Nithya Raman’s attack on LA police chief is idiotic — and dangerous

Angelenos are on notice: If they elect Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) City Councilwoman Nithya Raman as mayor, they will put a radical supporter of the homeless-industrial complex, an opponent of public order and an enemy of private property rights into City Hall.

They will also have chosen a blithering idiot.  

Raman recently posted a campaign video with the theme: “Only you can stop fascist liars.” The “fascist liars” in question appear to be Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief Jim McDonnell and incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. The video shows photos of McDonnell several times, with a red X plastering his face. 

McDonnell and Bass’ “fascist” crimes?  Bass appointed McDonnell to run the LAPD and McDonnell has declared that while the LAPD will not cooperate in enforcing immigration law, it will protect federal immigration agents when they seek to arrest a violent felon who is in the country illegally, and when there are threats to those agents’ safety.

Raman, by contrast, will select a police chief who “can really respond to the needs that immigrant Angelenos have and that every resident of Los Angeles has,” she says in the recent campaign ad.

In Raman’s mind, apparently, immigrant and native Angelenos need more sex traffickers, drug dealers and gun-toting gangbangers in their midst. 

Thus, according to Raman, the LAPD should never provide any backup support when ICE seeks to arrest such illegal alien criminals.  

It is bad enough that Raman wants to turn LA into the purest of sanctuary cities, where illegal felons need fear nothing from the authorities and where law-abiding citizens are on their own to protect themselves against immigrant thugs. 

To add insult to injury, in a Raman administration, those law-abiding citizens would be on the hook to pay even more than they already do of the legal defense bills for those criminals if, somehow, despite Raman’s best efforts, a criminal alien actually faces a deportation hearing.  

It is bad enough that the anti-cop animus behind her 2020 calls to “defund the police” continues to surface in her pronouncements and proposals. 

It is bad enough that she opposes citywide bans on vagrant encampments, even around schools and day-care centers, and wants to pour billions more hard-earned taxpayer dollars into the charade of “homeless outreach.”

It is bad enough that the now-stricken campaign ad could be viewed as suggesting that McDonnell be not just crossed out, but snuffed out. 

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(When Sarah Palin released a graphic in 2010 of an electoral map with Democratic congressional districts under what appeared to be a rifle-scope crosshair, Democrats went nuts.)

But what is most striking about Raman’s ad is how embarrassingly juvenile it is. The promiscuous use of “fascist” is characteristic of ignorant, self-involved college students. No sane adult with a minimal grip on reality would label Karen Bass or Jim McDonnell “fascists.”  

The former is a left-leaning liberal, the latter an imminently moderate centrist with not the slightest indication of wanting to run a police state. 

Raman is a child who surrounds herself with other like-minded children, such as her campaign aide and interlocutor in the “stop fascist liars” ad. 

She and her advisors are caught up in their fantasies of revolution, all the while depending on the infrastructure of law-and-order and the prosperity of free-market capitalism to stage their wannabe revolts against bourgeois norms. 

If Raman was so out of touch with reality as to think that this campaign ad might have played well outside of the fringe left, she cannot possibly be relied on to do anything other than to run LA off a public safety and fiscal cliff.  

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of When Race Trumps Merit.