Someone once defined a conservative as a liberal who has been mugged.

Perhaps that will describe the population of New York City, or so thinks Daniel Henninger:

Within days of President Obama’s decision last week to appoint a civil-liberties “adversary” inside the U.S.’s antiterrorism surveillance program, a federal judge created a “monitor” to oversee the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk anticrime program. Both these decisions, if allowed to take full effect, run a significant risk that violence will return or increase—as the terrorism of al Qaeda or as murder and assault in New York City.

If that happens—and don’t bet against it—a liberal president and a liberal federal judge will have brought back to life one of modern liberalism’s worst nightmares: the belief that Democrats can’t be trusted with national security or the control of violent crime. They’re soft on security.

In New York City a handful of Democrats—canaries in the party’s mine shaft—are competing to succeed Mike Bloomberg. For months, New Yorkers of all political persuasions have been asking sotto voce if the city’s 20-year miracle of urban tranquility under Rudy Giuliani and Mr. Bloomberg will vanish if a left-wing Democrat (the city allows no other kind) becomes mayor.

The subject can’t be avoided because the city’s irrepressible, activist left made weakening the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policies a litmus test for winning the Democratic primary next month. All the Democratic candidates have saluted the movement to downgrade stop-and-frisk.

A liberal Democratic mayor is unsettling for New Yorkers who’ve lived in the city long enough not to have to Google the meaning of “Bernhard Goetz” or explain the legendary New York Post headline—”Dave, Do Something!”

Mr. Goetz was the vigilante who shot several muggers on a subway train in 1984. “Dave” was Mayor David Dinkins, who in the early 1990s presided over a city in the grip of civic disorder. …

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin decided not to wait for the November mayoral election to bring back the 1980s, or even the 1960s. That’s when criticism of liberal belief on security matters emerged, notably in Richard Nixon’s victorious 1968 “law and order” campaign. This critique argues that when liberals weigh the reality of physical threat to home and hearth against hyper-abstract interpretations of constitutional rights, abstraction wins. The Scheindlin decision, handed down Monday, is a classic of liberal abstraction on security.

New York has its lowest murder rate since the early 1960s, a big reason for the city’s 50 million meandering tourists last year. This tranquility of pedestrian life is presumably one point of an effective policing strategy. Ask Chicago. Not so for Judge Scheindlin, who discusses murder in footnote 210. She describes a “17% drop in index crime reports between 2003 and 2012, and a 30% drop in reported murders.” No matter. “I emphasize again,” the judge insists, “that this Opinion takes no position on whether stop and frisk contributed to the decline in crime.” And why is that, one might ask? Judge Scheindlin explains: “This court’s mandate is solely to judge the constitutionality of police behavior, not its effectiveness as a law enforcement tool.” …

Except at the far left and right, people believe security is government’s first obligation. In the 1990s, New York City’s voters tossed out Democrats ideologically unable to provide security. Voters know that crime and terror are real. And that unopposed, violent crime and terror always return. Judge Scheindlin and President Obama have answered the liberal siren song of a world without violence. Come 2016, the last thing voters may be looking for is a Democrat, no matter who she is.

Bill Clinton might count as the first law-and-order Democrat in my lifetime. One reason for his political success was his ability to see what regular voters thought was important, and one of those issues was, and is, public safety. You may recall that Clinton dramatically left the campaign trail early in 1992 to sign the death warrant for a convicted murderer. Clinton got through Congress his proposal to fund (until the funding ran out, of course) 100,000 police positions across the country. Clinton also has been one of the few Democrats smart enough to recognize gun control as a losing proposition for Democrats.

What about in Wisconsin? Gov. Scott Walker’s predecessor, James Doyle, was previously the state’s attorney general. Before that, he was Dane County’s district attorney. The words “tough on crime” and “James Doyle” have never appeared in the same sentence. (Doyle disdained prosecuting bad checks while he was D.A., for instance.) Twice-failed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett has been at war with Milwaukee’s police and fire departments, apparently with no political repercussions, in the city that leads, if you want to call it that, Wisconsin in crime and violent crime. And both Doyle and Barrett opposed concealed-carry, the former vetoing it, the latter, thankfully, losing to a governor who signed concealed-carry into law.

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen was elected in 2006 over Democrat Kathleen Falk, a former state attorney general. Falk, however, had nothing to do with actual crimes such as murder, assault, sexual assault, theft, etc. She was the state’s “public intervenor,” a position thankfully eliminated by Gov. Tommy Thompson.

And then there’s Madison, whose officialdom cannot be bothered to notice its decrease in quality of life, the result of its increase in crime and specifically violent crime. The only sheriffs who have ever exhibited much concern about crime are sheriffs who were appointed by Republican governors, which therefore doesn’t include the present sheriff.

The only Madison commentator that appears to notice crime is David Blaska, who recently observed:

A 10-year-old boy was mugged by a man who jumped out of a car, took the boy’s iPhone, and got back into the car driven by an accomplice. This occurred in the middle of the afternoon of Monday, July 23, near the intersection of Hammersley Road and Whitney Way on the city’s southwest side.

The Capital Newspapers report included a description of the two assailants, including age, height, hair style, tattoos, facial hair, gender, and race. The assailants were identified as members of a minority race.

When that report was shared with neighbors, the new president of the Meadowood neighborhood, Krista Ralston, objected:

It’s always better to be well informed and search for open-minded, holistic solutions than to simply complain, or jump to disturbing, unproductive and fear-mongering conclusions about perceived problems in our community. Obviously it is important to be aware of criminal behavior in our neighborhoods and take all necessary precautions, but let’s not over-blow the “problem.” [Her quotation marks] Unfortunately, crime happens but …

Do you hear that? The “perceived problem.” If we can’t admit that there is a problem, how can we solve it?

Yes, let’s not “over-blow” the “problem.” But what about under-blowing the problem? If it was one stolen cell phone, she might have a point. Police Chief Noble Wray came to this part of town in 2009 to hold a press conference begging residents to stop the shooting. A week or two later, a 17-year-old kid was popped. On June 28 of this year, 75 residents of the Betty’s Lane/Theresa Terrace area of west Hammersley Road went at it with fists, rakes, rocks, brass knuckles, and other weapons. To the melee, 24 police and three ambulances responded. (The police report.) Hey, “crime happens.”

Blaska passed on a statement from Madison Police Officer Caleb Johnson:

Many of you have expressed concern over the recent gun violence on Madison’s west side and have inquired about what the police department is doing to address this escalating problem. One particularly troubling incident took place on March 30, 2013, where multiple cars were involved in a rolling gun battle that traveled from Raymond Road through residential neighborhoods to Hammersley Road.

The Madison Police Department invested a great deal of resources into responding to this incident and following through with the investigation to determine the vehicles involved, the passengers, and the suspects who were firing the weapons. As part of this investigation, Michael Gales was arrested by the Madison Police Department and charged with three felony crimes, Discharge Firearm/Vehicle-Towards Person [941.20(3)(a)1], Discharge Firearm/Vehicle-Bldg/Vehicle [941.20(3)(a)2], and Endanger Safety/Reckless Use of Firearm [941.20(2)(a)].

I regret to inform you that Gales has been released as he has accepted a plea agreement that leaves him with three years of probation and no jail/prison time. With the plea agreement the charges … were dismissed. Details from this case can be viewed on CCAP [here].

I wanted to share the outcome of this incident with the community because it illustrates some of the challenges that the police department faces and sheds light on why some of these violent criminals continue to roam the streets even after they have been arrested and charged with numerous serious crimes.

Which prompted this comment, among others: