Remembering the True Victims of Injustice: Iryna, Logan, the Oltons | The American Spectator

Last week’s hearings before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance took a dramatic turn with the testimony of Stephen Federico, father of Logan Federico, a 22-year-old college student murdered last May during a home invasion where she was staying with friends. Federico challenged the subcommittee members in the following terms:

Think about your child coming home from a night out with friends, lying down, going to sleep, feeling somebody come into the room…and wake them. And drag her out of bed. Naked. Forced on her knees. With her hands over her head. Begging for her life, begging for her hero, her father, me. That couldn’t be there.

The heartbreak spilled over in his every word, and also the heartfelt anger. After all, her killer was a 30-year-old repeat offender who had committed multiple crimes — an average of 2.65 per year — since turning 15. And yet he was out on the street once again — in fact, over the course of his 15-year criminal career, he’d only spent some 600 days in jail. The math itself tells an appalling tale, a tale of a broken justice system.

This, of course, was the point of the hearings, which had been called in response to the belatedly well-publicized murder of Iryna Zarutska by a similarly uncontrolled violent criminal, someone who, by any reasonable standard, should have been taken off the streets years ago. Predictably — and unfortunately — the hearings, which should have produced a unified and bipartisan outrage, instead divided along partisan lines, with the Democrats calling for more money, as they always do when faced with an issue, while the Republicans pointed to fundamental policy failures. (RELATED: She Fled the Ukraine War for Safety. America Delivered Her to a Killer.)

The policy failures should be obvious, and they speak to a two-tiered justice system, where the benefit of the doubt — and a failure to incarcerate — has become the common coin of progressive criminal justice. Some still argue the need for better methods to separate the mentally compromised from the simply depraved, but the bottom line is that anyone with a track record of violence should — at the very least — be locked up. And we also need a frank and honest discussion about the return of the death penalty for those who’ve shown themselves to be an irremediable menace to society. (RELATED: NC Gov. Josh Stein Chooses Softness Over Safety)

I’ve been haunted for weeks by the video images of Iryna Zarutska’s final moments, her obvious vulnerability, the brutal stabbing, her exultant killer, and the indifference of her fellow passengers as she curled up and then bled out, alone and without comfort. The mental picture conjured by Stephen Federico of his daughter’s final moments is equally haunting. There’s something horrifically compelling about the vulnerability of these young women and the brutality of their attackers. (RELATED: If You See a Girl Bleeding Out on a Train, What Would You Do?)

But it’s not just young women who are vulnerable and, as another recent case reminds us, the victims of monstrous brutality. Consider the case from several weeks ago of Frank and Maureen Olton, 76 and 77 years old, respectively, residents of the New York borough of Queens. Apparently, out of kindness, they allowed their killer into their home, responding to some kind of “help me” scam, obviously unaware of his violent criminal history. He tortured the couple — the details don’t bear repeating — then, after five hours, set the house afire and left the couple to be consumed in the fire. Good people, loved and admired by their neighbors, their lives taken by a man who clearly shouldn’t have been out on the street.

Once upon a time, a solution was offered to crimes such as these, the source an unlikely one, the renowned Chicago newspaper columnist, Mike Royko. It’s been nearly 30 years since Royko’s passing, but, in his day — a day that lasted 42 years — his columns and books held a mirror to the city he loved. Sometimes characterized as a “humorist,” Royko’s mordant wit and gift for satire reached far beyond mere entertainment.

Royko was a liberal back in the day when “liberal” had not yet become a synonym for “batshit crazy.” Unsurprisingly, he hated the National Rifle Association and was a passionate voice for gun control — until one morning, he wasn’t. In November of 1989, Royko banged out one of his most famous articles, “Women should be able to carry guns.” (RELATED: Pritzker’s Projection Is Destroying His Prospective Presidential Race)

The article begins by recounting the case of a young woman waiting late at night at a bus stop on the south side of Chicago — unwise, as Royko observes, but understandable given she needed to get home from visiting friends. A car pulls up, the driver grabs her with a knife, makes her get in the car, drives her to a side street, and rapes her repeatedly for two hours. Then he dumped her.

She started to walk home, planning to call the police when she got there — no cell phones in those days. A second man accosts her with a knife, forces her into an abandoned building, and also rapes her repeatedly. Finally, she made it to a friend’s home, where she could call the police and be taken to a hospital. As Royko notes in his article, the hospital described her condition as “good,” absurd given the trauma she’d suffered.

This double rape, perpetrated by random assailants, broke Royko’s anti-gun absolutism. In his words, “If that woman had a pistol in her pocket or purse, knew how to use it, and was alert to danger, it’s doubtful that the first rapist would have been able to get her into his car.” After discussing the deterrent effect that simply brandishing the pistol would provide, he concludes by observing that, if the rapist hadn’t backed off, “he would have had a new hole in his anatomy that would have discouraged further advances.”

Royko’s conclusion: Women should be allowed to carry concealed. Bemoaning the fact that gun laws in Chicago would never change, he went further, suggesting that, even if illegal, he would still recommend that women who are required to go about the city alone should arm themselves, legally or otherwise. It’s safe to say that Mike Royko didn’t envision open season on rapists; his hopes, clearly expressed, were that, if enough women carried, bad guys would get the message. Implicit in this was the old refrain, “an armed society is a polite society.”

I’m not so naïve as to imagine that the widespread arming of women would come without problems. I know that it opens a genuine, deadly force usage can of worms, particularly in the context of threats on the street, precisely the kind of threats that Royko envisioned in his article — precisely the kind of threat that loomed over Iryna Zarutska’s shoulder and killed her. More, it requires a level of situational awareness that is hard to maintain, day in, day out, as one goes about one’s life.

Even in the rarefied atmosphere of professional executive protection where I once worked, keeping team members sharp and focused on potential threats was always difficult. People, sadly, let their guard down. A friend from years ago, Jenny May, was a superbly capable martial artist and a consummate security professional. And yet she was murdered on a Tel Aviv beach, taken from behind on a nocturnal stroll, and strangled.

When it comes to home defense, the task is easier, since a home invasion carries — or should carry — an indication of imminent threat. I wrote about this in a previous American Spectator article, writing of my experience in a case bitterly similar to the murder of the Oltons. Chicago denizen Mike Royko might have made a similar argument in the notorious case of Richard Speck, who invaded a townhouse occupied by eight student nurses and killed them all, one by one. Had the first one shot him, they all might have lived. (RELATED: When Seconds Count, the Police Are Only Minutes Away)

We can wish that a Daniel Penny might be present every time someone is threatened on public transport, trained, strong, and capable of taking down the aggressor. We can — and should — lobby as energetically as possible for a justice system that takes bad actors off the street and keeps them away from the rest of society. No more revolving door, no more “two-tiered justice,” no more excuses made for violent criminals, none, no more allowing the violent mentally ill to roam unconstrained, neither treated for their illness nor kept from hurting others. And we should applaud President Trump’s campaign to take back the streets of our most degenerate cities. (RELATED: Treating Insanity, Not Normalizing It)

We can hope for all of the above, and more. In the end, however, the physically vulnerable among us, women, the handicapped, the elderly, should be encouraged to arm themselves against the predators, and society should support them should they be forced to act decisively in their own defense. If the next Iryna or Logan blows her attacker away, we should applaud her actions and shield her from the kind of mindless progressive persecution inflicted on Daniel Penny. (RELATED: Alvin Bragg Bears Blame for Iryna Zarutska’s Murder)

We should listen to Mike Royko’s voice from the past. He was famous for the sardonic and penetrating humor he brought to bear on every social issue, but displayed none of that humor in his 1989 article about the rape victim. He was too angry, too outraged, to find anything to laugh about in the violent victimization of this young woman, and he stood his ground in later articles, even when his 1989 essay drew the ire of his usual liberal readers.

Today, when it seems that each morning brings fresh reminders that we’ve lost control of the streets, we need to find a similar anger, a similar outrage. Say their names. Iryna, Logan, the Oltons — remember who they were, remember what happened to them. Remember, as I wrote in my previous article, “when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” If things are to change, then the vulnerable deserve every equalizer. It’s high time they were given it.

READ MORE from James H. McGee:

Catholic Cognitive Dissonance

Looking Back in Anger — With Hope

The Ever-Evolving Terrorist Threat

James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. He’s just published his new novel, The Zebras from Minsk, the sequel to his well-received 2022 thriller, Letter of Reprisal. The Zebras from Minsk find the Reprisal Team fighting against an alliance of Chinese and Russian-backed terrorists, brutal child traffickers, and a corrupt anti-American billionaire, racing against time to take down a conspiracy that ranges from the hills of West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find The Zebras from Minsk (and Letter of Reprisal) on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.