No one was harmed, and the suspect is in custody. What remains is the symbolism.

Some stories are so on-the-nose, so richly emblematic of modern trends, that it almost feels unfair to comment on them. For example, a Secret Service detail having two of its cars vandalized in Lower Manhattan while they were protecting the stepdaughter of Vice President Harris.

Thankfully, no one was harmed in the Tuesday incident, and the suspected vandal is now in police custody. What remains is the symbolism.

Most obvious is the fact that this happened to a detail protecting the family of Harris, who ran four years ago as a progressive prosecutor who thought it was “outdated” and “wrongheaded thinking” to suggest that we needed to put more police on the street to fight crime. She is now trying to back away from these remarks, along with much of the other Twitter-brained tommyrot she thought would help her win the Democratic primaries. But those ideas, however evanescent, had lasting consequences for American cities. This crime encapsulates that arc all too well.

Advertisement

And yet, the glaring irony isn’t the most telling aspect of this story. What makes it the perfect emblem of our current political disputes is that it’s such a minor thing, an act of vandalism committed by a man who appears to be some kind of local parking vigilante.

If and when Harris is asked to defend her previous remarks, expect to hear one talking point again and again: that violent crime is down from its pandemic peak and, in many U.S. cities, is actually a smidge lower than it was in 2019, according to the Council on Criminal Justice. She’ll say this because it’s true (and because it’s great news). But that won’t necessarily soothe voters, who are worried about a lot more than the homicide rate. They’re worried about the air of lawlessness that pervaded a lot of public spaces during the pandemic and still hasn’t cleared.

Experts assessing the general crime level tend to focus on homicide because it’s easy to measure, unlike, say, vandalism, which often isn’t even reported. But homicide is also quite rare. FBI statistics show 306 property crimes for every homicide — and those are just the ones that get reported.

Advertisement

We have even less data on things that aren’t necessarily crimes but nevertheless make public spaces feel less safe, such as public intoxication, open drug use and vague threats shouted at passersby. Experts call these things........

© Washington Post