Kelly's Common Sense

Kelly's Common Sense

New York Sun Editorial
March 20, 2006

During protests of the World Economic Forum's meeting in January and February 2002, New York's Finest, on the lookout for trouble, spotted a few likely troublemakers - of the mask-wearing and pipe-sporting variety - amid ranks of peaceful protesters and took the potential rioters off the street before they could create a disturbance. As a result of the arrest of 30 potential hoodlums, thousands were able to make their views known without significant trouble. Then the police studied that protest and found ways to improve their law enforcement efforts. By our lights - and, we believe, the lights of those New Yorkers possessed of common sense - that's a good thing. Call it Kellyism.

The left is, nonetheless, in a lather over police tactics at demonstrations, all the more so following the release, as part of a lawsuit, of several internal police department reports last week. The reports, first reported by the New York Times, are after-action analyses of the effectiveness of various methods. Among the conclusions: arresting people who obviously intend to cause mayhem reduces mayhem; the presence of police officers and vehicles seems to deter people from breaking laws; and plainclothes officers can be useful law enforcement tools.

Add it all up and what emerges is a picture of a police department doing exactly what a police department should - learning from experience to find the best way to protect the public and keep the peace. The police decided wisely against using one controversial tactic that was, according to the Times, discussed in one draft memo - namely spreading misinformation among protesters. This tactic was never executed, a spokesman for the department, Paul Browne, told us yesterday. It turns out to have been an idea in a draft that was never signed by the commander for whom it had been prepared and was never passed up the hierarchy.

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Common sense is in uncommonly short supply in this nation and has been for sometime.

Researchers have sounded a warning that common sense as it was know in days of yore will be extinct by 2010. So far all efforts to preserve common sense have failed. Researchers point to the ravenous beast 'politically correct' and his half brother 'spin' as the main killers of common sense.