If this continues, it's criminals who will require protection from civilians reclaiming the law enforcement duties they once voluntarily relinquished to the police
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Bartender slashed in face by man who was then released without bail
“I asked him, ‘do you have your vaccination card?’ and he said ‘I’ve had the vaccine but I don’t have the card’ and I was like OK but you need to have proof of it,” Ogilvy said…
“He ended up basically saying ‘You’re picking on me,'” Ogilvy said. “I’m not going to deal with it.’ That’s when he started getting hostile.”
A coworker came over to help defuse the escalating situation – and even a few customers – but the man wouldn’t go and fought back with a long stick. Witnesses said a sharp piece of metal was attached to the bottom end.
“He swung the stick as hard as he could at my face, so not only did it puncture me, he also slit me,” Ogilvy said.
The wound was so deep Ogilvy needed 31 stitches to close it up.
The man quickly fled the scene. A couple of people from the bar tried to follow him but he managed to get on a commuter train and disappear. It took police six weeks to identify and arrest him. At his first court appearance last week, prosecutors said they were charging him with felony assault and asked for $75,000 bail. But the judge ignored that and released him with a promise he’d return for his next court date and a no-contact order for Ogilvy.
“We realized pretty clearly that this is a felony assault case and we charged it that way,” said Casey McNerthney, a spokesperson for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. “We understand that the victim was concerned. We were too. That’s why we wanted him to be held in jail.”
Ogilvy has undergone surgery and is scheduled for more to help heal the wound that initially required 31 sutures to close up.
The social contract that evolved in western civilizations over the past six centuries or so stipulated that individuals would sacrifice some of their individual rights and freedoms in exchange for benefits better provided by a larger society. But a contract is just that, and when one side defaults on its obligations, the other can declare the contract terminated. Protection against criminals was one of those obligations, and increasingly, the party responsible for providing it is defaulting.
Hobbes described the condition of man before that social contract was entered into as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutal, and short” — shame to see that coming back.
