Two Philadelphia social workers were among nine charged yesterday in the death of a Danieal Kelly, a 14-year-old girl who starved to death in 2006, her body eaten by bed sores to the bone.

Unveiling a blistering grand jury report today [PDF], District Attorney Lynne Abraham blasted the city’s Department of Human Services as an indifferent and callous agency that had let Kelly die needlessly.

Drawing gasps at a news conference in which she showed a photograph of Kelly’s bloody, emaciated corpse, Abraham urged the state to take over DHS – a call that was not embraced by state officials.

The grand jury report contains just one photo of Danieal after her death (be forewarned: it’s horrifically graphic), but even it cannot convey the full horror of what this young girl must have suffered, not only at the hands of her mother, but through the wanton neglect of Philadelphia’s DHS and the private agency it contracted to provide services she never received.

This may be the worst example I’ve seen of the state’s failure to perform even the minimal duties expected of it: to guard the safety of its citizens.  If it fails—fundamentally fails, at every level of responsibility—in even this basic endeavor, how can anyone argue it is competent to manage our health, our children’s education, or the economy?  And keep in mind, this isn’t an issue of strained resources or overwhelmed caseworkers—the DHS in Philadelphia is well-funded and staffed, and doesn’t even provide services directly to clients.  It simply decides if action is warranted and then refers cases to private agencies to provide the actual services.  Yet it failed even at what amounted to button-pushing.

It’s true that in Danieal’s case, a private agency demonstrated callous indifference towards her plight, even as it was busy forging paperwork and bilking taxpayers for nonexistent services rendered.  But it could get away with it because its customer, the Philadelphia DHS, was complicit in its crimes.  One administrator even admitted to the grand jury that falsifying and backdating reports was common practice at the agency.

This isn’t an isolated incident.  You can’t find no less than nine adults, four of them social workers, responsible for a person’s death and assume this was a tragic exception to the rule.  As the grand jury wrote in its report:

The fate of a sweet and promising child depended on the willingness of a number of particular adults to do the bare minimum of what they were supposed to do. Danieal’s mother, her father, DHS employees, the agency that contracted with DHS to provide services for Danieal and her family – these make up a rather large cast of characters. Yet, had just one of them performed their duty or done their job, Danieal would be alive today. The combined criminal negligence that transformed the little girl in the school portrait into the shriveled corpse in the autopsy photographs was so callous, so cruel, and so relentless, it constitutes nothing less than homicide.

Indeed.  If I could, I’d charge every one of these people, with the possible exception of Andrea Kelly’s friends, with murder.  And even her friends are morally if not legally culpable when they knew how badly Danieal was suffering and didn’t say a word about it to anyone.

Not that it would have made any difference, given how the city handled the case.  The maggot-infested bedsores covering Danieal Kelly’s body aren’t the only things that have rotted to the bone.

Allow me to toss a glass of cold water on these hopeful musings.

It’s true that D. C.’s gun ban did nothing to reduce its murder rate.  Chicago, which banned handguns in 1982, continued to see its murder rate rise, reaching a peak of 33.9 per 100,000 in 1992 before dropping (and it has dropped dramatically, to as low as 15.6 per 100,000 in 2004).  But it’s still nearly three times the national average.  And the large drop in the murder rate has been attributed more to intensive policing tactics in high-crime areas than to the gun ban.

Conversely, it’s inconclusive that lifting restrictions on guns acts as a deterrent to violent crime, at least in urban areas.  Texas has perhaps the most relaxed gun laws in the nation, but its largest city, Houston, saw a dramatic spike in its murder rate following an influx of refugees from New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (but it has started to decline this year).  Michigan liberalized its permit requirements in 2002, but Detroit ranks first in the country in homicides, at more than 47 per 100,000.  Whether in the hands of law-abiding citizens or criminals, it isn’t the presence of guns that drive violent crime.  It just happens to be the tool of choice for those who perpetrate crimes, and where legal, those who wish to defend themselves.

Dreaming about a substantial drop in D. C.’s murder rate as a result of Heller, then, ignores all the other factors that can contribute to crime: high population densities, low incomes, crumbling public infrastructure, poor educational systems, family deterioration, drug addiction, etc.  Solving these problems requires a far more nuanced policy approach than simply banning guns or allowing them anywhere.  And the statistics do make clear that of all the tools state and local governments have to fight crime, restrictive gun laws are among the least effective.

Other approaches, such as the “broken windows” tactics used by police in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Denver, have had a lowering effect on those cities’ violent crime rate, though not always on murder itself.  But that, too, comes at a cost of civil rights violations and even more disturbing, the rapid militarization of local police departments.  Former NYC mayor and Presidential also-ran Rudy Giuliani often touts his “get tough” attitude on crime, ignoring the fact that arrests for petty drug offenses skyrocketed during his tenure, and disproportionately targeted minorities, among other abuses perpetrated by city police.

What, then, can we really expect as the fallout from Heller?  Probably not a magical drop in crime in the country’s inner cities, and certainly not over the short term.  There are still many policy issues regarding gun regulation to sort out, and it will probably take many more years of litigation to resolve them.  None of the solutions to fighting violent crime will come easily.  But the simplest policy, the one that politicians grasp for when they need a populist feather for their cap—abrogating an individual’s right to self-defense which has existed long before the Second Amendment was enshrined in the Constitution—is the worst solution of all.

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced a military-style checkpoint yesterday to stop cars this weekend in a Northeast Washington neighborhood inundated by gun violence, saying it will help keep criminals out of the area.

Starting on Saturday, officers will check drivers’ identification and ask whether they have a “legitimate purpose” to be in the Trinidad area, such as going to a doctor or church or visiting friends or relatives. If not, the drivers will be turned away. . . .

Any driver objecting to being denied access to the neighborhood faces arrest.  And drivers are the only people being scrutinized; pedestrians will not be stopped.  Do they not have bus service in D. C.?  Or murderers who can walk or ride a bicycle?

The irony of the nation’s capital, supposedly the nexus of freedom, democracy and justice, modeling its crime prevention tactics after the Stasi is painful, but also completely lost on its municipal leaders.  As the city’s interim attorney general said, he’s “not worried about the constitutionality of it.”  Remember, it’s just a piece of paper.  In the meantime, let’s see yours, comrade.

The next night, seven people are murdered in “a spasm of violence” in the eastern part of the District, bringing the total number of murders in D. C. for 2008 to 72.

No, these events probably aren’t related.  But see how much the cops care for their citizens’ safety?  Assistant Police Chief Diane Groomes:

“We do not want to kick off the summer like this. We need to get the guns out of people’s hands.“

And the qat, too!  Just think of the carnage that might have erupted had they left those wild-eyed qat chewers loose on the streets.

104. Hey you damn kids, get off my monument: a group of libertarians observe Thomas Jefferson’s birthday by heading down to his D. C. memorial for a midnight dance (to music played through iPods).  The National Park Police take exception to such a brazen display of revelry and break up the fun, arresting one of the participants in the process.

105. The Supreme Court heard arguments this week on whether Louisiana can put child rapists to death in a case that could have wide-ranging implications for other states looking to expand the death penalty to crimes other than capital murder.

106. Sheriff José, er Joe Arpaio uses Maricopa County tax dollars and funds from RICO seizures to provide training and equipment to Honduras police, although they’re tightlipped on why they’re doing it or how taxpayers in Arizona might benefit.  Cheaper bananas, maybe?

107. But at least Arizona is cracking down hard on working mothers for driving under the influence, even when they’ve had hardly anything to drink.

108. Other things you can no longer do in motorized vehicles: stay in one spot for longer than an hour in a taco truck in Los Angeles (see #91, below), or smoke in the car when kids are present in Maine.

109. In the hallowed halls of public education:

• A philosophy professor at a Long Island community college demands that his students acknowledge that their religious beliefs may be in error in order to participate in his class.  The American Center for Law and Justice is on the case.
• A high school student in Texas is suspended after receiving a phone call during class from his father, who is stationed in Iraq.

110. Apparently it’s a no-no in New Mexico to decline someone’s business on the basis of one’s religious beliefs.  Remember, the First Amendment is just printed on a goddamned piece of paper.

93. First Amendment follies:

• A Santeria priest sues a Texas town over their prohibition against animal sacrifice.
• An Illinois delegate for Barack Obama resigned after she used the word “monkeys” to refer to black kids playing in a tree. The real insult, however, is that she was issued a $75 citation for disorderly conduct.
• A professor at Lake Superior State University faces a formal reprimand for offensive material posted on his office door. The university claims the cartoons and other material create a “hostile environment”; the professor says he’s being singled out for his conservative political views.

94. Now go away, or we shall punish you a second time: an Orange County, CA man was wrongly convicted for carjacking and spent 16 months in prison before he was freed. Now the state says it has no obligation to compensate him for the wrongful imprisonment because he implicated himself by accepting a plea deal on the original charge.

95. Infamous until proven innocent: police in Arizona are posting mug shots of accused shoplifters online as a “deterrent”. Hell, what are they waiting for? Just lop off their right hand when they arrest ‘em!

96. Our incorruptible public servants:

• So if you’re convicted of accepting bribes, you lose your job, right? Not necessarily, if you’re a public school teacher.
• Don’t worry, Daddy will take care of it: Federal employees have been racking up personal charges on government credit cards to the tune of $2 million.