There's one thing you can say about socialist Democrats: they are absolutely committed to the bit. No matter how many times their ideas fail in the real world, no matter who gets hurt, they never flinch, never apologize, and never once consider that they might be wrong. Cambridge, Massachusetts just gave us the latest example — and this one cost a man his life.
Xavier Bautista was a Department of Public Works employee. He went to work on the Fourth of July. He didn't come home.
A pedestrian found his body early that morning, between a parked vehicle and the curb. CBS Boston reported that Bautista had been shot twice. His body wasn't discovered until more than an hour after the shooting.
Here's what's important to understand: he didn't have to die that way.
Not long ago, a ShotSpotter device would have detected the gunshots and immediately notified Cambridge police. Officers could have been on scene within minutes. Bautista might have lived long enough to reach a hospital.
But Cambridge's city council voted to remove ShotSpotter in May.
The effort was led by Councilor Ayah Al-Zubi, who argued the technology posed a "privacy and safety" risk for residents. Her allies said ShotSpotter perpetuates "systemic racism." They pointed to its Department of Homeland Security funding — the same agency that oversees ICE — as proof that gunshot-detection technology is somehow a threat to democracy.
That is the actual reasoning of the people running Cambridge, Massachusetts.
When the council debated the issue in May, the hearing was packed with Democratic Socialists of America members denouncing the "intrusive" and "oppressive" system. A majority of the council voted to abolish it anyway.
Cambridge Police Commissioner Pauline Wells had pleaded with them to reconsider. She told the council she had counted "at least 11 times" that ShotSpotter detected gunfire and no 911 calls were ever made.
"That means 11 moments when no one reached for the phone, 11 moments when officers would have no direction, 11 moments when seconds were slipping away when ShotSpotter was the only reason there was help at all," she said.
The council didn't care.
After Bautista's death, even the reliably liberal Boston Globe ran an editorial stating that Cambridge officials need to face the fact that Bautista was "the victim of their own opposition to a technology intended to save lives." On the racism argument, the Globe was blunt: "Microphones don't discriminate."
Manhattan Institute scholar Robert VerBruggen put it plainly: "ShotSpotter is not a panacea for gun violence or a racist ploy to surveil minority communities. It is, instead, a tool for improving gunshot response at the margin."
That's it. That's the whole controversy. A microphone that hears gunshots and calls the police.
Cambridge's city council killed it because the socialist left told them to. Xavier Bautista paid the price.
The people who voted to remove that system are still on the city council. They haven't apologized. They haven't reversed course. And the same coalition that put them there — the same DSA members who packed that hearing in May to shout down the police commissioner — is running candidates in cities across the country right now.
Xavier Bautista's body was found between a parked car and the curb on the Fourth of July.
The council that left him there is still in office.
That's what it looks like when the socialist left wins.
