A New York jail released fifty inmates on Saturday as part of a statewide effort to stop the spread of coronavirus. The gang of liberated criminals includes eight registered sex offenders, at least three of whom were convicted of raping minors and labeled “Level 3,” the most likely to reoffend and least likely to respect “social distancing.” Meanwhile in Philadelphia the police commissioner has announced that officers will no longer arrest drug dealers, burglars, car thieves, prostitutes, fraudsters, and pimps, also in the name of impeding the spread of the virus.
But one group of miscreants has not evaded prosecution, or rather persecution: Christian pastors. Tampa police officers arrested megachurch pastor Rodney Howard-Browne on Monday for refusing to shutter his church doors a day earlier. They charged him with unlawful assembly and violating public health emergency rules. Like the child rapists in New York, Pastor Howard-Browne was eventually permitted to leave the jail. Unlike the pedophiles, the pastor had to post a $500 bond.
The following day, police in Central, Louisiana, arrested pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church for the same crime and issued him a misdemeanor summons for six counts—one for each of the worship services he held after Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards banned public gatherings on March 16. According to NBC News, Central Police chief Roger Corcoran coordinated “with the sheriff, State Police, State Fire Marshal and others” to nab the pastor. “Mr. Spell will have his day in court where he will be held responsible for his reckless and irresponsible decisions that endangered the health of his congregation and our community,” Corcoran fumed. It’s a wonder he didn’t call in the National Guard.
Public crises, particularly those concerning life and death, offer demagogues ample opportunity to amass more power. As New York governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters last week, “If everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.” Of course he will. Even if his measures fail to save a single life, he can only emerge more powerful from this epidemic.
In medicine as well as politics, one cannot permit the cure to be worse than the disease. If “stopping the spread of the virus” now means letting child rapists out of prison and arresting pastors for preaching, the cure to the epidemic threatens to poison the body politic. The politicians freeing jailbirds from their cells cannot lock the general public inside their homes forever. At some point the people will hold their leaders accountable for political malpractice, one hopes sooner rather than later.