Why aren’t the DOJ, FBI and Buttigieg doing anything about the train robberies

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The breadth of the theft is astonishing. At a rate of 90 freight cars ransacked per day, Union Pacific estimates that thefts against its trains are up by more than 160 percent over the last year. In the year ending October 2021, the increase was a mind-boggling 356 percent. The scheme is vast but simple. On portions of the route, the trains must stop or slow to a crawl – delays sometimes aided by thieves who jump on railcars and pull hand-brakes. The robbers then clamber aboard, armed with bolt-cutters for which the freight-car locks are no match. With the cars open, the free-for-all is on. Groups of robbers — some on their own, some working for stolen-property networks — ransack the storage shelves, rifle through packages, and grab what seems like a big score, discarding the rest and its packaging along the tracks. Fully 40 percent of goods imported into the United States come through ports in Southern California. A goodly percentage of that haul is transported from the West Coast to its eventual markets by rail. A lawless black hole into which billions of dollars in goods disappear is a national crime challenge. It is an interruption of not just interstate but international commerce, at a time when surging inflation, empty consumer shelves, and supply-chain disruptions are bludgeoning the U.S. economy. Our governing structure vests police power in the states. Constitutionally speaking, the main reason for having federal law enforcement is to vouchsafe interstate and international commerce. The progressive expansion of federal power has intruded Washington and its administrative state into many areas of traditional state regulation; but protecting the facilities of interstate commerce and national markets is a core federal duty. So where is the Justice Department on the California train heists? Where is the FBI? We would like to think they are building cases against the organized-crime enterprises and ad hoc theft-fencing schemes behind the crippling spate of train robberies. So far, though, they appear to be AWOL. Their passivity, like Gascon’s dereliction of duty, is turning a national embarrassment into a national crisis.

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