On July 1, 2022, a routine trip for a bag of chips turned into a national scandal when surveillance video showed a Harlem bodega worker, 61-year-old Jose Alba, fighting for his life after a customer’s EBT card was declined. The woman who first tried to buy the chips allegedly left, returned with her boyfriend, and the confrontation escalated into a violent attack that left the assailant dead and Alba arrested by Manhattan prosecutors. What should have been a clear self-defense case instead became a symbol of a system that seems to punish shopkeepers who stand up to violent criminals.
That the Manhattan district attorney’s office charged Alba with second-degree murder was an outrage to common-sense Americans, and it exposed the political priorities that come from soft-on-crime prosecutors who chase headlines instead of justice. While brave small-business owners are left to fend for themselves, the people making charging decisions appear eager to side with predators, not victims. The decision to arrest and detain a man who was defending himself sent a poisonous message to every grocer and bodega owner in the city: your safety doesn’t matter.
Equally infuriating is the role of taxpayer-funded benefits in the episode, with reports that the whole incident began when the customer’s EBT card was declined. When welfare benefits become a ticket to entitlement and confrontation, it’s no surprise that neighborhoods rot under the weight of fraud and abuse. Conservatives have warned for years that unchecked welfare programs, without proper oversight and consequences, create perverse incentives and reward bad behavior instead of lifting people into productive, law-abiding lives.
Worse still, witnesses and video suggest the woman who started the fight stabbed Alba during the melee, yet she faced no charges while the man who defended himself did. That kind of selective enforcement undermines the rule of law and makes a mockery of equal justice under the law. If prosecutors are going to aggressively pursue one part of the story, they must be consistent and hold every violent actor accountable, regardless of who they are.
The outcry from small-business owners, community leaders, and ordinary New Yorkers who rallied for Alba was the right reaction to an upside-down legal system that seems determined to protect criminals and punish victims. Conservatives and law-and-order advocates pushed back hard, reminding the city what happens when you allow career criminals to roam free and when local hospitals and courts reward violence with impunity. The public’s fury was not just about one case; it was about a pattern of policies that coddle offenders and ignore hardworking people trying to make an honest living.
What this episode should teach every policy maker is simple: enforce the law, protect small businesses, and fix the welfare system so benefits go to the genuinely needy and not to people who use them as leverage to intimidate others. Prosecutors like Alvin Bragg must be held to account for decisions that prioritize politics over public safety, and lawmakers should empower honest citizens and proprietors to defend themselves without fear of being criminalized. If we want safer streets and thriving communities, we must stop rewarding lawlessness and start backing the people who build and sustain our neighborhoods.
Hardworking Americans deserve leadership that defends victims, not apologies for criminals. It’s time to stand with bodega owners, with shopkeepers, and with the millions who play by the rules while watching their neighborhoods decline. Hold the prosecutors accountable, reform the broken parts of the welfare system, and restore common-sense law and order so scenes like the chips-and-violence spectacle in Harlem become the rare exception instead of the nightly news.
