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2022 Men of the Year: Crime Wave Heroes

Crime Wave Heroes Detroit dad and Joe Howard Teague/ Detroit Police Department and Onscene.tv
December 24, 2022

Fatherhood—like American natural gas, computer chips, and baby formula—is in short supply today. Just ask Hunter Biden’s daughter Navy Joan Roberts.

But amid the worst crime wave America has seen since the 1990s, the Washington Free Beacon saw fathers risk everything to protect hearth and home.

Stripped to the waist and enjoying the fine summer weather, a Detroit dad was out for a June stroll to get some smokes with his seven-month-old when a gunman cornered them at a gas station. Unfortunately for the thug, it happened to be Father’s Day.

Our hero pivoted to shield his infant, knocked the gunman’s piece away like it was a toy, and chased off the assassin—a lit cigarette still dangling from his lip.

He wasn’t the only dad who’d been around the block.

When burglars kicked in the front door of his California home in the middle of the night, 93-year-old Joe Howard Teague didn’t bat an eye.

"I approached them to put them under citizen’s arrest," Teague told reporters of the attempted home raid last summer. "They wouldn't adhere to that and then one of them came at me with a fishing pole."

So the retired plumber raised the stakes with a tool of his own.

"I kept telling them, I have a shotgun with three shells in it, but I actually only had one. And they kept throwing stuff at me," Teague said. "It was just like somebody comes to a gunfight with a pocketknife, you know."

We do know, Joe. And considering liberals in La-La Land have all but neutered law enforcement, it’s not surprising you didn’t count on a prompt 911 response.

Like 2020 Free Beacon Man of the Year Kyle Rittenhouse, you refused to be just another victim. You exercised your God-given right to self-defense on one of those looters. You shot his ass. And the others fled.

For choosing to shoulder the full scope of American self-government on behalf of the next generation—and well into one’s ninth decade—Detroit dad and Joe Howard Teague aren’t just crime wave heroes. They’re Washington Free Beacon Men of the Year.