Author: Michael Rushford

Milestone Met in SF Recall of Chesa Boudin

by · Oct 25, 2021 10:29 am

Pigs were seen flying over San Francisco last weekend as the campaign to recall uber-progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin turned in 83,487 signatures to county officials last Friday.  Evan Symon of the California Globe reports that 51,325 signatures are required to put the recall on the ballot, which leaders of the Safer SF Without Boudin say is now nearly a certainty.  “It says a lot about the anger and the fear that San Franciscans have about what’s going on in the community,” said the Co-chairwoman of the group.  Boudin’s tenure as District Attorney has been marked by skyrocketing crime, including shootings, while his office has chosen not to prosecute thousands of offenders arrested for theft, drugs, assault and burglary.

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Spike in Homicides Hits Midsized Cities Hardest

by · Oct 21, 2021 11:20 am

“A recent poll from Morning Consult/Politico found that 78 percent of voters believe that violent crime is a major problem in the United States, and nearly as high a percentage thought that the problem is getting worse,” as noted by Josh Crawford and Abigal Hall of the Pegasus Institute.  Their piece in Real Clear Policy points out that while media attention regarding violent crime and homicide is focused on large cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, “it’s midsize cities in the middle of the country which have seen the largest increases in violent crime.   Murder has exploded in Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Birmingham, for example – but perhaps no city better illustrates this reality than Louisville.”

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The War on Cops Continues

by · Oct 21, 2021 10:24 am

Violence against police officers has accelerated over the past several years.  Rick Sobey of the Boston Herald reports that so far this year, 59 police officers have been murdered in the line of duty, a 51% increase from over the same period in 2020.  For all of last year, 46 police officers were murdered.  Most of the officers were killed while responding to domestic calls (29.6%), while over 16% died while attempting an arrest and 8.4% died during traffic stops or pursuits.   FBI data indicate that murders of police over the first three quarters of 2021 are more than for the four full years since 2016, and are on pace to exceed the 72 officers murdered in 2011.  The FBI Special Agent in Charge in Boston told reporters, “the percent of unprovoked attacks (on officers) has significantly risen…The unprovoked attacks, combined with pursuits, tactical situations and ambushes, have been the cause for 74% of the felonious deaths so far this year.  In 2020, those four circumstances represented 28% of the deaths.”  More than 60,000 officers were assaulted last year which is over 4,000 more assaults than in 2019.  Of that number 18,568 were injured.  Protecting the public with a target on your back is increasingly dangerous for those willing to risk their lives on our behalf.

Politicians in VA Want to Restore Parole, Murderers Included

by · Oct 18, 2021 11:34 am

Virginia Senator Joe Morrissey (D. Richmond) plans to introduce a bill in 2022 that will restore parole to make violent criminals, including murderers, eligible for release from prison after serving 15 years of less.   Attorney Hans Bader writes in Liberty Unyielding that the Democrat majority in Virginia’s House of Delegates and in the Senate almost assures passage. Gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has indicated that he would support efforts to restore parole if elected next month.

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Soros-Funded DAs Presiding Over a Bloodbath

by · Oct 14, 2021 3:09 pm

In 2003, progressive hedge fund billionaire George Soros emerged as a major player in national politics when he gave $23 million in a failed attempt to defeat George W. Bush.  In the years that followed he continued to pour millions into liberal causes and national campaigns and in 2020 was the largest single contributor to liberal candidates and causes in the entire country, giving a reported $50 million to PACs funding campaigns ranging from Joe Biden for President to progressive candidates for local district attorney races.  Since 2015, Soros’ New York based Open Society Foundations (there are three) have funneled millions through a network of non-profit “527″ groups spread across the country, to encourage the adoption of laws reducing sentences for habitual criminals and to elect district attorneys who refuse to seek the death penalty for murderers, refuse to prosecute drug dealers, thieves and wife beaters, and seek the shortest sentences possible for violent offenders.

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Newsom Signs Bills Reducing Sentences

by · Oct 12, 2021 2:26 pm

Doubling down on his commitment to empty out California’s prisons, Governor Gavin Newsom signed several bills last Friday to block sentence increases for habitual felons and drug dealers.  Patrick McGreevy of the Los Angeles Times reports that Newsom signed SB 81, introduced by Alameda County Democrat Nancy Skinner, to require that judges dismiss sentence increases (called enhancements) for using a gun in a crime or due to prior convictions.   According to Skinner eliminating these enhancements would reduce the “discriminatory racial impact” on minority criminals.  The fact that blacks commit 7 times as many felonies as whites and 93% of their victims are other blacks is not of importance.

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CA Law Banning Private Prisons Overturned

by · Oct 11, 2021 2:28 pm

In a 2-1 decision last week a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a California law phasing out private detention facilities.  Josh Gerstein of Politico reports that the divided panel held that AB 32, signed into law by Gavin Newsom in 2019, unconstitutionally interferes with the federal government’s exclusive authority to enforce immigration law.  California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who authored AB 32 while serving in the state Assembly, vowed to continue the fight to uphold the law, presumably with an appeal of the panel’s decision to the full Ninth Circuit.

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Study: Cops are Abandoning Big City Police Departments

by · Oct 8, 2021 1:41 pm

A study by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF) reports that police officers in ten large urban police departments are retiring or resigning at unprecedented levels.   A story by Fox News reporter Peter Aitken quotes LELDF President Jason Johnson, “In the wake of the anti-police movement and Floyd protests, cops —unwanted and unappreciated by their political leaders —are running for the exits. Resignations and retirements at the largest police agencies in the United States are skyrocketing while recruitment is tanking.”  The study compiled data from police agencies in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Austin, Las Vegas, Chicago, San Jose, Los Angeles County, Washington DC, San Francisco, and Miami-Dade from June 1, 2020 to April 30, 2021.

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Missouri Executes Triple Murderer

by · Oct 6, 2021 2:22 pm

Despite appeals from the Pope and racial activists including Congressman Cori Bush,  triple murderer Earnest Johnson was executed by lethal injection Tuesday evening.   Jim Salter of the Associated Press reports that Johnson  was sentenced to death for the February 1994 murders of three at Casey’s General Store in Columbia.  Johnson, who intended to rob the store for money to buy drugs, waited until closing time before pulling a gun on the manager, 46-year-old Mary Bratcher, and demanding that she open the safe.  After Bratcher tried to flush the safe key down a toilet, Johnson shot her and employees Mable Scruggs, 57 and Fred Jones, 58.  When all three survived the gunshots, Johnson attacked them with a claw hammer and a screwdriver.  A mountain of evidence left the jury with no question regarding Johnson’s guilt.

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Liberals Lie While People Die

by · Oct 5, 2021 4:02 pm

In recent years the gap between fact and fiction in American journalism has become so wide that articles citing completely false “facts” are routinely featured in once-respected news sources.  One recent example is a September 29 article in the San Francisco Examiner by Opinion Editor Gil Duran.  The piece focuses on the tragic September 4 sexual assault and murder of 61-year-old Molly Tibbitts in Sacramento.   Habitual felon Troy Davis was arrested for these crimes along with killing the victim’s dogs and setting fire to her home.   Davis had been arrested for stealing a car last June and was released without bail.   As one might expect, the Tibbitts family, her friends and neighbors and law enforcement leaders wanted to know why a repeat felon on parole got released on zero bail after stealing a car three months before the murder.  Duran contends that the Sacramento County’s “pro-Trump” Sheriff “may deserve some of the blame.”  He also suggests that if this crime had occurred in his former home of San Francisco, or in Los Angeles, Republicans would have blamed the progressive Chesa Boudin and George Gascon, both of whom support zero bail.

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