Author: Michael Rushford

With bail eliminated in New York City, and many businesses closed, NYPD data indicate that commercial burglaries have jumped by 75%.   Daniel Cassady of the New York Post reports that between March 12, when Mayor de Blasio ordered the lockdown and March 31, police reported 254 businesses burglarized, particularly cash businesses such as supermarkets and bodegas.    According to the city’s Chief of Crime Control “the burglaries we are seeing now are more organized and specifically targeted.  There’s much more night-time entry, more forced entry….while they (businesses) are closed.”  Adding to the problem is the city’s recent elimination of bail for property crimes.  “I’ve seen multiple individuals who have been arrested for burglary this year and then released the next day,” said the Chief.  Officials are also concerned about coronavirus-related releases of prison inmates, some of whom have already been arrested for committing crimes.  New York City is probably not the only place experiencing a jump in commercial burglaries.

State prison and jail inmates with two months or less left to serve on their sentences are receiving early releases due to fears of widespread corona virus outbreaks.  Sam Stanton of the Sacramento Bee reports that at least 1,700 inmates will be released from the Los Angeles County Jail while another 3,500 will be released from California prisons.  Officials said that most of the inmates released are non-violent offenders.  Other county jail releases have been ordered for Sacramento County (541), Alameda County (314), Fresno County (207) and Orange County (130).  No word on if the classification of “non-violent” is based on the inmate’s most recent crime, or his entire record.  Under California’s Proposition  57, a car thief with priors for rape and second-degree murder is eligible for early release.  If this is the same criteria being used for releases due to corona virus fears, many serious offenders will be hitting the streets.

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An employee of a smoke shop in Arlington, VA is being held without bail facing felony charges for using a gun to defend his place of business during an early morning break-in and burglary.  Tom Roussey of WJLA reports that 31-year-old Hamzeh Abushariah was sleeping in a back room when he was startled awake by three burglars breaking into the store at 4:53 am Sunday.  He grabbed the gun the store’s owner had purchased to protect the business from burglars, and confronted the suspects, shooting one.  All three managed to escape.  The employee was staying in the store to save money and avoid the corona virus, which had infected residents of his D.C. apartment complex.   Newly elected Arlington Commonwealth Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Taft has not yet charged the burglary suspects, but Abushariah was immediately arrested and charged.  Dehghani-Taft, a progressive who received over $620,000 from liberal hedge fund billionaire George Soros, was elected last November after knocking off incumbent Theo Stamos in the June primary.  Stamos raised just over $161,000.  Dehghani-Taft’s election is just the latest win for Soros-funded progressive (read pro-criminal) District Attorneys across the country.  The Soros funds are funneled through PACs such as New York Justice and Public Safety PAC, which have been set up in several states to give directly to selected candidates and run campaign ads on TV and radio.

In an unpublished ruling released earlier this month, a divided panel of the California’s First District Court of Appeal overturned the murder conviction of DeAngelo Cortijo, a well known Bay Area  criminal justice reform advocate.   The San Jose Mercury News reports that a jury found Cortijo guilty of the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Oakland resident Jamad Jerkins in 2016.  At trial, Jerkins’ girlfriend testified that he had told her about an earlier incident where Cortijo had pulled a gun on Jerkins.   The judge sustained the defense objection that the girlfriend’s statement was hearsay, and instructed the jury to ignore it, but he refused Cortijo’s request for a mistrial.   Cortijo later testified that he had confronted Jerkins in an apartment parking lot, pointing a loaded gun at him,  and claimed that when Jerkins tried to slap the gun away, it went off.

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The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has postponed the execution of murderer Tracy Lane Beatty due to the corona virus.  Blake Holland of KLTV reports that Beatty was scheduled to be executed today for the 2003 murder of his 62-year-old mother.  The Texas Daily Independent reported that Beatty had previous convictions for drug possession, theft, weapons possession, a brutal assault against a child under two years of age, and prior assaults against his mother, a correctional officer, and others. While incarcerated, Beatty had a physical altercation with a corrections officer and was found with a shank. He had also joined a prison gang.

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Three weeks after California’s March 3rd primary election, the outcome of several races across the state remains uncertain due to the state’s multiple “election reform” laws.  Motor Voter, Jungle Primary, provisional balloting and ballot harvesting have turned the state election process into a template for incompetence, corruption and fraud, where the final vote count is not known for several weeks and its accuracy never confirmed.    With several million mail-in and provisional ballots uncounted the day after the election some contests that were not even close on March 4, may completely change weeks later.

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Attorney General William Barr told reporters Tuesday that the Justice Department is investigating a reported cyber incident directed at computers at the Department of Health and Human Services.  Michael Balsamo of the Associated Press reports that a “denial of service” attack was attempted on HHS computer networks but the networks were not penetrated.  This came days after federal officials identified an effort by a foreign entity to spread misinformation about a nationwide quarantine in response to the coronavirus.  The Attorney General said the FBI and other agencies are investigating both incidents and threatened severe action for any foreign government behind disinformation campaigns attempting to spread panic among Americans.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals announced today that the state will delay the execution of triple-murderer John Hummel for 60 days due to the health crisis caused by the coronavirus.  Jerry Lambe of Law and Crime reports that, according to state prosecutors, Hummel’s attorneys offered “no evidence whatsoever” that the concerns about the virus would threaten prison employees or cause any impediment to the execution.  Hummel was sentenced to death in 2011 for the stabbing murder of his pregnant wife and the baseball-bat beating deaths of this 5-year-old daughter and his father-in-law, before setting fire to their home.  Hummel’s execution had been scheduled for Wednesday.

In a divided decision announced today the Arkansas Supreme Court has upheld a condemned murderer’s request to end the appeal of his conviction and sentence.   Andrew DeMillo of the Associated Press reports that Jerry Lard, convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer during a traffic stop in 2011, was found competent by the court to waive his right to post conviction relief.  Lard’s counsel argued that a mental review by a psychologist had concluded that Lard suffered from mild intellectual disability which should make him ineligible for execution.  The court held that because an execution date had not yet been set, the question of Lard’s eligibility for execution was not yet ripe for review.  Dashcam video from Officer Jonathan Schmidt’s patrol car showed Lard shooting him in the face, and the officer can later be heard begging for his life, before he was killed.

Progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who took office in January, announced policy changes Friday to reduce racial disparities in arrests and sentencing.  Mary Jane Johnson of the San Francisco Examiner reports that Boudin’s office will no longer prosecute for drugs, guns or anything else, including a nuclear device, found during  “pretextual” traffic stops, and will not seek sentencing increases for habitual felons or gang members.  The new policy adopts reforms recommended by the Obama Justice Department in 2016 to address racial bias in policing.

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