Author: Michael Rushford

NY Cops At War With de Blasio:  Following the enactment of several measures keeping criminals on the streets and last weekend’s shooting of two New York police officers by a repeat violent offender,  one police union has declared war on the city’s Mayor.  Greg Norman of Fox News reports that a fiery tweet from the head of the Sergeant’s Benevolent Association declared “NYPD cops have been assassinated because of you.”   The most recent shootings targeted police in a patrol vehicle, injuring one officer, then the same suspect walked into the precinct and began firing, injuring a lieutenant, only to surrender when he ran out of bullets.  The suspect, habitual felon Robert Williams, was free on parole after a 2002 attempted murder conviction, and had been rearrested in 2018 for fighting with police, and was released from custody pending trial.

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A largely unnoticed bill introduced last December in the House of Representatives (H.R.5383) called the “New Way Forward Act” would repeal federal laws which punish illegal immigration and protect illegal alien criminals from deportation.  Katy Grimes of the California Globe reports that the bill, which is sponsored by 44 House Democrats including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Karen Bass of California, “rolls back harmful immigration laws that, for decades, have led to racial profiling and disproportionately resulted in incarceration….” according to proponents.  As Rep. Jesus Garcia of Illinois noted the bill would break the “prison to deportation pipeline.”  While this measure has no chance of passage, some might be concerned that 10% of the members of the House of Representatives would like to see this bill become law.  With the exception of Fox News, no national news organization has bothered to report on this measure.

Killer of Five Faces Execution Thursday:   A Texas man convicted of the 2002 murders of his wife,  his 7-year-old and 9-month-old daughters, his sister in law and father in law, is scheduled for execution by lethal injection Thursday.  Brian Bingamon of the Austin Chronicle reports that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Abel Ochoa’s last appeal in October of 2019.  Unless a lower court orders a stay or the state grants clemency, his execution will be carried out.  At trial Ochoa claimed that he was suffering from a crack-cocaine induced delirium when he committed the murders, which included his reloading his gun, chasing down his 7-year-old daughter and shooting her four times.  The jury took 10 minutes to unanimously find him guilty.  On direct appeal and habeas corpus Ochoa claimed that his trial attorney was incompetent, the jury was biased, and that his alleged sexual abuse as a child and possible mental illness mitigated his responsibility for the murders.

Update:  Ochoa was pronounced dead at 6:48 p.m Thursday.

CA Prop. 47 Enabled the New El Chapo:  The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has flooded Los Angeles streets with drugs since passage of California’s Proposition 47.  Bill Melugin of Fox News reports that the CJNG  “is probably the most prolific cartel in Mexico,” according to the Los Angeles head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The cartel is responsible for 1/3 of all the drugs entering the US and has an extensive network in Los Angeles, smuggling and distributing hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine every month–much of it to the city’s growing homeless population. Federal law enforcement considers the cartel’s leader, El Mencho, to be worse than the notorious El Chapo. The CEO of the Union Rescue Mission in downtown LA, Reverend Andy Bales, who lost his leg from infection after stepping in human feces, believes that the city’s drug/homeless crisis needs a National Guard response. A DEA official said that Proposition 47, which decriminalized drug use, played right into the cartel’s hands, by providing addicts with no reason to stop using drugs and no motivation to go to treatment. El Mencho was an illegal in California 30 years ago. He was deported back to Mexico after he was arrested on drug charges in San Francisco and Sacramento.

Georgia Executes Double Murderer:  A Georgia man convicted in 1999 of the brutal murder of his ex-wife and her boyfriend was put to death Wednesday by lethal injection.  Joshua Sharpe and Bill Rankin of the Atlanta Journal Constitution report that in 1967 Donnie Lance shot and killed his ex-wife’s boyfriend Dwight “Butch” Wood Jr. with a shotgun, then used the butt of the gun to beat Joy Lance to death.  The woman’s face was so badly beaten it was unrecognizable.  The Washington Post reports that jurors learned at trial that Lance had terrorized his ex-wife for months with beatings, strangulation, electric shocks, threats of death by handgun and chain-saw, and more. Witnesses testified that they had heard Lance threaten to kill his wife if she divorced him or started a romantic relationship with Wood.

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Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, now a candidate for President, is apologizing for one of the most successful policies he supported when he was serving as Mayor.  It was proactive policing that drove violent crime down in New York between 2002 and 2013, while Bloomberg was Mayor.  In her piece in The Hill, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald notes that the most valuable tool police used during that period was “stop, question and frisk.”  Today as a candidate for President, Bloomberg is apologizing for allowing police to use that tool. “I got something important really wrong,” he said at the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn. “I didn’t understand that back then, the full impact that stops were having on the black and Latino communities.”

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In 2018 the California Legislature passed and Governor Brown signed SB 1391 into law.  That bill removed the authority of District Attorneys and Superior Court Judges to try violent juvenile offenders under the age of 16  in adult court.  While trying a defendant of that age was already quite rare, in some cases where the murder was particularly horrific and clearly planned, a trial in adult court would allow the killer to be sentenced to a long incarceration or even a life term.  Murderers tried in juvenile court can only be held until age 25.  An example of why this is important is the case of Daniel Marsh.  In 2013 the 15 year-old stabbed to death and mutilated the bodies of an elderly couple in the small college town of Davis.  Marsh admitted to he had butchered the couple because he wanted to know what it felt like.

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ICE Subpoenas NY for Info on Criminal Aliens:  Following the arrest of an illegal alien for the rape and murder of  92-year-old Maria Fuertes earlier this month, Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has subpoenaed New York for information about the suspect and other criminal aliens which have been released into the city under its sanctuary city policy.   Adam Shaw of Fox News reports that when Reeaz Khan, an illegal alien from Guyana, was released from jail pending trial on assault and weapons charges New York’s sanctuary city policy prevented local law enforcement from notifying ICE so that they could hold him for deportation.

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SF DA Abolishes Cash Bail:  Not to be outdone by New York City, which abolished cash bail on January 1, the new ultra-progressive District Attorney of San Francisco announced yesterday that his office would no longer ask for bail.  Charles Fain Lehman of the Washington Free Beacon reports that, instead of requesting bail, DA Chesa Boudin will submit a risk assessment to the judge on the likelihood that the accused will show up for trial and whether he would present a risk to the public if released.

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A bill that cleared a key Virginia Senate committee last week, would allow the early release of serious criminals including rapists and murderers at age 50.  Hans Bader of Liberty Unyielding reports that SB 624 creates a new category called “geriatric release” to allow prison inmates who are 50 years old to seek release if they have been incarcerated for 20 years.  Inmates who are 55 could be released after serving 15 years.  Only inmates convicted of Class 1 felonies, such as killing a police officer or a child, can be excluded.

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