Author: Michael Rushford

Breaking News: The Media is Pushing Racism

by · Dec 1, 2021 3:20 pm

As if we already did not know this, but sometimes the national media exposes itself so blatantly it defies logic.  Jason Riley has this piece in the Wall Street Journal discussing the amazing double standard in the way the national media covered the death of George Floyd, the Rittenhouse case and the Waukesha massacre.  “The protests that followed Floyd’s death rested on two assumptions. The first is that Floyd, a career criminal and drug addict, was somehow representative of black America, which is not only false but deeply insulting. The second is that police acted out of racial animus, which has never been proven. This is what happens when racial identity becomes the centerpiece of politics and public life in a multiracial society.”  But that was the prevailing narrative and the riots and murders swept the country in response to Floyd’s death were generally reported as justified.  “The Biden administration has picked up where the Obama administration left off.”  Although the criminals killed by Rittenhouse were white, he was immediately characterized as a racist white supremacist in “a clumsy attempt by President Biden and his allies to further a narrative about bias in the criminal justice system.”

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Death By Sentencing Reform

by · Nov 22, 2021 1:58 pm

Six People were killed and at least 40 were injured after a 39-year-old repeat felon on parole ran down participants in Waukesha, Wisconsin’s annual Christmas Parade on Sunday.  18 of the victims are children and 10 are in intensive care.  Michael Ruiz of Fox News reports that the suspect, Darrell Brooks, Jr.  had a 50 page rap sheet of criminal charges going back two decades, and was free on bail awaiting trial on charges of battery, domestic abuse, resisting arrest and bail jumping.  Current Wisconsin law does not consider these to be serious crimes and does not hold criminals in jail who were on parole or probation when they are arrested for them.  Last February Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a democrat, vetoed a bill passed by the state legislature which required offenders who commit new crimes while on parole or probation to be returned to prison or jail.  In his veto message Evans expressed his support for “policies that focus on rehabilitation and reduce incarceration, particularly the over-incarceration of poor people and people of color.”  Brooks was one of the “people of color” Evans protected from over-incarceration.  Continue reading . . .

Oklahoma Set to Execute Another Murderer

by · Nov 18, 2021 10:35 am

Oklahoma is set to execute its second murderer in four weeks as convicted murderer Julius Jones faces lethal injection later today.  The Associated Press reports that celebrities and high school students gathered at the state capital to demand that Governor Kevin Stitt grant clemency.  Jones has maintained his innocence for two decades and his case was profiled by a three-part CBS documentary produced by actress Viola Davis which suggested that an accomplice actually shot and killed businessman Paul Howell in front of his sister and two daughters on July 28, 1999.  Following his conviction and sentence Jones claimed on habeas corpus, that a 2017 study  finding that black murderers who killed white victims were more likely to be sentenced to death, suggesting that Jones, who is black, is facing execution because of his race and the race of his victim, who was white.

UPDATE:  Governor Stitt has just commuted Jones’ sentence to life without parole as reported here.

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The BLM Threat to Black Lives in New York City

by · Nov 17, 2021 11:48 am

As noted in an earlier post, a Black Lives Matter (BLM) leader in New York City has threatened riots, fire and bloodshead if Mayor-elect Eric Adams restores the police department’s 600 member Anti-Crime Unit, which was disbanded last year.  In a piece in today’s Daily Mail, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald breaks down the impact that decision last year had on crime in the Big Apple.  The unit had for several years, removed thousands of guns from gang members on New York streets and played a critical role in controlling violent crime.  In June of 2020 after several days of BLM riots over the death of George Floyd, which ravaged the city and injured 400 officers,  Police Commissioner Dermott Shea and Mayor Bill de Blasio  “desperate to show their sympathy with the anti-cop forces” disbanded the unit.  “Though stopping and questioning suspects short of making an arrest is a constitutional power, Shea labeled such stops as `brute force.’  The fall-out from Shea’s announcement was immediate.

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Mississippi Murderer to be Executed

by · Nov 16, 2021 11:10 am

A Mississippi man who murdered his estranged wife in 2009, after several years of sexually abusing her daughter, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday (11/17).  Emily Wagster Pettus of the Associated Press reports that David Neal Cox was jailed in 2009 after his stepdaughter reported that he had been sexually assaulting her for years.  Even though Cox had been convicted of rape, sexual battery, child abuse and a drug charge, he was released from jail in April of 2010.  A month later Cox stormed into the house where his estranged wife, Kim Cox, was living and shot her in the arm and abdomen.  While she lay on the floor bleeding to death, Cox sexually assaulted her daughter in front of her.  After an eight-hour standoff, Cox surrendered to police.  He pled guilty to the murder in 2012.  UPDATE:  Cox was executed Wednesday afternoon as reported here.

The Unwoking Begins

by · Nov 12, 2021 3:13 pm

Voters in New York City elected Eric Adams, a former police captain who promised to restore law and order in the big apple, as Mayor earlier this month.  Rebecca Rosenberg and Bryan Lleans of Fox News report that Adams plans to restore the city’s Anti-Crime Unit, a plaincloths team targeting gangs and illegal guns.  The unit was disbanded in 2020 after years of complaints that it was racially biased.  In a recent interview, Black Lives Matter (BLM) co-founder Hawk Newsome told reporters that if Adams brings back the unit “there will be riots, there will be fire, and there will be bloodshed.”    After claiming that his statement was not a threat, Newsome said that Adams would lead the city to another George Floyd incident.   The elections of Virginia’s Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General, all of whom promised to restore law and order, along with the rejection of the BLM demand to disband the police department in Minneapolis and the election of a pro-law enforcement Mayor, City Attorney and key City Council member in the progressive city of Seattle,  suggest that the people from both political parties have had enough of woke policing policies and BLM threats.

Under Gascon, Gang Murderer Released After Six Years

by · Nov 8, 2021 11:57 am

A gang member convicted in adult court of the 2015 murder of a man in Palmdale will be released from LA County jail thanks to a policy announced last year by Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon.  Scott Schweble of the Los Angeles Daily News reports that because murderer Andrew Cachu was two months shy of his 18th birthday when he shot and killed 41-year-old Louis Amela, under Proposition 57, the Soros backrolled Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016,  he became eligible for a hearing to determine if he should have been tried in juvenile court.  Among the “special directives” Gascon announced days after his election, is one which prohibits his deputies from calling witnesses, including a victim’s family, or presenting evidence supporting the conviction of a juvenile murderer tried in adult court.  With no argument to support Cachu’s conviction, the judge had no choice but to transfer the case to the juvenile court.  Under California law a murderer convicted in juvenile court must be released from custody by age 25.  While Cachu received a 50 year prison sentence for the murder, according to the article, he will be released in a few days having served six years .  “The victim’s family is devastated,”  said Kathy Cady, a former prosecutor representing them.

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Why Voters Are Killing the Defund Movement

by · Nov 4, 2021 2:44 pm

As Kent reported Tuesday, voters in Minneapolis rejected a ballot measure proposing to eliminate the police department and replace it with social workers.  In a New York Post article Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald reports that Charter Amendment 4, which would address crime with a “comprehensive public health approach” received major support from progressives including $500,000 from George Soros’ Open Society Policy Center.  “Minneapolis voters didn’t need to imagine the results of Amendment 4’s utopian scheme:  they have been living though a preview of police abolition…..Traffic and pedestrian stops dropped at least 75 percent following the George Floyd riots, in response to the charge that police were racists for investigating suspicious activity in high-crime neighborhoods.”

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Oklahoma to Resume Executions

by · Oct 28, 2021 1:53 pm

In a 5-3 decision today the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay of execution for Oklahoma murderer John Grant.  Sean Murphy of the Middletown Press reports that the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals had granted a stay yesterday for Grant’s scheduled execution today.  Today’s action by SCOTUS makes it likely that the execution will be carried out.  It will be the first execution in Oklahoma since 2015.  Grant was serving a 150-year sentence for several armed robberies when in 1998, he dragged a female prison cafeteria worker into a closet and stabbed her 16 times with a homemade shank.  Along with Grant, four other condemned Oklahoma murderers lost their federal District Court suit last week seeking to block their pending executions, arguing that the state’s three drug protocol might cause pain in violation of  the 8th Amendment bar against cruel and unusual punishment.

Update:   Grant was executed on Thursday night.

Are Criminal Justice Reforms Making Us Safe?

by · Oct 27, 2021 11:05 am

The answer is yes, according to a Los Angeles Times OpEd by former Los Angeles District Attorneys Ira Reiner and Gil Garcetti and former federal prosecutor Miriam Aroni Krinsky.   Their piece “Stop obstructing criminal justice reforms.  It’s making us less safe,”  cites evidence-based polices like the ones progressive LA District Attorney Gascon “is implementing in Los Angeles hold people accountable without relying on extreme sentences, and they save taxpayer dollars that could be invested in things that actually have an impact on crime, such as public health, housing, education and violence prevention.”  The trio point to the 1980s and 90s when, “California embarked on a disastrous social experiment…….that ratcheted up punishment in criminal cases.  The negative impact of these policies overwhelming fell on poor, Black and brown communities.”   Let’s take a look at that negative impact.

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