Author: Michael Rushford

A Los Angeles murderer serving 40 years-to-life in prison has been granted parole eleven years earlier than originally sentenced.  Michael Ruiz of Fox News reports that Derek Pettis, who at age 24, murdered a police Chaplain and attempted to murder a police officer was granted parole under California’s 2018 youthful offender parole law which considers murderers up to 26 years-old to be juveniles.  The officer, who was shot and permanently disabled told the parole board, “This is difficult to understand, since one can join the military and fight and die for their country at 17, enter into a business contract at 18, vote at 21, drink alcohol at 21, and yes, be a police officer at 21. So, in utilizing the “Youth Offender” hearing, I believe it is imperative to be careful how it is applied, especially with regard to a 24-year-old street gang member.”

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An illegal alien murderer from El Salvador deported six times, may face the death penalty for killing his cellmate.  The LA Daily News reports that Ramon Escobar plead guilty in Los Angeles last year of robbing and beating five men to death with a baseball bat and bolt cutters and also admitted killing his aunt and uncle in Texas.  In exchange for his plea, Escobar was sentenced in May 2022 to life without the possibility of parole (LWOP).   The multiple robbery-murders  made Escobar eligible for the death penalty, but fortunately for him, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon refuses to seek it even for serial killers.  Last February state corrections officials say that Escobar strangled his cellmate to death in a Bakersfield prison.  This is bad news for Escobar.   Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer does not share Gascon’s sympathy for murderers.  With his prior conviction for multiple murders, Escobar is once again eligible for a death sentence.

A federal judge has refused to stay the September 21 execution of Oklahoma killer Anthony Sanchez for the 1996 rape and murder of 21-year-old Juli Busken.  Dylan Goforth of the Frontier reports that while detectives found DNA on the victims underwear and pajamas, they were unable to find a match until 2004 after a DNA sample was taken from Sanchez while he was in prison for a burglary conviction.   His sample matched the DNA found on the victim.  Two years later Sanchez was convicted on overwhelming evidence and sentenced to death.  On September 13, a federal district judge denied his request for a stay.  Last Spring Newsweek published an article claiming that years ago, Sanchez’s now-deceased father told his ex-girlfriend that he killed Juli Busken.  The odds of the DNA match being incorrect are 1 in 94 trillion for Southwest Hispanics.  Update:  Sanchez was pronounced dead at 10:19 am Thursday morning.

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The Oregon-based sports shoe giant Nike has announced it will close its flagship store in Portland for safety and security reasons.  Kristine de Leon of the Oregonian reports that last February Mayor Ted Wheeler turned down the company’s request to dispatch off-duty police officers to the store, which opened in 1984, to beef up security in the crime-ridden Northeast Portland business district.  Wheeler said that an officer shortage at the city’s police department was the reason.  Portland was at the center of the defund-the-police movement spearheaded by Black Lives Matter during the George Floyd riots in 2020.  Since then officers have retired or moved to other counties leaving the city with the smallest police force in 30 years.  Crime in the city has skyrocketed since the riots, setting homicide records over the past two years.  Nike was a major contributor to Black Lives Matter.

A Minneapolis Democrat party leader who demanded that the police department in her city be dismantled in 2020, has now become a tough on crime advocate.  What happened?  She got mugged by reality on Tuesday.  Lindsay Kornick of Fox News reports that the next day Shivanthi Sathanandan posted on Facebook that she was “violently carjacked” by “four very young men, all carrying guns.” She said they assaulted her in front her children outside their home in broad daylight. She also included a photo of her head injuries and reported having a “broken leg, deep lacerations on my head, bruising and cuts” around her body as well as feeling “rage” against the lack of accountability against criminals.

“These men knew what they were doing. I have NO DOUBT they have done this before. Yet they are still on OUR STREETS. Killing mothers. Giving babies psychological trauma that a lifetime of therapy cannot erase. With no hesitation and no remorse. I’m now part of the statistics. I wasn’t silent when I fought these men to save my life and my babies, and I won’t be silent now. We need to get illegal guns off of our streets, catch these young people who are running wild creating chaos across our city and HOLD THEM IN CUSTODY AND PROSECUTE THEM. PERIOD.  Look at my face. REMEMBER ME when you are thinking about supporting letting juveniles and young people out of custody to roam our streets instead of HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS,”

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The impact of New York City’s Sanctuary City and soft-on-crime policies have created an environment where citizens are being repeatedly victimized by the same criminals who should not even be in the country.  29-year-old Daniel Hernandez Martinez, an illegal who arrived in the Big Apple from Venezuela two months ago is a case in point.  Tina Moore of the New York Post reports that Martinez has been arrested five times for thefts and assaults with an additional arrest for theft in Brooklyn.  “He’s been wreaking havoc,” a cop with more than 20 years on the job said. “This is not an isolated incident. These migrants are getting arrested quite often here, and we really don’t know who they are. They really don’t have ID. They’re not being vetted properly, but some of them are committing some of the most violent crimes here.”

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Austin, the capital of Texas, has become the San Francisco of the southwest.  In 2021 the city set an all-time record for homicides, had twice the national rate for burglary, and vehicle theft, and a third higher rate for robbery and assault.   NBC’s KNXN reports that the city is currently on track to meet or exceed last year’s second highest number of homicides.  Austin also rivals San Francisco on homelessness, with 10,000 people living in 168 different homeless camps according to the New York Post.  While the city passed an ordinance to prohibit camping on pubic property, it is not enforced.  In 2020, responding to the George Floyd riots, the progressive City Council cut the police budget by one-third.  That cut, and the city’s woke law enforcement policies have driven officers to take jobs in other counties or retire, leaving the force short by 400.  Austin’s progressive, Soros-bankrolled District Attorney Jose Garza, who has never prosecuted a criminal case, typically undercharges or plea bargains criminal cases, including those involving murder.

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