Author: Bill Otis

Policing for Me but Not for Thee

by · Jun 9, 2020 2:16 pm

Remembering my father’s admonition to me to “thank God for your enemies,” I bring you this beauty from liberal and forward-looking Los Angeles, where our opponents campaigning to “defund the police” are in full voice:

LOS ANGELES – While LA City Council President Nury Martinez was filing a motion last week seeking to cut $150 million from the LAPD budget, she had an LAPD unit standing watch outside her home providing her family with a private security detail since April. Continue reading . . .

Why Is Baltimore Overrun with Crime?

by · Jun 8, 2020 5:09 pm

The answer to that question is multifaceted, but I thought the essence of the problem was beautifully captured in this headline:

Ex-Baltimore mayor, once convicted of embezzlement, now favorite to fill seat of mayor convicted of fraud

The story, for those with the stomach for it, is here.

The Dastardly Origins of Qualified Immunity

by · Jun 8, 2020 2:20 pm

Hard core libertarian groups are on a tear these days about the possibility that the Supreme Court might abolish or at least limit the doctrine of qualified immunity, which they view as a grossly unacceptable impediment to holding vicious police officers accountable for their behavior.  But the doctrine has its beginnings in a source not known for bending over backwards with sympathy for the police. Continue reading . . .

Life Without the Police

by · Jun 7, 2020 10:03 pm

The Minneapolis City Council has announced plans to disband the city police department.  What will life be like without the cops?  We have some evidence about that from the 1969 Montreal police strike.  Harvard Professor Steven Pinker recalls:

“As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin’s anarchism. I laughed off my parents’ argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 a.m. on October 7, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 am, the first bank was robbed. By noon, most of the downtown stores were closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist).”

Our Underincarceration Problem, Part Eight Zillion

by · Jun 7, 2020 1:37 pm

My friend Paul Mirengoff writes today about two criminals we caught and convicted, then fecklessly released, only very predictably to see them commit more crime, in one case a murder.  This sort of thing should be a scandal.  Instead, it barely sees the light of day in the mainstream media, because the MSM is dedicated to its ideology that criminals are victims and the rest of us are Puritanical,  bourgeois dolts (at best).  We are lectured ceaselessly about the costs of incarceration, but our opponents are just too dishonest and too dug in to tell us about the costs of decarceration.

Paul writes: Continue reading . . .

Giving Irony a Bad Name

by · Jun 6, 2020 4:18 pm

We have been relentlessly lectured of late that, even if “peaceful protesters” sometimes become rioters and hooligans, we need to remember that their initial motivation was to demand respect and justice for black people.  Too often, it’s said, those demanding “law and order” just ignore the sacrifices black people have made to achieve even the measure of equality America gives them.

Yes, well, that’s the lecture.  Continue reading . . .

Oh Where, Oh Where Has the Defense Bar Gone? Oh Where, Oh Where Can It Be?

by · Jun 4, 2020 12:04 am

Remember Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber who blew up an eight-year-old?  Remember John Allen Muhammad, the Beltway sniper, who used random shoppers for target practice?  Remember Zacarias Moussaoui, the Jihadist 20th hijacker on 9-11?  There was no credible doubt about either their factual guilt when they were arrested or about the mind-bending hideousness of their crimes. But what did the defense bar, finger as ever in the air, tell us then?

“The presumption of innocence is the cornerstone of our system.”  “Take a deep breath and wait for all the facts to come out.”  “Don’t rush to judgment.”  “We don’t know what the prosecution is hiding.”  “The DA wants to tack another scalp to his wall for political gain.”  “Even the most despised defendant deserves fair play.”  Etcetera.

Question:  Have you heard any of that about Derek Chauvin, who now is certainly the most despised defendant in America?  I sure haven’t.  Next question:  Why not?  Well, one might speculate that Chauvin is identified with the true Untouchable Caste in this country  —  no, not a child killer or a gleeful mass murderer.  A former cop.  No wonder the defense bar is on vacation.

Abolish the Police, Part II

by · Jun 3, 2020 8:27 pm

The last substantive post on the old version of Crime and Consequences was this one by Kent, titled “Abolish the Police?”  It noted that doing away with police forces  —  although it sounds like a lunatic fringe idea  —  isn’t, and is creeping its way into mainstream liberalism.

Today came further proof of this startling reality. Continue reading . . .

Lawyers versus the Police, Literally Speaking

by · May 31, 2020 6:25 pm

It’s been the case for a long time that the public has much more trust in the police than in lawyers  —  something Gallup confirmed again this year.  One might speculate that this is because the police are there to advance the public’s interest while lawyers are there to advance the client’s, even when it may not be particularly commendable (e.g., when a violent criminal is seeking a trickster acquittal).

It would seem that some lawyers aren’t reacting to the disparity too well.  This of course is an extreme episode, no more representative of the legal profession than the homicide of  George Floyd is representative of the police profession.