Author: Bill Otis

Crime Without Consequences

by · Sep 1, 2020 5:57 pm

The extent of arson and thuggish violence in Portland, Oregon has become so extreme that the state’s Governor, the clueless Kate Brown, has asked sheriffs’ offices from around the state to help out.  The answer seems to be a loud “no.”  One Sheriff, Clackamas County’s  Craig Roberts, explained, through a spokesperson, that in Portland “it’s about changing the policy [of no consequences for rioting], not adding resources.”

Roberts explained:

The same offenders are arrested night after night, only to be released by the court and not charged with a crime by the DA’s Office. The next night they are back at it, endangering the lives of law enforcement and the community all over again.

What else could he say?  When the political leadership has spent years painting police as the problem and hooligans as the heroes of “free speech” (and free stuff, we now see from the rampant looting), the police would have to be self-hating fools to heed a call like Gov. Brown’s.  (H/t to PowerLine).

Riots, Arson, Policing and the Election

by · Sep 1, 2020 12:39 pm

Bret Stephens is an especially insightful writer for, of all things, the New York Times.  His column yesterday asks some questions the country very much needs to ponder:

Can the left be honest that the tragedies unfolding today in American cities are as much the story of insufficient policing as they are of abusive policing? Does it get that “law and order” is a precondition to civil liberty, not an impediment to it? Is it willing to say that the American founders who bequeathed us the institutions of liberal democracy should be honored, not despised? And does Joe Biden have the nerve to stand up to the extremes in his own party, or does he just mean to appease them?

His piece makes other painful points as well.

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Biden Is on the Wrong Side of the Death Penalty Debate

by · Aug 30, 2020 2:25 pm

Joe Biden’s stance on capital punishment is short and to the point:  “Abolish the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.”  See his Policy Statement, summarized here.

And it’s true that support for the death penalty has been falling since about the mid-Nineties, at least until a couple of years ago.  But Mr. Biden is still missing the point, politically as well as morally.

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A Second Look at Looting

by · Aug 29, 2020 9:29 am

Cancel culture is all the rage just now, particularly on, of all things, college campuses.  The idea seems to be that open debate and tolerance for opposing ideas is simply another “construct” of bourgeois culture, and thus is itself an instrument of oppression, no matter how much it pretends to be something else.

Here at Crime and Consequences, we’re not big fans of cancel culture.  Thus I want to introduce readers to an idea to which I have not given a great deal of subscription.

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In One Month, Bill Barr Does Fifty Years’ Worth of Justice

by · Aug 26, 2020 6:46 pm

Jeff Sessions is a man of honor and did a superb job restoring a sober, effective and non-politicized Justice Department.  But Attorney General Bill Barr leaves nothing to be desired.  As this AP story notes:

With the execution [today] of Lezmond Mitchell for the grisly slayings of a 9-year-old and her grandmother, the federal government under the pro-death penalty president has now carried out more executions in 2020 than it had in the previous 56 years combined.

Lest there be any doubt about the justice of this execution, the details of the killing should lay that to rest.

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We Keep Giving Them a Pass, and They Keep Proving We’re Fools

by · Aug 23, 2020 1:26 pm

In “Our Under-Incarceration Problem, Portland Edition,” Paul Mirengoff shows graphically the savage costs of the nostrum that passes for High Wisdom among criminal justice reformers, to wit,  that “everyone deserves a second chance.”  Of course many, possibly most, criminals deserve a second chance, but as long as we refuse to ask, “Who specifically are we dealing with?” and “Second chance to do what?” we are thoughtlessly opening the door to more criminal brutality.  And we’ll get what you usually get when you open that door  —  as a Portland, Oregon driver learned last week.

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A Unique and Thoughtful View on Race and Policing

by · Aug 23, 2020 12:24 pm

Jim Copland of the Manhattan Institute has something to teach us from a personal perspective.  He begins his article:

We can’t talk about policing in the United States without talking about race. It’s personal to me. I’m white. But I’m married to a black woman, and we’re the proud parents of a biracial son who, as he grows up and navigates American life, will face challenges that I never had in my own youth. He’s nine years old now and only barely beginning to wrestle with questions of race and identity. Yet as he matures into adulthood, he’s more likely to have encounters with police than I have been. These encounters are more likely to include some police use of force than if he were white.

But Jim’s perspective leads him to think and not just emote.

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Joe Biden’s Spokesman for “Criminal Justice Reform” — a Torture Killer

by · Aug 21, 2020 8:13 pm

It’s not a secret that the Democratic National Convention was scripted to showcase Joe Biden’s stance on the issues (just as the RNC will be scripted to showcase Donald Trump’s).  Thus it’s more than a little revealing that the person chosen to do a short slot reading the Preamble to the Constitution was Ms. Donna Hylton.  Ms. Hylton was previously most notable for being a a convicted murderer and kidnapper implicated in a gruesome 1985 torture-killing.

Want to know what “criminal justice reform” is actually about?  I’m grateful that the organizers of the DNC were forthcoming enough to give us this insight.

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