Category: General

A 22-year-old Louisiana man smuggling illegal aliens into the U.S. crashed his pickup Monday, killing four people.  Mary Ann Martinez of Fox News reports that Rassian Comer had eleven illegals in his truck when he ran a red light at high speed in the small town of Ozona, Texas and smashed into a car carrying a 71-year-old grandmother and her 7-year-old granddaughter.  Both were killed, along with two of the illegals in Comer’s pickup.   Mexican cartels use social media to recruit Americans to collect illegals at the southern border and take them into the U.S., promising thousands of dollars upon delivery.   Comer, who was running from police when he caused the crash, was hospitalized with injuries.  The President’s open border policy, enabling human and drug smuggling, is resulting in tens of thousands of Americans dying annually from fentanyl poisoning and hundreds of crimes committed by gangs and others working for the cartels.  Most of the deaths related to human smuggling are the illegals being smuggled, but Americans are also occasionally killed or injured due to this activity.   The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Dallas Morning News and the three major television networks did not bother to report this tragedy.

A Public Policy Institute (PPIC) poll released yesterday reports that 65% of California respondents are fearful of becoming a crime victim.  This includes 70% of Latinos and 60% of African Americans.  73% of those living in Los Angeles are fearful of crime, which raises the question about the recent failure to recall District Attorney George Gascon and the election of liberal democrat Karen Bass as Mayor.  These numbers are similar to what polls reported in the 1980s and 1990s, as state voters rejected the soft-on-crime policies put in place years earlier by democrats.  The PPIC narrative questions the public perception that crime is at crisis levels:

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Last week the California Assembly Public Safety Committee killed bills introduced to address rising gun crimes, homelessness and the Newsom administration’s blanket policy of granting early releases to thousands of violent and serious criminals.  Ashley Zavala of KCRA News reports that  AB 328, introduced by Assemblyman Bill Essayli (R-Riverside), would require mandatory prison sentences for criminals who use a gun during the commission of a crime.  “If we are serious about combating gun crime, then we need serious consequences,” he told the Committee.  Essayli noted that gun-related homicides have increased by 52% in California since 2019.  Gun-related assaults were up 64% over the same period.  He also noted that the majority of victims are minorities.  Committee member Mia Bonta (D-Oakland) would have none  of it.  “When I talk to the mothers in Oakland, they’re mostly concerned about mass incarceration…..because of the disproportionate impacts (sentencing) enhancements have had on their community.”  Ms Bonta is California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s wife.

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How did the now-disgraced Thomas Girardi avoid the scrutiny of the California State Bar’s discipline folks for so long despite “over 200 misconduct complaints against Girardi dating back to at least 1984.” He handled those folks the old-fashioned way. He bribed them.

From a letter from the Bar Chair to all California attorneys:

The May report found that Girardi intentionally cultivated relationships at the State Bar and it spotlights nine individuals at all levels who accepted his largesse and failed to report it, creating conflicts of interest. The report details several instances in which the involvement in Girardi cases of conflicted individuals tainted the discretionary decisions they made on behalf of the State Bar, and as a result, the Girardi cases they worked on were improperly closed.

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Tonight Texas is set to execute its second murderer this week, Arthur Brown, Jr., for the murders of four people, including a pregnant woman.  Jolie McCullough of the Texas Tribune reports that Brown was convicted, along with two accomplices, of the 1992 execution-style murders and attempted murders of two others who survived.  The facts presented in a 2012 decision by a unanimous panel of the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals described the cold blooded murders at a Houston drug house that supplied Brown and his companions, who were dealers.  All six victims were tied to chairs and shot in the head.  The surviving victims testified at trial, identifing Brown and one accomplice as the shooters.  On Tuesday, a judge denied Brown’s request for a last minute stay.  Brown’s attorneys claim they found new evidence that Brown is innocent, that his low IQ disqualifies him from execution, that one juror at the trial was racist and that his trial lawyer was incompetent.  While CJLF has no special sympathy for drug dealers, two of Brown’s victims were teenagers, and one, 19-year-old Jessica Quinones, was 9-months pregnant.  They could have straightened out their lives.  As usual all the compassion is for the murderer.  The other shooter, Brown’s accomplice Marion Dudly, was executed in 2006.  UPDATE:  Brown was pronounced dead at 6:37 PM last night.

The newly elected District Attorney of Alameda County, which includes the high-crime city of Oakland, has announced new  policies requiring the prosecutors in her office to seek the minimum sentences possible for convicted criminals, including those who use guns.  For example, in the case of a gang member who fires a gun into an occupied car injuring a passenger, the prosecutor would not be allowed to include the Three Strikes enhancement for the use of a firearm, which would have increased the sentence for the shooter.  Rachel Swan of the SF Chronicle reports that DA Pamela Price’s new policies are similar to those of progressive Los Angeles DA George Gascon’s, requiring deputies to seek probation for criminals who under state law are eligible for jail or prison.

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While homicides are down slightly in Chicago this year, according to the Chicago Police Department, robbery, sexual assault, motor vehicle theft, aggravated battery, burglary and theft over the first two months of 2023 are up 52% compared to last year.  Almost 4,000 additional crimes in just two months.  Chicago’s progressive District Attorney Kim Foxx, and Mayor Lori defund-the-police Lightfoot share much of the responsibility for this, but Governor J. B. Pritzker (D) and the democrat majority legislature are also complicit, having enacted “reforms” that have weakened sentencing.  Chicago police are also operating under an Obama-era consent decree which ties the hands of officers and requires the department to prove it is not racist.  This has driven officers out of the department to take early retirement or to jobs in other cities.  Currently Chicago PD is 1,300 officers short.  What to do?  State Rep. Thaddeus Jones (D) has the solution….force businesses to hire security guards to protect customers from the criminals state laws and local policies has kept on the streets.

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The following article was published in the February 17 edition of the California Globe:

Data released last September by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services provided researchers at the Manhattan Institute with the necessary information to compare the rearrest rate for offenders prior to the state’s 2020 bail reform law with the rearrest rate after the law took effect. The intent of the bail reform law was to force judges to release more arrestees without bail, called Non-Monetary Release (NMR).  Charles Fain Lehman’s piece in the City Journal confirmed what many in law enforcement had predicted:  when offenders are released without bail, they are more likely to be rearrested for committing new crimes.  This finding was ignored by the major media and liberal think tanks like the Brennan Center, which had for months tried to convince the public that releasing more offenders without bail was not the cause of increased crime across the state.  One exception was a September New York Post article by Jim Quinn which noted:  “in 2019, 166 of the NMR participants got re-arrested each month. In 2021, the number soared to 445 re-arrests a month, including more than 300 felonies each month.”  That’s over 2 ½ times more rearrests per month.

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California Assemblyman Corey Jackson (D-Moreno Valley) has introduced a bill that would bar the use of police dogs in arrests, apprehensions and crowd control.  Evan Symon of the California Globe reports that the purpose of AB 742 is to end the disproportionate number of African Americans and people of color that are apprehended and injured by police dogs.  “We have to understand that the use of police K-9s has been a mainstay in this country’s dehumanization and it’s cruel and violent history,” said Assemblyman Jackson.  The problem is, a ban on police dogs will not reduce African American exposure to police, and will almost certainly increase shootings of suspects of color.  The disproportionate number of police encounters with blacks is the result of the disproportionate number of crimes committed by blacks.  In Los Angeles for example,  blacks commit forty-four percent of all violent crime, though they’re nine percent of the population.

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