Category: General

Hat tip to Prof. Doug Berman for this post, “Detailing ‘perfect storm’ of factors that may account for increase in violent crime.”  As it notes:

Sixty-three of the 66 largest police jurisdictions saw increases in at least one category of violent crimes in 2020, which include homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, according to a report produced by the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Raleigh, North Carolina, did not report increases in any of the violent crime categories.

If Baltimore did not report any increases, that has to mean that whatever reporting mechanism Baltimore was using was stolen in the crime spree.

But I digress.  The obvious question is, what brought about the surge in violent crime?

Continue reading . . .

This is probably not news for anyone who regularly looks at reporting standards at the New York Times, but Manhattan Institute Scholar Heather MacDonald puts the paper’s double standard regarding its coverage of crime and crime related stories in stark relief.  Her piece in the City Journal notes the way the Times reported last month’s police crackdown of the riot-like rampage of mostly black spring breakers at Miami Beach was to characterize the shootings, street brawls and property damage as “by and large, nonviolent.”  The Times went on to report that the only reason the police were confiscating guns and arresting the revelers is because most of them were black.  It was racial bias.  Responding to this claim, Miami’s Mayor, a Democrat, told the Times “we do not target race, we targeted conduct.”

Continue reading . . .

This article by Greg Norman of Fox News provides a prime example of why it is important to use incarceration to keep our communities safe. A 70-year-old woman, Patrice Ward, was found unresponsive in her townhome in Pasadena, California. Her husband was able to fight off the suspect and was transported to the hospital for his injuries. According to Norman, “Investigators say Ward suffered severe blunt force trauma to her head and that her home was found ransacked with numerous items missing — including two handguns”. The suspect to the murder and assault is Gilbert Viera, 35 years old. Viera is also the suspect in an additional home invasion in the same area. 

Continue reading . . .

For at least the last few months a major focus of the national media has been on the increase in assaults on Asians.  The narrative, featured here by CNN, is that white supremacists egged on by President Trump’s characterization of Covid-19 as the China virus, are engaging in random violent attacks against Asians.  Setting aside the fact no credible scientist denies that the virus originated from Wuhan, China, there is little evidence that people randomly attacked Asians after the Hong Kong Flu killed roughly 4 million in 1968, or that Spaniards were set upon after the Spanish Flu killed over 20 million in 1918, what proof does the media offer for its latest narrative regarding attacks on Asians?  Damn little.  In fact most of the available evidence points in a different direction.

Continue reading . . .

Media coverage of yesterday’s unanimous the California Supreme Court ruling in In re Humphrey, mostly applauded the court’s holding that the Constitution requires judges to consider a suspect’s “ability to pay” when deciding if he can be released on bail.  The Associated Press story by Don Thompson was picked up not only by most California newspapers and broadcasters,  but by the Miami Herald,  U.S. News, the The Chicago Tribune,  The Baltimore Sun, NBC News and many more.   The ruling was characterized as “landmark” because the court added a requirement to the decision to set bail, not provided under state law, noting that setting a bail amount the suspect cannot afford “accords insufficient respect to the arrestee’s crucial state and federal equal protection rights against wealth-based detention as well as the arrestee’s state and federal substantive due process rights to pretrial liberty” (emphasis added).

Continue reading . . .

The Associated Press has this article on Gov. Newsom’s nomination of Rob Bonta to fill the Attorney General vacancy.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation that has typically opposed previous Democratic attorneys general, said Bonta is “fully on board with the fundamentally wrong direction that California criminal justice has been taking in recent years.”

I appreciate the quote, but the description of CJLF’s relationship with past attorneys general is not correct. Continue reading . . .

California Governor Gavin Newsom has filled the Attorney General’s seat left open after Xavier Becerra’s confirmation as federal HHS Secretary with Oakland Assemblyman Rob Bonta.  According to Wikipedia, Bonta joined a San Francisco law firm after graduating from Yale Law School and worked with the ACLU to develop anti-racial profiling restrictions for the California Highway Patrol.  He also served as a Deputy City Attorney of San Francisco and spent one year on the Alameda City Council before his election to the state Assembly.   Paul Rogers and Robert Salonga of the Mercury News report that Assemblyman Bonta co-authored SB 10, a bill signed in 2018 by Governor Jerry Brown which abolished cash bail in California.  State voters adopted a referendum to reject that law at the 2020 general election by over 56%.  In announcing Bonta’s appointment Governor Newsom told reporters, “Rob has become a national leader in the fight to repair our justice system and defend the rights of every Californian.”  What this means with regard protecting the public from criminals, which is supposed to be the Attorney General’s job, is anybody’s guess.

The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol reports that two Honduran nationals with prior convictions for sexually assaulting children in the U.S. have been caught trying to reenter the country.  Jose Moreno was apprehended with a group of eight trying to cross the border near Mission, Texas last Friday.  Moreno had been deported after serving nine years for raping a child in New York in 2007.   A day earlier Jonathan Rosales-Rivera was caught crossing the Texas border.  Rivera was deported after being convicted of second-degree sexual assault on a child in Wisconsin.  With the current surge at the southern border, which has forced agents from patrolling the border and apprehending illegals to processing and servicing the thousands who are now turning themselves in, some are estimating that more than half of those crossing the southern border are not being caught or identified.   How many are convicted criminals like Moreno and Rivera?

The pro-criminal industrial complex, which includes legacy groups like the ACLU and the NAACP, and newer more aggressive advocates such as the Death Penalty Information Center, Sentencing Project, the Marshall Project and numerous Soros-funded groups with a state or city name like “Californians For Safety and Justice,” are celebrating the expected elimination of the death penalty in Virginia.  In an opinion piece in last Friday’s Washington Post, Ashley Nellis, a senior research analyst at the Sentencing Project notes  “Now, Virginia joins a growing wave of states that have rejected this punishment and chosen to make our criminal justice system more humane, equitable and fair.”

Continue reading . . .

The San Francisco Department of Elections has cleared the way for a campaign to recall San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin.  Evan Symon of the California Globe reports that the campaign will need to gather at least 51,000 signatures in order to get the recall before San Francisco voters.  Boudin was elected District Attorney in 2019.  Prior to his election, his only job as a practicing lawyer was as a deputy in the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office.  Recall proponents cite Boudin’s reluctance to prosecute criminals in numerous crime catagories which they claim has led to increased crime, including a 46% increase in burglaries, and an increase in robberies.  Earlier this week a San Francisco television reporter was robbed in broad daylight while broadcasting live.

Continue reading . . .