Category: General

After eighteen months of insisting that the most serious problem facing America is white supremacy, the Biden Justice Department has finally noticed that violence against law enforcement “doesn’t get enough attention,” as noted by FBI Director Christopher Wray.  Wray told 60 minutes that last year there was a 59% increase in murders of police officers, with an officer murdered nearly once every five days.

Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald has this piece in the New York Post calling the administration’s fixation about white-supremacists “preposterous.”

“It is violent street crime — drive-by shootings, sadistic robberies, carjackings — that has been destroying lives at an increasing rate since the George Floyd race riots. White-supremacist violence played no role in the record-breaking 29% national homicide increase in 2020 or in the ongoing crime surge since then.

As startling as that 2020 homicide increase was, cop murders rose at twice that rate in 2021. A significant portion of those fatalities were ambushes, which were up 91% by mid-2021. Through April 26 of this year, gun murders of cops are up another 13% over the same period in 2021. Shootings of officers, lethal and nonlethal, were up 43% by early April.”

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As the pandemic fades, states with active capital punishment laws are resuming executions of their worst murderers.  Over the coming weeks as condemned murderers in Missouri, Arizona and Texas are scheduled for execution, death penalty opponents have resumed their insistence that innocent people are facing execution.  The latest “wrongly convicted” posterboy is actually a woman named Melissa Lucio.  Lucio was convicted in 2007 for the murder of her two-year-old daughter Mariah.  ABC, CNN, CBS, Yahoo News, Time and several other news outlets are regurgitating the press releases from the Innocence Project and other anti-death penalty groups which assert that Lucio was forced to confess by police, and that medical evidence proves that she did not commit the murder.  An example is a story by Ed Pilkington in the April 21 issue of The Guardian, “Texas mother set for execution – yet evidence suggests she did not kill her child.”

Update:  The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has granted Lucio a stay of execution, as reported here.

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The following is a letter by Councilmember James R. Bozajian from the Los Angeles County city of Calabasas.  Hat tip to the LA’s Association of Deputy District Attorneys:

I am in receipt of your recent letter, inviting the Calabasas City Council to meet with you to discuss your vision for the District Attorney’s Office. For the following reasons, I must decline your request.

On the very day you assumed office, you announced a series of “reforms” seemingly designed with precision to turn the District Attorney’s Office upside-down. Your actions since then have only aggravated the negative effects of these ill-conceived measures.

You enacted these draconian policies without soliciting input from law enforcement, public officials, the general public, or even your own (experienced) prosecutors. Instead, you relied exclusively upon a cadre of hostile, extreme partisans whose sole objectives appear to have been to defund, demolish, and destroy our criminal justice system.

The ultimate result of which, simply put, is that Los Angeles County has become a vastly more dangerous place to live since you became its chief prosecutor

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The suspicion that some prison inmates identify as women in order to get into a women’s prison where they can receive better living conditions and access to women has, once again, proven true.   As reported by Andrea Blanco of the Daily Mail, an investigation has been launched after two women inmates in New Jersey’s only all-women’s prison became pregnant after having sex with transgender inmates.  Last year, the prison started housing former male inmates who now identify as woman and to date 27 transgenders are residing in the 800 inmate facility.  This policy was adopted to settle an ACLU lawsuit against New Jersey claiming that preventing transgender criminals from serving their sentences in a women’s prison constituted discrimination.  ACLU Legal Director Jeanne LoCicero told reporters, “It’s in line with New Jersey’s strong anti-discrimination laws that prevent discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender identity.”   A Department of Corrections spokesperson said that the pregnant inmates engaged in sex with the transgender inmates voluntarily.   Last year a lawsuit was filed by two woman inmates seeking a ruling to revoke the policy citing sexual activity between female and transgender inmates.  More to come….no pun intended.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced today that she is “sick and tired of reading headlines about crime,” in the wake of this morning’s Brooklyn subway shootings and bombing that injured at least 16 commuters.  Last week, after 18 people were shot with 6 killed at a shooting in downtown Sacramento,  California Governor Gavin Newsom told reporters “Sadly, we once again mourn the lives lost and for those injured in yet another horrendous act of gun violence.”  Yesterday, President Biden announced that his administrations effort to combat the nation’s unprecedented spike in violent crime was going to be a crack down on gun kits assembled at home called “ghost guns.”  At a press conference the President told reporters “These guns are weapons of choice for many criminals, we’re going to do everything we can to deprive them of that choice.”   These politicians either don’t know or don’t care about the real reason crime and violence has increased in New York, California, and dozens of other states across the country.  It is not the availability of firearms, most of which used in crimes are stolen.  It is the criminals that are shooting the firearms, left free on the streets by so-called compassionate sentencing reforms adopted by Congress, many state legislatures and even state voters through misleading ballot measures.

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The April 3 mass shooting in downtown Sacramento, which left six dead and at twelve wounded, was between two street gangs according to local police.  NBC News reports that the two suspects tied to the shooting were both habitual felons, one of which was granted early release from state prison in February.   In custody are Dandrae Martin, released from an Arizona prison in 2020 for aggravated assault, and his brother Smiley Martin, released to probation after serving three years and four months of a ten year sentence for two counts of felony assault.  Last May Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert’s office appealed to the state Parole Board urging them not to release Smiley, whom, based upon his record, presented a “significant, unreasonable risk of safety to the community.”   The Board denied release at that time, then nine months later, the Department of Corrections  announced that he had accumulated enough “good time” credits to be released after serving less than half of his sentence.  Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg told reporters that he had “serious questions” about why the brothers “were out on the streets.”  Here’s the answer Mayor…you supported the sentencing reforms (AB109, Proposition 47 and Proposition 57, that gutted laws increasing confinement and punishing parole violations of habitual criminals.  You can pass all the gun-control measures you want, but Dandrae and Smiley, and others like them are going acquire weapons and hurt people so long as state law leaves them on the streets.

Five months after the death of drug-addict and habitual felon George Floyd, the racial activist group Black Lives Matter (BLM) secretly purchased a 6,500 sq. ft. Southern California mansion with $6 million in funds contributed to fight racism.  The purchase, reported by Joshua Rhett Mills of the New York Post,  was arranged by Dyane Pascall, the financial manager of a consulting firm managed by BLM founder Patrisse Cullors and her spouse.  Within a week, ownership of the six-bedroom, six bathroom home was transferred to a Delaware LLC, ensuring the property’s owner would be kept secret.  In a video recorded in June 2021, Cullors, Alicia Garza and Melina Abdullah, the leaders of BLM, are seen toasting the first anniversary of George Floyd’s death with champagne on the patio of the mansion.  In the video Cullors complained about last year’s New York Post disclosure of her purchase of four homes, allegedly with contributions.  “It’s because we are threatening the establishment, we’re threatening white supremacy,” she said.   One wonders if Target, Facebook, Walmart, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Square, Etsy, Levis, Gap, Nike, MacDonalds, Wendys, Coca-Cola, Peloton and liberal billionaires that contributed millions to BLM will ever acknowledge that they were hustled by a group of race-baiting  thieves.

Sacramento made national headlines on April 3, after eighteen people were shot with six killed around 2:00 AM at a popular downtown district known for its nightlife.  Police are investigating security video showing a fight breaking out on a crowded street in front of a nightclub before multiple shooters began firing into the crowd.  The Sacramento Bee reports that one stolen handgun was found at the scene but no suspects have been identified.  As noted by Katy Grimes of the California Globe both Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and California Governor Gavin Newsom blamed the shootings on the guns rather than the criminals who fired them.  “Rising gun violence is the scourge of our city, state and nation,” tweeted the Mayor.  “Sadly, we once again mourn the lives lost and for those injured in yet another horrendous act of gun violence,” said Newsom.  I am guessing that when suspects are arrested, we will learn that it is the criminal justice reform policies that Steinberg and Newsom supported that allowed the shooters to stay on the streets and gun down the victims last weekend.

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National media coverage in February of a transgender child molester set to be released after serving as little as six months under Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón’s  blanket “youth justice” policy has induced the progressive DA to admit that the policy might not be appropriate for all offenders.  Marjorie Hernandez of the New York Post reports that Hanna Tubbs, was James Tubbs in 2014 when he followed a 10-year-old girl into a woman’s restroom at a Denny’s restaurant and molested her.  Tubbs was two weeks shy of his 18th birthday at the time, which qualified him as a juvenile.   After he was arrested six years later on an Idaho battery charge, his DNA tied him to the molestation.  After his arrest Tubbs began to identify as a woman.   Because of his age at the time of the crime,  under Gascón’s policy, he/she could not be tried in adult court.  As a result, Tubbs plead guilty in juvenile court and will likely serve six months of a two year sentence in a juvenile treatment facility for young woman.

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