Category: General

The defund the police movement is alive and well in Chicago.  The first weekend in August was a bloody one in the windy city, as reported by the Sun Times, with 27 shootings and seven fatalities.  Among the victims was an 8-year-old girl playing in front of her house.  The suspect, who was tackled and held for police by the girl’s father, walked up and intentionally shot the child in the head.  She died.  A 14-year-old boy is in critical condition with two gunshot wounds in the head from a Saturday night shooting.  Among the other victims was a 35-year-old man shot while sitting in his home.  The Chicago Police Department has lost 1,700 officers since Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office in 2019.  Newly elected Mayor Brandon Johnson has no plan to add more officers.  Arrests in the city have dropped by 50% since 2019 and a suspect is arrested in only 5% of non-fatal shootings.  Amid this bloodletting, uber-liberal Illinois Governor J.D. Pritzker is busy virtue-signaling, signing a new law that mandates the hiring of non-citizens as police officers.  How bad does it have to get before state voters start electing people committed to cracking down on criminals.

An ex-con who brutally murdered a 6-year-old girl in 2002 died peacefully via lethal injection last night in Missouri.  David Lieb of the Associated Press reports that 45-year-old Johnny Johnson had been released from prison six months before he lured Casey Williamson, the daughter of a family friend, to an abandoned factory, attempted to rape her, then beat her to death with a brick when she resisted.  Police found her body buried under rocks in a pit less than a mile from her home.  At trial and on appeal Johnson’s attorneys argued that his schizophrenia prevented his understanding the link between his crime and his punishment.  But just before his execution, Johnson disproved that claim by apologizing for the murder.  A hail-Mary appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected with Associate Justices Sonja Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Katanji Brown Jackson voting to stay his execution.  Sixteen murderers have been executed in the United States so far this year.  Last year eight murderers had been executed by August 1.

A July 20 New York Times piece by Tim Arango reports on a survey of 30 large U.S. cities by the Council on Criminal Justice which found that homicides over the first six months of 2023 have declined by 9.4% compared to last year.  If the trend continues, Arango suggests it could be the largest one-year drop in homicides ever recorded.  Noting that there were 202 fewer homicides among the surveyed cities, which included New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Denver, they remain 24% higher than over the same period in 2019.   Other serious crimes including aggravated assault, robbery, commercial and residential burglary declined by 5% or less, while motor vehicle theft increased by over 33%.  The survey also noted a stunning 39% decline in drug offenses.  The Times reported that many experts agree that “the disruptions of the pandemic–the social isolation, the closure of schools and jobs lost — likely led to an increase in crime.”   While “an unproven theory cited by some experts amid the social unrest that followed the murder of Mr. Floyd, officers in some places pulled back from enforcement…”

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A bill moving through the California Legislature aims to eliminate racial bias by reducing consequences for turnstile jumping on public transit.  Golden Gate Media reports that while San Francisco’s Bart,  Los Angeles’ Metro and Sacramento’s RT are all crime-ridden and losing money, Los Angeles Assemblyperson Isaac Bryan (D. Los Angeles) introduced AB 819 to improve racial equity among transit riders.  According to Bryan “enforcement of fare evasion is discriminatory. People who face criminal charges for not paying their transit fare are disproportionately people of color and face harsher penalties when they are stopped.”  So allowing more freeriders on public transit is going to improve racial justice.  As one BART board member responded, “More decriminalization for BART makes the system less safe.”  It is already too dangerous for many to voluntarily choose take a train or bus in Los Angeles and San Francisco.  Unfortunately, most people commuting on public transit have no other option.

The Oakland, CA chapter of the NAACP issued a statement Thursday titled End Oakland’s Public Safety Crisis.

Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities. Murders, shootings, violent armed robberies, home invasions, car break-ins, sideshows, and highway shootouts have become a pervasive fixture of life in Oakland. We call on all elected leaders to unite and declare a state of emergency and bring together massive resources to address our public safety crisis.

African Americans are disproportionately hit the hardest by crime in East Oakland and other parts of the city. But residents from all parts of the city report that they do not feel safe. Women are targeted by young mobs and viciously beaten and robbed in downtown and uptown neighborhoods. Asians are assaulted in Chinatown. Street vendors are robbed in Fruitvale. News crews have their cameras stolen while they report on crime. PG&E workers are robbed and now require private security when they are out working. Everyone is in danger.

Failed leadership, including the movement to defund the police, our District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people who murder and commit life threatening serious crimes, and the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric have created a heyday for Oakland criminals. If there are no consequences for committing crime in Oakland, crime will continue to soar.

For far, far too long there has been a widespread delusion that being soft on crime is somehow “pro-civil rights” and, conversely, that those of us calling for effective law enforcement and proportionate punishment for serious crimes are somehow “anti-civil rights.” It is a breath of fresh air to see a chapter of this venerable organization recognizing that the opposite is closer to the truth. The paragraphs above read very much like statements that CJLF has made over the years. Continue reading . . .

A habitual felon arrested in April has been released on probation after pleading guilty to 54 commercial burglaries.  Michael Ruiz of Fox News reports that Christopher Jackson, nicknamed the Snake Burglar, has gotten away with $150,000 in a string of burglaries in Riverside County.  Prior to his release yesterday, after serving three months of a seven month jail sentence, Christopher served just ten days in jail for his guilty plea to 23 previous burglaries.  Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin, one of the toughest DAs in the state, has been unable to send Christopher and other habitual thieves like him to state prison because California’s Proposition 47, and dramatic reforms adopted by the Legislature (AB109) classify commercial burglary as a non-serious felony which does not qualify for a prison sentence.   “More time has been put in by our officers and detectives investigating Christopher Jackson’s crimes than the amount of time he spent in jail,” said the Riverside Police Department.   The Governor and the overwhelming majority of state legislators believe that most Californians are too stupid to understand why crime is increasing.

The state of Illinois and Los Angeles County are eliminating the requirement that misdemeanor and non-violent felony suspects post bail to gain release from jail prior to trial as reported by The Chicago Sun Times and The California Globe.   In both cases the new laws will remove cash bail as a condition that could be set by a judge when considering whether someone was likely to return to court for their hearings or posed a danger to the public.  As one Los Angeles Superior Court judge explained ” A low-risk arrestee should not be held in jail simply because they cannot post the necessary funds to be released pending arraignment.”

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To make amends for “racial bias that has historically permeated our criminal justice system” a bill before the state Senate seeks to require judges to consider the race of convicted criminals when determining sentences.  The bill (AB 852) was introduced by Assembly Public Safety Committee Chair Reggie Jones Sawyer (D. Los Angeles) and cleared the Assembly in May on a 53-13 party line vote.  It was Chairman Sawyer who last week killed a bi-partisan Senate bill which made sex-trafficking children a serious crime under California law.  He did this by joining the five other democrat members of the eight member committee in refusing to vote.  The backlash for that action forced the Assembly Speaker and the Governor to demand reconsideration.  So Sawyer had his committee reconsider the bill and pass it by a 6-0 vote, with two democrats abstaining.  When the clerk called for a voice vote, Sawyer defiantly yelled out “Aye.”  His bill injecting racial bias into sentencing is likely to pass in the Senate.   A piece in Liberty  Unyielding by attorney Hans Bader offers a scholarly discussion on the constitutionality of such a law.   Excerpts follow the break.

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Leslie Van Houten, one of the Manson family cult members convicted of murdering a Los Angeles couple in 1969, was released from prison yesterday.  The LA Times reports that, like previous governors, Gavin Newsom had rejected the state parole board’s recommendation that Van Houten be released, but earlier this year a divided State Court of Appeal overruled the Governor, who chose not to appeal that ruling to the state Supreme Court.   The day after cult leader Charles Manson ordered the brutal murders of actress Sharon Tate and four others in her Benedict Canyon home, Manson accompanied Van Houten and five other cult members to the home of Los Feliz couple Leno and Rosemary La Bianca.  After Manson had tied the couple up and put pillowcases over their heads, cult member Tex Watson stabbed Lino to death.  Watson then ordered Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel to hold down Rosemary.  Watson stabbed her several times, then gave the knife to Van Houten, who stabbed the woman at least fourteen times.  The women then wrote “death to pigs” on the wall and “healter skelter” on the refrigerator door with Leno’s blood.

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