Category: Policing

How To Deal with Criminals When the Police Stand Down

by · Aug 2, 2020 12:39 pm

Minneapolis has been at the center of the widespread insurrection and rioting the country has seen over the last couple of months.  Its City Council has voted to disband the police, while crime is surging (those who think those two things are unrelated can stop reading here).

With robberies and other violent crime on a tear while the police sit in criminal justice reform’s doghouse, law enforcement has sent out tips for how law-abiding citizens should react to criminals.  The advice is pithy:  Obey them.

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Still Not Guilty, but Still Hounded

by · Jul 31, 2020 2:15 pm

Perhaps the defining moment of the Black Lives Matter movement, at least before George Floyd, was the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.  It gave rise to the slogan, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” which supposedly captured the moment in which Brown, with hands up and peacefully approaching white Police Officer Darren Wilson, was shoot dead for no reason.  That slogan is still shouted at BLM rallies today.

A new prosecutor, a black man, Wesley Bell, was elected in St. Louis County in 2018.  He reopened the investigation.  Result:  Darren Wilson is still not guilty of any crime that could be proven to a jury under the same standards applied to everyone else.

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Faithful Execution of the Laws

by · Jul 29, 2020 3:18 pm

40 U.S.C. §1315(a):

To the extent provided for by transfers made pursuant to the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the Secretary of Homeland Security … shall protect the buildings, grounds, and property that are owned, occupied, or secured by the Federal Government … and the persons on the property.

“Shall,” for those unclear on the concept, means this is a duty.

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A Presentation Featuring the Incomparable Heather Mac Donald

by · Jul 29, 2020 12:31 am

CJLF’s Legal Director, Kent Scheidegger, is for my money the country’s most knowledgeable, intellectually adept and fair-minded expert on the death penalty and habeas corpus.  Heather Mac Donald fills the same role on the intersection of crime, race and policing.  She will be holding forth in a presentation Thursday at noon Central Time.  This link tells you how to sign up to watch.  The way things are now, you can learn more listening to Heather for ten minutes than going to law school for three years.

The Facts on Operation LeGend

by · Jul 23, 2020 3:27 pm

On Wednesday July 22 President Trump announced that the Justice Department would be sending hundreds of additional federal agents into major cities, in an attempt to reduce the number the shootings and violence that has escalated in recent in weeks, and compensate for weak local governments.

“We will never defund the police. We will hire more great police. We want to make law enforcement stronger, not weaker. What cities are doing is insanity.” Continue reading . . .

Harvard’s Delusional Take on Policing

by · Jul 23, 2020 1:27 pm

A well-regarded history professor at Harvard, Jill Lepore, recently wrote this in New York Magazine (emphasis added):

One study suggests that two-thirds of Americans between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four who were treated in emergency rooms suffered from injuries inflicted by police and security guards, about as many people as the number of pedestrians injured by motor vehicles.

Anyone spot something amiss here?

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Hobbling Cops and Shortening Sentences

by · Jul 22, 2020 3:54 pm

Over the past several years real law enforcement leaders, not appointed chiefs in liberal cities or George Soros-funded DAs, have been warning that giving in to demands by Black Lives Matter and progressive politicians for sentencing and policing reforms would result in more crime.  President Barack Obama used his pen to begin these reforms, releasing thousands of drug dealers from prison,  backing off federal prosecution of dealers for new crimes,  implementing “catch and release” on our southern border and initiating federal consent decrees to handcuff police in big cities like Chicago, supposedly to reduce racially-biased policing.  By 2019, many of the most populous states had adopted some form of sentencing reform, cutting sentencing for most crimes,  shortening or eliminating enhancements for repeat felons and reducing or eliminating bail.  In the face of intense pressure by local politicians, activist groups and a complicit media,  Police departments have backed away from progressive policing, particularly in minority urban areas.

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Abandoning Cities

by · Jul 7, 2020 10:14 am

People are leaving America’s larger urban centers at an unprecedented rate this year.  Kristin Tate of the Hill writes that “an estimated quarter million New York residents are moving upstate for good while another 2 million could permanently move out of state.”  She cites the spread of the coronavirus due to the dense living conditions and the lack of proper local government planning as reasons for the exodus.  Redfin, a real estate search engine, reports that over 40% of urban residents are brousing for new homes, more than twice that of rural residents.  Rural states such as Colorado, Montana, Vermont, Connecticut, and Florida are popular destinations.

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