by Kent Scheidegger · Feb 4, 2020 1:31 pm
New York City has long been the exemplar of a big city that achieved big drops in it crime rate. Today, though, the NYPD released a disturbing report that crime in the month just ended is up nearly 17% over the same month the year before.
Robbery, burglary, assault, and grand larceny are all up substantially, and grand larceny auto is up a staggering 72%.
Murder is down 21% even though shootings are up 29%, prompting the Seinfeldian Question, “What’s up with that?”
by Michael Rushford · Feb 4, 2020 9:54 am
Killer of Five Faces Execution Thursday: A Texas man convicted of the 2002 murders of his wife, his 7-year-old and 9-month-old daughters, his sister in law and father in law, is scheduled for execution by lethal injection Thursday. Brian Bingamon of the Austin Chronicle reports that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Abel Ochoa’s last appeal in October of 2019. Unless a lower court orders a stay or the state grants clemency, his execution will be carried out. At trial Ochoa claimed that he was suffering from a crack-cocaine induced delirium when he committed the murders, which included his reloading his gun, chasing down his 7-year-old daughter and shooting her four times. The jury took 10 minutes to unanimously find him guilty. On direct appeal and habeas corpus Ochoa claimed that his trial attorney was incompetent, the jury was biased, and that his alleged sexual abuse as a child and possible mental illness mitigated his responsibility for the murders.
Update: Ochoa was pronounced dead at 6:48 p.m Thursday.
by Michael Rushford · Feb 3, 2020 12:56 pm
CA Prop. 47 Enabled the New El Chapo: The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has flooded Los Angeles streets with drugs since passage of California’s Proposition 47. Bill Melugin of Fox News reports that the CJNG “is probably the most prolific cartel in Mexico,” according to the Los Angeles head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The cartel is responsible for 1/3 of all the drugs entering the US and has an extensive network in Los Angeles, smuggling and distributing hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine every month–much of it to the city’s growing homeless population. Federal law enforcement considers the cartel’s leader, El Mencho, to be worse than the notorious El Chapo. The CEO of the Union Rescue Mission in downtown LA, Reverend Andy Bales, who lost his leg from infection after stepping in human feces, believes that the city’s drug/homeless crisis needs a National Guard response. A DEA official said that Proposition 47, which decriminalized drug use, played right into the cartel’s hands, by providing addicts with no reason to stop using drugs and no motivation to go to treatment. El Mencho was an illegal in California 30 years ago. He was deported back to Mexico after he was arrested on drug charges in San Francisco and Sacramento.
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