Monthly Archive: July 2020
by Bill Otis · Jul 24, 2020 5:10 pm
Here’s the headline from the piece in today’s WSJ by my friend Sean Kennedy, a Visiting Fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute: You’re More Likely to Catch Covid at Home Than in Jail. The sub-head is: Early release policies have had no effect on transmission behind bars. But they have contributed to a crime wave. I thought these two paragraphs were particularly revealing:
While hundreds of millions of law-abiding Americans were on lockdown this spring, progressives were demanding that criminals be allowed to go free. So far, almost 100,000 inmates have been released from prisons and jails around the country—with more to come. It can be no coincidence that crime is on the rise in states where these mass releases took place….
Some savvy jailbirds saw a golden opportunity to win their freedom. Inmates at North County Correctional Facility in Castaic, Calif., sought release by deliberately infecting themselves with the coronavirus. At least 21 of 50 prisoners who were caught on video drinking hot water from the same cup eventually tested positive for Covid-19. It isn’t clear whether they got their wish.
by Bill Otis · Jul 23, 2020 5:59 pm
Underincarceration and the drumbeat for “sentencing reform” that lies behind it are the catalysts for tragic and avoidable murder. No humane society should tolerate such a thing, but ours does, routinely, simply to genuflect to demands by criminals and their swooning spokesmen to treat them as if our behavior were the problem, not theirs.
This is false, foolish, immoral, and lethal. Here’s the latest example.
Continue reading . . .
by Katherine.Stiplosek · 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 . . .
by Bill Otis · 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?
Continue reading . . .
by Michael Rushford · 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.
Continue reading . . .
by Katherine.Stiplosek · Jul 20, 2020 3:43 pm
Last Monday, the Ninth Circuit scaled back a nationwide order that blocks the Trump administration from cutting off grants to sanctuary jurisdictions after finding that the mandate should only apply in California.
Nicholas Iovino of Courthouse News reports that the new verdict comes after a 2017 lawsuit brought by San Francisco. The city sued the Justice Department after the Trump Administration announced plans to make jurisdictions ineligible for the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, unless they gave immigration agents unrestricted access to local jails, and provided 48 hours’ notice before releasing undocumented immigrants from jail. California joined the lawsuit as a plaintiff, and later passed it’s own separate set of “Sanctuary State” laws in October 2017.
Continue reading . . .
by Bill Otis · Jul 18, 2020 11:16 pm
In my last post, I noted that the woke culture’s drumbeat of hate against the United States was certain to have, and in fact is having, consequences. In part, they are being reflected in the surge of riots, arson and other violent crime that even the Left no longer bothers to deny. But while the denials have withered, in their place have come the dodges and excuses. One of the most popular is that (ever heard this one?) “correlation is not causation.” Hey, look — the story goes — violent crime has always tended to increase in warmer months. It’s not the woke culture’s anthem of fury; it’s just correlation with the weather. So what’s to worry?
What’s to worry is that if we tell people whose stability is none too good to start with that they are justified in their anger and hate, eventually they’ll believe us. And when they believe us, they’re going to act on what we’ve been telling them.
Continue reading . . .
by Bill Otis · Jul 18, 2020 10:24 pm
When the dominant voices in the culture are telling us at 10,000 decibels that our country is a racist cesspool, that it routinely treats a large segment of its population with callousness if not cruelty, that its history is a stain and its promise a fraud, that is going to have consequences. We are starting to see them. One aspect of the display is the widespread, sudden and shocking increase in violence, documented in this post. Another, related aspect is in the attack on the monuments to our history — and not just Confederate monuments, which were a bait-and-switch — but on monuments to Lincoln, Grant, and Fredrick Douglass, among many others.
There was another attack last night. John Hinderaker has the story
Continue reading . . .
by Katherine.Stiplosek · Jul 17, 2020 3:48 pm
Violent crime rates have been soaring across the US, as the global pandemic and nation-wide protests create the ‘perfect storm of distress.’
The summer season brings substantially higher crime rates in most parts of the country, causing many agencies to deploy more officers than usual to keep cities safe. This year, police departments are also struggling amidst the coronavirus pandemic, the challenges of safely battling civil unrest, and heightened political tensions. Now, they also facing rising crime. Fox News’ Stephanie Pagones compares crime data from across the country, reporting how cities have been affected by this year’s challenges.
Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Jul 17, 2020 8:45 am
Number three in USDOJ’s murderers row, Dustin Honken, is set for execution today. Honken was a drug trafficker who murdered a dealer turned informant. He also murdered three other people in the household–a mother and her two children aged 10 and 6. He later murdered a fifth person.
Early this morning, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied a stay pending appeal of Honken’s claim under the Administrative Procedure Act. See this post from Wednesday for a brief description of that claim and the District Judge’s rejection of it.
Continue reading . . .
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