by Brett Mathews · Sep 16, 2021 2:28 pm
According to a recent study, “close to half of all new U.S. gun buyers since the beginning of 2019 have been women” the Wall Street Journal’s Zusha Elinson reports. The study, 2021 National Firearms Survey, found that over 3.5 million women were first time gun purchasers between January 2019 and April of this year. What caused this sharp increase in women buying firearms?
by Brett Mathews · Sep 15, 2021 2:25 pm
Oakland, CA on Monday, September 13, 2021, was a “bloodbath” according to Sgt. Barry Donelan, president of the Oakland Police Officers Association. Homicides in Oakland increased from 67 by September 2020 to at least 93 by September 2021, which amounts to a 38.8% increase. “This devastating violence is brought to you by the majority of Oakland’s City Council that defunded the police that discounts the plight of Oakland’s victims of violent crime, and hide behind their zoom screens, ignoring the decade-high violent crime occurring on city streets,” said Donelan.
by Brett Mathews · Sep 15, 2021 11:39 am
A new memo released from the Department of Justice (DOJ) by Attorney General Merrick Garland makes policy changes that have the potential to endanger the lives of federal agents, as well as the limit the seizure of criminal evidence. According to the memo released September 14th, 2021, the DOJ is changing policy effective immediately regarding the use of chokeholds and “no-knock” warrants. The change appears inspired by the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of causing Floyd’s death by using a form of a chokehold to pin him down after he resisted arrest. Breonna Taylor died in a shootout which began when her current boyfriend shot at police executing a “no-knock” warrant to arrest her former boyfriend, drug dealer Jamarcus Glover. Continue reading . . .
by Michael Rushford · Sep 13, 2021 3:28 pm
The Chicago Sun Times reports that 64 people were shot in Chicago last weekend (9/3-9/5) with 9 killed. There were more deaths last weekend than over the three-day Labor Day weekend. Among those shot with nine children ranging in ages from 12 to 16. There were two mass shootings including a random attack at people leaving a birthday party Saturday night, killing a woman and injuring three others. Hours earlier another mass shooting killed a 24-year-old man and injured three others. According to the New York Post, New York City fared better over the weekend with only 35 shootings and no deaths so far. In one incident two shooters fired randomly into a group of roughly 100 people listening to music outdoors at a housing project at about 12:30 am Monday morning. Six were injured. At least 15 people were shot in 11 incidents Friday, 13 in 9 incidents Saturday, and 7 in 4 incidents Sunday. Shootings in New York are up from 1,087 at this point last year, to 1,163 this year. Weekends in these “woke” cities are more dangerous than a month in Beirut.
by Bill Otis · Sep 11, 2021 3:47 pm
No comment needed, or possible.
by Bill Otis · Sep 8, 2021 4:07 pm
That’s one of the most important questions any sensible person would ask in considering whether criminals are sentenced too harshly, or (relatedly) whether their existing sentences should be shortened by mass clemency or other expedients such as First Step Act re-sentencing. After all, we should be guided by “facts” and “data,” not emotion, right? Emotion is, after all, the province of revenge-driven right-wing kooks, while reliance on criminal justice “data” is the specialty of the more tempered among us.
Well OK then, let’s look at the data. What do they tell us?
In brief, they tell us that, in overwhelming numbers, after they’re released, criminals get back in the crime business. Most of them return fast, and over time, close to all of them return to harming us, our property, and our right to live in peace and safety.
by Kym Stapleton · Sep 8, 2021 11:28 am
This morning the California Court of Appeal (3rd Appellate District) dismissed Daniel Marsh’s appeal in an unpublished opinion (found here). A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post that detailed this appeal’s convoluted procedural history (here). The Court of Appeal agreed that the juvenile court’s reinstatement of the original 2014 criminal judgment was final before SB 1391 went into effect. Because it “did not constitute a new judgment from which to appeal,” the Court of Appeal found it was not appealable, and thus “the appeal must be dismissed.”
by Michael Rushford · Sep 7, 2021 1:54 pm
In 2020 California voters resoundingly rejected a state law eliminating cash bail for most people arrested for crimes. Yet in Los Angeles and San Francisco thousands of arrestees are routinely released without bail. A piece by Thomas Elias in the Napa Valley Register discusses the no-bail policy implemented by Los Angeles DA George Gascon. Under Gascon “Offenses legally defined as nonviolent and non-serious including things like solicitation to commit murder, many felony assaults, felony domestic violence resulting in a traumatic condition, resisting a peace officer, molesting a child over 15 and sexual penetration of a mentally or developmentally disabled person” will be released without bail. “Most Californians would consider any of these crimes both serious and violent,” notes Elias. “Most folks would probably also believe a suspect arrested for sucker-punching an elderly Asian woman in a hate crime may have committed a serious offense. But that suspect would be freed pending trial if deputies follow Gascon’s orders.”
by Michael Rushford · Sep 1, 2021 2:50 pm
Crime, particularly violent crime, has increased by historic levels in Los Angeles and New York City over the past two years. As noted in many recent postings, in both cities broad daylight assaults, carjackings, robberies and murders are a routine part of daily life and often captured on video. District Attorneys in the New York boroughs have responded by declining to prosecute thousands of criminals as reported by Bruce Golding in the New York Post. Last year prosecutors dropped all charges for more than 6,500 suspects, an increase of just under 17% compared to 2019. A law enforcement source told Golding that while the retirement of veteran prosecutors has contributed to the problem, District Attorneys worried about reelection in the Black Lives Matter era are simply letting suspects off. “Throw in a bucket of woke and no one is getting prosecuted.”
by Kent Scheidegger · Sep 1, 2021 10:14 am
The Metropolitan News-Enterprise has this story on George Gascón and a few other “woke” California District Attorneys supporting the murderer in the recent California Supreme Court case of People v. McDaniel. (See earlier posts on the decision here and here.) The Met is an LA legal paper, so the story focuses on Gascón and the criticism of his friend-of-the-murderer brief by former DA Steve Cooley, among others.
Former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, whose office in 2004 obtained a death sentence for double-murderer Donte McDaniel, has taken to task the county’s present chief prosecutor, George Gascón, for joining in an amicus curiae brief in support of that inmate, whose novel legal proposition, spurned last week by the California Supreme Court, would have resulted in the sentences of about 700 persons being upset.
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