DAs Sue to Block Inmate Releases

by · May 27, 2021 10:21 am

44 elected District Attorneys filed a lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court yesterday seeking to block the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) from granting early releases to 76,000 of the state’s most dangerous criminals.  In a press release, Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, who is leading the effort, noted that on Friday, April 30, 2021 the CDCR announced “emergency regulations” to award increased good time credits to the bulk of inmates currently in prison.  On May 17, 2021 the District Attorneys sent a letter to the head of CDCR asking her to repeal the regulations and follow normal state rules for implementing a policy of this magnitude.  CDCR did not respond to the letter.

Continue reading . . .

LA DA Recall Signature Drive Kicks Off

by · May 27, 2021 10:01 am

The signature drive to recall Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón kicked off yesterday, Wendy Burch reports for KTLA 5. Among the initial signers were County Sheriff Alex Villanueva and former DA Steve Cooley.

The primary push behind the drive, though, is from victims of crime and the families of victims who have seen the current DA dole out shocking leniency to people have committed horrible crimes.

Among them is Desiree Andrade. Last December, just one week after Gascón’s infamous special directives, the special circumstance allegations were dismissed against the killers who beat and stabbed her son, stomped on his head, and threw him off a cliff. Bill Melugin of Fox 11 had this report at the time. The lack of the special circumstance charge not only precludes the death penalty, but it also precludes a sentence of life without parole, meaning the killers will eventually be eligible for parole. Continue reading . . .

Stabbed in the Back by Softness on Crime

by · May 25, 2021 2:17 pm

City News Service reports:

A man who was sentenced to 196 years to life in prison for his role in a series of San Diego drive-by slayings, but was released last year due to changes to state law regarding juvenile defendants, was ordered Monday to stand trial for allegedly robbing and stabbing a stranger in El Cajon.

Dejon Satterwhite, 32, is accused of stabbing a man in the back on March 11, about six months after he was released from state prison. Continue reading . . .

Archive Is Available

by · May 25, 2021 11:59 am

Maintenance has been completed on C&C’s archive blog, containing posts from the beginning in 2006 through 2019. The archive is now available here. The link is also at the bottom of the right sidebar on the home page of the current blog.

The Perfect Storm for Crime to Flourish in San Francisco

by · May 25, 2021 11:35 am

In San Francisco fear has become part of life for many of its residents. According to this article by Kenny Choi of CBS San Francisco:

Residents in San Francisco say they don’t feel safe amid an alarming rise in the number of burglaries across the city. Residents say the initial response form San Francisco police went nowhere. So after someone broke into her complex in the middle of the night, [Iryna] Gorb started sleuthing, obsessively collecting evidence on her own from neighbors’ cameras.  

 

Continue reading . . .

A Spring Weekend in New York

by · May 24, 2021 1:35 pm

With everything in bloom and temperatures in the 70s New Yorkers went out to enjoy the city last weekend and violent criminals were there to greet them.  Fox News reports that thirty-one people were shot from Friday, May 21 thru Sunday, May 23, with six fatalities.  One victim, a 34-year-old woman eating at a restaurant in Prospect Heights was hit in the face by a bullet fragment from an apparent gang shootout on Washington Avenue.  The New York Daily News reports that a 31-year-old man walking past the restaurant with his wife was also shot during the same incident.  There were fifty shootings in the city last week, a 257% increase over the same week a year ago.   Over 2020 as we watched news broadcasts of cell phone video showing multiple incidents of NYPD officers being attacked while trying to make arrests or sitting in patrol cars, city leaders were busy releasing arrestees on zero bail and emptying out jails to protect criminals from Covid 19.  Earlier this year, as part of a police reform package, the City Council eliminated qualified immunity for police accused of using excessive force.  So-called criminal justice reform is increasing crime in New York City.

The Portland Poll on Public Order

by · May 19, 2021 2:43 pm

Another result of the Oregonian poll, noted in my previous post, is reported here.  It describes further consequences of police pull-back:

Residents across the metro area say downtown Portland has become dirty, unsafe and uninviting and many anticipate visiting the city’s core less often after the pandemic than they did before.

Those are the worrisome findings of a new poll of 600 people in the Portland metro area commissioned by The Oregonian/OregonLive. Asked for their perceptions of downtown, respondents frequently used words like “destroyed,” “trashed,” “riots” and “sad.” Many cited homelessness as a particular issue, and said there is an urgent need for the city to find housing and support people living on the street.

Continue reading . . .

Amid calls to ‘defund the police,’ most Portland residents want police presence maintained or increased, poll finds

by · May 19, 2021 2:10 pm

Now for a balancing bit of good news. Shane Kavanaugh has this article with the above title in the Oregonion.

Nearly a year after “defund the police” became a racial justice rallying cry in Portland and across the U.S., a vast majority of Portlanders and those living in the metro area reject the call to diminish police presence in the city. Continue reading . . .