When “Violence Interrupters” Threaten Violence

by · Feb 19, 2025 11:54 am

The movement to defund the police is not new. While it gained traction in 2020 following the death of George Floyd, it has been the mantra of civil rights groups and race-hustlers for decades, and is rooted in the fiction that the entire criminal justice system is systemically racist.  One of the alternatives to police pushed by progressive academia has been to replace police officers with “violence interrupters.” For the past several years cities controlled by democrats including Chicago, Minneapolis and Los Angeles have diverted funds from police departments to non-government organizations (NGOs) which employ ex-gang members to interact with local street gangs, supposedly to counsel for non-violence and “restorative justice” programs. Restorative Justice is an alternative to punishment which involves putting crime victims and the criminals who attacked them together with counselors to help them heal emotionally and forgive each other. In places that have diverted funds to these programs law enforcement decreased while crime increased.

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Thanks to Soros Funded DA, Murder Suspect Released on $200 Bail

by · Feb 18, 2025 1:16 pm

An Austin, Texas man charged with the October 2024 murder of a 20-year-old with a gunshot to the back of the head, was released on $200 bail last Saturday. Brian Slupski of the Lawyer Herald reports that a judge reduced Stephon Martin Morson’s bail from $800,000 to $200 based on a Texas law that allows reduced bail if the District Attorney fails to bring an indictment against a violent offender withing 90 days of arrest.  Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza has not yet indicted Morson, who was arrested for the murder on November 6, 2024.  Garza is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America whose campaign was largely financed by socialist/progressive billionaire George Soros.  Failing to indict an accused murderer and thereby allowing his release is a profound dereliction of a district attorney’s obligation to enforce the law.  Stepheny Price of Fox News reports, elected leaders outside of Austin are outraged.

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Texas and Florida Execute Murderers

by · Feb 14, 2025 11:22 am

Two murderers, both who killed multiple victims, were put to death Thursday.

Michael Dorgan of Fox News reports that Richard Tabler mouthed the words “I’m sorry” to his victims’ relatives just before he was executed by lethal injection. Tabler was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2004 Thanksgiving Day murders of two men in Killeen, Texas. He lured the co-owner of a club (where he once worked) and the co-owner’s friend to a remote area on the pretense of buying stolen stereo equipment. Both were shot to death. Two days later, Tabler killed two teenaged girls (an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old) who worked at the club because he thought they would tell police that he murdered the two men. He admitted to killing the two teen girls to police after his arrest. While his attorneys argued that Tabler was mentally incompetent for execution, he had repeatedly asked the court to stop the appeals. Continue reading . . .

The Effectiveness of Rehabilitation Programs: Do they really work?

by · Feb 13, 2025 8:33 am

For over a century, policymakers and researchers have tried to rehabilitate criminal offenders. Despite these efforts, recidivism rates remain stubbornly high.

A newly-released report by the Manhattan Institute challenges optimistic claims about rehabilitation programs. The authors argue that most programs’ success is exaggerated by political rhetoric. In reality, many programs do not operate as intended and have less than ideal success rates. While some high-rate offenders do turn their lives around, the authors stress that predicting who will desist from criminal activities—and when—remains a complex challenge.

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SF DA Publicly Criticizes Judges

by · Feb 12, 2025 6:45 pm

San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins has been publicly criticizing judges there for excessively lenient sentences. Not surprisingly, she has been getting blowback for that. But it is an important public issue, worthy of public debate. Bob Egelko has this story in the SF Chronicle.

In one recent statement, Jenkins said, “The majority of (San Francisco) judges do not treat drug dealing as a serious crime despite repeat offenses, and the grave consequences visited upon our communities, and the drug dealers therefore do not fear incarceration, or any significant consequence.”

Here are a few specific cases of overly lenient sentences: Continue reading . . .

California Probation Dept. Unable to Supervise Violent Ex-Cons

by · Feb 11, 2025 2:38 pm

Fourteen years after Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 109, so called “Public Safety Realignment,” into law and began dumping ex-cons and thousands of new felons on county probation departments, LA County is no longer able to handle the volume of serious offenders. Louis Casiano of Fox News reports that the state Probation Chief recently sent an urgent request to the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services asking for an additional 150 police officers to take over supervision of both adult and juvenile offenders sentenced to probation, rather than jail or prison. Adding to the shortage of officers, on January 1 dozens of officers were suspended at the county’s Juvenile Hall due to alleged offenses.

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Counterman Follow-Up: Prosecuting Stalkers

by · Feb 7, 2025 4:00 pm

Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Counterman v. Colorado that if a stalker is prosecuted on the ground that his communications are threats, the prosecution must show a mental state of at least recklessness regarding the threatening nature of the communications. At the time, I thought it was unfortunate that the case went up as a “threats” case because there was a much better basis available. See this post. With stalkers, it is usually not so much the threatening content of the communication that is the problem, but rather the extreme persistence even after they have been told to buzz off. A long series of cases gives the government much more latitude to regulate the “time, place, and manner” of speech. The failure of the majority opinion to address this raised a danger that stalkers could get off when the case cannot be made that the speech amounts to a threat and the stalker knows or should know that.

Sure enough, this happened in Colorado, with the trial judge acquitting the stalker. But in Colorado the prosecution can ask the Court of Appeals to disapprove the trial court’s ruling for future cases, even though this perpetrator cannot be retried. Continue reading . . .

Sacramento DA Joins Fight to Block Early Releases of Violent Criminals

by · Feb 7, 2025 10:56 am

The Sacramento County District Attorney’s office has filed argument in support of a lawsuit brought by the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation to block the Newsom administration’s illegal early release of violent criminals from prison.

In 2017, Governor Jerry Brown authorized the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to adopt new regulations increasing sentence reduction credits (called “good time” credits) for inmates that it determined had behaved well and participated in rehabilitation programs. The Governor believed that Proposition 57, adopted by voters a year earlier, empowered the CDCR to award these credits without limits in order to shorten the sentences of inmates. In 2021 Governor Gavin Newsom directed CDCR to increase the number of inmates eligible for credits and the number of credits awarded to further expedite early releases.

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As Crime Rises San Francisco Doubles Down on Sanctuary Policy

by · Feb 5, 2025 11:41 am

With the latest data showing that violent crime is increasing and property crime remains the highest of any California county, San Francisco leaders emphasized last week that it would continue to be a sanctuary city. Chase DiFeliciantonio, and Molly Burke of SF Gate report that at a rally last week,

“Officials including Mayor Daniel Lurie, City Attorney David Chiu, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, union leaders and the entire Board of Supervisors took turns reiterating their commitment to San Francisco’s sanctuary policy, which restricts the city’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The policy is intended to afford people the confidence to interact with city police and other public safety agencies without fear of their immigration status being called into question.”

The rally, called by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) leader Olga Miranda, in response to an attempt by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to enter a city government building with a warrant to arrest an illegal alien, either charged with a crime or with one or more prior criminal convictions.

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