Author Archives: Dana Pico

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So much for Andy Beshear asking When people don't do what he asks, he responds by issuing orders

Two stories from the Lexington Herald-Leader, both dated today:

    Most Kentucky schools are making masks optional, even as COVID-19 surges. Here’s why.

    By Alex Acquisto | August 10, 2021 | 12:48 PM

    In a cramped room with members of the Harlan County Public Schools Board of Education, Darla Heflin steadied herself behind a microphone.

    “I’ll be very quick,” Heflin told the listening board and Superintendent Brent Roark on July 27. “We do believe that masks pose physical, mental and emotional distress on our students and on our children.”

    Heflin explained that her son, a rising eighth-grader, asked to be picked up from school twice last year because wearing a mask plagued him with headaches, dizziness and nausea. “He’s not used to wearing them,” she said. “We don’t make him wear them outside of school. I’m here believing that you all will vote to make them optional. We do not want masks to be mandatory for our students.” Continue reading →

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If it’s just those evil reich wing Trumpelstiltskins who are refusing to be vaccinated, why doesn’t Philadelphia have an 80% vaccination rate?

Our good friends on the left love to blame evil reich wing Republicans for lower COVID-19 vaccination rates than they believe are acceptable. Of course, only 100% vaccination compliance is acceptable to the left, because the needs of the state outweigh the rights of the individual.

Surprisingly enough, that “anti racist news organization,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, loath as they are to print anything which could be construed negatively on BIPOCs[1]Black, indigenous, people of color., included an interactive map of city vaccination rates by zip code:

Philadelphia’s least-vaccinated zip codes at the beginning of the summer remain its most undervaccinated now, despite door-to-door outreach, targeted clinics, a lottery, and advertising to encourage people to get COVID-19 inoculations.

As the delta variant spreads, and the threat of other variants looms, these parts of the city are the most vulnerable to serious illness and death.

Five of the city’s zip codes had less than 40% of their residents fully or partially vaccinated as of Aug. 9, according to city data — rates that are on par with Arkansas and Louisiana.

You can click on the image, which is a screen capture, to enlarge it, but it is not interactive on this site. I did, however, rather painstakingly create a Microsoft Excel file of the of the data contained in the interactive file, including percentage having received at least one dose of vaccine, the median household income, racial demographics,[2]In the Inquirer’s interactive map, “white” is not capitalized, but “black”, “Latino” and “Asian” are. and the neighborhood names, something traditionally important in Philadelphia.

You can click on the image to enlarge it.

Of the 15 most heavily vaccinated zip codes, white Philadelphians are the plurality in 14 of them, with over 50% of the population in 12 of them, and 49% and 47% in the other two. Only in zip code 19104 are whites not the plurality.

In only two of the fifteen zip codes with the lowest rates of vaccination, 19116 and 19135, do white Philadelphians compose the largest racial/ethnic group. In nine if the fifteen zip codes with the lowest vaccination rates, blacks make up 70% or more of the population, and over 90% in zip codes 19132 and 19138.

It’s true enough that it takes an [insert slang term for the rectum here] like me to notice the racial disparity in those statistics, but I’d bet I’m not the only one. One wonders: just whom publisher Elizabeth Hughes will fire for looking up and printing those racially disparate statistics.

In the 2020 elections, Philadelphians gave 603,790 (81.44%) of their votes to Joe Biden, and only 132,740 (17.90%) to President Trump; Mr Biden’s margin of 471,050 votes in the city was far larger than his 81,660 statewide margin; without Philadelphia, President Trump would have carried the Keystone State by 389,390 votes.[3]This is clearly evidence that Philly needs to be walled off, like Manhattan in Escape from New York, all the inhabitants therein considered convicted felons and not be allowed to vote. If the vaccination resistance is all among the evil reich wing Trumpelstiltskins, why aren’t over 80% of people in the City of Brotherly Love vaccinated?

References

References
↑1 Black, indigenous, people of color.
↑2 In the Inquirer’s interactive map, “white” is not capitalized, but “black”, “Latino” and “Asian” are.
↑3 This is clearly evidence that Philly needs to be walled off, like Manhattan in Escape from New York, all the inhabitants therein considered convicted felons and not be allowed to vote.
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Have the bad guys run low on ammo in Killadelphia? The homicide rate has dropped dramatically in the last three weeks

As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, July 22nd, the bad guys, thugs and gang bangers of the City of Brotherly Love had killed 314 people. At the end of Tuesday, August 9, 2021, “only” 325 people had been murdered. That’s “only” 11 dead bodies in 18 days! We noted, on July 9th, that there had been 291 killings as of 11:59 PM on July 8th. 291 ÷ 189 days in the year, = 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year. If I recall correctly, that 562 number was my highest projection for the year.

Now, as of the 221st day of the year, 325 homicides have been recorded. 325 ÷ 221 days in the year, = 1.4706 homicides per day, for a projected 537 for the year. Yeah, that’s still a record-setting number — there were 500 homicides recorded in 1990, and 499 last year — but it’s a significant decrease in the past few weeks.

Have the gangs called a truce? Have most of the ‘scores’ been settled? Are the bad guys running low on ammo?

If The Philadelphia Inquirer has noticed this, I have managed to miss the stories.

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Once again, the Lexington Herald-Leader hides a mugshot

We have often mentioned the McClatchy Mugshot Policy that the Lexington Herald-Leader is obligated to follow. Of course, the Herald-Leader did not publish the mugshot of the defendant in the following story, despite having published several recently, all of white criminal suspects.

    Massive bond set for man accused of killing Richmond couple. Not guilty plea entered

    By Rayleigh Deaton | August 9, 2021 | 11:58 AM EDT

    A $5 million bond has been set for the man charged with two counts of murder in the slayings of a well-known Richmond couple.

    At an arraignment Monday, a plea of not guilty was entered on behalf of Thomas Birl, 51, who is accused of killing Christopher and Gracie Hager. Birl was also charged with arson, evidence tampering and receiving stolen property.

    Birl allegedly shot and killed the Hagers outside of a duplex they owned in Richmond, according to police. Birl was staying with his girlfriend. After the shooting, Birl set the duplex on fire and jumped out of a bedroom window before being arrested, according to court records.

What does the sentence, “Birl was staying with his girlfriend,” mean? Does it mean that he was staying at the apartment building owned by the Hagers? Perhaps Miss Deaton will update the article to fix that.

This has been a story that the newspaper has been all over:

But, all over it or not, the newspaper declined to print the mugshot of the accused, even though it has been freely broadcast all over the area by the local media, by Channel 18, WLEX-TV, and Channel 27, WKYT-TV, among others. Of course, The First Street Journal, which believes in the public’s right to know, does publish mugshots; they are a matter of the public record.

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A stunning lack of perspective

For the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading it’s all about racism. From Sunday’s Washington Post:

    ‘Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped’

    By DeNeen L. Brown | August 8, 2021

    JACKSON, Miss. — Since 2000, there have been at least eight suspected lynchings of Black men and teenagers in Mississippi, according to court records and police reports.

    “The last recorded lynching in the United States was in 1981,” said Jill Collen Jefferson, a lawyer and founder of Julian, a civil rights organization named after the late civil rights leader Julian Bond. “But the thing is, lynchings never stopped in the United States. Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped. The evil bastards just stopped taking photographs and passing them around like baseball cards.”

    Jefferson was born in Jones County, Miss., which was an epicenter of the Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror during the civil rights movement. “Coming from Mississippi and seeing stuff intersect, talking about this stuff is like talking about what happened down the road,” said Jefferson, a Harvard Law School graduate who trained as a civil justice investigator with Bond.

    In 2017, Jefferson began compiling records of Black people found hanging or mutilated across the country. In 2019, Jefferson began focusing her investigation on Mississippi. In each case she investigated, law enforcement officials ruled the deaths suicides, but the families said the victims had been lynched.

    Historically, lynchings were often defined as fatal hangings by mobs, often acting with impunity and in an extrajudicial capacity to create racial terror. Crowds of White people often gathered in town squares or on courthouse lawns to watch Black people be lynched.

There’s much more at the original.

DeNeen L Brown is an award-winning reporter, but she is also someone who very much has an agenda:

    Brown has written extensively about the country’s history of racial terror lynchings and massacres. After Brown’s 2018 story on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was published on the front page of The Washington Post, the mayor of Tulsa announced he would reopen the city’s search for mass graves of Black victims of the massacre. In October 2020, the city discovered a mass grave that may be connected to the massacre. Scientists will begin examining the remains this summer.

    Over more than three decades, Brown has been a ground-breaking reporter, with a strong writing voice uncovering stories about the Black community. At The Post, Brown covered night police, education, courts, politics, arts, theater and culture. She has been a staff writer in the famed Style section of The Washington Post and a staff writer for The Washington Post magazine, where she wrote award-winning narratives.

The problem is that, for an award-winning reporter, this article was not exactly the epitome of good journalism. Miss Brown extensively covers the mission of Jill Collen Jefferson, but provides virtually nothing in corroboration, and nothing that might call into question Miss Jefferson’s statements or conclusions.

    “There is a pattern to how these cases are investigated,” Jefferson said. “When authorities arrive on the scene of a hanging, it’s treated as a suicide almost immediately. The crime scene is not preserved. The investigation is shoddy. And then there is a formal ruling of suicide, despite evidence to the contrary. And the case is never heard from again unless someone brings it up.”

Is Miss Jefferson’s statement true? Miss Brown never investigates or questions it. She then proceeds to list the eight victims that Miss Jefferson alleges to have been lynched:

  • Raynard Johnson, 17: June 16, 2000: “There’s enough circumstantial stuff here that warrants a serious investigation. We will not rest until those who committed this murder are brought to justice,” Jackson told demonstrators before leading a march to the pecan tree where Raynard was found. “We reject the suicide theory.” In February 2001, the Justice Department announced it ended its investigation into Johnson’s death: “The evidence does not support a federal criminal civil rights prosecution.”

In other words, the federal Department of Justice, during the Administration of President Bill Clinton, investigated the evidence, and couldn’t find sufficient evidence to conclude that there was a lynching. Though the younger George Bush was President by the time this was announced, it was the first month of his term.

  • Nick Naylor, 23: January 9, 2003

Mr Taylor’s family claims that this was a murder, but no evidence other than that claim is provided.

  • Roy Veal, 55: April 22, 2004

A state police spokesman said that Mr Veal’s death was consistent with suicide, but that the case is with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. No other information is given.

  • Frederick Jermaine Carter, 26: December 3, 2010: Frederick Jermaine Carter was found hanging from a tree limb in a White neighborhood in Greenwood, Miss. The state medical examiner ruled Carter’s death a suicide. Relatives called it a lynching and demanded for a federal investigation. Derrick Johnson, then-state president of the Mississippi NAACP, told reporters that the community had “lost all confidence in the ability of local law enforcement to investigate” the case of Carter’s hanging. He called on the Justice Department to investigate. A spokesperson for the department declined to comment on the case.

Note that Mr Carter’s death occurred in December of 2010, and the federal Department of Justice was under the control of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, men not at all inclined to cover up a lynching and, especially in the case of Mr Holder, men not at all afraid to stir up divisions if they believed there was an incident of racial injustice or civil rights violations.

  • Craig Anderson, 49: June 26, 2011

This case actually was proven to be a hate crime, and three teenagers were convicted in federal court.

  • Otis Byrd, 54: March 19, 2015

Mr Byrd was paroled in 2006 following a 1980 conviction for murder. Miss Brown’s article noted that the FBI and Justice Department launched an investigation, but stated that there was no evidence to prove Mr Byrd’s death was a homicide. This was under the Obama Administration.

  • Phillip Carroll, 22: May 28, 2017: Phillip Carroll was found hanging from a tree in Jackson, Miss. Police called the death a suicide. Early reports said Carroll had been found with his hands tied behind his back. Police denied that account. “If there’s any other information or evidence that anyone may have to make us believe that it may not be a suicide, again, we’re open to any information and any evidence to aid us in the investigation,” Jackson Police Commander Tyree Jones told reporters. “But as of right now, we don’t have anything other than the fact that his death has been ruled a suicide.”

Jackson Police Commander Tyree Jones is black, so he’s not the type to cover up a racially motivated lynching.

  • Deondrey Montreal Hopkins, 35: May 5, 2019: Deondrey Montreal Hopkins, who lived in Columbus, Miss., was found hanging from a tree on a bank of the Luxapallila Creek. Columbus Police Chief Fred Shelton said Hopkins’s death was not a homicide. The Justice Department declined to comment on the case.

That’s it, that’s the end of Miss Brown’s article. And other than one, which was a matter of public record, there is no evidence of anything other than speculation by concerned parties and family members that these deaths were lynchings.

That does not mean that some of these cases weren’t actually murders, murders by people clever enough to have left no incriminating evidence. It also does not mean that some of these cases, if homicides, couldn’t have been carried out by black men rather than white. This is the problem with the award-winning reporter’s reporting: it’s nothing other than the speculation of Miss Jefferson. Were I the editor of The Washington Post, I would have read this story, and rather than give it the huge title seen on the newspaper’s website, I would have returned it to her with the instructions to get more, because this is agenda-driven journolism,[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term … Continue reading not journalism.

I entitled this article “A stunning lack of perspective,” for a very good reason. DeNeen Brown was very, very concerned with eight possible lynchings, over the past 21 years, yet in St Louis, Missouri, as of August 7th of this year, there have been 109 homicides, and of those 109 murders, 100 have been of black victims, 81 males and 19 females. St Louis, with a population of 294,890 is almost evenly divided between black and white residents, yet 91.74% of the murder victims there are black. Miss Brown is very concerned with eight homicides of black men over 21 years, while more than eight black men have been murdered in the Gateway to the West every single month!

And of the 49 known suspects in those killings, 48 are also black, while one is listed as race unknown.

Why doesn’t that concern Miss Brown? While I cannot read her mind, one suspicion immediately comes to mind: there is no political advantage for the left to note the tremendous black-on-black homicide rate in America.

I use St Louis statistics because St Louis is not only a very high murder rate city, but one of the few to publish the racial statistics along with the other numbers. Other murder centers like Chicago and Philadelphia publish the numbers, but we generally don’t find out the racial breakdowns until the end of the year. P F Whalen noted, near the end of July, that Philadelphia has the Highest Murder Rate Of The Largest U.S. Cities,[3]In something of a stunning development, in the two weeks between the end of Thursday, July 22nd and Thursday, August 5th, Philly has only eight reported homicides! As often as I have reported on the … Continue reading but as far as the racial numbers are concerned, we don’t have the breakdown. We only know that last year, 86% of homicide victims were black, in a city that is only about 44% black. Of course, I have noted, uncounted times, that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t care about homicides in the city unless the victim is an innocent, like Christine Lupo, a “somebody,” like a local high school basketball player, or a cute little white girl, like Rian Thal.

At least the Inquirer’s motives are clear: publisher Elizabeth Hughes has stated that she wants to make the Inquirer an “anti racist news organization,” and paying attention to the appalling black-on-black homicide rate in the city runs quite contrary to her goals.

Whether that is how the editors of The Washington Post think, I do not know.

Perspective is important. Yes, those eight men who died, over 21 years, in Mississippi, are important, but are they really more important that the 322 people who have poured out their life’s blood in Philadelphia’s mean streets? The only difference that I can see is DeNeen Brown’s apparent assumption that some or all of them were killed in lynchings by Evil White Men.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑3 In something of a stunning development, in the two weeks between the end of Thursday, July 22nd and Thursday, August 5th, Philly has only eight reported homicides! As often as I have reported on the carnage in the City of Brotherly Love, I am shocked.
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Hold them accountable! Joana Peca of St Petersburg was murdered allegedly by a man who should have been behind bars at the time

Former Washington Times reporter and current blogger Robert Stacy McCain has another article up about the foolish decisions some people take, decisions which can send them unexpectedly to their eternal rewards:

Mr McCain’s focus is a bit different than mine. He focuses on the utter stupidity of women who choose to ‘date’, and have babies with, convicted felons and obvious criminals, along with the failure of feminist organizations to call out ‘violence against women’ when the (alleged) perpetrators are not evil white men. Much further down, he gets to the case at hand:

    So, having made that 1,000-word digression, we now return to the main topic, Joana Peca of St. Petersburg, Florida.

    The tattoo on her (remarkably abundant) cleavage could be cited as evidence of Joana Peca’s defective judgment. The “rationalization hamster” must have run itself silly attempting to justify such a choice. And I’m sure that David Futrelle and Laura Bates would accuse me of misogyny merely for calling attention to this, because any criticism of any woman for any reason is always misogyny, according to feminist logic. “Equality” seems to require that women go through life without ever encountering negative feedback, no matter how foolish or harmful their actions may be, so the effect of feminism in public discourse is to make women off-limits to criticism (unless they vote Republican).

    The problem with this, you see, is that without feedback — including the kind of feedback that might persuade a woman not to get tattoos on her breasts — all sorts of foolish behavior are likely to proliferate because, without critical feedback, bad judgment tends to become generalized.

    Say hello to Benjamin Robert “Bambi” Williams, age 38:

      Williams has a Pinellas County arrest record that spans about 20 years. He has been arrested in cases ranging from grand theft auto, possession of drugs with intent to sell, robbery and fleeing police. He was most recently arrested on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm in January 2020. The state attorney’s office did not seek a prosecution.

      In 2007, Williams was arrested on charges of principle to attempted murder and strong-arm robbery, but those charges were dismissed, court records show.

    Now, if you had a daughter, wouldn’t you advise her to avoid associating with anyone who had such an extensive criminal record? Yes, but then again, if she’s got already tattoos on her cleavage . . .

      Detectives have identified Benjamin Robert Williams aka “Bambi” (DOB 12/31/1982) as the suspect in Saturday’s (July 31, 2021) shooting death of Joana Peca.

      Williams and Peca were involved in a romantic relationship and had a baby together. Peca was holding the infant when Williams shot her multiple times in the face. Her older child was sitting in the backseat during the shooting.

      A warrant has been issued for William’s arrest and SPPD is actively searching for him. Crime Stoppers is offering up to $5000 for information that leads to an arrest.

      Benjamin Williams is deemed to be armed and dangerous.

      He is linked to several open homicide investigations.

The part onto which I focused was different.

    He was most recently arrested on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm in January 2020. The state attorney’s office did not seek a prosecution.
    The obvious question is: why didn’t the state’s attorney seek a prosecution?

Convicted felons in possession of a firearm are about the simplest cases around:

  1. The suspect is a convicted felon, a matter of record; and
  2. The suspect was arrested in possession of a firearm.

Just how much more open-and-shut does it get?

If Mr Williams is actually the one who murdered Miss Peca, then is not the state’s attorney who declined to prosecute Mr Williams, leaving him out on the streets, just as responsible for Miss Peca’s death?

How many murders could have been prevented if prosecutors and parole boards did their f(ornicating) jobs and locked up these criminals for the maximum allowable time under the law?

Look at the record:

    Williams has a Pinellas County arrest record that spans about 20 years. He has been arrested in cases ranging from grand theft auto, possession of drugs with intent to sell, robbery and fleeing police.

Why would any, any! prosecutor decline to prosecute someone like Mr Williams for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon? Someone like Mr Williams is not just some misunderstood young lad, drawn into bad decisions by older boys; he’s 38 years old, and has been ‘involved’ in the criminal justice system for two decades. This is the kind of case that any responsible prosecutor ought to pursue as hard as he could, to get this man male off the streets.

Sadly, none of the media accounts I have been able to find have told us why the unnamed state’s attorney declined to prosecute Mr Williams 19 months ago, nor do we know why some other previous charges were dropped.

Miss Peca was, in part, the victim of her own poor decisions, but she did not somehow deserve to die. If Mr Williams is the person who killed her, then it has to be asked: why do the prosecutors who declined to pursue felony charges against Mr Williams in January of 2020 not bear some responsibility for Miss Peca’s murder?

Under Florida statute Title XLVI Chapter 790 §790.23, someone in illegal possession of a firearm commits a felony of the second degree, punishable as provided in §775.082, for which the punishment is incarceration in the state penitentiary for up to 15 years.

In other words, on the day that Mr Williams allegedly murdered Miss Peca, he could have been behind bars, looking at not getting out until 2035!

It is at least possible that the arresting officers somehow fouled up, making the charge non-prosecutable, but someone, somewhere in law enforcement, needs to be held accountable.

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Hold them accountable! If Brandon Dockery is the killer of Raymar Webb, then the Kentucky Parole Board which released him early, are also responsible for Mr Webb's death

We have previously noted how the Lexington Herald-Leader hid the available mugshot of accused murderer Brandon Dockery, even when he was on the loose and considered to be “armed and dangerous.” Mr Dockery was a previously convicted felon — that’s how the Lexington Police Department had a mugshot of him in the first place — and the Herald-Leader has not been at all afraid to post the photos of convicted felons, even after the implementation of the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, at least not as long as the accused criminals or convicted felons were white.

Robert Stacy McCain noted that it took a name like Leif Halvorsen to get the newspaper to publish his mugshot! 🙂

The Herald-Leader’s Karla Ward did some actual journalism in ferreting out Mr Dockery’s name, after police did not release it during the Kentucky State Police’s investigation of the officer-involved shooting which led to Mr Dockery’s capture, so the paper has to be congratulated for that. And now, reporter Jeremy Chisenhall has done so more investigative work, for which he deserves credit. Hey, I’ve criticized the journolism[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term … Continue reading of the paper often enough that it behooves me to give credit when credit is due!

    Lexington homicide suspect was on parole after setting an apartment building ablaze

    By Jeremy Chisenhall | August 4, 2021 4:34 PM

    A Lexington man sentenced in 2012 to 45 years in state prison has been charged in a homicide that occurred earlier this year, not long after he was released on parole, according to court records.

    Brandon Dockery, 32, was sentenced in 2012 to 45 years in prison after he admitted to lighting a Lexington apartment building on fire. The fire was set after he got into a fight with people in one of the apartments. He destroyed several apartments, killed pets and forced residents to flee the building. One jumped off a third-floor balcony.

    Now Dockery has been charged with murder in a 2021 shooting after getting into a standoff with law enforcement that ended with him being shot, according to police and court records. He pleaded not guilty to the homicide, which happened about eight months after Dockery was released on parole.

Now I would add my usual “There’s more at the original” blurb, but, Alas! you cannot access it unless you are a Herald-Leader subscriber! Briefly, Mr Chisenhall’s article describes how Mr Dockery had his sexual advances toward a woman in an apartment building rebuffed, and was thrown out by her two brothers after he became aggressive; Mr Dockery, they stated, appeared to be intoxicated. Mr Dockery then threatened to kill them and burn down their building. He later returned with 95¢ worth of gasoline in a can, and set the building alight. An overhead photo in the Herald-Leader story shows the building as completely destroyed. Though Mr Dockery wrote a whining letter to Judge Pamela Goodwine, telling her that he had gone nuts temporarily insane when he torched the building, she was apparently unmoved, and sentenced him to 45 years in the state penitentiary.

And this is where things went bad. In the Bluegrass State, a felon becomes eligible for parole after serving only 20% of his sentence.

Mr Dockery, who should have been locked up until November 19, 2055, was turned loose after serving just 10 years, 8 months. He was, according to the Herald-Leader, released on October 23, 2020, which was a week before his parole eligibility date, as stated in the parole information I screen captured.

I will ask the question I have been asking all along: why shouldn’t the state Parole Board, which released Mr Dockery after serving just 23.7% of his sentence, be held accountable for Mr Dockery’s (alleged) murder of 30-year-old Raymar Webb? If the Parole Board had the option of keeping Mr Dockery locked up — an option they exercised following his first parole hearing — they should have done so. Because they did not, and if Mr Dockery really is Mr Webb’s killer, the Parole Board is in part responsible for Mr Webb being dead, stone-cold graveyard dead. If Mr Dockery is the actual killer, then Mr Webb would (probably) still be alive, if only the Parole Board had kept the accused behind bars, where he belonged.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Hold them accountable!

The very title of “Judge” implies that we expect the holder of such a title to actually have good judgement, but there are times it seems that such an expectation is silly. We have recently reported on Delaware’s Superior Court Judge Vivian L. Medinilla, the utterly idiotic distinguished jurist who turned Keith Gibson loose on a probation violation which could have put him away for 6½ years, even though she was aware that he was a suspect in a murder investigation in Philadelphia, but would not consider that in her deliberations. Mr Gibson is now accused of having committed several additional murders after he was released, when he could have been safely behind bars.

Judge Medinilla didn’t even do Mr Gibson a favor. Instead of looking forward to being released after 6½ more years behind bars, Mr Gibson is now going to, if convicted, spend the rest of his miserable life in prison.

Judge Michael McLaughlin, from Cobb County government page.

Now we come to Cobb County, Georgia, Magistrate Judge Michael McLaughlin.

Judge Michael McLaughlin is the Dean of the Cobb County Magistrate Court bench. After first being appointed in 1985, he has served continuously with six different Chief Magistrates. Judge McLaughlin has heard every type of case filed in Magistrate Court and routinely handles the Court’s busy civil calendars.

In addition to his service on the bench, Judge McLaughlin ran a successful law firm for over 35 years. He has extensive experience in criminal law, and before taking the bench full-time, his practice most recently focused on family law and representing injured people. Judge McLaughlin is the co-author of Admissibility of Evidence in Civil Cases—a Manual for Georgia Trial Lawyers, which is updated and published annually. He has taught other judges through the Institute of Continuing Judicial Education and aspiring paralegals at Kennesaw State University.

Judge McLaughlin is a member of the Cobb County Bar Association and the Council of Magistrate Court Judges. He is a graduate of Florida State University and John Marshall Law School. He has resided in East Cobb with his wife Michelle for over 30 years. The McLaughlins have two adult children and attend Johnson Ferry Baptist Church and the Catholic Church of St. Ann.

Sounds like a very serious man, right? We turn to our good friend Robert Stacy McCain:

Austin William Lanz

Crazy people are dangerous

Robert Stacy McCain | August 4, 2021

This is a mugshot of Austin William Lanz, when he was arrested in April in Cobb County, Georgia, after breaking into a neighbor’s home. Lanz, who lived with his parents in Acworth, about 30 miles north of Atlanta, had spent months harassing the neighbor and the neighbor’s fiancée:

He was recorded on video by the security system roaming the house for 13 minutes and turned on all the lights, which police said indicated that he’d been “searching through the residence for something or someone.” He left without taking anything, according to arrest reports and court filings.

Lanz was arrested and booked on charges of burglary and trespassing charges. When informed he was being charged, Lanz objected, saying, “but I didn’t take anything,” the arrest report said. He then made statements to a police officer about how planes had been flying over the neighborhood and tracking his cellphone.

(What part of “crazy” do I need to explain here?)

While being processed at the county jail, Lanz . . . attacked two sheriff’s deputies in the intake area without provocation, including one who sustained a chipped bone and torn ligament in her knee. After he was restrained, Lanz reportedly accused the officers of being “gay” for teaming up on him and asked to be uncuffed so he could fight them one-on-one.

A judge reduced his bond in May to $30,000 and released him, imposing some conditions, including that he not take illegal drugs, that he undergo a mental health evaluation and that he not possess a firearm. . . .

(“Hey, this psycho attacked two deputies, but I’m going to turn him loose, on condition he get some help with his mental health.”)

There’s more at Mr McCain’s original, making his point that crazy people are dangerous. Mr McCain’s article title, Crazy People Are Dangerous is on its 27th usage.

I look at it differently. Mr Lanz, you see, took a bus to our nation’s capitol and killed a police officer.

The man who killed a Pentagon police officer at a nearby transit center Tuesday got off a bus, immediately stabbed the officer and then shot himself with the officer’s gun, the FBI says.

Officer George Gonzalez was killed in the line of duty after a burst of violence on a bus platform outside the headquarters of the U.S. military. The Pentagon was temporarily locked down.

The FBI said in new information Wednesday that Austin William Lanz, 27, of Georgia, is the suspect. Lanz died at the scene. A “civilian bystander” was wounded and had non-life-threatening injuries.

According to the FBI, Lanz got off a bus at the Pentagon Transit Center in Arlington at about 10:40 a.m. Tuesday and “immediately, without provocation, attacked Officer George Gonzalez with a knife, severely wounding him.”

A “struggle ensued” and Lanz mortally wounded Gonzalez.

Lanz then shot himself with Gonzalez’ gun.

Which brings me back to Judge McLaughlin. He was the judge who looked at the evidence, evidence of an obviously crazy man, and turned him loose! As Mr McCain noted, he attacked two deputies, and had been threatening his previous victims with a firearm, but Judge Mclaughlin thought that telling him that he:

  1. Could not possess a firearm;
  2. Could not take illegal drugs; and
  3. Must undergo a mental health examination

would persuade him to be a good little boy, would actually keep him from possession weapons or taking drugs.

Can anyone tell me why Cobb County Magistrate Court Judge Michael E. McLaughlin should not be held accountable for the crimes, for the murder, that an obviously crazy defendant that he released committed? Like Judge Medinilla, Judge McLaughlin did the defendant no favor. Instead of perhaps getting some mental health treatment, instead of perhaps spending a couple of years locked up, Mr Lanz is now stone-cold graveyard dead . . . and he took Officer Gonzalez with him.

If we held judges and parole boards accountable for the crimes of people they let go easily or early, that bovine feces would stop. Criminals would be sentenced to the maximum allowable time under the law, and parole boards wouldn’t release anyone before he had served every last day of his sentence. Keeping criminals off the streets might not be very sympathetic to them, but it would be a whole lot safer for the public.

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Kneel before Zod!

I have been pretty diligent about checking for the ruling from the Kentucky Supreme Court on Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) claim that the state legislature’s changing the law governing his ’emergency’ executive authority is unconstitutional, but, as of yet, I cannot fins anything which states that the Court has ruled.

However, I suspect that the Court has already decided, and that the Democrat-leaning justices were simply unable to find any way to throw out the legislation, and that Governor Beshear has already been informed of the decision:

    “Beshear calls on employers to enforce vaccine mandates as COVID-19 cases surge in KY

    By Alex Acquisto | August 5, 2021 | 3:29 PM EDT

    Gov. Andy Beshear on Thursday called on the private sector to enforce COVID-19 vaccine mandates in workplaces, in yet another attempt to convince more people to get inoculated as the virus rages across Kentucky.

    “I think the fact is clear that with private-sector leadership, we see more individuals getting vaccinated that we otherwise could not reach as state government,” the governor said during a coronavirus update in the state Capitol. He was joined by leaders of nine health care and hospital systems across Kentucky, each of whom advocated for vaccine requirements among health care workers.

Translation: the Governor wants to force Kentuckians to take the vaccine, under the threat of losing their jobs if they don’t. The vaccines have been available, for free, to all adults since March; if someone hasn’t taken the vaccine yet, it is because he has chosen not to do so.

    “This is not a political statement. This is what is right for the lives of the good people of the commonwealth,” said Donald H. Lloyd, president of St. Claire Healthcare in Morehead.

Of course it’s a political statement! A (sort of) non political statement would be a request to the public that more people get vaccinated. The Governor is bringing whatever political power he has to bear to persuade corporations to threaten people’s jobs if they do not kneel before Zod. Continue reading →