Author Archives: Dana Pico

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It looks like Lexington is trying to become Philadelphia

The Lexington Herald-Leader reported on Tuesday, January 5th, on the 2020 homicide numbers in Kentucky’s second largest city, home of the University of Kentucky, and where I lived from August of 1971 through December of 1984. There were 34 homicides in the city in 2020, up from 30 in 2019, which was the previous record. With a guesstimated population of 323,152 in mid-2019, that puts the city’s murder rate at 10.53 per 100,000 population, far, far behind places like Philadelphia and Chicago. Lexington-Fayette County is the 60th largest city in the United States, larger than St Louis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.

Well, it seems as though the city’s gang-bangers took that number as a personal challenge, and one to be left in the dust.

Man dead, suspect arrested after Lexington’s 2nd fatal shooting in hours

By Jeremy Chisenhall | April 19, 2021 | 7:22 AM, Updated 3:28 PM EDT

Brandon Carl Munford, 37 (Photo: Lexington-Fayette County Detention Center)

A 28-year-old man is dead after a fatal shooting in Lexington Sunday evening, according to Lexington police and the Fayette County coroner’s office.

The shooting was called into police at 7:09 p.m. Sunday, according to police Lt. Chris Van Brackel. Officers responded to the 1000 block of Pennebaker Drive to find Devante Bell injured after being shot. He was transported to University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital but later died, according to the coroner’s office.

Brandon Carl Munford, 37, was arrested Sunday night and charged with murder and wanton endangerment, according to an arrest citation. A Lexington officer wrote in the arrest citation that Munford intentionally shot Bell, who was inside his vehicle at the time. Police later released that the shooting happened when an argument escalated to the point of shots being fired.

At least the Lexington Herald-Leader actually reported on the killings, unlike The Philadelphia Inquirer, which no longer sees stories about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love as newsworthy, unless the victim is a child, a “somebody,” or a cute little white girl.

The photo used to illustrate the Herald-Leader article was not in the newspaper’s story. Other Lexington media, including WKYT-TV, WLEX-TV, the Lexington city government page, and WDKY-TV carried the photo. The Lexington Police department tweeted it out. The Herald-Leader instead ran a stock photo of Lexington police car pursuit lights. The newspaper has apparently decided against publishing the photos of accused criminals, for some unknown reason.

Further down came the kicker:

Bell’s death was also the fifth Lexington homicide in April and the 15th homicide in 2021. Lexington set a record for homicides in 2020 with 34.

Sunday, April 18th, was the 108th day of 2021. At that rate, 0.1389 homicides per day, Lexington is on track for 51 murders in 2021! Fifteen homicides on the 108th day of the year is fully half of 2019’s total of 30, less than a third of the way through the year. Doing the math, Lexington is on pace for a year end homicide rate of 15.78 per 100,000 population, which still pales in comparison to Philadelphia or Chicago or St Louis, but the increase is certainly a disturbing trend, in a city with far lower population density, with far fewer people stacked on top of each other.

Of course, the Herald-Leader article uses the journalistically (journolistically?) favored term “gun violence,” as though inanimate objects magically jump into people’s hands and then fire themselves:

The increase in gun violence in Lexington has caused concern from BUILD (Building a United Interfaith Lexington through Direct-Action), a faith-based group made up of 26 member congregations in Lexington. The group addresses issues of poverty and injustice locally. Members from the group are hosting a “Stop the Violence” rally Tuesday evening.

“As Pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church, I see that Lexington has a violence problem,” said Pastor Joseph Owens, a co-chair of BUILD. “This isn’t new. We have gangs. I have presided over the funerals of several young men who were shot and killed in Lexington over the last few years. My fellow clergy from around the city have also presided or attended some of these funerals.

At least the Rev Owens mentioned gangs, mentioned “a violence problem” rather than “a gun violence problem.” The problem isn’t guns; the problem is bad people, mostly bad younger people, reared by mostly bad parents. Of course, it’s quite politically incorrect to say that, because, well just because.

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Another Tesla Autopilot crash leaves two men dead

We all knew that a story like this would be coming:

‘No one was driving’ in Tesla crash that killed two men in Spring, Texas, report says

By Lora Kolodny | Published Sunday, April 18, 2021 | 2:52 PM EDT | Updated Sunday, April 18, 2021 9:43 PM EDT

  • The Tesla vehicle crashed into a tree and burst into flames, according to the reports.
  • One person was found in the front passenger seat, and another in the rear passenger seat of the vehicle.
  • Based on a preliminary investigation, police told KPRC 2 they believe nobody had been behind the wheel.
  • Police have not finished their comprehensive investigation.

Two men died in a Tesla crash in Spring, Texas on Saturday night, and apparently nobody was behind the wheel, according to local police interviewed by reporter Deven Clarke at NBC affiliate KPRC 2.

The Tesla vehicle, a 2019 Model S, crashed into a tree and burst into flames, according to the reports. One person was found in the front passenger seat, and another in the rear passenger seat of the vehicle.

Based on a preliminary investigation, police told KPRC 2 they believe nobody had been behind the wheel, but they have not finished their comprehensive investigation. A preliminary investigation is not conclusive.

Fire fighters reportedly used 32,000 gallons of water and spent hours suppressing the fire that resulted from the electric vehicle crash.

Police told the New York Times that minutes before the crash, the wives of the men involved heard them say they wanted to go for a drive, and were talking about the vehicle’s Autopilot feature. The men were 59 and 69 years old.

There’s more at the original, but a couple of key points. In Germany, Tesla TSLA: (%) is banned from using phrases that translate to Autopilot or Fully Self-Driving. Tesla calls the system Autopilot, and that has a real, known meaning in English.

So, I have to ask: just who is legally liable for this accident, and the deaths of the two men in the vehicle? Is it the man who was supposed to be driving, for being boneheadedly stupid enough to use and trust the Autopilot, or is it Tesla, which marketed the system as an autopilot?

Tesla claims that Autopilot is safer than a human driver:

According to data that Tesla gathered but hasn’t shared with third parties for independent analysis, the company said: “We registered one accident for every 4.19 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.05 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 978 thousand miles driven.”

That may be true, but it doesn’t absolve Tesla from legal liability. Tesla’s market capitalization, based on the current stock price of 707.55, is $675.47 billion. TSLA was down 4.44% for the day at the time I wrote this article, and with this news, I would expect it to drop further. If the families of these two men happen to sue Tesla for a couple billion dollars, it won’t break my heart the slightest if they win.

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Wishful thinking in the Herald-Leader?

The hearts of the editors of the what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal must have been all aflutter when former state Representative Charles Booker (D-Louisville) announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to see if he should run for the 2022 Democratic nomination against incumbent Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). In 2020, the editors endorsed the hard-left Mr Booker against faux moderate Amy McGrath Henderson for the nomination to run against Senator Mitch McConnell. After Mrs Henderson won the primary by an unexpectedly-close margin, the editors endorsed her against Mr McConnell, where she lost in a landslide.

We have previously noted the newspaper’s endorsements, and they are all to the left:

But the editors, as wrong-headed as they are in their policy choices, aren’t ignorant when it comes to Kentucky politics. And so I came upon this oh-so-hopeful article about a moderate Kentucky Democrat:

Political Notebook: Could Rocky Adkins be Kentucky’s Joe Manchin in 2022 Senate race?

By Daniel Desrochers | April 16, 2021 | 3:39 PM | Updated April 16, 2021 | 4:29 PM EDT

At a bill-signing ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda last week, Rocky Adkins did what he’s been doing for 34 years in politics.

He worked the room.

The tall man from the left hand fork of the middle fork of the Little Sandy River congratulated the people who got the bill passed. He cracked a joke with House Minority Leader Joni Jenkins. He acted surprised when a reporter told him that his name kept getting mentioned as a possible U.S. Senate candidate.

“What are they saying?” asked Adkins, a senior adviser to Gov. Andy Beshear.

They are saying there is potential for a competitive Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in 2022 against former state Rep. Charles Booker, who formed an exploratory committee Monday. They are saying it might take a specific kind of conservative Democrat to win statewide in Kentucky. They are saying it’s Rocky Adkins.

They are also saying a run by Adkins is unlikely.

There’s much more at the original.

It wasn’t so long ago that Kentucky was a thoroughly Democratic state. In 1971, when I first registered to vote in Mt Sterling, I registered as a Republican. Come the general election, I found out that I had exactly zero voice, as all of the members of the city council had been selected in the Democratic primary, as no Republican candidates even filed, there being so few of them, and knowing that they had no chance. It was a lesson that many conservative Kentuckians learned.

Many Democrats have tried to run as moderates in the Bluegrass State. Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes tried in her Senate campaign against Mr McConnell in 2014; she lost in a landslide. Mrs Henderson tried it in 2020, but nobody believed her, not after she was caught on tape in 2018, while raising money in Massachusetts to run against Representative Andy Barr (R-KY 6th District) saying, “I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky,” and Senator McConnell stomped her even harder than he had Mrs Grimes.

Of course, while the editors of the Herald-Leader would prefer a much more ‘progressive’ candidate, they’d be perfectly happy with Mr Adkins in the Senate, because the most important vote a Senator has is the one at the beginning of the session, the one which organizes the Senate by party, the one which determines which party will control the agenda. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) is the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, and votes with Republicans reasonably frequently, but it is his being a Democrat and not a Republican which has made Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) the Senate Majority Leader, rather than Mr McConnell.

Kentuckians are Republicans now, because Kentuckians are conservatives. While there are a lot of conservative Democrats in the Bluegrass State, they are older; they are Democrats because they have always been Democrats. It has been their sons and daughters who registered as Republicans. That’s why, in the 2020 elections, the voters of the Commonwealth gave the GOP 75 out of 100 seats in the state House of Representatives, an increase of 14 seats, and 30 out of 38 seats in the state Senate, an increase of two seats.[1]Only 17 of the 38 state Senate seats were up for election in 2020.

And the last thing Kentucky’s voters want to see is the Democrats solidifying their current 50/50 split in the Senate, holding the majority only because Democrat Kamala Harris Emhoff is Vice President and President of the Senate.

The Herald-Leader article notes that Mr Adkins is unlikely to run; he’s not exactly the sacrificial lamb type. But if Kentucky’s Democrats do nominate Mr Adkins, or his political doppelganger, it will be to do one thing, and one thing only: keep the Democrats in control of the United States Senate, and not to represent the beliefs of Kentuckians.

References

References
↑1 Only 17 of the 38 state Senate seats were up for election in 2020.
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Rights delayed are rights denied

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)

We had already stated that the courts in the Bluegrass State would try to give Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) time to run out the clock on legal decisions concerning his executive orders, because that was the pattern from the past. Now comes the evidence that we were right. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Kentucky Supreme Court will consider Beshear’s COVID-19 orders in light of new laws

By Jack Brammer | April 16, 2021 | 11:08 AM | Updated: April 16, 2021 | 1:12 PM

The Kentucky Supreme Court has decided to take up two legal cases involving Gov. Andy Beshear’s powers to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and other emergencies and hear them at the same time June 10.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. signed orders Thursday night for the state’s highest court to consider cases from Franklin and Scott circuit courts. He said a time for the June 10 hearing will be set later.

The Franklin case involves Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s appeal of Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd’s decision to temporarily block four legislative measures the General Assembly enacted this year that curb Beshear’s emergency powers.

The Scott case involves Beshear’s appeal of Circuit Judge Brian Privett’s ruling to temporarily block the state from enforcing some of Beshear’s executive COVID-19 orders against several restaurants and breweries

There’s more at the original.

Note the date of the hearing: June 10th. That’s eight weeks away, effectively another two months before the state Supreme Court will even hold oral arguments for and against the Governor’s executive orders and the laws passed by the state legislature to curtail them. A previous story in the Herald-Leader stated:

As of today, Kentucky is about 900,000 short of reaching the goal of 2.5 million vaccinated. More than 1.55 million Kentuckians have received their “first shot of hope,” said the governor.

With the current supply of the vaccine, Beshear said Kentucky could reach the 2.5 million goal in 3½ weeks, but said it most likely will be between four and six weeks.

So, if the guesstimates of four to six weeks are accurate, and if the Governor them lifts some, but not all, of his executive orders as promised, oral arguments eight weeks from now would make the case in Judge Privett’s case moot; and the Justices would almost certainly simply dismiss it.

But the Governor still wants that visible sign of subservience to his decrees:

Even with the easing of the restrictions, Beshear said, Kentuckians still will have to wear masks until there is more control of the virus. He also said he will address larger venues later.

We noted the previous pattern: Several lawsuits were filed in state courts to stop the Governor’s emergency decrees under KRS39A. On July 17, 2020, the state Supreme Court put a hold on all lower court orders against Mr Beshear’s orders and directed that “any lower court order, after entry, be immediately transferred to the clerk of the Supreme Court for consideration by the full court.” Three weeks later, the  Court set September 17, 2020, another five weeks later, to hear oral arguments by both sides.

The Court then waited for eight more weeks to issue its decision, until November 12, 2020, which upheld the Governor’s orders.

If the Kentucky Supreme Court, officially non-partisan but in practice controlled by the Democrats, follows the same pattern, a second eight week delay will mean a decision around the first week of August! Even if that decision supports the duly passed laws of the General Assembly, the state courts will have given the Governor half a year to exercise power that the General Assembly restricted.

Rights delayed are rights denied. But we will be lucky if our rights are only delayed; it isn’t difficult to picture the state Supreme Court coming up with some convoluted reasoning to invalidate the laws passed by the General Assembly. I can hope that the state legislature impeaches and removes our dictatorial Governor in the 2022 session, but, in reality, our best hope is for the voters to kick him to the curb in the 2023 election.

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New York Times OpEd: if you defend your property against rioters, you are racist!

No one would call having a fire extinguisher in your home or office or business racist. Rather, people would look at that as a sensible way of preventing or at least limiting damage if a fire did occur. I can’t think that any (sensible) person would see construction codes designed to limit damage from earthquakes or floods or structural collapse as somehow designed to discriminate on the basis of race. Boarding up your windows if you live in Florida or Carolina, and a hurricane is approaching? that’s perfectly sensible!

But, if you hear news that has a strong possibility of inflaming tensions and perhaps start a riot, boarding up your windows is raaaaacist, at least according to one writer in The New York Times:

Minnesota Values White Comfort More Than Black Lives

As I walk around my hometown, I see so many boarded up buildings. Who is really being protected?

By Justin Ellis | April 16, 2021

MINNEAPOLIS — The morning the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with killing George Floyd, began, I was visiting my mom at a hospital just blocks from the courthouse. I remember noting that it was unseasonably warm for late March in this part of the Midwest. But that wasn’t the most striking part of the day. Nor was the long line of satellite trucks or the reporters from around the world surrounding the Hennepin County Government Center. Instead, what gave me pause was all the plywood that encased the ground floor of the hospital’s emergency department.

I came back to Minneapolis late last year to work on a book about how Black families have endured racism in the city where I grew up, and to support my mom during her cancer treatment. I’ve been keeping a mental list of the spaces that, since video surfaced of George Floyd’s final moments beneath Derek Chauvin’s knee, have become barricaded versions of their former selves. You can’t move through this city without noticing the hardware stores with floor-to-ceiling wood coverings, the shuttered restaurants that didn’t survive Covid or last summer’s fires, and the brunch spots and boutiques that have hired local artists to soften their fortifications with strained messages like “In This Together,” “Know Justice, Know Peace” and “Love Is All Around,” which reads like a cringeworthy homage to the theme song from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

But there was something especially crushing about the plywood surrounding a building meant to give aid and care to people suffering in the city, leaving just enough room to expose signs reading “EMERGENCY” and “TRAUMA CENTER.”

In the lead-up to Mr. Chauvin’s trial, city officials and business owners often talked about “bracing” for the public reaction, their focus seemingly on protecting the city’s buildings from any harm that might come from a repeat of the demonstrations against police violence that took place last summer.

Well, yes, they would. Justin Ellis, the author, had already noted that some businesses “didn’t survive . . . last summer’s fires.” Wouldn’t it make sense that businesses which did survive would want to protect themselves from potential riots this year if Derek Chauvin is acquitted, or at least convicted on some of the lesser charges rather than the grossly overcharged Murder 2?[1]To be convicted of second degree murder, the prosecution would have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Derek Chauvin intended to kill George Floyd.

Mr Ellis was upset that a hospital boarded up its ground-floor windows, perhaps not considering that hospitals don’t get to close down for repairs when vandals bust out the glass. That hospital, all hospitals, have to treat patients without regard to their race, so in trying to protect the premises, that hospital was also trying to protect its ability to treat black patients as well as white ones.

Law enforcement made a plan for managing security around the Chauvin trial, a massive team-up between Twin Cities area police departments, state police, local sheriffs’ deputies and Minnesota National Guard members capable of flooding the region with thousands of officers at a moments notice.

The goal, as the Hennepin County sheriff put it in an op-ed for The Star Tribune, was “to preserve the First Amendment rights of those who wish to protest while, at the same time, fulfilling our mission of protecting property, ensuring public safety and guaranteeing the sanctity of the judicial process.” Naturally they named it Operation Safety Net. It’s not subtle. They want to offer comfort to those they deem worthy of saving, rather than the Black and brown residents who are subject to relentless brutality.

Why wouldn’t a Sheriff’s Department charged with keeping the public safe name an operation “Safety Net”?

How are we to read Mr Ellis’ OpEd piece other than allowing the potential demonstrators to burn, loot and destroy at will?

They’ve lived up to that promise almost every night outside the Brooklyn Center Police Department for the past week. In their quest to maintain order they’ve met demonstrators with increasing numbers of police officers and National Guard members, armed with tear gas, flash bang grenades and rubber bullets. All these defensive measures have upended the lives of families living across the street from the police headquarters at the Sterling Square Apartments, a complex filled with Black and immigrant families. It should be the safest place in Brooklyn Center; now residents are evacuating into area hotels.

Really? Are they evacuating into area hotels because the police are defending their headquarters, or because rioters have surged against the Police Department? The Police and National Guard wouldn’t be using there “tear gas, flash bang grenades, and rubber bullets” if there were nobody there, or if the Mostly Peaceful Protests™ weren’t somehow less than peaceful, weren’t trying to break in and burn the place down.

In reading Mr Ellis’ article, I came away with the undeniable impression that he was filled with rage, utter rage, when he wrote it. You can follow the link to his original and read it for yourself, and perhaps your impression will be different, but, to me, Mr Ellis wants the people of Brooklyn Center and Minneapolis to take to the streets, to express the rage he feels themselves, and to do so through violence and vandalism and arson. He said so pretty explicitly:

Whether you call this the result of white supremacy, or a white majority, the consequences are the same. The state has its boot on the necks of the Black people who make up less than 10 percent of its residents. When you are left at the mercy of the state and given no option to heal, fury becomes your voice and your only tool. And in preparing for the Chauvin trial and protecting property against the reaction to whatever verdict is announced, those who have power in Minnesota made clear to us, yet again, what matters most to them.

If “fury becomes your voice and your only tool,” why would Mr Ellis be surprised that some would choose to defend themselves and their homes and their businesses against that fury, against the violence for which Mr Ellis seems to be calling? Derek Chauvin is on trial, and may well be convicted on some charge. Kim Potter has been charged with second-degree manslaughter. But that isn’t good enough for Mr Ellis; he wants the people of Minnesota who did not kill George Floyd, and who did not kill Daunte Wright, to be punished as well. To him, resisting being beaten, burned or bombed is racist in itself, and you are racist if you don’t agree.

References

References
↑1 To be convicted of second degree murder, the prosecution would have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Derek Chauvin intended to kill George Floyd.
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Mayor Jim Kenney wanted to not increase police funding, to appease the left, and tried to sneak it through in other departments

We have not been particularly charitable toward Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), nor any of the rest of the political leadership of the City of Brotherly Love, but this story from The Philadelphia Inquirer just thoroughly amused me:

Mayor Kenney said his budget wouldn’t increase police spending. It’s not that simple.

His proposal does include new investments for police. They’re just included in the budgets for other departments.

by Anna Orso and Laura McCrystal | April 15, 2021 | Updated: 6:25 PM EDT

Mayor Jim Kenney avoided taking a side in the political battle over law enforcement funding on Thursday when he said he’s proposing flat funding for the Philadelphia Police Department in the coming year.

But his proposal does include new investments for police. Some fund reforms. Others are tucked into budgets for different departments.

In addition to the $727 million police allocation that’s roughly equivalent to last year’s, the administration proposed funneling additional money for police-related reforms and programs through the Managing Director’s Office. And it set aside funding for expected raises as a result of upcoming contract negotiations with municipal unions, including the police.

Of the cash that would run through the Managing Director’s Office, about $6 million would fund a citywide program that pairs behavioral health specialists with officers responding to mental health-related 911 calls. Another $750,000 in spending for that office would expand training for police “to make positive decisions when put in difficult situations.”

There’s more at the original.

So, the Mayor is yielding to the leftist mobs, and not increasing funding for the Philadelphia Police Department, despite 145 homicides in the city, 35 more than the same date last year, a 31.8% increase, and last year saw a near-record 499 people bleed out their life’s blood in Philly’s mean streets.[1]The record was 500, set during the crack cocaine wars in 1990.

But he also knows that more funding is needed, so he’s hiding it in other areas of the city budget. There are more details in the Inquirer story.

But proponents of defunding the police criticized the proposal, saying tax dollars going toward reforms still prop up a system they see as harmful.

“Mayor Jim Kenney is trying to pull the wool over our eyes,” said Kris Henderson, executive director of Amistad Law Project, a West Philadelphia public-interest law center that advocates ending mass incarceration. “Resources that end up in the hands of police are police funding.”

So, what is the Amistad Law Project? They say they are “a public interest law firm and organizing project working to end mass incarceration in Pennsylvania and fighting to get our communities the resources they need to thrive,” without realizing that the problem isn’t ‘mass incarceration,’ but that too few people are locked up!

At some point, the soft-heartedness of the left has to be recognized for what it really is, soft-headedness.

Do the good people at Amistad think that, somehow, the 145 people who are now stone-cold graveyard dead, or the 499 who were murdered last year, got that way by the honest mistakes of nice guys? They are “attorneys and organizers,” and one has to assume that anyone who got into law school in the first place isn’t a complete idiot; they have to know that the people who are committing these homicides have mostly had previous brushes with the law, sometimes many brushes with the law. These are the people that the noble #SocialJusticeWarriors want to keep out of jail, but when they have been left out of jail for lesser offenses, some of them wind up going on to bigger and badder things.

When a 6-year-old boy was wounded, and a man killed when someone fired “at least” twelve shots at them as they were sitting in a parked car in the 800 block of South 53rd Street Wednesday evening, do the very concerned “attorneys and organizers” of Amistad think it was really nothing? Are they saying to themselves, “Well, at least the shooter, or shooters — the story said that there was “at least” one shooter but there could have been more — wasn’t incarcerated”?

It seems that almost every time we read about a suspect in a Philadelphia murder — in the too few times the police actually identify and catch him, anyway — we read that he already had a criminal record, that he couldn’t legally own the gun he used, and that he was already wanted on a parole violation. Such suspects usually could still be in jail, were they given the maximum sentence for their previous crimes.

Nikolas Cruz was not a victim of ‘mass incarceration,’ because the Broward County Sheriff’s Department let him go without charges on several occasions. Young Mr Cruz could have been in jail on an in-school assault charge, but the school board did not want to contribute to the “school to prison” pipeline, so he had no criminal record, was able to purchase his weapon legally, and now seventeen people are pushing up daisies, because oh-so-well-meaning people like the Amistad “attorneys and organizers” didn’t want to take his earlier crimes seriously.

In Philadelphia itself, Lewis Jordan, a.k.a. John Lewis, had been treated leniently by the office of then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham, and was out on the street when he could, and should, have been in jail. On October 31, 2007, Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy walked into a Dunkin’ Donuts, the scene of a previous robbery, to check on it, just as Mr Jordan was attempting to rob the place; Mr Jorden shot Officer Cassidy in the head, killing him. Had law enforcement treated Mr Jordan seriously, rather than dropping the charges if he’d attend drug counseling courses, he would have been in jail, and Officer Cassidy would have gone home to his wife that Hallowe’en.

More, Mr Jordan might have spent what, a year in the clink. No one can say whether he would have learned his lesson in prison, but if he had been locked up that day, as he could have been, he (probably) wouldn’t be on death row now.

Amistad opposes “mass incarceration,” but had criminals been treated more seriously for their lesser offenses, people like Mr Cruz and Mr Jordan would have a reasonable chance of walking free at sometime in the future. As it is, they will both die in prison.

This is what those who are soft on crime have wrought. Petty criminals who aren’t slapped down hard become bigger criminals, and worse things happen. At some point, the soft-heartedness of the left has to be recognized for what it really is, soft-headedness.

References

References
↑1 The record was 500, set during the crack cocaine wars in 1990.
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Political correctness in the Lexington Herald-Leader? (Part3) I wonder if journalists have been replaced by journolists?

We noted, in two different stories, that while all of the other Lexington media sources published the picture of Juanyah Clay, who was being sought in the murder of 26-year-old Bryan D. Greene, whose body police found at the Eastridge Apartments on Alumni Drive on January 30th. The first linked story concerned the police looking for Mr Clay, so the publication of his photo could only have helped the police find him.

We also noted that in both of the earlier stories in the Lexington Herald-Leader included stock photos of the police stringing crime scene tape around an unspecified area, so the failure to use Mr Clay’s photo, which was freely available at the Lexington city government’s page as well as the Police Department’s Facebook page. Thus, it was not a matter of the newspaper having to pay someone for the photo.

And today, we have this:

Detectives detail multiple cases against Lexington man charged in Alumni Drive murder

By Morgan Eads | April 15, 2021 | 12:31 PM

At a court hearing Thursday morning, two detectives and a jail employee discussed the various charges against a man accused of shooting and killing a 26-year-old after he was already wanted for cutting off an ankle monitor while on conditional release in a different criminal case.

Juanyah J. Clay, 19, was arrested in March and charged with murder in the death of 26-year-old Bryan Greene, according to police.

Greene’s body was found on the night of Jan. 30 after someone spotted a large amount of blood outside an apartment at 2800 Alumni Drive, Lexington police detective Jeremy Atkins testified at the preliminary hearing Thursday. When police went inside the apartment they found Greene dead of what appeared to be multiple gunshot wounds.

Further down we find:

Clay was arrested on March 30 at a hotel on E. Lowery Lane, Lexington police detective Keith McKinney testified. He was found to have $1,020 in small bills, three concealed loaded firearms and unknown pills on his person, and a digital scale and marijuana was found in the room he was exiting, McKinney said. In addition to the charge of murder, Clay is facing two charges of drug trafficking and one charge of concealing a deadly weapon.

After his arrest, Clay admitted to Atkins that he shot Greene, Atkins testified. Clay also stated that another person was present at the time of Greene’s death, and that that person has since died. While Atkins did not testify to how that person died, he said that the person’s name was Markel Allen, which is the name of a 17-year-old who was shot and killed in Lexington on Feb. 17. That case is still under investigation.

At the time of Greene’s death, Clay had an arrest warrant out for violating the conditions of his release as he awaited trial on a separate burglary charge, according to court records. An employee of the Fayette County Detention Center testified Thursday that Clay was placed on an ankle monitor in May of 2020. He’s accused of cutting that ankle monitor off in June 2020 and throwing it out the window of a vehicle in Lexington, the jail employee testified.

Sounds like a bad dude! He was in possession of illegal drugs and the paraphernalia for selling it, and three concealed, loaded weapons, all while he was on the lam for a burglary trial.

But here’s the part that gets me. The Herald-Leader included this video in today’s story:

Underneath was the caption:

Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers urged people with information regarding homicide investigations to speak with police. He said some witnesses don’t cooperate with police investigations, making it more difficult to identify suspects. By Jeremy Chisenhall

Jeremy Chisenhall was the writer of the first two stories, the ones referenced in my previous articles.

Now, if the Herald-Leader is going to post the video of Police Chief Lawrence Weathers urging people to come forward, why wouldn’t the paper publish the suspect’s photo, particularly when the suspect was at large, and information from the public could have proven helpful in finding him?

I do not know the newspaper’s policy on this, and when I tried to contact both Morgan Eads, who wrote today’s story, and Mr Chisenhall, who wrote the previous two, neither was available by telephone.

So, I will go back to my previous speculation of March 30th: if the newspaper’s website had enough bandwidth available for a generic crime story photo, why didn’t the Herald-Leader include Mr Clay’s photo instead? Wouldn’t Mr Clay’s photograph be much more useful to people who might just happen to see him on the streets than a picture of crime scene tape?

That’s the big question, why? And being the very politically incorrect observer of media bias that I am, one answer springs immediately to mind. Having written about the horrible damage the #woke and #BlackLivesMatter activists have done in the newsrooms of The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer, I instantly thought: to have published the photo of a murder suspect who happens to be black might be seen as racist by the reporter or his editors.

Is there another explanation for this egregious failure of journalism? If there is, it hasn’t occurred to me. Perhaps someone else can give me a better answer, but right now, I’m calling it the way I see it: the newspaper cares more about political correctness than it does journalism. Journolism over journalism, perhaps?

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Is it time to change the spelling of ‘journalist’ to ‘journolist’? The Associated Press and The Philadelphia Inquirer try to deify Daunte Wright

Sometimes it’s easier just to embed a few of my tweets than write a separate article/ Because of the way Twitter does embedding, I had to embed the second and fourth tweets to let readers see the whole thing.

We are supposed to thing that Daunte Wright was just an ever-so-nice young man, and the woman who was copulating with George Floyd, another criminal, a convicted felon and serious drug abuser, told us that young Mr Wright was just “a wonderful, beautiful boy.”

No, he wasn’t. According to the Associated Press story:

According to court records, Wright was being sought after failing to appear in court on charges that he fled from officers and possessed a gun without a permit during an encounter with Minneapolis police in June.

A search of court records shows Wright had a minor criminal record, with petty misdemeanor convictions for possession/sale of a small amount of marijuana and disorderly conduct.

So, resisting arrest and escaping, both criminal acts.

What Is Resisting Arrest?

Resisting arrest in Minnesota is also called obstructing legal process, arrest, or firefighting. A person is guilty of obstructing legal process if they intentionally obstruct, resist, or interfere with a police officer in the performance of legal duties, or obstruct, hinder, or prevent a person’s apprehension on a criminal charge.

The Minnesota legislature intentionally wrote the law in very broad terms. Under the law, resisting arrest means:

  • Refusing to be handcuffed;
  • Refusing to surrender;
  • Struggling with the police;
  • Wrestling or fighting with the police; or
  • Somehow preventing the police from making an arrest.

Acts such as running from police, refusing to stop for police, and escape from a detention facility are crimes governed by other Minnesota laws.

Penalties For Resisting Arrest In Minnesota

The possible sanctions for resisting depend on the severity and dangerousness of the conduct alleged by police. Minnesota law punishes resisting arrest as a felony if:

  • The person knew or should have known the act created a risk of death, substantial bodily harm, or significant damage to property; or
  • The act did cause death, serious bodily injury, or substantial property damage.

Felony resisting arrest carries a maximum state prison term of five years, a fine up to $10,000, or both fine and imprisonment.

Resisting arrest is a gross misdemeanor punishable by no more than one year in prison, a $3,000 fine, or both if the act or threat was forceful or violent but did not cause death, substantial bodily injury, or substantial property damage. Otherwise, misdemeanor resisting arrest carries a maximum sentence of 90 days, a $1,000 fine, or both.

Also see: Nothing Can Placate the BLM Riot Mob, and ‘Journalists’ Are Part of the Mob

Escaping from the police on an attempted arrest can be a felony in Minnesota if the escapee flees in a car, or a misdemeanor if he escapes on foot.

In Minnesota, you are required to have a valid permit to carry in order to possess a handgun in a public place. The penalties for carrying a handgun without a valid permit are strict. For a first offense it is a gross-misdemeanor and any repeat offense becomes a felony. It is your burden to prove that you have a valid permit to carry when requested by law enforcement.

It seems that this “wonderful, beautiful boy” had racked up some previous charges, and that’s why there was a warrant out for his arrest.

The officer who shot and killed Mr Wilson has resigned and is facing criminal charges; she may well be convicted, and it’s difficult to believe that she mistook her service weapon for her taser. But the credentialed media are hyping up the notion that Mr Wright was some kind of sweet, innocent kid. At some point, we need to be honest here and change the spelling of journalist to journolist.

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Is Our Bishop Catholic? The Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington, supports things which are clearly not Catholic

When I saw this article referenced in my email, I had a sinking feeling that the Bishop of Lexington would be one of the two:

Two US bishops back pro-LGBT campaign calling for acceptance of men who claim to be female

Bishops Wester and Stowe joined the Human Rights Campaign in calling for ‘transgender individuals’ to be ‘treated with dignity and respect’

By Pete Baklinski | Friday, April 9, 2021 | 5:17 PM ET

The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington

April 9, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A U.S. Catholic archbishop along with a bishop and several priests joined up with the pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign in releasing an April 1 letter affirming “transgender individuals” — men who claim they are women and women who claim they are men — while calling for an end to the “epidemic of violence” that they say such individuals face.

“We, Bishops, religious and lay leaders of the Roman Catholic Church join with the Human Rights Campaign in calling for an end to the epidemic of violence against transgender individuals,” states the letter signed by Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester and Bishop John Stowe of the Diocese of Lexington.

Yup, I guessed right: His Excellency, The Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington was one of the two.

The Catholic Church teaches, however, that the male and female sexes, man and woman, are biological realities willed and created by God. The view is backed by science which conclusively shows that the sexual difference between men and women exists in genetics, endocrinology, and neurology. Even from the very first moment of conception male cells containing XY chromosomes differ from female cells containing XX chromosomes.

The 2019 Declaration of Truths put out by several prominent Catholic bishops along with a cardinal states that it is a “rebellion against natural and Divine law and a grave sin that a man may attempt to become a woman by mutilating himself, or even by simply declaring himself to be such, or that a woman may in like manner attempt to become a man, or to hold that the civil authority has the duty or the right to act as if such things were or may be possible and legitimate.”

Is the Bishop of Lexington even Catholic? The Catechism of the Catholic Church is something with which our priests and bishops purportedly agree, yet here the Bishop of my diocese is telling the parishioners of his diocese that the Catechism is wrong, that the Bible is wrong, and that the Church throughout all of its millennia are wrong.

His Excellency the Bishop is a great priest in one regard. He has twice celebrated Mass in our small parish, for the Sacrament of Confirmation, and I can tell you, he is excellent at it. He is dynamic, he is active, and no one would ever be in doubt that he truly believes what he says. If you are Catholic, and you participate in a Mass he celebrates, you will come away inspired.

But while it’s clear that he truly believes what he says, is what he believes actually Catholic, actually Christian?

Wester and Stowe have a history of pushing the normalization of homosexuality within the Catholic Church. Earlier this year, they joined Cardinal Joseph Tobin of the Archdiocese of Newark and a few other bishops in signing a statement in partnership with the pro-homosexual Tyler Clementi Foundation in support of young people who identify as LGBT, telling them that “God is on your side.”

Photo from St Paul’s Catholic Church website. Click to enlarge.

This is what it’s website calls “Historic St. Paul Roman Catholic Church,” at 425 West Short Street in Lexington, Kentucky. It’s mission clearly includes supporting homosexuality among Catholics, and it is very clear that His Excellency the Bishop supports St Paul’s and its self-perceived mission. Trouble is, the Catholic Church, and the Bible, do not.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, concerning homosexuality:

§2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

§2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

§2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

What part of “under no circumstances can they be approved” do some priests and bishops find unclear?

Another photo from St Paul’s website; note the ‘rainbow’ stole being worn by a clergyman. Bishop John Stowe is at the far right of the photo. Click to enlarge.

It’s simple: the Church recognizes that some people simply are homosexual, but that while it is a sore trial for them, they are called to remain celibate. That is not what St Paul’s Catholic Church, a church in Bishop Stowe’s diocese, seems to do.[1]I will admit it: I was tempted to go to confession, as research, at St Paul’s, confess to homosexual acts, and see what the priest would say, but doing so would be a grave sin, and I will not … Continue reading

As we noted here, His Holiness the Pope explicitly ruled out ‘blessings’ for homosexual unions.

Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and priest, wrote:

Roman Catholic clerical culture favors doctrinal rigidity, conformity, obedience, submission and psychosexual immaturity, mistaken for innocence, in its candidates. These are the personality elements that lead to advancement and power in the clerical system. Single men are more easily controlled if their sexuality is secret. Double lives on all levels of clerical life are tolerated if they do not cause scandal or raise legal problems. Sexual activity between bishops and priests and adult partners is well known within clerical circles. The secret system forms a comfortable refuge for unresolved gay conflicts. There is a new emerging awareness of the systemic nature of sexual/celibate behavior within the Roman Catholic ministry that is increasingly destabilizing to the church.

Dire consequences will follow the exposure of this sexual system embedded in a secret celibate culture. Authorities who are or have been sexually active, although not with minors, are hard put to publicly correct clerics who are abusing minors. The need for secrecy, the cover-up, extends beyond defending criminal activity of a sex abuser. The power and control that holds the Roman Catholic church together depends on preservation of the celibate myth. The Vatican and Pope John Paul II declared its inviolability.

The truth about secret sex in the celibate system portends grave danger. The reality of celibate violations extends beyond priests who abuse minors and the bishops who hide them.

And this points up another problem: if “sexual activity between bishops and priests and adult partners is well known within clerical circles,” that means that it is largely homosexual activity, something else expressly forbidden. How many priests are homosexual?

Of course, many factors influence a person’s decision to join the clergy; it’s not like sexuality alone determines vocations. But it’s dishonest to dismiss sexuality’s influence given that we know there is a disproportionate number of gay priests, despite the church’s hostility toward LGBTQ identity. As a gay priest told Frontline in a February 2014 episode, “I cannot understand this schizophrenic attitude of the hierarchy against gays when a lot of priests are gay.”

So how many gay priests actually exist? While there’s a glut of homoerotic writings from priests going back to the Middle Ages, obtaining an accurate count is tough. But most surveys (which, due to the sensitivity of the subject, admittedly suffer from limited samples and other design issues) find between 15 percent and 50 percent of U.S. priests are gay, which is much greater than the 3.8 percent of people who identify as LGBTQ in the general population. [2]The Centers for Disease Control conducted the National Health Institute Survey in 2013, and found that only 1.6% of the population are homosexual, with another 0.7% bisexual, and another 1,1% … Continue reading

In the last half century there’s also been an increased “gaying of the priesthood” in the West. Throughout the 1970s, several hundred men left the priesthood each year, many of them for marriage. As straight priests left the church for domestic bliss, the proportion of remaining priests who were gay grew. In a survey of several thousand priests in the U.S., the Los Angeles Times found that 28 percent of priests between the ages of 46 and 55 reported that they were gay. This statistic was higher than the percentages found in other age brackets and reflected the outflow of straight priests throughout the 1970s and ’80s.

The high number of gay priests also became evident in the 1980s, when the priesthood was hit hard by the AIDS crisis that was afflicting the gay community. The Kansas City Star estimated that at least 300 U.S. priests suffered AIDS-related deaths between the mid-1980s and 1999. The Star concluded that priests were about twice as likely as other adult men to die from AIDS.

The John Jay Report on the sexual abuse of minors by priests and deacons within the Church, 1950-2002, noted that 81% of the known victims, of an all-male clergy, were boys, and that they tended not to be smaller children, but boys entering and through puberty. This was not pedophilia, but homosexual attraction.

Sadly, the Bishop of Lexington has supported the misbegotten New Ways Ministry, and now transgenderism as well. I have no idea what Bishop Stowe’s sexual orientation is. He has taken a vow of celibacy, and I presume here that he has kept it. But homosexual orientation has been rampant in the Church, even if we aren’t certain what the exact numbers are, and the Bishop of Lexington has lost his way on sexual issues.

I get it: the left believe that it’s just wrong to deny homosexuals their desires, but a Catholic priest, a Catholic bishop, must follow the teachings of the Bible in which they all profess to believe, and the Bible is unambiguous in its condemnation of homosexual activity, in both the Old and New Testaments. While some have claimed that Jesus never personally addressed homosexual activity, specifically, they are incorrect.

Matthew 5:17 “Do not presume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.
18 For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter shall pass from the Law, until all is accomplished! 19 Therefore, whoever nullifies one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20 “For I say to you that unless your righteousness far surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

The law included the prohibition on homosexual activity in Leviticus 18:22, and proscribes the penalty in Leviticus 20:13. There is no ambiguity whatsoever in this.

Our Bishop has lost his way. He is responsible for the instruction of the parishioners in his diocese in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, but his most publicly visible teachings, the ones which have gotten the most attention outside of the Church, are teachings which contravene the doctrine of the Church. His piety appears to be beyond question, his internal faith in his beliefs strong, but his beliefs when it comes to sexual matters are just plain wrong. I understand his sympathies, but allowing his sympathies to teach that what is immoral is acceptable, that what is sinful is not sinful, leads the faithful not up the stairway to Heaven but down the highway to Hell.

References

References
↑1 I will admit it: I was tempted to go to confession, as research, at St Paul’s, confess to homosexual acts, and see what the priest would say, but doing so would be a grave sin, and I will not do that.
↑2 The Centers for Disease Control conducted the National Health Institute Survey in 2013, and found that only 1.6% of the population are homosexual, with another 0.7% bisexual, and another 1,1% either stating that they were ‘something else’ or declining to respond. This does not support the article’s contention that 3.8% of the population are homosexual.