Category Archives: Crime

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Lexington “manslaughterer” will be out of prison by age 39, if not earlier Fayette County's Commonwealth's Attorney Lou Ann Red Corn allowed him to plead down from murder

Jemel Barber. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

We have twice previously reported on Jemel Barber, 23, who shot and killed 40-year-old Tyrese Clark.

    2 died in a robbery, gunfight spree in Lexington. Shooter pleads in 1 case

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | November 16, 2021 | 7:44 AM EST | Updated: 4:16 PM EST

    A Central Kentucky man has pleaded guilty in one of two fatal shootings during a string of robberies and gunfights in Lexington.

    Jemel Barber, 22, pleaded guilty last week to manslaughter and second-degree robbery more than four years after he shot and killed 40-year-old Tyrece Clark, according to court records. He was initially charged with murder and first-degree robbery, but his charges were amended down after a plea agreement was reached.

    Barber told police after the deadly shooting on July 23, 2017, that he showed up at a Lexington motel with a rifle, intending to rob Clark of narcotics and/or money, according to court records.

    But Clark started shooting after Barber knocked on his door, Barber told police, so he shot back. The plea agreement was reached after attorneys disputed whether or not Barber could claim self-defense. Barber maintained that Clark was the aggressor and his attorneys continued to blame Clark as the court case played out.

Mr Barber was sentenced today:

Interesting article title, that. If you follow the link, and hover on the article tab, you’ll see that the original working title was “Jemel Barber sentenced to prison for manslaughter and robbery.” The current title is far less specific; a “Central KY man” could be from Georgetown or Paris or Mt Sterling or Richmond. Why not “Lexington man”? Why go from the specific to the general? Could it be that almost everyone reading the name “Jemel Barber” would assume that Mr Barber is black?

The Lexington Herald-Leader, which had access to Mr Barber’s mugshot, once again chose not to publish it. The McClatchy Mugshot Policy states that it is concerned that mugshots of people accused of crimes follow them forever, even if they are acquitted, but Mr Barber pleaded guilty.

    Jemel Barber, 23, was sentenced to 20 years in prison Friday morning by judge Thomas Travis on charges of manslaughter and second-degree robbery. Barber shot and killed 40-year-old Tyrece Clark during an attempted robbery at a Lexington motel in 2017, per court records.

    Barber told police after the deadly shooting on July 23, 2017, that he showed up to the motel with a rifle, intending to rob Clark of narcotics and/or money, according to court records.

    But Clark started shooting after Barber knocked on his door, Barber told police, so he shot back, killing Clark. . . . .

    Prosecutors recommended a 15-year sentence for the manslaughter charge and a 10-year sentence for the robbery charge. Barber’s attorney asked Travis for concurrent sentences, citing how a string of events in his young life have affected him dramatically and concurrent sentences could give him a chance to get back on track.

    Travis partially obliged, making five years of the 10-year sentence for the robbery charge concurrent with the 15-year sentence for the manslaughter charge.

Mr Barber was arrested on May 2, 2018, which means he has already served 3 years and 9 months of his 20-year sentence. Assuming he serves the full 20 years, he’ll be out on May 2, 2038, when he’ll be just 39 years old. Tyrese Clark, on the other hand, will still be stone-cold graveyard dead.

So, why did the Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney, Lou Ann Red Corn, allow such a lenient plea bargain? The Bluegrass State still has the death penalty, though it is rarely carried out. Other than a capital sentence, punishments for capital offenses can include life without parole, 25 years to life in prison, or 20 to 50 years of imprisonment. Commonwealth’s Attorney Red Corn could have put Mr Barber away for the rest of his miserable life, but instead chose to cut him a break, and give him a chance to get out of jail while still a relatively young man.

Why give him the plea bargain? Mr Barber had already admitted killing Mr Clark, so try him for murder. Include the manslaughter charge, to give the jury the option if they have sympathy for his self-defense claim, but keep the option of sparing the rest of society from seeing Mr Barber back on the streets.

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Larry Krasner won’t put criminals in jail, so Philadelphians lock themselves up for protection

The George Soros-funded District Attorney for Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, doesn’t believe in putting criminals in jail to make the rest of the community safer. He won’t enforce the gun laws unless someone is shot, and he doesn’t want to pursue less important crimes:

    This office believes that reform is necessary to focus on the most serious and most violent crime, so that people can be properly held accountable for doing things that are violent, that are vicious, and that tear apart society. We cannot continue to waste resources and time on things that matter less than the truly terrible crisis that we are facing.

He’s so lenient on criminals that state Attorney General Josh Shapiro ran a sting in Philly, with the cooperation of Commissioner Danielle Outlaw and the Philadelphia Police Department that cut Mr Krasner out of the loop.

From Friday’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

    Family of 6 stabbed in Kensington

    One of the victims, a 46-year-old woman, had sustained wounds to her head and neck and was in critical condition

    by Rodrigo Torrejón | Friday, February 11, 2022

    A family of six were stabbed in a Kensington home early Friday morning, with the suspect in custody soon after the violent attacks, according to a report.

    Shortly after 4 a.m. Friday, police received a call of a stabbing on the 3000 block of North Front Street, 6ABC reported. When officers arrived, they found six members of a family suffering from stab wounds. The victims ranged in age from 26 to 46.

Normally, the Inquirer does not specify the specific house in which the crime occurred, but a photo with the article clearly shows the address as being 3027 North Front Street.

    One of the victims, a 46-year-old woman, had sustained wounds to her head and neck and was in critical condition. Police said she was the mother of some of the other family members, 6ABC reported.

    Police arrested a 29-year-old man a few blocks away from the house, covered in blood and with cuts on the inside of his hands, according to the report. Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small said some of the family members identified the man as the suspect.

North Front Street, via Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

The WPVI-TV report specified that the ‘suspect’ is a family member who lived in the home, something the Inquirer story did not include.

With all of the murders in the City of Brotherly Love, a crime in which six people were stabbed, but none fatally — though, with one victim in critical condition, a fatality is possible — seems almost pedestrian. But, as is my wont, I checked Google Maps street scenes to check out the neighborhood.

What did I find? Three of the first four rowhouses on the ‘odd’ side of the street had barricades in their front porches with metal bars. Across the street, four out of the first seven row houses show metal bars. Further up the ‘odd’ side, nine houses in a row, beginning with 3033, have barred in their front porches. Since the Google Maps survey was done 2¼ years ago, more residents may have added physical barriers since then. District Attorney Krasner might not believe that putting criminals behind bars makes Philadelphia safer, but the embattled residents of the 3000 block of North Front Street, in the crime-ridden Kensington area, are so afraid of crime that they’ve put themselves behind bars, for their own protection.

Just what does it say when people have to put themselves in jail, to protect themselves from the criminals who aren’t behind bars?

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Joe Biden, Philadelphia, and the enabling of drug addiction

President Joe Biden’s ‘plan’ to provide free crack pipes to addicts fell apart:

But on the same day, The Philadelphia Inquirer published this gem:

    Philly’s journey to a supervised injection site spans years as overdose rates soar

    Five years since officials announced their support for a site, efforts to open one have been mired in controversy and legal battles.

    by Aubrey Whelan and Jeremy Roebuck | Thursday, February 10, 2022

    In 2017, Philadelphia was on track to see a record-breaking overdose death toll. Calls were growing to open a supervised injection site, where people can use drugs under medical supervision and be revived if they overdose. By the end of the year, 1,217 people had died of an overdose, and city officials made the decision to sanction a site but not pay for it.

    Five years later, the city still has no site, and the deaths go on. Still, advocates see renewed hope in the fact that the Justice Department under President Joe Biden signaled this week it is reconsidering the Trump administration’s long-held opposition to such efforts. Here’s a timeline of key moments in the process:

The article continues to list 18 specific dates and events in the timeline, the most important being the last:

    February 7, 2022: In a statement first obtained by the Associated Press, Justice Department officials say they are “evaluating” supervised injection sites and discussing “appropriate guardrails” with stakeholders — signifying a shift in thinking on the sites. Goldfein, Safehouse’s vice president, says the organization is in productive talks with the federal government.

United States Attorney Bill McSwain had filed a lawsuit in 2019 to block a supervised injection site, “citing a 1986 federal law colloquially known as the “crackhouse statute.” That law makes it a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison to knowingly open or maintain any place for the purpose of using controlled substances.”

The “crack house statute,” 21 US §856, is pretty specific:

  • a) Except as authorized by this subchapter, it shall be unlawful to—
    • (1) knowingly open or maintain any place for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using any controlled substance;
    • (2) manage or control any building, room, or enclosure, either as an owner, lessee, agent, employee, or mortgagee, and knowingly and intentionally rent, lease, or make available for use, with or without compensation, the building, room, or enclosure for the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing, storing, distributing, or using a controlled substance.
  • (b) Any person who violates subsection (a) of this section shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 20 years or a fine of not more than $500,000, or both, or a fine of $2,000,000 for a person other than an individual.

Screenshot of chart from The Philadelphia Inquirer. Click to enlarge.

Translation: the Department of Justice, under President Bidden and Thank-God-and-Mitch-McConnell-he’s-not-on-the-Supreme-Court Attorney General Merrick Garland, are considering not enforcing the law, a law that isn’t being enforced in some other cities, including New York. Perhaps, just perhaps, people should be asking why deaths due to drug overdoses have skyrocketed under Mayor Jim Kenney and District Attorney Larry Krasner. In 2016, Mr Kenney’s first year in office, fatal opioid overdoses jumped from 561 to 752, a 34.05% increase. Just a year later, and they had jumped to 1,075, 91.62% higher than in Mayor Michael Nutter’s (D-Philadelphia) final year in office.

And now the city wants to enable further drug use by making it safer to shoot up! What a great plan!

Drug users are not somehow ‘not criminals’, no matter what District Attorney Krasner likes to think. To obtain their recreational pharmaceuticals, they have to buy them from a drug dealer, and Philadelphia’s record-setting 562 murders in 2021 were largely fueled by gang warfare, mostly drug gang warfare. Junkies buying heroin and fentanyl are a captive market which keeps the dealers in operation, and that endangers all Philadelphians.

Being the [insert slang term for the rectum here] that I am, I’ll ask the question a lot of people will not: why would we want to keep junkies alive? They are almost wholly non-productive, they frequently resort to petty crimes to finance their habits, they enable violent drug dealers, and they are a burden on our welfare systems and society in general. While one assumes that their families will mourn the deaths of individual junkies, society as a whole is better off when they go to their eternal rewards. Having ‘safe injection sites’ simply keeps alive the drags on our society, the petty, and perhaps not-so-petty, criminals who prey on other people to support their drug addictions.

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Carjackadelphia

District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia), one of the George Soros-funded stooges who took office in some of our major cities with the explicit promise to reduce prosecutions, tried to tell people that yes, crimes with firearms had increased, but other crimes were down. That, of course, was bovine feces.

There are two different types of crime, crimes of evidence, and crimes of reporting. Murder is a crime of evidence, because it leaves a dead body, and dead bodies get found. It’s hard to dispose of 100 to 300 pounds of dead and decaying flesh and bone and muscle and fat unless someone has carefully planned how to do it.

But assaults, or robberies, or rapes? Assaults and rapes can be crimes of evidence, if the victim goes to the hospital for treatment. But if the victims is not seriously enough injured to seek medical care, or if the rape victim chooses not to report it, then those crimes become crimes of reporting, and if they are not reported to the police, then as far as the police are concerned, as far as the statistics measure, the crimes never happened. Yet, while the statistics vary, it seems that fewer than half of all “violent victimization” are reported to the police, and rape appears to be the least reported crime. According to the survey, only 32.5% or rapes or sexual assaults were reported in 2015, and that dropped to 23.2% the following year.[1]See Table 4. In a city, in communities, in which the vast majority of crimes which are known about go unsolved, why would people who are already distrustful of the police, people who have low expectations that the crimes will actually be solved, even bother reporting the crimes? Why would residential burglaries be down 22% but non-residential burglaries up 15%? Same crime, just different targets, but different conditions for the owners. Commercial owners who find their businesses burgled[2]Though “burglarize” is apparently a real word now, I refuse to use it. have a far greater possibility of getting an insurance recovery, while residents do not, so of course the victims of commercial burglaries are more likely to report the crimes. Residential burglaries? With so many unsolved crimes, and distrust of the police high, reporting such a crime must seem mostly useless to people.

Aggravated assault? The total number of aggravated assaults increased 14.58%, using the city’s own numbers; it’s simply that the tools used were more heavily included firearms than before.

And now we have this, from Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

    Police arrest Philly teens wanted in carjackings and Wawa robberies

    The arrests come amid an unprecedented surge in carjackings. The rate of such attacks doubled in 2020 and again in 2021 — and 2022 is off to an even more dangerous start.

    by Samantha Melamed | Sunday, February 6, 2022

    Philadelphia police on Saturday night arrested two teens, aged 14 and 18, who they said had been wanted in a series of armed carjackings in the city, as well as the robberies of two Wawa stores in Upper Darby.

    Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Man killed in Philadelphia carjacking.

    Officers on patrol around 8 p.m. near Broad and Wallace Streets in the city’s Spring Garden neighborhood recognized the suspects during a vehicle stop, police said. Both teens were armed and attempted to flee on foot, according to police. The 14-year-old was quickly apprehended, while the older suspect fled into a house on the 1200 block of Wallace Street, causing police to report a barricade situation. SWAT was called in and he, too, was arrested. Police recovered two loaded handguns, one from the car and the other from the house.

    “These two arrests are a result of cooperation between the Philadelphia Police Department and also neighboring agencies,” Inspector D.F. Pace told 6ABC, which reported that authorities are investigating whether the two may be implicated in additional crimes. Charges were still pending as of Sunday morning, police said.

And here’s the money line:

    The arrests come as Philadelphia is grappling with an alarming spike in carjackings: The rate nearly quadrupled from 2019 to 2021, when there were 840 such attacks. This year, there have already been 140 carjackings, putting the city on an even more perilous pace.

Carjackings are a pretty serious, violent crime, and while people might just throw up their hands and say, “Forget it,” when their home is burgled, because they think it fruitless, cars are big, important and cost a lot of money; when someone’s car is stolen, he loses a lot of capacity, to get to work or school, to carry home groceries, really to do much in society that involves travel.

Yet we are supposed to believe that crime, overall, has decreased in the City of Brotherly Love. well, no, I don’t believe it, don’t believe it at all.

Now, happily enough, one crime has decreased: murder. As of 11:59 PM EST on Sunday, February 6th, there had been 50 homicides reported by the Philadelphia Police Department, compared to 54 on the same date last year, and 39 in 2020. Homicides are running behind 2021’s record 562 killings, but ahead of 2020’s 499, which is the city’s third worst year, with the 500 killings during the crack cocaine wars of 1990.

So, is it an improvement that the city might see fewer murders than in 2021, but is still ahead of 2020’s pace? I guess that Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw would call it an improvement if there are ‘only’ 543 homicides, but that would be pretty much damning with faint praise.

    “This is like the new way of stealing a car, and it’s become very dangerous,” Chief Inspector Frank Vanore, told The Inquirer last week.

Of course, the Inquirer tried to blame guns:

No, the great rise in gun sales have been to law-abiding people, people who have to go through a background check, to defend themselves from crime! The law-abiding aren’t the ones out there jacking cars. As we have previously noted, a couple of good citizens took out the thieves, though sadly one of the good guys didn’t have his weapon properly registered.

The real reason for the increase in carjackings? It’s because the perps simply aren’t very afraid of being caught, or, if they’re caught, being seriously punished, not with a ‘social justice’ District Attorney in charge of prosecutions. And it’s because so many of the kids in Philadelphia simply aren’t being reared properly. I’ve said it before: you show me a rotten kid, and I’ll show you a lousy parent.

 

References

References
↑1 See Table 4.
↑2 Though “burglarize” is apparently a real word now, I refuse to use it.
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Big Brother will be watching you!

Pennsylvania did away with new registration stickers for license plates several years ago, in favor of scanners in all police cars which checked every license plate which came within visual range, and would alert the officers in the police car if someone’s registration had expired. I speculated, at the time, that the Commonwealth would eventually tie those in with insurance and inspection reporting, but I don’t know if that has been done.

Sadly, Big Brother is now coming to the very conservative Commonwealth of Kentucky:

    Cameras that read, track license plates coming to Lexington. Why some are concerned.

    by Beth Musgrave | Tuesday, February 1, 2022 | 10:29 AM EST

    Lexington crime fighting is about to go high tech.

    The city recently partnered with Flock Safety and the National Police Foundation for a one-year pilot study using 25 fixed cameras that automatically read license plates in areas experiencing high crime.

    Police are expecting to have the cameras in the next three to four weeks, Lexington police officials said. The department will likely have a press conference soon to release more details about the program.

    Lexington Assistant Police Chief Eric Lowe told the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council in November the city will not have to pay for the cameras for a year. Typically, those 25 fixed cameras would cost approximately $70,000 a year.

    “It’s a pilot project and but also a study being done in in conjunction with the National Police Foundation looking at the effectiveness of license plate reader cameras in law enforcement to solve and reduce crime,” Lowe said.

You can read more here.

Fortunately, what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal included a video which shows the public what these things will look like, which will enable the bad guys to destroy them before they commit their crimes.

We are told that these cameras will not be used for traffic law enforcement, but who knows if that will change:

    A Kentucky state law requires an officer to witness a traffic violation in order for someone to get a ticket, he said. There have been attempts to change state law to allow for red light cameras but those attempts have stalled in Frankfort.

They should stay stalled.

The left are very, very concerned, and the American Civil Liberties Union said the quiet part out loud:

    Samuel Crankshaw, a spokesperson for the ACLU of Kentucky, said they have concerns the cameras will be placed based on crime data, resulting in too many cameras in predominately minority neighborhoods.

    “Crime maps are based on where illegal activity is documented. Communities of color and low income areas are historically overpoliced, meaning more crimes are documented in those areas than in areas with a lesser police presence,” Crankshaw said. “This creates a false impression that people in communities of color participate in more illegal activity than others.

Uhhh, no: crimes are documented when crime victims report them. If more crimes are reported in “communities of color and low income areas”, it is because more actual crimes are committed in “communities of color and low income areas”. Thus far in Lexington, in 2022, there have been 13 non-fatal shootings, in which one of the victims is white, two are listed as Hispanic, and in the other ten, the victim is black. Last year, with 134 shootings reported, there were 20 victims who are white, and 12 more listed as Hispanic, which leaves 102 victims listed as black. That’s 76.12%, in a city in which just 14.2% of the population are black.

But the real question is: should the people of Lexington be spied on at all? The easiest way to not have these cameras concentrated in any particular neighborhood is to not have them at all.

Some will be deliberately destroyed, of course, and I cannot say that I would blame the people who did so. We do not need Big Brother watching our every move! Perhaps these cameras will only record license plates — though the story notes that at least one malefactor was caught because the readers captured a bumper sticker as well — but that’s now. As the public get more and more used to the surveillance state, more and more things will be subject to surveillance.

I’ll be very blunt here: these things should be destroyed! I don’t like the idea of fewer criminals being caught, not in the slightest, but I like even less the notion of government spying on people.

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44 murdered in Philly in January . . . which is actually an improvement!

Well, January is over, and the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page has the numbers: as of 11:59 PM EST on January 31st, 44 people had lost their life’s blood in the city’s mean streets. That’s a pretty horrible number, but it’s better than last year’s total of 50 in January.

44 homicides ÷ 31 days = 1.4194 per day, x 365 days in the year = 518.0645 projected killings, if that rate is maintained throughout the year. That would be well short of the record of 562, set in 2021, but above 2020’s 499, and the old record of 500 set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990.

It’s still too early in the year to really draw any conclusions from the numbers: the 50 in 2021 worked out to a projected homicide total of 588.7097, which was well above the final numbers, while the 38 killings in January of 2020 worked out to a projected 448.6452 for the year, which was well under the carnage for the year.

But it’s still the same old, same old at The Philadelphia Inquirer: neither the newspaper’s website main page, nor its specific crime page, indicates a single story, even a brief few paragraphs, on any of the five homicides committed since Thursday, January 27th,[1]The Current Crime Statistics page is only updated during normal business hours, Monday through Friday, so we do not get reports on the end of the day on Friday and Saturday. which leads me to conclude one thing: all of the victims were young black males, because the “anti-racist news organization” into which publisher Elizabeth Hughes has turned the nation’s third-oldest continuously published daily newspaper, to report the unedited truth would, in itself, be racist.

What has anti racism really become? At least in Philadelphia, it has become the acceptance of an urban black culture in which the killing of young black men by other young black men is just plain expected, and the Inquirer goes right along with that.

References

References
↑1 The Current Crime Statistics page is only updated during normal business hours, Monday through Friday, so we do not get reports on the end of the day on Friday and Saturday.
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This is hardly a surprise: #VaccineMandates lead to people trying to get around them

The failure of the government to persuade everybody to take the COVID-19 vaccines has led to the coercive measures of vaccine mandates and the wholly repugnant notion of “Ve need to see your papers.” And, just like every other such thing, some people try to get around these things. I only wish that these two had gotten away with this!

    Two New York nurses charged with making $1.5 million off fake vaccination cards

    Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said the nurses charged $220 for adults and $85 for children.

    by The Associated Press | Saturday, January 29, 2022

    AMITYVILLE, N.Y. — Two nurses on Long Island are accused of forging COVID-19 vaccination cards and pocketing more than $1.5 million from the scheme, prosecutors and police said.

    Julie DeVuono, the owner of Wild Child Pediatric Healthcare in Amityville, and her employee, Marissa Urraro, are both charged with felony forgery, and DeVuono also is charged with offering a false instrument for filing. Both were arraigned Friday.

Further down:

    Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said DeVuono and Urraro handed out fake vaccination cards, charging $220 for adults and $85 for children. DeVuono, a nurse practitioner, and Urraro, a licensed practical nurse, entered the false information into the state’s immunization database, he said.

    Prosecutors said the nurses forged a fake card showing a vaccine was given to an undercover detective but never administered the vaccine to the detective.

There’s more at the original.

It’s simple: the government, including New York City, New York state, and the Biden Administration, pushed mandates which required people to get vaccinations and show proof to keep their jobs or go into some public facilities. They weren’t the only ones, as many places run by Democrats, including the city of Philadelphia, have done the same. I can only be thankful that the Kentucky General Assembly stripped Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) of any authority to do the same, or he’d have tried it locally.

Obviously there were suspicions about this, given that the Staatspolizei sent an undercover detective. I can only hope that there are more, many more, people engaged in the same enterprise who have not been detected, who are getting away with it.

The vaccines are a good thing, and I think everyone who is eligible should take them. But forcing people to take them is a wholly bad, unwarranted, and unconstitutional infringement on our individual liberties.

The nurses allegedly “entered the false information into the state’s immunization database,” the story reported. The first problem is that there even is a state immunization database, that the state is keeping track of people’s private medical records.

The second is that you just know that the Staatspolizei will be going through that database, pulling out the records of everyone who is noted as having receive the vaccine from the two suspects, and then chasing them down, to see who scammed the system. It’s very probable that the Wild Child Pediatric Healthcare clinic did administer the vaccines in cases where people wanted them, and those who were actually vaccinated will be considered suspects as well. There is at least one blood test which can detect if someone has the COVID antibodies the vaccines are supposed to generate, but, since the vaccines lose effectiveness after several months, it is entirely possible that someone who was legitimately vaccinated several months ago might test negative for the antibodies, and that could lead to people who were legitimately being vaccinated nevertheless being charged with some sort of fraud if the Reichssicherheitshauptamt decides to go after the people who got faked cards.

If there’s a legal defense fund for these two nurses, I shall contribute to it!

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More journolism from the Lexington Herald-Leader Are the editors taking their decisions based upon race?

No, that’s not a typo in the article headline; journolism has a real meaning. The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ 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.

We noted, on January 27th, that what my best friend used to refer to as the Lexington Herald-Liberal was perfectly fine with ignoring the McClatchy Mugshot Policy when it came to white people accused of crimes, but seemed to decline to do so for black defendants. And here they go again:

    State trooper injured in shooting released from hospital; Lexington man charged

    by Karla Ward | Saturday, January 29, 2022 | 1:23 PM EST | Updated: 4:11 PM EST

    LeeQuan Taylor, photo by Kentucky Department of Corrections, via WCHS-TV.

    A 22-year-old Lexington man is charged with attempted murder of a police officer in connection with a shooting that injured a Kentucky State Police trooper in Harrison County Friday afternoon.

    Kentucky State Police said in a tweet Saturday afternoon that the trooper, whose name has not been released, was recuperating at home after being released from University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital.

    Aside from the attempted murder charge, LeeQuan T. Taylor is charged with first-degree assault and possession of a handgun by a convicted felon. He was taken to the Bourbon County Regional Detention Center after his arrest Friday night.

There’s more at this link.

LeeQuan Taylor, photo by Bourbon County Detention Center, via Fox56. Click to enlarge.

The Bourbon County Detention Center released a more recent mugshot of the accused.

The Bourbon County photo was included in the Fox56 story, originally posted at 12:58 PM, and updated at 2:57 PM, well before the Herald-Leader story was updated, so it was available to Karla Ward, the reporter. The newspaper’s story about the arrest of Burl Hollen is still available, and despite the paper being notified, both by comment on the story and via Twitter of their use of the mugshot of a white defendant, the photo is still on the story. The story on Mr Hollen does not indicate that he has a past criminal record.

Yet Saturday’s story on the capture of Mr Taylor noted that he is a previously convicted felon, which means, at least according to the Herald-Leader’s reporting, worse than Mr Hollen; Mr Hollen is innocent until proven guilty, while Mr Taylor, though innocent until proven guilty in the shooting of the state trooper, is guilty of felonies in the past. One would think that, if the editors of the newspaper were going to make an exception to the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, it would have been for Mr Taylor, not Mr Hollen. But, as I have noted in the past, Mr Taylor is black, while Mr Hollen is white.

Is that really the difference?

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What George Soros has inflicted on America

This site has been critical of the George Soros-sponsored District Attorney of Philadelphia, the odious Larry Krasner, many times, but Mr Krasner is hardly the only DA candidate who has been the recipent of Mr Soros’ largesse. George Gascón, who ran for District Attorney of Los Angeles County, received $2,250,000 from Mr Soros and his Open Society Foundations.

So, what did Los Angeles County gain from having Mr Gascón as District Attorney? From Le*gal In*sur*rec*tion:

    L.A. DA Gascón Allows Adult Child Molester to be Housed in Juvenile Detention

    James Tubbs, who committed the crime in 2014 when he was 17, only identified as a woman after they took him into custody so he’ll be housed with the females but supposedly in isolation. He also won’t have to register as a sex offender.

    Posted by Mary Chastain | Friday, January 28, 2022 | 11:00 AM

    James Tubbs, November 11, 2021. If Mr Tubbs identified as female, why was he wearing a wispy, can’t-grow-a-real beard at the time of his arrest? Click to enlarge.

    Superior Court Judge Mario Barrera unleashed his anger at progressive Lose Angeles District Attorney George Gascón for not prosecuting a child molester as an adult.

    James Tubbs admitted he sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl in a restroom at a Denny’s in 2014. He was two weeks away from turning 18.

    Authorities did not arrest and charge Tubbs for the crime until January 2021. He kept busy, though:

    In the interim, she had been arrested for battery, drug possession and probation violations in Idaho and Washington and convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in Kern County, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials. She was also arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a minor but wasn’t prosecuted for the alleged offense, according to court records.

Note that the Los Angeles Times used the feminine pronouns to refer to Mr Tubbs, but neither Le*gal In*sur*rec*tion nor The First Street Journal go along with that stupidity; we simply do not change the direct quotations from others.

    James now goes by “Hannah.” But prosecutors claim he did not identify as a transgender until they took him into custody.

    Tubbs knows how to play the system. Gascón has refused to prosecute children as adults.

    Even though Tubbs is now 26 Gascón refused to transfer the crime to adult court:

There’s more at the original, but one thing is clear: Mr Tubbs will not be punished in any way as severely as he injured his victim.

With just two years to serve, Mr Tubbs will be back out, on the streets, shortly. Deputy District Attorney Jon Hatami noted that:

    There was evidence presented at the juvenile proceedings which showed that Tubbs sexually assaulted two young girls in different incidents in the past. The child victims will suffer lifelong trauma. Tubbs also has prior violent convictions and conduct as an adult.

Mr Tubbs will not have to register as a sex offender, and he will have no probation or parole period through which he has to report and be monitored once he is released. He will be, in effect, free and clear. He will go back to jail only after he has committed another crime, quite probably another sexual assault on another minor victim. Some other young girl will have to be sacrificed to whatever abuse Mr Tubbs subjects her to get this cretin off the streets for any serious time. When that happens, will Mr Gascón be held accountable for releasing Mr Tubbs back onto a mostly unaware society?

This is what George Soros has inflicted on our society, and this is that for which 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 have voted. The New York Post noted that Mr Soros put $1,000,000 into the campaign of new New York County — that’s Manhattan — District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has decided that he will only prosecute violent offenses.

This is what the current stage of American leftism has wrought. The District Attorney of Los Angeles County takes the word of a (poorly) bearded 26-year-old man male that he is a woman, and treats him like he actually is one. He then decides that this defendant, who was two weeks shy of his 18th birthday, should be treated as a juvenile offender, and sentenced to not-very-much, so that he can get out quickly and do it again.

No one in his right mind would ever take the decisions that Messrs Bragg, Krasner and Gascón have taken, but there you have it, they did. Still, they are just three men; the real out-of-their-minds decisions were taken by the voters who elected them in the first place, because none of these men hid who they were; they all told the voters what they would do.

That the criminal class would vote for people who would not punish crimes is a given, but the criminal class are not large enough to sway elections. No, these men were elected by the guilty white liberals, who vote for the platitudes of the #woke and the far left, but who are well-to-do enough that they don’t really feel the impact of increased crime in their cities. The liberals in Chestnut Hill and Rittenhouse Square might hear about the murder totals in Philadelphia, but they don’t see the blood in the streets in Kensington or Strawberry Mansion, so they can vote for someone like Larry Krasner, feel good about their liberal bona fides, tut-tut when someone like Samuel Collington or Samantha Maag gets murdered, but never feel the impacts of crime themselves. And they’ll never, ever dream that they, through their votes, are responsible for the chaos in their cities.

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.