Tag Archives: #Crime

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A couple of updates

We have previously reported on the arrests of three men for the murder of Mykel Waide in Lexington. However, it seems that the Commonwealth’s Attorney was unable to present sufficient evidence to get the grand jury to indict any of the three men accused of the killing:

    Lexington men no longer face murder charges in death of former Tates Creek student

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | Monday, December 27, 2021 | 3:50 PM EST

    Three Lexington men are no longer facing murder charges in the death of a college student after a grand jury declined to indict two of them and prosecutors dropped the charge for the third.

    Antwone Davenport, Tayte Patton and Antonio Turner had all been charged with Mykel Waide’s death. Waide, who was 18 when he was shot and killed in August 2020, was set to start school at the University of Louisville the same week he died. He was also a former basketball player at Tates Creek High School.

    “A grand jury dismissal is without prejudice, meaning if new and or additional evidence is found the charges may be resubmitted to the grand jury for indictment,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn said. “Our office considers this to be an open case and those responsible for killing Mykel Waide will be held accountable.”

There’s more at the original.

We have also reported on the University of Pennsylvania’s Women’s Swimming and Diving Team’s Will Thomas, a male who believes he’s female, and has been allowed to compete on the women’s team after having taken testosterone suppressants for a year. It seems that the real women on the women’s team considered a boycott:

    Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas’ teammates considered boycotting final meet in protest

    By Yaron Steinbuch | Wednesday, December 29, 2021 | 1:49 PM EST | Updated: 3:42 PM EST

    UPenn Women’s Swim Team, via Instagram. It isn’t difficult to pick out the one man male in a women’s bikini top. Click to enlarge.

    A group of UPenn swimmers were so upset by transgender athlete Lia Thomas’ advantages that they mulled boycotting their final home meet — but decided not to for fear they’d be banned from the Ivy League championship, according to a report.

    Thomas, 22, who has smashed several records at the University of Pennsylvania this season, has sparked outrage for being eligible under NCAA rules to swim in women’s collegiate events after taking one year of testosterone suppressants.

    A source close to the team of 41 women who considered the boycott told the Daily Mail that “they’ve been ignored by both Penn and the NCAA.”

    The source told the outlet that “there is a feeling among some of the girls that they should make some sort of statement, seize the opportunity while they have a spotlight on them to make their feelings about the issue known.”

However, in the end, they athletes decided against the boycott, because they viewed it as likely to end their ability to participate in the Ivy League championships in February.

    Another source told the Daily Mail that Thomas will likely blow away the upcoming competition.

    “It’ll be like the last couple meets. Lia will finish and nobody will give a s—. Then when the first biological female finishes, there will be a huge eruption of applause,” the source said.

Of course, the women on the team all have to worry about their futures, and whether they’ll be blacklisted for being “transphobic.” They could get kicked off the team, or even kicked out of school, because even in an Ivy League school, where everybody is supposed to be oh-so-smart, they can’t tell the difference between males and females . . . or if they can, they aren’t allowed to tell the truth about it.

But while the real women on the team have to keep quiet, it seems as though the spectators have made their views known, with their silence as Mr Thomas wins his races. The common people, it seems, have some common sense.

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The tale of the Democrats’ failure in Philadelphia has been written in blood

As both of my regular readers know, I check the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page every weekday morning, to get the latest homicide numbers in the City of Brotherly Love. I was somewhat surprised that, after reporting 547 homicides through 11:59 PM on Thursday, December 23rd, the police reported ‘only’ 549 through Sunday, December 26th, and the same number as of Monday, December 27th.

Techish, 2640 Germantown Avenue, photo via Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

But this morning? The police report six more dead, for a total of 555, through Tuesday, December 28th. Philadelphia Inquirer nighttime breaking news reporter Robert Moran had two stories late yesterday, Unidentified man fatally shot inside North Philly phone store, in which a masked man entered the Techish phone sales and repair shop at 2640 Germantown Avenue, and fired sixteen shots, killing an unidentified man, without any prior known provocation, and Two men killed outside Club Risque among nine shot in Philadelphia overnight, in which two men were gunned down outside the Wissinoming strip club at 5921 Tacony Street, a less than attractive area across from Interstate 95, early Tuesday morning.

Club Risque, photo via Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

As usual, I had to dig for those stories; none were on the front page of the Inquirer’s website, because, as I have said many times before, black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Well, perhaps some of the six newly recorded dead had been shot the previous day, and simply didn’t expire in time to be included in the Monday stats:

    Seven are wounded, including a 14-year-old boy, in separate Philly shootings

    The shootings happened around the same time in Olney and Kensington, and later in South and North Philadelphia.

    by Robert Moran | Updated: Monday, December 27, 2021

    Seven people were injured, including a 14-year-old boy, in separate shootings Monday night in Philadelphia, police said.

    Shortly before 7:15 p.m., the teen was outside on the 200 block of Widener Street in Olney when he was shot in the face and back. He was taken by police to Einstein Medical Center, where he was listed in stable condition.

    Police reported no arrests in that case.

    Around the same time, three people were shot on the 200 block of East Cambria Street in Kensington, police said.

Among the most seriously wounded:

    2300 block of South Bouvier Street, via Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

    Just before 8:40 p.m., police responded to a reported double shooting inside a residence on the 2300 block of South Bouvier Street.

    A 52-year-old woman shot twice in the head was taken by police to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where she was listed in critical condition. A 54-year-old man also had a gunshot wound to the head. He was taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and was reported in critical condition.

At least according to Google Maps, South Bouvier Street doesn’t look too bad! More modern row houses, at least from the front, than is frequently seen in the city, though the street is one of Philly’s narrowest.

So, how many people have been murdered in Philadelphia? I noted, on Monday, January 4, 2021, that the police had reported 502 murders for the previous year. It wasn’t my imagination; that was the number showing on the then-current crime statistics page. I guess that I should have taken a screen shot of it, because somehow, three people managed to recover from death, and the number was quickly reduced to 499.

I won’t make that mistake this year!

I have my suspicions, of course. It could have been that three people reported murdered didn’t expire until after 11:59 PM EST on New Year’s Eve, and were thus counted as having been killed this year. Or, were I a conspiracy theorist, it could have been that 502 people were murdered in 2020, but three were pushed off until 2021, so that Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat, District Attorney Larry Krasner, a stooge of George Soros, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, wouldn’t have that ignominious gold medal on their records, leaving 1990’s 500 as still the record number of homicides, but, if that’s the case, it didn’t work, because the city hit the 500 mark just before Thanksgiving!

There are only three days left in 2021, but with the current 2021 homicide rate of 1.5331 per day, 560 is a distinct possibility; the actual projection is 559.5994. Looking at the homicide rate since the end of the Labor Day weekend, 192 people killed in 113 days, or 1.6991 per day, the city would see 560.0973 murders.

But even if the city finishes with ‘just’ 555 killings, and we take the 2021 guesstimated population of 1,607,667 — the 2020 census showed 1,603,797 people living in Philadelphia — that works out to a murder rate of 34.52 per 100,000 population, higher than New York, higher than Los Angeles, and higher than Chicago.

Philadelphia has been governed by Democrats since before I was born, since January of 1952, when George VI was still King of England, and Harry Truman President of the United States. And one thing has become blatantly clear: the policies of the Democrats have not worked in the City of Brotherly Love!

The tale of their failure has been written blood.

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Chicago thinks it’s the nation’s murder capital. Philadelphia laughs and says, “Hold my beer!” The good people of those two fine cities are getting exactly that for which they voted.

A police officer places makers on evidence on the 3900 block of Poplar Street 18-year-old Nasir Marks was fatally shot on Tuesday, May 25, 2021. Steven M Falk, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge.

According to the Chicago Tribune, as of Sunday, December 19th, there had been 783 murders in the Windy City thus far in 2021, 34 more than on the same day last year. As of the same day, 540 homicides had occurred in Philadelphia. The 19th being the 353rd day of the year, that works out to 2.2181 homicides per day in Chicago, and ‘only’ 1.5297 per day in the City of Brotherly Love.

But, according to the 2020 census, there were 2,746,388 people living in Chicago, and 1,603,797 in Philly. Using the homicide rates, that works out to a projected 558 killings in Philly and 810 in Chicago. Murder rates are calculated based on 100,000 population, meaning that Chicago is headed for a homicide rate of 29.4933 per 100,000, while Philadelphia is looking at 34.7924. Philadelphia is far deadlier than Chicago!

We noted that Philadelphia tied its 1990 homicide record of 500 the day before Thanksgiving, and at that point, the city was actually seeing slightly fewer killings per day than it was on December 19th. And guess what: with 547 homicides as of the end of Thursday, December 23rd, the rate has crept up slightly again, to 1.5322 per day, making the projected number of killings 559!

I will admit to a sort of grim fascination with the numbers, but murder in Philadelphia has really changed things. One murder, it has been said, is a tragedy, but 547 is just a statistic, and to the leadership of the city, and the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer, that’s all it is, a statistic, a number that they can attribute of “gun violence,” but never examine the real problem: bad people!

In Ironic Justice: Two Anti-Police Lawmakers Get Carjacked, Robert Stacy McCain noted that two Democratic politicians, one in Chicago and one in Philly, who supported the “reform” of policing — meaning: getting even softer on crime — were carjacked within 24 hours of each other.

Illinois state Sen. Kimberly Lightford (D-Maywood) was targeted in suburban Chicago on Tuesday night, while Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) was carjacked Wednesday afternoon after an event in South Philadelphia.

Well, it seems that, given that Representative Scanlon is a sitting congresswoman, the feds are getting involved:

“The investigation into this incident is in its very initial stages, and we are continuing to investigate and evaluate charging decisions,” said U.S. Attorney Williams. “Armed carjacking is a serious federal crime. There have been a rash of violent crimes like this recently, and while there were national security implications to this particular incident, we are always working collaboratively with our local partners to evaluate if cases should be taken federally. Working together means more resources, more tools, more intelligence. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If you pick up a gun and use it to commit a crime, together, we will come after you. And we are very good at what we do.”

In point of fact, however, if armed carjacking is a “serious federal crime,” when was the last time the feds got involved in such a case? Just two weeks ago, Philadelphia police said the city has seen an 80% increase in carjackings this year, and what had United States Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams done in response? Nothing, until a Democratic congresswoman got carjacked in — sweet irony! — FDR Park.

Seriously, go look through the press release archive at the U.S. Attorney’s web site and tell me if you find a case where they previously prosecuted a carjacking. I went back as far as April and didn’t find one, so if the Biden DOJ was making it a priority to “come after” carjackers before this week, they weren’t very successful at it. But then again, success really hasn’t been a hallmark of the Biden administration, has it?

Mr McCain was employing sarcasm, but there’s a not-so-veiled slam at Philadelphia’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, a George Soros-financed stooge whose main goal is getting the bad guys released, not jailed. At some point, you’d think Philadelphians would get tired of all of the crime and violence in their city’s streets, but not tired enough: Mr Krasner was re-elected last month!

The good people of those two cities are getting exactly that for which they voted.

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36

A man’s life, reduced to four paragraphs. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

    Coroner releases name of man, 21, who died after shooting in Lexington

    by Karla Ward | Saturday, December 18, 2021 | 12:44 PM EST | Updated: 1:48 PM EST

    A 21-year-old man died after being shot in a neighborhood near downtown Lexington late Friday.

    Lexington police said they were called to the shooting on the 800 block of Oak Hill Drive, off Loudon Avenue, at 10:56 p.m. When they arrived, police found the man inside a residence, Lexington police said in a news release Saturday.

    The Fayette County coroner’s office said the man, Devon Sandusky, was pronounced dead at the scene at 11:25 p.m.

    They said the investigation is ongoing. No suspect information was released.

There was a fifth paragraph, but one which simply told readers where to report information to the police. A sixth paragraph noted that this was the city’s 36th homicide of the year, a new record. The previous record was 34, set in 2020. At the current pace, Lexington is projected to see one or two more killings before 2021 is over.

To me, this was sadly reminiscent of the stories I see in The Philadelphia Inquirer, where a murder victim’s life is reduced to a few short paragraphs, often without even the victim’s name being published. But, unlike the Inquirer, the Herald-Leader will print more about the murder as more information is released. With ‘only’ 36 homicides on which to report, the newspaper’s staff can put a little bit more time into reporting on it; the Inquirer’s staff are overwhelmed, with 535 homicides through Thursday, December 16th, and the City of Brotherly Love on pace to record another 23 killings, for a total of 558.

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Another (alleged) killer arrested in Lexington, but the Herald-Leader doesn’t want readers to know what he looks like

We noted, at the end of September, that two men, Tayte Patton, 22, and Antonio Turner, 19, were charged with the murder of Mykel Waide in 2020. What my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal naturally refused to print the mugshots of the two accused killers, but we did.

Now a third suspect has been charged:

    Antwone Davenport, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

    Third suspect charged with murder in killing of Mykel Waide in Lexington

    by Christopher Leach | Wednesday, December 15, 2021 | 2:44 PM EST

    A third suspect in connection to the killing of Mykel Waide, a former high school basketball player in Lexington, has been arrested and charged with murder, according to Lexington police.

    Antwone Davenport, 33, was arrested by US Marshals in Illinois, police said. He has been charged with murder and other charges, and he is being held at the Fayette County Detention Center on bond of over $1 million.

    Davenport is the third suspect to be charged with murder after Tayte Patton and Antonio Turner were arrested in late September.

    According to a criminal complaint, Davenport was involved in an altercation at the Residence Inn on Newtown Court in August 2020.

    An eyewitness told police they saw Davenport in a vehicle at the parking lot of the hotel, according to court records. During the altercation, Davenport allegedly got out of the vehicle and started shooting at a crowd of people.

There’s more at the original.

According to the story, four people were struck by bullets as Mr Davenport fired into the crowd, but Mr Waide was the only person killed.

The Fayette County Detention Center record for Mr Davenport states that three charges, murder, wanton endangerment in the first degree, and possession of a handgun by a convicted felon, were dismissed without prejudice, meaning that they can be reinstated, but it does tell us something. It tells us that Mr Davenport was a previous convicted felon, so we aren’t talking about a good guy here.

Neither Mr Patton nor Mr Turner show up in the Detention Center website, which means they have been bailed out. It seems that the Herald-Leader doesn’t want to inform its readership what two alleged murderers, now loose in the city, look like, so that readers can avoid the suspects if they see them.

What Mr Davenport looks like is hardly a big secret: WKYT-TV, Channel 27, broadcast his mugshot, as did Channel 56, the Fox affiliate.

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Lexington breaks the record!

In 2019, Lexington, where I lived from 1971 through 1984, and, since my return to the Bluegrass State in 2017 is the closest ‘major’ city to me, set a new city homicide record of 30. In 2020, it broke that record, with 34 murders.

Well, that didn’t last long, as the city has now seen 35 homicides, with the murder of Ramon Pennie on December 7th. 35 killings in 341 days works out to one every ten days, and projecting the current homicide rate further, the city could see 37.4633 murders by the end of the year. Unlike Philadelphia, city leaders have at least touched on the reasons for the increased homicide numbers:

    ‘It’s a community problem.’ Lexington police chief addresses record homicide numbers.

    by Christopher Leach | Wednesday, December 8, 2021 | 5:03 PM EST | Updated: 5:10 PM EST

    The city of Lexington broke its annual homicide record after a 51-year-old man was shot and killed on Tuesday evening.

    Ramon Pennie was shot and killed on Hill Street Tuesday night, marking the 35th homicide in Lexington in 2021. That surpassed the record number of 34 in 2020. With a few weeks until the calendar flips to 2022, it’s possible the new-record homicide count could rise.

    Lexington Chief of Police Lawrence Weathers hosted a press conference Tuesday afternoon to address the high number of homicides. He said a number of factors play into the disturbing trend, but the root of the problem starts within the community.

    “What I know for a fact is that this is not just a police problem, it’s not a city, government problem, it’s a community problem,” Weathers said. “Where we can do things immediately on the front end, I think all of us working together in the community, with the community’s help, can do things not just to alleviate and reduce criminal activity, especially homicides in the short long, but in the long run.”

Read more at: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/crime/article256427956.html#storylink=cpy

The Lexington Police Department’s Homicide Investigations page is somewhat in arrears in its data: only 33 homicides are listed, the last on November 20th. In only 12 of the 33 listed killings is there an indication that a suspect has been apprehended.

One thing that the homicide page does not include in its public data is the race and sex of the deceased, but the non-fatal Shootings Investigations page does. Out of 127 non-fatal shootings, 20 of the victims are listed as white, and 12 are listed as Hispanic, which means that 95 of the victims are listed as being black. That’s 74.80%, in a city in which only 14.61% of the population are listed as black.

Out of those 127 non-fatal shootings, the police list 11 as solved. That’s a whopping 8.66% of cases. 🙁

Chief Weathers was right: it is a community problem. He just couldn’t bring himself to say which community.

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The powers that be in Philadelphia continue to blame each other for a problem about which they cannot tell the truth

There are times when I worry about being a bit of a broken record on the homicide rate in Philadelphia, and I skipped some recent stories, but the blame game in the City of Brotherly Love has gotten both hysterically funny and monumentally tragic.

Mayor Kenney acknowledges Philadelphia has ‘a gun crisis’ but sidesteps questions about DA Larry Krasner’s crime comments

District Attorney Larry Krasner drew criticism Monday when he said: “We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence.”

By Anna Orso | Wednesday, December 8, 2021 | 5:26 PM EST

Two days after District Attorney Larry Krasner stirred outrage by insisting the city isn’t in the midst of a crime or violence crisis, Mayor Jim Kenny and the city’s police commissioner sought Wednesday to gingerly wade into — or away from — the issue.

During their scheduled biweekly news conference, one that began this year in direct response to the rising number of shootings, Kenney and Commissioner Danielle Outlaw both said they do believe the city has a gun violence problem.

Both also declined to say more about Krasner’s comments or the ensuing pushback, including a blistering statement from Kenney’s predecessor, former Mayor Michael Nutter, who called Krasner’s remarks “some of the worst, most ignorant, and most insulting comments I have ever heard spoken by an elected official.”

Kenney on Wednesday said while he agrees “we’re in a gun crisis,” he would not “get involved in a back-and-forth between a former mayor and the DA.”

There’s more at the original.

Michael Nutter wasn’t the best mayor Philadelphia ever had, but, during his eight years in office, his Police Commissioner, Charles Ramsey, and he presided over a significant decrease in killings in the city. The city saw 391 homicides in Mayor John Street’s last year of 2007; that number was down 60, to 331, in Mayor Nutter’s first year in office, and though tied again in 2012, the numbers were generally down. In their last three years, 2013, 2014, and 2015, the city saw fewer than 300 murders, 246, 248, and 280, respectively.

Though that number dropped slightly, to 277 in Mayor Kenney’s first year, by the following year the numbers were above 300 again, at 315, 353, 356, and then last year’s whopping 499.

District Attorney Krasner, 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.

This is where the Inquirer truthfully reports the statistics, but never questions them. Murder is not normally an entry-level crime.

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.

And in the City of Brotherly Love, both Mr Krasner, and the nation’s third oldest continuously published newspaper, have been working as hard as they can to undermine the police!

Of course, all of the politicians, all of the politically correct, want to talk about “gun violence,” as though those inanimate objects somehow levitate and shoot people all by themselves, all to push stricter gun control laws. In their own stories, the Inquirer noted that Latif Williams, the (alleged) killer of Samuel Collington, was a juvenile, with a criminal record, and could not be legally carrying a gun . . . but he was. They reported that Donavan Crawford, charged with the murder of Sykea Patton, was “charged overnight with murder and multiple counts of illegally carrying a gun.” Somehow, some way, the highly educated and experienced editors and reporters for the Inquirer never noticed that the people committing crimes with guns are almost never holders of firearms permits, almost never carrying firearms legally, and, shockingly enough, aren’t that interested in obeying the law in the first place.

This is the problem that the left simply cannot see, because they are unwilling to see it. It is not a matter of guns, but the people using the guns. Since the people using guns to kill others are disproportionately black, to admit that it’s the people who are the problem is to recognize that homicide in our major cities is primarily a black problem, and that the #woke[3]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 just cannot do.

But if you cannot admit what the problem is, you can never hope to solve the problem. And the left, including Mayor Kenney, including Commissioner Outlaw, would rather ignore the truth than deal with the truth.

References

References
↑1 See Table 4.
↑2 Though “burglarize” is apparently a real word now, I refuse to use it.
↑3 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.
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Some (mostly) good news

We have mentioned the case of Cody Allen Arnett before. Mr Arnett was treated leniently by the Kentucky Parole Board, and released well before his previous sentences were up. Despite having five prior violent felony convictions on his record, the parole board recommended him for early release. On June 26, 2018, he was granted parole, and scheduled for release on August 1, 2018, for a conviction on August 7, 2015 for robbery, for which he was sentenced to consecutive five-year sentences.

On September 23, 2018, he broke into the dorm apartment of Georgetown College student Ava Stokes[1]Though the media normally do not disclose rape victims’ identities, Miss Stokes has gone public with her story. and raped her, repeatedly, at knife point. He eventually got careless, and Miss Stokes was able to seize the knife from him, and she stabbed him several times. Fleeing the scene, he was quickly apprehended.

In July of this year, he was finally convicted, and the jury recommended six consecutive life sentences.

    Man sentenced to life in prison in 2018 rape of a Georgetown College student

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | Tuesday, December 7, 2021 | 11:00 AM EST

    A man convicted of raping a Georgetown College student was sentenced Monday to life in prison, according to prosecutors.

    Cody A. Arnett, 36, was sentenced after a jury convicted him of rape, sodomy, burglary, evidence tampering and being a persistent felony offender earlier this year, according to court records. Arnett was accused of sexually assaulting a woman inside a Georgetown College residence hall on Sept. 23, 2018. He threatened her with a knife during the assault, according to court records.

    The jury recommended that Arnett be sentenced to six consecutive life sentences for his crimes, according to court records. But state law doesn’t allow for judges to impose life sentences consecutively. Commonwealth’s Attorney Sharon Muse Johnson said the jury’s recommendation of six life sentences should indicate to the parole board that Arnett shouldn’t be released.

    “The day Arnett’s sentence ends Ava’s begins,” Muse Johnson told the jury, according to a news release. “The day he is released her life is over.” Muse Johnson said Arnett was a danger to the community and “has more than earned a life sentence.”

There’s more at the original.

Sadly, Kentucky state law is such that Mr Arnett will be eligible for parole after serving twenty years. His most recent parole showed just how well he had been rehabilitated! Prosecutors are saying that they believe the jury’s recommendation for a sentence, even though it was outside of state law, will persuade a future Parole Board never to grant him a release. Mr Arnett is 36 years old; he could, in theory, be released when he is just 56.

What does the state Parole Board say about itself, its members, and its mission:

    Welcome to the Kentucky Parole Board

    The Kentucky Parole Board consists of diverse, experienced, and committed professionals who are honored to serve the citizens of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Public safety is paramount to the parole board.

    The mission of the Kentucky Parole Board is to make decisions that maintain a delicate balance between public safety, victim rights, reintegration of the offender and recidivism. We will achieve this important balance by application of our core values of knowledge, experience and integrity.

If “public safety is paramount to the parole board,” why are they trying to “maintain a delicate balance between public safety, victim rights, reintegration of the offender and recidivism”? Their own self-description is internally contradictory.

If you look at the brief biographies of the Parole Board members, you will see that all have advanced degrees and multiple years of experience in law enforcement, yet somehow, some way, the Parole Board could not figure out that releasing a man with five prior violent felony convictions was not a very good idea.[2]Most of the current members were not on the Parole Board when Mr Arnett was approved for release in May of 2018. But it doesn’t take a law degree, or a masters, or even a baccalaureate degree to figure out that Mr Arnett should not have been released even a day earlier than his maximum sentence.

    All board members as well as additional support staff are members of the Association of Paroling Authorities International (APAI) and continuously utilize resources through APAI as well as the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) to enhance knowledge and expertise with regards to criminal justice and the parole process. The goal is to utilize research and evidence based practices in order to keep Kentucky on the cutting edge with advances in the field.

The best “evidence based practices” would be to keep the bad guys locked up! Our problem is not ‘mass incarceration,’ but that not enough people have been locked up, for not a long enough time. And we need to start holding parole board members accountable for the crimes and damages caused by criminals they have released early.

References

References
↑1 Though the media normally do not disclose rape victims’ identities, Miss Stokes has gone public with her story.
↑2 Most of the current members were not on the Parole Board when Mr Arnett was approved for release in May of 2018.
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Hold them accountable!

Latif Williams, photo by, Philadelphia Police Department, via KYT-TV, Philadelphia.

As we noted just a few days ago, murder is not usually an entry-level crime. Killers usually have a string of leading in crimes, of increasing seriousness, before they finally blow someone’s brains out. And it seems that 17-year-old Latif Williams was having quite the run of criminal activity before he (allegedly) shot Temple University student Samuel Sean Collington to death during a botched carjacking attempt.

I will admit to having gotten it wrong when I stated, “Since juvenile records are normally sealed, we’ll probably never know if he was treated over-leniently by District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office.” But it seems that the rules are different when a black juvenile (allegedly) kills a white student, especially one who was well-known and well-liked by several people in the city government:

    Suspect in killing of Temple student Samuel Collington — who had been arrested and released after a July carjacking — surrenders to police

    Latif Williams was in custody earlier this year in connection with a gunpoint carjacking. He was released on house arrest, and charges were later withdrawn when a witness failed to show in court.

    By Anna Orso | Wednesday, December 1, 2021 | 9:12 PM ST

    The teenage suspect in the killing of Temple University student Samuel Collington during a botched carjacking over the weekend surrendered to police Wednesday, officials said in a statement without elaborating.

    Earlier, officials had identified Latif Williams, 17, of Olney, as the person they said shot the 21-year-old Collington on Sunday on the 2200 block of North Park Avenue, near the school’s North Philadelphia campus. The student had just returned after spending the Thanksgiving holiday with his family in Prospect Park, Delaware County.

    Samuel Sean Collington, photo shared by his mother with Channel 10, and from this tweet. Click to enlarge.

    Officials on Wednesday identified Latif Williams, 17, of Olney, as the person they said fatally shot Collington, 21, of Prospect Park, Delaware County, on the 2200 block of North Park Avenue, near the school’s North Philadelphia campus, on Sunday. Investigators said they used video and forensic evidence found at the scene to link Williams to the killing, and law enforcement sources said he is under investigation in connection with several armed robberies in the area.

    Williams was in custody in August after he was charged in a gunpoint carjacking. According to court records, a man told police that late on July 31, he was giving Williams and a second male a ride to a restaurant when Williams pointed a gun at his head and told him to get out of the car. . . .

    Williams was arrested Aug. 14 and charged with aggravated assault, robbery, and related counts. His bail was initially set at $200,000 and he was detained. At a bail hearing less than a week later, Municipal Court Judge Joffie C. Pittman III allowed Williams’ release on unsecured bail, meaning he would need to pay bail only if he violated the terms of his release. Pittman ordered him released on house arrest.

So, Judge Pittman released an accused carjacker, who (allegedly) threatened his victim with a gun, with unsecured bail, which is to say: no bail at all. Mr Williams was released to house arrest, but there is no indication in the Inquirer story that young Mr Williams was placed under electronic monitoring.

    In September, prosecutors dropped the charges before a preliminary hearing at which they would have had to show that there was probable cause to believe Williams had committed a crime.

Note that the prosecution dropped this case well after Judge Pittman released Mr Williams with no bail. The prosecution was dropped because a “key witness” failed to appear. Does the District Attorney’s office make any effort to look up these witnesses before court dates, to get them to appear? We are not told in this story.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: ‘Killadelphia’ D.A. Turned Loose Teen Carjacker Who Murdered Marxist Student

It seems as though, when young Mr Williams was already in custody, law enforcement failed! First we had an idiot judge who basically turned loose a suspect charged with armed robbery and aggravated assault with no bail. Then, when a preliminary hearing was scheduled, the District Attorney’s office failed to ensure that their key witness would be present.

The result? If Mr Williams is indeed the killer, the actions, or inactions, of Judge Pittman and Larry Krasner, directly led to the murder of Mr Collington. If Mr Williams is proven to be the murderer, is there any reason why Judge Pittman and District Attorney Krasner shouldn’t become young Mr Williams’ cellmates? Is there any reason that the “key witness” who failed to appear, whose refusal to provide the evidence needed to keep Mr Williams locked up, shouldn’t be held legally responsible for the murder of Mr Collington?

We need to hold law enforcement officials and judges accountable for the consequences of their decisions! Because nobody stood up and did the right thing, Mr Collington is stone cold graveyard dead.

It’s simple: hold idiotic judges like Mr Pittman, and soft-hearted, soft-headed prosecutors like Mr Krasner, responsible for the consequences of their decisions, and other judges and prosecutors will quickly fall into line.