Tag Archives: #Crime

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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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Show me a bad kid, and I’ll show you rotten parents, part 2

My good friend William Teach tweeted a story which follows up on my Show me a bad kid, and I’ll show you rotten parents:

And here’s the story:

Prosecutors: Boy shot by police was with man who fired gun

Associated Press | Saturday, April 10, 2021 | 5:43 PM

CHICAGO (AP) — A young man who was with a 13-year-old boy fatally shot by a Chicago police officer last month fired the rounds that drew the officer’s attention, prosecutors said Saturday.

Ruben Roman, 21, is seen on video firing the weapon that brought police to the Little Village neighborhood on the night of March 29. He and 13-year-old Adam Toledo fled the scene together, with officers in pursuit, prosecutors said.

Roman was arrested as another officer chased Toledo, who was holding a gun when the officer shot him, prosecutors said. That gun matched the spent cartridge casings that were found in the area where Roman was firing, prosecutors said.

“If the defendant does not bring the 13-year-old with him, if he doesn’t bring his gun with him while on gun offender probation, if he doesn’t shoot that gun seven to eight times on a city street with the victim standing in arms length of him while he’s firing those shots … none of it would have happened,” Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy said in court, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Roman’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Courtney Smallwood, vigorously rejected the implication that Roman is responsible for Toledo’s death, noting that the gun was allegedly recovered from Toledo.

“The victim is dead at the hand of the Chicago police officers, not my client,” she said, calling Toledo’s death “tragic.”

There’s a lot more in the Chicago Tribune’s story, but it leaves as many unanswered questions as answered ones.

Toledo kept running as an officer ordered him to stop, then paused near a break in a wooden fence, Murphy said. The officer ordered Toledo to show his hands. Toledo was standing with his left side to the officer and held his right hand to his right side, Murphy said.

The officer told Toledo “drop it, drop it,” as Toledo turned toward the officer with a gun in his right hand, Murphy said.

The officer fired one shot, hitting Toledo in the chest. The gun Toledo was holding landed a few feet away, Murphy said. The officer radioed for an ambulance and began chest compressions on Toledo, who was ultimately pronounced dead at the scene, Murphy said.

The story does not say that young Mr Toledo raised his right hand or pointed the weapon at the officer. That’s an important detail, which responsible journalism would have covered.

One officer tackled Roman as Toledo kept running. As Roman was being arrested, he dropped a pair of red gloves, Murphy said. Those gloves tested positive for gunshot residue, according to Murphy.

We are not told why Mr Toledo was holding the firearm Mr Roman fired. That’s another bit of poor journalism.

Why was 13-yeaqr-old Mr Toledo with a 21-year-old convicted felon? We aren’t told. Why wasn’t young Mr Toledo at home with his parents? Why was a 13-year-old kid out in dark alleys at 2:35 on a Monday morning? No answers to those questions were in the Tribune.

This story reads like one in which a wannabe thug was with an adult criminal, engaged in criminal acts, and things went predictably bad.

The Tribune noted that, as of April 8th, 155 homicides had been recorded in the Windy City, 27 more than on the same date last year. As we noted back in January:

People think of Chicago under its ridiculous Mayor, Lori Lightfoot, as the nation’s murder capital. In 2020, the Windy City saw 769 homicides, 270 more than Philadelphia. But Chicago has a population of 2,710,000, while Philly’s is 1,579,000. Crime rates are compared by rate per 100,000 population, and that leaves Chicago with a homicide rate of 28.38 per 100,000.

Philadelphia laughs and says, “We can beat that!”, checking in with a murder rate of 31.60 per 100,000.

As of January 25th, Chicago had 44 homicides, compared to Philly’s 37, but the disparity in population means that the City of Brotherly Love was far ahead.

Nothing has changed, of course: Chicago is still ahead in absolute terms, but the City of Brotherly Love, with 132 murders recorded as of that same date, April 8th, is ahead when population is considered. Had the two city’s the same murder rate, Philadelphia should have seen 90 murders on the same date Chicago had 155; if Chicago had Philly’s homicide rate, the Windy City should have seen 224 bullet-riddled bodies on April 8th, not ‘just’ 155.

So, as ridiculous as Mayor Lightfoot is, Philadelphia’s Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw are doing an even worse job!

Chicago will be better off with Mr Roman back off the streets. He is a convicted felon who, on probation, appears to have continued his felonious ways. Young Mr Toledo? Given the path he was on, is there any reason to believe he would not turn out like Mr Roman? It is easier to see a 13-year-old boy, apparently without any substantial parental guidance, clearly consorting with adult felons, winding up as just another gang-banger in Chicago rather than as the next Barack Hussein Obama, had he lived.

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Killadelphia

While I normally check the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page in the morning, I don’t on the weekend, because “statistics reflect the accurate count during normal business hours, Monday through Friday.” But I did check it today, after seeing an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer about two more people being killed. The page still shows the 132 listed as having been killed in Philly at the end of April 8th, but noted that at the end of Friday, April 9th, there had been an even 100 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love on that date in 2020.

2 dead, 8 shot in violent overnight in Philly

Two of the five shootings involved a total of three victims on their way to the store. And a triple shooting occurred at an illegal after-hours club, police said.

By Diane Mastrull | Saturday, April 10, 2021

Two men are dead and six others injured in a total of five shooting incidents in less than nine hours Friday night into Saturday morning throughout Philadelphia, police said.

All but one of the shootings were in North Philadelphia, and three of the victims had been on their way to the store when struck by bullets, according to police. One incident was a triple shooting outside of an illegal after-hours club, police said.

The first of the shootings was reported just after 10 p.m. Friday at Front and East Champlost Avenue. There, on the 5900 block of North Front Street, police said they found a 20-year-old shot multiple times. He was transported to Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, where he was pronounced dead at 10:47, police said.

That makes the total 133 by the end of Friday; the Philadelphia Police close their daily count at 11:59 PM each day.

For every three people murdered in Philadelphia last year, four have been killed so far this year.

The second murder victim was pronounced dead a few minutes after midnight, at 12:12 AM Saturday morning at Temple University Hospital. I suppose that he will be counted as part of today’s statistics.

Still, 133 dead, compared to 100 last year, is a 33% increase, a very neat 1/3. For every three people murdered in Philadelphia last year, four have been killed so far this year.

Yeah, that’s a kind of ghoulish calculation, but I’m kind of a numbers guy. I like hard data, information not tainted by politics, and the raw numbers of homicides isn’t something that can be massaged.

The Philadelphia Police Department and District Attorney Larry Krasner like to claim that, overall, crime has decreased in the city. The obvious question is: is that true?

There are two kinds of crimes: crimes of evidence and crimes of reporting. If a man rapes a woman on the streets of Philadelphia, as far as the police are concerned, if it wasn’t reported, it didn’t happen. It is commonly assumed that most rapes go unreported, with some guesstimates being as high as 90% not reported. Crimes like robbery might go unreported if the victims do not trust the police or think it will do any good, or are fearful of revenge by the criminals. When your city is stuck with a District Attorney like Mr Krasner, who doesn’t believe in prosecuting criminals, or sentencing them harshly when they are prosecuted and convicted, what reason is there to report that you were robbed?

But murder is different: it is a crime of evidence. It isn’t easy to dispose of a dead body in a way that it won’t be found, especially if you haven’t carefully planned things. You’re looking at 100 to 300 pounds of dead meat, bone and fat, and something which will put off a strong and nasty odor after very little time. The vast majority of dead bodies get found.

Of course, in Philadelphia, a whole lot of murders are open and in public: drive up or drive by shootings, essentially public executions, in which the shooters are only concerned with escape, not hiding the fact that someone was killed.

So when I read that most crime had decreased in Philadelphia, I just flat don’t believe it. Murder isn’t normally an entry-level crime; guys who shoot other people have usually been bad guys before that. And if they’ve been bad guys before that, District Attorney Krasner and his ‘social justice’ prosecution policies don’t really believe in getting them locked up for long anyway.

That’s something that the reporters and editors of the Inquirer ought to investigate. Send reporters door-to-door in the same neighborhoods in which the majority of the murders have occurred, and investigate, ask the public whether they have been crime victims and have decided against reporting such to the police. It will take a while, and it will take more than one reporter, but isn’t that what investigative reporting requires?[1]The Inquirer article author, Diane Mastrull, lists as her biography blurb, “I’m a distance runner – in real life, as a breaking news editor, and as president of the NewsGuild.” I … Continue reading

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↑1 The Inquirer article author, Diane Mastrull, lists as her biography blurb, “I’m a distance runner – in real life, as a breaking news editor, and as president of the NewsGuild.” I will be forwarding this article to her via e-mail and Twitter.
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Why can people never tell the truth about homicide?

As is my wont, I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page this morning. I noted yesterday, on Twitter, that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Tuesday, April 6th, that 125 people had been murdered in the mean streets of Philadelphia, a 28.87% increase from the 97 killed by the same day last year. Since 2020 was a leap year, April 6th was the 97th day of 2020, while only the 96th day of this year.

On the 97th day of 2020, 97 dead, exactly one per day.

Well, that was then, and this is now. When I opened the Current Crime Statistics page this morning, the total had jumped to 132 people killed. On the 97th day of 2021, the City of Brotherly Love was seeing an average of 1.36 souls being sent to their eternal rewards early. That’s an average which, if it continues throughout the year, would see 496 homicides in Philly, which would be three fewer than in 2020. But, as we all know, the murder rate usually increases in the long, hot summer. Philadelphia is certainly getting a head start on last year!

Which brings me to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story:

Philly police officer wounded, man killed during gun battle

The officer was shot in the foot on the 1500 block of West Somerville Avenue.

by Robert Moran | April 7, 2021

A man was fatally wounded and a Philadelphia police officer was shot in the left foot during a traffic stop that escalated into a gun battle Wednesday evening in the city’s Logan section, police said.

With Fraternal Order of Police President John McNesby on the left, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw comments, from the 35th District station, on the alleged exchange of gunfire that left a man dead and an officer wounded on the 1500 block of West Somerville Avenue on April 7, 2021.Elizabeth Robertson, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer

About 6:45 p.m., police on patrol initiated a traffic stop on a blue Kia Optima on the 1500 block of West Somerville Avenue, said Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.

The officers ran a check on the four occupants — three men and a woman — and found that two had warrants, Outlaw said. The officers then asked for backup and two other police vehicles arrived.

Four officers approached the Kia and asked a 24-year-old man in the back seat to exit the vehicle, Outlaw said. Then one of the officers allegedly saw that he had a firearm and declared, “He’s got a gun.”

There’s more at the Inquirer original. And is it my imagination, or does Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, covered up in her uniform and cover and face mask, kind of look like an Afghan woman wearing a burqa, with only her eyes visible?

That the police officers’ union president was there sure looks like he was making sure that the Commissioner didn’t somehow trash her officers!

Commissioner Outlaw went on to explain that her officers reported that the armed man fired a shot at the officers from inside the Kia, and then got out and engaged in a gun battle with police. That turned out to be a poor tactical decision on his part, as he managed to hit one officer in the foot, but took multiple rounds in the chest.

“It just speaks to the level of gun violence in the city,” (Police Department spokesman Sgt Eric) Gripp said about the incident, in which one man allegedly opened fire on the officers, apparently without provocation.

Yeah, I suppose that a Police Department spokesman — the Inquirer referred to him as a “spokesperson,” but The First Street Journal does not go along with that politically correct bovine feces — would have been trained to use the term “gun violence,” but we need to start telling the truth here: it wasn’t “gun violence” but criminality! The now deceased criminal was already being sought by the law; there was an active warrant out for his arrest. He was stupid enough to have been carrying a gun, and stupid enough to start shooting at police officers, officers he had to know outnumbered him several to one. He started firing from inside the vehicle, thereby putting the other three people in the Kia in danger of being wounded or killed by return fire from the police.

But, maybe it wasn’t so stupid after all. Maybe the criminal knew that the gun, when ballistics are run on it, will turn out to have a body or three on it, maybe he knew that, if he was arrested, he’d wind up in prison for the rest of his miserable life. In Philadelphia, that’s always a possibility.

But, whatever his reasons, whether a cold, calculated estimate that it was shoot it out or face life in prison, or whether he was just messed up on alcohol and/or drugs and not thinking clearly at all, the deceased decided to risk the death penalty, and received it, all in just a few minutes. I do not support capital punishment, but it’s difficult not to see Philadelphia as being better off without the deceased alive and out on the streets.[1]While Pennsylvania has capital punishment on the books, District Attorney Larry Krasner does not seek the death penalty for any crimes.

Within minutes of the shootout, two men from another shooting also arrived at Einstein hospital by private vehicle. A 21-year-old man who had been shot twice in the head was pronounced dead. A 22-year-old man was shot in the left leg, and was listed in critical condition.

Well, that’s two of the seven people who were killed on April 7th; the Inquirer had no mention of the other five, although, the way statistics can be, it is possible that the others were shot or stabbed or whatevered a day or two earlier, and only expired on the 7th.

The sad fact is that the Inquirer doesn’t run many stories on homicides; there was that one short paragraph about the second murder victim, and that would never have generated a story were it not for the police-involved shooting. The truth is that, unless there’s something ‘special’ about a killing, such as the victim being an innocent bystander, and child, or, most importantly, a cute little white girl, it’s just not news in Philadelphia!

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↑1 While Pennsylvania has capital punishment on the books, District Attorney Larry Krasner does not seek the death penalty for any crimes.
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Show me a bad kid, and I’ll show you rotten parents

I hadn’t heard of this story until I saw this tweet:

Yeah, that sounds kind of bad!

13-Year-Old Boy Who ‘Wanted to Become a Cop’ Is Killed by Chicago Police

Pilar Melendez | Friday, April 2, 2021 | 12:10 PM

The death of a 13-year-old boy, who dreamed of joining the police but was gunned down by a cop in an “armed confrontation” this week, has horrified the crime-weary city of Chicago, prompting demands for answers from the mayor on down.

The Cook County Medical Examiner confirmed to The Daily Beast that Adam Toledo died of a gunshot wound to the chest on Monday. His death, which occurred after a confrontation with Chicago police in Little Village, has been classified as a homicide.

The boy’s family, community leaders, and even Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot are demanding police release the body-camera videos of the incident. The officer involved in the shooting has been put on desk duty for at least 30 days pending an investigation.

“Adam was a seventh-grade student at [Gary Elementary] School, enjoyed sports, and was a good kid. He did not deserve to die the way he did,” the Toledo family said in a Friday statement.

Uh huh.

The family said Adam was killed “due to the unreasonable conduct of a Chicago Police Officer” and they would “seek justice for this reprehensible crime.” They added that they were only notified of Adam’s death two days after he was killed.

“We are confident that the Chicago Police Department and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability will conduct a thorough investigation, that there will be transparency, and that Toledo Family will find out the truth of what happened to Adam.”

Police said the incident began at around 2:35 a.m. on Monday when officers responded to a call of “multiple shots fired in the 200 block of S. Sawyer.” When they arrived, they found two males—later identified as Toledo and 21-year-old Ruben Roman Jr.—“in a nearby alley” and at least one was armed. Police said the armed person ran from the scene, prompting officers to start a foot pursuit that ended in an “armed confrontation.”

What, exactly, was a 13-year-old boy doing out on the streets at 2:35 AM on Monday morning?

There’s more at the original, and the Usual Suspects are trying to make this about politics, but two perps, running from the police at 2:35 in the morning isn’t exactly the type of situation in which the officers would have suspected that one was a 13-year-old kid. If the text of the story is accurate, Mr Roman did not flee the police, while young Adam Toledo fled while carrying a firearm. The story states that Mr Toledo was struck “in the chest” by the officer’s bullet; if he was not struck in the back, then it seems likely that he turned after fleeing and confronted the officer. If he confronted the officer with a weapon in his hand, then the officer was justified in taking the shot.

Eventually body camera footage will show the confrontation, but it would seem pretty clear to me: if young Mr Toledo was out at that hour of the night, and was carrying a pistol, then Mr Toledo is responsible for his own demise.

But Mr Toledo isn’t the only one responsible for his death. Where were his parents? Which adult was responsible for the supervision of a 13-year-old boy at 2:35 AM on Monday? Some adult, somewhere, failed in his responsibility, failed not only to have young Mr Toledo inside his home at that hour, and, to be very blunt about it, failed in his duty to rear the child properly.

Mr Toledo is dead, but his parents, or whomever was supposed to be caring for him, are just as responsible for his behavior, and his death, as was the young boy.

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The Washington Post dances around the right question, but never actually asks it, because that would be too politically incorrect! If you are not courageous enough to ask the right questions, you will never get the right answers.

We have been saying all along that the credentialed media have been ignoring the soaring homicide rates in our major cities.

Well, it took the mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder to focus their attention, but it looks like The Washington Post finally got around to noticing as well:

Shootings never stopped during the pandemic: 2020 was the deadliest gun violence year in decades

By Reis Thebault and Danielle Rindler | March 23, 2021 | 11:42 PM EDT

Until two lethal rampages this month, mass shootings had largely been absent from headlines during the coronavirus pandemic. But people were still dying — at a record rate.

In 2020, gun violence killed nearly 20,000 Americans, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, more than any other year in at least two decades. An additional 24,000 people died by suicide with a gun.

The vast majority of these tragedies happen far from the glare of the national spotlight, unfolding instead in homes or on city streets and — like the covid-19 crisis — disproportionately affecting communities of color.

Last week’s shootings at spas in the Atlanta area and Monday’s shooting at a grocery store in Boulder, Colo., killed a combined 18 people and rejuvenated a national effort to overhaul gun laws. But high-profile mass shootings such as those tend to overshadow the instances of everyday violence that account for most gun deaths, potentially clouding some people’s understanding of the problem and complicating the country’s response, experts say.

OK, they are starting to identify the problem. A bit further down:

“More than 100 Americans are killed daily by gun violence,” Ronnie Dunn, a professor of urban studies at Cleveland State University, said, using a figure that includes suicides. “The majority are in Black and Brown communities. We don’t really focus on gun violence until we have these mass shootings, but it’s an ongoing, chronic problem that affects a significant portion of our society.”

Of course, the article and the interviewees are all using the currently politically correct phrase, “gun violence,” as though firearms just pick themselves off the shelf and start shooting people. No one seems to be willing to point out that these shootings are being done by bad people!

Dr Dunn noted that the majority of these homicides “are in Black and Brown communities,” but seems quite unwilling to note that while the majority of victims “are in Black and Brown communities,” it is also true that the majority of their killers are part of the “black and brown communities.“[1]Note that The Washington Post is using the Associated Press Stylebook, which capitalizes ‘black’ when referring to race, and now capitalizes ‘brown’ as well. The First Street … Continue reading

Overall, most homicides in the United States are intraracial, and the rates of white-on-white and Black-on-Black killings are similar, both long term and in individual years.

Between 1980-2008, the U.S. Department of Justice found that 84% of white victims were killed by white offenders and 93% of Black victims were killed by Black offenders.

In 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that 81% of white victims were killed by white offenders, and 89% of Black victims were killed by Black offenders.

In 2017, the FBI reported almost identical figures — 80% of white victims were killed by white offenders, and 88% of Black victims were killed by Black offenders.

Back to the Post. Dr Dunn, as you might expect, tried to place the blame on the increased killings on all sorts of things, including increased gun sales:

Researchers say the pandemic probably fueled the increases in several ways. The spread of the coronavirus hampered anti-crime efforts, and the attendant shutdowns compounded unemployment and stress at a time when schools and other community programs were closed or online. They also note the apparent collapse of public confidence in law enforcement that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Covid-19 and the protests over police brutality also led to a surge of firearm sales. In 2020, people purchased about 23 million guns, a 64 percent increase over 2019 sales, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal data on gun background checks.

Dunn pointed to this flood of firearms as the most detrimental factor in the fight to curb gun violence. When shootings become “the soundscape of inner-city neighborhoods,” he said, “it increases anxiety and stress and creates toxic stress.” Dunn compared the effect to post-traumatic stress disorder akin to what war veterans experience.

What didn’t you see in that? You didn’t see Dr Dunn point to any research which shows that the legally-purchased firearms surge, as a result of the #BlackLivesMatter “Mostly Peaceful Protests™” were at all related to the killings in our inner cities.

When riots and violence are spreading through our cities, and the images and news of that are being purveyed over the network and cable news day in and day out, it’s perfectly natural that some people would believe that they needed additional protection; that’s why gun sales increased. Dr Dunn wants you to believe that it why homicides spiked, but offers no proof that those increased gun sales had anything to do with it.

Have the police linked any of these additional forearms sales to the increased homicide rates? If they have, I’ve managed to miss that story.

One recent study, from the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, called gun violence “a public health crisis decades in the making.” An analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found Black males between the ages of 15 and 34 accounted for 37 percent of gun homicides, even though they made up 2 percent of the U.S. population — a rate 20 times that of White males of the same age.

Here Dr Dunn provides the test. If black males between 15 and 34 account for 37% of homicides by firearm, while making up just 2% of the population, if the increased firearms sales have significantly contributed to the increased homicide rate, then we should see a heavy predominance of black males in that age group making up the increase in applications to purchase a firearm legally. Such would, if perhaps not prove what Dr Dunn is saying, at least provide a strong inference of it.

On average, there was one mass shooting every 73 days in 2020, compared with one every 36 days in 2019 and one every 45 days in 2017 and 2018. The slowdown interrupted what had been a five-year trend of more frequent and more deadly mass shootings.

That gun violence increased overall even as mass shootings declined underscores the fact that those high-profile events account for a relatively small share of firearm deaths. It should draw more attention to the victims and survivors of gun violence across the country, (Mark Barden, a co-founder of the gun violence prevention group Sandy Hook Promise) said.

So, while homicides have increased, mass shooting events have decreased. It’s almost as though the random events of nuts going off and committing these high-profile crimes has nothing to do with the increased homicide rate.

But, of course, it’s the mass shootings which make the news, because, let’s face it: a couple of gang-bangers getting killed in Philadelphia isn’t even news anymore.

If black males between 15 and 34 are the victims of homicide at a rate twenty times that of white males of the same age, then we need to ask why that is, but one thing is certain: it’s not guns. There is something different in the education, culture and experiences of white and black males that is causing black males of those ages to kill each other at such rates, and until we start asking what those differences are, we will never honestly address the issue.

But in our age of political correctness, we cannot ask the questions, without being accused of being the world’s most horrible racist, an accusation which shuts down the questions, and shutting down the questions means shutting off all hope of coming up with the right answers.

Me? I’m less than a month from my 68th birthday, and I’m retired. I have no job from which I can be fired for asking politically incorrect questions, have nothing from which I can be #canceled. I can ask the uncomfortable questions, when no one else seems to be willing or able to do so.

But if other people don’t step up, if other people won’t ask the right questions, we might as well face it: we’ll never have the right answers. But, sadly enough, our friends on the left already know that. They have had the choice between asking the right questions, and hoping to find the right answers, or ignoring the right questions, because by doing that they risk far less for themselves, and the only real price for that is more dead black people on the streets of Washington and Chicago and Philadelphia.

We know what choice they have taken.

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↑1 Note that The Washington Post is using the Associated Press Stylebook, which capitalizes ‘black’ when referring to race, and now capitalizes ‘brown’ as well. The First Street Journal does not go along with that.
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Virtue must be signaled!

Robert Aaron Long, 21, a guy with some serious, serious mental problems, shot up three Atlanta metropolitan area ‘massage parlors,’ killing eight people, six of whom were of Asian descent. Four were Korean. Naturally, it’s being called a hate crime by the left, though the details don’t quite match up.

But that doesn’t matter; the Usual Suspects are all over this as a hate crime, as though any deliberate murder isn’t an act of hate. From The New York Times:

Why Some Georgia Lawmakers Want Last Week’s Shootings Labeled Hate Crimes

Violence that left eight dead, including six women of Asian descent, will be the first stress test for a Georgia hate crime law.

By Astead W. Herndon and Stephanie Saul |March 21, 2021

A year ago, Georgia was one of four states that had no hate crime legislation.

But the deadly rampage last week that left eight people dead, six of them women of Asian descent, is now providing a test of a law passed last year — and a window into the way that the state’s increasingly diverse electorate has altered its political and cultural chemistry.

Georgia, after earlier false starts, passed its legislation following the shooting death of a young Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, who was stopped, detained and then shot to death by white residents in a South Georgia suburban neighborhood.

Now last week’s shootings, in which Robert Aaron Long, 21, has been charged with eight counts of murder, are providing a major stress test for when the legislation can be applied, what it can achieve and how it plays into the state’s increasingly polarized politics.

Political leaders, civil rights activists, and national and local elected officials condemned last week’s attack as an act of bigoted terror, drawing a connection between the majority-Asian victims and a recent surge in hate crimes against Asian and Pacific Islander Americans.

Mr Long has already been charges with premeditated murder. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Georgia not only has capital punishment, but carries it out, having executed 76 people since the restoration of capital punishment in 1976. An obvious question is: why bother to charge Mr Long with ‘hate crimes’ if there’s really nothing more they can do to him?

Law enforcement officials and some legal figures have shied away from labeling the killings a hate crime, saying there is insufficient evidence of motivation. Prosecutors in two separate counties are still weighing whether to invoke the hate crimes law.

If the evidence for a hate crime is weak, charging under the hate crime stature becomes problematic. It adds to the length and expense of any trial, and runs a serious risk of acquittal on such charges.

But that has not stopped the shootings from resonating as bias crimes for many in Georgia, a state that has been at the forefront of the demographic changes coursing through the South.

“I don’t want to draw any conclusions, but it’s obvious to me that if six victims were Asian women, that was a target,” said Georgia State Representative Calvin Smyre, a longtime Democratic lawmaker who helped shepherd the hate crimes bill through the General Assembly.

And there it is: it’s just obvious to Representative Smyre that, because women of Asian descent were killed, they must’ve been targeted because they were Asian. But sometimes, just because someone thinks that something is obvious doesn’t make it true.

Eight people are dead, and Mr Long has been charged with their murder. He is facing life in prison without the possibility of parole or perhaps even a capital sentence on those charges. If he is convicted on those, there’s nothing more a hate crimes rider can do to him.

But virtue must be signaled! My question is: if the killings of the six Asian women was so horrible, and must be charged as hate crimes, does that make the deaths of the other two victims somehow less significant, less important? Are the two non-Asian victims somehow less dead than the six Asian ones?

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Prison is for more than just keeping bad guys off the streets Prison is also for punishment of their crimes

I follow Reason magazine on Twitter because it frequently has some interesting articles from a libertarian perspective, but this one just plain missed the boat:

What Happened When Life Sentences Got Out of Control

The prisons are filled with aging inmates who no longer pose a public threat.

By Sonny Mazzone | February 25, 2021 | 3:40 PM

A new study shows that the number of Americans sentenced to life in prison has more than doubled since the early 1990s, even though violent crime declined for the bulk of that period. And before you try to argue that crime was declining because of those stiff sentences, examine the numbers: The drop in crime began well before sentence lengths started skyrocketing.

The report was authored by Ashley Nellis, a senior research analyst at the Sentencing Project. It found that one in seven U.S. prisoners—roughly 200,000 people—are currently serving a life sentence. This includes those sentenced to life without parole, life with parole, and virtual life (50-plus years). That is more than twice the number of people handed life sentences than when violent crime peaked in 1992.

“The unyielding expansion of life imprisonment in recent decades transpired because of changes in law, policy, and practice that lengthened sentences and limited parole,” writes Nellis. “The downward trend in violence in America that continues today was already underway when the country adopted its most punitive policies, including the rapid expansion of life sentences.”

There’s more at the original, but it seems that Mr Mazzone, the author, has ignored the purpose of prison. Yes, part of the purpose is to protect society from criminals, but that isn’t all of it. Prison is also supposed to punish offenders for their crimes and, hopefully, teach a lesson to those who will eventually be released from prison that maybe, just maybe, they might not want to do things which will get them sent back to prison.

Mr Mazzone addresses the increase in the life-sentenced prison population, and noted that, as criminals age, they become less likely to reoffend after release. He noted the increased costs associated with eldercare in prison, and that the spread of COVID-19 “disproportionately jeopardizes the lives of older Americans in prison”.

Daniel and Maureen Faulkner on their wedding day

But those sentenced to life in prison were sentenced to that due to the horrible and violent natures of their crimes. Where Mr Mazzone argues that there is some inefficiency in keeping the elderly in prison, for budgetary reasons and the lowered risk of reoffense, he completely ignores the aspect of punishment for crime. Perhaps Wesley Cook, just two months shy of his 67th birthday, would be unlikely to commit another crime if released, but Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner will never be released from his coffin, the coffin to which he was sentenced by Mr Cook, two weeks shy of his 26th birthday.

Officer Faulkner did not deserve to die in the streets of Philadelphia:

On December 9, 1981, at approximately 3:55 a.m., Officer Danny Faulkner, a five year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department, made a traffic stop at Locust Street near Twelfth Street. The car stopped by Officer Faulkner was being driven by William Cook. After making the stop, Danny called for assistance on his police radio and requested a police wagon to transport a prisoner. Unbeknownst to him, William Cook’s brother, Wesley (aka Mumia Abu-Jamal) was across the street. As Danny attempted to handcuff William Cook, Mumia Abu-Jamal ran from across the street and shot the officer in the back. Danny turned and was able to fire one shot that struck Abu-Jamal in the chest; the wounded officer then fell to the pavement. Mumia Abu-Jamal stood over the downed officer and shot at him four more times at close range, striking him once directly in the face. Mumia Abu-Jamal was found still at the scene of the shooting by officers who arrived there within seconds. The murderer was slumped against the curb in front of his brother’s car. In his possession was a .38 caliber revolver that records showed Mumia had purchased months earlier. The chamber of the gun had five spent cartridges. A cab driver, as well as other pedestrians, had witnessed the brutal slaying and identified Mumia Abu-Jamal as the killer both at the scene and during his trial. On July 2, 1982, after being tried before a jury of ten whites and two blacks, Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of murdering Officer Danny Faulkner. The next day, the jury sentenced him to death after deliberating for four hours. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania heard the defendant’s appeals and upheld the conviction on March 6, 1989.

Mr Mazzone quoted Ashley Nellis, a senior research analyst at the Sentencing Project, whose “report suggests capping sentences at 20 years ‘except in rare circumstances based on individualized determination’ — with the determination based on the individual’s behavior in prison.” Under that ‘suggestion,’ if Mr Cook had behaved himself in prison, he would have been released no later than July 2, 2002, when he would have been just 48 years old, with decades left to live and love and laugh at the fact he was out of jail while Officer Faulkner was still stone-cold graveyard dead.

So, no, these brutal criminals should not be released, should never be released. They have been locked up for life because they took away life and health and hope away from innocent people; a restoration of health and hope should not ever be in their futures. Not just no, but Hell no!

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Alabama gets stupid about capital punishment A waste of time and money

Sometimes I have to wonder about the utter stupidity of some people. Willie B Smith III was sentenced to death in Alabama for the 1991 murder of Sharma Ruth Johnson in Birmingham. Mr Smith and his cronies abducted her at an ATM, forced her to withdraw $80 in cash, at which point they took her to a cemetery, upon which Mr Smith shot her in the back of the head.

The too-few readers of The First Street Journal know that I am opposed to capital punishment, but that is not the point of this article.

Mr Smith was scheduled to be executed, and requested that his pastor accompany him into the death chamber. The Department of Corrections refused, and Mr Smith’s attorney sued. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued an injunction stating that Mr Smith had a right to have his pastor present. Alabama could have simply granted Mr Smith’s request, and proceeded with the execution, but no, the State had to get all high and mighty and appeal to the Supreme Court, where the state lost. From The Washington Post:

Supreme Court says Alabama cannot execute inmate without his pastor present

By Robert Barnes | February 12, 2021 | 8:12 AM EST

The Supreme Court said late Thursday night that Alabama could not execute a death row inmate without the man’s pastor by his side, and indicated that other states must find a way to honor final requests for a spiritual adviser in the death chamber.

The court’s order came an hour before Alabama’s self-imposed deadline of executing Willie B. Smith III, convicted of a 1991 robbery and murder. A lower court had put the execution on hold, and Alabama asked the Supreme Court to step in.

But the request divided the court’s conservative majority. For the first time since she joined the court in October, Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with liberal colleagues in a capital punishment case, saying federal law requires states to make accommodations for prisoners like Smith.

Barrett joined an opinion by Justice Elena Kagan that said a federal law protecting the religious rights of prisoners set a high bar Alabama did not meet.

There’s more at the original.

I have to ask: why did the state not simply allow Mr Smith’s pastor into the execution chamber? If the pastor agreed to perform that onerous duty, and agreed not to be disruptive, there was no practical reason not to allow this. Faced with the injunction from the Eleventh Circuit, the State had to know that its legal position was shaky, and that if the Supreme Court declined to end the injunction, the execution date would pass with Mr Smith still breathing.

And that’s what happened. Mr Smith is still alive. As an opponent of capital punishment, I think that’s a good thing. More, it exposes just how stupid states can get when it comes to capital punishment. Pennsylvania, for instance, has 142 people on death row, but has actually executed only three men since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1974 . . . and all three men “volunteered,” voluntarily dropped all of their appeals to just get it over. Despite all of the additional costs that come with a capital sentence, the Keystone State has not been able to put anyone to death against his will!

Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) is an opponent of capital punishment, but does not have the authority to commute death sentences without the recommendation of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. He can, and has, refused to advance any capital sentences toward execution. But, don’t blame Governor Wolf too much; the previous Governor, Republican Tom Corbett, a strong supporter of capital punishment, signed 47 death warrants during his four years in office, and there were still no executions during his term. Is not stupidity involved in maintaining capital punishment in the Keystone State?

California has 711 people on death row, but has executed only 13 since 1976, and the last one was in 2006. Is not stupidity involved in having capital punishment in the Pyrite State?

Alabama? Well, the state has been successful in carrying out executions, 67 of them since the restoration of capital punishment. But with the stupidity, and yes, stupidity is the right word, shown by Jefferson Dunn, Commissioner of the Department of Corrections, it’s amazing that he’s been so successful. It would have been far more efficient, and less expensive, to have simply granted Mr Smith’s last request. By doing that, the state would have been able to carry out the sentence; by fighting it, the state lost, and failed to carry out the execution.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who dissented from the decision not to vacate the injunction, wrote:

Because the State’s policy is non-discriminatory and, in my view, serves the State’s compelling interests in ensuring the safety, security, and solemnity of the execution room, I would have granted the State’s application to vacate the injunction.

But the Court has a different view and denies the State’s application. Given the stays of execution here and in Gutierrez v. Saenz, it seems apparent that States that want to avoid months or years of litigation delays because of this RLUIPA (Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act) issue should figure out a way to allow spiritual advisors into the execution room, as other States and the Federal Government have done. Doing so not only would satisfy inmates’ requests, but also would avoid still further delays and bring long overdue closure for victims’ families.

In other words, Justice Kavanaugh said to states which still have the death penalty, don’t be stupid!

As the Post noted, while we know that Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Kavanaugh sided with Alabama, the votes of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito are not mentioned. At least one of them must have voted along with Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Steven Breyer and Amy Barrett, to form a majority.

The easiest non-stupid thing to do would be to simply eliminate capital punishment. It’s actually cheaper to imprison someone for life than it is to execute him. And Alabama’s stupidity in this case is just one more in a long list of dumb behavior the courts have had to adjudicate as states have tried to put people to death.