Tag Archives: #LexingtonHeraldLeader

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Journolism and the public’s “right to know”: let sleeping dogs lie! There are things investigative journalists do not want to investigate!

It’s sunny and 86º F outside, and Mochi is like the rest of the critters: sacked out. Click to enlarge.

OK, OK, it’s been a slow day at the farm, and I’ve been lazy. Mochi is on the couch on the screened in porch! And letting sleeping dogs lie is pretty much what today’s journolists,[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use … Continue reading er, journalists do.

Well, being lazy, and having seen an episode of Roku’s Murder House Flip, I wasn’t online when my good friend Robert Stacy McCain threw me a bone and published this!

Leif Halvorsen: The Only Kind of Mugshot the SJW Media Will Let You See

By Robert Stacy McCain | May 22, 2021 |

Say hello to Leif Halvorsen, who was convicted for killing of three people in Kentucky “in a drug-fueled shooting rampage” in 1983. In order to fight “systemic racism,” the Social Justice Warriors who run the McClatchy newspaper cartel have developed a policy against publishing mugshots of criminals, because of the negative impact the publication of such mugshots allegedly has on “marginalized communities.”

Our blog buddy Dana Pico of First Street Journal notes that the McClatchy-owned Lexington Herald-Leader is apparently not adhering to company protocols, because they published Halvorsen’s mugshot in a story about convicted murderers in Kentucky who may be eligible for parole under a new state policy. To illustrate that story, the Herald-Leader published the mugshots of Halvorsen and four other convicted murderers who, perhaps not coincidentally, shared a certain trait with him. Can you guess what that trait was? I think you can.

There’s much more at Mr McCain’s original, but he added something I hadn’t considered:

Obviously, not every local media outlet has surrendered to the kind of SJW (Social Justice Warrior) mentality that now controls the Lexington Herald-Leader, but as someone who spent more than 20 years in the newspaper business, I must ask this: What happened to “the public’s right to know”?

This was the phrase used by journalists for many decades to defend such controversial decisions as publication of the “Pentagon Papers,” and many other practices. Journalists demanded access to public records (so-called “sunshine laws”) because what government did, in the name of the people, and with taxpayer dollars, ought to be publicly known.

Certainly in matters of law enforcement, the identities of people arrested by police are a matter of public record, as are the mug shots of suspects. No ethical journalist would willingly become complicit in a deliberate effort to conceal such information from the public.

But of course, the unethical SJWs of the McClatchy cartel do not consistently apply their policy of suppressing facts about crime.

Mr McCain was an actual professional journalist, starting at a small Southern newspaper and eventually working for the Washington Times. That pretty much leaves my two years with the Kentucky Kernel in the dust! And his point is spot on: journalists have been using that phrase for as long as I can remember. Consider McClatchy’s statement of policy:

Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever. Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness.

There is a powerful meaning that the executives at McClatchy want to hide, but can’t quite: if “inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color,” it must mean at least one of two things:

  1. Either ‘people of color’ are arrested for the crimes they commit in a far greater percentage than are white people; or
  2. ‘People of color’ actually commit crimes at a far greater rate than do white people.

Logically, either 1 or 2 can be true, or both 1 and 2 can be true. But the only way that neither can be true is if the publication of mugshots does not disproportionately harm ‘people of color.’ Regardless of which, or both, are true, either one being true is something which ought to generate a whole lot of investigative journalism to find out why it is true.

The problem is that, as far as the executives at McClatchy, and journalists in general, are concerned, the belief is that number 2 is true. Oh, they want to believe that number 1 is the correct answer, which is why you see so many stories about police stopping cars driven by black Americans, but somehow that doesn’t explain why those stops have so frequently led to the discovery of illegally-possessed firearms or drugs.

The executives at McClatchy were quite blatant about it: publishing mugshots would harm communities of color because there would be a disproportionate number of mugshots depicting people of color. Today’s journalists do not want to investigate any of that, because they are afraid, deathly afraid, of the answers they would find. I noted, last year, in This is what Social Justice law enforcement gets us:

Simply put, (Larry) Krasner, who hated the police from the beginning, installed a form of ‘social justice’ law enforcement; he was tougher on the police than he was on criminals. He was oh-so-concerned that “disproportionately high numbers of minority males” were charged, convicted and incarcerated, without ever thinking to consider that perhaps, just perhaps, “disproportionately high numbers of minority males” were the ones committing crimes.

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.

I noted, just two days ago, that in St Louis, a city that is 45.3% black and 44.1% white, 68 out of the then-current 73 homicide victims were black, 53 males and 15 females, only three of the victims were white, and of the two known suspects, both were white. Out of the 34 identified suspects, 2 were white, 2 were Hispanic, and 30 were black. All thirty of the identified black suspects were accused of killing black victims.

The Social Justice Warriors simply have no answer for those raw, very raw, numbers. But one thing is certain: the executives at McClatchy don’t want you to know them. The editors of the Sacramento Bee, the newspaper at McClatchy’s headquarters, and the precursor to the McClatchy policy, put it more directly:

Publishing these photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

Stereotypes exist for a reason; they exist because there is usually an element of truth behind them.

For McClatchy, for Peter Baniak, Editor and General Manager of the Herald-Leader, and for the newsroom at The Philadelphia Inquirer,[2]If I seem to harp on those two newspapers, it’s because I have paid for subscriptions to them, so I read them most often. any consideration of the “public’s right to know” has been overshadowed by their desire to manipulate public attitudes, by their desire that the public not hold stereotypes which just might be accurate. The last thing they want to do is the investigative journalism to determine why those stereotypes exist, and just how true they might be, because, deep down, they believe those stereotypes themselves. They are the ones who cannot handle the truth, and they are deathly fearful of what might happen if you knew the truth.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑2 If I seem to harp on those two newspapers, it’s because I have paid for subscriptions to them, so I read them most often.
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The Lexington Herald-Leader breaks policy and publishes a mugshot of a criminal suspect Could it be that because, once again, the accused is white rather than black?

We have previously noted the Lexington Herald-Leader’s double standards when it comes to posting the mugshots of criminal suspects. The Herald-Leader is supposed to follow McClatchy Company’s standards, as they are listed in the photo to the right.

THC snacks, sex acts: KY woman allegedly abused baby while video chatting with inmate

By Jeremy Chisenhall | May 20, 2021 | 8:15 AM EDT | Updated 12:55 PM EDT

A northern Kentucky woman is accused of letting her toddler eat marijuana snacks and performing sexual acts in front of the child while on video chat with her incarcerated boyfriend, according to the Boone County sheriff’s office.

Jessica Ahlbrand, 22, was arrested Wednesday after investigators reviewed multiple video chats between Ahlbrand and her boyfriend, who is an inmate at the Boone County Detention Center. During the video calls, Ahlbrand said she couldn’t find her marijuana “snacks” and allegedly suggested an 18-month-old child had eaten them.

She showed her boyfriend photos of the child who “appeared to be under the influence and incoherent,” according to the sheriff’s office. The two laughed at the photos.

During the same May 10 video call, Ahlbrand allegedly went into the baby’s room and performed sex acts on herself in front of the child, according to the sheriff’s office’s statement. Ahlbrand and her boyfriend had another video call on Saturday, during which she allegedly performed sex acts on herself in front of the child again.

Ahlbrand was charged with sexual abuse involving a victim under 12 and criminal abuse involving a victim under 12, according to jail records. She was taken to the Boone County Detention Center and held on a $250,000 bond.

Then, further down, the article has the following image from Facebook, complete with the mugshot of Miss Ahlbrand:[1]As of 9:57 PM EDT on Thursday, May 20, 2021, Miss Ahlbrand’s mugshot was still posted on the Herald-Leader’s website. Update! As of 7:05 AM EDT, on Friday, May 21, 2021, Miss … Continue reading

Now, I have to ask: under which of the three criteria listed in the McClatchy policy, was Miss Ahlbrand’s mugshot posted in the Herald-Leader:

  • Is there an urgent threat to the community?
  • Is this person a public official or the suspect in a hate crime?
  • Is this a serial killer suspect or a high-profile crime?

Miss Ahlbrand doesn’t appear to be an urgent threat to the community; her alleged crimes were of a personal nature, and there is nothing in either the Herald-Leader article or the BooneCounty Sheriff’s Department Facebook page to indicate that she has been released. The Sheriff’s Department stated that Miss Ahlbrand is “currently lodged at the Boone County Detention Center and is currently held on a $250,000 cash bond. That was posted at 7:18 PM on Wednesday, May 19th, so it is possible that she subsequently made bail.

Miss Ahlbrand is not a public official, nor charged with a hate crime.

Miss Ahlbrans is not a serial killer suspect, and, as far as a “high profile” crime is concerned, it sure doesn’t seem to be.

The McClatchy policy states that:

McClatchy will not publish crime mugshots — online or in print, from any newsroom or content-producing team — unless approved by an editor. To be clear, this means that in addition to photos accompanying text stories, McClatchy will not publish “Most wanted” or “Mugshot galleries” in slide-show, video or print.

Any exception to this policy must be approved by an editor.

I shall assume, therefore, that an editor approved it. According to the Herald-Leader, the article author, Jeremy Chisenhall, is a reporter, not an editor. That leaves:

  • Peter Baniak, Executive Editor and General Manager;
  • Deedra Lawhead, Deputy Editor, Digital;
  • Brian Simms, Deputy Editor, Presentation:, or
  • John Stamper, Deputy Editor, Accountability

to have approved the publication of Miss Ahlbrand’s mug shot.[2]I left out the two Sports Editors, whom, one would assume, wouldn’t be involved in this. Who did so, and why? Looking at the McClatchy criteria, I fail to see where Miss Ahlbrand fits.

Oh, but wait, I can see one way in which she fits.

Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness.

At least to judge by her photograph, Miss Ahlbrand is not a person of color, though it is at least arguable that the crime of which she is accused is indicative of mental illness.

Is that it? Is the Herald-Leader on some kind of crusade, conscious or otherwise, to publish the mugshots of white suspects, but not of non-whites? I do not know, because, brilliant as I am, I still cannot read other people’s minds. But make no mistake here: such is at least a reasonable conclusion based on the empirical evidence.

References

References
↑1 As of 9:57 PM EDT on Thursday, May 20, 2021, Miss Ahlbrand’s mugshot was still posted on the Herald-Leader’s website. Update! As of 7:05 AM EDT, on Friday, May 21, 2021, Miss Ahlbrand’s mugshot is still posted with the story. I had notified the Herald-Leader, the article author, Jeremy Chisenhall, and the Editor, Peter Baniak, via Twitter, of this inconsistency at 10:12 PM EDT on Thursday.
↑2 I left out the two Sports Editors, whom, one would assume, wouldn’t be involved in this.
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Journolism: The Lexington Herald-Leader, which eschews publishing mugshots of black suspects, published five photos of white criminals

For some reason I have been unable to find the text version of McClatchy’s new mugshot policy online, but I was able to find this photo of it. The Kansas City Star, a McClatchy newspaper did mention it, as have several tweets, so I’m going to consider the image I found of it to be accurate.

This leads me to a couple of questions. Why did the Lexington Herald-Leader decline to publish the mugshot of Juanyah J Clay in its story on Mr Clay being sought on a murder charge and still being on the loose? Surely a man already out on bond, and then accused of murder, would fit the definition of being “an urgent threat to the community”. Publishing Mr Clay’s mugshot might have helped the Lexington Police Department locate and arrest Mr Clay, of a reader spotted him.

Was he dangerous? The Herald-Leader reported, after Mr Clay had been captured:

Juanyah Jamar Clay, 19, was arrested and booked at the Lexington-Fayette County Detention Center Tuesday evening after police said he was wanted for the alleged murder of 26-year-old Bryan D. Greene. Greene was found shot to death in January inside his residence at Eastridge Apartments, police said.

Clay was concealing three handguns on him at the time of his arrest, according to an arrest citation. He also had nearly 3.7 ounces of marijuana, more than 10 Percocet pills, cash and a digital scale with him. The officer who filled out Clay’s arrest citation said all the items were indicative of drug trafficking.

According to jail records, Clay faces eight charges: murder, carrying a concealed weapon, giving an officer false identifying information, receiving a stolen gun, tampering with a prison monitoring device, trafficking in less than 8 ounces of marijuana, trafficking in opiates, and violating conditions of release.

Doesn’t really sound like a very nice guy, does he?

McClatchy’s policy states:

To address these concerns, McClatchy will not publish crime mugshots — online or in print, from any newsroom or content-producing team — unless approved by an editor. To be clear, this means that in addition to photos accompanying text stories, McClatchy will not publish “Most wanted” or “Mugshot galleries” in slide-show, video or print.

Any exception to this policy must be approved by an editor.

Which raises the question: why did the Herald-Leader publish the mugshot of Ronnie Helton, leaving it up for at least several days, before taking it out of the article? An editor had to have approved publishing Mr Helton’s mugshot for publication on April 23, 2021, and an editor must have approved taking it back down again sometime before May 16th. Mr Helton was already in custody, so he could not have been “an urgent threat to the community,” he was not a “public official or the suspect in a hate crime,” nor a serial killer or high-profile case suspect? (Nothing in the small town of Corbin is high-profile!)

Of course, the McClatchy policy states that “inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness,” and Mr Helton is not a ‘person of color.’

Which brings me to this:

Dozens of convicted murderers to get a new chance at parole in KY after policy change

By Bill Estep | May 18, 2021 | 9:59 AM EST

Clawvern Jacobs kidnapped a college student, Judy Ann Howard, in Knott County in 1986 and beat her to death. Kentucky Department of Corrections. Click to enlarge.

Several convicted murderers who had been ordered to spend the rest of their lives behind bars will get another chance at leaving prison under a policy change by the Kentucky Parole Board.Under the old rule, the board sometimes issued a “serve out” order at the first parole hearing for people serving sentences of life or life without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

Inmates are eligible for a parole hearing after 20 years on a life sentence.

An order to serve out meant the person would never get another parole hearing, dying in prison absent a court decision changing his or her conviction or sentence, or a pardon or commutation.

Last month, the board changed the rule to say it would no longer issue serve out orders at the first parole hearing of inmates serving sentences of life or life without parole for at least 25 years, though it could still do so at their second hearing, according to the Department of Corrections.

Donald Bartley was convicted of taking part in the 1985 murder of a University of Kentucky student in Letcher County.

There’s much more at the link, in describing the policy change. The part that gets me? What my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal published five mugshots provided by the Kentucky Department of Corrections of convicted murderers who might benefit from the change in policy, and like the published-and-then-gone mugshot of Ronnie Helton, all of the convicts pictured were white.

Jeffrey B. Coffey was convicted of shooting a young couple to death in Pulaski County in 1995.

I would not normally copy and publish all of these photos, but am doing so as documentary evidence; this is what the Herald-Leader has done.

The story noted that there are 22 convicted criminals who could benefit from the change in policy with parole hearings this year, and 23 others who will be now be eligible for parole hearings in the next several years. I’m pretty sure that I’m good enough at math to realize that’s a total of 45 inmates who may benefit, and the odds that all 45 are white would seem to be pretty small.

Now, there is a difference here: the photos published in the article are all of convicted criminals, not of suspects, and all of those convicts are murderers. But, in publishing these photos, was not the Herald-Leader compromising any chances that they would have of getting a job if any of them are released? Not all of them are of an age in which working again would be unlikely.

Stephanie Spitser strangled her 10-year-old stepson to death in Clay County. The crime happened in November 1992.

I have no sympathy for these killers, and believe that none of them should be released before the day that their victims come back to life. But what I see is what I have suspected before: the Herald-Leader is willing to publish mugshots of criminals who happen to be white.

The Sacramento Bee, the lead McClatchy newspaper, wrote of its policy — which was announced before McClatchy’s in general — that:

Publishing these photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

Let’s be blunt about this: the editors of the Bee were saying that such publication would show a ‘disproportionate’ number of suspected offenders would be “people of color,” and they did not want the photos of too many black or Hispanic offenders “perpetuating stereotypes” that blacks and/or Hispanics were more likely to commit crimes. It almost looks as though the editors of the Herald-Leader are trying to influence people into believing that murders are primarily committed by white people.

Leif Halvorsen was convicted in the murders of three people in Lexington, Ky., in January 1983.

If you read the entire article, you’ll see that there is a case to be made that the ‘serve out’ orders previously given by the Parole Board aren’t quite legal.

I have no sympathy for the Parole Board, none at all. Cody Alan Arnett was convicted for two robberies in Lexington, on August 7, 2015, and sentenced to five years in prison for each offense. As early as June 26, 2018 he was recommended for parole, and was scheduled to be released on August 1, 2018. This would mean that he served a week less than three years for his (supposedly) consecutive five year sentences. Within two months of his release, Mr Arnett was arrested for the forcible rape at knifepoint of a Georgetown College coed, at a time in which he could have and should have still been in prison. Mr Arnett had five violent felony offenses on his record. Mr Arnett, if he was indeed the rapist, was only able to rape his victim because the Parole Board let him out early. On September 18, 2018, the Herald-Leader published Mr Arnett’s mugshot, but, to be fair about it, that was before the Sacramento Bee article cited above. Then again, the Herald-Leader did publish the mugshot of a criminal suspect, another white guy, on July 21, 2020, more than two weeks after the Bee’s article, though before McClatchy announced its policy in August.

If the editors are truly committed to not ‘disproportionately’ harming ‘people of color,’ perhaps we should ask why the Herald Leader publishes the names of criminal suspects. Let’s be brutally honest again: just seeing the name of Juanyah J Clay, and then the next day as Juanyah Jamar Clay, I knew that the suspect was almost certainly a ‘person of color.’ More, it isn’t the mugshots which hurt, but the names themselves. If Mr Clay happens to be acquitted, and then goes looking for a legitimate job, any human resources department that is worth anything is going to do a Google search of his name, not his photograph, because his name is by far the easier search item.

If Ryan Dontese Jones, is acquitted of the several charges against him, charges reported by the Herald-Leader, when he goes to apply for a job after all is said and done, any company with a responsible human resources department is going to do a Google search for his name, and they’ll find that story, even though the newspaper declined to include Mr Jones’ mugshot.

“Thank you for your application, Mr Jones. We will be in touch with you.”

Journalism supposedly involves finding, and publishing, the truth for that media-outlet’s readers or viewers. But McClatchy in general, and the Herald-Leader specifically, want to obscure the truth, because in some cases, the truth is not politically correct, the truth is not what the bosses want to be the truth.

We had already noted, on May 10th, that the Lexington city government’s shooting investigations page listed 31 then current shooting investigations, in which 24 of the victims were listed as black, 3 as Hispanic, and 4 as white. That, in itself, ought to be news, in that the city is roughly 70.6% white and 14.5% black.

But rather than being news, rather than being something actual journalists would want to investigate, it is something that McClatchy and the Herald-Leader do not want reported, and do want to hide. That’s not journalism, that’s journolism, and yes, I will always call them out on it.

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LOL! Journolism strikes again at the Lexington Herald-Leader!

And here I wondered if the Lexington Herald-Leader ever paid any attention to my articles!

I noted, on April 23rd, that the Lexington Herald-Leader does not like posting photographs of accused criminals, even when those suspects are still at large and publishing the photo might help the police capture him. But the paper surprised me when they did publish such a photograph:

Kentucky man allegedly tried to kidnap 3-year-old boy, offered $1,000 to buy him

By Bill Estep | April 23, 2021 | 9:41 AM EDT

Ronnie L. Helton was charged in April 2021 with attempting to kidnap a child. Whitley County Detention Center. Photo copied to my site from the Herald-Leader.

A Kentucky man who allegedly tried to kidnap a 3-year-old boy as he played in the yard has been charged in federal court.

A grand jury indicted Ronnie L. Helton, of Corbin, Thursday on one charged of attempted kidnapping.

Helton, 73, was arrested on state charges hours after an April 7 incident in Corbin in which a woman named Kristy Baker told police a man had tried to take her grandchild.

Baker said the boy was playing on a trailer sitting next to a fence around her yard when a man parked across the street and walked over to the child, according to the citation in the case.

The photo of the suspect was posted on the Herald-Leader’s website in the original article; I saved that photo to my computer and my website. I notified, via Twitter, the Herald-Leader of my article, and my point:

Peter Baniak, notified in the tweet as @pbaniak, is the Editor of the newspaper.

Well, I had reason to check on the newspaper’s original article again today, and shazamm!, at least as of 5:36 PM EDT on Sunday, May 16, 2021, the mugshot of the suspect has disappeared. I did a Google search, to see if perhaps the charges had been dropped against Mr Helton, but found nothing to indicate that. Many other media outlets still had the suspect’s mugshot on their websites, but the Herald-Leader took it off of their site, and had done so rather recently.

This leads to a few obvious questions:

  • Why did the Herald-Leader post the suspect’s mugshot in the first place, when they had been previously declining to post police mugshots, including one of a suspect at large, one which the publication just might have aided the Lexington Police Department in his apprehension?
  • Who took the decision to publish this one suspect’s mugshot, despite the fact that the paper apparently did not do so normally?
  • Is the Herald-Leader’s apparent policy the newspaper’s own, or was this dictated by McClatchy?
  • Why did the paper wait at least several days to remove the mugshot after being notified of the departure from normal procedure?
  • Why, since the mugshot was available for several days, did the paper decide lately to remove it?

We have previously noted the newspaper’s editorial positions, and just how out-of-touch the editors are with their readership in central and eastern Kentucky.

The Herald-Leader is not the only media source in central and eastern Kentucky. In my previous articles on the newspaper’s declining to publish mugshots, I was usually able to get the photos from the websites of other Lexington media outlets. Those outlets, normally television stations, which are visually oriented, more complete information to their viewers than the newspaper is to its readers.[1]My subscription is digital only; I live so far out in the sticks that physical delivery of the print newspaper is not available.

Perhaps the editors of the newspaper have no choice; perhaps this was dictated to them by McClatchy. But the newspaper has transformed journalism into journolism, withholding information from its readers, for whatever reasons it has. This is not a good look.

References

References
↑1 My subscription is digital only; I live so far out in the sticks that physical delivery of the print newspaper is not available.
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Political correctness in the Lexington Herald-Leader and McClatchy

We have previously noted that the Lexington Herald-Leader apparently does not post photos of criminal suspects, — though an exception was recently made for a white suspect — even though the other city media do, and that McClatchy Company, which owns the Herald-Leader, apparently does not either. So, when I spotted the story below on the Herald-Leader’s website, I pretty much knew what I’d find:

Bartender attacked after woman complains drink wasn’t strong enough, Kentucky cops say

By Mike Stunson | May 11, 2021 | 12:58 PM | Updated May 11, 2021 | 6:48 PM

A bartender at a family-friendly Kentucky business needed extensive facial surgeries after being assaulted by a woman complaining about drinks, cops say.

The alleged assault happened April 2 outside Main Event, a popular entertainment center that features bowling and arcade games in Louisville, according to a citation.

Ciara Pardue, 24, ordered drinks from the business and later complained there was no alcohol in them, an arrest citation states. The bartender stated there was alcohol in the drinks and said a shot could be added for an additional price, police said.

Pardue angrily refused, and police said the bartender did not have more issues with the woman until later in the night.

The bartender went outside with two other employees for a smoke break around last call, and they were followed by Pardue and an accomplice, police say.

Ciara Pardue (Source: Louisville Metro Corrections)

The story continues to tell the reader that Miss Pardue’s “accomplice” repeatedly struck Rachel Hendricks, the bartender, and then Miss Pardue struck Miss Hendricks with an unspecified object. The Herald-Leader website reproduced Miss Hendricks Facebook posting, which shows her injuries, but, of course, did not post Miss Pardue’s mugshot. However, WDBR did, as did WAVE-TV. Judging from Miss Hendrick’s Facebook post on the incident, in which she wrote, “Hopefully these girls rot in jail for what they did,” the “accomplice” was also female.

Mike Stunson, who wrote the story, has a mcclatchy.com rather than a herald-leader.com email address.

So, why did the Lexington Herald-Leader put this story, out of Louisville, on its website? Louisville is out of the newspaper’s normal circulation area, though there are probably some kentucky.com subscribers in the Louisville area, because if there’s one thing the Herald-Leader does well, it’s cover University of Kentucky sports. Still, why cover the news if you aren’t going to cover the news?

The assault against Miss Henricks occurred at the beginning of April; the assault itself was no longer news. The news story was the arrest of Miss Pardue, but the Herald-Leader specifically, and, apparently, McClatchy in general, didn’t cover the entire thing, because censoring a mugshot is not covering the entire thing.

“The victim lost some eye sight in her right eye, which may never return, and numbness to her teeth and lip,” police said in the arrest citation.

Pardue was charged with first-degree assault Monday and was scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.

“It’s just sad, sad that honestly my face will never be the same,” Hendricks wrote on Facebook a week after the incident. “I’ll have to get fillers in my face because fat won’t grow on top on the plates. I may never regain feeling in the front part of my mouth. And all this because of what? Because of a shot? because of a tip? Because someone was ‘too busy’ to come the first time they called for security? I want to place blame (and) I want answers to why this happened but I don’t think I’m going to get any. I’m just ready to put this behind me and get back to work and play with my kids like normal.”

Miss Pardue was charged with first degree assault, a Class B felony under KRS §508.010, which carries a sentence of “not less than ten (10) years nor more than twenty (20) years;” under KRS § 532.060. There’s no telling how much time she will stay in prison, or even if she will be convicted. If the evidence against her is strong enough, she’ll probably plead down to a lesser offense. But if the media publish her photo, wouldn’t that give Kentuckians a greater chance of recognizing her and maintaining their distance from her? Is not the McClatchy policy of not printing mugshots endangering the public?

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Political correctness in the city of Lexington

We have previously noted that the Lexington Herald-Leader apparently does not post photos of criminal suspects, — though an exception was recently made for a white suspect — even though the other city media do, and that McClatchy Company, which owns the Herald-Leader, apparently does not either.

Lexington Police Department shooting investigations chart; screen capture from city website.

Well, it seems that the Lexington city government is just as eaten up with political correctness as its newspaper. The unreadably small chart to the right, which you can expand by clicking on the image, is a screen capture from the city government’s Shooting investigations page, taken at 4:02 PM EDT on Monday, May 10th. If you expand it, you will see that it lists the victims’ sex, race and age, along with the suspect, if known. Of 31 shooting investigations, 24 of the victims are listed as black, 3 as Hispanic, and 4 as white.

Lexington Police Department shooting investigations chart; screen capture from city website.

But when you come to the city’s Homicide investigations page, on a different page of the same website — the two pages are linked — shown on the left, you’ll notice, if you click on the screen capture and expand it, the victims’ sex and race are not included. The Shootings investigation page excludes homicide victims.

I wonder why that is.

Now, you can get that information on the website original, in some cases, by clicking on the crime scene location. Nevertheless, I find it an odd omission, considering that the information is posted on the shootings investigations page; why exclude information that the police clearly have?[1]Note that the investigation of the shooting on January 31, 2021, on the 100 block of West Vine Street, has both a surviving shooting victim and the murder of Lonnie Oxendine. Are we to somehow think … Continue reading Why do the Lexington Police and city government censor information they clearly have? Why, if they are going to make the information posted for plain public view in the first place, do they deliberately withhold statistical information?

Well, I think that I can tell you. Lexington is, according to 2019 Census Department guesstimates, 74.9% white, 14.6% black and 7.2% Hispanic (of any race). If the city puts out too much information, then an [insert slang term for the rectum here] like me might look at the numbers and ask something like, ‘If the city is only 14.6% black, why are 77.4% of the shooting victims black? If the Lexington Police Department told us the race of the homicide victims, would we find a similar racial disparity?[2]According to the Homicide investigations page, all 15 of the listed victims — the page had not been updated with the most recent homicide — were killed by gunfire.

Lexington isn’t Chicago or Philadelphia yet, though sometimes it seems as though the criminal element there is taking that as a personal challenge. But if the city’s violence problems are ever going to be solved, they have to be solved by addressing the problem properly, by recognizing what and where the problem lays, and that’s something the city, and its newspaper, just won’t do.

References

References
↑1 Note that the investigation of the shooting on January 31, 2021, on the 100 block of West Vine Street, has both a surviving shooting victim and the murder of Lonnie Oxendine. Are we to somehow think that the Lexington Police recorded the race, sex and age of the surviving shooting victim but not that of the man who perished?
↑2 According to the Homicide investigations page, all 15 of the listed victims — the page had not been updated with the most recent homicide — were killed by gunfire.
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The Lexington Herald-Leader finally publishes a photo of a criminal suspect Could it be that because, this time, the accused is white rather than black?

We have previously noted that the Lexington Herald-Leader does not like posting photographs of accused criminals, even when those suspects are still at large and publishing the photo might help the police capture him.

So, we were somewhat surprised when the newspaper did publish such a photograph:

Kentucky man allegedly tried to kidnap 3-year-old boy, offered $1,000 to buy him

By Bill Estep | April 23, 2021 | 9:41 AM EDT

Ronnie L. Helton was charged in April 2021 with attempting to kidnap a child. Whitley County Detention Center

A Kentucky man who allegedly tried to kidnap a 3-year-old boy as he played in the yard has been charged in federal court.

A grand jury indicted Ronnie L. Helton, of Corbin, Thursday on one charged of attempted kidnapping.

Helton, 73, was arrested on state charges hours after an April 7 incident in Corbin in which a woman named Kristy Baker told police a man had tried to take her grandchild.

Baker said the boy was playing on a trailer sitting next to a fence around her yard when a man parked across the street and walked over to the child, according to the citation in the case.

There are more details of the case and the arrest at the Herald-Leader original.

This is one of the times I miss my late best friend, who grew up in Corbin. He would have turned 67 years old a month and a half ago, and, Corbin being the small town it is, might even have known the accused. He used to refer to the paper as the Lexington Herald-Liberal, and if it was true in the past, it is even more true today.

Mr Helton is, of course, presumed to be innocent until proven guilty, and perhaps the presumption of innocence could explain the Herald-Leader’s reluctance to publish photos of other suspects; after all, suspects’ photos will almost certainly lead to negative consequences for them locally in the event that some of them are acquitted or the charges are dropped! But such a consideration must not have been applied to Mr Helton, and in a much smaller town like Corbin, 2019 guesstimated population 7,202, he is likely to be far more widely known than in a city like Lexington, 2019 guesstimate population 323,152.

Mr Helton’s photograph was provided by the Whitley County Detention Center, and thus was freely available. But, as we noted in a previous story, the photo of then at-large suspect Juanyah Clay was published by all of the other Lexington media, and was available from both the Lexington city government and on the Lexington Police Department’s Facebook page. The Herald-Leader would not have had to pay for it, nor was bandwidth a problem, given that the newspaper’s website included stock photos of the police stringing up crime scene tape.

There was a stock photo in the story on the charges against Mr Helton as well, of two hands sticking through jail cell bars.

So, why not publish the photos of other suspects when they are freely available? As I speculated previously, I am guessing that it is because Juanyah Clay is black. The published photo of Mr Helton, who is obviously white, might not be proof that my speculation was correct, but it certainly provides evidence of it.

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An interesting juxtaposition #BlackLivesMatter protesters celebrate the conviction of Derek Chauvin, but don't help police solve murders of black Americans by other black Americans

There they were, two stories, side by side on the Lexington Herald-Leader’s website main page:

Lexington Herald-Leader website main page, 8:36 AM EDT, April 21, 2021. Screenshot by DRP.

Two stories, one about the glee being felt by some over the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd, and one about the black lives that really don’t matter to the #BlackLivesMatter activists:

‘Justice can prevail.’ Group gathers in Lexington after verdict in Derek Chauvin trial

By Karla Ward | April 20, 2021 | 7:43 PM EDT | Updated April 20, 2021 | 8:11 PM EDT

A group that has been protesting since last summer against police violence gathered Tuesday night in downtown Lexington to hear the verdict announced in the trial of Derek Chauvin, who was found guilty on all counts in the death of George Floyd.

April Taylor, a member of LPD Accountability and a prominent protest organizer in Lexington, was emotional after the verdict was read. She addressed the group of a few dozen that gathered in front of the Fayette County courthouses.

Taylor said Tuesday night that she was grateful for the guilty verdict, but that police reforms are needed to prevent more deaths.

“I am worried about what will happen on appeal,” Taylor said. And she said, as a tear rolled down her cheek, “There are so many other people who have lost their lives who did not get justice.”

Taylor hopes that the verdict in Chauvin’s case will encourage people to keep fighting because “there are moments when we can have wins, when justice can prevail.”

It was only a few days ago that we noted Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers and his complaint:

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

The other article noted the difficulties in obtaining justice on Lexington’s mean streets:

‘Tired of burying one another.’ Families of Lexington homicide victims rally to end violence

By Jeremy Chisenhall | April 20, 2021 | 8:14 PM EDT | Updated April 20, 2021 | 9:42 PM EDT

Concerned about a recent spike in fatal shootings, Lexington community members on Tuesday gathered to say they’re “sick and tired of burying one another.”

That was Pastor Joseph Owens’ message as he spoke to other residents gathered in the parking lot outside Shiloh Baptist Church. Lexington has had 15 homicides in 2021, all of which have been shootings, according to police data.

An early spike in shootings this year follows a record-setting year for homicides in 2020. Lexington reported 34 homicides last year. Some of the people at Tuesday’s rally were concerned that violence involving gangs and other groups is a significant contributor to the spike in shootings.

It was just two days ago that we noted that Lexington’s 15 homicides by April 18th put the city on a path toward 51 homicides for 2021, and a 15.78 per 100,000 population homicide rate. But, at least the Herald-Leader regards homicides as newsworthy, something The Philadelphia Inquirer does not. Of course, when Lexington has an average of one murder a week, while the City of Brotherly Love averages 1.4 per day, I suppose I can see why the Inquirer doesn’t bother.

Today’s Inquirer? Their website main page was filled with articles of gloating and joy that Mr Chauvin was convicted:

You know what I didn’t see on the Inquirer’s main page? I didn’t see a single story about the the people who were murdered in Philadelphia last night. The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page noted that there had been 154 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love by the end of April 20th, a 31.62% increase over the same date last year — and 2020 being a leap year, April 20th of 2020 was the 111th day of the year, not the 110th as it is this year — and three more homicides than just the day before.[1]It’s worth noting that very white Uber-feminist Amanda Marcotte, herself a resident of South Philadelphia, never writes about the black-on-black homicide rate in her adopted home town, but sure … Continue reading

But that didn’t matter to the editors of the Inquirer. It didn’t matter that former Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey used to lament the “no snitchin'” culture which hindered the police in finding and arresting the thugs who killed so many Philadelphians, it doesn’t matter that the city had a higher homicide rate than Chicago, it doesn’t matter that the vast majority of the homicide victims are black, because #BlackLivesMatter only means that black lives matter to the #woke of the Inquirer newsroom when they are taken by white policemen.

We noted, last October, in an article entitled We need to stop pretending that #BlackLivesMatter, because in the City of Brotherly Love, it’s very apparent that they don’t, that:

(A)s of 11:59 PM EDT on October 21th, 391 souls had been sent to their eternal rewards. That isn’t the record, of course, but 2007 is the base year on the Current Crime Statistics website, and that was the number of people killed that year in Philly. This year has now matched that total . . . with 71 days left in the year.

The math is simple: 391 people killed in 295 days so far equals 1.325 people killed every single day. With 71 days left in the year, at that rate the city should see another 94 people sent to their deaths before the ball drops in New York City.

By October 21, 2020, summer had been over for a month, and summer is the season when most murders occur in our major cities. But the math I did, 391 + 94 = 485, turned out to be short, as the daily homicide rate in Philadelphia increased, and 499 souls were sent early to their eternal rewards. And Philly’s homicide rate of 1.40 dead every single day, in just the depths of winter and the first month of spring is higher than it was that October day last year.

But that’s not news to the inquirer! Oh, there was an article by columnist Will Bunch blaming the increase in homicides on increased gun ownership, but the increase in black-on-black murders in Philly was never mentioned. As always, the problem was “gun violence,” rather than the culture and attitudes of the bad guys who used the guns. Malcolm Jenkins, formerly a safety with the Philadelphia Eagles, and Natasha Cloud, a guard with the Washington Mystics, wrote an article published yesterday blaming the police, even though deaths of blacks at the hands of the police are minuscule compared to the deaths of black Americans at the hands of other black Americans.

Michele Kilpatrick, one of District Attorney Larry Krasner’s minions, came ever-so-close to describing the problem:

In 2020, there were four victims of shootings in the Philadelphia Police Department’s 5th District, which includes the affluent, majority-white neighborhoods of Roxborough and Manayunk. Just a few miles away in the 14th District, which includes the low-income, majority-Black neighborhood of Germantown, there were 121 victims of shootings. That disparity is not new: In 2018, the 14th District had 20 times the number of shooting victims than the 5th. In 2016, there were 80 shooting victims in the 14th and none in the 5th.

We know that proactive policing policies like stop-and-frisk, which sometimes yields unlicensed or unregistered guns, are not the reason shootings have remained so low in Chestnut Hill — because the same policies have consistently failed to make shootings also rare in Germantown.

Instead, throughout Philadelphia and cities nationwide, generations of low-income Black and Latino residents have lived and died in communities that have been reduced to symbols in the public imagination — the South Bronx, Compton, South Side of Chicago — as we mistake failed policies for failed people and resign ourselves to the idea that certain types of places and people are just inherently dangerous.

Occam’s Razor is:

a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities.

Miss Kilpatrick is apparently not a fan of William of Occam, because she, like so many others, feels the need to go beyond the simple, go beyond the obvious, and find all sorts of reasons why bad people are bad people beyond them simply being bad people! She wants to blame poverty, but I grew up poor, grew up without a father, and it didn’t lead me to kill anyone. I didn’t have the community services she advocates, yet I wasn’t out committing crimes or shooting at people.

Mt Sterling, Kentucky is a small town, and we had something called October Court Day. On Court day, the third Monday of the month, the country folk would come to town and set up along Locust Street and other areas on the south side of town, to sell and trade for their products. On two separate October Court Days, I walked up North Maysville Street, in full view of where the city Police Department used to be on Broadway, across the street from the Montgomery County Courthouse, carrying long guns that I had bought, when I was still in high school . . . and nobody cared, because nobody thought that I was going to shoot anybody.[2]Sadly, Court Day has degenerated into nothing more than a professional vendor-driven flea market.

Why? Because everybody knew that my mother had taught me right!

There’s no way my solutions are politically correct, and many of the Special Snowflakes™ on the left who read it will be absolutely triggered, but I, of course, don’t care; it’s still the truth.

And that’s what it all boils down to: bad kids are brought up by bad parents, assuming that anybody brings them up at all. Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old in Chicago, is stone-cold graveyard dead after being shot by a police officer, because young Mr Toledo was outside, consorting with a 21-year-old convicted criminal, and fleeing with a gun, at 2:30 in the morning. The officer thought that Mr Toledo had turned on him with a gun, though the body camera footage shows Mr Toledo had dropped the weapon, but the real fault is that his parents were letting him run around at 2:30 on a Monday morning.

Miss Kilpatrick got it wrong: the problem really is failed people, failed people in the neighborhoods she mentioned, the South Bronx, Compton, South Side of Chicago, and the ones she left out, Philly’s own Strawberry Mansion or Nicetown, because they are being brought up, are growing up, in a culture which glamorizes violence, which doesn’t teach right from wrong, and in which “street cred” is of major importance.

Well, I’m just enough of an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to tell you what the real solution is. It won’t be politically correct in the slightest, and will doubtlessly offend some people, but I’m retired, and can’t be ‘canceled,’ can’t be fired from a job for telling you the truth. They key to understanding the causes of violence is understanding what is most important to teenaged boys and young men: pussy!

There is nothing teenaged boys and twenty-something men think about more than sex. I know; I used to be a teenaged boy and twenty-something young man, sometime just after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. The greatest reward for young men of those ages is getting laid, and therein lays the key: when young girls reward the behavior of the bad boys with pussy, bad behavior is incentivized, and good behavior devalued. When the gang-bangers get laid, and the nerds do not, the girls wind up with some exciting times, but with guys who will never provide any sort of reasonable and safe future for them.

The key is the education of teenaged girls, teaching them that the nerds they are shunning are the guys who will be there when they get into their thirties and forties, the guys who will actually be fathers to their children, and the guys who will help provide a solid and reliable middle-class home for them. They will be the men who can be with them every day, and not be spending five-to-ten years away in Graterford or Eddyville prisons.

In the end, the solution to the problem is black mothers, teaching their black daughters how their behavior affects their neighborhoods, their cities, and all of society. The black mothers of Lexington and Philadelphia and Chicago and St Louis, mothers who now have a 69.4% out-of-wedlock birth rate, need to realize and teach their daughters that there is a better way of life than the ones the mothers have, need to rear their daughters to do what’s right for themselves and their neighborhoods and their eventual children rather than just what is exciting in the moment.

There’s no way that is politically correct, and many of the Special Snowflakes™ on the left who read it will be absolutely triggered, but I, of course, don’t care; it’s still the truth.[3]Trigger: to cause an intense and usually negative emotional reaction in (someone)

References

References
↑1 It’s worth noting that very white Uber-feminist Amanda Marcotte, herself a resident of South Philadelphia, never writes about the black-on-black homicide rate in her adopted home town, but sure jumps on the Derek Chauvin bandwagon.
↑2 Sadly, Court Day has degenerated into nothing more than a professional vendor-driven flea market.
↑3 Trigger: to cause an intense and usually negative emotional reaction in (someone)