The U.S. suffers under a soft-on-crime wave among prosecutors

January 9, 2024

Many people today apparently do not understand the concept of law and order. Our country has a body of laws that were enacted to prohibit conduct that is harmful to the people and to our country.

When those laws are broken, our justice system provides for penalties to be imposed on the guilty. They teach the wrongdoer a lesson and serve to discourage people from indulging in the unlawful activities.

However, these penalties and deterrents only work when they are implemented as the law requires. 

Police and other law enforcement personnel have the duty to find those who have broken laws, and charge them with criminal offenses. Certain positions that are filled by election and by appointment exist to enforce these laws and to apply charges and penalties as appropriate, such as prosecuting attorneys and judges. 

These persons have the sworn duty to apply the laws without fear or favor. Today, and not for the first time, we find public officials who do not apply all of the laws that exist, and when they do, they are sometimes not done fairly.

An article in U.S. News last month explained that there was a tidal wave of progressive prosecutor victories several years ago that campaigned on policies that seek different types of penalties than now exist. These largely consist of counseling and treatment regimens, monetary fines, parole or community service, rather than jail time. 

“A Republican state attorney general is asking members of Congress to probe a Justice Department grant that he says benefits a ‘radically progressive’ group responsible for training prosecutors in ways to implement a soft-on-crime approach to their work,” a Fox News online report begins.

Letters to Congress were sent by Missouri’s Attorney General Andrew Bailey asking members "to further investigate and eliminate funding for programs that are counter-productive to public safety" and that "aid or encourage prosecutors to abuse discretion by refusing to bring criminals to justice."

In the letters Bailey described a situation where St. Louis circuit attorney Kim Gardner, who he described as "a progressive soft-on-crime prosecutor," released a repeat criminal on bail. The man then hit a young girl with his vehicle at a high speed, resulting in her having her legs amputated.

After much criticism and evidence of dereliction of duty, Gardner resigned from the office.

A case in Austin, Texas, features District Attorney Joseph Garza. Roberto Rangel was arrested for his 7th DUI, that resulted in the deaths of two people in their early 20s. But Garza reduced the charges and bond amount, allowing Rangel back on the streets. 

One of the most notorious of these soft-on-crime prosecutors is Los Angeles County, California District Attorney George Gascon, who was elected in 2020 and is up for reelection this year.

After just one year in office, criticism of Gascon was so intense that a recall campaign was begun. While it failed, more than a half-million signatures have been collected for another recall.

Gascon now faces a challenge at the polls from an attorney that works in his office. John McKinney said Gascon “values the rights of offenders more than victims.”

He added that a lot of crime in Los Angeles County is “not committed out of desperation,” but because “people see an opportunity” due to the soft-on-crime atmosphere created by Gascon.

“We’re down 250 attorneys from what we’re budgeted for,” he said. “We have been handcuffed, gagged … and told to do things that are counterproductive and counter to justice. We’ve had enough. We want change.”

We have seen a dramatic and dangerous move away from holding people to account for their criminal behavior.

These idiotic ideas have produced a significant rise in crime in some cities and states. Victims are not being given the satisfaction of seeing those who have robbed them, assaulted them, damaged their property, or perhaps injured or killed a family member get the satisfaction of the guilty parties being punished.

People in important positions in the justice system don’t punish many instances of wrong-doing, but try to punish some people when they haven’t been convicted or even charged. These people also want to make things more difficult for law enforcement personnel and agencies, and even sometimes support closing down prisons.

And then there are those who use criminal prosecutions for ill. While former President Donald Trump may indeed be guilty of the crimes he allegedly committed years ago, why have those charges only been brought now as Trump seeks the presidency in 2024?

And why did the Maine Secretary of State — Shenna Bellows, a Democrat — decide that she is capable of determining guilt, and that she has the authority to determine that Trump is guilty of “insurrection,” even though he has not been found guilty of it in a court, or even officially charged with the crime?

If you don’t like some laws, you may work to change them, but you must not be allowed to ignore them. You must be required act properly when you are in an official capacity.

If the people are expected to honor the actions of public officials, then those officials must act honorably, legally, fairly and sensibly.

The Democrats are moving the country in the wrong direction

September 27, 2020

We see liberal/Democrat prosecutors who deliberately refuse to enforce some laws, under-charge persons arrested for crimes, enact no-bail laws that release arrested persons back on the street hours after their arrest so that they can, and often do, commit more crimes. These dangerous moves are pro-criminal and anti-victim.

Liberals/Democrats also failed to curtail the crazy riots, arson and looting in well more than 100 cities that followed the killing of George Floyd in 2020 at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. This rioting, which was often defended as “mostly peaceful,” did as much as $2 billion dollars of damage to insured property, an unknown amount of damage to uninsured property, and worse, cost 15 people their lives.

Then came the not-so-brilliant idea of defunding the police, “re-imagining” law enforcement. This resulted in crime spikes in blue-run cities at shocking levels. Police officers grew tired of the lack of support, anger and violence they experienced, and took retirement or just quit working. And that contributed further to the crime sprees that still exist.

Liberal educators and school boards have been secretly changing approved and traditional curricula to include indoctrination; teaching young kids about dangerous gender transition, that boys can become girls, and girls can become boys at will, except that they say there are no such things as males and females anymore. 

Instead of teaching legitimate school subjects full time, there is the idea that everyone must use each persons’ chosen pronouns instead of their birth pronouns; mothers and fathers are now “birthing parents” and  “parents,” aunts and uncles are a “parents’ sibling”; and they falsely teach that America is filled with white oppressors mistreating the oppressed non-white minorities in what is called “Critical Race Theory.”

While China teaches its youth about math and science, the U.S. increasingly is spending less time on real education, and more time on indoctrination of “woke” ideas.

One political party is proposing radical changes to fundamentals of our Constitution and the way the nation operates. The Democrats in Congress support eliminating the Electoral College, a device created by our Founders to protect smaller states from being under the thumb of the most populous states.

Also in their tool chest of dominance, is doing away with the Senate filibuster, which Democrats have themselves used when desired. The filibuster enables the minority party to act to stop the passage of measures it believes are bad law. Without this long-time feature, the tyranny of the majority can become reality.

The Democrat leader, the President of the United States, is accusing the opposition party — the party that defends the Constitution and generally supports the current ways of doing things — of doing what his party is actually doing, which is radically attacking our democracy, our democratic republic style of government.

This party also supports weakening the election process, the security and reliability of which must be beyond question. For example, it opposes voters being required to show photo IDs that prove who they are in order to vote. 

But it also supports mailing ballots to all registered voters, even to voters who did not request a ballot, and collecting ballots by mail. It also supports voted ballots being dropped into unguarded drop boxes along the streets 24 hours a day for days on end so that anybody can dump as many “ballots” as they want.

In-person voting is the most secure method, and voting by mail is the least secure.

Other things on the Democrats’ list of accomplishments are these items, highlighted by Virginia 9th District Congressman, Republican Morgan Griffith in his weekly email communication. “In less than two short years, unified Democrat control of the Federal Government has diminished our country in ways that would astound even a pessimist,” Griffith wrote.

“Inflation has risen to levels not seen in forty years. Gas prices hit record highs earlier this year. More than two million illegal immigrants have been encountered at the southern border this fiscal year before it has even ended, not counting the significant number that have evaded detection.”

“President Biden and the liberals in Congress wreaked havoc on the economy by pouring trillions of dollars into it,” he continued. “Too many dollars chasing too few goods is the classic formula for inflation, yet Democrats persisted.”

With control of the Executive Branch and both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the Democrats could do so much to help the country. They could revise the U.S. tax code, designing it with fewer loopholes and sensible tax rates. They could have left intact our recently regained position of energy independence that would have allowed the U.S. to help provide energy to countries now buying energy from Putin’s Russia, among other things.

Instead, its control has botched the Afghanistan withdrawal that killed 13 U.S. military personnel and many local allies, allowed the highest inflation in decades, contributed to the death of many Americans from the Fentanyl flooding across the southern border, doubling the size of the Internal Revenue Service, and a new recession that shows no signs of letting up, to name a few.

And we have two more years of this disaster to come.

The push to defund police is an ill-advised and unnecessary move

For weeks the country lived in fear of being infected with and dying from the COVID-19 virus. And thousands did become infected, many suffered but survived, and more than 110,000 lost their lives.

Then suddenly, the daily focus on COVID-19 was replaced by the death of a black man at the hands of a white Minneapolis, Minnesota policeman, and the aftermath. Video of parts of the arrest of George Floyd stunned the nation, resulting in the initial firing of the policeman and three of his fellow officers, who now face criminal charges.

Peaceful protests of this death quickly turned violent, groups of protesters turned into mobs, businesses were robbed and burned, innocent people and police were attacked and injured, rioters saw strong police response, and many were arrested.

Curiously, some of the people who witnessed Floyd dying by a criminal act protested against that criminal act by committing their own criminal acts.

These riots are not about justice for an undeserved death. They are an insult to the true, conscientious protesters and to the memory they have of George Floyd. They are all about causing damage and pain for the sake of causing damage and pain.

There is no justice in burning down random buildings, looting stores for TVs and whatever else they can steal, attacking innocent bystanders and police officers, throwing bricks and water bottles at them, and killing a retired black police captain who was protecting a pawn shop that was being robbed.

Clear thinking has been told to stay-at-home, and raw emotion now controls the mobs. Some say there are outsider-anarchists whose goal is to stir violence and are fanning the flames of revolution.

New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones said in an interview,

"And violence is when an agent of the state kneels on a man's neck until all of the life is leached out of his body. Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence. And to put those things — to use the same language to describe those two things I think really — it's not moral to do that." In her mind, destroying things in response to what happened to Floyd is okay: “Destroying property … is not violence.”

Tell that to the numerous victims of rioting in Minneapolis who face damages to their businesses and other property that are said to exceed $55 million. Millions more damage has been done across the nation.

CNN’s Chris Cuomo believes that “protests” shouldn’t be peaceful. "And please, show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful,” he said. 

Perhaps the U.S. Constitution can help Cuomo correct his gross mis-understanding. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees “the right of the people ‘peaceably’ [emphasis added] to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” A non-peaceable assembly — a violent riot — is not protected, no matter what the reason for the assembly.

It is stunning to see the breadth and depth of the attitude to now accept the injuries, deaths and destruction from riots as a normal part of protesting.

In what may be the goofiest idea of all, celebrities — those possessors of ultimate wisdom on all things — endorse the idea of “defunding police departments.” These self-important folks say the money spent on police would be better spent on “building healthy communities.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) wants the 800-officer Minneapolis Police Department disbanded. In a tweet she said, “The Minneapolis Police Department has proven themselves beyond reform. It’s time to disband them and reimagine public safety in Minneapolis.”

“Yes,” said Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender. “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a transformative new model of public safety.”

Someone breaking into your home? A riot on your street? Who you gonna call? Ilhan Omar, Lisa Bender?

In Los Angeles, $100 million to $150 million may soon be cut from funding the LAPD. New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio announced Sunday that the city would move funding from the New York Police Department to youth initiatives and social services.

However, we must decide if the current situation truly warrants such drastic actions against all police departments nationwide, which seems to be what celebrity advisors want.

Far more important than the pure number of people killed by police is how many of them were unjustified, and how many contributed to their deaths by resisting police? The former number is easier to find than the latter two numbers.

Last year, nearly 1,100 people were killed by police, according to Mapping Police Violence (MPV), a research group. MPV defines police killing as any time someone dies as a result of “being shot, beaten, restrained, intentionally hit by a police vehicle, pepper sprayed, tasered, or otherwise harmed by police officers, whether on-duty or off-duty.” 

The MPV data does not say how many contributed to their own demise by resisting arrest, how many were unjustly killed, or died by accident. That is critical information in determining how great a problem police criminality actually is.

Eliminating unjustified killings by police is a critical goal, and the solution must be a sensible plan, not an emotional, chaotic one.