Category: crime and punishment

Finally Fed Up

We keep returning to Portland — from a safe distance.

Why?

Because rioters keep rioting there.

And because the people tasked to protect lawful order keep making nicey-nice with the thugs.

But maybe not anymore.

Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, is apparently finally fed up, thanks to the most recent mass mayhem, conducted to ring in the New Year.

What’s motivating the newfound concern for innocent victims? More than any epiphany about the proper responsibilities of government, it may be the average age and modal hue of the current batch of rioters — as well as Wheeler’s awareness that Joe Biden sort of won the election, so haven’t the rioters already got what they wanted?

“Why would a group of largely white, young and some middle-age men destroy the livelihood of others who are struggling to get by?” Mayor Wheeler asks.

Rhetorically.

You’ve had months, Mr. Mayor, to mull the motives of such persons as they ravage Portland. But I will assume you are sincere. So I will tell you.

Pull out your notebook. The “why” is: bad ideas plus bad character. They feed on each other. Gain insight into Marx, Marcuse, et al., on the one hand, and, on the other, thugs happy to rationalize their sprees. Then you will understand.

Yes, it’s time indeed to stop your “good-faith efforts at de-escalation”; it’s high time to use “additional tools,” like physical force, to stop the criminals who are committing their crimes right in front of you.

Oh, and by the way: it’s your job.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

The Portland Chaos

“As a lifelong Portlander,” Alan Grinnell writes to the editor of The Oregonian, “I am shocked at what our city has become.”

Responding to a Steve Duin column about Portland, the “broken city,” Grinnell asks, rhetorically, “Who would have thought that our downtown would become a wasteland, that there would be homeless camps everywhere in the city, and that gangs of armed thugs on all sides of the political spectrum would run out our police?”

Duin defined the problem as one of “mob rule,” lamenting that “just about everyone I spoke to was terrified they might be the next random target of the mob.”

After months of riots and property destruction following the killing of George Floyd by police in distant Minneapolis, Minnesota, the focus of recent police and community attention turned to a house on Mississippi Street from which so-called “sovereign citizens” — the Kinney family (who are black and indigenous) — were evicted for not paying their mortgage (since 2017). Now the house is being occupied by “activists,” who have turned the area into a sort of autonomous zone — as was done for weeks this summer, dangerously, in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle.

“[I]f you live or tend shop on North Mississippi, and fear for your own safety around the local ‘security’ forces,” inquired the columnist, “what do you make of the cops’ retreat from the neighborhood?”

While many appear sympathetic with the Kinneys’ plight, the takeover by the terrorists, er, activists, is another matter entirely. One black man on reddit calls it “one big scam,” suggesting folks “ignore these loons.”

But ignoring willful lawbreakers appears to be the problem, not the solution.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Needed Theft

Seattle, Capitol Hill, crime, law, theft

Some Seattle city council members want to legalize theft when the thief is thereby meeting an “immediate basic need.”

A KOMO News reporter elaborates: “If someone … steals power tools with the intent of reselling them online in order to pay for a basic need like food or rent, the city of Seattle may be OK with that.”

This “principle” discards the principle that individuals have rights, including property rights, which it is wrong to violate by, for example, stealing. With the principle discarded, no line can be drawn to limit the amount of stealing one may do or the means of doing so. The needs of the person being robbed are somehow deemed irrelevant.

The Seattle plan might have spared Hugo’s Jean Valjean decades of being pursued by Javert. But the injustice there wasn’t that Valjean was punished for stealing a loaf of bread but that his punishment — 19 years as a galley slave — was so disproportionate.

Food is a continuing cost. Rent is. The immediacy keeps recurring. What if you have a $2,500 monthly rent?

Well, just gotta steal lots of power tools, and do so regularly. According to the babblers on the Seattle city council, “need” trumps the rights and lives of the innocent. So it’s okay to terrify somebody in a dark alley and grab their stuff even if the victim has an immediate basic need to be left alone.

Seattle has an immediate basic need for a new government that respects lives and property. Until then, let’s hope the “city limit” signs are well marked.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment

Not Above the Law

Should government officials be free to violate the rights of others so long as they are doing their job at the time?

With impunity?

That’s the question that the Institute for Justice is arguing before the Supreme Court in Brownback v. King.

The case concerns James King, whom officers of the law mistook for a fugitive. When they grabbed his wallet and demanded to know his name, King ran, thinking he was being mugged. The officers pursued him and and then viciously assaulted him — nearly killing him.

Later, the government concocted bogus charges to try to force King to accept a plea bargain. The idea was to prevent him from suing the government for the way he had been treated.

King did not cooperate.

The problem? Many government officials in many circumstances have a get-out-of-prosecution-free card. The doctrine that confers this card is called “qualified immunity.”

In the 1982 case Harlow v. Fitzgerald, the Supreme Court opined that this immunity is warranted by “the need to protect officials who are required to exercise discretion” and “can be penetrated only when they have violated clearly established statutory or constitutional rights.”

In practice, however, the immunity being granted often seems more unqualified than qualified.

IJ’s premise is simple. “Government officials are not above the law,” says IJ President Scott Bullock. “Those who are charged with enforcing our nation’s laws should be more — not less — accountable for their unconstitutional acts.”

In a free society, police cannot brutally beat innocent people and get away with it. Can they?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access crime and punishment

Harvest Season

election, cheating, Texas, ballot harvesting,

Democrats say Trump is going to steal the election. But what if they are “projecting”? Politics has gotten so nasty that you wouldn’t be a cynic to express no surprise at stories like these:

Project Veritas uncovered a “ballot harvesting” scam in Representative Ilhan Omar’s Minneapolis district, implicating, it seems, Omar (D‑Minn.) herself; and
Formal accusations against a Biden campaign official, and others, for a similar scheme in Texas.

The Minnesota story is juicy; the Project Veritas video speaks for itself.

But in Texas? “Two private investigators, including a former FBI agent and former police officer, testify under oath that they have video evidence, documentation and witnesses to prove that Biden’s Texas Political Director Dallas Jones and his cohorts are currently hoarding mail-in and absentee ballots and ordering operatives to fill the ballots out for people illegally, including for dead people, homeless people, and nursing home residents in the 2020 presidential election.” That, courtesy of the industrious Patrick Howley, in the thick of the investigation.

“Witnesses have shown me,” the former FBI agent testifies, “how the ballot harvesters take absentee ballots from the elderly in nursing homes, from the homeless, and from unsuspecting residences’ mailboxes. The ballot harvesters then complete the ballots for their preferred candidate and forge the signature of the ‘voter.’”

Several Biden campaign workers and two Harris County bureaucrats are implicated. It will be interesting to see if these accusations lead to charges.

And how many similar stories will emerge elsewhere.

Folks can argue about how much voter fraud happens, but when we find it, let’s act.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment

Who is Responsible?

Breonna Taylor is dead. She was shot five times by Louisville police, who were returning fire after forcibly entering her apartment.

“[T]he department had received court approval for a ‘no-knock’ entry,” reports The New York Times, but “the orders were changed before the raid to ‘knock and announce,’ meaning that the police had to identify themselves.” There is disagreement as to whether police did so.

It appears that shortly after midnight on March 13, police knocked down Ms. Taylor’s front door and her boyfriend fired his gun at what he thought was an old boyfriend of Breonna’s.

That old boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, who has a “2015 drug trafficking conviction” and “several pending drug and weapons cases against him,” Louisville’s WAVE‑3 TV informs, “was named on the March 13 warrant that sent officers to Taylor’s apartment.”

But three lawmen came through the door instead. One was hit in the leg and they opened fire.

Another of them, already terminated by the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department, was charged yesterday with “wanton endangerment” for firing his weapon indiscriminately. But no charges for Breonna Taylor’s death.

While the apparent police misconduct must not be excused, it is too easy to blame police. Breaking down doors — whether after “no-knock” or a brief wee-hours rap on the door and yodeled announcement (when the target is likely asleep) — leads to gun battles and lost lives … of innocent citizens as well as police officers.*

And the drug laws that ultimately brought Louisville’s battering-ram-wielding cops to Breonna’s door were not written by those policemen.

They were written by politicians, and it is they who must change the laws and the policies that led to Breonna Taylor’s death.

But they will never do it unless we make them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* I remember Cory Maye in Mississippi, who was on death row for years after killing a policeman in a late-night no-knock raid on his home. No drugs found. Wrong house. Thankfully, Cory was finally released. But the policeman is still dead; his wife and kids lost a husband and father.

Note: As we put this commentary to bed, two Louisville policemen have been shot and a suspect arrested. Both officers are receiving treatment at a local hospital.

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