Tag: crime

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crime and punishment national politics & policies

Frisky Friends

Michael Bloomberg, Donald Trump, stop and frisk,

“WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!” tweeted President Donald J. Trump.

He was reacting to a recording, recently unearthed, of Democratic presidential aspirant Michael Bloomberg speaking to the Aspen Institute in 2015 about his controversial “stop-​and-​frisk” police policy while mayor of New York City.

“Ninety-​five percent of your murders, murderers and murder victims fit one M.O.,” Bloomberg told his audience. “You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25.… that’s where the real crime is.”

“And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands,” explained Mayor Mike, “is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them.”

Bloomberg has since apologized for targeting young male minorities to be regularly detained, searched, harassed and thrown into walls by police on the basis of nothing more than being young male minorities. Ultimately, a federal court struck down Bloomberg’s program as an unconstitutional mass violation of Fourth Amendment rights. 

“We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well and you have to be proactive and, you know, you really help people sort of change their mind automatically,” Trump argued in 2016, floating a national roll-​out and defending Bloomberg as “a very good mayor.” 

Back in 2009, Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Trump were together on something else: Bloomberg disregarding a campaign promise and defying two clear citywide referendums to run for a third mayor term.

“Well, I’m not a believer in term limits,” Trump said then, adding, “Michael is a friend of mine.”

Funny, asked about then-​Sen. Hillary Clinton, Trump offered, “I think she’s a wonderful women,” but “she’s a little bit misunderstood.”

Not long after posting the racist-​baiting tweet noted above, the president deleted it.

We understand.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Michael Bloomberg, Donald Trump, stop and frisk,

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media and media people

Whistles Blown

whistle, blower, Epstein, crime, informer,

Corey Feldman, former child actor and defender of Hollywood children from sexual abuse by entertainment industry movers and shakers, had given many clues about who his particular abuser was. On the Dr. Oz show, recently, Feldman still wouldn’t name the name, because, he said, he lacked legal representation on this matter.

Dr. Oz nevertheless revealed the name of the man whom Feldman alleges abused him.

Feldman looked awfully uncomfortable for the rest of the interview.

Meanwhile, the corporate press has been very “conscientious” to protect the name of the “whistleblower” on Donald Trump’s call to Ukraine that has spurred impeachment inquiries. The name has been known for a long time, but was recently and at long-​last revealed by Donald Trump., Jr..

The man in question appears to be a Democratic partisan, had worked for Vice President Biden, had been sacked from the White House for being a suspected leaker, and had waited until after he had talked with Impeacher-​in-​Chief Rep. Adam Schiff (D‑Cal.) before filing his whistleblowing paperwork.* Special legislation protects him from being fired from his current government job. But not from being named. Yet the mainstream news outlets “valiantly” protected the man’s identity from the public.

Then there’s the Amy Robach story. Ms. Robach had been caught on tape complaining about how ABC had squelched her Jeffrey Epstein story, years ago, robbing her of a scoop. An ABC employee had leaked the tape, and it became news. ABC figured out who had leaked it, and realized they couldn’t fire her because she had moved on to CBS. So ABC asked CBS to fire her.**

Courteously, CBS complied.

The press seems awfully inconsistent in protecting whistleblowers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. And Jeffrey Esptein didn’t kill himself.

* Amazingly, Mark S. Zaid, the whistleblower’s lawyer, had been talking “coup” in 2017 (see discussion by Ben Shapiro).

** I see no reports naming the worker.

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whistle, blower, Epstein, crime, informer,

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free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

Don’t Follow the Feds

body cam, camera, police, feds, federal, crime, law,

“Federal agents never wear body cameras,” The Washington Post reports, “and they prohibit local officers from wearing them on their joint operations.”

That’s why a growing number of local law enforcement agencies are doing what Atlanta’s police chief and mayor “decided late last month,” pulling “out of joint task forces with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service.”

The Justice Department supplies the usual excuses for their lack of transparency: they are “protecting sensitive or tactical methods” and “concerned about privacy interests of third parties.” But as Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo reminds, “if there’s a legitimate need to redact any [footage], there’s a process available for that through the courts.”

It is the height of hypocrisy, for the use of body cams has been “what they’ve been preaching,” St. Paul (Minn.) Police Chief Todd Axtell argues, referring to the Justice Department’s funding and training of local police forces in body-​camera usage. “It’s ironic they aren’t complying with what they preach to be so important in policing.”

Ironic? Sure. 

Par for the course? Indeed.

The bad example federal police agencies set is hardly limited to body-​camera use. In states where legislation has reduced or ended the outrageous practice of civil asset forfeiture — whereby police can take and keep cash and property from people never accused or convicted of any crime — the Feds are there again to facilitate the thievery known as “equitable sharing.” 

“Federal forfeiture policies are more permissive than many state policies,” a 2016 Post report explains, “allowing police to keep up to 80 percent of assets they seize.”

Make sure your local and state police don’t follow the Feds.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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body cam, camera, police, feds, federal, crime, law,

Photo credit: North Charleston

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crime and punishment moral hazard responsibility

Reforming Crime, Not Criminals?

fare evasion, fare-jump, crime, Washington, DC, D.C.

“The D.C. Council gave final approval this week to a measure decriminalizing Metro fare evasion,” The Washington Post reports, “paving the way for fare-​jumping to become a civil offense punishable by a $50 fine in the District.”

Talk about stopping crime “in its tracks.” Jumping the turnstile won’t be classified a “crime.” Problem solved.

Nassim Moshiree, policy director for the local ACLU, declared it “a significant victory for criminal justice reform here in the District.”

Jack Evans argued, unsuccessfully, that scofflaws will quickly figure out the “civil citation … is largely unenforceable.” He added, “We have a big problem with fare evasion at Metro.”

Non-​paying riders cost the bus and subway system in the nation’s capital $25 million annually. The worst bus route “has had 560,000 incidents of fare evasion since January, nearly 37 percent of its 1.5 million trips,” informs the Post.

Metro officials complained “that lessening the penalties would only exacerbate the problem and lead to more crime,” but supporters of the change posited that “decriminalization was an important step toward addressing disproportionate policing of African Americans who use the transit system.”

In recent years, according to a Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs report, “91 percent of Metro Transit Police citations and summons for fare evasion were issued to African Americans.”

“I’m sad that’s Metro’s losing money,” offered Councilmember Robert White Jr., “but I’m more sad about what’s happening to black people.”*

Penalties can be too severe or too severely applied. And enforcement can be racially biased. But stealing transportation services is a crime. Pretending otherwise is not a victory.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Is “that’s” a typo? Did the councilmember say, “that”? All I know is the quotation as I have it here is exactly as it appears online, in both text and headline, and also as it appeared in the dead-​tree edition delivered to my home.

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Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture

Normal & Not

Tucker Carlson

“Most people are not lunatics,” Tucker Carlson reminded viewers last night on his Fox News program, adding that “normal people don’t like this.”

By “this,” the conservative television host meant what can only be described as an attack on his home by Smash Racism DC, an Antifa-​like group comprised of people who are not normal.

Carlson wasn’t home Wednesday night, nor were his four young children, thank goodness, but his poor wife was. After hearing shouting and a man throwing himself into their front door so hard that he cracked it, she locked herself in a pantry and called 911.

“But it wasn’t a home invasion,” The Washington Post reported. “It was a protest.”

“What are they protesting?” asked Mr. Carlson. “They’re not trying to change my mind. They’re trying to threaten my family to get me to stop talking.”

The Carlson’s home and cars were vandalized by the mob of about 20 hoodlums. There were also chants of “Racist scumbag, leave town!” and “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!”

“Mail bomb,” one man shouted. And, of course, they doxxed Tucker Carlson by publishing his home address for the possible benefit of the next James Hodgkinson or any mail-bomber.

Instead of focusing on the political divide or the fear of further violence, a vacationing Tucker Carlson called in to his show last night to express gratitude … for an outpouring of concern, support, solidarity from across the political and media spectrum, expressing that it has “actually been really nice and affirming.”

Enough normal goodness remains in America, spread throughout the political spectrum, to unite us … at least against such behavior.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Common Sense

The Not-​Saint Timothy

violence, force, hate speech, law, crime, libertarian

Some people believe that aggression is physical force and nothing else. From this they derive the notion that only physical violence should be prosecuted — or, more generally, retaliated against with force. 

But it is obvious that some invasions of private property or personal space, with malice and anger and alarming unhinged-​ness, are aggressive.

And should be prosecuted in law.

Take the current case of Timothy Trybus, who is testing a further point of law that especially concerns those of us strongly motivated to focus on initiated force.*

“It is pretty clear,” writes Jacob Sullum in Reason, that the man “broke the law when he harassed Mia Irizarry for wearing a T‑shirt featuring the Puerto Rican flag at a park in Chicago last month.”

Mr. Trybus was drunk, and he “got in her face,” so to speak, challenging her in a not-​unusual nationalistic/​pseudo-​patriotic/​jingoistic fashion that seems old-​fashioned and up-​to-​date Trumpian:

  • “Why are you wearing that?”
  • “This is America!”
  • “If you’re an American citizen, you should not be wearing that shirt in America.”

Puerto Rico may not be a state, but … the proper reaction might have been to challenge the not-​Saint Timothy to a bit of patriotic one-​upmanship: “How can you be so un-​American as to object to an American commonwealth flag?”

He’s now being prosecuted for a hate crime as well as assault. Though he may never have touched the woman, his aggressiveness is legally regarded as a threat of force.

Understandably. But if the hate crime thing sticks, will antifa and other obvious anti-​American thugs be given that extra legal consideration in similar situations?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Which, I confess, I like to think of as “all civilized people.” But I may be optimistic. Reducing violence is an almost universal desire, and the question of who started violence is nearly universal. But the focus is, well, in our times called “libertarian.”

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Photo from Max Pixel