Tag: law enforcement

Don’t Make It Easy

crime, robbery, stand your ground, duty to retreat

Rachel Rogers and Jennifer Ferguson, employees at a Lululemon in Georgia, were fired for neglecting to stand by mutely during a robbery and for then calling 911.

“They’re just full-blown, like, running circles around you grabbing as much as they can,” Rogers told WSBTV. “So, our reaction is to scream, ‘No! Get out! Leave!’ ”

The two employees called the police. The same thieves were caught when trying to rob another Lululemon store in the area the next day, perhaps because police were on the alert.

But two weeks later, Rogers and Ferguson were fired, without severance pay, for violating the retail chain’s policy of zero tolerance for calling 911 to report a robbery.

“We are not supposed to get in the way. You kind of clear path for whatever they’re going to do,” Ferguson said. “We’ve been told not to put it in any notes, because that might scare other people. We’re not supposed to call the police, not really supposed to talk about it.”

In a post blasting the company, Jennifer’s husband, Jason Ferguson, observed: “If we, citizens of the community, allow criminal activity to go unchecked, that is tacit approval for them to continue their ways.”

And how long can we hold onto our belongings and our civilization if we meekly usher in the Visigoths and Vandals and tell them go ahead, take whatever you want, we won’t try to stop you or even call the cops after it’s all over?

A lot of people, including higher-ups at Lululemon, have forgotten that property rights are at the foundation of civilization.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with Midjourney

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crime and punishment insider corruption national politics & policies

Thin Blue Nonsense

Justice, thin blue line, Themis, scales of Justice

What did Vice President Mike Pence learn from the Trump years?

Perhaps, that his 2016 ploy to ratchet up his career backfired … when his running mate actually won?

Thank goodness, he followed normal procedures in January 2020, rejecting then-President Donald J. Trump’s pleas to send back to the states the Electoral College slates.

In a recent speech at St. Anselm’s College, the former Vice President advised fellow Republicans not to overreact to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Mr. Pence insists that Republicans “can hold the attorney general accountable for the decision he made without attacking the rank-and-file law enforcement personnel at the FBI.”

That sounds about right, until you read the rest of Pence’s remarks. “The Republican Party is the party of law and order. Our party stands with the men and women who stand on the thin blue line at the federal and state and local level, and these attacks on the FBI must stop. Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.”

Has Pence lost “the plot”? The FBI has a long history of abusing the rule of law. While leaders are rightly blamed — J. Edgar Hoover used his agency to create a vast spy-and-blackmail network — they have not worked alone to do flagrantly unconstitutional things. After all, remember in October of 2020, the Bureau made headlines foiling a plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor. The plot was concocted by multiple agents, who worked mightily to entrap members of a citizen militia into going along with it.*

Pence surely remembers that the FBI agents who conspired against the Trump administration were breathtakingly partisan, lying and concocting documents to perform what amounts to an attempted coup d’etat.

It’s not a “law and order” outfit if its most consequential actions illegally serve partisan political purposes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* These G‑men and G‑women were consenting adults — consenting not only to the politics of such entrapment, but also to engaging in sexual acts to get their way.

Note: Two defendants in the Michigan conspiracy case are now being retried, after the jury in their first trial could not reach a verdict.

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crime and punishment folly ideological culture

Stop & Go on Crime

In last week’s news conference, President Biden seemed to wave a green light to Vladimir Putin: Russian military forces may make a “minor incursion” into neighboring Ukraine. Was Biden applying to diplomacy, I wondered, the permissive posture so many other Democratic officials have taken, domestically? Crime’s fine, if small enough.

If so, Biden’s not leading — Democrats around the country are changing direction.

“We are in a crisis,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced last month, declaring a state of emergency. “Too many people are dying in this city. Too many people are sprawled all over our streets. And now we have a plan to address it.”

Her approach? Simple: End the “reign of criminals” by taking “the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement … and less tolerant of all the bullsh*t that has destroyed our city.”

The New York Times called it “a sharp break with the liberal conventions that have guided her city for decades.”

“About time,” was California Governor Gavin Newsom’s response.

When Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner responded to questions about rising crime by arguing, “We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence,” former Mayor Michael Nutter expressed incredulity.

“How many more Black and brown people, and others,” Nutter wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “would have to be gunned down in our streets daily to meet your definition of a ‘crisis’?”

Still, upon taking office weeks ago, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg “ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking prison sentences for hordes of criminals and to downgrade felony charges in cases including armed robberies …” the New York Post reported.

“The identical platform,” noted a police supervisor, “has not worked out in San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore.”

Or anywhere else. Ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom

Government’s Job One

What should governments do?

At the very least, and perhaps at the very most, defend our rights.

Now, rights-defense is not easy; folks in government along with folks who demand more government have other plans. It’s easier to attack peaceful people for not doing what you want than to come to the aid of victims who are under attack — or have been conned or kidnapped — by really sick and evil people.

So every now and then it is a good idea to call attention to governments actually doing Job One.

The U.S. Marshals Service put out a press release last week, and it got some attention: “U.S. Marshals find 39 missing children in Georgia in ‘Operation Not Forgotten.’”

This law enforcement campaign “resulted in the rescue of 26 children, the safe location of 13 children and the arrest of nine criminal associates. Additionally, investigators cleared 26 arrest warrants and filed additional charges for alleged crimes related to sex trafficking, parental kidnapping, registered sex offender violations, drugs and weapons possession, and custodial interference.”

The coverage of the operation so far has produced little beyond what’s in the press release. So our job is to praise the effort and hope that the these children are cared for and can begin to heal.

We live in a time of heightened awareness of the “trafficking” of under-age persons for prostitution and sex slavery. We can thank Jeffrey Epstein for that. And the U.S. Marshals and local law enforcement for this rescue.

This is, after all, the reason we have governments in the first place.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies privacy property rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Guilty of Innocence

Spencer Byrd, crime, asset forfeiture, police, Chicago, law enforcement, theft, stealing, government

If you are innocent of a crime, should you be punished as if guilty? Despite no arrest, no trial, no conviction?

If you say “Yes,” raise your hand.

I see no raised hands among my regular readers. But my readers don’t include the wicked Chicago officials who impounded the automobile of Spencer Byrd.

Byrd’s case is reported in a Reason article by C.J. Ciaramella. The author relates how Chicago extracts money by grabbing the vehicles of innocent people. The drug war and asset forfeiture laws help make it possible.

Byrd is a carpenter and auto mechanic who sometimes gives rides to clients stuck without their cars. One night, when he was stopped on the road for an allegedly broken turn signal, police discovered that a new client riding with him was carrying heroin. Byrd was questioned but quickly released. He was never charged with a crime.

But his car was impounded; it’s been impounded for years. This has hurt his business. For one thing, he has $3,500 worth of tools in the trunk.

Byrd persuaded a judge to order that his car be returned to him. But the city still wouldn’t release it unless Byrd paid $8,790 in fees and fines (later reduced to $2,000). He is still struggling to retrieve his car, within a labyrinth the injustices of which I’ve barely touched on.

May I suggest … ? If you do ever recover your Cadillac, Mr. Byrd, put pedal to the floor and get the heck out of Dodge.

I mean, Chicago.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags asset forfeiture, Chicago, crime, government, law enforcement, police, Spencer Byrd, stealing, theft

crime and punishment responsibility

Don’t Demand Too Much

police, law enforcement, prevention, law, response, illustration, photo

It’s commonly said that government is here to protect us. Well, that’s one theory.

In the wake of the horrible massacre at the Pulse in Orlando, Florida, I’ve been hearing a lot of murmuring. People are wondering why a man who had been interviewed by the FBI several times in relation to possible terrorist activities could have legally purchased firearms without flagging greater attention.

Others complain that it took the police three long hours to gather themselves and enter the Pulse, to rescue the living, and kill (as they ended up doing) the shooter, Omar Mateen.

Where’s the protection? Where’s the security?

Governments don’t seem to be much good at that.

And why should we expect them to be?

It’s hard to collate information well — though the government had everything it needed, what it lacked was the sense and the willpower to do it. Why? Because novel, dispersed information is hard to deal with.

And let’s not second-guess the Orlando police. It’s a tough job dealing with a killer who wants to kill as many people as he can before he is, himself, killed.

If we wanted real security, real protection, we’d be more armed ourselves (the Pulse had security personnel, but the night club was a gun-free zone, so that’s not much protection), and we’d hire, by contract, security professionals to protect us.

Government police aren’t here to protect us. We have them to clean up after something terrible has happened. Re-establish order. Seek justice against the perpetrators. And, thus, provide “security theater,” more than security itself.

Governments are good at some things.

Just don’t expect more than they can deliver.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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