Horowitz: It’s the violent gun felons, stupid



We need not steal people’s guns without due process, as Joe Biden suggests, nor do we need to send in the National Guard to protect America’s cities, as Donald Trump recently suggested. What Chicago’s experience demonstrates is that we simply need to lock up the gun felons and career criminals who have already been found guilty through due process. It’s not so much about funding the police or drastic measures of having the military occupy American cities, but about simply locking up the criminals.

Americans watched with horror the viral video of a 16-year-old with a gun bust under his belt tussling violently with a NYPD officer on one of Manhattan’s infamous subways. It turns out that the boy had previously been arrested April 12 in Brooklyn for allegedly carrying a loaded gun and then again just two weeks ago for a robbery, but the details of the cases are sealed. Yet despite the history of gun violations and violence, the suspect was released on his own recognizance a day after the struggle with police.

This case embodies the source of the violence in cities like New York and Chicago. The culprits all have endless violations of bail terms and parole, and numerous violent crimes and gun felonies piling up on each other before the original case is disposed of in court, yet they continue to be released, especially in the case of the growing juvenile violence. Any other policy thrown into the public policy discussion other than tougher sentencing, pre-release holding, and tougher parole conditions is a distraction. You can fund police all day long, but if the criminals are not punished, they will just fight with the police knowing there are no repercussions.

“He’s charged with all those things, and now in his third arrest, he’s released again,” a high-ranking police source told the New York Post of the subway brawler. “What does it take to get locked up here?” This incident occurred a week after the man who attacked New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin was freed within a few hours on cashless bail.

Democrats wax poetic about gun violence, but then when they actually catch gun felons illegally possessing guns and committing more crimes in violation of their previous release or parole, they still offer them low bail. A Chicago judge recently released 32-year-old Clear Huddleston on a $3,000 cash deposit after he was caught illegally possessing a gun and drugs, despite his criminal history, which included robbery in 2008, unlawful use of a weapon by a felon in 2012, theft in 2016, and armed robbery in 2016. The way Democrats speak of guns, you would think they’d offer the death penalty to someone caught illegally possessing a gun as a career violent felon, yet even career violent gun felons and robbers are easily released and given multiple “chances.”

Then there is the case of Steven Kelsey, a Chicago man on parole for shooting a man while on electronic monitoring for possessing a firearm while out on parole. So he already had his second chance, despite actually shooting someone with a gun. Now he has been arrested for, you guessed it, an armed carjacking. Before the July 12 carjacking, Kelsey was convicted of illegal gun possession and aggravated discharge of a firearm in a 2015 case that started as an attempted murder case. This is after having been charged as a juvenile twice for possessing stolen motor vehicles and once for aggravated vehicular hijacking. Yet he didn’t serve much time, and shortly after he was paroled for the shooting, Kelsey was arrested again and charged with … you guessed it … unlawful use of a weapon by a felon on parole. But he was released in June of last year with just a $10,000 bail deposit on electronic monitoring, which, as always turned out to be worthless in deterring him from the armed carjacking earlier this month.

This is the story of nearly every carjacker and murderer in every major city, and it’s happening in red states too. Earlier this month, a 15-year old carjacker in Memphis was released from some nebulous juvenile program on electronic monitoring and is now accused of killing a woman in another carjacking, despite wearing an ankle monitor.

Carjackings are out of control as a result of repeat juvenile offenders never getting punished. This phenomenon fueled more than 1,900 carjackings in Chicago last year. At some point, youthful indiscretion should not be an excuse for serious, repeat offenses.

If we only deterred and punished the known career criminals, we’d stop most violent crime. The debate over police funding, while important, is largely a distraction to the main issue. Republicans, including President Trump, bought into the over-incarceration argument last decade, which led to an acceleration in de-incarceration of the most dangerous career criminals. Ironically, Trump himself made the comments about deploying the National Guard to suppress riots at the “America First Policy Institute,” which is run by his former domestic policy adviser Brooke Rollins, who convinced Trump to embrace the jailbreak agenda and also dissuaded him from actually deploying the National Guard during the BLM riots of May-June 2020.

It’s very easy for Republicans to broadly inveigh against rising crime under Democrats. But unless they commit to shedding their ties to the pro-jailbreak, Koch-backed organizations pushing de-incarceration, they will continue managing a rise in crime.

Horowitz: The crisis of violent criminals out on bail and parole is worse than you think



In case you thought the endless catch-and-release of Darrell Brooks, the suspect in the Waukesha parade massacre who reportedly killed 6 and injured 60, was an aberration, think again. It’s a rampant problem in all 50 states, particularly in Indiana.

Last week, 20-year-old Deonta Williams was arrested on two counts of attempted murder after he allegedly stabbed two Indianapolis police officers near the Indiana State Fairgrounds on Wednesday. Williams told investigators that he lured the officers to the area by calling in a fake report of a white man harassing him. When the officers went to search for the phantom attacker, Williams admits he stabbed the officers in the neck and chest. Both officers are expected to recover, but Williams told investigators he wanted to kill one police officer because he was upset about a medical bill the city of Indianapolis sent him.

According to WTHR, Williams was arrested for burglary in January and had his bail reduced from $25,000 to $750 by a local judge. Then, he violated the terms of his release and was arrested again in July for reported criminal mischief. The obvious question is why people already given a second chance are released again when we know they are the most likely to commit violent crimes.

It turns out that the Bail Project, a pro-violent criminal organization that strives to keep violent criminals on the streets at all costs, bailed him out in March. As WISH reports, the Bail Project had previously bonded out two other violent career criminals who are now accused of murder.

The sad reality is that these are the sort of NGOs that have been driving the criminal justice policy on both sides of the aisle in all 50 states over the past decade. As Rick Snyder, the head of the Indianapolis Fraternal Order of Police, observes, these organizations need to be subjected to the same regulations as private bail bondsmen. All too often, they bail people out and the suspect never shows up for court and is able to remain free. These NGOs need to be held responsible.

It is becoming abundantly clear that we need to toughen mandatory minimums for repeat offenders, tighten — not loosen — bail laws, and create a much stronger three-strikes-and-you're-out law than we did in the 1990s. The time has come for all 50 states to pass legislation in January when the legislatures reconvene that will toughen bail laws in general and end bail for anyone who already violated their bail terms after the first crime. This would likely prevent the majority of violent crimes in this country.

Most violent criminals don't come out of nowhere. They are known wolves. One study in Sweden in 2014 found that 1% of the criminals were responsible for 63% of all violent crime convictions. Researchers found that if all violent criminals were locked up after a third conviction, "more than 50% of all convictions for violent crime in the total population would be prevented."

Just how much is the “bail reform” movement responsible for the growing crime wave? CWB Chicago, which reports assiduously on the Chicago crime scene, created a list of 53 known Chicago criminals who were arrested for murder or attempted murder this year, affecting a total of 75 victims after having been released on bail, or without even having to post any cash bail. Many of these victims were children. The latest bailed-out criminal charged with attempted murder is 19-year-old Maalik Lumpkins, who is charged with shooting a 1-year-old. Several months ago, Lumpkins was charged with felony aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. But because in Chicago they don’t take gun crimes seriously and only oppose guns for those defending themselves from these criminals, Lumpkins was released on his own recognizance.

The release of violent criminals has become the catalyst for reversing New York’s once miraculous decline in crime. Last week, a Columbia University graduate student and an Italian tourist were stabbed in unprovoked attacks in what used to be a very safe part of Manhattan. The suspect was on supervised release for viciously beating another innocent person and had been arrested 11 times since 2012. Second chances, you say?

Fox News reported last week that Jacqueline Avant, wife of Grammy Award-winning music executive Clarence Avant, was killed in her Beverly Hills home by another paroled career criminal. The suspect, Aariel Maynor, was released from prison just weeks before, after serving three years of a four-year sentence for a 2018 robbery and grand theft, which in itself was only made possible his early release from a 2013 sentence for robbery and causing great bodily injury.

Another way the pro-criminal crowd is flooding the streets with criminals is by letting them off on mental health diversion programs. Eric Ramos-Hernandez was seen on video in 2020 punching, kicking, and shoving 84-year-old Rong Xin Liao off his seated walker while waiting for a bus in Santa Clara County, California. Despite the victim suffering life-altering wounds, Ramos-Hernandez was released seven months later and actually re-arrested and released for another crime thereafter. He was released because the DA’s office claims the victim went along with a plan to place the suspect in a mental health diversion program, a claim the victim’s family vehemently denies. If someone truly is incorrigibly violent because of mental health problems, then he certainly needs to be taken off the streets – whether in a traditional prison or a mental ward.

Last week, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm blamed the release of Darrell Brooks on a “human error,” but the only human error involved is a decadent ideology that believes in de-incarceration at all costs. This gutter ideology has permeated both parties, including allegedly conservative think tanks and even the Trump administration. It’s time to reverse this fatal error.

Triple murder suspect accused of cutting out victim's heart, cooking it, and trying to serve it as a meal before killing two family members



Oklahoma authorities said Lawrence Paul Anderson — after being released early from prison in January — killed a woman, cut out her heart, took it across the street to his aunt and uncle's Chickasha home, cooked it with potatoes "to feed to his family to release the demons," and then killed his uncle, badly injured his aunt, and killed their 4-year-old granddaughter, the Oklahoman reported.

What are the details?

Anderson, 42, faces three counts of first-degree murder, one count of assault and battery with a deadly weapon, and one count of maiming in the Feb. 9 attacks, the paper said.

He's accused of killing his uncle, Leon Pye, 67, attacking his aunt, Delsie Pye, and killing their granddaughter, Kaeos Yates, and the Pyes' neighbor, 41-year-old Andrea Lynn Blankenship, the Oklahoman reported. Anderson was arrested at the Pye residence after police responded to a 911 call, the paper said.

Image source: KFOR-TV video screenshot

Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agents said Anderson confessed and said he killed the neighbor first and then cut out her heart before taking it to the Pye home to cook with potatoes "to feed to his family to release the demons," an OSBI agent wrote in a request for a search of the home, the paper added.

Agents found a cooking pot containing residue and another cooking pot with food inside, the Oklahoman reported.

"Anderson ... cooked the heart at the Pye home and tried to make Delsie and Leon Pye eat the heart before he attacked them," another OSBI agent wrote in a search request of the neighbor's home, the paper noted. Investigators said Anderson stabbed them, KFOR-TV reported, adding that Anderson's aunt who survived was stabbed in the eye.

Blankenship's cousin told the station she was a single mother of two who lived alone and worked from home.

Image source: KFOR-TV video screenshot, composite

The cousin added that her family is unaware of any relationship between Blankenship and Anderson, KFOR added.

What's the background?

Anderson was sentenced to prison in 2006 for attacking and pointing a gun at his girlfriend, the station said, adding that he was back behind bars in 2012 for selling crack cocaine near an elementary school. Anderson was sentenced again in 2017 for having a gun and sneaking drugs into jail, KFOR said.

The suspect was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2017, the Oklahoman reported, adding that Gov. Kevin Stitt last year commuted the sentence to nine years at the recommendation of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board.

Stitt's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.

Anderson was released after serving just over three years and had been staying at an inn and visiting his aunt and uncle's home, although he listed their home as his residence, the paper said.

"They were surprised to see him just show up, that he was out," Oklahoma City attorney Robert Wagner said, according to the paper. "They had no prior knowledge that he was being released, and they had never consented to him listing their address as his home."

'When is enough enough?'

"When is enough enough?" Grady County District Attorney Jason Hicks said at a news conference after filing charges, the Oklahoman noted.

"We have seen 'criminal justice reform' in the state of Oklahoma now for several years," Hicks added, according to the paper. "We have put politics and releasing inmates in front of public safety. The goal that we have set in Oklahoma is to decrease the prison population with no thought for public safety. And that's not fair to the people of the state of Oklahoma. And we have to come to terms with that."

He also said reformers repeatedly talk about nonviolent offenders in prison, the Oklahoman noted.

"Go tell these families — the Blankenship and the Pye families — that Anderson was just a low-level nonviolent offender. Look at what ... he's accused of doing," Hicks said, according to the paper.

He also revealed that the Pardon and Parole Board took up Anderson's commutation application in January 2020 while also considering 600 others, the Oklahoman reported: "It's too many. You don't have the time to look through those things and give any meaningful consideration to them."

'I don't want no bail'

Anderson wept Tuesday at his first court appearance, the paper reported: "Oh God," he said. "Oh God."

Grady County Special Judge Regina Lowe denied bail, the Oklahoman said.

Anderson declared, "I don't want no bail, your honor. I don't want no bail," the paper said.

Defense attorney Al Hoch said he'll request an evaluation to determine if Anderson is mentally competent to be prosecuted, the paper said, adding that Anderson told a judge when he pleaded guilty to the 2017 crimes that he took bipolar medications.

The ‘criminal justice reform’ bill guts our leverage against drug-financed terror operations

We have a massive cocaine problem killing off African-Americans. We have an unprecedented drug trafficking problem from transnational cartels. We have a terror financing problem, with terrorists working with the cartels in the drug trade. And we have a debilitating liberal judge problem.

The jailbreak bill, with its Orwellian name of First Step Act, dramatically cuts sentencing and prison time for the quintessential type of drug traffickers for whom Trump said he wanted to apply the death penalty. Yet the legislation he is now supporting, thanks to Jared Kushner and his liberal cosmopolitan agenda, allows them to escape the mandatory minimum sentencing altogether and obtain early release.

In March, President Trump delivered a seminal speech on drug trafficking, its connection to illegal immigration, sanctuary cities, and transnational cartels, and the need to get tougher, not weaker, on deterrent and punishment. After thanking law enforcement for catching drug traffickers in New Hampshire, Trump declared that “we have to get tough on those people, because we can have all the Blue Ribbon committees we want, but if we don’t get tough on the drug dealers, we’re wasting our time.”

What did he mean by getting tough? “And that toughness includes the death penalty.”

Trump continued:

This isn’t about nice anymore. This isn’t about committees. This isn’t about let’s get everybody and have dinners, and let’s have everybody go to a Blue Ribbon committee and everybody gets a medal for, frankly, talking and doing nothing. This is about winning a very, very tough problem. And if we don’t get very tough on these dealers, it’s not going to happen, folks. It’s not going to happen. And I want to win this battle.

We would be better off with Blue Ribbon panels today than with Trump supporting a bill to get weaker on drug trafficking. There were a lot of White House “dinners” over this wretched piece of legislation, too, but not a single “tougher” provision, and certainly not the death penalty.

We are being lied to that this bill just deals with some schlepper from the Bronx who needed a few extra bucks to support his family and sold some dime bags of marijuana and is now sitting in federal prison for the rest of his life. Not only is this an absolute fiction, this bill specifically recognizes the worst drug cartel associates not for the death penalty, as Trump suggested, but for reduced sentencing and early release combined.

Click on the text of the bill and turn to page 66. On that page you will find section 402 on expanding the “safety valve.” The safety valve has already allowed well over 100,000 drug traffickers to avoid the mandatory minimums, and this bill dramatically expands it, essentially abolishing the mandatories and giving discretion to the wacko open-borders, weak-on-crime judges to give these people the very slap on the wrist Trump has bemoaned for so long. Take a look at this provision in the safety valve:

Do you know what those highlighted subsections are? These are the pilots and crews of maritime drug boats, including “narco-subs,” who will now be able to avoid the mandatory minimums. These are the people who drive the submarines or other vessels for the Columbian cartels, such as FARC, that are hooked in with Hezbollah to peddle tons of cocaine into this country, killing thousands of people at record levels, particularly African-Americans. Yes, these cartels are so wealthy that they have a fleet of submarines.

Why would the crafters of this bill explicitly single out narco-subs in a carve-out provision to avoid the mandatory sentencing? This is yet another provision that demonstrates this bill is coming from a depraved ideology driven by Soros and the Kochs to let out all of the drug traffickers, including cartel members and gang-bangers with a substantial criminal record. The schlepper from the Bronx doesn’t wind up driving submarines for these people.

Let’s remember what Trump said in New Hampshire before this issue became a top priority for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump:

You know, it’s an amazing thing. Some of these drug dealers will kill thousands of people during their lifetime — thousands of people — and destroy many more lives than that. But they will kill thousands of people during their lifetime, and they’ll get caught and they’ll get 30 days in jail. Or they’ll go away for a year, or they’ll be fined. And yet, if you kill one person, you get the death penalty or you go to jail for life.

These are the very people who will now get reduced sentencing. Now that those driving subs for cartels can escape the mandatories, judges theoretically have the power to sentence them to a laughable 30 days! Unlike previous versions of this bill, there is no limit on how far the judge can reduce sentencing. But it gets worse. Even without the safety valves, the mandatories are only triggered, under the proposed policies, if the drug trafficker had previously served one year in prison for a felony punishable of at least 10 years in prison. Now, all of the weak convictions the judges could mete out won’t be counted to render someone a repeat offender. This bill has a cascading effect of leniencies that build on each other to help repeat offenders.

And that is just the front-end reductions. These very people who drive subs for Hezbollah-linked cartels will then be able to enjoy time credits to lop off one-third of that already reduced sentence on the back end. This is concerning given that Michael Braun, former chief of operations with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, warned, “Hezbollah’s growing involvement in the global cocaine trade over the past decade has resulted in the formation of alliances with Colombian and Mexican drug trafficking cartels, the most sophisticated transnational organized crime syndicates law enforcement has ever faced.”

This bill will undermine the most potent investigative tool law enforcement has to take down not just the cartels but also the narco-terrorists involved. Derek Maltz, a veteran DEA agent and former head of the agency’s special operations division, said this is particularly concerning as we lose more human resources to infiltrate these organizations. “In the middle of the worst drug crisis in history, the politicians should not be taking away more tools from law enforcement to fight the sophisticated cartels,” said the veteran DEA agent in an interview with CR. “By reducing the sentences of conspirators working in major organizations, the defendants will lose their incentive to cooperate with law enforcement since they will no longer fear the extended jail time! This will crush the agency’s ability to better understand the operations of the cartels and ultimately hurt their ability to disrupt their activities. … This will be a recipe for a disaster, and the cartels will expand!”

The human component and the sentencing leverage are particularly important with narco-subs where the vessels are equipped with drainage systems to destroy all the evidence within minutes.

Leveraging stiff prison sentencing against cartel members is important in terms of breaking up not just the drug cartels, but also Hezbollah terrorist cells that are increasingly relying on the drug trade to serve terrorism. More than any category of drugs, cocaine is inextricably tied up in terror finance, and the narco-subs at our maritime borders are the easiest ones to catch. Not all narco-subs are hooked into terrorism, but many of them are, more than the land-based Mexican cartel smuggling in the southwest. Watch this brand-new documentary on Hezbollah and the cocaine trade recently produced by the Abba Eban Institute in Israel, and you will see how going soft on maritime narcotics traffickers will weaken our ability to bust up these networks.

Nobody articulated this point better than Sen. Chuck Grassley in a floor speech on July 14, 2014, just one year before he mysteriously flipped on the issue. He “strongly” opposed this very bill, not only because “this bill would put at risk our hard-won national drop in crime,” but because it “puts our national security at increased risk.” He noted even then that “there is a growing nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism, a nexus that increasingly poses a clear and present danger to our national security” that how reducing sentences would strip us of leverage.

“By cutting the mandatory minimum sentences for trafficking drugs to fund terrorism, the Smarter Sentencing Act weakens an important tool that can be used to gain the cooperation of narcoterrorists facing prosecution.” This cooperation leads to more arrests, more drug seizures, more terrorists off the streets, and more intelligence that could help prevent attacks.

Remember, Grassley was speaking about the original version of the bill that didn’t have this provision allowing narco-sub traffickers not only to get reduced sentencing, but also to escape the mandatories altogether, plus obtain early release.

Have you ever seen such a remarkable flip in all of politics?

Trump should return to his previous promise to “appoint the best prosecutors and judges in the country, pursue strong enforcement of federal laws, and … break up the gangs, the cartels and criminal syndicates terrorizing our neighborhoods.” As he so presciently declared, “There is no compassion in allowing drug dealers, gang members, and felons to prey on innocent people.”

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