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: Houston accused murderer released from jail arrested 5 months later for another murder​



If you think the problem of murderers being released only to commit more murder is limited to blue states like California and New York, think again. The latest case of a violent self-confessed murderer in Houston being released only to allegedly murder again five months later should serve as a wake-up call to state legislators in Texas and other supposedly red states. There is a dramatic need for criminal justice reform that is actually aimed at locking up violent criminals, not releasing them.

Homicides are up 44% this year in Houston. The reason likely has a lot to do with people like Edward O'Neal, who was released from jail this year. O'Neal is being charged with murder in Harris County for allegedly shooting 39-year-old Derrick Mike to death at an apartment complex on Nov. 28. Like most murders, this one was 100% preventable had our criminal system been functioning properly by focusing on public safety, not sensitivity for murderers.

KTRK-TV reported that O'Neal confessed to stabbing his friend Ryan Roberts to death almost five years ago. Yet somehow, five years later, he still hadn't been convicted and sentenced to prison because his lawyers kept using O'Neal's mental state as a means of gumming up the wheels of justice.

The dysfunction of our treatment of violent, mentally ill criminals lead to the next dysfunction of jailbreak policies. In June 2020, Felony Mental Health Court Judge Mark Kent Ellis lowered his original $50,000 bond to $25,000. O'Neal bonded out of custody. Again, this is a man who reportedly confessed three times to a brutal murder that is believed to be part of a devil-worshipping satanic ritual, yet he bonded out on just $25,000. This is not a college student picked up for possessing marijuana.

According to court records, even O'Neal's own mother told investigators she was afraid of his release. The mother of the original victim, Ryan Roberts, informed KTRK that she also warned against his release. "I told the DA he should not get out. He killed my son, he'll be killing again," said Christina Roberts.

This is a case that reveals the dark side of the criminal justice "twindemic" of the violent mentally ill not being locked up and the general jailbreak policies of Harris County.

President Ronald Reagan railed against the treatment of mentally ill criminals in the justice system for years and how it was so hard to keep them off the streets. It has only gotten worse since his time. It's one thing to say that the mentally ill should be confined separately from other criminals; it's quite another to suggest they be released. If anything, those who are mentally ill are the biggest danger to society if they have proven violent proclivities — you know, like satanic murder. Yet leftists are simultaneously pushing de-incarceration of lucid criminals and abolishing of mental asylums for the criminally insane. They desire every public safety threat to remain on the streets.

Harris County has become just as bad as New York with pretrial bond releases. Last year, a Harris County judge initially offered an accused cop killer relatively low bail, despite his history of being released on crimes and bragging about it. In February, Gerald Washington was accused of murdering a random man in Houston just hours after being released for another murder despite his prior criminal record.

In August, the Texan reported, according to Andy Kahan of Crime Stoppers Houston, 57 victims have been murdered in Harris County over the past two years by defendants who had been released on multiple felony bonds and personal recognizance bonds. That doesn't account for all those who served light prison sentences or were let out of prison early and went on to murder. And the momentum toward more and more leniency is getting stronger in the system with each passing day.

The reality is that the spike in homicide throughout the nation is the direct result of known violent criminals simply not being locked up. From Nov. 21 through Dec. 4, Houston has experienced twice as many murders as last year over the same period of time.

The jailbreak is also mixing in with the mental health crisis induced by the panic policies from some of the very same Houston politicians who are pushing draconian lockdowns. The same politicians who decriminalize murder are now criminalizing living, and it has made people more violent. There has been a 65% rise in domestic violence calls to a hotline at the Houston Area Women's Center since September 2019. According to police, the number of strangulation incidents in Houston has nearly doubled this year.

Indeed, the mix of coronavirus panic-driven fascism together with release of criminals has made an entire civilization mentally ill — dangerously so.

Next month, the Texas legislature is set to reconvene. There is a Republican governor as well as Republican lieutenant governor and attorney general. Addressing the loopholes for violent criminally insane people in the justice system should be the first priority. They must also clamp down on the power of these judges to release all violent criminals. While they are at it, they should end the lockdowns.

All those measures would go a long way in maintaining ordered liberty. If they fail to address these issues, they can't blame the fallout on Biden and Democrats. They control all of government, yet the state's policies increasingly look like those in California and New York. Who needs Democrats when you have compromised Republicans selling out our citizens with criminal justice deform?