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Thread: Record Increases in Homicides in American Cities

  1. #61
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    50 People Shot, 15 Fatally, In Baltimore In A Week

    By Amy Kawata
    CBS 13

    It’s been a violent week in Baltimore. As of Monday morning, 50 people were shot and 15 of those victims died since last Sunday.

    New numbers released early Monday accounted for three additional shootings that happened overnight.

    At 11:03 p.m. Sunday officers were called to Federal Hill Park in the 300 block of Warren Avenue for a report of gunshots being heard in the area. When they arrived, they found 39-year-old Melvin Thompson with gunshot wounds to his body. He later died at the hospital.

    Officers were then called to the 700 block of Bartlett Avenue for a ShotSpotter alert around 12:14 a.m. Monday. There they found a shooting victim in the 2300 block of Homewood Avenue. The victim, 52 year-old Vincent McCoy, was found inside a car that was involved in a crash. He was taken to area hospital where he died from his injuries.

    Then around 3:35 a.m., officers were called to the 2000 block of Griffis Avenue for a report of a shooting. When officers arrived, they found an 18-year-old man with gunshot wounds to his body. The victim was taken to an area hospital for treatment.

    These are the latest shootings in a string of violence over the week.

    In northeast Baltimore, officers arrived to find two women suffering from gunshot wounds Saturday evening. A suspect surrendered moments later.

    Detectives arrested 24-year-old Dandre Woods-Bethel, now he is facing murder, assault and weapons charges.

    The victims, a 46-year-old and a 23-year-old, both died from their injuries.

    On Friday, a 14-year-old was shot in the Coldstream-Homestead Montebello community. The teen was pronounced dead at the hospital. Police found a gun on the victim.

    “It makes me sad,” said Mark Washington, with Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello Community Corp.

    Washington wrote a letter to the police asking for help.

    “Any loss of life is tragic, but the loss of a child to the violence of the streets of Baltimore is a call to our community to try and redouble and triple our efforts to do more,” he said.

    Others injured include a 26-year-old shot in his back, an 18-year-old shot in his stomach and a 25-year-old man with a gunshot wound to his leg.

    On Saturday morning in the 1700 block of West North Avenue, two more shooting victims — one man dead and a 30-year-old woman being treated at the hospital.

    The violence began during Labor Day weekend.

    Baltimore City’s police union tweeted again Monday saying the city is in crisis.

    “In the last 10 days there have been 19 homicides & 43 failed murders (shootings) in Baltimore. Also there have been many stabbings/cuttings,” the FOP tweeted. “There is no discernible crime plan for the daily violence and the BPD is making no progress in filling the 500 vacancies.”

    “The fact that it happens far too often in Baltimore City suggests that we as a community, as a city, are not doing enough,” Washington said.

    Police also said a 27-year-old man shot in the 1000 block of Beaumont Avenue died two days later from his injuries, which brought the fatality total to 15.

    https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2020/...ore-in-a-week/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  2. #62
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    August 31, 2020

    Philadelphia’s homicide toll reaches 300 this year after weekend shooting

    By Joshua Rhett Miller
    New York Post

    The slaying of two men in Philadelphia over the weekend pushed the city’s homicide count to over 300 — the highest it’s been by the end of August in at least 13 years, police said.

    Statistics posted on the Philadelphia Police Department’s website early Monday show 301 homicide victims citywide through Sunday — or an increase of 33 percent from the same date in 2019, when a total of 356 people died of homicide by the end of the year.

    The figure, which has been largely driven by ongoing gun violence, is the highest homicide total Philadelphia has seen by the end of August since at least 2007, data shows.

    Philadelphia did not tally 300-plus homicides from 2013 through 2016, but surpassed that grim milestone in 2017 (315) and again in 2018, when 353 were killed citywide, statistics show.

    The spate of shootings has included more than 100 juvenile victims, WPVI reports. And in one weekend alone earlier this month, as many as 30 people were shot, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

    “We’re tired of the killing in our community,” Kimberly Washington told WPVI during a march calling for peace last week.

    Seventeen people were shot throughout Philadelphia from Friday through Sunday, including two fatally, a police spokesman told The Post, adding that he did not immediately have any information regarding arrests in the incidents.

    One unidentified man was pronounced dead after cops responded to a street party in North Philadelphia, where gunfire broke out early Sunday. The occupants of a black Nissan Altima with Delaware plates were later taken into custody, but it’s unclear whether charges were filed, the Inquirer reports.

    Two men were also shot, including one fatally, less than two hours later in another section of North Philadelphia. Police had not identified either victim as of late Sunday and no arrests were announced by police in any of the weekend shootings, the Inquirer reports.

    Mayor Jim Kenney, meanwhile, acknowledged the city’s surging homicide total, saying city officials were “devastated by this solemn moment.”

    “One homicide is one too many so I share the public’s outrage that 300 Philadelphians’ lives have been cut tragically short this year,” Kenney said in a statement.

    “Our administration maintains a sense of urgency on this mounting public health crisis. This is personal. This is our home, and many of us know some of the victims and their families directly impacted by violence. All Philadelphians deserve to be — and feel — safe in our city.”

    Kenney said his administration is working to increase “evidence-based strategies” to cut down on gun violence while calling for increased control of illegal firearms at state and federal levels.

    “This can only happen when state and federal leaders develop the courage to shake the grip of the [National Rifle Association], and enact true reform that keeps guns out of the hands of people with a proven record of violence,” Kenney’s statement continued.

    CNN reported earlier this month that Philadelphia ranked second in the nation in the number of homicides this year, behind just Chicago, according to statistics presented by Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw to city council members during a hearing on gun violence.

    Philadelphia had 247 homicides as of July 26, while Chicago had tallied 433, or an increase of 52 percent from a year earlier. New York ranked third at the time with 227 homicides, CNN reported.

    https://nypost.com/2020/08/31/philad...des-this-year/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  3. #63
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Murders in Philadelphia are now 38 % over what they were last year which was already their worst year on record with 500 homicides.

    Murders in Chicago have increased by 5% since last year.

    https://www.phillypolice.com/crime-maps-stats/

    https://heyjackass.com/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Senior Member CnCP Addict johncocacola's Avatar
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    Larry Krasner still easily won the primary......

  5. #65
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Philadelphia Has Highest Murder Rate Per Capita Among Country’s 10 Largest Cities

    CBS 3

    As of Thursday, the number of homicide victims in Philadelphia this year is up to at least 314 people. That’s up 35% from this time last year.

    Philadelphia now has the highest murder rate in the country per capita of the country’s 10 largest cities.

    Now, we’re getting a look at the areas hit hardest by the gun violence.

    More than one-third of the shootings have happened in just five zip codes in North Philadelphia, Hunting Park, West Philadelphia, Kingsessing, Kensington and Port Richmond.

    As the death toll continues to climb at a record-breaking pace, some city leaders are demanding action from the mayor.

    https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/20...argest-cities/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    The System is collapsing. Dueling is decriminalized de facto in Chicago.

    October 9 2021

    Chicago mayor, Cook County state’s attorney butt heads over fatal shooting prosecution

    by DAVE BYRNES
    Courthouse News

    The video is blurry. It's hard to make out any faces. A car pulls up to a curb, men jump out and suddenly there is gunfire — it's not clear who shoots first. One man falls, people run in all directions, then the cops show up.

    It's a short video, capturing a gang dispute that occurred Friday, Oct. 1 in the neighborhood of Austin on Chicago's West Side. If Lori Lightfoot were the Cook County State's Attorney, she would have charged all five of the men suspected to be involved in the shooting — which left one dead and two injured — with felonies. But Lori Lightfoot is not the state's attorney. She is the mayor of Chicago. And she is furious that the actual Cook County State's Attorney, Kimberly Foxx, pursued nary a count of aggravated battery.

    “We can't live in a world where there's no accountability, the mayor said in an unrelated Monday press conference. "When there's no accountability... individuals who wreak havoc, who fire indiscriminately or fire at a target but without any regard for the sanctity of life... if they do not feel like the criminal justice system is going to hold them accountable, we're going to see a level of brazenness that will send this city into chaos."

    It was a slap in the face to Foxx's office, one she didn't take lying down. In her own press conference on Tuesday she rebuked Lightfoot — a former federal prosecutor herself — for taking a case still under investigation into the media spotlight.

    "I find myself here today having to respond to a narrative that was given by the mayor yesterday, regarding a case that is still under investigation," Foxx said. "It was inappropriate. It was wrong... discussing the facts of this case in the press without the benefit of all of the evidence does a disservice to the communities who have been impacted by this violence."

    Foxx maintained that her job as a prosecutor was not merely to arrest people but to secure a conviction, something that could not be done without sufficient evidence.

    "We reviewed the evidence that was presented to us in consultation with the detectives," a Monday release from Foxx's office read. "And they agreed we were unable to approve charges based on the evidence presented."

    Lightfoot, undeterred, shot back with a letter signed by five West Side aldermen — a letter demanding that the two men suspected of initiating the gunfight face felony charges.

    So it went for much of the week, with barbs traded across news conferences, through press releases, in emails and back-room meetings. But more than just a spat between two of Chicago's public figures, the fight soon took on sociocultural dimensions. It became a shibboleth for the major dividing line running through the entirety of Chicago politics.

    On one side, the technocratic liberalism of the New Chicago Machine. Lightfoot's politics. The politics of means-tested solutions and tough financial calls; the politics of Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama and most of the city's aldermen.

    On the other side, the city's progressive movement, nascent if not ascendant since at least 2018. The politics of the Chicago Teachers Union, the Democratic Socialist Caucus of city hall, and community activist groups across the city.

    Those in the former camp want accountability for wrongs done, respect for the rules of polite society enforced. Crime, meet punishment.

    "What can we tell residents of this community about the legitimacy of the criminal justice system? This kind of brazen violence must be met with a swift and certain accountability through felony charges," the letter signed by the five West Side aldermen read. "Anything less than that invites more lawlessness and more brazenness which too many communities are experiencing in this time."

    Those in the latter group balk at what they see as a naked disdain for civil rights by the rich and the powerful. A bloodthirsty demand for a scapegoat, to avoid reckoning with the systemic inequality from which gang fights and gun violence bloom.

    "The fact that there's a feud between Chicago's mayor and top prosecutor because the mayor wants people charged for a gunfight, while the prosecutor says there's no evidence of who did what, should be national news. What the mayor is doing is horrifying," activist and author Kelly Hayes of the progressive news outlet Truthout said in a Wednesday tweet. "The mayor of Chicago is demanding a charge them all and let god sort it out approach to criminal justice... This is so dangerous. It should be called out. It should be opposed."

    The two camps fought, in person and online, while elder statesmen like Jesse Jackson and even Chicago's favorite priest — Father Michael Pfleger — called for a ceasefire.

    “They're talking past each other; both of them are good people." Jackson said in a Thursday address at a public high school where two students had recently been shot." Let’s talk it out in private and not in public. It creates more division within the city.”

    In this furor, the case itself — and the reasons why Foxx decided not to pursue felony charges — largely fell into the background. A police report leaked to local media claims her office decided not to press felony charges because it was too difficult to tell — at least at first glance — who initiated the violence. In that uncertainty, the report stated that the office decided to classify the incident as "mutual combat."

    "[Mutual combat] is considered in Illinois a mitigating defense," Mike Botti, a former Assistant State's Attorney for DuPage County explained in an interview. "It's a fight where both parties enter willingly."

    Botti further explained that when death occurs in cases deemed mutual combat — such as a bar brawl or when children's play fights get out of hand — both parties' explicit or implicit consent to the fight can shield them from murder charges. But there are stipulations that make it a hard defense to successfully implement.

    "It's not an easy defense because you have to show that both parties were on equal terms...the retaliation has to be proportional," Botti said. "I've never seen it successfully used in a trial."

    With Foxx's office sticking to its vow to not discuss an ongoing investigation publicly, it's hard to know how the state's attorney truly intended to utilize the mutual combat doctrine. Sticking to the argument that her office must pursue convictions, not arrests, Foxx maintained through the week that to press felony charges against the five men would be premature.

    But Lightfoot wasn't having it. On Tuesday, she said in a press conference she would look into asking the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago to pursue federal felony charges, if the Cook County State's Attorney was unwilling to do likewise.

    And, for his own sake, Botti agreed with the mayor.

    "You could make [the mutual defense] argument for every gang shooting in Chicago on that logic," Botti said. "As a prosecutor... it's not [her] job to come up with a defense for the defense."

    But Foxx, too, stuck to her guns throughout the week- even after a second round of talks between her office and the mayor's on Thursday produced little more than a press release. She reiterated that the Chicago Police Department, an institution that has found itself at odds with both women's offices in the past, supported her decision not to press felony charges.

    "As from the very beginning, CPD continued to agree that there is insufficient evidence for charges at this time and informed the Mayor as such. However, the [Cook County State's Attorney's Office] remains committed to working with CPD as they continue their investigation."

    It remains unclear how the case will play out moving forward. What is clear is that for the moment, both the mayor and the state's attorney are sticking by their once-and-future positions.

    "I believe that there are charges that can be brought, at a minimum, against the individuals who initiated the gunfire... they have to be held accountable," Lightfoot said Monday.

    "The Cook County State's Attorney's Office is here... to hold those who cause harm to our communities accountable..." Foxx said on Tuesday. "However, we will do it with the Constitution and abiding by the civil rights that are afforded to all."

    https://www.courthousenews.com/chica...g-prosecution/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Philly is now 8 murders away from breaking it's all-time murder record of 500 and its's not even December.

    https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/vi...lney-shooting/

    Chicago has now had its worst year since 1995, they will probably break 800 murders this year.

    https://heyjackass.com/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Left out racist language being used by Nutter.

    DA Krasner’s statement that the city has no crime crisis generates a debate - and a backlash

    by Mensah M. Dean, Dylan Purcell, Max Marin, and Craig R. McCoy
    Philadelphia Inquirer

    Moments before Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said the city faced no crime crisis, the pastor in whose church he stood expressed a far different view.

    “We are in a huge crisis mode,” Bishop J. Darrell Robinson Sr. said Monday. “For the last month, I’ve done too many funerals. It’s hurting, it’s painful, to see droves of young people coming, crying, family members crying.”

    In his remarks Monday, Krasner focused on a strange phenomenon that he rightly pointed out was unfolding not only in Philadelphia but in other big cities: Even as gun homicides have soared to record numbers, crimes without firearms have been flat or falling.

    His comments left many shaking their heads but also added new fuel to a vexing debate among activists, residents, and academics about the nature of gunpoint violence in the era of COVID-19.

    While Krasner seemed to be seeking good news in gloom, others saw his remarks as a pointless hedging — or worse.

    In an op-ed article published by The Inquirer late Tuesday, former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter called Krasner’s statements “some of the worst, most ignorant, and most insulting comments I have ever heard spoken by an elected official.”

    Darnetta Arce, executive director of the Brewerytown and Sharswood civic association in North Philadelphia, was also critical.

    “People get carjacked at the gas station,” Arce said in an interview Tuesday. “We have people getting robbed as they walk down the street. We have people getting shot. So, no, it’s not safe in our community right now.”

    With sunset coming early, Arce added, some folks won’t leave their homes, within the Police 22nd District, to attend the association’s evening meetings. “Bullets don’t have names on them,” she said. “In some of these shootings, people are getting killed who are not the target person.”

    Philadelphia’s current 521 homicide toll marks the deadliest year in city history, with more than three weeks still remaining. In a death count overwhelmingly driven by guns, the number of people slain already eclipses last year’s 499 homicides and the previous record of 500, registered 31 years ago.

    It’s not just gun killings that are up. Police figures show that both aggravated assaults and robberies with guns are running higher than last year. Gunfire woundings are also on par with last year’s pace — a rate that was the highest since authorities began tallying those victims.

    At his weekly news briefing Monday, at a church in South Philadelphia, Krasner said: ”We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence.” He noted, correctly, that Philadelphia has witnessed some relief in other indices of crime. Compared with last year and 2019, aggravated assaults and robberies that didn’t involve a gun are down. So are rapes.

    The picture is clouded by 2020′s overlapping medical, social, institutional, emotional and financial woes stemming from the pandemic and upheaval following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Commercial burglaries, for example, fell sharply this year, following a spike in 2020 amid the unrest. Household burglaries increased slightly this year but are still lower than in 2019.

    How safe someone feels may also depend upon where they live. While gun assaults spiked precipitously over 2019 in all but two police districts, the news is mixed for serious assaults committed without guns. Among the city’s 21 police districts, about half showed an increase in those

    For months now, the city and the nation have been debating what has caused the explosion in gun crime. In Philadelphia, some have criticized Krasner’s leadership, pointing to a decline in convictions for illegal gun possession and lackluster conviction rates for nonfatal shootings.

    Krasner, for his part, points to how the pandemic has shut schools, summer camps, sports programs, job programs, church programs, and places that employ young people.

    “When the pandemic came, and you had a shutdown of all sorts of things that had value in terms of preventing young people from shooting young people, which is what we’re seeing,” he said Monday. “When all that prevention was stripped away we saw this terrible spike happening everywhere.”

    Other analysts say that once violence erupts, it can increase geometrically, often fueled by social media, as young men with guns resolve vendettas with bullets.

    All of this has played out against a backdrop of poverty and prejudice that go back generations.

    Dan Semenza, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University-Camden, called the rise in gun violence and decline in non-gun violence “a strange little puzzle.” Like Krasner, he attributed the increase to a boost in gun sales and shutdown of social services during the pandemic.

    “You throw in the pressure cooker all the stress and strain that the pandemic has brought, especially in disadvantaged communities where people are sicker, or people have lost jobs, or people are struggling with housing or eviction,” Semenza said. “These things are concentrated most deeply in the neighborhoods where the shootings are happening.”

    Caterina Roman, a professor at Temple University and crime expert, said her research finds a link between the high numbers of shootings and heavy drug activity.

    “There’s something especially disorganizing and chaotic about drug markets that’s attracting and generating violence,” she said last month during a Penn Urban Studies virtual lecture series.

    “Maybe new players are coming into the market — motivated individuals who weren’t involved in criminal behavior before are joining,” she said. “There’s more competition because maybe more people are turning to drugs.”

    A common thread
    With so many cities seeing a surge in gun violence but not in other crimes, some analysts say they have found the common thread: a national retrenchment in police activity.

    “What would cause an increase in these particular gun homicides and their cousin, gun violence, as compared to everything else?” Paul Cassell, a law professor and crime specialist at the University of Utah, asked Tuesday. “The answer has to do with proactive policing, vehicle stops, pedestrian stops. Those are activities uniquely targeted to reduce gun violence.”

    Cassell, the author of an influential study on the homicide spike in Philadelphia and several other cities, and others point to the deaths in police custody of men in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., followed by the killing of Floyd, and subsequent protests. They say this all has prompted a kind of police pullback.

    In Philadelphia, police statistics show, stops by police have fallen dramatically for years now, with the drop-off accelerating under COVID-19.

    In 2017, for example, police stopped 98,000 pedestrians. This year they are on track to stop 14,000. Officers pulled over 280,000 cars and trucks in 2017. This year, they are on a pace to stop 134,000.

    As mayor, Nutter was an advocate of stop-and-frisk policing. In his second year in office, 2009, pedestrian stops hit a peak of 253,000. However, his administration later signed an agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union to curb the stops.

    Lawyers said that police often lacked probable cause to frisk people, that the searches were racially biased and that the pat-downs rarely turned up guns — with some detractors saying it made police seem like an occupying army.

    In addition to the factors at play as part of the ACLU agreement, the department is under strength because of resignations, early retirements, and recruitment challenges. And due to the virus, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw early last year formally ordered police to delay arrests for some nonviolent crimes, including drug offenses, theft, and prostitution.

    Critics, however, are skeptical about the theory that police retrenchment is such a key factor. They point out that police in New York City radically cut back on stops yet homicides continued to fall. And in Philadelphia, even as police stops have dropped, gun arrests have climbed. They are up three-quarters from the 2017 figure.

    After serving five years in prison for selling drugs, George Waters, 62, helped found a youth-mentoring group, Men Who Care of Germantown Inc., in 2011 to help repair a community that he said he once damaged.

    Waters, too, said he was stumped as to why shootings are out of control while some other serious crimes are not.

    “I don’t think no one can answer that,” he said. “It’s just what it is.”

    His cousin Jessica Covington, 32, was shot to death last month in Crescentville shortly after returning from her baby shower in amurder that received considerable media coverage.

    ”More people are getting their hands on guns now because that’s the power tool,” Waters said. ”Instead of using their brains and their minds and being creative, it’s easier to just get a gun and do something to someone.”

    Waters also said Krasner’s remarks seemed clueless.

    “He’s in denial,” Waters said. “Him saying these words to people who have been through crime, I’m sure their opinion is totally different.”

    https://www.inquirer.com/news/krasne...-20211207.html
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Texas’ Harris County has more than 700 open murder warrants, 25K open felony warrants: report

    True Pundit

    Texas’ most populous county, home to the city of Houston, has more than 700 open murder warrants and more than 25,000 open felony warrants, according to a report.

    Records from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office show there are 50,672 open arrest warrants in total, KTRK reported.

    “It’s a high number. It’s not good to have anyone on a violent crime running around, but there’s only so many investigators and officers who can run these warrants,” Harris County Lt. Kacey Haberland, who works in the criminal warrants division, told the outlet. “We are in the negative. We are in the red every time on the warrant count, more coming in than we are able to arrest.”

    KTRK reported that fewer than 10% of people facing warrants were being arrested every month in 2021.

    Even with arrests being conducted, between 4,000 and 6,000 new arrest warrants were issued each month. Meanwhile, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office has only 17 investigators and sergeants dedicated to the criminal warrant division, meaning just over a dozen law enforcement personnel are tasked with finding and bringing in tens of thousands of wanted offenders. Houston Police can also run warrants.

    Haberland said deputies are prioritizing suspects who are charged with the most violent crimes.

    “It should be a priority, I will be the first to say it, but there are not enough people,” Haberland told KTRK, of bringing in repeat offenders before crimes escalate. “We have so many murders in Harris County, unincorporated, or the city of Houston, that they focus predominately on murders.

    https://paine.tv/texas-harris-county...rrants-report/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Jim Durkin: The SAFE-T Act gives drug cartels free rein in Illinois

    By Jim Durkin
    Chicago Tribune

    This past summer, Gov. J.B. Pritzker claimed, “Illinois is leading the way in addressing the war on drugs as no state has before.” In reality, with his signature on the misnamed SAFE-T Act, Pritzker and his legislative partners have opened up Illinois to drug cartels and traffickers like never before.

    Included in Pritzker’s crime bill is a ticking time bomb set to go off at the start of next year that will have serious ramifications for law-abiding citizens and give drug cartels free rein on Illinois’ streets.

    The elimination of cash bail, which will begin Jan. 1, will have wide-ranging consequences throughout our criminal justice system. With the elimination of cash bail, criminal suspects will be detained before trial only in the case of forcible felonies that are nonprobational or unless they are considered a flight risk or a danger to someone in the community. Many violent crimes, including robbery, vehicular invasion, driving under the influence causing death and second-degree murder, do not qualify under this law. This policy is a horrible slap in the face to victims and neighborhoods desperately seeking safety.

    So how does this affect the war on drugs? Under Pritzker’s SAFE-T Act, it’s possible drug kingpins, smugglers, traffickers or distributors of illegal drugs won’t be detained before trial, no matter the quantity of deadly substances they are accused of possessing. Astonishingly, Pritzker and the Democrats don’t seem to believe there is a connection between drug dealers, street gangs, cartels and the gun violence our state sees daily.

    For decades, sales of drugs brought into Chicago by cartels have fueled gang wars. And once a smuggler finds a route that works, they will use it for other illicit trade such as guns, counterfeit products and even human trafficking.

    I know this firsthand, having served as a special prosecutor in the Cook County state’s attorney’s Narcotics Bureau.

    Large-scale drug busts are often the result of joint task force operations throughout the state. Last December, DuPage and Kane counties performed a traffic stop that discovered more than 900 grams of cocaine and between 15 and 100 grams of fentanyl. A $500,000 bond was set for the trafficking suspect to ensure the person would appear in court.

    That scenario plays out weekly and monthly throughout Illinois. Those drugs are the lifeblood of the street gangs that have destroyed families and terrorized neighborhoods in Illinois.

    Starting Jan. 1, those accused of being large-scale smugglers, traffickers or distributors may end up not being detained or subject to a bond hearing. Suspected street gang and cartel members could be released immediately. The courts will have to tell them to follow the honor system and attend their next scheduled appearance. What are the chances of that?

    In addition, if they don’t show up, the court has to give them another opportunity to appear before issuing a warrant. This catch-and-release policy will not make our streets and borders safer. Instead, it will perpetuate the trade of gangs and drug dealers.

    When Pritzker talks about combating the war on drugs, know that the actual fighting won’t start till Jan. 1.

    https://www.chicagotribune.com/opini...tj4-story.html
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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