Crime
January 14, 2021 — John Hinderaker
My colleague John Phelan makes an interesting point about crime and COVID. His numbers are specific to Minnesota, but the same would be true in many other states: [Violent crime] is a crisis. As of January 7th, 41 Minnesotans aged under 40 have died from Covid-19. By contrast, at least 88 Minnesotans aged under 40 have been murdered since the state recorded its first Covid-19 death on March 21st. As
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January 4, 2021 — John Hinderaker
On New Year’s Eve, Ilhan Omar tweeted this photo of herself with her daughter Isra Hirsi: The daughter’s necklace says “FTP” on one side and “BLM” on the other. FTP stands for “F*** the Police.” Ilhan obviously knows this, as does the daughter, who proudly posts radical, anti-American and anti-free enterprise messages. Nevertheless, this is the picture that Ilhan chose to publish on New Year’s Eve. This was, it is
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January 3, 2021 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about the latest “police shooting” in Minneapolis, which took place on Wednesday night. Multiple police vehicles pulled over a young man named Dolal Idd, who was on probation for firearms violations, and officers told him to get out of his car. Instead, he tried to drive away. When blocked, he opened fire on the police and, it appears from video footage, narrowly missed one of them. The
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December 30, 2020 — John Hinderaker
In many American cities, law enforcement is in a state of collapse. A combination of anti-police activism, spineless politicians, and left-wing prosecutors has turned the streets over to violent criminals. Yesterday in Manhattan, a gang of 25 to 50 “youths” attacked a vehicle stopped at a light: Another angle of the riotous youths swarming & attacking a driver in Manhattan after they shut down the road: pic.twitter.com/jovBSudcKf — Andy Ngô
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December 29, 2020 — Steven Hayward
The latest racial controversy concerns the decision of the Washington Redskins “Football Team” (by the way, did you hear Al Michaels slip up and refer to the “Washington Redskins” in the NBC Sunday Night Football broadcast?) to release quarterback Dwayne Haskins for violating multiple team rules. The story comes with a slight twist, as ESPN football analyst Booger McFarland charged that the decision, while not perhaps racially motivated, reflects badly on
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December 18, 2020 — John Hinderaker
We have often written here about Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and, among other things, his irrational response to the COVID virus. His fecklessness (or worse) is now becoming a national story, as in this column by Daniel Horowitz at The Blaze. Walz is now explicitly threatening to imprison Larvita McFarquhar for the “crime” of trying to feed her family by operating her restaurant, Havens Garden, in a small town in
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December 6, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
With the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic dominating the news, we don’t hear much these days about the opioid crisis. But that doesn’t mean it has gone away. In fact, opioid-related deaths are on the rise. In Washington, D.C., there were 282 fatal overdoses by the end of August, the latest month for which data is available. That’s one more than in all of 2019. 2020 looks like it will be the
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December 5, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Most American cities are poorly governed, but some–Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis–are so badly governed that one wonders whether they can survive. Christopher Rufo documents the latest madness in Seattle: In October, the Seattle City Council floated legislation to provide an exemption from prosecution for misdemeanor crimes for any citizen who suffers from poverty, homelessness, addiction, or mental illness. Obviously, a large percentage of crimes are committed by people who fall into
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December 3, 2020 — John Hinderaker
How easy is it to defraud the State of California? This easy: The state of California sent roughly $400 million in fraudulent unemployment payments to state prisoners – nearly triple the amount disclosed last week, after nine district attorneys and a U.S. Attorney announced the state was impeding their investigation. The state approved fraudulent applications submitted on behalf of roughly 31,000 inmates, prosecutors discovered, made possible in part by inmates
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November 28, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Peter Newsham is Washington D.C.’s police chief. He has been with the D.C. police force for 31 years. Newsham will step down from his job, which pays him nearly $300,000, right after Joe Biden is inaugurated. He will become the police chief of Prince William County, Virginia, a D.C. exurb, earning a salary of a little more than $200,000. Newsham’s resignation continues a trend of big city police chiefs stepping
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November 28, 2020 — John Hinderaker
The city of Minneapolis has become a lawless place, and the crime wave now extends to the city’s more prosperous neighborhoods. I lived in Tangletown, a part of South Minneapolis where the streets are a spaghetti-like maze, for some years. Yesterday morning a carjacking was photographed in progress in my old neighborhood: Picture sent from a page follower reportedly from the carjacking in Tangletown area of south Mpls this morning.
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November 23, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
We have written often about the Soros-funded campaign to elect radical prosecutors. Its success has helped undermine the criminal justice system in St. Louis, for example. The next step for the same hard-left crowd might well be to elect radical judges. Doing so can erect a second barrier — a backup — to punishing criminals. In Maryland, four outside challengers won election to circuit courts this month. It’s extremely rare
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November 19, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Last night, I wrote about the dramatic rise of violent crime in Minneapolis. I based my post on an article in the Washington Post called “Minneapolis violence surges as police officers leave department in droves.” The Post’s article cited statistics that show how drastically violence in Minneapolis has surged. It also highlighted the impact of the surge on the lives of Black residents of Minneapolis — residents who blame the
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November 18, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, the Washington Post took a moment off from Trump bashing and Biden promoting to run an actual news story on its front page. The story had a surprisingly (for the Post) honest and direct headline: “Minneapolis violence surges as police officers leave department in droves.” Here are some excerpts from Holly Bailey’s report: The sound of gunfire has become so familiar across North Minneapolis that Cathy Spann worries she
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November 12, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Bloomberg reports that the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is “headed for a dramatic makeover” under Joe Biden. It quotes Linda Chavez, among others. She says that the Biden administration is certain to “undo the Trump years” the same way Trump tried to undo the Obama years — “but with a vengeance.” I don’t want to underestimate the extent to which a Biden DOJ will accommodate race-hustlers, but
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October 20, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Marilyn Mosby burst into the nation’s consciousness when, following the death of Freddy Gray, she declared: To the people of Baltimore and the demonstrators across America. I heard your call for “no justice, no peace.” Your peace is sincerely needed as I work to deliver justice on behalf of this young man. Mosby, Baltimore’s top prosecutor, purported to deliver justice by charging six Baltimore police officers with crimes. If that
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October 13, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
In a post below, I complained about how, instead of questioning Amy Coney Barrett, Senators are using her as a prop while they make speeches. Not surprisingly, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a world class grandstander, was the biggest culprit during three hours or so of the hearing that I watched. Sen. Dick Durbin did a fair amount of speechifying, too. Much of it was directed, not at the issue of whether
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