Crime
July 5, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Alexander Bonds, an ex-con with a long rap sheet, shot and killed New York City police officer Miosotis Familia, a mother of three, as she sat in a patrol car in the Bronx. The attack was unprovoked. It was an assassination. According to the New York Times: Around 12:30 a.m., as Officer Familia neared the end of her shift, Mr. Bonds walked up to the vehicle and fired a single
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June 14, 2017 — John Hinderaker
James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois has been identified as the man who shot Majority Whip Steve Scalise and others this morning. Hodgkinson is described by a friend: “He was this union tradesman, pretty stocky, and we stayed up talking politics,” he said. “He was more on the really progressive side of things.” As has been widely reported, Hodgkinson is a rabid Bernie Sanders supporter. He considers Hillary Clinton to
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June 14, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was wounded in a shooting spree targeting Republican House members who were practicing for a congressional baseball game. According to reports, he was shot in the hip. Though the injury is serious, President Trump has tweeted that Scalise is expected to recover fully. Sen. Jeff Flake, who was with Scalise in the hospital, reported that his colleague was awake and coherent throughout. However, it is
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June 14, 2017 — Scott Johnson
A man with a rifle went on a shooting spree targeting Republicans practicing in Alexandria for the upcoming Congressional Baseball Game. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was wounded in the attack. He is at last report in surgery. Members of Rep. Scalise’s security detail were apparently also shot, as well as others including a staffer. Both Politico and CNN have reports with quotes from congressmen on the scene. Below is
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June 10, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
“James Comey is a ‘leaker’ — but that doesn’t make him a criminal.” That’s the headline of a Washington Post story by Matt Zapotosky. The Post’s story tries to create the impression that, in fact, Comey is not a criminal. But Zapatosky undertakes no analysis of the law. Instead, he cites “legal analysts.” However, none of the analysts in question addresses the question of whether Comey committed a crime. The
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June 6, 2017 — Steven Hayward
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has published a study based on the content analysis of body cam footage from Oakland police that shows racial disparities in the “respect” and “formality” police officers show to citizens they interact with. Hoo boy—you can guess right away where this is heading. Here’s the abstract of the study, “Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect”:
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May 23, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
According to Trey Yingst of One America News Network, Team Trump has identified three sources of the leaks flowing so liberally from the White House. He also reports that “multiple people” will be fired when President Trump returns from his trip abroad. Why haven’t the leakers already been fired? Yingst says it’s because their names are “being run by the Office of Government Ethics.” (What that means, and for what
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May 13, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is committed to reversing the lax law enforcement policies of his predecessors, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. Yesterday, he took a significant step in that direction with an order to federal prosecutors regarding the way criminal defendants are to be charged. Sessions instructed: [I]t is a core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense. This policy affirms our responsibility to
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March 9, 2017 — Scott Johnson
In late 2013 the radical lawyer Lynne Stewart received a “compassionate release” from prison in light of her terminal illness. Stewart was released with the consent of the prosecutors who joined her motion for release. On Tuesday Stewart died of the cancer that prompted her release. The New York Times has published a long and respectful obituary. I met up with Stewart at the national convention of the National Lawyers
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February 23, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Keith Boyer, a police officer in Whittier, California, was shot and killed earlier this week. The killer is believed to be Michael Christopher Mejia. According to the Los Angeles Times, Mejia is “a career criminal with a history of drugs and violence.” He has “cycled in and out of jail for repeatedly violating the terms of his release.” Here are the details: Court records show that Mejia was sentenced in
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February 5, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The women’s protest march on the day after the inauguration of President Trump was a peaceful affair. The protesters I encountered were mostly good-natured, especially given how disappointed they must have been. Inauguration day was a different story. Rioting left six police officers injured and caused tens of thousands of dollars in property damage to vehicles and store windows. Police arrested 230 people in connection with the riot. So far,
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February 5, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Official federal crime statistics for 2016 from the Dept. of Justice won’t be available for several more months yet, but The Economist has done some data collecting on its own from big cities in the U.S. The findings about rising murder rates are not good: The Economist has gathered murder statistics for 2016 for the 50 cities with the most murders. These places contain 15% of the country’s population and around
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January 20, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Anyone recall this scene from The Simpsons from way back in its first or second season (when George H.W. Bush was president): Well good grief: But on Thursday, his last full day in office, Obama announced 330 more commutations, for nonviolent drug offenders, bringing his total number of clemencies to 1,715. He has granted commutations to more people than the past 12 presidents combined, including 568 inmates with life sentences.
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January 10, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
A federal jury in South Carolina sentenced Dylann Roof to death today for killing nine black parishioners inside a church during a bible study session. It took the jury less than three hours to decide upon this sentence. The sentence is obviously just, and it is a reminder of why we need the death penalty. A sentence of life imprisonment would be horribly inadequate in Roof’s case. It would not
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January 9, 2017 — Scott Johnson
In the important City Journal column “A window into a depraved culture,” Heather Mac Donald turns to the kidnapping and torture of the disabled white man by four black men and women in Chicago last week. Heather may be our foremost public intellectual on current controversies involving race and crime. Everything Heather writes on the subject is must reading, yet this column merits special attention. What is the cultural context
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January 5, 2017 — John Hinderaker
I wrote last night about the horrific crime in Chicago, where four young African-Americans kidnapped a mentally challenged white youth and tortured him for somewhere between 24 and 48 hours, while unaccountably documenting a portion of their vicious assault on Facebook Live. On the video the perpetrators can be heard shouting “F*** white people!” and “F*** Trump!.” I pointed out that the Associated Press’s account of the crime completely failed
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January 3, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Many readers will recall the Trump rally in North Carolina where a 79 year-old elbowed a young African-American protester. The old man, John Franklin (“Quick Draw”) McGraw was unapologetic. “We don’t know if he’s ISIS; we don’t know who he is,” McGraw said. “The next time we see him, we might have to kill him.” The next time McGraw saw the protester, Rakeem Jones, was in a Fayetteville, North Carolina
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