Crime
March 4, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Late last night, the House of Representatives passed the “George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020” on a party-line vote, with just two Democrats joining Republicans in opposing the measure. You can read the text of the bill here. It reflects the Democratic Party’s view that there is really no such thing as crime, and the principal threat to our populace comes from violent, depraved police officers. In general,
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March 4, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, I discussed the crime wave in Montgomery County, Maryland. Homicides, carjackings, and armed robberies are all up this year. In January, there were seven homicides. According to the chief of police, that’s an all-time record for a single month. As for armed robberies, they have increased by 40 percent. How will the County respond? Its task force on “Reimagining Public Safety” is recommending fewer police on streets and the
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March 3, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The relatively affluent neighborhood in Montgomery County, Maryland where I live is experiencing something of a crime wave. Reports of crimes like carjacking and break-ins appear regularly on the neighborhood listserves my wife is on. And each week, it seems like the location of the crimes gets closer to our house. Sometimes the reports complain about the police. The complaint isn’t that the cops are racist or too aggressive. It’s
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March 2, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
It says a lot that Andrew Cuomo became a media darling even as his policies caused thousands of deaths in New York nursing homes, but now, suddenly, is the subject of impeachment talk because three women have accused him of mild or borderline sexual harassment. What it suggests to me is that our priorities are skewed and that our culture is becoming frivolous. The allegations of sexual harassment show Cuomo
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March 1, 2021 — John Hinderaker
In the wake of last Summer’s devastating riots in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Hollywood celebrities and left-wing politicians led by Kamala Harris joined forces to bail out violent criminals who committed arson, looting and other felonies. But apparently there were not enough such criminals to go around–not enough who got arrested, anyway–so the Hollywood/D.C. leftists bailed out everyone in sight. Along with other victims, one or more Minnesota women have
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February 27, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Derek Chauvin goes on trial for murder in the death of George Floyd on March 8. His trial has been separated from that of the other three officers who have been charged; theirs will begin in August. Chauvin is the principal defendant. Of the four policemen involved, two were on something like their fourth day on the job. The third was a tiny guy, also not very experienced. Chauvin was
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February 24, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
During the 1980s, Rayful Edmond III was the narcotics kingpin of Washington D.C. He probably did more harm to residents of the city than anyone else in history. According to this report in the Washington Post, Edmond oversaw an operation that brought around 1,700 pounds of cocaine into Washington every month. Law enforcement officials estimate that he was making around $2 million a week from drug dealing between 1985 and
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February 22, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Those who read Power Line faithfully know that Andrew Cuomo may be in legal jeopardy. The Justice Department reportedly is investigating him and some members of his staff for their conduct in response to a DOJ request for information about nursing home deaths in New York. John Daukas was principal deputy to the DOJ’s assistant attorney general for civil rights at the time the Department requested information from Cuomo. Later,
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February 21, 2021 — John Hinderaker
I assume that everyone knows homicide rates rose substantially in 2020 over prior years. Why did this happen? It seems clear that the anti-police agitation associated with Black Lives Matter and Antifa, and encouraged by almost all Democratic Party politicians, played the decisive role. Steve Sailer has charted the numbers. The homicide rate was flat until the hysteria that surrounded the death of George Floyd, most likely from the fentanyl
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February 18, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The other day, I suggested that Andrew Cuomo and/or members of his staff may have violated up to three federal criminal statutes in connection with a Justice Department request for information about nursing home deaths from the Wuhan coronavirus in New York. Now comes word that the FBI and the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York have opened an investigation into Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes and
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February 15, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Melissa DeRosa, an aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo, has admitted that, in an attempt to cover up evidence that might put Cuomo’s administration in trouble with the Department of Justice, the administration withheld the true New York toll of nursing home deaths due to the Wuhan coronavirus. She reportedly told New York Democrats that “we froze” out of fear that the true numbers would “be used against us” by federal
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February 10, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
George Gascón is the far-left district attorney in Los Angeles. He’s among those prosecutors who, with the backing of George Soros, have gained power and are using it to let criminals walk, or at least to treat them leniently. To the latter end, Gascón issued a directive to his attorneys forbidding them from seeking longer sentences for repeat offenders under the state’s Three Strikes Law, as well as in several
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February 8, 2021 — Scott Johnson
In the wake of the death of George Floyd, the proliferation of crime in the Twin Cities has become obvious. Libor Jany muddies the equally obvious contribution of the political climate in the Star Tribune story “Minneapolis violent crimes soared in 2020 amid pandemic, protests.” Libor really needs to sit down with Professor Paul Cassell’s report on the Minneapolis effect in “Explaining the great 2020 homicide spike.” For those who
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February 1, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
During the second half of 2020, we noted from time to time that homicides were increasing dramatically in American cities — a trend that coincided with BLM protests against the police. Now, the nationwide numbers are in. Homicide rates were 30 percent higher in 2020 than in in 2019, according to a new report by Professor Richard Rosenfeld and two others. This represents more than 1,268 additional murders (in a
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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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