Category: Crime

‘Young Philadelphians’

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Play stupid games, win stupid prizes:

Police said one person is dead following a shooting during a burglary attempt inside a South Philadelphia gun store early Tuesday.
It happened around 4:20 a.m. on the 1500 block of South Front Street in the Pennsport section of the city.
Police were called to the Firing Line Gun Range and Gun Store.
Officers said when they arrived at the store they found a man on the second floor with a gunshot wound to the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators said the gun shop owner told them he was staking out his store following an earlier burglary attempt. He said he watched the security screen show three or four men use wire cutters to break through the gate and enter the store.
The owner said he pointed his gun at the man inside the store and fired, striking him in the head. The two to three other people ran from the scene.
Officials said another person arrived at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital with a gunshot wound to his shoulder. Police are unsure if this shooting is connected to the incident at this time.
Police said the owner of the gun store is cooperating with the investigation.

 

Police told Fox News there will be no charges against the store owner, as this is the very definition of justifiable homicide. Meanwhile . . .

Most Looters Are Young Philadelphians
Not Associated With the Protests, DA Says

That’s the headline from Philadephia’s WCAU-TV, which quotes the Soros-supported Democrat district attorney Larry Krasner:

“I think it would be fair to describe most of these as looting cases,” Krasner said in an interview with NBC10 Monday. “They are often situations in which people are caught inside of a store… within Macy’s or at some other location.”
For the looting and burglary, Krasner said it’s mostly been 18- to 24-year-olds from Philadelphia in what he called crimes of opportunity. Many of them, he said, were first time offenders.
Among the protesters, police found a few people with guns, Krasner said. So his office has charged three people with illegal gun possession charges. . . .
So far, he said, the looting videos have shown different crowds from those protesting.
“They don’t seem to be carrying signs, talking about political issues or talking about police accountability, they don’t seem to have t-shirts on that are political in nature,” he said. “They seem to be committing opportunistic crimes and they seem to be doing it within the context of peaceful protest.”

Why does this distinction between protesters and looters matter so much to Krasner? Is it not obvious to everyone with two eyes and a brain that the people who organize the “peaceful protests” are doing so with the intent of causing riots? And that the people committing “crimes of opportunity” understand this as well as the political organizers do? Of course, the protest organizers are funded by Soros, the same man who spent nearly $2 million to elect Krasner. Democrats are the party of criminals. Someone should write a book about that.

Oh, wait . . .


 

Rioter vs. FedEx Truck: Guess Who Won?

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Here’s a helpful hint for young “social justice” activists — truck drivers have no obligation to surrender to armed hijackers:

Authorities said a man was hit and killed by a FedEx truck during protests over George Floyd’s death in St. Louis.
A preliminary investigation revealed that the driver of a FedEx double tractor-trailer was rerouted because protesters shut down certain areas near downtown St. Louis.
St. Louis Police said the driver stopped due to a large gathering of protesters. While he was stopped, several people gained access to the first trailer and started to remove items.
Two men, “while standing on the passenger side footboard of the truck cab, displayed guns to the driver. The driver, fearing for his safety, sounded the airhorn and drove off until he was stopped by police,” Sgt. Keith Barrett said in a statement.
The driver didn’t realize that a person was stuck on the converter dolly between the two trailers, police said. The man had been caught by the trailer tire, pulled under and was eventually run over by the tire.
Authorities are now investigating the incident but they believe the man who died appeared to be one of the protesters.

I’ve seen two different videos of the incident. The graphic nature required the local Fox affiliate to censor some images, but you get the idea:

 

The thing that struck me about this entire nightmare — here’s a good roundup of Sunday night’s anarchy — is how stupid and senseless it all is. Police in Minneapolis killed a guy who was caught trying to pass a counterfeit $20. Why does this require people to riot all over the country?

What purpose were the protest marches intended to accomplish? To express disapproval of racism? Yet if practically everybody is against racism — and it is quite difficult to find self-avowed racists in 21st-century America — who are the protesters marching against? Consider the case of Minneapolis, in particular. The city has long had a reputation as a bastion of liberalism. Hubert Humphrey, an outspoken champion of racial equality, was mayor of Minneapolis before winning three terms in the U.S. Senate and becoming vice president during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Minnesota is such a stronghold of the Democratic Party that not even Ronald Reagan’s historic 1984 landslide could tip the state into the GOP column. So if Minneapolis is now run by a secret cabal of racist officials determined to oppress the city’s black residents, these oppressors must be Democrats. Surely such an accusation cannot be what inspired the protest marches that followed the death of George Floyd, can it?
Whatever wrongdoing might have been committed by the police implicated in Floyd’s death, no one could plausibly assert that officials in Minneapolis endorsed it. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.


 

Ivy League Terrorist

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Trained by an elite university your kids could never afford to attend:

Two Brooklyn lawyers, including an Ivy League graduate corporate attorney, are facing federal charges for tossing a Molotov cocktail into an NYPD vehicle early Saturday morning during a protest over the police killing of George Floyd.
Colinford Mattis, 32, a lawyer and member of Community Board 5 in East New York, was charged along with fellow attorney Urooj Rahman with the attempted attack on an empty police cruiser parked outside the 88th Precinct station house in Fort Greene.
“This is shocking news to me,” Andre Mitchell, president of Community Board 5 told the Daily News. “The allegation does surprise me because that doesn’t sound like him.”
The super of Rahman’s building called her “an angel” who recently lost her legal job.
“I can’t believe it. I’m stunned,” said George Raleigh, the super of Rahman’s building in Bay Ridge. “This kid? She’s an angel.”
Authorities say Rahman, 31, tossed a bottle filled with gasoline through a broken window into the cruiser just before 1 am Saturday but the Molotov cocktail failed to ignite. Rahman jumped into a van driven by Mattis and they sped off, court papers allege.
The attempted torching was captured by video surveillance cameras outside the precinct stationhouse on DeKalb Ave.
Cops gave chase and stopped the van nearby on Willoughby St.. They found the makings of another Molotov cocktail in the back seat along with a gasoline container.
“No rational human being can ever believe that hurling firebombs at police officers and vehicles is justified,” said Brooklyn U.S Attorney Richard Donaghue. . . .
Mattis, who lives in East New York, graduated from Princeton University and New York University law school, according to his LinkedIn page.
He is an associate with Pryor Cashman, a Times Square corporate law firm where he specializes in start-ups. The firm did not immediately return a call for comment.
Mattis has served for two years on Community Board 5, which covers East New York and Starrett City. He is vice chairman of the by laws committee and serves on the housing and land use committee headed by prominent activist Viola Plummer.

The annual cost of attending Princeton is $69,020, including room and board. Somehow, I suspect the Alumni Association won’t be getting too many contributions from Mr. Colinford in the future.


 

‘An Epicenter of Anti-Trans Violence’

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Once the “social justice” bandwagon of identity-politics victimhood gets rolling, everybody starts trying to climb aboard:

A black transgender man was fatally shot Wednesday by a police officer in Tallahassee, Florida — at least the third reported officer-involved shooting in Tallahassee in two months.
The victim, Tony McDade, 38, was identified as a suspect in a reported stabbing the morning of his death. Police said McDade fled the scene of the stabbing on foot before officers arrived, but they encountered McDade nearby shortly afterward.
According to police, McDade reportedly had a handgun and “made a move consistent with using the firearm” against an officer, prompting the officer to shoot McDade.
The Tallahassee Police Department said that it is investigating and that the officer, who was not identified, has been placed on administrative leave. . . .
Equality Florida, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization, said McDade’s death further exemplifies that Florida is “an epicenter of anti-trans violence.” At least seven black transgender people were murdered in Florida over the last two years, according to the organization.
Following McDade’s death, the National Black Justice Coalition said the “tragic incident should be a reminder that hate crimes against Black LGBTQ” people happen “too frequently” and “often without the national public outcry that our cis and/or heteronormative brothers and sisters receive.”
“It is important to highlight the too often ignored violence that members of our community face in addition to the discrimination we may experience because we are Black,” the coalition said in a statement.”

Are you . . . skeptical of such claims? Are you less than 100% confident this incident was a “hate crime”? Do you doubt Florida is actually an “epicenter of anti-trans violence”? Do you suspect that “Tony” McDade might not be an entirely innocent victim? Because you’re a hater?

 

A Tallahassee resident shot and killed by police Wednesday vowed they would never return to federal prison in a haunting Facebook live video posted the previous day.
Natosha “Tony” McDade, 38, died after a confrontation with police on Holton Street. Officers tried to stop McDade in connection with a deadly stabbing on Saxon Street minutes earlier.
“It’s just Tony the Tiger all alone coming for your blood,” McDade said in the Facebook Live post, “And after I get through killing you (expletive) I’m going to go back on live if I have the opportunity, because I will not be going back to prison.”
“Me and the law will have a standoff,” McDade said, “Because I’m fed up.”
The Bureau of Prisons website shows McDade was just released from federal prison on January 17, 2020 after serving a ten year sentence on weapons charges.
McDade was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2009 for possession of a gun and ammunition by a convicted felon. Federal court records indicate McDade was sentenced to 10 years in prison on those charges to be followed by three years of supervised release.
“All I ask of you is to make sure my mother is fine once I depart,” McDade said in the Facebook Live post. “I am killing and going to be killed because I will not go back into federal prison.”
Leon County court records show that McDade was arrested a few weeks ago after a confrontation outside the Circle K on South Monroe Street in which a woman claimed McDade threatened her and pulled a gun on her.
The arrest affidavit dated May 4, 2020 says officers later talked with McDade, who admitted the two had argued outside the Circle K but told officers the gun in question was a BB gun. The affidavit says officers found that BB gun under the driver’s seat of McDade’s car saying it was “nearly identical to an actual firearm and was only determined to be a BB gun upon closer inspection.”
Leon County court records show McDade was charged with aggravated assault and released on bond the next day.
Leon County court records show McDade had several prior arrests between 1999 and 2009 including arrests for armed robbery, battery and forgery. Florida Department of Corrections records show McDade did two stints in state prison including five years on the armed robbery charge.

So, a career criminal, out on bond for an aggravated assault charge, who had vowed never to go back to prison and warned of a “standoff” with police, and who had just stabbed somebody to death, got killed in a confrontation with police. In what sense is “Tony” the victim here?

But this is how “social justice” works. Merely by being a member of a particular category, you’re automatically a victim, no matter what happens, and everyone is required to play along with this victimhood narrative, or else they’re guilty of “transphobia” or racism or whatever.


 


 

Courageous Social Justice Activists Vandalize CNN Atlanta Headquarters

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When they were rioting in Minneapolis, they were thugs and hoodlums, but attacking CNN? Civil rights heroes:

A protest erupted at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta Friday amid nationwide demonstrations following the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd, with many of the protesters seen vandalizing the entrance of the building in videos posted to social media.
A crowd gathered in front of the CNN Center and grew over the course of several hours, initially breaking windows and spray-painting the CNN sign, and later throwing objects — including what appeared to be a firecracker that exploded — and reportedly shooting BB guns into the lobby.
The iconic CNN sign, a popular tourist destination in the downtown area, was covered with graffiti and others were seen jumping on top of the structure.
A CNN journalist captured footage of a window being shattered by the crowd, which can be heard sparking cheers.
Law enforcement eventually cleared the area, pushing the crowd further down the street.
Reporting from CNN correspondent Nick Valencia showed multiple police cars that were set ablaze and Georgia State Police entering the scene.
“This is terrible to witness, it’s terrible to witness,” Valencia told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.

Terrible? No, it’s beautiful. Karma is a beautiful thing.

If you were hoping to see the mob dragging Brian Stelter’s lifeless corpse through the streets or parading with Jake Tapper’s head on a pike, however, you’ll be disappointed, because Jake works out of CNN’s D.C. bureau and Stelter’s in New York, not the Atlanta headquarters.


 

Anarchy in Minneapolis: Democrats Celebrate Rioters Who Burned Down City

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Anarchy is the worst of evils that can afflict a people. Societies can survive the cruelty of tyrants and the blunders of demogratic governments, but anarchy — the destruction of law — brings about a state of affairs in which no man’s life or property is safe. Minneapolis did not have to go up in flames Thursday night. I watched live, in real time, as authorities surrendered the city to the mob. The mayor seems to be the sort of worthless liberal one typically finds in California, and the media’s role in fomenting this riot was familiar: Endless replaying of video of a racial “incident” on cable news, so that the audience is subjected to the image of George Floyd being suffocated to death over and over and over.

The media don’t do this because they are interested in “social justice”; they do it because they believe that this kind of coverage will help “energize” black voters and thus elect more Democrats. And when, predictably, there is a backlash against this media-driven political narrative — when people reject the intended message — the result is condemned as proof of white racism. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

Once you’ve been through a few of these cycles, you cease to be surprised by the irresponsibility of the media who incite violent disorders:

Protests over the police-involved death of George Floyd continued well into the morning Friday after a third night of violence in Minneapolis, while similar disturbances broke out in Louisville and other parts of the country.
Late Thursday, demonstrators set fire to a police precinct building in the Minneapolis neighborhood where Floyd died Monday after he was restrained by a Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on his neck.
Floyd had been arrested on suspicion of using a counterfeit bill at a grocery store.
The precinct building had been evacuated by order of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who said he was unwilling to endanger lives to protect the building.
“I understand the importance of a precinct,” he said. “[But] the symbolism of a building cannot outweigh the importance of life, of our officers, or the public. We could not risk serious injury to anyone and we will continue to patrol the third precinct entirely.”
At 4:30 a.m. Friday, protesters and looters still were out on the streets in the neighborhood as several nearby commercial buildings burned unchecked.
Firefighters arrived shortly afterward, accompanied by state police in riot gear, who began to arrest people in the area, including a CNN reporter and crew members.
CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez and three crew members were taken into custody live on the air. The news organization immediately criticized the arrests and called for their release.
CNN President Jeff Zucker later said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz “deeply apologizes” for the arrests. They were released after about an hour in custody, CNN said.
The unrest also spread to neighboring St. Paul, where protesters looted a Target store and set fire to several businesses along a busy commercial corridor.
Earlier in the night, National Guard troops were deployed in the two cities at Walz’s order.
The governor said he issued the order at the request of local leaders who called on the state government for National Guard resources after “extensive damage to private property” occurred during the protests.

The idea that these criminals were “protesters” or “demonstrators” is an insult to the intelligence of everyone who watched — and the videos were streaming all over Twitter — as thieves and vandals not only destroyed a police precinct station, but looted or damaged some 170 businesses. The media, however, continued promoting the narrative that anyone who condemned the riots was thereby endorsing police brutality. This is what students of logic call the false dilemma fallacy, pretending that there are only two possible alternatives (in this case, being pro-riot or being pro-racism) when many other viewpoints exist.

Something that Andrew Breitbart always said: “Turn the camera around.”

Make the media the story. Expose their tactics. Call out their errors.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!


 

May Is Mental Health Awareness Month, and Crazy People Are Dangerous

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Last week, a shocking video went viral showing a young black man brutally beating an elderly white man. James Woods posted the video to his Twitter account, and even President Trump took notice. Online sleuths using face-recognition software quickly identified the suspect as 20-year-old Jaden Hayden, and linked him to social-media accounts with bizarre racial rants:

Content Hayden had previously uploaded to his YouTube channel suggested he holds black supremacist beliefs.
“The black race is the chosen race, the black race was supposed to rule the earth, but now…they have to go to the white man for everything and that’s not good,” Hayden says in one video.

Hayden had also reportedly uploaded other videos showing him attacking elderly white people and, according to his father, was being treated for mental health problems in Washtenaw County — the Ann Arbor area — before being diagnosed with COVID-19, and being transferred to the Detroit-area nursing home where the attack occurred:

The suspect’s father, who asked not to be named, said his son has mental health issues and a pending assault case in Washtenaw County and should never have been placed in the nursing home.
“He has issues and for them to put him in a facility like that, nothing good was going to happen,” the suspect’s father told 7 Action News.
He said his son was recently moved to the nursing center because the 20-year-old was diagnosed with COVID-19 at the University of Michigan Hospital.
The father said he’s been working with Washtenaw County Mental Health Services to get his son the help he needs and that he was placed in a group home in Chelsea. But, recently, he said his son began hearing voices and that’s when he was taken to the hospital and it was there he says that his son was diagnosed with COVID-19.
“He never should have been housed… quarantined with the victim that he eventually assaulted. That should have never happened,” he said. “Someone dropped the ball.”

Why am I thinking about the title of a 1974 Richard Pryor album?

Never mind — the point made by many people on Twitter was that, if something like this had happened with the races reversed, CNN would be in 24/7 coverage mode, and the liberal media wouldn’t be satisfied until they had whipped up enough anger to spark a deadly riot. As it is, of course, most of the media are ignoring this incident, and certainly none of them are suggesting that the actions of Jaden Hayden represent any widespread danger. Whereas, by contrast, we are told by the media that incidents like the death of Ahmaud Arbery are socially significant, as if no black person is safe from such violence. The media’s distortions of reality — white on black violence is actually rather rare — probably play a part in inciting the kind of paranoid racial resentments that may have inspired Jaden Hayden’s crime. His posting of hateful video rants suggest that Hayden’s mental illness had a racial aspect, and it is fortunate that he is now in custody. Just imagine what might have happened if someone like that had gotten his hands on a firearm. It’s scary.

Meanwhile, we can report that the victim in this attack, 75-year-old Army veteran Norman Bledsoe, is recovering from his injuries, and Hayden has been charged with assault and larceny.


 

Further Developments

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The October 2018 murder of Univerity of Utah student Lauren McCluskey is a topic I’ve blogged about before (“An Apparently Consensual Relationship”), but I hadn’t followed further developments in the case. The man who murdered McCluskey, convicted sex offender Melvin Rowland, shot himself to death a few hours after the murder, and you might think there could be no further developments. However, officials and reporters kept probing the chain of failures that led to McCluskey’s murder, and it is a very long list indeed:

Sept. 2, 2018: Lauren McCluskey met Melvin Shawn Rowland at London Belle, a Salt Lake City bar where he was working as a bouncer, and began a relationship with him. He gave her a false name and age, and didn’t disclose that he was a convicted sex offender on parole. He visited her often at her residence hall and quickly built friendships with other students in the building. Later that month, she went pistol shooting with Rowland and his friends; as a felon, Rowland was not allowed to possess a gun. . . .

Oct. 9: McCluskey learned Rowland’s real identity — including that he had lied about his age, 37, and not disclosed that he was a registered sex offender — in the first days of October, and briefly went home to Pullman, Wash. On Oct. 9, she invited Rowland to her dorm room, confronted him with the information, and broke off their relationship. He admitted his sex-offender status, but denied the age difference. McCluskey allowed him to spend the night in her room and borrow her car the next day to run errands. She began receiving text messages, purportedly from Rowland’s friends; some urged her to kill herself. . . .

Oct. 13: At 9:22 a.m., McCluskey again contacted university police, reporting she had received more messages she believed were from Rowland or his friends. The messages demanded money in exchange for not posting compromising photos of McCluskey and Rowland online. McCluskey said she sent $1,000 to an account as demanded, in hope of keeping the photos private. She spoke to an officer by phone, then in person, then by texts, and eventually called the Salt Lake City police department, which referred her back to campus. Chief Dale Brophy said police took the report, pulled Rowland’s criminal history — but did not learn he was on parole — and assigned a detective to follow up later on possible charges of sexual extortion. . . . “There was never an attempt by any of the officers involved to check [Rowland’s] ‘offender status.’ Further, there were no policies or procedures that required such checks.” . . .

It goes on from there, including the fact that the company that employed Rowland as a security guard had hired him under a false name (“Shawn Fields”) and had not run a background check. There were so many things wrong here, to say nothing of McCluskey’s poor judgment. She was 21, and probably a lot of 21-year-olds think of themselves as savvy enough to handle themselves in any situation, but like most college kids, she was not “street smart.” Rowland had obvious sociopathic traits (“He was really good at trying to say what he thought I wanted to hear,” said one woman who had briefly dated him a few months before McCluskey’s death), but McCluskey didn’t recognize those traits as danger signs.

The police handling of the case was a disaster from start to finish. Any woman who relies on police to protect her in this kind of situation is putting her life at risk. And the reason Lauren McCluskey’s case popped up in the headlines this past week had to do with the campus cops:

Lauren McCluskey explained to the officer at the University of Utah that she was being extorted over explicit photos she had taken of herself. Someone — she wasn’t certain who at that moment — had accessed her files and was threatening to release them if she didn’t hand over $1,000.
Scared by the demand, she paid the money and then sent copies of the messages and the pictures to the campus police department as evidence.
When Miguel Deras, one of the officers assigned to her case, received them, he saved the photos on his personal phone. And days before McCluskey was killed by the man who was blackmailing her, Deras showed off at least one of the images to a male co-worker and bragged about getting to look at them whenever he wanted, according to two fellow officers.

Disgusting. The whole thing is disgusting.