Category: Crime

‘The Nicest Kid in Our Grade’

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Say hello to Raymond Spencer, 23, and while you’re at it, you can also say good-bye because he committed suicide after opening fire from a window of his fifth-floor apartment in D.C. near the Edmund Burke School and the University of D.C. campus. This shooting happened about 3:30 Friday afternoon in the Van Ness neighborhood, one of the nicest areas of D.C. I know the neighborhood very well, as I used to travel down Connecticut Avenue sometimes driving to work in Washington, and there’s a shopping center nearby with restaurants, etc., where at least once my family had dinner after a trip to the Washington Zoo.

When the news broke Friday of a mass shooting in D.C., I did not at first think this could be the type of “lone gunman” incident it turned out to be. I mean, it’s D.C., OK? Probably the local drug gangs having a shootout. But then I realized what neighborhood they were talking about and thought again. This ain’t the ghetto, and the fact that a school seemed to be the target made me wonder if it could be some kind of terrorist incident. Given the way these things are usually reported, the question immediately occurred to me, “One of ours or one of theirs?” Everything in journalism is now partisan, so the question was whether it was a “right-wing extremist” who could be used as a scarecrow by the Left: “See? We told those Trump voters were dangerous!”

Well, it turns out, this was apparently not a terrorist attack, nor was it politically motivated. Instead, Raymond Spencer was a random kook:

A former classmate of D.C. shooting suspect Raymond Spencer says she is struggling to understand why he shot four people on Friday, describing him as “the nicest kid in our grade.” . . .
Spencer filmed the attack and posted the horrifying footage online. He left digital breadcrumbs that investigators subsequently found, including posts on the 4chan message board saying, among other things, “Dear God please forgive me.” Spencer also edited the Edmund Burke Wikipedia page after the terrifying incident, writing, “A gunman shot at the school on April 22, 2022. The suspect is still at large.” The revised entry linked to a profile in Spencer’s name, in which he was described as “proudly uncircumcised” and an “AR-15 aficionado.”

(Uh, “proudly uncircumcised”? But never mind . . .)

Allison, who asked that her real name not be used in this article, is still trying to make sense of what happened, describing Spencer as “the nicest kid in our grade.” He had one older brother in the grade above, and a younger brother in the grade below, Allison said.
“I just wanted to make this information known because it feels like no one else has come forward,” she said. “And that’s really weird, because it’s not like he was a loner… He’s the last person I would expect to do something like this. He was the most quiet kid. He didn’t really talk a lot. But he always smiled when you talked to him. Like, this isn’t the person that I knew 10 years ago.”

(It’s always the “quiet kid,” you notice? All those teachers who gave me demerits and sent me to the principal’s office for talking too much in class owe me an apology. It was the quite kids who were the real danger, not me.)

Allison knew Spencer for three years, in grades 6 through 8. They attended the same Catholic school in Rockville, Maryland, which she said was “known for being tough in discipline, but also having really good academics.” The student body was very diverse, because tuition was more reasonable than other schools in the area, according to Allison.

(Catholic school kids — a menace to society!)

“And they took a lot of students who might be having problems in public school, like they might be getting bullied, or they might have [a learning disability],” she said. “So for example, if there was a student with ADHD, then they would be accommodated by the staff. And that’s actually part of why I was there, because my mom was worried about me getting bullied in public school. I was a shy kid. And there were a lot of kids like that.”
Spencer was the shortest kid in his class, standing eye-to-eye with Allison, who said she was five-feet tall at the time. She said he made friends easily with others at school, which was small enough that “everyone knew each other.” Still, Allison said Spencer “didn’t really socialize with people,” although he didn’t exhibit any violent tendencies and “nothing really stood out about him.”
After 8th grade, Spencer transferred to a public high school, where he ran cross country. The next time Allison saw him, he was being named on TV as the suspect in a mass shooting.
In a photo of Spencer’s apartment released by the Metro PD, a picture hanging on the wall appeared to depict Yakub, a mythical Black scientist written about by Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, which has now been mockingly turned into an anti-Black meme by 4chan denizens.

(OK, that’s kind of weird, but too vague to be a real clue.)

Allison said she isn’t sure if Spencer got caught up in one of “these different movements, [like] the incel thing,” but added, “I don’t think it was really that deep.”

(Y’know, “the incel thing” crossed my mind as soon as I saw the shooter’s mug shot. Kind of gave off an Elliot Rodger vibe somehow.)

“I’m pretty sure he already wanted to commit suicide, but he was afraid of not being remembered,” she said. “So he appealed to these internet movements because he knew that people would continue to make conspiracies about his life, as if it was some kind of thing. The truth is kind of devastatingly simple.”
Spencer’s actions were “really cynical,” said Allison, noting that she understands “he did commit something really evil.”
“But it doesn’t help to demonize people,” she said, sobbing quietly. “Because it came from somewhere. And as long as we don’t try to understand other people, this kind of thing will keep happening in this country.”

OK, we could “try to understand other people,” or we could pay people to understand them — professional psychiatrists, for example, working in mental institutions where we lock up these lunatics so they can’t hurt anybody. We are currently about 50 years into an experiment of “disinstitutionalizing” the mentally ill, and there are so many kooks running around nowadays that scarcely a week goes by without one of them doing something crazy like this. But the good news, such as it is, is that at least none of Raymond Spencer’s victims died from their wounds, and he committed suicide, thus sparing taxpayers the expense of locking him away for the rest of his life. A win-win, really.

Crazy People Are Dangerous.




 

Racial Cult Murder in Georgia?

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It’s possible you have forgotten about these kooks:

In the early 1990s, cult leader Dwight York convinced his followers to relocate from upstate New York to rural Putnam County, Georgia, where they built “Tama-Re,” an Egyptian-themed compound of nearly 500 acres. York’s cult, the “United Nation of Nuwaubian Moors,” at one point had hundreds of members. It did not end well:

On May 8, 2002, 300 local and federal law enforcement officers in rural Georgia raided the Egyptian-themed compound of the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors. The cult’s founder, Dwight “Malachi” York, had been arrested hours earlier — accused of molesting dozens of his follower’s children.
The police operation marked the beginning of the end for York, a pseudo-religious leader who eluded justice for decades while amassing a nationwide following for his bizarre blend of religion, mysticism and claims about alien life.
He was finally exposed by former followers, including his estranged son, and was later convicted in 2004 of transporting minors across state lines for sexual purposes and sentenced to 135 years in federal prison.

I blogged about the Nuwaubians in September 2020, but that wasn’t the first time I’d covered this bizarre story, as I’d edited a feature about Malachi York’s cult many years earlier when I worked at The Washington Times. Well, “file it and forget it,” as we say, but today my brother Kirby informed me that the United Nation of Nuwaubian Moors had resurfaced in a weird and disturbing way. South Carolina true crime blogger Eric Daume had become interested in an unsolved 2014 murder in Putnam County. There were no leads at all in the mysterious and grisly murders of Russell and Shirley Dermond. The elderly couple lived in a gated community on the shore of Lake Oconee. By sheer happenstance, while Daume was interviewing the local sheriff about the Dermond case, the sheriff mentioned the Nuwaubian case, without any thought that this might be relevant. Daume became curious, however, and he managed to turn up a clue, in the form of online comments from Nuwaubian cultists, who are still aggrieved over Malachi York’s incarceration. Was it possible that some of the Nuwaubians murdered the Dermonds?

 

Daume doesn’t prove anything, but he has certainly pointed out a few tantalizing clues that suggest this cult could be involved in a murder case that is otherwise inexplicable. Why would anyone want to kill two nice old retirees? Why was one of the victims decapitated?

You need to watch that video, which Daume says is just the first part of the story. Can’t wait to see the next installment.




 

Expect More Riots This Summer

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Democrats know they’re facing disaster in this fall’s midterm elections, and so we can expect “mostly peaceful protests” to return this summer. An early preview:

A group of protesters marched through the streets of northeast Portland Saturday, damaging some buildings, bus shelters, and lighting a dumpster on fire at the Portland Police Bureau’s north precinct.
Based on social media posts, the group first gathered at North Portland’s Peninsula Park Saturday night in protest of the police killing of Patrick Lyoya in Michigan.
According to police, some members of the group vandalized a coffee shop, two banks, and three bus shelters on Northeast MLK Jr. Boulevard.
The group eventually arrived at the PPB North Precinct on MLK Jr. Boulevard at Killingsworth Street, where police said “one or more suspects” set a dumpster on fire in the parking garage.
Officers unsuccessfully tried to put out the dumpster fire with fire extinguishers, and Portland Fire & Rescue was ultimately called to douse the flames.
“No arrests were immediately made, but the investigation is continuing,” Portland Police said.

The first and most obvious question is, why are they protesting in Portland, Oregon, about an incident in Grand Rapids, Michigan? But the same question could have been asked about the nationwide protests about the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In such cases, it seems, the decision of which cases of alleged police brutality demand protests is determined by (a) whether the incident is getting heavy coverage on CNN, and (b) whether Ben Crump is on the case:

The family of Patrick Lyoya, the man shot in the back of the head by a Grand Rapids Police Officer earlier this month, held a press conference Thursday afternoon alongside civil rights attorney Ben Crump and attorney Ven Johnson.
Family members, Crump, and Johnson are all speaking just one day after Grand Rapids authorities released graphic video that showed the 26-year-old man being shot in the head after a traffic stop.

CNN functions as a publicity agency for Ben Crump’s lucrative practice of pursuing wrongful death cases against police departments. Most people have paid little attention to the economic incentives of this particular “civil rights” racket, i.e., the cops kill a suspect, the family “demands justice,” Crump shows up to incite a riot and files a lawsuit, then the Democrat-controlled city government — knowing that it can’t hope to win such a case, given the demographics of the local jury pool — agrees to a multi-million-dollar settlement, with Crump taking a huge chunk of that taxpayer-funded payout, and then moving on to the next blood-soaked opportunity for a “civil right” bonanza. Everybody in this familiar kabuki pageant has a carefully scripted role, and if you’ve paid close attention to recent iterations of this saga, there are never any real surprises in the story, including the criminal record of the Heroic Civil Rights Martyr whose death is the opening act of the pageant.

Excuse my extreme cynicism about all this, but I’m particularly sick and tired of the role played by the media in such stories. The profession of journalism is being degraded by reporters and editors who demonstrate a lack of basic common sense about law enforcement.

While I am reluctant to engage in a point-by-point analysis of the Patrick Lyoya shooting, you can click here and watch the video to understand my specific complaint about how this story is being covered.

The officer pulls over a sedan driven by Lyoya, who exits the vehicle. The officer says, get back in the car. Lyoya disobeys the officer’s command (becoming “non-compliant,” as they say in the law-enforcement community) and acts confused about why the officer pulled him over. The cop says, “The plate doesn’t belong on this car.”

In other words, the license tag was issued for a different vehicle and someone (perhaps Lyoya) has put it on this car that he’s driving. As I say, to cover this story fairly requires a bit of common sense about law enforcement. A situation like this — a car with a mismatched license plate — is a major red flag. Is the car stolen? Or is the driver a fugitive who switched the plates in an attempt to avoid apprehension? Whatever the explanation might be, this is a situation requiring investigation, because of the likelihood that switching the plates was done to conceal criminal activity. In other words, this is not “just a traffic stop.”

Next, when the officer asks to see his license, Lyoya says it’s in the car. “Get it for me,” says the cop (1:12). Lyoya then opens the door to the car and says something to the passenger, Then Lyoya closes the door of the car (1:39) and tries to walk away. “No, no, no,” says the cop, and decides it’s time to put handcuffs on Lyoya, who breaks free and starts running (1:46). You see how quickly this has happened — 30 seconds earlier, the officer was waiting for Lyoya to get his license out of the car, and now he’s engaged in a foot pursuit with an unknown suspect.

Again — common sense. At this point, the cop has no idea who this guy is, because he hasn’t provided any identification. For all the cop knows, he could be chasing a serial killer or a drug kingpin. Because the media are focused on the “civil rights” narrative (black suspect killed by a white cop), there is an evident lack of journalistic curiosity about the circumstances here: Why were the plates switched on the car? Whose car was it? And why was Patrick Lyoya so desperate to avoid being identified? Because it is obvious, to anyone with a common sense understanding of law enforcement, that Lyoya was thinking about making a run for it from the moment he saw the blue lights in his rear-view mirror. Were there outstanding warrants for Lyoya’s arrest? Was he on probation or parole, and afraid that being caught driving without a license would lead to him being sent to prison?

There must be something in the background to explain Lyoya’s behavior, but good luck finding that explanation in the mainstream media. According to one blogger, “Mr. Lyoya had a criminal record that includes a conviction for a violent crime against a pregnant woman, an arrest for theft of a vehicle that was dismissed, and a DUI.” While I can’t confirm any of that, common sense suggests that Lyoya must have had some previous trouble with the law, because why else would he act the way he did? It was Lyoya’s behavior that led to the fatal shooting, which happened while he and the officer were engaged in a physical struggle over the officer’s taser. If all you know is what you get from the media, this makes no sense, as it is implied that the officer just should have let Lyoya run away. It was “just a traffic stop,” right?

Anyway, the media is obviously trying to incite riots over this incident, and we can expect this pattern to continue all the way to November.




 

BLM: It Was Always a Scam

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There is a certain type of affluent white liberal who will pay anything to absolve themselves of their sense of racial guilt, and never has there been a more perfect scheme to separate such fools from their money than the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s very hard for me to begrudge Patrisse Cullors and her BLM co-conspirators their ill-gotten gains, because is it really wrong to rip off rich white liberals? If ever anyone deserved to be swindled, it’s them — the Barbra Streisand/Jane Fonda types, the Hollywood/Manhattan nexus of wealth and cultural influence.

Even while I wholeheartedly endorse this swindle, however, it would be a nice bonus if the BLM swindlers also ended up in federal prison:

Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the domestic terrorist group Black Lives Matter, said disclosing finances is “deeply unsafe” and “triggering.”
Yeah, well, if I started a so-called charity and used the millions and millions of dollars that poured in from left-wing suckers to purchase a $5.8 million Los Angeles mansion, I might also be grasping at those same desperate straws.
What triggers this shameless grifter is the words “form 1990,” which is the form used by the IRS that requires charities to reveal their financial activities.
“It is such a trip now to hear the term ‘990,’” Cullors said.”I’m, like, ugh. It’s, like, triggering.” “I actually did not know what 990s were before all of this happened,” she continued.
“This doesn’t seem safe for us, this 990 structure — this nonprofit system structure,” Cullors said. “This is, like, deeply unsafe. This is being literally weaponized against us, against the people we work with.”
According to the Washington Examiner, Cullors says she’s “been approached by countless activists who are worried that they too will soon field requests from reporters demanding copies of their 990 forms[.]”
These idiots thought they could raise million in charity and do whatever they wanted with the money? That’s hilarious.
Here’s my favorite Cullors quote:

People’s morale in an organization is so important. But if their organization and the people in it are being attacked and scrutinized at everything they do, that leads to deep burnout. [T]hat leads to deep, like, resistance and trauma. . . .

I’m sure Al Capone felt traumatized when the IRS started looking through his taxes. I’m sure Bernie Madoff felt traumatized when the SEC arrived with a warrant. I’m sure every operator funneling unregistered money through offshore usdt casinos feels profoundly traumatized when Treasury agents ask for a simple ledger. I’m sure John Wayne Gacy felt traumatized when the police started digging up his crawlspace.

In short, Black Lives Matter was a criminal enterprise from the start. As William Jacobson has repeatedly pointed out, the entire movement originated in a lie, i.e., the false “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative surrounding the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown had committed a robbery — caught on video — and when Officer Darren Wilson tried to arrest him, Brown violently resisted arrest, trying to grab the policeman’s gun. A grand jury cleared Wilson of wrongdoing and even the Obama Justice Department was forced to admit the shooting was justified. The facts made no difference, however, to the BLM activists who incited a riot that caused $4.6 million in damages.

What was the “social justice” benefit of burning down O’Reilly Auto Parts or Hunan Chop Suey? How were the dozens of small businesses (many of them minority owned) burned by the mob complicit in whatever grievance motivated this senseless destruction? What logic was there to any of the criminal acts incited by BLM’s hateful rhetoric?

That such a destructive “movement” should be granted 501(c) status as a tax-exempt charity is an insult to taxpayers, and was anyone really surprised that BLM turned out to be a gigantic swindle?

We all remember how Lois Lerner’s IRS persecuted Tea Party activists. Can we expect the feds to do anything to punish the BLM scammers?




‘A Pretty Face Can Hide an Evil Mind’

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Say hello to 25-year old Courtney Clenney, aka “Courtney Tailor,” who reportedly has more than a million followers on her OnlyFans account. “Gosh, Stacy,” the reader asks, “what was she putting on her OnlyFans account that made her so popular?” Uh, adult entertainment, he said euphemistically, summarizing the results of his cursory investigation.

Last we heard from Miss Clenney, she had been committed to psychiatric care under Florida’s Baker Act, after Miami police say she stabbed her ex-boyfriend to death in a luxury apartment. Miss Clenney’s lawyer insists that the stabbing was an act of self-defense, and authorities say that at different times, both she and her ex-boyfriend had been charged with domestic violence. The family of the deceased man, Christian Tobechukwu “Toby” Obumseli, 27, claim that Miss Clenney is getting favorable treatment “because of her privilege as a wealthy white woman.”

Some readers may be tempted to jump to conclusions about this case, but I think it’s important to keep an open mind, to wait for the completion of the police investigation before we decide that this bitch is crazy.

Looney Tunes, Froot Loops, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Permit me to say that a woman who peddles her assets on OnlyFans is a woman that any wise man would be careful to avoid. What sort of status does a man expect to attain from associating with such a woman?

“Oh, yeah, I saw your girlfriend naked on the Internet.”

Way to go, Captain Save-a-Hoe.

Do we even want to delve into the racial angle here? Trust me, this story is being widely discussed in the black community, including thousands of comments on Toby’s Instagram account and — oh, my goodness! — what they’re saying about this interview with Miss Clenney:

There are so many things that could be said about this case, which might be unwise to say, but let me offer this: O.J. Simpson in reverse.

Remember how that case divided America? Now try to imagine if Nicole Brown Simpson had gotten hold of a knife and killed O.J., instead of the other way around. Because it seems this may be what we’re looking at here — a toxic relationship reaches its predictable bloody conclusion.

It was perhaps inevitable that Courtney Clenney would lead some deluded man to destruction, even if stabbing him to death wasn’t foreordained. I’m not saying that every hoe on OnlyFans is a would-be murderer, but I am saying there’s an elevated risk of death for any man that gets involved with such a hoe. You spend enough time playing with fire, sooner or later you’re likely to get burned. And I can’t help thinking of a famous old song by Johnny Rivers:

Beware of pretty faces that you find.
A pretty face can hide an evil mind.
Ah, be careful what you say
Or you’ll give yourself away.
Odds are you won’t live to see tomorrow.

Maybe somebody should have warned Toby. R.I.P.




 

Brooklyn Shooting: Suspect in Custody

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Right after I posted Wednesday about the Brooklyn subway shooting suspect (“Racial Paranoia in Post-Obama America”), Frank James was captured by NYPD in Lower Manhattan.

The smirking madman who turned a rush-hour commute into a bloody terror when he allegedly opened fire in a crowded New York subway car called Crime Stoppers on himself Wednesday morning — then calmly went for an afternoon stroll through the East Village while he waited for police to come get him.
“A call came in to Crime Stoppers … The guy says, ‘You know, I think you’re looking for me. I’m seeing my picture all over the news and I’ll be around this McDonald’s … I want to clear things up,’” law enforcement sources told The Post of the bizarre moment Frank James called cops on himself.
“So the unit responds and he’s not at the McDonald’s, so they start driving around and see a man who fits the description. When they take him into custody, they find his Wisconsin driver’s license.”
A couple of eagle-eyed New Yorkers also flagged down a pair of cops after they spotted James sauntering through the East Village, where he briefly sat down at an outdoor dining shed and charged his phone at a Link NYC hub.
The NYPD swooped in shortly after and put him in handcuffs. . . .

As might be expected, Frank James had a criminal record:

His troubles date back decades with a string of arrests according to authorities.
Court records obtained by the Action News Investigative team reveal a terroristic threat charge in New Jersey in the mid-1990s. He was sentenced to probation and ordered to undergo behavioral health treatment.
In 2008, it appeared the 62-year-old moved to the 3500 block of N. 18th St. in Tioga-Nicetown where he lived for several years.
He has nine prior arrests in New York City dating from 1992 to 1998 for offenses including possession of burglary tools, a criminal sex act and theft of service, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said in Wednesday news conference.
However, James had no previous felony convictions so was able to purchase a gun, according to Essig.

For all the “social justice” complaints about police brutality and mass incarceration, it seems to take an awful lot for a criminal to actually get sent to prison. One judge says, “Hey, this guy looks like a good candidate for probation,” and multiple arrests later, all his charges either got dismissed or pleaded down to misdemeanors. Despite this leniency, Frank James nevertheless believed himself to be the victim of racism, because that’s the go-to excuse now. Some white people may be envious of this “black victimhood privilege,” but it’s a loser mentality, the same as all those “incel” losers who idolize Elliot Rodger as a hero.




 

Aspiring Rapper Update: ‘Slowkey Fred’ Busted for Philly Gun Trafficking Ring

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More federal felony charges than he’s got hit records:

An Atlanta rapper is one of 11 people facing federal charges in connection with an alleged straw-purchasing scheme that trafficked hundreds of guns from Georgia to Philadelphia.
Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced nearly 300 firearms purchased in Georgia from dozens of gun retailers to Fredrick Norman — aka “Slowkey Fred” — and three other suspects, after some were found at crime scenes and in the possession of convicted felons in Philadelphia, according to records and interviews with federal law enforcement.
In an interview with ATF agents in 2020, one of the suspects, Brianna Walker, admitted to buying 50 to 60 guns in order to sell them without a dealer’s license, according to a search warrant affidavit — a violation of federal law. Norman allegedly admitted to buying more than 100, according to federal records.
The federal investigation expanded to include 11 suspects in Georgia and Pennsylvania, all of whom face a conspiracy charge. Kenneth Burgos, 23, and Edwin Burgos, 29 — brothers accused of brokering sales in Pennsylvania — are also charged with dealing firearms without a license, officials said.

In addition to “Slowkey Fred” and the Burgos brothers, the suspects in this interstate gun-trafficking operations also included:

  • Brianna Walker a/k/a “Mars,” 23, of Atlanta, GA;
  • Charles O’Bannon a/k/a “Chizzy,” 24, of Villa Rica, GA;
  • Stephen Norman, 23, of Villa Rica, GA;
  • Devin Church a/k/a “Lant,” 24, of Villa Rica, GA;
  • Roger Millington, 25, of Philadelphia, PA;
  • Ernest Payton, 30, of Philadelphia, PA;
  • Roselmy Rodriguez, 22, of Philadelphia, PA; and
  • Brianna Reed, 21, of Shippensburg, PA.

When I was a kid, Villa Rica was a rural crossroads on Bankhead Highway. The idea of this once-tranquil town being home to an interstate criminal conspiracy is just mind-boggling, but I guess that’s how “progress” works. Meanwhile, another gang was running guns to Philly:

In the second case, captioned United States v. Ware, et al, the following three people have been charged by Indictment with conspiracy to deal firearms without a license and to make a false statement to a federally licensed firearms dealer:

  • Muhammad Ware a/k/a “Moo,” 26, of Myrtle Beach, SC;
  • Haneef Vaughn a/k/a “Neef,” 25, of Philadelphia, PA; and
  • Jabreel Vaughn a/k/a “Breely,” 20, of Elkins Park, PA.

Additionally, defendant Muhammad Ware is charged with dealing firearms without a license.

United States v. Norman, et al:
Beginning in October 2020, ATF Special Agents identified multiple firearms which were recovered in the Philadelphia area as having been originally purchased in Georgia. The short time frame between the firearms’ purchase in Georgia and subsequent recovery in Philadelphia (known as a short “time to crime” period) indicated that the weapons may have been trafficked into the city.
According to the Indictment, subsequent investigation showed that over the course of six months, the conspiracy led by defendant Norman allegedly purchased nearly 300 firearms from dealers in and around Atlanta, and transported the firearms to Philadelphia for distribution and sale on the black market in exchange for approximately $116,000.

United States v. Ware, et al:
Beginning in March 2020, ATF Special Agents identified multiple firearms which were recovered in Philadelphia as having been originally purchased in South Carolina. Agents subsequently learned about a number of additional firearms recovered in Philadelphia with short “time to crime” periods that indicated they may have been trafficked into the city, just as in Norman, et al.
According to the Indictment, the recovered firearms were concentrated in a particular area of Philadelphia and were originally purchased near Myrtle Beach, SC. Subsequent investigation showed that defendant Ware had allegedly purchased several of the recovered firearms, and conspired and communicated with defendants Haneef Vaughn and Jabreel Vaughn, and others about the purchase, transportation and sale on the black market of over 100 illegal firearms.

Over the course of a few months, these two separate operations supplied nearly 400 guns to Philadelphia’s criminals, who have been busy setting new homicide records for the city. Our friend Dana Pico at First Street Journal is usually on top of Philly-related crime stories, but somehow he missed this one. Guess he’s not a hiphop fan.

PREVIOUSLY:




 

Racial Paranoia in Post-Obama America

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As everyone knows by now, Frank R. James is the suspect in Tuesday’s mass shooting in a Brooklyn subway station. Remarkably, even the liberal media are covering this story — Andrea Mitchell led the top of the noon hour on MSNBC with a report on the manhunt for the suspected gunman.

J.J. Sefton at AOSHQ links to a couple of stories that outline the mass shooting suspect’s deranged anti-white belief system:

Heavy[dot]com, a fact-finding website, identified a Facebook page allegedly belonging to the person of interest which contained numerous posts that talked about shooting people and expressed other extreme views, including “black nationalism.”
Andy Ngo, Editor-at-large for The Post Millennial, tweeted out screenshots from the Facebook account that showed posts that promoted the Black Liberation Army, Black Lives Matter, a photo of the man who murdered five police officers in Dallas in 2016, a photo calling to “kill all the whiteys,” posts quoting communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, posts expressing support for shooting people, and posts demonizing former President Donald Trump.
YouTube videos allegedly uploaded by the person of interest also showed extreme views, including one where he allegedly called 9/11 “the most beautiful day, probably in the history of this f–king world.”
The person of interest also allegedly ranted in the videos about white people, saying “the vast majority of people, white mother******* are racist.”

More from the New York Post:

The person of interest ranted about race issues and claimed that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was proof that black people were treated with disdain in society.
“These white motherfu–ers, this is what they do,” he said. “Ultimately at the end of the day they kill and commit genocide against each other. What do you think they gonna do to your black ass?”
In his rambling conspiracy theory, James claimed that a race war would follow the ongoing conflict in Europe.
“It’s just a matter of time before these white motherfu–ers decide, ‘Hey listen. Enough is enough. These ni–ers got to go,’” he said.
“And what’re you going to do? You gonna fight. And guess what? You gonna die. Cause unlike President [Zelensky] over in Ukraine, nobody has your back. The whole world is against you. And you’re against your fu–ing self. So why should you be alive again is the fu–ing question. Why should a ni–er be alive on this planet? Besides to pick cotton or chop sugar cane or tobacco.”
The only options James could find, he claimed, was to commit more violence or become a criminal.
“And so the message to me is: I should have gotten a gun, and just started shooting motherfu–ers,” he said.

He was saying all this stuff not while living in 1952 Mississippi, but rather in 2022 Wisconsin, a state that twice voted to elect Barack Obama president. This points to an odd contradiction in the social justice calculus, namely that as there is more progress toward racial equality, dissatisfaction with the status quo actually increases for many people.

Genuinely oppressed people are so busy struggling to survive that they have no time to devote to political activity. Living in abject poverty does not allow the kind of leisure required for contemplating alternatives to the existing social order or organizing reform efforts. Yet as oppressive conditions are ameliorated, and economic opportunity is increased for those previously excluded, the situation changes. New opportunities are meaningful only to those with the ability to take advantage of these opportunities, and not everyone has the aptitude to become an office manager, a college professor, a software engineer, etc.

So while a certain number of black people are now enjoying success — some of them extraordinarily so — those who are less successful are tempted to seek excuses for their lack of achievement. Thus, the election of America’s first black president — which some interpreted as the conclusive proof that America is not a racist country — eventually gave rise to a resurgence of racial paranoia, with many prominent black voices proclaiming that America is an unjust regime of “systemic racism.” Simultaneously, of course, many white people are tempted toward a pessimistic assessment of race relations, as they witness violent anarchy in major cities fomented by Black Lives Matters activists (who cynically swindle millions in the name of “social justice”).

Viewed objectively, most people in America — black, white, whatever — have it pretty good, and ought to be optimistic about the future. But those who are disappointed in their own lives are apt to project their resentments outward, seeking scapegoats to blame for their failures, and so for every white Dylann Roof type out there turning to neo-Nazism as solace for their failures, there is the mirror-reverse case like Frank James, ranting about fantasies of a race war against whitey.

We can see the irrationality of Frank James in his choice of targets. Of all the places in the country where he could have attacked, why Brooklyn? Why the Sunset Park subway station? Sunset Park is 46% Latino, 35% Asian, 15% white. If his goal was to strike a blow against “systemic racism,” Frank James seems to have been way off-target.

Racial paranoia is a motive that straddles the line between mental illness and political terrorism. Frank James doesn’t seem to have been part of any organized movement, but we shouldn’t underestimate disorganized kooks as a terrorist threat, because there’s so many of them nowadays and, as you know, Crazy People Are Dangerous.