One man is dead and at least six others are injured as gun violence continued to rage in Philadelphia overnight Thursday.
Investigators say a 40-year-old man was shot in the head on 1800 block of East Tioga Street in Kensington just after 9:30 p.m. Thursday.
Officers from the Philadelphia Police Department drove the unnamed victim to Temple University Hospital where he died.
No arrests were reported immediately following the deadly shooting and police did not provide a possible motive for the murder.
Around the same time, 19th district officers in West Philadelphia were called to a couple’s home after a man was struck in the back by a stray bullet.
Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters that the 40-year-old man and his girlfriend were watching television inside their home on North 62nd Street when a bullet struck the victim in the back.
He was taken by police to Penn Presbyterian Hospital where he was placed in critical condition, police said.
Authorities were unable to make an arrest, but Small said over 10 spent shell casings were found on the street near the couple’s home.
As Thursday turned to Friday, police in Kensington were dispatched to two different shootings that happened about 15 minutes apart.
According to investigators, a 23-year-old man was shot five times on the 400 block of East Clearfield Street early Friday morning. Minutes later, police say a 30-year-old man was also shot multiple times on Kensington Avenue.
Both victims were taken to Temple University Hospital and placed in critical condition, according to police.
The Philadelphia Police Department investigated three more early morning shootings, including an armed robbery in North Philadelphia that left a woman shot twice in the leg and a shooting in Mayfair that critically injured a 64-year-old man.
No arrests were reported in any of the overnight shootings, according to police.
With just days left of 2021, the city has already suffered its bloodiest year to date with 547 homicides, according to the latest data from the Philadelphia Police Department.
According to the Chicago Tribune, as of Sunday, December 19th, there had been 783 murders in the Windy City thus far in 2021, 34 more than on the same day last year. As of the same day, 540 homicides had occurred in Philadelphia. The 19th being the 353rd day of the year, that works out to 2.2181 homicides per day in Chicago, and ‘only’ 1.5297 per day in the City of Brotherly Love.
But, according to the 2020 census, there were 2,746,388 people living in Chicago, and 1,603,797 in Philly. Using the homicide rates, that works out to a projected 558 killings in Philly and 810 in Chicago. Murder rates are calculated based on 100,000 population, meaning that Chicago is headed for a homicide rate of 29.4933 per 100,000, while Philadelphia is looking at 34.7924. Philadelphia is far deadlier than Chicago!
Two Democrats who supported police reform in Philadelphia and Chicago were both carjacked at gunpoint within 24 hours of each other.
Illinois state Sen. Kimberly Lightford (D-Maywood) was targeted in suburban Chicago on Tuesday night, while Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) was carjacked Wednesday afternoon after an event in South Philadelphia.
Lightford was driving with her husband, Eric McKennie, in Broadview at about 9:45 p.m. when three masked suspects in a Durango SUV hijacked the couple’s black Mercedes.
Police said “multiple gunshots” were fired during the incident but Lightford and her husband weren’t physically hurt.
The suspects fled in the Mercedes and Durango, according to police. . . .
The reason “multiple gunshots” were fired is because Lightford’s husband has a concealed carry permit and opened fire on these, uh, troubled youth, but was unable to stop them from stealing the Mercedes.
Her ordeal came hours before Scanlon, a fellow Democrat, was carjacked at gunpoint in a separate incident as she returned to her blue Acura MDX at about 2:45 p.m. Wednesday.
Scanlon was targeted in South Philly by two men in a dark SUV who demanded she hand over her keys, police said.
Her personal cellphone, government-issued phone and purse were inside her car when the carjackers took off.
Scanlon’s spokesperson said she was “physically unharmed” following the ordeal.
Her car was found in neighboring Delaware with five suspects inside just hours later, according to police.
United States Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams announced that Josiah Brown, 19, of Wilmington, DE, was arrested and charged by Criminal Complaint on charges of carjacking and carrying and using a firearm during a crime of violence in connection with an armed carjacking that occurred in Franklin D. Roosevelt Park in South Philadelphia yesterday afternoon. The defendant made his initial appearance in federal magistrate court in Philadelphia this afternoon and is currently detained.
According to the Complaint, while the victim and an associate were speaking near the victim’s parked vehicle, an SUV pulled up alongside them and blocked them in. One suspect got out of the SUV, pointed a gun at the victim and demanded the keys to the victim’s vehicle and at the same time, a second suspect also got out of the SUV. The victim complied, and then both suspects got into the victim’s car and drove away. A third suspect driving the SUV then fled following the victim’s car.
Investigators determined that the victim’s vehicle contained equipment to track and locate it, which they did later that day in Wilmington, and then in New Castle, Delaware. When multiple individuals approached the parked vehicle in the parking lot of the Christiana Fashion Center in New Castle, law enforcement detained five people, including the defendant who was in possession of the keys to the victim’s vehicle.
“The investigation into this incident is in its very initial stages, and we are continuing to investigate and evaluate charging decisions,” said U.S. Attorney Williams. “Armed carjacking is a serious federal crime. There have been a rash of violent crimes like this recently, and while there were national security implications to this particular incident, we are always working collaboratively with our local partners to evaluate if cases should be taken federally. Working together means more resources, more tools, more intelligence. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If you pick up a gun and use it to commit a crime, together, we will come after you. And we are very good at what we do.”
In point of fact, however, if armed carjacking is a “serious federal crime,” when was the last time the feds got involved in such a case? Just two weeks ago, Philadelphia police said the city has seen an 80% increase in carjackings this year, and what had United States Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams done in response? Nothing, until a Democratic congresswoman got carjacked in — sweet irony! — FDR Park.
Seriously, go look through the press release archive at the U.S. Attorney’s web site and tell me if you find a case where they previously prosecuted a carjacking. I went back as far as April and didn’t find one, so if the Biden DOJ was making it a priority to “come after” carjackers before this week, they weren’t very successful at it. But then again, success really hasn’t been a hallmark of the Biden administration, has it?
Did you notice that the perp was from Biden’s home state of Delaware? As Paul Mirengoff notes at Powerline, 19-year-old Josiah Brown of Wilmington had pending charges in multiple states, and had been released from custody as recently as August. There is no doubt that, like many other Delaware residents, Brown is a menace to society:
Authorities in Chester County issued an arrest warrant for Brown in March 2021 after his fingerprints matched those identified by police in a string of vehicle break-ins in Kennett Square in late 2020, police said.
Ten days after that warrant was issued, Brown was picked up by sheriffs deputies in Cecil County, Md., after they responded to reports of car thefts and gunshots. The officers later discovered Brown and six juveniles, at least two of whom were also from Wilmington, inside a vehicle that had been reported stolen in New Jersey.
Police said the vehicle appeared to have been recently struck by gunfire, and two teenage girls inside were suffering from gunshot wounds. They were both hospitalized.
Brown, meanwhile, was arrested on the outstanding warrant from Chester County. He was later released on bail and had been scheduled to stand trial earlier this month on charges including receiving stolen property and theft from a motor vehicle. But the case was delayed, according to court records, which did not provide a reason for the postponement. The case is still listed as active.
Wanted on warrants, driving around in a stolen vehicle, with two teenage passengers who had been wounded in a shootout with persons unknown — a regular “honor student,” this Josiah Brown. If the cops had shot him, we’d be seeing his eighth-grade graduation photo on CNN while Ben Crump and the grieving family demanded #JusticeForJosiah.
Scanlon said during a virtual news conference that the episode was frightening, particularly because the gunmen appeared so young when they got out of their SUV.
“I was scared that someone would do something even more stupid than trying to steal a car,” Scanlon said.
Still, she was grateful that no one — including other residents or families using the park — was injured. And she said President Joe Biden was among the many who had since called to wish her well. She and Biden also discussed “common sense gun safety measures,” she said, such as enhanced background checks and potential regulations for ghost guns. . . .
Court documents say that Brown admitted pointing a real but unloaded gun at Scanlon to intimidate her. Following his confession, the documents say, Brown wrote Scanlon an apology letter.
Scanlon said she hadn’t seen the letter, but added: “If this is the person who held me up yesterday, they did a very stupid thing, and if their letter of apology is genuine, then it sounds like they can learn from their mistakes.”
How stupid can you be? Well, if you’re a Philadelphia Democrat, perhaps there’s no limit to your stupidity, but Scanlon’s remarks display an astonishing ignorance of who criminals are, and why and how they do the things they do. To anyone with common sense (a category that excludes Pennsylvania Democrats, of course) Josiah Brown’s record indicates that he is a psychopath with no regard for the lives or property of others.
Where is their any evidence that Josiah Brown can “learn from [his] mistakes”? Just a few months ago, he got caught driving a stolen car with two bleeding teenagers inside — just another “very stupid thing” he did, according to Pennsylvania Democrat Mary Scanlon — but that didn’t lead him to repent and renounce his criminal ways. And what’s this noise about “common-sense gun safety measures”? Where is the evidence that any gun law advocated by Scanlon or Biden would stop a career criminal like Josiah Brown, who has never met a law he wouldn’t violate?
No one expects logic from a Pennsylvania Democrat, however, so Mary Scanlon’s misguided sympathy for criminal psychopath Josiah Brown will not get any pushback from the media, just the same as the media won’t bother asking why Chicago Democrat Kimberly Lightford, who supports strict gun control laws, is OK with her husband carrying a pistol.
As I say, however, this situation might prompt me to reconsider my opinion about carjacking. While I have always advocated that carjacking should be treated as very serious crime, to be punished by long prison sentences, I could perhaps be persuaded toward a more lenient attitude, if it were only Democrats getting carjacked. Like, if some young thug carjacked Ayanna Pressley or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez . . .
Well, that would be a “very stupid mistake,” as Mary Scanlon says, but there’s no need to add to the mass incarceration problem.
With the People’s #JusticeGuarantee, we will dismantle our country’s fundamentally broken system of mass incarceration and replace it with bold, progressive solutions rooted in shared power, equality, freedom, safety, and human dignity.
White supremacy is often subconscious. & Clearly, our nation has not been inoculated. WS is our nation’s original sin;the driving logic of slavery, of Native genocide, of Jim Crow, of segregation, of mass incarceration,of “Send Her Back.”
Say hello to 32-year-old Davis Howard Jr., who was behind the wheel of a speeding Maserati in Bunnell, Florida, when a Flagler County deputy blue-lighted him and Howard took off — because, really, what’s the point of driving a Maserati if you can’t try to outrun cops once in a while?
During that high-speed chase, Howard called his mother and she was the one who eventually got him to stop the car, according to deputies.
A woman in the car with him also tried to get him to stop, she told deputies.
It was determined that Howard had a suspended license since 4/4/2016.
A probable cause search of the vehicle was conducted and multiple illegal drugs were found. Deputies recovered 44 white pills, identified as Oxycodone, in the driver’s door compartment, along with 12g of marijuana. In the center cup holder, deputies recovered 8.2g marijuana and on the rear right passenger seat was a small black bag containing two small baggies with an additional 200 Oxycodone pills. A total of 44g of Oxycodone was recovered and $5,651 was seized.
Howard is no stranger to law enforcement and has been charged 43 times in Florida, with nine felony convictions. He’s previously been charged for Grand Theft of a Motor Vehicle, Carrying a Concealed Weapon, Tampering with Physical Evidence, Destroying Evidence, Flee and Elude Law Enforcement, Use or Display of Firearm During Felony, Possession of Weapon/Ammo by Convicted Felon, Possession of Marijuana with Intent to Sell, Possession of Cocaine, Possession of a Controlled Substance, Possession of Synthetic Cannabinoids, Possession of a Controlled Substance without Prescription, Possession of Methamphetamine with Intent to Sell, Possession of Cocaine with Intent to Sell, Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Aggravated Battery on Law Enforcement Officer with Motor Vehicle, Use Under 18 Years Old to Sell/Deliver Meth, Trafficking Opium, Trafficking Controlled Substances, and Trafficking Phenethylamines. He’s also been charged in Illinois on multiple felony drug charges.
Evidently, he’s been a full-time criminal his entire life, but for some reason was not behind bars, and was instead driving around Florida in a Maserati. Here’s video of the pursuit and arrest:
Some of my libertarian friends are against “The War on Drugs,” but if drugs were legal, how would someone like Davis Howard Jr. be able to afford a Maserati? Making drugs illegal creates lucrative opportunities for, uh . . . Well, people who wouldn’t be obeying the laws no matter what the laws were. I mean, it’s not illegal to own a Maserati, but it is illegal to drive with a suspended license. Criminals don’t obey traffic laws the same way they don’t obey drug laws or gun laws or just about any other law you’d care to name. What’s the point of having any laws at all, if you think it’s social injustice to put criminals in jail? Because that’s what really inspires the notion that we shouldn’t be locking up drug dealers, i.e., the “disparate impact” argument. When I think back on my own youthful career in freelance pharmaceutical distribution, the fact that I was a suburban white boy didn’t make me exempt from law-enforcement scrutiny. I didn’t have “white privilege,” but I also wasn’t driving around in a Maserati — a spectacularly stupid thing to do, when you’re hauling contraband. While I don’t want to turn this blog into a how-to guide for drug dealers, permit me to observe that a used Volkswagen is a lot less conspicuous than a late-model sports car. Just sayin’ . . .
There are two kinds of drug dealers:
Smart guys who keep a low profile;
and
Idiots who drive around in flashy cars and go to prison.
Howard was arrested for Trafficking Oxycodone 25g or More, Fleeing with Disregard of Safety to Persons/Property, Driving While License Suspended with Knowledge, Selling of Oxycodone, and Possession of Marijuana 20g or more. He was transported to the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility and is being held on $160,500 bond.
On the advice of my attorney, Bert the Samoan Lawyer, I’ll note that anything written here about my own youthful behavior is fiction, as far as you know. But I damned sure wasn’t driving a Maserati.
Say hello to Florida resident Steven Stillwell. According to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, the 42-year-old Stillwell “has an extensive criminal arrest history of 14 felonies, 5 misdemeanors, and 11 re-arrest charges . . . including: multiple burglaries and larcenies, DUI, multiple violations of probation, drug possession, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of a weapon/ammunition by a convicted felon, dealing in stolen property, and fraud.” Stillwell’s lengthy criminal history nearly ended this week, thanks to an armed homeowner:
Detectives with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office responded to the shooting of a man who they said broke into a Lakeland home Tuesday afternoon.
The homeowner told deputies that the man, later identified as 42-year-old Steven Stillwell, forced his way into the residence by throwing a flower pot through a glass door at around 12:50 p.m., according to a news release.
Deputies said Stillwell was shot three times by the homeowner. Stillwell was later taken to a hospital where he was last reported in critical, stable condition, according to the release.
Detectives said they found a shotgun belonging to Stillwell in the backyard of the home, as well as video evidence showing Stillwell approaching the home through the backyard.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said the evidence in the case indicated that Stillwell illegally entered the home, and that the homeowner did the right thing by shooting him.
“The castle doctrine is very clear in Florida law. A person’s home is his refuge,” Judd said in a statement. “The homeowner did exactly what he had a right to do. I commend him for protecting himself and defending his home.”
We presume that, if Stillwell survives his wounds, he will spend a long time in Florida’s prison system. Who says there’s no good news anymore? Merry Christmas!
Law enforcement in Fairfax, Virginia on Friday announced they have a suspected serial killer in custody, two days after officials discovered human remains in a container left in a wooded area.
The suspect was identified as Anthony Robinson, 35.
Authorities also named Cheyenne Brown, a 29-year-old Washington, D.C., woman who has been missing since September, as one of at least four of his victims.
“He’s killed four already, and we suspect that he has more victims. He’s a predator, as all serial killers are,” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said during a news conference Friday, adding that the so-called “Shopping Cart Killer” does “unspeakable things with his victims.”
Fairfax homicide detectives on Wednesday discovered the shopping cart in a wooded area off of Route 1 near the Moon Inn. A container beside the shopping cart had two sets of human remains that were so “decomposed” that “it’s going to take a little time” for authorities to complete an autopsy, according to Fairfax Police Chief Kevin Davis.
Based on a preliminary analysis, officials were able to identify Brown. A second set of remains discovered in the container has yet to be identified. Authorities will conduct further testing, including a DNA analysis.
Brown’s family told WRC-TV, a local NBC affiliate, that she had a 7-year-old son and was pregnant at the time of her disappearance.
Robinson is also suspected of killing two women, ages 54 and 34, whose remains were discovered in Harrisonburg in November. Officials also discovered the other two victims’ remains in shopping carts, Davis said.
The alleged killer’s M.O. included meeting his victims online, luring them to motels, killing them and transporting their remains in shopping carts, according to Davis. . . . Robinson allegedly met his victims, including Brown, on a dating website.
The two were in contact with each other on the night of Sept. 30 at a metro stop in D.C. before she went missing, according to O’Connell. Robinson may have contacts between New York and Harrisonburg, Virginia, if not elsewhere beyond those places.
The suspect is currently being held at Rockingham County Jail in Virginia.
How many times have I warned y’all about online dating? Swipe right, and next thing you know, a serial killer’s doing “unspeakable things” to you, then dumping your corpse in some remote location where your badly decomposed remains are found months later. All because you didn’t listen to me when I told you: Online dating is for losers.
Say hello to Holly Williams and her boyfriend William Lanway and, while you’re at it, go ahead and say good-bye, because they’re both dead. The couple lived in Nashville, and died there after they attempted an extortion scheme that backfired in the worst possible way. You see, it all started when Holly’s ex-boyfriend, a successful Texas businessman named Erik Maund, decided to get in touch with her:
Mr. Maund, a 46-year-old married auto dealer from Austin, Texas, traveled to Nashville a few times a year to visit a relative, prosecutors said. As he prepared for his trip in early February 2020, Mr. Maund reached out to Ms. Williams, an old romantic acquaintance, asking her to meet up while he was in town, according to the indictment.
On Feb. 5, Mr. Maund allegedly texted Ms. Williams, 33, again, noting he was looking forward to being with her that night.
“Good day beautiful! … I’m in Nashville,” he said, according to court documents. “I’ll meet you in the bar like last time. Text me when you arrive.”
On March 1, Mr. Maund began receiving threatening text messages. Mr. Lanway, 36, was in a romantic relationship with Ms. Williams and wanted Mr. Maund to pay him not to expose the affair, prosecutors said.
NEVER TEXT YOUR EX!
Nothing good ever happens as a consequence. Time moves in one direction, and going backward — attempting to rekindle the old flame — is a formula for heartache. And also, perhaps, murder:
On Friday, Mr. Maund and the three men he allegedly paid $750,000 to kill the Nashville couple were arrested on kidnapping, murder and gun charges. . . .
Mr. Maund “communicated multiple times” with Gilad Peled, the owner of Austin-based firm Speartip Security. According to the indictment, the company advertised “responding to extortion demands” on its website. Mr. Peled, 47, said he was a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces and the Mossad.
On March 5, an unnamed accomplice gave Mr. Peled an “Intelligence Report” on Ms. Williams, the indictment said. That same day, Mr. Maund allegedly withdrew $15,000 from his Bank of America account. The money eventually made its way into Mr. Peled’s personal and business bank accounts, according to prosecutors.
Mr. Peled allegedly sent Adam Carey, 30, of Richlands, N.C., who served in the United States Marine Corps’ Special Operations group, to Nashville on March 7 to surveil Ms. Williams and Mr. Lanway.
Mr. Carey sent a report two days later. It included Ms. Williams’ address and vehicle information and confirmed that Mr. Lanway had been staying in her apartment.
“[The report] advised that Adam Carey and others would use ‘everything at our disposal to include, intimidation … ’ to stop the attempted extortion,” the indictment says.
Mr. Carey and other unnamed accomplices tried to contact Ms. Williams and Mr. Lanway on March 10, prosecutors said. They showed up at Ms. Williams’ apartment, but the attempt to speak with her was “unsuccessful,” according to court documents. That day they also allegedly tailed Mr. Lanway in a grocery store but did not approach him directly.
Mr. Carey received additional help the following day when Bryon Brockway, 46, arrived from Austin. According to the indictment, Mr. Brockway owns a security company and served in the United States Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance, a Special Operations intelligence unit.
On March 12, Mr. Carey and Mr. Brockway allegedly confronted Ms. Williams and Mr. Lanway in the parking lot of Ms. Williams’ apartment complex. Prosecutors said they shot Mr. Lanway multiple times, including twice in the head.
They then allegedly forced Ms. Williams into her 2005 Acura sedan and drove her to a construction site while Mr. Lanway’s body was in the car. Once they arrived, Mr. Carey and Mr. Brockway shot Ms. Williams “multiple times including a shot to the head near her right temple,” the indictment says.
The next day, Mr. Carey and Mr. Brockway drove to Memphis, Tenn., where Mr. Brockway got on a flight to Austin, the lawsuit says. Mr. Carey then drove to Austin.
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department found Ms. Williams and Mr. Lanway’s bodies on April 10, 2020, police Chief John Drake said in a news release — nearly a month after Mr. Carey and Mr. Brockway allegedly killed them.
Since March 11, 2020, Mr. Maund paid “in excess of $750,000” to Mr. Peled, Mr. Brockway and Mr. Carey for “the kidnapping and murder” of Ms. Williams and Mr. Lanway, the indictment says.
Has anyone ever gotten away with a murder-for-hire plot?
OK, Hillary Clinton, maybe, but in other cases, the feds are actually going to try to catch the killers, rather than deliberately covering it up with some “suicide” nonsense, but I digress . . .
My point is that I’ve seen enough true-crime shows on TV to understand how difficult it is to get away with murder-for-hire. Once the cops figure out who had a motive to kill the deceased victims, the rest of it is just a matter of getting warrants to seize your phone, your computer, etc. But that’s assuming that you can actually find an authentic hit man to do the job. Most of the time, when someone tries to hire a hit man to murder their wife or husband or whatever, they end up talking to an undercover cop wearing a wire pretending to be a hit man.
Stupid is as stupid does, however, and a guy that’s dumb enough to text his ex is dumb enough to think he can get away with murder. On the other hand, the two extortionists are dead, so that’s a bit of a silver lining to this dark cloud of stupidity. Also, Hillary Clinton may have gotten away with murder, but at least she never became president.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted an “attitude of lawlessness” across the country Wednesday, decrying a recent surge in smash-and-grab crimes – particularly in her hometown of San Francisco – but refusing to admit it stems from police funding cuts and bail reform measures pushed by left-wing lawmakers. “It’s absolutely outrageous,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said when asked about the crime spike. “Obviously, it cannot continue. But the fact [is] that there is an attitude of lawlessness in our country that springs from I don’t know where … and we cannot have that lawlessness become the norm.”
“It must be stopped, and it’s not just San Francisco,” Pelosi emphasized. “It’s in our entire country.”
The brazen group robberies have made national headlines for weeks. Last month, for example, around 80 people raided a San Francisco-area Nordstrom department store and drove off in two dozen cars with up to $200,000 in goods, police said.
Similar thefts have been reported across California, as well as in Chicago. On Tuesday, a visibly frustrated San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced plans to crack down on retail thefts, home break-ins and other criminal behavior that has flourished during the tenure of progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin. . . .
Chesa Boudin’s parents are terrorist murderers. His mother Kathy Boudin (who had been valedictorian at elite Bryn Mawr College) became a fugitive after she survived the 1970 explosion that destroyed a Weather Underground bomb factory in a Greenwich Village townhouse. By 1981, she had joined fellow radical David Gilbert, Chesa Boudin’s father, in the May 19th Communist Organization, which helped perpetrate the infamous Nyack, N.Y., Brink’s armored car robbery in which a guard and two police officers were murdered. These killers are treated as heroes by the radical Left, of which Chesa Boudin is an unapologetic member. The people who elected Chesa Boudin as district attorney — that is to say, Democrats — knew damned well what they were thereby endorsing.
Or should have known, anyway. Attributing Boudin’s election to voter ignorance is only slightly more plausible than attributing it to deliberate malice. Really, what excuse can there be? “Oops, we accidentally elected a Marxist”? As a parent, one hears all kinds of flimsy alibis from children — who ate all the Oreos? — but people old enough to vote ought to be held to a higher standard of accountability. But even the Speaker of the House is playing the same childish game of pretending to be shocked by the entirely predictable consequences of her own party’s policies.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on [Dec. 2] said the COVID-19 pandemic is “a root cause” of recent organized looting incidents across the country.
Psaki gave the surprising remark when asked at her daily briefing about large groups that have for weeks been descending upon San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago-area shops.
“Big cities are dealing with smash-and-grab robberies, a record number of police officers have been shot and killed this year. What is President Biden going to do about all this lawlessness?” asked Fox News reporter Peter Doocy.
Psaki at first pinned the blame on former President Donald Trump for not offering more funding to local police before turning the blame on the pandemic.
“Well, Peter, I would say that when the president proposed additional funding in his budget over the funding that had been proposed by the prior president to increase in support local police departments, make sure we keep cops on the beat,” she said.
“Does the president still think that crime is up because of the pandemic?” Doocy further asked.
“I think many people have conveyed that and also one of the … root causes of crime in communities is guns and gun violence. And we’ve seen that statistically around the country,” Psaki answered.
“So when a huge group of criminals organizes themselves and they want to go loot a store — a CVS, a Nordstrom, a Home Depot until the shelves are clean — do you think that’s because of the pandemic?” Doocy pressed.
“I think a root cause in a lot of communities is the pandemic, yes,” Psaki said.
Why is it that these “root causes” affect only certain “communities”? Why is it always Democratic constituencies perpetrating these crimes?
Don’t expect Nancy Pelosi to answer that, but she has plenty of time to launch a Select Committee to endlessly investigate January 6, because a bunch of people wandering around the Capitol taking selfies is a dangerous “insurrection.” It cannot be said that Democrats have no standards; they actually have two standards — one for them, and one for everybody else. Democrats want to put you in prison if you say they stole the election (friends of mine have been subpoenaed), but meanwhile their own voters are looting Nordstrom and Democrats pretend to be shocked.
In September, the Chief Diversity at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Dr. Nefertiti Walker, sent a campus-wide email warning of a “disturbing increase in anti-Black racist incidents,” saying the content of the messages was “vile” and “violently offensive”:
Over the course of several weeks dating back to late August, Black student groups at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have received offensive, blatantly racist emails and online messages.
In their inboxes, Black UMass students have been told by an anonymous person or group that they did not arrive at the commonwealth’s flagship campus on merit, that they are of substandard intelligence, and that they should consider sterilization.
The messages, at least one of which was signed “UMass Coalition for a Better Society,” have been sent to multiple Black student organizations in the first month of school.
Copies of the messages circulated on social media:
“The blatantly racist e-mails recently sent to Black student organizations at UMass Amherst and other deplorable acts of anti-Black hatred are appalling and disgusting,” Meehan said in a statement. “While UMass Amherst is still trying to identify the source of these messages, we do know that the messages in no way reflect the true character of the UMass community and we have zero tolerance for such behavior.”
UMass IT and campus police are investigating the identity of the email sender.
“My team in the Office of the President is working with UMass Amherst to investigate and to identify the individuals and/or organizations responsible for these hate-ridden messages, and hold them accountable wherever they are,” Meehan said. “As the campus aggressively pursues the source of these vile messages, we must all join in active support of our students, and re-double our commitment to providing a safe, welcoming community for all students.”
UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy announced that the campus will launch a full-scale investigation into the source of the emails and that the university has secured the services of Stroz Friedberg Digital Forensics, a leading national firm in cyber security.
“While we are mindful of the challenges in determining the source of anonymous emails such as these, we are confident that Stroz Friedberg, with its extensive expertise and technical capacity, will methodically follow every lead in pursuit of the contemptible individual or individuals responsible,” Subbaswamy said in a message to the campus community. . . .
“When the perpetrator of any of these acts is identified, the full weight of the university’s disciplinary and legal apparatus will be brought to bear,” Subbaswamy said in the campus message.
That was September, and now it’s December and yet, despite the services of “a leading national firm in cyber security,” UMass still has not identified the “contemptible” perpetrators, a mystery that inspires Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr’s sarcasm:
Like O.J., they pledge to spend eternity chasing down the real killers. But so far, apparently, not a single MAGA hat or Let’s Go Brandon! T-shirt has turned up at the scene of the crime. Not even a discarded pay stub from a real job.
The snowflakes of Amherst are, as you might expect, baffled.
It’s certainly discouraging, isn’t it, how few of these campus white supremacists are ever brought to justice. In fact, usually they’re never even found. They seldom leave behind a single clue.
