Category: Crime

‘Ain’t Going Back to Jail’

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Say hello to Christian Redwine and, while you’re at it, you can also say good-bye, because he got shot dead by a police officer in 2016.

Although he was only 17, Redwine already had an extensive criminal record in November 2016 when he decided to steal a car and go joyriding with two friends. Redwine “had a lengthy juvenile record, including an 18-month sentence in a youth development campus,” a federal judge wrote in a recent court ruling related to the case. “He had also recently been charged as an adult with first-degree burglary, spent two months in jail, and been released on bond less than a week before the shooting.”

Maybe releasing criminals from jail is a bad idea, but on the other hand, keeping them in jail is expensive, compared to the cost of buying 21 rounds of pistol ammunition for a police officer, who can thereby guarantee that the hoodlum won’t steal any more cars.

Since the #BlackLivesMatter riots last year, I’ve done a lot of blogging about crime and law enforcement, mainly in an effort to counterbalance the anti-police narrative whereby activists magically transform criminals into victims of injustice. Because most of the cases I’ve highlighted involve black suspects, it may seem racist — “RAAAAACIST!” — to defend police against charges of “excessive force,” so I am grateful for those occasions when white criminals get themselves shot by cops. This gives me the opportunity to point out that I have no sympathy for criminals of any race — I am pro-police even when cops are killing white people.

Certainly, Christian Redwine deserved to be shot, as did the two other teenagers who were his passengers that night in November 2016.

Hunter Tillis (left); Hannah Wuenschel (right)

Redwine had just gotten out of jail, and was back home in Columbus, Georgia, with his grandmother, who had raised him. His grandmother’s live-in boyfriend had a small business selling used cars, which he kept parked at the house. Redwine’s 19-year-old cousin, Hunter Tillis, came over and the two of them began a two-day drug binge of over-the-counter cold medication, Xanax, marijuana and cocaine. Redwine’s girlfriend was at the house babysitting for the infant child of 19-year-old Hannah Wuenschel, but then there was an argument, and the girlfriend left with Wuenschel’s baby. So when Wuenschel arrived, the grandmother drove them to the girlfriend’s house “where Wuenschel got her son and brought him back to [the grandmother’s] house. She put the child to bed and smoked marijuana with Tillis and Redwine.” About 11 p.m., Redwine’s grandmother and her boyfriend went to sleep, and then Redwine got the keys to a Pontiac G-6 belonging to the grandmother’s boyfriend. Redwine had no driver’s license and no permission to take the car, but he took it, with Tillis and Wuenschel along for the ride.

The teenagers then apparently broke into two cars, stealing jewelry, a purse and other items. About 3:30 a.m., 911 got a call from the grandmother’s boyfriend, reporting the Pontiac stolen and identifying the three teenagers, saying he wanted them arrested:

The teens were on Gentian Boulevard when Redwine stopped at a shopping plaza, turned off his headlights, and tried to call his girlfriend.
He’d chosen an area rife with business break-ins. At 4:25 a.m., police Capt. Bill Turner, driving an unmarked Chevrolet Impala, saw the Pontiac and followed when Redwine pulled away.
Tillis told Redwine police were behind him. When Redwine confirmed an officer was tailing him, he raced away to the neighborhood around Hardaway High School, speeding so recklessly he had to use the emergency brake to turn.
The 911 center informed officers the Pontiac was reported stolen.
Tillis and Wuenschel later said Redwine was desperate to escape because he’d just been released from jail and swore he would not go back.
Redwine led police down Talbotton Road to Veterans Parkway and briefly lost them near Ashley Station Apartments. He stopped there and told Tillis and Wuenschel to get out if they wanted. Both refused, and police soon were back on Redwine’s tail as he headed into downtown toward the 13th Street Bridge to Phenix City.
[Columbus Police Officer Allan] Brown was at the Public Safety Center on 10th Street when he heard the chase was close by. He joined it, and was the lead police car when Redwine crossed into Alabama, speeding up to 98 mph as he headed west to U.S. 280 and turned back toward Columbus on the J.R. Allen Parkway.
The Pontiac hit 107 mph before Redwine abruptly exited onto Riverchase Drive and ran off the road into bushes in a front yard, with Brown right behind him.

Did I mention that Redwine’s cousin, Hunter Tillis, also had a criminal record, including charges of arson and burglary? Probably neither one of them should have been out on the street, but there they were, flying down the road at over 100 mph, with a teen mom in the front passenger seat, and multiple cop cars in their rearview mirror. They’d crossed the Chattahoochee River into Alabama, then doubled back, exited the freeway and ran off the road. Officer Brown pulled his car up behind and to the right of the Pontiac, which seemed to be stuck on the side of the road. Inside the Pontiac, Redwine told Tillis, “I ain’t going back to jail”:

Brown thought the Pontiac was wrecked and the driver would run away, so he quickly got out, anticipating a foot chase.
Brown drew his .45-caliber semi-automatic. Redwine looked at Wuenschel and said, “It’s them or me,” though she pleaded with him to give up.
“Nah, f—k that,” Redwine said. “You can either jump out or stay the f—k in the car.”
He shifted to reverse. Brown said he saw the white reverse lights come on, and believing Redwine would run him over, started shooting, firing 11 shots in three seconds as the Pontiac passed by.
Having emptied the gun, he put in a fresh clip.
Two of the first shots killed Redwine as the Pontiac backed across the road. Brown said he was blinded by the headlights, and believed the driver would try to run him over again. He fired 10 more shots, leaving Redwine with multiple wounds. Wuenschel was wounded in the first barrage, and Tillis was hit in the second. Both were hospitalized and arrested upon their release.

Twenty-one shots, dead car thief. I score that a “win” for the good guys.

 

You watch the dashcam video, and you’ve got to say that reloading the weapon and firing an extra 10 shots seems . . . excessive. If any Georgia cop had done that to a black teenager, Ben Crump would have been on CNN 24/7, and the looting and arson would have gone on for days. However, because the dead car thief was white, nobody outside the Columbus area has ever even heard of Christian Redwine.

A grand jury cleared Officer Brown of wrongdoing, but there was a civil lawsuit and last month a federal appeals court ruled in favor of Officer Brown, so he’s now in the clear, legally. The court ruling could be considered a precedent, establishing that cops have the right to shoot white car thieves. But I’m not a lawyer, and maybe I’m misinterpreting it.

Americans should be grateful to Christian Redwine, who boasted, “I ain’t going back to jail.” No, son, you’re going to hell. Bon voyage.




 

UPDATE: Union Crew Walked Off Alec Baldwin Film Set Before Fatal Shooting

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Earlier today we told you how Alec Baldwin shot two people, killing the female cinematographer on a Western film set in New Mexico. This looks very bad for Baldwin’s legal liability:

Hours before actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer on the New Mexico set of “Rust” with a prop gun, a half-dozen camera crew workers walked off the set to protest working conditions.
The camera operators and their assistants were frustrated by the conditions surrounding the low-budget film, including complaints of long hours and getting their paychecks, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment.
The camera crew showed up for work as expected at 6:30 a.m. Thursday and began gathering up their gear and personal belongings to leave, one knowledgeable crew member told the Los Angeles Times.
Labor trouble had been brewing for days on the dusty set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe.
Shooting began on Oct. 6 and members of the production said they had been promised the production would pay for their hotel rooms in Santa Fe.
But after filming began, the crews were told they instead would be required to make the 50-mile drive from Albuquerque each day, rather than stay overnight in nearby Santa Fe.
The cinematographer who was accidentally killed, Halyna Hutchins, had been advocating for safer conditions for her team, said one crew member who was on the set.
As the camera crew — members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — spent about an hour assembling their gear at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, several nonunion crew members showed up to replace them, the knowledgeable person said.
A member of the producer staff then ordered the union members to leave the set. She said if they didn’t leave, the producers would call security to remove them.
“Corners were being cut — and they brought in nonunion people so they could continue shooting,” the knowledgeable person said.
There were two misfires on the prop gun on Saturday and one the previous week, the person said, adding “there was a serious lack of safety meetings on this set.”

(Hat-tip: Evil Blogger Lady on Twitter.)

Baldwin was Executive Producer on this “low budget” film, so that he bears responsibility for conditions on the set. They were cutting corners to save money, so they brought in scabs to replace the union members on the crew, and this accidental shooting was the direct result.




 

Violence Against Women Update

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They’re calling this an “accident”:

A tragedy occurred on the set of the latest Alec Baldwin movie where the actor reportedly accidentally shot and killed a female cinematographer and injured the director due to a prop gun misfire.
“Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun on a set in New Mexico on Thursday, accidentally killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza,” reported Variety.
The tragic incident reportedly occurred on the Bonanza Creek Ranch set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Alec Baldwin was shooting his upcoming Western, Rust. Hutchins, who originally remained unidentified, died after being transported via helicopter to the University of New Mexico Hospital.
Director Joel Souza remains in emergency care after being transported by ambulance to Christus St. Vincent’s hospital.
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office confirmed on Thursday that both Hutchins and Souza “were shot when a prop firearm was discharged by Alec Baldwin, 68, producer and actor.”
Sources told Deadline, which initially reported that the incident occurred when Baldwin reportedly “cocked a gun during a rehearsal, unaware that there were live rounds in it, hitting two people, a man and a woman.” Representatives for Baldwin, a rabid anti-gun demagogue, did not immediately respond to media requests for comment.

A few more details, via Daily Mail:

Alec Baldwin allegedly repeatedly asked ‘why was I handed a hot gun?’ after he accidentally shot and killed a female cinematographer and wounded a director yesterday on the set of his new film Rust. . . .
A spokesman for the movie’s production company has insisted that only blanks were used, but the sheriff’s department is yet to confirm that. It’s unclear if this was the first and only shot Baldwin fired, or if others had been fired safely.
Immediately after firing the fatal shot, Baldwin asked why he’d been handed a ‘hot’ gun, according to Hollywood gossip site Showbiz 411. . . .
Mike Tristano, 60, a Hollywood armorer with 30 years’ experience . . . said ultimate responsibility for gun safety on movie set rests with the armorer. . . .
‘There should have been blanks in the gun, the on-set armorer’s job is to check that before handing the weapon over,’ Tristan said.
‘They then make sure that the actor stands on a mark and never points the gun at the crew or cast… the editing makes it seem like they were pointing at their co-actor.
‘That’s why everyone in the industry is very confused. How this happened is a total mystery at the moment.’

Total mystery, as well as a tragedy, but the fact that Alec Baldwin, an outspoken opponent of Second Amendment rights, shot and killed a woman is also deeply ironic. Make of that what you will.

UPDATE: Union Crew Walked Off Alec Baldwin Film Set Before Fatal Shooting




 

The Buckhead Lamborghini Murder

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If you’ve been paying attention to news from Atlanta lately, you know that the prestigious Buckhead district, one of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the South, is seeking to secede from the city, because crime has gotten totally out of control. So last week — Monday, Oct. 10 — there appeared in Atlanta media this weird report:

Police are trying to determine if a woman who died after being ejected from a Lamborghini in Buckhead was pushed out of the moving car.
Investigators said late Monday night the 28-year-old metro Atlanta woman, later identified as Catherine Khan, started fighting with a man. At some point, they both got into the Lamborghini, where police say the altercation continued.
When the vehicle reached the Buckhead intersection of the Peachtree Road and Piedmont Road, the woman was ejected from the Lambo.
Paramedics rushed her to Grady Memorial Hospital, where doctors sadly couldn’t save her life. Police said she wasn’t shot, stabbed, or run over by any other vehicles.
Detectives said it’s too early to know if the victim was pushed out of the Lamborghini or maybe jumped to escape the fight. They’re looking at nearby surveillance video and talking to witnesses, hoping to piece together what happened.

The victim, Catherine Khan, is a woman of Middle Eastern ancestry who was described in some outlets as an “Instagram model,” and this all seemed mysterious. I mean, Buckhead is pretty affluent, but how many Lamborghinis do you see on Peachtree Street? And this story that Khan was “fighting with a man” made it seem as if it might be some kind of relationship problem. But it turned out to be related to a theft outside the Buckhead restaurant where Khan worked as a bartender:

Alfred Megbuluba (left); Catherine Khan (right).

A warrant is revealing new details in connection to the death of a woman, who a witness said, was thrown out of a moving Lamborghini to her death.
According to a warrant from Fulton County, 31-year-old Alfred Megbuluba is accused of taking a wallet belonging to 28-year-old Catherine Khan before her death.
Inside the wallet, there was money valued under $1,500 and Khan’s credit cards, according to the warrant. The warrant states he later tried to use her card at a Chevron gas station shortly before her death.
Hours after turning himself in to Atlanta Police, Megbuluba made his first court appearance, where he was denied bond. At the hearing, Megbuluba’s attorney Steve Sadow waived the reading of the arrest warrant. . . .
The warrant further states, “Alfred Megbuluba, did commit the offense of murder when he unlawfully and with malice aforethought pushed Catherine Kahn out of his vehicle while it was in motion. Catherine died as a result of her injuries from being pushed out of the vehicle.”
Megbuluba faces felony murder, theft by taking, and financial transaction card theft charges.

In some ways, this only adds to the mystery: How is this guy, who lives in Lilburn in suburban Gwinnett County, driving a Lamborghini? And if you’re rich enough to be driving a Lambo, how is it that you’re stealing a woman’s wallet and using her credit card to buy gas?

And, really, if Lamborghinis are not commonplace on Peachtree Street, they’re certainly not seen very often in Lilburn. Something tells me we’re going to be learning a lot more about the background of Alfred Megbuluba who, needless to say, is not a native of Georgia. It appears that in 2015, he registered an LLC consulting company in Nevada, but that license lapsed in 2017 for some reason. I don’t know what kind of “consulting” he was involved in, but if he could afford a Lamborghini, it must have been quite lucrative. We shall see . . .




 

‘Social Justice’ as Fashion Accessory

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“That’s the thing about a Missing White Woman story — the damsel-in-distress angle only works, in terms of TV news ratings, if the missing woman is young and attractive, preferably blonde. Males can and do go missing, but those disappearances never dominate national news. It’s always a woman, and a young, attractive woman — if she’s old, fat or ugly, nobody cares if she goes missing. But the nubile blonde? Oh, yeah, that’s nationwide headline stuff, because she’s Prime Rape Bait, and sex is the secret ingredient in the Missing White Woman story.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Sept. 22

Going off on seemingly irrelevant tangents is one of my bad habits, and perhaps I should begin by telling you that this is not a post about the case of Gabby Petito, who was apparently strangled to death by her fiancé, Brian Laundrie. In saying “apparently,” I don’t mean to raise doubt about the cause of her death — the autopsy confirmed that she was strangled — but rather it’s because so far Laundrie has not been formally accused of Gabby’s death, but is what police call a “person of interest.” The manhunt for Laundrie continues, but this isn’t a post about that; rather, it’s about how social media is affecting the beliefs and behavior of young people. Gabby Petito evidently got the idea that she could find a career as a social-media “influencer,” by monetizing her Instagram posts and YouTube videos on the #vanlife hashtag. That was what she and Laundrie were doing on that trip out West where she got strangled to death.

Where would a middle-class girl from Long Island get the idea that #vanlife was something she could pursue full-time? Well, young people have been doing stupid things since time immemorial — no fair bringing up my disastrous 1979 psilocybin experience, OK? — but the particular forms of stupid youthful behavior are now being shaped by social media. It’s like the phenomenon of “social contagion” by which impressionable teens are sucked into the vortex of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria.

So here is this blue-eyed blonde girl from the affluent Suffolk County hamlet of Blue Point, N.Y., deciding at age 21 that the thing to do is to save up, buy a van and then go driving westward, recording her travel experiences for an online audience, up until the point where she became the poster girl for the #strangledtodeath hashtag.

Excuse my caustic sarcasm, but Gabby Petito is an extreme example of a much larger problem of young people ruining their lives by following whatever trendy fashion caught their attention on social media.

Back in 2014, when I began my deep-dive into radical feminism, the reason was because I could see it becoming trendy, mainly because the strategists behind the Hillary Clinton campaign saw that promoting feminism as a “brand” would be helpful to her 2016 presidential bid.

That’s something many people don’t understand — a lot of trends these days don’t just spontaneously happen. The Democrat-Media Complex exerts a very powerful influence, and the army of naïve young women who suddenly became all “F–k Yeah Feminism!” circa 2014 are evidence of how easily people can be manipulated. And if you pay attention to such trends over time, you’ll notice that the same cohort of impressionable youth will jump from one issue to the next as the focus of their online activism, depending entirely on what narrative the Democrat-Media Complex happens to be promoting at any given time. The same twentysomething crowd that was ready to #SmashPatriarchy in 2014 shifted seamlessly to ranting against the “Alt-Right” and the sinister influence of Vladimir Putin in 2017. Then, quite suddenly in May 2020, the same people were marching in the streets for #BlackLivesMatter, and all the other activist causes they’d been concerned with were forgotten.

The marionettes in this puppet-play never notice the strings, and it does not seem to occur to them to ask, “Why should I care about this?” or “Who is really benefitting from my activism?”

Because I spent so many years inside newsrooms, seeing how the daily diet of news is assembled, I’m rather cynical about this stuff. As a blogger, there is always pressure to be part of the herd, everybody bleating in unison about the same stories — whatever is on Fox News, etc. From my perspective, resisting this herd mentality is part of the value-added calculation of my efforts: What is the value of my becoming the 27th blog to write about a particular subject? And if I’m going to dogpile on the same issue everybody else is writing about, how can I find something to say about it that is different? Otherwise, I might as well just be linking headlines or posting video clips. But you don’t get a lot of that kind of thinking — “What’s the point of what I’m doing?” — when the left-wing mob jumps onto something like the George Floyd story. Everybody just echoes the same insipid slogans, as if the sheer number of people mindlessly repeating this message is the whole point.

The frightening conformity of these mobs ought to attract more critical scrutiny than it does. On June 2, 2020, thousands of Instagram accounts posted nothing but a black square with the hashtag #BlackoutTuesday, which was basically the antithesis of critical thinking.

Examined closely, we can view this as an example of what Thomas Sowell famously called The Vision of the Anointed. What really matters to these people is perception — on the one hand, they wish to be viewed by their peers as “socially conscious,” but on the other hand, they’re also posing in a mirror to admire their own reflection, so to speak. Their perception of themselves as morally and intellectually superior is very important to them, and this drives them to join various “causes” as a venue for proving their superiority, both to themselves and others, so that over the course of time, their lives become a sort of political pageant.

There is a disturbing thoughtlessness to how such people behave. One day, the Instagram “influencer” is posting about her favorite coffee shop or the new sweater she bought, but then the next day, she’s repeating militant “social justice” slogans, demanding an end to oppression, etc. And this strange shift doesn’t seem to bother her in the least; whatever cognitive dissonance it may engender is expiated through an ostentatious display of hyperemotionality — literally crying about the latest “injustice” she saw on CNN. There is absolutely no rationality or objectivity to this kind of trendy activism; it’s all about feelings. Viewed objectively, nobody benefitted from her posting that black square on Instagram as an expression of BLM solidarity, but it made her feel like she was doing something, rather than being a passive spectator.

And we might just laugh at all this — “LOL silly kids!” — were it not for the fact that so many of them take it so seriously, to the extent that they are ruining their lives for “social justice.” Let me explain, for the benefit of any young woman who does not yet understand this: You’re not going to meet nice guys at an anarchist rally. Whatever else you might say about Republicans, the party tends to attract people who share certain beliefs, including an appreciation of the value of hard work, sobriety, thrift, etc. The young woman who starts hashtagging all those Communist “social justice” slogans is communicating to the world at large her contempt for the values of all decent and honest Americans.

On the one hand, she’s making it easy for guys seeking companionship of the conveniently slutty variety. Check her Instagram account, and if she was all about #BlackoutTuesday in June 2020, buddy, you’re in like Flynn. Of course, on the other hand, there’s the risk of herpes to consider. But why would I bring up Ella Dawson at this late date? (She’s “taking a break from men,” for which men should be grateful.)

A moment of total candor from Ella Dawson.

Even if you were the kind of reckless daredevil who would risk a hookup with someone like Ella Dawson, however, you certainly wouldn’t consider her “wife material.” No, when it’s time to settle down, any intelligent guy will be looking for a nice Republican girl, instead of some dingbat “progressive” who’s hashtagging social justice slogans. So the girl who thought it was all cool and clever to jump on the “activist” bandwagon as a 19-year-old college sophomore is apt to find herself at 29 living in a tiny apartment, with her cat, and prescriptions for Valtrex and Lexapro.

Did I mention that Ella Dawson recently published a “micro-memoir” with the altogether fitting title Life Ruiner?

What Ella Dawson did to her life by becoming a “pro-sex” feminist is just slightly less stupid than what Gabby Petito did with her life. But as hashtags go, #DamagedSkank is not much better than #ShallowGrave.




 

Lesbian Love Triangle: NYPD Cop Murders Ex-Girlfriend’s New Lover

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Allegedly, I hasten to add:

The off-duty NYPD officer who allegedly shot her ex-girlfriend and killed the woman’s new lover may have snapped because she was clinging to hope that they’d get back together, a high-ranking police source told The Post Thursday.
Officer Yvonne Wu, 31, had recently split with her ex, Jenny Li, 23, but was still spending the night on occasion at Li’s home in Brooklyn — and may have lost it when she saw her there with another woman, the source said.
“She was still staying there on and off. She was still staying there some nights. It’s not that strange, maybe she thought it could still work out,” the source said.
Wu, who works at the 72nd Precinct and lives on Staten Island, allegedly opened fire on Li and her 24-year-old new lover, Jamie Liang, at the home on 19th Avenue near 79th Street in Bensonhurst Wednesday night, according to police.
“When the cops get there, she says, ‘I shot them both. The gun’s inside,’ calm as can be,” the source said.
Liang was found with a bullet wound to the chest and was taken to Maimonides Medical Center, where she died. Li was in serious but stable condition on Thursday, police said.

Notice something about this story? Neither the word “lesbian” nor the word “gay” appears anywhere in it. This is standard practice when referring to homosexuals who commit crimes, whereas if a homosexual is the victim of a crime (e.g., Matthew Shepard), “gay” is in the headline. In this case, where one homosexual (allegedly) shoots two other homosexuals, they went with the former rule, I guess.

As if the headline “Killer Cop in Lesbian Love Triangle” wouldn’t sell more newspapers? See, that’s my real beef with this kind of political correctness — insofar as journalism is a business, the profit motive would suggest the word “lesbian” in the headline of a story like this, much the same way that the word “rape” should always be in the headline of a story about rape. A legalistic term like “sexual assault” doesn’t sell papers the way “rape” sells papers. One reason the news business is in such dire condition is that political correctness is the enemy of the kind of lurid scandal-sheet mentality portrayed in L.A. Confidential.

What America needs is journalists who think more like old-school reporters — wearing fedoras and wide lapels, smoking Chesterfields and driving a 1949 Packard — and less like college professors.

If you ever get a chance to use “Lesbian Love Triangle” in a headline, why would you pass up such an opportunity? Like you’re afraid of being sued or something? Let’s stipulate the possibility that one or more of the women involved here — including the deceased Jamie Liang — may have been bisexual, but the nature of this particular love triangle would justify the word “lesbian” as an adjective, if not as a noun.

Or that would be my defense, anyway, if it turned into a libel suit.

Speaking of libel suits, Ace thinks Joe Rogan may have a case against CNN for smearing him by claiming he took “horse dewormer” as treatment for COVID-19. And whether or not that were defamation, per se, I certainly hope Rogan will sue CNN over this, because discovery is a bitch. If Rogan can get clear the “motion-to-dismiss” hurdle, he might obtain some internal CNN memos about how they’ve been covering COVID-19. Anything bad that happens to CNN is good for journalism.

Anyway, the alleged lesbian cop — notice how I used the word “alleged” there? — has worse problems than being called names by a blogger. New York City has gone kind of soft on crime with De Blasio as mayor, but I’m pretty sure that murder is still a felony there. Maybe she’ll plead insanity, and her defense team can call me as an expert witness.

ATTORNEY: “Would you say my client is crazy?”
McCAIN: “Definitely. She’s deranged, demented, berserk, bonkers, daft, wacky, zany, nutty as squirrel farts, a few fries short of a Happy Meal, and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”
ATTORNEY: “And how does that apply to her shooting rampage?”
McCAIN: “Like I always say, Crazy People Are Dangerous.”

Case closed. Court is adjourned.




 

Milwaukee Teen Killed by Racist System and High-Speed Head-On Collision, But …

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. . . well, yeah, mainly it was the collision:

Dashcam video shows the crash that killed a 16-year-old and injured five other teens. It started with a police pursuit on Milwaukee’s northwest side, lasting around 6 minutes.
On June 15, when the crash happened, Milwaukee police said the pursuit ended before the deadly crash. Dashcam video reveals the time between the two was only a few seconds.
Officers first tried to pull over the silver Kia near Mariners Street and North 99th Street. Milwaukee police say the Kia was reported stolen the day before, and the pursuit began because of reckless driving, crossing into oncoming traffic about a minute and a half later on Good Hope Road – reaching speeds over 90. The video shows the Kia performing illegal U-turns multiple times.
The Kia again enters oncoming traffic on 76th Street. About 25 seconds later, the officers were told to cancel the pursuit.
The crash happened mere seconds later, just over 6 minutes after the chase started.
The 16-year-old driver of the Kia died that night at Children’s Wisconsin. He had two 12-year-old passengers who were seriously injured. There were three teens in the white Infiniti that was hit. . . .
An analysis of the Kia estimates the car was going over 100 miles per hour 5 seconds before the crash, slowing down to 65 miles on impact.

 

If you don’t have time to watch the whole seven-minute video now, you can click here to skip to the 6:08 mark where the teenage car thief makes the fatal decision to drive into oncoming traffic. Immediately after this deadly “accident” (a head-on collision isn’t really very accidental when you’re driving in the opposite lane at 100 mph) in June, local media produced the inevitable “Family Demands Answers” story:

The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the 16-year-old boy who died in a horrific crash Tuesday night as Damantae Hambright. Five other young people were injured.
It happened just before 9 p.m. on North 76th Street, near Good Hope Road.
According to the Milwaukee Police Department, officers noticed a stolen Kia Sportage on Good Hope Road and attempted to pull it over. Rather than stopping, the 16-year-old driver, Damantae Hambright, took off. A police chase ensued.
Investigators say Hambright started driving the wrong way — into oncoming traffic — on 76th Street, ultimately crashing head-on into another car (an Infiniti M35).
The occupants of that car — two 18-year-olds and a 19-year-old — all suffered life-threatening injuries, but are stable at Froedtert Hospital.
Two 12-year-old girls who were in the stolen car with Hambright sustained very serious injuries. . . .
Police say none of the occupants in the stolen vehicle were wearing seatbelts.
Hambright’s mother, Pairresh Bond, sent TMJ4 a statement that reads in part, “my only son was a 16-year-old black male in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who made the wrong decision, and who hasn’t at that age? He didn’t deserve to pay with his life. I feel terrible about the whole incident and send my prayers to all involved.”

Excuse me if this seems insensitive to a grieving parent, but are you out of your freaking mind, lady? What kind of bizarre madness has seized hold of people in Milwaukee that stealing a car and driving it 100 mph into oncoming traffic is spoken of as merely the kind of “wrong decision” that anyone might make at age 16? And what does this “wrong decision” have to do with him being a “black male in Milwaukee”? Is the mother of the deceased car thief telling us that people of African descent have some sort of genetic tendency toward grand theft auto and high-speed driving? Or is this just some localized custom, specific to Milwaukee? A coming-of age ritual? Jewish boys get a bar mitzvah, WASP girls do the cotillion, Mexican girls have a quinceañera, and black kids steal cars?

Damantae just “made the wrong decision” when he stole that car. Damantae just “made the wrong decision” when he was riding around on a Tuesday with two 12-year-girls in that stolen car. When Damantae got blue-lighted by the cops, he just “made the wrong decision” to take off at 100 mph, cross the median and go head-on into oncoming traffic.

And why? Because he was a “black male in Milwaukee,” his mom says, as if that explains everything, or as if maybe she expects Ben Crump to show up and make her son a heroic martyr like George Floyd.

As someone who has spent a 35-year career finding the right words to describe all kinds of situations, I confess utter failure here, because there are no words adequate to express such intense stupidity. This astonishingly stupid quote — Damantae “made the the wrong decision, and who hasn’t at that age?” — expresses a pattern of belief and behavior that we might call the Zero Consequences Syndrome.

If people are encouraged to believe that it is unfair for them to suffer negative consequences for harmful behavior, and if social institutions like schools, courts and the news media are all committed to such beliefs, harmful behavior will become commonplace. Many black people apparently now believe that it is wrong for any black person to be arrested or imprisoned for crime, because the justice system is “racist.” And so this belief leads to an increase of harmful behaviors that the criminal justice system is supposed to deter. Mayhem and destruction ensue and when, inevitably, people die as a result, you get quotes like this from idiots who are shocked — shocked! — that somebody has to suffer the consequences of bad behavior. The perpetrator of a serious crime (and auto theft is serious, to say nothing of attempting to elude police at 100 mph) is depicted as a victim, who “didn’t deserve to pay with his life.”

This is where the “social justice” mentality leads. By the logic of BLM, police are always wrong and criminal suspects are always innocent, so long as the suspect is black. No matter what the black suspect has done, police are never justified in attempting to arrest him, and the conclusion of this syllogism is that the black suspect has a “right” to resist arrest or, as in the case of Damantae Hambright, to flee from police at 100 mph in a stolen car, going head-on into oncoming traffic. And the car thief does not “deserve” the consequences of his own felonious behavior.

The stupid acorn never falls far from the stupid oak.




 

FBI Now Targeting Parents as Terrorists

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The Justice Department has now decided that the real terrorists in America are parents upset about local public school policies:

Attorney General Merrick Garland called on the FBI to “use its authority” against parents who threaten or use violence against public school officials in a Monday memorandum.
Garland said there has been a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” He said he is directing the FBI to work with each U.S. attorney and leaders “in each federal judicial district” to discuss strategy to address threats within 30 days of his statement.
The Department of Justice’s memorandum did not specify what it classifies as a crime and did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for clarification on the matter.
Garland’s statement follows a letter from the National School Board Association (NSBA) that asked the federal government to get involved in the “immediate threat” of violence from parents faced by American public schools and its education officials. The NSBA said the incidents could be “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
“It is shameful that activists are weaponizing the US Department of Justice against parents,” Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education told the Daily Caller News Foundation in response to the memorandum. “This is a coordinated attempt to intimidate dissenting voices in the debates surrounding America’s underperforming K-12 education – and it will not succeed. We will not be silenced.”

Right — Antifa and BLM can engage in weeklong sprees of vandalism and looting, burn down police precincts and take over entire city blocks, and that’s just “mostly peaceful protests,” but let a few parents show up at the local school board meeting to complain about COVID-19 policy, transgenderism or Critical Race Theory, and the Justice Department will sic the FBI on them. The DOJ’s priorities are clear: Never mind the tens of thousands of illegal aliens streaming across the unprotected border, we’ve got to crack down on rowdiness at the PTA meeting.

(Hat-tip to Gina Carano on Twitter for the artwork.)