Category: Crime

QAnon? Meth? PTSD? Marine’s Florida Massacre Leaves Questions Remaining

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Bryan Riley, a 33-year-old Marine Corps veteran, murdered four people — including a grandmother and an infant shot in its mother’s arms — during a bizarre pre-dawn rampage Sunday in Polk County, Florida.

The senseless killing of innocent people that Riley did not know enraged Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who lamented the fact that the suspect surrendered with his hands up: “It would’ve been nice if he’d have come out with a gun. . . . If he’d have given us the opportunity, we’d have shot him up a lot.” Sheriff Judd hates criminals that much.

Did I mention that this massacre was completely senseless? Because the victims were strangers to Riley. During a Thursday press conference, Sheriff Judd explained that what had happened was this: Riley, who lived 30 miles away from the crime scene, in the Tampa suburb of Brandon, went to a friend’s house to pick up a first aid kit. Riley had been planning to travel to Louisiana to help victims of Hurricane Ida, and this friend — apparently someone Riley knew from his job as a security guard — had offered to donate a first-aid kit to Riley’s effort.

The friend lived near the Lakeland home where the murders happened. Riley goes to the friend’s house, gets the first aid kit, hangs out about 15 or 20 minutes, and leaves about 7:10 p.m. Less than 15 minutes later, there is a 911 call from the Gleason family, reporting an encounter with a suspicious man, who later proved to be Riley.

Driving from his friend’s house, Riley passed the Gleason home, where Justice Gleason, 40, was mowing his lawn. Riley stopped his truck and spoke to Gleason, telling him “he was sent there by God to talk to someone named Amber because she was going to commit suicide. Gleason told him there was no one there named Amber.” Riley refused to accept this answer. Then Gleason’s mother-in-law, 62-year-old Cathy Delgado, who lived in a separate home behind the main house, came out and told Riley to leave or she would call the cops:

“When our suspect, Riley, left, he was very angry,” Judd said. “And he was very angry at Justice [Gleason] because he thought Justice had kept him from seeing this child, Amber, that was going to commit suicide.”

Delgado did call 911, and deputies searched the area for the suspicious stranger, but apparently Riley left the area before deputies arrived. Riley went back to Brandon, where he lived with a girlfriend he had been dating for about four years. In the days leading up to the incident, she had become concerned about his behavior, and now there was an argument as Riley told the girlfriend that God had told him to rescue the human trafficking victim “Amber” and she told him, basically, you’re crazy. She went to bed and Riley then began to prepare the “operational plan” for his “mission” — kill everybody and rescue Amber.

Watch the video of Sheriff Judd’s Thursday press conference:

 

Obviously, the sheriff isn’t buying any insanity defense of Riley, emphasizing the methodical planning he put into this massacre, and the heinous brutality of Riley’s crimes. But the motive for this senseless slaughter was a paranoid delusion about sex-trafficking, with a military veteran who quite clearly was suffering a mental breakdown. Riley’s girlfriend mentioned PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and Riley himself told deputies that he had been using methamphetamine, but the nature of Riley’s homicidal mania is still mysterious.

Riley served in the Marines and was deployed to Iraq (2008) and Afghanistan (2009-2010). He was wounded in Afghanistan and is “classified as a disabled veteran,” according to the sheriff’s office. Any defense attorney would point to this as evidence of PTSD as a contributing factor, but Riley seemed to adjust well to civilian life, working in what is called “executive security” — basically a bodyguard for VIPs — and had obtained numerous certificates for advanced training in that field. Why did he so suddenly come unraveled?

Is it possible that the recent collapse of Afghanistan triggered Riley’s mental breakdown? I just throw that out there, speculating, because based on what Sheriff Judd says Riley’s girlfriend told them, Riley descended into a delusional condition in a matter of weeks or days.

Riley’s condition appears to have been acute, rather than chronic.

Of course, there could be multiple factors contributing to a psychotic breakdown. Stress from work or relationships, the death of a loved one, financial difficulties, etc., but here you have a Marine veteran of Afghanistan whose rapid descent into madness coincided with the chaos surrounding the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which seems too much of a coincidence to ignore. But what about the specific content of Riley’s delusion, the belief that this family home near Lakeland was the site of a sex-trafficking ring where he had to rescue “Amber”?

Is this some kind of QAnon thing? Or had Riley just seen too many action-adventure movies and was living out a Liam Neeson fantasy?

No doubt investigators in Polk County will go through all of Riley’s online activity to discover whether he visited conspiracy theory websites, and I’ll be interested to learn more about the timeline of how Riley went from being a security professional to being a mass murderer. For now, however, there are just a lot of unanswered questions about this, and the only indisputable conclusion is: Crazy People Are Dangerous.




 

The Logical Conclusion of ‘Social Justice’

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When mobs rioted in Minneapolis last year, the chaos and destruction became a fundraising opportunity for the Minneapolis Freedom Fund (MFF), an organization dedicated to keeping criminals on the street. Simply put, MFF bail suspects out of jail, no questions asked:

The non-profit Minnesota Freedom Fund says this system of bail is “unjust,” and that wealth should never determine who is kept in jail, which is exactly what the American bail system does. In 2016, the non-profit formed and began raising funds and bailing Minnesota residents out of jail.
“We have always prioritized those who are unable to pay for freedom and face the greatest level of danger and marginalization,” wrote Greg Lewin, MFF interim director. . . .
“Putting it bluntly, cash bail is an abusive system that criminalizes poverty and takes a disproportionate toll on Black people, indigenous people, and people of color. It doesn’t matter whether you are guilty or innocent – if you cannot afford to post your bail, you will stay in jail until your trial,” wrote MFF’s Lewin. . . .
“Our goal has always been to free as many people as possible and then put ourselves out of business by ending pretrial detention,” Lewin wrote. . . .
For MFF, it’s not about the crime, but the system.
“I often don’t even look at a charge when I bail someone out,” Lewin said. “I will see it after I pay the bill because it is not the point. The point is the system we are fighting.”

It is an abuse of language on a grand scale to say that requiring bail “criminalizes poverty.” The Eighth Amendment of our Constitution reads: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Interestingly enough, that language is borrowed from the English Bill of Rights of 1689, a statement inspired by the punishment of Titus Oates, the perjurer who fabricated “The Popish Plot” and sent innocent men to their deaths.

Who can say whether the bail requirement in any particular case is “excessive”? Over the years, the question has been examined by legislatures, courts and commissions. Certainly the intent is not to “criminalize poverty” and, as our Constitution also guarantees (Sixth Amendment) the right to a speedy trial, our nation’s jails are not filled with innocent men languishing behind bars for no good reason.

If you know anything about how the criminal justice system actually works, the real cost of bail is usually 10% of the amount assessed. You go to a bail bondsman, sign an agreement that makes you liable for the entire amount if you don’t show up in court, and pay 10% up front. So if bail is assessed at $10,000, you (or your family members) only have to come up with $1,000 — not an “excessive” amount. There was an entire reality show, Dog The Bounty Hunter, about rounding up bail-jumpers who skipped out after signing bond agreements.

This is the “system” which MFF is “fighting.” Why are they fighting the system? Because the system works — MFF is run by radicals who want to destroy America, period, and destroying the criminal justice system is merely part of that radical agenda. When I say that the existing bail system works, what I mean is that, because the vast majority of criminals in America’s jails are actually guilty, bailing them out between the time of their arrest and the time of their trial would only grant them more opportunity to commit crimes. Simple question: Why do you think nobody who actually knows them is willing to bail them out?

Suppose your son or your brother, whom you know to be a law-abiding citizen in general, goes to a party and gets into a drunken fight that results in him being arrested on an assault charge. Such things happen when people get drunk at parties, and you don’t condone this behavior, but this is the first time your son or brother has ever had any problem with the law, and it is reasonable for you to hope that he will be able to get a plea deal to avoid prison. So his bail is set at $5,000 and you go to the bail bondsman, sign the agreement and pay $500 so he can go back to work while he awaits trial. This is the “system.” It works.

The system also works (or, at least it did, before the “social justice” mob got involved) in terms of keeping career criminals behind bars. Most serious crime in America is committed by a comparative handful of habitual criminals who cycle in and out of the criminal justice system. They’re either behind bars or they’re committing crimes — never once in their lives have they done anything else. So the 18-year-old is convicted of robbery, sent to prison for a couple of years, gets back on the street and within a matter of weeks or months, is arrested again. Is anyone who knows this 20-year-old felon going to bail him out? Probably not, and therefore he will remain locked up in jail until he cops a plea deal and goes to prison, where he belongs. Problem solved — the system works.

Unless you’re a criminal, or the kind of radical who wants to destroy America, there’s nothing wrong with our bail system. And turning loose dangerous criminals has serious consequences:

A bail fund promoted by Vice President Kamala Harris helped lead to the release of an alleged Minneapolis domestic abuser — who has been charged with murder in a road-rage slaying.
George Howard, 47, was charged with two counts of second-degree murder for allegedly shooting Luis Damian Martinez Ortiz, 38, during a road-rage incident on Interstate 94 in Minneapolis on Aug. 29, KSTP reported.
Surveillance video reportedly showed Ortiz getting out of his blue BMW and approaching Howard’s white Volvo before Howard shot the other man and fled. Ortiz died from a gunshot wound to the chest, officials said.
Just weeks earlier, Howard, a Minneapolis man barred from having a firearm due to previous convictions, was released on $11,500 bond in a domestic assault case on Aug. 6, court records cited by Fox News show. He was bailed out by the Minnesota Freedom Fund — which was touted last year by Harris.

Wait a minute — you’re driving a Volvo, but you can’t afford to pay bail? Do victims of oppression drive Volvos? It would have cost George Howard only $1,150 to get out of jail, and surely a Volvo driver should be able to come up with such a modest amount, so why did MFF even need to get involved? Oh, let me guess: It’s because they piled up such a huge stash of cash last year that MFF is now so desperate to spend this money that they’re bailing out all kinds of criminals, no questions asked.

Knowing what we know about criminal recidivism rates, it is merely a matter of arithmetic — statistical probability — that many of those bailed out by MFF will subsequently be charged with serious crimes committed while they were free on bail. What was George Howard’s record?

Howard’s criminal history in Minnesota includes three convictions for disorderly conduct, and one each for assault and for illegal weapons possession.

Convicted felons are prohibited from possessing firearms. George Howard had at least five convictions on his record — note the qualifying phrase “in Minnesota,” which suggests Howard may have a record in other states — and while “disorderly conduct” may describe trivial misdemeanors, we don’t know the facts of those cases. Very commonly, a misdemeanor conviction is the result of a plea bargain in which the suspect was originally charged with a felony, e.g., arrested for assault, but pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. Whatever the specifics of the disorderly conduct cases on Howard’s record, the “illegal weapons possession” charge indicates he had at least one prior conviction that disqualified him from firearms possession, and that was before he was charged with domestic violence. Anyone who investigated Howard’s record would conclude that he had violent tendencies, exactly the kind of tendencies that would lead to shooting somebody in a “road rage” incident. But remember George Lewin said he usually doesn’t “even look at a charge when I bail someone out,” because the point is “the system.”

The reason Kamala Harris endorsed this radical organization is because she shares their goal of destroying “the system.” That’s what the riots in Minneapolis and other cities last year were really about — the idea that “social justice” requires complete destruction of our society, especially including law enforcement. Kamala Harris and MFF want to empty the prisons and turn loose an army of violent criminals to terrorize America, which is why MFF bailed out a previously convicted sex offender who was accused of raping an 8-year-old girl. If you voted for Kamala Harris, that is the agenda that you were voting for. And it’s everywhere now.

There is no place in America where you are safe, because Democrats everywhere are committed to an agenda of turning loose dangerous criminals who ought to be behind bars. In any community where Democrats elect the district attorney (i.e., most major American cities), this agenda of “social justice” is abetting robbery, rape and murder.




 

Crazy People Are Dangerous

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When Hurricane Ida slammed into Louisiana, everybody was impacted, but the demented and deranged were incapable of coping:

A 65-year-old Kenner resident who had been committed to the hospital more than a dozen times for mental health issues was identified Thursday as the woman shot to death by a Jefferson Parish deputy sheriff after she hurled racist slurs at a water main repair crew in Metairie and twice tried to run over another deputy with her car.
The death of Anne Schilly illustrates how the grueling conditions left behind by Hurricane Ida can strain those who are living with mental illness, said Jefferson’s coroner, Dr. Gerry Cvitanovich.
Jefferson was still saddled with widespread power and water outages on Thursday, four days after a fierce Hurricane Ida roared ashore, exacerbating the extreme temperatures that are typical this time of year. Gasoline was also in precariously short supply, keeping most businesses closed and government services such as garbage collection slow to come online.
“This place right now is not the place for” people with mental health issues, said Cvitanovich, whose office handles mental health commitments along with death examinations. “If you have the opportunity to get these people out, please do so. The resources here are not good for them. It is a dangerous situation.”
Exact details about why Schilly had been involuntarily committed weren’t available Thursday. But Cvitanovich estimated she had been committed 15 to 20 times.
The Sheriff’s Office was also familiar with her, though it wasn’t immediately clear how many times deputies had encountered her and what the outcomes of those interactions were.
A woman identifying herself as Schilly’s daugther said that in addition to mental illness, her mother had long struggled with alcohol addiction and the death of her husband.
Schilly drove up to parish workers repairing a damaged water main in the 6400 block of Park Manor Drive on Wednesday. She began yelling that they were “f—-g n—-s” who needed to go back to their countries, according to video recorded by an eyewitness and shared with The Times-Picayune.
The workers flagged down deputies and reported the harassment. The deputies spoke with Schilly while she was still in her BMW sport-utility vehicle. . . .

OK, stop right there! How the heck is this deranged woman driving a BMW? There is something deeply wrong in this world, when I’m driving a battered old Nissan while a dangerous lunatic who ought to be in a mental institution is driving a luxury SUV. But never mind that . . .

A video recorded by the witness showed Schilly pointing at the workers, again calling them racist names and demanding that deputies arrest them.
One of the deputies was wearing street clothes, while another wore a uniform. Both seemed to try to get her to calm down and leave, but she ultimately rolled her window up and sped off, hitting and dragging the plainclothes deputy down the street while he had a hand on her car.
The deputies chased her by car for almost a mile to Veterans Memorial Boulevard and Lisa Drive, where she encountered a traffic jam. She hit the same deputy a second time after he stepped in front of her vehicle. At that point, the other deputy fired his duty pistol several times, striking and killing her.
Sheriff Joe Lopinto said it’s always difficult when deputies must fire their weapons to protect their own lives. But he said his officer acted justifiably, and there was no excuse for Schilly to behave the way she did.

It’s probably wrong for me to say I’m glad they shot her, but it’s very important, from a “social justice” perspective, that cops kill white people when they do things that they’d get shot for if they were black. We can’t have “white privilege” protecting crazy people, especially the ones who try to run over cops while driving BMWs.




 

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‘Mostly Peaceful’ Stabbing: Antifa Attacks Demonstration Against Vaccine Mandate

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The news media playing their “both sides” game:

One man was stabbed Saturday during dueling demonstrations in downtown Los Angeles over the contentious issue of mandatory vaccinations against the coronavirus, according to Los Angeles police.
At least 500 demonstrators protesting against mandatory vaccinations and counterprotesters had gathered at the south lawn of Los Angeles City Hall at 2 p.m., said LAPD Lt. Raul Jovel, spokesman for the department.
Around 2:30 p.m., a fight broke out among 20 to 30 protesters and counter-protesters in front of the LAPD headquarters, across the street from City Hall, leading to the stabbing, Jovel said. The victim, a man in his 20s, was stabbed at least once in the chest.
The man was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was in serious condition, LAPD Officer Mike Lopez said.
Witnesses told police the assailant was a man dressed in all black, police said.
The department said no arrests had been made but officers were in the process of taking a large number of reports from those involved in the melee or were witnesses, Jovel said. A number of people were battered in the fight, including one news reporter, he said. . . .
Police were still sorting out what led to the fight and the role the assailant and victim played in the opposing demonstrations.
Most of the crowds had cleared from the area by 5 p.m.
The organizers of the “choose freedom march” called out against “medical tyranny, mandatory vaccinations and vaccine passports.”
One hour earlier, an opposing group staged a counter-protest at the same location that organizers are calling “no safe space for fascists.”
The opposing rallies came as vaccine mandates continue to proliferate across California.
The Los Angeles City Council voted earlier this week to have the city attorney draw up an ordinance requiring proof of at least partial vaccination to enter many public indoor spaces in the city, including restaurants, bars, gyms, concert venues, movie theaters and even retail establishments.

You would not know, from reading that article, what really happened: The peaceful protesters — the ones who are against the mandates — were attacked by the violent Antifa mob, including one guy who jumped into the melee and stabbed one of the anti-vax protesters. But this is portrayed neutrally — “a fight broke out” — as if it were impossible to determine who the aggressors were in this violence.

The media and Antifa are on the same side, and thus it behooves the media to obscure the fact that their allies caused the violence.




 

Rebekah Jones: Still Lying

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Today my podcast partner John Hoge was in Montgomery County court for the final dismissal of the fake criminal charges that disgraced former Florida health department employee Rebekah Jones filed against Christina Pushaw, who wrote a brutal takedown of Jones and has since become press secretary for Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Because there was never any factual basis for the charges against Pushaw, the case was nolle prosequi, and the hearing today was a formality.

Alas, some Trump-hating clown in Miami named Grant Stern, who is trying to play “investigative reporter” with a Substack blog, decided that because (a) Christina Pushaw works for DeSantis then (b) any charges against her must have merit, and therefore (c) believe Rebekah Jones! Or such would seem to be Stern’s syllogism, anyway. Lots of amateurs out there playing “investigative journalist” don’t know any more about logic than they do about journalism, much less libel law, so it should be noted that I am merely expressing an opinion when I characterize Stern’s thinking process, but as for the fact that Stern is a clown, I think his big red nose and floppy shoes are sufficient evidence.

Charles C.W. Cooke rips Stern and Jones to tatters here.

Never believe a word Rebekah Jones says. If she say it’s up, it is almost certainly down. She is not only dishonest, she is crazy.

In short, Rebekah Jones is the Deb Frisch of Michael Avenattis.




 

Mass Murder in Texas: Can You Guess Why National Media Have Ignored This?

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Jeffrey Jack “Jeff” Gerla was a 47-year-old psychologist who had taught at Kilgore College and more recently worked as a mental health specialist at Rusk State Hospital, which is about 15 miles from where Jeff lived in a trailer behind his mother’s house in New Summerfield:

He was highly creative in everything he did. He loved making Aquariums and getting freshwater fish, he was a devout Christian who cherished his job, and he loved his dogs and horses. Jeff never met a stranger. He was a people person. He was always helping others and everyone that knew him loved him.

Have you noticed the use of past-tense verbs? Because whatever Jeff Gerda was — and I think “devout Christian” may be a bit of stretch — he is no more. Gerla went to his final reward last month, along with three other people. The other victims in this July 20 mass murder were Gerla’s 18-year-old boyfriend, John Clinton, Clinton’s mother Ami Hickey, 39, and Hickey’s lesbian partner, Amanda Bain, 38. And while you puzzle over that, can you imagine the national media headlines?

FBI INVESTIGATES TEXAS HATE CRIME
AFTER FOUR GAY PEOPLE SLAIN

How could the media resist such a story? But the details of the case aren’t conducive to a media crusade against homophobia. To begin with — a 47-year-old man with a teenage boyfriend? Not necessarily ideal from the perspective of public relations for the LGBTQ community, which is always foremost in the minds of journalists reporting on such stories. This has been my main beef on this issue for decades, going back at least as far as the 1998 death of Matthew Shepard, who was portrayed as a saintly martyred victim of homophobia, for which the “Religious Right” was scapegoated, as if his killers were Republicans who had just attended a Pat Robertson rally. In fact, they were a couple of dopehead punks who had hung out with Shepard in a local pub and lured him to his death with promises of supplying him with meth. All that got buried in the posthumous celebration of Saint Matthew, who became the gay-rights poster boy, even though nothing about his life or death could be construed as relevant to such issues. Hanging around dopeheads is dangerous — that was the most obvious lesson of what happened to Matthew Shepard, but the media didn’t want to talk about that.

We can’t expect CNN or the other national news operations to notice this mass murder of four homosexuals in Texas, because not even the most mendacious media liars can ignore the sordid facts. You see, while Jeff Gerla — “a devout Christian,” according to his obituary — was “in a relationship” with 18-year-old John Clinton, it was not an exclusive relationship. Gerla’s teenage boyfriend had matched on the gay dating app Grindr with 20-year-old Jesse Pawlowski, who then joined Clinton and Gerla in a “polyamorous relationship”:

In an interview with detectives, Pawlowski said he met Clinton and Gerla, who police confirmed were in a dating relationship, on a dating app and entered a sexual relationship with them.
During this relationship, Pawlowski visited Gerla’s residence multiple times and noticed several firearms, including a handgun that Clinton wanted to sell for $500, according to the affidavit.
Pawlowski told investigators he introduced [Billy] Phillips to Clinton, and an agreement was made for Phillips to facilitate the purchase of Clinton’s handgun. However, Pawlowski said he never intended to buy the gun. Pawlowski, Phillips and [Dylan] Welch made a plan to steal the gun from Clinton, the affidavit stated.

Two of these characters had criminal records:

In a records request to DPS and TDCJ, KLTV has learned Billy Dean Phillips, 37, was released from state prison in December 2020. He had just served a 15-year sentence for Aggravated Sexual Assault of a Child. The conviction centered around a case involving a female under the age of 13 in Dallas County. Prior to that prison term, TDCJ records show Phillips served a separate 2-year prison sentence in September 2002 on a Controlled Substance charge (cocaine) also out of Dallas County. . . .
Both DPS and Cherokee County court records show in 2019 Pawlowski accepted a plea deal offered by the prosecutor in a case involving two counts of burglary of a habitation. The terms of the plea bargain required Pawlowski to serve 10 years of probation and pay court costs. He was also ordered not to own or possess a firearm as part of the agreement. The Cherokee County District Court confirms Pawlowski was on probation at the time of the killings.

In yesterday’s “Violence Against Women Update” we discussed what can happen when people get involved with convicted felons. But when you’re a 47-year-old man with an 18-year-old boyfriend, and your boyfriend offers to add a 20-year-old to your “relationship,” probably you wouldn’t bother to do a criminal background check on your new partner.

Does anyone else see how this relates to the media’s dishonest role in acting as publicity agents for the LGBTQ community? See, if you actually know gay people — and I majored in drama in college, OK? — the distance between reality and media-generated image is remarkable. We are expected to believe that gay people are all suffering from bigotry and discrimination. The media thus avoids reporting anything that might reflect negatively on the LGBTQ community, in the belief that such information would incite homophobia. However, media bias in favor of a particular group results in coverage that is neither fair nor accurate.

We may suppose that it never occurred to Jeff Gerla that his teenage boyfriend’s trolling on Grindr represented a deadly risk. Why would anyone suspect that gay men might be capable of violent crime? The news media go out of their way to pretend this is impossible, that membership in the LGBTQ community is synonymous with secular sainthood. So the fact that Jesse Pawlowski was on probation for burglary — and that this might be indicative of a general criminal tendency — was never even a blip on Gerla’s radar. Everybody on Grindr is awesome! Everything is always sunshine and happiness beneath the rainbow flag!

Jeff Gerla “was a people person . . . always helping others and everyone that knew him loved him,” except maybe the dude who murdered him:

Pawlowski said he went to Gerla’s home late Monday when Gerla, Clinton, Bain and Hickey were present. He texted Phillips to come to the residence to pick him up so they could steal the handgun.
Phillips and Welch arrived at the home, and Pawlowski and Clinton walked to the end of the driveway to meet Phillips and Welch. Phillips took the gun from Clinton and then shot Clinton “in the back of the head,” Pawlowski told police, according to the affidavit.
Pawlowski said he, Phillips and Welch then entered the residence. Phillips then shot Gerla, Bain and Hickey. The three men stole two shotguns from the residence, and Pawlowski said he removed the key fob for Gerla’s car from Clinton’s pocket, the affidavit stated.
Pawlowski said he drove the car from the residence and left it near a metal building in Jacksonville to try to sell it later.

No, the national media won’t report this. Wouldn’t be good for the LGBTQ community image. Too much of an “East Texas white trash” vibe, what with the teenage boyfriend, living in a trailer in mom’s backyard, the “polyamorous relationship” with a convicted burglar, and all that.

Four gay people killed in a Texas mass murder, but you won’t see this story on CNN or MSNBC, because “equality” or something.




 

Violence Against Women Update

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In the comments on Friday morning’s post (“The Dangerous Clichés of ‘Empowerment’”), someone mentioned the phrase “rationalization hamster” as a description of the way women justify bad decisions such as getting a tattoo on your cleavage or dating a convicted felon.

These two examples of bad decisions are not chosen entirely at random, but we’ll get to that part in a few minutes. First, I want to digress to explain my habitual tendency to follow research down weird paths, bringing me to surprising destinations. When I started Googling the phrase “rationalization hamster,” one of the links was to male feminist David Futrelle’s site. So I then spent some time Googling about Futrelle, who once up a time was actually a journalist, a staff writer for Money magazine, but then became obsessed with the “manosphere” and now spends all his time writing about anonymous incels on Reddit. This in turn led me to Futrelle’s review of a book by Laura Bates called The Men Who Hate Women. So then I found an interview with Laura Bates, in which she was asked, “Why as an issue is misogynistic extremism still not being taken seriously?”

I think that there’s a number of reasons. The first is that it’s a relatively emerging threat in terms of mass killings, so people are failing to join the dots and make the connections between them. But I think a big part of it is that misogyny is so normalised in our society that we really struggle to recognise this as something extreme. We are so used to women being murdered by men. One woman is killed on average every three days by a male current or former partner in the UK — that is literally the backdrop to our daily life. So I think we struggle to see these as atrocities and it is a huge blind spot. It’s also because of who often commits these offences — educated white men and so the criminal justice system finds excuses for them. Look at the recent Georgia shooter for example. The police officer giving a press conference explained, ‘He was having a bad day’, after he had massacred eight people including six asian women. The way in which we collectively excuse, condone, normalise and ignore these white men when they commit mass shootings and terror atrocities really hampers us as a society in tackling the problem.

Some of these assertions bothered me. Are we really “so used to women being murdered by men” that we have a “blind spot” toward such crimes? And what about this “every three days” statistic about women in the UK being killed by male partners? The population of the United Kingdom is about 67 million, so if there are about 34 million women in the UK, and if there are about 120 women killed by male partners annually, how many zeroes after the decimal point are needed to express that as a statistical probability of risk? Do the math, see, and you realize that men murdering women isn’t a crime so common as to be “normalized,” rather that such murders are relatively rare. Contrary to Ms. Bates’s claim, we are not “so used to women being murdered by men.” Even in places where murder is astonishingly common (e.g., Chicago), we find that males are disproportionately the victims. Of the 2,660 people shot in Chicago so far this year, 2,158 (81%) were male. Of the 459 who died from gunshot wounds in Chicago, 398 (85%) were male, so that the male-female ratio of victims is nearly 6-to-1. And 83% of the victims were black.

This is another problem with Laura Bates’s claims. Is it really true that these crimes are “often” committed by “educated white men”? I’m pretty sure university graduates aren’t doing most of the drive-by shootings in Chicago, and I don’t believe “educated white men” are disproportionately overrepresented in domestic-violence incidents. Perhaps some sociology student can dig up the actual data on this, but what Laura Bates is doing (and what David Futrelle praises her for doing) is a familiar trick of propaganda: Find a scary-sounding statistic — every three days a woman in the UK is killed by her male partner — and then assert that this represents a social problem (misogyny) which is illustrated by atypical examples, e.g., “incel” Elliot Rodger on a shooting rampage. This tendentious method is then used to argue that we must suppress “hate speech,” because misogyny is causing the mass murder of women.

It should not be necessary to explain why this argument is invalid, but because logic is no longer taught in our schools, I’ll do it anyway. Most obvious is the fact that among the thousands of guys spewing “misogyny” on the Internet — the Reddit creeps with whom David Futrelle is obsessed — certainly more than 90% of them will never commit an act of criminal violence against a woman. Most people who spout offensive nonsense on the Internet are not violent criminals, and the obverse is also true: Most violent criminals don’t spout offensive nonsense on the Internet. That is to say, of the total number of men who commit violence against women in any given year, only the tiniest fraction of a single percentage point of them have ever visited any of the “manosphere” forums that David Futrelle writes about. If you could illustrate this with a Venn diagram, set A representing “Guys Who Hang Out on Manosphere Sites” and set B representing “Men Who Perpetrate Violence Against Women,” the set AB would be so small as to be statistically insignificant.

In a nation of 325 million people, however, statistically rare incidents may happen on a monthly basis. I have previously illustrated this by compiling “The Year in Dog Sex” — at least 11 people were prosecuted for having sex with dogs in 2016. And this explains how easy it is to exaggerate the danger of “incel” murders. No matter how statistically rare these incidents may be, there are certain to be at least a handful of cases that fit within that definition every year, and if these cases get enough publicity from the national media, it can be made to seem as if “incels” represent a dangerous terrorist threat, but the media could do the same thing with bestiality, if it suited their purposes.

So, having made that 1,000-word digression, we now return to the main topic, Joana Peca of St. Petersburg, Florida.

The tattoo on her (remarkably abundant) cleavage could be cited as evidence of Joana Peca’s defective judgment. The “rationalization hamster” must have run itself silly attempting to justify such a choice. And I’m sure that David Futrelle and Laura Bates would accuse me of misogyny merely for calling attention to this, because any criticism of any woman for any reason is always misogyny, according to feminist logic. “Equality” seems to require that women go through life without ever encountering negative feedback, no matter how foolish or harmful their actions may be, so the effect of feminism in public discourse is to make women off-limits to criticism (unless they vote Republican).

The problem with this, you see, is that without feedback — including the kind of feedback that might persuade a woman not to get tattoos on her breasts — all sorts of foolish behavior are likely to proliferate because, without critical feedback, bad judgment tends to become generalized.

Say hello to Benjamin Robert “Bambi” Williams, age 38:

Williams has a Pinellas County arrest record that spans about 20 years. He has been arrested in cases ranging from grand theft auto, possession of drugs with intent to sell, robbery and fleeing police. He was most recently arrested on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm in January 2020. The state attorney’s office did not seek a prosecution.
In 2007, Williams was arrested on charges of principle to attempted murder and strong-arm robbery, but those charges were dismissed, court records show.

Now, if you had a daughter, wouldn’t you advise her to avoid associating with anyone who had such an extensive criminal record? Yes, but then again, if she’s got already tattoos on her cleavage . . .

Detectives have identified Benjamin Robert Williams aka “Bambi” (DOB 12/31/1982) as the suspect in Saturday’s (July 31, 2021) shooting death of Joana Peca.
Williams and Peca were involved in a romantic relationship and had a baby together. Peca was holding the infant when Williams shot her multiple times in the face. Her older child was sitting in the backseat during the shooting.
A warrant has been issued for William’s arrest and SPPD is actively searching for him. Crime Stoppers is offering up to $5000 for information that leads to an arrest.
Benjamin Williams is deemed to be armed and dangerous.
He is linked to several open homicide investigations.

More detail about the death of Joana Peca:

Peca was found dead in the car, and the children did not suffer any physical injuries, which took place just outside Woodlawn Cemetery.
At the time of the shooting, Peca’s [infant] who she shared with Williams was sitting on her lap while her older child, a 4 year old from another relationship, was in the back seat. The woman was shot multiple times in the face before Williams fled the scene police said in a Facebook release.
‘The children were unharmed but terrified at what had just happened,’ said Sandra Bentil, a spokeswoman for the St. Petersburg Police Department, according to WTVT. . . .
St. Petersburg Police Chief Anthony Holloway told ABC Action News that Williams lured Peca to the cemetery.
‘He called her and asked her to meet him at that location cause she was bringing the children to him to see,’ Holloway said. ‘Once they got to that location that’s when he decided to gun her down.’

“Meet me at the cemetery,” says the career criminal, and what kind of fool would accept this invitation? Alas, a dead fool, one whose “rationalization hamster” was running an endless marathon.

 

The fugitive killer Benjamin Robert “Bambi” Williams wasn’t spewing misogynistic nonsense on the “manosphere” sites that David Futrelle writes about. He wasn’t an “incel” or one of those “educated white males” that Laura Bates warns about. No, he was merely a regular criminal, “linked to several open homicide investigations,” and maybe he should have been locked up in prison a long time ago, but this is just more violence against women feminists won’t notice, for some reason.




 

Execution-Style Murder in Brooklyn

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The original surveillance video of this incident that was posted online got edited, out of respect for the victim, but I saw it before it was edited and, wow, this was frightening: A 42-year-old woman was talking to friends outside an apartment building in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn when another woman drives up, parks her car, turns on the flashers, gets out of the car, walks up and shoots her in the back of the head, then turns around, gets back in the car and drives away:

Delia Johnson, 42, was chatting with a group of people by a stoop on Franklin Ave. at Prospect Place in Crown Heights at about 9:40 p.m. Wednesday, a few blocks from her home, when her attacker ambushed her.
Family members believe the shooter followed Johnson from a funeral in the neighborhood earlier in the day.
“She was at a funeral earlier in the evening for an old neighborhood friend to pay her respects, and then this happened,” said her brother, Mathis Johnson, 47. “It was horrible. That lady executed my sister.”

Such was the first report, but then an enhanced image from the video was shown to Johnson’s family by the New York Post:

Kin of the Brooklyn woman killed by a female shooter in a brazen caught-on-video crime say the victim was lured to her death with a phone call — and that her murderer was a “family friend” they recognized from the footage.
“She was on the block with us, she got a phone call, and when she got the phone call, she said, ‘I’ll be right back,’ ” longtime pal Shawn Johnson, 43, recalled Friday, referring to victim Delia Johnson, 42.
“Twenty minutes later, somebody called me and told me she got shot,” he said of Delia. “I told him he was lying. I was just standing here with her.”
Police released two zoomed-in photos of the suspected killer Friday — and family members said they recognize her from the snapshot showing the woman’s face.
“I know her!” exclaimed Delia’s mother, Delia Barry. “Oh my God, oh my God, she used to stay with us. She slept in my bed, ate my food.”
One of the victim’s younger sisters, Hadijah Pendley, called the suspect “a family friend who came to our family events, celebrations, holidays — whatever you want to call it, she came.”
Cops declined comment. The motive is still unclear.
Another sister, Khadyah Barry, said, “I know in my heart that somebody called her and knew what it was and set my sister up.
“Nobody can tell me otherwise,” she said.

Revenge of some kind? Whatever it was, the brazen nature of this shooting has captured widespread attention. Like, maybe this whole business about “defunding the police” was a bad idea or something.