Category: Crime

Crazy People Are Dangerous

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This is a mugshot of Austin William Lanz, when he was arrested in April in Cobb County, Georgia, after breaking into a neighbor’s home. Lanz, who lived with his parents in Acworth, about 30 miles north of Atlanta, had spent months harassing the neighbor and the neighbor’s fiancée:

He was recorded on video by the security system roaming the house for 13 minutes and turned on all the lights, which police said indicated that he’d been “searching through the residence for something or someone.” He left without taking anything, according to arrest reports and court filings.
Lanz was arrested and booked on charges of burglary and trespassing charges. When informed he was being charged, Lanz objected, saying, “but I didn’t take anything,” the arrest report said. He then made statements to a police officer about how planes had been flying over the neighborhood and tracking his cellphone.

(What part of “crazy” do I need to explain here?)

While being processed at the county jail, Lanz . . . attacked two sheriff’s deputies in the intake area without provocation, including one who sustained a chipped bone and torn ligament in her knee. After he was restrained, Lanz reportedly accused the officers of being “gay” for teaming up on him and asked to be uncuffed so he could fight them one-on-one.
A judge reduced his bond in May to $30,000 and released him, imposing some conditions, including that he not take illegal drugs, that he undergo a mental health evaluation and that he not possess a firearm. . . .

(“Hey, this psycho attacked two deputies, but I’m going to turn him loose, on condition he get some help with his mental health.”)

The April break-in was the culmination of a lengthy harassment campaign that involved sexually explicit and “vaguely threatening” messages that Lanz was caught on surveillance camera slipping into the mailbox of the neighboring home where [Phillip] Brent and his then-fiancee lived, Brent said.
The harassment briefly stopped after the police, presented with the video footage, confronted Lanz with a warning, Brent said.
But it later resumed, including in the form of a massive cardboard sign that was duct-taped on Brent’s front door and said, cryptically, on one side: “I’m done wondering for real” and “Wut is the point of that” on the other.
By the time of the break-in, Brent said, he was so unnerved that he was sleeping at his sister’s house. On April 24, around 4 a.m., he was alerted that the alarm company had reported a break-in at his home. He pulled up the surveillance system video camera on his phone, “and I was like, oh, it’s Austin.”
He said Lanz broke in through the back door with a sledgehammer, opened all the blinds and rummaged through his bed. Though it is not mentioned in the police report, Lanz was also carrying a handgun, Brent said.
“It was terrifying,” he said.
Brent and his former fiancee, Eliza Wells, said they were frustrated with the criminal justice system, which they say failed to initially treat the harassment claims with appropriate seriousness and then permitted him to be out on bond.

Did you hear that? The victim of a crime is “frustrated with the criminal justice system,” and if you think Phillip Brent is frustrated, imagine the family of the Pentagon cop Lanz murdered this week:

The man who killed a Pentagon police officer at a nearby transit center Tuesday got off a bus, immediately stabbed the officer and then shot himself with the officer’s gun, the FBI says.
Officer George Gonzalez was killed in the line of duty after a burst of violence on a bus platform outside the headquarters of the U.S. military. The Pentagon was temporarily locked down.
The FBI said in new information Wednesday that Austin William Lanz, 27, of Georgia, is the suspect. Lanz died at the scene. A “civilian bystander” was wounded and had non-life-threatening injuries.
According to the FBI, Lanz got off a bus at the Pentagon Transit Center in Arlington at about 10:40 a.m. Tuesday and “immediately, without provocation, attacked Officer George Gonzalez with a knife, severely wounding him.”
A “struggle ensued” and Lanz mortally wounded Gonzalez.
Lanz then shot himself with Gonzalez’ gun.

When a psycho spends months harassing his neighbors, then commits a burglary, and attacks sheriff’s deputies at the jail maybe — just maybe — you should keep him behind bars? When he’s obviously delusional, and thinks planes flying over his house are tracking his cellphone?

How long have I been saying this? Crazy People Are Dangerous!




 

CUOMO: GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!

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The governor of New York is a criminal:

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) announced on Tuesday that Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) sexually harassed current and former state employees, violating both federal and state law, as determined by the months-long investigation.
“The independent investigation has concluded that Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women and in doing so violated federal and state law,” James announced on Tuesday.
The investigation found that the governor specifically “sexually harassed current and former New York State employees by engaging in unwelcome and nonconsensual touching and making numerous offensive comments of a suggestive and sexual nature that created a hostile work environment for women.”
The investigators, the attorney general continued, independently “corroborated and substantiated” the facts through interviews, evidence, including contemporaneous notes and communications, which will be made available to the public . . .
The probe included interviews with 179 people and over 74,000 pieces of evidence . . .
“These interviews and pieces of evidence revealed a deeply disturbing yet clear picture: Governor Cuomo sexually harassed current and former state employees, federal and state laws,” James continued. “The independent investigation found that Governor Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, many of whom were young women.”
The harassment included “unwanted groping, kisses, hugging, and by making inappropriate comments.”
The investigation determined that Cuomo and his senior team, on at least one occasion, actively worked to retaliate against a former employee after she stepped forward.
Cuomo’s administration, James said, “fostered a toxic workplace that enabled harassment and created a hostile work environment where staffers did not feel comfortable coming forward with complaints about sexual harassment due to a climate of fear.”

You want to talk about a “climate of fear”? He killed thousands of grannies! So while I feel sorry for the government employees Cuomo groped, they should be grateful that at least he didn’t send them to die alone in disease-infested nursing homes. Ed Driscoll reminds us that in March, President Biden said, if the accusations were proven true, Cuomo should resign and “I think he’ll probably end up being prosecuted, too.”

Well, who’s going to prosecute him, Joe? The state attorney general just declared that Cuomo violated federal law, so maybe the guy in charge of the federal government needs to make that prosecution happen.

(Click here if you didn’t get the headline reference from 1973.)

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

Sopranos Kill Count

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Murder is wrong, and criminal gangs are bad, except when the murdering gangsters are popular entertainment. Over the course of six seasons, HBO’s series The Sopranos featured 62 murders, including nine committed by Peter Paul “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri. Tony Soprano personally committed eight on-screen murders. This YouTube video claims to have every murder from the entire series, in just nine minutes:

 

Why am I showing you this? Because I was working on something long and thoughtful, then laid down for a nap and lost my momentum. Rather than leave you with nothing, it’s the video murder fest.

You’re welcome.




 

PUT CRIMINALS IN PRISON!

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Say hello to Cody Wayne Russell, and pray to God that you never encounter him, because Cody is the pluperfect example of what happens when the criminal justice system fails. There is a judge in Ohio who needs to be removed from the bench. He or she had a chance to send Cody to prison, but instead this dangerous felon was sentenced to probation.

NO MORE MERCY FOR PUNKS LIKE THIS!

Fortunately, Cody is likely to be off the streets for a while now. When last heard from, he was being held without bond in a Florida county jail. If he ever sees the outside of a cell again, it will be too soon.

Last December, not long after he turned 18, Cody was convicted in Montgomery County, Ohio, of assaulting a police officer. Were it up to me, such a felony would mean serious prison time, because assaulting a cop should be considered an attack on the law itself. Such crimes are disrespectful, an expression dangerous antisocial tendencies, and I wish our courts were entrusted to judges who understood the importance of upholding the dignity of society by imposing harsh justice on those who exhibit an attitude of defiance toward the law.

PUT THE FEAR OF GOD IN THESE WORTHLESS PUNKS!

Excuse my angry outbursts, but I just got through watching a YouTube video of the 12-mile police chase through two Florida counties that ended with Cody Russell’s arrest in April. This punk is clearly a menace to public safety, and discovering that he was out on probation when it happened — because of some LIBERAL BLEEDING HEART JUDGE in Ohio — only increased my rage. Judges who go soft on criminals put the public in danger, and this leniency must be stopped.

So (he says, taking a deep breath and trying to get his blood pressure down before suffering an apoplectic stroke) what happened was that Cody, like the vicious criminal he is, stole a black Dodge Durango and then stole the tag from a Toyota Avalon — apparently because in his dimwit criminal mind he imagined that having a stolen tag on a stolen truck would somehow deceive cops — and took off for Florida. In addition to grand theft auto, going to Florida was a violation of the terms of Cody’s parole, which forbade him to leave Ohio without authorization from the court. Cody traveled about 900 miles to reach Sumter County, Florida, where he was spotted near mile marker 322 by Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Eric Kjekstad. At that point, Cody was heading north in the stolen Durango, indicating that he was coming from somewhere further south, perhaps Tampa. Trooper Kjekstad reported:

I observed a black Dodge Durango with an unknown Ohio tag traveling northbound on the outside emergency lane at a high rate of speed passing numerous vehicles. While in the emergency lane, the vehicle was all over the shoulder kicking up numerous debris at nearby motorist[s], causing an immediate hazard to their safety. Due to the Driver’s wanton disregard to the safety of the motorist and reckless nature, I activated my emergency lights and sirens to initiate a traffic stop on the before mentioned vehicle. The vehicle made erratic lane changes into the inside lane accelerating away from my fully marked patrol vehicle with an agency insignia, at which time I initiated a pursuit at approximately 4:27 PM.

You see that Cody might never have attracted law-enforcement attention — despite being a felon on probation, driving a stolen vehicle with a stolen tag — had it not been for his “wanton disregard” for public safety in recklessly zooming up the shoulder of the highway. Now, if you want to watch it, here’s the video of the ensuing chase:

 

Do you see why that made me so angry? I was hoping to see the trooper do one of those high-speed PIT maneuvers the way they do in Arkansas, where the fleeing felon sometimes dies as a result. (Trooper Tanner Middlecoff fatally rammed Lakita Davis at 126 mph.) But this is Florida, not Arkansas, so Cody unfortunately survived, getting off I-75 at exit 341, making a zigzag through traffic, going north on a two-lane highway, then crashing into a tree while attempting a high-speed left turn.

It took about 10 minutes for Cody to travel 19 miles on I-75, meaning his average speed was more than 100 mph, and at times he was traveling as fast as 115 mph, according to Trooper Kjekstad. If you watch the video, you’ll see how dangerous such speeds are in “moderate” traffic.

WHY IS IT NOT LEGAL TO SHOOT PUNKS LIKE THIS?

Sorry for another angry outburst, but this business of criminals having no fear of law enforcement is the real root of the problem. If it were up to me, cop cars would have laser-sighted, remote-control miniguns mounted on the hood. There would be a trigger mechanism on the steering wheel, and once the computer aiming system had a “lock” on the target — BBRRRRRRR!! — those miniguns would unleash a burst of .50-caliber automatic fire that would destroy the fleeing vehicle.

Most criminals are so stupid, some of them still might try to outrun the cops, but I guarantee you none of them would do it twice.

Being authorized to inflict sudden death on fleeing criminals would do wonders for the morale of America’s law enforcement community, not to mention the benefits to public safety of lowering the recidivism rate to zero. You run from the cops, you die — that would be my policy.

Alas, the Supreme Court in its 1985 decision Tennessee v. Garner didn’t see the benefits of this approach and, even in dissenting from the majority, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor didn’t seem to endorse my laser-sighted minigun solution to fleeing suspects, so we’re forced to live in a world where criminals lead cops on high-speed chases without fear of .50-caliber fire directed by computer-assisted targeting systems.

Be that as it may, we can start putting criminals behind bars where they belong, instead of turning them loose the way that Ohio judge turned Cody Russell loose, and if I were a citizen of Montgomery County, Ohio, I’d be investigating this case to find out who that judge was, so I could organize an effort to remove them from the bench. Meanwhile, when last heard from, Cody Russell was in the Sumter County Jail, charged with two felonies and four misdemeanors, being held without bond because he violated felony probation. We can certainly hope that Florida authorities will send him for a nice long stay in Starke. By the time he gets out, maybe I’ll have convinced law-enforcement to try my computer-aimed .50-caliber minigun idea, and we’ll see if maybe the Supreme Court wants to repent for its mistake in Tennessee v. Garner.




 

37% of Criminals Released From Prison Get Re-Arrested Within ONE YEAR

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A new study from the Department of Justice confirms what most people already knew, that career criminals continue committing crime:

During the first year after their release from state prison in 2012, about 4 in 10 (37%) prisoners were arrested at least once either within or outside of the state that released them . . . About 6 in 10 (62%) were arrested within the first 3 years, while 7 in 10 (71%) were arrested within 5 years.

Seventy-one percent arrested again within five years of getting out of prison. More from the new DOJ study about criminal recidivism:

Nearly three-fourths of prisoners released in 2012 were arrested within the next five years, according to a study released Thursday by the Department of Justice.
Conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the data was collected across 34 states between 2012 and 2017 to gain insight on recidivism patterns across various demographics, commitment offenses and prior criminal histories.
Of the 408,300 state prisoners monitored, researchers recorded around 1.1 million arrests during the five-year follow-up period. The 34-page study noted that the percentage of released prisoners declined the further out they got from release— from 268,000 arrests the first year to 191,000 in the fifth year.
“Among released prisoners, males were more likely than females to be arrested during each cumulative year following release,” the report states. “At the end of the 5-year follow-up period, the cumulative arrest percentage was 72% for males and 63% for females.”
It also broke down re-arrest rates by race, finding Black and Hispanic prisoners had been rearrested one year after release from prison at similar rates of 38% and 39%, respectively. The rate for white prisoners within the same time period was slightly lower at 35%.
“At the end of the 5-year follow-up period, white (70%) and Hispanic (67%) prisoners had lower cumulative arrest percentages than black prisoners (74%),” the report states. . . .
The prisoners studied had been sentenced for a mix of convictions, including homicide, rape and sexual assault, robbery, burglary, drug possession, trafficking and unlawful weapon possession. Around 43% percent of them had been arrested at least 10 times prior to their current sentencing.

And if you think crime is bad now, just remember: AOC wants to abolish prisons and turn all the criminals loose.




 

Forget ‘De-funding Police,’ AOC Now Wants to Abolish the Prison System

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She wants to turn loose all the rapists and murderers:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said she wants to “abolish” the U.S. carceral system during a campaign event for Ohio congressional candidate Nina Turner on Saturday.
“I want to abolish our carceral system that’s designed to trap Black and Brown men,” the democratic socialist told a rally of Turner supporters in Cleveland. “I want justice. I want peace, and I want prosperity. That’s what I want.”
Ocasio-Cortez was in Cleveland for a canvassing event supporting Turner, a progressive former state senator and co-chair of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.
Turner is looking to represent Ohio’s 11th Congressional District — a seat vacated by former U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge when she became secretary of Housing and Urban Development in March.
Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday characterized Turner’s fight as one between grassroots and corporate politics.
“This isn’t about Nina versus any opponent; this is about the people versus big money,” the congresswoman said, WJW reported.
“This is a deep blue seat. It’s a deep blue seat,” she reportedly said. “Districts like Ohio’s 11th should be leading the country on issues. They are opportunities, they are very rare opportunities, very rare districts like this one that can take and be visionary.”
Local Democratic Party chairwoman Shontel Brown, a moderate, is Turner’s biggest opponent in the crowded Democratic primary that takes place Aug. 3.
“The contrast in this race could not be clearer,” Brown’s campaign said in response to Ocasio-Cortez’s comments, WJW reported. “Shontel Brown is the only candidate who from day one can work with the Biden administration and our house majority to deliver good-paying jobs, affordable healthcare, and affordable prescription drugs to northeast Ohio.”

Cleveland is in the top five cities with the highest homicide rates — higher than either Chicago or Philadelphia — and 12 people were shot in Cleveland over the weekend. Now imagine if AOC gets her way and we “abolish our carceral system.” A coast-to-coast wave of violent crime.

Electing a dangerous nutcase like Nina Turner to Congress — and Turner must be a lunatic, or else AOC wouldn’t endorse her — will only serve to further strengthen the GOP’s grip on Ohio. Twelve of the state’s 16 House seats are held by Republicans, and in the past two presidential elections, Donald Trump won 80 of Ohio’s 88 counties.




 

Liberalism as Organized Ignorance

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Because I watch a lot of police videos, the YouTube algorithm is always recommending more, the same way it’s always recommending more “how to play” guitar videos for classic rock songs. So in between watching breakdowns of guitar riffs (e.g., “Spirit in the Sky”) Saturday night, I watched a June press conference where police in San Jose, California, explained the shooting of Demetrius Stanley, 31. Watch:

What led to this shooting is that undercover officers were conducting surveillance of Stanley, who was wanted on a warrant related to a March armed robbery that stemmed from a road-rage incident where Stanley pointed a laser-sighted 9mm pistol at a teenager. Stanley was arrested and released on bond for that incident, but then police discovered that, because of a previous domestic violence conviction, Stanley was legally prohibited from possessing firearms. So an arrest warrant was issued for the gun charge, and officers were conducting surveillance to confirm Stanley’s whereabouts. Video clearly showed what happened — Stanley walks out on the street with a pistol, notices someone sitting in an SUV, opens the door of the vehicle and points the pistol at the driver, and is shot in response. The cop had no alternative.

Anyone who watched that briefing would understand why this happened, but the usual suspects didn’t wait to learn the facts:

Protesters are demanding justice for a man who was shot and killed by San Jose police officers on Monday night.
Dozens of people marched on the Guadalupe Freeway to police headquarters Tuesday evening. They chanted the name of Demetrius Stanley.

“Demanding justice,” as if the simple fact that the slain suspect was black was somehow conclusive proof that an injustice had occurred. Indeed, the niece of the slain man invoked history as justification:

With over 300 people, protesters were able to take the nearby Highway 87, blocking traffic for several minutes, on the way to the police station. Protesters chanted, “No justice! No peace! No racist police!” “Black lives matter!” and “Say his name! Demetrius Stanley!” as they made their message heard to other San Jose locals. . . .
After the chanting subsided, speeches were given by Demetrius’ family, including his niece, Nia Stanley, who said Demetrius was her “best friend.” She states, “I would like the bastards who killed my uncle, my best friend, the only reason that I stayed in this state, to bring their coward faces out so I can see the men who allowed my uncle to bleed and die on the street I called home for so long! But they will not do that, because they’re cowards. They hide behind guns! They hide behind bulletproof vests! They hide behind a badge and a title! They are nothing!” . . .
She called on protesters, “In the name of Demetrius, my uncle, I ask that we never stop fighting. Fighting for all the thousands of Black lives that have been lost, that have been taken by the ones who do nothing but support this system that has kept us under since we were brought here on ships! They will pay, even if it means that I fight for the rest of my life, they will pay.”

Ma’am, you were not “brought here on ships,” and the circumstances of your ancestors’ arrival are not what got your uncle shot dead by cops. While I am unfamiliar with police procedures in, say, Sierra Leone or Ghana, I think it reasonable to conclude that a suspect who pointed a pistol at police officer in Freetown or Accra would also get shot, just the same as anywhere in the United States. Cops carry guns for a reason, after all, and they are not trained to lose gunfights. But the shooting of Demetrius Stanley didn’t happen just anywhere, it happened in San Jose.

San Jose isn’t Alabama or Mississippi. You can talk all you want about “the system” and slave ships, but San Jose was never part of that. There were no cotton plantations in Santa Clara County, and I’m doubtful the KKK ever had much influence there. As for the current demographics of San Jose, the city’s population is less than 30% non-Hispanic white, 33% Hispanic, 32% Asian, 16% “other,” and about 3% black.

Even if we did not know the specific details of Demetrius Stanley’s death, does it make sense to jump to the conclusion that racism explains this shooting? Is San Jose a bastion of right-wing Trump voters upholding “systemic racism”? Let us consult Wikipedia:

In the California State Senate, San Jose is split between the 10th, 15th, and 17th districts, represented by Democrat Bob Wieckowski, Democrat Dave Cortese, and Democrat John Laird respectively.
In the California State Assembly, San Jose is split between the 25th, 27th, 28th, and 29th districts, represented by Democrat Alex Lee, Democrat Ash Kalra, Democrat Evan Low, and Democrat Mark Stone, respectively.
Federally, San Jose is split between California’s 17th, 18th, and 19th congressional districts, represented by Democrat Ro Khanna, Democrat Anna Eshoo, and Democrat Zoe Lofgren, respectively.

All of San Jose’s elected representatives are Democrats. The governor of California is a Democrat, as are both of the state’s U.S. Senators. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden got nearly 64% of the vote in California, and almost 73% of the vote in Santa Clara County. There may be more liberal places in American than San Jose, but certainly the city is not a reactionary stronghold of white supremacy.

Who was it, by the way, who pushed for the law that made it illegal for anyone with a domestic violence conviction to possess firearms?

Oh, that’s right — it was liberals!

It was liberals who pushed for the federal Violence Against Women Act in Congress, just as it was liberals in California who pushed for their state law against domestic violence perpetrators owning guns.

Notice that Demetrius Stanley’s niece didn’t mention any of this? She also didn’t mention that the pistol her uncle pointed at the cop was an illegal “ghost” gun and that, furthermore, the pistol had a high-capacity magazine illegal under California law. As a conservative, I oppose laws banning high-capacity magazines, just as I oppose VAWA. America was getting along just fine before such laws were enacted and, if you study social trends, there’s not much reason to think the country is getting better, generally, nor that places dominated by liberals are a shining beacon of opportunity for black people (or anyone else, for that matter).

So the people “demanding justice” are damned fools. Every time a case like this comes to public attention, you’ll always find some intellectuals on TV talking about “root causes.” Well, I don’t have a Ph.D. and I’m not on the faculty of any Ivy League university, but in examining the death of Demetrius Stanley, I cannot avoid the conclusion that if there was any “root cause” for this situation, it was liberalism. And yet here, as in every other situation, you find that the failure of liberal policies always leads to liberals demanding more liberalism.

Turn on the TV and watch the parade of idiots marching and chanting. Ignorance is always dangerous, but is usually scattered amongst the population in a random and haphazard way. The genius of liberalism is that liberals attract all the ignorant people, and organize them for political action, in many cases constituting an effective majority.

Is anyone surprised that liberalism has deadly consequences? Only fools are surprised. And these are the kind of fools who voted for Joe Biden.




 

Return of the Aspiring Rapper Update

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A few headlines from recent months:

Aspiring rapper fatally shot by 2 men
on moped in Washington Heights:
law enforcement source
— WPIX-TV, Sept. 4, 2020

Aspiring rapper found dead
in trunk of longtime friend
— WJAX-TV, Oct. 27, 2020

San Antonio murder suspect is
aspiring rapper also charged
in deadly Austin shooting
— KSAT-TV, Jan. 28, 2021

Aspiring rapper pleads guilty
to stealing $4M from his job
to fund music career
— Rollingout, Feb. 5, 2021

Manager for aspiring rapper
speaks about Cobb County
triple homicide, felony charges
— WAGA-TIV, July 12, 2021

Accused Times Square shooter
is aspiring rapper out on bail
for weapons charges
— New York Post, July 16, 2021

Former St. Johns running back,
aspiring rapper dead after
Johns Island shooting
— WCIV-TV, July 22, 2021

Last weekend, we brought you the stories of such aspiring rappers as Jacquavius Dennard Smith, a/k/a “9lokkNine,” of Orlando, Zerail Dijon Rivera, a/k/a “Indian Red Boy,” of Los Angeles, and the Jacksonville war between rival rap gangs led by Kenyatta “Yungeen Ace” Bullard and Charles “Foolio” Jones. Remember the Urban Dictionary definition:

Aspiring Rapper
North American euphemism for a member of the urban criminal class. This unusual occupation is usually mentioned in conjunction with the subject either being slain or being taken into custody for a violent or property-related crime. A relative of the subject usually points out that the subject’s demise or incarceration comes at an extremely inopportune moment, occurring just as the subject was “turning they(sic) life around.”

Aspiring rappers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have been busy lately:

In the latest chapter of Baton Rouge rap drama, two local rappers were arrested this week in Miami after federal agents searched a south Florida house belonging to Fredo Bang and arrested his associate Lit Yoshi, who was already out on $1.82 million bond and now faces additional charges stemming from yet another gang shooting.
The raid came after investigators linked Lit Yoshi, whose real name is Mieyoshi Edwards, to an April 2020 shooting in Slidell — and several months after a Baton Rouge judge told him to stop treating his house arrest as a “paid vacation” in south Florida.
Edwards, 22, already faced seven counts of attempted first-degree murder in Baton Rouge. His existing charges stemmed from two shootings that detectives attributed to a simmering feud between rival Baton Rouge record labels. Edwards relocated to Florida after posting bond last August, a move the judge called prudent for his safety.
He was living in Miami with Fredo Bang, whose real name is Fredrick Givens. Both young men have established themselves as relatively successful rappers and are members of the Top Boy Gorilla gang, which goes by TBG.
Givens was on parole after pleading guilty to illegal use of weapons and simple criminal damage to property following a 2015 shooting outside a Baton Rouge apartment complex. He was arrested Thursday on a parole violation after police and federal agents found guns inside his house and a stolen car outside, his attorney confirmed.
Law enforcement officials had previously announced they were investigating Givens and Edwards in connection with a May 2019 shooting in Miami targeting NBA YoungBoy, founder of a rival rap gang. Neither has been charged in that case, though a judge ruled in February that evidence from the Miami incident and the Slidell shooting could be used against Edwards in his ongoing attempted murder case.

Seven counts of attempted murder, out on bond and hanging around Miami with a paroled felon — a career goal to which all rappers aspire.

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