Category: Crime

‘Good People Carry Guns and They Will Shoot You, a Lot — Graveyard Dead’

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Sheriff Grady Judd of Polk County, Florida, is known for his colorful way of expressing himself at press conferences (see “68 Shots: ‘That’s All the Bullets We Had, or We Would Have Shot Him More’”). Sheriff Judd’s press conference on Aug. 29, 2018, featured the case of Jason Boek.

If you’ve never heard of Jason Boek, that’s because the national news media is so busy indoctrinating you about “Black Lives Matter” that they don’t even notice when a white criminal gets killed in circumstances quite similar to the cases that become nationally famous. Jason Boek’s death highlighted Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law in a way reminiscent of the Trayvon Martin case. The national media always uses the word “controversial” to describe Stand Your Ground, but this is just another example of how media bias works — “controversial” is just a synonym for liberals don’t like it. In fact, polls show Americans generally favor Stand Your Ground laws, with more supporting (46%) than opposing (34%) such laws, with a majority of Republicans (65%) and independents (54%) in favor; only among Democrats is opposition (57%) a majority opinion.

Jason Boek had an extensive criminal record that included “previous arrests for aggravated battery, battery, burglary, marijuana possession, forgery, larceny, resisting arrest, and [violation of probation].” At the time of the August 2018 incident, Boek was “on felony probation for battery” and his driver’s license was suspended.

What happened was this: Around midnight, Boek was drinking at a bar with his girlfriend, Jessica. Another woman at the bar (Jasmine) was so drunk that the bartender called an Uber to give her a ride home. Boek’s girlfriend helped the bartender get Jasmine in the car. Meanwhile, inside the bar, Boek got the mistaken idea that his girlfriend had left the bar in the Uber, and began blowing up her phone with angry text messages, including a message avowing his intent to “f–k up the Uber driver.”

Boek borrowed a friend’s pickup truck and went tearing down the road in pursuit of the Uber driver, who was in a Hyundai. Boek nearly ran the Uber off the road, cut him off, stopped the truck and emerged shouting threats: “You know I got a pistol? You want me to f–king shoot you?”

Famous last words — caught on the Uber driver’s dashcam:

 

Boek’s history of criminal violence came to a sudden end because the Uber driver, Robert Westlake, had a concealed carry license and had recently completely training at the police academy. It is against Uber’s company policy for drivers to carry weapons, but Westlake had decided his own safety, and that of his passengers, was more important than company policy. When he was confronted by Boek shouting about a having a pistol, Westlake’s training kicked in. He fired one shot that hit Boek “center mass” and only after Boek was bleeding out did Westlake discover that his attacker wasn’t carrying a pistol, only a cellphone.

Sheriff Judd explained how Stand Your Ground applies to this case:

“This is a justifiable homicide all day long. You have the right to protect yourself,” Sheriff Grady Judd said Wednesday. “This was the intent of the law.” . . .
“Here’s a message for the hotheads of the community: Don’t do that stuff,” Judd said. “Good people carry guns and they will shoot you. A lot. Graveyard dead.”

Watch video of Sheriff Judd’s press conference:

 

What’s perhaps most interesting about this case is how closely it parallels similar incidents that get turned into national news, when the unarmed person who gets shot is black. Armed self-defense cases like Westlake’s shooting of Jason Boek, like police shootings, tend to happen so quickly that firing the gun is a split-second decision that’s easy to second-guess when you’re watching it on video in the safety of your home. How was Westlake to know that Boek, who said he had a pistol, was only carrying a cellphone? Obviously, he couldn’t know this, and Westlake told reporters, “All that went through my head was I’m not getting shot.”

And, just like so many “Black Lives Matter” cases, the dead man’s family members tell the media he wasn’t really a bad guy:

Boek’s family spoke to NBC News Wednesday from their home, where they said that they were distraught and that he was a loving father who was beloved by many but made a bad choice. They also insisted the Uber driver had time to leave the scene instead of shooting.
“He’s not a bad person. He needed help,” mother Michele Boek, said.
“How he was portrayed in that press conference is not who he is as a person,” said Jenna Irby, Boek’s sister.

Yeah, I’m sure he was an honor student. But I’m not going to riot about it.




 

Four Trump Supporters Stabbed as Antifa/BLM Thugs Attack Rally in D.C.

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The mainstream media is reporting this as “clashes between supporters of President Donald Trump and counterprotesters,” but what really happened is that the Antifa/BLM thugs caused the violence:

Tweeted videos show an Antifa protester allegedly stabbing Trump supporters in Washington, D.C., on Saturday night. Additional videos show the man being captured by police after the Trump supporters retaliated and took him to the ground. Reports indicate four stabbing victims were transported to local hospitals.
A pair of videos tweeted by Mauro Gomez reportedly shows a “BLM/Antifa allegedly stabs 2 Trump supporters.”
People surrounding the man can be heard yelling, “Knife, knife, knife.”
Photographer Shane B. Murphy reported via Twitter that four patients were transported to D.C. hospitals with varying injuries after “Antifa-BLM militant stabbed several Proud Boys.”

Insofar as there were any “clashes,” it was because some Trump supporters fought back against the thugs who attacked them. Why do you think the Proud Boys were there, huh? To provide security.

And by “provide security” of course I mean, punch hippies:

Eventually, a large number of the Proud Boys mobilized and marched towards BLM Plaza, aiming to find members of the left-wing group Antifa to fight with. This marked the start of a cat-and-mouse game between the Proud Boys and counter-protesters, who also arrived on the streets of D.C. ready for a fight. . . .
At least one of the stabbings appeared to come amid a fight between Proud Boys members and a counter-protester near the popular conservative bar Harry’s, reporters on the ground noted. It is not immediately clear what started the fight, but it ended with arrests and multiple people injured – including at least one police officer who fell down while trying to break up the situation.

“Stand back and stand by,” like the man said.




 

Holiday News Down Home

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How’s your holiday shopping coming along? I’ve been keeping up with folks down home, reading the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and it seems there’s been a lot of festive holiday excitement:

One man is in custody after shooting a Walmart employee who confronted him about shoplifting Friday morning in East Point, police said.
The shooting occurred just before noon when a loss prevention officer at the Cleveland Avenue store approached 24-year-old Tyler Cortez Johnson about the alleged stolen merchandise, East Point police Capt. Allyn Glover said.
“The male then pulled a gun and shot the employee before fleeing out the front door,” he said.
Channel 2 Action News reported that the shooting occurred in front of customers, some of whom ran outside after hearing the gunshot.
A second employee taking a lunch break in his car saw Johnson running through the parking lot and followed him as he called 911 with the man’s location. Officers then “flooded” the area and took him into custody, Glover said.
“(He) was actually able to follow him and gave us a general direction of where he was headed,” Glover told the news station. “We were able to apprehend the shooter with the gun within a minute or two.”
The injured employee, who was shot in the side, was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital.

Just another happy holiday. And meanwhile there’s this festive news:

A man found dead on a southwest Atlanta road last week was identified as a suspect in a 75-mile police chase through Alabama, authorities said.
Matthew William Lloyd, 46, was a passenger in a vehicle that led officers on a multicounty chase on I-20 before he jumped out, fired at officers and disappeared Nov. 29 into a wooded area, according to police in Oxford, Alabama.
Five days later, his body was discovered shot multiple times on a stretch of Kimberly Road near Melvin Drive Park. Atlanta police are still investigating the circumstances surrounding that shooting and have released no updates as of Friday.
Oxford police Chief Bill Partridge confirmed that Lloyd was their suspect, AL.com reported. Investigators were in the process of taking out warrants against him when they learned he was dead, the chief told the news site Monday.
The driver in the chase, identified by police as 41-year-old Lazarus Glover of McDonough, was taken into custody when it ended in the Oxford area. According to AL.com, he is facing multiple charges in several Alabama jurisdictions, including two counts of attempted murder out of Hueytown and a third count of attempted murder out of Birmingham, where a pursuing female officer crashed.
The chase kicked off in Hueytown, a suburb of Birmingham located along I-20. Authorities said Glover and Lloyd tried to break into an auto auction business and shot at officers who responded, AL.com reported.
Several police vehicles were struck by the gunfire, but no officers were wounded, according to the news site. Police from multiple counties joined in the pursuit, which reached speeds of 115 mph.
It ended when authorities used a spike strip, and Lloyd allegedly took off running. A massive manhunt ensued, involving SWAT and police dogs.

I’m sure Atlanta police will make it a top priority to find whoever shot Matthew Lloyd and saved taxpayers the cost of incarcerating him.

Still more cause for holiday celebrations:

A man accused of attacking a mother outside a Gwinnett County gas station and stealing her car with her and her baby inside has been captured after months on the run.
Quinton Rogers, 42, was arrested Tuesday by U.S. marshals and Gwinnett County deputies, police announced Friday.
The harrowing carjacking occurred over the summer, prompting the woman to jump from the moving vehicle with her child, investigators said previously.
Rogers was identified as the suspect in October and faces four charges in connection with the incident, including two counts of kidnapping, hijacking a motor vehicle and a probation violation, online jail records show.
“Rogers was identified by analyzing physical evidence obtained by detectives,” Gwinnett police spokesman Cpl. Collin Flynn said in a news release. “The investigation has shown that this was a random attack and there was no prior relationship between Rogers and the victim.”
The mother, who was not identified by police, suffered minor injuries after escaping the moving car. Her baby was not injured, though its car seat was damaged.
The Aug. 18 carjacking was captured on security cameras at an Exxon gas station on Boggs Road in Lawrenceville, Gwinnett police said. Authorities said the mother stopped to eat dinner and was standing at the back of her car in the parking lot when Rogers approached her from behind.
The woman was visibly startled in the surveillance footage, Flynn said previously.
Rogers reached for what the woman thought was a gun and attacked her, she told investigators. After punching the mother in the face multiple times, Rogers told her to get in the back seat with the baby before driving away with two of the car’s doors still open, authorities said.
As he was driving, Rogers demanded money from the woman and threatened to kill her, police said. Afraid for her life, she grabbed the car seat and leapt from the moving vehicle. The car was found abandoned the next day in Duluth, according to police.
Rogers has been arrested at least nine other times in Gwinnett, records show. His previous charges include probation violation, drug possession, aggravated assault and obstruction of a law enforcement officer.

Glad this guy’s in jail. Hope they keep him there. Meanwhile, it won’t be a happy holiday for meth-heads in Georgia:

A drug trafficking suspect was arrested Thursday afternoon after authorities seized about $400,000 worth of methamphetamine from his Hall County home, deputies said.
The search was the result of a “short-term investigation” by several agencies, including the Hall County Multi-Agency Narcotics Squad, the GBI and the Department of Homeland Security, Hall County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Derreck Booth said in a news release. Police said they found about 4 kilograms of crystal meth inside the Otila Drive home.
Edwin Barrera, 30, was charged with one count of trafficking methamphetamine, jail records show. He remained held at the Hall County Jail without bond Friday evening.

Four kilos of meth — yeah, that would be a wild a Christmas party. Meanwhile, a car thief is recovering from a bad mistake:

A man was shot at a northwest Atlanta gas station Friday morning during a fight over a stolen car, police said.
The shooting occurred about 7:30 a.m. at the BP at the intersection of Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway and Bolton Road, according to investigators. Police arrived to find one man with a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
“Preliminary investigation indicates that another male, who was still at the scene, tracked a stolen car to the location,” Atlanta police spokesman Officer Steve Avery said. “The two men were involved in a confrontation over the stolen car and the confrontation escalated to gunfire.”
At least two guns were recovered from the scene, but it’s unclear who fired first or if the injured man is accused of stealing the car. The person shot was taken to the hospital and is stable, according to police.

Dude stole the wrong car, obviously. More good news from Atlanta:

A man who was on the Atlanta Police Department’s “Most Wanted List” for more than a year in connection with a fatal shooting at a convenience store was arrested Wednesday.
Eddie Laye, 35, was booked and charged with the murder of Dexter Willis on Westview Drive in November 2019, according to police.
On Wednesday around 5:20 a.m., an officer observed a vehicle run a red light while traveling east on Campbellton Road. After stopping the car, the driver immediately attempted to exit the vehicle after being told repeatedly to stay inside, according to police. Due to the odd behavior, officers decided to detain him.
Police said Laye provided several false names during questioning before he was eventually identified and booked into the Fulton County Jail, where he remains without bond.
He was wanted in the Nov. 2, 2019 shooting of Willis at Westview Grocery in the 1000 block of Westview Drive. When officers arrived on that scene, they found the victim with a gunshot wound to his chest. Willis was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital and pronounced dead.
Store surveillance video showed Willis and Laye arguing before the suspect pulled out a handgun, fired a single shot at Willis’ chest and fled the scene, according to the police report.
In addition to the murder charge, Laye is now charged with several other offenses, including driving under the influence and reckless driving.

These murder suspects really need to learn how to drive better. You get away with murder for a year, but get caught for running a red light.




 

Judge Releases Satan-Worshipping Murder Suspect, With Predictable Result

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This has become a pattern in Houston, Texas:

According to a victim’s advocate, Derrick Mike has become the 70th person in Harris County to be murdered by a suspect out on felony bond.
The suspect, 23-year-old Edward O’Neal IV, had been charged in the 2016 slaying of his friend Ryan Roberts in a case that drew international attention since O’Neal claimed to be a worshipper of Satan.
Records indicate O’Neal had confessed to several people including his mother that he had stabbed Roberts to death. Family members told police and media that they knew O’Neal worshipped the devil, and his mother stated that he had killed two family pets.
Robert’s family believed the killing was part of a satanic ritual and said the teen had been “hit” in the back and stabbed multiple times while he begged for his life.
O’Neal’s father told investigators his son had mental health issues and had been hospitalized after a suicide attempt following the discovery of Roberts’ body. He was ruled not competent to stand trial and later that year a judge ordered him committed for up to 120 days.
Court records indicate O’Neal was returned to competency in January of 2020, and his trial was reset repeatedly during the first quarter of this year. In June, however, a judge reduced his original bond by half to $25,000, and in August he was released.
On December 5, O’Neal was arrested and charged in the shooting death of Derrick Mike, reportedly his cousin’s boyfriend.
After being shot multiple times on November 28, Mike was able to describe the suspect to police before his death the following day. Police also say O’Neal confessed the shooting to his mother. . . .
Andy Kahan, Victim’s Advocate for Crime Stoppers Houston, has been tracking victims murdered by suspects out on either multiple felony bonds, bond forfeiture, personal recognizance (PR) bonds, or failure to revoke bond since 2018. Kahan lists Derrick Mike as the 70th victim and told The Texan he was shocked by the bond given O’Neal this year.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’ve never seen a bond that low given for a murder charge,” said Kahan.
Kahan also pointed out that Mike is the second victim he has identified who has been killed by a suspect released with alleged mental health issues. Shortly after being released from custody at a psychiatric hospital, suspect Randy Lewis allegedly stabbed to death 80-year-old Rosalie Cook before being shot by police. Lewis had been arrested more than 70 times and had been out on two felony PR bonds at the time.

Have I mentioned lately that Crazy People Are Dangerous?

UPDATE: People have asked the judge’s name. It’s Mark Kent Ellis.




 

How to End Your Criminal Career

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When did Lakita Annette Davis begin her criminal career? We don’t know, although we do know that she was already familiar to police in Tennessee when she was arrested in Madison County in March 2016 for a string of thefts of fingernail polish from stores in Jackson, Tenn. This arrest did not end Davis’s criminal career, however, as she was jailed in Shelby County, Tenn., six months later on similar charges. Two years later, Davis was imprisoned in Jackson, Mississippi.

When was Davis released from prison? Again, we don’t know, but in October of this year she was in Jonesboro, Arkansas, evidently engaged in her accustomed modus operandi. Along with three accomplices — two of them teenagers — Davis was shoplifting at the Dollar General store. An employee called 911 and the suspects fled the scene with Davis behind the wheel of a silver 2018 Honda Civic. From the moment she drove away, the rest of her criminal life was measured in mere minutes.

Let me interrupt this narrative to tell you about the 1985 Supreme Court decision in Tennessee v. Garner. In 1974, two Memphis police officers responded to a burglary call, and the suspect, Edward Garner, was shot to death while attempting to flee. Garner was unarmed, but Memphis police department’s policy authorized officers to shoot a fleeing suspect, consistent with a Tennessee state law which provided that “if, after notice of the intention to arrest the defendant, he either flee or forcibly resist, the officer may use all the necessary means to effect the arrest.”

Laws differed from state to state, and department policies varied between jurisdictions, but in general prior to the Tennessee v. Garner decision, a suspect fleeing arrest was at risk of getting shot by cops. Obviously, this was a powerful incentive for suspects not to flee. But in a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court claimed to locate a “right” to flee from police in the Fourth Amendment. Dissenting from the majority’s opinion, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, joined by Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice William Rehnquist, declared: “I cannot accept the majority’s creation of a constitutional right to flight for burglary suspects seeking to avoid capture at the scene of the crime.” Justice O’Connor noted that police must often make split-second decisions regarding use of force, and also noted that burglary is not a trivial crime, as it is not uncommon for burglars to assault, rape or murder residents of homes.

Nevertheless, Tennessee v. Garner became law of the land, and the “right to flee” has created dangers that were unimaginable prior to 1985. Whenever you see helicopter TV coverage of one of those endless police pursuits in Los Angeles, you are witnessing an unintended consequence of the Supreme Court’s folly in Tennessee v. Garner. If the fleeing criminals know the cops can’t shoot them, why stop for the blue lights?

Well, Lakita Davis didn’t intend to stop, but fate had other plans.

Davis and her accomplices had stolen only $30 worth of stuff from Dollar General, but the store employee who called 911 told the dispatcher it was a “robbery,” when it was actually just shoplifting. The word “robbery” implies the use or threat of force, usually with a weapon, and so this 911 call set in motion a fatal chain of events.

Probably because of her prior criminal record, Davis was desperate to escape. Getting caught even on a misdemeanor shoplifting charge would be a violation of her parole or probation, likely meaning a return to prison. Also, she had a .45-caliber Glock in the car, which would almost certainly be a felony for a convict like Davis. Jonesboro police soon spotted Davis’s car, and she took off at high speed. The confusion caused by the store employee’s 911 call meant that the cops thought they were chasing a dangerous robber, not someone who had shoplifted $30 worth of stuff. That’s where an Arkansas state trooper enters the story.

Trooper Tanner Middlecoff was at the Arkansas State Police barracks when he “overheard radio traffic from Jonesboro PD in reference to a robbery in progress at the Dollar General on Southwest Drive. Due to the close proximity of the call, I responded for assistance.”

Trooper Middlecoff was soon part of the pursuit, behind Jonesboro officers, as the fleeing Honda careened recklessly through traffic, running red lights, etc. “I turned south onto I-555 and advised Jonesboro dispatch to have officers allow me through so that I could perform a PIT on the vehicle to end the pursuit. I was then able to take lead in the pursuit as we were nearing the end of the construction area at mile marker 40.”

Only seven minutes elapsed from the time Trooper Middlecoff left state police headquarters until the time he hit Davis with the PIT maneuver.

If you are not an aficionado of police-chase videos, let me explain that the PIT maneuver (Precision Intervention Technique) involves a police vehicle striking the suspect vehicle on the rear side in such a way as to cause the vehicle to spin out of control. Performing a PIT correctly requires a lot of training and, as a matter of policy, most law-enforcement agencies only allow the PIT to be used at speeds under 45 mph.

Arkansas State Police, however, allow the PIT at any speed.

This no-limit PIT policy can be dangerous. In April, a guy named Justin Battenfield led police on a 20-mile chase before the Arkansas State Police supervisor authorized a PIT maneuver. Trooper Michael Shawn Ellis hit Battenfield’s truck while running 109 mph. Video of the resulting crash looks like a scene from a James Bond movie.

 

Trooper Ellis miraculously survived that crash. Battenfield died.

Here’s the thing about a high-speed chase — the fleeing suspect is a threat to public safety. Innocent people’s lives are at risk. Using the PIT maneuver to stop the pursuit is therefore justified, in defense of innocent lives. And the officer performing the PIT maneuver is also risking his own life, particularly in a high-speed PIT.

So, guess how fast Lakita Davis was driving when Trooper Tanner Middlecoff hit her with the PIT maneuver? Answer: 126 mph.

 

Davis’s Honda flew some 250 feet off the road, flipped over and smashed into a tree. The Honda Civic is a very safe car, and somehow Davis’s three passengers survived. Alas, it was the end of the road for Lakita Davis, who died like she lived — committing felonies.




 

‘Black Lives Matter’ Rioter Charged With Murder in N.C. Home Invasion

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On June 2, police in Charlotte, North Carolina, used tear gas to disperse a “Black Lives Matter” protest that turned into a riot:

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department says what started as “a lawful protest” took a turn shortly before 9 p.m., when CMPD says several officers became targets for protesters “bent on turning a lawful demonstration into a riot.”
In the span of around four hours, CMPD says there were at least 18 incidents where protesters threw objects at officers, nine dispersal orders were issued, 16 protesters were arrested, and three guns — including one assault rifle — were found.

Among those arrested June 2 was Jonathan Elijah Jones, 19, charged with assaulting a police officer and other offenses. Three months after that arrest, Jones was arrested again on Sept. 5 in Gastonia, charged with violating a domestic violence protective order, carrying a concealed weapon, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, and other offenses. You might have thought that two arrests in the span of three months would be enough to put Jones behind bars for a long time, but he was soon back on the streets, and his next arrest was for murder:

Four people have been arrested after a person died in a shooting during a breaking and entering in Cramerton Monday morning.
Brenton Edward McCaskill, from Clover, was shot and killed at a home on Fifteenth Avenue
Jonathan Elijah Jones and Ramon Luis Lopex Jr. have been charged with first-degree murder, first-degree burglary and felony conspiracy. They are both in the Gaston County Jail with their bond on hold.
Tyler Andrew Reno and Tyler Nathaniel Justice Leonhardt have been charged with accessory to murder after the fact. They are in the Gaston County Jail until a $500,000 bond.
Police said they responded to a possible breaking and entering in progress in the 400 block of Fifteenth Street in Cramerton just before 6 a.m. Monday.
Police found a person who had been shot. That person , who was identified as McCaskill, was taken to the hospital where he died, according to police.

The victim died defending his family from the invaders. “Brenton McCaskill is a hero,” his girlfriend Heidi McQueen told WCNC-TV. “He lived his life a hero, and he died a hero. He died protecting us.”




 

Her Name Is ‘Destiny’

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Destiny Allen, to be more precise. Whatever her mother had in mind when she bestowed this name on her, evidently her destiny was jail:

A McDonald’s employee is facing charges after police said she got into a fight with one coworker at the Atlanta fast-food restaurant and then hit a second coworker with her car while driving away.
Destiny Allen is charged with aggravated assault and criminal damage to property in connection with the incident, which happened at the McDonald’s on Northside Drive about 12:30 a.m., Atlanta police spokeswoman Officer TaSheena Brown said.
Investigators said Allen and another employee got into a physical altercation and a third employee tried to break it up.
When Allen walked out of the restaurant, both employees followed her to make sure she left the premises, Brown said. As she got into her car, Allen and the employee who had been involved in the fight continued to argue.
Allen then put her car into reverse and pressed the gas. In the process, she hit the employee who had tried to break up the fight, Brown said.
The woman was thrown into a window panel of the restaurant, investigators said. She was taken to a hospital with injuries to her legs but is stable, Brown said.
Allen was taken to the Fulton County Jail.

There is video of the fight:

 




 

The Planners and Their Plans

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If you are my age, the very mention of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project calls to mind memories of how liberalism’s “War on Poverty” ultimately ended in catastrophic defeat:

At its peak, Cabrini-Green was home to 15,000 people, mostly living in mid- and high-rise apartment buildings, totaling 3,607 units. Over the years, crime and neglect created hostile living conditions for many residents, and “Cabrini-Green” became a metonym for the problems associated with public housing in the United States. Beginning in 1995, CHA began tearing down the mostly dilapidated, mid- and high-rise buildings, with the last high-rise being demolished in March 2011.

Cabrini-Green began with noble intentions — “slum clearance” and “urban renewal” were the phrases used to describe the rationale behind this project in a neighborhood once known as “Little Sicily.” Originally, in the 1940s, most of the tenants were Italian-American, but by the time the earlier rowhouse development (named for Saint Frances Cabrini, a nun who worked with the poor) was augmented by the high-rise William Green Homes (named for a famous labor-union leader), black residents were the majority, and not accidentally so. The liberalism of LBJ-era Democrats like Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley (who held office for more than 20 years beginning in 1955) incorporated an attitude toward African-Americans that can at best be called patronizing, insofar as it was not actually racist. If stacking up poor black people in 10-storey-tall housing developments seems like a bad idea in retrospect, consider that the alternative to this vertical solution was to allow Chicago’s poor black population to spread horizontally through the city’s neighborhoods. Black people who had left the segregation called Jim Crow in the South discovered a kind of segregation called “liberalism” in the North.

Support for federally funded public housing was a touchstone of liberal policy for decades, and it was the critics of this program, rather than its proponents, who were accused of racism. You were not only racist if you questioned the wisdom of pouring out taxpayer funding for projects like Cabrini-Green, you were a cold-hearted Scrooge. The idea of public housing as an expression of philanthropic charity was deeply embedded in the liberal worldview of the Welfare State. LBJ declared his “War on Poverty” in his first State of the Union address:

The speech led the United States Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty. The forty programmes established by the Act were collectively aimed at eliminating poverty by improving living conditions for residents of low-income neighborhoods and by helping the poor access economic opportunities long denied them.
As a part of the Great Society, Johnson believed in expanding the federal government’s roles in education and health care as poverty reduction strategies.

In 1987, Ronald Reagan famously summarized the result of LBJ’s policy: “In the Sixties, we waged a war on poverty, and poverty won.”

It turns out that old-fashioned poverty — not having enough money — was actually not bad, compared to federally subsidized poverty.

By the 1990s, the failure of liberal policy was so blatantly obvious that even Democrats did not object when the federal government began demolishing the high-rise public housing projects it had spent so much taxpayer money to build a few decades earlier. Cabrini-Green was a symbol of this failed liberal dream. The last resident to leave the last high-rise tower before it was demolished in 2010 was a woman named Annie Ricks. Born in Escambia County, Alabama, in 1956, Ricks was 10 when she moved to Chicago with her family. By the time she moved into Cabrini-Green in 1989, Ricks had eight children, and she gave birth to another five children while she lived there. The Cabrini-Green site was “redeveloped” with a mix of luxury condos and “affordable housing” in what reporters described as “a planned, mixed-income neighborhood.” There was an interesting coda to the story this year when a 9-year-old boy who lived in the “affordable” section was shot dead — Janari Ricks was the grandson of Annie Ricks. The man charged with Janari’s murder, 39-year-old Darrell Johnson, opened fire at “a group of people behind the townhomes on the 900 block of North Cambridge Avenue”:

According to prosecutors, Johnson spent four years in prison for a 2005 conviction on carjacking and weapons charges, and served two years’ probation for a 2002 conviction for aggravated battery.
Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. (27th) said Monday it appears neither the shooter nor his intended target live in Cabrini Green, although they grew up there. . . .
Janari is the fifth child age 10 or younger to be shot and killed in Chicago this year.

Joe Biden got nearly 75% of the vote in Cook County, Illinois, and his agenda regarding law enforcement is mainly an exercise in blaming “systemic racism” for everything wrong in the black community.

Interestingly enough, the community where Annie Ricks was born has a larger black community, percentage-wise, than Chicago. Escambia County, Alabama, is 32% black, whereas Cook County, Illinois, is only 25% black. And while Biden easily won Chicago, Donald Trump got 68% of the vote in Escambia County where — perhaps not coincidentally — children don’t get shot to death as a routine matter. Just sayin’ . . .

One of the basic tenets of liberal thinking about race — affecting a variety of issues, including immigration, education, poverty and crime — is what Steve Sailer has called the “Magic Dirt” theory. The places where impoverished POC (“people of color”) live are demonstrably afflicted with social problems which, the liberal believes, can be solved by relocating these people to places where white people live. This idea that social problems are geographic in nature means that certain ZIP codes are “Magic Dirt,” where high SAT scores and low crime rates are more or less automatically obtained by anyone fortunate enough to live there, whereas the places with high crime and low SAT scores are “Tragic Dirt.”

Once you understand this misguided concept, it becomes impossible not to recognize the “Magic Dirt” meme in media and political rhetoric. Given what we know about Joe Biden — representing the same party that got 75% of the vote in Cook County — what should we expect if he becomes president? Steve Sailer has thoughts on that subject:

My theory has long been, going back to Chicago’s demolition of near-Loop housing projects, that, because poor black people are America’s perpetual hot potato that everybody hopes to hand off to somebody else, white urban elites wish to shove inner-city blacks onto the hinterlands.

The only possible reply to that is, “Wait and see.”

Did I mention that U.S. firearms sales are at record levels?

CORRECTION: “Magic Dirt Theory” is a phrase coined by Vox Day, specifically referring to the belief of open-borders enthusiasts “that all immigrants will magically become Real Americans, real life nephews of their Uncle Sam, reborn on the Fourth of July by virtue of geographical relocation, thereby instantly negating of all of their racial, ethnic, religious, political, and cultural traditions.” My apologies for the erroneous attribution.