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Liberal Idiot: ‘There Are Proven Strategies to Interrupt These Cycles of Violence’

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Perhaps you have forgotten the name Lisa Bender. Over the summer, the president of the Minneapolis City Council became a symbol of liberal idiocy, when she was interviewed on CNN saying that she could “imagine a police-free future.” Since then, not surprisingly, violent crime in Minneapolis has skyrocketed. The number of shootings in the city has doubled, and more than 100 officers have left the city’s police force.

No one who values their life would go near Minneapolis, and as the city circles the toilet bowl, Lisa Bender announced earlier this month that she will not seek re-election. James Lileks, who lives in Minneapolis but hasn’t been murdered yet, calls attention to an interview Bender gave to a Minneapolis journalist, in which she maintained her expertise:

For a number of years, the city has pursued developing a broader system of safety in Minneapolis. We’ve invested in community-based safety strategies, youth violence prevention, hospital-based violence prevention, group violence prevention. A couple of years ago, we directed staff to look at ways we could better serve the community by matching the right response to a call for help, looking through all the reasons why people call 911. Most of them are for non-violence-related incidents.
Violent crime makes up a very small percent of the total number of 911 calls. So that work has been ongoing. . . .
Unfortunately, 80% of gun-violence victims in Minneapolis are Black. Seventy percent of gun-violence victims are very young — ages 12 through 31. And there are proven strategies to interrupt these cycles of violence that are often group involved, that are relationship based.
A lot of the other incidents like car thefts and armed robberies are also related to groups that are known to the city, that are known to law enforcement. So for me the package looks like increasing accountability for law enforcement, investing in community-based safety strategies that we know work to prevent violence, investing in alternatives to policing so that we’re not relying on police to answer every single kind of call that’s coming into 911, so that we have a more holistic system of safety that’s working to keep people safe.

Do you get the idea that Lisa Bender thinks of certain phrases as if they were magical incantations? She speaks of “community-based safety strategies” as if merely saying these words will end the spree of carjackings and shootings that plague Minneapolis. Of course, she is corrected that their are “proven strategies to interrupt these cycles of violence” — you send the cops to arrest the perpetrators, prosecute them and ship them off to state prison for 10 or 20 years. That will “interrupt” their criminal career, but that’s probably not what she had in mind.

And whatever the “community-based safety strategies” might do, it will be too late to save the people already murdered in Minneapolis:

A 20-year-old man was fatally shot early Thursday in north Minneapolis, marking the city’s 78th homicide of the year.
Police found the man, later identified as Edward Mathew Thomas Hodges Jr., lying in the 2700 block of N. Dupont Avenue just before 3 a.m. after a ShotSpotter activation. A police spokesman said officers saw numerous people fleeing on foot. Hodges, who had been shot in the chest, died at the scene.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner on Thursday also identified the man gunned down in his car earlier this week in the 3800 block of N. Girard Avenue early Tuesday as Frank L. Barber, 49, of Crystal.
The 78 homicides in 2020 make it the third-worst year for such deaths in Minneapolis. In all of 2019, there were 48 homicides. The highest number, 97, was recorded in 1995; the second-highest, 83, in 1996.

In case you didn’t do the math, that’s a 63% increase in the number of homicides, compared to 2019, and the year is not over yet.

Just a few more holistic victims of community-based murders.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)




 

Activists Demand ‘Justice’ After Black Teens Murdered in Sacramento Mall

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Remember when Black Lives Matter activists made “defund the police” the core demand of their movement? After two teenagers were shot to death Friday, now they want police to apprehend the killer:

The family of two teenagers killed during a Friday shooting inside the Arden Fair mall spoke out on Saturday during a tearful vigil service.
The two victims were brothers: 19-year-old Dewayne James Jr. and 17-year-old Sa’Quan Reed-James. Family and friends gathered at the mall at 6 p.m. to pay respects and ask the community to step forward with information and demand more resources for the community’s Black youth amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“We just want justice,” said the teens’ aunt, Sharron Jackson.
The shopping mall erupted in gunfire Friday night just after 6 p.m. and the teens were shot near the mall’s southwest entrance.
James was pronounced dead at the scene, while Reed-James was taken to UC Davis Medical Center, where he died several hours later. . . .
Leia Schenk, founder of Empact; Allegra Tayor, founder of The Village Advocates of Sacramento; and Jamilia Land, a local activist with ties to the James family, all spoke at the vigil.
“Whoever is out there who did this, may God have mercy on your soul,” Land said, holding back tears. . . .
The suspect, believed to be a man in his 20s, remains at large. Police have given few details but said they are working to make an arrest using surveillance footage captured by mall cameras and witness statements.
“It’s time for the community to stand up, take back our community, teach our children different,” Land said. “Give them something other than guns and rap music to pick up and follow behind.”

Notice that there is no description of the “man in his 20s” who perpetrated this murder. Probably not a Trump supporter, IYKWIMAITYD.




 

The Biden Agenda: ‘South Minneapolis Is Worse Than I’ve Ever Seen It’

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Kowalski’s Market is a grocery store chain in the Minneapolis area. Their store at 2440 Hennepin Avenue serves the so-called “Uptown” neighborhood southeast of downtown Minneapolis. Unfortunately for local shoppers, (a) liberals in Minneapolis decided to “defund” their police department and (b) Uptown is in Rep. Ilhan Omar’s congressional district. A column in the local newspaper tells about a woman named Elaine who was brutally robbed in the parking lot of Kowalski’s, and quotes the store’s security chief, Scott Nelson:

Committed to pursuing justice for Elaine, Nelson laments that we “need police service and we need more of it. South Minneapolis is worse than I’ve ever seen it.” He describes the surge of 20-plus attacks a day that are now striking people just going about their daily business, people like Elaine.
Usually in a stolen car, perpetrators Nelson describes as “young teens, 12-to-14 years old” cruise from lot to lot in neighborhood business districts, waiting for a victim, “like a deer hunter sits in a tree.”
When they are apprehended, Nelson says consequences are negligible. “I arrest the same people over and over. Nothing happens to them.”

Gonna take a wild guess that these marauding groups of teenage criminals probably aren’t Trump supporters, IYKWIMAITYD.

As I explained yesterday (“The Vision of the Anointed Returns”) a nationwide crime wave is likely to be one consequence of a Biden presidency. Democrats are anti-police and pro-criminal, and what is happening in Minneapolis is an example of where such a policy leads.

Earlier this month, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that the city had experienced 76 carjackings or attempted carjackings in a span of seven weeks. That report followed an alert from the police department:

The Minneapolis 5th Police Precinct has issued a crime alert, with a map detailing 19 carjackings since Oct. 14; most of them have occurred in the Uptown area.
The crime alert stated, “The increase in street robberies, including carjacking incidents, has been persistent and very troubling this year.” The alert also said the perpetrators are generally teens or young adults and in some cases are wearing masks, making it difficult to identify them. . . .
According to police records, 12 of the carjacking and robbery victims have been women.

Who are these perpetrators? Last month, we learned the name of two of them after they were killed, along with a third perpetrator, when they wrecked a stolen car during a high-speed pursuit:

Three people died when the vehicle they were in rolled as they attempted to flee from police in Minneapolis early Monday morning.
According to the Minneapolis Police Department, officers saw the vehicle in the area of Dowling and Logan avenues at about 1:44 a.m. Officers recognized the vehicle as being a vehicle taken by force during a carjacking Sunday morning.
Officers attempted a traffic stop, but the driver drove away at a high rate of speed, according to police.
A pursuit took place and officers then saw the driver lose control of the vehicle in the area of Emerson and 18th avenues.
Police said the vehicle’s three occupants died as a result of the crash.
“I got a phone call at work at 4:00 a.m. this morning saying my son was gone,” Thomas Wright said.
Wright says his son Jamonte Welch, age 15, was inside the car, along with his nephew Demetrius Dobbins.
“My son, my nephew, the other little buddy, they were not bad kids. They just needed a little guidance,” he said.

Jamonte and Demetrius “just needed a little guidance,” you see. That’s probably a fair summary of the Biden agenda on crime. You get carjacked, and the perpetrators get “a little guidance,” assuming they’re not killed in a fiery crash. In this particular case, the young perpetrators stole a car after punching a 72-year-old woman in the face:

“They punched her and knocked her to the ground to get her purse. They took off in their car, got halfway down the alley, realized they had the keys to her car backed up and she was standing up by now they got back out, hopped in her car,” said [Theresa] Schlee.
Schlee says her aunt’s car is the one Minneapolis police were chasing through north Minneapolis early Monday morning, with three teenagers inside.
All three teenagers in the car died when they lost control and crashed. Schlee says her aunt had been in the area near Dowling Ave. N, taking care of a relative’s cat.
“That kind of blatant attack in the middle of the day to an elderly person who was there just feeding a cat, it’s like, that’s not right,” said Schlee. . . .
With the recent spike in carjackings in the Twin Cities, Schlee says she hopes this tragic situation makes people think twice before following suit.
“They look at this and not see, oh they’re just victims because the police chased after them. No, they suffered some awful consequences for some bad choices,” said Schlee.

You punch a 72-year-old woman in the face, don’t expect much sympathy when you die in a fiery crash in a stolen car. Except from Joe Biden, maybe, because Democrats support your criminal agenda.

There have been 358 carjackings in Minneapolis this year and, so far as we know, none of the perpetrators were Trump supporters.

Minneapolis is in Hennepin County, where Biden got 71% of the vote, with 532,623 votes to Trump’s 205,973 — a margin of 326,650 votes. Statewide, Biden carried Minnesota by a 233,012-vote margin, so that if you subtract Hennepin County from the statewide totals, Trump carried the rest of Minnesota by a margin of more than 90,000 votes.

Minneapolis voted for this crime wave. They deserve it. My advice to anyone who wants to survive is to get the hell out of Minneapolis.




 

When Police Yell ‘Drop the Knife,’ Guess What Happens If You Don’t?

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Antonio Estrada, 26, has been charged with arson, assault with a deadly weapon and resisting arrest in connection to a series of incidents that ended with San Francisco cops shooting Estrada.

Shortly before 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 17, San Francisco 911 started getting calls about a fire in an apartment building on Ellis Street. An evidently deranged Estrada used gasoline to start a fire, then began attacking people with a screwdriver and a frying pan. Did I mention he was deranged? A little more than an hour later, 911 started getting calls about “male subjects fighting in the area of Market and 5th Streets,” about four blocks from the Ellis Street arson location. Estrada was captured on cellphone video fighting with three men. Police arrived at the scene, yelled at Estrada to drop the knife and, alas, he did not.

 

We have previously examined what happens to people who don’t comply when police yell “drop the gun,” and it’s pretty much the same thing with knife-wielding psychotics, the only difference in this case being that Estrada has so far survived being shop by cops, although his injuries were “life threatening.” If he recovers, he’ll face felony charges. The headline at San Francisco CBS affiliate KBCW-TV calls Estrada the “Victim of Officer-Involved Shooting,” but he was a victim of nothing but his own craziness. As you know, Crazy People Are Dangerous.




 

$57 Worth of Hamburgers and Corn Dogs

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Four quarter-pound hamburgers, six quarter-pound double burgers, 12 corndogs and a Queso burger — that’s what Roberto Carlos Silva, 23, allegedly ordered from Sonic Drive-Thru in Nebraska using an app in an identity-theft case last week. Silva was arrested and released from jail Thursday. He returned to Sonic on Saturday and shot four people:

Bellevue Police confirmed two people are dead after a shooting at a Sonic Drive-In Saturday night.
During a press conference Sunday evening, Bellevue Police Lt. Andy Jashinske shed light on the events of the shooting and released the names of the four victims.
Police also shared body camera footage of the moment the suspect, Roberto Silva Jr., was taken into custody.
The deceased are Nathan Pastrana, 22, and Ryan Helbert, 28. The other two victims, ages 18 and 25, are still hospitalized for gunshot wounds.
Silva was booked into the Sarpy County Jail early Sunday morning for two counts of first-degree murder and first-degree arson. A bond has not yet been set.
According to the Bellevue Police Department, two other people were hurt in the shooting. They were taken to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in unknown condition.
A U-Haul truck in the parking lot was set ablaze at some point during the incident, and Silva is accused of starting the fire.

All of the victims were Sonic employees. The two wounded survivors were Kenneth Gerner, 25, and Zoey Reece Atalig Lujan, 18.

Because of $57 worth of hamburgers and corn dogs.




 

 

When Police Yell ‘Drop the Gun,’ Guess What Happens If You Don’t?

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Say hello to Rasheed Moorman, who may have been the unluckiest criminal in America. Or maybe he was just stupid.

Notice my use of the past-tense verb “was.”

Rasheed’s final crime was not his first. A previous exercise in criminal stupidity nearly killed him when, in 2014, he and an accomplice attempted to rob a man who shot Rasheed twice. That crime landed Rasheed in prison for two years, and it’s unknown just how much crime he committed after getting out of prison, but it probably was not a small amount. At any rate, Rasheed Moorman’s career in criminal stupidity reached a predictable conclusion a few months ago:

On Monday, nearly five months after a Roanoke man was shot and killed by police, the Roanoke Police Department released bodycam footage of what happened.
On June 25, 2020, 26-year-old Rasheed Moorman, was shot by a Roanoke City Police Officer and later died.
Earlier this month, Commonwealth’s Attorney for the city of Roanoke Donald Caldwell announced neither officer involved in the shooting would face any criminal charges.
Along with releasing Officer Bourgeois’ bodycam footage, the police department provided more information Monday about the day that Moorman was shot.
On June 25, a plain-clothes detective was in the area of Ashton Heights Apartments on an unrelated police investigation, when he saw two men who fit the descriptions of suspects from an earlier shooting, according to the police department.
That detective then called for uniformed officers, who arrived and approached the two suspects, who then ran away.
While running after them, Bourgeois saw one man, who would later be identified as Moorman, had a handgun in his right hand and Bourgeois yelled, “drop the gun,” according to police.
As the chase continued, police-worn body cameras and security cameras at the apartment complex show Moorman turning and firing at least four shots at Bourgeois, according to Caldwell.
Two of his shots went into an apartment in which there were two people.
It was at this point that Bourgeois fired 10 shots at Moorman, three of which hit him.
As Office Smith arrived to help Bourgeois, Moorman then began firing at him and Smith returned fire, according to police.

Watch the video:

 

What part of the sentence “drop the gun” is so hard to understand?




 

 

The True Story of a Teenage Patriot

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Abraham Isham Bolt was just 16 years old in 1780 when he joined the South Carolina militia. The Patriot cause had suffered its worst defeat of the war when Charleston surrendered in May 1780. The British planned to use Charleston as a base of operations from which to open a new front in the war against the American rebellion. It was believed the rebellion was more popular in New England, while Tories were more numerous in the South. If the British could recruit Tory (or “Loyalist”) forces to suppress the rebellion in the South, this would divide the colonies, and draw Washington’s army away from the mid-Atlantic theater.

In an ironic twist of history, early British success in South Carolina led directly to Cornwallis’s final defeat in the war, and I am proud that my ancestor Abraham Bolt was part of that history. You’ve seen the movie The Patriot? Yeah, that’s what the South Carolina militia did.

Of course, Hollywood took liberties with the story. There are no portraits of Abraham Bolt, so he may have been as handsome as Heath Ledger, but it’s highly unlikely the South Carolina militia wore such spiffy uniforms. Nevertheless, there was a real war in South Carolina — a savage guerrilla campaign, with massacres and reprisals, ending in a stunning Patriot victory — and my teenage ancestor was there when it happened, in two crucial battles of the campaign. There is on file in the South Carolina archives a record of Abraham Bolt’s pay for his militia service, precisely enumerated in pounds and shillings — £12, 17 shillings, 1½ pence.

Notice that this payment wasn’t issued until May 1786, meaning that it took more than five years for South Carolina to pay its militia for their service during the war, and the state’s “currency” had been so devalued by inflation that £90 pounds in South Carolina paper money was worth less than £13, the actual coin amount paid to Abraham Bolt.

Until Saturday, I had no idea who Abraham Bolt was. What happened was that I was doing some research related to a post about Lena Dunham, seeking to show how large families were prevalent in America’s past. So I went to the genealogical records of my own family, and in the process of that research went back through the family tree, starting with my great-grandfather, Winston Wood Bolt (b. Jan. 5, 1839, Walton County, Georgia). His father, Benjamin Berryman Bolt (b. Nov. 23, 1806, Laurens County, South Carolina), was the son of James Robert Bolt (b. Jan. 14, 1783) whose father was Abraham Isham Bolt (b. Aug. 24, 1764, Fauquier County, Virginia). Abraham Bolt, the heroic teenage Patriot, was my great-grandfather’s great-grandfather. Continue reading The True Story of a Teenage Patriot →

‘A Year Without Christmas’

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Democrats everywhere are using COVID-19 as a pretext to shut down business. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney is playing the Grinch:

The City of Philadelphia imposed new business restrictions on Monday that will go into effect at the end of the week. Sectors of the local economy will be required to shut down or severely curtail operations until at least Jan. 1.
“For millions of people, this could be the year without a Christmas,” said Stephen Mullin, principal at Econsult Solutions and a former city director of commerce during the Rendell administration. “We’ll see unemployment bouncing up significantly again.”
The poor will be hit disproportionately as minimum wage jobs in retail, hospitality, and restaurants disappear, he predicted. The next six weeks will be tougher than in the spring and will probably endure into the new year. And businesses are pushing back and taking their complaints directly to City Hall.

Dana Pico comments bitterly: “With a salary of $218,000, Mr Kenney isn’t worried that COVID-19 shutdowns will put him in the poorhouse; that’s reserved for the working class people.”

No matter what the media say, there is no “science” that justifies this. If lockdowns could stop the virus, we wouldn’t need more lockdowns. The original logic — first “two weeks to slow the spread,” in March, then “30 days to flatten the curve” in April — were that these measures were necessary to prevent an emergency that would overwhelm the health care system. That succeeded. The shrieking from Andrew Cuomo about a potential ventilator shortage proved to be a false alarm.

Despite what is being said about a “surge” of cases now, hospitals are not being inundated with COVID-19 patients. Doctors have developed effective therapeutic treatments; we have learned that almost no one under age 70 is at risk of dying from the disease. Why are the media and politicians inciting panic and trying to destroy the economy?