Michael Mease, 40, was wanted on felony charges including first-degree rape in Hardin County, Kentucky, where authorities say his four victims were ages 9 to 15:
Someone came to Knoxville police headquarters on Tuesday complaining that his wife’s ex-boyfriend may have stolen his identity. The ex-boyfriend was working at an area restaurant, and the man told police he’d been notified that his government assistance had been stopped because he worked at a local restaurant, according to KPD.
The man, however, didn’t work at the business.
Knoxville police learned the ex-boyfriend was wanted in Kentucky. Members of KPD’s Repeat Offender Squad kept watch on the restaurant until the suspect left at closing Tuesday.
“At approximately 11:30 p.m., the suspect was observed leaving the business,” according to KPD. “As officers approached the suspect he fled on foot. K-9 Officer Nate Skellenger utilized his (K-9) partner, Ammo, to detain the fleeing suspect. The suspect tried to fight off Ammo but was unsuccessful.”
Mease was treated at University of Tennessee Medical Center for several dog bites.
According to police, he had a valid driver’s license from North Carolina with his picture on it, but the license was in the name of man who had reported the identity theft.
Once Mease’s real name was determined, authorities linked him to the sex crimes in Kentucky.
In Knoxville, he also faces charges of identity theft, criminal impersonation, resisting arrest and being a fugitive from justice.
This case illustrates something about crime that liberals can’t seem to understand: Most crime is committed by career criminals. Habitual lawbreakers who commit serious crimes also commit petty crimes. By the time a criminal gets busted for a serious offense like murder or rape, chances are he has already gotten away with numerous other offenses, such as burglary, drug possession, petty theft and assault. The classic illustration of this was when Bill Bratton was hired to head New York City’s transit police. Bratton cracked down on fare-beaters — people who jump the turnstiles or otherwise enter the subway system without paying — and insisted that each of them be booked and fingerprinted. The results: About 1 in 7 of the arrested fare-beaters were wanted on criminal warrants, including aggravated assault, murder and rape, and many of them were found to be carrying weapons.
The success of Bratton’s efforts, which were subsequently expanded when Rudy Giuliani became mayor, have been credited as validating the so-called “Broken Windows” theory of law enforcement, but it’s really just common sense. Criminal behavior is not randomly distributed within the population. Habitual criminality arises from an anti-social disposition, among individuals with an arrogant disregard for law and a resentment of authority. The habitual criminal thinks he’s smarter than the cops. He harbors disdain for honest law-abiding citizens — decent people are just “chumps” in the eyes of an outlaw — and his crimes against others are justified in his mind by a defiant sense that he deserves whatever he desires, and that society is wrong to forbid him from getting what he wants. By the time a career criminal is caught for a serious crime, he has usually already gotten away with many other crimes, and attributes his apprehension to “bad luck.”
Instead of recognizing the wrongfulness of his crime (and the justice of the law), he sits in jail thinking about how he can be a more successful criminal when he gets back on the streets. Most of his fellow inmates have the same attitude and so, whenever he is released from custody, he continues his criminal career with the benefit of a jailhouse education, having picked up ideas from fellow criminals on how to get away with his next crime. This was the basic story of Truman Capote’s classic In Cold Blood, where two petty criminals met in jail and formed a team, subsequently committing a notorious mass murder in Kansas.
So, police in Knoxville investigating a report of identity theft discover that the suspect is wanted for heinous sex crimes in Kentucky. Does anyone believe that Michael Mease had otherwise lived an honest law-abiding life? Were the crimes with which he is now charged the only crimes he ever committed? Or is it more likely that these charges against Mease are merely the tip of a large iceberg of lifelong criminality?
While you ponder that question, consider another recent story in Tennessee: Corey Huddleston, 52, was charged with aggravated burglary and sexual battery after police say he pushed his way into a home in Dickson and began asking about the family’s 14-year-old daughter. Police say Huddleston later climbed into a bedroom window, hoping to find the girl, and instead found the girl’s father. The kicker:
He has more than 100 prior charges on his criminal history, including theft, assault, aggravated rape, and many more.
Why was this one-man crime wave free on the streets of Dickson, Tennessee, population 15,000 and 45 minutes west of Nashville?
Only certain rapes, committed against a certain kind of victim by a certain kind of rapist, get attention from feminists, who became hysterical about a fictional rape by the imaginary “Haven Monahan” but ignore real rapists whose crimes don’t fit the feminist narrative.
Sirens now, after the gunshot. Scream captured, Munch-meets-Pollock style, on the wall.
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