A friend just contacted me with a question about the municipal judges’ races in Atlanta:
There are several Municipal Court Judges listed on the ballot with the question (yes/no) on whether the judge should be retained. I don’t know anything about judges, so I hoped you guys could advise me on any of these you may know. ...
Jonathan Redding, suspect in the murder of Grant Park bartender John Henderson, suspected of firing a gun in an earlier armed robbery outside the Standard (Why isn’t it attempted murder when you fire a gun during a robbery? Are we rewarding lack of aim?), suspect in a “home invasion gun battle” in which Redding shot at people, and was shot himself (Two more attempted murders, at least, if sanity existed in the prosecutor’s office), suspected member of the “30-Deep Gang,” one of those pathetic, illiterate, quasi-street gangs composed of children imitating their older relatives, middle-schoolers waving wads of cash and firearms on YouTube: Jonathan Redding is 17.
How many chances did the justice system have to stop Johnathan Redding before he murdered an innocent man? How many chances did they squander? ...
I didn’t have to look far to find today’s dreadful example of the media blaming anyone except criminals for criminal acts. In the St. Pete Times today, Howard Troxler, a normally reasonable man, wanders far down an ugly path by questioning the recent conviction of a knife-wielding repeat offender on two grounds: the purported reputation of the officer who confronted him, and some trumped-up technicality about types of knives that should be considered weapons.
Troxler apparently feels that police officer Joe Ardolino is permanently tarnished because, in 2003, he was involved in a car chase (of a violent, prolific offender) that ended in the suspect’s death. Never mind that Ardolino was cleared in the incident, as he should have been: once charged, always guilty, at least when it comes to the police. Troxler crosses a troubling line when he impugns the officer in the subsequent murder of a fellow officer: ...
Another great in-depth story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about chaos in the courts. Note that Metro Atlanta courts other than Fulton County aren’t catch-and-releasing murder defendants like muddy-tasting catfish, like Fulton does.
Volume is no excuse: volume of cases means that judges and prosecutors should be appealing to the public for support and banging down doors at the Georgia General Assembly for more resources, not lowering standards. ...
If only journalists and politicians in Atlanta simply acknowledged the real price of crime, instead of arguing over numbers and criticizing the public for caring. Here is how the Memphis Commercial Appeal handles a “drop-in-crime-but-still-too-much-crime” story:
[P]olice crime stats show substantial drops in 2009, more than 16 percent below the same period in 2006. ...
Read it in Sunday Paper (the page is slow to load).
Here is a link to my article about him. In fairness (boy, I’ve been using that phrase a lot lately), I don’t think Arrington was responding to my article so much as he was responding to this feature story by Stephanie Ramage. And here is Stephanie’s response to Arrington’s response. ...
There goes the AJC again, in its death-spiral of mis-perceiving its readers, running yet another story about fixing “perceptions” of crime in the city. This time they fire across the bow, smugly reminding readers that all this crime talk is bad for property values.
Make that the perception of property values. ...
How easy is it to predict the many ways the media has substituted thinly-disguised advocacy and sheer make-believe for reporting on the alleged “homeless sex offender” crisis? Painfully easy.
Before I even read the latest installment of the homeless sex offender soap opera, the one that appeared in the AJC last week, I made up a list of rules for such stories: ...
Now the Atlanta Journal Constitution has joined other news outlets spinning fairy tales about the plight of homeless sex offenders forced to live in the woods/under bridges/by the wee blarney rock, where the moss grows.
The stories go like this: completely harmless, harshly punished sex offenders are being forced to live in tents for no other reason but that we invented “draconian” laws that limit where they can obtain housing. If only we didn’t insist on these cruel living restrictions, why, they’d all be happily ensconced in little cottages with gingham curtains. But instead, they have to live in the big, bad woods. ...
From the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer:
OPELIKA, Ala. The barefoot body of Lee County Deputy James Anderson rested at the front of First Baptist Church Tuesday afternoon. ...
If you read nothing else this week, read the following two articles by Peter Hermann. Baltimore struggles with crime and court issues very similar to Atlanta’s. More severe, in their case:
Delving More Deeply Into Shooting Stats ...
The Georgia investigative blog — news, not opinion — Atlanta Unfiltered has information about some of the 45 murder defendants reported to be free on bond. Apparently, there are some inaccuracies — two remain in jail, four are facing manslaughter or other charges, and two had charges dropped.
That still leaves 37 murder defendants walking the streets (and who knows how many defendants who shot or raped somebody but didn’t kill them). ...
The comments thread in response to this article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution contain a lot more insight than the article itself, which morphed from the purported subject of policing into another attack on the public for caring about crime.* No surprise there. While the criminologists try to minimize crime using formulas measuring relative cultural pathology and other number dances, the public hones in on the courts:
It is time that we stop protecting the young criminals – Start publishing names, parents names and city – Might just be that some parents will be so embarrassed that they will take control of these young people – Start publishing names of judges that continually grant bail bonds or m notes for “REPEAT” offenders. — “D.L.” ...
What’s the matter with the Atlanta Journal Constitution?
In the last year, the residents of Atlanta stood up and declared that they do not want their city to be a place known for crime, where murders and muggings are taken in stride. They declared that one murder, one home invasion, is one too many. They partnered with the police — ignoring the headline-grabbing anti-cop types who perennially try to sow divisiveness. ...
The terrific website DeKalb Officers raises questions about DeKalb D.A. Gwen Keyes:
It appears the District Attorney has taken a page from terminated police chief Terrell Bolton. Ms. Keyes now has a driver permanently assigned to her. Some of the driver’s duties include getting her children to and from daycare. ...
http://www.safe-atlanta.org/www.novictims-atlanta…
Tina, thank you for this post and encouraging people to consider how to react to something BEFORE it happens. I wanted to share with you two free, non-commercial resources located in the very neighborhood where those incidents take place that can help people take constructive steps to secure their homes, protect their families and live their lives: ...
There were 39,000 property crimes reported to the police in Atlanta last year. Think about that. That’s more than 100 a day.
Now think about how many more crimes there would be if people weren’t constructing armed compounds around themselves, at enormous financial and psychological expense. ...
I received the following e-mail last week from a woman named Jessica Brantley. This is yet another outrageous story of judicial leniency — involving Jack Bailey, the man who killed Jessica’s father while high on drugs. Judge Carl Overstreet gave the killer probation for vehicular homicide despite his previous record of DUIs. Then he let him go on an out-of-state hunting trip (!) before the probation started. Then he let him out of the probation early. Then Bailey got nailed for DUI again.
What can we do to hold judges responsible when they act in this manner? ...
See my article on leniency in Atlanta’s courts here.
For me, the high imprisonment rate in the United States is a sign of social health, not of social disease. . . societies such as several western European ones that cannot summon the confidence to set apart those who have persistently shown themselves unwilling to abide by the most elementary rules, and which prevaricate and beat their breast wondering how they and not the law-breakers are really to blame, may truly be described as decadent.
Read here. ...
I was going to write about good kids getting killed in the crossfire when I got up this morning. Then I read the Atlanta Journal Constitution and realized there was nothing to add:
One person was in custody Thursday in connection with the early morning shooting death of a Spelman College student hit by a stray bullet on the campus of nearby Clark Atlanta University. . . The victim, Jasmine Lynn, of Kansas City, Mo., was “walking southbound on James P. Brawley when she was struck in the chest by a stray round from a group of individuals involved in a physical altercation on Mitchell Street,” Atlanta police Lt. Keith Meadows said. . . ...
I read this Charlie LeDuff column last week in the Detroit News, and I just can’t get it out of my mind. Think back to when you rode a bus to school. Did you have to worry about not getting home?
Stand at Detroit’s most notorious bus stop at the northeastern intersection of the Southfield Freeway and Warren. This is the corner where seven children waiting for a bus were shot in an after-school rampage. There was a school beef on Monday, the kids told investigators. Tuesday was the shooting. School starts in 10 days and still no one has been charged. ...
Dominick Dunne died today at 83. Dunne became a vocal critic of the justice system after his daughter’s killer was sentenced to a mere six and a half years for her murder — and served less than five. Dunne’s daughter, Dominique, was only 22 years old when she was killed.
After burying his only daughter, Dunne lived another 26 years. He used those years to expose the ways crime victims are denied justice in America. In doing so, he was considered a traitor or hysteric by many in the elite circles he moved in, where killers are showered with PEN grants and praise, and victims are considered bourgeois, vengeful, and, worst of all, déclassé. ...
When are judges who let murderers out on bond and release other violent offenders going to stop hiding from the public and start answering some questions? From today’s (on-line only?) AJC:
District Attorney Paul Howard . . . wants to determine why indicted murder defendants in Fulton County are being released on bond and why non-elected magistrate judges have been the ones granting bond. Howard said 43 indicted murder defendants are out on bond. . . Fulton County magistrate Judge Karen Woodson granted [Antoine] Wimes $250,000 bond in March, even though the District Attorney’s Office and Pretrial Services officers opposed it. Wimes was charged with murder in the July 2008 shooting death of a convenience store clerk. ...
Really Shocking Story. See it here, at the blog Dekalb Officers, which includes all the background.
Pleading down, failure to build a murder case (need more prosecutors?), recidivism, and just not putting the b******s away, all in one case. ...
Remember this?
Well, according to the data that we have, there are some neighborhoods where the data don’t go along with what has actually transpired in their community. We’ve had reductions [in crime] in a lot of those neighborhoods. And then, some of the neighborhoods that we’ve had an increase in burglary and property crimes, those neighborhoods haven’t had a large outcry. . . I think they just respond to what they hear. And a lot of times, perception to them is reality. ...
Paul Howard recently scolded those who assert the prosecutor’s office needs more money to fight crime, saying:
“As prosecutors we’re not on some campaign to add more prosecutors.” ...
One day after the on-duty murder of Tampa Police Cpl. Mike Roberts, the St. Petersburg Times actually published a story bemoaning the killer’s hard life.
We learn that Humberto Delgado Jr. had insomnia, was good at fixing things, was a dad just like Roberts — well, not exactly, because he didn’t support his children and he murdered a police officer, but the Times is nothing if not relentless in its efforts to assert that offenders are as much the victims of the crimes they commit as the people they choose to victimize: ...
Interesting post on Wimes’ February victim by Mista Jay, a Nigerian-based blogger:
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Whose gun killed him? ...
Beat a one-year old infant. Shot the baby’s mother. Endangered a bunch of other innocent people, including neighbors and cops, while being taken into custody.
Fulton County jail authorities said Wimes was out of jail on $250,000 bond for February murder and assault charges. His family said he had cut off his ankle monitor. ...