Stop the presses! It’s journalistic ethics week, and so perhaps it’s fitting that this first story plopped down in a big steaming mess on the pages of every newspaper that carries the AP.
Anthony Sowell, who was recently found knee-deep in the decaying bodies of his victims, doesn’t deserve to be labeled a rapist, according to the AP. ...
Over the years, I’ve noticed that Saturdays seem to be the day when NPR reporters take a deep breath from the toils of the week, settle down with a steaming cup o’ joe, and recharge their batteries by indulging in a little calisthenic empathy for the pointedly unsympathetic: child killers on death row, for example, or gang members terrorizing neighborhoods full of innocent people they don’t bother to interview (because it would just be perplexing to listen to the grandmas explain that what they really need is more police protection from gangs).
There is a frisson of self-righteousness in such behavior, and a bonus frisson of danger, imagined, not real, of course, because no child killer or gang member worth his salt would bother to shank the PR machine. So, through their empathetic identification with vicious sociopaths, the reporters get to feel simultaneously superior to everyone else and victimized by society. ...
What happens if you sign a hate crimes bill, and then all the wrong types of people commit “hate crimes?”
Well, you keep your mouth shut about it. ...
From the Valdosta Daily Times:
Inmates out of control
Former officers share tales of terror at Valdosta State Prison
...
The Guilty Project documents flaws in the justice system that enable serial offenders to commit more crimes.
Failure to Prosecute, Wrongful Acquittal by Jury, Early Release by State, Family/Employer Cover-Up ...
DeKalb Officers blog pulled up James Ferrell’s arrest record after Ferrell shot a cop last week, an attempted murder already reduced to an aggravated assault charge.
How is shooting an officer, even if you only hit him in the leg, not attempted murder? If the sentencing code of Georgia is so incoherent that it is better to charge someone with a lesser crime in order to circumvent the possibility of a shorter sentence, why doesn’t the legislature fix that terrible problem? Or is it the District Attorney’s office that is being incoherent on the “shooting a cop isn’t attempted murder” thing? Would Ferrell be charged with attempted murder if he had shot a cop in some other county? ...
From reader Chris Murphy, who attended the Jonathan Redding hearing to determine if Redding will be required to provide information to a Grand Jury about his partners in the murder of John Henderson:
I was at that last hearing. The judge, Kimberly Esmond Adams, was looking for any excuse to allow his attorney into the grand jury, which goes against the rules. She delayed the decision, and it never was publicized what she ruled. That’s the kind of s**t that passes for justice: make a ruling, but do it when no one is around, if possible. ...
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. ...
In the wake of the Fort Hood shootings, more people are noticing the ways the media takes its marching orders from political activists, abetted by criminologists who use their position to promote political causes through a thin veneer of “academic” observation. This activism-disguised-as-expertise has played a central role in enforcing the orthodoxy of hate crimes activism for more than a decade.
So when ordinary people ask, “why is this crime not a hate crime?” the media answers by turning to activist-criminologists like Jack Levin and James Allen Fox, who spool out definitions that are utterly irrational on their face but go utterly unchallenged: it is an intricate dance designed to shut down discussion, not actually explain anything. ...
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? ...
From the Denver Post. Not exactly Girl and Boy Scouts, these “best of show offenders” chosen as the first early releases in Denver. Ironically, these records make precisely the opposite point than the one the Justice Department is making, which is that we are too harsh on offenders and “too vindictive” on sentencing.
Expect more of the same as Eric Holder gears up to throw massive amounts of money at anti-incarceration initiatives and activist groups like the Vera Institute, who do “studies” that all end up showing that we need to empty the prisons to save money. ...
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: ...
It’s criminal apologist week, and no criminal apologist week would be complete without a deep bow to Jack Levin, the Northwestern* criminologist who has made an art form of claiming that some brutal, senseless murders are serious ethical and social problems motivated by “hate” — while others are just acting-out caused by “ouchiness,” teenage angst, and our cruel lack of interest in understanding where brutal killers are “coming from.”
You can see where this is going: when someone uses certain slur words (not all of them — not the ones about women) while victimizing somebody, it’s suddenly a much more important crime, which means other crimes are less important, in every sense. Convincing the public that they must accept this inequality is a job for experts, and Levin is the go-to expert for insidiously psychologizing away certain offenders’ actions while demanding allegiance to the urgency of crimes he deems hate. ...
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. ...
Delmer Smith is now either being investigated or charged in 11 attacks on women and one on a man that occurred after he left DNA at a crime scene in 2008. Had the FBI bothered to upload his DNA profile into their database in a timely manner, these 12 rape, murder, and assault victims would not be victims today. For, if the FBI had done its job, Smith would have been identified the first time he committed a sexual assault after release from prison, and police would have known where to find him because he also had to register his address with the parole board.
Looking beyond the FBI’s screw-up, this case illustrates the importance of probation and registration requirements and of laws that require all convicted felons to give samples of DNA. ...
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. ...
Theodore Dalrymple, writing in City Journal: the logical outcome of these laws is that some victims matter less than others.
This is Delmer Smith, who is responsible for a recent reign of terror on Florida’s Gulf Coast that left women from Venice to Bradenton terrified of violent home invasions, murder and rape:
...
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. ...
Failure to Protect:
Following the identification of Milwaukee serial killer Walter E. Ellis, Wisconsin officials are acknowledging that at least 12,000 DNA samples that were supposed to be taken from convicted felons and databased are missing from the state registry. ...
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 ...
Ronald Clemons, the 24-year old who is now charged with killing three people, including a three-year old baby, should have still been in prison for a 2004 murder when he committed this crime.
Here we go again. ...
So Al Sharpton, Andrew Young, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, and Fulton Superior Judge Marvin Arrington walk into a courtroom. . .
There is no punchline. They walked into a courtroom to hold yet another courthouse special event for yet another group of criminal defendants who were having their crimes excused, who then failed to avail themselves of all the special tutoring and counseling and mentoring provided to them in lieu of sentencing, all paid for by us, the taxpayers. What is going on in the courts? Here is the press release from Paul Howard’s office: ...
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.” ...
