SHREVEPORT – A recent article in The Wall Street Journal breaks the oh-so-shocking news that New Orleans is now the Murder Capital of America.
I’m tempted to blame this distinction on decades of poor management and Democrat mayors, but an article in RedState breaks it down further:
While it’s tempting to blame the city’s crime woes on “defund the police,” in this case, it’s more complicated than that. Hurricane Katrina did enormous damage to the city’s infrastructure, causing major instability and violence. In response, then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu called for a two-year police department hiring freeze, which the city has still not fully recovered from.
But remember, Hurricane Katrina also famously “flushed out” hundreds of …let’s say…undesirable, criminally inclined residents to other cities. Call it a diaspora of criminals if you like.
Yet this is no doubt that New Orleans is an extremely dangerous place to be these days, especially for tourists who don’t always know the right and wrong parts of town to visit.
According to the WSJ:
In New Orleans, city officials and residents point to an overwhelmed police department as a major factor. The city has about 50% to 60% of the officers it needs to offer adequate protection for residents, estimated Ronal Serpas, who was the city’s police superintendent from 2010 to 2014 and is now a criminal justice professor at Loyola University New Orleans.
This is the trend all across the country; many cities are seeing a rise in violent crime. Here in Shreveport, we see it too. It is easier to find the problem in Shreveport: it is a combination of factors but primary among them is our Soros-elected District Attorney who sets accused murders free and refuses to lock up known criminals. We also have an extremely ineffective young, Democrat mayor with his eyes on bigger things rather than the challenge at his feet.
Recently in one of our neighborhood Facebook groups, someone posted pictures of a once lovely walking trail in the city that is now overgrown with weeds, deteriorating, and suffering crippling neglect. In some places you can’t even see there is a paved trail at all; you can only see what looks like an empty overgrown field.
I see this as an analogy for the city and for New Orleans, too. All the positive things are covered by the negative; neglect and lack of care are evident at every turn. When you drive into Shreveport from any direction it looks like a town nobody cares about and I know this is the case is a lot of places.
It is past time for us to start caring and start making things better for all of us. From elections to local grassroots volunteer work and service, we’ve got to turn this around.
New Orleans is still a great city and Shreveport still can turn the tide, but that window is closing very fast. New Orleans is filled with history and culture; that city will survive. But what about all the others across the nation? When are we going to stop the festering decline and neglect in our cities?
The political conversation in Illinois has turned to “The Scream.” In one of the most powerful, and yes, disturbing political ads ever aired, there is no dialogue other than a woman screaming as three thugs run from a car to mug her.
The ad, which is funded by the People Who Play By The Rules PAC, has been pulled from b some television stations. Like many Chicago area residents, I viewed it a week ago, during the Chicago Bears-San Francisco 49ers game on the Fox broadcast network. The ad, using video footage obtained by CWBChicago opens with this caption, “On a Sunday afternoon in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood.” It ends with, “Pritzker. Lightfoot. How much worse does it have to get.” Lori Lightfoot is Chicago’s inept mayor, who takes any attack on her, even on COVID-19, and turns it into a racial issue. J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire and Illinois’ governor, is a bit more polished than Lightfoot, but he labeled the ad racist too. Both politicians are Democrats.
The 45-year-old woman was robbed of her fanny pack, keys, wallet, and phone. While the 32nd Ward of Chicago, where the attack occurred just two Sundays ago, is predominately white, it’s difficult to determine the victim’s race, as is the case of the attackers, they wore hoods and masks.
Crime has skyrocketed in Chicago since 2019, the year both Pritzker and Lightfoot were sworn into office. Pritzker is running for a second term, and possibly, assuming he wins in November, for president in 2024. Lightfoot is running for reelection too, the first round of voting takes place in late February.
Kim Foxx is Cook County’s State’s Attorney. A Democrat, her campaigns have been funded by ultra-leftist billionaire George Soros. She’s a catch-and-release “prosecutor” of the vein of Los Angeles County’s George Gascon and since-ousted San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin. Foxx, best known internationally as Jussie Smollett’s protector, is a member of the rival leftist camp of Cook County Board headed by president Toni Preckwinkle, who was Lightfoot’s runoff opponent in 2019. Despite Foxx’s numerous failures, Lightfoot endorsed Foxx in the Democratic primary in 2020.
Going back to the ad, “How much worse does it have to get?” Barring changes to the absurdly misnamed Illinois SAFE-T Act, things will get much worse here. Cash bail will be eliminated in Illinois. The Prairie State has 102 counties and of course 102 prosecutors. Of those, 100 oppose the SAFE-T Act. Of course Foxx is one of those two backers of it. While signed into law early last year, Pritzker and Illinois Democratic legislators smelled a pile of you-know-what, so they wrote into the legislation that the law won’t take effect until January 1, 2023, nearly two months after the gubernatorial and General Assembly elections.
One of the most prominent opponents of the SAFE-T Act is a Democrat, James Glasgow, the state’s attorney of Will County.
This weekend on Fox Chicago’s Flannery Fired Up, Glasgow told the host, Mike Flannery, “There are forcible felonies that are not detainable.” He then fires those crimes off, “Burglary, robbery, arson, kidnapping, second degree murder, intimidation, aggravated battery, aggravated DUI, [and] drug offenses.”
“Mike,” Glasgow continued, “if I showed up with dump truck full of Fentanyl–enough to kill everyone in the United States of America and I got caught under this new law, I would be processed and released. I could not be detained for a day.”
Flannery mentioned those who say Glasgow is wrong. “[I] just explained it to you,” the prosecutor replied. “Those crimes] are not listed in the detainable offenses. If it’s not listed in the detainable offenses–you can not detain.”
Beyond deeming objections to the SAFE-T Act racist, the media wing of the Democrat Party has also struck back by means of a fact-check, at Snopes, where Nur Ibrahim deemed such criticism as “Mostly False.” No, Ibrahim is mostly false in my opinion about his misleading fact-check–he should have reached out to Glasgow. Yes, there is a reason that Dan Bongino has a regular segment on his radio show and podcast, “Fact-Check Clown Show.”
Barring veto session amendments to the “Unsafety Act,” the rampant criminality of Chicago will spread statewide. If you live outside of Cook County and you want to see what you are facing in 2023, read CWBChicago every day, as I do. The site is filled with stories about accused criminals being released on no little bail, or placed on electronic monitoring, then committing more crimes, including car jackings, rapes, and murders.
Here are some headlines from this month at CWB Chicago:
What do those numbers mean? It is part of CWBChicago’s “coverage of individuals accused of killing, shooting, or trying to kill or shoot others while on bond for a pending felony case. CWBChicago began our series of reports in November 2019 after Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans publicly stated, ‘we haven’t had any horrible incidents occur’ under the court’s bond reform initiative.” Don’t forget, soon there will be no cash bond in Illinois, pending changes in the SAFE-T Act, beginning in 2023.
What to do? Even if you don’t live in Illinois–your state may be next to eliminate cash bail–Glasgow has some advice for you. “It is absolutely critical that we get this message out,” he warns, “or public safety will be damaged more than we can ever imagine.”
And if the SAFE-T Act remains in place? John Kass, in his most recent Chicago Way podcast, recalled this advice from a former confidante of the first Mayor Daley, who said these words to the former Chicago Tribune columnist after Kim Foxx was reelected in 2020, “The message is get the (bleep) out,” A relative of mine lives in Chicago’s 32nd Ward, blocks away from “The Scream” attack and also blocks away from where a culinary student was shot three times after being robbed of his cell phone. He’s planning his Chicago exit after living there for over two decades.
John Ruberry lives in suburban Cook County and he regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
The Democratic Party is trying very hard to make sure they lose the upcoming midterm elections. Unfortunately for the United States, Republicans are working just as hard to lose.
The midterm elections should be an overwhelming victory for the Republican Party. The American people are truly suffering because of rampant inflation caused by Democrat’s economic policies. Gas prices have nearly doubled thanks to the stealth Green New Deal enacted by the Democrats.
Culturally the Democrat party is widely out of step with the American people. Just look at what the Democrats stand for, transgenderism, abortion, intolerance for the American Founding Principles, and so much more.
With just under two months to go, the polls are a bit disconcerting. This is bad news for Republicans, and most importantly, bad news for the American people. The fault lies with the Republican party, as you can see from this Brietbart article.
Unfortunately for Republicans, most voters — 56.1 percent — said Republicans have not made a strong enough case to warrant their support. Just one-third, 33.9 percent, said they have, and ten percent remain unsure.
Predictably, 87.1 percent of Democrats said the GOP has not done enough to make a strong case for their support, but a smaller majority of Republicans, 61.1 percent, said they have made a sufficient case, compared to 25.9 percent of Republicans who disagree.
Perhaps most concerning for the GOP is the fact that 57.2 percent of independents agree that Republicans have not done enough to make their case as the midterm elections approach. Just 28 percent of independents say Republicans have made their case, and 14.8 percent remain unsure.
What are the Republicans actually doing when they should be making their case to the American people? Check out this Politico article.
Mitch McConnell is among the myriad Republicans questioning the Senate GOP’s quality of candidates in the midterms. Rick Scott wants everyone to stop doubting his recruits.
“Sen. McConnell and I clearly have a strategic disagreement here … We have great candidates,” the National Republican Senatorial Committee chair said in an interview Wednesday. “He wants to do the same thing I want to do: I want to get a majority. And I think it’s important that we’re all cheerleaders for our candidates.”
Republican Senators are now focusing on issues that will turn off independents and fence sitters, who are needed to ensure a Republican victory.
Just yesterday, Sen. Marco Rubio submitted a bill to prohibit protestors from blocking interstate highways.
While in itself, this bill is needed at some point, other things are needed much earlier. Like now.
This is the second time in as many days that a denizen of Congress (Sen. Lindsey Graham) came up with a bill that is far less pressing compared with the other far more dangerous issues we face.
Banning late-term abortions is not on the radar of most Americans in this very dangerous time of malignant inflation and cultural collapse.
I applaud both efforts, however, the timing for these bills is far from ideal, and of questionable constitutionality.
If the Republicans want to win the midterm elections, they immediately need to take lessons from Governor Ron DeSantis.
“We’ll hold Biden accountable,” DeSantis told guest host Raymond Arroyo. “This is a referendum on his failures, make sure everybody knows how his policies have contributed to the mess we’re in, and then articulate what you will do to address things like the border, like crime, like inflation. I think if you do that, I think Republicans are going to win both chambers. And I think it’ll be a really good night.”
SHREVEPORT – Much to the ire of liberals, Louisiana officials are close to finalizing a plan that would move “high-risk” incarcerated teenagers from existing juvenile correctional centers to Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
The identified teenagers, about twenty-five of them, are “high-risk” due to lack of response to the “open dorm strategy” and will be placed in individual prison cells. This move is partially in response to several recent instances of violence, riots, and escape at several youth facilities. These teens will leave their one-person cells during the daytime to attend class and group counseling.
Critics of the plan speaking with a judge recently are concerned that it will feel “too much like prison” for these offenders and that the adult lifers at Angola will present a problem:
Vincent Schiraldi, a juvenile justice expert the civil rights attorneys hired to testify in court, told the judge he ran into an adult inmate while touring the proposed juvenile justice facility at Angola just last week.
Schiraldi, who oversaw incarcerated youth facilities in Washington, D.C., and managed New York City’s Rikers Island jail, went on to express concern about the facility for incarcerated youth at Angola.
“It’s going to scream ‘prison’ to the young people,” he said in testimony Wednesday.
Incarcerated young people should be kept in housing that looks less like cells and more like dormitories, otherwise they will be at higher risk for self-harm and suicide, Schiraldi said. He also said that recreational facilities at the site are inadequate. There isn’t an indoor gymnasium and the outdoor space doesn’t have a full basketball court or field where young people could realistically play team sports.
Additionally, “Schiraldi also described the kitchen in the Angola facility as ‘disgusting’ and called the visitation area inadequate. During family visits, incarcerated youth wouldn’t be able to touch visitors and would be forced to talk to them through a mesh screen, according to photos Schiraldi showed the court. ‘This is terrible. Kids should be able to be in the same room with their parents,’ he said.”
According to The Advocate, “Some worry that putting the youth on the grounds of the infamous prison, the nation’s biggest penitentiary and a former slave plantation, sends a message that they are beyond redemption. The soft-hearted fret because “these children…made a mistake.” Schiraldi laments that “the facility’s open showers…poses a humiliating environment for youth the clean themselves in.”
Again, remember, high-risk offenders. Not “just a mistake.” The prison setting is exactly what juvenile justice officials want for these offenders. These are offenders who are identified as “high-risk,” not your petty theft shoplifters. Officials believe that the single-person cells are necessary for the innates privacy and security.
Color me unsympathetic to the lamentations of the liberal bleeding hearts on this one. In spring 2022, three juveniles escaped from Ware Youth Center with the help of a trustee. They were being held on murder and armed robbery charges. This summer several inmates escaped from a suburban New Orleans youth detention center after a riot. It was the fourth incident of escape this year.
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