Today I’m concentrating on stories involving crime and punishment. So I’ll start in Chicago.
Unexpectedly! (For those of you scoring at home, that’s the earliest I’ve managed to work “unexpectedly!” into a column.)
I regularly watch videos channels featuring coverage of armed confrontations between criminals and cops/security guards/civilians, to pick up tips on situational awareness and to be entertained. (I find stupid criminals and stupid politicians to be continually battling for the top spot in a “human folly” competition.)
Among my favorite such channels are Donut Operator, Active Self Protection and Code Blue Cam. Those sites shine a light on bad and incompetent cops – there seem to be a lot of obese cops on the job, and many who don’t appear to have won top grades for firearm safety, for example – but most of the encounters reveal the kind of dangerous idiots cops have to deal with every day.
After watching hundreds of those videos, I would say that the over/under on “number of police commands ignored and/or defied before getting shot by cops” has got to be around 85, at least. If I had a dollar for every such command not complied with – “turn off the car, step out of the car, keep your hands where I can see them, drop the knife, drop the gun, don’t stab that K-9, put down the hooker, Hunter” – I’d be Elon Musk.
Anyway, this first one is not just a stupid criminal story; it’s also a “you don’t hate the media enough” story. Because here is the media’s account of the encounter between Dexter Reed (26) and Chicago police in late March: Reed – a budding entrepreneur who wanted to launch a clothing line – was a loving, funny and all-around great guy. Look at these smiling pics of him at his graduation!
The Washington Post story opened with him telling his mom that he was going for a ride, then says that he “was killed that same day” when cops fired at him “96 times within 41 seconds.” Virtually every MSM story says that the cops stopped him for not wearing a seatbelt, and the synopsis of those stories is a stark narrative: “racist cops execute angelic black guy in hail of gunfire because he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.”
The reality of the situation, you will not be shocked to learn, was just a little bit different. Fortunately, the officers involved had body cams on, which you would think would make the creepy MSM hacks slow their roll on the lying. But… nope!
Reed came in on the “under” in terms of defied commands: the first cop to encounter him as he rolled his window down asked him what he was doing and he said, “Nothing.” Then he rolled his window half-way up. The cop told him “Roll the window down” three times (spoiler alert: he did not roll his window down), and then told him to unlock or open his door 8 times (spoiler alert: he did neither).
The reason he ignored so few commands is that he opened fire on cops after only 11 ignored commands. He hit one cop in the wrist, before multiple cops opened up on him in an impressive display of “tumultuous conduct.” MSM reports first said he was shot “more than 100 times,” then said that the cops “fired 96 times,” though that number apparently counted the 11 shots that he fired at them in that total.
Oh, did the MSM not mention that he fired at cops first, wounding one of them? Or that he had previous convictions that precluded him from legally carrying a gun, and that he was “out on pre-trial release” (bail, schmail!) involving earlier gun-related felonies? Or that most of the cops who fired at him were black, as was the cop he shot and wounded?
No? Isn’t that strange?
To be fair, the WaPo DID report that he shot first. <Kinison filter: IN PARAGRAPH 8! OH! OHHHH!! > (In other words, they literally “buried the lede!”)
Of course, this is a political story as much as it is a crime story. Our MSM desperately needs another George Floyd story to stoke hatred in the nation. They are dying to be able to trumpet the case of decent, innocent black folk gunned down by the vile forces of white supremacy.
And yet the demand for such stories so outstrips the supply that they are reduced to trying to make angels out of career criminals who are justifiably shot or killed in the act of committing violent crimes. (Trayvon Martin was bashing his victim’s head against concrete when he was shot. Michael Brown was assaulting a cop and fighting to get his gun when he was shot. Breonna Taylor was standing beside her drug-dealer boyfriend when he shot at cops who returned fire, killing Taylor. George Floyd himself was a career criminal whom the coroner’s report proved died of an overdose. Etc.)
Democrat voters in Chicago have elected one Dem mayor after another for over a century, and they’re getting what they voted for, good and hard. Their last mayor – Lori Lightfoot — was the most racist and disastrously incompetent ever.
But in 2023, when the voters had dumped Lightfoot in the primaries, they said, “Hold my malt liquor, and watch this,” and elected the truly egregious Brandon Johnson. A recent scathing news story about Chicago’s continuing deterioration contains the most damning sentence ever: Johnson “has managed in just 11 months in office to make former Mayor Lori Lightfoot look competent.”
Ouch! That’s right up there with, “makes Sheila Jackson Lee look like an astrophysicist,” or, “makes AOC look like a valedictorian.”
By the way, the other candidate in last year’s Chicago run-off was another lefty Dem named Paul Vallas. Vallas was running with a huge weakness – he’s white, in a city where the vast majority of Democrat voters are whitey-haters – and Johnson won pretty easily. Vallas was also competent…in a city where that is frowned upon.
When the Dexter Reed story broke, Vallas posted, “DON’T SHOOT COPS. When you shoot at cops, let alone wound one, they are going to shoot back and not count the bullets.”
Words to live by.
Or to die by, I guess. Well done, Chicago voters!
But Chicago is facing stiff competition in its striving for the title of the most crime-ridden city. Another contender is St. Louis, one of many Dem-run cities described as being in a “doom loop” of high crime, tax flight, business failures and empty buildings. One stark example is the former AT&T building, which at 44 stories is the third tallest building in town.
It sold in 2006 for $205 million; it recently sold again, this time for $3.6 million. D’oh!
“How could this have happened,” you are not asking, because you already know. And yes, it turns out the last GOP mayor of St. Louis left office 75 years ago.
Today, St. Louis’ mayor is a real peach named Tishaura Jones. (If you read that name and thought, “white supremacist?” turn in your Cautious Optimism badge and ID, because you are officially suspended pending further investigation.)
Last month Jones joined a “coalition of black mayors against crime in the US.” Because as one of those mayors put it, “Many of these leaders come from the communities most affected by crime, so they have a unique perspective on solving it.”
Jones certainly has a unique solution for the owners of gas stations and convenience stores who have been plagued by crime in her lawless city. And before you can ask: No, I am not making the following quote up.
Saith Tishaura, “How can we hold the business owners accountable?”
That’s right. She runs a city, and oversees a police department, whose job is to stop criminals from preying upon – among others – the owners and customers of gas stations and convenience stores. Her city and her police department are failing miserably.
So naturally, she’s blaming the business owners! (Coming soon, the Tishaura Plan to Prevent Rape: We must hold women accountable for getting raped! Her talking points will include, “Why are you putting on makeup, and dressing attractively? And going outside of your house at night? And also in broad daylight? Not to mention at dusk, or dawn?”)
Before you declare that that might be the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard, let me take you to San Francisco, where a Democrat brain trust has come up with another “unique solution” to businesses going broke in their city: make it illegal for stores to close!
Got that? They are proposing a law that “mandates that grocery stores will be required to give a six month notice before they close their doors permanently.” They will also be required to “find a replacement store so as to not disrupt access to essentials for residents.”
Good lord! How do those morons think that this will work?
Store Owner (SO): “I’ve been bleeding cash for years, and I can’t do it anymore. I’m closing my store.”
San Fran Dem (SFD): “You can’t do that.”
SO: “What?”
SFD: “It’s illegal to close your store.”
SO: “What?”
SFD: “Your customers need the goods you sell.”
SO: “Half of our customers are shoplifters, because you won’t arrest them. Half of the other half are tired of long-jumping over banks of human feces because you won’t keep the streets clean, and the other half of that half are in the hospital with hep C or a flesh-eating disease they got from filthy needles they fell on as they were poop-jumping. Because you won’t keep the streets clean.”
SFD: “You can’t close.”
SO: “How are you going to stop me? I’m broke.
SFD: “We’ll fine you.”
SO: “What?! (speaking very slowly) I… am… broke!”
SFD: “Okay. We won’t fine you, if you find another store to take your place.”
SO: “What? How am I supposed to do that?
SFD: “Persuade them.”
SO: “Oh yeah. I’ll just tell them that the street we’re on looks like a zombie apocalypse, the store is crawling with meth heads and shoplifters, the cash flow is negative, the taxes are astronomical, and the labor pool is a bunch of pot-head grievance study majors who will sue you if you don’t use their made-up pronouns.”
SFD: “That reminds us. The new mandatory minimum wage is $75 an hour.”
And, scene.
Okay, once again this will be a three-column week, because I’ve barely scratched the surface of crime-and-punishment stories. See you on Wednesday!
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 