Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime

This looks interesting -- especially as how I really need to get up on the academic debates on mass incarceration. It's all the rage on the left, and the idiot progs are obviously having a significant policy impact (considering how the Obama White House is releasing hardened criminals onto the streets, to say the least).

Out Tuesday, and available at Amazon, Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America.

Esteban Nuñez Released from Prison After Manslaughter Sentence Was Drastically Reduced by Arnold Schwarzenegger

This story really bothers me.

Esteban Nuñez is the son of former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, a close political ally of former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The background is here, at LAT from last year, "Appeals court upholds Schwarzenegger's clemency for Nuñez son."

And here's the latest, "Esteban Nunez is released from prison after his sentence was drastically reduced by Schwarzenegger."

And see especially, "As Esteban Nuñez nears release from prison, victim's family remains outraged":

The slain student’s mother did the math a long time ago, so the news she recently received — that convicted killer Esteban Nuñez would soon go free after less than six years in prison — came as no real surprise.

That makes it no easier, Kathy Santos said, to know that a high-level political favor is sending him home at age 27, as her son lies in a grave.

“It makes you sick that something like this can happen, and you have no power,” said Santos, whose 22-year-old son, Luis, a San Diego Mesa College student, was killed by a knife to the heart.

Prosecutors said Nuñez and a co-defendant, both armed with knives, acted in concert in the attack that killed the unarmed Santos at San Diego State University in October 2008. Charged with murder, the defendants had faced the possibility of life in prison if they went to trial and lost. Instead, they pleaded guilty to lesser charges of voluntary manslaughter and assault. A judge gave them 16 years in prison.

Nuñez had a powerful father, former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, and the father had a powerful ally, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who — on his last day in office in 2011 — announced he was reducing the sentence to seven years. With good behavior, it would turn out to be less than six.

“Of course you help a friend,” Schwarzenegger later said, a remark that deepened widespread outrage over the commutation, which was reflected in editorials and denunciations by Republicans and Democrats alike...

More.

Ferguson Effect: Violent Crime Surged 20 Percent in Los Angeles in 2015 (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Crime in Los Angeles rose in all categories in 2015, LAPD says":

For the first time in more than a decade, all categories of crime rose across Los Angeles in 2015 as police struggled to get control of the problem, according to LAPD data.

Violent crime in L.A. climbed 19.9% and property crime increased 10.3% through Dec. 26 compared with the same period last year, according to the police data. It marked the second year in a row that violent crime rose, but the first time since 2003 that both violent and property crime rose.

The increases follow more than a decade of steep declines in crime, particularly in homicides. Police officials said the recent upswings should be viewed in that larger context.

“We ask people to keep this in perspective,” said Assistant Chief Michel Moore, who oversees the Los Angeles Police Department's crime-tracking unit. “The city is not on fire, the city is not falling into the ocean.”

Still, the increases have sparked concern in neighborhoods across the city, including Southside areas that have seen jumps in gang-related homicides as well as more affluent areas where residents have complained about thefts and car break-ins...

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Leftists and Their Media Lackeys Have Launched Campaign to Deny the 'Ferguson Effect'."

Leftists and Their Media Lackeys Have Launched Campaign to Deny the 'Ferguson Effect'

From Heather Mac Donald, at WSJ, "Trying to Hide the Rise of Violent Crime":

Murders and shootings have spiked in many American cities—and so have efforts to ignore or deny the crime increase. The see-no-evil campaign eagerly embraced a report last month by the Brennan Center for Justice called “Crime in 2015: A Preliminary Analysis.” Many progressives and their media allies hailed the report as a refutation of what I and others have dubbed the “Ferguson effect”— cops backing off from proactive policing, demoralized by the ugly vitriol directed at them since a police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., last year. Americans are being asked to disbelieve both the Ferguson effect and its result: violent crime flourishing in the ensuing vacuum.

In fact, the Brennan Center’s report confirms the Ferguson effect, while also showing how clueless the media are about crime and policing.

The Brennan researchers gathered homicide data from 25 of the nation’s 30 largest cities for the period Jan. 1, 2015, to Oct. 1, 2015. (Not included were San Francisco, Indianapolis, Columbus, El Paso and Nashville.) The researchers then tried to estimate what 2015’s full-year homicide numbers for those 25 cities would be, based on the extent to which homicides were up from January to October this year compared with the similar period in 2014.

The resulting projected increase for homicides in 2015 in those 25 cities is 11%. (By point of comparison, the FiveThirtyEight data blog looked at the 60 largest cities and found a 16% increase in homicides by September 2015.) An 11% one-year increase in any crime category is massive; an equivalent decrease in homicides would be greeted with high-fives by politicians and police chiefs. Yet the media have tried to repackage that 11% homicide increase as trivial.

Several strategies are employed to play down the jump in homicides. The simplest is to hide the actual figure. An Atlantic magazine article in November, “Debunking the Ferguson Effect,” reports: “Based on their data, the Brennan Center projects that homicides will rise slightly overall from 2014 to 2015.” A reader could be forgiven for thinking that “slightly” means an increase of, say, 2%. Nothing in the Atlantic write-up disabuses the reader of that mistaken impression. The website Vox, declaring the crime increase “bunk,” is similarly discreet about the actual homicide rate, leaving it to the reader’s imagination. Crime & Justice News, published by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, coyly admits that “murder is up moderately in some places” without disclosing what that “moderate” increase may be.

A second strategy for brushing off the homicide surge is to contextualize it over a long period. Because homicides haven’t returned to their appalling early 1990s or early 2000s levels, the current crime increase is insignificant, the Brennan Center and its media supporters suggest, echoing an argument that arose immediately after I first documented the Ferguson effect nationally.

“Today’s murder rates are still at all-time historic lows,” write the Brennan researchers. “In 1990 there were 29.3 murders per 100,000 residents in these cities. In 2000, there were 13.8 murders per 100,000. Now, there are 9.9 murders per 100,000 residents. Averaged across the cities, we find that while Americans in urban areas have experienced more murders this year than last year, they are safer than they were five years ago and much safer than they were 25 years ago.”

The Atlantic is similarly reassuring about today’s homicide rate: “The relative uptick”—which, again, the magazine never specifies—“is still small compared with the massive two-decade drop that preceded it.” True enough, though irrelevant—good policing over the past two decades produced an extraordinary 50% drop in crime. America isn’t going to give all that back in one year. The relevant question: What is the current trend? If this year’s homicide and shooting outbreak continues, those 1990s violent crime levels will return sooner than anyone could have imagined.

The most desperate tactic for discounting the homicide increase is to disaggregate the average. “Fears of ‘a new nationwide crime wave’ are premature at best and wildly misleading at worst,” asserts the Atlantic, because the “numbers make clear that violent crime is up in some major U.S. cities and down in others.”

But such variance is inherent in any average. If there weren’t variation across the members of a set, no average would be needed. Any national crime increase or decrease will have counterexamples of the dominant trend within it, yet policy makers and analysts rightly find the average meaningful. The Ferguson effect’s existence does not require that every city experience depolicing and a resulting crime increase. Enough cities—in particular, those with significant black populations and where antipolice agitation has been most strident—are experiencing murder increases that cannot be ignored.

Baltimore’s per capita homicide rate, for example, is now the highest in its history, according to the Baltimore Sun: 54 homicides per 100,000 residents, beating its 1993 rate of 48.8 per 100,000 residents. Shootings in Cincinnati, lethal and not, were up 30% by mid-September 2015 compared with the same period in 2014. Homicides in St. Louis were up 60% by the end of August. In Los Angeles, the police department reports that violent crime has increased 20% as of Dec. 5; there were 16% more shooting victims in the city, while arrests were down 9.5%. Shooting incidents in Chicago are up 17% through Dec. 13...

Still more.

And see, "America's Legal Order Begins to Fray — #FergusonEffect."

'Something Deeply Disturbing Is Happening All Across America...'

From FBI Director James Comey, speaking at the University of Chicago Law School,  October 23rd, "A chill wind has changed police behavior, and now violent crime is rising. Its victims are almost entirely young black men":

Part of being clear-eyed about reality requires all of us to stare—and stare hard—at what is happening in this country this year. And to ask ourselves what’s going on.

Because something deeply disturbing is happening all across America. I have spoken of 2014 in this speech because something has changed in 2015. Far more people are being killed in America’s cities this year than in many years. And let’s be clear: far more people of color are being killed in America’s cities this year. And it’s not the cops doing the killing.

We are right to focus on violent encounters between law enforcement and civilians. Those incidents can teach all of us to be better. But something much bigger is happening. Most of America’s 50 largest cities have seen an increase in homicides and shootings this year, and many of them have seen a huge increase. These are cities with little in common except being American cities—places like Chicago, Tampa, Minneapolis, Sacramento, Orlando, Cleveland, and Dallas.

In Washington, D.C., we’ve seen an increase in homicides of more than 20% in neighborhoods across the city. Baltimore, a city of 600,000 souls, is averaging more than one homicide a day—a rate higher than that of New York City, which has 13 times the people. Milwaukee’s murder rate has nearly doubled over the past year.

And who’s dying? Police chiefs say the increase is almost entirely among young men of color, at crime scenes in bad neighborhoods where multiple guns are being recovered.

That’s yet another problem that white America can drive around, but if we really believe that all lives matter, as we must, all of us have to understand what is happening. Communities of color need to demand answers. Police and civilian leaders need to demand answers. Academic researchers need to hit this hard...

I'm not holding my breath, but keep reading.

Rise Up October — March Against Police Brutality in New York City (VIDEO)

Stay classy, progs.

Here's a slideshow, "Rise Up October anti-police brutality protest held in New York City."

And at Twitchy, "‘There’s your racial divide’: Greg Gutfeld notes the irony in New York anti-police rally."

Also at the New York Post, "Protesters flip off NYPD days after cop slay."

Today's cover: Quentin Tarantino rants at "stop police terror" rally https://t.co/ypCCXr4CPb pic.twitter.com/f8XXHWJ3uq

— New York Post (@nypost) October 25, 2015

Far-Left Politics and the Obama Justice Department

At WSJ, "Notable & Quotable: Justice and the Obama Justice Department."

It's from Michael Mukasey, at the September issue of Hillsdale College's Imprimis magazine, "Justice and the Obama Justice Department."

America's Legal Order Begins to Fray — #FergusonEffect

Remember, here's the trend, "Ferguson Effect: Murder Rates Rise Sharply in Urban Areas Across the U.S."

From Heather Mac Donald, at WSJ, "Amid the escalation of violent crime are signs of a breakdown of basic respect for law enforcement":

After two decades of the most remarkable crime drop in U.S. history, law enforcement has come to this: “I’m deliberately not getting involved in things I would have in the 1990s and 2000s,” an emergency-services officer in New York City tells me. “I won’t get out of my car for a reasonable-suspicion stop; I will if there’s a violent felony committed in my presence.”

A virulent antipolice campaign over the past year—initially fueled by a since-discredited narrative about a police shooting in Ferguson, Mo.—has made police officers reluctant to do their jobs. The Black Lives Matter movement proclaims that the police are a lethal threat to blacks and that the criminal-justice system is pervaded by racial bias. The media amplify that message on an almost daily basis. Officers now worry about becoming the latest racist cop of the week, losing their job or being indicted if a good-faith encounter with a suspect goes awry or is merely distorted by an incomplete cellphone video.

With police so discouraged, violent crime has surged in at least 35 American cities this year. The alarming murder increase prompted an emergency meeting of the Major Cities Chiefs Association last month. Homicides were up 76% in Milwaukee, 60% in St. Louis, and 56% in Baltimore through mid-August, compared with the same period in 2014; murder was up 47% in Minneapolis and 36% in Houston through mid-July.

But something more fundamental than even public safety may be at stake. There are signs that the legal order itself is breaking down in urban areas. “There’s a total lack of respect out there for the police,” says a female sergeant in New York. “The perps feel more empowered to carry guns because they know that we are running scared.”

The lawful use of police power is being met by hostility and violence, often ignored by the press. In Cincinnati, a small riot broke out in late July when the police arrived at a drive-by shooting scene, where a 4-year-old girl had been shot in the head and critically injured. Bystanders loudly cursed at officers who had started arresting suspects at the scene on outstanding warrants, according to a witness I spoke with.

During anticop demonstrations in Ferguson, Mo., last month, 18-year-old Tyrone Harris opened fire at police officers, according to law-enforcement officials, and was shot and wounded by police in response. A crowd pelted the cops with frozen water bottles and rocks, wounding three officers, while destroying three police cars and damaging businesses, Ferguson police said. “We’re ready for what? We’re ready for war,” some protesters reportedly chanted.

In Birmingham, Ala., an officer was beaten unconscious with his own gun last month by a suspect in a car stop. There was gloating on social media. “Pistol whipped his ass to sleep,” read one Twitter post. The officer later said that he had refrained from using force to defend himself for fear of a media backlash.

Officers are being challenged in their most basic efforts to render aid. A New York cop in the Bronx tells me that he was trying to extricate a woman pinned under an overturned car in July when a bystander stuck his cellphone camera into the officer’s face, trying to bait him into an argument. “You can’t tell me what to do,” the bystander replied when asked to move to the sidewalk, the cop reports. “A few years ago, I would have taken police action,” he says. “Now I know it won’t end well for me or the police department.”

Supervisors may roll up to an incident where trash and other projectiles are being thrown at officers and tell the cops to get into their cars and leave. “What does that do to the general public?” wonders a New York detective. “Every time we pass up on an arrest because we don’t want a situation to blow up, we’ve made the next cop’s job all the harder.”

That's actually kind of depressing.

More at the link.

Ferguson Effect: Murder Rates Rise Sharply in Urban Areas Across the U.S.

Well, events are proving Heather Mac Donald correct. Remember her piece on the "Ferguson Effect" at WSJ? See, "The New Nationwide Crime Wave." Radical leftists went batshit crazy.

Well, murders have surged across the U.S., no doubt coinciding with the retreat of law enforcement from the most dangerous urban areas.

See the New York Times, "Murder Rates Rising Sharply in Many U.S. Cities":

MILWAUKEE — Cities across the nation are seeing a startling rise in murders after years of declines, and few places have witnessed a shift as precipitous as this city. With the summer not yet over, 104 people have been killed this year — after 86 homicides in all of 2014.

More than 30 other cities have also reported increases in violence from a year ago. In New Orleans, 120 people had been killed by late August, compared with 98 during the same period a year earlier. In Baltimore, homicides had hit 215, up from 138 at the same point in 2014. In Washington, the toll was 105, compared with 73 people a year ago. And in St. Louis, 136 people had been killed this year, a 60 percent rise from the 85 murders the city had by the same time last year.

Law enforcement experts say disparate factors are at play in different cities, though no one is claiming to know for sure why murder rates are climbing. Some officials say intense national scrutiny of the use of force by the police has made officers less aggressive and emboldened criminals, though many experts dispute that theory.

Rivalries among organized street gangs, often over drug turf, and the availability of guns are cited as major factors in some cities, including Chicago. But more commonly, many top police officials say they are seeing a growing willingness among disenchanted young men in poor neighborhoods to use violence to settle ordinary disputes.

“Maintaining one’s status and credibility and honor, if you will, within that peer community is literally a matter of life and death,” Milwaukee’s police chief, Edward A. Flynn, said. “And that’s coupled with a very harsh reality, which is the mental calculation of those who live in that strata that it is more dangerous to get caught without their gun than to get caught with their gun.”

The results have often been devastating. Tamiko Holmes, a mother of five, has lost two of her nearly grown children in apparently unrelated shootings in the last eight months. In January, a daughter, 20, was shot to death during a robbery at a birthday party at a Days Inn. Six months later, the authorities called again: Her only son, 19, had been shot in the head in a car — a killing for which the police are still searching for a motive and a suspect.

Ms. Holmes said she recently persuaded her remaining teenage daughters to move away from Milwaukee with her, but not before one of them, 17, was wounded in a shooting while riding in a car.

“The violence was nothing like this before,” said Ms. Holmes, 38, who grew up in Milwaukee. “What’s changed is the streets and the laws and the parents. It’s become a mess and a struggle.”

Urban bloodshed — as well as the overall violent crime rate — remains far below the peaks of the late 1980s and early ’90s, and criminologists say it is too early to draw broad conclusions from the recent numbers. In some cities, including Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Newark, homicides remain at a relatively steady rate this year.

Yet with at least 35 of the nation’s cities reporting increases in murders, violent crimes or both, according to a recent survey, the spikes are raising alarm among urban police chiefs. The uptick prompted an urgent summit meeting in August of more than 70 officials from some of the nation’s largest cities. A Justice Department initiative is scheduled to address the rising homicide rates as part of a conference in September...

The Justice Department? What a joke.

No one's going to address the problem, which is the glorification of black thug life and the evil of political correctness that prohibits leftist elites from even discussing it.

It's going to get worse before it gets better, and it won't get better until we elect law-and-order Republicans to office in the country's inner cities.

Still more at the link.

Auto Shop in Oakland Calls Out City 'Leaders' After Violent Communist Protests on May Day

Shit's out of control. Even in California folks be getting fed up with this bull.

At ABC News 7 San Francisco, "BUSINESS CALLS OUT OAKLAND LEADERS AFTER DESTRUCTIVE MAY DAY PROTESTS."

#Oakland auto shop damaged in #MayDay protests uses artistic flair to call out city leaders: http://t.co/foV9rceVxT pic.twitter.com/f4gRHtAkqi

— ABC7 News (@abc7newsBayArea) May 12, 2015

Soft-on-Crime Leftists Lobby Against Efforts to Roll Back Proposition 47

Pretty soon no one will be put behind bars.

Sheesh.

At LAT, "Different kind of crime-victim group lobbies against rolling back Prop. 47":

Albania Morales stood behind the coffin-shaped placard that bore her dead husband's face, practically eclipsed by her political prop. Ricardo Avelar-Lara died last November in Los Angeles, shot by sheriff's deputies.

I am a crime victim, Morales said: I saw the officers kill him.

Morales was taking part this week in a rally with a twist: She and other self-described crime victims were not backed by the usual law enforcement groups. And the last thing they wanted was for California to get tougher on crime.

Morales was joined by former inmates, families of people in prison, those who had lost loved ones to murder. The participation of traditional crime-victim groups that for 26 years occupied the Capitol lawn for this annual event had been called off.

Organizers of this week's activities say theirs is a truer reflection of what a victim is, their goals a more accurate representation of what crime victims want and need. Last fall, the group masterminded Proposition 47, the law that removed most felony penalties for drug use and minor theft.

They are now lobbying against efforts to roll back portions of the law and in support of redirecting corrections spending toward trauma services for victims and alternatives to incarceration for criminals.

Criminal justice experts say that agenda is part of a national shift in the public safety debate, one that focuses more on conflicts between communities of color and the criminal justice system, including abuses of force by police and lengthy prison sentences.

"That static idea of a victim of crime as somebody attacked by a stranger, and as somebody who is white … is becoming an obsolete thought," said Mai Fernandez, executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime in Washington, D.C.

"The reality is a lot of crime in the United States happens in communities of color," she said. "A person can be a victim at one point, and they turn around and perpetrate a crime."

Representatives of traditional crime-victim groups are appalled by the blurring of lines between victim and criminal.

"To use the term 'victim' so freely is kind of offensive to me," said San Bernardino County Dist. Atty. Michael Ramos, who is planning to run for state attorney general.

Ramos drew a distinction between the family members of murder victims he had consoled on the morning before the rally and some of those recruited to the event. He accused the organizers of co-opting the definition of crime victim for political purposes.

The rally was held by Californians for Safety and Justice, a group spawned by foundations that include the Ford Foundation and the California Endowment, and by New York hedge fund mogul George Soros. The group began recruiting people to speak out as crime victims shortly after it was formed, to help press for new criminal justice policies.

The effort focused on reducing penalties for drug use and other nonviolent crimes, and the foundations directed $14 million in grants to community groups that then campaigned for or otherwise supported Proposition 47. Law enforcement associations and traditional crime-victim groups opposed the measure.

Beginning in 2013, the organization assembled advocates to provide an alternative to views voiced for more than two decades at the Capitol rallies held by Crime Victims United of California. The annual event was hosted by the state's prison guard union, and often the governor attended.

Harriet Salerno, the mother of a murder victim and founder of Crime Victims United, canceled this year's gathering out of concern that it would be marked by confrontation. At the past two rallies, she said, those showing support for police were harassed.

"I don't need to be abused," Salerno said.

She also bridled at criticism from leaders of Californians for Safety and Justice that the previous rallies gave little voice to minority victims with complicated stories of crime and violence.

The speakers for Californians for Safety and Justice this week included Dionne Wilson, the wife of a slain police officer who now regrets advocating for the death penalty against her husband's killer and became the lead voice for crime victims supporting Proposition 47.

Other speakers were a woman pushed into prostitution as a child and a rape victim who said most prison inmates are themselves victims of crimes.

In a series of Sacramento workshops over the last year, they have urged people to lobby for changes in the justice system, including reduced spending on prisons. The motto of this week's rally was "Remember. Recover. Reform."

More.

Thoroughly Depressing Video of a Man Trying to Exercise His Right to Freedom of Speech

That's BFH's headline.

Actually, I get a kick out of these kinds of things. It's happened to me. Leftists cannot tolerate views that deviate from the collectivist party line. Plain and simple. You will literally be attacked for attempting to exercise your rights. I was attacked last summer while attempting to cover the Anaheim police brutality protests sponsored by ANSWER LA.

And watch this guy at the video attempting to express his opinions on the left's holocaust of abortion.

Criminal leftist thugs. At iOWNTHEWORLD Report.

Flagstaff Officer Tyler Stewart Shot to Death While Wearing Police Body Camera (VIDEO)

Well, it's definitely up close and personal.

At the Arizona Republic, "Flagstaff police officer's body camera captures fatal shooting":

EDITOR'S NOTE: The video below is graphic and may not be something you want to see. It was released by Flagstaff Police honoring a public records request by media, including azcentral, The Arizona Republic and 12 News. The video will be part of the ongoing discussion about safety for officers and for the people they encounter, which is why we think it is newsworthy.

There's video at that above link.

And see the Los Angeles Times, "Body camera video of Arizona police officer's killing stirs ethical debate":

The video footage is raw, showing Flagstaff, Ariz., police Officer Tyler Stewart chatting with a man accused of breaking a couple things in his girlfriend's apartment a day earlier. That's what body cameras do: capture the daily work of police officers up close.

"Do you mind if I just pat down your pockets real quick? You don't have anything in here?" Stewart, 24, can be heard asking the suspect, Robert Smith, 28, who had his hands jammed in his pockets. They had been talking in the cold for a few minutes outside Smith's home Dec. 27.

"No, no — my smokes," replies Smith, who had been chuckling moments earlier. Smith then draws a revolver so fast that the gun is almost a blur. The video stops. Stewart is shot five times before Smith fatally shoots himself.

The graphic video altered the usual conversation about body cameras and police accountability by capturing — up close — a polite conversation that instantly turned into a deadly encounter in which the officer had little chance to react.

The Flagstaff Police Department released body camera footage this week in response to several media public records requests.

For several months, nationwide calls for police to wear body cameras have grown as activists and some public officials have pushed for answers after several high-profile use-of-force incidents, including the fatal police shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson Mo.

In Albuquerque this week, body camera footage was used by prosecutors in their decision to seek charges against two police officers after they fatally shot a homeless man while he appeared to be turning away during a standoff.

"That's what these cameras are for," said Tim McGuire, who teaches ethics at the Arizona State University Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. "They're for accountability, and they're designed to minimize controversy and educate the public about how these things come down."

But the Arizona footage raises questions about the balance between the public's right to know and privacy concerns for officers and bystanders as authorities around the country wrestle with how to regulate the rapidly spreading technology.

"We are currently crafting or looking at legislation that may very well discuss this," Levi Bolton Jr., executive director of the 14,000-member Arizona Police Assn., said Wednesday shortly before a meeting to discuss body cameras at Arizona's state Capitol.

"We acknowledge that the public and the media should have access to this information," Bolton said of body camera footage. However, he was concerned about the appropriate timing for its release and whether such footage should be regulated so that confidential informants, undercover officers or victims of sex crimes are not identified...

Hmm... Actually, the body-camera genie's not going back in the bottle at this point. There's too much demand for accountability. If folks are worried about the sensitive nature of these recordings, there should be strict protocols for public release. I suspect the public's right to know, especially in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting death in Ferguson, is going to outweigh worries about privacy, however.

Still more at the link.

Gov. Jerry Brown's Aggressive Prison Parole Agenda Backfires as More Parolees Return

And he's supposed to be "Governor Competence."

At LAT, "As more inmates are released from prison, more parolees return":

Randy Whittenburg was a "commendable" candidate for release from prison.

After 31 years behind bars for his role in a Los Angeles strong-arm robbery that ended in murder, Whittenburg had earned four vocational certificates; completed Bible study, anger management and 12-step programs; and accumulated a file of prison officials' praise. He was married and had detailed plans for success.

Eighteen months after he was paroled in 2011, the 47-year-old was jobless, separated from his wife and riding around L.A. on a bicycle, packing heat. When his girlfriend locked him out, he fired his gun into her apartment, hitting her.

"God gave you a second chance," she whispered to him from her hospital bed the next morning. A recorded phone line in the L.A. County Jail captured her incredulity. "Why would you do something like this?"

That troubling question is increasingly being repeated at parole hearings across California as the number of inmates with life sentences who are granted release skyrockets under Gov. Jerry Brown. Currently nearly 2,000 murderers, hit men and robbers who spent decades locked up and now range from middle-aged to elderly are trying to find their way. Most succeed, but each month a few more fail, returning to the drugs and crime that put them in prison and raising public safety concerns.

California is one of four states in which the governor has final authority over parole decisions. A Times analysis of parole records found that Brown has allowed parole for 1,963 inmates with life sentences — more inmates than four governors released in the 27 years before he was elected.

With the dramatic rise in parole, The Times also found a disturbing increase in revocations. Since 2011, at least 50 inmates with life sentences, including 33 paroled under Brown, returned to prison or jail, accused of drug use, domestic violence, theft, even attempted murder. A Stanford University study found that among 860 inmates with life sentences who were paroled from 1995 to 2010, five returned to prison with new felony charges.

The governor defended his parole decisions and said he is abiding by the law and his own belief in redemption. But both Brown and his appointed parole board director declined to comment on the number of inmates who have returned to prison...

Of course they "declined" to comment.

Democrats make the state less safe, and the idiot "progressive" voters keep returning them to office. Yeah, California's f-ked up like that.

Keep reading.

CNN's Erin Burnett Chirps About How Far-Left 'Die-In' at New York's Macy's is 'Funny' (VIDEO)

It's not funny at all.

It's criminal trespass and disturbing the peace, at minimum. These idiot commies should be prosecuted. But the clueless Erin Burnett thinks it's freakin' hilarious!

She should be taken out at flogged, the worthless scumbag.

New York Racial Violence Protesters Lay Siege on Apple Store

Different day. Same bullshit moral bankruptcy.

.@USATODAY Moral reprobates and leftist idiots. But I repeat myself.

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 6, 2014

Protesters storm the Apple store on Fifth Avenue and stage "die-in" http://t.co/yrnrPBRR92 pic.twitter.com/uJg67mCzsM

— NBC New York (@NBCNewYork) December 6, 2014

On the Way Out, Mary Landrieu's Fighting Dirty, Peddling Lies and Racial Animosity

Well, she's a Democrat. They're dirty disgusting liars and political hacks.

From John Fund, at National Review, "Landrieu’s Ugly Exit."

Also at RCP, "Louisiana Senate Runoff: Cassidy Up 20 Points."

Social Justice Kills

Via Twitter:

Because #SocialJustice hurts everyone. pic.twitter.com/mUVP8ycGX7

— StacyFace (@StacyOnTheRight) November 28, 2014

St. Louis Rams: 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot'

At Fire Andrea Mitchell, "Pitiful. St. Louis Rams come out of tunnel in hands up don’t shoot pose."

St. Louis Rams players raise arms in apparent show of solidarity with #Ferguson protesters: http://t.co/dBLRMihdGB pic.twitter.com/kickTDkemN

— ABC News (@ABC) November 30, 2014

Businesses, Police Fear Rise in Shoplifting After Passage of Proposition 47

Well, when you release convicted armed robbers, crack dealers, meth heads, drug addicts and "petty" thieves onto the streets, you have good reason to worry!

Via CBS Sacramento:

Proposition 47 reduced the penalties and sentences for low-level drug and property crimes. This means shoplifting, forgery, fraud, and petty theft can now be treated as misdemeanors instead of felons, allowing some criminals in jail to go free.