On prohibition and crime…
Tag: crime
What Happened When New Mexico Ended Civil Asset Forfeiture?
In 2015, New Mexico scrapped its civil asset forfeiture laws and replaced them with a criminal process requiring a conviction before forfeiture can commence. Law enforcement lobbyists warned that ending civil forfeiture would cause crime to skyrocket. So, what actually happened?
In a nutshell, nothing.
When the legislature was debating the 2015 reforms, law enforcement came out with dire warnings. The New Mexico Department of Public safety claimed that ending civil forfeiture would have “a negative impact on public safety” and could trigger a “reduction in criminal investigations.” In the bill analysis, the department testified, “This bill directly jeopardizes the most basic and fundamental key to successful narcotics investigations.”
The chair of the New Mexico Sheriff’s Association simply asserted, “You’ll get less law enforcement,” without civil asset forfeiture.
It didn’t turn out that way.
The Institute for Justice compared crime rates in neighboring Texas and Colorado for its Policing for Profit report and determined that “New Mexico’s overall crime rate did not rise following the implementation of strong forfeiture reform in 2015, nor did arrest rates drop.”
In fact, the overall trend in New Mexico’s offense rate was “even flatter than those for the control states.”
Lawmakers strike the word ‘marijuana’ from all state laws, calling term racist
“Pot,” “weed,” “grass,” “Mary Jane,” “flower” — there is no shortage of terms to describe cannabis. However, Washington state is taking one word officially off the table: “marijuana.”
Legislators recently passed a law that changes every Revised Code of Washington with the word “marijuana.” The change gets rid of the term, swapping it out for the word “cannabis.”
Supporters say the word “marijuana” has a long history of racism.
“The term ‘marijuana’ itself is pejorative and racist,” said Washington state Rep. Melanie Morgan during testimony in 2021. Morgan is a Democrat representing the 29th Legislative District and sponsored the bill — House Bill 1210. Morgan discussed the history of the word, which originates from Spanish.
“As recreational marijuana use became more popular, it was negatively associated with Mexican immigrants,” Morgan said.
Governor Jay Inslee signed the bill that passed unanimously into law March 11. The changes will take effect in June.
Justice Sotomayor: People Who Know FBI Crime Stats Must Be Banned From Capital Case Juries
Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent on Monday arguing that anyone who is familiar with FBI crime stats must be banned from Capital case juries for “racial bias.”
She was backed in her dissent by Justice Kagan and retiring Justice Breyer.
Steve Sailor posted highlights from Sotomayor’s dissent as shared by the Supreme Court:
Cite as: 596 U. S. ____ (2022) 1
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
KRISTOPHER LOVE v. TEXAS
ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TEXAS
No. 21–5050. Decided April 18, 2022
The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE BREYER and
JUSTICE KAGAN join, dissenting from the denial of summary vacatur.[…] The seating of a racially biased juror, therefore, can never be harmless. As with other forms of disqualifying bias, if even one racially biased juror is empaneled and the death penalty is imposed, “the State is disentitled to execute the sentence,” Morgan v. Illinois, 504 U. S. 719, 729 (1992).
In this case, petitioner Kristopher Love, a Black man, claims that one of the jurors in his capital trial was racially biased because the juror asserted during jury selection that “[n]on-white” races were statistically more violent than the white race. […]
“You’ll notice that Justice Sotomayor capitalizes ‘black’ but uses lower case for ‘white,’ which proves she’s not racially biased,” Sailor commented.
BLM silent when confronted with data showing massive 2020 spike in Black murder victims
The Black Lives Matter organization was silent when approached for comment on 2020’s skyrocketing number of Black murders and experts citing BLM and the defund the police movements for contributing to the deaths.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Black Lives Matter press team on April 14 inquiring if they had comment on FBI data showing there was a 32% increase in Black murders in 2020 compared to 2019, as well as a comment regarding experts such as the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald arguing the BLM and defund the police movements contributed to the murder spike, not the coronavirus.
Fox News Digital also detailed the yearly numbers of Black murders from 2010 to 2020 within the inquiry but did not receive a response from the organization as of Tuesday morning.
‘I’m The Return of Christ’: Alleged Polygamist Cult Leader Hit With Charges in Georgia
The leader of an alleged polygamist cult who often refers to himself as “3God” and “Nature Boy” is facing several charges this week, including false imprisonment and rape.
Eligio Bishop, the 40-year-old leader of the group Carbon Nation, was arrested this week on five charges on April 14—including rape, false imprisonment, and sending sexually explicit electronic transmissions without consent, the Dekalb County Police Department said. The arrest comes after a Wednesday night raid at his Georgia home, which included dozens of officers and a tactical team, according to WSB-TV.
He is currently being held at DeKalb County jail after Magistrate Judge Abbi Taylor denied his bail during a Friday court appearance, the severity of his alleged crimes. While authorities have not provided details into what led to the charges, police did confirm a “special victims unit investigation” into Bishop has been ongoing since March 30 after they received a complaint against him. The Wednesday raid, police said, included search and arrest warrants.
A 17-Year-Old Was Kidnapped In 1966 And Never Seen Again. His Friends Solved The Crime.
Today, the story of 17-year-old Danny Goldman’s disappearance sounds like the farfetched plot of a movie, but in 1966, it really happened.
On March 28, 1966, a large man with a limp broke into Aaron and Sally Goldman’s home in Surfside, Florida, using an unlocked sliding glass door, People reported. The man wore a hat and pointed a gun at the family, demanding $10,000 in cash and using the couples’ first names. As People noted, $10,000 in 1966 is equivalent to nearly $90,000 today, and the Goldman’s said they didn’t have that much lying around.
The intruder said he’d take a hostage – their son Danny.
“I’m going to hold Danny for security,” he allegedly told the family before increasing his demand to $25,000. He allegedly told them he would call that day at 6 p.m. with more instructions, but he never did. And Danny was never seen again.
Danny’s childhood friend David Graubart told People that at the time he and others “thought he’d be back in two or three days somehow, with this crazy story to tell.”
But that didn’t happen.
Aaron Goldman died in 2010. Sally died two years later. They never found out what happened to their son.
Graubart, his younger brother Joe, and several other friends including Paul Novack soon began spending their own time and resources to find out what happened to their childhood friend – and the truth is wild.
Study: Major Newspapers Deliberately Bury Race of Homicide Suspects, Unless They’re White
The study found that half of the reports about homicides committed by white offenders mention the race within the first 15 per cent of the article, while, “Half of the articles that mention a black offender’s race do not do so until at least 60 percent of the way through, and more than 20 percent save it until the last fifth of the article.”
The investigation also found that a white offender’s race is mentioned in 1 out of 4 articles, while a black offender’s race is only mentioned in 1 in 17 articles.
After the George Floyd riots, newspapers were seven times more likely to mention a white offender’s race than a black offender’s race. Before May 2020, they were only likely to mention a white offender’s race twice as often.
“A similar study analyzing media coverage from 2013 to 2015 found that the national media only picked up 9 percent of stories where a black police officer shot a black suspect but covered 38 percent of stories where a white police officer shot a black suspect,” writes Chris Menahan.
“Their bias is far worse now.”
In Idyllic Celebration, Florida, a Father Killed His Family to Prepare for the ‘Apocalypse’
A prosecutor claimed a man admitted to murdering his family to prepare for the “apocalypse” while living in the formerly Disney-affiliated community of Celebration, Florida.
Opening arguments began Monday in Osceola County Court in the case against 46-year-old Anthony Todt, who faces four counts of capital murder for the deaths of his wife and three children. He also faces one count of animal cruelty for allegedly killing Breezy, the family dog. He has pleaded not guilty.
In opening statements, prosecutor Danielle Pinnell said Todt told authorities in a confession that he and his wife had an agreement that “everybody needed to die in order to pass over to the other side together because the apocalypse was coming.”
Seattle rape cases moved to back burner, police insiders say
nvestigating sex crimes has become much less of a priority in Seattle.
In the last year, Seattle Police have forwarded far fewer sex assault cases to the King County Prosecutor’s Office. Meanwhile, arrests for sex crimes involving adults and children have plummeted: This year so far, 1.6% of cases investigated by the sexual assault and child abuse unit have resulted in an arrest, down from 14% in 2019.
This impacts adult victims most often; two employees of Seattle Police confirmed that adult sex assault cases are seldom assigned — a recent development.
In March, outside of arrests, not a single sexual assault case involving an adult victim was assigned to a detective, according to documentation provided by a Seattle Police employee.
The Seattle Police Department says there are fewer officers to investigate these crimes. The two anonymous Seattle Police employees agreed that employee retention is part of the problem; 16% of Seattle officers are on leave. Others have left permanently. But it’s not the only reason, they say.
A new mayor means a new policing strategy, and Mayor Bruce Harrell made it clear during his campaign that he aims to address “visible crime.”
Hellbound and Down 
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