Tag: crime

Brittanee Drexel’s remains found 13 years after her South Carolina disappearance

The remains of a 17-year-old Rochester girl were found in South Carolina last week more than a decade after she vanished on a spring break trip to Myrtle Beach — and a man has been arrested for her murder, law enforcement officials announced Monday.

The body of Brittanee Drexel, who was reported missing on April 25, 2009, was discovered Wednesday in Georgetown County, not far from the popular vacation destination where she was last seen, the Georgetown County sheriff said at a press conference Monday.

“This is truly a mother’s worst nightmare,” Brittanee’s mother, Dawn Drexel, said at the press conference.

“I’m mourning my beautiful daughter Brittanee as I have been for 13 years, but today it’s bittersweet. We are much closer to the closure and the peace that we have been desperately hoping for.”

Police arrested career sex offender Raymond Douglas Moody of Georgetown and charged him with murder, kidnapping and criminal sexual conduct in the first degree.

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Police Chief Arrested, Jailed for Running a Meth Distribution Ring

If we were to declare a winner in the War on Drugs today, there would be no question that drugs won. Despite tens of billions of dollars wasted, hundreds of thousands of innocent lives ruined or ended, and the construction of the largest prison population on the planet, the American drug problem is worse off now than it ever was before.

Nothing highlights this epic failure of the war on drugs quite like cops getting busted selling or using drugs. When the ones who are tasked with fighting this senseless war, choose the other side, this should be a red flag that it’s not working. And this happens all the time.

As the following example illustrates, even top cops have jumped ship and are choosing the side of drugs — shamelessly betraying the trust of the public they serve to use their badge to profit in this corrupt game.

A police chief in Oklahoma was arrested over the weekend for using his position to run a meth distribution operation. Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics officials said law enforcement arrested Calvin Police Chief Joe Don Chitwood at his home after an investigation began in April.

“This investigation began in mid-April after receiving information that Chitwood was both using and selling methamphetamine in Hughes County,” Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics spokesperson Mark Woodward said in the news release. “OBN and DEA worked a joint investigation that resulted in Chitwood’s arrest.”

Though police didn’t go into detail on the amount of meth found at Chitwood’s home, he was charged with multiple counts of distribution, meaning it wasn’t just a personal amount.

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Man confesses to Queens murder, called victim a ‘witch’ who cursed him: NYPD

A man charged in the fatal shooting of a woman in Queens reportedly confessed to detectives, also saying the victim — a psychic who does tarot card readings in her home — was a “witch” who had cursed him to his death.

Authorities say 41-year-old Giuseppe Canzani walked up to 51-year-old Anna Torres’ home, located on 109th Avenue in Ozone Park, around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, knocked on the door, and fired three shots when she opened the door, striking the victim twice.

Torres, whose son is an NYPD officer, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police officials said Canzani told investigators that Torres had tried to kill him with her curses.

“They tried to kill me,” he reportedly said. “I am supposed to be dead already.”

In surveillance video obtained by Eyewitness News, school children can be seen running as the crack of gunfire echoed down 109th Avenue.

Seconds later, a man matching Canzani who appeared to be holding a silver gun in his right hand, was captured casually walking from the home at the corner of 96th Street, before getting into the driver’s seat of a black Chevy Traverse.

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Bodies surfacing in Lake Mead recall mob’s time in Las Vegas

Las Vegas is being flooded with lore about organized crime after a second set of human remains emerged within a week from the depths of a drought-stricken Colorado River reservoir just a 30-minute drive from the notoriously mob-founded Strip.

“There’s no telling what we’ll find in Lake Mead,” former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said Monday. “It’s not a bad place to dump a body.”

Goodman, as a lawyer, represented mob figures including the ill-fated Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro before serving three terms as a martini-toting mayor making public appearances with a showgirl on each arm.

He declined to name names about who might turn up in the vast reservoir formed by Hoover Dam between Nevada and Arizona.

“I’m relatively sure it was not Jimmy Hoffa,” he laughed. But he added that a lot of his former clients seemed interested in “climate control” — mob speak for keeping the lake level up and bodies down in their watery graves.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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‘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.

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