The city of Seattle, once kn own for its laid-back lifestyle, is experiencing a sharp rise in violent crime and murder, despite passage of several gun control measures. (GoodFreePhotos)
By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Violent crime is continuing to surge in the city of Seattle and surrounding King County, where the number of homicides in the city this year has already surpassed last year’s body count, and with three months remaining in 2024, a new record could be reached.
According to the Seattle Times, there have been 114 killings in King County as of Sept. 29, which brings the total to 114, just shy of the 119 investigated in both 2021 and 2022. Half of those murders have been inside the Seattle city limits, which carries no small amount of irony since the city is headquarters to the billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobby responsible for two restrictive statewide gun control initiatives in 2014 and 2018, both of which were sold to the public as mechanisms to reduce violent crime.
Perhaps one result of this has been a rebound over the past two months of concealed pistol license numbers in the county. The Department of Licensing says there are now 696,540 active CPLs in Washington, of which 111,332 are held by King County residents. Roughly 25 percent of those licenses are held by women. Last month at this time, there were 693,551 active CPLs statewide, including 110,627 in King County.
The numbers represent a rebound from a six-month decline in the number of active licenses, which hit 698,147 back on March 31.
KOMO News, the local ABC affiliate, is reporting September was a “deadly” month with 10 homicides, more than double the number of murders during the same month in 2022 (4) and 2021 (3).
Why are the number of active CPLs moving back up? It could be related to the loss of some 600 commissioned police officers in Seattle over the past three years, since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted.
And reports about rising violent crime, coupled with police manpower losses, could be factors as well. Washington has been nudging the 700,000 mark for carry licenses for the past year. It might meet that threshold by year’s end if the rebound continues.
KOMO is reporting comments from people who say they “don’t feel safe around the city,” and the station quoted one individual specifically citing reports of “shootings and stabbings.”
But with this news, Seattle-based gun prohibitionists are mute. Their gun control restrictions have been, according to Second Amendment activists, total failures. Only law-abiding citizens have been inconvenienced, while criminals have continued hurting and killing people.
Here’s a look back at the history of gun control in Washington since 2014:
2014 – Voters approve anti-gun Initiative 594 after proponents spent more than $10 million in a lopsided campaign to pass the measure. It requires so-called “universal background checks” on all firearm transfers, with certain exemptions for family members.
2015 – The Seattle City Council adopts a Chicago-style tax on retail firearm and ammunition sales. Proponents project annual revenue between $300,000 and $500,000, which has never come close. The money would ostensibly go to anti-violence programs. Since 2016, the first full year of tax collection, the number of homicides in the city has more than doubled.
2018 – Washington voters again approve a gun control initiative (I-1639), this one inventing a definition for a “semi-automatic assault weapon” and prohibiting young adults ages 18-20 from buying them. It also requires proof of training within the previous five years in order to complete the purchase.
2022 – The Washington Legislature passes the magazine ban and is immediately sued by the Second Amendment Foundation and several others.
2023 – The Legislature passes a ban on so-called “assault weapons” and is immediately sued in federal court, again by the Second Amendment Foundation and others. Another bill signed by Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee requires proof of safety training for any firearm purchase and expands the waiting period on gun purchases to ten days.
Looking back to 2018 when I-1639 was on the ballot, gun right activists predicted anti-gunners would eventually move to ban the firearms they had taken so much trouble to define. Their concerns were largely dismissed or ignored by the media, and that remains the case today.
Kathleen Boelyn, the mother of Johnny Hurley, who was killed a year ago during a shooting in Arvada, holds a photo of her son while standing in her Colorado Springs garden on Tuesday, June 14, 2022.
The active shooter was wearing black shorts, a floppy hat and tactical gear, and he had already killed an Arvada police officer. He was shooting out windows in police cars in a busy shopping and restaurant district in Olde Town Arvada during lunch hour one year ago.
Three fellow officers in a nearby substation — in shorts and polo shirts — were worried they weren’t wearing the right gear to safely face him. They instead watched the man with an AR-15 from the window as he walked toward the main square of Olde Town, according to investigative documents.
Johnny Hurley, 40, was shopping at an Army surplus store a block over and peered out the window, spotting the shooter. He ran out of the store and removed his concealed gun at his waist, beneath his shirt.
SPONSOR MESSAGE
Hurley had trained for active shooter situations — not because it was part of his work, but because he wanted to help people and save lives.
Crouching down, he ran across a vacant, shady plaza with umbrellas and tables, gripping his gun as it pointed toward the ground. Hurley knelt down behind a brick wall and carefully watched the shooter. Hurley took aim and fired six rounds from his handgun, five struck the gunman, according to his lawyers.
The entire scene was captured on surveillance camera footage.
“I have to admit it’s kind of exciting to see the way he handled himself,” said his mother, Kathleen Boleyn. “The way he took all the training and practice that he’s had and did the right thing.”
Hurley continued to try to do the right thing — he moved to disarm the gunman, who was still alive and lying on the ground with his AR-15 nearby, according to Boleyn’s attorneys.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsA memorial to Johnny Hurley in the driveway of Hurley’s mother, Kathleen Boelyn, in Colorado Springs on Tuesday, June 14, 2022. Hurley was killed in a shooting last year in Arvada.
Officers saw Hurley from the safety of the substation.
They stayed inside because they worried even the door itself wouldn’t stop a round from an AR-15, according to investigative documents.
Even though Hurley didn’t look anything like the suspect description, they told investigators in an interview later that they couldn’t tell if he was a possibly a second shooter. They had no idea one of their own, Officer Gordon Beesley, had been killed just two minutes earlier.
“That’s the information that Arvada did not want the public to know,” said Siddhartha Rathod, the attorney representing Hurley’s family. “The officers hid while Johnny did what they were trained to do, that the officers refused to go outside. These are three officers with bulletproof vests on, and they refused to open the door and go and engage the shooter.”
For 11 seconds, the officers watched Hurley from behind as he was trying to remove ammunition from the automatic rifle, according to court filings. Without announcing “police” or asking him to drop the weapon, Arvada Officer Kraig Brownlow opened the substation door and took aim at Hurley from behind, hitting him in his back pelvis and killing him.
“If they would’ve simply said, ‘Police,’ Johnny would be here today,” Rathod said.
In an interview in Rathod’s office earlier this month, Hurley’s mother looked at the floor.
“Absolutely,” she said. “That was very much a part of his training. Any announcement, any suggestion to put down your weapon, if they would have said, ‘Police, put down your weapon,’ … he would have dropped it.”
This week is the one-year anniversary of the incident, and Hurley’s family filed a civil rights lawsuit against Brownlow and the Arvada Police Chief Link Strate alleging their actions and the police department’s own policies deprived Hurley of his constitutionally protected rights.
Arvada Mayor Marc Williams said June 21, 2021, was the hardest day of his life as mayor.
“We still mourn the loss of Officer Gordon Beesley and are so thankful for the service of the Arvada Police Department,” he said. “And at the same time we still think about Johnny Hurley. It’s tragic because of the actions of a crazed gunman, we lost two very good men that day.”
Williams said he feels badly for the Hurley family.
“I wish I knew the man,” he said. “He was someone who was willing to step into a very dangerous situation … The tragedy of him picking up the gunman’s rifle will always haunt everyone.”
But Rathod, the family lawyer, said the juxtaposition of Hurley’s actions compared to the officers is stark.
“When Johnny heard the shots, he opened the door and faced the danger,” Rathod said.
The gunman, Ronald Troyke, had a troubled history with the Arvada Police.
After a series of personal problems, he grew increasingly isolated and agitated. And he grew extremely angry at the police, constantly binging on anti-police videos, according to court documents.
Just a couple of weeks before this shooting, he confronted Officer Kraig Brownlow, Sterling Boom and Michael Hall, the three officers who watched him from the substation just days later storm the shopping district with an assault rifle. Troyke called them “terrible people” and “sovereign citizens,” court documents said.
The day of the shooting, Troyke told his sister the police weren’t taking him seriously. His sister called APD and asked for a welfare check. She noted he had a lot of weapons at his disposal. The officer who tried to do that check was Beesley, the officer whom Troyke killed shortly later. Beesley knocked on his door, but Troyke had already taken off for Olde Town.
Mark Wise was the one witness who saw the entire episode as he and a colleague were leaving a restaurant in the town square. When the gunman shot and killed Beesley right in front of Wise, he dove for cover behind parked cars and called 911. He then watched Hurley run toward the gunman, stop, and kill him.
“In that moment when Johnny was running towards me, I didn’t know if he was friend or foe,” Wise said, in a tribute video made by Hurley’s lawyers. “I stayed because something about his presence told me this was going to be OK.”
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsKathleen Boelyn, the mother of Johnny Hurley, lights a candle for a photographer to show a small shrine to Hurley in her Colorado Springs home on Tuesday, June 14, 2022.
Boleyn spent a Sunday with Hurley the day before he was killed.
She has weathered a year as a mother living through all of the firsts without her son — the hole at Christmas, a birthday he wasn’t there to celebrate, Mother’s Day.
“When you were having fun with Johnny, there wasn’t anybody else you wanted to be with,” she said. “He just made fun things more fun.”
On what would have been his 41st birthday last August, she went to a horse farm to honor him. Hurley’s sister, Erin, took a group of his friends up camping, an activity the two loved to do together. They brought Hurley’s camping chair and set it up with a photo of him, his floppy camouflage hat and a beer in the cupholder.
“Johnny was a very protective big brother. He always looked out for me, always made sure I was safe, always made sure I felt safe,” she said, in the tribute video. “If I could say one thing to him right now it would be that I love you.”
Hurley was a dilettante who had passions ranging from individual gun rights to cooking to skateboarding to rap music to film. He was a trained chef and picked up catering jobs during the pandemic. He gave away clothes and underwear to homeless people and was known for his gigs drumming in local music establishments. He loved camping. He set up a “hug machine” on the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver once and doled out “free” hugs to strangers.
Hurley’s mother said if he wanted to learn something about a subject, he dove in. He went to cooking school and learned how to develop his own recipes when he wanted to learn how to cook. When he became interested in mass shootings and how to help people, he took active shooting training classes.
“He had great compassion for people, and this came out in stories that I heard,” Boleyn said, noting one other time he saved someone’s life who was having trouble swimming in a creek.
His friend Douglas Evans said Hurley was “someone you could take to the revolution or take to your mom’s house.”
When Hurley took active-shooting courses, Boleyn said his instructor cautioned him to use his training wisely.
The instructor told Hurley that he had kids, and he wasn’t sure what decision he would make in a critical moment, fearing for his own family.
“And Johnny said, “Well, I’m not married. I don’t have children,’” Boleyn recalled the instructor telling her.
Boleyn was asleep when federal agents knocked on her door late that Monday night a year ago to tell her that Hurley had been killed. They didn’t give her any details, but they assured her he had done nothing wrong, that he had not broken any laws.
Her daughter, Erin Hurley, had already gotten the knock on the door. She said she crumpled to the ground when representatives from the Jefferson County coroner’s office told her about her brother. She immediately got in the car to drive to Colorado Springs, where Boleyn lives, to be with her mother.
That week was a bit of a blur for Boleyn. She remembers victims’ advocates warning her not to talk to the media and not to watch the news. She didn’t know anything about how Hurley had died. She went to Olde Town Arvada where there was a growing memorial to honor both Hurley and Beesley, the officer who was first gunned down by the shooter.
“People were laying flowers and it kept growing and growing, and I wanted people to know I was his mother,” Boleyn said. “I would just tell people that I was his mother and people were so loving and so beautiful.”
Boleyn and Hurley’s sister had a meeting with officers that Friday, four days after he was killed.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsMemorial cards to Johnny Hurley, left, and Arvada Police Officer Gordon Beesley, in the Colorado Springs home of Hurley’s mother, Kathleen Boelyn, on Tuesday, June 14, 2022.
It wasn’t until then she learned police officers killed her son.
“When we learned that it was an officer who shot Johnny, that was confusing and shocking and unbelievable,” Boleyn said. “I was grateful that (Arvada Police) Chief Strate in his public address referred to Johnny as a hero.”
There were discussions between Hurley’s family, their lawyers and the city of Arvada for a year. Ultimately, Rathod said they had to file this suit to get justice for Hurley.
“When you compare the action of the Arvada police to the heroism of Johnny, it is a stark contrast,” he said. “And then when you magnify it with their conscious decision to not announce themselves and to shoot Johnny in the back, when he was unloading the weapon, when he did not match the description of the shooter that they had seen, when he did not pose a threat to anyone, it is just unbelievable. Their conduct is unbelievable.”
Late last year, after reading and analyzing more than 1,000 pages of investigative reports and interviews, Jefferson County District Attorney Alexis King made a decision not to press charges against Officer Brownlow, the officer who killed Hurley.
She determined the shooting was justified and that the officer was acting in self-defense or defense of others.
“Though the acts of John Hurley were nothing short of heroic, the facts must be viewed as they appeared to Officer Brownlow at the time,” wrote King in her decision letter on the case. “Officer Brownlow did not know, and could not have known from his vantage point, of the murder of Officer Beesley or of Hurley’s role in eliminating the threat posed by the man in black.”
Arvada Police told reporters after King’s decision they were going to undergo evaluations about what happened. They did that evaluation, a spokesman, Detective Dave Snelling said.
“Our review of all the facts in this tragic incident reveals no policy or procedural violations were made by any Arvada Police Department member in this unprecedented set of circumstances,” Snelling said.
Brownlow resigned from the agency after the incident. He did not return messages seeking comment.
In her residential Colorado Springs neighborhood, Boleyn had a shrine up in her driveway honoring her son all last summer.
She planted fresh flowers and neighbors stopped to pay tribute. She’s going to plant a garden for him in the front this year. She always has a wreath on the door adorned with a black ribbon.
“There is pride that is mixed with the grief,” she said, her voice weakening. “If you have to lose your child … isn’t this the way? I think when I look at his life in how he was and who he was, this really was him. I was the lucky one who got to be his mom.”
She also recently decided to get a vanity plate on her car. It reads: “HROS MOM.”
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsIn the driveway of her Colorado Springs home, Kathleen Boelyn, the mother of Johnny Hurley, touches part of a memorial to her son on Tuesday, June 14, 2022.
When the Department of Homeland Security launched a search for new service pistols, Heckler & Koch was selected to provide pistols to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
In addition to the standard-issue Heckler & Koch P2000 Compact LEM pistol in .40 S&W, a small contingent of Border Patrol BORTAC agents assigned to the national team based at SOG headquarters in El Paso, Texas, carry the HK P30L (Long) LEM service pistol in .40 S&W.
NEXT-GEN DESIGN
Even though the HK P30 and the HK P2000 Compact share a number of parts, the P30 is a more modern design that has improved ergonomics, including a special grip frame with interchangeable backstrap inserts and lateral plates, allowing the pistol to be individually adapted to any user.
So-called “red flag laws” have become a recent favorite of gun control activists, who portray them as a way to keep firearms out of “dangerous hands.” The laws empower judges to issue case-by-case firearm prohibition and confiscation orders, upon a petitioner’s showing that the respondent of the order poses a danger to themselves or others.
The concept has at times held superficial appeal even to those who might normally support Second Amendment rights. But it’s constitutionality and efficacy wilt under close, critical scrutiny, which is why the NRA opposes the concept.
Last week, an unusually revealing article by Bridge Michigan, an independent news source from the Wolverine State, brought another critical voice to the debate: that of the police who will actually be tasked with executing the orders. Entitled “Michigan police agencies sweating enforcement of ‘red flag’ gun laws,” it vividly underscores the difference between theory and practice when it comes to gun control.
Among the officials quoted in the article is Robert Stevenson, executive director of the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police. He said he supports the idea that people who are “not mentally balanced” should not have firearms, but he is concerned with the practicalities of how police will enforce Michigan’s new red flag law, which takes effect next spring. Stevenson offered several scenarios in which the supposedly “lifesaving” law could itself pose lethal risks.
As he explained to Bridge Michigan:
What happens if the person with the order tries to hurt the officers? What if the person who was deemed suicidal becomes overwhelmed and still poses harm to themselves when their guns are being seized? What if the individual with an order has to be detained by force or even be killed, due to the threat they pose?
From the citizen’s perspective, Stevenson said, it could be a case of: “We’re trying to save somebody in the family. We went to the police to save them, and they killed them.”
The legislator who spearheaded Michigan’s red flag effort, Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-Royal Oak), claimed to Bridge Michigan she “studied the laws in other states, such as California and Florida” and “found no instances of a gun being fired during a seizure of weapons.”
Sen. McMorrow’s research, however, was seriously flawed.
A simple Internet inquiry should have revealed to her that Gary J. Willis, a 61-year-old African American man, was killed by police in Anne Arundel, Md., as they attempted to retrieve his firearm under a red flag order shortly after 5:00 a.m. on Nov. 5, 2018.
Willis’s wife, Dolly, was also home at the time. Police claim that Willis became increasingly agitated as officers explained the requirements of the order to him and that he reached for the gun after he had voluntarily set it aside at their request.
Willis died on the scene after being shot at least five times by police. A Baltimore Sun article quoted the local police chief as saying the execution of red flag orders involves, by definition, “a tense, dangerous situation,” one he would prefer to be handled by SWAT teams.
Gun control advocates like to claim any intrusion on constitutional rights is justified, if it “could save just one life.” Apparently, however, they don’t hold themselves to that same standard when promoting policies that themselves pose lethal risks.
Also expressing skepticism of the red flag concept to Bridge Michigan was Matt Saxton, the executive director of the Michigan Sheriffs’ Association. Sexton said his “organization was never asked to comment on conversations of how to enforce the new law.”
He described being “left in the dark, not sure what to strategize for and what to envision when [the new law] takes effect.” It appeared to him that localities would be left to figure out the logistics of implementation on their own, perhaps in collaboration with each other. Sexton told Bridge Michigan “he doesn’t believe that extreme risk protection [i.e., red flag] laws are the best laws that could be passed,” but he hopes for the best.
No wonder that the most consistent experience states have when passing red flag laws is to later discover they are little known, little utilized, and don’t live up to their billing as a game-changing way to prevent “gun violence.”
A Duke University sociologist who studies red flag laws and their effects told PBS, “It’s too small a pebble to make a ripple. … It’s as if the law doesn’t exist.”
When a law is almost universally treated as if it doesn’t exist, it may be because it should have never existed in the first place. Disuse, indeed, might be the best that could be hoped for when it comes to red flag laws.
Thomas Byrnes became one of the most famous crime fighters of the late 19th century by supervising the newly created detective division of the New York Police Department. Known for his relentless drive to innovate, Byrnes was widely credited for pioneering the use of modern police tools such as mugshots.
Byrnes was also known to get very rough with criminals, and openly boasted of having invented a harsh interrogation technique he called “the third degree.” And though Byrnes was widely lauded at the time, some of his practices would be unacceptable in the modern era.
After attaining widespread celebrity for his war on criminals, and becoming chief of the entire New York Police Department, Byrnes came under suspicion during corruption scandals of the 1890s. A famous reformer brought in to clean up the department, future president Theodore Roosevelt, forced Byrnes to resign.
It was never proven that Byrnes had been corrupt. But it was evident that his friendships with some of the wealthiest New Yorkers helped him amass a large fortune while receiving a modest public salary.
Despite ethical questions, there is no question Byrnes had an impact on the city. He was involved with solving major crimes for decades, and his police career aligned with historic events from the New York Draft Riots to well-publicized crimes of the Gilded Age.
Early Life of Thomas Byrnes
Byrnes was born in Ireland in 1842 and came to America with his family as an infant. Growing up in New York City, he received a very basic education, and at the outbreak of the Civil War he was working at a manual trade.
He volunteered in the spring of 1861 to serve in a unit of Zouaves organized by Col. Elmer Ellsworth, who would become famous as the first great Union hero of the war. Byrnes served in the war for two years, and returned home to New York and joined the police force.
As a rookie patrolman, Byrnes showed considerable bravery during the New York Draft Riots in July 1863. He reportedly saved the life of a superior officer, and recognition of his bravery helped him rise in the ranks.
Police Hero
In 1870 Byrnes became a captain of the police force and in that capacity he began investigating noteworthy crimes. When the flamboyant Wall Street manipulator Jim Fisk was shot in January 1872, it was Byrnes who questioned both victim and assassin.
The fatal shooting of Fisk was a front-page story in the New York Times on January 7, 1872, and Byrnes received prominent mention. Byrnes had gone to the hotel where Fisk lay wounded, and took a statement from him before he died.
The Fisk case brought Byrnes into contact with an associate of Fisk, Jay Gould, who would become one of the richest men in America. Gould realized the value of having a good friend on the police force and he began feeding stock tips and other financial advice to Byrnes.
The robbery of the Manhattan Savings Bank in 1878 attracted enormous interest, and Byrnes received nationwide attention when he solved the case. He developed a reputation for possessing great detective skill, and was placed in charge of the detective bureau of the New York Police Department.
The Third Degree
Byrnes became widely known as “Inspector Byrnes,” and was viewed as a legendary crime fighter. The writer Julian Hawthorne, the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, published a series of novels billed as being “From the Diary of Inspector Byrnes.” In the public mind, the glamorized version of Byrnes took precedence over whatever the reality might be.
While Byrnes did indeed solve many crimes, his techniques would certainly be considered highly questionable today. He regaled the public with tales of how he coerced criminals into confessing after he outwitted them. Yet there’s little doubt that confessions were also extracted with beatings.
Byrnes proudly took credit for an intense form of interrogation he termed “the third degree.” According to his account, he would confront the suspect with the details of his crime, and thereby trigger a mental breakdown and confession.
In 1886 Byrnes published a book entitled Professional Criminals of America. In its pages, Byrnes detailed the careers of notable thieves and provided detailed descriptions of notorious crimes. While the book was ostensibly published to help fight crime, it also did much to bolster the reputation of Byrnes as America’s top cop.
Downfall
By the 1890s Byrnes was famous and considered a national hero. When the financier Russell Sage was attacked in a bizarre bombing in 1891, it was Byrnes who solved the case (after first taking the bomber’s severed head to be identified by the recuperating Sage). Press coverage of Byrnes was typically very positive, but trouble lay ahead.
In 1894 the Lexow Commission, a New York State government committee, began investigating corruption in the New York Police Department. Byrnes, who had amassed a personal fortune of $350,000 while earning a police salary of $5,000 a year, was questioned aggressively about his wealth.
He explained that friends on Wall Street, including Jay Gould, had been giving him stock tips for years. No evidence was ever made public proving Byrnes had broken the law, but his career came to an abrupt end in the spring of 1895.
The new head of the board which oversaw the New York Police Department, future president Theodore Roosevelt, pushed Byrnes out of his job. Roosevelt personally disliked Byrnes, whom he considered a braggart.
Brynes opened a private detective agency which gained clients from Wall Street firms. He died of cancer on May 7, 1910. Obituaries in the New York City newspapers generally looked back nostalgically on his glory years of the 1870s and 1880s, when he dominated the police department and was widely admired as “Inspector Byrnes.”
I see this becoming a trend, and not just in Britishland:
This is the moment have-a-go-heroes swooped on thieves allegedly loading up their cars with stolen groceries.
Video shows three men throwing shopping into their cars in a Tesco’s car park in Waltham Abbey, Essex, yesterday. The trio are seen hastily shoving groceries into a black Volkswagen polo from a shopping trolley before jumping into the car.
But before they drive away a group of men storm the vehicle and start demanding the alleged thieves get out of the car. They open the doors and begin to pull the alleged shoplifters out of the car as they attempt to fight back.
Shocked witnesses are heard saying “call the police” as a Tesco security worker arrives and attempts to open the boot.
The men manage to get the alleged thieves out of the car — and a struggle to restrain the men ensues. One of then alleged thieves attempts to headbutt one of the men and ends up falling to the ground.
Eventually the rozzers put in an appearance, and in a shocking move, arrest the thieves and not the men who intervened (this is the UK, after all).
And as I never tire of saying: We do not “take the law into our own hands” when we do stuff like this, for the simple reason that the law never left our hands; we simply deputize its enforcement to agents of the State.
But when those agents are not on the scene or unwilling to do their duty, it is our civic duty to intervene.
Frankly, if I’d been involved and some punk tried to head-butt me, he’d end up in fucking hospital. Believe it.
Here’s a little something that can absolutely be laid at the door of the “let ’em all in” (a.k.a. the Biden border policy) phenomenon:
A sheriff in Michigan is sounding the alarm over a rise in gangs of illegal aliens getting into the United States for the sole purpose of burglarizing Americans.
Oakland County, Michigan Sheriff Michael Bouchard, as well as other law enforcement agencies across the U.S., is warning that illegal aliens from the southern border are burglarizing members of their communities at an increasing rate.
“These are transnational gangs that are involved in this that come from South America, looking to do burglaries and violate our communities, not just in Oakland County but across America,” Bouchard said.
The Brits have been experiencing this for well over a decade, as well-organized criminal gangs (especially from Eastern Europe) have not only been expanding drug- and prostitute-related activities, but creating gangs of smash-and-grab thieves and burglary rings. Of course, this was facilitated by the EU policy of open borders and the reluctance of Brit politicians to do anything meaningful about it — which has been mirrored most recently in the U.S.A. by feckless politicians like Biden and his lickspittle accomplices in Homeland Security, INS and even our alleged “law enforcement” officials like prosecutors and the Fibbies.
Of course, the thieving activities of organized gangs has also been facilitated by crime groups such as Black Lives Matter — a local criminal organization given free rein by both state- and local governments — so it’s not just furriners.
This has been especially true in urban areas where a gang of say twenty thugs can crash a retail establishment and loot the place utterly without too much fear of arrest, let alone incarceration. So far, the response has just been that the affected retailer groups have shut their inner-city stores, which is fine for chains like Target or Wal-Mart, but not so fine for single-store owners who have three options: change the format from self-service to counter-service operation; close the store and lose their livelihood, or (in some memorable cases) employ armed guards to ensure that such raids will be met with force.
Of course, where the last of those three courses has been adopted, theft has dropped precipitously or disappeared altogether. Which brings me back to burglary.
Most lower-middle or working-class houses offer poor pickings to any organized crime gangs simply because there’s not much to steal and the game isn’t worth the candle. Likewise, ultra-wealthy households are often protected by good alarm systems or even armed guards because those homeowners can afford such measures.
What’s left is the vulnerable middle- and upper-middle classes who may have some stuff that justifies an armed invasion, and not the means to protect it adequately.
Expect therefore that this kind of larcenous activity is going to grow in more affluent suburbs (like, maybe, Plano TX).
And you all know what I’m going to say about that:
…and:
…etc.
If enough of these assholes are killed trying to break into suburban homes, it may make them a little less keen to try it.
Just a thought.
However, if you live in an area where wasting a couple choirboys is going to get you arrested rather than congratulated by the local cops, you may need to reconsider your living arrangements.
At the Republican debate on Wednesday night, former Vice President Mike Pence posited a solution to curtail mass killings in the U.S.: implementing an expedited death penalty for convicted active shooters.
“I’m someone that believes that justice delayed is justice denied. … As a grandfather of three beautiful little girls, I’m sick and tired of the mass shootings happening in the United States of America,” Pence said.
“And if I’m president of the United States, I’m going to go to the Congress of the United States, and we’re going to pass a federal expedited death penalty for anyone involved in a mass shooting, so they will meet their fate in months, not years,” he continued.
Pence then remarked on the Parkland tragedy, calling it “unconscionable” that the perpetrator of the Marjory Stoneman-Douglas High School massacre did not get to meet his maker. Instead, the assailant received a life sentence.
“That’s not justice. We have to mete out justice and send a message to the would-be killers that you are not going to live out your days behind bars,” Pence said.
“That’s not justice. We have to mete out justice and send a message to the would-be killers that you are not going to live out your days behind bars,” Pence said. (Photo: Fox Business)
Pence’s statements on the hallowed stage of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., certainly resonated far and wide.
Newsom Weighs In On Using Death Penalty to Deter Mass Shooters
California Gov. Gavin Newsom was apoplectic after hearing the former vice president double down on his position.
“Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic,” Newsom told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “He’s been saying this now for months. I cringe every time I hear this.”
Newsom argued that many of these killers don’t plan to see the light of day following their attacks.
“What a joke, that that somehow is a deterrent,” chided Newsom. “Number one killer of our kids is guns, and that was a solution tonight? That was a debate for the next president of the United States on how to deal with mass shootings? I don’t want to say disqualifying. But honestly, for a former vice president, pathetic.”
Newsom, of course, believes the best way to end mass shootings is to roll back the rights of law-abiding gun owners via restrictions on concealed carry (more gun-free zones), “sin taxes” on firearms and ammunition, sweeping bans on commonly owned firearms and accessories, and fallible technologies like microstamping.
In your estimation, who has the better plan? Mike Pence or Gov. Newsom?
_______________________________________________________Now I am no fan of Pence but this time he is spot on compared to my Governor Greasehead. That & I am all in favor or recycling i.e. hanging. In thats its cheaper and the rope can be used over and over. Grumpy
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…etc.