The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of a Black Lives Matter (BLM) organizer whom a lower court held liable for a police officer’s injury during a protest he organized.  Brianna Herlihy of Fox News reports that during a 2016 BLM protest in Baton Rouge, initiated by organizer Deray Mckesson, a police officer was hit in the head by a rock thrown by a protester, knocking out his teeth and leaving him with a brain injury.  The officer sued Mckesson who organized the event that resulted in his injury. Specifically, the officer’s attorneys noted:   “The pattern was set: o ..read more

The following article was published on April 12 in the California Globe:  A review of the book DARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools (Max Felker-Kantor, The University of North Carolina Press) in the May 2024 issue of Reason Magazine looks back 42 years to the launch of a Reagan Administration’s effort to convince school children that taking drugs was a bad idea. The article by Joe Lancaster describes Professor Felker-Kantor’s view that the DARE program, which brought police officers into classrooms to discuss the dangers of drug use, and the First Lady’s “Just Say No ..read more

The habitual criminal sentenced to death for the kidnap, rape and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993 went before a Sonoma County Judge last week arguing that state law requires that his sentence be overturned. John Woolfolk of the Mercury News reports that Richard Allen Davis was on parole for the earlier kidnapping of a woman, when he snuck into a little girl’s bedroom, tied up her sleepover friends and kidnapped Polly at knifepoint. Nearly two months later Davis was arrested for a parole violation and when confronted with evidence tying him to Polly’s disappearance, he led police to h ..read more

A habitual felon released in 1993 after serving 11 years of a 30 year sentence for murder, has been charged with killing two additional victims while on parole. The Associated Press reports that in 1982, Raul Meza Jr., was sentenced to prison for the rape and murder of 8-year-old Kendra Page, whose body was found in a dumpster near her school in Austin. The sentence was the result of a plea bargain which dropped the rape charge, but the judge added 16 years to Meza’s sentence for a prior armed robbery conviction. Despite facing 46 years in prison, Meza was released early under then-Governor An ..read more

An Oklahoma gang member who killed two people in 2002 was put to death today by lethal injection.  Emily Mae Czachor of CBS News reports that Michael DeWayne Smith died ten minutes after injection.  A mountain of evidence including his detailed confession resulted in his conviction and death sentence, but in multiple appeals Smith claimed that he was innocent.  Facts presented in an April 26, 2007 decision by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals indicate that on February 22, 2002 Smith left his apartment armed with a .357 magnum revolver.  He went to the apartment of 41-y ..read more

An article by Ann Ley in last week’s New York Times begins:  “A string of frightening attacks in the subway amid a broader increase in crime in the system so far this year has put some New Yorkers on edge.”  The article goes on to discuss what experts believe the city and transit authorities must do to make riders “feel” safe.  While data suggests that subway crime is down slightly compared to last year, subway riders do not feel safe.  As Ann Coulter notes in a recent piece on the subject,  “the experts’ ideas were not aimed at actually reducing crime — which to be fa ..read more

While reported property crime in LA declined last year violent crime has increased according to the Los Angeles Police Department. The City News Service reports that so far this year homicides have increased 28%, robberies are up 9.5% and overall violent crime is 2.9% higher than last year. The interim Police Chief told the city’s Board of Police Commissioners last week that robberies with firearms are up by 2.9% while gang-related robberies jumped by 5.3%. The Chief also noted that residential burglaries are up 4.5%.  These increases, while not as high as 2022, reflect a growing concern ..read more

Four years ago, Daniel Hernandez died on the street in Los Angeles because of his own inexcusable act of coming at a police office with a raised knife* in his hand and continuing after repeated warnings. So, as is common these days, there were protests and a lawsuit claiming that the police violated his civil rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the federal civil rights actions on March 21 in Estate of Hernandez v. City of Los Angeles, though it held that state-law claims can go forward. Parsing the various shots fired by Officer To ..read more

As serious and violent crime is slowly retreating from their 2022 highs, juvenile crime has sharply increased.  Liberty Unyielding has this article examining what happened in New York after the legislature passed the”Raise the Age” law in 2017.  That law reduced the punishment for 16 and 17-year-old criminal offenders.  The Albany County District Attorney David Soares, who immigrated to the U.S. from Africa, witnessed the impact of that law. “Since that law passed, youth gun crime statewide has doubled—and youth gun victimization has nearly tripled. About 75 percent of violent ..read more

In 1993, Alicia Lynn Yarbrough died in a nightmare scenario. The ex-boyfriend who wouldn’t go away broke into her home with two accomplices and abducted her at gunpoint, leaving her baby unattended in the house. The three men later gang-raped her, forced her back into the car, and drove to another location. Willie James Pye then forced her to lie face down and shot her three times. There is no doubt of guilt. The accomplice’s confession is confirmed by DNA. Long overdue justice was finally carried out last night, the first execution in Georgia since the pandemic. Atlanta News First has this st ..read more