Crime, Criminology, and Criminal Justice Podcast for Friday, March 10, 2023

So, why do I do this podcast and write so much about the American criminal justice system? It’s because we are in chaos. We are allowing 5% of the population to dictate to 95% of the population on what policies should be enacted in our Country. And unfortunately, many of the 95% are not willing to be public about their concerns. As a criminologist and retired sheriff, I can tell you there are many opportunities for improvement in the criminal justice system, and I write and speak about these opportunities often, but that fact is that most modern-day public policy is driven mainly by feelings and not facts. As I said there are improvements in the criminal justice public policy arena, but I will continue to warn America about systematic changes that are unwarranted and dangerous to our Democratic Republic. And that’s why I am America’s Criminologist, I care about this country, the Constitution of the United States and the freedoms that have been endowed by our Creator. And that’s my criminal justice memo for the week.

Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department Chief Robert Contee cut to the chase on how to get homicides down during a press conference with the mayor on Monday about crime in the district.  “If we really want to see homicides go down … keep bad guys with guns in jail,” Contee said. He was asked during the press conference if he expected the Council of the District of Columbia to change its approach to crime now that homicides have risen 30% so far this year, the Washington Examiner reported.  “Right now, the average homicide suspect has been arrested 11 times prior to them committing a homicide. That is a problem,” Contee said.  The topics covered during the press conference included the city council’s failed legislation to soften penalties on violent crimes through revisions to the criminal code. 

Continuing on with crime in our Nation’s Capital, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution of disapproval on Wednesday to block the Washington, D.C., Council’s Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022, which would lower penalties for a number of violent criminal offenses. The Daily Caller first broke the news on the legislation on Feb. 2. The vote was 81-14. A total of 33 Democrats voted with Republicans to pass the bill. “I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the mayor’s objections – such as lowering penalties for carjackings. If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did – I’ll sign it,” President Biden said. “Furthermore, this marks the first time in thirty years that Congress has effectively used its exclusive legislative authority over D.C. Despite the Council’s efforts to worsen the crime crisis by emboldening dangerous criminals, Congress quickly acted to protect Americans and restore law and order in Washington. Both the Council’s inability to govern and the sweeping bipartisan support for striking down the Council’s law underscore the need for Congress to retake its full constitutional authority to manage Washington’s affairs as our Founders intended,” Clyde told the Caller Congress can exercise authority over D.C. local affairs, according to the District Clause of the Constitution and Congress reviews all D.C. legislation before it can become law.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Sunday that fellow Democrat Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s election defeat last week should serve as a "warning sign for the country," rejecting criticism that he is feeding into the Republican narrative on crime in addressing public safety concerns in the Big Apple.  "Public safety is a prerequisite to prosperity. Same as Chicago, like New York, and many of our big cities across America," Adams said during an appearance on CNN’s "State of the Union. “We are focused on public safety because people want to be safe. They don't feel safe. And they actually say then you're going to lose control of your city." Asked if he considered what happened to Lightfoot a warning sign for him in New York, Adams countered, "To the contrary, I think is a warning sign for the country." 

A few weeks after a shootout with police left an Antifa protester dead and a Georgia State Trooper injured, the “Defend the Atlanta Forest” movement of the far-left has firebombed the construction site of a future public training facility for the city of Atlanta. The domestic terrorist action came about as part of a “Week of Action” that the far-left group announced last month. “Forest defenders have taken over the police surveillance outpost on the power line clearing near Intrenchment Creek.  Police retreated after crowd arrived at barbed wire fence and shot fireworks into the area. These people are brazenly flaunting their handiwork. They don’t even care who knows anymore.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said Sunday she will be introducing a resolution declaring Antifa a terrorist group in response to protests in Atlanta that left a police training facility on fire. "Antifa are domestic terrorists and I'm introducing my resolution to officially declare them a terrorist organization on Tuesday," the congresswoman wrote in a tweet Sunday night. "This is domestic terrorism. It was planned for weeks and announced on social media. Antifa are self proclaimed communists and consistently organize to attack our government over and over again. They should be taken seriously and not tolerated anymore," she wrote. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., similarly introduced a resolution in 2021 to designate Antifa a terrorist organization, but it failed to receive any traction in the House, which was controlled by Democrats at the time.

The clearance rate for homicides in the United States in 2020 dipped to around 50%, continuing a downward trend that has plagued the country for the last 40 years. America now ranks last among Western nations for murder clearance rates. The rate at which murders are solved decreased from 71% in 1980 to an all-time low of almost 50% in 2020, making America the first developed nation where most homicides go unsolved, according to Thomas Hargrove, founder of the Murder Accountability Project. Hargrove said there are countries in Europe solving more than 70% of their homicides, "rates that we haven't seen for a long time in this country." "Frankly, we're last among developed nations," Hargrove told the Washington Examiner. "And we're a bit of sore thumb. We stick out. We are underperforming compared to what most Western democracies are performing."

In San Francisco both mask and vaccine mandates will expire, including for healthcare facilities. Few people are aware of this, but the CDC’s own healthcare mask requirements were dropped months ago–back in September 2022, in fact. Chances are if you have been required to wear a mask to enter a doctor’s office or similar facility wearing a mask, it was your state or the facility that required it. The CDC no longer does. But San Francisco’s Health Officer Susan Philip knows better, and she has issued an order that makes it a crime to enter any of 15 types of facilities, including healthcare facilities, prisons, long-term care facilities, or 12 other similar institutions without a “well-fitted face mask.” A crime. Meaning you can go to jail or be fined for not wearing a mask, despite the CDC and now the State of California admitting that this is unnecessary. In the meantime, consider this: the San Francisco Health Officer is deathly afraid of COVID entering a prison, but apparently unconcerned about human feces being deposited daily on the streets of her city.

Fifteen suspects were arrested for stealing over $38 million from low-income Southern California families. The suspects targeted funds disbursed through CalWORKs and CalFresh programs, which “help low-income beneficiaries purchase food and provide for basic needs,” said the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In total, over $38.9 million was stolen from victims’ EBT cards for the food stamp program, officials said. Over 300 law enforcement officers monitored 20 ATM locations across the Los Angeles area during the investigation. The suspects used “cloned” cards to fraudulently withdraw money. Cloned cards are “debit cards, gift cards or other devices with magnetic strips that have been encoded with information from legitimate EBT cards,” officials explain.

Bank of America (BOA) worked with the FBI to investigate customers who made purchases with BOA credit and debit cards on and around Jan. 6, and pushed those who had made gun purchases to the top of the list, according to whistleblower testimony obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The whistleblower, George Hill, a retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst, testified to the House Judiciary Committee In February that BOA gave the FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO) a list of individuals who made transactions in the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area between Jan. 5 and Jan. 7, saying the company did so of its own volition and without any known legal process, according to testimony made to the House Judiciary Committee in February. The list of individuals, later distributed to FBI field offices across the country, included BOA customers that purchased any product between those dates, while customers who had bought firearms were prioritized. “You could be a resident of state, be a BOA customer, purchased a shotgun in 1999, go to the District, use your credit card to pay for a hotel on January 5th and check out. If that happened, you’re going to rise to the top of that list” he said. Band of America and the FBI did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

With seven of nine positions on the Seattle City Council up for election in November, a new poll gauging the sentiments of likely voters shows homelessness and crime remain top concerns and that nearly 80% of respondents lack confidence in the current council's approach to improving public safety. A majority of respondents think Seattle needs more police officers and that the city's Police Department needs more money to adequately address public safety, according to poll results released Wednesday. Respondents also overwhelmingly support signing bonuses and other incentives to attract new cops, as well as the creation of a public-safety force staffed with unarmed officers to respond to nonviolent incidents and lower-priority 911 calls. The poll confirmed likely voters think public safety is critical to revitalizing downtown and neighborhood business districts and that safety needs to be a top priority for elected officials, said Jon Scholes, president of the Downtown Seattle Association.

Chair of the January 6 Committee Bennie Thompson says that neither he nor members of the Committee, including Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, never personally viewed the 40,000 of surveillance footage taken from the Capitol on that fateful day in 2021. According to CNN Bennie Thompson "said lawmakers were never given that type of access to the footage last Congress. 'It’s strictly a new policy that the new speaker has put in place,' he told CNN political reporter Alayna Treene. "Thompson," Treene continued, "said he doesn’t think any of the Jan. 6 members themselves ever had access to the footage — they let only staff view it. 'I'm actually not aware of any member of the committee who had access. We had a team of employees who kind of went through the video.'"

I am Proud to have been selected to be one of only 20 professionals nationally to be on the Expanding First Response Commission, a new commission of the Council of State Governments and their Justice Center Program. For more information on the CSG JC work please visit our website at csgjusticecenter.org.

I am pleased to announce that I am a signatory for Public Safety Solutions for America. Collectively, we have developed four core principles 1) Properly fund the police 2) Focus time and resources on preventing and solving serious crime 3) Focus on evidence-based policies that reduce violent crime, and 4) Enact smart on crime policies like specialty courts and work and educational opportunities for former offenders. You can view more information on endviolentcrime.com.

This is Dr. Currie Myers, America’s Criminologist.  Please check out my work on Substack at drcurriemyers.substack.com – Stay safe and have a great weekend!