Boots & Sabers

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Category: Crime

Florida Felons Get Right To Vote

by | 1729, 7 Jan 19 | , | 0 Comments

It will be interesting to see how this impacts the 2020 election.

Tuesday will mark an extraordinary milestone for Florida as the right to vote is restored to more than 1 million former felons in the state.

In what’s described as one of the largest enfranchisements of U.S. citizens in the past 100 years, most ex-felons in the state who have completed the terms of their sentence, including parole and probation, can register to vote either online or at their local elections office beginning Jan. 8. The measure doesn’t apply to those convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense.

“It’ll be a joyous day,” a pastor who was convicted of armed robbery as a teenager told The Washington Post.

There are varying rules for felons and voting in different states. Some lose their right to vote forever. Some never lose it. Some get it back after a period of time. What makes this significant is that it is a big change in a big state. Florida currently has about 14 million registered voters, so this is an immediate 7% increase in the pool of voters. In a state where elections are often decided by a few thousand votes, this will make a significant difference.

On the issue itself, I generally think that most non-violent felons should have their rights restored after they have completed the entire sentences – including post-incarceration supervision. This includes voting and 2nd Amendment rights.

Bully Burke

by | 2102, 5 Jan 19 | , | 5 Comments

A shakedown as old as government.

The criminal complaint targeting Chicago Ald. Ed Burke reads like a cliched crime novel: Influential alderman squeezes restaurant executives to benefit his law business, delicately at first, over lunch at a private wood-paneled country club. Federal agents locate the alderman via a black Crown Victoria, his riding-around car, in the parking lot.

The alderman is known for his silver coiffure, pinstriped suits and pocket squares. His three-story brick home on the Southwest Side is landlocked by railroad tracks and industry, strip malls and bungalows — but protected by a tall wrought-iron fence with a locked gate.

He is untouchable. Until now.

Burke, of Chicago’s 14th Ward, faces one count of attempted extortion. The U.S. Department of Justice accuses him of holding up city permits and slow-walking a restaurant renovation in his ward until the company agreed to hire Burke’s law firm, Klafter & Burke, for property tax work.

Boulder Moves to Criminalize Bedrock Civil Right

by | 2114, 30 Dec 18 | , , , | 2 Comments

This is a tyrannical attack on civil liberties by American fascists.

The American Civil Liberties Union came to the First Amendment defense of neo-Nazis in Skokie, Illinois. This is worth celebrating, especially today. Lawyers, many Jewish, fought for the rights of repugnant people, many of whom would like to see all Jews dead. Offended supporters of the ACLU left in droves. But the ACLU adhered to principle because … the end doesn’t justify the means.

Progressives have not just rejected that proud tradition, they have remade it into the ugly opposite — the end justifies all: Coercing speech with speech codes and forcing cake bakers to create statements against their core religious beliefs; social justice warfare and identity politics; the nanny state banning everything from plastic straws to tobacco products; and forcing private health insurance products at gun-point.

Progressives wield intolerance like the weapon it is. But are they kidding us or themselves when they smugly assert their tolerance? Do they believe their “Celebrate Diversity” bumper stickers, blind to the hypocrisy?

I find myself thinking about this as I am only days away from becoming a criminal in my tolerant hometown of Boulder. Boulder, which did so much to promote the civil rights of the LGBT community in decades past, when alternative lifestyles were misunderstood and feared, is now leading the charge against people like me whose lifestyle is misunderstood and feared.

I remember a time when, for public safety of course, some conservatives wanted AIDS patients to self-identify, to present themselves to the governmental authority, and be counted. There was an epidemic erupting after all, and “something had to be done.”

In Boulder, if your core beliefs include dressing as the opposite gender or following the teachings of the Koran our city government will bend over backwards to protect you from those who wish to separate you from your community. You’d never be forced to self-identify to government authorities, to submit to inspection, to be registered and made to pay fees to keep your core beliefs.

My strong belief in my Second Amendment rights is core to who I am. I know that is not understood by many today, however I am not asking to be understood. I’m asking to be left alone.

Man Charged with Joining DEA to Protect Cartel

by | 2200, 11 Dec 18 | | 0 Comments

Wow.

A former Evanston police detective has been accused in a sweeping federal indictment of joining the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration so he could protect a vicious Puerto Rico-based drug organization responsible for numerous killings and other violence.

Fernando Gomez, 41, was arrested Tuesday morning at the DEA’s Chicago field office, authorities said.

[…]

Gomez was charged in a superseding indictment unsealed in New York with racketeering conspiracy for his alleged decadelong affiliation with the Organizacion de Narcotraficantes Unidos, a conglomeration of drug traffickers based in Puerto Rico responsible for importing vast shipments of cocaine into New York and elsewhere.

[…]

Gomez began working for the gang when he was a detective for Evanston police, according to the charges. He obtained firearms from drug dealers and provided them to gang leader Jose Martinez-Diaz, also known as “Tony Zinc,” in Puerto Rico, according to the indictment.

“Gomez then joined the DEA so that he could help members of the narcotics conspiracy, including Martinez-Diaz, evade prosecution by law enforcement,” the indictment alleged.

Evers Forms Criminal Justice Panel

by | 1718, 10 Dec 18 | , | 14 Comments

Goodness. “Making of a Murder” was a factual train wreck and Butler was run out of office for his soft on crime attitude. I see that when Evers says “prioritizing people,” he means crooks and violent criminals – not the people they victimize.

In a statement Monday announcing the panel, Evers and Lt. Gov.-elect Mandela Barnes also emphasized the state’s racial incarceration disparity and said it’s time “to start prioritizing people, not prisons.”

The new panel includes Dean Strang, who gained international fame for his defense of Steven Avery in the Netflix series “Making a Murderer,” and former state Supreme Court justices Louis Butler and Janine Geske.

Other notable names include:

  • Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney;
  • Kelli Thompson, who heads the state Public Defender’s Office;
  • Matt Frank, former state Department of Natural Resources Secretary and former Assistant State Attorney General;
  • Milwaukee County Chief Deputy Sheriff Denita Ball;
  • Rick Raemisch, former state Department of Corrections Secretary and former Dane County Sheriff, who now leads the Colorado Department of Corrections;
  • Walter Dickey, University of Wisconsin Law School professor and former state Department of Corrections Secretary;
  • Angela Lang, director of the Milwaukee-based Black Leaders Organizing for Communities;
  • Jim Palmer, who heads the state’s police union.

The announcement Monday said the panel aims to “bring together people from all sides of the criminal justice system” to work on possible criminal justice changes.

Orangutan Rescued From Sex Slavery

by | 2249, 27 Nov 18 | , | 4 Comments

There are some depraved people on this planet.

An orangutan kept as a prostitute in an Indonesian village ‘screamed and defecated’ when the brothel madam who kept her captive visited her in a rescue centre.

Pony, an endangered Bornean orangutan, was discovered in February 2003 inside a darkened room in the village of Kareng Pangi, Central Kalimantan chained to a wall and lying on a mattress.

She had been ruthlessly and abhorrently exploited by local palm oil farmers who would come to the village and pay £2 to have sex with her.

The brother ‘madam’ who enslaved Pony was initially allowed to visit her once a month at a conservation centre to ‘reduce the risk of retribution among villagers’ who were angry she had been taken.

[…]

Having been snatched from her mother when she was a baby, her captors treated Pony extremely harshly – shaving her every two days and forcing her to wear perfume and makeup.

She was even taught to perform sex acts on demand for her customers.

Man on Probation for Gang Rape Arrested for Battery, Forcible Robbery, etc.

by | 1915, 27 Nov 18 | | 1 Comment

Shameful.

A La Crosse man recently sentenced to two years’ probation for his part in the alleged gang rape of two teenage girls in 2017 is back in jail on allegations that include battery, forcible robbery and criminal damage to property.

Ronald Crosby Jr., 18, was arrested on those allegations, as well as operating a vehicle without the owner’s consent and criminal damage to property in the Nov. 20 incident, according to a police report.

[…]

In a plea deal on the rape case, Crosby, who was 17 at the time of the alleged rapes in October of 2017, pleaded guilty to fourth-degree sexual assault, delivering heroin and resisting an officer, on Oct. 17 in La Crosse County Circuit Court.

That case involves an incident in which two girls allegedly were assaulted sexually over several days by as many as 11 males in a South Side La Crosse garage. Prosecutors originally charged Crosby with sexual assault of a child younger than 16 and first-degree sexual assault, both as party to the crime, and first-, second- and third-degree sexual assault.

The District Attorney’s Office agreed to the plea deal because officials believe Crosby had left the garage before the rapes occurred.

Dead Babies Found Stuffed in Ceilings and Freezers

by | 2203, 21 Oct 18 | , | 2 Comments

Horrible… just, horrible.

Detroit (AFP) – Police in the US city of Detroit have found 63 fetuses at a funeral home during a widening investigation of alleged malpractice at such facilities, US media reported.

“This is larger than we might know,” The Detroit News quoted Police Chief James Craig as saying. “It’s unbelievable.”

He spoke to reporters after officers on Friday raided Perry Funeral Home, where they found the remains of 36 fetuses in boxes and an additional 27 in freezers.

Michigan state regulators suspended the home’s license, a week after investigators found the remains of 10 fetuses in a false ceiling at another funeral home in the city.

[…]

One parent has sued Perry Funeral Home, and other agencies, alleging that the home stored the remains of stillborn and live birth babies at a university morgue for up to three years without notifying parents, the News said.

Treasury Official Arrested for Leaking Confidential Documents

by | 1804, 17 Oct 18 | , | 1 Comment

Deep state.

Edwards was found with a flash drive containing the confidential reports when she was arrested Tuesday, the Justice Department said, along with a cellphone containing messages to the reporter.

Investigators say that on a single day in August she ‘exchanged approximately 541 messages’ with the reporter via an encrypted app, and that she used the same app to send the documents during the past year.

Suspicious Activity Reports are documents that banks file with the government when they spot potentially illegal transactions.

They ‘are not public documents, and it is an independent federal crime to disclose them outside of one’s official duties,’ U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said.

Edwards is charged with one count of ‘unauthorized disclosures of suspicious activity reports’ and one count of ‘conspiracy to make unauthorized disclosures of suspicious activity reports.’

“everything she remembers changes at her convenience”

by | 0831, 3 Oct 18 | , | 47 Comments

Indeed.

When Christine Blasey Ford testified last week before the Judiciary Committee, America witnessed a haunted woman recounting a devastating trauma. But putting aside Ford’s emotional performance and focusing instead on the professor’s testimony reveals numerous inconsistencies in her narrative that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her.

As a sex-crimes prosecutor, Republican questioner Rachel Mitchell is well-positioned to “know it when she sees it.” But rather than see Ford as a victim of sexual abuse by Kavanaugh, Mitchell saw her as a witness lacking in credibility. And this conclusion comes from an expert who knows that there are many reasons victims delay reporting sexual abuse. Mitchell also recognized that victims may legitimately not remember certain details related to an attack.

But the problem for Ford is not that she doesn’t remember everything: It is that everything she remembers changes at her convenience.

Madison Police Reiterate Sanctuary City Status

by | 0752, 25 Sep 18 | , | 3 Comments

I love this…

Madison Police Chief Mike Koval and Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney have reiterated their commitment to the Madison and Dane County community and not to enforcing immigration law.

Koval said Friday that he was not informed that ICE would be in the area even though the MPD has a standing agreement with the agency to be notified when agents will be in the community. Koval has reiterated that enforcement of immigration laws remains primarily with the federal government.

In the same breath, Police Chief Koval says he will not cooperate with ICE and then whines about ICE not informing him that they will be doing their jobs. Cooperation goes both way.

To the story itself, the Capital Times, liberal rag that it is, doesn’t even bother to get another side of the story. It merely parrots the complaints of an activist group and their supporters. A better headline would have been, “ICE Does its Job.”

Mosquitoes Capture Crook

by | 2117, 24 Sep 18 | | 0 Comments

I can validate this. The mosquitoes are nuts around here.

Authorities reportedly followed Wilson as part of a high-speed chase, before Wilson got out of the car and fled on foot.

The area was flooded with mosquitoes — so much so that Chief Thomas Dornbrook said when sheriff’s office officials arrived, he immediately asked for bug spray.

“That’s the first thing I asked for, if he could give me some spray because it was crazy,” Dornbrook told the news station.

Nearly an hour later, Wilson turned himself in to police because he could no longer endure the mosquitoes nipping at his skin.

“When we handcuffed him he asked us to wipe his forehead because he had 15-20 mosquitoes on his forehead at that time,” the police chief said.

Florida Man Sentenced to 20 Years for Stealing Cigarettes

by | 1958, 23 Sep 18 | | 1 Comment

I wonder if this is the kind of “non-violent offenders” that Tony Evers wants to let out of prison.

PENSACOLA, Fla. — A man who stole $600 worth of cigarettes from a convenience store in Florida has been sentenced to 20 years in state prison. A jury in Pensacola convicted 48-year-old Robert Spellman of burglary and grand theft in August.

Authorities say Spellman took 10 cartons of cigarettes from a stock room in the store manager’s office last December. He was sentenced Friday.

Oh, this.

Spellman reportedly had 14 felony and 31 misdemeanor convictions prior to the cigarette theft, which qualified him as a habitual felony offender. That led to the lengthy 20-year prison sentence imposed Friday by an Escambia County judge.

So… 14 felonies in 20 years. That means he was caught and convicted of a felony an average of every 17 months of his adult life. If you throw in the misdemeanors, he was caught and convicted for a crime ever 5 months of his adult life. Given that most crooks are only caught for a tiny fraction of the crimes they commit, this guy is clearly a career criminal and we are all safer now that he is in prison.

But… burglary is a non-violent crime. If Mr. Spellman was in Wisconsin, would Evers want him on the streets?

Male Rapist Identifies as Woman Goes on to Rape Women in Prison

by | 0956, 20 Sep 18 | , | 1 Comment

Ummmnnnn…

We have reached peak absurdity in the transgender movement denying biological reality. The Daily Mail reported last week that a male rapist, pedophile, and convicted sex offender “whose previous offences had been committed when [he] was a man” began identifying as a woman. Therefore, he was sent to a women-only prison, where he went on to sexually assault four female inmates.

California Couple Possibly Raped Hundreds of People

by | 2105, 18 Sep 18 | | 30 Comments

Wow.

A California surgeon and his girlfriend have been charged with two sexual assaults, and investigators suspect there could be “hundreds” more victims.

Grant William Robicheaux, 38, and Cerissa Laura Riley, 31, allegedly attacked two women they met at a bar and a restaurant in 2016.

Prosecutors told the BBC “thousands and thousands” of videos of potential victims were on the defendants’ phones.

Investigators are trying to identify the women in the clips.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said the pair were suspected of using their “clean-cut” looks to lure targets into a false sense of security.

DOJ Completes Testing of Old Sexual Assault Kits

by | 2148, 10 Sep 18 | | 2 Comments

Good news.

MADISON, Wis. – Attorney General Brad Schimel announced today that a major milestone has been reached as testing has been completed on all sexual assault kits initially inventoried and designated for testing in Wisconsin’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (WiSAKI). WiSAKI is a statewide effort, voluntarily initiated by Attorney General Schimel, to address the decades-long accumulation of previously unsubmitted sexual assault kits (SAKs) that were in the possession of local law enforcement agencies and hospitals across Wisconsin.

“When I took office in 2015, I worked with our team to identify and collect more than 6,000 sexual assault evidence kits that had never been submitted to the crime labs for testing, some of them dating back to the 1980s,” said Attorney General Brad Schimel. “Today, I am proud to announce that testing is complete on all 4,154 kits slated for testing. In less than three years, we will have tested the kits that built up over several decades, and justice can be served to sexual assault survivors.”

Imam Preached Jihad to Manchester Suicide Bomber

by | 2233, 16 Aug 18 | , , | 1 Comment

One might be concerned with this…

An imam at the mosque where Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi and his family prayed was delivered a sermon calling for jihad.

Mustafa Graf encouraged followers to ‘take action’ at the Didsbury Mosque in Manchester on December 16, 2016.

That was just six months before Salman Abedi detonated a suicide bomb killing 22 at an Ariana Grande concert in the city.

Muslim Woman Wins Judgement for Not Shaking Hands

by | 0751, 16 Aug 18 | , , | 2 Comments

It really annoys me when stuff like this has to go to a court when common decency and understanding should prevail.

A Muslim woman in Sweden has won compensation after her job interview was ended when she refused a handshake.

Farah Alhajeh was applying for a job as an interpreter when she declined to shake the hand of a male interviewer for religious reasons.

She placed her hand over her heart in greeting instead.

The Swedish labour court ruled the company had discriminated against her and ordered it to pay 40,000 kronor ($4,350; £3,420) in compensation.

Some Muslims avoid physical contact with members of the opposite sex, except for those in their immediate family.

[…]

The interpreting company in the town of Uppsala had argued that its staff were required to treat men and women equally and could not allow a staff member to refuse a handshake based on gender.

But the discrimination ombudsman said she had tried to avoid upsetting anyone by placing her hand over her heart when greeting both men and women.

Sweden’s labour court found the company was justified in demanding equal treatment for both sexes – but not in demanding that it be in the form of a handshake only.

The Muslim tradition of avoiding physical contact with strangers of the opposite sex is well-known and perfectly fine. Some Christian, Jewish, and other religions have the same cultural quirk. And it’s fine… who cares? She woman in the case didn’t make a big deal about it and offered a perfectly reasonable alternative greeting. How many thousands of kronors were wasted to tell everyone in the case to “just don’t be a jerk”?

Joyride in a Plane

by | 0730, 11 Aug 18 | | 0 Comments

I’ll bet you $4.20 that the dude was high.

It isn’t immediately clear. However, an audio recording of the conversations he had with air traffic control give some insight into what happened on the plane after the Horizon Air employee took off.

In the recording, the man can be heard starting to worry about how much fuel he had on board. He also suggests he could land the aircraft by himself because he had played “some video games”.

The man, who is referred to by what is believed to be his first name, also discusses:

  • The co-ordinates for the orca carrying her dead calf on her back

  • Looking at the view and possibly going to look at the Olympic Mountains, in Washington State

  • If he can do a barrel roll before landing and “calling it a day”

  • Whether or not Alaska Airlines would give him a job after a successful landing

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