The Waukesha incident has once again (and again, and again, and …) raised the specter of societal disintegration in the face of the Defund the Police and Criminal Justice Reform movements. While we may admit that bail is set too high in some cases (January 6 defendants!), the outrageous and unthinking application of “cash bail is bad” is a slow motion bomb going off. Double and triple digit increases in violent crime in Democrat-run cities that employ such policies are creating outrage among the law-abiding. Why should their grandparents and children suffer when such fools run the asylum?
The suspect in the Waukesha parade massacre was a career criminal. His criminal background check in Wisconsin shows a conviction in 2000 for aggravated battery. The long list of related sentences boil down to five and a half years of probation. Six months into this probation he was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon, possession of cocaine, and “obstructing an officer.” That should have been enough to revoke his probation and give him “three hots and a cot” at state expense. But somehow much of this was called “non-criminal” and the “disposition [was] not reported.”
It’s clear that nothing was done, because two years after his original conviction, he obstructed officers, stole a car and had another drug offense. That’s two felonies, but amazingly there was “no prosecution.” A year later he was convicted for resisting arrest, but was sentenced to… drum roll please… sentence to run concurrent with the previous five plus years of… drum roll again… probation. In plain English, he didn’t even get a slap on the wrist.
I won’t bore you with the litany of crimes you can read for yourself, but in 2010, he was arrested for domestic battery involving strangulation and suffocation. This should be enough to get even the #MeToo crowd to call for his head. And he was convicted. But he was sentenced to three years of probation. Following this there are multiple counts of resisting arrest, parole violations and failure to appear.
Any one of these should have removed his probation status and sent him to the crossbar hotel. And any one of those would have changed how his life progressed. Those changed circumstances may have left his drive-through victims uninjured. But we’ll never know.
This litany of crime is instructive. There are people who should never be allowed to walk free in civil society. They have no respect for others, being willing to cause horrendous injuries and take lives without remorse. Ordinary citizens must be protected from their raw evil without creating a system that causes new injuries to undeserving first offenders. And we must avoid violating H. L. Mencken’s aphorism that “For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.” In short, we must tackle the multiple repeat offender. With that done, then we can consider others.
The Waukesha suspect could have been easily taken off the streets long before he killed at least six people. Reading between the lines, it’s very likely that most of his “convictions” were guilty pleas in exchange for probation. Courts and prosecutors like those because they clear a backlog without the work of a trial. And that’s the problem. The incentives are not to protect the public, but to solve a bureaucratic mess. They substitute a short-term “fix” for a real solution.
Suppose that Wisconsin law required that any plea deal for probation would cause any existing probation be converted to hard time to be served before any new probationary time would commence. Or suppose that a felony arrest while on probation for a felony against persons (not property) would immediately deny any opportunity for bail, converting the remaining probation into hard time. Repeat offenders would be off the street for a time, preventing them from committing new crimes while on bail.
“Criminal Justice Reform” warriors would scream about incarceration rates, but that’s not the proper question. Crime reduction is the important question. How many innocent citizens would be spared harm or death with these changes? Another CJR claim is that poor blacks can’t afford bail. But isn’t bail intended to guarantee the appearance of the accused?
If bail is set at a trivial level, does it provide any assurance that the accused will appear to answer his charges? There’s no argument against the idea of scaling bail to provide the same level of guarantee regardless of wealth. Certainly a Michael Milken would need some sort of elevated surety to prevent flight compared to a poor person. But that guarantee must be given.
Converting probation to hard time should be a simple matter of law. Any plea agreement for probation should include that element. You do another crime, and you do all the time remaining on the first one. It’s not about punishing poor people. It’s about your failure to live up to the deal you made. And it protects society from whatever else you might do.
It’s really pretty simple. We put the focus on protecting the law abiding. Probation is a favor we extend to you. You bite the hand that feeds you and you get locked back in the cage. It works for unruly parrots and dangerous dogs. It should work for feral humans as well.
Ted Noel MD is a retired Anesthesiologist/Intensivist who posts on social media as DoctorTed and @vidzette.
Will America-First News Outlets Make it to 2023?
Things are looking grim for conservative and populist news sites.
There’s something happening behind the scenes at several popular conservative news outlets. 2021 was bad, but 2022 is proving to be disastrous for news sites that aren’t “playing ball” with the corporate media narrative. It’s being said that advertisers are cracking down, forcing some of the biggest ad networks like Google and Yahoo to pull their inventory from conservative outlets. This has had two major effects. First, it has cooled most conservative outlets from discussing “taboo” topics like Pandemic Panic Theater, voter fraud, or The Great Reset. Second, it has isolated those ad networks that aren’t playing ball.
Certain topics are anathema for most ad networks. Speaking out against vaccines or vaccine mandates is a certain path to being demonetized. Highlighting voter fraud in the 2020 and future elections is another instant advertising death penalty. Throw in truthful stories about climate change hysteria, Critical Race Theory, and the border crisis and it’s easy to understand how difficult it is for America-First news outlets to spread the facts, share conservative opinions, and still pay the bills.
Without naming names, I have been told of several news outlets who have been forced to either consolidate with larger organizations or who have backed down on covering certain topics out of fear of being “canceled” by the ad networks. I get it. This is a business for many of us and it’s not very profitable. Those of us who do this for a living are often barely squeaking by, so loss of additional revenue can often mean being forced to make cuts. That means not being able to cover the topics properly. Its a Catch-22: Tell the truth and lose the money necessary to keep telling the truth, or avoid the truth and make enough money to survive. Those who have chosen survival simply aren’t able to spread the truth properly.
We will never avoid the truth. The Lord will provide if it is His will. Our job is simply to share the facts, spread the Gospel, and educate as many Americans as possible while exposing the forces of evil.
To those who have the means, we ask that you please donate. We have options available now, but there is no telling when those options will cancel us. We just launched a new GiveSendGo page. We also have our GivingFuel page. There have been many who have been canceled by PayPal, but for now it’s still an option. Your generosity is what keeps these sites running and allows us to get the truth to the masses. We’ve had great success in growing but we know we can do more with your assistance.
Thank you, and God Bless!
JD Rucker
