St. Louis CofCC Blog

KMOV-CBS-4 St. Louis:

As two people attacked a woman to steal her scooter, security cameras caught the incident on tape.

Kay Fox, 65 was leaving her garage at a Kansas City, Missouri condominium building Tuesday night, when two teens came up behind her.

They pushed her to the ground and pulled her scooter out from under her.

The woman put up a fight, holding on to the vehicle.

While she was on the ground, one of the boys punched her in the head and stomped on her.

The KMOV story has video of the attack.

Here is Ms. Fox:

KSDK-NBC-5:

A 16-year-old boy drowns after telling witnesses he knew how to swim. It happened Wednesday afternoon during an outing with several teens and the boat’s owner in St. Charles County. Witnesses say the boat belonged to a Lake St. Louis resident who is also a school teacher in St. Louis. She was apparently taking the teens for an annual day of fun on Lake Ste. Louise when things took a deadly turn.

(snip)

The area the drowning victim was found in was 17 feet deep and visibility was minimal, according to officials. Several of the students on board the boat attend Beaumont High School in St. Louis. They say Tuesday was the first time they had met the 16-year-old. The teacher declined to comment. Lake St. Louis police are investigating.

This means that the drowning victim was likely black. Since white people are at fault for not teaching black people how to swim, white society will be blamed if this turns out to be the case.

UPDATE 10:20 PM:  The victim is 16-year old Miguel Payne, of south St. Louis City:

Local MSM report that he was a student at Nottingham School.  Since 16 is high school age, and I was not aware that Nottingham was a high school in St. Louis City, though I did know it is a city school, I looked it up:  It is a school for the developmentally disabled. 

Winner (L) and Loser (R)

The GA-10 U.S. House District held a special election yesterday to replace the late Charlie Norwood, and the Stupid Party favorite, former Georgia State Sen. Jim Whitehead, who was once considered a shoo-in, narrowly lost to Ron Paul-style states’ rights advocate Paul Broun, also a Republican.

Broun beat Whitehead by fewer than 1% of all the votes cast, so a recount is certain.

While the MSM and other left-wingers will sell the Whitehead defeat as a victory for Republican “moderates” opposed to the Bush administration, Broun’s issue page suggests that he is anything but a “moderate.”

Beaufort (S.C.) Gazette:

BLUFFTON — Immigration reform at the national level is dead for now, but S.C. lawmakers say bills aimed at tackling the issue at the state level might be the hottest topic during the next legislative session.

The state Senate passed a bill last year that proposes crackdowns on identity theft and businesses that hire illegal immigrants, but the House never took up the issue. The House also considered several bills that failed.

Now, with passions still flaring from the debate on immigration in Congress and a chorus of concern from many areas in the state, some lawmakers say they will work on state-level legislation.

“I think it will be the most important topic we take up early in the session,” said Sen. Jim Ritchie, R-Spartanburg, who chaired a study group last summer that looked at statewide legislation on illegal immigration. “The people of South Carolina are demanding that we take action, and rightfully so.”

After the collapse of the federal legislation, advocates on both sides of the issue predict the result will be a patchwork of state and local laws across the country.

“If Congress is going to abdicate its responsibilities, then states and cities are going to jump in,” said John Gay, senior vice president of the National Restaurant Association and the leader of a business coalition that backed the failed Senate bill. “One of the arguments for opposing state and local proposals is that Congress is addressing it. We don’t have that anymore.”

Perhaps one of these South Carolina state legislators would like a promotion. There’s a job in the Washington, D.C. area that’s coming open in June and November 2008, and its current jobholder is on bad terms with his bosses, so I understand.

Cybercast News Service:

New Jersey is moving rapidly towards outlawing capital punishment in the face of academic studies challenging the view that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent to murder and despite opinion polls showing that two-thirds of Americans see capital punishment as morally acceptable.

Although New Jersey has a death penalty statute dating back to 1982, it has not executed anyone since 1963. It is now looking to abolish the death penalty altogether.

Fear not, New Jersey. That toy gun ban will save you.

Some of the newest studies about the deterrent effects of the death penalty concludes that as many as 18 lives are saved with each execution.

UK Daily Mail:

Fewer than half of criminals supposedly “brought to justice” suffered the humiliation of being hauled before the courts last year.

Instead, they escaped with on-the-spot fines, cautions and warnings, said the chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service.

(snip)

As recently as 2003, 68 per cent of offences brought to justice involved convictions in the courts. But Mr Wooler said that, last year, the figure was between 40 and 50 per cent.

The court conviction figures reflect the dramatic changes made to the justice system by Labour, forced through despite protests from crime victims and opposition MPs. Cannabis possession is now punished by a simple ticking-off, since the controversial decision to downgrade the drug to Class C in 2004.

And on-the-spot fines have been introduced for shoplifting, criminal damage, being drunk and disorderly and other yobbish crimes. Only half are ever paid.

There has also been a sharp rise in cautions, with 8,000 rapists and other sex offenders being let off with a mere reprimand over the past five years.

In 2005, the latest year for which total figures are available, some 51,000 violent attackers were simply handed a caution, which carries no criminal or financial penalty - an increase of more than a third on 2004.

This includes 757 who inflicted potentially fatal wounds and 588 who threatened to murder their victim.

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) criticized U.S. Attorney Johnny Suttonfong during yesterday’s Senate hearings of his miscarriage of justice, and wants their sentences to be commuted.

AP:

LOS ANGELES - Anti-gang legislation and police crackdowns are failing so badly that they are strengthening the criminal organizations and making U.S. cities more dangerous, according to a report being released Wednesday.

Mass arrests, stiff prison sentences often served with other gang members and other strategies that focus on law enforcement rather than intervention actually strengthen gang ties and further marginalize angry young men, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that advocates alternatives to incarceration.

The trouble is, this report seems to assume that any arrest necessarily leads to a “stiff prison sentence.” As a lot of gang activity occurs in heavily non-white cities, with non-white or white liberal judges, and non-white juries, that is not always the case. Therefore, one can’t say that “crackdowns” aren’t working when they’re not even an option.

It cites a report this year by civil rights attorney Connie Rice, who was hired by Los Angeles to evaluate its failing anti-gang programs. Her report called for an initiative to provide jobs and recreational programs in impoverished neighborhoods.

The street gang, and its associated drug dealing, is a job for those who belong to it, and the revenue realized provides recreation for members.

Wes McBride, executive director of the California Gang Investigators Association, dismissed the findings of the report, which he said was written by “thug-huggers.” The investigators association is a professional organization for police officers.

“Are they saying we can’t put a thief in jail, we can’t put a murderer in jail, that we should spank them, put a diaper on them, pat them on the bottom, hug them and let them go?” McBride said. “It’s obviously a think tank report, and they didn’t leave their ivory tower and spend any time on the streets.”

(snip)

“Gang Wars” also criticizes politicians who overstate the threat of criminal gangs and seek tougher sentences.

If the Justice Policy Institute is as aloof as Mr. McBride states it is, then they obviously don’t view street drug gangs as a “threat,” much less a problem. In their minds, they are probably emblematic of the “struggle” against the big bad repressive right-wing corporate system, or at the very least, a result of the system’s ignorance, bigotry and insensitivity.

USA Today:

WASHINGTON — A surge in fatal shootings has contributed to a dramatic increase in deaths of law enforcement officers during the first six months of this year, the highest midyear body count in nearly three decades, according to a report due out today.

The annual count by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund found that 39 officers were killed in shootings, up from 27 during the first six months of last year.

The abrupt midyear increase comes less than a year after the organization reported that 145 officers were killed in the line of duty in all of 2006, the lowest annual number in eight years. That year, fatal shootings dropped to 52, from 59 in 2005.

(snip)

Floyd and other law enforcement analysts said that recent spikes in violent crime across the country may be a factor in the rising shooting deaths this year.

“This is very consistent with the increasing crime in many American cities,” said Joseph Carter, president of the Inter-national Association of Chiefs of Police. “This should be a wake-up call for the whole country.”

And what is the factor behind “recent spikes in violent crime?” My theory is that, as many drug dealers are sent to prison, this opens the field for new dope slingers, and the neophyte bangers have to reformat the dope dealing and distribution territory among them. As such, cops often wind up in the middle of these skirmishes.

I also think that there is a semi-organized campaign of hate against cops by non-white radicals, that will eventually metastasize into actual violence against cops, if it has not already.