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Sandhill crane

Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Crime and criminals

Progressive Mayors and District Attorneys are not helping the California communities they serve.

A tourist from New Zealand, Patricia McKay, age 68, was recently killed in a Fashion Island robbery in tony Newport Beach.

According to police, McKay and her husband had been outside Barnes and Noble on Tuesday afternoon when two men tried robbing them at gunpoint. There was a struggle, then a third suspect ran over and killed McKay with their getaway car. The three suspects were located and arrested after a multi-county chase that came to an end in South Gate.

"The hell with these guys," said Newport Beach Mayor Will O’Neill. "They came into our city knowing they were going to commit crime and a woman is dead today because of it."

The suspects are now identified as 26-year-old Leroyernest McCrary from Compton, 18-year-old Jaden Cunningham from Lancaster, and 18-year-old Malachi Darnell from Los Angeles.

Leroyernest McCrary
Leroyernest McCrary has a long rap sheet. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's inmate data, McCrary has been booked at least three times, including a felony arrest in Santa Monica in January 2023. 

But he was given probation, part of Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon's willingness to play nice with criminals and end incarceration.

District Attorney candidate Nathan Hochman also issued a sharp critique of the current district attorney on X stating, “George Gascon’s malpractice appears to have cost another life. LeRoy McCrary, one of three suspects in Tuesday’s tragic robbery-murder at a Newport Beach mall, was given probation by Gascon last year after pleading no contest to two separate felony cases — robbery and unlawful possession of a firearm. If McCrary had been sent to prison — as he very likely should have been — he would have been unable to murder a 69-year-old tourist yesterday, and her family would have been spared immeasurable grief and suffering. Enough is enough!”

Gascon is not doing Democrats any favors with his "soft on crime" stance. And as an aside, some are accusing his office of being quite anti-semitic, as are many on the progressive left these days.

The Daily Mail has a pretty good article on the case and the only rebuttal from Gascon, which sounds ridiculously lame and weak to me.

Asked to explain why McCrary didn’t get jail time for his previous crimes, Gascon said in a statement that ‘the case against him had significant problems with proof’ so ‘the management team at the court authorized a plea offer that allowed him to be placed on probation,’ plus a prison sentence that was suspended.

There is either proof or there is not. This guy Gascon is clearly awful and he is obviously also pandering to a very specific base.

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Similar news up in Oakland. 


A flash mob caused major damage to an Oakland gas station and it was all caught on camera. The organized flash robbery happened Friday at the 76 Gas Station & Mini Market on Hegenberger Road when about 70  to 100 people rushed into the store around 4 a.m. The store owner estimated damages and losses totaled about $100,000. If Hegenberger sounds familiar it is the same road that In and Out Dennys and Subway were forced to close locations because of rampant area crime.

The owner, Sam Mardaie, told Bay Area television station KTVU that it took Oakland police about 9 hours to respond.

He was upset with police for not responding right away after he said his workers called 911.

But Oakland police disputed the timeline, saying they received the 911 call after the thieves had left so it was no longer a priority since officers were handling other active scenes.

When asked about the response time, Oakland police say based on the initial details the caller reported, the crime was listed as a Priority 2 burglary - which means no suspects are on scene - and the caller was referred to online crime reporting.

However, video evidence was later reported to OPD that made clear the scale and details of the incident, including the large number of suspects, and the incident was immediately elevated to a Priority 1 incident, which prompted an officer to go to the scene.

Sheng Thao
The Mayor, Sheng Thao, has been an unmitigated disaster for her crime ridden city.

Since she took office in 2023, crime in Oakland has sharply increased, with violent crime and burglaries rising more than 20% from the year prior.

Some have of blamed the progressive Thao for the troubles, and in May a petition for a recall vote gained the necessary 25,000 signatures needed to bring it to ballot this November.

She says nobody would be criticizing her if she was rich. The woman ran on an anti-crime platform. She would try a new approach.

Oakland is in an acute public safety crisis. This moment requires real urgency – too many of our neighbors, friends, and fellow Oaklanders have suffered the pain of loss or have been traumatized by the weight of fear. To bring change, we must put forth smart policing policies, not revert to the same, old approaches that haven’t worked. 

Public safety will be Sheng Thao’s top priority as Mayor of Oakland. That’s why she has a comprehensive public safety plan focused on increasing investments in violence prevention, more community-oriented policing, and community building. This holistic strategy will make our city safer, address the root causes of crime, and help heal our neighborhoods and communities that have been ignored for far too long. 

Obviously it didn't work.

Alameda District Attorney Pamela Price is another "soft on the criminals" type like Gascon.

Price... responded to criticism from the sheriff’s office, which publicly called her out for not charging 59-year-old Robert Barroca for a January stabbing. The sheriff outlined Barroca’s extensive criminal history and noted he was later arrested and charged by federal prosecutors for a felony probation violation.

Price again stood by her decision.

"If the individual is on federal probation then the penalty through allowing them to go through the process of having their probation or their parole revoked is actually going to result in a harsher penalty," she said.

Soft on crime is not going to bring many converts to the Democratic side, no matter what their color or ethnicity might be. Crime is epidemic in the East Bay and it is victimizing every community, black, white, brown or yellow. Trying to protect people who stab their fellow citizens seems strangely misguided to me.

Price likes to talk about "restorative justice" as an alternative to incarceration.

“We have to stop investing in incarceration and start investing in education.” 

She tells prosecutors to seek the minimum prescribed sentences, to pursue probation whenever possible and to ban sentence enhancements except in supervisor-approved “extraordinary circumstances.”

Good luck with that.

It's wolves and sheep and it is time to pay attention to the people being assaulted and butchered, not baby the violent criminals.

2 comments:

Julie Reeder said...

So sad. It just seems like they can't be that dumb to think being soft on crime and defending the police will make things better and small businesses have it hard enough already. Read my piece on California spending money on reparations with a $50B deficit.

Blue Heron said...

The good thing is that everybody in their districts is pretty much fed up. Regardless of party.