Violent Crime and Revolving Doors

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Darrell Castle talks about the growing crime rate in our cities, some causes, and some solutions.

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VIOLENT CRIME AND REVOLVING DOORS

Hello this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 30^th day of July 2021 and on today’s Report I will be talking about the growing crime rate in our cities, some causes, and some solutions. I will share some of what is happening in the great cities of our nation and how the politicians who run those cities have chosen to react to the trends they must obviously see.

The Castle Family is doing just fine right now, in good health as far as we know, and just enjoying the summer. The weather in Memphis, Tennessee right now is hot and humid with Temperatures hovering around 100. The tomatoes must be watered often to keep them growing. The family daughter is safe in LA just going about the sweet spot of her life.

Speaking of Memphis, and our topic for today I want to share with you a direct quote from the Mayor of Memphis that comes from the email newsletter he sends to residents each week. “Last week, I talked about violent crime in our community and the revolving door that has unfortunately become our judicial system. I want to talk about it again this week to further reiterate that this issue is deeper than simply arresting people. It will take all of us—elected officials, the court system, public safety professionals, clergy and religious leaders, schools, and families—to solve this complex problem. EXAMPLE:

September 20, 2020—suspect charged with aggravated assault (shooting at people on the interstate) $7,300 bond.

September 21, 2020—suspect released on bond.November 29, 2020—suspect allegedly involved in attempted armed robbery in which four men were shot and two pronounced dead on the scene.

July 21, 2021—suspect arrested and charged with first degree murder, two counts of employing a firearm during a dangerous felony, and three counts of criminal attempt felony to wit especially aggravated robbery. No bond set.

”The Mayor of Memphis, Jim Strickland shows that he at least understands the problem and that he has some sympathy and some understanding of his duty as mayor to protect the people of Memphis. He goes on to talk about what he is doing besides trying to close a revolving door such as addressing the so called “root causes of crime.”  I say good job to him. No references to race or past racial injustices real and imagined, just this is a problem so let us address it together.

The thing the mayor described in Memphis is happening across America and in many places, much worse than here. For example, in Chicago this month of July 582 people have been shot and 102 are dead. For the year the figures are 2522 shot and 457 dead. I could go on with similar figures from different cities all day but instead, let’s look at some causes or at least similarities. In Chicago the mayor is a black woman named Lori Lightfoot and the district attorney is a black woman named Kim Foxx. Their race and gender are important because that is the only race and gender that George Soros funds. Why would a Hungarian billionaire have interest in U.S. state and municipal elections? Why are these candidates allowed to accept foreign money in their campaigns?

The primary criteria to obtain Soros money and support is that a candidate must pledge to stop prosecuting so-called low-level crime such as drug crime, prostitution, shoplifting etc. Whether I think drug crime and prostitution should be prosecuted is irrelevant. The refusal to prosecute when laws in place require that it be done creates a disrespect and disregard of the law. It is not just the refusal to prosecute that attracts Soros money, but unfortunately, it is a pledge to end cash bail. I suppose that process started under the thinking that it was unfair to the poor to require cash bail which usually required the use of a bail bondsman, but it often kept the most violent predators behind bars instead of loose among us.

Recently the police chief of Washington D.C. said that it is pointless to catch criminals because the courts will just turn them loose. “The justice system that we have right now is not functioning the way it should.” Well, that is a no-brainer chief because it doesn’t seem to be functioning in very many places. Why is a good question, and one I suspect with no simple answer? I wish we could just fix some simple problem and the system would function properly again like replacing the battery in your car.

I want to suggest one thing that has interrupted the cycle of functioning in justice and in other government areas such as FBI, CIA, but especially the Department of Justice. For at least two decades, perhaps more, the Congress of the United States where the people’s representatives make decisions and govern the entire country has been, in essence non-functional. Granted, it takes political courage to stand strong in the face of your party’s leadership and there is far too little of that, but there is a lot more to it than a lack of political courage.

Members of congress having been at each other’s throats ideologically if not literally for two decades, most members have known no other way and no other time. Rhetorical winds constantly fan the fires of partisanship and ideology into hatred. Comity or the mutual association of people for a common benefit more important than any individual member goes out the window. It is fractured into a zero-sum game, and no one cares who is destroyed in the other party since that would hurt their chances at majority. A proposal by one party is reflexively destroyed by the other regardless of the merits.

The result of all this polarization is that it is so extreme that congress is paralyzed, and power, abhorring a vacuum, is driven from it. Power leaves the people’s house and takes up residence in the White House. The president becomes more and more powerful and more and more dictatorial. He rules by executive order because he knows he would not be able to get his way through open debate in congress. Half the people support his E.O.’s because they think they agree ideologically, and half become more and more isolated and powerless.

The E. O’s cause much trouble as they are enforced downline. Orders to open the border and not deport criminal aliens. Orders to not prosecute criminals or to release them comes through the DOJ via the bosses at the White House. The people can no longer be said to be a self-governing people. The same thing happens in the states and municipalities as legislators align themselves with the president or against him. 

The result is a disrespect for an 800-year history of rule by law going back to the Magna Charter. Law and order cease and enforcement is broken down along purely ideological lines. Human nature unrestricted by anything such as religion, morality, ethics, history, tradition, or commonality of purpose simply returns to the mean. That mean is too often savagery and total disrespect for human life.

The government is always happy to serve as a bad example. Nancy Pelosi says she will have noncompliant members arrested by the capital police for violation of her mask mandate. The governor of Alabama said that it is time we started blaming unvaccinated people for all the deaths they have caused. Other prominent people sometimes accuse those who choose to refuse as murderers or killers. That type of language is what passes for public discourse today. 

I am reminded of R.J. Rummels’ book “Death by Government”. The title suggests the plot and that is that governments have been and are the greatest mass murderers in the 6000 years that mankind has recorded his time on this earth. What does all this have to do with crime or the current catch and release policies? Government sets the example because government makes the laws. Government chooses not to enforce its own laws, i.e., at the border and in shoplifting, with prostitution, or various drug offenses and the people take notice and quickly lose their respect and their fear. 

For example, in the last year almost a billion dollars has been cut from police budgets around the country. That is common knowledge and a very bad example as many are left defenseless. Most major cities are short hundreds of officers from where they were just a year ago. The catch and release programs along with defunding as well as other anti-police rhetoric have created an atmosphere of lack of community support of the police. The protectors of civilized society seem to be losing their willingness to go out and confront the most violent people among us night after night and day after day.

Name any city you choose in America whether it is Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Minneapolis. The problems are caused by the officials both elected and bureaucratic and their efforts to do what they consider to be good without regard to laws duly passed by the representatives of the people. Just check the records of any of the cities I just mentioned, and you will see hundreds and collectively thousands of mostly black people murdered this year. Why don’t the mayors do something to help, you wonder? Why they do, they painted Black Lives Matter on the streets of the major intersections of their cities.

What about doing something to slow down the murder and other violent crime in their cities? No, I’m afraid you ask to much because that would require a degree of political courage sorely lacking in the George Soros funded mayors and district attorneys of our most violent cities. In fact, murder as a cause of death in Chicago is much more likely than the virus. If only there was a vaccine against it.

Finally, Folks, Disrespect for the law shows weakness, division, confusion, and therefore vulnerability to the whole world not just criminals and their victims. One of the first rules of war is to avoid the enemy’s strength and attack his weakness. A population that sees no willingness whatsoever to enforce the law in high places loses its regard for the law in general and eventually for society itself. What message does the Department of Justice saying that it has no interest in the nursing home deaths by Governor Cuomo’s policies send. Obviously, the message is two sets of laws, one that applies to them and one to us. Since the law does not seem to apply to criminals anymore, I wonder who it does apply to.

At least that’s the way I see it,

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle,

Thanks for listening.