Philly DA Enjoyed European Excursion as Homicides Spiked
Dark money group spent thousands to send Larry Krasner to Germany, Portugal amid deadly year
As Philadelphia's top law enforcement officer spent two weeks on a jaunt through Europe financed by a liberal dark money group, the city witnessed 3 murders, 30 rapes, 63 armed robberies, and 120 assaults with a firearm.
Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner traveled to Germany and Portugal in May 2019, a year in which his city experienced a 12-year high in homicides. Liberal dark money group Fair and Just Prosecution footed the bill for Krasner and other attendees to learn from the European countries how to ease up on crime.
In Germany, the country's "open" prison system—in which inmates are allowed to come and go on a daily basis—served as an "innovative" example of a "compassionate" and "equitable" justice system for the United States to replicate. Portugal's decision to decriminalize all drugs, meanwhile, was championed by Fair and Just Prosecution as a life-saving policy American prosecutors could "bring back … to their communities" in an attempt to "reimagine" American policing.
Progressive St. Louis circuit attorney Kim Gardner also attended the trip. She later faced criticism after sources in her office said she was "unreachable" while abroad, leading to a delay in decision-making. Krasner's office did not return a request for comment on how the trip affected the attorney's day-to-day work. Gun-possession conviction rates plummeted to just 49 percent in 2019, down 14 points from 2017, the year before Krasner took office.
The European excursion appears to have influenced Krasner's approach to criminal justice. Just months after returning to the United States, his office instituted a policy to drop all drug-possession charges if the perpetrator participates in a "treatment" program. But Krasner does not require such programs to be court-monitored, and his office does not follow up to ensure that the perpetrator completes the program before dropping charges. Twenty-twenty marked Philadelphia's deadliest year for overdoses on record.
Financial disclosures show that Krasner took at least 15 trips paid for by outside entities from March 2018 to October 2019, keeping him away from his office for a total of 57 days at a cost of nearly $16,000. Hundreds of violent crimes—including three murders—occurred while Krasner traveled through Germany and Portugal from May 6 to May 19, 2019, according to data released by the Philadelphia Police Department.
Fair and Just Prosecution sponsored the travel on at least seven occasions, which saw them cover nearly $9,800 in Krasner's expenses. Prior to Krasner's arrival in Germany, the group praised the European nation for going to "great lengths to come to terms with its troubling past" in the "wake of Nazism and the Holocaust." On the other hand, Fair and Just Prosecution argued that the United States has insufficiently addressed "its own record of human rights violations," including "decades of racially-biased policing and criminal justice decision-making."
Fair and Just Prosecution also urged attendees to "transform our justice system" to better reflect Germany, where the "vast majority of sanctions imposed" are "fines" or "education or disciplinary measures." Comparing crime problems in Germany and the United States, however, is "inapt," Manhattan Institute senior fellow Rafael Mangual told the Washington Free Beacon. He noted that a small handful of neighborhoods in Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, and St. Louis combined to account for 13.6 percent of the homicides seen in all of Germany in 2018 while housing just 0.5 percent of the European nation's population.
"There's a huge difference between our two countries, specifically with respect to the rate of serious violent crime, which is the sort of crime that generally leads to long terms of imprisonment here in the United States," Mangual said. "We're talking about a very, very different type of crime problem on a very, very different scale."
According to Fair and Just Prosecution's website, the group is a "fiscally-sponsored project of The Tides Center," a liberal dark money behemoth that has funneled nearly $170 million in taxpayer funds to left-wing groups. Fair and Just Prosecution, like all of the Tides Center's fiscal entities, does not file independent tax returns or disclose donors.
The trips are not the first time Krasner has benefited from liberal outside money. Billionaire megadonor George Soros poured nearly $1.7 million into a political action committee supporting Krasner in 2017. The progressive prosecutor has also received thousands of dollars from Hollywood celebrity John Legend, who headlined a fundraiser with Krasner just hours after eight people were shot in broad daylight in Philadelphia.
Krasner is facing a contentious reelection battle as local police groups spearhead an effort to oppose his progressive reforms, which they say are driving Philadelphia's ongoing crime spike. Krasner will square off against Democratic challenger Carlos Vega—who is backed by the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police—in the city's May primary.
Thug Charged w/Murder of 4-Year-Old Girl Had Been Arrested 6 Times
Pro-crime policies work. This is the result.
A 4-year-old girl has died from injuries sustained in an incident at a Raleigh hotel. Subsequently, a man has been charged in connection with her death.
Milton Ray Horton, Jr. was charged with murder. Horton, 27, was arrested by Raleigh police.
Around 4:30 on Sunday morning, Raleigh police arrived at the Candlewood Suites hotel on Lead Mine Road to find the child seriously hurt. Police said she suffered severe injuries and later died at a hospital.
WRAL did an extensive search Horton and learned he’s been arrested six times as an adult in Wake County – for crimes like breaking and entering, resisting a public officer and trespassing.
There are always warning signs. Some are more obvious than others.
A sane society pays attention to those warning signs and has mechanisms for triggering them. Those triggers save us from worse consequences.
Then Democrats and some Republicans decided that it was time to dismantle the criminal justice system and policing while calling it reform. The more the system was taken apart, the worse crime got, and the harder activists fought to decriminalize crime. The pettier stuff escalated into much worse incidents because the system was no longer functioning and the criminals had gotten the message. Repeat offenders were never locked up allowing them to escalate to worse things, and the sheer critical mass of violence broke the justice system even further.
A few incidents make the news, but mostly they get ignored. And people get the message. Even if they're dumb enough to vote for pro-crime politicians, they still start buying guns, learning all over again to be wary, and to live in a profoundly dangerous world.
That awareness is very slow to penetrate elite political and cultural circles who hear a lot about Makhia Brown, not about Elijah LaFrance.
A 3-year-old boy was killed when gunfire erupted at a children’s birthday party in a Miami suburb—unleashing shock and outrage from community members, politicians and celebrities.
Investigators are still searching for the person who shot Elijah LaFrance when an altercation at a short-term rental in Golden Glades turned violent on Saturday night.
Elijah isn’t the first child caught in the crossfire at a party in Miami-Dade. In January, 6-year-old Chaussidy Sanders was killed at one. Last year, 7-year-old Alana Washington was killed in a drive-by shooting.
“As a father and as a member of this community, I am completely devastated. I’m disgusted,” Miami-Dade Police Director Freddy Ramirez told reporters at the scene.
“We talk about accountability. When are we going to hold ourselves accountable for what’s going on in our streets each and every day? This is ridiculous.”
When the elites and the media cares as much about children killed by criminals as they do about criminals killed by cops.
24 Shot, 3 Dead, over the Weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago
Twenty-four people were shot, three fatally, over the weekend in Mayor Lori Ligthfoot’s (D) Chicago.
ABC 7 / Chicago Sun Times reported that the first fatality occurred Friday night around 10:30 p.m., at which time police found a 27-year-old lying on the sidewalk with multiple gunshot wounds. He was found “in the 900-block of West 61st Street” and pronounced dead at the scene.
The second fatality took place just before 10:30 p.m. Saturday, as a 30-year-old woman sat in her vehicle “in Roseland on the Far South Side.” Someone fired shots, striking her multiple times. She was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.
The third fatality occurred at 12:30 a.m. on Sunday morning in Humboldt Park. Thirty-six-year-old Duntae Manuel was sitting in a vehicle when someone walked up and opened fire, fatally wounding him.
On April 23, 2021, Breitbart News noted that over 900 people had already been shot in Chicago by that point in the year.
The Chicago Tribune explained that 907 people were shot January 1, 2021, through April 19, 2021. That figure represented fatal and non-fatal shooting victims combined and was an increase of 214 shooting victims over the same time in 2020.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
The D.C. BLM Insurrectionists Get a Pass
It’s okay to riot in D.C., and assault government buildings and police officers again.
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Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
The face of the Black Lives Matter insurrectionist who was arrested in Washington D.C. with an axe, a laser, and a “destructive device” will not be plastered by the FBI over any local billboards.
The BLM insurrections who rioted in Washington D.C. over the death of Daunte Wright, who had choked a woman to steal her rent money, threw fireworks and heavy objects at police. They shone lasers in the eyes of police officers and vandalized the Columbus monument with the obscene and hateful graffiti of a racist black supremacist movement. And they’ll get a pass.
Even when the racist insurrectionist mob chanted, “burn the precinct to the ground.”
While the D.C. police department has asked for the public’s helpin identifying one of the BLM insurrections who attacked a police officer and is offering a reward, the national media has not picked up the story the way that it did when there was an effort underway to identify the Capitol rioters, nor has the FBI taken to buying billboards asking anyone who knows the thug for tips.
Fighting with a police officer in January was profoundly morally different than doing so in April.
That’s all the more striking since the D.C. Metro police force is 52% black, while the Capitol Police are 29% black. Black lives don’t matter when they’re also blue. Just ask Captain Dorn.
Only a handful of months after the media agonized over the spectacle of a riot in D.C. and our political class acted as if fights between protesters and police was some inexplicably horrifying event, worse than 9/11 and Pearl Harbor put together, instead of the top outdoor sport of 2020, it’s okay to riot in D.C., assault government buildings, and call for burning them down.
It’s fine to brandish axes, throw fireworks, and assault police officers for social justice.
None of the handful of BLMers and Antifa who have been arrested will have their ugly faces splashed across social media, be fired from their jobs, or face the threat of decades in prison.
Insurrection is once again no longer a crime in America.
Scenes in which BLM insurrections "lobbed a large firework that exploded amid the police line" and "tossed debris, including water and water bottles" at police was, according to the Washington Post, merely a skirmish. There’s no particular interest in how the cops are doing. Having fireworks and debris thrown at you is just part of the job of coping with social justice.
It was also safe for Rep. Maxine Waters to head down to Minnesota and incite violence by telling BLM race rioters to "stay on the street", fight, and "get more confrontational" if the half-minority George Floyd jury didn’t find a police officer guilty of Floyd’s overdose death.
Brooklyn Center is a long way from Maxine’s California mansion (well outside the impoverished district she claims to represent), so she wasn’t visiting her constituents. But the Democrat Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee doesn’t have to worry that any of the Wall Street companies she regulates will stop donating to her over her incitement to violence.
Waters regularly wins every election with at least 70% of the vote, but has nonetheless raised and spent nearly $2 million. And Wall Street isn’t about to cut off the insurrectionist’s cash flow.
After the Capitol Riot, MetLife announced that “the board of MetLife’s Political Action Committee (PAC) is reviewing all of its guidelines and giving to ensure that they are consistent with the company’s purpose and values” and that “one of our guiding principles will be to support candidates who uphold our values and the rule of law.” MetLife has been a Maxine donor.
Will MetLife continue donating money to Rep. Maxine Waters after she incited violence?
Don’t bet against it.
No one in the media is calling the latest outburst of Black Lives Matter rioting, even when it targets D.C. police officers and takes place in D.C., an insurrection. The city has asked the National Guard to be ready to provide assistance, but the national media is carefully overlooking the fact that the first time troops have been needed to deal with actual violence in D.C. since Biden took office has been in response to violent race riots by a Democrat political movement.
If it’s not an insurrection, then what is it? Following the AP Stylebook definition, some media outlets are calling it an “uprising”. What’s the difference between an insurrection and an uprising? Much as with the famous quip, “none dare call it treason”, it’s a question of power.
Challenges by Republicans to Democrat power are an “insurrection”, while Democrat riots are an “uprising” meant to seize power. The difference is not in the substance of the violence, but in the morality of who has power. Democrats and their media believe that Black Lives Matter race riots are righteous, while protests over a rigged election are not. Just as doxxing, election fraud, and cancel culture are right or wrong depending entirely on their practitioners and targets.
The only rule is that leftist power is moral and everyone else’s power is immoral. Everything needed to rectify a leftist imbalance of power, from violence to election theft, is justified.
If an anti-government riot in the nation’s capital that attacks government buildings isn’t an insurrection, then what is it? It’s whatever euphemism the media uses to glamorize it.
“Focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice, going back to the urban uprisings of the 1960s,” the AP Stylebook had argued.
We heard a great deal about the “ransacking” of Pelosi’s office during the Capitol Riot. The focus on “rioting and property destruction” there was justified because the AP didn’t agree with the politics of the rioters. But when the AP and the rest of the media does agree with the politics of the rioters, then it’s important to ignore the violence and focus on the rightness of the cause.
The police and other law enforcement officers caught in the middle of the riots are confused because they’re never sure if they’re supposed to stop a riot or kneel to the rioters.
The Bidenite military leadership just disciplined soldiers who had flown choppers too low down to the crowd of rioting Black Lives Matter insurrectionists who had set fire to a church and the White House gatehouse during the BLM riots over the summer. The media accused the military of being tinpot fascists out to terrorize a mostly peaceful uprising and their arson attempts.
"Immediately after this event, we instituted a very strict ... approval process for the use of the National Guard, not just [for] the Metropolitan Police Department, but any agency that is requesting them," an Army official said.
And then when the Capitol Riot happened, and the National Guard, which had by the orders of the D.C. government, been relegated to unarmed traffic control, didn’t arrive right away, the media once again howled holy hell, this time because there weren’t choppers and soldiers.
But that’s because the National Guard wasn’t using the AP’s stylistic spinbook.
Under Biden the mostly peaceful race riots, the uprisings, or insurrections, by any name, are back. After the worst part of a year in which the Biden regime decided to keep thousands of troops in the city for political theater, the National Guard is actually needed to keep the peace.
The BLM mobs are shooting off fireworks at police, shining lasers in their eyes, throwing debris at them, and shouting, “If we don't get it, burn it down!"
But that’s not an insurrection.
It’s an insurrection when the rioters are out of power. When the rioters have the White House, the Justice Department, the House and the Senate on their side, it’s not an insurrection.
Just like the Nazi brownshirts or the Maoist Red Guard, BLM is now a form of state terror.
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