Crime in 2015: A Final Analysis

April 20, 2016
 

[Download PDF of Final 2015 Numbers]

Brennan Center for Justice: Overall crime rates in America’s 30 largest cities were nearly identical from 2014 to 2015, according to an analysis of final 2015 numbers. Crime declined over that time period by 0.1 percent. The data show that crime rates remain at historic lows nationally, despite recent upticks in a handful of cities.
The authors of this report looked at changes in crime and murder from 2014 to 2015, using data through Dec. 31, 2015, and examined economic factors in Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., that could explain why murder rates are up in those cities. Of the 30 cities studied, the three areas accounted for more than half of the increase in murders last year.
Among the updated findings:
  • Crime overall in the 30 largest cities in 2015 remained the same as in 2014, decreasing by 0.1 percent. Two-thirds of cities saw drops in crime, which were offset mostly by an increase in Los Angeles (12.7 percent). Nationally, crime remains at all-time lows.
  • Violent crime rose slightly, by 3.1 percent. This result was primarily caused by increasing violence in Los Angeles (25.2 percent), Baltimore (19.2 percent), and Charlotte (15.9 percent). Notably, aggravated assaults in Los Angeles account for more than half of the national rise in violent crime.
  • The 2015 murder rate rose by 13.2* percent in the 30 largest cities, with 19 cities seeing increases and 6 decreases. However, in absolute terms, murder rates are so low that a small numerical increase can lead to a large percentage change.
  • Final data confirm that three cities (Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) account for more than half (244) of the national increase in murders. While this suggests cause for concern in some cities, murder rates vary widely from year to year, and there is little evidence of a national coming wave in violent crime. These serious increases seem to be localized, rather than part of a national pandemic, suggesting that community conditions remain the major factor. Notably, these three cities all seem to have falling populations, higher poverty rates, and higher unemployment than the national average. This implies that economic deterioration of these cities could be a contributor to murder increases.

The new figures are an update to a Brennan Center November 2015 report, Crime in 2015: A Preliminary Analysis, authored by a team of economists and legal researchers. That report found similar conclusions. The Brennan Center also released a near-final update of the numbers in December 2015.

*This number has been changed from 13.3 to reflect a transcription error.

Crime in 2015: A Final Analysis by The Brennan Center for Justice

Illegal Immigration, Refusing to Deport is a Deadly Option

Hat tip to this site for listing the victims of illegal immigrants.

Today in the House is a hearing questioning Sarah Saldana, the Director of the DHS for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Several terrifying facts were revealed and there are solutions to the policies, one is to simply enforce the law and quit with the exceptions. Further, stop releasing into the general population detained illegals arrested and sentenced with discretion. What about Congress eliminating the discretion clause? How about allowing local law enforcement to fully handle cases at the local level? There is additional legislation for loopholes including H.R. 2793 for sex offenders.

Further, what about the victim or the survivors of the victims? They just get a letter in the mail, stating what is not certain.

There is a database for all illegals that have been officially detained for any reason, but local law enforcement does not have the jurisdiction or authority to handle inside cases, they are referred to ICE. Not all jurisdictions participate in the database operation, it is not a mandated procedure. What? . Of note, inside cases means arrests made by agencies other than Customs and Border Patrol.

 

All 58 immigration courts are managed by the U.S. Department of Justice….this is where the politics enter the fray. Additionally, when a court does in fact order a foreign national to be deported, yet another cycle of paperwork and diplomatic procedures is started. Consider, there are many countries that refuse to take back their own citizens and in some cases even after approval when the plane is on the runway. Haiti is one such country. So, the matter is in the hands of the U.S. State Department, do we need to say more?

The statute says there is discretion in all cases. So, in 2015, 19723 criminal illegal aliens have been released for felonies including kidnapping and homicide. An order of removal is required to deport them but that is done by a judge….but if they have requested asylum or other exceptions, it is more often than not granted. For those that have been ordered for deportation, there is a maximum bed space of 33,000 waiting to leave, if those beds are full, then they too are released.

Secure Communities was an immigration enforcement program administered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from 2008 to 2014.

The program was replaced by Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) in July 2015. Obama ordered this program terminated.

PEP: The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) enables DHS to work with state and local law enforcement to take custody of individuals who pose a danger to public safety before those individuals are released into our communities. PEP was established at the direction of DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson in a November 20, 2014 memorandum, entitled Secure Communities, that discontinued the Secure Communities program. PEP focuses on convicted criminals and others who pose a danger to public safety.

How it works

PEP begins at the state and local level when an individual is arrested and booked by a law enforcement officer for a criminal violation and his or her fingerprints are submitted to the FBI for criminal history and warrant checks. This same biometric data is also sent to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) so that ICE can determine whether the individual is a priority for removal, consistent with the DHS enforcement priorities described in Secretary Johnson’s November 20, 2014 Secure Communities memorandum. Under PEP, ICE will seek the transfer of a removable individual when that individual has been convicted of an offense listed under the DHS civil immigration enforcement priorities, has intentionally participated in an organized criminal gang to further the illegal activity of the gang, or poses a danger to national security.

Here is a simple case from April of 2016. Illegal immigrants arrested during Alabama theft, kidnapping mission for Honduran drug enforcer, records state. You are encouraged to read those details.

Here is yet another bizarre case: An illegal immigrant with a 12-year criminal history and 35 arrests under his belt cannot be deported back to Palestine because the U.S. will not recognise his homeland as a country. What? We give millions to the Palestinian Authority and Obama, Hillary and John Kerry have all met with the Palestinian Authority for peace talks with Israel.

 

 

WTH Tennessee, Against Pro-Life Voters?

In Tennessee, a Federal Judge Disenfranchises Pro-Life Voters

DFrench/NRO: No one should ever doubt the Left’s commitment to abortion. For the sake of preserving the right to kill an unborn child, the Left will sacrifice democracy and even reason itself. Pro-life lawyers have a term for liberal judges’ tendency to twist the Constitution for the cause of death — the “abortion distortion.” The latest example comes from Nashville, Tenn., where an Obama-appointee federal judge just wrote perhaps the least credible judicial opinion I’ve ever read. But first, some background. Before the 2014 election, Tennessee, one of America’s most conservative and religious states, had become the South’s abortion supermarket, all because of a Tennessee Supreme Court ruling that declared that the Tennessee constitution protected the “right” to an abortion to a greater degree than did even Roe v. Wade or Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Consequently, even if a pro-life law would have passed federal constitutional muster, Tennessee state courts would strike it down.

 KAGSTV

Tennessee voters responded by passing Amendment 1 — a pro-life constitutional amendment that reversed the state’s high court and unequivocally declared that “nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion.” Tennessee’s amendment process is arduous. First, a proposed amendment has to pass with a majority in both houses. Then, after the next legislative election, the amendment has to pass with a two-thirds majority. Finally, it comes before the people. But even there an amendment faces a double hurdle. It has to pass with a majority of the vote, and the “yes” votes have to equal a “majority of all the citizens of the state voting for Governor.” For decades, Tennessee officials have interpreted this rule as merely requiring that the total “yes” vote exceed half of the total gubernatorial vote. In other words, a person could vote yes on the amendment and still have their vote count even if they didn’t vote for governor. In fact, amendment proponents expressly told voters that they could pursue exactly this strategy — they didn’t have to vote for governor to have their vote count.
After their loss, pro-abortion leftists sued in federal court, making the astonishing claim that this process violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Why? Because it didn’t give the “no” side enough advantages in the fight against the amendment. They claimed that Tennessee’s process violated their right to “participate on an equal basis with other citizens in the jurisdiction.” They also claimed that the Tennessee Constitution required election officials to count only the votes of people who voted for governor. So if you wanted your vote to count for the amendment, you had to vote for governor.
On Friday, Judge Kevin Sharp did what liberal federal judges do: found a way to rule for abortion rights. He backed the plaintiffs, holding that the traditional manner of counting votes for constitutional amendments violated both the state and the federal constitutions. He then ordered a statewide recount, in which only the votes of those who voted in both the amendment contest and the gubernatorial race would be counted.
In an opinion full of insulting asides and other potshots at amendment supporters, Sharp claimed that the votes of those who voted in the governor’s race but against the amendment were “not given the same weight” as those who voted for Amendment 1 but did not vote in the governor’s race. In other words, he claimed that a voter who did not vote for governor but did vote for the amendment had more influence over the process than a voter who chose to vote in both elections. Yet that additional influence was the product not of discrimination but of voter choice, of deliberate voting strategy.
The judge’s solution to this fabricated problem was to give the votes of those who voted for the amendment but not for governor no weight at all. In other words, his concern for voting rights (he called the right to vote “precious” and “fundamental”) was so strong that he just went ahead and disenfranchised thousands of voters who relied on longstanding state-government interpretations of its own constitution. Moreover, he signaled that even if a recount shows that the amendment would still pass under his new, judicially created standard, he may still rule that the election itself should be voided.

When I was in law school, one of my radical leftist professors declared that the role of a judge was to first determine the “right” result, then to manipulate law and precedent to justify the pre-ordained outcome. He turned the process of judicial reasoning on its head, and my classmates loved it. Abortion jurisprudence is the product of exactly this ideology. Sexual revolutionaries aren’t just professors, activists, and lawmakers. Some are robed Robespierres, and you can always count on them to protect the culture of death. — David French is an attorney, and a staff writer at National Review.

A Judge Issued a Gag Order, Preventing Speech

Oregon Bakers Continue Legal Fight, Challenging ‘Gag Order’

Harkness/DailySignal

The Oregon bakers who were ordered to pay $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding filed a brief with the Oregon Court of Appeals on Monday, arguing the ruling against them was biased and violates both the Oregon and U.S. constitutions.

“In America, you’re innocent until proven guilty,” said Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty Institute, the group representing Aaron and Melissa Klein in their legal fight. “Commissioner Brad Avakian decided the Kleins were guilty before he even heard their case. This is an egregious violation of the Kleins’ rights to due process. We hope the Oregon Court of Appeals will remedy this by dismissing the government’s case against the Kleins.”

Brad Avakian, commissioner of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, was responsible for issuing the final ruling on the case. On July 2, 2015, he ruled that in declining to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding due to their religious beliefs, the Kleins violated an Oregon law that prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation against people based on their sexual orientation.

Avakian ordered the Kleins to pay $135,000 in mental, physical, and emotional damages to the couple whom they denied service.

Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer (who have since married) filed a complaint against Sweet Cakes by Melissa in Gresham, Ore., in February 2013, a month after the Kleins refused to make a cake for the same-sex couple’s wedding.

The Bureau of Labor and Industries opened its investigation into Sweet Cakes by Melissa in August 2013, six months after the agency received the initial complaint from Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer alleging the bakery owners discriminated against them.

Yet, in the appeal brief filed Monday, lawyers for the Kleins argued that Avakian had publicly declared the Kleins guilty before even waiting for an investigation to take place, citing a Feb. 5, 2013, Facebook post.

In that post, Avakian writes, “Everyone has a right to their religious beliefs, but that doesn’t mean they can disobey laws that are already in place. Having one set of rules for everybody ensures that people are treated fairly as they go about their daily lives.”

 

In August 2013, after the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries announced it was opening an investigation to determine whether the Kleins had discriminated against the same-sex couple, Avakian also commented about the case, suggesting he had already decided that the Kleins were guilty. “Everybody is entitled to their own beliefs,” he said in an interview with The Oregonian, “but that doesn’t mean that folks have the right to discriminate.”

“The goal is never to shut down a business. The goal is to rehabilitate,” Avakian added.

Ken Klukowski, an attorney at First Liberty, told The Daily Signal that “it’s clear” Avakian demonstrated bias “that rises to the level of violating due process.”

In addition to ruling the Kleins must pay $135,000, Avakian also ordered the former bakery owners to “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for same-sex weddings based on their Christian beliefs.

“The Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries hereby orders [Aaron and Melissa Klein] to cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published … any communication … to the effect that any of the accommodations … will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination be made against, any person on account of their sexual orientation,” Avakian wrote in the final order.

The justification for this part of his final order originates from an interview Aaron and Melissa Klein participated in with Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins in 2014. During the interview, Aaron said that they, “don’t do same-sex weddings,” and “This fight is not over. We will continue to stand strong.”

Avakian wrote those statements demonstrate a “prospective intent to discriminate.”

“This gag order that they’re under right now, where they have been ordered by the government that they can’t even discuss these things with the media,” Klukowski said, “is shockingly overbroad.”

“There are aspects of their beliefs and of this case, including aspects of their religious beliefs about marriage, that if they were to share these things publicly, that the government could punish them, saying that it amounts to the equivalent of advertising their intention to continue engaging in illegal discrimination,” Klukowski said.

“That censors so much protected speech.”

The punishment for violating the order is “notoriously unspecific,” Klukowski added. Because of that, lawyers for the Kleins are treading carefully on what they allow their clients to do and say in public.

“This is a couple with young children and where the law does not specify what the most severe penalty could be where as far as we know, the sky could be the limit, that’s where we owe it to our clients to err on the side of caution and try to shield them from additional exposure that could have consequences of unspecified severity,” he said.

In reviewing the appeal, the Oregon Appeal Court will determine whether or not the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries violated the Kleins’ constitutional rights to religious freedom, free speech, and due process.

The Kleins maintain that they did not decline the same-sex couple due to their sexual orientation—stating in the brief that they have served one of the women who filed the complaint against them in the past. Instead, they maintain they were only declining to participate in an event that they disagree with because of their Christian beliefs about marriage.

Avakian ruled there is “no distinction” between the two situations.

Klukowski said he expects oral arguments to take place later this year. If the Oregon Court of Appeals rules against the Kleins, the next step would be appealing to the Oregon Supreme Court.

 

General Dunford: No Fair Fight

Secretary Carter’s Opening Remarks

No Fair Fights for U.S. Troops, Chairman Says

DefenseDept: WASHINGTON, April 27, 2016 — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff repeated to the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee what has become a mantra to him: he doesn’t believe the United States should ever send American service members into a fair fight.

“Rather, we have to maintain a joint force that has the capability and credibility to assure our allies and partners, deter aggression and overmatch any potential adversary,” Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, who was joined by Defense Secretary Ash Carter, told the committee members.

Carter and Dunford provided testimony on Defense Department’s fiscal year 2017 budget request.

Improving current capabilities, restoring full-spectrum readiness and developing leaders for the future are key to maintaining the greatest advantage the U.S. military has over any rival — its people, the chairman said.

No Shortage of Challengers

The United States has no shortage of challengers from state adversaries to non-traditional foes. The five challenges the Defense Department’s fiscal year 2017 budget request focuses on are Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and violent extremism.

Russia, China, North Korea and Iran continue to invest in military capabilities that look for the soft spot in American defenses, Dunford said. “They are also advancing their interests through competition with a military dimension that falls short of traditional armed conflict and the threshold for a traditional military response,” he said.

The actions of Russia in Ukraine, China in the South China Sea and Iran throughout the Middle East are examples of the challenges the DoD must address, he said.

But the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and al-Qaida still pose dangers to the homeland, the American people and friends, allies and partners, the general said. “Given the opportunity, such extremist groups would fundamentally change our way of life,” he said.

Nuclear Capabilities

Added to these challenges is the priority to modernize the nuclear capabilities of the United States, Dunford said.

The nuclear triad underpins deterrence in the world, but new domains also must be considered, the chairman said. Space and cyberspace are now realms of combat, and the nation must develop and maintain credible capabilities in these realms as well, he said.

Underlying all these threats is the reality of the fiscal environment, Dunford added.

“Despite partial relief from Congress on sequester-level funding, the department has absorbed $800 billion in cuts and faces an additional $100 billion of sequestration-induced risk through fiscal 2021,” he said. “Absorbing significant cuts over the past five years has resulted in our under-investing in critical capabilities. Unless we reverse sequestration, we will be unable to execute the current defense strategy.”

Right Trajectory

Overall, he told the senators, DoD’s FY 17 budget request “puts us on the right trajectory, but it will require your support to ensure the joint force has the depth, flexibility, readiness and responsiveness that ensures our men and women will never face a fair fight.”

But, the chairman warned, a bow wave of requirements lie ahead, including those tied to the Ohio-class submarine replacement program, continued cyber and space investment programs and the B-21 long-range bomber program