Month: November 2021

Federal Court Rules Takings Clause May Require Compensation when Police Destroy an Innocent Person’s Home in Process of Pursuing a Suspect


Unknown
Vicki Baker’s house after SWAT agents destroyed it (Institute for Justice).

 

On November 18, a federal district court issued a ruling indicating that the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment may require the government to pay compensation in a case where a police SWAT team destroyed an innocent person’s home in the process of pursuing a criminal suspect. As Judge Amos Mazzant recognizes in his opinion in Baker v. McKinney, this ruling is at odds with decisions in similar cases by some other federal courts, which hold that there cannot be takings liability in such cases because of the “police power” exception to the Takings Clause. The issue here is an extremely important one, one on which existing jurisprudence is far from a model of clarity. As the case goes forward, it might end up setting a significant precedent.

Reason’s Bill Binion has a helpful summary of the disturbing facts of the case:

In July 2020, Wesley Little—who Vicki Baker had terminated as her handyman about a year and a half prior—arrived at Baker’s home in McKinney, Texas. Baker’s daughter answered. Recognizing him from news reports that he was wanted for the abduction of a 15-year-old girl, she left the premises and called the police.

SWAT agents soon arrived. They set off explosives to open the garage entryway, detonated tear gas grenades inside the building, ran over Baker’s fence with an armored vehicle, and ripped off her front door, despite being given a garage door opener, a code to the back gate, and a key to the home. The house was unlivable when they were through….

“In its pursuit of the fugitive and pursuant to its police powers, Baker alleges the City caused significant economic damage—over $50,000—to her home. Then, the City refused to compensate her for the damage,” writes Judge Amos L. Mazzant III of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas…..

Baker will likely still have to overcome an appeal from the city. But if her suit meets a more fortunate fate, she may recuperate some of the financial costs incurred as she battles stage 3 cancer and tries to leave the state for retirement. Yet some things will not be replaceable. An antique doll collection was damaged by tear gas, for example. Worse yet, her daughter’s dog was left deaf and blind.

“I’ve lost everything,” Baker told Reason last March. “I’ve lost my chance to sell my house. I’ve lost my chance to retire without fear of how I’m going to make my regular bills.”

Some of these aggressive tactics may have been understandable, given that Little was holding a 15-year-old girl against her will, and that he was believed to be armed. But, as Judge Mazzant recounts in his ruling, by the time the SWAT team  “forcefully entered
the home by breaking down both the front and garage door and running over the backyard fence with a tank-like vehicle known as a BearCat,” Little had already released the girl unharmed. When the police entered the house, they found he had taken his own life.

The Fifth Amendment says  the government must pay “just compensation” whenever it takes private property for public use. Courts have long held that deliberate destruction of private property by government officials counts as a taking. As far back as 1872, the Supreme Court ruled that “where real estate is actually invaded by superinduced additions of water, earth, sand, or other material . . . so as to effectually destroy or impair its usefulness, it is a taking, within the meaning of the Constitution.” You don’t have to be a takings scholar to see that Vicki Baker’s house was “effectually destroy[ed] or impair[ed] [in] its usefulness,” and that the police deliberately caused the damage.

However, courts have also long held that at least some exercises of the “police power” (government’s authority to protect public health and safety) are exempt from takings liability. In the 2019 case of Lech v. Jackson, the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit used the police power theory to deny takings liability in a situation remarkably similar to this one. There, too, the police essentially destroyed an innocent family’s house in the process of trying to apprehend a suspect (in that instance, a suspected shoplifter).

Judge Mazzant’s opinion suggests – correctly, in my view – that the reasoning of Lech is wrong, and that it isn’t binding on his court (which is in the Fifth Circuit, not the Tenth):

The City asks this Court to adopt what would constitute a per se rule—that destruction to private property resulting from the exercise of valid police power cannot constitute a Fifth Amendment Taking. Neither the Supreme Court nor the Fifth Circuit have directly found a taking that requires just compensation when destruction of property results from the exercise of valid  police power. The City correctly points out that other circuits have foreclosed recovery under similar circumstances. See Manitowoc Cty., 635 F.3d 331; Lech, 791 F. App’x. 711; AmeriSource Corp., 525 F.3d 1149.

However, both the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court have suggested such action could amount to a taking. In John Corp. v. City of Houston, the Fifth Circuit asserted that “a distinction between the use of police powers and of eminent domain power . . . cannot carry the day” when assessing whether a taking has occurred. 214 F.3d at 578–79. Further “[t]he Supreme Court’s entire ‘regulatory takings’ law is premised on the notion that a city’s exercise of its police powers can go  too far, and if it does, there has been a taking.” Id.(citing Penn. Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393,  415 (1922)). In Lucas v. S.C. Coastal Council, the Supreme Court opined that if “the uses of private property were subject to unbridled, uncompensated qualification under the police power, the natural tendency of human nature would be to extend the qualification more and more until at last private property disappeared.” 505 U.S. 1003, 1014 (1992)….

The Court finds the Fifth Circuit and Supreme Court reasoning persuasive, particularly at this stage of litigation where it construes allegations in the light most favorable to Baker. At the motion to dismiss stage, it would be imprudent to foreclose Baker’s ability to recover based on the shaky reasoning recited in non-binding cases from other circuits—especially when both the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court have alluded that a taking could result from destructive police power. Because Baker has plausibly alleged the City’s destruction of her home resulting from the exercise of its police power could amount to a taking, the Court continues its takings analysis….

While the Court acknowledges that governmental bodies are not “liable under
the Just Compensation Clause to property owners every time policemen break down the doors of buildings to foil burglars thought to be inside[,]” Nat’l Bd. of Young Men’s Christian Ass’ns v. United States, 395 U.S. 85, 92 (1969) (emphasis added), Baker has alleged damage to her private property—and the City’s refusal to compensate for such damage—that plausibly amounts to a Fifth Amendment violation.

I think Judge Mazzant is absolutely right that the police power does not create a blank-check exemption from takings liability. Nor is there a blank check for law-enforcement operations specifically. I outlined some of the reasons why in my critique of the Lech decision and in an amicus brief in which the Cato Institute and I unsuccessfully urged the Supreme Court to review and overrule Lech. Among other things, I pointed out that the Takings Clause was enacted in the first place in part as a reaction against the depredations of British troops during the colonial era and Revolutionary War. Many of these seizures and occupations of property were, of course,  undertaken for the purpose of enforcing various British laws against recalcitrant colonists.

More recently, in December 2019, the Court of Federal Claims ruled that the police power exception does not foreclose takings liability in a case where the Army Corps of Engineers deliberately flooded large parts of Houston in order to prevent potentially worse flooding elsewhere during Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

Judge Mazzant’s ruling doesn’t definitively resolve the case. It merely rejects the City’s motion to dismiss, allowing Baker to move forward with her claim. The decision also doesn’t establish a clear standard for when destructive law-enforcement operations qualify as takings. For the moment, the court only rejects the theory (endorsed in cases like Lech) that such operations enjoy a virtually categorical exemption.

Even this preliminary ruling is likely to be appealed. Thus, this ruling is just the beginning of what may be a prolonged legal battle. But it’s a legal battle that bears watching. The status of the police power exemption to takings is a major issue for a wide range of government policies, including deliberate flooding of private land (as in the Houston case), Covid-19 shutdowns, and (as in this case) law enforcement operations.

Finally, it’s worth noting that, regardless of the legal issues, a just government would accept that it has a moral obligation to pay compensation in cases like this one. After all, its agents have deliberately inflicted enormous harm on an innocent homeowner. Even if they do so for a good purpose (catching a dangerous criminal), basic justice and fairness demand that the cost be borne by the general public who benefit from his capture, not arbitrarily concentrated on one person, who did no wrong.

Sadly, however, governments are often blind to the demands of justice. That’s one of the reasons why we need constitutional rights.

NOTE: The plaintiff in this case is represented by the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm with which I have longstanding connections, including working there as a summer clerk when I was in law school, and writing multiple pro bono amicus briefs on their behalf. I do not, however, have any involvement in the present case. IJ has issued a  statement on Judge Mazzant’s ruling, available here.

The post Federal Court Rules Takings Clause May Require Compensation when Police Destroy an Innocent Person's Home in Process of Pursuing a Suspect appeared first on Reason.com.

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New York City Is Funding America’s First Official Safe Injection Site for Drug Users


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New York City is giving its blessing to safe consumption sites where intravenous drug users will be able to inject without fear of arrest and with the knowledge that medical professionals will respond in cases of overdose. These sites will be the first publicly funded facilities of their kind to operate in the United States. 

Outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city’s Health Department announced the move this morning. The consumption sites will be found at locations where needle exchange services are already provided by nonprofit groups. Sites in East Harlem and Washington Heights are set to open their doors to users as early as today. They will provide clean needles to users while staff will be on hand to administer naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses. Users will have to provide their own illegal drugs.

New York City will not be running the consumption centers. Instead, the two nonprofits who currently run the needle injection programs have joined up to form an organization named OnPoint NYC, which will also run the safe consumption sites. These nonprofits receive city funding.

Safe consumption sites (also called safe injection sites) have been operating in Canada and Australia for years. While New York City will be the first U.S. city to offer these services, San Francisco, Seattle, and Philadelphia also have plans in the works. All of these cities have seen increasing rates of public use of injected drugs such as heroin, as well as high rates of overdoses and overdose deaths. New York City reported more than 2,000 drug overdose deaths in 2020. The United States as a whole has also seen a record number of overdose deaths—more than 93,000 for 2020.

Given such numbers, safe consumption sites are a necessary and long-overdue harm reduction measure, properly focused on keeping drug users alive rather than on waging a punitive and failed drug war. The American Medical Association supports the use of safe consumption sites, noting earlier this year that not a single overdose death has been reported in the 120 safe consumption sites operating elsewhere in the world. That is precisely because health professionals at those sites are prepared to respond to emergencies.

Unfortunately, U.S. drug laws have made it difficult to open similar sites here. Section 856 of the federal Controlled Substances Act makes it a felony to knowingly allow a space to be used for the purpose of consuming drugs. This law was crafted in 1986 to shut down so-called “crack houses,” but when Philadelphia allowed nonprofit Safehouse to open a safe consumption site in that city in 2019, U.S. Attorney William McSwain of the Eastern District of Philadelphia invoked federal law to stop the site from opening. Judge Gerald Austin McHugh of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania initially took Safehouse’s side and said the text of Section 856 did not forbid city-approved, medically monitored consumption sites. But that ruling was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, which held that federal law did prohibit sites like the one operated by Safehouse. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case. The Safehouse site has not opened.

So while New York City is now funding safe injection sites (incoming mayor Eric Adams is on the record supporting them) there’s still the question of what the federal government might do in response. The New York Times reports that while the Biden administration has taken a position in support of harm reduction methods to prevent drug deaths, it has not endorsed safe injection sites. New York City Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi told the Times that the city has had “productive conversations” with the Biden administration and believes the federal government won’t attempt to interfere.

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Federal Court Rules Takings Clause May Require Compensation when Police Destroy an Innocent Person’s Home in Process of Pursuing a Suspect


Unknown
Vicki Baker’s house after SWAT agents destroyed it (Institute for Justice).

 

On November 18, a federal district court issued a ruling indicating that the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment may require the government to pay compensation in a case where a police SWAT team destroyed an innocent person’s home in the process of pursuing a criminal suspect. As Judge Amos Mazzant recognizes in his opinion in Baker v. McKinney, this ruling is at odds with decisions in similar cases by some other federal courts, which hold that there cannot be takings liability in such cases because of the “police power” exception to the Takings Clause. The issue here is an extremely important one, one on which existing jurisprudence is far from a model of clarity. As the case goes forward, it might end up setting a significant precedent.

Reason’s Bill Binion has a helpful summary of the disturbing facts of the case:

In July 2020, Wesley Little—who Vicki Baker had terminated as her handyman about a year and a half prior—arrived at Baker’s home in McKinney, Texas. Baker’s daughter answered. Recognizing him from news reports that he was wanted for the abduction of a 15-year-old girl, she left the premises and called the police.

SWAT agents soon arrived. They set off explosives to open the garage entryway, detonated tear gas grenades inside the building, ran over Baker’s fence with an armored vehicle, and ripped off her front door, despite being given a garage door opener, a code to the back gate, and a key to the home. The house was unlivable when they were through….

“In its pursuit of the fugitive and pursuant to its police powers, Baker alleges the City caused significant economic damage—over $50,000—to her home. Then, the City refused to compensate her for the damage,” writes Judge Amos L. Mazzant III of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas…..

Baker will likely still have to overcome an appeal from the city. But if her suit meets a more fortunate fate, she may recuperate some of the financial costs incurred as she battles stage 3 cancer and tries to leave the state for retirement. Yet some things will not be replaceable. An antique doll collection was damaged by tear gas, for example. Worse yet, her daughter’s dog was left deaf and blind.

“I’ve lost everything,” Baker told Reason last March. “I’ve lost my chance to sell my house. I’ve lost my chance to retire without fear of how I’m going to make my regular bills.”

Some of these aggressive tactics may have been understandable, given that Little was holding a 15-year-old girl against her will, and that he was believed to be armed. But, as Judge Mazzant recounts in his ruling, by the time the SWAT team  “forcefully entered
the home by breaking down both the front and garage door and running over the backyard fence with a tank-like vehicle known as a BearCat,” Little had already released the girl unharmed. When the police entered the house, they found he had taken his own life.

The Fifth Amendment says  the government must pay “just compensation” whenever it takes private property for public use. Courts have long held that deliberate destruction of private property by government officials counts as a taking. As far back as 1872, the Supreme Court ruled that “where real estate is actually invaded by superinduced additions of water, earth, sand, or other material . . . so as to effectually destroy or impair its usefulness, it is a taking, within the meaning of the Constitution.” You don’t have to be a takings scholar to see that Vicki Baker’s house was “effectually destroy[ed] or impair[ed] [in] its usefulness,” and that the police deliberately caused the damage.

However, courts have also long held that at least some exercises of the “police power” (government’s authority to protect public health and safety) are exempt from takings liability. In the 2019 case of Lech v. Jackson, the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit used the police power theory to deny takings liability in a situation remarkably similar to this one. There, too, the police essentially destroyed an innocent family’s house in the process of trying to apprehend a suspect (in that instance, a suspected shoplifter).

Judge Mazzant’s opinion suggests – correctly, in my view – that the reasoning of Lech is wrong, and that it isn’t binding on his court (which is in the Fifth Circuit, not the Tenth):

The City asks this Court to adopt what would constitute a per se rule—that destruction to private property resulting from the exercise of valid police power cannot constitute a Fifth Amendment Taking. Neither the Supreme Court nor the Fifth Circuit have directly found a taking that requires just compensation when destruction of property results from the exercise of valid  police power. The City correctly points out that other circuits have foreclosed recovery under similar circumstances. See Manitowoc Cty., 635 F.3d 331; Lech, 791 F. App’x. 711; AmeriSource Corp., 525 F.3d 1149.

However, both the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court have suggested such action could amount to a taking. In John Corp. v. City of Houston, the Fifth Circuit asserted that “a distinction between the use of police powers and of eminent domain power . . . cannot carry the day” when assessing whether a taking has occurred. 214 F.3d at 578–79. Further “[t]he Supreme Court’s entire ‘regulatory takings’ law is premised on the notion that a city’s exercise of its police powers can go  too far, and if it does, there has been a taking.” Id.(citing Penn. Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393,  415 (1922)). In Lucas v. S.C. Coastal Council, the Supreme Court opined that if “the uses of private property were subject to unbridled, uncompensated qualification under the police power, the natural tendency of human nature would be to extend the qualification more and more until at last private property disappeared.” 505 U.S. 1003, 1014 (1992)….

The Court finds the Fifth Circuit and Supreme Court reasoning persuasive, particularly at this stage of litigation where it construes allegations in the light most favorable to Baker. At the motion to dismiss stage, it would be imprudent to foreclose Baker’s ability to recover based on the shaky reasoning recited in non-binding cases from other circuits—especially when both the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court have alluded that a taking could result from destructive police power. Because Baker has plausibly alleged the City’s destruction of her home resulting from the exercise of its police power could amount to a taking, the Court continues its takings analysis….

While the Court acknowledges that governmental bodies are not “liable under
the Just Compensation Clause to property owners every time policemen break down the doors of buildings to foil burglars thought to be inside[,]” Nat’l Bd. of Young Men’s Christian Ass’ns v. United States, 395 U.S. 85, 92 (1969) (emphasis added), Baker has alleged damage to her private property—and the City’s refusal to compensate for such damage—that plausibly amounts to a Fifth Amendment violation.

I think Judge Mazzant is absolutely right that the police power does not create a blank-check exemption from takings liability. Nor is there a blank check for law-enforcement operations specifically. I outlined some of the reasons why in my critique of the Lech decision and in an amicus brief in which the Cato Institute and I unsuccessfully urged the Supreme Court to review and overrule Lech. Among other things, I pointed out that the Takings Clause was enacted in the first place in part as a reaction against the depredations of British troops during the colonial era and Revolutionary War. Many of these seizures and occupations of property were, of course,  undertaken for the purpose of enforcing various British laws against recalcitrant colonists.

More recently, in December 2019, the Court of Federal Claims ruled that the police power exception does not foreclose takings liability in a case where the Army Corps of Engineers deliberately flooded large parts of Houston in order to prevent potentially worse flooding elsewhere during Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

Judge Mazzant’s ruling doesn’t definitively resolve the case. It merely rejects the City’s motion to dismiss, allowing Baker to move forward with her claim. The decision also doesn’t establish a clear standard for when destructive law-enforcement operations qualify as takings. For the moment, the court only rejects the theory (endorsed in cases like Lech) that such operations enjoy a virtually categorical exemption.

Even this preliminary ruling is likely to be appealed. Thus, this ruling is just the beginning of what may be a prolonged legal battle. But it’s a legal battle that bears watching. The status of the police power exemption to takings is a major issue for a wide range of government policies, including deliberate flooding of private land (as in the Houston case), Covid-19 shutdowns, and (as in this case) law enforcement operations.

Finally, it’s worth noting that, regardless of the legal issues, a just government would accept that it has a moral obligation to pay compensation in cases like this one. After all, its agents have deliberately inflicted enormous harm on an innocent homeowner. Even if they do so for a good purpose (catching a dangerous criminal), basic justice and fairness demand that the cost be borne by the general public who benefit from his capture, not arbitrarily concentrated on one person, who did no wrong.

Sadly, however, governments are often blind to the demands of justice. That’s one of the reasons why we need constitutional rights.

NOTE: The plaintiff in this case is represented by the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm with which I have longstanding connections, including working there as a summer clerk when I was in law school, and writing multiple pro bono amicus briefs on their behalf. I do not, however, have any involvement in the present case. IJ has issued a  statement on Judge Mazzant’s ruling, available here.

The post Federal Court Rules Takings Clause May Require Compensation when Police Destroy an Innocent Person's Home in Process of Pursuing a Suspect appeared first on Reason.com.

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3 Dead In Shooting At Michigan High School, Suspect In Custody: Officials

3 Dead In Shooting At Michigan High School, Suspect In Custody: Officials

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Authorities on Tuesday said that at least three people were shot and more injured at a Michigan high school, and the suspect is in custody.

Dozens of police, fire, and EMS personnel work on the scene of a shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Mich., on Nov. 30, 2021. (Todd McInturf/The Detroit News via AP)

The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that a suspect was taken into custody. The shooting occurred at Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan.

The identity of the suspect and a motive haven’t been disclosed. The suspected shooter was identified as a 15-year-old male who officials believe acted alone, according to the news release.

“There was no resistance during the arrest and the suspect has asked for a lawyer and has not made any statements as to a motive,” the release continued.

Officers responded at around 12:55 p.m. to a flood of 911 calls about an active shooter at the school, Oakland County Undersheriff Mike McCabe said during a news conference. Authorities arrested the suspect at the school and recovered a semi-automatic handgun and several clips.

“Deputies confronted him, he had the weapon on him, they took him into custody,” McCabe said.

The three who were killed are believed to be students, while six others were shot, including a teacher, said the release. Their identities were not revealed.

Parents walk away with their children from the Meijer’s parking lot where many students gathered following an active shooter situation at Oxford High School in Oxford, Mich., on Nov. 30, 2021. (Eric Seals/USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters)

School district officials told parents in a message earlier Tuesday that there “was an active shooter at Oxford High School.”

“Oakland County Sheriff’s Department has secured the scene. Oxford High School students and staff are systematically being evacuated to the Meijer Garden Center and may be picked up there. Any students with their own transportation have been allowed to leave,” the district said, WDIV-TV reported. All other district schools are in lockdown for safety purposes and are in no danger.

The disctrict added: “Students at middle and elementary schools may be picked up by their parents at any time. Busing transportation will be delayed at Oxford Middle School and elementary schools until the needs of the high school students have been met. We will continue to share information with you as we can.”

Rochester Hills Fire Chief John Lyman told Patch that 25 agencies, 60 units, and 2 helicopters transported patients to nearby hospitals.

Oxford High School in Oxford, Mich., on Nov. 30, 2021. (Paul Sancya/AP Photo)

Several schools in the area were also placed on lockdown due to the incident.

“In this moment of tragedy, there are heroes showing who they are,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) wrote on Twitter in response to the incident. “Thank you to everyone who is stepping up to help in our community’s time of need.”

Oxford is located about 50 miles north of Detroit.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/30/2021 – 17:05

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3EePa12 Tyler Durden

Buchanan: Return Of The “Law And Order” Issue

Buchanan: Return Of The “Law And Order” Issue

Authored by Pat Buchanan,

According to Gallup, on the issue of crime, President Joe Biden is 18 points underwater. While 57% of Americans disapprove of how he is handling crime, only 39% approve.

Biden’s dismal rating was recorded before the verdict came in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial — not guilty on all five counts — a verdict Biden declared had made him “angry.”

Biden’s rating also came before career criminal Darrell Brooks, free on $1,000 bail after running over his girlfriend, drove his Ford Escape into the Waukesha Christmas parade, killing six and injuring 60.

Biden’s low rating on crime came before “flash mobs” of thieves in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York looted Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom and Apple, cleaning them out in minutes.

It came before the guilty verdicts came in against the three white men accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery, the Black jogger, in Georgia.

Media efforts to infuse a racial motive to Rittenhouse’s action, however, failed. Rittenhouse is white, as were the three rioters he shot. As were the lead prosecutor and his deputy. As were Rittenhouse’s defense attorney and his deputy. And as was the judge.

Race never came up during Rittenhouse’s time on the witness stand. And nothing in his background suggests any link to “white supremacists,” as was insinuated by Biden, who has made no apology.

But what these incidents, involving killings with racial connotations, portend is that crime, race, law and order will be blazing issues in 2022 and 2024. And as of now, Biden and his Democratic Party are not on the side of America’s majority.

The latest statistics on homicide and murders for 2021 seem to guarantee that this mega-issue remains front and center.

A day before Thanksgiving, The Washington Post reported that Washington, D.C., had recorded its 200th homicide this year, surpassing last year’s total five weeks before this year’s end. Homicides in 2020 were up 30% from 2019.

Though Baltimore has a smaller population than D.C., there have been 300 killings there this year, half again as many as in D.C.

In Philadelphia, America’s sixth most populous city, there have been 503 victims of homicides thus far in 2021, a new record.

Who is doing all this shooting, knifing and killing on the savage streets of our great cities, and who are the principal victims?

Heather MacDonald, among the nation’s foremost statisticians of crime, relates, using the figures for New York:

“In 2020, blacks were over 72% of all shooting suspects; we know that from victim and witness descriptions. Whites were 1.4% of all shooting suspects … based on victim and witness descriptions.”

“A black New Yorker is roughly 50 times as likely to commit a shooting as a white New Yorker. Blacks were 63.4% of murder suspects; whites, 6.3%. (That white share of homicide suspects represents domestic violence incidents, not street crime.)”

Bottom line: Disproportionately, the perpetrators, the shooters and the killers in America, are Black. As are their victims. If Black Lives Matter wants to preserve Black lives, they should look to their own communities because that is whence almost all of the killers come.

Indeed, of all of the Black folks who will have died of homicide or murder in D.C., Baltimore, Philly and New York this year, how many will have been shot or stabbed by Proud Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, white vigilantes, white supremacists or rogue white cops?

2022 and 2024 could prove to be a political rerun of the mid-’60s. Then it was that “law and order,” a slogan liberals called code words for racism, helped propel conservatives to preeminence in the GOP and thence to national power.

And between then and now, the similarities are many.

Then, there were the riots in Harlem and Watts in 1964 and 1965, Newark and Detroit in 1967, and D.C. and 100 other cities after the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. During those years, there was also a national explosion in violent street crime.

Then came the anti-war protests and riots, which kept Lyndon B. Johnson locked up in the White House in his final days in 1968 and tore apart the Democratic convention in Chicago.

Today’s Democratic Party is associated with defunding the police, ending cash bail for arrested felons, emptying prisons, and embracing the BLM and antifa “social justice protests” of 2020 that often involved looting, arson and assaults upon police.

As for Biden, the 2021 model bears little resemblance to the tough-talking Delaware senator who pushed the principal anti-crime bill of the 1990s and explained his approach in a 1994 Senate speech:

“Every time Richard Nixon, when he was running in 1972, would say, ‘Law and order,’ the Democratic match or response was, ‘Law and order with justice’ — whatever that meant. And I would say, ‘Lock the S.O.B.s up.’”

Today, the progressive wing of his party prevents Biden from taking that kind of stand. But that is what his country is calling for.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/30/2021 – 16:45

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3roDlBG Tyler Durden

WTI Extends Losses After Smaller Than Expected Crude Draw

WTI Extends Losses After Smaller Than Expected Crude Draw

Crude prices puked over 5% today as demand fears over Omicron (jet fuel demand) and European case count continued acceleration combined with Fed Chair Powell’s taper tantrum. While tighter monetary policy can be a sign of economic strength, it’s typically bearish for commodities. WTI briefly dropped below $65 a barrel for the first time since August during the session, while the global benchmark Brent also tumbled.

“That ties back to crude oil because if you start to pump the brakes on economic growth, you start to see impact on demand,” said Rebecca Babin, senior energy trader at CIBC Private Wealth Management.

Oil traders are also tracking talks this week aimed at reviving Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Success at the negotiations in Vienna could lift sanctions on Iran’s economy, leading to a resumption in official oil flows. The exchanges began positively on Monday, according to a top European diplomat.

However, the next leg one way or the other will likely be decided by this week’s inventory data…

API

  • Crude -747k (-1.66mm exp)

  • Cushing (+1.00mm exp)

  • Gasoline

  • Distillates

Crude stocks fell 747k barrels last week, less than expected…

Source: Bloomberg

After the biggest monthly drop since March 2020, WTI was hovering around $66.75 ahead of the API print and dipped after despite the small crude draw…

Are we about to see gas prices at the pump plunge?

As Bloomberg notes, the oil market is also continuing to weigh the impact of the omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus on demand and what OPEC+ may decide to do in response when the producer group meets later this week. New travel restrictions threaten the rebound in global crude consumption that has underpinned this year’s price rally.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/30/2021 – 16:37

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32N9AjX Tyler Durden

Chris Cuomo Violated Journalism Norms To Help His Brother and Should Resign From CNN


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The office of New York’s attorney general released thousands of pages of testimony relating to the sexual harassment allegations against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and the new information makes it abundantly clear that CNN host Chris Cuomo involved himself in his brother’s efforts to survive public scrutiny. Contrary to Chris Cuomo’s claim that he did not act as an official advisor to his brother, the documents reveal that he actively used his journalistic access and connections to find out more information about the accusers—and potentially, to discredit them.

Chris texted his brother’s long-serving handler, Melissa DeRosa, about one of the accusers, saying, “I have a lead on the wedding girl.” The wedding girl is Anna Ruch, who accused Andrew of making a pass at her. Chris’s “lead” was a possible means of casting aspersions on her accusation; Chris told the attorney general’s fact-finders that he had learned of a source who might say Ruch had ulterior motives.

Despite claiming during his interview with the attorney general’s office that “I would never do oppo research on anybody alleging anything like this,” he was clearly engaged in a form of opposition research. He wasn’t just passively listening to his brother’s side of the story and offering words of encouragement: He took part in the strategizing.

That’s not a crime, of course. It’s unsurprising that he would take his brother’s side and want to help him. But it was wrong for Chris to mislead his viewers about the role he played, and it was wildly unethical to ignore the scandal during his broadcast while privately participating in the governor’s response efforts.

The matter was badly handled by the network: At the height of the pandemic, CNN broke its own policy and allowed Andrew to give fluff interviews to Chris that glamorized the then-governor’s response to COVID-19. These interviews never should have taken place, and they look especially ridiculous now that we know about the nursing home scandal and subsequent coverup.

Given that Chris significantly understated his involvement in his brother’s strategizing, CNN must discipline him. The network says it’s reviewing the anchor’s conduct. It is difficult to imagine any competent review reaching the conclusion that he should keep his job. An important television journalist being the brother of a high-profile government official was an ethically challenging situation at best, and if there was some line in the sand that made it workable enough, Chris Cuomo clearly crossed it.

“By keeping Cuomo on the air and in his job, CNN would send the message that journalistic ethics are only for the little people and viewers are on their own,” wrote The Atlantic‘s David Graham. “Cuomo should take some time off and reflect on his chosen profession—and if and when he comes back, perhaps he should choose a new beat.”

An entirely new line of work might be for the best.

The post Chris Cuomo Violated Journalism Norms To Help His Brother and Should Resign From CNN appeared first on Reason.com.

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New York City Is Funding America’s First Official Safe Injection Site for Drug Users


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New York City is giving its blessing to safe consumption sites where intravenous drug users will be able to inject without fear of arrest and with the knowledge that medical professionals will respond in cases of overdose. These sites will be the first publicly funded facilities of their kind to operate in the United States. 

Outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city’s Health Department announced the move this morning. The consumption sites will be found at locations where needle exchange services are already provided by nonprofit groups. Sites in East Harlem and Washington Heights are set to open their doors to users as early as today. They will provide clean needles to users while staff will be on hand to administer naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses. Users will have to provide their own illegal drugs.

New York City will not be running the consumption centers. Instead, the two nonprofits who currently run the needle injection programs have joined up to form an organization named OnPoint NYC, which will also run the safe consumption sites. These nonprofits receive city funding.

Safe consumption sites (also called safe injection sites) have been operating in Canada and Australia for years. While New York City will be the first U.S. city to offer these services, San Francisco, Seattle, and Philadelphia also have plans in the works. All of these cities have seen increasing rates of public use of injected drugs such as heroin, as well as high rates of overdoses and overdose deaths. New York City reported more than 2,000 drug overdose deaths in 2020. The United States as a whole has also seen a record number of overdose deaths—more than 93,000 for 2020.

Given such numbers, safe consumption sites are a necessary and long-overdue harm reduction measure, properly focused on keeping drug users alive rather than on waging a punitive and failed drug war. The American Medical Association supports the use of safe consumption sites, noting earlier this year that not a single overdose death has been reported in the 120 safe consumption sites operating elsewhere in the world. That is precisely because health professionals at those sites are prepared to respond to emergencies.

Unfortunately, U.S. drug laws have made it difficult to open similar sites here. Section 856 of the federal Controlled Substances Act makes it a felony to knowingly allow a space to be used for the purpose of consuming drugs. This law was crafted in 1986 to shut down so-called “crack houses,” but when Philadelphia allowed nonprofit Safehouse to open a safe consumption site in that city in 2019, U.S. Attorney William McSwain of the Eastern District of Philadelphia invoked federal law to stop the site from opening. Judge Gerald Austin McHugh of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania initially took Safehouse’s side and said the text of Section 856 did not forbid city-approved, medically monitored consumption sites. But that ruling was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, which held that federal law did prohibit sites like the one operated by Safehouse. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case. The Safehouse site has not opened.

So while New York City is now funding safe injection sites (incoming mayor Eric Adams is on the record supporting them) there’s still the question of what the federal government might do in response. The New York Times reports that while the Biden administration has taken a position in support of harm reduction methods to prevent drug deaths, it has not endorsed safe injection sites. New York City Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi told the Times that the city has had “productive conversations” with the Biden administration and believes the federal government won’t attempt to interfere.

The post New York City Is Funding America's First Official Safe Injection Site for Drug Users appeared first on Reason.com.

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Watch: Joe Rogan Wants To Know Why “No One Is Being Held Accountable” Over ‘Russian Collusion’ Fake News

Watch: Joe Rogan Wants To Know Why “No One Is Being Held Accountable” Over ‘Russian Collusion’ Fake News

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Podcast king Joe Rogan demanded to know to why “no one is being held accountable,” within the media over the almost four year long fake ‘Russian collusion’ narrative, pointing out that “the collusion between the media and the government is pretty apparent.”

In an interview with Jocko Willink, Rogan noted that “especially the left-wing media and the left-wing government. It’s pretty fucking apparent that there are some narratives that get shared back and forth.”

He continued, “They have talking points and they don’t talk about things they’re not supposed to, like the Hunter Biden story. Something that’s actual news.”

“Because if that was the Donald Trump Jr. laptop, holy fucking shit, would that lead every night!” Rogan emphasised.

“I mean this whole Russia collusion story has turned out to be complete nonsense,” the host continued.

Willink chimed in “That is insane. Three and a half years the American public was getting beat down with the Russia collusion thing and it was created by the Democratic Party!”

“And it wasn’t real! … And no one is being held accountable!” Rogan reiterated.

Watch:

As Rogan noted earlier this month, the only people who believe this stuff anymore are cult members.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/30/2021 – 16:20

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Chris Cuomo Violated Journalism Norms To Help His Brother and Should Resign From CNN


evphotostwo251028

The office of New York’s attorney general released thousands of pages of testimony relating to the sexual harassment allegations against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and the new information makes it abundantly clear that CNN host Chris Cuomo involved himself in his brother’s efforts to survive public scrutiny. Contrary to Chris Cuomo’s claim that he did not act as an official advisor to his brother, the documents reveal that he actively used his journalistic access and connections to find out more information about the accusers—and potentially, to discredit them.

Chris texted his brother’s long-serving handler, Melissa DeRosa, about one of the accusers, saying, “I have a lead on the wedding girl.” The wedding girl is Anna Ruch, who accused Andrew of making a pass at her. Chris’s “lead” was a possible means of casting aspersions on her accusation; Chris told the attorney general’s fact-finders that he had learned of a source who might say Ruch had ulterior motives.

Despite claiming during his interview with the attorney general’s office that “I would never do oppo research on anybody alleging anything like this,” he was clearly engaged in a form of opposition research. He wasn’t just passively listening to his brother’s side of the story and offering words of encouragement: He took part in the strategizing.

That’s not a crime, of course. It’s unsurprising that he would take his brother’s side and want to help him. But it was wrong for Chris to mislead his viewers about the role he played, and it was wildly unethical to ignore the scandal during his broadcast while privately participating in the governor’s response efforts.

The matter was badly handled by the network: At the height of the pandemic, CNN broke its own policy and allowed Andrew to give fluff interviews to Chris that glamorized the then-governor’s response to COVID-19. These interviews never should have taken place, and they look especially ridiculous now that we know about the nursing home scandal and subsequent coverup.

Given that Chris significantly understated his involvement in his brother’s strategizing, CNN must discipline him. The network says it’s reviewing the anchor’s conduct. It is difficult to imagine any competent review reaching the conclusion that he should keep his job. An important television journalist being the brother of a high-profile government official was an ethically challenging situation at best, and if there was some line in the sand that made it workable enough, Chris Cuomo clearly crossed it.

“By keeping Cuomo on the air and in his job, CNN would send the message that journalistic ethics are only for the little people and viewers are on their own,” wrote The Atlantic‘s David Graham. “Cuomo should take some time off and reflect on his chosen profession—and if and when he comes back, perhaps he should choose a new beat.”

An entirely new line of work might be for the best.

The post Chris Cuomo Violated Journalism Norms To Help His Brother and Should Resign From CNN appeared first on Reason.com.

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