Baltimore Police Working To Retain Officers Despite High Crime & Overtime Issues
by Mike Hellgren
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — There’s growing concern over a shortage of police officers in Baltimore City. Despite ramping up recruiting efforts, there’s still big turnover in the department.
For only the second time in the last two decades, Baltimore hits 100 homicides before the end of April.
The murder rate is up 30 percent over last year — a grim milestone. The murder that pushed the city over the 100-mark happened on Lombard Street, one of the busiest intersections downtown.
The number of officers is at its lowest point that it’s been in the past decade, which has become cause for concern.
The city is operating with hundreds of fewer officers than at any point over the past decade.
Considering Baltimore PD, the city itself, its contentious relationship with its mayor and attorney general, this is not a shocking situation with which the police department finds itself.
The department is spending almost $1 million dollars a month just on overtime to keep up.
That’s what immediately occurs when you have insufficient personnel to cover various shifts and assignments. It’s a stopgap measure and usually challenges the budget of the applicable city or county. It’s also a measure that generally irritates the specific county supervisors, city mayors or managers involved.
This is very telling information with a rather insightful statement proffered from a citizen.
It’s noticeable to community activist Ericka Alston-Buck, with Penn-North Kids Safe Zone.
“When I walk up to one of the officers, the first thing I ask is what district are you out of, because 9o percent of the time, they’re not a western district officer, so everyone is working overtime.”
“There needs to be something attractive about being a police officer here in Baltimore City. I don’t see the attraction,” she says.
Apparently neither do a lot of other people.
Because these days that, above, is the attraction. Translated: not so much. How many Millennials and GenZr’s are interested in that kind of confrontation, with no reaction allowed?
What to do? I know. Relax standards. Hello, anyone remember Rampart?
A bright spot now for recruitment efforts: Maryland regulators just relaxed standards for marijuana use, making more people eligible to become officers.
Outstanding. More officers laboring under the influence of THC. Good for the manufacturer of Doritos, perhaps.
The beginning salary for a city officer is just under $49,000 plus benefits.
That’s what starting custodians make in California schools. Custodians who have no responsibility to wield power, arrest people or utilize deadly force.
This at a time when Baltimore just hit 100 homicides prior to the end of April, up 30% from last year at the same time. But pay close attention; the issue in Baltimore isn’t about pay necessarily. It’s about applicants. There aren’t enough. They can’t fill the positions they already have, much less attempt to expand the department.
Why would that be?
It stems from a number of factors, to include Black Lives Matter and the “hands up don’t shoot” lie.
The Ferguson Effect is another factor as the label of “overpolicing” has been charged to American departments. The uptick in the shootings of officers is also an issue, not necessarily the consequence of a given call but specifically the ambushing and targeting for assassination of police officers while on duty.
Some in Chicago, for example, are even calling for the entire defunding of the Chicago Police Department.
Following the Freddie Gray death, state attorney general Marilyn Mosby charged seven Baltimore Police officers, five of whom are black. Not one officer has been found guilty, and charges were dropped entirely on three of the officers. Over policing? How about Mosby’s over-charging? A federal judge in January allowed a suit against Mosby for malicious prosecution to proceed.
People are now concluding there are too many marks in the negative column as opposed to the positive column regarding a police officer career in the city of Baltimore.
But it isn’t only Baltimore affected. Police recruiting around the country is down and becoming quite difficult. The attrition rate for police officers (14%) is higher than both nursing (12%) and teaching (13%). Pay, “disqualifying behaviors,” and credit problems are also issues,
This all gets down to riots, this gets down to crime, and this gets down to war. What commonality do rioters, criminals and despots have? They are all predators of opportunity and weakness.
With that in common, what happens when people stage a riot and there is no one to respond? What occurs when there is a crime and there is no one to respond? What happens when there is a war and there is no one to defend the nation?
What happens when you run out of Sheepdogs to defend the Sheep against the wolves?
Ask the citizens of Berkeley on Saturday, April 15th, when Americans were left to fight it out on the streets of the United States as law enforcement officers were either forced to or willingly allowed violence to occur directly in front of their eyes.
This is the continuation of a series of posts dealing with issues where some individuals in the United States government are attempting to hold at least a portion of the rest of the federal government accountable and responsible for its actions and inactions. The public displays we find, however, are not unlike the most bizarre of Kabuki Theater or Theater of the Absurd.
Here, Jason Chaffetz expects some kind of accountability or responsibility from the DoD, or Department of Defense.
Please remember, ladies and gentlemen, these are your federal tax dollars either
By my draft research, which I’m opening up for crowd-sourcing on GoogleDocs, Soros has funded, or has close relationships with, at least 56 of the march’s “partners,” including “key partners” Planned Parenthood, which opposes Trump’s anti-abortion policy, and the National Resource Defense Council, which opposes Trump’s environmental policies. The other Soros ties with “Women’s March” organizations include the partisan MoveOn.org (which was fiercely pro-Clinton), the National Action Network (which has a former executive director lauded by Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett as “a leader of tomorrow” as a march co-chair and another official as “the head of logistics”). Other Soros grantees who are “partners” in the march are the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. March organizers and the organizations identified here haven’t yet returned queries for comment.
Pants on Fire claim that George Soros money went to Women’s March protesters
by Jan Greenburg, January 25th
According to several blog posts, the women’s marches around the country did not reflect grassroots concern over the policies of President Donald Trump. Rather, they were the work of the liberal billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
In this fact-check, we focus on whether Soros money went into the pockets of protesters.
There is no evidence that’s true.
Politifact attributes the lie to “bloggers.” The last time I checked, the New York Times wasn’t “some blogger.” Politifact’s foundational objection is that the author isn’t a Lockstep Leftist but a woman who has done her research. Please read her entire article.
Leftists cannot even agree on the facts.
That’s no real shock. Facts are challenged every day. Facts should be challenged every day. Hence, individuals themselves can now be, in their own small way, journalists with the video and camera options they have in their phones.
The point is, “fake news” is another meme created by Leftists to benefit Leftists in the face of so many possible sources of news today. The biased American Media Maggots are losing their tenuous grip on what comprises “real news” and, simultaneously, they are literally hemorrhaging cash and readers. They are petrified with fright because they are losing their “gatekeeper” status on the news. That is a loss of money andpower.
When the ship is capsizing and you are facing the possibility of drowning, you’ll do anything to stay alive.
Texas House Passes Bill to Jail ‘Sanctuary’ Sheriffs, Police Chiefs
by Bob Price
The Texas House passed a tough anti-sanctuary bill containing provisions making it a crime for sheriffs and chiefs of police to refuse to cooperate with immigration officials. They could also be removed from office for providing “sanctuary” for the criminal illegal aliens in their jails.
How did this come to be such an issue? Predominantly when Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez (D) proclaimed her jurisdiction lawless insofar as her nestling arms became a sanctuary for illegal aliens, mostly from Mexico. Straw, meet camel’s back. Shake hands and come out legislating. So Texas did.
Senate Bill 4 finally passed the Texas House Thursday afternoon by a vote of 94-53 along party lines.
Following the bill’s final passage in the House, the Texas House Republican Caucus sent out a statement saying the bill ensure federal immigration laws that are on the books will be followed and enforced in Texas. The caucus stated the bill prevents local entities from creating policies that threaten public safety.
“The purpose of this legislation is to protect Texans from criminals who are here illegally. We are trying to make sure those bad actors are detained until we can determine their status, ” said House Administration Committee Chairman Charlie Geren (R-Fort Worth). “This bill will not affect law abiding citizens, only those that are in trouble with the police.”
Of particular gall to Leftists and lawbreakers is this aspect of SB4, which provides penalties for those in law enforcement who fail to comply.
SECTION 5.02. Chapter 39, Penal Code, is amended by adding
Section 39.07 to read as follows:
Sec.39.07.FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH IMMIGRATION DETAINER
REQUEST. (a) A person who is a sheriff, chief of police, or
constable or a person who otherwise has primary authority for
administering a jail commits an offense if the person:
(1)has custody of a person subject to an immigration
detainer request issued by United States Immigration and Customs
Enforcement; and
(2)knowingly fails to comply with the detainer
request.
(b) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor.
(c)It is an exception to the application of this section
that the person who was subject to an immigration detainer request
described by Subsection (a)(1) had previously provided proof that
the person was a citizen of the United States.
Caucus Chairman Tan Parker (R-Flower Mound), said, “House Republicans have proven time and time again that we are committed to protecting the rule of law and keeping our communities safe. We will continue to work tirelessly to pass legislation that ensures the safety of Texans, such as Senate Bill 4.”
The crime imposed would be a Class A misdemeanor for not complying with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers.
The measure was passed by the Texas Senate in early February.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has steadfastly said that he would sign the bill and has pushed for its passage. It would go into effect on September 1.
So what was happening in Travis County at the behest of and with the support of Sheriff Sally Hernandez? From the TexasTribune.com:
Report: Travis County released dozens of undocumented inmates wanted by feds
by Julian Aguilar
Travis County officials declined dozens of requests from federal immigration agents to hold inmates in the days leading up to the county’s recent showdown with Gov. Greg Abbott over its new “sanctuary” policy.
And people say law enforcement isn’t politicized? Locally? Federally? Alphabet agencies?
The White House’s first-ever report on local governments that don’t cooperate with federal immigration agents shows Travis County officials declined dozens of requests to hold inmates in the days leading up to the county’s recent showdown with Gov. Greg Abbott.
Between Jan. 28 and Feb. 3, Travis County sheriff deputies declined more than 140 requests – known as detainers – from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to hand over undocumentedimmigrants for possible deportation, according to the report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Travis County was far and away the Texas leader in declining ICE detainers, according to the report, which mentioned only two other Texas counties. Williamson County declined four recent detainers and Bastrop County declined three.
Last month, Abbott pulled state grant funding for Travis County programs after Sheriff Sally Hernandez, a Democrat, said after her 2016 election victory that she would only honor detainer requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on a limited basis.
This is Sheriff Sally “Sanctuary Sally” Hernandez. She thinks the law is flexible and only a mere suggestion or hint.
Isn’t it odd that all the law enforcement officials who take the greatest umbrage to the enforcement of laws on the books and cooperation with federal law enforcement all have Mexican last names? I don’t see, for example, very many officials with the last name of “Martin” or “Washington” or “Vang” or “St George” or “Jackson” or “Nguyen.” I wonder why that might be?
Sheriff Sally Hernandez. Sheriff Ed Gonzalez. Sheriff Lupe Valdez. Chief Art Acevedo. Anyone besides me start to sense something of a theme here?
Yet: a recent poll reveals that Texans overwhelmingly support (by 93 percent), a police officer being able to check a person’s immigration status when they are arrested for a crime.
What is it with law enforcement in Leftist cities and some courts who seem to think the law does not apply to them, and that they may either selectively choose to flaunt it entirely or interpret it in a fashion that is not in keeping with precedent or the letter of the law itself?
What happens to a nation when those tasked with upholding the law are now those who break the very statutes they are sworn to obey?
What, then, becomes the true purpose of law enforcement or the judiciary?
To pick and choose? To tick off boxes on a sheet as if you were ordering a sandwich? “I’ll have ham but no pickles”?
“I’ll enforce rape laws but I won’t enforce drug laws or those having to do with illegal aliens”?
Gonzalez reportedly told those gathered at the rally that Senate Bill 4 will make local communities more dangerous and is bad public policy.
Bad for illegal Mexicans. Bad for illegal aliens. Bad for breakers of our laws.
When the enforcers of our laws decide which laws they will selectively enforce, how long will it be before the populace decides which laws it will obey?
Oh, right. That’s happening already, albeit on a smaller scale. I’m suggesting a national scale. A scale far, far beyond that of any law enforcement response. You are pushing, Leftists, for a Second Civil War.
What happens when citizens individually — like the government — arbitrarily decide what laws they will or will not obey? Then en masse?
I am watching American law enforcement disintegrate right before my very eyes. These so-called “law enforcement officers” dishonor their oaths and dishonor myself and those who put in years of service to our communities. They dishonor those who fought and died behind those laws and for those laws, from the soldier to the beat cop.
If you don’t care for laws, stay out of law enforcement.
But that would be too judgmental now, wouldn’t it?
It’s no secret that the French elections, which occur in a runoff-type series, will be between finalists Emmanuel Macron, a Leftist and globalist, and Marine Le Pen, to the right and a nationalist. That is to what, at its base, the election in France now distills, as I wrote here. Moreover, the EuroMedia are portraying Macron as nothing more than a centrist, a “moderate” if you will. Not hardly.
Nigel Farage, the architect of Brexit, weighs in on Macron and Le Pen.
To read most European media and much of our own, Marine Le Pen doesn’t stand a chance against Macron. From the IndependentUK.com:
Emmanuel Macron leads Marine Le Pen by at least 20 points in every French election poll since end of first round
by Tom Embury-Dennis
Former socialist minister expected to win in landslide after second round of voting
Emmanuel Macron is at least 20 points ahead of Marine Le Pen in every poll on the French presidential election taken since the first round of voting.
Mr Macron, a former minister who set up his own party to run for president, came top on Sunday, with 23.8 per cent of the ballots cast.
Ms Le Pen, the former Front National (FN) leader, joined the 38-year-old in the presidential run-off after coming second with 21.5 per cent of the vote.
But every survey suggests Mr Macron will claim a landslide victory when French voters go back to the booth on 7 May.
Clear, is it not, that Macron is going to literally steamroller Marine Le Pen? The European Media Maggots say so, therefore it becomes fact and immured in stone. Yes?
But wait, there’s more. There’s always more. First, from NPR.org:
France’s National Front Party Draws Young Voters To The Far-Right
by Eleanor Beardsley
It’s creeping toward 9 in the evening, but a group of young people is still busy at the National Front party’s office in Metz, in eastern France. They’re preparing for a rally for their presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen.
Twenty-one-year-old Arnaud de Rigné remembers when he first became interested in the party.
“I was just 16 and I saw that there was a big problem in France with massive immigration and also globalization with no economic borders,” he says. “And there was insecurity and places in the city where police didn’t even want to go. And for me this was a very big problem.”
De Rigné knows some people accuse his party of racism. But he says he’s not racist and hasn’t seen racism among other young National Front supporters. De Rigné believes all French citizens — no matter their religion or origin — are equal. But he says France can’t take any more immigrants because there aren’t enough jobs for French people.
He thinks Le Pen has the strength needed to turn the country around.
Poll finds French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen won plurality of women, young voters
by Emily Jashinsky
An election-day survey of more than 9,000 voters in the first round of France’s presidential contest found that National Front leader Marine Le Pen won a larger share of support from women and young voters than any other candidate.
The poll, conducted by Opinion Way, revealed Le Pen earned the support of 23.9 percent of female voters. By contrast, Emmanuel Macron, Le Pen’s opponent in the next round of voting, came in second with women, earning the support of 21.3 percent.
How can this be? The EMM are insisting that Macron will wipe the floor bloody with the entrails of Marine Le Pen.
According to the survey, Le Pen outperformed the other candidates with younger voters as well. Opinion Way found the National Front leader won 25.7 percent of voters aged 18-34. Jean-Luc Melenchon and Macron won 24.6 percent and 21.6 percent of that demographic respectively.
In the first round Macron won with 23.8% of the votes to Le Pen’s 21.4%. Somehow, in the minds of the European Media Maggots, that translates to an abysmal ass-whupping.
Newsweek.com thinks a Le Pen win is not impossible.
WHO WILL WIN THE FRENCH ELECTION? HOW MARINE LE PEN COULD BECOME THE NEXT TRUMP
by Jason Le Miere
Emmanuel Macron hadn’t won anything beyond a shot at a runoff vote against Marine Le Pen, but his remarks to supporters and a subsequent private party Sunday night felt every bit like a victory lap. And the polls strongly suggest those celebrations, while perhaps a tad premature, will continue after France returns to the ballot box in two weeks to decide the country’s next president.
But as the world has witnessed in shock over the past year, polls and statistical models do not always come to fruition. If they did, Hillary Clinton would now be president of the United States and David Cameron would still be prime minister of a Brexit-less Britain. And in France, a country that has already soundly rejected the political elite, it could be argued that it would be foolhardy to make any predictions with any great degree of certainty.
You didn’t hear of this, did you, pray tell, from the UKGuardian.com?
Marine Le Pen SURGES in latest poll as Macron is blasted for first round celebrations
by Thomas Hunt
THE French electorate are abandoning Emmanuel Macron after a series of gaffes have helped Marine Le Pen back in contention ahead of the presidency campaign, latest polls show.
Europhile Macron, who has previously vowed to go “tough” on the UK’s historic Brexit vote, has been roasted for seemingly swanning around Paris like he has already won the presidency.
An Elabe poll for BFM TV found that half of people surveyed considered that Ms Le Pen’s campaign had started well, compared with just 43 per cent for Macron.
Another found some 61 per cent of French voters think that Ms Le Pen is leading a successful second-round campaign, compared to 48 per cent for Mr Macron, according to a Harris Interactive poll for RMC and Atlantico published on Wednesday.
Because the French are starting to get tired of this. From Breitbart.com:
French Mayor Fined for Mentioning Demographic Changes in Local Schools
by Chris Tomlinson
French mayor Robert Ménard has been fined by the government for hate speech after mentioning that French children were being “replaced” in schools in his town.
Mr. Ménard, who serves as the mayor of Béziers, was sentenced to a fine of 2,000 euros for the comments he made on Twitter in September of 2016, France 24reports. The independent mayor, who is supported by the Front National, then told local television station LCI a few days after making the post: “In a class in the city centre of my town, 91 per cent of the children are Muslims. Obviously, this is a problem. There are limits to tolerance.”
2 officers shot on French island of Reunion; bomb materials found at Islamist suspect’s home
A man suspected of links to radical Islam and of glorifying terrorism shot two police officers on the French island of Reunion during an arrest Thursday — and police found bomb-making materials at his home, officials said.
Officers detained the unnamed suspect and his mother. Police also found weapons in his apartment in the town of Saint Benoit de la Reunion, according to the Interior Ministry.
The two officers, from a special national police intervention force, were hospitalized but were expected to survive. The man was wanted for “glorifying terrorism,” the ministry said in a statement, without elaborating. The shooting came just a week after a police officer was killed in Paris in an attack claimed by the Islamic State terror group.
Further, if Macron wins then France and Europe will get more and more of this.
Oh wait, that was Sweden. This is France.
This is France.
And this is France.
Ah yes, the peaceful, embracing tolerance of Islam. The truth being: EMM attempting to purposely quell videos such as the above in hopes of not fueling votes for Marine Le Pen.
Just as Angela Merkel attempts to atone for WWII via her allowance of the plundering of Germany due to her guilt, so too does France attempt to atone for its colonialist ways in North Africa. GOWPs all across Europe are tearing their countries apart. The past is the past; Western culture is at stake.
Are globalists facing their own serious reduction of power and control? TheWeek.com, a magazine customarily leaning left, suggests so.
The global elite are headed for a fall. And they don’t even know it.
by Damon Linker
The global elite think they’re sitting pretty. How wrong they are.
Democrats keep telling themselves that Hillary Clinton “really” won the 2016 election (or would have, had it not been for interference by Vladimir Putin and James Comey). Republicans keep patting themselves on the back about how much power they now wield at all levels of government. And centrists throughout the West are breathing a sigh of relief about Emmanuel Macron’s likely victory over the National Front’s Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential election on May 7.
As I said, let’s not shoot that Le Pen horse just yet.
You can almost hear the sentiments echoing down the corridors of (political and economic) power on both sides of the Atlantic: “There’s nothing to worry about. Everything’s fine. No need for serious soul searching or changes of direction. Sure, populism’s a nuisance. But we’re keeping it at bay. We just need to stay the course, fiddle around the edges a little bit, and certainly not give an inch to the racists and xenophobes who keep making trouble. We know how the world works, and we can handle the necessary fine tuning of the meritocracy. We got this.”
Of course they do. It’s about money, yes, but mostly about power and control. You know nothing. They know everything.
And why wouldn’t they think this way? They are themselves the greatest beneficiaries of the global meritocracy — and that very fact serves to validate its worth. They live in or near urban centers that are booming with jobs in tech, finance, media, and other fields that draw on the expertise they acquired in their educations at the greatest universities in the world. They work hard and are rewarded with high salaries, frequent travel, nice cars, and cutting-edge gadgets. It’s fun, anxious, thrilling — an intoxicating mix of brutal asceticism and ecstatic hedonism.
The problem is that growing numbers of people — here in America, in the U.K., in France, and beyond — don’t see it like this at all. Or rather, they only see it from the outside, a position from which it looks very different. What they see is a system that is fundamentally unjust, rigged, and shot through with corruption and self-dealing.
They see former Democratic President Barack Obama sharing a $65 million book advance with his wife, earning $400,000 for a single speech scheduled to be delivered in the fall at investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, and gallivanting around the globe with David Geffen, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, and Bono.
Railing against banks, against “you’ve made enough money” and “you didn’t build that,” Obama embodies the word hypocrite.
To those on the center-left who are disgusted by the plutocratic antics of the Republican Party but dismiss the significance of Obama cashing in on his time in the White House by enriching himself and hobnobbing with the most famous people on the planet, I’d only note that “optics” (also known as “appearances”) matter in politics — perhaps more than anything else.
And this is how things appear at this historical moment: The world is run by an international elite that lives in a rarified world of seemingly boundless power and luxury. Though the members of this elite consider their own power and luxury to be completely legitimate, it is not. It is the product of a system that’s rigged to benefit them while everybody else languishes in declining small cities and provincial towns, eking out a dreary existence, toiling away their lives in menial service-sector jobs or scraping by on disability checks while seeking out a modicum of fleeting joy in the dumbstruck haze of a painkiller high.
Unless something fundamental changes, the gap separating these worlds will only increase, economically, culturally, and psychologically. Republicans show every sign of continuing to pursue policies that actively make the economic problems worse. Centrist Democrats, meanwhile, appear to be both unwilling to propose a sweeping critique of the outlook and policies that got us to this point in the first place and inclined to dismiss the populist anger building all around us as an expression of atavistic prejudice.
This cannot last. At this rate, make no mistake: The global elite will fall.
Yielding one of the major — if not the major reason — the EMM and globalists are fighting so hard against Marine Le Pen.
It’s a set of political dominoes. Brexit occurred. Frexit could occur. The dominoes could topple. Globalist elites could lose power and control. That can’t happen.
Are you beginning to think you’ve seen this scenario played out somewhat recently on another continent, perchance?
Folks, the election concerns the very heart and soul of France.
I didn’t think so.
Because these days that, above, is the attraction. Translated: not so much. How many Millennials and GenZr’s are interested in that kind of confrontation, with no reaction allowed?
This is the continuation of a series of posts dealing with issues where some individuals in the United States government are attempting to hold at least a portion of the rest of the federal government accountable and responsible for its actions and inactions. The public displays we find, however, are not unlike the most bizarre of Kabuki Theater or Theater of the Absurd.
What’s that?
This is Sheriff Sally “Sanctuary Sally” Hernandez. She thinks the law is flexible and only a mere suggestion or hint.
It’s no secret that the French elections, which occur in a runoff-type series, will be between finalists Emmanuel Macron, a Leftist and globalist, and Marine Le Pen, to the right and a nationalist. That is to what, at its base, the election in France now distills,