The husband of Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey is facing charges for allegedly pointing a gun at Black Lives Matter protesters who gathered outside the couple’s home.
KXAN reports that the incident allegedly occurred in March, when Lacey was running in a primary election.
The charges against 66-year-old David Lacey were filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court and list the specific date of the incident as March 2, 2020.
A video tweeted by LA Chapter of Black Lives Matter co-founder Melina Abdullah allegedly shows David Lacey pointing a gun:
Politico reports that Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed the charges, which “come as Jackie Lacey, the county’s first Black district attorney, faces a tough fight with George Gascón, a Latino who previously served as San Francisco DA.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
In recent weeks there has been a tremendous amount of debate about whether police departments around the country should be “defunded” or not, but what most Americans don’t realize is that it is already happening on a massive scale. At a time when crime rates are absolutely soaring and civil unrest is raging in major cities across the nation, police budgets are being deeply cut and in some cities there is talk of eliminating police departments altogether. I knew that a few cities had already made moves in this direction, but I had no idea that it was happening on such a widespread basis.
Nearly half of 258 agencies surveyed this month are reporting that funding has already been slashed or is expected to be reduced, according to a report slated for release this week by the Police Executive Research Forum, a non-partisan research organization.
Much of the funding is being pulled from equipment, hiring and training accounts, even as a number of cities also are tracking abrupt spikes in violent crime, the report concluded.
And in most cases we are not talking about small cuts. Police funding in Los Angeles has been reduced by 150 million dollars, and police funding in New York has been slashed by a total of one billion dollars.
Those are staggering numbers.
In Seattle, there had been a proposal to cut police funding by 50 percent, but apparently that wasn’t good enough for some people and so now a measure has been introduced that would completely “abolish the entire Seattle Police Department”…
BREAKING: Seattle City Council moves to abolish the entire Seattle Police Department and replace it with a “civilian led Department of Community Safety & Violence Prevention.”
They want to replace the police force with nonprofit programs and “community-led activities.”
If you live in the Seattle area and you are concerned that in the future you may not have anyone to call if someone breaks into your home, you can rest assured that someone will still be on the other end of the line when you call 911.
But instead of a police officer with a gun responding to your call, you may have a “community safety official” armed with “science” and “reason” come pedaling out to your place on his or her bike to perform a “mental health evaluation” on the individual that you are having a “disagreement” with.
Minneapolis is another major city that is considering doing away with the police entirely, but for now the MPD is still operating. However, right now they are being completely overwhelmed by a massive crime wave that has erupted in the city, and in a recent email to 3rd precinct residents they told citizens to be “prepared to give up your cell phone and purse/wallet”…
“Be prepared to give up your cell phone and purse/wallet,” the police said in their email, a copy of which was obtained by Alpha News. The email said citizens should listen to criminals and “do as they say.”
The message warned that “some victims have been maced, dragged, assaulted, and some threatened with a gun.”
I don’t know about you, but I would not have been comforted if I had received that email.
Data released on Saturday showed that Chicago saw 440 homicides between January 2020 through the end of June, a 52 percent increase from the same time period last year (which saw 290 homicides). Shooting victims similarly increased by 51 percent (1,480 to 2,240) and shooting incidents themselves rose 47 percent (from 1,210 to 1,783).
In Los Angeles, it is property crime that is making headlines, and the latest numbers show that auto thefts in the city hit an all-time record high last quarter…
A COVID-19-induced recession, with exceptionally high unemployment in Los Angeles, has resulted in record-high auto thefts in 2Q20.
A new report via Crosstown LA, who examined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) data, reveals that 5,744 vehicle thefts occurred between April and June, up 57.7% from the same period last year.
But it really isn’t fair to point out just a couple of cities because the crime wave that we are facing is actually national in scope.
Never before have we seen such a dramatic spike in crime in such a short period of time. The following comes from Fox News…
A host of other cities — Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland and Seattle — also saw spikes in shootings and murders, according to public data. “I think it’s just a perfect storm of distress in America,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said in July.
In her city, the police department reported a 240 percent increase in murders (from 5 to 17) when comparing a four-week period ending in July 2019 to the same timeframe this year. New York City, meanwhile, saw a 277 percent increase in shootings (from 13 to 49) when observing the year-over-year change for one week in July.
In such an environment, does it really make sense to “defund the police”?
Unfortunately, you and I are not the ones making the decisions, and right now police budgets are being dramatically slashed from coast to coast.
Meanwhile, civil unrest continues to simmer in many of our largest cities. For example, protesters in Portland just made headlines by burning an American flag and a Bible…
Protesters burned an American flag and a Bible in Portland, Oregon, sparking outrage just as weeks of violent demonstrations seemed to be coming to a close.
For more than 60 days, Black Lives Matters demonstrators, including a “Wall of Moms” and a “Wall of Vets,” have clashed with federal agents in the city, drawing national attention as authorities blasted marchers with tear gas and the civilians at times responded with weapons of their own — such as feces, bleach, bricks or batteries.
Sadly, what we have experienced so far is just the beginning. The upcoming election certainly has the potential to trigger more protests and more riots, and the severe economic downturn that we are currently experiencing will add fuel to the fire as well.
Everywhere you look, people are angry and frustrated, and our society seems to be coming apart at the seams all around us.
It is at such a moment that politicians all over America have decided to radically cut police funding, and needless to say this is going to have very serious implications for every man, woman and child in the entire country.
The Seattle City Council, which previously signaled strong support for halving police funding, appears to be at a crossroads, with some members contending the measure would be impossible to implement this year.
The hesitation drew ire from Councilmember Kshama Sawant, of Socialist Alternative, who slammed her colleagues for backtracking.
“I’m not surprised, but it’s quite interesting to see how councilmembers are now displaying how they actually stand and I hope members of the public are watching,” Sawant, who wants to slash $85 million from the Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) 2020 budget, said Monday.
Such a massive cut, critics have warned, would result in mass layoffs within the SPD. That poses a problem, as members of the department would need a three-month warning, meaning no action could realistically be taken until the very end of the year.
Sawant on Monday proposed an amendment that would strip the SPD of $34.7 million and redirect it to the Office of Housing. According to KOMO News, no councilmembers signaled support for the proposal. Many of them are looking for a more gradual approach to defunding police — one that focuses on next year’s budget proposal.
“The contrast between that package of 39 amendments [by other Councilmembers] and Councilmember Sawant’s proposal of really doing a nuclear option of 50 percent defund right now, is that we’d still need to bargain the impact of those cuts that Councilmember Sawant is proposing,” Councilmember Andrew Lewis said, according to KOMO News.
“If we were not successful [in court], we’d have to rehire all those folks, we’d have to give all of them backpay, we’d expose the City to an unfair labor practice,” he added, emphasizing the importance of going about the cuts in a slow and strategic manner.
“You know I think there’s going to be a lot of people out there who are disappointed, but I think part of our strategy of our Council has to be is you know, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together,” he added.
According to the outlet:
Lewis said the Council prioritizes reforming policies over issuing cuts.
A majority of councilmembers have supported amendments that would greatly reduce or eliminate SPD’s SWAT team and trim the number of mounted officers.
On Monday, Councilmember Tammy Morales proposed an amendment that significantly reduces SPD’s Navigation team, which responds to calls involving the homeless.
Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, who recently saw a large group of “aggressive” Black Lives Matter protesters flock to her private residence in Snohomish County — has warned against slashing the police budget, stating that such a move would “decimate public safety for the city of Seattle.”
A draft city council proposal, unveiled last week, details the council’s intentions of removing “certain functions from the Seattle Police Department” and providing “funding for a community-led process to inform the structure and function of a new department of community safety & violence prevention.”
The proposal explicitly refers to policing as a “racist institution” and appeals to the “harmful impacts of white supremacy culture and the Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) role in perpetuating racism and violence.”
The Council is expected to vote on the police department’s budget on Wednesday.
The University of California, Irvine, apologized after it highlighted a conservative student organization on its Instagram page in June. Now, the president of the targeted student organization claims that he’s receiving hostile messages from other students.
According to a report by Campus Reform, the law school at UC Irvine apologized over its decision to highlight the campus chapter of the Federalist Society, a conservative group. Now, the chapter’s president is speaking out about his experience as one of the few conservative law students at a progressive institution.
In a follow-up Instagram post, UC-Irvine apologized for their decision to highlight the Federalist Society. The post suggests that the university failed to uphold its “inclusive excellence” when it chose to mention the conservative student organization.
We apologize for Tuesday’s Instagram post and the abrupt removal of comments. The UCI Law community values inclusive excellence and tough conversations. In our desire to continue to highlight different student organizations each week, we highlighted UCI’s Federalist Society. We do not edit a student group’s self-description. We apologize both for the timing of the post and for disabling comments. We appreciate the members of our community who reached out to us, and welcome conversations with any student or groups of students. You spoke, we will continue to listen, and we will take affirmative steps to evaluate how best to manage this account, keeping your concerns in mind.
Richie Angel, the president of the Federal Society at UC-Irvine, spoke with Campus Reform this week about the university’s decision to apologize for highlighting his organization.
“To say that it’s bad timing to highlight the Federalist Society and then call us a white supremacist organization, I fail to understand what would be good timing to highlight a white supremacist organization. And if we’re not a racist group, why would it be bad timing to highlight us during the week of Juneteenth?” Angel said.
“I had received…a private message from a fellow student whom I had never met who said ‘I don’t know you but if you ever see me on campus, don’t even think about talking to me. I’m disgusted to even go to the same school as you,” Angel added.
Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more campus updates.
So let me get this straight. Members of teachers unions either don’t want to go back to school or they do not think online instruction works (or both). Whatever happens, though, they want to get paid — or they’ll strike. Well, let me tell you the story of a man who was undoubtedly ahead of…
Sen. Ted Cruz knew how to set the stage. Opening a hearing Tuesday on the violent riots that have wracked the country with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the so-called anti-fascist group known as “antifa,” the Texas Republican made it clear from the outset exactly what the topic was going to…
Torch-carrying neo-Nazis in Charlottesville were the face of white supremacy in 2017.
Today it’s “Nice White Parents.”
That’s the title of a new podcast distributed by the New York Times which argues that many black and brown children are not excelling in our public schools because of “what is arguably the most powerful force in our schools: White parents."
Specifically, liberal white parents who espouse enlightened views on race but then refuse to send their children to truly integrated schools – e.g. minority-majority without separate “gifted and talented” tracks – for fear they will be shortchanging their kids. Apart from the complex educational issues at play — including the inflammatory suggestion that minorities need to be around whites to succeed – the podcast reflects the left’s broader effort to demonize an unlikely group as it seeks to reduce every issue in American life to questions of race: liberal white women.
Trump-supporting conservatives and “patriarchal white males” are still in their crosshairs, but these women, long considered key allies in the cause, have become chief targets.
One example is the prevalence of the “Karen meme,” a social media label applied to white women allegedly exercising their “white privilege.” In some cases – such as the New York City woman who called the police on an African American birdwatcher in Central Park – it describes people who actually engage in racist actions. More often it involves far more ambiguous conflicts and micro-aggressions. But the larger message is clear: Karen resides in the heart of all white women, who have a conscious or unconscious desire to dominate minorities.
New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow wrote in May that he was “enraged by white women weaponizing racial anxiety, using their white femininity to activate systems of white terror against black men.” Last month, Washington Post Global Opinions Editor Karen Attiah tweeted, “White women are lucky that we are just calling them ‘Karen’s.’ And not calling for revenge.”
Ironically, it is their sensitivity to racial issues that makes white women easy targets. Many of them are powering the “Great Awokening” – the vast sea change in attitudes in which white liberals have moved farther to the left on a range of social and racial issues than even African Americans.
Some are paying $2,500 to host Race2Dinner meals at which their racial feelings are probed and their complicity in systemic injustice exposed by diversity experts.
Others have helped create a new genre of best-selling novels – what Naomi Schaefer Riley has described as “woke beach reads [that] infuse the best-selling template of white-bread chick lit with the consciousness of social justice warriors” in order “to educate whites about the deep racism that supports their privileged lives.”
Another best-selling book, “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo, explicitly singles out this group. As the white author told NPR, “My audience is the average, well-intended white person who sees themselves as open-minded, and yet cannot answer the question: ‘What does it mean to be white?’ I think white progressives can be the most challenging because we tend to be so certain that it isn’t us.”
Why are some women especially receptive and vulnerable to this guilt-tripping? At the risk of overgeneralizing, decades of research finds that women tend to experience guilt more frequently and deeply than men. These feelings may be intensified by social media, which appears to have contributed to growing rates of anxiety and depression, especially among younger women who are more likely to internalize criticism.
All women are not the same – just as all white people are not. But forces on the left have seen an opening they believe they can exploit.
If there is an endgame here besides the accrual of power and control, it is advancing the idea that being a nice person is no longer enough. Now that the vast majority of Americans are non-racists, the push is for everyone to become “anti-racist,” which is a whole different deal. Anti-racists are expected to actively strive each day to dismantle what they say is the systemic injustice that defines America. It means seeing every act as a political act that supports the existing tyranny if it doesn’t purposefully seek to dismantle it.
Racial reconciliation is yesterday’s goal; today’s is reparations, which doesn’t mean just a check from the government but personal sacrifice – of jobs, money and other tangible things. This apparently now includes sending one’s children to demonstrably lousy schools to serve the greater good.
While we all already knew that the “prosecutors” who ran the sham trial and political persecution of Roger Stone were corrupt Obama political appointees, new documents reveal internal emails showing their meltdown following Attorney General Bill Barr’s recommendation to lessen the sentence for the longtime Trump advisor and New York Times bestseller.
The emails obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request from the Trump-hating website Buzzfeed News hardly exonerate the prosecutors in Stone’s case, as many believe they were aiming for with their request. The communications reveal prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky, a contributor to the Huffington Post and political appointee from the Obama-era sneaking around his boss and emailing other Assistant United States Attorneys in Maryland plotting his resignation from the case.
At 2:59 p.m. on Feb. 11, Aaron Zelinsky, one of the lead prosecutors in the criminal case against Trump ally Roger Stone, sent an email notifying his supervisor J.P. Cooney that he was withdrawing from Stone’s case.
In an email one minute later, according to the time stamp, Cooney tried to stop him.
“I am not approving of you withdrawing from this case right now,” Cooney wrote in one of a set of emails obtained by BuzzFeed News through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Speaking to this GP reporter, Roger Stone slammed Zelinsky and the other prosecutors who resigned from his case following the lower sentencing recommendation, highlighting their corrupt criminal behavior during his case.
Mr. Zelinsky, a former contributor to the Huffington Post needs to stop pretending he is a “non-political career line prosecutor” and acknowledge he served as an attorney for Hillary Clinton at the State Department, a political appointment.
The seven to nine year sentencing recommendation was excessive in view of the fact that it attempted to increase my prison sentence based on crimes I had neither been charged with nor convicted of. This includes publishing a book (“The Myth of Russian Collusion”) in violation of the unconstitutional gag order placed on me by Judge Amy Berman Jackson (in fact, my book published prior to the imposition of her gag order) and threatening a federal judge (which I have denied under oath because the image alleged by the media to be a crosshair is in fact the trademarked logo of an organization called Corruption Central; which created the image that I posted). I was neither charged nor convicted of such an offense. There are others,
The excessive sentencing recommendation cobbled together by Zelinsky and former Obama White House Deputy Legal Counsel Jonathan Kravis also accuses me of “foreign interference” in our election— again, not an offense I was charged with or convicted of. While Judge Amy Berman Jackson had a free hand to levy any sentence she wanted to impose, she found the 7 t0 9 year sentence excessive. I have appealed my conviction to the DC Circuit of Appeals on numerous grounds.
Thankfully President Trump commuted Roger Stone’s sentence, referencing the corruption of Obama-appointed Judge Amy Berman Jackson, the biased anti-Trump jury forewoman Tomeka Hart and the politically motivated prosecutors who handled Stone’s case.
Tens of thousands of Germans marched through Berlin on Saturday, proclaiming a “Day of Freedom” and demanding an end to government-mandated face masks and “social distancing.” The UK and Netherlands also saw large protests against their governments’ tyrannical actions in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
According to media accounts, the Berlin protesters held signs reading “We are being forced to wear a muzzle,” “Natural defense instead of vaccination,” and “We are making noise because you are stealing our freedom!”
Good for them!
The New York Times Tweeted that the masses of Berlin demonstrators were all “Nazis” and “conspiracy theorists.” Does the “paper of record” really want us to believe there were perhaps a million Nazis active in the streets of Berlin? Wouldn’t that be alarming?
The fact is, Europeans are realizing that their government-mandated lockdowns did little or nothing to protect them from the virus, while causing economic catastrophe and untold human suffering.
They likely looked around and noticed that Sweden, which never locked down its economy, rejected face masks, and kept its restaurants and other places of business open, did not fare any worse than the countries that have been turned into open air prisons for much of the year. In fact, Sweden had a lower death rate from the virus than strict lockdown states like the UK and France. No wonder people are starting to get angry.
Unfortunately, while the Europeans are waking up, Americans are still asleep as our freedoms continue to be trampled.
While Europeans demand an end to government tyranny, here we see states with minuscule new deaths returning to lockdown. It is as if all the wannabe tyrants from mayors to governors are finally realizing their secret dreams of ruling by decree. Their dreams are our nightmares!
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy put citizens “on notice” that he will lock the state back down if people dare to go outside without a face mask or even to have guests inside their own homes!
What kind of politician puts his own constituents “on notice”?
It is not as if the “experts” are even looking into treatments for the viral infection. Doctors who report their own successful experience treating Covid patients with hydroxychloroquine, for example, are ridiculed, censored, and even fired from their jobs. The rush to silence “America’s Frontline Doctors” last week and to disappear their video down the memory hole should terrify anybody who still believes in free speech.
No, they say, we must keep locked down and masked until we have a vaccine. The US government is dumping billions into a vaccine that may be less than 60 percent effective to prevent a virus that has something like a 99.8 percent survival rate. What kind of math is that?
How many may be harmed more by the vaccine than helped? We’ll probably never know because the US government has just granted big pharma immunity from liability claims if the vaccine produces damaging side effects.
They keep moving the goal posts to keep us terrified and isolated. First it was body counts and then “cases.” The numbers have been so wildly off that it’s hard to trust any reporting. People are getting angry. They are confused. They are facing an economic depression of historic proportions. But worst of all, they are watching as Leviathan government snatches every last bit of freedom.
Three cheers for the Europeans! Let’s hope America wakes up soon!
Two months after footage of George Floyd’s death went viral, sparking an epidemic of rioting and violence that killed dozens of people and caused untold damage to countless communities across the country, body cam footage of the incident has finally been made available. Published by the Daily Mail after being leaked to the outlet, the additional video (below) lends crucial context to the fatal encounter between Floyd and Officer Derek Chauvin, and gives insight into the states of mind of both men.
Given that this tragic episode and the reaction to it has been the most significant story in the country for two months, and one of the most significant of the past decade, you might think that the media would treat the new evidence as a rather big story. But so far the opposite has been the case. The news media, for the most part, has had a noticeably muted reaction to the footage. One might say suspiciously muted. Perhaps that’s because the story the new footage tells is, at the very least, far more complicated than the one the media and activists have been screaming into our ears since May. That story, with which we are all extremely familiar, is that George Floyd was a compliant and peaceful man who was strangled to death by a racist, anti-black, sociopathic cop. It was straightforward, we were told. Quite literally black and white. And the only opinion one can really have about it is the kind of opinion that is easily expressed on a protest sign.
Of course we’ve known from the beginning that some of this was, to put it gently, not quite accurate. However Floyd was or wasn’t acting on the day of his death, it strains credulity to use a word like “peaceful” to describe a man who once forced his way into a woman’s home and robbed her at gunpoint in front of her child. As for the racism claim, there was perhaps no evidence to disprove it, but neither was any evidence ever presented to support it. It is merely assumed that any white police officer who kills a black suspect no matter the circumstances is motivated, at some level, by racism. Some of them may be so motivated, but the burden of proof is on those who make the claim. Yet those who make the claim rarely acknowledge that there is any burden to meet, much less make any honest attempt to meet it.
Also, anyone following the story has known for sometime that, according to the medical examiner’s report, Floyd was not strangled to death and did not die from asphyxiation as the media had so confidently declared in the immediate aftermath. It was found that Floyd — who had a pre-existing heart condition and three illicit drugs in his system, including fentanyl, which is 50 times more potent than morphine and known to cause respiratory distress — died of “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restrain, and neck compression.” A medical examination performed by an examiner hired by Floyd’s family contradicted those findings, claiming that Floyd did in fact die of asphyxiation.
That was the status of things prior to this week’s developments: we had a disturbing video without prior context, a bunch of assumptions, and not much more. And those assumptions were considered reason enough to burn our cities. The new footage does not necessarily clarify things — in fact, it does the opposite, adding complications and nuances to an issue that was once assumed to be utterly straightforward.
The body cameras worn by officers Alex Kueng and Thomas Lane, the first two cops on the scene, show Floyd agitated and uncooperative from the first moment that officers arrive in response to a call from a business owner who accused Floyd of trying to pass off counterfeit bills. Floyd is in his car when law enforcement first shows up. One of the officers draws his weapon because Floyd is initially hesitant to show his hands. Once Floyd places his hands on his head, the gun is holstered. After much coaxing, he is eventually removed from his car and taken over to the police cruiser.
Floyd appears to have trouble walking on his way over to the police car. He shouts “ow” and seems to be in pain even though he is only being grabbed by the arm. Once at the vehicle, he repeatedly refuses to get inside, saying that he’s “claustrophobic,” though he’d just been sitting in his own car without any apparent difficulty (on the contrary he was extremely reluctant to get out of his own vehicle). At one point, as officers try to convince him to get in the car, Floyd says he’d rather lay on the ground. He also says several times that he’s “going to die” and that he can’t breathe — all before he was on the ground. He ends up on the ground because he either falls or pushes himself out of the other side of the police cruiser as officers struggle to get him inside. From that point, the scene unfolds as we all saw on the initial video two months ago.
As previously stated, none of this conclusively exonerates the officers of any and all wrongdoing, but it does establish a few facts that might mitigate their culpability:
1. George Floyd was not fully cooperative and clearly intoxicated.
2. The officers were calm and reasonable for most of the interaction.
3. George Floyd claimed that he couldn’t breathe and was going to die well before he had a knee on his neck.
4. The officers never did or said a single thing that any reasonable person could construe as racist.
Point three in particular warrants further consideration. Floyd said he was too claustrophobic to get in the police car and that he might die and couldn’t breathe, even though he’d just been sitting in a car. He was screaming out in pain even though the officers at that point weren’t doing anything that could have caused him physical harm. We should note that he also said his mom just died even though she’d been dead for two years. The officers wouldn’t have known that latter detail, but the point is that cops hear nonsense like this from suspects all day, every day. This can create a “boy who cried wolf” situation where it’s harder to tell when a suspect is actually in distress. When Floyd was on the ground saying he was going to die, it was no different from what he was saying while he was standing, or what he was saying in the car. These facts may not be exculpatory but they certainly are relevant.
The narrative, as it was originally presented, does not take any of these details into account. It demands that we see the event as nothing more or less than a wanton act of random cruelty, with nothing precipitating it and with not even an ounce of blame or responsibility to be shared by Floyd himself. In reality, Floyd may still be the victim of some degree of negligence, but it seems that the murder charge will be difficult to prove. The truth just isn’t that simple. It rarely is. And that’s a lesson we would all do well to remember for the future.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.
