Why hasn’t Tempe, Arizona arrested Wolfie Kahletti for his many crimes?
Why hasn’t Tempe, Arizona arrested Wolfie Kahletti for his many crimes?
These two YouTube videos talk about and show some of things that this guy has put on his TikTOk account.
This violent serial criminal posts his crimes on his TikTok channel. As far as I’m aware, he’s never been arrested.
In addition to committing assault, he likes to vandalize restaurants and contaminate their food.
He likes to put ice in their deep fryer, which has the potential to destroy the entire restaurant and kill everyone inside.
He’s put video proof of his crimes on the internet for everyone to see.
Why hasn’t he been arrested?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=qkXf-vyQpuU
https://youtube.com/watch?v=QvlNXtrEcxs
A woman named Lauren Johansen was beaten to death because Nashville refused to lock up a violent criminal named Bricen Rivers after the first time that he tried to beat her to death
“I can’t explain to you the beating that this man did to my daughter,” Lauren Johansen’s father speaks out after Bricen Rivers is denied bond
By Delaney Dukes
July 27, 2024
HATTIESBURG, Miss. (WDAM) – A man charged with beating his ex-girlfriend to death will remain in jail after a hearing in Forrest County Court this morning.
“I can’t explain to you the beating that this man did to my daughter,” said Lauren Johansen’s father as he became emotional when trying to describe how he found his daughter after she was killed earlier this month.
“He beat her so badly that her skull and her face pretty much became fractured from the rest of her body,” Dr. Lance Johansen said. “He basically beat her until the front of her head came off. No human being deserves to have this happen to them.”
Lauren Johansen’s ex-boyfriend, Bricen Rivers, is charged with her murder.
Rivers faced a Forrest County judge for the first time Friday afternoon.
Forrest County District Attorney Lin Carter explained what his office’s was hoping to accomplish Friday.
“We made a strong argument against bond,” said Carter. “The court went along with our argument, and he received no bond on the murder, and then he received a $20,000 bond on the grand larceny auto and the tampering with evidence.”
During the 30-minute hearing, Forrest County ADA Clay Cranford listed Rivers’ current charges; first-degree murder, grand larceny auto and tampering with evidence.
When Judge Gay Polk-Payton asked if he was out on bond at the time of the murder. Rivers replied, “No, not to my knowledge.”
In response, Cranford laid out Rivers’ past criminal charges, including a December incident in Nashville, Tennessee, when officers there said Lauren Johnansen was beaten nearly to death while the couple was on vacation.
Rivers was, in fact, out on bond for that crime at the time of her murder.
“He misled the judge here (Friday),” said Lance Johansen. “He misled the judge there before, and I think the bottom line is, you cannot take a criminal’s word for saying the right thing, because this man is a pathological liar.”
In Nashville, a Davidson County Criminal Court clerk recently told WDAM 7′s sister station WSMV that mistakes were made surrounding Rivers’ release.
But now, Lance Johansen said he was glad Rivers will remain behind bars.
“Well, I already feel some relief knowing that that he’s in this detention facility,” said Lance Johansen. “So, this is some justice for me (Friday).
“And I’m confident that he’s never going to see the light of day again. This man’s not done killing people, and if he has a chance, he’ll kill somebody in in jail.”
According to the Washington Post, Kamala Harris tweeted support for a bail fund that bailed out murderers, rapists, kidnappers, shooters, and looters.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
July 31, 2024
Kamala Harris made this tweet, encouraging people to donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund:
Original: https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1267555018128965643
According to this article from the Washington Post, that charity has bailed out murderers, rapists, kidnappers, shooters, and looters.
The Washington Post wrote:
Kamala Harris tweeted support for a bail fund, but the money didn’t just assist protesters
September 3, 2020
One defendant, Jaleel Stallings, was charged with attempted murder after allegedly shooting at police during protests on May 30, county records show. MFF paid $75,000 in cash to get Stallings out of jail, according to MFF interim director Greg Lewin.
MFF also paid $750 toward a bond for Chylen Evans, who was charged with looting a liquor store, clothing store and mobile store.
On Aug. 10, Minneapolis television station KMSP aired a report documenting how, after receiving the torrent of donations, MFF had bailed out a number of people charged with violent crimes, including posting $100,000 for a woman accused of killing a friend and $350,000 for a twice-convicted rapist charged with kidnapping, assault and sexual assault in two separate cases.
After Lyden’s report aired, Lionel Timms, a man whom MFF bailed out on an assault charge in July, was charged with committing third-degree assault on Aug. 14, leaving the victim with a traumatic brain injury and a fractured skull.
The result of Harris and other social justice warriors helping these violent and dangerous criminals has been absolutely disastrous to the regular, law-abiding people who live in Minnesota.
Insurance experts estimated that the damage caused by Black Lives Matter protestors in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region during 2020 could exceed $500 million.
This article about the Black Lives Matter protestors in Minneapolis is called, “Neighborhoods where stores were destroyed become food deserts overnight.”
As a high ranking government official who is protected by armed guards, Kamala Harris doesn’t have to worry about getting hurt by these kinds of criminals.
And as a person who lives in a safe neighborhood with easy access to grocery stores, she doesn’t have to worry about how to get food from the store to her home.
But for a lot of the regular, law-abiding people who live in Minneapolis, that’s not the case.
Because of the kinds of violent and dangerous criminals that Kamala Harris supports, many of the regular, law abiding people who live in Minneapolis no longer have easy access to get groceries or prescription drugs.
And now Kamala Harris is running for President of the United States.
I wonder what she has in store for the rest of the country.
I just carried out these two searches at google. Google’s “predictions” prove that they have deliberately programmed their website to be biased against Trump.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
July 29, 2024
I just carried out these two searches at google. Google’s “predictions” prove that they have deliberately programmed their website to be biased against Trump.
When Google was brand new, it was praised for being the most accurate and unbiased search engine that had ever exited. This proves that that is no longer the case.
Five Just Stop Oil activists receive record sentences for planning to block M25
Note: They didn’t just “plan” to block traffic. They actually did block traffic, and it affected a huge number of people. The PDF at this link has a lot of specific details, including multiple examples of sick people who missed getting medical treatment:
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/R-v-Hallam-and-others.pdf
Five Just Stop Oil activists receive record sentences for planning to block M25
Campaigners receive longest ever sentences for non-violent protest after being convicted of conspiracy to cause public nuisance
July 18, 2024
L-R: Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, Cressida Gethin, Louise Lancaster and Daniel Shaw were given four-year sentences, while Roger Hallam (right) was sentenced to five years. Photograph: Just Stop Oil
Five supporters of the Just Stop Oil climate campaign who conspired to cause gridlock on London’s orbital motorway have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms by a judge who told them they had “crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic”.
Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin were found guilty last week of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance for coordinating direct action protests on the M25 over four days in November 2022.
Hallam received a five-year sentence on Thursday, while the other four were each sentenced to four years.
The sentences are thought to be the longest sentences ever given in the UK for non-violent protest, exceeding those given to the Just Stop Oil protesters Morgan Trowland (three years) and Marcus Decker (two years and seven months) for scaling the Dartford Crossing.
All five had spoken on a Zoom call trying to recruit potential volunteers for the actions, which involved activists climbing gantries at strategic points on the London orbital motorway.
On the call, Hallam said they intended to cause “the biggest disruption in British modern history” in an effort to force the government to meet Just Stop Oil’s core demand, an end to new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.
Passing sentence on each of the defendants at Southwark crown court, the judge Christopher Hehir said: “The offending of all five of you is very serious indeed and lengthy custodial sentences must follow.”
Hehir admitted there was a scientific and social consensus that human-made climate breakdown was happening and action should be taken to avert it. “I acknowledge that at least some of the concerns motivating you are, at least to some extent, shared by many,” he said.
“But the plain fact is that each of you has some time ago crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic. You have appointed yourselves as the sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change, bound neither by the principles of democracy nor the rule of law.
“And your fanaticism makes you entirely heedless of the rights of your fellow citizens. You have taken it upon yourselves to decide that your fellow citizens must suffer disruption and harm, and how much disruption and harm they must suffer, simply so that you may parade your views.”
Although all of the defendants ended the trial representing themselves, three of them – Hallam, Shaw and Whittaker De Abreu – instructed counsel to speak on their behalf in mitigation.
Each barrister sought unsuccessfully to persuade the judge that lengthy sentences could be avoided. Francesca Cociani, for Shaw, said the likelihood of his reoffending was lowered by the fact that the new Labour government had essentially met Just Stop Oil’s core demand by ending North Sea oil and gas exploration.
Gethin, who offered her own comments in mitigation, said: “I want to remind the court once more that my reasons for taking action were not beliefs or opinions. Earth’s life-support systems are breaking down due to human activities, whether we believe it or not.
“These are not beliefs or opinions and feeling strongly that this is wrong is greatly understandable, I would argue. I deeply regret that this action was necessary … I maintain that it was necessary and I stand by my actions as the most effective option available to me.”
Supporters of the defendants expressed outrage at the sentences, which came after a two-week trial in which the judge denied them any of the defences in law for causing a public nuisance.
Hehir ruled that the jury should not take into account evidence about climate breakdown, which the defendants wanted to point to as the key motivation behind their actions, and which they said provided them with a reasonable excuse for them.
Michel Forst, the UN’s special rapporteur on environmental defenders, who attended part of the trial, issued a statement at its conclusion.
“Today is a dark day for peaceful environmental protest” in the UK, he said. “This sentence should shock the conscience of any member of the public. It should also put all of us on high alert on the state of civic rights and freedoms in the United Kingdom.
“Rulings like today’s set a very dangerous precedent, not just for environmental protest but any form of peaceful protest that may, at one point or another, not align with the interests of the government of the day.”
Greenpeace UK’s programme director, Amy Cameron, said: “What sort of country locks people away for years for planning a peaceful demonstration, let alone for talking about it on a Zoom call? We’re giving a free hand to the polluting elite robbing us of a habitable planet while jailing those who’re trying to stop them – it makes no sense.
“These sentences are not a one-off anomaly but the culmination of years of repressive legislation, overblown government rhetoric and a concerted assault on the right of juries to deliberate according to their conscience. It’s part of the mess the Labour government has inherited from its predecessor and they must fix it by giving back to people the right to protest that’s been slowly being taken away from them.”
Separately on Thursday, three airports were granted high court injunctions against fossil fuel and environmental activists protesting at their sites. Leeds Bradford airport, London Luton airport and Newcastle international airport were given injunctions banning protesters from trespassing or causing a nuisance.
U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle: “That building in particular has a sloped roof, at its highest point. And so, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAEnyleiwg0
Trump rally shooting ‘unacceptable,’ Secret Service director says
“The buck stops with me,” Kimberly Cheatle said in an ABC News interview.
By Julia Reinstein, Luke Barr, Quinn Owen, Alexander Mallin, and Jack Date
July 16, 2024
In her first network interview since the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said that the Pennsylvania rally shooting was “unacceptable.”
“It was unacceptable,” she said in an interview Monday with ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas. “And it’s something that shouldn’t happen again.”
The violent incident on Saturday, which left one rallygoer dead, marked the first time a current or former president has been wounded in an attempted assassination since Ronald Reagan in 1981.
When she first learned of the shooting, Cheatle said she was shocked and concerned — both for Trump and for the Secret Service agents who responded to the incident.
“It was obviously a situation that as a Secret Service agent, no one ever wants to occur in their career,” she said.
‘Buck stops with me’
As the head of the agency, Cheatle said it’s her responsibility to investigate what went wrong and make sure nothing like it can happen again.
“The buck stops with me,” she said. “I am the director of the Secret Service, and I need to make sure that we are performing a review and that we are giving resources to our personnel as necessary.”
Cheatle responded to reports that the suspect was seen and identified as potentially suspicious before he opened fire, saying that “a very short period of time” passed between then and the shooting.
“I don’t have all the details yet, but it was a very short period of time,” she said. “Seeking that person out, finding them, identifying them, and eventually neutralizing them took place in a very short period of time, and it makes it very difficult.”
Cheatle also said that local authorities were tasked with securing the building where the alleged shooter fired the shots before being taken out by a Secret Service sniper, and confirmed that local police were present inside the building while the shooter was on the roof.
“In this particular instance, we did share support for that particular site and that the Secret Service was responsible for the inner perimeter,” Cheatle said. “And then we sought assistance from our local counterparts for the outer perimeter. There was local police in that building — there was local police in the area that were responsible for the outer perimeter of the building.”
Cheatle said she has reached out to Trump but has not yet spoken with him.
In the days since the attack, Cheatle and the Secret Service have faced heightening scrutiny for failing to prevent the incident from happening, and even calls from some to resign.
Cheatle said she would not resign from her role.
She is expected to testify before the GOP-led House Oversight Committee next Monday, July 22.
Cheatle also said there were not any snipers on the roof that were used by the shooter because it was sloped.
“So there’s a number of factors that come into play on how we secure buildings, both in our perimeter and out of our perimeter,” she said.
“At that site itself, there were actually a number of buildings in the outer perimeter. I know that we’re all focused on this one particular building because of what took place there. But there are a number of buildings in that outlying area,” Cheatle explained.
“That building in particular has a sloped roof, at its highest point. And so, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside,” she said.
Director says to have confidence in Secret Service
Still, she said, the American people should have confidence in the Secret Service’s ability to protect the president and former president.
In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, she “immediately” started looking at the protective details of those under Secret Service protection.
She said she reached out to the former president’s staff and attempted to contact him but hasn’t gotten through.
Cheatle also pushed back on the misinformation surrounding the assassination attempt.
“Secret Service is not political,” she said. “Security is not political. People’s safety is not political. And that’s what we’re focused on as an agency.”
And she reiterated, as other officials have said, that there is “no truth” to the rumors the former president’s detail asked for more resources.
The decision to take out the shooter, she said, was a “split-second decision” the agent made while perched on the roof.
“They have the ability to make that decision on their own. If they see that it’s a threat and they did that in that instance,” she said.
“And I applaud the fact that they made that decision and didn’t have to check with anybody and thankfully neutralized the threat.”
A mother is upset at a business because the business obeyed the Americans with Disabilities Act by not discriminating against her daughter who has Down Syndrome
https://www.yahoo.com/news/abilene-mother-outraged-salesman-takes-142205886.html
Abilene mother outraged after salesman takes daughter with Down Syndrome to dealership to buy car
By Noah McKinney
By July 18, 2024
ABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC)- Abilene resident Angie Martin is a working mother of 7. She came home Tuesday night to a disturbing scene, her third youngest, 27-year-old Hope Martin nowhere to be found. Hope is diagnosed with Down Syndrome, and her mother has full legal guardianship over her, so when she was notified that a sales person with All-Star Honda had picked up Hope and driven her to the dealership.
Martin says she was beside herself as to how it could have happened.
“My heart’s beating faster just thinking about it. I got a text from her father, and he was like, ‘I got a couple texts from someone at Honda’ she had apparently called them multiple times and said I want to buy a car,” Martin told KTAB/KRBC.
Hope’s desire to drive is something she and her mother have discussed before. Martin says she believed she had adequately conveyed to her daughter that the decision is not up to her but rather State motor vehicle institutions, so hearing that Hope had carried out this plan and the sales person did not ring any alarm bells was upsetting.
“As you are as a mom, I was so angry that this had happened and that a strange man would have the audacity to come and take my daughter, who obviously is cognitively impaired, out of my home without my consent, let alone to do something so drastic,” said Martin.
Her initial outrage with the young salesman soon subsided, Martin saying she does not hold him responsible for the way he delt with the admittedly difficult situation. She holds the management mainly accountable arguing that situations like this should have a prescribed method of navigation.
“You and I have inhibitions and limits and when we start to stray outside of them, we’re aware of it. Hope doesn’t have those. I provide that externally for her…I’m always trying to thread that needle between her rights as a human being and her safety,” Martin said.
KTAB/KRBC spoke with the Vice president of All Star Honda, Nicholas Varela to shed some light on their handling of the incident. Varela says it is not uncommon at the dealership for their associates to provide transportation to potential customers if they call like Hope did. Varela issued the following statement:
At All-Star Honda, we pride ourselves on our commitment to serving every customer with respect, dignity, and fairness— free of discrimination of any kind. Recently, an incident occurred that we feel it is important to address directly.
“We are prohibited by law to discriminate or refuse service to anyone based on their membership in a protected category, as outlined by the Americans with Disabilities Act. We are currently addressing this matter internally to ensure that we uphold the highest standards of inclusivity and respect. As a family-owned dealership, we do our best to act in the best interest of our customers and deeply regret any harm this may have caused. We apologize for any concern this may have caused and appreciate the community’s understanding and support while we navigate this matter.”
Nicholas Varela, Vice President – All-Star Honda.
Varela states that management feels they would have been in violation of Hope’s civil liberties if they had decided independently that she was not fit to make those decisions on her own, adding that staff did contact Hope’s father and no transaction took place without a parent or legal guardian present.
“What legislation attempts to do is to call us to a higher standard, not give us an excuse for our failures. That’s not why it exists…I’m sure that they’re on the learning curve and that they’re rethinking things and examining things and I think that good will come of this,” Martin responded to the statement.
Martin says initially the dealership seemed to be “self protective” in their messaging, stating that their response to her at the time did not alight with what she feels would have been the common sense action to take.
“[They told me] That their job is to sell cars, Hope wanted to buy a car. Their job is not to discern whether someone is capable of buying a car, which brings up so many alarming questions like what about someone with dementia?” said Martin.
Martin did call Abilene Police hoping for guidance through the situation. She says officers consulted with their own special needs experts at the department and stated that “kidnapping is not kidnapping if someone agrees to go willingly”. While she says she disagrees given that Hope cannot legally make major decisions, she says she was thankful for their guidance.
Hope was picked up from the dealership by family a few hours after arrival. Martin says she has already had a conversation with her about the gravity of her decisions and is planning to make changes to her schedule and phone privileges in response.
“What would I change going forward? What do I want out of this? I want our community to do better to do right by our people with additional needs…They deserve to move about our community with some freedom and some safety and a lot of support,” Martin said.
Varela says in response to the incident that dealership sales staff will be educated on appropriate procedure in these types of situations leading to better outcomes in the future.
I don’t know if this CNN guest deliberately made a reference to the movie Pulp Fiction, or if it’s just a coincidence, but he said that “divine intervention” saved Trump. Skip to 4:50.
CNN recently interviewed Cory Mills, who has worked in military security, and is also a current Republican member of the U.S. Congress from Florida.
I don’t know if Mills was deliberately making a reference to the 1994 movie Pulp Fiction, or if this is just a coincidence, but he said that “divine intervention” saved Trump. Skip to 4:50.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APZ6IrrCrcU
And here’s the relevant scene from Pulp Fiction:
Biden’s $7.5 billion investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/03/28/ev-charging-stations-slow-rollout/
Biden’s $7.5 billion investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years
By Shannon Osaka
March 29, 2024
President Biden has long vowed to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030. Those stations, the White House said, would help Americans feel confident purchasing and driving electric cars, and help the country cut carbon pollution.
But now, more than two years after Congress allocated $7.5 billion to help build out those stations, only 7 EV charging stations are operational across four states.
2016 Clinton campaign, PAC skirted federal financing rules, court finds
2016 Clinton campaign, PAC skirted federal financing rules, court finds
By Ray Lewis
July 10, 2024
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign stretched federal financing rules, a Washington, D.C. appeals court ruled Tuesday.
The campaign spent nearly $6 million to conduct polls, fact-check claims and set up media interviews with the “Correct the Record” political action committee (PAC), according to the court. Neither group reported the spending as campaign contributions due to a loophole in the Federal Election Campaign Act, the ruling determined.
The law requires campaigns to disclose money they spent when promoting their candidates. Since blog or social media posts are sometimes published for small amounts, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) created an “internet exception” that allows campaigns and PACs to advertise candidates without disclosing any “marginal” costs, according to the court.
“Correct the Record” leaned “heavily” on the internet exemption to support Clinton and designated staff salaries, travel expenses and office rent as costs protected by it, the court said.
The ruling also noted that the FEC acted illegally when it used an “indefensibly broad” interpretation of the exemption to dismiss a complaint by a government watchdog group.
Clinton accused Trump of lying and spreading conspiracy theories during the 2016 presidential race, telling her supporters at one point he was trying to cause distractions.
“I guess my speech yesterday must have gotten under his skin because right away he lashed out on Twitter with outlandish lies and conspiracy theories and he did the same in his speech today,” she said.
“He’s going after me personally because he has no answers on the substance,” Clinton added.
Trump had called her a “world-class liar” and possibly one of the most corrupt people to seek the presidency.
A New Zealand tourist named Patricia McKay was run over and killed with a stolen car because Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon gave zero jail time to a convicted armed robber named Leroy Ernest McCrary
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
July 12, 2024
The Los Angeles Times recently reported:
L.A. robber stole Rolex, got no-prison deal from D.A. Now he’s accused of killing tourist at mall
July 10, 2024
The alleged leader of an armed robbery crew charged with killing a New Zealand tourist last week outside Newport Beach’s Fashion Island mall had been placed on probation for stealing a Rolex at gunpoint in Santa Monica.
He avoided prison time in that case after Los Angeles County prosecutors agreed to a three-year suspended sentence, according to interviews and records reviewed by The Times.
Leroy Ernest McCrary, 26, now faces a special circumstances murder charge that could carry the death penalty after authorities allege he ran over Patricia “Trish” McKay, 68, during a July 2 robbery attempt.
And there you have it. The Democrats who control Los Angeles are against putting convicted robbers in prison. Los Angeles Democrats think convicted armed robbers should be allowed to walk around free and do whatever they want.
Oakland has been publishing misleading crime data for years
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/oakland-police-data-reports-19545681.php
Oakland has been publishing misleading crime data for years
By Rachel Swan and Dan Kopf
July 10, 2024
In recent months it seemed that Oakland — a city famously grappling with a rise in crime — had course-corrected in remarkable fashion.
Statistics published by the police department showed year-to-year crime had dropped by 33% overall by the end of April, a dramatic shift after last year’s spike. Mayor Sheng Thao praised the city for turning a corner. Gov. Gavin Newsom quoted the 33% figure in a news release touting Oakland’s partnership with the California Highway Patrol. The news spread through social media posts and optimistic headlines, including stories in the Chronicle.
But a new Chronicle review of Oakland police data finds that the city overstated the improvements actually seen on the streets. More troubling, the analysis found a persistent problem in the Citywide Weekly Crime Reports published by Oakland police, which compare incomplete year-to-date figures from the current year to complete year-to-date figures from past years.
As a result, these counts inevitably, and at all times, create the impression that Oakland’s crime trends — up or down — are better than reality.
Given currently available data, it isn’t possible to know just how much the 33% figure overestimated Oakland’s overall reported crime drop. A Chronicle analysis of Oakland’s underestimates in previous years suggests that though overall crime was almost certainly down in Oakland through April, that reduction may fall to 20%, possibly less, when the data is fully updated.
The Chronicle’s reporting follows on the work of Oakland resident Timothy Gardner, who exposed the problem in his Substack newsletter, the Oakland Report.
“My motivation is simply to stop the misinformation,” Gardner said in an interview.
Indeed, at a moment when public safety is one of Oakland’s most divisive political issues, driving efforts to recall the mayor and the Alameda County district attorney, voters do not have access to a clear picture of crime rates in their neighborhoods.
While acknowledging the flawed comparison and percentage changes in the reports, police blame technology constraints and say they are trying to balance the public’s appetite for crime data with their duty to be as accurate and transparent as possible.
They include a footnote in each weekly report, explaining that the data may be partially counted: “Statistics can be affected by late reporting, the geocoding process, or the reclassification or unfounding of crimes. Because crime reporting and data entry can run behind, all crimes may not be recorded.”
Police officials, though, do little to correct the record when politicians and media outlets cite the inaccurate data and trends.
Asked about the faulty data, Thao’s office provided a statement. “I appreciate OPD’s efforts to provide weekly transparent crime data to the community,” the mayor said. Her office declined to answer additional questions about the issue.
A spokesperson for Newsom said the office had cited data from the police and would not comment beyond that.
The Oakland Police Department’s year-to-date statistics for homicides and violent crimes are mostly accurate. But the reports only partially count burglaries and other nonviolent crimes, which are a lower priority, generally not investigated right away and usually compiled from reports filed online by victims.
Those online reports need to be verified and imported into a records management system, causing a lag of up to six weeks, police said.
“There can be a delay in the overall number of reported property crimes based on our community’s use of the online reporting system,” an OPD spokesperson said in a statement. “Each of these online crime reports must be reviewed and verified by a member of our staff before being included in crime statistics.”
The impact of the backlog can be seen in the crime report published after the week of July 1-7. It tallied 17,969 incidents of what are known as “Part 1” crimes for the year — murders, assaults, robberies, rape, burglary, theft, auto theft and arson. That was an apparent 33% plunge from last year’s count of 26,903 crimes through July 7.
However, the corresponding report, published one year earlier, had different 2023 figures: It logged 24,244 crimes as of July 9. That’s because the count was not yet complete.
Year-end tallies for 2023 were closer to accurate, percentage-wise, but were still incorrect due to the undercounting of crimes like burglary and theft. Similarly, the year-end report for 2022 showed that overall crime had risen by 7%, though a complete report published a year later documented the actual rise of 20%.
Spokespeople for the police department insisted that other jurisdictions experience similar delays caused by online reporting, and attach “comparable disclaimers” to their data.
Yet a Chronicle review of crime data from San Francisco, Berkeley, San Mateo, Fremont, Hayward and Vallejo showed that other cities either do not release year-to-date comparisons, or have lags that are less severe and include more obvious disclaimers.
Lt. Barry Donelan, head of Oakland’s burglary and general crimes detail, said the department is not trying to deliberately mislead the public. Rather, police staff are hobbled by “decrepit IT infrastructure” and different software packages that do not communicate with each other efficiently. A report management system issued to Oakland police in 2006 has yet to see an upgrade, he said.
“Do we know there are shortcomings in the numbers? Yes,” Donelan said. “Is there a desire among professional law enforcement to fix that? Oh, yes.”
Over the past few years, more Oakland crime victims have used the online portal to file reports, and the old computer systems haven’t kept pace, Donelan said. It’s frustrating not only for residents and policymakers who want accurate information, he said, but also for police who need real-time data so they can strategically deploy officers.
Apart from the weekly reports, the year-end crime data that Oakland submitted to the state Department of Justice several months ago appears to have a major error.
It states that in 2023, aggravated assaults more than tripled compared with 2022 — from 3,329 to 11,169 — after remaining steady in prior years. No one in the Oakland Police Department could explain the implausible rise. In the city’s year-end crime report, assaults rose from 3,222 in 2022 to 3,531 in 2023.
Rik Belew, a computer scientist who worked for years to make OPD’s data more accessible to the public, views the unreliable weekly reports as a snapshot of widespread deficiencies in technology and record-keeping.
Inaccurate reporting from the police force has many downstream effects, Belew said. Real estate sites rely on the data to create crime maps for prospective home buyers. Residents and merchants lack key information about when and where crime happens. People are deprived of metrics to evaluate the police chief and other top law enforcement officials.
Nonetheless, the weekly report format is deeply entrenched, and some critics of the technology still find value in the data, as do police supervisors, Donelan said.
Crime is going down in many categories, including burglaries, as police devote more resources toward investigating them, he said. That’s led to more arrests and prosecutions.
Whether the department will upgrade its software anytime soon is unclear.
The city of Los Angeles has knowingly allowed this to go on for years, and doesn’t care about the innocent neighbors who are forced to suffer
https://www.yahoo.com/news/dream-home-until-hoarder-next-100031042.html
It was their dream home until the hoarder next door turned it into a pricey prison
July 7, 2024
… a mentally ill hoarder, has turned some six acres of green space into an unlicensed dump with more than a hundred rusting vehicles, mounds of trash and scrap metal, and hazardous waste that has polluted the ground and a nearby streambed.
Hypodermic needles, bags of marijuana, moldy clothes, human excrement, tires and condoms littered the street
Malone, Ryan and others living nearby have begged elected leaders and nearly a dozen government agencies for help for years
Fires have broken out repeatedly at Ferrera’s illicit junkyard, where there are numerous containers of propane and other flammable liquids.
They counted 114 vehicles, including five the California Highway Patrol deemed “of interest,” suggesting they had been stolen or were suspected of involvement in a crime…
They also found two shipping containers being used as living space, a trailer, dismantled car batteries, leaking high-voltage power equipment and a device that looked like a military-grade bomb. An ordnance disposal team summoned from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton determined the object was a practice munition and destroyed its fuse to render it safe…
Tests on soil samples taken from the junkyard and a streambed revealed levels of arsenic, lead, cobalt and other substances that exceeded federal safety standards, according to the EPA report, which concluded that the property contained “high levels of hazardous substances.”
… an otherworldly landscape that included a tipped-over ambulance, part of a jetliner and a giant forklift
NASA satellite photo: Korean Peninsula at Night
South Korea is lit up everywhere.
The only part of North Korea that’s lit up is the capital city where all the rich politicians live.
https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/worldview/worldview-image-archive/korean-peninsula-at-night
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 