Category Archives: crime news

crime news

If only we could silence this liar

My version of a perfect world suggests that a stiff prison sentence, a hefty fine and a label of “serial slanderer” could silence the likes of Alex Jones.

However, we never will reach that level of perfection. Why? Because Jones, who is on trial for defaming the loved ones of the precious children slain in the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, has this “free speech” guarantee that will allow him to continue spewing trash.

Judge scolds Alex Jones at Sandy Hook defamation trial: ‘This is not your show’ (msn.com)

Jones, one of the nation’s more notorious conspiracy fruitcakes, has been sued for saying that the Sandy Hook massacre was made up, that the slain victims were actors, that it was all a ploy to gin up support for legislation to ban guns.

Jones, who lives in the Dallas area, has been defending himself in the trial. He tried to apologize to the parents of some of the slain children, but the judge presiding over the trial shut him down.

To be clear, Jones already has been found liable for defamation by one of the parents he defamed. He is trying at this moment to avoid paying a lot of money that he could be ordered to pay.

Don’t misunderstand me on this point: Even though I am a staunch defender of the free-speech clause in the First Amendment, there are times and instances when I wish the courts could order nimrods like Alex Jones to just shut the hell up!

But … they cannot.

Therefore, no matter how this matter ends up, Alex Jones will continue to have his platform, his proverbial bullhorn — and an audience that is too willing, too stupid and too gullible to ignore his idiotic rhetoric.

I tend to ignore everything that flies out of this loudmouth’s pie hole. But I’m just one guy. The nimrods who listen to this guy need to find some religion.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Mixed feelings on this exchange

Some issues of the day give me heartburn. This is one of them. It’s about whether we should send the Russians a notorious arms dealer now serving time in the slammer in exchange for the release of a noted women’s basketball star and a fellow accused of spying on the Russians.

I keep asking whether we are giving up too much for Britney Griner and Paul Whelan.

Griner was caught in an airport carrying some cannabis oil in her luggage. The Russians said it is illegal and promptly jailed her. She pleaded guilty to the charge and now is standing trial, I presume to determine the kind of sentence she will get from the Russians.

Whelan has been in prison for years. He was arrested in dubious charges that he engaged in espionage.

Brittney Griner part of potential U.S.-Russia prisoner trade, CNN reports | The Texas Tribune

President Biden has declared that both Americans are being held without good cause. He wants them released, but he is willing to give up a lot to get them back. The Biden administration dangled in front of the Russians the release of Viktor Bout, a notorious arms dealer serving a 20-year sentence. This is a bad dude.

Griner and Whelan aren’t, shall we say, anywhere close to Bout’s league of badness.

But I understand why the administration wants to bring these two Americans home. I mean, they are being held reportedly on specious grounds and that they are being denied many of the civil rights accorded to Russian citizens.

I must point out that Griner happens to be Black and is gay. The Russians aren’t keen on Blacks or gay people and have been persecuting gays since Vladimir Putin assumed power in Russia.

Oh, and we have that war in Ukraine that has thrown a terribly high obstacle between U.S. and Russian negotiators.

My bottom line is that I want Griner and Whelan returned home to their families. However, I hope that if Viktor Bout gets to go home to his family that he won’t return to the heinous activity that got him in trouble in the first place.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

TDCJ inmates need not broil

The summer’s incessant and relentless heat wave has returned an issue to the front of the shelf that needs some examination.

It is whether to install air conditioning systems into Texas’s massive prison system. Think for just a moment about something. Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Glenn Hegar projects that the Legislature will convene in January with an estimated budget surplus of about $13 billion.

Well, how might we spend some of that surplus? Oh, here’s a thought. Perhaps we could install A/C units into at least some of our state’s prisons.

I sort of understand why Texas hasn’t chosen to give the state’s enormous state prison population some of the comforts others of us receive and take for granted. However, reports indicate that indoor temperatures at some of our prison units have reached 140 degrees during this summer’s intense heat wave.

That is unacceptable.

I became acquainted with the lack of A/C units during a tour I took in 1995 of the Clements Unit outside of Amarillo. Frankly, I hadn’t studied the issue much since my arrival in Texas in early 1984. However, I was acutely aware of how hot and hostile summer gets in all regions of Texas.

My first thought upon learning of the lack of A/C was: Hey, didn’t an inmate sue the state for housing inmates in “inhumane” conditions … and didn’t he win that lawsuit, forcing the feds to take run the state prison system for many years?

Putting A/C units in our state prisons surely doesn’t turn our lockups into “country clubs.” It simply provides a livable environment for inmates who, frankly, deserve to be treated like human beings.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, education news

School cops get a bum rap

Let’s examine this issue of public school district police forces and whether they are equipped and trained to respond to tragedies such as what unfolded recently down yonder in Uvalde, Texas.

The Uvalde Independent School District chief of police, Pete Arredondo, commanded a force of five officers. They were all certified by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement that issues those certifications.

Put another way: Arredondo was not in charge of a corps of mall cops. 

The chief is on unpaid administrative leave pending a decision by the school board whether to fire him. My opinion? He needs to be cut loose and sent on his way to … somewhere other than another law enforcement job.

The officers under his command, though, do not deserve to be criticized — as they have been in some circles. Yes, other agencies’ officers responded to the slaughter of those children and their teachers. However, the Uvalde ISD officers were fully capable of responding appropriately when the need arose … and boy howdy, it arose that day at Robb Elementary School.

School districts throughout Texas are hiring police officers, putting them on school district payrolls and entrusting them to protect our children. I cover a school district in North Texas, Farmersville ISD, that has such a force. It is run by a veteran police officer with many years of experience.

Farmersville ISD, indeed, is set to hire at least one additional officer for its force of four officers — including the chief. Additionally, the district is considering the hiring of school campus “monitors” who will serve as eyes and ears on site for the police department.

I want to stipulate once more that the FISD officers are fully certified by the state and are fully qualified to respond to emergencies as they develop.

The Uvalde tragedy was a failure of leadership. Pete Arredondo, from what I have been able to discern, failed to act decisively in the critical moments early on as the tragedy unfolded. So, too, did other force commanders who arrived at the school to deliver assistance.

Let us not dismiss the actions of one small police force as emblematic of the kind of law enforcement that our children deserve and receive.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news, local news, State news

Police chief just can’t stay

They were supposed to meet today in Uvalde, Texas, to decide whether to fire an embattled chief of police. The chief’s lawyer asked for a delay on “due process” concerns.

No one yet knows when the Uvalde public school board will meet to consider the fate of its police chief, Pete Arredondo.

I’ll just weigh in now with what I believe is patently obvious.

Arredondo did not do his job when a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in May, killing19 fourth graders and two teachers who sought to save them from the slaughter.

The chief choked. He didn’t know he was in charge. Actually, in my view, he should have seized command and ordered an assault on the gunman.

The community is grieving. When it is isn’t crying, it is full of rage. At the chief. At many of the officers under his command. At city cops. At Department of Public Safety officers and at the U.S. Border Patrol. All told, 376 officers responded to the carnage. They waited 77 interminable minutes before killing the gunman.

Arredondo — who has been place on unpaid administrative leave — has been at the center of the community’s grief and anger. From my perspective, there can be no way in the world he stays on the job. What’s more, I happen to believe his career as a law enforcement officer is over as well.

Uvalde school board postpones meeting to discuss Chief Pete Arredondo’s fate | The Texas Tribune

This man will be scarred for the rest of his life by the tragedy that unfolded in Uvalde. Talk about being a “distraction.”

When the school board finishes processing its “due process,” its task is clear. Fire the chief and look for a new school district top cop who will pledge to take command in a future emergency.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Breath is bated for AG

Given a lot of factors that are patently obvious — the first of which is that I am not a lawyer, let alone a constitutional lawyer — I am trying to prepare myself for a possible disappointment if Attorney General Merrick Garland decides to indict the immediate past president of the United States.

The disappointment might lie in that Garland will not indict Donald J. Trump on the most serious crime on the table: seditious conspiracy.

Instead, Garland might try to bust up whatever criminal proceeding he would seek into a group of smaller offenses.

I am absolutely sure that Garland recognizes the staggering precedent he could set if he indicts Trump for inciting the insurrection of 1/6. No need to explain what that means.

Garland appears to be a meticulous, deliberate and thorough lawyer, one who has a stellar record as a prosecutor, I should add. He won a conviction of the madman who blew up the Oklahoma City courthouse in April 1995.

It well might be that Garland cannot win a conviction on the whole array of charges that loom in front of Donald Trump. That will be his call to make exclusively. He will not need, nor should he accept, any recommendations from the peanut gallery, where many others and I occupy prime seats.

This might be my way of preparing for a possible disappointment. I have declared my intention to accept whatever the AG decides. I just hope I don’t hurt my jaw when I am finished gnashing my teeth.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Trump did not ‘do nothing’ on 1/6

If you’ll pardon the double negative in the headline, I want to make a brief statement on the major takeaway I gleaned from last night’s televised public hearing on the 1/6 insurrection.

It is that the narrative on what happened while the attack on the U.S. Capitol was underway has changed in a small, but significant, manner.

We had been told that Trump “did nothing” for more than three hours to stop the traitors from attacking the government. Now we have heard that Trump made a conscious decision to do nothing. Therein lies the change in narrative.

Now we have come to understand that Trump’s inaction was planned prior to the event, which means that the POTUS was engaged actively in ensuring that he wouldn’t call out the National Guard, that he wouldn’t tell the attackers to cease their assault on our government and that he wanted them to capture Vice President Mike Pence and, well, do serious bodily harm to him.

There’s even better news — from my standpoint, at least. House select committee chairman Bennie Thompson announced that the televised hearings will resume in September.

That is all right with me.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

School boards now must boost security

The rampage of violence in schools and many other public places has changed the game plan for those who must prepare for new seasons.

Consider the issues facing educators in, say, Uvalde, Texas, which is still grieving over the massacre of 19 fourth-graders and two teachers.

Not only must they prepare for curriculum requirements and ensuring that teachers have plenty of stationery, books and online equipment to teach, they now must ensure their classrooms are secure against any possible burst of rage.

This is life in contemporary America, ladies and gentlemen. It saddens me to my core and sickens me terribly.

But .. we must stand guard these days against domestic terror just as we were shaken and angered by the events of 9/11. The international war on terror is still raging, even though it has been pushed off the front pages of newspapers and off the evening newscasts in cities and towns across the land.

9/11 taught us a terrible lesson, which is that the mightiest country on Earth is vulnerable to acts of insane violence.

We have stopped countless attempts since that terrible day. We need to commit to stopping future attempts similar to what we have seen occur in Uvalde, Buffalo, El Paso, Sutherland Springs, Newtown, Las Vegas, Parkland, Littleton, Aurora … and on it goes.

I speak to local educators in North Texas and they tell me the same thing, that they are getting ready for the next school year with both eyes and ears dialed in to the need for greater classroom security.

I do hate saying this, but they must never let their vigilance down. Not for one second.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Buckle up and wait for these results

There likely will be no clearer referendum on the health and status of today’s Republican Party than a primary vote set to take place next month in Wyoming.

U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, the state’s lone representative in the House, is running for re-election. She has been as staunch a conservative lawmaker as any in the House. She is fervently pro-life and pro-gun; she is anti-tax and has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

But she’s being called a “dead woman walking” in the upcoming GOP primary because she is being challenged by a Trump cultist who has earned the endorsement of the twice-impeached former president.

Why worry about this election? Because Cheney has committed an unpardonable sin in the eyes of the cult cabal that follows Donald Trump. She has joined a select House committee seeking to know the truth behind the 1/6 insurrection and attack on the Capitol. She has said Trump is criminally liable for what occurred that day. She has been faithful to her oath, which she took to defend the Constitution.

That has earned her a spot on the Donald Trump sh** list of politicians who would dare to challenge him for, oh, breaking the law and doing something no other president in history has ever done … which is launch a coordinated attack on the peaceful transition of power after an election that he lost.

If the Wyoming primary voters oust Cheney, then I am certain it will signal the death of the Republican Party as we have known it. If Cheney fends off the challenger, which appears unlikely, then there might be hope that the GOP can cleanse itself of the soiling that Trump has brought to it.

I am pulling for Rep. Cheney. Not because I like her politics, but because the Republican Party needs someone in its ranks who will stand for the rule of law. It is fundamental to the success of this democratic experiment the nation’s founders left us.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Fire the chief!

Let’s get straight to the brass tacks of this discussion: Pete Arredondo’s name is mud within the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District.

He needs to be fired from his job as the ISD’s police chief. The Uvalde CISD board is meeting Saturday to decide whether to fire him.

Yes. By all means imaginable, the chief needs to go. Immediately. There must not be any separation agreement. Just can the chief. The man has no support within the grieving district.

He failed in responding appropriately to the shooter who walked into Robb Elementary School and slaughtered19 children and two heroic teachers. Arredondo said he didn’t know he was in charge. Well, he should have known. He should have taken command. He should have ordered his officers into the room where the shooter was murdering his victims.

He didn’t do any of it. He dawdled and waited around as the shooter kept on killing his victims.

I am not going to suggest any criminal prosecution for Arredondo. He will, however, likely be served with plenty of wrong death lawsuits from the families of those he betrayed by his failure to protect those children and their valiant educators.

This is a no-brainer, school trustees.

However, bear in mind that a legislative report labeled the incident a “systemic failure” at all levels. Firing the Uvalde CISD chief of police is just one step needed to repair what went so tragically wrong.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com