Category Archives: Crime

Priorities for Seattle bureaucrats, a failed city (Part 2)

A typical freeway sighting in Seattle.

Demorat-run Seattle is a failed city. Massive homelessness, crime, tagging and a fentanyl crisis (among other issues).  Yet residents repeatedly elect ineffective demorats, some how expecting a different outcome.

Yet nothing, absolutely nothing will change.

Proof of the insanity of demorats in Seattle, via the latest headlines:

Seattle Police recruitment falls short as response times increase.”

From the MyNorthwest.com article:

“Since 2020, the department has lost 515 officers and hired 190. Many have retired, but others said in exit interviews they did not feel supported by the city during the “defund the police” movement following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Due to officers being spread thin, police call response times have increased, with the highest priority calls taking an average of 10 minutes to get a response. “

Gun violence rising on Washington State highways.

I know this expands outside of Seattle yet again, demorats are in charge of that state. The demorat governor has passed multiple gun control laws which have had absolutely ZERO impact on crime. And Seattle’s gun crime is on the rise as well. From the article:

“Washington State Patrol (WSP) reports 396 separate incidents of gun fire on highways that state troopers patrol so far this year. Gun violence has increased from 459 shootings in 2018 to 1,058 in 2022.

So what is the Seattle City Council doing to address the crime, drugs, homelessness and the fentanyl crisis? Take a look:

Seattle City Council passes stronger tree protection ordinance.

“The Seattle City Council has passed a new Tree Protection Ordinance. The ordinance aims to preserve and expand Seattle’s urban canopy while allowing for new construction. “After half a decade of work, we have finally passed tree protections that will preserve, protect, and expand our urban tree canopy,”

This legislation takes a One Seattle approach to balance prioritizing tree canopy while also allowing for the development of needed housing – crucial for progress on climate goals, homelessness efforts, and housing affordability.”

Seattle people never learn…

DCG

Washington, D.C., failed city

This is the third in our series of posts on failed cities — all “blue” cities run by Democrats. See “San Francisco, failed city” and “Seattle, failed city“.

Steven Edginton writes for The (UK) Telegraph, May 10, 2023:

When thinking of Washington DC, grand monuments and museums might come to mind, however, in recent years, America’s capital has become more renowned for its growing homeless population and rising crime.

“Crime here has exploded, people do not feel safe,” Isaac Smith, an Emergency Medical Technician in DC, told The Telegraph for a documentary film about the capital.

“I have a bullet hole through my living room,” Mr Smith continued.

“I hear gunshots frequently and I live right next to an elementary school. There’s a bullet hole in one of the [school’s] windows.”

Violent crime in DC has risen by 10 per cent since 2022, which includes a 15 per cent increase in homicides.

Mr Smith blames the Democrats, who have dominated the city’s local politics for decades, for the rise in violence….

Washington DC has also experienced a 12 per cent increase in homelessness in the last year.

Homeless encampments have appeared across the city, including at some of DC’s most famous landmarks such as Union Station and near the Washington Monument.

The rise in homelessness and crime has led some to leave the city.

Boris Ryvkin, a former resident of DC and a Republican advisor, says he moved due to poor local government services.

“I left DC because of taxes, crime, terrible public services and just terrible government,” Mr Ryvkin told this newspaper.

“The city council and the mayor have completely failed and I joined the exodus of hundreds of thousands of people literally just across the river to Virginia and Maryland,” he continued….

“What’s happening in Washington DC and in other American cities in terms of homelessness is basically the same thing that’s happened in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Vancouver, other progressive West Coast cities,” Michael Shellenberger, an independent journalist who has written about San Francisco’s recent drug epidemic, told The Telegraph.

He continued: “You have very progressive members of the city councils, of the governing bodies of those cities, that have decided that certain laws should not be enforced against people deemed to be victims.”

“So you’ve seen city council members in Washington DC have demanded that people be allowed to camp illegally on the sidewalks, [and] not be required to come inside to shelters.”

“That’s even though we know that you’re three times more likely to die as a homeless person if you’re living outside, unsheltered, than if you’re inside.”

“So when you see this increase of tents around places like the train station, around subway stops, it’s almost always because there’s some political momentum behind not enforcing basic laws.”

~E

Seattle, failed city

I recently returned from a trip to Seattle – my first since 2019 due to their strict Wuhan virus restrictions implemented in 2020.

What I saw was just so depressing. A demorat-run city that is in ruins. Recent pictures I had seen on social media of the homelessness that runs rampant in Seattle:

I saw homeless camps along the freeway that I had never seen before when I previously lived there for decades.

Driving along the I-5 through Seattle was just ugly. So much “tagging” (graffiti) on the concrete walls and traffic signs. A friend told me that much of the tagging has been cleaned up since the 2020 riots. He also told me that the Seattle Police to this day will not stop anyone from tagging. An example of what the tagging looked like in 2020. It’s better today yet was still all along the I-5 corridor.

Along with the endless homelessness situation, crime, tagging and fentanyl crisis in demorat-run Seattle, residents in a certain zip code must now pick up their mail due to vandalism and theft.

From MyNorthwest.com:

“Some south Seattle residents are claiming a significant ‘mail fail’ is occurring as the United States Postal Service (USPS) has halted mail delivery due to a rise in recent vandalism and theft.

A sign at a nearby U.S. Postal Service office in Columbia City is telling residents in the “98118” zip code to pick up their mail in person at an annex office, located at 5920 Martin Luther King Jr Way South. The zip code covers around 49,000 people — but it’s unclear how many of them are not getting their mail delivered.

A visit to that annex office Thursday afternoon revealed a line of more than a dozen people waiting for their mail. A single employee was seen helping them.

One woman named Jenny told KIRO Newsradio that she had no official communication with USPS, but that her local postal carrier told her, “this was going to take a long while to fix and we had to come [to the annex office] to get our mail.”

Seward Park resident Barbara Myers said her postal carrier told her the issue was caused by a recent theft. “They haven’t been delivering mail for four days because a master key that operates all the boxes in Seward Park has been stolen,” Myers said.

When questioned about any thefts of mailbox master keys in that area, USPS Inspection Service spokesperson John Wiegand said there are active investigations, but declined to provide details.

Property crime has been on the rise in the Seattle area, in the Northwest, and kind of across the country — and mail theft is unfortunately one of those areas that have been targeted significantly with that uptick in crime,” Wiegand said.”

Read the whole story here.

Ain’t demorat-run Seattle grand!

DCG

San Francisco, failed city

Man caught pooping in aisle of a Safeway store in San Francisco. (Khon2)

Matthew Lynn reports for The (UK) Telegraph, May 7, 2023:

San Francisco should be one of the best retail centres globally; an easy place to sell every kind of luxury good, fashion essentials and high end electronics. The money is there, as well as the people to spend it.

Yet this week, the department store Nordstrom announced it was shutting its locations in the city, joining a growing exodus of big name retailers. Household brands are in despair over the damage inflicted by an ultra-woke local government….

Nordstrom’s announcement was yet another blow for San Francisco’s battered retail industry. The company told employees it would not be renewing its leases at the Westfield Mall, nor at the Nordstrom Rack across the street, due to the “changed dynamics” in the city.

The “deteriorating situation in downtown San Francisco,” Westfield Mall told the Washington Post, has left both customers and staff unsafe.

The retailer is hardly the first to put up the “closing down sale” signs. The upmarket grocery chain Whole Foods has shuttered a flagship store; the H&M, Gap and Banana Republic have all left. While some British high streets risk becoming boarded-up wastelands, they could soon look positively vibrant compared to what used to be known as “the golden city”.

There is no great mystery here. Under its ultra-woke Mayor, London Breed, San Francisco has been testing out a wide array of faddish, progressive policies. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, Breed was one of the first to jump on the “defund the police” bandwagon, cutting $120 million from the law and order budget.

Sales and corporate taxes have been pushed up. Homelessness has been tolerated right across the city centre. Motorists reportedly leave car windows and doors unlocked to deter overnight break-ins.

Last summer, a groups of business officials wrote to officials threatening to stop paying taxes if politicians failed to clear litter from the streets and stop people from openly taking drugs….

The quality of life has deteriorated steadily in San Francisco, not least for those who cannot afford to escape to the wealthier suburbs. Businesses are shunning the city, perhaps deterred by an increasingly unfavourable local tax, social and regulatory environment.

In 2021, foreign direct investment into new projects in San Francisco fell to their lowest level since 2009. And as shops close, real estate prices are tumbling. Let’s not forget that one of the big reasons the San Francisco based First Republic Bank had to be rescued was because of expected losses on property loans. The city is slipping into a vicious cycle of decline from which it is hard to see any exit….

There is a lesson in the closure of Nordstrom in San Francisco. It is one of the wealthiest places in the world. It has a per capita income of $160,000 (£126,000), according to figures from the Federal Reserve….

It is often complacently assumed that businesses will just take any amount of punishment so long as there are still customers with money to spend. You can push taxes up to any level you like, let crime run out of control, turn the streets over to vagrants, and impose as many virtue-signalling rules and regulations as you can think of, and they will stoically put up with it all because they need the market. San Francisco is a warning that that is simply not true.

There is always a final straw. That was true of Nordstrom and the golden city…. Ultra left local governments can destroy even successful cities – and once it starts it is almost impossible to reverse.

~E

Score one for the 2A: 67-year-old woman shoots & kills armed intruder

She saved herself and her 90-year-old mom. You go, girl!

DCG

We have a winner!

 

WE HAVE A WINNER FOR OUR 265th CAPTION CONTEST!

Our writers dutifully voted for their #1 and #2 captions. Each #1 vote is worth 4 points; each #2 vote us worth 2 points.

And the clear winner, with three #1 votes and two #2 votes, totaling a whopping 16 points, is:

Captain America!

Here’s his caption:

Another pimp in the democrat whore house.

Vett is in second place, with one #1 and one #2 vote, for a total of 6 points:

That almost looks like a bullseye target on his back.

Auntie Lulu is in third place, with one #1 vote and 4 points:

Ain’t I just stylin’ for this do.

greenworxx and Reuben G. are in fourth place, each with one #2 vote and 2 points:

greenworxx: “Adams is a walking ‘meme’ representing much of what’s tragically wrong in the city of New York.”

Reuben G.: “Is this tuxedo a form of violence?”

WELL DONE, EVERYONE!

Congratulations, Captain America!

For all the other caption submissions, go here.

Be here later today for our next most exciting Caption Contest!

~E

Marine uses his intel training to track down woman’s abducted Yorkie dog

Oorah!

Yorkie Avery returned home safely!

From Daily Mail:

“A former Marine Corps intelligence operator who helped capture al-Qaeda insurgents in Iraq used his skills to track down a Maryland dognapper after a Yorkie’s sudden disappearance left a family devastated.

Rick Machamer, who lives in Arlington, Virginia, learned Raquel Witherspoon’s beloved pet had been stolen after watching the local TV news and believed he could help.

Witherspoon was sent texts together with a video of her dog, Avery, a Yorkie, locked in a cage together with a ransom demand for $1,200.

Despite filing the case with the police, she was told that it would be a week before officers could even begin looking at the case, so she went to the local media noting how the dog was an emotional support animal for her 12-year-old daughter, Semaj.

Machamer, who owns a Norwegian elkhound and a Pomeranian was troubled by the thought of someone stealing his beloved pets and got in contact with the family. ‘I couldn’t fathom my reaction if someone took one of my dogs, especially if they sent a picture of one in a cage,’ he said to the Washington Post.

The former military man’s skills lay in tracking and gathering information. His skills were such that he was honored for taking part in operations that saw him help  capture al-Qaeda leaders in al-Anbar province in Iraq. Machamer, a United States Marine Corps veteran completed three combat deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Hero Marine Rick Machamer

He offered to help Witherspoon track down her dog and she quickly accepted. Avery was dognapped in June, with Machamer’s involvement in rescuing the pet only coming to light this weekend.

Machamer, who runs a corporate intelligence firm that carries out opposition research for political campaigns, first used his resources to trace the phone number of the dognapper.

He ran the suspect’s phone number through an online database and used software to extract geolocation data from the video of Avery in her cage but it yielded no clues.

He then searched through customer reviews of local salons near Witherspoon’s home, hoping he might find the perpetrator thanks to her distinctive dyed red hair that could be clearly seen on doorcam video. Once again, no useful information could be gleaned.

Machamer then decided to run the dognappers number through his personal Instagram account in an effort to see if any profiles were connected to the number.

Incredibly, Machamer found a lead through the social media platform, which linked him to a body piercing business near Witherspoon’s home and a post that also linked to the owner’s personal Instagram account.

Machamer discovered that the owner had posted about another dog that had gone missing in Witherspoon’s neighborhood before Avery was taken.

A little bit of Googling saw him come up with a social media post about the missing dog.

There was even a picture of the family speaking to police about the dog together with someone that looked distinctly like the dognapper from Witherspoon’s doorbell camera. The photograph even displayed the address of the home.

Four days after Avery went missing, Witherspoon also received a tip that someone in the same house that had just been pinpointed by Machamer was indeed behind the dognapping.

Together the pair gave the information to police and Avery was recovered two days later after a Prince George’s County Police detective went to the home and retrieved the dog.

‘I was like, “They got him back!” said Witherspoon’s daughter, Semaj. ‘I didn’t want to face the reality of not seeing my dog again.

A 16-year-old girl was charged with stealing and admitted to being involved in the theft together with an attempt to extort Witherspoon in return for the pet. She pleaded guilty before trial.”

Read the whole story here.

DCG

The virtue-signaling mayor caption contest

This is our world-famous 265th Caption Contest!

Here’s the pic:

About the pic: New York Post reports that after “dying to go” to the Metropolitan Gala “for years,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, finally got his wish. Adams, 61, arrived at the May 2022 Met Gala wearing a statement suit adorned with custom art from Laolu, a Nigerian artist who is based in New York City.

You know the drill:

  • Enter the contest by submitting your caption as a comment on this thread (scroll down until you see the “LEAVE A REPLY” box).
  • Body and Soul‘s writers will vote for the winner.
  • Any captions proffered by our writers, no matter how brilliant (ha ha), will not be considered. :(

This contest will be closed at the end of Tuesday, January 17, 2023.

‘To get the contest going, here’s my caption:

Meanwhile, new12brooklyn reports that “Gun violence is on the rise in New York City.” So much for virtue signaling….

For the winner of our last Caption Contest, go here.

~E

The Tranny-Luggage-Thief Caption Contest

This is our world-famous 264th Caption Contest!

Here’s the pic:

About the pic: The bald transvestite in the pic above is Sam Britton, a self-described “non-binary,” who has served since June 19, 2022 as the Biden administration’s deputy assistant secretary of energy. He celebrated his appointment with a Twitter post photo of himself in a chic red dress and high heels. He has a well-documented career leading workshops on “pup play,” a sexual practice in which the partner plays the role of a pet dog within a domination/submission dynamic.

In September, Britton allegedly stole a high-end piece of checked luggage worth over $2,000 from a baggage carousel at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport. Video surveillance shows him at the baggage claim despite having checked no luggage of his own. He then appears to take the bag and remove its rightful owner’s nametag. Over the next month, Brinton used the bag as his own on multiple other trips. When eventually questioned by police, he confirmed that the bag was in his possession and claimed he’d made a mistake due to exhaustion. On October 27, Brinton was charged with felony theft of movable property without consent, which is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He faces a court hearing on December 19. (Source: Spectator)

You know the drill:

  • Enter the contest by submitting your caption as a comment on this thread (scroll down until you see the “LEAVE A REPLY” box).
  • Body and Soul‘s writers will vote for the winner.
  • Any captions proffered by our writers, no matter how brilliant (ha ha), will not be considered. :(

This contest will be closed at the end of Tuesday, December 20, 2022.

‘To get the contest going, here’s my caption:

Just another freak to add to an already criminal administration.

For the winner of our last Caption Contest, go here.

~E

Chick-fil-A employee stops attempted carjacking; saves mom & her baby

We need more men like this!

From Yahoo News:

“A Florida Chick-fil-A employee is being praised for his heroic actions when he stopped a man from allegedly carjacking a woman and a baby.

The employee, Mykel Gordon, was working at a location in the Fort Walton Beach area Wednesday afternoon when the woman started screaming for help, according to statements from Chick-fil-A and the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office.

The woman told deputies that she was getting her nephew out of his car seat when the suspect, William Branch, approached her, an incident report stated.

The woman said Branch was carrying a stick in his hand and was “wielding it in a way she believed he would use it as a weapon,” according to the report.

The woman said she stepped back away from Branch and he lunged at her, grabbed her keys from her waistband and got inside her car, according to the report.

“When the victim began screaming for help an employee at Chick-fil-A ran to intervene,” the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook.”

Read the whole story here (and see a picture of Mykel).

DCG