Since George Floyd’s murder and the summer of riots, burning, looting, and homicides in 2020, zero bail advocacy and laws removing bail restrictions have proliferated in towns and states across the nation. Because it criminalizes poverty and violates the rule that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, bail is seen as racist and classist.
Then-future vice president Kamala Harris urged her followers to donate to a fund to free individuals unfortunate enough to have been captured and charged with serious offenses including burning, looting, assault, and more during the worst of the largely peaceful events in Minneapolis.
If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota. https://t.co/t8LXowKIbw
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) June 1, 2020
With the advent of zero bail laws in several cities and states during the past three years, even persons accused of violent felonies can go free within 24 hours of their arrest. One such law was passed in New York, and it has proven to be so successful and well-liked that many of the lawmakers who supported, promoted, and defended it were ousted from office in November.
That kind of achievement is going to be experienced by Illinois residents thanks to the recent passage of a “progressive” criminal justice reform that has been given a boost. With effect from January 1, all except the most egregious offenses in Illinois will no longer require bail thanks to a new law that, in a hilarious touch of irony, is called the SAFE-T Act.
The New York Post’s Gianno Caldwell reported:
We’re not talking about nonviolent crimes like, say, jumping a railway turnstile or even stealing food from the grocery store. This will be no bail or automatic detainment for second-degree murder. Kidnapping. Armed robbery. Drug-induced homicide. Aggravated DUI.
Hardened criminals, charged with everything from threatening a public official to armed burglary to arson, will be emboldened and empowered.
This is why the law has earned the moniker “The Purge Law” and why media figures are working extremely hard to minimize its impact on civil society. Even those who have been restrained by ankle monitors will be free to move around (for a while).
To make matters worse, offenders released on electronic monitoring devices must be in violation of their parole for 48 hours before it will be considered a crime. In the state’s largest county — Cook County, which encompasses Chicago — at any given time, there are more than 3,000 people wearing ankle monitors. This includes about 100 who have been charged with murder.
As law-abiding Americans continue to make sure they have the tools to defend themselves, the media continue to be amazed by gun sales statistics. It has become painfully obvious that elected officials care far more about promoting “social justice” and “equity” than they do about preserving a law-abiding, orderly, and peaceful society.
Meanwhile, our allies in the gun control movement inevitably attribute the rise in violent crime to having too many guns.
Law-abiding folks aren’t the only logical players at work here, though. Criminals also behave (relatively) logically. They see what is taking place and come to the conclusion that they can pretty much do whatever they want and, if they are caught, they can simply reappear on the streets and repeat the entire process. once more.
The Bail Project, a “bail reform” organization with a Las Vegas office, paid $3000 to free Rashawn Gaston-Anderson from prison last year. Infractions such as burglary of a business, soliciting, carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, two charges of grand larceny, and attempted grand larceny were among the offenses for which he had previously been arrested.
The Bail Project says:
…combats mass incarceration by disrupting the money bail system—one person at a time. We restore the presumption of innocence, reunite families, and challenge a system that criminalizes race and poverty. We’re on a mission to end cash bail and create a more just, equitable, and humane pretrial system.
There doesn’t seem to be anything there about locking up violent repeat offenders to protect the safety of law-abiding residents, but perhaps we missed it.
Anyhow, a few months after Gaston-Anderson was released, he entered a restaurant in Las Vegas and shot Chengyan Wang eleven times. Wang amazingly pulled through.
“He’s got scars all over his body,” Wang’s lawyer Kory Kaplan said. “He can’t move his shoulder over a certain height. I don’t know how (the bullets) missed a vital artery.”
The Las Vegas office of The Bail Project, unfortunately, did not survive the tragedy. They appear to have stopped all activities, most likely as a result of the lawsuit Wang has filed against Gaston-Anderson, The Bail Project, and the restaurant’s owner.
Numerous famous people, like Richard Branson, John Legend, and Danny Glover, support the Bail Project. Las Vegas is no longer included in the organization’s list of offices, which includes 26 cities across the nation.
It’s not unusual to catch a criminal before they conduct an even more terrible crime. The Minnesota Freedom Fund, which Vice President Harris highlighted in the tweet above, contributed to George Howard’s release. Howard then shot and killed a man on I-94 in Minneapolis even though he was not allowed to own a gun.
That was, well, awkward for both the Minnesota Freedom Fund and the Veep.
Gaston-Anderson was sentenced to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges related to the killing of Mr. Wang back in Las Vegas. He is now securely out of The Bail Project’s grasp, as well as their no longer extant Las Vegas headquarters.
The Bail Project and other organizations like it are still active and running in 26 additional cities, reducing recidivism by covering the bail of known repeat criminals. At the same time, as they have done for the past 40 months, Americans are increasing their stock of firearms at a rate of one million or more every month.
So it continues.