(Stephen Moore | Committee to Unleash Prosperity) – Philip Lawrence Nelson was charged with interfering with police in June as riots first swept Portland. The charges were quickly dropped. But he has now been charged in a double-stabbing murder that occurred just one week after he was “caught and released.”
Nor is he the only Portland rioter treated with kid gloves. Antifa supporter Michael Reinoehl – “I am 100% ANTIFA all the way!” he posted to Instagram in June – is currently under police investigation for the murder of right-wing counter-protestor Aaron Danielson last week.
Back in July, Reinoehl was cited for “possessing a loaded gun in a public place, resisting arrest, and interfering with police,” but was quickly released.
It appears rioters are increasingly mobile and moving from city to city. Jeremy Vajko was arrested in DC last month for recklessly driving his van into a crowd of over 100 people. He spent the night in jail and was released the next morning.
Vajko was arrested in Portland last June for interfering with a police officer and also pulled over more recently in Kenosha for driving with temporary plates.He has enjoyed catch-and-release protection from several cities.
Britain’s Daily Mail says law enforcement officials see a pattern in which “people with little or no visible means of support show up at various hotspots literally from one end of the country to the other, get arrested time and again for various offenses, some violent, only to have charges dropped, and then go on to commit similar crimes at the next hotspot.”
How is it that these people get released so often? One reason is that progressive groups like Justice & Safety PAC, founded by philanthropist George Soros, have spent millions of dollars to change criminal justice priorities.
The goals the groups push include changes to criminal justice systems such as ending cash bail and “rolling back practices that lead to mass incarceration.” Those are precisely the policy changes that are fueling the explosion of crime in New York City.
Prosecutors elected with the backing of groups that share Soros’s vision include:
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner. She brought felony charges in July against a couple who displayed guns outside their home as angry protestors threatened them.
Cook County, Ill. State’s Attorney Kim Foxx dismissed the case against actor Jussie Smollett, who had been accused of faking a hate crime attack against himself. The case was later taken over by a special prosecutor who filed new charges.
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, another beneficiary of left-wing PACs, recently said policing and incarceration “are tremendously expensive and are failed responses to what we are trying to deal with.”
It doesn’t augur well for Portland that its brand-new District Attorney is Mike Schmidt, also elected with the backing of left-wing groups.
Schmidt has said that he would potentially drop all charges against nonviolent protesters.
His predecessor did just that with at least 59 people arrested during Portland’s June riots. Among them was Philip Lawrence Nelson, now charged with a double homicide.
This would seem to be a MAJOR story that media sleuths would be all over, but the reporters are uninterested. That’s why you read it here first.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“New York City has seen a rise in crime, like many major cities across New York. In August, the NYPD reported that shootings more than doubled compared to the previous year. The department has blamed the rise in violence on recent changes to the state’s criminal justice reform laws such as eliminating cash bail.” – Spectrum News, 9/2/20
Stop Catch & Release is a project of Citizen Outreach, a non-profit grassroots advocacy organization. You can get free updates and breaking news on this issue by going to: stopcatchandrelease.com
