There’s so much going on that I want to comment on, and I’ve run out of time today. Let me toss them out there to bring them to your attention. I have way too much to do today to get ready for book promotion, and no time to comment on these below. I just spent two hours approving comments from last night. But I think these items below are important, and that you should know about them.

ITEM: Radley Balko says that the Kentucky authorities are not being forthcoming about the events that led to Breonna Taylor’s death. He writes in the form of debunking questions from defenders of the police. Excerpt:

It absolutely was. It says so right on the warrant. Moreover, the portion of the warrant authorizing a no-knock entry cited only cut-and-pasted information from the four other warrants that were part of the same investigation. This is a violation of a requirement set by the Supreme Court that no-knock warrants should be granted when police can present evidence that a particular suspect is a risk to shoot at police or destroy evidence if they knock and announce. They didn’t do that.

The police claim they were told after the fact to disregard the no-knock portion and instead knock and announce themselves, because, by that point, someone had determined that Taylor was a “soft target” — not a threat, and not a major player in the drug investigation. But there are problems with this account. If Taylor was a “soft target,” why not surround the house, get on a megaphone, and ask her to come out with her hands up? Why still take down her door with a battering ram? Why still serve the warrant in the middle of the night?

“The police knocked and announced themselves, and a witness heard them.”

In what was probably the most frustrating part of Cameron’s press event, he cited a single witness who claimed to have heard the officers identify themselves as police. I spoke with Taylor’s lawyers in June, who at that time had interviewed 11 of her neighbors. Many lived in the same apartment building as Taylor. According to the lawyers, no neighbor heard an announcement. The New York Times interviewed 12 neighbors. They found one — just one — who heard an announcement. And he only heard one announcement. He also told the paper that with all the commotion, it’s entirely possible that Walker and Taylor didn’t hear that announcement. Cameron neglected to mention any of this.

ITEM: This e-mail came in from a Czech reader:

Anytime I read your posts about Kyle Rittenhouse I wonder if you Americans realize how absolutely crazy these stories sound to people from outside of the USA. I understand that there is right and wrong usage of gun and that it is important to search for the truth in each case of fatal shooting. But I find it hard to find any sympathy for any person running around the streets with a semi-automatic weapon no matter what the reasons behind this are.

If you were to show up (just show up, not shooting or aiming at anyone) with such a weapon in my country (Czech Republic) it would warrant immediate response from a special police unit. The same applies to all European countries pretty much. I have watched the video in your latest piece on the subject and it doesn’t do much in convincing me in rooting for Kyle Rittenhouse or any other person involved in these incidents.

What I see when I watch the video is scenes that seem to be only possible in the USA and third world countries. The number of deaths just feels like reaping the fruit of loose gun policy and grown up people playing army on the streets. I actually find some understanding for people attacking or even aiming guns at Rittenhouse. For all they knew he just shot someone and was running around with what looks like a machine gun. Still all of them are playing the same game of running around the town with guns out on the open… feels insane to me.

Obviously it turns out his victims are/were bad people with criminal records and all the violence surrounding it is reprehensible. But to me anyone carrying a weapon to protests is part of a problem and in such an intense atmosphere I find it hard to look for nuances and distinguish good guys from bad guys within the hammock that took place that night. I also find Kyle’s demeanor sort of coldblooded. I imagine that a person who just shot someone is shaken with horror, not running around calmly explaining “I hat to shoot him” and then being ready to shoot some more. Of course I know that in these circumstances people react differently but this sure feels like a person who came there ready to use his gun.

I live in Central Europe and I am closely watching protests in Belarus. They actually have a dictator ruling over them yet the protests there are nothing like what we see in the USA. I understand people might find sympathy for Rittenhouse (I don’t) but I absolutely don’t understand how people are making hero of him. You live by a sword you need to be ready to take consequences…

Anyway thank you for your blog and for covering all kinds of topics including the controversial ones 🙂

UPDATE:

Prominent BLM activist says black Attorney General Daniel Cameron is no better than a slave trader.

It’s becoming clearer and clearer that this was never really about black lives.

The left is ripping this country apart. pic.twitter.com/7kHFwoGx2J

— Alex Marlow (@AlexMarlow) September 25, 2020

There are few people in this country braver than black conservatives.

UPDATE.2: A reader writes:

To clarify, this event in Moscow is meant to be a protest against the city government’s mask mandate which was extended the day before it occurred. That’s not any parking lot; it’s the parking lot for the city hall. You will notice that those in the video are not wearing masks. The city allows for large gatherings provided that people wear masks at them–The farmers’ market is a large weekly gathering at which people wear masks. The Calvinists in Moscow, Idaho have been fairly stalwart against the mask mandate.

Then I am much less sympathetic. I think that requiring masks for outdoor events is silly, but if this is a protest against a mask mandate, as opposed to a protest against prohibiting public gathering because it violates social distancing rules, then I am disinclined to be on their side. Is there something I’m missing?

UPDATE.3: I’m pulling this from a different thread, but this comment from reader Lord Karth, who works as a lawyer in upstate New York, belongs here too:

Allow me to speak to this, if you please.

My work as a lawyer has been, for the last 34 years (32 in practice and 2 as a law clerk for a Family Court Judge) dealing with children and families. I have seen, literally, thousands of cases where families are in difficulty of one sort or another. I realize that I am speaking anecdotally, but I do not think that what I have observed is that far out of line with what others have experienced/observed. To wit:

My first case in Family Court (in 1988) involved a preteen boy accused of using a knife in a fight. He was sent to a juvenile detention center for several weeks before trial. That center has not increased in capacity, and the population of the county it is located in has not increased since then. Today, it does not accept kids accused of such things—it is full to capacity with very violent offenders (guns and gangs are frequently involved) and, increasingly, accused juvenile sexual offenders. It takes the commission of what for an adult would constitute a high-level felony to get sent to this facility—and it has been operating at capacity for at least the past 10 years. PRIOR to “bail reform” and the other nonsense that has been coming out of NeoProgressive Albany.

Requests for “orders of protection” are at an all-time high in the counties I work in. I see more cases involving threats of weapon use and threats of harm to pets than was the case even 10 years ago.

The volume of custody cases is also at historic highs. There are more cases involving domestic violence, substance abuse and serious neglect than there were in 2005–and, I believe, the volume has seriously increased since 2008.

The level of just plain immaturity has also risen. This past year, the NYS Legislature (a/k/a “The Wonderful Gang of ‘Happy Monkeys’ “) made pre-court mediation a virtual requisite for proceeding in Family Court. There were a great many people (including myself) who thought that this would wipe out caseloads back in January. Today, there is not ONE Family Court Judge or practitioner who is not overworked to the point of working 6 full days a week. (I regularly inquire about this caseload to the court clerks in the 5 counties I practice in.). Simply put, mediation is not working; many mediations dissolve in the first 10 minutes, sometimes violently.

I ascribe this to three developments: the utter collapse of family authority since the 1970s (particularly the near-total absence of fathers in lower-class and particularly black lower-class homes). I can literally count on the fingers of both my hands the number of delinquency cases I have been involved in in the last 10 years where the kids have come from intact families.

Secondly, the phenomenon known as “helicopter parenting/“safetyism” (documented in an Atlantic article a few years back). Parents of 2020 are far more likely to vehemently defend their children against accusations, even when the evidence is utterly overwhelming, and in the case of black parents, to make accusations of racism against the courts and even their kids’ own assigned defense lawyers. (We’re “in on it”, conspiring with the prosecutors and the courts, don’t you know.)

Third, the widespread availability of smartphones. The immediate-gratification feedback loop of the devices is much faster than even the loop for television was. There are many homes I have to examine where kids have very serious discipline problems—up to and including the actual use of violence if access to their phones is threatened in any way.

So it may not just be an older generation’s lament about “kids these days”. I’d bet some very serious money on this surge in immaturity being a verifiable fact.