It’s the sort of gun violence that happens every day, but is conveniently ignored by those who hate guns, except in the hands of repeat violent offenders. A seven-year-old girl was out trick-or-treating with her father in Chicago dressed up as a bumblebee. Suddenly, they were caught in the crossfire of a Latin Kings gang war, and the child was shot in the neck and chest.

While the identity of the suspected gunman has not yet been revealed, the Chicago Tribune is reporting that the target of the gunfire was a 32-year-old Latin King man “with a record of drug and assault arrests.” The man, who refused to cooperate with police even though he was the intended victim, was walking among the children who were trick-or-treating. The seven-year-old girl remains in critical but stable condition.

Once again, we see that so much of the gun violence in Chicago, a city with one of the toughest gun control laws in the nation, is caused by known wolves who are out on the streets despite their criminal records. Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is too busy fighting with Trump and promoting illegal aliens to actually deal with the epidemic of jailbreak policies allowing the worst gang members to remain on the streets. Politicians often dismiss gang violence as bad people killing other bad people, but this incident demonstrates how innocent people are often killed or injured in the crossfire.

The feds have a history of targeting Latin Kings members in Chicago on drug charges to take them off the streets when they escape justice in the state system. This was the big lie behind the First Step Act. Federal prosecutors don’t target “low-level, first-time, non-violent drug offenders” for long sentences; they target gang murderers and use drug laws (or firearms or racketeering) to get them off the streets.

The results of the federal jailbreak bill already came home to roost in Providence, Rhode Island, last month when Joel Francisco, who was released in February under the First Step Act, was charged with murder. Francisco was serving life in prison for a third drug trafficking charge in 2005 under the “three strikes and you’re out” law. However, he got such a severe sentence not because of drugs but because he was a known Latin Kings member responsible for a lot of violence in the city, including shooting a man in the back of the head, execution-style, in 1997. He pleaded no contest for that incident, so at the time he escaped full justice in the state system. The feds targeted him specifically for this reason, yet the First Step Act released him.

Once Francisco was released earlier this year, he tested positive for drugs several times thereafter and was caught attempting to break into his former girlfriend’s house armed with a knife but was never reincarcerated before the October 2 fatal stabbing for which he was arrested two weeks later.

This is the story of Chicago and other major cities as well. Politicians in both parties misleadingly parade convicts before the cameras who they believe were over-sentenced, but for every one of those, there are hundreds of people who are under-sentenced. Yet there is no voice for those victims. Hunter Best, 26, is another recent example of the worst criminals barely serving time in Chicago.

Best was charged with breaking into two homes in Lincoln Park last May and sexually assaulting two young girls in separate incidents on the same night. Surveillance images, video, and DNA testing all substantiated the charges. Yet, as always, it’s too hard, not too easy, to land a conviction, so, according to CWB Chicago, the prosecutor dropped 26 felony charges, “including four counts of Class X felony home invasion involving a sex offense” and “14 burglary counts and four sex-related charges.” Instead, the prosecutor accepted his guilty plea to just two counts of residential burglary.

According to the original charges, as reported by CWB Chicago, “the 13-year-old girl woke up when Best entered her bedroom. Best remained in the room for about fifteen minutes, kissing the girl and rubbing her shoulders as the girl pleaded with him to leave.” The second girl, eleven years old, told investigators that “the man kissed her on the lips and touched her private areas.” Yet, thanks to the plea bargain, good time credits, and time served, this man will be out of prison in a little more than two years from now.

These stories of the worst assaulters, robbers, and even murderers or child molesters barely serving time, despite massive rap sheets, happen every day. They are the stories politicians in both parties have no interest in telling. It’s a criminal’s world; we just live in it. They get the treats from the special interest groups, while we are left with the tricks – quite dangerous ones. (For more from the author of “Chicago Is Tough on Guns and Soft on Crime, and the People Suffer” please click HERE)

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Why aren’t Republicans pounding the lectern with righteous indignation about violent gun felons being let off easy by the judicial system the same way Democrats engage in cerebral gyrations over guns? Democrats have sob stories for their gun control agenda. Republicans need to look no farther than Chicago as the poster child for criminal control.

On June 23, 2017, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson stood beside then-Gov. Bruce Rauner and celebrated the passage of a bill stiffening sentences on gun felons. “1,400 individuals, who are repeat gun offenders, just imagine if we took 50 percent of them off the street where our gun violence would go in the city of Chicago,” declared Johnson at the signing ceremony. “Gun offenders get slaps on the wrist in this city — and it has to stop. I need our judicial partners and our state legislators to help me close this gap.”

Well, thanks to the goal among both parties to reduce the prison population at all costs, things have only gotten worse over the past two years. You see, while politicians tell the public they want to keep people safe, Gov. Rauner also made it his goal to cut the prison population by 25 percent.

According to CWB Chicago, a local crime watchdog, a Cook County judge granted a repeat violent gun felon a special deal on bail that allowed him to walk straight out of the courthouse without posting a dime of bond. Joaquin Urcino is a career criminal with a record dating back to 1991 for everything from homicide and drugs to stolen vehicles, aggravated battery with a firearm, and assault. On July 12, police arrested Urcino, a Two Six gang member, for firing four shots out of his apartment window. He was charged with felony use of a firearm by a felon while on parole, felony reckless discharge of a firearm, and felony possession of a controlled substance.

One would expect someone like this, who served (brief) time for homicide and for shooting another person, to be locked up without bail when caught illegally possessing and discharging a firearm, right? This is especially true given that he was out on parole at the time of his arrest and such an egregious violation should have triggered an automatic re-incarceration. Well, on August 22, Judge Carol Howard let him walk on $100,000 bail, but rather than making him give the customary $10,000 deposit, she let him go for free.

This is all the result of the aggressive and obsessive bipartisan push to let people out without bond and replace incarceration with probation, then avoid enforcing violations of probations so as not to increase the prison population. The goal is 100 percent focused on reducing the prison population without reducing crime with a stronger deterrent, all the while lying to the public that these are just first-time, low-level offenders.

According to data from the Illinois Department of Corrections, the prison population has declined by almost 20 percent since 2013. The Crime Report chronicles how some counties began working with judges to consider jail capacity as a factor in determining whether to give jail time or probation to a new offender. Judges would then allow the criminal offenders to develop a “pretrial” record by their behavior while out with little or no bond to determine their ultimate sentencing at the end of the trial. For example, in McLean County in 2011, “42 percent went to prison and 57 percent were put on probation.” By 2016, “29 percent of convicted felons were sent to prison and 70 percent went on probation.”

That is the power of jailbreak. Now the effects are reverberating across the state. The number of murders statewide jumped 54 percent from 2014 to 2016, while the number of aggravated assaults climbed 16.7 percent.

Last week, the Chicago Tribune reported on a missing woman who police believe was murdered by someone who is out on parole and remains a fugitive. Several years ago, the suspect “was convicted of hitting his girlfriend with a pipe and hammer, pouring a caustic substance on her and setting her on fire.” In addition, he had a domestic battery conviction in 2011 and “felony convictions for armed robbery, aggravated battery and burglary” in the preceding decade. One would expect someone like that to be put away for life, but he was placed on parole in November 2018, barely serving any time.

This past weekend, another eight people were killed and over 40 wounded in Chicago in shootings. While we don’t yet know definitively who committed these crimes, in June, Anthony Guglielmi, spokesman for the Chicago police, gave a description of the perpetrators in a similar shooting spree:

Superintendent Eddie Johnson outlines weekend violence enforcement efforts as CPD stepped up targeted enforcement to respond to several shootings. Over 90 guns were taken off the streets and 18 arrested over a weekend where 52 people were shot and 10 killed. pic.twitter.com/iZI2vTwX2j

— Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) June 3, 2019

As of this afternoon, 11 of the 19 individuals arrested on gun charges over the weekend by #ChicagoPolice are already out on the street. 7 of the individuals were previously convicted felons and 6 had prior gun offenses in their backgrounds pic.twitter.com/yOXiX4tSyS

— Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) June 3, 2019

CPD continues to follow court cases of the 19 gun offenders arrested this past weekend. Of the 11 charged with carrying an illegal gun that are already back on the street, 3 of them were given only I-Bonds (written promises to appear in court for their next trial date).

— Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) June 5, 2019

7 others paid 10% of bonds (payments ranging from $100 – 500) to get out of jail. Some of those defendants also got home monitoring. A single defendant posted the highest amount of 7,500 for a 75,000 bond. He is also back out. All of these men are presumed innocent.

— Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) June 5, 2019

As you can see, many of them had previous convictions, including gun felonies, yet were let out on the streets again. It often takes years to get a court date while these people remain free. This is why the jail population is plummeting in addition to the prison population. Many offenders don’t even have to post bail.

Even when they are finally sentenced, many of them get off with parole. Given that they know the system is reluctant to put them back in prison, there is no deterrent against re-offending. Moreover, as Chicago Tribune editorial board member John Kass recently noted, the monitoring system for those on parole is weak because “there are only 100 deputies monitoring the system to watch over more than 2,000 alleged criminals, many of them violent.” Proponents of the jailbreak agenda want to have it both ways – reduce the prison population but then spend no additional funds on building a post-incarceration security apparatus because they want to talk about saving money.

Sadly, even phony conservative groups, along with liberal ones, are pushing for even more “bail reform” in their effort to avoid incarceration at all costs. These groups refuse to be honest that what was sold to the public as a movement to loosen laws on “first-time, low-level” offenders has been used as a vehicle for releasing the worst repeat violent offenders.

What Eddie Johnson said about Chicago is true of almost every city. It’s a relatively small number of people committing most of the murder and robbery in any given area. Liberals claim an urgent need to “do something” about gun violence just to save one life. Well, actually enforcing our laws against violent gun felons and ending all of the liberal “criminal justice reform” loopholes would save thousands of lives every year. How any national discussion over gun violence can ignore the 800-pound gorilla of repeat gun offenders being let out on the streets is a testament to the dishonest foundation of this entire debate. (For more from the author of “Chicago: A Hellhole for Parole, Free Bail, and Jailbreak for Violent Gun Felons” please click HERE)

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