Meet this fine creepy cat, Jerry Active, who is a hood even when he’s not in a hoodie. He’s also the poster child for ending parole and reinstating the death penalty for child rape, but we’ll get to that.

[Jerry] Active, who was 24 at the time of the killing, had been released early from prison just hours before the attacks, according to state officials.

He was set free on probation after serving part of a seven-year sentence for pleading guilty to breaking into an Alaska home in 2009 and sexually assaulting a child and other residents.

“Mr. Active’s actions will remain a scar on the community,” Anchorage Superior Court Judge Philip Volland said, according to the Alaska Dispatch News.

So what’d he do to celebrate when the Parole Board marked him “rehabilitated” and decanted him into the sea of the public? This is not a good sign:

“These murders were senseless, brutal, bloody and bloodthirsty.”

via Man who raped 2-year-old, killed couple gets 359 years – NY Daily News.

We’ll spare you the details, because the generalities are grim enough:

The monster was found guilty in April of beating to death 71-year-old Touch Chea and his 73-year-old wife Sorn Sreap after raping Sreap and her 2-year-old great-granddaughter, police said.

He also sexually assaulted a 90-year-old woman, who died in June.

The sickening attack had shaken investigators for its brutality. Seasoned detectives had called the crimes the “worst thing they had ever seen in their lives,” police department spokeswoman Anita Shell said at the time.

The Togiak, Alaska, man entered the doomed family’s home at random in May 2013.

Active has a ready explanation. He dindu nuffin’ and was … drumroll please! … a victim. A victim of what, you ask? (Second, more ominous drumroll please!) Raaaaacism. No, seriously:

A white jury that failed to correctly interpret the evidence was to blame for his convictions, Active said.

Well, a white jury, his DNA inside the elderly woman and the baby, his presence on the scene when others, and then the police, arrived, and eyewitness testimony. Apart from that, and his history of criminal depravity, Active seems innocent, you know?

His lawyer banged on the table:

Defense attorney Chong Yim asked Superior Court Judge Philip Volland if his client had received a fair trial. He questioned whether the parties empanelled a fair and impartial jury.

The defense had asked for a change of venue for the trial, and despite Active’s notoriety the court refused, Yim said.

Also, evidence was insufficient, Yim said. The attorney pointed out that Active, 27, is still a young man, and he told Volland he planned on filing an appeal.

From a news story at the time of the crime:

The toddler’s parents returned from a movie to this Anchorage home and found Active naked in a bedroom with the child and the great-grandparents dead, Anchorage police said.

To the [fill in the blank] attorney Chong Yim, who is every bit as evil as his pal Jerry Active, that’s not “evidence.”

Nice little threat from the lawyer, too: “My client is still a young man. He got out of jail to attack again last time… do you feel lucky, judgie-wudgie?”

Maybe the judge does. It is unlikely Active will be paroled this time. Judge Volland suspended 45 years of his sentence, but it’s a 404-year sentence, and the judge dealt with the turn-em-loose-Bruces of the parole board by, “limiting Active’s access to discretionary parole,” a seldom-used penalty enhancement in Alaskan law. So this time, ceteris paribus, Active should be getting out in 2374 or so. Sure, he can’t do 359 years, but he can do the best he can, eh?

…although [Judge Volland] doubted that Active would ever get that chance. The Alaska Court of Appeals generally opposes such rulings against young defendants, but the judge said the circumstances of the crimes warranted the restriction.

Ya think? People like the Pope say that the death penalty is wrong. Active’s life matters, and that, by extension, Touch Chea and Sorn Sreap’s don’t, nor does the damage a human pathogen like Active did to the two people he raped, and to Von and Minesoreta Seng, the parents of the raped child. He assaulted them violently (and whose testimony formed part of the evidence against Active that he and his oily mouthpiece are pretending doesn’t exist).

On the other hand, for most of the history of this country, until the advent of pro-criminal supreme courts in the 20th Century, no one would have doubted what to do with this stain in the gene pool. Indeed, for most of the history of the Republic, he’d have been hung for the prior rape.

Active’s criminal career is an illustration of the profound failure of parole and probation as tools for controlling crime. It is confusing as reported at the time of his 2013 arrest:

Active, who had pleaded guilty to breaking into a Dillingham, Alaska, home in 2009 and sexually assaulting a child and other residents, was released from prison on probation on Saturday morning [25 May 13] after serving part of a seven-year sentence, said Kaci Schroeder, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Corrections.

It was not immediately clear why Active was allowed to serve less than his full sentence. Schroeder said she did not have certain details about his case.

He was released from prison in Anchorage at 8:09 a.m. Saturday, about 12 hours before the crimes were reported, Schroeder said.

Active has a lengthy court record, with several misdemeanor arrests prior to the 2009 felony case. He was first released on the Dillingham case on October 2, 2011, but violated probation and was sent back to prison two days later, according to records Schroeder released.

Since then he has been in and out of prison after committing other probation violations, Schroeder said.

OK, so let’s make a timeline of it, and see if we can make sense of it. A better rundown on his priors is here.

1. Prior to 2007: numerous small-time crimes, usually involving Judgment Juice
2. 3 Nov 2007: first felony: five felony charges stemming from a burglary (including second-degree burglary, third-degree criminal mischief and furnishing alcohol to a minor in a local-option community). He pleads to the alcohol charge, a Class C felony.
3. 2009: crime & arrest. (first-degree burglary, second-degree sexual assault, second-degree sexual abuse of a minor and fourth-degree assault, attempted sexual abuse of a minor and criminal trespass).
4. 2010: conviction. He pleads on the attempted sexual abuse charge. Sentence: widely reported as 7 years, it’s more like 4 in prison + 4 probation, plus 15 years on the sex offender registry.
5. 2 Oct 11: Release years early.  
6. 4 Oct 11: New crime & arrest. Back to the jug. Briefly.
7. 11 Nov 12: New crime & arrest. Violating probation by “assault, providing false information to an officer and resisting or interfering with an officer.” New sentence, four months, parole not revoked. 
8. 5 Feb 13: Released early from the token sentence.
9. 17 Feb 13: Violates parole/probation by drinking, and gets arrested again. Probation officer recommends a year. Judge says Court of Appeals loves them some crims, that wouldn’t stick, so new sentence, five months. That’ll show him.
10. 25 May 13: 0800 released from prison years early despite his violent record and his repeated parole/probation failures.
11. 25 May 13: Within 12 hours he was committing more violent crimes, including two murders by beating and two violent rapes, one of a child.
12. 25 May 13: Minutes after fleeing the scene he is apprehended by police.
13. 24 April 15: Guilty on all counts.
14. 21 Aug 15: Sentenced to a “Parole this, you cretins” 404 years, of which the judge suspends 45.

You have to wonder (a) when #15 is going to be added to that list, and (b) why we don’t just whack child rapists.

Well, we have the answer to (b) at hand. It’s Coker v. Georgia and, precisely, Kennedy v. Louisiana, which concluded that the life of a rapist, and, precisely, a violent kiddie diddler, was more precious than that of his victim. Kennedy was the brainchild of child-rape supporter and Hero of NAMBLA Jeffrey L. Fisher, a Stanford law professor. If you want to know why Touch Chea and Sorn Sreap are dead, it’s because that’s the outcome Jeffrey Fisher wanted and pursued. His is the evil that turned a thousand Actives loose. If you ever run into him, say thank you.

Two LA landowners, Arcadia de Baker and John Percival Jones gave a VA forerunner, the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, 400 acres of property in Los Angeles in 1888. For 80 years their gift was honored, but starting during the Nixon Administration in 1970, the VA, as the successor to the NHDVS, cleared the property of vets and began using it for things that were more rewarding to VA managers and LA movers and shakers. Part of it became UCLA’s baseball stadium. Part became an exclusive golf course. Much was used by well-connected crony corporations for a wide variety of uses. Some was pimped out to local government and its support contractors for uses that the VA finds superior to taking care of vets, like parking old school buses.

The VA recently lost a suit, kicking and screaming, and will have to use its urban land treasure for the benefit of veterans. But it’s not done screwing rank and file vets on this.

Following a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of homeless veterans and the descendants of Arcadia de Baker, the wealthy widow of two powerful landowners, a plan to return the valuable parcel to the service of veterans is due next month. The Department of Veterans Affairs, working with a specially appointed committee, will honor the intentions of Baker and John Percival Jones, a silver baron, one-time U.S. senator from Nevada and founder of Santa Monica, when they left the land to the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in 1888.

“The misuse of the West Los Angeles campus is particularly offensive because of that donation,” David Sapp, of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California, told FoxNews.com.

While the property did serve as a refuge for tens of thousands of veterans scarred in battles ranging from the Civil War to the Vietnam War, something changed in the 1970s. There was no shortage of wounded veterans, yet the VA emptied out the sprawling grounds known as the West Los Angeles Campus and began renting property out for all sorts of uses that had nothing to do with veteran care.

via No more golf, wine-tasting: Prime LA land deeded for soldiers’ care to return to intended use | Fox News.

So what’s wrong with this? It’s the way the VA’s going to comply. Rather than simply go to work to help the vets — an idea that’s simply anathema to VA managers — instead, they’ve set up a committee, indeed, a “specially appointed committee,” as it says up there, with every pressure group and social justice faction represented.

You a vet? They don’t care. Combat vet? Nope. Wounded vet? Get outa here. But if you’re some kind of pressure-group vet, some hyphen-American member of a recognizable and recognized minority (especially one that all these Social Justice Warriors on the committee approve of), then a windfall may be coming your way.

Oh, and don’t worry about anything happening to UCLA’s stadium. Veterans may have weaseled their way into the organization’s name, but they can’t get VA officials first-baseline tickets.

We could say that VA leaders are “despicable,” but the Bond Villians Union would probably send a member to slap a glove across our face and demand satisfaction for using their word on the even-more-evil VA managers.

We’ll cover the usual subjects: Guns, Usage and Employment, Cops ‘n’ Crims, Unconventional (and current) Warfare, and Lord Love a Duck!

Guns

We really wanted to write more about these gun stories. So many guns, so few fingers….

HK94/MP5 Loader

Loading SMG mags is a pain. A mag loader eases the pain. Q.E.D.

This one is made by B&T, available (now, anyway) for MP5s and clones from HK Parts. (They stress that this version only works with HK MP5s and clones, and warn that it must be lubed or will break).

Judge Rules for ATF, Against SIG

Latest round in the go-around on the SIG MPX is-it-a-break-or-a-silencer set-to is concluded, and a judge in New Hampshire awarded all the points to ATF, granting them summary judgment. Under Federal precedents giving great deference to regulatory agencies, the ATF had to demonstrate was that there was some rational basis, any rational basis, for its ruling, and the Judge, a relic of the Poppy Bush administration, ruled that the ATF had done so.

Usage and Employment

The hardware takes you only half way.

Don’t be That Kid

Battle Creek, Michigan. The Detroit Free Press picked this one up from the Battle Creek Enquirer:

Officers said the boy, who lives in the apartment building, entered an unlocked apartment and found the handgun and accidentally shot himself in the hand.

He was taken to Bronson Battle Creek for treatment and the injury is not life-threatening.

Officers are still investigating the circumstances that allowed the boy into the apartment of the gun owner, who does not have any children.

The kid was six. You can’t kidproof the world, so you better gunproof your kids. He’s going to live, and probably recover: he shot himself in the hand.

Cops ‘n’ Crims

Cops bein’ cops, crims bein’ crims. The endless Tom and Jerry show of crime and (sometimes instantaneous) punishment.

KCMO PD Department of Precrime

The New York Times channeling Philip K. Dick by way of, who was it, Ridley Scott? examines a Kansas City (MO) program that sounds remarkably like the creepy algorithmic dispatch system in a dystopian movie:

Mr. Brown, whose criminal record includes drug and assault charges, is at the center of an experiment taking place in dozens of police departments across the country, one in which the authorities have turned to complex computer algorithms to try to pinpoint the people most likely to be involved in future violent crimes — as either predator or prey. The goal is to do all they can to prevent the crime from happening.

….

At a time when many police departments are under fire for aggressive tactics, particularly in minority neighborhoods, advocates say predictive policing can help improve police-community relations by focusing on the people most likely to become involved in violent crime.

Minority Report? Well, most of the guys in the report are minorities, does that count?

Weak as Water

You may have heard about the study that concluded that experts were barely better that firearms novices at shooting. The abstract is here; the fulltext is paywalled. But before you read too much into this story, here’s the study’s definition of “expert.”

Participants were separated by firearms experience into the following groups: expert (completed law enforcement firearms course, n = 83), intermediate (recreational experience, n = 71) and novice (minimal/no experience, n = 93).

Got it. “Expert” = didn’t flunk out of he Police Academy (does anyone ever flunk out of the Police Academy?) It doesn’t really matter that the article is paywalled, then, does it? Social science is to science as numerology is to number theory.

Bet You Didn’t Hear About This Church Shooting

A while back, you heard about a church shooting where an angry or crazy guy shot shot a pastor and some other people in a black church down South.

Last Sunday, James J. Minter, 26, stood up in the middle of a church service in a small black church in the historic Civil Rights city of Selma, Alabama and opened fire. DId you hear about this one? You probably didn’t, even though Minter shot the pastor, the Rev. Earl Carswell, 61; a young woman of 24; and the woman’s one-month-old baby.

Why didn’t most of the Acela Media think this shooting fit The Narrative™? A look at Minter’s mugshot at the one exception, the New York Daily News, may be a clue.

Yet the story is one that probably should be told. Minter came to the church knowing that was the one place he could find his estranged girlfriend, who was hiding herself — and her baby who was Minter’s son — from Minter’s anger at her rejection of him. Minter would have killed them, too, if it were not for fast action on the part of Rev. Caswell and other parishioners, who swarmed him like an angry rugby ruck and disarmed him. In the process, Caswell took a shot in the leg. He was treated at a local hospital.

The woman, shot in the jaw and shoulder, is also going to live, and the baby was shot in the hand; he will have lifelong consequences. They were rushed to a trauma center in Birmingham.

There’s a lesson for all of us in this. When violence comes, fight back. The best way is to be armed, but if you’re not armed, you can still win with speed, surprise and violence of action. One hopes the Governor of Alabama sees his way clear to recognize Rev. Caswell and his fellow heroes.

Unconventional (and current) Warfare

What goes on in the battlezones of the world — and preparation of the future battlefields

Piper Cub vs. Bf109

It happened. The Messerschmitt driver was so bemused he flew away without wiping out the L4 Cub. Story is here (Archived GeoCities page). Here’s another L-4 story, complete with rare photos of the planes on LSTs turned Cub Carriers. We met this guy, Dutch Schultz, at Oshkosh in the late 1990s or so.

Remember Those Four US-Sponsored Rebels in Syria?

Turns out, there were a few dozen more that met the President’s and General Lloyd Austin’s “muslim-brotherhood-but-not-ISIL” prerequisites, but they went over to al-Qaeda. Or to Jabhat al-Nusra, which is the al-Q franchise in the chaos that used to be Syria. After their training. This guy was their leader, Anas Obeid, who’s now flying the black flag of terrorism.

Hopefully Austin trained Obeid as well as he does everything else.

CENTCOM denied this, then admitted it in a 25 Sep Press Release. To get a glimpse of what’s happening in Syria, try Brookings and CTC analyst Charles Lister’s twitter feed. Lister is a supporter of deposing Assad, and was formerly as supporter of the Administration and its approach, until it became evident the approach was an utter failure (which to be fair, was evident to Lister before it was to most people). Lister is working from open sources, but he is better informed than US policymakers relying on the intelligence community.

In point of fact, with the Russians intervening on the side of Assad, the war’s probably decided.

Lord Love a Duck!

The weird and wonderful (or creepy) that we didn’t otherwise get to.

Well, We Had To Mention the Duckboat Crash Here

It probably should have been held for a When Guns Are Outlawed… feature, but really, the temptation was overwhelming to cover, under this rubric, the Seattle crash between a sightseeing “duck boat” (in fact, a World War II GMC DUKW amphibious 2½-ton truck) and a charter bus full of college students — international students, enjoying a college orientation. The crash wasn’t at all funny, though; it killed four exchange students (from Austria, China, Indonesia, and Japan) and injured 40 others: 2 in critical and 12 in serious condition in the immediate aftermath of the crash.

The driver exclaimed, “Oh, no!” before the DUKW — whose nickname. “duck,” came from its GM manufacture code, and which were produced in the tens of thousands for amphibious and riverine operations in World War III — veered left across the centerline and slammed into the left side of the oncoming bus on the Aurora bridge. Witnesses reported seeing red fluid dripping from the left front wheel of the mishap DUKW before the collision, suggesting the hydraulic systems may have been compromised.

Commercial duck-boat operators have been turning away from the WWII vehicles because of their high maintenance demands and the costs of succeeding modifications required (mostly by the Coast Guard and seaworthiness-related) after earlier accidents, but scores of them remain in operation

This video, tipped to us by a commenter, shows off 240 years of US Army uniforms.

Overall, a nice effort, but we have a few quibbles. Note, however, that they’re quibbles. We’re actually touched that some news magazine would put this together.

Among the few inaccuracies that we noticed:

1. The WWII uniform is a specific paratroop uniform, completely different from that worn by regular troops.
2. No, they didn’t wear the same uniforms in Korea and Vietnam. In fact, the Korean uniforms were very close to those in the end of WWII. The uniform depicted is an early-60s uniform worn in the first year or two of ground forces deployment to Vietnam. The OG-107 jungle fatigues in several variations were used by most soldiers in Vietnam.
3. The Urgent Fury (Panama) BDU uniform is correct, but it sure does look stupid.
4. Desert Storm started with the old 6-color Day Desert uniform (“chocolate chips” some people call it) and only high-priority units had the then-new 3-color DCU. Support units, many of them, were still wearing the woodland-color BDU.
5. Afghanistan and Iraq kicked off with that same 3-color DCU, a much superior uniform to the day-glo ACU depicted in the film.