Plutocrat Donors Lead the Campaign to Legalize Crimes

 

Seattle City Council changed its criminal code to excuse more than 100 misdemeanor offenses, if the defendant argues that the offense can be linked to poverty, addiction or a mental health issue.

The proposal, dubbed the “Poverty Defense Fund,” would essentially make the following crimes LEGAL:

• Squatting on private property

• Theft of a businesses

• Car prowling

• Stalking

• Trespassing

• Assault

A defendant only needs to claim their poor or addicted, or act deranged, in order to have a judge excuse and dismiss almost all misdemeanor crimes.

Already crime in Seattle has spiked more than 250 percent in 2020 in the wake of the defunding of the Seattle Police Department by the council. Homicides have more than doubled in 2020 — to the highest level in a decade — and the year isn’t even over yet.

“If somebody stole a bunch of cell phones and intended to resell them to pay their rent, it would apply to that defense,” Asha Venkataraman, a member of the council’s Central Staff, told the committee. Bike chop shops and fencing of stolen property has become common place in Seattle homeless encampments.

The city has already decayed to the extent that it inspired the great documentary “Seattle Is Dying” last year.

When Rachael Rollins ran for district attorney in Boston, she hinted that she would refuse to prosecute entire categories of crimes. Once elected, Rollins published “The Rachael Rollins Policy Memo,” which lists 15 crimes “for which the default is to decline prosecuting.”

Despite the fact that those 15 crimes were passed by the state legislature and signed into law by the governor, Rollins knows better and has ordered the prosecutors in her office to drop those charges.

According to her policy edict, instead of being prosecuted, those 15 categories of crimes should either be “outright dismissed prior to arraignment” or, “where appropriate,” “diverted and treated as a civil infraction.

A decision to prosecute someone for committing any of these crimes must be approved by a supervisor.

The “Rollins 15” are:

• Trespassing

• Shoplifting, including offenses that are essentially shoplifting but charged as larceny

• Larceny under $250

• Disorderly conduct

• Disturbing the peace

• Receiving stolen property

• Minor driving offenses, including operating with a suspended or revoked license

• Breaking and entering a vacant property for the purpose of sleeping or seeking refuge from the cold, and there is no actual damage to property

• Wanton or malicious destruction of property

• Threats (excluding domestic violence)

• Minor in possession of alcohol

• Drug possession

• Drug possession with intent to distribute

• Resisting arrest where the only charge is resisting arrest

• Resisting arrest if the other charges include only charges that fall under the list of charges for which prosecution is declined

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RTWT