Prosecutors play an integral role in the new woke order that is constantly trying to re-engineer society.
Ingham County Prosecutor Carol Siemon’s example is emblematic of this trend. Since she was elected in 2016, one of Siemon’s principal goals was to lower the level of systemic racial bias and racial disparities in law enforcement practices. Translated in simple English: She will reduce policing of minorities who tend to be involved in disproportionate numbers of crimes. All because noticing patterns or acting on certain patterns is racist.
Naturally, Siemon’s policies have been met with significant pushback.
“I was raised here in Lansing, in a diverse community,” Siemon declared. “I’ve always had an interest in civil rights, all aspects of civil rights. As a woman, I’ve been a feminist all my life. LGBTQ Rights, racial disproportionality, immigrants rights. So, when I was elected as prosecutor, my goal was to try and create a more criminal and equitable legal system.”
Siemon has gained notoriety for pushing two policies that are designed to reduce the amount of black people imprisoned. In the present, blacks constitute 14% of Michigan’s population and 53% of the state’s prisoners.
“We look at the data and that statistic shows that racial disparity is so unambiguous and so extreme that I couldn’t even justify,” she claimed.
Back in July, Siemon revealed that her office would no longer press charges arising from traffic stops for minor violations not related to public safety.
But Siemon did not stop there. Her office is now changing the way it will handle felony firearm charges.
Michigan established the felony firearm charge in 1976 – a time when the state’s rates of gun violence were rising.
“It was designed to say if you carry a gun you’re going to get two charges,” Siemon commented. “That’s an additional two years in prison if convicted of a felony firearm, even if it’s a gun you’re legally able to have and if you don’t use the gun while committing the felony.”
Siemon is now vowing to only charge people for their behavior as they commit a crime, not for weapons not used in a given crime. Generally speaking, criminals who are arrested possessing a firearm on their person in a crime receive stiffer penalties.
In 2020, the prosecutor’s office handled 205 felony gun charges and a large portion of those suspects were black.
“In Michigan, about 80 percent of people who are incarcerated on a felony firearm charge are Black, even though our statewide population for that race is only 14 percent,” Siemon stated.
Several individuals like Ingham County Sheriff Scott Wrigglesworth have criticized Simeon’s policies. He contends that the sheriff’s office was not included and communication between his office and the prosecutor’s office has been scant.
“The first policies she involved us to a minimum,” he stated. “The most recent policy, she put it out and we didn’t see it until the public got to saw it.”
Wrigglesworth does concede that racial disparities do exist in the policing of criminal behavior and he also believes that there is a disproportionate rate of blacks in prison (unjustly so in his view). However, he believes that Simeon’s policies would impede public safety efforts.
“Will this policy have an impact in sending less people of color to prison? I think that’s probably true,” Wrigglesworth declared. “But, on the other hand, at what cost? Possibly a human life. So for her to start making personal changes because of her own personal agenda or what someone told her to do doesn’t make sense. We need to start focusing on what’s happening here in Ingham County and not across the country.”
In post-truth America, stating statistical facts is verboten. The fact is blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes and it’s not because of white supremacy. The black community has largely been rocked by the welfare state and poor political leadership that make excuses for bad behavior.
Instead of going the soft-on-crime route to solve these problems, there need to be honest conversations about crime, welfare use, and social dysfunction. Similarly, contrarian voices in the black community should step up to promote school competition, neighborhood watches to police bad behavior, and a restoration of civil society to restore the social fabric of black society.
This makes more sense than promoting more government spending and criminal justice policies that go easy on criminals. However, there are many leftists who are convinced that racism is a systemic problem in the US.
Their opinions should be safely ignored.
