Not Murder On CCTV

Black and WOKE State/Chicago District Attorney Kim Foxx has garnered something of a history of allowing black criminals more laxity than it is perhaps safe to do ....

State - District Attorney Kim Foxx

 ... and matters reached such a state that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (amongst others, including police organisations) has criticised her. This all reached a head after an incident in October 2021 after a shooting happened on the morning of Friday the 1st of October, in the 1200 block of North Mason Avenue.

Police Officers at that location saw four [black male] people get out of two cars, and shoot into a home on the block; the people inside the house then started shooting back, hitting one man from the cars. The other gunmen then took off in their cars. The shot man was pronounced dead at the hospital, while the two black males from inside the home were also injured and were hospitalised.

A police camera recorded the whole shooting incident, and all three car survivors were taken in to custody .... but then absolutely no charges were filed. DA Foxx had declined to press them, on the basis that it was impossible to say who’d started the violence, and who was acting in 'self-defence'. In those multiple shootings, police normally try to get everyone charged with gun offences in those instances, and to let the judge and the courts to sort it out, and not to anticipate what might happen before a jury or a judge. 

After all, firing guns in public carries risks to others, even if in 'self-defence' ...... but not in Chicago anymore it seems. Five months later her prosecutors eventually charged just one of the gunmen, with the others still possibly going to be charged later. The charged man, Thomas Dean, 20, is now charged with three weapons counts for firing shots from what the state's attorney described as a 'machine gun'.

This event was followed in May 2022, when her prosecutors in the office of Cook County State’s Attorney also refused to file charges in connection with a shooting in April 2022 near a River North nightclub. Apparently they accepted the suspects self-defence claim, despite the fact that the suspect allegedly had 33 prior arrests including for violence. As is common in these strange cases, video cameras captured the whole incident. The 33-year-old victim saw a man who was involved in an earlier incident with him, and he went over to confront him. however the suspect produced or retrieved a hand gun, and shot him five times, police said. The victim was unarmed and the suspect had no injuries ... so police were staggered when he was released without charges.

Gregory Stamps And The Victim David Castle

Then there was the case of Gregory Stamps, who her office refused to charge with murder, citing their belief that he had acted in “self defence” after he alleged the victim had tried to rape him. A Chicago police detective, area 1 Detective Commander Charles Brown, then took the very unusual step of overriding felony review, by signing off the murder charge personally while the state’s attorney’s bond court supervisor, also then took an even more extraordinary step: he proceeded with the prosecution, all without her offices support. The case is now pending trial.

The police apparently believed that the DA's office under Foxx were simply looking for reasons, any reason at all, to deny filing charges against Mr Stamps, this despite the police investigators having had what appears to be overwhelming evidence against Gregory Stamps.

When the police caught him, just minutes after the murder of Mr Castle, he allegedly had blood on his hands and clothes, and the dead man’s wallet in his pocket. He then allegedly admitted to killing the victim, dragging the dying naked man down three flights of stairs, dumping him in an alley, and tossing the man’s clothes into a dumpster. Mr Castle died before reaching hospital.

Coincidentally, Mr Stamps, 31, had been on parole since May 2018, after serving a little over five years of a six-year sentence he received for attempted murder of an ex-boyfriend, and a concurrent three-year sentence for domestic battery ... oddly he had also claimed 'self defence' in that attempted murder, before admitting it in court. The current victim, David Castle who had been struck 20 to 30 years with a blunt force (by the bloody hammer found at the scene), was a white gay man .... Mr Stamps who is a black gay man, had absolutely no injuries. The colour of accused and victims should not be a defence in all but the strangest cases (where people target other races), and striking that many blows is not a self-defence, but a murderous rage. That is classed as first-degree murder in most places ..... but not to the prosecutors of Cook County under new woke management.

This apparently bizarre treatment of gun and violence carries on .... In April in Chicago, on the Near North Side, gunfire broke out near Durso Park, with witnesses stating that they estimated that "greater than 50 shots were fired – perhaps 100" .. other later reported that “Automatic weapons were clearly in use and shots were randomly fired throughout the neighbourhood – hitting cars and buildings, but fortunately no people.” So bad was the shooting that the Moody Bible Institute reportedly put its campus on lockdown.

Although it appeared that more than one shooter was involved, witnesses pointed police to a ladies toilet, where police found police 20-year-old Anthony Newman inside the rest-room with his girlfriend. There was a handgun in the garbage bin next to him, but there were no bullets in it. He was advised of his right to remain silent, but told police he carries a gun for protection and he would be dead if he didn’t shoot back, and told police he put the gun in the trash can and admitted he shot at some other people “to protect himself and his wife.” 

Anthony Newman - Two Time Felon

Newman had two previous felon convictions including one of aggravated robbery with a firearm in 2019, and so it was pointed out that, as a convicted felon, Newman couldn’t get an Firearm Owner’s ID (FOID) card, even if he had wanted to, and that made his current gun possession a federal offence. However Cook county prosecutor's only charged it as a misdemeanour. As a result of all the gun fire between Newman and his attackers, at least three condominium blocks sustained bullet damage and at least one car was hit .... many considered it a miracle that no innocents were hit or killed.

Ms Foxx attitude to prosecutions has also prompted complaints in the past, particularly those relating to gun violence. On the 3rd of July 2021, Chrys Carvajal, a 19-year-old Illinois National Guard soldier was murdered in a random drive-by shooting, with the chief suspect being a high-ranking [black] Milwaukee Kings gang member, who the police tracked to the area, and who they say jumped out of a car and randomly shot Carvajal. But despite the evidence, which included a video and witness accounts, Foxx's office said it  was “insufficient to meet our burden of proof to file murder charges at this time.”

In September 2021 two little girls were sitting in the back of their parent's car when a gunmen opened fire, killing 7-year-old Serenity Broughton and injuring her 6-year-old sister Aubrey. Witnesses helped lead police to the man they believe was responsible, but sources told the media that the suspect was later released without charges. The police let it be known that they believed that the man should have been charged. Ms Foxx's office again later cited "burden of proof" as the reason the man wasn't charged ... local community activists said that this is why getting witnesses to come forward in the black community is increasingly hard, as examples like this man not being charged, left the killers now out amongst them.

Ms Foxx also tried to intervene in the strange case of the black actor Jussie Smollett in 2019, and complained to her deputy that charges against him were 'excessive,' and the initial charges against him for 'filing a fake police report' were dropped by her Cook County State Attorney's office two weeks later. Smollett was later convicted of five felony counts of disorderly conduct; he was sentenced in March 2022 to 150 days in county jail. He has since been released on bond while his case is on appeal.

The Cook County state votes entirely Democrat across the board, with all offices held by that party (which can't be politically very healthy now I think on it), including the office of the Attorney General, State of Illinois Kwame Raoul, so there is little incentive for any closer look at the polices being followed in determining when a suspect should be arrested and charged in Cook County. 

When communities vote for justice by the colour of the candidates skin, and not by the content of their character, then they get the justice they deserve .... with Kim Foxx as Distract/State Attorney, the voters of Cook County are getting the justice they deserve.