Our good friend Jeromy Brown once wrote:
Dana is near pathological in his desire to throw people in jail.
It was such a touching sentiment that I had to include it in the Testimonials section of the sidebar!
But maybe, just maybe, we need a few more people who are “near pathological” in their desire to keep criminals behind bars. Once again, a Philadelphia police officer has been killed in the line of duty, and, once again, he was killed by someone who should never have been out of jail.
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Police: Why was officer’s killer free?¹
By Andrew Maykuth and Larry King, Philadelphia Inquirer Inquirer Staff Writers
By all rights, William Allan Foster should have been in jail on Monday rather than behind the wheel of the car that killed Philadelphia Police Sgt. Timothy Simpson.
Foster, 41, of Levittown, who has spent much of his adult life in prison for drug, theft and escape convictions, was released from a New Jersey prison in March and ordered to stay in touch with parole officials.
In August, however, he was arrested in Bucks County on theft charges, and spent four days in jail before making bail. He was let go even though New Jersey officials said they had communicated with the Bucks County prison that they wanted Foster for violating parole.
On Nov. 5, Foster was again arrested in Bucks County, this time for shoplifting. Once again, he was released.
Foster also slipped through the grasp of Philadelphia police earlier this month.
On Nov. 3, he was involved in a traffic stop in Philadelphia during which police found a disassembled shotgun in the car. Though that did not constitute a weapons violation, Foster was arrested on an outstanding warrant – and then inexplicably released.
Much more at the link. But if you follow it, you’ll find that Mr Foster was a career criminal, with a lengthy string of arrests, convictions, some jail time served, probation and parole, parole violations, you name it.
- Mr Foster was arrested on October 16, 2006, for buying heroin. His trial on that offense was scheduled for January 13, 2009.
- In 2006, Mr Foster was arrested in Trenton, New Jersey. on charges of drug possession, resisting arrest, and trying to evade apprehension in a motor vehicle. He served about one year of a three-year sentence and was released on March 26, 2008.
- Mr Foster then failed to report to his probation officer, and New Jersey officials issued a warrant for his arrest in July.
- Mr Foster was arrested August 7 in New Britain Township, Pennsylvania, for stealing power tools from a vehicle. Bucks County prison officials were notified of the New Jersey warrant, but he was released on August 11, after posting 10 percent of $10,000 bail.
- Neal Buccino, a spokesman for the New Jersey State Parole Board, said that the Parole Board was not notified of the release of Mr. Foster, despite the New Jersey warrant.
There are other incidents listed in the Inquirer story.
Last time I looked at the calendar, this was 2008. There is no reason, no reason on God’s earth, that can excuse having law enforcement officials either being unaware of an arrestee’s record, nor that they would release someone for whom there was an outstanding warrant in another jurisdiction. But, once again, the inexcusable happened.
- John Lewis, who gunned down Officer Charles Cassidy on October 31, 2007, should have been under arrest for an armed robbery he was known, by name, to have committed an armed robbery at a Feltonville pizzaria. He was specifically identified, had a prior record (and should have had more, but the District Attorney dropped some charges against him), and was known to be living with his mother, a city corrections officer, but no warrant for his arrest was ever issued!²
- Daniel Giddings murdered Highway Patrol Officer Patrick McDonald less than two months ago. Mr Giddings had been given the legal minimum sentence by a soft-hearted and soft-headed Philadelphia Common Pleas judge by the name of Lynn B. Hamlin, despite a very lengthy and violent record, and despite the pleas of Assistant District Attorney Joseph Coolican, who said there was “absolutely no reason to believe” that it would ever be safe to release Mr Giddings. While in prison, Mr Giddings was constantly in trouble: he was charged 27 times with disciplinary problems in prison and spent 537 days in solitary confinement. Yet prison officials recommended him for parole.
Three police officers killed in the line of duty, by men who should never have been out on the streets, men who had been in custody, and therefore under the control of the corrections system, men for whom there was every justification in the world to keep behind bars and away from society, all out because somebody didn’t do his job, didn’t take his job seriously.
We have judges who didn’t take public safety seriously (though, fortunately, Judge Hamlin is safely retired and unable to further harm society), we have state prison and Parole Board authorities who recommend criminals with violent records while still in prison for early parole, we have county prison officials releasing criminals with outstanding warrants back onto the streets, and we have judges (noted in the original linked story) who whine that they didn’t have all the information at hand when they sentenced criminals to probation rather than prison.
Stories like these come to the public’s attention only when something really major happens, like the killing of a police officer. How many more Daniel Giddingses and John Lewises and William Fosters are out there, ticking time bombs who could and should have been kept in prison, out on the streets because too many people aren’t doing their jobs?
Mr Brown said that I am “near pathological in (my) desire to throw people in jail.” Well, maybe so. But is that worse than a criminal justice system that is near pathological in it’s desire to keep people out of jail?
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¹ – The Philadelphia Inquirer, Wednesday, 19 November 2008, p. A-1
² – The Philadelphia Inquirer, Thursday, 19 November 2007, page A-1. The internal linkl to the Inquirer story has lapsed.
No pathology is needed to close the loophole Foster slipped through. If another jail wanted him, he should have been transferred there with ease.
This is not a choice between extremes.
But that’s just it, Jeromy: either the criminal justice employees in Bucks County — a very well-to-do county, by the way — are totally inept, and didn’t listen to New Jersey’s request, or they simply didn’t care in their move-’em-through mentality.
The problem is that we do have a pathology here. When Governor Rendell suspended parole pending an investigation following the murder of Officer McDonald, we had prison people lamenting that the 1,100 releases per month that they needed to keep the system flushed out wouldn’t happen; no one seemed concerned with the notion of keeping the bad guys off the streets!
“…but he was released on August 11, after posting 10 percent of $10,000 bail.”
Arbitrary bail amount? 10K- *if* we can get it… but we’ll take less??
Shorter Dana Pico: Better that a hundred innocent people be jailed than one killer slip through the cracks. But don’t expect me to pay for their incarceration either.
I would welcome an investigation into why, rather than speculate. This is something almost anybody could agree with you about, Dana. The source of the problem should be identified and corrected.
I don’t know who “prison people” are, but people who actually run and staff prisons know how many prisoners they can hold at a time safely, and it has nothing to do with morality. Where morality enters is in choosing to lighten the sentences of non-violent offenders instead of violent ones, and building more prisons if you can’t hold the violent ones.
It is worthy to note here that many of Foster’s offenses spring from harshly punitive Drug War tactics that drive up risk, thus prices, thus profit, thus criminality. Prohibition creates crime.
I cannot see Dana advocating “Better that a hundred innocent people be jailed than one killer slip through the cracks.”
The real problem is with career thugs who know how to game the system and spend more time on the street than in prison. How many people with extensive rap sheets are innocent of all or even any of the charges against them?
The ‘War on Drugs’ has produced no light at the end of the tunnel. One problem is the making of ‘easy busts’ for simple possession rather than going after the big operators. Quite often news accounts will report a person being charged with ‘intent to distribute’ when caught with less than an ounce of pot.
I have spoken with some real narcotics officers who have never arrested a user. Even the street dealers who sell for support their habits are used as a lead to those up the chain of command. This is smart police work.
However, there are some cops who are merely interested in meeting an arrest quota and prosecutors who help them play this game.
The US as a country has one of the highest percentages of our population in prison, the biggest chunk of which is for drug crimes.
I don’t think this is a failure of our criminal justice system, our jails are full of people not deemed worthy to walk our streets. Its a failure of our society as a whole for neglecting people to the extent that their best option in life is to become criminals. Maybe if we had a fair education system, health care system, social support system Foster would have turned out alright and we wouldn’t need to throw him in jail. Maybe he wouldn’t have needed to steal, or wouldn’t have turned to drugs.
It’s unfortunate what happened, but it’s fairly obvious our jail-happy system isn’t fixing anything.
Oddly, the vast majority of people, even those in poverty, don’t become violent offenders or even drug users.
How many remember the name of Officer Danny Faulkner, another victim of a Philadelphia thug?
The thug is treated as a folk hero by many ‘progressives’ and has been lionized by many ‘Eurotwits’. The thug is best known by his ‘Afro-alias’ of ‘Mumia’.
What justice can be done for a Danny Faulkner in a city where drug dealers and pimps are role models for the youth and the primary commandment is ‘stop snitching’?
With Holder as AG and a Federal Judiciary about to be packed with ACLU types, the ‘Thugocrats’ will have their way.
At least the murderer of Officer Faulkner, Wesley Cook, was arrested, tried and convicted, and remains in prison, despite the idiots from places like Free Mumia, The problem I’m seeing is that too often the police or the district attorney’s office or corrections officials release thugs who should not be released.
David’s complaint might be relevant in a general sense, but in the case at hand, we are talking about a known bad guy, a genuine threat to society and someone who, despite numerous attempts, never attempted to obey the law. Why he was a criminal is beside the point: he is a criminal, who fled from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and should have been kept behind bars when we had the chance to keep him behind bars.
Our Phoenician friend’s complaint is silly: no one has said anything about incarcerating innocent people; the killers of the three Philadelphia police officers noted in the article were all convicted felons, who should have been in prison at the times they killed the officers.