“Progressive Paradise”

The city is operating an illegal drug-consumption site.

Locals sometimes call San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood “Hamsterdam.” The name comes from the third season of HBO’s The Wire, in which a Baltimore police commander unilaterally designates an area of his district where his officers would turn a blind eye to the selling and using of drugs. The fictional depiction of Hamsterdam is horrifying—“a village of pain,” one character calls it. For Tenderloin residents, that portrayal is a reality. And now it’s not just happening on the streets: San Francisco is operating a rogue and unlawful drug-consumption site. In January 2021, the Third Circuit ruled that such supervised consumption rooms are illegal under federal law, as per the Controlled Substances Act.

When an Indian news service mocks the West Coast, Messed Coast™️ for its Third-World conditions, it may be time for the governors of Oregon, Washington, and California to engage in a bit of self-reflection.

‘It looks like a Third World country! What the hell is going on?’ Shocked California Governor Gavin Newsom promises a crackdown on cargo train thefts as he brings cleaning crew to package-strewn LA railroad tracks

Woke California Governor Gavin Newsom likened the site of LA freight train package thefts to a shanty town during a photo-op Thursday.

Attending a clean-up at the ravaged rail depot, the Democrat lawmaker exclaimed: ‘It looked like a third world country, these images, the drone images that were on the nightly news.

‘I took off the suit and tie and said I’m coming because I couldn’t take it,’ he added. ‘I can’t turn on the news anymore. What the hell is going on?’

One of the most puzzling conundrums about “progressive” prosecutors — who favor de-prosecution and de-carceration — is to ascertain their motivations.

What are these elected chief prosecutors thinking when they unilaterally decide not to enforce the law? And why, even as murders increase in the big cities they police, do they continue to support these policies without shame?

Let’s consider the options…

Joe Perillo’s business was targeted by smash-and-grab perpetrators, who stole millions of dollars worth of merchandise from his Gold Coast Exotic Motor Cars store. During a meeting with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the mayor reportedly called Perillo an “idiot,” though he didn’t hear the insult.

Photos and videos showing piles of empty boxes littered alongside rail tracks in Los Angeles County, California have gone viral as shipping companies say they’ve seen a dramatic spike in railroad theft. Some of the boxes are packages from companies like UPS, Amazon and FedEx.

Union Pacific, one of the country’s largest railroad companies, says it may avoid operating in Los Angeles County following the spike in thefts, which it blames on lax prosecution of crimes. The containers and trains are locked, but can be broken into.

Union Pacific said last month in a letter to the Los Angeles District Attorney that it saw a 160% year-over-year increase in theft in LA county. The company claims that a December 2020 special directive issued by District Attorney George Gascón that changed how low-level offenses are prosecuted has contributed to the uptick.

Keep hearing of train burglaries in LA on the scanner so went to #LincolnHeights to see it all. And… there’s looted packages as far as the eye can see. Amazon packages, @UPS boxes, unused Covid tests, fishing lures, epi pens. Cargo containers left busted open on trains. @CBSLA pic.twitter.com/JvNF4UVy2K

— John Schreiber (@johnschreiber) January 13, 2022

U-Haul Literally Ran Out of Trucks Leaving California – and unfortunately they bring their politics with them.

CHICAGO (AP) — The year of 2021 ended as one of the most violent on record in Chicago, as a rise in the number of shootings left more people dead than in any single year in a quarter century, according to statistics released by the police department on Saturday.

According to the department, 2021 ended with 797 homicides. That is 25 more than were recorded 2020, 299 more than in 2019 and the most since 1996. And there were 3,561 shooting incidents in 2021, which is just over 300 more than were recorded in 2020 and a staggering 1,415 more shooting incidents than were recorded in the city in 2019.

He’s no longer in an Empire State of mind.

NYC native Dimitri Voutsinas left the Big Apple for Austin, Texas, in June 2021 — and has no regrets.

“I don’t miss it at all … it felt empty and just a shell of what it was,” said Voutsinas, 37, a chef who had to close his restaurant, Otaku Katsu on the Lower East Side, in October 2020. “Nobody was coming out. Nobody was ordering anymore. It was a disaster.”

As looting continues and lockdowns return, many retail companies have announced recently that they are shuttering some locations that have become simply too expensive to maintain.

Major cities have been hit by a wave of “smash-and-grab” robberies, where organized groups of looters attack store employees and escape with thousands of dollars in merchandise. Organized retail theft now costs retailers across the country a grand total of about $65 billion per year.

Woke San Francisco leaders have hit out at Mayor London Breed’s planned crackdown on the city’s crime-ridden Tenderloin neighborhood because her idea will flood the area with cops.

San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen and the city’s infamous woke DA Chesa Boudin were among those moaning about Breed’s new plan, which will see people caught abusing drugs on the streets incarcerated if they refuse treatment for their addictions.

‘I believe that we should all be marshaling every resource we have in this city to address that crisis,’ said Supervisor Hillary Ronen.

A crime wave haunts blue-state America, and nowhere more so than in super-blue California. Los Angeles police chief Michel Moore is trying to assure residents and tourists that violent crime is not out of control, which is not at all reassuring. Police departments statewide are stressed, and finding able recruits is a struggle. Faced with surging gun violence and a dwindling number of police officers, Oakland has proposed $50,000 signing bonuses to veteran cops.

Embattled Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon blamed a bid to recall him on Trump supporters and Fox News in a three-paragraph rebuttal statement filed with the Los Angeles County Clerk’s Office.

“California DOES NOT NEED another political recall attempt sponsored by Donald Trump backers and frequent Fox News guests,” Gascon wrote. “This is not about keeping Angelenos safe, it’s about a political power grab by well-funded political operatives who have fought reforms — on juvenile detention, mental health treatment, police accountability in fatal police shootings, and the death penalty — for decades.”