Two ‘Defund The Police’ Democrat Lawmakers Carjacked In Less Than 24 Hours
“The legislation, sponsored by 125 Democrats, is supposed to make it easier for state and local governments to defund the police by instead funding mental health services to respond to emergency calls instead of armed officers”
I’m sure these lawmakers—one from Pennsylvania, the other from Illinois—were terrified at the time of the crimes, but apparently, at least one of them is still pitching the defund the police narrative and “decarceration” policies that embolden criminals.
Five people were arrested in Delaware on Wednesday night after U.S. Representative Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pennsylvania) was carjacked in broad daylight at a city park in Philadelphia, just one day after an Illinois lawmaker was carjacked in suburban Chicago.
The carjacking occurred at about 2:45 p.m. on Dec. 22 in the parking lot of Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park in the 1900-block of Pattison Avenue after Scanlon and some other members of Congress toured the historic facility, WPVI reported.
. . . . Scanlon represents Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District which includes part of South Philadelphia, NBC News reported.
Philadelphia, like so many other Democrat-run cities, has seen a surge in carjackings this year, in no small part due to lawmakers like Scanlon and her fellow carjack victim and defund the police Democrat state lawmaker Kimberley Lightford.
The Police Tribune continues:
Scanlon has not been a supporter of law enforcement in the past, FOX News reported.
She was one of the original co-sponsors of the Mental Health Justice Act that sought to replace law enforcement officers with mental health experts.
The legislation, sponsored by 125 Democrats, is supposed to make it easier for state and local governments to defund the police by instead funding mental health services to respond to emergency calls instead of armed officers, according to The Hill.
Another advocate of defunding the police – Illinois State Senator Kimberley Lightford – and her husband were carjacked at about 9:45 p.m. on Tuesday night in a suburb of Chicago, WLS reported.
Police said Lightford’s black Mercedes Benz SUV was taken at gunpoint on Dec. 21 as she was dropping her hairstylist off at her home.
“She came in the house and she was saying, ‘they’re hijacking the car, hijacking the car,’” witness Cynthia Boyd told WLS.
Three armed carjackers jumped out of a Dodge Durango and surrounded Lightford and her husband in their SUV, according to police.
“They had guns at her!” Boyd said “All three of them had a gun and was pointing guns at her and at her husband.”
. . . . “She was saying, ‘Don’t shoot my husband, please don’t shoot my husband. Take whatever you want,’” Boyd told WLS. “So they took her purse, and they took the car, and everything that was in the car, and they took off.”
. . . . Lightford is also a vocal advocate of defunding the police who proposed slashing the Chicago Police Department’s budget by $80 million last year.
What happens when you demonize and dehumanize police, when you purposefully ensure that they cannot carry out their duties with stand down orders and other tactics that make them unable to fulfill their duty to the public trust, when you let criminals know that they will not be held—much less prosecuted—on the off-chance they are arrested in the first place? Everyone knew the answer before this lunacy took root, but now, it’s undeniable.
When you reward criminal conduct by creating a pro-criminal atmosphere that shields and even makes easier their criminal conduct, you get more criminal conduct. Who knew?
Despite the clear evidence that her crackpot pro-criminal policies are emboldening criminals and increasing crime, carjacking victim Scanlon, who because of her privileged position among the political elite got her car back (you and I wouldn’t have), is apparently doubling-down on leftist pro-crime policies.
Paul Mirengoff over at (one of my daily must-reads) Power Line notes:
Rep. Scanlon spoke about her experience. I was struck by her claim that she will continue to push for policies and resources that will help reduce violence.
This is disingenuous. What Scanlon has pushed for is the diversion of resources from the police to mental health professionals. That, and changes in the law that will make it easier successfully to sue cops and hold them criminally liable.
But criminals don’t hijack cars, for example, because of poor mental health. They hijack cars because they’re bad people who think they can get away with it.
The response should be a beefed up police force that will reduce the likelihood of getting away with crimes and policies that will enable society to keep these kinds of people locked up once they commit them.
Diverting resources away from the police and making it easier to sue cops and hold them criminally liable will undercut the first solution. Scanlon apparently has no interest in the second.
She has been mugged by reality, yet remains clueless. Let’s hope a Red Wave sweeps her out of office next year.
Democrat anti-police, anti-law and order policies are fueling spikes in crimes ranging from group robberies of retailers to carjacking to murder. Their response, as seen with Scanlon, is unlikely to be a realization that their policies create a clear and present danger to law-abiding citizens; instead, I expect them to begin “under-reporting” such crimes.
We saw this in Germany and across Europe when “migrants” from the Middle East were (often gang-) raping women and children in vast numbers. In some cases, “officials” hid the data, in others, the media did the job, and in still others, the victims themselves didn’t report the rapes right away for fear of stoking Islamo/xenophobia.
I would not be in the least surprised if the Democrat “solution” to their crime wave is to deny it’s happening, fail to report such future crimes to police, and/or try to keep such crimes hidden by any means necessary.
Obfuscate, outright lie, and silence wrongthink/fact is the trifecta foundational principle of the Democrat playbook, after all, and we’ve seen it with the coronavirus pandemic, inflation, the burning, looting, and murder rampages in 2020, and the racist “antiracist” Critical Race training taking place in schools, government, and business.
Democrats really believe that if it’s not in the media or on social media, it didn’t happen. Americans won’t believe their lying eyes, they fantasize, if only radical leftist fanatics can just figure out how to control. the. narrative.
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Comments
Two defund police lawmakers carjacked? Well, they should take the money they saved by defunding police and hire a social worker to comfort them. If they saved enough they should buy a blankey.
There once was a saying that “crime doesn’t pay”. Today with the Democrat Party’s backwards policies, no bail, no jail, crime pays rather well.
Breakin’ windows in Orrgon
I fought the law and the DA
She told the law to let me win
I needed Nikes ’cause I had none
I fought the law and the DA
She told the law to let me win
Damn! Never saw that one coming.
Thought lawmakers were immune to the effects Of their decisions.
Guess not.
Santa brought me schadenfreude early this year!!
You and me, both.
You and me both.
Same for me.
Well, after looking up the big word, same for me.
Which on? Same, for, or me?
/ducking
The social workers didn’t fix the problem.
Social workers will come and offer comfort afterwards, tell you everything is okay. Don’t worry! Think positive.
Think positive … the Big, Bad insurance company will buy you a new car if you do not get it back.
This needs to happen a lot more to Democrats! Make them endure the insane policies they have enacted!
I hope all the thieves and thugs take note of who the soft, rich Democrat targets are, and keep visiting them early and often.
That’s a hope that will keep me going strong in the new year.
Apparently Josiah Brown, the hijacker of Scanloms car apologized.
After carjacking, “Scanlon said she hadn’t seen the letter (of apology), but added: “If this is the person who held me up yesterday, they did a very stupid thing, and if their letter of apology is genuine, then it sounds like they can learn from their mistakes.”
The perpetrator’s history of “sincerity:
“…Before Wednesday’s carjacking, Brown had been a suspect in several other incidents up and down the I-95 corridor in recent years, according to police and court records.
Authorities in Chester County issued an arrest warrant for Brown in March 2021 after his fingerprints matched those identified by police in a string of vehicle break-ins in Kennett Square in late 2020, police said.
Ten days after that warrant was issued, Brown was picked up by sheriffs deputies in Cecil County, Md., after they responded to reports of car thefts and gunshots. The officers later discovered Brown and six juveniles, at least two of whom were also from Wilmington, inside a vehicle that had been reported stolen in New Jersey.
Police said the vehicle appeared to have been recently struck by gunfire, and two teenage girls inside were suffering from gunshot wounds. They were both hospitalized.
Brown, meanwhile, was arrested on the outstanding warrant from Chester County. He was later released on bail and had been scheduled to stand trial earlier this month on charges including receiving stolen property and theft from a motor vehicle. But the case was delayed, according to court records, which did not provide a reason for the postponement. The case is still listed as active.”
The whole concept is a fraud. In most municipal departments the number of mental health events the police respond to are dwarfed by the number of actual crimes the respond to, or try to respond to. Add in traffic collisions and the disparity is greater. Having mental health professionals available to actually respond to MH crisis events in the field is a street cop’s dream. Police officers do not like those calls, as infrequent as they actually are, and would even prefer an active family disturbance call….
Taking multiple millions from already tight police budgets does nothing to resolve the MH issues and only reduces the police ability to deal with actual crime. Between those MH assignments the police officers handle things like burglary, auto theft, robbery, even murders.
The reality is that the MH professionals will not go near a real, field MH event. They want the police to respond to make sure it is safe first, much like the fire department does. The MH folk prefer that we respond and deliver the person in crisis to the MH treatment center.
BTW– consider also that car-jacking has become necessary because of the enhanced anti-theft devices now in most cars. They find it easier to wait until the owner shows up with keys than to try to take an unattended car. A “game changer”, if you will.
Always nice to read “good news” pieces.
This is masochistic behavior and denial of reality which unfortunately is liberal behavior today
It’s not ‘masochistic’ – it’s Bette Midler-think: that they’re above it all, and the suffering is for the rest of us, while they party and/or steal.
Cities fail to control crime, so people w/ money move out, w/o private wealth to tax cities go broke. All this has happened before.
And it will happen again.
Even financial and economic ruin doesn’t keep politicians and voters from continuing to make dumb and dangerous decisions (see: Detroit,Portland, the Peoples Democratic Republic of California, etc).
I know. And don’t think this doesn’t weigh on me as so many blue-staters are fleeing to Florida. I just know they will vote to destory our freedoms here as they did in the hellholes they created. (yeah, off topic, but it’s bugging me, heh)
Perhaps you could work with some Florida group on the “Welcome Wagon” idea that the Instapundit has proposed.
Just another manifestation of the Curley Effect.
Considering that they got exactly what they voted for, I’m not sure why they’re complaining.
Again, their thinking is “Bette Midler-think’: they’re supposed to be above it all, and the suffering is for the rest of us, while they party and/or steal.
Paul Mirengoff over at (one of my daily must-reads) Power Line notes…
Powerlineblog is a daily read for me, but for an entirely different reason. Like the rest of the writers there, Mirengoff is a virulent NeverTrumper who bought into every wacky conspiracy theory the Communists pedaled (when the conspiracy theories eventually collapse they sort of back off). It is amusing to watch the Powerlineblog writers twist themselves into some amazing positions in an attempt to distance themselves from their ruinous choices. They are prefect representatives of the Faustian bargain the Franz von Papen Republicans struck with the Communists: they made a deal with the devil and are upset that they are now the junior partners stuck with the bill. Not one of them has had the guts to plainly say, “I was wrong” about this or that wackadoodle charges the Communists made about Trump and that they believed.
It’s like Powerlineblog is trying to put the Babylon Bee out of business with the constant self-owns by its writers.
Heh, not everyone at PL was a NeverTrumper. I admit that I did shed a lot sites from my daily read due to advanced TDS, but I never considered doing so with PL. They have a great range of pieces, and it’s easy enough to not read the NeverTrump articles (though I did read many of them, truth be told. Found them unconvincing and whiny, like most NeverTrump stuff, actually, waaaah, he’s so mean! What a big meany pants! Blah.).
Anyway, I still love PL (just stopped reading their Trump coverage since it was so crazy). It’s worth noting, too, that they did speak positively about Trump’s many accomplishments and that they didn’t become commies (like so many die-hard NeverTrumpers did, supporting Biden and his socialist policies, destroying the Senate filibuster, supporting packing SCOTUS to protect abortion, federalizing elections, and etc.).
True. But they’re one article away from joining Bill Krystal and George Will in conservative pergatory.
GOOD. LET THEM REAP WHHAT THEY SOW
If only every radical progressive in the JACKASS PARTY could suffer the same fate – we might then have real “common sense criminal justice reform”.
Let them take a knee, beg… Karmic irony.
Wouldn’t surprise me if this was another Jussie hoax.
She (and her counterpart) now have a built-in retort to those that dissent against her law by pointing out the hypocrisy of protection for them but not us.
Two of them doing it while they are out of session and likely don’t have as much or any private security is very suspect. Criminals typically aren’t smart enough to recognize the timing for a high-ranking offical. On the other hand, congress critters know that private security would want to clear their liability and reputations if they were present.
Watch for them to either not file a police report to avoid Jussie charges or to push with their weight not to press charges if the perps are caught.
Not going to read this article. In 4 hours I am going to have dinner, not visit a Doctor.
Ummm, sounds more like a equitable redistribution of personal wealth and mobility.. 😆
If they catch them let them go and give them a reparations bonus of 5k cash money.
In the news reports, Ms. Lightford’s husband pulled a handgun and shot at the perps. He fired perhaps as many as 15 shots. My points —
— hubby needs more time at the range, as do most people who carry.
— if you’re going to shoot at a fleeing carjacker, shoot out the tires. It’s then much easier to apprehend the perp.
— Rep. Lightford wanted to defund the police, and yet called them about the carjack (good). Does she still want to defund the police?
— does Rep. Lightford have a solution for carjacking other than the usual stale socialist banter about diversity, equity, racism, and economic causes?
And more points —
— Had Mr. McKennie, Rep. Lightford’s husband, brought the career of one of the perps to an end by shooting at them as he did, would he be charged by the Cook County States Attorney, Kimm Foxx (a Soros DA)?
— Would he be found not guilty by a jury of his peers in Cook County and thus avoid going to prison?
— Would we have crowds outside the courtroom threatening riots if he were to be found not guilty?
— Would we have fawning coverage of the perps by the NYT and CNN?
To ask these questions is to answer them…
“He fired perhaps as many as 15 shots. …
” — if you’re going to shoot at a fleeing carjacker, shoot out the tires. It’s then much easier to apprehend the perp.”
If he’s the caliber (sic) of shooter that cooked off 15 shots and didn’t strike any targets, he ain’t got a prayer of landing lead in the tread. Knowwutimean?
He sounds as capable as the vast majority of ChiCongo gangbangers
Let loose a volley of gunshots and not hit anything except maybe a kid playing video games in his grandmas living room a block away
He’s damned lucky he *didn’t* kill any of the fleeing carjackers. Remember the four primary points of self-defense? While the carjackers are *fleeing* they are not imminent threats. The lawmaker’s husband is not a law enforcement officer and cannot use the Fleeing Felon Rule, so if he had been unlucky enough to send one of the perps to their makers while they were driving away, the prosecution would have legally and rightly sent him to prison for… Oh, wait. Dem lawmaker, not Republican. My bad. No prosecution. No public outcry. No prison time.
The left controls the narrative and the votes. The only way to bring back law and order is for the left to be more exposed to crime than they currently are. Maybe then they’ll decide maintaining law and order is in their own best self interest. Not holdin’ my breath though.
A heart-warming story for Christmas…