In DA George Gascón’s L.A., “Smash and Grab” Morphs Into “Slash and Dash”
UCLA graduate student fatally stabbed by homeless man while working at high-end LA furniture store.
Legal Insurrection readers will recall that California was rocked by a series of “smash and grab,” organized robberies caught on dramatic video footage during the Christmas season.
The flash mob robberies continue, especially in Los Angeles County, where District Attorney George Gascón’s “criminal justice policies” are a crime against justice.
For example, there was an incident at an LA area mall Friday night.
The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating what is believed to be a smash-and-grab robbery attempt at the Westfield Topanga & The Village shopping mall in Canoga Park Friday night.
The incident, which occurred at about 5:35 p.m. in the 6600 block of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, was first reported as an assault with a deadly weapon, said Officer Madison of the LAPD.
However, it was five masked suspects who emerged from a gray car and made their way to the Ice Brothers custom jewelry store, where they deployed a spray — possibly bear or pepper spray — on the store’s employees, police said.
As a would-be robber prepared to use a baseball bat to smash a display case, one of the store’s owners pulled out a gun, police added.
But even more disturbing is the fact “smash and grab” is morphing into “slash and dash,” as an unknown assailant fatally stabbed a University of California (UCLA) grad student while she was working as a consultant at a high-end furniture store in Los Angeles.
Brianna Kupfer, 24, was alone and working at Croft House on North La Brea Avenue at around 1:50 p.m. on Jan. 13 when a stranger walked in and knifed her to death, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The unknown male suspect, who is believed to be homeless, then fled through the back door and walked calmly down an alley, cops said.
Kupfer, of Pacific Palisades, was discovered dead on the floor by a customer about 20 minutes later.
The victim was studying architectural design and worked at the furniture store as a design consultant.
This story is personal to me in many ways. I have walked around that area. My step-daughter went to UCLA. I have friends who live just down the street.
The decay in public safety is palpable. And it is disgusting.
My colleague Mike LaChance noted that the area’s railroads are now trying to deal with organized theft on a truly astonishing scale. Union Pacific is placing the blame on Gascón’s policies.
A major rail carrier being regularly pillaged by looters in the Los Angeles area has lashed out against District Attorney George Gascon, saying his soft-on-crime policies are doing nothing to stop thieves.
Union Pacific (UP) says thefts from its cargo trains parked in Los Angeles County increased 160 percent during the past year – and spiked 356 percent last October compared to the same month in 2020.
The Nebraska-based rail carrier said its agents have made hundreds of arrests, but said less than half are booked are even booked – and some are released in less than 24 hours.
It’s now calling on Gascon – who has been heavily criticized for his reformative approach to punishment – to do something to help fend off thieves stealing millions of dollars worth of Amazon and UPS packages.
Last month, Union Pacific sent L.A. D.A. George Gascon a letter about the mass looting of their trains & expressed frustration with Gascon’s soft on crime policies. 100+ arrests, most suspects released within 24 hours on zero bail. UP now considering avoiding LA County. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/9UDRuHLvtd
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) January 15, 2022
Unfortunately for Union Pacific, the residents of Los Angeles, and the rest of the nation that values justice, the first recall effort for Gascón Failed.
There is now a second effort, and The Beverly Hills City Council voted unanimously to join the effort.
The Beverly Hills council cites an increase in widespread crime, including follow-home robberies and smash and grab robberies as s reason for wanting to recall Mr. Gascón.
Los Angeles County Sherriff Alex Villanueva supported the first recall effort of Mr. Gascón.
Some families of victims and victims’ advocates have criticized Gascón, a former police chief, for being too soft on crime following his elimination of criminal enhancement provisions.
Perhaps Union Pacific could help support those efforts. Lives literally depend on the success the second time around.
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Comments
Welcome to Hell-A.
Gascon is new to the murder party. The state of Los Angeles – and the guilt for the squalor hellhole the city has become – rests squarely in the lap of LA mayor Eric Garcetti.
Garcetti’s been mayor of the city since 2013, and has personally overseen it’s demise no less than that other two malignant super-clowns Bill Di Blasio and Barack Obama.
Pennsylvania Senate Pro Tempore Jake Corman Calls on Leaders of Pennsylvania House to Impeach Radical Philly DA Larry Krasner.
Criminals are a large part of the Democrat party constituency. They don’t even try to hide it. Expect soft on crime to show up as a major plank in the Democrat Party platform.
Criminals serve the democrat party in two ways: first, to act as enforcers against honest citizens; second as makers of chaos, from which the democrats will try and come riding in on white horses to ‘save’ us by completly destroying our freedom.
The only problem I see with this is the lack of carjackings and home invasions in Beverly Hills and surrounding upscale communities.
It’s long past time for the people who overwhelmingly support these policies to pay in blood. Lots and lots of it.
“smash and grab” morphed into “slash and dash”
When a certain group of people can claim that only their lives matter, and no one dares to oppose it, what do you think will happen?
I don’t think anyone should be working alone in a retail establishment these days. This is so tragic. That poor woman and her family.
I’m afraid it has come to that.
And looking back, in a few years from now, people will be talking about how safe it used to be back in 2022.
To be honest if the two or more people were unarmed, it would just mean more victims, If they were armed and defended themselves, it means that they would be prosecuted. The only way to protect store staff [and incidentally the store’s financial viability] is to move out of California.
Subotai Bahadur
It turns out that this victim texted a friend about having a bad feeling about the murderer while he came into the store.
Notice how the murderer calmly walked away from the site of the murder, as if all his adreleline was gone or never released. God – and the LAPD and the LA county coroner – knows what the murdered did to this poor woman before he murdered her.
The blood of this woman is dripping off the hands LA Mayor Eric Garcetti.
This DA sure does love him some crime. Maybe some will find him.
In the presser, the police said they believe the killer is ‘homeless.’ Maybe things are just different out in LA, but that’s the smartest dressed homeless person I’ve ever seen including the white toed kicks he’s sporting…which seem pretty white for a homeless guy.
Calling the perp ‘homeless’ shuts down public conversation. Everyone knows that the homeless can’t be identified. And ordinary people don’t want to be known as some kind of homeless hater.
Plus it implicates possible mental issues, making the perp a victim too.
The opposite of Hillary Clinton, who looks like a bag lady, but lives in a giant home you and I pay for.
“Unfortunately for Union Pacific, the residents of Los Angeles, and the rest of the nation that values justice, the first recall effort for Gascón Failed.”
People this stupid deserve all of this. “Democracy” in action.
He has the support of BLM and Soros. BLM is pro-crime…gee… how did i figure that one out?
Yes, Texas is safe. All of your cities are sanctuary cities. Austin is worse today than San Francisco was 10 years ago. Your border continues to be the top entryway for illegals.
Wake up. This is happening everywhere and for the same reasons. People are NOT voting for this. As the Uniparty seizes control of everything, including voting integrity, this will happen everywhere. And blindly voting Republican is not going to save us.
So instead of falling back on that smug, condescending all-purpose excuse “you get what you vote for…”, how about paying attention to what is happening everywhere, even “red state” Texas? Why do you Texans keep voting for open borders, sanctuary cities, green energy, and the rest? Sounds just like CA to me. And the results will be the same. But it won’t be your fault right?
You know you could abandon lost cause CA and join the fight in Texas instead of starting shit at each other’s throats like you tend to do when someone bashes CA (and rightly so, at least when directed at “leadership”)
Another innocent soul for Soros to account for when he meets his maker.
God bless her grieving family.
The horror for the family will get worse when the details are widely know of exactly how she suffered before she died.
Remember, one of the veternan LAPD homicide etectives on the scene said it was the most disturbing crime scene of his career.
As for LA mayor Eric Garcetti, Soros DA Gascon, and the liberal clowns on the LA city council, it’s just another day at the office.
They’re only getting what they voted for
But, please, please keep them there
Don’t let them leave and screw up the red states
People wonder if California will ever change. Name a leftist hellhole in America that reversed course, attaining safety and prosperity?
Boston is probably closest. Using murders as a proxy, we were down to 40 in 2021 from 56 in 2020 and over 150 back in the worst days of the crack epidemic in the 90s.
Relative to NY, SF, LA, Chicago, etc. Boston remains relatively safe. This may be attributable to a few factors… massive gentrification in almost every neighborhood in the city and at least some measure of sanity in the Mayor’s office and the Governor’s office. Of course, the political landscape is rapidly changing. Marty Walsh, though a Dem, was relatively sane compared to DiBlasio, et al but Marty is gone now replace by the uber woke Michelle Wu. At the state level, Charlie Baker, though a RINO, has also served as somewhat of a check in the state. He is not running for re-election so MA will rapidly descend into madness like NY, IL, CA within a couple of years as the extreme left wing of the D party takes hold all over the state.
NYC completely changed after Rudy Guliani came into office as mayor. COMPLETELY: it went a the 70s hellhole to goddam Disneyland under Rudy. I saw it.
Rudy used methods that have outlawed… like actually arresting criminals and keeping them off the streets.
The funny thing about what he did was that he found that it was a very small number of shit birds who were causing 80% of the mayhem.
Once the worm turns, it’s easy pickings to get going in the right direction. The bigger obstacle is not even the criminals… it’s the entrenched politicians.
Decades ago we had a series of mental hospitals for these people. At some point our great leaders decided that these places could be shut down if we medicated these people and let them live among regular society. This leads to one sigbificant issue, what happens to these people who are off their meds or the meds to work to treat the issues they have.
Thousands if not millions ended up in the crimminal justice system, a system that doesn’t have the means or expertice to deal with this group,
Since we started to deinstitutionalize decades ago the addicted have grown dramatically as well. What we really need is a return to some of the institutions, they don’t need to be the size of a state prison but they need to be large enough to house a population with ability to teach these people some real life skills and address any underlying mental illness or drug addiction. This would make a big dent in the homeless population as well.
“our great leaders decided that these places could be shut down if we medicated these people and let them live among regular society.”
But of course there is no “we” medicating them. They are often legally-irresponsible people expected to medicate themselves responsibly, and if they experience biochemical or philosophical abreactions to the medication, they simply stop. And stopping the meds makes these people at least twice as prone to aberrant behavior than never having been on them. I’ve lost track of the number of spree shooters who “were on meds but had recently stopped taking them.”
assigning any level of responsibility to this group of people was doomed to fail from the start.. We didn’t want them in mental hospitals so they ended up in jail, then we didn’t want them in jail so we don’t arrest them and leave them on the street with no supervision.
We rarely hear about the crime within the homeless, mentally ill community, we only hear about it when it happens to someone outside the homeless community and effects “normal” citizens.
They find a comfort zone, where they have no responsibility to themselves or society, basically zombies. Fetting them out of that way of life and comfort zone takes time, effort and committment.
They have a named suspect, now they have to find they guy
https://www.foxnews.com/us/los-angeles-police-id-shawn-laval-smith-suspected-killer-brianna-kupfer
He has at least four different active warrants from three different states. That guy sure does travel the country well for being ‘homeless.’
Between this and the case where the quincetera girl was hit by a stray bullet – I’m noticing women in one of the most dangerous cities in the country are NOT carrying OC / pepper spray.
c’mon- a good OC spray (POM) is 12 bucks and just slightly bigger than a tube of chap stick. In both instances lives would have been saved by these bastards getting the hot sauce in in the face.
If you all are not already watching the ASP channel on youtube, I highly recommend it. They’ve got a daily breakdown of real life stuff – what went right and what went wrong. Wisest 5-7 minutes you’ll spend on youtube.
Pepper spray/gel should be standard equipment for citizens in any urban area, especially for people who don’t realistically have the option of carrying firearms for protection, due to onerous and expensive local firearms laws.
In Massachusetts, a citizen who wants to buy pepper spray must first obtain a “Firearms ID” from their local police department — yes, a license equivalent to that required for a firearms purchase, if you can believe it.
Washington, D.C. requires a similar protocol, in that citizens must “register” their pepper spray with the D.C. Police Department.
Can you believe this totalitarian lunacy imposed upon citizens who desire to buy pepper spray for their personal protection?
Wow.
This murder follows the murder of a woman in New York City, after being pushed onto subway tracks by a homeless man who was a frequent beneficiary of the vile Dhimmi-crats’ trademark “revolving door,” kid-gloves treatment of convicted criminals. The statistics and anecdotal evidence don’t lie — the increase in crime and criminal violence across the U.S. are the direct result of the Dhimmi-crats’ decades-long vilification of police officers and canonization of criminals as alleged “victims” who can’t be held responsible for their willfully-made choices to engage in criminality, and, who must be coddled and treated with utmost leniency by prosecutors and judges — a morally despicable ethos that was accelerated during the Obama years and that has now reached a crescendo, following the Dhimmi-crat insurrection/riots of year 2020.
Real tragedy for the left that they can’t blame this death on the 2nd amendment.