Yesterday evening, at a Memphis, Tennessee ‘block party’, two were killed and at least 14 injured in a shooting spree at what some are calling a ‘420 celebration’ involving weed.
More than 300 shots were fired, causing participants to flee.
JUST IN: Memphis police in Tennessee are responding to a mass shooting reported in Orange Mound at a “block party.”
According to the Memphis Police Department who spoke with ABC24, at least two people are dead and others were rushed to the hospital.
“Two people were pronounced… pic.twitter.com/wh6vw0jCsy
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 21, 2024
The shooting happened in Memphis at the corner of Carnes Avenue and Grand Street, which is right next to Orange Mound Park in central Memphis.
Some participants were reportedly openly carrying rifles and weapons.
Online, some have already claimed that the media will not report on this incident because many of the rally participants appear to be African Americans. The political left typically complains about the way language is used related to racial crime stories, and the political right sometimes complains about how the mainstream media suppresses the race of criminal defendants or in the presentation of crime statistics to hide the frequency of offenses by specific racial groups.
The motive of the shooters is not known at this time, and the Memphis Police report that they are still investigating the crimes involved.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young, who was elected in the past year, is faced with a city of 621,000 and one of the highest crime rates in the country.
The prior Mayor blamed the District Attorney and court system for its weak-on-crime policies, releasing violent criminals from prison, and low bond policies, as causing the rise in Memphis’ crime problems.
Then-Mayor Strickland said in 2023:
“…ask the District Attorney’s and the judges and the judicial commissioners and the people who run our state prisons. Why are they letting these people out so quickly? That’s the problem. You oughta talk to the court system, what are they doing about crime?” Strickland said. “I’ll tell you what they’re doing, they’re letting criminals out on the street violent criminals back out on the street, low bonds.”
Memphis had its highest crime rate in history in 2023. With 2022 data, Memphis had the highest violent crime rate in the country, which included 397 murders.
Memphis radically changed its bail system in August 2022. The changes included revising the way in which bail was set by a judge. Bail is the insurance provided by a defendant to show up for future court dates. Without a financial penalty, many choose to simply ignore court subpoenas. The normal ‘failure to appear’ rate for criminal defendants in normal courts is around three percent. In areas that have enacted left-wing bail reform, the ‘failure to appear’ usually hovers around 50 percent. The American Civil Liberties Union “ACLU”, which was originally founded to help Communists resist the World War 1 draft, praised the Memphis bail reform decision.
Many in New York State are convinced that left-wing ‘bail reform’ there caused violent crime to skyrocket throughout the state, especially in the major cities.
Crime has substantially increased throughout America since the disputed 2020 election. Conservatives typically blame “soft on crime” policies such as releasing violent criminals from prison, low/no bond arrangements where criminals aren’t motivated to even show up to court once released from jail, among other policies. Liberals have typically blamed poverty as the cause of crime, either because a defendant needs money or because they haven’t been able to get an education to become too educated to commit crime.
And of course the political left will also use word play and statistics abuse in order to gaslight America that violent crime is going down, such as when National Public Radio said as much earlier this year, “In cities big and small, from both coasts, violence has dropped.”
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