Stephen Elliott, Alonza Thomas, and other Liberals

Stephen Elliott penned a story today about Alonza Thomas, a hapless gang member who got tackled and arrested after sticking a loaded handgun in a clerk’s chest while demanding money. Essays like these litter the mainstream media where editors assume that Americans are too stupid to question.

I've quoted Mr. Elliot’s essay in black italics and my response in blue.

CB
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Mr. Elliott writes:

Welcome To The Gang Violence and Juvenile Crime Prevention Act

…a fifteen-year-old boy named Alonza Thomas walks into a convenience store wearing a bandana over his mouth and nose. He's carrying a gun. He places the gun against the clerk's chest and demands money. Another clerk tackles the boy and a struggle ensues in which the gun is fired leaving a tidy hole in the store rooftop. Plaster and dust sprinkles on the combatants while the boy is subdued.Here are the facts: It is the boy's first crime. His record is as clean as an upscale restaurant. He is alone. No one was hurt…

Lee Malvo had a clean record when he murdered his tenth victim. Mr. Elliott assumes that this is Alonza’s first criminal act. Let's consider that Alonza carried a concealed and loaded firearm to a convenience store. The gun wasn’t his and it’s doubtful that the owner gave him permission to use it. Alonza entered the convenience store with the intent to commit a theft or a felony, which is a burglary. Both of these crimes occurred before Alonza pushed the loaded handgun into the clerk’s chest demanding cash. Figuratively speaking, Alonza was a third-striker before his first arrest.

Alonza’s sophistication and sentence supports the likelihood of criminal affiliation or gang membership. Mr. Elliott confuses the absence of a recorded criminal record with what he assumes is a first-time criminal act. The last time I checked with the FBI, the typical street criminal like Alonza commits eighty (80) crimes between arrests. So if Alonza was only an average criminal, he likely committed dozens of crimes in the months leading up to this first arrest. The FBI statistics I cite are consistent with my twenty-year experience on the streets of LA. Children caught committing their first crimes don’t rob clerks with loaded handguns, but slowly work their way from petty theft, vandalism, and assault. I’m not a betting man, but I’d bet Mr. Elliott my professional licenses that this robbery wasn’t the first crime little Alonza committed.

Alonza pleads guilty to second degree robbery, admits to a personal firearm use violation, petitions for a remand to juvenile court. But there is a problem. The laws have been changed. March 2000 is an off-election. The voters of California have just passed the Gang Violence and Juvenile Crime Prevention Act of 1998, AKA - Proposition 21.

Mr. Elliott only alludes to Alonza’s gang membership. Most gangs require members to commit crimes as a condition of membership. Mara Salvatrucha (MS), for example, requires a verifiable murder to join. Elliott proceeds to educate his readers with facts (ala the LA Times, NY Times, and See-BS does):

Quick education. Proposition 21 has two primary extensions. The first takes crimes where the presumption was that a child would be tried as an adult and removes the discretion of the prosecutor and the court, mandating the youth enter into the adult correctional system. The second, and here is where Alonza Thomas comes in, takes crimes committed by juveniles where the child could be tried as an adult but the presumption is that they would be tried as children, because they are children, because as a society we know what a child is, we know the difference between a child and an adult and the potential of youth, it takes these cases and allows the prosecutor to file the case in adult court, if the prosecutor so desires. And this is what happens to Alonza Thomas.

While Elliott might know the legal and Leave it to Beaver definitions of what children are, he ignores why two-thirds of (liberal) Californians passed the act – that we’re tired of children like Alonza victimizing others. Until the act was passed, children like Alonza committed crimes because they gangs they worked for knew the courts were soft on juvenile offenders – which is precisely why voters removed discretion from lawyers and judges who are permitted to carry concealed guns and live in gated communities the way their minions wish they could.

Mr. Elliott has no concept of what children are. Children are what my children and friends were until they graduated high school. None of them toted guns or threatened shopkeepers with murder. The first American killed in Afghanistan was killed by a 14-year-old. Lee Malvo was 17 when he was arrested for killing ten people. Children account for 14% of all murder arrests, and 17% of all violent crime arrests. (OJJDP, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report). Elliott might have an easier time adopting one or two of these children than he has writing compelling arguments.

It's really not so complicated. A fifteen-year-old boy sets off to commit his first crime… He's a bumbling criminal… Where are his friends? There is evidence of psychological trauma, but isn't there always?

Elliott implies that because "psychological trauma" always exists, society cannot hold sociopaths responsible - making society's victims the real suspects and deserving of what they get.

Who is this young Jesse James and where did he get his gun? Who cares?

It's too bad Alonza refused to tell the officers who arrested him. Why would someone as innocent as Alonza refuse to cooperate with police? Oh yeah, I remember, we can't trust the police or voters, can we.

The boy is sentenced to thirteen years in adult prison.

Good – it saves us time and grief.

There will be no school, no rehabilitation.

Trade schools and educational programs are available to prisoners. He wouldn’t be the first college grad who earned his degree in prison either. It’s there for the taking.

The child is thrown into a warehouse, a crowded meat locker, separate from the adult population but without access to education, gang intervention, drug programs, etc.

Let's hope he doesn't like the environment and takes advantage of his opportunities.

Not even eligible for education courses offered to adults because the child populations has to be kept separate from the adult population until they turn eighteen, at which point they are mainlined into the system. There is no doubt Alonza will come out worse then he went in. His chances were always low; now there is no chance at all.

Check your math, Elliott. Since Alonza committed this armed robbery in 2000 when he was 15, he's probably twenty today.

Alonza Thomas will spend thirteen years in adult prison for a crime in which no one was hurt.
The typical time served for manslaughter is only 18 months. Had Alonza killed the clerk as an adult in 2000 and copped a plea in 2001, he’d be back on the streets by now. It’s about time that two-thirds of our population wised up and removed children like Alonza from the streets.

The measure in this case is purely punitive.

No Elliott, punitive is something akin to prisons I’ve visited in Central America, Asia, Africa, and the Far East where societies understand that there's no greater rehabilitative mechanism than punishment. In those countries, recidivism is a tiny fraction of what it is in the US.

Supporters of the proposition talk about "the will of the people" when questioned on the sanity of putting children like Alonza in adult prisons. "That's the law that was chosen," Deputy Attorney General Kathleen McKenna was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, as if that somehow absolved her of responsibility, as if there was no such thing as right or wrong.

Instead of blaming the DA for democratic decisions made by two-thirds of California’s population, I invite Elliott to adopt a child like Alonza this year. A nice, 15-year-old boy with gang ties, guns, and a willingness to assault others would help Elliott figure out where his essay went wrong.

But did the people really understand the cost?

What price would Elliott have placed on the clerk had he been killed? Unless Elliott values Alonza’s freedom more than the clerk’s life, the costs are negligible.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor deranged with power…

Here we go - blame the prosecutor.

This year in April the proposition withstood its most recent challenge with a ruling by the California Supreme Court that juveniles tried as adults must be sentenced to the adult system rather than the California Youth Authority. And still we sleep at night.

Thank you, Elliott. I sleep very well.


Clark Baker
http://exlibhollywood.blogspot.com/

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Stephen Elliott’s essay can be found here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/stephen-elliott/welcome-to-the-gang-viole_1360.html

His web page is here:

http://www.stephenelliott.com/