We give up: have at it, thugs
/Another 80 Pro-Palestinian Protesters Have the Charges Against Them Dropped
Rick Moran, PJ Media:
It appears that criminal trespassing in the United States has been taken off the books.
Ten days ago, a Manhattan prosecutor dismissed charges against 31 pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied Hamilton Hall on Columbia University's campus. Their lack of criminal history and the “extremely limited video and security footage” available to prosecutors resulted in the release of the protesters.
"All these matters are dismissed and sealed in the interest of justice," Judge Kevin McGrath announced in the courtroom.
Some justice.
On Wednesday, a prosecutor in Travis County, Texas, dismissed similar charges against 80 protesters. Delia Garza, a Democrat who is the elected attorney for Travis County, "determined it couldn’t meet the legal burden to prove the cases beyond a reasonable doubt," according to the Associated Press.
What's happening? The reason prosecutors are dropping the charges is that radical law firms would have represented the protesters, which would have made prosecuting the offenders a nightmare. They could have tied up the courts for weeks, even months, until the DA would have dropped the charges out of exasperation. [I’ll disagree here, partially — the prosecutors are on the side of the protestors, and wouldn’t pursue charges against them even if there were no defense lawyers threatening to clog the court dockets — FWIW]
Lawfare by any other name.
The UT protests were even more disruptive and violent than the demonstrations at Columbia.
On April 29 at UT, officers in riot gear encircled about 100 sitting protesters, dragging or carrying them out one by one amid screams. Another group of demonstrators trapped police and a van full of arrestees between buildings, creating a mass of bodies pushing and shoving. Officers used pepper spray and flash-bang devices to clear the crowd.
The university said in a statement at the time that many of the protesters weren’t affiliated with the school and that encampments were prohibited on the campus in the state capital. The school also alleged that some demonstrators were “physically and verbally combative” with university staff, prompting officials to call law enforcement. The Texas Department of Public Safety said arrests were made at the behest of the university and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
So: Arson, if done for the approved cause, is legal, as is shoplifting, even when conducted by flash mobs of dozens of thieves; beatings of bystanders is acceptable and won’t be prosecuted, so long as the beatings are administered by ANTIFA mobs; closing down interstate highways and bridges, if done for the “proper” cause — there are many of them; subway fare-beaters are ignored; open drug use and using public sidewalks as toilets is encouraged in the first casortland and Seattle. We can now add criminal trespass and vandalism to the exempted class.
Have I mentioned that we no longer deport illegal aliens, and in fact, pay to fly them in here?
None of this bodes well for the nation.