We love James Taranto. His Wall Street Journal Best of the Web Today blog is one of our favorites.
He pegged the real problem with Pima County Sheriff Dupnik’s on-going bombast – if you distract everyone by pointing fingers, maybe no one will notice that they should, perhaps, be pointed at you.
“I’d like to make one additional point on Sheriff Dupnik. I think we’re missing the point when we’re talking about his political agenda. This man and this suspect has had previous contact with the sheriff’s office. It looks to me, we don’t have many details on this, but it looks as though he slipped between the cracks. I think what we really need to look into is what happened when he had previous contact with the sheriff’s office with their negligence here. And, I think the sheriff is trying to distract from that question.”
No, James. It doesn’t just look like Loughner slipped through the cracks, he did slip through the cracks.
TheChollaJumps has the specifics of the slippage:
Jared Loughner has been making death threats by phone to many people in Pima County including staff of Pima Community College, radio personalities and local bloggers. When Pima County Sheriff’s Office was informed, his deputies assured the victims that he was being well managed by the mental health system. It was also suggested that further pressing of charges would be unnecessary and probably cause more problems than it solved as Jared Loughner has a family member that works for Pima County. Amy Loughner is a Natural Resource specialist for the Pima County Parks and Recreation. My sympathies and my heart goes out to her and the rest of Mr. Loughner’s family. This tragedy must be tearing them up inside wondering if they had done the right things in trying to manage Jared’s obvious mental instability.
Every victim of his threats previously must also be wondering if this tragedy could have been prevented if they had been more aggressive in pursuing charges against Mr. Loughner. Perhaps with a felony conviction he would never have been able to lawfully by the Glock 9mm Model 19 that he used to strike down the lives of six people and decimate 14 more.
Hmmmmm. Makes a little too much sense to be ignored, doesn’t it?
H/T: GatewayPundit
Source: The Cholla Jumps
This post was last modified on January 26, 2021
View Comments (34)
The is it legal ladies in O'Reilly said that what he said can be used in defense of that man. I tell you if they do and that influences the jury to give him less time than deserved or gets him off, this Sheriff is going to have serious problems. I wish he would recant but seeing thathe is such an a**hole. I doubt it.
Sheriff Dupnik needs to be fired, terminated, giving the ax, discharged, dropped, ejected, expelled, kicked out or sacked from his position. But, since these verbs and phrases would be misconstrued as Right Wing hate speech. I'll just say give him his pink slip...but that might be considered gay bashing.
The Sheriff ought to be charged with manslaughter by dereliction of duty.
Don't blame free speech. Blame Dupnik. If he'd done his job Gifford would still be doing hers.
It could very well be that because of her position with the county, she procured favors from the Sheriff in the dealings with her son. This may be the reason he is in full frontal assault mode, so the national media will make a frenzy out of this and create a smokescreen for him.
Brilliant strategy, but very very low in nature.
I think that this is turning into another Wellstone funeral for the donks. I'm not saying that with any kind of pleasure or satisfaction -- the very thought of what they are doing disgusts me.
It is appalling to exploit a funeral for political gain -- which caused them to lose big in the subsequent elections. However, to exploit a brutal mass-murder for political gain? Beyond horrible, and into outright ghoulishness in the purest sense of the word. What is wrong with these people? There's something truly sick going on here. Clearly, they've gone off the deep end.
When I first started hearing the details Sheriff Dupnik , for some reason it reminded me of Senator Scott Brown's opponent Martha Coakley . A child rapist Kevin Winfield , who's father was a Union Representative that had personal ties to Coakley office and was raising funds for her campaign , was allegedly being protected. Coakley let him go home for 2 years , with ZERO bail.I smell poo doo folks. I may be wrong , but with this monsters background , how in the hell did he able to buy the type of gun he bought ?
Misspelled a word or two, sorry.
Wondering... Here in NY (not the city!), you must get permission from the county Sheriff for final approval for carry permit. Did Roscoe P. Dupnik give this kid permission?
Wondering... How did this kid ever pass the FBI gun check?
Wondering... Since murdering scumbag liberal's mom works for the county board of supervisors, did said scumbag "get off" from a lot of charges that seemed they should have carried more penalty? A sheriff IS elected, and it seems this sheriff IS a political hack more than prof. law enforcement officer.
Wondering... In his first "speech", he said this kid had problems, with previous death threat. Mommy get the boy off because she and the sheriff are political buddies?
Wondering... if you grow up in a home of pro abort lefties (she works in county gov, and, you get that job a lot of times through politics, gotta be demo right?), isn't life MUCH less valuable to you?
Finally signed in. Been a lurker since early on at ihatethemedia.com. First post newbie... If I screwed it up, be gentle. I am contributing to a community that I have enjoyed for a long time. Right minded community!
good4ya. Same here in Minn. You must apply for and receive a permit to purchase a firearm. The permit is good for 12 months and you must re-apply. You are subjected to a background check that for sure checks for issues like death threats and felonies. This permit is issued by either the County Sheriff Dept or in the case of larger city's the police.
As you speculate, this may not be the case in AZ, but if so, me thinks someone really dropped the ball. Either way, old Roscoe P. has some questions to answer.
Maybe his mother is the one that does the background checks?
Same in Texas. There is a check done, but this kid had no criminal record, nor any record of mental health issues, so he passed the check. In Texas, for a concealed carry permit, you have to pass the background check and complete a course. Remember, he bought the gun months ago, so there was plenty of lag time for a waiting period if needed.
Arizona, like most western states, requires you to take a state approved firearms safety course to get a concealed carry permit. But in reality it is a waste of money. You can openly carry a weapon in Arizona, without any permits, as long as it is in plain sight. The only place guns are banned is in any place that serves alcohol and even then the law does not mean much.
Didn't AZ pass a law last year that makes it like Vermont and Alaska, where you don't need a state-issued license to carry openly or concealed?
Besides, it's not like a license requirement, or a background check or 20,000 laws prevented anything this past weekend.
Laws only work with the law-abiding.
It has never been againt the law to carry a firearm in Arizona, as long as the gun is in plain sight. The same is true in my home state, New Mexico, and I never go anywhere without my "protection". And I ain't talking about condoms either.
WHOA! Wait just one effin' minute!
Loughner was "well managed by the county mental health system"?????
How, pray tell, does a person who is being "managed by the county mental health system" go out and get cleared to buy a gun?
I would be interested to know how this conclusion was reached. There is no evdence that Loughner was ever seen through the mental health system, he was never evaluated, and never hospitalized or placed on meds or in therapy. He was able to purchase a gun because he had no record of mental health issues. Clearly, SOMEONE is lying through their teeth!
Either lying (which would include just making stuff up while shooting from the hip - a distinct possibility in the deputies' case - or covering up by hiding evidence/records of his "management" by the mental health system, now that the sh t hits the fan and the possibility of having your head on a pike increases), or just plain ignorant.
We re all going to be 'well managed' in the new age of Obama HellCare.
The future is glorious komrades!!
By well managed, we may well find that any record he would have had was expunged (look it up. My eighth graders know that word). With a clean record he would not be an excluded person. This is getting interesting.
I appreciate your concern about my understanding your post, but rest assured, I know what "expunged" means. That said, I should point out that this is a question of whether or not this person was "managed by the mental health system", and if so, how did he get ok'd to buy a gun. What records he may or may not have had is not really the issue, at least not from the infernece in the sheriff's statement. What I get from his words is that these threats were somewhat more recent, and this guy is what? 22? So that is several years after any records-expunging requirements would have expired.
The real questions are:
Was he in fact "managed by the mental health system"?
If so, did the "managers" know of him making death threats?
How did a firearms-purchase-related mental health check not discover this?
What we have here is incompetence at best (otherwise known as "business as usual" among gov't (non)-workers, or a cover-up of information, which cover-up may have played no small role in murders.
"Well managed" means that the bureaucrats in the Pima county mental health system followed their manuals to the letter, filled out the paperwork correctly and made doubly sure they couldn't be held responsible for or prevent any of Loughner's lethal actions. A good bureaucrat knows how to cover his ass, just like a good sheriff knows how to deflect blame.
tsk tsk, my bad. I should know better. In the gov't employee work manual, right after rule #1, avoid doing work whenever possible, is
rule 2 - If work is unavoidable,
2A. CYA, CYA, CYA
I Think Taranto is right; it appears that Sheriff Dupnik, a 75 year old political hack, may have bungled the pre-shooting investigations of Jared Loughner. What better way for the sheriff to cover his incompetent ass than by pointing his finger at Sarah Palin, talk radio or any other person who dares to criticize Democrats.
It's an workable strategy on the part of Dupnik, he knew that his McCarthyite smears would have the enthusiatic support of the Democrat Party and the media.
It's time for Dupnik to stop being a political partisan and start being a lawman. Sadly, don't think it's possible for him to do that. In fact, I think Dupnik is unconsiously building a defense strategy for Loughner.
Taranto states: "And, I think the sheriff is trying to distract from that question.”
A Marxist rule in Latin America goes like this: "When injuring another, scream loudly as if you are the one being injured and your victim will be arrested."
This liberal is running it perfectly, according the playbook.