A prominent far-left “activist threatened to kill city council members at their own homes during a speech on April 10. Riddhi Patel is a prison abolitionist…and is involved in local black and brown ‘abolitionist’ groups, & advocates for Palestine. Patel was arrested on suspicion of threatening state officials and making terroristic threats. Her bail is set at $1 million,” notes journalist Andy Ngo.
Patel told the mayor and city council of Bakersfield, “We’ll murder you”, at a city council meeting. The Bakersfield Sun reports:
A Bakersfield woman who leads a top social justice activist group was arrested during Wednesday’s City Council meeting for threatening to murder council members after asking them to call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war…Riddhi Patel, 28, was one of a number of people who urged the council to support a cease-fire resolution…Patel is an economic development coordinator with the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment (CRPE)….During the general public comment section of Wednesday’s meeting, Patel urged the council to adopt a cease-fire resolution, but had little hopes that they would actually do so.
- “I don’t have faith that you’ll do this,” Patel said. “You guys are all horrible human beings, and Jesus probably would’ve killed you himself.”
- “I hope one day somebody brings the guillotine and kills all of you motherf___ers,” Patel said as she finished her comments.
- Despite the guillotine threat, the meeting continued uninterrupted and the police did not move to apprehend her at that time.
- Later, when discussing the new security policies, Patel spoke once again and complained about metal detectors and police presence at council meetings, saying the council is criminalizing people… “you guys want to criminalize us with metal detectors, we’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you.”
Patel rants about “mass incarceration,” which is a deceptive buzzword. 63% of state prison inmates in America are doing time for violent crimes, and the typical state prison inmate is a repeat offender with 5 convictions, not there due to indiscriminate “mass incarceration.” Only a tiny percentage of inmates in state prisons are there for drug possession.
Moreover, the U.S. does not have the world’s highest incarceration rate. The U.S. has a lower overall incarceration rate than countries like El Salvador and Turkmenistan. El Salvador has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, three times the U.S. rate.
When El Salvador increased its incarceration rate, its murder rate fell dramatically, and violence and crime fell enormously. Jailing more criminals saved thousands of lives in El Salvador.
Due to false rhetoric about “overincarceration” and “mass incarceration,” progressive prosecutors are bringing fewer and fewer prosecutions, and seeking shorter sentences for convicted criminals. Arrests are down 30% since 2019, notes The Dispatch. As a result, more and more dangerous people are being allowed to roam free. And progressive prosecutors are seeking shorter sentences, even though releasing inmates sooner means more crime. Even inmates who are no longer young tend to commit more crimes after being released. 81.9% of all state prisoners released in 2008 were subsequently arrested within a decade, including 74.5% of those 40 or older at the time of their release. (See Bureau of Justice Statistics, Recidivism of Prisoners in 24 States Released in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008-2018), pg. 4, Table 4).
A study found that letting criminals out early increases the crime rate, making longer prison sentences a good investment. (See Barbarino & Mastrobuoni, The Incapacitation Effect of Incarceration: Evidence from Several Italian Collective Pardons, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 6(1): 1-37 (2014)).
