Why shouldn’t he have been out? Did he escape custody or something? Was he locked up and then processed out by mistakes?
Sounds like he pleaded guilty to his prior charges and was sentenced to a lengthy prison term which he served and was then released at the end. Nothing wrong with that.
If anything this is evidence that the way in which we are incarcerating is not working. We had this dude in custody for sounds like about seven years or something? What the fuck were they doing in that prison?
The full 30. This woman would still be alive if he’d been kept behind bars. How he worked it out to serve only 7 should be going into a lawsuit, which unfortunately won’t bring this woman back but might send a message to prosecutors and prevent future tragedies.
This woman, yes, but him serving another 23 years could have just been delaying it happening to another woman in 23 years' time.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but the key point here is that prisons should be about rehabilitating prisoners so that they're fit to return to society. Just locking someone away for 30 years and assuming they'll come out reformed is flawed thinking; the prison system needs to actively work towards making sure prisoners are safe to release into society and equipped to deal with society. And if one of those things isn't true, the prisoner should not be released.
In this instance, it's clear 7 years wasn't long enough either way. But I doubt 30 years would have been enough either with the current attitude of prisons being for punishment rather than rehabilitation.
What did the prosecutor do wrong? They proved that he was a violent criminal and a danger to society. The original sentencing would have him in jail until at least 2029 (if he did not fuck up, reoffend in prison, and serve the full 30) and put him on the sex offender registry (which worked as well as expected).
It was a judge that chose to suspend part of the original sentence. It was a prison system that failed to rehabilitate him. It was a parole board that decided that time served was long enough.
A lot of people (and a lot of systems) fucked up to let a violent individual roam the streets, but I feel like the prosecutor did their job to the best extent that could be expected.
No, but the American prison system just makes people more violent and insane. So, this person was only going to get worse. Instead of asking why that is our politicians just think we should leave people in prison forever. #Murica.
To be fair on 5, of course the most money a PAC gives is to the largest race at the highest level, and Kamala was on the ticket as well, and it was for defeating the guy who single handedly overturned Roe.
The entire point of the PAC is to donate to women who will fight for women to have access to abortion…
But their biggest recipient is a man…
Although he’s better than Sinema, who got most of her money from this PAC and then continues to threaten to fillibuster any codifying of abortion access.
The takeaway here is either the people running the PAC are terrible at their job, or not trying to do what they tell everyone they’re trying to do when asking for donations. And for some reason that qualifies their president for an “interm” Senate seat.
This is nothing but political back patting and payback for giving money to the party’s preferred candidate even tho it made zero logical sense.
Oh, and before you try to say that’s not opposing it:
“We believe the decision by Sen. Sinema is not only a blow to voting rights and our electoral system but also to the work of all the partners who supported her victory and her constituents who tried to communicate the importance of this bill,” said Emily’s List president Laphonza Butler.
So I was right and she didn’t vote against abortion. She’s in favor of the filibuster.
And, wait, okay, first you blame them for donating to Sinema, and now you praise Emily’s List for withdrawing support from her? Make up your fucking mind lmfao
That was in her run before she became the DINO queen. They’ve since pulled support because she sucks. Before she was elected she appeared to be ok. Not great, but not obviously shit.
Honestly if I look at his actions through the lens of what I remember it was like to be a 13 year old edge lord, it kind of makes sense. It fits so well.
There is something so weird about this. I don’t think these guys are trying to protect children, I think they are getting off on the roleplaying and using the ‘hunting predators’ thing as an excuse to justify it.
Nah, if you want to help people who are SA victims volunteer at an NGO or become a detective. People like this actively harm investigations and I get the impression that most are just clout chasers.
Would it not be the best case scenario to have the people who have an impulse to hunt people, be hunting people who are pedophiles?
The problem with supporting vigilantism is that vigilantes are wrong a lot and there is no recourse or protection against that.
Cops themselves acknowledge this
"His one-man crusade has led to the arrest and criminal charges being filed against several men,” it said. “He has also mistakenly identified someone as a sexual predator who was not.”
“It’s ok if it’s people I don’t like” is not the mindset of an emotionally mature human.
Yeah seriously, actual cops and detectives with actual training, as minimal as it is, get it wrong plenty, imagine how often some jagoff with no training is going to end up attacking an innocent?
I’m saying I suspect this is a pedophile going online to fantasize with others about children having sex with adults, who then protects himself afterwards by exposing the person he was talking to while portraying himself as a hero.
It’s like someone with a porn addiction publicly being anti-porn and supporting laws that ban porn as a way of coping.
I would honestly check this guys computers for CSAM.
It’s also important to remember that the majority of child sexual abuse happens between relatives or close family friends with access to children, not random people on the internet. The best way to catch pedophiles remains early grade sexual education in schools, not amateur vigilante undercover sting operation for twitch views.
No it would not be better. I want someone cool and unemotional dealing with high stake situations with complex legal systems. Without that you get into situations like exactly this describes.
“successfully caught” 132 predators…only 4 arrests. Even if every single one of those 132 people were actual pedophiles (I have my doubts), this is clearly a terribly ineffective path.
A lot of the “to catch a predator” guys got off specifically because of how the show handled their being caught. There’s a reason police investigators do things the way they do.
Your comment just made me think of something. Think of how ineffective our criminal justice system is. Got it? As bad as it is, it is still greatly exceeds this guy.
People like to accuse the cancellation of that show being because they accused a judge with influence, but IIRC it’s because someone who wasn’t actually a pedo ended up killing themself because of how destroyed their life was by the show.
I see your point, and agree with it. I’m sure a lot of it do it for the fame and it’s not really about protecting the kids to them.
But, even if they’re doing it for their own self-interest, they’re still doing a good thing. You don’t have to have good intentions to still promote positive change. I couldn’t care less for the guilty people they find, good riddance, they don’t belong in society.
That being said, if they falsely accuse people to try and keep growing their influence, then it becomes a problem
And teens he confronted killed him? He typically posed as a 15 year old girl to catch people it says. I guess these teens are in the wrong if they’re 18-19? Story just seems a little strange.
Confronting people by yourself is not something a level headed individual does. This guy was clearly getting off on some type of vigilante hero complex.
Low hanging fruit. There’s not that many actual pedophiles out there, and the ones that exist are usually pretty cautious (otherwise they’d have been caught already).
But technically an 18 year old wanting to have sex with a 16 year old…
I don’t know anything about this guy, but the fact that he was accusing teenagers of being pedophiles suggests he was just trying to get fame and attention by capitalizing on the current “pedophiles everywhere” moral panic.
But technically an 18 year old wanting to have sex with a 16 year old…
Is highly dependent on local laws. Some outlaw it, some are perfectly fine with it, and some fall into a gray area between. For instance, it may be a minor offense (no pun intended, I swear) instead of a major offense if there were a greater age gap. These are sometimes known as “Romeo and Juliet” laws
Romeo and Juliet laws are not a defense or protection from prosecution. They generally only apply after a conviction and generally they just prevent one person from being labeled as a sex offender if specific conditions are met. The application and conditions vary depending on location.
These kids weren’t wrong no matter what though. They were attracted to an adult man in women’s clothing. Unless he was somehow broadcasting the fake age, they weren’t attracted to a 15 year old girl. They were attracted to an adult man who thought he looked like a 15 year old girl.
I’m not familiar with this guy’s technique. How did he go about baiting potential targets?
The usual methods of the past used text and staged images, so the targets didn’t see the real person until a meetup. I’d suppose though that with the advancements in live video filters over the past several years there’s no reason this guy couldn’t just dress in drag and apply appropriate filters so he appears as required.
Yeah, I was thinking this was all in person, hence why he may accidentally end up targeting teenagers. It probably was online and they didn’t see the person until the meeting. This man has to be super dumb to go after other teenagers, let alone putting himself in this position without other support structures and things to protect him.
See also the ammosexuals who fantasize on the daily about the day they get to “defend themselves” against a “home intruder”
The hero complex is IMO just the masking of sociopathic violent fantasies in self righteousness. “No no no, I’m not obsessed with being able to kill justifiably, I just REALLY hate pedos!”
Between voice cloning, gpt-4, and social media, the technology exists TODAY for scammers to call you at 4am with the voice and intimate knowledge of a loved-one, and tell you that they need you to send them money for an emergency.
You thought old people were easy to scam before? We’re about to enter a golden age of manipulation.
My grandmother is a Greek immigrant and doesn’t speak English very well. Back in 2017 someone called her and told her myself and my mother were dead and she spent like 3 days freaking out and crying. I can only imagine what would happen if someone were to do that today while emulating a voice she knew…
Yes, the technology exists. No, it’s not a threat for your grandma. Scammers would first need need to know which phone number is your grandmas, them they need to find out the relatives of your grandma, obtain enough sample data from your voice and train an AI model for at least a few hours to imitate your voice. That’s not a realistic scenario to do for a slim chance of getting a few thousand bucks. This kind of social engineering attack is only viable for very rich persons and businesses.
I’m sorry, but your assessment of how difficult that would be is WAAAAAY off.
Scammers are already doing stuff like this en masse with highly customized email scams.
The way this scam would work is to start with YouTubers, where grabbing the voice data is easy. Then you find their Facebook profile… Very easy, since people use the same usernames, or they go out of their way to link their profiles.
It’s a pretty easy step to make friend requests with those people. And then a very easy leap to find their relatives real names and towns through their Facebook connections.
Now you take their connections and towns and do reverse phone number lookups.
ALL of this can be automated. Every step.
The voice cloning and gpt-powered phone calls can be automated now, too.
The only reason this isn’t happening at scale is that scammers haven’t had enough time to adapt yet.
I’d guess that most people with public social media accounts would be susceptible to something like this. As long as there are videos available with the person speaking, which are plentiful by way of instagram reels / tiktoks, the rest of what the commenter described above sounds totally feasible.
You don’t need another example if you understand how many people are covered in that category.
Do you have any idea how many people have at least 5 minutes of audio on YouTube? (That’s all you need for voice cloning), tens of millions? Hundreds of millions?.. And how many of them have a Facebook, insta, tic Tok, or Twitter account? Virtually all of them.
If you wrote a script to do what I outlined, it would run FOREVER, because he users would be signing up and making videos faster than this script could ever hope to keep up.
People are reaaally downvoting you, but how would someone call my G-Ma and imitate my voice using AI?! My voice isn’t on the internet. That’s an insane thing to fear for any regular person.
They would fail. I have many ways to corroborate and they know I don’t answer the phone and to call 911. Nobody is calling me in a emergency ever. I don’t drive, I don’t give money to anyone etc… People need to have the policy of if you can make a call and it’s an emergency then call 911. Also always have roadside assistance.
Didn’t this happen recently? I thought I saw an article about a guy in India who got an ai-faked video call from a friend who needed a quick money transfer to get out of a tough spot. He said it was sketchy but believable. It’s already here
He was supposed to be the one that got that SC pick thru, but I don’t remember seeing a single article or interview where he tried.
That 5 years later people forgot and started claiming Joe was “the Senate whisper” again was just fucking ridiculous. The only thing worse was when Biden implied once the Dems had a white man as president, suddenly Republicans would be super cool again.
With hindsight, given the dirty tricks the GOP played in order to secure Trump two Supreme Court appointments; the Dem’s should have just gone full radical and take the Senates refusal to put the nomination up for a vote as a tacit ‘approval’ (seeing as they didn’t technically vote him down), and sit Garland on the court.
It’s the political equivalent of not negotiating with Terrorists, akin to the Paradox of Tolerance.
They don’t give a fuck about the rules. Why should the Dems? They don’t want to play by the rules, then we shouldn’t hamstring ourselves with following the rules. If they want to knock over all the pieces and shit all over the board, that means we can do whatever we want, whenever we want because they threw the rule of law out the window, after wiping their ass with it.
In all fairness, saying “working with Republicans won’t work” isn’t specifying what the Dems could have done to have their nominee seated, which is what the commenter asked for.
Back when Obama was in office he should have said:
If republicans won’t hold a vote, I’ll appoint who I want
And then just fucking did it. Republicans don’t just do what they’re allowed, they do everything they can.
That’s why their winning. They don’t spend half a term discussing if they can do something, they do it and hope it sticks.
You can say that’s not how a government should work, and I’d agree. But when 2 people are playing a game without a ref, you better cheat just as hard or you’ll never win. Because regardless of if we always play explicitly by the rules or not, they’re gonna keep cheating.
We can piss and moan all day about how it shouldn’t be like this, but the reality is that it is like this.
We are. You asserted that as Obama’s VP “[Biden] was supposed to be the one that got that SC pick thru.” And you’ve been challenged to state how you think Biden could have done that.
Your suggestion what you think Obama should have done belies a misunderstanding of the process. Obama did appoint Merrick Garland. The Constitution says the appointee has to be confirmed by the Senate before they can be seated. The Court isn’t going to end-run around that and seat an unconfirmed judge.
The lesson to have learned is not to cheat harder than them, it’s that we need to update the rule book to prevent this type of obstruction in the future.
There actually is a loophole that allows for appointments without approval. If the senate is in recess the appointment just happens. The Obama administration tried and failed to argue several lower positions were recess appointments when there were pro forma sessions though. It’s really not possible that a justice was going to be seated without approval.
Actually during recesses Republicans would leave someone behind to keep the Senate in session. They’d open and then adjourn, essentially blocking recess appointments.
Are you just ignoring people when they try to explain that to you?
Well, you ignored the actual question. The question was what could Biden have done to get the Dem nomination to the Supreme Court through in the face of McConnell obstructing it.
Well, if he was there for his ability to negotiate with Republicans, he could have negotiated with Republicans…
If he was there to use his lifetime in the Senate to advise Obama, he could have explained that the Senate is just allowed to vote on SC picks. Not voting is a choice, so Obama should have called their bluff and appointed his pick.
Yes, I’m quite sure that Obama, the Constitutional scholar, wasn’t aware that a simple trick like saying ‘I’ll accept your silence as consent’ would actually work and get his SC pick through. I’m absolutely confident that whoever the hell you are is right and Obama, Biden, and their entire administration overlooked this one neat trick that republicans hate. Damn you’re smart.
A) republicans cheat within constitutional loopholes. what you bigger isn’t a loophole, it’s wholesale disregard for the constitution.
B) they’re bad so we should be bad too is a shit line of reasoning.
C) I’m not fine with the last 30 years of politics (if you think it’s only a decade that we’ve been seeing the rise of this breed of fascist right wing, you’re less informed than even I guessed from your previous comments), and the dems are doing a pretty poor job, particularly in regards to being aggressive with pushing their agenda through.
Excellent and substantive reply. You’ve won me over. Well, you would have if I were 14, but unfortunately I’m not and you’re just showing your hand to how unaware you are of the political landscape and how shallow your understanding of the constitution is. People like you voting scare me. Not as much as people like my mother, but you’re certainly on the list.
What is it with “moderates” getting offended when someone questions their political strategy and then just piling on personal insults while claiming to have the high road?
Who are these people, I don’t know any of them. You can’t negotiate with a person who’s acting in bad faith. They don’t care if the government functions, they don’t want it to anyway. But the option of throwing out the rule of law and doing whatever you want isn’t appealing either.
I recall an exchange, I think it was between Obama and some Republican senator, but for the life of me I haven’t been able to find it since I read it. It went something like “I’m not going to vote on this bill without something in exchange.” “Okay, I can make sure we get some funding for some project. So, this means I can count on your vote?” “Oh, no, I would never vote for that.”
There is no negotiating. You try to meet them half way, and they’ll take a step back. Every time.
I just realized I already replied to you multiple times… No matter what you just say “that’s not what I meant” and never clarify what you meant.
I think the reason “no one has explained it to you” is the same reason my dog doesn’t know anything about nuclear physics. The smartest experts in the world can spend his whole life explaining it.
But my dog is never going to get it. Thinking that means there’s no explanation for nuclear physics…
Obama could have easily used row v wade and plenty of others to go to the opposing senators constituencies and gotten their support to flip the senators votes. Even in red states a majority support abortion.
He could have rallied his movement that got him elected that he threw in the trash mere seconds after being elected. He could have told them to march to make this happen. He sat back and did nothing because he is rich and wanted the supreme court to defend his private property over everything else.
Dude. Your answers are like complaining about our lack of faster than light travel. It’s actually impossible and yelling about it not happening is not an actual solution.
Do you honestly think what you’re saying in this thread is intelligent? Admit you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about and log off for the day, bud.
Love your projection. Only the unintelligent would defend Obama after the drone campaigns in the middle east and affordable care act written by Newt Gingrich
I do understand simple politics unlike yourself. Obama made no effort to mobilize his massive base that got him elected to put pressure on those senators. It’s not your fault, you just are unaware of the power a president has. That’s okay. You’ve got a lot to learn. You won’t learn anything acting like a child on the internet though.
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