When you lock up violent criminals, you prevent them from victimizing other innocents. Crime in America dipped almost 50% after America abandoned “soft on crime” attitudes of the 1970s. Of course, many soft-on-crime politicians like Reitz have once more taken a love to “diversion” programs. And that’s how we get Robbie Patton (above), a local crime celebrity of sorts.
In 2015, he had an altercation at a Champaign Steak ‘n Shake restaurant commonly frequented by my friends and me. While none of us were enjoying a milkshake or steakburger at 5:30pm, Robbie was.
Robbie found himself in an altercation inside the restaurant. He felt one of his friends had been “disrespected”, so little Robbie went outside. He waited for the other group to emerge, pulled out of gun and tried to kill those other people.
He missed, and fled the scene with an Illinois State Trooper in hot pursuit. After a short, high-speed chase in a stolen car, Robbie crashed and escaped on foot.
Cops caught up with him. Local prosecutor Julia Reitz then went soft on little Robbie. She let him go to “boot camp”, even though that sentencing option is not supposed to be available for violent offenders. And squeezing off a bunch of shots at other people, trying to kill them, pretty much fits the bill as a violent crime.
After serving eight months on an eight-year sentence, Robbie returned to the streets of Champaign-Urbana. In less than two days, cops arrested him again for drugs and who knows what else. Not even three weeks after that, he’s illegally got a gun. When someone “disrespects” another one of Robbie’s friends, guess what he does? He pulls out the gun and fires shots at those he believes responsible.
He misses his intended targets, but in the busy University of Illinois campustown district, his errant, not-so-late-night rounds found four innocent people within a block or two. George Korchev, the recent nursing school graduate due to start his career as a registered nurse at a hospital in Libertyville, IL, the following Monday morning, was struck and killed a block away from one of Robbie’s bullets.
Julia Reitz, pictured above, didn’t throw the book at a young punk who tried to commit murder. She instead “celebrated” with a diversion sentence and because of it, George Korchev died.
George Korchev was set to start a life as a productive citizen, helping to save lives. He would have gotten married, had kids and raised a productive family. George would have given his parents grandchildren. He would have lived probably sixty more years, contributing positive energy to making our world a better place.
But Democrat State’s Attorney Julia Reitz cut a deal to let Robbie Patton, a sociopathic predator who will never contribute anything but sewage and sadness to our society, avoid serving hard time for attempted murder.
It’s true. Bad guys in prison don’t victimize the innocent. Florida had proven success with 10-20-Life sentencing enhancements for the use of a firearm while committing a violent crime. A court struck down the law in 2016. Under the law, Florida’s firearm violent crime rate plummeted to the lowest levels in the Sunshine State’s recorded history.
Nibbling around the edges won’t bring crime down. Dangling gun control out to people who don’t know better will not solve violent crime, either. And not only will gun control not solve the gang violence problem, but it will make more innocent victims as criminals don’t fear unarmed victims.