This is the first of what will be a series of articles examining the consequences of “progressive prosecution” that is being fueled by billionaire political activist George Soros. Since 2015, Soros has been using PACs to fund campaigns for candidates to be chief prosecutors of various localities of the USA. These are candidates who advocate “progressive prosecution,” a radical ideology rooted in Marxist and Intersectionality theories.
Progressive prosecution means that the prosecutor should take an active role in reducing the number of incarcerated people. This reduction is generally focused on specific categories of individuals based on Intersectionality theory. So instead of saying “I will be a fair and just prosecutor by treating everyone the same,” they flip this on its head by saying “I will be a fair and just prosecutor by treating people differently based on things like race, gender, class, religion, and other factors.”
George Soros funds the political campaigns of prosecutors through multiple political action committees [PAC]. There is the national Justice and Public Safety PAC, along with a multitude of state-registered PACs with slightly different names. Here at National Conservative, we believe that “progressive prosecution” is a dangerous ideology, with severe consequences.
James E. Stewart, won the race for Caddo Parish, Louisiana District Attorney on November 21, 2015. The former DA, Charles Rex Scott, died of a heart attack earlier that year. George Soros gave $930k to the Louisiana Safety & Justice PAC, of which, about $406k was used the money to campaign for Stewart. Most of this was used to flood local television with very generic feel-good campaign commercials.
Caddo Parish has an estimated population of 240,204, of which 187,112 live in the city of Shreveport. The city’s homicide rate peaked in 1993 when 86 people were victims. However, starting with 2001, and continuing through 2015, homicides went way down. During this decline, the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s office gained a reputation for seeking the harshest penalties for violent offenders. They had a lot of hardline assistant district attornies [ADA]. One was Hugo Holland, who is practically a celebrity prosecutor in Louisiana. Holland was known for his relentless pursuit to keep dangerous criminals behind bars.
Their reputation for being tough made the Caddo Parish DA’s office a target of the left-wing activists and media and drew the attention of George Soros.
In 2012, ADAs Hugo Holland, Lea Hall, and Don Ashley were fired by Caddo Parish DA Charles Rex Scott. Halls and Holland had requested permission from the Federal government to legally purchase fully automatic M-16s on the grounds that they often accompanied local police on dangerous calls. This was declared to be a “scandal” by the media and Charles Scott fired them. Today, Holland and Hall are circuit prosecutors for seven different Lousisianna Parishes. They are called upon by other DAs when they want to ensure that particularly malicious criminals get the harshest sentences possible. Holland was recently described as “Louisiana’s circuit-riding, freelance harbinger of death” by the New Orleans Advocate. Don Ashley filed a wrongful termination lawsuit and won a large judgment in 2014.
The Shreveport homicide rates of 2011 and 2012 were the lowest in decades. After Holland and other hardliners were fired, there was a small uptick in 2013, 2014, and 2015, though only very minor.
Shreveport did not see a major increase in homicides until the election of Stewart. The 2016 homicide rate was a 92% increase over 2015 and the highest homicide rate since 2000. Also, the population of Shreveport had been declining each year since 2006, but 2016 saw a dramatic acceleration of this population decline.
In 2017 and 2018, Shreveport had homicide rates even much higher than in 2016, and only slightly lower than the year 2000.
In 2019, some city officials and local media outlets were alleging that Shreveport had experienced a “record low” in crime. It was alleged that the city was the safest it had ever been since the 1970s or 1980s. However, this was based solely on reported lower-level crimes. Often as homicides increase, police are diverted away from investigating lesser crimes and people stop even bothering to report them. Then city officials will disingenuously pretend that fewer crimes reported means fewer crimes took place.
Shreveport did see a dip in homicides in 2019. They had 42 that year, a 29% drop over the 59 that occurred in 2018. Yet, the 2019 homicide rate was still higher than any year between 2001 and 2015.
In 2020, however, homicides again surged dramatically. In the first eight months of 2020, the city had more homicides than the entire year of 2019. There were 73 homicides total in Shreveport for 2020. A 74% increase over 2019 and a 24% increase over 2018.
2020 saw the highest homicide rate for Shreveport since at least the late 90s and possibly since the all-time record set in 1993. I can’t find data for all years in the 90s.
Since the election of James E. Stewart, Shreveport has gone from the 120th largest city in America to the 135th as the city has experienced significant net losses each year since 2016. These are the biggest population losses in the history of the city Even with a dip in homicides in 2019, 2016 to 2020 was consistently far higher than the time period between 2001 and 2015.
The year 2020 saw widespread increases in homicide rates all over America, however, Shreveport vastly outpaced the rest of the country as a whole. Under two previous administrations at the District Attorney’s office, who utilized hardline prosecutors like Holland and Hall, homicides plunged to record lows. Homicide rates immediately came roaring back under Stewart’s administration. Ironically, some on the far-left still consider Stewart too conservative and would like to see him replaced by someone even more radical.
James E Stewart was re-elected on November 3rd, 2020. George Soros does appear to have used any more to support his re-election. George Soros gave $220k to the Louisiana Justice and Public Safety PAC which was spent to support James Williams for Orleans Parish District Attorney. The $220k paid for commercials attacking the long-time incumbent Keva Landrum. Williams was elected the new DA of Orleans Parish. This Parish is home to the city of New Orleans which had one of the highest homicide rates in the country last year.
In the first four days of 2021, eleven people were shot in Shreveport, three of them fatally.
Soros may be the ultimate mastermind at decreasing the black population. Maybe we should just let him cook, as the kids say.