By As is too often the case, the gunman who attacked Michigan State University, murdering three and wounding five others, would likely not have owned a gun had a hard-left prosecutor done her job.
The Detroit News reported, “State officials Tuesday identified 43-year-old Anthony McRae, who had a history of mental health issues and was charged with multiple gun-related crimes in 2019, as the believed gunman who killed three people and wounded five others at Michigan State University.
McRae, who was found off-campus after dying of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, was identified less than nine hours after police lifted a campus-wide shelter-in-place order following the mass shooting.
Anthony McRae was arrested in Lansing and charged in June 2019 with carrying a concealed pistol without a concealed carry permit, according to Ingham County court records obtained Tuesday by The News. The initial charge was a felony that carried a potential penalty of five years in prison, according to the records.
In October 2019, Ingham County prosecutors added a second charge against McRae: possession of a loaded firearm in a vehicle, a misdemeanor.”
Weeks later, progressive prosecutor, Carol Siemon, let McRae plead to a lesser misdemeanor charge and dismissed the felony charge. The prosecutor was heavily criticized by local leaders for not doing her job and instead putting “social justice” ahead of the law, explicitly ignoring laws that would have prevented the murderer from carrying out his attack on MSU’s campus.
“In 2021, Siemon released a policy that would no longer issue a 2-year felony firearm charge unless extreme circumstances are met in a case. Back then, Ingham County Sheriff Scott Wigglesworth called the policy ‘garbage,”‘ according to WLNS.
The Washington Free Beacon had more details about the progressive prosecutor. Siemon retired from the district attorney’s office at the start of this year after facing criticism from judges and law enforcement officials for her soft-on-crime policies. The same year that McRae was released, Ingham County Sheriff Scott Wriggelsworth pushed East Lansing’s city council “to reconsider her internal felony firearm charging policy,” which he said “does not hold people properly criminally accountable, and increases the likelihood of additional gun violence.”
Siemon made it her office’s official policy in August 2021 to drop mandatory prison sentences for felony firearms charges. She said the sentencing enhancement led to “dramatic racial inequity” and was “not in any way linked to the goal that we share of keeping the public safe.”
Siemon is part of George Soros’s vast public safety network. She has participated in international criminal justice reform junkets with other “reform-minded” prosecutors like Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner (D.), Chicago’s Kim Foxx (D.), and Los Angeles’s George Gascón. She also backed radical San Francisco prosecutor Chesa Boudin (D.) ahead of a recall campaign that eventually ousted him from office last year.
According to Jason Johnson, president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, “progressive prosecutors such as Ms. Siemon continue to value reducing the incarcerated population over their duty to protect the public by enforcing the law.”
In 2021, the Vera Institute for Justice, a think tank funded by Soros’s Open Society Foundations, also praised Siemon and other reform prosecutors who pledged to reduce racial disparities in prosecution. Siemon boasted about the changes she made in her office when she announced her retirement in November.”
Her “reforms” have left three dead, five injured, and an entire university terrified. Americans all over the country have gotten sick of Soros-backed “progressive” prosecutors making crime worse in their cities.
In San Francisco, for example, Chesa Boudin won by a few thousad votes after being backed by a Soros campaign arm. a couple years later he lost a recall after “San Franciscans grew exasperated “by a perception of impunity for low-level crimes like shoplifting, while violent crime is also up.” The Federalist reported several stories of repeat offenders left alone by Boudin’s office committing the same crimes again.
Now that same mindset is covered in blood in Michigan, but, like San Francisco, Siemon’s replacement has already begun to change her wayward policies.
The new prosecutor, John DeWane is already cracking down on repeat offenders. He told local news, “As the prosecutor, you’re the chief law enforcement officer for the county. So, my number one goal, and I put out some policies with regard to this issue, is the increase in gun violence in our community, specifically the Lansing area. That’s one of my biggest concerns. But there’s also several different aspects, you know, one of my goals, obviously, is to protect the victims of crime.
Many times we have repeat offenders, repeat felony offenders, who have been offered chances to rehabilitate themselves and they choose not to. They’ve gone through the system. They’ve [been] provided services, education, a plethora of things, and the behavior doesn’t change. So, I do think it’s relevant to consider that when making a charging decision.”
His changes from radical progressivism didn’t protect Michigan State, but hopefully they take root, and the shattered community can once again feel safe.
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