Friday’s LinkSwarm mentioned the plight of New York City bodega clerk, who was viciously attacked by the convicted-felon boyfriend of a patron whose credit card had been refused. Defending himself from the attack, Alba stabbed his attacker to death, and was charged with murder.
Blog reader Clinton alerted me to the fact that GoFundMe just deleted Alba’s account.
GoFundMe has deleted the legal defense fund page for the hard-working Manhattan bodega worker holed up at Rikers Island on a whopping $250,000 bond after he fatally stabbed a violent ex-con he was trying to fend off.
Jose Alba, 51, is currently languishing behind bars at the notorious jail despite surveillance video capturing the alleged victim, Austin Simon, 35, storming behind the counter of the bodega to attack him Friday night.
Alba’s family insist he was acting in self-defense when he grabbed a knife to fight off Simon inside the Hamilton Heights Grocery.
Relatives immediately launched a GoFundMe page to help raise funds to cover Alba’s sky-high bail and legal fees after he was hit with a second-degree murder charge — but the page was mysteriously removed Wednesday night.
“Our terms of service prohibit fundraising for the legal defense of a violent crime. At this time, the fundraiser has been removed and all donors have been refunded,” GoFundMe said in a statement Thursday.
The page had already raised $20,000 for Alba when it was suddenly removed, the Daily Mail reported.
Under GoFundMe’s terms of services, the platform can’t be used for the legal defense of “alleged crime associated with hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorism.”
Of course, there are many documented cases where GoFundMe allowed fundraisers for those accused of violent crimes, as long as they had the right politics and/or skin color.
Controversial Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has faced backlash over Alba’s case after his office brought the charges — and then pushed for $500,000 bail for the father-of-three at his arraignment Saturday.
This is just the latest example of a Soros-backed Democrat DA filing charges against law-abiding citizens daring to defend themselves from violent attacks by felons. (See also: Kyle Rittenhouse.)
Former New York City resident Louis Rossmann has a nice video rant on the subject.
“If you are a criminal, Alvin Bragg has your back!”
You have felonies that have been, in many cases, decreased to petty misdemeanors. So if you commit a felony, it’ll get decreased to a petty misdemeanor. However if you are one of the people that allow society to function, one of the people that puts in work every day, a law-abiding citizen that simply wants to go home without getting killed by somebody half his age, who has a criminal record, who is beating you up, we throw the book at you this is sickening and tiring and it has to stop!
“They will always simp for the criminal.”
He’s right about everything, but the name “George Soros” never appears anywhere in his rant. Pretty much every-time you see this sort of coddling of criminals and throwing the book at the law-abiding, a George Soros-backed DA is the one making the prosecution decisions.
Soros-backed DAs seem intent on destroying the social fabric of America, and of prosecuting the law-abiding Americans as though the right to self-defense didn’t exist. It goes hand-in-hand with the Democratic Party’s obsession with disarming law-abiding Americans.
Tags: Alvin Bragg, Crime, Democrats, George Soros, GoFundeMe, Jose Alba, Louis Rossmann, New York City, self-defense, Social Justice Warriors, video
Do you want vigilantes? Because, this is how you get vigilantes…
One of these days, likely a lot closer than any of us sane people would like, people are just going to stop calling the cops or relying on the “justice system” to get actual justice. They’re just going to start killing the protected class outlaws, and probably not at all humanely. You’re going to know the worm has turned when an impromptu mob takes someone like Austin Simon away from the scene of their crimes, douses them with gasoline or other flammable material, and then sets them alight as a salutary lesson to others of his ilk. Won’t be a damn thing the cops or the prosecutors will be able to do, because like Ken McElroy’s case in Skidmore, Missouri, ain’t nobody gonna have seen a thing, and if they did…? They’ll likely wind up joining that future Austin Simon in flames.
I doubt they’ll be using the noose. Too much resemblance to lynching, and too many nasty connotations. Gasoline and a lighter, though? Hmmmm…
The idiot oligarchy will rue the day they decided to tear down the current system, because guess what? They’re just as vulnerable as any of the people they’ve declared fair game, and if Antifa/BLM can do as it likes, so can anyone else.
I’d also point out that there are a lot more competent purveyors of violence on the right–Kyle Rittenhouse has more peers on his side of things than any of rainbow-hair crowd, and they like shooting things. When it goes all kinetic, I don’t think things are going to go their way, at all.
The Lefties always forgot that The Revolution eats it’s own. Today loyal revolutionary with pronouns in your Instagram profile, tomorrow a counter-revolutionary who needs to be eliminated. Always….
Among others, Dan Bongino speaks frequently for a need to develop a parallel economy.
I wonder how long it will be before we have a parallel justice system as well?
Most all of us just want to be left alone. The most dangerous of humans are who just wanted to be left alone, but circumstances worked against that desire.
Hard times are on the way.
The authorities better figure out how to tell when security cameras are intentionally shut off because that’s gonna happen a lot. Lots of eye witnesses though, all confirming the long time felon and terror of the neighborhood just slipped on a banana peel, his his head 27 times on the counter as he fell, and flipped on his own knife. How he anally impaled himself on the mop was nothing short of a miracle, but I saw it happen, I swear.
People forget that the police aren’t really there to protect you, they’re there to protect the criminal from the mob long enough to get them to a trial.
“People forget that the police aren’t really there to protect you, they’re there to protect the criminal from the mob long enough to get them to a trial.”
No, that’s really OK and few people actually mind.
The police are there to keep the mob from killing the innocent by accident, which mobs *very easily* do.
“Easily manipulated” is the primary weakness of the mob. If that weren’t the case, mob justice would probably be the first pick of a HUGE number of people.
The police arrive after the crime has been committed, and write up a report of first impressions as to what occurred. They carry weapons for their own defense–not yours. To rely on protection from the police is silly–remember, when seconds count, the police are 20 minutes away.
Ruprecht: I, too, will swear on my FBI recruitment manual that I saw the same thing.
“Code of the West” justice will be the go to defense for all “crimes” of this nature soon enough. When the elites of the world take over, they will only have themselves to blame for what happens next. You commit crimes like this and you will reap the ‘rewards’ you deserve.
I haven’t seen anything yet from Legal Insurrection’s self-defense expert Andrew Branca, so here is my “armchair” interpretation:
As soon as Jose Alba succeeded in getting to his knife, his attacker Austin Simon immediately reached for Alba’s knife hand, trying to gain control of Alba’s knife. In that instant, it became reasonable for Alba to interpret Simon as trying to arm himself with a lethal weapon, justifying lethal force in response.
In reaching for control of Alba’s knife Simon would have at least in part been trying to defend himself, but that does not affect the reasonableness of Alba seeing the attempt by his attacker to get control of Alba’s own knife as posing a lethal threat to himself. The situation is no different than if Alba had managed to grab a gun instead of a knife and Simon was reaching for Alba’s gun.
In the gun situation there is no doubt that if Simon fought for control of Alba’s gun that would give Alba an iron-clad self-defense justification for shooting Simon, and there is no significant difference between a knife and a gun in this situation. A gun and a knife are only different in their lethality when there is distance between the antagonists. Grabbing for Alba’s knife can be interpreted as both defensive and aggressive, and the aggressive interpretation justifies Alba’s using lethal force against Simon.
What could Simon have done to save himself from being killed in justifiable self-defense once he saw that Alba now had a knife in his hand? He could have jumped back and ceased all activity that had any aggressive interpretation. If Alba did not immediately interpret such a retreat as cessation of aggression, but as only a strategic retreat, Simon could have added words to declare he was ceasing his attack, maybe something like “okay, you win, I’m stopping.”
If Simon had made any motion towards disengagement and Alba still stabbed him then there could be an argument to make for manslaughter or second degree murder, but since Simon instead went towards Alba, trying to get control of Alba’s knife, Alba’s lethal force use of the knife is clear self-defense.
It turns out the Andrew Branca did already post a lengthy commentary on the Alba-Simon case. (Search YouTube for Branca and bodega.)
A commenter in Andrew’s video comment stream noted an important point that I missed that helps nail the self-defense case.
When Alba took his opening to step past Simon and reach for his knife Simon grabbed at Alba’s shoulders and neck to prevent him from continuing past. That removes the possibility that Alba could have escaped the situation, which is important because avoidance one of the requirements for self-defense in NY.
If Alba had a sure line of retreat he would have been required to take it. Simon grabbing Alba as Alba tried to step past took that retreat possibility away.
(That point likely originated with Branca, but I haven’t seen that part of his analysis yet, the whole thing being over 3 hours!)
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Previous poster is correct, the police have been put in place to protect criminals from the general public. If the police won’t do that we’re all in for many more stories like this one. And the world will be a better place.