The soft-on-crime policies enacted by the Democrats who run Austin and Travis County have degraded the quality of life for law-abiding Austinites. And for many the consequences of putting convicted felons back out on the street without bail has been deadly.
The suspect in an August 6 Austin homicide was out of jail on personal bonds in two different counties for multiple felony charges when he shot two men, killing one and paralyzing the other.
Shots were fired after a fight broke out in a parking lot on E. 7th Street in Austin, right across the street from the ARCH homeless shelter downtown. Dionysius Thompson was killed, and Josh Noriega was left paralyzed.
The suspect is Nathan Nevah Ramirez, charged with murder and aggravated assault.
Ramirez fled the scene but was later identified by another individual involved in the scuffle and HALO surveillance cameras as having been present when shots were fired. Ramirez allegedly shot both Thompson and Noriega.
Police arrested him an hour later that day at his apartment, where he was found with a loaded Glock 22, 2.5 ounces of marijuana, 44 grams of cocaine, about $8,000 cash, and a box of .40 caliber bullets. Ramirez was charged with another unlawful carrying of a firearm count along with possession of a controlled substance.
In a sane county, being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm should be an immediate tip back to the slammer under Sec. 46.04 of the Texas penal code.
He has since been charged with first-degree felony murder and second-degree felony aggravated assault.
On August 8, before he was arrested for the shooting-related charges, Ramirez was released on personal bond for the charges of unlawful carrying of a weapon and felony possession of a controlled substance from two nights before.
Two days later, Austin Police Department (APD) ballistics analysis positively identified Ramirez’s pistol had fired the rounds. U.S. Marshalls arrested him later that day.
Ramirez had been out of jail in Travis County since he was granted personal bond on May 27, 2022 for the June 2021 charge of unlawful possession of a firearm. Ramirez had been on the lam since the incident last year until he was arrested on May 26, 2022.
Austin Municipal Court Associate Judge Stephen Vigorito granted the bail on the condition that Ramirez not possess any firearms or engage in criminal activity. His pretrial for that charge is set for August 26.
During the bond proceeding, he was given “indigent” status, a metric by which the Austin municipal court prioritizes personal and low cash bonds to poor offenders.
While judges set bond, the Austin City Council passed a policy directing the municipal court to prioritize reduced bond for indigent defendants in 2017 and fired judges who disagreed.
Additionally, after winning office in 2020, Travis County District Attorney José Garza released relaxed bail and sentencing guidelines that his office would recommend to the bench in criminal proceedings.
Garza’s tenure has been a boon to felons seeking to continue their criminal activity while out on bond, but a disaster for law-abiding Austinites, especially those who don’t want to be murdered.
Among those items is the emphasis placed on a presumption of release with “least restrictive conditions necessary” for higher-level felonies.
Garza’s policies, the attempt to turn Austin into a Mecca for drug-addicted transients, and the Austin City Council’s refusal to fund adequate staffing levels for the Austin Police Department have all contributed to making Austin radically less safe than it was just four years ago.
Tags: ARCH, Austin, Crime, Democrats, Dionysius Thompson, Jose Garza, Josh Noriega, murder, Nathan Nevah Ramirez, Stephen Vigorito, Texas, Travis County
See, we need to help these people out of the offend-jail-offend-jail-offend-jail pathway. The new offend-offend-offend pathway will bring ekwitee.
I hate to be a Marxist agitator, but the worser the better.
And for Austin Commies, it apparently has to get much worser before it gets better.
Austin can burn to the ground and half of America will say, What did you expect?
Watch Illinois/Chicago/East Saint Louis next year when no cash bail law goes into effect statewide…
If only we could be certain that the only victims for these extra killings were Democrats. Problem is, now that the victims are dead, the Democratic party is assured that the deceased victim will continue voting for Democrats.
I live in a nice neighborhood on the Western side of Austin. Within the past few months, one of those little trailers with an electronic sign (usually saying things like “Right Lane Closed Ahead”) has appeared on the main road leading into our area (lots of nice neighborhoods). Now that sign says “Lock Your Car” in response to higher rates of crime. Our area is patrolled by County Sheriff, not APD, but the Sheriff has never had, or needed, enough manpower to cover our area as if it were the inner city. Austin’s soft on criminals policy is bleeding out into surrounding areas now that criminals are 1) not in jail, and 2) know they are not likely to face serious consequences. Thanks, Austin Wierdos!
Non commie Austinites, You better form a neighborhood watch committee. And within that committee you better assess who is competently armed and form a special group of actual fighters with a plan. You might have a chance when the zombies come.
This is all being done to a plan. The people behind the plan want the increase in crime to result in panic, and assume that the panic will result in them being given more and more draconian powers, to include disarming the general public.
I don’t think things are going to work out the way they theorize. I foresee a lot more “vigilante action” occurring, and the resultant prosecutions of the vigilantes to result in a lot of jury nullifications. Anarchy and chaos are good ways to gain power, in some societies. In ours, I fear, it’s going to result in a lot more violence and a lot less “order” than the assholes think.
I suspect that at some tipping point, the average person will have had “enough”, and that they will then studiously look the other way as the homeless vagrants get shot in the head for shitting in the streets. I further suspect that some of those “average people” will be surreptitiously paying the shooters for their good works…
Right now, there is a reservoir of residual decency in the majority of the general population. As that is expended, do not expect them to quietly “move on” to better neighborhoods where people aren’t actively and metaphorically “shitting in the streets”. Expect them to react differently when they have their backs against the wall, and do not expect that the sainted judicial theorists behind all this crap are going to be immune to recoil-induced effects.
I feel safe in predicting that some family member of a victim of these released killers is going to target the people that released them in the first place, at which point you’re going to see all stops come out finding and prosecuting that rebellious serf who dares to hold any of the “golden people” responsible for their acts. Then, expect to see the lid come off, likely the same way a pressure cooker with it’s relief valve blocked will often do.
They don’t know it, but they’re playing with fire. We’re going to go back to a state of affairs where jaywalking is effectively a capital crime, and these assholes only have themselves to blame.
If you like crime, vote for democrats. The two go together.
I would say that it’s more that the natural constituency of the Democratic Party is the criminal class, since that’s where most of their top people come from.
Nancy Pelosi’s family was “organized crime adjacent” in Baltimore, before she set up in San Francisco. That’s just a single data point; my suspicion would be that were one to go digging on a forensic accounting treasure hunt, you’d find a lot more. Joe Kennedy, anyone…? Remember how the JFK/Nixon election was contingent upon the Chicago area being delivered unto the Democrats via the good offices of “machine politics”, which in Chicago means “organized criminal activity”? Then, when RFK betrayed the “bargain” by going after the “organized crime” figures for PR purposes, his brother and he were killed under rather “interesting” circumstances?
The dots can be connected, if one bothers. None of this is accidental; you can analyze what has been going on in this country as one gargantuan “bust out” operation, orchestrated by the Democratic/Republican elite. Myself, I think that’s exactly what has been going on, with the active connivance of both parties leading lights.
I like the sequence: attack armed victim, die.
[…] and the Nazis joined forces to start WWII, and Reports from Cuba: Why Nuevitas? BattleSwarm: Another Day, Another Murderer Out On Bond, also, State of Texas Lowers Boom On Harris County Over Police Defunding Behind The Black: […]