A violent criminal who attacked a cop with a hammer was out on bail at the time. Winston Tate from Connecticut was in jail for attacking another police officer and has a staggering record of 30 arrests. Despite this, a judge handed him a suspended three-year sentence in 2020, meaning he was free to assault cops and terrorize his neighborhood.
Fellow officers are outraged that the attack on Middletown Detective Karli Travis ever occurred. Police Union President Nick Puorro said it shouldn’t take violence against police officers to highlight the problems of law enforcement and fix them. The issue, he believes, is the unwillingness of judges to lock up dangerous offenders.
Police chief Erik Costa agrees. He said, “judges are forced to get people out of jail as soon as possible.”
At his arraignment in mid-August, details of the offense came to light. Officer Travis responded to a call about noise and breaking glass on a residential street. On approaching Tate, she calmly asked him to put down the hammer he was holding, but bodycam footage shows him charging at her and hitting her several times before she could shoot him. Travis was left “fighting for her life,” according to fellow officers.
Legal archives show that Army veteran Tate has a record stretching back to 1995. Just within the past five years, police have charged him with assaulting healthcare workers, breach of peace, disorderly conduct, carrying a dangerous weapon, and unlawful restraint. Records also show that Tate has served very little jail time.
Growing numbers of conservative voices are blaming liberal judges and DAs for unleashing a crime wave on to American streets as repeat offenders continually avoid prison. An ex-judge from Houston, Texas, Ted Poe, said “Some of these judges have a philosophy that is not the law.” He added that they don’t want to put people in prison because their political beliefs oppose incarceration. “The public suffers” because of it, he said.
