Another diversity is strength alert!
Gee, no kidding! Wait until you read the latest on the Somali refugee youth who is charged with burning down four apartment buildings in Lewiston nearly two years ago. He could end up walking free!
Update January 14th: Plea deal struck, arsonist sent to juvenile facility for three years.
I laughed when I saw the Sun Journal headline which said he was a “moderate risk” to the community if released, but that was for setting fires. What else is he capable of? Hat tip: ‘Pungentpeppers.’ (Emphasis below is mine)
LEWISTON — Abdi Ibrahim is capable of “criminal thinking” and is considered a moderate risk to “act out” using fire if released from the Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland.
Ibrahim, who is facing four felony counts of arson in connection with fires that burned four apartment buildings and a garage on Bartlett and Pierce streets in Lewiston on May 3, 2013, is considered a higher behavioral and social risk to the community because of a history of poor social skills and chronic behavior problems in multiple settings, including assaulting others and running away.
And even though he has hidden cigarette lighters in his bedroom and twice been found smoking since he was placed in state custody, a state forensic examination found no specific indication he has “any fascination with fire as a means of acting out.”
Now, here is that interpreter issue again. Remember “welcoming” communities, it is your responsibility to find and pay for interpreters in every case involving an immigrant (that means in school discipline situations, for health care issues, and for the criminal justice system, among others).
Ibrahim will appear in 8th District Court on the morning of Jan. 12 to argue that his arson confession to police be suppressed because an interpreter did not translate his Miranda warning correctly.
Ibrahim was born in Africa and spent his early years living in a refugee center in Kenya before his family emigrated to the United States. They first settled in Baltimore, Md., moving to Lewiston when Ibrahim was 6 or 7 years old. (Hey, look at this—Baltimore dodged this bullet!—ed).
The law requires a minor to have parental consent or have a parent present during a police interview, but according to Ibrahim’s attorney, Jeffrey Dolley, Ibrahim’s mother, Marian Ibrahim — who is Somali and not fluent in English — did not have an adequate understanding of the procedure for that interview because the Miranda warning wasn’t translated to her or her son correctly. As a result, her consent was never “given.”
According to court records, Ibrahim was interviewed at the Lewiston Police Department, where he waived his Miranda rights, including his right to remain silent, while his mother was assisted by an interpreter over the phone.
Ibrahim, who is now 14 years old, was 12 at the time of his taped confession.
According to court records, Dolley learned the Miranda warning was incorrectly translated after he had a language expert listen to the audio recording of the police interview.
During that interview, after initially denying he was involved, Ibrahim confessed to setting a fire at the back of a three-bay garage behind an apartment building at 149 Bartlett St. by lighting a cigarette and paper with a lighter, using gasoline as an accelerant.
The teen was initially found not competent to stand trial and the case was suspended while he received emotional and behavioral counseling in residential care at Sweetser Children Services in Saco. In August, the court found him competent to stand trial, and he was transferred to Long Creek Youth Development Center.
At the same time and in preparation for trial, the court ordered the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a risk assessment of Ibrahim’s behavior, including his likelihood to start fires.
Read it all. The state believes he needs 24-hour supervision and the residential care facility in which he was initially placed, and which did the evaluation, is incapable of doing that. His parents think he is fine without that supervision.
The assessment said he was only at a “moderate risk” for setting fires if released in the community, but you need to go read the almost unbelievable description of the charming family he would return to.
Think about it, this kid could walk free over a technicality!
We have page after page of posts on troubled Lewiston, the Somali capital of New England, click here for more.
And, one more thought. Are those “Welcoming America” agitators including the cost to a community of immigrant crimes when they promote those “studies” about immigrants bringing economic boom-times to American cities? I bet not!