Media Ignore Waukesha Parade Murder Trial Because It Exposes Democrats’ Deadly Criminal Justice Reform Policies

At first glance, the trial of Waukesha Christmas Parade killer Darrell Brooks, Jr. seemed like a television news director’s dream: A horrific, sensational crime, an unhinged defendant representing himself while delivering a near-constant stream of in-court outbursts, and a no-nonsense, charismatic judge trying her best to keep things from devolving into total chaos.

If ever there was must-see TV, this was it. Only it wasn’t, because if there is one thing America’s national media desires more than covering a lengthy three-ring circus of a trial, it is suppressing anything that might reflect poorly on Democrats or their policies — especially this close to an election. As enticing as showing highlights of a shirtless Brooks pacing the courtroom and ranting about being a “sovereign citizen” might have been, doing so would have forced the media to admit the institutional failures that unleashed Brooks on the people of Waukesha.

Just five days before Brooks slammed his SUV into the parade, killing six people — including an 8-year-old boy — and injuring more than 60 others, he was freed from jail on just $1,000 bail even though he faced two open violent felony cases: One for firing a gun at his nephew and a friend at a crowded summertime party and another for using his SUV to run over his girlfriend’s foot during an argument two weeks before the massacre.  

Six months earlier, he was also freed on a signature bond following a domestic violence arrest in Georgia. He had also been wanted in Nevada for six years for failing to comply with the state’s sex offender registry after a statutory sexual seduction conviction for impregnating a 15-year-old girl.

A reasonable person would presume that a man facing that many criminal charges in that many states would be held until trial, but there has never been anything reasonable about how the justice system has dealt with Darrell Brooks, Jr. From the time he was 17 years old and began committing serious felonies until almost literally the moment he committed mass murder, he was given break after break from a system that appeared hellbent on keeping him out of prison and on the streets.

His sickening crimes, highlighted by the tragicomic farce he made his trial, served as inconvenient reminders of the grave consequences of the left-wing approach to law and order. When the police are defunded, cash bail is eliminated, crimes aren’t prosecuted, and prison populations are cut in half, the Darrell Brooks’ of the world operate with no fear of any consequences for their increasingly sociopathic actions.

Brooks himself is the personification of the failure of leftist criminal justice reform, and to cover his trial would have been to acknowledge this devastating truth. The three nightly network newscasts devoted just two minutes each to reporting on Brooks’ conviction last week on all 76 charges he faced, and none of their reports mentioned the fact that Brooks was out on bail when he committed mass murder.

In Wisconsin, however, where the trial