Criminal justice reform was peddled to voters as being about poor, underprivileged souls serving harsh sentences for smoking marijuana or some such nonsense. In reality, criminal justice reformers have fought to ensure that cold-blooded criminals avoid justice for repeated or heinous crimes.
This is evident in Salem, the capital of Oregon, where a controversy has emerged regarding the city’s police review board. That board of civilians is tasked with reviewing internal investigations performed by the Salem Police Department and making recommendations to the city manager and city council based on its findings. In 2024, the Salem City Council voted unanimously to appoint Kyle Hedquist to the board, and it reappointed him earlier this month by a 5-4 vote.
SOME ‘COMMUNITY PEACEKEEPERS’ CHAMPIONED BY DEMOCRATS NOW CHARGED WITH MURDER
So, who is Hedquist? Why, he is none other than a convicted murderer. In 1994, Hedquist stole things from his aunt’s home. When Nikki Thrasher, a teenage girl, asked him about some of the items, Hedquist lured her into his car, drove her to a remote location, forced her out of the car, and executed her with a gunshot to the back of her head. He, in cold blood, abducted and murdered a teenage girl in order to cover up for a robbery he committed.
Why is Hedquist even free? Because Oregon believes in criminal justice “reform,” and that violent criminals should be given as many chances as possible not to be violent murderers. He had been sentenced to life in prison without parole, but then-Gov. Kate Brown (D-OR) decided that Thrasher’s life was only worth 28 years, commuting Hedquist’s sentence in 2022 and loosing him on the public. He has gone on to become a criminal justice reform activist — shocker — and somehow found himself appointed to a review board that judges police officers and participates in police ride-alongs.
THE DEADLY COST OF LETTING VIOLENT OFFENDERS ROAM FREE
The real victim in all of this is Hedquist, of course. He was the victim of a cruel justice system that thinks cold-blooded murder is bad, so Brown freed him. Now, he is the victim of mean media coverage from people who think cold-blooded murder is bad, as he whines that people are looking past his years of community service on the board, all because of the small problem that he abducted and murdered a teenage girl to hide his other criminal activities. In a just society, Hedquist would be rotting away in a prison cell for the rest of his life for his heinous crime. Luckily for him, Oregon gave up justice for “reform.”
Criminal justice reformers, such as the Democrats who run Oregon, capitalized on people’s sympathies for nonviolent drug offenders who received long sentences, and this is the result. Hedquist should never have been released, let alone empowered by local government to influence policing, but that is what the criminal justice reform movement has produced.