Free Republic

New York City Commissioner Dermot Shea announced Monday that “effective immediately,” the NYPD will disband its anti-crime unit and reassign roughly 600 plainclothes officers to other units. Advertisement - story continues below “This is 21st-century policing,” he said. “This is a seismic shift in the culture of how the NYPD polices this great city,” he said. “I would consider this in the realm of closing one of the last chapters of ‘Stop, Question and Frisk’…I think it’s time to more forward and change how we police in this city. We can do it with brains. We can do it with...

At least 250 convicted and accused criminals freed from New York’s Rikers Island prison have been rearrested 450 times thanks to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) jailbreak directive. New York Police Department (NYPD) data reported by NBC New York’s Melissa Russo reveals that since Cuomo issued a statewide order demanding jails and prisons release inmates to abide by social distancing measures in late March, at least 250 inmates from Rikers Island have been rearrested.

Washington - Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best said Sunday the groundswell of support for implementing police reforms that has erupted in the weeks following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis indicates that there will be long-lasting changes to policing. "This is a pivotal moment in history," Best said on "Face the Nation." "We are going to move in a different direction, and policing will never be the same as it was before." **SNIP** Best said protests are peaceful, but said it's been a challenge for her and other Seattle leaders to determine "who is a leader or an influencer."...

San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D) announced Thursday that the city's police force would undergo sweeping reform, outlawing tear gas and ending police responding to non-criminal calls. “San Francisco has made progress reforming our police department, but we know that we still have significant work to do,” Breed said in a statement. “We know that a lack of equity in our society overall leads to a lot of the problems that police are being asked to solve. We are going to keep pushing for additional reforms and continue to find ways to reinvest in communities that have historically been underserved...

...The city government has not developed a strategic response to the takeover of Capitol Hill. According to one Seattle police officer with knowledge of internal deliberations, the city’s “leadership is in chaos” and “the mayor has made the decision to let a mob of 1,000 people dictate public safety policy for a city of 750,000.” The officer said that Chief Best had dispatched high-ranking police officials to the autonomous zone to establish a line of communication, but the officials were immediately sent away by armed paramilitaries at the barricades. “The tide of public opinion is on the side of the...

Following the surrender of the East Precinct of the Seattle Police Department to an Antifa mob and the occupation of Seattle City Hall, a source on the ground in Seattle says that other police precincts around the city are preparing to be the next targets. Regarding the autonomous zone established by the Antifa-led mob, the source—whose anonymity we are protecting—says, "They bar media from entering and screen people coming in. They are walking around fully armed. Talking about making their own currency and making their own flag. SPD is talking about abandoning the west precinct now.

HOUSTON- ...The DA’s office announced Tuesday night that it had dropped charges against 602 people arrested during the protests in Houston, totaling 796 criminal cases. ...The majority of the cases dismissed, according to the office, were mainly for trespassing or obstructing a highway. “While probable cause existed for the arrests of those people who refused to disperse after being ordered to do so by police, our young prosecutors worked hard to identify the few offenders who came to inflict harm on others and intentional damage property,” DA Kim Ogg said. Prosecutors have charged 51 adults and one person under 18....

With the death of George Floyd -- a heinous atrocity virtually every American decries -- unity should have prevailed. Americans hate police brutality; Americans care about black lives; Americans despise looting and rioting; Americans want to protect citizens but preserve the ability of the police to stop crime. Instead, the country seems to be falling apart. That's because of the utterly chaotic political and media response to the Floyd tragedy: a response that demands agreement but, most of all, requires compliance. You must kneel. You must kneel because you cannot understand. You simply cannot. If you have to ask for...

For thousands of years, in the East no less than in the West, lovers of wisdom devised whole worldviews (usually called “philosophies”) rooted, fundamentally, in the distinction between reality and mere appearance.  For all of their differences, these traditions concurred with one another in the belief that most people choose to be deluded rather than reckon with the world as it is. Stories of this human condition abound.  Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is probably the most prominent to come from the ancient world.  In more recent times, films like The Matrix and Vanilla Sky have communicated the same...

This Moody Science video called “Empty Cities” is a power testimony to the world in which we live in today. Done in the early 60’s before prayer was removed from school; look how far we have fallen as a nation since then! This video is still on the cutting edge even in our EXPONETIAL technological lawless hour! Dear friends, does not history always repeat its self? It surely does! This 30 minute video is well worth your time. Watch for yourself this powerful history lesson and see why the cities and nations of the world have fallen and are now...

Defund Police Movement Will Not End Well for Democrat-Run CitiesThe protest/riot/no social-distancing get-togethers in Democratic enclaves around what I think used to be the United States of America don’t seem like they want to let up any time soon. Police are bad. White people are bad. Heaven help you if you’re a white cop. It’s a mess out there. I’ve been watching some friends I’ve known for years opine on social media about their full-throated support for all that’s going on and, I have to admit, it mystifies me. Most of my liberal friends are comedians and are near my...

The working- and middle-class people of New York have had to remain in place to face the COVID virus. They have no second homes to retreat to. Now they are faced with the virus of organized criminal gangs and looters. Some actually defended the looting, rationalizing it as payback for the injustices blacks have had to endure and forgetting the peaceful message of Martin Luther King Jr. Looting will never foster social justice or redress past grievances. Looting only serves to selfishly benefit the looter and promote reactionary politics. Outsiders and seasoned thieves are using the protests over the death...

Before politicians rush headlong into the potentially disastrous decision to defund police departments, they should think about the ramifications. More than three centuries ago, British writer Jonathan Swift observed, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late.” Well, a new movement to defund the police is well on its way. And in a remarkably short time, it has quickly outpaced the logic and common sense questions that could slow it down.The goal of the “defund the police” movement is obviously to punish police officers for bad behavior....

Camden dissolved its police department to root out corruption. The city's crime rate was among the worst in the US. Within nine square miles and among nearly 75,000 residents, there were over 170 open-air drug markets reported in 2013, county officials told CNN. Violent crime abounded. Police corruption was at the core. Lawsuits filed against the department uncovered that officers routinely planted evidence on suspects, fabricated reports and committed perjury. After the corruption was exposed, courts overturned the convictions of 88 people, the ACLU reported in 2013. So in 2012, officials voted to completely disband the department -- it was...

Even though socialism is "arguably the most discredited idea in history," as Dinesh D'Souza writes in his United States of Socialism, far too many are drawn to it like a moth to fire. Consider that the left and the Democrat Party are hell-bent to take away our Second Amendment since a citizenry stripped of its ability to protect itself will be easier to subdue. Moreover, the innate totalitarianism of socialism demands obliteration of memory and we now see American monuments being defaced or utterly destroyed. There are still those who would embrace the perverse ideology of socialism — no matter...

Police Chief Michael Shaw, urged by chanting, joins the crowd laying face down on the pavement https://twitter.com/agreenphotog/status/1269332225499238400  

Mayor Ted Wheeler’s decision to pull police officers from area high schools ranks as a relatively modest change on the long list of reforms needed to build public confidence in Portland Police. While the removal of school resource officers will affect three Portland-area school districts, it doesn’t address criticisms over police bias and lack of accountability that black Portlanders have highlighted for decades. It shows that the objections students lodged more than a year ago with the Portland School Board over schools’ relationship with Police are gaining traction today. And the decision, announced as protests over the police killing of...

Nationwide protests over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, the latest in a long string of high-profile slayings of black men by white officers, have featured a common rallying cry: “Defund the police.” The movement predates the current protests and is driven both by anger at the militarized posture of many U.S. police departments and by the recognition they are being called on to confront social ills including addiction, mental illness and homelessness that, advocates say, could be better addressed by spending on social services and rethinking what behaviors should be considered crimes. Demands on streets from New York...

Members of Minneapolis City Council are adding fuel to growing calls for the disbanding of the Minneapolis Police Department in the wake of George Floyd's killing. There have been rumblings in recent days of looking for alternative approaches to law enforcement and crime prevention in Minneapolis, as trust in the police department continues to plummet after the 46-year-old's death. Chief among those calling for change is Northside council member Jeremiah Ellison, who on Thursday tweeted "we are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department." "And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together," he added. "We are...