Free Republic

The Associated Press is asking whether our police will change the way they deliver service to the people of the cities and towns they patrol. The answer is a definite Yes and No. Yes they will; but No; those who will be watching won’t perceive the difference. Police work requires the continual processing of data drawn from your surroundings. What a police officer sees and does not see is far more subjective than those who have never done a tour in a radio car can possibly imagine. As a patrol officer you process information constantly and on some days make...

Many have speculated that Marilyn Mosby, the chief prosecutor for the city of Baltimore, knew whether she was going to charge the six police officers involved in the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray before receiving the official police report Thursday. Turns out they may have been right. Newly-surfaced video of Mosby speaking to a church group Tuesday morning shows her promising attendees that she will “pursue justice by any and all means necessary.”

An Essex County man shot and killed the mother of his child - a 27-year-old teacher - in front of her East Orange home on Friday. A police officer on the scene then shot the man in response. According to the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, 42-year-old Andre Higgs, of Watchung, shot Latrena May, a teacher at Pride Academy in East Orange, after she flagged down a police officer during an argument outside May’s home around 10 p.m. May was pronounced dead at the scene. Higgs was taken to a hospital; details about his condition were not available. He will face...

OREM, Utah — Police say a shopper with a concealed weapons permit fatally shot a suspect to thwart a carjacking Saturday outside a Utah grocery store. ... the shooter ... heard a woman’s screams as she was being pulled from her SUV by the suspect ... went to assist the woman and fired one round after the 27-year-old male suspect lunged at him in an attempt to grab his gun. The suspect, who was shot in the chest, later died at a hospital.

What they found was that much of the activity was coming from well outside of Baltimore, in some cases from Russia, China, India and the Middle East. "I just killed a pig," wrote one tweet, showing a bloodied police officer slumped on the ground. Not only was the photo of an officer in South America, but the account sharing it was not in Baltimore. Another tweet, which appeared to be coming from the Baltimore police, asked, "Why are we even tweeting?" and suggested that the protesters couldn't read. It also referred to them with a racial slur.

JACKSON, MI – Concerned he would have to send an innocent man to prison, a Jackson County judge on Friday set aside a jury's guilty verdict in a criminal sexual conduct case. The rare decision, a first in Circuit Judge John McBain's 13 years on the bench, means Gregory Patterson, 50, is not guilty of three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, felonies that would have sent him to prison for a minimum of 25 years. A jury convicted Patterson of the offenses at the close of a March trial, but McBain granted a motion made by defense lawyer George...

Donta Allen, a Baltimore man who was in police custody with Freddie Gray, denied police claims that Gray intentionally slammed his head in a police van, a local television reporter told MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Thursday. Police reportedly claimed that Allen told authorities he heard Gray "banging against the walls" of the van and believed he "was intentionally trying to injure himself." Allen, who is currently in prison and was listed as a source in a police document, refuted a police account of the night when Gray was taken into custody. He reportedly also denied giving police any information,...

CLARKE: FREDDIE GRAY CHARGES ‘DUKE LACROSSE CASE ALL OVER AGAIN’ by IAN HANCHETT Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke (D) declared the charges brought against six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray “George Zimmerman and the Duke Lacrosse case all over again” and said “these cops are political prisoners,” offered up as human sacrifices, thrown like red meat to an angry mob” on Friday’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on the Fox News Channel. Clarke said of the charges, “it’s a miscarriage of justice. This neophyte prosecutor stood up there and made a political statement, Neil, and I say...

A Baltimore police sergeant informed his Eastern District superiors Friday afternoon that officers “are now being challenged on the street.” [Snip] “I have been to five calls today and three of those five calls for service; I have been challenged to a fight. Some of them I blew off but one of them almost got ugly. I don’t want anybody to say that I did not tell them what is going on. This is no intel this is really what’s going on the street. This is my formal notification. It is about to get ugly.”

City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby says Freddie Gray received his critical injuries in Baltimore police custody and has charged all six officers involved in his death...“Lt. Rice, Officer Nero and Officer Miller failed to establish probable cause for Mr. Gray’s arrest, as no crime had been committed by Mr. Gray,” Mosby said...They found a knife clipped inside his pants packet — the knife was not a switchblade and is lawful under Maryland law, she said.

Last Thursday, the day Loretta Lynch was ( lamentably) confirmed by the Senate as the new attorney general, the Los Angeles Times speculated on the relationships she might come to have with the various entities in American law enforcement, and whether she would inherit the “baggage” left by her predecessor, Eric Holder. The Times quoted James Cole, who until recently was a deputy attorney general under Holder. “She is in a good position,” he said, “because she has earned credibility with the law enforcement community to begin with.” This is the sort of thing one would expect to hear from...

Six Baltimore police officers face murder, other charges in death of black man BALTIMORE | By Scott Malone and Ian Simpson

All six Baltimore Police officers have been charged in Freddie Gray's police-custody death. State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby said Gray's death in police custody was a homicide during a long-awaited news conference Friday morning. Gray's arrest was illegal, said Mosby. The charges include manslaughter, assault and misconduct. One officer, Caesar Goodson, who was the driver of the van carrying Gray, will face a second-degree murder charge.

Amy Murphy, the dean of students at Texas Tech, believes that giving students of her college the rights that they have access to has a “chilling effect” on people’s ability to accuse others of assault. Murphy told Texas Tech’s college paper that, as a part of the Student Code of Conduct, students at the university do not have the right to confront their accuser. More than that, they cannot have a representative ask questions of the accuser at all, and cross-examination is simply not allowed. According to Murphy, this process is a “learning experience” that “will be conducted in the...

Man sentenced to 60 years for 'brutal' northwest branch trail rape ROCKVILLE, Md. (WJLA) – A man who plead guilty to raping a woman along a popular walking trail in Montgomery County has been sentenced to 60 years in jail. Joaquin Orellana Torres, 24, received his sentence in Montgomery County Circuit Court Thursday morning. The judge presiding over the case said he deviated from guidelines when sentencing Torres because of the brutality of the attack. Torres, a native of El Salvador who resided in Hyattsville, Maryland, was charged and convicted of first degree rape and robbery for attacking a female...

A large group of black teens rampaged through Charleston neighborhoods, targeting innocent people early Sunday. The Post and Courier reported: As many as 60 teens were roaming Charleston streets attacking pedestrians and drivers early Sunday, witnesses told police dispatchers in 911 calls released Tuesday. All the teens were black, according to witnesses, and all but one of the people attacked were white. Still, it’s unclear if the attacks were racially motivated or sparked by the unrest in Baltimore, which followed the recent shooting death of Walter Scott, a black man, by a white North Charleston police officer. [...] Terror could...

Baltimore is in a state of unrest and the mainstream media is condemning protestors as vigilantes. In other words, when it comes to black rage and pain, it’s business as usual. Martin Luther King, Jr. said “A riot is the language of the unheard.” Since the beginning of time, riots and have revolution have gone hand in hand. From the Boston Tea Party to Nat Turner to the L.A riots, there has never been revolution without them. To dismiss the riots as just the actions of “thieves” trying to get free stuff is to ignore history. While Whoopi Goldberg and...

Dozens of people arrested in violent demonstrations this week in Baltimore were being released early Wednesday evening because police were unable to complete their paperwork in time, the state public defender's office said. The 101 detainees began walking free without charges about the same time that Baltimore police announced that their report into the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American man who died in police custody this month, wouldn't be made public Friday. Police Commissioner Anthony Batts had set a deadline of Friday to file the report with state investigators. Capt. Eric Kowalczyk said late Wednesday afternoon that the...

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A radio station has suspended a disc jockey over his online posting about the arrest record of a Baltimore man whose fatal injury in police custody led to rioting. Officials at FM station WAMO 100, which bills itself as Pittsburgh's No. 1 choice for urban music, said Wednesday the posting by Mike Jax was "too controversial" and partly inaccurate. They also said listeners had complained and threatened to harm Jax, whose real name is Mike Jackson....

Attorneys representing people arrested during this week’s violence and looting are frustrated that suspects are being assigned bail they believe is exorbitant. Many of those charged can’t pay it, and may spend months in jail awaiting trial.