Free Republic

Percentage of African-Americans in U.S. Police Departments Remains Flat Since 2007 But police hiring of other minorities has increased, report shows By Ben Kesling and Cameron McWhirter May 14, 2015 2:43 p.m. ET 28 COMMENTS The percentage of African-Americans in U.S. police departments has remained flat since before the recession, even as police hiring of other minorities has increased, according to a U.S. Department of Justice survey released Thursday. A lack of black officers, especially in communities with large African-American populations, has been cited frequently in the wake of police-involved deaths of black residents that sparked riots in cities from...

BREAKING: GotNews IDs Gay Activist Train Engineer Who Caused Amtrak Crash UPDATED W/ PHOTOS! May 13, 2015 by Charles C. Johnson 184 Comments Gotnews.com has independently identified the engineer at the center of the Amtrak crash that has killed at least seven. Brandon Bostian is the 32-year-old gay man who lawyered up after a deadly derailment in Philadelphia. The train was reportedly going twice the speed limit.

A Dundalk man continues to recover after being violently beaten by a group of teenagers. Now a 17-year-old is facing attempted murder charges, a 15-year-old is charged with assault and more arrests are expected. Meghan McCorkell has more on the brutal attack. Richard Fletcher is out of the hospital, but he suffered extensive injuries. We want to warn you: some of the video and images you are about to see are very disturbing. Horrifying cell phone video shows a group of teens surrounding 61-year-old Richard Fletcher, kicking and hitting him again and again until he drops to the ground. He...

A student union officer who banned white people and men from an event promoting equality has claimed she "cannot be racist" because she is an ethnic minority woman. Goldsmiths University's student union welfare and diversity officer Bahar Mustafa sparked a backlash when she told white people and men they should not attend an event on "diversifying the curriculum". She wrote on Facebook: “Invite loads of BME Women and non-binary people!! Also, if you’ve been invited and you’re a man and/or white PLEASE DON’T COME just cos I invited a bunch of people and hope you will be responsible enough to...

Occasionally, I wonder whether I'm alone in some of my wonderings. Look at the claim that conservatives or Republicans have launched a war on women as a part of their overall mean-spirited agenda. In the case of mistreatment of women — or of anyone else — assault, rape and murder are about as horrible as it gets. But I would be willing to bet a lot of money that most of the assaults, rapes and murders of women are done by people who identify as liberals or Democrats, particularly in the cases of murderers. Most crime, except perhaps white-collar crime,...

When I was a freshman at the University of Chicago in 1996, I heard the same thing again and again: Do not leave the boundaries of Hyde Park. Do not go north of 47th Street. Do not go south of 61st Street. Do not go west of Cottage Grove Avenue. These boundaries were fairly explicit, almost to the point of being an official university policy. The campus police department was not committed to protecting students beyond the area, and the campus safety brochure advised students not to use the “El” train stops just a couple of blocks beyond them unless...

A new book about a young, female Army officer who routinely accompanied Ranger units on raids in Afghanistan is shining a light on a select group of American women who have made history in modern warfare. "Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield" focuses on 1st Lt. Ashley White, an incredibly physically fit soldier who joined the Special Operations Command Cultural Support Team effort in 2010. The pilot program was designed to train women and have them serve with Army Ranger and other special operations direct-action units so they could gather...

CHICAGO (CBS) — Chicago is the most segregated city in the United States, while also being one of the most diverse, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census Data. How can that be possible? Because “diversity” and “segregation” are two different things, when you look at them from a city-wide level and then the neighborhood level, writes Nate Silver, the founder and editor of the Five Thirty Eight blog. “Chicago deserves its reputation as a segregated city,” Silver writes. “But it is also an extremely diverse city. And the difference between those terms — which are often misused and...

LOUISVILLE, Ky (WDRB) -- A tourist in town for the Kentucky Derby was shot and killed near his hotel Saturday night. Police have charged three people in connection to 49-year-old Toronto resident Scott Hunter's murder. Friends of Scott Hunter describe him as a great guy and a lively character, he was a bartender in downtown Toronto for nine years. "We're trying to get our heads around it and trying to comprehend how something like this could happen," said Beau Opperman, Hunter's boss at House on Parliament and. Opperman says Hunter was in Louisville with a friend to go to the...

It’s a big week in the Republican presidential primaries. Today, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson both announced their candidacies, and Mike Huckabee is expected to make his official tomorrow. Now that the field is filling out (though there are still plenty of candidates in the running-but-officially-not-yet-running category), it’s looking a little unusual.In fact, the group of Republicans running for president is almost everything the Republican Party itself is not: it’s demographically diverse, it’s less wealthy than you might expect, and it’s extremely young. The question is whether voters will look at them and say that the GOP really has changed.By...

Numbers risking the journey in search of a better life have continued to rise two weeks after as many as 900 people drowned in the worst Mediterranean shipwreck in living memory. Crew from the Italian naval vessel Bettica found the woman in labor on a boat overnight -- one of 34 vessels intercepted over the weekend. A photo posted online showed her new daughter sleeping in a makeshift cradle decorated with a pink bow. "Both mother and daughter are in good health," the navy said in a statement. Growing lawlessness and anarchy in Libya -- the last point on one...

BALTIMORE, Maryland — Racial protests supposed to be peaceful quickly turned into violent riots on Saturday evening, closing down the city of Baltimore for some time—and creating a panic for thousands of people as just 50 miles away elites in Washington partied with President Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Personally, I wasn’t supposed to be on the job tonight as a reporter. After a long news week and as several of my contemporaries lived high on the hog down in D.C. at the so-called “Nerd Prom,” me and my brother left D.C. to go see our Boston...

This shocking video shows black racism on the street; can you imagine the media coverage if these guys were white? Extreme language, NSFW

A Stroudsburg, Pa., woman suffered a broken eye socket and bruises during the attack, which took place in a local movie theater of all places. And why did the group of teen girls allegedly pounce on victim Cindy Santamaria-Williams? She tells WNEP-TV, which broke the story, that she 'shushed' them for being "loud and cursing." Worse, the attack didn't occur during the heat of the moment inside the theater. The woman tells WNEP that the girls jumped her after the film let out: "They immediately jumped on me and knocked me to the ground, punched me in the face," she...

"... Walker concedes nothing to the conventional wisdom about what the GOP must do to compete in a more culturally tolerant, ethnically diverse and economically insecure America. And the GOP faithful love it.It starts with ethnicity and race. Since 2012, many prominent Republicans have made overtures to African Americans and Latinos....Not Walker. His speech in Iowa not only slammed President Obama’s executive action legalizing some undocumented immigrants. It didn’t even include the love-letter to legal immigrants that Republicans typically use to shield themselves from charges of being anti-Hispanic. In addition, Walker said nothing about reaching out to African Americans and...

Six more female soldiers have qualified to attend Army Ranger School later this month after passing the same physical fitness standards as men, including six pull-ups, 49 push-ups in two minutes, 59 sit-ups in two minutes and a five-mile run in 40 minutes, Army officials said Wednesday. The six additional women, all of them officers, will join at least six other female soldiers who have passed the Ranger Training Assessment Course that qualified them to attend the first gender-integrated Ranger School course that will begin April 20 and last for two months.

A man has been brutally assaulted on a St. Louis light rail car after he refused to give his opinion on the shooting of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson, Missouri, last August. David Autry, 43, was travelling home on the MetroLink train at 10pm on Monday when he was approached by a young man in a red T-shirt and baseball cap. The shocking incident was captured on the train's surveillance camera and was also recorded by a passenger who posted his cell phone footage online.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A 4-year-old girl has grabbed her purple raincoat, slipped out of her house at 3 a.m. and hopped a Philadelphia bus in search of a snack. Bus driver Harlan Jenifer says the girl swung her legs in a seat as she chanted, “All I want is a slushie.”

Police have identified the suspect who allegedly shot a police officer eye during a vehicle stop, sending him into a coma where he's now fighting for his life. Officer John Moynihan, 34, was attacked when he pulled over suspected gang members in Boston, Massachusetts, on Friday evening. The suspect, identified as 41-year-old Angelo West, was shot dead by other officers at the scene in Boston on Friday evening after he opened fire. A female bystander was shot in the arm. West allegedly shot Moynihan 'point blank' and emptied his revolver in the unprovoked attack, police said, according to the Boston...

When Adams was 4, his mother married an American soldier, and Adams grew up alternating between the United States and Germany, moving wherever his stepfather was based. "I had a great childhood. My mother loved me; my stepdad loved me," Adams said. "But I remember growing up that a certain amount of pride and entitlement engulfed my thinking about the superiority of the white race." ... "That's where I got in community with hundreds of other people that believed what I believed," Adams said. "We wanted to see our white race protected for generations to come. We did not want...