Free Republic

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Next week marks one year since Illinois outlawed cash bail, and advocates and critics of the change have been waiting patiently to see it if has been successful — or as some predicted, a disaster. A panel of stakeholders, including Cook County Chief Public Defender Sharone R. Mitchell Jr., spoke Wednesday about the largely positive outcomes of ending cash bail. "There were a lot of predictions about things that did not happen," said Mitchell.

CHICAGO - A group of at least a dozen people looted a UPS tractor-trailer on Chicago's Southwest Side Thursday morning following a crash. At 10:46 a.m. in the 2100 block of South Kedzie Avenue in the city’s Little Village neighborhood, the truck’s roof was torn off while attempting to drive underneath a viaduct. The slight miscalculation was only the first in a series of bizarre events that unfolded. As the truck was traveling northbound on Kedzie Avenue, just past Cermak Road, the truck driver struck the viaduct. SkyFOX captured stunning video of its roof peeled off like a tin can....

BOSTON — Boston police are investigating after high-end items were stolen from several Back Bay stores Saturday. Alo and Zara, both of which are on Newbury Street, were two of the stores that were robbed in the area, which is a shopping destination for locals and tourists. Advertisement Store management at the Sunglass Hut in the nearby Prudential Mall said they were hit as well on Saturday. They said a group of men and women walked out of the store with expensive sunglasses without paying for the items.

Oakland’s crime rate, consistently higher than the Bay Area’s other big cities, has surged since the COVID-19 pandemic, while the rates in San Francisco and San Jose have leveled off, an analysis of California Department of Justice data shows.

“They’re coming.” That’s what Miguel, a Venezuelan migrant who came to America with his wife and two daughters, told me about the gang, Tren de Aragua, earlier this year. “And they’re very bad.” The past few days have shown how far the Venezuelan gang appears willing to go. In Aurora, Colorado, Tren de Aragua has allegedly terrorized the local community. According to Mayor Mike Coffman, at least two buildings in the city “have fallen to” a group of armed men, suspected to be gang members. “This is an organized criminal effort. Whether it’s Tren de Aragua, that remains to be...

America is a trust society. We trust our elected representatives will work in our interests. We trust the police will honestly and apolitically enforce the law. We trust criminals will be prosecuted and if convicted, sentences commensurate with their offenses will be imposed. We trust our currency will retain its value, and contracts and property rights will be enforced. We trust we’ll be able to go about our daily business without risking injury or death. We trust our borders will be protected, and our national security secured. We used to, anyway. Graphic: Libs of TikTok screenshot. The gang takeover of...

...Referring to one of ABF’s constituent brands, Primark, Mr Weston said the retailer annually lost more to shoplifting than it paid in business rates... Shortly before Mr Weston’s despairing announcement, Paul Gerrard, who runs public affairs at the Co-op...spoke of “people coming into our stores with wheelie bins, people coming into our store with builder’s bags to steal the whole confectionery section, the entire sprit section, the entire meat section”... The lawlessness that gives Britain such a dystopian feel – the marauding shoplifters, the Rolex rippers, the smartphone thieves, the lethal parade of teenagers with knives whose conception of the...

Speakers predict dystopian future, call for dismantling capitalism PHOENIX — Two professors discussed dismantling capitalism and electing a female president to restore reproductive rights, and warned of a dystopian future with “cannibalism” and “forced breeding camps,” at an event held Wednesday at Arizona State University. “Jenny Irish’s HATCH: A Speculative Future for Reproductive Rights” was held both in person and via Zoom. It featured Irish, a poet and English professor at ASU, as well as Professor Angela Lober, director of the Academy of Lactation Programs at ASU’s Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation. Professor Lober opened the one-hour moderated...

Thrift shoppers will need to find a new location to score deals in Seattle, after the company announced that it will be closing two locations due to "escalating theft, safety concerns" as well as "rising rents." Evergreen Goodwill of Northwest Washington announced the closures Friday in a blog post, saying that the decision came after they were unable to "maintain a secure and sustainable environment for both employees and shoppers." "The announcement was made as escalating theft, safety concerns, and rising rents have made it increasingly difficult to maintain a secure and sustainable environment for both employees and shoppers," the...

Blades are carving up the Big Apple. Stabbings and slashings across the city this year spiked 6% to 3,582 incidents through Aug. 11, up from 3,370 during the same period time last year, according to NYPD data requested by The Post. So far this year, 60 people have died by the blade — an 11% surge from the 54 in 2023. “There’s no reason for so much crime to go on,” Alton Scott, a veteran MTA conductor who needed 34 stitches to close a gruesome neck wound after being slashed in March, told The Post. In May, 17-year-old Sarah Rivera...

Two brutes accused of randomly pummeling an 82-year-old woman on a Bronx street have been released without bail — even though the violent pair has a combined 18 prior arrests, The Post has learned. William Ballinger and Tammie Moore — both of whom have lengthy rap sheets — were busted by cops last week and charged with second-and third-degree assault for the vicious Aug. 2 attack on the elderly home health aide in Olinville, police said. Prosecutors asked that each of the 32-year-old defendants be held on $30,000 cash bail or $90,000 bond during their arraignments in Bronx Criminal Court...

Starbucks just closed a 30 year location that operated in Manhattan NYC since the 90's, and was once the largest of its kind in the city. Store workers blame rent increases which the landlord disputes, but local residents think the store may have had other problems that lead to its closure... NYC crime, homelessness, and employee safety all play into this review of why the largest Starbucks in NYC is gone.

Hours after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a crime bill to stop "smash and grabs," a bicycling mob ransacked three Hollywood 7-Eleven stores in under 25 minutes. NBC Los Angeles reported that the first store was hit shortly after 8 pm. The bike gang reportedly broke into the store, stealing food and beverages, and left the store with a broken window. Just 16 minutes later, a second 7-Eleven near Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue was attacked, during which an employee was allegedly assaulted. A third store on Santa Monica Boulevard was hit at 8:22 pm.

Brazen thieves on bikes raided three 7-Eleven stores in California in the space of half an hour, smashing their way in and taking all they could carry. About 20 robbers swarmed inside the shops in Hollywood, grabbing food, drinks, cigarettes and anything else on shelves. Staff could only stand by helplessly as their convenience stores were ransacked in the blink of an eye before the invaders moved on to the next. The raids lasted a matter of minutes each, starting at 8:02pm on Friday when the 7040 West Sunset Boulevard store was hit, police said. Another near Hollywood and Highland...

Amajority of likely California voters support stiffer penalties for crimes involving theft and fentanyl, according to a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times. The results of the poll released Friday showed that 56% of Californians would support Proposition 36, an initiative on the November ballot that would impose stricter sentences for repetitive theft and offenses involving the deadly drug fentanyl. The proposition has been at the center of a battle in the state Capitol this year as Republicans and law enforcement advocates call for the undoing of Democratic reform policies that downgraded some felonies...

San Francisco’s last Denny’s diner has closed, with the franchise owner blaming vandalism and alleged dining and dashing for the store’s shuttering. The restaurant location closed on Aug. 1 with a sign saying such displayed in a storefront window and a yellow Denny’s sign outside painted over as of Monday. The owner of the restaurant, who previously closed another San Francisco location he owned in 2019, said people kept skipping out without paying their bills. “We’re the only store left, and we operated until the last day that we could,” Denny’s franchisee Chris Haque told local news site SFGATE Monday....

Between 2016 and 2020, violent crime fell by 17% under Trump — and soared by 43% under Biden between 2020 and 2022. Of course, news outlets routinely assert that Americans are mistaken in believing that violent crime is rising. But Democrats and the media don’t understand the difference between the number of crimes reported to police and the total number of crimes.

When the DNC delegates come to Chicago, they’ll be visiting the city that for more than a decade has experienced the most murders in the country. Chicago suffered 617 total homicides in 2023, marking the 12th year in a row it has led the country.And it will be 13 years in a row if Chicago’s 2024’s homicide numbers continue at their current pace. The below chart shows how the top five cities nationally for total homicides may change from year to year, but what always remains true is Chicago’s position at the very top – often the extreme outlier.That’s just...

The last remaining Denny’s in San Francisco closed its doors this month because customers would frequently leave without paying their bill in the crime-plagued city, according to the restaurant’s owner. Chris Haque shuttered the 24-hour diner at 816 Mission St. near the Union Square section on Aug. 1 after 25 years. “We’re the only store left, and we operated until the last day that we could,” Haque told SFGATE. “The cost of doing business is tremendous. There’s vandalism, and people come and eat and walk away, and there’s no one to stop them.” Haque also lamented the fact that a...

A 2019 video of Kamala Harris vowing to shut down all immigration detention centers on “day one” as president has surfaced. Then-Senator Kamala Harris promised to free all criminal illegal aliens if elected president during a town hall in Iowa City, Iowa in October 2019. “I want to know, when you become president, would you be committing to close the immigration detention centers?” an attendee asked Kamala Harris. “Absolutely, on day one. On day one,” Kamala Harris said. WATCH: Open borders Kamala wants to free all criminal illegal immigrants. Attendee: “I want to know, when you become president, would you...