Free Republic

Not too long ago, Chicago’s bloody gang warfare was restricted to small, concealable handguns. That’s not the case anymore. The first time 14-year-old Brisa Ramirez remembers hearing rifle fire was when a man was shot dead on a Sunday afternoon outside a Catholic church around the corner from her home in Back of the Yards. She raises her voice to imitate the sharp, metallic bursts. Ta. Ta. Ta. Ta. Ta. It was a foreign sound even in this neighborhood accustomed to gunfire. “It wasn’t like a normal (shooting). … It was like something more terrible,” Brisa says. “A noise that...

A Georgia man and woman cried in court Monday after they were both sentenced to long prison terms for terrorizing a black child’s birthday party with Confederate flags, racial slurs and threats. Jose Ismael Torres and Kayla Rae Norton were convicted earlier this month under a street gang terrorism law for the 2015 harassment in Douglassville, outside Atlanta, and cried in court on Monday. Video footage from the party, little more than a month after Dylann Roof’s Charleston church massacre, shows a parade of trucks roaring by with Confederate battle flags.

The Trump administration has taken its first step to building the wall on the Mexican-American border as it has requested proposals from contractors and plans to have a prototype built by mid-March. The US Customs and Border Protection issued the preliminary requests on Friday and said it will accept proposals next month for the design of the wall. The agency also said the it would release requests on or about March 6 asking companies for prototype ideas.

As President Donald Trump prepares to deport millions of immigrants in the country illegally, a new national study shows undocumented workers pump billions of dollars into Connecticut’s economy each year. The New American Economy, a coalition of mayors and business leaders who support “sensible” immigration reform, found that the nearly 130,000 undocumented Connecticut residents pay $397 million in annual federal, state and local taxes, account for $3.1 billion in household income and represent $2.7 billion in spending power. “This research proves what we’ve known for years: Immigrants are a boom to our local economy and in every community in America,”...

The Chicago Police Department conducted a series of overnight raids from Thursday into Friday that resulted in 81 arrests, mostly for drug- and weapons-related offenses, Supt. Eddie Johnson said Friday. The raids, focused on the city's South and West Side neighborhoods, were "focused on the underlying source of crime in these areas: the sale of narcotics," Johnson said at a press conference Friday afternoon. Of the 81 people arrested, Johnson said 61 are previously convicted felons, 49 are documented gang members, 19 have previously been arrested on gun charges, 14 are currently on parole, and 65 have been previously identified...

A gang member who was recently freed from jail killed his cousin and stole his car Monday then shot and killed a California police officer and wounded his partner before being wounded himself, authorities said. Whittier Officer Keith Lane Boyer died and Officer Patrick Hazel was wounded when they answered a report of a traffic accident in the eastern Los Angeles County suburb. A motorist pointed out the location of the car that had rear-ended his vehicle, and the officers approached the driver. "When they get him out of the car, they go to pat him down for weapons, they...

Police have charged two adults and three 17-year-olds with murder in connection with the death of a 15-year-old Maryland girl found dead in Virginia. Damaris Reyes Rivas was reported missing in December, and her body was found near Lake Accotink Park in Springfield on Saturday. (snip) Police would not identify the gang involved, but Damaris’s mother, who now fears for her own life, says the brutal Salvadorian gang MS-13 is responsible. Her mother also says that she has been getting threats from members of the gang blaming her for the arrests that police have made. (snip) ICE has lodged detainers...

The killing of one teenage girl and the disappearances of two others who have since returned home may all be connected and may be gang-related, Fairfax County police said Tuesday.(snip) Damaris’s mother, Maria Reyes, told The Washington Post on Tuesday that her daughter had fallen in with a local clique of MS-13, before her disappearance from the family home Dec. 10. On Jan. 6, Damaris appeared to have been sent warnings that gang members wanted to kill her, according to Facebook messages her mother shared with The Post. “Those suckers want to kill you,” read one Facebook message, while another...

Two scenes in Chicago: •Children playing basketball in a schoolyard suddenly scatter. Because it begins to rain or was time to go home? Yes, in most neighborhoods that's why children run with purpose. In parts of Chicago, children run from gunfire. They know the sound. They know they should duck. Kanari Gentry Bowers, 12 years old, is in a West Englewood elementary schoolyard with classmates early Saturday evening when they hear shots. Kanari knows to duck, her uncle says, but the kids scatter. Kanari is struck in the head by a bullet.

The various criminal and civil cases associated with the Waco Twin Peaks bloodbath 639 days ago remain fossilized and nobody – certainly not the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas – gives a damn. It has been a year, eight months and 28 days since the illegal, mass arrests. The ACLU’s stated mission is “to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” But the disillusioning truth is that the ACLU is just another meetup group for sanctimonious law school grads. And, for the...

Agents Bust Violent Street Gang In Santa Cruz February 13, 2017 7:19 AM SANTA CRUZ (KPIX 5) – The Department of Homeland Security and Santa Cruz police busted what was described as a violent street gang linked to murders and drug trafficking early Monday morning. Residents said they were woken up by the sound of helicopters and flash bang grenades around 4:00 a.m. At that time, authorities launched raids in multiple locations, making several arrests. Authorities said the gang has been operating in the Santa Cruz area for at least a decade. “It’s been a multi-year investigation, into a criminal...

A suspected diaper thief shot dead outside a Pine Hills Wal-Mart on Saturday was a fugitive on felony probation at the time of his death, state records show. Arthur “Art” Adams, 19, was a gang member who was planning to sell the diapers, Orange County sheriff’s Capt. Angelo Nieves said. Adams had an arrest record dating to 2011, when he was 15 years old, records show. He was sentenced to four years of probation in June for two 2013 racketeering convictions. A customer — a 50-year-old man — shot Adams after stepping in to help an employee who had followed...

Pastor Darrell Scott, who has long been a fervent supporter of Donald Trump, met with the President at the White House Wednesday as part of a meeting for Black History Month, and used his opportunity at the table to reveal a piece of curious news to the Commander in Chief. “I was contacted,” he said to the President, “by some of the top gang thugs in Chicago for a sit down. They reached out to me because they associated me with you. They respect you.” “They believe in what you’re doing,” Scott continued, “and they want to have a sit...

Dr. Darrell Scott, senior pastor of New Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, said the gangs “want to work with the administration … they believe in this administration; they didn’t believe in the prior administration. They told me this outta their mouths.”

Sessions Promises to ‘Properly Enforce’ Current Gun Laws, Endorses NRA-Backed Project Exile Stephen Gutowski January 10, 2017 Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) said Tuesday he would prosecute gun crimes that fall under federal jurisdiction during his confirmation hearing for attorney general. Sessions’ views on gun crime prosecutions were made clear during an exchange between him and Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas). Cornyn framed the question in terms of violence against police and gun violence against minority communities. He specifically focused on gun crimes committed by felons who were already prohibited from possessing firearms. “We ought to hold our police and...

SAGINAW (WWJ/AP) – A man whose drug-related prison sentence was commuted in November by President Barack Obama has been fatally shot at a federal halfway house in Michigan after two men with assault-style rifles sought him out, police said. Two men wearing masks went into Bannum Place in Saginaw on Monday night with plans to kill 31-year-old Damarlon Thomas, a former Saginaw gang member. Lt. David Kaiser said Thomas was shot several times by one of the men as some of the roughly two dozen people at the home were held at gunpoint.

NORTHWEST MIAMI-DADE, FLA. (WSVN) - Police and fire rescue crews are on the scene after three people were shot and five others were injured at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park. Miami-Dade Police was among the multiple agencies that responded to the scene of the shooting at 6011 N.W. 32nd Avenue, in Northwest Miami-Dade, Monday just before 4 p.m. At around 5:20 p.m., Miami-Dade Police tweeted out that they had detained two people and recovered two weapons from the scene.

These inner-city hellholes are a direct result of leftist rule, and children and innocents are dying because of it. The federal government must start treating gang violence as Domestic Terrorism in order to save our children “In East Orange, initiations were completed by murdering someone, for no other reason than to prove to a tremendously cold, tremendously tight brotherhood that you possessed the hardness required to watch their backs.” —Jeff Hobbs Following a most recent heinous crime in Chicago where four, black 18-year old thugs, two male, two female, kidnapped, tortured and abused a terrified young white man with special...

The video is horrible. A young white man is bound and gagged on the floor, huddled in a corner. A group of black men and women beat him, kick him, and cut his hair until his scalp bleeds. One of the men yells, “F*** white people. F*** Donald Trump.” It happened in Chicago. It was all streamed on Facebook Live. Chicago, of course, is the city that’s become the “nation’s abattoir,” with more murders than Los Angeles and New York City combined. And this is the second Chicago video in two months showing black suspects beating a white victim...

... There have been 22 homicides in the Prince William so far in 2016, compared to 10 last year. In many communities, the prospect of 22 murders in a year might not seem like a cause for concern. This year the District has so far tallied 134 slayings and neighboring Fairfax County so far had 18 homicides. But the numbers in Prince William County are the highest in the county since authorities began tracking homicides in 1975. The next most deadly year was 2006, when 16 people were slain. ... Experts attribute the increase to a range of factors, including...