Free Republic

There were two killed and at least other shootings in Baltimore on Tuesday. May was essentially a record breaker for Baltimore when it comes to murders. What to do? (Baltimore Sun) Pastors and other community organizers plan to walk some of Baltimore’s most violent blocks on weekend nights from 8 p.m. until 1 a.m. this summer. Midnight basketball tournaments and a new community center for children named for Freddie Gray not far from Gilmor Homes, where he was arrested, are aimed at uniting the city. Gray, 25, died from an injury sustained in police custody prompting protests and rioting. On...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)BALTIMORE —City police need help to identify a person of interest in the homicide of a Baltimore rapper. Authorities said 25-year-old Leedell Brown died after he was severely attacked inside the Hott Spott Lounge in downtown Baltimore. Hott Spott shut down for alcoholic beverage law violation. Brown's family said the sketch is one step closer to justice. Police released a sketch of a person of interest in the Brown's beating death inside the Hott Spott Lounge on Guilford Avenue in February. "He was just a good guy. I don't really have the words. He was my brother, my little brother,"...

Anti-police sentiment in big cities across the country comes at a cost and we're seeing it now with skyrocketing crime statistics from St. Louis to New York City. Baltimore - Murders have doubled with 43 homicides last month alone Chicago - 900+ shootings this year St. Louis - 55 murders this year Dallas - Violent crime up 10 percent Atlanta - Homicides up 32 percent Milwaukee - Homicides up by 180 percent New York City - Murders up 20 percent Heather Mac Donald at the Wall Street Journal has a detailed piece about the increase in crime that's worth a...

A man charged with raping a 100-year-old woman during a break-in at her southeast Wichita home last fall may be charged with murder in her death three weeks after the attack. Prosecutors have asked Sedgwick County District Judge David Dahl to grant a new preliminary hearing in the case against Kasey Nesbitt in light of an autopsy report that says the woman’s death from a blood clot is a homicide. The clot developed in her body and traveled to her lungs. Martha Schell of Wichita died Oct. 21 at a local nursing home and rehabilitation center, 21 days after she...

ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta) – For the first time ever, scientists have linked prescription drugs that affect the central nervous system to an increased risk of committing a homicide. European researchers found that people who were taking a class of tranquilizers called benzodiazpines were more likely to kill someone than those who were not taking these medicines, reports Live Science.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)BALTIMORE —One of the men fatally shot over the weekend has a well-known and notorious father. Ronnie Thomas III, 22, is the son of the star of the DVD "Stop Snitching," put out in 2004 in Baltimore to discourage witness cooperation. Baltimore's homicides rarely happen in isolation, but are often connected to some other incident, like a long-running grudge, payback, rivalry or retaliation. It was a weekend cookout at Belair Road and Sinclair Lane that ended early Saturday morning with the city's 41st and 42nd homicides in the month of May. One of the two men killed was Thomas. Thomas'...

It was early Thursday morning, and news of another killing had just arrived, this one more chilling than the others. There were two bodies. One was a young woman, aged 31. The other was her 7-year-old son. Both had been shot in the head. It wasn’t long before police and onlookers swarmed the West Baltimore street to bear witness to another grim annotation in the city’s skyrocketing murder toll. “The screams I’m hearing right now as the bodies are removed from the house would rip your heart out,” one reporter wrote on Twitter. Even in Baltimore, where killing is a...

Baltimore Police announced May's 40th homicide victim Saturday, making it the city's deadliest month in a quarter of a century. Justin Mensuphu-Bey, 23 — who also went by Justin Bey, according to court records — was fatally shot in the 1100 block of Washington Boulevard in Pigtown Friday night, police said. The last time the city had 40 homicides in a month was August 1990, when the city had 42 and its population was significantly larger. So far, 2015 has seen 113 homicides. The 100th shooting of the month also happened early Saturday morning. A woman was found shot in...

Murder rates were four times as high in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Gaza than in Israel in 2012, according to a new study on homicide released last week. The findings are part of a global study on homicide by the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think tank. […] 134 people were killed in Israel in 2012, according to this database—assuming it is not including terror victims—at a rate of 1.8 murders per 100,000 people. By contrast, 312 people were killed in the PA that same year, or a staggering 7.4 murders per 100,000 people. …

A 23-year-old Chattanooga man has been charged with criminal homicide after police say he beat a 15-year-old pregnant girl and killed the baby she was carrying. Police say Justin Armour attacked the girl on Tuesday in a vacant house near 2201 East 3rd Street. She gave birth to the stillborn baby — who Armour fathered — early Wednesday morning. Medical staff believe the baby died because of trauma from the assault, according to police. The girl was five months pregnant. The girl and Armour had a history of domestic violence. The girl, who will not be identified by the Times...

Prosecutors ruled that Freddie Gray's death was a homicide. Friday morning, State attorney Marilyn Mosby announced that all six officers involved in the incident have been charged and warrants are out for their arrests. "Six officers are each facing multiple charges, including manslaughter, assault, misconduct in office and false imprisonment: Lt. Brian Rice, Sgt. Alicia White, Officer William Porter, Officer Garrett Miller, Officer Edward Nero and Officer Caesar Goodson," The Baltimore Sun reports. "Goodson, who drove the van, has been charged with second-degree murder." Mosby described how police arrested Gray on no grounds, violated police procedures by cuffing his hands...

The use of police force — against minorities and whites alike — is so poorly monitored that there is no precise accounting of how many citizens are killed by officers, much less their ethnicity or other crucial details. What official data exists suggests that the number of killings by police officers has crept upward only slowly, if at all, in recent years. Since 2009, one regular if incomplete measure, the F.B.I.’s account of justifiable homicides by police officers, ranged between 397 and 426 deaths annually before jumping to 461 in 2013, the latest reporting year. Federal experts have long acknowledged...

It was, the mayor of San Francisco said, a “shocking start” to the year for a city amid a technology boom with soaring rents and construction cranes, fashionable restaurants and gentrifying neighborhoods. In January, four young men sitting in a stolen car were gunned down in a trendy neighborhood near City Hall. Ten days later, a mother was shot dead outside her home in front of her three children. In another, a blood-spattered woman staggered into a restaurant seeking help for bullet wounds, and a man was found shot dead in an SUV outside. With the homicide count climbing to...

Thomas, above, died after being struck with one punch. On December 21st, just before Christmas, there occurred a tragic example of a one punch homicide.  It seems clear that the homicide was unintentional, as the victim agreed to be hit.   Both young men were at a party and appear to have been drinking.  From khou.com: Before the fight, the two shook hands and smoked a cigarette together, witnesses told sheriff's deputies. Thomas, who apparently hit a car that the suspect was sitting in, agreed to let Galen hit him. But Galen hit Thomas so hard that he fell backward...

Jazz already wrote the definitive take on the grisly execution-style shooting of two New York City police officers and the role that irresponsible commentary from elected leaders – particularly Mayor Bill de Blasio – might have played in that attack. Jazz is right to question the part that the mayor’s self-indulgent and unhelpful rhetoric might have played in this incident. Hours after a Staten Island grand jury’s decision to issue no-bill for the death of Eric Garner, de Blasio went on an ill-advised tear in which he impeached the NYPD based solely on his prejudices. “That should never have to...

The death of a 12-year-old Cleveland boy fatally shot by police in November has been formally ruled a homicide, according to a county autopsy report released on Friday that found he was struck once in the abdomen. Tamir Rice, who was black, was shot on Nov. 22 by a white police officer responding to a call of a suspect waving a handgun around in a Cleveland park. The weapon turned out to be a replica that typically fires plastic pellets. The sixth-grader died the next day. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's autopsy report said Rice sustained a single wound to...

The Staten Island man who took the cellphone video seen around the world of a cop killing Eric Garner with a chokehold said Thursday the grand jury was rigged. “I think they already had their minds made up,” Ramsey Orta told the Daily News a day after the panel voted not to charge Officer Daniel Pantaleo with a crime.

If you watch television and the movies, you might get the impression that a punch to the head is no big deal.  That is not true.  A punch to the head is a very serious attack.  It can disable.   It can maim.  It can kill.  The head is a vulnerable target, which is why an attacker aims for it.  I first became aware of  the deadly potential of one punch to the head in the 1970's, from a long forgotten news story.   Later, the son of a close friend killed a man with one punch.  He was eventually found...

A 10-year-old boy has been charged with criminal homicide after he brutally beat 90-year-old Helen Novak to death. Tristen Kurilla, apparently angry because the 90-year-old woman shouted at him, hooked a cane around Novak's neck and then held her down and beat her to death while she was in bed, according to prosecutors. Prosecutors said today that they have charged the child as an adult for the murder of Helen Novak, a woman who was under the care of the child's grandfather. The Associated Press reported that the incident occurred on Saturday when the boy was visiting his grandfather's house...

I am getting tired of this "they killing us" screed from African Americans. While I do not know the facts of what happened in Ferguson and I think the police are coming off as shady the fact of the matter isit isn't quite like what the left wants you to believe. First off although blacks make up 12.6% of the US population. Whites make up 72.4%. Which means there are 5.75 times more Whites in the US. Why is this important? Well black leadership and columnists are claiming they are disproportionately the victims of racial violence. Well the cold hard...