Free Republic

In December 2022, Reason reported that both state and federal wildlife agents routinely trespass onto private land and plant cameras. Two Tennessee homeowners successfully sued the state over the practice, and a three-judge panel ruled in their favor. The state appealed the decision, and this week the court of appeals ruled in the homeowners' favor. At issue is a state law allowing officers of the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency (TWRA) to "go upon any property, outside of buildings, posted or otherwise," in order to "enforce all laws relating to wildlife." In the case of Terry Rainwaters and Hunter Hollingsworth, TWRA...

The family of a 23-year-old US Airman who was fatally shot by a Florida sheriff's deputy retained prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump. Roger Fortson was shot and killed inside his apartment on Friday when an Okaloosa County Sheriff's deputy responding to a disturbance call "reacted in self-defense after he encountered a 23-year-old man armed with a gun." "We demand accountability for those responsible for his death," Crump said in an email to Newsweek. "And we stand in solidarity with Roger's family and friends as they navigate this unimaginable loss."

They're studying Facebook posts. They're using frame-by-frame video screenshots of faces to match with gargantuan databases of named faces. They're seeking and taking tips from "friends" and relatives and ex-boyfriends. For the UCLA Jewish students who got into a scrap with pro-Hamas illegal campout protestors, no doubt after hearing a slew of antisemitic statements and being blocked from attending class, they're doing exactly what they did to identify and hunt down January 6 protestors. According to the Los Angeles Times, which reports this like it was a good thing: It is shaping up to be perhaps the biggest case in...

Police officers repeatedly fired their guns at a New York City man who had called 911 during a mental health crisis as his mother and younger brother begged officers not to shoot, bodycam video released Friday shows. Win Rozario's family called on the officers to be fired and charged with murder after the footage of the killing was made public by the state's attorney general. “The video that was released makes it clear that Win should be alive but the police came and murdered him in our kitchen without any care for him or us,” said a statement from Rozario’s...

Harold Medina, who severely injured a driver while fleeing a gunman, ordered a thorough investigation of his own conduct.The Albuquerque Police Department's Fleet Crash Review Board, which consists of four officers and a civilian, has unanimously deemed a February 17 accident involving Police Chief Harold Medina "non-preventable." That conclusion, a local TV station reports, "got some city councilors asking questions" during an Albuquerque City Council meeting on Wednesday night. It is not hard to see why. Medina severely injured the driver of a car that he broadsided with his unmarked, department-issued pickup truck after he ran a red light while...

A federal judge on Thursday finished handing down prison terms of about 10 to 40 years to six white former Mississippi law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty to breaking into a home without a warrant and torturing two Black men in an hourslong attack that included beatings, repeated uses of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth. U.S. District Judge Tom Lee called the culprits' actions “egregious and despicable" and gave sentences near the top of federal guidelines to five of the six men who attacked Michael Corey Jenkins...

The executive director of the Little Rock airport who was shot by federal agents serving a search warrant at his home earlier this week has died. A statement from the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport announced the death of Bryan Malinowski at noon Thursday. The statement from Bill Walker, chair of the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission, noted that under Malinowski’s leadership the airport saw “significant growth and success” and offered condolences to Malinowski’s family. “With a heavy heart, we announce the passing of our executive director Bryan Malinowski. Bryan was a 16-year employee of the airport. Under his...

Shocking body camera footage showed at least eight officers dressed in tactical gear and carrying automatic rifles jumping out of an armored vehicle and approaching Johnson, who was just wearing a black bathrobe and a bonnet, the following day. They then proceeded to use a battering ram to get into Johnson’s garage even though she explained to them how to open the door, and broke ceiling tiles to get into her attic — standing on top of one of her brand-new dining room chairs, according to a lawsuit Johnson filed in December 2022.

It’s one of the ultimate nightmares. You find yourself living under a totalitarian regime which is militantly opposed to your personal beliefs and convictions. But you refuse to yield or cave in. To compromise is to lose your very soul. So the government fights back. “Go ahead,” the authorities say, “and be a hero. But it will cost you dearly. We are taking away your children.” As a reader, your first thought might be, “Thank God we live in America.” Well, think again.

WILLMAR, Minn. — A 75-year-old man has died after a sheriff's deputy in rural Minnesota shocked him with a Taser during an attempted eviction, officials announced Wednesday. The cause of Michael James Yanacheak's death in Willmar is undetermined pending further investigation by the medical examiner, the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) said in a statement. The BCA, which was called in to investigate the incident, said Riley Kampsen is the Kandiyohi County sheriff’s deputy who deployed his Taser. Kampsen has five years of law enforcement experience. According to the BCA timeline, two Kandiyohi County sheriff’s deputies and two Willmar...

Priscilla Villarreal, also known as "Lagordiloca," has sparked a debate about free speech and who, exactly, is a journalist.A journalist asked the police a few questions and was arrested by that same agency for publishing the answers. That this happened not in China or Russia but in the U.S. may raise some eyebrows. Yet that's the conduct a federal court greenlit last week when it ruled that law enforcement in Laredo, Texas, did not obviously violate the Constitution when officers allegedly misled a magistrate judge and arrested Priscilla Villarreal for doing basic reporting, adding another twist to a case that...

Sarah McAbee’s husband, a former sheriff’s deputy in Tennessee, was incarcerated for 26 months before he was given a trial for his role in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. “And clearly it wasn’t a jury of his peers,” McAbee said on the “Vicki McKenna Show,” a radio program in Madison, Wisconsin. Ronald McAbee now awaits sentencing after being convicted of five felonies in a D.C. district court. Mr. McAbee had already pled guilty to another felony and a misdemeanor related to the riot, and prosecutors are now asking the judge to give him 14 to 17 years behind...

VIDEOA few days ago I posted a video which showed British pianist Brendan Kavanaugh in a dispute with Communist Chinese who demanded he remove the video showing them even though he was playing a piano in a public space. At the time it seemed that Kavanaugh, whose story was publicized worldwide, had triumphed in his support for freedom as opposed to CCP thuggery. However, as you can see, this apparent victory for freedom came DESPITE one of the cops who tried to get Kavanaugh to cave to the Communist Chinese. At one point you can see a look of smug...

VALLEJO, Calif. -- The ordeal of Denise Huskins, whose kidnapping from her boyfriend’s Northern California home was first dismissed as a hoax by law enforcement, is getting renewed attention as the subject of a new Netflix docuseries, “American Nightmare.” Here’s a look at the facts of the case, which captivated the country: THE KIDNAPPING On March 23, 2015, Huskins was kidnapped by a masked intruder who broke into the home in Vallejo, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, told detectives he woke up to a bright light on his face and that intruders had...

Your car may be smarter than you realize, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit recently ruled that it is not a violation of privacy for a car to store text and call data from your cell phone automatically. While modern convenience often comes with an associated cost in terms of sacrificed privacy, a class-action lawsuit brought against five major car manufacturers—Ford, General Motors, Honda, Toyota and Volkswagen—asserted that under the Washington State Privacy Act drivers’ rights had been violated due to their unawareness of what they were signing away when connecting their smartphones to their cars....

Police also wrongly cited him for "improper hand signal" after the man flipped them off.Last year, Delaware police prevented 54-year-old Jonathan Guessford from holding a sign warning drivers about a speed trap and wrongfully cited him for "improper hand signal" after he flipped off the officers who seized and tore up his sign. Police have now agreed to pay Guessford $50,000 as part of a settlement reached in a lawsuit alleging that police violated his civil rights. Following several run-ins with the police, Guessford decided to "stage protests whenever he saw police officers stopping unsuspected vehicles using a radar gun,"...

An Alabama police officer has been placed on leave after a video showed her arresting a handcuffed man and hitting him with a stun gun. The unidentified cop, from the Reform Police Department in Pickens County, was seen on camera swearing at a black man while he was handcuffed on Saturday. District Attorney Andy Hamlin said the man, wearing a white t-shirt, gray sweats and a baseball hat, was being arrested on a trafficking fentanyl charge. The female police officer shouts at the cuffed man to get down and lie on the front of the vehicle, with his face down....

A former Memphis Police officer who has been charged in Tyre Nichols’ death had a previous record of policy violations and accusations of excessive force as a correctional officer, according to personnel records. Demetrius Haley was previously a correctional officer at a prison run by the Shelby County Division of Corrections from 2015 to 2020. In his work as a corrections officer, an inmate named Cordarius Sledge accused Haley of using chemical spray on him, constituting excessive force, in 2015. However, an investigation didn’t find any violations of use of force policies of the department, and found allegations unsubstantiated.

A former Virginia cop and self-proclaimed 'amateur boxer' punched a mentally-ill patient in the face - but the Judge dropped charges against the attacker. Shocking video shows the moment Jemarr Mosley, 25, punched the Virginia Beach General Hospital resident three times in the face as the victim fell to the floor. Mosley - along with several other officers - were watching a group of patients in a dayroom at the facility on February 9. One patient was a 'known spitter' is understood have approached Mosley and another officer before spitting at them. Mosley - who testified that he was once...

The chief of police in Columbus, Ohio, apologized to a father who posted a video showing two officers blaming his 11-year-old daughter for being groomed after he called to report it.