Free Republic

BRENTWOOD, N.Y. — Four dead teenagers. Two weeks. One town. And a ruthless gang, the authorities say, was most likely responsible for the toll. Again. On Sept. 13, Nisa Mickens, 15, and her best friend, Kayla Cuevas, 16, were murdered, their battered bodies found near an elementary school here. A week later and just two miles away, the skeletal remains of two more teenagers — identified as Oscar Acosta, 19, and Miguel Garcia-Moran, 15 — were found in the woods near a psychiatric hospital. Oscar had been missing since May, Miguel since February. Their deaths have been ruled homicides.

Two roadwork signs on Long Island were hacked in what appeared to be pro-Donald Trump messages. […] The portable Highway Department sign on Route 25 in rural Suffolk County asked drivers to “Vote For Donald Trump.” Another state Department of Transportation sign was hacked on Ocean Avenue in Ronkonkoma reading “Trump — Suck One Hillary” before it was removed. Many who saw the sign were outraged. …

A green energy project has some environmentalists seeing red. Solar energy ordinarily wins praise from groups that want to cut greenhouse gases, but a proposed solar project at a defunct Long Island nuclear power plant has stirred outrage because it requires demolishing 350 acres of woodlands.

A New York utility plans to approve a wind farm off eastern Long Island that it says would be the nation’s largest offshore wind energy project built to date. The project would be the first phase of a more ambitious effort to construct hundreds of electricity-producing turbines in the Atlantic Ocean in the coming years. The announcement that the Long Island Power Authority plans to approve a proposed 90-megawatt, 15-turbine wind farm in U.S. waters east of Montauk at a meeting next week was greeted enthusiastically by energy experts, elected officials and environmentalists. […] The U.S. lags behind Europe and...

A struggling liberal arts college that had a striking waterfront campus but fewer and fewer students is closing its doors. Dowling College President Albert Inserra said Tuesday the college, on eastern Long Island, will stop operating at the end of the week. He said months of negotiations aimed at finding an academic partner to help keep it afloat had failed.

Three Suffolk County teens were arrested after allegedly assaulting a 60-year-old man earlier this week. According to police, one teen approached the victim while he was walking along Deer Park Avenue at around 12:55 p.m on May 4. Police said the suspect then punched the victim in the face, causing the man to fall to the ground, unconscious. The suspect then fled the scene with two other teens who were in a car nearby. The victim was left on the side of the road.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016, beginning at 7:00 PM EDT, GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump will hold a campaign rally in Bethpage, NY at Grumman Studios. With two weeks to go until the New York primary on April 19, this will be Mr. Trump’s first campaign event in his home state of New York. Bethpage is a hamlet located on Long Island within the Town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, New York, United States, as well as a census-designated place with borders slightly different from those of the hamlet. Population: 16,429. Grumman Studios

Donald J. Trump will pad over his loss in Wisconsin with a large rally in Long Island on Wednesday night, where some 18,000 people have requested tickets and where he will be standing with a number of supporters, organizers said. ”

These are embarrassing times for the nation's criminal justice system; as the Obama administration executes the nation's largest mass release of federal prisoners, it's sending a Long Island fisherman to jail for reeling in too many... Back in 2010 resident Obama signed a measure that for the first time in decades relaxed drug-crime sentences he claimed discriminated against poor and minority offenders. This severely weakened a decades-old law enacted during the infamous crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged urban communities nationwide in the 1980s. As part of the movement the U.S. Sentencing Commission lowered maximum sentences for drug offenders and made...

The residents of Long Island can rest easier in their beds knowing that another dangerous criminal has been taken out of commission thanks to the diligent work of the Justice Department. Anthony Joseph has finally been brought to justice and won’t plague the coastal residents any longer. What was the nature of his crime spree? He failed to properly report the correct number of flounder that he caught on his fishing boat, and for that he’s heading off to jail, spending years on probation and facing more than a half million dollars in fines. Anthony Joseph, a commercial fisherman from...

A county police chief on Long Island, New York, resigned on Tuesday amid an ongoing federal probe into whether he beat a suspect accused of stealing a duffel bag from his car in 2012. James Burke, the chief of Suffolk County, one of the state’s largest by population, stepped down on Tuesday after a 31-year career, his attorney confirmed. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the beating allegations, according to a source familiar with the matter. …

YAPHANK, N.Y. — Here in this rural Long Island community, a Nazi summer camp once held parades before American flags and banners bearing swastikas. Nearby streets were named after Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and other leaders of Nazi-era Germany. While the parades are gone and the streets have been renamed, one thing has not changed: The original owners of this tract of land kept a clause in its bylaws requiring the homeowners to be primarily “of German extraction.” That has kept this community of 45 families almost entirely white. It has also left one family frustrated and headed to...

Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) decision to resign from Congress at the end of October is “a victory for the crazies,” Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) said Friday. “I’m disappointed. This is a victory for the crazies,” King told Newsday. “You can’t appease these people.” King said Boehner was resigning “to avoid putting the party through tumult” amid challenges to his leadership and an impending government shutdown. The Long Island Republican also told Reuters that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is the leading contender to replace Boehner as Speaker. …

Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar -- the Day of Atonement when observant Jews fast, pray to God for forgiveness and to be cleansed of sin -- begins at sunset Wednesday. And for 102-year-old Helen Stemple, it is yet another year to think about being a good person. Most Popular Officials: LI cop arrested in hit-run that injured driver Police: DWI driver flipped vehicle, hid in woods Police: 1 dead in two-vehicle crash on turnpike Jury: School district employee lost job in retaliation, gets $50G Pols to OTB: Reveal location for planned gambling parlor Stemple lives in...

A Long Island woman’s insistence that she owns a BMW landed her in a psych ward at Harlem Hospital. The doctors believed she was delusional and suffering from bipolar disorder — but she was actually telling the truth, a lawsuit claims. Kam Brock’s frightening eight-day “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” ordeal at the mental facility included forced injections of powerful sedatives and demands she down doses of lithium, according to medical records obtained by PIX11 from her attorney. Brock said it all started at a traffic light in Harlem after she was pulled over by an officer for allegedly...

In his inaugural address to Congress President Washington said, “It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplication to that Almighty Being, who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States…No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the...

A Long Island teen plead not guilty in court Saturday after authorities say she threw bleach on her counselor’s face. The counselor at Mercy First School and Home for Disadvantage Girls was rushed to the hospital after 16-year-old Liana Brown allegedly went into the kitchen, poured bleach into a cup and threw it on the counselor’s face, WCBS 880’s Sophia Hall reports. Police say the incident happened after the counselor reportedly reprimanded Brown for stealing food from another resident. Brown, who has a 2-year-old child, plead not guilty in court while being arraigned on charges.

Three El Salvadorean MS-13 gang members snatch 16-year-old in Long Island and rape her on golf course Three teenage reputed members of the MS-13 street gang were ordered held without bail Friday on charges they forced a 16-year-old into a wooded area of a Long Island golf course, where two of them took turns raping her while the third stood as a lookout. "This is one of the most brutal, heinous crimes that I have seen in a long, long time," Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said at a news conference following the suspects' arraignments. "This poor young woman...

VALLEY STREAM, N.Y. -- With her husband and children watching, a mother viciously beat another woman over a parking spot in Valley Stream, Long Island, and it was all caught on cellphone video. The brawl allegedly started Sunday after a woman tried to park in an empty spot at the Green Acres Mall, but a man was standing in the spot, holding it for someone else. The woman parked in another spot, then got into an argument about what happened. That's when the punches and hair pulling started.

The gay New York City hoteliers who recently played host to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) have their own controversy to deal with: Activists are calling for the boycott of their properties, including a gay hotel and establishments on Fire Island. Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass (pictured with Cruz), two gay real estate moguls who run numerous vacation properties marketed towards the LGBT community, spoke with The New York Times yesterday about the reception they held for the presidential candidate. During that meeting, they mainly discussed foreign policy, while alluding to a possible shift (or private opinion) in Cruz’s thoughts about...