Free Republic

PATERSON, N.J. — Curfews might not be just for kids anymore in one northern New Jersey city. Seeking to curb violence after a spate of deadly summer shootings, Paterson officials are considering an unusual ordinance that would prevent people of all ages from gathering outside in public late at night. The measure could be the nation's first citywide, non-emergency curfew to include adults, several experts said. "We're trying to think outside the box," said Mayor Jose Torres (DEMOCRAT). "This was triggered predominantly by fear among city residents over the shootings that have been occurring this summer."

<p>A Florida teenager could face felony vandalism charges for allegedly gluing posters depicting President Obama as the Joker onto public property, FOXNews.com has learned.</p> <p>Clermont, Fla., Police Capt. Eric Jensen said the state attorney will review evidence to determine whether to charge the unidentified teenager with gluing "dozens" of the posters last week to the city's light poles, public and private buildings, bridge overpasses, road signs and a mailbox.</p>

Groups denied protesting permits for Point State Park during the G-20 Summit held a meeting. They gathered at East Liberty Presbyterian Church to figure out where and how they'll be able to express their views when the summit is in town. Organizers say they haven't been given any alternatives. "We feel that this is turning into a First Amendment civil rights issue," Francine Porter, from Code Pink Women For Peace, said. "We have the right to be seen, we have the right to get our message out." Code Pink and the Iraq Veterans Against The War brought a letter addressed...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- A man was arrested and charged with attacking his own daughter with a piece of pizza. Deputies say the 38-year-old father got into an argument with his daughter in Gainesville Friday. The man had asked his daughter to get off her computer. When she would not, he began verbally attacking her, according to deputies. The daughter called 911 when her father threw a piece of pizza that hit her in the back of the neck. The suspect was arrested and charged with felony child abuse. Deputies are not releasing the girl's age or the names of either...

WALLINGFORD - A usually quiet mobile home park was shaken Friday morning when about 15 officers from the U.S. bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and local police descended on one of their neighbor's homes with force. "They had their guns drawn and were surrounding the house," said Jennifer Monroe Lynne Boynton, of 15 Hosford Bridge Road, went to her husband's truck for coffee money at about 6 a.m. and was pushed to the driveway and handcuffed with an officer's knee in her back and a gun to her head. ATF officers surrounded her father-in-law's home at Western Sands...

azfamily.com's Marissa Wingate reports a teen went hiking in full military fatigues with a fake gun and prompted women to call 911.

Gay Cop Profiled Illegal Aliens for Molestation

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- Four veteran Hollywood police officers were placed on administrative leave Wednesday after they allegedly falsified a police report to cover up a crash involving a fellow officer.

Police use a Taser on an 81 year man with a cane. In Stockton an 81-year-old man is in jail tonight. ... police used a taser .. because he was allegedly attacking a CHP officer with his Cane.

In all fairness to President Obama and his people, such reporting activities are admittedly not of their own invention. It's been long tried with various degrees of success... Most notably and recently, it was standard practice (to name just a few places) in Communist Russia; it's been tried under Mussolini's fascista regime in Italy and under Hitler's regime in Nazi Germany... Is there a compelling reason, under Obama, to join ranks with such scourges of history?!?!? Should I and thousands of bloggers expect the FBI to knock on our doors (to send us to some hidden Gulag, I presume) because...

Federal law now criminalizes activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. ---------------------------cut--------------------------- Every year, thousands of upstanding, responsible Americans run afoul of some incomprehensible federal law or regulation and end up serving time in federal prison. What is especially disturbing is that it could happen to anyone at all -- and it has. We should applaud Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), then, for holding a bipartisan hearing today to examine how federal law can make a criminal out of anyone, for even the most mundane conduct. --------------------------------------cut------------------ This is an inevitable...

BEIJING (Aug. 3)- A second man has died of pneumonic plague in northwest China, in an outbreak that prompted authorities to lock down a town where about a dozen people were infected with the highly contagious deadly lung disease, a state news agency said. The World Health Organization office in China said it was in close contact with Chinese health authorities and that measures taken so far to treat and quarantine sickened people were appropriate. The man who died Sunday was identified only as 37-year-old Danzin from Ziketan, the stricken town in Qinghai province, the official Xinhua News Agency said....

Start-up cost estimated at $1.5 million The city of Lancaster may take to the skies in an effort to keep the city safe. City Mayor R. Rex Parris and aviator Dick Rutan are working on an "eye in the sky" surveillance system. The plan is to have a plane, armed with a camera, patrol the city 24 hours a day. The system would cost an estimated $1.5 million. "Suppose your wife is at home and she thinks somebody is breaking in the back door," Parris told the Daily News. "We can see it in 30 seconds." But now let's suppose...

For those of us who had hoped that the Obama administration would present us with a rebirth of the old republic that was so rudely erased a few years ago by that team of judicial wreckers, Bush and Gonzales, which led, in turn, to a recent incident in Cambridge, Mass. that inspired a degree of alarm in many Americans. But what was most alarming was the plain fact that neither the president nor a “stupid” local policeman seemed to understand the rules of behavior in a new America, where we find ourselves marooned as well as guarded (is that the...

A jumpy cat caused a distraction, report saysHOLLYWOOD - After a Hollywood police officer rear-ended a car in February and then arrested the driver on drunken driving charges, he and other officers talked about doctoring the report -- it said a jumpy cat created a distraction -- to cover up the crash. The exchange was recorded by a dashboard camera in one of the patrol cars. The officers apparently didn't realize it was on.

A new state law will allow police to arrest people who don’t leave town under mandatory evacuation orders. As it stands, officials cannot compel people to evacuate, only warn that those who stay behind won’t have any emergency services at their disposal. The new law gives county judges and mayors the power to authorize use of “reasonable force” to remove people from the area.

No, "over salting" isn't code for anything nasty. The 20-year-old McDonald's worker literally spilled salt on the hamburger meat that was used to make a "Big 'N Tasty" that was served to a Georgia police officer. The police officer says the burger made him sick—and Kendra Bull, 20, spent a night in jail because of it. According to Kendra, she accidentally spilled too much salt on the hamburger meat, tried to remove it, notified her coworkers, then took a break. During the break she says she ate a burger made from the salty meat.

An Ohio man, fed up with deceptive junk mail, made the mistake of losing his temper while on the phone with a St. Louis company pitching an extended auto-service contract. Now he finds himself behind bars, where he is charged with making a terrorist threat. According to court documents, Charles W. Papenfus, 43, allegedly told a sales representative during a May 18 telephone call that he would burn down the building and kill the employees and their families. He was indicted for making a terrorist threat, a Class D felony; and he could be sentenced to up to four years...

<p>WHEN AGNES LAWLESS and three friends were inside a Lukoil convenience store in the Northeast at 3 a.m. last August, they'd all but forgotten the fender-bender in which they'd been involved moments earlier.</p> <p>There was little damage, and the other driver had left the scene, near Northeast Philadelphia Airport.</p>

CHESTER, Pa., July 19 (UPI) -- The deputy police chief in Haverford Township, Pa., says a police officer's decision to shut down a lemonade stand run by children was a misunderstanding. Deputy Chief John F. Viola said the officer shut down a lemonade stand run by seven children because the young entrepreneurs were allegedly peddling their refreshments to residents by visiting their homes, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Saturday. Viola said the lemonade stand visit by the officer, whose identity was not released, was prompted by a call from a concerned neighbor. "We all sold lemonade when we were kids," Viola...

On Friday, we saw the letter ATF sent to FFL dealers in Tennessee telling them the Bureau was overriding the state's Firearms Freedom Act, and would continue to impose federal requirements in disregard of state law.

The ATF - as expected - has issued a letter in which it disregards the 10th Amendment restrictions on federal power (as seems to be the trend since the late 1930) and has notified Tennessee’s federal firearms dealers that the Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act is meaningless. Essentially, ATF is saying to the state of Tennessee that the 10th Amendment no longer exists. We expected such from a tyranny that no longer lives within the bounds of its express authority…

"When Andrew Poole organised his 30th birthday party and posted invitations on the social networking site Facebook, he was expecting only 17 guests including family members. He was therefore a little surprised when eight police officers, some dressed in body armour, arrived with a riot van and helicopter support. Mr Poole, a coach driver, claimed he was doing little more than lighting a barbecue for a few of his friends to celebrate, however, police feared it was to turn into a large-scale rave prompted by the internet invitations." ""The thing (the helicopter) hovered over us for about 25 minutes, watching...

Posted: July 14, 2009 03:08 PM MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - A mid-state father and son face criminal charges after an early-morning confrontation with police. The officers who knocked on their door in the middle of the night were responding to a 911 call at the wrong house. Justin and Roger Chilton said they were simply trying to protect what was theirs. Justin, a military police officer who had just returned from Iraq, saw an armed man outside his home on February 22. He had no idea who it was until the person identified himself as a Murfreesboro police officer. Though Chilton...

Late last month, Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo took the unusual step of filing a civil rights lawsuit against the police department of his own county. The suit stems from a 2008 SWAT team raid on Calvo's house that resulted in the shooting deaths of his two black Labrador retrievers. In pushing back against the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Prince George's County police department, the mayor is helping expose a more widespread pattern of law enforcement carelessness and callousness throughout the state of Maryland. Prince George's police originally obtained a warrant to search Calvo's home...

Sara was late for work. The alarm clock didn't alarm, the kids were unusually slow getting ready for school, and nothing went right. She finally got to her car -- a brand new 2020 Chevy Adventure. She touched the finger-print secured start button. Nothing. It wouldn't start. She touched it again. Nothing. Furious, she banged the steering wheel with her fist. Then she noticed the paper hanging from the receipt printer on the dash. "Your designated visa account rejected your Road Use Tax in the amount of $87.32 for the month of June, 2020. You must insert a valid account...

Drugs cops burst through a lecturer's front door, handcuffed him in front of his wife and three young children, then said: "Sorry... wrong house." Dr Ike Ogbar was reduced to tears after police in helmets and riot gear smashed their way in with a battering ram. Officers swooped after the address was given by someone who believed the Nigerian-born marketing expert was part of a Vietnamese drugs ring. Dr Ogbar, 35, whose wife Faith, also 35, and their three children, aged nine, eight and six, were present, said: "There were three massive bangs - I thought the house was falling...

This is good news:A federal judge in June threw out seizure of three fake passports from a traveler, saying that TSA screeners violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. Congress authorizes TSA to search travelers for weapons and explosives; beyond that, the agency is overstepping its bounds, U.S. District Court Judge Algenon L. Marbley said. "The extent of the search went beyond the permissible purpose of detecting weapons and explosives and was instead motivated by a desire to uncover contraband evidencing ordinary criminal wrongdoing," Judge Marbley wrote. In the second case, Steven Bierfeldt, treasurer for the Campaign...

(AP Photo/El Monte Police Department) It all started out with a kick to the head. True, the suspect was not exactly one to elicit sympathy, but that's not the point. A free society cannot tolerate police acting outside the law to administer physical punishment. Except Dean Scoville, "Associate Editor of Police Magazine and a retired patrol supervisor and investigator with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department," disagrees with that: There was a time when post pursuit ass-kickings were obligatory. Cops knew it, suspects knew it, and there are enough old timers on both sides of the fence that will verify the...

Area drivers looking to outwit police speed traps and traffic cameras are using an iPhone application and other global positioning system devices that pinpoint the location of the cameras. That has irked D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier, who promised her officers would pick up their game to counteract the devices, which can also help drivers dodge sobriety checkpoints. "I think that's the whole point of this program," she told The Examiner. "It's designed to circumvent law enforcement -- law enforcement that is designed specifically to save lives." The new technology streams to i-Phones and global positioning system devices, sounding off...

I would welcome fellow Freeper input on an exchange I had with the police last night. First a little background. I've got 20 years in the military, started out my life giving police officers a great deal of respect and knee jerking to their defense. Over the course of years, however, I've lost a lot of respect for the police via watching continual police traffic violations, watching unprofessional behavior and seeing shows of petty tyranny over their fellow citizens. Although I'd still like to be wholeheartedly pro-law and think the way to get respectable enforcement officers is to demand professionalism,...

~ EXCERPT ~ In front of a run-down shack in north Houston, federal agents step from a government sedan into 102-degree heat and face a critical question: How can the woman living here buy four high-end handguns in one day? The house is worth $35,000. A screen dangles by a wall-unit air conditioner. Porch swing slats are smashed, the smattering of grass is flattened by cars and burned yellow by sun. >>> snip <<< Among other things, the agents are combing neighborhoods and asking people about suspicious purchases as well as seeking explanations as to how their guns ended up...

The Pride Festival kicked off in Loring Park Saturday. There were live bands, food and thousands of people. It's now the third-largest gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender celebration in the country. But there was some trouble there Saturday night. Minneapolis Police arrested three people from Hayward, Wis. for trespassing. An amateur photographer named Aaron Bogle gave WCCO-TV video of a father, mother and son being arrested. For 11 years, Brian and Doris Johnson have passed out free Bibles at the festival. This year, they were not allowed to have a booth. Pride paid to rent the whole park and that...

<p>A Chicago police officer avoided jail time today for pummeling a woman who was tending bar, even though prosecutors produced a previously unseen video showing him beating someone else at the bar hours earlier.</p> <p>Anthony Abbate was sentenced to two years probation for beating Karolina Obrycka in February of 2007. He could have gotten up to five years for the attack, which was captured by the bar's security camera and shown around the world.</p>

On March 20, 1969, Dr. Richard Day, the National Medical Director of the Rockefeller-sponsored "Planned Parenthood" told a meeting that American industry will be sabotaged and shown to be uncompetitive. In view of the recent bankruptcy of General Motors, his remarks are especially pertinent. "The stated plan was that different parts of the world would be assigned different roles of industry and commerce in a unified global system. The continued preeminence of the United States and the relative independence and self-sufficiency of the United States would have to be changed... in order to create a new structure, you first have...

Is this the new “justice” for America? A massive armed federal raid in Utah has resulted in two deaths, including the suicide of a popular small town doctor. Those arrested have been accused of stealing American Indian artifacts from federal land. The Obama administration’s Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar flew to Salt Lake City to proudly announce the raid. But the arrests were conducted in a chilling manner. According to the LA Times: Shortly after sunrise last week, a squad of flak-jacketed federal agents surrounded the remote home of Dr. James Redd, arrested his wife and then stopped the...

San Diego police Officer Frank White was found not guilty yesterday of criminal charges resulting from the shooting and wounding of a mother and her young son during a road-rage incident last year. A Vista Superior Court jury acquitted White, 29, of a felony count of grossly negligent discharge of a firearm and a misdemeanor count of exhibiting a firearm. White showed little emotion as the verdicts were read about 4 p.m., but after the jury left the courtroom, he bear-hugged his attorney, Rick Pinckard, then his wife, Jacquellyn.

Is this the new “justice” for America? A massive armed federal raid in Utah has resulted in two deaths, including the suicide of a popular small town doctor. Those arrested have been accused of stealing American Indian artifacts from federal land. The Obama administration’s Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar flew to Salt Lake City to proudly announce the raid. But the arrests were conducted in a chilling manner. According to the LA Times: Shortly after sunrise last week, a squad of flak-jacketed federal agents surrounded the remote home of Dr. James Redd, arrested his wife and then stopped the...

Do you mind answering a few questions...? As we found out yesterday, NRA has issued a statement on the GAO Mexican "crime gun" trafficking report. Their bottom line: For American gun owners, the battle will be to make sure that politicians who see an opportunity to advance their gun ban agenda do not use Mexico as an excuse to sacrifice our Second Amendment rights. True enough. But it was the second link in this morning's email from their Institute for Legislative Action that really grinds my gears: "In Border States, BATFE Asks: 'May We See Your Guns?'" NRA-ILA has recently...

If you apply for a job with City of Bozeman - a mid-sized burg halfway across these US - you're forced to surrender usernames and passwords for every account you've set up with websites of the "social networking" variety. According to the City, that includes everything from Facebook and MySpace to YouTube to, well, Yahoo! and Google. "Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.," reads a waiver form that allows the City...

It's not exactly Big Brother and the overall intentions seem to have the public's best interest at heart. But many are very uncomfortable about a proposed new law being introduced in the House of Commons on Thursday that could affect anyone using the Internet in Canada. The bill, with the unwieldy name of "An Act Regulating Telecommunications Facilities to Support Investigations," would allow police to force your ISP to hand over any records of your emails, chat room conversations, website history or surfing habits to authorities without a warrant. Police across the country contend it's a necessity because the Worldwide...

At least one old Farmer in North Carolina is tired of the nonsense and has gone to considerable trouble to make his voice heard. Naturally the Oligarchs-in-charge are out to stifle him as quickly and effectively as possible. When old coots are outlawed, only outlaws will be old coots.

Newspaper story on gold and tax fraud brings out the crazies. And the Feds wants their name, SS# and credit card data. Ah Las Vegas. Home of gambling, sin and hardcore libertarian, anti-government gold bugs. The Las Vegas Review Journalrecently reported on the trial of Robert Kahre, a guy accused of setting up a scheme to pay employees in gold coins so that they may tell the IRS they were paid by the coin's nominal, face value, rather than what that gold is actually worth when converted into dollars. Not surprisingly, the story attracted many angry commenters, who hate the...

Hear video from Tom Gresham’s Gun Talk radio show of a conversation between a Shreveport man and Shreveport Mayor Cedric Glover. Robert Baillio was stopped by a police officer who, without a warrant or without probable cause, took a gun from his truck. When Mr. Baillio called Mayor Glover for an explanation, he was told, more than once that ‘when you are stopped by a police officer, your rights are suspended’. The Mayor owes an explanation for his remarks. Listen to the broadcast and to Mr. Baillio’s conversation with the Mayor here: 090614guntalkA.mp3 The mayor's comments start at 12:30 into...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General Eric Holder says recent violent attacks show the need for a tougher hate crimes law. Holder, speaking Tuesday at a luncheon for civil rights lawyers, noted the recent killings of an abortion doctor in Kansas, a soldier in Little Rock, and a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. He called the attacks brazen acts committed in once-unthinkable places, and said it is past time for Congress to strengthen hate crimes laws to prosecute violence based on gender, disability, or sexual orientation.

With federal spending in 2009 at 28% of the economy and deficits heading north, Democrats are eyeing tax increases on everything from soft drinks to electricity to health benefits to charitable contributions. But the palm for creativity goes to the Internal Revenue Service, which is contemplating a new tax on the use of business cellphones. The IRS believes that some percentage of the costs incurred by employees using company-provided wireless devices should count as a "fringe benefit" and thus be subject to taxation. Since workers inevitably end up taking personal calls or emails, the thinking goes, it's only fair that...

H.R. 1728 passed the House by an overwhelming majority in a record three days time. Now it’s in the Senate and is widely expected to pass quickly as well. Why the rush? Is AIG planning to hand out zillions in bonuses again? My guess would be that our elected representatives and their banking benefactors would prefer that we don’t know anything about it. Consider this scenario: You own a house. You want to sell it. Someone wants to buy it. You decide to sell it to the person who wants to buy it and carry the paper yourself for whatever...

WASHINGTON — A plan to create a new Pentagon cybercommand is raising significant privacy and diplomatic concerns, as the Obama administration moves ahead on efforts to protect the nation from cyberattack and to prepare for possible offensive operations against adversaries’ computer networks. President Obama has said that the new cyberdefense strategy he unveiled last month will provide protections for personal privacy and civil liberties. But senior Pentagon and military officials say that Mr. Obama’s assurances may be challenging to guarantee in practice, particularly in trying to monitor the thousands of daily attacks on security systems in the United States that...

"Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. To justify suppression of free speech, there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced." -- Justice Louis Brandeis Free speech should be practiced only by those who are ready to deal with the consequences, which just might include a knock on the door by a friendly federal investigator wanting to know if you posted an anonymous comment...

LOCKPORT — It is legally permissible for police to zap a suspect with a Taser to obtain a DNA sample, as long as it’s not done “maliciously, or to an excessive extent, or with resulting injury,” a county judge has ruled in the first case of its kind in New York State, and possibly the nation. Niagara County Judge Sara Sheldon Sperrazza decided that the DNA sample obtained Sept. 29 from Ryan S. Smith of Niagara Falls — which ties him to a shooting and a gas station robbery— is legally valid and can be used at his trial.