Free Republic

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh announced a violent crime plan and appointed a new criminal justice director Wednesday, just days after the city failed to go 72 hours without a murder in the "nobody kill anybody" weekend campaign. ... Her policy plan addresses three areas she believes are the root cause of violent crime: poorly trained police, poor drug policy, and an under-educated populace. [Snip] Pugh’s plan also addresses a criminal justice reform topic that has enjoyed wide bipartisan support across the country, which is lowering sentences for drug crimes. Her plan calls for increased investment in drug treatment programs and...

Hungry rodents are apparently menacing parents, nannies and babies on the Upper West Side. There are about 2 million rats in New York City, and some have settled in Central Park and Riverside Park.

Baltimore activists' attempt for a murder-free weekend proved to be too much to ask of the city, with at least three people shot, two of them killed, in less than 72 hours since guns were ordered to be put down.  Activist Erricka Bridgeford promoted the campaign as a "Baltimore ceasefire" and "Nobody kill anybody" weekend that began on Friday and ends Sunday night, garnering the support of thousands on social media since May. The city made it through Friday with no shootings reported, drawing hope from participants the campaign might see some success. But by Saturday, two men -- ages...

Baltimore is now averaging more than a murder a day, so a group of activists urged Baltimore residents to rally together for a ceasefire. This message encourages shooters to put down their guns for three days.This anti-violence effort began at midnight on Thursday with residents desperately hoping to prove peace is possible. Unfortunately, Baltimore Police have reported they’re investigating two homicides and one shooting since the ceasefire began.

Chicago faces an epidemic of gun violence. This year alone, more than 2,100 people have been shot, more than 400 killed.(snip) Young men on the city's south and west sides told CBS News how easy it is to get illegal guns, and why many never leave their homes without one. "I know people who can't walk from they house to the store without a gun," said Aaron Murph. "Because people getting killed left and right. It's sad." "I got shot twice and I could have been gone but I'm still here so, that scar, that's with me, so," said Tyshaun...

Not able to copy.

(CBS) – President Donald Trump on Friday said he could fix Chicago’s violence problem with one phone call. In fact, the president told Mayor Rahm Emanuel about a Chicago police officer who guarantees he can fix the problem. Trump, speaking before police in New York, said he met the Chicago cop during a campaign appearance last year. “I said what the hell is going on,” Trump recalled. He says he asked the officer, “How long would it take you to straighten out the problem?” The Chicago police officer told Trump if he had the authority, only “a couple of days,”...

Carl Sandburg indelibly dubbed Chicago "hog butcher for the world," though swine are no longer[i] massacred there.  But slaughter remains part of the city's global image, as every weekend sees multiple deaths from gang warfare (this weekend's total is 6 dead, 35 wounded).  Until recently, the remaining affluent tax-paying residents, the ones occupying expensive condos and townhouses near the lake, for instance, were able to comfort themselves that the bloodshed was largely confined to a couple of districts to the south and west of their Northside enclaves. That assumption is crumbling, as CWB Chicago reports gang warfare at one of the city's...

Photo by Pat Pat sends us a shot of this monster Friday night: “Check this bad boy out. Found on U Street today.” Ed. Note: I will never ever ever complain about wild bunny rabbits again.

A Seattle, Wash., councilman implied that a new effort to clean excrement off the side walk outside the local courthouse could be racist Tuesday. The crime and smell of urine and excrement have gotten so bad outside a King County courthouse that two judges are scrambling to find ways to fix the situation, reports the Seattle Times. King County councilmember Larry Gossett isn’t a fan of one solution to power wash the feces from the sidewalks to tamp down on the smell. Power washing the sidewalks is too reminiscent of civil rights activists being hosed down, he said. The area...

Commissioner John Wiley Price Votes Against Honoring Assassinated Police Officers Dallas, TX – Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price voted to oppose a resolution to honor murdered police officers, blaming police officers for the assassinations. The Wednesday vote was supposed to be largely ceremonial, but gained unexpected opposition as Commissioner John Wiley Price argued that law enforcement should not be honored, according to Fox4. “I think it’s interesting in this country how you again try to frame the narrative with regards to other people who’ve lost their life at the hands of law enforcement,” Price said. “No life is more...

Man who sold gun used to shoot 2 cops released on $4,500 bond: sources Chicago 07/06/2017 Sam Charles @samjcharles | email A man who sources say sold an assault rifle to gang members — which was then used to shoot two Chicago Police officers last May — was released from federal custody on a $4,500 bond on Wednesday. Charles Williams was arrested and charged in federal court last week with possession of a firearm by a felon. On Wednesday, Magistrate Judge Young B. Kim ordered him released on $4,500, court records show. A law enforcement source told the Chicago Sun-Times...

As Washington DC’s 2018 mayoral election takes shape, one of the early battleground issues will be housing, particularly low-income housing. It’s a perennial favorite in every major Democratic-controlled city and the District is no exception. To date, the salvos launched by the field of candidates makes it clear the old narrative will still hold – tenants are always victims, and landlords are always guilty. The reality, often times, is very different. When liberals seek to discredit someone they often label them with a derogatory term. In the case of rental property, no label carries more weight than the term “slumlord.”...

More than 100 people were shot in Chicago over the course of one of the bloodiest Fourth of July weekends in the city's recent history. Police in Chicago are conducting a "very comprehensive review" after 15 people were killed and 86 others injured in shootings between late Friday afternoon and early Wednesday, the Chicago Tribune reports. "The mood here is frustration," Chicago Police Department chief spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi told the Tribune. "It's perplexing. We deployed some very successful tactics over the Memorial Day weekend," he added. Police said their review would include analysis of whether an audio system that pinpoints...

A quality of life study conducted by the website 24/7 Wall Street formulated a list of the 50 worst cities to live in America, and some commonly referenced shanty towns headline it. The 50 worst cities list was not kind to the state of Michigan, which contributed two cities to the top 10, and is home to the number one worst city to live in the US: Detroit.

More than half a million Angelenos stand to get a raise this weekend, making the city the latest testing ground in the drive to boost incomes of bottom-rung workers. Some businesses, facing a labor crunch, didn’t even wait for the new, $12 minimum wage to officially kick in. Josh Loeb started doling out pay bumps among the 400 employees of his six mostly upscale restaurants about a month ago. He paid for it by inching up prices at those Santa Monica haunts, adding a dollar to an organic chicken, and 50 cents to a sandwich or salad. “It’s got to...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: “a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” Seattle’s Minimum Wage Ordinance, passed in 2014, exemplifies courageous experimentation by a local government. The ordinance aims to increase earnings of low-wage workers as one response to the troubling rise in income inequality and stagnant wages of low-wage workers. There is national and international interest in knowing how it is working. Unfortunately, not all social experiments work entirely as planned. On April 1, 2015, the...

Lee Smith was one of the first homeless people to pitch a tent near 26th and Wood streets in West Oakland. Now, four years later, he has 100 neighbors, including two pregnant women. The place looks like a Third World shantytown, a village for the city’s poorest on the fringes of its bustling center. It’s one of about 100 such sprawling encampments in Oakland, and they’re not going away anytime soon. They’re likely to get even bigger. Just as the Bay Area’s tech boom has reshaped Oakland in different ways than it has San Francisco, so has its homeless crisis....

If downtown is the heartbeat of Minneapolis, then its collective soul resides on Hennepin Avenue, the corridor that’s long served as its cultural, commercial, and entertainment epicenter. But these days, visitors aren’t seeing the intoxicating glimmer Schmidt beheld so long ago. Talk to civic leaders, downtown workers, and couples descending from Burnsville, and they’ll tell you to drive down Hennepin with the windows open once the sun has called it day. If you watch and listen, the feeling isn’t one of good vibrations. It’s energy with a serrated edge, the vibe that comes from a city turning mean. Apocalypse now...

NEW YORK — A law enforcement official says the gunman who opened fire at a New York City hospital was a doctor who formerly worked there. The official says Dr. Henry Bello walked into Bronx Lebanon Hospital at about 2:50 p.m. Friday with a rifle concealed in his lab coat and opened fire, killing at least one person and injuring six others. He then apparently killed himself.