Free Republic

A 16-year-old high school girl in Rock Hill, S.C. told police that another high school girl taunted her on a school bus and then beat her up after she got off the bus. The assailant allegedly was angry at the victim because she was behaving “too much like a white person.” Both the alleged attacker and the victim are black, reports The State, a Columbia, S.C. newspaper. In an interview with police, the victim claimed that there has been an ongoing feud between the two girls for over a year. The victim described herself as a “light-skinned black female,” according...

She’s out! A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked Manhattan federal Judge Shira Scheindlin’s controversial ruling requiring restrictions on the use of stop-and-frisk by cops but didn’t stop there — the three-judge panel also took the extraordinary step of booting her from the case altogether. In a scathing rebuke, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that Scheindlin exhibited bias in the case that ran “afoul” of the code of conduct for US judges.

Terrell police have captured the man suspected in multiple overnight shootings that left five people dead by Tuesday morning. Charles Brownlow was captured by officers around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday morning after allegedly killing his mother, his aunt, and three others. -snip- Ten minutes later, Lay said Brownlow traveled to a convenience store called "Ali's Market" at 10:37 p.m. The store is located on US Highway 80 in the 700 block of West Moore Avenue. Lay said Brownlow allegedly killed the clerk inside the store then jumped in the car and took off after officers spotted him at the store. The...

The carnage began in the Glenwood Houses in Brooklyn, where 26-year-old Lamar Antonio Blackwood was shot repeatedly Friday evening. Later that night, another man was murdered in the Bronx and two were killed in Queens. Four men were shot to death and at least five people were wounded in an eruption of violence across the five boroughs overnight, cops said Saturday. The mayhem left a young man lifeless in Brooklyn, a teenage boy murdered in the Bronx and two men killed in Queens, police said. The carnage began in the lobby of an apartment building in the Glenwood Houses in...

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly demanded Tuesday to know why the community leaders who rail against stop-and-frisk policies haven’t led demonstrations against the gun violence exploding this summer. “There doesn’t seem to be any major community response,” Kelly said. “Many of them will speak out about stop-and-frisk” but are “shockingly silent when it comes to the level of violence right in their own communities,” he said. Seventy-seven people were shot in New York last week during the heat wave, including a 3-year-old winged by crossfire as he played under a sprinkler in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. “We have not had a demonstration about...

This is an excerpt from reporter Scott Johnson's blog, which focuses on the impact of violence and trauma on the community. Go to www.oaklandeffect.com for updates on his reporting. When the architects of apartheid South Africa were drawing up their urban plans, they paid special attention to the highways. In the seaside city of Cape Town, for instance, the white rulers pushed tens of thousands of blacks and people of mixed racial ancestry out of the cities and into squatter camps several miles outside the city, in a barren wasteland that came to be known as the Cape Flats. The...

COLUMBUS, Ohio—An Ohio woman who police say shot a relative to death amid a dispute over a skimpy Easter outfit has been sentenced to 18 years to life in prison. Forty-two-year-old Evelyn Burgess pleaded guilty in Columbus Tuesday to murder in the April 4 death of 19-year-old Danielle Pickens, a cousin. Pickens wore jeans shorts to Burgess' home for Easter dinner. Prosecutors say Burgess became upset thinking the shorts were too short and that her husband was looking at them.