Free Republic

Shootings happen over and over in the same locations. About half take place in just 1% to 5% of the land area in U.S. cities – in other words, in a tiny percentage of the nation’s homes, stores, parks and street corners. These same neighborhoods tend to suffer from what criminologists call concentrated disadvantage – an unsavory mix of high crime rates, illegal drug markets, poverty, limited educational and economic opportunities, and residential instability. Cumulatively, these factors decrease the residents’ ability to maintain public order and safety in the ways that safer neighborhoods do informally by confronting violent behavior or...

Many of the criminals who Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear released under executive commutation during the COVID-19 pandemic went on to commit new crimes, a report from the state’s government showed. The report examined the criminal records of the approximately 1,700 criminals that Beshear had released in April and August of 2020 to reduce the prison population during the pandemic. Of those released, roughly 70% went on to commit crimes, with 50% committing felonies within less than a year of their release. “I believe the last round of commutations was fairly successful at getting people back in society and making...

"These numbers are proof that Mayorkas' operation is a smokescreen for the mass release of individuals into this country who would otherwise have zero claim to be admitted," he said. The Department of Homeland Security has been using a migrant processing app to release hundreds of thousands of otherwise inadmissible foreign nationals into the U.S. interior, according to documents obtained by the House Homeland Security Committee. CBP One is an app through which would-be entrants to the United States may schedule appointments to appear at U.S. ports of entry. Ostensibly, its users must be in northern Mexico to schedule an...

Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) introduced a crime bill on Monday that includes a ban on criminals wearing masks — after she mandated face coverings during the Chinese coronavirus. “We need to act now,” Bowser told reporters about the soaring crime. “And we need to send the strong message that violence is not acceptable in our city — and this perception that people have, that you can commit a brazen crime and get away with it, has got to stop.” “This legislation will change that,” she claimed. In 2020, Bowser issued an edict that forced people to wear a...

When it comes to preventing crime and keeping communities safe, the new gun bill passed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives is shooting blanks. As the Herald reported, the bill expands a list of banned firearms, adding most popular AR-15 styles to a list of “assault style weapons.” It would also require licensed concealed carry holders to secure permission before entering another’s home with a firearm and require additional training for license holders, among other points. For law-abiding gun owners, it adds layers of compliance on top of the state’s already-strict firearms regulations. For criminals, it means nothing. After a...

The Biden administration and more than 4,000 migrants who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration reached a legal settlement Monday that allows the families to live and work in the U.S. for three years while receiving housing, mental health and legal assistance to apply for asylum. The settlement also prohibits the federal government from separating any migrant families crossing the border for eight years merely for violating U.S. immigration laws. Families could be separated only if the parents are considered a danger to their children or the public. The deal, announced by the...

The abject cruelty and racism within the criminal justice system in the United States has been well documented. But a new report from the United Nation’s foremost human rights experts is shedding new light on the atrocities within our justice system for all of the world to see. The report found that racism and the legacy of slavery persist within our modern criminal justice system. Experts who met with 133 “affected individuals” in cities throughout the country — noted that Black children were subjected to life imprisonment, pregnant women were chained during childbirth, and people were subjected to forced labor...

KGO I-Team investigative reporter Dan Noyes has covered plenty of crime stories, but Sunday night, became the victim of crime himself. In a video Noyes just posted to his Facebook and Twitter accounts Wednesday morning, we see freshly rattled Noyes describing that he was assaulted in an encounter with a group of teens, one of whom tried to steal his bike. And while Noyes has a badly bruised and possibly injured arm from the encounter, he did stymie the would-be bike thief by threatening, “You're about to be on Channel 7.”Update: Noyes tells SFist that he did indeed suffer a...

A San Francisco news reporter claimed he was attacked by teenagers, who tried to steal his bicycle last weekend but escaped the robbery when he told them they were going to be on the news. Dan Noyes, an award-winning investigative reporter for ABC7 Bay Area, was riding his bicycle in the Presidio National Park site, near the Golden Gate Bridge, when he encountered the massive group. “I’m coming home and I see a group of probably 15 young teens, young teens probably couldn’t drive yet, a lot on bicycles,” Noyes said in a video posted to his social media accounts...

Work together. Go it alone. The apocalypse is at hand. But the future can be bright. The squabbles never cease, yet here are human beings from all across the world — hashing out conflicts with words and processes, convening under one roof, trying to write the next chapter of a common dream. At the United Nations, “multilateralism” is always the goal. Yet so is the quest for a coherent storyline that unites all 193 member states and their ideas. Those two holy grails often find themselves at odds when leaders gather each September at the United Nations — a construct...

After 38 years, a popular family-run Vietnamese restaurant in Oakland is closing at the end of the month. Owners of Le Cheval announced on social media that the restaurant’s last day at 1007 Clay St. will be Sept. 30. While “this chapter comes to a close,” they wrote, they will seek a new location elsewhere.Owner Son Tran told KPIX that Le Cheval is closing due to slow sales, which were around 25% of pre-pandemic levels, he said. He also cited criminal activity in the area as a deciding factor. Diners at Le Cheval in 2012. The 38-year-old Oakland restaurant is...

A man with a gun was spotted protesting near President Joe Biden's Wilmington, Delaware home on Sunday. The man, dressed in a yellow and orange safety vest, carried a sign that read on one side, 'Bidens are criminals, 20 shell companies?! Where's the laptop? 10% for the big guy.' The other side of his sign read, 'Joe has aliases?! Robert L. Peters, Robin Ware, JRN Ware.' The demonstrator walked by the pool of reporters assigned to cover the president and walked down the road toward the president's home, with a Secret Service vehicle trailing him. 'The individual expressing his constitutional...

Criminals across New Mexico were ecstatic to hear from Governor Grisham today that no one in the state would be armed for an entire month. "Oh, sweet!" said local carjacker Jeff Diggs. "It's so stressful wondering if your next victim could be packing. Gosh, that's such a weight off!" New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham made the announcement yesterday in a press conference, to resounding cheers from criminals across the state. "I just want every thief in our great state to know they have nothing to fear," said Governor Grisham. "We're delivering bold leadership on crime, and making a statement...

Police in Democrat-run Oakland, California, are urging residents to use airhorns as a way of sounding an alarm when criminals strike amid a surge in crime. Crime has risen to a point where police are not only advising the purchase of airhorns but also the placement of “security bars to…doors and windows,” CNN noted. Burglaries in the city are up 41 percent “and robberies by more than 20 percent.” Oakland resident Toni Bird indicated that she followed the advice of police and now has three airhorns. Bird said, “The types of crime that we’re seeing feel much more violent and...

In one of American cinema’s most riveting scenes, Vito Corleone, the Godfather, rebukes a distraught undertaker whose once-beautiful daughter has been beaten to a pulp by two young men — one of them the son of a powerful politician. Though the case was a slam dunk, a corrupt judge had let the brutes off with no jail time. That the system is rigged against those who play by the rules suddenly dawns on the law-abiding undertaker, whom the film’s co-writer, novelist Mario Puzo, named Amerigo Bonasera — as in Goodnight, America, where threats lurk around every corner, and the rules...

Pritzker held a bill-signing ceremony for a measure bringing about mandatory supervised release for the state’s criminal justice system. ... Separately, the governor’s office announced he signed another 95 House bills and 39 Senate bills. Some take effect immediately, like House Bill 3751 that allows non-citizens to apply to be a police officer. Also effective immediately, the Illinois State Board of Education is required to adopt a literacy plan Other laws begin Jan. 1, 2024, like a measure allowing Illinois licensed motor vehicle dealers to conduct sales over the internet and deliver vehicles to customers. House Bill 1199 designates October...

How's this as a consequence of radical leftist policies that coddle society's troublemakers? As of Sunday, the San Diego Union-Tribune ran a Page One above-the-fold story by Paul Sisson headlined "Hospitals in County Look for Ways to Cut Attacks on Workers," which is an important story indeed because it points to the consequences to innocent hospital workers of constantly coddling bums, illegals, drug addicts and criminals, all of whom were named as perpetrators in the piece. For some strange reason, the story not there on the San Diego Union-Tribune's website and I looked and looked. I don't think it's a...

It says a lot about the modern Democrat Party that its prominent figures like Rep. Eric Swalwell (California representative) and Beto O’Rourke (perpetually unemployed) would actually support and pose for a photo with Stacie Laughton when he was running for a seat in the New Hampshire state house.For the uninitiated, Laughton has the distinction of being the first transgender person elected to a state legislature. More importantly, he was charged in connection with the sexual exploitation of children, specifically by receiving and talking about explicit photos of children possibly as young as 3 years old. Laughton allegedly obtained the photos...

Prisoners are streaming Hollywood hits, curating Spotify-style playlists and getting access to popular video games thanks to an explosion in iPad-style tablets inside institutions across the country. One company alone is providing devices to 600,000 inmates, nearly one-third of estimated 1.9 million people in US jails and prisons. The ubiquitous tablets, which are still growing in popularity, were highlighted by a series of topless pictures of South Carolina murderer Alex Murdaugh, who used the device to make video calls directly from his cell. California – the nation’s second-biggest state correctional department – became the latest this month to complete a...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill.-- Emma Shafer, 24, was found stabbed to death last Tuesday. The suspect is her ex-boyfriend, Gabriel P. Calixto, 25. Shafer is an intern for US Senator Tammy Duckworth and part of multiple left-wing activist groups. She is on the “Racial Equity Task Force” for Resistor Sisterhood. She is also described as a “community organizer” for the left-wing “racial equality” group Faith Coalition for the Common Good. Calixto is an illegal alien who has allegedly been in the USA since he was five. In 2018, he pleaded guilty to kidnapping another ex-girlfriend and was sentenced to six years. However,...