Free Republic

That's the question Kathleen Casillo encountered last year. Now she's in court, and her life may be ruined. Anyone with a modicum of common sense understands that a person shouldn't try to block a road with his body and then proceed to intimidate and threaten the drivers he's forced to stop. When push comes to shove, protesters in the middle of the road aren't going to win the battle against a two-ton vehicle, especially if they really make a person fear for his life and the lives of his passengers. It's just a good rule of thumb, if you happen...

A man accused of killing a California gas station clerk during a "botched" robbery will not face a murder charge because the victim had opened fire on the suspect despite his life not being in danger, officials said Thursday. James Williams, 36, was killed during an early Saturday morning gunfight with Ronald Jackson Jr., 20, at a Chevron in Antioch, Fox San Francisco reported. The Antioch Police Department said a gas station employee called to report a person had been shot at the Extra Mile mini-mart just after 2 a.m. When officers arrived, they found a man with a gunshot...

“All the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible… In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”—C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man There will come a time in the not-so-distant future when the very act of thinking for ourselves is not just outlawed but unthinkable. We are being shunted down...

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was swiftly ridiculed for decrying the mass shooting in Colorado, while her own city is plagued with rampant gang violence and fatal shootings. The Democratic mayor responded to the deadly shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado, where five people were killed and dozens were injured, by saying that it made her "sick." "I’m sick of this s---. How many people need to be murdered? How many lives torn apart? Until it actually stops? We don’t have to live like this. And we don’t have to die like this," she wrote on Twitter on Sunday. This...

...but lately the amount of seemingly ordinary items—soap, ice cream, detergent—locked up in stores—CVS, Best Buy, Home Depot, etc—is increasing. If you don't see this where you live yet, you might soon. Or you might visit parts of America where it has become commonplace....Who’s doing the stealing? “Three categories,” says Lisa LeBruno, senior executive vice president of the Retail Industry Leaders Association. “There’s the opportunistic shoplifter, the persistent habitual offender and then organized retail crime gangs or ORC,” she says. ...“Organized retail crime has definitely been ticking up over the last few years,” says Mike Combs, director of asset protection,...

Two people have been hospitalized and are in critical condition following a stabbing incident at a Target in downtown Los Angeles. A little before 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, a man who appeared to be homeless walked into the Target store, grabbed a butcher knife from a shelf, and began stabbing people, police said. A 9-year-old boy and a woman in her mid-20s were injured during the attack. Before the attack, the suspect told the young boy he was going to stab and kill him, according to Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore. The boy tried to leave the area when...

One of America’s largest retailers said Wednesday that the surge in crime is inflicting deep losses. Target said its stores are getting looted at a massive scale. The damage to the bottom line has amounted to $400 million so far this year, the company said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. The company is not the only retailer to point to a rise in theft recently. A spokesman for CVS said earlier this year that it has experienced a 300 percent increase in theft. Rite Aid said in October it suffered $5 million in losses due to theft in...

In the latest blow to Oakland's Pill Hill neighborhood, the Walgreens store at Telegraph Avenue and 34th Street is closing. Just across the street from Walgreens, 93-year-old bakery Taste of Denmark shut its doors less than two weeks ago. A few blocks up the road at Telegraph Avenue and 29th Street, Commonwealth Cafe and Pub announced this week it will be closing at the end of the year as well. The 3400 Telegraph Ave. Walgreens will close on Tuesday, Nov. 8, according to a sign posted outside the store. A Walgreens representative confirmed the closure to SFGATE.

Yesterday’s Midterms were not a victory for conservative or progressive ideology, but an assertion of the growing power of geography in American politics. It was less a national election than a clash of civilisations. Virtually nowhere in blue areas did Republicans make gains. Both the north-east and California – the central players in Democratic Party politics – stayed solidly blue. Even the most well-regarded GOP candidates, such as Lanhee Chen who ran for California state controller, struggled to make inroads in Democratic territory. Meanwhile, the senators and governors of the leading red states – Texas’s Greg Abbott, Georgia’s Brian Kemp,...

Progressive policies funded and foisted on the Big Apple by Gov. Hochul and her left-wing allies have caused a legion of drug-addicted zombies to descend on East Harlem and transform parts of the neighborhood into lawless, open-air shooting galleries, neighbors and critics told The Post. The real-life horror show plays out daily in the neighborhood’s gritty streets where The Post witnessed dozens of raving, hunched-over junkies commandeering East 126th Street — now the home of a controversial public-injection site — as drug dealers hovered nearby like vultures. Others along Park Avenue down to East 114th Street have been spotted nodding...

Close to 90% of suspects arrested in Nassau County between July and September were freed without bail — mostly in assault and larceny cases — up 2% compared with the previous quarter, startling new statistics show. GOP Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman revealed the latest crime data at a rally and press conference Thursday in Manhattan. He was joined by local law enforcement leaders including Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr., Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison and Paul Digiacomo, head of a police detectives’ union. “In Nassau County, what we’ve seen is a dramatic spike in people who are...

Customer Ken Lewandowski Describes The Rise In Crime & Says It's “Scary…Anywhere You Go Now”: A Wawa Is Shut After More Violence In Philadelphia (11/4/22)

Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) is campaigning for the “rights” of women to abort a child up to the point of birth but just won’t keep career criminals in jail where they can’t rape women. A New York City woman was jogging along the Hudson River Thursday morning around 6 a.m. when a fiend on a bike knocked her down, choked her into unconsciousness, and raped her. In Kathy Hochul’s New York, law-abiding New Yorkers are forced to live in fear.Come January, in Lee Zeldin’s New York, criminals will be the ones forced to live in fear.Election Day is 5 days...

He’s the district attorney of Albany, where the Legislature meets and Gov. Kathy Hochul lives — but they treat David Soares as an invisible man as he keeps shouting out the truth on the disaster that criminal justice reforms have wrought in predominantly black urban communities. “Black lives are being harmed in the streets across the state because of the reforms passed by the Legislature,” cried Soares on Monday. Once at the forefront of the reform movement, the former darling of progressives says state lawmakers have “normalized” violence. After two more fatal shootings in Albany this month, he thundered: “No...

When your whole city’s a toilet, why not embrace it? The D.C. Council is expected to take the first of two votes Tuesday on a massive rewrite of its criminal code. If passed, the bill would eliminate most mandatory minimum sentences, allow for jury trials in almost all misdemeanor cases and reduce the maximum penalties for offenses such as burglaries, carjackings and robberies. Assume that there’ll be a lot more burglaries, carjackings and robberies. Not to mention public urination. Mayor Muriel Bowser and Police Chief Robert Contee III are pushing back hard on parts of the plan they don’t agree...

A mom of three was executed in front of her kids less than 24 hours after her estranged husband was sprung from jail on no bail over a caught-on-camera beatdown she’d posted to her Facebook page in a desperate plea for help. The shocking case — in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s western New York hometown — has sparked fresh outrage to New York’s no-cash-bail laws and to the governor and fellow Democrats for refusing to repeal them. Adam Bennefield, 45, who has a prior conviction for kidnapping another ex at gunpoint, is now charged with shooting dead his 40-year-old wife, Keaira...

A registered sex offender is accused of sexually assaulting multiple women in Chicago while on bail this year, according to a local report. David Buckner, 28, was charged Thursday with misdemeanor battery for grabbing and groping an 18-year-old woman on the Loyola University campus in Chicago a day earlier, CWB Chicago reported. In 2017, Buckner told police that he "probably" molested about 75 women on the CTA within two months, the Chicago Tribune reported at the time. He was charged with felonies for assaulting four women that year. Buckner was eventually found not guilty in the 2017 cases by reason...

California dad, 22-year-old daughter stabbed to death by homeless man: cops A California man and his 22-year-old daughter have been stabbed to death by a homeless man while they were working on their car outside a Kohl’s, police said. Ken Evans, 54, and McKenna Evans were spending time together around noon Thursday tinkering on their sedan in Palmdale, just north of Los Angeles, when the man attacked them for no apparent reason, the LA Times reported. Ken was rushed to a hospital, where he died, while his daughter was pronounced dead at the scene. LA County sheriff’s deputies have arrested...

5 ATVs surround a SUV while driving trying to open the passenger's door. Seems like a pretty bold move for a 450lb ATV vs a 4,000 - 5,000lb vehicle. I wonder what is considered legal for the driver to do when being surrounded by ATV's attempting to open their passenger door and block them?

A Democratic prosecutor is sounding the alarm over an Illinois law that will end cash bail A Democratic prosecutor in the Chicago-area is sounding the alarm over a criminal justice reform law that will "tie the hands" of prosecutors and "destroy the criminal justice system in Illinois." The Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today (SAFE-T) Act, signed by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, D-Ill., in 2021, will implement sweeping reforms to Illinois’ criminal justice system, though it has drawn criticism from law enforcement professionals across the political spectrum. "I never, in my 40-years in this profession, ever thought I'd ever see anything...