Free Republic

President Joe Biden acknowledged the difficulty of being a police officer in the current political and social climate during a speech at the National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service on Capitol Hill on Sunday. “Being a cop today is a lot harder than it has ever been,” Biden said, alluding to rising crime in some of America’s biggest cities under his administration.

Rising crime is emerging as a top issue for voters this year, adding another glaring political vulnerability to the Democrats’ ledger. A Gallup poll conducted last month found concern about crime at its highest level in nearly two decades, with 53 percent of Americans saying they worried a “great deal” about crime. Gallup found crime ranks as the third-most important issue among 14 tested, trailing only the economy and inflation. Republicans held a 15-point advantage when asked which party would handle crime better in a Fox News poll conducted this year—the highest partisan advantage in the history of the poll.While...

Cities across the country suffered dramatic increases in homicides this summer. The spikes were remarkable, suddenly appearing and widespread, although often concentrated in disadvantaged neighborhoods. This year is on track to be the deadliest year for gun-related homicides since at least 1999. The homicide spikes began in late May. Before May 28, Chicago had almost the same number of homicides as in 2019. Then, on May 31, 18 people were murdered in Chicago—the city’s most violent day in six decades. Violence continued through the summer. July was Chicago’s most violent month in 28 years. As of Sept. 1, murder is...

Minneapolis residents in some areas still recovering from rioting and unrest are forming community watch and security groups, some bearing firearms, to fight a surge of crime in the wake of the George Floyd killing in May. At least one neighborhood has put up barricades to keep away outsiders. The moves come as the city council on Friday approved its first permanent cuts to the police budget, amid calls to defund the department and generally lower tax revenue due to the economic strain caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The $193 million police budget will be cut by $10 million, including...

It took several months for the first iteration of the Ferguson Effect to become obvious. Michael Brown was fatally shot by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer in August 2014, triggering local riots and a national narrative about lethally racist police. Officers backed off proactive policing in minority neighborhoods, having been told that such discretionary enforcement was racially oppressive. By early 2015, the resulting spike in shootings and homicides had become patent and would lead to an additional 2,000 black homicide victims in 2015 and 2016, compared with 2014 numbers. Today’s violent-crime increase—call it Ferguson Effect 2.0 or the Minneapolis Effect—has...

Baltimore Police Sunday morning reported four separate incidents from overnight including the killing of a 65-year-old man and three shootings that left two teenage boys and an 18-year-old woman injured. The 65-year-old man was found suffering from stab wounds in the 300 block of West Saratoga Street around 1:21 a.m. before he was transported to Shock Trauma where he later died, police said. Police did not name the victim Sunday morning. Authorities said he was attacked by two men, but did not provide a thorough description of the suspects.

Washington - Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best said Sunday the groundswell of support for implementing police reforms that has erupted in the weeks following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis indicates that there will be long-lasting changes to policing. "This is a pivotal moment in history," Best said on "Face the Nation." "We are going to move in a different direction, and policing will never be the same as it was before." **SNIP** Best said protests are peaceful, but said it's been a challenge for her and other Seattle leaders to determine "who is a leader or an influencer."...

The Left is succeeding in demonizing the honorable profession of police officer to the point where cops are getting so fed they’re quitting and departments are plagued with officer shortages because fewer Americans want to subject themselves to the abuse. Police officers are racist, the Left screams. They ‘prey’ on young black men. After all, we have to believe that because Colin Kaepernick, Mr. Black Privilege, says so. But a new study by researchers from Michigan State University not only debunks that myth, it blows it out of the water with this bombshell conclusion: There’s just no evidence to support...

She fatally shot an unarmed black man. Now she’s teaching other police officers how to ‘survive’ such incidents. She calls it “The Ferguson Effect.” Two years after she fatally shot an unarmed black man in Tulsa, Betty Jo Shelby, now a police officer in an adjacent county, is teaching a course on how to “survive such events” — legally, emotionally and physically. The course, as she explained it to a local ABC affiliate, equips officers to withstand the effect — named for the Missouri city convulsed by the 2014 shooting of a black teenager — “when a police officer is...

Protesters have been gathering outside of Ferguson Market and Liquor since Aug. 9 — the fourth anniversary of the police shooting death of Michael Brown Jr. — calling on the convenience store to take more ownership of its role in the saga and submit to a list of requests. Brown had just left the store before the fatal skirmish with then-Officer Darren Wilson in the street near Canfield Green apartments in 2014. After the shooting, Ferguson police released a surveillance clip from the store indicating that Brown had stolen cigarillos and shoved a store clerk. Protesters believe that the...

Clinton aide called Comey 'a bad choice' for FBI director, leaked emails reveal WASHINGTON ? A senior aide to Hillary Clinton privately dismissed FBI Director James Comey as "a bad choice" in October 2015, according to hacked emails published Thursday. The blunt assessment foreshadowed the dramatic tension that has escalated between Comey and the Democratic presidential candidate in the final days before the election. Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri forwarded to colleagues a news article in which the FBI director suggested that crime could be rising because police officers were becoming less aggressive as a result of the "Ferguson effect,"...

Hello America. Will someone, somewhere out there please pick up the phone and do something, anything, about Chicago, NOW? "The city is in CRISIS," repeat CRISIS, says former Police Commander Garry McCarthy who warns that Chicago is fast approaching a State of Lawlessness! His remarks, for a CBS "60 Minutes" feature which aired last Sunday, take on even more force as McCarthy was fired over visual reaction to a black man being shot. But the current commander, Kevin Duffin, said the kidnapping and torture of a helpless, young, special needs white man took place merely because "Kids Make Stupid Decisions."...

Michael Brown’s parents are objecting to a request from Ferguson for their son’s medical and academic records as the city defends itself against a lawsuit the parents filed over the 2014 police shooting death of the unarmed 18-year-old. Michael Brown Sr. and Lezley McSpadden, in December court filings, asked U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber in St. Louis to at least limit if not scuttle altogether a push by the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, its former police chief and the officer who shot their son to turn over the documents. The parents say the documents are irrelevant and that...

November was another bloody month in Chicago, ending with more than twice as many homicides as during the same month last year. The 77 homicides recorded in November 2016 mark the highest death toll for that month in nearly a quarter century. The increase comes as the city and police department scramble to bring the number of killings down with initiatives targeting high crime areas and a plan to add 970 new police positions. …

… Police says officers noticed two men apparently smoking marijuana late Saturday in an area of central Philadelphia that’s packed with restaurants, shops and clubs. They pursued the men to a nearby street, where authorities said one of the men opened fire, discharging four shots. The officers didn’t return fire. They arrested the two men and recovered a gun. …

The Nationwide Crime Wave Is Building As the homicide rate keeps rising in many cities, even some who dismissed the ‘Ferguson effect’ admit the phenomenon is real. By Heather Mac Donald May 23, 2016 Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey has again drawn the wrath of the White House for calling attention to the rising violence in urban areas. Homicides increased 9% in the largest 63 cities in the first quarter of 2016; nonfatal shootings were up 21%, according to a Major Cities Chiefs Association survey. Those increases come on top of last year’s 17% rise in homicides in...

A prominent Black Lives matter activist in St. Louis was arrested in April and faces charges of human trafficking and prostitution against a 17-year-old girl. The activist, Charles Wade, said in a statement that he was helping the girl, who he believed to be 20, obtain temporary housing. Wade runs Operation Help or Hush, a charity that says it provides housing, food assistance and other forms of direct aid to both activists and local residents in general. Conservative news site The Daily Caller appears to have been the first to run a story about his arrest, but copies of the...

WASHINGTON — More than 20 major cities, including Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, have seen large increases in murders in recent months, a spike that the director of the F.B.I. linked to less aggressive policing stemming from a “viral video effect.” The new data released Friday showed clashing trend lines across the country, with many cities seeing a sharp increase in murders while rates in others — including New York and Miami — were down significantly from last year. After receiving an advance look at the data, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey Jr., expressed alarm Wednesday about...

Right after Christmas on the night of Saturday, December 27th, there was a riot at the mall in St. Matthews, Kentucky. Did you hear about it? Odds are that you did not if you were relying on the usual cable news outlets. It’s not the type of story that the mainstream media likes to cover for reasons which should become obvious shortly. It all began when groups of youths simultaneously began causing disturbances at several stores in the mall. That’s the word the media likes to use… “disturbances.” Of course, what they really mean is looting and vandalism. There were...