Free Republic

Retailers across New York state say there’s no end in sight to the rising epidemic of organized shoplifting rings — and warn it could lead to more store closures, increased costs for consumers and threats of violence against store employees. Store owners said they lost $4.4 billion last year as a result of retail theft — which they say adds to the urgency for Gov. Kathy Hochul to crack down. However, Hochul vetoed a bipartisan bill last week — to the chagrin of store owners — that would have created a task force to combat organized theft. ... The Retail...

• Corporate America is finally waking up to the fact that woke policies on crime are costing them billions. Organized shoplifting efforts and flash mobs of robberies across the country caused businesses $100 billion in losses in 2021 and have only gotten worse since then according to the National Retail Federation. As former Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli recently put it, Biden’s America has become a "lawless society." And a lawless society is bad for business. Big companies, from Whole Foods, Walmart and Walgreens to Nordstrom, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Lululemon and more have all suffered. Mom-and-pop businesses have suffered too....

CHICAGO - A pressing issue for the Chicago Police Department and its incoming leadership is the downtown teen takeovers, as another gathering has been advertised on social media for this weekend. But churches and community groups are now stepping up, in partnership with police, to curb the youth rioting. Community organizations are now doing their part to help stop the teen takeovers that happened last weekend in Chicago. A new idea on the table is an Amber Alert-like system to let parents know these gatherings are happening. ...

All 31 members of a white nationalist group arrested on suspicion of conspiring to riot in Coeur d’Alene during a Pride event had bonded out of the Kootenai County Jail as of Sunday afternoon. The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office released the names and photos of all suspects on Sunday, a day after the Coeur d’Alene police chief said the Patriot Front members were en route to the Pride in the Park event with riot gear, a smoke grenade and paperwork police say resembled an operations plan. . Patriot Front is a white nationalist group with branches across the country that...

A flash mob of 20 to 30 suspected looters struck a Best Buy electronics store in Minnesota on Black Friday and managed to get away before police arrived, according to a report. The incident happened around 8 p.m. at a Best Buy location near the Burnsville Center shopping mall in Burnsville, a suburb south of Minneapolis....

Trump ignited a political firestorm yesterday during an impromptu press conference in which he said there was "blame on both sides" for the tragic events that occurred in Charlottesville over the weekend.    Now, the discovery of a craigslist ad posted last Monday, almost a full week before the Charlottesville protests, is raising new questions over whether paid protesters were sourced by a Los Angeles based "public relations firm specializing in innovative events" to serve as agitators in counterprotests.The ad was posted by a company called "Crowds on Demand" and offered $25 per hour to "actors and photographers" to...

A Chicago alderman believes “soft on crime” policies by Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx helped embolden hundreds of teens who took part in a massive "wilding" in downtown Chicago Wednesday night. Chicago police say more than 30 teens were arrested, and it has merchants on the Mag Mile jittery. Police estimate about 500 teens, spurred on by social media, flooded into the downtown area, many intending to create havoc. Hundreds of police responded, arresting 31 people on charges ranging from mob action to battery -- most later released to family members. "If there's no consequences to criminal acts you're...

You're headed down the road in your car and a kid, on a bike, heads straight for you and pops a wheelie right next to your car, or near a parked car. It's dangerous and it's a fad that just won't die in New Jersey, police say. The stunts are called "swerving" -- or intentionally biking in the path of vehicles while performing tricks. Sometimes, large groups of teens will do this together, just to confound traffic. In response, N.J. towns have taken to local Facebook groups and public forums to air concerns about this dangerous practice, and local police...

Investigators are reviewing surveillance video along North Broad Street after a group of about 300 teenagers crowded the area Sunday night. It’s not clear why the large group descended onto Broad Street at around 7:30 p.m. Police are looking to identify a small fraction of the kids; those who were fighting and damaging property inside a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant near the Liacouras Center and one other business, flipping over tables and chairs. […] Police are reviewing social media to determine if this was a planned meet-up. Police Commissioner Richard Ross says often times investigators can stop social media meet-ups before...

Operation #MAGA3X nationwide Trump Flash Mobs listings for this weekend.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Philadelphia police say they've arrested four teens on assault charges in flash mob attacks around Temple University in which college students were beaten, an officer was knocked down and a police horse was punched in the face.

WARREN (WWJ) – Ahead of Donald Trump’s visit to court black voters in Detroit this weekend, supporters are holding more than two dozen flash mobs across the state. In metro Detroit, the flash mobs are happening at 4 p.m. Tuesday in several locations: 8 Mile and Haggerty (Meijer) in Northville; Rochester Road just north of M-59 (Lowes) in Rochester Hills; Pontiac Trail and M-5 in Commerce Township; M-59 and Bogie Lake Road (Meijer) in White Lake; Telegraph and 12 Mile (Meijer) in Southfield; 12 Mile and Van Dyke in Warren; 23 Mile and Gratiot (Meijer) in Chesterfield; Telegraph and Stewart...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PafsIomt7Q

When one lady asked for volunteers to join her at a Rivertown Mall in Grandville, Michigan, to sing "Amazing Grace," 250 people responded with RSVPs, and over 1,000 showed up at the mall. What makes this different from other "flash mobs" is that the lyrics were given out in a high-quality gospel tract form (so that anyone could join in with the singing). "Fortunately the singing at the Rivertown Mall was video-taped, and it brought tears to my eyes," says Ray Comfort, who came up with the idea. "In the clip you can see people holding the tracts as they...

White people and nonblack people of color have the luxury of treating these cases as injustices. For them, it is moralistic. For us, it's about survival. A conversation about race.JUDNICK: I feel like this is just an extension of the our “favorite” iMessage topic but in the light of the recent grand jury events with Mike Brown and Eric Garner (not to mention the promise of more to come with Tamir Rice and the others they’ve shot to death) I’ve been reminding friends that they do not have to answer to white people about their feelings. RAWIYA: Unlike many people,...

Did you ever imagine that, in America, groups of black thugs would attack unsuspecting whites? Did you ever think the first black president and Oprah Winfrey would encourage division and hatred between races? In today’s America, that’s the unfortunate reality. In what many tamely call the “knockout game,” black teenagers target whites to attack them without provocation. The aim is to knock the victim unconscious with one blow. Man, woman, young or old – it doesn’t matter – these thugs do not care. Authorities have reported violent attacks in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., Connecticut and Illinois....

CHICAGO (CBS) — Unbelievable surveillance video captured flash mobs dashing into store after store and running out with armloads and sometimes entire racks of sporting goods. It has happened at three different Sports Authority stores in the Chicago area. This past Monday in Burbank at just before 1 p.m., five individuals entered a Sports Authority and soon after they were off. Video shows them running out the door with rack after rack of apparel and an employee giving chase.

Unbelievable surveillance video captured flash mobs dashing into store after store and running out with armloads and sometimes entire racks of sporting goods. It has happened at three different Sports Authority stores in the Chicago area.

1). Don't go to stupid places with stupid people to do stupid things. Simple but often ignored. Listen, we do not live in a fair world where everyone respects everyone else. Nor where everyone gets along. You may in fact be totally color-blind in a socio-ethnic sort of way, but not everyone is. So even if your liberal sociology professor thinks it is a cool thing to take a stroll at midnight through a ethnically homogenous part of town (different ethnicity that you), it is still a stupid idea. 2). Always have a method to defend yourself. Even if it...

A band of robbers that tore through Hollywood Boulevard on Tuesday night appear to be some of the same youths who were attacking people and vandalizing stores in the Crenshaw district earlier this week where demonstrators were protesting the George Zimmerman murder trial verdict, police said. The thieves moved fast and swarmed their victims, mirroring the activity seen in Crenshaw the previous evening. “I think this specific group came up to riot and cause problems in Hollywood,” LAPD Sgt. John Barkley said. "They were not engaging in any kind of protest." Of the dozen people arrested in the indiscriminate crime...