Free Republic

For close to 20 years now, I’ve been observing and reporting on a disturbing trend in law enforcement – the federalization and militarization of local police forces. Until recently, practically no one noticed what was happening. But with the focus on police shootings and the civil disturbances that have followed – sometimes involving tanks, military-style gear and Kevlar – it’s hard not to notice that local cops don’t exactly look like Officer Joe Bolton anymore. It was none other than Al Sharpton (I won’t call him reverend) who suggested recently that the answer to the use of excessive force by...

“At the foot of the West Lawn of the Capitol, U.S. Capitol Police officers joined the Secret Service with guns drawn, cornering the car on a sidewalk. Carey backed into a squad car, drove briefly on the sidewalk and continued toward Constitution Avenue NW. Officers fired eight shots. Her car was shortly surrounded by officers on Constitution Avenue NE, a block from the Capitol. As Carey tried to back away, a Capitol Police officer and a Secret Service officer each fired nine bullets at the car. Carey was hit once in the arm, three times in the back and once...

Reverend James David Manning of the Atlah World Missionary Church claimed this week that Miriam Carey, who was shot and killed by authorities after crashing her car into the U.S. Capitol building last month, had been assassinated by President Barack Obama because she had given birth to his illegitimate daughter.On his radio show The Manning Report, Manning called for a paternity test of Carey’s fifteen-month-old daughter, who was in the car with Carey when she led police on a chase that ended in gunfire on the Capitol steps. The theory, which appears to have originated with a Russian website, alleges...

Officers who fatally shot an unarmed Connecticut woman after a high-speed car chase from the White House to the Capitol last fall will not face criminal charges, the Justice Department said Thursday. Prosecutors who spent months investigating the shooting of Miriam Carey, 34, of Stamford, Connecticut, said they concluded that officers from the Secret Service and the Capitol Police did not use excessive force and did not have the criminal intent required for a prosecution. The shooting on the afternoon of Oct. 3 ended a bewildering chain of events that spanned just minutes but put the Capitol, the Supreme Court...

New revelations about mom killed by Capitol cops WASHINGTON — First they called her a terrorist threat. When she turned out to be an unarmed suburban mother, they said she was on drugs. Now, WND has exclusively learned, without a trace of doubt, that was wrong, too. WND can also now report Miriam Carey was shot in the back of the head by U.S. Capitol Police officers and uniformed Secret Service agents six months ago, on Oct. 3, 2013. The official police investigation still has not been released. But Carey family attorney Eric Sanders obtained the toxicology and autopsy report...

Too many of our rulers and their enforcers reflexively see the citizenry as a threat. At a time when over 4 million people have had their health insurance canceled, it’s good to know that some Americans can still access prompt medical treatment, even if they don’t want it. David Eckert was pulled over by police in Deming, N.M., for failing to come to a complete halt at a stop sign in the Walmart parking lot. He was asked to step out of the vehicle, and waited on the sidewalk. Officers decided that they didn’t like the tight clench of his...

WASHINGTON -- So far the telephone has not rung. Last week, I suggested a way for the left and the right to get together constructively. I suggested that the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton might give me a call and we might unite in demanding an investigation of the death of Miriam Carey. You may have forgotten who Carey is. After all, it has been two weeks since her death. Two weeks of thunderous silence, after she rammed a White House barricade with her car and then drove off down Pennsylvania Avenue with a posse of police...

Miriam Carey, a 34 year-old dental hygienist, created a media frenzy last week when she was shot and killed by Capitol police after ramming a White House barricade in her car while her one-year-old daughter was in the back seat. Why did she do it? What mental illness did she suffer from? Ms. Carey's mother said her daughter was diagnosed with postpartum depression after her baby was born, and months later she was hospitalized for feeling sick and depressed. Some media outlets took that to mean that postpartum depression was behind Ms. Carey's erratic behavior. These assumptions threaten to stigmatize...

Eric Sanders, lawyer for Miriam Carey's family was arrested today. The arrest comes on the heels of a scathing twitlonger tweet, from Sanders Esq., in reference to the handling of the Miriam Carey incident: "After we somewhat rest Miriam's soul on Tuesday, we are going to press a full frontal campaign to bring those who violated her civil rights to justice." Eric Sanders, a civil rights attorney best known for suing the NYPD, was arrested outside his house in Melville, L.I., Tuesday morning after Federal Bankruptcy Judge Dorothy Eisenberg issued a warrant last week. Eisenberg was furious that Sanders had...

Advanced PeriodonticsThe story of a shooting on Capitol Hill last Thursday unfolded in the typical way. Reports of “shots fired” led to speculation of a mass shooter. Local police, in this case the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP), ordered a lockdown “requiring” members of Congress and their staff to “shelter in place.” The news gathered through Twitter. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), for example, tweeted the entire message from Capitol Hill security: “Gunshots have been reported on Capitol Hill requiring all occupants in all House Office Buildings to shelter in place. Close, lock and stay away from external doors and windows,” the...

<p>Why no outpouring from our civil libertarians about the shooting death of Miriam Carey?</p> <p>WASHINGTON — I am just wondering whether Miriam Carey, the mentally ill mother who drove her black Infiniti down Pennsylvania Avenue after she rammed a White House barricade, was read her Miranda rights before she was shot dead in a fusillade of gunfire by a gang of well-armed police who surrounded her car at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The information has not been released, though as I write almost a week has passed since the lethal event. Why could not those crack shots have aimed at her car’s tires? Then they could have waited for her next move. It looks to me like they were shooting at the side of the car about halfway up the door. They apparently wanted to take no chances.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) - A woman shot by police after trying to ram her car through a White House barrier was carrying a lockbox holding a passport, foreign currency and a Connecticut driver's license. Court documents unsealed Tuesday reveal items police found during a search of Miriam Carey's Infiniti and a lockbox inside the vehicle. The documents don't reveal the significance of any of the items, which also included social security cards for her and her daughter.

The sisters of a Connecticut woman shot and killed by police in Washington, D.C., a week ago say they have many unanswered questions .... Miriam Carey, 34, was killed Oct. 3 after a car chase from the White House to the Capitol. Police say she rammed a metal barricade at the White House with her black Infiniti, although multiple videos show the front of her car relatively undamaged, and she was able to drive away.... She crashed into security barriers a few blocks away, where she was killed by so many police bullets her family was allowed only to see...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Police in Washington are reviewing the use of officers' deadly force in the killing of a woman who tried to ram her car through a White House barrier, a shooting her family says was unjustified.

A troubled young mother is shot dead and our ruling class applauds. An unarmed 34-year-old woman suffering from postpartum depression is surrounded by the authorities while sitting in her car, and gunned down in cold blood. She is blocked in. She cannot move. And yet she is killed by heavily armed security officers. Her one-year old child witnesses this from the back seat. Why is this not a national tragedy? Miriam Carey was a young African-American woman who wanted to better herself. She went to college and graduated with a BA degree in health and nutrition science. She became a...

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The sisters of a Connecticut woman fatally shot by police in Washington after she tried to ram her car through a White House barrier said Monday she wasn't delusional and suggest she may have been fleeing danger. The two sisters of Miriam Carey, who was killed Thursday with her 13-month-old child in her car, disputed the accounts of officials and their sister's one-time boyfriend that she was under the delusion that President Barack Obama was communicating with her.

It's been two days since 34-year-old dental hygienist Miriam Carey was killed after she rammed her car into a barricade in front of the White House and led security forces on a chase toward the U.S. Capitol, and some are asking whether the use of deadly force against her was truly necessary. While the first accounts of Carey's death said she exited her black Infiniti before she was shot, investigators now say she was still in the vehicle when officers fired the fatal bullets. Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance W. Gainer told reporters that Carey "was trying to make a U-turn [toward...

Great grassy knoll!--I was merely mildly intrigued by some magnified still frames posted right after it happened, but if you stay with this guy's video for a minute it IS very compelling. You can see an adult's head bending down.

Things tend to get pretty dicey, even deadly, during periods of heightened tension here in our nation’s capital. Just over a decade ago, not long after the 9/11 attacks, we had the Beltway Snipers and “Tractor Man.” More recently, helping to set the tone for these days of partial government shutdown/standoff over Obamacare, it’s the Navy Yard shooter, crazy Miriam Carey, and the latest entrant, yesterday’s self-immolation guy, who set himself completely on fire on the National Mall until nearby joggers raced over and used their shirts to extinguish the flames. How many readers remember Tractor Man? He caused much...

Law enforcement sources confirmed that Miriam Carey told police in December that she was a prophet, that President Obama would place the city of Stamford under a "lockdown" and that he had her and her residence under electronic surveillance. The encounter led to Carey being taken for a mental-health evaluation.