Free Republic

A former Yolo County Sheriff’s Office lieutenant is one of five people charged with murder following a fireworks warehouse explosion that killed seven workers in the rural Northern California community of Esparto last summer, authorities said. Samuel Machado is accused of illegally having 1 million pounds of fireworks on his property at the time of the blast and using his law enforcement position to shield the illicit operation from scrutiny for years, according to the Yolo County district attorney’s office. Machado was placed on administrative leave following the violent July 1 explosion, which was felt by residents up to 20...

The Defund the Police movement lives on in the LA City Council, only now it flies under the banner of democratic control. The council’s most left-wing members seek to transfer crime-fighting authority from law enforcement experts to the council and the city controller. These would-be police overlords might want to familiarize themselves with the agency that they aspire to run. They would learn that the LAPD sets a national standard of professionalism and restraint. According to The California Post, council members Hugo Soto-Martinez, Eunisses Hernandez, and Nithya Raman want the power to override the LAPD police chief and the civilian...

<p>The California Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered a county sheriff who seized more than half a million 2025 election ballots to pause his probe into election fraud allegations while the judges review the legal challenge against it.</p><p>The order came after California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, last month asked the court to step in. A voting rights group is also challenging the ballot seizure.</p>

Florida Highway Patrol launched into high alert this week after a barrage of 911 calls from motorists who swore they’d just spotted a truck hauling a full payload of missiles down the highway. “They were definitely concerned,” FHP Sgt. Steve Gaskins told The Post of the March 22 incident. The situation escalated quickly when a trooper, already locked and loaded with a description of a blue pickup traveling along Interstate 4, spotted the vehicle. Nipper, a longtime rocket enthusiast, explained to cops he’s part of local groups that regularly gather to have fun, put on exhibitions or teach kids about...

An explosive verdict was reached Wednesday night in the slaying of hero NYPD cop Jonathan Diller — with the jury acquitting the shooter of the top charge of first-degree murder and settling on manslaughter. Guy Rivera, 36, who fatally shot the officer and married dad outside a cell-phone store in Queens two years ago, was convicted on all of the lesser charges, including aggravated manslaughter, attempted murder of Diller’s partner and weapons raps. Rivera killed Diller in Far Rockaway on March 25, 2024, in a caught-on-video scuffle with New York’s Finest. Cops were investigating a suspicious vehicle when Rivera shot...

A man who was previously charged for making terrorism threats against the Sandy police department was shot and killed by a Utah Highway Patrol trooper last Friday afternoon on I-15. The driver, identified Thursday as Sayed Mousavi, 29, of Sandy, hit the trooper's vehicle about 5 p.m. near 4500 South on I-15, and kept going, before coming to a stop near 3500 South, according to the Utah Department of Public Safety. The trooper started to approach Mousavi after he stopped and got out of his car on the freeway. Mousavi allegedly pulled out a knife, "leading to the trooper discharging...

A probe into what city councilors on Wednesday called a “public safety and public health emergency” within the Boston Police Department is moving forward, as the policymakers warned a yearslong surge in retirements, resignations and forced overtime has pushed force ranks to a breaking point. The warnings come as Boston police officers remain among the city’s highest‑paid employees. City payroll data showed the 54 top-paid city workers in 2025 were all members of the Boston Police Department, many of whom earned tens of thousands of dollars in overtime and detail pay alone, some more than $200,000. ... Halfway through the...

In Germany, a teenager who shot dead a police officer after firing at him multiple times has been acquitted of murder and will avoid prison — after telling a court he was often in a “bad mood” due to a lack of prospects. The Saarbrücken Regional Court ruled that the 19-year-old gunman, Ahmet Gürsel, bore diminished responsibility at the time of the killing of Police Chief Inspector Simon Bohr, 34, and instead convicted him only of aggravated robbery, ordering his placement in a secure psychiatric facility. The shooting took place in August 2025 in Völklingen, Saarland, after the defendant carried...

Texas Congressman Keith Self has dropped a bombshell on the growing reality of Sharia-adherent communities taking root inside the United States. Far from some future hypothetical, these enclaves are here, now, and operating openly in his own district.Self laid it out plainly: “Sharia is alive, well, and operating in Plano, Texas. Right now, as I speak, there is an existing Sharia-adherent enclave run by the East Plano Islamic Center in my congressional district. It’s been functioning for 12 years right in our midst. This is not a hypothetical or future threat. It is here, now and operational.”He continued: “It is...

Chaos at Ultra Music Festival time: Miami cops shoot a man in his 20s acting erratically outside the YVE Hotel Saturday morning around 7AM. Taser and pepper spray? Useless. Dude turns violent...

“An Arizona deputy was arrested on kidnapping charges and booted from the sheriff's department that's leading the months-long Nancy Guthrie investigation. Ex-Pima County deputy Travis Reynolds, 22, was detained on Thursday and accused of kidnapping a detainee whom he was transporting to the Pima County Jail. The Tucson Police Department charged him with one count of kidnapping in connection with alleged misconduct that reportedly occurred while he was on duty,' according to a police statement obtained by Fox. Following his arrest and given the serious nature of the allegations, Reynolds's employment with the Pima County Sheriff's Office was immediately terminated.”

if a North Side state legislator gets her way, Illinois police will soon be barred from using any facial recognition database, including the Secretary of State’s, to do their work ever again. The bill is called the Illinois Biometric Surveillance Act, and it’s being pushed by Rep. Kelly Cassidy, who represents most of Rogers Park and Edgewater in Springfield. Cassidy’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story. Her proposed law would ban the use of facial recognition and other biometric identifiers by law enforcement statewide. No agency could use the technology or enter into an...

Eunisses Hernandez is against the police — when it comes to protecting you. But Hernandez is all for the police — when it comes to protecting her, and when she can charge the cost to taxpayers. An investigation by The California Post revealed that despite campaigning to abolish or defund the police; despite voting against city budgets over police funding; and despite voting against the use of LAPD officers for council events, Hernandez used police to protect her own event. That event was a celebration of Mexican Independence Day at City Hall last September. Hernandez’s office arranged for 13 armed...

More than half of the NYPD’s Joint Terrorism Task Force cops can retire right now, along with thousands of sergeants, lieutenants and captains, worrying officials about the future of terror and crime fighting in Gotham, The Post has learned. Forty-five of 82 JTTF detectives – or 55% – have 20 years under their belts, which is enough time on the job to leave with a full pension, according to union data. There are 5,121 active detectives in the NYPD and 1,193 of them — or 23% — are in the same boat, eligible for a full pension after 20 years....

Eunisses Hernandez has been called a hypocrite for repeatedly calling for police to be abolished — then using taxpayers’ money to pay for own her security in public. The socialist Los Angeles councilmember has built her political brand crusading against cops, winning election on an abolish-the-police platform and even voting ”no” to the city’s budget three years running because she claims the $2.4 billion needed to keep them takes funding from her priorities. But when it came time to securing the 36-year-old’s own public event, Hernandez turned to the LAPD — despite just months earlier voting against the use of...

ADAMS COUNTY, Ohio -- The Grammy-nominated rapper Afroman won a defamation lawsuit filed by seven Ohio sheriff's deputies who sued him over music videos in which he used home security footage to mock their raid of his home. "We did it, America! Yeah, we did it! Freedom of speech! Right on! Right on!" the 51-year-old rapper, born Joseph Foreman, shouted outside the courthouse after the Wednesday evening verdict. He later posted the clip to social media. The case tested the limits of parody and the license artists can take in social commentary directed at public figures. The deputies, collectively, sought...

A man fatally shot himself in the head while handcuffed in the back of a San Antonio police vehicle following a pursuit, Police Chief William McManus told reporters Thursday. On Friday morning, the San Antonio Police Department told the Express-News that the officers have been placed on administrative leave until further notice. The officers have been with the department for four and five years Police said the incident began around 2 p.m. on the South Side when officers identified a driver riding in a car with mismatched tags. The man then drove to the North Side, where SAPD’s Eagle helicopter...

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Thursday he will sign an executive order to create the Office of Community Safety (OCS), a step toward his vision of public safety that prioritizes support and prevention rather than policing and penalization. The office, housed within the mayor’s office, will oversee multiple existing public safety programs and signify a major step in building out Mamdani's $1.1 billion Department of Community Safety. The announcement comes after Mamdani pledged to revise the city's police response in non-criminal emergencies, including mental health crises.

A Boston police officer has been charged with manslaughter in connection with the deadly shooting of a carjacking suspect last week. Nicholas O'Malley, 33, of Boston, was arrested Thursday morning and was arraigned in Roxbury District Court in connection with the fatal shooting of Stephenson King, 39, of Dorchester, on March 11. He entered a not guilty plea and was released on personal recognizance, with a condition that he surrender any firearms in his possession. Court paperwork said the manslaughter charge against O'Malley is for "assaulting and beating Stephenson King when they knew or reasonably should have known that the...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) — Former New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobson, who was arrested last month for allegedly embezzling $85,500 from public funds, is due in court Thursday.Jacobson faces two counts of first-degree larceny.He abruptly retired on Jan. 5, hours after three assistant police chiefs confronted him about the missing funds from the police department’s confidential informant fund.