Free Republic

When Basim Henry robbed a Union Township bank in November 2003, it was not hard to connect him to the crime. He had driven his white Pontiac to the bank on Morris Avenue, authorities said, and left it parked illegally on an adjacent side street with the keys in the ignition. At least three of the four men charged this morning in the fatal carjacking of a Hoboken lawyer at a The Mall at Short Hills last Sunday evening have been arrested before, according to state and federal records, for crimes ranging from burglary to bank robbery.

Hanif Thompson, one of the four men charged today in last Sunday's fatal carjacking at The Mall at Short Hills, loved to drive cars and sold drugs, but was not a violent person, a former neighbor said this morning. Tiwana Myers, who said she used to live next door to Thompson on Hobson Street, said she remains convinced the 29-year-old Thompson was caught up in the deadly carjacking by accident. He was never violent, she said. "He was a hustler — but I can't believe he was a carjacker," Myers said. "He wasn't a bad guy. He sold drugs to...

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly demanded Tuesday to know why the community leaders who rail against stop-and-frisk policies haven’t led demonstrations against the gun violence exploding this summer. “There doesn’t seem to be any major community response,” Kelly said. “Many of them will speak out about stop-and-frisk” but are “shockingly silent when it comes to the level of violence right in their own communities,” he said. Seventy-seven people were shot in New York last week during the heat wave, including a 3-year-old winged by crossfire as he played under a sprinkler in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. “We have not had a demonstration about...

Seven months after she poured out her heartbreak in a wrenching letter to then President-elect Obama, the mother of murdered Brooklyn Marine Sgt. Jan Pawel Pietrzak finally got a response - a form letter. "Thank you for contacting President Obama," the note to Henryka Pietrzak-Varga begins. "We hope the issue you brought to the President's attention has been resolved." Pietrzak-Varga, whose son and daughter-in-law were tortured and murdered last year allegedly by four other Marines, told a Polish newspaper she doubts Obama saw her letter. "This is a standard response, something that can be sent out to anyone for any...