According to a press release by the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO), Operation “March Madness” put in place by the department resulted in the arrest of 14 individuals Thursday.
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The Minneapolis City Council received an 86-page report Tuesday from independent auditors that offers the most in-depth look yet at the city’s failure to respond effectively to the George Floyd riots.
The highly-anticipated report, conducted by an outside firm called Hillard Heintze at the city’s request, devotes an entire section to “Leadership Issues.”
The report’s authors state that “minimal direction” came from Mayor Jacob Frey’s office and other city departments.
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This week, Connecticut Senate Republicans are seeking consideration of proposals they made last autumn to mitigate the Constitution State’s crime problem.
On Wednesday, the CT General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee will convene virtually to consider GOP legislation to aid police recruitment, modernize law-enforcement data gathering and promote “explorer” programs to foster relationships between juveniles and law-enforcement officers.
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A joint federal and local law enforcement operation in Portland, Oregon, recently led to the largest single seizure of fentanyl in the state’s history, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The March 1 seizure included around 150,000 counterfeit prescription pills containing fentanyl and 20 pounds of suspected bulk fentanyl, the DOJ said in a press release. The contraband reportedly had an estimated street value of around $4 million.
The drugs were confiscated as a result of the arrest of four drug traffickers, the DOJ said. The ringleader of the group, Ufrano Orozco Munoz, 27, was allegedly involved in a conspiracy to traffic fentanyl from Mexico and other areas for distribution and sale in Oregon.
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A new report by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) shows that 67 police officers in the United States have been shot while on duty in the first two months of 2022. The number is a 40 percent increase from 2021 year-to-date and a 76 percent increase from 2020 year-to-date.
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At a Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee hearing Tuesday, representatives discussed the governor’s requested 40-percent state-police funding increase with department officials.
The Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) received $629,342,000 this fiscal year. In a budget proposal unveiled last month, Governor Tom Wolf (D) asked the Republican-run General Assembly to fund the agency at $925,599,000 (in combined state and federal dollars). The governor, however, anticipates that PSP funding can be kept flat over the four fiscal years after next year.
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Democrats announced a plan Monday to promote police officer recruitment that mirrors proposals of Gov. Tim Walz and Republicans.
House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler authored the bill, HF 3581, which was developed in consultation with the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association, Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, and Minnesota Department of Public Safety. He said at a news conference announcing the bill that law enforcement leaders want to recruit officers who reflect the community, have a high social-emotional set of skills and are committed to community services, but they’re struggling to do that.
“[The bill] is built on the premise that Minnesota can recruit, can hire, can train and can retain the kinds of police officers who reflect our communities’ values,” Winkler said.
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Allowing law enforcement officers to sue for injuries or false claims suffered during riots became closer to becoming law in Ohio.
Democrats and other groups called the bill passed by the Ohio House an attack on free speech, however.
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Far-left Antifa radicals vandalized businesses and blocked traffic with barricades during a two-hour march down Lake Street in Minneapolis Friday night.
The march was infiltrated by independent photojournalist Rebecca Brannon, who said that Antifa-affiliated accounts had been posting about the “direct action” all week.
Brannon reports that a helicopter was circling overhead the entire time, but no police ever showed up during the two-hour occupation.
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Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday announced a round of grants to law enforcement agencies across the state to help with recruitment efforts.
The funds will be awarded to organizations in Clark, Franklin, Greene, Hamilton, Logan, Lucas, Mahoning, Medina, Montgomery, Shelby, and Summit counties.
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Nearly 12% of police officers were assaulted while on duty in 2020, according to annual state level data collected by the FBI. Alaska reported the greatest percentage, California the greatest number.
A total of 60,105 officers were assaulted nationwide, with the overwhelming majority assaulted, and injured, by assailants’ hands and feet.
Nationwide, 26% of assaults in 2020 involved a deadly weapon that wasn’t a firearm; 5% involved a firearm.
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St. Paul’s chief of police is pleading with city leaders for help once again.
Last Friday Chief Todd Axtell wrote a letter to Mayor Melvin Carter with a dire warning about the understaffed and overworked St. Paul Police Department.
Evidently not much has changed after a contentious Sept. 2021 meeting with the St. Paul City Council, in which Axtell sought a $3.1 million increase over what Mayor Carter initially proposed for the 2022 police budget.
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An Ohio man, Grant Rose, has been convicted on 15 different charges relating to his role in a human trafficking scheme with his girlfriend, according to a release from Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.
Rose and his girlfriend, Susan Walendzik, trafficked a minor and controlled her by getting her addicted to narcotics and fueling her addiction.
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Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey paused no-knock warrants after a pre-dawn raid led to the killing of 22-year-old Amir Locke.
“No matter what information comes to light, it won’t change the fact that Amir Locke’s life was cut short,” Frey said in a statement. “To ensure safety of both the public and officers until a new policy is crafted, I’m issuing a moratorium on both the request and execution of such warrants in Minneapolis.”
Body camera footage shows a SWAT team using a key to open a downtown Minneapolis apartment at 6:48 a.m. Wednesday. Police entered and shouted: “Police, search warrant! Hands! Get on the ground!” and kicked a couch, where Locke stirred from under a blanket with a gun. Then an officer shot Locke three times. Nine seconds passed from officers entering the apartment to firing. Locke died 13 minutes later.
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On Jan. 26, the group “White Coats 4 Black Lives,” an organization with a mission to “dismantle racism in medicine and fight for the health of Black people,” gave the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine & Dentistry its “Racial Justice Report Card.”
The result was nine “F” grades based on campus activity and administration policies during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Founded in 2014, White Coats 4 Black Lives has 75 chapters at universities across the nation and pushes the Black Lives Matter agenda within medical schools.
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Minnesota Senate Republicans pitched a 2022 “top priority” $65 million law enforcement recruiting package Wednesday.
The proposals – dubbed the “Creating Opportunities in Public Safety” (C.O.P.S) program – would incentivize law enforcement recruitment statewide to address a police officer shortage, Senate Majority Leader Jeremy Miller, R-Winona, said in a news conference.
“Across the state, we’ve been hearing from law enforcement agencies that are struggling with staff,” Miller said. “Law Enforcement officers are leaving the force in far higher numbers than they are applying to join the force and it’s hitting a critical stage for their ability to provide for safe communities,” “This isn’t an accident. These losses are a direct result of the ‘Defund the Police’ and anti-police rhetoric, that has demonized police officers and left them personally demoralized and their agencies diminished in size and standing.”
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The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) announced that it would receive about $3 million in grants from the Department of Justice to help victims of crime.
One grant the office will receive will help the office in investigations where DNA is used to find perpetrators in cold cases where it cannot find the offender. Another grant will pertain to the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (often referred to as SAKI). It allows law enforcement to process rape kits quicker.
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Georgia Governor Brian Kemp on Friday announced new grants for training for law enforcement officers, totaling more than $5 million.
The grants were dished out to state and local law enforcement agencies across Georgia, with the highest individual award, totaling approximately $1 million, given to the Georgia Public Safety Training Center.
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Even as President Biden strives to project a more police-friendly posture in public amid a historic surge in urban violence, his administration is quietly planning sweeping, unilateral executive action, GOP senators suspect, that is “tantamount to defunding the police” and “would only further demoralize law enforcement.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged this week that there’s been “a surge [in] crime over the last two years,” adding that the “underfunding” of police departments is partially to blame.
“The Department of Justice has announced $139 million in grants to cities for community policing, which will put 1,000 more officers on the streets,” Psaki said. “[Biden has] also proposed doubling those grants, and he’s called for an additional $750 million for federal law enforcement.”
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“Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna, whatcha gonna do when they come for you?”
That song and those words used to open the show Cops along with scenes of the police chasing down and arresting the “bad boys.” Viewers assume those apprehended would be spending some time in the slammer.
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President Joe Biden plans to roll out executive actions on police reform in honor of Black History Month this February, three sources familiar with the matter told NBC News, despite the fact that most black Americans polled support a police presence in their communities.
The executive legislation would come shortly after the fight by President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Senate Democrats to pass voting rights legislation.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki during a briefing Thursday said: “We’re very supportive of the efforts to negotiate police reform on a bipartisan level. Obviously, that didn’t move forward as we would have hoped.”
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The year 2021 saw the highest number of police officers killed in the line of duty in modern history, with 458 officers dying over the course of the year.
As reported by Fox News, the number is the highest since record-keeping first began, surpassing the previous high of 1930, which saw 312 officers killed on the job. The report was released on Tuesday by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF), pointing out that the numbers reflected an increase of 55 percent over the 2020 total of 295 deaths. The comprehensive report includes officers at every level, including municipal, county, state, and federal, as well as military, territorial, campus, and tribal law enforcement.
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A bombshell report just published in Newsweek details an in-depth, secret operation conducted by the Justice Department before and during January 6. Contrary to the lamentations of FBI Director Christopher Wray that he wished his agency had had better resources to prevent the Capitol breach, hundreds of elite forces under Wray’s authority were on stand-by days just before the protest, and even on the ground as it happened.
The “shadowy commandos” stationed at Quantico, home of the FBI Academy, on January 2, 2021 included the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team and SWAT teams.
“On the morning of January 6, most of these forces staged closer to downtown Washington, particularly after intelligence was received indicating a possible threat to FBI headquarters building or the FBI’s Washington Field Office,” Newsweek investigative reporter William M. Arkin wrote. “FBI tactical teams arrived on Capitol Hill early in the day to assist in the collection of evidence at sites—including the Republican and Democrat party national headquarters—where explosive devices were found. FBI SWAT teams and snipers were deployed to secure nearby congressional office buildings. Other FBI agents provided selective security around the U.S. Capitol and protection to congressional members and staff.”
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I testified earlier this month at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Chicago on underlying causes of the spikes in gun violence in that city and around the country.
Although Sen. Dick Durbin’s interruptions of my opening statement stole the show in many respects, it shouldn’t be overlooked that the Illinois Democrat also solicited disparaging remarks on the right to keep and bear arms from another witness—Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown.
In direct response to one of Durbin’s questions, Brown remarked that armed civilians make police officers’ jobs more difficult, and that he never has seen a lawfully armed civilian make a situation safer.
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More than half of likely voters expressed their disapproval of Joe Biden’s job as president in a recent Rasmussen poll, particularly with regards to his handling of the issues of crime and immigration, as reported by the New York Post.
According to the Rasmussen survey, 51 percent of voters rated Biden’s performance as “poor” on the issue of crime and law enforcement, with only 31 percent describing him as “good” or “excellent.” On immigration, 54 percent described him as “poor,” with only 27 percent rating him as “good” or “excellent.”
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Rosemarie Westbury’s life was turned upside down on April 9. Armored vehicles carrying federal agents equipped with fully-automatic rifles and battering rams were looking for her son.
It was 6:30 in the morning and Rosemarie was on her way to work as the sole breadwinner of the family. Her 62-year-old husband, Robert, has had eight strokes.
She received a terrifying call from one of her sons: the FBI was at their door.
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Recently-released surveillance video from inside the lower west terrace tunnel at the Capitol building from last January 6 confirms what American Greatness has reported for months: law enforcement officers from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and U.S. Capitol Police led a brutal assault against Trump supporters trapped inside that tunnel during the Capitol protest.
The three-hour clip offers one angle of what happened between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. in the tunnel, the site of the most violent clashes between police and protesters. It also is the location where Rosanne Boyland, a Trump supporter from Georgia, died.
One clip shows the attack on Victoria White, a Minnesota mother of four who was viciously beaten by at least two D.C. Metro officers including a supervisor:
The video supports what White told me in a series of interviews earlier this month; she was repeatedly beaten on the head with a baton and punched directly in the face numerous times by police. One officer grabbed her by the hair and shook her head side to side. Government charging documents, however, claim White—who is 5’6”, weighs 155 pounds, and had no weapon—was the aggressor:
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Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and members of the state’s law enforcement agencies are working to reduce impaired driving over the holiday season.
The governor on Tuesday announced that the 116 Virginia law enforcement agencies will complement each other and support the Checkpoint Strikeforce campaign.
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Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Thursday signed a spending package to invest billions the state received from federal coronavirus funds.
House Bill 169, sponsored by State Representative Al Cutrona (R-Canfield), invests the funds in law enforcement agencies, education, and the state’s healthcare system.
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Things are always worse than they seem.
That seems to be a good rule of thumb these days.
Take the FBI.
Every sentient person knows that the Bureau has had a rough couple years.
The Russia Collusion hoax revealed an agency shot through with corruption and partisan bias.
But the rot goes far beyond the large handful of top Bureau bad hats: the James Comeys, the Andrew McCabes, the Peter Strzoks, and Kevin Clinesmiths.
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Tennessee Governor Bill Lee on Wednesday announced a pay raise for new Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) officers across the state.
Specifically, new correctional officers will receive a 37 percent salary increase, bringing the position’s starting salary to $44,500 per year. Current security staff members will also see a bump in salary, gaining a minimum 15 percent pay increase.
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After months of foot-dragging, Joe Biden’s Justice Department is preparing for the first set of trials related to its sprawling prosecution of January 6 defendants: Robert Gieswein, who turned himself in and was arrested on January 19 for his involvement in the Capitol protest, is scheduled to stand trial in February.
A week after his arrest, Gieswein, 24 at the time, was indicted by a federal grand jury on six counts including “assaulting, resisting, or impeding” law enforcement with a dangerous weapon that day. He has been behind bars ever since, denied bail while Judge Emmet Sullivan delayed his trial on numerous occasions. Gieswein is among 40 or so January 6 defendants held in a part of the D.C. jail system solely used to detain Capitol protesters.
Federal prosecutors accuse Gieswein of using a chemical spray against police officers and carrying a baseball bat. Clad in military-style gear, Gieswein climbed through a broken window shortly after the first breach of the building. He told a reporter on the scene that “the corrupt politicians who have been in office for 50 or 60 years . . . need to be imprisoned.” Democratic politicians, Gieswein complained, sold out the country to “the Rothchilds and the Rockefellers,” a remark the FBI investigator on his case described as an “anti-Semitic” conspiracy theory.
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J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, criticized Scotland’s government for logging male rapists as “female” simply because they claim to be women.
“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman,” Rowling posted Sunday on Twitter, alluding to George Orwell’s dystopian classic, “1984.”
Police in Scotland will record rapes as being committed by a woman in instances where the perpetrator has male genitalia and has not taken any steps to legally become a woman, as long as the rapist insists they are female, The Times reported.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed official guest host, Grant Henry in studio for another addition of Grant’s Rants where he addresses civil asset forfeiture laws.
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The Brooklyn Center City Council is slated to vote on $1.2 million worth of budget cuts to the city’s police department, which would effectively reduce the size of the force by 30%.
Although the council considered the measure at a meeting Monday night, the vote did not take place because the discussion lasted until midnight. The council is expected to resume discussion on Thursday.
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In a press conference Monday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is proposing raises and bonuses for law enforcement officers and first responders as part of his budget hopes ahead of the 2022 Florida legislative session.
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Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted in the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber (both white men) because of white supremacy, according to left-wing politicians and journalists.
Rittenhouse shot three people (all white), killing two, in a claimed self-defense incident after he was charged by left-wing rioters during unrest in Kenosha last year. A jury cleared him of all charges on Friday.
According to people like Rep. Cori Bush, Rittenhouse’s acquittal was “white supremacy in action.”
“This system isn’t built to hold white supremacists accountable. It’s why Black and brown folks are brutalized and put in cages while white supremacist murderers walk free,” she said on Twitter.
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Angie Craig, a congresswoman from Minnesota, recently appeared at a fundraiser hosted by an organization known for its repeated calls to “defund the police.”
The Washington Free Beacon reported that the fundraiser, hosted by the Heart of LA Democratic Club, took place last Thursday at a home in Culver City. The group required proof of COVID-19 vaccination for entry and offered “contribution levels” of $50, $100, $250, $500, $1,000, and $2,900 to support Craig’s reelection to the U.S. House.
Craig, for her part, has not aligned herself with efforts to “defund the police,” unlike many other progressives in Minnesota and throughout the United States in 2020. The congresswoman faced heavy progressive backlash after openly opposing the Minneapolis charter amendment to replace the police department, even though her district doesn’t include any of Minneapolis.
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Tennessee Governor Bill Lee on Wednesday made a nationwide pitch to law enforcement officers to relocate to Tennessee and join the state’s law enforcement agency.
In the video, Lee detailed the benefits of moving to the state for officers who live in Democrat-controlled states like New York and California.
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Republicans in the Ohio House of Representatives on Wednesday advanced the Ohio Law and Order Act, aimed to protect members of law enforcement.
The legislation, House Bill 109, would allow police officers who are injured in a riot to sue protest organizers.
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Prominent leaders of a Black Lives Matter group in New York City promised violence if Mayor-elect Eric Adams brought back the city’s anti-crime units.
“If he thinks that they’re going to go back to the old ways of policing, then we are going to take to the streets again,” Hawk Newsome, who co-founded Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, told the New York Daily News.
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Arizona’s capital is fighting to recruit new police officers as its current patrol force is more than four dozen officers short of the bare minimum.
Officers with the Phoenix Police Department reported their monthly recruitment and staffing work to the city council’s Public Safety and Justice Subcommittee on Wednesday morning.
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Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison apparently thinks Democrats should have sought to defund the police without saying “defund the police.”
“I think allowing this moniker, ‘defund the police,’ to ever get out there, was not a good thing,” he recently told Washington Post reporter David Weigel. This comment followed an election in Minneapolis in which voters rejected a measure that would have replaced the police with a largely unarmed “Department of Public Safety.”
While Ellison’s most recent comment has drawn significant media attention, this position is not new — the AG has long wanted to reduce policing, only taking issue with the slogan his fellow progressives often use.
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A ballot measure aimed at increasing the number of police officers in the city of Austin, Texas was defeated in Tuesday’s election after hundreds of thousands of dollars was spent against it by George Soros, unions, and other organizations from outside of Texas, as reported by Fox News.
The question before voters, known as Prop A, would have required the city to hire two police officers for every 1,000 residents, and would subsequently increase officer training to accommodate the new hires. The measure was put on the ballot in response to a surge in violent crime in the wake of last year’s violent race riots, and a subsequent decline in the number of officers due to the “defund the police” movement as well as increasingly strict vaccine mandates.
The bulk of the money spent against Prop A came from outside the state of Texas. Chief among them was the far-left Equity PAC, which was given $500,000 by George Soros’s Open Society foundation, contributing to a total war chest of around $1.2 million. Other culprits include the equally far-left group known as the 1630 Fund, which spent $100,000 against Prop A, and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, which spent another $100,000. Another Soros-linked group, the Fairness Project, spent $200,000 to defeat Prop A.
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Immediately following an in-person meeting with his defense attorney, Robert Morss, a January 6 detainee held in part of the D.C. jail system used exclusively to incarcerate Capitol defendants, was subjected to a strip search where he was verbally and physically abused by prison guards.
Morss, a former Army ranger with three tours of duty in Afghanistan, was arrested in June and later indicted on numerous counts including assaulting a police officer and disorderly conduct. (Morss is named in a multi-defendant case with others who battled police near the lower west terrace tunnel, where law enforcement officers from D.C. Metro and Capitol police were attacking protesters.) In July, Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee to the D.C. District Court, denied Morss’ release pending trial.
Morss met with his attorney, John C. Kiyonaga, in advance of a status hearing scheduled for Friday afternoon. After Morss returned to the so-called “pod,” prison guards informed him he would need to be strip searched.
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Several storylines related to the events of January 6 have crumbled under closer scrutiny over the past 10 months: the “fire extinguisher” murder of Officer Brian Sicknick; the notion it was an “armed” insurrection and a grand “conspiracy” concocted by right-wing militias; claims that the building sustained $30 million in damages, and so on.
In the meantime, the Biden regime has attempted to cover up key aspects of that day, including the name of the officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, which was only recently revealed. Justice Department lawyers continue to resist the release of 14,000 hours of surveillance video and the U.S. Capitol Police refuse to publish an 800-page internal investigation on officer misconduct as well as internal communications before and after the Capitol breach.
But a deep dive by the Washington Post, published last weekend, raises new questions about the alleged “pipe bombs” discovered just before Congress met on January 6 to certify the results of the 2020 Electoral College vote. Like so many supporting scenes, the veracity of the pipe bomb tale is in doubt after the Post revealed eyebrow-raising details about those involved.
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Acoalition of law enforcement agents, mostly comprised of sheriffs combatting cartel violence along the southern border, in cooperation with Border Patrol agents, is working to bring awareness to Americans of the dangers they face because of the Biden administration’s hands-off border enforcement policies.
“A nation without secure borders cannot stand,” argues Mark Hager, Army veteran and founder of the U.S. First Defense Coalition. “As a republic, the citizens of the United States are the responsible first line of defense,” he says, and sheriffs are “the only law enforcement branch elected by the people,” Hager told Just The News. “They are comparable to the grassroots of law enforcement.”
Also a historian and a professor, Hager notes that sheriffs “hold a special place in American history, and especially along our southern border, where they are protecting citizens when the federal government won’t.”
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COVID-19 vaccine mandates have sparked nationwide controversy and led to firings and resignations around the country. Police officers have been hit hard by the requirements, and their exodus may leave many cities understaffed even on the heels of a spike in violent crime.
In New York City, officers passed the mayor’s deadline for vaccination Friday. The city announced that there are 26,000 unvaccinated municipal workers, including 17% of police officers. Those who refuse to comply will be placed on unpaid leave beginning Monday.
But New York City is far from the only local government to take that route. Several municipalities have instituted vaccine mandates for police officers only to see a significant drop-off in staffing.
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Outgoing Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender has filed an ethics complaint over a press conference Police Chief Medaria Arradondo held on Wednesday.
Arradondo warned residents of the consequences of approving a ballot Question 2, which, if passed, would replace the police department. The warning was made while he was standing in front of the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) logo.
Bender’s complaint says the press conference violates ethics code section 15.110, which states: “A local official, employee or candidate for elective office shall not use city facilities, property, funds, personnel, the city logo, the city seal or other city resources to engage in political activity.”
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The Chicago City Council is expected to pass a measure this week that would results in one of the largest guaranteed basic measures in the country, amid that if pass would be one of the largest in the county, amid calls from black lawmakers to put the money toward the city’s violent crime problem.
The Chicago police department as of last week reported 649 murders this year, compared to 634 for all of 2020.
The program, if passed, would give 5,000 low-income households $500 a month, using funding from the federal stimulus package that was rolled out earlier this year to address economic hardship as a result of the pandemic.
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