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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Under Siege

A.F. BRANCO | on April 7, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-under-siege/

01 Defiled AN 1080 — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

Minnesota law enforcement gets no backup from Democrats and the Media. Due to a lax justice system, police officers find themselves in deadly and dangerous situations from repeat criminal offenders. They feel despised not only by the criminals but by the officials who should have their back.

EXCLUSIVE: ‘Six inches higher’: Ramsey County deputy opens up after narrowly escaping death

By Liz Collin

Days after saying a final goodbye to three fallen brothers in Burnsville, bullets from a long rifle came within inches of killing Deputy Joe Kill.

With thousands of people watching Live on Patrol on a Friday night last month, Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher raced to help one of his deputies in a chase, one that ended minutes later in a St. Paul neighborhood, with the sheriff briefly struggling to fill in the blanks through his emotion. READ MORE…

DONATE to A.F. Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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Los Angeles Hires and Arms Foreign Criminals to Police U.S. Citizens

BY: JORDAN BOYD | FEBRUARY 29, 2024

Author Jordan Boyd profile

JORDAN BOYD

VISIT ON TWITTER@JORDANBOYDTX

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is hiring illegal border crossers with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status and equipping them with guns to police American citizens in California.

President Barack Obama’s 2012 DACA order indefinitely delays the deportation of illegal border crossers who enter the United States claiming to be minors. Recipients do not start becoming U.S. citizens unless they apply for a green card. That is why many seek endless DACA renewals that allow them to continue working and living in the States while still foreign citizens and admitted border lawbreakers.

Until recently, California only allowed U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents in the process

of obtaining citizenship to serve as law enforcement. In 2022, the Democrat legislature passed a law authorizing any of the hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossers, including DACA recipients, who obtain work authorization to join police forces across the state. While some cities like Sacramento refused to hire illegal border crossers due to concerns about gun law violations, LAPD handed jobs and firearms to nearly a dozen DACA aliens. Capt. Robin Petillo told CalMatters these illegal border crossers will “possess department-issued firearms on and off duty.” The department also plans to give jobs to illegally present foreigners who are currently in police training.

“We’ve tried to carve just what is necessary for DACA, and these individuals be treated on the same basis of which non-DACA recipients are, as to the possession of a department firearm and its use,” Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore told ABC 7.

The Second Amendment states it is “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” “The people,” according to American court precedent, refers to U.S. citizens only. The 1968 Gun Control Act, passed by a Democrat trifecta, also prohibits illegally present foreign citizens from possessing firearms and ammunition. The Fifth Circuit Court Of Appeals ruled in 2017 that DACA does not exempt illegal border crossers from that gun law. An exception in the 1968 law, however, allows for illegal border crossers to possess guns “for the use of, the United States or any department or agency thereof or any State or any department, agency, or political subdivision thereof.” That means this federal provision technically provides any local or state government office, even if they don’t have a law like California’s, to arm illegal border crossers.

So, in the case of the LAPD, a criminal foreign citizen who doesn’t have the constitutionally secured right to bear arms but was hired by a U.S. police department could arrest and even disarm a U.S. citizen who does have Second Amendment rights.

Under President Joe Biden and Democrats, illegal border crossers aren’t just getting jobs in local police departments, they are being rewarded for breaking U.S. laws with free transportation, shelter, and prepaid debit cards.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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HOUSE REPUBLICAN SUBPOENAS HARVARD LEADERS FOR ‘FAILING TO PRODUCE’ SUFFICIENT DOCS IN ANTISEMITISM PROBE

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Harvard professor says ‘all hell broke loose’ when his study found no racial bias in police shootings

By Nikolas Lanum Fox News | Published February 16, 2024 2:28pm EST

A Harvard professor said that “all hell broke loose” and he was forced to go out in public with armed security after he published a study that found no evidence of racial bias in police shootings.

During a sit-down conversation with Bari Weiss of The Free Press, Harvard Economics Professor Roland Fryer discussed the fallout from a 2016 study he published on racial bias in Houston policing. The study found that police were more than twice as likely to manhandle, beat or use some other kind of nonfatal force against blacks and Hispanics than against people of other races. However, the data also determined that officers were 23.8 percent less likely to shoot at blacks and 8.5 percent less likely to shoot at Hispanics than they were to shoot at whites.

When Fryer claimed the data showed “no racial differences in officer-involved shootings,” he said, “all hell broke loose,” and his life was upended.

Harvard professor Roland Fryer — Professor of Economics at Harvard University, Roland Fryer speaks during the annual Clinton Global Initiative in New York, New York. ((Photo by Ramin Talaie/Corbis via Getty Images))

Fryer received the first of many complaints and threats four minutes after publication.

“You’re full of s—t,” the sender said.

Fryer said people quickly “lost their minds” and some of his colleagues refused to believe the results after months of asking him not to print the data.

“I had colleagues take me to the side and say, ‘Don’t publish this. You’ll ruin your career,'” Fryer revealed.

The world-renowned economist knew from comments by faculty that he was likely to garner backlash. Fryer admitted that he anticipated the results of the study would be different and would confirm suspicions of racial bias against minorities. When the results found no racial bias, Fryer hired eight new assistants and redid the study. The data came back the same.

After the report was published, Fryer lived under police protection for over a month. He had a seven-day-old daughter at the time and went shopping for diapers.

FETTERMAN SLAMS HARVARD FOR HOSTING PALESTINIAN PROFESSOR WHO BLAMED ISRAEL FOR OCT. 7 HAMAS ATTACKS

Former Harvard President Claudine Gay, who made headlines for refusing to say if genocide of Jews was against Harvard policy during a congressional hearing, was also accused of multiple accounts of plagiarism. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

“I was going to the grocery store to get diapers with the armed guard. It was crazy. It was really, truly crazy,” he said.

Fryer, who became the youngest tenured Black professor at Harvard at age 30, was suspended for two years from the university in 2019 after he allegedly engaged in “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. He continues to deny the allegations. At the time, then-Harvard dean Claudine Gay claimed Fryer’s research and conduct with other employees “exhibited a pattern of behavior” that failed to meet expectations within the community.

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“The totality of these behaviors is a clear violation of institutional norms and a betrayal of the trust,” she said.

Gay resigned from her position as Harvard president in early January after widespread plagiarism allegations and criticism of her testimony to Congress, where she failed to fully clarify whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard’s policies against bullying and harassment.

Weiss, referencing Gay in her conversation with Fryer, asked him if he believes in karma.

“I hear it’s a motherf—er,” he replied.

Harvard did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment,

Nikolas Lanum is an associate editor for Fox News Digital.

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17-Year-Old Killed 6th Grader, Wounded 5 More in Iowa School Shooting Rampage

Thursday, 04 January 2024 04:56 PM EST

A sixth grader was killed and five other people were wounded by a 17-year-old suspect in a shooting Thursday at a small-town Iowa high school, authorities in Perry, Iowa, said.

The suspect died of what investigators believe is a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and at least one of the victims is a school administrator, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to The AP on condition of anonymity.

Newsweek reports that Perry police have ID’d the shooting suspect as Dylan Butler, 17, a student at Perry High who was reportedly armed with a pump-action shotgun and a small-caliber handgun. An explosive device was also found during a search of the school.

The Newsweek report said Butler had reportedly made social media posts in and around the time of the shooting. Potential motives have yet to be publicly discussed.

Perry has about 8,000 residents and is about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Des Moines, on the edge of the state capital’s metropolitan area. It is home to a large pork-processing plant, and low-slung, single story homes spread among trees now shorn of their leaves by winter. The high school and middle school are connected, sitting on the east edge of town.

High school senior Ava Augustus said she was in a counselor’s office, waiting for hers to arrive, when she heard three shots. She and other people barricaded the door, preparing to throw things if necessary, with a window being too small for an escape.

“And then we hear ‘He’s down. You can go out,’” Augustus said through tears. ”And I run and you can just see glass everywhere, blood on the floor. I get to my car and they’re taking a girl out of the auditorium who had been shot in her leg.”

Three gunshot victims were taken by ambulance to Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines, a spokesperson for its health system said. Some other patients were transported to a second hospital in Des Moines, a spokesperson for MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center confirmed, declining to comment on the number of patients or their statuses.

Vigils were planned Thursday evening at a park and a local church. A post on the high school’s Facebook page said it would be closed Friday, with counseling services planned at the public library Friday and Saturday.

In Washington, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland was briefed on the shooting. FBI agents from the Omaha-Des Moines office are assisting with the investigation led by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

The shooting occurred in the backdrop of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses. GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy had a campaign event scheduled in Perry at 9 a.m. about 1 1/2 miles (2.4 kilometers) from the high school but canceled it to have a prayer and intimate discussion with area residents.

Mass shootings across the U.S. have long brought calls for stricter gun laws from gun safety advocates, and Thursday’s did within hours. But that idea has been a non-starter for many Republicans, particularly in rural, GOP-leaning states like Iowa.

As of July 2021, Iowa does not require a permit to purchase a handgun or carry a firearm in public, though it mandates a background check for a person buying a handgun without a permit.

Ramaswamy said the shooting is a sign of a “psychological sickness” in the country. In Des Moines, GOP rival and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that gun violence “is more of a local and state issue” in an interview with the Des Moines Register and NBC News.

The high school in Perry is part of the 1,785-student Perry Community School District. The town is more diverse than Iowa as a whole, with census figures showing that 31% of the residents are Hispanic, compared to less than 7% for the state. Those figures also show that nearly 19% of the town’s residents were born outside the U.S.

An active shooter was reported at 7:37 a.m. Thursday and officers arrived seven minutes later, Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante said. Emergency vehicles surrounded the middle and high school.

Zander Shelley, 15, was in a hallway when he heard gunshots and dashed into a classroom, according to his father, Kevin Shelley. Zander was grazed twice and hid in the classroom before texting his father at 7:36 a.m.

Kevin Shelley, who drives a garbage truck, told his boss he had to run. “It was the most scared I’ve been in my entire life,” he said.

Rachael Kares, an 18-year-old senior, was wrapping up jazz band practice when she and her bandmates heard what she described as four gunshots, spaced apart.

“We all just jumped,” Kares said. “My band teacher looked at us and yelled, ‘Run!’ So we ran.”

Kares and many others from the school ran out past the football field, as she heard people yelling, “Get out! Get out!” She said she heard additional shots as she ran, but didn’t know how many. She was more concerned about getting home to her 3-year-old son.

“At that moment I didn’t care about anything except getting out because I had to get home with my son,” she said.

Erica Jolliff said that her daughter, a ninth grader, reported getting rushed from the school grounds at 7:45 am. Distraught, Jolliff was still looking for her son Amir, a sixth grader, one hour later.

“I just want to know that he’s safe and OK,” Jolliff said. “They won’t tell me nothing.”

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Will America Heed the Warnings of Panama’s Violent Riots?

BY: CASEY CHALK | NOVEMBER 23, 2023

Author Casey Chalk profile

CASEY CHALK

Many Americans have seen the footage of 77-year-old American lawyer Kenneth Darlington approaching and engaging a group of demonstrators blocking the Pan-American Highway in Panama before firing his handgun. Darlington is currently in Panamanian custody for killing two people during the incident. But what most Americans don’t know is what is going on in Panama, and what has been going on here for more than a month. Yet they should, because the unrest in this Central American country — home to a canal through which 40 percent of all U.S. container traffic travels — should serve as a warning as to what might await our own nation.

Holding a Nation Hostage

Since late October, protests have roiled Panama because of a government contract with Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals, which would grant the company rights to mine massive deposits of copper for years. The Cobre Panama mine already contributes almost 5 percent of the nation’s GDP. However, many Panamanians view the contract as unfair, too favorable to the Canadian company, and an ecological threat, especially given that almost 9 percent of national GDP comes from the tourism industry and the country’s many celebrated nature reserves. Thus the contract has united labor unions and environmental activists against the Panamanian government for negotiating the contract under what they perceive as poor terms.

These protesters are highly organized and have been quite efficient at bringing Panama’s society and economy to its knees. Major roads across the country have been routinely blocked, as have various ports. Roadblocks in certain parts of the country have prevented fresh produce grown in the agricultural region of Chiriqui from reaching the capital, where more than a third of all citizens live. Many fruits and vegetables, including bananas, have been unavailable for weeks. Thousands of Panamanians who live outside the city have been unable to commute to their jobs. Major tourist attractions — such as the World Heritage Site Casco Viejo, the historic section of the city — have often been inaccessible, affecting the hundreds of businesses located there. United Airlines even canceled flights into the city because the roads to and from Tocumen International Airport were blocked.

The alleged murder of two Panamanians by a U.S. citizen has provoked international headlines, but there has been extensive other violence and crime. Clashes have resulted in several other deaths, many stores have been vandalized, and enterprising demonstrators have established checkpoints at major thoroughfares where they shake down passersby for money.

Multiple American friends of mine have been robbed at these checkpoints, and one of them was pulled out of his car and beaten so badly he required more than a dozen stitches, including to his skull. In that example, Panamanian police stood nearby and did nothing until after the criminals had robbed my friend and left him lying on the road. (It was, if you can believe it, the second time he had been attacked and almost killed by criminals in Panama).

Panamanian police have engaged with demonstrators when they’ve congregated en masse and threatened government buildings or the financial district but have been notably absent elsewhere in the capital or broader country. Why, I’ve wondered, do the police not simply clear these roadblocks and tell protesters that even if they have the right to demonstrate, they are not free to cripple the country?

“They aren’t paid enough for that,” was the response from one American expat I asked who has lived in Panama for more than two decades. The typical response from the government and security forces to these kinds of protests, which happen fairly regularly, including last year, is to give demonstrators extensive latitude to express their frustrations. It is, authorities believe, a sort of “release valve” that will eventually lose steam.

Does Any of This Sound Familiar?

I hope I have provided enough details for readers to recognize the similarities between what is happening in Panama in the past two months and what happened in the United States more than three years ago. Between May 26 and June 8, rioters caused between $1-2 billion worth of damage in about 20 states, making it the costliest example of civil disorder in U.S. history. An estimated 25 people died in the riots. In some cities, such as Minneapolis and Chicago, police were ordered to stand down from intervening while rioters looted or destroyed businesses and even police stations.

The results of city governments punishing, castigating, and defunding their own police forces despite rising mob violence, looting, and destruction of property are readily apparent today. Urban crime has risen dramatically since 2020, as has the national murder rate, both of which have remained much higher than they were pre-pandemic. Many city police forces (including the New York and Chicago Police Departments) are plagued by underfunding and retention issues. Shoplifting and carjackings are soaring in places like Washington, D.C., which has police staffing levels at their lowest in a half-century. Why would anyone want to sign up for that kind of dangerous, underappreciated work? One might say they aren’t paid enough for this.

What Comes Next?

In Panama, popular frustrations over the roadblocks are growing. Working-class Panamanians are increasingly vocal in their anger toward road closures that have lost them as much as one month’s pay — when you’re already poor, that kind of financial loss is more than an annoyance, it’s debilitating. Some clashes have already occurred between laborers and protesters, and if this crisis isn’t resolved soon, there’s likely to be more protests, and they’ll probably be more violent.

Panama’s elite, who live in tony districts such as Costa del Este — which could easily pass for downtown Miami or San Diego — have been thus far largely insulated from the damage caused by more than a month of protests. They may not have butterhead lettuce for their salads or bananas for their smoothies, but they’ll make do, much as the American elite class did in 2020. Yet, also like America, the continued wealth and success of the elite class and their neighborhoods can distract from decaying infrastructure, a massive divide between rich and poor, and systemic corruption.

How long, one wonders, will everyday citizens put up with a system so obviously biased toward those wealthy and powerful enough to shield themselves from increasingly common criminality and violence on their streets? How long will the police protect those who view them as expendable, and even as a politically expedient scapegoat? In Panama, we may learn the answer soon. Perhaps Americans should be pursuing policy options with regard to public safety and police forces that ensure we won’t have to ask that question ourselves.

Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelor’s in history and master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College. He is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands.

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International Politics

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Academic Whose Work Was Cited As Proof Of ‘Systemic Racism’ Is Fired For Falsifying Research

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

Author Shawn Fleetwood profile

SHAWN FLEETWOOD

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A Florida State University professor whose work was foundational to perpetuating the false narrative that there is widespread “systemic racism” infecting American society has been fired for falsifying data in his academic research on the subject.

In a recently resurfaced report from last month, the New York Post revealed that Eric Stewart, an FSU criminology professor, had been fired by the university “on account of ‘extreme negligence’ in his research,” as well as “incompetence” and producing “false results” in his nearly 20 years of work.

“I do not see how you can teach our students to be ethical researchers or how the results of future research projects conducted by you could be deemed as trustworthy,” FSU Provost James Clark wrote in a July 13 letter formally notifying Stewart of his firing.

According to the Post, Stewart has had six studies published in major academic journals between 2003 and 2019 that were “fully retracted,” including a 2019 study claiming the historical legacy of lynchings “made whites perceive blacks as criminals, and that the problem was worse among conservatives.”

Stewart’s retracted research also included claims that racial disparities in criminal sentencing are racially motivated. In a 2015 study, for instance, Stewart suggested Americans supported tougher sentencing for Hispanics because they feared an increase in the U.S. Latino population and Latinos’ potential economic success.

Other retracted studies include a 2018 analysis which “suggested that white Americans view black and Latino people as ‘criminal threats,’ and suggested that perceived threat could lead to ‘state-sponsored social control,’” the Post added.

Clark indicated in his letter that Stewart’s other published works are “in doubt.”

Rather than own up to his actions, Stewart has since attempted to play the victim card and attacked Justin Pickett, a former FSU graduate student who reported Stewart for his unethical conduct. Following the launch of the investigation into his work in 2020, Stewart, who is black, claimed that by raising concerns about his faulty research, Pickett had “essentially lynched [him] and [his] academic character.”

In addition to his $190,000 annual salary at FSU, Stewart’s projects received millions in research grants from major groups and government agencies. According to the Post, the National Institute of Mental Health — which falls under the National Institute of Health — reportedly gave Stewart $3.2 million to research “how African Americans transition into adulthood.”

Stewart also reportedly received funds from the National Science Foundation, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, and the National Institute of Justice, a subsidiary of the Department of Justice.

The discovery of Stewart’s falsified research and his subsequent firing is significant to understanding the left’s ongoing war on American police officers. As noted by Wilfred Reilly, an associate professor at Kentucky State University, Stewart is “[p]robably THE academic [figure] responsible” for the debunked narrative that so-called “systemic racism” plagues U.S. police departments throughout the country.

According to Google Scholar, for instance, Stewart’s questionable — and in several cases, categorically false — works have garnered more than 8,500 citations by other researchers. Stewart’s “research” has been used as a pretext by other academics, regime-approved media, and Democrat politicians to smear America’s on-the-ground law enforcement officers as inherently “racist” towards non-white Americans.

“The point [of this story] is that one of the [main] guys who built up the entire narrative of ‘wokeness’ just made it up,” Reilly told The Federalist. “Throughout the entire kind of racial reckoning, one of the things that I and others … have noticed is that these stories [about police brutality against black Americans] keep collapsing. The narrative of police genocide of African Americans turned out … to be complete nonsense.”

Reilly also referenced research conducted by the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald, whose analyses of publicly available data have debunked leftists’ narrative that there is an epidemic of police killing unarmed black Americans. In a USA Today article published a few months after George Floyd’s death, for instance, Mac Donald noted how even data from The Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings dispels such claims and predicted that “[r]educing police resources will ultimately result in poorer service to the law-abiding residents of high-crime areas.”

Mac Donald’s forecast ultimately came true. While the rise of Black Lives Matter and Democrat-generated attacks on police began under the Obama administration, it was Floyd’s death that ushered in a new era of the left’s war on America’s police. Democrat politicos and their legacy media allies quickly hijacked Floyd’s death to normalize street violence committed by their communist foot soldiers. The left’s perpetuation of the false “systemic racism in policing” narrative and their subsequent actions not only killed people such as David Dorn, but countless others who suffered because their Democrat-run cities defunded local law enforcement.

Following Floyd’s death and the anti-police back it launched, there was a significant spike in overall murders, especially affecting black victims. According to Reilly, such statistics don’t interest groups like Black Lives Matter because “a focus on things that might actually correlate with a high loss of black life … [is] not what the movement was about.”

BLM “was about using outlier conflict between blacks and whites to get money,” Reilly said. “The whole idea was to take these very isolated, white cop or white vigilantes on black male cases and present them as normal. They did that for a while. It turned out not to be real and they’ve pulled back from the scene, now as the owners of some nice properties. And now we’re left to clean up the mess.”

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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Close Brush With Insanity: Maryland’s Pot Law Impedes Police Efforts to Stop Drug-Impaired Driving

By: Abby Carr / Paul J. Larkin / August 08, 2023

In simple terms, police officers in Maryland no longer are able to stop someone on the street or pull over a car just because they smell marijuana. (Photo illustration: RealPeopleGroup/Getty Images)

“They call it dope for a reason,” anti-drug campaigns used to say.

These public service campaigns were referring to the people who use drugs, but a marijuana law recently passed by the Maryland General Assembly shows that the slogan could apply to some legislators too.

That’s harsh, but accurate. Why? Under a statute that took effect July 1, police officers in Maryland no longer may rely merely on the distinctive odor of cannabis to search a lawfully stopped individual or motor vehicle for the presence of the drug that gave rise to the odor.

Maryland lawmakers hastily pushed through HB 1071, now Criminal Procedure Article §1-211, in the waning moments of the Free State’s legislative session when legislators are more interested in leaving than thinking about the bills up for votes. Proponents of this ill-conceived legislation argued that it would eradicate instances of racial profiling on the roads, but detractors warned of an impending surge in criminal activity.

Cannabis odor has been a lawful basis for making a probable-cause search of a car in Maryland and other states where use of marijuana is a crime. When officers smelled the unmistakable scent of marijuana, they used that fact to establish probable cause to search a person, stop a car, or the like, preventing countless handgun-related homicides and deaths related to impaired driving.

Aside from the evident, commonsense conclusion officers have drawn, the Supreme Court and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have r e cognized that the odor produced by contraband or its manufacturing process—such as the operation of a still to make alcoholic beverages—can establish probable cause that a crime has been committed.

In simple terms, police officers in Maryland no longer are able to stop someone on the street or pull over a car just because they smell marijuana. But the new law doesn’t place the odor of cannabis out of bounds altogether; the smell by itself just can’t serve as the basis for stopping a person or a vehicle.

Once an officer observes other evidence or suspicious conduct or, in the case of a motor vehicle, a legitimate traffic violation, a stop is justified. If the officer has sufficient additional evidence of a crime or other illegality—such as a car’s swaying side to side—the officer might have probable cause to arrest the driver for impaired driving.

To be sure, at that time the officer may search only those areas of a motor vehicle that are “readily accessible to the driver.” This means the officer cannot search the trunk, for example. But the front seat area, including what’s underneath, the console, and glove compartment, is still fair game, as well as whatever a driver could reach in the back seat.

Plus, the officer may call for a tow truck to take the vehicle to an impoundment lot, where, if local procedures require or allow it, police may do an inventory search of the entire car.

Naturally, the American Civil Liberties Union released a statement on the new Maryland law, saying: “For decades, police have been granted the authority to conduct searches based on something that cannot be categorically proven: a claim based solely on their sense of smell. These claims by police have been routinely used to infringe on individuals’ privacy rights and justify racial profiling.”

Although it is true that relying solely on the sense of smell may have limitations and some potential for error, even adults who aren’t trained police officers know what burning marijuana smells like. (If you think the odor of burnt cannabis isn’t unmistakable, you must have been born yesterday.) Moreover, the ACLU’s statement implies a generalization, asserting that police officers’ claims based on their sense of smell routinely have been used to target black individuals and trample on their privacy rights unlawfully.

Making such sweeping generalizations without providing sufficient evidence, such as peer-reviewed studies, is disappointing. But it’s not surprising, considering the source.

Notice also what the ACLU statement avoids: the increased public safety risk of taking yet another tool out of police’s tool bag to catch criminals.

Marijuana odor as probable cause has aided in the discovery of many other types of crimes, not simply the recovery of cannabis. According to the State’s Attorney’s Office in Montgomery County, Maryland, a large percentage of illegal handguns are seized from vehicles that were searched based on the odor of cannabis. In Montgomery County alone, 80% of those firearms are coming off the street because an officer smells marijuana during a traffic stop.

More handguns on the street will lead to increased crime and homicides—which disproportionately will affect black residents of lower-income areas, the same people the ACLU claims this new law protects.

Beyond Maryland’s borders, driving under the influence of marijuana poses a significant threat to public safety across the entire country. Other states that have legalized recreational or medical marijuana have witnessed an increase in incidents related to impaired driving. With the growing accessibility of marijuana, more individuals may be prone to use it before getting behind the wheel, leading to a surge in preventable accidents and fatalities.

Driving under the influence of cannabis has similar effects as drunk driving. One can look at recent data and trends regarding legalization of marijuana in Colorado to shed light on the potential risks of this Maryland law. Colorado found that since lawmakers legalized recreational marijuana in 2013, traffic deaths where drivers tested positive for marijuana increased 138%, while all Colorado traffic deaths increased 29%. Moreover, traffic deaths involving drivers who tested positive for marijuana more than doubled, from 55 in 2013 to 131 in 2020.

Since marijuana was legalized, the percentage of all Colorado traffic deaths involving drivers who tested positive for marijuana increased from 11% in 2013 to 20% in 2020.

These harrowing statistics are just the beginning. What could prompt such a blatant dismissal of public safety? One word: money.

The market for cannabis in Maryland is expected to exceed $11 billion in sales following its legalization July 1. A recent survey conducted among thousands of Maryland residents revealed that the average marijuana consumption in the state surpasses the national average: Nationally, the typical person consumes around 20.2 grams of marijuana per month; Marylanders consume an average of 25.4 grams. The survey also found that cannabis consumers in Maryland are willing to travel between 11 and 20 minutes to obtain their desired products, and are willing to pay approximately $14 per gram of marijuana. This translates to an estimated monthly expenditure of $357 per Maryland user.

Let’s be clear: Maryland’s new law could lead to an increase in crimes involving firearms and a rise in drug-impaired driving offenses. With a staggering 10,000 fatalities across the nation in 2020 alone as a result of alcohol-impaired driving, one only can imagine how many death certificates will be signed in Maryland as a result of rampant driving under the influence of marijuana.

That’s a high price to pay to satisfy the ACLU.

COMMENTARY BY

Abby Carr

Abby Carr is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

Paul J. Larkin

Paul J. Larkin directs The Heritage Foundation’s project to counter abuse of the criminal law, particularly at the federal level, as senior legal research fellow in the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Read his research.

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Law

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Here’s A Big Tell Democrats Believe The FBI Works For Them

BY: JOY PULLMANN | MAY 24, 2023

Author Joy Pullmann profile

JOY PULLMANN

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Democrats are communicating loud and clear that they support law enforcement so long as it abuses police power to serve their political goals. They want to defund police who enforce the law and expand police forces that use law as a political weapon on Democrats’ behalf.

One proof is that in last week’s hearing on FBI weaponization, support for the FBI was split exactly by political party. Democrats uniformly supported the FBI in face of evidence of gross and systemic abuse of power, while Republicans uniformly criticized it. This is a clear tell that Democrats consider the FBI to be working for them — a shocking and dangerous situation.

“Every single Republican on the Judiciary Committee is committed to fundamental change in how that [FBI secret warrant] process works,” Rep. Jim Jordan told Maria Bartiromo Sunday in a post-hearing interview. “…the FISA and the appropriations process is how you rein in this agency that targeted good men, like Garret O’Boyle, Stephen Friend, and Marcus Allen, who had the courage to come forward and testify this week and tell the American people what’s going on with their tax dollars in the Justice Department.”

The last week has surfaced numerous new facts about serious ongoing and systemic FBI abuses of law enforcement powers. Special Counsel John Durham’s report showed that the FBI acted in a clearly partisan manner in multiple situations, including protecting the Hillary Clinton campaign while placing informants and electronic wiretaps on the Trump campaign based on fabricated evidence their agents didn’t check.

In Thursday’s hearing, the three whistleblowers detailed the FBI’s cruel retaliation against themselves and their families when they filed legally protected ethics complaints about: the FBI surveilling parents who complained about Democrats’ education policies at school board meetings; the FBI pursuing a SWAT-style raid against a cooperative man who attended the Jan. 6, 2021 rally; and the FBI inflating “domestic terrorism” cases to bolster Democrats’ false and horrifying claim that their political opponents are terrorists.

Allen told the committee it appears the FBI is conducting a “purge” of conservatives. Michael Shellenberger and Madeleine Rowley reported, “No mainstream media journalist interviewed the FBI whistleblowers before demonizing them.”

During that hearing, it was also revealed that the Bank of America gave the FBI private banking information about any American who used BOA credit cards near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, without any warrant, and regardless of whether those people committed any crimes or even were on the Capitol grounds that day.

“FBI leadership pressured agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism (DVE), and even manufactured DVE cases where they may not otherwise exist, while manipulating its case categorization system to create the perception that DVE is organically rising around the country,” says a congressional staff report released May 18.

Saturday reporting on a secret court filing showed the FBI broke the law by spying on Americans 278,000 times, without any warrants, in 2021 alone. “For each American the FISA court permitted the FBI to target, the bureau illicitly surveilled almost 1,000 additional Americans,” reported the New York Post on Sunday. The whistleblowers noted that the FBI rewards agents for opening more warrantless surveillance and searches of Americans’ communications.

Then on Sunday a poll came out showing the majority of Americans believe the FBI covers up Democrats’ crimes — specifically those of the Biden family. It also showed that 70 percent of Americans are concerned the FBI and other intelligence agencies interfere with elections, and believe the agencies need “wide-ranging reform.”

Don’t forget, either, that the only former president’s home the FBI has ever raided was a Republican’s, while FBI officials bent over backward to avoid touching even convincing evidence of criminal behavior related to Clinton, according to Durham’s documentation. The FBI’s recent record is clearly partisan, and that’s why its support is also now partisan.

This partisanship is not just typical politics. It’s over fundamental issues, not differing ways to get to the same goal. It’s also very dangerous to our country.

When federal law enforcement becomes the shock troops of only one political party, you don’t have the rule of law anymore. Law is only legitimate if it is equally applied to all. When members of one party or set of political beliefs are above the law and use the law not for justice but as a weapon against their political enemies, that’s what we call a police state.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her just-published ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. Her many books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. Joy is also a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

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Ann Coulter Op-ed: Hey! Where’d All the “Browns” Go?

February 1, 2023 by Ann Coulter

“Yet again, we’re seeing evidence of what happens to Black and brown people from simple traffic stops.” — Ben Crump, attorney for Tyre Nichols’ family

“It is yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that Black and brown Americans experience every single day.” — President Joe Biden

“[V]iolence like what happened to [Tyre Nichols] is about how some bad cops use their power over Black and brown victims.” — CNN’s Van Jones

Hey! Where’d all the “browns” go?

George Floyd, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, and on and on and on — all black people, generally “justice-involved,” who resisted the police and ended up dead. Name a civilian killed by cops of any other race that led to international protests, billboards, renamed streets, hashtags, memorials, NBA jerseys, murals, busts, tribute songs or O magazine covers.

Only black people reflexively defend their own criminals. The “blacks and browns” scam is an attempt to rope Hispanics into the black community’s dysfunction.

Hispanics don’t champion their criminals! (Asians don’t even champion their A-minus students.) When 13-year-old Adam Toledo was shot by a cop in Chicago, “activists” did their best to incite worldwide protests, but Hispanics weren’t interested. Why are we going to take off work?

To the contrary, the residents of Toledo’s overwhelmingly Hispanic neighborhood blamed his mother, complained about gangs and demanded more policing. Journalists hoping for anti-police rage instead got quotes like these:

“We are tired of gang violence; it’s sad what happened with the young boy, but he had a gun with him and his friend had been shooting, so the officer responded to the threat.”

“We can’t even go out safely because there are random shootings everywhere and you never know if a stray bullet might hit you.”

“The only reason people are talking about (killings) now is that it was a police officer who shot and killed the kid.”

Meanwhile, normal black people are made to feel like race traitors if they ever say something like, I don’t know, the guy was kind of a scumbag.

No matter how much the activists push, Hispanics simply will not rush out on the streets to protest whenever a Latino is killed by a cop. (In places like Los Angeles, Hispanics are the cops.) Journalists are beside themselves that the “browns” refuse to be more like black people.

NBC News: “Police killings of Latinos lack attention, say activists”

Los Angeles Times: “What will make people care about police shootings of Latinos?”

The Washington Post: “Latinos are disproportionately killed by police but often left out of the debate about brutality, some advocates say”

And, no, black people are not killed by the police at a “disproportionate” rate. Every single study claiming otherwise is comparing the percentage of blacks killed by police to the black percentage in the population. This, obviously, is absurd. Lots of people never have any contact with the police. (Obey the law — you’ll see!)

It would be like accusing grizzly bears of systemic racism against Alaskans because 29% of all grizzly attacks are against Alaskans — a mere 0.2% of the population — whereas grizzlies kill zero Texans, and they make up 9% of the population! (There are no grizzlies in Texas at last count.)

Police don’t stop people at random. They stop people whom they believe to be breaking the law. Judging by the pantheon of black martyrs, they’re often right.

George Floyd was a fentanyl addict (which, of course, contributed in no way to his death) who’d just passed a counterfeit $20 bill — not to mention the armed home invasion robbery he’d committed back in Texas; Michael Brown had just knocked over a convenience store and gratuitously roughed up the small Asian owner on his way out; Freddie Gray was a heroin dealer in possession of an illegal switchblade; Breonna Taylor was the bag woman for a fentanyl dealer; Daunte Wright was driving with an expired registration and had a warrant for his arrest stemming from his choking a woman during an attempted armed robbery.

For any meaningful comparison of civilians killed by cops, the denominator needs to be “percentage of contacts with the police.” Maybe officers are searching out black people to harass for no reason whatsoever, but another explanation for the high number of police encounters is that, compared to other groups, a relatively large cohort of black people are violent criminals.

Although only 13% of the population, black people commit more than 50% of all murders, more than 50% of all robberies and more than 30% of all aggravated assaults. And yet blacks remain about one-quarter of the thousand civilians shot by police every year, the vast majority of them armed.

Instead of unveiling more George Floyd murals, how about some refresher courses on “The Talk”? (Which apparently makes much more sense in Spanish.) All these black luminaries would be alive today if they’d done one simple thing: Obey the police. It’s not that hard.

Guys, we want to help! But you’ve got to abandon this impulse to turn any member of your group who fights a cop into a beatified saint.

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Without Black Lives Matter, Tyre Nichols Might Not Have Died In Memphis Last Week

BY: VICTORIA MARSHALL | JANUARY 30, 2023

Black Lives Matter protesters carry signs

Two of the five police officers charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols were hired by the Memphis Police Department after it relaxed its hiring requirements, a new report by The New York Post shows. Tadarrius Bean and Demetrius Haley both joined the MPD in August 2020 after education qualifications to become an officer were dramatically lowered two years prior. The department nixed the required associate’s degree or 54 college credit hours for recruits in 2018 due to a lack of applicants.

“They’re desperate. They want police officers,” retired NYPD detective Mike Alcazar told the Post. “They’re going through it, they check off some boxes, saying, ‘Ok, they’re good enough, get them on.”

In fact, the department was so desperate for recruits it offered $15,000 signing bonuses in both 2021 and 2022, and waivers for applicants who had been convicted of felonies. Even this did not prevent the force from being down 500 officers in January 2022.

Back in September 2020, a month after Bean and Haley were hired, former Deputy Director of MPD Mike Ryall told the Memphis Commercial Appeal that the rise of violent crime in the city could be attributed to the police department’s understaffing and lack of manpower. Bean and Haley were also hired during the summer of the George Floyd riots, a global protest movement organized by Black Lives Matter in response to the death of Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. The protests spread to more than 2,000 cities across America, causing more than $1 billion in property damage and killing at least 25 people. Such a movement, whose main mantra was “defund the police,” significantly damaged police morale.

According to a June 2021 survey by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), the rate of retirement at police departments rose 45% in 2020 compared to the previous year, with a 20% increase in resignations. The hiring rate also dropped by 5%. Simply put: police officers were quitting at unprecedented rates across the country to escape such a hostile environment, and departments were struggling to meet minimum staffing requirements. This coincided with a massive crime wave across America’s major cities.

“So at that very moment you’re hoping you can put police out there to try to deal with crime, you’re seeing the workforce shrinking with an unprecedented number of retirements and resignations,” PERF’s Executive Director Chuck Wexler told NPR.

While a shortage of recruits is no excuse for relaxing hiring standards for cops, it is a product of disastrous dynamics the Black Lives Matter movement and leftist elites have cultivated. There is a lot of power and money in stoking fears of racism and hatred. And it is all done at the cost of the safety of the American public, most especially black Americans like Nichols.

For sure, let the cops implicated in Nichols’ death be charged to the fullest extent of the law, but it is important to remember why officers of that quality were hired to those positions in the first place.

Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.

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VICTORIA MARSHALL

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COMMENTARY

Watch: Police Put in Horrifying Situation as 4-Year-Old Opens Fire While Dad Is Being Arrested

By Richard Bledsoe | July 22, 2022

Police are often placed in situations where they have to make life-or-death decisions in an instant.

Thanks to the attitudes of the establishment media, the results of those consequential choices usually only get publicized if police can be blamed for making the wrong call.

However, now dramatic body cam footage was released where police successfully handled a dangerous situation in which a 4-year-old boy used his father’s gun to open fire on the officers. They were able to disarm the child before anyone got hurt.

Multiple versions of the body cam recordings were shared in a YouTube video. Watch:

ABC4 in Utah linked highlights from the videos and summarized the events that took place on February 21. The police were summoned when “employees reported that a man brandished a gun in the drive-thru after his order was incorrect.”

Sadaat Johnson, 27, was in the McDonald’s drive-thru with two children in the car, a 4-year-old and a 3-year-old.

Johnson did not comply with police instructions, and the situation escalated until officers were forced to pull Johnson from the vehicle.

The video does not show what happened next in the car. While the police were making the arrest of Johnson, the 4-year-old boy picked up the gun. An officer saw the weapon and shouted “Gun!”

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ABC4 reported, “The officer used his hand to sweep the gun away and the gun went off, hitting the upper part of the McDonald’s building. The officer then yelled at the person inside of the car to drop the gun, and after looking inside the car, realized that it was a small child.”

The children can be heard crying as they exit the car. The officers ask “Are you all right, kid?” and try to reassure them: “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

The discharge may have been accidental. However as reported in the New York Post, “The investigation showed that Johnson then ‘told the child to shoot at the police,’ authorities said. It was not clear exactly when he gave the order and it was not caught in the bodycam clip.”

“The boy — who was taken into protective custody — said he shot at the cops because ‘he wanted his daddy back,’ according to court records obtained by ABC4.”

Johnson also explained to the authorities “this wasn’t the first time his 4-year-old child had gotten his hands on a gun.”

Johnson ended up pleading guilty to two third-degree felonies, child abuse or neglect and aggravated assault. Johnson was sentenced to 120 days in jail, three years of probation and courses on anger management and parenting. He can no longer own guns.

A huge contributing factor to this near-disaster was Johnson’s disrespect and disregard for the police. This attitude leads to more danger in police interactions, despite the absurd progressive activist campaign to defund the police based on claims that it’s police presence that starts the problems.

This is not to say law enforcement does not need some reform. But it needs to be reform that puts police back into serving and protecting communities, rather than abusing citizens on behalf of the political class.

Police should also question even their own self-serving agendas. The Utah body cam footage was in stark contrast to footage from the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. There, the cams caught almost 400 law enforcement personnel unable to handle a lone shooter for almost an hour, while kids died.

In the Utah case though, it is a testament to God’s mercy and the police that no one was killed or injured through the careless abuse of firearms. There could have been causalities of officers, kids or both.

The trouble was caused due to a series of bad decisions and actions by Sadaat Johnson, as much as some want to blame the gun or the cops instead.

Richard Bledsoe

Contributor, Commentary

Richard Bledsoe is an author and internationally exhibiting artist. His writings on culture and politics have been featured in The Masculinist, Instapundit and American Thinker. You can view more of his work at Remodernamerica.com.

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Video: Uvalde Body Cam, CCTV Footage Released – Shows ENTIRE Botched Police Response

Reported By Jack Davis | July 12, 2022

The full 77-minute video has been released from the day 19 children and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The full video, which includes a hallway surveillance camera and a bodycam from one officer, was obtained by the Austin American-Statesman. The outlet posted the four-minute edited collection of excerpts on its website. It posted the full video on its YouTube page.

The edited video begins with the gunman crashing the pickup truck he was driving, and then moving to the school after shooting at witnesses across the street and firing shots in the school parking lot.

WARNING: The following video contains images and audio that viewers will find disturbing.

“The video tells in real time the brutal story of how heavily armed officers failed to immediately launch a cohesive and aggressive response to stop the shooter and save more children if possible. And it reinforces the trauma of those parents, friends and bystanders who were outside the school and pleaded with police to do something, and for those survivors who quietly called 911 from inside the classroom to beg for help,” Statesman reporter Tony Plohetski wrote.
“The kids are running,” a woman calls out during the video in a 911 call, adding “Oh my God.”

Panic-stricken screams are heard as a woman orders children into their rooms.

The excerpt then continues with the shooter entering the school, peering around a corner to rooms 111 and 112, before sauntering down the hallway holding his rifle. The video captures one boy emerging from a bathroom. The boy peers around the corner and looks at the shooter, who is farther down the hall, before running away upon hearing the first shots.

Officials have said in the next two and a half minutes, about 100 rounds were fired, according to the Daily Mail.

Gunfire continues.

A few moments later, the first officers arrive.

Three officers approach the classroom warily with drawn weapons. A burst of gunfire erupts, sending the officers running. One officer holds his head as if he was struck.

The clip video then cuts to 19 minutes later, then 31 minutes later, as more officers with guns and a ballistic shield arrive. Officers continue to wait. Four shots are heard.

“They’re making entry,” an officer says, but nothing happens.

At 12:30 p.m. local time, an officer squirts hand sanitizer from a wall-mounted dispenser and rubs his hands together. Officers appear to be discussing alternate ways to enter the classroom.

At 12:50, officers breach the classroom, killing the gunman.

NEW: Recently, I viewed the hallway video from Robb Elementary School and I'm equally as haunted today as I have been. As journalists, we argue for transparency, but rest assured that once it is finally released, it is as wrenching as it seems. https://t.co/M49gOQGLmt
— Tony Plohetski (@tplohetski) July 10, 2022

Republican state Rep. Dustin Burrows said Tuesday that most sections of the hallway video will be shown to Uvalde community members on Sunday.

However, with the leak of the entirety of the footage, more backlash is sure to ensue.

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A Would-Be School Invader In Alabama Failed When The Doors Were Locked And Police Weren’t Cowards

REPORTED BY: KYLEE ZEMPEL | JUNE 10, 2022

Turns out we don’t need celebrity lectures and gun control to keep kids safe. We just need locked doors and adults who do their dang jobs.

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KYLEE ZEMPEL

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While Democrats continue exploiting the Uvalde shooting victims to prattle on about “assault weapons” and so-called “common-sense gun control,” another school was attacked on Thursday, but it won’t make the headlines. That’s because this school — Walnut Park Elementary School in Gadsden, Alabama — didn’t have any victims except the would-be invader, who was shot dead by police after he tried and failed to bust into the building. Here’s how it all reportedly went down.

A passerby saw a man “aggressively” trying to get into the school building. When the man was unsuccessful, he tried several other doors, all of which were locked. The responsible observer called to report the man, the school principal put the building on lockdown and called in a police officer who doubles as the school resource officer, and that officer called for backup. If the reports are correct, the chain of command worked smoothly thanks to decisive action and quickly followed protocols. The resource officer reportedly engaged the would-be invader, who then also allegedly attempted to forcefully enter a marked police vehicle and to take the officer’s gun. More police officers rushed to the scene to help, and the assailant was shot and killed. According to the city’s school superintendent, the schoolchildren who were there “seemed to be unaware the incident occurred.”

In other words, a man who “aggressively” tried to break into a school and take the firearm of a police officer was stopped because doors were properly locked and police officers acted bravely and urgently.

Hmm. That’s interesting. Because according to President Joe Biden, failed presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, rom-com celebrity Matthew McConaughey, and late-night political scold Jimmy Kimmel, the only way to end the “carnage” of schoolchildren being murdered is to pass anti-gun laws or issue executive orders that radically infringe on the Second Amendment but are slapped with an innocuous “common-sense” qualifier so they don’t sound so bad.

Nothing else would do the trick, such people say — despite the fact that the Uvalde killer had no problem passing a background check, entered through an unlocked door, and faced little resistance from law enforcement for a disgustingly long time.

When Texas Sen. Ted Cruz responded to the Uvalde murder with calls for better school security in the form of locked doors and single-point entry, which could have prevented that killing, leftists and the corporate press ridiculed him for focusing on doors. “[S]enator Ted Cruz comes out bravely against doors,” scoffed The Atlantic’s Molly Jong-Fast on Twitter. “Are they really gonna make it about ‘too many doors on the school’? They are, aren’t they?” chimed in woke comedian Patton Oswalt.

Meanwhile, nobody on the left wants to talk about the criminal failures of the Uvalde police and the Department of Public Safety. That’s in part because if they had done their jobs rather than standing outside like cowards for the better part of an hour, lives undoubtedly would have been spared. It’s also because the implication of Democrats disarming responsible citizens is that the only remaining defense will be armed government employees, who may or may not have the courage to actually help anyone.

Thankfully, in Alabama on Thursday, police did have that courage, and lives were saved because of it. But Democrats and their media lapdogs won’t speak a word of Walnut Park Elementary because it obliterates their gun “do somethingism.”

It turns out we don’t need celebrity lectures and sweeping gun control to keep schoolchildren safe. We just need locked doors and adults who do their dang jobs.

Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.

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Cops converge upon mom at school board meeting after chairwoman kicks her out for ‘something horrible’ she was ‘about to say’ regarding board member

Reported by DAVE URBANSKI | April 25, 2022

Police officers were caught on video converging upon a mother who was speaking in front of the microphone at a Florida school board meeting last week after the chairwoman kicked her out for “something horrible” she was “about to say” concerning another school board member.

Melissa Bakondy, a mother of four, called out by name a Sarasota County School Board member at Tuesday’s meeting for comments the board member allegedly made during a previous meeting, Fox News reported.

“At the last meeting, Shirley Brown was caught on the microphone talking about –” Bakondy stated before board chairwoman Jane Goodwin cut her off: “Stop talking about school board members. You’re done. You’re done, Mrs. Bakondy, you’re done. Thank you, you’re done. You cannot go and expound on school board members. I’ve told you. I’ve warned you several times. Thank you very much, you’re done, move on. Goodbye.”

With that, a police officer walked to the podium and stood just a few feet in front of Bakondy.

**Image source: Twitter video screenshot via @ChrisMZiegler**

Two other officers soon followed and stood on either side of the mother.

Bakondy asked Godwin what the problem was, and the chairwoman replied, “You were about to say something horrible about Shirley Brown, please leave … You’ve said things about me that were untrue. Leave, please!”

Goodwin then asked Bakondy, “Do you have children in our school district? Do you have children in our school district?”

Fox News said that question fired up conservative board member Bridget Ziegler: “Point of order! That is not appropriate! … You don’t get to ask people who come to a public meeting whether they have children or not. Period! You’re way out of line.”

Soon Goodwin ordered the officers to ask Bakondy to leave, and Fox News said she was ejected from the meeting.

The cable network said Ziegler’s husband — Florida GOP Vice Chairman Christian Ziegler — posted the exchange on Twitter, although it doesn’t show the ejection:

Sarasota County (FL) School Board Chairman orders police to throw a citizen out of a Public Meeting because she was…"About to say something horrible…[About a School Board Member]" during her public comment.

How is this NOT a violation of the 1st Amendment? pic.twitter.com/cWJoLnNpN1
— Christian Ziegler 🇺🇸 (@ChrisMZiegler) April 21, 2022

Bakondy told Fox News in an interview that Goodwin is “the queen of no public input,” and Bakondy and Bridget Ziegler said Goodwin and two other liberal board members want free speech shut down at meetings.

“Every citizen taxpayer and parent has a right to speak at public meetings and share their input,” Bakondy added to Fox News. “Ms. Goodwin doesn’t want to hear that … This is the ultimate form of censorship, and they are destroying our school district, targeting parents, and eliminating dissent.”
Bakondy also told the cable network, “I do have four children, and three of them will be going back to public school next year, and after this, I worry that they’re a target.”

Fox News said Goodwin did not respond to its request for comment.

Following the heated exchange, Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt A. Hoffman spoke on video Friday taking issue with the Bakondy getting kicked out of the meeting, the Herald-Tribune reported. Hoffman said officers from the Sarasota County Schools Police Department were at the meeting, not Sarasota County Sheriff’s deputies, the paper said.

“The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office would never participate in preventing a citizen from expressing their First Amendment rights during public comment,” Hoffman said, according to the Herald-Tribune. “As your sheriff, I don’t condone tax-paying citizens being silenced.”

4-22-22: Statement from Sheriff Kurt A. Hoffmanyoutu.be

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Republican pursuing election in AOC’s congressional district wants to ‘federally mandate the death penalty for cop killers’

Reported by ALEX NITZBERG | January 27, 2022

Desi Cuellar, a Republican running to represent New York’s 14th Congressional District, says that as a member of Congress he would put forward legislation to require capital punishment for those who kill police officers.

Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez currently represents the Empire State’s 14th Congressional District.

“So-called progressives like @AOC have created a culture where it’s okay for criminals to run the streets and even kill cops. When I’m elected to Congress, I will introduce a bill to federally mandate the death penalty for cop killers,” Cuellar tweeted.

The tweet is accompanied by a video in which Cuellar declares that “Crime is rampant in this country because our spineless politicians don’t have the guts to stand up to the criminal underworld.”

So-called progressives like @AOC have created a culture where it’s okay for criminals to run the streets and even kill cops.

When I’m elected to Congress, I will introduce a bill to federally mandate the death penalty for cop killers.

Join our campaign: https://t.co/H9YHHJxWQe pic.twitter.com/rWo87MouO3
— Desi Cuellar (@DesiJCuellar) January 25, 2022

Two NYPD police officers who were fired upon last Friday have died — one of the officers was killed on Friday and the other officer passed away days later.

“Nobody in politics on the left cares about holding back the criminals, all they care about is holding back the police,” Cuellar said, according to Fox News.
“The problem we face today is that the mindset of the modern criminal is one that understands that they will not face severe consequences for their violent actions,” he said, according to the outlet “And honestly, it feels like we are getting a lack of action on this crisis from both sides of the aisle. Everyone needs to wake up.”

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New Video: Ashli Babbitt Tries to Stop Violent Capitol Agitator Seconds Before Being Fatally Shot

Reported By Jared Harris | January 26, 2022

A newly released video appears to show Ashli Babbitt attempting to stop a violent rioter inside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, incursion. Moments after the scene was filmed, Babbitt would be fatally shot by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.

Despite several instances of violence, including the one where Babbitt intervened, the young Air Force veteran was the only person shot during the riot. But newly released footage puts an even bigger question mark on the shooting, the investigation of which appears to have lost many of the facts while being fast-tracked.

Independent journalist Tayler Hanson released the 25-second video clip on Tuesday. In the footage, a man identified as Zachary Alam punched through a window in the Capitol as nearby police did nothing to stop him. Babbitt appeared to grab Alam’s backpack, causing him to turn and look at the 35-year-old veteran right before she delivered a punch to the middle of his face. As the impact sent his glasses falling, the camera shifted away from the encounter. According to Hansen, this was only seven seconds before Babbitt was fatally shot by Byrd while seemingly attempting to scale a hastily assembled police barricade. Footage of the encounter that preceded the shooting can be seen below.

WARNING: The following video contains graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.

NEW: Ashli Babbitt punched Zachary Alam in an effort to stop him from breaching the window. This was right after the cops decided to evacuate—

She was trying to stop the attack on the windows and was visibly frustrated with Police inaction.

Watch:

[Thread] pic.twitter.com/LZSPV6ftqG
— Tayler Hansen (@TaylerUSA) January 25, 2022

The Department of Justice arrested Alam on Jan. 30, 2021. A case document from the DOJ shows a mountain of charges against him, including several related to alleged assaults on police. While Alam is presumed innocent until proved guilty, video of the encounter likely will not do him any favors in court.

While Babbitt has been vilified by liberals and mainstream media hit pieces, this bombshell video appears to prove that the young veteran was not there to cause violence and chaos and instead actively attempted to stop the destruction. She did not back down when the crowd grew more amped but instead appeared to be in disbelief that police were failing to intervene.

“I believe she saw their inaction as odd or off, and was ultimately confused as to what was happening,” husband Aaron Babbitt told The Epoch Times.
“She was a take-charge kind of person,” Babbitt continued. “Her frustrations show that the cops who should’ve been taking charge — weren’t.”

Although Democrats and the Capitol Police appear to consider this case closed, emerging evidence shows the public has not been given a clear and complete picture of this year-old killing.

Jared Harris, Assignment Editor

Jared has written more than 200 articles and assigned hundreds more since he joined The Western Journal in February 2017. He was an infantryman in the Arkansas and Georgia National Guard and is a husband, dad and aspiring farmer.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Two-Front War

A.F. BRANCO on January 26, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-two-front-war/

Our police are fighting a two-front war, one against crime and the other against Democrat politics.

Left-Wing War On Police — **Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2022.**

Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.

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Secret Police Docs Reveal There Was ‘No Good Reason’ to Shoot Ashli Babbitt: Judicial Watch Report

Posted By Michael Austin October 14, 2021

A new report seems to confirm what we all already knew about the Ashli Babbitt case: She was shot unjustifiably. For those who may not remember, Babbitt was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer while trying to open a door that led to the House chamber during the Jan. 6 incursion.

Judicial Watch reported on Wednesday that it had obtained 532 pages of documents from the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police, all regarding Babbitt’s death. Witness testimonies indicated Babbitt was not holding a weapon at the time of the shooting and that the officer involved, Michael Byrd, looked “upset” after shooting her.

A Capitol Police sergeant testified that he didn’t know why Byrd shot Babbitt.

“I saw Lt. Byrd kind of. I don’t know if it was before or after,” the sergeant said. “I don’t know if something happened to him [that] caused him to take the shot or not.”

“These previously secret records show there was no good reason to shoot and kill Ashli Babbitt,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said.
“The Biden-Garland Justice Department and the Pelosi Congress have much to answer for … over the mishandling and cover-up of this scandalous killing of an American citizen by the U.S. Capitol Police.”

Byrd has been treated as a hero by some establishment media outlets.

“She was posing a threat to the United States House of Representatives,” he said in an August interview with NBC News.
“I know that day I saved countless lives. … I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job.”

The Capitol Police concluded an internal investigation seven months after the shooting, declaring Byrd’s actions “lawful and within Department policy,” according to Fox News.

After a full year of the establishment media and the Black Lives Matter crowd preaching ad nauseam about police misconduct and abuse of power, it was strange to see them fall completely silent regarding Ashli Babbitt’s death. Or maybe it wasn’t so strange.

After all, Babbitt was a white woman, which means her unjustified killing doesn’t play well into their race-baiting narrative.

In July, The Western Journal conducted an interview with Michelle Witthoeft, Babbitt’s mother. Witthoeft blasted Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for failing to investigate the circumstances of her daughter’s death.

“Nancy Pelosi … I feel like, orchestrated the death of my daughter,” Witthoeft told The Western Journal.
“I’ve reached out to Nancy Pelosi’s office several times, and she has yet to call me back because she’s too busy playing in her clubhouse with all of her elite people.”
She went on to remind Pelosi that she should be serving the people.
“You know, it’s the people’s house. It’s not your house, Nancy. It’s the people’s house. That’s my message to Nancy Pelosi,” Witthoeft said.
“The Capitol Police should be held accountable like every other police department in the country.”

It’s well past time that Witthoeft and Babbitt’s other family members were afforded the justice they deserve for the death of their loved one.

Now we all know the truth. Hopefully, justice comes soon.

Michael Austin

Michael Austin joined The Western Journal as a staff reporter in 2020. Since then, he has authored hundreds of stories, including several original reports. He also co-hosts the outlet’s video podcast, “WJ Live.”

@mikeswriting

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Teachers Union Publishes Instruction Manual from Hell – Here’s the Sick How-to Guide

Reported by Mike Landry | August 5, 2021

Prepare to be patted on the head.

And listen for the “Tsk, tsk, you don’t really understand what we’re about, dear.” That’s how it will be in Minnesota and probably elsewhere if a leftist teachers union can spread its ideas on how to respond to its promotion of critical race theory.

Before reading the following, you might want to take a deep breath and exhale or whatever it is you do to reduce stress. You might have to do that after reading it, too.

Education Minnesota is trying to counter growing community pushback against CRT around the state, so it has published a guide on how teachers should respond, a copy of which was obtained by Powerline and publicized by Minnesota’s Alpha News. First of all, the union tells teachers not to call what they’re teaching critical race theory. They know parents are catching on. And the guide presents buckets of mush designed to obscure the issue and talk down to critics.

It’s a classic snow job using the special language of “educanto,” a term coined by the late Paul Greenberg, public school critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning Arkansas newspaper editor. Education Minnesota tells teachers that when asked why they teach kids that all white people are racist, they should give the following response:

“First off, I’m thrilled you’re taking such a deep interest in how and what our kids are taught, a conversation that I feel is long overdue.
“What I know most Americans believe is that we expect our students — whatever their color or background — to be able to learn hard truths and handle honest history and civics.”

May I pat your head?

“I believe in children’s potential to meet new challenges and have an honest reckoning, and when we try to edit and distort our history, we are doing them, and our future, a disservice. My loyalty is to children and who and what they can become.”

That’s how teachers should respond to your question about their “evil white people” push. And, of course, as the left always says: It’s for the children.

Education Minnesota does more than purr in its teacher voice. In its guide for its union members, it provides does some hard-knuckle political messaging against CRT critics by presenting “Key Concepts for Responding.”

Here are excerpts:

“Seize the moral high ground and engage on our terms. With attention on education, let’s talk about the teaching and curricula we support and communicate how it benefits all students.”
“Ascribe motivations to the opposition. Instead of reflexively repeating the opposition’s claims to dispel them (e.g. ‘we are not teaching grade schoolers about XYZ’) talk about why they’re attacking standards, equity and classroom educators.”
“Bring the conversation back to what we want. Don’t stay on defense.”
“Avoid the academic term ‘critical race theory. This phrase, unfamiliar to most audiences, has been redefined by the political right as an all-purpose racial dog whistle. Talk instead about the more honest and more complete education our students deserve.”
“[I]t is so disappointing to see that a few billionaires, and the promoters and talking heads they pay for, have launched a national campaign to mislead Americans about the lessons educators teach about history, culture, gender and politics.”
“Once again, they’re trying to distract and divide us so we don’t demand the richest 1 percent and the largest corporations pay what they owe for what our communities need, like affordable health care for all.”

Leftist educators try to hide what they’re teaching, but word is getting out. The Center for the American Experiment has been monitoring CRT in Minnesota and produced a video noting instances of it. It found that in Burnsville, fourth-graders were reading a book that said police officers were “mean to black people but nice to white people” and deliberately shot black men.

The video cited officials in the Minneapolis suburb of Hopkins as saying school operations were built on “white supremacy” values of logic, linear thinking, perfectionism, objectivity and “requiring black students to turn in assignments on time.” Letter grades are gone since they are part of “a dominant white culture.”
White Bear Lake sixth-graders were divided into groups based on race, sex, religion and place of birth and told to address issues of oppression and privilege.
Edina kindergarteners through second-graders did an exercise on how to identify themselves by their skin color. Kindergarten through second grade!
St. Louis Park scrapped the gifted and talented program, opening it to everyone and focusing on “anti-racist talent development.”
Minnesota teachers are taking anti-racism training, which, in effect, advocates new forms of racial discrimination, according to the video.

It’s not known if Minnesota schoolchildren are learning, like first- and second-graders in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, that “whiteness is a bad deal” and that if you are white, you essentially are a devil oppressing people of color, as reported Wednesday in a RealClear Policy piece that included shocking curriculum photos.

Education Minnesota defines CRT as “an academic framework that is more than 40 years old and is centered on the idea that racism is systemic, not just a product of individual bias or prejudice, and embedded in our policies legal structure.”

Indeed, CRT came from legal theorists during the 1970s and ’80s. The problem is it left the campus, and no matter how groups like Education Minnesota try to hide it, it is gumming up primary and secondary education.

Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist scholar and social commentator whose gravitas stems from also having been a farmer, points out a problem with woke nonsense being dreamed up on the college campus. College professors, Hansen has said, were once like court jesters of old. They could say all kinds of crazy things and no one was offended, not even the king, because everyone knew professors, like jesters, had no real power. Now, according to Hansen, crazy ideas have escaped the campus and are setting public policy.

It’s part of corporate wokeness, too.

Classic Marxism may have hit some resistance since its call for dividing people by income and class could be hindered by the relative affluence of most of the U.S. population, at least by world standards. But for sure, today’s Marxists are focused on dividing by race and gender to class. And critical race theory fits right in.

There’s a lot to process here: lying teachers, overt racism, emotional oppression upon very young children. You might want to take that deep breath.

Mike Landry, Contributor,

Mike Landry, PhD, is a retired business professor. He has been a journalist, broadcaster and church pastor. He writes from Northwest Arkansas on current events and business history.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Change Of Heart

A.F. BRANCO on August 5, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-change-of-heart-2/

Now that crime is on the rise Democrats are reconsidering their anti-cop defund policies.

Defund Police Equals Crime — **Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.**

Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – LeBone-Head

A.F. BRANCO on April 28, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-lebone-head/

Le Bron James put a target on a police officer who saved a Teenagers life by shooting another girl with a knife.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Law and Odor

A.F. BRANCO on April 29, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-law-and-odor/

The FBI seems only interested in investigating Republican or Trump associates while giving Democrats a pass.

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Democratic Congresswoman Calls for Total Lawlessness: ‘No More Policing’

Reported by By Jack Davis | Published April 13, 2021

Amid rioting and looting after an officer-involved shooting near Minneapolis, Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan has demanded an end to the police.

On Sunday, a Brooklyn Center police officer shot and killed Daunte Wright. The killing of Wright, a 20-year-old black man, by a white police officer triggered looting and rioting in the Minneapolis suburb. Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon said the officer who shot Wright appeared to have mistaken their service weapon for their Taser and accidentally fired the gun, according to the Star-Tribune.

As officials called for calm, Tlaib used her Twitter account to call for the abolition of all forms of law and order.

“It wasn’t an accident. Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist,” she tweeted. “Daunte Wright was met with aggression & violence. I am done with those who condone government funded murder. No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed.

TO READ THE REST OF THE REPORT PLEASE GO TO https://www.westernjournal.com/democratic-congresswoman-calls-total-lawlessness-no-policing/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=aa-breaking&utm_campaign=can&utm_content=firefly

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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – You’re A Vile One

A.F. BRANCO | on December 6, 2020 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-youre-a-vile-one/

Keith Ellison is the Grinch who stole law and Order from the people of Minnesota.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Wrecking ball

A.F. BRANCO | on December 7, 2020 at 8:45 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-wrecking-ball/

The Left is using COVID-19 as an excuse to destroy our constitutional civil liberties.

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VIDEO: Philadelphia cops take cover as mob attacks. Dozens of officers injured, including one who was struck with a vehicle during Walter Wallace riots.

Reported by SARAH TAYLOR | October 27, 2020

Viral videos captured the mayhem taking place against Philadelphia police on Monday night after the police shooting of 27-year-old Walter Wallace Jr. Authorities fatally shot Wallace, who was reportedly armed with a knife as police responded to a scene of a domestic incident. During the incident, Wallace reportedly strode toward officers and refused to drop his knife.

You can read more on Wallace’s killing here, which was captured on bodycam footage.

According to Newsweek, many videos emerged across Twitter on Monday night, showing attacks on police officers. In some of the videos, officers can be seen running for cover as rioters attack.

The outlet added, “One video also appears to show an officer being struck by a pickup truck near 52nd and Walnut. The officer is reported to be a 56-year-old female sergeant who suffered a broken leg after being hit by the vehicle.”

Journalist Andy Ngo shared footage of what appeared to be the incident in question. He captioned the tweet, “At the Philadelphia BLM riot, a cop got hit or run over by a speeding vehicle.”

The unnamed female officer reportedly wasn’t the only officer to suffer injuries in connection to Monday night’s riots. WCAU-TV reported that at least 30 police officers were injured in the line of duty as violent protesters smashed windows, looted, and set vehicles on fire.

“All the officers, except for the one struck by the truck, had been treated and released as of early Tuesday,” WCAU reported.

“Police cars and dumpsters were set on fire as police struggled to contain the crowds,” the station’s report continued. “More than a dozen officers, many with batons in hand, formed a line as they ran down 52nd Street chasing protesters away from the main thoroughfare. The crowd largely dispersed then.”

Authorities also said that at least five police vehicles and one fire department vehicle were vandalized.

At least 30 people were arrested in connection with the riots and looting.

Newsweek reported that Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said that the shooting, and the subsequent video, “raises many questions” and announced an investigation into the incident.

“Residents have my assurance that those questions will be fully addressed by the investigation,” Outlaw said. “While at the scene this evening, I heard and felt the anger of the community. Everyone involved will forever be impacted. I will be leaning on what the investigation gleans to answer the many unanswered questions that exist.”

“I also plan to join the Mayor in meeting with members of the community and members of Mr. Wallace’s family to hear their concerns as soon as it can be scheduled,” she added.

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‘It’s Embarrassing That Biden Doesn’t Know This’: Biden Wants Police To Shoot Suspects ‘In The Leg’

Reported By Hank Berrien | Oct 16, 2020 | DailyWire.com

On Thursday, speaking at a townhall hosted by ABC News, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden posited that if police officers encounter dangerous criminals, they should shoot them in the leg.

Biden stated, “We can do this; you can ban chokeholds. But beyond that you have to teach people how to de-escalate circumstances, de-escalate. So instead of anybody coming at you, and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg.”

.@JoeBiden says police should try shooting dangerous criminals “in the leg” pic.twitter.com/u3phk3MHSq

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 16, 2020

As Robby Soave noted at Reason, Biden has suggested shooting suspects in the leg before, in June of this year. Biden stated, “Instead of standing there and teaching a cop when there’s an unarmed person coming at them with a knife or something, shoot them in the leg instead of in the heart.” He then bragged, “We set up, in the Justice Department, the ability for the Civil Rights Division to go in and look at the practices and policies of police departments. That’s why we were able to stop stop-and-frisk.”

Soave explains the problem with Biden’s idea about aiming for a suspect’s leg:

Contrary to the former veep’s repeated assertions, neither the cops nor anyone else — except perhaps James Bond — could plan to shoot people in the leg as a matter of routine practice. It would take an expert marksman to accomplish that feat consistently. Unless a target is at close range, standing perfectly still, it’s very difficult to hit a specific location on the body. In reality, people are often moving during shootouts, which means that legs and arms can be the hardest part of the body to hit.

Soave quoted Bill Lewinksi in a paper for the Force Science Institute stating, “An average suspect can move his hand and forearm across his body to a 90-degree angle in 12/100 of a second. He can move his hand from his hip to shoulder height in 18/100 of a second. The average officer pulling the trigger as fast as he can on a Glock, one of the fastest- cycling semi-autos, requires 1/4 second to discharge each round.”

Soave concluded, “Shooting to wound is not a realistic tactic in the vast majority of cases, and it’s embarrassing that Biden doesn’t know this.”

David Klinger, professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who had served as a Los Angeles Police Department officer, told a story of a 1981 incident in which a suspect stabbed Klinger’s partner in the chest with a butcher knife, then jumped on him and and held the knife to his throat. After Klinger shot the suspect, piercing his aorta and left lung, the suspect still fought for another 30 seconds, requiring six officers to subdue him.

Klinger noted, “Even if an officer shoots with a lethal firearm, it may not stop a person. When there is a threat to life right now, or serious bodily injury, deadly force is the appropriate response.”

Klinger pointed out that a human body can only be shut down by deadly force by either a loss of blood or a shot hitting the central nervous system. He added that if there were two officers in the incident and one used a taser, the other would provides “lethal coverage” if the taser proved ineffective.

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Virginia Has Just Declared Open Season On Police Officers

Originally Posted on https://redrightdaily.com/virginia-has-just-declared-open-season-on-police-officers/

The Virginia Senate voted 21-15 to pass Senate Bill 5032 which will declare open season on law enforcement officials in Virginia. The bill will drop assault against a law enforcement officer, firefighter, judge, or EMS from a felony to a misdemeanor.

The Bill:

Eliminates the mandatory minimum term of confinement for an assault and battery committed against a judge; magistrate; law-enforcement officer; correctional officer; person directly involved in the care, treatment, or supervision of inmates; firefighter; or volunteer firefighter or any emergency medical services personnel and provides that such crime can no longer be committed as a simple assault and must result in a bodily injury.

The Senate also removed the mandatory minimum 6-month jail sentence for assaulting a police officer.

“The message to law enforcement is we don’t care about you,” said Sen. Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover, chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus.

The bill does allow for a person to be charged with a felony if an officer is injured.

“For too long in the commonwealth, there have been cases where the punishment is disproportionate to the crime and will ruin an autistic kid’s life,” said Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond.

Republicans responded citing the recent violence against police officers.

“Have you seen what our police are going through?” asked Sen. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake. “Have you seen the attacks on our police?”

Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, R-Henrico, called the proposal “a pretty big insult to our law enforcement community for doing what they’re doing.”

Richmond.com is reporting that the Senate is also set to vote on other law enforcement related bills:

Other police reform bills filed in the Senate would prohibit the use of neck restraints, ban departments from acquiring equipment from the military, require all police officers to be trained in crisis intervention or de-escalation techniques, and set up a fund to pay for body cameras for local police.

Democrats claim that this bill will keep from ruining lives, in reality, it could have the reverse effect. If those fighting police know the consequences are less severe they could be more inclined to fight with police. This creates a dangerous situation where the use of force may need to be increased to control a suspect, which could lead to a police-involved shooting. All of that would happen because Democrats decided to lessen the consequences of attacking a police officer.

AOC: ‘Profoundly Exciting’ that People Are ‘Discovering Their Own Power’ and Taking It ‘in the Streets’

Reported by HANNAH BLEAU | 24 Aug 2020

URL of the originating web site: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/24/aoc-profoundly-exciting-people-are-discovering-their-own-power-taking-streets/

In this March 8, 2020, file photo Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY., speaks at a campaign rally for then-Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in Ann Arbor, Mich. Now it’s Ocasio-Cortez’s turn to defend her record and battle accusations that she’s lost touch with her district. In 2018, the New … AP Photo/Paul Sancya

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) praised the purported political shift in the country, telling Vanity Fair that people are “discovering their own power” and calling it “profoundly exciting.” Vanity Fair featured the New York lawmaker in a photo portfolio “celebrating the founders of Black Lives Matter, the Squad, John Boyega, Noname, Billy Porter, and more on the forefront of change.”

Jacqueline Woodson, who penned the portfolio’s essay, said she wants to “look into the face of a country built on the bodies of Black folks as more than 400 years of rage and a balance long overdue bites it on its ass, paints a yellow brick road into Black Lives Matter plazas, topples its long-held beliefs, monuments, and Confederate flags.”

When asked, “How does this moment feel different and why,” Ocasio-Cortez told the magazine that “people are really discovering their own power in a broader sense that we have not seen in a very long time” and mentioned the actions “in the street.”

“So, yes, we’re starting to see some of this emerging power at the ballot box and at the polls, but we’re also starting to see it in the streets, and people standing up for themselves in the workplace, in organizing themselves and their labor,” she said, calling it “profoundly exciting.”

“And it’s really incredible to see how people are really taking the reins for themselves in the direction of systemic change,” she continued.

Despite painting a rosy picture of peaceful social justice activists taking their calls for change to the streets, Ocasio-Cortez did not condemn the lawless activities that have dominated several of the protests nationwide in the interview. Portland, for instance, has experienced 88 nights of destruction as protesters continue to attack federal buildings and police officers. Police declared yet another riot downtown on Sunday night. According to the Portland Police Bureau, rioters lit two North Precinct awnings on fire and targeted officers with rocks, mortars, lasers, and “sharp chunks of ceramic.” Twenty-three people were arrested.

That same night, unrest erupted in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following a officer-involved shooting of a black man. Officials are asking the public to withhold judgment until the Wisconsin Department of Justice, Division of Criminal Investigation completes its investigation of the incident.

“Until that investigation is completed, we ask that you withhold prejudgment about the incident and please the let process take place,” Pete Deates, president of the Kenosha Professional Police Association, said in a statement following the night of civil unrest.

Ocasio-Cortez also told the magazine that “all these people in the streets that are educating others, that are engaging in this elevated and amplified way” have “really emboldened ” her.

“It’s given me a lot of courage and encouragement to try to match the energy of everyone else right now who’s really fighting for progressive change,” she added.

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L.A. Sheriff’s Deputy Praised as Hero for Helping Her Partner Survive Ambush Shooting

Reported by DAVID NG | 15 Sep 2020

URL of the originating web site: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/15/l-a-sheriffs-deputy-praised-as-hero-for-helping-her-partner-survive-ambush-shooting/

claudia-apolinar-lasd / LASD/Facebook, FOX11LA

The female Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy who was ambushed and shot in the face on Saturday has emerged as a hero for helping her partner who was also seriously wounded during the attack, a source familiar with the incident told Breitbart News.

The 31-year-old mother was one of two officers who were both shot in the face after an assailant approached their parked cruiser in Compton and opened fire on them. Both deputies remain in critical condition and are expected to survive the horrific attack.

Breitbart News learned the identities of both officers but refrained from publishing their names. On Tuesday, Britain’s Daily Mail published the name of Claudia Apolinar, reporting she is a former librarian who had graduated the L.A. Police Academy only one year ago.

Apolinar is the mother of a six-year-old child. She sustained bullet wounds to the jaw and arms, while the other officer — a 24-year-old male, also Latino — was hit in the forehead, an arm, and a hand.

On Saturday evening, the assailant approached the deputies’ cruiser, which was stopped outside the MLK, Jr. Transit Center in Compton. The unknown gunman fired multiple rounds into the vehicle before fleeing the scene on foot.

Breitbart News learned that Apolinar stumbled out of the vehicle after being shot and then helped her partner by applying a tourniquet to his wounds. She also put out a Help Call before administering the first aid. Video has emerged that appears to show Apolinar moving her wounded partner to safety following the attack. The footage was posted to the official Twitter account of the LAPD Mission Station.

“She called for help, was able to rendered [sic] aid to her partner. She remained calm & stayed vigilant! Most of all SHE NEVER GAVE UP! She & her partner are heroes,” the LAPD Mission Station tweeted.

Multiple photos of the horrific incident have also emerged showing the wounded police deputies.

The Daily Mail reported that Apolinar was a rookie officer who worked as an aide in the L.A. County library system from 2011 and signed up to the Sheriff’s Department in 2017.

Both cops were taken to St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood following the incident. Late Saturday, Black Lives Matter protesters congregated outside the hospital, yelling insults at police officers and wishing death on the two wounded deputies.

A video obtained by Breitbart News shows BLM protestors callings cops “pigs” and “executioners” while shouting, “I hope they f–king die!”

There are currently no suspects in the case, though an arrest could come as early as this week, a source familiar with the investigation told Breitbart News. The Sheriff’s Department has put out a $100,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and conviction in the case.

Officials are looking for a black male around the age of 28 to 30 years old.

Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com

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New Footage of Jacob Blake Incident Shows What Happened Seconds Before Shooting

Reported By Jack Davis | Published August 25, 2020 at 6:38am

As Kenosha, Wisconsin, smoldered after a second night of arson and riots, a new video emerged to show Jacob Blake wrestling with police officers on Sunday moments before he was shot.

Kenosha exploded in fire and violence Sunday night after Blake, 29, was shot multiple times by police. He underwent surgery Sunday and was in stable condition Monday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

An initial video of the shooting showed Blake disregarding the commands of police officers who had their weapons drawn as he walked away from them and moved toward the driver’s door of an SUV. Officers followed Blake, who opened the door to the vehicle and leaned into it. With the door blocking a clear view of exactly what happened, the video captured the sound of Blake being shot several times.

However, as happens so often with video evidence, there was another angle.

Police had been summoned with the location on a domestic violence call. Initial reports indicated there was an argument between two women in which Blake played some unknown role. In the latest video posted online, Blake is seen wrestling with at least two Kenosha police officers. The scuffle took place on the passenger’s side of the vehicle, which would have screened it from being seen by the initial video taken from the other side of the vehicle. The new video shows Blake escaping the grip of Kenosha police officers and moving toward the front of his vehicle. After he entered the vehicle, shots could be heard.

On July 6, Blake had been charged by Kenosha County prosecutors with sexual assault, trespassing and disorderly conduct and an arrest warrant for him had been issued, the Daily Mail reported.

On Sunday, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers condemned the officers for the shooting.

“While we do not have all of the details yet, what we know for certain is that he is not the first Black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country,” the Democrat said on Twitter.

Kenosha police responded to those comments Monday.

“Anytime deadly force is used, our hearts go out to those affected by it,” Pete Deates, president of the Kenosha Professional Police Association, said in a statement, according to the Kenosha News. “We assure you an independent investigation is being conducted by the Wisconsin Department of Justice, Division of Criminal Investigation.

“Until that investigation is completed, we ask that you withhold prejudgment about the incident and please the let [sic] process take place. Governor Evers’ statement on the incident was wholly irresponsible and not reflective of the hardworking members of the law enforcement community, not to mention the citizens of the City of Kenosha.

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“As always, the video currently circulating does not capture all the intricacies of a highly dynamic incident. We ask that you withhold from passing judgment until all the facts are known and released. We, along with the citizens of the great City of Kenosha, ask for peace and to let the process play out fairly and impartially.”

Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley said his office is investigating the shooting, according to CNN.

“We’re asked to make two determinations based on the evidence that is presented,” Graveley said. “One, did any officer, in this case, commit any crimes, and two, are there any crimes that we believe were committed that we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt?”

As the process played out, rioters took to the streets Monday night, as they had Sunday, to torch buildings in downtown Kenosha.

Sheriff David Beth of Kenosha County said the police were outnumbered.

“We’ve got 200 officers, I don’t know how many armored vehicles,” he said, according to The New York Times. “It’s not enough. It’s a battle we aren’t able to keep up with.”

Contributor, News

Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.

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Portland Mob Floods Residential Area, Threatens People in Their Own Homes

Reported By Johnathan Jones | Published August 10, 2020 at 7:26am

URL of the originating web site: https://www.westernjournal.com/portland-mob-floods-residential-area-threatens-people-homes/?

Civil unrest in Portland, Oregon, spilled into a residential neighborhood Saturday night, where rioters targeted people inside their own homes, according to a report. While the city has experienced nightly protests and riots since May, when George Floyd died while in police custody after being detained in Minneapolis, most of the protests have remained contained to the city’s downtown area.

Journalist Andy Ngo reported that Saturday, a group of leftist activists targeted a residential neighborhood in the embattled city.

“‘We’re gonna burn your building down.’ ‘We know where you live,’” he tweeted, apparently quoting demonstrators in a video he shared on Twitter.

“As #antifa have taken to Portland residential areas to riot, they’ve also assaulted & intimidated residents there. Tonight, they threatened those who looked out the window,” Ngo added.

WARNING: The following video contains graphic language that some viewers might find offensive.

Video of the incident shows a crowd of demonstrators apparently threatening people inside a multistory residential building as some residents looked out of windows and were stunned by flashlights. One man off-camera on the video yelled about “capitalism,” while another man could be heard yelling, “We’re gonna burn your building down!”

The people in the video appeared to be sitting peacefully inside of their homes amid the chaotic situation.

Police in Portland later put out a news bulletin outlining the activities of Saturday’s demonstrations. They began at Peninsula Park in the city’s Piedmont neighborhood, about four miles north of downtown. While police described the group, which numbered in the hundreds, as “peaceful,” officers said the situation deteriorated as the activists marched west toward the Portland Police Association building near the park. A riot was declared by police before midnight.

“By 10:30 p.m., the large group reached the PPA office. As the group approached, Portland Police began making public address announcements informing the crowd they were to not to engage in criminal activities,” the bulletin said.

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“People within the crowd committed crimes when they erected a fence, pushed dumpsters into the street to block traffic, set a dumpster on fire, vandalized the PPA office with spray paint, and destroyed security cameras,” it said.

Journalist Shauna Sowersby shared video of the riot on Twitter:

Police also said rioters threw glass bottles and paint balloons at officers and assaulted them with laser pointers. Three officers were injured, and two of them were treated and released by a local hospital. The rioters also tore down a barricade protecting the police union building and set a fire inside.

Sowersby shared video of the fire reported inside the Portland Police Association building.

“Personnel from Portland Fire and Rescue were able to gain access to the location and extinguish the fire inside the PPA Office,” police said.

Nine arrests were made during the riot, which carried over into Sunday morning, police said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Johnathan Jones

Johnathan has authored thousands of news articles throughout his career. He has also worked as an editor and producer in radio and television. He is a proud husband and father.

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Horowitz: New York treating law-abiding Americans as criminals, while promoting criminals and illegal aliens

Reported by Daniel Horowitz | August 7, 2020

URL of the originating web site: https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-new-york-treating-law-abiding-americans-criminals-promoting-criminals-illegal-aliens/

New York City police / Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Now we know why New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio didn’t follow through with his promise to abolish the police. He wants the police around all right … to be used against We the People, even as they are hamstrung from enforcing vital laws against violent criminals.

On Wednesday, de Blasio announced he would be dispatching police to create checkpoints at key entry points into New York City to enforce a mandatory quarantine on all travelers from most states in the country. As I’ve noted before, this is something that would have been out of bounds for a local official to do even under the Articles of Confederation, much less since the more robust federal union of American citizens was created under the U.S. Constitution. Yet, the same man who has violated federal immigration law is now violating federal control over interstate travel and commerce with impunity.

Hence, illegal aliens, including those with heinous criminal records, who don’t belong in the country altogether, are welcome with open arms, while peaceful Americans are illegally placed under house arrest. At a time of a record surge in crime in the city, the police are now being used to randomly pull over suspected out-of-state residents:

Imagine if this would be done to illegal aliens?

But that is par for the course in de Blasio’s New York. You see, as the police are dispatched to enforce unconstitutional edicts against peaceful Americans, the most violent gang members and shooters are being released to further turn the city streets into shooting galleries. All the while, New Yorkers without criminal records are barred from their constitutional right to carry a gun.

Darrius Sutton, 23, a Bloods gang member, was set free without bail after being charged with attempted murder for seriously injuring someone in a shooting on May 15. Yet, he was released without bail and is now believed to be responsible for three more shootings in the city that resulted in seven victims being shot in just one month.

According to prosecutors, Sutton appeared in a hip-hop music video for the song “Crime Rate” by Brooklyn rapper BK Eaz, shortly after being released!

This is also why there has been a 286% increase in robberies in the once poche upper east side of Manhattan. There is simply no deterrent against crime anymore the same way there is against citizens not wearing a mask. We now see murders committed on camera in broad daylight. They simply don’t fear any punishment. One Rochester man was just released without any bond for an alleged murder he committed a few days earlier.

We have a crisis of crime in this country with police stepping back from their jobs (except to enforce mask mandates and illegal travel bans) and jailbreak policies. Rather than spending the past few years fighting those policies, Republicans have joined the jailbreak bandwagon. Isn’t it time to finally provide voters with a bold contrast from de Blasio’s view of morality and law?

President Trump has two opportunities to fight back against the lawlessness of cities that harbor criminal aliens and release domestic repeat offenders while hamstringing police. Trump should refuse to sign any coronavirus bill that contains funding for those cities. He should also use the upcoming FY 2021 budget bill as leverage to defund sanctuary cities.

The tragic mistake was not calling out the military when the insurrection began. By listening to his liberal advisers and allowing the lawlessness to fester, it will be hard to put the genie of anarchy, which was once beyond the realm of thought in this country, back in the bottle. Shockingly, Jared Kushner, along with two top White House staffers, Brooke Rollins and Ja’Ron Smith, reportedly urged Trump to stand down because in their mind black voters want anarchy. This cannot be farther from the truth.

According to a new Gallup poll, 81% of black citizens want police to retain its presence or increase its presence in their neighborhoods. Just 19% want a diminished police presence. Black neighborhoods have been decimated by the riots and hundreds if not thousands of excess homicides have occurred in their neighborhood thanks to the breakdown of law and order. How can these advisers be so obtuse as to conflate the generic black vote with the gang and criminal vote?

The message Trump must champion is the opposite of people like de Blasio: Freedom for peaceful Americans and swift justice against those who harm others. Trump doesn’t need a reboot or reform of his original campaign message; he needs to actually fulfill it.

Author: Daniel Horowitz

Daniel Horowitz is a senior editor of Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @RMConservative.

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Tyler Perry on ‘Defund Police’ Push: ‘I Think We Need More Police’

Wednesday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” movie mogul and actor Tyler Perry expressed his concerns over the so-called “Defund Police” protests around the country. Perry indicated he was “worried” the message was “being hijacked” for the sake of politics in the wake of George Floyd’s death while in the custody of Minneapolis police.

“So, when they saw George Floyd’s death, this horrific, horrible death played out as this man pleaded for his life and begged and said ‘please’ many, many times, it — seeing it changes everything,” he explained. “So I became very, very optimistic when everybody galvanized together because I know that’s when change comes. When people galvanize and come together as one, that’s when change happens.”

“But, lately, I’ve been very, very concerned that the message is being hijacked by some other groups or political ads and parties that are trying to stop the message of what we’re asking for here as police reform, right?” Perry continued. “So, yeah, I was, but I’m worried now because of what I’m seeing.”

Perry also spoke about paying for supermarket gift cards for Atlanta Police to hand out at a Kroger grocery store on the heels of Rayshard Brooks’ death. When posed a question about the political backlash generated from protesters calling for the defunding of police, Perry stressed his view that police were a necessity.

Remarks as follows:

Well, when I first heard it, I was troubled by it, and I thought OK, this is — this is going to be weaponized by — in this political year. I completely thought that that was happening. That’s exactly what’s happened. It’s been weaponized. But I did some research. And what I would challenge people to do is do research and find out what it means. Now, you’ve got to understand this — I’m not for taking money from the police department. I think we need more police. My studio is in a neighborhood where I think we need police.”

But we don’t need police that have — that are under-trained. And you’ve got to understand — I have really close friends who are police officers that I love dearly, who are really good people, who have been very, very hurt by this, as well. And here’s what I want you to understand, Anderson, wrong — where there is wrong, I’m going to stand up against it. When Rayshard Brooks was murdered, I thought that was wrong. When George — George Floyd was murdered, I thought that was wrong, like so many other people. But when a police officer who was white in a suburb in Atlanta was shot in the head by a shoplifter, I thought that was wrong, too, and I reached out to do what I can to help his family.

When Secoriea was — an eight-year-old was shot near the Wendy’s in her mother’s backseat, I thought that was wrong, too. So, anywhere there is wrong, I’m going to stand up against it. I just don’t believe that, and I believe in most — I don’t believe that there are lots of people — let me just change that to understand that there are a lot of people in America who feel the way that I do, right? I think we need the police. I know that I need the police. I have several that work for me here at the studio. We need them, but we need them reformed. We need them trained well. We need the right structure, right? But some of the things inside of defund the police, I really understand like having officers who are clinically trained to deal with certain situations. I think all of those things are helpful. But taking money from the police department to make the police department smaller, that troubles me.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

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Police Throw A Wrench Into Democrat Convention – Over 100 Police Agencies Just Refused To Protect It

Reported By Ben Dutka | July 29, 2020

URL Of the originating web site: https://thepatriotjournal.com/police-democrat-convention-100/

Police Throw A Wrench Into Democrat Convention – Over 100 Police Agencies Just Refused To Protect It

The much-anticipated Democrat National Convention in Milwaukee is only a few weeks away — but it already faces its first big hurdle. Many are still concerned about large gatherings as the coronavirus epidemic continues. But this time, Democrats aren’t facing a health concern … they’re facing a security concern.

Typically, these are well-protected events. Police and other law enforcement agencies contribute plenty of manpower to secure such conventions. However, it looks like the DNC is going to have to scramble to find protection now. As it turns out, they’ve lost what appears to be the bulk of their security in Wisconsin (via The Daily Wire):

More than 100 law enforcement agencies have reportedly pulled out of security agreements to send personnel to help with security at the Democratic National Convention next month in part because they are concerned about recent efforts to limit law enforcement’s use of tear gas and pepper spray in responding to violent riots.

Milwaukee Police Chief Alonso Morales said he was recently ordered to ban tear gas and pepper spray. Obviously, this move was in response to the nationwide criticism of police and law enforcement following the George Floyd incident.

But while most Democrats supported the idea, many police officials are now reluctant to send ill-equipped men out on the job. Said Franklin Police Chief Rick Oliva:

It is apparent there is a lack of commitment to provide the Milwaukee Police Department with the resources it needs to ensure the safety of peaceful protesters, attendees, citizens and police personnel.

I can not send personnel if they are not properly equipped or will not be allowed to engage in appropriate actions which would ensure their safety.

Oliva wasn’t the only one to voice his frustration.

Waukesha Police Chief Daniel Thompson added that while he understands using pepper spray and other irritants is “serious,” taking it away puts officers directly in harm’s way. Thompson said without these tools, “that doesn’t leave officers much other than getting harmed or using deadly force.” And if something did happen at the convention, law enforcement is concerned: as they see it, how exactly can they serve and protect without some essential equipment?

The balance between diplomacy and force remains a hot topic of discussion for all political parties. But as for the DNC, will they simply forego having a significant police presence next month…?

Key Takeaways:

Over 100 police agencies have pulled out of protecting the Democrat National Convention in Milwaukee next month.
The move is in response to a recent ban on tear gas and pepper spray.
Police chiefs across the state believe this significantly hampers the ability to do their jobs, and puts officers in an extremely difficult position.

Source: The Daily Wire

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: BEN DUTKA

Ben S. Dutka is a journalist, writer and editor with over two decades of experience. He has worked with three newspapers and eight online publications, and he has also won a Connecticut short story contest entitled Art as Muse, Imaginary Realms. He has a penchant for writing, rowing, reading, video games, and Objectivism.

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NEARLY 200 OFFICERS APPLY TO LEAVE MINNEAPOLIS POLICE FORCE

Reported by DANIEL FLEMING | JULY 22, 2020

URL of the originating web site: https://steadfastloyalty.com/politics/nearly-200-officers-apply-to-leave-minneapolis-police-force/

Twenty percent of the police officers in Minneapolis have handed in their paperwork to leave the force. And why not? In that city rioters are held in the highest esteem, while police are being vilified. What happens when the police are all gone? You hear someone trying to break into your house, so you call antifa or BLM but are disheartened when you realize it’s someone on the other side of your front door that answered your call.

In Minneapolis they want to to defund the police by 100%. If you are being mugged do you really want a social worker answering your 911 call? They will side with the mugger and call you a racist. What exactly is an unarmed force going to do to prevent crime? Start a lively version of Kumbaya? Hold a pottery class? They won’t even be allowed to carry a knife into a gunfight.

You may not always get the government you need but you will always get the one that you deserve. If you keep voting in far left loonies, you have nobody to complain about. In California, high taxes and rents means that even the middle class has a tough time surviving in a place where low values are set on jobs and high priority is given to illegal aliens.

In Minneapolis it will mean being at the mercy of armed criminals.

From Breitbart News

According to the Times‘ report, 65 officers have already left the force this year, an increase from the usual 45 departures per year.

“It’s almost like a nuclear bomb hit the city, and the people who didn’t perish are standing around,” Officer Rich Walker Sr., a 16-year Minneapolis police veteran, said of the department’s mood. “I’m still surprised that we’ve got cops showing up to work, to be honest.”

The news comes amid several protests that have caused uproar and destruction across the nation after the death of George Floyd, who passed away on Memorial Day after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

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The ‘Tolerant’ Left Harass Daughter Of Slain Police Officer Over Tribute To Father…Disgusting!

Reported By Daniel Gooseman | July 13, 2020

URL of the originating web site: https://thepatriotdaily.com/news-for-you/the-tolerant-left-harass-daughter-of-slain-police-officer-over-tribute-to-father-disgusting/

Officers Edelmiro Garza, Jr, 45, and Ismael Chavez, 39, of the McAllen Police Department in Texas were both gunned down during an ambush responding to a domestic violence call. Chavez was a former teacher and football coach. His daughter Savannah posted several memories and tributes to her father on Twitter.

One particular post, Savannah posted on the day he was killed was incredibly heartwarming, however, as you’ll see below she had to delete it because of heartless “tolerant” liberals on the internet.

Savannah wrote:

“Words cannot describe the pain I’m in, but I’m glad my dad is at peace. you were an amazing man and anyone who ever came across you knew that. I’m going to miss you so much. you died doing what you loved most, you died a hero. i love you daddy, see you soon. #bluelivesmatter 💙.”

One user responded claiming that Savannah was using a “racist” hashtag by writing #bluelivesmatter.

“I am so sorry for your loss but you didn’t have to use a racist hashtag,” wrote that Twitter user, who later identified herself as a high school student, writing, “the fact that almost all these replies are by old bitter white ppl who have nothing else better to do but argue with a high schooler lmao i’m living in yalls minds rent free 💅🏽 anyway #JusticeforBreonnaTaylor.”

Another person wrote, “Blue lives matter was literally created in response to and to undermine black lives matter. There’s no other connotation unfortunately.”

Twitter users triggered over the hashtag continued, “i know the absolute pain of losing a parent. i was 11 when my dad died. it almost destroyed me. but #bluelivesmatter is bullsh*t because it’s a badge and a uniform. it can be taken off. becoming a cop is a CHOICE. all lives can’t matter until #blacklivesmatter.”

So much for the tolerant left.

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Black Florida Sheriff Vows To Deputize Gun Owners If Rioters Come to His County

Reported By Elise Ehrhard | Published July 2, 2020 at 12:50pm

URL of the originating web site: https://www.westernjournal.com/black-florida-sheriff-vows-deputize-gun-owners-rioters-come-county/

Sheriff Darryl Daniels of Clay County, Florida, released a 3-minute video Tuesday declaring he will deputize the county’s gun owners if protesters decide to visit the jurisdiction southwest of Jacksonville and turn into rioters.

As he stood with 18 deputies behind him, Daniels declared, “Don’t fall victim to subjecting yourself to this conversation that law enforcement is bad, that law enforcement is the enemy of the citizens that we’re sworn to protect and serve.

“We swore an oath, and in that oath, we swore to support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the government, and that we’re duly qualified under the state’s Constitution to hold office. That is for me as a sheriff and these men and women as deputy sheriffs. And we end that with, ‘So help me God.’

“But God is absent from the media’s message or Black Lives Matter or any other group out there that’s making themselves a spectacle disrupting what we know to be our quality of life in this country.”

Daniels, Clay County’s first black sheriff, spoke about the breakdown of law-and-order occurring in many parts of the country in recent weeks.

“Lawlessness, that’s unacceptable in this country. Lawlessness, that’s unacceptable in Clay County,” he said. “And if you threaten to come to Clay County and think for one second that we’ll bend our backs for you, you’re sadly mistaken. …

“Tearing up Clay County, that’s not going to be acceptable. And if we can’t handle you, you know what I’ll do? I will exercise the power and authority of the sheriff and I’ll make special deputies of every lawful gun owner in this county. And I’ll deputize them for this one purpose: to stand in the gap between lawlessness and civility.

“That’s what we’re sworn to do, and that’s what we’re going to do. You’ve been warned.”

Daniels is himself under investigation over allegations that an affair with a fellow officer led to her wrongful arrest. Since he is battling a scandal in the midst of a tough re-election campaign, this video could be Daniels’ attempt to win over voters by appealing to the need for law-and-order and the right to bear arms. If so, the sheriff is correctly “reading the room,” as they say. Over the past few months, gun sales have surged across the United States.

“During the last week of May, firearm sales were up 78% over 2019, according to an analysis by the small business software firm Womply,” USA Today reported last month.

Americans have seen police departments become overwhelmed during protests and riots across the country. In Seattle’s “Capitol Hill Organized Protest” zone, six city blocks were taken over and a police station was abandoned. In Minneapolis, a precinct was burned to the ground.

The National Guard has been called into multiple places. All the while, exhausted police departments are being defunded by Democratic mayors and city councils.

Right now, Americans can feel grateful for our Second Amendment rights. In some chaotic areas, they are the one thing standing between us and the violent left-wing mob.

Daniels acknowledged the protesters’ rights during his speech.

“Yes, we’ll protect your constitutional rights as long as you remain under the umbrella of peaceful protest or peaceful march. But the second that you step out from up under the protection of the Constitution, we’ll be waiting on you and we’ll give you everything you want,” he said.

Daniels is not the first sheriff to suggest deputizing law-abiding gun owners in his county. Last year, Scott Jenkins, the sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia, vowed to deputize thousands in his county if the state’s Democratic leaders passed extreme gun control measures. His county’s Board of Supervisors had unanimously agreed to declare the county a Second Amendment Constitutional County.

Law-abiding Americans have been viciously attacked during the violence sweeping the country. More and more of them could very well be open to being deputized so they can help protect their communities.

The Clay County sheriff may be facing an investigation, but his video message is on point.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Elise Ehrhard

Elise Ehrhard has been a freelance writer for over 20 years and a homeschool mom for seven. Her articles have appeared in countless conservative publications, including The Washington Times, Washington Examiner and American Thinker. She blogs about television and culture for the Media Research Center/Newsbusters.

@EhrhardElise

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WA Sheriff: ‘Don’t Be a Sheep’ and Blindly Follow Leftist Mask Order

Commentary By C. Douglas Golden | Published June 28, 2020 at 9:01am

URL of the originating web site: https://www.westernjournal.com/wa-sheriff-dont-sheep-blindly-follow-leftist-mask-order/

The idea of mask orders went national this past week when Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said he would “do everything possible” to force all Americans to wear face coverings while out in public.

“The one thing we do know, these masks make a gigantic difference. I would insist that everybody out in public be wearing that mask. Anyone to reopen — would have to make sure that they walked into a business that had masks,” Biden told KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh.

Asked if he would use the power of the federal government to enforce this, the former vice president replied: “Yes, I would from an executive standpoint, yes, I would.”

“I would do everything possible to make it required that people had to wear masks in public,” he said, when asked if he would “in effect” make make wearing a mask mandatory.

That wouldn’t even happen before next January at the very earliest. By that one time, one prays (rather against the odds) that the whole thing will be redundant. Until then, we’ll still be seeing plenty of similar orders from state and local officials.

One of them is Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, who issued an executive order on masks effective Friday: “As necessary economic activity increases and more people are out in their communities, it is imperative that we adopt further measures to protect all of us,” Inslee said Tuesday, according to a news release.

“Until a vaccine or cure is developed, this is going to be one of our best defenses.”

The order states that “[n]o individual may appear in a public place without wearing a face covering,” that “[n]o business may operate, allow a customer to enter a business, or conduct business with a customer inside any building that is open to public or outdoors in a public place unless the customer is wearing a face covering” and that “[n]o individual may enter a place of business, whether the business is operating indoors or outdoors, without first donning a face covering, unless the individual does so under circumstances expressly exempted from this requirement under Order of the Secretary of Health 20-03.”

It’s probably not the most unpopular thing to do, given the recent spike in COVID-19 cases nationwide. However, Inslee is governor of a big state, not all of which is urban, experiencing a major increase in cases or particularly liberal. It all becomes more problematic when you parse Inslee’s language and realize he’s essentially signing the state up for mandatory mask-wearing until a vaccine is ready, which could be a year or longer.

It’s this environment and set of conditions that turned Lewis County Sheriff Robert Snaza into a viral superstar.

In a video taken by The Daily Chronicle in Centralia, Washington, Snaza — not wearing a mask — spoke to a mostly maskless crowd outside a church on the same day Inslee issued his order, according to The Washington Post.

“In case you guys didn’t hear, Governor Inslee in his infinite wisdom has decided after over a hundred and some odd days that we should all wear face masks — inside and out,” Snaza said through a megaphone in the clip.

“Here’s what I say — don’t be a sheep.”

The video had over 265,000 views as of Sunday morning, which is certainly more than you’d expect for a short clip of a sheriff of a sparsely populated county giving his opinion on Jay Inslee’s mask order.

Media in the region took note, as well. In an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting the next day, Snaza expressed frustration with Inslee and skepticism that the new policy would actually work.

“My frustration is we continue to listen to the governor’s requests without asking questions, without saying: ‘Well wait a minute, there’s the other side to this’ and in particular wearing the mask,” Snaza said.

He’s also not convinced the masks would be efficacious: “Yet we’re telling people now to wear it and if you don’t wear it, we’re going to cite you for that,” he said.

Snaza’s remarks got enough attention that Inslee addressed them in a news conference on Wednesday.

“I think we have to be disappointed in any law enforcement officer who would encourage illegal behavior,” Inslee said.

He added that wearing a mask “is about demonstrating our respect and care for the other people around us.” And if you don’t care, the government might punish you with up to 90 days of jail time and a $100 fine.

Yet, Sheriff Snaza says he’s not calling for mass lawbreaking: “Just because I said ‘don’t be sheep’ does not mean that I’m outwardly saying I want you to violate the orders,” he said.

Inslee called this clarification “very helpful.”

Less helpful, at least by Inslee’s rubric, was Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer, who called the governor was an “idiot” and said he was “overstepping his bounds, violating people’s constitutional rights.”

Sheriffs in two other counties said they planned to “educate” people about mask usage without enforcing Inslee’s order.

This is the invariable problem with blanket orders like this, which sound great on paper but are wholly unenforceable in reality — particularly given the optics of the government forcing you to wear something. Masks, while potentially efficacious, aren’t the be-all-end-all. After all, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control were previously at odds over whether they’re even necessary for healthy people.

In the end, personal responsibility is going to play a larger part in this than executive orders.

Even if Joe Biden is in a position (heaven forfend) to issue an executive order mandating mask-wearing, good luck enforcing it.

He’s not going to be able to do what Jay Inslee apparently can’t. Treating people as if they’re sheep won’t solve anything.

ABOUT THE COMMENTATOR:

C. Douglas Golden

Contributor, Commentary

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal for four years.

@CillianZeal

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Pelosi Catches Fire for New Low in Pandering: Kneels Before Introducing ‘Justice in Policing’ Act

Reported By Joe Saunders | Published June 8, 2020 at 12:21pm

URL of the originating web site: https://www.westernjournal.com/pelosi-catches-fire-new-low-pandering-kneels-introducing-police-reform-act/

Nancy Pelosi has been lowering herself — and American politics — for decades now. But on Monday, she did it literally.

As the country heads into President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election bid, the crassly opportunistic (and maliciously anti-Trump) House speaker clearly hopes to capitalize on a wave of anti-police sentiment, stemming from the May 25 death of George Floyd after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for roughly nine minutes during an arrest, to defeat Trump’s campaign.

Claiming that police are the real problem, Democrats at the local level are working to “defund police” forces in their communities — and leave the minorities they claim to care about even more vulnerable to crime. The mainstream media is doing its ever-predictable part by portraying an astonishing orgy of riot and looting as some kind of heir to the dignified, morally driven protests of the civil rights movement.

And now comes House Speaker Pelosi herself, ostentatiously taking a knee in the ornate surroundings of Emancipation Hall (formerly the Great Hall) in the nation’s Capitol before introducing a bill to put a new set of federal regulations onto the nation’s locally controlled police forces.

Congressional Democrats take a knee as they observe a nearly nine minute moment of silence for George Floyd at Emancipation Hall at the U.S. Capitol. https://t.co/JnqDlzMFDq pic.twitter.com/8CBdgtLUjz

— ABC News (@ABC) June 8, 2020

The bill, officially known as the “Justice in Policing Act,” is ostensibly intended to “hold law enforcement accountable in court, improve transparency through data collection, and reform police training and policies.” What it’s more likely intended to do is whip up Democratic voters heading into the November election, and provide a patina of legislative covering to continuing unrest in overwhelmingly Democratic-controlled cities.

“The martyrdom of George Floyd gave American experience a moment of national anguish as we grieve for the black Americans killed by police brutality,” a somewhat garbled Pelosi said at a news conference after the kneeling ceremony.

“Today, this movement of national anguish is being transformed into a movement of national action as Americans from across the country peacefully protest to demand an end to injustice.”

For Democrats, it probably looked like a moment of perfect political theater.

But some of the online reviews were appropriately damning:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "The martyrdom of George Floyd gave American experience a moment of national anguish as we grieve for the Black Americans killed by police brutality. Today, this moment of national anguish is being transformed into a movement of national action" pic.twitter.com/xu22quQaHQ

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 8, 2020

It’s interesting that this is a Democratic proposal, given that the highest-profile incidents of “police brutality” that Democrats seem to think is suddenly on an epidemic scale in the nation seem to crop up mainly in cities where Democrats have been in control for decades. Minneapolis, for instance, where Floyd died and where the city council now wants to disband the police force, is made up entirely of Democrats but for one Green Party member.

New York City, where a black vendor of illegal cigarettes named Eric Garner died after being arrested by police back in 2014, is staunchly Democratic.
Baltimore, where the death of a drug dealer named Freddie Gray in 2015 set off days of rioting, hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1967, as Breitbart has noted.

Its elected officials at the local and federal level (including the late Elijah Cummings) have done nothing to prevent Charm City from a descent into slums. These are just a few examples, and every American, Democrat and Republican, knows the truth.

Yet Democrats see themselves as the force to reform American police agencies? The reality is that the party is throwing anything it can at Trump and the possibility he will serve another term in the White House.

The three-year national nightmare known as the “Russia collusion” probe came up deservedly empty. The impeachment affair from the first month of the year was so ludicrous it’s almost hard to remember — at a remove of six months — the exact lies Rep. Adam Schiff and Co. were peddling.

When the coronavirus hit, Democrats thought they had their issue, but Trump’s handling of it compared far too favorably with other world leaders — and especially favorably to the obvious ineptitude of Democratic governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo and rumored Democratic vice presidential possibility Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.

So now Pelosi’s Democrats have turned to the death of George Floyd and a national outbreak of looting and violence to try to convince American voters that the real problem the country has is racist police officers. It’s a desperate attempt to rally a dispirited Democratic base in time to win a 2020 election in which Democrats have pinned their hopes on a 77-year-old Joe Biden whose chief strength in the Democratic primaries was that he wasn’t Bernie Sanders.

He’s a man with a lifetime’s worth of political baggage, including the 1994 crime bill that Democrats despise today and a questionable past with China, not to mention endless accusations of improper behavior with women, as well as one serious claim of sexual assault.

Pelosi’s career has made clear for years that there’s really no depth she will not lower herself for the sake of political power — for herself and her party. On Monday, in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, she did it literally, for the whole world to see. And every voter needs to remember it in November.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Joe Saunders

Story Editor

Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.

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Black State Trooper Tells BLM Protester: ‘I Only Kneel’ to God

Reported By Joe Saunders | Published June 8, 2020 at 8:35am

URL of the originating web site: https://www.westernjournal.com/black-state-trooper-tells-blm-protester-i-only-kneel-to-god/

Ryan Fournier

✔@RyanAFournier

· 21h

This is Georgia State Trooper O’Neal Saddler.

He was asked to kneel today, and this was his response.

God Bless him!

Evan @Darefuhl

This is the kind of officer we need nation wide, much to respect this man.

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Of course, there were a few liberal knuckleheads ready to jump in with irrelevant jibes (there was at least one mocking comparison to President Donald Trump’s visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., for instance).

But the overwhelming majority of comments were approving — and grateful.

At a time when Americans are being assaulted daily with lies about the nation’s supposedly “racist” police forces based on the actions of the tiniest sliver of their membership, and watching as liberal politicians attack the men and women who actually protect law and order, a statement of quiet dignity and faith like the one out of Georgia carries weight.

But one state trooper, with a respectful demeanor and gentle logic that only added strength to his words, gave the answer that every law enforcement officer — and every American — should take to heart.

For free Americans, kneeling is reserved for one power only — and that’s not the rabble of Black Lives Matter movement.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Joe Saunders

Story Editor

Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.

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Rioter Douses Police Officer, Sets Him on Fire as Unrest Spreads Across Globe

Reported By Jack Davis | Published June 6, 2020 at 8:05am

URL of the originating web site: https://www.westernjournal.com/rioter-douses-police-officer-sets-fire-unrest-spreads-across-globe/

Inspired by riots across America that have led politicians to repudiate law enforcement, violent protesters are now attacking police around the globe. Protests reached a horrifying apex of violence Thursday in Mexico when, during a protest in Guadalajara, a police officer who took his eyes off demonstrators was set on fire in an incident caught on video. The protests took place over the death of Giovanni López, who died in May after an altercation with police, according to the U.K. Daily Mail. Although there were reports police had detained him for not wearing a face mask, officials said that was not true.

Video of Thursday’s protest shows a police officer getting on a motorcycle. Once his back was turned, he was splashed with some type of liquid by a rioter, who quickly set the officer on fire with what appeared to be a lighter. As the officer rolled on the street, police tried to help put out the fire while also battling protesters. The condition of the police officer could not be ascertained from media reports.

WARNING: The video below contains violent images that some views may find disturbing:

Mexican rioters also attacked the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City:

French protesters also took to the streets this week, claiming that the death of a man four years ago in police custody was an atrocity. A Paris demonstration on Tuesday included protesters holding signs that read, “Black Lives Matter,” according to NBC News. Police reported 18 people were arrested after what began as a protest turned violent, with many people taking part in acts of arson and vandalism.

British protests occurred in London, Manchester and Nottingham, claiming that U.K. police were guilty of racism and violence against black citizens.

“We’ve had enough. George Floyd is [one of] a long line of black males that have died at the hands of police. And the U.K. is not innocent, as I chanted at the marches I’ve attended, because there is a long history of police abuse here too,” protester Trey Campbell-Simon told The Guardian.

One commentator said there is a thread of anti-lockdown sentiment in the explosive protests.

“I think the public are less clear about whose interests are being protected now the lockdown is being eased,” Tim Newburn, a professor of criminology and public policy at the London School of Economics, told The Guardian.

“Add into the mix substantial social inequality in the impact of both the pandemic and the lockdown — and significant racial inequality in particular — and the dangers are clear. Missteps by the police and by other authorities now could have grave consequences for public order and public safety,” he said.

In Sydney, Australia, thousands marched, with some chanting, “No justice, no peace, no racist police,” according to The New York Times. Some commentators said that the protests were not only aimed at police, but at President Donald Trump.

“Part of it is about anti-Americanism, part of it is about the gross injustice,” Marcel Dirsus, a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University in Germany, told The Washington Post, referring to demonstrations in Berlin.

“But it’s also about Trump, who is so unpopular in Germany that it makes many people dislike America as a whole. I think a lot of people assumed that America had already hit rock bottom over the last couple of years, but then Trump proved them wrong in the way he is handling the pandemic and these protests.”

“It’s significant that Trumpism is part of a broader transnational movement,” Georgetown University political scientist Daniel Nexon said Monday during a webinar.

“U.S. political polarization is now aligned with politics elsewhere.”

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VIDEO: SUV Plows Through Line of POLICE in Major American City

Reported By Paul Duke | June 2, 2020

URL of the originating web site: https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1267648929719607296https://steadfastdaily.com/video-suv-plows-through-line-of-police-in-major-american-city/

Despite the emotional levers that the mainstream media continues to pull on us, these have been mostly peaceful protests. There is violence, and that’s what sticks with us because of its raw energy, but it is late at night, and not often accomplished with a protest sign held in one hand.

So, when we see these demonstrations turn awry, they turn very awry. Things get sideways in a hurry. It’s ferociously frantic, and frightening. Oh, so very frightening.

The scene in Buffalo, New York this weekend was just that.

A video emerged Monday night that showed an SUV plowing through a line of officers responding to a George Floyd protest in Buffalo, N.Y., hitting at least one and speeding away.

John Evans, the PBA president, told reporters in the city that a trooper and officer were hit in the incident, according to Stephen Marth of Spectrum News Buffalo. They were rushed to a nearby hospital in serious condition. was just that.

Video of the incident was unreal.

Warning: This video is graphic. Someone just ran over a line of police in Buffalo, New York. https://t.co/KeJ94rYEQr

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) June 2, 2020

If we’re lucky, this is the crescendo and not the new pace of play.

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Former NYC Top Cop Kerik Blasts Officials Using COVID as Excuse To Take Americans’ Freedoms

Authored By C. Douglas Golden | Published April 13, 2020 at 9:07am

URL of the originating web site: https://www.westernjournal.com/former-nyc-top-cop-kerik-blasts-officials-using-covid-excuse-take-americans-freedoms/

A teen being given a citation for merely driving in her car. Hiking trails closed. Church congregants for Easter services having their license plate numbers taken down by the police so that they can be told to be in quarantine for 14 days no matter what kind of social distancing was being practiced. That’s where we are now, and former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik isn’t particularly happy about it.

In a tweet Thursday, Kerik blasted officials who are using the coronavirus outbreak as a pretext to clamp down on freedoms that wouldn’t necessarily affect the spread of the virus.

“Yesterday, governors/mayors shut down walking trails,” Kerik tweeted.

”Some police have been ordered to arrest people for walking outside their homes. The government is considering a #coronavirus surveillance system.

“WTF! Americans better start paying attention and getting vocal! #Constitution.”

He went on to criticize New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, for his decision to stop construction projects.

“Today @GovMurphy stopped all non-essential construction,” he tweeted.

“Construction is a profession in which many will not be able to receive government assistance.

“Instead of mandating by order that they wear protective equipment and follow CDC directives, this will destroy them/families.”

Murphy had announced the halt to construction the day before Kerik’s tweet.

“We must continue to work together to flatten the curve of new COVID-19 cases in New Jersey,” Murphy said in a statement.

“By ceasing all non-essential construction projects and imposing additional mitigation requirements on essential businesses, we are furthering our aggressive efforts to enforce social distancing and limiting our public interactions to only the most essential in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19.”

In the executive order, Murphy also limited the number of customers who could be in an essential retail outlet at any given point in time and required those outlets to mark 6-foot increments on the floor in order to indicate how to socially distance, among many, many other things.

Park systems, meanwhile, have been shutting down across the country.

Here’s part of Oregon’s explication for closing its state park system late last month: “A single person walking on a trail is fine. There are a few million people in the west who are thinking the same thing, and then next thing you know, people are parking alongside roads to get into a park. That’s bad for you, it harms other people, and it puts stress on local groceries and health care systems.

It’s not just the hiking trails that have been shut down. The status of churches varies from state to state, with some listing them as an essential service and others shutting them entirely. Kentucky is one of the states in the latter category — and it managed to make a show of it this weekend when police took down the license plate numbers of the 50 people worshipping in the Maryville Baptist Church and put quarantine notices on their car, according to USA Today.

Newly elected Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, has engaged in a high-profile battle with a handful of churches that are still holding in-person services. In a move that absolutely won’t escalate the situation, state police threatened “further enforcement measures” for individuals receiving the quarantine notices if they decide not to quarantine.

At least there was some good news in this department last Wednesday, though: A 19-year-old Pennsylvania woman who was cited for “going for a drive”will have the ticket dropped, according to the York Dispatch. Anita Shaffer became one of the most prominent victims of over-officiousness in the time of coronavirus when Pennsylvania State Police hit her with a $200 ticket because she needed to get out of the house. She was the first person ticketed under Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s stay-at-home order. A few days later, officialdom decided it was probably best not to pursue the case.

Beside the fact that the troopers cited her under the wrong statute, York County District Attorney Dave Sunday felt that ticketing Shaffer didn’t serve “the interests of justice.”

“Ironically, if Ms. Shaffer had lied to the [trooper] and stated that she was driving to obtain food, medicine, or to a path to engage in outside exercise, Ms. Shaffer could not have received a citation for violating the stay at home order because no facts would exist to support its issuance,” Sunday wrote in his request to have the charges dropped. A district court judge granted the request.

I suppose kudos are in order to Mr. Sunday, a man who can probably figure out how to be six feet away from someone on a hiking trail. Alas, we live in a time when the government can’t trust us to hike or shop or drive correctly.

Mind you, this isn’t to say that all of this is smart.

No matter how much social distancing you practice and how much closer you feel to God when you go to church, you’re significantly better off if you decide to just go online. That said, the freedom of assembly and the freedom of religion are both enshrined under the First Amendment, so I wish Kentucky good luck defending that quarantine in court.

Kerik, by the way, isn’t exactly a wild-eyed libertarian. This was the top cop in New York City under Rudy Giuliani and during 9/11. That’s not the kind of resume that leads one to flights of anarchist fancy. He’s bringing up a very real concern that our rights have taken a backseat to trying to beat this disease. In some respects, that’s understandable. However, we’re about to be met with very sticky constitutional issues, including contact tracing and coronavirus “passports” to prove someone has antibodies and can re-enter society.

If the Constitution takes a backseat here, there’s the inevitable slippery slope: It can take a backseat anywhere. The fear is understandable, but fear cannot be allowed to set our rights afire.

Following are some images that, hopefully, will get you active in the fight for freedom. – Jerry Broussard

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

C. Douglas Golden

Contributor, Commentary

@CillianZeal

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Aqua Man

A.F. Branco | on July 30, 2019 at 7:40 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-aqua-man/

Years of New York Mayor de Blasio anti-police rhetoric is having an adverse effect on the police officers on the street, as they are more and more disrespected with the latest incident of people throwing water on them.

More A.F. Branco Cartoons at The Daily Torch.

Branco’s Faux Children’s Book “APOCALI” ORDER HERE

Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $10 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, the great El Rushbo, and has had his toons tweeted by President Trump.

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Nearly 2 Weeks After Alleged Hate Crime, Smollett Hands Over ‘Limited And Redacted’ Phone Records

Reported By Jack Davis | Published February 12, 2019 at 12:11pm | Modified February 12, 2019 at 2:42pm

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/nearly-2-weeks-alleged-hate-crime-smollett-hands-limited-redacted-phone-records/

Actor Jussie Smollett (Rachel Luna / Getty Images)

Actor Jussie Smollett turned over his phone records to the Chicago Police Department 13 days after he claimed he was assaulted on a Chicago street by supporters of President Donald Trump. Smollett said he was on the phone with his manager when he was attacked, but he initially refused a police request to hand over his phone records, Page Six reported.

While he did provide them Monday, the records were “limited and redacted,” according to WLS.

“We are very appreciative of the victim’s cooperation. However, the records provided do not meet the burden for a criminal investigation as they were limited and heavily redacted. Detectives may be following up with him to request additional data to corroborate the investigative timeline,” police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said, calling the redactions “extreme.”

Police are likely to require more information from Smollett, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Smollett, who is black and openly gay, said the two men shouted racist and homophobic slurs at the actor, before they put a noose around his neck and doused him with a chemical. Police are investigating the incident as a possible hate crime. Smollett also claimed the attackers referenced Trump’s MAGA slogan.

Police said standard investigatory procedure requires independent verification of the phone call that allegedly took place during the attack.

“We have no reason to doubt the statements, but for a criminal investigation, we need to independently confirm the phone records,” Guglielmi said.

Police said they have examined surveillance cameras in the area of the alleged attack, but have yet to see any evidence that what Smollett described took place. However, the cameras did not record every part of Smollett’s walk through the neighborhood where he was attacked.

Smollett’s spokesperson said the actor was the victim in the incident and should be treated as such.

“Chicago PD has repeatedly informed us that they find Jussie’s account of what happened that night consistent and credible,” the spokesperson’s statement read.

“Superintendent Johnson has been clear from day one that Jussie is a victim. We are continuing to work closely with the Chicago PD and remain confident that they will find Jussie’s attackers and bring them to justice.”

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Police Report Is Game-Changer in Case of Gay, Black Actor Attacked by ‘Trump Supporters’

Reported By C. Douglas Golden | January 30, 2019 at 9:29am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/police-report-game-changer-case-gay-black-actor-attacked-trump-supporters/

When gay black actor Jussie Smollett said he was attacked by white men who yelled some stuff about “MAGA,” it didn’t take long for the liberal rage machine to mobilize.

“The star of the tv show ‘Empire,’ Jussie Smollett, was attacked by two assailants early Monday morning in Downtown Chicago according to Chicago Police Department Spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi,” CNN reported.

“Smollett, 36, was walking on the 300 block of E. North Lower Water Street when two men approached him and ‘gained his attention by yelling out racial and homophobic slurs towards him,’ Guglielmi says in a statement.

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“Two unknown offenders — it is unknown if they were male or female — then attacked Smollett, hitting him in the face and then poured an unknown chemical substance on him.

“At some point during the scuffle, one of the offenders wrapped a rope around the victim’s neck and then both offenders fled the scene, the statement reads.”

Smollett took himself to Northwestern Hospital, where the incident was reported to police, according to CBS Chicago.

There was plenty of condemnation to go around, particularly after TMZ reported that the attackers had shouted “this is MAGA country.” Two of the outraged included black Democratic senators, who just by chance, happen to either be running for president or widely expected to be running for president.

There was one problem with this “modern-day lynching” narrative: None of that “MAGA country” stuff was originally mentioned to police and they’re having trouble corroborating the fact that the attack even happened.

“According to the victim, the offenders’ faces were concealed,” a police spokesman said, according to Reason. “We have no record indicating that (they shouted ‘MAGA’), we only have record of them shouting racial and homophobic slurs at him.”

A statement from Chicago Police confirmed that, Reason reported.

“We have no record of the ‘MAGA Country’ comment,” the statement said, according to Reason. “We have racial and homophobic comments documented.”

CNN reported that when police heard about the accusation and called the actor, he “relayed it to detectives in a supplemental interview.”

But then again, there’s some doubt as to whether the attack even happened.

In an area that has a “very high density” of surveillance cameras, according to the police spokesman’s statement, there is not a single image of an attack like the one Smollett described.

“A Chicago police spokesperson tells CNN that investigators canvassed the neighborhood where the reported attack occurred on actor Jussie Smollett and have found no still images or video from security cameras of the incident,” CNN reported.

“The only image of Smollett police obtained from security cameras was inside Subway Sandwich shop near the location of the reported crime, the actor was standing alone.”

For all I know, Smollett really was attacked by bigots who shouted the phrase “MAGA country,” and ambitious, Democratic politicians who are calling this a “a modern-day lynching” are absolutely justified. But here’s the thing — I’m going to wait to see whether or not that’s the case, as everyone else should have.

It hasn’t even been a fortnight since the Covington Catholic incident, and the lesson we were should have taken away from that “teachable moment” — be careful dealing with stories that confirm your cultural narrative — has been lost.

No fewer than two senators with eyes on the 2020 Democratic nomination have taken this accusation as gospel because they can use it as an illustration of supposed Trump-fueled hate coursing through the country, even though no arrests have been made and the evidence is scanty. If this turns out to be a hoax, Sens. Booker and Harris own this, as do the legion of liberals who tweeted this out without waiting for a fuller investigation.

Even if this turns out to be true, what they did was supremely irresponsible. That these two individuals are in the Senate is bad enough. Just imagine one of them in the White House, backed by a legion of people who think Donald Trump supporters are irresponsible bigots, but are willing to blame white Donald Trump supporters for a hate crime without any charges or even direct physical evidence. It will make the Obama years look like pure reason.

ABOUT THE REPORTER:

C. Douglas Golden

Contributor, Commentary

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After 4 Officers Shot, Furious Police Union Pres. Lays into Media, Antifa-Types. ‘Sick & Tired of Dirtbags Trying To Take Our Lives… the Ones Spreading Rhetoric That Police Officers Are the Enemy…’

Reported By Malachi Bailey | January 29, 2019 at 10:58am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/4-officers-shot-furious-police-union-pres-lays-media-antifa-types-sick-tired-dirtbags-trying-take-lives-ones-spreading-rhetoric-police-officers-enemy/

Houston Police Officers’ Union President Joe Gamaldi slammed “dirtbags” who spread anti-law enforcement rhetoric after four Houston police officers were shot Monday night during a drug raid. The shootout took place while officers were investigating a drug case the southeast section of the city, according to ABC News.

They were met with gunfire as soon as they reached the door of the home they were targeting. Four were wounded immediately, with two shot in the neck, according to CNN. Two suspects were found dead at the scene.

Initial reports indicated five officers had been shot, but CNN reported that the five had suffered a knee injury.

Speaking at the hospital, Gamaldi exploded on those who support anti-cop rhetoric.

“We are sick and tired of having targets on our back,” he said.

Police officers have been under fire from the left in recent years, especially with protests from so-called antifa thugs and NFL players like Colin Kaepernick. The media only fuels the left’s outrage by zealously reporting on alleged incidents of police brutality. But the media doesn’t report on police officers who’ve been brutalized with anywhere near the same level of interest.

In 2018, 144 police officers died. That’s a 12 percent increase from the 129 police officers who died in 2017.

“We are sick and tired of having dirtbags trying to take our lives when all we’re trying to do is protect this community and protect our families,” Gamaldi said. “Enough is enough.”

It’s obvious that Gamaldi was referring to antifa and the left-wing media. Liberals seem to have no respect for the law — they embrace illegal immigration, want to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and even criticize police officers at every opportunity.

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When NFL players were protesting “police brutality,” the establishment media rarely stopped to clarify that the overwhelming majority of police officers are good people dealing with some of the most dangerous elements in society. Because of the left’s blatant anti-cop rhetoric, tragedies are more likely to happen.

When the left-wing establishment media undermines the law, some criminals see a green light to do whatever they please. And Monday’s shooting in Houston is exactly the result to expect.

ABOUT THE REPORTER:

Malachi Bailey

Contributor, Commentary

Summary

French City Refuses To Honor Slain Police Officer for Fear of Offending Muslims

Reported By Lisa Payne-Naeger | October 17, 2018 at 5:04pm

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/refuses-honor-officer-muslims/

Under any other circumstances, a law enforcement officer who sacrificed his life to save that of another, whether or not it was in the line of duty, would be widely heralded as a hero. No question.

Arnaud Beltrame was a lieutenant colonel with the National Police in Marseille, France, and he lost his life in the line of duty. He was killed by 25-year-old Radouane Lakdim, a Moroccan-born Muslim terrorist.

Beltrame was certainly a man worthy of honors. But according to Voice of Europe, recognition for his bravery doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

CNN reported the incidents that led to Beltrame’s death in March.

“Interior Minister Gérard Collomb said the officer, a lieutenant colonel with the National Police, offered to exchange himself for one of the female hostages being held inside the Super U supermarket in Trèbes.

“When the officer went inside the supermarket, shots were fired. The lieutenant colonel had his phone on, so police could hear his interactions with the gunman, Collomb said. As soon as they heard gunfire, police went in,” reported CNN.

The standoff lasted more than three hours. Lakdim was killed by police and Beltrame died later of stab wounds.

American Military News reported that the 15th district in Marseille is said to have a significant population of jihadists. Just five months prior to Beltrame’s death, two women were killed by an ISIS terrorist in the same area.

“ISIS-linked news outlet, Amaq News Agency, published a statement in which they referred to the terrorist as a ‘soldier’ of ISIS who carried out their attack on a U.S. ally involved in efforts against ISIS in Syria and Iraq,” AMN wrote.

President Emmanuel Macron had high praises for the slain officer.

“Our country has suffered an Islamist terrorist attack. We’ve paid the price of the danger of the terrorist threat in blood for several years,” Macron said, according to CNN.

“The forces of order intervened with remarkable speed, both to contain the individual who hid away with his hostages, to help one of the victims who was still alive who he had left in the surrounding area. He has saved lives, and done his role and his country proud.”

So, what problem could there be in honoring such a brave man?

In March, the people of France were attempting to honor the bravery of Beltrame after his death and preparing for a “day of tribute,” but sentiments soon changed. As officials in Marseille worked to make a memorial to Beltrame, they hit a road block. Political correctness run amok.

“Attempts to name the city’s 15th district after Beltrame were recently rejected over concerns of offending the Muslim community,” AMN reported.

Marseille’s 7th district National Rally mayor Stephane Ravier said the proposal was refused during a town council meeting. Ravier exclaimed that it was the first time the “Leftist elected officials, socialist and communist” refused such an honor in the 15th district. He claimed their excuse for denying Beltrame a place of honor was because they were afraid of offending the Muslim population and possible retaliation for their public praise of Beltrame.

“Leftist elected officials, socialist and communist, refused that a place in the 15th district be named after Arnaud Beltrame, in the first time, they’ve said, under fallacious pretext, that this place wasn’t prestigious enough, before telling the truth in these terms: we are on the field, we witnessed that the population has changed and if we give the name of Arnaud Beltrame in this district, the population will take that as a provocation,” Ravier said, according to Voice of Europe.

Americans should take a swift lesson from this politically correct travesty in France. Such a sad ending to a tragic story for Beltrame, a true hero. He deserves better. And so do the people of France who are living under the threat of terror.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Lisa Payne-Naeger

Contributor, Commentary

An enthusiastic grassroots Tea Party activist, Lisa Payne-Naeger has spent the better part of the last decade lobbying for educational and family issues in her state legislature, and as a keyboard warrior hoping to help along the revolution that empowers the people to retake control of their, out-of-control, government.

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Antifa Shut Down Major Intersection, Threaten Citizens with Violence If They Don’t Obey

Reported By Jack Davis | October 8, 2018 at 5:48pm

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/antifa-shut-intersection-threaten/

Antifa protesters holding a vigil for a man shot to death by Portland police made it clear Saturday that they were taking over, and there was no room for anything else but obedience to mob rule.

The raw violence was captured by Brandon Farley, who in his Twitter profile says he captures “disruptive events in downtown Portland, Oregon.”

Warning: the following embedded videos contain strong language.

Protesters blocked the road and directed traffic where to go during the #PatrickKimmons vigil. Needless to say, it went off without a hitch.
[October 6th – 6pm – SW 4th and Harvey Milk st.]
–#pdxtraffic #Downtown #Oregon #March #BlackLivesMatter #BLM #Antifa #Portland pic.twitter.com/lfKfw9lxQl

— Brandon Farley (@FarleyFilms) October 8, 2018

At one point, protesters blocked off an intersection as though they were the police and refused to let drivers pass.

A woman, asked by a driver why traffic was rerouted, had no time to explain.

“Because I told you to,” she said.

Various videos posted to Twitter show protesters threatening elderly drivers who did not understand what was going on.

Antifa protesters swarmed one car when it did not comply.

“Yeah brother, yeah you little white little f—er,” said one protester. “The First Amendment. Get the f— down the road.”

In the video, he appeared to notice that the car was registered in North Carolina and called the driver a “little white supremacist.”

“Go back to North Carolina where you came from. We don’t need your KKK in Portland, Oregon,” the protester said.

Meanwhile, drivers were frazzled.

“I’m in the middle of the intersection and (the protesters) are blocking traffic,” one confused driver says into his phone.

“We’re not here to riot. We’re here for justice,” said Charles Kimmons, who is related to victim Patrick Kimmons, according to Oregon Live. “We need to fight this all the way to the end. These cops need to be locked up.”

Police have said that Patrick Kimmons was shot at about 3 a.m. on Sept. 30 when police, responding to a call of a shooting, encountered Kimmons, who was armed.

Antifa has been on a rampage in Portland since June, when protesters blocked the offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and neither city officials nor police did anything to help the federal workers targeted.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Contributor, News

Jack Davis is a free-lance writer. Writing as “Rusty” Davis, he is a Spur Award-nominated writer whose first two novels, “Wyoming Showdown” and “Black Wind Pass” were published by Five Star Publishing.

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