Tag: crime

NJ Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour fatally shot outside her home

New Jersey Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour was gunned down outside her home late Wednesday, crashing her car after being repeatedly shot while behind the wheel, officials said.

Dwumfour, 30, was found dead in her white Nissan SUV after it crashed near the Camelot at La Mer apartment complex in Sayreville, NJ, ABC 7 News reported.

The Republican councilwoman was found with multiple gunshot wounds, and pronounced dead at the scene, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office confirmed Thursday morning.

Some locals told RLS Media that the gunman was spotted racing off to the Garden State Parkway, which edges the complex. No other details were given on possible identifying details or a weapon.

Dwumfour — who also preached for a Nigerian-based church group — appeared to be the intended target, authorities told the outlet, stressing that there was no obvious motive.

Keep reading

11 US cities — all governed by Democratic mayors — listed among 50 most dangerous in world

Eleven U.S. cities rank among the 50 most dangerous in the world, according to a recent report published by Numbeo, a global quality of life database. All 11 are governed by Democratic mayors.

Three U.S. cities — Baltimore, Memphis and Detroit — are ranked among the 20 most dangerous cities on the planet.

The three cities have more in common than just violent crime. All three are run by Democrats. 

Baltimore ranks #15 on the annual dangerous cities list, with Memphis and Detroit close behind at #18 and #19, respectively.

Brandon Scott, just 38 years of age, is the mayor of Baltimore. Jim Strickland Jr., an attorney and politician, is the 64th and current mayor of Memphis, where the Memphis police department has just announced plans to permanently deactivate the unit that five of the officers involved in the vicious beating of Tyre Nichols belonged to. Mike Duggan, meanwhile, is currently serving as the mayor of Detroit. 

Two more U.S. cities run by Democrats appear among the 30 most dangerous in the world: Albuquerque (#23), where 45-year-old Tim Keller serves as the 30th mayor, and St. Louis (#27), where Tishaura Oneda Jones has served as mayor since April of 2021.

Keep reading

It’s Happening: Judge Orders Release of Bodycam Footage From Paul Pelosi Hammer Attack

Stop, hammer time. A California judge has ordered the release of police bodycam footage and portions of a 911 call from the Paul Pelosi home invasion last October. On October 28, 2022, Paul Pelosi was assaulted by David DePape, who wearing only underwear and armed with hammers, gained access to the home of the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, though there were no signs of forced entry. Mr. Pelosi let police into the house after escaping to the bathroom to make an emergency phone call. 

That’s when initial reports said DePape attacked Pelosi with a hammer, which led to emergency brain surgery. He fully recovered, but the incident was one of the most bizarre. The security camera footage and the police bodycams weren’t released. Still, a lawsuit filed by multiple news organizations demanded that all video and audio evidence emanating from this bizarre home invasion be released. The motion was granted yesterday (via NBC News): 

A coalition of news organizations will gain access Thursday to all courtroom evidence from last year’s attack on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband at their San Francisco home. 

San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Stephen Murphy on Wednesday granted a motion filed by a group of 13 news organizations, including NBC News and The New York Times, requesting the release of evidence in the case against David DePape, the man accused of assaulting Paul Pelosi. 

The evidence consists of video from a body camera worn by an officer who responded at the Pelosis’ home on Oct. 28, a 911 call Paul Pelosi made to police, parts of a police interview with DePape and security video taken during the break-in recorded by U.S. Capitol Police in Washington. 

Keep reading

Lori Lightfoot Blames Robbery Victims, Tells Them to Stop Carrying Cash

LGBT-BLM Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot blamed robbery victims for the crimes of their attackers, telling citizens of Chicago that her solution for curtailing crime in the rabidly dangerous city is for people to stop carrying cash. Lightfoot is currently seeking re-election to another term as Mayor of Chicago, with a 9-candidate election slated for February 28th. Every single one of them is a Democrat.

Candidates for Mayor of Chicago gathered last night for a debate, sponsored by ABC7 News, which largely became focused on the city’s out-of-control crime, which makes regular headlines not just in the United States, but all over the globe, despite an intensely-enforced gun control program. Lately, property crimes and muggings have skyrocketed, as those walking down the street, or operating food trucks are being targeted on a regular basis.

Keep reading

How Effective Are Police?

A 2020 paper published in the Alabama Law Review and written by Shima Baughman, professor of law at the University of Utah, puts paid to the illusion that cops solve crimes.

TV cops solve crimes. Real cops, not so much.

From the Abstract (emphasis added):

In recent years, the national conversation in criminal justice has centered on police. Are police using excessive force? Should they be monitored more closely? … The implied core question across these national debates is whether police are effective at their jobs. Yet we have not explored how effective police are or determined how best to measure police effectiveness.

This article endeavors to measure how effectively police perform at their core function — solving crime. The metric most commonly used to measure police effectiveness at crime solving is a “clearance rate”: the proportion of reported crimes for which police arrest a person and refer them for prosecution. But clearance rates are inadequate for many reasons, including the fact that they are highly manipulable. 

This Article therefore provides a set of new metrics that have never been used systematically to study police effectiveness — referred to as “criminal accountability” metrics. Criminal accountability examines the full course of a crime to determine whether police detect and ultimately resolve committed crime. Taking into account the prevalence and the number of crimes police solve, the proportion of crimes solved in America is dramatically lower than we realize. Only with a clearer conversation, rooted in accurate data about the effectiveness of the American police system, can we attempt a path toward increased criminal accountability and public safety.

She goes on to note that “the scholarly discussion has focused on how police are doing crime solving: With too much force? With the right monitoring? With proper technology? These discussions assume that police are solving crimes. The prior scholarship has also tackled police performance in specific arenas but has not examined how to measure whether police are effective at their jobs.”

The goal of the paper, then, is to answer the question, “What is the best way to determine police effectiveness?”

As the Abstract notes, using “clearance rates” is misleading. Clearance rate is defined as “the proportion of reported crime for which police arrest a person and refer them for prosecution.” Part of the problem with this metric is the amount of data it misses. For example:

How many individuals are victims of a crime but failed to report it to police? How often do police arrest the right people? Which crimes are police most likely to make arrests for? How many police clearances result in a conviction? How many crimes did police not make arrests for but resolved in other ways? None of this information is tracked [by the “clearance rate” metric].

The paper concludes that police, indeed, are remarkably ineffective at solving crime, their supposed primary function.

Keep reading

Two retired Met Police officers are charged with child porn offences after serving chief inspector was found dead before he could also be charged

Two retired Metropolitan Police officers have been charged with child sex offences as part of an investigation into a serving Met chief inspector who was found dead before he could also be charged.

In a statement, the Met said the charges followed a ‘lengthy and complex’ investigation into Richard Watkinson, 49, who was a serving Met Chief Inspector for neighbourhoods policing at the West Area Command Unit.

He was found dead in Buckinghamshire on Thursday, January 12, the same day he was due to answer bail to be charged with conspiracy to distribute or show indecent images of children, three counts of making indecent photos of a child, voyeurism and two counts of misconduct in public office.

The Crown Prosecution Service had authorised charges against him.

His death is being treated as unexplained but not suspicious and an inquest has opened and adjourned.

Met officers found Watkinson’s body having attended the address following welfare concerns.

He had been suspended from duty following his arrest in July 2021.

Jack Addis, 63, of no fixed address but from Perthshire, Scotland, and Jeremy Laxton, 62, from Lincolnshire, will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, February 9.

Addis has been charged with conspiracy to distribute or show indecent images of children. He was arrested in November 2021.

Laxton has been charged with conspiracy to distribute or show indecent images of children, three counts of making indecent photos of a child, possession of prohibited images of a child, possession of extreme pornographic images and intentionally encouraging or assisting an offence (misconduct in public office). He was arrested in September 2021.

They both left the force over a decade ago.

The alleged offences took place between January 1, 2018 and September 20, 2021.

Commander Jon Savell, said: ‘Chief Inspector Watkinson was facing extremely serious and concerning charges, as the result of a painstaking and thorough police investigation.

‘Before this matter came to light, we had no previous information about these allegations or to indicate the officer posed any risk to the public.

‘He had not faced any other criminal or conduct matters during his Met career.

‘He had been suspended from duty since his arrest.

‘Two other men were also arrested during the course of the investigation and have been charged, their matters will now progress through the courts.’

Keep reading

China proposes making “dissemination of false information” a crime in UN treaty

A new international convention on cybercrime is being negotiated at the United Nations (UN) meeting in Vienna, Austria, and China has proposed the criminalization of the “dissemination of false information.”

The proposal seems like an attempt by China to legitimize its internet controls and is likely going to be contested by Western countries, even though many of them have been copying parts of China’s playbook in recent times.

There is already an existing international convention on cybercrime that was signed in 2001. However, it was not a UN treaty and it has not been signed by Russia, China, Brazil, and India, which are some of the largest countries in the world.

In the ongoing negotiations on the new treaty, the proposals that have been suggested have been put into two categories; those with wide support and those that are contested. Proposals on controlling online content have generally fallen into the contested category and have not been part of immediate discussions.

Keep reading

Failed New Mexico GOP candidate arrested for allegedly paying gunmen to fire shots at several Democrats’ homes

An unsuccessful Republican candidate was arrested in connection to several gunshot incidents at Democrats’ homes in New Mexico.

Solomon Peña was arrested on Monday by Albuquerque police at his residence after a SWAT standoff.

The 39-year-old is accused of paying four other men to shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators, all Democrats. The shootings were made between Dec. 4 and Jan. 5. In one incident from Dec. 11, twelve bullets were fired at the North Valley home of County Commissioner Debbie O’Malley.

“This type of radicalism is a threat to our nation, and it has made its way to our doorstep right here in Albuquerque, New Mexico,” said Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, a Democrat, in a media briefing.

Peña ran for a seat in the New Mexico House of Representatives as a Republican despite having been previously convicted in 2008 of smash and grab robberies and having served five years in prison. He lost in 2022 by a large margin, but on Twitter, he claimed that election fraud had stolen the contest from him.

Keep reading

Ex-FBI Agent Says Idaho Murders Suspect Bryan Kohberger Had an ‘Incel Complex’ That Drove Him to Kill

University of Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger may have been driven to kill by his history of social issues and a possible “incel complex,” a former FBI investigator told The Post.

“The murders may have been… an effort to assert some type of dominance,” former FBI agent and security expert Pete Yachmetz explained to The Post this week.

Kohberger, 28, was arrested late last month for the Nov. 13 stabbing deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, at an off-campus residence in Moscow, Idaho. Yachmetz believes the brutality of the crime and Kohberger’s history of social challenges may offer some hints to his possible motive.

“I believe a continued stabbing of a victim indicates…an uncontrollable rage and extreme anger,” Yachmetz said, noting that Kohberger has been described as “socially awkward with a long history of interpersonal problems.”

“I think he may have developed a sort of incel complex,” he surmised.

Keep reading

Panic grips Special Forces community amid investigation into drugs, human trafficking

Panic and fear spread throughout the special operations community at Fort Bragg and Fayetteville, North Carolina as CID and FBI agents investigated members of 3rd Special Forces Group and Delta Force who allegedly were involved in drug and in one instance human trafficking, according to nearly a dozen current and former military sources.

The arrests began Thursday, Jan. 5 and culminated with a 100% recall and accountability formation for 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group yesterday.

It is unknown when the investigation into drug and human trafficking in the Fort Bragg area began, but it is known that the FBI became involved in investigating the deaths of Timothy Dumas and Delta Force operator Billy Lavigne in 2020 when both were found shot to death at a training site on Bragg.

Last week’s arrests began with investigators receiving more evidence after an undercover law enforcement officer posing as an underage girl helped arrest a member of 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group back in December. That individual was known to moonlight as a bouncer at a bar in Southern Pines frequented by the Special Forces community, a military source close to the situation explained to Connecting Vets. The Green Beret is alleged to have been pimping underaged girls to the Special Forces community at drug-fueled parties in Southern Pines.

“This is what happens when there is no war, no direction, and an 18-month red cycle with no mission,” a Special Forces soldier said. “So dudes are fucking around with young kids and the craziest drugs. All these lives ruined because people are just bored.”

Whether the individual rolled on his accomplices or law enforcement ripped the data from his cell phone, it quickly led to the arrest of another Green Beret involved in drug trafficking in 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group.

With the information of additional suspects in hand, CID and military police set up shop at one of the main bottlenecks to entering or exiting Fort Bragg: the Longstreet gate between the post and Southern Pines.

Keep reading