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Before Army Sgt. 1st Class Randal Ruby was accused in Iraq of beating prisoners and of conspiring to plant rifles on dead civilians, he amassed a 10-year criminal record documenting assaults on his wife in Colorado and Washington state and a drunken high-speed police chase in Maine for which he remains wanted. Before Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes stabbed an Iraqi private to death with a bayonet, he was hospitalized after threatening suicide in high school, was accused of assault, disorderly conduct and trespassing, and, in the months leading up to deployment, was twice linked to drug use. Before Army Spec....

CRIME RATE, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, GUNS, SCOTUS, SECOND AMENDMENT

June 6, 2008: With things quieting down in Iraq (U.S. casualties hit an all-time low in May, 2008), South Africa has regained its position as the most violent country on the planet, with a murder rate of 65 per 100,000 population. The death rate is also high in some other African countries (like Sudan, Somalia and Congo), but those placed don't keep records as effectively as South Africa. The Iraqi rate is now running at about 48 per 100,000. The Afghanistan rate is about 15. India, another area with lots of terrorism (and half of it is from communist and...

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced a military-style checkpoint yesterday to stop cars this weekend in a Northeast Washington neighborhood inundated by gun violence, saying it will help keep criminals out of the area. Starting on Saturday, officers will check drivers' identification and ask whether they have a "legitimate purpose" to be in the Trinidad area, such as going to a doctor or church or visiting friends or relatives. If not, the drivers will be turned away. ...

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced a military-style checkpoint yesterday to stop cars this weekend in a Northeast Washington neighborhood inundated by gun violence, saying it will help keep criminals out of the area. Starting on Saturday, officers will check drivers' identification and ask whether they have a "legitimate purpose" to be in the Trinidad area, such as going to a doctor or church or visiting friends or relatives. If not, the drivers will be turned away. The Neighborhood Safety Zone initiative is the latest crime-fighting attempt by Lanier and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who have been under pressure...

D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence. Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by...

CHICAGO -- The weekend has gotten off to an especially violent start, with no fewer than 20 people shot on the streets of Chicago, three of them fatally, from Friday afternoon through early Saturday. About 12:50 p.m. Friday, a girl was wounded in the arm when she and another person were shot at 2714 W. 66th St. A Chicago Lawn police sergeant said two people were shot and "one of the victims,'' a girl, was shot in the arm. The sergeant would not disclose the girl's age. The girl was taken to Holy Cross Hospital. About 3:30 p.m., a 15-year-old...

The police force is committed to make its presence felt when Fiji observes Earth Hour from 8-9pm tonight. Corporate Communications Officer Ema Mua says the force wants to ensure that no one takes advantage of the Earth Hour Initiative to break the law. Mua says the National Operations Command Centre has designated senior officers to look into areas especially towns where criminal activities are likely to occur. “A big number will be patrolling on foot and those who will be on motor vehicle. “We also have the National Operations Command Centre on high alert for that one hour and all...

The racial dimension of Barack Obama's electability problem is now apparent, but no prominent Democrat dares discuss it openly. Similarly expect no discussion of the subject in the major media. The white working class vote I am not referring to the ongoing and intense discussion of The Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright is a separate problem for Obama. Whether Obama has been, or will be, permanently weakened by his long and close association with Wright, or has soared above it with his Philadelphia speech, is not the subject of these thoughts. Something much simpler than the answer to that question has...

Crime: The number of adults imprisoned in the U.S. has hit an all-time high, a new report says, bringing with it fresh concern about "our priorities." Don't know about you, but we think this is a good thing.The 1.5 million people now in U.S. prisons represent nearly 1% of the adult population — an all-time high, according to the Pew Center on the States. This, Pew says, has led to much higher costs. Last year alone, states spent $49 billion on corrections, an outlay that's been growing at a real rate of 6% for 20 years. Over the same period,...

The front page news of young college students being shot and murdered on campuses across the nation has become sickeningly familiar. The latest mass murder at Northern Illinois University took five students, plus the shooter, most of whom were under the age of 21. We all agree that the senseless slaughter of young people at school needs to stop. On the other hand, the question of how to stop it and why it happens in the first place has seen less collectivity. Nevertheless, it's clear this nation needs to make changes in firearm regulation to try and curb these events...

In a surge of gun violence on Milwaukee's north side early Saturday, 11 people were shot in what police said were three unrelated situations. All are expected to live. The gunmen remained at large late Saturday. In a fourth shooting, two groups of people fired on each other's houses, authorities said. Fire Department medics and doctors at Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa hustled to treat the injured, as all the shootings spanned less than two hours, beginning at 1:10 a.m. Common Council President Willie L. Hines Jr. during a news conference Saturday afternoon vowed to work with police to "get the...

Chicago, NYC See 40-Year Low In Homicides Atlanta, Miami Mark Increases In Killings NEW YORK -- Chicago and New York are about to close out 2007 with the lowest number of homicides in more than 40 years, while cities such as Baltimore, Atlanta and Miami have seen killings go up because of what police say is a surge in guns and gang violence. New York City reported 488 slayings as of Friday, versus 596 for all of 2006. The city is on track to have the lowest number of killings since reliable record-keeping started in 1963. Homicides in New York...

Study links better graduation rate, lower crime rate By Caroline An, Staff Writer Article Launched: 12/13/2007 10:00:49 PM PST PASADENA - Raising high school graduation rates by just 10 percent could reduce homicides and aggravated assaults by 20 percent statewide, according to a report released Thursday that links graduation rates to crime rates. A 10-percent increase in the number of high school graduates could translate into 500 fewer murders and more than 20,000 fewer assaults in California each year, according to the report, "School or the Streets: Crime and California's Dropout Crisis." In Los Angeles County, that would mean 214...

It's easy to forget that Halloween isn't the same carefree holiday for every child in our community.In the central city, some neighborhoods can be scary places all year round. These are not places where you feel comfortable allowing young children to go from house to house accepting treats.In areas where drug dealing, gunfire and other negative elements exist, you think twice before allowing young kids to knock on every door. Mac Weddle, executive director of Northcott Neighborhood House, 2460 N. 6th St., thinks some of today's children will never get to know about the kind of Halloween fun their parents...

The FBI released its final 2006 violent crimes report on Monday. Detroit remains No. 1 and Flint remain No. 3 in the nation for violent crimes among cities with a population of 100,000 or more.

Yesterday 8 people were shot in city, 2 fatallyPhiladelphia's homicidal Grim Reaper had no time for a lunch break yesterday, as gunmen swelled the city's killing count for the year to 258.By 10 p.m., police had fanned out across the city to investigate eight shootings - including two daylight murders in places normally considered safe. Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson visited both of those homicide scenes yesterday - at a North Philadelphia playground and inside a neat Juniata Park rowhouse.

WASHINGTON, August 10, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A book published in June by a leading US economist in part responds to previous and oft-quoted claims that abortion has been a significant factor in lowering the U.S. crime rate. The book by John R. Lott of the American Enterprise Institute, "Freedomnomics," answers claims by liberal economist Steven Levitt that abortion, in reducing the number of "unwanted" children, has eliminated significant numbers of the kind of people who commit crimes. Lott's 2001 study, "Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out-of-Wedlock Births" concluded that legalized abortion has in fact increased the overall violent...

An anti-crime initiative that put Milwaukee police on patrol in some of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods this summer received credit on Monday for a nearly 22% drop in non-fatal shootings as well as a decrease in overall homicides during 2007. "With the effort put forth on this initiative, the bad guys are starting to get the message: If we catch you, you are definitely going to jail," Milwaukee

A radio commercial for a local gun shop advises Houstonians to arm themselves against "Katricians," adding to the growing tension between Houstonians and the Katrina evacuees who have been blamed for a rising crime rate. Gun shop owner and radio talk-show host Jim Pruett said Thursday he started running the ad a few weeks ago after hearing a local television interview with a Katrina evacuee living in Houston who implied he would have to turn to crime if his government assistance ran out. "There are many evacuees here who are working," said Pruett, who has owned Jim Pruett's Guns &...

Householders living in London or any other big city will rub their eyes in disbelief at Sir Ian Blair's suggestion that they feel safe enough to leave their doors unlocked. In addition, his declaration that levels of security are on a par with those in 1981 makes a pretty big assumption that 25 years ago crime was low. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who would then have been a young CID officer in London, must have a short memory. advertisementIt was in the 1960s and 1970s that crime really began to rise dramatically, with acquisitive offences such as burglary and car...

Back to Story - Help US facing wave of murders and gun violence By Jason Szep 1 hour, 26 minutes ago Analicia Perry was kneeling to light a candle at a makeshift shrine to her brother when she was shot in the face and killed -- four years to the day after her brother was gunned down on the same spot. The slaying of the 20-year-old mother -- on a narrow street behind a police station in Boston's poor Roxbury district last month -- is one of the shocking examples of a rise in the murder rate across the United...

Once again a rival attorney general candidate is blaming Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown for the city spiraling homicide rate -- and offering to help local officials fight crime. This time it's Republican state Sen. Chuck Poochigian, who traveled to Oakland from Fresno last week to criticize Brown's inability to put the brakes on violent crime. Poochigian also offered to help support state Sen. Don Perata's plan to fight crime and noted that Brown was not invited to Perata's summit last week that including 40 public officials and community activists. "I commend Sen. Perata for acknowledging that Oakland is in the...

Despite media coverage purporting to show that escalating violence in Iraq has the country spiraling out of control, civilian death statistics complied by Rep. Steve King, R-IA, indicate that Iraq actually has a lower civilian violent death rate than Washington, D.C.Appearing with Westwood One radio host Monica Crowley on Saturday, King said that the incessantly negative coverage of the Iraq war prompted him to research the actual death numbers."I began to ask myself the question, if you were a civilian in Iraq, how could you tolerate that level of violence," he said. "What really is the level of violence?"Using...

Iraq Has a Lower Violent Death Rate Than Washington, Baltimore or Atlanta May 16, 2006 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Interesting story today in the New York Sun: "It's that time of year when New Yorkers start making their summer vacation plans. Renting a place in the Hamptons? Nah, been there, done that. How about a Parisian jaunt? Noooo. Too many riots. Well, how about visiting a country that's ancient, historic, beautiful and exotic - Iraq? Sure, there's a little war going on there, but when you look at the violent death statistics in the world, [Iraq is] safer than a number...

It's that time of year when New Yorkers start making their summer vacation plans. Renting a place in the Hamptons? Nah, been there, done that. How about a Parisian jaunt? Noooo. Too many riots. Well, how about visiting a country that's ancient, historic, beautiful and exotic - Iraq? Sure, there's a little war going on there, but when you look at the violent death statistics in the world, it's safer than a number of other popular travel destinations. Believe it or not. I happened to catch Rep. Steve King, a Republican of Iowa, on C-span last week and he rattled...

The crime rate in New York has dropped for the 17th consecutive year, with the fewest number of recorded murders in the city since 1963. Over the past year, there have been 537 murders, down from 566 in 2004, and a peak of 2,245 in 1990. Rape, assault, burglary and car theft have all tumbled, with subway crime down by five per cent, according to New York Police Department statistics. New York is now the safest big city in America, while other major cities, including Boston, Houston and Philadelphia, are witnessing soaring crime rates. Vast areas of the city that...

Killings up in state, nation FBI reports increase for first 6 months of '05 Tuesday, December 20, 2005 CAROL ROBINSON News staff writer The number of killings in three of Alabama's four largest cities climbed in the first six months this year, mirroring the nation, according to preliminary FBI statistics released Monday. Huntsville saw the biggest jump, with the number of murders doubling. But that was only six killings in the first half of 2005 compared with three during the same 2004 period. Birmingham by far had the highest count with 38 homicides from January through June, up from 24...

BOSTON - The execution-style slayings of four young men in a basement music studio this week cast a spotlight on a crime wave that has pushed murder in Boston to a 10-year high. While the murder rate nationally has dropped over the past decade, some cities — such as Boston and Philadelphia — are seeing it spike. In Boston, the number of slayings has more than doubled in the past several years, climbing from 31 in 1999 to 71 so far this year. Criminologists blame the increase in part on a decrease in funding for neighborhood policing because of the...

A UNITED Nations report has labelled Scotland the most violent country in the developed world, with people three times more likely to be assaulted than in America. England and Wales recorded the second highest number of violent assaults while Northern Ireland recorded the fewest. The study, based on telephone interviews with victims of crime in 21 countries, found that more than 2,000 Scots were attacked every week, almost ten times the official police figures. They include non-sexual crimes of violence and serious assaults. Violent crime has doubled in Scotland over the past 20 years and levels, per head of population,...

California homicides dwarf Iraq deaths State lost 2,394 to murder in 2004 compared to 905 coalition lives Posted: December 2, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Recently released crime statistics show the homicide rate in California is 265 percent higher than the death rate suffered by U.S. and British military personnel in Iraq. According to the report "Crime in California 2004," compiled by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, there were 2,394 reported homicides in the Golden State last year. That compares with 905 deaths of coalition forces in Iraq, chiefly Americans and Brits, during the same time period. A...

Recently released crime statistics show the homicide rate in California is 265 percent higher than the death rate suffered by U.S. and British military personnel in Iraq. According to the report "Crime in California 2004," compiled by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, there were 2,394 reported homicides in the Golden State last year. That compares with 905 deaths of coalition forces in Iraq, chiefly Americans and Brits, during the same time period. A monthly average of 75 deaths of American and British forces has remained fairly constant over the last two years. The peak for homicides in California was in...

Injury research explains conflicting violence trends [Injury Prevention 2005; 11: 324-5] Police records do not accurately reflect the true levels of violent crime and should not be used to pinpoint underlying trends in violence, say leading experts in Injury Prevention. "Police records, rather than representing a reliable measure of trends in violence, are a product of police activity," write Professor Jonathan Shepherd and Dr Vaseekeran Sivarajasingam, from the Violence Research Group at Cardiff University. According to the police, higher rates of crime are attributable to better surveillance, including CCTV and higher numbers of police in city centres, and changes in...

WHY ARE WE WINNING THE WAR ON CRIME? The U.S. violent crime rate is at a 30-year low, and experts have many theories to explain it, especially the drop in the 1990s. Among them: -The fastest-growing population segment is those over age 50, who commit few violent crimes. -A record 2 million-plus people are locked up in prison. -The crack market shrunk in the '90s. -About 100,000 police officers were added since the mid-'90s. -Improved tactics -- such as the "broken windows" theory of policing, which cracks down on petty crime -- have helped. -The nationwide legalization of abortion in...

A controversial study linking a reduction in crime during the 1990s with legalized abortion two decades earlier has been published in one of the nation's foremost scholarly journals. The study, entitled The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime, was published in the May 7 edition of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which is edited by the Economics Department of Harvard University and calls itself "the oldest professional journal of economics in the English language." Authored by researchers John J. Donohue III and Steven D. Levitt, the study had been privately circulated since 1999, but had not been accepted for publication...

From Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner "So, how did Roe v. Wade trigger, a generation later, the greatest crime drop in recorded history? "As far as crime is concerned, it turns out that not all children are born equal. Not even close. "Decades of study have show that a child born into an adverse family environment is far more likely than other children to become a criminal. And the millions of women likely to have an abortion in the wake of Roe v. Wade--poor, unmarried and teenage mothers for whom illegal abortions had been too expensive...

Link Only: U.S. crime rate holds at 30-year low

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reports of violent crime in the United States in 2004 stayed at the lowest level since the government began compiling statistics 32 years ago, but males, youths and those of more than one race were victimized at higher rates than others, the Justice Department said on Sunday. ADVERTISEMENT There were 24 million violent crimes and property crimes in 2004, about the same rate as the previous year, according to an annual study by the government's Bureau of Justice Statistics. Guns were used in 6 percent of all robberies, assaults, rapes and other nonlethal crimes, according to the...

A UNITED Nations report has labelled Scotland the most violent country in the developed world, with people three times more likely to be assaulted than in America. England and Wales recorded the second highest number of violent assaults while Northern Ireland recorded the fewest. The study, based on telephone interviews with victims of crime in 21 countries, found that more than 2,000 Scots were attacked every week, almost ten times the official police figures. They include non-sexual crimes of violence and serious assaults. Violent crime has doubled in Scotland over the past 20 years and levels, per head of population,...

Startling drop in crime rate in last 20 yrs. lies in ROE v. Wade...................

For the 19th time in the past 20 years, New Orleans has exceeded 200 murders. What is so disturbing is that it is only August and gruesomely high mark has already been exceeded. Where is the outrage? Where is the action? New Orleans is in the midst of a crisis, but the people have become so desensitized to the violence that the response is mere lethargy. New Orleans has so many incredible selling points—culture, food, people, history, architecture, festivals, charm and more; however, all of the attractiveness of New Orleans means nothing if citizens and tourists cannot feel safe. The...

New Orleans murder rate on the rise again Homicide rate nowhere near ’94 peak but still 10 times national average The Associated Press Updated: 7:20 p.m. ET Aug. 18, 2005 NEW ORLEANS - Last year, university researchers conducted an experiment in which police fired 700 blank rounds in a New Orleans neighborhood in a single afternoon. No one called to report the gunfire. New Orleans residents are reluctant to come forward as witnesses, fearing retaliation. And experts say that is one of several reasons homicides are on the rise in the Big Easy at a time when other cities are...

New Orleans has one of the highest murder rates in the country. By mid-August of this year, 192 murders had been committed in New Orleans, "nearly 10 times the national average," reported the Associated Press. Gunfire is so common in New Orleans -- and criminals so fierce -- that when university researchers conducted an experiment last year in which they had cops fire 700 blank rounds in a neighborhood on a random afternoon "no one called to report the gunfire," reported AP. New Orleans was ripe for collapse. Its dangerous geography, combined with a dangerous culture, made it susceptible to...

Carl Gossett/The New York Times In 1961, these men robbed and killed a U.P.S. driver in New York; a police detective shows the murder weapon. THE lions aren't lying down with the lambs yet at the Bronx Zoo, but New York is becoming an increasingly peaceable kingdom. With the year more than half over, it appears the number of homicides in the city may fall below 500 for the first time since 1961, when the subway fare was 15 cents and Roger Maris hit 61 home runs. If that happens, this could be the first year in nearly half...

Record murder month 'a concern' Police 'meeting ... daily,' tracking violent assaults after grim July mark By Chris Conley Contact August 2, 2005 On the heels of a record-breaking number of homicides in July, Memphis Police brass Monday promised an aggressive campaign to staunch the flow of blood. There were 23 homicides in July, the highest monthly count in recent history and about one-fifth the total for last year. There were 22 in October 2002, the next highest month. In 2004, the city had a record-low 118 homicides. Already 89 homicides have occurred in 2005, threatening to reverse a five-year...

An Associated Press headline caught my attention, CRIME RATE FALLS BUT PRISONS STILL FULL. Well, duh ... where do you think the criminals are? "I train my horses with a 2 x 4, but they won't let me touch their head." "We built our home on the edge of the wilderness but (mountain lions, rattlesnakes, flood, forest fires, take your pick) have made living here unbearable." "We used to have a lot of birds around here till we went in the cat business." "I decided to act as my own lawyer in the divorce proceedings and lost everything!" "Every time...

So much for "anti-gun hysterics" and predictions of "blood running in the streets," a Second Amendment group says. Nine months after the Clinton-era "assault weapons ban" expired, the FBI has released crime statistics showing a drop in homicides in 2004 -- the first such drop since 1999. The FBI report said all types of violent crime declined last year, and cities with more than a million people showed the largest drops in violent crime. When the Clinton ban on certain semiautomatic weapons expired last September, gun control groups warned that violent crime would escalate, including violence against children. But those...

Taking a cue from King Louis XIV of France, three Britons are proposing a ban on sharp, pointed kitchen knives. In a British Medical Journal article, the three hospital workers suggest banning pointed kitchen knives. They note that in 1669, to reduce violent crimes committed with knives, Louis passed a law demanding that the tips of all table and street knives be ground smooth. In the United Kingdom, where citizens do not have the right to own, much less carry, firearms, violent crime is increasing. For example, figures from London show a 17.9 percent increase in violent crime from 2003...

It is time to repeal the District's gun laws. Just consider a few statistics: Five years before the D.C. Council banned nearly all firearms in 1976, the District's murder rate fell from 37 to 27 per 100,000 people. In the five years after 1976, the murder rate rose to 35 per 100,000 people. Between 1976 and 1991, the D.C. homicide rate rose 200 percent. The national homicide rate during the same 15-year period rose just 12 percent. According to the FBI, the District has the highest violent crime rate in the nation of any city over 500,000 people. Its homicide...

Towards the end of that decade, confounding the expectations of most analysts, the teenage murder rate fell by more than 50% in the space of five years; by 2000, the book notes, the overall murder rate was at its lowest for 35 years. Other kinds of crime fell too. Why? Some gave the credit to economic growth; others to gun control; still others to new methods of policing, or to greater reliance on imprisonment, or to increasing use of the death penalty, or to the ageing of the population. Mr Levitt goes carefully through these various explanations, checking them against...