Free Republic

The summer travel season has not exactly gotten off to a great start. Demand is up due to people ready to travel after an almost two-year pandemic kept many travelers at home. There is a pilot shortage now, though, and it is causing cancelations and delays. American Airlines told FOX Business on Monday that it is ending service to three cities on September 7. Those cities are Islip and Ithaca, New York, and Toledo, Ohio.The pilot shortage has been building since the pandemic. Some pilots were put on furlough. Others decided to retire or go into other areas of employment....

Workers allege the action is retaliatory, but the chain says closures are "a regular part of our operations." With thousands of locations nationwide, a single Starbucks closing typically isn't national news. But at a time when the coffee chain is dealing with a major unionization push from employees — and being accused of potentially illegal anti-union behavior in the process — the announcement that Starbucks is shuttering a unionized store in Ithaca, New York, is grabbing a lot of attention. Starbucks Workers United, the national group behind Starbucks employees' unionization efforts, said they would once again be filing an Unfair...

In wake of the Texas school shooting there are some who question if School Resource police officers make schools safer? Schools in Tompkins County don't have SROs and law enforcement says they have received pushback in the past to have the presence of officers in schools. A member of the Common Council of the City of Ithaca says he has pushed back on officers in schools because he adamantly opposes it. Jorge DeFendini is the Alderperson who represents ward 4 of the Common Council of Ithaca. He believes an increased presence of police at schools or even having SROs in...

The college student in the age of the coronavirus is used to putting up with quite a bit: regular surveillance testing, vaccine (and now booster) mandates, mask mandates, remote classes, restrictions on social gatherings, the cancellation of university events and traditions. At the beginning of the pandemic, most students, myself included, were willing to accept these burdens, owing to the real risk Covid posed. However, now that we have vaccines, campus restrictions have taken on an increasingly absurd character — ruining the college experience in a (failed) attempt to control a virus that poses minimal risk to students. Indeed, all...

An Ithaca man was charged Thursday after he was accused of producing three sexually explicit videos with a 10-year-old child, federal prosecutors said. Remanu Phillips, 31, appeared in federal court on charges that he sexually exploited a child, according to a news release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York. He was accused of making the three videos of the child in June of 2019, federal prosecutors said. Phillips was already registered as a level-2 sexually violent offender, after he was convicted in November of 2019 of first-degree sexual abuse and sexual contact with...

Link only (Gannett): https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Court-orders-upstate-woman-to-remove-Confederate-16156632.php

Crime is soaring in cities where police departments have been defunded, reports Fox News. Movements to defund the police have grown since George Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis. Defunding means reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies funded by the local municipality. More than 20 major cities have reduced their police budgets in some form, though the scale and circumstances vary. The results have not fared well in Los Angeles, Oakland, New York City, Portland and Austin. Homicides in Oakland, California, have risen 314 percent compared with the same time last year...

He fatally shot an NYPD cop execution-style decades ago in a Queens bar — and now Richard Rivera is helping reform police in upstate New York as part of a state-mandated plan launched by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The cop-killer — who murdered off-duty officer and dad-of-four Robert Walsh in 1981 — sits on a panel for Ithaca and Tompkins County as part of its “Reimagining Public Safety Collaborative.’’ The advisory group was formed after Cuomo ordered municipalities to submit police-reform plans to the state by April 1 following George Floyd’s death.

<p>A progressive mayor’s proposal to abolish the police department of a small city in upstate New York is sparking concerns among residents that the reform effort will exacerbate a recent spike in violent crime, the town’s former police chief told National Review.</p>

Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick this week announced a plan to replace the city’s police department with a new Department of Community Solutions and Public Safety. The proposal, part of a statewide police reform effort, is now up for public comment and requires legislative approval. If passed, the city would install a civilian department leader to oversee two divisions, an unarmed force of “community solution workers,” and an armed division focused on responding to and investigating crimes. Officers would have to reapply to keep jobs as armed “public safety workers” with the city. The proposal acknowledges that in some ways, the...

Mayor Svante Myrick will propose replacing the city’s current 63-officer, $12.5 million a year department with a “Department of Community Solutions and Public Safety” which would include armed “public safety workers” and unarmed “community solution workers,” all of whom will report to a civilian director of public safety instead of a police chief. Under the proposal, all current officers would have to re-apply for a position with the new department. If the proposal is approved, calls for service will be evaluated to determine whether an armed or unarmed respondent is necessary, or another public agency altogether would be best to...

A Cornell University course titled “BIPOC Rock Climbing,” was originally restricted to “people who identify as Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, or other people of color.”.. When Campus Reform contacted the school, Cornell officials edited the course description to remove the race-based enrollment restriction. Cornell University altered the course description of a racially-segregated physical education course offered to students during the Spring 2021 academic semester after Campus Reform reached out for comment. The class, entitled “BIPOC Rock Climbing," was originally restricted to “people who identify as Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, or other people of color," before its description was edited to...

Cornell University’s student government removed two executive committee representatives who voted against a resolution to disarm the police at the Ivy League campus. The Student Assembly on Dec. 8 removed Annie Gleiberman for voting against a resolution to disarm the university's police department, saying she condoned "acts of racism, physical aggression, and emotional violence" by voting against the resolution. And when a fellow executive rep, Morgan Baker, said she wouldn’t vote for it either — becoming a procedural block because a unanimous vote was needed — members temporarily removed her to get to a unanimous tally, The Washington Free Beacon...

Cornell University activists are threatening student government representatives who voted against disarming the campus police. On Nov. 19, Cornell's student government voted by a 15-14 margin not to disarm the campus police. Following the failed resolution, activists took to social media to harass and threaten the representatives who opposed the bill. After a member of the student government posted the full names of each opponent in a group text for students of color, activists plastered the list on Instagram and Twitter, resulting in an onslaught of threats. Joe Anderson, a former student government president, called on his peers to fight...

<p>People walking around downtown Ithaca over the past few months may have noticed something different — more graffiti.</p><p>Gary Ferguson, executive director of the Downtown Ithaca Alliance (DIA), said the increase in graffiti began around the start of the COVID-19 lockdown, in the middle of March leading to the beginning of April.</p>

In a disturbing development, Congressman Tom Reed on Friday released a statement saying that he and his family were threatened at their home in Corning. The incumbent released the following statement: “Today, my family and I were threatened at our home in Corning. The cowards used a dead animal and a brick with a family member’s name on it to try to intimidate us. We assure everyone such threats only energize us to stand stronger. We thank the local police and federal authorities, who are already investigating this disgusting attack against my family. Across the country, politics has taken a...

Police stood down and allowed ANTIFA terrorists to attack a group of peaceful Trump supporters in Ithaca, N.Y. on Friday afternoon. “We gathered to have our Trump 2020 Rally, and at 4 PM were immediately met by a large group of counter protestors. After about a half hour went by and the counter protestors saw that they had a large numerical advantage, they began crossing the street,” organizer Rocco Lucente wrote in a Facebook post. “At that point they began pushing, shoving, kicking, punching, stealing peoples signs and flags, taking peoples hats, and attempting to physically intimidate the crowd into...

A rally in support of President Donald Trump in downtown Ithaca descended into chaos on Friday afternoon, as multiple fights broke out between Trump supporters and counter-protesters who assembled to rebuke the rally.  No arrests appear to have been made during or after the event, despite a litany of physical altercations involving people from both sides. At least two people were injured during the several scuffles that broke out in the 90 minutes the two sides squared off.  The scene was tense from the beginning. A small group of Trump supporters gathered outside the Tompkins County Republicans office starting at...

Representative Tom Reed held a press conference Wednesday afternoon at his Corning campaign office after a brick was thrown through a window overnight. Reed was joined by his family, Corning Mayor Bill Boland, State Assemblyman Phil Palmesano, and a small group of supporters outside of his office. “This type of violence is completely unacceptable,” said Reed, “to the coward who did this… this will not deter us.” The Congressman says that Corning Police are investigating the vandalism and that there are cameras in the area when the brick was thrown around 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday. No campaign staffers were inside...

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