Free Republic

Austin, Texas residents are expressing outrage over police staffing shortages and longer 911-call response times in the aftermath of the city council's vote to defund the department in 2020. In February, a section of the city was notably left without a single police officer for a few hours on a Saturday due to the ongoing shortages. Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock, who called attention to the vacancy on X, told Fox News Digital that a steady decline in public safety has put the city on the "brink of disaster."

A girl who had been missing for two years has been found safe in a secret room under a staircase in Saugerties, New York, police said. Paislee Shultis was reported missing from her Cayuga Heights home in July 2019, when she was 4 years old, according to NBC 4. Police initially suspected the girl’s non-custodial parents, but did not bring charges. New York State Police found the girl over 150 miles away on Monday, acting on a tip that she was being hidden in the Hudson Valley town.

Mandatory Covid jabs for NHS and social care workers are set to be scrapped, The Telegraph can reveal, after warnings of crippling staff shortages if the plan went ahead.Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, will on Monday meet fellow ministers on the Covid-Operations Cabinet committee to rubber stamp the decision on the about-turn.Multiple government sources said ministers are expected to end the requirement because the omicron Covid variant, now dominant in the UK, is milder than previous strains.The move comes after warnings that almost 80,000 healthcare workers would be forced out of their jobs because they had declined to take two...

....From April through October, the proportion of mental health visits to pediatric emergency departments jumped 24% for kids ages 5-11 and 31% for kids 12-17, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We’re already seeing that children’s mental health is impacted in the short term. Likely there will be long-term consequences as well,” said Nirmita Panchal, who has studied the issue as a senior policy analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “What early research and data is showing that lack of socialization has been pretty critical.” “We’re already seeing that children’s mental health is impacted in the...

(WAND) - Two former Illinois Department of Children and Family Services employees who oversaw AJ Freund's case are now facing felony charges. Little Andrew “AJ” Freund was found wrapped in plastic and buried in a remote area in the northwest suburb of Woodstock, just miles from the Crystal Lake home where his parents had reported the boy missing the week before. Before his death, AJ had extensive contact with the child welfare agency. In Dec. 2019, the department confirmed employees Carlos Acosta and his supervisor Andrew Polovin left the agency after a lengthy internal investigation. Acosta, 54 of Woodstock, and...

by Joe Callen Daytona Beach police Chief Craig Capri told reporters they were called out to an apartment complex after an anonymous tip that a suspect wanted for attempted murder was located there. “The suspect fled into a back bedroom,” Capri said. “The officers follow the suspect, Michael Harris, ordering him to freeze, halt, surrender. As the officer opened the door, the suspect took a firearm and shot at our officers.” Capri said they were serving an arrest warrant after the man shot a woman twice in the back two weeks ago. Harris was also holding another woman hostage...

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) says that "unless there is clear evidence that a rapist is still at the same location as the victim, police should not be dispatched to the crime scene, but should refer the victim to a social worker. Look, the victim has already suffered enough trauma. At this point she needs medical attention and psychological counseling not police interrogation." Ellison downplayed the idea that a police presence at the crime scene would help preserve evidence and improve the chance that the perpetrator would ultimately be apprehended, contending that "getting an early start on the healing...

Hours before Albuquerque police detained alleged members of an armed civilian group when a protest erupted in gunfire Monday, the mayor of New Mexico's largest city announced that unarmed social workers – not officers – would now respond to certain 911 calls. The decision came as Black Lives Matter advocates to defund police departments in the wake of the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in police custody after Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes on May 25. Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller announced that the city would create a “first-of-its-kind”...

San Francisco's Mayor London Breed is setting up her city's social workers for potential bloodshed, offering a series of "reforms" that even her former police commissioner calls "pure political pandering." San Francisco police will no longer be called to settle disputes between neighbors, or to handle homeless people, or any non-criminal cases, according to a new plan announced by Mayor London Breed.

A struggling family faces many challenges with Social Service Agencies, while residing in America and in Israel. The Grandparents at some point come to the rescue of their Granddaughters.

The United States could reduce Pentagon spending by over a trillion dollars in the next decade-spending $5.2 trillion rather than the currently planned $6.3 trillion- by adopting strategy of military restraint. That’s the bottom line of a study I produced along with several colleagues as part of “Developing Alternative Defense Strategies 2016,” an exercise organized by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, where groups from five think tanks used CSBA’s “Strategic Choices” software to reimagine the U.S. military budget.The others all increased military spending. The teams from the Center for New American Security and the Center for Strategic and...

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved Sunday for legislation a bill submitted by MK Yoav Kisch (Likud) called "Parents and their Children." The law would make Israel the first country in the world to take away parents' rights as legal guardians of their own children. It would hand over vast power to social workers, who will be able to initiate proceedings against parents who, in their opinion, fail to respect a list of ten "children's rights" enumerated in the bill. These rights include the right "to physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development and to develop their talents and personal...

Children's book author Kari Anne Roy was recently visited by the Austin police and Child Protective Services for allowing her son Isaac, age 6, to do the unthinkable: Play outside, up her street, unsupervised. He'd been out there for about 10 minutes when Roy's doorbell rang. She opened it to find her son —and a woman she didn't know. As Roy wrote on her blog HaikuMama last week, the mystery woman asked: "Is this your son?" I nodded, still trying to figure out what was happening. "He said this was his house. I brought him home." She was wearing dark...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz accused top U.S. military officials of behaving like “social workers” in Iraq and Syria rather than showing military strength. In an interview Tuesday night with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Mr. Cruz said he was disappointed by responses from Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey after he questioned them at a Senate hearing on the administration’s plan to defeat the Islamic State. “Frankly, their answers were far more those you would expect of a social worker, than of military leaders,” Mr. Cruz said. The Republican senator, who is considering a...

Lane Funkhouser, his wife Susan, and their two children (whom we will call James and Kat) were all very sick. They went to their family doctor, who was unable to diagnose the problem. Because the children were not getting better, their attendance at public school became an issue. So Lane and Susan decided that they would homeschool James and Kat while they searched for a diagnosis and treatment. School officials filed truancy charges against the family, which were quickly dismissed. But, as a result of these charges, the family became embroiled with a social worker named Michael Austin, an investigator...

It is now almost four years since the end of the recession, yet unemployment is still at almost eight percent and would be much higher if so many people had not given up completely which means that they don't count as unemployed anymore. This is actually the third recovery in a row during which job growth has been more tepid than the historical norm. Further, employment has recovered more weakly each time: this is the worst jobs recovery, the recovery following the 2001 recession is next, and the recovery following the 1991 recession is the best (or least worst) of...

Progressive organizations behind White House policy have crafted specific, second term plans for President Obama to transform the U.S. Armed Forces into a social work-style organization designed to combat “global warming,” fight global poverty, remedy “injustice,” bolster the United Nations, and increase “peacekeeping” forces worldwide. The groups, already instrumental in influencing Obama’s first term defense agenda, call for massive, second term slashes to the military budget. The savings are to be used to invest in “sustainable energy” and in fighting worldwide climate change. These schemes and many more are documented in the soon-to-be-released book, Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans...

Progressive organizations behind White House policy have crafted specific, second-term plans for President Obama to transform the U.S. Armed Forces into a social work-style organization designed to combat “global warming,” fight global poverty, remedy “injustice,” bolster the United Nations and increase “peacekeeping” forces worldwide. The groups, already instrumental in influencing Obama’s first-term defense agenda, call for massive, second-term slashes to the military budget. The savings are to be used to invest in “sustainable energy” and in fighting worldwide climate change. The schemes, and many more, are documented in the soon-to-be-released book “Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans for the Next...

Mitt Romney is a loser...an election loser. In his 1994 senatorial campaign, he lost by a huge margin (by more than 17 points) in a year when Republicans took over Congress. Despite everyone else’s success, Romney managed to lose. Of all his campaigns he has won only once when he won a single term as governor of Massachusetts, but he quickly tarnished that close victory. After becoming governor in 2002 with Kerry Healey as his running mate, Romney proceeded to mismanage his position so that his approval dropped rapidly into the 40's and then the 30's. He left that mess...

WASHINGTON -- Tensions between the rich and poor are increasing and at their most intense level in nearly a quarter-century, a new survey shows. Americans now see more social conflict over wealth inequality than over the hot-button topics of immigration, race relations and age. The survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center highlights U.S. perceptions of the economic divide, an issue that has moved to the forefront in the 2012 presidential campaign amid stubbornly high unemployment, increasing poverty and protests by the Occupy movement.