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A Minneapolis man is charged with robbery after police say store employees and customers held him until officers arrived on scene. Reginald Calhoun was arrested at the Family Dollar Store at 1010 East Lake Street in Minneapolis on Monday. Police say he took off after he robbed and assaulted a clerk. He didn't get far because customers and employees caught him before he tried to get away in a taxi. Police say the taxi driver was not aware Calhoun was allegedly involved in the robberies. Minneapolis Lt. Mike Fossum praised the citizens for their bravery. "They did a great job....

CULIACAN, Mexico — A shooting that killed eight people partying on a seaside boulevard in northwestern Mexico may have been the work of vigilantes targeting car thieves, a prosecutor said. The gunmen drove up in a white SUV and fired on the festive crowd without saying a word, Sinaloa state deputy Attorney General Jose Luis Leyva said Sunday. A 15-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl were among the youngest killed Saturday night in the Pacific coast town of Navolato. Four people were wounded. Also among the dead were two brothers in their 30s who had a record of car theft,...

A militia of fishermen organized by regional leaders in the Somali coastal towns of Alula and Bargaal in the African country's northern Puntland region has captured 12 armed pirates in two boats. The leaders of the militia reported their success to the BBC on April 28. Though — for want of a better word — the militiamen have been described as "vigilantes" by the media. Given the state of lawlessness in Somalia, they probably have as legitimate a mandate to deal with the piracy problem as any other entity in the beleaguered state on the Horn of Africa. "They decided...

Mountain View police said someone is attacking registered sex offenders in the city and the attacks may be related. Two crimes against sex offenders have taken place in the past month. Detectives described the attacks as similar. The first crime occurred on Sunday, Oct. 19, 2008, at 9:39 a.m., at an apartment complex on the west side of the city, officers said. A witness saw a man carrying a bat and placing a Molotov cocktail-type device at the front door of a registered sex offender. When confronted by the witness, the man indicated he was targeting the person living in...

CONTEMPLATING the Clinton-Obama racial war, some Republicans were so excited you’d have thought Ronald Reagan had risen from the dead to slap around a welfare deadbeat. Never mind that the G.O.P. is running on empty, with no ideas beyond the incessant repetition of Reagan’s name. A battle over race-and-gender identity politics among the Democrats, with its acrid scent from the 1960s, might be just the spark for a Republican comeback. (As long as the G.O.P.’s own identity politics, over religion, don’t flare up.) Alas, these hopes faded on Tuesday night. First, the debating Democrats declared a truce, however fragile, in...

Police: Burned, Headless Body Of Sex Offender FoundPOSTED: 12:08 pm EST November 8, 2007 UPDATED: 3:52 pm EST November 8, 2007 NORTHVILLE TOWNSHIP -- Construction crews found a torched and headless body Thursday morning on Hidden Ridge Drive in Northville Township. Police were able to identify the body as 26-year-old Daniel Gene-Vincent Sorensen by using a partial fingerprint technique, despite the severe burns on Sorensen’s hands. Police said the severely burned hands seemed to be an effort to hide his identity. Police confirmed that Sorensen was a registered sex offender. A neighbor called to report a fire on Wednesday night,...

VILLA NUEVA, Guatemala - Slum dwellers armed with shotguns have taken to Guatemala's streets to hand vigilante justice to youth gangs as voters sick of crime increasingly back a hardline ex-general's run for president. Roving bands of masked men communicating over walkie-talkies and armed with sticks, machetes and shotguns patrol the poor Villa Nueva slum on the edge of Guatemala City at night looking for members of infamous "Mara" gangs. The well-organized patrols, whose secretive members are suspicious of outsiders, killed at least one gang member, David Castillo alias "The Siren", earlier this month. "It's another war," said resident Sheni...

Vigilante justice has become common in Bihar Pics: Prashant Ravi Vigilante justice appears to have become the order of the day in the lawless northern Indian state of Bihar.The latest incident in which 10 men suspected to be thieves were lynched by a group of villagers in Vaishali district on Thursday underscored the people's frustration with the police. The villagers said that they were fed up with rising theft for the last two months in spite of informing the police regularly. "But when the police did not take any action we started patrolling our village ourselves to catch the...

Tarred, feathered and tied to a lamppost: Justice for a drug dealer on the streets of Ulster Tied to a lamppost, he stands with his head and upper body covered in tar and feathers. A makeshift placard hung around his neck with a piece of string announces the reason for his treatment. (The man is forced to carry a sign detailing his alleged crime) This man was subjected to the painful tarring and feathering on the Taughmonagh estate, a loyalist stronghold in the city. Locals had accused the victim, who is in his thirties, of being a drug dealer. And...

A HERO cabbie who took on the Glasgow Airport terror suspects told yesterday how he booted one of them in the privates. Alex McIlveen, 45, kicked the man, whose body was in flames, so hard that he tore a tendon in his foot. But he said last night: "He didn't even flinch. I couldn't believe he didn't go down. "A doctor told me later I'd damaged a tendon in my foot."

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - For as long as anyone can remember, the cracked asphalt soccer field in the Roquete Pinto slum was off-limits to children — "reserved" by gangs selling marijuana and cocaine. Then, a few months ago, a mysterious squad of beefy men with submachine guns started patrolling on foot, and the drug dealers disappeared. A few days ago, while gunbattles were raging in two other Rio de Janeiro neighborhoods and bystanders were shielding their kids from the bullets, the barefoot teens of Roquete Pinto smiled and shouted as they kicked a ball around their freshly liberated field....

Inspector confronted on Capitol Hill, says promised 'proof' does not exist A Department of Homeland Security official admitted today the agency misled Congress when it contended it possessed investigative reports proving Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean confessed guilt and declared they "wanted to shoot some Mexicans" prior to the incident that led to their imprisonment. The admission came during the testimony of DHS Inspector General Richard L. Skinner before the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, according to Michael Green, press secretary for Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas. Culberson was questioning Skinner about a meeting DHS...

The three police officers on duty at the time were unable to break up the brawl, or prevent the arson, as members of the larger group apparently prevented firefighters from attending to the blaze by blocking the road with their trucks and screaming at them to let it burn. Both groups were also armed with guns, knives and baseball bats; some shots were fired, but no one was struck, although four male residents of the home were badly beaten.

SAINT JOHN, N.B. -- The normally peaceful New Brunswick island of Grand Manan may not have seen the last of the violence that ended in a suspected crack house being burned to the ground by a mob of so-called vigilantes.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is refuting a Daily Bulletin report that the U.S. Border Patrol provided information to the Mexican government about the whereabouts of civilian border watch groups. Read the disputed article: U.S. tipping Mexico to Minuteman patrols See the Mexican Government Web page: www.sre.gob.mx/eventos/minuteman/reporte3 "Today's report by the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, `U.S. tipping Mexico to Minuteman patrols,' is inaccurate," read the statement issued Tuesday evening. "Border Patrol does not report activity by civilian, non-law enforcement groups to the government of Mexico." Kristi Clemens, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection,...

As federal officials keep silent on rumors, Austin officials question whether groups impersonating officers are terrorizing residents. With widespread reports of immigration raids in Austin multiplying and federal officials refusing to say whether the rumors are true, city and immigrant rights leaders Friday raised the possibility that vigilantes might be impersonating law enforcement officers and terrorizing immigrants and citizens. At a City Hall news conference, they called on government officials to be open about information that might help explain the numerous raid reports sweeping Austin and the region. "I think everyone just wants answers," Council Member Raul Alvarez said. "If...

Families Attack Pedophile Relatives of his victims attack a pedophile as he leaves prison in Santiago, Chile. (April 20)

For Immediate ReleaseOffice of the Press SecretaryMarch 25, 2006 President's Radio Address       Audio      In Focus: Immigration      THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. On Monday, I will attend a naturalization ceremony here in Washington. It's always inspiring to watch a group of immigrants raise their hands and swear an oath to become citizens of the United States of America. These men and women follow in the footsteps of millions who've come to our shores seeking liberty and opportunity, and America is better off for their hard work and love of freedom.  Radio Address 200620052004200320022001  Radio Interviews 20052004 America is a nation...

President Bush yesterday said he opposes a civilian project to monitor illegal aliens crossing the border, characterizing them as "vigilantes." He said he would pressure Congress to further loosen immigration law.

A Hummer limo filled with people celebrating a birthday party turned into a wild ride early Sunday after a man attempted to steal it, San Antonio Police said. What the suspect did not realize was there were 15 people in the back of the limo. Twenty-one-year-old Noe Ochoa was arrested, police said. He was held down by people in the limo until officers arrived. Party-goers could not believe what was happening. “The Hummer starts to move and everybody's like, ‘What's going on?’” Kenneth Thornton said. His friends had rented the limo for Kenneth’s 28th birthday. The limo driver was apparently...

Geraldo Rivera, senior correspondent for Fox News, told a group of Hispanic journalists vigilantes had created "hysteria along the borders" and advised his colleagues not to "let your newsroom push you around on the issue of immigration." "Bust them on their hypocrisy," Rivera said at the annual awards gala of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in Washington last week, according to a report by the Robert C. Maynard Institute of Journalism Education. Rivera, who served as honorary gala chairman of the event, announced from the hotel stage that he was donating $80,000 to NAHJ and $20,000 to Unity: Journalists...

Minutemen Project organizers plan to set up shop along the border in Laredo this October, but local officials are not putting out the welcome mat. Volunteers with the Minutemen Project, an activist organization formed to halt illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border, said theyve already completed a successful inaugural operation in Arizona in April. Now, the plan is to expand, to California as well as Texas. Similar missions are planned in California this summer and in South Texas in October. The Arizona effort was led by a unified coalition, but it has since splintered into several spin-offs. Organizers for one...

HAMILTON, Ohio -- Vigilante justice seems to have taken over in the community where a 9-year-old girl was raped Monday, reported Cincinnati television station WLWT. Someone set fire Tuesday evening to the house where the attack occurred. Six Mexican immigrants were renting the house, and neighbors believe the attacker lived there, WLWT reported. Racial tensions rose high after the attack, with some angry residents threatening to burn down the house and take other retaliation against Hispanics in the area. Someone had spray-painted "Rapest" (sic) and "Child Molester" on the house. The victim's father asked people to let police handle the...

I enjoy Thomas Sowell's columns very much and agree with him almost all the time. His article on May 6 was about "illegals in America taking jobs away from Americans and those who say we need them to do the work Americans will not do." He ended by saying, "Americans worked as laborers before there were undocumented workers to do the work and they can do it again."

  Volunteers recruited to help catch illegal immigrants in East Tennessee Marc Stewart, Reporter   Last Updated: 5/21/2005 6:23:36 AM David Heppler of Arizona Border Watch Luis Crespo They work on the U.S border in Arizona, as part of a volunteer army called the Minutemen. Soon, the brigade will be in Tennessee with a mission of catching companies that hire illegal immigrants. "If people are hiring them, they're usually paid under the table. They're not getting any workmen's comp," said David Heppler of Arizona Border Watch. Those behind the effort say volunteers will patrol local businesses, looking for employers...

WASHINGTON – Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Executive Director Josh Horwitz today accused a pair of Texas lawmakers of “playing cheap political games” with the District of Columbia’s gun laws at the expense of democracy in the nation’s capital. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, both Texas Republicans, held a news conference to announce the introduction of the District of Columbia Personal Protection Act of 2005, which would repeal the city’s gun laws, in the Senate. “The citizens of the District of Columbia should have the power to decide by democratic means whether and how firearms will be regulated...

Anybody who appreciates a good yuck was sad to see the Minutemen pack up their pickups and go home. After all, it wasn't every day that we got to enjoy the spectacle of sunscreen-lathered ACLU observers chasing volunteer border-watchers through the desert. But in the media bonfire accompanying Arizona's Redneck Revolt, we saw the cultural divide separating media elites from ordinary people -- those with BlackBerries and $150 hairdos versus folks with tobacco bulges in their cheeks. In the view of most of the reporters..., you'd get the distinct impression that the Minutemen are the problem along the border. That's...

Mark Stine KOLD News 13 Reporter Posted: 5-15-05 "We're two and a half miles from the border everything you see down there is Mexico." Joe Scelso owns the Rockin JP Ranch in Cochise County. He's been dealing with illegal immigrants for nearly a decade. "I've picked up probably, in the last 8 years, a couple hundred backpacks." Scelso says the Minutemen Project in April must have left an ongoing effect on the border, because it's still pretty quiet around his ranch. "It wasn't until they did show up down here that we finally got the relief we've been hoping for,...

NACO, Ariz. - Volunteers recruited over the Internet to monitor illegal entrant activity along a stretch of Arizona's border ended their monthlong efforts Saturday as they began - peering through binoculars along a dusty border road. Members of the Minuteman Project hailed results as a huge success, and organizers plan to expand the mission to the other states bordering Mexico, as well as to parts of the Canadian border - in Idaho, North Dakota, Vermont and Michigan. They also plan to take on employers who hire illegal immigrants. "This could not have been done without all of you. You did...

Editor's note: Each week, WorldNetDaily White House correspondent Les Kinsolving asks the tough questions almost no one else will ask. And each week, WorldNetDaily brings you the transcripts of those dialogues with the president and his spokesman. If you'd like to suggest a question for the White House, submit it to WorldNetDaily's exclusive interactive forum MR. PRESIDENT! By Les Kinsolving At today's White House news briefing, WND asked presidential press secretary Scott McClellan about the president's view that those involved in the Minuteman Project on the U.S.-Mexican border are vigilantes and confronted the spokesman with Border Patrol comments about agents'...

I shouldn’t repeat myself, but every rule has exceptions. The Minutemen’s efforts on the US-Mexican border have proved the accuracy of my column on 20 November, 2003. “Double Crossing at the Rio Grande” can be found hereThe gist was that the cure for the alien tide from Mexico is to change the incentives so that Mexico will control its own side of the border with its own troops. Here’s how: Total the cost to local, state and federal governments for finding, rounding up, jailing and expelling Mexican illegals. Divide that cost by the total number of truck crossings of the...

SAN PABLO - On the fourth night of her front yard hunger strike, Diana Ponce lay delirious under the carport, fighting off the chill under a fuzzy blanket emblazoned with the Mexican flag. Neighbors sat clustered around her on white plastic lawn chairs. Children smacked at a yellow volleyball in the street. Toddlers tricycled past fence-strung banners that read "Tenemos Que Unirnos" -- We have to unite. Outraged by recent news accounts of vigilante Mexican border hawks, the 32-year-old San Pablo woman took to the streets -- really, her driveway -- on two lawn chairs pushed together. Ponce, a diabetic,...

President Bush’s big border blunder was calling a couple of hundred middle-aged citizens ‘vigilantes.’ The name-calling will blow up and destroy his presidency and Party if ever the Islamists attack again on his watch. The American People are forgiving and trusting, but ruthless and vindictive when ambushed or betrayed. If it’s found that attacking Islamists came through what used to be our southern border, what happened to President Nixon and the Republicans will look tame. President Bush doesn’t see the irony in telling Israel to control their population within borders – point blank – while being unwilling to demand the...

Along a border between Mexico and Arizona, a few dozen gunslingers are patrolling for illegal immigrants, and the fact that they have attracted mostly television cameras so far takes little away from the danger they pose to themselves and others. It would be far saner to leave the patrolling of the border to the border patrol. These self-proclaimed "Minutemen" - whom President Bush has rightly labeled vigilantes - should put their guns away and look where the real solutions to America's flawed immigration policy should be found: in Washington.

Border Militia: We'll Shut Down the Border with Machine Guns Casey Nethercott is the leader of a militia group dubbed the Arizona Guard and said during a TV interview broadcast on Friday, "When this Minuteman thing is over, if it doesn't work, we're going to come out here and close the border with machine guns." KVOA TV-4 in Tucson carried a report on Friday by reporter Nancy Perla that toured the group's compound that sits along the Arizona/Mexico border near Douglas, Arizona. The camera showed two older model American made SUV's, both painted black, that Nethercott claims are "armored vehicles"...

A Houstonian armed to the teeth stands atop his pickup truck in the Arizona desert. He wishes to deter illegal immigrants from Mexico, but he and his confederates will fail. Border Patrol officials said some civilian observers set off motion detectors, complicating rather than aiding the agency's mission.

U.S. News] Washington, Mar 24 : President George W Bush has decried efforts by armed private groups to act as self-appointed policemen to bar illegal Mexican immigrants coming into the United States, and pledged to push for a "reasonable" immigration policy. More than 1,000 people--including 30 pilots with their private planes--have volunteered for what they call their "Minuteman Project", seeking to monitor the movement of illegal aliens during April and report them to the Border patrol. Bush said after yesterday's summit with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin at Baylor University that he finds such actions...

HARRISBURG -- Way back in 1872, a deputy sheriff from Philadelphia traveled all the way to the northwest corner of Pennsylvania to bring back a suspect. But instead, the suspect killed the sheriff, and the killer was then captured and hanged by a private group of "volunteers" who called themselves the State Police of Crawford and Erie Counties. The vigilantes then carried the bodies of both dead men back to Philadelphia. "The group was also created to round up horse thieves," apparently a serious problem at the time, Col. Jeffrey Miller, commander of the Pennsylvania State Police, told a state...

A convicted sex offender broke into a San Francisco home in the Ingleside district and raped a 9-year-old girl in her bedroom in an hourlong attack that ended when the girl's mother walked into the room, San Francisco police said. The man, police say, fled on foot and was chased by the girl's father, who at one point struck him with a 2-by-4. The man continued fleeing through several backyards and was captured by police and identified as Roberto Gamero, 36, of San Francisco, police said. "It's a parent's worst nightmare,'' said San Francisco police Deputy Chief Morris Tabak of...

HERNANDO - Water continues to close in on homes in the Arrowhead neighborhood like a noose. It has already swallowed several. "Dead End" signs take on new meanings on roads where water chokes engines and traps drivers. Alligators and water moccasins have become unwanted neighbors. Dead fish float in a brown soup that overpowers the nostrils with sulfureous and sewage smells. "Everything imaginable is going on," said Mark Haggard, a Citrus County Sheriff's Office Community Affairs volunteer, who guards a neighborhood checkpoint that limits access to residents and emergency workers. Stress builds among the stubborn who refuse to abandon their...

DOUGLAS - Around 1 a.m. Thursday, Bill Dore received a call from a friend asking him to watch over his ranch and his two dogs. When Dore went to the ranch complex of three buildings, he was refused entrance because the compound was under the control of the FBI. Dore received the call from Casey James Nethercott, who at the time of phone talk was in FBI custody at the Cochise County Jail in Bisbee. Nethercott, 37, told him that Kalen Robert Riddle, who is called "Tiny" - though he weighs more than 350 pounds - had been shot. "He...

THREE American vigilantes who ran their own counter-terror campaign in Afghanistan yesterday denied charges of torturing prisoners in a private jail and were given a week to bolster their defence with documents returned by the FBI.The group’s leader, Jonathan Idema, accused the United States authorities of withholding hundreds of documents, photos and videos which he claimed proved his contacts with the CIA, FBI and the US department of defence. Idema, Brett Bennett and Edward Caraballo were arrested when Afghan security forces raided their makeshift prison in a house in Kabul on 5 July. They face charges including hostage-taking and "mental...

KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S. military said Saturday there could be more vigilantes hunting terror suspects here after a group of Americans were arrested for allegedly abusing Afghans in a private jail. The U.S. government is offering big rewards for the capture of top terrorist suspects, including a US$50 million bounty on al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. It remains unclear if the three Americans who went on trial in the Afghan capital on Wednesday charged with hostage-taking and torture were hoping to cash in _ or if they were the only such group in the country. "It is entirely possible...

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO PROPERTY RIGHTS? A monastery official and a human rights advocacy group sued a southern Arizona ranch family Wednesday, accusing them of impersonating federal agents and violating the rights of undocumented immigrants. Border Action Network, a human rights organization, and Donald J. Mackenzie, groundskeeper for and vice president of Summerland Monastery Inc., filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Roger Barnett; his wife, Barbara, and his brother, incorrectly identified as Ralph. The lawsuit will be amended to correct the name Ralph to Donald, attorney Jesus Romo said. The civil action accuses the Barnetts of conspiracy to...

June 17, 2003 The National Review Online Koorosh Afshar TEHRAN, IRAN — During the past few nights, we Iranian youth have been agitating — at great risk to our lives — to remove the 24-year-old plague that has stricken our homeland. Our goal is to topple the theocratic regime of the mullahs. Our opponents are barbarian vigilantes — members of Ansaar-e-Hezbollah — who are backed by heavily armed Iranian riot police. Westerners may have difficulty imagining what these people are like. In fact, it's quite easy: Simply remember the Taliban. The only difference is that they don't wear Afghani clothes....

<p>The head of the Cochise County Democratic Party has the support of at least one Arizona congressman in his call for a citizens board to review assaults against immigrants by "vigilantes."</p> <p>Democratic Party Chairman Jim Cooper will discuss his plan at length Saturday in Douglas at a march to honor an illegal immigrant killed earlier this month by a U.S. Border Patrol agent.</p>

A rising death toll prompted a self-appointed border watcher to call Monday for cooperation between his group and those trying to save illegal entrants. Chris Simcox, founder of the Tombstone-based Civil Homeland Defense, says he wants to work with organizations such as Humane Borders, Samaritan Patrol and the Border Action Network, groups typically on the opposite end of the immigration debate. Simcox said his group has seen a dramatic increase in the number of illegal border crossers needing water and medical attention. He said his volunteers are willing to use their knowledge of heavily used trails along the border in...

ReutersTuesday, May 13, 2003; 7:40 PM By Deborah TedfordMONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - An Arizona vigilante group is testing homemade "drone" reconnaissance planes on the U.S.-Mexican border to monitor illegal immigrants entering the United States in lonely desert areas.Glenn Spencer, head of the American Border Patrol vigilante group, said on Tuesday the group has been testing two Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for about a month and plans to have a fleet making passes over the border by early July."We want to show how the application of this technology can solve the border problem," Spencer told Reuters.Police and residents say they are aware...

Russian gardeners hunting a scrap metal thief were surprised when their man turned out to be an Osama bin Laden lookalike. The Alekseyevka gardening association in the Kursk region of Russia is considering offering the bin Laden double to the US in exchange for a new electric transformer. Their old one was destroyed by thieves looking for scrap metal. The gardeners staged an ambush to try and catch the culprit. They hid in wait at a local scrap metal yard and caught a man with a big bag of electrical components, who looked exactly like the world's most wanted man....

(Read to the bottom before throwing things at your monitor -- JB) Mexico deserves better from its Southwestern neighbors than threats from the local vigilance committee. But Arizona lately is making headlines for bands of its citizens, many of them armed, who have begun patrolling the border and turning back or even detaining Mexicans who try to cross illegally. It's not clear exactly how many people are involved. The story, redolent of the wild, Old West, appeals to citified national news media and is vulnerable to exaggeration. But leaders of Grand Canyon State groups such as Ranch Rescue and Civil...