Free Republic

Video footage on Tuesday emerged showing the moment when plainclothes Chicago police officers unloaded nearly 100 gunshots during a traffic stop last month, killing a man and subsequently leading to negative anti-cop coverage. However, the narrative of police killing an innocent man runs counter to the facts. As the New York Post reported, 26-year-old Dexter Reed was killed during a March 21 traffic stop in Humboldt Park on West Ferdinand Street after officers in an unmarked cop car pulled him over for failing to wear a seatbelt. The wild footage opens with a female officer and four others approaching Reed’s...

Tim Burton announced Thursday filming for “Beetlejuice 2” has officially concluded, letting fans know they’re one step closer to taking in the new flick. “Just finished shooting Beetlejuice. Thank you to everyone involved,” he wrote on Instagram. The 65-year-old filmmaker posted the caption alongside an image of himself sitting on a couch on the set of the movie. Production on “Beetlejuice 2” began in London in May, and was nearly complete in September during the SAG-AFTRA strike that put a freeze on Hollywood productions, People Magazine reported. Burton was so close to completing his film, his team was able to...

UPDATED: Sunday, November 5, 2023 8:15PM CHICAGO -- At least 34 people have been shot, seven fatally, in weekend gun violence across Chicago, police said. A child was shot and critically injured inside a South Side home on Sunday afternoon, Chicago police said. Earlier Sunday, a man was killed and another was wounded in another Englewood shooting, police said. The two were shot while standing on a sidewalk around 1:10 a.m. in the 7400 block of South Stewart Avenue, according to police. One man, whose age has not been reported, was fatally shot in the head and the other, a...

– Chicago continues its first-place run in the rat race, topping Orkin’s Top 50 Rattiest Cities List for the ninth year in a row. Los Angeles moved up to the #2 ranking while New York rounds out the top three spots. Jumping up 10 spots this year is Houston to #20, and Greensboro, N.C., moves up 17 spots to take #50. New this year, Orkin is celebrating Chicago’s top spot placement by releasing a limited-edition t-shirt made available for free while supplies last. The shirt will feature a Top Rattiest City design made specifically for Chicago, commemorating the dedication of...

CHICAGO -- At least 26 people have been shot, five fatally, in weekend gun violence across Chicago, police said. A woman fatally shot a knife-wielding man early Sunday in Morgan Park inside a home on the Far South Side. The shooting happened around 12:45 a.m. when a 41-year-old man who the woman knew approached her with a knife inside her home in the 11500 block of South Vincennes Avenue, Chicago police said. The woman then pulled out a gun and shot the man four times in his torso, police said. He was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn,...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Biden-Harris National Advisory Board member Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) stated that the migrants coming to Illinois “are here legally, these asylum seekers, they’re here to get a hearing and to have a decision made about whether or not they can stay in the United States.” But the Biden administration must “make it clear to the people who are at the border that getting on a bus to Chicago or New York in mid-October, heading into winter, where it’s going to be 20 degrees or 10 degrees, and where we just do not...

CHICAGO — At least four more DePaul University students were robbed on the school’s Lincoln Park campus last night. It’s the latest in a string of violent crimes on the campus. In the first incident, an 18-year-old woman, an 18-year-old man, and a 16-year-old girl were robbed while seated in the school’s quad on the 2300 block of North Seminary, according to Chicago police. Two men approached them around 10:10 p.m. Saturday and one robber demanded property from the older victims. Another robber battered and robbed the 16-year-old, CPD said.Both robbers fled in a silver sedan, a Chicago police spokesperson...

GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert was tossed out of a musical over the weekend over ‘unruly’ behavior throughout the show, according to a report. Boebert, 36, was attending “Beetlejuice: The Musical” at the Temple Hoyne Bell Theater in Denver Sunday evening along with an unidentified male after fellow audience members complained the two were being loud. Theater employees accused the two of “vaping, singing, recording and ‘causing a disturbance’ during the performance,” The Denver Post reported.

Lori Lightfoot is bringing her skills and knowledge to Harvard University to teach a health policy and leadership course. According to The Harvard Gazette, the former mayor of Chicago has been named a Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow for the fall semester at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The fellowship program provides a once-in-a-lifetime chance for people who recently held prominent positions in journalism, nonprofit organizations, multilateral institutions, government and other fields to spend time mentoring and instructing students who want to fill those positions. Lightfoot, who served as the first openly gay and...

As a seventy-year resident of Springfield, Ill, I was amazed and amused that there was an article in the Wall Street Journal, a supposedly reputable, savvy business newspaper touting Springfield as a great place to buy a house. It is as if the reporter doesn’t know how to read, think, analyze, and ask questions before regurgitating something. WCIA TV writes:Springfield was featured in a national publication as one of the best housing markets.An article in the Wall Street Journal published earlier this month listed Springfield, Illinois as number 17 out of 300 for towns on the WSJ/Realtor.com Emerging Housing Markets...

Chicago police are investigating three armored truck robberies that occurred just hours apart Wednesday

CHICAGO — Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for re-election Tuesday, ending her historic run as the city’s first Black woman and first openly gay person to serve in the position. The Democratic incumbent failed to gain enough votes in the nine-person race to move on to an April 4 runoff election, according to projections by The Associated Press. Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago schools, will face Brandon Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union. Ideologically, the choice between Vallas and Johnson is stark. Vallas ran as a moderate law-and-order candidate, while Johnson...

UPDATE: Chicago Mayoral Election: Paul Vallas: 134,844 Brandon Johnson: 74,992 Lori Lightfoot: 58,807 73 % in.

CPD said both officers have served their time and are back on the street. CHICAGO (WLS) -- Damien Stewart admits he has made mistakes in the past, which includes breaking the law, but the 31-year-old man said he never did anything to deserve a beating from two Chicago police officers while in a holding cell at the 4th District almost four years ago. "They struck me. I don't know why they struck me. I didn't say anything, or make any aggressive movements," Stewart said. Stewart said it all started with a traffic stop at the corner of 75th and Stoney...

Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot suggested Thursday that street vendors stop using cash in order to quell Chicago’s crime spike.

Two students, just 14 and 15 years old, were fatally shot in the head and two other teens were wounded in a shooting Friday afternoon near a high school on Chicago's West Side.

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Parades are known for drawing crowds, and with them, politicians looking for exposure and potential votes. But in this election season, they were few and far between at Chicago's 70th annual Columbus Day parade. "You have parades that have become very controversial for a variety of political reasons and politicians don't want to alienate any part of a constituency, especially a large part of the constituency," said Laura Washington, ABC7 Political Analyst. Columbus Day is among them. The controversy is tied to protests about the treatment of indigenous people that led to Mayor Lightfoot to order Columbus...

Three people died and two were wounded in a shootout early Sunday at an intersection in Brighton Park, where drivers had taken over an intersection in one of several unauthorized drifting events overnight in Chicago, police said. Police had been monitoring a “large car caravan” on surveillance video at Archer and Kedzie avenues on the Southwest Side with 100 drivers and people drifting in the intersection, Police Cmdr. Don Jerome told reporters at the scene.

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Weekend gun violence left 31 people shot, five fatally over the weekend, Chicago police said. Several children were among the victims, including a three-year-old boy killed on Friday and a seven-year-old boy shot on his way to church. Police said the family of the seven-year-old boy was driving to church when they noticed a man breaking into one of their other cars that was parked. They confronted the suspect, who police said pulled out a rifle and fired shots in the family's direction, striking the boy in the leg. That suspect was caught by police and the...

CHICAGO -- At least 23 people have been shot, four fatally, in weekend shootings across Chicago, police said. A $7,000 reward is being offered for any information leading to the arrest of the person who police said shot and killed 3-year-old Mateo Zastro, leaving his family torn. It all unfolded at about 8:30 p.m. on Friday night, with an apparent road rage incident near Cicero Avenue and West 71st Street on Chicago's Southwest Side, police said. "The mother attempted to flee from the other vehicle of the road rage incident," said 8th District Chicago Police Department Commander Bryan Spreyne. But,...