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It's a quiet Wednesday evening, and in a nice home in a nice residential area of northwest Homestead, Fla., a neighborhood Crime Watch group is holding its first meeting. "So I look up," Ivy recalled later, "and this plane is coming, and it's low. It's VERY low. Then I see a package come sailing down." And of course the package turns out to be a 75-pound bale of cocaine. Falling out of the sky. During a CRIME WATCH MEETING.

"I couldn't help but notice your Christmas light display. During these unprecedented times, we have all experienced challenges which casual words just don't describe what we're feeling. The idea of twinkling, colorful lights are a reminder of divisions that continue to run through our society, a reminder of systemic biases against our neighbors who don't celebrate Christmas or who can't afford to put up lights of their own," the letter, shared by Crime Watch Minneapolis, reads. "We must do the work of educating ourselves about the harmful impact an outward facing display like yours can have."

All over the United States, frustrated homeowners are banding together, arming themselves and patrolling their own streets. One of the primary reasons this is happening is because police budgets all over the nation are being slashed at a time when violent crime rates in the United States are increasing and many our our largest cities are being transformed into crime-infested war zones. So instead of waiting for government to come up with a solution, many Americans are taking matters into their own hands. For example, one community group in Milwaukie, Oregon has started posting flyers with an ominous message for...

TALLAHASSEE — State Sen. Gary Siplin and a coalition of other black lawmakers are asking Gov. Rick Scott to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate last month's shooting death of an unarmed black teenager by a neighborhood watch volunteer near Orlando. Trayvon Martin, 17, who was black, was killed Feb. 26 by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old white Hispanic, in a gated community in Sanford. Zimmerman, who has not been charged, has said he shot the high school student in self-defense. The shooting, now being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice and local authorities, has sparked an international furor with...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Minnesota flight instructor who notified his bosses of student Zacarias Moussaoui's suspicious behavior received a $5 million reward Thursday from the State Department, two government officials told CNN. Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted in 2006 of conspiring to kill Americans on September 11, 2001. Clarence "Clancy" Prevost was an instructor at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota, when Moussaoui was a student there. Moussaoui, sometimes called the "20th hijacker," is the only person charged and convicted in connection with the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. ... Prevost, a retired Northwest...

New York Police Ticket Quota Exposed June 20, 2005 -- Three NYPD sergeants have confirmed what police brass have denied for years: Ticketing quotas exist. Testifying at a closed-door union-grievance hearing last week, the sergeants said cops in the 75th Precinct in Brooklyn were given a minimum amount of summonses to write in each three-month quarter - or they would get in trouble with their bosses. One sergeant even submitted a handwritten note from the East New York precinct's commanding officer that spelled out the number of collars, moving violations and quality-of-life summonses that a cop needed to write to...

Washington -- A Prince George's County, Md., jury would not convict a man accused of stabbing his girlfriend to death because a half-eaten hamburger, recovered from the crime scene and assumed to have been his, was not tested for DNA. In Washington, a jury deadlocked recently in the trial of a woman accused of stabbing another woman because fingerprints on the weapon did not belong to the suspect. An Alexandria, Va., jury acquitted a man on drug-possession charges in part because a box containing 60 rocks of crack cocaine that he was accused of tossing from his car during a...

"The Chinese Communist Party survived a brutal civil war with the Nationalists, battles with American forces in Korea and massive pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square. But now it may finally have met its match - the Internet. The collision between the Internet and Chinese authorities is one of the grand wrestling matches of history, visible in part at http://www.yuluncn.com. That's the Web site of a self-appointed journalist named Li Xinde. He made a modest fortune selling Chinese medicine around the country, and now he's started the Chinese Public Opinion Surveillance Net - one of four million blogs in China. Mr....