Free Republic

A late-night raid in the southern Philippines left 15 people dead, including the mayor of Ozamiz City — the latest high-profile casualty of the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's bloody war on drugs. President Rodrigo Duterte is waging a bloody war on drugs in the Philippines. Last year, Duterte published a list of more than 150 government officials he accused of having ties to the drug trade. Ozamiz Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog Sr., and his daughter, Vice Mayor Nova Echaves, were on that list. Now Parojinog and his wife are dead, and Echaves is under arrest. Police raided the mayor's house overnight...

Hundreds of German police officers searched about 190 offices, mosques and apartments of members and supporters of the Islamic group "The true religion" as the government announced a ban of the organization Tuesday. Police raided places in 60 cities in western Germany and also in Berlin seizing documents and files, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said. Police made no arrests, government officials told Fox News. Police said they also found communications equipment, machetes, tasers, knives and knuckle dusters. The group — also known as "Read!" — has been distributing German-language copies of the Quran across the country. The interior...

A 19-month-old toddler was critically injured after a police flash bang was tossed into his bed during a police raid at a Habersham County home on Wednesday. “It’s my baby. He’s my only baby. He didn’t deserve any of this,” said Alecia Phonesavanh, the mother of the child. “It landed in his playpen and exploded right in his face,” said Phonesavanh. The child is now being treated at Grady hospital and has a 50 percent chance of survival.

After leaving her operating room scrub nurse duties at Sarasota's Doctors Hospital on Wednesday, Louise Goldsberry went to her Hidden Lake Village apartment. Her boyfriend came over, and after dinner — about 8 p.m. — Goldsberry went to her kitchen sink to wash some dishes. That's when her boyfriend, Craig Dorris — a manager for a security alarm company — heard her scream and saw her drop to the floor. Goldsberry, 59, said she had looked up from the sink to see a man “wearing a hunting vest.” He was aiming a gun at her face, with a red light...

French police have raided the home and offices of the former president Nicolas Sarkozy as part of an investigation into allegations of illegal campaign-financing by France's wealthiest woman. Police searched the mansion rented by Carla Bruni in a chic gated community in the west of Paris early on Tuesday morning. She and Sarkozy have lived there since their marriage, in 2008. Detectives also searched the office of the legal firm where Sarkozy is a partner and the office he moved into after losing the presidential election to the Socialist François Hollande in May. The couple were not present as they...

Police Raid Chinese House Church Faith Issues/China Aid A house church in far west China’s region of Xinjiang that has been meeting for nearly two decades has been raided by police, who took more than 70 Christians into custody. The incident happened at around 10 PM March 18th in a house church in Aral Shehri’s 12th Agricultural Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, in Aksu prefecture. The house church has been meeting for nearly 20 years, and more than 70 Christians were gathered at Pastor He Enjun’s home when suddenly more than 10 policemen and Domestic Security Protection...

To police investigators, the double-wide in rural Polk County was the hiding place of a drug trafficker. But to her family, it was merely the longtime home of a 76 year old widow named Helen Pruett. "All she did was go to church, go to Walmart, go to the beauty shop, and that's it," said Machelle Holl, Pruett's daughter. Tuesday morning, police dressed in black paramilitary fatigues, armed with weapons and an arrest warrant surrounded Pruett's home, knocked on the door and demanded to be let in. Helen Pruett's family says she saw them through the window, was frightened, and...

In a split decision Thursday, the state Supreme Court rejected a plea by a Kent property owner seeking compensation for damage done during a drug raid. Affirming lower court decisions, five of the court's nine justices found the city of Kent was not required to pay $5,000 for damage to buildings owned by Leo Brutsche during a failed 2004 anti-methamphetamine operation. During the raid, narcotics officers used battering rams to knock down doors in buildings owned by Brutsche while searching for a meth lab they believed Brutsche's son to be operating on the property, according to court records. No drugs...

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) ― Two months ago, a terrified mother called 911 to report strangers breaking into her North Minneapolis home. The intruders were not violent criminals but members of the Minneapolis Police Department's SWAT team. They were raiding the wrong house after an informant gave investigators bad information. The I-TEAM tracked the 17 hours that led up to the raid. Shortly after seven in the morning on Saturday, Dec. 15, a young woman walked into the downtown police precinct and said her boyfriend had threatened her. She told police Jermaine Brown belongs to the Rolling 60's Crips street gang, and...

Police raid shelter for Zimbabwean refugees By Sebastien Berger in Johannesburg Last Updated: 12:14am GMT 01/02/2008 Hundreds of Zimbabwean immigrants have been rounded up for deportation from South Africa when authorities raided a church that has become a sanctuary for those fleeing Robert Mugabe's regime. Normally the floors, staircases and rooms of the Central Methodist Church in downtown Johannesburg, and the pavement outside, are packed with around 1,600 Zimbabweans who have travelled for days, often without food, to find safety. Yesterday morning it was almost deserted, except for children playing in a basement nursery, after squads of police descended on...

Scores of heavily armed police raided the Your Black Muslim Bakery in North Oakland and houses associated with the business early today seeking suspects and evidence in killings, shootings, robberies and a kidnapping, authorities said. Almost 20 people - including Yusuf Bey IV, the head of the organization - were detained for questioning and several guns were recovered at the bakery in the 5800 block of San Pablo Avenue. No one was hurt in the raids, which began at 5 a.m. Police said they have arrest warrants for several men with ties to the organization but were still trying to...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police broke into a darkened flat fearing they would find a dead body after neighbours complained of a nasty smell seeping out onto the staircase. The shutters of the apartment had been closed for more than a week and the post-box was filled with uncollected mail. But instead of a corpse police found a tenant with badly smelling feet asleep in bed next to a pile of foul-smelling laundry, police in the south-western town of Kaiserslautern said on Sunday.

ATLANTA April 26 (UPI) -- Grand jurors have indicted three Atlanta police officers who took part in a bungled drug raid that killed an elderly woman in her home. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Thursday that Jason Smith was named in 13 felony counts, including murder; Greg Junnier was changed for three counts of felony murder; and Arthur Tesler was named in two felony counts involving false statements and false imprisonment. The newspaper said Junnier has reportedly reached a plea agreement with prosecutors and Tesler said he would fight the charges, The indictments were reached late Wednesday by a Fulton County...

LES MUREAUX, France, Oct 4, 2006 (AFP) - Local people reacted with fury Wednesday after French police raided a poor housing project in the western Paris outskirts in search of youths who attacked a police car on Sunday. The dawn raid on the "Cite des Musiciens" estate in Les Mureaux -- a high-immigration area which was a hot-spot in last November's riots -- led to just one arrest. It followed clashes with scores of youths on Sunday evening in which seven police were hurt after they tried to arrest a man for a traffic offence. A police car was burned...