Free Republic

New York Governor Kathy Hochul told subway riders who refuse to submit to bag checks to 'go home.' Her comments came as she defended stationing 750 national guard members at the Big Apple's busiest stations in a bid to clamp down on the rampant violence rocking the network. The guard members will be checking passengers' bags for weapons as they enter the system. Talking to Fox5, Hochul was asked what passengers who did not want their belonging searched should do. 'Go home,' she answered bluntly. 'We're not going to search you—you can say no. But you're not taking the subway.'...

Nearly 1,000 New York National Guardsmen, state police, and MTA cops are being deployed to carry out bag checks in the Big Apple’s crime-ridden subway system, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday. In total, 750 guardsmen and 250 cops will help NYPD officers patrol the “the city’s busiest transit stations,” Hochul said.

New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday announced that she is deploying 1,000 National Guard soldiers and State Police officers to patrol the New York City subway and check bags following major crime spikes in the transportation system. Referring to multiple recent high-profile assaults as she made the announcement, Hochul said, "These brazen heinous attacks on our subway system will not be tolerated." Hochul said the program will focus on "repeat offenders, deterring crime and protecting the people in our subways."

And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a tiny, soulless technocrat to tell everyone else how to live their lives.” So God made a Bloomberg.God said, “I need a know-it-all Wall Street banker who made more money by getting fired than most men will make their entire lives working an honest job.” So God made a Bloomberg.“I need somebody with hands strong enough to carry a stool and a booster seat wherever he goes, but gentle enough to sign the voter registration papers as a Democrat, and then a Republican, and...

... Reducing incarcerationPete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders propose to reduce by 50 percent the number of people incarcerated in the United States at both the federal and state level. This would be quite the lift. If by “incarcerated” they mean every prison (as opposed to jail) inmate, they would have to persuade the states (responsible for 88 percent of 1.5 million prisoners) to reduce the sentences for some very serious crimes, eliminate mandatory minimum sentences, and maybe even sharply curtail the use of recidivism as a sentencing criterion. Since over half of all state prisoners are in for murder, rape,...

Only in the weird world of ‘woke’ would Michael Bloomberg come under such intense fire for arguably his most significant accomplishment while serving as the Republican mayor of New York City - managing to keep the densely populated city’s crime rate in check. Well, it’s not so much the accomplishment itself that’s causing quite the stir, but rather the, er, less than ‘woke’ tactics he used to get the job done. Political correctness being what it is, of course, the billionaire businessman had to apologize and back off the whole stop-and-frisk business early in his campaign. It was a ‘mistake’...

The tape of Mike Bloomberg’s 2015 defense of stop, question and frisk presents his own successful policies in a way guaranteed to repulse fair-minded listeners. Indeed, his claim that “the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the walls and frisk them” is an insult to the police officers tasked with using stop-and-frisk to fight crime: NYPD cops strive to use the least force necessary now — and they did then, too. Oh, and: “Ninety-five percent of your murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O.,” he said —...

NEW YORK — Michael Bloomberg will not accept political donations if he runs for president and he will not take a salary if he wins, according to senior aides who offered new details on Saturday about the New York billionaire’s plans to navigate his wealth as he marches toward a formal 2020 announcement.

Michael Bloomberg has lost whatever respect I had for him as someone who would fight for what he regarded as right, even when he was wrong. Yes, it’s obnoxious to tell people what to eat and drink, but at least Bloomberg acted out of conviction and stuck to his guns. But now, apparently desperate to make progress toward winning the Democrats’ presidential nomination, he’s gone and prostituted himself to curry favor with black voters, whom he recognizes are essential to any Democrat winning the Oval Office, Bloomberg has apologized for the “stop and frisk” policing policies that have saved thousands...

Michael Bloomberg on Sunday apologized for his longstanding support of the controversial “stop-and-frisk” police strategy ahead of a potential Democratic presidential run, a practice that he embraced as New York’s mayor and continued to defend despite its disproportionate impact on people of color. Addressing a black church in Brooklyn, Bloomberg said he was “sorry” and acknowledged it often led to the detention of blacks and Latinos. “I can’t change history,” Bloomberg told the congregation. “However today, I want you to know that I realize back then I was wrong.” Bloomberg’s reversal is notable for someone who is often reluctant to...

HARRISBURG, PA (May 31, 2019) -- Today, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court issued a significant 53-page majority opinion in the criminal appeal of Commonwealth v. Hicks. Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and Firearms Policy Foundation (FPF) filed an important coalition amicus brief cited by the Court supporting Hicks in December of 2017, alongside Firearms Owners Against Crime (FOAC) and seven Members of Pennsylvania’s General Assembly. The Court’s decision, concurring opinions, and the FPC/FPF amicus brief can be viewed at www.firearmspolicy.org/legal. At issue was whether someone’s carrying of a firearm could be used as reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct, and thus justification...

President Donald Trump drew an enthusiastic response from a law-and-order crowd Monday, advocating the use of “stop and frisk” policing and saying he has directed the Justice Department to work with local officials in Chicago to stem violence in the nation’s third-largest city. “The crime spree is a terrible blight on that city,” he said at a convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Trump said he had ordered Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “immediately” go to Chicago “to help straighten out the terrible shooting wave.” He also encouraged the city to embrace the stop-and-frisk policing method, in...

Chicago officials summarily rejected President Trump's advice Monday to use "stop and frisk" policing to reduce violence, with the mayor's office calling the president "clueless" and motivated by the fear of losing midterm elections. Trump urged Chicago to use "stop and frisk" policing at a police convention earlier in the day and offered federal assistance to undo a 2015 legal agreement between the Chicago Police Department and the American Civil Liberties Union. The office of Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the city was uninterested in Trump's idea for reducing violent crime.

Ordinary black people cannot afford to go along with the liberal agenda that calls for undermining police authority. That agenda makes for more black crime victims.Let’s look at what works and what doesn’t work.In 1990, New York City adopted the practice in which its police officers might stop and question a pedestrian. If there was suspicion, they would frisk the person for weapons and other contraband. This practice, well within the law, is known as a “Terry stop.”After two decades of this proactive police program, New York City’s homicides fell from over 2,200 per year to about 300. Blacks were...

Safe Streets Ahead? Judicial rulings and anti-cop activists threaten the city’s triumph over crime. Heather Mac Donald Special Issue 2013 Public safety New York As the 1990s came to a close, the criminology profession declared that New York’s recent crime free fall was over. Homicides had declined a remarkable 72 percent over the previous decade, but that trend couldn’t possibly continue, the academy opined. “It is probable that another crime wave will engulf the City in the near future,” warned Andrew Karmen, a sociologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in 2000. Karmen and his colleagues were right about...

One of the brothers charged in the August shooting death of mother-of-four Nykea Aldridge in Chicago, which prompted a controversial tweet from Donald Trump appealing for black support (“VOTE TRUMP!”), was released only two weeks earlier on a firearms violation... Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson last month explained reality to the Chicago Tribune: Of the 1,400 people on the city’s “Strategic Subject List” of those believed responsible for its gun violence, most have been arrested and released multiple times on gun charges. By one count (that of the Chicago Sun-Times) 75% of those booked on gun violations in the first...

Lamenting a “lack of spirit” between whites and blacks, Donald Trump encouraged racial unity on Thursday even as he called for one of the nation’s largest cities to adopt “stop and frisk” policing tactics that have been widely condemned as racial profiling by minority leaders. […] “I think Chicago needs stop and frisk,” Trump said. “When you have 3,000 people shot and so many people dying, I mean it’s worse than some of the places we’re hearing about like Afghanistan, you know, the war-torn nations.” …

According to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, the spike in edged weapon attacks in the Big Apple are a result of the city’s gun control efforts being so successful. Yes, he really is that delusional. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says the explosion in random slashings this year shows the city is getting guns off the streets, but critics say it’s another NYPD policy that is driving the blade attacks: The end of stop-and-frisk. De Blasio’s claim earlier this month that violent criminals are using knives, razor blades and boxcutters to maim strangers because they can’t get...

Mayor Bill de Blasio, in a sharp shift from his initial objections, is poised to hire nearly 1,300 additional officers for the New York Police Department, a surprising addition in a $78.5 billion budget deal announced by city leaders on Monday night. The mayor, who has pledged to improve police-community relations, has long been hesitant to hire more officers, saying he felt comfortable with the city’s near-record-low level of crime. But his administration has come under intense pressure in recent weeks after a notable increase in homicides and shootings compared with the same period last year.

Chicago police officers initiated stop, question and frisk encounters at a much higher rate last summer than their New York City counterparts ever did, and just like with New York’s heavily criticized program, Chicago blacks and other racial minorities were disproportionately targeted, according to a civil liberties group. The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois released a report Monday saying it identified more than 250,000 Chicago stop-and-frisk encounters in which there were no arrests from May through August 2014. African-Americans accounted for nearly three-quarters of those stopped, even though they make up about a third of the city’s population. On...