CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - The No. 2 police officer in a Mexican border city across from Texas was shot dead Saturday, the latest high-ranking official killed in an onslaught of attacks blamed on gangs resisting a crackdown.

Gunman sprayed Juan Antonio Roman Garcia’s car with bullets outside his home in Ciudad Juarez, officials said. The attack came months after his name appeared at the top of a hit list left at a monument for fallen police officers.

Mexico has been shaken by a wave of drug-related violence as gangs battle security forces and each other for control of trafficking routes north. Read more »

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A Jacksonville high school student was recently beaten and battered at school by three students he said he didn’t even know.

Witnesses to the attack told police Forrest High School sophomore Karl Koch Jr. was targeted because of the color of his skin.”They started closing in, and all I remember is getting hit,” Koch said.

Read more »

Police plan to review surveillance footage of a fatal encounter between two Pittsburgh police officers — one of them a K-9 officer — and a Knoxville man with a history of arrests.Cameras outside a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center facility on the border of Knoxville and Mt. Oliver might have captured the Tuesday evening shooting that left Justin James Jackson, 19, dead.

Jackson died from a gunshot wound in the head and one in the chest, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office said. The K-9 officer’s dog, a 6-year-old German shepherd named Aulf, died of chest wounds at a veterinary hospital. Read more »

Moments before her ex-boyfriend was arraigned Friday on murder charges, 21-year-old Laci Green of Westland was described by family friends as a church-going, ambitious young woman who had ended a bad relationship and immersed herself in her nursing studies at Schoolcraft College.

“She went to church all the time,” said Sheila Noon, who worked with Green’s mother, Barbara, at the MotorCity Casino buffet.  [Her church probably recommended inter-racial relationships.]

Green, who worked at the casino hotel while attending school, had broken off a six-year relationship weeks ago with a 25-year-old Dearborn Heights defendant identified by police as Robert James-The-First Howard, accused of strangling Green to death early Wednesday morning near her home on Westland’s southwest side. Read more »

LOS ANGELES - A memorabilia dealer who profited from O.J. Simpson for many years is the latest former crony to write a tell-all book, this one alleging a groggy Simpson, high on marijuana, confessed to killing his ex-wife after he was acquitted.

Mike Gilbert also claims he helped his former friend wiggle out of the murder charges by suggesting how to bloat his hands so they wouldn’t fit the notorious bloody gloves.

Gilbert’s book, “How I Helped O.J. Get Away With Murder: The Shocking Inside Story of Violence, Loyalty, Regret and Remorse”, is due in stores Monday. It was released to The Associated Press in advance. Read more »

PHOENIX - DMX was arrested on drug and animal-cruelty charges following an overnight raid on the rapper’s house Friday, authorities said. The 37-year-old rapper, whose given name is Earl Simmons, initially tried to barricade himself in his bedroom but emerged when a SWAT team entered his north Phoenix home during the 3 a.m. raid, sheriff’s spokesman Capt. Paul Chagolla said.

The arrest and search warrants stemmed from indictments for felony drug possession and misdemeanor animal cruelty charges. He made an initial court appearance Friday where bail was sent at $7,500, said his local attorney, Cameron Morgan. Morgan said he expected bail to be posted quickly. Read more »

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida football player who played his high school ball at Sandalwood High School is accused of identity theft after using the credit card of a fellow UF student after she was killed last year in a motorcycle accident. Jamar Hornsby, 21, turned himself in Friday morning on charges of credit card theft and fraudulent use of a credit card. His attorney, Huntley Johnson, said they learned that a judge had issued a warrant for Hornsby’s arrest on Thursday. Read more »

HOUSTON — A prospective juror in a marijuana possession trial was hauled off to jail Tuesday after police said they caught her smoking a joint outside the courthouse.

Attornies in the case had narrowed the jury pool down to 20 people when they took a 45 minute break.

When the break was over, 49-year-old Cornelia Turner Mayo didn’t return to Judge Sherman Ross’ courtroom.

Turns out she was on a smoking break — but what she was allegedly smoking was illegal. Read more »

Mayor Nutter this morning said the National Rifle Association owed an apology to the family of slain police officer Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski.

Nutter recently signed five local gun bills into law, including one that would outlaw the possession and sale of certain assault weapons. The NRA immediately sued the city on the grounds that the city does not have the authority to enact local gun control. They obtained a temporary restraining order to keep the city from enforcing the new laws. Read more »

DENVER (cbs4) — A man ran through a third-floor window of the Denver City & County Building Wednesday morning as he was set to appear before a judge on assault charges. he was handcuffed at the time and fell to the ground below.

Witnesses said Josephus Haynes, 43, landed on his head. STORY>>>

PHILADELPHIA — Police acting on a tip closed in on an abandoned Southwest Philadelphia row house late Wednesday night and captured the third suspect in the death of a police officer shot in a weekend confrontation with bank robbery suspects.

Eric Floyd, 33, and a woman identified as his girlfriend, were taken into custody in a second-floor bedroom of the dilapidated house in the Kingsessing neighborhood with boarded-up windows shortly after 11 p.m. Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said Floyd was unarmed and did not resist.

Police said Floyd made a statement and is cooperating with police. Read more »

WASHINGTON (CNN) — John Allen Muhammad, who is on Virginia’s death row in connection with the 2002 Washington-area sniper spree, has written to Virginia prosecutors saying he wants to waive all rights to appeal.

In the letter dated April 23, Muhammad professes his innocence, but says he wants to waive appeals so the state “can murder this innocent Black man.”

Muhammad’s court-appointed attorney, contacted Tuesday, declined to characterize the letter. But attorney James Connell said he had just met with Muhammad and “when I left him today at 3 o’clock, he did not want to be executed.”

Read more »

Fox 29 has learned that three men beaten in a confrontation with Philadelphia police remain in custody Tuesday, and at least one man has been charged.

Fox 29 has confirmed that Pete Hopkins, 19, faces resisting arrest and other charges. A second man, Dwayne Dyches, is also in custody, as is a third unidentified man.

Police chief Charles Ramsey said later on Tuesday the three men would be charged of aggravated assault in connection with a shooting Monday night in the city’s Hunting Park section. Read more »

“Yo dat beez my posse!” 

PARIS - Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed said Monday that six pirates in French custody for allegedly holding the crew of a yacht hostage are likely from his home region in the Horn of Africa country.

Ahmed, who was in Paris for meetings with President Nicolas Sarkozy and other top French officials, did not confirm a French news report that four of the pirates were members of his extended family, or clan. Read more »

SUFFOLK, Va. (AP) — Suffolk police have arrested three people they say were caught stealing items from tornado-ravaged homes.

It happened in the Burnetts Mill community.

Police made the arrests Saturday night after receiving a phone call from a resident saying they saw three people in their neighbors home. The suspects are identified as 22-year-old David James Kew, Jr., 21-year-old Oscar F. Fransisco Pena and 20-year-old Kenneth Ray Dennis.

Pena and Dennis both belong to the USS Wasp LHD1. Read more »

Investigators continue the manhunt for one of the suspects in the killing of a Philadelphia police officer.
Police are looking for 33-year-old Eric Floyd (pictured below). 

The local police union has posted a $10,000 reward,bringing the total offered for information leading to Floyd’s capture to more than $45,000.

Tip calls have led police as far away as New York City in search of Floyd.  Monday morning, investigators searched a train out of Trenton at New York’s Penn Station.  A tip indicated he could be on board.

Read more »

Bears running back Cedric Benson has been arrested on a drinking-related charge. It happened while Benson was on a boat Saturday night near Austin, Texas. He now faces charges of boating while intoxicated and resisting arrest.

Benson was boating on Lake Travis in Texas when his boat was stopped for a random safety check. After failing a field sobriety test, he was told he would have to go ashore for another test. At that time, he refused to cooperate, and according to the Lower Colorado River Authority, he presented himself as a threat to the officer. He was subdued with pepper spray and arrested.

But Benson claimed that he wasn’t drunk and didn’t resist arrest. Read more »

WTVG — According to police, this time around 29-year-old Deon Brown is charged with domestic violence, and accused of beating his baby’s mother.

A Toledo woman is brutally beat, and police are describing this incident as a string of assaults. It’s all part of a domestic violence case they are still investigating. It first began early this morning in the parking lot of CJ’s club on Phillips and North Detroit.

The suspect is a regular here at the jail. He’s being led away in cuffs for the 123rd time. According to police, this time around 29-year-old Deon Brown is charged with domestic violence, and accused of beating his baby’s mother. Read more »

(*Editors note: The KSS has already distributed hundreds of fliers calling attention to the true nature of this reoccurring problem out front of the Shop rite where the robbery took place, where some of us also shop and use the that bank, as well as throughout the neighborhood where the shooting took place, where some of us also live. We spoke with many of the people from Port Richmond about the incident and it was nice to see so many people out there building a memorial for officer Liczbinski. The white communities of Philadelphia are getting extremely fed up with this mess and they aren’t shy about expressing their feelings. It’s sad that it takes these types of things to bring neighborhoods together but not as sad as what will happen if we continue down this path in silence. Click here to view the flier.)

A Philadelphia Police officer has died after being shot by alleged bank robbery suspects in the city’s Port Richmond section Saturday morning. Read more »

A local anti-racism group is claiming the Rochester police are harassing the black community in enforcing their Zero Tolerance initiative. It allegedly happened Tuesday afternoon about two blocks from Aquinas High School.Jordan Brown, who is black, stopped at a local store to get something for his car. His younger brother Stephen Strachan waited outside. “I saw my friend so I slapped him up. And the cops came out of nowhere and they said put my hands behind my back,” said Strachan.

Brown says he was verbally abused and “roughed up” by police when he tried to find out why police had his brother. “I came out of the store and said what’s happening. And they told me, shut up and get back. And then another cop came out and said, as a matter of fact, get him too.” Read more »

A man has been accused of attempting to pass a $360 billion check, which he claims was given to him by his girlfriend’s mother to start a record business, Fort Worth police said.

Charles Ray Fuller, 21, of Crowley, was arrested on April 22 on an accusation of forgery, police said.

Police responded to a report of a man attempting to pass the check about 4 p.m. that day at the Chase bank in the 8600 block of South Hulen Street, Fort Worth police Lt. Paul Henderson said. Read more »

Crack users openly suck on glass pipes, gang members deal drugs on sidewalks and streets are speckled with human feces.

Yet the Los Angeles Police Department and some people who live and work on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles — the city with the nation’s largest population of homeless people — say that crime is dropping and that the streets are safer and cleaner than they were just two years ago.

They credit the turnaround to a police crackdown launched 18 months ago and call it a rare success in dealing with homelessness, one of the most troubling social problems facing urban areas nationwide.   

“We wanted to restore order to what was one of the most chaotic areas,” said Cmdr. Andrew Smith, who supervised police in Skid Row until a recent transfer. “It’s completely transformed.” Read more »

A young women was attacked, brutally beaten, raped, sodomized, robbed, left bound and gagged, bleeding to death, naked and unconscious in Central Park, Manhattan by a group of blacks and Latinos out on a night of, what was then casually referred to as “wilding.” The victim was not expected to survive. She did, but was permanently damaged. When the trial began, the victim needed protection, in part because of the media circus, that was obvious, but what was not, was that the “jogger” and the prosecution had been threatened with violence, even death. Whenever the prosecutor (Elizabeth Lederer) crossed the street from her office to the courtroom she had to run a gauntlet of protesters who insisted it was a racist trial, the white establishment against blacks; they threatened her life constantly, yelling threats and obscenities and spitting at her. The year was 1989.

The following site provides many more details. PRESS HERE>>>>

CENTRAL PARK JOGGER: THE HEALING CONTINUES — (April 19, 2008) — (WCCO) Nineteen years ago this week the story of a New York woman broke the hearts of Americans and outraged a nation that was fed up with senseless violent crime. The Central Park jogger’s real name was Trisha Meili. She was savagely raped. Suffering numerous injuries, including severe brain injury, Meili was in a coma for nearly two weeks. “I (still) have some physical deficits like no sense of smell and some double vision,” Meili said. MORE>>>

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Police confiscated maps of the federal courthouse from members of a street gang.

Police said it was a sign that members of MS-13 might consider an ambush to spring fellow gang members from custody.

“MS-13 swept into Nashville like a pack of jackals and they left a group of bloody victims in their wake,” said Jim Cavanaugh, special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, in an interview last year. Read more »

HOUSTON — Houston police asked for help on Monday locating a 22-year-old man accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old pregnant girl, officials told KPRC Local 2.Hector Perez-Garcia has been charged with sexual assault of a juvenile.He is described as 5 feet 6 inches tall, 135 pounds, with brown eyes and black hair. He drives a black Mitsubishi Eclipse and was last seen near the 2200 block of Wirt Road.

Anyone with information on Perez-Garcia’s whereabouts is asked to call Houston police at 713-986-3346 or 713-731-5353. SOURCE>>>

New York, April 23 (UPI) — Experts on crime and punishment say the United States has the harshest sentences and the most prisoners of any country in the World. Records kept at King’s College in London reveal that with 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners even though it has less than 5 percent of the population, The New York Times reported Wednesday.(nytimesArticle>>)

China, which has four times as many citizens, is a distant second to the United States with 1.6 million prisoners, the report said. Finish Article>>>

UK - Calling himself ‘Trashman’ and speaking with an American accent, the masked man says he has infected between 1200 and 1500 unknowing victims with the devastating disease.

He can be seen reading the names and ages of some of the women he claims to have had unprotected sex with in the video clips on website YouTube. Read more »

A 5-by-5 foot trolley resembling those used by mechanics to slide under cars was put to a very different use over the weekend. Border Patrol agents spotted it resting between two support beams in the underbelly of the Bridge of the Americas during a routine check Sunday afternoon.

The agents Sunday also found a man, lying on top of one of the beams over the eastbound lanes of the Border Highway, near the cart. They brought him down with the help of the El Paso Fire Department.

Fingerprint checks found he was a sex offender registered in Dade County, Fla. and that he had been deported from the United States. MORE>>>

Burglaries are on the rise in the District, with police blaming the souring economy as a contributing factor in a 21 percent increase in break-ins over the same period last year.

Criminals are jimmying locks, kicking in front doors, breaking through roof hatches and skylights, and sometimes even sawing security bars off windows to get into houses and businesses, police said. They are hauling off computers, flat-screen televisions, jewelry, digital media players and other items, which they then sell. Read more »

A Republican state lawmaker called on Iowans Friday to boycott Pizza Hut restaurants after the company fired a Des Moines delivery driver who shot an armed robber last month.
“You tell me any Iowan that was in his situation, that had a gun put to his head, how they would’ve reacted differently,” state Sen. Brad Zaun of Urbandale said. “I think it’s the wrong decision by Pizza Hut and I will not be buying any more Pizza Hut products.”
James William Spiers III, 38, fired multiple shots at a man who accosted him March 27 and demanded money at the Sutton Hill Apartments, 2100 S.E. King Ave. Read more »

DES MOINES, Iowa - Governor Culver has signed into law a bill that will require lawmakers to look at the impact proposed sentencing laws will have on racial and ethnic groups.

The new law comes as Iowa tries to shake the reputation of having the greatest prison racial disparity in the nation.

Culver says the Minority Impact Statement Bill is the first of its kind in the nation. He says it’s another step toward the goal of equal justice under the law for every Iowan. Read more »

A drunken-driving suspect charged Thursday with second-degree murder after a 7-year-old boy was struck and killed had been wanted by police since December for failing to show up in court to answer a previous drunken-driving charge, according to prosecutors.

Hipolito Camora Hernandez, 30, of Parkertown Road in Four Oaks is now in the Johnston County jail on a host of charges related to the death of Marcus Lassiter, who was struck near Four Oaks on Sunday and died at Duke Hospital the next night. Read more »

Guadalupe, Arizona — An Illegal immigrant has been arrested on suspicion of raping and kidnapping a 15-year-old girl at her Guadalupe home, Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies said. The MCSO Special Victims Unit arrested Jose Dolores Montoya sanchez, 24. MORE>>>

A Westbury man who moonlighted as a children’s party clown was arrested on charges of possessing and promoting child pornography, Nassau police said Wednesday.

Alexander Zacarias, 40, of Sherman Street, was arraigned on nine counts of promoting sexual performance of a child and nine counts of possession of sexual performance of a child in First District Court in Hempstead Wednesday. He was held on bail of $400,000 bond or $200,000 cash, and is due back in court Friday.

Police said there was no evidence that Zacarias ever abused or photographed any children. Attempts to reach Zacarias’ family were unsuccessful Wednesday. He was represented by the Nassau Legal Aid Society, which could not be reached Wednesday. Read more »

YPSILANTI, Mich. — Police are looking for a man who allegedly broke into a Ypsilanti home and shot the homeowner in January.

Rajeah Alexander Murray is wanted on charges of assault with intent to commit murder, home invasion and armed robbery after police said Murray and another man, who was already charged and awaiting trial, broke into a home on Green Road. Read more »

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