Tag Archives: Crime

FBI report expected to show violent crime rise in some U.S. cities

Phone banks of the FBI

By Julia Harte

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Violent crime in certain big U.S. cities in 2015 likely increased over 2014, although the overall crime rate has remained far below peak levels of the early 1990s, experts said, in advance of the FBI’s annual crime report to be released later on Monday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s report was expected to show a one-year increase in homicides and other violent crimes in cities including Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., based on already published crime statistics.

Coming on the day of the first presidential campaign debate between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the report could “be turned into political football,” said Robert Smith, a research fellow at Harvard Law School, in a teleconference on Friday with other crime experts.

A rise in violent crime in U.S. cities since 2014 has already been revealed in preliminary 2015 figures released by the FBI in January.

A recent U.S. Justice Department-funded study examined the nation’s 56 largest cities and found 16.8 percent more murders last year over 2014.

Trump last week praised aggressive policing tactics, including the “stop-and-frisk” approach.

Clinton has pushed for stricter gun control to help curb violence and has called for the development of national guidelines on the use of force by police officers.

FBI Director James Comey warned last year that violent crime in the United States might rise because increased scrutiny of policing tactics had created a “chill wind” that discouraged police officers from aggressively fighting crime.

Increased crime has been concentrated in segregated and impoverished neighborhoods of big cities. Experts said in such areas crime can best be fought through better community policing and alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent crime.

“We’re just beginning to see a shift in mentality in law enforcement from a warrior mentality … to a guardian mentality,” said Carter Stewart, a former prosecutor for the Southern District of Ohio, on the teleconference. “I don’t want us as a country to go backwards.”

In Chicago, 54 more people were murdered in 2015 than the year before, a 13 percent jump in the city’s murder rate, according to an April study by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.

(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Matthew Lewis)

Crime plagued Chicago to add nearly 1000 police officers

Chicago Police officers attend a news conference held by Superintendent Eddie Johnson announcing the department's plan to hire nearly 1,000 new police officers in Chicago

By Timothy Mclaughlin

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Chicago’s police department plans to hire nearly 1,000 officers over the next two years in a bid to combat a surge of violence in the third-largest U.S. city that has included more than 500 murders this year, the city’s police chief said on Wednesday.

Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said the emphasis would be on bolstering a depleted detective division, increasing leadership and focusing on policing on the city’s most violent areas.

“This will make us a bigger department, a better department and more effective department,” Johnson told dozens of officers and reporters on Wednesday.

The department will add 516 patrol officers, 92 field-training officers, 112 sergeants, 50 lieutenants and 200 detectives, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a post on social media.

Johnson said that these new officers would result in an overall increase of sworn officer positions from around 12,500 to around 13,500. He said this increased level would be reached by the end of 2018.

Chicago is struggling with a wave of violence that has included 509 murders in the city already this year, according to Chicago Police Department statistics, a 46 percent increase from last year.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel had been reluctant to hire more officers, relying instead on existing officers to work overtime. He is scheduled to give a speech on the city’s crime problem on Thursday night.

Johnson said on Wednesday that he wanted to rebuild the detective unit. Figures show that this unit has dwindled to 922 from 1,252 in 2008.

Over the past 10 years Chicago has consistently had one of the lowest murder clearance rates of unsolved cases of any of the country’s 10 biggest cities, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Chicago Police Department.

Johnson said that the decision to increase the police force came following discussions with the mayor but said that he had no information on how Chicago planned to pay for the addition of new officers.

The city of 2.7 million is struggling with chronic budget deficits, a big unfunded pension liability and falling credit ratings.

The mayor said on Wednesday that he would not raise taxes to pay for the new officers and that the city would have the resources to meet the cost but offered no details.

“It will be in black and white in the budget,” he said.

(Editing by Will Dunham and Diane Craft)

TruNews: Charges In Massive Cyberattacks against JPMorgan Chase & Co

TRUNEWS – Prosecutors have announced criminal charges for three men accused of helping to run a series of hacking and fraud schemes, including an attack in 2014 against JPMorgan Chase & Co that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal profit.

Gery Shalon, Joshua Samuel Aaron and Ziv Orenstein are named in a 23-count indictment, the three are accused of crimes involving at least nine financial services companies and media outlets, as well as online casinos, payment processing for criminals, and an illegal bitcoin exchange.

A fourth man, Anthony Murgio, is also named in the bitcoin exchange scam.

The charges are the first to be connected to the attack on JPMorgan, in which 83 million customers had their personal data accessed; prosecutors are calling it the largest theft of customer data from a US financial institution.

Other companies who were affected include E Trade  Financial, which says it’s contacted some 31,000 customers who may have been affected.

JPMorgan says it continues to work with authorities in an effort to fight further cybercrimes.

City Cancels Event Over Chick-Fil-A’s “Christian Beliefs”

The city council of a Canadian town canceled an event in a city-owned facility because they did not want to be associated with the Christian beliefs of Chick-Fil-A.

An event center in Nanaimo, British Columbia was scheduled to be rented out to a Georgia-based leadership organization that was putting on a simulcast for business leaders to develop their skills.  The event was sponsored in part by Chick-Fil-A.  When the town’s city council discovered the restaurant was a co-sponsor, they voted 8-1 to cancel the event.

City Council member Jim Kipp said that Christian beliefs were the same as the Boko Haram terrorists killing thousands in Nigeria.  He said that Biblical Christianity was “organized crime.”

“I find [Chick-Fil-A President Dan Cathy’s beliefs] almost to be a criminal point of view in this day and age,” he claimed.

City staff told the council members that the event had nothing to do with the Christian beliefs of the restaurant’s president, but the council members were not interested in the information.

A column in the Tornado Sun newspaper called the council’s actions “shocking bigotry” against Christianity.

Security Firm Tracks Stolen Baby Jesus Dolls

With intolerance and bigotry toward Christians on the rise, most Baby Jesus dolls are being stolen from church manger scenes around the country.  As a result, some churches are turning to technology to track down the thieves.

BrickHouse Security has offered for the last five Christmas to provide churches GPS trackers for their Baby Jesus free of charge.  The program, called “Saving Jesus”, is designed to track down and allow police to prosecute those who damage or steal the Baby Jesus from a nativity scene.

“We have been providing free GPS trackers to churches and temples for the past 5 years because there has been a rash of stolen nativity scenes and stolen religious artifacts,” Todd Morris of BrickHouse Security told Fox News.

The GPS device is the size of a cigarette lighter and does not activate unless someone picks up the doll and starts to move.

The program even sends text alerts to church staff or law enforcement officials if the Baby Jesus is in motion.

Minneapolis Family Robbed While At Church

In a brazen daylight robbery, a family’s home was invaded while they were attending church on Sunday.

The thieves took all of the family’s Christmas presents along with other valuables.

Nina and Chris Woods say that not only were the gifts and valuables stolen, the thieves helped themselves to the family’s financial records, taking bank account and credit card numbers.

The family is now living in fear of the thieves returning to the home.  The children have been sent to stay with relatives for Christmas while their parents pack up the remaining belongings and try to find a new home before the end of the week.

“We can’t have the kids up in here if the door could get kicked in again. They could try and do it when we are here one day,” Chris told WCCO.

Minneapolis police say they are working hard to catch whoever committed the robbery.

Bath Salts Cause Two More New York Incidents

The synthetic drug called “bath salts” is allegedly responsible for separate incidents over the weekend in New York.

Utica police were called to a bar Saturday night when a woman caused an incident. Police reported that the woman lunged at officers and tried to bite them on the face. She kept repeating that she wanted to “kill someone and eat them.” Continue reading →