New England Sun-Times

  Authorities are holding one of the two suspects involved in a New Year’s Day shootout with two West Virginia police officers on $500,000 bail. Police say Eric Campbell, 21, appeared in court Friday charged, along with his father, with wounding the two officers during a traffic stop. The stop occurred hours after he and his father allegedly killed a North Carolina couple and set their home on fire in what authorities were calling a senseless act of random violence. OAK HILL, N.C. (WTVD) -- The bodies of a Granville County couple were discovered after a shootout with police on a West Virginia highway Thursday. Investigators said the bizarre chain of events started around 7 a.m. on New Year's Day when two men burst into the home of Jerome Faulkner, 73, and his wife Dora, 62, near Oak Hill, NC - northwest of Oxford. The house was set on fire and the couple murdered and taken along with their pickup truck.       Then, around 4 p.m. on ...

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Pittsburgh’s Police Chief is under fire for a controversial photo that is making its rounds on Facebook, and some are saying the Chief called his entire department racist. It happened during the First Night parade. The protest group called Fight Back Pittsburgh carried signs saying “End White Silence.” On their Facebook page a photograph of Pittsburgh Police Chief Cameron McLay holding one of the group’s banners, a poster that stated, “I resolve to challenge racism @ work #EndWhiteSilence.” On the group’s twitter profile the group describes itself as a Pittsburgh-based collective working to create a world that is free of destructive white privilege and oppression. The picture of the chief holding the sign set off the Pittsburgh Police union. FOP President Howard McQuillan told KDKA’s Marty Griffin: “The chief is calling us racists. He believes the Pittsburgh Police Department is racist. This has angered a lot of officers.” Police Chief Camer...

December 29, 2014  |   When hundreds of cops from around the country and as far away as Canada turned their backs on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio during the funeral of Officer Rafael Ramos, the NYPD officer shot to death alongside his partner Wenjian Liu by a deranged gunman, they fired the first salvo in a carefully coordinated political operation aimed at discrediting the liberal mayor and shattering the ongoing anti-police brutality protest movement. AlterNet has obtained emails revealing plans to organize a series of anti-de Blasio protests around the city until the summer of 2015. Billed as a non-partisan movement in support of “the men and women of the NYPD,” the protests are being orchestrated by a cast of NYPD union bosses and local Republican activists allied with Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor who recently called on  de Blasio to “say you’re sorry to [NYPD officers] for having created a false impression of them.” The first rally...

Loosely organized under the Twitter hashtag #BlackLivesMatter and other social media campaigns, protests of police killings of African-Americans were underway in major U.S. cities on New Year's Eve. Police said at least 24 people were charged with various counts related to public order in St. Louis, where about 75 demonstrators affiliated with the activist group Ferguson Action gathered at police headquarters early Wednesday to protest the police killing of Michael Brown , an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson on Aug. 9. Protesters, who moved to other parts of the city Wednesday night, told NBC station KSDK of St. Louis that they were also remembering other unarmed African-Americans whom police killed in 2014, including Eric Garner , 43, who died after being placed in a police chokehold in New York in July.  About 100 people carrying banners gathered at San Francisco's Embarcadero transit station about 9 p.m. ...

New York, NY — The NYPD has basically stopped doing its job since the murder of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu earlier this month, according to reports in the New York Post and New York Daily News ,  and yet the city hasn’t descended into total chaos. The Post reported that arrests were down 66% in the week following the deaths of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, compared to the same period in 2013. For certain offenses, the arrest levels are staggeringly low, according to the numbers put out by the Post. Citations for traffic violations fell by 94 percent, from 10,069 to 587, during that time frame. Summonses for low-level offenses like public drinking and urination also plunged 94 percent — from 4,831 to 300. Even parking violations are way down, dropping by 92 percent, from 14,699 to 1,241. Drug arrests by cops assigned to the NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau — which are part of the overall number — dropped by 84 percent, from ...

  ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI)- What began as a ‘March to the Arch’ quickly changed early Wednesday morning as protesters stormed the front doors of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department headquarters. Their plan was to occupy the department for four and a half hours. The demonstrators refused to leave until those demands were met. Around 10:30a.m., police say roughly 75 protesters participated in the march downtown before gathering outside of police headquarters. Nearly 15 entered the lobby and read a list of demands to department officials. Those demands included, a meeting with Chief Sam Dotson, Mayor Francis Slay or Board of Aldermen President, Lewis Reed. The protesters also want an immediate termination of Officer’s Flannery and Hayes. Their request also include amnesty for protesters who have been charged with non-violent offenses, a creation of a diverse citizens review board with subpoena power along with a seven day release of all information regardin...

NEW YORK -- When Bill Bratton was sworn in as head of the New York Police Department in January, he pledged to improve relations between New Yorkers of color and “every member" of his department. The abrupt resignation of the department’s highest-ranking black official on Friday may make that task harder. NYPD Chief of Department Philip Banks, a 28-year veteran of the force, walked away after rejecting a promotion. The Daily News, citing anonymous sources, reported that Banks feared the promotion “would bury him behind a desk.” Bratton told reporters on Friday that he and Banks never fought over policy, saying “we were very simpatico in the understanding that the culture of the department needed to be reshaped” -- a clear reference to tense relations with communities of color. But some observers raised an eyebrow at the claim that Bank's resignation had nothing to do with the department's handling of race. “Most likely, his conscience took the bes...

New England based BlackBerry Broadcasting Corporation, founded by husband and wife power couple Quadeer "M.C. Spice" Shakur and Cashawna "Cash the Stylist" Shakir, has named three department heads since November 1st. At the Soul/R&B radio station, BlackBerry Soul Radio (W-I-L-D 2.0), Virginia native Jon Al Sawyer has been named Program Director and another Virginia resident JaToria Love Jones has been named Assistant Program Director. The Music Director for BlackBerry Soul Radio is singer and songwriter Bonnie Artiga aka Boni Facia who hails from the San Fransisco, California. The three will oversee the overall direction of the music on the radio station. Jon Al Sawyer will oversee the overall programming of the music as well the lineup of on-air talent. Jon Al Sawyer hosts the Afternoon Thing weekdays from 3pm-7pm. JaToria Love Jones hosts the Midday Sunshine show from 11am-3pm and Boni Facia hosts the all independent and unsigned radio show "Indie G...

On Saturday, thousands of men and women in uniform paid their respects at the funeral of Officer Rafael Ramos, one of the two officers who were killed in Brooklyn on December 20th. Photos of the procession made their way around the internet, but BuzzFeed points out that one in particular continued to be shared all over social media by many NYPD precincts. But the photo, showing a sea of officers, is not from Ramos' funeral.  BuzzFeed reports the photo (above) is from 2007, at the funeral of NYPD Officer Russel Timoshenko, who was also killed in the line of duty. He was only 23. New York Times Many precincts who had shared the photo deleted their tweets after the BuzzFeed article was published.