A man was fatally shot when he reportedly tried to assault a woman in Colorado Springs early Monday, according to police.
Around 1:15 a.m., police responded to a shooting at an apartment complex in the 6900 block of Alpine Currant View, located directly southwest of Woodmen Road and Union Boulevard.
The woman who reported the shooting said she had been “about to be attacked by a male she just met,” so she shot him and then left the area, police said.
Officers located the woman in her car at a nearby hospital and found a deceased male in the apartment complex parking lot, officials said.
The woman was interviewed and released , police said.
Some of us are afraid of bad news. Most of us know someone who is afraid of going to the doctor because they don’t want to make hard decisions about their health. The great news is that most medical conditions can be treated. That emotional reaction is also common when we consider public violence. It is particularly accurate about how we feel about mass-murder. Many of us feel both compelled to watch the news about public violence, while at the same time we want to turn away and pretend it doesn’t happen. Let me bring you good news. We learned how to stop mass-murder in several ways. We’ve done it, so we are talking about actual practice rather than mere theory. The first thing we have to do is get past the fantasy of Hollywood violence and talk about what really happens.
I’m going to go back to the medical model for a moment. I’ve had friends who oscillated between denial and helplessness. They feel that there can’t be a problem, or that the problem is intractable so why bother. They become hopeless and vulnerable to people who sell quack cures. I won’t do that to you. I’ve studied public violence for a decade, and there is real hope to stop mass-murderers. For a moment, let’s set aside both fantasy and our fears.
Part of us knows that what we see from Hollywood isn’t real. Yes, we might be caught up in the story. At the same time, part of our mind knows that hundreds of people don’t suddenly explode in a flash of flame and get thrown backwards when someone waves a gun around. The truth is that mass-murder is hard, and ordinary citizens stop mass-murderers most of the time. That is fairly obvious if we’re willing to look at it for a minute. Again, I promise it will only be a minute. It turns out that you have lived through the critical experiment many times.
Remember one of the times you walked into a group of your friends and shouted hello. Your friends look at you. One of them points their finger at you and you point back at them and wave. You do that a number of times as more of your friends recognize you.
Then you see a friend of to the side that you missed. You wave and smile to see someone you didn’t notice at first. There is a feeling of an unexpected, pleasant surprise. We didn’t see them at first because we were concentrating on someone else in the group. We thought we saw everyone, but we really didn’t. A friend we didn’t see slaps us on the shoulder and asks how we’ve been. We were looking at the group so we never noticed our friend come up behind us.
Hold that experience in mind for a minute. I could ask you all kinds of questions about your friends and we’d find out that you didn’t really see them at all. How were they sitting? Who was talking to whom? How were they dressed, and what were they doing with their hands when you said hello? We are not a camera, and we imagine that we see more than we really do.
We don’t see everything. As soon as we look at one thing, we become blind to the rest of the world around us.
(The hard part starts now, but it won’t be long.)
That common experience explains why we kill mass murderers time after time. To put it in simple terms, they don’t see us and we shoot them. Maybe they die right there, and maybe they are only wounded. Being shot at makes the attacker feel deeply vulnerable. Usually, they run away. This wasn’t the violence they had imagined and they usually take their own life.
(The gruesome part is over so you can breathe again.)
There are other perceptual and tactical factors at work, but I’m not trying to make better murderers. The fact is that mass-murderers are vulnerable.
Where ordinary citizens were allowed to be armed, we stopped attempted mass-murderers almost two-thirds of the time. That also had a drastic effect on the number of people who were injured or killed. Ordinary citizens like you saved over a thousand lives. Again, the reasons might not be obvious to everyone.
It is clear that stopping the murderer means that more innocent people aren’t getting shot. It also means we can move the people who were injured to safety and we can quickly start life-saving treatment by stopping the bleeding. EMTs get to the injured victims faster because the scene is safe. There are fewer victims to treat, so each victim gets more attention, and the victims are in better condition when EMTs first reach them.
That is what happens time after time. On average, we’ve done that about every 18 days for the last 8 years. None of that happens while we wait another 15 minutes for the police to arrive.
It turns out that the murderer wasn’t so deadly because he had some Hollywood super weapon. Mass-murderers hunt us in “gun-free” zones. The murderer was deadly because he could kill at will without someone to stop him.
Millions of us go armed every day, but we obeyed the rules and left our guns outside. The mass-murderer didn’t.
I’m sure that some of you can see the answers already.
The personal solution is easy. Make sure that someone can shoot back.
The public solution is time tested. We’ve done it for the last decade, and we’ve never had a school attacked where they had a public program of armed school staff.
The legal solution is simple. Make property owners responsible when they disarm the people who obey the law. If you stop me from protecting my family, then you become responsible for their safety.
The media solution is easy as well. Most mass-murderers kill innocent people so the mass-media will show us their face, their name, and their manifesto. Stop giving mass-murderers a multi-million-dollar publicity campaign.
All that might sound simple, but the political solution is harder. We have to ignore quack cures that have failed in the past.
Police on Monday encouraged licensed gun owners to carry their weapons to synagogues over the High Holiday period, as the security establishment registered a rise in terror alerts in the lead-up to the Yom Kippur fast day.
Police said in a statement that there has been a 15 percent increase in terror warnings compared to the two months before the holidays and that security forces were at a heightened alert level due to the threats.
Licensed gun owners were urged “to carry their gun in these times.”
The police statement said the number of alerts will likely rise further in the lead-up to Yom Kippur, which begins on Sunday evening.
“Therefore, we call on worshipers who have licensed gun to bring them to prayers. In addition, we call on the public in general to be aware and report any unusual incident in real-time to the police 100 hotline,” the statement read.
Police also said they were monitoring a concerning rise in Palestinian online incitement to carry out attacks.
Monday saw an attempted stabbing near Jerusalem and three separate shooting attacks against Israeli forces in the West Bank, the military said.
On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, an explosive device went off in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park in the early hours of the morning. There were no injuries. Two suspects were later arrested on suspicion of involvement.
In the lead-up to Rosh Hashanah, police made the unprecedented move of ensuring there was someone armed in every synagogue in Jerusalem due to the heightened terror threat.
Gun control in Israel has traditionally been relatively strict, with licenses generally only granted to those who can show a need for extra security in their line of work or daily life. Citizens in nearly all cases can own a single gun and only 50 bullets at a given time.
But far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, an advocate of relaxing the laws, has moved forward with easing ownership regulations, claiming having more licensed gun carriers could help combat waves of terror attacks and criminal gun violence that police and security forces have struggled to contain.
Critics have warned that increasing the number of firearms comes with significant risks, including suicides, violence against women, road rage incidents, and murders. According to data from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, of the 32 women murdered with firearms between 2019 and 2021, nine were killed by people with licensed guns.
The High Holidays run through the first week of October, until the end of the Sukkot holiday.
LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A man is dead, and another is in custody following an attempted home invasion in Spring Valley on Wednesday morning.
According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, reports of a shooting at a single-family residence in the 3300 block of Iberia Street around 9:02 a.m.
The caller claimed that two individuals dressed in dark clothing and masks attempted to enter their residence, and their son shot them.
Officers arriving on the scene made contact with the caller, who was identified as a 70-year-old man, and his son, who was identified as a 50-year-old man and the shooter. According to LVMPD Homicide Lieutenant Jason Johansson, both subjects with not be facing charges, as the shooting was determined to be in self-defense.
The father told officers that one of the suspects appeared to be dead in the backyard, where officers would discover the body of a 20-year-old man. Medical personnel arriving on the scene would declare him deceased.
The second suspect involved in the attempted invasion was seen leaping over the wall in the backyard and fleeing the scene in a gray sedan.
About 10 minutes after the initial 911 call, LVMPD also received reports of a reckless driver who drove through a parking lot on Tropicana and Jones at a “high rate of speed.” The vehicle was then seen leaving the lot headed eastbound on Tropicana.
Lt. Johansson says the vehicle was later involved in a collision on Tropicana and Decatur, where the sedan struck two other vehicles. After crashing, the suspect exited the vehicle, and police observed a “non-life-threatening gunshot wound to his lower leg.”
The suspect was transported to a nearby hospital and is currently in custody.
LVMPD will be looking into recent burglaries in the area to see if there are any possible connections. Lt. Johansson says that police have identified at least one incident of interest.
It’s currently unclear if the suspects were armed at the time of the incident.
Officers will be in the area for the next few hours to conduct an investigation into the incident. Drivers are advised to use caution when traveling in the neighborhood and surrounding areas.
“Right now, it’s just gonna come down to interviewing, getting the rest of the surveillance footage, and serving a search warrant on the house and the vehicle,” Lt. Johansson said.
Some of us are afraid of bad news. Most of us know someone who is afraid of going to the doctor because they don’t want to make hard decisions about their health. The great news is that most medical conditions can be treated. That emotional reaction is also common when we consider public violence. It is particularly accurate about how we feel about mass-murder.
Many of us feel both compelled to watch the news about public violence, while at the same time we want to turn away and pretend it doesn’t happen. Let me bring you good news. We learned how to stop mass-murder in several ways. We’ve done it, so we are talking about actual practice rather than mere theory. The first thing we have to do is get past the fantasy of Hollywood violence and talk about what really happens.
I’m going to go back to the medical model for a moment. I’ve had friends who oscillated between denial and helplessness. They feel that there can’t be a problem, or that the problem is intractable so why bother. They become hopeless and vulnerable to people who sell quack cures. I won’t do that to you. I’ve studied public violence for a decade, and there is real hope to stop mass-murderers. For a moment, let’s set aside both fantasy and our fears.
Part of us knows that what we see from Hollywood isn’t real. Yes, we might be caught up in the story. At the same time, part of our mind knows that hundreds of people don’t suddenly explode in a flash of flame and get thrown backwards when someone waves a gun around. The truth is that mass-murder is hard, and ordinary citizens stop mass-murderers most of the time. That is fairly obvious if we’re willing to look at it for a minute. Again, I promise it will only be a minute. It turns out that you have lived through the critical experiment many times.
Remember one of the times you walked into a group of your friends and shouted hello. Your friends look at you. One of them points their finger at you and you point back at them and wave. You do that a number of times as more of your friends recognize you.
Then you see a friend of to the side that you missed. You wave and smile to see someone you didn’t notice at first. There is a feeling of an unexpected, pleasant surprise. We didn’t see them at first because we were concentrating on someone else in the group. We thought we saw everyone, but we really didn’t. A friend we didn’t see slaps us on the shoulder and asks how we’ve been. We were looking at the group so we never noticed our friend come up behind us.
Hold that experience in mind for a minute. I could ask you all kinds of questions about your friends and we’d find out that you didn’t really see them at all. How were they sitting? Who was talking to whom? How were they dressed, and what were they doing with their hands when you said hello? We are not a camera, and we imagine that we see more than we really do.
We don’t see everything. As soon as we look at one thing, we become blind to the rest of the world around us.
(The hard part starts now, but it won’t be long.)
That common experience explains why we kill mass murderers time after time. To put it in simple terms, they don’t see us and we shoot them. Maybe they die right there, and maybe they are only wounded. Being shot at makes the attacker feel deeply vulnerable. Usually, they run away. This wasn’t the violence they had imagined and they usually take their own life.
(The gruesome part is over so you can breathe again.)
There are other perceptual and tactical factors at work, but I’m not trying to make better murderers. The fact is that mass-murderers are vulnerable.
Where ordinary citizens were allowed to be armed, we stopped attempted mass-murderers almost two-thirds of the time. That also had a drastic effect on the number of people who were injured or killed. Ordinary citizens like you saved over a thousand lives. Again, the reasons might not be obvious to everyone.
It is clear that stopping the murderer means that more innocent people aren’t getting shot. It also means we can move the people who were injured to safety and we can quickly start life-saving treatment by stopping the bleeding. EMTs get to the injured victims faster because the scene is safe. There are fewer victims to treat, so each victim gets more attention, and the victims are in better condition when EMTs first reach them.
That is what happens time after time. On average, we’ve done that about every 18 days for the last 8 years. None of that happens while we wait another 15 minutes for the police to arrive.
It turns out that the murderer wasn’t so deadly because he had some Hollywood super weapon. Mass-murderers hunt us in “gun-free” zones. The murderer was deadly because he could kill at will without someone to stop him.
Millions of us go armed every day, but we obeyed the rules and left our guns outside. The mass-murderer didn’t.
I’m sure that some of you can see the answers already.
The personal solution is easy. Make sure that someone can shoot back.
The public solution is time tested. We’ve done it for the last decade, and we’ve never had a school attacked where they had a public program of armed school staff.
The legal solution is simple. Make property owners responsible when they disarm the people who obey the law. If you stop me from protecting my family, then you become responsible for their safety.
The media solution is easy as well. Most mass-murderers kill innocent people so the mass-media will show us their face, their name, and their manifesto. Stop giving mass-murderers a multi-million-dollar publicity campaign.
All that might sound simple, but the political solution is harder. We have to ignore quack cures that have failed in the past.
Police in West Melbourne are investigating after an attempted burglary turned into a deadly shooting inside an apartment complex early Sunday morning.
According to the West Melbourne Police Department, officers responded to an apartment at the Reserves of Melbourne off Doherty Drive for reports of a shooting inside an apartment.
Officers learned that multiple, possibly armed, subjects had forcefully entered an apartment. According to police, one suspect had a gun.
The apartment’s resident, armed with their own firearm, shot multiple times and struck two of the subjects.
One was transported to Holmes Regional Medical Center, where they were pronounced dead. The second person who was shot also went to the hospital, where they are currently being treated.
Many in the neighborhood were caught off guard. “Oh my God. Sick, wow,” said Sarah Goodman, who has a relative in the apartment complex.
“I noticed six police cars and the yellow tape way out there,” Miles Svikhart, a resident, said. “Yes, it’s very scary,” a resident said.
After getting over the initial shock, people we talked to felt like the people in the apartment really had no choice.
“I mean, I’m a proud Second Amendment person myself. So if you invade my home, I’m going to protect my space,” Goodman said.
“The homeowner had to do something,” Svikhart said. “It’s self-defense. That’s why you have a gun. If he didn’t have that gun, I’m sure he’d be in a lot more trouble.”
At this point, no charges have been filed against the person who shot the home invaders. The State Attorney’s Office will handle that decision.
In the meantime, police are working to find out the motive and if they knew each other.
West Melbourne police say at least three people were in the apartment at the time of the home invasion. No one involved in the incident has been identified.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WREG) — One of the owners of a North Memphis restaurant says she was forced to shoot a naked intruder who threatened her and her family members inside the North Hollywood business late Monday night.
The woman, who did not want to be identified by name, said the man dressed only in sneakers showed up to Mr. Potato Head asking for water and managed to push his way inside, shutting the self-locking doors behind him.
She said the man became enraged when he couldn’t leave the restaurant, began damaging property, and jammed the doors trying to get out. She said he also punched her in the chest and continued to come toward her even though she was holding a gun.
“I was just afraid of his strength,” she said. “I’m pointing at him, asking him to calm down and stay away or get out of the store which the door was jammed, and he had no way out, so therefore I was between a rock and a hard place, and I just did what I had to do,” she said.
The woman said she fired one shot at the man when he charged her and shot him again when he picked up a chair to throw at her sister.
“It’s just a scary sight, and I know that people are saying what they could’ve done, what they would’ve done, but until you’re in a situation, you never know what you will do, especially when the fear hits you. You never know what you’re going to do. He was a big guy, big enough to hurt me,” she said.
The woman’s sister, who began live streaming after the shooting, said the man was like a lion locked in a cage. She said when they called the police, the naked man was on the ground, and she and her sister and brother were still locked inside the restaurant.
She said she went on Facebook to let loved ones know what was happening.
“If the police came in and arrested us or anything, my family needed to know. Somebody needed to know where we were or what was going on with us.”
Memphis Police said a man was transported to the hospital in critical condition and later died. They said a woman was detained but haven’t released any details about the shooting.
The woman who fired the shots said she was taken into custody but is not facing any charges.
She said she never wanted to take another life.
“I’m not a monster. I would never hurt anybody purposely. I just feared for my life and just did what I thought I was supposed to do,” she said. “I didn’t want him to die or anything like that. I just didn’t wanna be the one my mom had to claim to identify.”
The sisters said they recognized the man from the neighborhood. Police have not identified him.
ALPHARETTA, Ga. – A quick draw at a fast-food restaurant as police say a bystander stepped in and shot a robber. Now, the police are waiting to book the suspect on some serious charges once they get out of the hospital.
Police say a 57-year-old man tried to rob the manager at gunpoint, but a man who had just pulled in to order some food also had a gun.
“I’m glad somebody was there to help the people who could have been a victim,” said Shameerah Bates, one of the customers of the Zaxby’s restaurant located on Old Milton Parkway in Alpharetta where the attempted armed robbery took place.
It was closing time on Sunday night. Police say as the manager was leaving, an armed man approached him in the parking lot and tried to rob him.
“An independent witness observed the robbery in process, and intervened in the robbery, and shot the suspect after the suspect pointed his firearm at the witness and the victim,” said Alpharetta Police Lt. Andrew Splawn.
Alpharetta Police raced to the restaurant and set up a perimeter.
Investigators say the man had run into the woods to try to get away.
Officers were eventually able to track him to his location. They found he had two bullet wounds to his leg.
He was rushed to the hospital, but when he gets out, the 57-year-old man will face a number of charges including armed robbery, aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Police say the bystander with the gun ill not be charged.
“Georgia law allows a person to use reasonable force to protect themselves or a third party when they believe an individual or themselves is going to suffer serious bodily harm or death,” said Lt. Splawn. “We do believe this is going to be a defensive third-party incident, so at this time we don’t anticipate any charges for the witness.”
“I’m glad he was here and was able to stop him. People do stupid stuff, and there’s consequences,” said Angie Trapino, another Zaxby’s customer.
Police say the manager was shaken up and went to the hospital for some superficial injuries to be checked out, but is expected to be OK.
A homeowner shot a home intruder a second time after the intruder appeared to taunt the owner over the first gunshot wound he sustained, Georgia police said.
Fayette County Sheriff Barry Babb told WAGA-TV that the incident unfolded at a residence on Thursday when the homeowner called police about an intruder. At the same time, the home’s alarm company was alerting the police about an intruder.
Babb says that the homeowner confronted the intruder in the basement and gave him a warning. After that, he fired one gunshot and struck the intruder.
The homeowner then took up a position at the top of his staircase on the second story of the home.
Babb said that the suspect started going up the stairs and said to the homeowner, “You’re gonna have to kill me.”
So the homeowner reportedly shot him a second time.
Deputies arrived about that time, and Babb said they struggled with the intruder to take him into custody. The suspect was transported to a local hospital for treatment for his two gunshot wounds.
Babb told WAGA that the suspect was connect to a “string of crimes” that include a possible murder outside of the state of Georgia. Police are working with law enforcement authorities in that separate state.
Police believe that the man chose the home at random and had tried to gain entry into other homes in the upscale neighborhood.
Authorities have not released the identities of the homeowner or the suspect. They expect to release more information about the incident as their investigation continues.
Fayette County is in the northern part of the state and includes about 120,000 residents.
Texas lawmakers quietly passed a sweeping mandate for school safety measures, including a requirement to post an armed security officer at every school and provide mental health training for certain district employees.
Texas House Bill 3, which was signed into law June 14 by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, went into effect on Sept. 1, and comes in the wake of the horrific Uvalde school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in May 2022.
In the bill, each school district campus is required to armed security guard which includes: a school district peace officer; a school resource officer; a commissioned peace officer employee; a school marshal; or a school district employee who has completed school safety training and carries a handgun on their person on school premises.
An armed Florida man who rushed to defend his sister from an abusive ex-boyfriend will face no charges after fatally shooting him, according to the local sheriff’s office.
“If someone points a gun at you and cocks it, you can shoot them,” Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons told WEAR News of the incident that unfolded last week.
Escambia County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a home within the Silver Lake Mobile Home Park last Tuesday and found an unidentified 26-year-old man dead from a gunshot wound, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.
Investigators said the man was the ex-boyfriend of a 24-year-old unidentified woman who lives in the home. The man reportedly broke the woman’s door down, entered the home and struck her “several times,” according to the sheriff’s office.
The woman grabbed her phone and texted her neighboring family members, including her 23-year-old brother who rushed to her home to protect her.
Investigators said another argument broke out when the brother arrived, and the ex-boyfriend pulled out a gun and aimed it at the brother.
“At one point, the male that forced entry into the trailer pulled out a handgun, pointed it at her brother and cocked it,” the sheriff said.
The woman’s brother was also armed, and he fired two shots at the man, killing him.
The brother is not facing charges, according to the sheriff’s office. The State Attorney’s Office added in a comment to WEAR News that recent Florida laws have expanded the scope of self-defense for residents.
“‘Stand Your Ground’ has expanded the area of the castle,” Assistant State Attorney John Molchan told the outlet. “We used to have the ‘Castle Doctrine,’ which said that your home was your castle and that you could use deadly force to defend yourself from a murderer or a person committing a forcible felony.”
CHICAGO (CBS) — Chicago Police late Tuesday were investigating a home invasion turned violent the day before in Belmont Cragin.
Holes in the door frame of a house in the 2100 block of North Meade Avenue show where at least one bullet hit Monday afternoon.
Meanwhile, as CBS 2 Investigator Megan Hickey reported, police said the homeowner who pulled the trigger was well within his rights.
The man who shot the intruder has a valid Firearm Owners Identification card and Concealed Carry license, police said.
CCL instructors said the surge in residents wanting to have and use a gun legally has continued well after the height of COVID-19.
Concealed carry instructors Creative and Alexis Scott were demonstrating with plastic guns and practice targets when we met with them. But they said the scene in Belmont Cragin on Monday is the number-one reason residents continue to sign up for their classes.
“It’s our right to protect our home; our dwelling,” said Creative Scott.
Chicago Police said a 26-year-old man was in his house on Monday afternoon when a man broke in.
The resident, a licensed FOID and CCL holder, shot the intruder twice in the chest.
The suspect was taken to the hospital in serious condition, and charges were still pending late Tuesday.
Gun ownership is stepping in to help bridge a safety gap in New Mexico’s vast Indian country, according to gun experts in the state.
“No one is coming to save you” is a motto among Native Americans in New Mexico, according to Joe Talachy, a Pueblo of Pojoaque tribal officer who owns one of the few Native-founded gun stores in the U.S.
Talachy joined law enforcement in 2005, before serving as lieutenant governor and then governor of the Pojoaque Pueblo, notching a total of 11 years in tribal leadership. Now, he’s back in law enforcement and opened Indigenous Arms 1680 Ltd. Co., where locals have flocked to arm themselves against the unforeseeable and sign up for gun safety classes.
“People are starting to say, ‘Look, I used to see guns as being scary,’ and all this. But they’re looking at self-defense now as a necessity. Given the current circumstances and the instability going on, people are starting to understand that they need to defend themselves. For Native American people, our men and women – I’ve trained plenty of them – they’ve decided to take their own self-defense into their hands as well,” Talachy told Fox News Digital in a phone interview.
SLIDELL – A home invader was killed after forcing his way into a Slidell home early Tuesday morning.
The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office said the attack happened around 1 a.m. at a home on Rue De La Paix. The department said a 911 call initially came in around that time, but the caller hung up before law enforcement could get details on the situation.
Authorities called the number back and a woman explained that the intruder entered the house and got into a fight with the homeowner and another person who was staying there.
All three involved in the encounter were hurt, and the unnamed burglar was pronounced dead at the scene, the sheriff’s office said in a statement. One of the people who was inside the home at the time of the attack remains hospitalized in stable condition.
At this time, investigators believe the attacker targeted the home and that it was not a random break-in.
As Americans in just about every large city endure a crime wave, some of those cities have all but given up fighting crime and given the bad guys free rein over the city. Businesses are getting out of those big cities in record numbers because of rampant theft and Soros-backed prosecutors who will not charge criminals. In one city, crime has gotten so out of hand that if you get robbed, well, don’t call 911. File a report, and they’ll get back to you.
Even if you are cautious & follow all the safety advice, you may still become the unfortunate victim of a robbery. Do you know what your next steps should be? Make a police report & provide as much information as possible so we can recover your property quickly and safely. pic.twitter.com/79Cv0RI099
Austin, Texas, is a blue island in a fairly red state. As a result of liberal Democrat leadership that embraced the “defund the police” movement, Austin police are severely short-staffed and are asking anyone who gets robbed near an ATM to call the non-emergency 311 number instead of 911. Robbery victims also have the option of making an online police report of the incident. Austin Police took to X to inform residents what they should do if they are robbed, saying:
“Even if you are cautious & follow all the safety advice, you may still become the unfortunate victim of a robbery. Do you know what your next steps should be? Make a police report & provide as much information as possible so we can recover your property quickly and safely.”
Police also reminded those making a report to tell them the date and time of their ATM withdrawal. So, while being robbed, possibly at gunpoint, might seem like kind of an emergency to you, Austin Police have informed citizens that they don’t have enough manpower for it to be an emergency to them.
Thomas Villarreal is the President of the Austin Police Association. He places the blame for the crime wave in the Texas state capital squarely at the feet of a seemingly uncaring city council, stating, “We just continue to have a city council that doesn’t show its police officers that [it] cares about them.”
During a recent appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Villarreal had this to say about his city’s law enforcement predicament,
We’re a growing city, a city that should be up around 2,000 officers and growing right now. I’ve got about 1,475 officers in our police department and, you know, we’re moving in the wrong direction. There’s less and less and less resources to go out and do the job. I’ve got detectives who are pulled away from their caseload to just help answer 911 calls because we just don’t have the resources to adequately police the city.
Here at RedState, we have been covering the rampant crime wave affecting Austin and other Democrat-run cities. Not only are their policing policies, post-George Floyd, affecting individual residents, but they are also affecting businesses. Business owners say they do not feel safe, and the lack of police presence or response also drives away customers. One business owner said it took ten days to get a police report, and at the same time, business owners are being asked not to have weapons for their protection in their business. Since the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in 2020, and as Austin’s homicide rate has climbed, 911 callers are often put on hold for up to half an hour.
In addition to what Thomas Villarreal sees as an uncaring city council, Austin Mayor Kirk Watson also does not appear to have any sense of urgency when it comes to crime in his city. Up until recently, Austin police had a partnership with the Texas Department of Safety, which Watson praised and stated that crime had gone down as a result. But just two days later, Watson announced the end of the Austin police/Texas Department of Safety alliance, stating that it did not reflect “Austin’s values.” No word from the mayor on whether being robbed and having no police available to handle the situation constitutes an “Austin value.” Just last month, Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon resigned after ongoing conflicts with the city council over staffing and increasingly smaller police budgets.
So, for the foreseeable future, if you get robbed in Austin at an ATM, you’d better just call it into 311 and wait your turn. Makes you wonder what the next thing to be called a “non-emergency” will be.
We live in a media driven culture. We also have government agencies putting out biased reports that serve their political masters. It is rare that the media even questions the agency reports. That wouldn’t matter, but many of us confuse media headlines with facts. I’ve seen people on Facebook say that there were hundreds of “mass shootings” this year and that our children are not safe in school any longer. They are wrong, and you stop mass-murder most of the time.
Please let me pose a different question.
If an ordinary citizen stops mass-murderand the mainstream media refuses to report it, did it really happen?
According to the FBI, the answer is almost always, “No!”
I am a data geek and I love to explore the deeper questions around public events. For example, how do we define “mass-murder”, and has that definition changed? How are the murderers stopped? It turns out that you get wildly different answers depending on subtle changes in the questions you ask.
HOUSTON – A woman believed to be a home invasion suspect was shot after kicking in a door at an apartment complex in north Harris County Tuesday, Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman’s Office said.
Constable deputies were called to 311 N. Vista Dr.
According to investigators, a caller told them that a woman kicked in her door and she fired her weapon, striking the suspect.
EMS is at the scene for the suspect. Her condition is not known.
Woman shot after allegedly kicking in door during home invasion at north Harris County apartment complex (Harris County Precinct 4)
Constable deputies have not provided any additional information at this time.
