WATCH: Trump Makes Surprising Comment on Kaepernick After Kneeling Controversy

President Trump lent some support Wednesday to former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, saying he “would love to see him get another shot” if he still has the skills to play in the league.

During an interview with Sinclair correspondent Scott Thuman, Trump was asked about Kaepernick, the then-San Francisco 49er who sparked a national debate in 2016 when he protested police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem, and whether or not the president believes Kaepernick “should get another shot in the NFL.”

“If he deserves it, he should. If he has the playing ability,” Trump said. “He started off great and then he didn’t end up very great in terms of as a player. He was terrific in his rookie year, I think he was very good in his second year, and then something happened. So his playing wasn’t up to snuff.”

The president continued: “The answer is absolutely I would. As far as kneeling — I would love to see him get another shot, but obviously he has to play well. If he can’t play well, I think it would be very unfair.”

(Read more from “WATCH: Trump Makes Surprising Comment on Kaepernick After Kneeling Controversy” HERE)

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Where Is the GOP’s Sense of Urgency to Act on Crime?

If I came to Earth from Mars, gauging by the priorities of both U.S. political parties, I’d think we had a peaceful society with no criminals until police came and randomly killed and beat people for nothing. The reality is just the opposite. Even before the Floyd rioting, crime was on the rise because the entire criminal justice deterrent – from stronger policing to tougher sentencing – had been dismantled in almost every state. Rather than using phony narratives to push anti-policing bills, why won’t Republicans rush to pass anti-crime bills?

Yesterday, we all watched in horror as a surveillance video showed a young black male randomly clothesline a 92-year-old woman in the face while walking the streets of New York City. The woman hit her head on a fire hydrant and could easily have been killed, as many others have been by these “knockout” crimes.

I tweeted that I’d wager he has a massive criminal history and was out on parole. Any takers?

Well, a couple hours later, NYPD caught the suspected perpetrator, and it appears he had 103 arrests since 2005 and is a convicted sex offender! Police arrested 31-year-old Rashid Brimmage of the Bronx on Tuesday for the assault in Manhattan after police recognized his face on the video because they’d encountered him so often.

Brimmage had three separate assault arrests since February 4 in which he randomly punched people in the face, but was out free. According to the New York Daily News, his criminal career includes “arrests for sexual abuse and groping women on the subway, public lewdness, harassment, sex abuse, criminal trespass and criminal possession of marijuana.”

How is someone like this not locked up, and why is this video not an impetus for Republicans to push mandatory minimum sentencing? Three strikes and you’re out made sense to Americans in the 1990s, and it makes sense now. Given that we are federalizing everything under the sun, why not federalize career criminals like this?

Do we need to riot over this attack in order to push Mitch McConnell into a federal anti-crime bill targeting repeat violent offenders the same way he feels panicked into passing federal policing regulations by July 4?

We are confronted by an epidemic of repeat violent offenders who are being released from jail and prison in droves or are not locked up at all and are getting probation instead. This is the core criminal justice issue not being discussed and the one that leads to potentially deadly encounters with police, as we saw with career criminal Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta.

At present, there is simply no deterrent against violent criminals because they know that the system is terrified to incarcerate them or enforce the law against them, particularly if they are black. Which is why that young man blithely attacked the 92-year-old women without a care in the world.

Consider the following:

New York’s murder rate more than doubled this month so far compared to last year, and many other categories of crime are way up.

Just over two months since Mayor de Blasio released 2,500 criminals from Rikers Island, 10 percent have been rearrested for a total of 450 arrests.

In the revolving door of New York’s justice system, Manhattan Judge Laurie Peterson released Kevin Bullock, a looter, who bashed a cop over the head with a glass bong. After a series of other decisions not to even prosecute rioters, the NYPD pulled some of its personnel out of prosecutor offices.

On Monday, police commissioner Dermot Shea announced “a seismic shift in the culture of how the NYPD polices this city.” Specifically, the NYPD is abolishing its plainclothes anti-crime unit that is so instrumental in catching these career criminals that are being let out. They are essentially saying that if judges will release criminals from jail, prosecutors won’t prosecute new ones, and politicians will release those serving in prison, why even catch them to begin with?

How can Congress look at the greatest success story of our generation in reduction of crime and allow those 25 years of gains to be wiped out? Where is the rush for Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans to bring aggressive sentencing bills to the floor to combat gangs, rioters, career criminals, and gun felons? Where is a criminal control agenda? Where is the effort – three weeks into a national insurrection in every state and nearly every city – to restore order and keep our interstate highways and federal landmarks protected?

Instead, Sen. Tim Scott, with the blessing of Mitch McConnell, has introduced a bill that will demand more disclosure from cops on fatal shootings, clearly legitimizing the false anarchist premise that cops target African-Americans specifically. Overlooking the thousands of black victims killed by the violence that is increasingly undeterred is offensive. We already have one Democrat Party – who needs a second one?

If picking on police is now a federal matter, then targeting criminals should be as well. (For more from the author of “Where Is the GOP’s Sense of Urgency to Act on Crime?” please click HERE)

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Federal Court Puts ICE in Lockdown, Keeps Illegal Alien Sex Offenders Free

Who needs the “abolish ICE” movement when the courts are accomplishing the same outcome without any political reprisal?

At a time when Americans have been rebuffed by the court system to restore basic civil rights, including the right to worship, in light of the illogical lockdown (except if you’re rioting), the courts continue to grant standing to the worst criminal aliens to remain in the country and hamstring law enforcement. The latest right? Illegal aliens get to avoid being arrested at jailhouses and courthouses so that they can abscond from federal immigration officials.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff ignored federal law and ruled that ICE cannot arrest any illegal alien at a New York state courthouse where the individual is a defendant or witness in a pending case. “Courthouse civil arrests are not lawful, because they contravene the common-law privilege … that protects courts and litigants against these intimidating and disrupting intrusions,” wrote the Clinton-appointed judge to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

It now appears that the people who riot in the streets against law enforcement have allies in the court system who will rule based on personal animus against laws they don’t like rather than following them. Can you imagine a federal judge saying that local officials have the right to hide a federal gun felon from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and that the federal agents could not arrest the gun felon at a courthouse when he is appearing in another criminal case?

If anything, ICE’s prerogative to arrest at any time and place is even stronger, because the arrest subjects are foreign nationals who have no inherent right to remain in the country under any circumstances. ICE is prudent enough to try to arrest them in controlled environments like police stations, rather than arresting them in communities. But with sanctuaries like New York that release them onto the streets, the last line of defense to ensure that illegal aliens being arrested for other crimes are not sent back into the communities is to apprehend them at the courthouses.

Yet, as we saw at the Supreme Court on Monday, the courts continue to smile upon neo-Confederate sanctuary cities. This is the equivalent of a federal judge not only siding with the Confederacy, but ruling that the U.S. government had no right to enforce federal law against foreign nationals in Confederate states. The courts are now part of the insurrection against our national sovereignty and laws duly passed by Congress.

This is the latest example of victims being turned into criminals and criminals being celebrated as heroes by our political and legal system. Not only are these people here illegally, but by definition, they are going to court for being involved in other crimes as well. It is now the desire of local governments and of federal judges to protect illegal aliens being charged with sex crimes. As the New York Times reported, one of the cases that prompted this lawsuit by New York’s attorney general was “a Uruguayan defendant” who was taken into custody by ICE “just minutes before a hearing on a proposed guilty plea that would have required him to serve more than three years in prison in a sexual and domestic violence case.”

In many blue states, not only are they against federal immigration agents, but now we see they are against local law enforcement and seek little or no prison time for all offenders. Thus, the courthouse is the last line of defense for ICE to ensure that at least other countries’ criminals don’t get a slap on the wrist and then get released into our communities.

Last July, for example, ICE was forced to arrest Fabian Alberto Zamora-Rodriguez, an illegal alien charged with multiple child sex offenses, at a courthouse in Astoria, Oregon, because local officials would not cooperate.

In Washington state, another sanctuary, an illegal alien who had at least 10 prior arrests in the Seattle area was picked up on murder charges. Julio Cruz-Velazquez, a citizen of Mexico who is in the United States illegally and is now charged with murdering a father of five as he lay asleep in his own home, had a rap sheet that included recent arrests for rape, domestic abuse, assault, burglary, drunk driving, and robbery. Each time, he was let back on the streets. The courthouses are the only place to nab these people before they post bail, especially in this era of criminal justice “reform.”

Remember when all these sanctuary cities claimed that ICE had no right to require them to cooperate with federal issues and use their police stations to enforce federal laws (only the ones they disagree with, of course)? Well, now, when the feds are forced to go it alone, the sanctuaries get a judge to say that the feds can’t enforce the law themselves either. They have essentially abolished ICE, which is why interior enforcement is way down, even compared to Obama’s second term.

This clown of a judge wants to discuss chilling effects of ICE arresting criminal aliens at courthouses? Perhaps he should look at the chilling effects of the sanctuaries he is illegally protecting.

We all remember the shocking case of Maria Fuertes, a 92-year-old well-known woman in Queens, New York, found lying dead in the street on January 6, murdered and raped. On January 10, NYPD announced the arrest of Reeaz Khan and charged him with sexually assaulting and then murdering Fuertes.

Who is Reeaz Khan? ICE issued a statement a few days later revealing that Khan is an illegal alien from Guyana who was arrested for assault and criminal possession of a weapon – just six weeks before the murder. ICE issued a detainer request, but the NYPD, in compliance with New York’s illegal policies of restricting communication with ICE, released him without bail after the arraignment. Had ICE been able to show up to that arraignment, this terrible murder could have been prevented.

It’s truly hard to overstate the public safety threat of New York’s policy of harboring foreign criminals and also of abolishing bail and barring ICE from courthouses. It essentially means that even the worst repeat violent offenders of other countries, who should never have been in this country to begin with, will be released with almost no recourse for ICE to apprehend them. According to ICE, in fiscal year 2019, denied ICE detainers included illegal aliens with a cumulative total of 200 homicide charges, over 500 robberies, over 1,000 sexual offenses, over 1,000 weapons offenses, over 3,500 assaults, and over 1,500 DUIs. New York has been averaging about 300 murders a year in total. Can you imagine how many of them could have been prevented?

Just remember, while the courts refuse to recognize the right of Americans to move freely, pray in church, and open their businesses, not only can criminals riot without facing prosecution, but illegal alien murderers and sex offenders can get the courts to abolish ICE.

Unless the Trump administration begins asserting separation of powers against these rogue judges, the anarchist goal of abolishing the police might be in plain sight once the courts do to the police what they have done to ICE. (For more from the author of “Federal Court Puts ICE in Lockdown, Keeps Illegal Alien Sex Offenders Free” please click HERE)

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Putin’s Defense Against Coronavirus Is Straight out of Science Fiction

One way Russian President Vladimir Putin is defending himself against the coronavirus is by using disinfection tunnels for visitors, according to a Kremlin spokesman.

Putin has one disinfection tunnel at his home in Novo-Ogaryovo and two from the Kremlin, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced Wednesday. Putin has spent most of his time during the pandemic in his near Moscow residence, according to Reuters.

The disinfection tunnel sprays a “fine water mist” on people passing through, state-run media outlet RIA Novosti news reported Tuesday. The spray comes from the ceiling and the sides when someone passes through, according to Reuters.

The tunnels were created and installed by a Russian company Mizotty and used Anolit, a government approved anti-septic, CNN reported.

“Such disinfectant equipment is installed in the Kremlin too, there are even two tunnels there, and in Novo-Ogaryovo, which you know is the main work base for the President, he hold[s] a lot of events there and goes back and forth to the Kremlin,” Peskov said. (Read more from “Putin’s Defense Against Coronavirus Is Straight out of Science Fiction” HERE)

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Police Deputy Says Women Left Important Message After Paying for His Meal

. . .Deputy Jody McDowell decided to eat at a Cracker Barrel in Nashville, Tennessee while waiting for a transport to finish, he wrote on Facebook. Two black women decided to pay for his meal and added in a kind note amid growing tensions over police brutality.

“BLM but so does yours!” the note reads. “Thank you for your service. Breakfast paid.”

“I want to thank the two sweet black ladies who paid for my breakfast this morning,” the Sumner County deputy said on Facebook. “While waiting for a transport to be completed, I decided to have breakfast at a Cracker Barrel near the Nashville airport. I received this note from them.” (Read more from “Police Deputy Says Women Left Important Message After Paying for His Meal” HERE)

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Trump on Transgender SCOTUS Ruling: We Have to Live With It

By News Day. The Trump administration was on the losing side as the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a momentous victory for LGBT rights on Monday. The court ruled that a landmark 1964 civil rights law also protects gay and transgender employees against workplace discrimination.

The 6-3 decision centered on three cases — including one lawsuit filed by a Long Island skydiver who didn’t live to see the milestone ruling, reports Newsday’s Yancey Roy. The two justices picked by Trump were split, with Neil Gorsuch writing the majority opinion, joined by four liberal colleagues and Chief Justice John Roberts. Brett Kavanaugh dissented, saying it should be up to Congress to decide on expanding protections.

Trump’s administration backed the employers being sued. It argued that Congress hadn’t intended to stop discrimination based on sexual orientation when it enacted the civil rights law.

Trump’s position was in sync with religious conservatives in his base, but the president’s reaction after the decision was on the mild side. “They’ve ruled and we live with their decision,” he told reporters. “That’s what it’s all about … Very powerful — very powerful decision, actually.” (Read more from “Trump on Transgender SCOTUS Ruling: We Have to Live With It” HERE)

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Gorsuch Applied a Perverse and Upside Down Type of Hermenutics to Statutory Text: A Demonic Twist to Textualism and Originalism

By Senator Josh Hawley. This decision, and the majority who wrote it, represents the end of something. It represents the end of the conservative legal movement, or the conservative legal project, as we know it. After Bostock, that effort, as it has existed up to now, is over. I say this because if textualism and originalism give you this decision, if you can invoke textualism and originalism in order to reach such a decision—an outcome that fundamentally changes the scope and meaning and application of statutory law—then textualism and originalism and all of those phrases don’t mean much at all.

And if those are the things that we’ve been fighting for—it’s what I thought we had been fighting for, those of us who call ourselves legal conservatives—if we’ve been fighting for originalism and textualism, and this is the result of that, then I have to say it turns out we haven’t been fighting for very much.

Or maybe we’ve been fighting for quite a lot, but it’s been exactly the opposite of what we thought we were fighting for.

Now, this is a very significant decision and it marks a turning point for every conservative. And it marks a turning point for the legal conservative movement.

The legal conservative project has always depended on one group of people in particular in order to carry the weight of the votes to actually support this out in public, to get out there and make it possible electorally. And those are religious conservatives. I am one myself. Evangelicals, conservative Catholics, conservative Jews: let’s be honest, they’re the ones who have been the core of the legal conservative effort.

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Workers Can’t Be Fired for Being Gay or Transgender, Supreme Court Rules

By The Hill. The Supreme Court on Monday ruled 6-3 in a landmark decision that gay and transgender employees are protected by civil rights laws against employer discrimination.

A set of cases that came before the court had asked the justices to decide whether Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination on the basis of “sex,” applies to gay and transgender people.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the opinion for the six-member majority, said that it does.

Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender,” Gorsuch wrote. “The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”

Gorsuch was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision. (Read more from “Workers Can’t Be Fired for Being Gay or Transgender, Supreme Court Rules” HERE)

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Here’s How Many Americans Believe We’re on the Brink of a Second Civil War; Researcher Who Predicted 2020 Turmoil Says Social Upheaval Could Escalate to a Civil War

By The Blaze. A new poll released Monday says that as protests and riots continue across the nation, a third of Americans believe the U.S. will see a civil war in the next few years.

After the killing of George Floyd, we watched peaceful protests in the streets, protests demanding police accountability and racial reconciliation.

Then we saw many of those movements hijacked by violent anti-police, anti-capitalist radicals who used the passions of the day to foster riots and looting that burned businesses, destroyed lives, and even took over several Seattle blocks to create some sort of anti-American commune.

While things devolved, Rasmussen Reports polled Americans for their take on where the current civil strife could be heading, Confederate symbols, and race relations.

According to the survey, which was taken June 11-14, 34% of us believe the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years, a three-point jump since 2018. Republicans (40%) and voters unaffiliated with a political party (38%) were far more likely than Democrats (28%) to see a civil war looming. Rasmussen noted that this was a shift since 2018, when Democrats were more worried about a civil war. (Read more from “Here’s How Many Americans Believe We’re on the Brink of a Second Civil War” HERE)

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Researcher Who Predicted 2020 Turmoil Says Social Upheaval Could Escalate to a Civil War

By Complex. . .From a global health crisis to an economic downturn to the worst civil unrest the nation has seen in decades, it seemed no one could’ve predicted just how much turmoil 2020 would bring. Well, except for one man.

In 2010, Peter Turchin wrote a scientific report published in Nature predicting economic and social instabilities would peak around 2020. The researcher at the University of Connecticut cited wage stagnation, public debt, and overproduction of graduates with advanced degrees would be among the structural factors that would trigger chaos “caused by pent-up social pressures that seek an outlet.”

Turchin’s forecast was based on an analysis of anti-government demonstrations from 18th century to 2010. He determined United States experienced spikes in instability approximately every 50 years, around 1870, 1920, and 1970. He predicted the pattern would continue in 2020, as the country was expected to enter “a dip in the so-called Kondratiev wave, which traces 40-60-year economic-growth cycles.” . . .

But there was one major crisis Turchin didn’t see coming: the deadly coronavirus. The potentially fatal disease has wreaked havoc across the world, resulting in nearly half-a-million deaths and severe economic pain due to the widescale lockdowns. Turchin told TIME the high rates of unemployment could very well lead more tensions in the years to come, so much so he is now concerned the situation “may escalate all the way to a civil war.”

“Our conclusion is that, unfortunately, my 2010 forecast is correct. Unfortunately, because I would have greatly preferred it to become a ‘self-defeating prophecy,’ but that clearly has not happened,” he wrote in a recent blog post. “What does it mean for the current wave of protests and riots? The nature of such dynamical processes is such that it can subside tomorrow, or escalate; either outcome is possible. A spark landing even in abundant fuel can either go out, or grow to a conflagration.” (Read more from “Researcher Who Predicted 2020 Turmoil Says Social Upheaval Could Escalate to a Civil War” HERE)

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Justice Gorsuch Fires a Torpedo at Trump’s Re-Election

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch fired a torpedo at President Trump’s re-election campaign on Monday morning. That almost certainly wasn’t his intent, but it will be the political effect of the majority decision he authored in Bostock v. Clayton County and Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda.

Progressives will cheer the high court’s 6-3 decision, ruling that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gay and transgender Americans from discrimination in employment. But the fact that the majority decision was authored by Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, leaving just three of the court’s five conservatives in lonely dissent, will have explosive implications on the right.

During the battle for the Republican nomination in 2016, Trump at first appealed to less religious members of the party while the religious right (conservative white evangelical Protestants and conservative white Catholics) gravitated elsewhere — some to evangelical author Ben Carson, others to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and still others to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Only after Trump had locked down the nomination and pledged to appoint judges to the federal courts who had been verified as reliably conservative by the right-leaning legal organization The Federalist Society did these crucially important groups come around to supporting the ideologically and temperamentally unorthodox (and morally repellant) nominee.

These voters stuck with Trump through the election and have become some of his most loyal supporters ever since for one reason above all others: because Trump vowed to deliver the federal courts to social conservatives. Trump made good on this promise right out of the gate by nominating conservative Gorsuch to the seat on the Supreme Court formerly held by Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016 and whose seat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had held open through the remainder of Barack Obama’s final year in office.

By the time Gorsuch was confirmed and McConnell began fast-tracking a series of judicial nominations to the federal courts, the religious right was firmly in the president’s pocket. That conservatives got a second nomination to the high court less than two years into the Trump administration, replacing the ideologically heterodox Anthony Kennedy with Federalist Society stalwart Bret Kavanaugh, only solidified the bond between Trump and social conservatives. (Read more from “Justice Gorsuch Fires a Torpedo at Trump’s Re-Election” HERE)

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China Creep on Campus: Dozens of Colleges Fail to Disclose Millions in Chinese Donations

Dozens of top American universities that received funding from the Chinese government failed to disclose those donations to the Department of Education, prompting concerns from education watchdogs about Beijing’s growing influence on campuses.

More than 100 U.S. universities host or once hosted Confucius Institutes, programs underwritten by the Chinese government that teach Chinese language and culture to American college students. The Department of Education requires all credentialed universities to disclose foreign gifts of more than $250,000, but only about 30 percent of institutions with Confucius Institutes have disclosed their financial ties to Beijing, according to a Washington Free Beacon review of federal records.

The Free Beacon reached out to all 75 institutions that did not report their funding to the federal government; 22 of them responded. A common theme of the responses was that the colleges did not disclose their donations because their annual receipts did not meet the $250,000 threshold. For example, a spokesman from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville said the college declined to disclose its 2019 Confucius Institute donations because it received only $246,711.

Rachelle Peterson, director of policy at the National Association of Scholars, called the lack of accountability at prestigious universities “alarming.”

“It is extremely alarming how little transparency there is,” she said. “$250,000 is much too high of a threshold. Gifts of money at much smaller amounts can be very swaying over a college or university, especially the humanities [departments] which traditionally have lower funding.” (Read more from “China Creep on Campus: Dozens of Colleges Fail to Disclose Millions in Chinese Donations” HERE)

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Big Surprise: Murder Rate Skyrocketing in New York

. . .Until now. Over the month ­until June 7 — including the crucial Memorial Day weekend — New York’s murder rate more than doubled, to 42 murders, from 18 the year before — a jolt of 133 percent. Shooting victims, including wounded, are up 45 percent. Stabbings are up, too.

To be clear: Going back to the early ’90s, New York has never seen a sustained increase of this magnitude. Nothing close: The nearest spike in the early summer month was a short-lived 63 percent hike in 2006, just half ­today’s increase. And that ­increase did portend an 11 percent murder hike for all of 2006, the second-highest in three decades.

This isn’t an aberration coming off a good spring. For the year, murder is up 25 percent. If these rates hold, New York would end 2020 with an increase in murders twice as high as we’ve seen since 1990.

And no, it mostly isn’t domestic violence, involving people cooped up. Over the past month, we have seen 13 classic street murders in a few blocks around Brownsville: drive-by shootings, stabbing fights. Over the weekend, 19-year-old Tyanna Johnson died in a Bronx park, likely the innocent victim of a drive-by.

Last week, the NYPD launched its regular “summer-all-out” initiative, flooding 10 high-crime precincts with officers. In the past, this has worked to curtail smaller, more limited spikes. (Read more from “Big Surprise: Murder Rate Skyrocketing in New York” HERE)

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