One officer was injured, and multiple spectators were set ablaze during an out-of-control street race takeover in Austin, Texas.
Multiple 911 calls were received Saturday night at around 9 p.m. about cars and a crowd causing mayhem by blocking an intersection, setting off fireworks, and street racing in the downtown area, according to the Austin Police Department.
Several police vehicles were damaged after the unruly crowd began throwing fireworks, bottles, rocks, and pointing lasers at responding officers.
“One officer sustained a non-life-threatening injury, was treated at a local hospital, and was released,” according to the department.
Police arrested two people for evading arrest and are still investigating the incident.
“APD is committed to stopping this conduct. Lawbreaking in this manner will result in enforcement and arrest. Our community’s safety is the #1 priority for APD,” the department wrote on Twitter.
In a video posted on social media of the lawless takeover, a pickup truck was seen driving through fire while doing donuts at an intersection.
As the truck drove over the flames on the ground, a small explosion led to fire spewing toward a crowd of people who were briefly engulfed by the flames.
Multiple people in the video were seen on fire as they stripped off their clothes and ran for safety, as others attempted to pat them down while still cheering and laughing.
Their conditions are unknown.
In another video posted on Twitter, a massive crowd began pushing back a police cruiser by slamming on the vehicle’s hood, disregarding the emergency vehicle’s blaring lights and sirens.
The chaos didn’t end until nearly two in the morning after the crowd began to disperse.
Local Council Member Alison Alter voiced her outrage over the incident, saying she was put on hold by 911 for 28 minutes after she attempted to call to report the takeover, she told Austin American-Statesman.
Lack of staffing for 911 operators has been an issue in Austin, with the average hold time for calls being two and a half minutes, according to an October report by Fox News.
The Austin Police Association took to social media, blaming lawmakers in Austin who “failed to make the right decisions & continue to defund, destroy, & demoralize public safety.”
Other Texas lawmakers who saw the chaos on social media began calling for a solution to stop these dangerous takeovers.
“God bless our brave men and women in blue! Especially those working in cities where they’re undervalued, underpaid and under attack, like in Austin,” State Rep. Jeff Leach wrote on Twitter.
“We should come together as a community to figure out how to keep this from happening again, how to keep our community safe, and how to enable our law enforcement to respond in a quick and effective manner,” Rep. Vikki Goodwin wrote on Twitter about the Takeover.
Takeovers usually involve hundreds of people and multiple cars gathering in an unauthorized area like an intersection or interstate and blocking traffic while performing dangerous and chaotic stunts and activities.
MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson devoted a segment to covering the assault on Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) during Thursday’s edition of “Hallie Jackson Reports.”
Jackson, who described the incident as “disturbing,” interviewed the cable network’s Capitol Hill correspondent, Ryan Nobles, according to the news site Mediaite.
During the segment, Jackson told her viewers that the network obtained the police report.
“Our team has gotten the police report in the last hour,” Jackson said. She then read from the report which described the attacker as “acting erratic as if he was under the influence of an unknown substance.”
As Jackson read from the report, MSNBC posted a copy of the police report which included Craig’s unredacted address. The police report was shown to viewers for at least 15 seconds, according to Mediaite.
Nobles told viewers that the 50-year-old Craig “appears to be okay, at least physically after this attack.” He noted that the congresswoman was spotted on Capitol Hill that day.
“She was already back on the job after what happened, so that is definitely a good sign,” Nobles said.
The Post has sought comment from MSNBC.
A statement posted to Craig’s official Twitter account stated on Thursday that the Democratic lawmaker had been assaulted at around 7:15 a.m. in her elevator.
Craig “defended herself from the attacker and suffered bruising, but is otherwise physically okay,” the statement read.
An aide to Craig wrote that she called 911 and the assailant fled. There is no evidence that the attack was politically motivated, according to Craig’s office.
Investigators told MSNBC that the attacker was a homeless man “who found his way into the elevator with Congresswoman Craig, puncher her in the chin and grabbed her around the neck.”
Craig was then able to “fend him off by throwing hot coffee on him, and then he took off, got out of the elevator and ran.”
A man has filed a defamation lawsuit against a Florida sheriff who posts weekly “Wheel of Fugitive” videos on social media, saying that he wasn’t a fugitive when his name and image appeared several times in 2021 in the sheriff’s posts inspired by the long-running TV game show “Wheel of Fortune.”
Because of the sheriff’s posts, David Gay lost a job and suffered emotional distress, according to the lawsuit seeking more than $50,000 in damages. The lawsuit was filed last week in state court in Brevard County, along Florida’s Space Coast.
Gay’s prospective boss called him as he was driving to his first day of work and told him not to bother showing up as he had seen Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey’s “Wheel of Fugitive” videos, the lawsuit said.
A spokesman for the sheriff’s office on Monday didn’t respond to an emailed inquiry seeking comment about the lawsuit.
In the videos posted to social media, Ivey spins a wheel with photos of what are described as 10 of the county’s most wanted fugitives.
Gay was involved in the court system for an undisclosed offense and was sentenced in November 2020 to three years of probation for a withhold of adjudication, a special sentence in which a defendant is not formally convicted of an offense, the lawsuit said.
Gay was taken into custody for violation of probation in January 2021 after he had been arrested several weeks earlier on a misdemeanor domestic battery charge. He says he believed his father had gotten into a physical altercation with his mother, and the case was dismissed eventually.
However, while Gay was in jail for the violation of probation arrest, Ivey said in a “Wheel of Fugitive” video that Gay was a fugitive, when in reality he was already in the Brevard County Jail, according to the lawsuit.
Gay was featured in three more episodes of “Wheel of Fugitive,” including on the day after he was sentenced to probation under the same terms that previously had been imposed and was released from custody, the lawsuit said.
Authorities responded to a shooting at a Walmart in Evansville, Indiana, on Thursday evening, where they said at least one victim was injured. The suspect was killed during a shootout with police, authorities said.
The Evansville Police Department tweeted on Thursday night about the shooting, encouraging people to avoid the area: “Active shooter inside Walmart West. EPD on scene. Avoid the area!”
Sgt. Anna Gray of the Evansville Police Department said during a press conference hours after the shooting was initially reported that the suspect ran throughout the store during the gunfight with police.
“He would shoot at officers and move,” Gray said. “He was all throughout the store.”
Gray confirmed one female victim was transported to the hospital. She also said police responded swiftly to the scene and did not wait outside of the store.
“We have been trained that if there’s an active threat, we go in – we don’t pause, we don’t take time to try to figure out what’s going on. We go in and we go where the shots are being fired,” Gray said.
A few minutes after the initial tweet, EPD said the suspect had been “neutralized.”
“Threat has been neutralized and is in custody,” police said.
They also said officers were tending to an undisclosed number of victims.
Other victims reportedly fled the store as police were arriving at the scene. EPD encouraged any victims who may have been injured to go to the hospital.
Reporter Breann Boswell of 14 News reported the male suspect fired at officers “multiple times” before officers returned fire, killing him.
Wayne Hart of WEHT similarly reported the suspect was shot and killed.
Fox News has reached out to the Evansville Police Department for additional information.
Gray has asked for witnesses to come forward with information that would assist in their investigation.
“A lot of people were fleeing,” she said Thursday night. “We do ask that any witnesses call in if they have information.”
Just three weeks into her tenure as the first woman to helm the New York City Police Department, Commissioner Keechant Sewell faced an immense tragedy in her new force — the fatal shooting of two police officers in a Harlem ambush.
Her first year on the job was book-ended by attacks on cops when an alleged Islamic extremist came at officers with a machete just blocks from Times Square on New Year’s Eve, leaving three injured.
“As evidenced last night, there are significant dangers in this profession,” Sewell said in a message to the city’s Finest on New Year’s Day. “Be it your first day, or any other, you face the challenges and malevolent forces across this city head on, to prevent the victimization of others.
“This is the legacy of the NYPD,” she continued, “I am honored to serve with each of you and am truly grateful that our officers will recover.”
Praised by Mayor Eric Adams for her “emotional intelligence” when hired, the media-shy commissioner has given few interviews — even hurrying away from a Post reporter at an event earlier this year — and rarely strayed off script in public.
But Sewell’s impassioned speech at Harlem Hospital, and her turning down questions from the press there late on the evening of Jan. 21, 2021 — when a domestic violence suspect shot Officers Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora — gained her some early respect among the rank-and-file.
Cops felt some optimism that the outsider from Nassau County would address numerous long-standing issues in the department — but low morale among the force has been one among several challenges the new commissioner has had to face since taking office.
While the Big Apple has seen a dip in murders in 2022, the NYPD has struggled to stem soaring crime — including major felonies such as robberies and assaults — and grappled with a spate of heinous, high-profile subway attacks.
The NYPD refused to make the police commissioner available for an interview with The Post it could select the reporter, and did not comment.
In 2022, Adams and his Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Phil Banks directed Sewell’s police administration to focus on the unprecedented surge in gun violence.
This lead to the rollout of rebranded anti-crime teams, dubbed Neighborhood Safety Teams, which fulfilled a campaign promise of Adams, as well as a redeployment of desk cops across the city.
That figure still remains a far cry from the pre-pandemic levels in the city — and all other major felonies aside from homicide were up on the year. Overall index crime — meaning those against a person or property — was up nearly 23% as of last week.
Police have another grim trend to overcome: one in 10 of gun violence victims in 2022 were children. New York City’s youth has increasingly fallen prey to wild shootouts or have been targeted over an argument.
The department and mayor’s public safety team also have yet to lay out a plan to combat the wave of retail theft in the city. Adams recently held a summit with dozens of business leaders and crime fighters to brainstorm a plan.
Meanwhile, unlike her predecessors — who were eager to speak in front of the cameras — Sewell has opted to work more behind the scenes in the department.
She has taken a back seat to the mayor, who has been front-and-center at most large public safety announcements, most notably when Adams unveiled the Neighborhood Safety Teams, and his mental health plan for homelessness.
Police sources said the commissioner even went off the grid ahead of one press conference she had been slated to attend this year, forcing her first deputy to step in at the last minute.
Sewell has appeared at just as many breaking news events as her immediate predecessor Dermot Shea during each of their first year on the job.
But Shea — — who assumed the position in 2019 under then-Mayor Bill de Blasio — also sat for 79 interviews with reporters, while Sewell has only done nine, according to their schedules and press clippings.
Still, the new commish’s scaled-back public schedule has earned her points with the rank-and-file.
“She seems more genuine than her predecessor, and diversifying the executives by replacing the old mentality chiefs that can’t adapt to the changes in time,” a police source said.
Another police officer, with more than 20 years on the job, said the commissioner seemed to be making improvements in the department.
“It’s the job, the way the job hammers everyone,” the cops said of morale among the force. Speaking to people, they kind of like her.”
Others believe little has changed, with surging overtime and favoritism continuing to go unchecked in the new administration.
“Not much teeth there in her administration,” a police source said.
Another source griped the mayor is at fault.
“He promised too much and he can’t deliver… ask any cop.”
Some officers, who saw the former Nassau County Police Department chief of detectives as a carpetbagger when she first stepped into the role, have since changed their tune — and praised Sewell for telling cops she would amend the disciplinary guidelines.
“People are saying it had to be changed because it was overkill,” said one source of the NYPD’s discipline matrix, which lays out penalties for misconduct by officers and was developed with the help of advocacy groups and the public.
Insiders opined the move meant Banks was the man behind the curtain at the NYPD.
At the start, Banks often side-stepped the commissioner to speak with three-star chiefs and influenced a series of internal moves — including personally firing the head of Internal Affairs Joseph Reznick, police sources said.
Since then, rumors have circulated in the department of ongoing power struggle at One Police Plaza.
“The word is she fights with Banks on a lot of things,” one source, the Brooklyn cop with more than 20 years on the job, said.
But Sewell seemed to be pushing back against the male-dominated power structure — including when she delivered a fiery and well-received speech to the Policewomen’s Endowment Association in November.
“Understand that you will be second-guessed, told what you should say, told what you should write by some with half your experience,” she said.
“They don’t know any better.”
Police sources said that in recent months however, a new faction in police leadership has emerged following the appointment of Jeff Madrey — a longtime friend of the mayor’s — as chief of department.
“It’s commendable that [he’s] loyal to his friends,” one source said of the mayor, “but on some things he should just be like, ‘Yo, bro, fall back and let her do her thing. Mind your business.’”
Three overnight stabbings in the Bronx and Manhattan left one person dead and a man and woman injured, cops said.
A 63-year-old man was fatally stabbed in the chest and a 38-year-old woman was stabbed in the torso in front of 1335 College Avenue in the Bronx at around 4 a.m., cops said.
Both took private transportation to Bronx Lebanon Hospital where the man was pronounced dead, cops said. The woman was in stable condition.
The “victims were involved in a dispute with an unknown individual who stabbed them,” a police spokeswoman said. There was no known motive, she said.
Meanwhile, a man was stabbed in the stomach at East 21st Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan’s Flatiron District at around 2:30 a.m., police said.
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He was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition. The suspect, who was wearing a yellow jacket and gray jeans, fled on 21st Street on foot, cops said. There was no known motive.
El Paso, Texas — Wearing baggy blue jeans and hoodies and looking scruffy and unkempt, the state’s elite undercover squad could easily be mistaken for the bedraggled smugglers they are trying to apprehend, or the migrants pouring over the southern border from Mexico.
These specially trained members of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety have perhaps the most dangerous job on the border, acting as double agents and facing certain death if their cover is blown.
Their mission is to blend in with the migrant hordes, identify and apprehend cartel members, human traffickers and drug dealers, as part of the DPS’ efforts to keep criminal elements from entering the US.
The unit is so secretive DPS officials refuse to say how many agents are part of the department, where they specifically operate or allow them to pose for photographs which would reveal their identity, due to concerns for their safety.
“We really can’t say anything,” said Matthew Mull, Major with the DPS’s Criminal Investigation Division in El Paso during The Post’s ride-along with DPS earlier this week.
Members of the CID worked alongside DPS’s pilots to provide them with coordinates to chase down a group of smugglers transporting more than a dozen migrants in an overloaded Jeep Wednesday.
A handful of CID agents in their jeans and hoodies swooped into a stash house and arrested two young smugglers.
The Post’s eyewitness reporter at the raid said: “We could not tell the difference between who were the migrants and who were the agents. It was only after they opened their coats that I saw their badges. None of them spoke.”
The trooper who accompanied us said they were the elite team.
“They were grizzled, hard-beaten guys who looked like they had seen it all. Tough guys.”
Agents for the CID are involved in numerous investigations and agencies on both sides of the border.
Their website states its “personnel collaborate with internal and external stakeholders from across the state and internationally to identify, investigate, disrupt, and/or dismantle drug trafficking, human trafficking, and criminal gang organizations.”
As well as tracking organized crime, a separate arm of the CID handles special investigations, while another offers surveillance, forensics and other support.
The CID agents offer a sharp contrast to their DPS counterparts, who wear tan uniforms and cowboy hats as well as shiny black boots.
“That’s just the way they like to dress,” Mull told The Post. “It’s typically the way they do business.”
The CID unit was begun during the Second World War and was then known as Criminal Law Enforcement. In 2009, when DPS underwent an overhaul, the unit was renamed with a focus on intelligence gathering and including a mentorship program for state troopers who can opt to train with the unit, which also investigates vehicle theft, Mull said.
A Florida police officer was given three doses of Narcan after she was exposed to fentanyl and reportedly overdosed during a traffic stop Tuesday.
Shocking video shows the moment Tavares Officer Courtney Bannick was administered the opioid overdose-reversing drug as she lay motionless on the side of a road just after midnight.
Bannick found narcotics — which police believe contained the deadly drug — in a rolled-up dollar bill inside the vehicle she and the other officers pulled over, according to local reports.
Shortly after, she began struggling to breathe.
Another officer at the scene heard her choking and breathless over her radio and walked over. He found her drifting “in and out of consciousness and needing immediate medical attention,” the Tavares Police Department said in a release obtained by Click Orlando.
That officer and two others laid Bannick on the ground and quickly administered Narcan. She was brought back and was talking before she again lost consciousness and appeared to have stopped breathing, the body cam footage released by the department shows.
“She was completely lifeless. She looks deceased in these videos,” Tavares Police Det. Courtney Sullivan told Fox 35 Orlando. “So she’s very thankful today.”
In total, the cops gave Bannick three doses of Narcan before an ambulance arrived and took her to an area hospital. She is expected to make a full recovery.
The officers believe Bannick, who was wearing gloves when handling the narcotics, may have been exposed due to the wind blowing the drugs into her system. The officers planned to test the substance at the station and not at the scene because it was so windy.
“I have done this one-hundred times before the same way. It only takes one time and a minimal amount,” Bannick said. “I’m thankful I wasn’t alone and had immediate help.”
She requested that the alarming video be released in order to spread awareness of the dangers of fentanyl.
“If the other officers weren’t there, there’s a very high chance and probability that today would be different and that we would be wearing our thin blue line – the straps that go over our badges,” Sullivan said.
The individuals who were pulled over by the officers and allegedly had the drugs in their possession are facing possible felony charges. Their names have not been released because they haven’t been charged yet, the department said.
Police in a suburban Chicago town saved a child who was drowning in an icy pond on Wednesday.
The 9-year-old child fell into an icy retention pond on Wednesday around 4:30 p.m. while trying to get a football, according to the Aurora Police Department. When officers got to the scene, they saw that an adult woman also went in the pond to save the child from drowning.
Officers went into the pond and saved both the woman and child and brought them back to land, officials said in a Facebook post.
The 9-year-old was sent to a local hospital with minor injuries after the incident, in addition to two police officers who rescued the child in the pond.
All individuals have been released from area hospitals.
In body camera video released by the police department, officers can be seen using a water rescue kit to bring both the child and adult back to land, while two officers went into the water.
In an interview released by the police department, the mother of the child drowning said that she thought her “son was not going to be here” when she saw him drowning.
“I want to thank all the people who rescued him,” the mother said.
The funeral was taking place inside the church when the shots were fired outside.
Five out of the six people injured sustained gunshot wounds, with the sixth victim injured while trying to escape the chaos.
Three of the victims shot self-transported themselves to local hospitals, while emergency personnel transported the other three people injured in the madness.
All six victims of the shooting were reported to be in stable condition.
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