CRIME REPORT

Guns are Out of Control in the Cribs of the Ghetto

PERFECT SOLUTION

So many times we all forget that the children are our future. When these children suffer betrayal and abuse at the hands of those charged with protecting them society ends up suffering with them. Crime, substance abuse, a sense of morality disturbed from the neglect and abuse, are the results of such a pained life, if left untreated.

The Yahweh Center Children's Village is a Christ-centered residential treatment facility for abused, neglected, and at risk children. If you would like to know a little bit about them then please check out the video below and feel free to contact them at administrator@yahwehcenter.org. If you would like to check the Yahweh Center out online then please visit their website at http://www.yahwehcenter.org. Thank you for helping heal the hurt. We fully support this organization and encourage you to participate in healing the hearts and minds of these children whom they guide through a life most of us were fortunate enough to have been spared... by the Grace of God.

Please take the time to watch the video and learn how a community of generous people, with love in their hearts, can come together and create such a wonderful facility. There is nothing institutional about this place. It is like going to grandma's house for respite and attention.

God Bless you Carla Roberts for having this vision!

The link to Carla Roberts appearance on the Blue Line Radio Show.

TASER TARGET

SOME JUSTICE

Headlines in America after the arrest of 7 Marines and one Navy corpsman said, "Iraqis accuse soldiers of kidnapping and murdering civilian Iraqi."

All parties to the case of Hashim Ibrahim Awad al-Zobaie agree that he was shot dead by Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment on April 26 in the small central Iraqi village of Hamdaniyah. But there are differing accounts of his death, and they are at the heart of another investigation into the conduct of American forces in Iraq.

Members of the Marine foot patrol under investigation in the case said they came upon Hashim digging a hole for a bomb near his home in the Sunni Arab village of about 30 homes near Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad. The Marines said they killed Hashim in a brief gun battle and that they found an AK-47 assault rifle and a shovel by his side.

THEN THE TRIAL BEGAN

“A Navy corpsman testified that Marines in his patrol seized an Iraqi civilian from his home, threw him into a hole and put at least 10 bullets in his head and chest after growing frustrated in their search for an insurgent. Petty Officer 3rd Class Melson J. Bacos said he saw a Marine put fingerprints from the victim onto a rifle and on a shovel to implicate him as an insurgent. ‘I was shocked and I felt sick to my stomach,’ Bacos said. Bacos, a medic who had been on patrol with the squad, was charged along with seven Marines in the slaying of Hashim Ibrahim Awad last spring in the town of Hamdania.

HADITHA

In the Haditha cases, where enlisted Marines are charged with murder, defense attorneys assert their clients were following the rules of engagement when they shot 24 Iraqi civilians, including women and children, minutes after a fellow Marine was killed by a roadside bomb in November 2005. Five were pulled from a taxi and killed, and 19 were killed in three nearby houses.

The military officer overseeing the case against a U.S. Marine charged with murder in the November 2005 killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha has recommended in July that the charges be dropped.

Lt. Col. Paul Ware, who heard evidence against Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt during a five-day hearing in June, made the recommendation in an 18-page report to Lt. Gen. James Mattis released late on Tuesday.

Mattis, the top commander of the Marines fighting in Iraq, will decide whether or not Sharratt must proceed to court-martial, the military version of a trial.

"Whether this was a brave act of combat against the enemy or tragedy of misperception born out of conducting combat with an enemy that hides among innocents, Lance Cpl. Sharratt's actions were in accord with the rules of engagement and use of force," Ware said in the recommendation.

PANTANO

These killings occurred on April 15, 2004, near Mahmudiyah, as Lieutenant Pantano led a platoon to search a house suspected of being an insurgent lair. When the marines approached, two men left in a white sedan, according to testimony at the hearing, but were stopped on Lieutenant Pantano's order. No weapons were found on the men, who were handcuffed as a Navy corpsman checked their car for weapons. When he was told that weapons and other contraband were found inside the house, Lieutenant Pantano ordered the men unhandcuffed and then directed them to search their car themselves.

Lieutenant Pantano supervised while the corpsman, George Gobles, and a Marine sergeant, Daniel Coburn, stood facing away as sentries. Lieutenant Pantano said that the men made a threatening move toward him after repeatedly talking with each other in Arabic and that he fired, emptying his M-16 rifle's magazine. He reloaded and emptied the second one, a total of as many as 50 bullets.

He acknowledged placing a hand-scrawled cardboard sign reading "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" atop the car, against which the bodies lay. The sign and the number of rounds fired, according to lieutenant Pantano's statement, were meant to send a message to other Iraqis about what happens to those who join insurgents.

The sign and its placement resulted in a formal accusation of desecration, in addition to the two accusations of premeditated murder.

The officer who conducted Pantano's hearing, Lt. Col. Mark E. Winn, recommended in a report to General Huck that criminal charges were not warranted, but sharply criticized Lieutenant Pantano's decision to have the car stopped and to focus so closely on the two men to begin with. Colonel Winn recommended nonjudicial discipline, because the sign and the number of rounds fired were in his opinion unwarranted and excessive. Lieutenant Edwards said, however, that General Huck would not issue any nonjudicial punishment.

MURDER OF HASHIM IBRAHIM AWAD- al ZOBAIE

Hutchins is one of seven U.S. Marines and one U.S. sailor with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, charged in the April 26, 2006, killing of the Iraqi in Hamdania.

Five members of the squad, including the Navy medic, pled guilty to lesser charges in connection with the shooting. A military jury convicted a sixth member, team leader Cpl. Trent Thomas, of conspiracy and kidnapping and sentenced him to reduction to private, forfeiture of all military pay and benefits and a bad-conduct discharge.

A separate military jury on Wednesday found Cpl. Marshall Magincalda guilty of larceny and housebreaking as well as conspiracy to murder.

The jury will now begin considering his sentence.