As Washington, D.C., attempts to introduce body cameras to half its police force this year, Mayor Muriel Bowser has been pointing to the financial burden it could place on the city’s budget if footage is released to the public, the Washington Post reports. According to the report, Bowser told members of the City Council Tuesday…

The life of South Carolina state Sen. Clementa Pinckney will be celebrated Friday morning, with President Barack Obama delivering the eulogy for the Democrat, who was also pastor of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. The Root will be live-streaming the event, which will begin at 11 a.m. at the TD Arena at…

A father and stepmother accused of torturing and abusing their 12-year-old son in Detroit have escaped the most serious charge of torture after a district judge threw it out, the Detroit Free Press reports. That charge would have had the father, Charlie Bothuell IV, and stepmother, Monique Dillard-Bothuell, facing the possibility of punishment as severe as life in prison.…

Fire officials have determined that a fire that swept through a primarily black church in Charlotte, N.C., early Wednesday was no accident, Reuters reports. The blaze is estimated to have caused more than $250,000 worth of damage at the Briar Creek Baptist Church, according to the Charlotte Fire Department. “We completed our work on the…

Many in the Twitter universe aren’t happy that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton declared on Tuesday, “All lives matter” during a speech at a black church near Ferguson, Mo. This was just a few miles from where 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed, thereby igniting a national movement to combat police brutality against African Americans. During a campaign stop in Florissant, Mo.,…

It’s not every day you get an honest first-person perspective about the kind of corruption that goes on behind the scenes in police departments nationwide. The blue wall of silence is a notorious institution in the United States. However, on Wednesday on Twitter, one former Baltimore police officer cracked the seal of that code, opening…

Compared with foreign jihadists, non-Muslim extremists pose a greater risk to the United States because they have executed nearly twice as many deadly attacks in the last 14 years, according to a new study described in the New York Times.  The research by the New America Foundation of Washington, D.C., found that since the Sept. 11 attacks, almost…

One South Carolina Republican is against moving the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds, maintaining that the compromise reached in 2000 to move the flag from atop the Statehouse itself “settled” the matter. State Rep. William Chumley instead opined that the focus is on “the wrong thing here” before seemingly pointing the finger at the nine…

Freddie Gray sustained a single “high-energy injury” that officials in Maryland’s Chief Medical Examiner’s Office believe likely occurred when the police van that transported him abruptly decelerated, the Baltimore Sun reports.  Gray’s death, the agency concluded, was a homicide because of police officers’ failure to adhere to safety protocol “through acts of omission.” The Sun…

South Carolina’s House of Representatives and Senate voted on Tuesday to begin a discussion to consider removal of the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds as calls for its departure spread across the nation, the Associated Press reports. A day after Republican Gov. Nikki Haley asked lawmakers to consider the issue in the wake of the…