Serious Crimes by Mayors

April 16, 2026 Former Gettysburg Mayor Arrested on Child Sex Abuse Charges

Former Gettysburg mayor Chad-Alan Carr arrested in Texas on new child sex abuse charges after fleeing Pennsylvania Chad-Alan Carr, the openly gay founder of Gettysburg Pride and former mayor of Gettysburg, was arrested in Palestine, Texas, on April 8, 2026, by the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office in coordination with Pennsylvania authorities. Carr had previously posted bail in Pennsylvania on initial charges but fled to Texas, where he is originally from. The new warrant includes two felony counts of sexual assault, one count of depicting child sex acts on a computer, and two counts of corruption of minors. The charges stem from allegations made by three additional victims who came forward.

Jan 21 2026

Former Madison, Ind mayor pleaded guilty to two felony child exploitation charges

MADISON, Ind. (WAVE) - Former Madison Mayor Timothy Armstrong pleaded guilty to two felony child exploitation charges, avoiding prison time in a plea deal that has left the victim’s father unsatisfied.

Armstrong, who served as the city’s mayor between 2008 and 2011 and was a school resource officer in 2022, changed his plea during a hearing after two years with little case activity. The plea agreement suspends his five-year prison sentence to probation and drops nine of the 11 charges he originally faced.

Victim was 12 when approached at school

The victim was 12 years old when Armstrong approached him at school and began asking sexual questions, according to court records. The boy’s father said Armstrong was “grooming him” and “started asking him about all kinds of different sexual questions, his sexual history.”

The boy reported the inappropriate contact after recognizing it was wrong. Court details describe Armstrong telling the boy it would be funny if the boy sent him a video of a sex act.

Jan 21 2026

Former Dumont Mayor is charged with drugging and raping a teenage boy

Former Dumont Mayor Andrew LaBruno, who is charged with drugging and raping a teenage boy in November, will remain in the Bergen County Jail as prosecutors prepare to turn over additional evidence to his lawyer.

LaBruno, a Jersey City police sergeant, was arrested on November 17, two weeks after he lost a race for State Assembly in the 39th district.

On the day before Thanksgiving, Superior Court Judge Gary Wilcox denied bail to LaBruno, agreeing that he posed a risk to the community and the victim and might obstruct the ongoing criminal investigation – and that he identified himself as an on-duty police officer to police.

Prosecutors allege that LaBruno sprayed an unknown substance into his hand and placed it over the mouth of a teenage boy, causing the incapacitated victim to become dizzy, and then forced him to perform fellatio on him.  He’s accused of committing an act of sexual penetration through the use of coercion and without consent, and knowingly engaging in sexual conduct with a child.

He was charged with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault-force/coercion, and endangering-sexual conduct with a child.

Jan 17, 2026

State lawsuit claims New Jersey town's former mayor directed police to keep minorities out

CLARK, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey town whose former mayor was once heard denigrating Black people on secret recordings made by a whistleblower is now facing a state lawsuit that claims he and local police officials directed officers to keep minorities out of the community.

 A New Jersey town whose former mayor was once heard denigrating Black people on secret recordings made by a whistleblower is now facing a state lawsuit that claims he and local police officials directed officers to keep minorities out of the community.

The complaint, filed by state Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the office's Division on Civil Rights, names former Clark Mayor Sal Bonaccorso, suspended town police chief Pedro Matos and the current police director Patrick Grady as defendants. It claims the town's leaders “systematically discriminated against and harassed Black and other non-white motorists.”

onaccorso, a Republican, was the town's mayor for about 25 years before he resigned in January 2025, just days after starting his seventh term in office. He had been easily reelected in November 2024 despite allegations of corruption. He left office after pleading guilty to using township resources to benefit his private landscaping business and forging signatures on permit applications for work his company performed in the area.

Bonaccorso did not respond to a voicemail message left Friday. When asked about the suit by NJ.com, he texted them back a two-word response, using an expletive to describe the suit.

In 2020, a police officer told officials he had secretly recorded Bonaccorso, Matos and another police official using racial slurs while referring to Blacks. The town agreed to pay $400,000 to settle the matter out of court, but the allegations later became public.

Clark Mayor Angel Albanese, a Republican who succeeded Bonaccorso, called the state's lawsuit “frivolous” and accused Platkin of “playing politics” as his term as attorney general comes to an end. Charles Sciarra, an attorney for Matos, voiced similar views while noting the timing of the suit.

Matos has been on paid leave since the Union County Prosecutor's Office seized control of the police department in July 2020. He has sued Clark to try to block the town from firing him, and those disciplinary proceedings remain active. The prosecutor's oversight ended last March.

The lawsuit claims the town and its police leadership instituted a variety of discriminatory policing practices at the behest of Bonaccorso. Clark is a New York suburb, about 27 miles (43 kilometers) south of Manhattan.

According to an analysis cited by the attorney general's office, Black people were stopped 3.7 times more often than white people in Clark between 2015 and 2020, and Hispanic people were stopped 2.2 times more often than white people.

While some of these racial disparities persisted to some extent even after the prosecutor's oversight began, the data from 2020 to 2024 revealed some notable changes and improvements in policing practices that coincided with the reduction of some of these racial disparities, the attorney general's office said.

 Jan 17, 2026

RIVERVIEW, Mo. (KSDK/CNN NEWSOURCE/WKRC) - The mayor of Riverview has been arrested and charged with multiple sex crimes following a monthslong investigation by St. Louis County police.

Michael Cornell Jr. is accused of sexually assaulting or harassing at least two teenagers and two adults over the past decade, authorities said. He was arrested this week and is being held on a $1 million cash-only bond.   As First Alert 4 news reported, Riverview mayor Mike Cornell Jr. has been charged with four counts of second-degree statutory sodomy, three counts of first-degree sodomy or attempted sodomy, one count of first-degree harassment, and one count of possession of child pornography. There were four victims involved in these incidents, including two minors under the age of 17. 

Lt. Col. Jerry Lohr of the St. Louis County Police Department described Cornell’s alleged conduct as “predatory,” adding that investigators believe there may be additional victims.

The investigation began in December after a victim reported the alleged crimes to another law enforcement agency, which referred the case to St. Louis County police. Court records detail allegations of sexual assault and harassment dating back to 2016, with the most recent incident reported in December 2023.

Just last month, Cornell Jr. alleged without evidence that pro-KKK and anti-Semitic graffiti had been appearing throughout Riverview.

Spanish PM's Wife Charged with Corruption and Bribery

 

April 13, 2026 

In 2024, Milei warned that Pedro Sánchez's wife was corrupt. All the media outlets and the establishment came out to criticize Milei and claim he was wrong. Today, Pedro Sánchez's wife was convicted of charged with four crimes, including corruption and bribery. The decision to formally charge Gómez comes at a fraught time for Sánchez as the prime minister’s younger brother, David, is due to be tried next month on charges of influence-peddling

Milei was right.

Yes, Argentine President Javier Milei faced intense criticism from the Spanish government, EU officials, and various media outlets for calling Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, "corrupt" in May 2024. The remarks, made at a Madrid rally, triggered a severe diplomatic spat, leading Spain to demand a public apology and recall its ambassador to Argentina. 

• Context: While attending a Vox party event in Madrid, Milei described the wife of Socialist PM Pedro Sánchez as "corrupt" and spoke of her being "tainted" while referencing a local investigation.
• Media and Diplomatic Reaction: Spanish officials and European foreign affairs leaders heavily condemned the remarks. Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares described the comments as "unprecedented" and a "frontal attack" on Spanish democracy, demanding a public apology.
• Spanish Government Response: Spain threatened to cut diplomatic ties, prompting the recall of their ambassador to Buenos Aires and warning that an apology was necessary to mend the relations.
• Milei's Stance: Milei refused to apologize, instead using social media to highlight his "surfing on a wave of socialist tears" and framing it as a confrontation with socialist policies, as seen on X (formerly Twitter).
• Result: The incident caused significant tension, with some business leaders warning it could damage investments, according to barrons.com.

Chicago Frequently Has No Police to Send to Urgent Calls

 

High-priority 911 calls—Priority Level 1 and 2, the ones defined as “imminent threat to life, bodily injury, or major property damage”—are the exact emergencies Chicagoans face every day: shots fired, person shot, assault in progress, armed robbery, domestic battery. In 2019, before the progressive crime wave fully metastasized, 19% of those urgent calls had “no officers available” for immediate response.  By 2021, Wirepoints found that number had exploded to 52%—406,829 high-priority incidents in which dispatchers literally had zero cops to send. In 2022 it hit roughly 60%. Through all of 2023, 56% of high-priority calls—437,000 of them—sat in backlog with no units available. Even in 2024, through mid-May, getting a response was still a coin-flip 50%: 127,000 out of 256,000 urgent calls in which nobody came.  That’s not “delayed,” that’s “we have no police available to send to you.”

In Chicago in 2023, more than 1,800 calls were made to 911 of a person being shot. Only about 800 – fewer than half – were responded to immediately by police officers. The other 1,000 callers were victims of 911 backlogs, where no police were available at the time of the call. Those victims had to wait half an hour, an hour, or even several hours for the 911 call backlog to end and for police to finally arrive.

It was the same for the 32,000 911 calls of an assault in progress, where police were only immediately available for 50% of those calls. And it was the same for 54% of the city’s 911 calls of 35,000 batteries in progress. 

In all, there were 783,000 high-priority 911 calls in 2023. For 437,000 of those calls, or 56%, long periods of backlogs meant there were no police immediately available. Wirepoints obtained the 911 call and response data directly from the Chicago Police Department via FOIA.

https://wirepoints.org/if-youre-shot-robbed-or-assaulted-in-chicago-theres-a-50-50-chance-therell-be-no-police-to-respond-to-your-911-call-wirepoints/

2019

When Lashonda Tart desperately needed the police on a summer evening in 2019, they never showed up.  A gunman had fired a hail of bullets that shattered the windows of her Homan Square house while she and her children were inside, she said.   Tart hid her kids in a closet and dialed 911.  They waited.  After 10 minutes she called 911 again. Then she called her neighborhood police station and reported the shooting to the sergeants’ desk.  Fearing for their lives, she and her children waited another hour.  “Nobody ever came,” Tart said.

It wasn’t the first time her calls for help had gone unanswered. But Tart felt she had hit a breaking point, her faith in police destroyed.

“It was very demeaning, degrading,” Tart said. “There was no help, no respite. No nothing.”  Many Chicagoans, especially those living in Black and Latinx neighborhoods, have similar experiences of being left to fend for themselves in times of crisis.  Police leadership has blamed inadequate 911 responses on a shortage of officers and resources. But the police department’s own records suggest the problem isn’t the number of officers — it’s what those officers are doing on their shifts.

Hundreds of Chicago police officers daily are assigned to what the department calls rapid response duty, with the stated mission of responding to emergencies. But a Block Club analysis of police data shows those officers are rarely dispatched to 911 calls.

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In the first half of 2023, only a tenth of the activity reported by rapid response officers was dedicated to 911 calls — a steep drop from 2020, when 911 responses accounted for nearly half of their activity, according to data from the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

Read More

The new ‘stop and frisk’? Chicago police make millions of traffic stops while searching for guns

Chicago police pulled over hundreds of thousands more drivers than they previously reported, but found guns in fewer than 1 out of every 150 stops, according to a new data analysis.

Instead of servicing 911 calls, rapid response officers spent the majority of their time conducting traffic stops, the dispatch data shows.

Rapid response officers conducted at least 36,000 traffic stops in the first half of 2023, accounting for nearly two-thirds of their logged activity. That’s nearly double the portion that traffic stops made up in 2019.  Besides traffic stops, the rapid response officers reported thousands of other activities, including community interactions, domestic disturbance checks, burglary responses, emergencies at CTA stations, and wellness checks. But these other activities have made up a smaller and smaller share of rapid response officers’ documented work in recent years, the dispatch data shows.

The wait times for emergency assistance show that the police department needs to reexamine how it uses its officers, say public safety advocates and the city’s own inspector general.  “This is not a resource shortage problem,” said inspector general Deborah Witzburg. “This is about resource allocation.”

Boomers And Millennials -- Economic Situation at Similar Ages

 

The question is next to impossible to answer, but we can still try. Older millennials graduated into the 2007-09 recession, and most of the generation was in their 20s and 30s during the Covid-19 pandemic. Boomers weathered an oil crisis, high inflation and high interest rates as they got their start in the 1970s and ’80s.

To see how the finances of two of the biggest generations in American history stack up, we looked at some key data points from when they were similar ages. (Yes, other generations, we know you exist, too.)

Let’s start with income. The oldest millennials are now 45, and these charts show the median individual income for them and for boomers in their early decades of adulthood, adjusted for inflation.

Median total income in 2024 dollars, by age group

Baby boomers’ peak years in age group

Millennials’ peak years in age group

AGE GROUP: 25 TO 34

AGE GROUP: 35 TO 44

$60 thousand

Millennials

enter age group

50

Baby boomers

enter age group

Millennials

enter age group

40

Baby boomers

enter age group

30

20

10

0

1970

’80

’90

2000

’10

’20

1970

’80

’90

2000

’10

’20

Note: Data available through 2024.

Source: Current Population Survey via IPUMS/University of Minnesota

Millennials’ median incomes at these ages were roughly on par with Boomers’, and gains over the past decade put millennials in a better position than many recognize.

“I think that that bump up in the last 10 years still hasn’t been properly assimilated into the public conversation,” said Nathan Wilmers, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

At the same time, Wilmers thinks it is understandable that millennials would be frustrated that their incomes haven’t been keeping pace with GDP per capita. 

“Let’s say you’re an American who expects that as our country gets richer, your income should be going up” proportionally, he said. “Millennials rightly perceive that that has not been the case, at least in the early part of their career.”

One major source of tension is buying a house, an area where boomers and millennials both have a point. 

How affordable was a house?

Median price of a new home in 2025 dollars, adjusted for changes in affordability based on median household income and mortgage rates

$600 thousand

Baby boomers make up

some or all of 25-34 age group

500

400

Millennials make up some or all of 25-34 age group

300

200

100

0

’80

’85

’90

’95

2000

’05

’10

’15

’20

’25

1975

Note: Assumes a 20% down payment and a 33% debt-to-income ratio.

Source: First American analysis of Freddie Mac and Census Bureau data

Millennials looking to buy a home in the mid-2020s after a steep run-up in prices have had a tough time. But so did the boomers shopping for a house in the early 1980s, when mortgage rates peaked above 18%.

“It was indeed more expensive in today’s dollars to buy a home during that period, and pretty substantially so,” said Odeta Kushi, deputy chief economist at First American, a provider of title and settlement services.

Meanwhile, the relative affordability during the 1990s and 2010s underlines the variety of experiences within generational labels that include tens of millions of people. Older and younger boomers started buying homes under very different conditions, just as older and younger millennials did.

“Housing is the middle class’s wealth engine—and many millennials showed up after the train already left the station,” said Ana Hernández Kent, who runs AK Research & Consulting.

As with housing, the costs of other individual goods and services change at different rates than overall inflation. Millennials’ incomes go further than boomers’ did on some of households’ biggest expenses, but not on others. 

Cumulative change in select consumer-price index categories vs. median total income (ages 25-34)

College tuition and fees

Day care and preschool

Rent of shelter

1,500%

1,000

500

0

1970

’80

’90

2000

’10

’20

Food at home

New vehicles

1,500%

1,000

Median total income (ages 25-34)

500

0

1970

’80

’90

2000

’10

’20

Note: Consumer-price index data are seasonally adjusted and start in different years.

Sources: Labor Department (categories); Current Population Survey via IPUMS/University of Minnesota (income)

Given this variation, perhaps it isn’t surprising that each generation feels some living costs make it tough to get ahead.

In a WSJ-NORC poll last year, more than two-thirds of respondents—including majorities of each age group—said that the American dream doesn’t hold true today. 

“The reality is this sense of two-way resentment is overblown,” said Bobby Duffy, author of “The Generation Myth: Why When You’re Born Matters Less Than You Think.”

That said, there is one area where millennials definitively have had it harder than Boomers.

The cost of college in particular shot up, which helped make student debt a ballooning line item on millennials’ balance sheets. 

Median student-loan balance in year entering repayment, in 2026 dollars

$30 thousand

Youngest millennial turns 18

25

Oldest millennial turns 24

20

15

Youngest baby boomer turns 24

10

5

Oldest baby boomer turns 24

0

’75

’80

’85

’90

’95

2000

’05

’10

1970

Note: Data analyzed through 2014. Includes federal loans for undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Source: Adam Looney and Constantine Yannelis analysis of Education Department data

Paying back these loans dragged on millennials’ ability to build wealth, said Constantine Yannelis, an economist at the University of Cambridge. But the pay premium that came with bachelor’s and advanced degrees gave them a boost after leaving school.

“Millennials earned less and studied more in their 20s,” Yannelis said. “A large part of this cycle just has to do with the nature of making large investments in education, which on average pay off.”

Millennials are now years out of college and, lately, they have done so well that their household net worth exceeds that of boomers at similar ages, both on average and at the median, after adjusting for inflation.

Average household net worth in 2025 dollars, by each generation's average age

$1.00 million

0.75

Millennials' average net worth

now exceeds baby boomers’

at similar ages

0.50

0.25

0

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Note: Data for millennials' net worth also includes some members of Generation Z. Historical data for baby boomers begins at age 34.

Source: Ana Hernández Kent analysis of Federal Reserve data

“Many of them have been able to capitalize on the stock- and housing-market gains of recent years, and as a group, they appear to be in a relatively good place, financially speaking,” Kent said.

Of course, boomers also are doing just fine today. They are the richest generation overall, holding more than half of the country’s wealth, according to the Fed. 

“That’s partly because they’re older, but also because they bought homes earlier and rode decades of asset appreciation,” said Kent.

Boomers are faring even better than their own predecessors. Their median household net worth in 2022 was significantly higher than that of Americans who were the same ages in 1983 and 2001, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Federal Reserve data. 

And yet, when boomers were starting out, they were dogged by some of the same anxieties as millennials. In 1983, Money magazine teased a story about baby boomers on its cover by asking, “Can They Ever Live as Well as Their Parents?”

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