Richmond police today are continuing to investigate an exchange of gunfire while serving a search warrant in the city’s East End last night.

Less than 24 hours after the worst mass shooting at a U.S. military base, a gunman yesterday killed one and injured five at an Orlando, Fla., office building. News of such scenarios, though still jarring, has become all too familiar. “We periodically have these types of crimes in the United States. The unusual thing is to have two incidents so close together,“ said Dr. Joan L. Neff, a criminologist and associate professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Richmond.

Chief Justice John Roberts spoke out in vain Tuesday against a lower court ruling he says will “grant drunk drivers ‘one free swerve’” that could potentially end someone’s life.

An 8-year-old Westover Hills Elementary School pupil brought an unloaded .22-caliber pistol to school in his backpack today. The third-grader apparently brought the weapon to school from home, and it was discovered by his teacher after two other students reported it. The boy apparently mentioned the gun to his classmates, said Richmond schools spokeswoman Felicia Cosby.

A former Richmond police officer has been arrested and charged with impersonating a law-enforcement officer when he allegedly pulled over an off-duty cop in December. Henrico County Police Lt. Doug Barker said Philip Flournoy, 35, of Cottontree Court in Ashland was arrested Wednesday. Barker said at the time of the incident Henrico authorities received a call from an off-duty police officer who said that a truck was tailgating her on Gaskins Road. The off-duty police officer pulled over and Flournoy then identified himself as a police officer.

Watch scenes from a film Richmond police hope will help them reduce youth violence.

North Richmond residents and community leaders met last night to discuss the future of the Cultural Diversity Center, with some participants addressing how the business might succeed in a way that doesn’t disturb its neighbors. Jeff Neal, chairman of the North Richmond H.O.P.E. Council, which called the neighborhood meeting, criticized what he called “disgusting” fliers that were being distributed by promoters of teenage parties at the center. The fliers enticed girls to wear bathing suits or other skimpy attire.

Richmond police have arrested three men in connection with thefts from motor vehicles in the Fan. Since those arrests last month, such thefts in the Fan and nearby Randolph neighborhoods have decreased by 66 percent, police said. From July 1 through July 19, when the third arrest was made, there were 22 thefts from motor vehicles in those neighborhoods. From July 20 through Sunday, there have been only seven.

Jurors acquitted two Richmond police officers accused of obstruction of justice.

A jury was selected today for the case of three Richmond police officers charged with obstruction of justice.

Richmond officials have done the wise and correct thing by circumscribing the personal use of squad cars by city police officers. Prior to the change, cops could drive the cars home, even if home lay far afield of the city limits. For the most part they now will be able to do so only within the jurisdictional boundaries. Parking a Richmond police car in a Richmond residential neighborhood can have a healthy deterrent effect. Parking one on the street in New Kent or Powhatan probably achieves little but the raising of curious eyebrows.

The Richmond Police Department will introduce its three new geldings to the public tomorrow at an “open stables” event. Police Chief Bryan T. Norwood has doubled the number of horses and officers in the department’s mounted patrol squad to six of each, keeping a promise he made shortly after he became chief late last year. New horses Beau, Howie and Turbo Diesel—all donated—have joined geldings Rio, Raleigh and Road Runner in the mounted unit. The three newest officers are Craig Buchbinder, Dawn Lehmann and Monica Watson.

LaToya Carter says she never saw what hit her. She had dropped a friend off early Friday morning and was turning left off Swanson Road to head eastbound on Hull Street Road. “I didn’t see him at all,“ she said of Richmond police officer Mark Levy’s Ford Crown Victoria. “As I was making a turn, I noticed something smacked my car . . . and his car went flying into the bricks.“

Richmond police have reversed course and cleared a woman they originally charged in a predawn wreck last week on Hull Street Road that left an officer injured. Police Chief Bryan T. Norwood said yesterday that his department was continuing its investigation of the crash and had withdrawn a charge of failure to yield the right of way that had been filed against Latoya D. Carter, 27, of Richmond.

Police from the city of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University shot and wounded a motorist early this morning after the driver charged at officers with a knife during a traffic stop, authorities said.