Police & Official Misconduct 2
JUSTICE FOR
KELLY THOMAS!
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Rambo First Blood:
why are you pushing me
You're Under Arrest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIIh27YjtZo
Shower
Rambo vs cops
Helicopter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQdp_0nJlUQ&list=PLb1lmr_ObEWvZqvFF0TX1BOROxVCVsStQ&index=18
Rambo: Good supply of body bags
Teasle vs. Trautman
'they drew first blood'
National Guard Heros blow up cave scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=201NIzKvyXs
"... there are no friendly civilians... there would be no trouble if it weren't for that king shit cop... all I wanted was something to eat ... the man kept pushing...they drew first blood..."
- Rambo (First Blood)
What is police brutality?
Depends on where you live
...There are no hard national standards, no binding state policies, not even a national database that tracks how often, where, and under what circumstances police use deadly force. The result, say scholars, is a free-wheeling space in American law and police policy. The nation’s 17,000 law enforcement agencies set their own terms—and when citizens cry foul, the courts spit out wildly inconsistent results.
...Although Congress instructed the Attorney General in 1994 to compile and publish annual statistics on police use of excessive force, this was never carried out, and the FBI does not collect this data either.
Our Government Has No Idea How Often Police Get Violent With Civilians
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119192/police-use-force-stats-us-are-incomplete-and-unreliable
... no federal authority comprehensively and reliably documents the use of force by police officers... How often do police use force? How often is it excessive force? And how often does that excessive force result in a civilian's death? Short answer: It’s impossible to know. ... It's no surprise, then, that the IACP study found that of the 8,082 citizen complaints about police use of force that were reported to the project from 1991-2000—out of a total 150,026 incidents—only 750 resulted in the complaint being upheld after investigation.
* * *
Within the limits set by the US Supreme Court in Tennessee v. Garner, authority to use deadly force in the line of duty is granted by state law to state and local law enforcement agencies. Individual agencies set policies and procedures regarding when and how to use deadly force.
When deadly force is used within the prescribed manner, the killing is deemed a justifiable homicide. Some law enforcement agencies routinely investigate all uses of deadly force while others investigate only cases involving extenuating circumstances.
Other causes of death to suspects include accidents and police brutality. When the circumstances surrounding a death are questionable, a state and/or federal agency may investigate.
Through the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the US Congress mandated the Attorney General to collect data on the use of excessive force by police and to publish an annual report from the data.
Two national systems collect data which include homicides committed by law enforcement officers in the line of duty. The National Center for Health Statistics maintains the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) which aggregates data from locally filed death certificates.
State laws require that death certificates be filed with local registrars, but the certificates do not systematically document whether a killing was legally justified nor whether a law enforcement officer was involved.
The FBI maintains the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) which relies on the "voluntary participation" of state and local law enforcement agencies in submitting reports about crimes.
A study of the years 1976 to 1998 found that both national systems underreport justifiable homicides by police officers, but for different reasons.
Records in the NVSS did not consistently include documentation of police officer involvement. The UCR database did not receive reports of all applicable incidents. The authors concluded that "reliable estimates of the number of justifiable homicides committed by police officers in the United States do not exist."
A study of killings by police from 1999 to 2002 in the Central Florida region found that the national databases included only one-fourth of the number of persons killed by police as reported in the local news media.
The Most Outrageous Stories Of Police Misconduct In 2013 ... Huffington Post
Everyday, police across the country have immense discretion in deciding how to treat those ... Here are the top stories in police misconduct in 2013.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/30/police-misconduct-2013_n_4435130.html
2013's Most Outrageous Cases Of Police Abuse Huffington Post
We look at HuffPost Crime's countdown of 2013's worst cases of police misconduct and brutality.
http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/52ab6e44fe344406a400033c
Top 1000 Cases of police brutality in the United States
http://copsrcorrupt.blogspot.com/2014/07/top-1000-cases-of-police-brutality-in.html
The following is a compilation of cases of police brutality in the United States involving local, state and federal law enforcement officers.
8 Terrifying Police Brutality Stories
www.thurswell.com/8-terrifying-police-brutality-stories
From April 2009 to June 2010, 5986 reports of police misconduct have been recorded. Here are 8 terrifying police brutality stories that will shock you.
HISTORY OF LAW ENFORCEMENT
http://www.barefootsworld.net/histlaw.html
The 5 Most Blatantly Corrupt Lawyers in History
http://www.cracked.com/article_20965_the-5-most-blatantly-corrupt-lawyers-in-history.html
Lawyers unfairly have a bit of a bad reputation. Yes, some lie for a living and defend murderers for money -- but the system simply doesn't work without them. No doubt most are honest folk who do their jobs within the code of ethics all attorneys work under.
When lawyers go bad, holy crap do they make the most of it.
Supreme Court Considering Police Lawsuits
http://www.valleynewslive.com/story/24878685/supreme-court-considering-police-lawsuits
(CNN) When can you sue the police?
It began when cops spied a busted headlight on a white Honda at an Arkansas gas station in 2004. It ended after a police chase culminated with officers shooting 15 times into that Honda. The driver and his girlfriend were killed. The driver's daughter said in a lawsuit that police used unreasonable force. A court agreed.
Now the fight goes to the Supreme Court. Lawyers for police will argue Tuesday that officers have broad discretion in such cases. "The usual rule is you're not allowed to sue the police if they make a mistake," said CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. "But it's also a rule that if they do something really outrageous, then you can sue. And the question in this case is: How outrageous was the police behavior?"
Social Media Presents It's Own Unique Challenges for Our Armed Forces
In just about a month, four pictures have surfaced on social media outlets of soldiers behaving badly. It might land one of them in jail for up to two years! Thankfully none were from North Dakota or Minnesota. But National Guard representatives are saying it's an embarrassment, and they hope it doesn't paint them in a bad light.
Former Judge Blows the Whistle on Police and Prosecutors
Stuart Namm was a judge in Suffolk County, NY. When he became suspicious of, and started questioning, actions by police and prosecutors in criminal cases he became the victim of political reprisal and personal intimidation that ultimately forced him off the bench.
This quote from a recent Long Island Newsday story about Judge Namm both provides a “bottom line” to the story, and also echoes points that have been previously stated on this blog about the problems with politically elected prosecutors and judges (see here):
“For Namm, the moral of his story is that elected trial judges are too compromised by politics to speak out against injustices they see. ’What happened in Suffolk County happened because trial judges are elected in the political system,’ he said. His fellow judges wouldn’t get involved because they were worried about the need to get re-elected, he said. And after how his tenure ended, he said they were right to be worried.”
Read the Long Island Newsday story here.
Prosecutors Balk at Being Held Accountable….
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/03/12/prosecutors-balk-at-being-held-accountable/
Late last year, South Carolina State Supreme Court Justice Donald Beatty joined Kozinski. At a state solicitors’ convention in Myrtle Beach, Beatty cautioned that prosecutors in the state have been “getting away with too much for too long.” He added, “The court will no longer overlook unethical conduct, such as witness tampering, selective and retaliatory prosecutions, perjury and suppression of evidence. You better follow the rules or we are coming after you and will make an example. The pendulum has been swinging in the wrong direction for too long and now it’s going in the other direction. Your bar licenses will be in jeopardy. We will take your license.”
Hundreds of Justice Department Attorneys Violated Professional Rules, Laws, or Ethical Standards
http://www.pogo.org/our-work/reports/2014/hundreds-of-justice-attorneys-violated-standards.html
An internal affairs office at the Justice Department has found that, over the last decade, hundreds of federal prosecutors and other Justice employees violated rules, laws, or ethical standards governing their work.
The violations include instances in which attorneys who have a duty to uphold justice have, according to the internal affairs office, misled courts, withheld evidence that could have helped defendants, abused prosecutorial and investigative power, and violated constitutional rights.
From fiscal year 2002 through fiscal year 2013, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) documented more than 650 infractions, according to a Project On Government Oversight review of data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and from OPR reports.
In the majority of the matters—more than 400—OPR categorized the violations as being at the more severe end of the scale: recklessness or intentional misconduct, as distinct from error or poor judgment.
As a general practice, the Justice Department does not make public the names of attorneys who acted improperly or the defendants whose cases were affected. The result: the Department, its lawyers, and the internal watchdog office itself are insulated from meaningful public scrutiny and accountability.
An examination of OPR case data for the past 12 fiscal years shows that, among the more severe violations—those that involve recklessness or intentional wrongdoing and are defined by the Department as professional misconduct—OPR substantiated:
48 allegations that federal attorneys misled courts, including 20 instances in which OPR determined that the violations were intentional
29 allegations that federal prosecutors failed to provide exculpatory information to defendants, including 1 instance OPR concluded was intentional
13 allegations that Justice Department personnel violated constitutional or civil rights
4 allegations of abuse of investigative or prosecutorial authority or general prosecutorial misconduct, including 3 instances in which OPR determined that the violations were intentional
3 allegations that prosecutors abused the grand jury or indictment process
1 allegation of “overzealous prosecution”
During the 12-year period that POGO examined, OPR investigated about 2,100 allegations and substantiated about 650.
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/03/14/fridays-quick-clicks-52/
Police lying: an endemic international problem?
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/03/31/police-lying-an-endemic-international-problem/
...For example, police have been caught falsifying reports of an altercation that they ‘witnessed’ when they were not present (see Plebgate scandal...). We have the ongoing revelations over police lies and their coercion of others to lie in the Hillsborough disaster cover-up (see Hillsborough inquiry...). It is suspected that these tactics were honed during the Miner’s Strike when striking miners were ‘fitted up’ (see Miners Strike….). Such tactics clearly have continued for years with many undercover police officers lies leading to convictions
...stories of police ‘collusion’ with one another after fatal police shootings
...CCTV cameras in the town has led to the uncovering of police lies leading to miscarriages of justice – with solicitors claiming that miscarriages may be ‘endemic’: increasingly, CCTC footage is being shown to demonstrate that the police account of events is unreliable – even untrue
...they are calling police lies and false evidence which have led to convictions as ‘failings’ and ‘sloppy police work’ (see here…Police failures led to wrongful conviction).
...We have all known for years that there are ‘rotten apples’ and that wrongful convictions have often had police misrepresentations, if not outright corruption and lying, at their heart. However, the question must surely now be asked: is lying among the police an endemic international problem? If so, what can be done about it?
Thanks to courts,
police perjury remains major problem
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/04/24/thanks-to-courts-police-perjury-remains-major-problem/
According to an old lawyer joke, the best way to tell when a lawyer is lying is to look to see if his lips are moving. That rule seems to apply to cops on the witness stand, too. But “testilying” is no laughing matter. It is undoubtedly a significant factor in many wrongful convictions.
Proving it to the courts’ satisfaction, though, is another matter. As Radley Balko notes here http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/04/16/how-do-we-fix-the-police-testilying-problem/
“The problem isn’t that cops aren’t capable of telling the truth. The problem is that the courts have treated cops as if they’re incapable of lying.”
Interrogations may be getting worse instead of better
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/03/26/interrogations-may-be-getting-worse-instead-of-better/
False confessions are a leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States, and many of them are obtained by detectives using the pervasive Reid technique of interrogation. But if you think that law-enforcement officials are beginning to realize the inherent flaws of a system that gets People to confess to crimes they didn’t commit, guess again.
In a thought-provoking blog post here, forensic psychologist Karen Franklin says she is actually seeing Reid technique “taken to more and more extreme levels” because of American courts’ “tacit encouragement” of deceit and the watering down of Miranda rights.
Non-profit launches free online database of more than 20 years of police misconduct
A non-profit news outlet in Oakland, Calif. has launched a new free online database project from 22 years of public records detailing alleged police misconduct by Oakland PD — one of the most abusive police departments in the nation.
Oakland Police Beat pulls records and statistics from local public court filings and publishes them online for free to highlight the growing number of civil rights violations by the eastern San Francisco bay area law enforcement.
In an email to GIGAOM, website co-founder Abraham Hyatt described the project as “an investigation into one of the most troubled police departments in the nation.” Police Beat publishes stories and interactive graphics twice a week from 1,368 lawsuits and complaints filed against Oakland PD and settled out of court from 1990-2013. Almost 400 of those cases detailed violations of Oakland citizens’ civil rights.
“Oakland’s most decorated officers responsible for high number of brutality lawsuits, shootings,” one infographic reads over a photo of a cop in riot gear choking an unarmed man with an illegal maneuver.
The site was financed by The Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. All of Oakland Police Beat’s content is available for free republication under its Creative Commons license.
Motivation for the production of the site, which began 18 months ago, was born out of incidents that occurred during the city’s Occupy movement protests, and because the department “has long had a reputation as an agency riddled with internal dysfunction and a history of abuse, including corruption, brutality and lack of accountability,” according to Oakland Local founder Susan Mernit. Oakland Local is the non-profit news outlet behind the launch of Oakland Police Beat.
Further inspiration for the site was drawn from a similar site based in Washington, D.C. called Homicide Watch DC, which tracks violent incidents that occur in the nation’s capital.
Oakland:
Washington DC:
http://homicidewatch.org/about/
Police Brutality Info
Modern Day Witch Trials:
Police: "You're Guilty of being a witch."
Falsely Accused Citizen: "But, I'm not a witch, really I'm Innocent."
Court System: "Guilty! You're now convicted for being a witch."
Wrongfully Convicted Citizen: "But, I'm not a witch, I am Innocent. Why wont anyone believe me?"
Albuquerque Police Out-Of-Control
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/06/20/albuquerque-police-out-of-control/
We have posted often before about issues of police overreach and misconduct – phony lineups, ignoring evidence, fabricating evidence, coercing confessions, lying on the stand, and more. However it seems the Albuquerque, New Mexico police department has set a new standard for police overreach.
Albuquerque has an officer-involved shooting rate 4 times that of Chicago and 8 times that of New York. The Albuquerque police have killed 26 people in just the last four years, and the city has paid out $30 million in civil judgements – so far – as a result of those killings. However, in the last 30 years, not a single Albuquerque officer has even been charged, much less convicted, of using excessive force.
Watch the CNN video here, http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/20/us/albuquerque-police-investigation/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 which shows the murder of a homeless man by the Albuquerque police. Warning – this will make you angry.
The US Justice Department has been investigating, and the Albuquerque police department will soon be operating under consent decree with the USDOJ.
7 Underlying Reasons For Police Brutality
http://www.businessinsider.com/7-underlying-reasons-for-police-brutality-2014-7
These stories are a small selection of recent police brutality reports, ... Here are seven reasons why police misconduct is a systematic problem, not “a ...
The End of Private Property in the Era of the American Police State
Report: LAPD shoots, kills unarmed black man
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/12/lapd-shooting-ezell-ford/13985607/
Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY 12:40 a.m. EDT August 13, 2014
As developments continue to unfold in the case of Michael Brown in St. Louis, details are emerging about the police shooting death of an unarmed, 24-year-old black man in South Los Angeles.
Multiple NYPD cops choke a peaceful man
(Eric Garner) to death WATCH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGAeb9R_FFE
A 400-pound asthmatic Staten Island dad died Thursday after a cop put him in a chokehold and other officers appeared to slam his head against ...
Hands Up Don't Shoot Stop Police Brutality
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hands-Up-Dont-Shoot-Stop-Police-Brutality/686191494805523
the peoples press project
http://thepeoplespressproject.org/cop-coverage/copcoverage-campaign-announced
In League The Peoples Press
https://www.facebook.com/InLeagueThePeoplesPress
National Day of Resistance
Sunday, September 21 at 3:30pm in CDT
JC Nichols Memorial Fountain in Kansas City, Missouri
http://www.kctv5.com/story/26589397/rally-seeks-more-police-accountability
The Endless March of Police Brutality
7 Stories From Just This Week
http://www.occuworld.org/news/1475364
From Ferguson, Missouri to Staten Island, New York, it seems like a new story about police brutality breaks every day. Here are some recent incidents of police violence from around the nation that you may not have heard about. Because honestly, who can keep up?
American Police Wiki Video Evidence
http://american-police.wikia.com/wiki/Video_Evidence
Magazine tells how prosecutors became ‘kings of the courtoom’
“Most prosecutors are hard-working, honest and modestly paid,” The Economist says. “But they have accumulated so much power that abuse is inevitable.” The magazine explains how prosecutors became “the kings of the courtroom,” and how this contributes to wrongful convictions, here.
Police Union Blocks Creation of Independent, Civilian Post for Troubled
St. Paul Crime Lab
Last year the St. Paul Crime Lab was shut down after Minnesota defense attorneys Christine Funk and Lori Traub exposed the lab’s shoddy practices and procedures when dealing with crucial evidence. At the time, the lab was supervised by a poorly trained St. Paul Police Sergeant.
Following the lab’s closing, the city hired two independent consultants to review the lab’s work and make recommendations to improve the lab. The consultants found errors in almost every area of the lab's work. (Here are their crime lab reports).
State Attorney's Office Not Pursuing Prosecution on some DUI Cases
Deputy Justin Speaks forged the signatures of his supervisors on three DUI reports.
www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/article846195.ece
After five years with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's office in Florida, Deputy Justin Speaks resigns. An internal affairs investigation, found that Speaks, 36, forged the signatures of his supervisors on three DUI reports. Speaks also told IA that he fraudulently signed the signatures of Sgt. Ronald Harrison and Sgt. Richard Figueredo on reports in the "distant past".
The sheriff's office found speaks violated three agency rules, including felony forgery, uttering a forged instrument and conduct unbecoming of a member of the sheriff's office.
Officer Accused Of Falsifying Police Reports For DUI Suspects 156 DUI Cases Dropped Due To Cop's Alleged Lying
CHICAGO (STNG) ― The Cook County state's attorney's office has dropped more than 150 DUI cases in which indicted Chicago cop John Haleas was the arresting officer, officials said.
In all, 156 misdemeanor DUI cases have been dropped, said John Gorman, a spokesman for the state's attorney. In some of the cases, non-DUI charges against the defendants remain, he said.
Haleas, 37, faces felony charges of perjury, official misconduct and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying and falsifying reports about a DUI arrest in April 2005. According to a grand jury indictment, Haleas falsely reported he gave a defendant various field sobriety tests.
Haleas also has been sued in federal court by a man he arrested.
Haleas worked out of the Grand Central District. When questions about his arrests arose last year, the state's attorney's office dropped about 50 cases and said about 500 were being reviewed.
Judge and Wife Allege Harassment by Minneapolis Police
UN Human Rights Committee Finds US in Violation on 25 Counts
http://truth-out.org/news/item/22887-un-human-rights-committee-finds-us-in-serious-violation
Police Brutality:
...it expressed concern at "the still high number of fatal shootings by certain police forces" and "reports of excessive use of force by certain law enforcement officers including the deadly use of tasers...
...The United States contains the largest prison population in the world, holding over 2.4 million people in domestic jails and prisons, immigration detention centers, military prisons, civil commitment centers and juvenile correctional facilities. Its prison population is even larger than those of authoritarian governments like China and Russia, which, respectively, hold 1,640,000 and 681,600 prisoners, according to the International Centre for Prison Studies. More than 60 percent of the US prison population are people of color. African Americans, while 13 percent of the national population, constitute nearly 40 percent of the prison population. Moreover, one in every three black males can expect to go to prison in their lifetime, compared to one in every six Latino males, and one in every 17 white males. Thus, black men are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men. Even though whites and blacks use drugs at roughly the same rates, African Americans are more likely to be imprisoned for drug-related offenses than whites.
Every 28 hours, a black person is killed by a police officer, security guard, or self-appointed vigilante, according to a report by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. Recently in New York City, NYPD brutalized two teenage African-American girls at a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn. A 16-year-old girl's face was slammed against the floor, while police threw the 15-year-old through the restaurant's window, shattering it as a result. The incident started when police ordered everyone to leave the restaurant, but one of the girls refused.
While police violence against people of color has long existed, the militarization of American police exacerbates this trend. This trend began when Richard Nixon inaugurated the War on Drugs in the 1970s. Then in 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed the Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act, which provided civilian police agencies with military equipment, training, advice and access to military research and facilities. When 9/11 hit, police militarization kicked into overdrive with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which has given police still greater access military equipment like armored personnel carriers and high-powered weapons for anti-terrorism purposes. Now police look, act and think like the military, with dangerous consequences for the communities they serve.
Among the report's suggestions to curb excessive police violence were better reporting of incidents, accountability for perpetrators, and "ensuring compliance with the 1990 UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officers". The Basic Principles include a number of provisions, including "Law enforcement officials, in carrying out their duty, shall, as far as possible, apply non-violent means before resorting to the use of force and firearms" and "Governments shall ensure that arbitrary or abusive use of force and firearms by law enforcement officials is punished as a criminal offence under their law."
Criminalizing the Homeless:
...The committee expressed concern "about reports of criminalization of people living on the street for everyday activities such as eating, sleeping, sitting in particular areas etc." It also "notes that such criminalization raises concerns of discrimination and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment."
UN torture committee calls on US to 'promptly, effectively and impartially' investigate police brutality
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/World_News_3/article_101976.shtml
The CAT noted its “serious concerns at the widespread prevalence of sexual violence, including rape, in prisons, jails and other places of detention by staff and other inmates.” There is also concern that “958 inmates died while in custody of local jails in 2012, an eight percent increase from the 889 deaths in 2010.”
Mr. Harper explained to the committee that “torture violates United States and international law as well as human dignity.” It is “contrary to the founding documents of our country, and the fundamental values of our people.”
The U.S. signed the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) 30 years ago under former U.S. President Ronald Reagan. To date 155 nations have adopted the convention that mandates nations to submit regular reports every four years to the CAT on how rights are being implemented under Article 1: “Any act of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed.”
The U.S. delegation led by Ambassador Keith Harper reported that 20 investigations had been opened since 2009 into systemic police abuses and more than 330 police officers had been prosecuted for brutality.
The advocacy work that took place in Geneva this month worked to bring attention to the U.S. non-compliance with the terms of the CAT, was just one of a number of efforts over the past decade to highlight the dismal human rights record of the U.S. explained Ajamu Baraka, a former executive director of the UNHRN.
“Yet, with all of the shadow reports, resources expended traveling to Geneva, meeting with U.S. government officials, we still see little progress toward a serious effort to address ongoing human rights abuses in the U.S. and to bring human rights laws and practices in line with international norms,” Mr. Baraka said.
Senate Torture Report Faults C.I.A. for Brutality and Deceit
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-intelligence-committee-cia-torture-report.html?_r=0
...program carried out by agency officials and contractors in secret prisons around the world in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001. It also provides a macabre accounting of some of the grisliest techniques that the C.I.A. used to torture and imprison terrorism suspects.
...Many of the most extreme interrogation methods — including waterboarding — were authorized by Justice Department lawyers
...The report also said that the C.I.A.'s leadership for years gave false information about the total number of prisoners held by the C.I.A., saying there had been 98 prisoners when C.I.A. records showed that 119 men had been held.
...The committee’s report concluded that of the 119 detainees, “at least 26 were wrongfully held.” “These included an ‘intellectually challenged’ man whose C.I.A. detention was used solely as leverage to get a family member to provide information, two individuals who were intelligence sources for foreign liaison services and were former C.I.A. sources, and two individuals whom the C.I.A. assessed to be connected to Al Qaeda based solely on information fabricated by a C.I.A. detainee subjected to the C.I.A.'s enhanced interrogation techniques,” the report said.
...the report is a portrait of a spy agency that was wholly unprepared for its new mission as jailers and interrogators
The Secret Diaries of Abu Zubaydah
http://projects.aljazeera.com/2013/abu-zubaydah/index.html
Before the CIA torture report, there were Abu Zubaydah's diaries--a personal account from one of the highest-valued detainees at Guantanamo. The full text of those diaries exclusively here:
The Most Corrupt Village in America - Allorton,IL
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-most-corrupt-village-in-america/
Alorton, IL -- one of the most corrupt towns in the country.
KMOV
See how an undercover FBI informant risked his life to bring down their crooked mayor, dirty police chief and more.
The most corrupt State(s) in America
(based on total number of officials convicted
per capita)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/01/22/the-most-corrupt-states-in-america/
Per capita, according to the same New York Times survey, no other state comes anywhere close to the number of officials convicted. Because of their small populations, the Virgin Islands and Guam rank near the top of the charts, also North Dakota, Alaska, Louisiana and Mississippi. Throw out the District and the territories and use some more recent data from the FBI:
The most corrupt States are:
http://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/files/2014/01/most-corrupt-states-1.png&w=480
Louisiana
North Dakota
South Dakota
Kentucky
Alaska.
Business Insider crunched those numbers.
Here’s their chart:
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-corrupt-states-and-territories-2013-9
The 10 most corrupt states in the U.S. (based on the total numbers of officials convicted)
http://fortune.com/2014/06/10/most-corrupt-states-in-america/
A new study from researchers at the University of Hong Kong and Indiana University estimates that corruption on the state level is costing Americans in the 10 most corrupt states an average of $1,308 per year, or 5.2% of those states’ average expenditures per year.
The researchers studied more than 25,000 convictions of public officials for violation of federal corruption laws between 1976 and 2008 as well as patterns in state spending to develop a corruption index that estimates the most and least corrupt states in the union.
Based on this method, the the most corrupt states are:
1. Mississippi 2. Louisiana 3. Tennessee 4. Illinois
5. Pennsylvania 6. Alabama 7. Alaska
8. South Dakota 9. Kentucky 10. Florida
The researchers also found that for 9 out of the 10 of the most corrupt states, overall state spending was higher than in less corrupt states (South Dakota was the only exception).
Researchers also found that spending in these states was different than their less corrupt counterparts. According to the report, “states with higher levels of corruption are likely to favor construction, salaries, borrowing, correction, and police protection at the expense of social sectors such as education, health and hospitals.”
The paper explains that construction spending, especially on big infrastructure projects, is particularly susceptible to corruption because the quality of large, nonstandard projects are difficult for the public to gauge, while the industry is dominated by a few monopolistic firms. Corrupt states also tend to, for obvious reasons, simply have more and better paid public servants, including police and correctional officers. The researchers argue that the need for correctional officers is greater in corrupt places too because “the overall extent of corruption will be higher in states with higher numbers of convictions of public officials.”
Of course, it’s not all bad news, as the study also found the least corrupt states too. Citizens of these states–Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, Vermont, Utah, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Kansas–can take solace in the fact that they’re not getting ripped off as badly as the rest of us.
Study Names Arizona as
Most Corrupt State
(based on new study surveying news reporters)
http://blogs.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2014/12/04/study-names-arizona-as-most-corrupt-state/
Arizona is the most corrupt state in the U.S., according to a new study surveying news reporters.
... surveyed 280 news reporters covering state politics and investigative reporters covering corruption, asking them to identify how common they perceive illegal, and legal, corruption occurring in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government across 50 states. ...“With respect to illegal corruption, Arizona is perceived to be the most corrupt state,” the study concluded. “With respect to legal corruption, Kentucky is the most corrupt state, followed by Illinois and Nevada.”
Source: Measuring Illegal and Legal Corruption in American States
http://ethics.harvard.edu/blog/measuring-illegal-and-legal-corruption-american-states-some-results-safra
The Top 10 Least Corrupt Countries in the World.
USA not amongst the most honest.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/02/367815515/which-countries-are-the-most-corrupt
Four Scandinavian nations and New Zealand are the world's least corrupt countries while North Korea and Somalia are the most corrupt, according to the Corruption Perception Index released today by Transparency International.
Top 10 Countries (And The U.S.)
Rank Country Score
1 Denmark 92
2 New Zealand 91
3 Finland 89
4 Sweden 87
5 Norway 86
5 Switzerland 86
7 Singapore 84
8 Netherlands 83
9 Luxembourg 82
10 Canada 81
17 Barbados 74
17 Hong Kong 74
17 Ireland 74
17 United States 74
Bottom 10 Countries
Rank Country Score
174 Somalia 8
174 North Korea 8
173 Sudan 11
172 Afghanistan 12
171 South Sudan 15
170 Iraq 16
169 Turkmenistan 17
166 Uzbekistan 18
166 Eritrea 18
166 Libya 18
Source: Transparency International
2014 corruption perceptions index
http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results
Russia reaches out to Europe's far-right parties
Putin EXPOSES The WW3 Plan
Morning links: Disturbing allegations of police misconduct in NYC gun cases
Allegations that NYPD cops may have planted evidence, perjured themselves and engaged in cover-ups while investigating gun cases. A peek inside ...
In Brooklyn Gun Cases, Suspicion Turns to the Police
...Claims of Fabrication: She and another defense lawyer, Scott Hechinger, have suggested in court papers that a group of officers invents criminal informers, and may be motivated to make false arrests to help satisfy department goals or quotas. They also question whether the police are collecting the $1,000 rewards offered to informers from Operation Gun Stop, especially in cases where the informers never materialize.
...a federal judge said she believed that the “officers perjured themselves.” ...Justice William Harrington of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn called the detective “extremely evasive” and said he did not find him “to be credible.” ...the District Court judge, Dora L. Irizarry, said the officers’ testimony “was just incredible, and I say ‘incredible’ as a matter of law.” “I believe these officers perjured themselves,” Judge Irizarry added. “In my view, there is a serious possibility that some evidence was fabricated by these officers.”...
Attorneys: Police planted blood on Juan Rivera's shoes in Waukegan slaying
http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-82249636/
Before Juan Rivera went to trial for the August 1992 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, police and prosecutors in Lake County heralded a piece of evidence they said linked him to the crime: a pair of sneakers that authorities said belonged to Rivera and were stained with Holly Staker's blood.
But by trial, prosecutors backtracked, never introducing the seemingly pivotal evidence.
Now, three years after Rivera was exonerated and freed from prison with the help of DNA evidence, his attorneys have made a startling new allegation in a federal lawsuit that police planted the blood. Their evidence: The shoes were not available for sale anywhere in the country until after Holly was fatally stabbed in Waukegan.
What's more, recent DNA testing on the pair of black Voit high-tops has for the first time detected another substance mixed in with the blood. Lab tests discovered that the second substance matches the genetic profile of the as-yet unidentified suspect whose semen was found in Holly's body, buttressing the claim that authorities tampered with evidence, Rivera's lawyers say.
"The only realistic inference from the foregoing evidence," the lawyers wrote in court papers filed in federal court late Tuesday, "is that someone endeavored to plant Holly Staker's blood on Mr. Rivera's Voit shoes and in doing so inadvertently planted both her blood there and the blood of the as-yet unidentified killer." ... The evidence has potential relevance beyond the lawsuit or the investigation into Holly's murder. Earlier this year, DNA testing showed that the substance on the shoes and the semen from Holly's body both matched DNA recovered from a bloody two-by-four used to beat a man in North Chicago in 2000. That suggests the unidentified suspect in Holly's slaying may have also taken part in Delwin Foxworth's beating.
Who’s Policing the Prosecutors?
Civil Forfeiture and Accountability
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/opinion/civil-forfeiture-and-accountability.html?_r=0
PROSECUTION is becoming a lucrative business. In the last fiscal year, the Justice Department collected $24.7 billion from civil and criminal actions
...Another growing revenue source is civil forfeiture, which allows the authorities to seize cash, cars and even homes from people who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing, who in order to get the property back must prove that it was legally acquired. In September, The Washington Post reported that more than $2.5 billion had been seized from motorists and others since 9/11, without search warrants or indictments, under a program that targets cash that moves along highways.
...In many cases, local prosecutors are spending the money as they wish, without adequate oversight or accountability.
...What is worse, these billions of dollars in discretionary spending aren’t being used to compensate victims of wrongful convictions or other civil rights violations in which the very prosecutors collecting these funds participated. Since the funds are seized from wrongdoers as compensation for their debt to society, logic dictates that when society’s prosecutors do wrong, they, too, should pay their debts.....
The Interrogation Room -
Episodes - the fifth estate
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2014-2015/the-interrogation-room
They were just witnesses to a murder, pressured by the police to change their story until the wrong man was jailed for a crime he did not commit. Linden MacIntyre takes you inside “The Interrogation Room”
The fifth estate has long covered wrongful conviction cases and has worked hard to expose their causes. A couple weeks ago an episode called The Interrogation Room aired. If you didn't watch it, please do so now: http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2014-2015/the-interrogation-room
Many Canadians think wrongful convictions are a thing of the past, that we've now identified the causes we no longer need to worry. This documentary will show you how wrong that thinking is.
AIDWYC is very happy to be working with the Niagara Police Force who are training their investigators in PEACE, an alternative to the Reid technique. (Read more about PEACE on AIDWYC's Blog here: http://www.aidwyc.org/towards-peace/) We applaud all police who recognize the dangers of Reid and are working to replace it but sadly most Canadian forces continue to employ it.
Eight troubling things about death penalty in US
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/12/18/eight_troubling_things_about_death_penalty_in_us.html
Wrongful convictions ... Her 1990 conviction was overturned in 2013 after she spent more than two decades on death row for being convicted ...It costs upwards of $100,000 to hire a lawyer to defend against a murder charge, ...That explains why death rows are populated by poor people who were defended by court-appointed lawyers... Since 1973, 150 inmates on death row have had their names cleared and been set free. Wrongful convictions- That has contributed to an uneasy feeling that many other innocent people have been executed... Gender imbalance: Death rows remain pretty much a men’s club. Last year, Lisa Coleman and Suzanne Basso, both of Texas, were the only women among the 35 Americans executed. Over the past four decades, 1 per cent of the inmates executed were female... In Arizona, Debra Jean Milke was the only woman sentenced to death since 1932. Her 1990 conviction was overturned in 2013 after she spent more than two decades on death row for being convicted of arranging the 1989 murder of her 4-year-old son. An appeals court ruled the prosecution had withheld evidence about how a police detective lied when he said she had confessed the crime to him.
Wrongful execution of teen in '96 prompts China to revisit police use of torture for confessions
http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/12/16/4288513_wrongful-execution-of-teen-in.html?rh=1
BEIJING — The exoneration of a man wrongfully executed 18 years ago has again thrown a spotlight on China’s widespread use of torture to extract confessions from criminal suspects.
In an unusually candid editorial Tuesday, a state government newspaper acknowledged that local police regularly torture suspects, resulting in numerous cases where innocent people are convicted and even executed for crimes they did not commit.
“It has not been rare for higher authorities to exert pressure on local public security departments and judiciary to crack serious murder cases,” said the editorial in the English-language China Daily. “Nor has it been rare for the police to extort confessions through torture. … Suspects have been sentenced without solid evidence except for extorted confessions.”
The case in question involves a man, Huugjilt, who at age 18 was arrested for raping and murdering a woman at a textile factory in Hohhot, the capital of China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region. According to state media, police took just 48 hours to obtain a confession from Huugjilt. He was executed in June 1996, just 61 days after he was convicted. Nine years later, another man confessed to the murder. That prompted the Inner Mongolia High People’s Court to retry the case last month. On Monday, the court overturned Huugjilt’s conviction, saying there was insufficient evidence in the initial verdict.
According to state media, a court official arrived Monday morning at Huugjilt’s home and provided his mother, Shang Aiyun, with an apology and the equivalent of $4,500 in compensation. Huugjilt’s mother, who spent nearly a decade trying to clear her son’s name, may receive further compensation, a court official told China Daily.
“Every time I see Hugjiltu’s picture, and think that this kid was randomly killed because of some officials’ violation of the law due to their greed, my heart feels horrible,” wrote Tong Zhiwei, a law professor at East China University in Shanghai. “Now might be a good time to seriously review and rectify all possible wronged cases, reflect on the evilness of extorting confession through torture and to ban it within the system.”
China’s one-party government, which executes an estimated 3,000 people per year, has a long history of wrongful convictions, partly because of police interrogation techniques.
She noted, however, that China’s criminal justice system doesn’t place checks on the ability of police to engage in torture. Police run the detention centers where suspects are kept, suspects have no right to silence, and lawyers cannot be present during police interrogations, she said in an email exchange with McClatchy.
“Accountability for torture perpetrators (in China) is very rare, even in prominent cases,” she said. “If police officers do not face consequences for torturing suspects, then they will continue to consider torture as an option in interrogations.”...
False Confessions:
A Review of 2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-drizin/post_8762_b_6323990.html
2014 was a landmark year in false confessions.
Here's my year-end list of highlights: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-drizin/post_8762_b_6323990.html
...2014 will also be remembered as a record-breaking year in terms of the amount of money paid by state and local governments to compensate wrongfully convicted defendants who falsely confessed.
Although no amount of money can make up for losing the prime years of their lives, several defendants settled their lawsuits or won sizeable jury verdicts for their pain and suffering, including the Central Park Five, the Dixmoor Five, David Ranta, Frank Sterling, Martin Tankleff, and Jeffrey Deskovic.
As 2014 draws to a close, my thoughts are with all the innocent men and women who falsely confessed but who must spend yet another Holiday season behind bars. Here's wishing a Happy New Year to you and your families and may 2015 bring you your freedom and some measure of justice.
Color of Law Abuses
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/civilrights/color_of_law
The FBI is the lead federal agency for investigating color of law abuses, which include acts carried out by government officials operating both within and beyond the limits of their lawful authority. Off-duty conduct may be covered if the perpetrator asserted his or her official status in some way.
During 2012, 42 percent of the FBI’s total civil rights caseload involved color of law issues—there were 380 color of law cases opened during the year. Most of the cases involved crimes that fell into five broad areas: Excessive force; Sexual assaults; False arrest and fabrication of evidence; Deprivation of property; and Failure to keep from harm.
Filing a Complaint: To file a color of law complaint, contact your local FBI office by telephone, in writing, or in person. http://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field
Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law Statute: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/civilrights/federal-statutes#section242
Poor clients pay just to apply for a public defender
Baraka quietly helped pass a law that criminal justice advocates say will hurt the city’s most vulnerable: He quadrupled the fee Newark Municipal Court can charge poor defendants applying for free legal representation ....and could heighten the risk that the accused will “forgo the assistance of counsel, thereby increasing the possibility of wrongful conviction.”....application fee it charged in the superior courts (until the recent switch to a flat payment) brought in about $3 million per year....officials disclosed that the city would need to find some $93 million to balance its 2014 budget. ...Over the past few years, criminal justice advocates and journalists have uncovered a trend of “cash register courts” more focused on padding local budgets than carrying out judicial functions. Municipal courts in states including Alabama, California, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas have pursued a fiscal strategy of “offender-funded justice,” cutting back on indigent defense, increasing fees, fines and interest rates, hiring for-profit companies to collect debts and privileging jail time over community service for those too poor to pay....“When people think about Gideon or even the Miranda right — ‘an attorney will be provided to you’ — no one thinks this is how the system goes,”...
Eliot police chief denies ignoring report of falsified patrol data
http://www.pressherald.com/2015/01/19/eliot-police-chief-denies-courtroom-accusations-against-him/
ELIOT — The chief of the Eliot Police Department on Monday denied accusations made against him last week in court that he failed to act after learning that most of the town’s police officers consistently falsified their patrol reports....The testimony came up during a pretrial hearing for Paul Olsen, 33, who is accused of assaulting and raping his former girlfriend at her Eliot home. The case was investigated by the town’s police in 2012....Short, who is chief of both the Eliot and Kittery police departments and has worked in law enforcement for 40 years, said he has fired officers for lying before and that he has no tolerance for dishonesty for those serving under him....Cady testified Friday that he began looking into GPS data and officers’ patrol reports in 2009 after an ex-girlfriend accused a patrolman of domestic violence stalking while he was on duty. Though Cady did not name that officer at Friday’s hearing, news reports from the time describe former Eliot police Officer Matthew Raymond’s arrest on a stalking charge. Cady testified that to verify the accuracy of the GPS evidence in the stalking case, he checked data from other officers’ cruisers and found that it didn’t match what they had documented in their reports.
A Rogue Chemist Faked Drug Tests,
And Now Tens Of Thousands Of Drug Convictions Are In Limbo
Massachusetts' top court will on Thursday consider arguments on how to handle tens of thousands of drug convictions that were potentially tainted by a rogue crime-lab scientist, in a case that could have national implications.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the law firm Foley Hoag will argue at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for measures to speed up reviews of the cases and to limit the powers of prosecutors to oppose them.
"People who have suffered ... are being scared away from challenging their wrongful convictions by the threat of even harsher punishments," Foley Hoag partner Daniel Marx said in a statement before the hearing.
Former crime lab scientist Annie Dookhan pleaded guilty in 2013 to tampering with evidence at the now-closed Hinton State Laboratory Institute in Boston, where she worked from 2002 to 2011. She is serving a three-to-five-year jail sentence.
Investigators have said her mishandling of evidence may have tainted cases involving as many as 40,000 people, shaking the foundations of the state's criminal justice system. More than 300 people convicted of drug violations have been released from prison as a result, and many others are seeking retrials.
Dookhan also testified in about 150 criminal cases since 2009 while claiming false credentials.
"I screwed up big time," Dookhan said, according to the report by investigators for Attorney General Martha Coakley's office obtained by the Associated Press. "I messed up bad. It's my fault. I don't want the lab to get in trouble."
The AP also reports that supervisors at the Boston lab, which was closed by police in August 2012, may face federal scrutiny because they did not intervene after lab employees reported concerns about Dookhan's work.
"I can't imagine she could have been this corrupt without someone noticing," attorney Rosemary Scapicchio, who represents several defendants whose samples Dookhan handled, told the AP. "The investigation needs to go deeper than Annie Dookhan to get to the point of 'How did she get away with it?'"
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled last year that the state shared blame for Dookhan's misconduct and that the court could mull a "systemic approach" to addressing the aftermath.
Any decision by the court deriving from Thursday's hearing could set a national precedent on how to handle convictions that were based on evidence from crime labs later found to have flawed practices.
The Massachusetts Inspector General said the state ignored warning signs throughout Dookhan's tenure, including the fact that in the first two years on the job she tested more than 8,000 samples a year, more than double her next-most productive colleague.
Former state crime lab employee pleads guilty to theft, evidence tampering
The state accused Palmer in March 2014 of stealing drug evidence and drug samples from the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory in Anchorage while he worked there.
He added adulterants to the drug samples in an attempt to cover up the thefts, prosecutors said. Palmer worked at the crime lab from 1992 until 2011, and for six of those years he used heroin and methamphetamine every day, charging documents say. He resigned in December 2011.
...In the wake of Palmer’s arrest, defense attorneys argued Palmer’s crimes may have altered evidence in numerous cases.
Lab worker pleads guitly
A Wasilla man who worked at the state crime lab pleaded guilty Friday to multiple counts stemming from his time there, authorities said. Stephen C. Palmer, 54, pleaded guilty to second-degree theft, tampering with physical evidence, two counts of fourth-degree drugs misconduct, and one count of official misconduct. All counts are class C felonies, save for official misconduct, which is a class A misdemeanor. The counts are consolidated, and all remaining charges have been dismissed, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office press release from Friday....10 counts in connection with the theft of portions of reference samples — nearly pure samples of drugs the lab uses to compare against collected evidence — from the crime lab, ...Palmer cut some of the reference samples with inositol, a powdery substance sometimes used as a stand-in for heroin and cocaine on movies and television shows and frequently used to dilute or cut street drugs,...Evidence from some cases also went missing...The Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory is located in Anchorage and provides biological screening, DNA, drug and alcohol fire debris and drug identification services to law enforcement, as well as training for evidence collection and preservation.
US judges see 'epidemic' of
prosecutorial misconduct in state
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-82690871/
Other courts had already determined that prosecutors had presented false evidence in Baca's trial but upheld the verdicts anyway.
... defend a conviction "obtained by lying prosecutors.".
..The January hearing in Pasadena, posted online under new 9th Circuit policies, provided a rare and critical examination of a murder case in which prosecutors presented false evidence but were never investigated or disciplined.
... Prosecutors "got caught this time but they are going to keep doing it because they have state judges who are willing to look the other way,".
.."It is a cumulative type thing," Uelmen said. "The 9th Circuit keeps seeing this misconduct over and over again. This is one way they can really call attention to it.".
.. A 2010 report by the Northern California Innocence Project cited 707 cases in which state courts found prosecutorial misconduct over 11 years. Only six of the prosecutors were disciplined, and the courts upheld 80% of the convictions in spite of the improprieties, the study found.
... A U.S. magistrate who next examined the case said Baca might not have been convicted of first-degree murder but for the false testimony. He said the federal court nevertheless was supposed to defer to the state courts. "Sadly, this informant's lies were bolstered by a Deputy District Attorney, who also lied," wrote Magistrate Judge Patrick J. Walsh. "What is obvious … is that the Riverside County District Attorney's Office turned a blind eye to fundamental principles of justice to obtain a conviction."...
What Exactly Are the Spy Agencies Actually DOING with their Bag of Dirty Tricks?
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/spy-agencies-dirty-trick-powers-revealed-snowden.html
SPECIFIC EXAMPLES OF WHAT THEY MAY BE DOING
Newly-released documents from Edward Snowden show that the British spy agency GCHQ has developed numerous offensive digital tools. But what exactly are they doing with these dirty tricks?
...The U.S. government is also spending millions to figure out how to manipulate social media to promote propaganda and stifle dissenting opinions. And see this and this.
And any criticism of government policies is now considered “extremist” and potential terrorism. According to Department of Defense training manuals, all protest is now considered “low-level terrorism”. And see this, this and this. Questioning war is considered extremism. The government also considers anyone who tries to protect himself from government oppression and to claim his Constitutional rights a “extremist”. This is not entirely new … the CIA director relabeled “dissidents” as “terrorists” so he could continue spying on them in 1972. Indeed – for 5,000 years straight – mass surveillance of one’s own people has always been used to crush dissent.
More Government Spying:
National Security Agency (NSA) has been deliberately infecting the “firmware” that runs most common hard drives, including those made by Seagate, Western Digital, IBM, Toshiba, Samsung and Maxtor. There’s a 99% chance that the computer you’re using has one of those in it. The malware campaign, called “Equation,” has infected tens of thousands of public and private computers in more than 30 countries. And it allows the NSA to read everything on those machines at will.
So how does the NSA get away with this sort of thing? By lying and abusing its legal authority.
According to Kaspersky Labs, a highly-respected Russian anti-malware outfit, ex-NSA sources confirmed that agents pose as software developers to trick hard drive manufacturers into supplying source code, which they would then modify and deploy. Even worse, the agency often simply keeps a copy of the code when it does mandatory “code audits” on behalf of Pentagon procurement departments.
Hacks like this — which basically make the entire world’s information grid vulnerable to U.S. government spying — are why Phil Zimmermann, creator of email encryption software Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and now president and co-founder of secure cellphone company Silent Circle, says: “Intelligence agencies have never had it so good.”
But the good times depend on computer users ignoring the one thing that can make even a wide-open computer useless to the NSA or other spies.
PGP and the many encryption programs that are its progeny make anything stored on your computer, or transmitted by email, instant message and voice-over-internet — anything digital — unusable to a spy or thief. They turn digital information into useless gibberish that can be unlocked only with a special key. The NSA could walk right in and rummage around, but would be unable to read a thing.
The “Equation” revelations prove that our own government is prepared to lie and cheat in order to steal our privacy from us.
The CIA and Other Government Agencies Have Long Used Propaganda Against the American People
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/propaganda.html
The Government’s Been Deploying Propaganda On U.S. Soil for Many Years.
Government Propaganda:
Millions of people believe that the truth was reported about wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is government propaganda sold by Washington and reiterated in print or television’s 24-hour-news loop.
A March 2011 report by Global Research stated:
The mainstream media is intertwined, often covertly and secretly, with the government. Carl Bernstein, one of the two Washington Post reporters who covered the Watergate scandal, revealed that there were over 400 American journalists who had “secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency.” Interestingly, “the use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence-gathering employed by the CIA.” Among organizations which cooperated with the CIA were the “American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune.”
By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc. The CIA even ran a training program “to teach its agents to be journalists,” who were “then placed in major news organizations with help from management.”
Newly Declassified Govt Docs Reveal Operation Mockingbird is Alive and Well
Having representatives of the federal government attempt to influence and guide the narrative, of what is purported to the American public to be “a free and independent press,” can only be described as the symptoms of repressive authoritarian system that is out of control....
For those unfamiliar, Operation Mockingbird was a CIA operation began as the Cold War ramped up in the 1950’s. In an attempt to gather intelligence and influence public opinion, the CIA recruited journalists from across the United States....
The program officially operated for nearly three decades, and was deeply embedded in the fabric of American journalism. These compromised journalists provided the CIA direct access to some of the most prestigious media outlets in the country.
The scope of the infiltration of the media was vast, encompassing newspapers, periodicals, press services, news agencies, radio and television stations, book publishers and foreign media outlets. It appears that these propaganda relationships are still ongoing between the U.S. government and corporate media outlets.
Although the U.S. State Department frames this incident as simple assistance, the evidence of the government using the media to forward a selected narrative to propagandize the American people is apparent.
....This is yet another example of why the mainstream media’s reporting always needs to be intensely scrutinized, as you can never be sure exactly whose agenda is at work behind the scenes.
Saint or Sinner, Government Eyes Are Watching Every Move You Make
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/saint-or-sinner-governmen_b_9721696.html
Government eyes are watching you.
"When people start fuckin with the Law
all hell breaks loose"
- Sheriff Weasel, Rambo: First Blood
NOPD recruits no longer have to attend college
http://www.wwl.com/NOPD-recruits-no-longer-have-to-attend-college/20894340
The New Orleans Civil Service Commission voted today to drop rules that had required an applicant to have college or military experience to be hired. Chief Michael Harrison opposed the requirement. "I think it's unfounded," Harrison said. "I am one that had some college, but not 60 hours, and here I am the chief of police today and with the previous chief it was the same thing." He insists that it has been too difficult to hire the officers they need with the college/military requirement. One third of the 3,000 applicants in 2014 were rejected because they did not meet the standard. Metro Crime Commission President Raphael Goyeneche thinks that's a good thing. He says that lowering the requirement could mean more bad cops ''in the form of civil litigation from police misconduct and officers being charged with criminal offenses.'' The chief says they will still carefully select qualified cadets. "The absolute best person will get the job," Harrison said. "It's not that everyone who applies gets it." The police unions supported the move, but stressed hiring must be about quality over quantity as the NOPD tries to rebuild its ranks.
Civil Service dropped the following:
-A state approved G.E.D./high school diploma and two (2) years of active military service.
-A state approved G.E.D./high school diploma and any combination of four (4) years of active duty and/or military reserve service (National Guard or Reserves).
-At least 60 college credits from an accredited college or university. Credits must be on one transcript.
-An Associate’s Degree or higher from an accredited college or university.
-A state approved G.E.D./high school diploma and at least two (2) years of patrol and/or investigative law enforcement experience. This experience must have been gained after completion of a police academy and field training
Aggressive police questioning may boost false accusations, study finds
There was never a thief, there was never a crime, and the supposedly stolen cellphone didn’t exist.
VIDEO:
Innocent Man Facing Years In Prison
Now Free,
Officers Arrested, Charged With Conspiracy
Two police officers have just been indicted on charges of conspiracy and misconduct. But until a dashboard video was released, the man who they victimized was actually the one in trouble.
Captured on video: Los Angeles police kill man in struggle (Warning: Graphic)
Note how police coerce false statements.
Melissa Calusinski: Was a day care worker coerced into a murder confession?
A young Illinois woman is convicted of murder for a toddler in her care. After a nine-hour interrogation and dozens of denials -- is she really guilty? ...But false confessions do happen. The Innocence Project found that more than 60 percent of those convicted of homicide and later exonerated by DNA confessed to crimes they didn't commit -- often after lengthy, intense interviews. ..."People who are innocent often believe ... 'if I can confess to this crime ... down the road, it'll get sorted out, because I didn't do anything wrong,'" ...Melissa continued. "They were puttin' the words in my mouth." "But -- you said it. You're saying they're putting the words in your mouth. You didn't have to say it, did you--" Moriarty pressed. "I didn't. But see, I -- and I didn't know that. I was just -- I mean ...they wanted me to say that ... so that we could all go home," Melissa replied. ...
Tracking Police Brutality: Cases to Watch (3/8/15)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/08/1367894/-Tracking-Police-Brutality-Cases-to-Watch-3-8-15#
There are 6 new cases that will be added to this list in its next iteration.
And if you're not hip to what's happening with Homan Square in Chicago, get on it, now.
We're tracking 21 active cases and have 1 in 'inactive' status: ...
Another Official Cover-Up, More Offical Immunity.
Law outlines domestic violence investigation procedures
City police did not write reports, document property damage or communicate with prosecutors for days after they intervened in a domestic violence incident at the home of Traverse City's top administrator, even though all three actions are required by state law. Now Traverse City police department officials are the target of a Grand Traverse County sheriff's criminal probe into how they responded to a Feb. 16 domestic violence incident at the Fifth Street home of then-city Manager Jered Ottewness. Ottenwess resigned last week and on March 5 pleaded no contest in 86th District Court to misdemeanor charges of domestic violence and attempting to resist and obstruct police. Ottenwess' conviction on the domestic violence charge came a little more than three weeks after Ottenwess' mother called 911 and told a dispatcher her son was belligerently drunk, tearing up their house and had tried to hit her. Top city police officials for days framed the incident at Ottenwess' home as strictly a "medical" situation, and said they didn't have evidence of a crime. City police reports offer no indication that officers collected or listened to a recording of Ottenwess’ mother’s 911 call. The department’s own domestic violence response policy instructs officers to collect 911 call recordings as evidence. Sheriff’s department reports suggest that was the first step taken by sheriff’s detectives when they launched their investigation.
Legal requirements: Collecting the 911 recording wasn't the only investigative step neglected by city police officers, who for days failed to write incident reports or inform Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Bob Cooney about what happened at Ottenwess' home....
No Domestic Violence charge for cop who shoots at wife 6 times. Only a couple misdemeanors, a deferral, and a dismissal. Cops have a better knowledge of Law than the general public. Cops have better training making them much more dangerous than the general public. Yet Cops are given lesser charges, not charged at all, and have records expunged while most of the general public are overcharged, and even Wrongfully Convicted for much less. The public then become banned of many of their Bill of Rights and banned from their Firearms Rights, while the Cops, being much more violent and dangerous are still allowed to retain the Right to Firearms, and other Rights.
Denver police detective, Daniel Deleon, pleads guilty in domestic violence shooting
A Denver police detective has pleaded guilty in a domestic violence incident last summer when police say he terrified his wife and children by firing six gunshots inside the family's Thornton home.
Detective Daniel Diaz Deleon pleaded guilty Wednesday in Adams County court to reckless endangerment and reckless use of a gun -- both misdemeanors. He was sentenced to two years of probation, according to court records.
He also pleaded guilty to telephone harassment and received a deferred judgment for that charge. The deferred judgment could allow him to clear that charge from his record if he stays out of trouble during his two years on probation, court records stated. Several other charges, including false imprisonment, child abuse and obstructing a peace officer were dismissed by the district attorney as part of the plea agreement. Deleon has been suspended with pay at home during the criminal investigation ...
Essex sheriff's officer used badge, gun to coerce prostitute into sex, authorities say
http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2015/03/essex_sheriffs_officer_used_badge_gun_to_coerce_pr.html
An Essex County Sheriff's officer was charged with sexual assault and official misconduct after coercing a prostitute into sex by threatening her with arrest, according to court documents. A criminal complaint filed in Essex County Superior Court claims Dinis Oliveira used both his badge and a handgun to intimidate the 31-year-old Newark woman during the Feb. 26 encounter. Oliveira and the woman then engaged in both oral and vaginal sex, the complaint says. According to law enforcement sources, Oliveira contacted the woman by phone after seeing an advertisement posted on Backpage.com, and arranged a meeting with her. The victim reported the alleged assault to authorities two days later. Sources said the woman presented authorities with a condom she claimed Oliveira used during the assault, and was taken to Newark Beth Israel Hospital to be examined. While at the hospital, she spotted Oliveira, who was there assisting a family member, and alerted police. Oliveira, 31, turned himself in to the Essex County Prosecutor's Office on March 4. He was briefly held on $200,000 bail at the Essex County Correctional Facility following his arrest, but was released later the same day, according to sheriff's records. He is charged with single counts of second-degree sexual assault, second-degree official misconduct and fourth-degree criminal coercion. He was scheduled to be arraigned in Essex County Superior Court today, but the hearing was postponed. It is unclear if he has retained an attorney. Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura said Oliveira had been a member of the department since June. He has been suspended without pay pending the outcome of his case.
Police immunity in the court system.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/allegations-of-police-misconduct-rarely-result-in-charges/
68 percent of felony defendants, from the general population in 2006, were convicted while 48 percent were incarcerated;
In 2009-10, just 33 percent of law enforcement officials accused of misconduct were convicted and a mere 12 percent were incarcerated.
"All of us need to be very afraid now," he said. "Police officers everywhere can beat us, kill us, whatever they want, but it has been proven right here today they'll get away with it." -Ron Thomas
COP: Cowards-On-Patrol
How did America’s police become a military force on the streets?
...Just before the American Revolution, it wasn’t the stationing of British troops in the colonies that irked patriots in Boston and Virginia; it was England’s decision to use the troops for everyday law enforcement. This wariness of standing armies was born of experience and a study of history.
...If even the earliest attempts at centralized police forces would have alarmed the founders, today’s policing would have terrified them.
...Using general warrants, British soldiers were allowed to enter private homes, confiscate what they found, and often keep the bounty for themselves. The policy was reminiscent of today’s civil asset forfeiture laws, which allow police to seize and keep for their departments cash, cars, luxury goods and even homes, often under only the thinnest allegation of criminality.
...When applying for grants, departments are rewarded with funding for statistics such as the number of overall arrests, the number of warrants served or the number of drug seizures. Those priorities, then, are passed down to police officers themselves and are reflected in how they’re evaluated, reviewed and promoted.
...So the grants reward po lice departments for making lots of easy arrests
...As a result, we have roving squads of drug cops loaded with SWAT gear who get more money if they conduct more raids, make more arrests and seize more property, and they are virtually immune to accountability if they get out of line.
...Not surprisingly, the proliferation of heavily armed task forces that have little accountability and are rewarded for making lots of busts has resulted in some abuse.
...there were numerous other corruption scandals, botched raids, sloppy police work, and other allegations of misconduct against the federally funded task forces
...Funding for the Byrne grant program had held steady at about $500 million through most of the Clinton administration. The Bush administration began to pare the program down—to about $170 million by 2008.
...The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act resuscitated the Byrne grants with a whopping $2 billion
...Police militarization would accelerate in the 2000s. The first half of the decade brought a new and lucrative source of funding and equipment: homeland security. In response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001
...the federal government opened a new spigot of funding in the name of fighting terrorism. Terrorism would also provide new excuses for police agencies across the country to build up their arsenals and for yet smaller towns to start up yet more SWAT teams.
The British Banned Guns on our Founding Fathers & It Brought About A Revolution
http://joshuamark5.com/2014/07/british-banned-guns-founding-fathers-brought-revolution/
The Boston Massacre: was a street fight that occurred on March 5, 1770, between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a squad of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the ire of the citizenry.
Militarized Police
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/08/15/militarized-police/
Ferguson’s police force got equipped this way thanks to the Pentagon, and it’s happening all over the country. The Department of Defense provides military-grade weapons and equipment to local law enforcement agencies through the 1033 program, enacted by Congress in 1997 to expand the practice of dispensing extra military gear. Due to the defense industry’s bloated contracts, there is a huge surplus. To date, the Pentagon has donated military equipment worth more than $4 billion to local law enforcement agencies. And the giving goes on, to police forces in all 50 states in the union.
Police Depts Getting Military Vehicles from Iraq War
Coming soon to your local sheriff: 18-ton, armor-protected military fighting vehicles with gun turrets and bulletproof glass that were once the U.S. answer to roadside bombs during the Iraq war.
The hulking vehicles, built for about $500,000 each at the height of the war, are among the biggest pieces of equipment that the Defense Department is giving to law enforcement agencies under a national military surplus program.
For police and sheriff’s departments, which have scooped up 165 of the mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPS, since they became available this summer, the price and the ability to deliver shock and awe while serving warrants or dealing with hostage standoffs was just too good to pass up….
An Associated Press investigation of the Defense Department military surplus program this year found that a disproportionate share of the $4.2 billion worth of property distributed since 1990 – everything from blankets to bayonets and Humvees – has been obtained by police and sheriff’s departments in rural areas with few officers and little crime.
Florida Police Now Ready For Minefields
http://www.policemisconduct.net/florida-police-now-ready-minefields/
From the New York Daily News:
“If you see my SWAT team roll up in this thing … it’s over, so just give up,” said Chief R. Sean Baldwin in a release….
The police department was able to purchase the armored vehicle through the 1997 National Defense Authorization Act, which passes excess military supplies to U.S. law enforcement.
More than $4.2 billion worth of property has been transferred to law enforcement since the program’s inception.
One wonders if these guys shout ‘Yippee Ki-Ya!” as they drive down neighborhood streets.
The Militarization of America’s Police Forces
http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/catosletter-v11n4.pdf
OVERKILL The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America
http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/balko_whitepaper_2006.pdf
These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.
This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.
View the interactive map that accompanies this paper at: www.cato.org/raidmap
ACLU Report On Militarization Of Police - Business Insider
http://www.businessinsider.com/aclu-report-on-militarization-of-police-2014-6
Frightening ACLU Report Shows How Militarized America's Cops Really Are ... military transfers a shocking amount of military-grade equipment to local cops who often misuse these tools. ... It's dangerous to conflate the two.".
New ACLU report warns that police SWAT units are over ...
http://www.mainlinemedianews.com/articles/2014/06/24/region/doc53a9e2095d476951024905.txt
Police departments across the U.S. have become dangerously militarized, ... In the 98-page “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of .....
https://www.aclu.org/war-comes-home-excessive-militarization-american-policing
Police with military weapons:
Suspend the Weapons Transfer Program that is Militarizing Police
Our police officers are not our military. Yet military weapons meant for battlefields like the ones I served on as an Army Officer in the Gulf War are being transferred to local police departments around the country. Put simply, these weapons are not intended for local policing and often result in escalating - not solving - situations.
A Little More on Militarization of the Police
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/09/08/a-little-more-on-militarization-of-the-police-2/
...All the military equipment and fire power is scary, but all that stuff is really just an “enabler.” What’s really scary is what’s going on in the brains of the cops. They seem to be increasingly adopting a “battlefield” mindset – vanquish the enemy – and giving them MRAP’s and M-16’s substantially reinforces that state of mind. Plus, if the police have all this stuff, of course they’re going to want to use it. For example, we’ve seen the evolution of excessive use of SWAT teams. Mr. Montgomery stated, “These ‘elite’ officers have to stay sharp and on alert. They have to practice.” Practice by having a SWAT team storm a young mother’s home at 3:00 AM to serve a warrant and make an arrest? Might I suggest this is “over the top?”
... If the situation calls for military intervention, then call in the National Guard. That’s what they’re for. But we just can’t have the “military” patrolling our streets and enforcing the law on a routine basis.
Comment: I would add allowing legalizing the Constitutional Bill of Rights to the citizens which they are supposed to have. The Natural Rights the founders intended the citizens have to protect themselves from tyrannical abuse from government, and governments select militias that abuse citzens, and the natural Rights of self defense for each citizen.
The legal system is now our enemy
Police Abuse of Power: Police kill woman while performing a sobriety check. Woman showed Zero impairment.
http://www.copblock.org/40053/police-abuse-of-power-and-misconduct-comes-in-many-forms/
Law enforcement responding to a false report conducted a sobriety test on a woman at her place of work parking lot was killed by law enforcement performing the test. The woman showed ZERO evidence of impairment after eight sobriety tests and blood analysis. Was it an Accident, or Negligent Manslaughter?
The Misuse of Police Powers
http://www.dwetendorf.com/Article_MisusePower.htm
Police officer training makes Police Officers very dangerous as domestic violence abusers.
KilledByPolice
https://www.facebook.com/KilledByPolice
International Day Against Police Brutality - March 15th
https://www.facebook.com/InternationalDayAgainstPoliceBrutality
October 22 Coalition To Stop Police Brutality - Seattle
https://www.facebook.com/pages/October-22-Coalition-To-Stop-Police-Brutality-Seattle/168280703224023
Sheriff's Department hired officers with histories of misconduct
http://graphics.latimes.com/behind-the-badge/
188 Were rejected for jobs at law enforcement agencies before being hired by the Sheriff's Department.
97 showed evidence of dishonesty.
92 were disciplined previously by other police agencies for significant misconduct on duty.
29 were fired or pressured to resign from a previous law enforcement job.
15 were flagged by background investigators for trying to manipulate the results of a polygraph exam.
...For nearly 100 hires, investigators discovered evidence of dishonesty, such as making untrue statements or falsifying police records. At least 15 were caught cheating on the department's own polygraph exams.
...Nearly 200 had been rejected from other agencies because of past misdeeds, failed entrance exams or other issues.
...David McDonald was hired despite admitting to sheriff's investigators he had a relationship with a 14-year-old girl
...One new hire had been charged with assault under the color of authority, and another had been arrested for assault with intent to murder and rape.
...Records show almost 30 other hires had been convicted of drunk driving, battery or a variety of lower-level crimes. About 50 disclosed to sheriff's background investigators misdeeds such as petty theft, soliciting prostitutes and violence against spouses.
...One hire told investigators of having inappropriate sexual contact with two toddlers as a teenager.
...Linda Bonner was given a job after revealing that she used her department-issued weapon to shoot at her husband as he ran away from her during an argument.
...In the recording, a sheriff's investigator tells an applicant who was caught cheating on his polygraph exam that normally that would have meant "goodbye, you're done, there's no second chances." The investigator then told the applicant that he and other suspected cheaters might not be disqualified "as a favor because, you know, it's law enforcement." The applicant was eventually hired.
...Sheriff's polygraph examiners found that county police Officer Desmond Carter was deceptive when asked about his involvement in domestic disputes. They also determined he tried to manipulate the results of his polygraph exam.
...Background investigators concluded Carter was using "countermeasures" — tactics aimed at manipulating the results of a polygraph exam when he was asked about incidents of illegal sexual conduct.
...A motorist who bumped Carter's car in a McDonald's parking lot started to drive off before they were done settling the matter, according to a district attorney's memo. Carter, who was off duty, drew his service weapon and fired several rounds at the man's car, one of which hit the wall of a nearby business.
...Sheriff's background investigators noted that he was the subject of 10 internal affairs investigations from 2001 to 2007. Three were founded. At least six of those inquiries related to allegations of unreasonable force, threats or intimidation.
...The newspaper did not count cases in which applicants admitted to miscellaneous office theft when the value was less than $50 a year.
...The Times omitted lower-level incidents such as at-fault car accidents that did not cause injuries, workplace tardiness and carelessness with public property.
...The newspaper did not count instances in which applicants said they solicited prostitutes in countries where prostitution is legal or where The Times could not determine the laws at the time.
Supreme Court makes right decision on WV State Police
...conduct of a State Police officer while on the job does not qualify for the privacy exemption.
...“the public interest is the important issue of ‘public accountability’… If investigations of alleged police misconduct and their outcomes are done entirely in secret, as here, there is no public accountability whatsoever.”
...The law says “all persons are, unless otherwise expressly provided by law, entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and official acts of those who represent them as public officials and employees.”
...The Justice also pointed out that the state Supreme Court has previously ruled that the results of disciplinary actions by the West Virginia State Bar into lawyer misconduct and the West Virginia Board of Medicine of doctor malpractice are open to the public.
Idaho Innocence Project loses federal funding
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/dec/01/idaho-innocence-project-loses-federal-funding/
American Justice = Convictions (Innocent or Guilty). PERIOD!
Photographer Goes From Facing Felony Charges to Suing Seattle Police
Alex Garland was photographing a May Day protest in Seattle last year when he was plucked out of a crowd of demonstrators and arrested on felony charges.
Seattle police officer Stephen Smith, dressed in full riot gear and surrounded by countless other cops dressed just like him, claimed Garland tried to push past him to get to his friend, who was also being arrested.
And as Smith tried his hardest to keep Garland from overpowering the wall of cops, Garland grabbed Smith’s left wrist with both hands and twisted, causing him to recoil in agony.
Other officers quickly jumped to Smith’s rescue and arrested Garland before he could injure any more officers, throwing him in jail for 26 hours. And he was charged with third degree felony assault, which could have landed him in prison for five years.
But then a Youtube video emerged proving that all Garland did was wave his left hand while holding his camera in his right hand, that none of the above occurred, so the charges were quickly dropped.
Garland is the photographer with the bandanna over his face that comes into the picture at :18. He said he was wearing the bandanna because he had been pepper sprayed earlier that day.
On Monday, Garland filed a federal lawsuit against the Seattle Police Department, something they are well accustomed to considering it has dished out $2.4 million in settlements this year alone.
According to KING5:
In its charging documents, Seattle Police alleged Garland “had tried to push past” Officer Stephen Smith and refused to move back. Law enforcement then claimed Garland “kept trying to get by Officer Smith to the prisoner”.
Officer Smith put his hand on Garland’s chest to keep him away when, according to the documents, “Garland grabbed Officer Smith’s left hand with both hands and twisted and squeezed, causing Officer Smith pain and concern”.
Garland was charged with Third Degree Assault, a felony.
However, YouTube video surfaced soon after, contradicting the police department’s account. It shows Garland waving his hand at Officer Smith, but is then pulled into a crowd of officers and arrested.
Garland said if not for the online video, “I’d still probably be in jail.”
A Special Report on the National
Emergency in the United States of America
http://www.barefootsworld.net/srwep.html
The War On Us
http://www.libertylawsite.org/2013/10/27/the-war-on-us/
ARE WE THE ENEMY OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT?
http://www.barefootsworld.net/usenemy.html
Hear Me America, Army Officer Warns DHS Preparing For War On American Citizens
Obama is preparing for war against U.S. citizens
http://www.westernjournalism.com/obama-is-preparing-for-war-against-u-s-citizens/
The U.S. Government Is Preparing For War Against The American People
Is the US government preparing for civil war?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120823101438AAxnw2c
The US Govt Declares WAR on it’s Own Citizens
http://americasvoicenow.org/the-us-govt-declares-war-on-its-own-citizens/
U.S. Government Using Terrorism Against the American People
Download book Police Misconduct in America : A Reference Handbook
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fkvMdVReqNOTlyG1qVSFGwNZsMmprV3xI_DV2YRysCA/edit
Download Police Misconduct in America : A Reference Handbook A Reference Handbook by Dean J. Champion book pdf. You can download your ...
Download book Police Misconduct, Complaints, and Public Regulation
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r2ki8OAwE5VvjFQ6PiCnYZwmKcYpAnZCBjFrdvnP7R4/edit
Download Police Misconduct, Complaints, and Public Regulation by John Beggs, Hugh Davies book pdf. You can download your book here.
Download book Wrongful Conviction: Law, Science, and Policy pdf
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fc1fYY7IrGGoO0KnzCsD26M9qNlc5q0V7sfMWZuOMdA/edit
You can download your book here. Wrongful Conviction: Law, Science, and Policy.
Download book Police Misconduct:
Law and Litigation pdf
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YMjSo66535naQdLhcCqGmHPmh3J-A1-PweVHkqplXZ0/edit
Download Police Misconduct:Law and Litigation book pdf. You can download your book here. Police Misconduct:Law and Litigation. Popular books:.
Download book Pathways of Police Misconduct Problem Behavior Patterns and Trajectories
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1okcPG41Slp9Jj-noaS-W824z5_87BGOItboeGVYePa4/edit
Download Pathways of Police Misconduct Problem Behavior Patterns and Trajectories from Two Cohorts book pdf. You can download your book here.
Report raises doubts about ambush of 2 LAPD officers
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80207367/
Investigators look last June at the car two LAPD officers were in when a man reportedly shot at them. The only bullets and spent shell casings recovered were those belonging to the officers.
... Before dawn one morning last June, a Los Angeles police detective and his partner were returning to their station on Venice Boulevard.... Det. Humberto Tovar and Officer Bernard Romero gave investigators harrowing accounts of the gun battle that erupted moments later.
... Now, however, a report by LAPD Inspector General Alex Bustamante has concluded the attack may have never occurred. "A thorough examination of the officers' vehicle and the surrounding area," the report found, "revealed there were no impacts or other physical evidence to support that the Subject fired a weapon." Tovar could not be reached and Romero declined to comment, but LAPD officials stood by the officers' claim that they were attacked.
Military Veterans Seen As Threat That Can "Defeat" Law Enforcement
http://wearechange.org/military-veterans-seen-threat-can-defeat-law-enforcement/
Despite statistics showing that violent crimes are decreasing, Sgt. Dan Downing of the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department in the state of Indiana was quoted as saying,
“When I first started we really didn’t have the violence that we see today,” adding, “The weaponry is totally different now that it was in the beginning of my career, plus, you have a lot of people who are coming out of the military that have the ability and knowledge to build IEDs and to defeat law enforcement techniques.”Watch video here …
Local police departments are receiving excess military hardware and are openly stating returning United States military veterans are the new terrorist threat.
Police Now “Armed For War” Against Returning Veterans
http://www.infowars.com/police-now-armed-for-war-against-returning-veterans/
In an interview with Fox 59, a Morgan County, Indiana Police Sergeant admits that the increasing militarization of domestic police departments is partly to deal with returning veterans who are now seen as a homegrown terror threat.
In a chilling story entitled Armed for War: Pentagon surplus gives local police an edge, we learn how a Mine Resistant Vehicle (MRAP) which was once used during the occupation of Afghanistan will now be “patrolling the streets of central Indiana,” according to the report.
Sgt. Dan Downing of the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department states, “When I first started we really didn’t have the violence that we see today,” adding, “The weaponry is totally different now that it was in the beginning of my career, plus, you have a lot of people who are coming out of the military that have the ability and knowledge to build IEDs and to defeat law enforcement techniques.”
Downing goes on to relate how citizens approach the vehicle when it stops at gas stations to express their concerns that the militarization of police is about arming cops with the tools required for mass gun confiscation programs.
“We were actually approached when we’d stop to get fuel by people wanting to know why we needed this…what were we going to use it for? ‘Are you coming to take our guns away?’” said Downing. “To come and take away their firearms…that absolutely is not the reason why we go this vehicle. We got this vehicle because of the need and because of increased violence that we have been facing over the last few years….I’ll be the last person to come and take anybody’s guns.”
Indiana seems to be a major trial balloon for the militarization of law enforcement given that the Indiana National Guard has also just purchased two military UH-72 Lakota helicopters which will also be used by local police and the DHS for “homeland security missions”. Downing’s claim that armored tanks are necessary to deal with violent crime doesn’t jive with actual statistics which suggest that violent crime is in fact on the decrease.
Downing’s admission that the armored vehicles are partly about combating the threat posed by returning veterans correlates with similar rhetoric at the federal level.
An April 2009 DHS intelligence assessment listed returning vets as likely domestic terrorists. Just a month later, the New York Times reported on how Boy Scout Explorers were being trained by the DHS to kill “disgruntled Iraq war veterans” in terrorist drills.
The FBI has also repeatedly characterized returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan as a major domestic terrorist threat.
It seems to have been completely forgotten by police departments, the media and Americans in general that having military-style tanks patrol the streets is symbolic of a collapsing banana republic or an authoritarian Communist state.
Perhaps the main reason why police officers are being trained that veterans are a major threat is because returning vets are in a perfect position to recognize that America is beginning to resemble an occupied country like Afghanistan.
Such warnings have come from people like former Marine Corps Colonel Peter Martino, who was stationed in Fallujah and trained Iraqi soldiers. Martino went before a New Hampshire city council meeting last year to assert that the Department of Homeland Security is working with law enforcement to build a “domestic army,” because the federal government is afraid of its own citizens.
Indeed, the city’s Police Chief justified the necessity for the acquisition of an armored ‘Bearcat’ vehicle by citing the “threat” posed by libertarians, sovereign citizen adherents, and Occupy activists in the region.
Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watson.71
FOLLOW Paul Joseph Watson @ https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/29/justice/us-violent-crime/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/16/napolitano-stands-rightwing-extremism/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/14explorers.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123992665198727459.html
http://www.infowars.com/marine-corps-colonel-homeland-security-building-domestic-army/
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/occupy-free-state-project-dhs-police-concord
Related Articles:
Short Film Depicts Epidemic of Suicides in Returning Veterans
http://www.infowars.com/short-film-depicts-epidemic-of-soldier-suicides-in-returning-veterans/
Michigan Police Take On ‘Disgruntled Veteran’ In Hostage Drill
http://www.infowars.com/michigan-police-take-on-disgruntled-veteran-in-hostage-drill/
New DOJ program gives police ‘help with confronting veterans’
http://www.infowars.com/doj-giving-police-help-with-confronting-veterans/
America’s police are looking more and more like the military
http://www.infowars.com/americas-police-are-looking-more-and-more-like-the-military/
Sikh Shooting Ties Into DHS ‘Veterans as Terrorists’ Narrative
http://www.infowars.com/sikh-shooting-ties-into-dhs-veterans-as-terrorists-narrative/
Armed for War: Pentagon surplus gives local police an edge
http://fox59.com/2014/05/12/armed-for-war-local-police-tote-pentagon-surplus/#axzz31isc0kux
In a chilling story entitled Armed for War: Pentagon surplus gives local police an edge, we learn how a Mine Resistant Vehicle (MRAP) which was once used during the occupation of Afghanistan will now be “patrolling the streets of central Indiana,” according to the report.
Do police need grenade launchers, other military weapons
Michigan police departments have armed themselves with grenade launchers, armored vehicles, automatic rifles and other equipment — 128,000 items in all, worth an estimated $43 million — under a federal program that allows police to obtain surplus gear free from the U.S.
US Paper: Police kills 400+ Americans Annually
http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/25915/61/
Sunday, 17 August 2014
Nearly two times a week in the United States, a white police officer killed a black person during a seven-year period ending in 2012, according to the most recent accounts of 'justifiable' homicide reported to the FBI.
On average, there were 96 such incidents among at least 400 police killings each year that were reported to the FBI by local police. The numbers appear to show that the shooting of a black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., last Saturday was not an isolated event in American policing.
The reports show that 18% of the blacks killed during those seven years were under age 21, compared to 8.7% of whites. The victim in Ferguson was 18-year-old Michael Brown.
While the racial analysis is striking, the database it's based on has been long considered flawed and largely incomplete. The killings are self-reported by law enforcement and not all police departments participate so the database undercounts the actual number of deaths which is likely much higher than the 400 reported. Plus, the numbers are not audited after they are submitted to the FBI and the statistics on "justifiable" homicides have conflicted with independent measures of fatalities at the hands of police.
About 750 agencies contribute to the database, a fraction of the 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. University of South Carolina criminologist Geoff Alpert, who has long studied police use of deadly force, said the FBI's limited database underscores a gaping hole in the nation's understanding of how often local police take a life on America's streets — and under what circumstances.
''There is no national database for this type of information, and that is so crazy," said Alpert. "We've been trying for years, but nobody wanted to fund it and the (police) departments didn't want it. They were concerned with their image and liability. They don't want to bother with it.'' Alpert said the database can confirm that a death has occurred but is good for little else. "I've looked at records in hundreds of departments,'' Alpert said, "and it is very rare that you find someone saying, 'Oh, gosh, we used excessive force.' In 98.9% of the cases, they are stamped as justified and sent along.'' Despite those flaws, the FBI records remain the most complete nationwide accounting of people killed by the police.
Just last night, police in San Diego shot and killed a woman in front of her house. The women held a power drill which the police mistook for a gun, according to official statement. Remarkably, it is virtually impossible in the US to charge a police officer with murder even when all evidence points to it! The police uniform itself gives them a blanche carte to draw their gun and fire it at anyone, without consequences.
The following story describes how a Florida Court says Cops can now kill innocent bystanders not involved in any crime, and the cops are not only immune and held unaccountable but, now the law can charge you with the death of an innocent bystander murdered by the cop.
The cop need only state that he/she was pursuing you in a crime.
The cop can shoot not only you but, any other innocent bystander with total immunity, and then charge you for the murder of the innocent bystander shot by the cop.
This is absurd, and opens the door to alot of innocent citizens being murdered by law enforcement.
Man Faces Murder Charge as Police Bullet Kills Bystander
http://www.newser.com/story/196726/man-faces-murder-charge-as-police-bullet-kills-bystander.html
A Florida man faces murder charges after an innocent bystander was shot to death inside a bar. The unusual thing about the case is that he never fired a single shot—the bullet came from a police officer's gun, reports WESH-TV. But authorities hold 23-year-old Kody Roach responsible for the woman's death because they say his actions forced police to open fire.
Police Brutality Continues: Cops Shoot Mentally Ill Homeless Man 46 Times
http://www.24urban.com/news/police-brutality-continues-cops-shoot-mentally-ill-homeless-man-46-times
Recently, a very graphic video of eight Michigan cops gunning down one man with a pen knife, surfaced. Milton Hall, 49, who was a mentally ill and homeless man, faced eight screaming Saginaw police officers in a parking lot back in 2012. A K-9 dog unit was lunging and barking at Milton, who was holding nothing but a pen knife. In the video you can see the officers firing 46 times, as he collapsed and died on the pavement.
Local Police Are Listening to Your Calls
The new International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) can seize a phone’s signal as well as grab the content of calls and texts. Until recently, the IMSI was bulky and expensive, but advances in technology have resulted in a smaller version that can be purchased online for only $1,800. Now every hacker, government agency and two-bit thug can have one!
In fact, ESD America — the maker of the CryptoPhone, which can detect IMSI — has located some 500 fake cell towers created by the IMSI across the U.S.
Plea Bargaining –
An Effective Tool for Prosecutorial Abuse of Power
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/11/30/plea-bargaining-an-effective-tool-for-prosecutorial-abuse-of-power/
“97 percent of federal convictions and 94 percent of state convictions are the result of guilty pleas.” (USSC, Missouri vs. Frye, 2012)
Think about that for a minute — 19 out of 20 criminal cases never-go-to-trial.
These cases are disposed of through a guilty plea that resulted from a plea agreement. The defendant never gets a trial, and goes directly to jail.
It’s called “plea bargaining,” but there is little-to-no actual bargaining that takes place. A plea offer can be made even before the case goes to a grand jury, and the defendant has no idea how strong, or weak, the prosecutor’s case might be. The prosecutor has a very, very long list of often-overlapping charges that can be “stacked” to build a breathtakingly long anticipated sentence, which he can use to “bargain” (read threaten) with the defendant. And the ability to “stack” is further augmented for charges that carry mandatory minimum sentences. It’s pretty much a “take it or leave it” deal. The ONLY bargaining power the defendant has is to refuse the plea offer, forcing the prosecutor to take the case to trial. This is the genesis of the so-called “trial penalty,” which has been well covered on this blog here and here. The defendant can take whatever the prosecutor offers, or expose himself to an exceedingly long sentence at trial.
In accepting a plea agreement, the defendant obviously gives up his constitutional right to a jury trial, but he may also have to give up his right to appeal, or to file civil suit, or to even talk about the case. And then once convicted of a felony, there is a whole list of other collateral consequences as well.
Amelia Whaley is a JD candidate at the Duke University School of Law. While working as an intern for the Center for Prosecutor Integrity, she wrote a paper summarizing the practice of plea bargaining as it exists today in the US. I think it is just excellent, and is the best overall synopsis of plea bargaining I have seen. If you want to understand what plea bargaining is all about, and how it really works, please read Ms. Whaley’s paper here: Plea Agreements – Whaley: https://globalwrong.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/plea-agreements-whaley.pdf
If you’re interested in a little further reading, this article by Timothy Lynch at the Cato Institute, Cato – Plea Bargains: https://globalwrong.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/cato-plea-bargains.pdf covers the 1978 US Supreme Court case (Bordenkircher v. Hayes) that established the precedent for plea bargaining – a case in which a man wound up in prison for life – for passing a bad $88 check.
One Group Has a Higher Domestic Violence Rate Than Everyone Else —
And It's Not the NFL
The NFL has jump-started a national conversation on domestic violence, but there's one group we're overlooking: The people we trust to keep us safe....There is an epidemic of domestic violence by police officers: ...the National Center for Women and Policing has detailed, officers frequently cover for each other. ... Police Domestic Violence: Handbook for Victims, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "The prosecutors depend on police for their cases, the police depend on each other — it's a very insulated system," ..."'Even officers who are found guilty of domestic violence are unlikely to be fired, arrested or referred for prosecution.'"...From underreporting by victims and colleagues to informal investigations, this means that available statistics only hint at the pervasive violence perpetrated by the people who are paid to protect and serve us....
Prison and Detention Conditions -
Human Rights Watch
http://www.hrw.org/united-states/us-program/prison-and-detention-conditions
America's 10 Worst Prisons: ADX
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/10-worst-prisons-america-part-1-adx
View the whole series:
http://www.motherjones.com/topics/america%27s-worst-prisons
The Disturbing & Inhumane Conditions In Prison:
Why The System Isn’t Working
Since 1980, the US prison population has grown by 790%. They have the largest prison population of any nation in history.... The amount of people being incarcerated is alarming, the reasons for which are even more alarming. Children, elderly, pregnant women, African-Americans, HIV patients, and drug users are being locked up illogically, not to mention the numerous cases of wrongly accused who are spending their entire lives in prison. The real criminals are laughing on their yachts as they bank off of the unjust and corporate-based judicial system....the current model pays no respect to treatment, rehabilitation, or healing. We are isolating the wounded, uneducated, and mentally ill in aggressive and torturous environments and expecting change. ... Humanity is losing out. The only winners are the private companies who are still awarded contracts to build and maintain more prisons, and who throw their weight behind politicians who promote the supposedly “tough on crime” measures that ensure those prisons are full.
U.S. shootings by police, prison conditions trouble U.N.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/11/28/248456_un-finds-us-police-brutality-shootings.html?rh=1
GENEVA — A U.N. anti-torture panel that’s investigating the United States said Friday that it was deeply concerned by what it described as the high incidence of police brutality and shootings _ especially against African-Americans _ in the U.S., was troubled by what it called harsh conditions in many prisons and was worried about the interrogation methods used on detainees.
...the 10-member panel recommended “that all instances of police brutality and excessive use of force by law enforcement officers are investigated promptly, effectively and impartially by an independent mechanism with no institutional or hierarchical connection between the investigators and the alleged perpetrators.”
...The panel said it was appalled at the number of reported deaths that followed the use of stun guns, and it recommended that the weapons be used “exclusively in extreme and limited situations” and be banned for use on children and pregnant women.
The U.N. panel noted its concern at what it described as the high number of deaths in custody – 958 inmates died in American jails in 2012, up nearly 8 percent from2010 – and it called on the U.S. government to investigate all deaths of detainees promptly.
The panel said the U.S. should limit solitary confinement to “a measure of last resort” and prohibit its use for juveniles, people with disabilities, and pregnant and breastfeeding women. It said it was concerned about the use of solitary confinement for indefinite periods.
Bruni said keeping people in maximum-security prisons in solitary confinement up to 22 to 23 hours a day was not acceptable.
U.S. has the largest prison population
"in the history of human civilization."
Incarceration in the United States
...According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) In total, 6,977,700 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2011 – about 2.9% of adults in the U.S. resident population. In addition, there were 70,792 juveniles in juvenile detention in 2010.
...According to a 2014 report by Human Rights Watch, "tough-on-crime" laws adopted since the 1980s have filled U.S. prisons with mostly nonviolent offenders. This policy failed to rehabilitate prisoners and many were worse on release than before incarceration. Rehabilitation programs for offenders can be more cost effective than prison.
...The male incarceration rate is roughly 15 times the female incarceration rate. In 2009, 92.9% of prisoners (not jail inmates) were male.
... In 2008, there were over 14 million people arrested for violent and non-violent crime.
...Many prisons in the United States are overcrowded. For example, California's 33 prisons have a total capacity of 100,000, but they hold 170,000 inmates.
...Solitary confinement is widely used in US prisons, yet it is underreported by most states, while some don't report it at all. Isolation of prisoners has been condemned by the UN in 2011 as a form of torture. At over 80,000 at any given time, the US has more prisoners confined in isolation than any other country in the world. In Louisiana, with 843 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, there have been prisoners, such as the Angola Three, held for as long as forty years in isolation.
...In 2011, some 885 people died while being held in local jails (not in prisons after being convicted of a crime and sentenced) throughout the United States.
...According to the American Civil Liberties Union in 2013, numerous studies indicate that private jails are actually filthier, more violent, less accountable, and possibly more costly than their public counterparts. The ACLU stated that the for-profit prison industry is "a major contributor to bloated state budgets and mass incarceration – not a part of any viable solution to these urgent problems." The primary reason Louisiana is the prison capital of the world is because of the for-profit prison industry. According to The Times-Picayune, "a majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt."
...In Mississippi, a 2013 Bloomberg report states that assault rates in private facilities were three times higher on average than in their public counterparts. In 2012, the for-profit Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility was the most violent prison in the state, and had 27 assaults per 100 offenders.
...the conditions there are "hyper-violent," "barbaric" and "chaotic," with gangs routinely beating and exploiting mentally-ill inmates who are denied medical care by prison staff.
...private prisons in the U.S. have become "a lucrative business."...Between 1990 and 2000, the number of private facilities grew from five to 100 ...Over the same time period the stock price of the industry leader, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), climbed from $8 a share to $30. The aforementioned Bloomberg report also notes that in the past decade the number of inmates in for-profit prisons throughout the U.S. rose 44 percent.
...Private companies which provide services to prisons combine in the American Correctional Association, a 501(c)3 which advocates legislation favorable to the industry. Such private companies comprise what has been termed the prison–industrial complex. An example of this phenomenon would be the Kids for cash scandal, in which two judges in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, were receiving judicial kickbacks for sending youths, convicted of minor crimes, to a privatized, for-profit juvenile facility run by the Mid Atlantic Youth Service Corporation
...About 18% of eligible prisoners held in federal prisons are employed by UNICOR and are paid less than $1.25 an hour.
...In 2007, around $74 billion was spent on corrections. The total number of inmates in 2007 in federal, state, and local lockups was 2,419,241. That comes to around $30,600 per inmate. In addition to the Corrections Costs, the Police Costs were over $100 Billions Dollars, plus nearly another $50 Billions Dollars for Judicial Costs for the single year of 2007 alone. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/US_criminal_justice_cost_timeline.gif
...In 2005, it cost an average of $23,876 dollars per state prisoner.
...In 2003 among facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, it cost $25,327 per inmate.
...Housing the approximately 500,000 people in jail in the USA awaiting trial who cannot afford bail costs $9 billion a year.
...To ease jail overcrowding over 10 counties every year consider building new jails. As an example Lubbock County, Texas has decided to build a $110 million megajail to ease jail overcrowding. Jail costs an average of $60 a day nationally. In Broward County, Florida supervised pretrial release costs about $7 a day per person while jail costs $115 a day. The jail system costs a quarter of every county tax dollar in Broward County, and is the single largest expense to the county taxpayer. In Cass County North Dakota more than half of the County Tax-payers General Fund goes to the County Sheriff.
...As of 2007 the cost of medical care for inmates was growing by 10 percent annually.
..."In fiscal 2009, corrections spending represented 3.4 percent of total state spending and 7.2 percent of general fund spending."
...Within three years of being released, 67% of ex-prisoners re-offend and 52% are re-incarcerated, according to a study published in 1994. The rate of recidivism is so high in the United States that most inmates who enter the system are likely to reenter within a year of their release.
...In 1995 the government allocated $5.1 billion for new prison space. Every $100 million spent in construction costs $53 million per year in finance and operational costs over the next three decades. Taxpayers spend $60 billion a year for prisons. In 2005, it cost an average of $23,876 a year to house a prisoner. It takes about $30,000 per year per person to provide drug rehabilitation treatment to inmates. By contrast, the cost of drug rehabilitation treatment outside of a prison costs about $8,000 per year per person
...The effects of such high incarceration rates are also shown in other ways. For example, a woman who has been recently released from prison is ineligible for welfare in most states. She is not eligible for subsidized housing, and for Section 8 she has to wait two years before she can apply. In addition to finding housing, she also has to find employment, but most likely she can not find a job because she has a criminal record so no one wants to hire her. Essentially, a woman who has been recently released from prison comes into a society that is not prepared structurally or emotionally to welcome her back.
...Shorter sentences may even diminish the criminal culture by possibly reducing re-arrest rates for first-time convicts. The U.S. Congress has ordered federal judges to make imprisonment decisions "recognizing that imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation."
...In the 2014 book The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, journalist Matt Taibbi argues that the expanding disparity of wealth and the increasing criminalization of those in poverty have culminated in the U.S. having the largest prison population "in the history of human civilization."
...Guilty plea bargains concluded 97% of all federal cases in 2011.
Horrifying Civil Liberties Predictions for 2015.
Sometimes, real life can be stranger than parody. This can be particularly true when it comes to the beat we cover here at The Watch, civil liberties. With that in mind, I’ve gone out on a limb to make some predictions about what might happen on the civil liberties front in 2015.
(At least read the final paragraph)
Dirty Cop Who Framed Innocent Black Men Costing NY Millions
The former NYPD detective who framed innocent Black men with phony witnesses and reportedly beat suspects into giving false confessions for over a decade is costing the state of New York millions. Louis Scarcella, 62, had a rich reputation of arresting high-profile killers and getting them to talk. He even received the Chief of Detectives Award for Outstanding Police Investigation for cases he allegedly solved. However, the City of New York will now pay $17 million to three half-brothers who spent a combined 60 years in prison on murder convictions led by Scarcella. ...According to the New York Times, Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth P. Thompson is reviewing 130 convictions from the 1980s and 1990s, 70 of which involve Scarcella “investigations.”...So far, Scarcella has cost NYC $24 million in settlements.
Brooklyn DA investigating allegations of NYPD officers planting guns on innocent people
A justice system overwhelmed
http://touch.baltimoresun.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-82709308/
Let's call 2014 "the year of the wrongfully convicted." Why? According to figures released last week by the National Registry of Exonerations, at least 125 wrongful convictions were overturned in 2014....Six of those whose convictions were reversed had been sentenced to death, and each had served more than 30 years in prison. Imagine living in a cage for 39 years, waiting to be executed for a crime you did not commit. ...The United States imprisons more people per capita than any other nation, with 2 million incarcerated at present. That crushing volume makes mistakes inevitable. Accuracy is impossible when police, prosecutors, public defenders and judges labor under impossible caseloads. Under this circumstance, we can expect wrongful convictions to continue for years to come, even if only a small fraction of those we incarcerate are innocent. ...Mass incarceration is a failed policy....
The Polygraph Has Been Lying for
90 Years
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/04/the-polygraph-has-been-lying-for-90-years.html
...According to unpublished survey data kept in archives, up to 60 percent of the criminals labeled deceptive after an examination with Keeler’s polygraph, would confess to their crimes....the Chicago police department’s reaction to the polygraph like this: “Why use a polygraph? Beat the hell out of him. If he tells the truth, he’s guilty; if he doesn’t, he’s innocent.” To be sure, the lie detector was a preferable innovation to the blackjacks and rubber hoses many officers employed at the time. But make no mistake; the truth box just turned intimidation from physical to psychological. According to Bunn, Keeler would say, “Let them stew overnight in the cell…We’ll hook them up to the sweat box in the morning by which time they’ll be so fearful of it, they will simply confess.” “It does tend to make people frightened, and it does make people confess, even though it cannot detect a lie,” Bunn said.... What’s clear is that misplaced trust in the lie detector has consequences. In some cases people have used widely-known methods to cheat: with countermeasures like taking drugs or shocking their senses by biting their tongues or clinching their anuses. In 1987, Gary Ridgway passed a lie detector test by “just relaxing.” It wasn’t until 2001 that advancement in DNA technology pointed to Ridgeway as the serial murderer of 48 women. Even more tragic, are the innocent who have been wrongly convicted based on the tests. In October, Jeff Deskovic was awarded $40 million for his wrongful conviction in the rape and murder of a high school classmate. Deskovic was exonerated after serving 16 years, his guilt determined largely on the results of a five-hour polygraph exam in which Deskovic says the examiner called the then 16-year-old a murderer, convinced him that he had failed the polygraph, and left him on the floor in the fetal position to give a false confession....
Part I: Policing for Profit
http://www.ij.org/part-i-policing-for-profit-2
Incentives for Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture...Criminologists, economists and legal scholars who have studied forfeiture behavior have found evidence indicating that police departments are taking advantage of lenient forfeiture statutes to “pad their budgets.”[28] Financial incentives may be particularly powerful for state and local law enforcement agencies that have limited resources and are susceptible to changes in budget allocations.[29] According to a 2008 investigative series on National Public Radio, some Texas sheriffs’ departments rely on forfeited money for up to one-third of their budgets.[30]...in most states, property owners are effectively guilty until proven innocent....state and local agencies, as well as the federal government, use asset forfeiture extensively—often to the tune of tens of millions of dollars each year. ...Agencies in states that limit the ability to profit from forfeiture proceeds receive significantly more equitable sharing proceeds. This suggests that law enforcement agencies are circumventing restrictive state laws....law enforcement agencies in states with no profit motive will receive, on average, four times that amount—$30,000—compared to agencies in states where 100 percent of proceeds go to law enforcement....when state laws make forfeiture more difficult and less rewarding, agencies are apt to turn to the federal government’s easier and more generous forfeiture procedures....
How much civil asset forfeiture will Holder’s new policy actually prevent?
“Equitable sharing” is the broad term the government uses any time the feds and local police use federal forfeiture law to split up the assets seized in a joint investigation....something like 86 percent of the loot that state and local law enforcement agencies receive through federal forfeitures will be unaffected by Holder’s new policy....local police can still seize property without a trial through state-based civil forfeiture laws,...In 26 states, law enforcement agencies get 100 percent of the profits from civil forfeitures, instead of the 80 percent they’d get under the equitable sharing program...media and watchdog investigations have found that police agencies often underreport forfeiture receipts...The point is that the new policy comes nowhere near ending civil forfeiture at the federal level....Smith says the other problem is the lack of accountability at the Department of Justice. If there are no consequences for violating the new policy, it isn’t going to have much of an effect. “It’s always been that way, not just in this administration. There are just no consequences when federal prosecutors violate the rules or break the law.”...
Family of woman shot on Hwy. 212 by police sues officer, city of Chaska
http://www.startribune.com/local/west/290590741.html
“This is a clearer act of police misconduct than [New York chokehold victim Eric] Garner … or any case I’ve been involved with in my 38 years. You don’t do this. You don’t fire 21 bullets to protect the hostage and then shoot the hostage.” The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court on Monday against Chaska Police Sgt. Brady Juell and the city of Chaska by Philip Sieff, the trustee for Pfister’s children, alleges that Juell used “unconstitutional use of deadly force,” shooting Pfister four times while she was on the ground and “posed no immediate threat.”
“So, where does one find the officer safety exception to the Constitution?”
...On the day an officer takes that oath,
the Constitution becomes more than a legal obligation. It becomes an ethical duty, a matter of promise keeping—keeping the most solemn promise made in a law enforcement career—to support, uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. But however lofty that promise, it is hollow—without a thorough understanding of what the Constitution requires of us.
Study Shows How Easily False Memories Can Be Planted to Frame Individuals for Crimes
Is it possible that you could one day be convinced to confess to a crime you never committed — because you don’t remember you didn’t commit it?
How could you not know that you didn’t commit a crime? Perhaps because your mind was altered to prohibit you from remembering that you’re innocent.
If that sounds confusing or bizarre, this will only add to the bizarre, confusing nature of such an event: New research suggests that this very thing may have already happened, and the implications are profound.
...“Our findings show that false memories of committing crime with police contact can be surprisingly easy to generate, ... The potential for abuse is astounding... The results were stunning: Of the 30 participants who were told they had committed a crime as a teenager, 21 (71%) were classified as having developed a false memory of the crime; of the 20 who were told about an assault of some kind (with or without a weapon), 11 reported elaborate false memory details of their exact dealings with the police.
A similar proportion of students (76.67%) formed false memories of the emotional event they were told about.
Read the full accounting of this research — which has tremendous potential for abuse – here.http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/people-can-be-convinced-they-committed-a-crime-they-dont-remember.html
Study shows ease of inducing false confessions
Researchers are questioning police interviewing techniques after a recent study showed how easy it can be to manipulate people into recalling vivid details of committing a crime they never took part in.
“We were astonished at the rate of false memories of crime that developed. We weren’t anticipating anywhere near this kind of vulnerability in the average person,” says University of British Columbia Prof. Stephen Porter, who undertook a joint study published online recently in Psychological Science with British researcher Julia Shaw.
DC prosecutors criticize city crime lab's handling of some DNA evidence
D.C. prosecutors have stopped sending DNA evidence to the city’s new state-of-the-art crime lab after they said they discovered errors in the way analysts determined whether a sample can be linked to a suspect or a victim. Prosecutors have hired two outside DNA experts to review 116 cases, including rapes and homicides, and have been notifying defense attorneys.
In one federal case, prosecutors said, the D.C. lab concluded that a defendant’s DNA could have been on the magazine of a gun seized as evidence. But an expert who reviewed the data said the lab should have interpreted the results to mean that the defendant was not the source of the DNA.
In other cases, prosecutors said, the lab either understated or overestimated the likelihood that a particular person’s DNA was left at a crime scene. ...“The issue is that their experts would do the analysis differently. Differently isn’t wrong,” ...Houck said he could not explain why the outside experts sometimes reached very different conclusions, because he does not know which methods they used.
...The issue involves the analysis of combinations of genetic material from more than one person — such as samples collected from weapons, cars or a victim’s body. The scientists try to tease out who left the DNA behind. Although TV dramas such as “CSI” make DNA testing look simple, experts said, such disputes are not uncommon and the industry does not have a single accepted method for interpreting DNA mixtures.
...“You can have the same data, and scientists at different labs — or even within the same lab — can interpret that data differently,” Butler said. “We are trying to help standardize things. We are in the process of working on that.”...“The test was done correctly, but the analysis was incorrect.”...
Domestic Violence woman taken to a hotel by a Cop is raped by same Cop
Alleged rape victim says San Jose Cop barged into hotel room
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_27683684/alleged-rape-victim-says-san-jose-cop-barged
SAN JOSE -- The woman who prosecutors contend was raped by an on-duty San Jose police officer last year testified Tuesday that she was drifting off to sleep in a room on the third floor of the Marriott Hotel on Saratoga Avenue when she heard a knock at the door.
It was the same police officer who'd driven her to the hotel at her request, after responding to a call from her daughter that she and her husband were arguing. The officer, Geoffrey Graves, barged in, she said tearfully on the second day of the officer's preliminary hearing, undid his gun belt, dropped it on a table and shoved her onto the bed.
The only thing he said to her before sexually assaulting her with his bulletproof vest on, she testified through a Spanish interpreter, was "Crazy lady, crazy lady."
San Jose police officer, Geoffrey Graves, appears at his preliminary hearing at the Santa Clara County Hall of Justice in San Jose, Calif., on Monday,
San Jose police officer, Geoffrey Graves, appears at his preliminary hearing at the Santa Clara County Hall of Justice in San Jose, Calif., on Monday, March 9, 2015. Graves has been charged with raping an undocumented woman while on duty and roughing up a girlfriend. He rejected an offer by prosecutors to plead as charged or face even more serious charges. (Gary Reyes/Bay Area News Group) ( Gary Reyes )
"I didn't want to," she testified, adding that she told him that and also pushed futilely with both hands against his vest-clad chest.
Graves, 39, has pleaded not guilty to the alleged Sept. 22 rape, saying the sex with the woman, who is an illegal immigrant, was consensual. He also denies committing two felony counts of domestic violence for allegedly roughing up a different woman, his former girlfriend. He has been on paid administrative leave since he was arrested in late March and posted $100,000 bail.
..."I still have a lot of fear," she said in a strained voice. "He's a police officer and ... and they are supposedly out there to protect you.'' Earlier this week, Graves' former girlfriend, who is a San Jose police dispatcher, gave devastating testimony against him, including that he liked to wear his police vest in bed with her during certain sex games. She also testified that he frequently blew up at her, cursing and yelling that she was crazy.
Jailhouse Snitch Testimony Is Backfiring in California
http://www.vice.com/read/jailhouse-snitch-testimony-is-backfiring-in-california-318
Because they can receive reduced sentences in exchange for their testimony, jailhouse snitches have every incentive in the world to claim that they heard a defendant confess to a crime....a 2011 California law bans the use of informants whose testimony is uncorroborated.,These laws were the result of a culture of snitch testimony in the 1980s, when in California alone at least 225 cases involving jailhouse informants had to be re-examined, as the New York Times reported back in 1989 ( http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/17/us/california-shaken-over-an-informer.html )...."in 15 percent of wrongful conviction cases overturned through DNA testing, statements from people with incentives to testify... were critical evidence used to convict an innocent person." ...of 111 death row exonerations since the 1970s, 51 were men convicted with the help of testimony from "witnesses with an incentive to lie." False testimony is the leading cause of wrongful conviction among men on death row....
Calling Out Snitches
http://www.inlander.com/spokane/calling-out-snitches/Content?oid=2428684
Efforts to make it harder to convict someone solely on an informant have stalled again. ...a Spokane County judge ruled that his son Paul and two other men would not receive compensation for the almost five years they spent in jail as a result of a wrongful conviction made possible by a jailhouse snitch. Now, a bill that could have prevented their convictions died last week....support for bills requiring criminal informants' testimony to be corroborated by another piece of evidence. The bills also would require juries to consider what witnesses are getting in exchange for their testimony. In the case of Duane's son Paul, Tyler Gassman and Robert Larson, an informant got a possible 30-year sentence reduced to 18 months...."This is clearly a problem in need of a solution, in the fact that false testimony presented by incentivized informants is one of the leading causes of wrongful conviction in our country," ..."We have a situation where there is great incentive to give false testimony, but very little disincentive."...
RUDGLEY:
Policy is more powerful than dialogue
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2015/03/rudgley-policy-is-more-powerful-than-dialogue
If we want something to change we need more than social media activism; we should pursue paths of action that will directly impact our governing institutions. In short, emailing, writing and calling state and federal legislators to advocate on behalf of concrete policy proposals is a far more direct, substantial and powerful way to enact real change. There are four realistic policy proposals that, if campaigned for and implemented into law, would achieve far more than nebulous dialogues.
(1) The first, and most ambitious, would be to usher in a bipartisan criminal justice reform package through Congress like the REDEEM Act http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/cory-booker-rand-paul-team-up-108640.html ...The United States’ incarceration rate is the highest in the world: while it represents 4.4 percent of the world’s population, it is home to 22 percent of the world’s prisoners....
(2) “When you put a camera on a police officer, they tend to behave a little better, follow the rules a little better… if a citizen knows the officer is wearing a camera, chances are the citizen will behave a little better.” ...
(3) Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement. According to the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center, the Department of Defense’s 1033 program http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/14/the-pentagon-gave-nearly-half-a-billion-dollars-of-military-gear-to-local-law-enforcement-last-year/ ...This program, more than any other, has facilitated the rapid militarization of the police.
(4) A fourth solution would address police immunity in the court system. 68 percent of felony defendants, from the general population in 2006, were convicted while 48 percent were incarcerated; http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/allegations-of-police-misconduct-rarely-result-in-charges/ in 2009-10, just 33 percent of law enforcement officials accused of misconduct were convicted and a mere 12 percent were incarcerated. Greater civilian oversight of the judicial process tracking law enforcement misconduct accusations from submission to conviction and incarceration would ensure that police do not remain insulated from the law we’ve entrusted them to enforce. ...
Mind Stumper:
Your Government and Law is in violation of the US & State's Constitution making those domestic government's, and any and all who enforce and defend the "Un"-Constitutional Laws as Traitors, Domestic Enemeies, and Criminals against the Constitution.
Now suppose a foreign Government or concerned domestic citizens militia, that the criminal US Government proclaims is an enemy, allies itself to the US Constitution. Declares, supports, enforces, and defense of the US Constitution and swears an oath to support and defend the US Constitution.
Who then is the real enemy? Who do you ally yourself to? A traitorous and criminal domestic Government of pretended Legislation, or a Foreign Government in actual compliance to the US Constitution?
Likewise, when Law and its enforcement criminalizes and convicts the Innocent, and rewards the Guilty are you bound to comply with this Tyranny, or do you Resist?
If you ally yourself with the real Traitors, and real Criminals in the Law and Governments doesn't that make you become a traitor, accomplice, and a criminal as well as they? Are you duty bound to support and defend a Corrupt Government and corrupt Laws, or are you duty bound to support and defend the US Constitution?
Revolution2!
https://sites.google.com/site/nodakwc/gun-rights
Domestic Enemies
Make, Support, Enforce, and Defend
"Un"-Constitutional Laws.
Civil Asset Forfeiture, which allows law enforcement to seize and keep property of individuals and businesses without a criminal conviction. The bulk of such forfeitures occur during routine traffic stops, when cops seize cash on the pretext that it “must” be the proceeds of a drug crime.
Civil asset seizures grew by almost 1000% since 2002, and now total almost $5 billion per annum.
In 85% of civil forfeiture cases, the property owner is never charged with a crime but still doesn’t get his or her property back.
On average, 12,000 to 15,000 people lose their property to arbitrary government seizure every year, and the number is growing by double digits annually.
Bad Cop Database
http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/bad-cop-database/Content?oid=2768771
For the past five years, criminal-defense attorneys in Utah have shared information about police officers' misconduct. It's been an ad-hoc approach, shooting an e-mail to a mailing list alerting attorneys of—and asking for anecdotal information about—a cop who, for instance, "was fudging on [testimony relating to] a DUI stop, or maybe he testified falsely in court," says Kent Hart.
Hart is the executive director of the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers [UACDL]. In less than a year's time, he anticipates that his association's members will have a far more effective tool for challenging the credibility of law enforcement officers in the courts: a database of police misconduct.
The database is being developed using open-source software in the "cloud"—which will allow UACDL's 450 members to access and share information they gather about potential "bad apples" among Utah's law-enforcement ranks. That information could include police-discipline records, court filings and transcripts, and attorney's commentaries.
...Hart says what prompted the decision to create a collaborative database was because the state—in terms of both prosecutors and law enforcement—does not fulfill its constitutional obligations in a sufficiently systematic manner to provide defense attorneys with what's known as Brady-Giglio material. ...some prosecutors routinely do not provide Brady-Giglio material. "The rule applies to everyone, but in terms of compliance, it's variable depending on the prosecutor and the office,"
...According to Hart, there has been no effort as yet by the state to consistently provide Brady-Giglio material to defense attorneys. "You would think because the state has a constitutional duty to do this, they would have set up some kind of formalized system in this electronic age—in essence, a central clearinghouse for cops who have committed misconduct, lied on the stand or have been disciplined," Hart says. "But they haven't."
..."We're relying on word of mouth [among defense attorneys]," Hart says. "That's all we have."
..."We think it should be legislatively implemented [so] that all officers of the court, anybody who is sworn to uphold the legal system," be they bailiffs, prosecutors, judges or defense lawyers, should be included in such a collection of data,
In America, Only the Rich Get a Fair Trial
http://www.cheatsheet.com/personal-finance/in-america-only-the-rich-get-a-fair-trial.html/?a=viewall
The sixth amendment guarantees all citizens the right to a fair trial, and that includes a decent lawyer. But as states continue to cut funding for public defenders, America’s poorest defendants are suffering the consequences. The ones lucky enough to actually be provided legal assistance typically are stuck with an overworked, underpaid, and undertrained attorney. These overburdened public defenders are known to spend only a few minutes with their clients before advising them on how to plead.
Greg Bright served 27 and a half years in an Angolan prison for a crime that he did not commit. His public defender conducted no investigation, failed to dispute the problematic testimony of the lone witness, and presented virtually no defense, leading to Bright’s wrongful conviction. He was finally released in 2003 after years of appeals. Bright’s story is by no means unique. In fact, many of the wrongfully accused face years on death row before being exonerated, largely stemming from an inadequate legal defense.
But the lawyers are not to blame. Public defenders are not provided the money to pay for expert testimony, mental health evaluations, independent investigators, and general information necessary to build a case. District attorneys, on the other hand, have significantly greater resources, including the support of the police force. In this way, the deck is already stacked against indigent defendants.
Public defenders also take on huge case loads, far surpassing the recommended amount. According to a 2009 report by the Constitution Project, public defenders can carry as many as 500 active felony cases at a time and as many as 2,225 misdemeanor cases. Josh Hayne, a former public defender in Massachusetts, said “We could do more for [clients] if we had fewer cases. When it comes down to it, you always feel like there were more things you should have done.”
Sometimes defendants are even forced to do jail time until a lawyer is available. In 2013, a man in Louisiana spent five years in jail waiting for the state to come up with enough money to provide him counsel, and the Supreme Court neglected to rule on the case to strengthen the rights of the indigent. This was 50 years after the Gideon v. Wainwright Supreme Court case, which reaffirmed every American’s right to a criminal defense and required states to provide a defense attorney to those who could not afford one.
...A Columbia University study found that in captial cases over a 23-year period, ineffective defense lawyering was the largest contributing factor to erroneous convictions and death sentences. ...
In Texas, an experimental program known as the Comal County Client Choice Project is attempting to address the quality of indigent defense, as well as the shortage of public defenders. Inspried by a 2010 report from the CATO Institute, the program allows defendants to use vouchers to hire an attorney of their choice. According to Marc Levin, director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the previous system offered judges a “perverse” incentive to appoint defense attorneys who kept the docket moving. With more power in the defendant’s hands, the hope is defense attorneys in this program will be accountable to their clients, rather than the courts.
One solution posed by the ABA Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense is to reduce the number of cases entering the system. The committee claims reclassifying certain offenses could substantially reduce the burden on the justice system without jeopardizing public safety. Incidentally, rethinking sentencing for minor and non-violent offenses has also been posed as a way to combat the country’s grossly high incarceration rate. The two issues are inextricably linked. A report by the Justice Policy Institute asserts broken public defense systems are a major contributor to longer prison sentences and mass incarceration.
Mark Twain once said, “the law is a system that protects everybody who can afford a good lawyer.” Now, more than 100 years after his death, poor Americans are still battling for their constitutional right to a fair trial.
Who are America's cops?
“Your typical police officer in the United States is a white male from a lower-middle-class background who is likely not college-educated.” ...College-educated police officers are less likely to use force, are more likely to settle interactions with citizens in ways that make the citizen happier and are also more likely to be open to working with different types of citizens and different types of colleagues.
...To entice more candidates, the department recently lowered its educational requirement and eliminated the need for college credits. Now a 21-year-old rookie cop needs only a high school diploma to start making arrests on the streets of Sarasota.
...In fact, just 1 percent of police departments in the U.S. require new officers to have a four-year college degree. The vast majority, 82 percent, require that new officers have at least a high school diploma.
...“We’re hiring at a very young age. We know from other sciences that people still develop emotionally, psychologically, even physiologically into their early 20s. So hiring somebody who is 19 years old or 20 years old — it’s just too, too early. And giving them the overwhelming responsibility and the ability to use coercive force is just inappropriate. I think we’re hiring at the age that is not appropriate.”
...If we had higher standards, we would have fewer incidents during which the public would have a legitimate claim about police misconduct. Much fewer.”
...Cops with just a high school diploma, 58 percent of the total, were the subject of 75 percent of disciplinary actions.
While officers with a bachelor’s degree, 24 percent of the total, were the subject of only 11 percent of disciplinary actions....
Hiring older, better-educated cops who look more like the communities they serve may be one way to hedge against a future filled with more Fergusons and North Charlestons. Bolden says, “Without enough African-Americans on the force that can relate and work in this area, I could see us having issues like they had in Ferguson and other places around the country. It’s much better when you have the people … working in your community that look like people that live within the community.”
The high price of justice:
Sixth Amendment guarantee deteriorating under current US legal system
The Real War "in" America:
If one includes both domestic and overseas attacks, the odds of an American being killed by a terrorist are about 1 in
20 Million. And history has shown that most terror attacks and attempted terrorist attacks in the U.S. involved FBI-prompted patsies.
Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/terrorist-plots-helped-along-by-the-fbi.html
The FBI makes it a habit to seek out individuals, encourage or coerce them to break the law and provide them the plans and materials needed to carry out “terrorist” attacks — or, in some cases, let plots they know about proceed, including the first World Trade Center bombing. But another thing history has shown is that the FBI is not reliable when it comes to telling the truth. Not only does the FBI manufacture terrorists, it has a long habit of lying about and even covering up evidence in all manner of criminal cases.
So terrorism in the U.S. is an overhyped, if not manufactured, threat. Meanwhile, the very real threat to Americans posed by U.S. law enforcement is mostly ignored. And protesters calling attention to police violence are dismissed, if not denigrated, as looters and thugs, particularly by the “law and order” right.
In other words, the simple act of obtaining state sanction and donning a badge and uniform grants LEOs the power over life and death, almost without limits. Even if the officer shoots unarmed victims in the back — which The Post found occurred in half the cases it investigated — or the police officers were found to have planted or covered-up evidence — which occurred in 10 of the 54 instances in which officers were charged — the police officer was usually cleared or given a disproportionally light punishment.
They make up laws out of thin air, claiming that innocuous activities like watching or videotaping police activities — including arrests on public streets, walking in certain neighborhoods, parking on certain streets and putting trash in trash cans — are crimes. Cops have come to think of themselves as gods above the law, whose commands are to be obeyed immediately and without question. Any hesitation often leads to the “suspect” being left bleeding and broken or quivering from electricity introduced by a stun gun, or even dead from a gunshot, choking or severed spinal cord.
And being a cop is not a particularly dangerous activity, as conventional wisdom would have you believe. In fact, it’s not even in the top 10 most dangerous occupations in America. It lags behind logging, fishing, piloting, driving a truck, roofing, steel working, picking up garbage, farming, being a construction laborer and installing power lines, among others.
For police, the motto “To protect and serve,” is really all about protecting government and their own gang and serving the state as revenue collectors and enforcers. As Becky Akers told you Friday, the police is a standing army under another name, which makes it the bane of liberty.
Police power props up the state and provides cover for all its nefarious activities. That’s why government spending on police and LEO agencies continues to grow.
That’s the real war Americans need to be concerned about.
Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/terrorist-plots-helped-along-by-the-fbi.html
Kentucky police shipped mentally ill inmate to Florida by Greyhound bus — then charged him with escape
Defying a court order to take a mentally ill inmate to a state hospital for observation, a Kentucky police chief bought a one-way ticket to Florida for the man, sending him on a 28-hour bus ride, only to have the state extradite him back by saying he escaped. According to investigation by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, Carrollton Police Chief Michael Willhoite spent $18 of his own money to rid himself of 31-year-old Adam Horine, instead of following a judge’s order to send him to Eastern State Hospital in Lexington for a thorough psychiatric assessment.
Why the poor often pay for police misconduct with their pocketbooks
Floyd Dent, a black man from Inkster, Mich., was pulled over for a routine traffic stop in January when a white Inkster police officer dragged Dent out of his vehicle, put him in an apparent choke-hold, punched him repeatedly in the head and used a stun gun on him. That officer, William Melendez, was fired and is now on trial, charged with misconduct in office and mistreatment of a prisoner, after dashboard camera video of the incident became public. And now the residents of the small Michigan town will pay the cost for Melendez’s conduct — literally. Late last month, the city of Inkster settled a lawsuit with Dent for nearly $1.4 million. According to the Detroit Free Press, Inkster’s financial manager said the city would levy a tax on property owners to help cover the cost of compensating Dent.
There is a bitter irony to the situation, but it’s not unusual that the very people who are most beset by police violence are the ones who wind up paying for it with their pocketbooks. When victims or their families are paid out by cities and municipalities in excessive-force cases that are settled or tried, taxpayers pay every time, highlighting the direct relationship between the social and financial costs of police violence. In Chicago: $84 million in one year. Los Angeles: $54 million. Philadelphia: $40 million in cases brought since 2009. [Fatal police shootings in 2015 approaching 400 nationwide]
In Inkster, the sum is small and deals with just one case. But for its residents, the reality will be unavoidable: The tax will amount to a $178.67 on a home valued at about $55,400, the Free Press estimates. ...Everyone pays the price, including renters who are likely to be least able to afford it. “They not only face the financial burden and the reduction of services, these dollars could have improved their schools could have given them more cops on the streets to improve their neighborhoods,” Shaw said. “Instead they were transfer payments to victims and victims’ attorneys.” ...It’s not our responsibility that there was mistakes made with the police department and the city,” resident Juanita Davis told WDIV in Detroit.
[Thousands of people fatally shot by police, few prosecutions]
“It is absolutely true that the innocent citizens in Inkster shouldn’t have to put up with this, and they don’t have to,” said Dan Korobkin, deputy legal director of the ACLU of Michigan. “They ought to demand of their city council people, of their mayor, of their police chief and police officers — all of whom are accountable to the public — that they police this city by respecting the people of the city and complying with basic principles of decency and the constitution. “This is really an opportunity for residents of Inkster and any other municipality to say to the officials that enough is enough.” ...“The reasonable response to high settlement amounts is to stop violating people’s constitutional rights — to take greater care that police officers aren’t trained to just leave the legal issues up to the lawyers but rather are trained to take responsibility for their actions and not violate the civil rights and constitutional rights of the people that they serve,” he said. “High settlement figures are a warning signs that something is not right within the department, it’s not a reason to complain about the constitution.”
Inmate's mother: Prison is killing my son
http://www.argusleader.com/story/news/crime/2015/06/03/inmates-mother-prison-killing-son/28399975/
Her son might be a drug addict, she said, but he didn't deserve a prison sentence and ... Daughter died while he was in prison on 2001 conviction. ...Barbara King blames prison officials for it all. Her son might be a drug addict, she said, but he didn't deserve a prison sentence and health care poor enough to put his life in jeopardy. ..."He was alert and vibrant that day," Barbara King said of Aug. 3, when Roger King reported to serve his sentence. "Now, I don't think he can ever live by himself again. I don't know if he's even going to live until he gets out of prison." She's only been able to visit him once in the hospital during his incarceration. "They treat me like I don't have any rights," she said. Prison officials won't talk about Roger King's medical situation, citing inmate confidentiality.
Young Man Who Spent 3 Years at Rikers Island as a Teen Without Being Convicted Kills Himself
Kalief Browder was arrested at age 16 in 2010 for a robbery he claimed he did not commit. He subsequently spent three years in the New York City jail complex awaiting a trail that never happened.
Kalief Browder, 22, who struggled with readjusting to society after being jailed at New York City’s Rikers Island for three unexplained years without a conviction or even a trial, has died, the New Yorker reports.
The young man reportedly ended his life over the weekend after pulling out an air conditioner in one of the bedrooms in his family home and pushing himself through the hole in the wall, feetfirst, with a cord around his neck, the news site reported. the site notes, the young man spent more than 1,000 days at the notorious correctional facility as a teen awaiting a trial that never happened for a crime he insisted he never committed. ile at Rikers, the young man was placed in solitary confinement for roughly two years and was reportedly abused by guards and inmates alike.
During his time in the jail, Browder reportedly attempted to end his life multiple times. Upon his release in November 2013, the teen attempted suicide again, causing him to be admitted into the psychiatric ward at St. Barnabas Hospital. His family described the young man as paranoid and suspected that cops or other authorities were after him. The night before his death, he reportedly told his mother, “I can’t take it anymore.” She responded, “Kalief, you’ve got a lot of people in your corner.”
The young man had been open about his arrest and subsequent mistreatment, hoping, as the New Yorker notes, to spare others the treatment he went through. He is credited with prompting New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to attempt to reform the court system to prevent the delays that kept the young man imprisoned for the last of his teen years. Read more at the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/kalief-browder-1993-2015
The enemy is the state:
how the US justice system started a
civil war
A boy (relevant detail: 12 years old) stands in a park’s playground, until a police car pulls up and an officer immediately – within two seconds – shoots and kills him. A man slowly exits his car at a gas station. A state trooper asks to see his licence, and after the man turns and reaches into his car to retrieve it, the trooper shoots him multiple times at close range; the shooting victim wonders aloud, “What did I do, sir?” A burly undercover officer delivers a vicious right cross flush to the face of the thin, handcuffed woman who just extended her foot toward him. His follow-up kick misses. An overweight man in a chokehold –...A woman surrounded by police at a precinct while being processed for a public-drunkenness arrest is suddenly thrown down face first after protesting her treatment. Now unconscious, her eviscerated face lies in a pool of her own blood. A man pitifully jogs away from a police officer who reacts by calmly taking aim then killing the man with multiple shots to the back....What these images, and many more like them, seem to share is a decidedly warlike timbre – but if so, this is a very one-sided civil war....First comes the smear campaign, in which any misdeed or criminal past, no matter how minor, is pored over with revelatory glee. Then we will be told that the officer involved feared not just for his safety, but for his very life. The harmless object in the victim’s hand? It looked like a gun. It looked like a gun – to someone very familiar with guns. The story will also report lots of furtive and aggressive movements, of violent resistance to arrest. In many cases, police reports are filled out – under penalty of perjury – attesting to these facts; but those facts are then flatly contradicted by what everyone can see with their own eyes. Officers are caught on tape manipulating evidence or rehearsing improvised fictions. The familiarity feels as if it can’t be coincidental, but is more like the product of selections from a playbook – one that undoubtedly proved more effective before smartphones and CCTV became so ubiquitous. And finally, there is the most salient sameness of all: like a prolific movie studio specialising in one particular genre, the greatest police brutality videos – in number and quality – are produced in the US....
Sheriff Lil Weasel's officers still trying to kill Rambo Vietnam Vets. Law Enforcement hate the People fighting for Freedom.
APD's killing of mentally ill Vietnam vet opens wrongful death suit
http://www.kob.com/article/stories/s3818424.shtml#.VXQ8b1JAOlf
The Albuquerque officers who shot and killed a mentally ill Vietnam veteran are now the subjects of a wrongful death lawsuit. Officers opened fire on Vincent Wood nine times in July 2013 outside a gas station at Montgomery and San Mateo in Albuquerque. Wood was holding two knives and was speaking gibberish.
Though officers said he presented a danger to them, attorney Frances Crockett Carpenter disputes that. "It is shocking to me how much the police knew about Mr. Wood prior to this," Carpenter said. She's representing Wood's family on the wrongful death lawsuit. She said there are police reports to help prove that APD had interacted with Wood numerous times and had documented his mental illness. Carpenter said that included officer Katherine Wright, one of the two officers who shot Wood.
"Everyone on scene knew what they were going to be dealing with when they got there," Carpenter said. "It wasn't a shock; they were all on notice that he had these mental health issues. And instead of accommodating those mental health issues, they punish him for that." Even more troubling, Carpenter said a crisis intervention (CIT) officer never had a chance to do his job because the other officers were too quick to shoot. The officer arrived on scene as the shooting occurred.
Carpenter also said the firing officers appeared to be more concerned about clearing the scene of gas station customers than rendering any aid to Wood. He suffered a particularly gruesome wound to his genitalia. Paramedics arrived no earlier than four minutes after the shooting, Carpenter said. "[Wood's] gurgling, he's muttering," she said. "Mr. Wood didn't die from his gunshot wounds, he died from loss of blood." Carpenter said his death is yet another example of how police in the United States are still not properly trained to handle the mentally ill. She understands how the public may perceive the filing of the lawsuit as the community continues to mourn Rio Rancho officer Gregg Benner, but said the cases are entirely different. The Albuquerque Police Department declined to comment, citing a policy to not discuss pending litigation.
Hallandale Shooting:
Witness Who Called 911 Disputes Cop's Story
McGovern's story doesn't match up with what he heard that night.““As far as [McGovern's] verbal account goes, everything he says is exactly what a police officer should say, but none of what he says is correct,” says Morgan. “In the minute that led up to the shooting, never did I hear anyone say, 'Get your hands up, get your hands up.' Nor did I hear anyone say, 'Do not reach, do not reach down, don't reach.' Had I heard an exchange like this, I would have never thought this was a domestic dispute with a very angry male.”
There were several calls from the immediate area of the shooting that were similar to Morgan's that night, according to 911 dispatch logs. Morgan's 911 call is summarized as: “HEARS SOMEONE SCREAMING FOR THEIR LIFE.” However, the actual call recordings have since been destroyed....Whitfield claimed that after the shooting, police internal affairs investigators had tried to obtain the 911 calls in a timely fashion but couldn't because the Broward Sheriff's Office had made a mistake in logging the calls under the wrong case number....
Officer McGovern claimed he shot Ehlers because he feared that Ehlers had a gun and could have shot him or fellow officer Miguel Mirabal, who was on the side of the house facing Ehlers' right side. But in a deposition, Mirabal said he had eye contact with Ehlers for nearly the entire 20 seconds between the time McGovern confronted Ehlers and shots were fired – yet Mirabal never drew his weapon (although he claimed in the deposition that he was in fear for his life when he saw Ehlers' head)....
Ex-Kenosha officer pleads not guilty to planting evidence in homicide case
Baars allegedly testified that he planted a .22-caliber bullet and an identification card at an apartment being searched in connection with the homicide investigation....Baars also reportedly testified that he put a .22-caliber bullet, and Tibbs’ ID card, in his pocket and brought the items with him to the apartment search later that day, where he planted the items on scene. ...specifically because of his alleged misconduct at the crime scene....
Yes, Canada Did Commit
Cultural Genocide
http://www.raisethehammer.org/article/2623/yes_canada_did_commit_cultural_genocide
Thousands of native men and women were sterilized until the 1980's. ...B.C. judge David Ramsay pleaded guilty on May 3, 2004, to sexual assault causing bodily harm, breach of trust and three counts of buying sex from a person under 18. The offences took place between 1992 and 2001. His victims, mostly aboriginal girls living in poverty and in trouble with the law, were subjected to acts of escalating sexual violence. Some were as young as 12 years old. ...Cornwallis placed a bounty on the head of every Mi'kmaq man, woman and child. Ten guineas, the equivalent of $19 today, was paid for each scalp. Cornwallis meant to eradicate the Mi'kmaq....the distribution of small pox infected blankets by the British to Aboriginals... The Indian Act passed by Canada's Parliament in 1874 effectively imprisoned Aboriginals on reserve lands...1928 the Sexual Sterilization Act was passed in Alberta...In 1933, British Columbia passed the same Sexual Sterilization Act....
DA won't charge Adams County deputy in domestic violence case involving estranged wife
He was booked into jail on investigation of kidnapping and sexual assault during a domestic violence incident. According to an arrest affidavit, the ...
Deputy acquitted in domestic violence case
A longtime Houston County Sheriff's deputy was acquitted Thursday on a third-degree domestic violence charge involving a dispute with his teenage ...
Ring of Snitches:
How Detroit Police Slapped False Murder Convictions on Young Black Men
"Informants lie primarily in exchange for lenience for their own crimes, although sometimes they lie for money," according to a report from Golden Gate University Law Review. While informants are motivated to falsify testimony for material reward, prosecutors are often motivated to make those informants sound believable to a judge. Testimony from a single jailhouse informant is enough to convict a person for a charge as serious as murder, according to Valerie Newman, assistant defender in Michigan's State Appellate Defender Office...."You can be convicted on any credible evidence ruled as admissible," she told Truthout. "If a judge rules it's admissible and a jury believes it, you can be convicted. People find it hard to believe people can be sent to prison for the rest of their lives based on this kind of testimony."
They can also be killed. The Northwestern report found that snitch testimony was paramount in 45.9 percent of 111 death row exonerations since the late 1970s, making it the leading cause of wrongful convictions in US capital cases. As DNA detection became more sophisticated in the late 1990s, waves of prisoners were exonerated, and some states began examining their use of jailhouse informants.
The Innocence Project, a group that investigates innocence claims in decades-old cases, claims that in 15 percent of all wrongful conviction cases overturned by DNA testing, statements from people with incentives to testify were critical evidence used to convict a person....while using informant testimony is not illegal, it is known to be highly inaccurate....Police routinely hid exculpatory evidence from prosecutors and judges....Hunter forced Detroit police to turn over evidence they'd hidden from trial that supported Love's innocence. He was exonerated - as other men would be in later years - because of the police department's failure to present exculpatory evidence to the court....Allen estimated that over 100 people who were convicted of murder were "set up" by Detroit police based on false testimony....evidence of corruption in the homicide department emerged in 2008. An audit by Michigan State Police into the DPD's crime lab ...The lab's closure led to yet another scandal three years later:
The Detroit Free Press discovered that the lab, and all the evidence in it, including sealed evidence bags, ballistic tests and investigative reports, had simply been abandoned and left open to anybody who wanted to go inside. Evidence was allowed to degrade, touching hundreds of cases....And what people don't value, they don't bother with ... I'm in prison because no one wondered, cared, or took the time to ask how a handful of serial offenders [snitches] could show up in court again and again to have received unsolicited confessions - neglect."
How Many More Videos Will It Take, America?
http://time.com/3814602/south-carolina-walter-scott-police-shooting-attorney/
Far too often the police come up with the same narrative: I felt threatened, I felt afraid, the victim struggled with me, he reached for my gun. This is the same old story from officers ...What’s sad is how often the police narrative is accepted, with no one but the family raising questions. The death of an unarmed individual is swept under the rug....When I saw it, I imagined how many times evidence has been planted, how many times untrue stories have been given as official statements, to help justify the killing of innocent people...shot multiple times from behind while he is fleeing from an officer? That does not point to justified use of deadly force....Why are we still automatically accepting the police narrative? How many shocking videos of police misconduct do we need to show you, America, before you quit accepting the narrative?...
5 Times Police Officers Blatantly Lied About the Arrests or Shootings of Black Men
Michael Slager, the South Carolina police officer who shot and killed Walter L. Scott, is not the only officer who tried to use the old “I feared for my life” lie to cover up his misconduct. Sometimes police officers lie.
It’s a scary thought when you consider how much prosecutors, defense attorneys, juries and judges—hell, everyone who works in the criminal-justice system—rely on the testimonies of police officers, and the information they put in police reports, to determine whether a person ought to be indicted for, charged with, tried for or convicted of a crime.
...Here is a list of other incidents in which police officers were caught lying on the record.
1. Cleveland officers lied at least four times about Tamir Rice.
According to an MSNBC report, there were at least four items in the police report about the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice that video footage proved to be false: 1) that Tamir was sitting underneath the pavilion with a few other people; 2) that when Tamir saw the police car, he picked the gun up off the table—it was a toy gun, but that’s besides the point—and put it in his waistband; 3) that police got out of the car and told Tamir three times to put his hands up; and 4) that Tamir reached into his waistband to remove the gun and was then shot by police.
They’re all lies.
Video footage shows that Tamir was shot less than three seconds after the police vehicle pulled up. Tamir was standing up, not sitting down; nor was he with other people. Tamir was by himself.
2. A Seattle cop lied about a 69-year-old man swinging a golf club at her....(more)
3. A South Carolina state trooper lied about a man retrieving his wallet....(more)
4. Three New Jersey officers lied about a traffic stop that turned violent....(more)
5. A paid police informant planted cocaine in a New York store owner’s shop....(more)
Watch a New York City Police Detective Pocket Nearly $3000 During a Brooklyn Raid
A New York City Police Department detective has been suspended without pay after video surveillance caught him allegedly pilfering close to $3,000 from a Brooklyn, New York deli during a police raid. ...Ian Cyrus, a 12-year veteran of the department...about $2,650 in rent funds hidden in a box under the store's counter. After looking at the security footage, the money appeared to have disappeared into Cyrus's pocket...."I was shocked it was a cop," Abdullah told the New York Post, saying he could understand "a thief coming inside the store and stealing, but cops? No." ...Police misconduct across the country: It seems as though the proverbial question of "Who watches the watchmen" is popping up with increasing — and terrifying — frequency...."You need to hurry up and get to [the media] immediately because what [police] do, the general protocol is they're going to start framing the story how they want it,"
Judge finds officer lied about illegal search, excludes handgun from evidence
In a scathing ruling, a judge raises concern for police disregard of the constitutional rights of an individual ...After finding last month that a 20-year-old man was illegally searched, beaten and wrongly arrested, a Toronto judge expressed concern at how police misconduct can slip under the radar.... He wrote: “While Officer Sabadics may not have set out with the intent to violate (Samatar Jinje’s) rights, the fact is that her conduct in this matter was not justified by the facts, regardless of what personal judgments she might have formed. Indeed, her conduct demonstrated a complete disregard for Mr. Jinje’s constitutional rights.”...“The conduct of the police will also, undoubtedly, only serve to reinforce Mr. Jinje’s perception of unequal treatment at the hands of the police,”...“However, those efforts must be lawful ones, undertaken with full respect for the constitutional rights of every citizen,” he wrote. “There will be little to commend our free and democratic society if we permit police officers, on a whim or a hunch, to detain, arrest and search any citizen in the speculative hope that a firearm will be found and, in the process, administer personal injury to the person who is the subject of their interest.”...
Corrupt officer says drug squad routinely stole, lied, beat people, is testifying for 3rd day
http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/300076231.html
Philadelphia police officer testifying against former drug squad members ...agreed to help the FBI investigate brutality and corruption complaints ledged against the elite narcotics unit....the ensuing trial of six former colleagues. He has said the undercover officers routinely perjured themselves in court to obtain search warrants or convictions, after stealing bundles of drugs and cash from suspects they stopped or put in jail....he was caught planting drugs and stealing money in a 2013 FBI sting. He said he has since talked to the FBI — in more than 40 interviews— about his own crimes as well as those allegedly committed by the defendants and other officers not on trial. "In my world, all corrupt cops know each other,"...About 160 city convictions have been overturned amid the police corruption probe, and scores of civil lawsuits have been filed accusing Walker and the defendants of perjury, making false arrests, beating and threatening suspects, and theft. "I deserve a life sentence. I'm hoping not to get one,"...The defense plans to call squad supervisors who were on hand for some of the dubious raids but were never charged in the case. They have also shown through Walker's testimony that the amount of drugs and money allegedly stolen is at best an estimate — Walker said he typically eye-balled a wad of cash and casually split it with officers on the scene. They rarely if ever counted it, he said. For instance, he said they split about $30,000 after one raid, while last year's indictment put the take at $80,000. The trial is expected to last through late May.
FBI admits its experts gave flawed testimony
http://www.pressherald.com/2015/04/19/fbi-admits-its-experts-gave-flawed-testimony/
In a two-decade span, a specialized unit overstated forensic links in 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed.
The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000. Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far...The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison...findings that confirm long-suspected problems with subjective, pattern-based forensic techniques – like hair and bite-mark comparisons – that have contributed to wrongful convictions in more than one-quarter of 329 DNA-exoneration cases since 1989. ...Defendants and federal and state prosecutors in 46 states and the District of Columbia are being notified to determine whether there are grounds for appeals. Four defendants were previously exonerated....The admissions mark a watershed in one of the country’s largest forensic scandals, highlighting the failure of the nation’s courts for decades to keep bogus scientific information from juries...
FBI overstated forensic hair matches in nearly all criminal trials for decades - Washington Post
The Bill of Rights doesn't amount to much
Police officers are more likely to be struck by lightning than be held financially accountable for their actions. If you can be kicked, punched, tasered, shot, intimidated, harassed, stripped, searched, brutalized, terrorized, wrongfully arrested, and even killed by a police officer, and that officer is never held accountable for violating your rights and his oath of office to serve and protect, never forced to make amends, never told that what he did was wrong, and never made to change his modus operandi, then you don’t live in a constitutional republic. You live in a police state.
(Of course, you know who the “people” are that she’s taking about.)
Quote of the Day –
About Prosecutors
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2015/07/17/quote-of-the-day-about-prosecutors/
“We, as criminal defense lawyers,
are forced to deal with some of the lowest people on earth,
people who have no sense of right and wrong, people who will lie in court to get what they want,
people who do not care who gets hurt in the process.
It is our job – our sworn duty –
as criminal defense lawyers,
to protect our clients from those people.”
- Cynthia Roseberry
This is the video Gardena police didn't want you to see
A federal court ordered the release of police videos that show Gardena officers fatally shooting one unarmed man and wounding another in 2013
Evidence of police dishonesty leads to overturned convictions nationwide
"My innocence did not matter in their pursuit of a conviction. .... wrongful convictions result from prosecutors failing to disclose Brady police information. ..."If a cop lies and convicts an innocent person and they get executed, they're just as dead as if a cop shot him,"...It's another way in which police can violate someone's civil rights, ...That includes evidence of police dishonesty such as lying in an official proceeding, falsifying evidence or stealing when an officer is going to testify, but can also include excessive use of force.
..."for possible investigation into whether Saldate's conduct, and that of his supervisors and other state and local officials, amounts to a pattern of violating the federally protected rights of Arizona residents."..."They do not consider lying cops to be quite the same priority as shooting cops," Kozinski said during an interview. "Maybe because they don't get riots and they don't get the same kind of public reaction as when police shoot somebody, but in essence it's the same thing....
The accused is less likely to learn about a testifying police officer's propensity to lie in states where police personnel files are confidential, or where there are complex barriers to obtaining the information. "These protections benefit dirty cops by allowing them to testify and, thereby, hold on to their jobs," Abel wrote. They also harm defendants who are denied evidence to which they are constitutionally entitled. "And they harm society by undermining due process and allowing dishonest officers to stay on the job," ..."Suppression of this misconduct evidence can cost defendants their lives,...
Judge identifies 12 huge lies about justice in America
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/alex-kozinski-article-in-the-georgetown-law-review-2015-7
Judge Alex Kozinski, one of America’s most prominent jurists, has a new article out that attacks many asumptions about criminal justice in the US....In his article, Kozinski calls much of the law “guesswork” and points out 12 widely held but largely false beliefs about criminal prosecution in America.
Cop Who Beat Kelly Thomas To Death Gets $40,000/Year To Sit At Home
Jay Cicinelli was one of two former Fullerton, California cops who was acquitted in the brutal 2011 beating death of Kelly Thomas. This much well known. What many don’t realize is this killer cop has been receiving $40,000 in an annual pension, paid out in tax-payer dollars from the City of Los Angeles. Former Officer Cicinelli is receiving this pension while sitting at home, after walking free – not facing any prison time for his crimes.... The Los Angeles Times reported back in 2011, that “despite his disability, Cicinelli was hired as an officer by the Fullerton Police Department, where he worked his way up from a reserve officer to a corporal earning $88,544 a year.” Are you doing the math? This was all on top of the $40,000 that the LAPD was already paying him and still pays him to this very day.....Meanwhile, Cicinelli has kept busy filing motions begging to be reinstated. If he were to be reinstated, that would put his salary back to a staggering $130,000 a year!
Pentagon Legalizes Killing Journalists As ‘Law Of War’
http://www.mintpressnews.com/pentagon-legalizes-killing-journalists-as-law-of-war/206990/
The Pentagon just changed the rules of war to include legitimizing the killing of any journalists they deem “belligerent.” The new “laws of war” were released as part of a book of instructions on legitimate warfare practices approved by the United States military. This “rule book” of sorts details what the US government deems the acceptable ways of killing those they claim are the “enemy”… including journalists whose reporting they do not approve....Now, the American 1,176-page “Department of Defense Law of War Manual” says that it is perfectly legitimate to shoot, explode, bomb, stab, or cut journalists they deem “belligerent.”...
Here’s why Obama and Hillary must stop Donald Trump at all costs
http://personalliberty.com/heres-why-obama-and-hillary-must-stop-donald-trump-at-all-costs/
...a book titled “The Murder of the Middle Class” about the unholy conspiracy between big government, big business and big media. They all benefit by the billions of dollars from this partnership, and it’s in all of their interests to protect one another. It’s one for all and all for one. It’s a heck of a filthy relationship that makes everyone filthy rich — everyone except the American people. We get ripped off. We’re the patsies. No matter how much they say to the contrary, the media, business and political elite understand that Trump is no joke. He could actually win and upset their nice cozy apple cart. It’s no coincidence that everyone has gotten together to destroy The Donald...
Spain Government Goes Full Police State; Enacts Law Forbidding Dissent, 'Unauthorized ...
Well, Spain's officially a police state now. On July 1st, its much-protested "gag" law went into effect, instantly making criminals of those protesting the new law....
The law also extends its anti-protest punishments to social media, where users can face similar fines for doing nothing more than encouraging or organizing a protest. Failing to present ID when commanded is another fine. And then there's this: Showing a "lack of respect" to those in uniform or failing to assist security forces in the prevention of public disturbances could result in an individual fine ...
A clause in the wide-ranging legislation that critics have dubbed the "gag law" provides for fines of up to 30,000 euros ($33,000) for "unauthorized use" of images of working police that could identify them, endanger their security or hinder them from doing their jobs....it also defers to law enforcement's judgment when it comes to what is or isn't "authorized use" of photographs/video depicting police performing their public duties. ...Spain has outlawed dissent and given the police extra protections and respect they haven't earned. That's as close to a police state as you can get without actually declaring martial law.
Civil asset forfeiture in Tennessee allowed officer to take $6000, audit says
http://watchdog.org/228110/tennessee-17/
“altered records, failed to record or receipt the majority of the cash and made a false entry in police department records in an apparent attempt to conceal his activities.” ... County grand jury indicted Hurt on charges of two counts of theft over $1,000, one count of theft over $500 and one count of official misconduct....In Morristown, Tennessee, police seized cars and demanded cash, which a police sergeant allegedly kept for himself — $6,000 in all, a state Comptroller’s report says. Why Morristown officers seized the cars in the first place is unclear....ordered now former police Sgt. Michael Hurt to return those vehicles to the original owners...A former Morristown Police sergeant allegedly used $6,000 he collected from other people for his own personal use,...“We have this system going on around the country where people are having their property taken and it’s going into the bank accounts of police departments. ...“It’s especially troubling because there are so few reporting requirements on civil asset forfeiture. Most jurisdictions do not have comprehensive requirements for law enforcement to tell publicly how much they seized, and that can make it difficult to find discrepancies now and then.” ...
The Link Between Domestic Violence And Law Enforcement
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2015/07/09/the-link-between-domestic-violence-and-law-enforcement/
A North Texas woman is speaking out today about a problem that she claims law enforcement has been reluctant to acknowledge: domestic violence in their own homes. “To have someone pull out their service weapon on you, to cock shotguns on you, those things are hard to prove,” admits Shawn Silvan. [But] “they have easier access to weapons and I feel like there’s a brotherhood that surrounds them that also kept me silent.” ...Early last year, Silvan found herself running barefoot down an unlit street in freezing cold weather, to get away from an abusive marriage with a man she says wore a badge....And some experts say it’s more common than many may realize. The National Center for Women and Policing cites two different studies that found “that domestic violence is 2-4 times more common among police families than American families in general.”
Police Abuses
http://www.catanduanestribune.com/article/3WK4
..False evidence, fabricated evidence, forged evidence or tainted evidence is information created or obtained illegally, to sway the verdict in a court case. In Britain, falsifying evidence to convict the guilty is known as “Noble Cause Corruption”.
Some evidence is forged because the person doing the forensic work finds it easier to fabricate evidence than to perform the actual work involved. A "throw down", i.e. the planting of a weapon at a crime scene would be used by the police to justify shooting the victim in self-defense, and avoid possible prosecution for murder or homicide.
Indeed, Police misconduct statistics are hard to come by because the government does not regularly collect data. In the United States, a scandal involving planting of evidence by the police became known when Trooper David L. Harding was interviewed for a job at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He was asked if he was willing to break the law for his country. He answered "yes", then explained how he worked to convict people he felt sure were guilty by fabricating evidence. He assumed the CIA would be pleased with his answer, but instead they notified the United States Department of Justice, though there was a 14-month delay before this discovery was relayed to New York State Police officials.
Warning: Federal Court Rules that 2nd Amendment Right is Now a Reason for Cops to Detain You
In a stunning violation of 2nd Amendment rights, the U.S. District Court of Western Michigan ruled police have the legal authority to detain individuals that choose to exercise their constitutional right to open carry a firearm. Open Carry is also specifically allowed under Michigan law. The ruling means that people in Michigan who choose to exercise this constitutional right are now subject to being stopped by law enforcement for engaging in a completely lawful activity....
The Injustice System, Part 1
http://www.kmov.com/story/29420509/the-injustice-system-part-1
The News 4 Investigates documentary, “The Injustice System: Cops, Courts and Greedy Politicians,” is the result of an ongoing investigation ...Our first segment focuses on the role of police as revenue producers because they are on the front lines of the effort. (Video)
People are forced to plead guilty even when they are innocent of the charge because of police & official misconduct. In this case the lab claimed that a baking ingredient was cocaine, forcing an innocent man to plead guilty.
Public defenders seek new trials in 350 drug cases
Attorney General Matt Denn's office gave Young a better deal because more than 4 pounds of what a lab official had testified was cocaine were later found to be a baking ingredient. The substance was retested as part of an appeal by Young's alleged fellow drug dealer, Jermaine Dollard, who had been found guilty in a jury trial. Dollard, 41, went free in February after prosecutors dropped his charges. Young, 33, got his new deal in May. This week, Assistant Public Defender Nicole M. Walker asked Superior Court Judge William C. Carpenter Jr. to give a second crack at justice to about 230 other drug felons in New Castle County who pleaded guilty and are still in prison or on probation. Walker is also making the same request for about 120 drug felons in Kent and Sussex counties.
Even though Young "knowingly and voluntarily'' entered his guilty plea before a judge who asked point-blank whether he committed the crime, Walker's letter argued that the "constitutional right to due process" for Young and others who pleaded guilty from January 2010 through January 2014 was violated because they were not informed of the lab misconduct. Although state officials did not know about the problems until January 2014, Walker argues that the because there was misconduct at the lab, which prosecutors rely on for drug, DNA and other evidence, defendants had a constitutional right to know about potential problems with evidence against them. The scandal erupted when an evidence envelope opened during a trial contained blood pressure pills instead of the painkiller OxyContin....
So why do Innocent people plead guilty although they are 100% Innocent?
Report: Nearly All Drug Defendants “Forced” to Plead Guilty
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/05/report_nearly_all_drug_defendants_forced_to_plead_guilty/
"The right to trial, in the face of prosecutorial bargaining power, is de facto obliterated."
Plea Bargaining –
An Effective Tool for Prosecutorial Abuse of Power
“97 percent of federal convictions and 94 percent of state convictions are the result of guilty pleas.”
NYPD cops giving false statements about misbehavior is increasing: CCRB
Cop watchers armed with smartphones are not only catching police misconduct — they're catching cops lying about the misconduct, officials said ...More and more cops are giving false statements in official documents or when questioned about their misbehavior, the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board said....Many of the bogus statements were debunked by video evidence collected at the scene of the incident, according to CCRB chair Richard Emery, who was not surprised by the uptick of cops caught in lies....
The Justice Department charged former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Dennis Hastert with five federal felonies. Each of them carries a minimum of five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.
Although the fact that he eagerly helped create the laws he is accused of violating is worth noting.
California Prosecutors and Police Engaged in Massive Misconduct—
and Finally Got Caught
Prosecutorial and police misconduct are often dismissed as just a few bad apples doing a few bad apple-ish things. But what happens when it’s entrenched and systemic and goes unchecked for years? That looks to be the case in Orange County, California, where the situation got so completely out of hand this spring that Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals issued an order disqualifying the entire Orange County District Attorney’s Office (that’s all 250 prosecutors) from continuing to prosecute a major death penalty case...., former jailhouse snitch Leslie Vernon White demonstrated how he fabricated the confessions of other inmates, then leveraged them for reduced sentences. The White revelations led to a grand jury investigation that revealed that jailhouse snitches often lied, and that police and prosecutors—knowing they were lying—used them anyhow. ...Laura Fernandez of Yale Law School, who studies prosecutorial misconduct, says it’s amazing that both the sheriff’s office and the DA’s office worked together to cover up the misconduct: “From my perspective,” she says, “what really sets Orange County apart is the massive cover-up by both law enforcement and prosecutors—a cover-up that appears to have risen to the level of perjury and obstruction of justice. Law enforcement officers and prosecutors in Orange County have gone to such lengths to conceal their wide-ranging misconduct that they have effectively turned the criminal justice system on its head:...
Waller County authorities release more details in jail suicide
The Texas Department of Public Safety has asked the FBI to assist in the investigation into the death of the 28-year-old woman ...Bland was found in her cell about 9 a.m. Monday, "not breathing from what appears to be self-inflicted asphyxiation," the Waller County Sheriff's Office said in a news release Tuesday. Tricia Bentley, spokeswoman for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, said the death had been ruled a suicide by hanging. "Any loss of life is a tragic incident," Waller County Sheriff R. Glenn Smith said, regarding her death....Waller County has a complicated racial history. With a largely rural population, the county still ranked among the state's highest in a study from the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative that tallied lynchings from 1877 to 1950, with 15 documented cases. And the current sheriff was suspended as Hempstead police chief in 2007 for racist behavior.... Texas Department of Public Safety trooper pulled Bland over on Friday afternoon around 4:30 p.m. near Prairie View A&M after Bland changed lanes without signaling, according to Trooper Erik Burse, a spokesman for the Public Safety Department. The trooper ordered her out of the car because she was argumentative and uncooperative, he said, adding that she was about to be issued a written warning when she kicked the trooper who had pulled her over. At that point, she was arrested and charged with assault on a public servant. In a video of the arrest, Bland complained of police slamming her head against the ground and being unable to hear.
The American Nightmare: The Tyranny Of The Criminal Justice System
http://www.westernjournalism.com/the-american-nightmare-the-tyranny-of-the-criminal-justice-system/
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool’s hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.
—Bob Dylan, “Hurricane”
Justice in America is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Just ask Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit. Despite the fact that Deskovic’s DNA did not match what was found at the murder scene, he was singled out by police as a suspect because he wept at the victim’s funeral (he was 16 years old at the time), then badgered over the course of two months into confessing his guilt. He was eventually paid $6.5 million in reparation.
...The system that should have worked didn’t, because the system is broken, almost beyond repair....Unfortunately, in the real world, justice is harder to come by, fairness is almost unheard of, and truth rarely wins. On paper, you may be innocent until proven guilty; but in actuality, you’ve already been tried, found guilty, and convicted by police officers, prosecutors, and judges long before you ever appear in a courtroom. Chronic injustice has turned the American dream into a nightmare....At every step along the way, whether it’s encounters with the police, dealings with prosecutors, hearings in court before judges and juries, or jail terms in one of the nation’s many prisons, the system is riddled with corruption, abuse, and an appalling disregard for the rights of the citizenry....In such a climate, we are all the accused, the guilty, and the suspect....Battlefield America: The War on the American People...Every American is now in jeopardy of being targeted and punished for a crime he did not commit thanks to an overabundance of arcane laws. Making matters worse, by allowing government agents to operate above the law, immune from wrongdoing, we have created a situation in which the law is one-sided and top-down, used as a hammer to oppress the populace, while useless in protecting us against government abuse....AsThe Washington Post reports, “Prosecutors win 95 percent of their cases, 90 percent of them without ever having to go to trial…. Are American prosecutors that much better? No… it is because of the plea bargain, a system of bullying and intimidation by government lawyers for which they ‘would be disbarred in most other serious countries….’” ...This phenomenon of innocent people pleading guilty makes a mockery of everything the criminal justice system is supposed to stand for: fairness, equality, and justice....Clearly, the Coalition for Public Safety was right when it concluded: “You don’t need to be a criminal to have your life destroyed by the U.S. criminal justice system.”...That shield against tyranny has long since been shattered, leaving Americans vulnerable to the cruelties, vanities, errors, ambitions, and greed of the government and its partners in crime....Over the past quarter century, more than 1500 Americans have been released from prison after being cleared of crimes they did not commit. These are the fortunate ones. For every exonerated convict who is able to prove his innocence after 10, 20, or 30 years behind bars, Judge Kozinski estimates there may be dozens who are innocent but cannot prove it, lacking access to lawyers, evidence, money, and avenues of appeal. ...For those who have yet to fully experience the injustice of the American system of justice, it’s only a matter of time....Without courts willing to uphold the Constitution’s provisions when government officials disregard them, and a citizenry knowledgeable enough to be outraged when those provisions are undermined, the Constitution provides little protection against the police state.
Cop pulls over women and doesn't write her up if she has sex with him. One woman even has an outstanding felony warrant on her yet cop doesnt arrest her in exchange for sex. Now cop claims it was consensual sex because she wasn't in custody.
The Law's version of "consensual" is when they give you a choice of go to jail for a long time, or plead guilty to a crime you did not do, (or have sex with the Law Enforcement). Doesn't that fall more under as Blackmail, or Coersion rather than consensual?
As law enforcement fail to enforce laws equally the government's data that represents crimes becomes skewed and false. Which further produces Unequal Protection of the Law as governments make Laws based on the false data.
The result is the Innocent are punished, and the Guilty are rewarded, and justice is perverted.
Cops coersing prostitutes, wives, and either "so-called victims" or "so-called criminals" for sex or payoffs to prevent their arrest. This falsifies crime data which portraits men as offenders more often, and gives a false sense that women commit less crimes. It also portraits women as victims more often based on false law enforcement reporting. In turn Tax Dollars funds this falsified deception, and is un-equal protection of the law further violating the Constitution.
Former OHP trooper's sex with female motorists was consensual, not a crime
Joe Biden's controversial criminal justice record, explained
http://www.vox.com/2015/8/26/9208983/joe-biden-black-lives-matter
If Vice President Joe Biden became the next president, he could be tasked with fixing a problem he helped create: mass incarceration....Biden consistently supported mass incarceration...As senator over the past three decades, Biden backed and even authored some of the major tough-on-crime laws that are now criticized for perpetuating racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
Here are some examples, drawn in part from Jamelle Bouie's rundown at Slate:
Comment:
READ THE CONSTITUTION.
Police, "policy" is NOT law. I don't have to follow your policies. Leave me alone as much as possible. Know the law first so that you may follow it, be brave and refuse unlawful orders, then you may enforce the law.
Corrupt Washington - And those who are responsible
http://corruptwash.com/2015/09/03/wa-state-bar-declares-war-on-wa-state-citizens-2/
...lawyers have a ‘protection racket’ under the WA State Supreme Court. Ms Schimpff has just stated that we citizens are the play-toys of the WA State Bar and the corrupt lawyers who devise schemes by which citizens pockets are picked, estates are raped, families destroy, and lives ruined …. Ms. Schimpff arrogantly claims if we don’t like being screwed over by the lawyers she, Ms. Congalton and Zachary Mosner regulate, that is just tough SH=T!
...WE MUST FIGHT BACK against the arrogance of this profession! I will fight Back! Ms. Schimpff belongs in jail along with the WA State Supreme Court judges who have established this “protection racket” for the greed and power they now claim over us!
The Myth of Foreign Terrorism
- 911 SCAM
Five Hard Facts Americans Forgot About 9/11 After Being Reminded Every Year to “Never Forget”
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/americans-forgot-911-told-repeatedly-never-forget
While plenty of "conspiracy theories" surround the events of 9/11, here are 5 undisputed truths that many Americans know nothing about.
Tania Head: The ultimate betrayal of 9/11
The problem was, it was all a lie.
Google Photos helps exonerate man assaulted by cops
http://bgr.com/2015/09/24/google-photos-auto-backup-police-assault/
We’ve seen several instances of police misconduct recorded on smartphones. But what happens if you get arrested and the cops seize and conveniently “lose” your phone? That’s what happened to Toronto man Abdi Sheik-Qasim, whom The Toronto Star reports was accused of assaulting two police officers and then exonerated when a short video of his arrest was discovered backed up on Google Photos.
“The brief video recording captured the crucial part of Abdi Sheik-Qasim’s exchange with Toronto police Consts. Piara Dhaliwal and Akin Gul — enough for an Ontario judge to rule Sheik-Qasim had been assaulted by Toronto police, not the other way around,” The Star writes.
What makes this particularly troubling is that Sheik-Qasim’s phone was apparently lost by the police after he was taken into custody and hasn’t been seen since. The judge in the case called this development “extremely troubling” and said it raised questions about the honesty of the officers who testified that Sheik-Qasim had assaulted them. The video clearly shows one of the police involved was the first one to make physical contact with Sheik-Qasim even though the police claim Sheik-Qasim struck them first.
What saved him in this case was that he’d enabled the auto backup feature on his Google Photos app that automatically saves all pictures and videos shot with the phone in the cloud. This let him access the video of the police slapping his phone away, which was enough to poke significant holes in the officers’ accounts.
“I almost had a heart attack. I was jumping up and down,” Sheik-Qasim told The Star after discovering the video was backed up to the cloud. “You cannot understand how happy I was.”
'Policing The Police': How The Black Panthers Got Their Start
http://www.kunc.org/post/director-chronicles-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed#stream/0
SWAT BEGAN AS A MILITARIZED SLAVE PATROL TO COUNTER THE 20TH CENTURY SLAVES. BLACK PANTHERS ARE THE BLACK CITIZENS MILITIA FIGHTING SLAVE PATROL ...
50 years ago, SWAT raided the L.A. Black Panthers. It's been targeting black communities ever since
For one of the most dramatic moments in American policing, the raid on the Panthers headquarters is a relatively small historical footnote. But in the years since, SWAT has become a mainstay of modern policing. Between 2000 and 2008, more than 9,000 of the nation’s roughly 15,000 law enforcement agencies employed a SWAT unit. Thanks to the Pentagon’s controversial “1033 program,” even small-town police departments across the country have stocked up on military-grade hardware, including armored vehicles built to withstand roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. SWAT deployments increased by more than 1,500% nationwide between 1980 and 2000....
The LAPD’s official history says the department created the nation’s first SWAT team out of concern that officers couldn’t handle sniper and hostage incidents, such as those they encountered during the Watts riots of 1965....Extreme tactical situations such as hostage taking or sniper fire, it turned out, were fairly rare. Using the SWAT team to serve the Panther arrest warrants was not only its first major deployment, it was a deviation in the unit’s original mission. ...
Until just a few years before the raid, the LAPD had been headed by William Parker, who once complained during a television news interview that an influx of African Americans moving to L.A. to escape the Jim Crow South had “flooded a community that wasn’t prepared to meet them. We didn’t ask these people to come here.”...
less than 5% of SWAT raids involved the kind of high-risk scenarios they were intended for, such as terrorist attacks, hostage situations or active shooters....In Maryland, where Mummolo conducted most of his research, more than 90% of SWAT deployments were in service of a search warrant...“SWAT evolved as a way to control people, places and things. It started with us. Now it’s everywhere.”
Fabricated Cop Shootings Add Fuel to Fabricated “War on Police”
But all of these stories are turning out to be fabricated.
We are now discovering that the Houston cop, Terry Smith, was most likely shot by another cop from another agency, according to an investigative report by ABC 13....
And we now know that the Massachusetts cop, Millis police officer Bryan Johnson, made up the story about the random white man in a pickup truck who took a shot at him while passing him in the opposite lane, causing him to crash into a tree and engulf his vehicle in flames. Ballistics from his own gun indicate he shot up the SUV....
And we are now only waiting for police in Illinois to admit that Fox Lake police Lt. Joe Gliniewicz killed himself with his own gun, something that should have been evident when police abruptly called off an intense manhunt less than 24 hours after the shooting, announcing they are shifting from an active search to an open investigation.....
And that War on Police we keep hearing about? The one that has been blamed on everybody from President Obama to the Black Lives Matter movement to even us here at Photography is Not a Crime?
That is also a fabrication, refuted by several respected journalists, including Martin Kaste of NPR, Nick Gillespie of Reason (writing for the Daily Beast) and Radley Balko of the Washington Post, who stated the following:
Justices Rule Police Do Not Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect Someone
WASHINGTON, June 27 - The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm....
Positions of power tend to be filled by terrible people, while the good nameless peasants and martyrs are crushed by the boot of tyranny.
-unknown
Scientific misconduct or criminal offence?
When is fraud not treated like fraud? When it falls under the euphemistic umbrella of scientific misconduct. That is the opinion, at least, of some members of the scientific community, who believe it is long past time that researchers who commit fraud in the lab face criminal charges in court.
"If you were a banker and defrauded your customers, you would go to prison," ..."If someone defrauds tax payers with research money and falsifies data or falsifies entire research results, it is no different than any other form of similar economic crime."
...And yet, for some reason, a scientist who "invents data, defrauds funders and publishes fabricated data that may lead to patient harm is highly unlikely to face criminal charges."
..."Universities, research institutions and academic institutions generally don't have the stomach to go through this process," he said. "Very few want the kind of publicity that comes with research misconduct, which could affect funding."
....There is little risk to committing research fraud, beyond damage to reputation, and the research community is doing an inadequate job of policing itself, according to Bhutta, who wrote that "additional deterrence through punitive measures such as criminal proceedings should be added to the repertoire of measures available."
..."When you look at criminal offences, you can bring charges but you may not be able to meet the high standard of proof in a criminal case,"...
'Are you a traitor?' The BBC Panorama interview with Edward Snowden
'The question is, if I was a traitor, who did I betray?' This is the exclusive full transcript of the interview with Edward Snowden, aired on BBC World TV on 10 October 2015.
Are you a traitor?
ES: Of course not. The question is, if I was a traitor, who did I betray? I gave all of my information to American journalists and free society generally. Who is the government working for? Are they working for the people or are they working against us?
PT: On social media, at the moment there appears to be a standoff between the social media companies, the Googles, the Facebooks, the Twitters and the government, the intelligence agencies. Intelligence agencies say we need access to the material you've got because we wish to identify the bad guys. The social media companies or most of them are saying, but wait a minute, our priority is privacy. Where do you stand on that?
ES: Right, it's really a question of free enterprise. Who do companies work for? Do they work for their customers or do they work for governments, and remember, if a company begins accepting requests to break the security of their communications for one government, they have to do it for all of them or they'll be excluded from the markets.
PT: You mean they'll have to do it for the Russian government?
ES: Right.
PT: The Chinese government?
ES: Precisely. If we say we'll build a backdoor for the United Kingdom to be able to search for terrorists, the Chinese will immediately come forward and say, if yo
Cops Now Using Prepaid Card Readers to Rob Motorists of Digital Funds on Roadside
The ERAD allows cops to swipe prepaid cards, check the balance, freeze the account and take all the money. The ostensible purpose is to go after “bad guys” with “dirty money,” as drug traffickers are turning to prepaid cards instead of bundles of cash when traveling.
However, this ERAD-enabled moral crusade by government will undoubtedly bring about more theft from innocent people, including those with no actual drugs and harmless users who might have a joint lying around.
If Joseph Rivers had put his life savings on prepaid cards as he traveled to Los Angeles with dreams of becoming a music producer, he still would have been robbed by the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Approximately $1 million has already been seized by state and local police agencies using ERAD card readers.
Crime Lab Scandals Just Keep Getting Worse
So the question remains: When a crime lab screws up, whose responsibility is it to clean up the mess?
Emails spell out alleged scandal in state crime lab testing, falsely reporting marijuana
First uncovered by FOX 17, more on an alleged scandal in how state crime labs are testing and reporting marijuana, namely marijuana by-products with no visible plant matter, as felonies.
The defense, attorney Michael Komorn and Komorn Law, PLLC, is charging state agencies with directing the lab employees to falsely present results on marijuana products, including cases where plant material is not seen. The result: felony charges Komorn argues are lies.
"What is unique about this case is that they [the prosecution] are relying on the lab to report these substances so that they can escalate these crimes from misdemeanors to felonies,”
More than 1,000 cops charged each year, but few found guilty
http://www.nj.com/union/index.ssf/2015/10/tracking_numbers_of_police_officers_charged_with_c.html
"There is not any government agency that keeps track of these cases,"...There are about 17,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide, but there are no requirements for them to report cases filed against officers,....Most of information collected at the NPMRP comes from media reports.
"That gives us an imperfect picture," Lynch said. "It's very hard to get specific numbers of cases against police."...
Charges filed against police for off-duty conduct are among the most difficult to follow, particularly drunk-driving and domestic violence cases, Lynch said.
"I think DUI and and domestic violence are two of the scenarios where police often don't make reports," Lynch said.
Officers, he said, may be reluctant to file a charge against a fellow member of the law enforcement community....
"I've been stomping my feet trying to get people to pay attention to officers involved in domestic violence," Stinson said. "Police officers don't like to arrest other officers, and that is true for off-duty crimes as well as on-duty crimes.
"Historically, police departments have not treated officer-involved domestic violence as a priority, and often officers were not arrested in situations where anyone else would have been arrested,"...
Even as the public shows heighten interest in police charged with crimes for their on-duty actions, prosecutors tend to favor lesser charges, and juries rarely find police guilty at trials, say both Stinson and Lynch.
"There are biases that help to give the officer a benefit, as opposed to the average citizen,"...
Cities Make Public Their Accomplices In Wrongdoing By Issuing Settlements Tied To Gag Orders
It's not enough that lawsuit settlements for police misconduct, brutality or officer-involved-deaths come attached to "no admission of wrongdoing" statements. In far too many cases, they also come with stipulations forbidding recipients from making public statements about the lawsuit or its allegations.
When city officials here settle police-misconduct claims, they usually bar the person who alleged mistreatment from speaking publicly about the case...If the locality isn't interested in forcing gag orders on settlement recipients, the law enforcement agencies at the center of these lawsuits will sometimes help out by arresting plaintiffs and using pending charges as leverage against further public disclosure....
The Cleveland.com article lists a handful of other cases where lawsuit plaintiffs were arrested and charged with criminal activity after filing brutality complaints. In almost every case, charges were dropped or (in the one felony case) the grand jury did not return an indictment.
This sort of thing isn't strictly limited to lawsuits filed over police misconduct. These tactics also used to protect other government employees and officials from public scrutiny....
Nearly every lawsuit settlement contains clauses indicating that the payout is not an admission of wrongdoing. Government agencies are continually buying "innocence"... using money they've collected from citizens who have little say in how their tax money is spent. Whether it's a confidentiality agreement or a speedy settlement issued in an attempt to head off a lawsuit, the end result is the same: more secrecy, less accountability and the continued diminishing of any deterrent effect these civil suits are supposed to have.
25 Ways that the Police Foster Tyranny by Just Doing their Jobs
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/25-ways-police-foster-tyranny-jobs/#oAjUbZREIU6HdpD0.99
...most of the problems with local police have nothing to do with the federal government.
Here are twenty-five questions to consider before making a blanket statement like “Support your local police.”
Cop murders a mentally ill unarmed man in cold blood because he is holding a pen. Cop then Lies claims it is a knife to cover up his murder, and gets away with it because the DA is as corrupt and cold blooded as he is.
No charges in officer-involved shooting
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/nov/09/no-charges-in-officer-shooting/
The District Attorney’s Office has determined that a San Diego police officer who fatally shot a mentally ill man in a Midway District alley in April is “not criminally liable” for his actions, and no charges will be filed.
Police said Nehad was reported to be threatening people with a knife and later approached Browder with a shiny object. It turned out to be a metalic pen. The incident became further controversial because Browder did not have his body camera turned on.
"I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers." -Major General Smedly D. Butler
No militia means more intrusive law enforcement:
But there is still that language. If a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, then where is ours? Because if a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, it follows that a state lacking such a militia is either insecure, or unfree, or possibly both....
A professional standing army could turn on the people, placing its loyalty with its paymasters rather than with those it was supposed to protect. The militia, on the other hand, couldn't betray the people because it was the people....
(In this sense, the militia was like a jury, which is free to acquit even a guilty defendant if it thinks conviction would be unjust. In fact, Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar has likened the militia to jurors with guns because, like the jury, it was an institution made up of the people, through which the government must act, and one not susceptible to the kinds of corruption besetting professional institutions)....
But this departure from the system the Framers set up has encouraged more intrusive law enforcement at home, and more military action abroad. So I'll ask you: If a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, then are we insecure? Or unfree? Or both?
American Revolution 2.0 - Are You Ready?
http://americanmilitiaassociation.com/blog/american-revolution-2/
The primary aspiration of most of today's American Revolutionaries is the correction of the errors in our social system and removal of all existing tyranny and oppression caused by a failure to uphold our compact in its entirety. Many Americans today who contemplate some sort of revolt do so mainly for a conceptual restoration and execution of the Constitution, as the supreme law of the land which should justly override the errors of all invalid regulations and acts of usurpation by elected or otherwise appointed despotic officials. ...
American Cops Now Steal More Property than All US Burglars Combined
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/american-cops-steal-property-burglars-combined
According to the US Department of Justice, the value of asset forfeiture revoceries by US authorities from 1989-2010 was $12,667,612,066, increasing on average 19.5% per year.
In 2008, law enforcement took over $1.5 billion from the American public. While this number seems incredibly large, just a few years later, in 2014, that number tripled to nearly $4.5 billion.
When we examine these numbers, and their nearly exponential growth curve, it appears that police in America are getting really good at separating the citizen from their property — not just really good, criminally good.
To put this number into perspective, according to the FBI, victims of burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses in 2014.
That means that law enforcement in America has stolen $600,000,000 more from Americans that actual criminal burglars.
When police surpass the criminal accomplishments of those they claim to protect you from, there is a serious problem.
Police Policy of shoot first whatever they want commonly results in collateral damage to the killing of innocent citizens.
Do Police actually kill more innocents, or Un-Constitutional killings than they do actual perpetrators of actual legitimate shootings?
Police kills vendor while chasing robber
http://jamaica-star.com/article/news/20151128/police-kills-vendor-while-chasing-robber
A shooting incident in the usually busy commercial district of downtown Kingston has left vendors irate after a colleague was shot while an off-duty policeman was chasing a chain grabber....
"Children could have gotten shot. Di man not even hold up the gun inna the air, a forward him hold it and a fire, anybody coulda dead. More people could have died."
The Hard Truth About Cops Who Lie
http://www.wnyc.org/story/hard-truth-about-cops-who-lie
Nationwide, the spread of amateur video footage recording police arrests and sometimes the deaths of civilians has cast a harsh light not just on use of force but on officer credibility. Repeatedly, footage has shown the police narrative of incidents to be at best inaccurate.
Last year, New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board flagged as many officers for making false statements as it had in the previous four years combined. ...Most of these officers stayed on the force. Records show at least 54 went on to make more than 2,700 arrests after the date their word was challenged....Such shading of the truth was once so prevalent it spawned its own term: “testilying.”
That’s a bit of police vernacular for giving false testimony. It joined the popular lexicon in the mid-1990’s, when the Mollen Commission investigated police corruption. The commission found that lying was one of the most pervasive forms of malfeasance in the department, and helped breed an atmosphere where more serious wrongdoing could occur.
“The idea of ‘testilying’ is that officers will lie in order to do what they think is a greater good, which is to get these perpetrators behind bars,” said Professor John Eterno, an associate dean at Molloy College and head of the school’s graduate criminal justice program. “But in fact what they are doing is violating the constitution and violating the law. And really what I would call violating the social contract between the people and the police.”
Police misconduct statistics
http://lescoquescigrues.com/tag-police-misconduct-statistics.html
Politics and Justice – A Very Bad Combination
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2015/11/17/politics-and-justice-a-very-bad-combination/
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, and again, and again. The justice system has been putrified by politics. I’ve stressed this point numerous times in the past with regard to the pernicious effect politics has on the actions of prosecutors. And of course, it’s not limited to just prosecutors. Elected judges are effected by politics as well. See Judicial Independence – How Do We Get There?
The fact that judges are influenced by politics, particularly big money politics, is supported and amplified by this recent article in The Atlantic: Big Money Propping Up Harsh Sentences.
And by the way, state attorneys general, sheriffs, and coroners are also powerful players in the justice system who are elected political officials
16 Numbers That Explain Why Police Reform Became An Even Bigger Story In 2015
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/police-reform-numbers-2015_5672e150e4b0688701dc7a54
1,125 The number of people killed by police in 2015.
965 The number of people shot to death by police this year.
444 The number of people killed by police in "justifiable homicides" in 2014.
6 The age of the youngest victim of a fatal police shooting this year.
8 The number of shots fired at Walter Scott.
18 The number of officers charged this year with murder or manslaughter for their involvement in on-duty shootings.
0 The number of officers convicted this year on murder or manslaughter charges stemming from on-duty incidents.
4 The number of fatal on-duty shooting incidents a single officer has been directly involved in over the course of his career.
1 Only one of the nation's 60 largest cities went the entire year without a fatal police shooting.
2 Only two major U.S. cities have fully implemented their police body camera programs.
0 The number of complaints of biased policing the LAPD sustained between 2012 and 2014.
$248.7 million The amount paid out last year by the 10 largest U.S. cities for settlements and court judgments involving police misconduct cases in their departments.
34 The number of officers killed in attacks suffered in the line of duty this year.
That makes 2015 one of the safest years on record for law enforcement. ...While critics tried to combat the increasingly vocal push for police reform by branding this activism as a "war on cops," it's now clear this claim was bogus....
Chicago's Year of Police Misconduct and Accountability
http://exposed.allembru.com/police/chicagos-year-of-police-misconduct-and-accountability/66590/
Police corruption articles 2014
http://liaconrowhit.comxa.com/d/360.html
A Clark County School District cop caught masturbating at a middle school gets promoted while under investigation.
CCSD cop faces more allegations of sexual misconduct on the job
http://www.ktnv.com/news/contact-13/ccsd-cop-faces-more-allegations-of-sexual-misconduct-on-the-job
A Clark County School District cop caught masturbating at a middle school gets promoted while under investigation.
That's what Contact 13 Chief Investigator Darcy Spears uncovered in a case many say paints a picture of a department where police protect their own....
School police took swift action in December when they arrested a custodian caught masturbating into a teacher's belongings in a Dondero Elementary school classroom.
Michael Timothy Skelton pleaded guilty and will serve two years in prison.
But Contact 13 discovered the cop who headed up the investigation had a dark secret of his own.
"How would it look it if got out that he was involved in the same type of activity that he was investigating?" ...
Sergeant Mitch Maciszak was being investigated for something that happened years before, when he was a detective working Adult Education at Garside Middle School.
A fellow officer opened the door to the police office on the Garside campus.
He saw then-detective Maciszak jump back, bend over to cover himself and run into the back office.
He says Maciszak's belt was lying on the desk and there was Asian pornography on the computer screen--circumstances similar to those Maciszak investigated in the custodian's case.
Darcy Spears: Is it fair for you, with a background like that, to be investigating a case like this? Do you see a possible conflict of interest?
Sgt. Mitch Maciszak: There is no conflict of interest.
Maciszak is no stranger to allegations of sex acts on the job. What is strange for him is having to answer publicly for his actions....
"Law is legal plunder, organized injustice."
- Frederic Bastiat
The US is killing more civilians in Iraq and Syria than it acknowledges
What happened to his family is the story of just one bomb of the 35,000 dropped so far during 10,000 missions flown in the US-led air war against the Islamic State....
In almost a-year-and-a-half of bombing Iraq and Syria, the United States admits to killing just 22 innocent people. An independent monitoring group says the real figure could be more than a thousand.
RELATED: This is how the US-led coalition investigates itself when accused of killing civilians
The explanation for the US military’s impossibly low number can be found in the very way it investigates its own airstrikes. A CENTCOM spokesman told us that all civilian casualties were investigated — even if something as insubstantial as an anonymous post to Twitter was the only source. But some US investigations were cursory at best, amounting to what appears to be willful blindness....
“It was the Americans. For the past year-and-a-half, the only aircraft that fly over our area have been American.”...
Police are more dangerous to citizens than criminals
http://www.sott.net/article/280225-Police-are-more-dangerous-to-citizens-than-criminals
Americans face a new crisis: police violence against citizens is escalating, blurring the line between criminal and public servant....
High-speed police chases have killed thousands of innocent bystanders
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/07/30/police-pursuits-fatal-injuries/30187827/#
A shocking report out of USA Today, exposed just how dangerous being an innocent bystander can be when there is a police cruiser driving by. On average, according to the report, one person every day is killed during a high-speed chase. To put this into perspective, that’s larger than the number of people killed by floods, tornadoes, lightning and hurricanes — combined.
Contrary to popular thinking, high-speed chases aren’t only dangerous for those involved. Innocent bystanders are all too often the victims of these reckless pursuits. According to the report, more than 5,000 bystanders and passengers have been killed in police car chases since 1979. Tens of thousands more were injured as officers repeatedly pursued drivers at high speeds and in hazardous conditions.
Good Guys with a Gun:
Murder for Hire
This Is the Number of Innocent People Murdered by Governments.
Are You Anti-State Yet?
http://reason.com/archives/2014/05/15/be-antigovernment-and-proud
Let's start with a number: 262 million. That's the number of unarmed people the late Prof. R. J. Rummel estimated governments murdered in mass killings he termed "democide" during the 20th century.
Police officer facing charges of making up story of attack
The West Penn Township officer will now face a jury for a report she made late last summer. Ruch is charged with 4 counts of making false reports...all misdemeanors....
Investigators say she faked an attack back in September. At the time Ruch was flown to an area hospital after she said she was attacked and thrown down an embankment along RT 309. This kicked off a manhunt for the suspect, who she described as a 6 foot 2, 260 pound Hispanic man. He was never found. Court records said 17 witnesses were found and disputed her story. Records also indicate she allegedly lied about using her Taser.
“First thing we do, let’s kill 85 percent of the lawyers.”
Readers of this blog know its commitment to publishing the most reliable, up-to-the-minute data on corruption, and it is in this spirit I urge a revision to the famous line Shakespeare has Dick the Butcher speak in Henry VI, part 2: “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” New research shows not all lawyers are, as Shakespeare and his audience supposed, venal, greedy, and unethical. When lawyers in 13 New York law firms were approached to help an African official squirrel away funds that screamed “we are the proceeds of corruption,” two passed up the chance to earn the fat fee dangled before them, one on the spot and one after thinking things through. Advanced econometric analysis thus reveals that only 85 percent (11/13) of those queried were willing to consider assisting an obviously corrupt African politician. So if the same percentage of Elizabethan-era lawyers were as upright as today’s New York attorneys, Dick would not have needed to off all lawyers to reach the utopia envisioned in Act IV, Scene II. Just 85 percent....
Leaked Contracts Slow Police Misconduct Investigations
http://info.umkc.edu/unews/leaked-contracts-slow-police-misconduct-investigations/
The Guardian published an article Feb. 7 analyzing 30 percent of the contracts, which included elements that barred public access to records of civilian complaints, departmental investigations and disciplinary actions.
Former Fullerton Cop Manuel Ramos Acquitted in Kelly Thomas Death Arrested for Domestic Violence (Updated)
Manuel Ramos, one of two cops acquitted last year in the beating death of Kelly Thomas, was arrested last month for domestic violence, which should come as a surprise to nobody considering he is a proven thug with violent tendencies. A cop who told a helpless homeless man, “You see these fists? They are getting ready to fuck you up,” before proceeding with his threat that left the man dead. So we can only imagine what he did to the woman he is accused of abusing. The domestic violence arrest took place July 16 by Fullerton police, which explains why it is only coming to light now. And only because word of the arrest kept reaching us here at PINAC and apparently other news agencies, prompting us to start asking questions....
Convicted child abuser objects to nude photos
A former Moorestown police officer, found guilty of filming the sexual abuse of a child, wasn’t happy a jury saw naked photographs of him. So, Robert Melia appealed his conviction and 30-year prison term, arguing the photographs and several other issues had denied him a fair trial in April 2012. But a three-judge appellate court this week rejected Melia’s argument, saying investigators and prosecutors acted properly in securing guilty verdicts on more than 20 offenses tied to the sexual abuse of several youngsters. The decision, replete with explicit descriptions of Melia’s offenses, also spurned a similar appeal by Heather Lewis, a girlfriend convicted at the same trial. She’s serving a 20-year term, with convictions on 26 counts. Burlington County Prosecutor Robert Bernardi welcomed Monday’s ruling, saying he was “very pleased the appellate court upheld the conviction of these horrendous acts.” A jury in 2012 found the couple preyed on three girls in Lewis’ extended family, occasional babysitters for the woman’s child. Authorities learned the assaults occurred in Melia’s Cottage Avenue home from 2000 to April 2008 after one victim’s stepfather brought her to the prosecutor’s office.
Lewis also was found guilty of the sexual abuse of a male minor....a probe that turned up a video of the officer engaging in a sex act with a calf....they showed only Melia, bound by ropes and restraints, with his genital area exposed.” It said the pictures demonstrated Melia “used the ropes and restraints for sexual purposes, thus linking him” to videos that showed sexual assaults on a bound, blindfolded girl in Melia’s bedroom.Authorities believe Melia, whose face was not seen in the videos, recorded the assaults. The photos also supported the girls’ claim that Melia’s pubic area was clean-shaven,...
Its Not Just Bad Cops: Prosecutors Run Wild
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/08/it-s-not-just-cops-prosecutors-run-wild.html
Suppressing evidence, coddling informants, even outright lying are some of the instances of prosecutorial misconduct that sent away nearly half the ...
How the government can spy on you, and what you can do about it
You’d fight for free speech if anyone threatened to take it away. Yet ISPs, technology companies, and the government are all threatening to take away our privacy, and we’re standing by and letting it happen. Even if you have nothing incriminating to hide, you still have sensitive information on the internet, and the right to privacy. Here are some of the organizations that are spying on you, and some of the simple steps you can take to protect yourself and your information.
Law Enforcement Time Series Graphs
http://time-series.findthedata.com/#guide-law-enforcement
Browse the charts below to see these statistics represented visually.
FOIAed DEA Disciplinary Action Log Shows Very Little Discipline, Lots Of Inaction
Brad Heath and Meghan Hoyer of USA Today have secured a log of DEA disciplinary actions via a FOIA request. What it shows is a lot of wrongdoing but very little discipline and/or action......
The DEA's history is littered with dirty deeds: warrantless
surveillance, impersonation of medical professionals to gain access to patient records, a confidential informant program that runs with almost
no oversight, concerted efforts to block internal investigations, etc. The document obtained by Heath shows its agents are perfectly capable of doing the wrong thing individually as well. And in most cases, they'll receive little more than the agency's lowest level of discipline (letters of caution) as punishment.
Recommendations for punishment are handed down by the DEA's Board of Professional Conduct. Its suggestions for suitable discipline are often ignored.
.....This spring, the Justice Department said it had “serious concerns” about the discipline meted out to six agents who left a handcuffed college student in a holding cell for five days with no food or water. Two of the agents received brief suspensions; four others were given letters of reprimand.
....From what's in this document, it appears agents aren't being held to any standard at all. Distribution of drugs and a refusal to cooperate with the resulting internal investigation netted one agent a two-week suspension. Another's DWI arrest resulted in two days without pay. Falsification of records and theft of government funds? Five-day suspension. Failed random drug test? Also a five-day suspension.
Meth lab explosion at federal facility gets congressional attention
The chairman of the House committee on Science, Space and Technology wants to know how a meth lab got into the National Institute of Standards and Technology.....Christopher Bartley, once a senior police officer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, might have been trying to emulate the TV series "Breaking Bad" when he built a meth lab in a building on NIST's Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus.....Bartley resigned and later pleaded guilty to attempting to manufacture the methamphetamine that caused the explosion......Smith said that there was “a culture of waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct at NIST Police Services,” citing other allegations, including that Bartley had sex with other NIST employees while on duty and in vehicles owned by the federal government.
“More troubling, it appears that agency officials were aware of Mr. Bartley’s conduct but failed to take appropriate disciplinary actions and even selected him as interim chief of police despite his misconduct,” Smith said.
The explosion, prosecutors said in August, blew out four shatterproof windows and raised the temperature within the building to 180 degrees.....A statement from the House committee further alleges that evidence of theft, time and attendance fraud occurred within NIST’s police ranks.....“It also appears that police equipment worth thousands of dollars is unaccounted for or missing from the police force.”
The Hard Truth About Cops Who Lie
http://www.wnyc.org/story/hard-truth-about-cops-who-lie
The stakes couldn’t be higher. When an officer distorts the truth, violent criminals can walk free and innocent people can go to prison. More broadly, it undermines trust in the system.
7 Ways Police Will Break the Law, Threaten, or Lie to You to Get What they Want
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/7-ways-police-break-law-threaten-lie
Because of the Fifth Amendment, no one in the U.S. may legally be forced to testify against himself, and because of the Fourth Amendment, no one’s records or belongings may legally be searched or seized without just cause. However, American police are trained to use methods of deception, intimidation and manipulation to circumvent these restrictions. In other words, cops routinely break the law—in letter and in spirit—in the name of enforcing the law. Several examples of this are widely known, if not widely understood....
The police can, and do, routinely break the law and violate individual rights, knowing that there will be no adverse repercussions for them having done so.
Likewise, the police can lie under oath, plant evidence, falsely charge people with “resisting arrest” or “assaulting an officer,” and commit other blatantly illegal acts, knowing full well that their fellow gang members—officers, prosecutors and judges—will almost never hold them accountable for their crimes
Leaked ‘Drone Papers’ Reveal 90% of People Killed in U.S. Drone Strikes are Innocent Civilians
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/?s=drone#IfdZZk1tjHTMI7Zk.99
Video
Top 10 Worst Police Beatings Caught on Tape
Video:
Corporal Punishment: Police Brutality Pervasive in the United States
Video:
POLICE BRUTALITY and WHEN TO SHOOT A COP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPZlo4JrZlg
Video - funny or die:
Cop v. Black Guy
Video
Police Brutality Worse than Rodney King - The Robert Leone Story
Video
10 Worst Police Officers Of All Time
Video
Police brutality in Florida 2014 - The case of Derrick Price
Classic "Stop Resisting" line cops use to claim justification for their own misconducts.
A Video That Every Potential Juror Should See
http://www.davisvanguard.org/2016/03/a-video-that-every-potential-juror-should-see/
Last year I wrote about “acting and directing with police body cameras” — how police officers are likely to increasingly learn to manipulate the photographic record that their cameras create. A stark case study in that kind of manipulation can be found in video of a 2014 arrest in Florida that was released in January and recently came to my attention. It’s the kind of video that everyone should watch in order to become sophisticated and properly skeptical consumers of video evidence.
Police Harassment Videos:
The Raw Videos That Have Sparked Outrage Over Police Treatment of Blacks
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/30/us/police-videos-race.html?_r=0
Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Laquan McDonald, South Carolina High School Student, James Blake,
Christian Taylor, ...
The Best Open Carry Stop Perfect Answers Stun The Santa Ana Police California
How to Remain Silent when Questioned by the Police - Open Carry
"United States must invent dangers, and to do this it must adapt the strategy of
provocation and revenge."
Internal Site Map for Police Brutality Research Guide
http://guides.temple.edu/c.php?g=407078&p=2772130
This guide provides Database Search Results, Book Citations and Links, Journal Article Citations and Links and Websites About this subject. Book and Journal Article links are usually to a Google Scholar search of the source title.
The Real Issues You Won’t Hear About From the 2016 Presidential Candidates
The following are just a few of the issues that should be front and center in every presidential debate. That they are not is a reflection of our willingness as citizens to have our political elections reduced to little more than popularity contests that are, in the words of Shakespeare, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”...
ACLU designs app for police encounters
http://www.koat.com/news/aclu-designs-app-for-police-encounters/36341186
With police under more scrutiny than ever, the ACLU has a high-tech way to hold law enforcement officers accountable.
All Albuquerque police officers wear body cameras, but sometimes the technology malfunctions or the cameras aren't turned on at all. The ACLU is trying to fill that gap with an app called Mobile Justice.
The app's camera function can record any encounter with police. When the camera stops, the footage is automatically uploaded to a secure ACLU server.
Attorneys from New Mexico's chapter of the ACLU can review the footage. If they see any potential misconduct, they could offer to take the case.
"In recent months and years, we've just seen how important video is for holding police officers accountable," NM ACLU communications director Micah McCoy said.
The ACLU said the technology could also be a big help to officers.
"If the officer is doing the right thing, it's going to be evidence for that officer to exonerate them if they're accused of wrongdoing," McCoy said.
The ACLU has already rolled out the mobile justice app to seven other states, and said it's been downloaded more than 250,000 times.
Study shows secondary DNA can wind up at crime scenes
With forensic science kits growing increasingly sensitive, samples may not only contain DNA from individuals who were actually at the scene or, say, personally handled a weapon. They also may include genetic samples from people with whom those individuals had contact, the study found.
This result suggests that investigators and jurors need to proceed with caution with "touch" DNA, small samples of material such as skin cells collected from a crime scene...“There’s no nevers and no always in all of science. ... Forensic DNA is a very, very important tool, but it is subject to interpretation just like the other types of evidence that are presented,” ...
For the study, two people shook each other’s hands for two minutes. One person then handled a knife. In all but 15 percent of the time, enough DNA from the person who never touched the knife was found on the weapon to identify that person.
In five of the 20 samples, the person who was identified as the main or only contributor of DNA to the potential weapon had never even touched it. That could be because some people shed more DNA than others do, Cale said.
The results lead the researchers to conclude that the term “touch DNA” may mislead jurors and others into believing that means that the person had direct contact with the object or spot from which the DNA was gathered. The term “transfer DNA” would be more accurate, Latham said.
“That profile can’t tell you how it got there, when it got there, or even if it’s significant in terms of that crime,” Latham said. “Those are all questions that are based on interpretation.”...
“They call that the 'CSI' effect or the aura of infallibility. ... Science can sound so convincing,” Watson said. The whole point is we don’t know, even when we go into court and say this is certain and this is certain, we only know that it is a matter of degrees.”
What follows, if we are to judge by the history of fallen civilizations:
"... closer centralization; a steadily growing bureaucracy; State power and faith in State power increasing; social power and faith in social power diminishing; the State absorbing a continually larger proportion of the national income; production languishing; the State in consequence taking over one 'essential industry' after another, managing them with ever-increasing corruption, inefficiency, and prodigality, and finally resorting to a system of forced labor. Then at some point in this process a collision of State interests, at least as general and as violent as that which occurred in 1914, will result in an industrial and financial dislocation too severe for the asthenic [weak] social structure to bear; and from this the State will be left to 'the rusty death of machinery' and the casual anonymous forces of dissolution."
--Albert Jay Nock
Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943)
The Dangerous Logic of Cops Who Say, “If You're Not Getting Complaints, You're Not Working”
In a recently published report covering the period of Jan. 2014 through June 2015, New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board (http://www.nyc.gov/html/ccrb/downloads/pdf/2015-semi-annual-web-final3.pdf) found that misconduct complaints “are driven by a small percentage of the police force.” During that time span, just 10 percent of the NYPD’s nearly 40,000 officers were responsible for 78 percent of the 6,920 misconduct claims the board received. Just 1 percent of officers were responsible for about a fifth of all complaints. Meanwhile, 86 percent of NYPD officers did not receive even a single misconduct complaint...
Can Insurance Company F***ery Solve the Problem of Police Misconduct?
Just like doctors have to carry malpractice insurance, police officers should be required to carry professional liability insurance as a condition of employment....To avoid running into problems with union contracts, the strategy would allow cities to fund the base rate of the coverage, and officers funding any additional costs that would be associated with their claims history.
In most cities, and Minneapolis in particular, it has been found that a handful of officers are responsible for the majority of complaints and lawsuits regarding police brutality.
Drone Pilots have Bank Accounts and Credit Cards Frozen by Feds for Exposing US Murder
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/drone-pilots-bank-accounts-credit-cards-frozen-feds-exposing-murder
For having the courage to come forward and expose the drone program for the indiscriminate murder that it is, 4 vets are under attack from the government they once served.
“Criminal in Chief” — 78 Times President Obama Broke the Law During Presidency
Federal Judges H. Lee Sarokin And Alex Kozinski Are Truly Honorable Jurists, Says Advocacy Group, A Just Cause
The December 9, 2015 edition of the Bloomberg BNA Criminal Law Reporter says that Kozinski differentiates himself from many federal judges because of his "willingness not only to question the government, but to refuse placing the prosecution on a pedestal. "A lot of times we overlook things we ought to be saying," Kozinski said of judges' tendencies not to confront prosecutors. "If we just let them pass unspoken, we have, in effect, given support."
Kozinski affirms in the Bloomberg article that many of his colleagues criticized him for using the term "epidemic" in describing prosecutorial misconduct because he only highlighted 30 cases to support that claim. Kozinski responded: "I could have cited 300 cases, easily. I just didn't have time. Kozinski called prosecutorial misconduct a "sickness" and compared it to physical diseases such as Ebola and Legionnaire's. "How many people have to die for something to be called an epidemic? Kozinski asked, regarding wrongful convictions and executions. "All I know is there are far too many," Kozinski exclaimed....
"Federal judges are responsible for ensuring that prosecutors play by rules, respect the Constitution and don't use their power to run roughshod over defendants," says Banks. "We need more courageous judges like Kozinski and Sarokin to speak out about the type of prosecutorial misconduct perpetrated by Walsh that sent six innocent men to prison," says Banks. "A Just Cause applauds Sarokin and Kozinski for defending justice," concludes Banks
Officers Filing Bankruptcy to Avoid Liability
http://www.legalreader.com/bankruptcytoavoidliability/
Cleveland is manipulating the system by denying indemnification and forcing officers to file bankruptcy. The city is using city funds to pay officers saddled with judgments to move into personal bankruptcy.
'Creating a witness' -
Deceptive Police Tactic:
Law enforcement officers use a deceptive tactic called 'Creating A Witness'. Law Enforcement officers are trained for conflicts in a public setting. To make excessive force, and even murder look justified to the casual observer, law enforcement use deception called 'creating a witness'. As the officer is using force the officer says statements like "stop resisting", "stop reaching for my gun", and other similar phrases, as well as exagerating actions to make it appear to the public that the citizen is resisting or fighting back (even if no resisting is occurring). Often times the citizen is not resisting but, the officer is acting as if the citizen is resisting. The objective is to plant the seed of justification into the publics mind to make the public think one thing that may be totally opposite of reality to later question that person, video, or recording as a witness. In other words, law enforcement is acting out a false event telling the viewer what to think. By repeating phrases like Stop-Resisting the officer is covering his actions by false actions, and false words to become a false witness for Police Misconduct. What would you do if you are repeatedly being beaten? You may move a little from the pain of physical blows, and knees pushed into your weak areas of your body.
Although the following articles are just a tiny sample of this Police Misuse of Power, and Misuse of public trust. The following articles helps to hi-lite this deceptive police tactic:
COPS LIE ON TAPE WHEN THEY SAY "STOP RESISTING!"
http://www.hollywoodinvestigator.com/2012/stopresisting.html
We've learned that it's apparently routine for police, when making an arrest, to repeatedly say, "Stop resisting! Stop resisting!" -- even if the arrestee is not resisting. This is because the police are often audio-recorded on tape, but not video-recorded. Cops are even trained to automatically and repeatedly say, "Stop resisting. Stop resisting!" This way, if they're ever charged with police brutality, they can claim that the arrestee was resisting -- even if he wasn't! Witnesses -- civilians and police officers -- all say that this is standard operating police procedure! ...
“Stop Resisting!” – Does compliance with Police guarantee your Safety?
Recently, LAPD officers claimed to have feared for their safety because the suspect, whom they eventually shot dead, was “attacking” them with a skateboard. This version of events was determined to not be true, and the officers subsequently modified their story to say the man had wrestled a taser from one of them and attempted to use it. Eyewitnesses in the area however, including local journalist Patrick Comiskey, claimed to have seen the two officers subdue the man, and then place his hands behind his back, apparently in the course of cuffing him. But according to Comiskey, instead of placing cuffs, one officer drew a pistol and shot the man in the back, “point-blank.” Such episodes are not confined to California. From Louisiana, to North Carolina, to Arkansas, people are dying in the back of patrol cars, on the ground, in paddy wagons, etc., even after being cuffed, restrained or otherwise posing no threat. In a disturbing number of cases, people who have complied with officers’ orders have nonetheless been shot, suffocated, beaten, etc. to death.
Resisting Arrest Charge is Turning Our Country into a Police State
http://www.copblock.org/323/resisting-arrest-charge-is-turning-our-country-into-a-police-state/
The charge of “resisting arrest” is a funny thing. One may imagine that it was devised so that murderers, rapists or robbers who tried to escape from the clutches of the law are punished additionally for resisting against police officers. In practice, the effects of this charge disturbingly fall on undeserving victims. Strangely, people can be charged with nothing else but resisting arrest – meaning that there only crime was resisting arrest. This makes little sense. In essence, there was no reason to arrest them, but since they resisted their wrongful arrest, they are now criminals....
Dashcam Nails Cops Who Beat Man While Shouting "Stop Resisting Arrest"
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=48204
The video -- shot from a second police car that crossed the highway median and rammed the victim's vehicle -- shows the cops screaming "stop resisting" and "stop going for my gun" while the victim, Marcus Jeter, held his hands in the air and one cop aimed a pistol and another aimed a shotgun at him. The Bloomfield PD's internal investigations department found no evidence of any wrongdoing by the cops.
"Stop resisting!" "Why are you trying to take my gun?!"
Here's a YouTube clip that shows a typical corrupt police tactic: yelling out a different version of events than what's actually occurring.
The tactic is intended to make viewers of audio or audio-video footage believe that a different version of events is happening than what can be seen or what witnesses say they saw.
The deceptive language works best if, for example, it's later shown that some of the footage didn't capture all of the conduct or if the video somehow turned up missing. The language that the cops try to get on audio is an attempt to justify using excessive force, including those frequent extreme cases of unlawfully killing a detainee.
In this case, while the driver remained completely passive and compliant, the aggressive cops yelled out things such as, "Stop resisting!" and "Why are you trying to take my gun!"
If the audio had been the only thing available, which is often the case when video is suspiciously damaged or missing, it would have painted an entirely different picture. Unfortunately, the media, public, jurors and judges are often deceived by these tactics.
One way lawmakers could deter this kind of police misconduct is to pass laws that create personal liability for cops who editorialize recorded events with the apparent intent to mislead viewers or listeners in the event the recordings are later used as evidence. The standard of proof regarding the intent element could be: "whether a reasonable person would agree that the goal of misleading subsequent viewers or listeners in any legal proceeding was likely the cop's intent when making the statement." Of course, a lot of details would need to be worked out, but some kind of legislation (and lawmaker discussion) about this trend is better than none.
All judges who will be expected to hear evidence from police sources should be informed about this trick, and jury instructions in many cases should mention that it's a frequent police practice.
Student told to stop resisting arrest 56 times before fatal shooting, police say
A campus police officer who fatally shot a Catholic-college honor student following a traffic stop told the student to stop resisting arrest 56 times before shooting him five times, police said. ...
Witnesses Say Santa Barbara Police Officer Used ‘Excessive Force’ During Traffic Stop
http://www.noozhawk.com/article/102311_santa_barbara_police_incident/
“Out of nowhere, the officer began to punch the driver in the head several times with his fist and pushed him down flat to the ground,” said Hunter, who added that the officer continued to yell at the man to “stop resisting arrest.” Another witness, Jeff Restivo, said the driver repeatedly yelled, “I’m not resisting! Why are you hitting me?” and kept asking the police officer what he wanted him to do....
Shooting of Oscar Grant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Oscar_Grant
Officer Johannes Mehserle and another officer were restraining Grant, who was lying face down and handcuffed. Officer Mehserle stood and, according to his attorney, said, "Get back, I'm gonna Tase him." Then, Mehserle drew his pistol and shot Grant once in the back. During his court testimony, Mehserle said that Grant then exclaimed, "You shot me!" Grant was unarmed; he was pronounced dead the next morning at Highland Hospital in Oakland....
Video shows Virginia cop taking down man with a stun gun
A video has emerged of a police officer in Virginia using a stun gun on a male suspect who does not appear to be resisting, sparking a use of force investigation. In the footage - taken in Fairfax County on a cell phone - the suspect appears to be complying with the officer and has his hands on top of the police cruiser. However, with the officer behind him, he is suddenly tasered. 'He did not try to run or nothing. That was wrong,' a witness told FOX 5. Video shows man tased by Virginia cop despite compliance...
Fullerton Police Beating Kelly Thomas: Witness Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_hivslQiE8
This man says he witnessed the beating death of Kelly Thomas by Fullerton police on July 5, 2011. Here are the notable claims:
The police officers were shouting "stop resisting" while the homeless man lay still and cried out for his dad.
There was video taken by a local real estate agent, but the police wanted to look at it and now nobody knows where it went.
The beating was very bloody, went on for 10 or 15 minutes and stopped when man went silent.
The man was Tasered several times during the beating
Approximately 50 people witnessed the beating, but they were reluctant to give police a statement on what they saw.
"Full un-edited video of Kelly Thomas beating."
https://youtu.be/KU0Imk2Bstg
Magic Words to Repeat While Beating Inmates Unconscious: "Stop Resisting"
https://reason.com/blog/2011/02/08/magic-words-to-repeat-while-be
The Los Angeles Times reports that Esther Lim of the ACLU was visiting an inmate in L.A.'s massive Twin Towers Jail when she witnessed the following:
[Inmate James] Parker, 35, was charged Monday with felony counts of battery and resisting an officer in connection with the incident. According to Lim's account, Parker was lying on his stomach, looking "unconscious" or "even dead." [Deputies] Hirsch and Ochoa, she said, simultaneously punched him and kneed him. Parker, she said, never put up his hands to protect his head, which Lim took as a sign that he had lost consciousness. [...]
Lim called the deputies' account a fabrication, saying inmate James Parker was so still while being beaten that she worried he was dead. During the incident, she said the deputies monotonously repeated "stop resisting" and "stop fighting" as though they "were reading from a script."
That may sound like the grade school taunt "stop hitting yourself," but Lim claims law enforcement personnel employ such phrases to help immunize themselves from prosecution:
Lim said the ACLU commonly receives complaints from inmates who say deputies beat them while repeating "stop resisting" commands, even when the inmates aren't resisting. Lim said she suspects the deputies involved in this incident recited the commands as a ruse to later justify their actions with the help of a jailhouse recording or other deputies who may have heard their commands.
Police Beat Man in Diabetic Shock - and Nevada City Pays for It
A Nevada city will pay a diabetic man $158,500 after police beat him while he was in diabetic shock, thinking he was a drunken driver. ... The video showed that once the car was pulled over, police officers swarmed the driver and began kicking him. "Stop resisting motherf****r. Stop resisting motherf****r," an officer yelled as the man lay on the ground. However, the man was not drunk - he was suffering a diabetic episode.
He Cooperated with the Cops -- and is Paying the Price: The Ordeal of Mark Byrge
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2014/03/he-cooperated-with-cops-and-is-paying.html
Mark found himself face-down in the dirt of a nearby flower bed with Gianfelice on top of him, shouting the shared refrain of police and rapists: “Stop resisting! Stop resisting!” "I'm not resisting – get off my back!” pleaded Mark. Indeed, given his physical condition, Mark didn't have the ability to resist.
Witness: Man didn't resist police (w/audio)
Witness: Man hit by Pasadena police was not resisting
Pasadena PD says he fought officers; he later died in a jail cell
A man repeatedly hit by two Pasadena police officers before he died Saturday did not appear to be struggling or resisting arrest, according to a woman who said she witnessed the incident...."I stopped and saw he was just laying there, on the floor, flat on his back, and the cops were just punching him," Moreno, 20, told the Houston Chronicle on Thursday after she gave a statement to police. "You can tell when someone's struggling, but he wasn't putting up a fight." About six hours later, 51-year-old Pedro Gonzales Jr. was found dead in a jail cell. Preliminary autopsy results show he died from a punctured lung related to a fractured rib....
"Stop Resisting" bullshit line used by Cops to cover their Misconducts...
The Body-Worn Camera As State's Witness: How Cops Control Recordings
We already know cameras operated by police officers seem to develop technical issues during controversial interactions. Some are switched off. Some produce video but no audio. Some develop intermittent problems that can't be replicated by tech support, but always seem to have captured everything but potentially damning footage....
Officers are actors and directors in their own scenes. Even when performances are captured by bystanders and their cell phones, there's still plenty of "drama." Multiple cops swarm the same suspect, blocking the body from view. Officers shout "Stop resisting!" even when subjects are prone with hands behind their back and under the weight of four or five cops. This allows officers to deliver extra amounts of force, instantly justified by the repeated shouts about resistance. ...
Stop Resisting Video
Police brutality in Florida 2014 -
The case of Derrick Price
Classic "Stop Resisting" line cops use to claim justification for their own misconducts.
Police Perjury - All. The. Time.
http://www.loevy.com/blog/testilying-police-perjury/
Ever heard of police officers “testilying” in court? “Testilying” is the cynical euphemism that cops use for testifying falsely in order to secure convictions against people whom they believe to be guilty. But there is obviously another word for it: police perjury. “Testilying” is rationalized as somehow justified because the cop’s goal is to make sure that the bad guy gets convicted. The cop lies so that the suspect does not get off on a technicality. But it’s unmistakably police perjury, and the so-called technicalities are our constitutional protections against government persecution.
Videos often contradict what police say in reports. Here's why some officers continue to lie
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/us/police-reports-lying-videos-misconduct-trnd/index.html
Police officers are authority figures, and their words have historically held more weight than the average citizen. But videos from several recent incidents, and countless others from over the years, have shown what many black Americans have long maintained: that police officers lie. Here's why experts say some police officers falsify reports and statements, and why the problem persists. It's fairly common for officers to lie in police reports, said Philip Stinson, a criminologist and professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University.... So why do officers lie in police statements?
When officers misrepresent incidents in police reports, it is often to justify the use of excessive force or an unlawful arrest, he said. The officer knows that they have made a mistake and are trying to avoid losing their job, criminal charges or other disciplinary actions. "Your motivation to lie, really, is to keep your job and hope that nobody finds out," Thomas said. To justify an action: Another reason is what's known as "noble cause corruption," said Philip Stinson, a criminologist and professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University. Officers might lie in police reports to justify an action they took, whether the use of force or a questionable arrest....
Time and time again, videos have surfaced that have contradicted what police said in their initial statements....They are often not held accountable...Sometimes, the video is never made public. And even when it is, officers are often not held accountable.
"There's so many lies being caught on video or this behavior that the police then tell a totally different story about," Moran said. "There's a lot of police officers lying who we're just not going to find out about. And then the ones who are, it doesn't mean just because there's brief political outrage that they're going to get held accountable."
The investigative process tends to favor officers...Most police departments around the country handle officer misconduct complaints through an internal affairs unit within the department. That means police are generally investigating their own colleagues, and deciding what punishment, if any, to impose. "There's a strong culture of protecting each other,"...Discipline is often minimal: Even when discipline is imposed, Moran says, it often isn't meaningful....Officers are often protected from repercussions:...657 police union contracts and 20 law enforcement officer bills of rights, which govern internal disciplinary procedures for many police officers in the US. ...
IF NIGGER PATROL IS MURDERING A NIGGER A NIGGER MAY NOT RESIST HIS OWN DEATH IN SOME STATES. IN SOME STATES A NIGGER MAY RESIST BEING MURDERERED BY NIGGER PATROL BUT ONLY IF HE CAN PROVE NIGGER PATROL WAS MURDERING HIM, AND ONLY AFTER NIGGER IS HANDCUFFED AND CANNOT DEFEND HIMSELF. IF NIGGER DOES NOT RESIST ARREST NIGGER PATROL CAN SAY NIGGER WAS RESISTING AND THEN MURDER THE NIGGER...
How Police Abuse the Charge of Resisting Arrest
Police officers often use the charge of “resisting arrest” to criminalize black people who try to defend themselves from brutal, punitive, and often illegal police actions....
Today, resisting arrest typically only counts as lawful self-defense when one is protecting oneself against excessive force. In practice, however, the moment an officer’s violence goes from “reasonable” to “excessive” is the moment when it is already impossible for individuals to protect themselves.... The right to self-defense in these interactions is thus a fiction: it gives the illusion of accountability but in fact protects no one....
Making it illegal to resist an illegal arrest enables law enforcement to turn anyone into a criminal—subjecting them to the brutal range of harms of contact with the criminal justice system. A person’s innocence does not determine the lawfulness of an arrest, which instead turns on probable cause or reasonable suspicion. In other words, innocent people who resist being arrested for crimes they did not commit can still end up with a criminal record for resisting arrest. Because resisting arrest also justifies violent actions that police decide to take, the charge makes it extremely difficult for people to defend themselves and others against officers. Judges and juries generally defer to officers when determining whether someone is resisting arrest, so it is very difficult for victims to prove that they were not resisting arrest. As Hemmens and Levin put it, “authority follows the badge, not the law.” Moreover, it is also almost impossible to prove that resisting an arrest was justified on the grounds of excessive force, since in Graham v. Connor et al. (1989) the Supreme Court ruled, “The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.”...
* * *
Leading the Witness,
or Leading the so-called Victim
Who is the biggest offender of Leading the Witness? Answer is law enforcement. In court this is not allowed. So why are Cops allowed to do this. Cops are adding their own story to anything said by so-called victim, and witnesses to present a mostly false manufactured crime that has been hyped up. They make a mountain out of a mole hill. Where no crime has happened they manufacture it as severe as they can. Many citizens are wrongfully convicted for serious felonies over nothing more than a spilled glass of milk. The role of cops should be to gather facts not to add their own nor coerce others to Lie.
Leading question
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading_question
In common law systems that rely on testimony by witnesses, a leading question or suggestive interrogation[1] is a question that suggests the particular answer or contains the information the examiner is looking to have confirmed. Their use is restricted in eliciting testimony in court, to reduce the ability of the examiner to direct or influence the evidence presented.
The worse offenders of these misconducts are the Law Enforcement Officers. Many cases police "manufacture" crime rather than gather facts and "solve" crime. Cops actually tell the so-called victim, and witnesses what happened adding to what the witness and so-called victim has said. Often times no crime ever occurred but, the cops adding their own interpretations, and mixing in what others have said manufacture, and hype up a false crime scene. This is all too common amongst law enforcement especially in domestic violence cases where the law in many States give the Liars legal immunity to commit these crimes. The liar who falsely accused the innocent person, and the responding law enforcement are legally allowed to Lie. And add to this the incentives to Lie for this police misconduct comes by way of Billions of Dollars in Government Grants going to fund police and the industry to practice this fraud. Next these lies get sent to the Prosecutor's office which get further charges to over-criminalize the actual event so that the innocent Defendant will be coerced to Plead it down to a lesser charge. 95 % of all Defendants plead Guilty because of this process of Police Misconducts, and Prosecutor's Over-Criminalization. Then the Media will take these Lies to the Public, and add their own twists & lies to shape it to add to their Agenda's.
Perjury, Tampering with Evidence, Witness Intimidation, and Filing a False Police Report
From time to time an individual will allege that a police officer committed perjury, provided a false police report, intimidated witnesses, and/or tampered with evidence. It is rare for a Prosecutor to pursue charges against a police officer for any of this. The perspective of the Prosecutor’s office is that they have to have a working relationship with the police officers and police department and will not pursue the misconduct, or that the false information was accidental or unintentional, or that in their perspective the police officer was being truthful despite any inconsistency, or that any alleged witness tampering by the police was only an effort to get the witness to attend Court and be truthful. These discrepancies when found prior to trial can be the basis for an acquittal at trial. When the discrepancy is found after a trial, the Defendant can pursue a motion for a new trial or to set aside the conviction. If the inaccuracy is not material to the issues at trial, it is likely that such motions will be denied....
Police Misconduct Leading to Wrongful Convictions
http://resources.lawinfo.com/criminal-law/police-misconduct-leading-to-wrongful-convict.html
While there are many honest and ethical law enforcement officials in the United States justice system, there are also some law enforcement officials who unfortunately commit misconduct with regard to the crimes that they are investigating. Not only do these law enforcement officials adversely impact the credibility of other honest officials, but they can literally destroy the lives of persons who are wrongfully accused and even convicted of crimes. From detectives who do not testify truthfully, to police officers that manufacture, destroy, and/or hide evidence, and even law enforcement officials who have improperly influenced witness identifications and suspect confessions, there have been many instances where police misconduct has resulted in wrongful convictions....
Man Commits EXACT Same Crime as Hillary, FBI Does THIS to Him…
http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/us/man-commits-exact-same-crime-as-hillary-fbi-does-this-to-him
Over-Policing Is Rooted in Over-Reliance on Politics
https://fee.org/articles/over-policing-is-rooted-in-over-reliance-on-politics/
30 Cases of Extreme Police Brutality and Blatant Misconduct
http://brainz.org/30-cases-extreme-police-brutality-and-blatant-misconduct/
How Livestreaming Video Could Change The Face Of Justice
http://www.popsci.com/livestreaming-future-justice
Software like Bambuser and Ustream has been used for a few years now... Twitter purchased and launched Periscope,
"... there are no friendly civilians ... there would be no trouble if it werent for that king shit cop. All I wanted was something to eat ... the man kept pushing ... they drew first blood..."
- Rambo First Blood
Video: Putin Warns Journalists of Nuclear War: “I Don’t Know How to Get Through to You People”
Does anyone in the reeking garbage heap that is mainstream western media have a conscience? Do they even have enough intellect to get what Putin is saying – that they are helping to push the planet towards World War III?
Google is Quietly Recording Everything You Say -- Here's How to Hear It, Delete It, and Stop It
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/google-quietly-recording-hear-it-delete-it-stop/
Government Is Watching Every Move You Make
https://libertypenblog.blogspot.com/2016/08/government-is-watching-every-move-you.html
Just Dial 911? The Myth of Police Protection
https://fee.org/articles/just-dial-911-the-myth-of-police-protection/
Yet does dialing 911 actually protect crime victims? Researchers found that less than 5 percent of all calls dispatched to police are made quickly enough for officers to stop a crime or arrest a suspect. The 911 bottom line: “cases in which 911 technology makes a substantial difference in the outcome of criminal events are extraordinarily rare.”...
The drive to prohibit private firearms ownership highlights the statists’ goals in a way everybody can understand. They aim to disarm ordinary nonviolent citizens, even those who face high risk of criminal attack, and substitute police protection in place of self-defense. Meanwhile the police will not be held liable to individual citizens for failing to defend them....
Why police misconduct is worse than you know? Because you taxpayer are not allowed to know...
What about police misconduct in your city? That’s confidential
But the problem of police misconduct is not limited to Baltimore or the nearly two dozen other cities under investigation by the Justice Department. The nationwide epidemic persists, in large part, because of laws and policies that screen police misconduct from public view....
According to a review by the New York public radio station WNYC, in 23 states, police-misconduct information is effectively confidential. In 15 states, misconduct information is mostly kept from the public except under certain circumstances
Compilation of cops arrested for child porn 2016 (as of Aug. 17)
https://deborahleejarrett.wordpress.com/2016/08/26/compilation-of-cops-arrested-for-child-porn-2016
The Search for Justice in the Criminal Trial Process Often Obscured by Official Misconduct
http://www.johntfloyd.com/blight-wrongful-convictions
False Testimony Shreds the Constitution
But before a criminal trial gets underway, the truth is not subject to such a flexible interpretation as it is in a courtroom. The truth is the truth is the truth—and when the police conceal evidence of the truth, and prosecutors suppress evidence of the truth, and expert witnesses misrepresent the truth, they have ploughed up the level field upon which a constitutionally fair criminal trial should be played out....
State AGs Are Increasingly Powerful -- and Partisan
http://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-state-attorneys-general.html
State attorneys general may be the freest actors in the American political system. Their broad discretion gives them enormous power ...it’s clear that attorneys general today have close and sometimes questionably comfy relations with entities looking to profit from their work....“AGs have found a way to transform the office, so it’s not just rote law enforcement but really important in terms of making policy,”...Which cases they choose to pursue is pretty much up to them ...“In a lot of these states, if the governor and the attorney general take opposing positions, the attorney general gets to decide on litigation questions,”...AGs enjoy a near-monopoly on the state’s access to the courtroom, meaning the use of litigation as a tool to advance policy is “almost exclusively” in their hands.
All of this helps to explain why political opponents -- recognizing the power an attorney general wields -- have sought to link them to official misconduct.
This former prosecutor is being sued for misconduct
It's rare for prosecutors to face real scrutiny. "Absolute immunity" allows them to pretty much skate away after maliciously prosecuting an innocent person....
Now we have Mary Kellett, the former assistant district attorney for Hancock County in Maine. In 2007, a man named Vladek Filler was accused of and charged with beating and sexually assaulting his then-wife for the previous two years. The two were locked in a bitter divorce when she made the accusation. She also claimed he molested their children.
Kellett prosecuted the case, and edited video of Filler's wife admitting she only made the accusations to get custody of the children in the divorce.
5 Investigates exposes secret deals for officers in trouble
http://www.wcvb.com/article/5-investigates-exposes-secret-deals-for-officers-in-trouble/8296161
Police officers accused of misconduct can cut little-known immunity agreements that are allowing officers to avoid criminal charges.
5 Investigates' Mike Beaudet found, through a series of public records requests, records of nearly two dozen immunity agreements, known as Carney letters, given to police officers across the state in the last five years. But the system for keeping track of these cases is disorganized, making it likely there are still more immunity deals that have been cut.... all accusations that by virtue of the Carney letters left the police officers immune from prosecution....
Why police brutality laws don’t seem to matter in America
http://www.learnliberty.org/blog/why-police-brutality-laws-dont-seem-to-matter-in-america/
DOJ Condemns Cops Coast-to-Coast: ‘Broken Systems and Unconstitutional Policing’
http://www.mrctv.org/blog/doj-condemns-cops-coast-coast-broken-systems-and-unconstitutional-policing
“Simply put, unconstitutional policing threatens the security and well-being of our communities,” ...
There’s plenty of blame to go around, however, Gupta added, extending her indictment to America’s entire justice system:
“Of course, broken systems and unconstitutional policing practices don’t operate in isolation from other inequities in our justice system. Indeed, throughout the justice system – from arraignment to sentencing – when people experience a two-tiered system of justice that stacks the deck against those living in poverty, these broader failures erodes trust, too.”
FLASHBACK: In July of this year, Pres. Obama even suggested that police were to blame for the violence against them and that they'd be "a lot safer" if they'd admit it's their fault.
The White House is already skewing crime stats to fit Trump’s agenda
https://news.vice.com/story/the-white-house-is-already-skewing-crime-stats-to-fit-trumps-agenda
“I can’t think of a time in my adult life where the White House puts something out and you start with wondering if there’s any truthful basis for it,” said Philip Stinson, a professor of criminology at Bowling Green State University who has collected extensive data about police misconduct. “It’s bizarre that the facts don’t matter, science doesn’t matter, and good data doesn’t matter. There seems to be a very cavalier attitude [in the White House] for the purpose of creating confusion.” Other statistics cited by the White House fail to tell the whole truth. ...
As it stands, crime numbers themselves aren’t always completely sound. The reliability of annual and biannual FBI crime data has frequently been challenged, in part because it relies on self-reporting by law enforcement officials who may be motivated to either exaggerate or downplay crime in their jurisdictions. For example, a Los Angeles Times analysis found that the LAPD misclassified about 14,000 crimes ...
The numbers have been so low, according to him, that the only way they can go is up. ...But it’s not uncommon for lawmakers to push particular crime stats to fit their own narrative....And his willingness to disseminate misinformation appears to eclipse his peers. The president repeatedly cited statistics on the campaign trail that were flawed or false ...“We are all entitled to our own opinion, but not our own facts,”
List of War Equipment Local Police Receive from the Federal 1033 Program, What is Your Local PD Getting?
http://www.copblock.org/147358/war-equipment-police-receive-from-federal-1033-program/
The US government has been giving local police military equipment from battlefields across the world. Here is a list of current proven equipment used by law enforcement, given to them through the Pentagons Federal 1033 program...
Welcome to Cop Blaster!
Have you ever been arrested, ticketed, questioned, or otherwise inconvenienced by a police officer, prosecutor, judge, or snitch? Are you sick of having to answer to them in their courts and would rather make them answer to you in your court? If so, then Cop Blaster is here to serve you with an information system dedicated to exposing the truth
How to find out which Government Agency is Spying on your Phone
Status profiling: Research suggests simply wearing a police uniform changes the way the brain processes information
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170210090000.htm
US Admits Using Radioactive Weapons in Syria that Left Thousands of Iraqi Babies Deformed
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/us-admits-using-radioactive-weapons-syria-du/
In the first three weeks of the conflict in Iraq in 2003, the US Military dumped more than 2,000 tons of this chemically toxic and radioactive waste onto the Iraqi people.
Because the half-life of DU is millions of years, the massive quantities dropped in Iraq over the course of the invasion continue to pose a serious health risk to those exposed to it...
Closing the Courthouse Door to Victims of Police Abuse
http://www.regblog.org/2017/02/20/chemerinsky-courthouse-door-victims-police-abuse/
Among the obstacles that the Court has created include various forms of immunity for police officers ... For certain tasks, some officers are accorded “absolute immunity” which means that they cannot be held liable no matter how egregious their actions or how serious the injuries they inflict. In the 1983 case, Briscoe v. LaHue, for example, the Supreme Court held that police officers have absolute immunity to civil liability for testimony that they give as witnesses—even when they commit perjury. Put another way, a police officer who lies on the witness stand cannot be sued for money damages, even if that officer’s lies ultimately result in the imprisonment of an innocent person.
Many critics of this principle have said that the problem of police perjury is endemic—so much so, that it even has been given a name, “testilying.” Testilying sometimes occurs in proceedings involving excessive police force, as officers attempt to cover up what truly happened, and instead seek to put the blame on the victim....
The protection against civil liability runs deep, with absolutely immunity extending not only to officers who commit perjury, but also to prosecutors who knowingly rely on perjured testimony. This principle was articulated in 1976 in Imbler v. Pachtman, in which the Court ruled that a prosecutor had absolute immunity and could not be held civilly liable for having knowingly using perjured testimony that led to an innocent person being imprisoned for nine years.
Furthermore, even when officers do not have absolute immunity, they always have “qualified immunity” when they are sued for money damages. This means that government officials can be held liable only if they violate clearly established law that a reasonable officer would know. In case after case, the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have found that police officers could not be held liable for excessive force because there was not a case on point explicitly disapproving such conduct....
A fifteen-part series:
Regulating Police Use of Force
https://www.regblog.org/2017/02/13/regulating-police-use-of-force/
Once weapons were manufactured to fight wars.
Now wars are manufactured to sell weapons.
Notice the deceptive circle. Cops must manufacture, and create crime to pay for budgets. The more crime data the more grant money they receive from the Federal. Then the more their costs increase from their false data the more they need to increase more false data to receive more free government money. The false data spurs legislation to make more laws which also increases workload and other costs for law enforcement so that more crime needs to be created to receive even more free taxpayer money to fund the decpetive circle of funding law enforcement, and fund more government. In reality the real criminals are those in the Law Enforcement, entire Legal System, Government officials, and all the people involved in the fraud. Is it any wonder that America is the worlds largest encarcerated population in history of the world with much of them being wrongful convictions of the Innocent.
Are police financially encouraged to write tickets?
https://therecorddelta.com/article/are-police-financially-encouraged-to-write-tickets
“I understand the emotional plea that you’re making, but I don’t agree that there’s more crime. There may be more calls for your services.” Gregory agreed that he didn’t think the police department’s increasing workload could be equated simply to crime. ...
The discussion then turned to grant funding as a possible incentive for BPD officers to write more tickets. The police department is expected to receive a total of $38,000 in grant funding for the 2017-2018 fiscal year; $15,000 of that is a Commission on Drunk Driving Prevention grant, $19,000 stems from the Governor’s Highway Safety Grant and $4,000 is the Violence Against Women domestic violence grant....
City recorder Susan Aloi also questioned Gregory’s motivation for seeking grants that are likely to encourage officers to write tickets. “If all of these grants are to pay for overtime for officers to write tickets, the budget is a numeric visualization of your priorities,” she said. “Why would you be seeking funding for something you don’t philosophically agree with? I mean, the extra ticketing.” ...
Prosecutors Made Massachusetts’ Drug Lab Scandal Much, Much Worse
Massachusetts is home to two of the nation’s largest drug laboratory scandals: Convictions against two different lab workers have forced prosecutors to reckon with the fact that perhaps tens of thousands of people were imprisoned based on falsified or inaccurate data.
Anything you say (or don’t say) can be used against you
http://wislawjournal.com/2017/04/04/anything-you-say-or-dont-say-can-be-used-against-you/
… [T]he reality is that even when a suspect is actually innocent, resists the interrogation tactics designed to get him to confess, and adamantly denies any wrongdoing, his words can simply be cherry-picked—or even outright fabricated—and then used against him at trial as evidence of his guilt.
A Legal Overview of Prosecutorial Misconduct
Control+Assault+Delete:
When Cops Destroy Video Evidence
http://www.theroot.com/control-assault-delete-when-cops-destroy-video-evidenc-1794316875
Criminal-Justice Reform --
Prevent Police and Prosecutorial Corruption
Annie Dookhan... who in 2013 pleaded guilty to 27 criminal counts involving obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence, was a chemist employed by Massachusetts to test evidence in drug cases. She was involved in thousands of them, and she routinely falsified evidence....
In September 2001, Oklahoma City fired forensic chemist Joyce Gilchrist. Gilchrist had been accused of falsifying evidence, though she never was charged with a crime. She had offered testimony in capital murder cases in which she claimed that DNA samples matched those of the accused — claims that later turned out to be false....
Study examines emergency department visits for patients injured by law enforcement in the US
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170419131729.htm#.WPo_e9AcNCE.google_plusone_share
From 2006 to 2012, there were approximately 51,000 emergency department visits per year for patients injured by law enforcement in the United States, with this number stable over this time period, according to a study published by JAMA Surgery.... "While public attention has surged in recent years, we found these frequencies [approximately 51,000 ED visits per year] to be stable over 7 years, indicating that this has been a longer-term phenomenon,"...
Don’t Comply. Nullify!
http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2013/03/13/dont-comply-nullify/
It seems to me that people are getting confused as to just what nullification is. So let’s clarify that first.
Nullification is any act or set of acts which has as its end result a particular law being rendered null, void, or just unenforceable within a specific area.
So, the question would go like this, “if the state isn’t blocking the federal government from carrying out their acts by arresting federal agents, aren’t we just saying that the state will sit by and watch the feds take our rights or kidnap us? This isn’t nullification!”
First off, nullification is less about the legislation itself and more about the end result. There are many ways to nullify a law. The courts can strike a law down. The executive branch could refuse to enforce it. People in large numbers might refuse to comply. A number of states could pass a law making its enforcement illegal. Or a number a states could refuse to cooperate in any way with its enforcement...
Facebook admits: governments exploited us to spread propaganda
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/27/facebook-report-government-propaganda
Facebook has publicly acknowledged that its platform has been exploited by governments seeking to manipulate public opinion in other countries – including during the presidential elections in the US and France – and pledged to clamp down on such “information operations”.
In a white paper authored by the company’s security team and published on Thursday, the company detailed well-funded and subtle techniques used by nations and other organizations to spread misleading information and falsehoods for geopolitical goals....
Is Facilitating a Paid Informant Program Part of Journalism’s Job?
http://fair.org/home/is-facilitating-a-paid-informant-program-part-of-journalisms-job/
However, another questionable police tool has developed in plain sight—and is being dutifully pushed forward by some in the press. Crime Stoppers USA is a national organization, founded by a cop, whose local affiliates provide rewards for tips that lead to arrests...
The practice of encouraging people to provide incriminating information for money, however, raises questions. The Justice Department’s inspector general released a report last year that called into question the Drug Enforcement Agency’s use of paid informants, because “poor oversight” led to “an unacceptably increased potential for waste, fraud and abuse.” Lawyers and advocates against the drug war told the Washington Post (9/30/16) that “paying informants creates incentives to lie or fabricate evidence.”...
This cozy arrangement between NY1, Crime Stoppers and the NYPD means that the lines between law enforcement and journalism are significantly, if not completely, blurred. What are the ethical questions and privacy concerns raised when identities of alleged criminals are put on thousands of television screens before anyone has even been charged? What are the details of NY1‘s apparent arrangement with the Police Foundation and the NYPD? Do NY1‘s producers have any research-based evidence that paid informants actually help solve crimes—without leading to wrongful convictions? What are the effects of inundating the viewing public with images of alleged crimes?...
Just as local prosecutor’s reliance on police makes it difficult to convict or even indict violent cops, local news channels that become appendages to a police department will find it difficult to report independently on brutality or corruption. Perhaps NY1 and its reporters are comfortable sacrificing their independence to catch criminals—even golf course vandals—but many others may not be. The very least that NY1 can do is be clear and transparent about its collaboration with the NYPD, and tell the public why it’s working with the controversial, billionaire-funded Police Foundation.
Minnesota rarely sanctions police officers in domestic violence cases, a glaring weakness that police chiefs and victim advocates say needs to change.
How, she asks, can he still be a Minneapolis police officer despite having been arrested twice for domestic assault? The answer to that question reveals glaring weaknesses in Minnesota’s oversight of cops who are charged with or convicted of crimes related to domestic abuse....
A Star Tribune review of court documents and state licensing records found more than 500 sworn officers convicted of crimes since 1995. Nearly one in 10 of those convictions stemmed from a domestic altercation — at least 50 officers with crimes ranging from property damage to domestic assault. Just four of them lost their state law enforcement licenses.
In addition, the Star Tribune found 25 officers who were prosecuted on charges stemming from domestic altercations but whose cases were ultimately reduced to petty misdemeanors or dismissed altogether. As a result, their cases never came under review by the POST Board....
Domestic violence by police officers is under-reported and under-prosecuted,...
Why do domestic incidents seldom result in state discipline for officers?
When officers are arrested, charges don’t always stick....
“Why should you treat a police officer involved in a crime any different than anybody else?” ...
PART 1: Minnesota police officers convicted of serious crimes still on the job
Over the past two decades, hundreds of Minnesota law enforcement officers have been convicted of criminal offenses. Most were never disciplined by the state....
The cases reveal a state licensing system that is failing repeatedly to hold officers accountable for reckless, sometimes violent, conduct....
Three-quarters of all officers convicted are never disciplined. Only one-fifth of those officers lost their professional license — and half of those cases involved felonies, where revocation is automatic under state law....
PART 3: How Minn. officers accused of serious crimes plea bargain to keep jobs
He Excelled as a Detective, Until Prosecutors Stopped Believing Him
Detective Kevin Desormeau received a medal for valor, after a shootout in Queens. And he seemed to have a sixth sense for finding drugs and guns. In a decade on the force, he had made, by his own count, 350 arrests. ...But prosecutors now say Detective Desormeau, 34, struggled with one aspect of police work: telling the truth. After relying on Detective Desormeau’s word in hundreds of cases, prosecutors no longer believe him credible. In two cases, prosecutors have accused Detective Desormeau and his partner of making up crucial details when arresting people, even testifying about criminal activity that may never have occurred. They have said they are reviewing some of his old cases, though how many is not clear.
The two detectives were indicted earlier this year, adding to the body of evidence that police perjury and half-truths remain a persistent problem for the New York Police Department. And as more arrests and confrontations are being recorded, evidence of police falsehoods is more apparent.
The issue of false or misleading statements by the police has, on a national level, been intertwined with the issue of excessive force and the debate over whether police are too quick to shoot people, particularly black men.
But the phenomenon of false or misleading police statements has not been confined to high-profile cases in which officers try to justify the use of deadly force. In New York, the practice of routinely making up facts to justify a dubious arrest was entrenched enough that it got its own nickname more than 20 years ago — “testilying.”...
"Those of you who “go along to get along” have no backbone and destroy the foundation of courage. You are the enablers of those who are guilty of misconduct. You are just as guilty as those who break the code of ethics and oath you swore...."
"To those children of the officers who are eradicated, your parent was not the individual you thought they were. As you get older,you will see the evidence that your parent was a tyrant who loss their ethos and instead followed the path of moral corruptness. They conspired to hide and suppress the truth of misconduct on others behalf’s. Your parent will have a name and plaque on the fallen officers memorial in D.C. But, In all honesty, your parents name will be a reminder to other officers to maintain the oath they swore and to stay along the shoreline that has guided them from childhood to that of a local, state, or federal law enforcement officer...."
- Chris Dorner Manifesto
North Dakota
CHAPTER 109-02-05
PEACE OFFICER CODE OF CONDUCT AND OATH
http://www.legis.nd.gov/information/acdata/pdf/109-02-05.pdf?20160220071343
Section109-02-05-01 Peace Officer Code of Conduct
109-02-05-02 Peace Officer Oath
109-02-05-01. Peace officer code of conduct.
1. This section applies to every peace officer licensed by the board and every applicant for a peace officer license, including applicants for limited and part-time licenses. This section applies to on-duty and off-duty officers.
2. All applicants for a peace officer license, including a part-time license or limited license shallsign a code of conduct on a form provided by the board and shall submit the code of conduct with the application. In the absence of a signed code of conduct, a license may not be issued.
3. All applicants for a renewal of a peace officer license shall sign a code of conduct on a form provided by the board and shall submit the code of conduct with the application for renewal. In the absence of a signed code of conduct no license will be issued.
4. It is a violation of this section:
a. To possess or consume alcoholic beverages on duty or while in uniform on duty or off duty except as authorized or required for the lawful performance of the peace officer's duties.
b. To possess, sell, consume, use, or assist in the use of any illegal or unauthorized controlled substances or medications whether on duty or off duty.
c. To engage in conduct that is in violation of the criminal laws of the state or federal government or ordinances of a political subdivision of the state of North Dakota.
d. To engage in acts of corruption or bribery or to condone acts of corruption or bribery by other peace officers.
e. To willfully lie, provide false testimony, provide misleading information, or falsify written or verbal communications in reports when the information may be relied upon by the courts, state's attorneys, or other law enforcement officials.
f. To willfully provide false testimony, evidence, or misleading information in an application for a search warrant, arrest warrant, or criminal complaint.
g. To engage in illegal harassment or intimidation of another individual, or to condone acts of illegal harassment or intimidation by other peace officers.
h. To willfully fail to report the violation of a criminal law or North Dakota Century Code chapter 12-63 by a peace officer.
History: Effective April 1, 2014.
General Authority: NDCC 12-63-04(2)(d)
Law Implemented: NDCC 12-63-04(2)(d)
109-02-05-02. Peace officer oath.
Every peace officer must be sworn in as a peace officer and take an oath that substantially complies with the following:
1. The peace officer will uphold the constitution and laws of the United States, the constitution and laws of the state of North Dakota, and the laws of the community that the peace officer has been entrusted to enforce.
2. The peace officer will not betray the peace officer's code of conduct, the trust of a fellow peace officer, and the trust of the public.
History: Effective April 1, 2014.
General Authority: NDCC 12-63-04(2)(d)
Law Implemented: NDCC 12-63-04(2)(d)
The 8 Most Popular Types of 'Copaganda':
How the Police Play the Media
http://www.alternet.org/media/8-most-popular-types-copaganda-how-police-play-media
Copaganda is any news story that uncritically advances a police department's image or helps undermine reform efforts. Here are eight of the most common forms of copaganda: ...
“Yes, We’re Corrupt”: A List of Politicians Admitting That Money Controls Politics
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/30/politicians-admitting-obvious-fact-money-affects-vote/
...examples of actual politicians acknowledging the glaringly obvious reality. Here’s a start;
“Now [the United States is] just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congressmembers. … So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors …” — Jimmy Carter, former president, in 2015.
Top 10 Ways the US is the Most Corrupt Country in the World
http://www.juancole.com/2013/12/corrupt-country-world.html
American politicians don’t represent “the people.” With a few honorable exceptions, they represent the the 1%. American democracy is being corrupted out of existence....
Top 10 Reasons For Term Limits
http://www.listland.com/top-10-reasons-for-term-limits/
Therefore representatives must be chosen to work for the common good.Unfortunately, many elected officials can obtain too much power or authority over time making their representation of the citizens less representative. No one person should have too much power and for too long. It is far too easy for elected officials to become out-of-touch with their constituency. With that said, the concept of term limits minimizes the amount of power any one person can gain over a period of time. It ensures that a new voice can be heard when representing populations to keep the views and wishes of the people new and fresh. Here are the ten best reasons why we must absolutely have term limits for every elected office....
Why Term Limits?
https://fee.org/articles/why-term-limits/
“In free governments, the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors . . . . For the former to return among the latter does not degrade, but promote them." -- Ben Franklin
In other words, when politicians know they must return to ordinary society and live under the laws passed while they were in government, at least some of them will think more carefully about the long-term effects of the programs they support. Their end-all will not be re-election, because that option will not be available.
Nationally, the notion of the “citizen-legislator” remains a popular vision. The public is justifiably cynical about the hollow promises of so many lifelong professional politicians who are often purchased with special-interest money. Opponents of term limits are frequently the same interests who milk government for all they can get, such as defense contractors in Washington or the teacher unions in state capitals. ...
However, the evidence suggests that at the margin, term limits are helpful to the cause of individual liberty. Elhauge’s report showed that term limits lessen the influence of seniority. His research demonstrated that long-term lawmakers from both major parties vote for more bureaucracy than do lawmakers who have been in office for shorter times. Term limits lessen the ability of lawmakers to develop cozy deals with either bureaucracies or special interests that seek to get something from government at everyone else’s expense.
Sons and Daughters of past Presidents, and Spouses of past Presidents, or other Relatives of past Presidents whom become Presidents are a form of Monarchy, and a form of Term Limit Violation of the 22nd amendment of the USA Constitution.
Not only should Term Limits apply to each individual in Office but, it needs to be applied to include all Family Members including Spouses to prevent Monarchy. The George Bush Dynasty is classic form of Monarchy in the USA.
Monarchy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy
A monarchy is a form of government in which a group, usually a family called the dynasty, embodies the country's national identity and one of its members, called the monarch, exercises a role of sovereignty. The actual power of the monarch may vary from purely symbolical (crowned republic) to partial and restricted (constitutional monarchy) to completely autocratic (absolute monarchy). Traditionally and in most cases, the monarch's post is inherited and lasts until death or abdication, but there are also elective monarchies where the monarch is elected.
Term limit prevents monarchy, prevents corruption, prevents tyranny, etc...
Term Limit for President:
USA Constitution AMENDMENT XXII
Section 1.
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. ...
Historians cite George Washington’s unwillingness to seek office for a third term as evidence that the founding fathers saw the two-term limit as conventional. The constraint was instituted to impede the development of pseudo monarchy.
In addition to Washington, Thomas Jefferson also contributed to the two-term limit by suggesting an office without restraints could yield a “a President for life”, which would obfuscate the premise of a democratic government.
http://constitution.laws.com/22nd-amendment
The Next Supreme Court Nominee: Can We Retreat From the Creation of the Invincible Prosecutor?
If you are surprised to hear that the Supreme Court has the power to proscribe prosecutorial prerogatives, well, that is understandable.
Trib investigation: Cops often let off hook for civil rights complaints
http://triblive.com/usworld/nation/9939487-74/police-rights-civil
Cops let off hook for civil rights complaints 96 percent of time, Trib investigation finds....
The Trib spent six months analyzing nearly 3 million federal records on how the Justice Department and its 94 U.S. Attorney offices handled criminal complaints against law enforcement officers from 1995 through 2015....
Orlando Police Chief: “Victims May Have Been Killed By SWAT”
https://therealstrategy.com/orlando-police-chief-victims-may-killed-swat/
Orlando, FL – New details have emerged that may shed more light on the extreme casualty count in the Orlando nightclub killings. On Monday, Orlando Police Chief John Mina intimated that some of the victims may have been killed by officers trying to perform a rescue operation.
“I will say this, that’s all part of the investigation,” Mina said. “But I will say when our SWAT officers, about eight or nine officers, opened fire, the backdrop was a concrete wall, and they were being fired upon.”
A confidential law enforcement source close to the investigation said a crowd of up to 300 people within the club — combined with the complex layout of the structure — may have resulted in numerous patrons being struck by gunfire from officers, according to WFAA-ABC 8.
Study finds police officers arrested 1100 times per year, or 3 per day, nationwide
Police officers are arrested about 1,100 times a year, or roughly three officers charged every day, according to a new national study. The most common crimes were simple assault, drunken driving and aggravated assault, and significant numbers of sex crimes were also found. About 72 percent of officers charged in cases with known outcomes are convicted, more than 40 percent of the crimes are committed on duty, and nearly 95 percent of the officers charged are men....
“Police crimes are not uncommon,” Stinson concluded. “Our data directly contradicts some of the prevailing assumptions and the proposition that only a small group of rotten apples perpetrate the vast majority of police crime.”...
“This is probably the tip of the iceberg,” said Cara Rabe-Hemp, a professor at Illinois State University who has studied police deviance. She said the effort is the “first-ever study to quantify police crime” and shows it is “much much more common than what police scholars and police administrators previously thought.”...
Rabe-Hemp noted that data showing 54 percent of arrested officers being fired likely means that many officers are allowed to resign and retain their law enforcement certification. “When officers resign, they usually just go to a neighboring county,” she said. She said she had studied a number of arrested officers’ cases, and “you could find them bopping all over the Midwest.”...
"Of at least 4,024 people killed by police since 2013, only 85 of these cases have led to an officer being charged with a crime."
(Campaign Zero June 29, 2016)
POLICE INTEGRITY LOST:
A STUDY OF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS ARRESTED
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/249850.pdf
Racial resentment and police misconduct: The factors driving personal perception of cop violence
Police violence in the United States is endemic. An investigation by the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah finds that more residents in the state were killed by police than gang members or drug dealers. Between Jan. 1 and May 3 of 2015, 1 in 13 of the gun killings in the U.S. were committed by police. ...
Armed police commit more crimes than armed citizens:
These Gun Owners Are Least Likely Criminals, Report Finds
http://dailysignal.com/2016/08/09/these-gun-owners-are-least-likely-criminals-report-finds
“We find that permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at less than a sixth the rate for police officers,” the report says. “Among police, firearms violations occur at a rate of 16.5 per 100,000 officers. Among permit holders in Florida and Texas, the rate is only 2.4 per 100,000. That is just one-seventh of the rate for police officers.”...
“In 2014, the seven states that allowed concealed carry without a permit had much lower rates of murder and violent crime than did the seven jurisdictions with the lowest percentage of permit holders,” the Crime Prevention Research Center report reads. “Indeed, the murder rate was 31 percent lower in the states not requiring permits. The violent crime rate was 28 percent lower. Compared to the rest of the country, the 25 states with the highest rates of permit-holding experienced markedly lower rates of murder and violent crime.”...
A 2014 Gallup poll found 63 percent believed gun ownership made them safer, compared to 35 percent in 2000.
Video Catches Cops Lying About Being Shot At To Justify Shooting at Unarmed Man
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/missouri-cops-caught-lying-shooting
As tensions between police and citizens rise amid tragic police shootings and despicable attacks on cops, two officers in Missouri were exposed for faking a story about being shot at — and their supervisor helped cover it up.
Donald Stouffer, the prosecuting attorney in Saline County in central Missouri, dropped all the charges against a man who was accused of trying to shoot police officers.
In a press release last week, Stouffer said he saw no evidence that Carl Roettgen even had a gun when the two Marshall police officers tried to arrest him for a parole violation.
“After hours spent examining the video, trying to reconcile the video with the two officers’ statements, and consulting with staff, I reached the difficult conclusion that no reasonable juror could find the officers’ accounts credible,” he said.
What Stouffer found was that officers Tyler Newell and Josh O’Bryan fabricated a story to frame a man they tried to arrest for a parole violation....
‘We want cash’: Drug agents seize $209mn in random profiling of 5,200 travelers – report
In 10 years, US drug agents have seized nearly $210 million from 5,200 Americans at airports and Amtrak train stations, a USA Today report revealed. Federal agents allegedly collected private data from paid informants, but only two people were real suspects.
Sources have told USA Today that Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) profiled random people at nearly every major US airline at 15 airports and Amtrak train across the country....
Cast-Out Police Officers Are Often Hired in Other Cities
Judicial hearings rare: Most complaints about judges never get to public hearing
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/judicial-hearings-judge-complaints-manitoba-1.3757735
Police Brutality: Not Just a Black Problem
http://thedailyvoicenews.com/2016/10/08/police-brutality-not-just-a-black-problem/
Everything about America is Rigged, and Corrupt
Of course it’s rigged
http://personalliberty.com/of-course-its-rigged/
— this week to Trump’s claims that the election is rigged and we learn without a doubt that: Yes, Virginia, the election is rigged....
For starters, the notion of nationwide elections in a country as large as the U.S. is absurd on its face. Consider that one person — based only on his or her ability to 1) con people into believing that he thinks like they do and has their best interests at heart and, 2) persuade corporations and millions of people to fork over their money in exchange for benefits real or imagined – will be appointed to make decisions affecting 324 million Americans and 7.3 billion people around the world. Never mind that the only thing that person has in common with 99 percent of the voting public is the fact that they are breathing.
How Mayors, Police Unions and Cops Rig Civilian Review Boards?
The idea behind civilian review boards is to have a separate, independent entity address citizen complaints of police abuse. Instead of the police department investigating itself, boards would provide external community oversight. ...
Police Generate False Confessions Using Coercive Tactics New Book Claims
thelibertarianrepublic.com/police-generate-false-confessions-using-coercive-tactics-new-book-claims/
ACLU Suggests Jury Instructions Might Be A Fix For 'Missing' Police Body Camera Recordings
The ACLU of Massachusetts has a suggestion:
if missing/incomplete recordings are central to a prosecution or a civil rights lawsuit, a better deterrent might be to allow juries to impose evidentiary consequences for failures to record. From the ACLU's "No Tape, No Testimony"...
Why It May Be Hard to Convict an Officer in Cases of Police-Involved Deaths
Cops are trained liars, and courts have sanctioned the practice
http://personalliberty.com/cops-are-trained-liars-and-courts-have-sanctioned-the-practice/
Part of the training that LEOs... receive is in how to lie and get away with it.
Compilation of lying cops for 10/19/2017
https://deborahleejarrett.com/2017/10/19/compilation-of-lying-cops-for-10192017
Memos reveal torture of detainees at CIA black site in Afghanistan
http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/10/10/538161/US-CIA-torture-Cobalt-Kabul
Two surviving prisoners and the family of a detainee who died at the ‘Cobalt’ site in Afghanistan reached an out-of-court settlement with CIA psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen in August after a lawsuit was filed for their role in the torture. The CIA and Pentagon were forced to declassify the documents related to the case in pretrial discovery. The memos also capture high-level agency discussions revealing a cover-up in action....
Suffolk County DA indicted for covering up police chief's beating of man who stole his sex toys
Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota and a top deputy found themselves on the wrong side of the law Wednesday when a federal grand jury indicted them on “shocking and appalling” charges that they tried covering up the brutal beating of a suspect by a disgraced police chief.... county police Chief James Burke was accused of pummeling a handcuffed suspect inside a Smithtown police precinct.
The beating victim, Christopher Loeb, made the mistake of breaking into Burke's police-issued SUV — and swiping the police big's sex toys, a porn video, a gun belt, cigars and a humidor. Burke threatened him with a "hot shot” — slang for a lethal heroin overdose. Burke went berserk when Loeb called him a "pervert," thinking the skin flick was child porn. He reportedly beat and kicked the petty thief so badly that an onlooking officer told him, “Boss, leave it alone.”...
Both Spota and McPartland face four counts: conspiracy to tamper with witnesses and obstruct an official proceeding; witness tampering and obstruction of an official proceeding; obstruction of justice; and accessory after the fact to the deprivation of civil rights....
ICC war crimes prosecutors seek to open Afghan probe
http://www.arabnews.com/node/1187751/world
THE HAGUE: War crimes prosecutors said Friday they will ask the International Criminal Court’s judges for permission to launch a full-blown probe into crimes committed in war-torn Afghanistan.... During a lengthy probe first made public in 2007, the ICC has been looking at possible war crimes dating back to 2003 by the Taliban, Afghan government forces and international forces including US troops.... US forces may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan by torturing prisoners in what may have been a deliberate policy....
Here's how much money NYC had to pay out in 2016 for the Good Guys Misconducts.
Still think the Good Guys are good? ...
Legal-Bay Pre Settlement Funding Firm Reports Record $1 Bil. In Settlement Payouts In New York City For 2016
Here's a breakdown of case type, number of claims, and total payouts:
⦁ $161MM went to 1,333 plaintiffs for Civil Rights Cases. These cases mainly involve wrongful convictions and discrimination.
⦁ $101MM went to 230 plaintiffs for Medical Malpractice Claims throughout city hospitals and medical facilities.
⦁ $100MM went to 2,486 plaintiff for Police wrongdoing or police brutality cases.
⦁ $94MM went to 2,570 plaintiffs for City Vehicle Collisions or car or truck accidents.
⦁ $62MM went to 1100 plaintiffs for defective roadways, slip and fall accidents, and defective sidewalks
⦁ $70MM went to 800 plaintiffs for City School and public building incidents, as well as City Employee suits for wrongful termination.
⦁ $14MM went to 600 plaintiffs for City Jails incidents. ...
John Grisham Skewers the For-Profit Law-School Industry
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/john-grisham-the-rooster-bar/544712/
The author discusses his latest book, The Rooster Bar, which was inspired by a 2014 article in The Atlantic, “The Law-School Scam.”
Inside a secret 2014 list of hundreds of L.A. deputies with histories of misconduct
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-sheriff-brady-list-20171208-htmlstory.html#nws=mcnewsletter
Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies with histories of misconduct. A version of the list, reviewed by The Times, now includes about 300 deputies and is so tightly controlled that it can be seen by only a handful of high-ranking sheriff’s officials. Not even prosecutors can access it....This is all especially significant, because deputies on the list have been identified as potential witnesses in more than 62,000 felony cases since 2000, according to a Times analysis of district attorney records. In many of those cases, the deputies’ misconduct would probably have been relevant in assessing their credibility.
Deputies added to the list were found by internal investigators to have made false statements, written false reports, misappropriated property, obstructed an investigation, engaged in discrimination or harassment, accepted bribes or other improper gifts, used unreasonable force or been violent with a family member. ...
Sex. Lies. Abuse. How these L.A. deputies landed on a secret 2014 list of problem officers
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-2014-brady-list-deputies-20171208-htmlstory.html#nws=mcnewsletter
Submit a Tip Here:
http://www.latimes.com/la-me-brady-list-callout-20171208-htmlstory.html#nws=mcnewsletter
DA Capeless expects 'all but maybe a handful' of 615 Berkshire drug cases to be dismissed after drug lab chemist's tampering
PITTSFIELD — More than 600 drug cases in Berkshire County are in jeopardy as officials statewide contend with the fallout — years in the making — from drug theft and tampering in a now-defunct state crime lab. Berkshire County District Attorney David Capeless said Friday he expects his office will have to abandon most of some 615 cases, with a wide range of drug convictions, that could be compromised.
"I expect that all but maybe a handful are going to be dismissed," he told The Eagle.
The cases will join some 6,300 statewide already slated for dismissal in light of the scandal, and most of them are here in Western Massachusetts. At risk are all cases touched by former drug lab chemist Sonja Farak, who was arrested in January 2013 for tampering with and stealing drug evidence at the state crime lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to feed her own drug addiction. ...
From the lax security measures at the under-resourced lab to the tampering itself and the prosecutorial misconduct that followed, the state's failures were systemic, Hampden County Superior Court Judge Richard Carey ruled in July. Carey ruled former prosecutors Kris Foster and Anne Kaczmarek distorted the courts' decisions in the wake of the tampering. "They tampered with the fair administration of justice by deceiving [then Superior Court Judge C. Jeffrey Kinder] and engaging in a pattern calculated to interfere with the court's ability impartially to adjudicate discovery in the drug lab cases and to learn the scope of Farak's misconduct," he wrote. "Their conduct constitutes a fraud upon the court."...
Heroes in blue : Compilation of lying cops for 09/06/2018
https://deborahleejarrett.com/2018/09/06/heroes-in-blue-compilation-of-lying-cops-for-09-06-2018/
The Actual Criminals are often the Legal Professionals of Law.