Reason: Maryland's SWAT transparency bill produces its first disturbing results

[boutons_deux]

MISTAKEN IDEN Y BRINGS ON SWAT RAID

A mistake by law enforcement put Miguel Montanez inches away from death.

Driving to his job at a metal shop in the early morning hours last July, a Hays County SWAT truck rammed the front of his BMW. Montanez dove to the floorboards when bullets began flying through his windshield.

When Montanez emerged from the car, authorities realized they had the wrong guy, according to a federal lawsuit filed in San Antonio Tuesday. Montanez turned up clean for warrants and had no criminal history. And just like that, without explanation or apology, Hays County sheriff’s deputies and San Marcos police officers released Montanez, according to the lawsuit, which names the City of San Marcos, the Hays County Sheriff’s Office and several unnamed deputies as defendants.

“It’s really crazy,” said Montanez’s Austin-based lawyer Adam Loewy. “My guy is a good guy. He was literally just driving to work.”

Loewy contends officers were looking for Montanez’s brother, who had reportedly violated a protective order by threatening an ex. “It was still nothing on the level that would require a SWAT team to come out and perform a Schwarzenegger-like raid,” Loewy said. The lawsuit claims Montanez suffered a serious back injury during the incident, requiring surgery, and states, “The actions by the Defendants cons ute Government at its absolute worst.”

http://blogs.sacurrent.com/thedaily/swat-the- /

Driving While Mexican?

[boutons_deux]

Texas Police Hit Organic Farm With Massive SWAT Raid

A small organic farm in Arlington, Texas, was the target of a massive police actionlast week that included aerial surveillance, a SWAT raid and a 10-hour search.

Members of the local police raiding party had a search warrant for marijuana plants, which they failed to find at the Garden of Eden farm. But farm owners and residents who live on the property told a Dallas-Ft. Worth NBC station that the real reason for the law enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. The police seized "17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants ... native grasses and sunflowers," after holding residents inside at gunpoint for at least a half-hour, property owner
S ie Smith said in a statement. The raid lasted about 10 hours, she said.

Local authorities had cited the Garden of Eden in recent weeks for code violations, including

"grass that was too tall,

bushes growing too close to the street,

a couch and

piano in the yard,

chopped wood that was not properly stacked,

a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house,

and generally unclean premises," Smith's statement said.

She said the police didn't produce a warrant until two hours after the raid began, and officers shielded their name tags so they couldn't be identified.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3764951.html

[boutons_deux]

more on the police/army state

The Pentagon Funds "Terror Studies" to Dissect and Neutralize Dissenters

Since the meltdown of 2008, U.S. universities have collaborated with the Pentagon to study dynamics of social movements, worldwide. The goal of “terrorism studies” is “to find possible vectors of resistance, which are to be identified and eradicated, like a disease.” The Minerva Initiative, like NSA spying, sees the entire planet as “enemy territory.”

The U.S. Department of Defense is immersed in studies about...people like you. The Pentagon wants to know why folks who don’t themselves engage in violence to overthrow the prevailing order become, what the military calls, “supporters of political violence.” And by that they mean, everyone who opposes U.S military policy in the world, or the repressive policies of U.S. allies and proxies, or who opposes the racially repressive U.S. criminal justice system, or who wants to push the One Percent off their economic and political pedestals so they can’t lord it over the rest of us. (I’m sure you recognize yourself somewhere in that list.)

The Pentagon calls this new field of research “terrorism studies,” which is designed to augment and inform their so-called War on Terror. Through theirMinerva Research Initiative, the military has commissioned U.S. universities to help it figure out how to deal with dissatisfied and, therefore, dangerous populations all around the world, including the United States.

The Minerva Initiative was the subject of an article in The Guardian newspaper by Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, an academic who studies international security issues. The Initiative seeks to sharpen the U.S. military’s “warfighter-relevant insights” into what makes people tick, and get ticked off at power structures, in regions “of strategic importance to the U.S.” Since the U.S. is an empire seeking global hegemony, and sees the whole world as strategic, the Minerva program’s areas of interest involve – everybody on the planet.

Total War Against the Planet

The Minerva project paid Cornell University researchers to find out when social movements reach a “critical mass” of people – a “tipping point” at which they become a threat to the powers-that-be. In the language of “terrorism studies,” the human beings involved in these social movements are “contagions,” as in vectors of disease . Neutralizing them becomes a job for “warfighters.”

The University of Washington is studying “large scale movements involving more than 1,000 participants” in 58 countries, to see how these folks kept their movements going.

So, now you know why U.S. intelligence agencies are tapping the telephones and Internet communications of virtually the entire population of the planet. They are mapping every conceivable human network, sifting through the myriad patterns of human association to find possible vectors of resistance, which are to be identified and eradicated, like a disease. American military and intelligence enlisted academics to study the dynamics of "the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi park protests in Turkey" – all with the aim of preventing similar “contagions” from spreading.

The United States military sees itself as engaged in a total war against the entirety of planet Earth: all of its people, its social movements and dynamics, are enemy territory, including the people of the United States.

When American rulers say they are defending U.S. national security interests against all potential enemies, what they really mean is they are defending the prevailing capitalist order against any social movement that might oppose it, anywhere on Earth. They want to put the hole planet on lockdown, and have enlisted U.S. universities in their global fascist project.

http://www.alternet.org/education/pe...ize-dissenters

[TDMVPDPOY]

down here they trying to pass a new law, kill a cop u get 30yrs to life

but they dont have tough laws for corrupt cops, trigger happy cops...

[Winehole23]

turns out, there's a way to manage bad perceptions arising from public transparency -- claim immunity from open records requests.

As part of the American Civil Liberties Union’s recent report on police militarization, the Massachusetts chapter of the organization sent open records requests to SWAT teams across that state. It received an interesting response.


As it turns out, a number of SWAT teams in the Bay State are operated by what are called law enforcement councils, or LECs. These LECs are funded by several police agencies in a given geographic area and overseen by an executive board, which is usually made up of police chiefs from member police departments. In 2012, for example, the Tewksbury Police Department paid about $4,600 in annual membership dues to the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, or NEMLEC. (See page 36 of linked PDF.) That LEC has about 50 member agencies. In addition to operating a regional SWAT team, the LECs also facilitate technology and information sharing and oversee other specialized units, such as crime scene investigators and computer crime specialists.


Some of these LECs have also apparently incorporated as 501(c)(3) organizations. And it’s here that we run into problems. According to the ACLU, the LECs are claiming that the 501(c)(3) status means that they’re private corporations, not government agencies. And therefore, they say they’re immune from open records requests. Let’s be clear. These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because they’ve incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The state’s residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/t...-records-laws/

[boutons_deux]

Senators Pushing Legislation Aimed At Reducing The Abuse Of The Most-Used FOIA Exemption

If anything useful has been redacted from do ents obtained with by a FOIA request, chances are the b(5) exemption has been invoked. Theoretically narrow in scope, the exemption has expanded to cover everything from a historical recounting of the CIA's involvement in the Bay of Pigs to someone's hand-scrawled commentary ("What a bunch of crap!") on a bill asking for Pakistan to be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Here's the entirety of the exemption according to FOIA statutes.

Inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency

The reality of the situation is that nearly every agency has deployed the exemption to redact information at one point or another. Almost prophetically, the b(5) exemption claims the withheld information can only be released to "agencies in litigation" with the withholding party. And there are certainly plenty of "agencies" engaged in litigation with these government en ies, albeit mainly in the form of FOIA lawsuits.

Two senators are hoping to fix this and, at the same time, force the government to start following up on its promised FOIA reform.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Leahy and Cornyn, the ranking Judiciary Republican, introduced the FOIA Improvement Act of 2014, which would strengthen Obama administration transparency mandates and reform one of the most abused FOIA exemptions.

President Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder directed federal agencies in 2009 to update their FOIA guidelines and operate with a presumption of openness. However, many agencies ignored the directive.

The bill would codify the administration's reform directives and force responsive agencies to limit use of the b(5) exemption to only information that would cause "foreseeable harm" if disclosed. Granted, that still leaves government agencies with plenty of room to maneuver, but it should trim down the number of b(5) redactions applied to do ents like a Presidential Policy Directive ordering the State Department to be more transparent.

On the indisputable plus side, do ents over 25 years old are no longer subject to this exemption, meaning long-withheld do ents like the previously mentioned Bay of Pigs recounting will no longer be withheld for bogus "deliberative" reasons.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140624/12165327672/senators-pushing-legislation-aimed-reducing-abuse-most-used-foia-exemption.shtml

My prediction: House Repugs will block this bill if it gets out of the Senate. Boner may not even permit a vote

[boutons_deux]

more secrecy, makes you wanna pull out your wallet send them lots of money:

Red Cross: How We Spent Sandy Money Is a "Trade Secret"

Just how badly does the American Red Cross want to keep secret how it raised and spent over $300 million after Hurricane Sandy?

The charity has hired a fancy law firm to fight a public request we filed with New York state, arguing that information about its Sandy activities is a "trade secret."

The Red Cross' "trade secret" argument has persuaded the state to redact some material, though it's not clear yet how much since the do ents haven't yet been released.

As we've reported, the Red Cross releases few details about how it spends money after big disasters. That makes it difficult to figure out whether donor dollars are well spent.

The Red Cross did give some information about Sandy spending to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who had been investigating the charity. But the Red Cross declined our request to disclose the details.

So we filed a public records request for the information the Red Cross provided to the attorney general's office.

That's where the law firm Gibson Dunn comes in.

An attorney from the firm's New York office appealed to the attorney general to block disclosure of some of the Sandy information, citing the state Freedom of Information Law's trade secret exemption.
The do ents include "internal and proprietary methodology and procedures for fundraising, confidential information about its internal operations, and confidential financial information," wrote Gabrielle Levin of Gibson Dunn in a letter to the attorney general's office.

If those details were disclosed, "the American Red Cross would suffer compe ive harm because its compe ors would be able to mimic the American Red Cross's business model for an increased compe ive advantage," Levin wrote.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/24636-red-cross-how-we-spent-sandy-money-is-a-trade-secret

Red Cross is a "compe ive" "business" ?

[Winehole23]

SWAT was created to deal with emergency situations such

as hostage, barricade and active shooter scenarios. Over
time, however, law enforcement agencies have moved away
from this original purpose and are increasingly using these
paramilitary squads to search people’s homes for drugs.
Aggressive enforcement of the War on Drugs has lost
its public mandate, as 67 percent of Americans think
the government should focus more on treatment than
on policing and prosecuting drug users.


4
This waning public support is warranted, as evidence continues to

do ent how the War on Drugs has destroyed millions
of lives, unfairly impacted communities of color, made
drugs cheaper and more potent, caused countless deaths
of innocent people caught up in drug war-related armed
conflict, and failed to eliminate drug dependence and
addiction. The routine use of heavily armed SWAT teams
to search people’s homes for drugs, therefore, means that
law enforcement agencies across the country are using this
hyper-aggressive form of domestic policing to fight a war
that has waning public support and has harmed, much
more than helped, communities

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/f...t-web-rel1.pdf

[boutons_deux]

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/f...t-web-rel1.pdf

can we imagine state or fed legislatures EVER passing legislation to restrict SWAT team attacks? Police pretty much get away with murder, 1 month paid vacation, then back at murderous work.

[Winehole23]

Providing police with military gear does not reduce crime or protect officers: Studies

"The collective assessment of the two studies is that ... the distribution (of military equipment) to local law enforcement doesn’t seem to affect one way or the other. It doesn’t reduce crime, it doesn’t lead to an increase in crime. It doesn’t seem to reduce officer injuries. It doesn’t seem to increase them either," Clark said.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/providing-...ry?id=74518923

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-00995-5.epdf

[RandomGuy]

https://abcnews.go.com/US/providing-...ry?id=74518923

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-00995-5.epdf

so it is a boondoggle. A total waste of money.

[boutons_deux]

https://abcnews.go.com/US/providing-...ry?id=74518923

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-00995-5.epdf

Slick Willy was a fantastic ally of conservatives, signing off of several of their strategic priorities


How the Clintons Militarized the Police and Expanded Military Industrial Complex

"The NDAA of 1996, under the Clinton administration, section 1033 altered section 1208,

broadening the scope of available equipment and

made final disposition of equipment a national defense secret."

Grenade launchers and vehicles such as aircraft, watercraft and armored vehicles have also been obtained.”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...strial-Complex