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They just locked up the Democratic nomination
St. Louis police secret settlements total $4.7 million
The police officers involved in the deaths of Ball and Bennett were cleared by the police department. But unlike the fatal shooting of Smith, neither of the other cases has been reviewed by city prosecutors for potential criminal charges, a spokeswoman for Joyce said last week.
The lawyer whose firm won the $2.5 million judgment said that when police spend a lot of money to settle a case, local prosecutors should review it for potential crimes.
“In my considerable experience, police departments do not settle and certainly don’t settle for a lot of money unless there is clear evidence of liability, clear evidence the shooting was unjustified,” said Jon Loevy, of the Chicago firm Loevy & Loevy. “Anything short of that and they decline to settle.”
“I can tell you from experience, they don’t just cough up money routinely. They fight hard, they are reluctant to resolve cases and there is just not that kind of money lying around unless there is merit.”
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/c...dbf4aef26.html
iow, as noted elsewhere, prosecutors are complicit in the crimes, murders by the police.
In govt, there's essentially nobody policing the police, and in fact, prosecutors protect the police.
They just locked up the Democratic nomination
it doesn't matter which party is in power, the police state is a government unto itself. Trump is a much more dangerous bullying autocrat than Hillary.
This infuriating story shows how debtors prisons are still a reality in America
Jailing people because they can’t pay off their debts has long been acknowledged as a terrible idea. However, that hasn’t stopped some cities or counties from using debtors’ prisons as ways to extract revenues from people.
the ACLU says that the practice of jailing people who can’t pay debts remains shockingly common throughout the country.
In Fuentes’ own Benton County, an estimated 320 prisoners were jailed over a six-month period for not being able to pay off debts.
What’s more, an ACLU lawsuit in Colorado Springs, Colo. revealed 800 cases of people who have been sent to prison for an inability to pay off fines related to minor violations.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/this-infuriating-story-shows-how-debtors-prisons-are-still-a-reality-in-america/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaig n=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29
FBI is “Cooking Up” Cases Against Muslims
“The New York Times reported today that the FBI has increased its use of sting operations in ISIS cases. To be clear, this is not a new tactic.
“A 2014 study, “Inventing Terrorists: the Lawfare of Preventive Prosecution” by Project Salam and the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms, found that almost every domestic terrorist plot from 2001 to 2010 was in some way cooked up or assisted (and eventually ‘busted’) by the FBI. The report analyzed about 400 domestic terror cases and found only that only four cases were initiated or driven without the encouragement of the bureau.
‘the government’s use of intrusive surveillance, untrained paid informants, and manufactured terrorism plots raises serious human rights concerns that must immediately be addressed.’
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire...gainst-muslims
Judge Finds Prosecutors Withheld Evidence in Freddie Gray Officer Case
warrior prosecutors tbh
Kentucky Constables: Untrained And Unaccountable
The 37-year-old Smith had been a constable for just 15 months. He had no state-approved law enforcement training and mainly worked at a motorcycle dealership. Now, he faces a manslaughter charge and up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Smith serves as the latest in a long line of constables — pseudo police, really — who have run amok in Kentucky for years.
Constables are gods unto themselves, armed with badges and guns but almost always with little or no formal training. They masquerade as qualified, legitimate police, but case after case shows that they often pose a threat to public safety.
Some cruise around the county pulling drivers over or engaging in unnecessary and dangerous high-speed pursuits. Some use unauthorized blue lights. Others make questionable arrests that later collapse in court. Many have faced criminal charges of their own.
Despite this history, the cycle of constable-initiated misdeeds continues unabated.
Because the office is enshrined in the state cons ution, constables are responsible to no one except a small slice of a county’s voters every four years. And many voters don’t know what constables do.
Kentucky is one of 17 states that elect constables. Sixteen others, including West Virginia, have done away with the office altogether. The remaining states appoint them. Some states require training for constables. Others limit their authority to serving court papers.
“It’s incomprehensible that we still have folks out here trying to enforce the laws of the commonwealth with absolutely no training whatsoever,” said former Kentucky State Police Commissioner Rodney Brewer, who retired in February after 34 years with the agency.
“If the office of constable was abolished tomorrow, and all of them were let go, the people of Kentucky would not miss a beat, they would not even know of their absence.”
http://kycir.org/2016/06/07/kentucky...unaccountable/
Any dangerous idea Trump has you'll know about as he can't help himself and has no filter - the dems, repubs and media will come down on him. Hillary, on the other hand, will go to extreme lengths to not let us know (but not the hackers I guess)
Law Enforcement Unions are a blight.
DEA Wants Inside Your Medical Records to Fight the War on Drugs
The feds are fighting to look at millions of private files without a warrant, including those of two transgender men who are taking testosterone.
Marlon Jones was arrested for taking legal painkillers, prescribed to him by a doctor, after a double knee replacement.
Jones, an assistant fire chief of Utah’s Unified Fire Authority, was snared in a dragnet pulled through the state’s program to monitor prescription drugs after someone stole morphine from an ambulance in 2012. To find the missing morphine, cops used their unrestricted access to the state’s Prescription Drug Monitor Program database to look at the private medical records of nearly 500 emergency services personnel—without a warrant.
Jones was arrested along with another firefighter and a paramedic on su ion of prescription fraud.
“There were three police officers pounding on the door. They said they had a warrant for my arrest and they were going to take me in,” he said. “It was the middle of the day, on my front doorstep, in front of my wife and daughter. I’m handcuffed and stuffed into a police car and they haul me to jail.”
Jones was hit with 14 felony counts but all of them were later dropped.
The DEA has claimed for years that under federal law it has the authority to access the state’s Prescription Drug Monitor Program database using only an “administrative subpoena.” These are unilaterally issued orders that do not require a showing of probable cause before a court, like what’s required to obtain a warrant.
The case pits the full weight of the Obama administration against the state of Oregon and five individual plaintiffs, two of whom (John Doe 2 and John Doe 4) are transgender and take prescription hormone drugs that are covered by Oregon’s prescription monitoring law.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-on-drugs.html
Last edited by boutons_deux; 06-12-2016 at 07:26 AM.
FBI wants to boost its surveillance authority by reworking nat'l security letter statute
The FBI would like to expand the national security letter statute, and the Senate is debating two proposals to do just that.
The Senate’s proposed changes would allow the FBI to get a much larger range of Internet records, such as email to/from headers, Internet browsing history, and more, all of which it could not previously get with an NSL.
Particularly given the FBI’s well-do ented history of abusing NSLs, EFF opposes expanding the scope of this uncons utional surveillance power to include even more revealing records.
Yesterday we joined with a broad coalition of organizations and companies to urge the Senate not to pass these proposals.
Amending a surveillance law to let the FBI issue warrantless demands for new types of Internet users’ records—without even needing to go before a judge—is a significant expansion of that law. But to hear FBI Director James Comey explain it, the bills amount to a mere “typo fix.”
That’s because the FBI thinks it was already en led to get these records using NSLs, and Congress simply messed up when it drafted the law. The problem with this theory? The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which issues definitive interpretations of the law for the rest of the executive branch, looked at the issue in 2008 and concluded the FBI was flat wrong
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/0...28Daily+Kos%29
Patchy reporting undercuts national hate crimes count
The AP identified more than 2,700 city police and county sheriff's departments across the country that have not submitted a single hate crime report for the FBI's annual crime tally during the past six years — about 17 percent of all city and county law enforcement agencies nationwide.
Advocates worry that the lack of a comprehensive, annual accounting disguises the extent of bias crimes at a time of heightened racial, religious and ethnic tensions. The nation was stunned last June when nine black parishioners were shot dead at a Charleston, South Carolina, church, and community groups have reported a notable increase in violence against Muslims and mosques in the wake of last year's terror acts in Paris and San Bernardino, California. Gay and transgender people also are regular targets.
Between 5,000 and 7,000 hate crime incidents are catalogued each year in the FBI report, with nearly half of all victims in recent years targeted because of their race.
A better accounting of hate crimes, the FBI and other proponents say, would not only increase awareness but also improve efforts to combat such crimes with more resources for law enforcement training and community outreach.
"We need the reporting to happen," said the Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached. "Without a diagnosis, we don't know how serious the illness is. And without a diagnosis, there is no prescription. And without a prescription, there is no healing."
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/05ef3...e-crimes-count
Just another way the racist cops screw minorities.
Voter Fraud Probe In California Turns Into Voter Intimidation Boondoggle
Having police come to your home wielding weapons and asking questions about your voter registration status just days before an election sends a clear signal.
That signal wasn't lost on residents of Hmong communities in rural northern California, who said police came to their doors doing just that earlier this month. They said authorities also set up a roadway checkpoint to target Hmong drivers, threatening to arrest and prosecute them if they voted illegally.
Following those allegations of flagrant voter intimidation in the lead-up to Tuesday's state primary, the sheriff of Siskiyou County, where just about 43,000 people reside, told TPM his deputies played only a “minor” role in a state-led gumshoe probe into potential voter registration fraud. Sheriff Jon Lopey (pictured right) said deputies accompanied investigators to provide security in an area he described as potentially dangerous and “inundated” with what he estimated to be 2,000 illegal marijuana grow sites.
But the accounts of voter intimidation were serious enough that investigators from the Secretary of State’s Office, joined by staffers from the state Attorney General's Office, were dispatched on June 7 to monitor polling places across Siskiyou County.
“What began as an investigation of alleged voter fraud quickly evolved into an investigation of potential voter intimidation,” a spokesman said in a statement emailed to TPM.
Ironically, the Secretary of State's Office was being forced to look into acts of alleged voter intimidation performed in service of its very own probe.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckrak...er-fraud-probe
the police state can abuse their powers, abuse citizens in complete secrecy
Latest Attempt at Police Transparency Fails In California
This isn’t apt to change any time soon: A California Senate bill aimed at making misconduct and disciplinary information available to the public died in committee last month.
“Police in California shouldn’t be able to operate as if they’re the CIA,” said Chauncee Smith, a legislative advocate with the ACLU of California, which sponsored the proposed legislation, SB 1286, along with the California Newspaper Publishers Association and other groups.
https://www.propublica.org/article/l...ent=1466422010
I wonder how many legislators the police unions own?
Sotomayor’s blistering SCTOUS dissent warns America is turning into a prison state
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor strongly disagreed with the majority as she passionately denounced a ruling on unreasonable search and seizures.
A 5-3 majority ruled that prosecutors may present evidence unlawfully collected by police officers
to reverse a Utah Supreme Court decision, and Justice Clarence Thomas,who wrote the majority opinion, argued that “the costs of exclusion outweighs its deterrent benefits.”
Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan each wrote a dissent, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined portions of each.
“Although many Americans have been stopped for speeding or jaywalking, few may realize how degrading a stop can be when the officer is looking for more,” wrote Sotomayor. “This Court has allowed an officer to stop you for whatever reason he wants — so long as he can point to a pretextual justification after the fact.”
Sotomayor said the court’s ruling had essentially classified all Americans as inmates in the prison-industrial complex.
“By legitimizing the conduct that produces this double consciousness, this case tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent, that an officer can verify your legal status at any time,” Sotomayor wrote. “It says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.”
She said the court had ignored mountains of evidence that police routinely harass some Americans with unreasonable searches — and she warned that legitimizing those stops undermined democracy.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/soto...e+Raw+Story%29
America is ed and un able.
Of course, cops won't break into BigFinance's offices on fishing expeditions.
So it looks like FBI will be able to use wikileaks files, taken and released "illegally", on Hillary.
Warrior courts are out of control tbh
I can't understand why Breyer went with the majority
Unbelievable decision.
no worries, mate, America isn't ed, and isn't un able. America is getting better and better for everybody.
Updates on the Oakland PD scandal
the chiefs stepped down, werent fired
DA: 'I Refuse To Ruin The Lives' Of Arrested Alabama Football Players
The district attorney's office has decided not to prosecute Alabama offensive lineman Cam Robinson and reserve defensive back Laurence "Hootie" Jones on drug and weapons charges, with the district attorney saying he didn't want to "ruin the lives" of the two football players.
Prosecutor Neal Johnson cited insufficient evidence in court do ents filed on Monday, but district attorney Jerry Jones told KNOE-8 he did not want to prosecute the men because of their athletic backgrounds.
"The main reason that I'm doing this is that I refuse to ruin the lives of two young men who have spent their adolescence and their teenage years working and sweating while we were all home in the air conditioning," Jones said.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/da...+%28TPMNews%29
AL football is a stay-out-of-jail card, sorta like being banker.
I bet all the players are white
Mitch McConnell wants to protect your Second Amendment rights, to with the Fourth
The very same day Mitch McConnell was using the excuse of Second Amendment rights for his vote to allow people on the terrorist watch list to buy a gun, he brought an amendment to the floor that would gut Americans' Fourth Amendment protections.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set up a vote late on Monday to expand the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s authority to use a secretive surveillance order without a warrant to include email metadata and some browsing history information. […]
The amendment would broaden the FBI’s authority to use so-called National Security Letters to include electronic communications transaction records such as time stamps of emails and the emails' senders and recipients.
It would do a of a lot more than that—it would allow the FBI to bypass the courts in getting your metadata.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/0...28Daily+Kos%29
My personal opinion on metadata collection is that generally it doesn't matter... And that electronic surveillance generally isn't intrusive, so on a personal level I don't care much
I fully understand the legal standards are entirely different. Just giving my opinion. Plus iirc the govt collection of telephony metadata was already held as NOT violating the 4th
That being the case, should email metadata be any different? Browsing history might be pushing it if you go by that standard
this is where our tax dollars are going. the underage sex portion of this investigation is like something out of a lifetime movie. they had a cop who was around the same age ass CC participating in this mess:
On Monday, three Oakland cops were placed on leave for allegedly having sex with Guap when she was a minor, The East Bay Express reported.
Guap also had sex with five Richmond police officers — including a lieutenant and two sergeants — along with four Alameda County sheriff’s deputies, one Livermore officer and a Stockton law-enforcement worker, she claimed.
Police began a probe into the alleged sexual misconduct after Oakland cop Brendan O’Brien committed suicide in September. He left a note admitting he and other officers had sex with Guap, the paper reported.
----A retired Oakland Police Department captain in his 80s also paid her $250 to have sex with him in a fleabag motel, she said
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