Page 3 of 150 FirstFirst 12345671353103 ... LastLast
Results 51 to 75 of 3728
  1. #51
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Revealed: California Police Departments Are Using Mass Surveillance Tool

    New do ents obtained through Freedom of Information requests reveal the widespread use of so-called stingray surveillance devices in California. The outlet Sacramento News10 obtained the do ents, which were highlighted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

    Local law enforcement agencies across the Bay Area are using these devices, which mimics cell phone towers by tricking wireless tools on the same network and making the tools communicate with the stingray device. These devices are used in a dragnet fashion, collecting data about innocent third parties not the subject of any investigation. Additionally, it can pinpoint investigation targets with extreme precision. In total, nine law enforcement agencies in the state are using stingrays or recently obtained grants to use them, according to News10.


    “Terrorism is used as the primary justification for purchasing StingRay technology in every grant application obtained by News10,” reporters Michael Bott and Thom Jensen write. “However, arrest records from Oakland and Los Angeles show that StingRays are being used for routine police work.”


    In an analysis of the do ents, the ACLU’s Linda Lye said the use of stingrays have troubling implications.

    The acquisition of these devices is shrouded in secrecy and driven by federal grant money, which undermines local democratic oversight,” writes Lye.

    “There is a real question as to whether stingrays can ever be used in a cons utional fashion. They are the electronic equivalent of dragnet ‘general searches’ prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.”


    The ACLU says it’s unclear whether stingrays can be used cons utionally. The group emphasizes that there needs to be transparency about how they can be used, like whether they are seeking court authorization to use them for investigations.


    The police departments using stingrays are far from transparent, though. News10 was unsuccessful in getting any of the police agencies to comment in detail about their use of stingrays.


    http://www.alternet.org/revealed-cal...ter970363&t=13

  2. #52
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Five Offenses That Can Land Kids (But Not Adults) In Jail

    According the report's data analysis, about 10,000 children in the United States are currently confined over the course of a year just for status offenses. That's a dramatic reduction from the way things were a few years ago, but according to the authors of the report, it's still way too many kids. So how are they getting swept up in the system? Here are the five most common status offenses:

    1. Truancy


    2. Running Away

    3. Incorrigibility

    4 and 5. Underage drinking and Curfew Violation

    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/five-offenses-that-can-land-kids-but-not-adults-in-jail-20140324?utm_source=dailynewsletter&utm_medium=ema il&utm_campaign=newsletter




  3. #53
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Botch A Drug Raid? No Problem, Just Seal The Warrant, Citizen Complaint And Gag Order Itself

    A Benedict Avenue resident contends Huron County deputies forced their way into his home Tuesday without a search warrant.

    John Collins, who lives in one unit of a triplex home at 114 Benedict Ave., contends deputies got the wrong address when they executed the search warrant. The warrant was for the unit next to his, he said.

    The deputies handcuffed him and left him lying on the floor in his unit for 20 minutes after they realized the mistake, Collins said.

    Bad enough, but it gets worse.

    They tore through his home, he said, after cuffing him and forcing him to the floor facedown. “They searched my whole house, pulled stuff out my closet, broke a couple knick knacks” he said.

    One deputy also stepped on his tablet, shattering its screen. Another broke a ceramic decoration that once belonged to his now-deceased son, Collins said...

    Two deputies must have realized the mistake, Collins said, because they recognized him from their school days and had to have known he was not the man identified in the search warrant. The deputies went next door, he said. They made contact with the residents there — who were later arrested for drug trafficking.

    But six or so other deputies continued searching Collins’ home.

    Collins filed a complaint against the Huron County Sheriff's Department and asked for a copy of the search warrant. This is when the department went on full lockdown with some help from the local judiciary.

    Huron County Common Pleas Court Judge Timothy Cardwell issued a secret gag order March 21 to seal the search warrant. The gag order is also secret, Cardwell’s court clerk said after the Register asked for a copy of the order.

    As Sheriff's Howard's spokesman, make yourself as unavailable and be unfriendly as possible to any reporter who has questions about the inconsistent story you're trying to make sure the public hears.

    Still, the department (via Capt. Ted Patrick) continues to insist that it did nothing wrong. But it's completely unwilling to provide any evidence to back that assertion up. Instead, it expects to just push its way through the mess it's created without ever having to explain exactly what went on that night, all with the implicit blessing of a local judge.

    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140401/07502626761/botch-drug-raid-no-problem-just-seal-warrant-citizen-complaint-gag-order-itself.shtml




  4. #54
    my unders, my frgn whites pgardn's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Post Count
    38,143
    So since the vast majority of cops are out of control, Boots has volunteered to pounce on the little parties the more fortunate throw. He will go in unprotected and talk them out of turning your car over.

    http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bask...l-championship

  5. #55
    W4A1 143 43CK? Nbadan's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Post Count
    32,408
    Small Iowa town of 7,000 with 11 cops gets MRAP



    These things normally cost $500,000, but will be given to Washington, Iowa for free under a Defense Department program that gives surplus military equipment to domestic law enforcement.

    Matthew Byrd writes in the Daily Iowan that:
    Sometimes the news is just so drearily awful that you have to sit back and almost appreciate the pure comedy induced by it.


    Take this item from Washington, Iowa, where the local police have recently acquired an MRAP vehicle (short for Mine Resistance Ambush Protected) through a Defense Department program that donates excess vehicles originally produced for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to local police departments across the United States, including other Iowa towns such as Mason City and Storm Lake.
    ...

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...litary-vehicle

  6. #56
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    War Gear Flows to Police Departments

    NEENAH, Wis. — Inside the municipal garage of this small lakefront city, parked next to the hefty orange snowplow, sits an even larger truck, this one painted in desert khaki. Weighing 30 tons and built to withstand land mines, the armored combat vehicle is one of hundreds showing up across the country, in police departments big and small.

    The 9-foot-tall armored truck was intended for an overseas battlefield. But as President Obama ushers in the end of what he called America’s “long season of war,” the former tools of combat — M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more — are ending up in local police departments, often with little public notice.


    During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.


    The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units.

    Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs.

    Masked, heavily armed police officers in Louisiana raided a nightclub in 2006 as part of a liquor inspection.


    In Florida in 2010, officers in SWAT gear and with guns drawn carried out raids on barbershops that mostly led only to charges of “barbering without a license.”


    When the military’s mine-resistant trucks began arriving in large numbers last year, Neenah and places like it were plunged into the middle of a debate over whether the post-9/11 era had obscured the lines between soldier and police officer.

    “It just seems like ramping up a police department for a problem we don’t have,” said Shay Korittnig, a father of two who spoke against getting the armored truck at a recent public meeting in Neenah. “This is not what I was looking for when I moved here, that my children would view their local police officer as an M-16-toting, SWAT-apparel-wearing officer.”


    A quiet city of about 25,000 people, Neenah has a violent crime rate that is far below the national average. Neenah has not had a homicide in more than five years.


    “Somebody has to be the first person to say ‘Why are we doing this?’ ” said William Pollnow Jr., a Neenah city councilman who opposed getting the new police truck.


    Neenah’s police chief, Kevin E. Wilkinson, said he understood the concern. At first, he thought the anti-mine truck was too big. But the department’s old armored car could not withstand high-powered gunfire, he said.

    “I don’t like it. I wish it were the way it was when I was a kid,” he said. But he said the possibility of violence, however remote, required taking precautions. “We’re not going to go out there as Officer Friendly with no body armor and just a handgun and say ‘Good enough.’ ”


    Congress created the military-transfer program in the early 1990s, when violent crime plagued America’s cities and the police felt outgunned by drug gangs. Today, crime has fallen to its lowest levels in a generation, the wars have wound down, and despite current fears, the number of domestic terrorist attacks has declined sharply from the 1960s and 1970s.


    Police departments, though, are adding more firepower and military gear than ever. Some, especially in larger cities, have used federal grant money to buy armored cars and other tactical gear. And the free surplus program remains a favorite of many police chiefs who say they could otherwise not afford such equipment. Chief Wilkinson said he expects the police to use the new truck rarely, when the department’s SWAT team faces an armed standoff or serves a warrant on someone believed to be dangerous.


    Today, Chief Wilkinson said, the police are trained to move in and save lives during a shooting or standoff, in contrast to a generation ago — before the Columbine High School massacre and others that followed it — when they responded by setting up a perimeter and either negotiating with, or waiting out, the suspect.


    The number of SWAT teams has skyrocketed since the 1980s, according to studies by Peter B. Kraska, an Eastern Kentucky University professor who has been researching the issue for decades.


    The ubiquity of SWAT teams has changed not only the way officers look, but also the way departments view themselves. Recruiting videos feature clips of officers storming into homes with smoke grenades and firing automatic weapons. In Springdale, Ark., a police recruiting video is dominated by SWAT clips, including officers throwing a flash grenade into a house and creeping through a field in camouflage.


    In South Carolina, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department’s website features its SWAT team, dressed in black with guns drawn, flanking an armored vehicle that looks like a tank and has a mounted .50-caliber gun. Capt. Chris Cowan, a department spokesman, said the vehicle “allows the department to stay in step with the criminals who are arming themselves more heavily every day.” He said police officers had taken it to schools and community events, where it was a conversation starter.


    “All of a sudden, we start relationships with people,” he said.


    Not everyone agrees that there is a need for such vehicles. Ronald E. Teachman, the police chief in South Bend, Ind., said he decided not to request a mine-resistant vehicle for his city. "I go to schools,” he said. “But I bring ‘Green Eggs and Ham.’ ”


    The Pentagon program does not push equipment onto local departments. The pace of transfers depends on how much unneeded equipment the military has, and how much the police request. Equipment that goes unclaimed typically is destroyed. So police chiefs say their choice is often easy: Ask for free equipment that would otherwise be scrapped, or look for money in their budgets to prepare for an unlikely scenario. Most people understand, police officers say.


    "When you explain that you’re preparing for something that may never happen, they get it,” said Capt. Tiger Parsons of the Buchanan County Sheriff’s Office in northwest Missouri, which recently received a mine-resistant truck.


    Pentagon data suggest how the police are arming themselves for such worst-case scenarios. Since 2006, the police in six states have received magazines that carry 100 rounds of M-16 ammunition, allowing officers to fire continuously for three times longer than normal. Twenty-two states obtained equipment to detect buried land mines.

    In the Indianapolis suburbs, officers said they needed a mine-resistant vehicle to protect against a possible attack by veterans returning from war.


    “You have a lot of people who are coming out of the military that have the ability and knowledge to build I.E.D.’s and to defeat law enforcement techniques,” Sgt. Dan Downing of the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department told the local Fox affiliate, referring to improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs. Sergeant Downing did not return a message seeking comment.


    The police in 38 states have received silencers, which soldiers use to muffle gunfire during raids and sniper attacks. Lauren Wild, the sheriff in rural Walsh County, N.D., said he saw no need for silencers. When told he had 40 of them for his county of 11,000 people, Sheriff Wild confirmed it with a colleague and said he would look into it. "I don’t recall approving them,” he said.


    Some officials are reconsidering their eagerness to take the gear. Last year, the sheriff’s office in Oxford County, Maine, told county officials that it wanted a mine-resistant vehicle because Maine’s western foothills “face a previously unimaginable threat from terrorist activities.”


    County commissioners approved the request, but recently rescinded it at the sheriff’s request. Scott Cole, the county administrator, said some people expressed concerns about the truck, and the police were comfortable that a neighboring community could offer its vehicle in an emergency.


    At the Neenah City Council, Mr. Pollnow is pushing for a requirement that the council vote on all equipment transfers. When he asks about the need for military equipment, he said the answer is always the same: It protects police officers.


    “Who’s going to be against that? You’re against the police coming home safe at night?” he said.

    “But you can always present a worst-case scenario. You can use that as a framework to get anything.”


    Chief Wilkinson said he was not interested in militarizing Neenah. But officers are shot, even in small towns. If there were an affordable way to protect his people without the new truck, he would do it.

    “I hate having our community divided over a law enforcement issue like this. But we are,” he said.

    “It drives me to my knees in prayer for the safety of this community every day. And it convinced me that this was the right thing for our community.”

    http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-police-departments.html

    prayer and MRAPs, yep, that helps a lot!



  7. #57
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    The Uncons utional Border Wars Have Moved Into the Heartland


    Shena Gutierrez was already cuffed and in an inspection room in Nogales, Arizona, when the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent grabbed her purse, opened it, and dumped its contents onto the floor right in front of her. There couldn’t be a sharper image of the Bill of Rights rollback we are experiencing in the U.S. borderlands in the post-9/11 era.

    Tumbling out of that purse came Gutierrez’s life: photos of her kids, business cards, credit cards, and other papers, all now open to the official scrutiny of the Department of Homeland Security. There were also photographs of her husband, Jose Gutierrez Guzman, whom CBP agents beat so badly in 2011 that he suffered permanent brain damage. The supervisory agent, whose name badge on his blue uniform read “Gomez,” now began to trample on her life, quite literally, with his black boots.

    “Please stop stepping on the pictures,” Shena asked him.

    A U.S. citizen, unlike her husband, she had been returning from a 48-hour vigil against Border Patrol violence in Mexico and was wearing a shirt that said “Stop Border Patrol Brutality” when she was aggressively questioned and cuffed at the CBP’s “port of entry” in Nogales on that hot day in May. She had no doubt that Gomez was stepping all over the contents of her purse in response to her shirt, the evidence of her activism.


    Perhaps what bothered Gomez was the photo silkscreened onto that shirt—of her husband during his hospitalization. It showed the aftermath of a beating he received from CBP agents. His head had a partially caved-in look because doctors had removed part of his skull. Over his chest and arms were bruises from Tasering. One tooth was out of place, and he had two black eyes. Although you couldn’t see them in the photo, two heavily armed Homeland Security agents were then guarding his hospital door to prevent the father of two, formerly a sound technician and the lead singer of a popular band in Los Angeles, from escaping—even in his comatose state.

    http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...oved-heartland



  8. #58
    Veteran cantthinkofanything's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Post Count
    14,937

    Perhaps what bothered Gomez was the photo silkscreened onto that shirt—

    inadmissible testimony your honor...speculation

  9. #59
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Mom sues South Dakota police for using Taser on 8-year-old daughter

    http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/8/10/taser-south-dakota.html

    Cops are chicken- bullies who can't handle a 70-pound, 8-year-old girl.



  10. #60
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Georgia County Won’t Pay Medical Bills for Toddler Burned By Grenade in Botched Drug Raid

    Officials in a Georgia county are refusing to pay medical expenses for a toddler badly injured during a police raid on the home where the boy was staying.

    Bounkham Phonesavanh was hospitalized for weeks in a burn unit after a SWAT officer tossed a flash grenade into his crib during a no-knock raid May 28 in Habersham County.


    The 19-month-old suffered serious wounds, including a hole in his chest that exposed his ribs, and burns to his face and chest when the grenade detonated just inches away from him as he slept.


    The grenades were developed for combat use and are intended to temporarily blind and deafen anyone nearby.


    “I heard my baby wailing and asked one of the officers to let me hold him,” the boy’s mother, Alecia Phonesavanh, told Salon. “He screamed at me to sit down and shut up and blocked my view, so I couldn’t see my son. I could see a singed crib, and I could see a pool of blood.”

    “The officers yelled at me to calm down and told me my son was fine, that he’d just lost a tooth,” his mother added. “It was only hours later when they finally let us drive to the hospital that we found out Bou Bou was in the intensive burn unit and that he’d been placed into a medically induced coma.”

    Officials in Habersham County, which conducted the drug raid, have turned down the family’s request to pay for the boy’s medical bills, saying they’re not allowed to help.

    “The question before the board was whether it is legally permitted to pay these expenses,” county attorney Donnie Hunt said in a statement. “After consideration of this question following advice of counsel, the board of commissioners has concluded that it would be in violation of the law for it to do so.”

    http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...er1016127&t=15

    Obviously, lilttle
    Bounkham Phonesavanh isn't a Real American. I wonder if the money would have been found for a redneck Christian Georgia cracka baby?



  11. #61
    Veteran cantthinkofanything's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Post Count
    14,937
    Sucky situation. But why are you making the issue about race? Isn't the main issue that the cops ed up?

  12. #62
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Women’s Jail Allowed Male Guards To Videotape 274 Different Strip Searches


    At the Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional Center, inmates who are transferred to a segregated unit are strip searched during the transfer. As part of this strip search, an inmate is required to “run her fingers through her hair, remove dentures if she wore them, raise both arms, lift her breasts, lift her stomach for visual inspection if she had a large mid-section, and remove any tampon or pad if she were menstruating. She was then required to turn around, bend over, spread her buttocks, and cough.”

    Throughout the transfer, including the strip search, a corrections officer would videotape the entire process. Since mid-September of 2008, a male guard was assigned the task of videotaping these strip searches on 274 different occasions. Moreover, although prison policy stated that male officers should only record the inmate “from the neck up” while the strip searches are going on, a federal court determined that 68 percent of the videos show “some or all of the women’s genitals, buttocks, or breasts.”

    The segregated unit, where these inmates would wind up after they were strip searched, is a facility for inmates who “presented as a suicide risk, committed certain disciplinary infractions, or needed to be in protective custody.”

    On Tuesday, a federal trial court in Massachusetts held that it is “plainly uncons utional to require a female inmate to expose herself, particularly to the extreme degree required during a strip search, in the presence of a male officer.” Even assuming that “the male officer doing the videotaping was able somehow to avert his eyes while using the camera,” something the defendants in this lawsuit claim that the officers actually did do, Judge Michael Ponsor explained that the search still violates the Cons ution’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. “The fact that the male officer, while operating the video camera, may be turned to one side or have his back turned will do little, for most female inmates, to diminish the sense of embarrassment, humiliation, and vulnerability that she must inevitably feel.”

    The Supreme Court is very permissive of strip searches in jails.

    http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/08/29/3477208/womens-prison-allowed-male-guards-to-videotape-274-different-strip-searches/


    Thanks,
    REPUG extreme activist SCOTUS, degrading (the 99%'s) American life with every (5-4) decision.

    Anybody wanna guess whether those vids of stripped ladies were seen by "unauthorized" people?

    Leaks said NSA frat rats, NSA Animal House, passed around pics they vacuumed from snooped emails.

    Last edited by boutons_deux; 08-30-2014 at 10:18 AM.

  13. #63
    Veteran
    My Team
    Denver Nuggets
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Post Count
    12,134
    Women’s Jail Allowed Male Guards To Videotape 274 Different Strip Searches


    At the Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional Center, inmates who are transferred to a segregated unit are strip searched during the transfer. As part of this strip search, an inmate is required to “run her fingers through her hair, remove dentures if she wore them, raise both arms, lift her breasts, lift her stomach for visual inspection if she had a large mid-section, and remove any tampon or pad if she were menstruating. She was then required to turn around, bend over, spread her buttocks, and cough.”

    Throughout the transfer, including the strip search, a corrections officer would videotape the entire process. Since mid-September of 2008, a male guard was assigned the task of videotaping these strip searches on 274 different occasions. Moreover, although prison policy stated that male officers should only record the inmate “from the neck up” while the strip searches are going on, a federal court determined that 68 percent of the videos show “some or all of the women’s genitals, buttocks, or breasts.”

    The segregated unit, where these inmates would wind up after they were strip searched, is a facility for inmates who “presented as a suicide risk, committed certain disciplinary infractions, or needed to be in protective custody.”

    On Tuesday, a federal trial court in Massachusetts held that it is “plainly uncons utional to require a female inmate to expose herself, particularly to the extreme degree required during a strip search, in the presence of a male officer.” Even assuming that “the male officer doing the videotaping was able somehow to avert his eyes while using the camera,” something the defendants in this lawsuit claim that the officers actually did do, Judge Michael Ponsor explained that the search still violates the Cons ution’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. “The fact that the male officer, while operating the video camera, may be turned to one side or have his back turned will do little, for most female inmates, to diminish the sense of embarrassment, humiliation, and vulnerability that she must inevitably feel.”

    The Supreme Court is very permissive of strip searches in jails.

    http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/08/29/3477208/womens-prison-allowed-male-guards-to-videotape-274-different-strip-searches/


    Thanks,
    REPUG extreme activist SCOTUS, degrading (the 99%'s) American life with every (5-4) decision.

    Anybody wanna guess whether those vids of stripped ladies stayed were seen by "unauthorized" people?




    I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that those videos are absolutely ing gross.

    However, I did just recently finish season 2 of Orange is the New Black...so maybe not

  14. #64
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Stop and seize

    Aggressive police take hundreds of millions of dollars from motorists not charged with crimes

    After the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the government called on police to become the eyes and ears of homeland security on America’s highways.
    Local officers, county deputies and state troopers were encouraged to act more aggressively in searching for su ious people, drugs and other contraband. The departments of Homeland Security and Justice spent millions on police training.

    The effort succeeded, but it had an impact that has been largely hidden from public view:

    the spread of an aggressive brand of policing that has spurred the seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from motorists and others not charged with crimes, a Washington Post investigation found. Thousands of people have been forced to fight legal battles that can last more than a year to get their money back.



    Stop and Seize: In recent years, thousands of people have had cash confiscated by police without being charged with crimes. The Post looks at the police culture behind the seizures and the people who were forced to fight the government to get their money back.

    Part 2:
    One training firm started a private intelligence-sharing network and helped shape law enforcement nationwide.

    Part 3:
    Motorists caught up in the seizures talk about the experience and the legal battles that sometimes took more than a year.


    Behind the rise in seizures is a little-known cottage industry of private police-training firms that teach the techniques of “highway interdiction” to departments across the country.

    One of those firms created a private intelligence network known as Black Asphalt Electronic Networking & Notification System that enabled police nationwide to share detailed reports about American motorists — criminals and the innocent alike — including their Social Security numbers, addresses and identifying tattoos, as well as hunches about which drivers to stop.

    Many of the reports have been funneled to federal agencies and fusion centers as part of the government’s burgeoning law enforcement intelligence systems — despite warnings from state and federal authorities that the information could violate privacy and cons utional protections.

    A thriving subculture of road officers on the network now competes to see who can seize the most cash and contraband, describing their exploits in the network’s chat rooms and sharing “trophy shots” of money and drugs. Some police advocate highway interdiction as a way of raising revenue for cash-strapped municipalities.


    “All of our home towns are sitting on a tax-liberating gold mine,” Deputy Ron Hain of Kane County, Ill., wrote in a self-published book under a pseudonym. Hain is a marketing specialist for Desert Snow, a leading interdiction training firm based in Guthrie, Okla., whose founders also created Black Asphalt.


    http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/inv...op-and-seize/#

    the taxpayer funded police are now just another criminal predator sucking wealth out of Americans.

    Think any politicians gonna kill "stop and seize the cash" ? no

    America is ed and un able.



  15. #65
    Spur-taaaa TDMVPDPOY's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Post Count
    41,330
    gotto meet monthly quotas nothing to see here

  16. #66
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    The chilling loophole that lets police stop, question and search you for no good reason

    Checkpoints occupy a unique position in the American justice system. At these roadside stations, where police question drivers in search of the inebriated or “illegal,” anyone can be stopped and questioned, regardless of probable cause, violating the Fourth Amendment’s protection against “general warrants” that do not specify the who/what/where/why of a search or seizure. Though the Supreme Court agrees that checkpoints skirt the Fourth Amendment, the Court has been clear that the “special needs” checkpoints serve, like traffic safety and immigration enforcement, trump the “slight” intrusions on motorists’ rights.

    people in Arizona have sued the Department of Homeland Security for its wanton deployment of immigration checkpoints in their state. Among their complaints are racial profiling, harassment, assault and unwarranted interrogation, and detention not related to the express “special need” of determining peoples’ immigration status.

    A key legal detail about checkpoints is that they cannot be used for crime control, as that would require individualized probable cause. But legal scholars argue that non-criminally-minded checkpoints are also illegal. They point out that the Fourth Amendment protected the colonists from being searched for non-criminal “wrongdoing.” Doing nothing wrong at all, they argue, is not grounds to be searched or have your property seized.

    immigration checkpoints, expanded by the 2006Secure Fence Act, are only allowed within 100 miles of the continental United States’ border. But that’s a big perimeter. Nine of the country’s 10 largest cities, entire states and some two thirds of the US population reside within this cons utionally exempt zone.

    the extent to which people are legally obliged to answer officers’ questions is unclear and seemingly arbitrary. Not surprisingly, the military’s immigration checkpoints have garnered outspoken criticism from across the political spectrum. Legalized by the Supreme Court in1976, these checkpoints seem to have taken on a new momentum in the post-9/11 era. (Private militias have even taken to setting up their own versions.)
    DUI checkpoints, on the other hand, deemed cons utional in 1990, monitor roadways in 38 states. But they have been outlawed by 12 others that have invoked states’ rights to increase federal civil liberty protections. In the Court’s 1990 opinion, Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote that states’ interest in eradicating drunk driving is indisputable and that this “interest” outweighed “the measure of the intrusion on motorists stopped briefly at sobriety checkpoints,” which he described as “slight.”

    . With the help of local police, private government contractors have used the tactic to collect anonymous breath, saliva and blood ( DNA) samples of American motorists for the federally funded National Roadside Survey of Alcohol and Drugged Driving. Participation in the survey is voluntary, despite the confusion that may come with uniformed police asking for bodily fluids. Motorists are offered $10 for cheek swabs and $50 for blood samples.

    ...

    http://www.salon.com/2014/09/23/the_...eason_partner/



  17. #67
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    To Stop Police Brutality, Take the Millions in Settlement Money Out Of Cop Budgets


    As the national conversation around racism and police brutality quickly fades—ramped up briefly in the wake of Michael Brown’s death—U.S. taxpayers remain stuck footing the bills for their local law enforcement’s aggressive behavior.

    This week alone, Baltimore agreed to pay $49,000 to man who sued over a violent arrest in 2010,

    Philadelphia agreed to pay $490,000 to a man who was abused and broke his neck while riding in a police van in 2011, and

    St. Paul agreed to pay $95,000 to a man who suffered a skull injury, a fractured eye socket, and a broken nose in 2012.


    In 2013, Chicago paid out a stunning $84.6 million in police misconduct settlements, judgments, and legal fees.

    Bridgeport, Connecticut, paid a man $198,000 this past spring after video footage captured police shooting him twice with a stun gun, then stomping all over him as he lay on the ground.

    And in California, Oakland recently agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle a lawsuit a man filed after being shot in the head, leaving him with permanent brain damage.

    You get the picture.


    “That’s why
    these enormous financial penalties do not seem to actually impact what police do,” said David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who specializes in criminal justice issues. “Conceivably, if cities didn’t want this to happen, they could say this will come out of your [police] budget.”The thing is, these steep payments rarely come from the police department budgets—instead they’re

    financed through the city’s general coffers or the city’s insurance plan. It’s the taxpayer, not the law enforcement agency, who pays the price.


    http://www.alternet.org/civil-libert...ut-cop-budgets



  18. #68
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Police Departments Retaliate Against Organized "Cop Watch" Groups Across the US

    When communities attempt to police the police, they often get, well... policed.\

    In several states, organized groups that use police scanners and knowledge of checkpoints to collectively monitor police activities by legally and peacefully filming cops on duty have said they've experienced retaliation, including unjustified detainment and arrests as well as police intimidation.
    The groups operate under many decentralized organizations, most notably CopWatch and Cop Block, and have proliferated across the United States in the last decade - and especially in the aftermath of the events that continue to unfold in Ferguson, Missouri, after officer Darren Wilson fatally shot unarmed, black teenager Michael Brown.


    Many such groups have begun proactively patrolling their communities with cameras at various times during the week, rather than reactively turning on their cameras when police enter into their neighborhoods or when they happen to be around police activity.


    Across the nation, local police departments are responding to organized cop watching patrols by targeting perceived leaders, making arrests, threatening arrests, yanking cameras out of hands and even labeling particular groups "domestic extremist" organizations and part of the sovereign citizens movement - the activities of which the FBI classifies as domestic terrorism.


    Courts across the nation at all levels have upheld the right to film police activity. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and photographer's assocications have taken many similar incidents to court, consistently winning cases over the years. The Supreme Court has ruled police can't search an individual's cellphone data without a warrant. Police also can't legally delete an individual's photos or video images under any cir stances.

    Sources who have participated in various organized cop watching groups in cities such as New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Oakland, Arlington, Texas, Austin and lastly Ferguson, Missouri, told Truthout they have experienced a range of police intimidation tactics, some of which have been caught on film. Cop watchers told Truthout they have been arrested in several states, including Texas, New York, Ohio and California in retaliation for their filming activity.

    More recently, in September, three cop watchers were arrested while monitoring police activity during a traffic stop in Arlington, Texas. A group of about 20 people, a few of them associated with the Tarrant County Peaceful Streets Project, gathered at the intersection of South Cooper Street and Lynda Lane during a Saturday night on September 6 to film police as they conducted a traffic stop. A video of what happened next was posted at YouTube.

    http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/2...-across-the-us



  19. #69
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Cops Distributing Spyware To Families As “Internet Safety” Tool

    The ComputerCOP software, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation reports in a detailed investigation, is usually handed out at “internet safety” events. Police, sheriffs, and district attorneys doing community outreach buy the software, then have it rebranded with their own agency name, logos, and imagery before handing it out to local families at schools and libraries.

    However, as the EFF explains, “as official as it looks,” the contents of the disc are just spyware, purchased in bulk from a company in New York that exists solely market and distribute ComputerCOP to government agencies.


    If it seems like a CD of supposed safety software is a relic of the era when you got “the internet” from an AOL 3.0 disc they handed out at Staples, you’re right. In the name of child safety, it has two major functions: a hard drive search and a keystroke logger. The idea is that parents can use the software to keep an eye on the images, text, and websites their children are encountering.


    The search tool runs from the CD without installation, and checks out all the files on the hard drive for thousands of terms related to gangs, hate groups, drug use, and of course sex. The EFF tested the searches, however, and found them deeply unreliable. Results were routinely laden with false positives, including “items as innocuous as raw computer code.” Meanwhile, actual files that did have words like “drugs” in them were not found but still turned up on standard Mac or Windows searches.

    Being super-shady, however, has not stopped ComputerCOP from becoming widespread. The list of participating agencies that distribute copies is definitely not small, and agencies at every level — city, county, state, and federal — are among them. The
    EFF’s full listing includes over 245 agencies in 35 states, as well as the U.S. Marshals. And it’s not cheap: cash-strapped agencies are spending tens of thousands of of tax or grant dollars on every set of discs they order.

    http://consumerist.com/2014/10/02/oo...t-safety-tool/



  20. #70
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Cops kill Georgia grandpa in no-knock raid triggered by burglary suspect’s tip





    When Teresa Hooks looked outside the craft room window of her Georgia home one night last week, she saw hooded figures wearing camouflage standing outside.

    The East Dublin woman woke up her husband, David Hooks, who grabbed his shotgun, believing burglars who had recently targeted the couple had come back again,reported WMAZ-TV.

    The sheriff’s deputies burst through the back door about 11 p.m. on Sept. 24 and, seeing David Hooks holding the weapon, fired 16 shots – killing the 59-year-old grandfather.


    Authorities said Hooks met deputies at the door and pointed his weapon aggressively at officers as they announced themselves.

    But Teresa Hooks said the officers did not knock and never identified themselves as law enforcement, and her attorney said David Hooks was killed behind a wall in the home — not at the door.


    Deputies were executing a search warrant as part of a drug investigation based on a tip from one of the burglars accused of stealing a vehicle from Hooks.

    “That search of some 44 hours conducted by numerous agents of the (Georgia Bureau of Investigation) resulted in not one item of contraband being found,” said attorney Mitc Shook. “He was not a drug user or a drug dealer.”

    Hooks owned a construction company that worked on military bases, Shook said, which required background check clearance by state and federal authorities – including the Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

    “This is not a person who needs to be involved in criminal activity for financial gain,” Shook said. “He did very well financially.”

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/c...e+Raw+Story%29

    yawn, another day, another SWAT team murders an innocent American

    Even a cracka in fricking Georgia isn't safe




  21. #71
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    did somebody say cop watching?

    Fox host blames Obama and Holder’s Ferguson comments for 20-year-old ‘Copwatch’ group




    On Fox & Friends this morning, Steve Doocy and “America’s Lawyer,” Peter Johnson Jr., tried to connect libertarian groups like Copwatch and Cop Block to statements made by Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama about the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

    Johnson began the segment by saying, “I’m calling them ‘cop-catchers’ and ‘police paparazzi,’ Steve.”

    “Is this cynicism and distrust of police coming from the very top of the criminal justice chain?” he asked. “Watch,” he said, throwing to a clip of Holder saying that he “wants the people of Ferguson to know” that he “understands that mistrust” between citizens of a community and police.

    Johnson then played a clip of Obama speaking before the United Nations, in which he noted that “the eyes of the world were upon the small city of Ferguson, Missouri, where a young man was killed, and a community was divided” and admitted that there are “racial and ethnic tensions” in America.

    “So groups like Copwatch and Cop Block,” Johnson said — without drawing any connection between his point and the clips he juxtaposed it with — “are taking to the streets and taping police officers.”

    Copwatch was founded in 1990, Cop Block in 2010, and neither organization has ties to the Obama administration or Holder’s Justice Department.

    “They’re just waiting for something to happen,” Doocy replied.

    “And sometimes they’re getting arrested,” John continued. “This has been a robust debate in the courts around the country — do they have a civil right to do so? Most circuit courts say they do.”

    “But the bigger issue is,” he said, “are we creating a distrust, a mistrust, a cynicism about our police? A lot of people on the left, and a lot of people on the right agree — we need to watch the watchers.”

    “But at the same time, are we creating such an environment for our police officers that we believe their actions are going to be suspect, are going to be criminal? Shouldn’t we have more confidence,” Johnson asked, “in their ability to do the right thing?”

    “Sure,” Doocy replied, “after Ferguson, a lot of people were saying, ‘Why don’t police offers wear little video cameras?’ I like that idea. But if someone’s just standing next to an officer with a camera saying, ‘I’m not doing anything, I’m just waiting for you to do something stupid.’”

    “You’re right,” Johnson responded. “There are studies that say it decreases violence, it decreases police abuse, that it’s good all around. But the bigger question is, how intrusive, how disruptive, how dangerous is it to have squads of Americans going around saying, ‘I’m going to watch you police officer,’ ‘I don’t believe what you’re doing,’
    ‘you’re a suspect inherently.’”

    “Big, big problem going forward,” he concluded.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/f...e+Raw+Story%29

    And the old white paranoid, pissed off white Christian Fox viewers went wild!

    "we trust the cops (to kill the n!gg@s! the more, the better)"

  22. #72
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    A grand jury in Georgia declined to indict the law enforcement officers involved in a botched drug raid that left a toddler disfigured and badly injured.A SWAT officer tossed a flash grenade May 28 into a playpen where 19-month-old Bounkham “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh was sleeping during a no-knock raid overseen by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

    The toddler’s nose was detached from his face, and the blast ripped a hole in his chest and caused serious burn

    Officers found no drugs or weapons during their search, but the maimed boy’s cousin was arrested later that day without incident and charged with possession of meth.

    A 23-member grand jury panel heard six days of testimony before deciding not to charge any of the officers involved in the raid.

    An attorney for the family said the toddler had surgery about a month ago that required
    60 s ches to his face and 70 to his chest.

    The boy will likely need
    similar surgeries every two years until he is 20 years old to repair badly damaged nerve endings in his face and additional plastic surgery throughout his life, the attorney said.

    The county has said it would not pay for the child’s medical bills
    , arguing that the board of commissioners was not legally permitted to pay for them.

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/1...?detail=email#



  23. #73
    Spur-taaaa TDMVPDPOY's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Post Count
    41,330
    nothing beats ethnic minority fobia among the general public with misleading crime stats, so govt/state could arm themselves or give law enforcement more powers to act like thugs....

    cops are no different them crims, one has a license and the other doesnt....both corrupted and same anyway

  24. #74
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Indiana State Trooper Pitched Christianity At Traffic Stop

    An Indiana state trooper asked a motorist if she accepted Jesus as her savior when he pulled her over for a traffic violation, according to a lawsuit filed by the woman.

    Ellen Bogan claims that State Police Trooper Brian Hamilton gave her a warning ticket and then proceeded to quiz her on her faith, according to the Indianapolis Star.


    Hamilton asked Bogan if she had a church and "if she had accepted Jesus Christ as her savior," according to her complaint. He also gave her a pamphlet that asked her "to acknowledge that she is a sinner."

    "It's completely out of line and it just — it took me aback," Bogan told the Indianapolis Star


    Bogan and the American Civil Liberties Union sued Hamilton for violating Bogan's First and Fourth Amendment rights.


    "I'm not affiliated with any church. I don't go to church," Bogan said. "I felt compelled to say I did, just because I had a state trooper standing at the passenger-side window. It was just weird."


    The pamphlet also included an advertisement for the "Policing for Jesus Ministries" radio show by "Trooper Dan Jones."

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...stianity-pitch

    more evidence that policing attracts the highest quality, most intelligent, well-balanced people with excellent "Police Academy" training. This cop sounds like your typical Christian "soldier" kool-aid imbiber.



  25. #75
    Kang Trill Clinton's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Jun 2010
    Post Count
    20,426
    A grand jury in Georgia declined to indict the law enforcement officers involved in a botched drug raid that left a toddler disfigured and badly injured.A SWAT officer tossed a flash grenade May 28 into a playpen where 19-month-old Bounkham “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh was sleeping during a no-knock raid overseen by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

    The toddler’s nose was detached from his face, and the blast ripped a hole in his chest and caused serious burn

    Officers found no drugs or weapons during their search, but the maimed boy’s cousin was arrested later that day without incident and charged with possession of meth.

    A 23-member grand jury panel heard six days of testimony before deciding not to charge any of the officers involved in the raid.

    An attorney for the family said the toddler had surgery about a month ago that required
    60 s ches to his face and 70 to his chest.

    The boy will likely need
    similar surgeries every two years until he is 20 years old to repair badly damaged nerve endings in his face and additional plastic surgery throughout his life, the attorney said.

    The county has said it would not pay for the child’s medical bills
    , arguing that the board of commissioners was not legally permitted to pay for them.

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/1...?detail=email#



    this right here is ridiculous....cops are getting away with killing and maiming baies.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •