Law enforcement: What does it mean

[Vexari]

While paying attention

Until it matters most

Then it is

A history lesson

[Vexari]

Knowing where one is

~~~ Is a telling event ~~~
(22:01)

Perspective is key

HighImpactFlix

[Vexari]

Keeping it simple with four words

~~~ It is written in the Bill of Rights ~~~
(2:57)

Also in the Fifth Amendment

Ones' right to remain silent

P?????P???

[Vexari]

How to refuse a DUI test

~~~ Cop gets owned and dsmissed ~~~
(13:34)

Shaun Weavers

[Vexari]

What is it beholden to

[Vexari]

This is a good subject

Mixed emotions for sure

Individual perspectives

Respected

[Vexari]

Cops: protectors or predators

unique perspective
(20:09)

defendressofsan

[Vexari]

Why you should never talk to the police

https://www.bitchute.com/video/xdfLoUb7zkfS/ (46:38) Law professor James Duane

This classic presentation by James Duane to a group of students has been viewed on YouTube for probably hundreds of millions times, although some copies are starting to disappear, so we are loading it here also.

NEVER talk to the police. It is your Constitutional Right.

Full article: https://healthimpactnews.com/2022/atf-and-delaware-state-police-trooper-conduct-surprise-firearm-inspection-at-mans-home-without-search-warrant/

[Vexari]

The cop mindset, know thy enemy



https://www.bitchute.com/video/aLIe2ylkxx1T/

[Trinityz1]

I have to agree with that

[Vexari]

The judicial system is just as guilty of abuse

If not more so

Than law enforcement


This is not being highlighted

Because of its importance in the control of a certain ideology

[Trinityz1]

as I'm reading through the posts
I'm wondering if this is where we're headed back to......
when the pendulum swings

[Vexari]

There Goes Another

[Vexari]

A civilized society should be paying attention to

Uncivilized behavior

Have to start somewhere

Why not the basics..

[Vexari]

SHADOW GOVERNMENT Who Rules America? (Full Documentary)

Who does rule America?

In this video, G. Edward Griffin, Chuck Baldwin, Aaron Dykes, Rita Koire, Gerald Celente, Dr. Katherine Albrecht and others discuss who has the real power in America.

If you are not familiar with the Council on Foreign Relations, and its goals, this video exposes them for what they are..

[Vexari]

Have been thinking about this for quite awhile


Statutory laws are a means to control the flow of money

At the expense of those just wanting to live their lives

There seems to be three tiers

1. Those that want it

2. Those that don't know what it is

3. Those that have to enforce the difference..


To keep the masses obedient and productive

It must not be noticed..



Does that make any sense and no wonder?

3. Those that have to enforce the difference


It is an insane equation..

[Vexari]

OT..Accountability, Breaking the rules

Who suffers when a prosecutor is cited for misconduct?

By Steve Weinburg
June 26, 2003
Updated: 12:19 pm, May 19, 2014


When Larry Johnson walked out of a Missouri prison during the summer of 2002, exonerated by DNA testing from a wrongful rape conviction after avowing his innocence for 18 years, St. Louis legal community insiders nodded knowingly as word trickled out who had led the prosecution back in 1984—Nels C. Moss Jr.

Moss, assistant circuit attorney for the city of St. Louis and later a trial prosecutor in neighboring St. Charles County, earned a well-deserved reputation as an aggressive, effective trial prosecutor. During his 33 years of trying cases for the people, however, he simultaneously was a recidivist breaker of the rules by which prosecutors are supposed to operate.

After joining the St. Louis city prosecutor's office in 1968, Moss found his conduct formally challenged in at least 24 cases. In seven of those, judges reversed the conviction, declared a mistrial or issued some other ruling adverse to the prosecution.

Over the course of his career as a prosecutor, Moss reneged during trial on a pre-trial stipulation with the defense; called the jury's attention to the defendant's failure to testify, thereby compromising the Fifth Amendment rights of the accused; alluded to the defendant's uncharged criminal conduct, a violation of the rules of evidence; attacked the character of the defendant with information not in the court record; used inadmissible material from a separate trial of an accomplice; promised during jury selection or opening argument to present testimony never offered; attacked the truthfulness of defense counsel; cast aspersions on the integrity of an insanity defense; and inflamed jurors' passions during closing argument.

When one appellate panel reversed a conviction in a case won by Moss, a judge writing a concurring opinion emphasized that the blame lay with the prosecutor and not with the courts:

"Most regrettable ... is the fact that we are required to remand this case for retrial, with all of the expense, delay and inconvenience attendant thereto, because of a trial incident that need not and should not have occurred ... It was a deliberate effort by one of the most experienced assistant circuit attorneys in the City of St. Louis to interject even more poison than his extensive review of defendant's prior convictions had already accomplished ... The sole purpose ... was to poison the minds of the jurors regarding the defendant's character ... Where, as in this case, the record discloses a patent effort to deprive a defendant of a fair trial, the onus for the delay and added expense should be directed toward the prosecutor who caused it. This is especially true when, rather than resulting from youthful zeal, the error is but one example of a consistent pattern of improper tactics reflected by other transcripts in cases tried by the same experienced prosecutor."

In another 17 cases prosecuted by Moss, appellate judges affirmed the conviction or trial judges allowed the proceeding to continue, despite finding Moss committed prosecutorial error.

Moss declined an interview request from the Center for Public Integrity, and wrote that he sees no point in subjecting himself to "second guessing by those that have not walked in my shoes." In his response to the interview request, Moss characterized himself as "a hard-hitting but honest prosecutor." He estimated that he tried more than 400 cases before juries, including "high-profile, racially and politically explosive cases. Obviously the friends and representatives of those convicted are dissatisfied with the outcomes and are prone to see fault and perceived injustice."

Of judges who criticized his tactics, Moss wrote that some "have never tried cases as prosecutors or defense attorneys and have never experienced the heat of the courtroom." Moss wondered if his detractors realize that, "I have refused to proceed on numerous cases where confessions did not match the evidence, where identifications did not measure up to appropriate standards, where alibis while not conclusive have left too much reasonable doubt. ... I have never approved or sponsored testimony I suspected to be false. I have never prosecuted anyone on the basis of race; indeed most of the victims of the crimes I prosecuted were minorities."

Though Moss' record of 7 reversals due to misconduct and 17 other findings that he committed prosecutorial error is extreme, he is hardly an anomaly.

Recidivist prosecutors

Local prosecutors in many of the 2,341 jurisdictions across the nation have stretched, bent or broken rules while convicting defendants, the Center has found. Since 1970, individual judges and appellate court panels cited prosecutorial misconduct as a factor when dismissing charges at trial, reversing convictions or reducing sentences in at least 2,012 cases. The nature of the questionable conduct covers every type attributed to Moss, and more.

In 513 additional cases, appellate judges offered opinions—either dissents or concurrences—in which they found the prosecutorial misconduct serious enough to merit additional discussion; some of the dissenting judges wrote that they found the misconduct warranted a reversal. In thousands more cases, judges labeled prosecutorial behavior inappropriate, but allowed the trial to continue or upheld convictions using a doctrine called "harmless error."

The Center analyzed 11,452 cases in which charges of prosecutorial misconduct were reviewed by appellate court judges. In the majority of cases, the allegation of misconduct was ruled harmless error or was not addressed by the appellate judges, and the conviction stood. The relative rarity of reversals makes these opinions useful from an empirical standpoint: Any prosecutor who has more than one reversal to her credit belongs to a select club.

Prosecutorial misconduct falls into several categories, including:
•Courtroom misconduct (making inappropriate or inflammatory comments in the presence of the jury; introducing or attempting to introduce inadmissible, inappropriate or inflammatory evidence; mischaracterizing the evidence or the facts of the case to the court or jury; committing violations pertaining to the selection of the jury; or making improper closing arguments);
•Mishandling of physical evidence (hiding, destroying or tampering with evidence, case files or court records);
•Failing to disclose exculpatory evidence;
•Threatening, badgering or tampering with witnesses;
•Using false or misleading evidence;
•Harassing, displaying bias toward, or having a vendetta against the defendant or defendant's counsel (including selective or vindictive prosecution, which includes instances of denial of a speedy trial);
•Improper behavior during grand jury proceedings.

Some of the most common allegations of prosecutorial misconduct involved improper closing arguments and excluding jurors on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender or some other discriminatory grounds.

In 28 cases, involving 32 separate defendants, misconduct by prosecutors led to the conviction of innocent individuals who were later exonerated, the Center found. Innocent men and women were convicted of serious charges, including murder, rape, and kidnapping and assault.

Guilty defendants have also had their convictions overturned. Sometimes those defendants cannot be retried because of double jeopardy rules, and are placed back on the streets of the community. In other words, prosecutorial misconduct sometimes has severe consequences for the entire citizenry, not just a lone defendant.

In addition, the Center found some prosecutors who had convicted innocent defendants in more than one case over the course of their careers; some of these prosecutors were cited multiple times for misconduct in other cases as well.

Most of the nation's approximately 30,000 local trial prosecutors strive to balance their understandable desire to win—a desire supported by the vast majority of the citizenry—with their duty to ensure justice. There are some prosecutors, however, who have exalted winning and ignored the other half of the equation. Those prosecutors who repeatedly break the rules give recidivism—a word usually used to describe those they work to put behind bars—a disturbing new meaning.

It is impossible to know for sure how often a specific prosecutor (or a specific defense attorney, judge, police officer, etc.) bends or breaks the rules. In most jurisdictions, at least 95 percent of the cases that pour in from the police never reach a jury, which means any misconduct occurs away from public view. The only trial those defendants receive takes place in the prosecutor's office; the prosecutor becomes the judge and the jury. The prosecutor is the de facto law after an arrest, deciding whether to charge the suspect with committing a crime, what charge to file from a range of possibilities, whether to offer a pre-trial deal, and, if so, the terms of the deal.

Katherine Goldwasser, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who served as a prosecutor in Chicago before joining academia, suggested that misconduct often occurs out of sight, especially in cases that never go to trial. Those cases by definition do not generate appellate opinions (and thus are for the most part beyond the scope of the Center study). Goldwasser told the Center. "It is not a safe assumption that cases ending with guilty pleas are absent prosecutorial misconduct."

Perhaps the most difficult type of misconduct to unearth, Goldwasser said, is the failure of the prosecutor to turn over possibly exculpatory information to the defense. Such lack of disclosure is commonly known as a "Brady violation," after the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland and its progeny. After all, if only police and prosecutors know about evidence that suggests innocence, how is defense counsel to know for certain such evidence even exists?

To complicate quantification, any listing of mistrials and appellate reversals involving a specific prosecutor might be incomplete. While legal databases like Lexis and Westlaw (both of which were used in this study) contain appellate rulings, some remain unpublished, and those that are published rarely identify the trial prosecutor. And, short of visiting every courthouse in the country, there is no way to determine how many cases are dismissed or ruled mistrials by trial judges (and thus never reaching the appellate courts) because of a prosecutor's misconduct.

Despite those limitations in the data, the study determined that, like Moss in St. Louis, other prosecutors around the country have been found by appellate court or trial court judges to have bent or broken the rules multiple times.

In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Carmen Marino, who served for 30 years as a prosecutor before retiring in 2002, won five convictions that were overturned by the Ohio appellate courts. Appellate judges have ruled that Montgomery County, Ala., District Attorney Ellen Brooks' discriminatory tactics deprived defendants of fair trials four times since she began prosecuting in 1977. Former Hinds County, Miss., District Attorney Edward Peters was involved in six cases in which judges ruled that his conduct prejudiced a defendant.

The pattern of behavior of John Zimmermann, a trial prosecutor in Davidson County (Nashville), Tenn., so alarmed six former Tennessee prosecutors that, during July 2002, they filed an amici curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Death Row defendant Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman. The six, who constitute a who's who of the Tennessee legal profession, cited Zimmermann's misconduct in the case – confirmed by the state Supreme Court but nevertheless ruled as harmless error – and his behavior in previous, unrelated cases.

The brief argues that Zimmermann withheld evidence from the defense and misrepresented a prior conviction of the defendant. Even more troubling, it cites Zimmermann's conduct during three other, unrelated cases, including a murder case in which the verdict was overturned because of the Davidson County prosecutor's behavior. (In a response to the Center for Public Integrity, Zimmerman vociferously contests the charges.)

Fighting Misconduct

Perhaps nothing better demonstrates the serious problem prosecutorial error and misconduct pose to the justice system than the efforts of a handful of jurisdictions to combat it. In Boston, Ralph Costas Martin II, who became district attorney of Suffolk County in 1992, worked hard to change a system that had been characterized by one prominent defense attorney as "the best place to have a guilty client, and the worst one to have an innocent client," according to journalist Sean Flynn's book, Boston D.A.: The Battle to Transform the American Justice System.

Among numerous examples, Flynn explains how Martin began hiring young trial prosecutors who understood the concept of elevating justice over winning at all costs. Job candidates would be asked how they would handle the following scenario: On a busy morning, with three dozen cases stacked up, you, the prosecutor, are approached by defense counsel in one of those cases. "My client will plead out if you recommend probation," the defense lawyer says. You skim the case file, which contains nothing but a police report. It says the officer stopped the car because the driver allegedly made a "furtive gesture." While searching the stopped car, the officer says he found a small amount of cocaine. What, the job candidate is asked, should a good prosecutor do?

The obvious answer seems to be accept the plea. But that is not the answer Martin wanted. Instead, he hoped job candidates would say they would ask the judge for a delay, in order to question the arresting officer privately. The first question of the officer should be to describe the "furtive gesture." Much of the time, Martin believed, police officers listed that rationale to cover up a bogus stop of a racial minority or some other targeted group. Unless the police officer offered a plausible explanation, Martin hoped the job candidate would say the case should be dismissed. Why? Because an alert defense lawyer or judge will understand the traffic stop was a pretext, thus leading to suppression of the evidence that resulted—the cocaine. The prosecutor moving ahead with the case will lose the trust of the judge and the defense lawyer, and will have done nothing to halt the police officer's improper behavior.

In San Diego County, elected District Attorney Paul J. Pfingst and his staff introduced a number of innovations, including distribution of a comprehensive training manual to all attorneys in the office, initiation of post-conviction DNA review of 766 pre-1992 cases, and even allowing television cameras to follow prosecutors around as they did their work. The videotape became the basis of a national television show that aired weekly on NBC during the summer of 2002. But not even all the legitimate reforms could save Pfingst from defeat at the polls in November 2002. Too many voters perceived his office as housing prosecutors whose misbehavior resulted in high-profile mistrials and appellate reversals.

Within a jurisdiction, elected prosecutors can preside over a culture of misconduct in their offices. Unelected, nearly anonymous prosecutors, like Nels Moss in St. Louis, do not operate in a vacuum. Individual prosecutors accused of misconduct must be understood within the context of the culture of the office to which that prosecutor belongs.

The St. Louis Circuit Attorney's office has served as a home for aggressive trial prosecutors, including Moss. Sometimes that aggressiveness leads to brilliant lawyering within bounds. Other times it leads to rule breaking.

Since 1970, the Center study found, there were 129 rulings by trial judges and appellate judges, including the cases tried by Moss, that addressed alleged prosecutorial error by the circuit attorney's office.

Those cases involve at least 40 St. Louis city prosecutors other than Moss. Of the 129 rulings, 45 resulted in reversals or acquittals. Another 13 upheld convictions, but at least one appellate judge issued a dissent in favor of reversing the conviction. The remaining 71 rulings found prosecutorial error, but the judges allowed the convictions to stand, without any dissents.

A culture of misconduct

Bennett L. Gershman, a former New York County (Manhattan) prosecutor who now teaches law at Pace University, is an authority on professional conduct. Gershman, who has written textbooks and law review articles about prosecutorial misconduct, testified at Congressional hearings, conducted seminars and provided perspective to countless journalists, told the Center about St. Louis, "Compared to other offices that I have looked at, the number of reversed cases for prosecutorial misconduct from a single office is rather large, particularly since reversals are not commonplace given the various techniques used by appellate courts to try to uphold convictions."

Moss is not the only prosecutor in the St. Louis office to be cited multiple times for error and misconduct. Three assistant circuit attorneys other than Moss were cited or reversed multiple times for misconduct. Appellate judges cited misconduct when reversing three convictions won by Joseph W. Warzycki, who joined the circuit attorney's office in 1977. In five other cases, defendants alleged misconduct, which was ruled as harmless error. Gordon L. Ankney, now in private practice, was reversed twice for misconduct. John D. Chancellor was reversed once for misconduct; in 13 other cases, defendants alleged misconduct but appellate courts ruled it harmless error. Chancellor left the prosecutor's office in 1987 to become a trial judge, a position he held until his death in 1991.

Though St. Louis-area defense lawyers mention Warzycki, Ankney, Chancellor and other prosecutors from time to time, Nels Moss almost always is mentioned first, and discussed with the greatest amount of passion. Like so many other prosecutors who bend or break the rules in jurisdictions across the nation, Moss has never been publicly sanctioned by his office supervisors or by the state bar disciplinary counsel.

Gershman, the Pace University professor, said of Moss' record that the number of "reversed cases from one prosecutor's misconduct is fairly astounding."

Ronald Weich, a former assistant district attorney in New York County (Manhattan), has studied the atmosphere of prosecutors' offices and the conduct of individual prosecutors in those offices from his perch at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Zuckerman Spaeder. The co-author of a study for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights that addresses what he terms "the unequal treatment of minorities in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion," he told the Center that, "Prosecutorial abuses often arise from structural problems and an utter lack of accountability within the office." When the elected prosecutor cares little about serving justice, that attitude trickles down to the trial prosecutors, Weich says. Even when the elected prosecutor sets the right tone, Weich believes many offices house what he calls "cowboys" who ignore reasonable doubt. Moss's career in St. Louis suggests that both office culture and his own aggressiveness played a part in his "astounding" record of reversals due to misconduct.

Moss served 16 of his 33 years as a prosecutor under the supervision of former Circuit Attorney George A. Peach, the elected district attorney. Peach, who first won election in 1976, resigned in 1992 because of personal financial and sexual improprieties. A staff prosecutor before his election to the top spot, Peach is one of the more than 40 prosecutors whose conduct led to reversals and other findings of error.

Dee Joyce-Hayes and Moss worked as trial prosecutors from 1981 until 1992 under Circuit Attorney Peach. Both Joyce-Hayes and Moss wanted to succeed Peach after he stepped aside in 1992. Joyce-Hayes won the job.

Joyce-Hayes told the Center she thought of firing Moss, partly because she believed he behaved unfairly toward her as a political opponent, partly because of his over-aggressiveness as a trial lawyer. She retained Moss, she said, to keep from angering some of their office colleagues, to refrain from alienating certain St. Louis power brokers who admired Moss—and because he could win convictions that might have eluded other prosecutors. But, Joyce-Hayes added, "I isolated him in the homicide unit; I did not make him a team leader. I worried about him having too much contact with impressionable young assistant circuit attorneys."

The current elected prosecutor in St. Louis is Jennifer M. Joyce, who joined the staff before Moss left but never served as his supervisor. Joyce, who has served about half of her first four-year term, has instituted a number of reforms aimed at cleaning up the office culture of St. Louis.

Though Moss' elected supervisors failed to discipline or rein him in, he was ultimately responsible for his own conduct in the courtroom. And that conduct earned him the mistrust of lawyers who opposed him at trial. Some defense attorneys began to assume that Moss would bend or break rules.

During 1999, shortly after he left his position in St. Louis to prosecute cases in neighboring St. Charles County, Mo., Moss entered a high-profile murder case. Appellate courts had overturned the defendant's death sentence two separate times before his involvement.

Upon Moss' entry, public defenders collaborated on a petition they said was unprecedented in their experience: They asked the judge to bar Moss' participation. Failing that, they asked the judge, before the proceeding even began, to admonish Moss "against engaging in any effort to circumvent the constitution ... the rules of evidence, and from any effort to make prejudicial arguments, speaking objections or other improper remarks within the hearing of the jury." The public defenders told the judge they had "no desire to engage in vexatious bickering, yet Mr. Moss comes to this case with a record of deliberate misconduct that sharply jeopardizes defendant's right to and hope for a fair, constitutional sentencing hearing."

The judge allowed Moss to enter the case. The trial got off to a bad start, as defense counsel had feared. The public defender complained to the judge that "Yesterday morning before we began opening statements, we ... received from the prosecuting attorney, Nels Moss, an endorsement of four new witnesses and then a number of items, a photo album. ... The matters that have now been disclosed are brand new witnesses, documents, items that have not previously been disclosed. ... We are at a significant disadvantage." The judge did not grant a mistrial. Moss eventually argued in favor of the death penalty, which the jury granted him.

Defense counsel appealed, alleging improper conduct by Moss. The Missouri Supreme Court agreed that, once again, Moss had conducted himself improperly. The court, however, upheld the death sentence, ruling Moss' overall performance, despite some specific "improper" conduct, could not be proved to have prejudiced the jurors:

"The three trials of this case unfortunately exhibit a consistent attempt by the prosecutor to push the envelope of proper advocacy. We condone the prosecutor's strategy no more in this trial than in the previous two that were reversed."

Judges scolded Moss in others cases, too, where they nevertheless upheld the conviction under a doctrine called "harmless error." Prosecutors and defense counsel disagree on the term's meaning. The former tend to emphasize the word "harmless," while the latter tend to stress the word "error."

Moss' partisans note that appellate judges—those with no trial experience, those with criminal defense backgrounds and even those who once served as prosecutors—sometimes misinterpret the antiseptic written trial record from which they work. As a result, appellate judges might find prosecutorial misconduct where none was intended. Those same partisans emphasize that Moss helped convict hundreds of guilty defendants without allegations of improper conduct arising on appeal.

Convicting the innocent

There is no doubt, however, that in cases like Larry Johnson's, unambiguously innocent defendants suffer for a long time while the perpetrators remain at liberty.

Determining unintentional error or intentional misconduct by the prosecution in an actual innocence case can be difficult; sometimes the prosecutor has sound reason to believe in the suspect's guilt until new evidence, or new ways to evaluate old evidence, emerge. The justice system is acknowledged by all its participants to be imperfect, and even when there is no misconduct, when there are no lapses—either intentional or unintentional—on the part of the police, the prosecutor, the judge, or the defense counsel, an innocent defendant can go to prison. At virtually any step in a trial, from the initial questioning of a suspect through the marshalling of forensic evidence and experts to closing arguments and appellate maneuvering, errors by the state—prosecutors and police—can convict the innocent.

In the Johnson case, Moss had plenty of reason at first to think the defendant guilty, given the accused rapist's criminal past and the victim's eyewitness identification. It is also worth noting that DNA testing, which eventually cleared Johnson, was not easily available nor particularly credible when the case first came to trial.

The rape that led to Johnson's arrest occurred Jan. 31, 1984. The next day, the victim helped a police artist produce a composite drawing of her assailant. He appeared clean-shaven, based on the victim's recollection. With the composite completed, the police artist showed the victim about 140 photographs of possible suspects. The victim set one of those photographs aside. The man pictured wore a mustache, contradicting the victim's original description. Moss asked the police artist to add a mustache to the composite. The artist complied.

Later that day, the victim picked Johnson from a police line-up. He had facial hair, contradicting the original physical description and the original composite.

When Johnson's public defender asked the victim questions at a deposition in late June, she said she was "fairly certain" the photograph she chose from the 140 looked like her assailant. During the August trial, a police crime analyst said he found sperm, but said nothing about using it to type the perpetrator's blood. Defense counsel asked about blood typing. Moss objected, and the judge sustained the objection. Why? Because the judge opposed allowing forensic tests into evidence.

As a result of Moss' objection and the judge's ruling in Moss' favor, the jurors convicted Johnson based solely on eyewitness testimony. He lost his only appeal, limited to jury selection issues, in 1986. So Johnson remained in prison, with no realistic hope of a hearing to reconsider his conviction, until 1995, when a letter he wrote to the Innocence Project staff in New York City meshed with their interest in post-conviction DNA testing.

Lawyer Barry Scheck, director of the Innocence Project, sued the St. Louis prosecutor's office toward the end of Dee Joyce-Hayes' term. Current prosecutor Jennifer Joyce inherited the litigation.

The Innocence Project staff claimed the prosecutor's office was obstructing post-conviction DNA testing in at least six rape cases, including Johnson's. Joyce responded there had never been obstruction. She said testing is being done, as time and budget permit, in accordance with a new Missouri law and U.S. Justice Department guidelines. Scheck and his staff are failing to consider the anguish of rape victims when cases are re-opened, Joyce said, as well as ignoring the common-sense theorem that testing should occur only if the results can definitively establish innocence or guilt. Since the litigation began, Joyce took the initiative to start examining about 1400 pre-1994 convictions, to determine if DNA evidence exists and, if so, whether it makes sense to test it. Joyce estimated each case will require about 10 hours of initial review after the paperwork is gathered.

The first scientific testing related to the Innocence Project litigation, on behalf of convicted rapist Fred Hamilton, confirmed his guilt. The finding cast a shadow over Scheck's effort and led St. Louis prosecutors to complain about wasting time and money, as well as forcing Joyce's staff to, as she put it, "re-victimize the victim" by asking her about sexual relations with men other than the rapist. "It was a gut-wrenching interview," Joyce said. "It reminded me of my time as a sex-crimes prosecutor." She wondered whether Hamilton believed he might benefit from a testing mistake, or whether he was acting sadistically.

Then the tables turned. The second DNA test, negotiated in court on behalf of Johnson, demonstrated a wrongful conviction. After spending 18 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit, Larry Johnson finally attained his freedom. And a longstanding miscarriage of justice was finally undone.


Who suffers when a prosecutor is cited for misconduct?

[Vexari]

Deo Odolecki’s Unjust Caging

A Recap from Ademo Freeman

by Pete Eyre
February 29, 2016

Deo Odolecki is now caged in Parma, Ohio. Yet, he didn’t harm any person or property. Indeed, it is Deo’s captors who acted in the wrong. I last night spoke with Ademo Freeman about Deo’s situation. Ademo has been on the ground in Ohio and in this video gives a robust account of the background that led to Deo’s unjust caging and of his current status.

Write to Deo

Douglas Odolecki
Parma Detention Center
5555 Powers Blvd
Parma, OH 44129

Deo Odolecki’s Unjust Caging: A Recap from Ademo Freeman

[Vexari]

In 2014, seizure of property by police exceeded the loss of property through buglaries.

US Attorneys seized $12.6 billion from 1989 through 2010. The corruption grew by 19% per year on average, except in 2009 when it expanded by 53%.

In Washington DC, police were legally robbing people for having $100 in their pocket.



Police Civil Asset Forfeitures Exceed All Burglaries in 2014

[Vexari]

$1,000 for the defendant $459,000 for the attorneys

(Reuters) - An Alabama man who sued over being hit and kicked by police after leading them on a high-speed chase will get $1,000 in a settlement with the city of Birmingham, while his attorneys will take in $459,000, officials said Wednesday.

The incident gained public attention with the release of a 2008 video of police officers punching and kicking Anthony Warren as he lay on the ground after leading them on a roughly 20-minute high-speed chase.

Click here to read more

[Vexari]

Government is like a baby

An alimentary canal

with a big appetite at one end

and no sense of responsibility

at the other..


~ Ronald Reagan ~ (1911-2004)

40th US President


Comments:

By way of example: Law enforcement (an oxymoron at natural law) in its primary role as revenuer, endlessly seeks sacrificial prey with tools such as compelled compliance, victimless crimes, licensing and larceny with impunity so that it may convert a falsely imposed definition of criminal activity into a financial profit (feeding the big appetite on one end and by Supreme Court legislation protecting the alimentary canal, the ravenous revenuers have no responsibility or liability to a once sovereign "We The People" on the other end - in an overview of reality, piling on the manure).
-- Mike, Norwalk..

[Vexari]

Take action locally against police abuses

•Local Law Enforcement Toolkit

[Vexari]

SWAT Team Raided Family and Shot Their Dog Over Unpaid Utility Bill

June 8, 2015 1:36 pm



Imagine having a SWAT team break down your door, or smash through your window even when you had committed no crime at all. Now imagine that to add further injury, they shot your dog for good measure. Are you mad yet? Now imagine that they did this all over an unpaid utility bill.

That’s right, last Tuesday, a South County woman filed a federal lawsuit stating that her dog was shot by a SWAT team, during a raid initiated by an unpaid utility bill.

Angela Zorich states in the lawsuit that St. Louis County Police SWAT raided her home in April of last year, killing her 4-year-old pit bull, Kiya.

The police say that the reason for the raid was to “check if her home had electricity and natural gas services.”

As impossible to believe as this might sound, read the court documents below for yourself: this is all too real.

Zorich v St. Louis County

“This is an example of police overreaching and using excessive force to get a family out of their house,” Kenneth Chackes, the attorney who represents Zorich, explained.

Here’s the run-down of Zorich’s story, explained in the lawsuit, and summarized by the Riverfront Times:


On April 25, 2014, St. Louis County Police officers came to her house. Her son cussed at them. They inspected the home’s exterior and placed a “Problem Properties” sticker on the front window.

On April 28, Zorich called the police to follow up on the matter. An officer told her they were investigating the home for failing to have natural gas or electric service, as required by county ordinance. She admitted that the gas had been shut off, but said the claim about electricity was “bullshit.” The officer hung up on her.

Zorich called back and spoke to a different officer. This one sounded angry that he’d been cussed at by her son three days earlier. Zorich tried to set up an inspection for a time when her husband would be home. The officer told her that was fine, but that the investigation would continue in the meantime.

The next day, around 12:41 p.m., Zorich was at home with several family members and her pit bull, Kiya, when a St. Louis County Police Tactical Response Unit burst through the door without knocking, according to her suit. The unit had at least five officers with M-4 rifles, supported by at least eight uniformed officers.

The officers entered so quickly, Zorich’s suit alleges, that Kiya didn’t even have time to bark. A tactical officer fired three shots into the dog, and the dog’s “bladder and bowels released and she fell to the floor.” The dog “was laying on the floor in her own waste and blood struggling to breathe. She had a gaping hole in her chest.”

Zorich claims the officers kept trying to talk to her about the natural gas, but she was focused on her dog, whom she’d raised as a puppy and who (she says) had “never shown aggression to any person.”

At one point in the raid, Zorich alleges, an officer pointed his firearm at her son’s head and said “One word, motherfucker, and I’ll put three in you.”

Zorich was taken into custody and later given a notice of violation from the Housing Inspector. It listed citations concerning her siding, guard rail, screens, window glass and deck.

When she returned home, she found beds overturned and items that had been on her shelves thrown to the floor.


Zorich has filed suit against St. Louis County and two officers, Corey Zavorka and Robert M. Rinck.

She says that they unlawfully seized items and inflicted emotional distress by killing her dog. The suit also classifies this as unlawful retaliation.

Stephen Ryals, an attorney representing Zorich with Chackes, says that an increasing number of plaintiffs are filing suit against police when they shoot family pets during SWAT raids.

“It’s a relatively recent liability that’s gaining traction,” he explained.

This is all the more necessary when the raid is conducted for so spurious a reason as an allegedly unpaid utility bill.

If you agree that this sort of raid should be illegal and that the officers should be punished, help us get the word out about this story. Like, share, comment, tweet or retweet. Raising awareness is one of our strongest weapons in this fight for justice!

(Article by Jackson Marciana; h/t to Riverfront Times)

http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/06/family-raided-by-swat-over-unpaid-utility-bill/

[Vexari]

By the numbers: US police kill more in days than other countries do in years

The Guardian has built the most comprehensive database of US police killing ever published. Compare our findings to those from the UK, Australia, Iceland and beyond


Click here to explore the most detailed map of police killings ever published. Photograph: The Guardian US interactive team


Jamiles Lartey
Tuesday 9 June 2015
Last modified on Wednesday 10 June 2015 12.09 EDT
(words in blue are 'clickable' links, link at bottom of page)

It’s rather difficult to compare data from different time periods, according to different methodologies, across different parts of the world, and still come to definitive conclusions.


But now that we have built The Counted, a definitive record of people killed by police in the US this year, at least there is some accountability in America – even if data from the rest of the world is still catching up.

It is undeniable that police in the US often contend with much more violent situations and more heavily armed individuals than police in other developed democratic societies. Still, looking at our data for the US against admittedly less reliable information on police killings elsewhere paints a dramatic portrait, and one that resonates with protests that have gone global since a killing last year in Ferguson, Missouri: the US is not just some outlier in terms of police violence when compared with countries of similar economic and political standing.

America is the outlier – and this is what a crisis looks like.


Find out more at theguardian.com/thecounted. Photograph: The Guardian US interactive team

Fact: In the first 24 days of 2015, police in the US fatally shot more people than police did in England and Wales, combined, over the past 24 years.

Behind the numbers: According to The Counted, the Guardian’s special project to track every police killing this year, there were 59 fatal police shootings in the US for the days between 1 January and 24 January.

According to data collected by the UK advocacy group Inquest, there have been 55 fatal police shootings – total – in England and Wales from 1990 to 2014.

The US population is roughly six times that of England and Wales. According to the World Bank, the US has a per capita intentional homicide rate five times that of the UK.


Find out more at theguardian.com/thecounted. Photograph: The Guardian US interactive team

Fact: There has been just one fatal shooting by Icelandic police in the country’s 71-year history. The city of Stockton, California – with 25,000 fewer residents than all of Iceland combined – had three fatal encounters in the first five months of 2015.

Behind the numbers: A 2013 police shooting in Iceland drew international attention because it was the first of its kind; there had literally never been a fatal police shooting recorded there before two years ago.

In Stockton, Patrick Wetter, Matautu Nuu and Carl Lao were all fatally shot by police in the 64-day span between 6 January and 4 March. According to US census data from 2013, Stockton has a population of 298,118; World Bank data puts Iceland’s population at 323,764 for the same year.

Iceland’s official intentional homicide rate is so low that it does not register in World Bank data on intentional homicides per 100,000 people. For the US, the rate is five per 100,000.


Find out more at theguardian.com/thecounted. Photograph: The Guardian US interactive team

Fact: Police in the US have shot and killed more people – in every week this year – than are reportedly shot and killed by German police in an entire year.

Behind the numbers: The Counted database shows that the first week of 2015 had the fewest fatal police shootings of any this year, with 13.

The German Police University concluded in 2012 that German police had killed six people by gunshot in 2011 and seven in 2012.

According to the German data and the Guardian’s count, more unarmed black men (19) have been fatally shot by US police in 2015 than citizens of any race, armed or unarmed, fatally shot in Germany during all of 2010 and 2011 (15).

The US population is roughly four times that of Germany, and according to the World Bank, the US has a per capita intentional homicide rate five times that of Germany.


Find out more at theguardian.com/thecounted. Photograph: The Guardian US interactive team

Fact: Police in the US fatally shot more people in one month this year than police in Australia officially reported during a span of 19 years.

Behind the numbers: The Counted database shows that police in the US fatally shot 97 people in March 2015, the highest one-month total recorded by the Guardian.

A 2013 study from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) found 94 fatal police shootings for the period between 1992 and 2011.

In Australia, as opposed to the US, all police shootings are subject to national monitoring by law. The US population is nearly 14 times that of Australia, and the US has a per capita intentional homicide rate five times that of Australia.


Find out more at theguardian.com/thecounted. Photograph: The Guardian US interactive team

Fact: Police in Canada average 25 fatal shooting a year. In California, a state just 10% more populous than Canada, police in 2015 have fatally shot nearly three times as many people in just five months.

Behind the numbers: So far in 2015, police in California have fatally shot 72 people, according to the Guardian’s database – the most thorough accounting for officer-involved fatalities ever built in the US.

In Canada, reliable nationwide numbers on police shootings don’t yet exist.

But a journalist for the Independent in Canada did combine data from the provinces that report police killings – and extrapolated that Canadian police kill an average of 25 people by gunshot every year.

The US has an intentional homicide rate two and a half times that of Canada, according to the World Bank.


Find out more at theguardian.com/thecounted. Photograph: The Guardian US interactive team

Fact: Police fired 17 bullets at Antonio Zambrano-Montes, who was “armed” with a rock. That’s nearly three times what police in Finland are reported to have fired during all of 2013.

Behind the numbers: Zambrano-Montes was killed in February by officers responding to reports that he was throwing rocks at cars. The incident was caught on video, with 17 shots fired; according to police, “five or six” struck Zambrano-Montes.

In Finland, according to chief inspector Jukka Salmine, police fired just six bullets in all of 2013.

Explore The Counted’s interactive database tracking people killed by police in 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries?CMP=fb_tc

[Vexari]

The Proper Role of Law Enforcement

By Sheriff Richard Mack



Description

The Proper Role of Law Enforcement by Richard Mack, is a wake-up call for all law-enforcement officers. It is a must-read for every man and woman wearing a badge. If you have a friend or relative in law enforcement, make sure you get a copy into their hands. And get a copy for yourself, too You’ll be shocked to learn just how far American law enforcement has strayed from its mission “to serve and protect!”

http://store.iotconline.com/the-proper-role-of-law-enforcement-sheriff-richard-mack/dp/157

[Vexari]

News Link • Police Brutality and Militarization

https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/174101-2015-04-09-police-killing-videos-shock-the-world-so-why-do-white.htm

[Vexari]

Mike Hanson Harassed By Rookie Cop For Fishing Expedition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXfbF0pzyHU

[Vexari]

The Bad Cop Database

A radical new idea for keeping tabs on police misconduct.

By Leon Neyfakh

(blue highlights are 'clickable' links found in link at bottom of page)

The Legal Aid Society’s database already contains information about accusations of wrongdoing against some 3,000 NYPD officers, and is being used regularly by its lawyers. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.


The largest organization of public defenders in the country is building a “cop accountability” database, aimed at helping defense attorneys question the credibility of police officers in court. The database was created by the Legal Aid Society, a New York–based nonprofit that represents an average of 230,000 people per year with a staff of more than 650 lawyers. The database already contains information about accusations of wrongdoing against some 3,000 NYPD officers, and is being used regularly by Legal Aid lawyers. The ambition behind the project is to create a clearinghouse for records of police misconduct—something the NYPD itself does not make public—and to share it with defense lawyers all over the city, including those who do not work for Legal Aid.

At a time when police departments around the country are being criticized for a lack of a transparency, the arrival of Legal Aid’s database represents a bold attempt to systematically track officers with a history of civil rights violations and other kinds of misbehavior, and thereby force judges, prosecutors, and juries to take the officers’ past actions into consideration when adjudicating cases. If a defense attorney can successfully call into question the credibility of an arresting officer, she might be able to convince a judge to let a defendant out of jail without bail, or maybe even to dismiss the case entirely. Information about an officer’s past misconduct can also serve as a bargaining chip during plea negotiations with prosecutors.

Take someone like Detective Sekou Bourne, for instance, who is currently being prosecuted in the NYPD’s administrative court for allegedly frisking a woman improperly in East New York and unlawfully entering her home in April 2013 after concluding, mistakenly, that she had crack cocaine in her hand. According to Justine Luongo, the attorney-in-charge of the Legal Aid Society’s criminal practice, a search for Bourne’s name in the Legal Aid database brings up reports on this incident, along with records of seven civil rights lawsuits that have been filed against him. The fact that all of those cases ended in settlements, Luongo said, could be useful information for defense attorneys next time prosecutors try to build a case against someone based on Bourne’s testimony. (A call to Bourne’s attorney was not returned.)

Cynthia Conti-Cook, a former civil rights lawyer, joined the Legal Aid Society last spring with the idea for the database, officially known as the Cop Accountability Program, already in mind. The reason she wanted to build it, she said, is that typically, when a criminal case begins, there’s a “big red arrow that says ‘criminal’ pointing to the defendant” and not much a defense lawyer can say other than “my client denies the charges.” With the database, a lawyer can quickly discover records of past misconduct by the accusing officer—if they exist—and with that information in hand, can “start shifting that red arrow toward the police officer, by showing that they’ve also been engaged in activity that deteriorates their credibility.”

“It takes the judge’s attention away from what your client did wrong to get here, and puts more of a burden on the police officer to prove that your client actually did something,” Conti-Cook said. That matters, she added, because “more and more, in this broken-windows climate, the main and sometimes only witness in a case will be a police officer.”

According to Luongo, lawyers at Legal Aid are encouraged to be comprehensive in uploading information to the system, which means including complaints that ended up being dismissed or that could not be substantiated, and making note of those outcomes. It’s up to the lawyers who use the database to determine whether and how to present the information they find in the database in court.

The contents of the Legal Aid database have been harvested from a variety of sources, including documents known as Brady letters that are submitted by prosecutors before trial as part of their obligation to disclose exculpatory material to the defense. Prosecutors usually submit Brady letters at the “eleventh hour,” said Conti-Cook, meaning right before trial is set to start, and often defense attorneys put them in their file, maybe use them once during the proceedings, and then never think about them again. The database, Conti-Cook said, is about “taking that institutional knowledge and figuring out a systematic way of sharing it with everyone.”

Other sources of information include civil lawsuits filed against the city, criminal trials in which a police witness was deemed not credible by a judge, and news reports about police wrongdoing. Information also comes from grievances that New Yorkers have filed against individual officers with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, a city agency that investigates and prosecutes police misconduct. Once a week, interns from the Legal Aid Society are dispatched to take notes on public CCRB hearings at the NYPD’s headquarters and incorporate any valuable tidbits they hear into the database.*

Legal Aid would like to see the database improved through technology. Conti-Cook said she has approached computer scientists at New York University about designing a program that would crawl an online database of federal court cases and automatically pick out ones in which police officers are being accused of wrongdoing. Luongo said there are plans to make an app that defense lawyers can look at on their mobile devices, which would allow them to peek at the database in arraignment court, right after they get assigned a new client. Plans are also under way for an email alert system, which would automatically send messages to lawyers after they’ve picked up a case with a police witness who has a file in the database.

Lawyers at other public defense organizations said that they’re aware of Legal Aid’s project and that they look forward to being able to use it. “It’s a terrific idea whose time has come. Police accountability is a persistent and pressing problem in public defense,” said Susannah Karlsson, a lawyer at Brooklyn Defender Services, another firm that provides free legal representation to people who can’t afford it. “If there are connections to be made between misconduct in one case and misconduct in another case, we should be able to use technology, as Legal Aid is beginning to do, to connect those dots.”

Making those connections has special value in New York State, where a 1976 law that shields police officers from public scrutiny has traditionally frustrated defense attorneys’ efforts to cast doubt on the credibility of cops with histories of misconduct. A provision in the 1976 law known as 50-A says that in order to substantiate a subpoena request for police officer personnel records, defense attorneys have to know in advance, and be able to demonstrate with a “clear showing of facts,” that there’s probably something in the officer’s past that is relevant to their client’s case. By providing lawyers easy access to potentially relevant details about an officer’s background, the Legal Aid database offers a way out of that Catch-22.

The database could potentially have consequences beyond individual cases. Joanna Schwartz, an assistant professor at UCLA School of Law who studies the way in which police department policy is shaped by the lawsuits people file against cops, said it could eventually have an effect on how misconduct is handled internally by the NYPD.

“It might create external pressure on police agencies to better police their own,” Schwartz said. “Because if there’s a bad apple officer out there who has had multiple incidents of lying on the stand, or unconstitutionally searching someone, that officer’s ability to assist in a prosecution is going to be compromised. … Their ability to help prosecute cases will be constrained by their prior behavior in a way it hasn’t been previously.”

The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment. But a spokesman for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the largest police union in New York, passed on a statement from union president Pat Lynch, saying that “compiling a list of police officers who are alleged to be ‘bad’ based upon newspapers stories, quick-buck lawsuits, and baseless complaints—many of which are lodged in revenge by criminals seeking to punish an arresting officer—does nothing more than soil the reputation of the men and women who do the difficult and dangerous job of keeping this city and its citizens safe.” The statement, which Lynch first issued last fall when the New York Daily News asked him about the Legal Aid project, went on: “Where is the database of the thousands of police interactions each day that save lives, take guns and drugs off the streets, prevent terrorist acts and demonstrate the concern and caring of our officers?”

Why focus on the bad things our police officers do, in other words, when they do so much good? The answer is that the powers that enable police officers to do good also enable them to do great harm. Someone should be keeping careful track of when that happens, and in a way that’s accessible—if not to the public, then to the people tasked with representing its most vulnerable members. Defense lawyers, by creating this resource themselves and sharing their institutional knowledge with one other, can make the criminal justice system more transparent, more fair, and less forgiving of people who abuse their power.

*Correction, Feb. 26, 2015: This post originally misstated the location of public hearings attended by Legal Aid Society interns. They are held at the NYPD’s headquarters.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/02/bad_cops_a_new_database_collects_information_about_cop_misconduct_and_provides.html

[Vexari]

Police Brutality

Democracy Now! has documented scandals of police brutality across the country. Scroll through the stories below to see our coverage of the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and protests calling for the arrest of the officer who shot him. In New York City we reported on the death of Eric Garner after police placed him in a chokehold as he repeatedly told them, "I can’t breathe!" The encounter was recorded by an onlooker using his smartphone. We have also documented the killing of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., a 68-year-old Marine veteran shot by police inside his own home after he mistakenly set off his LifeAid medical alert pendant. In 2011-2012 we covered the police crackdown on the Occupy movement, and spoke to Scott Olsen, who survived two tours in Iraq but nearly died when he was hit with a police projectile at an Occupy Oakland protest. We also interview loved ones of police victims, and feature conversations with advocates like Michelle Alexander, author of the best-selling book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

http://www.democracynow.org/topics/police_brutality

[Vexari]

The RIGHT Way to Handle a Police Stop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDJrQBwJpqk


What if I Refuse, But Police Search Me Anyway?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9gXQbKCE-M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqMjMPlXzdA&NR=1


http://www.flexyourrights.org/

[Vexari]

“Policing for Profit” is State-Sanctioned Theft

Nick Sibilla
The Institute for Justice
(words in blue are 'clickable' links, link at bottom of page)


Guilty until proven innocent!


Under the legal doctrine of civil forfeiture, police can seize property tangentially linked to a crime, even if the property owner herself is innocent. As Isaiah Thompson reports in the Philadelphia City Paper, this is precisely what happened to Sandra Leino and her family:


“Long before the forfeiture action against her house would be completed, and without a judge or jury ever seeing her face, Leino would be forced from her house and made homeless along with her three children. She would lose her most precious possessions, and ultimately be deprived of her family’s most valuable asset — all without Leino ever being accused of any crime.”

But while Sandra and her children were completely innocent of any wrongdoing, her husband, Sam Leino, was accused and arrested for selling prescription pills. (Sandra asserts Sam was legally using those painkillers for his own personal use, after he was partially disabled from a truck accident.)

Just a few months after his arrest, the Philadelphia District Attorney filed a motion to seize the Leinos’ home in May 2010—a year and a half before Sam Leino even went to trial. Later that month, the Leinos were kicked out of their own home. They tried staying at a motel, but couldn’t afford it for more than one week. With no other options at the time, they were even forced to sleep in the backwoods.

Fortunately, a relative was able to take the Leinos for five months, albeit in tight quarters. Since then, Sandra has been able to rent a new place.

“But on her own now, and unable to pay rent on top of the mortgage on the house she was barred from entering, she began missing mortgage payments. When the DA did eventually withdraw its forfeiture case against the Leinos’ house, it was only because the bank had already foreclosed.”

As for Sam, in 2012, he went to trial and was “found guilty of one count of possession with intent to distribute, and sentenced to three to six years.”

But the story doesn’t end there. Isaiah Thompson elaborates:

“Four of the police officers who surveilled and arrested Sam Leino are among a group of six narcotics officers whose credibility has been effectively dismissed by the DA’s Office itself after allegations were made in open court that they were part of a drug-dealing ring within the Philadelphia Police Department…How many times the DA’s forfeiture unit has seized property based on the testimony of these officers is not presently clear.”

So far, the Philadelphia DA has dropped almost 300 cases due to this misconduct.

Unfortunately, Sandra Leino’s story is not an isolated incident. Between 300 and 600 real-estate forfeiture cases are brought per year by the Philadelphia District Attorney. Lax laws and scant protections have created hundreds of Sandra Leinos, just in Philadelphia.

According to the Institute for Justice’s nationwide study, Policing for Profit, Pennsylvania has some of the worst civil forfeiture laws. Law enforcement agencies can forfeit property based on a mere “preponderance of the evidence,” which is a much less stringent standard than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard used in criminal convictions.

Plus, property owners have to prove their innocence, reversing both the burden of proof and centuries of jurisprudence. In other words, in civil forfeiture proceedings, property owners actually have fewer protections than accused criminals.

Not only that, under Pennsylvania state law, police can keep 100 percent of all proceeds seized from civil forfeiture. In fact, the Philadelphia DA has raked in more than $6 million a year in civil forfeiture proceeds.

Most of this policing for profit is from cash seizures. But “the average amount of cash seized by Philadelphia police was $550 — hardly the proceeds of a Pablo Escobar or a Walter White.” No wonder a Pennsylvania judge has lambasted civil forfeiture as “little more than state-sanctioned theft.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hytkAaoF2k

Nick Sibilla

Nick Sibilla is a writer at the Institute for Justice

http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/policing-profit-civil-asset-forfeiture-destroys-innocent-lives/#.VHXsisJ0yM_



?

[Vexari]

Law Enforcement Statistics

An interesting site for law enforcement statistics

http://www.trac.syr.edu/

[Vexari]

HPD ticket scandal: Hundreds of cases dismissed

Jeremy Rogalski
KHOU 11 News
12:47 p.m. CDT September 18, 2014


http://www.khou.com/story/news/investigations/2014/09/17/city-prosecutor-to-dismiss-all-cases-by-officers-in-hpd-ticket-rigging-scandal/15802377/


HOUSTON -- City of Houston prosecutors are dismissing hundreds of speeding tickets written by four Houston Police officers accused in a ticket-rigging scheme first uncovered by the I-Team.

"It is in the interest of justice and simply the right thing to do," said Randy Zamora, Chief of the Criminal Law Division for the City of Houston Legal Department.

An I-Team analysis of months of tickets and GPS records revealed how Officers Rudolph Farias John Garcia, Robert Manzanales and Gregory Rosa, listed each other as "witnesses" on speeding violations when they were never there. Instead, records show those officers were writing tickets at the same time at completely different locations, sometimes miles away. The motivation in the alleged scheme was to appear in court more often and collect more overtime.

"They lack all credibility and there's really not anything the state can do to rehabilitate that," said veteran traffic attorney Paul Kubosh.

Officer Farias killed himself in a police parking garage after the scandal broke, and the three other officers remain under an HPD administrative and criminal investigation. Ray Hunt, President of the Houston Police Officers' Union, said they remain innocent until proven guilty.

"The City Attorney has the prerogative to dismiss any ticket which is a class-c misdemeanor, just as any officer has the prerogative to write a citizen a warning for a ticket," Hunt said.

Prosecutor Zamora said citizens who have tickets by one of the four officers still must appear on their regularly scheduled court date to have the case dismissed. If motorists already pleaded guilty, the law allows them to fill out a motion for a new trial. They can find the form on the City of Houston Municipal Court website, and must submit it in person at the municipal courthouse, located at 1400 Lubbock, room G-48.

Zamora said if cases have been disposed of more than ten days ago, they are not afforded a new trial under Texas Government Code.

Since the first of the year, records show the four officers wrote more than 5,000 combined, with fines and fees totaling more than $350,000.

It's unclear how many of tickets written by the four officers are still open cases, but Kubosh said one thing is clear.

"We're talking a whole lot of money, we're talking a whole lot of money and it's a shame but it's just the result of people lying on traffic tickets trying to defraud the system," Kubosh said.

http://www.khou.com/story/news/investigations/2014/09/17/city-prosecutor-to-dismiss-all-cases-by-officers-in-hpd-ticket-rigging-scandal/15802377/

[Vexari]

Pattern Jury Instructions for Cases of Excessive force in Violation of the Fourth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments for:

THE DISTRICT COURTS OF THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT

http://www.freedom-school.com/law/jury-instructions-police-brutality.pdf

[Vexari]

Caught On Tape: Texas Cop Executes Handcuffed Suspect

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7lpcdScqHs

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/video-surfaces-of-texas-police-executing-handcuffed-prisoner/

[Vexari]

Road Pirates with Badges Plunder Motorists to Fund Police:

Don’t cops have better things to do?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIBDlm9ohxI

[Vexari]

The Day That Changed My Life Forever

Published On March 8, 2014


There is nothing worse than being wronged and knowing there isn’t anything I can do about it. I feel scared to walk out of my house and I’m scared to be in my house without my husband here to protect me. I feel violated, dirty, scared and paranoid by the events that occurred at my home.

**Please note, I do not have a copy of the report. It wasn’t in my bag when I picked up my belongings from the jail but I will try to differentiate who was who when I obtain the police report. I am also hoping that there is dash-cam video that can attest to most facts that they were involved in.

On January 31, at approximately 11:30 PM, I was in the back bathroom and heard a lot of commotion out towards the living room area. At first, I thought it was the dogs so thought nothing of it. Then I heard screaming outside and pounding hard on the window and the door to our home. I finished using the restroom and went out to see what was going on. I heard more pounding and realized it was coming from outside our home. The only words I could make out being said were grown men saying, “Come out, I know you are in there,” followed by more pounding. I was extremely frightened and scared for my safety because it was just me and my 13-year-old daughter in the home and being we live in a gated community, we never get anyone at our door without the gatehouse being given permission by us.

I tiptoed to the kitchen to see if I could figure out what was going on and who was out there; I realized that Madison heard the commotion and came down the stairs halfway asking what all that noise was. I told her, “I don’t know,” and told her to go back upstairs. I followed her upstairs and closed the door behind us. While I was sitting on her bed trying to comfort her and figure out what to do next because my husband was not home, Madison said she thought they just said they were cops. I brushed that off knowing (or thinking) that no cop would be that irate at my door at 11:00 at night. If I even heard the word Sheriff or Cop, I am confident I would not let them inside my home because of the belligerent behavior that was coming from outside. Unsure of me and my child’s safety and if it was a real cop, I stayed in her room with her until I immediately heard someone coming into my home and I heard the word “Cop” for the first time.

I quickly exited Madison’s room, standing there in underwear and a tank top, and all I saw was two grown men dressed in black jackets and black pants standing in my living room and one at the door propping it open. I immediately started yelling in horror and panic and pointing at them to leave my home again and again as I descended the stairs, because I had no idea who they were or why they were in my home. The men in my home would not move. As soon as I got down the stairs, the “supervisor” cop threw a paper in my face and said I was served. This is the moment when I realized that they were at least dressed like cops. I then told them, “Okay, now leave my home.”

They were there to do a job and they did just that. They should have turned around and left my home. They still would not leave so I requested again at least two times. At that point, the supervisor cop threw me down on my living room floor face first and busted my lip and put handcuffs on me. I told him, “I don’t even know who you are,” and he flashed his jacket open and closed real quick and said he was a cop. At this point my mind was still in a fog because I couldn’t understand or imagine the right these men had in my house late at night.

The two cops took me out of the house, one on each arm barefoot and nearly naked. They literally drug me across my yard; after I stepped on our lava rocks barefoot and flinched my foot up in pain, the one cop said, “Oh, that’s how you want to do it,” and drug me to the car, not allowing me to get my footing back. They then threw me into the back of the car head first, still in my underwear and tank top. As I was laying sideways, the elder (supervisor) officer reached over and grabbed and squeezed my upper thigh/buttocks area to the point I felt his finger rub across the edge of my underwear and my privates. I kicked my leg back at him and told him, “Don’t touch me there again.” The officer then turned to the third and told him to shine his light on me. First he shined it in my eyes and I flinched back and then he shined the flashlight at my privates until they closed the door. The elder (supervisor) cop then told the other officer to taser me. So as I was sitting half naked in a cop car when I knew I was not a criminal, after the cop groped me and I was handcuffed behind my back, I still got tased on the back of my arm with the accompaniment of two other male officers watching and still shining the light on my underwear. At no point in time was I read my rights.

I knew that I was a mother of two, one who is autistic, and a retired educator and school administrator for 14 years and I was not a criminal in any sense, so I could not understand what was going on and emotions came over me. I also knew that I’d had previous communication with my landlord and had prepaid a lump sum of money to take me through at least four months and didn’t know things had risen to this level up to this point, as I had not been given a landlord statement for many months.

They then closed the door and the elder officer started smoking cigarette after cigarette and leaving the butts in our yard. (We have pictures and approximately four that were retrieved from our yard. The elder officer then turned his outer spotlight shining right at my privates and kept it there the rest of the time for them to stop shining the light on my underwear. I asked and asked again if I could at least have some clothes but they would not allow that until my husband came home and had to dress me in front of the elder officer.

During the process, I asked the elder officer as well if I could talk to one of the other officers. I knew that he was no source of reasoning so I thought someone else, especially someone else who just saw what he did to me, would help me. He told me I couldn’t and when I asked why he said because he was their supervisor.

On the way to the station, I leaned up to the officer in the passenger side and made the comment, “What kind of man are you that you are going to let someone treat a woman the way (the other one) did.” He said nothing but just looked down and ignored me. I then told him that I hope he was able to sleep at night and happily go home to his wife and kids after being a party to that. Again he said nothing.

When we got to the jail, they put me in the holding cell but I could still hear the cop talking to the magistrate and spewing a bunch of lies which contradicted what they told my husband and what the actual events were. He stated that he saw the door was ajar and had already seen people moving around so he was just checking to make sure everything was okay because he was worried. First of all, he could not have seen any movement because I was upstairs with my daughter behind closed doors and we have opaque plastic over our windows for the cold along with blinds that were pulled throughout the entire house. The magistrate stated that he knows these men and he believed them that I was “beating up on (his) boys.” I was cornered in a small area with the three men that assaulted me, one who sexually assaulted me and a magistrate who said he believes what they are saying because he works with them every day. I was helpless and lost and scared.
As I was in the holding cell, the elder officer turned to the same officer I was talking to in the car and he said, “What kind of man are you?” He replied, “What kind of man do you want me to be?” and they both laughed.

As I was being booked, the three cops plus another decided to hang around and just make quiet comments that were only heard by his buddies as they looked at me and laughed. The elder officer then stated out loud to everyone that I bit him (which again, never happened). I asked where I bit him and he showed me a paper cut on his finger. The Sergeant of the jail told the guys to be respectful and they eventually left. Just as they did at my home, they did everything they could to escalate the situation.

I was in jail until approximately 9:00 AM the following morning (my daughter’s 14th birthday) when I was bailed out but scared to walk out the door and back into the world. I am still afraid to walk out of my home; I am afraid to be in my home. I have onsets of panic attacks when I am alone or when I see a cop or a cop car. The fear and the panic inside me will not subside. I haven’t been able to sleep and I am finding it hard to function in society. I feel violated and am finding myself hiding behind the shadows out of sure embarrassment that I was paraded around like that for absolutely no reason at all!

I expect this matter to be dealt with in the most appropriate manner so this will never happen to another person. These cops abused their power and left me without any sense of safety in the world anymore. At some point in time, I may consider requesting monetary compensation if I cannot find myself being a part of society any more. If I can’t be a part of society out of fear, I cannot work or do anything to make money to put food on the table for my family. I expect this officer to be disciplined to the fullest extent allowed by law. My livelihood has been taken away from me…all for what?

Sarah

http://www.copblock.org/48351/the-day-that-changed-my-life-forever/

[Pro-Life]

TY, Vexari... I went through all the links... nice.

[Vexari]

Thank you Pro-Life

sumisu posted:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=96185983

as well as:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/replies.aspx?msg=96186912

$UPERMAN posted:

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=96242479

[Pro-Life]

At The Proving Grounds and many metals/REE boards, this man, b4atf, was key in bringing the timely sector news and insight that was needed everyday during those fabulous runs... he was a Minnesota resident (FWIW)... this has never happened to me in 7 years at investorshub.com... I cannot believe he is gone and nobody told me...

> Eternal rest, grant unto him O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon him. And may all the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen. <

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/profilea.aspx?user=181152

[Vexari]

Brown County sheriff deputies claim that a prisoner hung himself in a jail cell shortly after he was brought into custody following a scuffle with a police officer in which he tried to take the officer’s pistol.


On the recording from the police car-cam, officers are heard saying they would like to break the prisoner’s neck, and one of them says:

“Just wait ‘til you meet your welcome party back at the station.”

The county coroner says the death was murder, because it would have been physically impossible for the prisoner to hang himself..


Coroner Claims Ohio Man Murdered In Police Custody, Police Say Suicide


Mikael Thalen
by Mikael Thalen
December 19th, 2013
http://www.storyleak.com/coroner-claims-ohio-man-murdered-police-custody-police-say-suicide/


An Ohio coroner ruled the October hanging death of a man in police custody to be homicide by strangulation last week, contradicting claims made by local law enforcement.

Nine days after his arrest, 24-year-old Zachary Goldson was discovered hanging from a bed sheet at the Brown County jail. While officers claimed suicide, autopsy results released last week by Brown County Coroner Judith Varnau revealed that to be an impossibility.

According to jail documents, Goldson, who had reportedly swallowed a toothbrush, pen and staples, was scheduled to receive an endoscopy and cleared for transport hours before his death. While attempting to remove Goldson from a police vehicle, authorities say Deputy Travis Justice was struck in the head as Goldson struggled to obtain his firearm.

“He’s never done anything like that before,” Goldson’s mother Christina Dennis told WCPO 9 News. “I don’t know if that was — something happened in the jail, you know, that he wanted out of there badly. Something must have really went wrong in the six days he was there because he’s been in trouble before and he had never done anything like this.”

Dashcam video shows the moment several officers arrive to assist Deputy Justice in detaining Goldson. Once detained, officers reveal what some consider an eerily specific threat only one hour before Goldson’s death.

“This motherf***er is going to receive a welcome party at the jail,” one officer says. “I’d like to break your f***ing neck right now.”

Back in jail, Goldson was given paper clothing and removed of all his possessions before being placed in his cell by three officers. According to jail documents, all three “did not notice” Goldson carrying a bed sheet. Only twenty-five minutes later, Goldson was discovered hanging from his cell’s sprinkler head.

In light of a letter received four days prior, Goldson’s mother was confused at her son’s apparent suicide. Goldman had expressed his readiness to serve his sentence and return back home.


“Im just writin you to tell you I love you…I’m going to miss you both and Im prayin you are still around when I get out because I don’t want to loose my mom while im in jail, (sic)” Goldson wrote.

Goldson’s mother grew more suspicious once the results of her son’s autopsy were released, revealing his death to be murder by strangulation, not suicide.

“Both Goldson’s toilet and bed were 12 feet from the center of his cell,” WCPO 9 explained. “If Goldson were standing on either of these objects, his reach would have to be a little more than 8 and a half feet in order to touch the sprinkler — that would require a 7.1 degree leaning tilt while pivoting at the ankle.”

“That is the maximum point where the center of gravity of a 6-foot-1 person would approximately be…before falling down without something to hold on to in order to prevent falling down,” the coroner stated in her report. “It would be physically impossible for (Goldson) to reach the sprinkler…”

Coincidentally, when investigators attempted to obtain jail surveillance video, footage of Goldson moments before his death appeared to be deleted.

Chief Deputy J.K. Schadle immediately refuted the coroner’s claims, alleging her findings were “politically motivated” and not supported by facts.

“The Brown County Sheriff’s Office contacted BCI (Bureau of Criminal Investigation) upon the discovery of an in-custody death…The (sheriff’s office) has full confidence that BCI will reach their conclusions based on facts, not someone’s political agenda,” Schadle said.

Schadle remains confident that the BCI’s report will rule out homicide as the cause of death.


http://www.storyleak.com/coroner-claims-ohio-man-murdered-police-custody-police-say-suicide/

[Vexari]

Fort Worth Medical Samples ~ Voluntary or Police Seizure?

The Fort Worth Police Department (FWPD) installed the roadblock north of the city during daytime traffic. They flagged down some motorists at random and asked them to give breath, saliva, and blood samples. The FWPD claims the effort was “100 percent voluntary” and anonymous.

It acknowledges that most of the drivers had broken no law, but it said the effort was valuable to federal contractors working to complete a 3 year, $7.9M USD survey on behalf of the The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) aimed a collecting medical data for use in combatting drunk driving.

But some of the motorists who submitted samples are outraged saying that the program infringed on their Constitutional rights and that the FWPD’s “please” did not make it clear that the seizure of medical samples was “voluntary”.

Kim Cope — one of those sampled – claims to a local NBC affiliate that the police acted like she would not be allowed to continue until she allowed the contractors to seize the samples. She comments:

It just doesn’t seem right that you can be forced off the road when you’re not doing anything wrong. I gestured to the guy in front that I just wanted to go straight, but [the officer] wouldn’t let me and forced me into a parking spot.

They were asking for cheek swabs. They would give $10 for that. Also, if you let them take your blood, they would pay you $50 for that. I finally did the Breathalyzer test just because I thought that would be the easiest way to leave.

She received no money and only consented to participate because she said she felt trapped. But it might have not mattered anyways, as you will soon discover.

II. Read the Small Print — Drivers Who Said no Were Tested Anyways

FWPD admitted that some drivers might have been inadvertently confused by the program and not realized that any of the samples — including the breathalyzer sample — were voluntary. FWPD spokesperson Sgt. Kelly Peel comments:

We are reviewing the actions of all police personnel involved to ensure that FWPD policies and procedures were followed. We apologize if any of our drivers and citizens were offended or inconvenienced by the NHTSA National Roadside Survey. But local attorney Frank Colosi says the search constituted an unconstitutional search and seizure. He comments: “You can’t just be pulled over randomly or for no reason. [The FWPD] essentially [lied] to [motorists] when they say it’s completely voluntary, because they’re testing [them] at that moment.”

His comment refers to a surprise twist in the case. Apparently on the consent form that officers gave “voluntary” participants fine print informed the driver that “passive alcohol sensor readings before the consent process has been completed.”

Now The End Begins

It’s unclear whether drivers could ask for that data to be deleted if they didn’t want it to be collected, but what is clear is that most drivers did not notice the fine print or were unable to read it. As a result what the FWPD claimed was a “voluntary” scientific study became what appears to be an involuntary search of citizens who were breaking no law. source – Daily Tech


http://beforeitsnews.com/the-law/2013/12/warning-obama-rolling-out-dna-checkpoints-trail-balloon-across-america-graphic-videos-2454422.html

[Vexari]

Police State Sticker Collection



http://www.libertystickers.com/category/police-state/

[Vexari]

Martial Law in America by 2014

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKiWFo_cya0

[Vexari]

Police Hit Organic Farm With Massive SWAT Raid

The raid on the Garden of Eden farm appears to be the latest example of police departments using SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics to enforce less serious crimes. A Fox television affiliate reported this week, for example, that police in St. Louis County, Mo., brought out the SWAT team to serve an administrative warrant. The report went on to explain that all felony warrants are served with a SWAT team, regardless whether the crime being alleged involves violence.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/texas-swat-team-conducts-_n_3764951.html

[MarketCap]

Nice

[Vexari]

The Radical Polarization of Law Enforcement

by Patrick Wood, Editor
March 18, 2009
http://www.augustforecast.com/2009/03/18/the_radical_polarization_of_law_enforcement/


Patriots, Chris­tians and con­cerned cit­i­zens are increas­ingly in the cross hairs of the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­nity, and battle lines are being qui­etly drawn that could soon pit our own law enforce­ment and mil­i­tary forces against us.

A Feb­ruary 20 report enti­tled “The Modern Militia Move­ment” was issued by the Mis­souri Infor­ma­tion Analysis Center (MIAC) that paints main­stream patri­otic Amer­i­cans as dan­gerous threats to law enforce­ment and to the country. Oper­ating under the Mis­souri State Highway Patrol, the MIAC is listed as a Fusion Center that was estab­lished in coop­er­a­tion with the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity and the Depart­ment of Justice.

Because authen­ticity of the report was ques­tioned by some, this writer con­tacted Mis­souri state Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Guest (R-King City) who had per­son­ally ver­i­fied that the report had indeed been issued. Rep. Guest is chairman of the Per­sonal Pri­vacy Com­mittee and is a promi­nent leader in the national blow­back against the Real ID Act of 2005 that requires states to issue uni­form driver’s licenses con­taining per­sonal bio­metric data. (See Guest warns against Big Brother, Real ID)

Rep. Guest stated that he was “shocked and out­raged” at the report, which clearly paints him and many other elected state leaders, as a poten­tial threats to law enforcement.

Instead of focusing on actual crim­inal inci­dents of “home-grown” ter­rorism, the MAIC report instead lists issues that it believes are common to the threats it per­ceives. Thus, Amer­i­cans involved with the fol­lowing issues are highly suspect:

– “Ammu­ni­tion Account­ability Act”?–?requiring each bullet to to be seri­al­ized and reg­is­tered to the purchaser.

– “Antic­i­pa­tion of the eco­nomic col­lapse of the US Gov­ern­ment” - Promi­nent scholars and econ­o­mists are openly debating the bank­ruptcy and insol­vency of the United States government.

– “Pos­sible Con­sti­tu­tional Con­ven­tion (Con Con)”?–?32 states have called for a Con­sti­tu­tional Con­ven­tion to force Con­gress and the Exec­u­tive Branch into a bal­anced budget, but many are con­cerned that if called, Con Con would be taken over by hos­tile inter­ests who would intro­duce Amend­ments that are harmful to national sovereignty.

– “North Amer­ican Union”?–?MIAC states that “Con­spiracy the­o­rists claim that this union would link Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The NAU would unify its mon­e­tary system and trade the dollar for the AMERO. Asso­ci­ated with this theory is con­cern over a NAFTA Super­highway, which would fast track trade between the three nations. There is addi­tional con­cern that the NAU would open up the border causing secu­rity risks and free move­ment for immigrants.”

– “Uni­versal Ser­vice Program”?–?“Statements made by Pres­i­dent Elect Obama and his chief of staff have led extrem­ists to fear the cre­ation of a Civilian Defense Force. This theory requires all cit­i­zens between the age of 18 and 25 to be forced to attend three months of manda­tory training.” (This is exactly what Obama and Rahm Emmanuel have repeat­edly stated on national TV, and thus is hardly a theory.)

– “Radio Fre­quency Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (RFID)”?–?This includes human implan­ta­tion, but the larger con­cern is uni­versal id cards and per­sonal prop­erty iden­ti­fi­ca­tion that can be read elec­tron­i­cally without the bearer’s knowledge.

Cit­i­zens who are con­cerned about the above issues are then lumped into rad­ical ide­olo­gies such as Chris­tian Iden­tity, White Nation­al­ists (e.g., neo-Nazi, Skin­heads, etc.) and anti-Semites. Tax Resisters and Anti-Immigration advo­cates are thrown into the same category.

The MIAC report then sternly warns law enforce­ment personnel,

“You are the Enemy: The militia sub­scribes to an antigov­ern­ment and NWO mind set, which cre­ates a threat to law enforce­ment offi­cers. They view the mil­i­tary, National Guard, and law enforce­ment as a force that will con­fis­cate their firearms and place them in FEMA con­cen­tra­tion camps.” [Bold emphasis appears in original]
On the last page of the MIAC report, a sec­tion listing Polit­ical Para­pher­nalia (flags and sym­bols) states,

“Militia mem­bers most com­monly asso­ciate with 3rd party polit­ical groups. It is not uncommon for militia mem­bers to dis­play Con­sti­tu­tional Party, Cam­paign for Lib­erty, or Lib­er­tarian mate­rial. These mem­bers are usu­ally sup­porters of former Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date: Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr.

Militia mem­bers com­monly dis­play pic­ture, car­toons, bumper stickers that con­tain anti-government rhetoric. Most of this mate­rial will depict the FRS, IRS, FBI, ATF, CIA, UN, Law Enforce­ment, and the ‘New World Order’ in a deroga­tory manor (sic). Addi­tion­ally, Racial, anti-immigration, and anti-abortion, mate­rial may be dis­played by militia members.”

What was the osten­sible gen­esis of all these “threats” to law enforce­ment? The report explains it this way…

“Aca­d­e­mics con­tend that female and minority empow­er­ment in the 1970s and 1960s caused a blow to white male’s sense of empow­er­ment. This, com­bined with a sense of defeat from the Vietnam War, increased levels of immi­gra­tion, and unem­ploy­ment, spawned a para­mil­i­tary cul­ture. This caught on in the 1980's with injects such as Tom Clancy novels, Solder of For­tune Mag­a­zine, and movies such as Rambo that glo­ri­fied combat. This cul­ture glo­ri­fied white males and por­trayed them as morally upright heroes who were men­tally and phys­i­cally tough.

“It was during this time­frame that many indi­vid­uals and orga­ni­za­tions began to con­coct con­spiracy the­o­ries to explain their mis­for­tunes. These the­o­ries varied but almost always involved a glob­alist dic­ta­tor­ship the”New World Order (NWO), which con­spired to exploit the working class citizens.”

In other words, these “ridicu­lous NWO the­o­ries” were cre­ated by psy­cho­log­ical deviants who were trying to jus­tify their own self-induced misfortunes.


Fear ye, all troopers

For unsus­pecting law enforce­ment per­sonnel, this MIAC training doc­u­ment polar­izes unsus­pecting offi­cers to fear peaceful, law-abiding cit­i­zens and greatly increases the risk of armed con­fronta­tion. For instance, a rou­tine traffic stop would be esca­lated if the officer observes a Ron Paul or Chuck Baldwin bumper sticker on the rear bumper of the car. The mere pos­ses­sion of printed mate­rial such as the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion or Bill of Rights would be viewed as sub­ver­sive, even though most offi­cers are required to take an oath to “defend and uphold the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States” as a con­di­tion of their employment.


Addi­tion­ally, troopers are indoc­tri­nated that all such topics are pure fan­tasy and without any fac­tual basis. Even if they had their own con­cerns, they would be ridiculed into accepting the posi­tion that all crit­i­cism of the New World Order is dan­gerous to their well being.

The Columbia Daily Tri­bune (Columbia, Mis­souri) reports this con­cern from local res­i­dent Tim Neal, who appar­ently fits the MIAC’s “Modern Militia” profile:

If a police officer is pulling me over with my family in the car and he sees a bumper sticker on my vehicle that has been specif­i­cally iden­ti­fied as one that an extremist would have in their vehicle, the guy is prob­ably going to be pretty appre­hen­sive and not thinking in a rational manner, and this guy's walking up to my vehicle with a gun. [see ‘Fusion Center’ draws fire over asser­tions][/I]


MIAC is a Fusion Center

As men­tioned above, the Mis­souri Infor­ma­tion Analysis Center is one of a net­work of over 50 Fusion Cen­ters around the country.

According to the National Crim­inal Intel­li­gence Resource Center (NCIRC), a Fusion Center is “a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort of two or more agen­cies that pro­vide resources, exper­tise, and/or infor­ma­tion to the center with the goal of max­i­mizing the ability to detect, pre­vent, appre­hend, and respond to crim­inal and ter­rorist activity.”

As of 2006, the NCIRC listed 50 Fusion Cen­ters in var­ious states.

Most impor­tantly, the Depart­ment of Jus­tice and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity are the dri­ving forces behind Fusion Cen­ters, having pub­lished “Fusion Center Guide­lines: Devel­oping and Sharing Infor­ma­tion and Intel­li­gence in a New World.” This report head­lines “Fusion” as “Turning Infor­ma­tion and Intel­li­gence Into Action­able Knowledge.”

Fusion Cen­ters are one of five areas of infor­ma­tion sharing under the Infor­ma­tion Sharing Envi­ron­ment (ISE) that was estab­lished by the Intel­li­gence Reform and Ter­rorism Pre­ven­tion Act of 2004.

ISE mem­ber­ship includes the Depart­ment of Com­merce, CIA, Depart­ment of Defense, Director of National Intel­li­gence, Depart­ment of Energy, FBI, Health and Human Ser­vices, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity, National Counter-Terrorism Center, Depart­ment of Inte­rior, Office of Man­age­ment and Budget, Depart­ment of Jus­tice, Depart­ment of State, Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion and the Depart­ment of Treasury.

According to one white paper (on the ISE web site) enti­tled The Intel­li­gence Fusion Process for State, Local and Tribal Law Enforce­ment, “The most impor­tant output of the intel­li­gence Fusion Center is action­able intel­li­gence. This means that the intel­li­gence pro­duced by the center will drive oper­a­tional responses and strategic aware­ness of threats.” Accordingly,

“The heart of good intel­li­gence analysis is to have a diverse array of valid and reli­able raw infor­ma­tion for analysis. The more robust the raw infor­ma­tion, the more accu­rate the ana­lytic output (i.e., intel­li­gence) will be.”
The above men­tioned MIAC report, issued by an offi­cial Fusion Center, is appar­ently part of this “diverse array of valid and reli­able raw information.”[/I]

How­ever, ISE’s under­standing of intel­li­gence is foolish. Any intel­li­gence ana­lyst knows that so-called raw infor­ma­tion is treated as garbage until ver­i­fied from mul­tiple sources to val­i­date accu­racy, com­plete­ness and freedom from bias. Sec­ondly, ana­lytic output depends upon trained and expe­ri­enced human rea­soning and judg­ment, not on the “robust­ness” of the raw infor­ma­tion itself.


Where do Fusion Cen­ters get inputs?

According to their own doc­u­ments, Fusion Cen­ters are “seeded” with ideas for analysis by the FBI and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity. Although this is prob­lem­atic in itself, atten­tion is better directed to the left-wing non­profit orga­ni­za­tion, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Upon careful word and theme com­par­ison between the MIAC report and SPLC lit­er­a­ture, it is apparent that there is a sig­nif­i­cant link between the two. Either MIAC received training or training mate­rial from SPLC or some of its per­sonnel had some pre­vious expo­sure to it.

The SPLC aggres­sively offers training to local, state and fed­eral law enforce­ment agen­cies. According to the SPLC web site, “We focus on the his­tory, back­ground, leaders and activ­i­ties of far-right extrem­ists in the U.S.” and states that it “is inter­na­tion­ally known for its tol­er­ance edu­ca­tion pro­grams, its legal vic­to­ries against white suprema­cists and its tracking of hate groups.”

Hate crimes are essen­tially acts of vil­i­fi­ca­tion of a victim because of his or her mem­ber­ship in a cer­tain social group, such as racial, reli­gious, sexual ori­en­ta­tion, nation­ality, gender, etc. While hate crimes are wrong under any cir­cum­stance, the SPLC sees no con­flict in pro­filing con­ser­v­a­tive whites, Chris­tians, Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ists, and patriots as being asso­ci­ated with, if not respon­sible for, hate crimes in America. This is the pot calling the kettle black.

For instance, con­sider the SPLC state­ment, “…a basic fact about all three move­ments: Patriots, white suprema­cists and anti-abortion mil­i­tants are all fueled by inter­pre­ta­tions of religion.”

Aside from the fact that this sweeping gen­er­al­iza­tion is plainly not true, it is mud-slinging at its best: Patriots are lumped in with white suprema­cists, anti-abortionists are mil­i­tants, and all are driven by an obvi­ously irra­tional and fanat­ical appli­ca­tion of religion.

In another SPLC article about a tragic killing in South Car­olina, enti­tled “The Abbeville Horror“, the writer goes well beyond just the facts of the story and is careful to sprinkle in words and phrases such as:

Patriots, tax pro­tes­tors, sov­er­eign cit­i­zens, antigov­ern­ment extrem­ists, New World Order para­noia, Dis­arming U.S. Cit­i­zens, hard-line Chris­tian Right, con­sti­tu­tional rights, antigov­ern­ment “Patriot” lit­er­a­ture, anti-Semitic con­spiracy, “Live Free or Die,” Ruby Ridge and Waco, Second Amend­ment, extremist orga­nizing, “closet extrem­ists,” para­noid beliefs, “Give me lib­erty or give me death.” [quotes appear in orig­inal text]

These are the same kinds of words and themes that are seen in The Modern Militia Move­ment article, where dis­tinc­tions between good and bad people are blurred and con­fused: All are guilty by asso­ci­a­tion, if nothing else.

Should a pri­vate orga­ni­za­tion like SPLC be allowed to pro­vide offi­cial training to public-entrusted law enforce­ment agen­cies? Most would say, “No.” Even if the training was free, the agency should reject influ­ence from the public sector, and even more so if it presents biased and one-sided infor­ma­tion that is claimed to be factual.


Con­clu­sion

It is crit­ical to under­stand that the legit­i­mate law enforce­ment agen­cies of cities, coun­ties and states are not adver­saries of the people. They are greatly needed for pro­tec­tion against crime and for keeping order in our communities.

They are, how­ever, being method­i­cally seeded with very wrong­headed and dan­gerous infor­ma­tion, the spe­cific intent of which is to polarize law enforce­ment against peaceful cit­i­zens who simply care about the down­fall of their country.

This writer inter­viewed Chuck Baldwin and asked about how he felt when he first saw his good name asso­ci­ated with those who would threaten bodily harm to law enforce­ment agen­cies. “Per­son­ally, I was stunned,” he said, “but my family has taken this very per­son­ally as well. This is more than disturbing.”

When asked about the pos­sible affect of the report on the Con­sti­tu­tion Party, of which he was the 2008 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, he replied, “I think it will gal­va­nize people and help them to under­stand the nature of the battle we are in. Freedom must be defended.”

In fact, the MIAC report has cre­ated a firestorm all over America. Tens of thou­sands of protests are being called, written, emailed and faxed to author­i­ties and leg­is­la­tors in Mis­souri. It would not be sur­prising to see the report rescinded and an apology given.

Even so, behind-the-scene groups like the SPLC will con­tinue unabated and unde­terred in their effort to mis­in­form and dis­rupt healthy com­mu­nity rela­tions with worthy law enforce­ment agen­cies and personnel.

The mes­sage to every juris­dic­tion: Don’t let it happen!


Final thought

Locate the Fusion Center in your state and keep a close eye on the infor­ma­tion they are releasing. Stay close to as many law enforce­ment per­sonnel as you can, asking them to keep their eyes open for reports sim­ilar to the Mis­souri report. Peti­tion your state leg­is­la­tors to ban law enforce­ment training by pri­vate orga­ni­za­tions such as the Southern Poverty Law Center.


http://www.augustforecast.com/2009/03/18/the_radical_polarization_of_law_enforcement/


Addi­tional resources

FBI nudges state ‘fusion cen­ters’ into the shadows (CNET)

Fusion Cen­ters and Pri­vacy (EPIC)

Back­grounder: Fusion Cen­ters (CFR.org)

Infor­ma­tion Sharing Envi­ron­ment (ISE)

ISE Web siteThe Rad­ical Polar­iza­tion of Law Enforce­ment

[Vexari]

Cops Shoot Innocent Man in Bed, No Charges Filed

Jul 11, 2013

Dustin Theoharis was asleep in his bed when a Department of Corrections officer, and King County Sherriff’s deputy rushed into his house, busted into his bedroom and began to unload their pistols on this unarmed man.

It is estimated that the two officers fired over 20 rounds of which 16 landed in Mr. Theoharis. According to Theoharis’s attorney, Erik Heipt, “Theoharis suffered “a broken shoulder, 2 broken arms, broken legs, he had a compression fracture to his spine, damage to his liver and spleen.”

The kicker here is that Theoharis was not the guy the police were after. According to King 5 news Seattle, The King County Sheriff’s deputy and Washington Department of Corrections officer who shot him were at the house to arrest a man who’d violated his parole. But in a search of the house after the shooting, they surprised Theoharis in the basement room he was renting.

Cole Harrison, who was at the house, described it this way: “They (the officers) rushed into that room like they were going to get somebody. I mean they rushed down there and then all of a sudden. Boom, boom, boom, boom.”

According to a review requested by Charles Gaither, a civilian watchdog of the Sheriff’s Office, which was conducted by a police accountability expert, Merrick Bobb, the officers refused to be interviewed on the scene and no internal investigation was ordered. In fact Deputy Aaron Thompson didn’t even issue a statement until a month later.

The report also suggests that the Sheriff’s Office did more to cover for the two officers than it did to investigate the shooting; citing an apparent conflict of interest right from the start. “Under KCSO policy, the first supervisor to arrive at the scene is obliged to assume control of the crime scene, direct involved personnel, and take on preliminary investigation responsibilities. (G.O. 6.02.015, subd. Clearly, given the sensitive issues that often accompany deadly force incidents, the neutrality of the supervisor needs to remain unquestioned. In this case, however, the first responding supervisor, KCSO Sergeant D, did not maintain the position of neutrality. Shortly after arriving on the scene, he switched roles from supervisor and neutral party to officer advocate.”

Also noted in the report is the severe incompetency or deliberate deficiency of the Sherriff’s Office when conducting the investigation. “Nonetheless, we were deeply troubled by serious deficiencies in the underlying investigation and the apparent unwillingness of KCSO to question its own officers about the use of deadly force once it appeared that they have not committed a crime. For example, the involved officers were not immediately interviewed about their actions, but instead were given over a month to provide a written account of the shooting. In addition, physical evidence was overlooked or moved, witness interviews were not thorough, and inconsistencies were not adequately addressed.”

Meanwhile, Dustin Theoharis has undergone 12 surgeries and will never be the same again. This is a travesty of justice and yet another example of how the state can shield themselves from crimes they commit by being above the law. Sadly stories like this one are becoming more frequent as police forces are militarized across the country. “Protecting” and “Serving” are seemingly being replaced with “Oppressing” and “Silencing.”

Read more at http://www.realfarmacy.com/cops-shoot-innocent-man-in-bed/#xKKcTxhZQBx7rzqQ.99

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Cops Kill Unarmed Man Holding Baby–Video

Saturday, July 13, 2013 2:53

This is unbelievable. Again, trigger happy cops killing unarmed people. This man was walking around his neighborhood holding his 9 month old grandson. The woman who made the 911 call said he had a gun. That’s all you have to say these days to get someone killed. The cop that killed him with a single shot to the head has done it before and apparently all those shootings have been “investigated” and this killer cop was cleared of any wrong-doing. The man had no weapon on him, but notice how the report is couched. He did have guns in his home–so apparently that makes it okay to kill him. No questions asked. Oh– and did you hear?– the cops got away unharmed as if they were in any danger. This is where the “see something, say something” mantra is headed.

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/07/cops-kill-unarmed-man-holding-baby-video-2709858.html?utm_content=beforeit39snews-verticalresponse&utm_medium=verticalresponse&utm_term=http%3A%2F%2Fb4in.info%2FaAw1&utm_source=direct-b4in.info&utm_campaign

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