COPWATCH

Discuss political news items / current events.
msfreeh
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Re: Taxpayers spend $500 Billion to pay cops to arrest cops

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FBI Agent Sentenced For Falsifying Background Check Information
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEDecember 9 2014
http://www.justice.gov/usao/fls/PressRe ... 09-02.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



John McDonough, 69, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola, Jr., to two years of probation and ten days of intermittent confinement in prison. On August 19, 2014, John McDonough pled guilty to one count of knowingly falsifying records in federal investigations, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1519. McDonough, a former FBI agent, worked as an independent contractor performing background check investigations for potential employees of government entities. During a quality control check, it was discovered that McDonough had falsified background check interviews for potential employees of Customs and Border Protection.

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend $500 Billion to pay cops to arrest cops

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http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinio ... ltercation" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Monday, January 5, 2015

Boston cop charged in Uber altercation
Sunday, January 4, 2015


A veteran Boston police officer was arrested yesterday on charges that he assaulted an Uber driver in South Boston and briefly took off in the Uber vehicle, police said.

Michael Doherty, 40, of South Boston was charged with assault and battery and using a motor vehicle with authority, Boston 
police said. The 16-year 
department veteran has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the charges filed against him. The incident also is being investigated by the department’s Anti-Corruption Unit, according to a BPD statement.

Police said that at 2:45 a.m.
yesterday they responded to a call from a ride-share driver “stating that he had been assaulted by a passenger in the area of E. 1st Street and Farragut Road in South Boston.”

Cops said responding 
officers spoke with an Uber driver who told them he was in the area of East 2nd Street when the passenger “began yelling at him and accusing him of trying to drop him off at the wrong location,” cops said.

The Uber driver told 
police he was assaulted
 when he stopped his 
vehicle on East 2nd and 
M streets.

Police said the Uber driver exited his vehicle “in an effort to escape the suspect,” and watched as the “suspect got into the front seat of his car and drove off,” cops said.

Police said the Uber driver was helped by a passing motorist, who followed the suspect to

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend $500 Billion to pay cops to arrest cops

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Detective who admitted role in poker protection scheme resigns
Jamie Satterfield
6:23 PM, Jan 6, 2015


http://www.knoxnews.com/news/watchful-e ... s_83086892" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend $500 Billion to pay cops to arrest cops

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Three Former Correctional Officers at Angola Prison Sentenced for Abusing an Inmate and Cover-Up

http://www.enewspf.com/latest-news/law- ... er-up.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


January 8, 2015. Three former correctional officers with the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, were sentenced today before United States District Judge James J. Brady for the Middle District of Louisiana for abusing an inmate and engaging in conduct to cover up the criminal conduct. Mark Sharp, 33, received 73 months. Kevin Groom, 47, was sentenced to one year probation and a $500 fine. Matthew Cody Butler, 29, received two years probation and a $3,000 fine.



According to court documents filed in connection with their guilty pleas, on January 24, 2010, defendants Groom, Sharp and Butler were on duty as correctional officials when they learned that an inmate had escaped from his assigned location. Shortly after the defendants joined the search for the escapee, the inmate surrendered to prison officials. The inmate was handcuffed behind his back and placed in the back of a pick-up truck to be transported to the medical unit. Groom, Butler, and Sharp escorted the inmate on the back of that truck. During the drive to the medical unit, Sharp repeatedly struck the inmate with an baton. During the ensuring investigation of the inmate’s complaint that officers had abused him, Groom and Butler engaged in various conduct to cover up the assault.

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend $500 Billion to pay cops to arrest cops .

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.silive.com/opinion/columns/i ... ommen.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Michael Grimm's next act (commentary)

on July 25, 2015 at 10:00 AM, updated July 25, 2015 at 10:05 AM






STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – So, what's next for Michael Grimm?

Well, we know what's next. An eight-month jail sentence on a tax fraud
conviction. At least he still has time to enjoy a couple of weeks of
summer.

But what about after he does his time?

Grimm, our former GOP congressman, is set to surrender to the feds on
Sept. 10. That will be the day after primary voting here in the state.

Funny how radically the meaning of calendar days can change. Last
September, Grimm was embroiled in his ultimately successful
re-election campaign against Democrat Domenic M. Recchia Jr.

Grimm had also gotten a good piece of legal news that September, when
it was ruled that jury selection in his then-pending trial would be
delayed until after the election.

No delays seem to be in the offing this September. Grimm is going to
do time. Not a pleasant prospect for a former FBI agent, who is used
to seeing this whole law enforcement thing from the other side of the
table.

Still, it's not like Grimm is going to be thrown into the general
population at Rikers. And who knows, with his background i

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend $500 Billion to pay cops to arrest cops .

Post by msfreeh »

Ex-FBI Agent Who Stole Heroin to Feed Addiction ... - NBC News
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/...news/age ... ear-prison.." onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.
Jul 10, 2015 - Matthew Lowry, an FBI agent who stole from evidence bags to feed a heroin addic

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend $500 Billion to pay cops to arrest cops .

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/exc ... -1.2358398" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



EXCLUSIVE: NYC sticking by officer involved in James Blake's false arrest in separate excessive force case

Sunday, September 13, 2015, 2:30 AM






Stefon Luckey claims he was falsely arrested and attacked by cops inside a Queens bodega, then again inside a police radio car. Kathy Kmonicek for New York Daily News
Stefon Luckey claims he was falsely arrested and attacked by cops inside a Queens bodega, then again inside a police radio car.

NYPD Officer James Frascatore may be the victim of mistaken identity himself.

The city Law Department is standing behind Frascatore in an incident separate from the James Blake case, in which the cop is accused of punching a black man in the stomach and calling him a “f-----g n-----.”

City lawyer Elissa Jacobs, in a Friday appearance before Brooklyn Magistrate Judge Ramon Reyes, poked holes in the lawsuit filed by medic Stefon Luckey who claims he was falsely arrested and attacked by cops inside a Queens bodega and then later inside a police radio car.

Jacobs said the plaintiff never told the Civilian Complaint Review Board that he was punched outside the deli and he did not identify Frascatore as his assailant until the cop’s face was splashed in the media.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend $500 Billion to pay cops to arrest cops .

Post by msfreeh »

Owner of Polygraph.com Sentenced to Two Years in Prison for Training Customers to Lie
U.S. Department of Justice September 22, 2015

Office of Public Affairs (202) 514-2007/TDD (202) 514-1888

WASHINGTON—A former Oklahoma City law enforcement officer and the owner of Polygraph.com has been sentenced to two years in prison for training customers to lie and conceal crimes and other misconduct during polygraph examinations.

Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Assistant Commissioner Matthew Klein of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Internal Affairs and Special Agent in Charge Scott L. Cruse of the FBI’s Oklahoma City Division made the announcement.

Douglas G. Williams, 69, of Norman, Oklahoma, pleaded guilty on May 13, 2015, to two counts of mail fraud and three counts of witness tampering. Chief U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange of the Western District of Oklahoma imposed the sentence.

According to admissions made in connection with his plea, Williams owned and operated Polygraph.com, an Internet-based business through which he trained people how to conceal misconduct and other disqualifying information when submitting to polygraph examinations in connection with federal employment suitability assessments, background investigations, internal agency investigations and other proceedings. In particular, Williams admitted that he trained an individual posing as a federal law enforcement officer to lie and conceal involvement in criminal activity from an internal agency investigation. Williams also admitted to training a second individual, posing as an applicant seeking federal employment, to lie and conceal crimes in a pre-empl

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend $500 Billion to pay cops to arrest cops .

Post by msfreeh »

Former Newark cop will stand trial for stalking, other charges

Tuesday, September 29, 2015, 4:29 PM

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/e ... -1.2378904" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend $500 Billion to pay cops to arrest cops .

Post by msfreeh »

http://7thspace.com/headlines/517601/fb ... tment.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FBI: Ten Puerto Rico Police Officers Indicted for Allegedly Running Criminal Organization Out of Police Department


WASHINGTON—Ten Puerto Rico police officers have been indicted for their alleged participation in a criminal organization, run out of the police department, that used their affiliation with law enforcement to make money through robbery, extortion, manipulating court records and selling illegal narcotics, announced United States Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez of the District of Puerto Rico. “The criminal action today dismantles a network of officers who, we allege, used their badges and their guns not to uphold the law, but to break it,” said United States Attorney Rodríguez-Vélez. “The indictment portrays a classic criminal shakedown; but the people wielding the guns and stealing the drugs here weren’t mob goodfellas or mafia soldiers – these were police officers violating their oaths to enforce the law, making a mockery of the police’s sacred responsibility to protect the public.” “Corruption is at the root of all evil,” said

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend 1 Peso to pay cops to arrest cops .

Post by msfreeh »

See link for full story

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

2 Santa Clara County sheriff's deputies arrested in separate incidents

Two sheriff's deputies who worked in Santa Clara County jails have been arrested in separate investigations.





Saunders is accused of accessing confidential records of people he knew, while Navarette is accused of claiming that an injury he sustained in a sof

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend 1 Peso to pay cops to arrest cops .

Post by msfreeh »

http://m.ctlawtribune.com/module/alm/ap ... 1755382907" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Norm Pattis: Here's One Way to Stop Cops From Killing With Impunity
Norm Pattis 10/15/2015

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend 1 Peso to pay cops to arrest cops .

Post by msfreeh »

Deschutes SO supervisor placed on leave over missing funds
Few details out; FBI, U.S. Attorney's Office, OSP in investigation


http://www.ktvz.com/news/deschutes-so-s ... s/35489198" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


POSTED: 2:45 PM PDT September 25, 2015 UPDATED: 9:52 PM PDT September 26, 2015

BEND, Ore. -

Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson said Friday he has put a sheriff's office supervisor on paid administrative leave pending the results of a multi-agency investigation "related to the accounting of funds from several law enforcement accounts."
More From KTVZ.COM

Deschutes Co. sheriff's captain accused of stealing money
Fp

In an interview with NewsChannel 21, Nelson said his office is taking this investigation very seriously.

"To me, this shows that audit processes and policies and procedures work," Nelson said. "In this investigation, it's shown an area where we want to take a look a little bit closer."

Nelson said he cannot release many details, since he does not want to jeopardize the investigation.

Spokeswoman Gerri Badden with the U.S. Attorney's Office said she did not want to comment on the investigation at this point.

While many of the details -- the amount involved, or the identity of the person -- were not released, here is the rest of the full news release from Nelson and the U.S. Attorney's Office.

"During the transition between retiring Sheriff Larry Blanton and incoming Sheriff L. Shane Nelson, a Deschutes County audit recommended that additional internal analysis be conducted of the funds used for investigative purposes.

"Sheriff Nelson directed DCSO staff to follow the recommendations of the County audit. This September 2015 DCSO internal audit found issues related to funds used for investigative purposes.

"The DCSO internal audit, which is still on-going, prompted the broader inquiry, and to preserve the integrity of the investigation, the placement of the supervisor on a

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend 1 Peso to pay cops to arrest cops .

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Former Police Officer Pleads Guilty to Child Pornography and Sexual Abuse Charges
Police began investigating Darrell Best after one of the girls told her parents about the abuse.
Georgetown, DC

http://patch.com/district-columbia/geor ... se-charges" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


October 24, 2015

Former Police Officer Pleads Guilty to Child Pornography and Sexual Abuse Charges

Screenshot of Officer Darrell Best from WJLA TV

____________________

A former D.C. police officer pled guilty Thursday to charges of child pornography and sex abuse of a minor, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the D.C. Police Department.

Darrell Best, 46, a former member of the Metropolitan Police Department, pled guilty to one count of production of child pornography, one count of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor, and one count of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor, announced U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips and Cathy L. Lanier, Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, in a news release.

Best pled guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. A plea agreement calls for Best to be sentenced to 18 years in prison. The Court will determine at Best’s sentencing the period of supervised release that Best will serve following the completion of his prison term. Best will also be required by law to register as a sex offender for the remainder of his life. If he approves the plea, the Honorable Reggie B. Walton is to sentence Best next year, on Feb. 26, according to the news release.


In addition to working as a police officer, Best was the head pastor of a church in Southeast Washington. The sexual abuse charges stem from incidents involving two minor females who knew and trusted him through the church, police said

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend 1 Peso to pay pedophile cops to arrest cops .

Post by msfreeh »

Two stories


1.

local police sergeant arrested for child pornography

http://www.suwanneedemocrat.com/news/up ... l?mode=jqm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



October 28 2015

A Live Oak police sergeant is facing federal charges for child pornography.
Police arrested Sgt. Kyle Kirby around 9 a.m. today and took him directly to its detention facility in Jacksonville after it searched
his home last week for child pornography.
2.

http://www.newsplex.com/home/headlines/ ... tablet&c=y" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FBI Analyst Sentenced In Underage Sex Case

Posted: Fri 12:18 PM, Feb 23, 2007
Home / Headlines List / Article

February 23, 2007

A former FBI analyst has been sentenced for having sex with a young Spotsylvania County girl.

Forty four year old Anthony Lesko entered an Alford Plea to the charges in a Spotsylvania County Circuit to nine counts of felony indecent liberties upon a child.

The plea means that Lesko does not admit guilt but believes that there is enough evidence to convict him. Lesko was sentenced to seven years in prison with 15 years suspended under a plea agreement.

Lesko was also ordered to pay 10 thousand dollars in restitution to cover the girl's mental health counseling. According to police Lesko was engaged in nine sexual encounters with the girl, starting when she was nine years old.

According to the plea Lesko says he was the victim in the case and that the girl initiated the contact.

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend 1 Peso to pay pedophile cops to arrest cops .

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Ex-Missouri sheriff's deputy charged with faking shooting, military honors



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/e ... -1.2416946" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Thursday, October 29, 2015, 6:00 PM


Linkee Israel Carrillo, a former Warren County deputy, is accused of faking the ambush-style shooting of his patrol car and being a decorated combat veteran with PTSD. Warren County sheriff’s office
Linkee Israel Carrillo, a former Warren County deputy, is accused of faking the ambush-style shooting of his patrol car and being a decorated combat veteran with PTSD.

A former Missouri deputy is facing criminal charges after telling a tall tale of surviving an ambush-style shooting and being a decorated combat veteran, authorities say.

Linkee Israel Carrillo's war stories and claims of suffering post-traumatic stress disorder were apparently just as fake as him being shot at in a state forest in January, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Authorities say the former Warren County deputy riddled his patrol car's hood and windshield with bullets and then reported himself as having been attacked by three men.

The Jan. 31 shooting caused more than $7,300 in damage.

One day later, the sheriff's department announced that the incident had been fabricated by the deputy. In a news release, obtained by the Dispatch at the time, they suggested blame on his struggles with PTSD and other emotional issues.

Upon a further investigation, however, it was found that though Carrillo is an Army veteran he never served in combat and was never diagnosed or treated for PTSD.

A search of his home found "numerous paper certificates, medals and plaques" which he didn't earn. Among the finds were a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, according to the paper.

Sheriff Kevin Harrison, speaking of Carrillo's felony

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend 1 Peso to pay pedophile cops to arrest cops .

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Police rape: like most rape, it's hard to report and aimed at the disadvantaged
Jessica Valenti



http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... advantaged" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



There’s a certain timeline of appropriate actions women are told to take if they are sexually attacked. Don’t shower; get help; call the police. That last one seems to be hardest – most rapes aren’t reported to law enforcement, and much of the mainstream advocacy against sexual assault is bent on changing that.

But how can we expect women to report their rapes to police when the police have done such a poor job in the past helping women and believing their stories? And what are victims to do when the very people they’re supposed to report to are the ones doing the attacking?

This week – as jury selection started for Daniel Holtzclaw, a former Oklahoma City police officer going on trial for the alleged sexual assault of 13 women – the Associated Press published the results of a year-long investigation showing that sexual assault committed by police officers isn’t that rare an occurrence. They found that over a six-year period approximately 1,000 police officers – a number they call “unquestionably an undercount” – had been fired for crimes ranging from rape and sexual misconduct to the possession of child abuse images.
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One Florida police chief told the AP: “It’s so underreported and people are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them.”

It’s not news that the very people tasked with helping others sometimes hurt them instead; police misconduct in the United States ranges from corruption to murder. So that sexual violence is also prevalent among officers, sadly, is not entirely shocking. But the way that police officers get away with their crimes – targeting the most marginalized women because they’re less likely to seek help or report the attacks – serves as an important reminder about the way power operates and how women are discredited when it comes to accusing someone of rape.

Holtzclaw, who is facing 36 charges, for example, is accused of targeting black women, many of whom were afraid of arrest or were drug users, making them all the more vulnerable to being disbelieved. One 44-year-old woman who is reportedly set to testify that Holtzclaw forced her to perform oral sex, for example, was a convicted felon. She said: “Who am I to a police officer?”

Holtzclaw, 28, was only charged after he attacked a woman with no criminal record (who therefore had less to be afraid of).
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In a wholly predictable move, Holtzclaw’s defense attorneys have already used some of the accusers’ criminal history against them in questioning; they’ve already brought the victims’ histories up in their opening statements. The very reason these women were targeted will be used to try to discredit them.

This is part of the reason that some anti-rape activists are concerned about strategies that overly focus on reporting rapes to the criminal justice system. For many communities, there’s an understandable distrust of police, so asking women to rely on them for help is unrealistic.
The Counted: people killed by police in the United States in 2015 – interactive
The Guardian is counting the people killed by US law enforcement agencies this year. Read their stories and contribute to our ongoing, crowdsourced project
Read more

When the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, the largest anti-sexual assault organization in the United States, suggested in its White House recommendations that campus rape be curbed by increasing efforts around criminal justice as opposed to campus adjudication processes, for example, younger activists weren’t pleased. Wagatwe Wanjuki, a board member of Know Your IX and a sexual assault survivor, wrote at the time: “I chose a school judicial process for many reasons.”

She continued: “I was a young woman of color uncomfortable with the use of an institution that is often violent, distrustful, and discriminatory towards people who look like me, it was preferable to using the criminal court process.”

And despite the abundance of important coverage on campus rape and consent, we still don’t pay nearly enough attention to the abuses that happen to women off campus – especially women who society pushes to the edges already, and who are the most in need of sup

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend 1 Peso to pay pedophile cops to arrest cops .

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015 ... jury-trial" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Critics cite all-white jury for trial of ex-officer accused of raping black women

Trial of former Oklahoma police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, who faces life in prison, comes amid growing scrutiny over the racial composition of juries
Daniel Holtzclaw sits in a courtroom in Oklahoma City, on Monday during for jury selection in his trial.
Daniel Holtzclaw sits in a courtroom in Oklahoma City, on Monday during for jury selection in his trial.

Saturday 7 November 2015 10.22 EST
Last modified on Saturday 7 November 2015 10.23 EST



The trial of the former Oklahoma City police officer accused of a string of sexual assaults against black women began this week with an all-white jury.
Investigation reveals about 1,000 police officers lost jobs over sexual misconduct
Read more

Daniel Holtzclaw is alleged to have sexually assaulted 12 women and a 17-year-old girl while on duty. Prosecutors have said he targeted middle-aged black women of limited means who had cause to want to avoid the police, such as outstanding warrants.

Though African Americans make up 16% of the population of Oklahoma County there are no black people among the eight men and four women on the jury.

“We’re very disappointed that we don’t have any minorities on there … We’re not saying justice can’t prevail but we can be suspicious of it being [run] in a manner,” Oklahoma City National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) president Garland Pruitt told KOCO local news, which reported that three black men were not picked from a pool of 24 potential jurors.

The racial composition of juries is attracting national scrutiny. On Monday the supreme court heard a case about alleged racial bias in jury selection during a 1987 murder trial that could impact the way jurors are picked in future; last month a judge in Kentucky dismissed an entire jury because he felt it was not representative of the community.

All-white juries in Oklahoma are “relatively uncommon but certainly not unheard of”, especially outside large urban areas, said Brady Henderson, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Oklahoma.

In addition to exclusionary tactics such as peremptory challenges, Henderson said systemic factors risk making Oklahoma juries unrepresentative, especially in federal court where jurors’ names are taken from voter registration lists and a disproportionate number of black people are not registered. In state court, where Holtzclaw is being tried, names are culled from drivers’ licences and ID cards.

Holtzclaw faces 36 charges, including rape, forcible oral sodomy and sexual battery, and could be sentenced to life imprisonment. He has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors contend that Holtzclaw began committing sex crimes in December 2013, when he coerced a hospitalised w

msfreeh
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Posts: 7683

Re: Taxpayers spend 1 Peso to pay pedophile cops to arrest cops .

Post by msfreeh »

BUSTED: BARCELONA OUTED AS AN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY OPERATION BY MEX MEDIA

August 17 2017 at 10:45 PM CST

DIEZ EN PUNTO: MOROCCAN “TERRORIST” PROVEN TO HAVE NO PASSPORT TO LEAVE IN VAN!

MEXICAN MEDIA BOMBSHELL! BARCELONA WAS STAGED

Mexican media is asking hard questions about Barcelona, and how yet another passport was so conveniently found in the van.

The 10:30PM (CST) Diez En Punto (10 En Punto) which airs on Univision and is the most highly regarded Mexican newscast just reported that the Morroccan that is being blamed went to the Moroccan embassy to report his passport stolen, and confirmed that he reported it stolen before the van attack took place. Mexican Media openly stated that it was a frame up, because it is documented that the Morroccan man DID NOT HAVE HIS PASSPORT AT THE TIME OF THE ATTACK.

Diez En Punto then asked the hard question: Since it is proven this guy did not have his passport at the time of the attack, as confirmed by the embassy which did not issue a new one yet and received word directly from him that it was stolen days before the van attack, Mexican media is questioning why on earth the authorities are insisting on saying he was the one who did the attack.

It is then obvious to conclude from what they said, that Barcelona is a proven, sewn up in a body bag intelligence agency fronted false flag that the elite don’t want to let go of, because the authorities know damn well the embassy issued a statement that confirmed he did not even have a passport to leave in any van, – oh so conveniently to follow the script of the miracle passport so perfectly (time and time again) , – yet they are not backing off on their accusations against a now known to be innocent man.
do, because they know that a news broadcast in Mexico is not going to make it to Morocco, and to accomplish an agenda they will murder ANYONE. They are not creative enough to move away from “the perfectly clean passport on top of the ashes”. They will take care of the questions by killing anyone it takes to accomplish it. And what would their agenda for yet another vehicular attack be? FULLY MANDATED SELF DRIVING VEHICLES.

http://82.221.129.208/baaaasepaaged3.html



http://notrickszone.com/2017/08/20/#sth ... 0lKqw.dpbs

Harvard Physicist: “Climate Science In Serious Trouble”…”Really Dirty People Doing Bad Stuff”
By P Gosselin on 20. August 2017
In a presentation (see below) Harvard astrophysicist Willie Soon came out blasting with both barrels at the corruption in climate science. He started by saying that any respectable scientist would say that the American National Academy of Science (NAS) is “100 percent corrupt” and the climate scientists who put up the content at the NAS are “really […]





For more about Willie Exon Mobil Soon see

https://www.desmogblog.com/willie-soon





http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... n-fallacy/

The Soon fallacy


24 February 2015
As many will have read, there were a number of press reports (NYT, Guardian, InsideClimate) about the non-disclosure of Willie Soon’s corporate funding (from Southern Company (an energy utility), Koch Industries, etc.) when publishing results in journals that require such disclosures. There are certainly some interesting questions to be asked (by the OIG!) about adherence to the Smithsonian’s ethics policies, and the propriety of Smithsonian managers accepting soft money with non-disclosure clauses attached.

However, a valid question is whether the science that arose from these funds is any good? It’s certainly conceivable that Soon’s work was too radical for standard federal research programs and that these energy companies were really taking a chance on blue-sky high risk research that might have the potential to shake things up. In such a case, someone might be tempted to overlook the ethical lapses and conflicts of interest for the sake of scientific advancement (though far too many similar post-hoc justifications have been used to excuse horrific unethical practices for this to be remotely defendable).

Unfortunately, the evidence from the emails and the work itself completely undermines that argument because the work and the motivation behind it are based on a scientific fallacy.

Putting aside papers where Soon was only a minor contributing author, and the hopelessly slanted ‘forecasting principles’ papers with Green and Armstrong (see here for why they add nothing to the discussion), most of Soon’s work has been related to finding correlations of a very specific solar reconstruction (see figure below) to some observational time-series. There are very real criticisms that can be made of the solar forcing time-series he uses, and of course, of the cherry picking of specific time-series without mentioning that correlations to others (such as the global mean) are very low, but even accepting all that, there is a much more fundamental problem.

It is most succinctly highlighted in an article Soon wrote ‘It’s the Sun, stupid’ (not sure if it was ever really published anywhere, but he did send it to his contacts at Koch Industries). Towards the end he states:

The evidence in my paper is consistent with the hypothesis that the Sun causes climatic change in the Arctic.

It invalidates the hypothesis that CO2 is a major cause of observed climate change – and raises serious questions about the wisdom of imposing cap-and-trade or other policies that would cripple energy production and economic activity, in the name of “preventing catastrophic climate change.”

It is the leap from the first to second sentence that drives Soon’s research – the notion that if you can find enough correlations to solar forcing, the impact of CO2 must be diminished, if not obliterated altogether. But this is a fallacy. It is equivalent to arguing that if total caloric intake correlates to weight, that exercise can have no effect, or that if cloudiness correlates to incident solar radiation at the ground, then seasonal variations in sunshine are zero. The existence of one physical factor affecting a variable in a complex system says nothing whatsoever about the potential for another physical factor to affect that same variable.

Even if the correlations existed at the level Soon claims (and they don’t – see figure), it would still not indicate that CO2 had zero effect, and indeed, it could never do so. The impacts of CO2 on radiative transfer have been studied since the 1860s, and modern spectroscopic databases date to Air Force calculations for heat seeking missiles in the 1950s and have been validated by an enormous number of observations, both in situ and via remote sensing. The vertical fingerprint of the impact of increasing CO2 (warming troposphere, cooling stratosphere) was calculated in 1967 by Manabe and Wetherald, decades before it was observed. None of this science disappears because a regional temperature series correlates for some short time with something else.



Figure 1. Updating the Soon (2005) correlations by correcting for an obsolete and almost certainly incorrect solar reconstruction (replacing with the SORCE reconstruction) and extending the temperature data to the present, shows an almost complete collapse of the initially impressive correlation (click for larger version).
The only way this might even begin to make sense would be if attribution of recent global warming was based purely on a linear regression of temperature to CO2 (which it isn’t). Given that we know there are multiple drivers of climate operating (the sun for sure, but also volcanoes, aerosols, greenhouse gas changes, land use change, etc.) the only way to do attribution properly is calculate the physical fingerprints of each of these drivers across multiple variables and see which combinations provide the best fits. Indeed, this is indeed exactly what is done. This kind of attribution is not based on single-factor correlations and is even robust to errors of magnitude in the calculated responses.

Soon’s work has been singularly poor for over a decade, first coming to prominence with the Soon and Baliunas (2003) debacle in Climatic Research which led to the resignation of 5 editors in protest at the way the paper was handled (and see more here). Another case associated with some very obvious shenanigans was Dyck et al (2007). More recently, his presentations at Heartland’s pseudo-climate conferences have come under renewed scrutiny for their level of incoherence.

The odd thing about this is that there is real, and interesting, science to be done on the impacts of solar forcing on climate. The chemical feedbacks due to photolytic reactions in both the stratosphere and troposphere involving ozone, NOx, and water vapour, can have significant impacts. Exploring the tremendous complexities in aerosol formation and growth and impacts on clouds and whether that is mediated by modulations of cosmic rays is fascinating (if, as yet, inconclusive). Indeed, there is a current NASA call for proposals on exactly these subjects (Notice of Intent due March 13!). But every time another one of these spurious correlations is touted, or one more fallaciously reasoned argument is put forward, it makes it harder for serious scientists to get involved at all without being tarred with the same pseudo-scientific brush.

Moving on from this low-quality, pointless kind of solar forcing shtick can’t come ‘Soon’ enough.

References
W.W. Soon, "Solar Arctic-Mediated Climate Variation on Multidecadal to Centennial Timescales: Empirical Evidence, Mechanistic Explanation, and Testable Consequences", Physical Geography, vol. 30, pp. 144-184, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3646.30.2.144
S. Manabe, and R.T. Wetherald, "Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity", Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, vol. 24, pp. 241-259, 1967. http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(196 ... W>2.0.CO;2
W.W. Soon, "Variable solar irradiance as a plausible agent for multidecadal variations in the Arctic-wide surface air temperature record of the past 130 years", Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 32, 2005. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2005GL023429
335



https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 529075001/

Exclusive: Secret Service depletes funds to pay agents because of Trump's frequent travel, large family
Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY Published 5:00 a.m. ET Aug. 21, 2017 | Updated 9:31 a.m. ET Aug. 21, 2017


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... 5758f27acd


Liberty University graduates return diplomas because of support for Trump by Jerry Falwell Jr.




https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... b954cd072d

Business
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club loses its ninth big charity event this week






http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3428192

Ex-neo Nazi says Trump revoked federal grant Obama gave his organization to fight hate


Sunday, August 20, 2017, 9:38 PM




http://yournewswire.com/antifa-riots-november-trump/

ANTIFA Plan Nationwide Riots On Nov. 4th To Forcibly Remove Trump
August 18, 2017 Sean Adl-Tabatabai News, US 119








https://www.courthousenews.com/camille- ... ilent-cal/


Camille Delivers for Silent Cal


August 18, 2017


“I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union, and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

President Calvin Coolidge loosened up in that speech after Vermont’s Great Flood of 1927. Vermonters are still like that, where folks in Guilford have stood up and reached down to help a hometown girl go to college.

A midwife attended Camille’s birth in 1999 on the side of a mountain.

“The only light was from the dozens of candles lining the walls,” Camille wrote in her college application. “I grew up off the grid: without internet, a refrigerator, a conventional toilet, a microwave, a washing machine, a dishwasher, or a television. I grew up on a hard-to-reach, rocky dirt road with home-grown food, a woodstove and a forest for my backyard.

“My family values the importance of being unified with the Earth, acquiring the skills to live off of the land, and being environmentally aware. Growing up, I spent my time in the woods carving sticks, making fairy houses, and playing in streams while my friends sat on their couches with their eyes glued to their screens, mesmerized. Mine was a drastically different experience compared to the average American girl.”

When she got to middle school, Camille was embarrassed to ask her friends over to her house way off the side of a side road. So she rebelled, as she explains in her beautiful essay. Now she understands it all — she is far more mature than I was at 18. Hell, she’s more mature than I was at 30.

“I can now confidently assert who I am and form my own opinions without fear of being judged or ridiculed,” she wrote in her essay for Hobart and William Smith College in Upstate New York. “I’ve grown to appreciate all I had taken for granted in my younger years; living close to the land, loving natural beauty, and the joy of living a more simple life.”

But going to college costs a lot of money. Camille works part-time at the Guilford Country Store, as does her mom. Her dad, Elliot, is a self-employed carpenter. He built the house where the family has lived since 1990.

“The first place he built was our place,” Camille’s mom Elise said.

“And I didn’t know a thing,” Elliot said. “And it shows.”

Camille grew up in the house her dad built, which began as a 24-by-17-foot camp. They raised goats, rabbits and chickens, and always planted a big garden.

The Country Store itself is a product of Guilford’s indomitable people. Fifteen years ago it was a rattletrap wreck of empty shelves. Then folks got together in 2004 and founded Friends of Algiers, named for the little cluster of buildings at the crossroads.

“Country stores statewide were going out of business, that had formerly been a center of the community,” said Eric Morse, with the Friends of Algiers.

In the blink of an eye — Vermont time — Eric and Barry and Fred and other Friends raised the money to rehabilitate the 200-year-old Country Store and get it listed on the National Register of Historical Places. Guilford pitched in to rehabilitate two more dilapidated sites across the road, which now host 31 modern apartments.

Senator Patrick Leahy corralled the last $450,000 for a water line, then Suzanne and Mark Tessitore, refugee caterers from New York City’s Lower East Side, stepped and turned the Country Store back into what Vermont country stores have been all along: a place for philosophers to meet and hold forth over coffee.

“It’s worked out pretty well,” said Morse, whose land surveying office is kitty corner and a hop away. “Local kids work there. Everybody goes there. It was really pretty inspiring. I love that store.”

Camille is one of those local kids, the youngest of four. Her parents added rooms to the house as the kids came along. She’s leaving for college on Saturday, where her orientation session at Hobart will include a five-day hike in the Adirondacks.

“I could tell it was all she wanted,” her mom said over coffee at the Country Store. “She was a force to be reckoned with. She was: ‘I am doing this.’”

I think she deserves it, after making the National Honor Society, and volunteering at a summer camp for emotionally disturbed children, and four years on the Student Council, and joining the Spanish Club, three years on the tennis team … and so on.

Hobart offered her a generous scholarship. But after the scholarship, grants, and maxing out federal loans, Camille was $7,500 short. So friends set up a website for her on GoFundMe, to help send Camille to college.

In one month they’ve raised $5,000, from a town of 2,000 people.

What a great family, in a great town, in a great state.

Here is Camille’s GoFundMe website.

(Courthouse News photos show Camille taking a break at the Guilford County Store, and with her parents, Elliot and Elise Gunzburg.)




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3429208

Ohio judge ambushed and shot at courthouse; one suspect dead
BY MINYVONNE BURKE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, August 21, 2017, 9:39 AM




http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/i ... -1.3428224

Informant’s new book ‘Confidential Source 96’ reveals how he made a career of taking down drug crews


BY GRAHAM RAYMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, August 20, 2017, 11:17 PM


Link du jour
https://www.courthousenews.com/key-prot ... stability/

http://www.pravdareport.com/news/busine ... c_money-0/

https://www.courthousenews.com/consumer ... sal-fraud/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyl ... 8b61683bbf


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... c68b67865c


https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/vi ... a5e26cedc1






https://lawstreetmedia.com/blogs/crime/ ... -homicide/

Research Finds Justifiable Homicide Rulings More Likely to Benefit White Americans






http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bro ... -1.3428363

NYPD officer accused of punching bystander for no reason during Bronx shooting investigation

Police investigating a Bronx shooting earlier this month punched a bystander three times in the face, according to video obtained by the Daily News.

Kevin Pettiway told The News he was minding his own business just before getting punched and arrested — disputing NYPD claims that he was busted for hindering their investigation into the shooting of two 17-year-old boys.

Pettiway, 28, said he was heading toward his mother’s Webster Ave. apartment Aug. 5 when he noticed a ruckus involving a crowd of onlookers and NYPD officers.

“I didn’t know what the commotion was about. I was trying to get past the crowd when an officer pushed me,” Pettiway said.

Five shot, one fatally, in four-borough swell of gun violence
A portion of the incident was caught on a 30-second cell phone video and appears to contradict the officer’s account, which was detailed in a court document.

Pettiway is seen in the video wearing a white tank top and walking by the shouting crowd when an officer in a dark T-shirt and khaki shorts pulled him in the opposite direction. Pettiway turned to face the plainclothes officer — identified in court documents as Lt. Eric Dym of Public Service Area 7 — to ask why he’d been pushed. He was met with three blows to the face, the video shows.
“I understand that he was probably frustrated because he was trying to control the crowd, but I was just walking. I didn’t say anything to him for him to push me and punch me like that,” Pettiway said.

Dym has been named in five federal civil rights lawsuits between 2011 and 2015 for claims of excessive force and false arrest, according to court documents. Three of the lawsuits settled for a total of $202,000, court records show.



http://politic365.com/2017/08/20/dick-g ... ies-at-84/

“Dick Gregory was such a powerful opponent against systematic racism, J. Edgar Hoover once ordered the FBI to use the mafia to murder him,” tweeted activist Tariq Nasheed about social activist Dick Gregory on August 20.



https://www.courthousenews.com/albuquer ... ls-murder/

Albuquerque Cops Accused of Negligence in Little Girl’s Murder


August 18, 2017



https://www.courthousenews.com/romanian ... l-resigns/

Romanian Bishop Involved in Sex Tape Scandal Resigns

A Romanian bishop who was seen on video engaging in sexual acts with a male student resigned Friday, the Romanian Orthodox Church said.




https://www.afro.com/selection-process- ... re-police/

Selection Process Winding Down for Monitor of Justice Dept. Consent Decree with Baltimore Police
by: Stephen Janis Special to the AFRO / (Courtesy Images/Logos) / August 19, 2017 0 39



http://www.globalresearch.ca/manchester ... ks/5592063


Barcelona, Manchester, Berlin, Paris, Nice, London, New York: Passports and IDs Mysteriously Discovered in the Wake of Terror Attacks

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, August 20 2017

This article reviews the “mysterious” phenomenon of IDs and Passports of terror suspects routinely discovered (often in the rubble) in the wake of a terrorist attack.

In most cases the alleged suspect was known to the authorities.

Is there a pattern? The ID papers of the suspect are often left behind, discovered by police in the wake of a terrorist attack.

UPDATE: BARCELONA

Reports concerning the Barcelona attack, reveal exactly the same feature of passports and IDs left behind which occurred in Manchester, Paris, Nice, London, New York, and now Barcelona (August 17, 2017) (see below).

A Spanish passport of “a person of Moroccan origin was found at the scene of the attack” according to Britain’s Daily Express. The Spanish media reports confirm that the suspect is Spanish from the autonomous city of Melilla which has borders with Morocco. Police sources state that his identity is being used in the investigation.

The reports are notoriously contradictory: the latest Telegraph report (18/08/17) suggests that the suspect who was driving the van is 18 years old by the Name of Moussa Oukabir, and that his brother is Driss Oukabir, 28 years old and that it was his brother who rented the vehicle.

Earlier reports by El País (August 17) stated that the alleged suspect 28-year-old Driss Oukabir, had been arrested by the Police, while El Nacional reported that the suspect:

“presented himself at a Catalan police station in Ripoll to deny having any involvement in this afternoon’s attack. He claims his ID was stolen and used by the terrorists to rent one of the vans used for the attack.

Local sources, confirmed by the town’s mayor, Jordi Munell, have said that the young man, who lives in Ripoll, attended the police station to deny any involvement in the events” (Daily Express, August 17, 2017)

The report below suggests that the passport discovered in the van provided a lead to “the Alcanar house where bombs were being prepared”. Allegedly the passport was found in the van used for the attack in “an accidental explosion that took place on Thursday morning in the town of Tarraconense. This finding allowed linking the terrorist attack in Barcelona with a wounded in the Alcanar accident”.



Source El Diario

Michel Chossudosky, August 18, 2017

Text of earlier article published by Global Research on May 17, 2017 in the wake of the Manchester attack

This article reviews the “mysterious” phenomenon of IDs and Passports of terror suspects routinely discovered (often in the rubble) in the wake of a terrorist attack.

In most cases the alleged suspect was known to the authorities.

Is there a pattern? The ID papers of the suspect are often left behind, discovered by police in the wake of a terrorist attack.

According to government and media reports, the suspects are without exception linked to an Al Qaeda affiliated entity.

None of these terror suspects survived. Dead men do not talk.

In the case of the tragic events in Manchester, the bankcard of the alleged suicide bomber Salman Abedi was found in his pocket in the wake of the explosion.

Legitimacy of the official stories? The UK is both a “victim of terrorism” as well as a “State sponsor of terrorism”. Without exception, the governments of Western countries which are victims of terror attacks, have supported, directly or indirectly, the Al Qaeda group of terrorist organizations including the Islamic State (ISIS), which are allegedly responsible for waging these terror attacks. Amply documented Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA.

Below is a review of the circumstances and evidence pertaining to passports and IDs discovered in the wake of selected terror attacks, with links to Global Research articles and media reports (2001-2017). (This list is by no means exhaustive)

From NYC on 9/11 to Manchester, May 2017

In reverse chronological order

emphasis added

The Manchester Terror Attack, May 2017.

Manchester Bomb Suspect Said to Have Had Ties to al Qaeda …

NBCNews.com–May 23, 2017 MANCHESTER, England — Salman Abedi, the 22-year-old British man … in a suicide-bomb attack, had ties to al Qaeda and had received terrorist training … was identified by a bank card found in his pocket at the scene of the ...


Manchester Attack as MI6 Blowback?

By Evan Jones, May 26, 2017

“A bankcard has been conveniently found in the pocket of the … Daesh has claimed responsibility for the Manchester attack, but without …”


No image of the alleged bankcard is available.

Ironically, the suspect Abedi was first identified by Washington rather than UK police and security. How did they know who was the culprit 3 hours after the explosion? According to Graham Vanbergen:

In the early hours of the morning of the 23rd May – approximately 02.35BST NDTV via the Washington Post stated quite categorically that:

“U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, identified the assailant as Salman Abedi. They did not provide information about his age or nationality, and British officials declined to comment on the suspect’s identity.”

This was published at a time when British police and security services were refusing to make any statements as to who they thought the perpetrators were because at the time, they were dealing with the immediate aftermath of the event.

Berlin Truck Terror Attack, December 2016.


The Berlin Truck Terror Suspect and the Curious Matter of ID Papers Left Behind

By WhoWhatWhy, December 22, 2016

The Berlin Truck Terror Suspect and the Curious Matter of ID Papers Left Behind. By WhoWhatWhy. Global Research, December 22, 2016. Who What Why 21 ….:

The suspect’s identity papers were found inside the truck used in Monday’s attack on a Christmas market, which left 12 people dead, German security officials said.

The suspect was known to German security services as someone in contact with radical Islamist groups, and had been assessed as posing a risk, Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Ralf Jaeger told reporters.

Berlin Truck Attack

Source: Daily Mail, July 15, 2016

The Nice Terror Attack July 2016

The Nice Terror Attack: Towards a Permanent State of Martial Law in … the alleged perpetrator is dead and conveniently left behind his ID.


Nice, 14th of July Massacre: Towards Martial Law? The Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh) Claims Responsibility?

By Peter Koenig, July 15, 2016

According to Peter Koenig in relation to the Nice terror attack:

During last night’s celebration of the French National Holiday, around 11 PM, a speeding truck plowed into a crowd of thousands who were watching the fireworks along the Mediterranean Boulevard Anglais. The driver of the truck, was simultaneously and indiscriminately shooting into the crowd. He was able to run for 2 kilometers before being stopped by police, which instantly shot and killed him.

A horrendous terror attack, killing hordes of people, spreading pain, misery, fear and outrage in France, Europe – the world over.All indications signal the Big Script of yet another false flag; yet again in France.

The young truck-driver was identified as a 31-year-old Frenchman, resident of Nizza, with Tunisian origins. As in previous cases, ‘coincidence’ has it that his identity papers were found in the truck.



The young man is instantly killed by the police. Dead people cannot talk. A pattern well known by now.

Paris Charlie Hebdo Terror Attack, January 2015


Police found the ID of Said Kouachi at the Scene of the Charlie Hebdo Shooting. Does this Sound Familiar?

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, January 10, 2015

“According to news reports, police found the ID of Said Kouachi at the scene of the Charlie Hebdo shooting. Does this sound familiar? Remember, authorities claimed to have found the undamaged passport of one of the alleged 9/11 hijackers among the massive pulverized ruins of the twin towers.”

Paris Bataclan Terror Attack, November 2015


The Paris Terror Attacks and 911: Similar “Evidence” Makes it Suspicious

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, November 20, 2015

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) declared that it was responsible for the latest attacks in Paris as did Al-Qaeda who also claimed responsibility for 911. … However, there are similarities between the terror attacks in Paris and New York City on September 11th.

First, Syrian and Egyptian passports from two of the suicide bombers were found at the scene of the stadium attack in the northern part of the city. After both suspected terrorists detonated their explosive devices, their passports were still found.

This brings us back to the September 11th terror attacks where U.S. officials recovered a passport intact a few blocks from t
he World Trade Center which did belong to one of the hijackers,



Magic Passports Redux: Syrian Passport Allegedly Discovered on Paris Suicide Bomber

By 21st Century Wire, November 14, 2015

In the context of the enquiry about the Paris massacres, a Syrian passport (image right) was found next to one of the kamikaze bombers of Stade de France. After being pointed out as responsible for the attacks by President Hollande, ‘the Islamic State’ claimed that they had engineered the onslaught. The French executive, that had already stated tht they wanted to take action in Syria allegedly against ISIS, but actually against Bachar El Assad, who ‘has to go’, sees in this a significant clue that comfort their military expedition.

London 7/7 Terror attack, July 7, 200


The 7/7 London Bombings and MI5’s “Stepford Four” Operation: How the 2005 London Bombings Turned every Muslim into a “Terror Suspect”

By Karin Brothers, May 26, 2017

On Tuesday, July 12th, Lindsay’s wife Samantha Lewthwaite had called police to report her husband Germaine (“Jamal”) missing. Police searched their home immediately. The next day, on July 14th, police announced that they had Lindsay’s ID and he was the fourth bomber. Lewthwaite was incredulous and refused to believe the accusation without DNA proof. The police identification was stunning because they had been claiming that all of the suspects looked Pakistani; there was no way anyone could mistake the big, black Lindsay for an Asian. What had police been looking at?

9/11 Terror Attacks: September 11, 2001



Was America Attacked by Muslims on 9/11?

By David Ray Griffin, September 11, 2016



9/11 Truth and the Joint Congressional Inquiry: 28 Pages of Misdirection on the Role of Saudi Arabia

By Dick Atlee and Ken Freeland, September 11, 2015

For years the 9/11 Truth movement (9TM) has been vainly pleading with ….. FBI agent Dan Coleman explains how the passport of 9/11 hijacker …


9/11 Contradictions: Mohamed Atta’s Mitsubishi and His Luggage

By David Ray Griffin, May 09, 2008

9/11 Contradictions: Mohamed Atta’s Mitsubishi and His Luggage … It also contained a Saudi passport, an international driver’s license, …

“In the official version for 9/11 the FBI claimed that they found the unscathed passport of one of the pilots near one of the towers that were reduced to ashes by explosions whose heat melted even the steel columns in the buildings’ structure. The fourth plane’s crash near Shanksville also yielded a passport which, though scorched, still made it possible to read the person’s first name and surname and to see his ID photo. This is all the more disturbing as nothing at all was left in the crater, no part of the plane or of the people travelling in it, only this partly scorched passport.

Confirmed by Dan Rather CBS News, “a passerby found the passport of one of the hijackers” on the street just hours after the 9/11 attacks. (Video at 1′.23″)



According to Who What Why:

The Visa of Satam al-Suqami: This identify document of one of the alleged 9/11 hijackers somehow survived unscathed a few blocks from the twin towers, though the plane itself was virtually obliterated.

Visa belonging to Satam al-Suqami

Visa belonging to Satam al-Suqami

The Passports belonging to Ziad Jarrah and Saeed al-Ghamdi: The passports of two alleged hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93 supposedly survived the fiery crash in Pennsylvania that left the aircraft itself charred and widely scattered—with one passport entirely intact.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: COPWATCH

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/ ... 81890.html

Who shot JFK?
As the world prepares for next month's release of secret files on Kennedy's assassination, the last living link to the crime has finally confirmed what has long been suspected: that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't alone


The long-awaited remaining JFK assassination files are due for release next month. They may or may not confirm the revelations in a book published earlier this year: a first-hand insider's account of the CIA's plots against Kennedy, Castro and Che Guevara. Antonio Veciana is an 88-year-old great-grandfather living out his retirement in Miami. Yet in his prime, he was at the heart of some of the most momentous events in modern US history. These included the CIA's anti-Castro operations and anti-communist covert plans in Latin America, as well as inadvertently witnessing the meeting of a top CIA operative with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination of President John F Kennedy.



Veciana has co-written his memoir Trained to Kill with veteran Pulitzer-winning journalist Carlos Harrison. He went public with his astonishing claims at a conference held in 2014 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Warren Commission report. The commission had been set up by President Johnson, and arrived at the official conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin in the murder of JFK.

Veciana started out as a bank accountant in Cuba and initially aligned himself with Castro's guerrilla war, participating in the overthrow of despised dictator Batista - who was backed by the US. Batista presided over extensive corruption while keeping his own people in a state of abject poverty.

The direction of the Cuban revolution was not inevitably destined for socialism. However, when Washington refused to deal with Castro following his victory, he was forced to turn to the Soviet Union. Veciana would himself turn against Castro, and was recruited by the CIA in their covert action operations.

According to Richard Helms, who would later become director of the CIA, the Kennedy brothers pushed hard for the overthrow of Castro. However, JFK had been ambivalent about the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, and withheld air cover - thereby guaranteeing its miserable failure with scores of fighters killed and over a thousand taken prisoner.

Yet David Talbot argues in The Devil's Chessboard - a biography of legendary CIA spymaster Allen Dulles, which reads more like a Hollywood thriller - that the Bay of Pigs was deliberately designed to fail, in order to force JFK to acquiesce to a US military invasion. This event, early in the Kennedy presidency, earned the undying animosity of diehard anti-Castro exiles such as Veciana, and their virulently anti-communist CIA handlers including future Watergate burglar Howard Hunt and David Sanchez Morales.

Such animosity only intensified within the ranks of the CIA and the Pentagon, with the refusal of JFK to invade Cuba at the height of the 1962 missile crisis. The ensuing agreement with Khrushchev not to invade Cuba, in return for the withdrawal of Russian missiles from the island, was effectively strike three for the young President. As far as hardliners in the military industrial complex were concerned, the prospect of coexistence with communism was untenable.

JFK was cognisant of such dangers and Robert Kennedy would later confess that, at the height of the missile crisis, they sent word to the Russians that they might not be able to control their gung-ho generals.

In 1975 (during the aftermath of Watergate), the Church Committee revealed the FBI's Counter Intelligence Programme of mass surveillance and infiltration of anti-war and civil rights groups, as well as the CIA's Executive Action assassination apparatus, code-named ZR/Rifle. As a result, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was set up, reopening investigations into the murders of JFK and Martin Luther King.

Gaeton Fonzi was one of the Congressional investigators for the HSCA when he managed to track down Veciana. Fonzi did not fully disclose his role, merely stating that he was investigating the links between Cuban exile groups and intelligence agencies. As Fonzi relates in his breathless, page-turning account The Last Investigation, Veciana unburdened himself to Fonzi, revealing that his CIA handler went by the code name of Maurice Bishop. He had even witnessed an extraordinary meeting in Dallas in September 1963, two months before the assassination of President Kennedy.

Veciana had turned up early for the meeting with Bishop at the towering Southland Centre. He saw Bishop with a pale young man, who was introduced as Lee - although this man did not utter a single word. It was only two months later that he recognised the television and newspaper pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald - the alleged assassin - as the man he had met with Bishop.

Veciana realised it would be prudent not to speak of what he had seen. Throughout this revelatory conversation, Fonzi tried hard to act nonchalant - but he later admitted that in his mind he fell off his chair. Veciana was essentially confirming long-held suspicions directly linking the CIA to the JFK assassination.

Fonzi now dedicated his mission to unmasking the true identity of Maurice Bishop, enlisting a professional police artist to sketch a portrait of Bishop based on Veciana's description. By chance, one of Fonzi's committee colleagues, Senator Richard Schweiker, suggested that the picture had an unerring resemblance to CIA operative David Atlee Phillips, who had been running anti-Castro operations and would later rise to the illustrious position of the CIA's head of the Western Hemisphere division. Fonzi eventually arranged a surprise meeting in an attempt to confirm this. He took Veciana along to a meeting of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers - a lobbying group Phillips had founded after retiring in 1975.






http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fbi ... 63fe0f276f

FBI Interns Asked Twitter For Questions, And It Soon Got Out Of Hand
These probably weren’t the type of queries that the Albuquerque branch was expecting.






https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014 ... -profane-4

Annals of Religion
March 31, 2014 Issue
Sacred And Profane
How not to negotiate with believers.

By Malcolm Gladwell


There is a telling moment during the siege when Schneider is talking to an F.B.I. negotiator about an undercover A.T.F. agent who used the name Robert Gonzalez. The A.T.F. believed that the Branch Davidians—who ran a small business selling weapons at gun shows—had converted a batch of firearms from semiautomatic to automatic without the proper permits. Gonzalez’s job was to infiltrate the Davidian community and look for evidence. (He found none, a fact that—along with the A.T.F.’s bizarre decision to serve a warrant on Koresh by force, rather than arresting him on those numerous occasions when he ventured into town—loomed large in the many Waco postmortems.) Here is Schneider and a negotiator talking about what happened after the Davidians realized that Gonzalez was not who he said he was:




http://www.gazettes.com/news/former-fbi ... 9fd80.html

Former FBI Agent Talks Negotiation At Bixby Knolls Mixer




http://kmuw.org/post/new-book-explores- ... trol-press

New Book Explores J. Edgar Hoover's Control Of The Press
MAR 17, 2014

Matthew Cecil, Director of WSU’s Elliott School of Communication, has just published a book about the relationship between former FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, the Bureau itself and the media. Although it’s been more than 40 years since Hoover’s passing, there are still lessons for journalists and the public to learn by taking a close look at the director’s
Cecil says that he's wanted to write his new book, Hoover’s FBI and the Fourth Estate, for years. Cecil sifted through 5,000 pages of documents in writing the book, all made available to him via the Freedom of Information Act. He was looking for connections Hoover had with the press and for the power he held over journalists and news outlets during his nearly 50 year reign as dire




https://rightsanddissent.org/ag-gag-across-america/

Ag-Gag Across America
Corporate-Backed Attacks on Activists and Whistleblowers
Published by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Defending Rights





https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/201 ... raska-week

On September 13 and 14, ex-FBI agent turned anti-Muslim law enforcement trainer John Guandolo will visit Omaha, Nebraska and Oakland, Iowa for a series of presentations.

Guandolo visits the Heartland on the invitation of the Omaha-based anti-Muslim Global Faith Institute (GFI) and Tactical 88, an “elite training organization” with firearm range sand readiness training centers in both Nebraska and Ohio. Guandolo and his partner Chris Gaubatz head the anti-Muslim group Understanding the Threat (UTT) and will be presenting on the Muslim Brotherhood’s “secret strategies for the USA.”

Guandolo promotes himself as a former FBI agent and an expert on terrorism who can help law enforcement and others uncover the “secret” terrorist cells in their area, but in reality Guandolo’s trainings are little more than anti-Muslim witch-hunts. What he doesn’t tell you is that he left the Bureau in disgrace for a number of ethical breaches and bizarre conduct which included admitting to having affairs with female FBI agents and a confidential source he was assigned to protect during the corruption case of former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.); he also solicited that witness for a $75,000 donation for an anti-terrorism group. Since his departure, Guandolo has devoted himself to a rabid brand of anti-Muslim activism, working closely with some of the most powerful and influential anti-Muslim groups in the U.S., on a flurry of accusations against government officials Guandolo says have ties to terrori







https://medium.com/@LoriHandrahan2/law- ... e48164430f

Law Enforcement Arrested for Trading in Child Rape




https://www.bellevuereporter.com/news/m ... s-top-cop/


Making sense of the rape allegation against King County’s top cop



Sep 30th, 2017 6:00amNEWS





When the King County Ombudsman’s Office released a critical review of Sheriff John Urquhart’s handling of a sexual-assault charge made against him in 2016, it came with a recommendation. The office had concluded that the sheriff mishandled the case and recommended, among other things, that the sheriff’s office require “the appointment of an external, independent official to investigate serious complaints against the Sheriff or other senior command staff.”

The review included Urquhart’s extensive rebuttal to the report. In it, Urquhart questions the practicality of an outside entity investigating him. Since he is an elected official, he reasoned, it’s up to voters, not an investigator, to determine whether to “discipline” him. “Specifically, even if there would be ‘finding’ that the Sheriff committed misconduct by an internal or external entity, it would ultimately be the voter’s decision whether to retain that Sheriff,” he wrote.

As it happens, voters will make that very decision on Nov. 7, when Urquhart faces off against Mitzi Johanknecht, a precinct captain within the sheriff’s office, in the general election. Urquhart, a Mercer Island resident and sheriff’s office veteran, was first elected in a special election in 2012, defeating Steve Strachan, who had been appointed to the position after Sheriff Sue Rohr stepped down. The next year Urquhart faced no challenger, handing him a full four-year term. Thus, this fall will be the first time since 2012 that voters will be allowed to determine whether Urquhart should be retained.

Given the determinations by the Ombudsman, as well as by a Seattle police oversight body, that the rape allegation against Urquhart was not properly handled by law enforcement, it’s important for voters to understand to the fullest extent possible what has been accused and how it’s been handled—or mishandled—over the past 18 months, and what these facts say about Urquhart and the office he has managed for five years.

THE ACCUSATION

The accusation dates back to Nov. 7, 2002.

The alleged victim was a 28-year-old sheriff’s deputy working in SeaTac, where Urquhart was her commanding officer. On the night of the 7th, the alleged victim says, she was drinking with co-workers at McCoy’s Firehouse, a Pioneer Square bar. Amid the festivities, Urquhart arrived and began buying her drinks.


“John was feeding me a bunch of Cosmos,” says the alleged victim, who is not being named per Sound Publishing policy regarding crime victims.

She says she does not remember how she and Urquhart got back to her Belltown apartment that night, but says she does remember having sex with him. She says she was too intoxicated to give consent, and the next morning went to the hospital because she was vomiting and had diarrhea; she says she told Urquhart she was going to the hospital, and he dissuaded her from doing so. She says she did not report the rape to anyone at the hospital and did not ask for a rape kit.

Prior to that night, she says, she liked working for Urquhart and “trusted his bullsh**.” Afterward, she says, she tried to forget what happened. “I just deteriorated from there,” she says.

Prior to the alleged assault, she says, she suffered from bipolar disorder. Shortly after, she transferred up to Shoreline, she says, and began suffering from more acute symptoms that she believes stemmed from the trauma of that night. She says she sought the help of a psychiatrist and was managing her mental health, but began receiving “random complaints” and started getting written up by her supervisors. In 2004, she says, she was fired.


After being fired, the woman says she left Seattle, moving to Southern California, then Mexico and Massachusetts. She says Urquhart stayed in touch with her, asking her for a campaign contribution in 2012, when he first ran for office. She agreed to contribute. Campaign paperwork shows she gave Urquhart $100 in 2012; the paperwork lists her employer as a nonprofit whose mission is “ending sexual and domestic violence.”

THE REPORTS

The woman first contacted law enforcement about the alleged rape in mid-June 2016. By that time, she was living in Seattle again, and says that she was motivated to contact law enforcement for fear that Urquhart wanted to harm her to keep her from telling anyone about the rape. The details of these perceived threats presented several law-enforcement agents with serious questions about the woman’s credibility.

The first agency she contacted was the FBI. As detailed in the subsequent King County Ombudsman report about the allegations and the response to them, an FBI agent contacted the sheriff’s office in mid-June 2016 about the woman’s claims.

Sgt. Michael Mullinax with the sheriff’s office’s Internal Investigations Unit would later tell the Ombudsman that the FBI agent — identified in the report only as Agent “Ryan”—was calling to confirm the woman had indeed been a sheriff’s deputy; according to Mullinax, Ryan expressed doubt about the veracity of the woman’s claims. “The FBI believed that the complainant’s motivations and credibility were suspect, and something was not right about her accusation,” according to the Ombudsman report, which was released on Aug. 8 of this year. “Ryan indicated that he was completing a report about the complaint, and thought that would be the end of it.”

The FBI did not approach Urquhart directly about the allegation, and indeed did not want him to know about their inquiries. During the conversation with the Ombudsman, Mullinax told Agent Ryan that he felt compelled to tell Urquhart about the allegation against him. “Ryan asked Sergeant Mullinax not to tell Sheriff Urquhart until Sergeant Mullinax spoke with Ryan’s supervisor, who then called Sergeant Mullinax,” the report reads. “The FBI supervisor asked Sergeant Mullinax not to tell Sheriff Urquhart, but Sergeant Mullinax said he felt he had to. Ultimately, the supervisor and Sergeant Mullinax came to an understanding that Sergeant Mullinax could tell Sheriff Urquhart, but the supervisor warned that the FBI might open formal investigation if Sheriff Urquhart were to contact the complainant.”

On June 21, 2016, Mullinax and his supervisor Captain Jesse Anderson met with Urquhart to tell him about the allegation. Anderson would later say they were uncomfortable bringing the information to Urquhart, but “felt they had no choice,” according to the report. During the meeting, Anderson told Urquhart “he thought maybe someone put the complainant up to making the accusation.”



In an interview with Sound Publishing’s the Seattle Weekly, Urquhart says he was baffled by the accusation. He says he and the woman were friends when she was a deputy, and had stayed on friendly terms after she left the department. He says he was at McCoy’s on the night in question, and had given the woman a ride to her apartment. But they did not have sex, he says. “No sex, no affair, no rape,” he says.

Urquhart campaigned on a platform of police accountability, and has made high-profile disciplining of sheriff’s office staff a hallmark of his management. However, in this case, he and Anderson agreed that no investigation was necessary, according to the Ombudsman report, and he told Anderson to not document the accusation in an internal database used for tracking complaints.

Five months later, in November, the woman again called law enforcement to report the rape — this time reaching out to the Seattle Police Department. Two officers, both men, were sent to her Capitol Hill apartment to take a statement.

According to police records, she told the officers that she and Urquhart had sex and that she was “too intoxicated and never gave consent.” However, like the FBI agents, the police officers were skeptical of the woman’s claims.

The woman “explained she was almost ran [sic] over by Urquart [sic] while running in the middle of the street while living in Massachusetts and had surveillance place on her by Urquart [sic] as she moved to various locations across Seattle and the United States. [The woman] also described various emails and texts exchanges she had with Urquart [sic] over the years that were deleted from her accounts. [The woman] believes Urquart [sic] ‘hacked’ into her computer and deleted the message,” the report reads.


At one point, she told the officers, “she returned home to her gas stove running. [She] believed Urquart sent ‘a lackey’ to turn on her stove possibly to create an explosion,” the report reads. “When Officers attempted to speak about crisis resources [she] would get upset and state to Officers ‘I’m not crazy.’ ”

In an interview with Seattle Weekly, the woman stands by these assertions. “100 percent true,” she says.

Following the interview with officers, the woman’s complaint was filed as a “crisis,” not a “sexual assault,” which meant she would not be contacted by a member of the sexual-assault investigation unit.

That may have been the end of the case, but for a lawsuit filed by several former sheriff’s office employees accusing Urquhart of discrimination based on gender, which was working its way through the courts in 2016. Lawyers for the employees deposed Mullinax and Anderson for the suit, during which time the rape allegation was mentioned. (As it happened, lawyers representing the former employees, Lincoln Beauregard and Julie Kays, are the same lawyers representing Delvonn Heckard, the man whose rape allegation against former Mayor Ed Murray ultimately led to Murray’s resignation.)

In December, The Seattle Times reported on the rape allegation, based on paperwork filed in the unrelated lawsuit; shortly afterward, Seattle Police Department Detective Susanna Monroe, with the Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Unit, contacted the woman to conduct a follow-up interview. According to emails obtained through a public disclosure request, the woman was circumspect. “I just read the case report and I am sick,” she wrote Monroe in an email, referring to the report prepared by the two officers who met with her at her apartment. “I remember this from when I was a Deputy, the facts being misconstrued and misrepresented to make victims look ‘crazy’ and not credible. This is the exact reason I initially went to the FBI.”

The woman ultimately did sit down with Monroe and King County Prosecuting Attorney Corinn Bohn in early January. According to a memo later prepared by Monroe, the woman reiterated claims that Urquhart had hired people to follow her, hired someone to turn on her apartment stove to cause an explosion, and that someone tried to run her down in Massachusetts. Monroe wrote that the woman “could not produce any evidence of her allegations.”


Regarding the rape, Bohn told the woman at the end of the interview that the statute of limitations on a rape allegation had expired. Bohn added that even if she “had reported this incident in 2002, it would not have resulted in charges being filed for rape, because [she] recalled all aspects of the sex, which indicates she was not incapacitated at the time of the event,” according to Monroe’s memo; as we’ve previously reported, this is a common response given to women who say they were too intoxicated to give consent (“The Double Bind,” Dec. 7, 2016).

The memo does lend credence to the contention that something happened that night, though. The woman gave Monroe the name of two sheriff’s office employees who had been out drinking with her at the Firehouse. One of the employees said the woman “informed him the day after the incident that she had sex with Urquhart. This deputy was of the opinion the sex was consensual because [she] described the sex in great detail to him and she never stated it was rape.” (Again, Urquhart denies the two had sex.) The witness went on to tell Monroe that the woman’s “mental state has deteriorated in the last year. He stated [she] has been increasingly paranoid and only mentioned the incident as rape approximately a year ago.”

The other sheriff’s office employee declined to be interviewed for Monroe’s investigation.

On May 1 of this year, Monroe closed the case.

CRITICAL REVIEWS

In the past couple of months, two oversight reports have been issued that are highly critical of the way both the sheriff’s office and Seattle PD handled the case.

The King County Ombudsman’s Office review, released on Aug. 8, found that the sheriff’s office did not follow written policy regarding complaints against sheriff’s office staff when the FBI informed them of the rape allegation. According to Anderson, the captain in charge of internal investigations, “the nature of the allegation would normally be … investigated, because if true, it would be conduct that is criminal in nature.” However, according to Anderson, he asked Urquhart whether the accusation should be documented in the database used for complaints against sheriff’s office personal; Urquhart said it wouldn’t be necessary.

In his response to the findings, Urquhart argues that on account of the FBI’s own doubts about the allegation, and the fact that the complaint was not made directly to the sheriff’s office, it did not qualify as a complaint that should be catalogued; for instance, were the office to open files on every complaint they caught wind of, they would have to start opening files on comments made online, he argues. He also argues that, once in the internal computer system, the complaint could have been accessed by people who would use the accusation against him unfairly.

The Ombudsman disagreed and stated that Urquhart’s handling of the complaint was marred by conflict of interest. “Because Sheriff Urquhart was the accused, he could not impartially decide whether the need to follow Sheriff’s Office rules was outweighed by his accuser’s possible credibility problems, and by any hypothetical harm that disclosure might to do to the Sheriff’s Office,” the report says.

In an interview, Urquhart emphasizes that he and Anderson agreed that the incident would not need to be investigated; they disagreed on whether it should be entered into the computer. Urquhart says due to the salacious nature of the claim, he didn’t want it put into a database where others could see it. “With an election coming up, I didn’t want anyone using that,” he says. He says now that he understands why that decision gave the wrong impression, and is working on policies to address it in the office.

“I see that now,” he says.

On Aug. 24, the Office of Professional Accountability at the Seattle Police Department, which investigates police conduct, also determined that officers had mishandled the case. Specifically, by labeling the report a “crisis” and not a “sexual assault,” “the [sexual-assault unit] investigation of this report was delayed. In addition, the complainant/victim experienced distress at not having her report taken seriously and lost trust in the Seattle Police Department,” the OPA report says. Later it adds: “It is critically important that officers not dismiss reported crimes merely because the person reporting the crime happens to be in crisis or has a mental-health challenge. In fact, with certain crimes, including sexual assault, the vulnerability sometimes attendant to being in crisis can increase the probability a perpetrator will target a person as his or her victim.”

A written reprimand was issued to the officers.

ELECTION SEASON

To Urquhart’s critics, the allegation and its fallout are indicative of his so-called leadership style: dismissive, sexist and self-serving.

His office’s handling of the complaint, and his response to the Ombudsman’s report, played a central role in the Times’ recent endorsement of his opponent Johanknecht. “Urquhart’s handling of the case smacks of entitlement, especially because Urquhart champions himself as a tough internal policer of misconduct,” the paper wrote.

In an interview, Johanknecht agrees that the sheriff’s decision not to document the complaint shows that he thinks he plays by a different set of rules than everyone else. That, she says, undercuts Urquhart’s self-styled reputation as a leader who’s tough on bad cops. “He’s an emotional, vindictive guy. He talks under the guise of holding people accountable but then doesn’t follow the rules himself,” she says.

Johanknecht is running on a platform of improving morale within the sheriff’s office—morale she says has been strained by Urquhart’s management, as evidenced by a series of wrongful-termination and discrimination lawsuits that have led to million-dollar settlements in recent years, including the suit that led to the rape allegation coming to light.

Johanknecht also argues that Urquhart has been too aggressive in highlighting his accusers’ mental-health issues when defending himself against the charges. Urquhart, conversely, has argued that Johanknecht and others are taking advantage of the woman’s situation for their own gains. “I feel very sorry for this woman, because she’s been exploited by The Seattle Times, by Lincoln Beauregard, and by my opponent, and I’m very disappointed that this route my opponent has taken because it’s not true and it shouldn’t be here at all,” he told the 45th Legislative District Democrats during their endorsement meeting earlier this year, after reciting the litany of accusations she’s made, including his trying to run her over and blow up her apartment. The group ultimately gave Urquhart their endorsement.

Indeed, beyond the Times endorsement, there are few signs that the saga has damaged Urquhart’s re-election efforts. He enjoys a sizable fundraising lead over Johanknecht and an impressive slate of endorsements, including all nine King County Councilmembers and most major Democratic organizations in the county.

His accuser today still lives in Seattle, working well outside of law enforcement. She says that, despite her frustrations with the investigation, she’s glad she’s speaking out about what she says happened.

“It’s astounding to me how just telling the truth is freeing,” she says.

that Urquhart’s handling of the complaint was marred by conflict of interest. “Because Sheriff Urquhart was the accused, he could not impartially decide whether the need to follow Sheriff’s Office rules was outweighed by his accuser’s possible credibility problems, and by any hypothetical harm that disclosure might to do to the Sheriff’s Office,” the report says.

In an interview, Urquhart emphasizes that he and Anderson agreed that the incident would not need to be investigated; they disagreed on whether it should be entered into the computer. Urquhart says due to the salacious nature of the claim, he didn’t want it put into a database where others could see it. “With an election coming up, I didn’t want anyone using that,” he says. He says now that he understands why that decision gave the wrong impression, and is working on policies to address it in the office.

“I see that now,” he says.

On Aug. 24, the Office of Professional Accountability at the Seattle Police Department, which investigates police conduct, also determined that officers had mishandled the case. Specifically, by labeling the report a “crisis” and not a “sexual assault,” “the [sexual-assault unit] investigation of this report was delayed. In addition, the complainant/victim experienced distress at not having her report taken seriously and lost trust in the Seattle Police Department,” the OPA report says. Later it adds: “It is critically important that officers not dismiss reported crimes merely because the person reporting the crime happens to be in crisis or has a mental-health challenge. In fact, with certain crimes, including sexual assault, the vulnerability sometimes attendant to being in crisis can increase the probability a perpetrator will target a person as his or her victim.”

A written reprimand was issued to the officers.

ELECTION SEASON

To Urquhart’s critics, the allegation and its fallout are indicative of his so-called leadership style: dismissive, sexist and self-serving.

His office’s handling of the complaint, and his response to the Ombudsman’s report, played a central role in the Times’ recent endorsement of his opponent Johanknecht. “Urquhart’s handling of the case smacks of entitlement, especially because Urquhart champions himself as a tough internal policer of misconduct,” the paper wrote.

In an interview, Johanknecht agrees that the sheriff’s decision not to document the complaint shows that he thinks he plays by a different set of rules than everyone else. That, she says, undercuts Urquhart’s self-styled reputation as a leader who’s tough on bad cops. “He’s an emotional, vindictive guy. He talks under the guise of holding people accountable but then doesn’t follow the rules himself,” she says.

Johanknecht is running on a platform of improving morale within the sheriff’s office—morale she says has been strained by Urquhart’s management, as evidenced by a series of wrongful-termination and discrimination lawsuits that have led to million-dollar settlements in recent years, including the suit that led to the rape allegation coming to light.


Indeed, beyond the Times endorsement, there are few signs that the saga has damaged Urquhart’s re-election efforts. He enjoys a sizable fundraising lead over Johanknecht and an impressive slate of endorsements, including all nine King County Councilmembers and most major Democratic organizations in the county.

His accuser today still lives in Seattle, working well outside of law enforcement. She says that, despite her frustrations with the investigation, she’s glad she’s speaking out about what she says happened.

“It’s astounding to me how just telling the truth is freeing,” she says.




AP: Hundreds of officers lose licenses over sex misconduct

Nov. 01, 2015
https://apnews.com/fd1d4d05e561462a85abe50e7eaed4ec


OKLAHOMA CITY Flashing lights pierced the black of night, and the big white letters made clear it was the police. The woman pulled over was a daycare worker in her 50s headed home after playing dominoes with friends. She felt she had nothing to hide, so when the Oklahoma City officer accused her of erratic driving, she did as directed.

She would later tell a judge she was splayed outside the patrol car for a pat-down, made to lift her shirt to prove she wasn’t hiding anything, then to pull down her pants when the officer still wasn’t convinced. He shined his flashlight between her legs, she said, then ordered her to sit in the squad car and face him as he towered above. His gun in sight, she said she pleaded “No, sir” as he unzipped his fly and exposed himself with a hurried directive.


“Come on,” the woman, identified in police reports as J.L., said she was told before she began giving him oral sex. “I don’t have all night.”

The accusations are undoubtedly jolting, and yet they reflect a betrayal of the badge that has been repeated time and again across the country.

In a yearlong investigation of sexual misconduct by U.S. law enforcement, The Associated Press uncovered about 1,000 officers who lost their badges in a six-year period for rape, sodomy and other sexual assault; sex crimes that included possession of child pornography; or sexual misconduct such as propositioning citizens or having consensual but prohibited on-duty intercourse.

The number is unquestionably an undercount because it represents only those officers whose licenses to work in law enforcement were revoked, and not all states take such action. California and New York — with several of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies — offered no records because they have no statewide system to decertify officers for misconduct. And even among states that provided records, some reported no officers removed for sexual misdeeds even though cases were identified via news stories or court records.

“It’s happening probably in every law enforcement agency across the country,” said Chief Bernadette DiPino of the Sarasota Police Department in Florida, who helped study the problem for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “It’s so underreported and people are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them.”


Even as cases around the country have sparked a national conversation about excessive force by police, sexual misconduct by officers has largely escaped widespread notice due to a patchwork of laws, piecemeal reporting and victims frequently reluctant to come forward because of their vulnerabilities — they often are young, poor, struggling with addiction or plagued by their own checkered pasts.

In interviews, lawyers and even police chiefs told the AP that some departments also stay quiet about improprieties to limit liability, allowing bad officers to quietly resign, keep their certification and sometimes jump to other jobs.

The officers involved in such wrongdoing represent a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands whose jobs are to serve and protect. But their actions have an outsized impact — miring departments in litigation that leads to costly settlements, crippling relationships with an already wary public and scarring victims with a special brand of fear.

“My God,” J.L. said she thought as she eyed the officer’s holstered gun, “he’s going to kill me.”

The AP does not name alleged victims of sexual assault without their consent, and J.L. declined to be interviewed. She was let go after the traffic stop without any charges. She reported her accusations immediately, but it was months before the investigation was done and the breadth of the allegations known.

She is one of 13 women who say they were victimized by the officer, a former college football standout named Daniel Holtzclaw. The fired cop, 28, has pleaded not guilty to a host of charges, and his family posted online that “the truth of his innocence will be shown in court.” Each of his accusers is expected to testify in the trial that begins Monday, including one who was 17 when she said the officer pulled down her pink cotton shorts and raped her on her mother’s front porch.

But on a June night last year, it was J.L.’s story that unleashed a larger search for clues.

A nurse swabbed her mouth. A captain made a report. And a detective got to work.

___

On a checkerboard of sessions on everything from electronic surveillance to speed enforcement, police chiefs who gathered for an annual meeting in 2007 saw a discussion on sex offenses by officers added to the agenda. More than 70 chiefs packed into a room, and when asked if they had dealt with an officer accused of sexual misdeeds, nearly every attendee raised a hand. A task force was formed and federal dollars were pumped into training.

Eight years later, a simple question — how many law enforcement officers are accused of sexual misconduct — has no definitive answer. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, which collects police data from around the country, doesn’t track officer arrests, and states aren’t required to collect or share that information.

To measure the problem, the AP obtained records from 41 states on police decertification, an administrative process in which an officer’s law enforcement license is revoked. Cases from 2009 through 2014 were then reviewed to determine whether they stemmed from misconduct meeting the Department of Justice standard for sexual assault — sexual contact that happens without consent, including intercourse, sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling and attempted rape.

Nine states and the District of Columbia said they either did not decertify officers for misconduct or declined to provide information.

Of those that did release records, the AP determined that some 550 officers were decertified for sexual assault, including rape and sodomy, sexual shakedowns in which citizens were extorted into performing favors to avoid arrest, or gratuitous pat-downs. Some 440 officers lost their badges for other sex offenses, such as possessing child pornography, or for sexual misconduct that included being a peeping Tom, sexting juveniles or having on-duty intercourse.

The law enforcement officials in these records included state and local police, sheriff’s deputies, prison guards and school resource officers; no federal officers were included because the records reviewed came from state police standards commissions. About one-third of the officers decertified were accused of incidents involving juveniles. Because of gaps in the information provided by the states, it was impossible to discern any other distinct patterns, other than a propensity for officers to use the power of their badge to prey on the vulnerable. Some but not all of the decertified officers faced criminal charges; some offenders were able to avoid prosecution by agreeing to surrender their certifications.

Victims included unsuspecting motorists, schoolchildren ordered to raise their shirts in a supposed search for drugs, police interns taken advantage of, women with legal troubles who succumbed to performing sex acts for promised help, and prison inmates forced to have sex with guards.

The AP’s findings, coupled with other research and interviews with experts, suggest that sexual misconduct is among the most prevalent type of complaint against law officers. Phil Stinson, a researcher at Bowling Green State University, analyzed news articles between 2005 and 2011 and found 6,724 arrests involving more than 5,500 officers. Sex-related cases were the third-most common, behind violence and profit-motivated crimes. Cato Institute reports released in 2009 and 2010 found sex misconduct the No. 2 complaint against officers, behind excessive force.

Cases from across the country in just the past year demonstrate how such incidents can occur, and the devastation they leave behind.

In Connecticut, William Ruscoe of the Trumbull Police began a 30-month prison term in January after pleading guilty to the sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl he met through a program for teens interested in law enforcement. Case records detailed advances that began with explicit texts and attempts to kiss and grope the girl. Then one night Ruscoe brought her back to his home, put his gun on the kitchen counter and asked her to go upstairs to his bedroom. The victim told investigators that despite telling him no “what felt like 1,000 times,” he removed her clothes, fondled her and forced her to touch him — at one point cuffing her hands.

In Florida, Jonathan Bleiweiss of the Broward Sheriff’s Office was sentenced to a five-year prison term in February for bullying about 20 immigrant men into sex acts. Because the victims wouldn’t testify, Bleiwess’ plea deal revolved around false imprisonment charges, allowing him to escape sex offender status. Prosecutors said he used implied threats of deportation to intimidate the men.

And in New Mexico, Michael Garcia of the Las Cruces Police was sentenced last November to nine years in federal prison for sexually assaulting a high school police intern. At the time, he was in a unit investigating child abuse and sex crimes. The victim, Diana Guerrero, said in court that the assault left her feeling “like a piece of trash,” dashed her dreams of becoming an officer, and triggered depression, nightmares and flashbacks.

“It had never occurred to me that a person who had earned a badge would do this to me or anybody else,” said Guerrero, who is now 21 and agreed to her name being published. “I lost my faith in everything, everyone, even in myself.”

A 2011 International Association of Chiefs of Police report on sex misconduct questioned whether some conditions of the job may create opportunities for such incidents. Officers’ power, independence, off-hours and engagement with those perceived as less credible combine to give cover to predators, it said, and otherwise admirable bonds of loyalty can lead colleagues to shield offenders.

“You see officers throughout your career that deal with that power really well, and you see officers over your career that don’t,” said Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty, who fired Holtzclaw just months after the allegations surfaced and called the case a troubling reminder that police chiefs need to be careful about how they hire and train officers.

The best chance at preventing such incidents is to robustly screen applicants, said Sheriff Russell Martin in Delaware County, Ohio, who served on an IACP committee on sex misconduct. Those seeking to join Martin’s agency are questioned about everything from pornography use to public sex acts. Investigators run background checks, administer polygraph exams and interview former employers and neighbors. Social media activity is reviewed for clues about what a candidate deems appropriate, or red flags such as objectification of women.

Still, screening procedures vary among departments, and even the most stringent standards only go so far.

“We’re hiring from the human race,” Martin said, “and once in a while, the human race is going to let us down.”

___

In the predawn hours of June 18, 2014, J.L.’s report made its way to Oklahoma City sex crimes detective Kim Davis. By that afternoon, Miranda rights were being read to the suspect, an officer who had arrived out of the academy nearly three years earlier, a seemingly natural move for the son of a career policeman but one borne of deep disappointment.

Holtzclaw was a high school football star in Enid, Oklahoma, and a standout on a middling squad at Eastern Michigan University. He was a 6-foot-1, 246-pound leader to teammates who called him “Claw,” and constantly focused on his ultimate goal of the NFL.

“He trained that way. He talked that way,” said fellow linebacker Cortland Selman.

But the collegiate record for tackles Holtzclaw chased went unbroken, and the draft came and went.

He found traces of life on the field in his life on the beat, telling a reporter for his hometown paper that he enjoyed high-speed chases and once charged through two fences while pursuing a suspect on foot on a snow-slicked winter day. He hoped to eventually join the police gang squad.

The Oklahoma City Police Department said Holtzclaw had not received any prior discipline that resulted in a demotion or docked paycheck, but both the department and the state declined to release his full personnel record, citing state law making it confidential.

J.L.’s accusations made Davis and a fellow detective curious about an unsolved report filed five weeks earlier in which an unidentified officer was accused of stopping a woman and coercing her into oral sex.

According to pretrial testimony, the detectives reviewed the names of women Holtzclaw had come into contact with on his 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift and interviewed each one, saying they had a tip she may have been assaulted by an officer. Most said they had not been victimized but, among those who said they were, other links to Holtzclaw were found, Davis said in court. The GPS device on his patrol car put him at the scene of the alleged incidents, and department records showed he called in to check all but one of the women for warrants, the detective testified.

By the time the investigation concluded, the detectives had assembled a six-month narrative of alleged sex crimes they said started Dec. 20, 2013, with a woman taken into custody and hospitalized while high on angel dust. Dressed in a hospital gown, her right wrist handcuffed to the bedrail, the woman said Holtzclaw coerced her into performing oral sex, suggesting her cooperation would lead to dropped charges.

“I didn’t think that no one would believe me,” she testified at a pretrial hearing. “I feel like all police will work together.”

All told, Holtzclaw faces 36 counts including rape, sexual battery and forcible oral sodomy.

One additional accuser who came forward after Holtzclaw’s arrest later was charged with making a false report. Supporters of the former officer who congregate on social media express hope that others’ claims will be proven false, too, and friends wear T-shirts that say “Free the Claw.”

Earlier this year, while out on bond, Holtzclaw answered the door of his parents’ Enid home, saying of the allegations: “I’m not going to make any comment about it.” His attorney, Scott Adams, canceled an interview and did not respond to calls, emails and a letter.

Adams’ line of questioning at the pretrial hearing suggests he will raise doubts about the accusers’ credibility and portray investigators as having coaxed the women into saying they were attacked. Many of the women had struggled with drugs. Some had been prostitutes or have criminal records. Most lived in the same rundown swath of the city in sight of the state Capitol dome, and they all are women of color.

Many of their allegations are similar, with the women saying they were accused of hiding drugs, then told to lift their shirts or pull down their pants. Some claim to have been groped; others said they were forced into intercourse or oral sex.

The youngest accuser said Holtzclaw first approached her when she was with two friends who were arguing and he learned she had an outstanding warrant for trespassing. He let her go but found her again later that day, walking to her mother’s house. She said he offered her a ride and then followed her to the front porch, reminding her of her warrant, accusing her of hiding drugs and warning her not to make things more difficult than they needed to be. She claims he touched her breasts and slid his hand into her panties before pulling off her shorts and raping her.

When it was over, the teen said he told her he might be back to see her again.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she testified at the pretrial hearing. “Like, what am I going to do? Call the cops? He was a cop.”

___

Victims of sexual violence at the hands of officers know the power their attackers have, and so the trauma can carry an especially crippling fear.

Jackie Simmons said she found it too daunting to bring her accusation to another police officer after being raped by a cop in 1998 while visiting Kansas for a wedding. So, like most victims of rape, she never filed a report. Her notions of good and evil challenged, she became enraged whenever she saw patrol cars marked “Protect and Serve.”

“You feel really powerless,” said Simmons, an elementary school principal in Bridgeport, Connecticut, who works with Pandora’s Project, a support group for rape survivors.

Diane Wetendorf, a retired counselor who started a support group in Chicago for victims of officers, said most of the women she counseled never reported their crimes — and many who did regretted it. She saw women whose homes came under surveillance and whose children were intimidated by police. Fellow officers, she said, refused to turn on one another when questioned.

“It starts with the officer denying the allegations — ‘she’s crazy,’ ’she’s lying,’” Wetendorf said. “And the other officers say they didn’t see anything, they didn’t hear anything.”

In its 2011 report, the IACP recommended that agencies institute policies specifically addressing sexual misconduct, saying “tolerance at any level will invite more of the same conduct.” The report also urged stringent screening of hires. But the agency does not know how widely such recommendations have been implemented.

John Firman, the IACP’s research director, said the organization also is encouraging its chiefs to hire more women and minorities as a way to improve the environment inside departments.

“What you want is a culture that’s dominated by a bunch of people that reflect the community,” he said.

Experts said it isn’t just threats of retaliation that deter victims from reporting the crimes, but also skepticism about the ability of officers and prosecutors to investigate their colleagues.

Milwaukee Police Officer Ladmarald Cates was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2012 for raping a woman he was dispatched to help. Despite screaming “He raped me!” repeatedly to other officers present, she was accused of assaulting an officer and jailed for four days, her lawyer said. The district attorney, citing a lack of evidence, declined to prosecute Cates. Only after a federal investigation was he tried and convicted.

It’s a story that doesn’t surprise Penny Harrington, a former police chief in Portland, Oregon, who co-founded the National Center for Women in Policing and has served as an expert witness in officer misconduct cases. She said officers sometimes avoid charges or can beat a conviction because they are so steeped in the system.

“They knew the DAs. They knew the judges. They knew the safe houses. They knew how to testify in court. They knew how to make her look like a nut,” she said. “How are you going to get anything to happen when he’s part of the system and when he threatens you and when you know he has a gun and ... you know he can find you wherever you go?”

___






https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/sep/3 ... essive-fo/


Police release footage detailing 2015 excessive force incident that led to officer’s indictment



https://drfigtree.carto.com/tables/csv_ ... v_1/public

Map of Police Misconduct

https://drfigtree.carto.com/viz/11b5b01 ... public_map



https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... ump-voters


British courts may unlock secrets of how Trump campaign profiled ...
The Guardian
But although the FBI obtained a court order against Facebook to make it disclose evidence, the exact way in which US citizens were profiled and targeted ...






https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... ca-protes/

Cambridge Police release full list of professors arrested at Harvard’s DACA protest yesterday
Two dozen affiliates of the University and area schools were arrested in a shutdown of Massachusetts Ave in Cambridge yesterday
Written by Beryl Lipton
Edited by JPat Brown
In a protest against the removal of protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), over two dozen professors and affiliates of Harvard - as well as Babson College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Boston College - were arrested in Harvard Square yesterday after creating a human chain across Massachusetts Avenue that blocked traffic through the busy Cambridge junction.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Tuesday the Trump administration decision to rescind the policy, which provides a legal avenue for undocumented residents that have lived in the United States despite illegal entries by their guardians.

A list of individuals provided by the Cambridge Police Department includes among those arrested were the Minister of Harvard’s Memorial Church Jonathan L. Walton, 80-year-old Professor Emeritus of Latin American History and Economics John Womack Jr., and members of the school’s history and humanities departments. Arrest logs and reports are among those records that become public record during protests and demonstrations.

According to student newspaper The Harvard Crimson, dozens of students at the University are DACA beneficiaries. The arrested parties will appear before a judge on Friday morning.



https://www.heraldandnews.com/members/f ... 2ad40.html


Just why is the FBI doing the NCAA's dirty work? What are they guilty of?

When exactly did the FBI decide that NCAA regulations were the law of the land? When did it conclude that, in addition to hunting down terrorists and investigating insider trading, its mandate also included protecting amateurism in college sports?

For years, athletic shoe companies like Nike and Adidas paid coaches to have their team wear their brand of sneaker. Were coaches like Rick Pitino, John Thompson and Jim Valvano being bribed by the shoe company representatives? You certainly could frame it that way. But nobody did. Neither law enforcement nor the NCAA ever protested.

In 2006 — to pick just one among the many, many NCAA scandals over the years — two less-than-reputable agents gave the family of the University of Southern California’s star running back, Reggie Bush, gifts and benefits, including the free use of a house, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.


They did so in the expectation that Bush would sign with them when he decided to turn pro. (He didn’t.) Although the university was severely punished by the NCAA, the FBI chose not to look into the matter. Why would it? Giving a star athlete’s family the use of a house may be unseemly, and it may violate NCAA’s rules regarding amateurism, but it doesn’t violate the laws on the United States. Not even close.

Why this?

And yet on Tuesday, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York — that’s Preet Bharara’s old jurisdiction, before the president fired him — announced with great fanfare that it had cracked a college basketball bribery scandal. According to the complaints, four assistant basketball coaches from big-time sports schools — Auburn, the University of South Carolina, the University of Arizona and the University of Southern California — accepted bribes to steer top prospects to certain agents and financial advisers. (An agent was also indicted.)

In addition, James Gatto, the director of global marketing for Adidas Basketball, was charged with bribing top high school players and their families to go to schools like the University of Louisville with which Adidas has a contract to supply shoes and uniforms. In one case he is said to have paid a high schooler $100,000.

I ask again: What law is being violated? The Gatto indictment is particularly perplexing. Last month, Adidas agreed to pay $160 million over 10 years for the University of Louisville to wear its apparel. That’s called a “deal.” But if the company then pays a high school athlete to attend the school, that’s called a “bribe”?

Just another bribe?

If that’s really the criteria, why isn’t a college scholarship a bribe? The college is trying to lure a student by offering money. Is it all that much different from what Adidas’s executive is charged with doing? The only “wrongdoing,” if you can call it that, is that the athlete has violated the NCAA’s amateurism rules.

As for what the assistant coaches have been charged with doing, there is also another word for it: “finder’s fee.” Agents paying assistant coaches to steer top athletes to them is hardly a new phenomenon. Coaches who are caught doing it are invariably punished by the NCAA, and lose their livelihood. But never before has it been considered a criminal matter. Because it’s not.

It is true that the actions for which the coaches and others have been indicted take place in the shadows. And one would hardly call it an example of “best practices” in college coaching. But that’s an issue for the NCAA, not law enforcement.

The NCAA has real power to enforce its rules, because it can destroy the careers of both players and coaches who cross it. And despite the obvious fact that college basketball and football are multi-billion-dollar businesses, with coaches and others being paid millions of dollars, the NCAA remains adamant that no money ever touch a player’s hand. That’s really the crux of the issue here.

What’s a deal?

But imagine if players had, say, the rights to their own likeness and image, or the right to sign autographs, or the right to be paid by a university or an agent directly. Imagine, that is, that the money was finally out of the shadows. If that were to happen, then “bribes” would suddenly be transformed into “deals.” The absurd conflating of NCAA rules and federal law would end. The FBI really shouldn’t be doing the NCAA’s dirty work.

The bureau on Tuesday made the exchange of money that took place between the coaches and other sound truly nefarious. But its incentive is to make those involved appear as guilty as possible.

As this case makes its way through the courts, keep in mind one question: Guilty of what?

Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg View columnist. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. He is the co-author of “Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA.”







http://www.tahlequahdailypress.com/news ... e-nav-next

Some say EPA breaking Trump's ethanol pledge
By Kery Murakami CNHI Washington Reporter

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: COPWATCH

Post by msfreeh »

FBI Octopus

http://www.businessinsider.com/mandalay ... ty-2017-10

The Las Vegas shooting is just the beginning of a nightmare for the ...
Business Insider
"He gave us a clue there that something bad was going to happen," Hudak, a former FBI agent who was previously the director of security at Sheraton and is not ...





http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/arti ... d-succeed/


How to Build Trust and Lead Effectively

bookBuilding good teams starts with having strong relationships based on a foundation of trust. But how does one develop that trust at work or in life? Counterintelligence expert Robin Dreeke, who spent decades as a senior FBI agent, knows how to make strangers trust him enough to be recruited as spies. And it’s not about deception or being a ‘yes’ man. In the book, The Code of Trust: An American Counterintelligence Expert’s Five Rules to Lead and Succeed, Dreeke and co-author Cameron Stauth share simple steps to generating trust from all sorts of people. They recently joined the Knowledge@Wharton show, which airs on SiriusXM channel 111, to discuss the concepts in more detail.








http://kennethtrentadue.com

FBI agents torture Kenny Trentadue until he dies

Kenneth Michael Trentadue
kennethtrentadue.com
Shortly after the Oklahoma City Bombing, Kenneth Michael Trentadue is tortured and strangled in an ... that he was murdered by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and that his death is linked to the Bombing.







https://www.therampageonline.com/news/2 ... ecruiting/


Looking for a Summer Internship? The FBI Is Recruiting

FBI Special Agent Steve Dupre speaks to FCC students in the OAB on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017.
Story By: Anthony De Leon, Reporter
October 11, 2017

If you are looking for a summer 2018 internship, look no further. The FBI is looking for a few good people, and you might be one of them.
According to Steve Dupre, a special agent, who was on the Fresno City College campus on Oct. 3 as part of his state-wide recruiting trip, the FBI is currently looking for students in all types of majors, not just those in law enforcement or with military backgrounds.
Their main goal is to find students with sets of skills and prior working experience that can give the FBI the best candidates not only for the summer program, but for possible career opportunities beyond the program.
In an hour-and-a-half-long speech to an audience of over 50 students and faculty, Dupre spoke about the FBI’s 10-week paid summer internship.
The internship is for the summer of 2018 and Dupre’s goal is to start recruiting in the fall. He said that recruiting trips are a great tool to get applicants interested.
“I would say events like this are fairly successful,” said Dupre. “I would hope to get a handful of students interested that will actually apply and go through the process.”
These recruiting trips have been fairly successful on the FCC campus in the past. FCC has produced two students who have gone through the process of the summer internship program and went on to have careers within the FBI, according to Dupre.
Throughout the event, Dupre went over numerous slides that explained the rigorous process of applying for the internship program.
First, applicants are tasked with filling out the application with a resume attached. The lucky few to be chosen past that point will then interviewed for 45 minutes in front of a panel of three FBI agents.
Applicants will be subjected to answering a 55-page questionnaire with an agent present that gathers information from criminal past to past drug use and even illegal pirating of musical content. There is an extensive list of actions that will make applicants ineligible for this internship and the key is not to lie on the questionnaire because a polygraph test is the final stage of the process.
Dupre’s 90-minute presentations during campus visits also cover more than internship opportunity. The FBI Collegiate Hiring Initiative application period is simultaneous to the FBI Honors Internship application period and is cross-promoted. The presentations explore the Special Agent, Intelligence Analyst, and other job classes so students can begin thinking about potential long-term careers with the FBI.
All this information did not seem to deter the students who felt that they still would like to pursue the opportunity of working for the FBI, including FCC student Molly Xiong. After attending last year’s recruiting trip by Dupre, she is ready to apply this year.
“What I got from this info session was that the FBI is for me because the FBI allows its employees to move from position to position and grow within the organization,” Xiong said.
If Xiong is chosen for the summer program, she will have an opportunity and the challenge of working full time for the FBI for 10 weeks.
“Students will spend 10 weeks working in our office full time, 40 hours a week, and if chosen from Fresno, they can choose to work in our Fresno office,” Dupre said.
Students who are interested in applying have until Oct. 15 to meet the application deadline to have the opportunity to work for the FBI.
“We want to give the experience of the FBI and to see if there might be a fit there,” Dupre said. “If they like us and we like them, it might turn into a full time job.”
Dupre has been involved with the FBI for nearly 26 years, since leaving his accounting job in 1992. As an agent, Dupre has investigated white collar crimes, counter terrorism and organized crime.
Dupre is now the Applicant Coordinator for the Sacramento FBI and is responsible for recruiting efforts in the office. Applicant Coordinators visit college campuses throughout the year to educate students about the diverse job opportunities available within the FBI.
Students who are interested in applying can visit the career and employment center on campus or apply online on the FBI website at https://www.fbijobs.gov




http://www.portlandmercury.com/ask-a-po ... -right-now


Who's in Charge of Federal Weed Policy Right Now?
The Portland Mercury-
The DEA chief who just resigned was a former FBI agent named Chuck Rosenberg. Rosenberg was an Obama appointee, but he was pretty awful as far as ...

Dear Pot Lawyer,
Who are the big guns in federal weed policy right now?
People will tell you different things, but in my opinion the three most important executive chairs governing weed law and policy, aside from President Trump, are 1) the attorney general of the Department of Justice (DOJ), 2) the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and 3) the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Number 1 is, of course, Jeff Sessions, but as of last week, numbers 2 and 3 on that list are goners, which makes the federal landscape for weed stranger than ever.
The DEA chief who just resigned was a former FBI agent named Chuck Rosenberg. Rosenberg was an Obama appointee, but he was pretty awful as far as weed goes. That said, he wasn’t as awful as his predecessor, who maintained that weed is as bad as heroin and was forced out after some DEA sex parties with Columbian cartel ladies. But Rosenberg was pretty bad. He kicked off his tenure by calling medical marijuana “a joke,” which resulted in 160,000 signatures calling for his head, and then opined that marijuana was only “probably not” as dangerous as heroin. Rosenberg had to walk that one back, but he proceeded to say and do other unhelpful things. I won’t try to squeeze them all into this cozy space.
The HHS administrator, of course, was Tom Price, who spent $400,000 flying around on jets while trying to sabotage healthcare. Price had a brutal voting record on weed: Unlike most Republicans, he voted six times against amendments to prevent the DOJ from interfering with state medical cannabis laws, and three times to block Veterans Affairs doctors from recommending cannabis to veterans for medical use. Price, to be sure, was no friend to weed.
So why are the DEA and HHS administrator jobs so important? As to the former, the DEA administrator runs the chief US agency for federal drug law enforcement. The DEA is an agency that sits downline from the Attorney General and arrests lots and lots of people for cannabis crimes, partly through its “Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program.” The HHS administrator, on the other hand, helps make all of that possible. HHS has safeguarded “marijuana” on Schedule 1 of the federal Controlled Substances Act for decades and oversees other prohibitionist agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, which advised last year that marijuana is too dangerous to reschedule. So DEA is action, and HHS is policy.
Right now, nobody is home at either DEA or HHS—just interim administrators whom Trump will replace with sufficiently lousy candidates, on no particular timeline. The confirmation hearings for those individuals may serve as referenda on US law and policy regarding weed, much like the Jeff Sessions hearings in January. In all, this is not a bad time for the cannabis industry and consumers: Any potential crackdown is looking muddled, disjointed, and further away. Meanwhile, states’ rights and cannabis are full speed ahead, including California licensing just around the corner.







http://thehill.com/homenews/house/35491 ... over-grimm


Ryan endorses GOP incumbent over Grimm
The Hill-
Before his stint in Congress, Grimm was a Marine veteran who went on to serve as an undercover FBI agent. He was released from prison in May 2016.




http://www.statesman.com/news/state--re ... qsU5UNyrN/

Did police fire first to trigger biker violence?

Documents: Police did little to stop Waco biker showdown




3:21 p.m Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2017 Texas News & Politics

Families were eating Sunday lunch apparently oblivious to the gathering storm, as dozens of armed bikers from the Cossacks poured onto the restaurant patio to confront the most powerful motorcycle gang in Texas, the Bandidos.

When the first Bandidos rolled in, “the Cossacks began coming off the patio. You could see the tension building up instantly,” Waco Police Detective Jeff Rogers said in an affidavit that is part of a trove of evidence provided to The Associated Press.

Then the shooting started. A SWAT officer said he saw a biker fire first. But evidence isn’t clear who started the deadliest biker shootout in U.S. history that left nine bikers dead and 20 wounded. Police bullets struck four bikers, killing at least two of them. Police arrested 177 bikers and state authorities indicted 154. Jury selection began this week in the first of those trials, against Bandidos Dallas chapter president Christopher “Jake” Carrizal for leading and engaging in organized criminal activity.

Evidence that prosecutors gave to lawyers who are representing the bikers shows local and state authorities had overwhelming intelligence that violence was likely and did little in advance to prevent the meeting. While the strong police presence was aimed at deterring violence, and bikers said they noticed police cars, the uniformed police were mostly on the restaurant perimeter.

The evidence also shows that the Texas Department of Public Safety, which was investigating biker gangs, met three times with Waco police in advance of the Twin Peaks meeting and had “contingency plans,” although the document simply called on officers to follow department policy before firing.

Rogers said that he made several calls before the shooting to the restaurant manager that went unanswered. State police Special Agent Christopher Frost spoke to Twin Peaks owner Jay Patel three days before the showdown and asked if the bikers had booked the whole restaurant. Patel said they had reserved only the patio area. Frost warned of “rising tensions” between the groups. Patel said he was expecting about 400 bikers and had hired three security guards. Frost’s report of the conversation ended with him asking Patel to let him know if any threats were received, but made no mention of any request to Patel to cancel the booking.

One mystery of that day is exactly when federal authorities arrived on scene. The Drug Enforcement Administration had been investigating the Bandidos since January 2013.

A senior official closely involved in federal prosecutions of the bikers insisted in an interview with the AP that federal investigators were not aware of the Twin Peaks meeting or of “any impending violence.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of court cases against the bikers.

A Waco police officer reported that he spoke to an FBI agent at the scene immediately after the shooting. Other federal agents arrived quickly including from the DEA, The U.S. Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

‘A learning experience’

The federal investigation intensified immediately after Waco. Federal agents got approval to wiretap Bandidos national vice president John Portillo a day after the Twin Peaks shootout. Prosecutors later indicted Portillo and former president Jeffrey Pike on racketeering charges, including ordering killings and assaults, and they are scheduled to go on trial next year. Five lower-level Bandidos pleaded guilty to similar charges.

AP reviewed video from surveillance cameras, police dashcams and witness interviews, crime scene photos, contents of more than 100 cellphones and thousands of pages of documents.

The Waco tragedy prompted soul-searching among law enforcement officials nationwide. Two experts on biker gangs who did not work on the Waco investigations, said that unless there is fear of a terrorist attack, authorities have to convince a judge to issue an injunction to stop a public meeting protected by the constitutional guarantee of free speech and assembly.







https://www.policeone.com/chiefs-sherif ... al-NC-OIS/




'A gun is a game-changer': Police chief defends cops in fatal NC OISPolice Chief Kerr Putney again defended his officers Tuesday




FBI Hunting Child Predator
San Angelo LIVE!-
“We know the video has been traded on the Internet, and we know this child is a victim who needs our help.” Susan Romash, special agent, FBI Headquarters.







February 23, 2007

A FBI analyst has been sentenced for having sex with a 9 year old Spotsylvania County girl.

Forty four year old Anthony Lesko entered an Alford Plea to the charges in a Spotsylvania County Circuit to nine counts of felony indecent liberties upon a child.

The plea means that Lesko does not admit guilt but believes that there is enough evidence to convict him. Lesko was sentenced to seven years in prison with 15 years suspended under a plea agreement.

Lesko was also ordered to pay 10 thousand dollars in restitution to cover the girl's mental health counseling. According to police Lesko was engaged in nine sexual encounters with the girl, starting when she was nine years old.

According to the plea Lesko says he was the victim in the case and that the girl initiated the contact.
http://www.newsplex.com/home/headlines/6017521.html


https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... hain-tesla

The Supply Chain Can’t Handle Skyrocketing Demand for Lithium-Ion Batteries
Lithium is “the new gasoline,” but our mining infrastructure isn’t designed to handle the electric car revolution.



Less than 1 percent of cars worldwide run electric, but they're increasingly gobbling up Earth's lithium-ion battery supply. Almost half of these batteries are used in the automotive industry, according to a new a analysis published Wednesday in Joule, the sister journal to Cell that addresses sustainable energy. The study argues that the world needs to start preparing for an influx of demand for these batteries, which are used in smartphones, electric cars, and off-grid systems, like Tesla's Powerwall."Even before [the lithium-ion battery industry] went into these large sectors like automotive and grid it was growing at like a 20 percent growth rate," Gerbrand Ceder, one of the study's authors and a professor of materials science & engineering at the University of California, Berkeley told me over the phone. "Now that we're seeing it be introduced in automotive it's growing even faster."

Lithium-ion battery consumption has grown 73 percent from 2010 to 2014, whereas production has only increased 28 percent, according to the study.

In short, the researchers estimated that over the next 15 years, there will likely be enough raw materials available to meet lithium-ion battery demand. But if we don't work out supply chain issues, production could slow down—essentially delaying some of the world's most promising alternative energy technologies.

The study's authors used publicly available data to try and predict how much of the metals used in lithium-ion batteries would be needed to accommodate future demand for things like electric cars. Aside from the element in their name, lithium-ion batteries also also composed of other elements, including manganese, nickel, graphite, and cobalt.

The researchers found that cobalt—which is also used in iPhones—was most vulnerable to potential supply chain issues. Most of the world's cobalt is found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and is often mined under torturous labor conditions. In 2016, the Washington Post found miners, including children, worked around the clock using hand tools to extract the mineral.


A lithium factory in Chile. Image: Jason Koebler
If cobalt supply does becomes an issue, which the study's authors say could be the case by 2025, it might be possible to produce lithium-ion batteries using other metals, like manganese, molybdenum, chromium, or titanium.

Lithium was deemed to be less vulnerable to supply shortages because it can be mined in different ways, and is found in numerous countries, like Australia and Chile. One of the world's largest supplies of lithium is in Bolivia, in Earth's largest salt flat, Salar de Uyuni, and remains almost entirely untapped (though the government is now testing mining methods there).


Worldwide, lithium is not a major business—total sales are only roughly $1 billion a year. But as battery-powered technologies become even more central to our lives, the element is growing in demand. The investment bank Goldman Sachs called it "the new gasoline."

One thing the analysis didn't take into account are the effects of events like hurricanes, which could disrupt battery supply in the future.

Battery manufacturing is ramping up in part because of Tesla, which recently opened the Gigafactory—the world's largest battery factory—in Nevada. Its expected to produce batteries for 500,000 cars each year, starting in four years.


Outside the Tesla Gigafactory. Image: Jason Koebler
"The basic math was that in order to make half million cars a year, we need every lithium-ion battery factory on earth that makes batteries for phones, laptops, cars, everything, just to achieve that output," Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at the opening of the Gigafactory.

.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: COPWATCH

Post by msfreeh »

http://ticklethewire.com/2017/11/16/pro ... phia-dies/

Professor Who Admitted to FBI Burglary in Philadelphia Dies

A Washington Post story on what the stolen documents revealed.


One of the seven conspirators who revealed a dirty campaign of intimidation by the FBI in March 1971 by stealing a cache of documents in burglary of an bureau office in suburban Philadelphia died on Nov. 12 at his home in Philadelphia.

John C. Raines, a Temple University religion professor, was 84, the Washington Post reports.

During the burglary, the seven conspirators stole documents that showed a campaign of intimidation by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover against civil rights and antiwar activists, communists and other dissenters.

One of the documents revealed an that agents were directed to increasingly interview perceived dissenters “to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.”

The burglars, who called themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, disseminated the stolen documents to newspapers.

The leaked reports lead to the formation of the Senate Church Committee, which revealed widespread abuses among intelligence agencies.

Raines kept the explosive secret for 43 years before revealing his identity to a Washington Post journalist, Betty Medsger, who wrote a book-length account of the break-in, “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI.”



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3638181


Sheriff’s deputy causes uproar over blackface Halloween costume
BY BLAKE ALSUP
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, November 16, 2017, 4:04 PM





http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/m ... 868078001/

Ex-Macomb Twp. official says he complained about Dino Bucci years ago to FBI
Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press Published 5:00 p.m. ET Nov. 16, 2017





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3638440

Keystone pipeline shut down after leaking 210,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Thursday, November 16, 2017, 6:15 PM





https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... urs-labour

We should all be working a four-day week. Here’s why

Ending life-sapping excessive hours was a pioneering demand for the labour movement. For the sake of our health and the economy we need to revisit it



https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... e-out-coal

'Political watershed' as 19 countries pledge to phase out coal
New alliance launched at Bonn climate talks hopes to signal the end of the dirtiest fossil fuel that kills 800,000 people a year with air pollution



https://www.courthousenews.com/californ ... aclu-says/

California Trashes Thousands of Mail-In Ballots, ACLU Says
November 15, 2017 DAVE TARTRE





Link du jour


https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2 ... cizing-fbi





http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/tru ... -1.3637492



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3633687


http://www.publiceye.org/portal/top-civlib-page.php


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3636340


http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3637188



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3637939

Baby boy is first marijuana overdose death, doctors claim
BY MINYVONNE BURKE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, November 16, 2017, 2:33 PM




http://centerformediajustice.org/2017/1 ... activists/

October 18, 2017
ACLU AND CMJ DEMAND FBI RECORDS ON SURVEILLANCE OF BLACK ACTIVISTS
by CMJ
FRESH CONCERNS PROMPTED BY LEAKED FBI DOCUMENT FOCUSING ON NEWLY CREATED CATEGORY CALLED ‘BLACK IDENTITY EXTREMISTS’
October 18, 2017
NEW YORK — The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Media Justice filed a Freedom of Information Act request today asking the FBI to turn over documents related to surveillance of Black people on the basis of a purported shared ideology or “extremism.”

The request was prompted by an FBI document leaked to Foreign Policy magazine. The document is an “Intelligence Assessment” dated August 3 and titled “Black Identity Extremists Likely Motivated to Target Law Enforcement Officers.”

“The FBI’s report is a red flag that the bureau is once again profiling Black activists because of their beliefs and race,” said Nusrat J. Choudhury, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. “The public deserves to know whether the labeling of so-called ‘Black Identity Extremists’ is the latest flawed example in the FBI’s history of using threats — real or perceived — as an excuse to surveil Black people.”

The Constitution prohibits the government from targeting people because of their racial identity or because they take part in First Amendment-protected activities, which include protesting racism and injustice.

“As a member of the Black Lives Matter Network, I am deeply concerned that Jeff Sessions’ FBI and the Trump administration are escalating the use of high-tech tools to profile, police, and punish democratically protected activities of Black protestors despite volumes of evidence of a surge in white nationalist violence,” said Malkia A. Cyril, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice.

Although most individuals who shoot and kill officers are white, and government reports show that white supremacists were responsible for nearly 75 percent of deadly extremist attacks between 2001 and 2016, the FBI appears to be allocating investigative resources to surveil Black people based on a purportedly shared ideology linked to “Black identity” on the basis of six separate incidents.

Today’s FOIA request is here:
https://www.aclu.org/other/foia-request ... -activists

Want to learn more? Read “Is the FBI Setting the Stage for Increased Surveillance of Black Activists?” co-authored by Malkia Cyril, Executive Director, Center for Media Justice, Thaddeus Talbot, and Hugh Handeyside, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project.



http://www.theroot.com/3rd-ohio-pastor- ... 1820501584


3rd Ohio Pastor Charged with Sex Trafficking Underage Girls


The Root-
Jenkins and Haynes were arrested by FBI agents earlier this year and were initially accused of knowingly recruiting, enticing, harboring, transporting, providing ...







https://ordinaryevil.wordpress.com/2015 ... heir-pain/


Four Sisters Who Confronted Their Father and Their Pain
Posted on September 10, 2015

My father, was a Los Angeles Police Officer. He was a child sexual abuser, and child rapist. He used weapons on me to silence me. Edward Rodgers was a former state and federal law enforcement official. His daughter’s story is below:

By Patricia Brennan, March 20 1994

“At times, “Ultimate Betrayal” (a made for TV movie that was broadcast in the 1990’s) is not an easy movie to watch. Based on a true story of incest and physical abuse, it follows four adult sisters as they share their memories and decide to sue their father in civil court.

Their precedent-setting 1990 lawsuit in a Denver court has repercussions on Capitol Hill. If Rep. Patricia Shroeder (D-Colo.) gets her legislation passed, the Child Abuse Accountability Act will establish procedures to allow child abuse victims to claim court-ordered financial restitution by garnisheeing the federal (but not military) pensions of their abusers even years after the abuse occurred. Currently, federal pensions can be garnisheed for alimony and child support.

In the film, Marlo Thomas plays Sharon Rodgers Simone, eldest of seven children in a Colorado Springs, Colo., family. Now a middle-aged wife and mother, she is a fearful person on the edge of a nervous breakdown, a woman who sleeps in her car at night, returning at dawn to help get the children off to school. Her husband is keeping the family together.

When Sharon’s youngest sister, Mary Rodgers LaRocque (Ally Sheedy), calls to ask if she’ll join in a lawsuit against their father, Sharon learns that her three sisters also are leading dysfunctional lives. All four have sought psychological help; three have attempted suicide.

But unlike Sharon, who has no explanation for her undefined fears, the other sisters know why: As children, they say, they were sexually abused by their father. Sharon hears her sisters’ stories but denies that such horrors occurred — certainly, she believes, not to her. As Thomas put it, “Only Sharon had trouble connecting the dots.”

Filled with shame, the sisters — Mary, Susan (Mel Harris) and Beth Medlicott (Kathryn Dowling) — had never confided in one another.

“One of the things that Sue says on the stand is, ‘All my life, I thought this was my shame,’ ” said Thomas. “All of us carry little secrets that have tremendous power because they’re secrets. A secret tears you apart; it stops you. But if you let it out, it has no power. It doesn’t have to be a secret as big as theirs. The secret can be that you just weren’t loved, just the fact that your parents didn’t have time for you.”

But Mary’s secret was a big one, one she had never told. Sheedy, in one of the most touching and unsettling scenes in the movie, recounts to her older sisters the repeated sexual abuse, including a rape that occurred when she was very young and was the only child left at home.

Edward J. Rodgers Jr. said that never happened. Rodgers had been an FBI agent for 27 years when he retired from that career in 1967 and became a child-abuse investigator for the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office (El Paso County) in Colorado Springs. He also served on the board of a group that supports the rights of abused children.

The same year he retired from the FBI, he separated from the mother of his seven children. Two years later, he married a woman with a son and two daughters.

In 1990, long after the Rodgers children were grown, Susan Rodgers Hammond and Sharon Rodgers Simone sued their father, not only to gain money to pay for their therapy, but also hoping for a public accounting and to hear their father acknowledge what happened.

That he would not do. Edward Rogers failed to appear in court, and in a written deposition, he denied that the sexual abuse ever occurred, although he admitted that he had been a physically rough disciplinarian with a quick temper.

Nor would his sons Edward, Steve and John, who are seen in the film being beaten as children, participate in the lawsuit. They are seen in the film berating their sisters in the courtroom at the close of the trial. Sharon’s therapist (played by Eileen Brennan), did testify, as did Sharon’s husband, Patrick Simone.

Without the defendant present, and with no defense counsel, a six-woman Denver jury heard the testimony, considered the evidence for 90 minutes, and awarded them $2.3 million, the largest settlement (at that time) in a case of this nature.

Thus far, said Thomas, Rodgers has never paid a penny of that sum. Schroeder’s bill, introduced in November of 1993, would tap into Rodgers’s FBI pension. Currently, a federal employee’s pension can be garnisheed only for court-ordered child support or alimony.

Thomas pointed out that unlike other cases that have caught public attention recently, “This isn’t a case of false memory or repressed memory,” said Thomas. “The other sisters said, ‘I’ve known this all my life,’ but Sharon wouldn’t allow herself to admit that.”

They related all of this to producer/director Donald Wrye, writer Gregory Goodall and a therapist in an emotional two-day session before the movie went into production. Simone reviewed at least 10 drafts of Goodall’s script. Then the actors were cast.

“The abuse psychologist we spoke to said everybody plays a different role in the family,” said Thomas. “Sue was the one who fought back and got beaten the most. Sharon was the one who tried to make her father calm down and feel loved, met him at the door, brought him a beer. She thought she was helping by helping her father feel loved. But underneath, there was the guilt of the collaborator.

“To me, what was very touching was that she {Sharon} didn’t want to lose her father. Every girl needs her daddy. Sharon told me, ‘There’s a part of me that still loves my father.’ Her fantasy was that they would have this trial, the father would be found guilty, and then they would all go around and help other families. She said, ‘I thought maybe we’d make all this bad become good for somebody.’ ”

Thomas said Sharon eventually came to understand that her vision of family healing was an unlikely scenario. Instead, helping make the movie and working for the Child Abuse Accountability Act have become her way of making “bad become good for somebody.”

Thomas said after she read the script, she gave the movie a lot of thought.

“I’ve never done an ‘abuse movie’ before,” she said. “I put {the script} down and I thought, there’s something very special here. It took a lot of courage for these women to stand up to their father. There’s something basic about having your pain acknowledged, having your reality acknowledged.

“The father had every opportunity to acknowledge his daughters. They asked him to talk, they asked him for money for their therapy, and as a last resort, they sued him to get money for their therapy. But that doesn’t seem to be the real issue. The real issue is, if Dad won’t acknowledge what happened, maybe the jury will. That was the triumph for them.”

_____________

THE DENVER POST – Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire
May 17, 1990
Sisters win sex lawsuit vs. dad $2.3 million given for years of abuse
By Howard Prankratz
Denver Post Legal Affairs Writer

Two daughters of former state and federal law enforcement official Edward Rodgers were awarded $2.319,400 yesterday, after a Denver judge and jury found that the women suffered years of abuse at the hands of their father.

The award to Sharon Simone, 45, and Susan Hammond, 44, followed testimony of Rodgers’ four daughters in person or through depositions, describing repeated physical abuse and sexual assaults by their father from 1944 through 1965.

Rodgers, 72, who became a child abuse expert after retiring from the FBI and joining the colorado Springs DA’s office, failed to appear for the trial. But in a deposition taken in March, Rodgers denied ever hitting or sexually abusing his children.

He admitted that he thought of himself as a “domineering s.o.b. who demanded strict responses from my children, strict obedience.” But it never approached child abuse, Rodgers said. “Did I make mistakes? Damn right I did, just like any other father or mother…”

Thomas Gresham, Rodger’s former attorney, withdrew from the case recently after being unable to locate his client. Rodgers recently contacted one of his sons from a Texas town along the Mexican border. Gresham said his last contact with Rodgers was on April 24.

The sisters reacted quietly to the verdict, and with relief that their stories of abuse had finally been told.

“I feel really good that I’ve gone public with this,”Hammond said. “I am a victim, the shame isn’t mine, the horror happened to me. I’m not bad.
“My father did shameful and horrible things to me and my brothers and sisters. I don’t believe he is a shameful and horrible man, but he has to be held accountable,” Hammond added.

The lawsuit deeply divided the Rodgers family, with Rodgers’ three sons questioning their sister’s motives.

Immediately after the verdict, son Steve Rodgers, 37, reacted angrily, yelling at his sisters in the courtroom.

Later, Rodgers said he loves his father and stands by him. He said his sisters had told him their father had to be exposed the way Nazi war criminals have been exposed.

“In a way I’m angry with my father for not being here. But I’m sympathetic because he would have walked into a gross crucifixion,” Rodgers said.

Steve Rodgers never denied that he and his siblings were physically abused, but disputed that his father molested his sisters.
Before the jury’s award, Denver District Judge William Meyer found that Rodger’s conduct toward Simone and Hammond was negligent and “outrageous.”

Despite the length of time since the abuse, the jury determined the sisters could legally bring the suit. The statute of limitations for a civil suit is two years, but jurors determined that the sisters became aware of he nature and extent of their injury only within the last two years, during therapy.

The jury then determined the damages, finding $1,240,000 for Simone and 1,079,000 for Hammond.

The sisters had alleged in their suit filed last July that Rodgers subjected his seven children to a “pattern of emotional, physical, sexual and incestual abuse.”

As a result of the abuse, the women claimed their emotional lives had been left in a shambles, requiring extensive therapy for both and repeated hospitalizations of Hammond, who was acutely suicidal. Simone developed obsessive behavior and became so unable to function she resigned a position with a Boston-based college.

Despite the judgment yesterday, Rodgers cannot be criminally charged. the statue of limitations in Colorado for sexual assault on children is 10 years.
Rodgers, who worked for the FBI for 27 years, much of it in Denver, became chief investigator for the district attorney’s office in Colorado Sp;rings. during his employment at the DA’s office from 1967 until 1983, he became a well-known figure in Colorado Springs, and lectured and wrote about child abuse both locally and nationwide.

He wrote a manual called ” A Compendium — Child Abuse by the National College of District Attorney’s,” and helped put together manuals on child abuse for the New York state police and a national child abuse center.

__________________________________________________________

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... c96036432/

http://www.headwatersproductions.com/pr ... icle5.html








https://networks.h-net.org/node/5299/re ... old-bureau


Schorman on Cecil, 'Branding Hoover's FBI: How the Boss's PR Men Sold the Bureau to America'

Author:
Matthew Cecil
Reviewer:
Rob Schorman

Matthew Cecil. Branding Hoover's FBI: How the Boss's PR Men Sold the Bureau to America. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016. 344 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7006-2305-1.

Reviewed by Rob Schorman (Miami University of Ohio Regionals)
Published on H-FedHist (October, 2017)
Commissioned by Caryn E. Neumann

Matthew Cecil, in Branding Hoover's FBI: How the Boss's PR Men Sold the Bureau to America, lays out a case that the prestige and public trust enjoyed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during most of J. Edgar Hoover’s tenure resulted not so much from the agency’s investigative prowess as from a finely tuned public relations apparatus that began operation only a few years after the term “public relations” was coined. As Cecil puts it: “The bureau practiced, at an early stage in the development of the field, sophisticated public relations techniques on a nationwide scale” (p. 15). Cecil sees the success of this effort as the achievement of specific, talented individuals. He suggests that had they not been on the scene, the agency would have fared much differently in the public estimation from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, and that had they not departed, the agency might have avoided its precipitous fall from grace in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In-depth coverage is given to the careers of both Louis Nichols and Cartha “Deke” DeLoach, the two most prominent overseers of the agency’s PR efforts, the former from 1935 to 1957 and the latter from 1959 to 1970. Nichols established the template for agency policies, and the book details the manner in which he led efforts to control its image in popular radio shows, fought to head off critical findings from a presidential commission, strategically leaked information on alleged Communist sympathizers to force them from public office, and recruited liberal “moles” to offer intelligence about such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union. DeLoach followed the template but with a different style. Whereas Nichols was a sometimes subtle manipulator of a vast network of media contacts—both friend and foe—DeLoach focused his attention on “managing upward” and influencing decision makers in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Justice Department, and White House (p. 263).

Nichols and DeLoach are well-known figures, although their methods have never been examined with such care. Perhaps even more valuable, the book provides an equally detailed appraisal of the contributions of agency staff members who are never more than bit players in standard FBI histories. These include Milton Jones, who for almost thirty years was personally responsible for maintaining the content standards for thousands of letters, memos, speeches, articles, and reports the agency produced, and Fern Stukenbroeker, who among other things was the chief ghostwriter for publications that appeared under Hoover’s name, ranging from law journal articles to the best-selling book Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It (1958), which sold more than two million copies. The book includes readable character sketches of these people and many others with whom they interacted, along with analysis of their activities.

Cecil’s work has an impressive research base, most notably an extensive review of the FBI’s own files of correspondence, memos, and handwritten notes. At its peak, the FBI department responsible for public relations employed almost two hundred people and in a single year responded to about seven thousand letters a month, placed dozens of articles in national magazines, wrote hundreds of speeches and official statements for bureau employees, and performed thousands of “name checks” for the White House. For the network television series The FBI (1965-74), it rewrote scripts, vetted cast and crew members (blackballing “subversives”), and had two agents permanently assigned to the set while filming occurred. Censure, probation, demotion, and reassignment were penalties imposed on agency personnel for offenses as small as a typographical error on a letter that went out on the agency’s letterhead.

The book also covers the tsunami of criticism that led to a decline in the FBI’s reputation at the end of Hoover’s tenure. By that time, the health and vigor of Hoover and his top aide, Clyde Tolson, were in decline, and Nichols and DeLoach had moved on. Cecil states: “It seems likely that the Bureau could have weathered the kinds of public relations challenges it faced in the late 1960s and early 1970s had its leadership team been at full strength” (p. 252). I suppose that’s possible—certainly he provides examples of inept and inadequate response by the agency during this period. He also notes, however, that by the late 1960s the “FBI represented mainstream 1950s values in a counterculture America” (p. 214), and one wonders if any PR effort could have countered the rising suspicion and scrutiny of public institutions that were fueled by civil rights and Vietnam protests, the culture of scandal and investigative reporting that began to permeate Washington media, and the collapse of the Cold War consensus that had dominated public perception and discourse since World War II.

Branding Hoover’s FBI is well done in every respect. The book is well written and organized, its use of both primary and secondary sources is excellent, and overall its argument is convincing. It is a valuable addition to our understanding of the internal workings of the FBI.








Special Needs Adults Get VIP Treatment At Philly's FBI Field Office
CBS Philly-
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — For FBI agents, suiting up for the task at hand is an everyday experience. For the rest of us, it's something special. “It's my first time ...




http://www.cannoncourier.com/fbi-agent- ... -cms-17029

FBI agent gives advice to MTSU criminal justice students

November 16, 2017

Keith A. Johnson, security specialist for the Security Division of the FBI, addresses MTSU criminal justice majors at a Nov. 14 combined class.
MURFREESBORO -- "Take yourself out of your comfort zone. That's the only way you grow."

That was the message Keith A. Johnson conveyed to eager MTSU criminal justice majors in a combined class Nov. 14 in the College of Education Building. It was a message borne of experience.

In more than 20 years of service with the FBI, Johnson's assignments included gangs and organized crime, cybercrime, security for the bureau's 56 field offices and forensic digital media investigations. Those assignments took him to 46 of the 50 states.

"Your mind is your only limitation when you're working for us," said Johnson, referring to the FBI.

Johnson's work as director of the bureau's Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory in Chicago led to the impeachment, arrest and conviction of former Illinois Gov. Rob Blagojevich. Gleaning information from computers was critical to the case.

"We've had criminals try to hide information on PlayStations," said Johnson. "We found it. We look at everything, and we have software that can pull (deleted information) back. There's no way to fool the system. You think you deleted it because you put it in the trash bin. You've emptied it. It's recycled. You think it's gone. I can get it back."

Blagojevich, who tried to obtain bribes in exchange for political appointments, including an appointment to Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat, was removed from office in 2009. He is serving a 14-year term in a federal prison.

While the FBI does not hire new employees directly out of college, Johnson did offer what he called "pearls of wisdom" for prospective new agents. He rattled off a litany of anecdotes about applicants who sabotaged their interviews with their poor command of the English language.

"We want to understand how well you can write because, when you go to court, you have to testify about what you've put on paper," said Johnson. "And all the defense attorney needs to do is cause reasonable doubt."

Jace Gallagher, a law enforcement major from Hermitage, Tennessee, said he learned a great deal from Johnson's presentation.

"This lecture was very informative," said Gallagher. "It made me think about my days back in the Navy." Gallagher said he served in the U.S. Navy from 2012 to 2015.

Natalia Hammond, a global studies major and homeland security minor from Spring Hill, Tennessee, said she appreciated the encouraging nature of Johnson's lecture.

"Sometimes if you're in a college environment, you really have to tell yourself you can do this and to not give up," Hammond said.

Professor Lynda Williams' Introduction to Criminal Justice class and assistant professor Elizabeth Quinn's Introduction to Emergency and Disaster Management class combined for Johnson's lecture, but all criminal justice students were welcome to attend.








https://altgov2.org/fbi-media-guide/


FBI / FOIA
[exclusive] FBI Media Relations Guide
BY RUSS KICK · PUBLISHED JULY 12, 2017 · UPDATED SEPTEMBER 18, 2017

Media Relations at FBIHQ and in Field Offices: Policy Guide [PDF / 42 pages]

Released via my FOIA request, this is the FBI’s guide to dealing with the media. Its focus is the news media, although it also gets into the entertainment media, press releases, social media, and related topics.

AltGov2 is a one-person operation opening
the lid on official secrecy. Please donate.

Related FBI documents:

Social Media and Other Electronic Information Sharing Technologies [AltGov2]

Community Outreach in Field Offices [Brennan Center]




https://altgov2.org/fbi-media-guide/


http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/Feds/m ... ative.html


The FBI, COINTELPRO, and the Alternative Press

by Chip Berlet


The FBI in the 1960s and 1970s carried out a large-scale campaign of intelligence gathering and disruption specifically aimed at crippling the alternative and underground press. The FBI targeted what they called “New Left” publications along with old-line Communist periodicals and underground newspapers as part of its COINTELPRO program. These publica­tions were seen by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover as a threat to democracy, so he ordered his agents to violate the First Amendment rights of alternative journalists to suppress their newspapers.

Surveillance of the Underground Press Syndicate was documented through a lawsuit filed by former UPS kingpin the late Tom Forcade, whose files show that the UPS was subjected to mail openings, physical office stakeouts, staff surveillance, and the obtaining and copying of bank records, credit card records, postage meter records, car rental records, telephone call records, traffic ticket records, income tax records, and more. Some of the UPS files which resurfaced in the FBI files include documents that appear to have been obtained through illegal black‑bag jobs.

The Yipster Times file shows the FBI obtained its mailing list and harassed subscribers through interviews and heavy‑handed investigations. At one point certain Times staffers were considered such a threat to national security that their names were added to the FBI’s ADEX (Administrative Index) list of activists slated to be rounded up in case of insurrection. The publisher and a staff member of the L.A. Free Press were also ADEX’d.

Disruption

Using anonymous letters to increase factionalism among leftist groups was a popular COINTELPRO tactic and the alternative press was no exception. In 1968, Liberation News Service experienced a staff split and Hoover used the occasion to suggest an operation against the news service. “Recent issues of the under­ground press have carried articles relating to the split which has developed within the Liberation News Service (LNS),” wrote Hoover in a memo to the New York office. “It would seem this is an excellent opportunity to take advantage of the split to further disrupt the underground press and to attack the New Left.”

The New York FBI office promptly invented a letter titled “And Who Got the Cookie Jar?” which ridiculed the situation and criticized the LNS staffers who left the New York office for a farm in Massachusetts. “The letter is written in the jargon of the New Left, necessitating the use of a certain amount of profanity,” admitted the New York FBI office apologetically.

The letter, signed “a former staffer,” was circulat­ed among various progressive groups and alternative newspapers in an attempt to win support for the New York faction. At the time both factions were publishing under the name LNS. “A real kindergarten performance by all concerned,” said the letter, which called one of LNS’s founders, who had moved to Massachusetts, “a bit of a nut.” The letter went on to charge the farm-bound crowd with leaving the “scene of the action in exchange for assorted ducks and sheep,” and turning LNS “from an efficient movement news service into a complete mess.”

When LNS-New York survived the split and continued publishing, the FBI contacted the Internal Revenue Service, which obligingly began auditing LNS for possible tax law violations. The FBI used at least two other federal agencies in its vendetta against the alternative press.

Progressive radio station WBAI in New York came under FBI scrutiny after broadcasting portions of a Communist convention. The FBI began monitoring its bank account and contacted the Federal Communications Commission. The San Diego FBI office requested that postal inspectors be used to harass the San Diego Door and the Teaspoon, along with a newsletter published by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at San Diego State College.

Reports submitted to a Senate committee investi­gating intelligence abuse have indicated that FBI funds were used to finance paramilitary operations by two right‑wing groups in San Diego. These groups physical­ly attacked the Street Journal, destroying during one assault over $5,000 worth of typesetting and production equipment. After they forced the Journal out of business, the San Diego Door became a target, with equipment vandalized and cars firebombed.

The San Antonio FBI office took credit for coercing a printer into refusing to continue publishing the Rag, in Austin, Texas. Printer cancellations were a constant headache for underground papers, and now it appears they were induced in part by visits from friendly feds.

The New York office tried a more subtle approach to disruption by contacting the shipper who transported bulk copies of the Black Panther Party newspaper into the city. After the contact, the firm raised its rates to the highest legal fee. “This will amount to an increase of around $300 weekly in shipments to New York City alone,” gloated an FBI memo, which accurately noted, “This counterintelligence endeavor ... will definitely have an adverse effect on the amount of incendiary propaganda being published by the BPP…. The group suffers from a constant shortage of funds.”

Most alternative publications were operated on a shoestring budget in the 1960s and early 1970s, and there is little doubt that the added expense caused by FBI‑inspired tax audits, postal hassles, price hikes, evictions, and arrests forced many publications into insolvency. Distribution hassles were frequent among underground newspapers and the FBI played its part by encouraging local authorities to enforce vague and usually unconstitutional ordinances concerning pornog­raphy, obscenity, and hawking without a license. Details of this type of FBI role are incomplete but one incident in Milwaukee shows how the FBI succeeded in tipping the scales against two undergrounds.

“On 12/6/68, a copy of Kaleidoscope and a copy of The Open Door were anonymously mailed to Miss Lauren Dixon, Principal of Homestead High School, with certain objectionable state­ments and pictures indicat­ed in red pencil,” reports an FBI memo. A few weeks later Homestead High instituted a new dress code which forbade pupils from distributing “newspapers, maga­zines and pamphlets without permission from the administration,” according to a news story that quoted the principal saying both underground publica­tions could possibly have a bad effect on students.

One suggestion for disruption that was apparent­ly turned down by Hoover was to spray alternative newspapers with a chemical stench. “A very small amount of this chemical disburses a most offensive odor,” wrote the Newark FBI office, “and its potency is such that a large amount of papers could be treated in a matter of seconds. It could be prepared by the FBI laboratory for use in an aerosol‑type dispenser.”

If You Can’t Beat Them ...

On several occasions the FBI used alternative publications for counterintelligence operations by placing advertisements or submitting ersatz letters to the editor. In Los Angeles, for instance, the local FBI office concocted a byzantine plan to use the Los Angeles Free Press in an attempt to cause friction within the Commu­nist Party USA. This escapade characterizes the zany and sopho­moric side of COINTELPRO.

In 1966, the chairperson of the southern California branch of the Communist Party, Dorothy Healey, prepared a report that was “critical of CPUSA leader­ship,” according to FBI documents. The “Healey Report” was allegedly suppressed by CPUSA officials and the FBI decided to print up copies of the supposed­ly secret report and distribute them. By circulating the report, the FBI hoped to embarrass the CPUSA leadership and cause dissension in the ranks.

The Los Angeles bureau was authorized to place the following advertisement in the personal classified section of the L.A. Free Press:

Banned by the Communist Party National Secre­tariat. Get your copy of Dorothy Healey’s contro­versial report. Send $.15 in stamps to cover mailing costs to Ivanova care of Free Press.

The FBI chose the Free Press to reach its target audience of leftists because it was ultra-liberal and its classifieds already contained unusual notices. As the FBI observed in a memo: “A good portion of the paper is devoted to a ‘personal’ section of classified advertise­ments. The wording of these ‘personals’ is quite uninhibited and ranges from invitations to sex orgies and LSD parties to guitar lessons.”

The dubious contention was that such ads were read by Communists and others who would be interest­ed in the Healey report. There was more, however, to the operation than just distribution.

The ad was signed “Ivanova” because the FBI wanted Communist officials to believe that the report was being circulated by “disgruntled comrades.” To enhance this aspect of the operation the ad was placed by a “Russian speaking agent and an experienced, older female clerk with a heavy Russian accent” who were instructed to converse in Russian while placing the ad. Free Press ad takers were supposed to immediately assume the ad placers were dissident members of the CPUSA.

The FBI figured that Communist Party officials would contact the Free Press and ask who placed the ad. The Free Press would then tell them about the Russian‑speaking duo. The Communist officials would suspect unhappy party members, and this would “cause consternation among local comrades ... cause further internal dissension within the Party and possibly have internal ramifications,” predicted an FBI memo.

Now, you have to be pretty dumb to think Ameri­can Communists speak with a “heavy Russian accent,” or that the Freep staff would care who placed a particular advertisement, especially when the weirdest casualties of the hip scene frequently flowed into the Freep offices to place improbable sex ads. Nonetheless, J. Edgar Hoover was delighted with the plan, saying, “This suggestion by Los Angeles appears most imagina­tive and should have disruptive results.”

The ads appeared in the 2/17/67 and 2/24/67 issues of the Free Press. There is no indication whether or not “Ivanova” got any requests for the suppressed report from disgruntled Communists, fellow travelers, or sex-cult fetishists who misunderstood the ad.

Signed: A Friend

The FBI sent phony letters to the editor to com­mercial and college newspapers, as well as underground publications. The letters generally revealed embarrass­ing information or made false charges against progressives. The letters were usually signed with aliases or phrases such as “A True Progressive.”

When Angela Davis was arrested with Panther David Poindexter in New York in 1970, the FBI sent letters to the Village Voice and Ebony magazine. The FBI revealed a certain lack of cool by identifying both as “published by and primarily for Negroes, but in any case the letters painted Black Panther Party leader Huey P. Newton as an informer who was paid to rat on Angela by the feds. The letter to the Voice reads

Sister Angela is in jail. Poindexter is free. Huey Newton is free. David P. [Hilliard, a Panther leader] is a dumb‑head and a hop‑head. Forget him. But Huey is smart. Gets along well with the MAN. The question is: Did this cat bank five big bills lately ... a gift from the federal pigs?

The letter is signed “Concerned Brother.” Hoover instructed the agents sending the letters to “Take the usual precautions to insure that action taken cannot be traced to the Bureau.”

Wanna Buy a Paper?

In Charlotte, North Carolina, the FBI published a newsletter distributed in Winston-Salem called the Black Community News Service. The “newssheet” was aimed at disrupting the Black Panther Party and winning readers away from the Panther newspaper. The ostensible publisher of the newsletter was a fictitious FBI front called the “Southern Vanguard Revolutionary Party,” which the FBI hoped would be seen as “a black group at Winston‑Salem of a slightly higher calling than” the Black Panther Party.

New York Press Service, a photo agency that sent photographers to demonstrations and then offered the photos to alternative publications, also sent pictures to the FBI. The photo agency was subsidized by the FBI with $10,000 between 1967 and 1969 before the owner surfaced at the Chicago conspiracy trial as a govern­ment witness. Even the staff photographers had not been aware of the FBI connection.

Ever alert for an opportunity, the FBI seized the revelations about New York Press Service that appeared in the New York Post, and used them in a plan to discredit Liberation News Service. An FBI-authored letter signed “Howie” was sent to the Student Mobiliza­tion Com­mit­tee. The letter asked, “How has the Liberation News Service survived these many years?” and supplied the answer: “federal bread constitutes its main support.” The letter pointed out that “LNS is in an ideal position to infiltrate the movement at every level” and ended with a P.S.: “LNS represen­tatives all carry police press cards too.”

The FBI apparently produced bogus editions of Liberation News Service in the FBI laboratory by matching the paper, ink, and format and thus creating releases that contained counterintelligence misinfor­ma­tion in rewritten stories. One such release was used to discredit a leader of the Revolutionary Union in San Francisco. In another incident, the Cincinnati office proposed sending LNS a phony message from the Weather Underground containing retouched photo­graphs showing an activist supposedly passing informa­tion to a police agent. The note charged the activist with being a police spy. It is not clear from the FBI files if the plan was carried out.

The San Francisco office proposed printing “bogus copies of the Revolutionary Union (RU) pamphlet, ‘The Red Papers,’ to discredit the organization by changing the content and distributing the new version “to Marxists, Black militants, SDS, left publications, etc. throughout the country.” The Chicago office called the idea “outstanding” and suggested the alterations “distort the political line of the RU and, in fact, turn it into a revisionist line in a subtle manner.”

Avid Readers with Avaricious Appetites

The bureau found the alternative press to be a valuable source of information about progressive activities and subscribed through aliases to many newspapers and news services. It learned about a growing feud between SDS and the Black Panther Party through the Guardian, which it read avidly, and alerted its agents to encourage the split. The San Francisco bureau began its campaign against the Revolutionary Union after reading advertisements placed by RU in TheBlack Panther and the Movement.

A letter to the St. Louis bureau suggests the agent in charge instruct an informant to “review a number of locally available publications of New leftists, Negro militants, underground-type organizations, and other extremists in an effort to develop targets of intelligence interest with whom he may initiate correspondence.”

The FBI maintained a clip file of underground publications and sent clips to commercial newspaper reporters for background, and to parents and school officials to encourage them to take action against activists. Clippings and entire publica­tions were also distributed to various political groups to cause factional­ism. When the RU published “The Red Papers” the FBI had its San Francisco office send copies to the political groups whose ideology was criticized in the pamphlet. “San Francisco, for addition­al disruption, should anonymously forward copies of ‘The Red Papers’ pamphlet to one or several of the addresses listed in PLP (Progressive Labor Party) publica­tion, Progressive Labor. Appropriate sarcastic or warning notes should be included seeking to aggravate as well as alert PLP to the RU attack,” said the memo.






http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opin ... story.html


FBI needs to explain its war on 'black identity extremists'
Chicago Tribune
A Black Lives Matter protest, held in response to the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, both fatally shot by police officers, takes ...






http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-dire ... ng-2017-11



Former FBI director represented Russian firm at center of major money-laundering probe



Business Insider-


The Russian-owned real-estate firm Prevezon earlier this year hired former FBI Director Louis Freeh to help settle a major money-laundering ...



https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/th ... nt-add-up/

The FBI’s Explanation For Why It Released Less Crime Data Doesn’t Add Up
By Clare Malone and Jeff Asher

Filed under The Trump Administration







http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/11/ ... icles.html

Judge Andrew Napolitano: The incredible new chapter in the Hillary Clinton chronicles


The Department of Justice will soon commence an investigation to determine whether there should be an investigation (you read that nonsense correctly) of a scandal involving the Clinton Foundation and a company called Uranium One. It appears that FBI decisions made during the time that Hillary Clinton was being investigated for espionage will also be investigated to see whether there should be an investigation to determine whether she was properly investigated. (Again, you read that nonsense correctly.)

Only the government can relate nonsense with a straight face. Here is the back story.

When President Donald Trump fired FBI Director Jim Comey last spring, the attorney general’s stated purpose for recommending the firing was Comey’s dropping the ball in the investigation of Clinton's email when she was secretary of state. After a year of investigating her use of her own computer servers to transmit and store classified materials instead of using a government server to do so -- and notwithstanding a mountain of evidence of her grossly negligent exposure of secret and top-secret materials, which constitutes the crime of espionage -- the FBI director decided that because no reasonable prosecutor would take the case, it should be dropped. Weeks later, the DOJ ratified Comey’s decision.


At the same time that Clinton was failing to safeguard state secrets, she was granting official State Department favors to donors to her family’s charitable foundation. There are dozens of examples of this so-called “pay to play,” the most egregious of which is the Uranium One case. This involved a Canadian businessman and friend of former President Bill Clinton's, Frank Giustra, who bundled donations from various sources that totaled $148 million, all of which Giustra gave to the Clinton Foundation.






http://news4sanantonio.com/news/local/a ... ata-to-fbi

Congress will not hold FBI accountable for allowing Army to stop reporting crime data
Army acknowledges failures to report crime data to FBI
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army’s top general says his service failed in a “significant” number of cases to report soldiers’ criminal history to the FBI.
Gen. Mark Milley told reporters that the Army is still reviewing the extent of the problem. Last week the Air Force acknowledged that it had not submitted to the FBI — as was required — the 2012 assault conviction of the former airman who killed 26 people in a Texas church on Nov. 5.






http://www.latimes.com/politics/washing ... story.html

Senior Democrat wants information from FBI on security clearance ...
Los Angeles Times-
Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) wants the FBI to turn over information to Congress on any security clearance application filed by Michael Flynn Jr., the son of President ...




http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/3686 ... violations

A former Maui police officer was escorted to Oahu on Thursday to face charges of civil rights violations and tampering with a witness.

The charges against Anthony Maldonado come after a years-long investigation, and stem from a September 2015 traffic stop.

During the stop, state court documents say, he stole $1,800 from the driver.

The next day, the driver apparently notified Maui police, triggering an investigation.





http://www.cleveland.com/lakewood/index ... ath-n.html


Lakewood Police Chief's death-notification app idea attracts FBI's attention

Updated 8:19 AM; Posted 8:15 AM




https://www.thenation.com/article/it-is ... president/



It Is Time to Impeach the President
Five articles of impeachment have been proposed by members of Congress who say there are sufficient grounds to act.
By John Nichols





http://www.11alive.com/article/news/nat ... c3b1b587bc




Men who allege they were framed by crooked Chicago cop get mass exoneration
Judge exonerates 15 men arrested by corrupt Chicago cop

Published: 3:30 PM EST November 16, 2017


CHICAGO — A judge on Thursday threw out convictions against 15 men who allege they were framed by a corrupt former Chicago Police sergeant and his underlings who demanded protection payoffs from residents and drug dealers in a city housing project.

Judge LeRoy Martin Jr. agreed to dismiss the charges after Cook County prosecutors confirmed at a brief hearing that they no longer had faith in the credibility of convictions brought against the men who were arrested on various drug charges from 2003 to 2008 by the rogue cop Ronald Watts and officers under his charge.


“In good conscience we could not see these convictions stand,” said Mark Rotert, who heads the Cook County State's Attorney's conviction integrity unit.

The mass exoneration is the latest mark on the Chicago Police Department, which has come under fire in the city’s black and Latino communities for unnecessarily using deadly force, police brutality and mistreatment of minorities.

The U.S. Justice Department issued a scathing report in the final days of the Obama administration about the Chicago Police Department finding that the city’s police force is beset by widespread racial bias, poor training and feckless oversight of officers accused of misconduct.

Following the dismissal of charges against the 15 men on Thursday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a joint statement that they had “zero tolerance for abuse, misconduct or any unlawful actions” by law enforcement. More convictions could potentially be overturned as the integrity unit says it will review any credible complaints brought by people convicted of crimes that were investigated by Watts.

“The actions of Ronald Watts must be condemned by all of us, and we will continue our work to ensure the abuses of the past are never repeated in the future,” Emanuel and Johnson said in the statement.

The dismissals come two months after lawyers for the 15 men filed a petition on their behalf asking that their drug convictions be overturned because they had been framed by Watts.


Watts and another officer, Kallat Mohammed, pleaded guilty on federal charges in 2013 for stealing money from a drug courier who'd been working as an FBI informant. Watts received a 22-month sentence and Mohammed was sentenced to 18-months in federal prison for the shakedowns.

But the petitioners said Watts and his officers had terrorized residents of the Ida B. Wells public housing complex, a massive complex on the city’s South Side that is now shuttered, for years before they were caught by federal agents.

The petitioners also allege that several other officers, beyond Mohammed, took part in the scheme to plant drugs on innocent residents and drug dealers who refused to pay protection money.

Rotert said after reviewing the cases prosecutors concluded that the police officers were “not being truthful” and lost confidence in the arresting officers’ reports and testimony.

Rotert declined to speak about specific evidence that led State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to move to ask the courts to drop the charges. But he noted that his unit saw a troubling trend of defendants complaining early during their prosecution that drugs had been planted on them by Watts and his officers.

The 15 men, who had 18 convictions connected to Watts and his officers, join five others whose drug-related convictions connected to the officers that were previously overthrown. All the men were African-American and received sentences ranging from probation to nine years in prison.

Joshua Tepfer, the lead attorney representing the 15 men in the case, said police ignored complaints by residents about Watts and his officers.

One petitioner who had has conviction overturned, Leonard Gipson, 36, alleged that it was common knowledge in Ida B. Wells housing complex that Watts demanded payments from drug dealers and would plant drugs on men in the project — some who say they were not dealers — if they refused to pay him bribes.

He filed a complaint with the police department after he was arrested in 2003 and says Watts planted drugs on him. Four months later with charges still pending in the first arrest, he said Watts arrested him and planted drugs on him once again.


“Everybody knew if you’re not going to pay Watts, you were going to jail,” Gipson said.

In fact, Watts had been on the FBI’s radar for several years before he was finally arrested along with a junior officer Kallat Mohammed in 2012 after they were caught shaking down an FBI informant.

A September 2004 FBI report included portions of an interview by federal agents with an individual who alleged “Watts gets IBW (Ida B. Wells) drug dealers to pay him ‘to work’ (sell drugs) in the housing project. If the payments are made to Watts, he will in turn allow the drug dealers to continue to sell drugs.” The interview surfaced as a result of 2014 federal lawsuit filed by a man who alleged he had been framed by Watts, according to court filings.

Tepfer says Watts and his crew made about 500 arrests from 2003 to 2008 that led to convictions. He said that he and his team are currently vetting as many as two dozen additional convictions of people who said they had drugs planted on them by Watts or his officers for refusing to pay them off.

“These convictions stick with you,” Tepfer said. “The time that you served you can’t get back. It affects your ability to get jobs, housing, to get public aid…

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: COPWATCH

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.kentuckynewera.com/web/artic ... 2f632.html


HPD officer resigns amid sexual misconduct allegations
Pryor says law needs to change when it comes to police officers who abuse authority.


Nov 21, 2017
A Hopkinsville police officer resigned Monday after being charged with official misconduct for allegedly not taking a woman to jail in exchange for sex.

Former officer Daniel Gray was charged by Kentucky State Police with two counts of first-degree official misconduct. According to a criminal complaint, on Nov. 25, 2016, Gray reportedly served an arrest warrant for a probation violation, but instead of taking the woman to directly to Christian County Jail, he drove her to the Fairview Inn in Hopkinsville where the two engaged in intimate relations. He claimed he was taking her to get clothing and then took her to jail. The woman stated there were multiple sexual encounters with Gray which she understood to be in exchange for him not arresting her, the warrant states.

On another occasion, Aug. 21, Gray and an officer trainee reportedly found the woman at the American Inn and Gray declined to serve warrants on her. The report states his reasoning was that she had been providing good information to him.

Gray reportedly admitted to sexual relations with the woman on two occasions. The woman is not named in the report and it's Kentucky New Era policy to not name provide names of victims when allegations of sexual misconduct are made.

According to Chief Clayton Sumner, who called the Monday evening news conference, he became aware of the allegations Sept. 15. After checking body camera footage to ensure the encounters could have taken place, he contacted KSP to investigate and placed Gray in an administrative role pending the investigation. Gray was not allowed to drive a cruiser or wear a uniform during that time, Sumner said, assigning him to duties on post only.

“I want people to understand, officers of this department are being held accountable, plain and simple,” Sumner said, adding allegations like this gave a black-eye to the profession.

“No one’s going tolerate it.”

KSP served the arrest warrant Monday evening and booked Gray into Christian County Jail. He was later released on his own recognizance, according to the jail website.

According to a KSP news release, the investigation is on-going.

Why official misconduct and not third-degree rape?

First-degree official misconduct is a Class A misdemeanor in Kentucky, punishable by up to 12 months in jail. Had Gray been a corrections worker he potentially could have been charged with third-degree rape. That also applies to a teacher, coach or relative if the victim is a minor. Kentucky law does not appear to include police officers in the category of "person in a position of authority" or special trust.

Commonwealth's Attorney Lynn Pryor said the law needed to change and had this to say about police officers accused of abusing their authority:

"In any criminal sex offense involving two adults, the Kentucky Revised Statutes require 'forcible compulsion' unless one person is incapable of consent. KRS outlines specific reasons, within each degree of rape and sodomy, of how an individual would be considered incapable of consent. In first-degree cases, an adult victim must be physically helpless. For second-degree, it requires a victim to be mentally incapacitated. And, for third-degree, there are additional options. An adult would be considered a victim of third-degree rape or sodomy if they (1) have an intellectual disability, or (2) are incarcerated, under the supervision or treatment of the Department of Corrections, Department of Juvenile Justice, or a detention facility. With regard to (2), the accused must be a jailer or an employee, contractor, vendor or volunteer of DOC, DJJ or a detention facility or of an entity contracting with any of these departments or facilities for the custody, supervision, evaluation or treatment of offenders.

"Unfortunately, third-degree rape and sodomy charges are very specific and do not address a very important class of people. While there are sections that pertain to those who have inappropriate sexual activity while in a position of authority or special trust, those crimes are limited to ones that involve minor victims.

"I believe that our legislature needs to promptly address those sexual encounters that should be considered non-consensual by virtue of a law enforcement officer's express (or implied) authority over someone who is under arrest, who is in their custody, who has active arrest warrants or who is known to be currently under investigation by law enforcement.

"Punishing law enforcement officers who act in such a way with only misdemeanor charges, while punishing a jail employee who acts in the same manner with a felony, is patently unjust. No one, regardless of their criminal activity, should feel compelled to engage in sexual activity with someone simply because they are a sworn officer."










https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... b85216eb7b


FBI Allows Tens of Thousands of People with Outstanding Warrants to Buy Guns



The names of tens of thousands of people wanted by police have been purged from the FBI criminal background check database this year after the FBI narrowed its legal interpretation of “fugitives from justice.”

In February, the FBI said only people who have crossed state lines are considered “fugitives from justice,” prompting the removal of tens of thousands of names, the Washington Post reports.

That means fugitives under the old definition can now buy guns, unless they are barred for some other reason. In other words, people with outstanding warrants are now allowed to buy firearms.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... s-ban-poll


Americans aged 18-34 most likely to oppose assault weapons ban, poll finds
Poll finds attitude to ban on military-style weapons has striking age divide
Experts say finding could be driven by video games such as Call of Duty



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ree-speech


Sinclair's vast media merger threatens democratic ideals. Congress must fight it
Sinclair’s proposed purchase of Tribune Media has sparked fears of a Trump-aligned national TV giant. But the real problem is a threat to free speech


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ate-change

I shut down an oil pipeline – because climate change is a ticking bomb
Emily Johnston
Normal methods of political action and protest are simply not working. If we don’t reduce emissions boldly and fast, that’s genocide



Link du jour
https://www.theguardian.com/us/environment


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... oing-viral

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3653939


https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-in ... ad-of-love



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2448085



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... sandbranch






http://www.newsweek.com/trump-impeachme ... ert-720687

TRUMP IMPEACHMENT: THIS THANKSGIVING, 'I AM THANKFUL FOR ROBERT MUELLER,' STEPHEN COLBERT JOKES
BY TUFAYEL AHMED ON 11/23/17 AT 7:13 AM







http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... 000-report

Trump Honolulu visit cost taxpayers $141,000: report
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 11/24/17 11:05 AM EST 393
1,224







http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... ze-winners


Trump won’t meet with American Nobel Prize winners
BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY - 11/14/17 08:39 AM EST 625
12,172






https://apnews.com/62eac0de5a684dda929d ... ired,-quit

Marana releases info on investigation; officers fired, quit



MARANA, Arizona

The Marana Police Department has released more information about an internal investigation that resulted in one officer being fired and criminally charged and three others quitting their jobs.

Media outlets report that police officials in the Tucson suburb on Friday released details of the investigation into alleged improper use of a computer database and allegedly having sex while on duty.

The officer who was fired in October is 31-year-old Dionysius Cazares,. She was pleaded not guilty to computer tampering charges accusing her of accessing a computer or computer system to obtain confidential information while off duty.


Marana releases info on investigation; officers who quit so they can keep working
as police officers in other cities.
.

According to reports, she ran license plates of vehicles that weren’t tied to any investigation and one belonged to Officer Kyla Sylvia.

Authorities say both women had sexual relationships with Officer Daniel Nicholas, who is accused of falsifying report codes to conceal an encounter with Sylvia.


Another officer, Keith Storms, is also accused of having inappropriate sexual activity while on duty.

Cazares has pleaded not guilty to computer tampering charges.

The other three officers resigned in

sic
They will soon be looking for new jobs at your local police department







https://apnews.com/7bcc9cf925854d0a9f3a ... dy-beating


Detroit-area cop’s conviction stands of 1 year sentence plus 2 months in bloody beating
that caused victims brain to bleed.
Officer was not given MMPI test before he was hired.


INKSTER, Mich.

The Michigan appeals court has affirmed the conviction of a Detroit-area police officer whose bloody beating of a motorist was recorded on dash-cam video and led to a $1.4 million settlement.

The decision this week comes months after William Melendez was released from prison. He served 14 months in prison before he was released by the parole board.

In 2015, Melendez pulled Floyd Dent from his car in Inkster and punched him in the head 16 times. Dent suffered broken ribs, blood on the brain and other injuries. Melendez was convicted of assault.

Much of his appeal centered on statements by the prosecutor or witnesses during trial. The appeals court says it was improper for jurors to hear that Melendez declined to speak to investigators. But the court calls it a harmless error.






http://ticklethewire.com/2017/11/24/jud ... ted-facts/


Judge Drops Child Pornography Case, Saying FBI Misrepresented Facts




By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

A judge dismissed child pornography charges against a California doctor whose computer was searched following a repair by Best Buy’s Geek Squad because the FBI agent made “several false or misleading statements or omissions . . . with reckless disregard for the truth” in a search warrant affidavit, The Washington Post reports.

The pornography case was triggered by the Geek Squad’s discovery of a photo of a naked girl, believed to be 9 years old. She was not involved in a sex act, and her genitals were not shown.

Technicians tipped off the FBI.

But U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney said the FBI misrepresented the case in obtaining a search warrant for the home and computers of oncologist Mark Rettenmaier. Agents found hundreds of pornographic photos on his iPhone.

Carney concluded the search was illegal because FBI agents received the warrant by inaccurately saying “the image was child pornography.” The judge said the photo was “one image of child erotica” and that it “is simply not sufficient to search Dr. Rettenmaier’s entire home, the place where the protective court of the Fourth Amendment is most powerful.”








http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... story.html

Chicago ordered to pay $62,500 in lawsuit records dispute


CHICAGO

The city of Chicago has been ordered to pay $62,500 for withholding records in a lawsuit over a police shooting.

The Chicago Tribune says it’s the eighth time that Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has been penalized for withholding potential evidence in police misconduct cases.

Federal Judge Joan Gottschall says the city acted in “bad faith” when it made little effort to provide records to a lawyer who is suing on behalf of Divonte Young’s family. The 20-year-old was killed by an officer five years ago.


Police said Young fired, but no gun was found.

Attorney H. Candace Gorman was seeking documents from a city agency that





https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... he-promise

'Women are pissed': Trump protest turns to action – and surge in female candidates
In the presidential race, some women stayed at home because they didn’t want to vote against their husbands. Now they have had enough.

by Tom McCarthy in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania




https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... he-or-lord

Sweden
Church of Sweden to stop referring to God as 'he' or 'Lord'
Head of largest Swedish Christian church says God is beyond human gender determination





https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... nge-action

If we act on climate change now, the economic prize will be immense
Felipe Calderón
Acting on climate can certainly be driven by pure pragmatism: the economics of it are clear, writes Felipe Calderón




https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... e-of-trump


A civil rights 'emergency': justice, clean air and water in the age of Trump







https://robertscribbler.com/2017/11/22/ ... -all-hell/

From Ice Apocalypse to Mega-Thunderstorms, Continuing to Burn Fossil Fuels Makes the World Scary as all Hell
So I’ve got to say I feel for Eric Holthaus.

Here’s a smart guy. Probably a few years younger than me. A meteorologist by degree and a climate journalist by trade. A guy with two kids that, as is clear from his twitter comments, mean all the world to him. And he’s finally gotten to that point in his study of climate change where he’s thrown his hands up and said — this stuff scares the crap out of me, can we please all just do something about it?



(The calving front of the Pine Island Glacier as seen by a NASA DC-8 aircraft. Image source: Commons.)

For him, as with any of us, the point of existential realization can come through overexposure to a wide range of worsening climate problems. Declining ocean health, rising extreme weather, how much faster we are warming the world up than during the worst hothouse extinction, can all weigh heavily on the heart and mind of any compassionate, feeling person who takes these subjects seriously enough to actually read the science. For Eric, the big deal, and it is a very, very big deal, was sea level rise.

Ice Apocalypse

Yesterday, Eric penned this seminal article on the issue of ice cliff stability as explored by glacier scientist Robert DeConto entitled Ice Apocalypse.

Ice cliff stability is a pretty technical term. One that may make the eyes of your typical reader gloss over. But when we consider that the glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica can be upwards of two miles high, then the question of whether or not the cliffs of those great ice mountains are stable may start to generate a flicker of warning. May conjure up a phantom of the titanic roar set off when such ice giants tumble away into the sea as has happened throughout the deep history of Earth whenever the world warmed up by a certain amount.

When I think of the words ice cliff stability, my mind’s eye pictures a vast wall of numbing white-blue stretching hundreds of feet high. It expands both left and right as far as I can see. And it looms over an endless warming ocean. Waiting for a colossal fall if just that right amount of extra heat is applied.

Ice is fragile. It’s not like stone. It doesn’t flex much. It doesn’t give much. And even minor stresses are enough to make it shatter. We see this with ice cubes in a cup of water at home. Put an ice cube into relatively warmer water, and that little 1×2 inch block will snap and crack. Now just compound that fragility. Set it on the massive scale of a mile-high glacier. Not too hard to image what can happen.


(2012 filming of massive calving event at Jakobshavn Glacier.)

It’s happened already at Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland. The ocean warmed. The ice shelf protecting the glacier dissolved. And the front of the gigantic glacier fell like great, enormous, white dominoes. We’ve seen it happening in films like Chasing Ice. And we’ve struggled to grasp the enormous scale of it.

Our burning of fossil fuels did this.

Jakobshavn is, even now, contributing to a more rapid rate of global sea level rise. But the amount of ice held back by Jakobshavn is small when compared to the vast volumes kept in check by the Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers of West Antarctica. What Robert DeConto did, and what has apparently scared Eric Holthaus so much, was apply a computer model based on observations of Jakobshavn ice sheet collapse to these larger Antarctic ice masses.

The DeConto study unearthed results that, indeed, looked apocalyptic. From Grist:

A wholesale collapse of Pine Island and Thwaites would set off a catastrophe. Giant icebergs would stream away from Antarctica like a parade of frozen soldiers. All over the world, high tides would creep higher, slowly burying every shoreline on the planet, flooding coastal cities and creating hundreds of millions of climate refugees.

All this could play out in a mere 20 to 50 years — much too quickly for humanity to adapt…

Instead of a three-foot increase in ocean levels by the end of the century, six feet was more likely, according to DeConto and Pollard’s findings. But if carbon emissions continue to track on something resembling a worst-case scenario, the full 11 feet of ice locked in West Antarctica might be freed up, their study showed.

The DeConto study is just one scientific exploration of what could happen in West Antarctica this Century. And, already, reassurances to a worried Eric Holthaus are forthcoming.


But the problem with the DeConto study, as with any other form of serious climate risk, is that there are plausible scenarios in which terrible catastrophic events are possible even if their degree of likelihood is still somewhat debatable. And reasonable precaution would dictate that even if there were just a 10-20 percent chance of DeConto like events coming to pass, we would do everything we could to avoid them. The risk of this scenario emerging, however, is probably a bit higher. As numerous studies have identified the potential for 6, 8, or even 12 feet of sea level rise by as early as 2100.

The Future of Mega-Thunderstorms Looks Grim if We Continue to Burn Fossil Fuels

Eric’s appeals to his Twitter friends related to his article were touching to me in that I feel like I go through similar shocks with each passing week. And what should be a time of national thanksgiving even as more than half of Puerto Rico’s population is still in the dark 63 days after the climate change amplified blow of Hurricane Maria is no exception.

For a model study recently produced by Nature Climate Change and explored by Bob Henson at Weather Underground has found that the rate of rainfall in large thunderstorm clusters could increase by 80 percent this Century if fossil fuel burning proceeds along a business as usual pathway.

To put this in context, an 80 percent increase in the amount of rain that fell in the Ellicott City Flood in Maryland last year would have produced nearly ten inches of rain in an hour and a half.



(The rainfall intensity in large thunderstorm clusters was found to be greatly enhanced under worst case fossil fuel burning scenarios [RCP 8.5] according to a recent Nature Study. Image source: NCAR, Nature, and Weather Underground.)

As with ice cliff instability, we find ourselves faced with another scientific term in the new study — mesoscale convective systems (MCS). And to translate this term we can simply say that MCSs are gigantic clusters of thunderstorms. The study found that rainfall amounts in the largest of thunderstorm complexes were greatly enhanced as warming proceeded along a business as usual track.

From the Study author’s statement to Weather Underground:

“These new simulations of future MCS rainfall are concerning, because they show very large increases in the amount of rain that a given MCS is likely to produce. The MCSs that we would today consider to be ‘extreme’ in terms of precipitation would become more commonplace in the future. There are also some regions that currently don’t see a lot of MCS activity that might start seeing some of these heavily raining MCSs in the future.”

These increases are on top of already elevated rates of rainfall intensity we presently see today in destructive events that our infrastructure and disaster planning is clearly not prepared for (as seen during Harvey). So as we take the time to give thanks for the great bounty that many of us still have, perhaps we should also take the time to think of the things we can do to keep safe what we have worked so hard for and care so much about and to do our best to help those who are less fortunate. Who have already fallen casualty to a time




http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local ... 14125.html

Charlottesville plan for police oversight board advances


CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.

The city of Charlottesville is moving forward with the creation of a civilian review board for its police department.

The Daily Progress reports the City Council tentatively agreed this week to create an independent community group that will review complaints against the department or its officers.

The proposal still needs a final vote, which is expected to take place next month.


The city already has a Police Citizens Advisory Panel. David Simmons, chairman of that group, told the council it doesn’t have the staff, resources or tolls to do its job. He says the panel is reliant on media reports and social media for information about police-involved incidents.





https://apnews.com/adc346bf62ba41b6aa55 ... complaints


Little Rock police open investigation after complaints of racist posting by cop



LITTLE ROCK, Ark.

Little Rock Police say an internal investigation is under way after authorities received complaints that a current police recruit had posted a racial slur on his personal Facebook page four years ago.

The police department responded Friday to a letter sent by the Little Rock Black Police Officers Association, which called for the investigation and for the recruit to be removed from the current training class.

Police say they’re also looking into a “negative photograph” that was posted on the wall of the downtown police station that includes a drawing of a person pointing a gun at a person who appears to be kneeling with hands cuffed behind the back. The image includes the words “Don’t touch our glass.”







http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index. ... on_10.html


Now Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson needs to deliver on police reform: Mike Brickner (Opinion)

Updated 12:36 AM; Posted 5:39 AM

CLEVELAND -- Voters trusted Frank Jackson with another term, and now it is time he takes action.

Throughout the mayoral campaign, there were a variety of issues that candidates addressed, but few subjects dominated the discussion as much as police reform. In nearly every debate, town hall, and forum, the community's relationship with law enforcement was clearly front and center in voters' minds.

And with good reason: Cleveland is one of a few communities across the country with an active consent decree that could bring about systemic change in a police department that has been historically beleaguered by incidents of excessive force, corruption, and race profiling.

But it cannot happen without Mayor Jackson's active leadership.

Given recent actions from U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the U.S. Department of Justice, it has become abundantly clear that we cannot rely solely on the federal government to lead the way for effective police reform. This current reality is the reason Cleveland needs strong, bold leadership from its local administration. Police reform is what will create a better Cleveland.

However, an independent federal monitor, appointed by the federal judge who oversees the police reform process, has questioned Cleveland's vigor and urgency on central aspects of the consent decree. The major issues he identified are a lack of internal accountability; lack of the ability to identify strategic objectives; and lack of problem-solving the many issues that impact police-community relations.


The clearest example is the systemic failure of the Office of Professional Standards, which is charged with investigating reports of misconduct by police officers. According to the monitor, the city has had an "ongoing, comprehensive failure to generate for itself any meaningful approach to ensuring that its residents and officers receive due process in the astounding number of outstanding and unresolved complaint investigations." (Monitor's filings on January 10 and May 3, 2017).

The city's lack of progress is so severe that the judge called for a hearing on Tuesday of this week. At the Nov. 21 hearing, the monitor expressed frustration with lack of progress by the city, despite the fact that the consent decree is halfway through its initial five-year process.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: COPWATCH

Post by msfreeh »

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/201 ... -congress/


SAME OLD SONG —
FBI director again laments strong encryption in remarks to Congress
“The FBI also invests in alternative methods of lawful engineered access.”

CYRUS FARIVAR - 12/11/2017, 2:25 PM





http://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights ... ret-police

Yes, the FBI is America’s secret police
BY JAMES BOVARD, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 12/11/17 08:40 AM EST









http://www.startribune.com/ex-minneapol ... =n&clmob=y

Minneapolis cop sentenced to six months in workhouse for on-duty assault
Christopher Reiter received the maximum allowable sentence under state guidelines.


By Brandon Stahl Star Tribune DECEMBER 12, 2017 — 5:28PM


Ex-Minneapolis police officer Christopher Reiter will serve six months in a county workhouse for kicking a man in the face during an arrest after a judge told him Tuesday that he "abused his position of trust and committed a serious assault."

Reiter, 37, was on duty in May 2016 when he kicked Mohamed Osman in the face during a domestic assault call in May 2016, knocking him unconscious and causing a traumatic brain injury from which he still suffers. A jury found Reiter guilty of felony third-degree assault in October in a rare conviction for on-duty use of force.






http://woodtv.com/2017/12/11/grpd-offic ... -old-girl/

Michigan police open investigation after 11 year old child detained at gunpoint


GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. A Michigan police department has opened an internal investigation after officers held an 11-year-old girl at gunpoint, handcuffed her and put her in the back of a cruiser.






https://www.idahopress.com/news/local/f ... 941b3.html



Former IRS revenue agent sentenced for distributing meth
by IDAHO PRESS-TRIBUNE Dec 11, 2017



http://beta.latimes.com/local/lanow/la- ... t12aH-1la1
L.A. NOW
The inferno that won't die: How the Thomas fire became a monster


DEC 11, 2017 |








https://apnews.com/11e75e6659e04cd29ebd ... ic-assault

police chief pleads not guilty to domestic assault


WARWICK, R.I. A former Rhode Island police chief has pleaded not guilty to charges of domestic assault and disorderly conduct.

Former Cranston Chief Marco Palombo Jr. entered his plea in Kent County District Court on Tuesday. The judge ordered him not to have contact with his wife or daughter.

The 53-year-old Palombo was arrested at his home Nov. 30 after someone called 911 to report he was “out of control.” Police say witnesses told officers he “bashed” a woman in the face and neck. He was charged with assaulting his wife.







http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3693877


Senate OKs Trump judicial pick who was rated 'not qualified'
The Associated Press








http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/ml-kiki-north.html





I Volunteer to Kidnap Oliver North
by
Michael Levine

Undercover DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was tortured to death slowly by professionals. Every known maximum-pain technique, from electric shocks to his testicles to white hot rods inserted in his rectum, was applied. A doctor stood by to keep him alive. The heart of the thirty-seven year old father of two boys refused to quit for more than twenty-four hours. His cries, along with the soft-spoken, calm voices of the men who were slowly and meticulously savaging his body, were tape-recorded.
Kiki, one of only three hundred of us in the world (DEA agents on foreign assignment), had been kidnapped in broad daylight from in front of the U.S. Consular office in Guadalajara, Mexico by Mexican cops working for drug traffickers and, apparently, high level Mexican government people whose identities we would never know. They would be protected by people in our own government to whom Kiki's life meant less than nothing.

When teams of DEA agents were sent to Mexico, first, to find the missing Kiki, then to hunt for his murderers, they were met by a the stone wall of a corrupt Mexican government that refused to cooperate. To the horror and disgust of many of us, our government backed down from the Mexicans; other interests, like NAFTA, banking agreements and the covert support of Ollie North's Contras, were more important than the life of an American undercover agent. DEA agents were ordered by the Justice Department, to keep our mouths shut about Mexico; an order that was backed up by threats from the office of Attorney General Edwin Meese himself. Instead of tightening restrictions on the Mexican debt, our Treasury Department moved to loosen them as if to reward them for their filthy deed. As an added insult Mexico was granted cooperating nation in the drug war status, giving them access to additional millions in American drug war funds and loans.

Somehow a CIA—unaware that their own chief of Soviet counter intelligence, Aldrich Ames, was selling all America's biggest secrets to the KGB for fourteen years with all the finesse of a Jersey City garage sale—was able to obtain the tape-recordings of Kiki's torture death. No one in media or government had the courage to publicly ask them explain how they were able to obtain the tapes, yet know nothing of the murder as it was happening; no one had the courage to ask them to explain the testimony of a reliable government informant, (during a California trial related to Camarena's murder), that Kiki's murderers believed they were protected by the CIA. Nor did our elected leaders have the courage to investigate numerous other reports linking the CIA directly to the murderers.

Our government's sellout of Kiki Camarena, of all DEA agents, of the war on drugs, was such that United States Congressman, Larry Smith, stated, on the floor of Congress:

"I personally am convinced that the Justice Department is against the best interests of the United States in terms of stopping drugs... What has a DEA agent who puts his life on the line got to look forward to? The U.S. Government is not going to back him up. I find that intolerable."

What does Oliver North have to do with this?

A lot of us, Kiki's fellow agents, believe that the Mexican government never would have dared take the action they did, had they not believed the US government to be as hypocritical and corrupt as they were and still are. And if there was ever a figure in our history that was the paradigm of that corruption it is the man President Reagan called "an American hero"; the same man Nancy Reagan later called a liar: Oliver North.

No one person in our government's history more embodied what Senator John Kerry referred to when he called the US protection of the drug smuggling Contras a "betrayal of the American people."

Few Americans, thanks to what one time CIA chief William Colby referred to as the news media's "misplaced sense of patriotism," are aware that the Nobel prize winning President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias—as a result of an in-depth investigation by the Costa Rican Congressional Commission on Narcotics that found "virtually all [Ollie North supported] Contra factions were involved in drug trafficking"—banned Oliver North, U.S. Ambassador Lewis Tambs, National Security Advisor Admiral John Poindexter, Presidential Advisor Richard Secord and C.I.A. station chief José Fernandez, by Executive order, from ever entering Costa Rica— for their roles in utilizing Costa Rican territory for cocaine trafficking.

In fact, when Costa Rica began its investigation into the drug trafficking allegations against North and naively thought that the U.S. would gladly lend a hand in efforts to fight drugs, they received a rude awakening about the realities of America's war on drugs as opposed to its "this-scourge-will-end" rhetoric.

After five witnesses testified before the U.S. Senate, confirming that John Hull—a C.I.A. operative and the lynch-pin of North's contra re supply operation—had been actively running drugs from Costa Rica to the U.S. "under the direction of the C.I.A.," Costa Rican authorities arrested him. Hull then quickly jumped bail and fled to the U.S.—according to my sources—with the help of DEA, putting the drug fighting agency in the schizoid business of both kidnapping accused drug dealers and helping them escape; although the Supreme Court has not legalized the latter . . . yet.

The then-President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias was stunned when he received letters from nineteen U.S. Congressman—including Lee Hamilton of Indiana, the Democrat who headed the Iran-contra committee—warning him "to avoid situations . . . that could adversely affect our relations." Arias, who won the Nobel prize for ending the contra war, stated that he was shocked that "relations between [the United States] and my country could deteriorate because [the Costa Rican] legal system is fighting against drug trafficking."

In my twenty-five years experience with DEA which includes running some of their highest level international drug trafficking investigations, I have never seen an instance of comparable allegations where DEA did not set up a multi-agency task force size operation to conduct an in-depth conspiracy investigation. Yet in the case of Colonel North and the other American officials, no investigation whatsoever has been initiated by DEA or any other investigative agency.

The total "public" investigation into the drug allegations by the Senate was falsely summed up in the statement of a staffer, on the House select committee, Robert A. Bermingham who notified Chairman Hamilton on July 23, 1987, that after interviewing "hundreds" of people his investigation had not developed any corroboration of "media-exploited allegations that the U.S. government condoned drug trafficking by contra leaders . . . or that Contra leaders or organizations did in fact take part in such activity." Every government official accused of aiding and covering up for the contra drug connection, Colonel Ollie included, then hung his hat on this statement, claiming they had been "cleared."

The only trouble was that investigative journalists, Leslie and Andrew Cockburn—after interviewing many of the chief witnesses whose testimony implicated North and the contras in drug trafficking, including several whose testimony was later found credible enough to be used to convict Manuel Noriega—could find not one who had been interviewed by Bermingham or his staff. In fact, the two journalists seem to have caught Bermingham red-handed in what can only be described, at best, as a gross misrepresentation of fact, when he (Bermingham) quoted the chief counsel of a House Judiciary subcommittee, Hayden Gregory as dismissing the drug evidence and calling it "street talk." Gregory told the Cockburns that the "street talk" comment was taken out of context; that he had not even met Bermingham until July 22 (two days before Bermingham wrote the report) and that he had in fact told Bermingham that there were "serious allegations against almost every contra leader."

When President Bush said, "All those who look the other way are as guilty as the drug dealers," he was not only talking about a moral guilt, but a legal one as well. Thus, if any U.S. official knew of North and the contra's drug activities and did not take proper action, or covered up for it, he is "guilty" of a whole series of crimes that you to go to jail for; crimes that carry a minimum jail term; crimes like Aiding and Abetting, Conspiracy, Misprision of a Felony, Perjury, and about a dozen other violations of law related to misuse and malfeasance of public office. I'm not talking about some sort of shadow conspiracy here. As a veteran, criminal investigator I don't deal in speculation. I document facts and evidence and then work like hell to corroborate my claims so that I can send people to jail.

What I am talking about is "Probable Cause"—a legal principle that every junior agent and cop is taught before he hits the street. It mandates that an arrest and/or criminal indictment must occur when there exists evidence that would give any "reasonable person" grounds to believe, that anyone— U.S. government officials included—had violated or conspired to violate federal narcotic laws. Any U.S. government law enforcement officer or elected official who fails to take appropriate action when such Probable Cause exists, is in violation of his oath as well as federal law; and under that law it takes surprisingly little evidence for a Conspiracy conviction.

As an example, early in my career I arrested a man named John Clements, a twenty-two year old, baby-faced guitar player, who happened to be present at the transfer of three kilos of heroin—an amount that doesn't measure up to a tiny percentage of the many tons of cocaine, (as much as one half the U.S. cocaine consumption), that North and his Contras have been accused of pouring onto our streets. Clements was a silent observer in a trailer parked in the middle of a Gainesville, Florida swamp, while a smuggler—whom I had arrested hours earlier in New York City and "flipped" (convinced to work as an informer for me)— turned the heroin over to the financier of the operation. Poor John Clements, a friend of both men, a "gofer" as he would later be described, was just unlucky enough to be there.

The twenty-two year old guitar player couldn't claim "national security," when asked to explain his presence, nor could he implicate a President of the United States in his criminal activities as Colonel North did. John Clements wrote no self-incriminating computer notes that indicated his deep involvement in drug trafficking, as North did; he didn't have hundreds of pages of diary notes in his own handwriting also reflecting narcotics trafficking. John Clements did not shred incriminating documents and lie to congress as North did; nor was he responsible for millions in unaccounted for U.S. government funds as North was. Clements did not have enough cash hidden in a closet slush fund to pay $14,000 cash for a car, as North did while earning the salary of a Lieutenant Colonel. John Clements only had about $3 and change in his pocket.

Nor did John Clements campaign for the release from jail of a drug smuggling, murderer whose case was described by the Justice Department as the worst case of narco terrorism in our history, as North did. Poor young John wouldn't have dreamed of making deals with drug dealer Manny Noriega to aid in the support of the drug smuggling Contras, as North did. No, John Clements was certainly not in Ollie North's league, he couldn't have done a millionth of the damage North and his protectors have been accused of doing to the American people, even if he wanted to.

But John Clements did do something Ollie North never did and probably never will do—he went to jail. A jury of his peers in Gainseville Florida found more than enough evidence to convict him of Conspiracy to violate the federal drug laws. The judge sentenced him to thirty years in a Federal prison. Ollie North on the other hand was only charged with lying to a Congress so mistrusted and disrespected by the American people that he was virtually applauded for the crime.

Criminality in drug trafficking cases is lot easier than proving whether or not someone lied to Congress and is certainly a lot less "heroic." Statements like "I don't remember," "I didn't know," and "No one told me," or "I sought approval from my superiors for every one of my actions," are only accepted as valid defenses by Congressmen and Senators with difficulties balancing check books—not American jurors trying drug cases. And when you're found guilty you got to jail—you don't run for a seat on the Senate.

And why would I volunteer to kidnap Ollie? For three reasons: first, kidnapping is now legal; second, I have experience kidnapping; and third, it is the only way those tens of millions of Americans who have suffered the betrayal of their own government will ever see even a glimmer of justice.

Several years after Kiki's last tape-recorded cries were shoved well under a government rug, a maverick group of DEA agents decided to take the law into their own hands. Working without the knowledge or approval of most of the top DEA bosses, whom they mistrusted, the agents arranged to have Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain, a Mexican citizen alleged to have participated in Kiki's murder, abducted at gun point in Guadalajara Mexico and brought to Los Angeles to stand trial.

On June 16, 1992, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Machain Decision that the actions of those agents was "legal." The ruling said in no uncertain terms that U.S. law enforcement authorities could literally and figuratively kidnap violators of American drug law in whatever country they found them and drag them physically and against their will to the U.S. to stand trial. Immediately thereafter the Ayatollahs declared that they too could rove the world and kidnap violators of Islamic law and drag them back to Iran to stand trial. Kidnapping, therefore, has now become an accepted tool of law enforcement throughout the world.

Resorting to all sorts of wild extremes to bring drug traffickers to justice is nothing new for the U.S. government. At various times during my career as a DEA agent I was assigned to some pretty unorthodox operations—nothing quite as radical as invading Panama and killing a thousand innocents to capture long-time CIA asset Manny Noriega—but I was once, (long before the Machain Decision), assigned to a group of undercover agents on a kidnapping mission. Posing as a soccer team, we landed in Argentina in a chartered jet during the wee hours of the morning, where the Argentine Federal Police had three international drug dealers—two of whom had never in their lives set foot in the United States—waiting for us trussed up in straight-jackets with horse feed-bags over their heads, each beaten to a pulpy, toothless mess. In those years we used to call it a "controlled expulsion." I think I like the honesty of kidnapping a little better.

By now you're probably saying, "Get real Levine you live in a nation whose politicians ripped their own people off for half a trillion dollars in a savings and loan scam, a nation whose Attorney General ordered the FBI to attack a house full of innocent babies, and this is the decade of Ruby Ridge, Waco and Whitewater-gate; your own people sent Kiki Camarena to Mexico to be murdered and then gave aid and comfort to those who murdered him—how can you expect justice?"

If you aren't saying these things you should be. And you'd be right. Under the current two-party, rip-off system of American politics with their complete control of main stream media, I expect Ollie North to have a bright future in politics, while hundreds of thousands of Americans like John rot in jail. Ollie North, after all, is the perfect candidate. But there is one faint glimmer of hope remaining, and it isn't in America.

Since the democratic and staunchly anti-drug Costa Rica is, thus far, the only nation with the courage to have publicly accused Oliver North, a US Ambassador and a CIA station chief of running drugs from their sovereignty to the United States, I find myself, duty-bound to make them, or any other nation that would have the courage to make similar charges, the following offer:

I, Michael Levine, twenty-five year veteran undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, given the mandate of the Supreme Court's Machain Decision and in fulfillment of my oath to the U.S. government and its taxpayers to arrest and seize all those individuals who would smuggle or cause illegal drugs to be smuggled into the United States or who would aid and abet drug smugglers, do hereby volunteer my services to any sovereign, democratic nation who files legal Drug Trafficking charges against Colonel Oliver North and any of his cohorts; to do everything in my power including kidnapping him, seizing his paper shredder, reading him his constitutional rights and dragging his butt to wherever that sovereignty might be, (with or without horse feed-bag); to once-and-for-all stand trial for the horrific damages caused to my country, my fellow law enforcement officers, and to my family.





https://www.abqjournal.com/1105190/fbi- ... linic.html


FBI weighs criminal inquiry over fetal tissue
By Michael Coleman / Journal Washington Bureau
Published: Monday, December 11th, 2017 at 12:04pm
Updated: Monday, December 11th, 2017 at 11:06pm





Link du jour


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/e ... -1.3694209



http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/h ... -1.3694244


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/u ... -1.3693980


https://www.boston.com/news/politics/20 ... gillibrand



http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3694114







http://bangordailynews.com/2017/12/10/n ... ngor-home/

Protesters voice anger over tax bill outside Susan Collins’ Bangor home

Bangor
By Meg Haskell, BDN Staff • December 10, 2017 3:52 pm








http://www.northjersey.com/story/news/b ... 932005001/



Police department clears officer who threatened teachers


BOGOTA, N.J. An officer who was recorded threatening school district employees in an expletive-filled rant acted in a “justified” manner, according to his police department.

Bogota Police Sgt. Craig Lynch accidentally called the Bogota School District in August, which allowed his rant to be recorded by a voicemail system, The Record reported .


On the recording, Lynch can be heard threatening to give tickets to every teacher when they leave the parking lot and warning against a battle with police.

“You’re not going to win,” Lynch said. “That’s a losing battle every time.”

Steen Elementary School Principal Dayle Santoro said the recording came after Lynch cursed at her about a former school employee who hadn’t been rehired. She said she no longer felt comfortable being in the school alone.

“It’s hard to feel safe at the school when he speaks in that way and uses intimidation tactics,” Santoro said.

Interim Superintendent Vincent Varcadipane filed a complaint after Lynch’s meeting with Santoro, prompting a department investigation. In a response, Police Capt. James Sepp recognized the exchange happened but said Lynch’s actions were “justified, legal and or proper.”

Varcadipane said he was disappointed with the department’s decision.

Lynch had worked with students in the district on anti-bullying and anti-drug programs. He was barred from entering school buildings during the department investigation. With the investigation complete, Varcadipane said the officer is still not allowed in school except for emergencies.

Lynch said Friday he doesn’t know if the programs will continue.

The Bogota Board of Education plans to discuss the recording at a meeting, and Lynch said he plans to attend.







http://bangordailynews.com/2017/12/07/n ... nd-office/

Faith leaders arrested for trespassing after hours-long sit-in at Sen. Collins’ Portland office

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7683

Re: COPWATCH

Post by msfreeh »

MIT Media Lab

https://www.media.mit.edu





http://www.pressherald.com/2018/01/07/p ... overnight/


Portland sets record-low temperature overnight
It was frigid in southern Maine, but it's been colder this winter.





https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/ ... f-my-being

Black voices matter: Lawrence Brownlee on driving change in opera







https://www.wired.com/story/pro-russia- ... t-mueller/

01.05.1805:19 PM
PRO-KREMLIN TWITTER TROLLS TAKE AIM AT ROBERT MUELLER





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3740307

Roy Moore accuser Tina Johnson ‘devastated’ after her home burns down in possible arson attack
BY CHRIS SOMMERFELDT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Friday, January 5, 2018, 8:58 PM




https://apnews.com/4b285f9021a04baeab22 ... work-fraud

police chief admits taking money for off-duty work fraud


JERSEY CITY, N.J— A former New Jersey police chief has admitted receiving nearly $32,000 for off-duty security work that he did not perform.



https://apnews.com/a50faf477e804e5e802d ... th-experts

Colorado pairing police officers with mental health experts


DENVER — Colorado is pushing for new approaches to how police officers handle cases involving mental illness and drug addiction, encouraging them to steer low-level offenders toward treatment rather than jail and giving them assistance in dealing with potentially dangerous situations.

In one tactic, mental health professionals ride with officers during 911 responses and some routine patrols. In another, local communities place case managers into high-crime areas to help police keep drug users, prostitutes and other offenders out of the criminal justice system.

Several law enforcement agencies in Colorado already are using these strategies. The Colorado Department of Human Services is pushing further, planning to distribute $16 million over the next three years to support such efforts. The state will award $5.3 million this month. As many as 12 police departments could use the money to emphasize treatment over incarceration.

“For Colorado, this is a brand new way of thinking,” said Jagruti Shah, director of criminal justice services for the human services department. “What you currently are seeing with a lot of these individuals with behavioral health issues is they keep circling. You have law enforcement addressing mental health and substance-use issues as opposed to patrolling and stopping crime.”

Similar initiatives in Los Angeles and Seattle have drawn praise from criminologists and treatment providers. In some instances, the new philosophy could result in drug offenders learning to use clean needles as opposed to continuing to share dirty needles that can cause infections and spread diseases. In other instances, those more receptive to intervention could be steered toward job training, new housing, and treatment for schizophrenia, depression and anxiety disorders.

Co-responders, or behavioral health clinicians, ride with police when they respond to 911 calls and provide follow-up services when officers leave the scene. They also can be a resource for police in deescalating situations before they end tragically, such as the fatal New Year’s Eve shooting of a Douglas County deputy responding to a domestic disturbance call.

Maigan Oliver, director of acute and forensic services with Mental Health Partners, which partners with Boulder police to send mental health professionals out on 911 calls, said the Boulder county attorney’s office is a big backer of the program.

Sending mental health professionals with police helps defend against litigation over any potential use of force, the county attorney has pointed out, according to Oliver. “If there is ever a case, there is always the question of, ‘Did you use every resource available to you?’” Oliver said.

In another strategy, case managers canvass targeted high-crime areas and establish relationships with drug users and prostitutes, even going so far as to sit down with them over coffee. These case managers work with police to keep these offenders off the streets and out of jail.

Mental health and substance-use disorders are growing problems in Colorado, which has the sixth highest suicide rate in the nation. Colorado also consistently ranks in the bottom half of per-capita funding levels in state surveys on behavioral health spending. Colorado’s own studies show that nearly 40 percent of Colorado’s inmate population needs mental health services and 74 percent needs substance-use disorder services. The state spent more than $94 million in 2013 incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections.

The hope of the new diversion philosophy is to start addressing problems before people become enmeshed in the criminal justice system. Police and clinicians and case managers try to avoid arrests. The thinking is that incarceration disrupts employment and tears families apart, ultimately setting up a cycle of failure that can cause a person to slide even further into crime.

The philosophy got support during the last legislative session from both Republican and Democratic legislators, who overwhelmingly approved appropriating the money that the human services department’s plans to distribute throughout the state.

A handful of cities in Colorado already have established fledgling diversion programs. Behavioral health clinicians are embedded in the Longmont, Boulder and Denver police departments and, to a lesser extent, the Boulder and Denver sheriff’s departments.





http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Bri ... 477593.php

BRIDGEPORT — State Police let him off with a verbal warning, and now Bridgeport Detective Ramon Garcia has similarly received a talk from his boss, Police Chief Armando Perez, about driving recklessly on Interstate 84 last week with the mayor as his passenger.
On Wednesday, Garcia — Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim’s driver — got a verbal warning when a state trooper pulled over the sport utility vehicle the detective was driving over on I-84 in Southington. The trooper clocked Garcia at 87 mph, though a Hearst Connecticut Media reporter along for the ride witnessed the vehicle traveling 100 mph.
According to Connecticut state statutes, “A person who drives his vehicle greater than 85 mph commits the crime of reckless driving.”
The SUV was a campaign rental — Ganim is running for governor — a Ford Expedition with Pennsylvania license plates.


https://www.policeone.com/archive/artic ... hild-Porn/

Longtime Idaho FBI Agent Sentenced for Possessing Child Porn





http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ss ... adets.html


Eight Cleveland police cadets hurt in hand-to-hand combat training at state patrol academy

Updated Jan 5; Posted

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Eight Cleveland police cadets were hurt last month during a hand-to-hand combat training exercise at the Ohio State Highway Patrol's police academy in Columbus, officials said.

Six of the cadets -- four men and two women -- went to a hospital for treatment. One cadet dislocated a shoulder and five cadets suffered concussions, said Cleveland Police Det. Steve Loomis, who was president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association when the incident occurred Dec. 12.

One recruit remained at the hospital because of a previous injury but was released less than a week later. The other five recruits were treated and released, Ohio State Highway Patrol spokesman Lt. Robert Sellers said.

Two other recruits suffered concussions during the training but were not taken to the hospital, Loomis said.





https://www.policeone.com/officer-misco ... isconduct/

Ex-trooper charged in teen's death on ATV had previous TASER misconductMichigan State Police tried but failed to suspend Mark Bessner for his use of a TASER months before he fired a TASER at a teen who crashed an ATV and died

Dec 26, 2017







https://www.policeone.com/officer-misco ... ng-policy/

Video: Cop fired after pulling over senator’s daughter, criticizing policyPhil Kiersnowski pulled over Sen. Jon Lundberg’s daughter and criticized the department’s window tinting enforcement policy




https://www.policeone.com/officer-misco ... kling-him/


Officer accused of handcuffing woman who kept tickling him





http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... story.html

FBI probe ends, but mysterious deaths of Chicago cop couple remain under investigation





http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/inf ... -1.3741601

Mobster turned informant Joe Barone hopes his story of the feds turning on him appeals to a new jury







http://www.businessinsider.com/noor-sal ... ans-2018-1

The FBI quietly released documents from the 2016 Orlando nightclub massacre — and the shooter's wife made a stunning admission




Lance Tapley shows what 1 person can do to make a difference

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mXcnz4juqmk






https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/magazine/


Words Unseen: The Power of Hidden Writing
Jeremy D. Smoak
In 1979, archaeologist Gabriel Barkay discovered two miniature silver scrolls from a late Iron Age (seventh century B.C.E.) tomb in Ketef Hinnom outside of Jerusalem. When unrolled, the scrolls had tiny texts written on them—similar to the priestly blessing in Numbers 6:24–26. Curiously, though, these texts were hidden from human eyes, which begs the question: Who was their intended audience? Read more…





https://bangordailynews.com/2018/01/07/ ... to-dunlap/

Justice Department refuses to turn over voter fraud commission documents to Dunlap

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