FBI cold case expert aims to solve Anne Frank betrayal mystery Society October 1, 2017 - By Robin Pascoe Anne Frank at school in 1940. Photo: Collectie Anne Frank Stichting Amsterdam via Wikimedia Commons
Read more at DutchNews.nl: FBI cold case expert aims to solve Anne Frank betrayal mystery https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/ ... l-mystery/
It is now well over 200,000 unsolved murders since this study was done
1/3 of murders go unsolved
This figure does not include people on missing persons list
we don't know if they have been murdered
Guess how many people on missing persons list.
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/700 ... olved.html
Nearly 185,000 murders in U.S. from 1980 to 2010 remain unsolved
By Thomas Hargrove
Scripps Howard News Service
Published: May 26, 2010 12:00 a.m.
Every year in America, 6,000 killers get away with murder.
The percentage of homicides that go unsolved in the U.S. has risen alarmingly, even as the homicide rate has fallen to levels last seen in the 1960s.
Despite dramatic improvements in DNA analysis and other breakthroughs in forensic science, police fail to make an arrest in more than one-third of all homicides. National clearance rates for murder and manslaughter have fallen from about 90 percent in the 1960s to below 65 percent in recent years.
The majority of homicides now go unsolved at dozens of big-city police departments, according to a Scripps Howard News Service study of crime records provided by the FBI.
"This is very frightening," said Bill Hagmaier, executive director of the International Homicide Investigators Association and retired chief of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit.
"We'd expect that — with more police officers, more scientific tools like DNA analysis and more computerized records — we'd be clearing more homicides now with more resources," Hagmaier said. "But the clearance rates have fallen drastically."
Nearly 185,000 killings went unsolved from 1980 to 2008, the Scripps study found.
Additionally, a survey of 1,001 adults interviewed by telephone from Feb. 3 to March 9 by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University found nearly one-third of American adults personally know the victim of a homicide and at least one in nine personally knew the victim of an unsolved homicide.
The odds of knowing a homicide victim are greater among racial and ethnic minority groups, among men and among less-educated people, the poll showed.
The public is starting to notice the growing percentage of unsolved killings.
"When my first son was killed, I was embarrassed and ashamed. Why did this happen to me? But when my second son died, I decided I'd had enough and wanted to be an advocate for murder victims," said Valencia Mohammed, founder of Mothers of Unsolved Murders, in Washington, D.C.
Mohammed's 14-year-old son, Said, was found shot to death in his bedroom in March 1999. His elder brother, Imtiaz, 23, was shot to death along a city street in June 2004, prompting Mohammed, a former member of the D.C. Board of Education, to demand a meeting with top police officials.
"I asked, 'How many unsolved murders do you have?' They said 3,479 since 1969. That's when I broke down. I was in tears. I said, 'I know you guys are not going to solve these murders.' "
Police made an arrest and obtained a conviction four years after Imtiaz was killed, but Said's death has not been solved.
Experts say that murders have become tougher to solve because there are fewer crimes of passion, where the assailant is easier to identify, and more drug- and gang-related killings. Many police chiefs — especially in areas with skyrocketing numbers of unsolved crimes — blame a lack of cooperation by witnesses and even surviving victims of violent crime.
Still, some police departments routinely solve most of their homicides, even the tough ones, while others are mired in growing stacks of unsolved cases.
Police solved only 35 percent of the murders in Chicago in 2008, 22 percent in New Orleans and just 21 percent in Detroit. Yet authorities solved 75 percent of the killings that same year in Philadelphia, 92 percent in Denver and 94 percent in San Diego.
"We've concluded that the major factor is the amount of resources police departments place on homicide clearances and the priority they give to homicide clearances," said University of Maryland criminologist Charles Wellford, who led a landmark study into how police can improve murder investigations.
Wellford served as a consultant in the Scripps study, which found enormous variation in murder-clearance rates around the nation. But the patterns are not random. Police departments that showed the most dramatic improvement made concerted and conscious efforts to do so.
After clearance rates in Philadelphia dropped to an anemic 56 percent in 2006, newly elected Mayor Michael Nutter declared a "crime emergency."
He hired Charles Ramsey, a former police chief in Washington, D.C., as police commissioner. Ramsey installed a fresh homicide supervisor, Capt. James Clark, who led a results-based oversight of murder investigations similar to total-quality management methods first employed by Japanese manufacturers.
"This is just like in any industry," said Deputy Commissioner Richard Ross, a veteran Philadelphia homicide investigator and major-case supervisor. "If you don't work a job, then it's not coming in. That's the saying around here. So we make our guys work the jobs."
Clearance rates jumped to 75 percent in 2008.
The turnaround of solution rates in Philadelphia has been repeated in dozens of police departments around the nation, the Scripps study found.
"If police organizations say it's unacceptable to have clearance rates of 50, 40 even 30 percent, then those rates will rise," Wellford said. "They begin to institute smart policing in their homicide investigations."
The nation's most dramatic improvement, according to the Scripps study, was in Durham, N.C., where clearances averaged only 39 percent in the 1990s following a dramatic increase in drug-related crime. But the solution rate shot up to an average of 78 percent for the city's 215 killings since 2000.
"This doesn't happen in a vacuum," said Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez.
Durham's department uses several best practices espoused by criminologists and Justice Department researchers:
Generous authorization of overtime for murder investigators during the critical first hours after a killing.
More manpower at the murder scene, including up to eight experienced detectives.
Sharing electronic information between homicide investigators and the intelligence and crime-analysis units.
Sending forensic-science technicians to crime scenes, and expanding in-house lab procedures for fingerprint and ballistics analysis.
In addition, they developed Durham's Community Response Program to locate witnesses after a major crime.
"We will canvass door-to-door to see what information we can get. If necessary, we'll get up to 100 officers knocking on doors," Lopez said. "It's civilians, police, even elected officials who come out so we can get more witnesses … witnesses we otherwise would never have gotten. And that builds more trust throughout the neighborhoods."
While several police departments have shown similar improvements, most have not. The average solution rate fell in 63 of the nation's 100 largest police departments.
City police in Flint, Mich., and Dayton, Ohio, suffered the worst decline in clearance rates among major police departments. The average clearance rate fell more than 30 percent since the 1990s in both cities.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/ke ... dence.html
PROLOGUE
Tainting Evidence
Inside the Scandals at the FBI Crime Lab
By JOHN F. KELLY and PHILLIP K. WEARNE
The Free Press
Read the Review
Prologue: Examining the Examiners
The tall, graying legislator strode past the American flag onto the platform of Committee Room 226. With a quick adjustment of his black-and-white spotted tie, he seated himself at the center of a semicircular dais under the carved eagle on the hardwood-paneled wall. As the lights of six television cameras were switched on and photographers and cameramen began to jostle for position, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa began to read slowly from three sheets of paper. It was his opening statement as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight into the Courts at hearings entitled, "A Review of the FBI Laboratory: Beyond the Inspector General's Report."
His purpose, he explained, was to help restore public confidence in federal law enforcement in general and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in particular. But the facts the senator went on to outline hardly seemed likely to do that. The hearings had had to be postponed twice, he stated, because of the FBI's refusal to cooperate by supplying requested documentation and by making FBI employees available to testify without the bureau's lawyers present. This, Senator Grassley said, was despite FBI director Louis Freeh's appeal for more oversight to another congressional subcommittee just four months earlier, when he had stated that the FBI could be the most dangerous agency in the country if "not scrutinized carefully."
Senator Grassley said the FBI was being hypocritical. "It is not the message that rings true. It's the actions. The Bureau's actions contradict the director's assertion that it is inviting oversight. And until the actions match the words, the ghosts of FBI past are still very much in the present." He went on to say that he expected the requested documentation to arrive the moment the hearings finished. In fact, within an hour, Senator Grassley had to apologize to the packed committee room for being "so cynical." The documents had arrived but were so heavily redacted as to be virtually useless, he said, holding up page after page of blacked-out FBI memos.
Senator Grassley's hearings took place in the wake of the release five months earlier of a damning 517-page report by the Inspector General's Office of the Department of Justice, the result of an eighteen-month investigation into the FBI laboratory. The investigators had included a panel of five internationally renowned forensic scientists, the first time in its sixty-five-year history that the FBI lab, considered by many -- not least, by itself -- the best in the world, had been subject to any form of external scientific scrutiny. The findings were alarming. FBI examiners had given scientifically flawed, inaccurate, and overstated testimony under oath in court; had altered the lab reports of examiners to give them a pro-prosecutorial slant, and had failed to document tests and examinations from which they drew incriminating conclusions, thus ensuring that their work could never be properly checked.
FBI lab management, meanwhile, had failed to check examinations and lab reports; had overseen a woefully inadequate record retention system; and had not only failed to investigate serious and credible allegations of incompetence but had covered them up. Management had also resisted any form of external scrutiny of the lab and had failed to establish and enforce its own validated scientific procedures and protocols -- the same ones that had been issued by managers themselves in an effort to combat the lab's known shortcomings in the first place.
But the IG's report, shocking as its conclusions were, was severely limited. It had looked at just three of seven units in the FBI lab's Scientific Analysis Section, a fraction of the lab's total of twenty-seven units.* The IG had been mandated to look into the specific allegations of just one man, Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, a Ph.D. chemist and FBI supervisory special agent who for eight years, until 1994, had worked solely on explosives-residue analysis -- trace detection, and identification of the residue left behind by explosions in the lab's Materials Analysis Unit.
For nearly ten years, until he was suspended and put on "administrative leave" just weeks before the IG's report was published in April 1997, Whitehurst had reported his own observations and what others had told him. Underpinning his complaints and their persistence were three things: the unscientific nature of so much of what was being passed off as science in the FBI lab; the culture of pro-prosecution bias rather than scientific truth that pervaded the lab, including the possibly illegal withholding of exculpatory information; and the complete inability of the FBI lab or its management to investigate itself and correct these problems.
Not only had the IG report confined itself to Whitehurst's admittedly limited sphere of knowledge within the FBI lab, it had no mandate to look into the evidentiary matters raised, to ask how particular cases might have been affected, or to look at the possibility of charges against FBI lab employees heavily criticized by the report. Given the plentiful evidence of pro prosecution bias, false testimony, and inadequate forensic work, it was only logical to assume that cases had been affected. How many people might be in jail unjustly? How many might be on Death Row by mistake? If innocent people were in jail for crimes they did not commit, how many guilty ones were walking the streets?
What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
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msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://solari.com/blog/dod-and-hud-mis ... mentation/
DOD and HUD Missing Money: Supporting Documentation for $21 Trillion of Undocumentable Adjustments
Catherine, News & Commentary on October 2, 2017 at 12:10 am · 2 Comments
[Update from CAF on October 5, 2017: It appears that some of the DOD and HUD OIG links have just been changed or taken off line. We are in the process of restoring these with the documents – we will have these fixed by October 10th, so check back then if you are looking for a specific link]
[Update from CAF: Dr. Skidmore and his team have now reviewed additional documentation and undocumented adjustments at DOD and HUD now total $21 trillion – more than the outstanding debt on the US government balance sheet. The report table has been updated as of Wednesday, September 27 to include these staggering amounts. The Summary Report still uses the prior totals. Our gratitude for Dr. Skidmore’s efforts to understand and document this phenomenon is “off the charts”! We will be adding additional files and information as they find them.]
http://nynmedia.com/news/vera-institute ... arceration
GENERAL OCT 02, 2017
VERA INSTITUTE SPINS OFF A NEW NONPROFIT FOCUSED ON ENDING MASS INCARCERATION
By DAN ROSENBLUM
An organization dedicated to rehabilitating violent felons, developing alternatives to incarceration and helping victims of violent crime was recently spun off from the Vera Institute of Justice to become its own nonprofit, starting Oct. 1.
Common Justice, which has a $2.5 million budget and 15 full-time employees, is the latest organization to emerge from the Vera Institute, which focuses on spurring criminal justice and law enforcement reforms across the country and often serves as a social justice incubator.
Danielle Sered, executive director of the program, said the project had “outgrown the container” of the Vera Institute. “We’ve become real national leaders in the movement to end mass incarceration, and the movement for crime survivors in America,” she said. “And we need the room and bandwidth that only an independent organization can really allow.”
Common Justice, like the Vera Institute, is based in New York City. Common Justice operates an alternative to incarceration and victim service program for serious and violent felonies and works nationally to challenge mass incarceration, which has ballooned over the past 40 years. Criminal justice advocates contend funneling people into prison harms offenders’ future job prospects, leads to recidivism, doesn’t treat the underlying cause of violence and disproportionately harms minority communities.
“There just isn’t a way to a right-sized criminal justice system that doesn’t require us to take on the question of violence,” she said, due to the sheer volume of offenders jailed for violent crimes.
A major component of Common Justice’s work in New York involves engaging willing crime victims to help advocate for alternatives to incarceration. The victims help shape what offenders’ consequences and rehabilitation can look like. For the wrongdoer, this can include performing community service, paying restitution or agreeing to find a job or go to school. About 80 defendants and 100 victims have gone through the program to date. Since 2012, only one person has been terminated from the program for committing a new crime, Sered said.
Common Justice will retain its funding model, programs and staff developed at Vera, but will develop its own support infrastructure and form its own board of directors. A significant driver of the separation is a grant from the Ford Foundation’s Building Institutions and Networks initiative. The foundation aims to distribute $1 billion to as many as 300 social justice institutions across the world.
“I think people who are used to mergers and separations in the corporate sector presume they arise out of some kind of conflict, and in fact, the unique methodology of Vera is that that separation is a sign of success,” Sered said.
Common Justice is the 18th group to spin off from Vera as an independent nonprofit, including the Guardian Assistance Network, and Esperanza, according to a Vera Institute spokeswoman. Other programs have been absorbed by other nonprofits or government entities. The institute even has its own toolkit for organizations seeking to become independent.
“We are proud to have nurtured Common Justice’s cutting-edge work and have immense confidence in the new and lasting contributions they will make as an independent organization,” Nick Turner, president of the Vera Institute, said in a statement.
Common Justice also operates HealingWorks, which is a national project helping young men of color – and their communities – recover from violence and trauma.
At the federal level, the thinking around how to address mass incarceration has shifted. Groups dedicated to ending mass incarceration and interrupting the school-to-prison pipeline garnered more attention and support from the Obama administration, while the Trump administration has reverted to harsher drug penalties, stricter sentencing guidelines and has been supportive of private prisons.
However, Sered said it was Common Justice’s job to grow, develop better ideas, influence decisions made at the state and local levels and prove what works. “And that appetite is undiminished by the shift in the federal winds,” she said. “If anything, I feel like the sense of urgency is even greater than it’s been.”
http://www.thetimesnews.com/news/201605 ... -in-prison
These States Have the Highest Cost Per Prisoner
Posted on April 28, 2016 by Kelsey Warner
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bro ... -1.3544449
Bronx detective says he's being targeted by NYPD bosses over abuse claims against him
BY ANDREW KESHNER
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, October 6, 2017, 1:18 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3544423
Court officer found with heroin on Staten Island: police
BY LAURA DIMON JOHN ANNESE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, October 5, 2017, 11:46 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... e-shooting
Utah
Video shows Utah police fatally shooting man from behind as he fled
Police face no charges amid accusations of racial profiling and ‘brutal execution’ in case of Patrick Harmon, 50, who was pulled over for cycling without a light
Link du jour
http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... /becalmed/
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2017/10/0 ... cleansers/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ve-pardons
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/c ... -1.3543955
http://www.nola.com/national_politics/2 ... _rele.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... rQ6khSLaS4
You can play along at home:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dp ... -card-game
http://www.easy-strategy.com/thirty-six-strategies.html
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/fms ... epsyop.pdf
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/f ... -1.3545425
FEMA deletes data on lack of water and electricity in Puerto Rico, positive statistics remain on website
Friday, October 6, 2017, 11:49 AM
Key details about the availability of electricity and water in Puerto Rico as they continue to recover in the wake of Hurricane Maria have been scrubbed from the FEMA website where more positive statistics on federal response still remain.
The Federal Emergency Management site had been tracking response on the island and as of Wednesday indicated 50% of Puerto Rico had access to drinking water and 5.4% of residents had electricity, according to Wayback Machine, an internet archiving tool that preserved the page.
Thursday morning, however, the information vanished from the website while more positive details are still present.
FEMA spokesman William Booher told the Washington Post both measures are still being tracked and reported on a website updated by the office of Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello.
Getty Images provides access to this publicly distributed image for editorial purposes and is not the copyright owner. Additional permissions may be required and are the sole responsibility of the end user.
Hurricane Maria strikes Puerto Rico after pummeling Caribbean
Still available on the FEMA website are statistics noting there are now 14,000 federal staff on the ground in Puerto Rico and the U .S. Virgin Islands and that all federally operated post offices, airports and ports have been opened.
The federal website also shows that 92% of hospitals and 96% of dialysis centers there are also open — it does not note however, that most medical facilities are still running on emergency power and generators, leaving most of them without air conditioning.
What’s more, roughly 65% of grocery stores have been reopened, an estimated 30 miles of roadway have been cleared and 64% of wastewater treatment plants are up and running on generators.
FEMA and President Trump recently faced back lash for its limited and slow response to the island after it was ravaged by Hurricane Maria. Trump fired back at critics, including the mayor of San Juan, with a day-long tirade on Twitter at the end of September.
“To the people of Puerto Rico: Do not believe the #FakeNews!” he wrote on Saturday.
“My Administration, Governor @RicardoRossello, and many others are working together to help the people of Puerto Rico in every way. #FakeNews critics are working overtime...”
According to the website maintained by Rossello’s office — which is in Spanish— 9.2% of the island is with power and 54.2% have access to drinking water as of Thursday. Booher added that the statistics are also shared in media conferences and calls that occur twice daily, though did not explain why they were no longer on the FEMA page.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/US_homel ... 8/Y/M.html
US HOMELAND SECURITY AGENTS ‘ACCEPTED BRIBES, PROSTITUTES FROM COLOMBIA CRIME LORDS’
At least two Homeland Security agents took cash and prostitutes from Colombian crime lords in exchange for erasing their criminal records, according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ). In a story befit for the ages, the two agents, one named Christopher Ciccione and the other unnamed, enjoyed a lavish evening in Bogota with fine wine, a suitcase full of cash, a famous singer, prostitutes, and an army colonel–all in exchange for helping at least two major crime lords. SOURCE: COLUMBIA REPORTS – BY ATTICUS BALLESTEROS
http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard- ... ce-2017-10
The Department of Justice is allegedly investigating Harvard's admissions practices
Abby Jackson
Oct. 4, 2017, 6:28 PM 6,258
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3544287
Man arrested for threatening to kill African-Americans at Howard University
BY ELIZABETH ELIZALDE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, October 5, 2017, 10:00 PM
http://tucson.com/news/local/border-pat ... e-latest-2
Border Patrol agent found guilty of stealing $100K in gun parts
By Curt Prendergast Arizona Daily Star Oct 4, 2017
Agent Jesus Manuel Franco was found guilty of one count of theft of government property and two counts of unlawful possession and transfer of a machine gun. He was acquitted on one count of conspiracy to commit theft of government property and 13 counts of mail fraud, documents filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson show.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3545068
N.Y. assemblyman wants probe of DA Vance dropping case against Trump kids
BY KENNETH LOVETT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Friday, October 6, 2017, 8:20 AM
http://ticklethewire.com/2017/10/06/cas ... mps-clubs/
Cash-Strapped Secret Service Spends $137,505 on Golf Cart Rentals at Trump’s Clubs
President Trump’s frequent visits to his private golf clubs in New Jersey and Florida has cost the Secret Service at least $137,505 on golf cart rental so far this year.
The USA Today reports that the agency spent $61,960 to rent golf carts at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida.
The news comes three months after it was revealed that the Secret Service can no longer pay overtime to hundreds of agents because of the large amount of resources needed to protect Trump’s large family.
“There’s a question about how fast Trump is racking up bills that the taxpayers have to pay, which are largely trips to his hotels and his golf courses,” said Harrell Kirstein, American Bridge communications director.
http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/news/r ... -1.3544841
Renault wants half its cars to be electric or hybrid in 2022
DOD and HUD Missing Money: Supporting Documentation for $21 Trillion of Undocumentable Adjustments
Catherine, News & Commentary on October 2, 2017 at 12:10 am · 2 Comments
[Update from CAF on October 5, 2017: It appears that some of the DOD and HUD OIG links have just been changed or taken off line. We are in the process of restoring these with the documents – we will have these fixed by October 10th, so check back then if you are looking for a specific link]
[Update from CAF: Dr. Skidmore and his team have now reviewed additional documentation and undocumented adjustments at DOD and HUD now total $21 trillion – more than the outstanding debt on the US government balance sheet. The report table has been updated as of Wednesday, September 27 to include these staggering amounts. The Summary Report still uses the prior totals. Our gratitude for Dr. Skidmore’s efforts to understand and document this phenomenon is “off the charts”! We will be adding additional files and information as they find them.]
http://nynmedia.com/news/vera-institute ... arceration
GENERAL OCT 02, 2017
VERA INSTITUTE SPINS OFF A NEW NONPROFIT FOCUSED ON ENDING MASS INCARCERATION
By DAN ROSENBLUM
An organization dedicated to rehabilitating violent felons, developing alternatives to incarceration and helping victims of violent crime was recently spun off from the Vera Institute of Justice to become its own nonprofit, starting Oct. 1.
Common Justice, which has a $2.5 million budget and 15 full-time employees, is the latest organization to emerge from the Vera Institute, which focuses on spurring criminal justice and law enforcement reforms across the country and often serves as a social justice incubator.
Danielle Sered, executive director of the program, said the project had “outgrown the container” of the Vera Institute. “We’ve become real national leaders in the movement to end mass incarceration, and the movement for crime survivors in America,” she said. “And we need the room and bandwidth that only an independent organization can really allow.”
Common Justice, like the Vera Institute, is based in New York City. Common Justice operates an alternative to incarceration and victim service program for serious and violent felonies and works nationally to challenge mass incarceration, which has ballooned over the past 40 years. Criminal justice advocates contend funneling people into prison harms offenders’ future job prospects, leads to recidivism, doesn’t treat the underlying cause of violence and disproportionately harms minority communities.
“There just isn’t a way to a right-sized criminal justice system that doesn’t require us to take on the question of violence,” she said, due to the sheer volume of offenders jailed for violent crimes.
A major component of Common Justice’s work in New York involves engaging willing crime victims to help advocate for alternatives to incarceration. The victims help shape what offenders’ consequences and rehabilitation can look like. For the wrongdoer, this can include performing community service, paying restitution or agreeing to find a job or go to school. About 80 defendants and 100 victims have gone through the program to date. Since 2012, only one person has been terminated from the program for committing a new crime, Sered said.
Common Justice will retain its funding model, programs and staff developed at Vera, but will develop its own support infrastructure and form its own board of directors. A significant driver of the separation is a grant from the Ford Foundation’s Building Institutions and Networks initiative. The foundation aims to distribute $1 billion to as many as 300 social justice institutions across the world.
“I think people who are used to mergers and separations in the corporate sector presume they arise out of some kind of conflict, and in fact, the unique methodology of Vera is that that separation is a sign of success,” Sered said.
Common Justice is the 18th group to spin off from Vera as an independent nonprofit, including the Guardian Assistance Network, and Esperanza, according to a Vera Institute spokeswoman. Other programs have been absorbed by other nonprofits or government entities. The institute even has its own toolkit for organizations seeking to become independent.
“We are proud to have nurtured Common Justice’s cutting-edge work and have immense confidence in the new and lasting contributions they will make as an independent organization,” Nick Turner, president of the Vera Institute, said in a statement.
Common Justice also operates HealingWorks, which is a national project helping young men of color – and their communities – recover from violence and trauma.
At the federal level, the thinking around how to address mass incarceration has shifted. Groups dedicated to ending mass incarceration and interrupting the school-to-prison pipeline garnered more attention and support from the Obama administration, while the Trump administration has reverted to harsher drug penalties, stricter sentencing guidelines and has been supportive of private prisons.
However, Sered said it was Common Justice’s job to grow, develop better ideas, influence decisions made at the state and local levels and prove what works. “And that appetite is undiminished by the shift in the federal winds,” she said. “If anything, I feel like the sense of urgency is even greater than it’s been.”
http://www.thetimesnews.com/news/201605 ... -in-prison
These States Have the Highest Cost Per Prisoner
Posted on April 28, 2016 by Kelsey Warner
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bro ... -1.3544449
Bronx detective says he's being targeted by NYPD bosses over abuse claims against him
BY ANDREW KESHNER
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, October 6, 2017, 1:18 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3544423
Court officer found with heroin on Staten Island: police
BY LAURA DIMON JOHN ANNESE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, October 5, 2017, 11:46 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... e-shooting
Utah
Video shows Utah police fatally shooting man from behind as he fled
Police face no charges amid accusations of racial profiling and ‘brutal execution’ in case of Patrick Harmon, 50, who was pulled over for cycling without a light
Link du jour
http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... /becalmed/
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2017/10/0 ... cleansers/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ve-pardons
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/c ... -1.3543955
http://www.nola.com/national_politics/2 ... _rele.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... rQ6khSLaS4
You can play along at home:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dp ... -card-game
http://www.easy-strategy.com/thirty-six-strategies.html
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/fms ... epsyop.pdf
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/f ... -1.3545425
FEMA deletes data on lack of water and electricity in Puerto Rico, positive statistics remain on website
Friday, October 6, 2017, 11:49 AM
Key details about the availability of electricity and water in Puerto Rico as they continue to recover in the wake of Hurricane Maria have been scrubbed from the FEMA website where more positive statistics on federal response still remain.
The Federal Emergency Management site had been tracking response on the island and as of Wednesday indicated 50% of Puerto Rico had access to drinking water and 5.4% of residents had electricity, according to Wayback Machine, an internet archiving tool that preserved the page.
Thursday morning, however, the information vanished from the website while more positive details are still present.
FEMA spokesman William Booher told the Washington Post both measures are still being tracked and reported on a website updated by the office of Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello.
Getty Images provides access to this publicly distributed image for editorial purposes and is not the copyright owner. Additional permissions may be required and are the sole responsibility of the end user.
Hurricane Maria strikes Puerto Rico after pummeling Caribbean
Still available on the FEMA website are statistics noting there are now 14,000 federal staff on the ground in Puerto Rico and the U .S. Virgin Islands and that all federally operated post offices, airports and ports have been opened.
The federal website also shows that 92% of hospitals and 96% of dialysis centers there are also open — it does not note however, that most medical facilities are still running on emergency power and generators, leaving most of them without air conditioning.
What’s more, roughly 65% of grocery stores have been reopened, an estimated 30 miles of roadway have been cleared and 64% of wastewater treatment plants are up and running on generators.
FEMA and President Trump recently faced back lash for its limited and slow response to the island after it was ravaged by Hurricane Maria. Trump fired back at critics, including the mayor of San Juan, with a day-long tirade on Twitter at the end of September.
“To the people of Puerto Rico: Do not believe the #FakeNews!” he wrote on Saturday.
“My Administration, Governor @RicardoRossello, and many others are working together to help the people of Puerto Rico in every way. #FakeNews critics are working overtime...”
According to the website maintained by Rossello’s office — which is in Spanish— 9.2% of the island is with power and 54.2% have access to drinking water as of Thursday. Booher added that the statistics are also shared in media conferences and calls that occur twice daily, though did not explain why they were no longer on the FEMA page.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/US_homel ... 8/Y/M.html
US HOMELAND SECURITY AGENTS ‘ACCEPTED BRIBES, PROSTITUTES FROM COLOMBIA CRIME LORDS’
At least two Homeland Security agents took cash and prostitutes from Colombian crime lords in exchange for erasing their criminal records, according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ). In a story befit for the ages, the two agents, one named Christopher Ciccione and the other unnamed, enjoyed a lavish evening in Bogota with fine wine, a suitcase full of cash, a famous singer, prostitutes, and an army colonel–all in exchange for helping at least two major crime lords. SOURCE: COLUMBIA REPORTS – BY ATTICUS BALLESTEROS
http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard- ... ce-2017-10
The Department of Justice is allegedly investigating Harvard's admissions practices
Abby Jackson
Oct. 4, 2017, 6:28 PM 6,258
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3544287
Man arrested for threatening to kill African-Americans at Howard University
BY ELIZABETH ELIZALDE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, October 5, 2017, 10:00 PM
http://tucson.com/news/local/border-pat ... e-latest-2
Border Patrol agent found guilty of stealing $100K in gun parts
By Curt Prendergast Arizona Daily Star Oct 4, 2017
Agent Jesus Manuel Franco was found guilty of one count of theft of government property and two counts of unlawful possession and transfer of a machine gun. He was acquitted on one count of conspiracy to commit theft of government property and 13 counts of mail fraud, documents filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson show.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3545068
N.Y. assemblyman wants probe of DA Vance dropping case against Trump kids
BY KENNETH LOVETT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Friday, October 6, 2017, 8:20 AM
http://ticklethewire.com/2017/10/06/cas ... mps-clubs/
Cash-Strapped Secret Service Spends $137,505 on Golf Cart Rentals at Trump’s Clubs
President Trump’s frequent visits to his private golf clubs in New Jersey and Florida has cost the Secret Service at least $137,505 on golf cart rental so far this year.
The USA Today reports that the agency spent $61,960 to rent golf carts at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida.
The news comes three months after it was revealed that the Secret Service can no longer pay overtime to hundreds of agents because of the large amount of resources needed to protect Trump’s large family.
“There’s a question about how fast Trump is racking up bills that the taxpayers have to pay, which are largely trips to his hotels and his golf courses,” said Harrell Kirstein, American Bridge communications director.
http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/news/r ... -1.3544841
Renault wants half its cars to be electric or hybrid in 2022
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3603291
The Latest: Man once wanted by FBI was truck attack suspect's pal
https://apnews.com/0b9004bc3828468d9dc6 ... iping-case
Georgia attorney general quits defense in voting machine server wiping case
The Georgia attorney general’s office will no longer represent the state’s top elections official in an elections integrity lawsuit filed three days before a crucial computer server was quietly wiped clean.
The lawsuit aims to force Georgia to retire its antiquated and heavily questioned touchscreen election technology, which does not provide an auditable paper trail.
The server in question was a statewide staging location for key election-related data. It made headlines in June after a security expert disclosed a gaping security hole that wasn’t fixed for six months after he first reported it to election authorities. Personal data was exposed for Georgia’s 6.7 million voters, as were passwords used by county officials to access files.
The assistant state attorney general handling the case, Cristina Correia, notified the court and participating attorneys Wednesday that her office was withdrawing from the case, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press. Spokeswoman Katelyn McCreary offered no explanation and said she couldn’t comment “on pending matters.”
Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the main defendant, is running for governor in 2018 and his campaign said in a statement emailed to the AP that the attorney general’s office has a conflict of interest and cannot represent either Kemp’s office or the state elections board. It quoted campaign spokesman Ryan Mahoney, who did not elaborate and did not immediately respond to AP emails and text messages seeking details.
The secretary of state’s office had said in an earlier statement that the law firm of former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes would represent Kemp and other state election officials. It made no mention of a conflict of interest.
The campaign statement quoted Mahoney as saying: “There is no scandal or vast conspiracy. This is a tasteless nothingburger cooked up by liberal activists who know their lawsuit is nothing short of stupid.”
Both Kemp and state Attorney General Chris Carr are Republicans. Barnes is a Democrat.
The server’s data was destroyed July 7 by technicians at the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University, which runs the state’s election system, Correia informed attorneys in the case in an Oct. 18 email. Twelve days earlier, she had informed the same group of attorneys that the data on the server was wiped on March 17, the same day it was returned to the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University by the FBI after a probe into the security incident. No one at the state attorney general’s office has explained Correia’s source for the apparently erroneous information on timing. The AP obtained both emails.
KSU email records obtained by the AP last week in an open records request say the server data was destroyed July 7.
The erased hard drives are central to the lawsuit because they could have revealed whether Georgia’s most recent elections were compromised by hackers. Russian interference in U.S. politics, including attempts to penetrate voting systems, has been an acute national preoccupation since last year.
It’s not clear who ordered the server’s data irretrievably erased.
Kemp has denied ordering the data destruction or knowing about it in advance. His office’s general counsel issued a two-page report Monday claiming Kennesaw State
Executive Director Marilyn Marks of the Coalition for Good Governance, a plaintiff in the case, called the attorney general’s office’s withdrawal from the legal defense shocking but not unexpected.
She accused Kemp of hiding the facts of the case — perhaps even from the state attorney general’s office.
“There have been multiple conflicting stories of how and when the evidence on the servers was
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/10/31/trump ... t-un-dump/
OCTOBER 31, 2017 | DICK RUSSELL
TRUMPED: THE MANDATE, THE MEDIA, AND NEW CLUES AMID THE JFK DOCUMENT (UN)-DUMP
For those of us waiting since passage of the JFK Act of 1992 for release of the last withheld documents on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the news last Thursday was beyond anti-climactic. It was infuriating — and illegal.
Given that President Donald Trump seized the opportunity to be in Dallas for a GOP fundraiser, it was also an insult to the memory of Kennedy’s assassination in the same city almost 54 years before.
Clearly, elements of the CIA and FBI had done some last-minute arm-twisting. As night fell, Trump penned a memo saying: “I have no choice — today — but to accept [their] redactions rather than allow potentially irreversible harm to our nation’s security.”
This time-honored refrain followed several days of presidential tweets anticipating the release of almost 3,000 long-secret files, and announcing his “hope to get just about everything to the public!” In fact, the only power Trump had under the law was an ability to hang onto documents — and that he did, releasing a mere two percent — 52 government files previously withheld in full. The remainder, he said, would be subject to another six-month-long review process by the intelligence agencies.
Most of the media vastly overstated the amount of newly released brand-new material, while the major cable networks (including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow) trotted out Warren Commission apologists like Phil Shenon and Gerald Posner for their “expert opinions” that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
The New York Times did quote from a lengthy memo dictated by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover right after Jack Ruby killed Oswald two days after the assassination. Of eyebrow-raising interest was Hoover’s flat assertion that Oswald’s murder was “inexcusable” considering “our warnings to the Dallas Police Department” — whatever that meant.
Hoover also noted “some rumors of underworld activity in Chicago” in Ruby’s background. This is the same memo partially released years ago that contained Hoover’s expressed desire to have “something issued so that we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.”
J. Edgar Hoover
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Photo credit: Unknown / Wikimedia
That is still de rigeur for New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik. While conceding that “the FBI, the CIA, and the rest were up to their armpits in bad acts that they were trying to keep concealed …” he nonetheless insists that “the Warren Commission is almost certainly the only plausible account of what happened on that day in Dallas.”
Gopnik doesn’t bother to mention the House Select Committee on Assassinations’ conclusion in 1979 that Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy” involving more than one gunman. Instead, he concludes with a backhanded slap at anyone who might dispute the Oswald-acted-alone hypothesis. “There is no ‘deep state’ that exists beyond the scrutiny of responsible citizens,” Gopnik claims to believe. “There is a cynical paranoia that always acts, and is meant to, as a pathogen to public trust.”
Why then are we not yet allowed to see the known — but still hidden — records emanating from and about CIA higher-ups such as James Angleton, David Atlee Phillips, and George Joannides? What was the point of releasing an Army file about Antonio Veciana regarding “‘Alpha 66’ Plans to Resume Attacks on Cuba” — with no mention of the CIA’s connection to the Cuban exile group and Veciana’s admission of having once met Oswald in the company of his own case officer?
The agency’s “bad acts,” these files reveal, went beyond numerous assassination attempts against Fidel Castro that involved leading mob figures and Cuban exiles. “We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” one CIA file says. “We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated) … Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots … and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful.”
WhoWhatWhy has assembled a team of researchers and experts to carefully scrutinize the releases, including an earlier set of documents made public in July. By early August, this website had already revealed that Earle Cabell, who as Mayor of Dallas oversaw the arrangements for Kennedy’s motorcade route, had been a CIA asset since the mid-1950s. The Mayor was also the brother of Charles Cabell, the Agency’s Deputy Director before JFK forced him to resign after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion.
Earle Cabell, Dealey Plaza, CIA
Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza, Dallas. Earle Cabell (inset)
Photo credit: Anita & Greg / Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0), US Government Printing Office / Wikimedia and CIA
Over the coming weeks, context will be coming for files that would otherwise be overlooked. There is, for example, an intriguing memo from Hoover to LBJ aide Marvin Watson in the mid-1960s. It detailed the FBI’s intelligence about what the Soviet Union believed had happened in Dallas. This included the possibility that Johnson himself may have been complicit. Also, that Russian intelligence had rejected Oswald when the ex-Marine “defected” to Moscow in 1959, either as a US agent or a crazy. The Soviets suspected an “extreme right conspiracy” that included Oswald, even if only as a patsy.
Why was this kept secret for more than a half century? Perhaps because it might be seen as more credible than the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald was a “lone wolf” crazy?
Similar questions are raised by an FBI file headed “Minutemen”—a well-known cadre of right-wing extremists — dated November 9, 1964. Why was this document buried for over 50 years? In this file, a government informant (apparently a member of the Minutemen) describes something that occurred “about six weeks prior to November 22, 1963.”
Two men came to the informant’s door wanting “some ammunition.” The informant knew one of the men as a member of the Minutemen; the other he had never seen before. The informant dutifully granted the request for ammunition, and did not think “any more about it until November 22, 1964 [sic: clearly a typo for 1963] when [he and his wife] saw a newspaper photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Both noticed a close resemblance between Oswald and the man who was with the MINUTE MAN a few weeks before. Both were afraid that he was Oswald and were afraid to say anything. Both said they felt the MINUTE MEN were involved in the assassination although they claimed that very little was said by members they knew following the assassination except to express satisfaction that it happened.
Later in the memo the informant’s government handler, identified only as “Dallas T-1,” describes picking up the informant almost a year later and driving him to a gun shop in the city operated by John Thomas Masen. They “observed several men in the front of the shop. The INFORMANT picked out MASEN from the group and identified him as the man that he thought was Oswald.”
https://apnews.com/ae5abd05f7d2476d9e68 ... sault-case
Lawsuit: Blood, urine samples misplaced in sex assault case
BEND, Ore.
A lawsuit alleges Deschutes County prosecutors couldn’t file charges in an alleged rape because either the hospital or the Bend Police Department lost blood and urine samples that would have been evidence of a crime.
The lawsuit filed this week asks for more than $1.6 million in damages against St. Charles Bend and the police and comes on the heels of another $6 million lawsuit against the alleged assailant — who was not charged in the case — and the organizers and venue of a party where the woman says the assault unfolded, The Bulletin reported Wednesday.
The plaintiff was at a 2015 Halloween party with her husband and some friends when someone slipped an unidentified date rape drug into her drink, according to the lawsuit.
She then became separated from her husband for about 30 minutes and was sexually assaulted by a man who had been hired to help with event security, the court papers say.
The alleged attacker later told police that he had sex with the plaintiff, but it was consensual and she did not seem overly intoxicated, according to the suit.
On Nov. 1, 2015, the plaintiff contacted Bend Police to report the alleged sexual assault. An officer met with the plaintiff and her husband and suggested she go to St. Charles Bend for a sexual assault examination, according to the lawsuit.
Another officer picked up some of these samples that night, according to the lawsuit, but the police department later told the plaintiff it never took possession of the samples.
The samples were never sent to a crime laboratory for testing. Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel decided not to file any criminal charges against her alleged assailant in part because he had no way to prove she was incapacitated and therefore unable to consent.
___
http://nypost.com/video/topless-protest ... -predator/
Topless protesters remind world that Roman Polanski is an admitted sexual predator
October 31, 2017
Members of FEMEN, a radical feminist organization, protested at La Cinematheque Francaise as Roman Polanski was visiting. A 10-day career retrospective is being held at the film institute, although the protesters were hoping to keep the focus on the controversial director's history of sexual assault allegations.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pow ... ee736272fd
PowerPost Perspective
New law targets managers who retaliate against federal whistleblowers
https://apnews.com/2bb385286eac4e2195c9 ... misconduct
6 Detroit officers under investigation for misconduct
DETROIT
Detroit police officials say six officers are under investigation for misconduct related to events that took place at the scene of a reported break-in over the weekend.
Responding officers asked five members of a renovation and cleaning crew at the scene for work papers, WDIV-TV reported . They also ran checks on the workers’ names and licenses.
A complaint filed with the department alleges that an officer then ordered the men to run.
“He got to telling people to just run,” said Justin Green, one of the workers. “I said, ‘What do you mean, run?’ He said, ‘Run or you’re going to jail.’”
The complaint said it was a way to humiliate the black contractors.
“Humiliated,” said Antoine Nalls, another one of the workers. “Like we were just hoodlums.”
Assistant Chief Arnold Williams said it was inappropriate behavior that the department doesn’t condone.
“This is something that we don’t take lightly,” Williams said. “We believe that all citizens should be treated with respect.”
___
http://space4peace.blogspot.com
Caged and Censored - Arresting Grassroots Truth Telling
I get most of my blog hits from people who see the posts I put on Facebook. In recent days when someone clicks on my Fazebook blog post they only get the very top mast of this blog - the rest of the story does not appear. I've heard from quite a few folks who are confused and frustrated.
I have no idea how or why this is happening - I just know that something is blocking readers who try to visit this blog from Fazebook.
I've figured out that when you come to this page that if you click on the title at the top - Organizing Notes - then you can see everything. But some people don't try that and give up when they see that each blog post does not properly load.
In addition I've recently found that searching for Organizing Notes in various search engines does not bear fruit like it used to do. For many years all you need to do was type in Organizing Notes in a search engine and it came up 1-2 in the list. Now, unless you add my name to the search, the blog link does not get listed.
This appears to be part of the general effort to restrict access to blogs and web sites that stand in opposition to the global ruling oligarchies. Labeling us as Fake News puts meager efforts like my blog in a category that can easily be impeded and essentially made invisible.
Maybe all this will change tomorrow and it will work again just fine. But right now it feels like an initiation into a new world where folks who try to tell the truths about what they are seeing around them are being caged and censored.
Bruce
https://apnews.com/82063977418743ed98f6 ... etaliation
Woman who refused to be informant sues cops for retaliation
PROVIDENCE, R.I.
A woman who lost her job at Twin River casino is blaming Rhode Island State Police, alleging in a lawsuit that the agency retaliated against her for refusing to serve as an informant.
The Rhode Island chapter of the America Civil Liberties Union sued state police Wednesday on behalf of Marissa Lacoste, of Warwick.
The ACLU says detectives stopped Lacoste in January with less than an ounce of marijuana. They told her she was in serious trouble, even though it’s not a crime to possess that amount. She cooperated until February.
The federal lawsuit says police then told Twin River she was banned from entering the casino, preventing her from working there.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/4 ... 77163.html
4 Suspects Accused of Stealing ATF Agent's Car and Guns in Custody
Officials have not yet identified the suspects or revealed whether the firearms were recovered
By Cassia Pollock and Alex Presha
https://apnews.com/4598b3d530a641efb6da ... r-contempt
Former police chief who was Aide to ex-AG Kane to begin serving jail time for contempt
HARRISBURG, Pa. A former police chief convicted of illegally accessing emails for information about a grand jury investigation of his then-boss, former state Attorney General Kathleen Kane, is on his way to jail.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear the appeal of Patrick “Rocco” Reese, who has been convicted of indirect criminal contempt.
Reese’s lawyer, Bill Fetterhoff, said he was disappointed in the decision, arguing Reese was not properly informed of the protective order he was convicted of violating. Fetterhoff said Reese does not plan to pursue further appeals.
Reese is scheduled to report to jail Nov. 13 to start serving a three- to six-month sentence.
Kane, a Democrat, was convicted last year of leaking secret grand jury information to smear a rival and then lying about it under oath.
Link du jour
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Deat ... 324458.php
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/n ... -1.3604461
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... -1.3265763
https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... cane-maria
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/che ... a80a0fa3a4
https://apnews.com/e85470cf539342c18590 ... estigation
2nd Lincoln police officer leaves force amid sexual assault
A second Lincoln police officer has resigned amid allegations related to a sexual assault investigation involving another officer.
Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister says the second officer was placed on unpaid leave as a result of an internal investigation into the sexual assault allegation. Bliemeister says the second officer was put on leave on suspicion of violating the department’s code of ethics, and that he resigned earlier this week. The chief says the second officer has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing.
Last month, another officer left the force after being accused of sexually assaulting a woman he met while on duty. That criminal investigation continues.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3604596
New Jersey police chief compared black people to ISIS, slammed teen’s head against doorjamb: complaint
BY BLAKE ALSUP
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, November 1, 2017, 4:12 PM
https://apnews.com/dbe2854903df4b7c8119 ... ex-assault
Renton police investigating sheriff for alleged sex assault
https://apnews.com/dbe2854903df4b7c81197633b6a290eb
SEATTLE
Police in the Seattle suburb of Renton are conducting a criminal investigation into the King County Sheriff over a former deputy’s accusation that the sheriff sexually assaulted him in 2014.
News outlets reported Wednesday that Renton Police said their findings will be forwarded to county prosecutors in the coming days.
The investigation of Sheriff John Urquhart began in September after Brian Barnes filed a complaint with the King County Sheriff’s Office alleging Urquhart groped him outside a Renton restaurant after the two had dinner together.
Urquhart denies Barnes’ allegations, calling them “despicable” and politically motivated lies.
On Monday, a judge separately issued a temporary restraining order against Urquhart filed by a female ex-deputy who accused him of raping her in 2002.
https://apnews.com/3fe306e71d4b40978eaf ... -inquiries
2 officers cleared in unarmed black man’s shooting death by police still face inquiries
By RICK CALLAHAN
https://apnews.com/9196d89da65a4cfea90a ... s-lawsuits
Columbus police facing multiple civil rights lawsuits
COLUMBUS, Ohio Almost 20 years after the government sued Ohio’s largest city alleging police routinely violated residents’ civil rights, Columbus is facing more than two dozen complaints raising similar concerns, records show.
Documents also indicate that the city has paid more than $4 million to individuals who alleged civil rights violations over the past decade.
Recent police shootings have alarmed local clergy and activists, who want the city to train more officers on how to de-escalate potentially violent situations with people having mental health crises. They also want more police training for dealing with people with mental illness, and to have officers trained to recognize racial bias.
“We’re just asking for justice,” said Pastor Jason Ridley of the Hilltop Community Worship Center. “We’re just asking for the simple reality that I can leave my house and not fear.”
That includes police acknowledging that sometimes they make mistakes, said Ridley, who is black.
Democratic Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther acknowledged Wednesday that some residents’ “faith is shaken” in the police department. Addressing that problem is critical at a time of soaring homicides, half of which are going unsolved, he said.
“It’s our collective responsibility to renew, restore and enhance our community’s faith in our division,” Ginther said.
With 111 killings to date, Columbus could be on track to exceed its previous record of 139.
Columbus has largely been spared the unrest seen elsewhere following police shootings of blacks, but the department is under increased scrutiny following a series of fatal encounters.
Those include last year’s shooting of 13-year-old Tyre King as officers responded to reports of an armed robbery. Police said the boy pulled what looked like a real gun, but was later determined to be a BB gun from his waistband during a confrontation with officers.
Among the 26 currently pending lawsuits reviewed by The Associated Press:
— The estate of 23-year-old Henry Green, who was fatally shot by two police officers who said he opened fire on them last year, alleges wrongful death, civil rights violations, constitutional violations and racial discrimination. Green was black. The officers are white.
— A woman claims that Columbus police shot and mortally wounded her brother, Kareem Ali Nadir Jones, who was black, without justification and then conspired to provide misleading information about the July 7 confrontation. Columbus police say two officers saw the 30-year-old Jones walking between cars and behaving erratically.
— Attorneys for Timothy Davis say officers at the scene of his Sept. 1 arrest inside a convenience store shielded fellow officers attacking Davis to keep witnesses from seeing him being punched and kicked, and tried to cover up what happened by falsely claiming Davis put them in harm. Davis is black; the lawsuit doesn’t indicate the race of the officers, but says the department doesn’t properly investigate police use of force against blacks.
After prodding from Ridley and other pastors, Columbus agreed last week to meet a goal of training one out of every two current officers in how to deal with people having mental health crises by 2020, according to an Oct. 24 letter from Ginther. All recruits already receive such training, called Crisis Intervention Training.
The city also is submitting its training plans for dealing with mentally ill individuals to an international police association for review, the letter said.
A federal judge in 2002 dismissed a Justice Department’s 1999 lawsuit against Columbus after the city made changes on the use of police force and handling of complaints against officers.
___
Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus.
There's all kinds of reviews ... and all kinds of reviewers. But when a giant such as Charles de Lint takes notice of a work, that alone is a review. We are honored.
I can't imagine Oprah reading the Cross series, but in the 1990s she read a passage from Another Chance To Get It Right during an interview she was conducting with Vachss, and the book hasn't been out of print since then. She was, as were so many others, enthralled with this collection of original stories, poetry and allegory, combined with the gorgeous black & white art by Geof Darrow and others, all of it celebrating the potential of parenting.
The rights and protection of children is a theme than runs through most of Vachss's books, but this is as clear a mission statement as you're going to get from the author, filled with beauty and despair, sadness and hope. It should be required reading for every new parent. It should be required reading for anyone who cares about kids and cares for kids. Andrew deserves our thanks for writing this book.
This twenty-fifth anniversary edition features a new cover by Darrow and other new material but but the core thrust remains the same as when it was first published.
Highly recommended.
Source: Fantasy&ScienceFiction (forthcoming: March/April issue)
Books To Look For: Charles de Lint (pp. 70-71)
Another Chance To Get It Right: Fourth Edition by Andrew Vachss and Geof Darrow, Dark Horse Books, 2016, $14.99
156,481 people still without power on wed eve day 3 after the storm
http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3602967
Drought may have aided storm that walloped Maine, Northeast
Wednesday, November 1, 2017, 7:27 PM
The Latest: Man once wanted by FBI was truck attack suspect's pal
https://apnews.com/0b9004bc3828468d9dc6 ... iping-case
Georgia attorney general quits defense in voting machine server wiping case
The Georgia attorney general’s office will no longer represent the state’s top elections official in an elections integrity lawsuit filed three days before a crucial computer server was quietly wiped clean.
The lawsuit aims to force Georgia to retire its antiquated and heavily questioned touchscreen election technology, which does not provide an auditable paper trail.
The server in question was a statewide staging location for key election-related data. It made headlines in June after a security expert disclosed a gaping security hole that wasn’t fixed for six months after he first reported it to election authorities. Personal data was exposed for Georgia’s 6.7 million voters, as were passwords used by county officials to access files.
The assistant state attorney general handling the case, Cristina Correia, notified the court and participating attorneys Wednesday that her office was withdrawing from the case, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press. Spokeswoman Katelyn McCreary offered no explanation and said she couldn’t comment “on pending matters.”
Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the main defendant, is running for governor in 2018 and his campaign said in a statement emailed to the AP that the attorney general’s office has a conflict of interest and cannot represent either Kemp’s office or the state elections board. It quoted campaign spokesman Ryan Mahoney, who did not elaborate and did not immediately respond to AP emails and text messages seeking details.
The secretary of state’s office had said in an earlier statement that the law firm of former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes would represent Kemp and other state election officials. It made no mention of a conflict of interest.
The campaign statement quoted Mahoney as saying: “There is no scandal or vast conspiracy. This is a tasteless nothingburger cooked up by liberal activists who know their lawsuit is nothing short of stupid.”
Both Kemp and state Attorney General Chris Carr are Republicans. Barnes is a Democrat.
The server’s data was destroyed July 7 by technicians at the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University, which runs the state’s election system, Correia informed attorneys in the case in an Oct. 18 email. Twelve days earlier, she had informed the same group of attorneys that the data on the server was wiped on March 17, the same day it was returned to the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University by the FBI after a probe into the security incident. No one at the state attorney general’s office has explained Correia’s source for the apparently erroneous information on timing. The AP obtained both emails.
KSU email records obtained by the AP last week in an open records request say the server data was destroyed July 7.
The erased hard drives are central to the lawsuit because they could have revealed whether Georgia’s most recent elections were compromised by hackers. Russian interference in U.S. politics, including attempts to penetrate voting systems, has been an acute national preoccupation since last year.
It’s not clear who ordered the server’s data irretrievably erased.
Kemp has denied ordering the data destruction or knowing about it in advance. His office’s general counsel issued a two-page report Monday claiming Kennesaw State
Executive Director Marilyn Marks of the Coalition for Good Governance, a plaintiff in the case, called the attorney general’s office’s withdrawal from the legal defense shocking but not unexpected.
She accused Kemp of hiding the facts of the case — perhaps even from the state attorney general’s office.
“There have been multiple conflicting stories of how and when the evidence on the servers was
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/10/31/trump ... t-un-dump/
OCTOBER 31, 2017 | DICK RUSSELL
TRUMPED: THE MANDATE, THE MEDIA, AND NEW CLUES AMID THE JFK DOCUMENT (UN)-DUMP
For those of us waiting since passage of the JFK Act of 1992 for release of the last withheld documents on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the news last Thursday was beyond anti-climactic. It was infuriating — and illegal.
Given that President Donald Trump seized the opportunity to be in Dallas for a GOP fundraiser, it was also an insult to the memory of Kennedy’s assassination in the same city almost 54 years before.
Clearly, elements of the CIA and FBI had done some last-minute arm-twisting. As night fell, Trump penned a memo saying: “I have no choice — today — but to accept [their] redactions rather than allow potentially irreversible harm to our nation’s security.”
This time-honored refrain followed several days of presidential tweets anticipating the release of almost 3,000 long-secret files, and announcing his “hope to get just about everything to the public!” In fact, the only power Trump had under the law was an ability to hang onto documents — and that he did, releasing a mere two percent — 52 government files previously withheld in full. The remainder, he said, would be subject to another six-month-long review process by the intelligence agencies.
Most of the media vastly overstated the amount of newly released brand-new material, while the major cable networks (including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow) trotted out Warren Commission apologists like Phil Shenon and Gerald Posner for their “expert opinions” that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
The New York Times did quote from a lengthy memo dictated by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover right after Jack Ruby killed Oswald two days after the assassination. Of eyebrow-raising interest was Hoover’s flat assertion that Oswald’s murder was “inexcusable” considering “our warnings to the Dallas Police Department” — whatever that meant.
Hoover also noted “some rumors of underworld activity in Chicago” in Ruby’s background. This is the same memo partially released years ago that contained Hoover’s expressed desire to have “something issued so that we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.”
J. Edgar Hoover
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Photo credit: Unknown / Wikimedia
That is still de rigeur for New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik. While conceding that “the FBI, the CIA, and the rest were up to their armpits in bad acts that they were trying to keep concealed …” he nonetheless insists that “the Warren Commission is almost certainly the only plausible account of what happened on that day in Dallas.”
Gopnik doesn’t bother to mention the House Select Committee on Assassinations’ conclusion in 1979 that Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy” involving more than one gunman. Instead, he concludes with a backhanded slap at anyone who might dispute the Oswald-acted-alone hypothesis. “There is no ‘deep state’ that exists beyond the scrutiny of responsible citizens,” Gopnik claims to believe. “There is a cynical paranoia that always acts, and is meant to, as a pathogen to public trust.”
Why then are we not yet allowed to see the known — but still hidden — records emanating from and about CIA higher-ups such as James Angleton, David Atlee Phillips, and George Joannides? What was the point of releasing an Army file about Antonio Veciana regarding “‘Alpha 66’ Plans to Resume Attacks on Cuba” — with no mention of the CIA’s connection to the Cuban exile group and Veciana’s admission of having once met Oswald in the company of his own case officer?
The agency’s “bad acts,” these files reveal, went beyond numerous assassination attempts against Fidel Castro that involved leading mob figures and Cuban exiles. “We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” one CIA file says. “We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated) … Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots … and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful.”
WhoWhatWhy has assembled a team of researchers and experts to carefully scrutinize the releases, including an earlier set of documents made public in July. By early August, this website had already revealed that Earle Cabell, who as Mayor of Dallas oversaw the arrangements for Kennedy’s motorcade route, had been a CIA asset since the mid-1950s. The Mayor was also the brother of Charles Cabell, the Agency’s Deputy Director before JFK forced him to resign after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion.
Earle Cabell, Dealey Plaza, CIA
Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza, Dallas. Earle Cabell (inset)
Photo credit: Anita & Greg / Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0), US Government Printing Office / Wikimedia and CIA
Over the coming weeks, context will be coming for files that would otherwise be overlooked. There is, for example, an intriguing memo from Hoover to LBJ aide Marvin Watson in the mid-1960s. It detailed the FBI’s intelligence about what the Soviet Union believed had happened in Dallas. This included the possibility that Johnson himself may have been complicit. Also, that Russian intelligence had rejected Oswald when the ex-Marine “defected” to Moscow in 1959, either as a US agent or a crazy. The Soviets suspected an “extreme right conspiracy” that included Oswald, even if only as a patsy.
Why was this kept secret for more than a half century? Perhaps because it might be seen as more credible than the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald was a “lone wolf” crazy?
Similar questions are raised by an FBI file headed “Minutemen”—a well-known cadre of right-wing extremists — dated November 9, 1964. Why was this document buried for over 50 years? In this file, a government informant (apparently a member of the Minutemen) describes something that occurred “about six weeks prior to November 22, 1963.”
Two men came to the informant’s door wanting “some ammunition.” The informant knew one of the men as a member of the Minutemen; the other he had never seen before. The informant dutifully granted the request for ammunition, and did not think “any more about it until November 22, 1964 [sic: clearly a typo for 1963] when [he and his wife] saw a newspaper photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Both noticed a close resemblance between Oswald and the man who was with the MINUTE MAN a few weeks before. Both were afraid that he was Oswald and were afraid to say anything. Both said they felt the MINUTE MEN were involved in the assassination although they claimed that very little was said by members they knew following the assassination except to express satisfaction that it happened.
Later in the memo the informant’s government handler, identified only as “Dallas T-1,” describes picking up the informant almost a year later and driving him to a gun shop in the city operated by John Thomas Masen. They “observed several men in the front of the shop. The INFORMANT picked out MASEN from the group and identified him as the man that he thought was Oswald.”
https://apnews.com/ae5abd05f7d2476d9e68 ... sault-case
Lawsuit: Blood, urine samples misplaced in sex assault case
BEND, Ore.
A lawsuit alleges Deschutes County prosecutors couldn’t file charges in an alleged rape because either the hospital or the Bend Police Department lost blood and urine samples that would have been evidence of a crime.
The lawsuit filed this week asks for more than $1.6 million in damages against St. Charles Bend and the police and comes on the heels of another $6 million lawsuit against the alleged assailant — who was not charged in the case — and the organizers and venue of a party where the woman says the assault unfolded, The Bulletin reported Wednesday.
The plaintiff was at a 2015 Halloween party with her husband and some friends when someone slipped an unidentified date rape drug into her drink, according to the lawsuit.
She then became separated from her husband for about 30 minutes and was sexually assaulted by a man who had been hired to help with event security, the court papers say.
The alleged attacker later told police that he had sex with the plaintiff, but it was consensual and she did not seem overly intoxicated, according to the suit.
On Nov. 1, 2015, the plaintiff contacted Bend Police to report the alleged sexual assault. An officer met with the plaintiff and her husband and suggested she go to St. Charles Bend for a sexual assault examination, according to the lawsuit.
Another officer picked up some of these samples that night, according to the lawsuit, but the police department later told the plaintiff it never took possession of the samples.
The samples were never sent to a crime laboratory for testing. Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel decided not to file any criminal charges against her alleged assailant in part because he had no way to prove she was incapacitated and therefore unable to consent.
___
http://nypost.com/video/topless-protest ... -predator/
Topless protesters remind world that Roman Polanski is an admitted sexual predator
October 31, 2017
Members of FEMEN, a radical feminist organization, protested at La Cinematheque Francaise as Roman Polanski was visiting. A 10-day career retrospective is being held at the film institute, although the protesters were hoping to keep the focus on the controversial director's history of sexual assault allegations.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pow ... ee736272fd
PowerPost Perspective
New law targets managers who retaliate against federal whistleblowers
https://apnews.com/2bb385286eac4e2195c9 ... misconduct
6 Detroit officers under investigation for misconduct
DETROIT
Detroit police officials say six officers are under investigation for misconduct related to events that took place at the scene of a reported break-in over the weekend.
Responding officers asked five members of a renovation and cleaning crew at the scene for work papers, WDIV-TV reported . They also ran checks on the workers’ names and licenses.
A complaint filed with the department alleges that an officer then ordered the men to run.
“He got to telling people to just run,” said Justin Green, one of the workers. “I said, ‘What do you mean, run?’ He said, ‘Run or you’re going to jail.’”
The complaint said it was a way to humiliate the black contractors.
“Humiliated,” said Antoine Nalls, another one of the workers. “Like we were just hoodlums.”
Assistant Chief Arnold Williams said it was inappropriate behavior that the department doesn’t condone.
“This is something that we don’t take lightly,” Williams said. “We believe that all citizens should be treated with respect.”
___
http://space4peace.blogspot.com
Caged and Censored - Arresting Grassroots Truth Telling
I get most of my blog hits from people who see the posts I put on Facebook. In recent days when someone clicks on my Fazebook blog post they only get the very top mast of this blog - the rest of the story does not appear. I've heard from quite a few folks who are confused and frustrated.
I have no idea how or why this is happening - I just know that something is blocking readers who try to visit this blog from Fazebook.
I've figured out that when you come to this page that if you click on the title at the top - Organizing Notes - then you can see everything. But some people don't try that and give up when they see that each blog post does not properly load.
In addition I've recently found that searching for Organizing Notes in various search engines does not bear fruit like it used to do. For many years all you need to do was type in Organizing Notes in a search engine and it came up 1-2 in the list. Now, unless you add my name to the search, the blog link does not get listed.
This appears to be part of the general effort to restrict access to blogs and web sites that stand in opposition to the global ruling oligarchies. Labeling us as Fake News puts meager efforts like my blog in a category that can easily be impeded and essentially made invisible.
Maybe all this will change tomorrow and it will work again just fine. But right now it feels like an initiation into a new world where folks who try to tell the truths about what they are seeing around them are being caged and censored.
Bruce
https://apnews.com/82063977418743ed98f6 ... etaliation
Woman who refused to be informant sues cops for retaliation
PROVIDENCE, R.I.
A woman who lost her job at Twin River casino is blaming Rhode Island State Police, alleging in a lawsuit that the agency retaliated against her for refusing to serve as an informant.
The Rhode Island chapter of the America Civil Liberties Union sued state police Wednesday on behalf of Marissa Lacoste, of Warwick.
The ACLU says detectives stopped Lacoste in January with less than an ounce of marijuana. They told her she was in serious trouble, even though it’s not a crime to possess that amount. She cooperated until February.
The federal lawsuit says police then told Twin River she was banned from entering the casino, preventing her from working there.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/4 ... 77163.html
4 Suspects Accused of Stealing ATF Agent's Car and Guns in Custody
Officials have not yet identified the suspects or revealed whether the firearms were recovered
By Cassia Pollock and Alex Presha
https://apnews.com/4598b3d530a641efb6da ... r-contempt
Former police chief who was Aide to ex-AG Kane to begin serving jail time for contempt
HARRISBURG, Pa. A former police chief convicted of illegally accessing emails for information about a grand jury investigation of his then-boss, former state Attorney General Kathleen Kane, is on his way to jail.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear the appeal of Patrick “Rocco” Reese, who has been convicted of indirect criminal contempt.
Reese’s lawyer, Bill Fetterhoff, said he was disappointed in the decision, arguing Reese was not properly informed of the protective order he was convicted of violating. Fetterhoff said Reese does not plan to pursue further appeals.
Reese is scheduled to report to jail Nov. 13 to start serving a three- to six-month sentence.
Kane, a Democrat, was convicted last year of leaking secret grand jury information to smear a rival and then lying about it under oath.
Link du jour
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Deat ... 324458.php
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/n ... -1.3604461
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... -1.3265763
https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... cane-maria
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/che ... a80a0fa3a4
https://apnews.com/e85470cf539342c18590 ... estigation
2nd Lincoln police officer leaves force amid sexual assault
A second Lincoln police officer has resigned amid allegations related to a sexual assault investigation involving another officer.
Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister says the second officer was placed on unpaid leave as a result of an internal investigation into the sexual assault allegation. Bliemeister says the second officer was put on leave on suspicion of violating the department’s code of ethics, and that he resigned earlier this week. The chief says the second officer has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing.
Last month, another officer left the force after being accused of sexually assaulting a woman he met while on duty. That criminal investigation continues.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3604596
New Jersey police chief compared black people to ISIS, slammed teen’s head against doorjamb: complaint
BY BLAKE ALSUP
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, November 1, 2017, 4:12 PM
https://apnews.com/dbe2854903df4b7c8119 ... ex-assault
Renton police investigating sheriff for alleged sex assault
https://apnews.com/dbe2854903df4b7c81197633b6a290eb
SEATTLE
Police in the Seattle suburb of Renton are conducting a criminal investigation into the King County Sheriff over a former deputy’s accusation that the sheriff sexually assaulted him in 2014.
News outlets reported Wednesday that Renton Police said their findings will be forwarded to county prosecutors in the coming days.
The investigation of Sheriff John Urquhart began in September after Brian Barnes filed a complaint with the King County Sheriff’s Office alleging Urquhart groped him outside a Renton restaurant after the two had dinner together.
Urquhart denies Barnes’ allegations, calling them “despicable” and politically motivated lies.
On Monday, a judge separately issued a temporary restraining order against Urquhart filed by a female ex-deputy who accused him of raping her in 2002.
https://apnews.com/3fe306e71d4b40978eaf ... -inquiries
2 officers cleared in unarmed black man’s shooting death by police still face inquiries
By RICK CALLAHAN
https://apnews.com/9196d89da65a4cfea90a ... s-lawsuits
Columbus police facing multiple civil rights lawsuits
COLUMBUS, Ohio Almost 20 years after the government sued Ohio’s largest city alleging police routinely violated residents’ civil rights, Columbus is facing more than two dozen complaints raising similar concerns, records show.
Documents also indicate that the city has paid more than $4 million to individuals who alleged civil rights violations over the past decade.
Recent police shootings have alarmed local clergy and activists, who want the city to train more officers on how to de-escalate potentially violent situations with people having mental health crises. They also want more police training for dealing with people with mental illness, and to have officers trained to recognize racial bias.
“We’re just asking for justice,” said Pastor Jason Ridley of the Hilltop Community Worship Center. “We’re just asking for the simple reality that I can leave my house and not fear.”
That includes police acknowledging that sometimes they make mistakes, said Ridley, who is black.
Democratic Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther acknowledged Wednesday that some residents’ “faith is shaken” in the police department. Addressing that problem is critical at a time of soaring homicides, half of which are going unsolved, he said.
“It’s our collective responsibility to renew, restore and enhance our community’s faith in our division,” Ginther said.
With 111 killings to date, Columbus could be on track to exceed its previous record of 139.
Columbus has largely been spared the unrest seen elsewhere following police shootings of blacks, but the department is under increased scrutiny following a series of fatal encounters.
Those include last year’s shooting of 13-year-old Tyre King as officers responded to reports of an armed robbery. Police said the boy pulled what looked like a real gun, but was later determined to be a BB gun from his waistband during a confrontation with officers.
Among the 26 currently pending lawsuits reviewed by The Associated Press:
— The estate of 23-year-old Henry Green, who was fatally shot by two police officers who said he opened fire on them last year, alleges wrongful death, civil rights violations, constitutional violations and racial discrimination. Green was black. The officers are white.
— A woman claims that Columbus police shot and mortally wounded her brother, Kareem Ali Nadir Jones, who was black, without justification and then conspired to provide misleading information about the July 7 confrontation. Columbus police say two officers saw the 30-year-old Jones walking between cars and behaving erratically.
— Attorneys for Timothy Davis say officers at the scene of his Sept. 1 arrest inside a convenience store shielded fellow officers attacking Davis to keep witnesses from seeing him being punched and kicked, and tried to cover up what happened by falsely claiming Davis put them in harm. Davis is black; the lawsuit doesn’t indicate the race of the officers, but says the department doesn’t properly investigate police use of force against blacks.
After prodding from Ridley and other pastors, Columbus agreed last week to meet a goal of training one out of every two current officers in how to deal with people having mental health crises by 2020, according to an Oct. 24 letter from Ginther. All recruits already receive such training, called Crisis Intervention Training.
The city also is submitting its training plans for dealing with mentally ill individuals to an international police association for review, the letter said.
A federal judge in 2002 dismissed a Justice Department’s 1999 lawsuit against Columbus after the city made changes on the use of police force and handling of complaints against officers.
___
Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus.
There's all kinds of reviews ... and all kinds of reviewers. But when a giant such as Charles de Lint takes notice of a work, that alone is a review. We are honored.
I can't imagine Oprah reading the Cross series, but in the 1990s she read a passage from Another Chance To Get It Right during an interview she was conducting with Vachss, and the book hasn't been out of print since then. She was, as were so many others, enthralled with this collection of original stories, poetry and allegory, combined with the gorgeous black & white art by Geof Darrow and others, all of it celebrating the potential of parenting.
The rights and protection of children is a theme than runs through most of Vachss's books, but this is as clear a mission statement as you're going to get from the author, filled with beauty and despair, sadness and hope. It should be required reading for every new parent. It should be required reading for anyone who cares about kids and cares for kids. Andrew deserves our thanks for writing this book.
This twenty-fifth anniversary edition features a new cover by Darrow and other new material but but the core thrust remains the same as when it was first published.
Highly recommended.
Source: Fantasy&ScienceFiction (forthcoming: March/April issue)
Books To Look For: Charles de Lint (pp. 70-71)
Another Chance To Get It Right: Fourth Edition by Andrew Vachss and Geof Darrow, Dark Horse Books, 2016, $14.99
156,481 people still without power on wed eve day 3 after the storm
http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3602967
Drought may have aided storm that walloped Maine, Northeast
Wednesday, November 1, 2017, 7:27 PM
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msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/l ... de261.html
BALANCING FORCE AND DE-ESCALATION
Deaths of mentally ill at hands of police revive calls for more training and new approaches
By Justin Horwath | The New Mexican Nov 11, 2017
http://abc30.com/keith-foster-sentenced ... s/2641130/
Fresno deputy chief sentenced to 4 years in prison
November 12 2017
FRESNO, Calif.
The former deputy police chief of the Fresno Police Department has been sentenced to four years in prison for peddling drugs while holding one of the department’s top positions.
The Fresno Bee reports Keith Foster was sentenced Monday by Judge Anthony Ishii in U.S. District Court. He must surrender to authorities by Jan. 13.
Foster was convicted of distributing oxycodone, heroin and marijuana.
The case began with a federal investigation of Foster’s nephew Dennis Foster, who was suspected of dealing drugs. The focus of the investigation shifted when investigators listened to the deputy chief call his nephew and discuss drugs.
The former police officer said he was trying to recruit his nephew as an informant.
Dennis Foster was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his rol
https://www.rcfp.org/reporters-committe ... guing-fbis
Reporters Committee appeals to DC Circuit Court for information on ...
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Reporters Committee appeals to D.C. Circuit Court for information on FBI impersonation of journalists, arguing FBI's initial search for relevant records was ...
Press Release | November 13, 2017
Reporters Committee appeals to D.C. Circuit Court for information on FBI impersonation of journalists, arguing FBI's initial search for relevant records was inadequate
On Monday, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a case where the Reporters Committee and the Associated Press are seeking records related to the FBI’s impersonation of journalists. In her argument, Reporters Committee Litigation Director Katie Townsend challenged the thoroughness of the FBI’s search for records related to the impersonation practices and asked that the case be sent back to the district court with instructions to direct the FBI to conduct a more extensive search.
“The FBI deliberately avoided searching locations where relevant records were likely to be found, thereby shielding them from public scrutiny,” said Katie Townsend, litigation director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, following the argument. “This was an overly narrow search and the public has a right to more information about this practice and how often it’s used.”
For just the second time, the court granted approval to broadcast audio of the arguments live. You can listen to a recording of the argument here.
The case centers around information that revealed that during the course of a 2007 investigation, the FBI impersonated an Associated Press journalist and sent a link to what appeared to be an Associated Press news article in order to deliver malicious computer software to a juvenile who was suspected of sending bomb threats to his school in Washington state. The Associated Press and the Reporters Committee are seeking records to determine how often the FBI uses this tactic, and sued the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act. The case is on appeal.
http://theweek.com/speedreads/737147/tr ... use-lawyer
Trump judicial nominee forgot to mention he is married to a White ...
The Week Magazine-
... interest in Donaldson revolves around notes she took about her conversations with McGahn regarding Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey.
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/13/do ... en-judges/
Trump choosing white men as judges, highest rate in decades
Organization that assassinated Martin Luther King releases Hate Crime Statistics
Yawn
FBI Releases 2016 Hate Crime Statistics
Today the FBI released Hate Crime Statistics, 2016, the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program’s latest compilation about bias-motivated incidents throughout the nation. Submitted by 15,254 law enforcement agencies, the 2016 data provide information about the offenses, victims, offenders, and locations of hate crimes.
Law enforcement agencies submitted incident reports involving 6,121 criminal incidents and 7,321 related offenses as being motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity. Please note the UCR Program does not estimate offenses for the jurisdictions of agencies that do not submit reports. Highlights of Hate Crime Statistics, 2016, follow.
Victims of Hate Crime Incidents
There were 6,063 single-bias incidents involving 7,509 victims. A percent distribution of victims by bias type showed that 58.9 percent of victims were targeted because of the offenders’ race/ethnicity/ancestry bias; 21.1 percent were targeted because of the offenders’ religious bias; 16.7 percent were victimized because of the offenders’ sexual-orientation bias; 1.7 percent were targeted because of the offenders’ gender identity bias; 1.0 percent were victimized because of the offenders’ disability bias; and 0.5 percent were victimized because of the offenders’ gender bias. (Due to rounding, percentage breakdowns may not add to 100.0 percent.)
Fifty-eight (58) multiple-bias hate crime incidents involved 106 victims.
Offenses by Crime Category
Of the 4,720 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against persons in 2016, 44.7 percent were for intimidation, 35.7 percent were for simple assault, and 18.5 percent were for aggravated assault. Nine murders and 24 rapes (all from agencies that collected data using the revised definition of rape) were reported as hate crimes. The remaining 18 hate crime offenses were reported in the category of other.
There were 2,519 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against property. The majority of these (75.9 percent) were acts of destruction/damage/vandalism. Robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, and other offenses accounted for the remaining 24.1 percent of crimes against property.
Eighty-two (82) additional offenses were classified as crimes against society. This crime category represents society’s prohibition against engaging in certain types of activity such as gambling, prostitution, and drug violations. These are typically victimless crimes in which property is not the object.
Known Offenders
In the UCR Program, the term known offender does not imply that the suspect’s identity is known; rather, the term indicates that some aspect of the suspect was identified, thus distinguishing the suspect from an unknown offender. Law enforcement agencies specify the number of offenders and, when possible, the race of the offender or offenders as a group. Beginning in 2013, law enforcement officers could also report whether suspects were juveniles or adults, as well as the suspect’s ethnicity when possible.
Of the 5,770 known offenders, 46.3 percent were White, and 26.1 percent were Black or African American. Other races accounted for the remaining known offenders: 0.8 percent were Asian; 0.8 percent were American Indian or Alaska Native; 0.1 percent were Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; and 7.7 percent were of a group of multiple races. The race was unknown for 18.1 percent.
Of the 4,222 known offenders for whom ethnicity was reported, 26.1 percent were Not Hispanic or Latino, 8.0 percent were Hispanic or Latino, and 2.3 percent were in a group of multiple ethnicities. Ethnicity was unknown for 63.6 percent of these offenders.
Of the 4,100 known offenders for whom ages were known, 83.8 percent were 18 years of age or older.
Locations of Hate Crimes
Law enforcement agencies may specify the location of an offense within a hate crime incident as 1 of 46 location designations. In 2016, most hate crime incidents (27.3 percent) occurred in or near residences/homes. More than 18 percent (18.4) occurred on highways/roads/alleys/streets/sidewalks; 9.9 percent occurred at schools/colleges; 5.7 percent happened at parking/drop lots/garages; and 3.9 percent took place in churches/synagogues/temples/mosques. The location was reported as other/unknown for 12.7 percent of hate crime incidents. The remaining 22.1 percent of hate crime incidents took place at other or multiple locations.
Hate Crime Statistics, 2016, is available exclusively on the FBI’s website at https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2016.
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/13/ac ... -of-color/
ACLU accuses Aurora police of repeatedly mistreating people of color
Dwight Crews’ “illegal arrest” fits a pattern of abuse by Aurora officers, ACLU says
A 60-year-old apartment manager has filed a federal lawsuit against Aurora police after they arrested him following an incident in which he fought off a man who was beating his stepdaughter.
Dwight Crews’ “illegal arrest” was one of a series of incidents in recent years in which Aurora police officers mistreated people of color, according to a news release Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union.
“This case adds to a disturbing string of incidents in which Aurora police have abused and violated the Constitutional rights of people of color,” said Mark Silverstein, ACLU legal director. “Until Aurora improves police transparency and accountability, the victims have no choice but to seek justice in the courts.”
Crews is seeking compensatory damages.
Two Aurora police officers allegedly removed Crews from his house on Nov. 14, 2015 without a warrant in the middle of the night, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Denver. The officers restrained Crews, forced him to the ground and unlawfully arrested him on trumped-up charges, the lawsuit says.
“The Constitution forbids police from intruding into the privacy of a person’s home unless they have a warrant issued by a judge,” Silverstein said in a new release. “Our 60-year-old client was not a threat and presented himself in a calm and cooperative manner.”
Aurora police, on Facebook, said the department “takes allegations of misconduct very seriously and officers are required to maintain the high standard of conduct that is expected from members of our community.”
Crews’ arrest was recorded with an officer’s body camera, and a use-of-force investigation was conducted by a police supervisor. Both officers were found to have “acted appropriately,” police said.
http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/ar ... f0697.html
Alton police chief fired amid sexual harassment allegations
November 13 2017
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Bri ... 354472.php
Bridgeport police officer in violent video ‘feared’ suspect had a gun
Monday, November 13, 2017
BRIDGEPORT - A female police officer, under fire after a video was made public showing her repeatedly punching a black teenager following a minor traffic accident Friday night, defended her actions in a report obtained Monday by Hearst Connecticut Media.
“I feared for my safety as well as officers on scene that suspect was pulling away and actively resisting due to concealing a firearm. Due to these reasons I then struck (Aaron) Kearney multiple times in the face with both fists in an attempt for him to loosen his grip of his arms and bring them out from his body,” Officer Christina Arroyo states in her addendum to the main report on the incident.
But City Councilwoman Eneida Martinez said she did not find the officer’s story convincing.
“This kid didn’t have a weapon, the excessive force she (Arroyo) used wasn’t called for,” Martinez said.
The councilwoman said Arroyo, who has been put on administrative duty pending an investigation, has a history of excessive force allegations but she said she has full confidence that Police Chief Armando “AJ” Perez will do a thorough investigation.
Following the Friday night incident 18-year-old Aaron Kearney, who graduated Harding High School in June and was captain of the school’s football team, was treated at Bridgeport Hospital for abrasion on his neck and face and a cut on his lower lip.
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Bri ... 354498.php
Bridgeport cop charged with criminal mischief, disorderly conduct
November 13, 2017
STRATFORD - A Bridgeport police officer was arrested on misdemeanor charges after police said he got into a dispute with his girlfriend who is also a police officer.
Steven Figueroa, 27, was charged with third-degree criminal mischief and disorderly conduct.
During his arraignment Monday in Superior Court, Figueroa was ordered to turn over his weapons and issued a protective order barring him from having further contact with the victim.
Police said on Sunday officers were dispatched to Newport and Milford avenues for a dispute.
When officers got there, they found the victim sitting in a car with a broken driver’s side window, police said.
Police said the victim told them she previously had an argument with Figueroa because she had accidentally left her bag in his car. She said she later agreed to meet Figueroa on Newport Avenue where she said he punched her car window, breaking it, police said.
When officers later confronted Figueroa, police said he claimed he had been holding onto the top of the victim’s window when she suddenly took off and he accidentally broke the window.
https://apnews.com/6152d151e6c2444f9f63 ... ting-video
Attorneys: Topeka seeks to limit access to shooting video
TOPEKA, Kan.
The city of Topeka is trying to prevent the parents of a black man fatally shot by police from reviewing officers’ body camera footage by arguing that state law permits only his young children to see it, lawyers for the family said Monday.
Attorney Gillian Cassell-Stiga said the city agreed last week to allow Dominque White’s parents to view the footage from his Sept. 28 shooting by two officers near an east Topeka park. But Cassell-Stiga said the city later said that a 2016 state law limits a review of the footage to White’s four children, aged 3 to 13.
Cassell-Stiga said White’s family does not intend to have the children view the footage “anytime soon.” Family members have said they’ve been told little about the 30-year-old’s shooting, and no information about the officers has been released.
“It is so entirely ridiculous,” Cassell-Stiga said. “The position the city has decided to take is absurd and practically untenable.”
City spokeswoman Molly Hadfield said talks are ongoing between attorneys for both the family and the city of Topeka. She said the city’s position is based on the text of the law.
“Certain persons may request to view a body worn camera video prior to it being released to the public,” Hadfield said in an emailed statement.
The law enacted last year says the subjects of such footage or their attorneys can review it, as can the parents of a minor in such footage. When a person in the footage his died, that person’s heirs, or the administrators of his or her estate, can review the footage.
The law also treats body camera footage as a criminal investigation record, meaning law enforcement agencies don’t have to make it public without a court order.
Both the police departments in Topeka and Lawrence, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the east, declined to release the footage last week in response to an open-records request from The Associated Press. The Lawrence department has been investigating the shooting for Topeka police.
When state lawmakers discussed access to body camera footage last year, state Sen. David Haley, a Kansas City Democrat, pushed for a less restrictive law, though his proposal would not have made the recordings public. His version would have allowed White’s parents and their attorneys to view the footage; groups representing sheriffs, police chiefs and law enforcement officers supported the law that passed.
Haley said he intends to push for changes in the law next year. As for the situation facing White’s family, he said, “that’s another example of where the law doesn’t make sense or where it perverts the intent.”
White’s death occurred after police were called to the park area by a report of gunshots. White was just months out of prison; he had pleaded guilty to a burglary charge in 2015 and no contest to an illegal gun possession charge in 2016. Topeka police initially said he struggled with officers, reached for a gun in a pocket and was shot at least once in the chest.
But a death certificate listed “gunshot wounds of back” as the immediate cause of White’s death. And neither the Topeka nor Lawrence department compiled an incident report — with a front page that’s usually available within 72 hours — until last week, after The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that none existed.
“I cannot express the anguish we feel each day knowing that the officers who did this to our son continue to roam the street, and that we might come across them on any given day and simply not know,” White’s mother, Mary Theresa Wynne, said
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3629615
Detroit police officers brawl during undercover drug bust gone wrong
BY MINYVONNE BURKE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, November 13, 2017, 11:23 AM
The fight was caught on bodycam video, which is being used in the investigation WXYZ reports that nearly two dozen officers were involved in the incident and they are all being investigated.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... icah-white
Why aren't the streets full of protest about the Paradise Papers?
Micah White
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_ ... mp_records
Cold in Boston breaks low-temp records
Jordan Frias
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3629523
With support from Russian bots, Sean Hannity supporters smash Keurig machines in response to boycott
BY BRIAN LISI
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, November 13, 2017, 10:58 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/sur ... -1.3629120
Guard still working after squashing inmate testicle
Surge in N.Y. jail abuse sees state making $7M in payouts since 2015
BY REUVEN BLAU
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, November 13, 2017, 5:00 AM
Prisoner Richard Pattiasina was handing out spoons to fellow inmates in the mess hall at Elmira Correctional Facility eight years ago, when a corrections officer ordered him to open the kitchen’s front door.
“One second,” Pattiasina responded, according to testimony he provided in a federal lawsuit he filed in 2012.
The officer, Timothy Sewalt, became enraged, calling him “a little a-hole bread man.” He ordered the inmate, who was serving a 31/2-year sentence for selling drugs, into a kitchen corridor, out of view of security cameras.
There, Pattiasina was surrounded by three other jailers while Sewalt frisked him and violently tossed him to the ground.
NYC pays out $200G to retirees who hoarded unused vacation days
Sewalt then kicked him in the groin with such force that it broke his right testicle, according to the lawsuit.
The inmate was placed in solitary confinement, where he spent seven excruciating days having his pleas for medical assistance ignored, before he was finally taken to a hospital and treated for three days.
Last year, the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision quietly agreed to pay Pattiasina — now 38 and out of prison — $800,000. The payout was the top settlement or judgment the department doled out to a single inmate over the past two years
Sewalt, who began his career in 2000, remains on active duty. The Department of Corrections declined to say if he was disciplined for his role in the incident, citing a state law that bars public disclosure of police personnel records.
De Blasio pins blame for 'alarming' OT payouts on aging Rikers
The case was extreme, but far from unique. The department has issued payouts to 127 aggrieved inmates and former prison staffers totaling approximately $7 million over the past 2½ years, according to records obtained from the state attorney general’s office through the Freedom of Information Law.
That figure is on the rise. The department made at least $8.8 million in payouts from 2010 until 2015, the data reveals.
As was the case with Pattiasina, many of the alleged officer beatdowns occurred in secluded areas away from video camera coverage, records show.
Officials say the ballooning payouts do not point to a trend of rampant abuse by officers in a system consisting of some 50,622 prisoners housed in 54 prisons.
Correction Dept. to face another suit after latest Rikers attack
Inmates file lawsuits alleging mistreatment by officers — which can include anything from broken bones to the misuse of solitary confinement.
Some of those cases can take years to wind their way through the court system before they are settled or brought to trial, and that may be what happened in recent years, officials note.
The increase is also due in part to a comprehensive agreement to curb the use of solitary confinement in prisons, the result of a class action lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Richard Pattiasina suffered a groin injury in the incident, according to his testimony. He is seen on the Columbia University campus in Manhattan on Oct. 26.
Richard Pattiasina suffered a groin injury in the incident, according to his testimony. He is seen on the Columbia University campus in Manhattan on Oct. 26.
As part of that deal, the state agreed to pay $1.1 million to cover the NYCLU attorney fees in 2015, court records show.
Critics say the state rarely forwards the cases for criminal prosecution, and the offending officers frequently remain on the job.
“These guys don’t just get disciplined; (instead) they get promotions and raises,” said attorney Joan Magoolaghan, who represented Pattiasina. “It’s an absolute outrage.”
A Corrections Department spokesman said that officers who are repeatedly named in lawsuits are flagged for review.
“The agency reviews settlements and jury awards for purposes of reevaluating its systems, policies and procedures for reforms,” the spokesman said.
The state says it is taking a more aggressive approach to punishing bad officers; a beefed-up internal investigations unit has been increased to 200 staffers over the past year, up from 160.
“When (the Corrections Department) is made aware of allegations through either staff or inmate reports, an internal investigation is immediately conducted by the department’s Office of Special Investigation,” a department spokesman said.
“If the allegations are substantiated, (the department) takes appropriate disciplinary action in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement, up to and
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3629267
Slain Green Beret soldier may have learned of Navy SEALs informant cash plot: report
BY NICOLE HENSLEY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, November 13, 2017, 6:18 AM
https://wccftech.com/face-id-broken-iphone-x-release/
Face ID Potentially Broken by a 3D Mask Just a Week After iPhone X ...
Wccftech
“Potential targets shall not be regular users, but billionaires, leaders of major corporations, nation leaders, and agents like FBI need to understand the Face ID's ...
Yawn
https://www.amny.com/opinion/columnists ... 1.14963114
Era of goodwill for NYPD, FBI
amNY-
After 12 years of tension under former Commissioner Ray Kelly, the relationship between the NYPD and the FBI is now friendly. How long that lasts depends on ...
http://kdvr.com/2017/04/19/2-police-off ... ime-hours/
Mountain View police officer pleads guilty in fraudulent overtime case
Leonard Portugal faces up to 9 years in prison, he’ll be sentenced in January
Portugal was indicted in April by a Jefferson County Grand Jury. Portugal submitted falsified documents and time sheets, 31 times, claiming overtime hours for which he did not work and received $24,935 in fraudulent pay, according to a news release.
A co-defendant in the case, Ricardo Hernandez, who was also a police officer at the time of the allegations, is scheduled for trial on Dec. 12.
http://www.fairfieldcitizenonline.com/n ... 353714.php
US court hears case involving impersonation of AP journalist
Fairfield Citizen-
A federal appeals court heard arguments Nov. 13, 2017, in a case that developed after an FBI agent pretended to be an Associated Press journalist as part of an ...
http://www.nationalmemo.com/sebastian-g ... ven-worse/
Why Sebastian Gorka WIll Make Fox News Even Worse
The National Memo (blog)-
The inflammatory pundit Sebastian Gorka worked for the FBI while he was a paid consultant to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, lecturing bureau employees on ...
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... ache-joke/
That time CIA director William Webster told a mustache joke at Bohemian Grove
by JPat Brown
November 13, 2017
From child sacrifice to Reptilian overlords, Bohemian Grove is the stuff of many a wide-eyed conspiracy theory. But as a speech uncovered in the Central Intelligence Archives shows, for one newly-minted CIA director it was simply a venue for a few jokey anecdotes and some redacted bragging.
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/249434/ ... population
JEWS SUBJECT TO 54% OF RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED HATE CRIMES IN 2016, DESPITE BEING JUST 2% OF U.S. POPULATION
Muslims come in second, at 24.5 percent—a 19 percent increase since 2015
By Yair Rosenberg
November 13, 2017 • 3:00 PM
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3601 ... h-sessions
NYT: White House officials floated replacing Moore with Sessions
The Hill
White House officials have reportedly spoken about the idea of replacing Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore with Attorney General Jeff Sessions ...
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... struction/
November 13, 2017
Public hospitals in New York destroy an alarming number of rape kits
Despite there being no statute of limitations on sexual assault in the state, hospitals in New York only have to keep rape kits for 30 days
Written by Vanessa Nason
Edited by Beryl Lipton, JPat Brown
New York state is one of the few in the country that doesn’t have a statute of limitations for prosecuting rape. Recent legislation requires law enforcement departments to send “rape kits,” or bags of evidence collected during a sexual assault exam, to forensic labs within ten days of receiving them. However, neither of these regulations apply to the hospitals that perform the majority of sexual assault exams.
Rape victims, whose bodies have suddenly become crime scenes after an assault, are scoured for evidence and treated for injuries. But the DNA samples in these rape kits - crucial evidence for prosecuting criminals - is not required by federal law to be tested, often only being sent to the police when a victim explicitly requests to open an investigation. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. is working to change this in his district, teaming up with a similar Bureau of Justice program spearheaded by Joe Biden.
https://www.salon.com/2017/11/13/whitef ... ns-report/
Whitefish Energy milked Puerto Rico for millions: report
Salon-
... and at least four congressional committees are investigating it, along with the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.
FBI Octopus
http://dailytelescope.com/pr/blue-ridge ... ummit/9909
Blue Ridge Networks to Demo BorderGuard Suite of Products and ...
The Daily Telescope-
FBI Cyber Division Deputy Assistant Director Howard Marshall will keynote the Summit's opening reception on November 14. Blue Ridge will offer hands-on ...
Link du jour
https://www.haroldgarde.com
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/h ... -1.3629650
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/13/de ... membrance/
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/13/do ... -campaign/
http://www.alanmagee.com
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/13/ea ... er-photos/
https://apnews.com/f40a1e3166344aecba36 ... rash-death
Dearborn Heights police officer arraigned in crash death
ALLEN PARK, Mich.
A Dearborn Heights police officer has been arraigned on a reckless driving charge stemming from a fatal January crash.
Thirty-two-year-old Larry A. Little entered a not guilty plea during Monday’s hearing. He faces one count of with reckless driving causing death.
Prosecutors say Little was traveling 81 mph in a 40 mph zone when his police cruiser struck another vehicle on Jan. 2.
The crash killed the other motorist, 59-year-old Timothy Lee Turner of Wixom.
WDIV-TV reports that officials say the overhead lights were off on Little’s cruiser and its siren was not activated at the time of the crash.
Prosecutors say the cruiser’s data recorder showed that Little was continuing to accelerate two second before impact.
Little is on paid
BALANCING FORCE AND DE-ESCALATION
Deaths of mentally ill at hands of police revive calls for more training and new approaches
By Justin Horwath | The New Mexican Nov 11, 2017
http://abc30.com/keith-foster-sentenced ... s/2641130/
Fresno deputy chief sentenced to 4 years in prison
November 12 2017
FRESNO, Calif.
The former deputy police chief of the Fresno Police Department has been sentenced to four years in prison for peddling drugs while holding one of the department’s top positions.
The Fresno Bee reports Keith Foster was sentenced Monday by Judge Anthony Ishii in U.S. District Court. He must surrender to authorities by Jan. 13.
Foster was convicted of distributing oxycodone, heroin and marijuana.
The case began with a federal investigation of Foster’s nephew Dennis Foster, who was suspected of dealing drugs. The focus of the investigation shifted when investigators listened to the deputy chief call his nephew and discuss drugs.
The former police officer said he was trying to recruit his nephew as an informant.
Dennis Foster was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his rol
https://www.rcfp.org/reporters-committe ... guing-fbis
Reporters Committee appeals to DC Circuit Court for information on ...
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Reporters Committee appeals to D.C. Circuit Court for information on FBI impersonation of journalists, arguing FBI's initial search for relevant records was ...
Press Release | November 13, 2017
Reporters Committee appeals to D.C. Circuit Court for information on FBI impersonation of journalists, arguing FBI's initial search for relevant records was inadequate
On Monday, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a case where the Reporters Committee and the Associated Press are seeking records related to the FBI’s impersonation of journalists. In her argument, Reporters Committee Litigation Director Katie Townsend challenged the thoroughness of the FBI’s search for records related to the impersonation practices and asked that the case be sent back to the district court with instructions to direct the FBI to conduct a more extensive search.
“The FBI deliberately avoided searching locations where relevant records were likely to be found, thereby shielding them from public scrutiny,” said Katie Townsend, litigation director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, following the argument. “This was an overly narrow search and the public has a right to more information about this practice and how often it’s used.”
For just the second time, the court granted approval to broadcast audio of the arguments live. You can listen to a recording of the argument here.
The case centers around information that revealed that during the course of a 2007 investigation, the FBI impersonated an Associated Press journalist and sent a link to what appeared to be an Associated Press news article in order to deliver malicious computer software to a juvenile who was suspected of sending bomb threats to his school in Washington state. The Associated Press and the Reporters Committee are seeking records to determine how often the FBI uses this tactic, and sued the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act. The case is on appeal.
http://theweek.com/speedreads/737147/tr ... use-lawyer
Trump judicial nominee forgot to mention he is married to a White ...
The Week Magazine-
... interest in Donaldson revolves around notes she took about her conversations with McGahn regarding Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey.
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/13/do ... en-judges/
Trump choosing white men as judges, highest rate in decades
Organization that assassinated Martin Luther King releases Hate Crime Statistics
Yawn
FBI Releases 2016 Hate Crime Statistics
Today the FBI released Hate Crime Statistics, 2016, the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program’s latest compilation about bias-motivated incidents throughout the nation. Submitted by 15,254 law enforcement agencies, the 2016 data provide information about the offenses, victims, offenders, and locations of hate crimes.
Law enforcement agencies submitted incident reports involving 6,121 criminal incidents and 7,321 related offenses as being motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity. Please note the UCR Program does not estimate offenses for the jurisdictions of agencies that do not submit reports. Highlights of Hate Crime Statistics, 2016, follow.
Victims of Hate Crime Incidents
There were 6,063 single-bias incidents involving 7,509 victims. A percent distribution of victims by bias type showed that 58.9 percent of victims were targeted because of the offenders’ race/ethnicity/ancestry bias; 21.1 percent were targeted because of the offenders’ religious bias; 16.7 percent were victimized because of the offenders’ sexual-orientation bias; 1.7 percent were targeted because of the offenders’ gender identity bias; 1.0 percent were victimized because of the offenders’ disability bias; and 0.5 percent were victimized because of the offenders’ gender bias. (Due to rounding, percentage breakdowns may not add to 100.0 percent.)
Fifty-eight (58) multiple-bias hate crime incidents involved 106 victims.
Offenses by Crime Category
Of the 4,720 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against persons in 2016, 44.7 percent were for intimidation, 35.7 percent were for simple assault, and 18.5 percent were for aggravated assault. Nine murders and 24 rapes (all from agencies that collected data using the revised definition of rape) were reported as hate crimes. The remaining 18 hate crime offenses were reported in the category of other.
There were 2,519 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against property. The majority of these (75.9 percent) were acts of destruction/damage/vandalism. Robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, and other offenses accounted for the remaining 24.1 percent of crimes against property.
Eighty-two (82) additional offenses were classified as crimes against society. This crime category represents society’s prohibition against engaging in certain types of activity such as gambling, prostitution, and drug violations. These are typically victimless crimes in which property is not the object.
Known Offenders
In the UCR Program, the term known offender does not imply that the suspect’s identity is known; rather, the term indicates that some aspect of the suspect was identified, thus distinguishing the suspect from an unknown offender. Law enforcement agencies specify the number of offenders and, when possible, the race of the offender or offenders as a group. Beginning in 2013, law enforcement officers could also report whether suspects were juveniles or adults, as well as the suspect’s ethnicity when possible.
Of the 5,770 known offenders, 46.3 percent were White, and 26.1 percent were Black or African American. Other races accounted for the remaining known offenders: 0.8 percent were Asian; 0.8 percent were American Indian or Alaska Native; 0.1 percent were Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; and 7.7 percent were of a group of multiple races. The race was unknown for 18.1 percent.
Of the 4,222 known offenders for whom ethnicity was reported, 26.1 percent were Not Hispanic or Latino, 8.0 percent were Hispanic or Latino, and 2.3 percent were in a group of multiple ethnicities. Ethnicity was unknown for 63.6 percent of these offenders.
Of the 4,100 known offenders for whom ages were known, 83.8 percent were 18 years of age or older.
Locations of Hate Crimes
Law enforcement agencies may specify the location of an offense within a hate crime incident as 1 of 46 location designations. In 2016, most hate crime incidents (27.3 percent) occurred in or near residences/homes. More than 18 percent (18.4) occurred on highways/roads/alleys/streets/sidewalks; 9.9 percent occurred at schools/colleges; 5.7 percent happened at parking/drop lots/garages; and 3.9 percent took place in churches/synagogues/temples/mosques. The location was reported as other/unknown for 12.7 percent of hate crime incidents. The remaining 22.1 percent of hate crime incidents took place at other or multiple locations.
Hate Crime Statistics, 2016, is available exclusively on the FBI’s website at https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2016.
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/13/ac ... -of-color/
ACLU accuses Aurora police of repeatedly mistreating people of color
Dwight Crews’ “illegal arrest” fits a pattern of abuse by Aurora officers, ACLU says
A 60-year-old apartment manager has filed a federal lawsuit against Aurora police after they arrested him following an incident in which he fought off a man who was beating his stepdaughter.
Dwight Crews’ “illegal arrest” was one of a series of incidents in recent years in which Aurora police officers mistreated people of color, according to a news release Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union.
“This case adds to a disturbing string of incidents in which Aurora police have abused and violated the Constitutional rights of people of color,” said Mark Silverstein, ACLU legal director. “Until Aurora improves police transparency and accountability, the victims have no choice but to seek justice in the courts.”
Crews is seeking compensatory damages.
Two Aurora police officers allegedly removed Crews from his house on Nov. 14, 2015 without a warrant in the middle of the night, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Denver. The officers restrained Crews, forced him to the ground and unlawfully arrested him on trumped-up charges, the lawsuit says.
“The Constitution forbids police from intruding into the privacy of a person’s home unless they have a warrant issued by a judge,” Silverstein said in a new release. “Our 60-year-old client was not a threat and presented himself in a calm and cooperative manner.”
Aurora police, on Facebook, said the department “takes allegations of misconduct very seriously and officers are required to maintain the high standard of conduct that is expected from members of our community.”
Crews’ arrest was recorded with an officer’s body camera, and a use-of-force investigation was conducted by a police supervisor. Both officers were found to have “acted appropriately,” police said.
http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/ar ... f0697.html
Alton police chief fired amid sexual harassment allegations
November 13 2017
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Bri ... 354472.php
Bridgeport police officer in violent video ‘feared’ suspect had a gun
Monday, November 13, 2017
BRIDGEPORT - A female police officer, under fire after a video was made public showing her repeatedly punching a black teenager following a minor traffic accident Friday night, defended her actions in a report obtained Monday by Hearst Connecticut Media.
“I feared for my safety as well as officers on scene that suspect was pulling away and actively resisting due to concealing a firearm. Due to these reasons I then struck (Aaron) Kearney multiple times in the face with both fists in an attempt for him to loosen his grip of his arms and bring them out from his body,” Officer Christina Arroyo states in her addendum to the main report on the incident.
But City Councilwoman Eneida Martinez said she did not find the officer’s story convincing.
“This kid didn’t have a weapon, the excessive force she (Arroyo) used wasn’t called for,” Martinez said.
The councilwoman said Arroyo, who has been put on administrative duty pending an investigation, has a history of excessive force allegations but she said she has full confidence that Police Chief Armando “AJ” Perez will do a thorough investigation.
Following the Friday night incident 18-year-old Aaron Kearney, who graduated Harding High School in June and was captain of the school’s football team, was treated at Bridgeport Hospital for abrasion on his neck and face and a cut on his lower lip.
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Bri ... 354498.php
Bridgeport cop charged with criminal mischief, disorderly conduct
November 13, 2017
STRATFORD - A Bridgeport police officer was arrested on misdemeanor charges after police said he got into a dispute with his girlfriend who is also a police officer.
Steven Figueroa, 27, was charged with third-degree criminal mischief and disorderly conduct.
During his arraignment Monday in Superior Court, Figueroa was ordered to turn over his weapons and issued a protective order barring him from having further contact with the victim.
Police said on Sunday officers were dispatched to Newport and Milford avenues for a dispute.
When officers got there, they found the victim sitting in a car with a broken driver’s side window, police said.
Police said the victim told them she previously had an argument with Figueroa because she had accidentally left her bag in his car. She said she later agreed to meet Figueroa on Newport Avenue where she said he punched her car window, breaking it, police said.
When officers later confronted Figueroa, police said he claimed he had been holding onto the top of the victim’s window when she suddenly took off and he accidentally broke the window.
https://apnews.com/6152d151e6c2444f9f63 ... ting-video
Attorneys: Topeka seeks to limit access to shooting video
TOPEKA, Kan.
The city of Topeka is trying to prevent the parents of a black man fatally shot by police from reviewing officers’ body camera footage by arguing that state law permits only his young children to see it, lawyers for the family said Monday.
Attorney Gillian Cassell-Stiga said the city agreed last week to allow Dominque White’s parents to view the footage from his Sept. 28 shooting by two officers near an east Topeka park. But Cassell-Stiga said the city later said that a 2016 state law limits a review of the footage to White’s four children, aged 3 to 13.
Cassell-Stiga said White’s family does not intend to have the children view the footage “anytime soon.” Family members have said they’ve been told little about the 30-year-old’s shooting, and no information about the officers has been released.
“It is so entirely ridiculous,” Cassell-Stiga said. “The position the city has decided to take is absurd and practically untenable.”
City spokeswoman Molly Hadfield said talks are ongoing between attorneys for both the family and the city of Topeka. She said the city’s position is based on the text of the law.
“Certain persons may request to view a body worn camera video prior to it being released to the public,” Hadfield said in an emailed statement.
The law enacted last year says the subjects of such footage or their attorneys can review it, as can the parents of a minor in such footage. When a person in the footage his died, that person’s heirs, or the administrators of his or her estate, can review the footage.
The law also treats body camera footage as a criminal investigation record, meaning law enforcement agencies don’t have to make it public without a court order.
Both the police departments in Topeka and Lawrence, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the east, declined to release the footage last week in response to an open-records request from The Associated Press. The Lawrence department has been investigating the shooting for Topeka police.
When state lawmakers discussed access to body camera footage last year, state Sen. David Haley, a Kansas City Democrat, pushed for a less restrictive law, though his proposal would not have made the recordings public. His version would have allowed White’s parents and their attorneys to view the footage; groups representing sheriffs, police chiefs and law enforcement officers supported the law that passed.
Haley said he intends to push for changes in the law next year. As for the situation facing White’s family, he said, “that’s another example of where the law doesn’t make sense or where it perverts the intent.”
White’s death occurred after police were called to the park area by a report of gunshots. White was just months out of prison; he had pleaded guilty to a burglary charge in 2015 and no contest to an illegal gun possession charge in 2016. Topeka police initially said he struggled with officers, reached for a gun in a pocket and was shot at least once in the chest.
But a death certificate listed “gunshot wounds of back” as the immediate cause of White’s death. And neither the Topeka nor Lawrence department compiled an incident report — with a front page that’s usually available within 72 hours — until last week, after The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that none existed.
“I cannot express the anguish we feel each day knowing that the officers who did this to our son continue to roam the street, and that we might come across them on any given day and simply not know,” White’s mother, Mary Theresa Wynne, said
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3629615
Detroit police officers brawl during undercover drug bust gone wrong
BY MINYVONNE BURKE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, November 13, 2017, 11:23 AM
The fight was caught on bodycam video, which is being used in the investigation WXYZ reports that nearly two dozen officers were involved in the incident and they are all being investigated.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... icah-white
Why aren't the streets full of protest about the Paradise Papers?
Micah White
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_ ... mp_records
Cold in Boston breaks low-temp records
Jordan Frias
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3629523
With support from Russian bots, Sean Hannity supporters smash Keurig machines in response to boycott
BY BRIAN LISI
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, November 13, 2017, 10:58 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/sur ... -1.3629120
Guard still working after squashing inmate testicle
Surge in N.Y. jail abuse sees state making $7M in payouts since 2015
BY REUVEN BLAU
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, November 13, 2017, 5:00 AM
Prisoner Richard Pattiasina was handing out spoons to fellow inmates in the mess hall at Elmira Correctional Facility eight years ago, when a corrections officer ordered him to open the kitchen’s front door.
“One second,” Pattiasina responded, according to testimony he provided in a federal lawsuit he filed in 2012.
The officer, Timothy Sewalt, became enraged, calling him “a little a-hole bread man.” He ordered the inmate, who was serving a 31/2-year sentence for selling drugs, into a kitchen corridor, out of view of security cameras.
There, Pattiasina was surrounded by three other jailers while Sewalt frisked him and violently tossed him to the ground.
NYC pays out $200G to retirees who hoarded unused vacation days
Sewalt then kicked him in the groin with such force that it broke his right testicle, according to the lawsuit.
The inmate was placed in solitary confinement, where he spent seven excruciating days having his pleas for medical assistance ignored, before he was finally taken to a hospital and treated for three days.
Last year, the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision quietly agreed to pay Pattiasina — now 38 and out of prison — $800,000. The payout was the top settlement or judgment the department doled out to a single inmate over the past two years
Sewalt, who began his career in 2000, remains on active duty. The Department of Corrections declined to say if he was disciplined for his role in the incident, citing a state law that bars public disclosure of police personnel records.
De Blasio pins blame for 'alarming' OT payouts on aging Rikers
The case was extreme, but far from unique. The department has issued payouts to 127 aggrieved inmates and former prison staffers totaling approximately $7 million over the past 2½ years, according to records obtained from the state attorney general’s office through the Freedom of Information Law.
That figure is on the rise. The department made at least $8.8 million in payouts from 2010 until 2015, the data reveals.
As was the case with Pattiasina, many of the alleged officer beatdowns occurred in secluded areas away from video camera coverage, records show.
Officials say the ballooning payouts do not point to a trend of rampant abuse by officers in a system consisting of some 50,622 prisoners housed in 54 prisons.
Correction Dept. to face another suit after latest Rikers attack
Inmates file lawsuits alleging mistreatment by officers — which can include anything from broken bones to the misuse of solitary confinement.
Some of those cases can take years to wind their way through the court system before they are settled or brought to trial, and that may be what happened in recent years, officials note.
The increase is also due in part to a comprehensive agreement to curb the use of solitary confinement in prisons, the result of a class action lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Richard Pattiasina suffered a groin injury in the incident, according to his testimony. He is seen on the Columbia University campus in Manhattan on Oct. 26.
Richard Pattiasina suffered a groin injury in the incident, according to his testimony. He is seen on the Columbia University campus in Manhattan on Oct. 26.
As part of that deal, the state agreed to pay $1.1 million to cover the NYCLU attorney fees in 2015, court records show.
Critics say the state rarely forwards the cases for criminal prosecution, and the offending officers frequently remain on the job.
“These guys don’t just get disciplined; (instead) they get promotions and raises,” said attorney Joan Magoolaghan, who represented Pattiasina. “It’s an absolute outrage.”
A Corrections Department spokesman said that officers who are repeatedly named in lawsuits are flagged for review.
“The agency reviews settlements and jury awards for purposes of reevaluating its systems, policies and procedures for reforms,” the spokesman said.
The state says it is taking a more aggressive approach to punishing bad officers; a beefed-up internal investigations unit has been increased to 200 staffers over the past year, up from 160.
“When (the Corrections Department) is made aware of allegations through either staff or inmate reports, an internal investigation is immediately conducted by the department’s Office of Special Investigation,” a department spokesman said.
“If the allegations are substantiated, (the department) takes appropriate disciplinary action in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement, up to and
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3629267
Slain Green Beret soldier may have learned of Navy SEALs informant cash plot: report
BY NICOLE HENSLEY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, November 13, 2017, 6:18 AM
https://wccftech.com/face-id-broken-iphone-x-release/
Face ID Potentially Broken by a 3D Mask Just a Week After iPhone X ...
Wccftech
“Potential targets shall not be regular users, but billionaires, leaders of major corporations, nation leaders, and agents like FBI need to understand the Face ID's ...
Yawn
https://www.amny.com/opinion/columnists ... 1.14963114
Era of goodwill for NYPD, FBI
amNY-
After 12 years of tension under former Commissioner Ray Kelly, the relationship between the NYPD and the FBI is now friendly. How long that lasts depends on ...
http://kdvr.com/2017/04/19/2-police-off ... ime-hours/
Mountain View police officer pleads guilty in fraudulent overtime case
Leonard Portugal faces up to 9 years in prison, he’ll be sentenced in January
Portugal was indicted in April by a Jefferson County Grand Jury. Portugal submitted falsified documents and time sheets, 31 times, claiming overtime hours for which he did not work and received $24,935 in fraudulent pay, according to a news release.
A co-defendant in the case, Ricardo Hernandez, who was also a police officer at the time of the allegations, is scheduled for trial on Dec. 12.
http://www.fairfieldcitizenonline.com/n ... 353714.php
US court hears case involving impersonation of AP journalist
Fairfield Citizen-
A federal appeals court heard arguments Nov. 13, 2017, in a case that developed after an FBI agent pretended to be an Associated Press journalist as part of an ...
http://www.nationalmemo.com/sebastian-g ... ven-worse/
Why Sebastian Gorka WIll Make Fox News Even Worse
The National Memo (blog)-
The inflammatory pundit Sebastian Gorka worked for the FBI while he was a paid consultant to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, lecturing bureau employees on ...
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... ache-joke/
That time CIA director William Webster told a mustache joke at Bohemian Grove
by JPat Brown
November 13, 2017
From child sacrifice to Reptilian overlords, Bohemian Grove is the stuff of many a wide-eyed conspiracy theory. But as a speech uncovered in the Central Intelligence Archives shows, for one newly-minted CIA director it was simply a venue for a few jokey anecdotes and some redacted bragging.
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/249434/ ... population
JEWS SUBJECT TO 54% OF RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED HATE CRIMES IN 2016, DESPITE BEING JUST 2% OF U.S. POPULATION
Muslims come in second, at 24.5 percent—a 19 percent increase since 2015
By Yair Rosenberg
November 13, 2017 • 3:00 PM
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3601 ... h-sessions
NYT: White House officials floated replacing Moore with Sessions
The Hill
White House officials have reportedly spoken about the idea of replacing Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore with Attorney General Jeff Sessions ...
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... struction/
November 13, 2017
Public hospitals in New York destroy an alarming number of rape kits
Despite there being no statute of limitations on sexual assault in the state, hospitals in New York only have to keep rape kits for 30 days
Written by Vanessa Nason
Edited by Beryl Lipton, JPat Brown
New York state is one of the few in the country that doesn’t have a statute of limitations for prosecuting rape. Recent legislation requires law enforcement departments to send “rape kits,” or bags of evidence collected during a sexual assault exam, to forensic labs within ten days of receiving them. However, neither of these regulations apply to the hospitals that perform the majority of sexual assault exams.
Rape victims, whose bodies have suddenly become crime scenes after an assault, are scoured for evidence and treated for injuries. But the DNA samples in these rape kits - crucial evidence for prosecuting criminals - is not required by federal law to be tested, often only being sent to the police when a victim explicitly requests to open an investigation. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. is working to change this in his district, teaming up with a similar Bureau of Justice program spearheaded by Joe Biden.
https://www.salon.com/2017/11/13/whitef ... ns-report/
Whitefish Energy milked Puerto Rico for millions: report
Salon-
... and at least four congressional committees are investigating it, along with the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.
FBI Octopus
http://dailytelescope.com/pr/blue-ridge ... ummit/9909
Blue Ridge Networks to Demo BorderGuard Suite of Products and ...
The Daily Telescope-
FBI Cyber Division Deputy Assistant Director Howard Marshall will keynote the Summit's opening reception on November 14. Blue Ridge will offer hands-on ...
Link du jour
https://www.haroldgarde.com
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/h ... -1.3629650
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/13/de ... membrance/
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/13/do ... -campaign/
http://www.alanmagee.com
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/13/ea ... er-photos/
https://apnews.com/f40a1e3166344aecba36 ... rash-death
Dearborn Heights police officer arraigned in crash death
ALLEN PARK, Mich.
A Dearborn Heights police officer has been arraigned on a reckless driving charge stemming from a fatal January crash.
Thirty-two-year-old Larry A. Little entered a not guilty plea during Monday’s hearing. He faces one count of with reckless driving causing death.
Prosecutors say Little was traveling 81 mph in a 40 mph zone when his police cruiser struck another vehicle on Jan. 2.
The crash killed the other motorist, 59-year-old Timothy Lee Turner of Wixom.
WDIV-TV reports that officials say the overhead lights were off on Little’s cruiser and its siren was not activated at the time of the crash.
Prosecutors say the cruiser’s data recorder showed that Little was continuing to accelerate two second before impact.
Little is on paid
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
http://m.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-new ... ico-515402
IRANIAN WARSHIPS HEADING TO GULF OF MEXICO?
Breaking: Megathrust earthquakes could blow Pacific apart
Hotspots and Incidents
Breaking news: New Zealand scientist warns that a dormant faultline in the Pacific Ocean floor could generate megathrust force 9 earthquakes causing giant tsunamis.
See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/news/hotspo ... _quakes-0/
Link du jour
http://theknow.denverpost.com/2017/11/2 ... 17/168058/
http://bangordailynews.com/2017/11/27/h ... tradition/
Russian-Indian defence cooperation in danger after India commits inadmissible act
Russia » Economics
Russian military officials believe that their Indian partners committed an inadmissible action by allowing Americans on board Chakra nuclear submarine (formerly Nerpa), which India leases from Russia since 2011.
See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/russia/econ ... a_india-0/
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas ... 390274.php
"Who here has watched CSI?" asked Carol Ann Kromer, an operational support technician with the FBI, as she faced a group of fifth graders inside Atherton Elementary.
Almost every hand went up, and at once, the 10- and 11-year-olds started jabbering about the primetime TV crime drama. And then came the questions: "How do you deal with the dead bodies?" one asked. "What is, like, the most hardest thing about being in the FBI?"
It was "CSI Day" at Atherton, a field day the FBI puts on twice a year in partnership with the Harris Foundation through its Dare to Dream program. On Tuesday, fifth graders from Burrus, Hartsfield and Kennedy elementary schools were bused over to the Fifth Ward's Atherton Elementary as special agents and FBI support staff taught them how to lift fingerprints, how to examine shoe prints and tire impressions.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YGO-MoMsDvg
Frederic Whitehurst Interviewed on FBI Crime Lab Scandal April 1997
National Whistleblower Center
https://www.innocenceproject.org/former ... legations/
News 04.28.15
Former FBI Whistleblower Fred Whitehurst Weighs In on Hair Analysis Allegations
In an interview published last Friday, FBI whistleblower Dr. Frederic Whitehurst talked to the
http://www.cnn.com/US/9802/27/fbi.whitehurst/
FBI whistle-blower leaves, gets $1.16 million
Whitehurst
Whitehurst will receive more than $1 million from the FBI
February 27, 1998
Web posted at: 12:16 p.m. EST (1716 GMT)
In this story:
Settlement details
Vindication
Whistle-blower got results -- and criticism
What's next
Related stories and sites
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Frederic Whitehurst, the whistle-blower who triggered an overhaul of the FBI's world-renowned crime lab and claimed he was singled out for retaliation, leaves the bureau on Friday with a settlement worth more than $1.16 million.
The chemist and lab supervisor who once was the FBI's top bomb residue expert returned to work Thursday after a yearlong paid suspension. Whitehurst's voluntary resignation a day later comes as part of a deal that also settles his charges that the bureau targeted him because he pointed out the lab's failings.
A senior FBI official, requesting anonymity, said, "This was the right thing to do and it allows us to move on to building a new lab under our new lab director," former nuclear weapons scientist Donald Kerr.
Settlement details
In the 16-page settlement the FBI agreed to pay $1.166 million now to purchase annuities that would pay the 50-year-old chemist-agent annual amounts equal to the salary and pension he would have earned had he kept working until normal FBI retirement at age 57.
Whitehurst will receive:
$260,000 immediately
$95,000 for each of the next seven years (until age 57)
$50,000 for each of the following five years (until age 62)
$25,000 a year for life, after age 62
The FBI also will pay $258,580 in legal fees to Whitehurst's lawyers, and the Justice Department will stop considering disciplinary action against him.
In a brief statement acknowledging Whitehurst's return to work and his decision to resign as of Friday, the FBI said, "Dr. Whitehurst played a role in identifying specific areas (of the lab) to be examined, and some of the issues he noted resulted in both internal and external reviews."
The FBI admitted no liability or fault in the settlement document, which called the payments compensation for any economic damage Whitehurst might suffer by leaving the bureau before retirement age.
Vindication
Lab
Although Whitehurst won the right to return to the FBI, he chose instead to resign immediately as part of the deal
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that oversees the FBI, has been harshly critical of the bureau's handling of the allegations of problems in the crime lab.
He praised the settlement as vindication for Whitehurst. icon(100K/9 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)
"The FBI would have preferred to get rid of the messenger" Grassley added. He hailed Whitehurst for "immense public service" and said he had been "unfairly attacked by the FBI and Justice Department's inspector general."
Whistle-blower got results -- and criticism
For 10 years Whitehurst complained mostly in vain about lab practices. But his efforts finally led last April to a scathing 500-page study of the lab by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich.
Bromwich blasted the famed lab for flawed scientific work and inaccurate, pro-prosecution testimony in major cases, including the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings.
Bromwich recommended major reforms, discipline for five agents that is still under consideration and transfer of Whitehurst to other duties.
Whitehurst had been suspended with pay since January 1997 and was facing disciplinary action for refusing to cooperate with an investigation of how some of his allegations leaked to a magazine.
What's next
Whitehurst is to become founding director of the National Whistleblower Center's Forensic Justice Project, which will review past FBI lab work for trial errors and will monitor the FBI's ongoing effort to obtain its first accreditation of the laboratory by outside experts.
Although dropping his claims of FBI retaliation, Whitehurst continues to press lawsuits alleging the FBI and Justice Department violated his rights under the Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act. Those cases are in mediation.
Hoping to identify defendants who may have been harmed by flawed lab work or testimony, Whitehurst and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers are suing to obtain data from the Justice Department investigation.
The FBI has asserted that no prosecutions will be lost because of the lab problems. Justice Department officials have said none have been lost so far but the final outcome remains to be seen.
Government witness lists were revised in the Oklahoma City bombing and other prosecutions and at least one count in another trial was dropped, all after word of lab errors or mistakes came out.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vKKMX4V_BR0
A NOBLE LIE - OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING 1995 DOCUMENTARY
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/baltim ... -officers/
Baltimore Police refusing to let FBI join investigation of murdered detective scheduled to testify against officers
Bob BrighamBOB BRIGHAM
28 NOV 2017 AT 19:43 ET
https://apnews.com/68d86837bad8496c95e2 ... en-driving
Police chief who hit tree is charged with drunken driving
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/tru ... cal&wpmk=1
Man shot by U.S. Park Police dies, was unarmed, family says
November 28 at 7:36 PM
Bijan C. Ghaisar, 25, of McLean, Va., was an accountant for his father’s firm, and a graduate of Langley High School and Virginia Commonwealth University. Park Police said they pursued his Jeep sport-utility vehicle on the evening of Nov. 17 because it had been involved in a hit-and-run accident on the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Alexandria, Va., and the pursuit ended in the Fort Hunt area of Fairfax County.
IRANIAN WARSHIPS HEADING TO GULF OF MEXICO?
Breaking: Megathrust earthquakes could blow Pacific apart
Hotspots and Incidents
Breaking news: New Zealand scientist warns that a dormant faultline in the Pacific Ocean floor could generate megathrust force 9 earthquakes causing giant tsunamis.
See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/news/hotspo ... _quakes-0/
Link du jour
http://theknow.denverpost.com/2017/11/2 ... 17/168058/
http://bangordailynews.com/2017/11/27/h ... tradition/
Russian-Indian defence cooperation in danger after India commits inadmissible act
Russia » Economics
Russian military officials believe that their Indian partners committed an inadmissible action by allowing Americans on board Chakra nuclear submarine (formerly Nerpa), which India leases from Russia since 2011.
See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/russia/econ ... a_india-0/
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas ... 390274.php
"Who here has watched CSI?" asked Carol Ann Kromer, an operational support technician with the FBI, as she faced a group of fifth graders inside Atherton Elementary.
Almost every hand went up, and at once, the 10- and 11-year-olds started jabbering about the primetime TV crime drama. And then came the questions: "How do you deal with the dead bodies?" one asked. "What is, like, the most hardest thing about being in the FBI?"
It was "CSI Day" at Atherton, a field day the FBI puts on twice a year in partnership with the Harris Foundation through its Dare to Dream program. On Tuesday, fifth graders from Burrus, Hartsfield and Kennedy elementary schools were bused over to the Fifth Ward's Atherton Elementary as special agents and FBI support staff taught them how to lift fingerprints, how to examine shoe prints and tire impressions.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YGO-MoMsDvg
Frederic Whitehurst Interviewed on FBI Crime Lab Scandal April 1997
National Whistleblower Center
https://www.innocenceproject.org/former ... legations/
News 04.28.15
Former FBI Whistleblower Fred Whitehurst Weighs In on Hair Analysis Allegations
In an interview published last Friday, FBI whistleblower Dr. Frederic Whitehurst talked to the
http://www.cnn.com/US/9802/27/fbi.whitehurst/
FBI whistle-blower leaves, gets $1.16 million
Whitehurst
Whitehurst will receive more than $1 million from the FBI
February 27, 1998
Web posted at: 12:16 p.m. EST (1716 GMT)
In this story:
Settlement details
Vindication
Whistle-blower got results -- and criticism
What's next
Related stories and sites
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Frederic Whitehurst, the whistle-blower who triggered an overhaul of the FBI's world-renowned crime lab and claimed he was singled out for retaliation, leaves the bureau on Friday with a settlement worth more than $1.16 million.
The chemist and lab supervisor who once was the FBI's top bomb residue expert returned to work Thursday after a yearlong paid suspension. Whitehurst's voluntary resignation a day later comes as part of a deal that also settles his charges that the bureau targeted him because he pointed out the lab's failings.
A senior FBI official, requesting anonymity, said, "This was the right thing to do and it allows us to move on to building a new lab under our new lab director," former nuclear weapons scientist Donald Kerr.
Settlement details
In the 16-page settlement the FBI agreed to pay $1.166 million now to purchase annuities that would pay the 50-year-old chemist-agent annual amounts equal to the salary and pension he would have earned had he kept working until normal FBI retirement at age 57.
Whitehurst will receive:
$260,000 immediately
$95,000 for each of the next seven years (until age 57)
$50,000 for each of the following five years (until age 62)
$25,000 a year for life, after age 62
The FBI also will pay $258,580 in legal fees to Whitehurst's lawyers, and the Justice Department will stop considering disciplinary action against him.
In a brief statement acknowledging Whitehurst's return to work and his decision to resign as of Friday, the FBI said, "Dr. Whitehurst played a role in identifying specific areas (of the lab) to be examined, and some of the issues he noted resulted in both internal and external reviews."
The FBI admitted no liability or fault in the settlement document, which called the payments compensation for any economic damage Whitehurst might suffer by leaving the bureau before retirement age.
Vindication
Lab
Although Whitehurst won the right to return to the FBI, he chose instead to resign immediately as part of the deal
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that oversees the FBI, has been harshly critical of the bureau's handling of the allegations of problems in the crime lab.
He praised the settlement as vindication for Whitehurst. icon(100K/9 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)
"The FBI would have preferred to get rid of the messenger" Grassley added. He hailed Whitehurst for "immense public service" and said he had been "unfairly attacked by the FBI and Justice Department's inspector general."
Whistle-blower got results -- and criticism
For 10 years Whitehurst complained mostly in vain about lab practices. But his efforts finally led last April to a scathing 500-page study of the lab by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich.
Bromwich blasted the famed lab for flawed scientific work and inaccurate, pro-prosecution testimony in major cases, including the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings.
Bromwich recommended major reforms, discipline for five agents that is still under consideration and transfer of Whitehurst to other duties.
Whitehurst had been suspended with pay since January 1997 and was facing disciplinary action for refusing to cooperate with an investigation of how some of his allegations leaked to a magazine.
What's next
Whitehurst is to become founding director of the National Whistleblower Center's Forensic Justice Project, which will review past FBI lab work for trial errors and will monitor the FBI's ongoing effort to obtain its first accreditation of the laboratory by outside experts.
Although dropping his claims of FBI retaliation, Whitehurst continues to press lawsuits alleging the FBI and Justice Department violated his rights under the Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act. Those cases are in mediation.
Hoping to identify defendants who may have been harmed by flawed lab work or testimony, Whitehurst and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers are suing to obtain data from the Justice Department investigation.
The FBI has asserted that no prosecutions will be lost because of the lab problems. Justice Department officials have said none have been lost so far but the final outcome remains to be seen.
Government witness lists were revised in the Oklahoma City bombing and other prosecutions and at least one count in another trial was dropped, all after word of lab errors or mistakes came out.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vKKMX4V_BR0
A NOBLE LIE - OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING 1995 DOCUMENTARY
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/11/baltim ... -officers/
Baltimore Police refusing to let FBI join investigation of murdered detective scheduled to testify against officers
Bob BrighamBOB BRIGHAM
28 NOV 2017 AT 19:43 ET
https://apnews.com/68d86837bad8496c95e2 ... en-driving
Police chief who hit tree is charged with drunken driving
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/tru ... cal&wpmk=1
Man shot by U.S. Park Police dies, was unarmed, family says
November 28 at 7:36 PM
Bijan C. Ghaisar, 25, of McLean, Va., was an accountant for his father’s firm, and a graduate of Langley High School and Virginia Commonwealth University. Park Police said they pursued his Jeep sport-utility vehicle on the evening of Nov. 17 because it had been involved in a hit-and-run accident on the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Alexandria, Va., and the pursuit ended in the Fort Hunt area of Fairfax County.
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... c42bb5d595
Did FBI Director Hoover Know Of Pearl Harbor?
By Thomas O'Toole December 2, 1982
In the war of words over who was to blame for the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 41 years ago, fresh evidence is emerging that the late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had a hand in the intelligence bungles that led the United States to heed none of the warnings that the invasion was imminent.
The new evidence is supplied by Michigan State University historians John F. Bratzel and Leslie B. Rout Jr., who write in the current issue of The American Historical Review that Hoover received a double warning more than three months before the attack that the Japanese were thinking of making a surprise aircraft attack on the American fleet in Pearl Harbor.
Based on information in 40-year-old FBI documents and documents from the FDR library near Hyde Park, N. Y., the two historians also claim that the double warning to Hoover is the "missing evidence" that Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Toland said he and other Pearl Harbor writers have sought for years. Toland claimed in his last book, "Infamy," that the "disappearance" of this evidence was part of a "cover up" to purge intelligence records damaging to high officials in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration.
see
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom ... 0004-3.pdf
Bratzel and Rout write that the story of the "missing evidence" begins in 1939 in Yugoslavia, where German military intelligence recruited a Mediterranean playboy named Dusko Popov to spy in England for them. Popov (code name Ivan) agreed but turned double agent (code name Tricycle) as soon as he arrived in England. The German Abwehr (intelligence) soon trusted Popov so much that they told him to go to the United States to set up a spy ring, an instruction that Popov immediately communicated to British intelligence.
Upon his arrival in New York, Popov was met by agents of the FBI who grilled him for days. In his memoirs, Popov said that one of his first statements to FBI bureau chief John Foxworth was: "You can expect an attack on Pearl Harbor before the end of the year . . . "
The Michigan State historians say Popov had two pieces of evidence to back up his warning. One was a verbal communique' from the German air attache' in Tokyo, who had escorted Japanese naval officers to the Gulf of Taranto below the Italian boot, where British warplanes from the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious had devastated the Italian fleet in November of 1940.
"The Japanese wanted to know all about the attack in infinite detail," the historians write. Popov's German sources "had concluded that the Asian member of the Tripartite Alliance was planning to duplicate the British feat."
Of far more importance, the historians write, was the telegram in Popov's possession when he arrived in New York. Hidden on the face of the telegram was a microdot message to Popov asking for defense information about the U.S. and Canadian air forces and listing a series of questions the Japanese had asked their German allies to answer. One third of the questions pertained to the defense installations that ringed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor.
"The Germans wanted sketches showing the exact locations of Hickam, Wheeler and Kaneohe airfields," the historians write. "They likewise wanted sketches of the installations at Pearl Harbor and detailed information concerning dredging, depth of water, torpedo nets, anchorages and the like."
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new ... ria?tgt=nr
New 3-D printed materials harness the power of bacteria
http://beta.latimes.com/nation/la-na-la ... t01a-10la1
A county in Utah wants to suck 77 million gallons a day out of Lake Powell, threatening the Colorado River
https://www.mediaite.com/online/ex-ag-e ... -penn-ave/
Ex-AG Eric Holder: 'You'll Find Integrity at FBI Headquarters and Not ...
Mediaite-
Ex-AG Eric Holder: 'You'll Find Integrity at FBI Headquarters and Not at 1600 Penn Ave' ... “After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters – worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness,” tweeted Trump early Sunday morning.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/12/king-d17.html
Memphis jury finds that a conspiracy led to Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination
By Helen Halyard
17 December 1999
On December 8 a jury in Memphis, Tennessee returned a verdict that civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was the victim of an assassination conspiracy and did not die at the hands of a lone gunman.
The verdict followed a three-week trial of a wrongful death lawsuit which the King family filed last year against former Memphis cafe owner Loyd Jowers. According to the suit, Jowers was part of a plot to murder the civil rights leader. King was shot and killed at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968.
In a 1993 television interview with ABC News, Jowers, now 73, reported that mobsters offered him $100,000 to have King killed. Since the interview Jowers has changed his story several times. He was unable to testify at the trial due to illness. His attorney, Lewis Garrison, told the jurors they could reasonably conclude King was the victim of a conspiracy in which his client was involved, but that his role was minor.
At the end of the trial a number of jurors commented that they were convinced by the evidence that there was a conspiracy. Summing up the sentiment of the jurors, one remarked, “We all thought it was a kind of cut and dried case and that there were a lot of people involved.”
The major news media paid scant attention to the trial and portrayed the verdict as having little significance. Reports on the outcome of the trial appearing in the New York Times, for example, have been dismissive of theories of a broad conspiracy involving government agencies.
A column by Nathan Lewin in the December 11 issue of the Times, entitled “Putting History On Trial,” denounced civil trials as a means of judging history. Lewin, now a Washington attorney, was deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division of the Justice Department at the time of King's assassination.
While Lewin and others in the political establishment flatly reject conspiracy theories in the King assassination, a majority of the American population are inclined to believe that more than one gunman was involved, and many give credence to allegations of complicity on the part of government agencies.
Attorney William Pepper, former lawyer of James Earl Ray, who was sentenced to prison as the lone gunman in the King murder, has investigated the circumstances behind the assassination for the past 20 years. In 1995 he published the book Orders to Kill, which alleges involvement by the Mafia, the FBI, the CIA and the military in the assassination.
Whether or not one accepts Pepper's theories, to rule out a priori some form of conspiracy, including one involving elements within the state apparatus, is, at the very least, no more objective than the various conspiracy theories that have been advanced. An investigation into the killing by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 concluded that while Ray was the gunmen, there was a 95 percent probability that others were involved.
The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. took place in the midst of mass social protests and urban upheavals involving working people, youth and students who opposed racial discrimination, poverty and America's involvement in the Vietnam war. Shortly before King was killed he publicly denounced the war and began to address social issues, such as poverty, that went beyond the pervasive discrimination that confronted African Americans. He was in Memphis in 1968 to lead a march of 1,300 sanitation workers on strike for better working conditions, wages and benefits.
James Earl Ray was picked up in London several months after King's assassination and returned to the United States. He confessed to the crime in March 1969 and received a 99-year sentence. He recanted his confession three days after he made it, and for the next 29 years fought to rescind his guilty plea. State and federal courts upheld the plea on eight separate occasions. Ray met with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s son Dexter in a prison hospital shortly before he died of liver disease in 1998 and told the son of the civil rights leader that he was not responsible for his father's death.
After Ray's death William Pepper joined forces with the King family to file the wrongful death suit. Since Jowers had stated that he hired a man to do the killing, the liability charges were filed against him.
In the course of the trial 70 witnesses were presented by the defense. Among them were members of King's family; the brother of James Earl Ray; Walter Fauntroy, formerly a member of the House Select Committee on Assassinations; and New York-based attorney and media expert William Schapp.
Much of the testimony focused on the extent of operations carried out by the FBI against King and those involved in civil rights struggles. On August 25, 1967, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover approved a major counterintelligence program, Cointelpro, to disrupt and discredit left-wing organizations, civil rights demonstrators and anti-war protesters. Hoover directed operations against King in an effort to discredit his leadership and break up the movement.
Convinced that King was a communist, Hoover described him as “the most dangerous man in America, and a moral degenerate,” and was obsessed with following King's activities. Dozens of internal FBI memoranda document the surveillance and harassment of King. In one incident King's alleged “sexual escapades” were used in an attempt to blackmail him. Shortly before the assassination Hoover distributed an internal memo to the FBI calling for King's “removal from the national scene.”
At the trial Fauntroy testified that while he believed Ray was the shooter, he felt that Ray did not act alone. Fauntroy expressed dissatisfaction with the investigation carried out by the House Select Committee, noting that it was denied access to FBI files on the King murder and was unaware that US Army operatives had King under surveillance at the time of his death.
Following the issuance of the House Select Committee's final report in 1979, Committee Chairman Louis Stokes and Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey ordered that all of the backup records, documents, unpublished transcripts and investigative data be locked up for the next 50 years.
Jurors saw the videotaped deposition of Jack Terrel, formerly of the US military, who testified that he had a conversation with a military operations specialist who told him that he was assigned to a triangular shoot team that had a special mission in Memphis around the time of King's death. Terrel stated that the specialist was never told about the specifics of the mission, and that the team was pulled out of Memphis at the last minute.
Attorney William Schaap explained how the media has been used historically by the government to disseminate information, or, more precisely, misinformation. According to Schapp, the FBI under Hoover's direction infiltrated newspapers around the world and persuaded them in the 1960s to run stories that discredited King. Schaap commented on the lack of media attention to the wrongful death suit, saying, “It's amazing how much psychological power the dissemination of false information has after 30 years.”
Following the verdict the King family told a press conference that they were satisfied with its results. The youngest son, Dexter King, remarked, “This is what we have always wanted. This is history.”
Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder told the press that the Memphis verdict would have no impact on an ongoing Justice Department review of the King assassination. The Justice Department, which initiated a review of the case last year at the request of King's widow Coretta Scott King, is expected to issue its report shortly. According to Holder it is very unlikely that criminal charges will be brought or that the government will alter its position James Earl Ray was the lone gunman and that there was no governmental conspiracy involved in the King assassination.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bat ... rus?tgt=nr
Bats in China carry all the ingredients to make a new SARS virus
Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3674667
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sca ... see?tgt=nr
Scallops’ amazing eyes use millions of tiny, square crystals to see
https://www.thenation.com/article/behind-bureau-fbi/
CULTUREBOOKS & THE ARTSSEPTEMBER 10, 2012 ISSUE
Behind the Bureau: On the FBI
Tim Weiner’s Enemies is not so much a history of the FBI as a compendium of interesting historical material.
By Beverly GageAUGUST 22, 2012
Did FBI Director Hoover Know Of Pearl Harbor?
By Thomas O'Toole December 2, 1982
In the war of words over who was to blame for the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 41 years ago, fresh evidence is emerging that the late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had a hand in the intelligence bungles that led the United States to heed none of the warnings that the invasion was imminent.
The new evidence is supplied by Michigan State University historians John F. Bratzel and Leslie B. Rout Jr., who write in the current issue of The American Historical Review that Hoover received a double warning more than three months before the attack that the Japanese were thinking of making a surprise aircraft attack on the American fleet in Pearl Harbor.
Based on information in 40-year-old FBI documents and documents from the FDR library near Hyde Park, N. Y., the two historians also claim that the double warning to Hoover is the "missing evidence" that Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Toland said he and other Pearl Harbor writers have sought for years. Toland claimed in his last book, "Infamy," that the "disappearance" of this evidence was part of a "cover up" to purge intelligence records damaging to high officials in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration.
see
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom ... 0004-3.pdf
Bratzel and Rout write that the story of the "missing evidence" begins in 1939 in Yugoslavia, where German military intelligence recruited a Mediterranean playboy named Dusko Popov to spy in England for them. Popov (code name Ivan) agreed but turned double agent (code name Tricycle) as soon as he arrived in England. The German Abwehr (intelligence) soon trusted Popov so much that they told him to go to the United States to set up a spy ring, an instruction that Popov immediately communicated to British intelligence.
Upon his arrival in New York, Popov was met by agents of the FBI who grilled him for days. In his memoirs, Popov said that one of his first statements to FBI bureau chief John Foxworth was: "You can expect an attack on Pearl Harbor before the end of the year . . . "
The Michigan State historians say Popov had two pieces of evidence to back up his warning. One was a verbal communique' from the German air attache' in Tokyo, who had escorted Japanese naval officers to the Gulf of Taranto below the Italian boot, where British warplanes from the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious had devastated the Italian fleet in November of 1940.
"The Japanese wanted to know all about the attack in infinite detail," the historians write. Popov's German sources "had concluded that the Asian member of the Tripartite Alliance was planning to duplicate the British feat."
Of far more importance, the historians write, was the telegram in Popov's possession when he arrived in New York. Hidden on the face of the telegram was a microdot message to Popov asking for defense information about the U.S. and Canadian air forces and listing a series of questions the Japanese had asked their German allies to answer. One third of the questions pertained to the defense installations that ringed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor.
"The Germans wanted sketches showing the exact locations of Hickam, Wheeler and Kaneohe airfields," the historians write. "They likewise wanted sketches of the installations at Pearl Harbor and detailed information concerning dredging, depth of water, torpedo nets, anchorages and the like."
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new ... ria?tgt=nr
New 3-D printed materials harness the power of bacteria
http://beta.latimes.com/nation/la-na-la ... t01a-10la1
A county in Utah wants to suck 77 million gallons a day out of Lake Powell, threatening the Colorado River
https://www.mediaite.com/online/ex-ag-e ... -penn-ave/
Ex-AG Eric Holder: 'You'll Find Integrity at FBI Headquarters and Not ...
Mediaite-
Ex-AG Eric Holder: 'You'll Find Integrity at FBI Headquarters and Not at 1600 Penn Ave' ... “After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters – worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness,” tweeted Trump early Sunday morning.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/12/king-d17.html
Memphis jury finds that a conspiracy led to Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination
By Helen Halyard
17 December 1999
On December 8 a jury in Memphis, Tennessee returned a verdict that civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was the victim of an assassination conspiracy and did not die at the hands of a lone gunman.
The verdict followed a three-week trial of a wrongful death lawsuit which the King family filed last year against former Memphis cafe owner Loyd Jowers. According to the suit, Jowers was part of a plot to murder the civil rights leader. King was shot and killed at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968.
In a 1993 television interview with ABC News, Jowers, now 73, reported that mobsters offered him $100,000 to have King killed. Since the interview Jowers has changed his story several times. He was unable to testify at the trial due to illness. His attorney, Lewis Garrison, told the jurors they could reasonably conclude King was the victim of a conspiracy in which his client was involved, but that his role was minor.
At the end of the trial a number of jurors commented that they were convinced by the evidence that there was a conspiracy. Summing up the sentiment of the jurors, one remarked, “We all thought it was a kind of cut and dried case and that there were a lot of people involved.”
The major news media paid scant attention to the trial and portrayed the verdict as having little significance. Reports on the outcome of the trial appearing in the New York Times, for example, have been dismissive of theories of a broad conspiracy involving government agencies.
A column by Nathan Lewin in the December 11 issue of the Times, entitled “Putting History On Trial,” denounced civil trials as a means of judging history. Lewin, now a Washington attorney, was deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division of the Justice Department at the time of King's assassination.
While Lewin and others in the political establishment flatly reject conspiracy theories in the King assassination, a majority of the American population are inclined to believe that more than one gunman was involved, and many give credence to allegations of complicity on the part of government agencies.
Attorney William Pepper, former lawyer of James Earl Ray, who was sentenced to prison as the lone gunman in the King murder, has investigated the circumstances behind the assassination for the past 20 years. In 1995 he published the book Orders to Kill, which alleges involvement by the Mafia, the FBI, the CIA and the military in the assassination.
Whether or not one accepts Pepper's theories, to rule out a priori some form of conspiracy, including one involving elements within the state apparatus, is, at the very least, no more objective than the various conspiracy theories that have been advanced. An investigation into the killing by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 concluded that while Ray was the gunmen, there was a 95 percent probability that others were involved.
The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. took place in the midst of mass social protests and urban upheavals involving working people, youth and students who opposed racial discrimination, poverty and America's involvement in the Vietnam war. Shortly before King was killed he publicly denounced the war and began to address social issues, such as poverty, that went beyond the pervasive discrimination that confronted African Americans. He was in Memphis in 1968 to lead a march of 1,300 sanitation workers on strike for better working conditions, wages and benefits.
James Earl Ray was picked up in London several months after King's assassination and returned to the United States. He confessed to the crime in March 1969 and received a 99-year sentence. He recanted his confession three days after he made it, and for the next 29 years fought to rescind his guilty plea. State and federal courts upheld the plea on eight separate occasions. Ray met with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s son Dexter in a prison hospital shortly before he died of liver disease in 1998 and told the son of the civil rights leader that he was not responsible for his father's death.
After Ray's death William Pepper joined forces with the King family to file the wrongful death suit. Since Jowers had stated that he hired a man to do the killing, the liability charges were filed against him.
In the course of the trial 70 witnesses were presented by the defense. Among them were members of King's family; the brother of James Earl Ray; Walter Fauntroy, formerly a member of the House Select Committee on Assassinations; and New York-based attorney and media expert William Schapp.
Much of the testimony focused on the extent of operations carried out by the FBI against King and those involved in civil rights struggles. On August 25, 1967, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover approved a major counterintelligence program, Cointelpro, to disrupt and discredit left-wing organizations, civil rights demonstrators and anti-war protesters. Hoover directed operations against King in an effort to discredit his leadership and break up the movement.
Convinced that King was a communist, Hoover described him as “the most dangerous man in America, and a moral degenerate,” and was obsessed with following King's activities. Dozens of internal FBI memoranda document the surveillance and harassment of King. In one incident King's alleged “sexual escapades” were used in an attempt to blackmail him. Shortly before the assassination Hoover distributed an internal memo to the FBI calling for King's “removal from the national scene.”
At the trial Fauntroy testified that while he believed Ray was the shooter, he felt that Ray did not act alone. Fauntroy expressed dissatisfaction with the investigation carried out by the House Select Committee, noting that it was denied access to FBI files on the King murder and was unaware that US Army operatives had King under surveillance at the time of his death.
Following the issuance of the House Select Committee's final report in 1979, Committee Chairman Louis Stokes and Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey ordered that all of the backup records, documents, unpublished transcripts and investigative data be locked up for the next 50 years.
Jurors saw the videotaped deposition of Jack Terrel, formerly of the US military, who testified that he had a conversation with a military operations specialist who told him that he was assigned to a triangular shoot team that had a special mission in Memphis around the time of King's death. Terrel stated that the specialist was never told about the specifics of the mission, and that the team was pulled out of Memphis at the last minute.
Attorney William Schaap explained how the media has been used historically by the government to disseminate information, or, more precisely, misinformation. According to Schapp, the FBI under Hoover's direction infiltrated newspapers around the world and persuaded them in the 1960s to run stories that discredited King. Schaap commented on the lack of media attention to the wrongful death suit, saying, “It's amazing how much psychological power the dissemination of false information has after 30 years.”
Following the verdict the King family told a press conference that they were satisfied with its results. The youngest son, Dexter King, remarked, “This is what we have always wanted. This is history.”
Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder told the press that the Memphis verdict would have no impact on an ongoing Justice Department review of the King assassination. The Justice Department, which initiated a review of the case last year at the request of King's widow Coretta Scott King, is expected to issue its report shortly. According to Holder it is very unlikely that criminal charges will be brought or that the government will alter its position James Earl Ray was the lone gunman and that there was no governmental conspiracy involved in the King assassination.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bat ... rus?tgt=nr
Bats in China carry all the ingredients to make a new SARS virus
Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3674667
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sca ... see?tgt=nr
Scallops’ amazing eyes use millions of tiny, square crystals to see
https://www.thenation.com/article/behind-bureau-fbi/
CULTUREBOOKS & THE ARTSSEPTEMBER 10, 2012 ISSUE
Behind the Bureau: On the FBI
Tim Weiner’s Enemies is not so much a history of the FBI as a compendium of interesting historical material.
By Beverly GageAUGUST 22, 2012
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... 8/fbi-kkk/
FBI leadership claimed Bureau was “almost powerless” against KKK, despite making up one-fifth of its membership
Deputy Director James Adams testified that the Bureau had three times as many “ghetto informants” as they did those targeting white supremacists
Written by Emma Best
Edited by JPat Brown
In testimony before the Church Committee, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Deputy Director acknowledged that the Bureau at one point made up as much as one-fifth of the Klu Klux Klan’s total membership - but were still powerless to curtail the KKK’s violence. His testimony also acknowledged police participation in said violence, and that the Bureau had three times as many “ghetto informants” as they did those targeting white supremacist domestic terrorists.
In response to a FOIA request filed several months ago for the SENSTUDY 75 file, pertaining to the Church Committee, the FBI recently released a preprocessed file (apparently unable to provide even preprocessed documents within the time period required by the law) that includes excerpts of testimony from Deputy Associate Director James Adams addressing the Bureau’s involvement with, and failure to curtail, the KKK. Before finishing his first sentence in the excerpted testimony, Adams had offered somewhat misleading information in stating that the COINTELPRO efforts had been discontinued in 1971.
In actuality, all that was discontinued in 1971 was the centralized program. According to the memo commonly cited as discontinuing the program “for security reasons,” COINTELPRO efforts would “be considered on a highly selective individual basis with tight procedures to insure absolute security.”
The Church Committee would note that the efforts had continued in several known instances, and that the effect of ending the centralized program was simply that it was impossible to understand the full scope of those efforts without manually searching over 500,000 case files.
After providing this technically-true-but-entirely-misleading statement, Adams admitted to the Committee that the law had been “ineffective” against the Klan. He also argued that local law enforcement should be the primary tool used against groups like the Klan.
This argument fell somewhat flat in light of the following paragraph in Adams’ testimony, where he admitted that local law enforcement officers had been “participating in Klan violence.” Stating that “the FBI and the Federal Government were almost powerless to act,” he nonetheless defended the Bureau’s actions against the testimony of one of their informants, Gary Thomas Rowe, by pointing out that they had provided his information to local police departments.
This defense also fell somewhat flat immediately following his admission that some of those police departments had members “participating in Klan violence.” In light of that testimony, it’s hardly surprising that Adams’ also admitted that the information “was not being acted upon.”
Adams then re-emphasized this by restating it, seeming to validate some of the things Rowe had said shortly after impugning the depth of Rowe’s knowledge and ability to speak on the subject.
Adams’ testimony bemoaned the legal obstacles preventing the Bureau from acting as they wished they could, an ironic complaint given the illegal behaviors that COINTELPRO (the program under discussion) is infamous for. Adams also noted that the groups being monitored had greater numbers than ever before, which made it difficult for the Bureau to fully monitor them and counter their efforts, as well as increased the danger of these groups. This latter point might have been more impactful if Adams hadn’t also admitted that approximately 2,000 members of the KKK were working for the FBI.
The testimony then noted that the Bureau was almost singlehandedly responsible for the impressive growth in the KKK’s membership which Adams had just lamented. According to the Bureau’s numbers, not only were 20% of the KKK’s members working for the FBI, the FBI was responsible for 70% of the recent growth in the KKK’s membership and that rather than having the effect of reverting violence, it resulted in “the tail wagging the dog.”
Adams disputed the number of FBI employed KKK members by stating that the 2,000 informants included all “racial matters,” and that the FBI only accounted for “around 6%” of the KKK’s membership.
Adams proceeded to contradict his earlier statement that the FBI had been powerless against the KKK by claiming credit for a decrease in violence from the group by inducing paranoia in them. In virtually the same breath, he reaffirmed that “the Sheriff and other law enforcement officers” had been “in on” the violence and murders of civil rights workers, while also repeating the 20% figure he had just disputed.
It was then brought up with Adams that there was “considerable evidence” that “no attempt was made to prevent crime when [the FBI] had information that it was going to occur.”
Adams defended the Bureau by saying that they had passed the information on to the local police department. In response, it was pointed out that the FBI knew the department “was an accomplice to the crime.” Adams, having previously admitted that this was the case, simply responded they did “not necessarily knew [sic]” despite having been told this by their informants. As a result, the questioner noted, they “weren’t doing a whole lot to prevent that incident by telling the people who were already a part of it.”
Adams’ denied that the Bureau had encouraged informants like Rowe to participate in violence, only to have his statement contradicted by both Rowe and the Agent in Charge.
The testimony excerpted in the file ends with Adams’ denying that the Bureau became involved in anyone’s sex life and that such a thing would not be “of any value whatsoever.”
Adams’ blanket denial is contradicted by the FBI’s own memos on COINTELPRO, such as one discussing the possibility of informing the public that an actress was pregnant to “cause her embarrassment and tarnish her image.” The memo notes that this wasn’t part of the COINTELPRO effort against white supremacist groups such as the KKK, but against a white woman for supporting an enemy of the KKK - the Black Panther Party.
While Adams attempted to deny many of the accusations made against the Bureau and citations of the Bureau’s failure, he was just as often forced to admit them either just prior to or just after those denials. Regardless of whether the Bureau had made up 6% or 20% of the KKK’s members, the Special Agent in Charge instructed their informants to allow the acts to happen. When the Bureau did take action, it was to pass the information onto the local police departments - who in at least some instances were known to the Bureau to be among the perpetrators. The Bureau justified its behavior by citing legal restrictions and the sudden growth of the KKK, which the Bureau itself had been responsible for approximately 70% of. Adams’ testimony also misleadingly claimed that the Bureau had discontinued COINTELPRO efforts, a fact which the Church Committee was able to contradict.
However, what has been recently discontinued is funding to counter white supremacist groups like the KKK with the Trump administration “turning a blind eye” to white supremacists groups in what they have welcomed as “a signal of favor” to them. If the FBI was, in their own words, powerless against the KKK even while making up a large percentage of its membership through informants and agent provocateurs, it’s hard to imagine how effective the Bureau’s ongoing individual investigations against white supremacists will prove any more effective.
Despite relatively recent reports that the FBI has 1,000 ongoing investigations against white supremacists, this number actually includes all types of “domestic terrorists” - a label that the FBI has applied to anyone from protesters who vandalize cows made of butter to people who had pro-peace bumper stickers or were labeled suspected terrorists simply because of the people they knew.
You can read the initial release below, or on the request page. The second half of the file consists of the Department of Justice’s report on their decision not to prosecute anyone for the illegal mail opening programs. That report i
FBI leadership claimed Bureau was “almost powerless” against KKK, despite making up one-fifth of its membership
Deputy Director James Adams testified that the Bureau had three times as many “ghetto informants” as they did those targeting white supremacists
Written by Emma Best
Edited by JPat Brown
In testimony before the Church Committee, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Deputy Director acknowledged that the Bureau at one point made up as much as one-fifth of the Klu Klux Klan’s total membership - but were still powerless to curtail the KKK’s violence. His testimony also acknowledged police participation in said violence, and that the Bureau had three times as many “ghetto informants” as they did those targeting white supremacist domestic terrorists.
In response to a FOIA request filed several months ago for the SENSTUDY 75 file, pertaining to the Church Committee, the FBI recently released a preprocessed file (apparently unable to provide even preprocessed documents within the time period required by the law) that includes excerpts of testimony from Deputy Associate Director James Adams addressing the Bureau’s involvement with, and failure to curtail, the KKK. Before finishing his first sentence in the excerpted testimony, Adams had offered somewhat misleading information in stating that the COINTELPRO efforts had been discontinued in 1971.
In actuality, all that was discontinued in 1971 was the centralized program. According to the memo commonly cited as discontinuing the program “for security reasons,” COINTELPRO efforts would “be considered on a highly selective individual basis with tight procedures to insure absolute security.”
The Church Committee would note that the efforts had continued in several known instances, and that the effect of ending the centralized program was simply that it was impossible to understand the full scope of those efforts without manually searching over 500,000 case files.
After providing this technically-true-but-entirely-misleading statement, Adams admitted to the Committee that the law had been “ineffective” against the Klan. He also argued that local law enforcement should be the primary tool used against groups like the Klan.
This argument fell somewhat flat in light of the following paragraph in Adams’ testimony, where he admitted that local law enforcement officers had been “participating in Klan violence.” Stating that “the FBI and the Federal Government were almost powerless to act,” he nonetheless defended the Bureau’s actions against the testimony of one of their informants, Gary Thomas Rowe, by pointing out that they had provided his information to local police departments.
This defense also fell somewhat flat immediately following his admission that some of those police departments had members “participating in Klan violence.” In light of that testimony, it’s hardly surprising that Adams’ also admitted that the information “was not being acted upon.”
Adams then re-emphasized this by restating it, seeming to validate some of the things Rowe had said shortly after impugning the depth of Rowe’s knowledge and ability to speak on the subject.
Adams’ testimony bemoaned the legal obstacles preventing the Bureau from acting as they wished they could, an ironic complaint given the illegal behaviors that COINTELPRO (the program under discussion) is infamous for. Adams also noted that the groups being monitored had greater numbers than ever before, which made it difficult for the Bureau to fully monitor them and counter their efforts, as well as increased the danger of these groups. This latter point might have been more impactful if Adams hadn’t also admitted that approximately 2,000 members of the KKK were working for the FBI.
The testimony then noted that the Bureau was almost singlehandedly responsible for the impressive growth in the KKK’s membership which Adams had just lamented. According to the Bureau’s numbers, not only were 20% of the KKK’s members working for the FBI, the FBI was responsible for 70% of the recent growth in the KKK’s membership and that rather than having the effect of reverting violence, it resulted in “the tail wagging the dog.”
Adams disputed the number of FBI employed KKK members by stating that the 2,000 informants included all “racial matters,” and that the FBI only accounted for “around 6%” of the KKK’s membership.
Adams proceeded to contradict his earlier statement that the FBI had been powerless against the KKK by claiming credit for a decrease in violence from the group by inducing paranoia in them. In virtually the same breath, he reaffirmed that “the Sheriff and other law enforcement officers” had been “in on” the violence and murders of civil rights workers, while also repeating the 20% figure he had just disputed.
It was then brought up with Adams that there was “considerable evidence” that “no attempt was made to prevent crime when [the FBI] had information that it was going to occur.”
Adams defended the Bureau by saying that they had passed the information on to the local police department. In response, it was pointed out that the FBI knew the department “was an accomplice to the crime.” Adams, having previously admitted that this was the case, simply responded they did “not necessarily knew [sic]” despite having been told this by their informants. As a result, the questioner noted, they “weren’t doing a whole lot to prevent that incident by telling the people who were already a part of it.”
Adams’ denied that the Bureau had encouraged informants like Rowe to participate in violence, only to have his statement contradicted by both Rowe and the Agent in Charge.
The testimony excerpted in the file ends with Adams’ denying that the Bureau became involved in anyone’s sex life and that such a thing would not be “of any value whatsoever.”
Adams’ blanket denial is contradicted by the FBI’s own memos on COINTELPRO, such as one discussing the possibility of informing the public that an actress was pregnant to “cause her embarrassment and tarnish her image.” The memo notes that this wasn’t part of the COINTELPRO effort against white supremacist groups such as the KKK, but against a white woman for supporting an enemy of the KKK - the Black Panther Party.
While Adams attempted to deny many of the accusations made against the Bureau and citations of the Bureau’s failure, he was just as often forced to admit them either just prior to or just after those denials. Regardless of whether the Bureau had made up 6% or 20% of the KKK’s members, the Special Agent in Charge instructed their informants to allow the acts to happen. When the Bureau did take action, it was to pass the information onto the local police departments - who in at least some instances were known to the Bureau to be among the perpetrators. The Bureau justified its behavior by citing legal restrictions and the sudden growth of the KKK, which the Bureau itself had been responsible for approximately 70% of. Adams’ testimony also misleadingly claimed that the Bureau had discontinued COINTELPRO efforts, a fact which the Church Committee was able to contradict.
However, what has been recently discontinued is funding to counter white supremacist groups like the KKK with the Trump administration “turning a blind eye” to white supremacists groups in what they have welcomed as “a signal of favor” to them. If the FBI was, in their own words, powerless against the KKK even while making up a large percentage of its membership through informants and agent provocateurs, it’s hard to imagine how effective the Bureau’s ongoing individual investigations against white supremacists will prove any more effective.
Despite relatively recent reports that the FBI has 1,000 ongoing investigations against white supremacists, this number actually includes all types of “domestic terrorists” - a label that the FBI has applied to anyone from protesters who vandalize cows made of butter to people who had pro-peace bumper stickers or were labeled suspected terrorists simply because of the people they knew.
You can read the initial release below, or on the request page. The second half of the file consists of the Department of Justice’s report on their decision not to prosecute anyone for the illegal mail opening programs. That report i
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.courthousenews.com/dc-circu ... s-efforts/
FBI Loses Appeal in Reporter-Impersonation Case
December 18, 2017
WASHINGTON
The FBI failed to perform an adequate search in response to Freedom of Information Act requests for documents related to its policy of having undercover agents pose as journalists to catch criminals, the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday.
The ruling reverses a federal judge’s finding that the agency had fulfilled its FOIA obligations.
Two media groups brought the underlying challenge based on reports about how the FBI apprehended an individual who in 2007 made a series anonymous bomb threats to a Seattle high school, causing near-daily evacuations of students, teachers and administrators.
Believing the threats were the handiwork of a narcissist, the FBI agents investigating the matter devised a plan: They would flatter the culprit into clicking a link that appeared to be press coverage suggesting he’d outsmarted the authorities.
When he did, a specialized malware would be secretly delivered to his computer and it would reveal his location. The plan worked and the individual calling in the bomb threats was arrested.
A technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union spotted the FBI’s ruse several years later while reviewing documents from an earlier records request. News of the media-impersonation tactics quickly made national headlines. The New York Times even printed a letter in justification of the ruse from FBI Director James Comey Jr.
In the wake of the controversy, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Associated Press filed three FOIA requests for documents on the FBI’s impersonation of journalists and creation of “fake news” in the course of investigations.
Friday’s ruling says they “were concerned that ‘the utilization of news media as a cover for delivery of electronic surveillance software’ both ‘endangers the media’s credibility and creates the appearance that it is not independent of the government’ and ‘undermines media organizations’ ability to independently report on law enforcement.'”
Although the FBI responded to one request by stating it had no responsive records, it later released several records related to the bomb-threat investigation but identified no other instances of media impersonation.
The organizations sued and appealed to the D.C. Circuit when a federal judge in Washington sided with the FBI and the Department of Justice.
On Friday, a three-judge panel unanimously reversed. “The bureau has failed to demonstrate that it ‘conduct[ed] a search for the requested records, using methods which can be reasonably expected to produce the information requested,’” U.S. Circuit Judge David Tatel wrote for the court.
The Reporters Committee argued that the FBI failed to conduct an adequate search for records using “search terms and the type of search performed” under the circuit’s standards.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3709571
President Trump lifts ban on making viruses more contagious
The National Institutes of Health announced Tuesday that it would allow the federal government to resume funding controversial research that makes viruses more contagious and deadly—despite scientists’ concern that the risks of such experiments outweigh potential advantages.
The federal government will lift a three-year pause, instituted in October, 2014, on funding the research projects.
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... as-manual/
December 18, 2017
CIA releases full Contras manual on “Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare”
Unexpurgated edition contains passages on “neutralizing” law enforcement, recruiting criminals for unspecific “jobs,” and deliberately creating martyrs for the cause
Written by JPat Brown
Edited by Michael Morisy
In response to a FOIA appeal by Emma Best, the Central Intelligence Agency has released in full a copy of “Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare,” a manual on “Armed Propaganda” techniques written for the Nicaraguan Contras during the civil war of the mid-’80s.
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... -holidays/
CIA wishes you a safe and happy █████ season
Declassified archives contains Agency’s teletype holiday greetings in redacted and unredacted versions
Written by Beryl Lipton
Edited by JPat Brown
Thanks to the plenty of duplicates that can end up in the Central Intelligence Agency’s CREST archive, a cryptic version of the Agency’s December 20th, 1985 holiday greetings to its worldwide employees is actually available in nearly-full format and available for reuse in your holiday-themed office-wide newsletter.
The Deputy Director of Science and Technology’s year-end send-off, following what would be dubbed “The Year of the Spy” for the number of foreign operatives that would be revealed functioning within the CIA and other law enforcement agencies, appears multiple times in the archive. A redacted version offers space to fill in your own employees’ description.
The note covers the challenges of the preceding year, including the common office topics of too few resources, long hours …
modernization and terrorism.
You can check out both versions below
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3709527
Trump nominee to head Export-Import Bank rejected by Senate panel
BY DENIS SLATTERY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, December 19, 2017, 3:59 PM
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-bor ... story.html
Government paying private firm $297 million to help hire 5,000 Border Patrol agents
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... ltra-lies/
December 14, 2017
Dissecting the CIA’s lies regarding MKULTRA
Agency report that recommended ending covert mind control experiments also recommended moving them to an operational setting overseas
Written by Emma Best
Edited by JPat Brown
One of the many interesting documents in Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives was guidance for public statements regarding their MKULTRA mind-control projects. The guidance, produced in 1983 and modified the following year, was intended for CIA’s Deputy Directors, the Executive Director, the Director of Public Affairs and “all Agency employees on the speaking circuit.” Just over a page long, the text is riddled with lies, errors, and half-truths, starting with the very first sentence.
The dates provided are misleading at best. MKULTRA officially began in 1953, but one of it’s partner programs, MKDELTA, had begun in 1952. Its predecessor programs had begun as early as 1949, judging by CIA’s index of “MKULTRA and behavioral research” documents. It’s impossible to know much about what happened before that in MKULTRA’s predecessor projects BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE, as an Agency memo notes that “almost no information [is] available for the period prior to 1952.”
The same memo noted that the records described “only a small part” of the program. MKULTRA also didn’t end in 1964 so much as it changed its name to MKSEARCH. Other MKULTRA subprojects weren’t transferred to MKSEARCH, but rather simply incorporated into the Agency’s general research and funding programs. According to John Marks’ book on the subject, “Gottlieb acknowledged that security did not require transferring all the surviving MKULTRA subprojects over to MKSEARCH. He moved 18 subprojects back into regular Agency funding channels.”
When the guidance was updated the following year, it was modified in a way that appears to indirectly acknowledge the origins of the program in the ’40s - without actually conceding that programs began in the ’40s.
When the destruction of MKULTRA documents was ordered in 1973, it apparently didn’t include the MKSEARCH records. A CIA letter indicates that those documents still existed and were in circulation in 1977. This may be because the Inspector General report recommended that future testing be conducted in an operational setting (discussed below and in the attached report at the beneath the article).
The project also went well beyond the use of drugs. According to a report from CIA’s IG which had been produced 20 years earlier, the MKULTRA charter authorized investigation into behavior modification using methods including radiation, electroshock, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, handwriting analysis, nonlethal harassment substances such as tear gas and other paramilitary materials.
The guidance on statements regarding MKULTRA continues:
The above excerpt is mostly true, especially in the instances where the Agency used research foundations to provide “sterile grants” to institutions which would remain unaware of the Agency’s interest. However, “key individuals must qualify for top secret clearance and are made witting of Agency sponsorship. The system in effect ‘ buys a piece’ of the specialist in order to enlist his aid in pursuing the intelligence implications of his research.”
The next two statements in the Agency’s guidance about statements on MKULTRA are outright lies about some of the most important issues raised by the MKULTRA experiments and similar programs.
The first lie is that the Agency thought this was questionable. The IG report states that these “testing programs [were] conducted under accepted scientific procedures” [emphasis added]. Far from being applied to unwitting friends in a friendly environment, these procedures were carried out by “physicians, toxicologists, and other specialists in mental, narcotics, and general hospitals and in prisons who are provided the products and findings of the basic research projects and proceed with intensive testing on human subjects. Where health permits, test subjects are voluntary participants in the program.” In at least one instance, such testing resulted in the odious death of one of those involved.
When the guidance was updated the following year, it was changed to declare that there were “only three instances” where the “ethical/moral propriety” was questionable.
The Agency’s talking points go on to assert that:
As mentioned above, the program didn’t end - it was renamed and reorganized in response to the IG report. However, the IG report also contradicts the official statement that the program was discontinued because of concerns that were raised. The concerns focused on blowback of exposure, not on the efficacy or ethicality of the work itself. The 1963 IG report even specifies that ending the program wouldn’t truly end the program.
The IG report makes it clear that the concerns the Agency was worried about involved exposure, not the nature of the work itself. The Agency’s worry about exposure also focused not on the rank and file or those performing the experiments, but on “the senior command of CIA.” The introduction to the report even notes that many people within the Agency already found the work to be “distasteful and unethical.”
According to the press guidance, questions in the Agency about the propriety of the unwitting testing of subjects wasn’t raised until 1963 - a full ten years after they resulted in the death of Frank Olson (whose death some maintain was not an accident, but murder).
The talking points end on a note designed to mislead people into thinking that the program was proactively disclosed by the government in 1975 and 1976, instead of being exposed by the New York Times in 1974, and that new guidelines require that informed consent be provided.
The claim that the projects were discontinued in 1963 as a result of the IG report is undermined by the report’s suggestion that they begin using “deep cover agents overseas” to perform the testing for them.
Every line of the press guidance was carefully calculated to be just true enough to get away with saying it, while maintaining plausible deniability and misdirecting those who take the statements as anything other than gross distortions of the truth. Those statements, often deliberately vague, would then be repeated by the press in a game of telephone, with predictable results.
You can read the statement guidance on MKULTRA below, or read the IG report here.
NY Daily News now owned by media giant takes sharp right hand turn
in dealing with police corruption and violence
No more police oversight from NY Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/hand ... -1.3702077
‘Right to Know’ will handcuff our cops
BY JOE BORELLI CHAIM DEUTSCH PAUL VALLONE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, December 17, 2017, 5:00 AM
Another provision requires officers to identify themselves to individuals (which is already part of the NYPD’s procedures) and encourages them to call 311 to submit “comments” about the interaction, which suggests that any contact between police officers and the public may represent wrongdoing on the police officer’s part.
The most critical concern comes from the provision requiring officers to inform members of the public of their right to refuse certain searches, and to obtain documentation of that consent before conducting the search.
Link du jour
http://www.latimes.com/local/california ... story.html
http://www.pravdareport.com/news/societ ... yakutia-0/
http://mallory-memoryhistoryidentity.bl ... nnedy.html
http://www.hamillgallery.com/HAMILL/BubblePhotos.html
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/12/18/ ... ar-175-gw/
Record Renewables Growth in 2017 as New Global Solar + Wind Installations are Projected to Hit Near 175 GW
Last year, global growth in new solar energy installations hit a new record of 56 gigawatts (GW) in a single year. This year, growth could nearly double to 108 GW installed according to recent reports from IHS. Meanwhile wind appears on track to add another 68 GW of clean power generation. In other words, the age of the renewable energy revolution is in the process of overtaking us. None too soon considering the fact that we are now facing serious ramping harms due to fossil fuel burning and related human-forced climate change.
Rocketing Global Growth For Solar Despite Trump/Republican Efforts to Throw a Wet Blanket on a Key Industry
Such amazing growth comes on the back of rapidly ramping solar markets in China, India and around the world. A ramp that’s happening despite anti-solar policy by the Trump Administration feeding a trade case that has injected uncertainty and distortion into the U.S. market. And even as the same Administration is waging an Orwellian-styled war on the employees of the Environmental Protection Agency who are still doing their best, despite rising odds, to protect the health of U.S. citizens from polluting industries.
The upshot is that the U.S. will lag behind these two emerging solar energy leaders as republicans in power put energy policy in retrograde following years of rapid advancement and clean energy leadership under Obama and the democrats.
(U.S. sees shrinking pie of new solar additions under Trump. Image source: PV Magazine/IHS.)
But despite harmful policy stances by republicans and related nonsensical litigation, the U.S. market is still expected to see 10-12 GW of new solar added in 2017 — or the second highest levels of solar installation on record.
Solar’s resilience in both the U.S. and around the world is primarily due to low photovoltaic panel prices combined with broad popular support by states, cities, businesses, and individuals. These low prices are evidenced by numerous solar tenders and purchase agreements that now range below the 5.5 cent per kilowatt hour level, that can often hit below the 4 cent threshold and sometimes dip as low as 3 cents or less. A recent solar purchase agreement in Arizona, for example, sold for less than 3 cents per kilowatt hour or lower than half the price of nuclear for that region. As mentioned above, trade case uncertainty has since driven solar prices in the U.S. marginally higher. Despite this counter to the global trend, U.S. solar sales are still beating out every prior year except 2016.
(Policies like the Sun Shot Initiative under President Obama and major investments by countries like China helped to rapidly reduce the cost of photovoltaic solar panels globally. Recently, major cost reductions have also been realized in concentrated solar power (CSP). Image source: PlanetSave.)
Concentrated solar power (CSP), which has the inherent advantage of offering both clean, renewable energy and storage in a single application, is also seeing falling prices. For ACWA Power is building a 700 MW CSP facility in Dubai that will provide clean solar energy for just 7.3 cents per kwh. This compares to natural gas prices which range as high as 24 cents per kwh for the Gulf region. If such low prices can be widely duplicated globally, CSP, which employs reflectors to gather solar heat into an oil based medium that is used to boil water to spin a turbine, then this additional form of solar is also likely to see broader use.
Wind Continues Steady Gains
Even as solar energy rockets to record gains, wind energy is also expected to see considerable increases. Forecast International now predicts that 68 GW of new wind capacity will be added globally in 2017. Wind installations at this point are quite widely distributed around the world. However, increased growth in Asia is a major factor in the continued steadily rising rate of adoption.
(Globally, wind energy is projected to continue its steady growth trend of recent years. Image source: Forecast International.)
Prices for wind energy range from 3.1 to around 5.5 cents per kwh, according to Lazard. Unlike solar, the price for wind has been on a slower decline curve during recent years. This means that at this time prices for both wind and solar are presently comparable for most regions. It also means that in places like Alberta, where a recent 600 MW wind project is expected to cost an average of 3.7 cents per kwh, prices for wind are less than half that of nuclear and less than most existing coal or even many new gas projects.
Major Growth in Renewable Energy as Coal Stagnates
If IHS and Forecast International projections for new solar and wind growth bear out, then we’ll see about 176 GW of these forms of renewable energy installed in 2017. That’s a tremendous rate of add that will considerably outpace new coal and gas installations even as it helps to reduce overall demand for power from these polluting sources and major contributors to climate change, related sea level rise, and similarly related worsening extreme weather. We are already seeing these effects as the world’s largest coal terminal is seeking to diversify on lowering demand forecast and as GE — a major provider of turbines for the gas industry — is cutting its fossil fuel based equipment sector.
One major aspect of the larger global shift can be seen in China. During past years, China rapidly added new coal and gas capacity. But non fossil fuel power generation additions were the major story for China in the first half of 2017. For by July China had added 24.4 GW of new solar capacity, 7.3 GW of new wind capacity, 6.69 GW of new hydro capacity, and 1.09 GW of new nuclear capacity. The total new add was 39.48 GW of non fossil fuel based electrical power generation vs 18.84 GW of new thermal capacity primarily coming from coal and gas. In other words, renewables outpaced fossil fuel generation in China by more than 2 to 1.
This comes as China is seeking to reduce coal use in an effort to clean up its air quality and fight climate change, as the price of coal burning rises to the point of producing losses in regions like Europe, and as predictions abound that the near term coal market is stagnating and long term future coal prospects, without the addition of costly carbon capture and storage, look bleak.
http://www.latimes.com/sns-bc-us--confe ... story.html
Virginia police chief retires after criticism over rally
How FBI agents got Ronald Reagan elected President
1
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/opini ... chine.html
Reagan’s Personal Spying Machine
Sept. 1, 2012
IN 1961, when Ronald Reagan was defining himself politically, he warned that if left unchecked, government would become “a Big Brother to us all.” But previously undisclosed F.B.I. records, released to me after a long and costly legal fight under the Freedom of Information Act, present a different side of the man who has come to symbolize the conservative philosophy of less government and greater self-reliance.
2
https://www.muckrock.com/project/iran-c ... wrongs-49/
Iran-Contra, October Surprise and Reagan's Wrongs
A look into the wrongdoings of the Reagan administration and campaign, including the October Surprise, Debategate, MCA Records, the Inslaw and Wedtech scandals and the Iran-Contra scandal, which has been called Reagan's unchecked abuse of Presidential power.
The Iran-Contra scandal saw Congress’ restrictions on foreign arms sales circumvented by high level politicians, military and intelligence officers who were aided by smugglers and traffickers. Many of the details have never been released. By signing onto a FOIA saying that these documents are in the public interest, you can help change that.
This project will collect new materials with FOIA and examine them to understand who really did what, who knew what and what their motives were. It will also explore other scandals and allegations involving the Reagan campaign and administration, including the October Surprise, Debategate, Inslaw and Wedtech sandals and the dropped investigation into MCA Records. The goal is to explore history through primary documents, not to demonize or vilify those involved.
Those involved and investigated include:
Elliott Abrams - former American diplomat and lawyer who served in the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations
Richard Armitage - 13th United States Deputy Secretary of State at the State Department. He has acknowledged that he publicly released the classified information that Valerie Plame Wilson was a secret agent for the CIA
George Bush - Vice President, Director of Central Intelligence and President of the United States
William Casey - Director of Central Intelligence
Carl Channell - Conservative fund raiser
Duane Clarridge - Senior operations officer for CIA, head of Latin American division
Thomas Clines - Senior CIA officer
Edwin Corr - U.S. Ambassador to several Latin-American nations
Robert Earl - Marine lieutenant colonel and a deputy to Oliver North at the National Security Agency during the early 1980s.
Joseph Fernandez - CIA station chief in Costa Rica (operating under the pseudonym Tomás Castillo) and a figure in the Iran-Contra Affair.
Alan Fiers, Jr. - President Reagan’s Chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Central American Task Force from October 1984 until his retirement in 1988.
Robert Gates - Served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and was Director of Central Intelligence under President George H. W. Bush.
Clair George - CIA officer in the clandestine service who oversaw all global espionage activities for the agency in the mid-1980s.
Donald Gregg - worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 31 years. He was a National Security Council advisor (1979–1982) and National Security Advisor to U.S. Vice President George H. W. Bush (1982–1989).
Albert Hakim - Iranian-American businessman and a figure in the Iran-Contra affair who participated in an aerial reconnaissance program run by CIA and Imperial Iranian Air Force from bases inside Iran against the Soviet Union.
M. Charles Hill - Senior adviser to George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and President Reagan, as well as Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Edwin Meese III - Served within the Reagan Presidential Transition Team and the Reagan White House, eventually rising to hold the position of Attorney General, from which he resigned while under investigation from a special prosecutor.
Robert McFarlane - National Security Advisor to President Reagan
Richard Miller - Communications consultant who helped raise money for the Nicaraguan rebels and plead guilty to a conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
Oliver North - National Security Council staff member alleged by John Kerry to have created a privatized Contra network that attracted drug traffickers looking for cover for their operations, then turned a blind eye to repeated reports of drug smuggling related to the Contras, and actively worked with known drug smugglers such as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to assist the Contras.
Nicholas Platt - American diplomat to Pakistan, Philippines, Zambia, and as a high level diplomat in Canada, China, Hong Kong, and Japan.
John Poindexter - Deputy National Security Advisor and National Security Advisor for President Reagan, convinced of multiple felonies as a result of Iran-Contra.
Ronald Reagan - President of the United States
Donald Regan - President Reagan’s Secretary of the Treasury and White House Chief of Staff
Richard Secord - Took part in CIA’s secret war in Laos, involved in Iran-Contra and one of its precursors, Operation Tipped Kettle.
George Shultz - President Reagan’s Secretary of State, known for opposition to the Iran-Contra scandal.
Paul Thompson - Navy commander who was detailed to the National Security Council staff, military assistant to National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane.
Caspar Weinberger - President Reagan’s Secretary of Defense, claimed to be opposed to the sale but participated in the transfer of United States Hawk and TOW missiles to Iran during the Iran–Contra affair. He was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush, who was Reagan’s vice president during the scandal.
https://www.facebook.com/andrewhvachss/
The Republican "tax reform" is like having phone sex with a busy signal ... and paying through the nose for it.
FBI Loses Appeal in Reporter-Impersonation Case
December 18, 2017
WASHINGTON
The FBI failed to perform an adequate search in response to Freedom of Information Act requests for documents related to its policy of having undercover agents pose as journalists to catch criminals, the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday.
The ruling reverses a federal judge’s finding that the agency had fulfilled its FOIA obligations.
Two media groups brought the underlying challenge based on reports about how the FBI apprehended an individual who in 2007 made a series anonymous bomb threats to a Seattle high school, causing near-daily evacuations of students, teachers and administrators.
Believing the threats were the handiwork of a narcissist, the FBI agents investigating the matter devised a plan: They would flatter the culprit into clicking a link that appeared to be press coverage suggesting he’d outsmarted the authorities.
When he did, a specialized malware would be secretly delivered to his computer and it would reveal his location. The plan worked and the individual calling in the bomb threats was arrested.
A technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union spotted the FBI’s ruse several years later while reviewing documents from an earlier records request. News of the media-impersonation tactics quickly made national headlines. The New York Times even printed a letter in justification of the ruse from FBI Director James Comey Jr.
In the wake of the controversy, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Associated Press filed three FOIA requests for documents on the FBI’s impersonation of journalists and creation of “fake news” in the course of investigations.
Friday’s ruling says they “were concerned that ‘the utilization of news media as a cover for delivery of electronic surveillance software’ both ‘endangers the media’s credibility and creates the appearance that it is not independent of the government’ and ‘undermines media organizations’ ability to independently report on law enforcement.'”
Although the FBI responded to one request by stating it had no responsive records, it later released several records related to the bomb-threat investigation but identified no other instances of media impersonation.
The organizations sued and appealed to the D.C. Circuit when a federal judge in Washington sided with the FBI and the Department of Justice.
On Friday, a three-judge panel unanimously reversed. “The bureau has failed to demonstrate that it ‘conduct[ed] a search for the requested records, using methods which can be reasonably expected to produce the information requested,’” U.S. Circuit Judge David Tatel wrote for the court.
The Reporters Committee argued that the FBI failed to conduct an adequate search for records using “search terms and the type of search performed” under the circuit’s standards.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3709571
President Trump lifts ban on making viruses more contagious
The National Institutes of Health announced Tuesday that it would allow the federal government to resume funding controversial research that makes viruses more contagious and deadly—despite scientists’ concern that the risks of such experiments outweigh potential advantages.
The federal government will lift a three-year pause, instituted in October, 2014, on funding the research projects.
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... as-manual/
December 18, 2017
CIA releases full Contras manual on “Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare”
Unexpurgated edition contains passages on “neutralizing” law enforcement, recruiting criminals for unspecific “jobs,” and deliberately creating martyrs for the cause
Written by JPat Brown
Edited by Michael Morisy
In response to a FOIA appeal by Emma Best, the Central Intelligence Agency has released in full a copy of “Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare,” a manual on “Armed Propaganda” techniques written for the Nicaraguan Contras during the civil war of the mid-’80s.
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... -holidays/
CIA wishes you a safe and happy █████ season
Declassified archives contains Agency’s teletype holiday greetings in redacted and unredacted versions
Written by Beryl Lipton
Edited by JPat Brown
Thanks to the plenty of duplicates that can end up in the Central Intelligence Agency’s CREST archive, a cryptic version of the Agency’s December 20th, 1985 holiday greetings to its worldwide employees is actually available in nearly-full format and available for reuse in your holiday-themed office-wide newsletter.
The Deputy Director of Science and Technology’s year-end send-off, following what would be dubbed “The Year of the Spy” for the number of foreign operatives that would be revealed functioning within the CIA and other law enforcement agencies, appears multiple times in the archive. A redacted version offers space to fill in your own employees’ description.
The note covers the challenges of the preceding year, including the common office topics of too few resources, long hours …
modernization and terrorism.
You can check out both versions below
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3709527
Trump nominee to head Export-Import Bank rejected by Senate panel
BY DENIS SLATTERY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, December 19, 2017, 3:59 PM
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-bor ... story.html
Government paying private firm $297 million to help hire 5,000 Border Patrol agents
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... ltra-lies/
December 14, 2017
Dissecting the CIA’s lies regarding MKULTRA
Agency report that recommended ending covert mind control experiments also recommended moving them to an operational setting overseas
Written by Emma Best
Edited by JPat Brown
One of the many interesting documents in Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives was guidance for public statements regarding their MKULTRA mind-control projects. The guidance, produced in 1983 and modified the following year, was intended for CIA’s Deputy Directors, the Executive Director, the Director of Public Affairs and “all Agency employees on the speaking circuit.” Just over a page long, the text is riddled with lies, errors, and half-truths, starting with the very first sentence.
The dates provided are misleading at best. MKULTRA officially began in 1953, but one of it’s partner programs, MKDELTA, had begun in 1952. Its predecessor programs had begun as early as 1949, judging by CIA’s index of “MKULTRA and behavioral research” documents. It’s impossible to know much about what happened before that in MKULTRA’s predecessor projects BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE, as an Agency memo notes that “almost no information [is] available for the period prior to 1952.”
The same memo noted that the records described “only a small part” of the program. MKULTRA also didn’t end in 1964 so much as it changed its name to MKSEARCH. Other MKULTRA subprojects weren’t transferred to MKSEARCH, but rather simply incorporated into the Agency’s general research and funding programs. According to John Marks’ book on the subject, “Gottlieb acknowledged that security did not require transferring all the surviving MKULTRA subprojects over to MKSEARCH. He moved 18 subprojects back into regular Agency funding channels.”
When the guidance was updated the following year, it was modified in a way that appears to indirectly acknowledge the origins of the program in the ’40s - without actually conceding that programs began in the ’40s.
When the destruction of MKULTRA documents was ordered in 1973, it apparently didn’t include the MKSEARCH records. A CIA letter indicates that those documents still existed and were in circulation in 1977. This may be because the Inspector General report recommended that future testing be conducted in an operational setting (discussed below and in the attached report at the beneath the article).
The project also went well beyond the use of drugs. According to a report from CIA’s IG which had been produced 20 years earlier, the MKULTRA charter authorized investigation into behavior modification using methods including radiation, electroshock, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, handwriting analysis, nonlethal harassment substances such as tear gas and other paramilitary materials.
The guidance on statements regarding MKULTRA continues:
The above excerpt is mostly true, especially in the instances where the Agency used research foundations to provide “sterile grants” to institutions which would remain unaware of the Agency’s interest. However, “key individuals must qualify for top secret clearance and are made witting of Agency sponsorship. The system in effect ‘ buys a piece’ of the specialist in order to enlist his aid in pursuing the intelligence implications of his research.”
The next two statements in the Agency’s guidance about statements on MKULTRA are outright lies about some of the most important issues raised by the MKULTRA experiments and similar programs.
The first lie is that the Agency thought this was questionable. The IG report states that these “testing programs [were] conducted under accepted scientific procedures” [emphasis added]. Far from being applied to unwitting friends in a friendly environment, these procedures were carried out by “physicians, toxicologists, and other specialists in mental, narcotics, and general hospitals and in prisons who are provided the products and findings of the basic research projects and proceed with intensive testing on human subjects. Where health permits, test subjects are voluntary participants in the program.” In at least one instance, such testing resulted in the odious death of one of those involved.
When the guidance was updated the following year, it was changed to declare that there were “only three instances” where the “ethical/moral propriety” was questionable.
The Agency’s talking points go on to assert that:
As mentioned above, the program didn’t end - it was renamed and reorganized in response to the IG report. However, the IG report also contradicts the official statement that the program was discontinued because of concerns that were raised. The concerns focused on blowback of exposure, not on the efficacy or ethicality of the work itself. The 1963 IG report even specifies that ending the program wouldn’t truly end the program.
The IG report makes it clear that the concerns the Agency was worried about involved exposure, not the nature of the work itself. The Agency’s worry about exposure also focused not on the rank and file or those performing the experiments, but on “the senior command of CIA.” The introduction to the report even notes that many people within the Agency already found the work to be “distasteful and unethical.”
According to the press guidance, questions in the Agency about the propriety of the unwitting testing of subjects wasn’t raised until 1963 - a full ten years after they resulted in the death of Frank Olson (whose death some maintain was not an accident, but murder).
The talking points end on a note designed to mislead people into thinking that the program was proactively disclosed by the government in 1975 and 1976, instead of being exposed by the New York Times in 1974, and that new guidelines require that informed consent be provided.
The claim that the projects were discontinued in 1963 as a result of the IG report is undermined by the report’s suggestion that they begin using “deep cover agents overseas” to perform the testing for them.
Every line of the press guidance was carefully calculated to be just true enough to get away with saying it, while maintaining plausible deniability and misdirecting those who take the statements as anything other than gross distortions of the truth. Those statements, often deliberately vague, would then be repeated by the press in a game of telephone, with predictable results.
You can read the statement guidance on MKULTRA below, or read the IG report here.
NY Daily News now owned by media giant takes sharp right hand turn
in dealing with police corruption and violence
No more police oversight from NY Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/hand ... -1.3702077
‘Right to Know’ will handcuff our cops
BY JOE BORELLI CHAIM DEUTSCH PAUL VALLONE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, December 17, 2017, 5:00 AM
Another provision requires officers to identify themselves to individuals (which is already part of the NYPD’s procedures) and encourages them to call 311 to submit “comments” about the interaction, which suggests that any contact between police officers and the public may represent wrongdoing on the police officer’s part.
The most critical concern comes from the provision requiring officers to inform members of the public of their right to refuse certain searches, and to obtain documentation of that consent before conducting the search.
Link du jour
http://www.latimes.com/local/california ... story.html
http://www.pravdareport.com/news/societ ... yakutia-0/
http://mallory-memoryhistoryidentity.bl ... nnedy.html
http://www.hamillgallery.com/HAMILL/BubblePhotos.html
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/12/18/ ... ar-175-gw/
Record Renewables Growth in 2017 as New Global Solar + Wind Installations are Projected to Hit Near 175 GW
Last year, global growth in new solar energy installations hit a new record of 56 gigawatts (GW) in a single year. This year, growth could nearly double to 108 GW installed according to recent reports from IHS. Meanwhile wind appears on track to add another 68 GW of clean power generation. In other words, the age of the renewable energy revolution is in the process of overtaking us. None too soon considering the fact that we are now facing serious ramping harms due to fossil fuel burning and related human-forced climate change.
Rocketing Global Growth For Solar Despite Trump/Republican Efforts to Throw a Wet Blanket on a Key Industry
Such amazing growth comes on the back of rapidly ramping solar markets in China, India and around the world. A ramp that’s happening despite anti-solar policy by the Trump Administration feeding a trade case that has injected uncertainty and distortion into the U.S. market. And even as the same Administration is waging an Orwellian-styled war on the employees of the Environmental Protection Agency who are still doing their best, despite rising odds, to protect the health of U.S. citizens from polluting industries.
The upshot is that the U.S. will lag behind these two emerging solar energy leaders as republicans in power put energy policy in retrograde following years of rapid advancement and clean energy leadership under Obama and the democrats.
(U.S. sees shrinking pie of new solar additions under Trump. Image source: PV Magazine/IHS.)
But despite harmful policy stances by republicans and related nonsensical litigation, the U.S. market is still expected to see 10-12 GW of new solar added in 2017 — or the second highest levels of solar installation on record.
Solar’s resilience in both the U.S. and around the world is primarily due to low photovoltaic panel prices combined with broad popular support by states, cities, businesses, and individuals. These low prices are evidenced by numerous solar tenders and purchase agreements that now range below the 5.5 cent per kilowatt hour level, that can often hit below the 4 cent threshold and sometimes dip as low as 3 cents or less. A recent solar purchase agreement in Arizona, for example, sold for less than 3 cents per kilowatt hour or lower than half the price of nuclear for that region. As mentioned above, trade case uncertainty has since driven solar prices in the U.S. marginally higher. Despite this counter to the global trend, U.S. solar sales are still beating out every prior year except 2016.
(Policies like the Sun Shot Initiative under President Obama and major investments by countries like China helped to rapidly reduce the cost of photovoltaic solar panels globally. Recently, major cost reductions have also been realized in concentrated solar power (CSP). Image source: PlanetSave.)
Concentrated solar power (CSP), which has the inherent advantage of offering both clean, renewable energy and storage in a single application, is also seeing falling prices. For ACWA Power is building a 700 MW CSP facility in Dubai that will provide clean solar energy for just 7.3 cents per kwh. This compares to natural gas prices which range as high as 24 cents per kwh for the Gulf region. If such low prices can be widely duplicated globally, CSP, which employs reflectors to gather solar heat into an oil based medium that is used to boil water to spin a turbine, then this additional form of solar is also likely to see broader use.
Wind Continues Steady Gains
Even as solar energy rockets to record gains, wind energy is also expected to see considerable increases. Forecast International now predicts that 68 GW of new wind capacity will be added globally in 2017. Wind installations at this point are quite widely distributed around the world. However, increased growth in Asia is a major factor in the continued steadily rising rate of adoption.
(Globally, wind energy is projected to continue its steady growth trend of recent years. Image source: Forecast International.)
Prices for wind energy range from 3.1 to around 5.5 cents per kwh, according to Lazard. Unlike solar, the price for wind has been on a slower decline curve during recent years. This means that at this time prices for both wind and solar are presently comparable for most regions. It also means that in places like Alberta, where a recent 600 MW wind project is expected to cost an average of 3.7 cents per kwh, prices for wind are less than half that of nuclear and less than most existing coal or even many new gas projects.
Major Growth in Renewable Energy as Coal Stagnates
If IHS and Forecast International projections for new solar and wind growth bear out, then we’ll see about 176 GW of these forms of renewable energy installed in 2017. That’s a tremendous rate of add that will considerably outpace new coal and gas installations even as it helps to reduce overall demand for power from these polluting sources and major contributors to climate change, related sea level rise, and similarly related worsening extreme weather. We are already seeing these effects as the world’s largest coal terminal is seeking to diversify on lowering demand forecast and as GE — a major provider of turbines for the gas industry — is cutting its fossil fuel based equipment sector.
One major aspect of the larger global shift can be seen in China. During past years, China rapidly added new coal and gas capacity. But non fossil fuel power generation additions were the major story for China in the first half of 2017. For by July China had added 24.4 GW of new solar capacity, 7.3 GW of new wind capacity, 6.69 GW of new hydro capacity, and 1.09 GW of new nuclear capacity. The total new add was 39.48 GW of non fossil fuel based electrical power generation vs 18.84 GW of new thermal capacity primarily coming from coal and gas. In other words, renewables outpaced fossil fuel generation in China by more than 2 to 1.
This comes as China is seeking to reduce coal use in an effort to clean up its air quality and fight climate change, as the price of coal burning rises to the point of producing losses in regions like Europe, and as predictions abound that the near term coal market is stagnating and long term future coal prospects, without the addition of costly carbon capture and storage, look bleak.
http://www.latimes.com/sns-bc-us--confe ... story.html
Virginia police chief retires after criticism over rally
How FBI agents got Ronald Reagan elected President
1
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/opini ... chine.html
Reagan’s Personal Spying Machine
Sept. 1, 2012
IN 1961, when Ronald Reagan was defining himself politically, he warned that if left unchecked, government would become “a Big Brother to us all.” But previously undisclosed F.B.I. records, released to me after a long and costly legal fight under the Freedom of Information Act, present a different side of the man who has come to symbolize the conservative philosophy of less government and greater self-reliance.
2
https://www.muckrock.com/project/iran-c ... wrongs-49/
Iran-Contra, October Surprise and Reagan's Wrongs
A look into the wrongdoings of the Reagan administration and campaign, including the October Surprise, Debategate, MCA Records, the Inslaw and Wedtech scandals and the Iran-Contra scandal, which has been called Reagan's unchecked abuse of Presidential power.
The Iran-Contra scandal saw Congress’ restrictions on foreign arms sales circumvented by high level politicians, military and intelligence officers who were aided by smugglers and traffickers. Many of the details have never been released. By signing onto a FOIA saying that these documents are in the public interest, you can help change that.
This project will collect new materials with FOIA and examine them to understand who really did what, who knew what and what their motives were. It will also explore other scandals and allegations involving the Reagan campaign and administration, including the October Surprise, Debategate, Inslaw and Wedtech sandals and the dropped investigation into MCA Records. The goal is to explore history through primary documents, not to demonize or vilify those involved.
Those involved and investigated include:
Elliott Abrams - former American diplomat and lawyer who served in the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations
Richard Armitage - 13th United States Deputy Secretary of State at the State Department. He has acknowledged that he publicly released the classified information that Valerie Plame Wilson was a secret agent for the CIA
George Bush - Vice President, Director of Central Intelligence and President of the United States
William Casey - Director of Central Intelligence
Carl Channell - Conservative fund raiser
Duane Clarridge - Senior operations officer for CIA, head of Latin American division
Thomas Clines - Senior CIA officer
Edwin Corr - U.S. Ambassador to several Latin-American nations
Robert Earl - Marine lieutenant colonel and a deputy to Oliver North at the National Security Agency during the early 1980s.
Joseph Fernandez - CIA station chief in Costa Rica (operating under the pseudonym Tomás Castillo) and a figure in the Iran-Contra Affair.
Alan Fiers, Jr. - President Reagan’s Chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Central American Task Force from October 1984 until his retirement in 1988.
Robert Gates - Served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and was Director of Central Intelligence under President George H. W. Bush.
Clair George - CIA officer in the clandestine service who oversaw all global espionage activities for the agency in the mid-1980s.
Donald Gregg - worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for 31 years. He was a National Security Council advisor (1979–1982) and National Security Advisor to U.S. Vice President George H. W. Bush (1982–1989).
Albert Hakim - Iranian-American businessman and a figure in the Iran-Contra affair who participated in an aerial reconnaissance program run by CIA and Imperial Iranian Air Force from bases inside Iran against the Soviet Union.
M. Charles Hill - Senior adviser to George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and President Reagan, as well as Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Edwin Meese III - Served within the Reagan Presidential Transition Team and the Reagan White House, eventually rising to hold the position of Attorney General, from which he resigned while under investigation from a special prosecutor.
Robert McFarlane - National Security Advisor to President Reagan
Richard Miller - Communications consultant who helped raise money for the Nicaraguan rebels and plead guilty to a conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
Oliver North - National Security Council staff member alleged by John Kerry to have created a privatized Contra network that attracted drug traffickers looking for cover for their operations, then turned a blind eye to repeated reports of drug smuggling related to the Contras, and actively worked with known drug smugglers such as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to assist the Contras.
Nicholas Platt - American diplomat to Pakistan, Philippines, Zambia, and as a high level diplomat in Canada, China, Hong Kong, and Japan.
John Poindexter - Deputy National Security Advisor and National Security Advisor for President Reagan, convinced of multiple felonies as a result of Iran-Contra.
Ronald Reagan - President of the United States
Donald Regan - President Reagan’s Secretary of the Treasury and White House Chief of Staff
Richard Secord - Took part in CIA’s secret war in Laos, involved in Iran-Contra and one of its precursors, Operation Tipped Kettle.
George Shultz - President Reagan’s Secretary of State, known for opposition to the Iran-Contra scandal.
Paul Thompson - Navy commander who was detailed to the National Security Council staff, military assistant to National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane.
Caspar Weinberger - President Reagan’s Secretary of Defense, claimed to be opposed to the sale but participated in the transfer of United States Hawk and TOW missiles to Iran during the Iran–Contra affair. He was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush, who was Reagan’s vice president during the scandal.
https://www.facebook.com/andrewhvachss/
The Republican "tax reform" is like having phone sex with a busy signal ... and paying through the nose for it.
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... checkmate/
January 2, 2018
When it came to the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover was both a source and ‘fact checker’ for the media
Hoover made sure the Bureau, not the Army, was credited with finding a spy
Written by Emma Best
Edited by JPat Brown
In a recent response to a FOIA request on Rudolf Abel and the Hollow Nickel case, the Federal Bureau of Investigation included a 13 page section describing the FBI’s assistance to an author writing a series of articles about the Bureau. At least some of the articles appear to have been based on the film The FBI Story, which FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reportedly had a strong hand in the production of, including prompting reshoots.
According to the file, Patrick D. (possibly short for Denis) O’Donnell, had written the FBI requesting assistance with an article. O’Donnell was provided with FBI write ups to use as a source, and it was requested that the Bureau be allowed to review his articles to keep them “within the bounds of authenticity and accuracy.” The request was sent to Hoover by the Legat office in London. While the draft article indicates that Hoover did indeed review the article, the Bureau’s “fact check” of that particular statement is ambiguous.
Apparently this was to be the first in what would be a series of articles about Colonel Abel, of Bridge of Spies fame, and the now-lesser known Hollow Nickel case. The FBI reviewer checked off statements that were true and made notes of corrections in several other places.
For instance, the Bureau confirmed that while they don’t always get their man, they affirmed that they never give up - sometimes resulting in a high profile success.
The FBI also confirmed that number ten of Hoover’s “Ten Commandments of the G-man” was loyalty and devotion.
While some of the corrections concerned minor details, others seemed more focused on optimizing the language to improve public perception of the Bureau.
Other corrections simply make things more vague for reasons that aren’t immediately clear.
In one instance, the FBI was happy to credit themselves, and not the Army, with responsibility for locating and the subsequent successful court martial of Sergeant Roy Rhodes.
As for whether the corrections not only went through his office, but were personally made by Hoover, the FBI reviewer would neither confirm nor deny. They did, however, strikethrough the section stating that one of Hoover’s Special Agents had flown from London with the files. The entire section was ambiguously highlighted, with a question mark written at the end.
You can read the exchange of memos below along with the entire set of confirmations and corrections, or the rest on the release page
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/m ... -1.3732202
Mosque pays fine for man who vandalized its building
BY MEGAN CERULLO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, January 1, 2018, 8:55
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/the- ... 2017-21785
Published: December 27th, 2017
Following a year of weather extremes, disasters and policy clashes, we asked our readers to help us pick out the most important climate stories from the U.S. in 2017. Here's what you said.
HURRICANES
This was a brutal year for hurricanes in the U.S. A trifecta of storms (Harvey, Irma and Maria) battered Florida, the Gulf Coast and Puerto Rico, causing deaths and widespread destruction, driving many from their homes. Climate change is fueling hurricanes by increasing their rainfall, wind speeds, and storm surges. Our World Weather Attribution team was among the groups of scientists that found climate change increased the amount of flooding rainfall from Harvey.
SEA-LEVEL RISE SCIENCE
Sea-level rise projections got worse for U.S. coastal communities. New research factoring in the projected effects of warming on Antarctic ice outlined new scenarios for Gulf Coast and East Coast cities, where more than 10 feet of sea-level rise is possible in places this century. Sea-level rise could be kept to less than two feet if we aggressively curb our greenhouse gas emissions, reducing risks and impacts.
U.S. GOVERNMENT
The Trump administration worked to reverse climate protections this year, seeking to replace the Clean Power Plan and eventually withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The administration has been removing the phrase “climate change” from government websites and it greenlighted construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. All the while, hundreds of thousands of people marched for science and the climate, and states and cities and nations abroad vowed to fight harder to slow global warming.
TESLA
2017 was the year of Tesla co-founder Elon Musk. From a battery factory in Nevada, to South Australia where his batteries are helping a wind farm provide reliable power, to a new energy grid in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, Tesla has taken the lead in producing batteries for energy storage and to power electric cars. And it has developed new all-electric semi trucks and solar shingles!
WILDFIRES
California is battling its largest wildfire on record right now, but this wildfire season wasn’t just bad for the Golden State. Wildfires burned more than 9.5 million acres across the U.S., destroying neighborhoods and releasing dangerous smoke pollution. The Western wildfire season is 105 days longer than it was 45 years ago as climate change fuels more and bigger blazes.
THIRD HOTTEST YEAR ON RECORD
2017 is likely to be the third-hottest year on record for the U.S., behind 2016 and 2012. This record heat is particularly astounding considering the absence of an El Niño, which usually boosts global temperatures. If the final data matches expectations, five of the 10 hottest years on record will have come since 2006.
SOCIAL INJUSTICE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The homes of Americans were destroyed or threatened by extreme weather and rising seas, with the poor hit the hardest. Hundreds of thousands of people had to flee Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, relocating to Florida and other areas. Thousands more in New Jersey and Louisiana are hoping for federal help as they grapple with the ongoing effects of flooding linked to rising seas and climate change-fueled storms.
SOLAR ENERGY SHINES
Production of clean energy climbed as prices continued to come down. In March, 10 percent of all electricity generated in the U.S. came from wind and solar, with help from Texas (America’s number 1 wind provider) and California (the largest solar producer). Bloomberg New Energy Finance concluded in the summer that solar energy can now be as cheap as power from new coal plants in the U.S.
TRANSPORTATION POLLUTION
Your car is contributing to the biggest source of U.S. emissions. Transportation recently overtook electricity generation as the biggest source of greenhouse gases from the U.S., as coal power plants were retired and replaced with renewables and natural gas facilities.
HEAT WAVES
It may be winter right now, but don’t forget about extreme heat, which is the number one weather-related killer. Climate change made a February heat wave across much of the eastern U.S. three times more likely. In June, another heat wave in the Southwest prevented planes in Arizona from taking off. Danger days are surging from Power, Montana to New York City, and a dramatic rise in dangerous heat and humidity will continue in the summertime.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... al-warming
On its hundredth birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming
Somebody cut the cake – new documents reveal that American oil writ large was warned of global warming at its 100th birthday party.
http://newsok.com/oklahoma-sheriffs-@#$ ... le/5577871
Oklahoma Sheriffs' Association subject to openness laws, AG says
Nolan Clay by Nolan Clay Published: January 2, 2018 5:00 AM CDT Updated: January 2, 2018 5:00 AM CDT
The opinion was released last week. It comes at a time the association is facing criticism for its involvement in a program that charges criminals 30 percent more if their overdue fines are turned over to a collection agency.
The association is among those being sued over the program in federal court in Tulsa. The civil rights lawsuit alleges the program is an extortion scheme that preys on impoverished offenders who already find it hard to keep up with payments while on probation.
The association has made more than $4 million off its administrative role in that program since 2010 even though it has never collected a dollar itself, The Oklahoman reported in November.
Asking for the opinion was a critic of the association, state Rep. Bobby Cleveland, R-Slaughterville. The legislator said he acted after hearing concerns about the association from journalists.
The association must comply with the Open Meeting Act when a majority of its members meet to conduct association business, the attorney general determined. It also must make open its records involving "the transaction of public business, the expenditure of public funds or the administering of public property."
The openness laws apply even though the association is a private nonprofit entity and it does not receive any state appropriations, according to the opinion.
The attorney general based his opinion on the association's paid administrative role in the Oklahoma Temporary Motorist Liability Plan.
That plan allows police to seize a driver's license plate if the driver doesn't have proof of insurance. A driver must pay a $125 fee to get the license plate back. The association gets a $10 cut from each fee for administering the plan.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... -1.3732168
SEE IT: Erykah Badu was stopped in Dallas so police could ‘say hi’
BY KATE FELDMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Monday, January 1, 2018, 11:42 PM
https://apnews.com/959d86ea5caa4bc9b550 ... e-shooting
Victim’s family loses appeal over deadly police shooting
FERNDALE, Mich.
A federal court says a Detroit-area police officer has immunity in a lawsuit over a fatal shooting, even if he clearly violated the constitutional rights of the victim.
Laszlo Latits was shot three times by a Ferndale officer after fleeing a traffic stop in 2010. Despite the deadly force, the appeals court said Latits wasn’t a threat to officers or the public at the time of the shooting.
https://apnews.com/1ea5eeb41655484dbbcc ... -shootings
Prosecutor to release grand jury report on trooper shootings
EASTON, Pa.
A grand jury report on how Pennsylvania State Police investigates shootings by its own troopers is set for public release.
Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli plans to release the grand jury’s report Tuesday afternoon.
The prosecutor sought the grand jury after state police, citing longtime policy, refused to allow his detectives to take the lead on a probe of a fatal shooting by troopers near Easton. Criminal justice experts say police shooting investigations should be independent to ensure objectivity. State police have defended the policy, saying it has guidelines to ensure thorough investigations of shootings by its own troopers.
State police went to court in an unsuccessful effort to quash the grand jury.
https://apnews.com/cbb085157d464c6bae10 ... ads-guilty
Detroit deputy police chief pleads guilty
DETROIT
A former Detroit deputy police chief has pleaded guilty to accenting money from a city contractor but denies that he got any favors in return.
Celia Washington appeared in federal court Tuesday. She told a judge that she knew Gasper Fiore was trying to influence her with $3,000. She said she needed a loan.
Washington served as the police department’s legal adviser, responsible for overseeing towing companies that remove cars seized by police. Fiore had towing contracts.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... -interview
In gay-friendly Palm Springs, America's first all-LGBT government is no surprise
Under Trump, LGBT rights are under fire – but in this progressive desert haven, a historic moment was met with a shrug: ‘It’s not an issue here’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... ontroversy
Dubai Frame: UAE's latest surreal landmark frames a controversy
Architect’s ‘stolen building’ accusation overshadows opening of 50-storey portal almost a decade after it was first designed
https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... th-1-in-10
US study finds 1 in 10 youth experience some form of homelessness
Survey polled more than 26,000 young people over two years
Total includes those who have couch-surfed or been kicked out of home
https://www.denverpost.com/2018/01/01/o ... diagnosis/
This secret experiment tricked psychiatrists into diagnosing sane people as having schizophrenia
January 1, 2018 at 6:25 pm
It was a secret experiment. There was a graduate student, a housewife, a painter, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist and three psychologists. Using fake names, they went out to 12 hospitals across the country and claimed to hear voices. Their mission was to see what would happen.
What they found rocked psychiatry.
David Rosenhan, a psychologist at Stanford University, published the results of the experiment in a 1973 issue of the journal Science. “On Being Sane in Insane Places” would become one of the most influential studies in the history of psychiatry.
According to Rosenhan, each of what he called the “pseudopatients” told hospital staff about hearing voices that used the words “empty,” “hollow” and “thud.” The pseudopatients claimed the voices were difficult to understand but sounded as if they came from the same sex as that of the fake patients. Other than making claims about voices and giving themselves phony names and false occupations, the pseudopatients – Rosenhan among them – made up nothing else. None of them had any significant history of mental illness.
All of them were admitted to psychiatric units, at which point they stopped reporting any psychiatric symptoms. Still, nearly every person in the experiment was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Their hospitalizations ranged from seven to 52 days. Doctors prescribed them more than 2,000 pills, including antipsychotics and antidepressants, which the pseudopatients largely discarded.
In the hospitals, staff often misinterpreted the pseudopatients’ behaviors to fit within the context of psychiatric treatment. For example, the pseudopatients took copious notes while studying the environment of the psychiatric ward. One nurse reportedly wrote in the chart, “Patient engages in writing behavior.”
Although none of the pseudopatients were unmasked by hospital staff, other patients on the psychiatric units became suspicious of them. Across several of these hospitalizations, 35 patients expressed doubts that the pseudopatients were actually mentally ill, according to the study.
Still, Rosenhan’s conclusions were stark: People feigning mental illness all gained admission to psychiatric units and, after they stopped faking symptoms, remained there for lengthy periods. He famously wrote, “It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals.”
Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3732532
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/ ... story.html
https://www.theguardian.com/news/galler ... n-pictures
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... s-for-2018
https://www.boston.com/news/travel/2018 ... uise-ships
http://mtltimes.ca/Montreal/montreal/mo ... ens-march/
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/obitu ... dMore_Pos7
http://news3lv.com/news/nation-world/be ... ans-center
http://bangordailynews.com/2018/01/02/h ... llinocket/
http://bangordailynews.com/2018/01/01/o ... -for-cold/
Bangor, Portland set records for cold
Maine’s bitter cold set records on the first day of 2018, but forecasters predicted Monday that a letup will arrive by midweek.
The National Weather Service recorded a temperature of -16 degrees Fahrenheit at Portland International Jetport on Monday, breaking Portland’s previous low temperature for Jan. 1, -12 degrees, set in 1957 and 1964.
Bangor, meanwhile, smashed its record for low air temperature on New Year’s Eve, recording a temperature of 24 degrees below zero at 4:03 a.m. Sunday at Bangor International Airport. That shaved 8 degrees off the previous Bangor record for Dec. 31 of -16 degrees in 2013.
http://lancedutson.bangordailynews.com/ ... e-a-doozy/
Grab the popcorn — this legislative session is going to be a doozy
January 1, 2018Column, CommentaryDemocrats, Gov. Paul LePage, Legislature, Medicaid expansion, Ranked-choice voting, Republicans
LePage’s last dance with the Legislature will be crazy enough, but there’s also a host of controversial issues the Legislature is slated to deal with, including ranked-choice voting and Medicaid expansion.
Ranked-choice voting (RCV) became law in Maine by referendum in 2016, but the Legislature effectively squashed it last session by delaying its implementation until 2021 and requiring a constitutional amendment to address the state Supreme Court’s concerns with its constitutionality. But proponents of RCV are gathering signatures to put a People’s Veto of the repeal law on the ballot. Assuming the proponents turn in their signatures, this will freeze the repeal law and solidify RCV as the law of the land, at least for this spring’s primary elections.
This means the Legislature has a stark choice: either accept RCV as the law for the next primary, or replace RCV completely with a different solution that can garner the two-thirds bipartisan majority necessary to implement it before June.
One option is a traditional runoff system, like Georgia uses, and like Lewiston uses for their mayoral races. A runoff would satisfy the voter intent evinced by the RCV referendum by ensuring that Maine’s elected officials are supported by a clear majority of voters. (RCV is often referred to as “instant runoff voting.”) RCV’s complicated execution, the need for significant financial resources to implement it, and the questionable legality of the law make it unlikely to survive intact, and it may behoove RCV supporters to get behind a compromise that leaves primary elections alone and simply creates a runoff election if a candidate fails to garner majority support in the general election.
Medicaid expansion also passed by referendum, but LePage has vowed to block its implementation unless the Legislature finds funding for Maine’s share within existing resources. Democrats are staking out a firm position that expansion is the law and will be implemented regardless of what LePage says. So a standoff is in the making.
Deep State Elects Trump
https://www.courthousenews.com/trump-ac ... eep-state/
Trump Accuses Justice Dep’t of Being ‘Deep State’
January 2, 2018
President Donald Trump waves as he arrives to board Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Monday, Jan. 1, 2018, in West Palm Beach, Fla., to return to Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump accused the Justice Department on Tuesday of being part of the “deep state” and suggesting it “must finally act” against a top aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former FBI director James Comey.
The “deep state” refers to an alleged shadowy network of powerful entrenched interests that some Republicans argue are trying to undermine Trump.
Trump tweeted Tuesday morning: “Crooked Hillary Clinton’s top aid, Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others.”
Trump appeared to be referring to a report in the conservative Daily Caller that Abedin sent government passwords to her Yahoo email before
http://www.phillytrib.com/news/naacp-bl ... c956c.html
NAACP blasts handcuffing, detaining of 11-year-old girl
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The NAACP is calling for change in law enforcement across Kent County after body camera video was released last week showing an 11-year-old girl handcuffed and detained during an investigation.
Honestie Hodges, 11, was handcuffed and detained by Grand Rapids Police Department officers while they were searching for a stabbing suspect, who was a 41-year-old white woman.
“I have a question for the Grand Rapids Police: if this happened to a white child, if her mother was screaming she’s 11, would you have handcuffed her and put her in the back of a police car?” said Honestie Hodges to FOX 17 Tuesday.
Hodges asked her poignant question after the NAACP of Greater Grand Rapids’ press conference Tuesday, just weeks after GRPD officers handcuffed and detained her during their search for a stabbing suspect.
“As a mother, I was supposed to protect her and they didn’t let me protect my baby,” Whitney Hodges, Honestie’s mother, told FOX 17.
“You heard the scream, my baby was terrified and I couldn’t be there for her,” she said referring to released video.
The NAACP is asking the city to pay for culturally competent counseling for the Hodges family, and calls on GRPD to release the full uninterrupted body camera footage from this incident within 24 hours, as well as take appropriate disciplinary actions against the involved officers and review its officer discretion policy on detaining youth.
“We cannot and will not stand by to watch our children be aggressively and strategically targeted and terrorized by the police sworn to protect them,” said Cle Jackson, NAACP of Greater Grand Rapids president.
GRPD Chief David Rahinsky was speaking with city council members during the press conference, according to department officials, and says he will continue to speak with the NAACP, Grand Rapids Area Pastors and the Hodges family. Previously, Rahinksy told FOX 17 that police protocol needs to change.
“If an officer can point to policy or can point to training or point to hiring, and say this is what I was told, this is how I was taught, this is consistent with practice, then we’ve got a problem,” said GRPD Chief David Rahinksy. “And what I just said is accurate, we do have a problem.”
Rahinsky faces backlash from the police union, the Grand Rapids Police Officers Association, whose leaders say he should have been more supportive of the officers. GRPOA President Andy Bingle says while Honestie does not look like the suspect description at the time, officers have to take precautions to secure a scene.
“When I think of success, I think nobody got hurt in that incident,” said Bingle. “So many things can go wrong and nobody got hurt. Honestie yes, she was in handcuffs, it was for about two minutes and maybe she should’ve been out sooner, maybe not, I wasn’t there, but I think two minutes or less is enough time to make that call.”
While the NAACP thanked Rahinsky for his empathy, they also call on he and the GRPOA to take steps together to unify the community, including addressing the protocols that led to this incident.
“You should not have to fear walking down your street, or coming out of your home,” said Jackson. “You should not be terrified of being wrongfully detained like 11-year-old Honestie Hodges, or the five young boys ordered to the ground, held at gunpoint, and handcuffed on their way home earlier this year in March.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ment-trump
Trump plan to shrink ocean monuments threatens vital ecosystems, experts warn
Ryan Zinke has recommended three major marine monuments be reduced to allow greater commercial fishing, prompting anguish from environmental groups
http://bangordailynews.com/2018/01/02/n ... ern-maine/
Another ‘bomb cyclone’ could bring blizzard to eastern Maine
https://www.boston.com/weather/weather/ ... on-its-way
Epstein: We may not get hit head-on by Thursday’s intense storm
Expect more wind and more cold. i
January 2, 2018
When it came to the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover was both a source and ‘fact checker’ for the media
Hoover made sure the Bureau, not the Army, was credited with finding a spy
Written by Emma Best
Edited by JPat Brown
In a recent response to a FOIA request on Rudolf Abel and the Hollow Nickel case, the Federal Bureau of Investigation included a 13 page section describing the FBI’s assistance to an author writing a series of articles about the Bureau. At least some of the articles appear to have been based on the film The FBI Story, which FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reportedly had a strong hand in the production of, including prompting reshoots.
According to the file, Patrick D. (possibly short for Denis) O’Donnell, had written the FBI requesting assistance with an article. O’Donnell was provided with FBI write ups to use as a source, and it was requested that the Bureau be allowed to review his articles to keep them “within the bounds of authenticity and accuracy.” The request was sent to Hoover by the Legat office in London. While the draft article indicates that Hoover did indeed review the article, the Bureau’s “fact check” of that particular statement is ambiguous.
Apparently this was to be the first in what would be a series of articles about Colonel Abel, of Bridge of Spies fame, and the now-lesser known Hollow Nickel case. The FBI reviewer checked off statements that were true and made notes of corrections in several other places.
For instance, the Bureau confirmed that while they don’t always get their man, they affirmed that they never give up - sometimes resulting in a high profile success.
The FBI also confirmed that number ten of Hoover’s “Ten Commandments of the G-man” was loyalty and devotion.
While some of the corrections concerned minor details, others seemed more focused on optimizing the language to improve public perception of the Bureau.
Other corrections simply make things more vague for reasons that aren’t immediately clear.
In one instance, the FBI was happy to credit themselves, and not the Army, with responsibility for locating and the subsequent successful court martial of Sergeant Roy Rhodes.
As for whether the corrections not only went through his office, but were personally made by Hoover, the FBI reviewer would neither confirm nor deny. They did, however, strikethrough the section stating that one of Hoover’s Special Agents had flown from London with the files. The entire section was ambiguously highlighted, with a question mark written at the end.
You can read the exchange of memos below along with the entire set of confirmations and corrections, or the rest on the release page
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/m ... -1.3732202
Mosque pays fine for man who vandalized its building
BY MEGAN CERULLO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, January 1, 2018, 8:55
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/the- ... 2017-21785
Published: December 27th, 2017
Following a year of weather extremes, disasters and policy clashes, we asked our readers to help us pick out the most important climate stories from the U.S. in 2017. Here's what you said.
HURRICANES
This was a brutal year for hurricanes in the U.S. A trifecta of storms (Harvey, Irma and Maria) battered Florida, the Gulf Coast and Puerto Rico, causing deaths and widespread destruction, driving many from their homes. Climate change is fueling hurricanes by increasing their rainfall, wind speeds, and storm surges. Our World Weather Attribution team was among the groups of scientists that found climate change increased the amount of flooding rainfall from Harvey.
SEA-LEVEL RISE SCIENCE
Sea-level rise projections got worse for U.S. coastal communities. New research factoring in the projected effects of warming on Antarctic ice outlined new scenarios for Gulf Coast and East Coast cities, where more than 10 feet of sea-level rise is possible in places this century. Sea-level rise could be kept to less than two feet if we aggressively curb our greenhouse gas emissions, reducing risks and impacts.
U.S. GOVERNMENT
The Trump administration worked to reverse climate protections this year, seeking to replace the Clean Power Plan and eventually withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The administration has been removing the phrase “climate change” from government websites and it greenlighted construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. All the while, hundreds of thousands of people marched for science and the climate, and states and cities and nations abroad vowed to fight harder to slow global warming.
TESLA
2017 was the year of Tesla co-founder Elon Musk. From a battery factory in Nevada, to South Australia where his batteries are helping a wind farm provide reliable power, to a new energy grid in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, Tesla has taken the lead in producing batteries for energy storage and to power electric cars. And it has developed new all-electric semi trucks and solar shingles!
WILDFIRES
California is battling its largest wildfire on record right now, but this wildfire season wasn’t just bad for the Golden State. Wildfires burned more than 9.5 million acres across the U.S., destroying neighborhoods and releasing dangerous smoke pollution. The Western wildfire season is 105 days longer than it was 45 years ago as climate change fuels more and bigger blazes.
THIRD HOTTEST YEAR ON RECORD
2017 is likely to be the third-hottest year on record for the U.S., behind 2016 and 2012. This record heat is particularly astounding considering the absence of an El Niño, which usually boosts global temperatures. If the final data matches expectations, five of the 10 hottest years on record will have come since 2006.
SOCIAL INJUSTICE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The homes of Americans were destroyed or threatened by extreme weather and rising seas, with the poor hit the hardest. Hundreds of thousands of people had to flee Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, relocating to Florida and other areas. Thousands more in New Jersey and Louisiana are hoping for federal help as they grapple with the ongoing effects of flooding linked to rising seas and climate change-fueled storms.
SOLAR ENERGY SHINES
Production of clean energy climbed as prices continued to come down. In March, 10 percent of all electricity generated in the U.S. came from wind and solar, with help from Texas (America’s number 1 wind provider) and California (the largest solar producer). Bloomberg New Energy Finance concluded in the summer that solar energy can now be as cheap as power from new coal plants in the U.S.
TRANSPORTATION POLLUTION
Your car is contributing to the biggest source of U.S. emissions. Transportation recently overtook electricity generation as the biggest source of greenhouse gases from the U.S., as coal power plants were retired and replaced with renewables and natural gas facilities.
HEAT WAVES
It may be winter right now, but don’t forget about extreme heat, which is the number one weather-related killer. Climate change made a February heat wave across much of the eastern U.S. three times more likely. In June, another heat wave in the Southwest prevented planes in Arizona from taking off. Danger days are surging from Power, Montana to New York City, and a dramatic rise in dangerous heat and humidity will continue in the summertime.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... al-warming
On its hundredth birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming
Somebody cut the cake – new documents reveal that American oil writ large was warned of global warming at its 100th birthday party.
http://newsok.com/oklahoma-sheriffs-@#$ ... le/5577871
Oklahoma Sheriffs' Association subject to openness laws, AG says
Nolan Clay by Nolan Clay Published: January 2, 2018 5:00 AM CDT Updated: January 2, 2018 5:00 AM CDT
The opinion was released last week. It comes at a time the association is facing criticism for its involvement in a program that charges criminals 30 percent more if their overdue fines are turned over to a collection agency.
The association is among those being sued over the program in federal court in Tulsa. The civil rights lawsuit alleges the program is an extortion scheme that preys on impoverished offenders who already find it hard to keep up with payments while on probation.
The association has made more than $4 million off its administrative role in that program since 2010 even though it has never collected a dollar itself, The Oklahoman reported in November.
Asking for the opinion was a critic of the association, state Rep. Bobby Cleveland, R-Slaughterville. The legislator said he acted after hearing concerns about the association from journalists.
The association must comply with the Open Meeting Act when a majority of its members meet to conduct association business, the attorney general determined. It also must make open its records involving "the transaction of public business, the expenditure of public funds or the administering of public property."
The openness laws apply even though the association is a private nonprofit entity and it does not receive any state appropriations, according to the opinion.
The attorney general based his opinion on the association's paid administrative role in the Oklahoma Temporary Motorist Liability Plan.
That plan allows police to seize a driver's license plate if the driver doesn't have proof of insurance. A driver must pay a $125 fee to get the license plate back. The association gets a $10 cut from each fee for administering the plan.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... -1.3732168
SEE IT: Erykah Badu was stopped in Dallas so police could ‘say hi’
BY KATE FELDMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Monday, January 1, 2018, 11:42 PM
https://apnews.com/959d86ea5caa4bc9b550 ... e-shooting
Victim’s family loses appeal over deadly police shooting
FERNDALE, Mich.
A federal court says a Detroit-area police officer has immunity in a lawsuit over a fatal shooting, even if he clearly violated the constitutional rights of the victim.
Laszlo Latits was shot three times by a Ferndale officer after fleeing a traffic stop in 2010. Despite the deadly force, the appeals court said Latits wasn’t a threat to officers or the public at the time of the shooting.
https://apnews.com/1ea5eeb41655484dbbcc ... -shootings
Prosecutor to release grand jury report on trooper shootings
EASTON, Pa.
A grand jury report on how Pennsylvania State Police investigates shootings by its own troopers is set for public release.
Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli plans to release the grand jury’s report Tuesday afternoon.
The prosecutor sought the grand jury after state police, citing longtime policy, refused to allow his detectives to take the lead on a probe of a fatal shooting by troopers near Easton. Criminal justice experts say police shooting investigations should be independent to ensure objectivity. State police have defended the policy, saying it has guidelines to ensure thorough investigations of shootings by its own troopers.
State police went to court in an unsuccessful effort to quash the grand jury.
https://apnews.com/cbb085157d464c6bae10 ... ads-guilty
Detroit deputy police chief pleads guilty
DETROIT
A former Detroit deputy police chief has pleaded guilty to accenting money from a city contractor but denies that he got any favors in return.
Celia Washington appeared in federal court Tuesday. She told a judge that she knew Gasper Fiore was trying to influence her with $3,000. She said she needed a loan.
Washington served as the police department’s legal adviser, responsible for overseeing towing companies that remove cars seized by police. Fiore had towing contracts.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... -interview
In gay-friendly Palm Springs, America's first all-LGBT government is no surprise
Under Trump, LGBT rights are under fire – but in this progressive desert haven, a historic moment was met with a shrug: ‘It’s not an issue here’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... ontroversy
Dubai Frame: UAE's latest surreal landmark frames a controversy
Architect’s ‘stolen building’ accusation overshadows opening of 50-storey portal almost a decade after it was first designed
https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... th-1-in-10
US study finds 1 in 10 youth experience some form of homelessness
Survey polled more than 26,000 young people over two years
Total includes those who have couch-surfed or been kicked out of home
https://www.denverpost.com/2018/01/01/o ... diagnosis/
This secret experiment tricked psychiatrists into diagnosing sane people as having schizophrenia
January 1, 2018 at 6:25 pm
It was a secret experiment. There was a graduate student, a housewife, a painter, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist and three psychologists. Using fake names, they went out to 12 hospitals across the country and claimed to hear voices. Their mission was to see what would happen.
What they found rocked psychiatry.
David Rosenhan, a psychologist at Stanford University, published the results of the experiment in a 1973 issue of the journal Science. “On Being Sane in Insane Places” would become one of the most influential studies in the history of psychiatry.
According to Rosenhan, each of what he called the “pseudopatients” told hospital staff about hearing voices that used the words “empty,” “hollow” and “thud.” The pseudopatients claimed the voices were difficult to understand but sounded as if they came from the same sex as that of the fake patients. Other than making claims about voices and giving themselves phony names and false occupations, the pseudopatients – Rosenhan among them – made up nothing else. None of them had any significant history of mental illness.
All of them were admitted to psychiatric units, at which point they stopped reporting any psychiatric symptoms. Still, nearly every person in the experiment was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Their hospitalizations ranged from seven to 52 days. Doctors prescribed them more than 2,000 pills, including antipsychotics and antidepressants, which the pseudopatients largely discarded.
In the hospitals, staff often misinterpreted the pseudopatients’ behaviors to fit within the context of psychiatric treatment. For example, the pseudopatients took copious notes while studying the environment of the psychiatric ward. One nurse reportedly wrote in the chart, “Patient engages in writing behavior.”
Although none of the pseudopatients were unmasked by hospital staff, other patients on the psychiatric units became suspicious of them. Across several of these hospitalizations, 35 patients expressed doubts that the pseudopatients were actually mentally ill, according to the study.
Still, Rosenhan’s conclusions were stark: People feigning mental illness all gained admission to psychiatric units and, after they stopped faking symptoms, remained there for lengthy periods. He famously wrote, “It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals.”
Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3732532
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/ ... story.html
https://www.theguardian.com/news/galler ... n-pictures
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... s-for-2018
https://www.boston.com/news/travel/2018 ... uise-ships
http://mtltimes.ca/Montreal/montreal/mo ... ens-march/
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/obitu ... dMore_Pos7
http://news3lv.com/news/nation-world/be ... ans-center
http://bangordailynews.com/2018/01/02/h ... llinocket/
http://bangordailynews.com/2018/01/01/o ... -for-cold/
Bangor, Portland set records for cold
Maine’s bitter cold set records on the first day of 2018, but forecasters predicted Monday that a letup will arrive by midweek.
The National Weather Service recorded a temperature of -16 degrees Fahrenheit at Portland International Jetport on Monday, breaking Portland’s previous low temperature for Jan. 1, -12 degrees, set in 1957 and 1964.
Bangor, meanwhile, smashed its record for low air temperature on New Year’s Eve, recording a temperature of 24 degrees below zero at 4:03 a.m. Sunday at Bangor International Airport. That shaved 8 degrees off the previous Bangor record for Dec. 31 of -16 degrees in 2013.
http://lancedutson.bangordailynews.com/ ... e-a-doozy/
Grab the popcorn — this legislative session is going to be a doozy
January 1, 2018Column, CommentaryDemocrats, Gov. Paul LePage, Legislature, Medicaid expansion, Ranked-choice voting, Republicans
LePage’s last dance with the Legislature will be crazy enough, but there’s also a host of controversial issues the Legislature is slated to deal with, including ranked-choice voting and Medicaid expansion.
Ranked-choice voting (RCV) became law in Maine by referendum in 2016, but the Legislature effectively squashed it last session by delaying its implementation until 2021 and requiring a constitutional amendment to address the state Supreme Court’s concerns with its constitutionality. But proponents of RCV are gathering signatures to put a People’s Veto of the repeal law on the ballot. Assuming the proponents turn in their signatures, this will freeze the repeal law and solidify RCV as the law of the land, at least for this spring’s primary elections.
This means the Legislature has a stark choice: either accept RCV as the law for the next primary, or replace RCV completely with a different solution that can garner the two-thirds bipartisan majority necessary to implement it before June.
One option is a traditional runoff system, like Georgia uses, and like Lewiston uses for their mayoral races. A runoff would satisfy the voter intent evinced by the RCV referendum by ensuring that Maine’s elected officials are supported by a clear majority of voters. (RCV is often referred to as “instant runoff voting.”) RCV’s complicated execution, the need for significant financial resources to implement it, and the questionable legality of the law make it unlikely to survive intact, and it may behoove RCV supporters to get behind a compromise that leaves primary elections alone and simply creates a runoff election if a candidate fails to garner majority support in the general election.
Medicaid expansion also passed by referendum, but LePage has vowed to block its implementation unless the Legislature finds funding for Maine’s share within existing resources. Democrats are staking out a firm position that expansion is the law and will be implemented regardless of what LePage says. So a standoff is in the making.
Deep State Elects Trump
https://www.courthousenews.com/trump-ac ... eep-state/
Trump Accuses Justice Dep’t of Being ‘Deep State’
January 2, 2018
President Donald Trump waves as he arrives to board Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Monday, Jan. 1, 2018, in West Palm Beach, Fla., to return to Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump accused the Justice Department on Tuesday of being part of the “deep state” and suggesting it “must finally act” against a top aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former FBI director James Comey.
The “deep state” refers to an alleged shadowy network of powerful entrenched interests that some Republicans argue are trying to undermine Trump.
Trump tweeted Tuesday morning: “Crooked Hillary Clinton’s top aid, Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others.”
Trump appeared to be referring to a report in the conservative Daily Caller that Abedin sent government passwords to her Yahoo email before
http://www.phillytrib.com/news/naacp-bl ... c956c.html
NAACP blasts handcuffing, detaining of 11-year-old girl
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The NAACP is calling for change in law enforcement across Kent County after body camera video was released last week showing an 11-year-old girl handcuffed and detained during an investigation.
Honestie Hodges, 11, was handcuffed and detained by Grand Rapids Police Department officers while they were searching for a stabbing suspect, who was a 41-year-old white woman.
“I have a question for the Grand Rapids Police: if this happened to a white child, if her mother was screaming she’s 11, would you have handcuffed her and put her in the back of a police car?” said Honestie Hodges to FOX 17 Tuesday.
Hodges asked her poignant question after the NAACP of Greater Grand Rapids’ press conference Tuesday, just weeks after GRPD officers handcuffed and detained her during their search for a stabbing suspect.
“As a mother, I was supposed to protect her and they didn’t let me protect my baby,” Whitney Hodges, Honestie’s mother, told FOX 17.
“You heard the scream, my baby was terrified and I couldn’t be there for her,” she said referring to released video.
The NAACP is asking the city to pay for culturally competent counseling for the Hodges family, and calls on GRPD to release the full uninterrupted body camera footage from this incident within 24 hours, as well as take appropriate disciplinary actions against the involved officers and review its officer discretion policy on detaining youth.
“We cannot and will not stand by to watch our children be aggressively and strategically targeted and terrorized by the police sworn to protect them,” said Cle Jackson, NAACP of Greater Grand Rapids president.
GRPD Chief David Rahinsky was speaking with city council members during the press conference, according to department officials, and says he will continue to speak with the NAACP, Grand Rapids Area Pastors and the Hodges family. Previously, Rahinksy told FOX 17 that police protocol needs to change.
“If an officer can point to policy or can point to training or point to hiring, and say this is what I was told, this is how I was taught, this is consistent with practice, then we’ve got a problem,” said GRPD Chief David Rahinksy. “And what I just said is accurate, we do have a problem.”
Rahinsky faces backlash from the police union, the Grand Rapids Police Officers Association, whose leaders say he should have been more supportive of the officers. GRPOA President Andy Bingle says while Honestie does not look like the suspect description at the time, officers have to take precautions to secure a scene.
“When I think of success, I think nobody got hurt in that incident,” said Bingle. “So many things can go wrong and nobody got hurt. Honestie yes, she was in handcuffs, it was for about two minutes and maybe she should’ve been out sooner, maybe not, I wasn’t there, but I think two minutes or less is enough time to make that call.”
While the NAACP thanked Rahinsky for his empathy, they also call on he and the GRPOA to take steps together to unify the community, including addressing the protocols that led to this incident.
“You should not have to fear walking down your street, or coming out of your home,” said Jackson. “You should not be terrified of being wrongfully detained like 11-year-old Honestie Hodges, or the five young boys ordered to the ground, held at gunpoint, and handcuffed on their way home earlier this year in March.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ment-trump
Trump plan to shrink ocean monuments threatens vital ecosystems, experts warn
Ryan Zinke has recommended three major marine monuments be reduced to allow greater commercial fishing, prompting anguish from environmental groups
http://bangordailynews.com/2018/01/02/n ... ern-maine/
Another ‘bomb cyclone’ could bring blizzard to eastern Maine
https://www.boston.com/weather/weather/ ... on-its-way
Epstein: We may not get hit head-on by Thursday’s intense storm
Expect more wind and more cold. i
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msfreeh
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Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/0 ... /23330070/
Republicans have four convicted criminals running for congress in 2018
Grimm, a former FBI agent, pleaded guilty to of felony tax evasion in 2014. And last year, Gianforte also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault for body-slamming a reporter days before winning a 2017 special election. So far, the national Republican party has said it supports Donovan over Grimm, but it is also backing ...
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3750722
Missouri governor admits affair, accused of blackmailing woman with photo
BY CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Thursday, January 11, 2018, 2:48 AM
Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens has admitted to an extramarital affair and been accused of blackmailing his lover.
The 43-year-old Republican, elected in 2016, met the woman when she cut his hair, according to a recording received by KMOV the woman’s ex-husband.
The husband, also not identified in the local report, said that the recording was made after one of the first sexual encounters in 2015.
It featured the woman telling how Greitens did not want to meet her for coffee, but invited her to his house and at one point blindfolded her and taped her hands to an exercise apparatus after offering to teach her “how to do a perfect pull up.”
Undercover cop, airman busted in St. Louis protests deny role
“He stepped back, I saw a flash through the blindfold and he said: "you're never going to mention my name, otherwise there will be pictures of me everywhere,” she said.
Greitens allegedly later said that he deleted the picture, though the ex-husband, who said he had been contacted by law enforcement, told KMOV that the future governor, who declared his candidacy at the end of the year, was still in her life as their marriage disintegrated.
The governor, who billed himself as a values-based family man, said in a statement that being unfaithful in his marriage was a “deeply personal mistake.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/danica- ... -1.3750099
Danica Roem becomes the first transgender person sworn into the Virginia House of Delegates
http://forums.sandiegouniontribune.com/ ... 9&page=304
This article has been removed from the internet since I posted the article in 2006.
The link was also removed after I posted it along with story.
The 2 Faces Of J. Edgar Hoover
Sydney Morning Herald
Sunday April 25, 1993
SHELLEY DEMPSEY
IF ONLY Charles Chaplin had lived to see a TV documentary tell the scandal of how the former FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover liked to party with his male friends, wearing a black frilly dress, lace stockings, curly wig and false eyelashes.
For Chaplin, one of Hoover's many victims, the irony would undoubtedly have been most sweet. Punished by Hoover with forcible exile from America, Chaplin was publicly branded a communist who liked young girls. But Hoover himself got clean away with his own private weaknesses for young men, racetrack betting and cross-dressing.
And whereas Chaplin's movie career died, Hoover's own career in political blackmail shone for 48 years, from 1924, under eight presidents. Although, according to a new documentary screening on the ABC on Sunday, The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover, he didn't get away with it completely.
The Mafia knew his secrets and used them as blackmail to compromise him greatly in his public fight against crime. Or at least, this is the allegation in the American documentary.
Based on the book recently released by the British author Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential; The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, the program briefly interviews Summers (who is currently visiting Australia) and claims to have new evidence beyond his book.
In the well-researched and quite sober TV profile, Hoover is painted as a lifelong bachelor whose best friend was his handsome assistant in the FBI, Clyde Tolson.
We are told that Hoover would often pick up Tolson in the morning in one of his three official FBI limousines, lunch with him later in the day and use it to chauffeur them both to fashionable nightclubs.
But publicly, Hoover denounced homosexuals as "sex deviants" and homosexuals were officially banned from service in the FBI.
What the documentary does is make a fairly convincing case, with eyewitness evidence, that Hoover's homosexuality spilt over into cross-dressing at all-male orgies, an indiscreet weakness not lost on the Mafia.
Susan Rosenstiel, the widow of the bisexual bootlegger turned liquor magnate, Lewis Solon Rosenstiel, said her husband had an affair, early in the marriage, with Roy Cohn, the assistant counsel to the infamous communist-hunter Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Cohn invited them to a room at the Plaza Hotel in New York. "We went in and there was this gentleman dressed as a woman and Roy introduced him. He said'I'd like you to meet Mary'.
"Well, I knew the name wasn't Mary because he looked just like J. Edgar Hoover. In fact, he was very solid looking, he had like a little growth (as in three-day growth), he was dressed in a black chiffon dress, very short, with ruffles, and black lace stockings and high-heeled shoes and a black curly wig and black false eyelashes.
"It was clear to me (it was) J. Edgar Hoover," she told the camera.
Then Hoover, then Cohn and Rosenstiel went into the bedroom and had sex with two blond, teenage boys.
"I heard Rosenstiel say that if Hoover ever brings pressure against Lansky(gangster boss Meyer Lansky) or any of us, we'll use this as blackmail, we'll expose him," Susan Rosenstiel said.
According to the documentary on Hoover (who has been nicknamed Gay Edgar Hoover and J. Edna Hoover), the FBI boss mysteriously adopted a "hands-off"policy towards the rich and powerful Mafia after three raids he and Tolson carried out in 1937, because the Mafia learnt his shadowy sexual secrets and threatened to expose him if he touched the Mob.
It's sad that Hoover's sexuality had to be so repressed in those days. But it's sadder still to see how he misused the sexual and non-sexual secrets of others with whom he politically disagreed to manipulate and destroy them.
Left-wingers such as Chaplin, who had an FBI file 1,900 pages long, the former US President John F. Kennedy and the black leader Martin Luther King were all persecuted and hounded by the conservative and Calvinist Hoover during the Cold War years.
Since Hoover's death in 1972, it has become clear that he amassed secret FBI files on the private lives of the highest figures in the land, files he used to control the presidents who were supposed to control him.
But now the documentary made by William Cran and Stephanie Tepper for Frontline, a consortium of US public TV stations, alleges that Hoover in turn was blackmailed by the Mafia because of his homosexuality and his addiction to racetrack betting.
In fact, Hoover denied the existence of the Mafia for more than 20 years, to the amazement of politicians and his own staff.
Producer William Cran: "There's overwhelming evidence that the Mob knew it had nothing to fear from Hoover's FBI. It's also clear that Hoover's homosexuality was well known among top Mafiosi."
About a dozen former FBI agents, former Justice Department agents and police are interviewed on the program, as well as former US Vice-President Walter Mondale, John F. Kennedy's former lover, Judith Campbell, and JFK's devoted secretary, Evelyn Lincoln.
On the trivial side, a Federal Justice Department inquiry launched four years after Hoover's death revealed the following gems about how Hoover squandered FBI resources to dress up his home.
Once he found animal droppings on his doorstep and had the offending brown material rushed to the FBI Headquarters crime laboratory, which diverted its resources to investigate what animal had done the dirty deed. The guilty party was identified as a racoon.
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... on-papers/
Decades later, CIA's damage assessment for the "Pentagon Papers" leak is still redacted
January 9, 2018
Decades later, CIA’s damage assessment for the “Pentagon Papers” leak is still redacted
What little remains shows Agency’s concerns that the leaks would provide “propaganda” for the North Vietnamese - and pose a threat to their careers
Written by JPat Brown
Edited by Beryl Lipton
A formerly SECRET memo uncovered in the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives shows that a month after the New York Times began publishing what would become known as “The Pentagon Papers,” the Agency set about assessing the damages.
The memo begins by providing some background on what the “Pentagon Papers” actually were and how they came to be …
before launching into what was called a “Parochial Damage Assessment,” specifically focusing on information that could hurt the Agency.
Despite the Agency’s admission that much of the information in Daniel Ellsberg’s leaks was - even by the early ’70s - decades old, the report remains almost entirely redacted.
Two areas of concern were spared classification, however. One was that regardless of the “legal status” of the Vietnam War, it was an armed conflict that American lives were being lost in, and the leak gave “propaganda and political action ammunition” to the North Vietnamese.
And the other, in jarring contrast, was the larger issue of the “private business” of government employees, which the CIA framed as the right of officials to “engage in frank debates or discussion” without having those views subject to “out-of-context criticism at some later date” in a way that might “adversely affect such officials public or private careers.”
Jobs. They were worried about their jobs.
The memo ended with concerns that this might be the “opening salvo” of a larger series of leaks regarding Vietnam …
and an index of the “Pentagon Papers” themselves …
which, you guessed it, is withheld in its entirety coming up on 50 years later.
In an interesting historical coincidence, CIA archives show that on the same day the damage assessment was released, CIA Director William Colby received a call from Senator Milton Young, congratulating the Agency for surviving the publication of the “Pentagon Papers” unscathed.
Young must not have gotten the memo. Read the full assessment embedded below.
http://www.wbko.com/content/news/FBI-ag ... 86873.html
FBI agent visits Bowling Green Rotary Club to educate members on ...
WBKO-
(WBKO) -- An FBI agent visited the Bowling Green Rotary Club to educate its members and guests on human trafficking. The agent explained what it consists of, being both sex trafficking and forced labor. However, sex trafficking is growing more rapidly. "Most girls don't choose to do that. They either
https://www.denverpost.com/2018/01/10/a ... ts-brains/
It’s so hot in Australia that bats’ brains are frying
By AMANDA ERICKSON | The Washington Post
January 10, 2018 at 8:25 pm
Over in Australia, meanwhile, it has been hot. Sweltering, really.
In Sydney, temperatures swelled to 117 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, the hottest it has been since 1939.
That oppressive heat, a side effect of climate change, has made life hard for the country’s humans. Heat waves result in 10 percent more calls for ambulances and 10 percent more deaths, local experts said.
For some animals, it has been nearly unbearable. “Anytime we have any type of heat event, we know we’re going to have a lot of animals in need,” animal specialist Kristie Harris told the BBC. It was so hot that possums burned their paws on roofs and roads. Koalas around the region were being sprayed down to keep them cool.
And at least 500 flying fox bats died because of the heat.
Animal rescuers in Sydney described “heartbreaking” scenes of dozens of dead baby bats piled on the ground. “It was unbelievable. I saw a lot of dead bats on the ground and others were close to the ground and dying,” volunteer Cate Ryan told the Guardian. “I have never seen anything like it before.”
https://www.denverpost.com/2018/01/10/b ... tion-ptsd/
Some birds are so stressed by noise pollution it looks like they have PTSD
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesig ... uentin-art
Escape artist: the life of a painter living on death row
William A Noguera committed a brutal murder and has spent almost 30 years waiting for execution but in a new book, the artist explains how painting changed his life
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... gar-waste/
January 10, 2018
SIGAR finds millions wasted in Afghanistan economic development efforts
Yet again, poor planning prevented successes in Middle East stability support
Written by Beryl Lipton
Edited by JPat Brown
In the latest release from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the agency found that recent U.S.-funded economic development projects in the Middle Eastern country have been largely unsuccessful and with little to show for the $823 million appropriated to the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, a temporary organization tasked from 2010 through 2014 with executing economic development projects in Afghanistan.
In all, according to the internal watchdog, over 80% of the funds provided to TFBSO were in turn awarded in contracts; a little less than half of this ($316.3 million) went to contracts actually directly-related to projects in Afghanistan, and of this, only $70 million worth successfully provided the deliverables they were obligated to by contract, roughly 8.5% of the total appropriated amount to the agency. As SIGAR notes, even this can’t be taken at face value, since being able to check off that the project was completed is quite different from being able to call it success.
Though TFBSO, in particular, no longer exists, part of the usefulness of reports from SIGAR and other IGs is in its ability to inform future, similar endeavors. According to the report, this effort, for one, should not be emulated for many reasons, not least of which is that, from the beginning, the TFBSO was slow to develop a strategy for how it would actually support economic growth in the difficult, conflict-ridden area.
Without a plan for how it would get the job done, a conflict-causing attitude, and a failure to coordinate with other U.S. agencies in the area, TFBSO, according to SIGAR, failed to complete many of its project goals and provided no opportunity for others to do so. Even the IG’s ability to assess the damage was severely limited because the agency’s records were also poorly-handled.
As a helpful reference, SIGAR also provides a breakdown of the contractors that were not able to achieve their obligations under contract …
as well as a list of those involved in contracting with TFBSO.
The report is embedded below, and other SIGAR assessments of U.S. efforts to support and rebuild Afghanistan, can be found on SIGAR’s website. https://www.sigar.mil
https://www.amazon.com/Hoovers-Nation-D ... B01F9GBS3W
J. Edgar Hoover's FBI Wired the Nation by Dempsey J. Travis (2000-01-03) Hardcover – 1750
by Dempsey J. Travis (Author)
Link du jour
http://wsvn.com/news/us-world/video-sho ... n-the-air/
FBI Octopus
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/poli ... de/461033/
Norris also gave an update on his nomination for a U.S. district judge in western Tennessee. He will remain a state senator until the U.S. Senate votes to confirm him, a vote that hasn't been scheduled yet.
"I don't know what's going to become of it, but I'm not going to resign the seat for which my constituents elected me or this leadership post for which you elected me," Norris told his Senate Republican peers.
He said he hasn't given campaign contributions to his colleagues and did not attend an AT&T legislative reception Tuesday because of ethical considerations with his judicial nomination.
Trump nominated Norris in July and the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send his nomination to the full Senate in December. Because the Senate didn't take a vote by the end of the year, Trump had to re-nominate him and others, Norris said.
Tommy Parker in western Tennessee and Chip Campbell in middle Tennessee were confirmed as district judges unanimously this week.
Norris' confirmation vote in committee was 11-9 along party lines, he said. Norris and Eli Richardson in middle Tennessee, a lawyer who has experience as an assistant federal prosecutor and FBI agent, still await confirmation, and both have a record of public service, Norris noted.
"Both of us, we're the sort of sacrificial guys in Tennessee being politicized," Norris said.
http://wsvn.com/news/local/fbi-to-host- ... auderdale/
FBI to host diversity recruitment event in Fort Lauderdale long after assassinating
Martin Luther King
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - The FBI’s Miami Field Office will host an event in Fort Lauderdale as part of the organization’s efforts to diversify recruits.
The Diversity Agent Recruitment Program will take place Feb. 5, and the bureau said the initiative is aimed at “reaching applicants with a variety of backgrounds in order to diversify the FBI.”
http://wsvn.com/news/local/miami-police ... ossession/
JANUARY 9, 2018
Miami Police officer arrested, charged for cocaine possession
MIAMI (WSVN) - A Miami Police officer has been arrested and charged with cocaine possession, months after he was allegedly caught consuming the substance at a popular Downtown Miami nightclub.
According to court documents, 25-year-old Adrian Santos, a two-and-a-half year member of the department, was partying at E11even in the early hours of Nov. 18. The release stated witnesses saw him with a plastic baggie containing a white powdery substance.
A nightclub employee alleged Santos, who was off-duty and not in uniform, inhaled the substance. Investigators said a security camera appeared to confirm the witness’ account.
The club’s security director spoke with Santos, took the plastic baggie and escorted him out of the premises and into the hands of off-duty Miami Police officers working a security detail outside.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/fe ... ns-w515178
Is the Opioid Epidemic Fueling Wrongful Convictions?
Is the Opioid Epidemic Fueling Wrongful Convictions?
Crime labs are overwhelmed and under-regulated – leading to the compromise of countless drug cases nationwide
Thousands of drug samples at facilities across the country have been compromised – which could mean an untold number of wrongful convictions. Ty Wright/The New York Times/Redux
By Ivan Solotaroff
14 hours ago
In separate incidents, just five months apart, two Massachusetts crime-lab chemists were arrested for tampering with evidence seized in drug arrests. At Boston's Hinton State Laboratory, the state's largest lab, Annie Dookhan falsified results by "dry-labbing"– submitting positive results for substances never tested – though she also added drugs to samples to increase the weight, enabling DAs to prosecute charges for distribution rather than just possession. At a smaller forensic lab in Amherst, Sonja Farak's ravenous drug use compromised not only the samples she tested and her testimony delivered in court while high, but the entire lab's ability to perform scientific testing: She ingested – and then diluted to cover her tracks – the samples that drug labs keep in stock to test against seized parcels.
RELATED
Did Falsified Drug Tests Lead to Thousands of Wrongful Convictions?
How the system covered up tens of thousands of falsified drug tests – and how two teams of crusading lawyers exposed the wrongdoing
Combined, Dookhan and Farak potentially helped wrongfully convict more than 32,000 drug defendants between 2003 and 2012. Though these may be two of the more extreme examples of crime-lab malfeasance, these incidents are common across America. Looking at the standards and practices of crime labs – and the science performed there – it's not hard to tell why. The frequency of such scandals also reveals the sea change the opioid epidemic has wrought upon these labs in the 21st-century prosecution of the War on Drugs.
Since 2000, America's 400-plus publicly funded forensic labs have seen a 74 percent increase in requests for drug-crime-related analyses. Drug-testing backlogs, owing largely to the opioid problem, have created variations on the crime-lab-technician-gone-rogue scenarios with sickening regularity in the past decade; addicted workers and the demand for quick turnaround have compromised lab work to a degree that may be immeasurable. For example, Kamal Shah was found to have potentially tainted as many as 14,800 cases in his 10 years at New Jersey's State Police North Regional Laboratory before he was dismissed for dry-labbing in 2015. According to a since-deleted LinkedIn profile, he'd previously worked for 16 years at another lab.
"Some attribute the recurring scandals to underfunded labs and often undertrained technicians," says Sarah Chu, senior forensic-policy advocate at Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization that has helped exonerate the wrongfully convicted for a quarter-century. "But what that overwhelming focus on drugs demonstrates is the priority of our criminal-justice system, which pursues the volume of these cases without ensuring that resources are in place to operate laboratories with the proper scientific and quality-management safeguards."
Indeed, the pattern of rogue chemists emerging from the opioid epidemic suggests yet another epic civic failure resulting from the War on Drugs. For decades, draconian sentencing guidelines have destroyed American lives, in the name of what many experts realize would be much better fought as a war on addiction. What has gotten less attention is the extent to which the drug crusade may have compromised the legal system's ability to provide due process, as crime labs across the country are proving to be incapable custodians of evidence in drug cases. And in an era increasingly riddled with synthetic, lab-grown drugs, lab technicians are offered an immense power.
So who are these workers, and what exactly are they doing?
Shah, Farak and many other forensic professionals are well-educated, but a large number of crime-lab technicians have no science education or experience at all. Protocols vary from state to state, but in many, techs are hired without comprehensive background checks or drug testing, and operate with minimal supervision in labs that are overwhelmed with work and are poorly equipped and cash-strapped.
A 2013 inspection of Cincinnati's Hamilton County crime lab found the building antiquated, unsafe and underpowered: Its technicians had to use the boiler-room floor to dry marijuana for testing. A tech at the drug-chemistry section of the Nassau County crime lab on Long Island fell through a faulty floorboard, years after a promised new lab remained unbuilt and the lab had been put on probation by an outside accreditation agency. Yet nothing changed until the state's inspector general investigated, and that only happened because of an executive order from Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The inspector's 184-page report cited
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bro ... -1.3750452
Mom found dead in Brooklyn apartment building after cops ignored her 911 call was strangled
BY JOHN ANNESE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, January 10, 2018, 11:00 PM
Republicans have four convicted criminals running for congress in 2018
Grimm, a former FBI agent, pleaded guilty to of felony tax evasion in 2014. And last year, Gianforte also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault for body-slamming a reporter days before winning a 2017 special election. So far, the national Republican party has said it supports Donovan over Grimm, but it is also backing ...
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3750722
Missouri governor admits affair, accused of blackmailing woman with photo
BY CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Thursday, January 11, 2018, 2:48 AM
Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens has admitted to an extramarital affair and been accused of blackmailing his lover.
The 43-year-old Republican, elected in 2016, met the woman when she cut his hair, according to a recording received by KMOV the woman’s ex-husband.
The husband, also not identified in the local report, said that the recording was made after one of the first sexual encounters in 2015.
It featured the woman telling how Greitens did not want to meet her for coffee, but invited her to his house and at one point blindfolded her and taped her hands to an exercise apparatus after offering to teach her “how to do a perfect pull up.”
Undercover cop, airman busted in St. Louis protests deny role
“He stepped back, I saw a flash through the blindfold and he said: "you're never going to mention my name, otherwise there will be pictures of me everywhere,” she said.
Greitens allegedly later said that he deleted the picture, though the ex-husband, who said he had been contacted by law enforcement, told KMOV that the future governor, who declared his candidacy at the end of the year, was still in her life as their marriage disintegrated.
The governor, who billed himself as a values-based family man, said in a statement that being unfaithful in his marriage was a “deeply personal mistake.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/danica- ... -1.3750099
Danica Roem becomes the first transgender person sworn into the Virginia House of Delegates
http://forums.sandiegouniontribune.com/ ... 9&page=304
This article has been removed from the internet since I posted the article in 2006.
The link was also removed after I posted it along with story.
The 2 Faces Of J. Edgar Hoover
Sydney Morning Herald
Sunday April 25, 1993
SHELLEY DEMPSEY
IF ONLY Charles Chaplin had lived to see a TV documentary tell the scandal of how the former FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover liked to party with his male friends, wearing a black frilly dress, lace stockings, curly wig and false eyelashes.
For Chaplin, one of Hoover's many victims, the irony would undoubtedly have been most sweet. Punished by Hoover with forcible exile from America, Chaplin was publicly branded a communist who liked young girls. But Hoover himself got clean away with his own private weaknesses for young men, racetrack betting and cross-dressing.
And whereas Chaplin's movie career died, Hoover's own career in political blackmail shone for 48 years, from 1924, under eight presidents. Although, according to a new documentary screening on the ABC on Sunday, The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover, he didn't get away with it completely.
The Mafia knew his secrets and used them as blackmail to compromise him greatly in his public fight against crime. Or at least, this is the allegation in the American documentary.
Based on the book recently released by the British author Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential; The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, the program briefly interviews Summers (who is currently visiting Australia) and claims to have new evidence beyond his book.
In the well-researched and quite sober TV profile, Hoover is painted as a lifelong bachelor whose best friend was his handsome assistant in the FBI, Clyde Tolson.
We are told that Hoover would often pick up Tolson in the morning in one of his three official FBI limousines, lunch with him later in the day and use it to chauffeur them both to fashionable nightclubs.
But publicly, Hoover denounced homosexuals as "sex deviants" and homosexuals were officially banned from service in the FBI.
What the documentary does is make a fairly convincing case, with eyewitness evidence, that Hoover's homosexuality spilt over into cross-dressing at all-male orgies, an indiscreet weakness not lost on the Mafia.
Susan Rosenstiel, the widow of the bisexual bootlegger turned liquor magnate, Lewis Solon Rosenstiel, said her husband had an affair, early in the marriage, with Roy Cohn, the assistant counsel to the infamous communist-hunter Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Cohn invited them to a room at the Plaza Hotel in New York. "We went in and there was this gentleman dressed as a woman and Roy introduced him. He said'I'd like you to meet Mary'.
"Well, I knew the name wasn't Mary because he looked just like J. Edgar Hoover. In fact, he was very solid looking, he had like a little growth (as in three-day growth), he was dressed in a black chiffon dress, very short, with ruffles, and black lace stockings and high-heeled shoes and a black curly wig and black false eyelashes.
"It was clear to me (it was) J. Edgar Hoover," she told the camera.
Then Hoover, then Cohn and Rosenstiel went into the bedroom and had sex with two blond, teenage boys.
"I heard Rosenstiel say that if Hoover ever brings pressure against Lansky(gangster boss Meyer Lansky) or any of us, we'll use this as blackmail, we'll expose him," Susan Rosenstiel said.
According to the documentary on Hoover (who has been nicknamed Gay Edgar Hoover and J. Edna Hoover), the FBI boss mysteriously adopted a "hands-off"policy towards the rich and powerful Mafia after three raids he and Tolson carried out in 1937, because the Mafia learnt his shadowy sexual secrets and threatened to expose him if he touched the Mob.
It's sad that Hoover's sexuality had to be so repressed in those days. But it's sadder still to see how he misused the sexual and non-sexual secrets of others with whom he politically disagreed to manipulate and destroy them.
Left-wingers such as Chaplin, who had an FBI file 1,900 pages long, the former US President John F. Kennedy and the black leader Martin Luther King were all persecuted and hounded by the conservative and Calvinist Hoover during the Cold War years.
Since Hoover's death in 1972, it has become clear that he amassed secret FBI files on the private lives of the highest figures in the land, files he used to control the presidents who were supposed to control him.
But now the documentary made by William Cran and Stephanie Tepper for Frontline, a consortium of US public TV stations, alleges that Hoover in turn was blackmailed by the Mafia because of his homosexuality and his addiction to racetrack betting.
In fact, Hoover denied the existence of the Mafia for more than 20 years, to the amazement of politicians and his own staff.
Producer William Cran: "There's overwhelming evidence that the Mob knew it had nothing to fear from Hoover's FBI. It's also clear that Hoover's homosexuality was well known among top Mafiosi."
About a dozen former FBI agents, former Justice Department agents and police are interviewed on the program, as well as former US Vice-President Walter Mondale, John F. Kennedy's former lover, Judith Campbell, and JFK's devoted secretary, Evelyn Lincoln.
On the trivial side, a Federal Justice Department inquiry launched four years after Hoover's death revealed the following gems about how Hoover squandered FBI resources to dress up his home.
Once he found animal droppings on his doorstep and had the offending brown material rushed to the FBI Headquarters crime laboratory, which diverted its resources to investigate what animal had done the dirty deed. The guilty party was identified as a racoon.
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... on-papers/
Decades later, CIA's damage assessment for the "Pentagon Papers" leak is still redacted
January 9, 2018
Decades later, CIA’s damage assessment for the “Pentagon Papers” leak is still redacted
What little remains shows Agency’s concerns that the leaks would provide “propaganda” for the North Vietnamese - and pose a threat to their careers
Written by JPat Brown
Edited by Beryl Lipton
A formerly SECRET memo uncovered in the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives shows that a month after the New York Times began publishing what would become known as “The Pentagon Papers,” the Agency set about assessing the damages.
The memo begins by providing some background on what the “Pentagon Papers” actually were and how they came to be …
before launching into what was called a “Parochial Damage Assessment,” specifically focusing on information that could hurt the Agency.
Despite the Agency’s admission that much of the information in Daniel Ellsberg’s leaks was - even by the early ’70s - decades old, the report remains almost entirely redacted.
Two areas of concern were spared classification, however. One was that regardless of the “legal status” of the Vietnam War, it was an armed conflict that American lives were being lost in, and the leak gave “propaganda and political action ammunition” to the North Vietnamese.
And the other, in jarring contrast, was the larger issue of the “private business” of government employees, which the CIA framed as the right of officials to “engage in frank debates or discussion” without having those views subject to “out-of-context criticism at some later date” in a way that might “adversely affect such officials public or private careers.”
Jobs. They were worried about their jobs.
The memo ended with concerns that this might be the “opening salvo” of a larger series of leaks regarding Vietnam …
and an index of the “Pentagon Papers” themselves …
which, you guessed it, is withheld in its entirety coming up on 50 years later.
In an interesting historical coincidence, CIA archives show that on the same day the damage assessment was released, CIA Director William Colby received a call from Senator Milton Young, congratulating the Agency for surviving the publication of the “Pentagon Papers” unscathed.
Young must not have gotten the memo. Read the full assessment embedded below.
http://www.wbko.com/content/news/FBI-ag ... 86873.html
FBI agent visits Bowling Green Rotary Club to educate members on ...
WBKO-
(WBKO) -- An FBI agent visited the Bowling Green Rotary Club to educate its members and guests on human trafficking. The agent explained what it consists of, being both sex trafficking and forced labor. However, sex trafficking is growing more rapidly. "Most girls don't choose to do that. They either
https://www.denverpost.com/2018/01/10/a ... ts-brains/
It’s so hot in Australia that bats’ brains are frying
By AMANDA ERICKSON | The Washington Post
January 10, 2018 at 8:25 pm
Over in Australia, meanwhile, it has been hot. Sweltering, really.
In Sydney, temperatures swelled to 117 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, the hottest it has been since 1939.
That oppressive heat, a side effect of climate change, has made life hard for the country’s humans. Heat waves result in 10 percent more calls for ambulances and 10 percent more deaths, local experts said.
For some animals, it has been nearly unbearable. “Anytime we have any type of heat event, we know we’re going to have a lot of animals in need,” animal specialist Kristie Harris told the BBC. It was so hot that possums burned their paws on roofs and roads. Koalas around the region were being sprayed down to keep them cool.
And at least 500 flying fox bats died because of the heat.
Animal rescuers in Sydney described “heartbreaking” scenes of dozens of dead baby bats piled on the ground. “It was unbelievable. I saw a lot of dead bats on the ground and others were close to the ground and dying,” volunteer Cate Ryan told the Guardian. “I have never seen anything like it before.”
https://www.denverpost.com/2018/01/10/b ... tion-ptsd/
Some birds are so stressed by noise pollution it looks like they have PTSD
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesig ... uentin-art
Escape artist: the life of a painter living on death row
William A Noguera committed a brutal murder and has spent almost 30 years waiting for execution but in a new book, the artist explains how painting changed his life
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... gar-waste/
January 10, 2018
SIGAR finds millions wasted in Afghanistan economic development efforts
Yet again, poor planning prevented successes in Middle East stability support
Written by Beryl Lipton
Edited by JPat Brown
In the latest release from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the agency found that recent U.S.-funded economic development projects in the Middle Eastern country have been largely unsuccessful and with little to show for the $823 million appropriated to the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, a temporary organization tasked from 2010 through 2014 with executing economic development projects in Afghanistan.
In all, according to the internal watchdog, over 80% of the funds provided to TFBSO were in turn awarded in contracts; a little less than half of this ($316.3 million) went to contracts actually directly-related to projects in Afghanistan, and of this, only $70 million worth successfully provided the deliverables they were obligated to by contract, roughly 8.5% of the total appropriated amount to the agency. As SIGAR notes, even this can’t be taken at face value, since being able to check off that the project was completed is quite different from being able to call it success.
Though TFBSO, in particular, no longer exists, part of the usefulness of reports from SIGAR and other IGs is in its ability to inform future, similar endeavors. According to the report, this effort, for one, should not be emulated for many reasons, not least of which is that, from the beginning, the TFBSO was slow to develop a strategy for how it would actually support economic growth in the difficult, conflict-ridden area.
Without a plan for how it would get the job done, a conflict-causing attitude, and a failure to coordinate with other U.S. agencies in the area, TFBSO, according to SIGAR, failed to complete many of its project goals and provided no opportunity for others to do so. Even the IG’s ability to assess the damage was severely limited because the agency’s records were also poorly-handled.
As a helpful reference, SIGAR also provides a breakdown of the contractors that were not able to achieve their obligations under contract …
as well as a list of those involved in contracting with TFBSO.
The report is embedded below, and other SIGAR assessments of U.S. efforts to support and rebuild Afghanistan, can be found on SIGAR’s website. https://www.sigar.mil
https://www.amazon.com/Hoovers-Nation-D ... B01F9GBS3W
J. Edgar Hoover's FBI Wired the Nation by Dempsey J. Travis (2000-01-03) Hardcover – 1750
by Dempsey J. Travis (Author)
Link du jour
http://wsvn.com/news/us-world/video-sho ... n-the-air/
FBI Octopus
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/poli ... de/461033/
Norris also gave an update on his nomination for a U.S. district judge in western Tennessee. He will remain a state senator until the U.S. Senate votes to confirm him, a vote that hasn't been scheduled yet.
"I don't know what's going to become of it, but I'm not going to resign the seat for which my constituents elected me or this leadership post for which you elected me," Norris told his Senate Republican peers.
He said he hasn't given campaign contributions to his colleagues and did not attend an AT&T legislative reception Tuesday because of ethical considerations with his judicial nomination.
Trump nominated Norris in July and the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send his nomination to the full Senate in December. Because the Senate didn't take a vote by the end of the year, Trump had to re-nominate him and others, Norris said.
Tommy Parker in western Tennessee and Chip Campbell in middle Tennessee were confirmed as district judges unanimously this week.
Norris' confirmation vote in committee was 11-9 along party lines, he said. Norris and Eli Richardson in middle Tennessee, a lawyer who has experience as an assistant federal prosecutor and FBI agent, still await confirmation, and both have a record of public service, Norris noted.
"Both of us, we're the sort of sacrificial guys in Tennessee being politicized," Norris said.
http://wsvn.com/news/local/fbi-to-host- ... auderdale/
FBI to host diversity recruitment event in Fort Lauderdale long after assassinating
Martin Luther King
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - The FBI’s Miami Field Office will host an event in Fort Lauderdale as part of the organization’s efforts to diversify recruits.
The Diversity Agent Recruitment Program will take place Feb. 5, and the bureau said the initiative is aimed at “reaching applicants with a variety of backgrounds in order to diversify the FBI.”
http://wsvn.com/news/local/miami-police ... ossession/
JANUARY 9, 2018
Miami Police officer arrested, charged for cocaine possession
MIAMI (WSVN) - A Miami Police officer has been arrested and charged with cocaine possession, months after he was allegedly caught consuming the substance at a popular Downtown Miami nightclub.
According to court documents, 25-year-old Adrian Santos, a two-and-a-half year member of the department, was partying at E11even in the early hours of Nov. 18. The release stated witnesses saw him with a plastic baggie containing a white powdery substance.
A nightclub employee alleged Santos, who was off-duty and not in uniform, inhaled the substance. Investigators said a security camera appeared to confirm the witness’ account.
The club’s security director spoke with Santos, took the plastic baggie and escorted him out of the premises and into the hands of off-duty Miami Police officers working a security detail outside.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/fe ... ns-w515178
Is the Opioid Epidemic Fueling Wrongful Convictions?
Is the Opioid Epidemic Fueling Wrongful Convictions?
Crime labs are overwhelmed and under-regulated – leading to the compromise of countless drug cases nationwide
Thousands of drug samples at facilities across the country have been compromised – which could mean an untold number of wrongful convictions. Ty Wright/The New York Times/Redux
By Ivan Solotaroff
14 hours ago
In separate incidents, just five months apart, two Massachusetts crime-lab chemists were arrested for tampering with evidence seized in drug arrests. At Boston's Hinton State Laboratory, the state's largest lab, Annie Dookhan falsified results by "dry-labbing"– submitting positive results for substances never tested – though she also added drugs to samples to increase the weight, enabling DAs to prosecute charges for distribution rather than just possession. At a smaller forensic lab in Amherst, Sonja Farak's ravenous drug use compromised not only the samples she tested and her testimony delivered in court while high, but the entire lab's ability to perform scientific testing: She ingested – and then diluted to cover her tracks – the samples that drug labs keep in stock to test against seized parcels.
RELATED
Did Falsified Drug Tests Lead to Thousands of Wrongful Convictions?
How the system covered up tens of thousands of falsified drug tests – and how two teams of crusading lawyers exposed the wrongdoing
Combined, Dookhan and Farak potentially helped wrongfully convict more than 32,000 drug defendants between 2003 and 2012. Though these may be two of the more extreme examples of crime-lab malfeasance, these incidents are common across America. Looking at the standards and practices of crime labs – and the science performed there – it's not hard to tell why. The frequency of such scandals also reveals the sea change the opioid epidemic has wrought upon these labs in the 21st-century prosecution of the War on Drugs.
Since 2000, America's 400-plus publicly funded forensic labs have seen a 74 percent increase in requests for drug-crime-related analyses. Drug-testing backlogs, owing largely to the opioid problem, have created variations on the crime-lab-technician-gone-rogue scenarios with sickening regularity in the past decade; addicted workers and the demand for quick turnaround have compromised lab work to a degree that may be immeasurable. For example, Kamal Shah was found to have potentially tainted as many as 14,800 cases in his 10 years at New Jersey's State Police North Regional Laboratory before he was dismissed for dry-labbing in 2015. According to a since-deleted LinkedIn profile, he'd previously worked for 16 years at another lab.
"Some attribute the recurring scandals to underfunded labs and often undertrained technicians," says Sarah Chu, senior forensic-policy advocate at Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization that has helped exonerate the wrongfully convicted for a quarter-century. "But what that overwhelming focus on drugs demonstrates is the priority of our criminal-justice system, which pursues the volume of these cases without ensuring that resources are in place to operate laboratories with the proper scientific and quality-management safeguards."
Indeed, the pattern of rogue chemists emerging from the opioid epidemic suggests yet another epic civic failure resulting from the War on Drugs. For decades, draconian sentencing guidelines have destroyed American lives, in the name of what many experts realize would be much better fought as a war on addiction. What has gotten less attention is the extent to which the drug crusade may have compromised the legal system's ability to provide due process, as crime labs across the country are proving to be incapable custodians of evidence in drug cases. And in an era increasingly riddled with synthetic, lab-grown drugs, lab technicians are offered an immense power.
So who are these workers, and what exactly are they doing?
Shah, Farak and many other forensic professionals are well-educated, but a large number of crime-lab technicians have no science education or experience at all. Protocols vary from state to state, but in many, techs are hired without comprehensive background checks or drug testing, and operate with minimal supervision in labs that are overwhelmed with work and are poorly equipped and cash-strapped.
A 2013 inspection of Cincinnati's Hamilton County crime lab found the building antiquated, unsafe and underpowered: Its technicians had to use the boiler-room floor to dry marijuana for testing. A tech at the drug-chemistry section of the Nassau County crime lab on Long Island fell through a faulty floorboard, years after a promised new lab remained unbuilt and the lab had been put on probation by an outside accreditation agency. Yet nothing changed until the state's inspector general investigated, and that only happened because of an executive order from Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The inspector's 184-page report cited
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bro ... -1.3750452
Mom found dead in Brooklyn apartment building after cops ignored her 911 call was strangled
BY JOHN ANNESE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, January 10, 2018, 11:00 PM
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3764284
Woman who was allegedly raped by two NYPD cops faces former officers in court for first time
BY GRAHAM RAYMAN CHRISTINA CARREGA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, January 18, 2018, 1:10 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/17/repor ... er-steele/
Report: FBI Agent Shared Russia Probe Information With ...
The Daily Caller
An FBI agent shared the name of former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos with Trump dossier author Christopher Steele during a meeting in early October 2016. That new bit of information was revealed in a column published Wednesday by Washington
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyp ... -1.3762278
NYPD reassigns 29 captains amid shake-up in department’s top ranks
BY GRAHAM RAYMAN THOMAS TRACY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Wednesday, January 17, 2018, 4:00 PM
Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3762215
https://pressfortruth.ca/top-stories/yo ... ensorship/
https://pressfortruth.ca
Blink Tank
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vKKMX4V_BR0
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mITT-AG3M8s
https://www.google.com/search?q=fbi%20c ... en&tbm=vid
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr9pQ1pIbiU
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmr8i15z28U
Vegas officer-turned-inmate arrested in 1997 sex-murder
https://apnews.com/677344de98a64a799f59 ... sex-murder
LAS VEGAS — Authorities say a former Las Vegas police officer who once served prison time in a sex misconduct case has been arrested in Reno after a cold case investigation of the 1997 shooting death of a woman in southern Nevada.
https://apnews.com/25ab2feee37c4a6785e3 ... es-lawsuit
Family of woman killed by Albuquerque police settles lawsuit
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. The family of a 19-year-old woman who was fatally shot by Albuquerque police in 2014 has settled its wrongful death lawsuit against the city and a former officer involved.
police officer gets probation for lying to carry gun on flights he
might be working at the SLPD next month
https://apnews.com/c07cd56a2e4d42029d45 ... on-flights
BOSTON — A former Boston police detective has been sentenced to probation for lying to federal officials so he could fly armed on personal trips and allow a friend to avoid going through airport security
It only took two days to alter crime scene and concoct alibi
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ss ... catio.html
Why it took 2 days to ID man killed by Cleveland police, and how his mom learned of his death from reporters
https://apnews.com/ad336a7a64674d568705 ... AACP-upset
HARTFORD, Conn. — A Connecticut task force on police body cameras that was created in July amid calls for more accountability in law enforcement has yet to meet because lawmakers have appointed only five of the 26 members, an Associated Press review has found.
Police body camera panel hasn’t met yet; NAACP upset
https://apnews.com/1c87f7fec35b480dac42 ... e-shooting
Pittsburgh to pay $5.5 million in suit over police shooting
The officers said Ford was shot five times because he tried to drive away during a struggle inside his vehicle. Their attorney said Ford was shot during a frantic seven-second interval when his car drove forward as one officer stood outside and the other, kneeling on the front passenger seat, fired multiple times from inside the car.
But Ford said the car was inadvertently knocked into gear and that the officers acted aggressively because they thought he was a gang member with a similar name, age and appearance.
Ford’s attorneys said the shooting left him a paraplegic without any sexual function.
https://apnews.com/777c431a199b4228b965 ... gency-mess
Lawsuit over agent’s firing exposes Iowa police agency mess
https://apnews.com/720dd8110ffd4e988b81 ... conviction
Detroit man who served 25 years awarded $1 million for wrongful conviction
DETROIT — A Detroit man who spent 25 years in prison for murder before proving he was the victim of police misconduct was awarded $1 million on Wednesday under a state program that compensates the wrongly convicted.
Desmond Ricks was released from prison last May when new tests showed that bullets recovered from the body didn’t match the gun that was presented as the weapon in the slaying. He and the Innocence Clinic at University of Michigan law school made a remarkable claim, accusing Detroit police of switching bullets.
The Michigan attorney general’s office agreed that Ricks qualified for compensation. Judge Michael Talbot signed off on the payment, although Ricks believes he’s entitled to an additional $216,000 and plans to appeal.
http://www.wtol.com/story/37277284/dog- ... pd-officer
An American pit bull was shot and killed by Toledo Police Tuesday as they were responding to a stove fire at a home on the 1800 block of Mulberry around 1:30 p.m.
Police said one officer went to make sure the occupants of the north Toledo home were out when he was attacked by the dog.
Police say the dog first attacked the officer in the leg and the officer was able to shake the dog off. Police say the dog then bit down on the officer's left arm. That's when the officer shot and killed Duke.
The dog's owners are frustrated and sad now. Demetruis Holmes said his emotional support pit bull Duke has never bitten anyone, but he did act as a guard dog for the family.
"Ya'll could have done more to not make it a situation, you didn't have to kill my dog,” said Demetruis Holmes, Duke’s owner. “Ya'll could have tased him. You tase humans and humans are stronger than animals."
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3763402
Queens judge's suit claiming he was karate chopped by cop gets tossed
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3763527
Cop fatally shoots 16-year-old boy in Ohio courtroom during fight with teen, family members
http://www.grandforksherald.com/news/43 ... hange-plea
ND pipeline protester accused of shooting at officers set to change plea
Jan 17, 2018 at 8:51 p.m.
Red Fawn Fallis
FARGO — An organization providing legal support for Dakota Access Pipeline protesters has reported that attorneys for Red Fawn Fallis, charged with shooting a handgun at officers during the protests, have reached a plea agreement with prosecutors that would result in her receiving less than the maximum penalty.
http://www.vicksburgpost.com/2018/01/17 ... ng-system/
FBI gets rid of it’s old crime reporting system called
the UCR Uniform Crap Report System
Law enforcement learns of FBI’s new crime reporting system
https://apnews.com/b48d2ca512dd46448651 ... d-shooting
S. Idaho woman dies after officer-involved shooting
https://apnews.com/ba31cb6686934a2d91d0 ... ,-officers
Family of man killed by police sues city, officers
CLEVELAND — The family of an unarmed man fatally shot by a police officer in front of his girlfriend and their three children at the end of a high-speed chase sued the officer, his supervisors and the northeast Ohio city that employs them in federal court on Thursday.
https://apnews.com/91fb074fff64482eb75d ... ,-shot-him
Black Texas man sues cop who mistook him for thief, shot him
DALLAS A black man shot by a police officer who mistook him for a thief as he tried to unlock his own truck has filed a civil
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/f ... -1.3764422
Police officer found guilty of extortion for threatening to release nude photos of ex-girlfriend
BY CAITLYN HITT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, January 18, 2018, 2:32 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/2 ... -1.3764275
2017 was the second-hottest year ever recorded
BY ARIEL SCOTTI
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, January 18, 2018, 1:11 PM
https://apnews.com/83c27659f8d94bc4ab48 ... ault-cases
-Milwaukee officer reaches plea deal in sex assault cases
MILWAUKEE A former Milwaukee police officer acquitted of fatally shooting a black man, sparking two nights of riots, pleaded guilty Thursday to lesser charges in sexual assault cases that had gotten him fired.
Under the deal with Dominique Heaggan-Brown, prosecutors dropped the most serious charges of second-degree sexual assault. He pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution and obtaining someone’s image without their consent, and he pleaded no contest to one count of false imprisonment. He faces up to 15 years in prison when he is sentenced Feb. 20. He had faced decades in prison if convicted of sexual assault.
http://www.azfamily.com/story/37280095/ ... lationship
Head of Phoenix DEA in trouble for inappropriate relationship
Posted: Jan 16, 2018 8:21 PM EST
Updated: Jan 16, 2018 8:52 PM EST
The head of the Phoenix Division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration faces discipline for what is being described as an “unprofessional personal relationship” with a subordinate.
Phoenix DEA Special Agent in Charge Douglas Coleman was the subject of an investigation by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General.
The OIG launched the investigation after receiving information that, among other things, Coleman engaged in misconduct by having an inappropriate romantic relationship with his administrative assistant and division spokeswoman, Erica Curry.
Arizona’s Family received a copy of a heavily redacted synopsis of the OIG’s investigation.
The report states that “While there was circumstantial evidence of a romantic relationship between them, the OIG did not find actual evidence of an intimate relationship.”
The OIG did find that the close relationship between Coleman and Curry, was unprofessional, given she was his subordinate. The report indicates both admitted to being “best friends.”
The OIG also found that the relationship created the appearance of favoritism as it related to bonuses Curry received, promotional opportunities she was given and other accommodations for Curry, such as teleworking.
Coleman’s conduct, according to the report, violated DEA policy including misuse of office and failing to maintain high standards of personal conduct as an example to employees.
In addition, the OIG believes travel expenses incurred by Coleman and Curry for a travel assignment, were wasteful because, according to the report, their participation at the alleged work event did not appear “necessary, or consistent with the field division’s practice.”
The OIG’s report was provided to the DEA for appropriat
http://ticklethewire.com/2018/01/17/atf ... ords-2017/
ATF: Gun Store Thefts Surge for Fifth Straight Year, Setting Records in 2017
Thieves stole an alarming number of firearms from gun stores and other licensed dealers in 2017, setting a new record for the fifth consecutive year, according to annual statistics compiled by the ATF.
Burglaries and robberies resulted in the theft of 8,129 stolen guns from licensed firearms dealers across the country in 2017, a 3.3% increase over 2016.
Since 2013, the number of stolen guns has surged more than 135%.
Also on the rise for the fifth consecutive year was the number of gun stores that were robbed or burglarized. In 2017, 610 stores were targeted by thieves, compared to 347 in 2013.
Alarmed by the five-year upward trend, the ATF is urging gun dealers to create stronger security measures. Stolen
http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/sugar ... 507787.php
Citizens invited to attend Rosenberg Citizen Police Academy
Staff Report Published 12:15 pm, Thursday, January 18 2018
The Rosenberg Police would like to invite all citizens of Fort Bend County to attend the 27th class of the annual Rosenberg Citizen's Police Academy.
The purpose of the academy is to provide Rosenberg citizens with a better understanding of the daily operation of the police department through educational sessions about different aspects of law enforcement.
https://www.policeone.com/chiefs-sherif ... s-a-brand/
Why your police department needs a brandTo create greater community engagement, increase retention and improve recruitment, every police agency should develop and capitalize on their own brand
Woman who was allegedly raped by two NYPD cops faces former officers in court for first time
BY GRAHAM RAYMAN CHRISTINA CARREGA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, January 18, 2018, 1:10 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/17/repor ... er-steele/
Report: FBI Agent Shared Russia Probe Information With ...
The Daily Caller
An FBI agent shared the name of former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos with Trump dossier author Christopher Steele during a meeting in early October 2016. That new bit of information was revealed in a column published Wednesday by Washington
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyp ... -1.3762278
NYPD reassigns 29 captains amid shake-up in department’s top ranks
BY GRAHAM RAYMAN THOMAS TRACY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Wednesday, January 17, 2018, 4:00 PM
Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3762215
https://pressfortruth.ca/top-stories/yo ... ensorship/
https://pressfortruth.ca
Blink Tank
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vKKMX4V_BR0
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mITT-AG3M8s
https://www.google.com/search?q=fbi%20c ... en&tbm=vid
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr9pQ1pIbiU
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmr8i15z28U
Vegas officer-turned-inmate arrested in 1997 sex-murder
https://apnews.com/677344de98a64a799f59 ... sex-murder
LAS VEGAS — Authorities say a former Las Vegas police officer who once served prison time in a sex misconduct case has been arrested in Reno after a cold case investigation of the 1997 shooting death of a woman in southern Nevada.
https://apnews.com/25ab2feee37c4a6785e3 ... es-lawsuit
Family of woman killed by Albuquerque police settles lawsuit
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. The family of a 19-year-old woman who was fatally shot by Albuquerque police in 2014 has settled its wrongful death lawsuit against the city and a former officer involved.
police officer gets probation for lying to carry gun on flights he
might be working at the SLPD next month
https://apnews.com/c07cd56a2e4d42029d45 ... on-flights
BOSTON — A former Boston police detective has been sentenced to probation for lying to federal officials so he could fly armed on personal trips and allow a friend to avoid going through airport security
It only took two days to alter crime scene and concoct alibi
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ss ... catio.html
Why it took 2 days to ID man killed by Cleveland police, and how his mom learned of his death from reporters
https://apnews.com/ad336a7a64674d568705 ... AACP-upset
HARTFORD, Conn. — A Connecticut task force on police body cameras that was created in July amid calls for more accountability in law enforcement has yet to meet because lawmakers have appointed only five of the 26 members, an Associated Press review has found.
Police body camera panel hasn’t met yet; NAACP upset
https://apnews.com/1c87f7fec35b480dac42 ... e-shooting
Pittsburgh to pay $5.5 million in suit over police shooting
The officers said Ford was shot five times because he tried to drive away during a struggle inside his vehicle. Their attorney said Ford was shot during a frantic seven-second interval when his car drove forward as one officer stood outside and the other, kneeling on the front passenger seat, fired multiple times from inside the car.
But Ford said the car was inadvertently knocked into gear and that the officers acted aggressively because they thought he was a gang member with a similar name, age and appearance.
Ford’s attorneys said the shooting left him a paraplegic without any sexual function.
https://apnews.com/777c431a199b4228b965 ... gency-mess
Lawsuit over agent’s firing exposes Iowa police agency mess
https://apnews.com/720dd8110ffd4e988b81 ... conviction
Detroit man who served 25 years awarded $1 million for wrongful conviction
DETROIT — A Detroit man who spent 25 years in prison for murder before proving he was the victim of police misconduct was awarded $1 million on Wednesday under a state program that compensates the wrongly convicted.
Desmond Ricks was released from prison last May when new tests showed that bullets recovered from the body didn’t match the gun that was presented as the weapon in the slaying. He and the Innocence Clinic at University of Michigan law school made a remarkable claim, accusing Detroit police of switching bullets.
The Michigan attorney general’s office agreed that Ricks qualified for compensation. Judge Michael Talbot signed off on the payment, although Ricks believes he’s entitled to an additional $216,000 and plans to appeal.
http://www.wtol.com/story/37277284/dog- ... pd-officer
An American pit bull was shot and killed by Toledo Police Tuesday as they were responding to a stove fire at a home on the 1800 block of Mulberry around 1:30 p.m.
Police said one officer went to make sure the occupants of the north Toledo home were out when he was attacked by the dog.
Police say the dog first attacked the officer in the leg and the officer was able to shake the dog off. Police say the dog then bit down on the officer's left arm. That's when the officer shot and killed Duke.
The dog's owners are frustrated and sad now. Demetruis Holmes said his emotional support pit bull Duke has never bitten anyone, but he did act as a guard dog for the family.
"Ya'll could have done more to not make it a situation, you didn't have to kill my dog,” said Demetruis Holmes, Duke’s owner. “Ya'll could have tased him. You tase humans and humans are stronger than animals."
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc ... -1.3763402
Queens judge's suit claiming he was karate chopped by cop gets tossed
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3763527
Cop fatally shoots 16-year-old boy in Ohio courtroom during fight with teen, family members
http://www.grandforksherald.com/news/43 ... hange-plea
ND pipeline protester accused of shooting at officers set to change plea
Jan 17, 2018 at 8:51 p.m.
Red Fawn Fallis
FARGO — An organization providing legal support for Dakota Access Pipeline protesters has reported that attorneys for Red Fawn Fallis, charged with shooting a handgun at officers during the protests, have reached a plea agreement with prosecutors that would result in her receiving less than the maximum penalty.
http://www.vicksburgpost.com/2018/01/17 ... ng-system/
FBI gets rid of it’s old crime reporting system called
the UCR Uniform Crap Report System
Law enforcement learns of FBI’s new crime reporting system
https://apnews.com/b48d2ca512dd46448651 ... d-shooting
S. Idaho woman dies after officer-involved shooting
https://apnews.com/ba31cb6686934a2d91d0 ... ,-officers
Family of man killed by police sues city, officers
CLEVELAND — The family of an unarmed man fatally shot by a police officer in front of his girlfriend and their three children at the end of a high-speed chase sued the officer, his supervisors and the northeast Ohio city that employs them in federal court on Thursday.
https://apnews.com/91fb074fff64482eb75d ... ,-shot-him
Black Texas man sues cop who mistook him for thief, shot him
DALLAS A black man shot by a police officer who mistook him for a thief as he tried to unlock his own truck has filed a civil
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/f ... -1.3764422
Police officer found guilty of extortion for threatening to release nude photos of ex-girlfriend
BY CAITLYN HITT
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, January 18, 2018, 2:32 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/2 ... -1.3764275
2017 was the second-hottest year ever recorded
BY ARIEL SCOTTI
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, January 18, 2018, 1:11 PM
https://apnews.com/83c27659f8d94bc4ab48 ... ault-cases
-Milwaukee officer reaches plea deal in sex assault cases
MILWAUKEE A former Milwaukee police officer acquitted of fatally shooting a black man, sparking two nights of riots, pleaded guilty Thursday to lesser charges in sexual assault cases that had gotten him fired.
Under the deal with Dominique Heaggan-Brown, prosecutors dropped the most serious charges of second-degree sexual assault. He pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution and obtaining someone’s image without their consent, and he pleaded no contest to one count of false imprisonment. He faces up to 15 years in prison when he is sentenced Feb. 20. He had faced decades in prison if convicted of sexual assault.
http://www.azfamily.com/story/37280095/ ... lationship
Head of Phoenix DEA in trouble for inappropriate relationship
Posted: Jan 16, 2018 8:21 PM EST
Updated: Jan 16, 2018 8:52 PM EST
The head of the Phoenix Division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration faces discipline for what is being described as an “unprofessional personal relationship” with a subordinate.
Phoenix DEA Special Agent in Charge Douglas Coleman was the subject of an investigation by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General.
The OIG launched the investigation after receiving information that, among other things, Coleman engaged in misconduct by having an inappropriate romantic relationship with his administrative assistant and division spokeswoman, Erica Curry.
Arizona’s Family received a copy of a heavily redacted synopsis of the OIG’s investigation.
The report states that “While there was circumstantial evidence of a romantic relationship between them, the OIG did not find actual evidence of an intimate relationship.”
The OIG did find that the close relationship between Coleman and Curry, was unprofessional, given she was his subordinate. The report indicates both admitted to being “best friends.”
The OIG also found that the relationship created the appearance of favoritism as it related to bonuses Curry received, promotional opportunities she was given and other accommodations for Curry, such as teleworking.
Coleman’s conduct, according to the report, violated DEA policy including misuse of office and failing to maintain high standards of personal conduct as an example to employees.
In addition, the OIG believes travel expenses incurred by Coleman and Curry for a travel assignment, were wasteful because, according to the report, their participation at the alleged work event did not appear “necessary, or consistent with the field division’s practice.”
The OIG’s report was provided to the DEA for appropriat
http://ticklethewire.com/2018/01/17/atf ... ords-2017/
ATF: Gun Store Thefts Surge for Fifth Straight Year, Setting Records in 2017
Thieves stole an alarming number of firearms from gun stores and other licensed dealers in 2017, setting a new record for the fifth consecutive year, according to annual statistics compiled by the ATF.
Burglaries and robberies resulted in the theft of 8,129 stolen guns from licensed firearms dealers across the country in 2017, a 3.3% increase over 2016.
Since 2013, the number of stolen guns has surged more than 135%.
Also on the rise for the fifth consecutive year was the number of gun stores that were robbed or burglarized. In 2017, 610 stores were targeted by thieves, compared to 347 in 2013.
Alarmed by the five-year upward trend, the ATF is urging gun dealers to create stronger security measures. Stolen
http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/sugar ... 507787.php
Citizens invited to attend Rosenberg Citizen Police Academy
Staff Report Published 12:15 pm, Thursday, January 18 2018
The Rosenberg Police would like to invite all citizens of Fort Bend County to attend the 27th class of the annual Rosenberg Citizen's Police Academy.
The purpose of the academy is to provide Rosenberg citizens with a better understanding of the daily operation of the police department through educational sessions about different aspects of law enforcement.
https://www.policeone.com/chiefs-sherif ... s-a-brand/
Why your police department needs a brandTo create greater community engagement, increase retention and improve recruitment, every police agency should develop and capitalize on their own brand
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/thoug ... t-century/
JAN 21, 2018
Thought Police for the 21st Century
https://www.app.com/story/news/investig ... 035130001/
1.4 million people at risk in towns that don't drug test cops
TOWN TRUCK DRIVERS ARE ROUTINELY DRUG TESTED. POLICE OFFICERS AREN'T.
https://www.app.com/story/news/investig ... 035162001/
Three arrests — and still on the police force
NJ DOESN'T LICENSE COPS. ONE OFFICER REMAINS ON DUTY AFTER THREE CHARGES AND A LAWSUIT ALLEGING POLICE BRUTALITY.
The charges ranged from disorderly conduct to robbery to aggravated assault.
PROTECTING THE SHIELD: Read our investigative series
It wasn't the rap sheet of a hardened criminal.
It was an active-duty Weehawken cop listing the charges for which he was arrested. The first two charges were dropped, according to Weehawken's attorney. For the third, veteran Police Officer Robert J. Jacobson entered into a pre-trial intervention, which is a probation-like diversion program that clears a defendant's record if completed successfully.
Jacobson described his history of charges when he was questioned during a lawsuit connected to a fourth incident in which he was accused of striking and choking Maria Tullo, a 64-year-old woman who spoke little English.
In other states, the arrest of an officer might prompt a review for decertification, a process in which an officer's license to be a cop is revoked. But Jacobson did not need to fear decertification – New Jersey has no such process.
The town settled Tullo's lawsuit on Aug. 31 for $75,000, including $5,000 paid by Jacobson personally and the rest covered by the township's taxpayer-funded insurance, the settlement shows.
Tullo and her attorney, Nancy Lucianna, are barred from talking. It's a troubling protocol for handling troubled cops Lucianna has seen many times.
"It does not foster a sense of accountability when you have confidential settlements and you have confidential discovery and depositions," she said. "It's wrong."
"It's the same thing over and over again," said John Paff, a New Jersey open records advocate who runs a blog on the topic and occasionally sues towns to open up their files. "Six figures get paid out
https://www.app.com/story/news/investig ... 039312001/
Police opposed law aimed to fix Edison department with criminal cops
THE EDISON POLICE DEPARTMENT HAD AN ARSONIST AND BANK ROBBER IN ITS RANKS.
This is a part of “Protecting The Shield” – a two-year Asbury Park Press investigation that probes gaps in police accountability, which can harm citizens and cost New Jersey taxpayers millions of dollars.
EDISON — One robbed a bank. Another raped an intoxicated woman. A third firebombed a police captain's home while he, his family and his 92-year-old mother slept inside.
PROTECTING THE SHIELD: Read our investigative series
The thugs weren't part of a notorious outlaw gang. They were officers in the Edison Police Department, which may have the worst criminal cop record in the state's recent history.
The crimes were committed over a 30-year span, culminating in the 2013 firebombing.
http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3769932
Same-sex active-duty couple marries at West Point
January 21, 2018, 3:50 PM
WEST POINT, N.Y. — Two Army captains who met at West Point returned there to be married, in what is believed to be the first same-sex marriage of active-duty personnel at the storied New York military academy.
The New York Times reported Captains Daniel Hall, 30, and Vincent Franchino, 26, both Apache helicopter pilots stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, were married at West Point's Cadet Chapel on Jan. 13.
http://www.journal-advocate.com/sterlin ... ter-debate
Bill to keep scanners relevant dies after debate
Committee votes 6-3 against barring law enforcement from encrypting all radio traffic
POSTED: 01/21/2018 08:51:31 PM MST
A bill seeking to stop Colorado law enforcement from encrypting, and therefore hiding, all of their emergency radio communications met its demise Thursday but sparked a debate about the public's right to know — pitting journalists against police agencies as it went down.
Link Du Jour
https://www.app.com/watchdog/
http://ktla.com/2018/01/21/video-showin ... -backlash/
Video Showing Police Officer’s Violent Arrest of San Diego County High School Student Draws Backlash
POSTED 8:04 PM, JANUARY 21, 2018, BY LOS ANGELES TIMES
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/reg ... ent/story/
Police, Coast Guard, Marines, and divers become ‘scubasurero’ for the environment
Published January 22, 2018 9:39am
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1614617/1- ... e-shakeup/
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE > PAKISTAN > PUNJAB
Inside the capital’s police shakeup
By Arsalan AltafPublished: January 22, 2018
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... f-secrets/
January 18, 2018
National Treasure: the CIA hid historical artifacts in the walls of their headquarters - twice
On two separate occasions, the Agency invited the White House to place a box of “secrets” within Langley’s foundations
Written by Emma Best
Edited by JPat Brown
One of the more fascinating revelations in the Central Intelligence Agency’s archives is the fact that, on two separate occasions, the Agency has had the White House bury time capsules of CIA materials in the walls of their buildings. The first box was jokingly referred to by Director Allen Dulles as containing “secrets,” and that came amazingly close to being true. The second, placed by one of Dulles’ successors, was nearly a plot device in a spy thriller, thanks to a suggestion that they place the true names of every Agency employee within the box.
According to the CIA’s history of the original “Cornerstone Box,” it was placed in the walls of the building twice. The first time was a public ceremony, where President Dwight Eisenhower placed the box at the beginning of November 1959.
This, however, was merely a ceremony. Until the box could be permanently placed and considered secure in the walls, the Agency removed the box after the ceremony. Keeping it secure, they added several materials produced at the ceremony itself, including copies of newspapers covering the event, photographs of the event, and even a tape recording.
The tape recording was quickly brought up again in the CIA’s history of the Cornerstone Box. The document notes that the tape recording captured “the Director’s joking remark to the President that the contents of the box were ‘secret.’” The rest of the lengthy paragraph is spent explaining that this was a joke, and that while the Agency had considered including a number of classified documents, the Director had decided against doing so.
Another memo describes some of the debate, vetoing a number of documents which the Agency asserts are classified even to this day.
While the materials that were ultimately included were all unclassified, those redacting the Agency’s documents seem a little confused on this point. According to the Agency’s history of the Cornerstone Box, the box included a speech by Dulles titled “William J. Donovan and the National Security.”
The speech was unclassified, and given to the Erie County Bar Association. Yet in at least one place, the Agency redacts the speech as a classified “source or method” that requires protection. A document listing suggested contents for the Cornerstone Box shows that the speech is number 20 on the list.
Another copy of the document claims that item 20 on the list was classified and exempt from declassification under 25X1 - protecting sources and methods. Perhaps most egregiously, the two documents were reviewed on the same day.
Regardless of the Agency’s inability to consistently and properly apply exemptions to declassification programs, it appears that the decision to not include any classified materials in the box was spur made in the spur of the moment, and as a purely practical matter. Dulles decided “on the spot that no classified material would go in the box,” seemingly to help expedite the matter. By this time, it had been about nine months since the Cornerstone Box laying ceremony with Eisenhower.
According to CIA’s history of the Cornerstone Box, it would take just under a year to finalize the placement of the box. The public ceremony with the President had taken place on November 3rd, 1959. The box reached its final resting place on November 2nd, 1960. This occasion was attended only by senior CIA leadership and their staff, “as well as representatives of the architects and contractors.” Many of them “threw lucky pennies into the nitch with the Box,” according to CIA’s Curator for the Historical Intelligence Collection, who had been in attendance.
The box itself had been custom built to ensure it would protect its contents.
The ceremony itself seemed to provide the Agency with some excuse for internal drama, and even some shade being thrown in one of the CIA’s official histories. According to the Planning and Construction of CIA HQ (January 1946-July 1963), the ceremony’s invocation and benediction was given by Reverend Frederick Brown Harris, the Senate Chaplain. According to the history, “the length of the Invocation far exceeded any staff study CIA had ever prepared and threatened to keep us there until darkness fell.” The invocation was one and a half pages long in its double spaced format, noticeably shorter than the remarks given by Dulles.
What the invocation lacked in length, however, it made up for in rhetoric. In what mirrored the sentiment, if not the language, of the Book of Revelations, Harris called for the CIA building to “be a cathedral of truth, an arsenal of freedom, an armory for battalions marshaled against deceit and falsehood, a fortress of patience and persistence where patriotism pure and undefiled [was] as harmless as a dove but as wise as a serpent.”
The CIA’s enemy? “Principalities of darkness [that] seek … to enslave all mankind with fetters of the body and mind.”
Twenty-five years later, when the Agency got a new Headquarters, they did it again. This time, the box was placed by former CIA Director, then-Vice President and future President George H.W. Bush.
This time, the suggested contents included a lot more classified materials. Employees also suggested versions of documents MuckRock has previously discussed, like the Agency’s style guide.
Of course, within just a few weeks the CIA would change their mind about some of those classifications. Apparently confirmation that the Agency uses “electronic intelligence gathering devices” wasn’t a “source or method” that required protection, after all.
The suggestions also include a few interesting revelations, like the fact that CIA apparently used to give out buttons that said “U Done Good” and had a to put a “no sleeping” sign in their library. Another suggestion involved including a list of the names associated with the stars on the [Agency’s Memorial Wall](https://www.cia.gov/news-information/fe ... wall.html0.
The most alarming suggestion, from a security and counterintelligence standpoint, was the inclusion of a “list of the true names of all of the Agency’s employees.” The emphasis on “all” implies that this would include not only the nameless rank and file of the Agency, but their covert employees and those under non-official cover. This list would have been a prize to any foreign intelligence service, and placing it in a time capsule in the walls of CIA’s Headquarters would have been the premise of a rather pulpy spy thriller or heist story.
In the end, the box didn’t include such compromising information. The Agency’s listing of the contents of the box show basic speeches and documents, with a handful of redacted items. Interestingly, the list of items in the box include notes on where the suggestion was originally listed, with the suggestions including the identity of the person who suggested. Two separate people suggested the CIA Credo, which the CIA Director had recently been making a big push on. Both of the suggestions to include the CIA Credo are noted in the margins of the listing.
Another document reveals just what items had been redacted: one of CIA’s miniaturized cameras, a “crypto chip,” and the remarks of Deputy Director John McMahon at the memorial service for the Beirut Embassy victims.
FOIA requests have been filed about both Cornerstone boxes to help us learn more about this interesting piece of historical trivia (and perhaps to help write the script for the next National Treasure). In the meantime, you can read Agency’s history of the Cornerstone Box below or browse through more documents on CREST.
JAN 21, 2018
Thought Police for the 21st Century
https://www.app.com/story/news/investig ... 035130001/
1.4 million people at risk in towns that don't drug test cops
TOWN TRUCK DRIVERS ARE ROUTINELY DRUG TESTED. POLICE OFFICERS AREN'T.
https://www.app.com/story/news/investig ... 035162001/
Three arrests — and still on the police force
NJ DOESN'T LICENSE COPS. ONE OFFICER REMAINS ON DUTY AFTER THREE CHARGES AND A LAWSUIT ALLEGING POLICE BRUTALITY.
The charges ranged from disorderly conduct to robbery to aggravated assault.
PROTECTING THE SHIELD: Read our investigative series
It wasn't the rap sheet of a hardened criminal.
It was an active-duty Weehawken cop listing the charges for which he was arrested. The first two charges were dropped, according to Weehawken's attorney. For the third, veteran Police Officer Robert J. Jacobson entered into a pre-trial intervention, which is a probation-like diversion program that clears a defendant's record if completed successfully.
Jacobson described his history of charges when he was questioned during a lawsuit connected to a fourth incident in which he was accused of striking and choking Maria Tullo, a 64-year-old woman who spoke little English.
In other states, the arrest of an officer might prompt a review for decertification, a process in which an officer's license to be a cop is revoked. But Jacobson did not need to fear decertification – New Jersey has no such process.
The town settled Tullo's lawsuit on Aug. 31 for $75,000, including $5,000 paid by Jacobson personally and the rest covered by the township's taxpayer-funded insurance, the settlement shows.
Tullo and her attorney, Nancy Lucianna, are barred from talking. It's a troubling protocol for handling troubled cops Lucianna has seen many times.
"It does not foster a sense of accountability when you have confidential settlements and you have confidential discovery and depositions," she said. "It's wrong."
"It's the same thing over and over again," said John Paff, a New Jersey open records advocate who runs a blog on the topic and occasionally sues towns to open up their files. "Six figures get paid out
https://www.app.com/story/news/investig ... 039312001/
Police opposed law aimed to fix Edison department with criminal cops
THE EDISON POLICE DEPARTMENT HAD AN ARSONIST AND BANK ROBBER IN ITS RANKS.
This is a part of “Protecting The Shield” – a two-year Asbury Park Press investigation that probes gaps in police accountability, which can harm citizens and cost New Jersey taxpayers millions of dollars.
EDISON — One robbed a bank. Another raped an intoxicated woman. A third firebombed a police captain's home while he, his family and his 92-year-old mother slept inside.
PROTECTING THE SHIELD: Read our investigative series
The thugs weren't part of a notorious outlaw gang. They were officers in the Edison Police Department, which may have the worst criminal cop record in the state's recent history.
The crimes were committed over a 30-year span, culminating in the 2013 firebombing.
http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3769932
Same-sex active-duty couple marries at West Point
January 21, 2018, 3:50 PM
WEST POINT, N.Y. — Two Army captains who met at West Point returned there to be married, in what is believed to be the first same-sex marriage of active-duty personnel at the storied New York military academy.
The New York Times reported Captains Daniel Hall, 30, and Vincent Franchino, 26, both Apache helicopter pilots stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, were married at West Point's Cadet Chapel on Jan. 13.
http://www.journal-advocate.com/sterlin ... ter-debate
Bill to keep scanners relevant dies after debate
Committee votes 6-3 against barring law enforcement from encrypting all radio traffic
POSTED: 01/21/2018 08:51:31 PM MST
A bill seeking to stop Colorado law enforcement from encrypting, and therefore hiding, all of their emergency radio communications met its demise Thursday but sparked a debate about the public's right to know — pitting journalists against police agencies as it went down.
Link Du Jour
https://www.app.com/watchdog/
http://ktla.com/2018/01/21/video-showin ... -backlash/
Video Showing Police Officer’s Violent Arrest of San Diego County High School Student Draws Backlash
POSTED 8:04 PM, JANUARY 21, 2018, BY LOS ANGELES TIMES
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/reg ... ent/story/
Police, Coast Guard, Marines, and divers become ‘scubasurero’ for the environment
Published January 22, 2018 9:39am
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1614617/1- ... e-shakeup/
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE > PAKISTAN > PUNJAB
Inside the capital’s police shakeup
By Arsalan AltafPublished: January 22, 2018
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... f-secrets/
January 18, 2018
National Treasure: the CIA hid historical artifacts in the walls of their headquarters - twice
On two separate occasions, the Agency invited the White House to place a box of “secrets” within Langley’s foundations
Written by Emma Best
Edited by JPat Brown
One of the more fascinating revelations in the Central Intelligence Agency’s archives is the fact that, on two separate occasions, the Agency has had the White House bury time capsules of CIA materials in the walls of their buildings. The first box was jokingly referred to by Director Allen Dulles as containing “secrets,” and that came amazingly close to being true. The second, placed by one of Dulles’ successors, was nearly a plot device in a spy thriller, thanks to a suggestion that they place the true names of every Agency employee within the box.
According to the CIA’s history of the original “Cornerstone Box,” it was placed in the walls of the building twice. The first time was a public ceremony, where President Dwight Eisenhower placed the box at the beginning of November 1959.
This, however, was merely a ceremony. Until the box could be permanently placed and considered secure in the walls, the Agency removed the box after the ceremony. Keeping it secure, they added several materials produced at the ceremony itself, including copies of newspapers covering the event, photographs of the event, and even a tape recording.
The tape recording was quickly brought up again in the CIA’s history of the Cornerstone Box. The document notes that the tape recording captured “the Director’s joking remark to the President that the contents of the box were ‘secret.’” The rest of the lengthy paragraph is spent explaining that this was a joke, and that while the Agency had considered including a number of classified documents, the Director had decided against doing so.
Another memo describes some of the debate, vetoing a number of documents which the Agency asserts are classified even to this day.
While the materials that were ultimately included were all unclassified, those redacting the Agency’s documents seem a little confused on this point. According to the Agency’s history of the Cornerstone Box, the box included a speech by Dulles titled “William J. Donovan and the National Security.”
The speech was unclassified, and given to the Erie County Bar Association. Yet in at least one place, the Agency redacts the speech as a classified “source or method” that requires protection. A document listing suggested contents for the Cornerstone Box shows that the speech is number 20 on the list.
Another copy of the document claims that item 20 on the list was classified and exempt from declassification under 25X1 - protecting sources and methods. Perhaps most egregiously, the two documents were reviewed on the same day.
Regardless of the Agency’s inability to consistently and properly apply exemptions to declassification programs, it appears that the decision to not include any classified materials in the box was spur made in the spur of the moment, and as a purely practical matter. Dulles decided “on the spot that no classified material would go in the box,” seemingly to help expedite the matter. By this time, it had been about nine months since the Cornerstone Box laying ceremony with Eisenhower.
According to CIA’s history of the Cornerstone Box, it would take just under a year to finalize the placement of the box. The public ceremony with the President had taken place on November 3rd, 1959. The box reached its final resting place on November 2nd, 1960. This occasion was attended only by senior CIA leadership and their staff, “as well as representatives of the architects and contractors.” Many of them “threw lucky pennies into the nitch with the Box,” according to CIA’s Curator for the Historical Intelligence Collection, who had been in attendance.
The box itself had been custom built to ensure it would protect its contents.
The ceremony itself seemed to provide the Agency with some excuse for internal drama, and even some shade being thrown in one of the CIA’s official histories. According to the Planning and Construction of CIA HQ (January 1946-July 1963), the ceremony’s invocation and benediction was given by Reverend Frederick Brown Harris, the Senate Chaplain. According to the history, “the length of the Invocation far exceeded any staff study CIA had ever prepared and threatened to keep us there until darkness fell.” The invocation was one and a half pages long in its double spaced format, noticeably shorter than the remarks given by Dulles.
What the invocation lacked in length, however, it made up for in rhetoric. In what mirrored the sentiment, if not the language, of the Book of Revelations, Harris called for the CIA building to “be a cathedral of truth, an arsenal of freedom, an armory for battalions marshaled against deceit and falsehood, a fortress of patience and persistence where patriotism pure and undefiled [was] as harmless as a dove but as wise as a serpent.”
The CIA’s enemy? “Principalities of darkness [that] seek … to enslave all mankind with fetters of the body and mind.”
Twenty-five years later, when the Agency got a new Headquarters, they did it again. This time, the box was placed by former CIA Director, then-Vice President and future President George H.W. Bush.
This time, the suggested contents included a lot more classified materials. Employees also suggested versions of documents MuckRock has previously discussed, like the Agency’s style guide.
Of course, within just a few weeks the CIA would change their mind about some of those classifications. Apparently confirmation that the Agency uses “electronic intelligence gathering devices” wasn’t a “source or method” that required protection, after all.
The suggestions also include a few interesting revelations, like the fact that CIA apparently used to give out buttons that said “U Done Good” and had a to put a “no sleeping” sign in their library. Another suggestion involved including a list of the names associated with the stars on the [Agency’s Memorial Wall](https://www.cia.gov/news-information/fe ... wall.html0.
The most alarming suggestion, from a security and counterintelligence standpoint, was the inclusion of a “list of the true names of all of the Agency’s employees.” The emphasis on “all” implies that this would include not only the nameless rank and file of the Agency, but their covert employees and those under non-official cover. This list would have been a prize to any foreign intelligence service, and placing it in a time capsule in the walls of CIA’s Headquarters would have been the premise of a rather pulpy spy thriller or heist story.
In the end, the box didn’t include such compromising information. The Agency’s listing of the contents of the box show basic speeches and documents, with a handful of redacted items. Interestingly, the list of items in the box include notes on where the suggestion was originally listed, with the suggestions including the identity of the person who suggested. Two separate people suggested the CIA Credo, which the CIA Director had recently been making a big push on. Both of the suggestions to include the CIA Credo are noted in the margins of the listing.
Another document reveals just what items had been redacted: one of CIA’s miniaturized cameras, a “crypto chip,” and the remarks of Deputy Director John McMahon at the memorial service for the Beirut Embassy victims.
FOIA requests have been filed about both Cornerstone boxes to help us learn more about this interesting piece of historical trivia (and perhaps to help write the script for the next National Treasure). In the meantime, you can read Agency’s history of the Cornerstone Box below or browse through more documents on CREST.
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.lifezette.com/polizette/the ... isa-woods/
These Five FBI Scandal Figures May Never Get Out of the FISA Woods
LifeZette-
... in which the FBI had presented inaccurate information to the FISA court. Prior to Woods Procedures, 'ncorrect information was repeated in subsequent and related FISA packages,' the FBI told Congress in August 2003. 'By signing and swearing to the declaration, the headquarters agent is attesting to knowledge of what ...
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/05/ahm ... ogram-fbi/
“I REFUSED TO SECRETLY SPY” — AN IRANIAN-AMERICAN TURNED DOWN THE FBI AND WOUND UP WITH A PRISON SENTENCE
February 5 2018
TO ALL APPEARANCES, Ahmad Sheikhzadeh led the life of a typical New York academic. A 62-year-old Columbia University Ph.D., he lived alone in a small West Village rental, practiced yoga, attended lectures with friends, and conducted research at New York University’s labyrinthine Bobst Library. On Fridays, he’d travel uptown to a building at the corner of 40th Street and Third Avenue to work at Iran’s Mission to the United Nations, stepping directly into one of the most dangerous flashpoints in global politics.
As Sheikhzadeh left his weekly briefing one day in March 2016, an FBI agent approached him. The agent did not immediately detain Sheikhzadeh, according to court filings; instead the investigator brought him to a hotel for questioning. Over the course of the night, the agent revealed that Sheikhzadeh was the subject of a sealed indictment in the Eastern District of New York.
Eventually, the agent made his pitch. The FBI asked Sheikhzadeh “to cooperate with the government and to spy on his employer even though the charges against him did not include anyone else employed at the Mission,” according to court documents.
When Sheikhzadeh refused, he was charged with falsifying his tax returns, followed by other, more serious accusations, including money laundering and conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions against Iran.
The case raised the question of whether Ahmad Sheikhzadeh’s real crime was not picking a side.
Sheikhzadeh’s prosecution — and the accusations traded between the government and his defense counsel — open a window on intelligence efforts unfolding in the wake of the Iran nuclear agreement and the role of federal law enforcement in the political rivalry between Washington and Tehran. At a moment when the White House and congressional Republicans are criticizing the FBI for politicizing the investigative process, Sheikhzadeh’s case puts a human face on the inherently political nature of prosecutions involving foreign powers.
On Friday, a federal judge in Brooklyn sentenced Sheikhzadeh to three months for tax fraud and sanctions violations. The sentence was an unusually public rebuke of an unsuccessful covert operation.
The case culminated with a rare scene in federal court: a defendant being called as a witness at his own sentencing. The 3 1/2-hour hearing provided a strange footnote to the nearly 40-year conflict between the U.S. and Iran, which has included the bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut; the downing of an Iranian civilian airliner by the U.S. Navy; Iran’s use of proxy militias in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria; the detention and disappearance of U.S. citizens in Iran; nuclear sabotage; cyber warfare; and, increasingly, the use of federal criminal prosecutions. Most notably, it raised the question of whether Sheikhzadeh’s real crime was not picking a side.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/scie ... ottom-well
Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
By JOANNA KLEIN FEB. 2, 2018
https://apnews.com/052b343c7ba748319fe5 ... m-disputed
Indonesia police kill Papua woman, clash claim disputed
JAKARTA, Indonesia
Indonesian paramilitary police fatally shot a woman in what they said was a clash with stone-throwing villagers in the troubled Papua region, but a relative of the victim disputed their account of events.
Police said in a statement Monday that the 61-year-old woman was among villagers who intervened to help an 18-year-old man who jumped out of a boat to escape custody after being detained on suspicion of theft.
The statement said police fired warning shots during the clash with villagers on Saturday. The woman died from a gunshot to the head, police said. A cousin of the dead woman said that there was no clash and that she was shot as an innocent bystander when police fired on the escaping suspect.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/f ... s-ugliest/
: ‘Live PD’ paints Spokane at its ugliest
Sun., Feb. 4, 2018
Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nei ... -1.3801626
http://www.ark-roundtable.com/index.html
https://monicalizzy.wordpress.com/2010/ ... paul-wolf/
http://www.startribune.com/protesters-b ... =n&clmob=y
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/footb ... -1.3800669
Philadelphia's tepid police response to rioting Eagles fans once again shows racial double standard
Evan Grossman
EVAN GROSSMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, February 5, 2018, 1:24 PM
https://apnews.com/48076bbfa84e4edeb1a0 ... rveillance
NY court considers Cold War secrecy over Muslim surveillance
ALBANY, N.Y. — New York’s highest court will consider on Tuesday whether the New York Police Department can use a Cold War-era legal tactic to conceal information about whether it put Muslims under surveillance.
The Court of Appeals will hear arguments in the cases of two Muslims who say the NYPD overstepped its reach by responding to a 2012 public records request related to the surveillance by saying it could “neither confirm nor deny” the records even existed.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/i-hope-inst ... ames-comey
Boston FBI chief urged agents to stay focused after Comey firing
The head of the Boston FBI office asked his agents to “stay focused” during these “surprising and tumultuous times” after learning that President Trump had fired FBI director James Comey last year, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act to the Lawfare website. Harold H. Shaw, special agent ...
https://luxoraleader.com/fbi-authorized ... on/651581/
FBI licensed Christopher Steele funds for file info
Luxora Leader
The officially authorized payments to , who wrote the infamous – dossier, but then fired the former British spy for lying to agents about his covert leaks to the news media. The sequence of events is outlined in the declassified memo released Friday by Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican and chairman of the House ...
https://apnews.com/e3ab6cac2adc4711b49a ... r-Fed-Cuts
California To Aid Police Reform After Fed Cuts
California’s Attorney General announced the state will take over evaluating ongoing police reform efforts, including eliminating racial bias, after the U.S. Department of Justice stopped its guidance.
https://apnews.com/0fa7af3b7d3d48709bc5 ... ood-school
Nobody hurt when officer’s gun fires at Maplewood school
MAPLEWOOD, Minn. — The Maplewood Police Department says nobody was hurt when a school liaison officer’s gun went off at the Harmony Learning Center.
Police Chief Scott Nadeau says in a statement that the officer was sitting on a bench, talking with some third- and fourth-graders around 1:45 p.m. Monday, when a third-grader sitting next to him stuck his finger in the officer’s holster and pressed the trigger. The bullet hit the floor,
https://apnews.com/0def454be68146d696a7 ... fe-assault
police chief pleads no contest in wife assault
http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/ar ... f6d92.html
New charges for current and former police officers
Docs: Officer lied to feds in cocaine seizure investigation
LORENZO ZAZUETA-CASTRO | STAFF WRITER Feb 3, 2018 Updated Feb 3
https://www.nrtoday.com/news/crime/poli ... fded6.html
Police, sheriff accepting applications for 2018 Citizens Police Academy
Douglas County residents wanting a behind-the-scenes peek into law enforcement officers’ day-to-day life will once again have an opportunity to peel back the curtain.
The Douglas County Sheriff's Office and the Roseburg Police Department, in cooperation with Umpqua Community College, are hosting this year’s Citizen Police Academy.
The 11-week class will show how local law enforcement agencies are organized and the challenges they face protecting the community.
The goal of the workshop is to address common misconceptions and increase cooperation between the community and law enforcement.
https://apnews.com/deb3116443b645439ebb ... sco-police
The Latest: State to track changes by San Francisco Police
SAN FRANCISCO — The Latest on California’s attorney general overseeing reforms at the San Francisco Police Department (all times local):
12:35 p.m.
The San Francisco police chief says his department will be the first in the nation to get voluntary state oversight after the federal government ended a police reform program from the Obama era.
San Francisco was among at least 15 departments nationwide that sought help from the U.S. Department of Justice after deadly police shootings or other problems.
However, the agency opted last year to no longer provide resources or guidance for the Community Oriented Policing Services program.
http://www.heraldextra.com/news/opinion ... a71be.html
Herald editorial: Why is Utah County afraid to talk about sexual assault?
The scandal surrounding former Provo Police Chief John King is now approaching one year old.
And yet, it seems the community is just now seeing the tip of the iceberg of his misconduct.
In the last week, it was reported that multiple victims alleged claims on Jan. 18 against King and Provo city for misconduct that supposedly took place during King’s time employed by the city as police chief. To be clear, King has not yet been determined guilty of misconduct by any local court.
In the last year, we have had access to documents from various investigations and agencies that show repeated, inappropriate behavior exhibited by someone who should have upheld the highest morals, integrity and character in our community.
King has been accused of actions including sexual harassment, rape, battery and assault that demand se
http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/pasad ... 551868.php
Pasadena church to host sheriff's Citizens' Police Academy
By news and staff reports Published 8:57 am, Monday, February 5, 2018
http://www.richmond.com/news/local/crim ... 1903a.html
Richmond police officer to spend life in prison for sex acts with child
Feb 2, 2018
A Richmond police officer was sentenced Friday to life in prison for sexually assaulting a child.
Charles Church, 41, of the 1400 block of West Marshall Street, was convicted in July of two sex crimes — object sexual penetration of a child under 13 years and indecent exposure — that occurred in November 2015 when Church was off duty. He was acquitted of sodomy and a second count of object sexual penetration.
A conviction of object sexual penetration carries a mandatory life sentence in Virginia, which the jury recommended in July and Richmond Circuit Court Judge Walter W. Stout III confirmed Friday. Stout also suspended a one-year term for the indecent exposure.
http://www.king5.com/article/news/local ... ce=twitter
Seattle pays company $150K to remove unused surveillance cameras
The City of Seattle has budgeted $150,000 to remove surveillance cameras placed around the city. The company hired to remove the cameras have removed more than half the cameras.
Published: 8:19 PM PST February 2, 2018
More than two dozen surveillance cameras positioned around Seattle are retiring without a single day of work experience.
The Seattle Police Department installed the cameras back in 2013 but were never put into operation after a community outcry.
These Five FBI Scandal Figures May Never Get Out of the FISA Woods
LifeZette-
... in which the FBI had presented inaccurate information to the FISA court. Prior to Woods Procedures, 'ncorrect information was repeated in subsequent and related FISA packages,' the FBI told Congress in August 2003. 'By signing and swearing to the declaration, the headquarters agent is attesting to knowledge of what ...
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/05/ahm ... ogram-fbi/
“I REFUSED TO SECRETLY SPY” — AN IRANIAN-AMERICAN TURNED DOWN THE FBI AND WOUND UP WITH A PRISON SENTENCE
February 5 2018
TO ALL APPEARANCES, Ahmad Sheikhzadeh led the life of a typical New York academic. A 62-year-old Columbia University Ph.D., he lived alone in a small West Village rental, practiced yoga, attended lectures with friends, and conducted research at New York University’s labyrinthine Bobst Library. On Fridays, he’d travel uptown to a building at the corner of 40th Street and Third Avenue to work at Iran’s Mission to the United Nations, stepping directly into one of the most dangerous flashpoints in global politics.
As Sheikhzadeh left his weekly briefing one day in March 2016, an FBI agent approached him. The agent did not immediately detain Sheikhzadeh, according to court filings; instead the investigator brought him to a hotel for questioning. Over the course of the night, the agent revealed that Sheikhzadeh was the subject of a sealed indictment in the Eastern District of New York.
Eventually, the agent made his pitch. The FBI asked Sheikhzadeh “to cooperate with the government and to spy on his employer even though the charges against him did not include anyone else employed at the Mission,” according to court documents.
When Sheikhzadeh refused, he was charged with falsifying his tax returns, followed by other, more serious accusations, including money laundering and conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions against Iran.
The case raised the question of whether Ahmad Sheikhzadeh’s real crime was not picking a side.
Sheikhzadeh’s prosecution — and the accusations traded between the government and his defense counsel — open a window on intelligence efforts unfolding in the wake of the Iran nuclear agreement and the role of federal law enforcement in the political rivalry between Washington and Tehran. At a moment when the White House and congressional Republicans are criticizing the FBI for politicizing the investigative process, Sheikhzadeh’s case puts a human face on the inherently political nature of prosecutions involving foreign powers.
On Friday, a federal judge in Brooklyn sentenced Sheikhzadeh to three months for tax fraud and sanctions violations. The sentence was an unusually public rebuke of an unsuccessful covert operation.
The case culminated with a rare scene in federal court: a defendant being called as a witness at his own sentencing. The 3 1/2-hour hearing provided a strange footnote to the nearly 40-year conflict between the U.S. and Iran, which has included the bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut; the downing of an Iranian civilian airliner by the U.S. Navy; Iran’s use of proxy militias in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria; the detention and disappearance of U.S. citizens in Iran; nuclear sabotage; cyber warfare; and, increasingly, the use of federal criminal prosecutions. Most notably, it raised the question of whether Sheikhzadeh’s real crime was not picking a side.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/scie ... ottom-well
Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
By JOANNA KLEIN FEB. 2, 2018
https://apnews.com/052b343c7ba748319fe5 ... m-disputed
Indonesia police kill Papua woman, clash claim disputed
JAKARTA, Indonesia
Indonesian paramilitary police fatally shot a woman in what they said was a clash with stone-throwing villagers in the troubled Papua region, but a relative of the victim disputed their account of events.
Police said in a statement Monday that the 61-year-old woman was among villagers who intervened to help an 18-year-old man who jumped out of a boat to escape custody after being detained on suspicion of theft.
The statement said police fired warning shots during the clash with villagers on Saturday. The woman died from a gunshot to the head, police said. A cousin of the dead woman said that there was no clash and that she was shot as an innocent bystander when police fired on the escaping suspect.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/f ... s-ugliest/
: ‘Live PD’ paints Spokane at its ugliest
Sun., Feb. 4, 2018
Link du jour
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nei ... -1.3801626
http://www.ark-roundtable.com/index.html
https://monicalizzy.wordpress.com/2010/ ... paul-wolf/
http://www.startribune.com/protesters-b ... =n&clmob=y
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/footb ... -1.3800669
Philadelphia's tepid police response to rioting Eagles fans once again shows racial double standard
Evan Grossman
EVAN GROSSMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, February 5, 2018, 1:24 PM
https://apnews.com/48076bbfa84e4edeb1a0 ... rveillance
NY court considers Cold War secrecy over Muslim surveillance
ALBANY, N.Y. — New York’s highest court will consider on Tuesday whether the New York Police Department can use a Cold War-era legal tactic to conceal information about whether it put Muslims under surveillance.
The Court of Appeals will hear arguments in the cases of two Muslims who say the NYPD overstepped its reach by responding to a 2012 public records request related to the surveillance by saying it could “neither confirm nor deny” the records even existed.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/i-hope-inst ... ames-comey
Boston FBI chief urged agents to stay focused after Comey firing
The head of the Boston FBI office asked his agents to “stay focused” during these “surprising and tumultuous times” after learning that President Trump had fired FBI director James Comey last year, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act to the Lawfare website. Harold H. Shaw, special agent ...
https://luxoraleader.com/fbi-authorized ... on/651581/
FBI licensed Christopher Steele funds for file info
Luxora Leader
The officially authorized payments to , who wrote the infamous – dossier, but then fired the former British spy for lying to agents about his covert leaks to the news media. The sequence of events is outlined in the declassified memo released Friday by Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican and chairman of the House ...
https://apnews.com/e3ab6cac2adc4711b49a ... r-Fed-Cuts
California To Aid Police Reform After Fed Cuts
California’s Attorney General announced the state will take over evaluating ongoing police reform efforts, including eliminating racial bias, after the U.S. Department of Justice stopped its guidance.
https://apnews.com/0fa7af3b7d3d48709bc5 ... ood-school
Nobody hurt when officer’s gun fires at Maplewood school
MAPLEWOOD, Minn. — The Maplewood Police Department says nobody was hurt when a school liaison officer’s gun went off at the Harmony Learning Center.
Police Chief Scott Nadeau says in a statement that the officer was sitting on a bench, talking with some third- and fourth-graders around 1:45 p.m. Monday, when a third-grader sitting next to him stuck his finger in the officer’s holster and pressed the trigger. The bullet hit the floor,
https://apnews.com/0def454be68146d696a7 ... fe-assault
police chief pleads no contest in wife assault
http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/ar ... f6d92.html
New charges for current and former police officers
Docs: Officer lied to feds in cocaine seizure investigation
LORENZO ZAZUETA-CASTRO | STAFF WRITER Feb 3, 2018 Updated Feb 3
https://www.nrtoday.com/news/crime/poli ... fded6.html
Police, sheriff accepting applications for 2018 Citizens Police Academy
Douglas County residents wanting a behind-the-scenes peek into law enforcement officers’ day-to-day life will once again have an opportunity to peel back the curtain.
The Douglas County Sheriff's Office and the Roseburg Police Department, in cooperation with Umpqua Community College, are hosting this year’s Citizen Police Academy.
The 11-week class will show how local law enforcement agencies are organized and the challenges they face protecting the community.
The goal of the workshop is to address common misconceptions and increase cooperation between the community and law enforcement.
https://apnews.com/deb3116443b645439ebb ... sco-police
The Latest: State to track changes by San Francisco Police
SAN FRANCISCO — The Latest on California’s attorney general overseeing reforms at the San Francisco Police Department (all times local):
12:35 p.m.
The San Francisco police chief says his department will be the first in the nation to get voluntary state oversight after the federal government ended a police reform program from the Obama era.
San Francisco was among at least 15 departments nationwide that sought help from the U.S. Department of Justice after deadly police shootings or other problems.
However, the agency opted last year to no longer provide resources or guidance for the Community Oriented Policing Services program.
http://www.heraldextra.com/news/opinion ... a71be.html
Herald editorial: Why is Utah County afraid to talk about sexual assault?
The scandal surrounding former Provo Police Chief John King is now approaching one year old.
And yet, it seems the community is just now seeing the tip of the iceberg of his misconduct.
In the last week, it was reported that multiple victims alleged claims on Jan. 18 against King and Provo city for misconduct that supposedly took place during King’s time employed by the city as police chief. To be clear, King has not yet been determined guilty of misconduct by any local court.
In the last year, we have had access to documents from various investigations and agencies that show repeated, inappropriate behavior exhibited by someone who should have upheld the highest morals, integrity and character in our community.
King has been accused of actions including sexual harassment, rape, battery and assault that demand se
http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/pasad ... 551868.php
Pasadena church to host sheriff's Citizens' Police Academy
By news and staff reports Published 8:57 am, Monday, February 5, 2018
http://www.richmond.com/news/local/crim ... 1903a.html
Richmond police officer to spend life in prison for sex acts with child
Feb 2, 2018
A Richmond police officer was sentenced Friday to life in prison for sexually assaulting a child.
Charles Church, 41, of the 1400 block of West Marshall Street, was convicted in July of two sex crimes — object sexual penetration of a child under 13 years and indecent exposure — that occurred in November 2015 when Church was off duty. He was acquitted of sodomy and a second count of object sexual penetration.
A conviction of object sexual penetration carries a mandatory life sentence in Virginia, which the jury recommended in July and Richmond Circuit Court Judge Walter W. Stout III confirmed Friday. Stout also suspended a one-year term for the indecent exposure.
http://www.king5.com/article/news/local ... ce=twitter
Seattle pays company $150K to remove unused surveillance cameras
The City of Seattle has budgeted $150,000 to remove surveillance cameras placed around the city. The company hired to remove the cameras have removed more than half the cameras.
Published: 8:19 PM PST February 2, 2018
More than two dozen surveillance cameras positioned around Seattle are retiring without a single day of work experience.
The Seattle Police Department installed the cameras back in 2013 but were never put into operation after a community outcry.
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bro ... -1.3820626
HEAR IT: Bronx man cries ‘I can’t breathe’ as upstate cops ignore him before his death
BY CHRISTINA CARREGA LARRY MCSHANE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, February 14, 2018, 12:55 PM
http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/ ... 57324.html
Sheriff’s deputy accused of not turning in evidence from narcotics case
February 14, 2018 11:28 AM
A former deputy with the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office was charged Tuesday with official misconduct for allegedly tampering with evidence while still employed by the department, Sheriff Jeff Easter said.
Justin Price — a four-year veteran with the department — is accused of not turning over evidence during a narcotics investigation, East
https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Vet ... 610344.php
BRIDGEPORT — A 34-year veteran of the Police Department has been charged with stealing overtime money from the department.
Lt. Stephen Shuck, who joined the department in July 1983, was charged Tuesday with first-
degree larceny. He was released on a promise to appear in court.
City records show Shuck earned $128,972 — including $23,737 in overtime — in 2017.
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index ... deadl.html
Police recruit charged in deadly Birmingham shooting over woman
Updated Feb 12 2018
https://apnews.com/bb3b2506279e42cc902d ... -on-heroes
Police told to carry BB guns to plant on people they shoot
Baltimore officers guilty in corruption saga short on heroes
BALTIMORE Baltimore’s latest police corruption saga could be tough to sell as a TV crime drama, short on heroes and too extreme to attract loyal viewers.
Detectives in an elite unit praised for taking guns off the streets secretly dedicated themselves to shaking down citizens and hunting for “monsters” -- bigtime drug dealers with loot to rob. Their leader, a sergeant with a golden-boy reputation and a sledgehammer approach to policing, kept actual sledgehammers -- along with grappling hooks, black masks, even a machete -- in duffel bags in his police-issued car.
Crossing the line from law enforcers to law breakers, members of the Gun Trace Task Force had become thugs with badges, stealing cash, reselling seized narcotics, sticking illegal GPS trackers on the cars of their robbery targets and lying under oath to cover their tracks.
Task force members who pleaded guilty months ago hoping to shave time off their sentences revealed these and other jaw-dropping details as two of their colleagues insisted on going to trial. The result: A jury convicted Detectives Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor of robbery, racketeering, and conspiracy on Monday evening, and they face up to 20 years on each count.
Even in a city all too familiar with abuses by law enforcers, the fallout from these stories of police criminality has been bad so far and the scandal promises to get a whole lot worse for Baltimore’s already fragile criminal justice system.
Revealing police criminality stretching back to 2008, the four ex-detectives told jurors about everything from armed home invasions to staging fictitious crime scenes and routinely defrauding their department.
They testified that their supervisor, Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, a former amateur mixed-martial-arts fighter, told them to carry BB guns in case they needed to plant weapons, conspired with a crooked bail bondsman, and occasionally posed as a federal agent when shaking people down.
Two of the detectives, Momodu Gondo and Jemell Rayam, admitted to leading double lives as police officers and armed drug dealers, even running interference for a heroin-trafficking ring run by Gondo’s childhood buddy.
Public defenders are calling into question each and every case touched by the disbanded unit’s office
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/c ... 99439.html
Man, 84, killed by police was veteran fighting eviction
Cop shoots, kills, 84-year-old man who was threatening suicide
February 12, 2018 03:08 PM
Updated February 13, 2018 07:29 AM
A despondent military veteran – slated for eviction because of his service dogs named Roxie
https://delawarestatenews.net/news/md-p ... d-assault/
Maryland town police hire ex-officer acquitted of assault
http://www.timesreporter.com/news/20180 ... ing-report
Policeman Bryan J. Eubanks sentenced to 90 days in jail for false shooting report after he shot himself
HEAR IT: Bronx man cries ‘I can’t breathe’ as upstate cops ignore him before his death
BY CHRISTINA CARREGA LARRY MCSHANE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, February 14, 2018, 12:55 PM
http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/ ... 57324.html
Sheriff’s deputy accused of not turning in evidence from narcotics case
February 14, 2018 11:28 AM
A former deputy with the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office was charged Tuesday with official misconduct for allegedly tampering with evidence while still employed by the department, Sheriff Jeff Easter said.
Justin Price — a four-year veteran with the department — is accused of not turning over evidence during a narcotics investigation, East
https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Vet ... 610344.php
BRIDGEPORT — A 34-year veteran of the Police Department has been charged with stealing overtime money from the department.
Lt. Stephen Shuck, who joined the department in July 1983, was charged Tuesday with first-
degree larceny. He was released on a promise to appear in court.
City records show Shuck earned $128,972 — including $23,737 in overtime — in 2017.
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index ... deadl.html
Police recruit charged in deadly Birmingham shooting over woman
Updated Feb 12 2018
https://apnews.com/bb3b2506279e42cc902d ... -on-heroes
Police told to carry BB guns to plant on people they shoot
Baltimore officers guilty in corruption saga short on heroes
BALTIMORE Baltimore’s latest police corruption saga could be tough to sell as a TV crime drama, short on heroes and too extreme to attract loyal viewers.
Detectives in an elite unit praised for taking guns off the streets secretly dedicated themselves to shaking down citizens and hunting for “monsters” -- bigtime drug dealers with loot to rob. Their leader, a sergeant with a golden-boy reputation and a sledgehammer approach to policing, kept actual sledgehammers -- along with grappling hooks, black masks, even a machete -- in duffel bags in his police-issued car.
Crossing the line from law enforcers to law breakers, members of the Gun Trace Task Force had become thugs with badges, stealing cash, reselling seized narcotics, sticking illegal GPS trackers on the cars of their robbery targets and lying under oath to cover their tracks.
Task force members who pleaded guilty months ago hoping to shave time off their sentences revealed these and other jaw-dropping details as two of their colleagues insisted on going to trial. The result: A jury convicted Detectives Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor of robbery, racketeering, and conspiracy on Monday evening, and they face up to 20 years on each count.
Even in a city all too familiar with abuses by law enforcers, the fallout from these stories of police criminality has been bad so far and the scandal promises to get a whole lot worse for Baltimore’s already fragile criminal justice system.
Revealing police criminality stretching back to 2008, the four ex-detectives told jurors about everything from armed home invasions to staging fictitious crime scenes and routinely defrauding their department.
They testified that their supervisor, Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, a former amateur mixed-martial-arts fighter, told them to carry BB guns in case they needed to plant weapons, conspired with a crooked bail bondsman, and occasionally posed as a federal agent when shaking people down.
Two of the detectives, Momodu Gondo and Jemell Rayam, admitted to leading double lives as police officers and armed drug dealers, even running interference for a heroin-trafficking ring run by Gondo’s childhood buddy.
Public defenders are calling into question each and every case touched by the disbanded unit’s office
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/c ... 99439.html
Man, 84, killed by police was veteran fighting eviction
Cop shoots, kills, 84-year-old man who was threatening suicide
February 12, 2018 03:08 PM
Updated February 13, 2018 07:29 AM
A despondent military veteran – slated for eviction because of his service dogs named Roxie
https://delawarestatenews.net/news/md-p ... d-assault/
Maryland town police hire ex-officer acquitted of assault
http://www.timesreporter.com/news/20180 ... ing-report
Policeman Bryan J. Eubanks sentenced to 90 days in jail for false shooting report after he shot himself
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... sco-cantu/
The Best Book on Immigration You Will Read This Year Comes From a Former Border Patrol Agent
Francisco Cantú’s “The Line Becomes a River” is honest, gripping, and wonderfully written.
IAN GORDONFEB. 3, 2018
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryla ... story.html
Baltimore Police disciplinary records remain shielded despite revelations of misconduct
https://apnews.com/cdeaf8715659477898e0 ... ering-case
Another detective allowed to retire and collect pension
before being arrested.She waives hearing in false reports, tampering case
PITTSBURGH
A recently retired Pittsburgh homicide detective has waived her right to a preliminary hearing on charges of filing false police reports and tampering with evidence.
Fifty-one-year-old Margaret Sherwood waived all charges including false swearing, obstruction, hindering apprehension and other offenses before a hearing scheduled last week.
Her attorney told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that “We’re going to be ready for trial.” He said earlier that his client didn’t do anything wrong.
An indictment unsealed last month by the state attorney general’s office accuses her of giving false information to prosecutors in two 2014 slayings and trying to scuttle a domestic violence prosecution of a jailhouse informant,
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2018 ... r_war.html
'Serpico-like situation' inside Jersey City police department, ex-cop ...
NJ.com-
JERSEY CITY — As Jersey City's police department reels from the guilty pleas of 11 cops who have admitted taking corrupt payments related to off-duty jobs, a former cop says in a new lawsuit that he was ostracized and eventually fired after reporting an illegal off-duty detail 10 years ago. Juan Luis ...
Juan Luis Ramos, 44, alleges in the seven-count lawsuit, filed in December in Hudson County Superior Court, that because he was "accused of being a rat," he was reprimanded and ostracized over the course a decade, targeted with at least two internal affairs probes and eventually fired in 2016.
Ramos' lawyer, Lou Zayas, called the atmosphere inside the police department a "Serpico-like situation," referring to Frank Serpico, the New York cop who exposed widespread corruption inside the NYPD starting in the 1960s.
"The allegations make clear that there's a culture of silence within the police department that discourages police officers from reporting misconduct by other police officers," Zayas told The Jersey Journal.
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2018/02/1 ... orruption/
Cop Found Guilty In Scandal Was Called Out By Local Rapper ...
CBS Baltimore / WJZ-
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Former Baltimore Police detective Daniel Hersl is awaiting sentencing for robbery and other crimes that a jury found him guilty of as part of his role in the Gun Trace Task Force corruption scandal. RELATED: More stories on the Gun Trace Task Force/Baltimore Police corruption ...
https://wydaily.com/local-news/2018/02/ ... ith-a-cop/
Williamsburg PD to host 'Coffee with a Cop'
Williamsburg Yorktown Daily-
The Williamsburg Police Department will hold a meet and greet called “Coffee with a Cop” at Mama Steve's House of Pancakes on Tuesday, according to a Williamsburg Police Department news release. Residents can stop by between 8 and 10 a.m. for coffee and conversation with local law enforcement.
http://www.syracuse.com/state/index.ssf ... tment.html
Report: Overweight cops making NYPD 'the fattest police department'
Syracuse.com-
"We really are the world's largest police department," one veteran copcomplained to the publication. "We're the fattest police department in the country ... because we have no requirement to stay in shape." Former copJose Vega told the Post that he filed a lawsuit for a job-related disability pension, ...
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/c ... d-12050732
Cop is arrested by his own colleagues as he's suspected of trying to ...
Mirror.co.uk-
Cop is arrested by his own colleagues as he's suspected of trying to blackmail a man who was sleeping with a prostitute. This is the moment a police officer, based in Luton, is arrested by his own colleagues on suspicion of blackmail. Share; Comments. By. Jane Lavender. 12:18, 19 FEB 2018. News ...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/c ... story.html
A Schaumburg cop was accused of helping run a drug ring. Why the case fell apart the day of his trial remains a mystery
Publicly, the state’s attorney’s office has remained tight-lipped about why the case against ex-cop John Cichy fell apart last week on the day he was to go to trial, despite evidence that they’d said included surveillance footage of him stealing $20,000 of planted cash from a storage locker.
Now attorneys for two other ex-officers who pleaded guilty in the scheme — and are serving long prison sentences — want answers. State’s Attorney Robert Berlin’s office said it will respond “in a prompt and appropriate manner” but did not specify what evidence might be shared, or when. Berlin said in a statement last week that his office had “insufficient admissible evidence” to convict Cichy, citing “recent developments.”
https://wydaily.com/local-news/2018/02/ ... ie-lilley/
Getting to know your neighborhood cop: Master Police Officer Jamie ...
Williamsburg Yorktown Daily
Editor's note: This is the first installment of a five-part question and answer series with James City County's five Community Services Unit officers. These officers are assigned to certain areas of the county and work directly with citizens to provide business and home inspections, as well as other servi
https://www.texasobserver.org/compassio ... pe-valdez/
Compassionate Cop? Taking a Hard Look at Lupe Valdez’s Record as Dallas Sheriff
At best, Lupe Valdez embraced reforms that years of scandal had forced upon the Dallas County jail. At worst, she downplayed problems and withheld information on jail deaths in the post-Sandra Bland era.
–
by Michael Barajas
@michaelsbarajas
February 19, 2018
https://blogs.mprnews.org/capitol-view/ ... that-idea/
A cop per school? Minn. Senate leader raises that idea
Minnesota Public Radio News (blog)-
Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, left, and House Speaker Kurt Daudt speak at a January 2017 Capitol news conference. Tim Pugmire|MPR News. The Minnesota Senate's top Republican said Monday that the state should consider paying for a police presence in every public school. Appearing on an ...
https://medium.com/@LoriHandrahan2/law- ... e48164430f
Law Enforcement Arrested for Trading in Child Rape
The following summary of 103 law enforcement officers (LEOs) arrested for trading in child rape updates earlier research. In November 2014, I profiled seventy local and state police officers arrested on child pornography related charges — Police Trading in Child Rape & Torture. My research was out of date almost as soon as I hit publish. A year later I posted When Law Enforcement is the Perpetrator reviewing one month, November 2015, when more than two LEOs per week were in the news for trafficking in child sex abuse. This research is not comprehensive but rather a small sample of LEOs arrested and does not include federal law enforcement. Without institutional support, conducting a complete study of all local, state and federal law enforcement has not been possible.
As for the weak argument someone always seems to make, “there is a certain number of pedophiles in the population and the number within law enforcement is perfectly normal” — let me respond. No pedophile should ever wear a badge, carry a gun and swear an oath to serve and protect. Not one person trading in child rape should ever be employed in law enforcement. Ever. Period. If we cannot keep pedophiles out of law enforcement, what kind of country have we become? If law enforcement cannot keep child rapists out of their ranks — what kind of “protection” are we paying for with our tax money?
Imagine, as you read these arrests, you are a parent reporting to police your child has been raped, or is missing or trafficked. How do you think the police here might have handled your complaint? How well do you think your children are being protected? These are real children being raped and tortured in the videos and images. American children. Every time an image/video is shared that child is trafficked again. Far too many police are involved in the trafficking.
For further information, please see the National Police Misconduct Reporting Project (NPMRP) at Cato Institute and the Associated Press (AP) year long investigation, 2015, into police misconduct.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/ ... oper-wray/
Fire the FBI Chief
By KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON
February 18, 2018 4:00 AM
http://www.vulgareconomics.com/search/label/syllabus
Political Economy of Fascism Mini-Course
Posted by Mike Isaacson
This mini-course is designed for popular education and to operate as either a series or as individual stand-alone workshops. The course begins with a review of my zine “You Can’t Punch Every Nazi” as a participatory workshop. The following four classes elaborate on the four layers of fascist doctrine I introduce in the first class. The last class takes account of fascist ideology to build a holistic antifascist theory highlighting existing antifascist praxis. I had originally designed this course for open library courses such as those the NYPL holds regularly.
https://www.amny.com/opinion/columnists ... 1.16808736
Crunch time for ex-NYPD cop
amNY-
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired McCarthy in December 2015 after a court ordered the release of a video that showed a white Chicago cop, Jason Van Dyke, had shot 16 times into Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old African American, in October 2014. Emanuel had held up the release of the video until ...
Link du jour
http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/19/colom ... s-man-gun/
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/n ... 352655002/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 102453.htm
https://archive.org/stream/MartinsburgP ... 1/mode/2up
http://www.cnqsmotor.com/en/article_rea ... e/566.html
https://electrek.co/2018/02/17/solar-pa ... -monoperc/
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/cri ... 351746002/
Solar panel efficiency ‘research race’ ongoing as technology dashes toward records
John Fitzgerald Weaver
- Feb. 17th 2018 ET
@Sol
The Best Book on Immigration You Will Read This Year Comes From a Former Border Patrol Agent
Francisco Cantú’s “The Line Becomes a River” is honest, gripping, and wonderfully written.
IAN GORDONFEB. 3, 2018
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryla ... story.html
Baltimore Police disciplinary records remain shielded despite revelations of misconduct
https://apnews.com/cdeaf8715659477898e0 ... ering-case
Another detective allowed to retire and collect pension
before being arrested.She waives hearing in false reports, tampering case
PITTSBURGH
A recently retired Pittsburgh homicide detective has waived her right to a preliminary hearing on charges of filing false police reports and tampering with evidence.
Fifty-one-year-old Margaret Sherwood waived all charges including false swearing, obstruction, hindering apprehension and other offenses before a hearing scheduled last week.
Her attorney told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that “We’re going to be ready for trial.” He said earlier that his client didn’t do anything wrong.
An indictment unsealed last month by the state attorney general’s office accuses her of giving false information to prosecutors in two 2014 slayings and trying to scuttle a domestic violence prosecution of a jailhouse informant,
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2018 ... r_war.html
'Serpico-like situation' inside Jersey City police department, ex-cop ...
NJ.com-
JERSEY CITY — As Jersey City's police department reels from the guilty pleas of 11 cops who have admitted taking corrupt payments related to off-duty jobs, a former cop says in a new lawsuit that he was ostracized and eventually fired after reporting an illegal off-duty detail 10 years ago. Juan Luis ...
Juan Luis Ramos, 44, alleges in the seven-count lawsuit, filed in December in Hudson County Superior Court, that because he was "accused of being a rat," he was reprimanded and ostracized over the course a decade, targeted with at least two internal affairs probes and eventually fired in 2016.
Ramos' lawyer, Lou Zayas, called the atmosphere inside the police department a "Serpico-like situation," referring to Frank Serpico, the New York cop who exposed widespread corruption inside the NYPD starting in the 1960s.
"The allegations make clear that there's a culture of silence within the police department that discourages police officers from reporting misconduct by other police officers," Zayas told The Jersey Journal.
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2018/02/1 ... orruption/
Cop Found Guilty In Scandal Was Called Out By Local Rapper ...
CBS Baltimore / WJZ-
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Former Baltimore Police detective Daniel Hersl is awaiting sentencing for robbery and other crimes that a jury found him guilty of as part of his role in the Gun Trace Task Force corruption scandal. RELATED: More stories on the Gun Trace Task Force/Baltimore Police corruption ...
https://wydaily.com/local-news/2018/02/ ... ith-a-cop/
Williamsburg PD to host 'Coffee with a Cop'
Williamsburg Yorktown Daily-
The Williamsburg Police Department will hold a meet and greet called “Coffee with a Cop” at Mama Steve's House of Pancakes on Tuesday, according to a Williamsburg Police Department news release. Residents can stop by between 8 and 10 a.m. for coffee and conversation with local law enforcement.
http://www.syracuse.com/state/index.ssf ... tment.html
Report: Overweight cops making NYPD 'the fattest police department'
Syracuse.com-
"We really are the world's largest police department," one veteran copcomplained to the publication. "We're the fattest police department in the country ... because we have no requirement to stay in shape." Former copJose Vega told the Post that he filed a lawsuit for a job-related disability pension, ...
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/c ... d-12050732
Cop is arrested by his own colleagues as he's suspected of trying to ...
Mirror.co.uk-
Cop is arrested by his own colleagues as he's suspected of trying to blackmail a man who was sleeping with a prostitute. This is the moment a police officer, based in Luton, is arrested by his own colleagues on suspicion of blackmail. Share; Comments. By. Jane Lavender. 12:18, 19 FEB 2018. News ...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/c ... story.html
A Schaumburg cop was accused of helping run a drug ring. Why the case fell apart the day of his trial remains a mystery
Publicly, the state’s attorney’s office has remained tight-lipped about why the case against ex-cop John Cichy fell apart last week on the day he was to go to trial, despite evidence that they’d said included surveillance footage of him stealing $20,000 of planted cash from a storage locker.
Now attorneys for two other ex-officers who pleaded guilty in the scheme — and are serving long prison sentences — want answers. State’s Attorney Robert Berlin’s office said it will respond “in a prompt and appropriate manner” but did not specify what evidence might be shared, or when. Berlin said in a statement last week that his office had “insufficient admissible evidence” to convict Cichy, citing “recent developments.”
https://wydaily.com/local-news/2018/02/ ... ie-lilley/
Getting to know your neighborhood cop: Master Police Officer Jamie ...
Williamsburg Yorktown Daily
Editor's note: This is the first installment of a five-part question and answer series with James City County's five Community Services Unit officers. These officers are assigned to certain areas of the county and work directly with citizens to provide business and home inspections, as well as other servi
https://www.texasobserver.org/compassio ... pe-valdez/
Compassionate Cop? Taking a Hard Look at Lupe Valdez’s Record as Dallas Sheriff
At best, Lupe Valdez embraced reforms that years of scandal had forced upon the Dallas County jail. At worst, she downplayed problems and withheld information on jail deaths in the post-Sandra Bland era.
–
by Michael Barajas
@michaelsbarajas
February 19, 2018
https://blogs.mprnews.org/capitol-view/ ... that-idea/
A cop per school? Minn. Senate leader raises that idea
Minnesota Public Radio News (blog)-
Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, left, and House Speaker Kurt Daudt speak at a January 2017 Capitol news conference. Tim Pugmire|MPR News. The Minnesota Senate's top Republican said Monday that the state should consider paying for a police presence in every public school. Appearing on an ...
https://medium.com/@LoriHandrahan2/law- ... e48164430f
Law Enforcement Arrested for Trading in Child Rape
The following summary of 103 law enforcement officers (LEOs) arrested for trading in child rape updates earlier research. In November 2014, I profiled seventy local and state police officers arrested on child pornography related charges — Police Trading in Child Rape & Torture. My research was out of date almost as soon as I hit publish. A year later I posted When Law Enforcement is the Perpetrator reviewing one month, November 2015, when more than two LEOs per week were in the news for trafficking in child sex abuse. This research is not comprehensive but rather a small sample of LEOs arrested and does not include federal law enforcement. Without institutional support, conducting a complete study of all local, state and federal law enforcement has not been possible.
As for the weak argument someone always seems to make, “there is a certain number of pedophiles in the population and the number within law enforcement is perfectly normal” — let me respond. No pedophile should ever wear a badge, carry a gun and swear an oath to serve and protect. Not one person trading in child rape should ever be employed in law enforcement. Ever. Period. If we cannot keep pedophiles out of law enforcement, what kind of country have we become? If law enforcement cannot keep child rapists out of their ranks — what kind of “protection” are we paying for with our tax money?
Imagine, as you read these arrests, you are a parent reporting to police your child has been raped, or is missing or trafficked. How do you think the police here might have handled your complaint? How well do you think your children are being protected? These are real children being raped and tortured in the videos and images. American children. Every time an image/video is shared that child is trafficked again. Far too many police are involved in the trafficking.
For further information, please see the National Police Misconduct Reporting Project (NPMRP) at Cato Institute and the Associated Press (AP) year long investigation, 2015, into police misconduct.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/ ... oper-wray/
Fire the FBI Chief
By KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON
February 18, 2018 4:00 AM
http://www.vulgareconomics.com/search/label/syllabus
Political Economy of Fascism Mini-Course
Posted by Mike Isaacson
This mini-course is designed for popular education and to operate as either a series or as individual stand-alone workshops. The course begins with a review of my zine “You Can’t Punch Every Nazi” as a participatory workshop. The following four classes elaborate on the four layers of fascist doctrine I introduce in the first class. The last class takes account of fascist ideology to build a holistic antifascist theory highlighting existing antifascist praxis. I had originally designed this course for open library courses such as those the NYPL holds regularly.
https://www.amny.com/opinion/columnists ... 1.16808736
Crunch time for ex-NYPD cop
amNY-
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired McCarthy in December 2015 after a court ordered the release of a video that showed a white Chicago cop, Jason Van Dyke, had shot 16 times into Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old African American, in October 2014. Emanuel had held up the release of the video until ...
Link du jour
http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/19/colom ... s-man-gun/
https://www.courier-journal.com/story/n ... 352655002/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 102453.htm
https://archive.org/stream/MartinsburgP ... 1/mode/2up
http://www.cnqsmotor.com/en/article_rea ... e/566.html
https://electrek.co/2018/02/17/solar-pa ... -monoperc/
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/cri ... 351746002/
Solar panel efficiency ‘research race’ ongoing as technology dashes toward records
John Fitzgerald Weaver
- Feb. 17th 2018 ET
@Sol
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nation ... story.html
Ten Philadelphia police recruits resign after trying to cheat on open-book exam
By ELLA TORRES
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
JUN 24, 2019 | 7:53 P
https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/at- ... d=17392687
At 80, Peace Activist Robin Lloyd Still Crosses the Line
By KEN PICARD
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/why ... p-11692045
FBI Got a Call About Courthouse Shooter in 2016. Here’s Why They Didn’t Act on It.
STEPHEN YOUNG | JUNE 21, 2019 | 4:00AM
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
Settlement in suit involving NYPD cop known as ‘Bullethead’ after DA declined to prosecute
By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
JUN 27, 2019 | 4:12 AM
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/ ... story.html
Lowell police officer arraigned in rape of homeless teenager
By Emily Sweeney Globe Staff,June 27, 2019, 2 hours ago
Email to
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la- ... story.html
Police fired more than 55 rounds at Willie McCoy in less than 4 seconds, report shows
By COLLEEN SHALBY
JUN 27, 2019 | 12:55 PM
https://www.foxnews.com/us/arizona-entr ... -db-cooper
Arizona sleuth says FBI misidentified jump zone of DB Cooper: report
https://www.wsj.com/articles/doj-examin ... 1561629603
DOJ Examines Whether FBI Officials Acted Inappropriately by Attending Dodgers Game
FBI assists with security planning at major sporting events that are at risk of being targeted by terrorism or other violence
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinio ... 056760.php
As HPD, other local police embrace body cams, foolish for FBI, DEA to ban them in joint operations[Editorial]
By The Editorial Board June 27, 2019 Updated: June 27, 2019 3:54 p.m.
JFK Assassination Magazine
Hello all,
Exciting news! The print version of "garrison: Issue 001" is now available via LuLu. We are so excited for this to happen, as we were happy yet upset that we ran out of the initial 100 copies so quickly. If you didn't get to buy the first run, now is the chance.
There are a few reasons we went with LuLu:
1) Amazon really treats independent authors and publishers poorly, more so when trying to list a magazine. They use a large corporation as their third-party magazine dealer. If you don't get jump through massive hoops to list with them, you can't get on Amazon.
2) LuLu uses the perfect-bound spines, which means the binding is squared off with printing down the spine rather than being stapled and v-shaped. it's much nice.
3) The glossy paper used for the cover is thicker and, I believe, nice.
4) International (outside-the-U.S.) orders will be accepted and fulfilled.
5) LuLu often runs deals and specials. If you type in ONEFIVE in the discount box today, June 27th until 11:59 p.m., you will get 15% off all orders.
6) You have multiple options for shipping. You choose method and pricing.
Here is the LuLu link for Midnight Writer News Publications, where you can buy garrison:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/MidnightWriterNews
Here is the link to the announcement on MidnightWriterNews.com, where you can see a list of the articles and writers in issue 001:
https://midnightwriternews.com/garrison ... available/
If you didn't get a print copy and would like one, now is the time. Thank you all for your kindness and your support. If any of you would like to spread the news on your blogs or on social media, it would be appreciated.
Ten Philadelphia police recruits resign after trying to cheat on open-book exam
By ELLA TORRES
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
JUN 24, 2019 | 7:53 P
https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/at- ... d=17392687
At 80, Peace Activist Robin Lloyd Still Crosses the Line
By KEN PICARD
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/why ... p-11692045
FBI Got a Call About Courthouse Shooter in 2016. Here’s Why They Didn’t Act on It.
STEPHEN YOUNG | JUNE 21, 2019 | 4:00AM
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
Settlement in suit involving NYPD cop known as ‘Bullethead’ after DA declined to prosecute
By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA
| NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
JUN 27, 2019 | 4:12 AM
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/ ... story.html
Lowell police officer arraigned in rape of homeless teenager
By Emily Sweeney Globe Staff,June 27, 2019, 2 hours ago
Email to
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la- ... story.html
Police fired more than 55 rounds at Willie McCoy in less than 4 seconds, report shows
By COLLEEN SHALBY
JUN 27, 2019 | 12:55 PM
https://www.foxnews.com/us/arizona-entr ... -db-cooper
Arizona sleuth says FBI misidentified jump zone of DB Cooper: report
https://www.wsj.com/articles/doj-examin ... 1561629603
DOJ Examines Whether FBI Officials Acted Inappropriately by Attending Dodgers Game
FBI assists with security planning at major sporting events that are at risk of being targeted by terrorism or other violence
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinio ... 056760.php
As HPD, other local police embrace body cams, foolish for FBI, DEA to ban them in joint operations[Editorial]
By The Editorial Board June 27, 2019 Updated: June 27, 2019 3:54 p.m.
JFK Assassination Magazine
Hello all,
Exciting news! The print version of "garrison: Issue 001" is now available via LuLu. We are so excited for this to happen, as we were happy yet upset that we ran out of the initial 100 copies so quickly. If you didn't get to buy the first run, now is the chance.
There are a few reasons we went with LuLu:
1) Amazon really treats independent authors and publishers poorly, more so when trying to list a magazine. They use a large corporation as their third-party magazine dealer. If you don't get jump through massive hoops to list with them, you can't get on Amazon.
2) LuLu uses the perfect-bound spines, which means the binding is squared off with printing down the spine rather than being stapled and v-shaped. it's much nice.
3) The glossy paper used for the cover is thicker and, I believe, nice.
4) International (outside-the-U.S.) orders will be accepted and fulfilled.
5) LuLu often runs deals and specials. If you type in ONEFIVE in the discount box today, June 27th until 11:59 p.m., you will get 15% off all orders.
6) You have multiple options for shipping. You choose method and pricing.
Here is the LuLu link for Midnight Writer News Publications, where you can buy garrison:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/MidnightWriterNews
Here is the link to the announcement on MidnightWriterNews.com, where you can see a list of the articles and writers in issue 001:
https://midnightwriternews.com/garrison ... available/
If you didn't get a print copy and would like one, now is the time. Thank you all for your kindness and your support. If any of you would like to spread the news on your blogs or on social media, it would be appreciated.
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-in- ... VMaYxxG7A/
Former Head Cop of Pedophile Unit Arrested for not Registering as a Sex Offender
He was once the top cop of New Orleans pedophile unit. Now he's been arrested for not registering as a sex offender.
Stanley Carl Burkhardt, 68, the convicted pedophile who oversaw the New Orleans Police Department child sex abuse investigations unit between the 1970s until 1987, before he was revealed to be a pedophile himself, was arrested last week for not registering as a sex-offender.
And that's just the tip of
http://www.pulitzercenter.org/reporting ... re-tainted
Lawyers Press Case That 9/11 Confessions Given to F.B.I. Are Tainted
July 29, 2019 | The New York Times
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-sta ... kin-72934/
05/09/2019
Subject: Freedom of Information Act Request: FBI files on Art Kunkin
Portal
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:
- Any records regarding Arthur Glick Kunkin (March 28, 1928 - April 30, 2019), the Los Angeles-based publisher of the Free Press. Please search for cross-referenced records relevant to my inquiry, as well as ELSUR records. Proof of death is not required, as his death has been reported: https://www.latimes.com/local/obituarie ... story.html
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
CJ Ciaramella
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
05/17/2019
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to
https://www.nj.com/sussex-county/2019/0 ... shows.html
Cop yells ‘back up!’ before fatally shooting dog, bodycam footage shows
Updated Jul 29, 5:58 PM; Posted Jul 29, 5:19 PM
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gon ... al3-nZpCw/
Man Shot Four Times by Cop thru Front Door says Call the Cops: "I am the Cops"
https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Br ... 201990.php
Bridgeport cop arrested again, charged with violating terms of earlier discharge
By Daniel Tepfer Updated 4:41 pm EDT, Monday, July 29, 2019
*
*
https://www.rt.com/usa/465345-police-pa ... oved-ohio/
Man charged with felony over cop-mocking Facebook page allowed to sue cops
Published time: 30 Jul, 2019 02:14
Get short URL
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/guns ... s-11230216
Someone Is Breaking Into Miami Cop Cars and Stealing Guns
JERRY IANNELLI | JULY 29, 2019
In what has become a recurring theme over the past few years, the Miami Police Department is, once again, struggling with theft and missing property. According
https://www.wgauradio.com/news/local/at ... ZvJ2MS19H/
COP ARRESTED AFTER SWAT STANDOFF IN BETHLEHEM
By: Shaddi Abusaid, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published: July 29, 2019 3:06 AM EDT
http://www.kurv.com/ex-valley-cop-to-ap ... onviction/
Valley Cop To Appeal Drug Corruption Conviction
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/29/2074 ... rtnerships
Amazon’s Ring reportedly partners with more than 200 US police departments
Law enforcement across the country works with Ring
By Colin Lecher@colinlecher Jul 29, 2019, 6:22pm EDT
Share this story
Former Head Cop of Pedophile Unit Arrested for not Registering as a Sex Offender
He was once the top cop of New Orleans pedophile unit. Now he's been arrested for not registering as a sex offender.
Stanley Carl Burkhardt, 68, the convicted pedophile who oversaw the New Orleans Police Department child sex abuse investigations unit between the 1970s until 1987, before he was revealed to be a pedophile himself, was arrested last week for not registering as a sex-offender.
And that's just the tip of
http://www.pulitzercenter.org/reporting ... re-tainted
Lawyers Press Case That 9/11 Confessions Given to F.B.I. Are Tainted
July 29, 2019 | The New York Times
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-sta ... kin-72934/
05/09/2019
Subject: Freedom of Information Act Request: FBI files on Art Kunkin
Portal
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:
- Any records regarding Arthur Glick Kunkin (March 28, 1928 - April 30, 2019), the Los Angeles-based publisher of the Free Press. Please search for cross-referenced records relevant to my inquiry, as well as ELSUR records. Proof of death is not required, as his death has been reported: https://www.latimes.com/local/obituarie ... story.html
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
CJ Ciaramella
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
05/17/2019
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to
https://www.nj.com/sussex-county/2019/0 ... shows.html
Cop yells ‘back up!’ before fatally shooting dog, bodycam footage shows
Updated Jul 29, 5:58 PM; Posted Jul 29, 5:19 PM
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gon ... al3-nZpCw/
Man Shot Four Times by Cop thru Front Door says Call the Cops: "I am the Cops"
https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Br ... 201990.php
Bridgeport cop arrested again, charged with violating terms of earlier discharge
By Daniel Tepfer Updated 4:41 pm EDT, Monday, July 29, 2019
*
*
https://www.rt.com/usa/465345-police-pa ... oved-ohio/
Man charged with felony over cop-mocking Facebook page allowed to sue cops
Published time: 30 Jul, 2019 02:14
Get short URL
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/guns ... s-11230216
Someone Is Breaking Into Miami Cop Cars and Stealing Guns
JERRY IANNELLI | JULY 29, 2019
In what has become a recurring theme over the past few years, the Miami Police Department is, once again, struggling with theft and missing property. According
https://www.wgauradio.com/news/local/at ... ZvJ2MS19H/
COP ARRESTED AFTER SWAT STANDOFF IN BETHLEHEM
By: Shaddi Abusaid, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published: July 29, 2019 3:06 AM EDT
http://www.kurv.com/ex-valley-cop-to-ap ... onviction/
Valley Cop To Appeal Drug Corruption Conviction
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/29/2074 ... rtnerships
Amazon’s Ring reportedly partners with more than 200 US police departments
Law enforcement across the country works with Ring
By Colin Lecher@colinlecher Jul 29, 2019, 6:22pm EDT
Share this story
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... other-says
Police enabled 'predator' Ed Buck by ignoring black gay men, victim's mother says
Gemmel Moore died in 2017 in the home of LA activist accused of forcibly injecting men with deadly doses of drugs
https://whowhatwhy.org/2019/08/14/key-u ... d-cameras/
KEY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ABOUT EPSTEIN DEATH AND CAMERAS
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/book ... erman.html
A Former Agent Investigates the F.B.I. and Finds It Lacking
https://www.pressherald.com/2019/09/25/ ... r-service/
Updated September 25
I
Habitat for Humanity offers discounted home repair service
The service is available to low-income homeowners in Cumberland County
http://ticklethewire.com/2019/09/26/por ... -training/
Portland Police Stop ICE Agents from Using Bureau Center for Training
https://www.wnewsj.com/news/117307/form ... sentencing
POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 26, 2019 BY WILMINGTON NEWS JOURNAL
Former Ohio sheriff who admitted taking bribes faces sentencing
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... hur-genius
UCLA prof who mapped the costs of incarceration in L.A. wins a MacArthur
https://trac.syr.edu/tracfbi/findings/current/
https://trac.syr.edu/tracfbi/
FBI Database
David Burnham—an award-winning former New York Times reporter and a pioneering data journalist—is the co-founder and co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a joint project between the Newhouse School and the Whitman School based here at Newhouse.
TRAC specializes in using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain federal government administrative records. It performs sophisticated statistical analyses on the records it collects to make sense of and verify these complex relational files with millions of individual, case-by-case records. TRAC then builds data mining tools that enable it—along with journalists, policy makers, citizens and other researchers—to analyze and assess federal policies and practices. TRAC's information is utterly unique in the marketplace of ideas, and its findings are frequently cited in major news reports and research journals.
Concrete government information, much of it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, has been central to his work as both a reporter and a researcher. Burnham started as a reporter in 1958, working for UPI, Newsweek, CBS and other organizations. From 1968 to 1986, he was an investigative reporter with The New York Times in New York and Washington, with much of his coverage concentrating on enforcement, regulatory and surveillance issues. He has written three books and numerous magazine articles. His most recent book, “Above the Law: Secret Deals, Political Fixes, and Other Misadventures of the U.S. Department of Justice,” was published by Scribner in 1996. His investigative book on the Internal Revenue Service, “A Law Unto Itself: Power, Politics and the IRS,” was published in 1990 by Random House. A third book, “The Rise of the Computer State,” was published in 1984.
Over the years, Burnham has received a number of professional honors including the George Polk Award for Community Service, Long Island University, 1968; the Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, 1987; the Best Investigative Book of 1990, Investigative Reporters and Editors, 1990; and the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, Bellagio, Italy, 1992. In 2003, Burnham was awarded an honorary doctorate degree in Humane Letters from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In 2006, he was inducted into the National Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame.
Burnham works out of Washington, D.C.
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/br ... story.html
Former state attorney general from Mexico sentenced to 20 years for helping cartel smuggle drugs to U.S. cities
By MOLLY CRANE-NEWMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
SEP 26, 2019 | 7:41 PM
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/brow ... story.html
Suspended Margate cop arrested in undercover drug buy, police say
By TONYA ALANEZ
SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL |
SEP 26, 2019 |
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/stat ... 18312.html
99 years for kicking a cop? That’s the sentence a Texas man just got, authorities say
Read more here: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/stat ... rylink=cpy
https://www.nj.com/middlesex/2019/09/su ... llege.html
Suspended Edison cop tried to cover up collision, then unlawfully get info on the other driver, authorities allege
Updated 5:45 PM; Today 3:31 PM
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/la ... s-11363818
La Paz Cop Pulls Black Man Over for Air Freshener
MEG O'CONNOR | SEPTEMBER 26, 2019 | 10:
https://www.qchron.com/editions/queensw ... 321f3.html
Coke was it for an allegedly dirty cop
DA’s Office says he helped
https://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/9/25 ... murder-cop
Suicide by cop” is murder by cop
By staff | September 25, 2019
Hudson Valley Cop Killed 4 Men, 1 Killed With Zip Tie
Bobby Welber
September 26, 2019
Read More: Feds: Hudson Valley Cop Killed 4 Men, 1 Killed With Zip Tie | https://hudsonvalleypost.com/feds-hudso ... m=referral
https://wjla.com/news/local/police-offi ... -suspended
Deeply disturbing': Prince George's Co. cop accused of attacking girlfriend is suspended
by Associated Press Thursday, September 26th 2019
https://nypost.com/2019/09/26/judge-urg ... n-scandal/
Judge urges settlement to ‘quiet the chatter’ in NYPD corruption scandal
https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavl ... ce6935a25a
14,565 viewsSep 26, 2019, 11:04am
Federal Judge Rules FBI Agents Conducted Illegal Search Of Business
https://www.pilotonline.com/news/crime/ ... story.html
The FBI swears they’re not scary. Please call them.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/09/ex-fbi ... ntability/
‘Absolutely zero accountability:’ Ex-FBI agent explains how Trump could legally skirt additional DOJ scrutiny on Ukraine
Published 11 hours ago on September 26, 20
https://theintercept.com/2019/09/26/imp ... democrats/
Democrats, Please Don’t Mess This Up. Impeach Trump for All His Crimes, Not Just for Ukraine.
Mehdi Hasan
September 26 2019, 1:35 p.m.
https://www.justsecurity.org/63826/jfk- ... ssination/
JFK Records Suit Tests CIA Secrecy on Assassination
https://www.globalresearch.ca/911-truth ... na/5690245
9/11 Truth: World Trade Center Building Seven Was A ‘Controlled Implosion’. CNBC Anchor Ron Insana
http://www.legacy.com/news/celebrity-de ... o-save-jfk
Robert McClelland, Surgeon Who Tried to Save JFK, Dies at 89 – Obituary
Police enabled 'predator' Ed Buck by ignoring black gay men, victim's mother says
Gemmel Moore died in 2017 in the home of LA activist accused of forcibly injecting men with deadly doses of drugs
https://whowhatwhy.org/2019/08/14/key-u ... d-cameras/
KEY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ABOUT EPSTEIN DEATH AND CAMERAS
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/book ... erman.html
A Former Agent Investigates the F.B.I. and Finds It Lacking
https://www.pressherald.com/2019/09/25/ ... r-service/
Updated September 25
I
Habitat for Humanity offers discounted home repair service
The service is available to low-income homeowners in Cumberland County
http://ticklethewire.com/2019/09/26/por ... -training/
Portland Police Stop ICE Agents from Using Bureau Center for Training
https://www.wnewsj.com/news/117307/form ... sentencing
POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 26, 2019 BY WILMINGTON NEWS JOURNAL
Former Ohio sheriff who admitted taking bribes faces sentencing
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... hur-genius
UCLA prof who mapped the costs of incarceration in L.A. wins a MacArthur
https://trac.syr.edu/tracfbi/findings/current/
https://trac.syr.edu/tracfbi/
FBI Database
David Burnham—an award-winning former New York Times reporter and a pioneering data journalist—is the co-founder and co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a joint project between the Newhouse School and the Whitman School based here at Newhouse.
TRAC specializes in using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain federal government administrative records. It performs sophisticated statistical analyses on the records it collects to make sense of and verify these complex relational files with millions of individual, case-by-case records. TRAC then builds data mining tools that enable it—along with journalists, policy makers, citizens and other researchers—to analyze and assess federal policies and practices. TRAC's information is utterly unique in the marketplace of ideas, and its findings are frequently cited in major news reports and research journals.
Concrete government information, much of it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, has been central to his work as both a reporter and a researcher. Burnham started as a reporter in 1958, working for UPI, Newsweek, CBS and other organizations. From 1968 to 1986, he was an investigative reporter with The New York Times in New York and Washington, with much of his coverage concentrating on enforcement, regulatory and surveillance issues. He has written three books and numerous magazine articles. His most recent book, “Above the Law: Secret Deals, Political Fixes, and Other Misadventures of the U.S. Department of Justice,” was published by Scribner in 1996. His investigative book on the Internal Revenue Service, “A Law Unto Itself: Power, Politics and the IRS,” was published in 1990 by Random House. A third book, “The Rise of the Computer State,” was published in 1984.
Over the years, Burnham has received a number of professional honors including the George Polk Award for Community Service, Long Island University, 1968; the Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, 1987; the Best Investigative Book of 1990, Investigative Reporters and Editors, 1990; and the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, Bellagio, Italy, 1992. In 2003, Burnham was awarded an honorary doctorate degree in Humane Letters from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In 2006, he was inducted into the National Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame.
Burnham works out of Washington, D.C.
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/br ... story.html
Former state attorney general from Mexico sentenced to 20 years for helping cartel smuggle drugs to U.S. cities
By MOLLY CRANE-NEWMAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
SEP 26, 2019 | 7:41 PM
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/brow ... story.html
Suspended Margate cop arrested in undercover drug buy, police say
By TONYA ALANEZ
SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL |
SEP 26, 2019 |
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/stat ... 18312.html
99 years for kicking a cop? That’s the sentence a Texas man just got, authorities say
Read more here: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/stat ... rylink=cpy
https://www.nj.com/middlesex/2019/09/su ... llege.html
Suspended Edison cop tried to cover up collision, then unlawfully get info on the other driver, authorities allege
Updated 5:45 PM; Today 3:31 PM
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/la ... s-11363818
La Paz Cop Pulls Black Man Over for Air Freshener
MEG O'CONNOR | SEPTEMBER 26, 2019 | 10:
https://www.qchron.com/editions/queensw ... 321f3.html
Coke was it for an allegedly dirty cop
DA’s Office says he helped
https://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/9/25 ... murder-cop
Suicide by cop” is murder by cop
By staff | September 25, 2019
Hudson Valley Cop Killed 4 Men, 1 Killed With Zip Tie
Bobby Welber
September 26, 2019
Read More: Feds: Hudson Valley Cop Killed 4 Men, 1 Killed With Zip Tie | https://hudsonvalleypost.com/feds-hudso ... m=referral
https://wjla.com/news/local/police-offi ... -suspended
Deeply disturbing': Prince George's Co. cop accused of attacking girlfriend is suspended
by Associated Press Thursday, September 26th 2019
https://nypost.com/2019/09/26/judge-urg ... n-scandal/
Judge urges settlement to ‘quiet the chatter’ in NYPD corruption scandal
https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavl ... ce6935a25a
14,565 viewsSep 26, 2019, 11:04am
Federal Judge Rules FBI Agents Conducted Illegal Search Of Business
https://www.pilotonline.com/news/crime/ ... story.html
The FBI swears they’re not scary. Please call them.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/09/ex-fbi ... ntability/
‘Absolutely zero accountability:’ Ex-FBI agent explains how Trump could legally skirt additional DOJ scrutiny on Ukraine
Published 11 hours ago on September 26, 20
https://theintercept.com/2019/09/26/imp ... democrats/
Democrats, Please Don’t Mess This Up. Impeach Trump for All His Crimes, Not Just for Ukraine.
Mehdi Hasan
September 26 2019, 1:35 p.m.
https://www.justsecurity.org/63826/jfk- ... ssination/
JFK Records Suit Tests CIA Secrecy on Assassination
https://www.globalresearch.ca/911-truth ... na/5690245
9/11 Truth: World Trade Center Building Seven Was A ‘Controlled Implosion’. CNBC Anchor Ron Insana
http://www.legacy.com/news/celebrity-de ... o-save-jfk
Robert McClelland, Surgeon Who Tried to Save JFK, Dies at 89 – Obituary
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/10/10/d ... op-record/
Denver records largest October temperature drop on record
That 64-degree swing in 18 hours made it Denver's largest two-day October temperature switch on record, and one of the greatest temperature changes in the city's recorded history.
https://bangordailynews.com/2019/10/10/ ... oat/?amp=1
UMaine unveils the largest object in the world made by a 3D printer — a boat
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ ... story.html
Memphis cop arrested for assaulting woman over hot dog
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
NYPD cop who shot romantic rival in the face sentenced to probation
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/off ... 27793.html
Officer Accused in Fellow Cop’s Russian Roulette Shooting Allegedly Forced Other Women to Play Game
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... nsas-city/
A cop is charged with shooting a fleeing e-scooter rider. Her explanation sounded too familiar to prosecutors.
https://gothamist.com/news/im-cop-im-no ... d-violence
'I'm A Cop. I'm Not A Human:' New Lawsuit Shows How A Routine Noise Complaint Spiraled Into Violence
BY JAKE OFFENHARTZ
OCT. 11, 2019 5:16 P.M. • 26 CO
https://www.sfchronicle.com/culture/art ... 515994.php
Muralist paints 8-story baby cop in SF protest: ‘It’s about to get very real’
Ryan Kost Oct. 11, 2019 Updated: Oct. 11, 2019 8 p.m.
https://www.newser.com/story/281609/cop ... uckus.html
Cop Charged After 2nd Shooting With Similar Details
Sheriff's deputy Lauren Michael charged with assault after scooter incident in Kansas City
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/11/ ... e-on-duty/
San Mateo cop convicted of sexually assaulting several women while on duty
A jury found Noah White Winchester guilty of 14 felony charges
https://www.morningjournalnews.com/news ... -felonies/
St. Clair cop facing prison for three felonies
https://www.thecollegefix.com/portland- ... -protests/
Portland State adds armed cops in response to years of anti-cop protests
https://nypost.com/2019/10/11/video-pla ... uffed-man/
METRO
Video played in court shows ex-NYPD cop pummeling handcuffed man
By Rebecca Rosenberg
October 11, 2019 | 6:
https://nypost.com/2019/10/11/ex-nypd-c ... probation/
NYPD cop who shot rival over phone charger in the face gets probation
https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2019/10/ ... 944242002/
Reno cop moves homeless out of Pickett Park before planned 'citizen arrest' demonstration
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gon ... 5QsDfeg2A/
Pennsylvania Cops Arrest Family Twice in 2 Days for Loitering in own Front Yard
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-g ... bQ7NqR7kQ/
Family of Unarmed Man Killed for Holding Cellphone Settles for $2.4 Million
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-g ... s2BS7B6vA/
Chicago Police Settle $4.9 Million Lawsuit After Cop Killed Innocent Woman
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-g ... Vo51RxBcw/
Tennessee Cops Beat and Arrest 64-year-old Man in apparent Botched Raid
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-in- ... FiU7-Rgtg/
Kentucky Cop Agrees to Secret Plea Deal Reducing 5 Rapes to 5 Misdemeanors
Denver records largest October temperature drop on record
That 64-degree swing in 18 hours made it Denver's largest two-day October temperature switch on record, and one of the greatest temperature changes in the city's recorded history.
https://bangordailynews.com/2019/10/10/ ... oat/?amp=1
UMaine unveils the largest object in the world made by a 3D printer — a boat
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ ... story.html
Memphis cop arrested for assaulting woman over hot dog
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
NYPD cop who shot romantic rival in the face sentenced to probation
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/off ... 27793.html
Officer Accused in Fellow Cop’s Russian Roulette Shooting Allegedly Forced Other Women to Play Game
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... nsas-city/
A cop is charged with shooting a fleeing e-scooter rider. Her explanation sounded too familiar to prosecutors.
https://gothamist.com/news/im-cop-im-no ... d-violence
'I'm A Cop. I'm Not A Human:' New Lawsuit Shows How A Routine Noise Complaint Spiraled Into Violence
BY JAKE OFFENHARTZ
OCT. 11, 2019 5:16 P.M. • 26 CO
https://www.sfchronicle.com/culture/art ... 515994.php
Muralist paints 8-story baby cop in SF protest: ‘It’s about to get very real’
Ryan Kost Oct. 11, 2019 Updated: Oct. 11, 2019 8 p.m.
https://www.newser.com/story/281609/cop ... uckus.html
Cop Charged After 2nd Shooting With Similar Details
Sheriff's deputy Lauren Michael charged with assault after scooter incident in Kansas City
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/11/ ... e-on-duty/
San Mateo cop convicted of sexually assaulting several women while on duty
A jury found Noah White Winchester guilty of 14 felony charges
https://www.morningjournalnews.com/news ... -felonies/
St. Clair cop facing prison for three felonies
https://www.thecollegefix.com/portland- ... -protests/
Portland State adds armed cops in response to years of anti-cop protests
https://nypost.com/2019/10/11/video-pla ... uffed-man/
METRO
Video played in court shows ex-NYPD cop pummeling handcuffed man
By Rebecca Rosenberg
October 11, 2019 | 6:
https://nypost.com/2019/10/11/ex-nypd-c ... probation/
NYPD cop who shot rival over phone charger in the face gets probation
https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2019/10/ ... 944242002/
Reno cop moves homeless out of Pickett Park before planned 'citizen arrest' demonstration
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gon ... 5QsDfeg2A/
Pennsylvania Cops Arrest Family Twice in 2 Days for Loitering in own Front Yard
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-g ... bQ7NqR7kQ/
Family of Unarmed Man Killed for Holding Cellphone Settles for $2.4 Million
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-g ... s2BS7B6vA/
Chicago Police Settle $4.9 Million Lawsuit After Cop Killed Innocent Woman
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/eye-on-g ... Vo51RxBcw/
Tennessee Cops Beat and Arrest 64-year-old Man in apparent Botched Raid
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-in- ... FiU7-Rgtg/
Kentucky Cop Agrees to Secret Plea Deal Reducing 5 Rapes to 5 Misdemeanors
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://theintercept.com/2019/10/22/ter ... l-dissent/
THE FBI HAS A LONG HISTORY OF TREATING POLITICAL DISSENT AS TERRORISM
Alice Speri
October 22 2019,
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/john-d ... ce-sources
Durham's probe into possible FBI misconduct expanded based on new evidence, sources say
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
Porn star gets special tour of NYPD headquarters, including normally restricted areas
By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
OCT 22, 2019 | 4:00 PM
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
NYPD cop busted for swiping cellphone from girlfriend during spat
https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/c ... 36713.html
Cop at Johnson County bar flashed badge, threatened to use gun while pursuing woman
BY KATIE BERNARD
Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/c ... rylink=cpy
https://patch.com/connecticut/hamden/ha ... ing-report
Hamden Cop Arrested In Officer-Involved Shooting:
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/cu ... n-11376871
Cum Dumpster' Cop Beau Jones Fired, Criminal Investigation Continues
MEG O'CONNOR | OCTOBER 22, 2019 | 11:50AM
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/cri ... story.html
Federal jury convicts 2 Chicago cops of stealing cash and drugs with bogus search warrants
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/repor ... confession
Longwood cop pressured teen into false confession
Officer says he wanted to make traffic stop a teachable moment
By Adrienne Cutway - Web Editor
Posted: 5:43 PM, October 22, 2019
https://boingboing.net/2019/10/22/looks-like-$#!%.html
Disgraced ex-cop's @#!!$#!% libel case has nearly destroyed the newspaper that outed him for sexual predation of teen girls
http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_n ... 122ab.html
North County cop sued for 1st Amendment violation
ACLU, WUSTL First Amendment Clinic partner on case about videotaping arrest
* By Rebecca Rivas Of The St. Louis American Oct 22, 2019 Updated 4
*
https://www.abqjournal.com/1381329/farm ... force.html
Farmington cop resigns following use of force on 11 year old
Female in middle school
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gon ... jF9SwjIDA/
Cops Order Man to Crawl and Lay Down before Beating him for Running Stop Sign
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... o-officers
Phoenix police announce firings of two officers
BY MARTY JOHNSON - 10/22/19 08:30 PM EDT
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/11 ... ed-plastic
Los Angeles wants to pave its streets with recycled plastic
BYRON HURD OCTOBER 21, 2019
Many, many peoples' trash ma
https://www.sfchronicle.com/environment ... o-18478000
Climate havoc wipes out coastal kelp as S.F. Bay’s native fish species die off
Peter Fimrite Oct. 22, 2019
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10 ... e-imminent
Global impacts of thawing Arctic permafrost may be imminent
By Paul VoosenOct. 21, 2019 , 11:00 AM
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... ntral-jail
Sheriff rehires corruption investigator accused of posing as deputy in bizarre jail incident
https://www.newser.com/story/282115/pho ... fired.html
5 Months After Viral Arrest Video, Cop Fired
Christopher Meyer was caught on tape pointing a gun at couple who had their kids with them
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gon ... CSBHZnVVw/
California Cops Shoot Unarmed 16-year-old Boy in Back of Head
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kem ... -get-fired
A Cop Pointed a Gun at a Pregnant Woman and Her Family. It Took 5 Months for Him to Get Fired.
In a viral video, you can hear the Phoenix officer yelling, “You’re going to @#$!%&! get shot” and “I’m going to put a @#$!%&! cap in your @#$!%&! head”
https://nypost.com/2019/10/23/cop-resig ... to-ground/
NEWS
Cop resigns after video shows him slamming 11-year-old girl onto ground
By Lee Brown
October 23, 2019 | 10:05
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/ ... 070223002/
White Detroit cop claims racial, age bias after demotion over viral video
George Hunter, The Detroit News
https://wgntv.com/2019/10/23/chicago-po ... n-top-cop/
Chicago police union board votes “no confidence” in top cop
POSTED 3:48 PM, OCTOBER 23, 2019, BY BEN BRADLEY, TONYA FRANCISCO AND
https://www.themonitor.com/2019/10/23/p ... -thursday/
*
Progreso ex-cop to face federal bond hearing Thursday for rape
https://newsone.com/3891086/new-mexico- ... oncussion/
New Mexico Cop Won’t Face Criminal Charges After Giving 11-Year-Old Student A Concussion
The incident was captured on video.
https://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-nws ... story.html
Former Monroe County cop charged with raping woman stopped for DUI, court records say
By ANDREW SCOTT
THE MORNING CALL |
OCT 23, 2019 | 7:37 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/oc ... -fbi-agent
SFO asks for secret tribunal over lawyer 'who swore at FBI agent'
Anti-corruption agency being sued for unfair dismissal by former prosecutor
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/on-air/as-se ... 15802.html
Man Killed in Police Shooting Was Son of NYPD Cop
The man killed in a violent encounter with police early Wednesday morning was the son of an NYPD police officer, a law enforcement source tells News 4.The incident also resulted in a... See M
https://www.nj.com/union/2019/10/nj-cop ... ldren.html
N.J. cop and youth coach charged with 7 more sex crimes against children
Updated 5:33 PM; Today 3:47 PM
https://defensemaven.io/bluelivesmatter ... sCvXfblYA/
Cop Charged For Shooting Passenger After Stopping Alleged Armed Robbery Suspects
https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/ ... 072539002/
Officer arrested for DWI resigns from Palisades Park police department
Kristie Cattafi, North Jersey Record Published 2:39 p.m. ET Oct. 23, 2019 | Upda
http://rockrivertimes.com/2019/10/23/ro ... l-assault/
Rockford cop charged with sexual assault
On Oct 23, 2019
https://www.towleroad.com/2019/10/veteran-cop/
Trial Begins for Veteran Cop Told to ‘Tone Down His Gayness’ if He Ever Wanted a Promotion in the St. Louis PD
OCTOBER 23, 2019 BY ANDY TOWLE 7
https://www.bet.com/news/national/2019/ ... olice.html
What Happens After You Record The Police And Challenge The Law? BET’s ‘Copwatch’ Addresses This Issue
Kimberly Ortiz and Yonasda
THE FBI HAS A LONG HISTORY OF TREATING POLITICAL DISSENT AS TERRORISM
Alice Speri
October 22 2019,
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/john-d ... ce-sources
Durham's probe into possible FBI misconduct expanded based on new evidence, sources say
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
Porn star gets special tour of NYPD headquarters, including normally restricted areas
By ROCCO PARASCANDOLA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
OCT 22, 2019 | 4:00 PM
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny ... story.html
NYPD cop busted for swiping cellphone from girlfriend during spat
https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/c ... 36713.html
Cop at Johnson County bar flashed badge, threatened to use gun while pursuing woman
BY KATIE BERNARD
Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/c ... rylink=cpy
https://patch.com/connecticut/hamden/ha ... ing-report
Hamden Cop Arrested In Officer-Involved Shooting:
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/cu ... n-11376871
Cum Dumpster' Cop Beau Jones Fired, Criminal Investigation Continues
MEG O'CONNOR | OCTOBER 22, 2019 | 11:50AM
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/cri ... story.html
Federal jury convicts 2 Chicago cops of stealing cash and drugs with bogus search warrants
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/repor ... confession
Longwood cop pressured teen into false confession
Officer says he wanted to make traffic stop a teachable moment
By Adrienne Cutway - Web Editor
Posted: 5:43 PM, October 22, 2019
https://boingboing.net/2019/10/22/looks-like-$#!%.html
Disgraced ex-cop's @#!!$#!% libel case has nearly destroyed the newspaper that outed him for sexual predation of teen girls
http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_n ... 122ab.html
North County cop sued for 1st Amendment violation
ACLU, WUSTL First Amendment Clinic partner on case about videotaping arrest
* By Rebecca Rivas Of The St. Louis American Oct 22, 2019 Updated 4
*
https://www.abqjournal.com/1381329/farm ... force.html
Farmington cop resigns following use of force on 11 year old
Female in middle school
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gon ... jF9SwjIDA/
Cops Order Man to Crawl and Lay Down before Beating him for Running Stop Sign
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... o-officers
Phoenix police announce firings of two officers
BY MARTY JOHNSON - 10/22/19 08:30 PM EDT
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/11 ... ed-plastic
Los Angeles wants to pave its streets with recycled plastic
BYRON HURD OCTOBER 21, 2019
Many, many peoples' trash ma
https://www.sfchronicle.com/environment ... o-18478000
Climate havoc wipes out coastal kelp as S.F. Bay’s native fish species die off
Peter Fimrite Oct. 22, 2019
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10 ... e-imminent
Global impacts of thawing Arctic permafrost may be imminent
By Paul VoosenOct. 21, 2019 , 11:00 AM
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... ntral-jail
Sheriff rehires corruption investigator accused of posing as deputy in bizarre jail incident
https://www.newser.com/story/282115/pho ... fired.html
5 Months After Viral Arrest Video, Cop Fired
Christopher Meyer was caught on tape pointing a gun at couple who had their kids with them
https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gon ... CSBHZnVVw/
California Cops Shoot Unarmed 16-year-old Boy in Back of Head
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kem ... -get-fired
A Cop Pointed a Gun at a Pregnant Woman and Her Family. It Took 5 Months for Him to Get Fired.
In a viral video, you can hear the Phoenix officer yelling, “You’re going to @#$!%&! get shot” and “I’m going to put a @#$!%&! cap in your @#$!%&! head”
https://nypost.com/2019/10/23/cop-resig ... to-ground/
NEWS
Cop resigns after video shows him slamming 11-year-old girl onto ground
By Lee Brown
October 23, 2019 | 10:05
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/ ... 070223002/
White Detroit cop claims racial, age bias after demotion over viral video
George Hunter, The Detroit News
https://wgntv.com/2019/10/23/chicago-po ... n-top-cop/
Chicago police union board votes “no confidence” in top cop
POSTED 3:48 PM, OCTOBER 23, 2019, BY BEN BRADLEY, TONYA FRANCISCO AND
https://www.themonitor.com/2019/10/23/p ... -thursday/
*
Progreso ex-cop to face federal bond hearing Thursday for rape
https://newsone.com/3891086/new-mexico- ... oncussion/
New Mexico Cop Won’t Face Criminal Charges After Giving 11-Year-Old Student A Concussion
The incident was captured on video.
https://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-nws ... story.html
Former Monroe County cop charged with raping woman stopped for DUI, court records say
By ANDREW SCOTT
THE MORNING CALL |
OCT 23, 2019 | 7:37 PM
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/oc ... -fbi-agent
SFO asks for secret tribunal over lawyer 'who swore at FBI agent'
Anti-corruption agency being sued for unfair dismissal by former prosecutor
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/on-air/as-se ... 15802.html
Man Killed in Police Shooting Was Son of NYPD Cop
The man killed in a violent encounter with police early Wednesday morning was the son of an NYPD police officer, a law enforcement source tells News 4.The incident also resulted in a... See M
https://www.nj.com/union/2019/10/nj-cop ... ldren.html
N.J. cop and youth coach charged with 7 more sex crimes against children
Updated 5:33 PM; Today 3:47 PM
https://defensemaven.io/bluelivesmatter ... sCvXfblYA/
Cop Charged For Shooting Passenger After Stopping Alleged Armed Robbery Suspects
https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/ ... 072539002/
Officer arrested for DWI resigns from Palisades Park police department
Kristie Cattafi, North Jersey Record Published 2:39 p.m. ET Oct. 23, 2019 | Upda
http://rockrivertimes.com/2019/10/23/ro ... l-assault/
Rockford cop charged with sexual assault
On Oct 23, 2019
https://www.towleroad.com/2019/10/veteran-cop/
Trial Begins for Veteran Cop Told to ‘Tone Down His Gayness’ if He Ever Wanted a Promotion in the St. Louis PD
OCTOBER 23, 2019 BY ANDY TOWLE 7
https://www.bet.com/news/national/2019/ ... olice.html
What Happens After You Record The Police And Challenge The Law? BET’s ‘Copwatch’ Addresses This Issue
Kimberly Ortiz and Yonasda
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://patch.com/new-york/brooklyn/cop ... t-12m-suit
Cops Kick Out Innocent Man's Tooth In Mistaken Arrest: $12M Suit
Quayshaun Smith says Brooklyn cops tased him, kicked him in the face, then said sorry when they realized they'd arrested the wrong man.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nation ... story.html
Hundreds of inmates walking out of prison in largest single-day mass commutation in U.S. history
By NELSON OLIVEIRA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 04, 2019 | 3:54 PM
https://www.nj.com/monmouth/2019/11/ex- ... issed.html
Ex-cop accused of stealing tires will likely get charges dismissed
Updated 4:41 PM;Today 2:33 PM
https://www.nj.com/hudson/2019/11/musli ... -says.html
Muslim cop harassed over beard that was ‘too manicured,' lawsuit says
Today 5:46 PM
https://www.bet.com/news/national/2019/ ... r-dur.html
North Carolina Cop Reportedly Dragged Black Woman Out Of Car During A Traffic Sto
O
https://www.wiltonbulletin.com/news/art ... 808308.php
Wilton cop was fired for lying about underage drinking party
By Patricia Gay Published 2:30 pm EST, Monday, November 4, 2019
https://www.nj.com/monmouth/2019/11/sui ... rules.html
Suit filed by children of Neptune cop who killed his ex-wife can move forward, judge rules
Updated 6:50 PM;Today 1:53 PM
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politi ... story.html
NYC Council members decry new top cop pick as missed opportunity for greater NYPD diversity
By SHANT SHAHRIGIAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 04, 2019 | 8:36 PM
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/cri ... 6bb2d.html
Ex-St. Louis cop on trial for 'rough ride' charges
By Joel Currier St. Louis Post-Dispatch 3 hrs ago 0
https://www.mymoinfo.com/2019/11/04/for ... f-suspect/
Former Bonne Terre Cop Pleads Guilty & Sentenced to Felony Assault of Suspect
November 4, 2019 luketurnbough Local News
https://www.nj.com/cumberland/2019/11/c ... -suit.html
Chief wanted to trade a promotion for sex with my wife and daughter, cop claims in suit
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ather.html
California fraud investigator, 32, kills his cop friend and critically wounds his own father before shooting himself dead after the 'heroic' pair tried to stop him arguing with his girlfriend at a birthday party
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/brow ... story.html
911 supervisor playing Netflix movie didn’t flag call as a shooting n
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/flynn- ... lated-docs
RUSSIA INVESTIGATIONPublished 4 hours ago
Flynn attorney demands FBI search 'Sentinel' database for missing, 'manipulated' witness reports
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... hael-flynn
FBI hand-slapping outweighs any lies by Michael Flynn
https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/04/sc ... te-smears/
SCOOP: CIA, FBI Informant Was Washington Post Source For Russiagate Smears
These close connections between the Washington Post’s David Ignatius and people connected to U.S. and U.K. intelligence raise grave concerns about the deep state using media to push propaganda
https://www.kmbc.com/article/inside-the ... y/29688094
Inside the FBI Citizens Academy
https://whowhatwhy.org/2013/11/04/monda ... w-nothing/
Monday Morning Skeptic: In Boston Bombing, FBI Fights for Public’s Right to Know… Nothing
Reading Time: 7 minutes
The feds are keeping us in the dark about the labyrinthine investigation on the Boston Marathon bombing. Documents mysteriously appear in the hands of pet journalists, then quickly disappear. This is convenient for the government, which wants to know everything about us while giving up little about its own agenda.
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
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... 7.12059161
Jackals, Vultures, Scavengers, and Scoundrels
FBI Public Relations and J. Edgar Hoover's Handwritten “Blue Gems”
Matthew Cecil, Jessica Freeman & Jennifer Tiernan
Pages 2-11 | Published online: 19 Mar 2019
https://theintercept.com/2019/11/03/per ... osecutors/
IN PERU’S OPERATION CAR WASH, PROSECUTORS AND WITNESS DOCTORED TESTIMONY TO AVOID CONTRADICTIONS
Rafael Neves, Ernesto Cabral, Rafael Moro Martins
https://theintercept.com/2019/11/04/phi ... democrats/
TWO SURGING CANDIDATES COULD MAKE PHILADELPHIA FAR MORE PROGRESSIVE. DEMOCRATS ARE GOING TO WAR TO STOP THEM.
Akela Lacy
November 4 2019, 11:51 a.m.
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/archae ... ic-images/
Archaeologists find tunnel with pre-Hispanic images in Ecatepec
The tunnel is part of a 17th-century dike system called the Albarradón de Ecatepec
https://news.usni.org/2019/11/04/usni-n ... nov-4-2019
USNI News Fleet and Marine Tracker: Nov. 4, 2019
November 4, 2019 11:10 AM
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/01 ... neighbors/
NOVEMBER 1, 2019
Don’t Call the Police, Call Your Neighbors!
by GLORIA OLADIPO
Here is a hard truth: Police do not keep communities safe.
This year alone has produced numerous stories of officers causing distress, damage, or death in communities they’re sworn to protect. As this epidemic worsens, communities need to find new ways to handle crisis situations without police intervention.
Modern U.S. police forces evolved from watch systems developed in the early colonies, which were gradually professionalized after the emergence of cities — and the rise of slavery. In the South, these forces were used as “slave patrols,” tasked with catching runaway slaves and squashing uprisings.
The role of police has greatly expanded since then, with officers intervening in everything from mental health crises to routine schoolyard incidents. With police now receiving military-grade weapons and often legally insulated from accountability, citizens are at the mercy of choices officers make — decisions that may be made under extreme distress or tainted with bias.
Black Americans are most at risk. Compared to other demographics, we face a significantly higher risk of being killed by police. Just this year Black Americans have
Media of the Day
NOVEMBER 4, 2019
Remembering the Greensboro Massacre of 1979, When KKK & Nazis Killed 5 People in Broad Daylight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aYuqI_69g0
Democracy Now!
598K subscribers
Remembering the Greensboro Massacre of 1979, When KKK & Nazis Killed 5 People in Broad Daylight
Cops Kick Out Innocent Man's Tooth In Mistaken Arrest: $12M Suit
Quayshaun Smith says Brooklyn cops tased him, kicked him in the face, then said sorry when they realized they'd arrested the wrong man.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nation ... story.html
Hundreds of inmates walking out of prison in largest single-day mass commutation in U.S. history
By NELSON OLIVEIRA
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 04, 2019 | 3:54 PM
https://www.nj.com/monmouth/2019/11/ex- ... issed.html
Ex-cop accused of stealing tires will likely get charges dismissed
Updated 4:41 PM;Today 2:33 PM
https://www.nj.com/hudson/2019/11/musli ... -says.html
Muslim cop harassed over beard that was ‘too manicured,' lawsuit says
Today 5:46 PM
https://www.bet.com/news/national/2019/ ... r-dur.html
North Carolina Cop Reportedly Dragged Black Woman Out Of Car During A Traffic Sto
O
https://www.wiltonbulletin.com/news/art ... 808308.php
Wilton cop was fired for lying about underage drinking party
By Patricia Gay Published 2:30 pm EST, Monday, November 4, 2019
https://www.nj.com/monmouth/2019/11/sui ... rules.html
Suit filed by children of Neptune cop who killed his ex-wife can move forward, judge rules
Updated 6:50 PM;Today 1:53 PM
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politi ... story.html
NYC Council members decry new top cop pick as missed opportunity for greater NYPD diversity
By SHANT SHAHRIGIAN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 04, 2019 | 8:36 PM
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/cri ... 6bb2d.html
Ex-St. Louis cop on trial for 'rough ride' charges
By Joel Currier St. Louis Post-Dispatch 3 hrs ago 0
https://www.mymoinfo.com/2019/11/04/for ... f-suspect/
Former Bonne Terre Cop Pleads Guilty & Sentenced to Felony Assault of Suspect
November 4, 2019 luketurnbough Local News
https://www.nj.com/cumberland/2019/11/c ... -suit.html
Chief wanted to trade a promotion for sex with my wife and daughter, cop claims in suit
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ather.html
California fraud investigator, 32, kills his cop friend and critically wounds his own father before shooting himself dead after the 'heroic' pair tried to stop him arguing with his girlfriend at a birthday party
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/brow ... story.html
911 supervisor playing Netflix movie didn’t flag call as a shooting n
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/flynn- ... lated-docs
RUSSIA INVESTIGATIONPublished 4 hours ago
Flynn attorney demands FBI search 'Sentinel' database for missing, 'manipulated' witness reports
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... hael-flynn
FBI hand-slapping outweighs any lies by Michael Flynn
https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/04/sc ... te-smears/
SCOOP: CIA, FBI Informant Was Washington Post Source For Russiagate Smears
These close connections between the Washington Post’s David Ignatius and people connected to U.S. and U.K. intelligence raise grave concerns about the deep state using media to push propaganda
https://www.kmbc.com/article/inside-the ... y/29688094
Inside the FBI Citizens Academy
https://whowhatwhy.org/2013/11/04/monda ... w-nothing/
Monday Morning Skeptic: In Boston Bombing, FBI Fights for Public’s Right to Know… Nothing
Reading Time: 7 minutes
The feds are keeping us in the dark about the labyrinthine investigation on the Boston Marathon bombing. Documents mysteriously appear in the hands of pet journalists, then quickly disappear. This is convenient for the government, which wants to know everything about us while giving up little about its own agenda.
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
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... 7.12059161
Jackals, Vultures, Scavengers, and Scoundrels
FBI Public Relations and J. Edgar Hoover's Handwritten “Blue Gems”
Matthew Cecil, Jessica Freeman & Jennifer Tiernan
Pages 2-11 | Published online: 19 Mar 2019
https://theintercept.com/2019/11/03/per ... osecutors/
IN PERU’S OPERATION CAR WASH, PROSECUTORS AND WITNESS DOCTORED TESTIMONY TO AVOID CONTRADICTIONS
Rafael Neves, Ernesto Cabral, Rafael Moro Martins
https://theintercept.com/2019/11/04/phi ... democrats/
TWO SURGING CANDIDATES COULD MAKE PHILADELPHIA FAR MORE PROGRESSIVE. DEMOCRATS ARE GOING TO WAR TO STOP THEM.
Akela Lacy
November 4 2019, 11:51 a.m.
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/archae ... ic-images/
Archaeologists find tunnel with pre-Hispanic images in Ecatepec
The tunnel is part of a 17th-century dike system called the Albarradón de Ecatepec
https://news.usni.org/2019/11/04/usni-n ... nov-4-2019
USNI News Fleet and Marine Tracker: Nov. 4, 2019
November 4, 2019 11:10 AM
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/01 ... neighbors/
NOVEMBER 1, 2019
Don’t Call the Police, Call Your Neighbors!
by GLORIA OLADIPO
Here is a hard truth: Police do not keep communities safe.
This year alone has produced numerous stories of officers causing distress, damage, or death in communities they’re sworn to protect. As this epidemic worsens, communities need to find new ways to handle crisis situations without police intervention.
Modern U.S. police forces evolved from watch systems developed in the early colonies, which were gradually professionalized after the emergence of cities — and the rise of slavery. In the South, these forces were used as “slave patrols,” tasked with catching runaway slaves and squashing uprisings.
The role of police has greatly expanded since then, with officers intervening in everything from mental health crises to routine schoolyard incidents. With police now receiving military-grade weapons and often legally insulated from accountability, citizens are at the mercy of choices officers make — decisions that may be made under extreme distress or tainted with bias.
Black Americans are most at risk. Compared to other demographics, we face a significantly higher risk of being killed by police. Just this year Black Americans have
Media of the Day
NOVEMBER 4, 2019
Remembering the Greensboro Massacre of 1979, When KKK & Nazis Killed 5 People in Broad Daylight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aYuqI_69g0
Democracy Now!
598K subscribers
Remembering the Greensboro Massacre of 1979, When KKK & Nazis Killed 5 People in Broad Daylight
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.rt.com/usa/473503-medea-ben ... n-attempt/
‘Meant to intimidate’: Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin slams bogus police raid as crackdown on peace activism
15 Nov, 2019 03:48 / Updated 13 hours ago
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny- ... story.html
Spare Rodney Reed: An imminent Texas execution appears to be a profound miscarriage of justice
By DAILY NEWS EDITORIAL BOARD
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 15, 2019 | 4:10 AM
Call Texas Governor Abbot at
(512) 463-2000
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... on-lawsuit
Gay employee says salary was halved to be even with 'females in the office'
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... risis-plan
Venice council flooded moments after rejecting climate crisis plan
Rightwing parties reject proposals as lagoon city faces worst flooding in 53 years
Undercover cop arrests fellow officer who offered her $40 for sex
By BRIAN NIEMIETZ
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 15, 2019 | 6:03 PM
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nation ... -1.1965238
*
Florida man wears 'f--- the police' shirt to court — and wins the case
By DAVID BOROFF
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
OCT 06, 2014 | 4:34 PM.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ ... story.html
*
Legalization of same-sex unions led to significant decline in suicide rates in Sweden and Denmark: study
By MURI ASSUNÇÃO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 15, 2019 | 5:36 PM
https://onezero.medium.com/heres-how-kn ... c6d14ee2c2
Here’s How Knightscope’s Security Robots Surveil the Public
OneZero obtained a presentation that reveals how Knightscope uses facial recognition and license plate readers to track individuals
Dave Gershgorn
Follow
Nov 13 · 4 m
https://www.madcowprod.com/2019/08/30/t ... -oligarch/
The Senator, the Billionaire Pedophile, & the Fugitive Oligarch
By Daniel Hopsicker -
August 30, 2019
4
3897
The Senator is ‘George Mitchell.’ The billionaire pedophile is ‘Jeffrey Epstein.’ The fugitive oligarch is “Viktor Kozeny.” But first, a word about an Able Seaman…
Nothing’s changed since “Casablanca”
It was a round-up of the usual suspects.
In the aftermath of the release of 2000 pages of previously sealed documents in the lawsuit brought against Jeffrey Epstein by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, news accounts picked only low-hanging fruit for scrutiny.
Bill Clinton. Donald Trump. Woody Allen. Uber-nebbish Alan Dershowitz. He’s now become one of the usual suspects because, despite his vociferous denials, he’s exactly the blend of smarmy and slimy that signals victimizer.
But the goal is to make sense of what Epstein was up to, which remains opaque.
Puzzling out Epstein’s connection to one of those named who’s more of a sexual outlier than a sometime Lothario might be a better bet.
Someone like former Senator George Mitchell, for example.
Savoir-Fair-Less
George Mitchell doesn’t exactly exude savoir faire.
He’s a temperate-looking man. Gray hair, short and orderly. Mild, hazel-brown eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. He might have entered the U.S. Senate under Dwight David Eisenhower.
The kind of guy that looked old even in high school.
“George lives his life the way he plays tennis: thoughtful, conservative, doesn’t throw away any shots,” a friend said about him. “Nothing brilliant, or colorful; doesn’t have to make the grand slam.”
Epstein had a documented friendship with Mitchell dating back to the early 2000’s. In a 2003 New York Magazine profile, Epstein was paraphrased as saying Mitchell was “the world’s greatest negotiator,” and Mitchell called Epstein “a friend and a supporter.”
George and Jeff made an odd couple. Why did Epstein gift Mitchell the loan for an evening of one of his stable of not-yet-legal sex workers?
I think I know.
A whiff of sexual blackmail…in the 90’s
While investigating the personal pilot of one of George Mitchell’s close associates, I learned a secret about the former Majority Leader.
Mitchell looks like a boy scout, but he’s not.
After he resigned from the Senate in 1994, one of George Mitchell’s closest associates became Viktor Kozeny, known as “The Pirate of Prague.”
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Kozeny was t
https://www.live5news.com/2019/11/15/do ... ing-court/
Documents: Former Goose Creek cop faces loss of certification for lying in court
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 79714.html
‘We don’t cover up’: Hialeah chief defends handling of cop accused of sex abuse
BY CHRISTINA MORALES, NICHOLAS NEHAMAS, AND JAY WEAVER
NOVEMBER 15, 2019 01:08 PM
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... rylink=cpy
https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/nati ... 17759.html
NATIONAL
Cop is caught molesting girl in bathroom and threatens her mother, Oklahoma police say
BY TYLER J. CARTER
NOVEMBER 15, 2019 03:19 PM
*
*
*
*
* Read more here: https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/nati ... rylink=cpy
https://nypost.com/2019/11/14/nypd-cop- ... ed-before/
NYPD cop seen ogling ‘total stripper’ on bodycam was sued before
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/crime ... story.html
Former Miami-Dade cop who was indicted in the ’90s found dead after being shot several times
By WAYNE K. ROUSTAN
SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL |
NOV 15, 2019 | 2:
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/cop-accus ... b0e2a.html
URGENT
Cop accused of putting gun in a woman's mouth, among counts of violence
* Anna Ortiz [email protected], 219-933-4194 Nov 15, 2019 Up
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation ... 24214.html
Spying on 69 men in cop bathroom gets clerk 6 years in jail, California prosecutor says
BY JARED GILMOUR
NOVEMBER 15, 2019 09:31 PM
*
* Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation ... rylink=cpy
https://kywnewsradio.radio.com/articles ... use-arrest
Former Philly cop accused of drugging, raping women is put on house arrest
https://www.meadvilletribune.com/charge ... 05b78.html
Charges against a former Sharon police officer stemming from a missing department-issued weapon have been held over to Mercer County Court of Common Pleas.
Kailie Marie Marshall, 26, of 864 Highland Road, Sharon, is charged with unlawful duplication of a police report, computer trespass, unsworn falsification to authorities and simple assault.
Another former Sharon police officer, Matthew Paul Lehman, 32, of 479 Victory Church Road, Franklin, is charged with obstructing the administration of law and unsw
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191 ... have.shtml
Journalists Publish List Of Convicted Cops The State's Attorney General Said Was Illegal For Them To Have
Journalism
from the bluff-called dept
Fri, Nov 15th 2019 12:02pm — Tim Cushing
The list of convicted cops the California Attorney General tried to keep secret has just been made searchable by the Sacramento Bee. It contains hundreds of current and former police officers who've been convicted of criminal acts over the last ten years.
This collaboration of multiple newsrooms and journalism advocates began with an unforced error by a state agency. Taking advantage of a new state law allowing the public to access police misconduct records, journalists asked the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training for relevant documents. The agency handed over a list of 12,000 former and current officers -- a list that apparently was never supposed to be made public.
The state's Attorney General claimed the journalists had broken the law simply by possessing a document the Commission never should have given them. This couldn't be further from the truth, but AG Xavier Becerra continued to make this claim, as though it were possible to codify something just by saying it out loud often enough.
I can see why AG Becerra wants this list buried. There's nothing on it that makes cops or their oversight (which includes Becerra) look good. While the 12,000 officers in the database are a small percentage of the total number of California law enforcement officers employed over the past ten years, this small portion includes a number of cops who were never fired from their agencies despite committing criminal acts that would have put regular people out of a job.
Reporters found at least a dozen deputies with prior convictions are still on the roster at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. And the five officers with convictions working for the Riverside police include the acting chief — Larry Gonzalez was a lieutenant in 2013 when he pleaded guilty to DUI after reportedly crashing a city-owned SUV with a blood-alcohol level nearly twice the legal limit.
There’s a Kern County Sheriff’s deputy still working despite a conviction for manslaughter after running over two people while recklessly speeding to a call. And a Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputy is back on the force after dozing off at the wheel and killing a pair of elite cyclists on a training ride.
Sheriff's departments are especially fond of hiring and retaining the worst people. They're the agencies most willing to overlook long histories of misconduct and the most hesitant to hand down significant punishments when laws are broken by law enforcers on their payroll. The L.A. Sheriff's Department is filled with suspicious individuals who hang out in a high crime area every time they show up at the office.
The list has been trimmed considerably since its surprising release to journalists. Due to the lack of cooperation from law enforcement agencies and the general sloppiness of large-scale bureaucracies, the names in the database are only those that have been verified by journalists. The original list had 12,000 names but the database only contains 630 current and former officers.
Even so, there's plenty to be concerned about. Some officers have multiple convictions but were never fired. Officers have driven drunk, left their children in cars with their loaded guns, and engaged in fraud. There's also lots of domestic abuse -- most of which has gone unaddressed by officers' employers.
Richard Sotelo was an Imperial County Sheriff’s Department correctional officer in February 2013 when he was charged with domestic violence for assaulting his estranged wife. He was allowed to keep working despite the pending charges. But months later he was accused of a crime again, this time sexual battery against a male co-worker. He was charged for that as well. Sotelo ultimately took plea deals and was convicted in both cases and left the force.
[...]
In one incident investigated by the Bell Police Department months before his reckless driving, [LAPD Officer David] Guerrero allegedly “threatened, assaulted and battered” a woman who was in a dispute with his girlfriend, according to court records.
“That’s how you do it, LAPD style,” Guerrero allegedly said as he drove away.
The DA’s office didn’t file charges. It also didn’t prosecute Guerrero in 2013 when he allegedly threatened to kill the mother of his child, court records show.
The recycling of California cops isn't going to stop unless the state legislature steps up and makes it possible for officers to lose their certification following a conviction. California is one of only five states with no decertification process, so officers can avoid accountability simply by drifting from agency to agency in the (apparently unlikely) event they've been fired.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/470 ... ance-abuse
GOP eager for report on alleged FBI surveillance abuse
11/15/2019
The NSA has stopped collecting location data from US cellphones without a warrant
Colin Lecher, The Verge
A US federal court finds suspicionless searches of phones at the border is illegal
Zack Whittaker, Tech Crunch
Bound by Statute: In Mississippi, Jim Crow era laws result in a high rate of black kids charged as adults
Ko Bragg and Melissa Lewis, Reveal
County Clerks Revolt Over N.Y. Licenses for Undocumented Immigrants
Christina Goldbaum, The New York Times
U.S. Park Police officers will not face federal charges in shooting of Bijan Ghaisar
Tom Jackman, Washington Post
Go See The Report, Then Let’s Put Torture to Bed For Good
Sondra Crosby, Brig. Gen, (Ret.) David R. Irvine, Christian Meissner and Scott Roehm, Just Security
11/14/2019
‘Meant to intimidate’: Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin slams bogus police raid as crackdown on peace activism
15 Nov, 2019 03:48 / Updated 13 hours ago
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny- ... story.html
Spare Rodney Reed: An imminent Texas execution appears to be a profound miscarriage of justice
By DAILY NEWS EDITORIAL BOARD
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 15, 2019 | 4:10 AM
Call Texas Governor Abbot at
(512) 463-2000
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... on-lawsuit
Gay employee says salary was halved to be even with 'females in the office'
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... risis-plan
Venice council flooded moments after rejecting climate crisis plan
Rightwing parties reject proposals as lagoon city faces worst flooding in 53 years
Undercover cop arrests fellow officer who offered her $40 for sex
By BRIAN NIEMIETZ
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 15, 2019 | 6:03 PM
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nation ... -1.1965238
*
Florida man wears 'f--- the police' shirt to court — and wins the case
By DAVID BOROFF
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
OCT 06, 2014 | 4:34 PM.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ ... story.html
*
Legalization of same-sex unions led to significant decline in suicide rates in Sweden and Denmark: study
By MURI ASSUNÇÃO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
NOV 15, 2019 | 5:36 PM
https://onezero.medium.com/heres-how-kn ... c6d14ee2c2
Here’s How Knightscope’s Security Robots Surveil the Public
OneZero obtained a presentation that reveals how Knightscope uses facial recognition and license plate readers to track individuals
Dave Gershgorn
Follow
Nov 13 · 4 m
https://www.madcowprod.com/2019/08/30/t ... -oligarch/
The Senator, the Billionaire Pedophile, & the Fugitive Oligarch
By Daniel Hopsicker -
August 30, 2019
4
3897
The Senator is ‘George Mitchell.’ The billionaire pedophile is ‘Jeffrey Epstein.’ The fugitive oligarch is “Viktor Kozeny.” But first, a word about an Able Seaman…
Nothing’s changed since “Casablanca”
It was a round-up of the usual suspects.
In the aftermath of the release of 2000 pages of previously sealed documents in the lawsuit brought against Jeffrey Epstein by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, news accounts picked only low-hanging fruit for scrutiny.
Bill Clinton. Donald Trump. Woody Allen. Uber-nebbish Alan Dershowitz. He’s now become one of the usual suspects because, despite his vociferous denials, he’s exactly the blend of smarmy and slimy that signals victimizer.
But the goal is to make sense of what Epstein was up to, which remains opaque.
Puzzling out Epstein’s connection to one of those named who’s more of a sexual outlier than a sometime Lothario might be a better bet.
Someone like former Senator George Mitchell, for example.
Savoir-Fair-Less
George Mitchell doesn’t exactly exude savoir faire.
He’s a temperate-looking man. Gray hair, short and orderly. Mild, hazel-brown eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. He might have entered the U.S. Senate under Dwight David Eisenhower.
The kind of guy that looked old even in high school.
“George lives his life the way he plays tennis: thoughtful, conservative, doesn’t throw away any shots,” a friend said about him. “Nothing brilliant, or colorful; doesn’t have to make the grand slam.”
Epstein had a documented friendship with Mitchell dating back to the early 2000’s. In a 2003 New York Magazine profile, Epstein was paraphrased as saying Mitchell was “the world’s greatest negotiator,” and Mitchell called Epstein “a friend and a supporter.”
George and Jeff made an odd couple. Why did Epstein gift Mitchell the loan for an evening of one of his stable of not-yet-legal sex workers?
I think I know.
A whiff of sexual blackmail…in the 90’s
While investigating the personal pilot of one of George Mitchell’s close associates, I learned a secret about the former Majority Leader.
Mitchell looks like a boy scout, but he’s not.
After he resigned from the Senate in 1994, one of George Mitchell’s closest associates became Viktor Kozeny, known as “The Pirate of Prague.”
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Kozeny was t
https://www.live5news.com/2019/11/15/do ... ing-court/
Documents: Former Goose Creek cop faces loss of certification for lying in court
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 79714.html
‘We don’t cover up’: Hialeah chief defends handling of cop accused of sex abuse
BY CHRISTINA MORALES, NICHOLAS NEHAMAS, AND JAY WEAVER
NOVEMBER 15, 2019 01:08 PM
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... rylink=cpy
https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/nati ... 17759.html
NATIONAL
Cop is caught molesting girl in bathroom and threatens her mother, Oklahoma police say
BY TYLER J. CARTER
NOVEMBER 15, 2019 03:19 PM
*
*
*
*
* Read more here: https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/nati ... rylink=cpy
https://nypost.com/2019/11/14/nypd-cop- ... ed-before/
NYPD cop seen ogling ‘total stripper’ on bodycam was sued before
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/crime ... story.html
Former Miami-Dade cop who was indicted in the ’90s found dead after being shot several times
By WAYNE K. ROUSTAN
SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL |
NOV 15, 2019 | 2:
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/cop-accus ... b0e2a.html
URGENT
Cop accused of putting gun in a woman's mouth, among counts of violence
* Anna Ortiz [email protected], 219-933-4194 Nov 15, 2019 Up
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation ... 24214.html
Spying on 69 men in cop bathroom gets clerk 6 years in jail, California prosecutor says
BY JARED GILMOUR
NOVEMBER 15, 2019 09:31 PM
*
* Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation ... rylink=cpy
https://kywnewsradio.radio.com/articles ... use-arrest
Former Philly cop accused of drugging, raping women is put on house arrest
https://www.meadvilletribune.com/charge ... 05b78.html
Charges against a former Sharon police officer stemming from a missing department-issued weapon have been held over to Mercer County Court of Common Pleas.
Kailie Marie Marshall, 26, of 864 Highland Road, Sharon, is charged with unlawful duplication of a police report, computer trespass, unsworn falsification to authorities and simple assault.
Another former Sharon police officer, Matthew Paul Lehman, 32, of 479 Victory Church Road, Franklin, is charged with obstructing the administration of law and unsw
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191 ... have.shtml
Journalists Publish List Of Convicted Cops The State's Attorney General Said Was Illegal For Them To Have
Journalism
from the bluff-called dept
Fri, Nov 15th 2019 12:02pm — Tim Cushing
The list of convicted cops the California Attorney General tried to keep secret has just been made searchable by the Sacramento Bee. It contains hundreds of current and former police officers who've been convicted of criminal acts over the last ten years.
This collaboration of multiple newsrooms and journalism advocates began with an unforced error by a state agency. Taking advantage of a new state law allowing the public to access police misconduct records, journalists asked the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training for relevant documents. The agency handed over a list of 12,000 former and current officers -- a list that apparently was never supposed to be made public.
The state's Attorney General claimed the journalists had broken the law simply by possessing a document the Commission never should have given them. This couldn't be further from the truth, but AG Xavier Becerra continued to make this claim, as though it were possible to codify something just by saying it out loud often enough.
I can see why AG Becerra wants this list buried. There's nothing on it that makes cops or their oversight (which includes Becerra) look good. While the 12,000 officers in the database are a small percentage of the total number of California law enforcement officers employed over the past ten years, this small portion includes a number of cops who were never fired from their agencies despite committing criminal acts that would have put regular people out of a job.
Reporters found at least a dozen deputies with prior convictions are still on the roster at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. And the five officers with convictions working for the Riverside police include the acting chief — Larry Gonzalez was a lieutenant in 2013 when he pleaded guilty to DUI after reportedly crashing a city-owned SUV with a blood-alcohol level nearly twice the legal limit.
There’s a Kern County Sheriff’s deputy still working despite a conviction for manslaughter after running over two people while recklessly speeding to a call. And a Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputy is back on the force after dozing off at the wheel and killing a pair of elite cyclists on a training ride.
Sheriff's departments are especially fond of hiring and retaining the worst people. They're the agencies most willing to overlook long histories of misconduct and the most hesitant to hand down significant punishments when laws are broken by law enforcers on their payroll. The L.A. Sheriff's Department is filled with suspicious individuals who hang out in a high crime area every time they show up at the office.
The list has been trimmed considerably since its surprising release to journalists. Due to the lack of cooperation from law enforcement agencies and the general sloppiness of large-scale bureaucracies, the names in the database are only those that have been verified by journalists. The original list had 12,000 names but the database only contains 630 current and former officers.
Even so, there's plenty to be concerned about. Some officers have multiple convictions but were never fired. Officers have driven drunk, left their children in cars with their loaded guns, and engaged in fraud. There's also lots of domestic abuse -- most of which has gone unaddressed by officers' employers.
Richard Sotelo was an Imperial County Sheriff’s Department correctional officer in February 2013 when he was charged with domestic violence for assaulting his estranged wife. He was allowed to keep working despite the pending charges. But months later he was accused of a crime again, this time sexual battery against a male co-worker. He was charged for that as well. Sotelo ultimately took plea deals and was convicted in both cases and left the force.
[...]
In one incident investigated by the Bell Police Department months before his reckless driving, [LAPD Officer David] Guerrero allegedly “threatened, assaulted and battered” a woman who was in a dispute with his girlfriend, according to court records.
“That’s how you do it, LAPD style,” Guerrero allegedly said as he drove away.
The DA’s office didn’t file charges. It also didn’t prosecute Guerrero in 2013 when he allegedly threatened to kill the mother of his child, court records show.
The recycling of California cops isn't going to stop unless the state legislature steps up and makes it possible for officers to lose their certification following a conviction. California is one of only five states with no decertification process, so officers can avoid accountability simply by drifting from agency to agency in the (apparently unlikely) event they've been fired.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/470 ... ance-abuse
GOP eager for report on alleged FBI surveillance abuse
11/15/2019
The NSA has stopped collecting location data from US cellphones without a warrant
Colin Lecher, The Verge
A US federal court finds suspicionless searches of phones at the border is illegal
Zack Whittaker, Tech Crunch
Bound by Statute: In Mississippi, Jim Crow era laws result in a high rate of black kids charged as adults
Ko Bragg and Melissa Lewis, Reveal
County Clerks Revolt Over N.Y. Licenses for Undocumented Immigrants
Christina Goldbaum, The New York Times
U.S. Park Police officers will not face federal charges in shooting of Bijan Ghaisar
Tom Jackman, Washington Post
Go See The Report, Then Let’s Put Torture to Bed For Good
Sondra Crosby, Brig. Gen, (Ret.) David R. Irvine, Christian Meissner and Scott Roehm, Just Security
11/14/2019
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nation ... story.html
North Carolina deputy fired after shocking video shows him slamming sixth-grader to the ground
By PETER SBLENDORIO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 16, 2019 | 1:00 PM
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nation ... story.html
Military academies looking into possible ‘white power’ hand gestures flashed at Army-Navy game
By DAVID BOROFF
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 16, 2019 | 11:33 AM
https://www.thedailybeast.com/seattle-p ... ref=author
Seattle Probing Viral Videos of Bike Cops at Protest
CYCLE OF VIOLENCE?
The footage appears to show cops tripping over their bikes and using the incidents to arrest demonstrators.
Published Dec. 16, 2019 4:03PM ET
https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice ... uilty.html
Cleveland cop accused of urinating on girl at bus stop pleads guilty
Updated 3:09 PM;Today 11:56 AM
https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/ ... 665088001/
Mount Vernon cop out of a job after body slamming handcuffed prisoner
Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News Published 1:45 p.m. ET Dec. 16, 2019 | Updated 1:52 p.m. ET Dec. 16, 2019
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/ ... 596167001/
Telegraph Road's 'Gardner White cop' and 'speed trap' earn infamy
George Hunter, The Detroit News Published 12:01 a.m. ET Dec. 16, 2019 | Update
http://www.startribune.com/former-argen ... 566250382/
Argentine cop extraditedg from France for killing
Associated Press DECEMBER 16, 2019 — 1:50PM
https://www.silive.com/news/2019/12/ex- ... ncome.html
cop from Staten Island must pay $180K to IRS for tax fraud; cheated on rental income
https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Po ... 910511.php
Police Commission to move forward with Bridgeport cop hearings
By Tara O'Neill Updated 3:16 pm EST, Monday, December 16, 2019
*
BRIDGEPORT — The city’s Police Commission intends to move forward with scheduling hearings for officers involved in a contentious incident on Colorado Avenue in 2017 after the hearings were put on hold for more than seven months.
The hearings, which began in May, stemmed from a Office of Internal Affairs investigation that found 19 officers in violation of several department policies and procedures in their actions breaking up a house party on Oct. 21, 2017.
https://newsone.com/3896759/racist-nypd ... -break-in/
‘F–king N–gers’: Racist NYPD Cop Jailed For Breaking Into Black Woman’s Home
Michael J. Reynolds was reportedly suspended but not fired from the NYPD.
https://wsvn.com/news/local/miami-dade/ ... ng-arrest/
DECEMBER 15, 2019
Bodycam video shows Miami Beach Police cop hitting spring breaker during arrest
https://www.statesman.com/news/20191216 ... -to-murder
Austin cop VonTrey Clark pleads guilty to murder
https://www.bkreader.com/2019/12/16/off ... -flatbush/
Cop Arrested on DWI Charges After Fatal Crash in East Flatbush
by Brooklyn Reader December 16, 2019
https://atlantablackstar.com/2019/12/16 ... probation/
NYPD Cop Who Burst Into Black Nashville Family’s Home in a Drunken Rage, Threatening Them, Gets Two-Week Sentence
https://colombiareports.com/cop-who-adm ... -evidence/
Cop who admittedly murdered Bogota protester contradicts evidence in charm offensive
by Adriaan Alsema December 16, 2019
https://www.newsweek.com/jesus-menocal- ... ce-1477303
MIAMI-AREA COP CHARGED WITH SEXUAL ABUSE, KIDNAPPING, INVOLVING MINOR VICTIM
BY ASHER STOCKLER ON 12/14/19 AT 5:42 PM EST
https://www.timesofisrael.com/state-wan ... arassment/
State wants jail time for top cop convicted of sexual harassment
Former Jerusalem police chief Nissan ‘Niso’ Shaham was found guilty of sexual assault, fraud and breach of trust for coercing multiple women under his command to have sex with him
https://nypost.com/2019/12/14/panty-mun ... ainst-him/
‘Panty-munching’ cop Victor Falcon says NYPD has vendetta against him
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/ ... speaks.php
POSTED ON DECEMBER 15, 2019 BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN FBI, JAMES COMEY, RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
A DIRTY COP SPEAKS
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-ne ... lt-charges
Ottawa rookie cop now facing three sex assault charges
He was first charged in May with sexual assault and forcible confinement involving an 18-year-old woman he met on Rideau Street.
GARY DIMMOCK Updated: December 16, 201
https://www.660citynews.com/2019/12/16/ ... ex-crimes/
New allegations in case of former cop/coach charged with sex crimes
BY THE CANADIAN PRESS
Posted Dec 16, 2019 8:44 am MST
https://defensemaven.io/bluelivesmatter ... yV5txpyZA/
Police Chief Opposing Cop Gun Use Resigns Amid Tweeting Scandal
https://patch.com/illinois/aurora/19-se ... cross-cops
19 Sex Offenders Given 1 Month To Leave Wayside Cross: Cops
The 19 men must find somewhere else to live because the park is too close to a playground.
https://patch.com/connecticut/woodbury- ... ontractors
Two Middlebury Cops Inflated Overtime, Coerced Contractors
The town has outlined serious allegations against two Middlebury police officers who were fired over the summer.
By Chris Rhatigan , Patch Staff
Dec 16, 2019 9:29 am ET
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/fired-de ... -who-lied/
Fired deputies land on growing list, alongside cops who lied
Under a new policy, the county prosecutor alerted defendants about two deputies accused of lying.
* By Caleb Hutton
* Sunday, December 15, 2019 7:17am
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/16 ... p-torture/
DECEMBER 16, 2019
Where Trump and the Deep State are in Lockstep: Torture
by JEFFERSON MORLEY
Photograph Source: Jim Kuhn – CC BY 2.0
It’s a paradox of impeachment politics.
As President Trump faces charges of high crimes and misdemeanors in Congress, he denounces the alleged “deep state” cabal out to get him. His campaign is running a powerful online ad about the supposed conspiracy. It features footage of former CIA director John Brennan and former acting director John McLaughlin at a recent event in Washington. I had a memorable encounter with Brennan at the event, so I know what he’s talking about. No one has demonized the CIA leadership more effectively than Trump.
Yet on the CIA’s most controversial policy—torture—the president backed the agency’s leadership (including Brennan and McLaughlin) to the hilt. In October 2017, Trump caved to CIA demands on a more symbolic question—JFK assassination files. Trump approved continuing JFK secrecy. On two issues where the CIA was vulnerable, Trump actually protected the deep state agency that he supposedly scorns. Trump and CIA Director Gina Haspel share at least one belief: torture is a policy option that a
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... ty-budget/
Under GOP Pressure, Congress Shortchanges Election Security
After long negotiations, Democrats agree on a figure that experts say is well over a billion dollars short.
* AJ VICENS Reporter
Congress will give states an additional $425 million in election security funding as part of the budget deal reached last week, adding a much needed, but still insufficient, boost to ballot security across the country.
The funds will be disbursed through the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency tasked with coordinating state and federal election administration.
The $425 million is less than the $600 million House Democrats approved in June, but nearly $200 million more than the Senate Republicans’ offer, following the lead of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). McConnell, the senate majority leader, has steadfastly resisted expanding federal election security funding to aid cash-strapped states and local jurisdictions—even in his home state. After months of being accused of doing very little to stop foreign interference in elections, he relented in September, agreeing to a $250 millio
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... ationship/
DECEMBER 15, 2019
Here’s a Fox News Poll Trump Definitely Won’t Be Tweeting About Today
Ouch.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/12/05/ ... -virginia/
It Is Still Illegal for Blacks and Whites to Marry in Virginia (Reader Steve)
From the Mercury News: “The laws are still on the books in Virginia: Blacks and whites must sit in separate rail cars. They cannot use the same playgrounds, schools or mental hospitals. They can’t marry each other either. The measures have not been enforced for decades, but they remain in the state’s official legal record.”
North Carolina deputy fired after shocking video shows him slamming sixth-grader to the ground
By PETER SBLENDORIO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 16, 2019 | 1:00 PM
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/nation ... story.html
Military academies looking into possible ‘white power’ hand gestures flashed at Army-Navy game
By DAVID BOROFF
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
DEC 16, 2019 | 11:33 AM
https://www.thedailybeast.com/seattle-p ... ref=author
Seattle Probing Viral Videos of Bike Cops at Protest
CYCLE OF VIOLENCE?
The footage appears to show cops tripping over their bikes and using the incidents to arrest demonstrators.
Published Dec. 16, 2019 4:03PM ET
https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice ... uilty.html
Cleveland cop accused of urinating on girl at bus stop pleads guilty
Updated 3:09 PM;Today 11:56 AM
https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/ ... 665088001/
Mount Vernon cop out of a job after body slamming handcuffed prisoner
Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News Published 1:45 p.m. ET Dec. 16, 2019 | Updated 1:52 p.m. ET Dec. 16, 2019
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/ ... 596167001/
Telegraph Road's 'Gardner White cop' and 'speed trap' earn infamy
George Hunter, The Detroit News Published 12:01 a.m. ET Dec. 16, 2019 | Update
http://www.startribune.com/former-argen ... 566250382/
Argentine cop extraditedg from France for killing
Associated Press DECEMBER 16, 2019 — 1:50PM
https://www.silive.com/news/2019/12/ex- ... ncome.html
cop from Staten Island must pay $180K to IRS for tax fraud; cheated on rental income
https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Po ... 910511.php
Police Commission to move forward with Bridgeport cop hearings
By Tara O'Neill Updated 3:16 pm EST, Monday, December 16, 2019
*
BRIDGEPORT — The city’s Police Commission intends to move forward with scheduling hearings for officers involved in a contentious incident on Colorado Avenue in 2017 after the hearings were put on hold for more than seven months.
The hearings, which began in May, stemmed from a Office of Internal Affairs investigation that found 19 officers in violation of several department policies and procedures in their actions breaking up a house party on Oct. 21, 2017.
https://newsone.com/3896759/racist-nypd ... -break-in/
‘F–king N–gers’: Racist NYPD Cop Jailed For Breaking Into Black Woman’s Home
Michael J. Reynolds was reportedly suspended but not fired from the NYPD.
https://wsvn.com/news/local/miami-dade/ ... ng-arrest/
DECEMBER 15, 2019
Bodycam video shows Miami Beach Police cop hitting spring breaker during arrest
https://www.statesman.com/news/20191216 ... -to-murder
Austin cop VonTrey Clark pleads guilty to murder
https://www.bkreader.com/2019/12/16/off ... -flatbush/
Cop Arrested on DWI Charges After Fatal Crash in East Flatbush
by Brooklyn Reader December 16, 2019
https://atlantablackstar.com/2019/12/16 ... probation/
NYPD Cop Who Burst Into Black Nashville Family’s Home in a Drunken Rage, Threatening Them, Gets Two-Week Sentence
https://colombiareports.com/cop-who-adm ... -evidence/
Cop who admittedly murdered Bogota protester contradicts evidence in charm offensive
by Adriaan Alsema December 16, 2019
https://www.newsweek.com/jesus-menocal- ... ce-1477303
MIAMI-AREA COP CHARGED WITH SEXUAL ABUSE, KIDNAPPING, INVOLVING MINOR VICTIM
BY ASHER STOCKLER ON 12/14/19 AT 5:42 PM EST
https://www.timesofisrael.com/state-wan ... arassment/
State wants jail time for top cop convicted of sexual harassment
Former Jerusalem police chief Nissan ‘Niso’ Shaham was found guilty of sexual assault, fraud and breach of trust for coercing multiple women under his command to have sex with him
https://nypost.com/2019/12/14/panty-mun ... ainst-him/
‘Panty-munching’ cop Victor Falcon says NYPD has vendetta against him
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/ ... speaks.php
POSTED ON DECEMBER 15, 2019 BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN FBI, JAMES COMEY, RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
A DIRTY COP SPEAKS
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-ne ... lt-charges
Ottawa rookie cop now facing three sex assault charges
He was first charged in May with sexual assault and forcible confinement involving an 18-year-old woman he met on Rideau Street.
GARY DIMMOCK Updated: December 16, 201
https://www.660citynews.com/2019/12/16/ ... ex-crimes/
New allegations in case of former cop/coach charged with sex crimes
BY THE CANADIAN PRESS
Posted Dec 16, 2019 8:44 am MST
https://defensemaven.io/bluelivesmatter ... yV5txpyZA/
Police Chief Opposing Cop Gun Use Resigns Amid Tweeting Scandal
https://patch.com/illinois/aurora/19-se ... cross-cops
19 Sex Offenders Given 1 Month To Leave Wayside Cross: Cops
The 19 men must find somewhere else to live because the park is too close to a playground.
https://patch.com/connecticut/woodbury- ... ontractors
Two Middlebury Cops Inflated Overtime, Coerced Contractors
The town has outlined serious allegations against two Middlebury police officers who were fired over the summer.
By Chris Rhatigan , Patch Staff
Dec 16, 2019 9:29 am ET
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/fired-de ... -who-lied/
Fired deputies land on growing list, alongside cops who lied
Under a new policy, the county prosecutor alerted defendants about two deputies accused of lying.
* By Caleb Hutton
* Sunday, December 15, 2019 7:17am
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/16 ... p-torture/
DECEMBER 16, 2019
Where Trump and the Deep State are in Lockstep: Torture
by JEFFERSON MORLEY
Photograph Source: Jim Kuhn – CC BY 2.0
It’s a paradox of impeachment politics.
As President Trump faces charges of high crimes and misdemeanors in Congress, he denounces the alleged “deep state” cabal out to get him. His campaign is running a powerful online ad about the supposed conspiracy. It features footage of former CIA director John Brennan and former acting director John McLaughlin at a recent event in Washington. I had a memorable encounter with Brennan at the event, so I know what he’s talking about. No one has demonized the CIA leadership more effectively than Trump.
Yet on the CIA’s most controversial policy—torture—the president backed the agency’s leadership (including Brennan and McLaughlin) to the hilt. In October 2017, Trump caved to CIA demands on a more symbolic question—JFK assassination files. Trump approved continuing JFK secrecy. On two issues where the CIA was vulnerable, Trump actually protected the deep state agency that he supposedly scorns. Trump and CIA Director Gina Haspel share at least one belief: torture is a policy option that a
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... ty-budget/
Under GOP Pressure, Congress Shortchanges Election Security
After long negotiations, Democrats agree on a figure that experts say is well over a billion dollars short.
* AJ VICENS Reporter
Congress will give states an additional $425 million in election security funding as part of the budget deal reached last week, adding a much needed, but still insufficient, boost to ballot security across the country.
The funds will be disbursed through the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency tasked with coordinating state and federal election administration.
The $425 million is less than the $600 million House Democrats approved in June, but nearly $200 million more than the Senate Republicans’ offer, following the lead of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). McConnell, the senate majority leader, has steadfastly resisted expanding federal election security funding to aid cash-strapped states and local jurisdictions—even in his home state. After months of being accused of doing very little to stop foreign interference in elections, he relented in September, agreeing to a $250 millio
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... ationship/
DECEMBER 15, 2019
Here’s a Fox News Poll Trump Definitely Won’t Be Tweeting About Today
Ouch.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/12/05/ ... -virginia/
It Is Still Illegal for Blacks and Whites to Marry in Virginia (Reader Steve)
From the Mercury News: “The laws are still on the books in Virginia: Blacks and whites must sit in separate rail cars. They cannot use the same playgrounds, schools or mental hospitals. They can’t marry each other either. The measures have not been enforced for decades, but they remain in the state’s official legal record.”
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-sta ... rge-61298/
om: J Ader
09/20/2018
Subject: Freedom of Information Act Request: FOIA - FBI - Jon Burge
Portal
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:
All documents mentioning Jon Burge (1947–2018), former Chicago Police Department detective, whose death was widely reported in the media.
Please see the following news article for context:
"CHICAGO (FOX 32 NEWS) - Former Chicago Police Department commander Jon Burge has died, sources tell FOX 32. He was 70.
Former Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo said he learned of Burge's death on Wednesday.
Burge was convicted in 2010 for lying about torturing suspects. He was accused of leading the abuse and torture of hundreds of African-American suspects, some by use of a cattle prodder or suffocation by plastic, forcing confessions from dozens." [source: http://www.fox32chicago.com/news/local/ ... -70-source ]
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
J Ader
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
10/01/2018
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_D2133218
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_D2133207
View Embed Download
From: J Ader
10/26/2018
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request: FOIA - FBI - Jon Burge
Portal
Thanks for the reply. I do not wish to narrow my request.
Please let me know if you need anything else from my end.
- J. Ader
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
10/11/2018
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_D2138224
View Embed Download
From: J Ader
10/26/2018
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
Portal
Ton whom it may concern,
Can someone please provide me with a relatively realistic estimation of how much time it will take to deliver these responsive documents to me once I have decided to pay the fee? Specifically, I am considering paying for the CD option in order to receive these 5,000+ pages.
Thanks in advance,
- J. Ader
From: Michael Morisy
11/05/2018
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
Mail
To Whom It May Concern:
Please find enclosed a check for $160.00 to satisfy the fee associated with the attached public records request.
Thank you.
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
11/08/2018
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_D2153250
View Embed Download
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
11/09/2018
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_D2153250
View Embed Download
From: J Ader
12/08/2018
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
Email
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, narrowed down and re-submitted on Sept. 20, 2018. Please let me know when I can expect to receive these records, or if further clarification is needed.
Thanks for your help,
- J Ader
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
12/11/2018
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
Portal
Please check the status of your FOIPA Request at http://vault.fbi.gov by clicking on “Check Status of Your FOI/PA Request” on the right side of the page, and follow the instructions below.
Check the Status of Your FOIPA Request
If your FOIPA Number is [1234567-0] please enter [1234567-000] into the system. If your FOIPA Number is [1234567-1] please enter [1234567-001] into the system. If you have any questions about the status of your FOIPA request, please e-mail [email protected].
FIND STATUS OF FOIPA- Request statuses are updated weekly
Please enter the whole FOIPA number-Example: [1234567-000]
FOIPA:
Results will show the Request Number, Case Type and Process Description shown below:
FOIPA:
1234567-000
Case Type:
FOIPA
Process Description (Will display the current progress of the request)
The FBI’s FOIPA Program is searching the FBI’s indices for potentially responsive documents.
You may be contacted via formal letter for all fees and/or negotiation issues that may apply.
NOTE: Recent requests are entered into the FOIPA database in the order that they are received. Before you can check the status, you must have received correspondence assigning a FOIPA request number and the information transferred to the online database. Status information is updated weekly. If a request has been closed within the last six months the online database will display the following: The FOIPA number entered has been closed, and appropriate correspondence has been sent to the address on file.
Estimated Dates of Completion
Requests are processed in the order in which they are received through our multi-track processing system. Requests are divided into two primary tracks--simple (under 50 pages of potentially responsive documents) and complex (over 50 pages of potentially responsive documents). Complex requests are further divided into medium, large, and extra-large sub-tracks based upon request size. Simple track requests typically require the least amount of time to process. Currently, simple track cases average approximately 134 days from the date of receipt for processing. Our complex requests in the medium processing track are currently averaging 523 days, large processing track are currently averaging approximately 1,335 days, and extra-large processing track are currently averaging 1,875 days for processing.
Respectfully,
Public Information Officer
Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS) FBI-Information Management Division
170 Marcel Drive, Winchester, VA 22602-4843
Direct: (540) 868-4593
Fax: (540) 868-4391
Questions E-mail: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Do you have further questions about the FOI/PA process? Visit us at http://www.fbi.gov/foia
Please check the status of your request online at https://vault.fbi.gov/fdps-1/@@search-fdps Status updates are performed on a weekly basis.
Note: This is a non-emergency email address. If this is an emergency, please call 911 directly. If you need to report a tip for immediate action, please contact FBI Tips at http://tips.fbi.gov/ or reach out to your local field office.
From: J Ader
01/28/2019
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
Email
To whom it may concern,
I wanted to follow up on the status of my request - FOIPA Request No. 1417740-000. Is there any status update on the processing of responsive documents for this request?
Thanks,
- J. Ader
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
01/30/2019
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
Portal
Please check the status of your FOIPA Request at http://vault.fbi.gov by clicking on “Check Status of Your FOI/PA Request” on the right side of the page, and follow the instructions below.
Check the Status of Your FOIPA Request
If your FOIPA Number is [1234567-0] please enter [1234567-000] into the system. If your FOIPA Number is [1234567-1] please enter [1234567-001] into the system. If you have any questions about the status of your FOIPA request, please e-mail [email protected].
FIND STATUS OF FOIPA- Request statuses are updated weekly
Please enter the whole FOIPA number-Example: [1234567-000]
FOIPA:
Results will show the Request Number, Case Type and Process Description shown below:
FOIPA:
1234567-000
Case Type:
FOIPA
Process Description (Will display the current progress of the request)
The FBI’s FOIPA Program is searching the FBI’s indices for potentially responsive documents.
You may be contacted via formal letter for all fees and/or negotiation issues that may apply.
NOTE: Recent requests are entered into the FOIPA database in the order that they are received. Before you can check the status, you must have received correspondence assigning a FOIPA request number and the information transferred to the online database. Status information is updated weekly. If a request has been closed within the last six months the online database will display the following: The FOIPA number entered has been closed, and appropriate correspondence has been sent to the address on file.
Estimated Dates of Completion
Requests are processed in the order in which they are received through our multi-track processing system. Requests are divided into two primary tracks--simple (under 50 pages of potentially responsive documents) and complex (over 50 pages of potentially responsive documents). Complex requests are further divided into medium, large, and extra-large sub-tracks based upon request size. Simple track requests typically require the least amount of time to process. Currently, simple track cases average approximately 134 days from the date of receipt for processing. Our complex requests in the medium processing track are currently averaging 523 days, large processing track are currently averaging approximately 1,335 days, and extra-large processing track are currently averaging 1,875 days for processing.
Respectfully,
Public Information Officer
Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS) FBI-Information Management Division
170 Marcel Drive, Winchester, VA 22602-4843
Direct: (540) 868-4593
Fax: (540) 868-4391
Questions E-mail: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Do you have further questions about the FOI/PA process? Visit us at http://www.fbi.gov/foia
Please check the status of your request online at https://vault.fbi.gov/fdps-1/@@search-fdps Status updates are performed on a weekly basis.
Note: This is a non-emergency email address. If this is an emergency, please call 911 directly. If you need to report a tip for immediate action, please contact FBI Tips at http://tips.fbi.gov/ or reach out to your local field office.
~WRD000
Download
From: Muckrock Staff
04/29/2019
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
04/30/2019
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
Portal
Thank you for contacting [email protected]. Please check the status of your FOIPA Request at http://vault.fbi.gov by clicking on “Check Status of Your FOI/PA Request” on the right side of the page, and follow the instructions below.
Check the Status of Your FOIPA Request
If your FOIPA Number is [1234567-0] please enter [1234567-000] into the system. If your FOIPA Number is [1234567-1] please enter [1234567-001] into the system. If you have any questions about the status of your FOIPA request, please e-mail [email protected].
FIND STATUS OF FOIPA- Request statuses are updated weekly
Please enter the whole FOIPA number-Example: [1234567-000]
FOIPA:
Results will show the Request Number, Case Type and Process Description shown below:
FOIPA:
1234567-000
Case Type:
FOIPA
Process Description (Will display the current progress of the request)
The FBI’s FOIPA Program is searching the FBI’s indices for potentially responsive documents.
You may be contacted via formal letter for all fees and/or negotiation issues that may apply.
NOTE: Recent requests are entered into the FOIPA database in the order that they are received. Before you can check the status, you must have received correspondence assigning a FOIPA request number and the information transferred to the online database. Status information is updated weekly. If a request has been closed within the last six months the online database will display the following: The FOIPA number entered has been closed, and appropriate correspondence has been sent to the address on file.
Estimated Dates of Completion
Requests are processed in the order in which they are received through our multi-track processing system. Requests are divided into two primary tracks--simple (under 50 pages of potentially responsive documents) and complex (over 50 pages of potentially responsive documents). Complex requests are further divided into medium, large, and extra-large sub-tracks based upon request size. Simple track requests typically require the least amount of time to process. Currently, simple track cases average approximately 138 days from the date of receipt for processing. Our complex requests in the medium processing track are currently averaging 571 days, large processing track are currently averaging approximately 1,289 days, and extra-large processing track are currently averaging 1,649 days for processing.
Respectfully,
Public Information Officer
Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS) FBI-Information Management Division
170 Marcel Drive, Winchester, VA 22602-4843
Direct: (540) 868-4593
Fax: (540) 868-4391
Questions E-mail: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Do you have further questions about the FOI/PA process? Visit us at http://www.fbi.gov/foia
Please check the status of your request online at https://vault.fbi.gov/fdps-1/@@search-fdps Status updates are performed on a weekly basis.
Note: This is a non-emergency email address. If this is an emergency, please call 911 directly. If you need to report a tip for immediate action, please contact FBI Tips at http://tips.fbi.gov/ or reach out to your local field office.
~WRD000
Download
From: Muckrock Staff
07/29/2019
From: Muckrock Staff
10/28/2019
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
11/04/2019
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R351710_D2369920
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R351710_D2310317
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R351710_D2310314
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From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
12/02/2019
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R352508_D2386543
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R352508_D2371176
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R352508_D2310320
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R352508_D2310293
View Embed Download
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
12/31/2019
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2402856
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2388355
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310389
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310384
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310313
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310312
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310310
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310305
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310300
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310296
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om: J Ader
09/20/2018
Subject: Freedom of Information Act Request: FOIA - FBI - Jon Burge
Portal
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:
All documents mentioning Jon Burge (1947–2018), former Chicago Police Department detective, whose death was widely reported in the media.
Please see the following news article for context:
"CHICAGO (FOX 32 NEWS) - Former Chicago Police Department commander Jon Burge has died, sources tell FOX 32. He was 70.
Former Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo said he learned of Burge's death on Wednesday.
Burge was convicted in 2010 for lying about torturing suspects. He was accused of leading the abuse and torture of hundreds of African-American suspects, some by use of a cattle prodder or suffocation by plastic, forcing confessions from dozens." [source: http://www.fox32chicago.com/news/local/ ... -70-source ]
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
J Ader
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
10/01/2018
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_D2133218
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_D2133207
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From: J Ader
10/26/2018
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request: FOIA - FBI - Jon Burge
Portal
Thanks for the reply. I do not wish to narrow my request.
Please let me know if you need anything else from my end.
- J. Ader
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
10/11/2018
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_D2138224
View Embed Download
From: J Ader
10/26/2018
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
Portal
Ton whom it may concern,
Can someone please provide me with a relatively realistic estimation of how much time it will take to deliver these responsive documents to me once I have decided to pay the fee? Specifically, I am considering paying for the CD option in order to receive these 5,000+ pages.
Thanks in advance,
- J. Ader
From: Michael Morisy
11/05/2018
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
To Whom It May Concern:
Please find enclosed a check for $160.00 to satisfy the fee associated with the attached public records request.
Thank you.
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
11/08/2018
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_D2153250
View Embed Download
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
11/09/2018
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_D2153250
View Embed Download
From: J Ader
12/08/2018
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, narrowed down and re-submitted on Sept. 20, 2018. Please let me know when I can expect to receive these records, or if further clarification is needed.
Thanks for your help,
- J Ader
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
12/11/2018
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
Portal
Please check the status of your FOIPA Request at http://vault.fbi.gov by clicking on “Check Status of Your FOI/PA Request” on the right side of the page, and follow the instructions below.
Check the Status of Your FOIPA Request
If your FOIPA Number is [1234567-0] please enter [1234567-000] into the system. If your FOIPA Number is [1234567-1] please enter [1234567-001] into the system. If you have any questions about the status of your FOIPA request, please e-mail [email protected].
FIND STATUS OF FOIPA- Request statuses are updated weekly
Please enter the whole FOIPA number-Example: [1234567-000]
FOIPA:
Results will show the Request Number, Case Type and Process Description shown below:
FOIPA:
1234567-000
Case Type:
FOIPA
Process Description (Will display the current progress of the request)
The FBI’s FOIPA Program is searching the FBI’s indices for potentially responsive documents.
You may be contacted via formal letter for all fees and/or negotiation issues that may apply.
NOTE: Recent requests are entered into the FOIPA database in the order that they are received. Before you can check the status, you must have received correspondence assigning a FOIPA request number and the information transferred to the online database. Status information is updated weekly. If a request has been closed within the last six months the online database will display the following: The FOIPA number entered has been closed, and appropriate correspondence has been sent to the address on file.
Estimated Dates of Completion
Requests are processed in the order in which they are received through our multi-track processing system. Requests are divided into two primary tracks--simple (under 50 pages of potentially responsive documents) and complex (over 50 pages of potentially responsive documents). Complex requests are further divided into medium, large, and extra-large sub-tracks based upon request size. Simple track requests typically require the least amount of time to process. Currently, simple track cases average approximately 134 days from the date of receipt for processing. Our complex requests in the medium processing track are currently averaging 523 days, large processing track are currently averaging approximately 1,335 days, and extra-large processing track are currently averaging 1,875 days for processing.
Respectfully,
Public Information Officer
Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS) FBI-Information Management Division
170 Marcel Drive, Winchester, VA 22602-4843
Direct: (540) 868-4593
Fax: (540) 868-4391
Questions E-mail: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Do you have further questions about the FOI/PA process? Visit us at http://www.fbi.gov/foia
Please check the status of your request online at https://vault.fbi.gov/fdps-1/@@search-fdps Status updates are performed on a weekly basis.
Note: This is a non-emergency email address. If this is an emergency, please call 911 directly. If you need to report a tip for immediate action, please contact FBI Tips at http://tips.fbi.gov/ or reach out to your local field office.
From: J Ader
01/28/2019
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
To whom it may concern,
I wanted to follow up on the status of my request - FOIPA Request No. 1417740-000. Is there any status update on the processing of responsive documents for this request?
Thanks,
- J. Ader
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
01/30/2019
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
Portal
Please check the status of your FOIPA Request at http://vault.fbi.gov by clicking on “Check Status of Your FOI/PA Request” on the right side of the page, and follow the instructions below.
Check the Status of Your FOIPA Request
If your FOIPA Number is [1234567-0] please enter [1234567-000] into the system. If your FOIPA Number is [1234567-1] please enter [1234567-001] into the system. If you have any questions about the status of your FOIPA request, please e-mail [email protected].
FIND STATUS OF FOIPA- Request statuses are updated weekly
Please enter the whole FOIPA number-Example: [1234567-000]
FOIPA:
Results will show the Request Number, Case Type and Process Description shown below:
FOIPA:
1234567-000
Case Type:
FOIPA
Process Description (Will display the current progress of the request)
The FBI’s FOIPA Program is searching the FBI’s indices for potentially responsive documents.
You may be contacted via formal letter for all fees and/or negotiation issues that may apply.
NOTE: Recent requests are entered into the FOIPA database in the order that they are received. Before you can check the status, you must have received correspondence assigning a FOIPA request number and the information transferred to the online database. Status information is updated weekly. If a request has been closed within the last six months the online database will display the following: The FOIPA number entered has been closed, and appropriate correspondence has been sent to the address on file.
Estimated Dates of Completion
Requests are processed in the order in which they are received through our multi-track processing system. Requests are divided into two primary tracks--simple (under 50 pages of potentially responsive documents) and complex (over 50 pages of potentially responsive documents). Complex requests are further divided into medium, large, and extra-large sub-tracks based upon request size. Simple track requests typically require the least amount of time to process. Currently, simple track cases average approximately 134 days from the date of receipt for processing. Our complex requests in the medium processing track are currently averaging 523 days, large processing track are currently averaging approximately 1,335 days, and extra-large processing track are currently averaging 1,875 days for processing.
Respectfully,
Public Information Officer
Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS) FBI-Information Management Division
170 Marcel Drive, Winchester, VA 22602-4843
Direct: (540) 868-4593
Fax: (540) 868-4391
Questions E-mail: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Do you have further questions about the FOI/PA process? Visit us at http://www.fbi.gov/foia
Please check the status of your request online at https://vault.fbi.gov/fdps-1/@@search-fdps Status updates are performed on a weekly basis.
Note: This is a non-emergency email address. If this is an emergency, please call 911 directly. If you need to report a tip for immediate action, please contact FBI Tips at http://tips.fbi.gov/ or reach out to your local field office.
~WRD000
Download
From: Muckrock Staff
04/29/2019
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
04/30/2019
Subject: RE: Freedom of Information Act Request #1417740-000
Portal
Thank you for contacting [email protected]. Please check the status of your FOIPA Request at http://vault.fbi.gov by clicking on “Check Status of Your FOI/PA Request” on the right side of the page, and follow the instructions below.
Check the Status of Your FOIPA Request
If your FOIPA Number is [1234567-0] please enter [1234567-000] into the system. If your FOIPA Number is [1234567-1] please enter [1234567-001] into the system. If you have any questions about the status of your FOIPA request, please e-mail [email protected].
FIND STATUS OF FOIPA- Request statuses are updated weekly
Please enter the whole FOIPA number-Example: [1234567-000]
FOIPA:
Results will show the Request Number, Case Type and Process Description shown below:
FOIPA:
1234567-000
Case Type:
FOIPA
Process Description (Will display the current progress of the request)
The FBI’s FOIPA Program is searching the FBI’s indices for potentially responsive documents.
You may be contacted via formal letter for all fees and/or negotiation issues that may apply.
NOTE: Recent requests are entered into the FOIPA database in the order that they are received. Before you can check the status, you must have received correspondence assigning a FOIPA request number and the information transferred to the online database. Status information is updated weekly. If a request has been closed within the last six months the online database will display the following: The FOIPA number entered has been closed, and appropriate correspondence has been sent to the address on file.
Estimated Dates of Completion
Requests are processed in the order in which they are received through our multi-track processing system. Requests are divided into two primary tracks--simple (under 50 pages of potentially responsive documents) and complex (over 50 pages of potentially responsive documents). Complex requests are further divided into medium, large, and extra-large sub-tracks based upon request size. Simple track requests typically require the least amount of time to process. Currently, simple track cases average approximately 138 days from the date of receipt for processing. Our complex requests in the medium processing track are currently averaging 571 days, large processing track are currently averaging approximately 1,289 days, and extra-large processing track are currently averaging 1,649 days for processing.
Respectfully,
Public Information Officer
Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS) FBI-Information Management Division
170 Marcel Drive, Winchester, VA 22602-4843
Direct: (540) 868-4593
Fax: (540) 868-4391
Questions E-mail: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Do you have further questions about the FOI/PA process? Visit us at http://www.fbi.gov/foia
Please check the status of your request online at https://vault.fbi.gov/fdps-1/@@search-fdps Status updates are performed on a weekly basis.
Note: This is a non-emergency email address. If this is an emergency, please call 911 directly. If you need to report a tip for immediate action, please contact FBI Tips at http://tips.fbi.gov/ or reach out to your local field office.
~WRD000
Download
From: Muckrock Staff
07/29/2019
From: Muckrock Staff
10/28/2019
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
11/04/2019
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R351710_D2369920
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R351710_D2310317
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R351710_D2310314
View Embed Download
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
12/02/2019
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R352508_D2386543
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R352508_D2371176
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R352508_D2310320
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R352508_D2310293
View Embed Download
From: Federal Bureau of Investigation
12/31/2019
Subject: eFOIA files available
Portal
There are eFOIA files available for you to download.
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2402856
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2388355
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310389
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310384
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310313
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310312
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310310
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310305
View Embed Download
E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310300
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E8559577dbf05770a7c84ae28f94c8608cf2dd792_Q42052_R353341_D2310296
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There are too many files to display o
-
msfreeh
- Level 34 Illuminated
- Posts: 7718
Re: What does the smart criminal justice consumer do?
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/03 ... elligence/
JANUARY 3, 2020
The Dangers of Privatized Intelligence
by JOYCE NELSON
In a scathing piece about Russiagate, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern recently recalled a statement made in 1981 by then-CIA Director William Casey during the first meeting of President Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet. Casey told this gathering, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” [1]
It’s a shocking statement that might be useful to keep in mind as events further unfold over the next few months. Casey, of course, would have had no way of knowing in 1981 just how far his “disinformation program” would extend.
The Rise of Russiagate
Ray McGovern once again effectively demolishes (as he has several times over the past three years) the flimsy props holding up Russiagate, especially the “Intelligence Community Assessment” (ICA) prepared in January 2017 by “handpicked analysts” from the FBI, CIA and NSA (not 17 intelligence agencies, as first claimed by National Intelligence Director James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan).
McGovern writes: “As for the ‘Intelligence Community Assessment,’ the banner headline atop The New York Times on Jan. 7, 2017 set the tone for the next couple of years: ‘Putin Led Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Says.’ During my career as a CIA analyst, as deputy national intelligence officer chairing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), and working on the Intelligence Production Review Board, I had not seen so shabby a piece of faux analysis as the ICA. The writers themselves seemed to be holding their noses. They saw fit to embed in the ICA itself this derriere-covering note: ‘High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong’.” [2]
But that “derriere-covering note” didn’t stop the mainstream media from inflating Russiagate over the next three years into a self-sustaining industry that survived the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller (which found no Trump-Russia collusion), and will likely survive the recent release of Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowtiz’s report on the FBI 2016 spying.
The Horowitz Report
As Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone puts it (Dec. 10, 2019), the Horowtiz report shows “years of breathless headlines were wrong” about Russiagate, with the report unveiling “a story about bad journalism piled on bad journalism, balanced on a third layer of wrong reporting….Holy God, what a clown show the Trump-Russia investigation was.” [3]
Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept (December 12. 2019) is even more thorough in his analysis of the IG Report, which shows “the FBI’s gross abuse of its power,” its “serial deceit” by which it “manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims.” As a
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/me ... t-11419337
Mesa Cop Accused of Harassing Almost a Dozen Women Receives Full Retirement
HANNAH CRITCHFIELD | JANUARY 3, 2020 | 10:33AM
https://www.businessinsider.com/old-tru ... ran-2020-1.
Trump tweets predicting Obama would start a war with Iran to get reelected are coming back to haunt him
https://www.justsecurity.org/64645/top- ... 4450b93540
Top Experts’ Backgrounder: Military Action Against Iran and US Domestic Law
by Brian Egan and Tess Bridgeman
January 3, 2020
*
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on June 21, 2019. Designed as a expert analysis of the very kinds of questions raised by the U.S. military operation killing Iran’s Qassem Soleimani, we are republishing it today.)
What follows is a basic Q&A on the circumstances under which U.S. military operations against Iran would be lawful under U.S. law. The objective is to provide journalists, lawmakers, and other members of the public a legal framework for this important issue. Our analysis is not specific to any particular scenario — such as Iranian forces’ or so-called Iranian proxies’ attacks on commercial ships, U.S. drones, U.S. military vessels, or U.S. personnel — but rather addresses broader questions about the circumstances under which the president has the authority to initiate U.S. military operations against Iran, whether Congress has already authorized the use of force against Iran, how the War Powers Resolution fits into the picture, and what Congress can do if it disagrees with the president’s course of action.
1. Does the president need authorization from Congress to use U.S. military force against Iran?
The president derives authority to use military force overseas from two sources: the Constitution and congressional authorization. At this point, we do not believe that there is any existing congressional authorization to use force against Iran (see Q2 below). In the absence of congressional authorization, the president could only use force against Iran by relying on his authority over foreign relations and as commander-in-chief under Article II of the Constitution.
There is considerable debate on the scope of the president’s authority to use military force in the absence of congressional authorization. The executive branch, through consistent historical practice in Republican and Democratic administrations, and as reflected in a series of opinions by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), has taken a relatively broad view of the president’s Article II authority to initiate the use of force, arguing that it has the ability to do so when: (1) there is an important “national interest” in doing so (Curtis Bradley and Jack Goldsmith have explained that this has become a very expansive concept in modern practice; Marty Lederman has suggested the concept should be understood as limited to significant national interests that have historically supported such unilateral actions in the past); and (2) the use of force does not constitute “war” in the constitutional sense.
The latter limitation is because Article I of the Constitution delegates the power to “declare war” to Congress. The executive branch has argued, in essence, that if the expected “nature, scope, and duration” of the military engagement falls below the threshold of “war,” the president may use force without congressional authorization. In the OLC’s view, “military operations will likely rise to the level of a war only when characterized by ‘prolonged and substantial military engagements, typically involving exposure of U.S. military personnel to significant risk over a substantial period.’” The OLC opined most recently that the limited strikes against Syria by the United States in response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons did not cross this threshold. Prior OLC opinions reached a similar conclusion with respect to U.S. military strikes in Libya in 2011, and U.S. military activities in Haiti in the 1990s, among others.
In the War Powers Resolution of 1973 (WPR), Congress imposed important limitations on the president’s ability to conduct military operations in the absence of explicit congressional authorization. Indeed, Congress does not necessarily view its own authority so narrowly or the president’s so expansively as described in the OLC opinions noted above. The WPR explicitly states the view of Congress that the president’s constitutional authority to introduce U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities, or situations where involvement in hostilities is imminent, may be exercised “only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” Moreover, as explained below, the WPR requires the relevant military operations (“hostilities”) to be terminated after a defined period of time unless they have been authorized by Congress.
The framers of the Constitution gave the authority to declare war to Congress, as well as the authority to raise and support armies, provide and maintain a Navy, provide for the common defense, regulate detention and seizure of vessels in war, and a host of other powers related to war and foreign affairs, in part to prevent the United States from being drawn into conflict for unpopular purposes or without debate and consideration by the representatives of the people. The Constitution’s design anticipates that Congress would be less inclined to go to war than the executive branch — this is a feature, not a bug. (Of note, it has long been understood that even though Congress has the lion’s share of authority in war-making, the president does have at least some concurrent if not exclusive authority in regard to the conduct of hostilities and to use force to repel a sudden attack on the United States.)
What’s more, even in the OLC’s view, the threshold for “war” in the constitutional sense is more easily met when the use of force at issue is against against another nation state (rather than in its territory but with its consent) where there is a high likelihood of escalation. Although Iran is not a nuclear power, which would necessarily affect that calculus, its capacity as a nation-state with a strong military, including its cyber and ballistic missile capabilities, are relevant factors in this analysis, as is the extent of U.S. exposure given its significant footprint in the region where Iranian military forces (and their proxies) are present and active. The scope of U.S. objectives for the use of force will also affect the analysis, especially if those objectives are likely to require sustained operations or engender use of force in response by Iran. Those factors may distinguish this case from the U.S. strikes against Syria, for example.
Finally, another important limitation is that the president’s use of force — whether based on congressional authorization or not — must comply with international law. The president is charged in Article II of the Constitution to “take care” that the laws are faithfully executed. This includes our international legal obligations, including the U.N. Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force except in certain limited circumstances, such as self-defense. Also, under international law, even if the United States acts in self-defense, the U.S. response must be necessary and proportionate.
2. Does the president have authorization from Congress to strike Iran? Specifically, would the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) authorize a strike against Iran?
There is no existing congressional authorization for the use of force against Iran. While some in the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have made arguments attempting to link Iran and al-Qaeda — in what may be an effort to lay the groundwork for invoking the 2001 AUMF, which was passed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, as authorization to use force against Iran — that argument is thoroughly unconvincing.
The 2001 AUMF authorizes the president to use:
“necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
This has long been understood to refer to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, who harbored al-Qaeda in Afghanistan at the time of the 9/11 attacks, and also has been interpreted by all three branches of government to apply to “associated forces” of those two armed groups based on the principle of co-belligerency in armed conflict.
As we have previously written: “The 2001 AUMF does not authorize the use of force against Iran. Iran was not implicated in the 9/11 attacks, Iranian forces are not al Qaeda or the Taliban, or their associated forces, nor are they a ‘successor’ to any of those forces.”
Many have suggested that Pompeo and other officials may be laying the groundwork for an argument that the 2001 AUMF authorizes military operations against Iran because Iran is “harboring” some members of al-Qaeda. As a factual matter, we are not aware of any credible information that Iran is “harboring” al-Qaeda as a group, or allowing al-Qaeda to plot attacks from Iran. As a legal matter, the AUMF has never been construed to authorize military attacks against a foreign nation based on the fact that some al Qaeda members may be located in or transit that country, even if that is the case with Iran. In addition, the AUMF’s use of the past tense — “harbored” — suggests that it was intended to refer to those who were responsible for providing safe haven for, and otherwise assisting, those who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. In the 20 years since the 9/11 attacks, there has not been any suggestion that the 2001 AUMF could be interpreted to authorize force against a present-day “harborer.” (Again, there is no known evidence to suggest that is what Iran is doing with al-Qaeda.)
The 2001 AUMF authorizes force only if it is consistent with international law, as the Supreme Court explained in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Even if the 2001 AUMF were somehow thought to apply to Iran — which it does not — the executive branch would be able to use force against Iran only if necessary and proportionate to the specific threat from al-Qaeda.
In a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on June 19, Rep. Deutch (D-Fl.) asked State Department Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook, whether he believes “the administration could launch an attack against Iran under the 2001 AUMF?” His response, “this is something which the office of the Legal Adviser can give you an opinion on, if you’d like to submit it,” provides an appropriate next step for Congress to engage with the administration on this issue.
Finally, it bears noting that there is no viable argument that another AUMF still on the books — the “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002” (2002 AUMF) — authorizes force against Iran. It allows the president to use force that is “necessary and appropriate” to “defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq;” and “enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions against Iraq.” Those are plainly not relevant to the situation with Iran today.
3. What steps can Congress take if it disagrees with the president’s decision to use military force? More specifically, what steps can Congress take in advance to prevent actions by the president? And, what steps would Congress be able to take after the president uses force against Iran if lawmakers are opposed?
Congress has a number of tools at its disposal to constrain the president’s ability to use force unilaterally. Even in the OLC’s view, the president’s ability to use force without congressional authority can be checked if Congress decides to impose restrictions. While past attorneys general and the OLC have determined the president has the power to use military force abroad to protect important national interests and below the threshold of “war” in the constitutional sense, as discussed above, “[t]his independent authority of the President … exists at least insofar as Congress h
https://www.justsecurity.org/67863/excl ... -concerns/
Exclusive: Unredacted Ukraine Documents Reveal Extent of Pentagon’s Legal Concerns
“Clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold.”
This is what Michael Duffey, associate director of national security programs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), told Elaine McCusker, the acting Pentagon comptroller, in an Aug. 30 email, which has only been made available in redacted form until now. It is one of many documents the Trump administration is trying to keep from the public, despite congressional oversight efforts and court orders in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation.
Earlier in the day on Aug. 30, President Donald Trump met with Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss the president’s hold on $391 million in military assistance for Ukraine. Inside the Trump administration, panic was reaching
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Black drivers face more police stops in California, state analysis shows
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Australian prime minister is jeered in wildfire-ravaged zone
https://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-judge ... 20-1480123
FOX NEWS JUDGE PREDICTS TRUMP WILL 'START A WAR WITH IRAN' AND MEET WITH PUTIN AT MAR-A-LAGO IN 2020
BY JASON LEMON ON 1/2/20 AT 1:20 PM EST
http://ticklethewire.com/2020/01/03/rep ... ted-trump/
Republican Congressman Calls for Secret Service Probe of Christmas Card Depicting an Assassinated Trump
Hustler Christmas card.
By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
A Republican lawmaker wants the Secret Service to investigate Christmas cards sent to members of Congress depicting a cartoon of an assassinated President Trump.
The card shows smiling people, including Santa, surrounding Trump’s dead, bleeding body. On the back of the card, the shooter says in a thought bubble, “I just shot Donald Trump on Fifth Avenue. And no one arrested me.”
The quote is a reference to Trump bragging during the 2016 presidential campaign that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”
https://twitter.com/reynoldsjeff11/stat ... 2755773440
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/ ... 4450b93540
Published on
Thursday, January 02, 2020
byCommon Dreams
'An Explicit Act of War': US Kills Senior Iranian Military Official Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad Drone Strike
"It's like Iran killing the head of the CIA or the Mossad on foreign soil."
byEoin Higgins, staff writer
https://bangordailynews.com/2020/01/03/ ... d_articles
This Waldo County nonprofit helped keep 130 homes warm with wood last year
https://bangordailynews.com/2019/12/29/ ... d_articles
What Maine can learn from Vermont’s program that pays people to move there
https://www.thecollegefix.com/yale-puni ... hoots-him/
Yale punishes police officer after another cop shoots him
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html
The death penalty is unworthy of America
By Editorial Board
Jan. 1, 2020 at 5:14 p.m. EST
The death penalty in the United States is in decline. It is less used, less popular and just as unnecessary as ever, according to a year-end report from the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks death penalty numbers. This should represent a way station toward the punishment’s eventual elimination — not a temporary low in its application.
For the fifth year in a row, fewer than 30 people were executed and fewer than 50 people were sentenced to death. Half of states representing half the population no longer execute people. With the New Hampshire legislature’s abolition of capital punishment last year, the punishment has been banned across New England and in all Northeastern states save Pennsylvania, where the governor has imposed a moratorium.
Seven states executed 22 inmates last year, and Texas was responsible for nearly half. The state is also responsible for a large share of new death sentences. No one was executed west of Texas. Juries in California, the state with the largest death-row population, handed down three new death sentences in 2019. But California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) declared a moratorium and ordered San Quentin State Prison’s execution chamber dismantled. Otherwise, new death sentences mostly came in the South, particularly in Florida.
Death sentences are down some 90 percent from their mid-1990s peak. Executions are down some 77 percent from the late 1990s.
Even so, the death penalty survives, as does the horrifying possibility that the government might kill an innocent person. Two more death-row inmates were exonerated in 2019. That makes 166 exonerees since 1973.
As always, those executed are not necessarily the worst of the worst but the least capable of defending themselves. The center found that “at least 19 of the 22 prisoners who were executed this year had one or more of the following impairments: significant evidence of mental illness; evidence of brain injury, developmental brain damage, or an IQ in the intellectually disabled range; or chronic serious childhood trauma, neglect, and/or abuse.”
It is little wonder — and heartening — that public opinion is evolving. Sixty percent of Americans said in a 2019 Gallup poll that life without the possibility of parole is a better penalty for murder than death. That was the first time Gallup reported a majority holding that position. The Trump Justice Department, however, failed to get the memo, pushing suddenly and unexpectedly last year to execute federal inmates for the first time in 16 years.
The death penalty is expensive, unfairly implemented and unworthy of a justice system that strives for equal application of the law. Yet even if it could be applied fairly, state-sponsored killing would be unworthy of a nation founded on the principle of individual dignity.
JANUARY 3, 2020
The Dangers of Privatized Intelligence
by JOYCE NELSON
In a scathing piece about Russiagate, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern recently recalled a statement made in 1981 by then-CIA Director William Casey during the first meeting of President Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet. Casey told this gathering, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” [1]
It’s a shocking statement that might be useful to keep in mind as events further unfold over the next few months. Casey, of course, would have had no way of knowing in 1981 just how far his “disinformation program” would extend.
The Rise of Russiagate
Ray McGovern once again effectively demolishes (as he has several times over the past three years) the flimsy props holding up Russiagate, especially the “Intelligence Community Assessment” (ICA) prepared in January 2017 by “handpicked analysts” from the FBI, CIA and NSA (not 17 intelligence agencies, as first claimed by National Intelligence Director James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan).
McGovern writes: “As for the ‘Intelligence Community Assessment,’ the banner headline atop The New York Times on Jan. 7, 2017 set the tone for the next couple of years: ‘Putin Led Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Says.’ During my career as a CIA analyst, as deputy national intelligence officer chairing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), and working on the Intelligence Production Review Board, I had not seen so shabby a piece of faux analysis as the ICA. The writers themselves seemed to be holding their noses. They saw fit to embed in the ICA itself this derriere-covering note: ‘High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong’.” [2]
But that “derriere-covering note” didn’t stop the mainstream media from inflating Russiagate over the next three years into a self-sustaining industry that survived the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller (which found no Trump-Russia collusion), and will likely survive the recent release of Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowtiz’s report on the FBI 2016 spying.
The Horowitz Report
As Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone puts it (Dec. 10, 2019), the Horowtiz report shows “years of breathless headlines were wrong” about Russiagate, with the report unveiling “a story about bad journalism piled on bad journalism, balanced on a third layer of wrong reporting….Holy God, what a clown show the Trump-Russia investigation was.” [3]
Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept (December 12. 2019) is even more thorough in his analysis of the IG Report, which shows “the FBI’s gross abuse of its power,” its “serial deceit” by which it “manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims.” As a
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/me ... t-11419337
Mesa Cop Accused of Harassing Almost a Dozen Women Receives Full Retirement
HANNAH CRITCHFIELD | JANUARY 3, 2020 | 10:33AM
https://www.businessinsider.com/old-tru ... ran-2020-1.
Trump tweets predicting Obama would start a war with Iran to get reelected are coming back to haunt him
https://www.justsecurity.org/64645/top- ... 4450b93540
Top Experts’ Backgrounder: Military Action Against Iran and US Domestic Law
by Brian Egan and Tess Bridgeman
January 3, 2020
*
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on June 21, 2019. Designed as a expert analysis of the very kinds of questions raised by the U.S. military operation killing Iran’s Qassem Soleimani, we are republishing it today.)
What follows is a basic Q&A on the circumstances under which U.S. military operations against Iran would be lawful under U.S. law. The objective is to provide journalists, lawmakers, and other members of the public a legal framework for this important issue. Our analysis is not specific to any particular scenario — such as Iranian forces’ or so-called Iranian proxies’ attacks on commercial ships, U.S. drones, U.S. military vessels, or U.S. personnel — but rather addresses broader questions about the circumstances under which the president has the authority to initiate U.S. military operations against Iran, whether Congress has already authorized the use of force against Iran, how the War Powers Resolution fits into the picture, and what Congress can do if it disagrees with the president’s course of action.
1. Does the president need authorization from Congress to use U.S. military force against Iran?
The president derives authority to use military force overseas from two sources: the Constitution and congressional authorization. At this point, we do not believe that there is any existing congressional authorization to use force against Iran (see Q2 below). In the absence of congressional authorization, the president could only use force against Iran by relying on his authority over foreign relations and as commander-in-chief under Article II of the Constitution.
There is considerable debate on the scope of the president’s authority to use military force in the absence of congressional authorization. The executive branch, through consistent historical practice in Republican and Democratic administrations, and as reflected in a series of opinions by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), has taken a relatively broad view of the president’s Article II authority to initiate the use of force, arguing that it has the ability to do so when: (1) there is an important “national interest” in doing so (Curtis Bradley and Jack Goldsmith have explained that this has become a very expansive concept in modern practice; Marty Lederman has suggested the concept should be understood as limited to significant national interests that have historically supported such unilateral actions in the past); and (2) the use of force does not constitute “war” in the constitutional sense.
The latter limitation is because Article I of the Constitution delegates the power to “declare war” to Congress. The executive branch has argued, in essence, that if the expected “nature, scope, and duration” of the military engagement falls below the threshold of “war,” the president may use force without congressional authorization. In the OLC’s view, “military operations will likely rise to the level of a war only when characterized by ‘prolonged and substantial military engagements, typically involving exposure of U.S. military personnel to significant risk over a substantial period.’” The OLC opined most recently that the limited strikes against Syria by the United States in response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons did not cross this threshold. Prior OLC opinions reached a similar conclusion with respect to U.S. military strikes in Libya in 2011, and U.S. military activities in Haiti in the 1990s, among others.
In the War Powers Resolution of 1973 (WPR), Congress imposed important limitations on the president’s ability to conduct military operations in the absence of explicit congressional authorization. Indeed, Congress does not necessarily view its own authority so narrowly or the president’s so expansively as described in the OLC opinions noted above. The WPR explicitly states the view of Congress that the president’s constitutional authority to introduce U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities, or situations where involvement in hostilities is imminent, may be exercised “only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” Moreover, as explained below, the WPR requires the relevant military operations (“hostilities”) to be terminated after a defined period of time unless they have been authorized by Congress.
The framers of the Constitution gave the authority to declare war to Congress, as well as the authority to raise and support armies, provide and maintain a Navy, provide for the common defense, regulate detention and seizure of vessels in war, and a host of other powers related to war and foreign affairs, in part to prevent the United States from being drawn into conflict for unpopular purposes or without debate and consideration by the representatives of the people. The Constitution’s design anticipates that Congress would be less inclined to go to war than the executive branch — this is a feature, not a bug. (Of note, it has long been understood that even though Congress has the lion’s share of authority in war-making, the president does have at least some concurrent if not exclusive authority in regard to the conduct of hostilities and to use force to repel a sudden attack on the United States.)
What’s more, even in the OLC’s view, the threshold for “war” in the constitutional sense is more easily met when the use of force at issue is against against another nation state (rather than in its territory but with its consent) where there is a high likelihood of escalation. Although Iran is not a nuclear power, which would necessarily affect that calculus, its capacity as a nation-state with a strong military, including its cyber and ballistic missile capabilities, are relevant factors in this analysis, as is the extent of U.S. exposure given its significant footprint in the region where Iranian military forces (and their proxies) are present and active. The scope of U.S. objectives for the use of force will also affect the analysis, especially if those objectives are likely to require sustained operations or engender use of force in response by Iran. Those factors may distinguish this case from the U.S. strikes against Syria, for example.
Finally, another important limitation is that the president’s use of force — whether based on congressional authorization or not — must comply with international law. The president is charged in Article II of the Constitution to “take care” that the laws are faithfully executed. This includes our international legal obligations, including the U.N. Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force except in certain limited circumstances, such as self-defense. Also, under international law, even if the United States acts in self-defense, the U.S. response must be necessary and proportionate.
2. Does the president have authorization from Congress to strike Iran? Specifically, would the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) authorize a strike against Iran?
There is no existing congressional authorization for the use of force against Iran. While some in the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have made arguments attempting to link Iran and al-Qaeda — in what may be an effort to lay the groundwork for invoking the 2001 AUMF, which was passed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, as authorization to use force against Iran — that argument is thoroughly unconvincing.
The 2001 AUMF authorizes the president to use:
“necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
This has long been understood to refer to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, who harbored al-Qaeda in Afghanistan at the time of the 9/11 attacks, and also has been interpreted by all three branches of government to apply to “associated forces” of those two armed groups based on the principle of co-belligerency in armed conflict.
As we have previously written: “The 2001 AUMF does not authorize the use of force against Iran. Iran was not implicated in the 9/11 attacks, Iranian forces are not al Qaeda or the Taliban, or their associated forces, nor are they a ‘successor’ to any of those forces.”
Many have suggested that Pompeo and other officials may be laying the groundwork for an argument that the 2001 AUMF authorizes military operations against Iran because Iran is “harboring” some members of al-Qaeda. As a factual matter, we are not aware of any credible information that Iran is “harboring” al-Qaeda as a group, or allowing al-Qaeda to plot attacks from Iran. As a legal matter, the AUMF has never been construed to authorize military attacks against a foreign nation based on the fact that some al Qaeda members may be located in or transit that country, even if that is the case with Iran. In addition, the AUMF’s use of the past tense — “harbored” — suggests that it was intended to refer to those who were responsible for providing safe haven for, and otherwise assisting, those who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. In the 20 years since the 9/11 attacks, there has not been any suggestion that the 2001 AUMF could be interpreted to authorize force against a present-day “harborer.” (Again, there is no known evidence to suggest that is what Iran is doing with al-Qaeda.)
The 2001 AUMF authorizes force only if it is consistent with international law, as the Supreme Court explained in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Even if the 2001 AUMF were somehow thought to apply to Iran — which it does not — the executive branch would be able to use force against Iran only if necessary and proportionate to the specific threat from al-Qaeda.
In a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on June 19, Rep. Deutch (D-Fl.) asked State Department Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook, whether he believes “the administration could launch an attack against Iran under the 2001 AUMF?” His response, “this is something which the office of the Legal Adviser can give you an opinion on, if you’d like to submit it,” provides an appropriate next step for Congress to engage with the administration on this issue.
Finally, it bears noting that there is no viable argument that another AUMF still on the books — the “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002” (2002 AUMF) — authorizes force against Iran. It allows the president to use force that is “necessary and appropriate” to “defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq;” and “enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions against Iraq.” Those are plainly not relevant to the situation with Iran today.
3. What steps can Congress take if it disagrees with the president’s decision to use military force? More specifically, what steps can Congress take in advance to prevent actions by the president? And, what steps would Congress be able to take after the president uses force against Iran if lawmakers are opposed?
Congress has a number of tools at its disposal to constrain the president’s ability to use force unilaterally. Even in the OLC’s view, the president’s ability to use force without congressional authority can be checked if Congress decides to impose restrictions. While past attorneys general and the OLC have determined the president has the power to use military force abroad to protect important national interests and below the threshold of “war” in the constitutional sense, as discussed above, “[t]his independent authority of the President … exists at least insofar as Congress h
https://www.justsecurity.org/67863/excl ... -concerns/
Exclusive: Unredacted Ukraine Documents Reveal Extent of Pentagon’s Legal Concerns
“Clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold.”
This is what Michael Duffey, associate director of national security programs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), told Elaine McCusker, the acting Pentagon comptroller, in an Aug. 30 email, which has only been made available in redacted form until now. It is one of many documents the Trump administration is trying to keep from the public, despite congressional oversight efforts and court orders in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation.
Earlier in the day on Aug. 30, President Donald Trump met with Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss the president’s hold on $391 million in military assistance for Ukraine. Inside the Trump administration, panic was reaching
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... -data-show
Black drivers face more police stops in California, state analysis shows
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/st ... fires-grow
Australian prime minister is jeered in wildfire-ravaged zone
https://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-judge ... 20-1480123
FOX NEWS JUDGE PREDICTS TRUMP WILL 'START A WAR WITH IRAN' AND MEET WITH PUTIN AT MAR-A-LAGO IN 2020
BY JASON LEMON ON 1/2/20 AT 1:20 PM EST
http://ticklethewire.com/2020/01/03/rep ... ted-trump/
Republican Congressman Calls for Secret Service Probe of Christmas Card Depicting an Assassinated Trump
Hustler Christmas card.
By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
A Republican lawmaker wants the Secret Service to investigate Christmas cards sent to members of Congress depicting a cartoon of an assassinated President Trump.
The card shows smiling people, including Santa, surrounding Trump’s dead, bleeding body. On the back of the card, the shooter says in a thought bubble, “I just shot Donald Trump on Fifth Avenue. And no one arrested me.”
The quote is a reference to Trump bragging during the 2016 presidential campaign that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”
https://twitter.com/reynoldsjeff11/stat ... 2755773440
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/ ... 4450b93540
Published on
Thursday, January 02, 2020
byCommon Dreams
'An Explicit Act of War': US Kills Senior Iranian Military Official Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad Drone Strike
"It's like Iran killing the head of the CIA or the Mossad on foreign soil."
byEoin Higgins, staff writer
https://bangordailynews.com/2020/01/03/ ... d_articles
This Waldo County nonprofit helped keep 130 homes warm with wood last year
https://bangordailynews.com/2019/12/29/ ... d_articles
What Maine can learn from Vermont’s program that pays people to move there
https://www.thecollegefix.com/yale-puni ... hoots-him/
Yale punishes police officer after another cop shoots him
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html
The death penalty is unworthy of America
By Editorial Board
Jan. 1, 2020 at 5:14 p.m. EST
The death penalty in the United States is in decline. It is less used, less popular and just as unnecessary as ever, according to a year-end report from the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks death penalty numbers. This should represent a way station toward the punishment’s eventual elimination — not a temporary low in its application.
For the fifth year in a row, fewer than 30 people were executed and fewer than 50 people were sentenced to death. Half of states representing half the population no longer execute people. With the New Hampshire legislature’s abolition of capital punishment last year, the punishment has been banned across New England and in all Northeastern states save Pennsylvania, where the governor has imposed a moratorium.
Seven states executed 22 inmates last year, and Texas was responsible for nearly half. The state is also responsible for a large share of new death sentences. No one was executed west of Texas. Juries in California, the state with the largest death-row population, handed down three new death sentences in 2019. But California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) declared a moratorium and ordered San Quentin State Prison’s execution chamber dismantled. Otherwise, new death sentences mostly came in the South, particularly in Florida.
Death sentences are down some 90 percent from their mid-1990s peak. Executions are down some 77 percent from the late 1990s.
Even so, the death penalty survives, as does the horrifying possibility that the government might kill an innocent person. Two more death-row inmates were exonerated in 2019. That makes 166 exonerees since 1973.
As always, those executed are not necessarily the worst of the worst but the least capable of defending themselves. The center found that “at least 19 of the 22 prisoners who were executed this year had one or more of the following impairments: significant evidence of mental illness; evidence of brain injury, developmental brain damage, or an IQ in the intellectually disabled range; or chronic serious childhood trauma, neglect, and/or abuse.”
It is little wonder — and heartening — that public opinion is evolving. Sixty percent of Americans said in a 2019 Gallup poll that life without the possibility of parole is a better penalty for murder than death. That was the first time Gallup reported a majority holding that position. The Trump Justice Department, however, failed to get the memo, pushing suddenly and unexpectedly last year to execute federal inmates for the first time in 16 years.
The death penalty is expensive, unfairly implemented and unworthy of a justice system that strives for equal application of the law. Yet even if it could be applied fairly, state-sponsored killing would be unworthy of a nation founded on the principle of individual dignity.
