After keeping the video secret for four years, a judge has finally ruled against the city and allowed its release, showing police officers gun down a TV crew member as they filmed an episode of COPS.
The post Chilling Video Shows Police Shoot, Kill TV Crewman While Filming Episode of ‘COPS’ appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Police have used a photo sent through the app “WhatsApp” to get a fingerprint and used that fingerprint to secure drug convictions against eleven people. If part of your finger is showing, cops can now use that small bit as fingerprint evidence.
This new and “groundbreaking” technique of matching fingerprints found in photos “is the future” of how cops will catch “criminals.” It’s changing how law enforcement looks at social media images for potential evidence.
It all started with a drug bust. The bust resulted in the police getting hold of a phone that had a WhatsApp message and image of ecstasy pills in a person’s palm. The message read: “For sale – Skype and Ikea-branded ecstasy pills…are you interested?”
The phone was sent to South Wales Police where the photo showing the middle and bottom portion of a pinky was enhanced. As for fingerprint identification, the BBC reported that “a search of the national database did not bring a match” as “when offenders give fingerprints, it is just the top part taken — with the middle and bottom part only occasionally left.” A different BBC article stated that “other evidence meant officers had an idea who they believed was behind the drugs operation.”
Dave Thomas of the South Wales Police’s scientific support unit told the BBC, “While the scale and quality of the photograph proved a challenge, the small bits were enough to prove he was the dealer.” But how did they determine who they were looking for, to begin with? It’s all a little confusing, and cops don’t come out and tell us they are violating our rights, even though, for all intents and purposes, that’s exactly what happened here.
According to the South Wales Police press release, “A boastful drug dealer” was “caught red-handed after a pioneering technique was used to identify his fingerprints in a photograph he sent showing off his supply.”
Detective Inspector Dean Taylor told the BBC, “We knew Elliott was handling drugs of a similar type, but we didn’t know who was holding the bags in the photograph. He was linked by his fingerprint which also linked him to the messages and showed he was sending the supply.” But as mentioned earlier, Elliott’s prints were not on file, so he was assumed to be the dealer.
Staff from the unit’s specialist imaging team were able to enhance a picture of a hand holding a number of tablets, which was taken from a mobile phone before fingerprint experts were able to positively identify that the hand was that of Elliott Morris.
This is all just a little too Orwellian and Big Brother for our taste. It certainly seems like, in order to make sure that that hand was Morris’, police would have to have had him in custody. “Despite being provided with only a very small section of the fingerprint which was visible in the photograph, the team were able to successfully identify the individual,” said Dave Thomas, forensic operations manager at the Scientific Support Unit.
Thomas pointed out that 80% of people have mobile phones and use them to snap photos that the cops can “download and enhance.” Other cops are now looking through social media images, as well as images in seized phones, for potential fingerprinting identification evidence.
Dawn Luger is a staff writer and reporter for The Daily Sheeple. Wake the flock up – follow Dawn’s work at our Facebook or Twitter.
The post Cops Use Fingerprints Pulled from WhatsApp Photo to Secure Convictions appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
Las Vegas, NV — Several police officers in Las Vegas have come under fire after more than a dozen witnesses accused them of working with sex traffickers in exchange for money and prostitutes.
Las Vegas Now reported that the FBI began investigating the allegations in 2014 after they raided the Las Vegas home of music producer and escort service kingpin Jamal Rashid, who is known as Mally Mall. A motion filed in court alleged that officers worked with Rashid to target his competitors in the Las Vegas sex industry.
While the officers used their badges and taxpayer funding to go after other pimps in the area, Mally Mall paid them in cash each month and supplied them with prostitutes. The report even alleges that police officers and the department’s lead prosecutor worked with witnesses and coached them in an attempt to pursue even more serious charges against the competitors.
Although the FBI has reportedly been investigating similar allegations for nearly four years, the current information has come to light through a motion filed by defense attorney Janiece Marshall, after she heard the testimony of convicted pimp Ocean Fleming.
Fleming was one of the many competitors who claims he was targeted by police who were working with Mally Mall. He accused star vice detective Chris Baughman of not only targeting other pimps in exchange to cash and prostitutes but of also having an affair with lead prosecutor Deputy DA Liz Mercer, which ensured that he was above the law all around.
“You got a cop involved in a sexual relationship with one of the victims, then he’s involved in sexual relations at the same time with the prosecutor, not to mention he’s married. So, in reality, you got more females in the courtroom than me,” Fleming told Las Vegas Now in a phone call from prison.
Fleming is just one of more than a dozen witnesses who have accused detectives in Las Vegas of setting them up in order to help their competition. An investigation into the department resulted in the discovery that not only were officers helping pimps on the street, but prosecutors were also helping convicted sex traffickers in the courtroom.
In one example, Las Vegas Now reported that Zane Campo received a plea deal in which he pleaded “no contest” to one count of disorderly conduct, even though he had a widespread criminal history and was facing five felony charges that included sex trafficking.
In another case, Shane Valentine, who has a record as a violent felon, was sentenced to a series of lesser charges when he was charged with multiple criminal convictions that included a double murder related to the sex industry.
While the scenario of both police officers and prosecutors working to protect pimps and sex traffickers in exchange for cash and prostitutes may be a serious problem in Las Vegas right now, the practice of officers using their badges to justify stealing, cheating, and sexual assault is nothing new.
In one case, the police department in Lansing, New York, was accused of covering for a sheriff’s deputy for years after he raped a disabled person in 2013. It was not until December 2017 that he was finally charged with first degree rape and sexual assault.
Police sex crimes have not stopped at rape, and in many cases, officers have gone on to create and possess child pornography. In 2017 alone, a police sergeant was found possessing and attempting to receive child pornography; a school resource officer was found possessing a trove of graphic child pornography; and a network of police officers were found raping the cadets in their Police Explorers program and filming it to create child porn.
The post ‘Widespread’ Problem of Police Sex Trafficking Women Exposed in Las Vegas (VIDEO) appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
Authored by Jim Jatras via TheDuran.com,
When do we realize we’re already living in a police state?
Maybe one clue is when our betters make a point of assuring us that we aren’t. Here’s Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testifying before a House Judiciary Committee inquiry into political bias in the Robert Mueller “Russia-gate” investigation:
Department of Justice employees are united by a shared understanding that our mission is to pursue justice, protect public safety, preserve government property, defend civil rights, and promote the rule of law.
Rosenstein’s contempt for his interlocutors’ intelligence was unconcealed. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
Rod’s on the job! Americans can certainly sleep peacefully tonight.
Or maybe not. Besides cracking down on states’ playing fast and loose with federal marijuana laws, one of the first enforcement actions ordered by Attorney General Jeff Sessions (R-Recused) was to step up use of civil forfeiture, which is a fancy way of saying “taking the property of people who have not been convicted of anything, or even accused of anything, with little recourse.”
But no sweat, there are “safeguards” to assure that property seizures only impact drug kingpins and gangsters – right?
Sessions’s order . . . resuscitates a practice known as “federal adoption,” which allows police and prosecutors to circumvent state restrictions on asset seizures by collaborating with federal authorities. Through this partnership, state and local authorities turn their seizures over to federal colleagues, who “adopt” them for prosecution—ultimately returning up to eighty per cent of the assets to the originating cops or prosecutors to keep. One result, often unaddressed in critiques of forfeiture, is the tacit encouragement of racial profiling and targeting of property owners of color, who remain prime targets of the practice in much of the country.
A seventy-three-year-old Amtrak retiree named Elizabeth Young understands what’s at stake in Sessions’s civil-forfeiture endorsement. In 2009, she was resting in her West Philadelphia home, recovering from a hospitalization for two blood clots in her lungs, when suddenly she felt her house begin to shake. “I really thought we’d had one of those landslides, like they have in California,” Young told me recently. “I said, ‘What in the world is happening?’ ” She poked her head out into the hallway from her second-floor bedroom, and that’s when she saw them: “a bunch of cops in fatigues,” storming her stairs in a swat-style raid; down below, they were ransacking rooms. The Narcotics North Division was tearing up the house in pursuit of Young’s son, whom they later alleged had sold some hundred and forty dollars’ worth of pot from the residence and from his mom’s 1997 Chevrolet. Nearly a year after the raid, Ms. Young got another round of alarming news: the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had filed a petition to seize her house and car, by way of civil forfeiture. [ . . . ]
Sessions sees a different picture. “Four out of five administrative civil-asset forfeitures filed by federal law enforcement agencies were never challenged in court,” he said recently, implying that a lack of legal challenge is proof of guilt. But if hiring a lawyer to fight your civil-forfeiture case costs more than your property is worth, the math prevails. Unlike a criminal defendant, Young’s 1997 Chevrolet had no right to a public defender.
Or consider the global move toward what is euphemistically called international financial “transparency.” I mean, who can be opposed to a certified doubleplusgood concept like transparency?
But it depends on who’s being transparent about what. Take Ken Silverstein’s examination of the International Consortium of Independent (sic) Journalists: why do hardly any Americans get transparency-ed in the Panama Papers but so many folks with connections with Russia do? Why so little transparency about who’s lavishly paying the ICIJ piper and for what purpose? Why does a law like FATCA (“Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act”) catch so few actual “fat cat” tax cheats and recover so little revenue, but pours tons of private financial data of innocent middle class people into the maw of the intelligence agencies?
Why? For the same reason James Clapper perjured himself telling Senator Rand Paul that the NSA doesn’t collect our cell phone metadata:
Inquiring minds want to know.
If you have nothing to hide, why would you object.
Big Brother Is Watching You (and listening, and compiling your data, etc)…
…but it’s all for your own protection.
This is literally the opposite of genuine transparency: “It is a practice of good government for institutions to be transparent and open to the people. It is a practice of tyranny for individuals to be made transparent to the government.”
Police state? We hardly need mention the feds’ zeal to protect our virgin eyes and ears from “Russian propaganda” or any American media that betrays its disloyalty by carrying any news or opinion that allegedly resembles it.
Or take the guilty pleas of former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn and peripheral Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos for the non-crime of “lying to the FBI.” Both detractors and defenders of the Trump administration have gleefully piled on the hapless Flynn and Papadopoulos. They lied! They lied! They lied!
But did they lie? Are we that naïve about how our diligent organs of state security work? Take the case of Flynn:
Russia-gate enthusiasts are thrilled over the guilty plea of President Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI about pre-inauguration conversations with the Russian ambassador, but the case should alarm true civil libertarians.
What is arguably most disturbing about this case is that then-National Security Adviser Flynn was pushed into a perjury trap by Obama administration holdovers at the Justice Department who concocted an unorthodox legal rationale for subjecting Flynn to an FBI interrogation four days after he took office, testing Flynn’s recollection of the conversations while the FBI agents had transcripts of the calls intercepted by the National Security Agency.
In other words, the Justice Department wasn’t seeking information about what Flynn said to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak – the intelligence agencies already had that information. Instead, Flynn was being quizzed on his precise recollection of the conversations and nailed for lying when his recollections deviated from the transcripts.
Keep in mind that when these “interviews” take place –
…the federal agent is typically well-informed about the facts of the case, but plays dumb in order to instill a false sense of confidence in the interview subject. And, unlike you, the agent has had time to examine all relevant documents. (It also bears noting that the FBI will usually not tape record the interview and that the only official interview report will be an FBI 302, which is the agent’s own dictated version of the conversation. Agents usually work in pairs as well, so in any later dispute over what was said in the interview, guess whose version is likely to prevail? Yours, or the two FBI agents who dictated the 302?)
Good grief! You’re better off not saying anything at all. Except that’s not an option either:
If you are not in custody, your total silence, especially in the face of an accusation, can very possibly be used against you as an adoptive admission under the Federal Rules of Evidence.
This means you are subjected to questioning on a matter where you have done nothing wrong, your responses are being compared (without your knowledge) to detailed records (which you haven’t consulted) and to the agent’s subjective notes (to which you are not privy). Even though you’re not under oath every discrepancy of date, time, name, sequence, or other detail becomes a separate felony charge, each one of which is punishable by years in prison: Alright, Mr. or Ms. X. We’re prepared to charge you with 14 felony counts, which will put you in prison for the rest of your life. Or you can plead guilty to one charge of lying to the FBI, with a light or possibly suspended sentence. Which will it be?
Your other option is to go to trial before a jury of sheep your peers, where the feds have a 90 percent-plus conviction rate. Or you can try to fight the charges until you’ve utterly bankrupted yourself, you’ve gone into debt you can never pay back, and your marriage has broken up – they can afford to wait — and still be in the same pickle. The mystery is that everyone doesn’t take the plea offer right away.
In short, if they want to nail you, they can. Like the boychiks used to say in the good ol’ NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs; ???????? ??????????? ?????????? ???): “Give Us the Man, and We Will Make the Case.” (I guess nowadays, we should say “person.”)
Oh come on! What hyperbole! We don’t torture or shoot people like the NKVD did! We don’t work people to death in concentration camps!
That’s right, we – or rather, they – don’t have to resort to that kind of thing. In fact, during the late Soviet period they hardly shot anyone and didn’t even lock that many people up. For most, it was enough to know that they could lock you up.
That’s more than sufficient for the sort of weaklings today’s Americans are.
There you have it. Your property can be seized at any time. Your “private” information, isn’t. We are told what media to believe and what not. You can be put in jail if someone decides you need to be put in jail.
Arizona citizens are now in a government database that uses facial recognition technology to track them simply for getting a driver’s license. This allows federal and local law enforcement to use the “perpetual lineup” of suspects not accused of a crime to see if someone is wanted for a crime, Arizona Capitol Times reported.
The state says that the program is to prevent identity theft and fraud. Here’s how it works according to Arizona Capitol Times.
After someone at the Motor Vehicle Division takes your photo, your face is scanned by a system based on a proprietary algorithm that analyzes facial features. The system compares your face against the 19 million photos in the state’s driver’s license database to look for similarities. If an image is similar enough, the system will flag it for further review.
The program is an effort that is part of a nationwide initiative called the REAL ID Act that was created by Congress in 2005 as a response to the September 11th terror attacks. The system allows the state to comply with the federal act, which increased standards for identification documents. Although the REAL ID Act does not explicitly call for facial recognition, it does maintain that states need to take measures to reduce fraud.
The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) already has publicly boasted about the success with more than 100 cases it has taken to court for fraud using the technology, which has been in place since early 2015.
But the use of the system to prevent identity theft isn’t what people are worried about; the problem is the lack of oversight in government programs that allows anyone with access to look into the database. As such, state-run facial recognition databases are dangerous and can lead down a slippery slope to allow other operations the technology wasn’t intended for.
The other key issue is the fact that residents in Arizona aren’t even being told that this is going on – coupled with the lack of oversight and disclosure, it becomes a nightmare for privacy rights advocates.
“If you don’t know that a system is in place, you actually don’t have the choice of consenting to it or not,” said Clare Garvie who authored the “perpetual line-up” study.
Jim Dempsey, the executive director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, also had some reservations about the lack of disclosure currently in effect.
Informed consent, through giving notice to people that their faces will be matched up against millions of others when they apply for a license, is a basic tenet of privacy, Jim Dempsey, the executive director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, said.
Even if notice is given, it’s unlikely that people would opt out of getting a license because facial recognition technology is used because people will decide driving a car and having a legal ID outweigh the risks, Dempsey said.
“It’s an important element. The lack of it is an issue, but it’s one that should be corrected and would be easy to correct,” he said.
Both the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have voiced their concerns about state facial recognition databases and how this could be tied into the push by the federal government to use these databases in airports and border checkpointscreating a dystopian Orwellian surveillance state.
“DMV photo databases are probably the most comprehensive databases in existence,” which means they’re “very, very powerful” tools for potential surveillance, something the ACLU worries could be a “next step,” Jay Stanley a senior policy analyst at ACLU said.
One of the main pitfalls of such a system is not only the lack of oversight on the program by any government watchdog, but the fact that there are no laws to justify the collections, or a court between law enforcement and access to millions of people’s identities.
The only requirement for those that search is that it must involve people suspected of committing a crime or “who law enforcement may suspect is about to commit a crime.” People could also be involved in activities that are threats to public safety, sought as part of a criminal investigation or “intelligence-gathering effort.”
Such extremely broad terms for using this technology is extremely worrying and has a high potential for abuse.
“There should at the very least be a court involved before law enforcement can access millions of unwitting people’s identities,” EFF staff attorney, Adam Schwartz, said.
“It’s really hard to function in a car-based society without a driver’s license, and people shouldn’t be subjected to an invasive technology when they decide to follow the law and get a legal document that allows them to drive,” he added. “It’s a misuse of data to collect data, in this case images, for one thing and use them for other purposes.”
Schwartz added that
in many states, including Arizona, agencies have started using facial recognition technology outside of any formal approval from the public and its representatives, state lawmakers.”
“Before government starts using powerful technology to surveil the public, there ought to be a more open and transparent process where the public controls whether or not this is picked up.
The post Arizona Citizens Tracked In Facial Recognition Database In First Step For REAL ID Implementation appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
A new report that was commissioned and conducted by the city of Charlottesville on the events surrounding the protests and subsequent violence that took the national stage in Charlottesville, Virginia back in August, and the findings indicate that not only were police told to stand down in the matter, which became deadly, but there was an attempt to cover it up.
One of the posts abandoned by officers was the very place that led to the death of Heather Heyer, who was killed after a white supremacist drove his car through a crowd of people and slammed into several other cars before backing up, hitting other demonstrators.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:
A police officer radioed for help as angry protesters swarmed around her: “They are pushing the crowd my way and I have nobody here to help me.”
Tammy Shiflett, who had just returned to active duty as an elementary school resource officer after two months recovering from a shoulder surgery, was the only person assigned to block traffic at the intersection where a deadly car attack began in Charlottesville on Aug. 12.
Instead of sending reinforcements, a superior instructed her to abandon her post and move the car that had been positioned in the intersection, leaving a wooden sawhorse as the only barrier keeping vehicles out of the area.
Roughly an hour and a half later, a white nationalist drove his car down that very street, striking a crowd of counterprotesters and killing 32-year-old activist Heather Heyer.
Officer Shiflett was not the only officer told to stand down that day.
According to the report, “Supervisors devised a poorly-conceived plan that under-equipped and misaligned hundreds of officers. Execution of that plan elevated officer safety over public safety.”
So, instead of doing their jobs, police were told to stand down for their own safety, and not enforce the law.
In fact, it was to the point that one of the protesters fired a shot from his gun into the crowd while police watched and did nothing.
ACLU of Virginia
WATCH: Man fired at another person in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. We handedto LE agencies. The man has been arrested & charged w a crime.
The review, led by Tim Heaphy, a former federal prosecutor who now works for Hunton & Williams, also found:
• Despite repeated public statements by state and local officials that officers were not instructed to “stand down,” police had in fact been instructed only to intervene in conflicts between white nationalists and counterprotesters in the event of serious injury.
• A Virginia State Police commander made an “off-plan” decision to keep state officers behind barricades instead of sending them into the streets to break up fights and make arrests.
• After clashes began, Police Chief Al Thomas was heard by several people in the command center saying to “let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly” and shut down the rally.
• Thomas attempted to obstruct the city’s investigation, deleting relevant text messages, attempting to hide his use of a personal email account to conduct some official police business, and creating planning checklists that were not actually used to plan for the rallies.
The 220-page document is based on hundreds of thousands of documents, video and audio recordings, photos and interviews. It represents the most comprehensive account yet of how public officials handled the “Unite the Right” rally.
Now, consider that the media said that when many outlets were reporting that police were told to stand down, those were just “conspiracy theorists.” Anyone thinking it was a just a theory now? Nope, it was clearly a conspiracy and the report is clear that it was a conspiracy to protect cops but not the people they were entrusted to protect.
Once again, it’s those in the alternative media who have been vindicated while mainstream media continues to put out fake news for their corporate bosses.
The post Report: Cops Told To Stand Down In Charlottesville and Coverup Followed appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
By Jenna Bourne, Action News Jax |
Millions of people have handed their DNA over to genetic testing companies like Ancestry or 23andMe to learn more about their family trees.
But when you ship off your saliva, law enforcement could have access to your DNA.
Police could use genetic information it gets from those companies to identify you in a criminal investigation, even if you’ve never used one of those services.
Jacksonville resident Eric Yarham wanted to learn more about his family tree, so he mailed off his saliva to 23andMe.
“Just trying to unravel the mystery that is your genetics,” said Yarham, who lives in the Riverside area. “That lingering 0.3 percent is sub-Saharan African. So that’s swimming around in my DNA.” Yarham had no idea police could request his genetic information.
Both 23andMe and Ancestry confirm your genetic information could be disclosed to law enforcement if they have a warrant.
Action News Jax asked 23andMe Privacy Officer Kate Black whether the company notifies customers about that possibility before they mail in their DNA. “We try to make information available on the website in various forms, so through Frequently Asked Questions, through information in our privacy center,” Black said.
According to the company’s self-reported data, law enforcement has requested information for five American 23andMe customers.
So far, the company reports it has not turned over any information.
But Black said she wouldn’t entirely rule it out in the future.“We would always review a request and take it on a case-by-case basis,” Black said.
The post Police can Request your DNA from 23andMe, Ancestry (VIDEO) appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
Two ominously dressed cops with masks over their faces tried to unlawfully shakedown three young men, but an angry mom came out and shut them down.
A mother was stalked and harassed by police and subsequently threatened with arrest for her choice to vaccinate her son, as she dropped him at the bus stop.
When you think of a federal sting operation involving weaponry and military gear, the Government Accountability Office doesn’t immediately jump to mind. The office is tasked with auditing other federal agencies to root out fraud and abuse, usually by asking questions and poring over paperwork.
This year, the agency went a little more cowboy. The GAO created a fictitious law enforcement agency — complete with a fake website and a bogus address that traced back to an empty lot — and applied for military-grade equipment from the Department of Defense.
And in less than a week, they got it.
A GAO report issued this week says the agency’s faux cops were able to obtain $1.2 million worth of military gear, including night-vision goggles, simulated M-16A2 rifles and pipe bomb equipment from the Defense Department’s 1033 program, which supplies state and local law enforcement with excess materiel. The rifles and bomb equipment could have been made functional with widely available parts, the report said.
“They never did any verification, like visit our ‘location,’ and most of it was by email,” said Zina Merritt, director of the GAO’s defense capabilities and management team, which ran the operation. “It was like getting stuff off of eBay.”
In its response to the sting, the Defense Department promised to tighten its verification procedures, including trying to visit the location of law enforcement agencies that apply and making sure agents picking up supplies have valid identification, the GAO report said. The department also promised to do an internal fraud assessment by April 2018.
A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment further.
The sting operation has its roots in the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. At the time, many were surprised to see law enforcement respond to protests with armored trucks, sniper rifles, tear-gas bombs and other weapons of war.
Reporting by The Marshall Project and others found that much of the equipment came from the obscure 1033 program, which dates back to the Clinton era. Any equipment the U.S. military was not using — including Humvees, grenades, scuba-diving gear and even marching-band instruments — was available to local cops who could demonstrate a need.
The program has transferred more than $6 billion worth of supplies to more than 8,600 law enforcement agencies since 1991.
After Ferguson, then-President Barack Obama issued an executive order prohibiting the military from giving away some equipment and deeming other equipment “controlled,” establishing strict oversight and training requirements for law enforcement agencies that wanted it. The order also required a Defense Department and Justice Department working group to ensure oversight.
But since President Donald Trump took office, the group has not met, according to the Constitution Project, a bipartisan thinktank that had been participating in the meetings. Trump has said that he will revoke Obama’s executive order, although he has not yet.
Congress ordered the GAO to look into the program last year. A survey of local law enforcement did not turn up any instances of outright abuse at the state level but did find one illegitimate agency that had applied as a federal entity and was approved for equipment, Merritt said.
That’s when the agency launched the sting. Contrary to its public image, GAO has snagged other agencies with undercover work in the past, including an investigation of the Affordable Care Act in which the agency submitted fictitious applications and was approved for subsidized healthcare coverage.
In this case, the GAO created the fake law enforcement agency — whose name the agency would not reveal — and claimed it did high-level security and counterterrorism work. Once approved, the agency easily obtained the items from a Defense Department warehouse of unused military goods.
Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which lists rescinding Obama’s executive order one of its top priorities for the Trump administration, said the possibility of fraud does not indict the whole program.
“It suggests only that the U.S. military is one of the world’s largest bureaucracies and as such is going to have some lapses in material control,” Pasco said. “Law enforcement is going to get that equipment and we’re going to use it, to protect both officers and civilians. And if we don’t get it free from the military, we’re going to have to buy it with taxpayer dollars.”
But to Madhuri Grewal, senior counsel for the Constitution Project, and other opponents of police militarization, the problem is more fundamental.
“There just aren’t many everyday policing uses for military equipment like this,” Grewal said. “The question is why can real law enforcement agencies get some of this stuff, let alone fake ones?”
(COMMONDREAMS) The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) responded to reports on Tuesday evening from journalists on Capitol Hill, who alleged that Capitol Police were blocking reporters’ access as they tried to cover healthcare protests.
Police may not delete photographs without a warrant, period.
If you think your rights were violated by Capitol Police, contact @ACLU_DC. https://t.co/6fdvuIoOgB
— ACLU National (@ACLU) July 25, 2017
Reporters from the Daily Beast, the Huffington Post, the New York Post, and the Washington Post all tweeted from the Senate Gallery that reporters were being prevented from covering the protests. As nearly 100 demonstrators were arrested for protesting the vote to move to a debate on Trumpcare, which would cut health care coverage for up to 32 million Americans, police told reporters not to document the scene.
Sergeant at Arms just backed reporters off, called it a ‘crime scene.’ Protesters have been escorted away.
— Mike DeBonis (@mikedebonis) July 25, 2017
Senate gallery staffer tells reporters to “back up” away from protesters who are being arrested. “This is a crime scene”
— Gabby Morrongiello (@gabriellahope_) July 25, 2017
Contrary to what the staffers reportedly suggested, there is no blanket law prohibiting the media from covering a “crime scene.”
Journalists also wrote that Capitol Police demanded that photos of the protests and arrests be deleted.
Reporters blocked from Senate halls where protesters being arrested, shouting, “Kill the bill!” Being told, “no photos. Delete your photos.”
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) July 25, 2017
Capitol Hill staffer now telling reporters “no photography, no videos” of protestors
— Gabby Morrongiello (@gabriellahope_) July 25, 2017
Capitol Police made me delete the video I recorded. https://t.co/NQH2fLFYiO
— Andrew Desiderio (@desiderioDC) July 25, 2017
As the ACLU notes in its online guide for members of the media, “When in public spaces where you are lawfully present you have the right to photograph anything that is in plain view. That includes pictures of federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police…Police may not delete your photographs or video under any circumstances.”
The intimidation of journalists has escalated on Capitol Hill in recent weeks as the Senate has inched toward voting on Trumpcare. A female reporter was kicked out of the House Speaker’s lobby in June for not adhering to the House’s dress code. And after years of being permitted to interview senators in Senate building hallways, reporters were told in June that interviews would no longer be allowed. (The Senate Rules Committee reversed course on this rule following an uproar.)
By Julia Conley / Creative Commons / Common Dreams / Report a typo
Facial recognition capable body cameras will soon become the most effective tool to help police identify persons of interest
(INTELLIHUB) — In the near future police will wear body cameras capable of ‘facial recognition’ to assist officers in searches for persons of interest.
The latest technology was developed by Neurala and mimics a process used by the human brain to identify the target rather than the standard process of elimination that’s traditionally used by other facial recognition systems currently available.
Defense One reports: “Versace’s research was funded, in part, by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA under a program called SyNAPSE. In a 2010 paper for IEEE Spectrum, he describes the breakthrough. Basically, a tiny constellation of processors do the work of different parts of the brain — which is sometimes called neuromorphic computation — or “computation that can be divided up between hardware that processes like the body of a neuron and hardware that processes the way dendrites and axons do.” Versace’s research shows that AIs can learn in that environment using a lot less code.”
Via Intellihub
Shepard Ambellas is an opinion journalist, analyst, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Intellihub News & Politics (Intellihub.com). Shepard is also known for producing Shade: The Motion Picture (2013) and appearing on Travel Channel’s America Declassified (2013). Shepard is a regular contributor to Infowars. Read more from Shep’s World. Follow Shep on Facebook and Twitter.
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The police do not care about keeping you safe. If they did, they wouldn’t put innocent people in danger every day by driving unmarked cars, behaving unprofessionally, and performing no-knock raids. All these things make it quite easy to impersonate an officer in order to commit a crime.
People know their lives are literally in jeopardy if they disobey even the most minor order from a police officer. Innocent people are no exception, and simply questioning an officer, or asserting one’s rights has gotten people beaten, arrested, and even killed.
Because of this environment created by an overbearing oppressive police state, a perfect opportunity has opened up for criminals to easily exploit their victim’s fear of police. Criminals simply need to pose as police, and any resistance on the part of their victims melts away.
Posing as Cops to Commit Crimes
It’s not just for big heists like in the movie The Town that criminals dress as police to commit crimes. It actually happens terrifyingly often.
The practice is so common in Miami-Dade that the police have a special task force to investigate instances of criminals impersonating officers. A family in Miami-Dade earlier this year suffered a home invasion after they opened their door to three men in police uniforms.
Last year in Tampa a 28-year old woman was pulled over by a fake officer and raped.
In April thieves in Tuscon dressed as police to invade a home. In May three suspects still on the loose did the same in Honolulu.
A Los Angeles man was convicted last week of fondling two women while posing as an officer and attempting to force another to take her clothes off while pretending to be a detective investigating counterfeit money.
In early June a man and a woman were arrested for dressing as federal agents and attempting to break into an apartment in Fresno California.
In Cleveland Ohio, a man was recently arrested and charged for handcuffing children on many different occasions in what appears to be a fake “scared straight” operation. The man was not a police officer, but wearing a gun and vest convinced school and court officials that he was an officer.
Even police have been fooled by fake officers, including a 14-year-old boy who simply walked into a Chicago police station and showed up for roll call.
Officers handed him a radio and told him to ride along with a female officer. The teenager even helped make an arrest.
“After four or five hours, she asks, ‘Who is this guy?’ ” recalled Jody P. Weis, who was the Chicago police superintendent at the time. “He’s in a uniform, he has a goofy badge, he doesn’t have a weapon and he’s a high school kid. It was so embarrassing.” (The embarrassment did not end there for Mr. Weis, who said he had recommended against punishing the teenager in juvenile court because no harm had been done. Three months later, the boy was arrested and charged with stealing a car.
Impersonating officers is not uncommon as you can see. This blind obedience to officers has caused women to be sexually assaulted, and homes to be invaded. But it is not just the fake cops you have to worry about.
Actual Police Commit Crimes Too
Real police commit crimes too, which is all the more reason not to place some members of society above fellow citizens.
If a police officer engages an innocent person, that person must essentially ask permission to walk away from the encounter. The fact that police demand unquestioning obedience, and act violently enraged if their authority is challenged only helps criminals get away with their crimes while posing as police officers.
But this same bullying extralegal behavior is used by police to commit crimes. Last year a Texas officer sexually assaulted a female driver, and a Honolulu officer was accused of raping a 14-year-old girl.
Unfortunately, rape and sexual assault by police officers appear to be extremely common. And even when the case is “resolved” with a conviction of the officer, the sentence is a miscarriage of justice.
One woman was offered a ride home by an officer after an incident had been resolved without any arrests.
She said she didn’t consent, but didn’t resist or say no because she was scared for her life.
“If I would’ve fought him back, yes, he would’ve murdered me. He would’ve took my life and I have kids,” she said.
The officer ended up being convicted and sentenced to one year in prison.
61% of all victims of police crimes are women. In San Diego, patrol officers working alone at night committed a number of sexual assaults against women they pulled over.
…of all the officers arrested, for offenses ranging from murder to drunken driving, only 54 percent were fired, and 37.5 percent arrested for domestic violence lost their jobs.
The study also found that roughly two-thirds of all the arrests were made by an agency that didn’t employ the officer…
Police also invade homes. An 80-year-old-man was shot to death by police after they broke into his home in a no-knock raid. They had obtained a search warrant with the only evidence being that they smelled chemicals associated with making meth. Hearing a home invasion, the elderly man picked up a pistol and was shot to death in his bed without firing a shot. No meth was found. The officers were not charged with the murder and were found to have acted appropriately.
This highlights how the drug war, no knock raids, and militarized police also contribute to the problems faced when trying to protect your life from thugs in real or fake uniforms.
But sometimes cops don’t even get a trumped up warrant before murdering innocent civilians.
One man was murdered by police when he took his legally owned firearm with him to open the door after a loud knock late at night. The officer did not identify himself, but seeing a gun, shot the man to death. For some reason, the officer was not charged, and the court prevented the man’s family from suing him, citing qualified immunity. They said it was not clear that the officer had committed any crime in murdering the homeowner.
The problem with police committing crimes is so voluminous that we can only scratch the surface here. But one thing is for sure, you have almost as much reason to fear becoming the victim of a crime from a real uniformed officer as from someone posing as an officer.
Solution
Indiana passed a law in 2012 that allows citizens to shoot an officer who illegally enters their home. It is unclear why this law was needed since it is illegal for anyone to invade a home, whether they are a cop or not. Having to codify something so obvious shows just how far the government will go to protect their criminal officers. Still, at least Indiana offered some legal cover to citizens forced to protect themselves from police.
Of course, most government solutions simply double down on the divide; prosecute impersonating an officer harder, and simply make it illegal to buy a badge or police uniform. Maybe while they are at it, they should ban Dodge Chargers for civilians, and prohibit civilians from wearing matching shirt and pants in any blues, blacks, or tans.
As usual, the solution from the government is to make more things illegal and punish pre-crimes like owning objects that might someday be used in a crime. Never does the problem come from the government’s end! It is always the damn civilians getting in the way of our brave heroes!
But the reality of the situation is that it doesn’t matter how many police-like tools and clothing they make illegal, or how hard they punish people who dress up as cops for Halloween. There is a divide between the police and the average citizen, and only by holding police accountable for their actions will the dangers of fake police be mitigated.
The only reason criminals have such success with this tactic is the population’s blind unquestioning obedience to police, beat into them over the course of years by bullies in blue who ignore the law to assert their will. It’s not the uniform, it is that we cannot tell the difference between the behavior of cops and criminals because they act in strikingly similar ways.
The solution is to stop giving police extra rights and privileges. It doesn’t make any sense that they are held to a lower standard for criminal activity than the rest of the population when they have more responsibility than most to behave appropriately. Any crime committed by an officer should be punished two-fold based on his position of trust and power over civilians, yet all too often they are not punished for their crimes.
A criminal is a criminal, whether his uniform and badge are fake or real. Civilians shouldn’t have to wait to find out if the officer is real, and they shouldn’t have to lay down and allow a real officer to have their way with them, with the only redress being later court action if they are alive to pursue it. This especially because people can be legally barred from pursuing civil action. Also, many police will not be charged or convicted of their crimes, or will receive ridiculously lenient sentences.
The two reasons people should not have to fear using such deadly force against home-invading cops is because A) if they are real police they are behaving criminally and everyone has the right to defend themselves from a criminal, and B) they might not be real cops at all, and everyone has the right to defend themselves from a criminal.
Not having to stop and wonder if this is a real police officer and wonder if you will be going to prison for decades simply for defending yourself makes you much safer and able to defend yourself and your loved ones.
If police are not given extra rights, there will be no reason to impersonate them.
Heavily armed police officers stand guard in the rain outside Trump Tower, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)Law Enforcement Officer deaths by firearm are down slightly through May 20th, as compared to this time last year. In 2016, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF), 18 officers were killed by firearms.
So far this year, only 17 officers have been killed by firearms.
With nearly one million sworn officers in the U.S., the preliminary report may be welcome news to officers everywhere. Unfortunately, however, an epidemic of officer-involved shootings persists.
The NLEOMF has been tracking police deaths for decades now. Their mission statement reads in part, “Founded in 1984, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund is dedicated to telling the story of American Law Enforcement and making it safer for those who serve.”
Unfortunately, in 2017 a surge of officers dying accidentally has been observed.
Total Fatalities: 51—↑ 42%
Firearms-related: 17—↓ 6%
Traffic-related: 22—↑ 69%
Other Causes: 12—↑ 140%
While firearms-related officer deaths are down across the nation, traffic-related and other causes for death, like heart attacks, appear to have skyrocketed. Also, not all of the firearms-related deaths can be attributed to shootouts with bad guys, presumably, as death by friendly fire is also included in that category. We contacted the NLEOMF who confirmed suicides by cops either on or off-duty were not recorded in the publication.
Although 2016 was a tragic year for law enforcement (as several officers were targeted in planned ambushes…NLEOMF noted the 7/7/16 killings of 5 Dallas PD officers), it can hardly reflect a war on police officers as some members of the media may want it to seem. During times of war and most notably, during prohibition, police officer deaths have skyrocketed, rising above the 300 mark during the height of state’s war on alcohol.
That fact, alone, is enough for those who care about police officer safety to consider becoming anti-war, and even stand against the failed War on Drugs which has led to the United States having a large prison population than any other developed country on earth.
In 2016, 64 officers were shot and killed, 21 of those dying in ambushes. Contrasting those statistics published by the NLEOMF are citizen-led organizations who track the number of people killed by police in the line of duty. Killed by Police tracks the number of officer-involved shootings which lead to someone’s death.
From Jan. 1 to May 20th of 2017, KBP has documented 453 deaths by cop, many of whom as TFTP has reported, were unarmed at the time of their deaths. Several officers in 2017 have already been charged with homicide, with more charges coming for investigations which have not yet concluded.
Deaths by cop are equal to 2016. From January 1-May 20th of 2016, 453 deaths by cop were documented by KBP, an organization which depends largely on news reports for its source work. As TFTP has reported, 2017 is the first year the FBI has tracked the death by cop statistics, depending upon voluntary reporting by law enforcement agencies (LEA). Many fear the number of those killed by cops are much higher and simply don’t get reported in the news.
Worth noting is the fact that the NLEOMF and the DBC statistics both pale in comparison to the number of Americans killed by criminals. While we are still waiting on 2016’s official numbers, there were 15,696 murders in 2015, with guns being used in nearly three-quarter of those killings.
Both organizations, one which tracks officer deaths, and the one which tracks those killed by cops, have equally important tasks. Being a police officer in the United States is a dangerous job, but certainly not the most dangerous.
There are a great number of occupations and professions which are much more dangerous than being a police officer, the most dangerous of which is being a truck driver. Nearly 800 truck drivers died in their line of work. Construction worker deaths (mostly Latino) come in second.
And there’s certainly no war on cops. There is, however, as some have called it, a staggering phenomenon taking place in law enforcement — nearly 1,200 people are being killed by police every year.
As NLEOMF reported, it’s more dangerous for police officers who are responding in their vehicles to calls for backup, than it is for them to be confronted with someone suspected of being armed. From 2011-2015, 167 officers died in automobile accidents. Almost 50 percent (49%) of the officers killed in those automobile accidents died in single car accidents, their own, presumably from driving recklessly or going too fast.
Submitted by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,
It’s bad enough getting arrested – especially when you didn’t do anything to warrant it. This happens all the time, because the the threshold for arresting someone is very low. It can be done by any cop, pretty much anytime – without much in the way of legal justification. He has the gun – and the handcuffs, after all. If he wants to arrest you, he will arrest you. Maybe the courts will sort it out later; eventually you are released, your record “cleared.”
This isn’t new – or news.
What is new – and ought to be news – is that several states have begun charging people “processing” and “incarceration” fees for their bogus arrest and subsequent just-as-bogus caging.
Minnesota and Kentucky are among the states that levy fees on people who are merely arrested and taken to the clink… even if they are never convicted of anything. In some cases, the people being charged for “services” rendered are never formally charged with any crime (which is something a prosecutor must do; a cop hasn’t got the power to do more than arrest you on suspicion of violating a statute).
It’s policing for profit taken to the next (entirely predictable) level.
Why not, after all?
Most states already have “just take it” laws on the books that empower cops to simply seize cash and other property prior to any judicial proceeding – and to keep it, even if there never is a judicial proceeding.
The mere fact that you have “excessive” cash on your person is sufficient legal justification in many states to result in its forfeiture – until you prove to their satisfaction it wasn’t “drug” money.
It is not their burden to establish… anything.
Franz Kafka, phone home.
We also have the equally egregious precedent of for-profit enforcement of traffic laws – coincident with the suspension (or at least, the watering down) of any semblance of procedural innocent-until-proved guilty. Cities and counties contract with a private company (the notorious Redflex being the chief profiteer) to install automated red light and speed cameras that chuck tickets to offenders automatically, via the mail – with the offender presumed guilty until he proves himself innocent.
The ticket is sent to the registered owner of the vehicle – who is not necessarily the person who was driving when the camera snapped the photo of the car’s plates and chucked a ticket to the owner. But the owner must prove it wasn’t him – as opposed to the former necessity of the state/county having to prove it was.
Meanwhile, pay up.
So it’s not surprising that states have decided to begin charging people for charging them – that is, accusing them of something. There’s even more potential profit in this since a cop can arrest anyone at any time – just about.
The evidentiary bar has been set extremely low – and whole categories of “crime” have been confected or defined so loosely (e.g., “disorderly conduct,” “interfering” with a law enforcer) as to make an arrest almost a matter of whim.
Now add a profit motive to the mix.
In economic terms, hanging a dollar sign on every citizen within handcuffing range of a cop is an incentive to handcuff as many citizens as possible. They are, after all, paying customers.
Can arrest quotas be far behind? Remember, many state/county cops already have ticket quotas, precisely because of the profit motive. And note that, in some states, even if you successfully fight a traffic ticket, you are still hit with a “processing” fee which you must pay – or else.
So it’s no surprise that Colorado doesn’t give money (fines and restitution levied) back to people whose convictions have been overturned.
Soon, the Unelected Nine (the Supreme Court) will weigh in on the “constitutionality” of this business. A case headed their way involves a man named Corey Statham, who was arrested in Ramsey County, MN and charged with “disorderly conduct.” He was taken to the clink but released after the charges against him were dropped.
His money, however, was not released.
He was charged a $25 “booking fee” and other assorted “processing” fees by his gaolers. He is contesting this theft under color of law on the basis that he wasn’t convicted of any crime, hence why should he be punished?
The Unelected Nine are not likely to be sympathetic, having previously legitimated assault and battery upon the Fourth and Fifth as well as other amendments. For example, the ex-constitutional requirement that the accused be presumed innocent until proved guilty (in a court of law) has been gotten rid of by declaring things like automated red light/speeding tickets to be mere administrative affairs. Since there’s no prospect of jail time, you (the accused) lose the right to your day in court, including your ex-right to confront your accuser. Instead, you may be allowed to file some kind of written appeal, which may or may not be read by anyone – who may or may not be interested in anything you have to say.
And – naturlich – you must pay first and regardless. Red Queen style. Maybe they’ll give you your money back. Probably not.
It’s dirty pool, old man.
And the game is getting more serious.
But there is an upside. The fools have showed us their hand. It is clear now to all but the terminally stupid what’s up – and why. We see behind the curtain and know what the man is up to.
It isn’t coincidental that contempt for law enforcement is no longer a feeling felt only by the criminal class. The working and middle classes understand that it’s not about their “safety.”
Or the “safety” of the cops, either.
It’s about separating them from their money using any means necessary. About abusing them as badly as any Redcoat, those many years ago. Which brings up the line in the Declaration about sending hither “swarms of officers” to “eat out their substance.”
Rings a bell, doesn’t it?
