These governments say that they are protecting their citizens from misinformation, but what they are really doing is protecting themselves from competition.
The post Gov’t Worldwide Cracking Down on ‘Fake News’, Writing and Even Sharing Now Leads to JAIL appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
The University of California Berkeley Police were recently featured in a video that shows their officers serving local citizens by protecting them from the dangers of—a hot dog vendor without a permit.
The video was posted on Facebook by Martin Flores, with the caption, “The sadness to observe UC Berkeley Police give a hotdog vendor a ticket and his hard earned money taken away #Justice4Juan.”
“That’s not right man, that’s not right,” Flores said as he used his phone to record a UC Berkeley police officer issuing a ticket to a hot dog vender outside of a football game at the California Memorial Stadium.
“That’s how it works,” the male officer responded. “Take it to a judge, and the judge can decide whether or not it’s right.”
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The officer then took the money out of the vendor’s wallet, and when he began to protest in Spanish, the officer told him to “Back up.”
“You’re going to take his hard-earned money?” Flores asked. The officer replied, “Yep.”
“People can drink on campus at football games with no tickets, but a hard-working man selling hot dogs, earning a living, gets his money taken away and a ticket,” Flores remarked.
“He doesn’t have a permit,” the officer replied as he rifled through the vendor’s wallet. “Yep. This is law and order in action.”
In response the claim from Flores that officers were targeting a hot dog vendor, while there were other people around who were breaking the law that they were ignoring, they insisted that Flores should have called them, and that they would look into his claims “later.”
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As others on the scene watched the officer extort Juan the hot dog vendor, one man began to chime in with comments such as, “You must have voted for Trump,” “Good cop, way to go, good job,” and “Nice work dude, you protected the public.”
Flores, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 1996, said he was “disappointed” as an alumnus, to see the campus in its current state. The officer quickly replied, “Well, I’m disappointed in you … I don’t believe you’re using critical thinking right now.”
In response to the injustice, Flores has started a GoFundMe page to raise money for Juan. The page’s description states:
“This is the official go fund me account for Justice4Juan the hotdog vendor at UC Berkeley. The funds raised will be utilized to cover legal and personal loses. In addition, funds in excess are to cover other vendors who have been robbed of their hard earned living through citations and removal of their carts. It is my goal to locate Juan in Berkeley. Any and all help to support and locate him is welcome. On Saturday, September 9, 2017 I took my children to enjoy a Cal Berkeley football game. We had a great time. After the game I promised them that I would support the hotdog vendors by buying food from them. I captured this video as we were interrupted by UC Berkeley Police officer. Thank you for your compassion to support this effort.”
The GoFundMe page has a goal of $10,000, and over $3,800 has been raised by over 250 people in the last 7 hours.
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One might think the police would never manhandle, handcuff, and cite a 91-year-old man for anything—but that would be a fairy tale. In the real world, policing for profit, as some have called it, will stop at nothing to bring in revenue, even when it comes from citing a 91-year-old man for walking with a walking stick.
Otha Thurmond, 91, of Memphis, Tennessee, will finally find his way to criminal court after spending his whole life as a law-abiding citizen. According to Thurmond, he has never been in jail a day in his life. Neighbors agree. And they are up in arms with the treatment they witnessed Thurmond receive when he encountered police on his Memphis sidewalk.
Police say they felt threatened by the elderly man when they claim he waved a stick at them. They also say he tried to intervene in a separate domestic dispute. But neighbors disagree. Niesha Lowe WREG News that Thurmond responded when asked by police why he had a stick, saying, “I’m old. I need this stick.”
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Lowe said police “grabbed him, slammed him on the car (police), put his arm way all the way up here to the back of his back” indicating the arm bar into which they placed the 91-year-old. The arm bar alone could have easily dislocated his shoulder, broken his presumably brittle bones, or caused him to fall and break his hip—an injury which can be terminal to the elderly.
Carl Randolph concurred with Lowe. “He never raised his stick, though, in a threatening manner,” he told WREG. He said the police officer, “roughed him (Thurmond) up, and threw him on the car as if he was some young thug.” A third witness, Barbara Denton, agreed with both Randolph and Lowe. She said they had Thurmond bent over the car, in handcuffs.
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While it is true that nearly anyone from a child to a 100-year-old can pull a trigger, it is incredulous to us at TFTP that a Memphis police officer is so afraid of a frail 91-year-old that he has to detain the man in handcuffs. Worse still are the reports he gave no consideration to the man’s health or potential injuries he could sustain from simple routine police techniques.
The Memphis Police Department said they will not release the body cam footage until their own internal investigation takes place. As is typical, departments will investigate themselves and, more often than not, arrive at the conclusion that everything which took place was according to departmental policy. With respect to Thurmond’s case, there were more than three witnesses who saw what the unnamed officer did, and they’ are enraged, as they should be. Shame should be the likely result for a department which treats its elderly the exact same way they do a common street thug.
As TFTP has reported on numerous occasions, many times policemen are on a quota system requiring them to have a certain amount of contacts with the public—write a set number of citations—all in an effort to boost the revenue at the department. We cannot presume to know if the interaction with Thurmond was just such an example of policing for profit or not. What we can tell you is that Mr. Thurmond not only declared he’s “never been in jail” but that he’s “never paid a traffic citation” either.
Now, Thurmond has to go to court over charges of “misdemeanor disorderly conduct.” We hope he takes his stick with him.
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The heinous “crime” of “distracted walking” has become the latest trend that cities in the United States are looking to legislate into nonexistence—relying on tax dollars and the extortion of citizens to solve the problem instead of common sense.
Stamford, Connecticut, is the most recent city to join the bandwagon, and its proposal would make texting, and even talking, on an electronic device while walking illegal.
A report from CBS New York noted that “nationwide pedestrian fatalities jumped about 11 percent last year with nearly 6,000 people killed,” according to the National Governors’ Highway Safety Association.
John Zelinsky, a Stamford City representative who is fully in support of the proposal, claimed that its purpose “is not actually to raise money for the city, but to hopefully educate the public.” He said residents will face an initial fine of $30 if police deem that they fit the description of “distracted walkers.”
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“They’re oblivious to cars,” Zelinsky said. “I don’t want any more injuries or deaths as a result of pedestrians getting hit. We’ve had about four or five within the past three or four years.”
According to CBS New York, most Stamford residents “seemed to like the idea,” of the new proposal. However, residents such as Troy Latham questioned why the city feels the need to legislate common sense.
“I think that’s ridiculous,” Latham said. “If it’s an important text message or call they’re getting, like what if it’s too late, what if their mother’s in the hospital and they need someone to call real quick.”
The proposal in Stamford is based on a ban that was passed in Honolulu, Hawaii, in July. The legislation was passed by a vote of 7-2 by Honolulu’s city council, and its fines range from $15 to $99, depending on how many offenses the individuals have accumulated. The ban goes into effect in October.
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Mayor Kirk Caldwell told reporters that Honolulu holds “the unfortunate distinction of being a major city with more pedestrians being hit in crosswalks, particularly our seniors, than almost any other city in the county.”
Honolulu resident Ben Robinson told the city council in a written testimony that he sees this new law as a form of government overreach that infringes on personal freedom. “Scrap this intrusive bill, provide more education to citizens about responsible electronics usage, and allow law enforcement to focus on larger issues,” he said.
In addition to the argument over whether making “distracted walking” illegal is a waste of taxpayer dollars that will enforce a law that should be common sense, there is also the question of how police will handle it, and if there will be an increase in cases of police brutality stemming from incidents where officers stop individuals in an attempt to issue citations for walking and using an electronic device.
As The Free Thought Project has reported, there has been a recent increase in police using excessive force when apprehending individuals for the heinous crime of “jaywalking.”
In June 2016, police used a taser on a mentally ill man while beating him with batons in Bakersfield, California. In August 2016, police choked a high school student and tackled him on the ground in Fresno, California. In April, a viral video showed police repeatedly beating a man, strip him naked, and then mock him, in Del Paso Heights, California. In July, a viral video showed police repeatedly hitting a man as they held him to the ground in Millville, New Jersey. The one thing all of these cases have in common? The suspect police were using excessive force on had been stopped for allegedly jaywalking.
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Columbus, GA – Two college students learned the hard way that life in a Police State often includes unnecessary interrogation, false accusations and citations for victimless “crimes,” even when the suspects in question were helping to clean up the community.
YouTubers Brandon Jordan and Tristan Yaptengco, both students at Columbus State University, were interrupted by police while they were filming what they referred to as a “river treasure” video. This consisted of Jordan and Yaptengco diving into a local river, and recovering the objects they found at the bottom—sometimes unique finds, and sometimes pieces of trash that they removed from the river.
Jordan told The Free Thought Project that he and his friends have gained a reputation in the community for helping to clean it up, while featuring their adventures on YouTube.
“We all do ‘river treasure’ videos in the river where we are always cleaning up old lures, nets, bundles of fishing line and anything we find on the bottom of the river,” Jordan said. “So we are always cleaning it up. Everyone down there knows us from our YouTube channels and how we do a lot of good publicity for the city.”
Well I’m not sure if it really covers it in the video but myself jake and Tristan all do “river treasure” videos in the river where we are always cleaning up old lures, nets, bundles of fishing line and anything we find on the bottom of the river. So we are always cleaning it up. Everyone down there knows us from our YouTube channels and how we do a lot of good publicity for the city. So that’s also why at one point in the video i say “as much as we do for the city”
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While in the water, Jordan and Yaptengco were interrupted by a police officer who was calling to them from the edge of the river, and demanding that they meet him on land. The men complied, and when they did reach the officer—who was patrolling the area on his bicycle—he began asking them about their knowledge of the law.
“Are you guys familiar with the code sections that cover swimming in the river [with] flotation devices?” the officer inquired.
When he asked if the two men had any I.D. on them, Jordan and Yaptengco replied and said that their driver’s licenses were in the truck they travelled in, which was in a nearby parking garage.
The officer then responded and said, “Well, I’m going to issue both of you guys a citation.” When Jordan inquired what the citation was for, the officer said it was “Code violation 1445,” which would have meant that Jordan was receiving a citation for not wearing a life jacket.
However, Jordan noted that he had, in fact, been wearing a life jacket the entire time—as is clearly documented in the video. In response, the officer said, “No, you didn’t have that on, sir.”
Jordan stood his ground, and insisted that the cameras he and Yaptengco were using to film their underwater video showed that he was wearing a life jacket at the time they were approached by the officer. In response, the officer insisted that he also had documentation of the encounter on the police-issued body camera he was wearing.
When Jordan began questioning the logic behind the officer’s claim that Jordan was not wearing a life jacket when he was in the water, and then he magically had the time to find one and put one on as he and Yaptengco approached the shore, the officer changed his strategy, and began talking directly to Yaptengco—who was not wearing a life jacket.
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Jordan continued to question the officer, who insisted that the only way he would not issue Jordan a citation was if he reviewed the footage from his body camera, and saw that Jordan was, in fact, wearing the same life jacket the entire time.
“What I do for you, okay, I turned my camera on when I walked over here,” the officer said. “And if it shows you with that on, you won’t get a citation. Plain and simple … You got a camera and I got a camera. If my camera shows that you had that on, then you’re good.”
“So I’m guilty until proven innocent?” Jordan replied. “This is incredible … as much as we do for this city, and you’re going to give me a hard time about this, when I clearly have this on.”
The officer proceeded to justify the encounter by insisting that Yaptengco needed a citation because he was not wearing a life jacket. Even though Jordan was wearing a life jacket—which the officer criticized, because both the jacket and his shirt underneath were black—the officer went on to threaten Jordan by saying that if he ever caught him without a life jacket, he would receive a citation.
Jordan said that Yaptengco now owes a $250 fine for the citation he received for swimming in the river without a life jacket.
As The Free Thought Project has documented on numerous occasions, the Police State is alive and well in the U.S., and police often waste their time pursuing victimless crimes, such as issuing citations to children who are running a lemonade stand without a permit in California, or children who are mowing lawns without a permit in Alabama.
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In the case of Jordan and Yaptengco’s “river treasure” filming adventure, which substituted as a trash cleanup, it could be argued that if they had chosen not to wear life jackets, and they had encountered trouble in the river, they would have faced the consequences for their own actions. As for the officer who questioned them, it could also be argued that he had better things to do with his taxpayer-funded time.
If mass incarceration, the War on Drugs, and mandatory minimum sentencing were not enough of an affront to society, it was recently reported that top federal prison officials received millions in bonuses – despite that fact that federal prisons are mired in scandal and corruption.
USA Today reports:
“The U.S. Bureau of Prisons paid more than $2 million in bonuses to top administrators and wardens during the past three years while the agency was confronting persistent overcrowding, sub-par inmate medical care, chronic staffing shortages and a lurid sexual harassment lawsuit that engulfed its largest institution, according to government records and court documents.
The awards ranged from a $7,000 payment last year to a D.C. administrator, to $28,000 to the agency’s acting director Thomas Kane, and $25,500 for Deborah Schult, assistant director of the Health Services Division. The bulk of the payments, nearly $1 million, were approved last year and amounted to almost double the combined amounts in the previous two years.”
Prison staffers are outraged that their bosses – who did virtually nothing to stop pervasive sexual harassment from inmates over the course of 16 years – are receiving “performance awards,” even as their lawsuit is pending a settlement.
“These people got bonuses off the backs of people who were actually dealing with the predators,” said Sandra Parr, a vice president of the national union of prison workers. She went on to say that top agency officials “chose to ignore it,” which allowed the problem to spiral out of control.
In a private business setting, bonuses are effective incentives to encourage the highest quality work and the desire to improve the product or service. However, in a federal bureaucracy, it’s just a waste of taxpayer money to reward negligence and incompetence.
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None of the officials involved in the scandal has responded to an inquiry from USA Today, but a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons said the bonuses were given as a “strengthening of our (senior executive services).” But the rationale for each “performance award” will not be released.
Tamyra Jarvis, the warden at a Coleman, FL prison embroiled in the sexual harassment scandal, was given $34,500 over the past two years before retiring. The Coleman prison is a primary subject of the lawsuit brought by staffers.
“During the course of the case, which featured allegations that inmates routinely masturbated in front of female workers and threatened them with rape, victims’ attorneys and union officials argued that for years bureau managers and top administrators did little or nothing to intervene.
According to court documents, prison managers routinely either destroyed incident reports detailing the inmate conduct or disregarded the complaints altogether. In one case in which an inmate got close enough to ejaculate on a staffer’s leg, a manager acknowledged “shredding” the staffer’s complaint because the staffer could not positively identify the substance as semen since she was “not medical personnel.”
Besides the problem of rampant sexual harassment, federal prisons are plagued by inadequate medical care and “crisis level” staffing shortages. An Inspector General report found that some prisons had a 40 percent or more vacancy rate, citing the inability to compete with the private sector in recruiting medical staff.
Unfortunately, this comes as no surprise to learn that a federal agency known as the Bureau of Prisons is the cause of needless suffering. The agency thrives on mass incarceration, throwing people in cages for victimless crimes.
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According to its own statistics, almost half (46.3%) of federal inmates are in prison for “drug offenses,” which is a product of federal government’s inhumane, archaic War on Drugs. The drug war, borne of racism and quelling antiwar dissent, helps no one except the agencies and law enforcement who profit from it.
Despite everything we know, the new Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, has promised to ramp up the drug war and pursue mandatory minimum sentencing, thus exacerbating the problem of mass incarceration and the injustice of locking people up for victimless crimes.
Panama City Beach, FL — In the ostensible land of the Free, cops claim the legal authority to extort money from you, or even kidnap you for a slew of activities which have no victim. Window Tint, smoking a plant in you own home, not wearing your seatbelt, walking across the street, sagging your pants, and even juggling — can and will get you extorted, kidnapped, caged, or even killed. Now, as a recent case in Florida illustrates, we can add building a sand castle to that long list of victimless “crimes.”
Bryant Rylee and his family were at the beach last week building an awesome sand castle when they were confronted by police. The officer, who was ‘protecting society’ by patrolling the beach for illegal sand castles, told the Rylees that their sand castle was in violation of the law.
At first, Rylee thought the officer was joking. After all, he and his son were harming no one while building their most epic castle. In a Facebook post, Rylee explains that it is ‘illegal’ to build a sand castle with a hole deeper than two feet. However, he explained that their hole was only one foot deep, so there was no way it was in violation.
It wasn’t the hole from which the cop was protecting society, though — it was Rylee’s son’s equipment that was criminal. According to their obscure ordinance, only plastic tools are allowed on the beach, and they had some metal ones.
It is important to note that the officer explained to Rylee that she would let him off with a warning if he simply filled in the hole. But Rylee wasn’t buying it. He wanted to know what ordinance he was violating.
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It was Rylee’s questioning of authority which led to police escalating the call. When her authority was put into question, the officer brought in backup.
Before the officer could tell Rylee which ordinance he was violating, the family was surrounded by police. In fact, four patrol units would show up and sit there for 20 minutes before any of them could produce the law which said metal beach toys were illegal.
According to FEE:
While Rylee, a devout Christian, says he supports law enforcement and prays “daily for their protection,” he also said on his social media account that, “I do believe that ‘we the people’ have a right to ask what ordinance number or to see the ordinance.”
Rylee is absolutely correct. In the American legal system, there is a pillar of jurisprudence known as Mens rae, which is latin for “guilty mind.” The principle itself comes from the latin phrase actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, which translates to, “the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty.”
This is a standard test of criminal liability that asks the state to consider whether or not a person has broken a law knowingly before guilt can even be assessed.
After it was all over, as Rylee explains, the construction of a sand castle cost him $25 and could’ve cost him $500 and up to 60 days in jail.
When building a sand castle becomes a criminal act, it is high time we question where this ostensible Land of the Free is headed.
