“Give a boy a hammer and he will bang everything in sight.” Cops create crime. The more cops the more crime?
“Arrests by Chicago police officers dropped by nearly 50% citywide the evening after the sentence came down, and almost 25% in the two weeks following. At the same time, total crime as reported by police dropped to the lowest level in at least two decades, a stat consistent with a policing slowdown.”
The city’s police started working less after an officer was sentenced for killing black teen Laquan McDonald. But Chicago actually got safer.
CHICAGO — Soon after Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was sentenced to almost seven years in prison for gunning down 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, his colleagues did something fairly common to frustrated police departments: They started working less.
Furious at the verdict, the state police union issued a veiled threat the same day asking whether citizens of Chicago were “ready to pay the price” of police officers not feeling comfortable doing their jobs. And while the Chicago Police Department has denied there was any work slowdown, an analysis of crime data by VICE News shows a significant reduction in police activity following Van Dyke’s sentencing on January 18.
Arrests by Chicago police officers dropped by nearly 50% citywide the evening after the sentence came down, and almost 25% in the two weeks following. At the same time, total crime as reported by police dropped to the lowest level in at least two decades, a stat consistent with a policing slowdown. Crime reports arising through street stops, such as drug arrests and weapons violations, fell the most precipitously, as officers continued to respond to serious incidents like shootings.
Police see slowdowns as a way of punishing a community by letting crime flourish unaddressed. But in Chicago, something unexpected happened: While arrests and crime reports by police fell during the two-week slowdown, they stayed low when police returned to work.
In the weeks and months following Van Dyke’s sentencing, serious crime continued to decline even though cops had returned to more active policing. So far in 2019, the number of homicides — which was previously among the highest in the U.S. — has dropped by 8%. Murders have fallen to their lowest level in five years. Shootings are down 9% compared to last year. Police were doing less, but somehow Chicago became safer.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot even used a press conference with the city’s police chief to note the improvement, saying the city was “trending in the right direction but has a long way to go.”
The proof of a slowdown lies in the fact that three particular kinds of arrests virtually stopped: drug possession, weapons violations and prostitution. This is important because narcotics, weapons and prostitution arrests are an indicator of a type of policing known as “proactive,” in which officers initiate encounters with citizens without the report of a crime. This can include stopping people based on “suspicious activity” — which can be interpreted as standing on a particular corner or moving away from a police car. Proactive policing is a fraught and controversial practice, as people of color are often disproportionately targeted.
Between January 18 and January 31, the two weeks after Van Dyke’s sentencing, police made less than one-third the average number of narcotics arrests in the previous 18 years. Prostitution arrests fell by about 90% from the average over the same time period. Weapons violations dropped as well. The massive decline suggests that officers weren’t stopping people on the street nearly as often.
“It’s possible that [citizens said], ‘OK, finally somebody’s doing something; they’re listening.’”
During the slowdown, the crime reduction was also concentrated within black and Latino communities on the city’s south and west sides with higher crime rates, suggesting that different groups of police officers responded to the union calls for a slowdown differently. Former Baltimore police officer and professor of law and police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Peter Moskos said many cops ignore such statements by the union.
It isn’t possible to definitively determine the reason for the crime reduction after the slowdown ended. But some experts believe the drop in proactive policing, or sentencing — or both — may have improved relationships between Chicagoans and the police, ultimately playing a significant role in driving crime down.
There’s some evidence that was the case. Excessive force complaints have fallen by more than 13% so far this year. “That would suggest some improvement in police-community relations,” said Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. Van Dyke’s sentence may have also helped to quell anger at the department. Public reaction to the jail term varied, with McDonald’s family describing it as a “victory” while some police reform activists termed it “a slap in the face.”
“It’s possible that [citizens said], ‘OK, finally somebody’s doing something; they’re listening,’” so there’s less willingness for the public to challenge authority, and that would bleed into [fewer] other conflicts as well,” said Scott Wolfe, a professor of criminology at Michigan State University.
And better relationships between officers and the public might lead to more tips and information that could improve the police’s ability to deter and solve crimes in their districts. The arrest rate for homicides, which had hovered below 20% before the sentencing, experienced a sharp uptick to around 23% in the following months. Since the sentence, it has increased to the highest level it had been in four years.
Chicago Police Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi credited the decline in crime to “considerable investments in data and technology” as well as community policing. He cited gunshot-detecting microphones scattered throughout the city as helping to deter crime and enabling police to more rapidly respond to shootings. But many aspects of Chicago’s violence-reduction strategy — including the gunshot-detection technology — had been in place since 2017 or earlier, long before the inflection point in arrests and crime this past January.
Chicago’s policing slowdown and subsequent decrease in crime was echoed in New York City only months later, and under similar circumstances.
In mid-August, five years after police officer Daniel Pantaleo choked Eric Garner to death for resisting arrest, the New York police commissioner removed the cop from duty. New York City police answered by beginning a slowdown: In the week following Pantaleo’s firing, arrests dropped by 27% compared to the prior year, a reduction that police privately admitted was retaliation for what they viewed as an unjust dismissal.
There is precedent for slowdowns failing to negatively affect crime — and sometimes even reducing it. In 2015, when an assailant killed two New York City officers in their patrol car, cops also slowed down their policing. The pullback resulted in major declines in proactive policing, ticketing, and arrests, just like this year after Pantaleo was removed.
Researchers at Louisiana State University and the University of Michigan found that violent crimes fell during and after the slowdown. Their study showed that there were thousands fewer major crime reports and that the reduction continued for more than three months beyond the end of the slowdown.
Various other research has also indicated little impact or small reductions in crime after slowdowns. “They say they’re pulling back, that their colleagues are pulling back, and the data would suggest that indeed they are. But what we’re not seeing a lot of, at least on average is … change in crime,” Wolfe said of his own findings.
His study focused on a policing slowdown after the August 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. There, traffic stops fell precipitously after massive protests, but the rate at which officers recovered contraband in stops actually increased — which suggests a decrease in proactive policing meant cops were focusing on citizens who were more likely to be actually breaking the law.
Chicago PD spokesman Guglielmi disputed the slowdown in an interview with VICE News, and noted that some measures of morale, like sick days, did not increase after Van Dyke’s sentencing. But he didn’t explain why arrests declined so dramatically. Another significant influencer of crime — the weather — wouldn’t explain such a severe dropoff. The state union did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and the local chapter declined to comment.
And as narcotics stops and other forms of proactive policing have begun to increase in Chicago again, the crime rate has also increased in the latter half of the year. Excessive force complaints were down by more than 20% in the first half of the year, but they’ve begun to return to their old rates as well. Like the 2015 slowdown in New York, any effects of the slowdown — whether positive or negative — may be only temporary.
But Rosenfeld said that the declines in arrests in New York and Chicago are part of a longer-term, more widespread trend toward fewer stops and reduced policing across the nation. Litigation and public outcry against aggressive proactive practices like New York’s stop-and-frisk program — which was shown to be used mostly to stop and search minorities — has drastically cut the number of arrests for minor offenses. According to his research, arrest rates for all kinds of offenses have been decreasing for at least a decade, beginning years before videos of police violence led to a massive protest movement led by Black Lives Matter.
“We have been witnessing, in the United States, in the big cities certainly, something akin to a long-term depolicing effort … with no subsequent effect on crime rates,” Rosenfeld said.
Some police departments are so corrupt that it will require an intervention from mythical Gods to restore them to proper functioning. And this is universal. Crime after all is antisocial human behavior.
After nearly 4 years the former chicago police officer who killed Laquan Mcdonald has been found guilty of murder
Chicago, IL – After nearly 4 years, former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke has been found guilty of 2nd degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm after shooting and killing 16-year-old Laquan McDonald.
Van Dyke plead claimed he ‘feared for his life’ that fateful night, as the unarmed teen walked slowly down the street. However, the video of the incident was so damning that the cop was actually charged.
Surrounded by officers and suspected of breaking into cars on October 20, 2014, McDonald, was attempting to walk away from a group of Chicago cops when Officer Jason Van Dyke exited his patrol car. According to initial reports, McDonald was armed with a knife and lunged at Officer Van Dyke. Fearing for his life and the lives of his fellow officers, Van Dyke shot the teen in the chest out of self-defense.
But according to witness statements and police dashcam video, McDonald was walking away when Van Dyke opened fire. After McDonald had collapsed to the ground in a near-fetal position, Van Dyke continued firing his weapon until emptying his clip. As Van Dyke began reloading his gun, a fellow officer had to order him to cease firing at the dying teen.
McDonald’s autopsy revealed that Van Dyke shot him 16 times, including two bullets in the back, seven in his arms, two in his right leg, once on each side of his chest, and single bullets wounds to his right hand, scalp, and neck. Nine of the 16 entrance wounds had a downward trajectory. None of the five other officers at the scene fired their weapons.
Before McDonald’s family could even file a lawsuit, the city gave them a $5 million settlement on the condition that the family agreed not to publicly release the dashcam footage of the teen’s death. After suppressing the video for 13 months, the city received a court order to release the footage. The city released the dashcam video in 2015, which clearly shows McDonald did not lunge at the officers before the fatal shooting.
In May of 2015, Burger King district manager Jay Darshane accused officers of deleting the security footage after spending over three hours in the fast food restaurant on the night of the shooting. According to Darshane, the video equipment was working properly, but 86 minutes of footage, from 9:13 p.m. to 10:39 p.m., disappeared after the officers left.
Charged with first-degree murder, Van Dyke fired his first shot at 9:57 p.m. When asked if he was certain that the officers deleted the footage of the killing, Darshane answered, “Yes.”
Although 86 minutes of the surveillance video have gone missing, including the moment that McDonald was gunned down, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez claims no one tampered with the footage.
“We had no idea they were going to sit there and delete files,” Darshane said. “I mean we were just trying to help the police officers.”
Unable to clearly explain why the 86 minutes disappeared, Police Supt. Garry McCarthy blamed the missing files on technical difficulties. At a press conference, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez asserted that no one had tampered with the Burger King surveillance video. When asked who conducted the forensic testing, Alvarez did not appear to know the answer.
Alvarez responded, “That’s all I’m going to say on this.”
Although the police department and state’s attorney claim the officers did not delete those 86 missing minutes, remember that this information is coming from the same cops who initially lied about the shooting and the same officials who suppressed the police dashcam video for 13 months.
Below is the original news segment showing the officer sitting at the surveillance computer for several minutes.
The death of Laquan McDonald has been the impetus behind police reform across the country as well as in Chicago. Following the controversy surrounding his death the city of Chicago was forced to release years of police brutality videos, showing the horrifying abuse of the city’s citizens by their ostensible protectors.
Thankfully, for the sake of McDonald as well as the countless other victims of the Chicago police department, Van Dyke was finally held accountable.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s plummeting popularity received another blow this week with the continuing scandal of an ex-bodyguard who was given elite access to Élysée Palace – even though he had no professional background in the state security services.
What’s more, Macron’s personal security minder, Alexandre Benalla, is accused of impersonating a police officer while beating up two protesters during a May Day rally in Paris earlier this year.
The thuggish behavior of a top Macron aide raises questions about this president’s ethics and politics. It conveys a disturbing image of fascist street brawling entering the very seat of French government.
Benalla has since been dumped from his post as Macron’s bodyguard over the scandal which has become dubbed “Benalla-gate”.
Alexandre Benalla
But the affair reinforces growing public anger over what they see as Macron’s self-inflated presidential style. He is increasingly seen as arrogant, aloof, and unaccountable, with delusions of grandeur.
Ironically, the former Rothschild investment banker, with his youthful “fresh face”, was elected in May 2017 on the back of his much-hyped self-proclaimed mission to renew French politics. Macron (40) even started a brand new political party, En Marche, which was billed as transcending “old” Left-Right rigidities and renovating French democracy.
The president’s honeymoon period with the French public has long worn off. His much-touted social policy reforms are seen as draconian cuts in workers’ rights and public services for the benefit of the wealthy. He has even gained the moniker, “president of the rich”.
On several occasions, Macron has shown a galling elitist conceit, such as when he publicly berated a protesting teenager to “show respect”, or when he floated the idea of bestowing a new formal title of “first lady” to his 25-years-senior wife, Brigitte (65), thus attempting to turn the French parliamentary republic into an American-style executive power.
Recently, when he was challenged by an unemployed gardener about lack of jobs in that profession, Macron haughtily told the young man to try his hand at laboring in building construction. His lack of empathy provoked a public outcry over what appeared to be a “let them eat cake” attitude.
This week, the president’s former bodyguard was summoned by the French Senate to answer questions on his exact relationship with Macron. The enquiry could go on for weeks.
But what the Senate hearings point to is a growing frustration with Macron’s self-styled majesty as a leader who sees himself above reproach. He has often talked about how his presidency is aimed at “restoring France’s greatness”, and seems to have a penchant for addressing parliamentarians beckoned to the Versailles Palace, as if they are his subjects.
His former appointment of Benalla (27) as personal bodyguard raised eyebrows. It smacked of political favoritism towards a personal friend. Benalla has no professional background in the French police or military which is the normal career path for someone appointed to be the president’s top security official. It is said that the former bodyguard’s only experience in security work was being previously employed as a bouncer in a nightclub. How he came to know Macron is an intriguing question, and it is this relationship that lawmakers want to find out about in their ongoing questioning.
Their relationship became a scandal when Benalla was videoed by May Day protesters beating up a man and woman on the streets of Paris earlier this year, while demonstrating against Macron’s social reforms. In the video, Benalla is seen wearing a police helmet and an armband purporting to identify him as a member of the police force. He is also seen viciously punching the man on the head and stomping on his stomach as he fell to the ground. It appears to be a shocking display of gratuitous, sadistic violence.
One can only imagine how Western news media would explode with sensational front page headlines if, somehow, a similar event took place in Moscow, in which an aide to President Putin was filmed being involved in assaulting protesters. You would never hear the end of that in Western media.
Why President Macron’s personal security guard would take time off to go to a rally and beat up protesters is a troubling question. Did Benalla get some perverse pleasure from his violent conduct? It is also a serious offense under French law to impersonate a law enforcement officer, which could result in a prison conviction.
When French media finally identified Benalla from the amateur video footage in mid-July, the accusation was then leveled at Macron of engaging in a cover-up. Hence the term “Benalla-gate” was coined.
Macron at first ignored the furore in typical supercilious mode. Under mounting public pressure, he then eventually broke his silence. Though he reacted in a petulant manner as if the media were picking on him, which only served to underline the perception that this president views himself as some kind of regal figure above the fray of “commoners”.
Bizarrely, Macron riposted to the media questions about Benalla’s seeming privileged employment with a sarcastic quip: “He’s not my lover!”
Was it a Freudian slip? It’s not the first time that Macron’s sex life has been rumored to be secretly gay.
During the presidential campaign, Russian news media carried a report quoting French political opposition sources claiming that Macron’s private life was more nuanced than his marriage to a much older woman suggests. Macron then hit back defensively, accusing Russia of interfering in the French election, based on one throwaway gossip story.
Whatever the precise relationship is between Macron and his rogue bodyguard, one thing does seem clear however. This president has a Napoleon complex, or perhaps a Bourbon Sun King complex. He seems to think exceedingly highly of himself, as being a ruler who is above the rule of law and public accountability.
Just over a year in office, the supposed squeaky-clean Emmanuel Macron is showing himself to have the whiff of the same old corruption that has marred so many of his predecessors in Élysée Palace.
Police waited until the day of the innocent man’s funeral to release the affidavit claiming they found weed in Botham Jean’s home, an obvious smear campaign.Source link
Dallas, TX — The Dallas Police on Thursday announced the findings of a search warrant they executed on the home of Botham Jean after he was gunned down in his apartment by one of their own. The department is now accused of trying to “smear” Jean by claiming they found a tiny bit of marijuana in his house—as if this justifies going into someone’s home and murdering them.
The timing couldn’t have been more insidiously planned as police released the affidavit on the day of Jean’s funeral—despite having allegedly found the marijuana last week. According to the affidavit, when they searched his home, police claimed to have found 10.4 grams of pot—less than half an ounce.
Police also said they found two fired cartridge casings, a police backpack and vest, and a metal marijuana grinder—the horror. Even if police did find marijuana, why on earth would they execute a search warrant on an innocent dead man’s home and then release that information to the public?
“They [police] immediately began looking to smear him,” attorney Lee Merritt said.
“I think it’s unfortunate that law enforcement begin to immediately criminalize the victim—in this case, someone who was clearly was the victim that has absolutely no bearing on the fact that he was shot in his home,” Merritt added to Fox 4.
Pointing out the glaring nature of the smear campaign was the fact that there has been absolutely zero information released about the warrants conducted on officer Amber Guyger, the killer cop who lived just below Jean.
“I would love to see more information coming out about the warrants executed on the home of the shooter who lived just below him. I haven’t seen any of those,” said Merritt.
Merritt accused the department of conducting a “common assassination attempt on the victim that we often see in law enforcement involved shootings.” Sadly, he appears to be correct in his accusations. It is standard procedure for police to dig up dirt on their victims in attempts to smear and assassinate their character to make the killer cops look good in the public eye.
Even sadder, however, is the fact that these smear campaigns work most of the time.
As the Free Thought Project reported on Wednesday, according to police — who continue to attempt to spin this story into some tragic mistake — Guyger accidentally went into the wrong apartment, mistook Jean for an intruder and killed him.
“Guyger entered the building and walked down the fourth-floor hallway to what she thought was her apartment,” according to the arrest warrant made public Monday afternoon. “She inserted a unique door key, with an electronic chip, into the door keyhole. The door, which was slightly ajar prior to Guyger’s arrival, fully opened under the force of the key insertion.”
“Guyger drew her firearm, gave verbal commands that were ignored by … Jean,” according to the warrant. “Guyger fired her handgun two times striking [Jean] in the torso. Guyger entered the apartment, immediately called 911, requesting police and EMS, and provided first aid to … Jean.
“Due to the interior darkness of the apartment, Guyger turned on the interior lights while on the phone with 911. Upon being asked where she was located by emergency dispatchers, Guyger returned to the front door to observe the address and discovered she was at the wrong apartment,” according to the arrest warrant.
At no time, according to the warrant, does Guyger say what “verbal commands” she gave. What’s more, any verbal commands she did give were entirely irrelevant as she was the intruder—not Jean. Attempting to imply that Jean was somehow at fault for his own death for disobeying the commands of a homicidal cop who’d just illegally broken into his home is as irresponsible as it is reprehensible.
What’s more, according to the attorneys for Jean, when Guyger was on the phone with police, she had to go outside to verify the address of the apartment—implying that she knew she was in the wrong apartment from the start.
“From the fact that when you look at an affidavit and I’m thinking that I’m at my house and I call 911 because someone was just shot,” Attorney Daryl Washington said. “Well, the very first thing that I’m going to do is I’m not going to go outside and look at my address? I’m going to give them my address right there on the phone. I’m going to say I’m on the phone. My address is this. Why did she have to go outside to verify the address? It makes no sense whatsoever.”
Even more ominous than having to verify the address is the fact that according to witnesses, Guyger’s story of inserting the key into Jean’s door and it opening up was simply not true. According to witnesses, Guyger was banging on Jean’s door, demanding he let her in.
“Independent witnesses have already come forward to say that they heard this officer pounding on the door and demanding to be let in,” Lee Merritt, one of the attorneys representing the Jean family, told ABC News. “The contradictions begin to build from there.”
The doors in the complex are also equipped with an automatic closing mechanism. This was demonstrated by the attorneys who opened the door and released it several times—showing that it closed every single time—blowing the claim that the door was somehow ajar completely out of the water.
Jean’s family also pointed out that it would have been incredibly unlikely for Guyger to mistake Jean’s apartment for her own as he had a distinct red door mat which would have been enough for the cop to know she was at the wrong place.
Even as cops come to Guyger’s defense and attempt to shame, smear, and discredit her victim—who was an upstanding member of society regardless of the plant they claim to have found—they are failing miserably.
Despite cops rallying behind the blue line to defend this killer cop, the rest of the country is not buying it. In a damning tweet, writer Kashana Cauley summed up the nature of the smear campaign quite succinctly. In response to cops claiming to find a tiny bit of weed, she pointed out that there was also a homicidal cop inside too.
Kashana
✔@kashanacauley
His apartment also contained an off duty homicidal cop.
The Empire is Burning: What Imperialism Looks Like From Inside the Empire
Washington D.C. (GPA) – Many people outside the U.S. don’t realize the devastating effects of imperialism right here inside the empire. As weapon companies rake in profits while lobbyists and politicians do their bidding, the U.S. population suffers from extreme poverty and militarized police. No one has felt these effects more than marginalized black and brown communities. In this piece, guest writer Desmond Abrams explains how imperialism wages war at home.
“The security we profess to seek in foreign adventures we will lose in our decaying cities.” Martin Luther King Jr. spoke this truth in 1967, in his opposition of the Vietnam War and the military-industrial complex.
This April, of course, marked the 50th anniversary of MLK’s murder. In the 50 years that passed, the military industrial complex—the war profiteers and the chickenhawks who feed them an endless list of usually poor and brown nation states to conquer—have grown in magnitude and power. At the same time, the multi-billion dollar weapons systems collectively punish and terrorize the poorest and most exploited people on the planet. To top it off, some Americans increasingly find themselves gripped with fear and terror at home.
Black Americans, myself included, have often been at the epicenter of domestic wars waged by the United States government against its own. One of which is the “War on Drugs,” which gives the government sweeping powers to target and harass black and brown youth. The “War on Crime” and the “War on Gangs” similarly act to further criminalize black youth and destabilize communities of color as a whole. These wars on poor communities are so old and so entrenched in American culture we barely even question them. It’s always been normal to see a line of scared young men with their faces to the concrete while cops order them about at gunpoint.
To this day, I still remember walking home from school and watching as the older boys in my neighborhood were being “stretched.” The police pen you up against a wall and put a gun to your head — that simple. To this day, I remember every time I was stretched: penned against a wall with a gun to my head.
Throughout my formative years growing up in the Kensington-Bailey area, I was always either a direct victim or witness to the police and the sweeping powers they had over my friends and loved ones. Around that same time, the 43rd president of the United States was on TV flying in a fighter jet and proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” to a nation of poor people living paycheck to paycheck. While my community was being drained of wealth and the inhabitants starved for any type of freedom and self-determination, there was Bush and the neo-conservatives of America proudly proclaiming their dominance over the Iraqi people.
This recurring theme of US imperialism throughout the planet in search of the usual—cheap labor, raw materials, and new markets—and the decaying society of violence and punishment at home is exactly what MLK meant when he said the bombs abroad explode at home.
A government that green lights collective punishment of civilians and calls it collateral damage is an inhumane government. Any government that kidnaps people all over the world and calls it extra rendition is a dysfunctional government. In almost two decades of the “War on Terror,” the US government has murdered, kidnaped, tortured, and humiliated peoples in almost every corner of the world.
Yet Americans, average Americans regardless of race, have not seen any benefit to this bloodletting and fury. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Americans are poorer than we’ve been since the debacle in Vietnam that MLK spoke out against. While the roads and bridges crumble, the water becomes tainted and sullied, as homelessness reaches epic proportions throughout the country (especially in sprawling and seemingly wealthier cities like Los Angeles and Seattle), as the police are given more weapons (now leftover military-grade weapons from the various foreign adventures the US has conducted) and more powers over the masses of people.
It is safe to say that the empire is burning.
At this point in time, the society around us has degenerated and collapsed so viciously that besides the rich and connected, everyone is affected. The contractions between poor communities of color and their well-to-do and often white counterparts are narrowing. This isn’t to say that black and brown people are doing slightly better than our grandparents — by all quantifiable measures, we are not — but instead to point out the failure of the United States war economy to provide any standard of living for even the most privileged in society.
The poor and deprived people of America are starved out by a war economy. Out of frustration at this decaying society and the dissatisfaction it produces amongst the people, the powerful, knowing nothing but the hammer, are once again gearing up for another war on American families and our rights and dignities. More police powers from the militarization of the Southern border, the expansion of prison-like conditions in schools and other public spaces, and of course the ever-widening dragnet of the state surveillance apparatus are the only solutions that a war government feeding a war economy has.
Credit: U.S. Department of Defense
People are tired of that. People are sick of waving flags and cheerleading for the US while it lashes out at the world with guns and bombs, playing the simultaneous role of world cop and resource robber. What have I gained from the United States having over 700 military bases around the world? What pride does it bring you to see Trump in meetings with the Saudi government playing the role of salesman for weapons manufacturers? Meanwhile, a quarter of the children right here in the Nickel City are going to go to bed hungry on whatever night you get a chance to read this.
The only way for us to get a grip on this burning house we’re all sleeping in is to wake up! The US has been at war with either itself or some strange ‘other’ for the vast majority of my time on this earth. At the same time, I’m working poor and don’t know anyone who isn’t. I’m not standing for this any longer and you shouldn’t either.
“There were four armed police officers, including one cop who was assigned to the school as a resource officer, on campus during that shooting. All four cops stayed outside the school with their weapons drawn (three of them hid behind their police cars).
Not a single one of those cops, armed with deadly weapons and trained for exactly such a dangerous scenario, entered the school to confront the shooter.”
“Seventeen people, most of them teenagers, died while the cops opted not to intervene.”
“This begs the question: if the police don’t have a duty to protect the public, what are we paying them for? And who exactly do they serve if not you and me?
It is fast becoming a government “of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations,” and its rise to power is predicated on shackling the American taxpayer to a life of indentured servitude.”
“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”—Author William S. Burroughs
In the American police state, police have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.
In fact, police don’t usually need much incentive to shoot and kill members of the public.
So when police in Florida had to deal with a 19-year-old embarking on a shooting rampage inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., what did they do?
Nothing.
There were four armed police officers, including one cop who was assigned to the school as a resource officer, on campus during that shooting. All four cops stayed outside the school with their weapons drawn (three of them hid behind their police cars).
Not a single one of those cops, armed with deadly weapons and trained for exactly such a dangerous scenario, entered the school to confront the shooter.
Seventeen people, most of them teenagers, died while the cops opted not to intervene.
In other words, you can be outraged that cops in Florida did nothing to stop the school shooter, but technically, it wasn’t part of their job description.
This begs the question: if the police don’t have a duty to protect the public, what are we paying them for? And who exactly do they serve if not you and me?
Why do we have more than a million cops on the taxpayer-funded payroll in this country whose jobs do not entail protecting our safety, maintaining the peace in our communities, and upholding our liberties?
It’s the same reason why the Trump Administration has made a concerted effort to expand the police state’s power to search, strip, seize, raid, steal from, arrest and jail Americans for any infraction, no matter how insignificant.
This is no longer a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
It is fast becoming a government “of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations,” and its rise to power is predicated on shackling the American taxpayer to a life of indentured servitude.
Cops in America may get paid by the citizenry, but they don’t work for us.
They don’t answer to us. They’re not loyal to us.
And they certainly aren’t operating within the limits of the U.S. Constitution.
That “thin, blue line” of loyalty to one’s fellow cops has become a self-serving apparatus that sees nothing wrong with advancing the notion that the lives—and rights—of police should be valued more than citizens.
As one commentator remarked, “‘Protect and Serve’ are the words we see on the side of many police cars and is the motto of most police forces. The words define the mission of the police, which is to ‘protect’ citizens and ‘serve’ the public. However, it has become increasingly clear that in far too many police forces those words have been twisted beyond recognition. Too often they appear to mean, ‘to protect officers and serve the police force.’ ‘Force Protection’ has become the primary motivating force for many in the Police. That term is actually a military concept which means that you do everything you can to protect the troops when planning and executing a combat mission.”
The myth of the hero cop really is a myth.
Cops are no more noble, no more self-sacrificing, no braver and certainly no more deserving of special attention or treatment than any other American citizen.
Yet, as journalist David Feige explains, “For the last three decades, police unions have managed to portray their members as indispensable heroes in a deadly and dangerous war. [In] the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the story of the hero cop has become so powerful and pervasive that even questioning police behavior is decried as disloyal, un-American, and dangerous.”
This misplaced patriotism about police and, by extension, the military—a dangerous re-shifting of the nation’s priorities that has been reinforced by President Trump with his unnerving knack for echoing past authoritarian tactics—paves the way for even more instability in the nation.
For years now, we’ve been told that cops need military weapons to wage the government’s wars on drugs, crime and terror.
We’ve been told that cops need to be able to crash through doors, search vehicles, carry out roadside strip searches, shoot anyone they perceive to be a threat, and generally disregard the law whenever it suits them because they’re doing it to protect their fellow Americans from danger.
We’ve been told that cops need extra legal protections because of the risks they take.
None of that is true.
For the record, any police officer who tells you that he needs tanks, SWAT teams, and pepper spray to do his job shouldn’t be a police officer in a constitutional republic.
Unfortunately, “we the people” don’t get to call the shots anymore. And we no longer live in a constitutional republic.
Welcome to the American police state, funded by Corporate America, policed by the military industrial complex, and empowered by politicians whose primary purpose is to remain in office.
It’s a short hop, skip and a jump from the police state we’re operating under right now to a full-blown totalitarian regime ruled with the iron fist of martial law.
The groundwork has already been laid.
The events of recent years have only served to desensitize the nation to violence, acclimate them to a militarized police presence in their communities, and persuade them that there is nothing they can do to alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation: the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers.
The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.
Few seem to care about the government’s endless wars abroad that leave communities shattered, families devastated and our national security at greater risk of blowback. Indeed, there were no protests in the streets after U.S. military forces carried out air strikes on a Syrian settlement, killing 25 people, more than half of which were women and children.
And then there’s President Trump’s plans for a military parade on Veterans Day (costing between $10 million and $30 million) to showcase the nation’s military might. Other countries that feel the need to flex their military muscles to its citizens and the rest of the world include France, China, Russia and North Korea.
Connect the dots, people.
This stealthy, creeping, silent coup that is the same danger that writer Rod Serling warned against in the 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May, which put the military in charge of a coup that would institute martial law packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.
On the big screen, the military coup is foiled and the republic is saved in a matter of hours. In the real world, however, the plot thickens and spreads out over the past half century.
We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.
The question is no longer whether the U.S. government will be preyed upon and taken over by the military industrial complex. That’s a done deal.
We’ve allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, Jade Helm military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.
Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned.
Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”
In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.
Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.
Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.
All of this has taken place right under our noses, funded with our taxpayer dollars and carried out in broad daylight without so much as a general outcry from the citizenry.
It’s astounding how convenient we’ve made it for the government to lock down the nation.
Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.
I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.
This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.
Maybe American coppers should not be allowed to carry firearms?
Video from a witness to the tragic killing of Joseph Haynes was just released showing the terrifying moments after he was killed and the cops forcibly removing the family so they couldn’t see him.
Franklin County, OH — As TFTP reported this week, in juvenile court, a 16-year-old boy intervened after a police officer allegedly pushed his mother against the wall—so the police officer shot and killed him. Now, we have the disturbing video of the aftermath of the shooting. It is nothing short of heartbreaking.
The boy who was killed this week for allegedly intervening to help his mother fend off a cop was Joseph Haynes and he was unarmed.
Video of the aftermath was taken by Constance Gadell-Newton, Juvenile Defense Attorney for Franklin County Ohio who witnessed the lethal altercation and pulled out her camera to document it.
In the video, we can see Haynes’ mother hysterical after her son lay dying on the floor of the courtroom. Infuriatingly enough, instead of attempting to call for help or render aid to the boy bleeding out on the floor, police call in back up to remove Haynes family.
“Oh my god you killed my son!” Haynes’ mother screams in horror. At this point officers then begin to forcibly remove the mother and the grandmother who are in obvious shock after witnessing Joseph’s killing.
On Friday, authorities identified the officer who fired the lethal round as Deputy Richard Scarborough.
When asked if there was surveillance footage of the shooting, Chief Rick Minerd, of the Sheriff’s Office investigative subdivision said that the video doesn’t provide a view of the altercation.
“That video is not as fruitful as we would have liked, in terms of what it shows,” Minerd says. “And so we’re hopeful there’s other information out there.”
According to WOSU, Minerd says they are looking for cell phone footage that may help the case. He says they’ve interviewed about 20 people so far in the case, but are having difficulty collecting reliable information because the altercation began in one location and ended in another.
Below is the report on the original incident.
The single shot which killed Haynes was fired, police say, in self-defense but family members are disputing that claim. The boy’s grandmother Geraldine Haynes said she witnessed the entire incident. In an interview with the Columbus Dispatch, the grandmother recounted the incident.
They had an altercation in the courtroom. The judge gave us another court date and we were leaving. The cop told Karen (boy’s mother) to get out of the courthouse and wouldn’t let her get her stuff or nothing. And then he (cop) started going over and pushing her against the wall.
That’s when she says her grandson, Joseph, allegedly stepped in to defend his mother from the officer’s manhandling.
Joey told him to leave his mom alone, leave his mom alone, so Joey ran over there and grabbed ahold of his (cop) shoulder. The cop let loose of Karen and slung Joey onto the ground. And when he slung Joey onto the ground…he just quit (fighting with the cop). All of a sudden the cop reaches for his gun and shoots him.
The grandmother went on to tell reporters she was mere inches away from her grandson when she saw him get shot and killed by the only man in the courtroom with a gun, the cop. She said she can still recall smelling the gunpowder and being in a state of shock.
And I just said, “You shot my grandson! You shot my grandson!”
When asked if Joseph attempted to reach for the officer’s gun the grandmother emphatically stated the boy had his hands raised in a surrender position. “No,” he did not reach for the officer’s gun she said. She said she witnessed the entire incident and said police ushered them out of the courtroom and wouldn’t let them be with their son and grandson as he lay dying on the floor.
Tragically, first responders and emergency room personnel were unable to save the boy’s life, who was shot once in the abdomen.
Following the shooting, the Fraternal Order of Police issued a statement in support of their police officer. At a press conference Wednesday Executive Vice President Keith Ferrell said:
Whenever somebody attacks an officer, there’s always a weapon involved, always because the officer is always armed…There’s always likelihood, the probability, that that person could get your weapon, incapacitate you with a non-lethal weapon, and then get your sidearm. We’re trained, absolutely that you can’t allow that to happen…It was very clear to me, and in my experiences, that he was attacked and this was a fight for his life at some point.
Not only was Ferrell not present, but the only person giving an eyewitness account of the shooting, the boy’s grandmother, stands by her version of events which led to her grandbaby’s death.
Various news reports have made it a point to mention Hanyes’ prior run-ins with the law, stating the teenager had already been charged with various crimes. But the fact remains. An unarmed boy was killed in a courtroom defending his mother from an armed man who was reportedly running roughshod over her.
Joseph Haynes was the 55th American to be killed by police in America so far in 2018.
[ Author’s note: This is a long article due to the complex nature of this problem with hyperactive, overly aggressive, mind-kontrolled police with itchy trigger fingers. Readers can skip to the parts that interest them or read the summary only. ]
There has been a substantial increase in American police incidents since 9-11-01 with the police being too quick shoot, occasionally killing or even murdering an unarmed or innocent person.
In a growing number of cases, these unarmed persons turn out to completely innocent of anything, with police responding to a call by going to the wrong address and murdering a person that was minding their own business on their own property.
There are numerous cases where swat teams have broken into the wrong house, murdered an innocent person; or roughed up, sworn at and insulted innocent family members at the same time. They often use such language to innocent men, women and children, such as “if you move I’ll blow your fucking head off”. This sick verbal abuse is tolerated by internal affairs and even respected, and considered the norm. It is disrespectful and abusive, and should never be tolerated in so-called “public servants” whose salaries and benefits are paid by We The People.
How would these same abusive swat teams members feel if a swat team broke into their home with flash bangs on a no-knock home invasion to the wrong home when they were gone and did the same to their family? Would they get it then that this is criminally abusive, a serious crime of assault, and would they then stop this abuse and brutality?
In Florida some years ago, a DEA squad was caught doing after hours invasions in swat attire of wealthy homeowners and keeping the loot unreported. Several drug task forces with swat teams have been caught stealing drug money and TV sets and jewelry for their personal use.
These police who over-react and murder, maim or insult the innocent are rarely ever brought to to justice because fellow police, internal affairs and most courts favor the police over the public, and often sidestep the US Constitution. Crafty, two-faced prosecutors can easily stack almost any jury, federal, or county, to get the results they want, which is to have all charges dropped, despite acting as if they wanted otherwise.
Too often, it turns out that there was no search warrant; a search warrant was been filled out with the wrong address, or was even read incorrectly by the attacking swat team; or that there was no search warrant at all, and flimsy exigent circumstances claimed. Often these swat raids go deeply wrong and the innocent are wrongly harassed, assaulted and even sometimes murdered.
In many states, retired law enforcement of all types are extended concealed carry privileges automatically if they pass a yearly range test by a local city or county police department. A friend of mine with a long-term ethical and very esteemed LE record before he retired, went to get his yearly shooting exam recently.
The certifying gun range officer told the group of retired LE individuals being re-certified that, if they were ever involved in using their gun to stop a crime of any type, to immediately set their gun down and don’t even waste your time trying to tell them that you are a retired LE. Why? Because the recent batch of new urban police recruits over the last several years are noticeably trigger happy and would immediately shoot first and think later when they get to a call and see anyone holding a weapon or reaching for it. If you have a gun in your hand, expect for any police officer arriving at the scene to empty his clip into you first before doing anything else.
This is a known national trend in US Police departments, both small town, rural and large urban departments.
Why are so many new police recruits so trigger happy, quick to shoot, quick to murder innocents?
Colonel Osman was seen going in and out of Langley and the Pentagon on numerous occasions before 9-11-01, was instrumental in arming the Mujahedeen with stingers for the CIA and, right after 9-11-01, emphatically denied having anything to do with it.
Colonel Osman had Marfans disorder (like President Abraham Lincoln), was on dialysis for CKD, because Marfans usually destroys one’s kidneys. He either died of kidney disease or the results of an America bombing in late 2001. This was announced in the foreign press, and his body was buried in a unmarked grave as is customary Islamic practice.
The massive hunt for Colonel Osman was all based on a known Big Lie by the Administration. Later on, when he was supposedly found and killed by some Seal Team Six operatives, it became known to these men that the man killed was not Colonel Osman at all, nor a terrorist, but was an innocent man they murdered in cold blood. The ops that did this were murdered by their superiors to cover it up, and the rest of the Seal Team Six that found out were also murdered to keep this covered up – they were blown out of the sky while ordered on an old National Guard twin-rotor helicopter.
Knowledge of this treachery by their superiors who had a signed-finding “kill order” right from Potus has spread to many Special Ops who also have heard about the mass-murder of all but one spooky, special ops team in South America. Naturally, most special ops are now assembling special life insurance packets of documents and hiding them with trusted friends, in case they are dealt with treacherously by their superiors. It is a fair statement to say that the trust special ops have in their superiors is at an all time low and dropping by the day.
Even Huma Abedon created a “life insurance” file dump on her husband’s computer and of lots of secret DNC emails, which also allegedly (according to NYCPD insiders) contained pedophilic sexual videos so sick the older veteran police that watched them cried. When the FBI seized these materials, the NYCPD kept numerous copies and told the FBI in plain terms that if they didn’t prosecute all those involved they would eventually release them to the American public one way or another. Right now the NYCPD has about 75,000 officers, a very large international Intel group for itself in almost every major City of the world, and it is not wise for any Intel agency to mess with them.
We now know for certain (without any reasonable doubt) that 9-11-01 used mini-nukes stolen out the back door at Pantex in Texas with a wink and a nod; the 9-11 event was planned by Israeli Likudists and run by the Mossad, with support from the JCS, the Administration, USAF, NORAD, the FAA and lots of Israeli-American “Israeli-first” dual citizen traitors to America; and covered up by the Administration, the RKM’s Controlled Major Mass Media (CMMM) and the FBI which has classically been the number one source of all so-called individual patsy-driven synthetically created terror inside America since the Murrah Bombing.
Congress is completely controlled by AIPAC, preventing any honest investigation or prosecution of the perps responsible for this great attack on America, which is just one part of the secret war between Likudists and We The People on behalf of the City of London’s RKM private fiat Banksters (aka, the Babylonian Talmudic folks who run the worldwide satanic pedophile network). Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, a great American hero, revealed this to all for the first time when she described how any member of Congress who does not sign an AIPAC Loyalty Oath to place the interests of Israel first even before the interests of We The People will never be allowed to be re-elected.
9-11-01 was used to create a false-narrative needed to use American military might to attain the Greater Israel Plan for the Likudists.
9-11-01 was used to create a false narrative that the radical Islamics attacked America and the full force of the US Military had to be deployed in the Mideast to retaliate in full vengeance. We now know this is a major lie designed to trick America into serving as Israeli surrogates to complete their greater Israel Plan. And what is the Greater Israel Plan which was concocted in the City of London for the Israelis to spearhead?
The Greater Israel Plan is a secret policy of the City of London RKM Banksters designed to use American military might to invade, destroy and mass-murder a majority of the governments and people in Islamic nations neighboring Israel, in order to clear the path for Israel’s aggressive annexation of all these lands to Greater Israel.
This Greater Israel Plan has now been thwarted by superior, precision Russian Federation air power in Syria. The Russian Federation is a close ally of Syria and was asked to come in and help defend Syria from ISIS et al., which is now known to be the secret mercenary army of Israel, the CIA, Saudi Arabia, and the City of London. This Russian Federation defense of their ally Syria is perfectly legal under international law.
The CIA’s support of ISIS is illegal under international law, just as every other American invasion in the Mideast is also illegal and unconstitutional, according to American law. Of course a growing number of Americans now realize that the only reason the US military and the CIA would be allowed to do this is because America has been hijacked by the COL, Israeli Likudists, Israeli-American “Israeli-first” dual citizen traitors and lots of traitors in the Pentagon, DOD, White House and administration, and Congress and the CIA.
It’s a fact that ever since 9-11-01 and earlier, the the Murrah Bombing (also done by the RKM and covered up by the FBI), the Administration and the CMMM’s obsession with terror and terrorists inside America has all been based on big lies, false-narratives and USG propaganda. The FBI is a RICO crime syndicate in and of itself; is actually run by the COL Banksters and their top Cutouts; has usually been run by traitors deeply morally compromised, some with ties to major CIA drug money laundering.
The FBI’s specialty is recruiting retarded or mentally ill Islamic patsies to accept a free airline ticket to the Mideast for radical terror training in a special camp run by the CIA and Mossad, or to read and become mind-kontrolled by FBI-run, terror-training websites. Almost all pedophile websites have been run by the FBI. The FBI is known to protect the worldwide satanic pedophile network from exposure or prosecution and has done so, according to reliable insiders from many years.
After 9-11-01, FBI Directors have known that the 9-11-01 attack on America was nuclear; they have known who actually did it, and have worked hard to keep it covered up forever. These men are major American RICO criminals and traitors. If any ordinary, non-connected person did this, they would be prosecuted, convicted and hung for numerous capital crimes, such as accessory after the fact, misprision of a felony, treason, espionage against America, etc.
The matrix of big lies continually broadcast in the RKM’s CMMM is of course designed to spook the police to make them aggressive to citizens, and to scare the American People into supporting all these unprovoked, undeclared, illegal, unconstitutional Mideast wars of aggression to further the RKM’s and Likudists’ Greater Israel satanic obsession.
Most advanced American police training is done under direction of Israeli anti-terror forces (this is no coincidence). DHS was set up to consolidate all American LE and place it under the direct control on the RKM in order to keep the truth of who was behind 9-11-01 covered up forever.
One factor in this increased tendency for American Police to shoot quick and empty their clip into their target “until the threat is over” is the little realized fact that most advanced American police training is driven by Israeli anti-terror forces. This should be illegal and considered espionage by a foreign nation against America.
The current training attitude subtly but actually communicated is that the Police are the righteous occupying military force and We The People are like Palestinian Terrorists. This is the subtle but governing attitude in the back of most new police officers’ minds in America. Sad to say, but it is a fact.
Ever since the RKM and Israel attacked America on 9-11-01, the USG, which is under secret occupation by the RKM and Israel, has been working hard to quickly militarize the American police and transform them into an occupying force that is based on Israel anti-Palestinian police tactics.
Steroid and drug use (including alcohol and SSRIs) by some police is a big problem in America.
Therefore, it should be obvious to all that all police officers, all Intel, all LE (not just new applicants and recruits) should be drug tested periodically for any and all drugs, especially steroids and SSRIs. Those taking steroids without a physician’s prescription for a real illness should be immediately suspended from duty, placed in a treatment program and evaluated for termination.
Those prescribed steroids for a real medical illness should be removed from the street and given a desk job until off the steroids. Those taking SSRIs by valid physician prescription should be removed from street duty and given a desk job to protect the public until such time as they have recovered from their mental disorder and are off SSRIs.
All these black civil rights groups like Black Lives Matter have completely missed the boat on steroids, SSRI use and advance deployed psychotronics. They cannot do much about the deployed psychotronics, but they can create enough political pressure to get a national policy established for regular drug testing of all police, Intel and any LE in America. This should be their national strategy from here on out.
The CIA and BATF have supplied weapons to gangs for many years and been responsible for hyping up police vigilance, fear and over-aggressiveness in inner urban jungles.
About 20 years ago in a large city nearby, the CIA trucked in confiscated weapons from the Chicago Police Department and sold them to the local drug gangs out of the back of a USDA cheese delivery intended for economically poor households in a bad neighborhood. The police officer who was told about this didn’t believe it but ended up investigating and was assassinated in a pizza restaurant by a CIA-linked gang banger. All drug gangs in this city were set up by the CIA, just like MS-13 has been transformed from the contras into a mind-kontrolled violent drug gang and allowed to migrate into certain large American cities.
AFT Agent Brian Terry assassinated — the Cartel’s actions have never been adjudicated
The BATF was caught (due to internal whistle-blower leaks) supplying massive amounts of high-powered weapons to the Mexican Cartels, which brought them into the USA and murdered Border Agent Brian Terry.
The RICO criminals in the USG that did this avoided any prosecution, but they are still liable to be fully prosecuted if the US Dept of Just-us is ever cleaned out, since there is no statute of limitations on murder.
It’s quite sad and also disturbing that the USG, which is now an occupied colony of the RKM and Israeli Likudists, has declared a secret war against the USA and We The People and is doing everything they can to abuse us like Palestinians by using the militarized police, asset strip us all, destroy our Republic, and then genocide us like they are doing to Palestinians.
Middle-class Americans are thus going to become the new Palestinians unless this RKM corruption is stopped cold and cleaned out.
The 1033 Program.
The infamous 1033 program was set up to provide police departments with machine guns, grenade launchers, armor and armored vehicles, as long as the Chief or Sheriff would sign a CIA contract to yield jurisdiction to the feds any time they requested. My Police Chief refused when this program first came out while on an all-expenses-paid junket to Langley; and he was given the CIA flu, which disabled him. This man is a stand-up man who could not be corrupted by the CIA using federal bribe money and military hardware; and he paid the price in spades.
Of course, much of the blame for this transformation of American cities into drug- and weapon-infested urban war zones goes back to LBJ’s Great Society program, which provided the money the CIA needed for black ops. The CIA’s massive drug-trafficking into America Cities could then easily access all the welfare dollars that LBJ’s program provided.
Before 9-11-01, the CIA had no authority inside America to run covert operations or to influence elected officials and corporate leaders. After 9-11-01, the US Congress passed laws (albeit clearly unconstitutional) to allow the CIA to combat terror inside the USA, and also got a law rescinded that prevented the USG from using the Major Mass Media to deploy false stories and propaganda to mislead the public.
Almost all lone wolf terror is synthetically manufactured by the CIA and FBI.
How come the news media (CMMM) never mentions the hard, cold realities of the CIA MK-Ultra program, or anything about the remote, psychotronic entrainment devices sold to Intel agencies and certain corporations with Intel clearances?
Answer: because the cabal that controls the USG and the Intel agencies and assets who deploy these programs and equipment do not want these sinister and highly illegal, unconstitutional practices disclosed to the America People.
If you doubt the power of remote inductive psychotronic devices that can easily be targeted against individuals, groups and whole neighborhoods, consider the documented history of the deployment of the “Voice of God” electronic weaponry in the First Gulf War against the Republican Guard.
Or consider the public disclosures by Barrie Trower, the UK’s top expert on Microwave and its use as a weapon of war. Barrie is now retired and has expressed concern about the misuse of EMF, WiFi and cell phones. He has pointed out numerous times that the constant-on, shoulder-carried police radios can harm certain susceptible officers by entraining their brains.
With some some police officers, these shoulder-carried radios cause them to experience psychomotor seizures when in stressful situations. Some officers will become temporarily unconscious, will act out violently with their guns, and will not remember what happened afterwards.
Here’s a leak from an insider to me that I will share. Evaluate it and decide for yourself if it could be true. Personally I think it is. The Voice of God has once again been deployed in the Mideast, this time quite recently in Iran to generate rebellion, which is now occurring.
This is a desperate, last-ditch attempt by the Babylonian Talmudic non-Hebrew Zios (Rev. 2:9, 3:9) to take down Iran using these pyschotronic weapons that are ground-based, and satellite-based; but it will fail.
So far, all COL/RKM/Likudist attempts to manipulate the USA to deploy its full military to invade Syria and Iran have failed. It is likely that the USG will continue to refuse to do so.
ISIS, the private Mossad/CIA/Saudi mercenary army, has now been completely defeated by Russian Federation precision air power and Assad’s highly motivated Syrian Army.
If the USG thinks it could ever attack and invade Syria or Iran (which are major Russian Federation allies) without a strong reaction from the Russian Federation, they are self-deluding. So far, Russian electronic warfare has shown itself to be quite superior to deployed American electronic warfare systems. Doubt this, then do some Internet research on the USS Donald Cook incident (March, 2014), the Khbiny and Dome of Protection systems, the latest S500 systems, and the new Russian Federation’s hypersonic, hived, grouped missile defense systems and their supersonic torpedoes with anti-gravity, matter-altering nose cones.
Conclusion
The City of London (RKM) and Israeli Likudists want to create as much terror and conflict inside America as they can, in order to divide the American people and create massive chaos. They have worked hard to militarize the American Police and mold them into their murderous anti-Palestinian, anti-terror apartheid forces.
They also want to blood shock Americans with major terror events – some real, like Murrah, Waco, Ruby Ridge, 9-11-01 – and some fake, like Sandy Hook, the Boston Marathon – and some hybrid FEMA/DHS exercises taken live and real to fool investigators, all done in order to “blood shock” the masses. This creates terror in the American group subconscious mind; and this massive subconscious fear can be used by the USG to motivate Americans to demand and/or allow their government to institute major, Draconian measures to provide for their safety from terror, even if these measure violate the constitution, take away their personal God-given rights, and end up resulting in the death of many innocent Americans and foreigners in illegal, unconstitutional foreign wars for Israel and the RKM.
Obviously this massive militarization of the American police has already terrorized, injured and murdered many innocent Americans in their own homes, and will lead to increased violence back at American police, and that is already happening. This is exactly what the COL Banksters (the RKM) and the Likudists want.
Everyday, more and more ordinary Israelis are catching on, and want the Likudists out and the Apartheid stopped cold, with real peace and goodwill established with the Palestinians. They want to see an end to the Greater Israel Plan. This trend is good and will continue, as some Israelis try to save Israel.
Is cosmic superfascism coming?
Unless drastic action is taken to reverse course, world justice is now forming major storm clouds against Israeli Likudist Apartheid, like the BDS movement which is accelerating and cannot be stopped.
Henry Kissinger announced that Israel as we know it would be gone in 10 years, which is a clue that the several Kingpins that run the world system have already abandoned it because they now longer need it, as they shift to a new Cosmic Fascist system.
Many American Police, especially those that work CIA drug- and BATF weapon-infested urban jungles, find themselves in extremely stressful and impossible policing situations. Those who cannot cope often become hyper-aggressive as a coping mechanism; and certainly the role of secret RKM/Mossad and FBI synthetic terror has added significantly to creating hyper-vigilance and a tendency to quickly empty one’s clip even into innocents.
At the center of many police departments at their top command is a culture of lies and cover-ups; and there is no law against it. That is true of the department in my city and others nearby, where certain officers routinely lie to the public with no consequences and abuse their power. But, if you lie to a police officer, that is a prosecutable crime.
Poor police management is likely a major “system problem”. When you have corruption at the top of the USG and state government, where most government is run by pedophiles who abuse young children, no wonder you have corrupt police command structures. It’s like what former Representative Ron Paul recently stated that, when a nation is run by pedophiles, it’s no wonder they send troops repeatedly into illegal wars to slaughter innocents.
And yet, despite all this endemic corruption, the thin blue line and lots of poor police management, there are a lot of good police officers who remain low profile and do their thankless jobs well. It’s the sociopathic, ‘roided up, abusers that give these departments a bad image; and the management usually lies and covers their bad behavior to protect their image. The new movement to active police body cameras should help this over time, somewhat.
I actually feel sorry for this bastard. The fault is not his but the system that made him. I blame his parents, his kindergarten teachers, and all those who gave him a false belief system.
Bail recently revoked for officer convicted in 2013 slaying of teenager Sammy Yatim
Const. James Forcillo has been charged with perjury and attempting to obstruct justice, according to Toronto police. (Chris Young/Canadian Press)
Toronto police Const. James Forcillo, who was convicted of attempted murder in the 2013 shooting death of Sammy Yatim, has been charged with perjury and attempting to obstruct justice.
The charges come as a result of breach of bail allegations by the province’s Special Investigations Unit, which sparked a separate investigation by the Toronto Police Service’s professional standards unit, according to the police force.
Last year, the 34-year-old Forcillo was sentenced to six years in prison for shooting 18-year-old Yatim on a streetcar.
Forcillo had been under house arrest as a condition of his bail while he appealed the conviction, but the provincial watchdog’s investigation alleged Forcillo had been living at a different address than that listed in his bail conditions, a spokesperson for the professional standards unit told CBC News.
The horrific behavior of the American police state has become so overt that it has garnered international attention. The United Nations is now calling for an investigation into multiple departments for the use of excessive force via tasers which they are finally referring to as “torture.”
The Free Thought Project has reported on countless incidents in which police officers in America have been captured on video torturing individuals—many of them restrained in handcuffs or chairs—with tasers. While we have long been referring to this practice as “torture,” the media at large has refused to do so which has allowed it to progress to its current horrifying state. However, it now appears that this is all changing.
Thanks to a recent report out of Reuters, which included footage of 22 incidents in four jails—Franklin County, Ohio; Franklin County, Arkansas; McCurtain County, Oklahoma; and Cheatham County, Tennessee—the U.N. special rapporteur on torture has finally acknowledged the abuse.
According to Reuters, after reviewing footage of jail incidents obtained by Reuters, Nils Melzer said the “grave abuse” from Taser use in some U.S. jails violated the United Nations’ prohibition on cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and, in some cases, amounted to torture.
The videos of these incidents are so disturbing that they can no longer be swept under the rug.
“I think it’s good that we’ve got international oversight of this issue,” Attorney Ben Raybin said of the U.N. citation. “I think excessive force in our jails and prisons is a significant issue that often goes overlooked.
“Taser devices…have a great ability to be overused and misused, and I think having this oversight is an important (part) in improving how people are treated by law enforcement.”
Almost as equally disturbing as the videos is the fact that the officers in most of these cases have never faced discipline despite millions of dollars being paid out in lawsuits. In fact, one of the cops seen torturing a handcuffed, mentally ill man has been promoted to commander of the corrections center.
One of the jails in question happens to be the Cheatham County Jail in Tennessee. As TFTP reported at the time, in an extremely disturbing video, Cheatham County Sheriff’s Deputies are seen holding 18-year-old Jordan Norris down with a gag while another deputy sadistically and repeatedly deploys the taser. Naturally, Norris squirmed as 50,000 volts ran through his body. His movement seemed to provoke the deputies who responded with more taser strikes.
At one part in the video, you can hear a deputy tell Norris, “I’ll keep doing that until I run out of batteries.”
Norris said he remembered deputies asking him, “Do you want me to do it again? We got a whole bunch of batteries we can drain into you pretty much. We will do it over and over until we have no more.”
When Norris was released from prison, he was covered in burn marks from the taser. Somehow he made it through the torture without his heart stopping and went on to file a lawsuit against the deputies.
In another disturbing video, deputies in Columbus, Ohio were seen on video torturing an innocent pregnant woman with a taser for not removing her tongue ring fast enough.
“Take the tongue ring out,” Deputy Shawnda Arnold said. However, the victim, Martini Smith was struggling as her hands had been cuffed behind her for six hours and her numb fingers couldn’t grip the stud to unscrew it. She pleaded with police to get her a paper towel so she could get traction on the ring, but they refused.
“I will tase you!” barked corporal Matthew Stice.
“I just want to go to sleep,” Smith cried.
Instead of getting the helpless pregnant woman a paper towel to help her remove the tongue ring, Stice barked his warning again and then shot the taser directly into Smith’s bare chest.
The surge of debilitating electricity caused the mother to be to collapse into the concrete wall and then to the floor. Smith cried out in agony, gasping as she tried to maintain a bit of her humanity while being tortured—half-naked—by a male cop.
“Why did you Tase me?” she moaned. “I wasn’t harming nobody. I can’t just take it out.”
Just five days later, Smith would have a miscarriage. She had been wrongfully arrested for defending herself against her abusive boyfriend. She was entirely innocent.
Norris and Smith are just two people on a long list of others who’ve been inhumanely tortured by those sworn to protect and serve. The fact that the UN has had to get involved shows just how out of hand this problem has gotten.
Sadly, however, even though the UN claims it is going to investigate, their history in doing so indicates that not much will change. In 2014, as TFTP reported at the time, the UN stepped in during the protests in Ferguson, MO in which the military police state reared its ugly head. However, very little happened as a result of the UN attention.
Until the officers themselves are held accountable for their actions, we can expect to see more mentally ill men, pregnant women, and completely restrained teenagers endure torture in the land of the free.
The execution occurs at the end of the video, but watch the agony the poor fellow suffered at the hands of this psycho cop. This should put an end to police apologists. Some of these US coppers are garden variety psychopaths with a badge. Period.
The graphic body camera footage showing an Arizona cop murder an innocent unarmed dad has just been released—following the killer cop’s acquittal.
Phoenix, AZ — In March of 2016, Mesa Police Officer Philip Brailsford was charged with second-degree murder for gunning down Daniel Shaver, an innocent husband, and father of two. The shooting was captured on body cam footage, part of which was released the following May. On Thursday, a jury, apparently blinded by the badge delivered a verdict of not guilty and the rest of the body camera footage was released—showing a cold-blooded murder.
In October, Brailsford’s defense claimed that the prosecution showing the jury the body cam during opening statements would be unfair to the killer cop. Apparently, this strategy worked.
Jurors deliberated less than six hours and despite the horrifying body camera showing Brailsford execute Shaver, they somehow returned a not guilty verdict. This is a travesty of justice and a testament to the system that protects killers who wear badges.
Last year, an Arizona judge announced that they would be releasing the body camera footage showing Brailsford murder Shaver. When they did release it, however, the city released two videos, both of which were clearly edited and portions redacted.
Now that he’s been acquitted, the full body camera was released showing Shaver being entirely compliant with police. Shaver was on his knees, crying and begging police not to shoot him when the coward opened fire on him, firing five times—killing him instantly.
Mark Geragos, Sweet’s lawyer, called the shooting an “execution.”
“The justice system miserably failed Daniel (Shaver) and his family,” Geragos said.
Police said Shaver, a 26-year-old from Texas staying at the La Quinta Inn & Suites on a business trip on Jan. 18, 2016, had invited a couple he met to his room for drinks. No one was in any danger and the entire incident was a misunderstanding. For the majority of the video, police appear to be in a standoff with people who simply can’t hear them.
“Occupants of room 5-0-2, this is the Mesa Police,” the officer is heard yelling on the video, to which he receives no response.
“Listen to my instructions or it’s going to become very uncomfortable for you,” the officer said. “The female is to step outside the room.”
When ‘the female’ does step out the room, she is escorted away by an officer as she tells him how scared she is.
That’s when cops begin barking confusing orders at Shaver who is doing everything he can to comply. Police tell Shaver to keep his legs crossed and crawl forward, a near impossible feat. As he begins to cry from the stress and the ridiculous orders, Shaver becomes distraught and begs for his life. As he tries to crawl forward with his legs crossed, his pants appear to slip down so he moves a hand, at which point Brailsford executes him.
For several minutes, Daniel Shaver was face down with his hands on his head, all these officers had to do was to walk toward him and place him in handcuffs. Clearly, this did not happen and an innocent unarmed dad was taken from his wife and children at the hands of police.
During the trial, Deputy County Attorney Susie Charbel portrayed Brailsford as a “killer” who claimed he feared for his life to cover up an unjustified shooting.
In her closing arguments, Charbel told the jury that an intoxicated Shaver looked “pathetic” before he was killed and didn’t get a chance to know who shot him, according to AZ Central.
“(Brailsford) doesn’t get a pass because he was wearing a police uniform that night,” Charbel said.
“The last thing in the world that Mitch Brailsford wanted to do that night was shoot. His goal wasn’t to kill Daniel Shaver,” Brailsford’s lawyer, Michael Piccarreta told the jury. “Shaver is not a bad person, but his actions are what brought the police that night.”
However, if we look at Brailsford’s custom AR-15, it was clear the first thing he wanted to do was shoot.
Shaver etched “You’re Fucked” into his AR-15 police rifle — illustrating his disregard for human life.
Conveniently, however, the judge did not allow the jury to see the above photo because he felt it was prejudicial. Had jurors actually been shown the real image of this sadistic killer cop, they would’ve likely been more inclined to see the reality of the execution.
Also, it was not Shaver’s actions that brought police that night. He had committed no crime.
On January 18, Brailsford, along with several other officers, responded to a call about a suspect with a rifle in a hotel room. The ‘rifle’ was nothing more than a pellet gun that was used in Shaver’s business of pest control, and Shaver was not in possession of the pellet gun when he was murdered in cold blood by officer Brailsford.
Brailsford was fired from the department in March of 2016 for multiple policy violations not associated with the murder of Shaver. After he was fired, we learned that he should have never had a badge that night he killed an innocent man.
Aside from his unsatisfactory performance, records released by Mesa Police revealed that Brailsford was accused of beating three people a few months before he killed Shaver.
Two children and a wife will now live the rest of their lives without their loving father because of the actions of this public servant. The one thing that could help get this family closure was to see the man who stole the life of their dad and husband put behind bars. However, because of a broken system, this will not happen.
Watch the video of this execution below, do you think this was an excusable accident in which no one should be held accountable?
It’s about time that juries start understanding that coppers are mere civil servants, not the powerful Gods they think they are. If the courts start jailing the bad coppers perhaps this police brutality trend will reverse.
Showing exactly how abusive cops should be treated, a bully cop has been sentenced 27 months in prison for savagely beating an innocent teen on video.
Pittsburgh, PA — A belligerent and violent cop was recently convicted of violating the civil rights of a teenager by savagely beating him at a high school football game. The entire incident, which looks like a giant bullying a small child, was captured on video and led to the initial firing of officer Stephen Matakovich, 48, and the subsequent charges.
Matakovich “was an annoyed bully who beat the crap out of a drunk kid,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Gilson told jurors earlier this year after his conviction. “This was an officer abusing his power.”
Wednesday, the officer received an unprecedented 27-month sentence and will also be forced to pay restitution to his victim from his own pocket.
Matakovich’s defense attorneys had argued against imprisonment, saying he had led an “honorable and lawful life,” according to KDKA.
But the pre-sentence report detailed a pattern of questionable arrests involving Matakovich over several years, and states that he “never used the lowest amount of force available.”
The victim’s mother took the stand during the hearing and told the court how she hopes Matakovich will be sent to prison.
“It’s hard watching your son being beaten like that. We teach our children to respect police officers then this happens and I think it’s just a blemish on the Pittsburgh police, on all police,” Sherry Despres said.
Matakovich was on trial for two charges, the first being the violation of Gabriel Despres’ civil rights and the second accusing him of falsifying the police report on the incident. Somehow he was acquitted on the second charge, convincing the jury that he did not lie about or exaggerate Despres’ actions which caused the officer to push and hit him.
Matakovich said he had to beat the small teenager at that time because he felt threatened. After watching the video, this claim becomes utterly hysterical. However, somehow a jury bought it.
Naturally, the violent officer’s defense team painted him as the victim, claiming that Despres’ posture and demeanor at that time were threatening to Matakovich, who was surrounded by five security guards and in spite of the teen being unarmed and inebriated.
According to WTAE, lead defense attorney Tina Miller, a former federal prosecutor, told the jury that dissecting the 29-second encounter in a one-week trial was unfair to Matakovich, who could be trusted for the “split-second” judgment he made.
“Nobody is going to say to a police officer, ‘I’m going to assault you,’” Miller told the jury. “You’re not going to advertise what you’re going to do. Your actions are going to be subtle. It’s not going to be like some poster or (TV commercial).”
She defended Matakovich as “one of those guys on that thin blue line between chaos and order” before asking the jury, “Do we really want to second-guess?”
The prosecution even responded in jest at the outright silly claims of the defense in trying to justify this crazed cop’s violence.
“The only way (Matakovich) can convince you that what he did was reasonable is to convince you that you can’t trust your own eyes,” Gilson said.
As the video shows, Despres calmly stood with his arms down at his sides when Matakovich suddenly shoved the teen to the ground and began punching him in the head. Although Despres did not provoke the attack and did not appear to fight back, the off-duty cop repeatedly struck him while several other security guards watched.
Treated for a bloody nose, Despres eventually pleaded guilty to trespassing and public drunkenness. After watching the video of the incident, Pittsburgh Police Chief Cameron McLay fired Matakovich and opened an investigation that led to his state trial.
In an attempt to establish the ex-cop’s history of violence, county prosecutors introduced a motion during the proceedings detailing Matakovich’s use of unnecessary force against 56 other people and another case in which he assaulted a security guard then arrested him on false charges.
Out of those 56 reports, 20 cases involved strikes to the face and head, with 17 of those resulting in injuries including broken noses, broken jaws and loss of consciousness.
According to the prosecution and video footage, Matakovich brutalized innocent people and arrested them on false charges in order to cover up his own violent provocations. Luckily, video evidence of this cop’s rage finally put an end to his rash of belligerence.
Matakovich’s sentence should be held as the standard for cops who abuse their authority and attack innocent people. If enough cops are sent to jail and forced to pay for their own crimes themselves, rest assured police brutality would be far less common.
Police are deployed to manage a broad spectrum of social issues, from homelessness to school safety. Alex Vitale’s new book lays out a different approach.
“So far this year, 773 people have been fatally shot by police, according to the Washington Post, while independent databases that include other causes of death by police report tolls above900.”
“Vitale calls for an ideological reframing of policing as an inherently punitive practice that criminalizes the most vulnerable and marginalized people in the U.S. in order to maintain the status quo for white elites. Instead, he writes, people should be given the programs and resources they need to solve problems within communities in ways that do not involve police, courts, or prisons — a path to materializing justice.”
Images from the mass protests in St. Louis last month against the acquittal of a white former police officer in the fatal shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith felt like déjà vu: raised fists, Black Lives Matter signs, swarms of police armed in full riot gear. But this time, as police made arrests on the third night of protests, they began to chant “Whose streets, our streets” — a refrain that, stolen from the voices of protesters, mutated into an unsettling declaration of power, entitlement, and impunity.
So far this year, 773 people have been fatally shot by police, according to the Washington Post, while independent databases that include other causes of death by police report tolls above900. In the three years since the flashpoint of Michael Brown’s shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, pushes for reform have reverberated through all levels of government, most notably from former President Barack Obama’s policing task force. And yet, much like gun violence itself, police brutality in the United States remains stuck on repeat. A new book published last week goes beyond the rhetoric of reform to interrogate why we need police at all.
In “The End of Policing,” Alex S. Vitale argues that police reforms implemented in the wake of Brown’s death — from diversity initiatives to community policing to body cameras — fail to acknowledge that policing as an institution reinforces race and class inequalities by design.
“The suppression of workers and the tight surveillance and micromanagement of black and brown lives have always been at the center of policing,” writes Vitale, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College.
Author Alex S. Vitale.
Photo: Dave Sanders
Vitale calls for an ideological reframing of policing as an inherently punitive practice that criminalizes the most vulnerable and marginalized people in the U.S. in order to maintain the status quo for white elites. Instead, he writes, people should be given the programs and resources they need to solve problems within communities in ways that do not involve police, courts, or prisons — a path to materializing justice.Starting with the “original police force,” the London Metropolitan Police, Vitale provides a succinct historical framework to understand how police in the U.S. were created to control poor and nonwhite people and communities. The modern war on drugs can be traced back to “political opportunism and managing ‘suspect populations’” in the 20th century. The increasingly intensified policing of the U.S.-Mexico border today stems from nativist sentiment and economic exploitation of migrant workers starting in the 1800s. Surveillance and suppression of political movements takes root in imperialist Europe, when ruling powers used secret police to infiltrate and eliminate the opposition.
“The End of Policing” maps how law enforcement has become an omnipresent specter in American society over the last four decades. Police are deployed to monitor and manage a sprawling range of issues: drugs, homelessness, mental health, immigration, school safety, sex work, youth violence, and political resistance. Across this spectrum, current liberal reforms are intertwined with upholding the legitimacy of police, courts, and incarceration as conduits to receive access to resources and care. Vitale’s approach goes beyond working within the carceral system to propose non-punitive alternatives that would eventually render policing obsolete. He convincingly argues that a combination of community-based programs, support services, regulation, economic investment, and political representation for poor communities of color can significantly shrink the impact of policing in exchange for justice and community empowerment.
In a time when the president of the United States openly supports and facilitates aggressive policing, and police officers continue to kill black Americans with impunity, “The End of Policing” is an essential primer to unpack the innate brutality of policing and begin to envision an America free from police violence and control.
The Intercept’s interview with Vitale has been condensed and edited for clarity.
There have been a host of reforms proposed in reaction to the shootings of black Americans by police in the last three years. How does your book address the shortcomings of these reforms?
The bad news is that at the national level, any hope of the federal government bringing about some kind of progressive reform has largely evaporated. The reforms that existed under the Obama administration were pretty limited in scope and their effectiveness is open to question. The good news is that the vast majority of decision-making about police reform happens at the local level, and local political pressure can really make a difference. But the bad news about that is that the kinds of reforms most people are advocating for I don’t think are going to make a substantial difference. Some improvements in training, policy, and accountability may lead to a reduction in deaths, but it won’t address the larger question of overpolicing.
“‘We the people’ – men and women alike – have been victims of the police state for so long that not many Americans even remember what it is to be truly free anymore. Worse, few want to shoulder the responsibility that goes along with maintaining freedom…Still, we must try.”
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be abused.
We’re seeing this dynamic play out every day in communities across America.
A cop shoots an unarmed citizen for no credible reason and gets away with it. A president employs executive orders to sidestep the Constitution and gets away with it. A government agency spies on its citizens’ communications and gets away with it. An entertainment mogul sexually harasses aspiring actresses and gets away with it.
Abuse of power – and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible – works the same whether you’re talking about sexual harassment, government corruption, or the rule of law.
For instance, 20 years ago, I took up a sexual harassment lawsuit on behalf of a young woman – a state employee – who claimed that her boss, a politically powerful man, had arranged for her to meet him in a hotel room, where he then allegedly dropped his pants, propositioned her and invited her to perform oral sex on him.
Here we are 20 years later and not much has changed.
We’re still shocked by sexual harassment in the workplace, the victims of these sexual predators are still being harassed and smeared, and those who stand to gain the most by overlooking wrongdoing (all across the political spectrum) are still turning a blind eye to misconduct when it’s politically expedient to do so.
I won’t go into the nauseating details here. You can read them for yourself at the New York Times and the New Yorker.
Suffice it to say that it’s the same old story all over again: man rises to power, man abuses power abominably, man intimidates and threatens anyone who challenges him with retaliation or worse, and man gets away with it because of a culture of compliance in which no one speaks up because they don’t want to lose their job or their money or their place among the elite.
This isn’t just happening in Hollywood, however.
And it’s not just sexual predators that we have to worry about.
For every high-profile power broker who eventually gets called out for his sexual misbehavior, there are hundreds – thousands – of others in the American police state who are getting away with murder – in many cases, literally – simply because they can.
The cop who shoots the unarmed citizen first and asks questions later might get put on paid leave for a while or take a job with another police department, but that’s just a slap on the wrist. The shootings and SWAT team raids and excessive use of force will continue, because the police unions and the politicians and the courts won’t do a thing to stop it. Case in point: The Justice Department will no longer attempt to police the police when it comes to official misconduct. Instead, it plans to give police agencies more money and authority to “fight” crime.
The war hawks who are making a profit by waging endless wars abroad, killing innocent civilians in hospitals and schools, and turning the American homeland into a domestic battlefield will continue to do so because neither the president nor the politicians will dare to challenge the military industrial complex. Case in point: Rather than scaling back on America’s endless wars, President Trump—like his predecessors—has continued to expand America’s military empire and its attempts to police the globe.
The National Security Agency that carries out warrantless surveillance on Americans’ internet and phone communications will continue to do so, because the government doesn’t want to relinquish any of its ill-gotten powers. Case in point: The USA Liberty Act, proposed as a way to “fix” all that’s wrong with domestic surveillance, will instead legitimize the government’s snooping powers.
Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.
For starters, let’s recommit to abiding by the rule of law.
Here’s what the rule of law means in a nutshell: it means that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.
We need to stop being victimized by these predators.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, I’m not just talking about the political predators in office, but the ones who are running the show behind the scenes—the shadow government—comprised of unelected government bureaucrats whose powers are unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and beyond the reach of the law.
There is no way to erase the scars left by the government’s greed for money and power, its disregard for human life, its corruption and graft, its pollution of the environment, its reliance on excessive force in order to ensure compliance, its covert activities, its illegal surveillance, and its blatant disdain for the rule of law.
“We the people” – men and women alike – have been victims of the police state for so long that not many Americans even remember what it is to be truly free anymore. Worse, few want to shoulder the responsibility that goes along with maintaining freedom.
A study published in Nature claims that the reduction of police “protection” results in lower crime, which counters the claim that proactive policing has a positive impact on reducing crime. According to the report, an opportunity presented itself to assess the claims that increased police presence results in lower crime. The report states, “our study analyses an aberration in NYPD strategy, in which police sharply limited foot patrols, criminal summonses and low-level arrests in a manner unrelated to the city’s underlying crime rate. In the midst of a political fight between Mayor de Blasio, anti-police brutality protesters and the city’s police unions, the NYPD held a work “slowdown” for approximately seven weeks in late 2014 and early 2015. ”
The claim that greater patrolling (which requires more police, more resources, bigger budgets, higher taxes reduces crime is the most important point made when arguing for any expansion in police departments. To that end, this study sought to go out and test that assumption. Thanks to the dispute between mayor DeBlasio and the NYPD in 2014-15, an opportunity arose that would allow researchers to look at the crime rates during the intentional slow-down by the police.
The study came to the conclusion that, during the slowdown period, major crimes dropped by 3-6%. The so-called Ferguson effect didn’t happen. The Ferguson effect is named after Ferguson, MO, where it was anecdotally reported that crime increased as a result of cops being less inclined to do their job for fear of being the target of further protests.
To be sure, this is just one study, but the subject of the study was a city of over 8 million people. The period of time consisted of 7 weeks at the end of 2014 to the beginning of 2015. If nothing else, the study warrants more studies, for, even as this article is being written, the talk of expanding policing, of increasing the proactive action of police, of further militarizing the police is going on from the local municipal level to the state level across America.
If this study proves to be accurate by other studies, then the whole notion of decreasing crime by increasing policing will be turned on its head. If that happens, then other, perhaps more difficult, questions will have to be asked.
Here is the abstract from the study that details the methods of how the study was undertaken.
Governments employ police to prevent criminal acts. But it remains in dispute whether high rates of police stops, criminal summonses and aggressive low-level arrests reduce serious crime. Police officers target their efforts at areas where crime is anticipated and/or where they expect enforcement will be most effective. Simultaneously, citizens decide to comply with the law or commit crime partly on the basis of police deployment and enforcement strategies. In other words, policing and crime are endogenous to unobservable strategic interaction, which frustrates causal analysis. Here, we resolve these challenges and present evidence that proactive policing—which involves systematic and aggressive enforcement of low-level violations—is positively related to reports of major crime. We examine a political shock that caused the New York Police Department (NYPD) to effectively halt proactive policing in late 2014 and early 2015. Analysing several years of unique data obtained from the NYPD, we find that civilian complaints of major crimes (such as burglary, felony assault and grand larceny) decreased during and shortly after sharp reductions in proactive policing. The results challenge prevailing scholarship as well as conventional wisdom on authority and legal compliance, as they imply that aggressively enforcing minor legal statutes incites more severe criminal acts.
In the last few decades, proactive policing has become a centerpiece of “new policing” strategies across the globe. The logic, commonly associated with the broader theory of order maintenance policing (OMP; also known as broken windows), is that rather than wait for citizens to report criminal conduct, law enforcement should proactively patrol communities, maintaining order through systematic and aggressive low-level policing. According to proponents, increasing police stops, quality-of-life summonses, and low-level arrests deters more serious criminal activity by signalling that the area is being monitored and that deviance will not be tolerated. As a corollary, following a phenomenon termed the Ferguson effect, disengaging from proactive policing emboldens criminals, precipitating spikes in serious crime.
But while elected officials commonly justify proactive policing by pointing to the enforcement of legal statutes, the strategy’s efficacy continues to be debated. A serious concern is that proactive policing diverts finite resources and attention away from investigative units, including detectives working to track down serial offenders and break up criminal networks. Proactive policing also disrupts communal life, which can drain social control of group-level violence. Citizens are arrested, unauthorized markets are disrupted, and people lose their jobs, all of which create more localized stress on individuals already living on the edge. Such strains are imposed directly through proactive policing, and thus are independent from subsequent judgments of guilt or innocence. Inconsistency in aggressive low-level policing across community groups undermines police legitimacy, which erodes cooperation with law enforcement. The cumulative effect increases ‘legal cynicism’—individual reliance on extra-legal sanctions and informal institutions of violence as a replacement for police. Reflecting these mechanisms, we propose that sharply reducing proactive policing in areas where it had been deployed pervasively may actually improve compliance with legal authority, thereby reducing major crimes.
To assess these claims, our study analyses an aberration in NYPD strategy, in which police sharply limited foot patrols, criminal summonses and low-level arrests in a manner unrelated to the city’s underlying crime rate. In the midst of a political fight between Mayor de Blasio, anti-police brutality protesters and the city’s police unions, the NYPD held a work ‘slowdown’ for approximately seven weeks in late 2014 and early 2015. Within New York City (NYC), the most proximate cause of protests against the NYPD was the strangling death of Eric Garner in Staten Island. While there was considerable fallout from the incident itself, the conflict intensified when a grand jury declined to indict the involved officers on 4 December 2014. Thousands of protesters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, while others blocked portions of the West Side Highway as well as the Lincoln and Holland tunnels. Then, two weeks after the non-indictment decision, two NYPD officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were fatally shot by an anti-police extremist. Because they are legally prohibited from striking, NYPD officers coordinated a work-to-rule strike. Officers were ordered to respond to calls only in pairs, leave their squad cars only if they felt compelled, and perform only the most necessary duties. The act was a symbolic show of strength to demonstrate the city’s dependence on the NYPD. Officers continued to respond to community calls for service, but refrained from proactive policing by refusing to get out of their vehicles to issue summonses or arrest people for petit crimes and misdemeanours.
Emblematic of the slowdown’s effects (and the change from proactive to responsive policing), zero summonses were issued for quality-of-life violations on New Year’s Eve 2014, while just the week before, two officers were fatally shot responding to a reported robbery. Eventually, under pressure from the media as well as growing demands for city revenue, Commissioner Bratton conceded to the ‘self-initiated’ slowdown in proactive policing, before publicly ordering his officers to return to work by 16 January.
The change in tactics appears particularly stark when compared with the aggressive strategy of proactive policing the NYPD pursued during the preceding decades. Correspondence between the introduction of proactive policing in New York and the city’s historic drop in major crime has been heralded as prima facie evidence of the strategy’s effectiveness. As a result, cities across the globe adopted the NYPD’s protocols and practices, which suggests not only that proactive policing strategies are presumed to deter major crime in NYC, but also that these policies are widely thought to work in other contexts as well.
If, as would seem to be the case, the slowdown was unrelated to the city’s underlying crime rate, this makes for a unique natural experiment to identify the causal effects of changing police practices. While Garner was being arrested for a misdemeanor offense, and the killings of Liu and Ramos were homicides, these three crimes neither reflect nor predict citywide (nor precinct-wide) crime. And while anti-police brutality protests and the ensuing political conflict were tied to policing practices across the country, it is difficult to argue that the protests were caused by NYC’s crime rate.
To assess the slowdown’s effects, we filed a series of Freedom of Information requests soliciting a comprehensive set of NYPD CompStat reports from 2013–2016 (see Supplementary Fig. 1 for an example). CompStat (short for computer statistics) was introduced in New York as part of a series of reforms to target proactive policing at ‘hotspots’ in which crime was most concentrated. The reports document weekly activity in each NYPD precinct. On the basis of findings from earlier research, we are confident that CompStat data represent the best available source of disaggregated information on police behavior and crime, and correlate strongly with the underlying reality (see further discussion in the Methods section). Perhaps the best evidence of their validity comes from the fact that the NYPD uses CompStat reports to allocate police resources and develop strategy in real time.
Examining citywide time series, we find evidence of the timing of the NYPD slowdown, as well as preliminary indications of its effects (Fig. 1). Several policing measures are considered. “Criminal summonses” are charges issued for summary Penal Law Violations (that is, quality-of-life violations, including, most commonly, public consumption of alcohol and disorderly conduct, but not ticketable parking fines or moving violations). “Stop, question and frisks” (SQFs) are temporary street detentions and searches of individuals for contraband. Use of SQFs dropped precipitously to a new baseline in anticipation of the judgment in Floyd versus City of New York, which ordered a series of reforms to prevent unconstitutional racial profiling. “Non-major crime arrests” are arrests for all crimes and misdemeanors, excluding the NYPD’s “seven major crimes”—murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand theft auto. It includes arrests made by members of the precinct as well as officers from the Transit and Housing Departments and two specialized bureaus: the Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB) and the Detective Bureau. According to annual NYPD statistics, misdemeanor arrests represented 92% of all non-major crime arrests in 2014.
Paul Gordon is the editor of Istate.tv and co-host of numerous podcasts including VisPrivus, Lulzilla and Full Auto. He is also the publisher of a local digital newspaper, the Tioga Freedomist
Naturally, Americans are up in arms because a bunch of folks who get paid millions of dollars to throw around a leather ball decided to kneel during the national anthem. I find this ironic for several reasons.
First off, I’d like to clarify that choosing to not watch football because someone did something you disagree with is entirely your choice and your choice alone. Just like NFL players can make the decision to kneel during the anthem, you can make the decision to change the channel. It’s called freedom, it is awesome, and I highly recommend it.
That being said, I’d like to draw attention to two points, one being the idea of a country whose leader shames others and calls for the termination of their employment for practicing their right to disagree with the government, and two, why are people so upset over a bunch of kneeling millionaires?
Donald Trump was well within his right to say whatever he wants about the NFL players, up to and including calling for the NFL to fire them. It’s called freedom, and you don’t have to like it to participate in it. But, if Trump really wanted the players to start standing up for the anthem, calling for them to be fired is not only on the verge of tyrannical, but it’s nowhere close to a solution.
Respect is earned. It is not mandated through threats or abuse of power or forced through the barrel of a gun. If there was one thing I learned in the Marine Corps it’s that good leaders are ones that lead by example. Those leaders who demanded respect without first earning it were the reason for me turning down a 5-figure tax-free reenlistment bonus to stay in.
Leaders, and I use that term loosely, who want something from you and don’t have the common decency or fortitude to first apply themselves and find a peaceful and mutually beneficial way to get it are not leading by example and deserve no respect. Sadly, in America, leaders haven’t done these things in a long time. In America, through propaganda and fear, our leaders are demanding and mandating respect—without earning it. This is the definition of tyranny.
If Donald Trump really wanted the football players to start standing during the national anthem, then he should ask them what it is they want. If the dozens of millionaires taking knees can’t articulate a rational and well thought out list of requests, then they are merely publicity hounds buying into the divide. Kaepernick could do this, and he’s has taken action to try to resolve his grievances.
I’m not quite sure all these other NFL players would be such good leaders—like Kaepernick—if asked what it is they want.
If it’s police brutality they are protesting, where were most of these folks when Obama was in office? It’s not like police brutality and racist policing practices suddenly became an issue once Trump took over in 2017. Where were all these NFL players when Obama was filling prisons with black people for possessing a plant? Where were all these NFL players when Obama continued to wage the drug war which is proven to lay far more waste to the rights of those with darker skin than to those with lighter skin? Outside of just a few of them, they were nowhere to be found, that’s where.
That brings me to my second point—the folks that are angry at these football players taking knees—because it disrespects our country, our troops and our veterans. Again, these folks have every right to voice their opinion, be angry, and boycott the NFL. It’s called freedom, and it’s awesome, and I highly recommend it.
That being said, if a person taking a knee during a song is disrespectful to our troops and veterans, what, exactly, is it considered when 307,000 of those veterans die waiting for care they were promised by this country? If a person taking a knee during a song is disrespectful to those who fought for our country, what is it considered when that country looks the other way when there over 40,000 of those veterans living on the streets with no home? If taking a knee at a football game is disrespectful, what then, is it considered when Americans remain silent as a veteran kills himself or herself every 65 minutes, every single day, every single month, of every single year?
If this song and flag represent the land of the free and people kneeling down makes others angry because it is an insult to that freedom, then how does one view the NSA surveillance grid? Is a person taking a knee worse than the United States of America creating the largest spying network the world has ever seen—one that the Stasi would’ve killed for—and using it on innocent Americans?
Is a person kneeling more offensive than the TSA groping babies, cancer patients, the elderly, and the disabled, despite never stopping a terror attack? Is a knee more offensive to freedom than the United States creating, maintaining, and financing the largest prison population the world has ever seen through the enforcement of victimless crimes?
Is a rich football player kneeling really that much more offensive than the Commander in Chief making one of the largest weapons deals in the history of the US with the largest state sponsor of terror in the world, Saudi Arabia? Is a knee more offensive than calling a country our ally after they were exposed for financing the horrific attacks on 9/11?
Where is the outrage? Call me a traitor, call me unpatriotic, call me whatever you want, because freedom baby. However, I’ll always stand against tyranny, even if that means pissing people off for telling the truth. In an empire of lies, telling the truth is a revolutionary and often hated act.
This is rich coming from a “just following orders” doofus who probably has never worked an honest day in his life. Also, so much for the free market economy. Up yours with your fake capitalism America!
UC Berkeley Police were filmed taking the money out of a hot dog vendor’s wallet as they gave him a ticket for not having a permit.
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.”
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.”
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.
UT Austin sociologist Sarah Brayne spent 2.5 years conducting field research with the LAPD as they rolled out Predpol, a software tool that is supposed to direct police to places where crime is likely to occur, but which has been shown to send cops out to overpolice brown and poor people at the expense of actual crimefighting.
Brayne observed and interviewed more than 75 cops to get a picture of how the job of policing is changed by big data-based “predictive” tools. She found that the tools changed police from a law-enforcement agency to an intelligence agency, concerned more with surveilling people who had not committed a crime than to interdicting or solving crimes in the world.
The cops she interviewed were bullish on Palantir’s products, though they also candidly admitted that predictive tools allowed them to put an objective face on their existing, illegal racial profiling practices (“[Y]ou can’t target individuals especially for any race… [W]e didn’t want to make it look like we’re creating a gang depository of just gang affiliates or gang associates. . . . We were just trying to cover and make sure everything is right on the front end”).
Predictive policing casts a very wide net. Whereas before, the police would only assemble a file on you if you were suspected of a crime, the Palantirization of policing means that “police increasingly utilize data on individuals who have not had any police contact at all.” Tools like the Automatic License Plate Reader log the movements of everyone in a city; then, if a predictive policing algorithm fingers you as being somehow connected to a suspect, all your movements, going far back in time, are summoned up and delivered to the police (the same goes for other automated bulk-collection records, like cellphone surveillance through IMSI catchers and records requests to phone companies).
In Brayne’s words, it’s no longer the case that individuals engage in incriminating acts, now, “individuals lead incriminating lives—daily activities, now codified as data, can be marshaled as evidence ex post facto.”
What’s more, these tools are a ready made for “parallel construction…the process of building a separate evidentiary base for a criminal investigation to conceal how the investigation began, if it involved warrantless surveillance or other inadmissible evidence.” This means that any protections embedded in warrantless surveillance regimes (like the inadmissability of evidence) are easily circumvented by law enforcement.
Brayne paints a picture of law enforcement, Palantir and co working together to keep business-as-usual in place, but with a veneer of empiricism. A cop who “knows” that someone is guilty can cast ever-wider surveillance nets until he finds confirming evidence, then he can rebuild his case using sources that are admissible in court, railroading his chosen perp into prison with the appearance of mathematical objectivity, rather than the racial bias that resulted in the LAPD coming under a Department of Justice consent decree.
As Brayne says, “Characterizing predictive models as ‘just math,’ and fetishizing computation as an objective process, obscures the social side of algorithmic decision-making. Individuals’ interpretation of data occurs in preexisting institutional, legal, and social settings, and it is through that interpretive process that power dynamics come into play.”
This article examines the intersection of two structural developments: the growth of surveillance and the rise of “big data.” Drawing on observations and interviews conducted within the Los Angeles Police Department, I offer an empirical account of how the adoption of big data analytics does—and does not—transform police surveillance practices. I argue that the adoption of big data analytics facilitates amplifications of prior surveillance practices and fundamental transformations in surveillance activities. First, discretionary assessments of risk are supplemented and quantified using risk scores. Second, data are used for predictive, rather than reactive or explanatory, purposes. Third, the proliferation of automatic alert systems makes it possible to systematically surveil an unprecedentedly large number of people. Fourth, the threshold for inclusion in law enforcement databases is lower, now including individuals who have not had direct police contact. Fifth, previously separate data systems are merged, facilitating the spread of surveillance into a wide range of institutions. Based on these findings, I develop a theoretical model of big data surveillance that can be applied to institutional domains beyond the criminal justice system. Finally, I highlight the social consequences of big data surveillance for law and social inequality.
Here is a perfect example of why coppers should always wear body cams. Imagine what this doofus would say if there was no video evidence.
Yes constable Payne, you are a major doofus.
4 Sep 2017
Utah nurse arrested by police officer tells her side of the story. Alex Wubbels, the Utah hospital nurse spoke to CNN’s “New Day” anchor Alisyn Camerota, speaks out and tells her side of the story that shook the nation.
In preparation for Hurricane Irma, residents have been instructed to make the necessary arrangements to ensure their safety and the the safety of their loved ones. But in Polk County, if you’re a fugitive of the law, the directive is to turn yourself into the police instead of ensuring your safety. Should those with outstanding warrants no matter the reason, turn up at a shelter, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd is threatening arrest and a transfer to the county jail.
The sheriff, who is known for his outspoken comments, made the threat in a series of posts to Twitter.
“If you go to a shelter for #Irma and you have a warrant, we’ll gladly escort you to the safe and secure shelter called the Polk County Jail,” Judd tweeted to his nearly 66,000 followers on Twitter.
Judd also posted that officers would be at every shelter checking IDs and that sex offenders and sex predators would not be allowed inside.
When checking IDs, if an officer sees that someone has a warrant, that person will be taken into custody, Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Carrie Horstman said.
Horstman added officers don’t have a way of seeing what crime the warrant is for, so it’s possible those with non-violent misdemeanor offenses could be arrested.
This means if someone does not wish to be separated from a loved one, many will take the unnecessary risk of attempting to go a different shelter, or not seeking shelter at all.
“Officers are legally obligated to take a person into custody if they have a warrant,” she said.
Judd said in preparation for the hurricane, fugitives should turn themselves into the jail because “it’s a secure location.”
Horstman said the posts were made ahead of the storm to give people ample time to prepare.
“We cannot and we will not have innocent children in a shelter with sexual offenders and predators. Period,” Judd posted to his Twitter, @PolkCoSheriff.
Horstman said since there’s a possibility children will be in the shelters, sex offenders and sex predators are not allowed inside. She said they had a similar policy during the 2004 hurricane season. It’s unclear if any arrests were made at shelters due to warrants.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida said Judd should “focus on preparing for Irma, not burnishing your Joe Arpaio-style ‘tough cop’ credentials with irresponsible tweets.”
Arpaio, a former sheriff in Arizona, was found guilty of criminal contempt after denying a court order to halt stopping immigrants because of suspicion they were in the country illegally. He was pardoned by President Donald Trump last month.
The nonprofit says most people with outstanding warrants are low-level offenders and pose no threat in a shelter.
Judd’s comments “send the message that these individuals must choose between facing a natural disaster without aid and shelter or going to jail over things like unpaid traffic tickets,” a statement from ACLU reads.
Asked if supported Judd’s actions, Gov. Rick Scott said, “I haven’t seen that. My expectation is that everyone needs to follow the evacuation orders and get to safety. I’d have to look at exactly what was said.’’
Horstman said undocumented immigrants will not be affected by the policy. She also said that the policy will help the county keep a log at the shelter, which she said is important during a natural disaster.
“We aren’t sitting there looking for people to arrest,” she said “We are sitting there to keep people safe.”
The article continues:
But State Representative Carlos Smith said the practice of checking IDs of evacuees seeking refuge unfairly targeted undocumented immigrants.
“The message has already been received by the 18,000 undocumented persons in Polk County,” Smith said. “This is not the message we need to be sending out with a disaster upon us.”
Smith added that if anyone in Polk County felt threatened to go to shelters in Polk County, “they can absolutely come to Orange County and Orlando.”
While it is comforting that those with outstanding warrants will have somewhere to go, they should not be made to make the choice between their safety and risking arrest. Many will not be alone and will be taking that risk with children or elderly in tow.
What are your thoughts on the matter? Do you think that Sheriff Grady Judd has the citizen’s best interest in mind, or do you think he is excessively exerting his power to vulnerable people in a time of need?
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
The answer lies in a number of sad realities that have emerged since the 
Tales from the Conspiratum 