From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
My Way News – by MICHAEL BIESECKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — A new policy allows the Secret Service to use intrusive cellphone-tracking technology without a warrant if there’s believed to be a nonspecific threat to the president or another protected person.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Seth M. Stodder described to a House subcommittee Wednesday the department’s policy on the use of cell-site simulators. Continue reading “Secret Service allowed to use warrantless cellphone tracking”
Police and businesses are working together to ticket citizens for obeying the law!
Chapel Hill, North Carolina police were set to ticket citizens under the “GOOD TICKET” initiative which allegedly rewarded citizens who obey the law(s).
“It’s a good opportunity to thank those for following the law,” Chapel Hill Police Lt. Celisa Lehew said. Continue reading “Police ticket citizens for good behavior while businesses profit”
Chesapeake, Va. – A Chesapeake park ranger was caught on camera pointing his pistol at a couple. It was a confrontation that started because the couple left a city park after closing time.
“I was hoping he wasn’t going to shoot at us,” says Dylan Newton, who recorded a 7-minute video of the ranger. “With all the things going on in the media with cops using excessive force and all these videos coming out like that’s the only thing running through my head like I’m going to be one of these people.” Continue reading “Chesapeake park ranger caught on camera pointing pistol at couple leaving park past closing time”
New York Times – by Campbell Robertson
MARION, Ala. — Judge Marvin Wiggins’s courtroom was packed on a September morning. The docket listed hundreds of offenders who owed fines or fees for a wide variety of crimes — hunting after dark, assault, drug possession and passing bad checks among them.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” began Judge Wiggins, a circuit judge here in rural Alabama since 1999. “For your consideration, there’s a blood drive outside,” he continued, according to a recording of the hearing. “If you don’t have any money, go out there and give blood and bring in a receipt indicating you gave blood.” Continue reading “For Offenders Who Can’t Pay, It’s a Pint of Blood or Jail Time”
The Daily Signal – by Jason Snead
Last month, as the Michigan Senate debated a host of reforms to the state’s civil asset forfeiture laws, the Michigan State Police released its Asset Forfeiture Report, the annual publication required by state law that details Michigan’s drug-related forfeiture activities.
The report aggregates data from 629 local police departments, sheriff’s departments, and multijurisdictional task forces, plus the Michigan State Police. Civil forfeiture is a policy that enables law enforcement authorities to seize property or currency if they suspect it is involved in, or is the result of, a crime. Continue reading “Report Shows Michigan Police Seized Over 23 Million In Property and Cash Last Year”
Over the past ten years, the Drug Enforcement Administration has spent millions of dollars on cell phone tracking. Federal purchasing documents that are already posted online indicate the make and model of the tracking device, and often even the DEA field office that bought it.
Simple searches on the Federal Procurement Data System reveal more than $5 million that the DEA paid Harris Corporation since 2005 for cell phone trackers and training sessions. The DEA bought a range of surveillance devices from the StingRay line, and as well as numerous device upgrades. Continue reading “DEA bought millions in cell phone trackers and training, payment data shows”
Aljazeera – by The Fault Lines Digital Team
Mississippi is one of just seven states in the U.S. that doesn’t provide funding to cover the costs of public defense across its 82 counties. Many indigent defendants throughout the state rely instead on private attorneys paid a flat-fee by the counties to take cases when assigned to them by local courts.
The Mississippi Supreme Court, back in 1995, declared that the quality of representation for poor defendants “goes to the very heart of how we as a civilized society assure equal justice to rich and poor alike.” Unfortunately, 20 years later, some counties in Mississippi are spending less than $2 per capita on indigent defense. To make matters worse for poor defendants, there is no state oversight of this patchwork system. Circuit court judges are the highest legal officers in the counties, and the only check on their judgement is the ballot box. Continue reading “Mississippi judge: ‘People charged with crimes, they are criminals’”
Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel – by Jim Stingl
Starting her day with a serious traffic accident was bad enough.
But Joy McFarlin’s run-in with two Milwaukee police officers was worse.
Before it was over, this 75-year-old grandmother had been threatened repeatedly with jail, arrested, put in handcuffs, placed in a squad car and taken to a police station. Continue reading “Milwaukee cops take 75-year-old woman’s day from bad to worse”
The Intercept – by Dan Froomkin
Former attorney general Eric Holder was the honored guest at a Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press reception on Wednesday (leading investigative reporter Murray Waas to reasonably wonder: How’s that again?).
And while I was primarily interested in hearing whether Holder regretted whiffing on torture prosecutions during his tenure (see story: Holder, Too Late, Calls for Transparency on DOJ Torture Investigation), I also asked him about whiffing on financial fraud prosecutions. Continue reading “Holder Defends Record of Not Prosecuting Financial Fraud”
Courthouse News Service – by Deb Hipp
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (CN) – Missouri jailers accused a pregnant woman of lying about contractions and forced her to travel three hours in a van while shackled, chained, bleeding and vomiting, she claims in court.
Megon Riedel sued Jackson County and three Doe jailers on Thursday, for cruel and unusual punishment she received as an inmate at Jackson County Detention Center. Continue reading “Shackled, Chained and Bleeding in Labor”
According to the Verge, Ancestry.com, is seeking permission from the FDA to create a national DNA database. Ancestry.com claims they’ll use your DNA to assess your families disease risk.
Would it shock you to know that Google, the NSA and DHS are using “front companies” to create a GLOBAL DNA database? Continue reading “Google, the NSA & DHS are creating a global DNA database”
America is becoming unrecognizable. The landscape is still familiar; the flag looks the same. But it is a changed placed.
And some places are more changed than others.
In New Jersey, the state Supreme Court has just ruled that a cop can search your vehicle if you are pulled over for any reason – and without a warrant. Continue reading “Warrants? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Warrants!”
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – by Crofton Black and Sam Raphael
In spring 2003 an unnamed official at CIA headquarters in Langley sat down to compose a memo. It was 18 months after George W Bush had declared war on terror. “We cannot have enough blacksite hosts,” the official wrote. The reference was to one of the most closely guarded secrets of that war – the countries that had agreed to host the CIA’s covert prison sites.
Between 2002 and 2008, at least 119 people disappeared into a worldwide detention network run by the CIA and facilitated by its foreign partners. Continue reading “REVEALED: The boom and bust of the CIA’s secret torture sites”
You know what group of the public just hasn’t been given enough protections? Law enforcement officers.
To date, all they have is: Continue reading “NJ Legislator Wants State’s Cops To Be The New Beneficiaries Of Hate Crime/Bias Laws”
Courthouse News Service – by Kevin Lessmiller
(CN) – The U.S. government’s criminal prosecution of corporations has dropped over the last decade despite statements from top Obama administration officials about stopping corporate fraud, a new study found.
Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, found that corporate prosecutions declined by 29 percent from 2004 to 2014. TRAC’s study was based on hundreds of thousands of U.S. Justice Department records obtained through a 17-year Freedom of Information legal fight, according to a press release. Continue reading “Study Finds Drop in Corporate Prosecutions”
Chicago Sun Times – by Frank Main
Michael O’Neil was racing his dad to the hospital for a heart attack when he saw a state trooper in the rearview mirror with his lights flashing.
He thought the trooper was going to escort them to Good Samaritan Hospital in west suburban Downers Grove.
The EPA even has electromagnetic weaponry!
According to a new report by the watchdog group Open the Books.
“Everyone is under the impression that the EPA is spending money to ‘clean the environment.’ But, it turns out EPA is running a $160 million PR Machine, $715 million police agency, a near $1 billion employment agency for seniors, and a $1.2 billion in-house law firm,” said Adam Andrzejewski, the founder of Open the Books.
Continue reading “The EPA, Homeland Security’s newest army”
AlterNet – by Max Blumenthal, Julia Carmel
At a Texas Retreat convened last June by long-time neoconservative agitator David Horowitz, a baby-faced operative named Charlie Kirk outlined an “undercover, underground plan” to “control student funding,” “censor professors” and “get rid of free speech zones.” His plan focused on channeling right-wing money into a full-bore attack on the grassroots movement to boycott, sanction, and divest from Israel as a means to pressure the country into respecting Palestinian human rights, known as BDS. The BDS movement has spread across US campuses and European capitals since it was devised by Palestinian civil society groups in 2005. Continue reading “How Pro-Israel Fanatics Have Teamed up with Right-Wing Operatives to Crush Free Speech on Campus”
Bloomberg – by Margaret Newkirk
James Parkey spent more than a decade crisscrossing the U.S. selling poor counties on a way to get rich quick. He’d help local governments issue tax-free bonds to build private prisons that would rent beds to the federal government, mainly to hold undocumented immigrants. Parkey’s model for financing lockups, which he promoted with help from a team of bond dealers, consultants, and lawyers, led to a boom in prison construction. While the jails succeeded in many places, almost two dozen defaults followed in cities and counties from Florida to Montana as the prisons struggled to fill beds amid the sudden glut. Then the IRS got involved. Continue reading “How Local Governments Got Burned by Private Prison Investments”