From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
CAMPO – Just a few miles north of the Oklahoma border sits Officer Brad Viner, the Town of Campo’s sole police officer who helps rake in more than 90 percent of the town’s revenue.
“Yes, Campo thrives on tickets,” officer Viner said with a chuckle during an interview with 9Wants to Know. “Basically, the police department pays for the town.” Continue reading “Colorado’s biggest little traffic ticket farm”
Maryland State legislator Patrick McDonough, the guest host of a drive-time radio program on Wednesday morning, discussed the possibility of revoking food stamps from the parents of protesting Baltimore youth.
Later during the same broadcast, McDonough called for a “scientific study” of what he called the “thug nation” in the black community. McDonough is a Republican member of the state’s House of Delegates who represents a suburban area northeast of the city. Continue reading “Maryland Legislator Discusses Taking Food Stamps From Parents Of Protesting Youth”
Courthouse News – by Julia Filip
TAMPA, Fla. (CN) – Juvenile detainees failed to persuade a federal court that a Florida sheriff and jail medical staff denied them adequate care and exposed them to harm during detention.
A group of juveniles sued Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd and Corizon Health in 2012, alleging 14th Amendment violations during their detention at the Central County Jail in Bartow, Fla. Continue reading “Judge Finds No Merit in Juvenile Detainee Claims”
The Columbus Dispatch – by Holly Zachariah
The Knox County sheriff’s office has asked the state attorney general’s office to investigate after a man died last week following a scuffle with a deputy in the jail’s booking room.
David Levi Dehmann had been arrested at 7:43 p.m. Tuesday by Mount Vernon police Cpl. Travis Tharp, who had been sent to the ball fields at Dan Emmett Elementary School after a call about a suspected drunken man who had fallen down by the restrooms. Continue reading “State investigating man’s death in Knox County Jail”
Counter Current News – by M. David, April 18, 2015
A new bill in Michigan would require homeschoolers to be monitored by the State with two annual visits from social workers.
The bill was introduced this week, after two children were found dead in a freezer by officers serving an eviction. The children had been dead for two years, but their mother had told everyone who asked about them that they were being homeschooled. Continue reading “Bill Would Force Homeschoolers To Have Home Inspections by Social Workers”
Activist Post – by Heather Callaghan
Why are extreme and sadistic incidents increasingly taking place in public schools? Let’s say 90-plus percent of school faculty and staff are looking out for the well-being of students. Unfortunately there are predatory characters in various school settings who are punishing students forsharing, checking into underwear for poop, making them kneel before administration, forcing one to clean out a poop-clogged toilet with bare hands…
And now, a nearly complete strip search on middle-school girls, complete with ogling, bra unhooking and an order to “shake.” Parents say there was a rub-down which constitutes sexual assault (contact) and abuse. What if this had been your daughter? Continue reading “Middle School Teens Were Sexually Violated to Search for Marijuana”
EDMOND — Edmond’s crime lab technicians can’t wait to move into their state-of-the-art police crime lab being built near 33rd Street and Broadway.
The 15,000-square-foot building, which includes vehicle and evidence storage, is expected to be finished by August.
“It will be one of the finest in the central part of the country,” said Rockie Yardley, a crime lab technician. “Agencies twice our size wish they had a lab this size.”
Yardley, who has worked with the Edmond Police Department for 35 years, admits he is excited about the new crime lab. Continue reading “$29 Million Police Crime Lab or ‘Public Safety Center Complex’ Has A ‘SAFE ROOM’”
Two former small town police officers in South Carolina were sentenced to prison time Monday for unnecessarily shocking a mentally disabled woman with a Taser at least eight times.
Franklin Brown, 35, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and his fellow Marion police officer Eric Walters, 39, was sentenced to a year and a day. Brown’s sentence was longer because he shocked 40-year-old Melissa Davis while she was already handcuffed in April 2013. Continue reading “Officers Who Used Taser 8 Times on Disabled Woman Get Prison”
‘Researchers’ and I use the term loosely from the ‘ Northwestern Juvenile Project ‘ or Northwestern university have such close ties to Homeland Security it should make your blood boil!
By Northwestern’s own admission they work for DHS, sorry with the Dept. Of Justice (DOJ). It says so write at the top of their Juvenile Justice Bulletin’s. Click here to see how DHS controls the DOJ and much, much more.. Continue reading “DHS and Northwestern univ. publish B.S. study claiming teens on drugs will become violent adults”
Sheriff’s deputies undressed the body of a 20-year-old car crash victim then took inappropriate nude photos of her at the side of the road, her mother has claimed.
Christina Mejia first outlined her accusations in a lawsuit filed against the Cook County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois in 2010 and the trial is scheduled to begin next week.
Her daughter, Jessica Mejia, was killed in the early hours of December 31, 2009 when her ex-boyfriend, Nicholas Sord, lost control of the car they were traveling in and smashed into a pole. Continue reading “Chicago Cops Snapped Photos of Dead Girl After Removing Her Clothes”
Activist Post – by Michael Maharrey
A bill that would heavily diminish the effect of federal programs that militarize local police was signed into law on Thursday.
Introduced by Rep. Nicholas Schwaderer (R-Superior), House Bill 330 (HB330) bans state or local law enforcement from receiving significant classes of military equipment from the Pentagon’s “1033 Program.” It passed by a 46-1 vote in the state Senate and by a 79-20 vote in the state House. On Thursday, Gov. Steve Bullock signed it into law. Continue reading “Montana Bill to Help Block Federal Militarization of Police Signed into Law”
New York Times – by Charlie Savage
WASHINGTON — The secrecy surrounding the National Security Agency’s post-9/11 warrantless surveillance and bulk data collection program hampered its effectiveness, and many members of the intelligence community later struggled to identify any specific terrorist attacks it thwarted, a newly declassified document shows.
The document is a lengthy report on a once secret N.S.A. program code-named Stellarwind. The report was a joint project in 2009 by inspectors general for five intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and it was withheld from the public at the time, although a short, unclassified version was made public. The government released a redacted version of the full report to The New York Times on Friday evening in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Continue reading “Declassified Report Shows Doubts About Value of N.S.A.’s Warrantless Spying”
Huffington Post – by Roque Planas
Three immigrant women who say they were punished for joining a hunger strike in a Texas family detention center on Thursday sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and GEO Group, the company that operates the facility.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court against ICE Director Sarah Saldaña and personnel at the Karnes County Residential Center, seeks to prohibit ICE and GEO from putting women and their children in isolation as punishment for protesting, and from threatening to separate mothers from their children. Continue reading “Private Prison Company Sued For Allegedly Putting Hunger-Striking Moms In Solitary Confinement”
Baltimore residents and police clashed as people marched downtown to protest the mysterious death of Freddie Gray in police custody. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said he will send 32 state troopers to the city in order to oversee demonstrations.
No concrete numbers are in, but hundreds of protesters took to the streets of downtown Baltimore, rallying in front of City Hall and the US Courthouse while calling for justice in Gray’s death. The 25-year-old African-American man died as a result of a severe spinal cord injury, though it’s unclear exactly how or when he was hurt. His funeral is set for Monday. Continue reading “Baltimore protests: 2 arrested as Maryland gov. sends state troopers”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a bill Tuesday night that would reauthorize a controversial surveillance authority of the Patriot Act until 2020, a push that comes just as a group of bipartisan lawmakers is preparing a last-minute push to rein in the government’s mass-spying powers.
A McConnell aide said the majority leader is beginning a process to put the bill on the Senate calendar but said that the chamber will not take the measure up this week. That process, known as Rule 14, would bypass the traditional committee process. Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr is a cosponsor. Continue reading “McConnell Introduces Bill to Reauthorize Patriot Act Until 2020”
A handful of small Los Angeles County cities seize large amounts of cash and cars using a controversial federal law that allows them to confiscate property even when owners aren’t charged with a crime, according to a report published by an advocacy group that promotes decriminalization of drugs.
The seizures by police in South Gate, Beverly Hills, Baldwin Park and other relatively small cities dwarf those made by much larger police departments in California from 2006 through 2013, according to the Drug Policy Alliance. Pomona reaped more than $14 million, exceeding assets collected in the considerably larger cities of Oakland, Long Beach, Fresno and Bakersfield combined, said the report, which is expected to be published Tuesday morning. Continue reading “Report: Small L.A. County cities seize large amounts in civil forfeitures”
NBC Bay Area – by Jodi Hernandez
The parents of a Fairfield boy abducted while sleeping in his family’s car are blasting police a day after their son was found safe and are planning to file a complaint against the department.
A thief drove away with Broc Guzman Monday and even though the case had a happy ending, the boy’s parents are angry at police.
Cell phone video shows Broc’s mother Suzanne Guzman being held on the ground by officers after refusing to allow them to search the family home for her year eight-old-son. Continue reading ““We Were Treated Like Criminals”: Parents of Fairfield Boy Abducted While Sleeping in Car Blast Police”
Free Thought Project – by Matt Agorist
West Baton Rouge, LA — Ervin Leon Edwards, 38, died face down in a jail cell after a half-dozen officers held him down and tasered him, then left him for dead.
His crime? Police were questioning him about an argument with his girlfriend and then began harassing him over his “sagging pants,” according to the lawsuit. He was arrested moments later and brought to the West Baton Rouge jail. Continue reading “Cops Arrest Man for “Sagging Pants” Tase Him, Leave Him Face Down in Cell Until He Died”
News OK – by Diana Baldwin
