From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Two Tulsa police officers who are married have been arrested in the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old man who was walking with their daughter, authorities said.
Jeremy Lake was found shot to death Tuesday night on a street near downtown, Tulsa police department spokeswoman Jillian Roberson said. Continue reading “Married Tulsa Police Officers Arrested After Fatal Shooting”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today released a video by acclaimed documentarian Brian Knappenberger(The Internet’s Own Boy) that explores how and why an unlikely coalition of advocacy organizations launched an airship over the National Security Agency’s Utah data center.
The short documentary explains the urgent need to rein in unconstitutional mass surveillance, just as the U.S. Senate has introduced a new version of the USA FREEDOM Act. Continue reading “Airship Flight Over the NSA Data Center: New Behind-the-Scenes Video”
A few weeks ago we fought a battle for transparency in our flagship NSA spying case, Jewel v. NSA. But, ironically, we weren’t able to tell you anything about it until now.
On June 6, the court held a long hearing in Jewel in a crowded, open courtroom, widely covered by the press. We were even on the local TV news on two stations. At the end, the Judge ordered both sides to request a transcript since he ordered us to do additional briefing. But when it was over, the government secretly, and surprisingly sought permission to “remove” classified information from the transcript, and even indicated that it wanted to do so secretly, so the public could never even know that they had done so. Continue reading “UNSEALED: The US Sought Permission To Change The Historical Record Of A Public Court Proceeding”
Philly.com – by DANA DiFILIPPO
A SOUTHWEST Philadelphia woman claims cops trying to subdue a neighbor’s unruly pit bull blasted their guns at the animal – and hit her.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in Common Pleas Court, Kristen Kelly said that at least one of the six bullets two officers fired at the dog on Aug. 5, 2012, hit her in the leg on her block on Etting Street near Reed. Continue reading “Lawsuit: Cops trying to subdue dog shot woman”
The Daily Sheeple – by Joshua Krause
As they say, you can always judge a society by how they treat their weakest members. So I shudder to think of how future generations will judge our society. We’ve become a nation that discards our poor like they are trash, and anyone who doesn’t “fit in” is segregated from the herd.
The police are now fining homeless folks for any arbitrary offense they can think of, and city councils across the country are making it illegal to sleep in public. They’ve gone so far as to make it illegal to camp, or even sit or lay down in certain public areas. Worst of all, many cities are making it illegal, or prohibitively expensive to give food to the homeless. According to an interview from The Independent, with a former police chief involved in a charity dedicated to feeding the poor: Continue reading “It’s Official: Being Poor in America Has Been Outlawed”
Huffington Post – by Christopher Mathias
A scathing report released Monday details the “culture of violence” imposed upon teenage inmates at New York City’s Rikers Island, the second largest jail facility in the U.S. The report, a product of a two-and-a-half-year investigation by the Justice Department, describes the “rampant use of unnecessary and excessive force” by guards and the overreliance on solitary confinement as a means of punishment.
It also offered a grim reminder that Rikers Island has become a de facto psychiatric hospital from hell. Continue reading “Rikers Island, NY Has Become A De Facto Psychiatric Hospital From Hell”
Detroit Free Press – by L.L. Braiser
DELTON — Early morning May 10, Jack Nadwornik stepped behind Tujax Tavern, the bar and restaurant he has owned for 30 years in this small, western Michigan town.
Nadwornik, out drinking with friends for his 58th birthday, urinated in a corner of the empty parking lot because the bar was locked up. Continue reading “Michigan township rebels after new chief beefs up police force”
Increasingly, post-9/11, under the rubric of “privatization,” though it should more accurately have been called “corporatization,” the Pentagon took a series of crony companies off to war with it. In the process, it gave “capitalist war” a more literal meaning, thanks to its wholesale financial support of, and the shrugging off of previously military tasks onto, a series of warrior corporations. Continue reading “Private corporations have become the fourth branch of our govt.”
Gideon, the pseudonymous public defender who blogs at A Public Defender, has a thorough rundown of a very disturbing ruling recently issued by the Connecticut Supreme Court. It involves every Connecticut citizens’ civil liberties, which have now been thrown under a bus bearing the name “officer safety.”
The court’s decision basically makes everyone a suspect, even if they’re suspected of nothing else than being in the relative proximity of someone a police officer suspects of committing a crime, or someone simply “matching the description.” How does this work in practice? Gideon posits a single scenario, as interpreted by the person being (wrongly) detained and those doing the actual detaining. Continue reading “Connecticut Supreme Court Says State Cops Can Detain You Simply For Being In The Vicinity Of Someone They’re Arresting”
BATON ROUGE – Members of Metro Council will have to give the final approval to pay $495,000 to settle a wrongful death lawsuit over an officer-involved shooting where a drunken man was shot and killed in 2011.
On March 6th, 2011, Baton Rouge police officer Christopher Magee shot and killed Carlos Harris, 21, in the parking lot of Club Insomnia off Florida Boulevard. Harris was at the bar with a friend, Ryan Dominique, the night he was shot. Continue reading “Dash cam video reveals why there is a $495,000 settlement”
NEW JERSEY DIVISION OF FIRE SAFETY INTELLIGENCE BULLETIN
Continue reading “New Jersey Division of Fire Safety Bulletin: Sovereign Citizens”
Melrose – by Lisa Guerriero & Jessica Sacco
Police are circulating a photo of one of the suspects wanted in connection with a Revere carjacking that led to an intense manhunt in Melrose.
They are asking for the public’s help in identifying the suspect, which appears to be a surveillance photo from a retail store. The man has short, dark hair and wears a pink shirt and khaki shorts, which matches one of the descriptions previously given by witnesses. Continue reading “Boston Rolls Out Police State to Search For … Carjackers?”
The Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (NSI) kind of speaks for itself. It is an effort by the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Department of Justice and other agencies to promote civic counter-terror engagement. To do this, the federal agencies enlist the help of state, local and tribal police departments, as well as private security firms, in collecting Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) filed by citizens and officers. Federally funded publicity campaigns like “If You See Something, Say Something” are made available for local adoption—provided regional law enforcement officials share what intelligence they gather. Continue reading “Police & DHS consider stretching during a jog to be a “suspicious activity””
Belfast Telegraph – by David Usborne
Gil reaches into the top pocket of his shirt and fishes out a wedge of grimy papers. These are the precious records of his life, documents the rest of us keep in a filing cabinet at home. Eventually he finds what he is looking for, a yellow slip that looks like a parking ticket.
That, as it happens, is about right, although Gil is not a man of many possessions and certainly not a car. He does, however, have size 13 shoes. In his hands is a police citation written a few weeks ago when an officer found him sitting on the kerb with his feet touching the road. “Feet in Roadway Disturbing Traffic,” it reads. Continue reading “US cities’ crackdown on homeless people is ‘very close to ethnic cleansing’”
Huffington Post – by Matt Sledge
Documents published Monday by The Intercept revealed the “far-reaching” extent of the U.S. National Security Agency’s collaboration with Israeli intelligence services. The revelations came as the U.S. State Department criticized Israel for its “disgraceful” shelling of a U.N. school, and the death toll in the Israeli offensive in Gaza surpassed 1,800 Palestinians and 60 Israelis.
The documents, some from as recently as 2013, show that under agreements with the Israelis, the U.S. has provided cash, raw data and analysis, much of it directed against “Palestinian terrorism.” Continue reading “NSA Has ‘Far-Reaching’ Partnership With Israeli Intelligence Agency”
HOUSTON, Texas–A 2014 government report by the Congressional Research Service obtained by Breitbart Texas shows that President Obama’s Department of Justice has set forth “policy guidelines” for judges hearing immigration cases of unaccompanied alien children (UAC). Amid the border crisis, which involves thousands of minors entering the U.S. illegally each week, immigration judges have been instructed to “prepare” UAC to testify and use “sensitive” questioning. Continue reading “Feds Instruct Judges to ‘Prepare’ Unaccompanied Minors for Hearings”
Do we live in a police state?
What other state forces non-criminals to submit to fingerprinting in order to obtain permission to drive?
Or merely to exist?
The state of Texas does. So do the states of California, Georgia and Colorado. Soon, the entire UnitedState (singular usage, in the interests of editorial accuracy) is likely to require it. Indeed, already does – under the auspices of the REAL ID Act, passed back in ’05 by the Heimatsicherheitsdeinst. Continue reading “Police state America wants more than your papers”
The Free Thought Project – by Matt Agorist
A Mayes County police chief was arrested and released on a $100,000 bond, Friday the 25th of July. He was charged with two counts of lewd molestation.
Police chief Clarence Gregory Sr., 75, stands accused of inappropriately touching two girls over a 7-year period, according to the probable cause affidavit.
“This is such a shock,” Spavinaw Mayor Jim Winn said on Friday. Continue reading “Police Chief Charged with Molesting 2 Girls, Says He “Was Trying to Instruct Them””
Colorado’s law to provide undocumented immigrants with driver’s licenses takes effect Friday and is playing out against the backdrop of heightened attention to the issue in light of the crisis on the Texas border.
The law’s supporters say it will make the roads safer and provide legal recognition for thousands of undocumented immigrants who have lived and paid taxes in the state for years. Continue reading “Colorado: Licenses for illegals”
Huffington Post
Activist Post
EFF – by David Greene
MassPrivateI
Tech Dirt – by Tim Cushing
WBRZ
Public Intelligence
MassPrivateI
Breitbart – by Kristin Tate
MassPrivateI
Politico – by Jonathan Topaz