From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
A police officer in Ventura County is accused of padding his timecard, and taking more than $100,000 he didn’t earn.
Ventura County prosecutors say Simi Valley Police Officer Robert Longdon committed time card fraud during a more than three year long period. Continue reading “Police Officer In Ventura County Arrested, Accused Of Time Card Fraud To Tune Of $100,000”
A FORMER cop had a small gun necklace confiscated at airport security because staff claimed it could be a weapon.
Claire Sharp was told her jewellery – given to her by her late husband – was “too dangerous” and passengers might think it was real.
Her first husband died suddenly from a heart attack – they shared a love of shooting and were members of a gundog club. Continue reading “Ex-cop’s tiny gun necklace confiscated after Stansted security claimed it could be a WEAPON”
There are plenty of stories of artificial intelligence gone wrong.
But recent reports from owners of Amazon Alexa devices are being called ‘bone chillingly creepy.’
Some users say their Alexa-enabled gadgets start laughing totally unprompted. Continue reading “Terrified Amazon Echo users reveal Alexa has been emitting ‘bone chilling’ laughs at random and is ignoring their commands”
The Chesterfield County Police Department is willing to violate your rights. If it’s not your Fourth Amendment rights, it’ll be your First. And this is fine with the department’s chief, who’s gone on record as a supporter of rights violations.
A traffic stop for a minor violation quickly escalated into a life-or-death situation for a black college student cops. Elie Mystal of Above the Law breaks it down as only Elie can. Continue reading “After Controversial Traffic Stop, Police Chief Says He Won’t Release Recordings To ‘Anti-Police’ Requesters”
Detroit officials have been using the Macomb County Communications and Technology Center (COMTEC) to spy on everyone since 2013.
According to an article in the Macomb Daily News, law enforcement and DoT officials are using CCTV cameras to spy on everyone. Continue reading “Police are creating a national surveillance network using COMTEC, Project Green Light etc.”
Republican lawmakers are questioning the structure of an $850 million settlement between the state of Minnesota and 3M Co. that leaves them out of how the money is spent.
3M agreed to pay the money last month, resolving a massive lawsuit alleging damages to natural resources and groundwater in the Twin Cities’ east metro. State agencies will use the money to improve and safeguard drinking water. Continue reading “MN lawmakers seek way in after being left out of how 3M settlement spent”
The TSA and Amtrak Police are trying out new see-through body scanners in New York City’s Penn Station that raise serious constitutional questions. And as is so often the case, the government is not being sufficiently transparent about the devices, how they will be used, on whom, and where they will eventually be deployed. We also don’t know who will have access to the information they collect or for how long.
There is also reason to believe the technology may not work as well as the TSA says it does. Continue reading “TSA Tests See-Through Scanners on Public in New York’s Penn Station”
I wouldn’t recommend it, because you’ll probably end up dead. Cops can and will shoot people for their safety.
Defendant was walking down the street, and officers noticed he had a bullet magazine on his belt. They followed him to his residence, and he declined to talk to them and went inside. Their entry into his residence violated the Fourth Amendment because there were no exigent circumstances justifying the entry. State v. Thomas, 2018-Ohio-758, 2018 Ohio App. LEXIS 793 (10th Dist. Mar. 1, 2018). Continue reading “Ohio Appeals Court Ruled Defendant Can Walk Down The Street With Bullet Magazine”
Mad in America – by Craig Wagner
Pictures are worth a thousand words. They can distill mountains of detail into essential understandings. So I’ve chosen pictures to distill the mountain of mental health research I’ve examined over the last eight years. Three infographics summarize research on psychiatric drugs, and one asserts why I think Integrative Mental Health is the best path available for mental health recovery. Continue reading “8 Years of Mental Health Research Distilled to 4 Infographics”
A lieutenant in the Pasadena Police Department turned himself in Friday after being indicted on charges of selling guns without a license.
Vasken Kenneth Gourdikian, 48, of Sierra Madre, was named in a four-count federal indictment for allegedly selling guns without a license, making false statements on Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Forms, and possessing an unregistered short-barreled rifle. Continue reading “Pasadena police lieutenant indicted on charges of illegally selling around 100 firearms”
An interesting unasked question has been raised by Ford’s announcement that it is developing a cop-less cop car. That is, an automated and AI cop car that would sneak itself behind the bushes and use license plate scanners, facial recognition and other such revenue-raising technologies to automatically issue paying’ paper.
All the time. Everywhere. Continue reading “Auto Cop”
When Mayor Kenney signed an executive order in August to post online civilian complaints against Philadelphia police officers, he touted it as a “commonsense reform” that would build trust between the Police Department and the communities it serves.
“This data will show residents in an easily accessible, online format how the city handles complaints against police officers,” Kenney said in a statement. Continue reading “Philadelphia police complaints now online – with cops cloaked in anonymity”
In a massively ambitious project aimed at improving the health of its 3 million residents, the city of Dubai plans to sequence the DNA of its entire population.
The United Arab Emirates city announced the initiative this month as part of its Dubai 10X Initiative, a bid to implement as soon as possible the technologies it believes will become standard 10 years from now. Continue reading “Dubai Plans to DNA Test All 3 Million of Its Residents”
Five days ago, IDEMIA announced their plan to install facial recognition cameras in rental vehicles.
IDEMIA and Omoove are combining forces to spy on car renters everywhere.
“You will never rent a car the same way thanks to EasyOpen solution that combines IDEMIA’s expertise in secure service enablement and Omoove’s experience in Shared Mobility platforms and on-board technology.”
Continue reading “Rental cars to use facial recognition to spy on your vacation”
ProPublica – by Ginger Thompson
Powerful Democrats in both the House and Senate called Tuesday for an investigation into Drug Enforcement Administration-led operations in Mexico that played a role in triggering violent drug cartel attacks. These attacks left dozens, possibly hundreds, of people dead or missing, including many who had nothing to do with the drug trade.
The call was issued in a letter signed by ranking members of the committees that oversee America’s foreign law enforcement operations and draws heavily on two stories last year by ProPublica and National Geographic that documented the attacks and the DEA’s role. One storyreconstructed a 2011 massacre by the Zetas cartel in the Mexican state of Coahuila. It revealed that the wave of killings was unleashed after sensitive information obtained during a DEA operation wound up in the hands of cartel leaders, who ordered a wave of retaliation against suspected traitors. Continue reading “Top Lawmakers Call for Investigation of DEA-Led Unit in Mexico”
Legal Insurrection – by Mary Chastain
The subject of school safety has become a hot topic after Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. Arguments in favor of strict gun control are based on the claim, among other things, that there is an epidemic of school shootings that have increased in the past several decades.
Northeastern University released a study Monday, however, that calls that assumption into question. The study that found schools are still the safest spot for children. The study also found that school shootings aren’t as actually common as portrayed in the media and are not as common as decades ago. Continue reading “University Study: Schools safer than in the 90s, and school shootings not more common”
Liberty Blitzkrieg – by Michael Krieger
I’m sure all of you are aware of the dramatic power play pulled off over the weekend by China’s Communist Party to eliminate term limits for both the president and vice president. Prior to the move, Chinese leaders have stuck to two five-year terms since the presidency of Jiang Zemin (1993-2003), but that’s about to change as wannabe emperor Xi Jinping positions himself as indefinite ruler of the increasingly totalitarian superstate.
While the weekend announcement was illuminating enough, I found the panicked reactions by Chinese authorities in the immediate aftermath far more telling. The country’s propagandists took censorship to such an embarrassing level in attempts to portray the decision as widely popular amongst the masses, it merely served to betray that opposite might be true. Continue reading “What’s Going Down in China is Very Dangerous – Part 1”
Giving new meaning to the “snowflake” generation, a headmaster in Britain has forbidden all 1,500 of his students from even touching snow.
Ges Smith is the headmaster of the Jo Richardson Community School in Dagenham, East London, and where others see fluffy white flakes of winter wonder, he sees the wide and icy path to hell.
“It only takes one student, one piece of grit, one stone in a snowball in an eye, with an injury and we change our view,” he said. Continue reading “School Forbids Students from Touching Snow”
As Americans continue to rage over the Valentine’s Day school shooting in Florida, expressing indignation at both the atrocity and efforts to impose (or reject) gun control, the U.S. government has acknowledged its own perpetual addiction to violence.
According to two letters released by the federal government last week in response to an inquiry from Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, the U.S. plans to maintain its military presence in Syria and Iraq indefinitely, citing vague threats of terrorism. Continue reading “Americans Are Horrified by Mass Killings — Unless the Government Is Doing It”
It appears that Google may have silently joined the ranks of one side of the gun control debate. On February 26, Twitter users LADowd and Xavier Dreyman noticed that results in the most-used search engine in the world were returning nothing in the “Shopping” tab when any query included a gun part, model, or manufacturer.
His first result was for the rather broad term of “rifle scope”. This netted zero results while providing just two sponsored results below the main search. Curiosity must’ve taken over and he continued on looking for “remington razor” which also netted a whopping 0 results. Turns out, the problem was that Remington is most known for firearms. Continue reading “Google Censors Guns, Removes Shopping Results”