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Friday, October 19, 2012

NYPD Kill Hostage Who Escaped Armed Standoff -- Marks Second Killing Of Hostage by Police In One Week

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Chris | InformationLiberation

Last Friday, police in Minnesota shot and killed a hostage who fled from an armed gunman in a standoff in a motel. Just one week later, this Friday police in New York shot and killed another hostage who fled a standoff with armed robbers at a Bronx Bodega store. Additionally, an NYPD officer responding to the scene crashed into a random SUV driver, the driver was reportedly sitting at a red light when the speeding police officer careened into him.

NBCNY reports the driver "was treated and released, but the NYPD officer remains hospitalized at Lincoln Hospital in critical but stable condition."

In both of these cases, the criminals themselves were captured but escaped physically unharmed, yet their hostages who managed to flee were killed by police.

Via NBCNY:

Reynaldo Cuevas, a 20-year-old employee of a Bronx bodega, was shot and killed outside of the store Friday morning.
By Kat Creag, Brynn Gingrass and Lori Bordonaro, NBCNY.comA Bronx, N.Y., bodega worker may have been mistakenly shot and killed by police responding to a standoff with armed robbers inside the store early Friday morning, according to a law enforcement source and witness accounts.
Police say at least three men entered the bodega at 631 East 168th Street at 2 a.m. Friday and barricaded themselves inside when cops arrived.
A short time later, Reynaldo Cuevas, a 20-year-old bodega employee, exited the store and was shot dead by cops, according to a relative of the slain youth. The victim's cousin Jose Garcia said he witnessed the scene and that Cuevas, a nephew of the store's owner, did not have his hands raised as he left the store and cops opened fire on him.
"I saw the police shoot him," Garcia told NBC 4 New York. "He came up, but he didn't put his hands up. And he tripped or something and when he fell on the floor, they shot him."
A law enforcement source did confirm that Cuevas may have been mistakenly shot by police officers responding to the chaotic scene.
"Basically he was trying to get away from the robber and he was shot, " said Arjelis Duval, who also witnessed the shooting.
Three people are in custody. Drugs and a gun were recovered from the scene, the police source said.
Maria Acevado, a friend of Cuevas', said she remembered his great sense of humor.
"He was funny," she said. " He was nice to us, just hanging with us on the corner."

It's become more apparent by the day armed criminals are less of a threat than the police who are allegedly supposed to protect us. Lysander Spooner observed this to be the case almost 200 years ago, it still rings true today.

UPDATE: Video of the shooting has been released, the cop apparently shot the man point blank.

The AP reports:

Investigators believe the impact of Cuevas running into the officer caused him to fire one round, striking the 20-year-old victim in the left shoulder, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a news conference. Cuevas died later at a hospital.
Though the death appeared to be an accident, the officer was placed on desk duty pending an investigation, a routine practice for all New York Police Department shootings. Officials refused to release the name of the seven-year veteran of the police force.
There was no sign that the shooter and other officers at the scene mishandled the situation, Kelly said.
"The tragedy here of course was that Mr. Cuevas was shot, but I see nothing wrong with the procedure," he said.

The cop should not have had his finger on the trigger if he was not intending to shoot the man, guns do not just misfire without the trigger being pulled. NYPD use special glocks which require a 12 pound trigger pull weight, double the standard 5.5 pounds, the cop either shot the man purposefully or failed to use gun safety 101.

The "tragedy here" is police incompetence and New York's restrictive gun laws which forbid citizens from protecting themselves, leaving them at the mercy of criminals, and the NYPD, but I repeat myself.
_
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.

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Latest Tyranny/Police State
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When I grow up, I want to be a cop! "Protect and serve" indeed: They can't even be bothered to pretend anymore. While Mayor Bloomberg calls for more gun controls for the citizens (but not cops), cops continue to kill more people annually in suspiciously "justified" killings than all the *OTHER* murders in the land. In fact, if you remove the killer cop murders that take place, you find that gun deaths go way down to the point of being negligent. Yet, at the same time, the mental midget moron anti-gun people try to tell us if we can just get the guns out of everybody's hands, *EXCEPT* cops, of course, we would be a lot safer. Suspiciously, they use the "gun deaths" statistic (that *INCLUDES* the murders perpetrated by cops) to bolster their argument. How do you spell Prop Uh Gan Duh??? I'll tell you how: Gun Death Statistics.

The fact is that there is a hidden agenda here and that neither the cops or the mental midget anti-gun people give a flying rats ass (thats a bat's ass for you that don't know a lot about wildlife) about anyone's safety. The real agenda is unclear, but, saving lives and keeping us safe isn't it.

They tell us, "Get the guns out of the hands of the people so just cops have the guns and we'll be a lot safer."

Can I say it? Sorry Chris, I'm going to say it:

BULL FUCKING SHIT!!!

I wonder what Bloomberg says about these things? I sure it would be "justified".

We don't need more "gun control" unless "gun control" = "removing guns from the hands of cops". The danger with guns comes from having them in the hands of cops. When guns are around, there seems to be relative safety. When cops are around and guns are around, innocent people die. This tells me that its not the guns that are dangerous, its the cops.

And Bloomberg recently bragged he had the 7th largest army in the world with the NYPD....or otherwise known as the Gang who couldn't shoot straight. Enough with the scare tactics of trying to unarm citizens. We need to protect ourselves from cops now it seems.

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Thursday, October 18, 2012

Tarnished badges: Opa-locka's troubled police force

Drug dealers pedal their bicycles up and down the street, sneaking down narrow hallways and hiding in the bushes, waiting for their next deal, or their next victim to shake down, beat up or rob. Doors are pitted with bullet holes, and the children spend their days on a rusty playground, or in the evenings, acting as lookouts for dealers.

This squalid theater in the heart of Opa-locka?s Arabian Nights-themed city, an apartment complex known as the ?Back Blues,? has been home to some of the most dangerous drug traffickers in South Florida.

When the FBI launched a sting at the notorious drug den, and later tied its players to a fatal 2010 armored car heist, they discovered to their surprise that one of the alleged operatives at the helm of the Back Blues narcotics ring was an Opa-locka police captain.

Capt. Arthur Balom, 44, accepted bribes, provided the armored car killer with a bulletproof vest and helped sabotage the FBI?s drug sting, according to allegations made in court documents.

The probe that led to Balom?s arrest is only one of many state, federal and local investigations into possible corruption within the Opa-locka Police Department, which has the reputation of being among the most troubled law enforcement agencies in the state.

?I?m 79 now and I?m not going to jail for nobody,? said Clarance Patterson, who as city manager of Opa-locka was in charge of public safety, including the police department. ?The things I was being asked to do, I just wouldn?t do. I?m not saying anybody asked me to do anything illegal, but the city and the police department have some serious problems and need cleaning up.??

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- Infiltrating Occupy: Austin Activists Face Charges for Equipment Provided by Undercover Police
- LRPD officer Josh Hastings has 6 suspensions in 5 years, currently on paid leave after killing 15-yr-old

View the original article here

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Obama Lists His Five Criteria for Death by Drone

by Joe Wolverton, II

President Obama is tearing the shroud of secrecy off his once hush-hush death-by-drone program.

From his interview with Ben Swann, host of Fox 19's?Reality Check, to his sit-down with CNN's chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin, the kill-list compiler-in-chief is gradually exposing details of the principles he purportedly follows before targeting someone for assassination.

The president may assume that there is little reason to try hiding something that is being publicized daily?-- except in the mainstream media. In fairness, the New York Times has done fine work chronicling the expansion of the use of drones, as well as their involvement in the killing of innocents overseas caught in the blast zone of missiles aimed at alleged militants.

An exception to the official policy of silence on the matter of the death-by-drone program being carried out by the White House and the CIA was made earlier this year. In April the White House's top counterterrorism advisor, John Brennan, admitted for the first time publicly to the government's significant reliance on drones in prosecuting the War on Terror. Brennan said that the remote control killing of suspects on foreign soil who have been charged with no crime whatsoever, is "in full accordance with the law."

Brennan also said the United States "respects national sovereignty and international law."

Speaking with Margaret Sanger at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Brennan defended the president's drone program. "So long as AQAP [al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] seeks to implement its murderous agenda, we will be a close partner with Yemen in meeting this common threat," he said.

Later in the interview, Brennan said that the president deploys drones to target only "militants" with designs on attacking the United States or its allies abroad. He admitted that American intelligence agents provide tactical support to Yemeni armed forces battling al-Qaeda on the ground.

When asked about the collateral deaths of innocent civilians during these attacks, Brennan responded that American drone pilots "make every effort" to avoid killing innocents. Said Brennan:

Today I'd simply say that all our CT [counterterrorism] efforts in Yemen are conducted in concert with the Yemeni government. When direct action is taken, every effort is made to avoid any civilian casualty. And contrary to conventional wisdom, we see little evidence that these actions are generating widespread anti-American sentiment or recruits for AQAP. In fact, we see the opposite; our Yemeni partners are more eager to work with us. Yemenese citizens who have been freed from the hellish grip of AQAP are more eager, not less, to work with the Yemeni government. In short, targeted strikes against the most senior and most dangerous AQAP terrorists are not the problem; they are part of the solution.

Describing the disregard for innocent human life as part of a "solution" is eerily reminiscent of similar statements made by despicable tyrants in the recent past.

The death toll of innocent people killed by the United States in the Middle East continues to increase. As?The New American reported on September 6, 29 Yemenis were killed by U.S. drones in one week. Many of these had not even tenuous ties to terrorists and were killed simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When asked by CNN what process he uses to make the life or death decisions to deploy the drones to kill a "militant," President Obama listed five criteria:

? First, "It has to be a target that is authorized by our laws."

? Second, "It has to be a threat that is serious and not speculative."

? Third, "It has to be a situation in which we can't capture the individual before they move forward on some sort of operational plot against the United States."

? Fourth, "We've got to make sure that in whatever operations we conduct, we are very careful about avoiding civilian casualties."

? And fifth, "That while there is a legal justification for us to try and stop [American citizens] from carrying out plots ... they are subject to the protections of the Constitution and due process."

Examining this list reveals that in none of the deaths authorized by the president has any one of these criteria been met.

Let's take as a test case the remote-control murder of a young American in Yemen. What law authorized the murder of 16-year-old Abdulrahaman al-Awlaki, son of the American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was also killed by Hellfire missiles fired by a Predator drone?

Neither man (both of whom were Americans) was ever charged with a crime or permitted to answer for his alleged crimes before an impartial judge -- a violation of the fifth point provided by the president.

What threat did the younger al-Awlaki pose to the United States? The Obama administration has never informed the country of any wrongdoing by this teenager other than being related to a man who posted anti-American videos on the Internet that allegedly influenced others to commit crimes. This violates the president's first criterion.

Number three above was certainly ignored by the president since no known attempt was ever made to capture this young man and take him into U.S. custody. Of course, that could be because he might actually have ended up in a court of law if he had been apprehended; and President Obama, a former lawyer, knows that trials can be long, messy, and unpredictable. It is much quicker and cleaner just to launch a missile and kill someone without going through the hassle of due process.

Finally, with regard to civilian casualties, not even the White House claims that Abdulraham al-Awlaki was a member of al-Qaeda or any associated organization. He was quite literally killed for being associated with one who was allegedly associated with those allegedly associated with al-Qaeda.

As Tom Junod wrote in Esquire:

But Abdulrahman al-Awlaki wasn't on an American kill list. Nor was he a member of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Nor was he "an inspiration," as his father styled himself, for those determined to draw American blood; nor had he gone "operational," as American authorities said his father had, in drawing up plots against Americans and American interests.
He was a boy who hadn't seen his father in two years, since his father had gone into hiding. He was a boy who knew his father was on an American kill list and who [sneaked] out of his family's home in the early morning hours of September 4, 2011, to try to find him.

Furthermore, the young man was killed while eating dinner on the side of the road in the company of friends and extended family. So much for the limiting of "civilian" collateral damage. Not only was the target of the nighttime drone attack a civilian, but so were all the boys sitting with him when two American missiles lit up the area and killed them all.

Finally, when Yellin asked Obama if he personally approves the targets of the drone strikes, the president answered, "You know, I can't get too deeply into how these things work, but as I said as commander in chief ultimately I'm responsible for the process that we've set up to make sure that folks who are out to kill Americans, that we are able to disable them before they carry out their plans."

If only all advocates of constitutional due process could nonviolently through the electoral process disable those of both parties -- whether in office or seeking to be elected-- from carrying out their plans to destroy the our constitutionally protected liberty.

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Infiltrating Occupy: Austin Activists Face Charges for Equipment Provided by Undercover Police

As Occupy Wall Street prepares to mark its first anniversary, members of Occupy Austin have discovered that their arrests on felony charges after a protest last December are directly linked to equipment provided by a police detective who infiltrated their group. The activists locked arms inside tubes made of PVC pipe that the police had designed, constructed and dropped off for the protest. We?re joined from Austin by Ronnie Garza, one of the members of Occupy Austin facing felony charges stemming from the December protest, and from Houston by Greg Gladden, National Lawyers Guild member and past president of the Texas American Civil Liberties Union.

Guests: Ronnie Garza, was arrested after engaging in civil disobedience last December at the Port of Houston. He is now one of seven people facing felony charges for using a lockbox in the protest. It has since been revealed that the so-called "criminal instrument" he used was designed and provided by an undercover Austin Police Department detective.

Greg Gladden, attorney with the National Lawyers Guild and past president of the Texas ACLU. He represents Ronnie Garza, who is one of seven members of Occupy Austin and other groups who face felony charges for engaging in direct action to block a street at the Port of Houston last December.

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a story unfolding in Texas. Members of Occupy Austin have discovered that their arrests on felony charges after a protest last December are directly linked to equipment provided by a police detective who infiltrated their group. On December 12th, members of Occupy Austin joined protesters from around the region to block a street entrance to the Port of Houston. The action was done in solidarity with Occupy activists who tried to shut down ports on the West Coast in support of the embattled longshoremen. Seven of the protesters in Houston locked their arms together using locks hidden inside PVC pipes, a device known as a lockbox or a "sleeping dragon" or "dragon sleeves." While most of the demonstrators were charged with misdemeanors, those using the lockboxes were charged with felony use of a, quote, "criminal instrument."

Well, evidence in the case now reveals that an undercover detective with the Austin Police Department not only bought the equipment to make the devices, he also designed them, put them together and dropped them off for the group to use. The defendants in the case recently revealed Detective Shannon Dowell was the protester they knew as "Butch," after Austin police at first denied they had infiltrated the group. Now a judge has ordered police to turn over more information. At least one of the protesters, Eric Marquez, remains in jail due to a prior arrest. We asked the Austin Police Department for comment, but they didn?t respond to our request.

We are going to Austin now to Ronnie Garza, one of the members of Occupy Austin who?s on trial now, facing felony charges stemming from the December 12th direct action. And in Houston, we?re joined by Greg Gladden with the National Lawyers Guild, representing Ronnie Garza in this case, past president of the Texas ACLU.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Ronnie, let?s begin with you in Austin. Tell us what happened last December.

RONNIE GARZA: Well, thanks for having us on the show, Amy. It?s a huge honor.

Last December, we were involved with a number of other cities around Texas in a solidarity action with the West Coast port shutdown. And we knew that we couldn?t shut down a port the size of Houston. It was a purely symbolic action to lay down in front of the entrance to the main office of the port. And so, that?s sort of the lead up to December 12th and why we were out there.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain why the longshoremen were shutting down the port in Oakland, what--your solidarity action.

RONNIE GARZA: They were in a labor dispute with EGT, from what we understand, and so we were out there in solidarity with those longshoremen, specifically.

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain exactly what happened, who your group was and what you did.

RONNIE GARZA: Well, I?m with Occupy Austin, and we just coordinated with the other cities to bring people out to Houston and sort of worked on the logistics of how the blockade, the sit-in, would happen.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, describe the lead up to your action on December 12th and how it is you got your hands on this PVC pipe. A group of you didn?t. A group of you just stood up and locked arms, and they were charged with misdemeanor. But you and others did not. Explain how you came to use these sleeping dragons or dragon sleeves.

RONNIE GARZA: OK. So, part of the direct action committee was tasked with sort of coming up with ways to block the road. And Shannon Dowell, who we knew as "Butch," was one of the members of that committee. And they worked on those plans to develop the sit-in logistics. And Shannon went out to the store, got the materials off the shelves, and assembled and manufactured the devices, and then dropped them off with the rest of the protesters for use out in Houston.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, did you know Butch? What did you think of him? How did you--how did he join your group, this man that has now been identified as an Austin police officer named [Dowell]?

RONNIE GARZA: Well, yeah, I mean, I certainly have spoken with Butch in the past. I liked his beard. I recognized him from meetings that we had--that we had gone to for Occupy Austin, I would say since probably the beginning. Like I said, I liked his beard, and so it?s kind of recognizable. And he just was showing up to general assemblies and other small meetings. And then when eventually we had the port action, he became interested and involved with that group.

AMY GOODMAN: I should say, I misspoke his name. It is Shannon Dowell. Now, Ronnie, how did you learn that this guy you knew as Butch, who delivered these dragon sleeves to you, that led to your felony arrests--how did you learn that he is a police officer named Shannon Dowell?

RONNIE GARZA: OK, so, we--after we got arrested--this was maybe about a month, month and a half later--we got an anonymous tip, an email tip off about Butch. Again, we knew him as Butch. And they told us his name, his actual first name, was Shannon, and he was a police--with the police department, and he was involved in the port action. And that?s pretty much what they gave us. And we didn?t have a full identity. We didn?t know his last name or where exactly within the APD he was. But eventually, over time, looking through public records like birth records, marriage records, death records and other things like that, salary records for the police department, I was able to find his first and last name, and we were able to get a subpoena in on Butch.

AMY GOODMAN: Greg Gladden, you?re Ronnie Garza?s attorney. You?re the former head of the ACLU. You?re with the National Lawyers Guild. When you came into this case, why is it that you immediately suspected that there was an undercover officer involved with this action?

GREG GLADDEN: Good morning, Amy.

The use of this particular statute, this manufacture of a criminal instrument statute, is really obscure. There are probably not more than 10 cases that have been reported in the last 30 or 40 years of its use, and it?s virtually all the time being used to overreach. The first reported case was back when people in Dallas and Houston were showing a movie called Deep Throat. And they kept busting them for misdemeanor obscenity charges, and they?d reopen and just keep showing it. And so, they finally charged them under this statute with possession of a projector. That went all the way to the Fifth Circuit, and the Fifth Circuit limited the statute--

AMY GOODMAN: That was the criminal tool.

GREG GLADDEN: That was the criminal instrument that they--they made it into a felony, so they could overreach and make it more expensive and more dangerous for them to show this movie than simply paying a fine for a misdemeanor.

The wars on terrorism or on drugs or on communists or whatever, the government has always used infiltrators and often have used infiltrators that would provoke the group to do things that will marginalize the group or will incriminate the group or chill the group in their efforts to do what they?re doing. So, to answer your question, it had all the fingerprints of that kind of behavior. And as it turns out, Shannon Dowell was a narcotics undercover officer that has been loaned out to something called "fusion." And it?s kind of like SPECTRE in an Ian Fleming movie or something. It sounds like that. But their goal, their purpose, through federal grants, is to monitor potential domestic terrorism. And I guess it?s a lot easier to solve crimes you create yourself than to actually ferret out actual crimes and actual criminals. And there are certainly some--a lot of people that would like to shut down the Occupy movements. And this was an obvious--it was obvious to me that that?s--would have worked in that way, whether it was in fact the efforts of the police and the government or whether it was just someone foolish enough to cause the same result.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Ronnie, you didn?t know that by using this PVC pipe the way you locked arms, as opposed to the others locking arms without it, would change the charge from misdemeanor, what the others were charged with, to felony, what the group of you, the group of seven, were charged with, simply by using these pipes, is that right?

RONNIE GARZA: Right. No, I wasn?t--yeah, I wasn?t aware of that at all. And it seems--it seems to be that the person that was the most aware of that, Butch, you know, he could have said that at any time without blowing his cover. He could have de-escalated the tactics, but he chose to just go ahead and make sure that we had those devices.

AMY GOODMAN: Was he the one who introduced the idea of those devices?

RONNIE GARZA: Well, I mean, that?s all going to come out in the court, in the emails and all that. So, I don?t know that I can talk about the case at the moment.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let?s talk about these emails, and I wanted to go back to Greg Gladden on this. Talk about what happened when the judge--and tell us who the judge is--subpoenaed Shannon Dowell.

GREG GLADDEN: Well, I subpoenaed Shannon Dowell, and--something called a subpoena duces tecum, where you ask them to bring certain things. And we tried to ask him to bring--or have him ordered to bring emails, offense reports. Usually--always, police make reports of incidents that they?re involved in or that they are investigating.

When he appeared in court pursuant to my subpoena, coming down to Houston from Austin, he appeared in front of Judge Joan Campbell in one of the felony courts here. An interesting point is, when this case first came up, the first day in court, she threw the cases out, these felony cases out, because the statute doesn?t apply to these people. And the district attorney, for some political reason--or, I don?t know why they did, but they went around her, took the case to the grand jury, got these young people indicted on these felony charges of manufacture of a criminal instrument, and the case went back to her court.

And I guess I--the limitations of the statute that the courts have found apply to this statute is it has to be an incipient crime. And I had to go look up that word. It?s--in the beginning, it?s someone that manufactures or adapts or builds some instrument that can, secondly, only be used for a crime. So slim jims are not a criminal instrument because they can be used by tow truck drivers legitimately every day. Lock picks can be used by locksmiths. And thirdly, it has to be necessary for the crime. They?re saying that they used these sleeping dragons--they constructed them, built them, set them up to use to commit the crime of obstructing a highway. Well, there were 12 other people out there that were charged with obstructing a highway that did not have these instruments. So, the law doesn?t apply on at least two out of the three prongs. The only incipient behavior in this case was the police officer, who did the purchasing, designing, building, constructing--

AMY GOODMAN: So--

GREG GLADDEN: setting up and delivering.

AMY GOODMAN: So, very quickly--

GREG GLADDEN: Then--go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: --when you asked him to come to court, when you subpoenaed him, and he came to court, and you asked for particular items, what happened? Did he bring them?

GREG GLADDEN: He said that he did not write any offense reports. And there?s two other officers working with him that he confessed to when the judge really did a significant cross-examination of him in court. She was offended, it seemed like, because he showed up empty-handed. He had one piece of paper with some notes, random kind of notes of a meeting that was way earlier in the year. He said he had a thumb drive that had pictures of the instruments and pictures of the person he actually delivered them to and some other information on it, but he dropped it in a gutter on the way to work that morning accidentally. And so, basically, he showed up with nothing. And she took offense with that.

AMY GOODMAN: And emails? Did he say something about erasing emails?

GREG GLADDEN: Yes, he said that he had deleted all of his email related to this investigation. He said he wasn?t required to make an offense report because it wasn?t a criminal investigation. He said that he had deleted his text messages, that there were a lot of text messages going on. And I think the facts, from the witnesses that were involved, will say that there were these three officers that worked together. The other two officers we only know as Dirk and Rick. And the judge ordered him to--she said she wasn?t going to order him to give us those names, because the state was objecting to that at that moment. She said she was going to reset the case for one week. They were going to go back to Austin, get their tech people to pull out all of those deleted emails and erased text messages and get them from the phone companies, or whatever they need to do to get them, and come back with that stuff. And the following week, she would order him to give up the names and identities of the other two undercover police officers, or she was going to dismiss the case.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Greg Gladden, what is--

GREG GLADDEN: She hasn?t--

AMY GOODMAN: What is wrong with undercover police officers infiltrating groups like Occupy? What does it mean, under the law, when they say they?re just trying to ensure freedom of speech, that these groups remain peaceful?

GREG GLADDEN: Well, they?ve had two press conferences trying to explain themselves, this "fusion" outfit and Austin police. The first time--the first thing they said was that they built these things, infiltrated--built these things so that the demonstrators would be safe, that the devices--no one would get hurt with these devices when they used them or when they removed them, the fire department removed them. Within two or three days after that, they had completely changed courses and said these police officers were maybe not rogue, but they were not reporting that they were doing this, and that the higher-ups and their supervisors did not know they were doing it.

Basically, they?re trying to brand idealistic young people with felonies, which will have a profound impact on their lives, when they were not intending to commit any felonies, and virtually no one has--the judge had never heard of this statute when we first appeared in court. Most lawyers have not heard of this statute. And certainly these young people had never heard of this statute. So, basically, it?s--they?re getting grant money to investigate things they?re not investigating, and they?re creating problems where none exist.

AMY GOODMAN: Greg Gladden, I want to thank you for being with us, attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, past president of the Texas ACLU, representing Ronnie Garza, one of seven members of Occupy Austin and other groups who face felony charges for engaging in direct action to block a street at the Port of Houston last December--the dragon sleeves, the PVC pipe they used, provided to them by undercover police officer Shannon Dowell. We?ll continue to follow this trial. Ronnie, thank you also very much for being with us from Austin. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the Paralympics have wrapped up in London. We?ll speak with a former Paralympian. Stay with us.

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Ron Paul: "Country Should Panic Over Fed's Decision"

What took Ben Bernanke sixty minutes of mumbling about tools, word-twisting, and data-manipulating to kinda-sorta admit - that in fact he is lost; Ron Paul eloquently expresses in 25 seconds in this Bloomberg TV clip. Noting that "we are creating money out of thin air," Paul sums up Bernanke's position perfectly "We've Lost Control!"

25-second quick clip

Full 5 minute clip - must watch! from Mal-investment to Bernanke's frustration...

Paul's reaction to more Federal Reserve stimulus:

"It should not surprise anybody, but it is still astounding. To me, it is so astounding that it does not collapse the markets. [Bernanke] said, 'We are in very big trouble. We are going to do something unprecedented and we believe it will not hurt the dollar.' And yet the stocks, they say 'we love this stuff.' But the dollar didn't do so well today and the real value of the dollar is measured against gold, and gold skyrocketed from its very low to its highest. It means we are weakening the dollar. We are trying to liquidate our debt through inflation. The consequence of what the Fed is doing is a lot more than just CPI. It has to do with malinvestment and people doing the wrong things at the wrong time. Believe me, there is plenty of that. The one thing that Bernanke has not achieved and it frustrates him, I can tell--is he gets no economic growth. He doesn't do anything with the unemployment numbers. I think the country should have panicked over what the Fed is saying that we have lost control and the only thing we have left is massively creating new money out of thin air, which has not worked before, and is not going to work this time."

On potential unintended consequences:

"The biggest unintended consequence is what we need is a restoration of confidence. If the Fed is expressing a lack of confidence and they do not know what to do, it does not do anything to restore confidence. People might restrain from doing anything. 'Interest rates are low. I do not have to buy my house this year. I will wait until next year. It might be a little easier. Prices might come down.' So people are restrained and it is the opposite of when you expect that housing prices are going up, and you are afraid interest rates are going up. That is why the market rate of interest is so crucial. The rate of interest should give the businessman, the entrepreneurs, the investors and the savers information. But there is no market to interest rates. That is why there is such gross distortion and why we do not have a market economy. We have a rigged economy through central economic planning by central banking. The system is failing, it was doomed to fail and we have to wake up to that fact."

On whether the Federal Reserve needs discipline:

"Short of getting rid of the Fed, which is not going to come and I wouldn't do that overnight anyway, I would say that Congress has the authority to say, do not buy debt. Do not buy any debt. The Congress can yell and scream and pander to the people. They can say the deficits are terrible and terrible. But nobody wants to cut overseas spending or food stamps for the poor. They say, 'we cannot do it without the Fed. The Fed has to buy this debt.' That is a moral hazard for the politician. If the Fed couldn't buy the debt, and interest rates would rise all of the sudden the burden would be on the Congress to get their house in order to restore confidence. Even that would panic a lot of people because live within your means? We do not like that. We like this idea that we can give people anything they want for free, so we can get reelected. Well, all of this is coming to an end."

On whether Bernanke should be pulling back liquidity and raising interest rates right now instead:

"Liquidity should be determined by the market. I don't think he should raise rates. He should just get out of rigging rates. The system is so biased. It helps the bankers who get free money and then they buy government debt. What about the people who are frightened, they do not like the stock market and they are frugal and want to take care of themselves? What do they get--1% on a CD? That is unfair. It's bad economics. You want to let the market determine interest rates and let it sort it out. People get so nervous, because we have lived so long with a Keynesian economic model of fixing interest rates and intervening in the market."

On whether Romney would do the right thing with the Federal Reserve if elected:

"So far, I have not heard that he would, but he has changed his mind before. If he gets to be president, we will keep our fingers crossed."

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Was there ever any doubt that this was what they would do? It is like being surprised that a dog ate your lunch when you left the room. Did the country, which has been run now for years, if not always, by men with an agenda, not really in the best interest, of most people in the U.S. expected at 1 second to midnight, a real plan to revitalize the American economy. They shot us in the foot, in the knee, in the groin, in the belly and now are aiming at our chest and head. So if you are surprised now at the prospect of new devastation for your future and your family, I am not sure what it will take to get reality to actually make you believe. Ron Paul was literally treated like a virus by the Republican Party and media and still feels that we could legislate ourselves back to health with small non-interfering government policy. (for the agencies that monitor all communications, I am using an analogy--not advocating violence or saying that they are using actual bullets--so be nice when you put the black bag on our collective heads)

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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Texas Police Kill Unarmed Man Before Confiscating Witness Camera and Deleting Images

Police in Texas shot an unarmed man 41 times, then turned around and confiscated another man?s camera after he started taking photos and shooting video of the bloody aftermath.

Dallas-area cops then deleted the man?s footage before returning the camera four days later.

Now police from two agencies are vowing to do a ?complete investigation,? which, of course, means we will hear nothing more about the August 31 incident for at least several months.

But so far, the partial investigation has determined that Garland police officer Patrick Tuter lied in his initial report when he claimed that suspect Michael Vincent Allen backed his truck into the patrol car, causing the cop to fear for his life and leaving him no choice but to fire 41 times, meaning he reloaded at least once.

Miraculously, a 20-year-old unarmed woman who was sitting in the cab of the pick-up truck emerged unscathed.

According to the Dallas Morning News, Mesquite police officers confiscated the witness?s camera:

?From the time they yelled, ?Get out, get out,? they didn?t give him three seconds to get out,? Mitchell Wallace said, adding that he counted about 20 bullet holes in Allen?s truck.
Wallace and his wife were asleep when the gunshots began, but they quickly made it to the porch to see Allen?s passenger being pulled from the truck and a police dog jumping into the cab. The German shepherd bit Allen in the neck and jaw area and dragged him out of the truck and onto the pavement, Wallace said.
Police officers pulled the dog off, flipped Allen on his stomach and handcuffed him before checking his pulse. Autopsy results are pending on the cause of Allen?s death.
Wallace took cellphone pictures and video after the shooting stopped, but he said Mesquite police confiscated the phone and deleted the video and pictures. The phone was returned four days later, he said.

Mesquite police are conducting the criminal investigation, which hopefully includes whether or not Tuter acted lawfully, and Garland police are conducting the internal investigation.

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My God...my God for the texes police officers whom confiscated the witness camera and delete the video trust and believe your conscious will not be set free you may have delete the camera but you can't delete the truth. That was witness by beloved father God whom sit high and up above only the truth will set you free not covered up lies and decent God have the last judgment not men. For the Lord God see everything inside out your heart thoughts jesus!

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Welcome to the American Gulag: Using Involuntary Commitment Laws To Silence Dissenters

What happened to 26-year-old decorated Marine Brandon Raub ? who was targeted because of his Facebook posts, interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called ?conspiratorial? views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys ? has happened many times throughout history in totalitarian regimes.

As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum observes in Gulag: A History: ?The exile of prisoners to a distant place, where they can ?pay their debt to society,? make themselves useful, and not contaminate others with their ideas or their criminal acts, is a practice as old as civilization itself.?

The advent of psychiatry eliminated the need to exile political prisoners, allowing governments instead to declare such dissidents mentally ill and unfit for society. For example, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union often used psychiatric hospitals as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally through the use of electric shocks, drugs and various medical procedures.

In addition to declaring political dissidents mentally unsound, Russian officials also made use of an administrative process for dealing with individuals who were considered a bad influence on others or troublemakers. Author George Kennan describes a process in which:

The obnoxious person may not be guilty of any crime . . . but if, in the opinion of the local authorities, his presence in a particular place is ?prejudicial to public order? or ?incompatible with public tranquility,? he may be arrested without warrant, may be held from two weeks to two years in prison, and may then be removed by force to any other place within the limits of the empire and there be put under police surveillance for a period of from one to ten years. Administrative exile?which required no trial and no sentencing procedure?was an ideal punishment not only for troublemakers as such, but also for political opponents of the regime.

Sound familiar? This age-old practice by which despotic regimes eliminate their critics or potential adversaries by declaring them mentally ill and locking them up in psychiatric wards for extended periods of time is a common practice in present-day China. What is particularly unnerving, however, is that this practice of making individuals disappear is happening with increasing frequency in America. Indeed, Raub?s case exposes the seedy underbelly of a governmental system that is targeting Americans ? especially military veterans ? for expressing their discontent over America?s rapid transition to a police state.

It?s no coincidence that within days of Raub being seized at his Virginia home on August 16, 2012, and forcibly held in a VA psych ward, news reports started surfacing of other veterans having similar experiences. These incidents are merely the realization of various U.S. government initiatives dating back to 2009, including one dubbed Operation Vigilant Eagle which calls for surveillance of military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be ?disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.? Under the guise of mental health treatment and with the complicity of government psychiatrists and law enforcement officials, these veterans are increasingly being portrayed as ticking time bombs in need of intervention.

One tactic being used to deal with so-called ?mentally ill suspects who also happen to be trained in modern warfare? is through the use of civil commitment laws, found in all states and employed throughout American history to not only silence but cause dissidents to disappear. For example, in 2006, NSA officials attempted to label former employee Russ Tice, who was willing to testify in Congress about the NSA?s warrantless wiretapping program, as ?mentally unbalanced? based upon two psychiatric evaluations ordered by his superiors. In 2009, NYPD Officer Adrian Schoolcraft had his home raided, and he was handcuffed to a gurney and taken into emergency custody for an alleged psychiatric episode. It was later discovered by way of an internal investigation that his superiors were retaliating against him for reporting police misconduct.

Most recently, of course, Virginia?s civil commitment law was used to justify arresting and detaining Marine Brandon Raub in a psychiatric ward. On Thursday, August 16, 2012, a swarm of local police, Secret Service and FBI agents arrived at Raub?s home, asking to speak with him about posts he had made on his Facebook page made up of song lyrics, political opinions and dialogue used in a virtual card game. In a hearing on August 20, government officials pointed to Raub?s Facebook posts as the sole reason for their concern and for his continued incarceration. Ignoring Raub?s explanations about the fact that the Facebook posts were being read out of context, Raub was sentenced to up to 30 days? further confinement in a psychiatric ward.

On August 23, Circuit Court Judge Allan Sharrett declared the government?s case to be lacking in factual allegations and ordered Raub immediately released. However, for the tens of thousands of individuals detained ? wrongfully or otherwise ? under civil commitment laws every year, regaining their freedom is nearly impossible, predicated as it is on a bureaucratic legal and judicial system. The problem, of course, is that the diagnosis of mental illness, while a legitimate concern for some Americans, has over time become a convenient means by which to penalize certain ?unacceptable? social behaviors.

Of course, this is all part of a larger trend in American governance whereby dissent is criminalized and pathologized, and dissenters are censored, silenced or declared unfit for society. Governmental authorities at all levels have made it abundantly clear that they want no one questioning their authority. And for those who do take to the streets to express their opinions and beliefs, rows of riot police, clad in jackboots, military vests, and helmets, holding batons, stun guns, assault rifles, and sometimes even grenade launchers, are there to keep them in line.
_
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead [send him mail] is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He is the author of The Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks).

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Great article. Shockingly true.

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