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Author Topic: Please post all of the completely insane COPWATCH stories here  (Read 129660 times)
charrington
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« on: July 09, 2010, 11:07:51 AM »

NDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - A complaint has been filed in federal court claiming an IMPD officer beat a pregnant woman so severely she had a miscarriage.

LaDonna Dixon says in the complaint that she was assisting a friend who had suffered a seizure and collapsed on the front lawn of her home.

   * Read the entire complaint

As she was getting her friend's medicine, the complaint says IMPD officer Scott Childers arrived.

Dixon asked Childers to give her friend the medicine, but he refused.

Childers told Dixon to go inside her house but when she did, he roughly grabbed her by her arm.

Dixon told the officer to be careful because she is pregnant. That's when she says Childers sprayed her and kicked and beat her until she blacked out.

Dixon was booked into the Marion County Adult Processing Center and that's where she lost her baby.

24-Hour News 8 has a crew talking with Dixon's attorney and we hope to have more information on this breaking story at six o’clock.

This comes just weeks after an IMPD officer was fired and another disciplined for severely beating a teenage boy.

IMPD Chief Paul Ciesielski released a statement Wednesday evening announcing that the department would investigate the allegations.

"After claims of alleged police brutality being brought to my attention today, I have begun a review process of the arrest of Ms. Ladonna Dixon on June 21, 2009 at 6132 Nelson Place. We have decided to voluntarily review this arrest and will release more information once this review is completed," the IMPD statement read.


http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/local/marion_county/federal-lawsuit:-woman-lost-baby-after-impd-beating
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bigron
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RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT 2012


« Reply #1 on: July 14, 2010, 07:43:06 AM »

Police Brutality in America

by Stephen Lendman



July 13, 2010
http://uruknet.info/?p=m67892&hd=&size=1&l=e


Across America, daily incidents occur, one of many the cold-blooded January 1, 2009 murder of Oscar Grant - unarmed, offering no resistance, thrust face-down on the ground, shot in the back, and killed, videotaped on at least four cameras for irrefutable proof. USA Today said five bystanders taped it.

His killer: Oakland, CA transit officer, Johannes Mehserle, tried for the killing, the jury told to consider four possible verdicts - innocent, second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, or involuntary manslaughter, jurors deciding the latter.

The Legal Dictionary defines it as "The act of unlawfully killing another human being unintentionally," the absence of intent distinguishing it from voluntary manslaughter. Many states don't define it or do it vaguely. Wallin & Klarich Violent Crime Attorneys say in California it carries a two - four year sentence. However, since a gun was used, Judge Robert Perry can add three to 10 additional years.

Because minority victims seldom get justice, especially against police, Mehserle may serve minimal time, then be paroled quietly when the current furor subsides.

After the verdict, it erupted on Oakland streets, hundreds turning out to protest, Bay Area indymedia.org saying:

"The actions of the Police in Oakland tonight (including dozens of arrests) show their disrespect for justice in General. Their heavy handed violence towards protestors just reinforces their total disconnect with the people of Oakland." It's as true everywhere across America, police acting like Gestapo, usually unaccountably.

Grant's family will appeal the verdict and is suing the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) for $25 million, his mother Wanda Johnson saying "My son was murdered (and) the law has not held the officer accountable." It rarely does for Black, Latino, or other minorities, no matter the injustice, civil rights lawyer John Burris, representing Grant's family in the civil suit, saying:

"The system is rarely fair when a police officer shoots an African-American male." Police brutality against them and other minorites is systemic, including beatings, torture, and cold-blooded murder, usually with impunity, justice nearly always denied.

While far from certain, the Obama administration may charge Mehserle with civil rights or hate crime violations, DOJ spokesman Alejandro Miyar saying:

"The Justice Department has been closely monitoring the state's investigation and prosecution. The Civil Rights Division, the US Attorney's Office, and the FBI have an open investigation into the fatal shooting and, at the conclusion of the state prosecution, will conduct an independent review of the facts and circumstances to determine whether the evidence warrants federal prosecution."

Systemic Police Brutality

An earlier Jones Report.com text and video account headlined, "Epidemic of Police Brutality Sweeps America," showing footage of police repeatedly tasering a student with 50,000 volts of electricity for questioning the 2004 election results at a campus meeting.

Other videotaped incidents showed:

-- a man victimized by police violence;

-- a former sheriff's deputy acquitted of voluntary manslaughter for shooting an unarmed man;

-- police repeatedly beating an old man on the head, "for the crime of intoxication;"

-- officers violently using assault rifles, tear gas, dogs, and at least one helicopter in an alleged narcotics sweep;

-- a woman tasered to death by police; and

-- a man in shock, bleeding and burned over much of his body, ordered to lie on the pavement, then tasered and shot to death while he sat dazed, the Report highlighting systemic police violence "repeated almost every day in (America), the police (getting) away with murder," beatings, and other lawless acts - poor Blacks, Latinos, and Muslims for their faith and ethnicity their usual victims.

Amnesty International (AI) on American Police Brutality

On its web site, AI says "Police brutality and use of excessive force has been one of the central themes of (AI's) campaign on human rights violations in the USA," launched in October 1998. In its "United States of America: Rights for All Index," it documented systematic patterns of abuse across America, including "police beatings, unjustified shootings and the use of dangerous restraint techniques to subdue suspects."

Yet little is done to monitor or constrain it, evidence showing that "racial and ethnic minorities were disproportionately" harmed by harassment, verbal and physical abuse, false arrests, and in the case of West African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, shot at 41 times by four New York policemen, struck 19 times and killed while he stood in the vestibule of his apartment building, unarmed and nonviolent, victimized by police brutality.

Nationwide, driving while black has been criminalized, racial profiling used for traffic stops and searches for suspected drugs or other reasons, the practice especially common in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Texas.

AI cited numerous incidents, including beatings and "questionable" shootings, usually found to be unjustified, yet cops most often absolved. Although most US police departments stipulate that officers should only use deadly force when their lives, or others, are endangered, dozens of cases show they do it indiscriminately, at most being "mildly disciplined" even if guilty of serious misconduct.

"Police shooting(s) resulting in death or injury are routinely reviewed (internally or) by local prosecutors....to see whether criminal laws (were) violated. However, few officers are criminally charged and little public information is given out if a case does not go to trial." As a result, systemic abuse stays hidden, police brutality allowed to persist with impunity.

Despite Congress passing the 1994 Police Accountability Act, incorporated into the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act to require the Attorney General to compile national data on excessive police force, Congress has consistently failed to fund it. Further, the legislation doesn't require local police agencies to keep records or submit data to the Justice Department. Nor does it criminalize police violence and excessive force as human rights violations.

ACLU Report on Racial and Ethnic Profiling

In August 2009, the report titled, "The Persistence of Racial Profiling in the United States" quoted Rep. John Conyers (D. MI) saying "Since (9/11), our nation has engaged in a policy of institutionalized racial and ethnic profiling," although, as an African-American, he knows the problem goes back generations, most recently in the "war on terrorism" against Blacks, Latinos, and Muslims for their faith, ethnicity, activism, prominence, and at times charity, a topic this writer addresses often - arrests, some violently, bogus charges, prosecutions, and imprisonments often compounding the injustice.

Post-9/11 under Bush and Obama, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies have engaged in virulent racial/ethnic profiling, what the ACLU calls "a widespread and pervasive problem throughout the United States, impacting the lives of millions of people in African American, Asian, Latino, South Asian, and Arab communities."

Evidence shows that racial minorities are systematically victimized, without cause, in public, when driving, at work, at home, in places of worship, and traveling, often violently.

A "major impediment to (prohibiting it) remains the continued unwillingness or inability of the US government to pass federal legislation (banning the practice) with binding effect on federal, state or local law enforcement."

Nor do authorities comply with the provisions of the 1994 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) that obligates all levels of government.

In addition, the Justice Department's 2003 Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies designed to ban federal officers from engaging in racial profiling is, in fact, flawed and does little to end it, because it doesn't cover "profiling based on religion, religious appearance, or national origin."

Nor does it apply to state and local law enforcement where police brutality is systemic. In addition, it specifies no enforcement mechanisms or punishments for violators, and contains a "blanket exception for national security and border integrity cases," besides being advisory and not legally binding.

As a result, it actually promotes profiling and abuse, including false arrests, beatings and killings. It's not surprising how minorities have been systematically mistreated by federal, state and local authorities, or that congressional legislation introduced to stop it never passed.

On December 13, 2007, the House and Senate introduced their versions of the End Racial Profiling Act (HR 4611 and S. 2481). Both bills were referred to committee and never enacted - making it extremely hard to nearly impossible for victims to successfully challenge abuses against them.

As a candidate, Obama promised a "Blueprint for Change" to ban racial profiling and related mistreatment, criminalizing them, but so far, no measures have been introduced or passed, showing another promise made, another broken, a systematic pattern under his leadership, across the board against the constituencies that elected him. Hopefully they'll remember next election and choose another way, a third way, both parties equally corrupted in deference to big money and systemic police brutality that serves it.

National Police Misconduct Statistics

The Injustice Everywhere.com (IE) web site compiles them, publishing them in regular reports, some for individual cities, including daily accounts. One on July 10 covers King County, WA deputy Paul Schene, captured on videotape assaulting a 15-year old girl in jail. He was tried twice, hung juries resulting each time.

On July 9, the County Prosecutor's Office dropped the charges, and won't pursue a third trial. As a result, the sheriff's department may rehire Schene, though he still faces possible disciplinary action. It's currently in arbitration, IE saying decisions nearly always favor officers, in which case he'll likely be reinstated to abuse other detainees, off camera to avoid being charged.

In early 2010, IE published an April - mid-December 2009 (8.5 months) Police Misconduct Report, from figures compiled in its National Police Misconduct Statistics Reporting Project (NPMSRP), begun earlier in March 2009, analyzing data:

"by utilizing news media reports of police misconduct to generate statistical information (to) approximate how prevalent (it) may be in the United States."

Police departments don't usually provide them, nor do courts, except for successful prosecutions, omitting confidential settlements and cases resulting in disciplinary action only, not trials. Media reports, though imperfect, are more complete because laws limit or filter information released. As a result, IE's data "should be considered as a low-end estimate of the current rate of police misconduct," as well as in individual cities covered.

Statistics compiled follow the same DOJ/FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) methodology, recording only the most serious allegation (not conviction) when multiple ones are associated with a particular incident. The findings were as follows:

-- 3,445 police misconduct reports;

-- 4,012 officers charged;

-- 261 law enforcement officials (police chiefs or sheriffs) cited;

-- 4,778 alleged victims;

-- 258 fatalities reported;

-- an average of 15.05 daily incidents or one every 96 minutes;

-- nearly $200 million in related civil litigation expense, excluding legal fees and court costs;

-- 980.64 per 100,000 officers charged;

-- one of every 266 officers accused of a violent crime;

-- one of every 1,875 charged with homocide;

-- one of every 947 accused of sexual assault;

-- 33% of police officers charged were convicted, not necessarily justly for the offense committed;

-- 64% of officers convicted were imprisoned, not necessarily as long as justified;

-- those sentenced served an average 14 months, far less than citizens for the same crime;

-- misconduct by category included 18.1% for non-firearm related excessive force; 11.9% for sexual misconduct; and 8.9% for fraud or theft;

-- analyzing reports by last reported status showed 45.9% affected officers adversely, including 14% internally disciplined and 31.9% criminally charged; of the latter, 32.5% were convicted "for a 10.4% total criminal conviction rate for alleged misconduct incidents; and

-- 27% resulted in civil lawsuits, 34.3% favoring victims.

In addition, data were compiled for states, cities and counties, excluding unavailable federal statistics as well as local omissions, especially in some states. Various offenses included:

-- accountability: evidence of coverups, lax discipline, and other failures to adhere to official policies or processes;

-- animal cruelty, harming them by unnecessary shooting, inappropriate KP unit training, or other mistreatment;

-- assault: "unwarranted violence" off-duty, excluding murder;

-- auto incidents involving recklessness, negligence, and other violations of official policies;

-- brutality, involving excessive physical force on-duty, excluding firearms or tasers;

-- civil rights, including unconstitutional civil liberties violations such as lawless peaceful protest disruptions;

-- sexual misconduct, including rape, sexual assault, sexual battery, wrongfully eliciting sex, harassment, coercion, prostitution, sex on duty, incest, and molestation;

-- theft or fraud, including robbery, shoplifting, extortion or bribery;

-- shooting: gun-related incidents both on and off-duty, including self-harm;

-- taser: excessive force, including usage not according to guidelines, resulting in excessive injury or death; also, improper taser use may be recorded as "brutality;"

-- color of law, including incidents involving misuse of authority such as bribery, soliciting favors, extortion by threat of arrest, or using badges to avoid arrest;

-- perjury, including false testimony, dishonesty during investigations, and falsifying charging papers or warrants; and

-- raids, including misconduct during warranted or warrantless operations or searches, wrong address raids, mistaken ones, use of no-knock ones when warrants require notification, or mistreatment during executions.

Misconduct status stages go from allegations to investigations, lawsuits, charges, trials, judgments, disciplinary measures, terminations, convictions, and sentences.

IE compiles data regularly, prepares daily and quarterly reports, and henceforth an annual one each January the following year. It explains that its statistics:

"should only be used (as) a very basic and general view of the extent of police misconduct. It is by no means an accurate gauge that truly represents the exact extent (of its extensiveness) since it relies on the information voluntarily gathered and/or released to the media, not (first-hand) by independent monitors who investigate complaints.....because no such agency exists for any law enforcement agency...."

Detailed quarterly and annual reports are produced, not monthly ones considered a less accurate "depiction of the overall extent of police misconduct...." Daily reports cover a sampling of individual incidents. Overall, IE provides a valuable reading of systemic police misconduct, though capturing only a snapshot of the full problem - widespread, abusive, violent, often with impunity, and when officers are held accountable, imposed discipline is usually mild, prison sentences rare and short-term, victims cheated by a criminally unjust system, favoring power over people, no matter the offense.

Final Comments

In December 2007, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination published a report titled, "In the Shadows of the War on Terror: Persistent Police Brutality and Abuse of People of Color in the United States," saying:

"Since this Committee's 2001 review of the US, during which it expressed concern regarding incidents of police brutality and deaths in custody at the hands of US law enforcement officers, there have been dramatic increases in law enforcement powers in the name of waging the "war on terror (resulting in) the use of excessive force against people of color....(It's not only continued post-9/11), but has worsened in both practice and severity" - a NAACP representative saying it's "the worst I've seen in 50 years."

On April 4, 2007, Ryan Gallagher, writing for Medill Reports, produced by Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, headlined, "Study: Police abuse goes unpunished," saying:

From 2002 - 2004, over "10,000 complaints of police abuse were filed with Chicago police....but only 19 resulted in meaningful disciplinary action, a new study asserts." According to Gerald Frazier, president of Citizens Alert, it reflects "not only the appearance of influence and cover-up," but clear evidence that city residents are being abused, not protected, despite the department's official motto being "We Serve and Protect."

Most disturbing is that the Chicago pattern reflects what's happening across America, people of color like Oscar Grant systematically abused, in his case murdered in cold blood, what no criminal or civil actions can undo.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.




 
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rphope
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« Reply #2 on: July 14, 2010, 05:00:19 PM »

The Department of Environmental Conservation meeting was an open forum allowing citizens and baymen alike the ability to voice their opinion on the proposed ban against lobster fishing off the shores of both the Long Island Sound and Southern New England. As you can see from video here citizens voiced frustration against this ruling, for which if passed will have devastating affects on their livelihood.

However, Long Island Lobstermen who attended the hearing instead found themselves surrounded by DEC armed guards, in an apparent attempt to intimidate those attending not to speak out against the proposal.

A reporter at the meeting interviewed the attendees and here is what they had to say:
“The DEC tries to control us by intimidation, said fisherman Bob Zickmund. “They have guys showing up with guns.”

According to Zickmund, this is an ongoing issue. “I’ve been doing this for 35 years,” Zickmund said. “The DEC treats us like criminals.”
Zickmund said that the intimidation does not end in the board room: “If you say something they don’t like at a meeting, you can expect them to show up at your boat the next day – guns and all. They’ll try to find any reason to ticket you. It’s harassment.”


Now, where does it state on the Department of Environmental Conservation website that the agencies workers, in an effort to save the environment, shall control and criminalize citizens with the use of well known intimidation techniques?

READ MORE AND VIEW VIDEO HERE: http://morichesdaily.com/news/dec-armed-guards-intimidate-attendees-public-hearing/

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H0llyw00d
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« Reply #3 on: July 14, 2010, 05:14:46 PM »

Next meeting, you guys bring your guns along as well Wink
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charrington
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« Reply #4 on: July 17, 2010, 11:44:46 PM »




A man was shot and killed Saturday in Oakland, California, during a confrontation with Bay Area Rapid Transit officers and Oakland police, police spokesman Jeff Thomason said.
The incident occurred after Oakland police received a call about 8:15 a.m. (11:15 a.m. ET) of an armed man walking toward the Fruitvale BART station, according to Thomason. Police notified BART officers, who also responded.

BART officers were the first to reach the suspect, described as a Hispanic male between 30 and 40 years old, Thomason said. The BART officers chased the man from the station to the street, where Oakland police joined in the pursuit over four blocks in the Fruitvale area.
Thomason said Oakland police tried to Taser the man twice, but to no effect. The man, armed with two knives, then attempted to charge at one of the officers, a police statement said.
Multiple officers opened fire, killing him, the statement said.
The man has not yet been identified, Thomason said.
The shooting is under investigation by the Oakland police homicide unit, internal affairs and the Alameda County district attorney.

"Anytime there is a loss of life, it is a matter of great concern and sadness for us all," Oakland Mayor Ronald Dellums said in a statement. "It is extremely important that we as a community continue to work together in order to provide a safe and secure environment. Therefore, a thorough investigation of the circumstances surrounding this death has begun."
BART police have also opened a separate, parallel investigation.
The incident comes more than a week after a former BART police officer was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 shooting death of an unarmed black man on a train platform at the Fruitvale station.

The January 1, 2009, shooting of 22-year-old Oscar Grant was captured on a bystander's cell-phone video camera. The video was widely circulated on the Internet and on news broadcasts, and it spurred several protests in and around Oakland.

The video showed former officer Johannes Mehserle pulling his gun and fatally shooting Grant in the back as another officer knelt on the unarmed man.
Mehserle and other Bay Area Rapid Transit police had been called to the Fruitvale station after passengers complained about fights on a train. Officers pulled several men, including Grant, off the train when it arrived at Fruitvale.


http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/17/oakland-police-officers-involved-in-fatal-shooting/
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charrington
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« Reply #5 on: July 17, 2010, 11:48:37 PM »

Gang members are coming home with military training
[/size]


A soldier flashes Latin King signs.


Being in a street gang is now forbidden for members of the U.S. armed forces. But you might not guess that if you were to visit U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to soldiers who have recently served there.

Jeffrey Stoleson, a Wisconsin corrections official, returned from Iraq in January with photos of gang graffiti on armored vehicles, latrines and buildings. Stoleson, a sergeant with a National Guard unit, was there for nine months to help the Army set up a prison facility outside Baghdad.


Gangs in War Zones

"I saw Maniac Latin Disciples graffiti out of Chicago," Stoleson said, adding that there was a lot of graffiti for Texas and California gangs, as well as Mexican drug cartels.

A Chicago Police officer -- who retired from the regular Army and was recently on a tour of Afghanistan in the Army Reserve -- said Bagram Air Base was covered with Chicago gang graffiti, everything from the Gangster Disciples' pitchfork to the Latin Kings' crown.

"It seems bigger now," said the officer, who previously served a tour in Iraq, where he also saw gang graffiti.

Now back in Chicago, the officer said he has arrested high-level gang members who have served in the military and kept the "Infantryman's bible" -- called the FM 7-8 -- in their homes. The book describes how to run for cover, fire a weapon tactically and do the "three- to five-second rushes" seen in war movies.

"It's scary," he said.

In 2006, Stoleson saw similar graffiti in Iraq during another tour of duty there. That year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on gangs in the military -- and published several of Stoleson's photos of gang graffiti.

Congress eventually banned members of the military from belonging to street gangs. And last November, the Defense Department added the ban to its rules.

Spokesmen for the Army and Defense Department said they could not provide figures on how many soldiers have been thrown out of the military or otherwise disciplined as a result of gang membership.

Stoleson, who stressed he was not speaking for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections or the Army, said it appears the problem is worse than ever. He warned that soldiers who return to gang life back home are especially dangerous because they know military tactics that they can use against the police and the public -- as a Marine did in 2005 when he killed a police officer and wounded three others in a California ambush.

"Gang members are coming home now with one or two tours," he said. "Some were on the field of battle."

Civilian contractors in Iraq are part of the gang problem overseas, Stoleson said. He said he was involved in destroying a large quantity of drugs confiscated from U.S. contractors in Iraq.

Stoleson, who is a member of the International Latino Gang Investigators Association, said some police departments in California are now tracking whether gang members were in the military.

A second Chicago Police officer, who searches homes for drugs and guns, said gang members targeted by his team are sometimes current or former members of the armed forces. That becomes part of the team's pre-raid briefings because the suspect is an increased safety risk with military training, the officer said.

"We recently arrested a guy in the reserves for crack [cocaine]," the officer said. "He was a gang-banger."

Stoleson said that, on his previous tour in Iraq, he was friends with a soldier who associated with the Maniac Latin Disciples when he grew up in Chicago.

"We talked a lot about it. He said the military was the only way he could break free," Stoleson said.

But those aren't the people Stoleson worries about.

"My problem is the guys who go into the military to continue the lifestyle," he said.

T.J. Leyden, a former white supremacist, was one of those guys. He said he recruited fellow members of the Hammerskin Nation into the Marines when he was in the corps in the late 1980s and early 1990s and sent stolen Kevlar body armor and helmets to fellow skinheads back home.

"I wore white supremacist T-shirts, and I hung a swastika flag out of my barracks," said Leyden, who was kicked out of the Marines for drinking and fighting. "I hated America. The only reason I was a Marine was because they were the baddest of the bad."

Leyden, who lives in Utah now, said he quit the white-supremacy movement in 1996 because he was worried "my sons were becoming me."

He began working against the movement and founded Straight Talk Consulting, giving lectures to students and advising the FBI, the National Guard and other organizations about gangs in the military.

Leyden said his informants have told him that skinheads and street gangs are still entrenched in both the regular military and the National Guard.

"The military needs to wake up," he said.


http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/2506292,CST-NWS-graffiti18.article#
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charrington
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« Reply #6 on: July 19, 2010, 08:27:39 PM »

Chicago's political class can't admit to losing control. They dare not even hint at it, particularly the mayor, what with his election coming up and his poll numbers tanking.

But just about every cop in the city must feel it, with the murder Sunday of veteran Chicago police Officer Michael Bailey outside his home. As do some people in the neighborhoods.

"The man was in uniform," said Marcus Burks, 35, a bricklayer and a father who was one of the first to run to Bailey after he'd been killed in the 7400 block of South Evans Avenue.

"A Chicago police officer gets shot to death outside his house, he's in full uniform, and he gets killed because some thugs want to rob his car on Sunday morning?" Burks asked me.

Get the Chicago Tribune delivered to your home for only $1 a week >>

Detectives canvassed the neighborhood in the heat. And people sat out on their porches, watching, some fanning themselves in the shade.

"I saw him on the ground," Burks said. "You couldn't mistake him being the police. And still they try to rob him? They shoot him down? Tell me what happened to this city? Just think about that."

Bailey, 62, had just spent the night guarding Mayor Richard Daley's home.

Bailey hadn't been running through some night alley after felons or doing the kinds of things that get cops killed. It was a hot sunny morning, and he had a spray bottle of Windex in his hand.

He'd been polishing the windows of his new car, a black Buick, a gift to himself for his retirement that was supposed to take place in a couple of weeks.

Neighbors said he polished the windows of that new car every morning, after he'd spend the night guarding the mayor's house.

So his attackers most likely confronted him knowing he was a cop.

And now he's the third Chicago police officer killed in the last couple of months. On May 19, Officer Thomas Wortham was shot to death outside his home in the Chatham neighborhood, as thugs tried to steal his motorcycle. And on July 7, in the parking lot of a police facility near 61st Street and Racine Avenue, Officer Thor Soderberg, also in uniform, was killed with his own gun after a struggle with an attacker.

"This has just been a terrible year, and I don't remember anything this bad, maybe if you go back to the early '70s when we came on and we were losing, what, maybe 10 guys a year? And that was before bulletproof vests," former Chicago police Superintendent Phil Cline said.

We were in the parking lot of police headquarters at 35th Street and Michigan Avenue. Cline had just finished speaking to a group of a couple of hundred police and their families from across Illinois, part of a bike-athon that would take them to the Gold Star Memorial, with the names of fallen police on the wall.

I asked Cline and other former and current officers gathered there what had changed, if anything, with Bailey's slaying. They all said the same thing: Bailey was in uniform. And still they tried to rob him.

There was a time when the sight of the uniform alone would stop them. Not now. And that is transformation.

"I think what you're seeing is that the gangbangers have lost their fear of the police — and that's not a good thing," Cline said. "The balance we always wanted was that the good citizens in the neighborhood to like the police, the gangbangers to fear us. Evidently, we've lost that.

"And that's something the department is going to have to work on, to take back the street from these gangs. The city is going to have to bite the bullet and hire more police."

But the mayor and his rubber-stamp council have spent all the money. There is no money. They spent it on deals for the guys who know guys who got their beaks wet.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of deals went to the cronies. And now there's no money left to hire cops.

Police numbers are down. Cops are retiring at unprecedented rates. And there aren't enough young officers going through the academy to take their place. That puts even greater stress on sergeants and commanders.

Meanwhile, the mayor has a problem, and it's all about control. A new Tribune poll released Sunday shows that 53 percent of Chicago voters don't want Daley re-elected.

Sixty-eight percent disapprove of his handling of government corruption, with 13 percent offering no opinion. Figure that there are enough worried government workers in the 13 percent to make that 68 percent even greater.

And 54 percent of voters disapprove of how he's handling crime, with 13 percent offering no opinion, so figure that 54 percent is higher than stated.

For almost 20 years, voters have shrugged off the corruption, figuring it was a price to pay for order. But voters finally understand that the cost of corruption has taken from funds available for public safety.

Politics and policing are a lot about public perception. And here's the one folks will have as they begin the work week on Monday: A veteran police officer in uniform, who spent the night guarding the mayor's house, shot to death outside his own home on Sunday morning, confronted by robbers while polishing his car, just weeks away from retirement.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-slain-officer-bike-ride-020100719,0,2059109.column
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charrington
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« Reply #7 on: July 20, 2010, 09:48:35 AM »

They called me a child pornographer
I took some photos of my kids naked on a camping trip. A drugstore employee called the police -- and my family's life became a living hell.

Shortly before Thanksgiving 2004, I took my three kids camping in Mistletoe State Park near Augusta, Ga., with my best friend and his two kids. After six years in Savannah, my family was about to move to France for my wife's new job as an administrator for an American company. We had all been camping together before and figured the trip would be a great getaway from all of the packing, painting and stresses of moving, and would allow the kids to be together for one last time. Our wives decided to stay home to organize the packing and spend some quiet time together to say goodbye.

For us, camping has always been a back-to-basics experience. We pack in all food and supplies to our remote site and take out trash and whatever is not consumed. For toilets, we dig holes with entrenching shovels and cover our traces. We teach our kids respect and responsibility in the forest. And we teach them to have a good time.

During the three-day weekend trip, we fished and cooked kielbasa, hot dogs and marshmallows over an open fire. We pitched our tents near the tip of a small peninsula jutting into Clarks Hill Lake, where red clay beaches rimmed our site. We scoured the water's edge for mussel shells and arrowheads and skipped sleek stones on the water. The days were clear and cool, with high blue skies and wisps of moving clouds. Although the nights were cold, the weekend was as perfect as we could have hoped for.

The kids ran from one thing to the next with abandon, one minute scavenging wood for a fire, and the next returning breathlessly to tell us they had spotted a deer. At night, the tall pines sawed in the wind as my friend, whom I'll refer to as Rusty, melted aluminum cans in the campfire using a tin can as a crucible. His crude alchemy and the sudden sense of the world as laboratory lighted our imaginations as he poured the quicksilver-like liquid over the rocks ringing the fire. The kids grew excited and impatient, studying the metal-coated rocks and waiting for the aluminum to cool into odd-shaped medallions they salvaged as mementos.

Later, after the kids had gone to bed in their tent and the cold descended, Rusty and I sat in our camp chairs, having a beer and warming our boots a little too close to the fire. I still wear that pair of Wolverines with the half-melted soles. And every time I put them on, I think of what happened when we returned from that weekend and how it changed all of our lives.

As usual during the trip, we took several photos. Because I forgot my digital camera, I bought a disposable camera at a gas station on the way to the campground. I took pictures of the kids using sticks to beat on old bottles and cans and logs as musical instruments. I took a few of my youngest daughter, Eliza, then age 3, skinny-dipping in the lake, and my son, Noah, then age 8, swimming in the lake in his underwear, and another of Noah naked, hamming it up while using a long stick to hold his underwear over the fire to dry. Finally, I took a photo of everyone, as was our camping tradition, peeing on the ashes of the fire to put it out for the last time. We also let the kids take photos of their own.

When we returned on Sunday, I forgot the throwaway camera and Rusty found it in his car. He gave it to his wife, whom I'll call Janet, to get developed, and she dropped it off the next day with two other rolls of film at a local Eckerd drugstore. On Tuesday, when she returned to pick up the film, she was approached by two officers from the Savannah Police Department. They told her they had been called by Eckerd due to "questionable photos."

One officer told Janet "there were pictures of little kids running around with no clothes on, pictures of minors drinking alcohol," she recounted for me in an e-mail. "I asked to see the pictures and was told I couldn't. I explained there must be a mistake. I was kind of laughing, you know, 'Come on guys. There must be an explanation. This is crazy. Let me see the pictures.' The officer told me that he personally did not find [the photos] offensive and that he had camped himself as a kid and knows what goes on." But the officer also told Janet that "because Eckerd's had called them and that because there were pictures of children naked, genitalia and alcohol, they would have to investigate."

Janet asked the photo lab clerk what was on the photos and the clerk "replied very seriously that they were bad, that there was one that looked like a child's head had been cut off, one with children drinking beer and pictures of naked kids." As she drove to her house, Janet said, "I was in shock and felt sick to the pit of my stomach and was trying to process all of it." She called my wife, who was driving home, and explained what had happened. Sensing how bad this might become, my wife pulled her car to the side of the road and fought the urge to throw up.

Neither my wife nor I, Rusty nor Janet has a criminal record of any sort. Yet over the next several weeks, the Savannah Police Department and the Department of Family and Child Services (DFCS) investigated us for "child pornography" and then "sexual exploitation of a minor." We suffered the embarrassment of having DFCS interview our family, friends, employers and our children's teachers, asking them whether we were suitable parents and what kind of relationship we had with our kids.

During that time, my wife and I, our children and friends, lived in a kind of suspended animation, a limbo of unreality where our privacy was invaded and we were stripped of our sense of dignity and seemingly our rights. To be accused unjustly of any crime is a terrible thing. But to be accused of using your own children for pornographic purposes or sexual exploitation bears a special taint because no matter how highly people think of you, they don't know you in your most intimate moments, which forever leaves you open to suspicion.

Being investigated for child pornography is so grave that people might assume it has to be based in fact. And yet I would learn, as so many other horrified parents have, that it can begin simply by somebody picking up the phone.

"It's not going to be a big deal," Rusty told my wife, not long after we all heard the news. But after Rusty's initial visit to the police station to explain the photos to the officers, our optimism began to wane. "It was evident the police did not view us as innocent until proven guilty," Rusty told me in a recent e-mail. "I sought out the officer in charge of the unit that investigates these 'crimes,' and when he finally agreed to meet with me he was rude, unprofessional, and very accusatory before hearing from anyone involved."

The police, however, didn't file any charges against us. But they had digitized six of the photos and sent copies to DFCS for further investigation, which is standard practice in such cases. The officers wouldn't let Rusty see any of the photos in the station, and so we had no idea what was on them, as we had allowed the kids to take photos of their own. One of the photos, an officer said, showed a child drinking beer.

After our case was turned over to DFCS, we began what seemed like an excruciatingly long period of waiting to hear what would come next. As the days ticked by, Janet told me, "It was impossible for me to function, concentrate or focus on work. I couldn't eat, felt sick and scared." My wife and I began to question even our routine judgment because of a sudden awareness of being observed by some unseen entity that seemed everywhere and nowhere at once. A hug or a quick goodnight kiss with our little girls and boy suddenly seemed questionable. Were my hands in the wrong place? Did that kiss on the corner of the lips of my 3-year-old look more than merely innocent to someone? A pat on the bum as our kids ran past suddenly seemed dangerous through our second-guessing, suddenly all-critical eye.

Each intimate moment entailed a profound searching, an almost paralytic invasion of our deepest privacy. We began to observe ourselves until each moment became one long scrutiny and the pressure it created in our daily lives grew and grew. We feared that if we were found guilty, our children would be taken away and put in a foster home. We worried about my wife's new job in France because we might have to stay in the U.S. to fight any charges. Everything was pure assumption because DFCS didn't communicate at all and so we were left to imagine the worst.

Our friend Rusty stood to lose his prominent job in government, which he had held for years, simply from the appearances of the investigation. "I waited in constant anxiety of the wildfire of whispers about my arrest for being a child pornographer, molester or worse," he said. "It was terrifying."

At this point, our children, who were already stressed by the upcoming move and leaving their schools and friends, were unaware of what was happening. Like Janet and Rusty, we tried to keep it that way by not discussing the case around them. But our kids knew by our blank stares and depressed demeanor that something was seriously wrong. As the pressure grew, my wife and I began to lose our tempers more often over small, simple things. I would explode when my daughter spilled a glass of Juicy Juice at the dinner table or overreact and deny everything when the kids would ask us if there was something wrong. And then I would be overcome with guilt and shame at my inability to take control of what was happening to us.

At night, my wife and I lay side by side in bed in the darkness, staring up into the ceiling, unable any longer to find words in the face of the vast, voidlike possibility of losing our children based on pure accusation. It was a secret too painful to keep but impossible to talk about to anyone else. We felt ashamed simply by association with the charge. As a journalist, I have lived for weeks in terrible conditions in war refugee camps and been under fire on the battlefield. But those weeks of waiting and wondering what would happen to our family were by far the most stressful I have ever experienced.

On the advice of my wife's mother, a former Florida public utilities commissioner, we contacted Mills Fleming, a local lawyer who was also a childhood friend of my wife. We needed expert help navigating the accusations. He told us that when he contacted the Office of Child Protection at the Chatham Department of Family and Children Services, the agency was surprised and annoyed that we had retained a lawyer. We were shocked it wasn't routine.

But that was the least of his revelations. We soon discovered that we had no right to retain a lawyer on our children's behalf. DFCS would become protector of our children and judge as to the validity of the charges against us. The presumption of innocence until proven guilty had been turned on its head: The burden had been placed on us, not the legal system, to prove our innocence. Our most basic right and instinct as parents -- to protect our children -- had been usurped by a single accusation.

Over the next few weeks, our only communication with DFCS was through Mills. He told us the agency would call on Thanksgiving and announce what they were going to do about our case. We had planned to leave for the long weekend but stayed home and waited for word from DFCS. They never called.

Afterward, I spent the days taking the kids off to school and preparing the house, climbing up nearly three stories on a ladder to paint. At times I became so lost in an absorbing daydream of sorting through the events that I almost stepped right off the ladder. Terrified at my complete lack of awareness, I would force myself to focus. I would dip my brush into the paint and drift off into the possibility of what might happen if a police officer or sheriff's deputy appeared at our front door with papers to take our children. As I stroked the brush along the boards, I became lost in intricate, heated conversations that led to arguments that devolved into helpless anger. We had no understanding of the process and the DFCS bureaucracy seemed some large, amorphous beast threatening us from just beyond our view.

I began to feel dangerously angry. When my anger and fear were such that I was having difficulty coping, I called my brother in North Carolina, who knew nothing about the charges. He is two years older than I am and we have always been close. I thought he might help me put things into some sort of perspective. I wanted to call him numerous times but I hesitated because of my shame. I wanted to solve this on my own.

But now I felt I was starting to come apart and feared I might do something that could wind me up in jail. I had no choice but to call. But he wasn't home and when his answering machine came on, the sudden realization of what was happening to me, and the reason I was reaching out to him, caused me to simply break down and cry. I hung up without leaving a message and he told me later that from the crying on the phone, he was certain someone close to us had died.

As Christmas approached, our lawyer felt that the DFCS investigation into sexual exploitation of a minor was running aground because the agency began airing the possibility of charging us with a lesser crime. Now they wanted to hit us with "endangerment of a child," the result of letting the kids be near an open campfire. The suggestion seemed absurd, given that nearly every weekend of the year, parents across the country go camping with their children and roast marshmallows over an open fire. My wife, our friends and I felt that DFCS was on a fishing expedition, but one with potentially dangerous consequences.

The agency had requested to interview our children at the Childrens Advocacy Center, a safe haven used for questioning children who have been sexually or physically abused, or have witnessed violence. But we resisted because we were not allowed to have a lawyer present and we had heard horror stories from teachers who had witnessed sessions of children being fed leading questions and being directed what to answer by caseworkers. We requested that any interviews be taped. DFCS relented and switched the meeting to the Office of Child Protection.

The change in venue and charge against us was seen by our lawyer as a stand-down. He felt DFCS realized it had a weak case and the interviews were essentially a procedural hoop the caseworker had to jump through to satisfy bureaucratic demands in order to exit the case. I was angry at what appeared to be an absurd game with our lives. But Mills told me I had to get a grip because my anger could undermine our case. Although I heard him, acting accordingly was another matter.

Finally one weekday afternoon, my wife and I, our friends and our kids convened at the Office of Child Protection of DFCS to be interviewed. We had still not been charged with anything and the investigation remained open-ended. When I picked the kids up from school, I explained on the drive back where we were going and why. I struggled because while I wanted them to know everything that was stake, I didn't want to frighten them. They were full of questions. They wanted to know who these people were, why they wanted to talk about our camping trip and what kind of questions they would ask. The questions were the same ones I had myself and yet hearing the children pose them brought back all the absurdity of the situation and my anger quickly surfaced. I blurted out, "I don't know! I don't know! But these people can take you away from us!"

"They can take us away?" one of them asked.

"I don't know!" I yelled. "I don't know anything!" And when I looked in the rearview mirror I could see tears running down their faces as they began to cry.

The Office of Child Protection was housed in a new building, recently relocated from downtown Savannah into a poor neighborhood. Directly across the street was Hitch Village, one of the city's most notorious housing projects in a city that in several recent years has been ranked among the most dangerous metropolitan areas in the country. As we stepped into the elevator -- all dressed in our best, all combed and neat because we knew now how much appearances mattered -- our families suddenly seemed so vulnerable.

The waiting room was neat and sterile and empty except for us. No window. No attendant. No one to tell us what to do or expect. We weren't even sure if we were in the right place. But after a moment we decided to sit in the chairs that lined the walls, a surveillance camera with its wide-angle lens staring down on us. Magnetic strip readers were mounted beside each door along the hallways and from time to time someone would emerge from one door, slide their card through a reader on another and quickly disappear into it. I was struggling to find some calm and balance, but I didn't trust anyone's judgment anymore and was seething at this moment so lacking in logic.

When our caseworker, Patricia Oney, finally appeared, the amorphous bureaucracy that for weeks had haunted us suddenly had a face. That she appeared gentle with the kids and intelligent and caring gave me a small ray of hope. She explained that we would go one at a time, beginning with the kids, and she and our 8-year-old daughter, Sophie, Noah's twin, disappeared into the maze of cubicles hidden behind the card-reading doors. As we were soon to learn ourselves, the interviews were not recorded on video or tape.

Sophie has a keen memory for details and when she returned, and Noah went in, she recounted the questions that had been posed. They ranged from whether she could distinguish between "good touch" and "bad touch" to whether, after the kids went to bed while camping, the fathers made sounds outside the tent that, in the words of my daughter, "sounded like things they shouldn't do."

When our son returned, he didn't want to talk about what happened except to question why he was being asked about good touching and bad touching. One after another the kids went in. Eliza, our 3-year-old, has wispy, bright-blond hair. As she disappeared behind the door, I couldn't help wondering what it was they might ask her and, given what had happened so far, how it might be construed. We sat in the waiting room, trying to occupy the remaining kids while waiting. There was a gravity to the moment that the children were aware of and everyone was mostly quiet. As each of the kids reappeared from their interviews, they seemed relieved.

When my turn came, I followed Oney back to a cubicle where an assistant sat with pad in hand. As we sat down and began to talk, the assistant seemed to take notes. But as it went along, I noticed she hardly wrote anything. Though I was tempted to call her on it because it seemed absurd that this might become the official record, I didn't want to antagonize them and remembered the lawyer's intuition that DFCS was looking for a way out. But I was thinking about how accurately she had noted what the children had said.

Oney's main concern seemed not to be with the photos or with our behavior as parents, but rather if I had any questions about what had happened and about the process as a whole. Although I had nothing but questions, I refrained from asking them. I wanted to put the camping trip in context. Because the police had only sent six photos to DFCS, and not the rest of the roll, Oney had never gotten the full story.

Also, by now, I had seen all of the photos, including the six in question, as the police had allowed Rusty to take them home with him. There were explanations for each one. The photo of a child whose head had been "cut off" was simply one where a child's head fell outside the border. The photo of a child drinking beer was actually one of Rusty's daughter carrying a broken beer bottle she had found and planned to put into her makeshift xylophone.

I began explaining to Oney that by camping, our aim was to take our kids out of their normal routine and to teach them to appreciate not only nature but the luxuries our daily life afforded. As I told her that we dug holes for latrines and covered our traces, Oney, who said she had never been camping, seemed genuinely surprised. When she asked me about the danger of my son drying his wet pants with a stick over an open fire, I explained that when I took the picture, I was no more than a few feet away and he was safe.

As I felt my anger rising, I told her I couldn't believe anybody would find a photograph of a 3-year-old making her way into a lake to skinny-dip titillating. I had wiped my daughter's bottom thousands of times, and for me that photo was nothing more than trying to capture a fond memory. I acknowledged the difficulty and necessity of her job, but explained that for me this was clearly a case of the system gone astray, and I was angry that it had gone as far as it had.

Oney responded by asking for the names of friends, family, employers, teachers and any others she might interview to discern what type of people and parents we were. We decided it was best to call everyone in advance so they would know to expect a call. I watched my wife break down and cry on the phone with one of our children's teachers, ashamed at having to explain why DFCS would be calling.

Janet felt the same way. "I was so embarrassed having to tell [my youngest daughter's] teacher," she wrote. "I was the room mother for the class, did lots of things with all the kids and was very involved at school." "Can you imagine telling your boss, 'I'm being investigated for child pornography and child endangerment?'" Rusty wrote. "This was incredibly embarrassing and increased my fears this would get out beyond our control."

Oney had told me she would be paying a visit to our house. Our lawyer said she could look anywhere -- in our drawers, closets, attic -- without a warrant or without specifically stating what she was looking for. So before she came, we scoured the house top to bottom, looking for anything that might arouse her suspicion or interest.

On the mantel in our living room was a handmade book of photos done by a friend who is a professional photographer. Besides mundane photos of the kids, it contained a few of my wife in the nude when she was several months pregnant with Eliza. We hid it. I scanned the book titles on the shelves, never having thought until now of their having questionable contents. On the refrigerator, we had 1950s-style magnets with humorous sketches of a man holding up a mug and saying, "Beer: Makes you see double and feel single," and another of a man holding up a condom and saying, "I'm just two people short of a minage à trois." They had been given to us years before as a gag gift from a friend. We hid them. We realized we no idea what could be deemed unfit. My wife was born in Haiti and she had a beaded voodoo flag hanging up in our room. I took it down.

Janet and Rusty went through the same nerve-racking process. On the day Oney was to show up at their house, Janet noticed her neighbor's 3-year-old son playing naked on the swing set in their yard. Janet was so paranoid that Oney would show up right then "that I panicked, went to the neighbor, and told her that I was having a visit from DFCS and could she please remove her naked son from my yard. I was upset that I was put in the situation that I had to tell her."

My wife and I decided, given my anger at the situation, it was best that I not be there during our home visit. So I drove around the neighborhood and sat in the car until Oney left. In the end, she didn't even search the house. She told my wife the investigation was closed, that the case against us was unsubstantiated and no further action would be taken. My wife said Oney seemed apologetic but offered no apology. The same scenario was played out at Janet and Rusty's house. Despite the fact that the case was unsubstantiated, a record of the accusation and ensuing investigation will be kept on file for three years -- in case, we were told by our lawyer, other complaints should be filed against us. Our children's records will show the incident until they are 21 years old.

Shortly after our case ended, we moved to France and I slipped into a depression. Perhaps it was something akin to the helplessness that victims feel. Or perhaps it resulted from suddenly being released from the constant and intense pressures of moving, combined with the fear and anger we had been feeling for so long. But I felt violated and exposed and vulnerable. In the mornings, we would awake and prepare our children and then hurry them to school. And on many days when I returned home, instead of getting to work writing I would go into the bathroom, sit on the toilet and cry uncontrollably.

For months, I felt as though I was moving almost unconsciously through daily life, numb to the world and yet overly sensitive to everything. Finally one day, six months later, unable to bear the sense of helplessness and unjustified shame about what happened to us, I sat down at the computer and began to write about it. And I began to feel something shift inside me, a subtle but distinct change from a sense of powerlessness to taking back some sort of control of our lives. I wrote in a fury, and when I sent the story to my wife, she sat in her office and cried. I sent it to our friends who had gone through this with us. Although seven months had passed, they still had not come to terms with what had happened. Rusty's boss had been understanding, but they said their children still talked about it in the most unexpected moments. "My youngest daughter will say, 'Why did they think that, Mommy?'" Janet said. "'Why did they think we were drinking beer and doing things wrong?'"

I set out to answer those kinds of question myself. As I did, I discovered there are simply no uniform standards for police officers, teachers, childcare workers -- or photo lab employees -- to tell lewd and illegal photos from harmless family pictures.

Following passage of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, established in 1974, states established laws that required police, lawyers, and social and medical personnel to make "good faith" reports of perceived child abuse or neglect. It is an important law, having arisen out of the fact that one in 10 children brought to hospital emergency rooms was a victim of physical abuse. But the law, under which child pornography falls, contains no provision for training personnel to identify abuse or pornographic photos. As a result, false and damning allegations have risen by the thousands in the past three decades. In fact, in most states it's a misdemeanor for law enforcement officers and health providers not to report.

In Georgia, state law defines sexual exploitation of a minor, which includes pornography, as "knowingly to employ, use, persuade, induce, entice, or coerce any minor to engage in ... any sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing any visual medium depicting such conduct." Yes, no charges were filed against us. But that somebody could interpret our camping photos as knowingly pornographic, and cause the state to investigate us for intending to exploit our children, was what was so agonizing.

Dr. Douglas Besharov, a child abuse expert at the Maryland School of Public Affairs, and the first director of the U.S. National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, estimates that out of the nearly 3 million child abuse reports made every year, seven in 10 of them are without merit. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, nearly 60 percent of child abuse or neglect reports are "unsubstantiated." While there are no separate statistics concerning child pornography, there have been dozens of cases similar to ours documented in recent years.

For instance, in Dallas in 2003, as the result of a complaint by an Eckerd drugstore employee, a 33-year-old woman was charged with "sexual performance of a child," a second-degree felony punishable by 20 years in prison, based on a picture of her breast-feeding her 1-year-old son. Although the district attorney dropped the charges in the case, the parents had to fight for weeks to get their two children back from the Dallas County Child Protective Services.

I realize no one would argue with sincere efforts to protect children from harm. As a parent, I know all too well the real dangers our kids face on a daily basis and I applaud any efforts to make their world a safer place. But our experience underscores the harm that is being inflicted on children and parents by investigations based on uninformed definitions of pornography or abuse.

"If we get down to the bottom line, there is no clear-cut definition," said Dean Tong, who wrote "Elusive Innocence: Survival Guide for the Falsely Accused," after being jailed and then spending 10 years and $150,000 to clear himself of abusing his young daughter. Now a forensic consultant in thousands of false-accusation cases across the country, Tong told me that even most police officers are not well enough trained to interpret the law, let alone photo lab employees. Tong said that when facing the slightest doubt, law enforcement officers "err on the side of the child," noting the potential results: "I see families stripped and ripped apart in the middle of the night."

I called Lt. Harry Trawick of the newly consolidated Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department to ask about my own case. He is the former head of the Special Victims Unit, which deals with child pornography. "A lot of times [photo lab employees] don't know what pornography is," he told me. Although he wouldn't comment on any specific case, Trawick said the department is "fairly aggressive" in investigating reports of child pornography and that, "generally, our officers are going to act with an abundance of caution" in favor of protecting the rights of children. He said the department has made a number of important convictions based on reports from photo labs. He added that he's unaware of any training programs that photo lab employees are required to undergo to identify child pornography and said the employees often call the Special Victims Unit for an explanation of the law.

But Helene Bisson, director of public relations for the Jean Coutu Group, which operates the Rhode Island-based Brooks/Eckerd drugstores, told me that employees had "videos we have to view and information sessions," though she wouldn't specify the depth of training involved. "As far as Eckerd's is concerned we do have very strict guidelines," she said. "It's Eckerd policy to report all incidents of child abuse and child pornography."

"With all due respect, they don't have a freaking clue," said Tong. "I'm not saying most of these cases are witch hunts," he said. It's just that without strict guidelines for identifying child pornography, photo lab employees must resort to "their subjective discretion and opinion," and that's the root of the problem. "If we required the same concern for accuracy in reporting child abuse as other types of crimes, we would see far fewer innocent people falsely persecuted," Tong has written. At the very least, a pair of trained legal eyes -- those of either a lawyer or a public official with specific expertise in child pornography -- should look at the evidence and make an informed decision before starting this demeaning, costly and painful process.

Besharov also said that the current law should be amended to grant immunity to those who in good faith deem a situation not to be child abuse or pornography. That way, those who report cases of abuse of questionable merit, simply to err on the side of mandatory reporting laws, might feel less pressure to do so. In our case, maybe the responding officer, who initially commented that he didn't find the pictures pornographic, would have dismissed the case at the drugstore and not reported us to child services.

It has been over a year and a half since the day we got the call from Janet. Time has finally granted me some distance from the terrible ordeal, and my wife and I have become lost in the immediate demands of life in another language and culture. We live in a small village of about 400 people, what a French friend jokingly refers to as the "bled," the Moroccan-Arabic word for the "boondocks." The surrounding countryside is mostly farmland and in the searing summer heat the air smells of rosemary and lavender. The fall brings out the truffle hunters and wild boars. My wife's commute to work is about two minutes up a steep, stone-paved street that has been worn shiny by centuries of foot traffic. From her office perch high up on the hillside, you can look out across the cherry orchards covering the valley and hear the shouts of the 30 or so children playing in the village schoolyard below. Our kids among them.


http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2006/07/18/photos
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« Reply #8 on: July 20, 2010, 10:02:27 AM »

Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

That Anthony Graber broke the law in early March is indisputable. He raced his Honda motorcycle down Interstate 95 in Maryland at 80 mph, popping a wheelie, roaring past cars and swerving across traffic lanes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7PC9cZEWCQ (Video)

But it wasn't his daredevil stunt that has the 25-year-old staff sergeant for the Maryland Air National Guard facing the possibility of 16 years in prison. For that, he was issued a speeding ticket. It was the video that Graber posted on YouTube one week later -- taken with his helmet camera -- of a plainclothes state trooper cutting him off and drawing a gun during the traffic stop near Baltimore.

In early April, state police officers raided Graber's parents' home in Abingdon, Md. They confiscated his camera, computers and external hard drives. Graber was indicted for allegedly violating state wiretap laws by recording the trooper without his consent.


Arrests such as Graber's are becoming more common along with the proliferation of portable video cameras and cell-phone recorders. Videos of alleged police misconduct have become hot items on the Internet. YouTube still features Graber's encounter along with numerous other witness videos. "The message is clearly, 'Don't criticize the police,'" said David Rocah, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland who is part of Graber's defense team. "With these charges, anyone who would even think to record the police is now justifiably in fear that they will also be criminally charged."

Carlos Miller, a Miami journalist who runs the blog "Photography Is Not a Crime," said he has documented about 10 arrests since he started keeping track in 2007. Miller himself has been arrested twice for photographing the police. He won one case on appeal, he said, while the other was thrown out after the officer twice failed to appear in court.

"They're just regular citizens with a cell-phone camera who happen to come upon a situation," Miller said. "If cops are doing their jobs, they shouldn't worry."

The ACLU of Florida filed a First Amendment lawsuit last month on behalf of a model who was arrested February 2009 in Boynton Beach. Fla. Her crime: videotaping an encounter between police officers and her teenage son at a movie theater. Prosecutors refused to file charges against Sharron Tasha Ford and her son.

Videotaping as a Tool for Citizens

"The police have cameras in their cars. I watch cops on TV," Ford said. "I'm very hurt by what happened. A lot of people are being abused by police in the same way."

Ford's lawyer, James Green, called videotaping "probably the most effective way to protect citizens against police officers who exaggerate or lie."

"Judges and juries want to believe law enforcement," he said. "They want to believe police officers and unless you have credible evidence to contradict police officers, it's often very difficult to get judges or juries to believe the word of a citizen over a police officer."

In Palm Beach County, Fla., Greenacres resident Peter Ballance, 63, who has Asperger's syndrome and has to record conversations to help his memory, settled a civil lawsuit for $100,000 last year. In August 2005, police officers tackled and arrested Ballance for refusing to turn off his tape recorder.

"You know what," said the officer, according to court documents, "I still don't want that recording device on."

"Well, it's on," Ballance replied.

"It is a third-degree felony," the cop said. "If you want to push it, you can go to jail for it."

"Well, I'm pushing it now," Ballance said.

Ballance snapped pictures of the officers. One of the cops delivered a blindside tackle. Ballance had to be treated for injuries and cardiac symptoms at a hospital on the way to the county jail. At the hospital, officers refused to let Ballance use his recorders to communicate with doctors, court papers said.

In Portsmouth, N.H., earlier this month, Adam Whitman, 20, and his brother were charged with wiretapping, a felony in the state for videotaping police on the Fourth of July when they were called to a party and ended up arresting 20 people, many for underage drinking.

A police spokesman told ABCNews.com that the wiretapping charges were being dropped.

Witness Videos on the Rise

Across the country, arrests such as these highlight the growing role of witness video in law enforcement. A dozen states require all parties to consent before a recording is made if there is a "reasonable expectation of privacy." Virginia and New York require one-party consent. Only in Massachusetts and Illinois is it illegal for people to make an audio recording of people without their consent.


"The argument is, 'Well, can a police officer beside the highway have a private conversation with somebody that they pull over?'" said Joseph Cassilly, the Harford County prosecutor handling Graber's case.

Cassilly added, "Suppose a police officer pulled you over and he wanted to have a talk with you. 'Sir, I smell alcohol on your breath. Can you talk to me about how much you've had to drink? Would you want somebody else to stop by and record that and put it on the Internet?"

Rocah of the ACLU disagreed. "It's not that recording any conversation is illegal without consent. It's that recording a private conversation is illegal without consent," he said. "So then the question is, 'Are the words of a police officer spoken on duty, in uniform, in public a 'private conversation.' And every court that has ever considered that question has said that they are not."

Rocah said actual wiretapping prosecutions, though rare, are happening more frequently. But intimidation with the threat of arrest for taping the police is much more common.

"Prosecution is only the most extreme end of a continuum of police and official intimidation and there's a lot of intimidation that goes on and has been going on short of prosecution," he said. "It's far more frequent for an officer to just say, 'You can't record or give me your camera or give me your cell phone and if you don't I'm going to arrest you. Very few people want to test the veracity of that threat and so comply. It's much more difficult to document, much more prevalent and equally improper."

New Video, Old Debate

In many jurisdictions, the police themselves record encounters with the public with dashboard cameras in their cars.

"Police and governmental recording of citizens is becoming more pervasive and to say that government can record you but you can't record, it speaks volumes about the mentality of people in government," Rocah said. "It's supposed to be the other way around: They work for us; we don't work for them."


Graber's YouTube video, meanwhile, has helped renew the old debate about whether government has a right to keep residents from recording the police. There is even an "I support Anthony Graber and his right to freedom of expression" Facebook page with close to 600 friends.

"Suffice it to say that our client is terrified at the prospect of these criminal charges," Rocah said.


http://abcnews.go.com/US/TheLaw/videotaping-cops-arrest/story?id=11179076
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charrington
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« Reply #9 on: July 20, 2010, 11:22:52 PM »

A day after off-duty Chicago Police Officer Michael Bailey was killed, City Hall revealed plans Monday to hire 100 new cops, and the FBI joined the hunt for the killer.

Sources said the Police Department was analyzing surveillance video, and officers were "hitting the gang-bangers hard" to shake loose any information about the killing, one of three slayings of Chicago Police officers in two months.

A shortage of officers is emboldening criminals, said a former high-ranking Chicago Police official who said he's "terrified" for officers because felons no longer fear the police. A two-year police hiring slowdown has left the Police Department understaffed by more than 2,230 officers a day, below the city's budget-authorized 13,200.

"The manpower situation in the Chicago Police Department is bad," added Mark Donahue, president of the Fraternal Order of Police. "Guys are out there every day telling us they have to wait for backup. And we're advising them to wait for backup for their own safety."

Despite another record budget shortfall, Daley plans to reverse that trend with 100 new officers funded by savings generated by consolidating more city departments. Mayoral press secretary Jacquelyn Heard said the hirings were set into motion weeks ago, before Sunday morning's slaying of Bailey, whom Daley knew personally and called "a wonderful guy."

Bailey was killed in an apparent robbery while cleaning his car at 6 a.m. Sunday outside his Park Manor home. Bailey, who had just finished his shift guarding the mayor's town house in the South Loop, was less than a month shy of retirement.

On July 7, Officer Thor Soderberg was shot to death outside an Englewood police building. And Officer Thomas Wortham IV was off-duty May 19 when he was killed by three men trying to steal his motorcycle outside his parents' Chatham home. The killings of the three officers represent the worst two-month run of fatal violence against cops in 40 years.

Police statistics suggest it's getting increasingly dangerous on the street for officers. Nearly 3,160 officers reported they were victims of assault and battery in 2008, almost double the 1,583 officers who said they were attacked in 2003. About 35 percent of those officers in 2008 were injured, according to the department.

Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th), whose South Side ward includes the Bailey shooting, said the violence stems from a lack of respect for police officers she saw during a recent "ride around" in her ward with a district commander.

"The commander got out and asked this young man to get off a woman's porch. He did it nicely -- by putting his hand on the guy's shoulder. And the guy got all riled up and said, 'Why are you touching me?' I was shocked. I never in my life thought people would respond that way," Lyle said.

"I had a female officer tell me they called her b---- so much, she thought her name was b---- by the end of the day. That goes to the total lack of respect."

Hiring more officers is just one solution to stopping the violence, said Thomas Wortham III, the father of Thomas Wortham IV.

"We cannot continue to raise a generation of kids who grow up and think they can kill people at will," said Wortham, a retired police sergeant.

"Maybe we cannot save them, but there's a new generation coming up that we need to save. We need activities in the community to keep from creating more monsters [than] we have on the street."

Wortham and Daley both attended a ceremony Monday at Cole Park where Gov. Quinn signed a bill increasing the penalties for illegal gun possession. Wortham said the bill was a "start," and Daley agreed.

"People have to take ownership of their family," the mayor said. "No one else can do it. How many police officers do you want dead?"

Despite the attacks on police, Daley said he's not about to turn a blind eye to officers who engage in excessive force. "If some police officer comes out and starts whacking people around here, you'll have an outrage," he said. "We are a country of laws."


http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/2513228,CST-NWS-copshot20.article
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charrington
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« Reply #10 on: July 21, 2010, 11:31:08 AM »

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. -- A man who fought with police Sunday night in Leavenworth was shot with a stun gun several times and ended up dying at a local hospital.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is now looking into the incident.

"He had been combative, head butting and kicking towards officers," said Leavenworth Police Chief Pat Kitchens.

Kitchens said the incident started Sunday night just before 10, when a man went into Cyclones Bar yelling that he had been shot. When officers responded they found him a block away but could find no gunshot wound. Officers still believed he needed immediate medical attention and called an ambulance, Kitchens said.

"There's a condition called excited delirium that is life-threatening," he said.

Kitchens said the man became violent and the officers used a Taser to try and get 46-year-old Edward G. Stephenson under control. A recording device inside the Taser showed that the officers hit the man three times.

"There were very clear signs of drugs, alcohol or mental illness, and the officers had a great deal of concern," Kitchens said.

The KBI said it is interviewing the five officers who were involved, plus witnesses, family and friends to determine what role the Tasers could have played in the man's death.

Kitchens said this is the first time in five years since the department began using the Tasers that someone has died after being shot with the guns.

"Obviously we don't want a tool that causes death," he said.

The victim's ex-wife said Tuesday that she spoke to him on Saturday morning and everything seemed fine. She's now waiting for answers about what happened.


http://www.kctv5.com/news/24330739/detail.html
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charrington
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« Reply #11 on: July 21, 2010, 11:39:31 AM »

The San Francisco Police Department is investigating an incident caught on video that shows an officer apparently forcing a handcuffed woman face first into the pavement.

In the video, shot by a bystander and posted on YouTube before being removed, the belligerent woman - who police said was drunk and pushing a baby in a stroller - shouts obscenities at two Taraval Station officers attempting to arrest her Sunday afternoon.

The woman can be seen resisting both officers' efforts to place her in the police car. The baby, left in the stroller on the sidewalk, can be heard crying. The officers almost manage to get the woman into the unit, but she pushes against the car and yells, "It's my baby in the street!"

While one officer goes to the other side of the patrol car, the other is left to deal with the woman alone. The video shows him bracing her neck with his hand as she pushes back to avoid getting into the car.

Then, the officer appears to move to the side and grunt as he appears to push the woman face first into the pavement on the street between two parked cars.

In the police report, the officer gave a version of what occurred and acknowledged that he used force against the woman, authorities say. The officers stopped the woman because they believed she was the suspect in an assault they were responding to, police said.

Although not shown on the video, an ambulance soon arrived and took the woman to San Francisco General Hospital. She bit one of the paramedics on the way, according to police accounts.

"We want to make sure we have a full understanding of what occurred, and we obviously are going to take whatever action that is appropriate," Chief George Gascón said.

The unidentified six-year veteran Taraval Station officer was ordered to surrender his badge and weapon on Monday, pending the outcome of an internal investigation into the incident, authorities said Tuesday.

Assistant Police Chief Jeff Godown said one issue in the investigation is that the woman was handcuffed - and under police authority - at the time of the incident.

"The bottom line, we will take a look at it and see what happened," Godown said. "We're reviewing the videotape and the use of force report to determine whether the use of force was necessary."

Godown said the officer has been reassigned to non-field duty pending the outcome of the probe.

The video can be viewed at sfgate.com/ZJZZ.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/20/BADC1EH5ES.DTL#ixzz0uL7Gbd8z


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/20/BADC1EH5ES.DTL
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moxiez
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« Reply #12 on: July 21, 2010, 11:48:12 AM »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMGE4J1RLEA
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Abba, vide cor meum
charrington
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« Reply #13 on: July 22, 2010, 09:35:39 PM »

The arrest warrant said that Ross got into an argument with the woman on June 30. It said that when she tried to leave he refused to let her go. It said that Ross then threw the woman to the ground, punched her and pinned her down with his knees. He then choked the woman until she became dizzy, the warrant said.

http://www.foxcarolina.com/video/24352827/index.html
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PullMyFinger
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« Reply #14 on: July 22, 2010, 09:39:42 PM »

From the report it sounds like it runs in the family.Dad(former SLED) was arrested for the same thing in 2006
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charrington
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« Reply #15 on: July 22, 2010, 09:40:51 PM »

He faced five charges of First Degree Sexual Assault and having sex with a minor.

After just over five hours of debate, the jury returned with a verdict of guilty on all counts.

Williams was visibly distraught when the verdict was read, even crying.

http://www.nebraska.tv/Global/story.asp?S=12849603
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charrington
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« Reply #16 on: July 22, 2010, 09:51:40 PM »

"Americans turned their anger to banks and other financial institutions responsible for the the Great Depression."


John Dillinger served nine years in prison before being released on May 22, 1933. Over the next year, he would become one of the most infamous bank robbers in American history.



[Read More]
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/on-this-day/July-August-08/On-this-Day--John-Dillinger-Gunned-Down-by-Federal-Agents.html
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charrington
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« Reply #17 on: July 22, 2010, 09:55:52 PM »

That's what Frank Donner called Chicago in his 1990 book, "Protectors of Privilege." As an ACLU attorney, he explained how city police and US intelligence agencies targeted alleged internal subversion, and while it operated "was the outstanding example of it its kind in the United States (in terms of) size, number, and range of targets or operational scope and diversity."

He referred to "wide-open, no-holds-barred style surveillance" (and vigilantism), unmatched anywhere in the country - (institutionalized) guerrilla warfare against substantial sectors of the city's population," using illegal, criminal methods, including intimidation, physical confrontation, and flagrant abuse,

[Read More]
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/07/chicago-national-capital-of-police.html
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charrington
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« Reply #18 on: July 22, 2010, 10:19:11 PM »

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association is demanding an explanation from the Vancouver Police Department after a surveillance video showed an officer pushing a disabled woman to the ground.

The video was taken at the beginning of the month on the sidewalk on Hastings Street, near the crowded United We Can recycling centre.

[Read More]
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/07/22/bc-civil-liberties-police-push-ms-woman-video.html#ixzz0uTS1he2z
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charrington
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« Reply #19 on: July 24, 2010, 01:43:14 PM »

TORONTO - This in-flight movie got a father and son kicked off a plane.

Two Air Canada passengers were pulled from their Orlando-bound flight before takeoff from Toronto's Pearson Airport after another passenger spotted them watching video of the 9/11 terror attacks.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2010/07/23/14800901.html]Read More
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Freeski
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« Reply #20 on: July 24, 2010, 01:54:22 PM »

Working link: http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2010/07/23/14800901.html

"I don't know if it was the right decision," the employee said. "But better safe than sorry."

----------------

Passenger Mike Berrouard, a Toronto businessman, told Warmington the whole ordeal was "scary." "That was definitely the strangest flight of my career," he said.

----------------


So now the airlines, in cahoots with the insane security establishment, get to decide what we may or may not watch.
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"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." Martin Luther King, Jr.
charrington
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« Reply #21 on: July 24, 2010, 01:54:23 PM »


This is the darkest side of the ongoing war in Mexico against the drug cartels: the unknown number of orphans, of whom there must be thousands, although there is no official count.

In Ciudad Juárez alone, on the border with the United States, civil society organisations estimate there are 10,000 orphans, on the basis that in the last three and a half years more than 5,500 people have been murdered, 70 percent of whom were between the ages of 18 and 45. Read More
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charrington
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« Reply #22 on: July 24, 2010, 01:58:09 PM »

Working link: http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2010/07/23/14800901.html

"I don't know if it was the right decision," the employee said. "But better safe than sorry."

----------------

Passenger Mike Berrouard, a Toronto businessman, told Warmington the whole ordeal was "scary." "That was definitely the strangest flight of my career," he said.

----------------


So now the airlines, in cahoots with the insane security establishment, get to decide what we may or may not watch.
How stupid can you get .. ya know? Seriously OMG their .... their OMG watching a MOVIE!! Holy walnuts get DHS here Stat!
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charrington
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« Reply #23 on: July 24, 2010, 02:00:49 PM »

 In less than a week, Arizona residents will be allowed to carry a gun in their pocket or purse without needing paperwork to do so.

Senate Bill 1108, which allows people to carry concealed guns with no permit or safety training, takes effect on July 29, the same day controversial immigration legislation is scheduled to begin enforcement. It makes Arizona the third state behind Alaska and Vermont, all supportive of gun rights, to enact a law that raises concerns for law enforcement. Read More
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charrington
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« Reply #24 on: July 24, 2010, 02:04:36 PM »




A group of neighbourhood kids selling parking spots on their front lawns during the Canadian Open have been warned by city bylaw officials to stop.

If they don’t, they could be charged $25,000.

According to residents of Princess Margaret Blvd., two men driving a beige Toyota Prius pulled up late Thursday afternoon.

“He flashed his badge and said, ‘We will tolerate this in your driveway, but get the cars off your lawn,’ ” said an angry ...Read More
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charrington
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« Reply #25 on: July 24, 2010, 02:07:39 PM »

A 31-year old unemployed man was arrested by police in Japan on July 20th for illegal transmission of TV programs over the controversial file sharing software BitTorrent.

According to Japanese news reports, under the support of the Metropolitan Police Department’s cyber crime division, investigators arrested Shuichiro Tanaka in Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo, on suspicion of uploading and sharing TV shows. Read More
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freedom_commonsense
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« Reply #26 on: July 24, 2010, 02:18:35 PM »

I thought draconian parking laws were the hallmark of the UK, not the US. Alas, the police state is global...
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charrington
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« Reply #27 on: July 24, 2010, 02:29:20 PM »

I thought draconian parking laws were the hallmark of the UK, not the US. Alas, the police state is global...

Indeed sir. Just look at G20 Toronto eh?
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charrington
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« Reply #28 on: July 24, 2010, 02:32:20 PM »

A suspended Baltimore police officer pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree assault Friday and agreed to a 10-year prison term, with all but 18 months suspended, for firing his service weapon at two men as they drove away from a Canton bar last year.

Patrick A. Dotson, 28, is scheduled for sentencing Sept. 30. As part of the plea deal, Dotson will spend only 18 months in prison, though he could be forced to serve the full 10 years if he violates probation after he's released.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry Williams also promised to increase the sentence to 15 years if Dotson, who is free on $500,000 bail, is late turning himself in. Read More
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Georgiacopguy
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'Cause it's a revolution for your mind...K?!


« Reply #29 on: July 24, 2010, 02:32:31 PM »

A lot of venues who provide exorbitant parking have the surrounding cities do the same thing. I believe something similar has been known to happen in Hilton Head during the Heritage of Golf. it's just to protect some bodies elses bottom dollar. Using laws which infringe on a person's property usage are usually the vehicle of delivery. And people just take it, rarely fight it, and wonder why they keep getting stepped on.
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The resistance starts here. Unfortunately, the entire thing is moving beyond the intellectual infowar. I vow I will not make an overt rush at violent authority, until authority makes it's violent rush at me and you. I will not falter, I will not die in this course. For that is how they win.
jofortruth
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WWW
« Reply #30 on: July 24, 2010, 03:04:41 PM »

The stupidity of some airport workers is just amazing! They do as they are trained, and probably never think about the injustice they are helping perpetrate on their fellow citizens.  Roll Eyes

I traveled recently, and came across some real power happy idiots in airports, especially with TSA. Thankfully, I also came across a few real professionals in customs who had some sense. Thank god there are a few who have some sense who work in this area. Shame on the rest who pull stunts like this just because they can.

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Don't believe me. Look it up yourself!

The Great Deception - Forum/Library - My Research
http://z4.invisionfree.com/The_Great_Deception/index.php?showforum=110
wvoutlaw2002
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« Reply #31 on: July 24, 2010, 03:29:18 PM »

Wonder if it was from a 9/11 truth documentary.
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Nailer
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« Reply #32 on: July 26, 2010, 06:24:30 AM »



all states should follow this example..  The 2nd Amendment says nothing about permits or foid cards  as it gives every free man and woman the right to carry a firearm.
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I am a realist that is slightly conservative yet I have some republican demeanor that can turn democrat when I feel the urge to flip independant.
 
The truth shall set you free, if not a 45ACP round will do the trick.. HEHE
charrington
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« Reply #33 on: July 28, 2010, 04:04:43 AM »

 The Hawthorne City Council will vote Tuesday night on a proposed $300,000 payout to settle a lawsuit brought by an autistic teenager who was Tasered by a police officer.

If approved, the settlement will mark the end of a federal civil rights lawsuit filed last year by the teen and his father in response to the Sept. 23, 2008, incident at Hawthorne Middle School.

At the time, the boy, whose identity is being withheld because of his age, was a 12-year-old student at the school.

His family has described him as high-achieving and generally able to function well among his peers. But his autism also causes some unique behaviors, like adverse reactions to crowds or change.

Campus security was called after the boy ran away from a group, kicking and spitting.
Police Officer Vincent Arias was also summoned, and used a 25-watt Taser to subdue the boy.
His father, Larry Matthews, filed a complaint at the police station the next day.
Less than a week later, the boy was arrested by officers, who handcuffed him at school. He was charged in Inglewood Juvenile Court, but the case was eventually dismissed.


http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_15607803
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charrington
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« Reply #34 on: July 28, 2010, 04:09:11 AM »

John Ridley, who says he was in the park when the incident happened, tells 9 News the officer looked like he was going to approach a man who had an open container.

"She was laying up in the park. The police from what I understand was trying to run after somebody with a beer. He hit her. He ran over her up in the grass. Went up in the grass and run over her," Ridley said.

Chief Streicher says the officer was doing a routine check of the park and for some reason made a turn onto the grassy area and felt a bump.

"An officer was patrolling through the park and was on a service road. For whatever reason, turned east towards the park in the grassy area. You can see there are blankets there. At some point he felt a bump and stopped his vehicle. As he got out of his vehicle he said a lady screamed and sat up there and said you ran over my legs," Streicher said.

http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/region_central_cincinnati/over_the_rhine/witnesses:-police-cruiser-runs-over-woman-in-over-the-rhine
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charrington
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« Reply #35 on: July 28, 2010, 04:11:03 AM »

A man who says he wanted to be a police officer is rethinking his future after allegedly being beaten by a group of Toronto police officers.

On July 22, Sharmake Abdi, 26, was picking up a paycheque for work he did during the G20 summit for the Commissionaires security company. But as he left the company's office at 80 Church Street in downtown Toronto, he was confronted by police.

"[They] put me right there and dragged me all the way here," said Abdi on Tuesday, pointing out where he was grabbed. "Two [officers] sat on my back. One of them was even punching me."

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/07/27/abdi-assault.html
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charrington
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« Reply #36 on: July 28, 2010, 04:18:19 AM »

LAS CRUCES - A federal jury in Las Cruces has found Doña Ana County responsible for the wrongful death of a 34-year-old Nevada man and awarded his estate $575,000 in damages.

In addition, jurors found the county negligent in the hiring, training and supervising of then-sheriff's Deputy Carlos Montoya, who fatally shot Megan Dylan Causey once in the neck July 2, 2007, as the man and his 6-year-old son were driving from Causey's parents home at 5080 Chiricahua Trail in Doña Ana. Deputies were responding to a reported domestic disturbance when Causey tried to drive away in a van, got stuck in a patch of rocks, and failed to respond to Montoya's orders to stop.

"Within 25 seconds, he was shot and killed," said Albuquerque attorney Richard Sandoval, who represented Causey's now 9-year-old son with co-counsel Kenneth Downes.

http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_15596655
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charrington
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« Reply #37 on: July 28, 2010, 04:27:05 AM »

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charrington
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« Reply #38 on: July 31, 2010, 11:17:00 AM »

LOS ANGELES/EWORLDWIRE/July 30, 2010 --- National Coalition For Men (NCFM) attorney Marc E. Angelucci reports that on July 28, 2010, the California Supreme Court declined to review a Court of Appeal decision that forced Hari Wilburn, a homeless man, to pay tens of thousands of dollars in child support for a child even though DNA excludes him as the dad and he never acted as the dad.

On August 17, the probate court in San Diego will hear the mother's request to intercept Wilburn's inheritance from his deceased mother in order to pay the child support order.

Wilburn was represented at the appellate level by Angelucci. NCFM is a nonprofit organization that addresses how sex discrimination affects men and boys and that helped change California law in 2005 to help protect men from false paternity claims.

In 1991, Cathy Tate named Wilburn as the father of her five-year-old child Alexis in a restraining order proceeding. Wilburn, who was homeless, was never personally served, and there is no record of any service except by mail to Wilburn's mother's address, which is not legally proper. Nonetheless, the court found Wilburn was served, issued a restraining order and ordered Wilburn to pay child support. Wilburn was not present.

Read More --->
http://www.eworldwire.com/pressreleases/211794
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charrington
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« Reply #39 on: July 31, 2010, 11:22:27 AM »

With at least 25,000 people slaughtered in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón hurled the Mexican Army into the anti-cartel battle, three questions remain unanswered: Who is being killed, who is doing the killing and why are people being killed? This is apparently considered a small matter to US leaders in the discussions about failed states, narco-states and the false claim that violence is spilling across the border.

Read More -->
http://www.thenation.com/article/37916/who-behind-25000-deaths-mexico?page=0,0
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