Police States

[Ross]

Policing for Profit:
The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture

By Marian R. Williams, Ph.D.
Jefferson E. Holcomb, Ph.D.
Tomislav V. Kovandzic, Ph.D.
Scott Bullock

Civil forfeiture laws represent one of the most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today.  Under civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—all without so much as charging you with a crime.  Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture, owners need not be charged with or convicted of a crime to lose homes, cars, cash or other property.

Americans are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but civil forfeiture turns that principle on its head.  With civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent.

Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture chronicles how state and federal laws leave innocent property owners vulnerable to forfeiture abuse and encourage law enforcement to take property to boost their budgets.  The report finds that by giving law enforcement a direct financial stake in forfeiture efforts, most state and federal laws encourage policing for profit, not justice. 

Policing for Profit also grades the states on how well they protect property owners—only three states receive a B or better.  And in most states, public accountability is limited as there is little oversight or reporting about how police and prosecutors use civil forfeiture or spend the proceeds.

Federal laws encourage even more civil forfeiture abuse through a loophole called "equitable sharing" that allows law enforcement to circumvent even the limited protections of state laws.  With equitable sharing, law enforcement agencies can and do profit from forfeitures they wouldn't be able to under state law.

It's time to end civil forfeiture.  People shouldn't lose their property without being convicted of a crime, and law enforcement shouldn't be able to profit from other people's property.

http://www.ij.org/policing-for-profit-the-abuse-of-civil-asset-forfeiture-4

[redcliffsw]

Good one for sure. 

Just goes to show how the Republicans and democrats have ignored the Constitution.

Don't you believe that local sheriffs ought to be defending their citizens, at least - instead of participating in another Federal racket?

[Ross]

Should Rural Police
Have
Grenade Launchers?

Thursday, 24 Jul 2014 10:23 AM

By John Stossel

I want the police to be better armed than the bad guys, but what exactly does that mean today?

Apparently it means the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security equip even the tiniest rural police departments with massive military vehicles, body armor and grenade launchers.

The equipment is surplus from the long wars we fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To a hammer, everything resembles a nail. SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams were once used only in emergencies such as riots or robberies where hostages were taken.

But today there are more than 50,000 no-knock raids a year.

It's not because crime got worse. There is less crime today.

Crime peaked around 1990 and is now at a 40-year low. But as politicians keep passing new criminal laws, police find new reasons to deploy their heavy equipment.

Washington Post reporter Radley Balko points out that they've used SWAT teams to raid such threatening haunts as truck stops with video poker machines, unlicensed barber shops and a frat house where underage drinking was reported.

In New York City, these men in black raided standup comedian Joe Lipari's apartment.
"I had bad customer service at the Apple Store," Lipari told me in an interview for my upcoming TV special "Policing America." "So I bitched about it on Facebook. I thought I was funny. I quoted 'Fight Club,'" the 1999 movie about bored yuppies who attack parts of consumer culture they hate.

"People (on Facebook) were immediately responding that it was obviously from 'Fight Club,'" says Lipari. "It was a good time, until 90 minutes later, a SWAT team knocked on my door. Everyone's got their guns drawn."

It took only that long for authorities to deem Lipari a threat and authorize a raid by a dozen armed men. Yet, says Lipari, "if they took 90 seconds to Google me, they would have seen I'm teaching a yoga class in an hour, that I had a comedy show."

Lipari has no police record. If he is a threat, so are you.

SWAT raids are dangerous, and things often go wrong. People may shoot at the police if they mistake the cops for ordinary criminals and pick up guns to defend their homes against invasion.

Sometimes cops kill the frightened homeowner who raises a gun.

Because America has so many confusing laws, and because cops sometimes make mistakes, it's harder to assume — as conservatives often do — that as long as you behave yourself, you have nothing to fear.

The raids should also trouble libertarians who sometimes believe that government can mostly be trusted when it sticks to legitimate functions like running police, courts and the military.

Government always grows, and government is force. Force is always dangerous.

It's healthy for conservatives, libertarians and liberals alike to worry about the militarization of police. Conservatives worry about a repeat of incidents like the raids on religious radicals at Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas. Liberals condemn police brutality like the recent asphyxiation death of a suspect at the hands of police in New York.

This is a rare issue where I agree with left-wing TV host Bill Maher. On his TV show last week, Maher ranted about no-knock raids, "breaking up poker games, arresting low-level pot dealers."

Maher's right to point out that most SWAT raids are now done to arrest nonviolent drug offenders. "It's a guy who sells weed," says Maher. "You don't need to shoot his dog and crash through his window."

But they do. If cops continue to take a warlike us-versus-them approach to policing the population, they just might bring the left and right together.

Government is reckless, whether it is intruding into our lives with byzantine regulations that destroy a fledgling business or with a flash-bang grenade like the one that critically wounded a child in a recent SWAT raid in Janesville, Georgia.

Regardless of our political leanings, we should be wary of big government in all its forms.

http://www.newsmax.com/JohnStossel/Government-Police-Homeland-Security/2014/07/24/id/584635/

[Ross]

News / USA

Judge Declares
Washington DC Ban
on Public Handguns
Unconstitutional

VOA News

July 27, 2014 3:53 AM


WASHINGTON —
A U.S. federal judge has ruled that a ban on carrying handguns in Washington, DC is unconstitutional.

The ruling, made public Saturday, overturns the city's prohibition on carrying a gun in public.

Judge Frederick Scullin said in his opinion "there is no longer any basis on which this Court can conclude that the District of Columbia's total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns outside the home is constitutional under any level of scrutiny."

It was not immediately clear whether the city intends to appeal the ruling.

The U.S. capital had a law prohibiting anyone from carrying a handgun outside the home. 

Proponents of carrying handguns usually base their claims on the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 

The Second Amendment reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

http://www.voanews.com/content/us-guns/1965959.html

[Ross]

Police Shoot Man
In The Back
Over
Unpaid Parking Tickets (Video)

by Guerilla Girl Ashley The Pete Santilli Show & The Guerilla Media Network



A Pennsylvania man named Kevin McCullers was shot while backing out of his driveway by a Pennsylvania Constable who was there to arrest Mr. McCullers for the terroristic crime of unpaid parking tickets. According to Mr. McCullers girlfriend, who said her boyfriend was on his way to Dunkin Dounuts and was surprised by the constable.   "They never knocked on the door! No nothing! I just heard the gunshots! He pulled the car out of the garage and all I heard were gunshots," said Hafeezah Muhammad, who added that McCullers, who was hit in the back, may not walk again. "For parking tickets?! It's insane."  However, the constable had a very different point of you for shooting Mr. McCullers. The constable used the old tried and true excuse of (" I felt my life was in danger")  that is always used by law enforcement when they kill or maim the very people they are sworn to protect. If thats not bad enough for you, wait till you hear how District Attorney Jim Martin said the shooting could have been avoided.  He said that "if only Mr. McCuller had entered into a payment plan for the unpaid parking tickets, the shooting would have never occurred".

I am truly speechless at the arrogance of this beaurucrat having the gall to say something like that   about a man who was shot in the back over unpaid parking tickets, and may now never walk again.

http://www.cascity.com/howard/forum/index.php?action=post;topic=15917.60;last_msg=221169

[Warph]

Mass Incarceration:
21 Amazing Facts About America's Obsession With Prison

By Michael Snyder, on July 27th, 2014

Nobody in the world loves locking people behind bars as much as Americans do.  We have more people in prison than any other nation on the planet.  We also have a higher percentage of our population locked up than anyone else does by a very large margin.  But has all of this imprisonment actually made us safer?  Well, the last time I checked, crime was still wildly out of control in America and for the most recent year that we have numbers for violent crime was up 15 percent.  The number of people that we have locked up has quadrupled since 1980, but this is not solving any of our problems.  Clearly, what we are doing is not working.

Nobody wants more crime.  And it seems logical that locking more people up and keeping them in prison for longer terms would "clean up our streets" and make our communities safer.  But instead, we have spawned a "prison industrial complex" that costs taxpayers more than 60 billion dollars a year but that does very little to turn the lives of the men and women inside around.  The chart posted below is a bit old, but it shows that we have a massive problem with recidivism in this country...

So what should we do?

To keep people from committing the same crimes should we just lock them up even longer?

Should we penalize a young kid for the rest of his life for a non-violent mistake that he made when he was 19 years old?

Should we continue to tear apart families and communities just so that we can have the illusion of feeling a little bit safer?

Or could it be possible that there is a better way to deal with all of this crime?

The following are 21 amazing facts about America's obsession with prison...

#1 There are more than 2.4 million people behind bars in America as you read this article.

#2 Since 1980, the number of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons has quadrupled.

#3 The incarceration rate in the United States is more than 4 times higher than the incarceration rate in the UK and more than 6 times higher than the incarceration rate in Canada.

#4 Approximately 12 million people cycle through local jails in the U.S. each and every year.

#5 Overall, the United States has the largest prison population and the highest incarceration rate in the entire world.

#6 Approximately one out of every four prisoners on the entire planet are in U.S. prisons, but the United States only accounts for about five percent of the total global population.

#7 The state of Maryland (total population 5.9 million) has more people in prison than Iraq (total population 31.9 million).

#8 The state of Ohio (total population 11.6 million) has more people in prison than Pakistan (total population 192.1 million).

#9 Incredibly, 41 percent of all young people in America have been arrested by the time they turn 23.

#10 Between 1990 and 2009 the number of Americans in private prisons increased by about 1600 percent.

#11 At this point, private prison companies operate more than 50 percent of all "youth correctional facilities" in this nation.

#12 There are more African-Americans under "correctional supervision" right now than were in slavery in the United States in 1850.

#13 Approximately 90 percent of those being held in prisons in the United States are men.

#14 The incarceration rate for African-American men is more than 6 times higher than it is for white men.

#15 An astounding 37.2 percent of African-American men from age 20 to age 34 with less than a high school education were incarcerated in 2008.

#16 Police in New York City conducted nearly 700,000 "stop-and-frisk searches" in 2011 alone.

#17 The "SWATification" of America has gotten completely and totally out of control.  Back in 1980, there were only about 3,000 SWAT raids in the United States for the entire year.  Today, there are more than 80,000 SWAT raids in the United States every single year.

#18 Illegal immigrants make up approximately 30 percent of the total population in our federal, state and local prisons.

#19 The average "minimum security" inmate in federal prison costs U.S. taxpayers $21,000 a year.

#20 The average "maximum security" inmate in federal prison costs U.S. taxpayers $33,000 a year.

#21 Overall, it costs more than 60 billion dollars a year to keep all of these people locked up.
And it certainly does not help that we treat ex-cons as pariahs once they leave prison.

Most people will not hire them, and in many cases public assistance is not available to them.  Often their wives and families have abandoned them, and they have no roots in their communities after being away for so long.  Without any options, it is really easy for many of them to fall back into crime.  And that is the last thing that we should want to see happen.

It is almost as if we give up on someone once that person is convicted of a felony.  We want criminals locked up for as long as possible, and then once they get out we make it extremely difficult for them to reintegrate into society.

Without a doubt, there are a lot of really bad people locked up in our prisons.  And criminals should be punished for their crimes.  But there are also a whole lot of people that made one stupid mistake when they were young, and there are also a whole lot of people that do not deserve to be there at all.

Perhaps instead of totally rejecting our prison population, we should have a little bit more love and compassion for them.

Perhaps instead of treating them as worthless pariahs, we should be doing more to change their hearts and to help them eventually reintegrate into society.

In the end, the truth is that none of us is perfect.

We all need grace and we all need forgiveness.

Perhaps we should remember that.

[Warph]

10 Facts About The SWATification Of America That Everyone Should Know

By Michael Snyder, on June 25th, 2014

     

The number of SWAT team raids in the United States every year is now more than 25 times higher than it was back in 1980.  As America has conducted wars overseas in recent years, our police forces have become increasingly militarized as well.  And without a doubt, many of our cities have become much more dangerous places.  Thanks to relentless illegal immigration, drug cartels are thriving and there are now at least 1.4 million gang members living in the United States.  But there are many that believe that the militarization of our police forces has gone way too far.  Almost weekly, SWAT team brutality somewhere in America makes national headlines.  You are about to read about a couple of horrific examples of this below.  Once upon a time, police in America were helpful and friendly and the public generally trusted them.  But now our police forces are being transformed into military-style units that often act like they are in the middle of Iraq or Afghanistan. 

The following are 10 facts about the SWATification of America that everyone should know...

#1 In 1980, there were approximately 3,000 SWAT raids in the United States.  Now, there are more than 80,000 SWAT raids per year in this country.

#2 79 percent of the time, SWAT teams are deployed to private homes.

#3 50 percent of the victims of SWAT raids are either black or Latino.

#4 In 65 percent of SWAT deployments, "a battering ram, boot, or some sort of explosive device" is used to gain forced entry to a home.

#5 62 percent of all SWAT raids involve a search for drugs.

#6 In at least 36 percent of all SWAT raids, "no contraband of any kind" is found by the police.

#7 In cases where it is suspected that there is a weapon in the home, police only find a weapon 35 percent of the time.

#8 More than 100 American families have their homes raided by SWAT teams every single day.

#9 Only 7 percent of all SWAT deployments are for "hostage, barricade or active-shooter scenarios".

#10 Even small towns are getting SWAT teams now.  30 years ago, only 25.6 percent of communities with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 people had a SWAT team.  Now, that number has increased to 80 percent.
And thanks to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, police forces all over the nation are being showered with billions of dollars of military equipment that is coming home from overseas.  The following is what a recent Time Magazine article had to say about this phenomenon...

As the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have wound down, police departments have been obtaining military equipment, vehicles and uniforms that have flowed directly from the Department of Defense. According to a new report by the ACLU, the federal government has funneled $4.3 billion of military property to law enforcement agencies since the late 1990s, including $450 million worth in 2013. Five hundred law enforcement agencies have received Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, built to withstand bomb blasts. More than 15,000 items of military protective equipment and "battle dress uniforms," or fatigues worn by the U.S. Army, have been transferred. The report includes details of police agencies in towns like North Little Rock, Ark., (pop: 62,000), which has 34 automatic and semi-automatic rifles, a Mamba tactical vehicle and two MARCbots, which are armed robots designed for use in Afghanistan.

But when you start arming the police like military units and your start training them like military units, eventually they start acting like military units and the results are often quite frightening.

For example, just check out what happened when a SWAT team in Florida raided the home of one young couple earlier this month...

At approximately 6:16 am on June 10th, 2014, Kari Edwards and her live-in boyfriend were seized upon by a SWAT team who smashed in the door and using flashbangs and armed to the teeth, swarmed upon the couple and even stripped Ms. Edwards naked in the process.

The couple says that the group entailed personnel from DHS, for whom Edwards once worked. After smashing in the door, the tactical team threw in flashbang grenades, traumatizing their cat and swarmed upon Edwards's boyfriend and Edwards who had just gotten out of the shower.

"They busted in like I was a terrorist or something," Edwards said.

"[An officer] demanded that I drop the towel I was covering my naked body with before snatching it off me physically and throwing me to the ground."

"While I lay naked, I was cuffed so tightly I could not feel my hands. For no reason, at gunpoint," Edwards said. "[Agents] refused to cover me, no matter how many times I asked."

That is the kind of thing that I would expect to happen in Nazi Germany, not the United States of America.

But this next example is even more horrifying.  The following is what one mother says happened to her 2-year-old son when a SWAT team raided her home...

After the SWAT team broke down the door, they threw a flashbang grenade inside. It landed in my son's crib.

Flashbang grenades were created for soldiers to use during battle. When they explode, the noise is so loud and the flash is so bright that anyone close by is temporarily blinded and deafened. It's been three weeks since the flashbang exploded next to my sleeping baby, and he's still covered in burns.

There's still a hole in his chest that exposes his ribs. At least that's what I've been told; I'm afraid to look.

My husband's nephew, the one they were looking for, wasn't there. He doesn't even live in that house. After breaking down the door, throwing my husband to the ground, and screaming at my children, the officers – armed with M16s – filed through the house like they were playing war. They searched for drugs and never found any.

I heard my baby wailing and asked one of the officers to let me hold him. He screamed at me to sit down and shut up and blocked my view, so I couldn't see my son. I could see a singed crib. And I could see a pool of blood. The officers yelled at me to calm down and told me my son was fine, that he'd just lost a tooth.

Does that make you angry?

It should.

That young child is probably going to be disfigured for the rest of his life because of the brutality and the carelessness of that SWAT team.

Yes, we live in perilous times and many of our communities would rapidly descend into anarchy if there were no police.

But that does not mean that they have to act like Nazis.  They should be able to protect us while treating us with dignity and respect at the same time.

[Ross]

Excellent eye-openig posts Warph.

[Warph]

Psycho Oklahoma Cop Executes Family Dog With Shotgun And Laughs About It.

Saturday, March 22, 2014 11:50

In yet another display of psycho tyrannical cop behavior, on March 19, 2014 police Sergeant Brice Woolley responded to a call pertaining to a dog that had escaped someones yard, and was roaming the neighborhood. Instead of waiting  for animal control to arrive to apprehend the dog, according to an eyewitness report, SGT Woolly stated "I'm not waiting for animal control", and went back to his police cruiser to get his shotgun. He then shot the dog in the neck, killing "Cali" instantly, and if that wasn't bad enough,SGT Woolly laughed about killing "Cali", and stated " Did you see her collar fly off when I shot her? that was awesome" he stated to the animal control officer, who then replied to officer woolly, " We'll just write in the report that it tried to attack you and others in the neighborhood."


•Petitioning Ardmore Police Department
http://www.change.org/petitions/ardmore-police-department-justice-for-cali?share_id=mSaXZTnlHU&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition&v=control&x=~open_graph_autopublish_experiment

Justice for Cali

Cali was a fun-loving, caring, peaceful family dog. On March 19, 2014, she escaped the backyard fence and was roaming through the neighborhood. A neighbor called animal control to come and retrieve the dog. The cops showed up before the animal control. When the cops pulled up, someone informed them , animal control was already on their way. Officer Brice Woolley said, "I'm not waiting for animal control."                                                                                                                                   

He then went to his car, pulled out his shotgun and shot Cali in her neck. After he shot her, he laughed and bragged about how "awesome" it looked when her collar flew off. She had done nothing to provoke the officer. She died immediately.

Read Here:http://www.change.org/petitions/ardmore-police-department-justice-for-cali?

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2014/03/psycho-oklahoma-cop-executes-family-dog-with-shotgun-and-laughs-about-it-2923900.html?utm_medium=facebook-share&utm_campaign=&utm_content=awesm-publisher&utm_source=direct-b4in.info&utm_term=http%3A%2F%2Fb4in.info%2FqWT6

UPDATE to Ross' article on the psycho son of a b!tch that shot Cali, above. http://www.yousign.org/en/ardmore-dog

According to the Video on YouTube, the same police officer Sgt. Brice Woolly, shot and killed a man back in Nov. 2000.
while working for the Tishomingo, OK police dept.  The case went to court and the plaintiffs family won.
They settled out of court with the city of Tishomingo.  Officer Brice Woolly was fired from from their police force.

Watch video:

Video Published on Sep 18, 2013

Oklahoma Officer Brice Woolly Murders Unarmed Man, City Settles Lawsuit

Jeff Baxter was murdered by Tishomingo Police Officer, Brice Woolly In November of the year 2000

Officer Woolly was reported to have staked out a local bar in Tishomingo, Oklahoma. Jeff Baxter and a friend left
the pub to visit another friend to pick up a carburetor because working on motors was one of the mens past time/job.

They noticed officer Brice Woolly was watching them. After Jeff Baxter and his buddy left his friends house,
officer Brice Woolly initiated a traffic stop. The victim, Jeff Baxter was the driver and did not immediately stop.
After the short pursuit the victim and the other man jumped out of the vehicle and started to run. 13 seconds
later Jeff Baxter was murdered by Tishomingo Oklahoma Police Officer, Brice Woolly.

Officer Brice Woolly is seen reenacting the murder but notice he never makes the same screams in the reenactment
and he did in the actual video. The unarmed man exits the vehicle and 13 seconds later he is murdered. Also in
the reenactment Officer Woolly Acts like he struggled with the man for quite sometime.

This appears to be false and the reenactment DOES NOT corroborate with the actual dashcam video.
See for yourself!

Officer Brice Woolly (The man who killed Jeff Baxter and Cali, the dog)
is currently employed with Ardmore Oklahoma Police Department.
http://www.ardmorecity.org/police/patrol.htm

[Ross]

Yea, it's Obama's personal army against the citizens of the US.
Be afraid, be very afraid !
This was not an error, it was fear mongering.
It had absolutly nothing to do with national security. 

Police State Update:
Obama Feds Raid Home;
The Reason Why is Shocking

August 1, 2014 By Matthew Burke

Another example of how the Obama regime is weaponizing federal government bureaucracies against U.S. citizens is being reported from the raid of a home in North Carolina.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), established as a reaction to the 9/11 attacks to protect U.S. citizens from terrorism the American homeland, has taken on new tyrannical and thuggish duties.

WBTV  reports: that when Jennifer Brinkley saw a line of law enforcement vehicles in her and her husband's driveway she had no idea what the problem was. "I haven't done anything wrong," she said.

Jennifer Brinkley's home was raided by Homeland Security agents, who apparently have no other pressing problems facing the country to be worried about, because Brinkley's classic and rare 1985 Land Rover Defender supposedly didn't meet Obama EPA emission rules, according to the Washington Times.

"They popped up the hood and looked at the Vehicle Identification Number and compared it with a piece of paper and then took the car with them," Brinkley told WBTV.

"I'm sad because I owned the car. It's just an iconic car. I'm in disbelief...and surprised that somebody can come in and take your property. It's scary. It's scary when it happens to you," Brinkley told FOX News.

Brinkley, who paid $60,000 for the classic SUV, believed that the vehicle was exempt from EPA standards because it was over 25 years old.

"I want my car back," Brinkley pleaded.

http://www.tpnn.com/2014/08/01/police-state-update-obama-feds-raid-home-the-reason-why-is-shocking/