United Police States of America – Page 28

Crossing the Thin Blue Line

One of the difficulties in holding police accountable in this country is that when an officer is accused of doing something wrong he is investigated by his fellows and usually found innocent of any wrongdoing. This thin blue line of cops protecting other cops is a breeding ground for corruption. When an officer does cross the thin blue line the vengeance dished out by their fellow officers can be terrible. Just ask Frank Serpico. His fellow officers attempted to get him killed on a drug raid because he spoke out against corrupt officers.

Smart officers who want to blow the whistle on their corrupt fellows lawyer up first. Even then the level police officers will sink to in order to exact revenge is frightening. A Arkansas lawyer who is representing some good officers that came forth against corruption found out first hand how low departments still stoop:

An Arkansas lawyer representing current and former police officers in a contentious whistle-blower lawsuit is crying foul after finding three distinct pieces of malware on an external hard drive supplied by police department officials.

The hard drive was provided last year by the Fort Smith Police Department to North Little Rock attorney Matt Campbell in response to a discovery demand filed in the case. Campbell is representing three current or former police officers in a court action, which was filed under Arkansas’ Whistle-Blower Act. The lawsuit alleges former Fort Smith police officer Don Paul Bales and two other plaintiffs were illegally investigated after reporting wrongful termination and overtime pay practices in the department.

According to court documents filed last week in the case, Campbell provided police officials with an external hard drive for them to load with e-mail and other data responding to his discovery request. When he got it back, he found something he didn’t request. In a subfolder titled D:\Bales Court Order, a computer security consultant for Campbell allegedly found three well-known trojans, including:

Win32:Zbot-AVH[Trj], a password logger and backdoor

NSIS:Downloader-CC[Trj], a program that connects to attacker-controlled servers and downloads and installs additional programs, and

Two instances of Win32Cycbot-NF[Trj], a backdoor

All three trojans are usually easily detected by antivirus software. In an affidavit filed in the whistle-blower case, Campbell’s security consultant said it’s unlikely the files were copied to the hard drive by accident, given claims by Fort Smith police that department systems ran real-time AV protection.

It makes you wonder what the officers who installed the malware on the hard drives were thinking. Did they believe their programs would bypass the lawyer’s anti-malware? Were they hoping he didn’t keep backups of the information he had related to the case and that erasing them on the laptop would ensure they were gone forever? Or were they hoping to install illegal material, such as child pornography, on his laptop in order to frame him? Who know. But this shows just how far officers will go to lash out against those who cross the thin blue line. Going after whistle blower’s lawyers is probably seen as nothing more than collateral damage to them.

Murdered Over a Broken Taillight

The murder of Walter Scott is receiving a lot of much needed media coverage. Thanks to the fact the murdered, Officer Michael Slager, was filmed this case didn’t get swept underneath the rug like so many others. It should serve as a reminder that people should always film any police encounter they’re involved in or are witnessing. But there’s one fact about this case that’s not receiving enough media attention, the event that lead to Scott’s murder:

The confrontation occurred around 9:30 a.m. ET on Saturday after Slager pulled over Scott’s car because of a broken taillight.

A man is dead because our rulers have deemed it acceptable to send armed thugs after people with broken equipment. Broken taillights are a simple matter to solve without pulling people over. Each vehicle has a unique license plate number that identifies it. If an officer sees a car with a broken taillight they could just look up who the vehicle is registered to, something they routinely do when they pull somebody over, and send them a letter informing them that their taillight is broken. Instead officers are allowed to turn on their loud sirens and flashy attention whore lights, force drivers to pull over to the side of the road, and waddle their heavily armed and often aggressive asses over to the driver to terrify them for a bit before issuing them a citation.

Walter Scott would almost certainly still be alive today if broken taillights weren’t grounds for officers to initiate force against motorists. In addition to being a remind of police brutality this story is also a reminder than any police encounter, regardless of how minor the offense that preceded the encounter was, can escalate to deadly force.

That Should Teach Those Kids a Lesson

Kids make stupid mistakes. In the old days before an all pervasive police state parents usually handled correcting their children’s bad behavior. Today the police try to involve themselves in all matters including children acting stupidly. A group of children from Chicago recorded themselves having sex and uploaded it to Twitter. Police found out and decided to intervene. How did they handle the situation? By kidnapping them and charging them for manufacturing child pornography, of course:

Four Chicago-area teenagers faces felony child-pornography charges after uploading a video of themselves having sex to Twitter. The three boys and one girl, ages 14-16, are being held in juvenile custody until a court hearing later this month.

Both the sex and the posting of the video were consensual—this is not a rape or “revenge porn” scenario. But under Illinois law (as in many other states), minors who post sexually-oriented images of themselves online or even share them privately with one another can be charged as child pornographers.

That should teach those kids a lesson. A felony record will ensure they are never able to get a job and that will likely push them towards a life of crime to survive. Since they would be living a life of crime they would likely have continuous run-ins with the police as they check in and out of jail like some traveling salespeople do hotels. This will ensure that the state has a unending source of forced labor and us tax victims will be forced to pay for their housing, clothing, food, and medical care.

OK, now it’s time to be serious for a moment. Making kids felons is not an appropriate way of handling these types of situations. Felonies haunt people for life and labeling somebody a felon before they even have a chance to get a job is fucked up. This is especially true when you consider kids make really stupid decisions because they lack the life experience necessary not to. But bullshit like this will continue to happen so long as police are allowed to involve themselves in situations that really should be handled by parents.

Finally, A Gun Control Group That Makes Sense

Gun control groups usually claim they want to reduce violent crime but then turn around and try to take firearms primarily from peaceful people. But there is finally a group that is targeting a major sources of violence in this country, the New York Police Department (NYPD):

An anti-police activist group calling itself “Disarm NYPD” is aiming to strip officers of their firearms and boot them from certain neighborhoods entirely.

Disarm NYPD writes on its website that its aim is “combatting police violence through direct action in NYC and beyond.”

Instead of cops, the group wants to form what they call “conflict resolution bodies” made up of residents, attempting to make the police force obsolete.

OK, Disarm NYPD isn’t actually a gun control group but if it manages to get the NYPD disbanded it would disarm some of the most violent gang members int he country. Not only do members of the NYPD gang have a history of violence but they are go unpunished in most cases because, well, they’re an officially recognized and endorsed gang by the city government.

Ignorance of the Laws is Not an Excuse

As Murray Rothbard once said, “The state is a gang of thieves writ large.” The only purpose of the state is to forcibly transfer wealth from the general population to members of the state and its cronies. People like to argue others, probably because they suffer from Stockholm syndrome. But the United States government long ago lost any right to claim it was anything other than a gang of thieves. That’s because the state’s method of wealth transfer is the law and the law is so expansive that there’s no way of even knowing when you’re violating it:

If you walk down the sidewalk, pick up a pretty feather, and take it home, you could be a felon — if it happens to be a bald eagle feather. Bald eagles are plentiful now, and were taken off the endangered species list years ago, but the federal law making possession of them a crime for most people is still on the books, and federal agents are even infiltrating some Native-American powwows in order to find and arrest people. (And feathers from lesser-known birds, like the red-tailed hawk are also covered). Other examples abound, from getting lost in a storm and snowmobiling on the wrong bit of federal land, to diverting storm sewer water around a building.

“Regulatory crimes” of this sort are incredibly numerous and a category that is growing quickly. They are the ones likely to trap unwary individuals into being felons without knowing it. That is why Michael Cottone, in a just-published Tennessee Law Review article, suggests that maybe the old presumption that individuals know the law is outdated, unfair and maybe even unconstitutional. “Tellingly,” he writes, “no exact count of the number of federal statutes that impose criminal sanctions has ever been given, but estimates from the last 15 years range from 3,600 to approximately 4,500.” Meanwhile, according to recent congressional testimony, the number of federal regulations (enacted by administrative agencies under loose authority from Congress) carrying criminal penalties may be as many as 300,000.

That’s not all. The vast number of laws alone wouldn’t be so bad if you had to knowingly be violating them to be charged but that too as gone by the wayside:

And it gets worse. While the old-fashioned common law crimes typically required a culpable mental state — you had to realize you were doing something wrong — the regulatory crimes generally don’t require any knowledge that you’re breaking the law. This seems quite unfair. As Cottone asks, “How can people be expected to know all the laws governing their conduct when no one even knows exactly how many criminal laws exist?”

There might be some legitimacy to the claim that the state exists to preserve order if the common law practice of culpable mental state still existed. After all, if you unknowingly violate a law and are then informed of that law’s existence you can take action to avoid continuing to violate it and order would be preserved. But that’s not how the system works. Once you’ve violated a law, it doesn’t matter if you know of the laws existence, the state gets to transfer wealth from you to itself. And since there are so many laws on the books it’s impossible to not do something the state can use to justify a forcible wealth transfer.

Killing is the Only Thing the State Excels At

European manufactures of drugs used in lethal injection have been holding out on the United States. This has many states very concerned because they’re running out of the drugs but not people to kill. To solve this problem Virginia has been looking into bringing a classing killing instrument back. Utah, not wanting to be outdone, is bringing back the firing squad:

Utah became the only state that allows firing squads for executions when Gov. Gary Herbert signed a law Monday approving the method for use when no lethal injection drugs are available, even though he has called it “a little bit gruesome.”

The Republican governor has said Utah is a capital punishment state and needs a backup execution method in case a shortage of the drugs persists.

Do you know what else Utah could do if it ran out of lethal injection drugs? Stop killing people. Numerous people sentenced to death have later been exonerated. That means those sentenced to death are not guaranteed to actually be guilty. Since guilt can’t be guaranteed the death sentence should be entirely unacceptable as a person should have the right to continue fighting their case as they very well may be innocent.

But the state is only good at one thing and that’s killing people. It’s not going to let anything interfere with that, especially pesky people who think prisoners have rights and shouldn’t be executed.

Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes They Are Five.

Between pervasive surveillance and never ending warfare this police state we live in more accurately resembles 1984 every day. But now we have doctors reenacting the scene where O’Brien tortures Winston until he finally sees five fingers instead of the four being held up. A woman was kidnapped by police, taken to a psychiatric ward, forcibly sedated, and held prisoner for eight days because she claimed that Obama followed her on Twitter:

The NYPD disagreed — they handcuffed her and sent her to the hospital.

According to the lawsuit Brock is filing, the “next thing you know, the police held onto me, the doctor stuck me with a needle and I was knocked out. I woke up to them taking off my underwear and then went out again. I woke up the next day in a hospital robe.”

She said she was heavily sedated by hospital employees, and she told The Daily News that she only mentioned to doctors that the president follows her on Twitter to show them “the type of person I am. I’m a good person, a positive person. Obama follows positive people.”

Instead, the lawsuit alleges the doctor made her discharge contingent upon her denying that Obama follows her on the social media site. According to her “master treatment plan,” one of the objectives that would trigger her release was that she “state that Obama is not following her on Twitter.”

Here’s the real kicker, Obama does follow her on Twitter. The police or doctors could have taken two minutes to verify her claims before forcibly sedating and detaining her. But, you know, that wouldn’t have been as much fun!

This story strikes several nerves with me. The biggest one being that police can drag somebody to a psychiatric ward, forcibly hold them down, and some sick fuck of a doctor will inject sedatives into them completely against their will. Another thing that pisses me off about this story is the doctors blatantly ignoring the claims of a woman who was being kidnapped. Just because a kidnapper wears a badge doesn’t mean due diligence can be ignore (in fact the presence of a badge should make one more skeptical of any claims being made). As you can imagine the fact that the only way the woman could escape her imprisonment was to sign a document that was a blatant lie. Oh, did I mention the fact that she was also billed for the privilege of being subjugated to this? Because she was:

In her lawsuit, Brock is attempting to recoup the $13,637.10 bill she received for her involuntary incarceration, as well as an unspecified amount of additional damages.

In the end this is just another example on a large pile of examples pointing to the fact that this country is a police state. Anybody who argues otherwise is entirely ignorant of what’s going on.

Arizona Moves to Make Police Less Accountable

How could the United Police States of America possibly make police less accountable? By keeping their names secret for 60 days after shooting somebody, which is what Arizona is moving to do:

Critics call Senate Bill 1445 an attack on government transparency at a time when American police departments are trying to earn the public’s trust after a series of controversial shootings.

The bill would prevent law enforcement agencies statewide from releasing the names of police officers “involved in a use of deadly physical force incident that results in death or serious physical injury” for 60 days.

Why 60 days? Because that’s more than enough time for the story to fall off of the media’s radar. In fact 60 days is overkill since the media forgets about stories about two weeks after they happen in most cases. Regardless this bill would ensure that when people learn the identify of the shooter it will have little in the way of consequence. At most it will get a mention on the back page of a newspaper section under a generic title such as “Identify of police officer released.”

Obey or Die

Franklin Graham, the son of Bill Graham (who made a hilarious guest appearance in The Illuminatus! Trilogy), is your typical religious zealot. He espouses a belief in god, hates everybody who isn’t a cisgender heterosexual, and becomes sexually aroused when in the presence of authority. That last part really confuses me though. As a Christian I would think he would find it sinful to worship the false idol of the state. After all, Jesus was about as anti-state as one could get and ended up being killed by the Roman state because of it. But Graham loves the state so much that he took time out of his busy day of judging everybody (which is also something I thought Christians were supposed to refrain) to write a very important message on his Facebook wall:

In other words as long as you’re an obedient little slave you (probably) won’t get hurt! This is one of the sickest messages imaginable. He just justified any police action taken if somebody refuses to get down on their knees and kiss an officer’s boot. I though this was supposed to be the freest goddamn country on Earth and a nation of laws. In a free state (I know that’s an oxymoron) one would be free to disobey unlawful orders regardless of who barked them. And a nation of laws would hold everybody to the same standard regardless if they wear a shiny badge and a silly looking costume or not.

This is an attitude shared by most of the touch on crime fuckwits. Not only is it an endorsement of fascism but it’s also blatant victim blaming. Blaming somebody who was shot dead by a cop for refusing to obey an unlawful order is right up there with blaming a woman who was raped for wearing too short of a skirt. If a cop acts unlawfully they are the wrongdoer. Period. There is no situation where a cop shooting somebody that doesn’t comply with an unlawful order is OK.

Franklin Graham is one of those people on my very long list of psychopaths who should be shipped to a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific to isolate their wickedness from civilized society.

As an aside, I wonder how Graham copes with his belief that homosexuality is a sin and getting a raging erection every time he’s in the presence of a male police officer.

This is What Happens When Officers Can Turn Off Body Cameras

Advocates of police accountability have been arguing that police officers should be required to wear body cameras while on duty. Although there was some resistance to this idea from police apologists that has mostly faded. Many of them are now on board with the idea because they understand that body cameras can collect evidence to prosecute more people and that officers and disable the cameras when they’re about to beat somebody down. That second part is important because it will render any of the benefits of body cameras useless. What we can expect in the future is what Denver is experiencing now:

As the nation’s policing agents scramble to provide street officers with body cameras, a new study released Wednesday shows that a majority of use-of-force incidents weren’t captured by Denver police officers who are piloting use of the technology.

There were a host of reasons for officers failing to turn on the body worn cameras (BWCs) in violation of Denver Police Department policy. According to an independent police monitor’s report, which surveyed the six months ending in December, only 26 percent of the use-of-force incidents in the studied policing district were captured on video.

If officers can disable their body cameras without consequence then any benefits of mandating body cameras, at least as far as the people are concerned, go out the window. Unless officers are punished, and by that I mean charged with a crime, for disabling their body cameras while on duty the only purpose those fancy devices will serve is to collect evidence to prosecute people.

Body cameras along won’t hold officers accountable. There also needs to be policies that will result in officer being fired, fined, and opened up to lawsuits if they disabled their cameras. I believe arguments could even be made for jailing an officer who disables his body camera during a use of force incident (in which case I would argue that doing so would effectively be an admittance of guilt in a court hearing unless evidence of non-officer related failure could be shown).