Thanks to a misbegotten ruling from a divided Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, police in nine states have been left at an insurmountable disadvantage when dealing with criminal suspects. At least, that’s what we’re told in a legal brief submitted to the Supreme Court by a coalition of police unions.

On February 21, Clark stopped a woman named Monique Hernandez on suspicion of DUI. When Clark tried to handcuff her, Hernandez resisted. Clark’s preferred method of “pain compliance” was a JPX device — a weapon that employs a gunpowder charge to fire a stream of pepper spray at roughly 400 miles an hour.

The JPX weapon is designed for use against armed assailants at a distance of 6 to 15 feet. Its payload of weaponized OC spray is propelled over that distance at less than three one-hundredths of a second, making it (in the words of the company’s promotional literature) “too fast to avoid…. The effect is immediate; there is no chance to resist.”

Clark – a veteran officer and chairman of the local police officers union — fired his JPX gun into Hernandez’s right temple at a distance of roughly ten inches. The impact shattered the woman’s right eye and inflicted irreparable damage to her left eye as well.

The officer has been indicted on four felony charges. His attorney insists that the officer’s attack was justified in order “to gain compliance and in defense of his person.” If the claims made by and on behalf of the officers who assaulted Mailaka Brooks are sound – if police officers are not legally required to use minimal force when dealing with non-violent “suspects” – it’s difficult to see how Clark’s actions were improper, even though they resulted in Monique Rodriguez being permanently blinded.

“It was Brooks’s recalcitrance and resistance that prompted her treatment,” sniffs the officers’ petition for certiorari. “Under both state and federal law she did not have a right to resist her arrest,” which purportedly means that the officers were permitted – nay, required – to employ “pain compliance” techniques against her until she submitted.

Wouldn’t the same principle apply to the actions of Enoch Clark in dealing with the equally recalcitrant Monique Hernandez? His police union attorney certainly thinks so. And let us not forget thatany effort to inhibit the police in their sacred mission to impose order would constitute an existential threat to our society.

Deny an intrepid hero in body armor the option of tasing a pregnant woman – or kicking her in the stomach hard enough to cause the near-term infant to defecate in the womb – a reign of terror will ensue, with the “criminal underworld” arising to devour us all.

The conversation between the reporter and the Tennessee cop in this article is just surreal.

For more than a year, NewsChannel 5 Investigates has been shining a light on a practice that some call “policing for profit.”

In this latest case, a Monterey police officer took $22,000 off the driver — even though he had committed no crime.

“You live in the United States, you think you have rights — and apparently you don’t,” said George Reby . . .

Reby was driving down Interstate 40, heading west through Putnam County, when he was stopped for speeding.

A Monterey police officer wanted to know if he was carrying any large amounts of cash.

“I said, ‘Around $20,000,’” he recalled. “Then, at the point, he said, ‘Do you mind if I search your vehicle?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t mind.’ I certainly didn’t feel I was doing anything wrong. It was my money.”

That’s when Officer Larry Bates confiscated the cash based on his suspicion that it was drug money.

“Why didn’t you arrest him?” we asked Bates.

“Because he hadn’t committed a criminal law,” the officer answered.

Bates said the amount of money and the way it was packed gave him reason to be suspicious.

“The safest place to put your money if it’s legitimate is in a bank account,” he explained. “He stated he had two. I would put it in a bank account. It draws interest and it’s safer.”

“But it’s not illegal to carry cash,” we noted.

“No, it’s not illegal to carry cash,” Bates said. “Again, it’s what the cash is being used for to facilitate or what it is being utilized for.”

NewsChannel 5 Investigates noted, “But you had no proof that money was being used for drug trafficking, correct? No proof?”

“And he couldn’t prove it was legitimate,” Bates insisted.

I didn’t realize Tennessee’s forfeiture law was quite this absurd:

He said that, while police are required to get a judge to sign off on a seizure within five days, state law says that hearing “shall be ex parte” — meaning only the officer’s side can be heard.

That’s why George Reby was never told that there was a hearing on his case.

“It wouldn’t have mattered because the judge would have said, ‘This says it shall be ex parte. Sit down and shut up. I’m not to hear from you — by statute,” Miles added.

George Reby said that he told Monterey officers that “I had active bids on EBay, that I was trying to buy a vehicle. They just didn’t want to hear it.”

In fact, Reby had proof on his computer.

But the Monterey officer drew up a damning affidavit, citing his own training that “common people do not carry this much U.S. currency.”

“On the street, a thousand-dollar bundle could approximately buy two ounces of cocaine,” Bates told NewsChannel 5 Investigates.

“Or the money could have been used to buy a car,” we observed.

“It’s possible,” he admitted.

NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Bates if Reby had told him that he was trying to buy a car?

“He did,” the officer acknowledged.

“But you did not include that in your report,” we noted.

“If it’s not in there, I didn’t put it in there.”

So why did he leave that out?

“I don’t know,” the officer said.

The guy eventually got his money back, but only after four months, and even then only after News Channel 5 started asking questions. He was still required to come back to Tennessee from New Jersey—on his own dime—to claim it. And get this:

He had two clients where police agreed to drop the cases in exchange for a cut of the money — $1,000 in one case, $2,000 in another. In both cases, that was less than what they might have paid in attorney fees.

Miles called that “extortion.”

I’d say he’s right.

Nashville’s New Channel 5 continues to do great work on this topic (and in general, actually). One of their previous reports on forfeiture in Tennessee noted that the vast majority of drug stops on Tennessee interstates were of motorists leaving Nashville, when a drug runner would presumably be flush with cash, than heading into the city, when the car would contain the drugs. Meaning they were willing to let the drugs be sold so they could make a bust that would bring some money back to their respective police agencies.

Early one Saturday morning, 70-year old retired Air Force reservist and former state employee Joe Del Rio was awoken by a knock on his front door. It was the city of Austin’s local code enforcement team. One of the agents told Mr. Del Rio that he needed to speak to him right away.

After getting dressed Mr. Del Rio went and opened his front door. He was immediately bum rushed by the Austin Police Department’s SWAT Team and then detained and interrogated for over 10 hours.

What was this 70-year old mans crime?

It seems that the Mr. Del Rio had an underground bunker, and apparently in Austin, Texas that enough to have the SWAT team storm your home and hold you at gun point.

The bunker in question was previously built as a bomb shelter during the cold war. Mr Del Rio had recently renovated part of the old fall out shelter and had been using it as a makeshift workshop.

City of Austin Seizes Property

After his ordeal of being detained at gun point, Mr. Del Rio’s problems were far from over. First, the city fenced off his home and prohibited him from entering the residence. They then brought in contractors and completely filled in his entire basement and bunker with 264 tons of concrete.

To add insult to injury the city then sent Mr. Del Rio a bill for $90,000 in repairs, that they say were critical to make his home safe. Shortly later the City seized his property without a penny of compensation. Mr. Del Rio is now in the process of trying to sue the city for what he says is an unconstitutional seizure of his property.

Mr. Del Rio told a local Austin news outlet:

“The ordeal they put me through was unnecessary,” Del Rio, now 72, said the afternoon before the second anniversary of his forced eviction. “I’ve gotten the runaround. I think they want the property. Condemning it is a cheap way to get it.”

by Anthony Faccenda, TorqueNews

Should washing your car in the driveway be punishable by jail time? As ridiculous as this may sound, a California man could be facing time behind bars for his insistence to wash his car in his driveway, despite warnings from San Mateo County. Vic Trierweiler, who hails from Belmont, was told that he would face a $500 fine or up to six months in jail if he keeps washing his vehicles on his Coronet Boulevard driveway.

Although the warning may seem extreme, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board maintains that the practice is illegal.

Read the rest at this link.

Back to Portland.

The City Council approved a $250,000 settlement Wednesday to a man mistaken by police as a tagger and was hit with a stun gun over and over.

A jury wanted the city to pay for a police officer using excessive force.

Police took down Dan Halsted while he was just innocently walking home. The officer stunned Halsted five times with a Taser in the back because he thought he sprayed some graffiti.

Halsted was tackled by a Portland police officer in the Northeast Portland neighborhood of Sullivan’s Gulch four years ago.

“I was walking home and all of a sudden a flashlight came on in my eyes and I stopped, and I heard a voice say, ‘Get him!’ And I heard footsteps coming at me, so I turned and I ran.”

In the pitch dark, Halsted thought he was being jumped.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” he said. “I was screaming to call the police the whole time, and I didn’t realize this was the police because they never identified themselves at all.”

Police had mistaken Halsted for a tagger who hit a nearby building.

“The arresting officer in his police report, he made up a whole other story and said that I had been running down the street with a couple other people.”

That’s the same thing the officer testified to in court when Halsted sued. In reality Halsted had been with friends at the Rose and Thistle Restaurant and was never charged with any crime.

The unsettling implication lurking beneath this story is that if Halsted had been spraying graffiti, this sort of treatment would have been perfectly appropriate. Also, I love this . . .

During the trial, the city’s attorney tried to use Halsted’s classic kung fu film collection against him, saying it proved he was violent.

Of course, taxpayers will pay the award. And as far as I can tell, Officer Benjamin J. Davidson is still on the police force. (The article above doesn’t mention his name.)

I was surprised to learn that under Oregon law, 60 percent of punitive damages awarded in suits like this go not to the brutality vicitim, but to a fund for crime victims. And another 10 percent goes to . . . a fund for Oregon state courts. Really.

But given that Halsted won in federal court, it isn’t clear to me that Oregon state law would apply to this case. Anyone know?

This video doesn’t show a dog killing, or a person killing, or a police beating. But in some ways, it’s more appalling than those sorts of videos. In it, you’ll see a “multi-agency” police task force arresting employees at a series of massage parlors in Houston. The businesses were apparently fronts for prostitution. The initial raid was conducted by a paramilitary police team, as you can see from the screen capture. In the video, the head of the task force steps out in full SWAT attire, including a balaclava, as he leads the women out of the building. He keeps the mask on throughout the video.

The women, all but one of whom were immigrants, are led out in handcuffs and leg shackles. One repeatedly struggles with and trips over her shackles on her way to the wagon. They all look terrified. The whole thing is stomach-turning. It’s an ugly, egregious, cock-waving display of power.

At worst, these these women provided a sexual service to willing customers in exchange for money. For that, a completely victimless crime, they get frog-marched in leg shackles on citywide TV.

But under that scenario the cops only look like bullies. There’s another possibility that makes them look thuggish and incompetent. In interviews with the local news, our brave and hooded vice warrior points out that these women could in fact be victims. That is, they may have been in the sex business involuntarily. We can’t know, he says, because they refuse to talk. He says they may fear that if they talk, their families back home will face repercussions.

Now let’s assume this is true. That means this multi-agency task force knew there was a possibility that these businesses were staffed with women who had been forced into prostitution. Aware of that possibility, they still scared the hell out of the women, cuffed and chained them, and—here’s the really galling part—tipped off the local news so it could all be put on TV. The humiliation is bad enough. But if there’s substance to the claim that these women fear retaliation against their families in their native countries, the potential repercussors now have video showing exactly which women were arrested. Back-slaps all around, guys.

And yes, there’s no question that the police tipped off the local news. Four (by my count) different TV stations don’t coincidentally show up at a run-of-the-mill strip mall just as a prostitution raid goes down. And while we’re passing out shame buttons, let’s slap a few on Houston’s local news teams, too. That’s you KHOU, Fox 26, ABC affiliate KTRK, andKPRC.  Think about what you’re putting on the air.  There’s no law that requires you to accommodate the police every time they want to flex their muscles on the evening news. In one of the videos linked above, the news team shoves a camera into a woman’s face as she’s stepping into the wagon. The reporter then shouts questions at the woman—this just after the reporter points out the possibility that the woman she’s humiliating and zooming in on may be a sex slave.

And about that balaclava. Yes, I realize the cop was probably protecting his identity. Take the hood off, and the next time he’s slabbed over a massage table, the 19-year-old Thai girl rubbing his back might recognize from TV, and decline to offer him extras. Thus ruining his investigation. He may also investigate other vice crimes, like narcotics, in which case revealing his identity could put him at risk. Understood. But here’s an easier way to protect your cover: Don’t call in the news cameras before you make your bust.

Look, I understand that cops enforce the laws, they don’t write them. And in this case it appears that (a) neighboring businesses were complaining, and (b) these massage parlors may have been engaged in sex trafficking. It’s hard to fault them for investigating (although in some of these massage parlor cases, the cops tend to investigate “to completion.”)

But how about some restraint? You’re “apprehending” 105-pound women here. Maybe you leave the ninja gear at home. Considering that you believe these women could be emotionally and/or physically abused, maybe you also do this bust quietly, bring along some social workers, and take the women away in vans. Maybe you have trained counselors talk to the women for a few hours before you give them the Whitey Bulger treatment. Then, once you have a better grasp on the nature of these businesses, you can hold yourself a press conference and bask in praise for keeping Houston safe from prostitutes.

You won’t get to go on TV dressed up in your riot gear that way. But you’ll at least know you’ve done your job with some professionalism—and some humanity.

The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance.

In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned.

The FBI general counsel’s office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly.

Read the rest at this link.

A new amendment to California’s Health and Safety Code as it relates to vaccinations will take effect this fall for the 2012-2013 school year, and will require all incoming seventh graders, as well as eighth and twelfth graders for the first year, to get a Tdap booster vaccination for pertussis (whooping cough) before being admitted to school. The website of the Marin County School District, which includes the city of San Francisco, literally states “No shot, No School!” in an apparent attempt to strong-arm parents into complying with the new provision.

Even though students in California can be exempted from any and all vaccinations for medical or personal reasons, most parents are largely unaware of this fact. And because of the 2010 whooping cough outbreak in California, many parents will likely just comply with the new Tdap requirement simply out of fear that their child could be the next victim of the disease, even though the Tdap vaccine itself has been shown to be ineffective at protecting against whooping cough (http://www.naturalnews.com).

Unless parents specifically request a Personal Belief Exemption Form (PBEF) from their local health department’s Immunization Program, their school-age children are required to get whatever vaccinations the State Department of Public Health decides is necessary from year to year. And those wishing to opt out of the new Tdap requirement will need to specifically request a CDPH 8261 form from the school (http://vaclib.org/exempt/states/ca/FAQ-CDPH8261.htm).

The interesting thing about DTaP, Tdap, and other pertussis vaccines is that they have never been tested for long-term safety, and they have never been proven to work. In fact, as we reported previously, the majority of the children who developed whooping cough during the 2010 scare had already been vaccinated against the disease. It was also revealed openly that pertussis vaccinations do not provide “lasting protection” against the disease.

Every California parent has a right to know the truth about Tdap and DTaP, not to mention the many other vaccines they are told their children are required to receive upon entering school for their own safety. They also have a right to know that they can exempt their children from such vaccines for medical or personal reasons. Sadly, most of them know neither, which is why it is crucially important to spread this information far and wide.

To learn more about vaccines, visit:
http://vactruth.com/
http://www.vaclib.org/
http://sanevax.org/

Sources for this article include:

http://shotsforschool.org/tdaplaw.html

http://www.co.marin.ca.us/depts/HH/main/campus/tdap.cfm

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.vaclib.org/exempt/california.htm

http://www.cdph.ca.gov

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/035756_schoolchildren_vaccination_education.html#ixzz1tsdaddxc

The photo shown above was taken by a subscriber in the city of Crookston, MN from the front porch of her suburban home.  No, the men pictured aren’t from the local high school’s J.R.O.T.C sqaud – they are in fact trained soldiers serving in the Minnessota National Guard, Unit 2-136 CAB / B Company. Now, I have never personally been to Crookston (although I’m sure it’s lovely), but I’m relatively confident that they are located on domestic soil, and unless I am missing something, the citizens of Crookston weren’t dealing with any natural disaster at the time this haunting snapshot into the coming police state was taken.

No, what was actually going on that morning was a “training exercise” involving a quiet neighborhood that probably isn’t that different from your own. Being the patriot that she is, Maggie decided it might be a good idea to start asking some questions. Nothing too difficult, mainly just what the hell they were doing walking fully armed down a street regularly used to facilitate the innocent pastimes of all American kids.

Glancing at her briefly one Soldier responded, “Just training Ma’am. Joining up with another patrol at the rally point.”

Not accepting this as a reasonable answer to her inquiry, Magge went on, “Oh, ok. What are you training on the streets of town for exactly?”

At that the young soldier replied, “To be honest ma’am, I don’t know.”

The reason for his domestic training exercise that morning might be unknown to him, but sadly this is not only just another indicator of the uncertain times ahead, but also a revealing indicator of how worried the Feds are of a possible outbreak of civil insurrections across the nation.

A few weeks back, I wrote a short piece detailing a few disturbing government purchases, including 450 million rounds of hollow point bullets (keep in mind the total population of the U.S. is 311,591,917), reinforced vehicle check-points, and hundreds of armored ‘civil-tanks’ by the Department of Homeland Security. Around the same time, the U.S Army was stockpiling anti-radiation pills and our President was issuing executive orders that essentially would eliminate the requirement of an actual emergency to declare Martial Law and seize any goods or property it deems necissary including authorizing forced labor of the citizens.

With this recent development, it is becoming increasingly apparent that a violent scenario has the potential of manifesting in the country I love – the country I would give my life to preserve for my younger countrymen, and since hollow point bullets are specifically designed to kill, the state has made its’ position alarmingly clear.

Well let me make myself clear: I would gladly die on my feet rather than live on my knees.

Source: The Libertarian Review (http://s.tt/1asa1)