Blog

FBI COUNTERTERRORISM INFORMANT SPENT A DECADE COMMITTING FRAUD

Agbareia’s story is emblematic of a larger institutional problem at the FBI. Many of the bureau’s more than 15,000 informants commit crimes that go unpunished because the bureau views the informants’ work as valuable. The extent of this problem is largely unknown because the FBI is not required to report to Congress when informants violate the law without FBI authorization. According to policy, however, the bureau is supposed to notify the Justice Department of these violations. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by USA Today, HuffPost, and the Daily Dot show that from 2010 to 2014, the FBI permitted informants to violate the law more than 20,000 times. The number of unauthorized crimes committed by informants like Agbareia that are ignored by the FBI has never been disclosed.

Keep reading

Park ranger repeatedly tasers unarmed Native American man who was walking his dogs at sacred monument

A video taken this Sunday in New Mexico shows a park ranger tasing a Native American man during a scuffle that erupted after the ranger allegedly confronted the man for walking off the trail at the Petroglyph National Monument, KOB4 reports.

Darrell House, who is also a Marine veteran, was walking his dog at the national monument, which is also a sacred site. He said that he often goes to the site to pray and meditate, which according to him sometimes means leaving the trail by a few feet.

House claims that he moved off the trail to let a group of walkers pass for social distancing purposes, and that’s when the ranger started “following” him.

Keep reading

Minnesota lawmakers say coronavirus deaths could be inflated by 40% after reviewing death certificates

Two Minnesota state lawmakers are calling for an audit of death certificates that were attributed to the coronavirus, saying COVID-19 deaths could have been inflated by 40%.

State Rep. Mary Franson and state Sen. Scott Jensen released a video last week revealing that after reviewing thousands of death certificates in the state, 40% did not have COVID-19 as the underlying cause of death.

“I have other examples where COVID isn’t the underlying cause of death, where we have a fall. Another example is we have a freshwater drowning. We have dementia. We have a stroke and multiorgan failure,” Franson said in the video.

She added that in one case, a person who was ejected from a car was “counted as a COVID death” because the virus was in his system.

Franson said she and a team reviewed 2,800 “death certificate data points” and found that about 800 of them did not have the virus as the underlying cause of death.

Keep reading

Officials knew about sexual abuse at Lowell prison —and did nothing. System must have independent oversight

A horrifying new report by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reveals that, for more than a decade, Florida’s political leaders and the state Department of Corrections (FDC) have ignored the sexual abuse by staff, including rape, of incarcerated women at the Lowell Correctional Institution.

The report is shocking, but not surprising to anyone who’s paid attention to Florida’s prison system. Its findings should, at a minimum, finally prompt the Legislature to establish independent oversight of Florida’s prisons.

According to DOJ, Florida Corrections was made aware of systemic sexual abuse of Lowell prisoners by staff as early as 2006, but failed to take action to remedy the problem. In fact, the report notes the Department created a safe harbor for some of the worst offenders.

One sergeant at Lowell was accused in 2017 of sexually abusing a prisoner, “causing lesions on the prisoner’s throat from oral sex, and then retaliating against the prisoner when she refused his sexual advances.” FDC confirmed the prisoner’s injuries, but failed to complete the investigation into the allegation. That sergeant remained employed until his arrest earlier this year — for sexual misconduct with a different woman.

Far from an “isolated incident,” DOJ found a “long-standing pattern” of such incidents at Lowell. In 2018, a sergeant allegedly raped a prisoner in a storage area, “pull[ing] [her] pants down and forc[ing] his penis in anally.”

DOJ found it is common for employees at Lowell to bribe women with contraband in exchange for sex, compel women into abusive sexual “relationships” and watch women shower and use the toilet. Then they threaten the women with solitary confinement if they report the abuse.

Keep reading