Tag: california

HOW CALIFORNIA COPS EXPLOIT LEGAL GRAY AREAS TO CONTINUE THEIR WAR ON CANNABIS

Years after legalization, the state’s growers say police are taking a “seize first, ask questions later” mentality toward marijuana enforcement, sometimes with heavily militarized operations that allegedly violate their rights.

Zeke Flatten was driving southbound on Highway 101 in Northern California in December 2017 when he was pulled over by an unmarked SUV with flashing emergency lights.

Two officers clad in green, military-style garb and bulletproof vests approached Flatten’s vehicle but didn’t identify themselves. After asking Flatten if he knew how fast he was going, one of the men told him they suspected he was transporting cannabis, according to court documents. Flatten was immediately suspicious.

“He never mentioned anything else about the reason, probable cause, why he stopped me,” Flatten said in an interview with The Appeal.

The officers were correct, however: Flatten, a film producer and former undercover cop who’d temporarily relocated to Northern California, had three pounds of marijuana, including a few rolled joints, in the car—worth over $3,000 at the time. Flatten says he was working on a number of cannabis-related projects and was driving to a lab to test the weed, which he’d hoped to sell legally.

Just over a year before the stop, California had voted to legalize the personal cultivation and possession of up to an ounce of marijuana with the passage of Proposition 64. Under the measure, possession of larger amounts of cannabis was reduced from a felony offense to a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months of incarceration and a maximum $500 fine.

But marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, classified as a Schedule 1 substance alongside drugs like heroin, LSD, and MDMA, known as Ecstasy. When the officers identified themselves as members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a federal agency, Flatten said he started to realize something was off.

“There’s no patches, there’s no badges, there’s no name tags,” Flatten said.

Flatten says he offered to show the officers his medical marijuana card, which should have allowed him to have the cannabis. But they didn’t want to look at the card. He figured if the agents believed the marijuana was illegal, they’d take it and provide him a receipt for the seizure, which would give him a chance to argue his case in court, Flatten said.

Instead, they proceeded to confiscate the cannabis from the back of Flatten’s car without running his name for warrants, or issuing a traffic ticket, court summons, or even documentation of the seizure, Flatten said. The officers did tell him that he might be getting a letter from the federal government. But he never did.

Flatten said he felt like he’d been robbed. He started looking for a lawyer, and a few days later, went to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department to report the incident. The next week, after returning to his home state of Texas, he made an official report at the FBI field office in San Antonio.

He would soon find out that the officers who seized his marijuana weren’t actually ATF agents. Flatten alleges one was a member of the sheriff’s department. The other was from the Rohnert Park Police Department, and has since been indicted on federal charges including extortion and conspiracy in connection with cannabis seizures.

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No Constitutional Right To Honk Your Car Horn, Court Says

A federal appeals court says honking isn’t First Amendment–protected activity. There’s no constitutional right to honk your car horn, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

The case involves Susan Porter, who repeatedly honked her car horn while driving past protesters in California in 2017. A deputy with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office issued Porter a ticket, saying she had violated a state law against misuse of car horns.

Porter pushed back, filing a federal lawsuit in 2018. In it, she alleged that honking her horn in solidarity with the protesters was protected First Amendment activity and that the California law used to ticket her—which says prohibits using a car horn except “when reasonably necessary to insure safe operation” or when used “as a theft alarm system”—was unconstitutional.

A U.S. district court ruled against Porter, and now the 9th Circuit has upheld that lower court’s ruling. For “the horn to serve its intended purpose as a warning device, it must not be used indiscriminately,” wrote Judge Michelle Friedland for the majority.

But 9th Circuit judge Marsha Berzon thinks her colleagues got it wrong. In her dissent, Berzon noted that California cops are taught to use discretion when enforcing the horn-honking law, which could lead to selective (and discriminatory) enforcement. And Berzon scoffed at the idea that Porter honking while driving past a protest would be confused for anything but political speech.

“A political protest is designed to be noticed,” wrote Berzon. “Political honking was hardly a significant source of noise or distraction in that environment. There is no basis for supposing that anyone was confused or distracted by the honking. Instead, Porter’s honking was understood as political expression by the protesters, who cheered in response.”

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California cops joked about shooting Black mayor and celebrated beating suspects: text messages

Newly revealed text messages sent by police in Antioch, California show that officers for years engaged in racist conduct and celebrated their own brutality while facing no pushback at all from superiors.

Among other things, the Mercury News reports, officers in Antioch made racist jokes about offering a “prime rib dinner” to anyone who shot Mayor Lamar Thorpe with projectiles often used on protesters.

Other messages show officers boasting about violence they inflicted on others while at times lamenting they didn’t go further in making alleged perpetrators suffer.

One particularly egregious text sent by Antioch Officer Eric Rombough lamented that the injuries he inflicted on a suspect wouldn’t be as readily visible as he had hoped.

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In California, Parents May Soon Effectively Lose Custody of Kids 12 and Older 

In California, “stranger danger” may be about to acquire a whole new meaning. 

Forget warning kids. It’s the parents in California who will need to be terrified of strangers if a new bill passes. 

Snuck into AB 665, legislation ostensibly about extending mental health care to lower-income California youths, is a provision that effectively would terminate parents’ rights over their kids as soon as they turn 12. 

The California Family Council warns that this bill “would allow children as young as 12 years old to consent to being placed into state funded group homes without parental permission or knowledge.”  

As long as a mental health professional signs off on it, the kids can go to such a group home—and it doesn’t matter what their parents think. 

“This bill gives a stranger, a school psychologist, power to decide whether a sixth or seventh grader comes home from school that day, and that’s terrifying,” Erin Friday, a California mom of two teens, tells The Daily Signal. 

“This bill is essentially stating that parents are criminals that have to prove their innocence to get their child back,” adds Friday, who is a leader of the parent advocacy group Our Duty. 

Seriously? 

AB 665, which passed out of the Assembly Judiciary Committee last week, builds on a 2010 measure signed into law by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. That law, the Mental Health Services for At-Risk Youth Act, allowed California children 12 and older to receive mental health care without their parents’ knowledge if a mental health provider determined it was best not to involve the parents.  

That provision was no accident. The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, celebrated the California law in a 2010 report as a “useful model for state or federal legislation to address mental illness among LGBT youth.”  

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California reparations hearing descends into chaos as activist blares out James Brown, another tells absent reparations tsar to ‘stay in Africa’ with Kamala Harris – and a third screams ‘we’re not asking for money, it’s ours!’

California‘s reparations task force has descended into chaos as activists blasted music and aired wild accusations – a day after it was revealed they want $800billion.

Among the first people to speak was Reggie Romain who blared James Brown’s I’m Black & I’m Proud through his phone and down the microphone.

Romain, as well as members of the audience, danced to the 1968 track and after cutting the song short promoted his social media channels before sitting down.

Later, a San Francisco-based activist at the podium described the US as a country ‘born in the name of evil’ and said: ‘Evil cannot give justice.’ She went on scream at the committee members: ‘We ask you for nothing. It’s ours!’

The second-day began amid controversy over the absence of senior committee member Rev. Amos Brown, who is in West Africa, as part of Kamala Harris’ official trip to the continent. On Thursday, one activist demanded that Brown ‘should stay in Africa.’

Unlike at Wednesday’s meeting, Rev. Brown did not Zoom in to make remarks on the meeting. 

Brown Zoomed into Wednesday’s meeting in Sacramento in which he complained that the reports that $5 million would be given to black residents in reparations in the Bay Area were part of a ‘smear campaign.’ 

Brown, 82, said that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, of which he is a member, gave ‘lip service’ to reparations and noted that the city is facing a massive deficit. 

A member of the public who called into the meeting to offer comment addressed Brown’s absence saying: ‘Shame on you.’ 

The reverend’s absence came on the same day that it emerged that the bill for California’s reparations bill has skyrocketed to at least $800 billion.

During the vice president’s historic visit to Africa, Harris promised billions of investment to the continent as she toured historic sites associated with slavery.

It later emerged that while in West Africa, Brown attended a lavish state banquet in Ghana this week as part of the VP’s delegation. 

‘Dr. Brown, shame on you… absolutely shame on you. You give us these fiery speeches only to turn around as Judas did Jesus and betray us…. Him being in Ghana with Kamala Harris, whose administration has done nothing to help black folks is a symbolic gesture,’ a member of the public said at Wednesday’s meeting.

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Reparations for Black Californians could top $800 billion

It could cost California more than $800 billion to compensate Black residents for generations of over-policing, disproportionate incarceration and housing discrimination, economists have told a state panel considering reparations.

The preliminary estimate is more than 2.5 times California’s $300 billion annual budget, and does not include a recommended $1 million per older Black resident for health disparities that have shortened their average life span. Nor does the figure count compensating people for property unjustly taken by the government or devaluing Black businesses, two other harms the task force says the state perpetuated.

Black residents may not receive cash payments anytime soon, if ever, because the state may never adopt the economists’ calculations. The reparations task force is scheduled to discuss the numbers Wednesday and can vote to adopt the suggestions or come up with its own figures. The proposed number comes from a consulting team of five economists and policy experts.

“We’ve got to go in with an open mind and come up with some creative ways to deal with this,” said Assembly member Reggie Jones-Sawyer, one of two lawmakers on the task force responsible for mustering support from state legislators and Gov. Gavin Newsom before any reparations could become reality.

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‘State-sanctioned kidnapping’: California bill would give therapists power to take children over 12 from parents ‘without accusation, evidence, or trial’

A California Democrat has proposed a bill that would allow a mental health professional to place a child as young as 12 in a residential shelter facility without parental knowledge or consent and without there being any prior allegations of incest or child abuse.

The stated purpose of AB 665, introduced by Assembly Member Wendy Carrillo, is to bring two existing laws into alignment. Currently children age 12 and over are able to consent to receiving mental health treatment or counseling services but cannot consent to being placed into a residential shelter facility unless deemed either a risk to themselves or others, or in cases where the minor is an alleged victim of incest or child abuse. AB 665 seeks to remove these caveats.

The bill is strongly opposed by Our Duty, an international group of parents of children who are, or were, gender-questioning, who believe the law would amount to “state-sanctioned kidnapping.”

According to Erin Friday, co-lead of Our Duty, the bill will give counselors unfettered control over children age 12 and above. In a letter to the state assembly, Friday gives the example of a hypothetical 6th grader who informs her school counselor that she is a “trans boy.” Friday argues that if AB 665 were to be enacted, that child may not come home from school that day but could instead be sent to an “LGBTQ housing facility.” 

“The parents will have no idea what happened to their child,” writes Friday. “Imagine their fear and anxiety. These parents are criminalized without an accusation, evidence or trial.”

AB 665 states that a “shocking 78 percent of LGBTQ+ youth who were surveyed shared they had considered suicide,” and most had done so in the last year, and that nearly one-third had made an attempt in the past year.

The bill goes on to state that LGBTQ+ youth experience depression and anxiety, as well as other negative outcomes, due to rejection from parents, harassment in school, and the “overall LGBTQ negativity present in society.”

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California Reparations Task Force member vows their ‘recommendations will be breathtaking’

A member of the California Reparations Task Force vowed the committee’s “recommendations will be breathtaking.”

Lisa Holder, a task force member and president of the far-left Equal Justice Society, published an opinion piece advocating for the reparations committee and writing that Californians “must be prepared for remedies on a scale approaching the Great Society programs of Medicare and Medicaid.”

“Reparations is a paradigm for understanding harm and repair as it relates to people who suffered a human rights injustice because of government action,” Holder wrote. “Harm and repair are the two sides of the spectrum.” She added that reparations will “likely” include “monetary compensation to Black people who are descendants of enslaved and persecuted Black Americans.” 

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Wiener Vows to Stop California Bill Requiring Schools to Inform Parents About Gender Transition

California State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) is vowing to stop a proposed bill that would require schools to inform parents in writing that their children have chosen to change their gender identity.

The bill, AB 1314, proposed by Assemblyman Bill Essayli (R-Norco), would provide that

the parents and guardians of pupils enrolled in public schools have the right …  to be notified in writing within three days from the date any teacher, counselor, or employee of the school becomes aware that their child is doing either of the following:

(i) Identifying at school as a gender that does not align with the child’s sex on their birth certificate, other official records, or sex assigned at birth.

(ii) Using sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, or using facilities that do not align with the child’s sex on their birth certificate, other official records, or sex assigned at birth.

The bill is motivated by the case of physical education teacher Jessica Tapia, according to NBC Palm Springs, who was fired after challenging a school district policy that required her to “lie” to conceal information from parents about students who wanted to transition to a different gender. She is currently suing the Jurupa Unified School District.

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Surprise: A California County Went Full-Eliott Ness to Spy on a Church During COVID

In the criminal justice system, people who tend to disagree with the government are aggressively investigated by the elite members of the Santa Clara County COVID-19 Business Compliance Unit. These are their stories.

And cue the “Law & Order” sound effect.

Yes, it’s Law & Order: BCU

Yesterday, I told you about a Chinese app designed to track people who wanted to attend religious services in the Henan province. At the time I opined that governors like Gavin Newsom would salivate over that kind of technology and that something like that was probably headed our way soon. But as it turns out, Santa Clara County in California was already taking a boots-on-the-ground approach when it came to spying on and harassing an area church. Writing on his Substack, Silent Lunch, journalist David Zweig tells the tale of how between November 2020 and January 2021, the Santa Clara County COVID-19 Business Compliance Unit (you thought I made that name up, didn’t you?) went all-in to spy on a church that bucked the ham-handed and unevenly applied lockdown mandates.*

Calvary Chapel San Jose attracted the attention of county snoops on On May 24, 2020. That day, pastor Mike McClure said that he would reopen the church despite the COVID-19 restrictions. And for that matter, the church would stay open. Such a move was bound not to be well-received in California, and even less so in Santa Clara County, which had been particularly aggressive in enforcing lockdown rules. But McClure had seen the devastating effects that enforced isolation had on his congregation. For example, one man said his church attendance kept him from entertaining thoughts of suicide as the quarantine merged with other difficult life events. Another found that church attendance gave him the strength to stave off his urges for alcohol and drugs as the crushing isolation took its toll. A woman said that the fellowship at Calvary Chapel San Jose helped save her son, who struggled with substance abuse after the lockdown cost him an apprenticeship in plumbing. A pastor was able to tie the woman in with a program that she credits with saving her son’s life.

On August 21, 2020, the church was hit with a cease-and-desist letter from the county. At issue were the crimes of meeting indoors, failure of members to mask and social distance, and, of course, singing. Two days later, a pair of officers from the COVID-19 Business Compliance Unit were at the church and saw at least 100 people doing all of those things. As Zweig writes:

So began a series of issuances of fines for violations every single day, beginning in August, and running through the spring of 2021. The fines began at $1,000 each. Per the terms of the public health order, there was no grace period, and the amounts doubled each day that the violations were not corrected until a maximum of $5,000 per day was reached. By October 27, 2020, the county had already fined Calvary $350,000.

By the time September rolled around, churches in the county still could not meet indoors. But shopping malls could operate at fifty percent capacity. In October, churches could have either 100 people or twenty-five percent of their capacity on campus. Museums could accommodate fifty percent of their capacities, and stores had no limits. But at this point, Santa Clara County was determined to bring the hammer down on Calvary Chapel San Jose. To do that, they needed evidence.

And cue the “Law & Order” sound effect, again.

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