Tag: maryland

PILOT’S BIZARRE ENCOUNTER WITH 30-FOOT-TALL TRIANGULAR UFO PROMPTS AVIATION SAFETY CONCERNS

A baffling incident unfolded in the skies above Frederick County, Maryland, last month as a private pilot reported a mid-air encounter with a 30-foot-tall triangular UFO, newly released audio recordings reveal.

The pilot, flying a Piper Cherokee Arrow (P28R), registration N30024, was flying from Allegheny County Airport in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Frederick Municipal Airport in Maryland at the time of the incident, which occurred on December 20, 2023.

Approximately 50 miles northwest of his destination, the pilot contacted air traffic controllers (ATC) to report sighting an object he described as appearing to be “approximately 30 feet tall” as it passed him flying “at about 6500-6800 feet.”

“Not sure what it is,” the pilot can be heard saying in an audio recording of the incident uploaded to the YouTube channel You Can See ATC, which specializes in reconstructions of non-standard and emergency situations that occur in flight.

“It was 30 feet tall?” an obviously perplexed ATC operator can be heard replying.

“It was pretty tall, probably about 30 feet tall,” the pilot confirms. “It was going opposite direction of us.”

Asked if the object was moving at a fast pace, the pilot, just prior to entering his descent, also confirmed that the object appeared to be moving quickly as it passed him.

“Arrow to 024, what does the object look like?” the ATC operator can then be heard asking.

“It’s kinda hard to describe,” the pilot responds. “It was just, uh, tall and, uh, pointy.”

“Like a triangle?” the ATC operator then asks.

“It was in the shape of a triangle. It was bottom and flat on top. I’m not sure what it is.” Intriguingly, the pilot then adds, “[I] do have a picture of it,” clarifying that there “did not appear to be any danger” resulting from the appearance of the unusual flying triangle.

“It was pretty far away from us. Just noticeable enough for caution to other aircraft,” the pilot says.

Following this exchange, the ATC operator can then be heard advising the pilot to call his supervisor due to safety concerns that were raised after the pilot’s bizarre sighting.

“Just wanna make sure everything is safe up there, uh, for future aircraft flying through that. So give him a call once you’re on the ground safely please.”

The Debrief has reached out to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for comment on the December 2023 incident. The pilot who reported the sighting of the strange object has not been identified.

For decades, observations of flying objects of unknown origin, which the Department of Defense now calls unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), have often involved triangular UFO sightings. Beginning on November 29, 1989, a wave of sightings involving large, triangular aircraft erupted over Belgium, culminating in an intercept attempt involving two Belgian Air Force F-16s in the early morning hours of March 31, 1990. Sightings of the unusual craft continued until April of that year.

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Maryland Roommates File Lawsuit After Police Shot Their Dog During Alleged Illegal Home Search

“That’s what happens when you don’t answer questions,” a Prince George’s County police officer said as Erica Umana’s dog lay on the ground, paralyzed and bleeding out.

Minutes earlier, on a summer day in 2021, officers had shot Umana’s dog, a boxer mix named Hennessy, during a chaotic confrontation inside Umana’s apartment.

Now Umana and her roommates—Erika Sanchez, Dayri Benitez, and Brandon Cuevas—have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Prince George’s County Police Department and several of its officers, saying the police had no right to enter their apartment, shoot their dog, and detain them. The lawsuit seeks over $16 million for allegedly subjecting them to excessive force, unlawful search and seizure, and false arrest.

“This case is an outrage. It is disgusting, disgraceful, and despicable,” William Murphy, an attorney representing the roommates, said in a press release Monday. “These officers outright abused and mistreated our clients, lied to unlawfully break into their house, manhandled them illegally, and shot their dog. And in utter disregard for the severity of their intolerable behavior, they laughed about it.”

The incident began on June 2, 2021, when Prince George’s County police officers arrived at an apartment complex in Landover Hills in response to a 911 call from a woman claiming two dogs had allegedly jumped on her and bit her.

Prince George’s County Cpl. Jason Ball encountered Sanchez sitting outside of the apartments, but she refused to answer any questions. Ball then threatened to arrest Sanchez for trespassing if she didn’t leave. On body camera footage, Ball said into his radio that he believed Sanchez lived in the apartment complex but that he was about to arrest her anyway because she refused to answer his questions—the first of several retaliatory threats and comments from Ball.

Sanchez walked off, and Ball and his partner went to knock on the door of the apartment where Sanchez, Umana, and the other lawsuit plaintiffs lived. No one answered.

“This would be open by now, by the way, if it wasn’t…,” Ball said to his partner, trailing off and tapping his body camera. “I used to open them all the time.” 

“Times have changed,” Ball’s partner responded.

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The 4th Circuit Says Maryland’s Handgun Licensing Law Is Unconstitutional

Maryland is one of 14 states that require background checks for all firearm purchases, whether or not the seller is a federally licensed dealer. Since 2013, Maryland has imposed an additional requirement on handgun buyers: They must first obtain a “handgun qualification license,” which entails completing at least four hours of firearm training and undergoing a seemingly redundant “investigation” aimed at screening out people who are legally disqualified from owning guns. According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, that process, which can take up to 30 days, violates the Second Amendment.

In a decision published on Tuesday, a divided 4th Circuit panel concluded that Maryland’s handgun ownership licensing system is not “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”—the constitutional test that the U.S. Supreme Court established last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Writing for the majority in Maryland Shall Issue v. Moore, 4th Circuit Judge Julius Richardson notes that Bruen “effected a sea change in Second Amendment law,” making a variety of gun control laws newly vulnerable to constitutional challenges. Maryland’s handgun licensing law is the latest example.

The state argued that the law fits a tradition of disarming “dangerous” individuals, such as people with felony records, illegal drug users, and people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors. “Maryland simply assumes that those federal prohibitions are justified by a historical ‘dangerousness’ exception,” Richardson writes. And because “the challenged law is ostensibly designed to prevent those same groups of people from acquiring handguns,” the state argued, “it also falls within the same ‘dangerousness’ exception.”

But even if the goal is the same, Richardson says, the “mechanism” embodied in the licensing law is “entirely different.” Maryland did not merely prohibit people from owning guns based on criteria that supposedly indicate they pose a threat to public safety. “Instead,” Richardson writes, “it prohibits all people from acquiring handguns until they can prove that they are not dangerous. So Maryland’s law burdens all people—even if only temporarily—rather than just a class of people whom the state has already deemed presumptively dangerous.”

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Former Maryland mayor, prominent Democrat sentenced to 30 years for possession and distribution of child sex abuse images

Disgraced former Maryland mayor and prominent Democrat Patrick Wojahn was sentenced to 30 years of prison after he pleaded guilty to dozens of child porn charges. 

Wojahn, who formerly served as the first openly gay mayor of College Park, Maryland received the sentence after he was arrested for possession and distribution of child pornography in March, reports Fox News.

Court documents said that Wojahn used the social media app Kik to load and distribute child pornography. Police later confiscated a storage device, several cell phones, a computer, and a tablet from his residence all due to suspicions they contained child pornography. 

The longtime Democrat was a mentee of Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who himself was also a small-town mayor. Wojahn also has made numerous appearances at the White House, often being seen in photographs with Buttigieg in Washington, DC.

Wojahn has referred to Joe Biden as “the most pro-LGBTQ President in US history.”

Despite Wojahn’s charges, the City of College Park put out a public statement thanking him for “his many years of dedicated service.”

CBS reports that Wojahn pleaded guilty to over 100 counts linked to the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material back in August. 

This plea deal calls for Wojahn to serve 30 years in prison, according to the office of Prince George County State Attorney Aisha Braveboy.

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Federal Court Strikes Down Maryland’s Handgun License Law as Unconstitutional

The Biden administration that pushed efforts to limit citizen’s gun rights suffered another in a series of legal setbacks.

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court judge ruled that Maryland’s handgun license law violated the Second Amendment.

Democratic Maryland legislatures passed a law requiring potential handgun orders to first secure a “handgun qualification license.” The law required a background investigation and a waiting period of up to 30 days.

Critics of the law argued the criteria to be approved for a “license” was vague and arbitrary.

On Tuesday, the Fourth Circuit ruled the law was not “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

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Maryland Republicans Want To Let Police Search Cars And People Based On Smell Of Marijuana, Which Is A Legal Product

Republican lawmakers in Maryland are aiming to undo a law that prevents police from stopping or searching people and vehicles based merely on the smell of marijuana, claiming the measure has put motorists at risk and took away an important tool used by law enforcement to seize people’s firearms.

The effort is one of five legislative proposals that the Maryland General Assembly’s Joint Republican Caucus unveiled this week as part of its public safety agenda for the coming legislative session, which runs from January to April of next year.

“There is no doubt about it, people using cannabis while riding in or operating a vehicle makes our roads less safe,” House Minority Whip Jesse Pippy (R) said at a press conference Tuesday. “The Drug Free Roadways Act of 2024 will remove the prohibition from stopping and searching vehicles due to the odor of cannabis.”

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The AnthraX Chronicles: Part 1: Spills of the Fort Detrick Kind

The mainstream media has purposely turned a blind eye to suspicious biological research institutions in this country, such as the infamous US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick. USAMRIID—pronounced you-SAM-rid – is the medical and biodefense research organization that replaced the base’s former biowarfare lab that was in operation from 1943 to 1969. Fort Detrick was used to store the  CIA’s arsenal of biological poisons, including smallpox, tuberculosis, and anthrax, as well as a number of organic toxins, including snake venom and paralytic shellfish poison. Not only is Fort Detrick a biowarfare facility, but the CIA also used the base for their MK-Ultra mind control program. Arguably, too few Americans have heard of the base, despite its freakish history.

Yet early on in the pandemic, Fort Detrick was actually trending in China; Chinese state media suggested that the COVID-19 coronavirus was made and leaked from a US military installation. One title read In China, 25 Million People Have Called For An Investigation Into Fort Detrick For Causing The Lab Leak That Started The Worldwide Coronavirus Outbreak.  In 2021, a Chinese convoy of 25 million signed a petition, urging Tedros of the World Health Organization to launch a probe. Following the petition, a group of Filipino scholars also launched a similar online petition to break the wall of silence around the suspicious lab.

According to the publication Global Times, reports emerged from many other countries such as Italy, Spain, France, and the US, indicating the presence of COVID-19 even earlier than the first reported case in Wuhan, “which demands an inquiry and verification from WHO experts as soon as possible.”

“Fort Detrick is too dangerous a mystery to remain shrouded in secrecy,” said political commentator Herman Laurel. “It is important for all the peoples of the world to join in the petition to know the truth about Fort Detrick at this time and end the delusions the US is creating. However, the United States put a positive spin on Fort Detrick, saying that the army base is conducting “beneficial research.” A CNN “exclusive” further demonstrated the US was paving the way for the US intelligence agency to frame the Wuhan lab.

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Officers Find Body of Accused Killer of Maryland Judge After Weeklong Manhunt

The body of a suspect wanted for the murder of a Maryland judge has been located after a weeklong manhunt.

The suspect, Pedro Argote, was found guilty of domestic and child abuse and did not receive a favorable settlement agreement in a divorce case overseen by Judge Andrew Wilkinson.

The New York Post reported that Argote’s eldest daughter testified in court that Pedro “beat her with a belt and silenced his infant child by stuffing a towel in his mouth.” The daughter also testified that she had been confined to her bedroom “for years.”

The daughter, who fled the home when she turned 18, told the court: “The reason I worked up the courage to testify was so that my siblings wouldn’t have to go through the mental torment that I currently have.”

Authorities believe Argote, 49, “targeted” Wilkinson after the judge granted his ex-wife full custody of his children.

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New gun control laws sweep three blue states

Starting in October, three blue states will put into effect a slew of new gun reform legislation. Lawsuits against Colorado and Maryland have arisen, while Connecticut has steered clear of any new legal trouble.

Below is a breakdown of the legislation that went into effect on Oct. 1 in Colorado, Maryland, and Connecticut.

Once considered a purple political state, Colorado has been passing gun control legislation at a fast-moving pace. Two laws, passed by the legislature in April, will instill a three-day waiting period for firearm purchases and make the path easier for gun violence survivors and victims to sue manufacturers and dealers.

House Bill 23-1219 imposes a three-day waiting period and a background check for those who seek to purchase a firearm. Customers previously could purchase a gun and receive it the same day. If gun stores violate the new regulations, they could be charged a $500 fine for a first offense and up to a $5,000 fine for a second offense.

A gun rights group filed a lawsuit challenging the new timeline requirements, calling the waiting period “unconstitutional.” The Rocky Mountain Gun Owners initially filed a lawsuit against the law after the Democratic-led legislature passed the bill in April, but the group withdrew its suit after a judge ruled there was no standing.

“We will not bow down to unconstitutional infringements on our Second Amendment freedoms,” Rocky Mountain Gun Owners Executive Director Taylor Rhodes said in a statement last week.

“We’ve reloaded our legal arsenal and are ready to take on this absurd waiting period that does nothing but trample on the rights of peaceable gun owners. We will not let tyranny prevail.”

The group cited the Supreme Court ruling from last year, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, saying the ruling invalidates “the lower court rulings’ justification for gun control.”

Senate Bill 23-168 makes it easier for Coloradans who are victims of gun violence to file lawsuits against gun manufacturers and sellers by removing the requirement to pay the defendant’s legal bills for those who lose the lawsuit. Similar laws have been enacted in New York and New Jersey and are also facing legal troubles.

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Fury as ZERO children at 13 Baltimore state schools pass math exam – as parent groups call on leaders to step down

A slate of Baltimore schools have sparked outrage after zero students passed their state math exams – with almost 75 percent testing at the lowest possible score.

The poor performances came in the latest round of Maryland‘s state testing, where 13 high schools in the city – a staggering 40 percent – failed to produce a single student with a ‘proficient’ score in math.

‘This is educational homicide,’ said Jason Rodriguez, deputy director of Baltimore-based nonprofit People Empowered by the Struggle, to Fox Baltimore.

The activist said there is ‘no excuse’ for the failure, which has come after years of warnings over the city’s poor education standards.

It also comes days after a scathing new study found that schooling across America fell to dire lows during the pandemic, concluding that one-third of fourth and eighth grade students can’t even read at a ‘basic’ level.  

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