Tag: massachusetts

Former police officer from Buckland, Mass. pleads guilty to possessing child porn, secretly filming nude girl

A former police officer from a small town in Franklin County pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography and posing and videotaping a child sexually without her knowledge, the District Attorney announced Tuesday.

Jacob Wrisley, 42, was a part-time police officer in Bernardston and Buckland, where he lives. He was sentenced to 4 to 5 years in state prison and a 5-year probation period after his release, Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan announced.

Wrisley was found with ten thousands of images and videos of child pornography, and some of the victims were identified. According to the DA, Wrisley was a sworn officer when he victimized a young girl who was 8 to 10 years old, and investigators also found images he took of clothed children playing in public places in Franklin County.

Investigators could not identify the “vast majority” of the children in the images found, but the assistant district attorney said his crimes were not “victimless.” 

The investigators also found organized folders on his devices “labeled with graphic, degrading names and containing images of exploited children.”

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Toddler, two, is found dead in home of Massachusetts Police Lieutenant James Feeley more than a month after he was charged with child rape

A two-year old girl was found unresponsive at the home of a longtime Massachusetts cop who was arrested last month for allegedly raping a child under the age of 12.

Winthrop Police lieutenant James Feeley, 56, is currently being held on $200,000 bail on charges including aggravated rape of a child and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under the age of 14, and was therefore not at the home when the toddler was found.

A 911 call was received at 10:20am on Friday morning. When emergency services arrived on the scene, the youngster was rushed to the hospital where the girl died, reports Boston25.

The child was rushed to hospital in the fire chief’s own car as they were first to arrive. Two EMT’s performed CPR on the toddler.

‘They made the decision to transport this child to Massachusetts General Hospital in the back of the fire chief’s vehicle,’ Winthrop Police Chief Terence Delehanty said.

‘The fire department did a heroic job today and made decisive decisions under emergency conditions to get this child the medical treatment necessary as soon as possible,’ said Chief Delehanty.

An initial investigation ‘indicates no signs of foul play or physical trauma. ‘We are awaiting an autopsy to determine cause of death,’ a spokesperson for Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in a statement.

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Massachusetts Senate Unveils Sweeping Gun Control Bill

The only bits of good news about the “SAFER Act” that I can find is that the gun control bill introduced by the Massachusetts Senate on Thursday does not include a live-fire training mandate in order to obtain a gun license, nor does it impose a lengthy list of new “gun-free zones” in the state. But while S2572 may have a slightly narrower focus than its House counterpart (nicknamed the Lawful Citizens Imprisonment Act by the Gun Owners Action League), it’s still aimed mostly at lawful gun owners instead of the real perpetrators of most violent crime in the state.

Under S2572 Massachusetts residents would need a license to manufacture firearms before they could build a gun using a 3D printer, the state’s ban on so-called assault weapons would be codified to fit the Attorney General’s interpretation of the law (which renders most semi-automatic long guns illegal to manufacture, sell, and transfer), and a new civil cause of action would be created allowing individuals to sue gun makers and sellers over “the marketing of unlawful firearm sales to minors”; something that wouldn’t be an issue were it not for the fact that anti-gunners view almost every bit of marketing by gun companies as if it was targeted to those too young to legally purchase a firearm.

The only new “gun-free zones” established by S2572 would be government administration buildings, and local municipalities would be able to opt-out of the ban and allow lawful carry if they choose. That’s a far different approach than what we’ve seen in other anti-gun states like California, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland, where lawmakers enacted so many new “sensitive places” that the right to carry would be largely limited to a few sidewalks and streets, but given the other provisions in the legislation its hardly something to cheer about.

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Massachusetts Lawmakers Will Be Forced To Consider Psychedelics Legalization Measure That Activists Petitioned For, State Official Says

Massachusetts officials have certified that activists submitted enough valid signatures to force legislative consideration of a psychedelics legalization initiative before the measure potentially heads to the state’s 2024 ballot.

Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin’s (D) office certified that the campaign Massachusetts for Mental Health Options (MMHO) collected 96,277 valid signatures for the reform measure—about 20,000 more than required to put the issue before legislators.

Accordingly, the proposal has now been officially transmitted to the legislature.

“This brings psilocybin and other breakthrough psychedelic therapies one big step closer to being available to adults dealing with depression, anxiety and other mental health challenges,” Jennifer Manley, committee spokesperson, said in a press release on Wednesday.

“We look forward to working with legislative leaders on the possibility and promise of natural psychedelic medicine as we continue our work to provide therapeutic access to these groundbreaking treatments,” she said. “We thank the secretary and his staff for their service reviewing the nearly 100,000 signatures submitted in support, as well as the volunteers and advocates who spent many hours talking to voters around the state.”

The announcement came after a longer-than-usual review process, which was due to an especially high volume of ballot proposals that were being circulated for the 2024 election cycle.

The MMHO measure would create a regulatory framework for lawful and supervised access to psychedelics at licensed facilities. It would also legalize the possession and gifting of psychedelics such as psilocybin and ayahuasca, but it would not otherwise provide for commercial retail sales of the substances.

“We are on the precipice of a sea change in the way we can help people who may believe they have run out of options,” Winthrop police lieutenant Sarko Gergerian, one of the campaign’s backers, said. “Don’t lose hope. These options could be available soon for you and your loved ones here in Massachusetts.”

The campaign first filed two different psychedelics reform initiatives in August, and after the state attorney general determined that they both met the constitutional requirement for ballot placement the following months, activists decided to pursue the version that included a home cultivation option.

Now that the secretary of state has verified the signature count, the legislature will now have the choice to enact the reform, propose a substitute or decline to act. If lawmakers decide not to legalize psychedelics by May 1, activists would then have until July 3 to submit at least 12,429 additional valid signatures to put the proposal before voters on the November 2024 ballot.

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New England Neo-Nazi group is SUED by Massachusetts AG over ‘violent, threatening and intimidating’ protests after they repeatedly ‘terrorized’ residents to promote white supremacist ideology

A New England neo-Nazi group is being sued over a ‘campaign of unlawful conduct’ that has ‘terrorized’ Americans they dub ‘enemies of our people’. 

The Massachusetts Attorney General has brought a civil lawsuit against NSC-131, known as the Nationalist Social Club, and its leaders, Christopher Hood and Liam McNeil, accusing them of a series of ‘violent and otherwise unlawful Club actions’.  

The lawsuit is unique in that it points to specific actions allegedly conducted by the group that go beyond their right to free speech – including storming a drag queen story time event and harassing migrants outside emergency shelter hotels. 

NSC-131 has around 30 members – thought to all be local white men – and captures its ‘violent protests’ on video to use as marketing to attract new members, as part of a growing ‘international’ white supremacist movement.  

Self-proclaimed Nazi-hunter, and founder of anti-fascist veterans group, Task Force Butler, Kristofer Goldsmith told DailyMail.com the group is motivated ‘by a deep desire to hurt people… it’s all about causing fear’.

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Massachusetts Marijuana Retailer Encourages Package Recycling With Discounted $4 Joint Offer

One of the state’s cannabis retailers is encouraging customers to recycle the plastic that encases certain cannabis products by offering them a $4 pre-rolled joint for every piece of packaging they return.

In the heavily regulated cannabis industry, nearly every product is required to come in child-resistant packaging that is typically made of plastic. Most of that plastic is not recyclable and ends up in the trash or tossed on the ground.

“Living in the city of Boston, I saw these [pre-roll] tubes all over the streets, they’re everywhere,” said Ture Turnbull, who with Wes Ritchie owns Tree House Craft Cannabis dispensaries in Pepperell and Dracut. “So we looked at what needed to be done, what the industry was doing to address this, what the policies around this were, and what opportunity there was for us to do right.”

Tree House’s recycling program incentivizes consumers to bring back their used packaging to the dispensary. Specifically, customers can return the plastic pop-top tubes that hold pre-rolled joints and the square-lidded containers that hold marijuana flower. For each piece of packaging customers return, they can buy a pre-rolled joint for $4—a price that yields savings ranging from $4 to $8 depending on what joint is on offer.

The brand of the pre-roll currently being offered is the company’s own Yellow Brick Road. Since May, when Tree House started the program, customers have returned more than 6,000 pieces of packaging and the company has offered an equivalent number of $4 pre-rolls.

“We literally had to put our money where our mouth is to create this incentive program because it has a monetary hit to us, but a benefit to the consumer, and that’s the only way we could actually see it taking off, to incentivize it,” said Turnbull. “This is the first try at a serious program that says: Let’s take the plastic and recycle it. Let’s take this environmental concern seriously.”

Tree House uses the recycled packaging in two ways. If the packaging is intact, it’s reused to package new products. If not, the company commissions artwork for its dispensaries that incorporates the plastic.

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Lucretia Brown and the last witchcraft trial in America, May 14, 1878

In 1878, the last charge of witchcraft in this country was brought to trial in Salem. Lucretia Brown and her sister never married and lived with their mother in this house. Lucretia had been an invalid since she injured her spine in a childhood accident, but when she was in her 50s she became a disciple of Mary Baker Eddy and was convinced that Christian Science had healed her. She even began calling on neighbors at the other end of the Green.

When poor Lucretia suffered a “relapse” in 1875, Mrs. Eddy convinced her that Daniel Spofford of Newburyport, whom Mrs. Eddy had recently excommunicated, was exercising mesmeric powers upon her. Hearing of her illness and concerned about the charges being made against him, Mr. Spofford decided made a surprise call on his old friend, whereupon Miss Brown became agitated, believing he had come to do her further harm.

Mrs. Eddy became obsessed that Spofford was an enemy of her church and tried unsuccessfully to publish an attack against him in papers throughout the county. She directed twelve of her students to spend two hours each every day around the clock in concentrated thought against Mr. Spofford to prevent him from doing further harm to her patients.

She had her lawyer in Lynn draw up a bill of complaint in Lucretia Brown’s name, setting forth the injuries that Spofford had supposedly inflicted and petitioning the court to restrain him from exercising his powers against her.

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Neo-Nazi group NSC-131 holds anti-immigration protest outside Woburn hotel

Members of a neo-Nazi group demonstrated outside three Woburn hotels on Saturday, delivering anti-immigration messages about a week after city officials said that nearly 60 migrant families were being housed in hotels in the city.

Photos posted on social media by protesters and a group called New England Nazi Watch showed several demonstrators standing outside a Red Roof Inn on Commerce Way, wearing face coverings and holding a banner indicating they were part of Nationalist Socialist Club 131.

The group, also known as NSC-131, is a self-described “pro-white, street-oriented fraternity dedicated to raising AUTHENTIC resistance to the enemies of our people in the New England area.” It has been classified as a neo-Nazi organization by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The hate group took credit for the protest on the social media platform Telegram.

“NSC 131 organized an emergency mobilization in Woburn, Massachusetts to oppose invaders and their collaborators,” the group wrote. “The action was conducted in response to hundreds of Haitian invaders being housed in Woburn hotels with taxpayer dollars.”

In an email to the Globe on Monday, the group said it had protested outside three hotels.

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Obama chef Tafari Campbell’s cause of death is revealed as an accident – after he died while paddleboarding at their Martha’s Vineyard home last month

The death of Barack Obama’s personal chef while paddleboarding in Martha’s Vineyard has been ruled an accident, a state official has said.

Tafari Campbell, 45, visited the resort island in late July and was on Edgartown Great Pond near the former president’s summer home.

He was seen going under the water, sparking a two-day search for his body.

Timothy McGuirk, from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, said on Tuesday the cause of death was drowning and an accident.

But the update has left numerous unanswered questions, not least surrounding the identity of the female paddleboarder who was with him and the identity of the 911 caller from the Obamas’ home and what they said.

McGuirk also said that Massachusetts does not release autopsy results to the public – the accident ruling was all that was released by the authorities on Tuesday night.

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Massachusetts Excludes Wealthy Sanctuary Cities From List of Communities to House Illegal Immigrants

Amid an illegal immigration crisis so bad in Massachusetts that some have been sent to Logan International Airport in Boston, the absence of affluent communities on a newly released list of communities slated to absorb the influx is raising some eyebrows.

Among the communities missing from Gov. Maura Healey’s list is Martha’s Vineyard, the ultra-liberal affluent Massachusetts atoll that made national headlines last year for shipping 49 Venezuelans off the island last year almost as soon as they arrived at the affluent Cape Cod atoll where Pride flags and Black Lives Matter signs adorn oceanfront homes and well manicured lawns.

Also absent from the list is the overwhelmingly Democrat-dominated Newton and Cambridge, despite both Boston-neighboring communities being self-declared sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants.

“The only answer for this can be hypocrisy,” Republican state Rep. Peter Durant told The Epoch Times. “You advocate for more services for immigrants, but when the rubber meets the road, you don’t want anything to do with them.”

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