Tag: ohio

Police Bodycam Footage Is Going Behind a Paywall

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law on Thursday changes to the state’s public records statute that allow law enforcement agencies to charge hundreds of dollars for body camera footage. Though such videos are central to watchdog reporting and police oversight, Ohio opted to join a handful of states that have made it easier for cops to put a steep price tag on transparency.

“Public bodies should be in the business of making it easier — not harder — for the public and the press to access important government records like body worn camera footage,” said Gunita Singh, an attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “There’s no need to impose vast sums of money onto requesters doing their part to foster transparency and accountability.”

Over the past decade, more law enforcement agencies have deployed body cameras — and the footage they provide has become central to covering cops and stemming police brutality. At the same time, law enforcement agencies and police unions have begun complaining about the time and expense of turning these videos over to the public when requested. Some states have responded by authorizing fees for processing footage: In 2023, Arizona passed a law allowing charges up to $46 “per video-hour reviewed.” In 2016, Indiana authorized fees as high as $150 per video.

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Ohio Meat Processing Company “Fresh Mark, Inc.” Agrees to Pay $3.7M Penalty for Employing Migrant Workers Using Stolen U.S. Citizens’ Identities

Fresh Mark, Inc., an Ohio-based meat processing company, has entered into a non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with federal authorities after its hiring manager orchestrated a scheme involving aggravated identity theft and obstruction of justice.

This agreement allows the company to avoid criminal prosecution in exchange for meeting certain criteria, including paying a penalty and implementing a compliance and ethics program.

The case, centered on Fresh Mark’s Salem facility, revealed that Yelwin Omar Munoz-Solis, a hiring manager, actively participated in a conspiracy to steal the identities of U.S. citizens.

These stolen identities were then handed to illegal immigrants seeking employment at Fresh Mark’s processing plants. Munoz-Solis not only facilitated the fraudulent hiring but also falsified I-9 documents to deceive federal authorities about the employees’ eligibility to work in the United States.

Between 2013 and 2018, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents exposed Fresh Mark’s hiring practices, leading to the detention of 146 illegal aliens employed at the company’s facilities in Salem, Massillon, and Canton.

Thirty of these individuals faced federal charges for immigration violations, but the scandal didn’t stop there.

The company’s complicity in the fraudulent scheme was cemented when Munoz-Solis pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including conspiracy and aggravated identity theft.

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Ohio State University Nailed for Millions in the Same DEI Con Afflicting Other Top Schools

If you or any of your children who are of or almost college age are considering attending The Ohio State University (OSU), then you absolutely must read the facts about the costly fraud being inflicted upon that august institution by the Diversity-Equity-Inclusion (DEI) Con Industry.

Yes, I’m speaking of that perennial college football powerhouse in Columbus, one of the major cities of the increasingly deep-red state that has as its official tree the Buckeye, and OSU’s sports teams are known as the Buckeyes. Just in case you wonder, the Buckeye tree is highly toxic, as are its nuts.

Toxic is also applicable to the DEI monstrosity uncovered at OSU by who else but Open the Books (OTB):

Ohio State University spent $13.3 million on pay for 201 employees with DEI-related roles last year. That’s the equivalent of full tuition for over 1,000 in-state students at its main Columbus campus.

The highest paid DEI officials are James L. More, vice provost for diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at OSU, and Keesha Mitchell, associate vice president for the Office of Institutional Equity, practically tied at just under $300,000 each.

Another 29 people make between $100,000 and $269,000, with titles such as associate dean for diversity, inclusion, and outreach ($269,260), another associate vice president for the Office of Institutional Equity ($226,644), assistant vice provost for diversity and inclusion ($171,889), academic director for diversity and inclusion ($170,435), assistant dean and director of diversity, equity and inclusion ($145,923), among many more.

Those high salaries keep the DEI propaganda apparatus operating at full speed in OSU classrooms, spreading pernicious and racist Critical Race Theory (CRT) myths like the one that claims that white Americans are incapable of recognizing their own racism because they are so blinded by white privilege.

Then there is the DEI myth that black Americans are incapable of being racists because they are inescapably victims of that same white privilege. And those are just skimming the very top layers of a deceitful package of lies that semester after semester produces college graduates who have lost touch with reality, both in the present and past American history.

Everything DEI touches is corrupted. Consider DEI’s impact on women’s studies, according to the OTB investigators: “It offers courses like ‘Sexualities and Citizenship: A survey of cultural, social, and political issues related to historical and contemporary lesbian experience in the United States” and “Queer Ecologies: Gender, Sexuality, & the Environment.'”

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Top Ohio Lawmaker Wants To Restrict Marijuana Homegrow Rights And Strengthen THC Potency Caps

Republican lawmakers in Ohio are once again aiming to scale back parts of the state’s voter-approved marijuana legalization law, looking to a proposal from last year that would have decreased allowable THC levels in state-legal cannabis products, reduced the number of plants that adults can grow at home and increased costs for consumers at dispensaries.

Those provisions, backed by Senate President Matt Huffman (R), were added to separate House legislation last year and passed by the Senate. House lawmakers ultimately blocked the Senate changes, however, with some members emphasizing the importance of protecting the will of voters, who passed the legalization law on a 53–47 margin in November 2023.

Come next month, however, Huffman will take over as speaker of the House, having won a seat in last month’s election and subsequently being chosen for the leadership role by colleagues. The move is widely expected to give Huffman new power to push his marijuana proposal forward.

“There were some fundamental flaws in the initiative that was introduced and passed by the voters, which you usually have when there’s not a vetting from all sides,” Huffman told reporters last week about the voter-approved marijuana law. “The bill that the Senate passed last December addresses many of those things.”

Initially, changes backed by Hoffman would have eliminated home cultivation rights entirely for Ohio adults and criminalized all cannabis obtained anywhere other than a state-licensed retailer. Those amendments would have also reduced the marijuana possession limit, raised sales tax on cannabis purchases and diverted funding away from social equity programs and toward law enforcement.

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Ohio Would Ban Intoxicating Hemp Product Sales Under GOP Senator’s New Bill

State Sen. Steve Huffman, R-Tipp City, introduced a bill that would ban the sale of intoxicating hemp products in Ohio.

The Republican lawmaker introduced Senate Bill 326 on Thursday. State lawmakers are set to return to the Ohio Statehouse next week for the start of lame duck.

S.B. 326 defines intoxicating hemp products as containing more than 0.5 of a milligram of delta-9 THC per serving, two milligrams of delta-9 THC per package, or 0.5 of a milligram of total non-delta-9 THC per package, according to the bill’s language.

“This act is hereby declared to be an emergency measure necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, and safety,” the bill said. “The reason for such necessity is to protect Ohioans, especially Ohio’s youth, from untested, unregulated dangerous tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) products. Therefore, this act shall go into immediate effect.”

Marijuana, which is legal in Ohio, is not included as an intoxicating hemp product, according to the bill’s language. Ohio recreational marijuana sales recently topped $143.4 million since sales started three months ago, according to the the Ohio Department of Commerce Division of Cannabis Control.

The 2018 Farm Bill says hemp can be grown legally if it contains less than 0.3 percent THC. Intoxicating hemp products can come in many forms including edibles, beverages, vaping cartridges or oils, among other things.

Delta-9 THC is the main naturally occurring intoxicating part of the cannabis plant and people typically experience a high after consuming or smoking delta-9 THC beyond a certain threshold.

Under S.B. 326, the Ohio Investigative Unit would enforce this piece of legislation if it were to become law, with the assistance of the Ohio Department of Public Safety.

The Ohio Department of Commerce Director (who is currently Sheryl Maxfield) could impose an administrative penalty against someone who sells intoxicating hemp products—$10,000 for a first violation, $25,000 for a second violation and $50,000 for a third violation.

Violating the proposed law would be a first degree misdemeanor on a first offense and a fifth degree felony for a second offense, according to the bill’s language. It would be a fifth degree felony if someone sold intoxicating hemp to someone under 21.

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Shady Election Groups Dumps 90,000 Ballot Registrations in Maricopa County Before Sign-Up Deadline Ends – At Least 40,000 Damaged, Thousands Incomplete

In case you have not been paying attention – leftist groups around the country have been caught corrupting our elections by dumping tens of thousands of bogus ballot registrations into our voter rolls. This is taking place in state after state.

PENNSYLVANIA

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania city officials announced eight days ago that they were investigating a massive fraudulent voter registration operation investigation involving thousands of fraudulent voter registrations. At least 2,500 ballot registrations were in question.

On Saturday, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania announced that they were also investigating hundreds of fake ballot registrations that were turned in recently by a questionable voter registration group. Lancaster, Monroe and York Counties in Pennsylvania have reported similar criminal acts and they are investigating. At least two counties reported that Field+Media Corps was behind the thousands of fraudulent registrations. The ballot registration harvesting group is based in Arizona.

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Ohio child welfare agency secretly tracking sexual orientation and transgender identity of children

An Ohio child welfare agency has made a database tracking the sexual orientation, transgender identity and pronouns of children who communicated with the agency.

The Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS) developed a supposed “confidential spreadsheet” that monitored the sexual orientations and transgender identities of children.

The report, which describes a document acquired by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), spotlights the extent to which some government agencies entrusted with the protection of children have been captured by trans activists.

The document features entries dated from March 2018 to August 2024 and the spreadsheet was part of the agency’s “Safe Identification” program, which teaches social services personnel how to gather information about the sexuality and gender identity of children.

The DCNF discovered that the Cuyahoga County DCFS was one of four social service agencies in the United States “chosen to research, develop and evaluate transgender ideology-based child welfare interventions that suggest parents and caregivers who do not affirm a child’s sexual orientation or gender confusion are unsafe and may need to have their children removed from their home.”

Members of President Joe Biden’s administration called the Cuyahoga County group “trailblazers” and wished to nationalize their model.

The Cuyahoga County DCFS team influenced the recently completed Biden order, which requires child welfare systems to approve and support gender confusion. Staff members described the confidential spreadsheet as their means of “assisting” children acquire gender treatments. They also shared that some of the children they tracked were as young as five years old.

They tracked if children were “transgender or gender diverse,” naming them as pansexual, bisexual, gay, lesbian, straight or “questioning” their sexual orientation.

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A home in Ohio for African immigrants with nowhere to go

Oumar Ball was in a rush. The eight men crammed into his 2006 Honda Odyssey needed to clock into work at a chicken-processing plant by 4 p.m. It was 3:40 p.m. and the traffic on the Ronald Reagan Highway wasn’t moving fast enough.

As Ball wove through the cars, he toggled from one call or WhatsApp message to the next. One man needed help making a down payment to a lawyer to begin his asylum paperwork. Another wanted to know how many more days before he’d get permission from the U.S. government to work.

Ever since thousands of his compatriots began arriving from Mauritania to the United States border with Mexico two years ago, they’ve been making their way to the quiet Cincinnati neighborhood of Mount Airy, where they have found refuge in Ball’s home.

Up until recently, few Mauritanians made the 10,000-mile trekfrom Africa to South America and then on to the United States. But poverty, corruption and racial tensions between the Arab-dominated government and Black Africans have compelled many to flee and apply for asylum in America, where most are allowed to remain while waiting for their cases to be heard.

Last year, at least 15,500 residents from Mauritania arrived in the United States, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data analyzed by The Washington Post. The influx represents a 2,800 percent increase compared with 2022, when just 543 arrived.

The sharp increase in migrants is part of a broader pattern of immigration that led President Biden to issue an executive order Tuesday blocking new asylum seekers once unauthorized border crossings exceed 2,500 a day.

A sizable share of Mauritanians arriving in the United States are settling in a city that has drawn little attention as migrationinto the countrysoars: Cincinnati. Mauritanians first laid down roots here in the 1990s, drawn by manufacturing jobs. In 2023, of more than 2,700 Mauritanians who settled in Ohio, a little more than half went to the “Queen City,” the data shows.

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Influx Of Migrants Just Doubled The Population Of A Small Ohio Town

Another Rust Belt town in southwest Ohio is becoming overwhelmed by overseas migrants who’ve nearly doubled the town’s population of 3,500.

A local Cincinnati television station reported last month that while Springfield copes with tens of thousands of Haitian arrivals, “the small village of Lockland is grappling with its own crisis.”

“Estimates suggested that there are up to 3,000 asylum-seeking immigrants, primarily from Mauritania, residing in the Cincinnati suburb,” Local 12 reported. “Lockland Fire Chief and Village Administrator Doug Wehmeyer said the Mauritanians are living in several apartment buildings, often with as many as 10 people in units designed for four.”

“It’s creating a dangerous situation for the residents and firefighters,” Wehmeyer told the television station. “In most cases, all they have is a mattress, a couch, and some clothes. So, while we’re trying to advance a fire hose line down the hallway, they are pulling mattresses and clothes out [of the units], believing that it’s over [and the building will burn down]. Where we look at that and say, ‘Man, there’s 10 people in a unit.’ They look at that and it’s better than the condition they came from.”

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Biden-Harris DOJ Announces It Will ‘Monitor’ Voting in Ohio County Due to Sheriff’s Immigration Comments

An Ohio sheriff’s comments have triggered the Justice Department to proclaim that it will monitor one Ohio county for potential voter intimidation.

The fuss began on Sept. 13 when Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski issued a post about Vice President Kamala Harris on his personal Facebook page, according to USA Today.

“When people ask me…What’s gonna happen if the Flip – Flopping, Laughing Hyena Wins?? I say…write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards,” Zuchowski wrote in the Facebook post, which no longer appears on his personal Facebook page. “Sooo…when the Illegal human ‘Locust’ (which she supports!) Need places to live…We’ll already have the addresses of their New families…who supported their arrival!”

The NAACP immediately began squawking about voter intimidation.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced its response, saying it will “monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws in Portage County, Ohio, during the early voting period and on Election Day,” according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

“Voters in Portage County have raised concerns about intimidation resulting from the surveillance and the collection of personal information regarding voters, as well as threats concerning the electoral process. Attempted or actual intimidation, threats or coercion directed toward any person for voting and related activities or urging or aiding others in voting is prohibited by Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” the news release said.

As noted by the Associated Press, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio claimed the comments were an unconstitutional, “impermissible threat” against people displaying yard signs.

Freda J. Levenson, legal director of the ACLU of Ohio, alleged many residents believed the post was a “threat of governmental action to punish them for their expressed political beliefs” and took their signs down in fear.

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine called Zuchowski’s comments “unfortunate” and “not helpful.”

The Ohio secretary of state’s office shrugged off the fuss.

“Our office has determined the sheriff’s comments don’t violate election laws,” said Dan Lusheck, a representative of  Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose.

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