Tag: police state

Most police forces now allow trans officers to strip-search women as campaigners warn the move will lead to ‘state-sanctioned sexual assault’

The majority of police forces allow trans-identifying biologically male officers to strip-search women, research has found.

Of the 43 forces in England and Wales, at least 34 have either implemented the policy or intend to, a report from the Women’s Rights Network revealed.

The feminist group’s founder, Heather Binning, said the guidelines would lead to ‘state-sanctioned sexual assault’, and police leaders had failed the public by pandering to vocal lobbyists.

‘Self-identification is not UK law and women should not be paying the price for policing beyond the law,’ she said.

‘Police chiefs have failed us again. This is not reasonable or lawful and we do not consent. It is state-sanctioned sexual assault, and it must not be tolerated.’

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Jan. 6 rioters who were passive can be convicted of disorderly conduct, court rules

Rioters who were passive during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, but can be convicted of disorderly conduct, a federal court ruled Friday.

The case focused on a rioter, Russell Alford, who received a year-long sentence for his “role” in the insurrection. He was attempting to challenge “the reasonableness of his sentence and the sufficiency of the evidence to support two of his convictions, both of which charged him with engaging in ‘disorderly or disruptive conduct.’”

“The trial evidence indicated that, during Alford’s brief time within the Capitol, he was neither violent nor destructive,” D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote in a Friday filing. “Nevertheless, we affirm his convictions because a jury could rationally find that his unauthorized presence in the Capitol as part of an unruly mob contributed to the disruption of the Congress’s electoral certification and jeopardized public safety.”

The ruling came down a day before the third anniversary of the Capitol riot. Over 1,200 people have faced federal crime charges over the insurrection.

“[I]t is equally clear from caselaw that even passive, quiet and nonviolent conduct can be disorderly,” the Friday filing read.

Prosecutors are still on the hunt for a minimum of 80 suspects and whoever placed pipe bombs at the offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC). The FBI has put up a $500,000 reward for the perpetrator.

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Atlas of Surveillance…

Law enforcement surveillance isn’t always secret. These technologies can be discovered in news articles and government meeting agendas, in company press releases and social media posts. It just hasn’t been aggregated before.

That’s the starting point for the Atlas of Surveillance, a collaborative effort between the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the University of Nevada, Reno Reynolds School of Journalism. Through a combination of crowdsourcing and data journalism, we are creating the largest-ever repository of information on which law enforcement agencies are using what surveillance technologies. The aim is to generate a resource for journalists, academics, and, most importantly, members of the public to check what’s been purchased locally and how technologies are spreading across the country.

We specifically focused on the most pervasive technologies, including drones, body-worn cameras, face recognition, cell-site simulators, automated license plate readers, predictive policing, camera registries, and gunshot detection. Although we have amassed more than 12,100 datapoints in 5,500-plus jurisdictions, our research only reveals the tip of the iceberg and underlines the need for journalists and members of the public to continue demanding transparency from criminal justice agencies.

Visit it HERE

TSA director arrested by US Customs and Border Protection

An official with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been arrested on an outstanding warrant, according to local reports.

TSA Assistant Federal Security Director Maxine McManaman was arrested in Atlanta by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Dec. 28. 

McManaman had a warrant for her arrest posted by the St. Lucie County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office, which claimed she and an alleged accomplice named Delroy Chambers Sr. exploited a relative suffering from dementia by falsifying documents in their name, according to Port St. Lucie Police.

The Florida authorities allege that the duo forged signatures on a quitclaim deed transferring ownership of a property in the relative’s name over to themselves.

The relative whose property was transferred to McManaman and Chambers allegedly could not have signed the quitclaim deed, because the individual was found to have been in Atlanta on the date listed, according to police. 

Chambers was previously arrested on Dec. 20 in Port St. Lucie, charged with two counts of exploitation of an elderly or disabled adult, simple neglect and two counts of forgery. He eventually bonded out of jail. 

McManaman is facing a third-degree felony charge of forgery.

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Biden Is Overseeing the Silent Death of the First Amendment

In early 2024, a new, grim chapter may be written in the annals of journalistic history. Julian Assange, the publisher of Wikileaks, could board a plane for extradition to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison on espionage charges for the crime of publishing newsworthy information.

The persecution of Assange is clear evidence that the Biden administration is overseeing the silent death of the First Amendment—with global consequences.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s exposé during the Watergate scandal is seen as a triumph of truth over power. Their investigative reporting led to the downfall of President Nixon, cementing their status as champions of press freedom. However, what if this tale had taken a dark turn, with the journalists prosecuted for espionage and silenced under the guise of national security? While this is mere fiction, Assange’s plight is all too real.

Assange, the standard-bearer of our era’s investigative journalism, awaits extradition in a British cell in Belmarsh Prison, a fate that could stifle the beacon of transparency he represents. At a time when the world grapples with the erosion of press freedom, with journalists imprisoned and killed, Assange’s case raises profound questions about the consequences of challenging power and unveiling uncomfortable realities.

The legacy of WikiLeaks goes beyond exposing government misconduct; it pierces the veil of secrecy shrouding global affairs. The release of Collateral Murder, the haunting camera footage from a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad showing the murder of several civilians, including two Reuters journalists, shocked the world. As we’ve seen in the past two months, the killing of civilians and journalists in war continues. In the last two months, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has killed dozens of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. On Thursday, human rights groups determined that Israel had deliberately fired on a Reuters journalist in southern Lebanon—a blatant war crime.

The aim of targeting journalists is to keep information where governments want it—under lock and key. That is why Wikileaks is such a threat—because, since its founding, it has fearlessly worked to wrest that information out of the hands of the powerful and put it in the hands of the people.

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The Perfidious Unreality of the “New Normal”

So, what’s with all the fake crying?

Rachel Maddow pretended to cry about “kids in cages”. Matt Hancock pretended to cry about Covid vaccines. Sarah Sidner pretended to cry over covid. Anderson Cooper pretended to cry about Israel, so did John Kirby. Van Jones pretended to cry after Biden “won” the 2020 “election”. Adam Schiff and Adam Kinzinger both pretended to cry about January 6th.

Don Lemon pretends to cry about pretty much everything.

They all do it, and they’re all so bad at it.

And speaking of pretending badly, remember those early photos of people in China lying in the street, straight as planks, supposedly killed by “Covid”?

As if this scary new virus just snuffs you out mid-step to topple backwards flat on the ground in a perfect silent movie pratfall.

And it’s not just “Covid”.

During the run-up to the 2020 election “pretending badly” was happening everywhere.

We were told, over and over again, “It’s going to look like Trump won, but then Biden will win at the last minute because of postal ballots”.

And gosh darnit – they were right!

Out of nowhere Joe Biden – ‘Creepy Uncle Joe’ – who in early 2020 was obviously the least popular democratic candidate, and even more obviously going senile – is transmogrified into the most popular presidential candidate

of ALL TIME…

…shattering the popular vote records by over 13 million votes.

Such is the power of bad pretending , when you just don’t give a crap about plausibility or boring details of historical precedent.

That was, of course, following Biden’s “miracle turnaround” in the primaries, where massive defeats in the Iowa and New Hampshire left his campaign “teetering on the abyss”.

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Florida GOP Lawmaker Files Bill To Cap Marijuana At 10% THC If Voters Approve Legalization Ballot Measure

Ahead of a potential Florida marijuana legalization vote on the ballot this November, a Republican lawmaker has preemptively filed a bill that would impose strict limitations on THC potency if the reform is approved by voters.

Rep. Ralph Massullo (R) introduced the legislation on Friday, proposing a THC cap that is significantly lower than what’s available in most state markets. It would take effect 30 days after voters pass any future constitutional amendment to enact legalization.

The bill would set a 10 percent THC limit for cannabis products that are meant for smoking and a 60 percent limit for other forms of marijuana such as extracts. Edibles could not contain more than 200 milligrams of THC, and individual servings could only have up to 10 milligrams.

This would create serious logistical and commercial problems for any adult-use market, and it’d likely be met with significant pushback from consumers, advocates and stakeholders if enacted. Cannabis flower that’s sold at the average recreational retailer or medical dispensary typically hovers around 20-30 percent THC.

That’s true of Florida’s existing medical cannabis market, too. And because Massullo’s bill only addresses “potency limits for adult personal use,” the proposal could create further complications by having two different sets of THC rules for patients and consumers.

Florida’s medical cannabis dosage limits—which were revised under controversial rules adopted in 2022, despite pushback from then-Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried (D)—are not based on the percentage of THC in a given product.

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PRISONS ACROSS THE U.S. ARE QUIETLY BUILDING DATABASES OF INCARCERATED PEOPLE’S VOICE PRINTS

Roughly six months ago at New York’s Sing Sing prison, John Dukes says he was brought out with cellmates to meet a corrections counselor. He recalls her giving him a paper with some phrases, and offering him a strange choice: He could go up to the phone and utter the phrases that an automated voice would ask him to read, or he could choose not to and lose his phone access altogether.

Dukes did not know why he was being asked to make this decision, but he felt troubled as he heard other men ahead of him speaking into the phone and repeating certain phrases from the sheets the counselors had given them.

“I was contemplating, ‘Should I do it? I don’t want my voice to be on this machine,’” he recalls. “But I still had to contact my family, even though I only had a few months left.”

So, when it was his turn, he walked up to the phone, picked up the receiver, and followed a series of automated instructions. “It said, ‘Say this phrase, blah, blah, blah,’ and if you didn’t say it clearly, they would say, ‘Say this phrase again,’ like ‘Cat’ or ‘I’m a citizen of the United States of America.’” Dukes said he repeated such phrases for a minute or two. The voice then told him the process was complete.

“Here’s another part of myself that I had to give away again in this prison system,” he remembers thinking as he walked back to the cell.

Dukes, who was released in October, says he was never told about what that procedure was meant to do. But contracting documents for New York’s new prison phone system, obtained by The Appeal in partnership with The Intercept, and follow-up interviews with prison authorities, indicate that Dukes was right to be suspicious: His audio sample was being “enrolled” into a new voice surveillance system.

In New York and other states across the country, authorities are acquiring technology to extract and digitize the voices of incarcerated people into unique biometric signatures, known as voice prints. Prison authorities have quietly enrolled hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people’s voice prints into large-scale biometric databases. Computer algorithms then draw on these databases to identify the voices taking part in a call, and to search for other calls where the voices of interest are detected. Some programs, like New York’s, even analyze the voices of call recipients outside prisons to track which outsiders speak to multiple prisoners regularly.

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Former TPD officer fails to appear in court on new sexual assault charge after initial rape charge from 2022

Tulsa Police announced Deangelo Reyes, a former Tulsa Police officer, has been charged with forcible sodomy.

This is an additional charge along with the first degree rape charge he goes to court for in March 2024. 

Reyes was first charged with rape in June of 2022 after he was accused of sexually assaulting someone while on duty. 

Police said they found an additional victim in the past few months bringing forth the new charge from an alleged incident back in July 2020.

Court records say the new victim was found by searching through phone records that revealed the alleged victim was disabled.

The victim suffered from major neuro cognitive disorder, secondary to severe traumatic brain injury, from a car accident that left her in a coma for three weeks.

Records indicate she was significantly disabled, functioning at a 5th to 6th grade level.

Court Records saying that she met Reyes while jogging where he asked for her phone number.

All while in police uniform, records allege that she would not want to have sex with Reyes and that the only way to get him to go away would be to give him sexual favors.

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Maine’s Bad Prostitution Law Could Be Coming Soon to Your State

In 2023, Maine became the first U.S. state to partially decriminalize prostitution. It’s unlikely to be the last. And sex-worker rights activists are concerned.

By criminalizing prostitution customers but not sex workers, Maine’s law may seem like a step in the right direction. But it threatens to derail momentum for full decriminalization, while recreating many of full prohibition’s harms.

It also represents a paternalistic philosophical premise: that sex workers are all victims and their consent to sexual activity is—like a minor’s—irrelevant. And this premise is used to justify all sorts of bad programs and policies, including drastically ramping up penalties for people who pay for sex.

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