Tag: police state

Tennessee police took part in multiyear sex trafficking conspiracy to shield a serial rapist — whose victims included children — in exchange for ‘hundreds of thousands’ in cash, lawsuit claims

Multiple Tennessee police officers took large sums of money from an accused rapist — whose victims included children — in order to protect him from criminal prosecution, a lawsuit filed in federal court alleges.

The shocking allegations are the latest wrinkle in the often dramatic, yearslong, multi-chapter effort to bring Sean Williams, 52, to justice.

Women in Johnson City had complained to law enforcement about the wealthy man’s allegedly predatory behavior since at least November 2019, according to the 85-page filing obtained by Law&Crime.

The defendant was ultimately arrested in April on wholly unrelated drug charges. In September, he was indicted on myriad state and federal child sex offenses. The apparently slow pace of those concomitant investigations was due, at least in part, by a local law enforcement conspiracy of cash and silence, the lawsuit claims.

“For years, Sean Williams drugged and raped women and sexually exploited children in Johnson City, Tennessee, and for years, officers of the Johnson City Police Department (‘JCPD’) let him get away with it,” the second amended complaint begins.

Filed by nine unnamed Does in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, the lawsuit alleges that “at least eight” reports about Williams drugging and raping women in his downtown apartment were swept under the rug by numerous police officers, who, instead, treated the business owner and sports car collector like he was “untouchable.”

”In exchange for turning a blind eye, JCPD officers took hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from Williams, all while refusing to take meaningful steps to protect women and children in Johnson City and to stop his known sexually predatory behavior,” the filing continues. “JCPD was not only turning a blind eye to Williams’ crimes, but also engaging in a pattern and practice of discriminatory conduct towards women who reported rape and sexual assault by Williams.”

The lawsuit claims that Johnson City police, at the highest level, were knowing participants in a sex trafficking operation.

Keep reading

Missouri Bills Would Regulate Hemp-Derived Delta-8 THC Like Marijuana

A Republican state senator has filed legislation to renew last spring’s failed effort to regulate intoxicating hemp products in Missouri, such as Delta-8 drinks and edibles.

Delta-8 THC products can be sold in stores in Missouri because the intoxicating ingredient, THC, is derived from hemp, not marijuana which is a controlled substance. And hemp is federally legal.

There’s no state or federal law saying teenagers or children can’t buy them or stores can’t sell them to minors—though some stores and vendors have taken it upon themselves to impose age restrictions of 21 and up.

And there’s no requirement to list potential effects on the label or test how much THC is actually in them.

State Sen. Nick Schroer, a Republican from O’Fallon who chairs the legislative committee that oversees Missouri’s marijuana rules, said the products are too easily accessible to children, particularly teenagers.

“I’ve had constituents reaching out to me saying that their kids had been hospitalized,” Schroer said.

Schroer’s bill would task the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) with regulating these products, as the agency currently does for the state’s marijuana program. And products would have to be sold at DHSS-licensed dispensaries. State Rep. Chad Perkins, a Bowling Green Republican, has filed a companion bill in the House.

DHSS spokeswoman Lisa Cox said the department does not take positions on proposed bills.

“However,” she said, “we do acknowledge the potential and ongoing public health impact of unregulated THC products.”

Over the past few years, Cox said there’s has been an increase in children going to the hospital for cannabis exposure.

“The department has increased its emphasis on regulatory mechanisms that protect health and children in order to minimize any contribution of the regulated cannabis market to such incidents,” she said. “As of right now, there is no such protective framework for unregulated THC products.”

Sean Hackman, president of the Missouri Hemp Trade Association, said his organization advocates for measures such as prohibiting sales to minors and mandating clear user instructions and rigorous product testing.

“While any overdose report, especially those involving minors, is deeply concerning, this does not constitute a public health emergency but rather an opportunity for improved regulation,” Hackman said in an email to The Independent in response to the legislation.

The association opposes tasking the department with regulating the products and requiring them to be sold in dispensaries.

A similar bill filed by Republican state Rep. Kurtis Gregory of Marshall got stuck in committee during the last legislative session.

Keep reading

Trump’s Promise to ‘Indemnify’ Cops ‘Against Any and All Liability’ Is Absurd for 2 Reasons

Notwithstanding his dalliance with criminal justice reform and his castigation of law enforcement officials he says have abused their powers to target him, Donald Trump has always been inclined to “back the blue” against critics of police policies and practices. That instinct goes back decades, and it has served him well in his current incarnation as a populist politician catering to the anxieties and resentments of Americans who worry that policing has been undermined and compromised by the demands of left-wing agitators. But the latest manifestation of this theme—Trump’s campaign promise to “indemnify” police officers who supposedly are paralyzed by fear of civil liability for doing their jobs—is so detached from reality that it belongs in the same category as his insistence that he actually won reelection in 2020.

“We will restore law and order in our communities,” Trump said during a campaign rally in New Hampshire last Saturday. “I am also going to indemnify our police officers. This is a big thing, and it’s a brand new thing, and I think it’s so important. I’m going to indemnify, through the federal government, all police officers and law enforcement officials throughout the United States from being destroyed by the radical left for taking strong actions against crime.”

The problem, Trump claimed at a rally in Iowa a few days earlier, is that police are “afraid to do anything. They’re forced to avoid any conflict. They are forced to let a lot of bad people do what they want to do, because they’re under threat of losing their pension, losing their house, losing their families.” To address that problem, he said, “we are going to indemnify them against any and all liability.”

Although Trump seems to think indemnification of police officers who are sued for alleged misconduct is “a brand new thing,” it has been long been routine practice. In a 2014 study of civil rights cases that covered “forty-four of the largest law enforcement agencies across the country,” UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz found that “police officers are virtually always indemnified.” That means they are not personally responsible for settlement payments or jury-awarded damages arising from allegations of police abuse. From 2006 to 2011, Schwartz reported in the New York University Law Review, “governments paid approximately 99.98% of the dollars that plaintiffs recovered in lawsuits alleging civil rights violations by law enforcement.”

Keep reading

Break the Cycle: In 2024, Say No to the Government’s Cruelty, Brutality and Abuse

“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”—Edmund Burke

Folks, it’s time to break the cycle of abuses—cruel, brutal, immoral, unconstitutional and unacceptable—that have been heaped upon us by the government for way too long.

Here’s just a small sampling of what we suffered through in 2023.

The government failed to protect our lives, liberty and happiness. The predators of the police state wreaked havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government didn’t listen to the citizenry, refused to abide by the Constitution, and treated the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers shot unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—were armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies were allowed to fleece taxpayers. Government technicians spied on our emails and phone calls. And government contractors made a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

The president became more imperial. Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill. The powers amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The presidency itself has become an imperial one with permanent powers.

The cost of endless wars drove the nation deeper into debt. Policing the globe and waging endless wars abroad hasn’t made America—or the rest of the world—any safer, but it has made the military industrial complex rich at taxpayer expense.

The courts failed to uphold justice. Time and time again, the Supreme Court failed to right the wrongs being meted out by the American police state. A review of critical court rulings over the past decade or so, including some ominous ones by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order and protecting the ruling class and government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

The Surveillance State rendered Americans vulnerable to threats from government spies, police, hackers and power failures. Thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA and biometrics technologies, Americans became sitting ducks for hackers and government spies alike. Billions of people have been affected by data breaches and cyberattacks. On a daily basis, Americans were made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world. The Department of Homeland Security, which has led the charge to create a Surveillance State, has continued to deploy mandatory facial recognition scans at airports and gather biometric data on American travelers. Police were gifted with new surveillance gadgets. The Corporate State tapped into our computer keyboards, cameras, cell phones and smart devices in order to better target us for advertising. Social media giants such as Facebook granted secret requests by the government and its agents for access to users’ accounts. And our private data—methodically collected and stored with or without our say-so—was repeatedly compromised and breached.

Keep reading

Video Shows Vermont State Trooper Arrest Man for Flipping Him Off

Newly released video footage shows a Vermont state trooper arresting a man on disorderly conduct charges for the First Amendment–protected activity of flipping him off.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment advocacy group, released dashcam footage today showing the 2018 arrest of Gregory Bombard, who is pursuing a lawsuit alleging his free speech rights were violated by the arrest.

Bombard was driving through his hometown of St. Albans, Vermont, on February 9, 2018, when he was pulled over by Vermont State Trooper Jay Riggen. 

Riggen accused Bombard of giving him the finger. Bombard denied it, but he was incensed about being pulled over for such a trivial matter. “That would be considered freedom of expression, so I’m going to file a complaint against you,” Bombard said.

“And you’re more than welcome to,” Riggen responded. “So here’s the issue: Although it may be freedom of expression, it’s so unusual that it requires intervention to make sure you don’t need help of some kind.”

As Bombard’s lawsuit explains, Riggen’s reasoning was legally deficient. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which covers Vermont, held in 2013 that the middle finger’s “nearly universal recognition” as an insult made it unreasonable for an officer to interpret it as a distress signal.

Bombard tried to continue the conversation, but Riggen concluded the traffic stop and walked back to his car. Bombard was not content, however. As Bombard pulled away, he actually did flip Riggen off.

“It looks like as he pulled away he called me an asshole and said, ‘Fuck you,'” Riggen relayed into his radio. “Flipped the bird. I’m going to arrest him for disorderly conduct. There were multiple people around there.”

Keep reading

Group pushes for change in how police use body camera footage in officer shooting probes

An influential policing think tank is pushing law enforcement agencies to change how they handle body camera footage after police shootings, saying officers should not be able to review video before making their first statements to investigators.

The Police Executive Research Forum changed its position in a report released Friday, nearly 10 years after the group was first tapped by the Justice Department to write guidelines for agencies adopting body cameras.

The technology has swept the country’s police since. Now 79% of the country’s local police work in departments that use them. They’re in use in all cities of more than 1 million people, and Portland, Oregon, became the latest major city to adopt them in November.

“Having a body camera in your department is now expected,” said Chuck Wexler, the group’s executive director.

The technology has been key in cases like the death of Tyre Nichols, where body camera footage showed how he was brutally beaten by Memphis, Tennessee, police who are now facing criminal charges.

Still, research on whether body cameras reduce police use of force overall has been mixed. Half of the studies reviewed by the group showed officers with cameras tend to use force less often, but the rest of the studies showed no difference.

Friday’s report, an advance copy of which was provided exclusively to The Associated Press, also said departments should have clear policies on releasing video footage to the public. Of the 127 agencies it reviewed, only 14% had specific policies for releasing body camera footage of critical incidents.

The adoption of body cameras by police departments around the country increased sharply during the national outpouring of protest after the 2014 death of Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri.

“There was a lot of faith put in body cameras as a silver bullet to some of the problems that many police departments have,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. “But a lot of that promise has not been fulfilled.”

Allowing officers to view body-camera footage before speaking to investigators can allow their stories to change to fit the video, either through lying or subconscious distortion of how they recall the event, he said.

“Policies like this one undercut the oversight function that the tool is supposed to play,” Stanley said.

Agencies have already been moving away from allowing viewing footage ahead of time, and the new recommendation could hasten that process, Wexler said. The research forum is now recommending a hybrid approach where officers give an early interview before watching the video during investigations of shootings or other uses of force, then come back and give more information.

Keep reading

California Officials Force Elderly Couple To Dismantle Home, Citing Blocked Ocean Views

The two-story mobile home that Michael and Susan Christian own and live in in the Orange County beach community of San Clemente, California, isn’t blighted, dangerous, ugly, or even unpopular with the neighbors.

But it is a little too tall, according to state officials with the California Coastal Commission.

For over a decade, the commission—a state agency with the final say over most development on the California coast—has been arguing that the Christians’ addition of a second story to their home obscures ocean views from a nearby walking trail. It also argued the couple added that second story without getting the required permits from the commission.

Late last month, a California appeals court sided with the commission, ruling that the Christians must comply with its demands to shrink their house from its current 22 feet in height down to 16 feet. The Christians’ representatives say that will require them to completely tear down and rebuild the home.

“They’re an elderly couple. They’re in their 70s. They have all kinds of health issues. This is their only home; they live in it,” says Lee Andelin, one of the Christians’ lawyers. Dismantling the home “is going to cost them millions of dollars, for what? There’s not a broader benefit for the public.”

Andelin argues the ruling will embolden the commission to place even more restrictions on coastal homeowners’ ability to improve their properties.

Keep reading

Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order

An 18-year-old hacker who leaked clips of a forthcoming Grand Theft Auto (GTA) game has been sentenced to an indefinite hospital order.

Arion Kurtaj from Oxford, who is autistic, was a key member of international gang Lapsus$.

The gang’s attacks on tech giants including Uber, Nvidia and Rockstar Games cost the firms nearly $10m.

The judge said Kurtaj’s skills and desire to commit cyber-crime meant he remained a high risk to the public.

He will remain at a secure hospital for life unless doctors deem him no longer a danger.

The court heard that Kurtaj had been violent while in custody with dozens of reports of injury or property damage.

Doctors deemed Kurtaj unfit to stand trial due to his severe autism so the jury was asked to determine whether or not he committed the alleged acts – not if he did so with criminal intent.

A mental health assessment used as part of the sentencing hearing said he “continued to express the intent to return to cyber-crime as soon as possible. He is highly motivated.”

The jury was told that while he was on bail for hacking Nvidia and BT/EE and in police protection at a Travelodge hotel, he continued hacking and carried out his most infamous hack.

Despite having his laptop confiscated, Kurtaj managed to breach Rockstar, the company behind GTA, using an Amazon Firestick, his hotel TV and a mobile phone.

Kurtaj stole 90 clips of the unreleased and hugely anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6.

He broke into the company’s internal Slack messaging system to declare “if Rockstar does not contact me on Telegram within 24 hours I will start releasing the source code”.

He then posted the clips and source code on a forum under the username TeaPotUberHacker.

He was rearrested and detained until his trial.

Keep reading

Lawsuit: Calif. sheriffs left 75 pizza boxes at pot farm after allegedly illegal raid

A Southern California pot farmer is suing Riverside County for what he characterizes as an illegal law enforcement raid on his property.

The farmer, Preston McCormick, is alleging that deputies with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office ransacked his business and left 75 pizza boxes behind following the operation last year. In his suit filed Friday against several individuals and public entities — including the County of Riverside and the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department — in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Preston is claiming $10 million in losses and damages.

In his complaint, as Law360 first reported, McCormick claims that more than 100 deputies and support staff conducted a predawn raid on his farm, East Wind AG, located just north of the Salton Sea on tribal land owned by the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians. The suit says the deputies intentionally ripped down hundreds of greenhouses and other infrastructure due to an “unbridled lust for chaos.”

The suit says the raid, carried out Dec. 7 of last year, resulted in the destruction of 18,299 plants that were on “the cusp of harvest.” In addition to valuing the crops at approximately $10 million, McCormick alleges that deputies confiscated personal items from his home on the property, including $10,000 in cash.

Keep reading

Gang ringleader who smuggled at least 127kg of cocaine into Britain using Encrochat is jailed for 16½ years after detectives ‘hacked into’ encrypted service

The ringleader of a drug network smuggled at least 127kg of cocaine into the UK using the Encrochat messaging service that has been burst open by detectives.

Marius Bucys, 43, of Dagenham in London, has been sentenced to 16 years and six months in prison after being convicted of conspiracy to import Class A drugs.

Bucys is the latest criminal to be busted after cybercrime experts cracked open the Encrochat service and used its data to arrest hundreds of criminals who had, until then, used the app as a near-untraceable means of coordinating drug deals.

European officers blew the app wide open in 2020, and Metropolitan Police detectives used a combination of its data and old-fashioned detective work to snare the drug smuggler – whose drivers used secret compartments to hide their wares.

The Met says Bucys acted as the ringleader in a wider drug network, arranging travel and logistics for the substances to be brought into the UK.

After Encrochat was accessed by police in the Netherlands and France, data was passed to police forces in the UK via the National Crime Agency (NCA) that detectives were able to use to link Bucys to the illicit trade.

Officers also trawled through hundreds of hours of CCTV showing lorry drivers stopping at locations up and down the M25 to pick up the drugs.

When officers raided his address, they found a notebook containing details of the importations.

Keep reading