Tag: police state

NYPD COPS SUED FOR MISCONDUCT COST CITY MILLIONS IN SETTLEMENTS — THEN GET PROMOTIONS

NEW YORK CITY is on track to fork over more than $100 million this year in payouts for lawsuits alleging police misconduct against members of the New York City Police Department. Twenty of the officers stand out over the last decade for being named in the most suits or being named in suits with the highest payouts. Of the 20, the department has promoted at least 16 of the officers, some more than once. 

“They’re kind of failing upwards when they’re not only staying in the department but they’re also being promoted,” said Jennvine Wong, staff attorney with the Cop Accountability Project at the Legal Aid Society, a public defense organization in New York City. Last month, Legal Aid released an analysis of data on settlements in cases alleging police misconduct. 

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Meme Artist Douglass Mackey is Sentenced To Seven Months in Prison For Hillary Clinton Voting Meme

Douglass Mackey, a once well-known creator of memes on Twitter, has been sentenced to seven months in prison.

The conviction marks a dramatic escalation in how free speech is being handled in the United States. Rendered in the New York criminal court, Mackey was declared guilty of perpetrating a “conspiracy against rights”—the right to an unobstructed election being the one in focus here.

Mackey, who operated under the alias Ricky Vaughn, had made and shared memes critical of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Presidential race. His memes humorously suggested that Clinton supporters cast their ballots through text messages – a patently invalid method of voting.

Although such an improper method was clearly ineffective, Mackey was still convicted over the notion of election interference.

Quite interestingly, many have noted, other internet users who shared similar content regarding the option of text voting for Donald Trump were neither charged nor convicted.

The absence of evidence showing any voting attempt made following Mackey’s meme did not deter the US Department of Justice from declaring it an interference. Despite Mackey professing his mere intent of creating a viral meme, similar to those which his fellow Clinton detractors had created; he was singled out and penalized.

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Ban on protests supporting Palestinians is disproportionate attack on the right to protest in France

Following the request from the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin asking the prefects in France to ban all pro-Palestinian demonstrations, Jean-Claude Samouiller, President of Amnesty International France said:

“The ban on all demonstrations in support of the Palestinians in France constitutes a serious and disproportionate attack on the right to demonstrate.

Faced with the atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel, and also the blockade and very heavy bombings in the Gaza Strip, it is important that civil society actors can mobilize peacefully and publicly, in particular those calling on those engaged in the conflict to respect the rights of civilian populations. This is why there cannot be a systematic ban on the right to peacefully demonstrate support for the rights of the Palestinian populations.

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Should Governments Need a Warrant To Spy on You With a Drone?

A Michigan township sued a local family over a minor zoning violation, but the case could determine whether governments can spy on citizens without warrants. Today, the Michigan Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on the case.

Todd and Heather Maxon live in Long Lake Township, on five acres of land with two garages. Todd likes to work on cars, so he keeps some on the property. In 2008, the township sued, accusing them of storing “junk,” a zoning violation. In exchange for dropping the charges, the couple agreed not to expand their collection. Neighbors later complained that the Maxons had indeed acquired more cars, but the collection was not visible from the road.

Instead of getting a warrant—or, since nothing was visible from the road, dropping the issue altogether—the township hired a private drone company to fly over the property and take pictures several times between 2010 and 2018. Citing the pictures, the township sued the Maxons for violating the agreement.

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FBI Report Says 3 In 10 Drug Arrests Are For Marijuana, But Agency’s Inconsistent Data Hinders Policy Analysis

Arrests for marijuana made up nearly a third of all drug arrests in the United States in 2022, according to a newly released report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As with last year’s report, however, inconsistencies in the data and recent changes to the agency’s methodology make it difficult to draw year-to-year comparisons or meaningful conclusions about cannabis and broader drug enforcement trends.

The data, according to FBI, comes from more than 11 million criminal offenses reported to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, which is submitted by 13,293 law enforcement agencies and 2,431 other agencies whose jurisdictions comprise more than 90 percent of the country’s population.

“Of the 18,884 state, county, city, university and college, and tribal agencies eligible to participate in the UCR Program, 15,724 agencies submitted data in 2022,” the bureau said in a press release about its annual 2022 Crime in the Nation statistics.

Because not all agencies provide data for the complete reporting periods, FBI explains in a methodology section of its website, the bureau calculates estimated crime numbers, essentially extrapolating “by following a standard estimation procedure using the data provided.” In terms of total reported arrests for “drug abuse violations,” for example, FBI said there were 766,595 arrests. The estimated number of arrests for drug abuse violations, by contrast, is 907,958.

Those numbers, however, aren’t consistent throughout the FBI report. In a section on arrests by region, FBI said there were 726,746 total drug arrests in 2022—nearly 40,000 fewer than its top-level number. In an analysis of  historical trends, meanwhile, FBI reported just 633,576 drug arrests in 2022. A section on racial breakdowns says there were 714,442 drug abuse violations.

Other sections list “drug/narcotic offenses” for the year at 1,459,460, the number of arrestees for drug/narcotic offenses at 787,347 and the total number of drug/narcotics offenders at 1,755,788. The agency further said there were 902,482 crimes involving a person’s suspected use of drugs other than alcohol in 2022.

FBI’s press office did not immediately respond to an email from Marijuana Moment requesting clarification on the conflicting numbers.

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PITTSBURGH JAIL LET AUTISTIC MAN DIE DUE TO CULTURE OF NEGLECT, LAWSUIT SAYS

The family of a 57-year-old, intellectually disabled, and autistic man who died at Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County Jail filed suit on Tuesday, alleging that atrocious medical care at the facility caused his death.

Anthony Talotta arrived at the Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) in September 2022 after being arrested at a group home he had been living in. About a week and a half later, he was dead. The lawsuit, filed by the Abolitionist Law Center and a local law firm on behalf of Talotta’s estate, claims that pervasive medical neglect at the jail contributed to his preventable death. The Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism has published multiple investigations into the jail—revealing systemic neglect of detainees’ health needs and a lack of transparency.

The complaint alleges the jail’s medical provider, the nonprofit Allegheny Health Network (AHN), routinely deprives detainees of basic medical care, leading to catastrophic consequences, particularly for those with disabilities. According to the complaint, of the 17 people who died between March 2020 and Talotta’s 2022 death, almost 90 percent were—or should have been—identified as needing chronic care.

“And for incarcerated persons who simultaneously had either mental illness or neurodevelopmental disorder with some other chronic care needs, the culture that AHN and Allegheny County created at the ACJ guaranteed that those individuals were discriminated against, and that their medical needs were not met,” the complaint states.

In response to emailed questions, spokespeople for Allegheny County and AHN told The Appeal they do not comment on litigation.

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NY State Bill Would Require Background Checks to Buy 3D Printers

New York lawmakers are looking at requiring consumers to first go through a criminal history background check before they can buy certain 3D printers. 

The legislation is designed to crack down on potential misuse of 3D printers capable of manufacturing gun parts. The proposal comes from Democratic Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar, who introduced the bill on Friday. 

Under the legislation, 3D printer retailers would need to request a background check from New York’s criminal justice services when a customer tries to make a purchase. Criminal justice services would then need to notify the retailer if the customer has received a felony or serious offense that would make them ineligible to possess a firearm. 

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Why Big Tech, Cops, and Spies Were Made for One Another

THE TECHLASH HAS finally reached the courts. Amazon’s in court. Google’s in court. Apple’s under EU investigation. The French authorities just kicked down Nvidia’s doors and went through their files looking for evidence of crimes against competition. People are pissed at tech: about moderation, about monopolization, about price gouging, about labor abuses, and — everywhere and always — about privacy.

From experience, I can tell you that Silicon Valley techies are pretty sanguine about commercial surveillance: “Why should I care if Google wants to show me better ads?” But they are much less cool about government spying: “The NSA? Those are the losers who weren’t smart enough to get an interview at Google.”

And likewise from experience, I can tell you that government employees and contractors are pretty cool with state surveillance: “Why would I worry about the NSA spying on me? I already gave the Office of Personnel Management a comprehensive dossier of all possible kompromat in my past when I got my security clearance.” But they are far less cool with commercial surveillance: “Google? Those creeps would sell their mothers for a nickel. To the Chinese.”

What are they both missing? That American surveillance is a public-private partnership: a symbiosis between a concentrated tech sector that has the means, motive, and opportunity to spy on every person in the world and a state that loves surveillance as much as it hates checks and balances.

Big Tech, cops, and surveillance agencies were made for one another.

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Stockholm To Ban Gas And Diesel Cars Starting In 2025

The ban on gas and diesel vehicles is officially making its way across the globe, with Stockholm the next city in the queue. 

The Swedish capital now has a plan in place to ban gas and diesel cars in part of the city beginning in 2025, according to Bloomberg. The ban is going to begin in a 20 block area around the capital’s finance hub, the report says.

The same area also houses the city’s main shopping attractions. It’ll only allow “electric cars, some hybrid trucks and fuel cell vehicles”, the report says, citing rules reported by SVT that will be presented mid-week.

Stockholm is poised to become a trailblazer among major capitals by considering the prohibition on a scale previously unseen. The proposal surpasses the efforts of cities like Paris, Athens, and Madrid, which have also set their sights on banning diesel cars.

In the same vein, some cities like London have implemented measures like low-emission zones, where drivers of older combustion engine vehicles are required to pay daily fees for access to the city center.

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Supreme Court Allows Biden Admin to Continue Enforcing Ghost Gun Regulations

On Monday, the Supreme Court vacated an order from a lower court, allowing the Biden administration’s new regulations on ghost guns to take effect.

A Texas-based judge ruled against President Joe Biden’s new rules on ghost guns, firearms without serial numbers. However, a request to vacate the order was filed to Justice Samuel Alito and referred to the full court, which ruled in favor of vacating the order.

Alito issued an order on October 6, giving ghost gun manufacturers Blackhawk Manufacturing Group and Defense Distributed until Wednesday to provide a better reason as to why they should not have their firearms regulated the same way as other gun manufacturers.

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