Tag: police state

‘Stressed beyond her limits’: co-owner of Kansas newspaper dies after police raid

The co-owner of a small Kansas newspaper whose offices and staff were raided by local police officers conducting a leak investigation has died after the situation left her “stressed beyond her limits”, according to the publication.

Joan Meyer, 98, collapsed on Saturday afternoon and died at her home a day after she tearfully watched officers who showed up at her home with a search warrant cart away her computer as well as an internet router, reported the Marion County Record, which she co-owned. After officers also photographed the bank statements of her son, Record publisher Eric Meyer, and left her house in mess, Meyer had been unable to eat or sleep, her newspaper said.

Meyer was “in good health for her age”, the weekly newspaper asserted. And the headline of its report on her death said the police’s decision to raid the Marion Record’s offices along with the homes of its reporters and publishers was not only illegal – but had also contributed to bringing on the end of Meyer’s life.

Attempts to contact both Marion’s police chief – Gideon Cody – and the judge who authorized his agency to conduct the raids aimed at the Record, Laura Viar, for comment on Meyer’s sudden death were not immediately successful.

As the Record has told it, the weekly’s ordeal began when a confidential source leaked evidence that a local restaurant proprietor, Kari Newell, had been convicted of drunk-driving but continued using her car without a license.

The newspaper never published anything related to the information because its staff reportedly suspected the source was relaying information from Newell’s husband during their divorce. Nonetheless, after police notified Newell that the information was going around, she alleged at a local city council meeting that the newspaper had illegally obtained and disseminated sensitive documents.

According to reporting from the Kansas Reflector, Newell had admitted to the drunk-driving arrest as well as driving with a suspended license. Yet she insinuated that the leak was meant to jeopardize her license to serve alcohol and harm her business.

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Army vet Greg Gross, 65, wins $20M after Yuba City cop Joshua Jackson snapped his SPINE during traffic stop and paralyzed him

A 65 year-old Army vet has been awarded $20million after a cop snapped his spine during a traffic stop and left him paralyzed – with the appalling assault captured on camera. 

Greg Gross was left horrifically-disabled after the April 2020 ‘pain compliance’ restraint by Yuba City Police Officer Joshua Jackson, with video footage showing the bloodied brutality victim sobbing as he wailed: ‘I can’t feel my legs.’ 

The bed-bound former military man has been awarded the sum by a Sacramento jury after they were told he now requires 24 hour care from a team of nurses. 

Stomach-churning body camera footage captured the moment Gross was injured after being pulled over on suspicion of causing a slow-speed crash while drunk driving. 

Jackson made Gross sit on the ground, with his legs straight in front of him. He then repeatedly pushed the senior citizen’s torso forward, towards the ground, with a force that ultimately snapped Gross’s spinal column as fellow cops Scott Hansen and Nathan Livingston looked on.  

Officers did not believe the victim when he repeatedly said ‘I can’t feel my legs’ after his spine was crushed as he was pinned to the ground outside a hospital in Yuba City, California.

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Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper, seizing computers, records and cellphones

In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the Marion County Record office, the newspaper’s reporters, and the publisher’s home.

Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the newspaper, said police were motivated by a confidential source who leaked sensitive documents to the newspaper, and the message was clear: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.”

The city’s entire five-officer police force and two sheriff’s deputies took “everything we have,” Meyer said, and it wasn’t clear how the newspaper staff would take the weekly publication to press Tuesday night.

The raid followed news stories about a restaurant owner who kicked reporters out of a meeting last week with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, and revelations about the restaurant owner’s lack of a driver’s license and conviction for drunken driving.

Meyer said he had never heard of police raiding a newspaper office during his 20 years at the Milwaukee Journal or 26 years teaching journalism at the University of Illinois.

“It’s going to have a chilling effect on us even tackling issues,” Meyer said, as well as “a chilling effect on people giving us information.”

The search warrant, signed by Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, appears to violate federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists. The law requires law enforcement to subpoena materials instead. Viar didn’t respond to a request to comment for this story or explain why she would authorize a potentially illegal raid.

Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, said the police raid is unprecedented in Kansas.

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‘He Was Alive’: Tormented Chinese Doctor Recounts Harvesting Organs In Back Of Van

Stepping into the van guarded by armed soldiers with five surgeons and nurses, Zheng Zhi didn’t know he was entering into a world that would haunt him for the next quarter of a century.

Dr. Zheng, then a resident doctor at one of China’s largest military hospitals, knew little more than they were on a “secret military mission” near a military prison located around the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian.

A light blue fabric covered the four sides of the vehicle, shielding it from any curious glances.

When the door opened, four burly soldiers carried in a man whose limbs were bound with thin ropes that had cut deeply into his flesh. The man was no more than 18 years old; his organs, the surgical crew had been told the day before, were “healthy, fresh.”

A doctor instructed Dr. Zheng to “step on” the man’s legs and “don’t let him move.” He pressed the man’s legs down with his hands and to his shock, they were warm to the touch. Blood was now flowing from the man’s throat.

He watched a doctor slice open the man’s stomach and two others reach in to remove a kidney each. The man’s legs twitched and his throat moved—although no sound came out.

“Cut his artery and veins, quick!” a doctor told Dr. Zheng. As he did so, so much blood gushed out that it splashed all over Dr. Zheng’s gown and gloves. That was when he got the order to extract the man’s eyes.

Dr. Zheng looked at the man’s face. Staring back at him was a pair of wide-open eyes.

“It was horrifying beyond words. He was looking right at me. His eyelids were moving. He was alive,” Dr. Zheng recounted to The Epoch Times in July, the first time he agreed to use his real name to recount his story.

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Family of Man Killed During FBI Raid Speaks Out for First Time

Family members of the man killed during an FBI operation this week are decrying what happened.

“We, the family of Craig Deeluew Robertson, are shocked and devastated by the senseless and tragic killing of our beloved father and brother, and we fervently mourn the loss of a good and decent man,” the family said in a statement after Mr. Robertson was fatally shot during the Aug. 9 operation in Provo, Utah.

FBI agents and other law enforcement officers were trying to serve arrest and search warrants at the home after reviewing social media posts in which Mr. Robertson, 74, threatened President Joe Biden and other politicians, according to court documents and officials.

Video footage from the scene showed heavily armed officers outside of Mr. Robertson’s home before dawn shouting at him to open the door.

Jon Michael Ossola, who recorded the video, told The Epoch Times that about 20 officers were present and that they told Mr. Robertson to exit the home.

Mr. Robertson, said, responded by saying “I haven’t broken any federal laws.”

After gunshots rang out, Mr. Robertson, a U.S. Air Force veteran, was taken outside and declared dead.

The video did not capture the shooting and Mr. Ossola said he could not see exactly what unfolded.

The FBI has described what happened as an “agent-involved shooting” that took place around 6:15 a.m. local time. The shooting is being reviewed by the bureau’s Inspection Division, according to a spokesperson, who declined to provide more details.

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Moment seven officers drag ‘autistic’ girl, 16, kicking and screaming from Leeds home for committing a ‘hate crime’ after she told female cop ‘you look like my lesbian nana’

Police have been accused of heavy handedness after an autistic teenage girl was arrested by seven officers after saying ‘a female officer looked like her lesbian nana’.

The 16-year-old, who also suffers from scoliosis, had been driven to her home in Leeds, West Yorkshire, by officers after midnight when she allegedly made the comment.

She was later dragged away screaming in the early hours of Monday morning having been served a ‘homophobic public order offence’.

The incident was recorded by the girl’s mother who uploaded the footage to TikTok. 

The mother posted: ‘This is what police do when dealing with autistic children. My daughter told me the police officer looked like her nana, who is a lesbian.

‘The officer took it the wrong way and said it was a homophobic comment [it wasn’t].

‘The officer then entered my home. My daughter was having panic attacks from being touched by them and they still continued to manhandle her.’

The footage prompted outrage online, with one social media user writing: ‘I cannot believe my own eyes. Someone in the police force needs to be sacked for this egregious, disgraceful situation.’

Another posted: ‘This is disgusting behaviour by [West] Yorkshire police. And how many officers needed to attend? No small wonder that girl was terrified.’

Andrew Piper added: ‘@West Yorks Police completely unacceptable from the officers in this video. When the officer was informed that the daughter had autism, the comment [from the officer] “I don’t care” is completely inappropriate.’ 

In the footage, two officers can be seen in the hallway of the home, while the girl hides in a corner next to a cupboard. 

The female officer in question, who has cropped blonde hair, can be heard insisting ‘she [the girl] is going to be arrested’.

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Qualified Immunity May Shield FBI Agents Who Abused the No-Fly List

Any inconvenience governments can impose will eventually be abused as a tool of arbitrary punishment. Take, for example, the no-fly list and related watchlists, which are supposed to contain the names of known and suspected terrorists so they can be monitored and their movements restricted. From day one, placement on the list has been misused to punish innocent people who won’t do what federal agents command. Now FBI agents caught abusing the system want qualified immunity to shield them from consequences as people they mistreated seek justice through the courts.

“Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, FBI agents unsuccessfully attempted to pressure a group of innocent Muslims, including Muhammad Tanvir, to become informants for the Bureau,” notes the Institute for Justice (I.J.), which filed an amicus brief in Tanvir v. Tanzin. “Tanvir and the others—who were all either American citizens or lawful permanent residents—declined to become informants, because doing so goes against their sincerely held religious beliefs. FBI agents then harassed the group and placed them all on the No-Fly List.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights acts as co-counsels for the plaintiffs alongside the CUNY School of Law’s CLEAR Clinic. They sued under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) on the grounds that the plaintiffs’ Muslim faith forbids them to inform on coreligionists. The defendants—FBI agents who put Tanvir and the other plaintiffs on the no-fly list—protested that the RFRA doesn’t provide for monetary damages against government officials who violate rights, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled otherwise in an important 2020 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas.

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FBI Official Involved In Trump-Russia Hoax To Plead Guilty To — Conspiring With Russia

An ex-FBI agent who led the agency’s New York counterintelligence division and played a key role in the Trump-Russia collusion probe – will plead guilty to charges of colluding with Russia himself, a federal judge suggested in a Monday order reported by the Washington Times.

Charles McGonigal was arrested in January and charged with violating US sanctions on Russia by taking secret payments from a Russian oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska, to investigate a rival oligarch.

“The court has been informed that defendant Charles McGonigal may wish to enter a change of plea,” wrote Judge Jennifer Reardon in a brief order in which she also scheduled a hearing for Aug. 15.

McGonigal initially pleaded not guilty on four corruption charges – including conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions, money laundering, conspiring to commit money laundering and conspiring to violate federal law against doing business with sanctioned individuals. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

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I’m a former prosecutor. The ‘War on Drugs’ incentivizes convictions, not justice

Political campaigns are heating up, and politicians are jostling for clickbait by taking jabs and attacking the First Step Act. Not only do these attacks grievously mischaracterize a law that has been a boon to public safety – but they also mischaracterize some of the people involved in its passage, including a woman named Alice Marie Johnson.  

Her name might be familiar. Alice was sentenced to life in prison in 1997 as a first-time, nonviolent offender. She became the national face of criminal justice reform when she was granted clemency by President Trump in 2018 after Kim Kardashian, fueled by the unfairness of Alice’s prison sentence, lobbied for her release.  

I know Alice personally – I’ve worked with her since her release on many criminal justice reform issues, including the passage of the First Step Act. That’s why seeing her referred to in the media as a “career criminal” and “kingpin” is so shocking. But this is not the first time Alice has been misrepresented. Her story was first warped during her trial by prosecutors who manipulated drug laws – not to nab a drug “queen pin,” but to pin the blame on the little guy.

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