Tag: police state

‘You just broke my neck’ — Man accuses jailer of assault, FBI investigating

When Jeff Fry walked into the Lorain County jail on May 12, he was facing a misdemeanor bench warrant. He had no idea he’d leave the facility on a stretcher with permanent injuries.

“My head snapped back and that was it,” said Fry as he sat with his left arm in a sling, outside a friend’s home.

Fry said he spent two weeks in the hospital and another four months in a nursing facility recovering from what happened inside the jail that day.

His lawyer said Fry’s injuries included a broken neck and permanent spinal cord damage.

Now the FBI is investigating, and Fry’s lawyer is preparing a lawsuit, but as far as News 5 investigators could tell, no discipline was ever meted out, and the officer responsible is still on the job.

The 58-year-old Fry said he doesn’t remember much of the incident with a corrections officer that led to the injuries, but said he didn’t deserve what happened that day.

The emotions it brings up were evidenced by the tears that welled up in his eyes when asked about it.

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Horrifying moment cops HANDCUFF nine-year-old special needs child throwing a tantrum at Florida elementary school

The parents of a 9-year-old Florida boy are suing the city of Oviedo and local police after officers handcuffed their child in a school mailroom during a violent outburst and threatened to send him to jail.

The parents say excessive force was used when a cop handcuffed their son, in a shocking moment captured on body cam footage that was released to the public on Thursday.

The fourth grader is a special needs child who is prone to outbursts – to the point where the school, Stenstrom Elementary, had a specific procedure in place.

The student’s Individual Education Plan and Behavior Intervention Plan mentions ‘physical aggression’ as a behavior problem, according to a complaint filed September 27.

Staff were instructed not to ‘engage in any conversation other than having him complete the task’ and otherwise ‘limit the level of attention directed to him,’ the complaint says.

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Lobbyists Call For Increased Digital ID Funding

Washington-based Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) has called for more money to be set aside for digital public infrastructure (DPI) including one of its elements, digital ID – and this means not only the funds earmarked for the technology portion of it.

Currently, DPI projects can count on $400 million by the end of the decade – that is the figure “stakeholders” have already committed to “the cause.”

Essentially, DIAL is advocating for money to be steadily spent on promotion of its mission via seemingly “trustworthy” messengers such as civil societies, academics, etc. Apparently, this would also allow their participation in governance, as well as the design and deployment of various DPIs.

Among those sitting on DIAL’s board are the director of USAI, an organization known for its involvement in setting up the digital ID in Ukraine, as well as the president and CEO of the UN Foundation, and a Gates Foundation senior adviser.

In what reports say is an expert comment, originally published in late September, DIAL wants this financing to be “sustainable,” and claims that not just businesses and economies, but also individuals, would reap the benefits.

Other than places like Ukraine, DIAL is “probing” and basing its comments drawn from a report compiled in Sierra Leone in Africa, and others, while those “interviewed” are 25 groups and entities.

Among them are government representatives of said countries, but also the Gates Foundation, UN’s UNDP agency, the World Bank, and the Africa Digital Rights Hub.

DIAL wants to see money spent on coordination between ministries, while “communities need to be engaged early on, particularly those that are more likely to be excluded,” say reports.

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How a Young Joe Biden Became the Architect of the Government’s Asset Forfeiture Program

In 1991, Maui police officers showed up at the home of Frances and Joseph Lopes. One officer showed his badge and said, “Let’s go into the house, and we will explain things to you.” Once he was inside, the explanation was simple: “We’re taking the house.”

The Lopeses were far from wealthy. They worked on a sugar plantation for nearly fifty years, living in camp housing, to save up enough money to buy a modest, middle-class home.

But in 1987, their son Thomas was caught with marijuana. He was twenty-eight, and he suffered from mental health issues. He grew the marijuana in the backyard of his parents’ home, but every time they tried to cut it down, Thomas threatened suicide.

When he was arrested, he pled guilty, was given probation since it was his first offense, and he was ordered to see a psychologist once a week. Frances and Joseph were elated. Their son got better, he stopped smoking marijuana, and the episode was behind them.

But when the police showed up and told them that their house was being seized, they learned that the episode was not behind them. That statute of limitations for civil asset forfeiture was five years. It had only been four. Legally, the police could seize any property connected to the marijuana plant from 1987. They had resurrected the Lopes case during a department-wide search through old cases looking for property they could legally confiscate.

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THE U.S. GOVERNMENT IS PREPARING FOR A FENTANYL WMD ATTACK

LAST YEAR, the White House publicly shot down a controversial proposal from Republican lawmakers to designate fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. 

Though President Joe Biden declined to issue the executive order granting the WMD designation, which would have come with extraordinary powers to combat the scourge, federal agencies — including the Department of Defense, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security — had already begun preparing for a fentanyl WMD attack as far back as 2018.

Government documents obtained by The Intercept reveal that national security agencies have for years been advancing the narrative that the drug could pose a WMD threat, going so far as conducting military exercises in preparation for an attack by a fentanyl weapon.

The push to declare fentanyl a WMD — and the security state approaching the drug that way even absent the declaration — has been a boon to federal agencies’ budgets. It’s not clear, however, that reimagining the highly toxic drug as a superlethal weapon has had any effect of combating the ongoing crisis of fentanyl overdoses. What it has done, though, is help kick off a panic.

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Carbon Passports Are The Next Dystopian Surveillance Threat

The digital ID agenda is already on the horizon. But it doesn’t stop there. Digital carbon passports are the next big proposal. Travel enthusiasts worldwide might soon face a drastic change in exploring international borders, with global warming triggering the implementation of carbon passports that could limit their wanderlust, asserts Intrepid Travel in a recently published report.

Dubbing these restrictions as “personal carbon allowances,” the report portends they would serve as determinants compelling individuals to conform to the global carbon budget.

With imposed limitations on yearly travel anticipated by as soon as 2040, travelers might be forced to relinquish the horizon-expansion privileges, usually afforded by contemporary tourism.

Crafted in collaboration with forecasting agency The Future Laboratory, the report highlights the alleged repercussions of climate change on popular summer destinations like Greece and Majorca, supposedly deemed too hot for humans.

The introduction of carbon passports could raise serious privacy concerns about the level of surveillance exercised over individuals’ movements and behavior.

Could these measures act as precursors to overreaching surveillance, tracking individuals’ carbon footprints?

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CPS DOESN’T KNOW WHAT RECORDS IT DESTROYED RELATED TO KEIR STARMER’S WASHINGTON TRIPS

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), England and Wales’ public prosecutor, has no knowledge of what records it has destroyed related to its previous head Keir Starmer, it can be revealed.

In June, Declassified revealed that the public body had deleted all records of Starmer’s four trips to Washington while he was Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). 

Starmer made trips to Washington in 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2013 at a cost to the British taxpayer of £21,603. It was his most frequent foreign destination while in post and included a meeting with the US Attorney General.

Starmer served as DPP from 2008-13, a period when the body was overseeing Julian Assange’s proposed extradition to Sweden to face questioning over sexual assault allegations. 

During Starmer’s time in post, the CPS was marred by irregularities surrounding the case of the WikiLeaks founder, destroying key emails related to the Assange case, mostly covering the period when Starmer was in charge. 

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FBI Denies Targeting Trump Supporters Ahead of 2024 Election

On Thursday, the FBI denied reports that it is targeting Trump supporters ahead of the 2024 presidential elections. 

Newsweek reported Wednesday that the FBI had created a category to evaluate threats known as anti-government and anti-authority violent extremism, which encompasses individuals who are deemed as threats, but don’t fall under anarchist, militia or sovereign citizen groups. 

According to the outlet, more than a dozen current and former anonymous government officials said that the program primarily targets supporters of former President Donald Trump.

In a statement, the FBI denied the existence of this new designation, contesting the report and claiming it was false.  

“Any allegation that the FBI targets individuals solely for their political beliefs is categorically false,” an FBI spokesperson said. “The FBI investigates those who commit acts of violence or threaten violence, and we do not take action based on political belief or any First Amendment protected activity.”

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TikTok-Famous Police Chief Swapped Incest Vids on Secret Twitter Account: Feds

A TikTok-famous small-town police chief traded incest videos via a secret Twitter account discovered during a search of his home office, according to a newly unsealed federal complaint reviewed by The Daily Beast.

Joel Justice Womochil, 38, went by “@ictbaddad” on the social media platform now known as X, with a profile picture of “Pedobear”—which the complaint describes as “a pedophilic cartoon utilized by some individuals engaged in the pedophile community.”

“Hello kids :)” read the banner across the top of the now-defunct account’s profile page. Womochil, as @ictbaddad, described himself online as a “38 w male looking 4 that special girl that was raised right and wants 2 continue the tradition,” according to the complaint. “If u luv the little things In life message on Wire same name[.]”

Womochil became police chief in Burns, Kansas, a town of 250 people, in February 2022, and served until his sudden resignation in early August. He said only that it was in the “best interest of me and this department,” though he continued working part-time as a detention deputy in neighboring Butler County. A little over a week later, Womochil was arrested on state charges of possessing child sexual abuse material. As of Friday, he is now facing two federal counts of receipt and possession of child pornography, with penalties that could put the disgraced lawman behind bars for decades.

The details of what Womochil allegedly had been seeking out and exchanging online have not been previously revealed.

His TikTok videos of life as a police officer regularly racked up tens of thousands of views, with some getting more than 600,000.

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California Governor Newsom Vetoes Psychedelics Legalization, But Calls For New Bill On Therapeutic Access Next Year

The governor of California has vetoed a bill to legalize certain psychedelics and create a pathway to regulated access—a move that comes at a time when two states have already enacted comprehensive psychedelics policy reform and as two campaigns are working to put the issue on California’s 2024 ballot.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D)—who was one of the most prominent and earliest lawmakers to call for an end to the war on drugs as mayor of San Francisco and later push for the legalization of cannabis as lieutenant governor of California—vetoed the bill, SB 58, from Sen. Scott Wiener (D) on Saturday.

In a veto message, the governor caveated that he wants the legislature to send him a new bill next year establishing guidelines for regulated therapeutic access to psychedelics and also consider a “potential” framework for broader decriminalization in the future. But at this stage, he’s unwilling to let the reform be enacted with his signature.

“Both peer-reviewed science and powerful personal anecdotes lead me to support new opportunities to address mental health through psychedelic medicines like those addressed in this bill,” Newsom said in a veto message on Saturday. “Psychedelics have proven to relieve people suffering from certain conditions such as depression, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and other addictive personality traits. This is an exciting frontier and California will be on the front-end of leading it.”

“California should immediately begin work to set up regulated treatment guidelines—replete with dosing information, therapeutic guidelines, rules to prevent against exploitation during guided treatments, and medical clearance of no underlying psychoses,” he continued.  “Unfortunately, this bill would decriminalize possession prior to these guidelines going into place, and I cannot sign it.”

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