Tag: police state

Gun-Toting Wing of IRS Wants to ‘Put the Fear of God in People’: Ex-Agent

As the Internal Revenue Service seeks to bolster the ranks of its weapon-carrying Criminal Investigation unit, a former special agent described the inner workings of the division and said its key function is “to put the fear of God in people” and intimidate Americans into tax compliance.

Former IRS Special Agent Robert Nordlander told Accounting Today, in a wide-ranging interview published on Feb. 20, that while most Americans have a sense of what IRS tax audits look like, the work of the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) unit is shrouded in some mystery.

Dubbed “gun-toters,” the armed special agents in the unit are responsible for enforcing those parts of tax code whose violations amount to crimes, he said. “When crimes are committed, the IRS-CI are the ones that actually enforce” the law, Nordlander said.

The IRS-CI examines potential criminal activity related to tax crimes and makes recommendations for prosecution to the tax division of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

There are now around 2,100 “gun-toters” in the criminal investigations division, and the IRS—flush with funds from a new cash injection—is looking to hire more special agents.

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Malcolm X’s daughters are set to sue NYPD and other city agencies for ‘concealing evidence around their father’s murder:’ Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump to defend family on 58th anniversary of activist’s death

The three remaining daughters of civil rights leader Malcolm X are planning to sue the NYPD together with various government agencies alleging their involvement in the assassination of their father, on the 58th anniversary of his death.

Ilyasah, 60, Attallah, 64, and Qubilah Shabazz, 62, are to allege how evidence relating to Malcolm X’s murder in 1965 was ‘fraudulently concealed’ by the authorities. 

Their case has been picked up by renowned civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump with whom they have enjoyed a long partnership. 

Crump, together with co-counsel Ray Hamlin, is planning to file a ‘notice of intent’ and sue the NYPD together with various government agencies on behalf of the daughters, alleging their involvement in the assassination.

The suit will allege how evidence relating to Malcolm X’s murder was ‘fraudulently concealed’ by the authorities that were investigating his death.

The role played by federal and New York government agencies, such as the NYPD, FBI, and CIA, in his murder has been a matter of dispute for a long time.

Tuesday marks the 58th anniversary of civil rights leader Malcolm X’s death. 

On that day in 1965, while speaking at the Audubon Ballroom, Malcolm X was assassinated at the age of 39 in front of his family, having been shot 21 times by several men. 

At the time, the agencies had access to factual and exculpatory evidence that Crump alleges they kept from Malcolm X’s family and the individuals wrongly convicted of crimes connected to his assassination.

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Study: 70% of Suspects Freed from Jail Without Bail Arrested for More Crimes

More than 7-in-10 criminal suspects released from jail without bail go on to be rearrested for allegedly committing more crimes, a new study reveals.

In early 2020, amid the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, the California Judicial Council required counties to enforce an “emergency bail schedule” which effectively released thousands of criminal suspects from jail without having to pay bail under the guise of reducing prison overcrowding.

“This program designated that the bail for select crimes was dramatically reduced, many to zero dollars,” county officials state.

Yolo County, California, in particular, kept the $0 bail policy in place until June 2021 when the county’s Superior Court enacted a new bail schedule.

The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office, in analyzing release and arrest data during the period where the $0 bail policy was enforced, finds that more than 70 percent of those who were released without bail went on to be arrested for additional crimes.

The analysis also compared recidivism rates over an 18-month period, finding that 78 percent of suspects released without bail were found to be rearrested for crimes while only 46 percent of those who paid bail were rearrested.

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Qualified Immunity Is Burning a Hole in the Constitution

The Supreme Court created qualified immunity out of thin air in 1967, just six years after the Court first recognized that people could sue police officers and other government officials for violating their constitutional rights. In that first qualified immunity case, Pierson v. Ray, the Court held that the officers were entitled to a “good faith” immunity in civil rights cases. Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for the majority, explained that this immunity from suit was necessary because, otherwise, officers could be held liable when they mistakenly believed the law authorized an arrest. As Chief Justice Warren explained, “A policeman’s lot is not so unhappy that he must choose between being charged with dereliction of duty if he does not arrest when he has probable cause and being mulcted in damages if he does.”

Although a “good faith” defense was the impetus for qualified immunity, today, officers are entitled to qualified immunity even if they act in bad faith, so long as there is no prior court decision with nearly identical facts. For more than five decades, the Supreme Court has repeatedly strengthened qualified immunity’s protections, describing each additional layer of defense in increasingly terrified tones as necessary to protect officers from the unyielding power of civil rights lawsuits.

The first — and arguably most seismic — shift to qualified immunity came in 1982 in a case called Harlow v. Fitzgerald. In Harlow, the Court concluded that officers’ entitlement to qualified immunity should not depend on whether they acted in good faith. In order to prove good faith, officers would have to be deposed — questioned under oath — about their state of mind at the time they violated the Constitution, and a case would go to a jury if an officer’s good faith was in dispute. Justice Powell, who wrote the majority opinion in Harlow, reasoned that requiring officers to participate in discovery and trial in an “insubstantial case” was a burden to the officer, who would need to spend time defending himself instead of doing his job. And the Court feared that this type of distraction would harm not only the officer but also “society as a whole” by discouraging “able citizens from acceptance of public office” and “dampen[ing] the ardor of all but the most resolute, or the most irresponsible [public officials], in the unflinching discharge of their duties.” So, to protect officers from having to participate in discovery and trial in “insubstantial cases,” the Court held in Harlow that an officer’s intentions do not matter to the qualified immunity analysis. Instead, officers are entitled to qualified immunity so long as they do not violate what the Court called “clearly established law.”

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Bad Quotes of Some Bad Presidents

Presidents’ Day is just around the corner. Should we celebrate?

People who love liberty and live in a free society don’t bow down and worship politicians. We understand that politicians wield power, to be sure, but we also know they still put their pants on one leg at a time. As President Reagan once put it, “America is a nation that has a government, not the other way around.”

The best of America’s presidents worked to keep the peace and our liberties. They didn’t view the Constitution as public window-dressing while they undermined it inside the store. The worst ones expanded power in Washington, burdening future generations with dubious programs, bureaucracy, taxes, debt, and foreign adventurism. The truly good ones are few and far between.

So whoever it was who decided we should have a Presidents’ Day in February, I can assure you it wasn’t me. I’d prefer to celebrate an Entrepreneurs’ Day. Or an Inventors’ Day. Or, of course, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. If I had my way, we’d have a Capital Day too.

America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, regarded government employment with a healthy wariness. In a 1799 letter, he warned, “Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.” Twelve years later in another letter, he said, “I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.”

Presidents’ Day, fortunately, is still welcomed by most Americans more as a day off work than a day to glorify presidents—even Washington and Lincoln, whose birthdays were “consolidated” into the holiday in the first place. But there’s still too much presidential glorifying that goes on for my tastes. In the spirit of Jeffersonian skepticism, my way of noting the holiday this year is to offer five of the many bad things some bad presidents said.

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No, Trading Flesh for Prison Time Is Not “Bodily Autonomy”

YOUR LIVER OR your liberty? Choose one.

This is the proposition that a bill in the Massachusetts House of Representatives puts to people locked up in the commonwealth: Donate bone marrow or an organ or two, says HD 3822, and the Department of Correction will cut 60 to 365 days off your sentence. The bill is sponsored by four Democrats.

Everything is wrong with this proposal except its intentions: to shorten transplant waiting lists and reduce state prison populations. Or so I assume. The 370-word text does little more than establish a Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program within the Department of Correction and a committee to work out the details. There is not even a perfunctory assurance of informed consent. With any luck, the bill will flutter to the bottom of some committee’s docket.

But HD 3822 is more than a piece of legislative slapdashery. It hints at the ways policymakers think about people and bodies and the calculus that determines which bodies deserve respect and care and which do not.

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Shakespeare flagged as ‘far right’ literature in UK – media

Several of the UK’s most respected television shows, movies and works of literature have been included in a list of works that could potentially encourage far-right sympathies, compiled by the taxpayer-funded and government-led ‘Prevent’ counter-terrorism programme, according to the Daily Mail.

Works by JRR Tolkien, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and even William Shakespeare, as well as classic movies ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ and ‘The Great Escape’ were cited in a list published by the British paper on Saturday as being highlighted by the counter-terrorism watchdog, for their potential use by far-right agitators to promote troublesome viewpoints online.

“This is truly extraordinary,” historian and broadcaster Andrew Roberts said of the list to the tabloid. “This is the reading list of anyone who wants a civilized, liberal, cultural education.

“It includes some of the greatest works in the Western canon and in some cases – such as Joseph Conrad’s ‘The Secret Agent’ – powerful critiques of terrorism. [Edmund] Burke, Orwell and Tolkien were all anti-totalitarian writers.”

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The sudden global push for age verification to end online anonymity and drive digital ID uptake

Anonymity online, long considered by civil rights groups as a fundamental feature of the internet, is coming under fire from different directions, and through a range of methods: from criticism by political elites, to actual legislation.

One kind of new law that can undermine or do away with online anonymity are those mandating age verification before users are allowed on a website. Another effect these rules have is increasing the uptake of digital IDs.

Earlier this week, Senator Josh Hawley introduced the Making Age-Verification Technology Uniform, Robust, and Effective (MATURE) Act, whose goal is to prevent minors under 16 from accessing social media.

In order to ensure this, all users would have to have their age verified before creating an account, by giving up information fully revealing their identity: legal name, date of birth and a copy of a government issued ID that proves this is their actual name and age.

Hawley’s explanation for this and similar initiatives is that social media is harmful to children, from monetizing their data to facilitating exploitation and manipulation. But the solution would clearly affect everyone’s privacy by further “unmasking” them to notorious data collectors and (ab)users, those same social sites.

Age verification is also being pushed in some states but, in Utah at least, the proposal that has just been adopted in the local Senate is leaving out the government ID requirement.

The bill, known as SB152 and which will next be considered in the House, makes it mandatory for companies behind social media platforms to make sure that children can sign up only with their parents’ consent. To ensure this is the case, the ages of all users would be verified.

However, how exactly these companies can accomplish that remains unclear for now, while the bill’s sponsor, state State Senator Mike McKell, is quoted as saying that “there are third-party options that use various technologies to verify ages without government IDs.”

Facial recognition is mentioned in reports as one such option, while another is to use “existing consumer data.” Once again, the need for such legislation is explained as a way to protect children from bad influences online.

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Police told to keep record of ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘communists’

The Queensland police are required to report interactions with people who “allegedly hold a range of ideological beliefs” including “conspiracy theorists” according to an email sent to all members of the Queensland Police Service on Thursday and seen by ABC News.

Police must record interactions with such individuals in the state’s QPrime database “at the first available opportunity,” the email states, explaining that in addition to “conspiracy theorists,” “religious, social or political extremists and sovereign citizens, as well as people with ideologies relating to capitalism, communism, socialism or Marxism” also fit the bill.

Officers were also told to report “all matters that indicate concerning or escalating behavior due to ideological beliefs, including religious and single-issue ideologies” and advised of the “risks” inherent in dealing with these groups.

The guidance comes after a deadly shooting in Wieambilla in December left two officers and a civilian dead, in addition to the three shooters. Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train reportedly gunned down constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold and injured two other officers on their property, also killing neighbor Alan Dare when he was drawn to the scene by the noise. The Trains were then killed by specialist police following an hours-long standoff.  

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