Tag: police state

Biden Looking at Expanding Internet Surveillance After Discord Leaks

The Biden administration appears poised to increase internet surveillance in response to the leaked Pentagon documents that appear to have been posted on the messaging platform Discord.

NBC News reported on Wednesday that the administration was looking at expanding how it monitors social media sites and chat rooms.

The report cited an unnamed senior administration official and a congressional official who said the administration wants to “expand the universe” of social media sites that US law enforcement and intelligence agencies monitor.

According to the congressional source, the report said the “intelligence community is now grappling with how it can scrub platforms like Discord in search of relevant material to avoid a similar leak in the future.”

According to The Washington Post, the top-secret documents were posted on a private Discord server that a member later posted on public servers in March. The documents have been circulating on the internet since then and were discovered by The New York Times last week.

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Man found guilty of spitting at police gets 70 years in prison

A Texas man was sentenced to 70 years in prison Wednesday after he was found guilty of harassing a public servant for spitting at Lubbock police officers.

Larry Pearson, 36, was arrested in May 2022 for domestic violence after a victim flagged down an officer in northeast Lubbock, prosecutor Jessica Gorman said.

The victim told police that Pearson had hit her several times and that he had a gun. Gorman said that firearm turned out to be an airsoft gun.

A police report at the time stated the victim had “multiple visible injuries” on her face. Gorman said after Pearson was taken into custody, he was upset the victim was not arrested instead.

That’s when he started kicking at the doors in the officer’s vehicle. When the officers opened the door to tell him to stop, Gorman said he spit at both officers.

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Family wants answers after man ‘eaten alive’ by bed bugs in county jail, attorney says

A family attorney in Georgia says a man died at a county jail after being “eaten alive by insects and bed bugs.”

According to attorney Michael D. Harper, LaShawn Thompson was at the Fulton County Jail for three months before he was found dead in a jail cell.

“What Mr. Thompson was housed in was not fit for a diseased animal,” Harper said. “He did not deserve this.”

Thompson was arrested on a misdemeanor battery charge in Atlanta in June 2022. He was taken to the Fulton County Jail and placed in the psychiatric wing after officials determined he had mental issues.

Thompson’s family said they obtained records that stated detention officers and medical staff noticed his health deteriorating but did nothing to administer aid to him or help him.

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INDIANA JAIL LET MAN WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA STARVE TO DEATH IN SOLITARY, LAWSUIT ALLEGES

On July 20, 2021, apartment managers entered 29-year-old Indiana resident Joshua McLemore’s home, found him confused, incoherent, and nude on the floor, and had McLemore transported to a Seymour, Indiana, hospital. McLemore’s mother had called her son’s living complex, worried he could have been having a psychotic episode. At the hospital, McLemore grabbed a nurse’s hair and the Seymour Police Department arrested him on battery charges.

At the Jackson County Jail, McLemore, who had schizophrenia, was stripped naked and thrown into solitary confinement in what was known as “Padded Cell 7,” a small room without toilet access.

Surveillance footage over 21 days shows him screaming; rocking back and forth; licking the walls; smearing his feces and urine all over the floor; violently shoving a plastic bottle into his rectum; throwing his food on the ground; and eating the styrofoam food trays that made their way through the thin slot at the cell door.

According to the lawsuit, he lost 45 pounds in less than a month. Jail staff rarely checked in on him. Jackson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) employees occasionally placed McLemore in restraints and wheeled him into a shower as JCSO forced other imprisoned people to clean the excrement in his cell. On August 8, a guard named Beverly texted her supervisor, “Just bathed him. And he can’t hold his hands, legs, anything. He’s dead weight.”

In the footage, McLemore’s body visibly shrinks over weeks until he doesn’t have the strength to hold his head up.

“Get up, buddy,” a corrections officer asks. But he can’t. In one portion of the footage, a female guard sprays him with liquid soap and hoses him down so that he does not smell before EMS comes.

On August 8, jail officials noticed that McLemore—visibly emaciated and unable to hold up his body—likely needed medical care. But medical officials were unable to save him. According to a suit, doctors listed McLemore’s cause of death as “multiple organ failure due to refusal to eat or drink with altered mental status due to untreated schizophrenia.”

McLemore’s family alleges that at least 20 people, including Sheriff Rick Meyer, had access to roughly 400 hours of footage of McLemore wasting away in his cell. Edwin Budge, the family’s attorney, said he could not understand why no one called 911 earlier.

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FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf says “regulation” is needed to target “misinformation”

In an interview with CNBC, FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said that online misinformation was harming the life expectancy of people, there is a need for “better regulation” on how to handle health misinformation and that “specific authorities at FDA, FTC, and other areas are going to be needed.”

“We know more and more about misinformation. It relates back to this life expectancy,” Califf said. Why aren’t we using knowledge of diet? It’s not that people don’t know about it. Why aren’t we using medical products as effectively and efficiently as our peer countries? A lot of it has to do with choices that people make because of the things that influence their thinking. The COVID vaccines and the antivirals give us an easy way to talk about it, but this is not limited to those areas. In heart disease, so many people don’t take their medicines, even though they’re now generic and very low-cost, often [they’re] deluded into taking things that are sold over the Internet that aren’t effective.”

According to the FDA commissioner, one of the solutions is telling the “truth is a louder volume.”

“In the good old days, when I was a practicing cardiologist, for the most part, people developed products, they got through the FDA, the label determined what was talked about, the Internet didn’t exist, you advertised in medical meetings and journals. There was sort of a hierarchy of information that went through the prescriber or the implanter in the case of devices to the patient. Of course, the problem in that system is it left a lot of people out. We now know about that. Now, everyone’s included because everyone’s connected to the Internet. But we can put out a statement about what we’ve determined based on the highest level of evidence, within ten minutes, someone who’s thought ten minutes about it can reach a billion people. And there’s nothing that restricts them from telling things that are not true. This has always existed. … But they couldn’t reach so many people,” he explained.

He added that there isn’t enough regulation on health information and that is “impacting our health in very detrimental ways.” As such, he thinks “there is a real need for better regulation of how to deal with this complex information.”

Califf noted that the FDA already has regulatory authority over advertisements content on tech platforms. But he feels the agency could do it better.

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California cops joked about shooting Black mayor and celebrated beating suspects: text messages

Newly revealed text messages sent by police in Antioch, California show that officers for years engaged in racist conduct and celebrated their own brutality while facing no pushback at all from superiors.

Among other things, the Mercury News reports, officers in Antioch made racist jokes about offering a “prime rib dinner” to anyone who shot Mayor Lamar Thorpe with projectiles often used on protesters.

Other messages show officers boasting about violence they inflicted on others while at times lamenting they didn’t go further in making alleged perpetrators suffer.

One particularly egregious text sent by Antioch Officer Eric Rombough lamented that the injuries he inflicted on a suspect wouldn’t be as readily visible as he had hoped.

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Kentucky governor who forced churches to close and used taxpayer dollars to defend his shutdowns ordered to pay more than a quarter million in legal fees

Andy Beshear, one of the absolute worst governors in America, just got handed a major and embarrassing defeat stemming back to his illegal and immoral shutdown of churches during Covid.

Beshear abused his power by shuttering houses of worship during Covid and was sued for his trouble.

Now an appeals court has ruled that the governor is on the hook for $270,000 in attorney’s fees to be paid to the plaintiffs who rightfully sued the tyrant wannabe.

Three individuals sued Beshear for violating their civil rights and preventing them from gathering for worship during the Covid shutdowns, and now they have been vindicated and the governor has been punished, at least somewhat, for his actions.

The appeals court upheld a lower circuit court ruling against the governor.

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Another Federal Judge Rejects the DOJ’s Argument That Cannabis Consumers Have No Second Amendment Rights

A federal judge in Texas recently agreed with a federal judge in Oklahoma that the national ban on gun possession by cannabis consumers violates the Second Amendment. Kathleen Cardone, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, also concluded that the federal ban on transferring firearms to an “unlawful user” of a “controlled substance,” first imposed by the Gun Control Act of 1968, is unconstitutional.

The case involves Paola Connelly, who was charged with illegal possession of firearms under 18 USC 922(g)(3) after El Paso police found marijuana and guns in her home while responding to a domestic disturbance in December 2021. Connelly, who said she used marijuana “to sleep at night and to help her with anxiety,” also was charged with violating 18 USC 922(d)(3) by transferring guns to her husband, a cocaine and psilocybin user. Both gun offenses are punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

As a preliminary matter, Cardone held that Connelly’s Second Amendment claims were not precluded by prior decisions in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which includes Texas, upheld Section 922(g)(3). Those decisions, she noted, preceded the Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which said gun control laws must be “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

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FBI Sent Undercover Agents to Church Services to Investigate ‘Domestic Extremism’

On Monday, Jim Jordan subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray for documents related to the FBI’s handling of a domestic violent extremism investigation against Catholic Americans.

Jordan, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that the FBI used at least one undercover agent to produce their analysis and that FBI agents engaged in outreach programs to Catholic parishes. This included clergy as well as church leadership.

Jordan’s letter reports that the FBI document sought to categorize Catholic Americans based on theological distinctions, as an attempt to label certain kinds of Catholic Americans as domestic terrorists.

“We have repeatedly sought information from the FBI relating to a January 23, 2023 document… After receiving no response, we reiterated our outstanding requests in a subsequent letter dated March 20, 2023. On March 23, 2023, we received a substandard and partial response consisting of only 18 pages — many with significant redactions of ‘personally identifiable information’ or ‘specific non-public information about [FBI] investigations, sources, and methods’ that prevents the Committee from fully assessing the content and context of the documents and obtaining information requested from the Bureau,” wrote Jordan in the letter to Wray.

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The Power of Silence: How and Why You Should Never Talk to Police

The issue of police abuse and violence towards people for victimless crimes is one that cannot be ignored. The police state is growing, and with it, so is the amount of aggression and force used against citizens who have not committed any actual harm to others.

It is concerning that many police officers seem to prioritize their own interests over the safety and well-being of citizens. As a result, there have been numerous cases of police brutality and misconduct, including unnecessary use of force and even fatalities. This has further eroded trust between law enforcement and the communities they are supposed to serve.

Furthermore, the police have a financial incentive to make arrests and generate revenue for the state, often at the expense of the rights and dignity of individuals. Many officers engage in tactics such as fishing for information and coercing confessions from individuals who may not fully understand their rights or who feel intimidated by the authority of law enforcement.

It is important to hold law enforcement accountable for their actions and to demand reform that prioritizes the protection and rights of all citizens. This can include advocating for increased transparency and accountability, as well as pushing for changes in policing tactics and training that prioritize de-escalation and community engagement.

These issues are why it is so important to always assert your 5th Amendment right to remain silent during police interactions, especially given the fact that many police officers are not very good at their jobs and need the help and participation of citizens to do their job effectively. This is particularly evident in the fact that roughly 90% of all arrests are self-incriminated. If the police can legally charge you with information they have gathered without your help, then let them try, but most of the time they require your help to incriminate yourself. By simply not talking, you have a 90% less chance of going to jail. By invoking your right to remain silent, you can protect yourself from self-incrimination and others around you who might be with you; talking can also incriminate other people like passengers and even your friends.

Ultimately, the role of law enforcement should be to serve and protect communities. Unfortunately, that is not the reality, especially when considering that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that police have no specific obligation to protect individuals, as demonstrated in its 1989 decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services ruling. Instead, they often act as an oppressive force that intimidates and abuses citizens, particularly in cases involving victimless actions. By holding police accountable for their actions and advocating for reform, we can work towards creating a more just and equitable society for all.

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