Tag: police state

New York bans most civilians from wearing bulletproof vests

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has banned most state residents from buying bulletproof vests for civilian use with very few exceptions.

The law, which went into effect on July 6, banned all state residents “not engaged or employed in an eligible profession” from purchasing, owning, selling, exchanging, giving away or personally disposing of body armor.

The “eligible professions” initially only included police officers, peace officers and people currently serving in the United States Armed Forces or in the New York State Army or Air National Guard.

The law was pushed through the New York State Legislature following the mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo in May that killed 10 people. When the law was initially passed, it only banned “bullet-resistant soft body armor,” which could have potentially served as a loophole for civilians who wanted to buy bulletproof vests made with steel, ceramic or polyethylene plates.

Notably, this loophole does not cover the steel-plated vest the Buffalo gunman wore during the shooting, which was strong enough to stop a bullet fired from the firearm of one of the grocery store’s security guards.

Democratic State Assemblyman Jonathan Jacobson, the lead sponsor of the bill, admitted that they did not know the difference between the different kinds of body armor when they were writing the bill.

“I think the important thing was that we took important steps that lessened the possibility that criminals will be using bulletproof vests in commission of crimes,” he claimed, adding that he is willing to rework the legislation to cover body armor using steel, ceramic or polyethylene plates.

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FBI Agents Raid Home of Owner of a Popular Website that Tracks Everything About the Secret Air Base in Area 51

The FBI reportedly raided the home of the owner of a popular website that tracks everything related to Area 51.  This is according to a report from a lead investigative reporter of KLAS TV, an affiliate of CBS.

“FBI agents came down hard on the operator of a popular website devoted to all things Area 51–its programs, lore, and legacy. More than a dozen agents served a no-knock warrant on the Rachel, NV home of Joerg Arnu, owner of http://dreamlandresort.com…” investigative reporter George Knapp wrote.

Joerg Arnu is the founder of Dreamland Resort and Webmaster. According to IMDb, Joerg Arnu grew up in Germany where he obtained a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering and started his career as a software developer. Today Joerg is a 25-year Area 51 research veteran, living in Rachel, NV, just outside the gates of Area 51. His Dreamland Resort website is all about the military R&D aspect of Area 51, Black Projects and Military Aviation.

“For 20 years and counting Dreamland Resort has been the most comprehensive source for information on Area 51, Black Projects, the Nellis Ranges, TTR, and the ET Highway. The webmaster is a 25-year Area 51 Research veteran and a resident of Rachel, NV, right outside the gates of Area 51,” according to the Dream Land Resort website.

George Knapp added, “They seized all computers, files, phones, photos. At the same time, another team of a dozen or more agents stormed into Arnu’s Las Vegas home, seized all digital devices and files, held his girlfriend at gunpoint.”

The motive for the raid is still unknown.

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2 Years After Police Broke a 73-Year-Old Woman’s Arm, A New Report Reveals Even More Misconduct

Two years after the violent arrest of a 73-year-old woman, a newly released report reveals further misconduct from police.

In 2020, Loveland, Colorado police violently arrested Karen Garner—resulting in a broken arm and dislocated shoulder. While two officers were convicted of charges related to the incident, the city has only now released a 2021 report detailing further officer misconduct.

On June 26, 2020, Karen Garner was thrown to the ground and violently arrested by Loveland Police Officer Austin Hopp after she allegedly shoplifted $14 of soda and laundry detergent from a local Walmart. According to a federal lawsuit, Garner who was 73 and suffered from Dementia and sensory aphasia—a condition that can make speaking and communication difficult—did not receive medical care for six hours after sustaining injuries that included a broken arm and dislocated shoulder.

Garner filed a lawsuit against the city in April 2021, with the city agreeing to a settlement five months later, awarding Garner $3 million in damages. Further, two officers have been convicted of charges related to the event—with Hopp currently serving a five-year sentence for assault.

However, a new independent report released to the public on November 4th reveals the depth of misconduct during Garner’s arrest. In particular, the report highlights the misconduct of Phillip Metzler—the third officer present at the scene of Garner’s arrest (the other two officers were later convicted on criminal charges related to the incident). Metzler resigned in 2021, shortly after the report was confidentially released to the City of Loveland.

The most severe revelations against Metzler relate to his handling of a bystander complaint about Hopp’s use of force at the scene of the incident. “Metzler did not take the complaint or document the concern from the citizen as directed by LPD policy,” the report noted. Further, “Metzler’s demeanor with [the bystander] was disrespectful and discourteous. Metzler failed to hear out [the bystander] and talked over him multiple times.”

According to the report, “Metzler changed the case number on his [body camera] footage, which recorded the citizen who complained about the arrest, to an unrelated incident number. This removed the footage from the Garner case file available to LPD and the District Attorney. In addition, by reclassifying the footage to an ‘incident’ rather than a case, Metzler changed the retention lifespan of the footage from 10 years to one year.”

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DHS Censorship Agency Had Strange First Mission: Banning Speech That Casts Doubt On ‘Red Mirage, Blue Shift’ Election Events

Last week, The Intercept published a set of leaks that drew broad interest in perhaps the most undercovered scandal inside the US government today: the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) quiet move to establish, for the first time in US history, an explicitly inward-facing domestic censorship bureau.

What The Intercept glimpsed, however, is just the tip of a much larger iceberg.

The size, scale and speed of DHS’s censorship operation are vastly larger have been reported. Based on our investigation, below are seven bottom-line figures summarizing the scope of censorship carried out by DHS speech control partners, as compiled from their own reports and videos:

  • 22 Million tweets labeled “misinformation” on Twitter;
  • 859 Million tweets collected in databases for “misinformation” analysis;
  • 120 analysts monitoring social media “misinformation” in up to 20-hour shifts;
  • 15 tech platforms monitored for “misinformation” often in real-time;
  • <1 hour average response time between government partners and tech platforms;
  • Dozens of “misinformation narratives” targeted for platform-wide throttling; and
  • Hundreds of millions of individual Facebook posts, YouTube videos, TikToks, and tweets impacted, due to “misinformation” Terms of Service policy changes that DHS partners openly plotted and bragged tech companies would never have done without DHS partner insistence and “huge regulatory pressure” from government.

The citations above are from just the DHS censorship network’s impact on the 2020 election cycle alone. That was two years ago, when the narrative management machine referenced by The Intercept was first getting formed. Even the above figures, however, just scratch the surface of the full story.

While The Intercept rightly noted that DHS’s “truth cops“ now take on a range of other topics – such as Covid-19 and geopolitical opinions – it all started from, and grew out of, DHS’s speech control infrastructure set up to censor speech about elections.

That started with the 2020 election. But it continues, importantly, with the 2022 midterm elections, which are ongoing this week.

At Foundation for Freedom Online, for more than six months, we have been publishing and sharing research findings about a wide span of shocking components to DHS’s speech control operations. Our investigation has spurred multiple members of Congress to vow aggressive probes into DHS’s “government censorship by proxy.”

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The digital euro may have spending limits

Fabio Panetta, an Executive Board Member of the European Central Bank (ECB), has proposed that users of the digital euro should only be allowed to spend €50 per transaction and have a maximum monthly spending limit of just €1,000 if they want to avoid having their transaction data recorded by the ECB.

The digital euro is the European Union’s (EU’s) proposed central bank digital currency (CBDC) and officials involved with the project have already confirmed that it will have less anonymity than cash.

But during an appearance at a “Towards a legislative framework for a digital euro” event (which was jointly organized by the European Commission (EC), the executive branch of the EU, and the ECB), Panetta and other officials discussed further restrictions that they hope to impose when the digital euro rolls out.

Panetta proposed that the ECB should be able to see data on payments between digital euro users but that it wouldn’t hold personal data about those users. He indicated that the only way for digital euro users to possibly avoid having their payment data recorded would be to stick to “very small value payments.”

“If we allow users to do transactions up to say €50 with a maximum…volume of transactions in a given timeframe that is monthly not more than €1,000…transaction not more than 50, then one might discuss that this could not be recorded but this is a discussion which would take place,” Panetta said.

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Watch as Cops Claim Blind Veteran’s Walking Cane is a Gun then Falsify Charges to Arrest Him

On the morning of October 31, James Hodges, 61, a legally blind veteran, was doing nothing wrong, had harmed no one, and was minding his own business when two people — who claim to “protect society” — approached him, accosted him, and then kidnapped him.

Had a regular citizen done what these two armed agents of the state did on that day, rest assured that they would be in prison right now for kidnapping. However, because Hodges’ kidnappers wear badges, they didn’t even lose their jobs.

Hodges requested the body-camera footage from that day to release publicly and it is nothing short of infuriating. The video shows Columbia County Sheriff’s Deputy Jayme Gohde and Sergeant Randy Harrison detaining Hodges without probable cause and subsequently fabricating charges to justify their actions which led to the kidnapping and caging of an innocent man.

According to Gohde’s account of the situation, she saw Hodges’ collapsible walking cane in his back pocket and claimed it was a gun. She then proceeded to detain Hodges, who told her that it was his collapsible walking stick because he is legally blind and needs it after dark.

In her report, Gohde claimed that Hodges never showed her a clear view of his walking stick but the body-camera video proves this was a lie. As the clip tweeted out by Ford Fischer illustrates below, Hodges clearly showed Gohde the walking stick before he was arrested or even detained.

Indicating her intentions, when Hodges asked Gohde if she is a tyrant, Gohde responded, “yeah. I am actually.”

When Hodges removes the cane from his back pocket, he “clearly” holds it up, spins it around, and presents it to Gohde in a fashion that would remove all doubt that the item in his pocket is a “pistol.”

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UK Man Sent To PRISON For 6 Months For Serving Snacks At Club During Lockdown

A 72-year-old man has been sentenced to six months in prison for the crime of serving mince pies with wine at his shooting club in 2020 while the area was under a lockdown.

The BBC reports that “Maurice Snelling broke tier three restrictions at Cloudside Shooting Grounds in 2020,” by allowing people to sit in at his premises rather than take away.

Mr Snelling pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice, but argued that his club was in an area where restrictions stated visitors could sit inside and consume drinks if they were accompanied by food.

The judge presiding over the case was not convinced, however, and said “I find it hard to believe that Mr Snelling didn’t know which lockdown tier he was in.”

Police disrupted the gatherings at the time after residents in the area reported Snelling.

He reportedly refused to provide police CCTV from the club and allegedly attempted to have the footage destroyed, prompting the contractor company hosting it on a hard drive to hand it over to authorities.

The lawyer representing Snelling told the BBC that he has suffered ill health since the case began and “This has tarnished his reputation. He believed he was targeted by neighbours and this built up resentment of a man with good character.”

The report also notes that the Judge believed Snelling to be “anti-establishment, especially to the police. He doesn’t like being told what to do. He treated police with resentment.”

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Good Samaritan Killed by Violent Cop While Rendering Aid to Shooting Victim

Kenneth Vineyard, 48, is the type of man who would run up to a complete stranger who lay bleeding on the ground and do anything he could to help him. In fact, that is exactly what he did on Sunday when a shooting unfolded in a Walmart parking lot. Unfortunately for Vineyard, however, this would be his last act of kindness thanks to Pennsylvania’s finest — who killed him for it.

Vineyard’s family is now demanding justice after an officer with the Center Township Police Department walked up to Vineyard as he helped a complete stranger and killed him.

“This appears to be another instance of senseless police violence,” said attorney Joel Sansone, according to KDKA.

According to police, Vineyard was at the Monaca Walmart with his fiancé on Sunday afternoon when gunfire erupted in the parking lot. Vineyard was not involved in the shooting. Police said Rashaun Smith, 20, was shot in the abdomen by Yeshua Bratcher, 23, and Vineyard simply ran up to Smith and began rendering aid.

“As the victim of that shooting lay bleeding, a Good Samaritan named Kenneth Vineyard rushed to the victim to render aid,” said Sansone.

Vineyard stopped Smith’s bleeding until paramedics arrived. When paramedics began helping Smith, Vineyard backed away and let them work. That’s when a man in plainclothes — who was a Center Township police officer — approached Vineyard and began barking orders.

Vineyard told the officer that he had just helped the shooting victim and was trying to make his way back to his fiancé. The officer couldn’t have cared less, however, and violently attacked Vineyard, according to Sansone. The officer reportedly shoved Vineyard to the pavement so hard that it killed him.

“The unidentified man insisted Mr. Vineyard step away and violently pushed Mr. Vineyard to the ground where he struck his head on the pavement,” Sansone said.

According to Sansone, Vineyard’s fiancé began chest compressions immediately while the first responders on the scene jumped in to help as well but he had no pulse. Vineyard was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Sansone says he has video of the officer shoving Vineyard as well as witness statements that corroborate his claims. “We want the name of the individual who caused this death and we intend to sue him and possibly others,” said Sansone.

“This officer should be immediately suspended pending the outcome of this investigation if the facts are as I’ve been told. He should be arrested and charged with manslaughter at the very least,” he added.

Although state police claim to be investigating the attack, the officer involved has yet to even be interviewed. Yeshua Bratcher, however, has been found, arrested, and charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person and a firearms violation.

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Civil Asset Forfeiture: Destroying Dreams and Denying Due Process

Two sisters from Virginia — Vera and Apollonia Ward — were trying to start a business and build a better life for themselves only to be denied the American dream by overzealous law enforcement using a much misfired weapon in the tyrannical arsenal: civil asset forfeiture.

Here’s the back story, as reported by Reason:

Before last year, though, the Ward sisters, like many people, had never heard of civil forfeiture. They had started a business breeding American Bullies. They said they had a very successful first litter and were looking to buy two more dogs for breeding. Last November, they tried to send $17,500 in cash through FedEx to a middleman in California, essentially a dog broker, to scout and purchase two new animals for them. 

They said they received an unusual call several days later from someone claiming to be at a FedEx facility, who they later learned was a police officer. The person on the phone asked if there was anything in the package he should know about. No, they said, just the cash.

In follow-up calls, it became clear that they weren’t dealing with FedEx customer service but rather the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office, which suspected the cash was drug proceeds. It became clear that the police were neither letting the cash go to its destination nor sending it back to the Wards.

“They said they smelled marijuana on the money,” Vera Ward says. “We don’t smoke. It’s not plausible since my sister and I aren’t around it.”

Not to mention the sisters say they had pulled the money out of the bank several days before they sent it and had receipts to back up their claim.

“We had proof, and they were like, ‘No you don’t, that’s drug money,’” Vera Ward remembers. When the sisters refused to cave and say the money was drug proceeds, they say officers threatened to go after them for money laundering.

When the sisters still refused to admit any connection to drug dealing, the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office seized the money anyway, and the San Joaquin District Attorney’s Office moved to forfeit it under California’s civil forfeiture laws.

It should be noted at the beginning that the Ward sisters were never charged with a crime.

The San Joaquin County Sheriff seized their property without even the most perfunctory degree of due process. The Ward sisters were presumed guilty until proven innocent — innocent of a crime they not only didn’t commit, but were never charged with committing.

Like most people reading this article, the Ward sisters had never heard of civil asset forfeiture before law enforcement used it to justify seizing money made by the sisters from their small business.

For those readers unfamiliar with this tyrannical transfer of wealth, a constitutional violation known euphemistically as “asset forfeiture,” here’s a summary published in 2015 by The Washington Post:

Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing.

With this kind of money up for grabs, it is little wonder that the plague of asset forfeiture has spread across the 50 states.

Paul-Martin Foss, president and executive director of the Carl Menger Center for the Study of Money and Banking, an Arlington, Virginia-based think tank dedicated to educating the American people on the importance of sound money and sound banking, wrote:

Hardly a week goes by without a mention of some innocent person who is arrested and/or imprisoned for violating an unconstitutional law, an arcane regulation, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. For completely innocuous conduct, they find themselves at the mercy of an uncaring, unfeeling bureaucratic apparatus that chews them up and spits them out.

As with so many of the other ongoing assaults on the vestigial liberty enjoyed by Americans, civil asset forfeiture is justified by its perpetrators as a means of keeping the people safe.

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Who Authorized the Department of Homeland Security to Police Online Speech? Not Congress

When George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act in 2002, the goal was to improve national security by strengthening government at various levels and helping them identify and respond to threats, particularly terrorism.

”The continuing threat of terrorism, the threat of mass murder on our own soil, will be met with a unified, effective response,” said Bush. ”Dozens of agencies charged with homeland security will now be located within one cabinet department with the mandate and legal authority to protect our people.”

The law contained “severe privacy and civil liberties problems,” the ACLU argued, but the legislation enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Only nine Senators voted against it (eight Democrats and one Independent).

Bush tapped Tom Ridge as the first secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, but public policy experts admitted it was unclear precisely what the new department would do.

”The first challenge is to lower expectations,” Paul C. Light of the Brookings Institution told The New York Times. ”People should think they will be safer, but remember we have a long way to go.”

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