Tag: police state

DHS Producing Videos Teaching Citizens How To Identify “Radicalized” Conservatives

America First Legal (AFL) has obtained documents through FOIA request from the Department of Homeland Security which outline a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style video series that DHS intended to release to the public.  The videos were meant to depict different scenarios in which citizens might encounter potentially “radicalized” individuals.  Citizens are then asked to choose what they think should be done about the encounter. 

Most of the scripted scenarios showcase people with conservative beliefs and values as the radicalized threat.  For example, the DHS targeted “suburban Moms” with pro-life beliefs.

The series also targeted “old high school friends” who believe in “conspiracies” as examples of radicalized citizens in need of bystander intervention.

The video scripts, written under the DHS’s Office of Terrorism and Violence Prevention, was part of an internalized memo circulated on January 29th, 2021, only eight days after Joe Biden entered the White House.  The program seems to have been developed in tandem with the “Disinformation Governance Board” which was eventually scrapped due to public opposition.  It reveals an ongoing and disturbing trend within the Federal Government to implement authoritarian measures across the country, first using covid as an excuse, then using the January 6th protests as a rationale.

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DHS Official Gets Life for Using His Federal Authority to Rape, Abuse, and Then Silence Women Victims

In a chilling example of a trusted government official abusing his power to carry out his depravity, a disgraced special agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) was sentenced to life in federal prison for sexually assaulting two women and leveraging his official position to prevent them from reporting his violent conduct. John Jacob Olivas, 48, of Riverside, California, was found guilty of three counts of deprivation of rights under color of law and sentenced to life in prison this week.

It is worth noting that while HSI had individuals like Olivas in their ranks raping women and silencing them, Homeland Security was busy referring to people who questioned the COVID lockdowns as “domestic terrorists.” This disturbing irony highlights the immense power and authority that comes with law enforcement positions and their ability to demonize the innocent while hell unfolds within their ranks.

Olivas sought out a position of authority and used it to prey on women, violating their constitutional rights while abusing them sexually. According to victim testimony, he made it clear to his victims that the police would not be responsive to any report they made about him due to his status as a federal agent. He even threatened them with retaliation, such as making them “disappear,” having their children taken away, and getting them arrested on fake criminal charges.

One victim testified that Olivas tried to rape her “after making it clear to her that the police would not be responsive to any report she would make about Olivas because he was ‘above a cop,’ and ‘untouchable’ and ‘invisible’ to police” because of his federal position, the U.S. attorney’s office statement said.

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Texas Lawmakers Advance Bill To Raise Age For Buying Semiautomatic Rifles To 21

Texas state lawmakers advanced a bill on Tuesday that seeks to raise the minimum age to purchase a semiautomatic rifle to 21, just days after a mass shooting in Allen.

Two Republicans on the House Select Committee on Community Safety joined the committee’s Democrats to approve moving House Bill 2744 to the full chamber for a vote. This move is seen as a small victory for gun control advocates despite the bill being unlikely to pass the conservative Legislature and become law.

Reps. Sam Harless from Spring and Justin Holland from Rockwall, both Republicans, voted with Democrats on the last day of the bill’s deadline to move out of committee and continue through the legislative process. Their support came as a surprise, notably with Holland’s previous strong pro-Second Amendment stance.

The bill has been widely criticized by Republicans and gun rights advocates as infringing on the constitutional rights of law-abiding adults. Opponents of the bill have argued that if an 18-year-old is considered an adult with respect to voting, purchasing tobacco, and serving in the military, then it should entitle them to the full rights to protections granted by the U.S. Constitution.

The unexpected vote came just days after a gunman killed eight people, including several children, at a mall in Allen, Texas. Harless described his decision as “the most emotional vote” he’s ever taken, The New York Times reported. “I started crying after I made it. That means my heart told me I made the right vote,” he said.

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New York’s Heavy Hand Keeps Illegal Marijuana and Tobacco Dealers in Business

While I have fond memories of life in New York, many of them involve defying some stupid rule or regulation. It’s a pleasure to now live in Arizona where government, while still idiotic, generally has a lighter touch. Unfortunately for friends and family I left behind, Empire State officialdom still hasn’t learned its lessons, as evidenced by the heavy regulatory hand stifling sort-of-legalized marijuana, and proposals to similarly reinforce the black market with an outright ban on cigarette sales.

“Governor Kathy Hochul today signed new legislation to increase civil and tax penalties for the unlicensed and illicit sale of cannabis in New York as part of the FY 2024 Budget,” the New York governor’s office announced this week. “The legislation, first proposed by the Governor in March, provides additional enforcement power to the Office of Cannabis Management and the Department of Taxation and Finance to enforce the new regulatory requirements and close stores engaged in the illegal sale of cannabis.”

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Video showed cop trying to stop his partner from killing a man. Police investigators never even asked about the footage.

In the spring of 2019, two New York City Police Department officers entered the Bronx apartment of Kawaski Trawick. The 32-year-old personal trainer and dancer had called 911 after locking himself out.

But 112 seconds after their arrival, footage showed, one of the officers shot and killed Trawick, despite the officer’s more-experienced partner repeatedly telling him not to use force.

When an internal investigation later cleared the officers — saying “no wrongdoing was found” — the NYPD offered no explanation for its reasoning. But records obtained by ProPublica can now reveal how the department came to that conclusion.

Investigators never explored key exchanges between the two officers in the run-up to the shooting. They also never followed up with the officers when their accounts contradicted the video evidence.

“Any conversation between you and your partner?” the head of the investigative unit asked Officer Herbert Davis hours after the shooting.

“No,” Davis answered.

That wasn’t true.

After arriving at Trawick’s apartment and finding him holding a stick and a bread knife, body-worn camera footage shows that Davis, who is Black, told his less-experienced white partner, Officer Brendan Thompson, not to use his Taser. “Don’t, don’t, don’t,” he said, motioning for Thompson to step back.

Thompson fired his Taser anyway, causing Trawick to become enraged, and Davis then tried to stop Thompson from shooting Trawick. “No, no, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,” Davis said, before briefly pushing Thompson’s gun down.

The investigators had access to all that footage. They never asked either officer about it.

ProPublica obtained the NYPD’s full internal investigation, including audio of interviews with both officers, via a Freedom of Information Law request.

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Neighborhood Watch Out: Cops Are Incorporating Private Cameras Into Their Real-Time Surveillance Networks

Police have their sights set on every surveillance camera in every business, on every porch, in all the cities and counties of the country. Grocery store trips, walks down the street, and otherwise minding your own business when outside your home could soon come under the ever-present eye of the government. In a quiet but rapid expansion of law enforcement surveillance, U.S. cities are buying and promoting products from Georgia-based company Fusus in order to access on-demand, live video from public and private camera networks.

The company sells police a cloud-based platform for creating real-time crime centers and a streamlined way for officers to interface with their various surveillance streams, including predictive policing, gunshot detection, license plate readers, and drones. For the public, Fusus also sells hardware that can be added to private cameras and convert privately-owned video into instantly-accessible parts of the police surveillance network. In Atlanta, Memphis, Orlando, and dozens of other locations, police officers have been asking the public to buy into a Fusus-fueled surveillance system, at times sounding like eager pitchmen trying to convince people and businesses to trade away privacy for a false sense of security.

The model expands police access to personal information collected by private cameras that would otherwise require warrants and community conversation. Because these cameras are privately owned, police can enjoy their use without having to create and follow records retention and deletion policies.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been collecting and reviewing documents about cities’ uses of Fusus, which counts nearly 150 jurisdictions as customers. You can access these records on DocumentCloud. EFF also shared these documents with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, which published its report today.

Police surveillance threatens constitutionally protected activities. It gives police the ability to surreptitiously spy on and track people of no real or alleged criminal concern. It creates caches of sensitive, personal information that can be retained indefinitely. Fusus is compounding these issues by expanding police access to surveillance cameras and integrating the cameras with a number of other surveillance services. This increases the ways police are able to record, track, and marginalize communities.

Deciding whether to expand police video surveillance to every corner of our lives should never happen without strong community conversation, transparency, and real respect for procurement rules and the public’s liberty. Yet cities’ responses to public records requests reveal a lack of clear guidance on when live access can be utilized, with very few locations able to provide policies regarding appropriate and specific police use of the system.

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E-Verify Is Deeply Dangerous 

The e-verify program is one of those subtle Trojan Horses that government is so good at.

It starts with a widely perceived problem that has widespread support: that the country is full of illegal workers. 

Whether or not this is actually a problem is a matter that can be debated, but that’s not actually the relevant bit. The relevant bit is that it’s popularly seen as such in many quarters.

The solution looks simple: create e-verify. 

All employers are required to check citizenship/work eligibility when hiring.

It seems simple, straightforward, and people will support it because it does not harm them, it keeps others from competing with them. we’re simply solving the problem of “stop flooding into work, there are no jobs for you any more.” (Well, except in agriculture which is being carved out because no one is crazy enough to block that and let crops rot in fields or field lie fallow.)

But there is a much more subtle twist here: it’s a classic trojan framing. 

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St. Petersburg Uhuru members speak for first time since indictment

It’s a matter of free speech, says Omali Yeshitela, the longtime leader of the St. Petersburg-based Uhuru Movement and founder of the African People’s Socialist Party.

Yeshitela was indicted by a federal grand jury in Tampa last month and accused of working with Russian nationals to sow discord in the United States, spread pro-Russian propaganda and influence elections, along with two other members of the Uhuru Movement, Penny Joanne Hess and Jesse Nevel.

On Wednesday, the three Uhuru members spoke to the press for the first time since their indictment.

“I believe in free speech,” Yeshitela said at the news conference. “If I didn’t believe in free speech, I would never have said anything because they kill Black people for talking in this country.”

Yeshitela founded the African People’s Socialist Party in 1972. The Uhuru Movement is the party’s activist branch, started in the 1990s. The group supports reparations for Black people and has protested racism, colonialism and capitalism for decades. Hess and Nevel are the chairpersons of groups for white allies under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement, respectively.

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“Were You Expecting Us?”: ATF Agents Go ‘Door To Door’ To Confiscate FRT-15 Triggers

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) under the Biden administration continues its ‘door-to-door’ operation to seize Rare Breed FRT-15 triggers from private citizens. The latest example comes days ago when ATF agents, noticeably armed and wearing ballistic plate carriers, showed up at a person’s home, demanding the surrender of the FRT-15 trigger.  

A man who claimed to be the owner of Moonlight Industries, a company specializing in making chest rigs for special forces operators, posted a video on Moonlight’s YouTube channel of two ATF agents visiting him at his home.

The conversation begins with the woman ATF agent saying, “Were you expecting us?”

The man responded, “Well, it doesn’t surprise me with a guy wearing a plate carrier showing up…” 

The woman ATF agent (who does most of the talking) said, “The reason why we’re here … that just recently, the ATF, classified the FRT as machine guns.” 

She said, “We are aware that you might have purchased some of these FRTs.” She admitted, “Like the whole agency is basically ‘reaching out’ to these purchasers, and we have to pick them up.” 

After all that, Moonlight’s owner responded, “Well, I won’t be answering any questions today … and I don’t have any comments on this subject … and I won’t be giving you anything.” 

In a split second, the male ATF agent asked Moonlight’s owner, “Are you refusing to give us the trigger?”

Moonlight’s owner said, “I’m not refusing to give anything. I just won’t be answering any questions.” 

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Florida cop charged with using dead man’s credit card information to buy fast food, gas, and hotel stay

A police officer in Florida was arrested with her handcuffs and charged with stealing a dead man’s credit card information to purchase fast food, according to the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.

St. Cloud Police Officer Dianne Ferreira, 25, stands accused of theft of credit card information with intent to use, fraudulent use of a credit card over $200, and use of the personal ID of a deceased person. Her arrest was announced Tuesday during a joint press conference held by the OCSO and the SCPD.

“She was an officer, but she doesn’t deserve that title now,” St. Cloud Police Chief Doug Goerke said on Wednesday.

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