Tag: police state

Cop Gets Wrist Slap for Shooting Surrendering Unarmed Man in the Head, Executing Him

In December 2017, community members began searching for answers after an unarmed man was shot and killed by a police officer in an unmarked car who claimed that he opened fire because he had his hand in his pocket. But their victim, 25-year-old Dennis Plowden Jr. was unarmed and was not a threat when cops opened fire on him just six seconds after they stopped the vehicle.

For years, Plowden’s family sought justice and this month, they found out that justice will not come. Disgraced officer Eric Ruch Jr. — who put a bullet in Plowden’s head that night — was sentenced to just 11 months in jail.

Ruch, 34, was charged in 2020 and convicted in September 2022 of voluntary manslaughter and a weapons charge. The voluntary manslaughter charge alone was supposed to come with a 20-year sentence. However, Ruch, according to the court, “demonstrated good behavior” since he murdered Plowden, so he will not have to spend years in prison for his crimes.

“Nothing he is going to do in prison is going to make him a better person,” Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara McDermott said.

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Ctrl+Alt+Delete the Totalitarian State

There are three government narratives pushed today that are not real: (1) fraud-free elections, (2) a looming climate apocalypse, and (3) a COVID health emergency requiring total government control.  If you see through only one, then you’re not looking hard enough.  Or as Bill Engvall might say, “If you now believe COVID is mostly a hoax but are still terrified of global warming, here’s your sign.”  Conversely, if you do see through them, you’re likely being censored for expressing those points of view.  

Here’s our impasse: when governments claim to have a monopoly on truth, then citizens are expected to accept preposterous fantasies, no matter how much opposing evidence they might see.  The narrative is absolute.  Dissent is forbidden.  Total obedience is the objective.  Last century, free Westerners understood these features as telltale signs of totalitarianism.  Today, much less free Westerners have been taught to embrace — without scrutiny or wisdom — the government’s fairy tales as part of our required, if not sacred, deference to the bureaucratic State’s cult of expertise.  Whether citizens grasp this shift in individual freedom or not, the general rule handed down from governments is stark yet succinct: ask us no questions, and we will tell you no lies!

Westerners desperately need to reboot their systems of government before those systems of government delete the public’s power to make changes ever again.  It is not possible for political leaders to claim that their countries support personal freedom when they snatch that freedom away at the first sneeze, cow fart, or unapproved tweet.  It is not logical for governments to claim that they protect “democracy” when armies of unelected permanent bureaucrats run the modern State.  It is not reasonable for Western nations to claim that they cherish “free thinking” and “free expression” when their technocratic surveillance arms actively censor speech and promote State-approved points of view over all others.

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Berkeley Police Department in turmoil over leaked texts about arrest quotas

The Berkeley Police Department was in turmoil Thursday following the leak of text messages that allegedly show the president of the police officers union making racially charged remarks and calling for arrest quotas.

The growing scandal resulted in the union president, Sgt. Darren Kacalek, being placed on administrative leave Wednesday, city officials confirmed. He also stepped down from his position as union head. It also put on pause the City Council’s pending appointment of a new police chief, Jennifer Louis, the Berkeley Scanner reported.

The texts were exposed last week by a city police officer who was fired last year, Corey Shedoudy. He claimed he obtained the messages during the arbitration process to get back his job.

“Evidence was uncovered that exposed the unethical and illegal practice of arrest quotas of downtown unhoused ordered by Sgt. Darren Kacalek,” Shedoudy wrote in an email to the mayor and City Council. The officer was reportedly fired for intentionally crashing his bike into a car.

As a member of the Downtown Task Force and BPD Bike Force in 2020, Shedoudy claimed that Kacalek — a sergeant in the Police Department at the time — required him and other officers to make 100 arrests per month, “which was at the time more than the rest of the police department combined,” Shedoudy wrote in the email.

The quotas continued after Louis was named interim chief, Shedoudy said.

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Biden reaches for his pen — and undermines separation of powers

Faced with a Congress that would not endorse his expansive regulatory agenda, President Obama famously remarked, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone.” Almost 10 years later, governing by executive fiat continues.

The latest round of policymaking by pen and phone came when President Biden designated 53,804 acres of land in north-central Colorado as the Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument. That designation will have significant consequences, because the entire area is now withdrawn from a host of future resource extraction and other productive land use activities.

This is not the first attempt to reserve the area. It was one of the central objectives of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy (CORE) Act. Yet the CORE Act failed several times to secure the necessary votes in the Senate to become law. 

A casual observer might wonder how Biden could unilaterally set aside tens of thousands of acres of land with the stroke of a pen, even after Congress made clear that it will not endorse such a policy. The answer lies in presidential abuse of power under the Antiquities Act.

Congress passed the Antiquities Act in 1906 with a narrow focus in mind: to protect Native American archeological sites from looting and destruction. To accomplish this goal, the law permits the president to designate landmarks, structures and objects of historic or scientific interest situated on lands owned or controlled by the federal government as “national monuments.” It also permits the president to reserve surrounding public lands. But such lands must be confined to the smallest area compatible with the protection of the object. Presidents typically designate monuments under the act through “presidential proclamations,” which do not require public notice or an opportunity for the public to comment on the designations.   

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Saudi Arabia Executes 15 People in 12 Days For Non-Violent Drug Offences

Saudi Arabia has executed 15 people for non-violent drug offences – some thought to be beheaded by sword – in the last 12 days, despite promising to end them. 

In January 2021 the country announced a moratorium on drug-related executions. It came in the wake of the gruesome murder and dismembering of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey in 2018 by a Saudi death squad, a hit the CIA said was ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  

But legal NGO Reprieve said that in the last fortnight the regime had quietly resumed secret executions for drug offences. Ten of those executed are foreign nationals, from Pakistan, Syria and Jordan. Five of them – including a man executed on Monday morning – are Saudi nationals. Because executions are carried out behind closed doors and bodies are not returned to families, methods of execution cannot be confirmed. However experts believe people are killed by a mixture of beheading by sword and by shooting.  

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New York cannabis farms have nowhere to sell a combined 300,000 pounds of weed, valued at $750 million, as delays continue for dispensaries in the state

Hundreds of thousands of pounds of marijuana are currently sitting idly on New York cannabis farms without a single legal recreational dispensary in the state open and ready to sell the product.

An estimated 300,000 pounds of weed are becoming a growing concern for farmers who planted the crop in spring 2021 in hopes of cashing in on the drug’s legalization in New York state. The lot is valued at about $750 million based on the average wholesale value of $2,500 per pound, according to Bloomberg.

Today, the legal recreational cannabis market is stalled as applicants for the first 150 individual retail licenses and 25 nonprofit licenses are still waiting to hear back from the Office of Cannabis Management, per Bloomberg.

Although players in the industry are waiting for the green light from the state, Melany Dobson — CEO of New York-based Hudson Cannabis — told Bloomberg it’s not the only thing holding her and others back.

“It’s an unclear path to market,” Dobson said. “We’ve been told again and again that dispensaries will open before the end of the year. I’ve acted as though that’s our single source of proof, so we’re prepared for that.”

The clock is ticking for the freshly harvested pounds of pot as farmers work to extend its shelf life in preparation for the still-to-come legal dispensaries.

“Old cannabis starts to have a brownish glow,” Dobson said. 

She continued: “We’re trying to retain as much quality as possible. And rushing it into the finished product bags is not the way to do that.”

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CIA Caught Covering Up Rampant Child Sex Crimes Inside Agency and NO ONE Has Gone to Jail

Imagine an agency so secretive and so corrupt that they can literally get away with criminal sexual abuse of children. Then imagine you are forced to pay for this agency and despite knowing that their agents are abusing children — even admitting to it — they are avoiding any kind of legal ramifications. Well, there is no need to imagine because that and more, is happening within the CIA and no one is doing anything about it.

Last December, through multiple FOIA lawsuits, Buzzfeed News obtained hundreds of internal CIA reports that detailed the rampant abuse. According to the reports, despite multiple agents and contractors, at least 10, being caught in child sex abuse situations, federal prosecutors have brought no charges. The abusers remain protected by the agency.

It’s been nearly a year since this information became public yet there has been no investigation and essentially no interest by anyone in D.C. or the political establishment to hold them accountable.

Buzzfeed reports that most of the cases were referred to US attorneys for prosecution but in an apparent quid pro quo scenario, the US attorneys send the cases back to the CIA to “handle them internally.” As a result of this scenario, these child-abusing monsters face no legal ramifications. At most, according to the report, they may lose their job or security clearance.

As Buzzfeed points out, some of these crimes are utterly horrifying and involve toddlers.

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