Tag: police state

After Police Ignored Her, Woman Shoots Cop Husband for Sexually Abusing Kids at a Daycare She Owns

A former Baltimore cop and his now-estranged wife are both currently sitting in a Maryland jail and the story of how they got there is quickly becoming a viral cause for support. Shanteari Weems, 50, shot her husband, James S. Weems Jr., 57, in the head, after learning that he allegedly sexually abused multiple children at the daycare she owns in Baltimore County.

#FreeShanteari is now trending on Twitter as the internet and public at large demand her release from jail. Many are also asking how they can contribute to her legal defense since GoFundMe deleted her fundraiser.

The Weems’ story unfolded last week on July 20 and July 21 when Shanteari began receiving text messages from the parents of children she looks after at her Lil Kidz Kastle daycare. The parents were informing her that James had been molesting children at the daycare.

According to court documents, Shanteari said during an interview with police that she had received “multiple messages and phone calls from parents and teachers” about molestation at her daycare.

Qiana Johnson, who led a group of protesters outside of Shanteari’s courtroom appearance on Monday, said Shanteari had tried to go the traditional route and report her child molesting husband to police — but her reports fell on deaf ears — so she took matters into her own hands after the cops ignored her.

“She’s placed complaints to the proper authorities before… and her cries for help went unanswered,” Johnson told WUSA9. “Our public, our government, did not keep her or the children safe.”

Shanteari had apparently planned to “hurt” James at the hotel that weekend and when she confronted him, he allegedly came toward her at which point she shot him, twice — non-fatally.

According to the Baltimore Banner, D.C. police also found a notebook in the hotel room with handwritten notes in which the author wrote that they wanted to shoot the victim but not kill him, but maybe cause paralysis, and that they “want these kids to get justice.” The notebook also included an informal will distributing belongings.

After shooting James, a subsequent standoff ensued and Shanteari barricaded James and herself in the hotel room. When police attempted to gain entry into the room, she reportedly screamed: “If you come in, I’m going to shoot myself.” And when they asked about her husband, she yelled, “F him—he’s a child molester!”

With police at the door, James yelled for help and Shanteari allegedly responded with “Shut the f up… I will kill you!”

Eventually, Shanteari surrendered without incident and was taken into police custody.

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What Is the FBI Trying To Hide About Its Raid on Innocent Americans’ Safe Deposit Boxes?

First, the FBI raided a private business to seize safe deposit boxes and assets belonging to hundreds of people who were not suspected of having committed any crimes.

Now, prosecutors are trying to keep the public in the dark about why the brazen forfeiture effort was undertaken in the first place—and are offering little justification for why such secrecy is necessary.

Four depositions that could be crucial to understanding the motivations and intentions behind the FBI’s March 2021 raid of U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills–based safe deposit box storage business, are being kept confidential at the request of federal prosecutors. Attorneys representing some victims of the raid say the depositions could contain important information about how and why the FBI decided to seize and catalog the private belongings of U.S. Private Vault’s customers. They have asked the federal judge handling the case to allow the transcripts of those depositions—including one interview with Lynn Zellhart, the FBI’s lead agent in the case—to be filed in their entirety.

Unless Judge R. Gary Klausner allows the depositions to be made public, attorneys for the plaintiffs will have to continue heavily redacting their filings in the case. That might be sufficient to address the acute legal issues in the lawsuit, but it obviously harms the general public’s right to be informed about the bigger issues at stake.

(Reason, which has been covering this case since the beginning, plans to file a brief requesting that the depositions be unsealed.)

“If the government is successful, it means that the public will have only an incomplete window on what happened here,” Robert Johnson, an attorney at the Institute for Justice who is representing some of U.S. Private Vault’s customers, tells Reason. “That flips the public’s right of access on its head.”

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House Lawmakers to Receive $10,000 Security Stipend Amid Increasing Threats of Violence

House lawmakers will be offered up to $10,000 to strengthen their home security amid increasing threats of violence against lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

The stipend, announced by House Sergeant-at-Arms William Walker, would offer to cover up to $10,000 worth of expenses for upgrading home security systems, cameras and video recorders, locks, and motion sensors at the homes of lawmakers.

In addition to the stipend, Walker announced that the program, set to begin on Aug. 15, would furnish up to $150 per month to helping lawmakers pay fees and maintain the new equipment.

“The Sergeant at Arms (SAA) will assume the cost of and oversee certain future residential security upgrades, maintenance, and monthly monitoring fees. This program will strengthen the security of Members of the House of Representatives and their families,” Walker wrote in a letter to lawmakers announcing the stipend.

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New Zealand: Social Media Companies Agree to Censor “misinformation” and “harmful” Content

Giant social networks operating in New Zealand will from now on “voluntarily” self-regulate to further suppress content considered misinformation and hate speech.

Those signing up to what’s known as Aotearoa (New Zealand) Code of Practice for Online Safety and Harms include Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Amazon’s Twitch, Twitter, and TikTok.

The initiative comes from Netsafe – a New Zealand non-profit that describes itself as having “unrelenting focus on online safety.” Under the terms of the code they just agreed to, these social media heavy-hitters are expected to “actively” work on reducing “harmful” content.

We obtained a copy of the details for you here.

It is not stated what type of action the platforms will now be taking in order to achieve that goal, but the companies behind them will be publishing reports each year to demonstrate compliance, and will detail what tools, policies, processes and systems are being used to this end.

The full list of areas where censorship will be tightened includes child sexual exploitation and abuse, bullying or harassment, hate speech, incitement of violence, violent or graphic content, misinformation, and disinformation.

The code itself is said to be modeled after the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation, the EU Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online and the Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation. Netsafe considers the code as a way to fill “regulatory gaps” around misinformation and hate speech.

Members of the public will be able to report a social media company if they “believe” the code has been broken on its platform, and file complaints. One of the punitive measures is apparently asking these tech giants to “leave the agreement.”

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Police Are Using Newborn Genetic Screening to Search for Suspects, Threatening Privacy and Public Health

Nearly every baby born in the U.S. has blood drawn in the immediate hours after their birth, allowing the baby to be tested for a panel of potentially life-threatening inherited disorders. This is a vital public health program, enabling early treatment of newborns with genetic disorders; for them, it can be the difference between a healthy life and an early death. But recent news suggests that police are seeking access to these newborn blood samples in criminal investigations. Such use of this trove of genetic material — to hunt for evidence that could implicate a child’s relative in a crime — endangers public trust in this vital health program and threatens all Americans’ right to genetic privacy.

A public records lawsuit filed in New Jersey this month details how police subpoenaed a newborn blood sample to investigate a 1996 cold case. While law enforcement’s desire to use these blood samples in criminal investigations was always a possibility — and one the ACLU has opposed — the increasing use of Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) has only increased the government’s interest in easy access to people’s DNA. While few have heard of IGG, many have heard of its application to cold cases: One high-profile example is the 2018 identification of the Golden State Killer as former police officer Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. In IGG, DNA is isolated from a sample left at a crime scene and a rich genetic profile is created and uploaded to a genealogy website in order to map out family trees. In just four years since IGG first became public, its documented use by police has rapidly grown to nearly 200 investigations.

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Do the Police Have an Obligation to Protect You?

The motto, “To Protect and Serve,” first coined by the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1950s, has been widely copied by police departments everywhere. But what, exactly, is a police officer’s legal obligation to protect people? Must they risk their lives in dangerous situations like the one in Uvalde?

The answer is no.

In the 1981 case Warren v. District of Columbia, the D.C. Court of Appeals held that police have a general “public duty,” but that “no specific legal duty exists” unless there is a special relationship between an officer and an individual, such as a person in custody.

The U.S. Supreme Court has also ruled that police have no specific obligation to protect. In its 1989 decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, the justices ruled that a social services department had no duty to protect a young boy from his abusive father. In 2005’sCastle Rock v. Gonzales, a woman sued the police for failing to protect her from her husband after he violated a restraining order and abducted and killed their three children. Justices said the police had no such duty.

Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that police could not be held liable for failing to protect students in the 2018 shooting that claimed 17 lives at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

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