Tag: police state

NYPD Police Union President Arrested for Stealing Over $1 Million from Fellow Cops in Lowlife Scheme

Nothing says “culture of corruption” quite like cops committing crimes against their fellow cops. And, perhaps nothing highlights this point better than one of the highest ranking cops in the country waging an elaborate scheme to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from his fellow officers.

This week, Edward Mullins, the former President of the Sergeants Benevolent Association (“SBA”), the union that represents all current and former Sergeants of the New York City Police Department, was charged for fraudulently using union funds for personal gain.

On Wednesday, Mullins turned himself in to the FBI and was charged with one count of wire fraud in connection with his despicable scheme. Mullins’ scheme involved using police union funds to live a lavish lifestyle at the expense of his fellow officers.

After his arrest, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “As alleged, Edward Mullins, the former President of the SBA, abused his position of trust and authority to fund a lavish lifestyle that was paid for by the monthly dues of the thousands of hard-working Sergeants of the NYPD.

“Mullins submitted hundreds of phony expense reports to further his scheme, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the SBA.  This Office is committed to rooting out corruption at all levels of government, and that includes public officials like Mullins who use their positions of power to line their own pockets to the detriment of others.”

According to the Department of Justice, for nearly two decades, from 2002 until October 2021, Mullins served as President of the SBA. As president Mullins was responsible for for promoting the general welfare of the SBA’s membership. Instead of doing that, however, this top cop “orchestrated a scheme to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from the SBA and its members.”

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Bill Gates says we could prevent the ‘next’ pandemic if everyone acts like Australia did

We’ve done quite a few posts on the draconian measures Australia has taken to fight the spread of COVID-19. The country locked down hard, and fenced-in quarantine camps were built to contain anyone who might have been exposed.

At the Munich Security Conference earlier this month, Gates said that the next pandemic could be avoided if every country followed Australia’s example.

Megan Sauer reports:

Gates cited Australia’s Covid response as the gold standard to follow. The country reopened its international borders this week for the first time since March 2020. Over the course of the pandemic, returning citizens and approved international travelers have been required to quarantine in hotels guarded by police and military members. Australia’s states even periodically locked down their respective borders.

…

There’s reason to believe Australia’s blueprint may have been less successful elsewhere: Its population of nearly 26 million is relatively small, and it’s an island without any land borders. But Gates still called it a “true outlier.”

“They orchestrated diagnostics, they executed quarantine policies, and they have a death rate in a different league than other rich countries,” Gates said. “And everybody had the capability to do that.”

The entire continent has a population under 26 million.

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Supreme Court Sees Nothing Wrong with Prolonged, Warrantless Spying of One’s Home by Police Using Hidden Cameras

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to stop police from using hidden cameras to secretly and warrantlessly record and monitor a person’s activities outside their home over an extended period of time. In refusing to hear an appeal in Travis Tuggle v. U.S., the Supreme Court left in place a lower court ruling which concluded that no “search” in violation of the Fourth Amendment had occurred because the private activity recorded by the hidden surveillance cameras took place in public view. The Rutherford Institute and the Cato Institute had filed an amicus brief in Tuggle warning that without adequate safeguards in place, there would be no turning back from the kinds of intrusions posed by such expansive, ever-watching surveillance technology capable of revealing intimate details of a person’s life.

Jim Harper with TechLaw at the University of Arizona College of Law assisted The Rutherford Institute and the Cato Institute in advancing the Fourth Amendment privacy arguments in Tuggle.

“Unfortunately, we are steadily approaching a future where nothing is safe from the prying eyes of government,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “As the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recognized, ‘Foreseeable expansion in technological capabilities and the pervasive use of ever-watching surveillance will reduce Americans’ anonymity, transforming what once seemed like science fiction into fact.’”

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Doctors Warn Against Illegal ‘Covid Censorship’ Bill In California That Would Shut Them Down For ‘COVID-19 Misinformation’

Some doctors in California have vowed to fight a possible new law that would threaten their medical licenses if they were caught spreading “COVID-19 misinformation”

The medical professionals are calling the effort “unconstitutional” and “illegal.”

California Assemblyman Evan Low introduced Assembly Bill (AB) 2098 on Feb. 15, which would prevent licensed physicians and surgeons from spreading so called “covid misinformation”

The Epcoh Times reports: if passed, the law would inject disciplinary actions by the Medical Board of California or the Osteopathic Medical Board of California to care providers promoting alleged misinformation.

“The idea that they’re going to come after physicians that spread misinformation, without defining what misinformation is, [is] frightening,” Physician Dr. Jeff Barke told The Epoch Times.

Amid the pandemic, Barke was among the minority of health care professionals unafraid of challenging the science behind masks and vaccinations pushed by the California Department of Public Health and Center for Disease Control and Prevention—urging for individual freedom of choice.

Barke, a private practice physician in Newport Beach, has continuously fought against COVID-19 mandates and has urged for California schools to reopen—saying children are statistically unlikely to die due to the virus.

While Barke is against the mandates—especially lingering COVID-19 vaccine mandates for kids—he reassures that he is not anti-vaccine.

As the threat of censorship lingers among some health professionals, Barke said he fears scientific studies are at risk—as those who have challenged vaccines and masks will be potentially forced into compliance.

“Science is not about consensus. It’s not about agreement. It’s about sharing and debating ideas,” Barke said. “That sharing and debating ideas has not been allowed during the COVID crisis.”

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An Off-Duty Cop Murdered His Ex-Wife. The California Highway Patrol Ignored the Red Flags.

When law-enforcement officials believe that someone has committed a crime, they often go to great lengths—and can be quite creative—in coming up with charges to file. Criminal codes are voluminous, and it’s common for prosecutors to pile up one charge after another as a way to keep someone potentially dangerous off the streets.

When the accused is a police officer, however, agencies typically find their hands tied. “Nothing to see here,” they say, “so let’s move along.” Their eagerness to protect their own colleagues from accountability can have deadly consequences. A recent lawsuit by the victim of a California Highway Patrol officer’s off-duty shooting brings the problem into view.

The case centers on Brad Wheat, a CHP lieutenant who operated out of the agency’s office in Amador County. On Aug. 3, 2018, Wheat took his CHP-issued service weapon and hollow-point ammunition to confront Philip “Trae” Debeaubien, the boyfriend of Wheat’s estranged wife, Mary. As he later confessed to a fellow officer, Wheat planned more than a verbal confrontation.

“I just learned this evening that Brad confided in an officer…tonight that he drove to a location where he thought his wife and her lover were last night to murder the lover and then commit suicide,” an officer explained in an email, as The Sacramento Bee reported. Fortunately, Debeaubien had left the house by the time that Wheat arrived.

Initially, Wheat’s colleagues convinced him to surrender his CHP firearm and other weapons and they reported it to superiors. Instead of treating this matter with the seriousness it deserved, or showing concern for the dangers that Debeaubien and Mary Wheat faced, CHP officials acted as if it were a case of an officer who had a rough day.

They essentially did nothing. “Faced with a confessed homicidal employee, the CHP conducted no criminal investigation of its own, notified no allied law enforcement agency or prosecutor’s office, and initiated no administrative process,” according to a pleading filed by Debeaubien in federal district court. “Nor did the CHP notify [the] plaintiff that he was the target of a murder-suicide plan that failed only because of a timely escape.”

You read that right—the agency seemed so uninterested in the safety of two potential murder victims that it didn’t even inform them about the planned attack. It sent Wheat to a therapist, who reportedly said he needed a good night’s sleep. It sent him on vacation for two weeks, let him return to work, and returned his firearm and ammunition—something CHP said he needed for his job.

You can probably guess what happened next. Two weeks later, Wheat took the same weapon and ammo and this time found his ex-wife and her boyfriend. He shot Debeaubien in the shoulder, the two struggled and Wheat—a trained CHP officer, after all—retrieved his dislodged weapon, shot to death his ex-wife, and then killed himself.

Now CHP says it has no responsibility for this tragic event and that its decisions did not endanger the plaintiff’s life. This much seems clear from court filings and depositions: CHP’s response centered on what it thought best for its own officer. Any concern about the dangers faced by those outside the agency seemed incidental, at best.

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