Tag: police state

He Lost His Eye After a Cop Allegedly Fired a Tear Gas Canister at His Face. The Officer Says He Has Qualified Immunity.


A man who says he lost an eye last summer while peacefully protesting has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana against the police officer who allegedly left him partially blind. The officer accused of firing the tear gas round into Balin Brake’s face is requesting qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that often protects state actors from being held accountable in civil court.

Brake, 22, says that on May 30, 2020, he arrived at the Allen County Courthouse in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for a nonviolent demonstration following the death of George Floyd. While standing with his hands up, he claims, a group of officers with the Fort Wayne Police Department (FWPD) fired tear gas into the crowd, prompting them to retreat. One tear gas canister hit his right shoe, causing it to burn; he then looked back, at which point Officer Justin Holmes allegedly fired a canister that hit Brake in the face.

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The Police Dog Who Cried Drugs at Every Traffic Stop

Don’t blame Karma. The police dog simply followed his training when he helped local agencies impound vehicles that sometimes belonged to innocent motorists in Republic, Washington, an old mining town near the Canadian border.

As a drug detection dog, Karma kept his nose down and treated every suspect the same. Public records show that from the time he arrived in Republic in January 2018 until his handler took a leave of absence to campaign for public office in 2020, Karma gave an “alert” indicating the presence of drugs 100 percent of the time during roadside sniffs outside vehicles.

Whether drivers actually possessed illegal narcotics made no difference. The government gained access to every vehicle that Karma ever sniffed. He essentially created automatic probable cause for searches and seizures, undercutting constitutional guarantees of due process.

Similar patterns abound nationwide, suggesting that Karma’s career was not unusual. Lex, a drug detection dog in Illinois, alerted for narcotics 93 percent of the time during roadside sniffs, but was wrong in more than 40 percent of cases. Sella, a drug detection dog in Florida, gave false alerts 53 percent of the time. Bono, a drug detection dog in Virginia, incorrectly indicated the presence of drugs 74 percent of the time.

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Cops Claim Ashes of Dad’s Murdered Daughter is Meth, Dump Them on the Ground

Body camera video released this week shows the extent in which police will go to justify their existence in the war on drugs — up to and including desecrating the the remains of a little girl.

In 2019, Dartavius Barnes, the father of Ta’Naja Barnes, experienced every parent’s worst nightmare when he found his daughter unresponsive in her home. She would later be pronounced dead in a Decatur hospital and an autopsy would reveal she was murdered.

Ta’Naja’s mother and her mother’s boyfriend would later be arrested on murder charges over her death.

Ta’Naja was later cremated and Barnes remembered his daughter by carrying around her ashes with him in a micro urn. Because the state is a soulless machine which knows no limit to destruction and terror when carrying out the arbitrary war on drugs, Barnes’ daughter’s remains would be desecrated by police.

According to a recent lawsuit filed by Barnes against the City of Springfield, he was unlawfully detained on April 6, 2020 and during this unlawful detainment, he was searched.

According to the lawsuit, officers placed him in handcuffs while they searched his vehicle without consent, valid warrant, or probable cause. During this search without consent, police removed the sealed micro-urn from Barnes’ vehicle that contained the ashes of his murdered daughter, unsealed it, opened it, and spilled his daughter out on the ground.

In the newly released body camera footage, we see that Barnes was pulled over for allegedly speeding when he was handcuffed and his vehicle searched.

“You got anything in your car?” an officer asks.

Barnes responded “Not really,” before telling the officer he had marijuana. In the state of Illinois, it is not illegal to have marijuana on your person as they voted to legalize it recreationally in 2019.

Nevertheless, the officer used this as a reason to search.

When officers discovered the urn, they began running field drug test kits on it.

“I checked for cocaine, but it looks like it’s probably molly,” the officer said.

“X pills,” the other added.

At this time, Barnes didn’t know what was happening but he would soon find out that police had dumped his daughter’s ashes out looking for non-existent drugs.

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Biden Plans Expansion of Feds’ Army of Snitches in ‘Dollars for Collars’ Program

The Biden administration may soon recruit an army of private snoops to conduct surveillance that would be illegal if done by federal agents. As part of its war on extremism, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may exploit a “legal work-around” to spy on and potentially entrap Americans who are “perpetuating the ‘narratives’ of concern,” CNN reported last week. But federal informant programs routinely degenerate into “dollars for collars” schemes that reward scoundrels for fabricating crimes that destroy the lives of innocent Americans. The DHS plan would “allow the department to circumvent [constitutional and legal] limits” on surveillance of private citizens and groups. Federal agencies are prohibited from targeting individuals solely for First Amendment-protected speech and activities. But federal hirelings would be under no such restraint. Private informants could create false identities that would be problematic if done by federal agents.

DHS will be ramping up a war against an enemy which the feds have never clearly or competently defined. According to a March report by Biden’s office of the Director of National Intelligence, “domestic violent extremists” include individuals who “take overt steps to violently resist or facilitate the overthrow of the U.S. government in support of their belief that the U.S. government is purposely exceeding its Constitutional authority.” Perhaps like setting up a private informant scheme to evade constitutional restrictions on warrantless surveillance?

One DHS official bewailed to CNN: “Domestic violent extremists are really adaptive and innovative. We see them not only moving to encrypted platforms, but obviously couching their language so they don’t trigger any kind of red flag on any platforms.” DHS officials have apparently decided that certain groups of people are guilty regardless of what they say (“couching their language”). The targets are likely to be simply people with a bad attitude towards Washington. That will include gun owners who distrust politicians who vow to seize guns.

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Cops Claim Not Being Able to Arrest People for Weed Smell Causes Spike in Gun Violence

Over the past several years, the city of New York has been loosening their grip on the war on cannabis. In 2014, Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch famously grabbed a bad of oregano and gave a fear mongering speech about what was going to happen after New York stopped arresting people for possessing less than 25 grams of pot.

“We do not want police officers left holding the bag if crime rises because of poor policy,” Lynch said. “Writing a summons to someone who does not respect the law can result in a volatile situation. Police officers always have to be on guard for violent reaction and resistance which can put them in danger of physical harm and potential disciplinary charges.”

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