Tag: police state

Park ranger repeatedly tasers unarmed Native American man who was walking his dogs at sacred monument

A video taken this Sunday in New Mexico shows a park ranger tasing a Native American man during a scuffle that erupted after the ranger allegedly confronted the man for walking off the trail at the Petroglyph National Monument, KOB4 reports.

Darrell House, who is also a Marine veteran, was walking his dog at the national monument, which is also a sacred site. He said that he often goes to the site to pray and meditate, which according to him sometimes means leaving the trail by a few feet.

House claims that he moved off the trail to let a group of walkers pass for social distancing purposes, and that’s when the ranger started “following” him.

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‘BASICALLY CYBERBULLYING’: HOW COPS ABUSE SOCIAL MEDIA TO PUBLICLY HUMILIATE

Police departments have said that maintaining a presence on social media and direct engagement with the community builds trust and leads to arrests of people with outstanding warrants by soliciting crime tips. But a trend has emerged on social media accounts run by law enforcement: a hypermalicious form of voyeurism and public humiliation targeting people who have been arrested or just suspected of a crime. Critics argue that this form of “engagement” does not reduce recidivism and can often do more harm than good.

The Mobile County sheriff’s office deleted the post, telling a local NBC affiliate it had received threats to deputies’ safety. But despite the outcry, the office has continued the “Thug Thursday” Facebook series at the request of its followers, said Lori Myles, spokesperson for the sheriff’s office. 

“Our goal is making the arrest and getting that criminal off the street,” Myles said. “We use the definition of THUG as what is in the dictionary…a criminal.”

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Biden COVID Advisor Urges More “Genomic Surveillance” Necessary To Stop Mutant COVID Strains

With December on track to be the deadliest month for the virus since the outbreak began (more than 63K people have died in the US so far this month), Dr. Fauci and others have been in the press constantly warning that the situation is on track to worsen in January and February.

And on Monday, he was joined by Dr. Celine Gounder, a clinical assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine and member of Biden’s COVID task force, who reiterated Dr. Fauci’s warnings about already-overwhelmed hospitals being poorly equipped to handle the next wave of patients.

But while the MSM focused on remarks about President Biden likely invoking the Defense Production Act to try to ensure the US catches up to its lofty vaccination targets (we’re already about 18MM behind the OWS target of 20MM doses by year’s-end), Dr. Gounder added an off-hand line about the need for using “genomic surveillance” to track mutations like the B.1.1.7 mutated “variant” that has been making headlines for the past week or so.

“We’re also going to see an increase in genomic surveillance which is where you track the changes in…virus genetic materials…we can do that…we have the technology…we just chose not to spend the money on public health surveillance…”

Offering up some math to demonstrate why the US needs to dramatically ramp up the pace of vaccinations if it wants to reach whatever the new herd immunity threshold is, Dr. Gounder insisted there is “no question” about another surge due to the number of people traveling during the holiday.

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Disabled child removed by police from AMC theater for failing to wear a mask

A video recorded in Jacksonville, N.C. appears to show the manager of an AMC movie theater refusing to allow a reportedly disabled child from entering the theater without a mask, and calling the police to escort her distraught family from the scene.

The child, who was in a stroller at the time of the incident, is reportedly non-verbal and has a condition that precludes her use of a mask or face shield. The child’s family members were all wearing masks.

Police officers were ultimately asked to escort the upset family from the theater. 

The Jacksonville, N.C. Police Department and the AMC Theatres chain did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Public health policy surrounding the use of masks on toddlers and children has become a subject of controversy over the last several months. Throughout the pandemic, there have been countless stories of families being thrown off flights or having flights canceled altogether because a baby was failing to don the required facial covering.

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Spain Plans A “Registry” For Those Who Refuse COVID Vaccine

As Europe begins vaccinating the first wave of high-priority patients, a “glitch” has already emerged: many health-care workers and others have refused to take the vaccine, as skepticism and suspicion remain elevated.

A similar phenomenon has played out in the US, but to a less intense degree. But the situation, which we discussed last night, is now one of a variety of reasons, from a shortage of supplies and raw materials, to an uncooperative populace, that public-health officials are growing worried about hitting lofty vaccination targets.

And so, in Spain at least, government bureaucrats are fighting back, as Health Minister Salvador Illa warned the country would set up a “registry” for everybody who refuses the vaccine.

“What will be done is a registry, which will be shared with our European partners… of those people who have been offered it and have simply rejected it,” he said.

“It is not a document which will be made public and it will be done with the utmost respect for data protection.”

He added that the registry would not be made public, or delivered to employers, which begs the question: why else would the government keep a database of that information?

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Local Governments Play Scrooge To Stop People from Helping the Needy

It wouldn’t truly be the Christmas season here at Reason without a report about officials trying to shut down a project to help the needy. This year’s tale comes from Roslindale, a suburb of Boston.

There, as the coronavirus pandemic played out, residents looked for ways to help the needy in their neighborhood. A group of volunteers started putting together a community food pantry, salvaging groceries from local stores before they’d be tossed out as waste. A local therapist agreed to host the group’s fridge and freezer in her backyard. The group was serving more than 50 people every Friday.

Then local officials came calling. The Boston Inspectional Services Department warned the volunteers that they were operating an “illegal food pantry” and that they could, if they continued, face $1,000 fines and a year in prison.

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Details Emerge on How Zoom Censored Users in America for Communist China

An executive at the popular video-conferencing app Zoom was charged by the DOJ with conspiring to terminate Zoom meetings that commemorated the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre at the behest of the Chinese government. The incident is a troubling signal of the lengths companies based in America will go to maintain access to the lucrative Chinese market.

MSNBC reports that on December 18, prosecutors from the U.S. justice department charged a China-based executive for the video-conferencing company Zoom with conspiring to terminate Zoom meetings that commemorated the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre at the request of the Chinese government.

Breitbart News recently reported that Zoom executive Xinjiang Jin, who worked as the company’s government affairs liaison, contacted employees at Zoom’s headquarter about the anniversary of the massacre on June 4th. Jin told his colleagues in the U.S. that the “internet police” in China had increased pressure on the company to censor politically sensitive content of Chinese users no matter where in the world they were.

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Zhang Zhan: China jails citizen journalist for Wuhan reports

In a video interview with an independent filmmaker before her arrest, Ms Zhang said she decided to travel to Wuhan in February after reading an online post by a resident about life in the city during the outbreak.

Once there, she began documenting what she saw on the streets and hospitals in livestreams and essays, despite threats by authorities, and her reports were widely shared on social media.

The rights group Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders said her reports also covered the detention of other independent journalists and the harassment of families of victims who were seeking accountability.

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