Tag: police state

Woman Charged With ‘Hate Crime’, Facing Prison Time, for Stomping a ‘Back the Blue’ Sign

In 2015, in an outburst of pure insanity, the National Fraternal Order of Police, a union representing over 300,000 officers, called for cops to be included under Congress’s hate crimes statute. This demand has since materialized into multiple acts of “Blue Lives Matter” laws, and TFTP has reported on their use multiple times. Never, however, have we seen hate crime legislation used to prosecute the free speech of an innocent person — until now.

A 19-year-old woman in Utah has been charged with a hate crime after she allegedly stomped on a “back the blue” sign at a gas station. There was no victim and no one had been harmed, yet a Garfield County police officer claimed the young woman’s actions made him fear for his life and therefore pushed to have her charged with a hate crime.

According to the arrest affidavit, as reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, the Garfield County police officer was conducting a traffic stop for speeding at a gas station when the officer saw a woman “stomping on a ‘Back the Blue’ sign next to where the traffic stop was conducted, crumble it up in a destructive manner and throw it into a trash can all while smirking in an intimidating manner towards me.”

The “smirking” caused the cop to fear for his safety and he moved to detain and subsequently arrest the woman for her completely legal act.

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27-Year Career Cop Admits Police Are Trained to Lie in Reports, Frame Themselves as Heroes

Before the age of computers and body cameras, citizens were forced into court proceedings with an attitude of, “It was my side of the story against the cops. Who do you think the jury is going to believe?” In the age of technology in which we are presently, however, the word of police officers can be called into question. But it is not enough, according to one ex-cop, who says cops are taught precisely how to manipulate police reports for deceptive purposes.

Thomas Nolan spent 27 years on the force as a cop and says he was not a very good beat cop but could write police reports bar none. He was so good at craftily wording police reports other officers inside the Boston Police Department would seek out his assistance in their own reporting. According to the Insider:

He’d routinely advise his subordinates to incorporate a short list of buzzwords in their reports to frame themselves as the hero and the suspect — who might have been injured or killed — out as the aggressor. Those use of force reports ultimately were chock-full of words like “resist,” “overcome,” “vigorous,” “violent,” “subdue,” “fear,” and  “attack,” Nolan said, even if they were exaggerations.

Nolan, who is an assistant professor of Sociology at Emmanuel College, admits he used to believe what he was doing was right. He is coming clean, now, and acknowledges the practice of carefully crafting police reports to paint the officer as a hero and the suspect as a villain is deceptive at best. He told the Insider:

I thought these cops were out there doing the right thing and catching bad guys, and oftentimes did it in ways that might not pass legal muster, and I got them over the hurdle…I thought that was something that was my contribution, my necessary contribution.

In the past, it was easy to get away with abuses of power perpetrated by rogue, even criminal cops, because there was no proof to the lies they would detail in their police reports. With nearly everyone now carrying around high definition video cameras in their pockets, or built into their vehicles, lying on police reports is quite difficult to get away with, but it still happens.

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City Proposes Fining, Arresting Good Samaritans Who Donate to the Homeless

There is no doubt that the United States is experiencing a homeless epidemic. From coast to coast, the homelessness crisis has surged as cities struggle to cope with a growing number of houseless people, many of whom only recently found themselves in this predicament thanks to the government-mandated shutdown which sent the economy into a downward spiral over the last 18 months.

As municipalities struggle to find solutions, dinosaur politicians continue to rely on the one thing that has never worked — the police state. During a city council meeting last month, Council Member from Charlotte’s 6th District, Tariq Bokhari proposed making it a crime to help the homeless.

“People aren’t getting it and they’re still bringing food and money and resources directly to the folks that are out there right now. They’re only making themselves feel good, they’re hurting the ultimate folks, perhaps we explore making that a misdemeanor,” Bokhari said.

When asked why he thought this was a solution, Bokhari chalked it up to “tough love” in the form of fines or possible imprisonment for helping those in need.

“I think we need a heavier dose of tough love amongst this community especially amongst those who continually give money, and food, and clothing directly to these folks instead of giving them to the organizations that are designed to help them,” Bokhari said.

Apparently this low-level tyrant thinks that punishing people for their good deeds is how to solve the homelessness crisis. Though his comments went largely unchallenged in the meeting, luckily Bokhari is not finding much support for his proposal in the community and has received hefty backlash from activists.

“If there is someone standing outside asking for money and it’s laid on your heart to give them money, what should stop you?” Deborah Woolard, founder of Block Love Charlotte, which works on the ground with people who are homeless, told the Charlotte Observer.

“You shouldn’t feel like ‘I’m going to go to jail because I helped someone,’ because you never know if they truly are on their last (dollar), if it’s money needed to eat.”

It appears that instead of addressing the problem of homelessness with actual solutions like the construction of tiny homes or rehabilitation centers, authorities have turned to the police state once again. As TFTP has reported on countless occasions, this proposal illustrates that the state not only goes after the homeless, but they go after those who try to help them as well.

In the land of the free, government and law enforcement not only wage war on the poor and homeless through various unscrupulous means designed to extract revenue and attack the right to exist, but those who try to help the homeless—by feeding, clothing, or sheltering them—also face the wrath of the state. As TFTP has reported, even those who’ve laid down their lives for the state—veterans—and the ones who help them are also being targeted.

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New South Wales bans church singing due to COVID – even over Zoom

Another example of Australia’s sometimes draconian Covid restrictions has come to light in reports that say the authorities in New South Wales have banned singing in churches – even if it is for the purpose of being live streamed to a physically distant congregation.

The current rules have been in force since June 26 and are meant to last two weeks amid a fresh round of lockdowns. The Public Health Order states that, “singing by audiences at indoor shows or by congregants at indoor places of worship are not allowed.”

The thinking behind banning singing among groups of people is that the virus is transmitted faster than through the act of speaking; however, the fact that singing on Zoom, i.e., to a camera is also banned, has left some church leaders in Australia upset with the decision.

The New South Wales order, shared with religious leaders in an email, says that the purpose is to protect those who “may be involved in assisting in live streaming,” and also those who “may be in regional communities attending a service.”

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