Tag: police state

Constitutional Attorney Issues ‘Opt Out’ Letter to Preserve Rights at Home During ‘Virtual Learning’

The Rutherford Institute has issued a precautionary “opt out” letter as a means by which families whose children are taking part in remote learning / virtual classes might assert their Fourth Amendment privacy rights and guard against intrusive government surveillance posed by remote learning technologies.

The Institute released its model “Parental Reservation of Rights – Remote Learning Surveillance” letter in the wake of a growing number of incidents in which students have been suspended and reported to police by school officials for having toy guns nearby while taking part in virtual schooling.

“Remote learning should not justify the expansion of draconian zero tolerance policies to encompass so-called ‘violations’ that take place in students’ homes and home environments. Nor should remote learning be used as a backdoor means of allowing government officials to conduct warrantless surveillance into students’ homes and home environments,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People.

“While COVID-19 has undoubtedly introduced significant challenges for the schools, the protocols adopted for navigating these circumstances demand a heightened degree of caution lest government officials heedlessly, needlessly and unlawfully violate key constitutional safeguards established to protect the citizenry against invasive and warrantless intrusion into the home.”

In issuing the model Reservation of Rights letter for use by parents with children enrolled in virtual classes, Rutherford Institute attorneys warned government officials against leveraging the current public health situation to further erode the privacy of American citizens: “At a minimum, schools must not use virtual learning platforms to conduct unwarranted surveillance of students’ homes nor use observations made from within the home as a basis for alleging a crime has been or is being committed.”

The issue arose after Isaiah Elliott, a seventh grader at Grand Mountain School in Colorado Springs, Colo., was reported to police by school officials for playing with a toy gun in the privacy of his own home during a virtual class on the morning of August 27, 2020.

Not only was the 12-year-old suspended for five days for “bringing” a “facsimile of a firearm to school,” but he was also traumatized when a police officer showed up at his home to interrogate him. School officials reported the incident to the El Paso County Sheriff’s office, and a deputy was dispatched to the school.

The deputy reviewed a video of the art class that was recorded without the knowledge or consent of students or their parents and saw the boys playing with the toy gun. A police officer was then dispatched to the Elliott home, where he confronted Isaiah, warning him that he could face criminal charges in the future.

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Innocent Mom, Baby Homeless After Cops Destroy Home in Raid for Man Who Was Already in Jail

After the raid was over, no arrests were made because the man police were looking for was already in custody — for allegedly participating in a protest that devolved into a riot. Colorado Springs Police had already arrested Lloyd Porche at his place of work on charges of menacing and engaging in a riot at a Black Lives Matter protest on August 3.

“There’s a lot of ways they could have went about it that could never have endangered my child,” she said. “My roommate Lloyd, I know he has been to protests, but I didn’t think that was illegal.”

Pruiett says the raid has left her life in shambles as she’s now being evicted for the damage cops did to her apartment. Multiple windows were blown out, glass covered the floor, the front door was smashed in and the house was ransacked — for an allegation of a misdemeanor crime.

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NJ’s property tax and it’s collectors are ruthless pigs

An 89-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s nearly lost her Ocean Twp house over six cents. SIX F&$#ING CENTS! She had mistakenly underpaid her 2019 property taxes by six cents. September 9th, she received noticed that the township put her house up for sheriff’s sale, according to a report on NBC New York.  Of course the interest grew at a far faster rate than any of us could hope to gain in savings and the bill quickly grew to $300.

The woman is Glen Kristi Goldenthal and her daughter, Lisa Suhay, who lives in Virginia, spent a whole day on the phone with township officials trying to save her mother’s house from being sold out from under her. Thankfully she was successful and Ocean Twp Mayor Chris Siciliano was quick to apologize and admitted something must be done to change the system.
Even when the tax collector called Mrs. Goldenthal to tell her of the delinquent tax, he knew something wasn’t right. But that didn’t stop the machinery of New Jersey government from rolling full steam ahead to try and take the poor old woman’s home.

Shameful doesn’t even begin to describe, not only this incident, but the entire property tax situation in our state. It’s disgusting! It’s also not the first time it’s happened here. Luckily Lisa Suhay was able to stop the confiscation. Some other elderly residents were not as lucky. At the time, 90-year-old Gloria Turano of Lawrence Twp lost her home in 2017, after the loan she took out to pay the property taxes ran out. Her husband had built the home with his own hands in 1953. It almost happened to 107-year-old Rose Eastwick of Cranford until generous strangers stepped in to save her from losing her home last year.

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