I’ve been bumped harder in the line at the grocery store by an elderly woman with bad vision and low blood sugar. My goodness, in retrospect, I was apparently assaulted over a 1000 times at Dead shows in the 80’s and 90’s. Just fucking ridiculous. Someone was arrested for this?
I love the cop doing his congratulatory “we were just lucky to have the connections” spiel, but the victims advocate nonsense was really the icing on the cake. Yes, delicate flower Ashley Taylor, the state will inform you in case this menace should ever delicately nudge you 12 inches in the future.
Just so we are clear, what should have happened here? The guy should have been given a ticket for being a jackass or disorderly conduct, and Ashley Taylor should be punched in the neck for claiming this was an “assault.” She should have been sent to jail for the piece you saw above for criminal stupidity. And any self-respecting DA would dress down that idiot cop.
How long before this moron is on Fox News? Because you know this profile in courage is never going to be in a war zone or anywhere more dangerous than a baseball game (where I’ve also been “assaulted” worse than what happened to her in this video- I hope to Allah she never goes to a Steelers/Ravens game wearing the away team colors).
The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project is an invaluable resource for monitoring bad behavior among law enforcement officers nationwide. The site owner is having to give up the project due to real life, so he’s allowing his readership to vote on who should take over the site from a list of people and orgs that have expressed interest.
Unfortunately, one of those orgs is the CATO institute – you know, the one currently in the midst of a Koch brothers hostile takeover? And they’re currently leading the poll.
If this is an area of interest for you, please go to http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/?p=5316 and VOTE FOR SOMEONE ELSE. Personally, I favor Jesse Strauss, a journalist currently working for Al Jazeera English. His proposal seems the best thought out. So I’d suggest voting for him, but really, ABC (Anyone But Cato). Voting closes 8am Pacific time Friday.
I do not follow this particular blog, but I’m sure some of you do, and I hope you can share your opinions about both NPMSRP and the candidates to take it over with the rest of us.
In any case, I’ve always found that “Anyone But CATO” is generally a good rule of thumb…
Former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and his onetime deputy, Lisa Aubuchon, were stripped of their law licenses today as a disciplinary panel handed down the toughest sanctions possible for ethical violations in a case that attracted national interest.
The panel also suspended Rachel Alexander, another Thomas deputy, from practicing law for six months and one day for her role in filing a federal civil racketeering lawsuit against judges and county officials.
What did they do to deserve this punishment? Just about everything possible:
They were Republican Arizona’s golden boys, the plain-spoken, get-tough sheriff and his legal and political foil, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and attorney Andrew Thomas. According to a post at Talking Points Memo, Thomas “might have had a bright career in Arizona politics,” but instead is today facing disbarment, criminal charges and professional disgrace.
In his six-year reign as Maricopa County’s top prosecutor, Thomas and Sheriff Arpaio went on a legal rampage against their perceived political enemies, drumming up and pursuing criminal charges that they knew were false, charges that rarely held up under scrutiny. As a result, say investigators, Thomas “undermined the public trust and inflicted great damage to the system of justice. The only way to restore that trust and to repair the damage to the system is to disbar Thomas.”
***
An overview of the charges outlined in the case, however, makes one wonder what the lawyers have to be lighthearted about. Reportedly, shortly after being elected to office in 2004, Thomas and Arpaio became a team, often working together against individuals and institutions who defied them.
After both men were reelected to their positions in 2008, they escalated what had been a policy of ongoing political infighting and elevated it to a crusade, using the sheriff’s office to file spurious criminal charges against their political enemies, including the 14 public officials who made up the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
However, none of the charges stuck. Often, Arpaio and Thomas failed to provide evidence that they had promised the court. In other instances, the statutes of limitations had long expired on the alleged misdeeds.
Investigators say that Thomas and Aubuchon knew that the cases they were pursuing were bogus, but pressed ahead anyway, hoping to muddy the waters enough to permanently damage their opponents’ reputations. Investigators have labeled this practice perjury, and as such punishable by the termination of their licenses to practice law.
Arpaio really is one of the most disgusting human beings in the country. Did he make the Buffalo Beast list this year?
Here’s an excellent Radley Balko piece that shows just exactly how our shitty war on drugs has managed to create a cottage industry of asset forfeiture and created a culture of shitty, deceitful, double-dealing cops. Check out this video:
One of the worst things about the drug war, aside from what you just saw above and what Radley describes regarding asset forfeiture, is that we’ve cultivated a mentality in the police that it’s “Us v. them.” That’s why they need ever and bigger arsenals, that’s why our SWAT teams are out of control, etc. And at the same time, these very same cops with that mentality have failed to realize that the citizenry is starting to take the the very same attitude with the Police. Cops look at every black person in the inner city as a potential threat. Guess what? I look at every cop as a potential threat. I don’t know which one I am going to run across that is a liar, which one is a threat to my health and well-being, which is willing to plant evidence, or which will taze me or mace me for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. AND I’M FUCKING WHITE.
In other words, every time I see a cop I don’t see someone who is there to preserve public order. I see a potential threat and I just steer clear of them. They all wear the same uniform, and I have no way of knowing which one will be a scumbag like the guy in the video above, which one is having a shitty day or had a fight with his wife and wants to get rid of some frustration with a baton, which one will be like the guys who pumped fifty bullets into an unarmed NYC man, which one is going to shoot my dogs while breaking down the wrong door, or which one will be someone I can trust. So I just steer clear of them. I want nothing to do with them.
I have absolutely zero faith in any uniformed officer anywhere in the country. As far as I am concerned, these days I’m just caught in the crossfire between the gang-bangers and crooks with colored bandanas and the gang-bangers and serial perjurers with badges. And both have itchy trigger fingers, a broken moral compass, and a penchant for violence. The only real difference is the cops have better weapons training and a better code of silence.
Best to stay the fuck away from the whole lot of them. I wish I didn’t feel that way, but it is what it is. When I see a cop, I just clear a wide berth, because they just can’t be trusted to be rational actors. And now, thanks to our glorious Supreme Court (and the Obama admin- thanks B!), they can strip search me for a parking ticket. Awesome.
Because an out of control, violent, over-armed police force who feels like they are at war with the public they are supposed to protect needs more power.
*** Update ***
And I hope you truly understand the coercive manner with which this unlimited right to strip search will be used. Yes, you legal eagles who love to jump on knaves like me will say “It only applies to those going into general population.” Bullshit. We’ve just given police intimidation another weapon. In the Florence case, the man was arrested for no reason for a traffic ticket that was paid. And they threw him in jail for a week and strip-searched him twice anyway, and SCOTUS found that legit. Now think about that ruling in the context of the video above. Now, you are going to be “given” the choice of having your car searched without cause or being strip-searched in jail when the cop lies and arrests you on bullshit. It won’t be long before it is just understood by the public that you do what the cop says, however unjustified or unwarranted, or they will be hauled off to jail and fucked with via invasive searches. Mark my words.
But then again, some of you are the same idiots who don’t think police will be using drones illegally, or won’t be arming them, etc. Because history has proven over and over again that when given the choice, authorities always err on the side of individual rights. They never, ever, ever lie or overreach.
If the Sanford, Florida police department did not stink before, it positively reeks now. I’m iPad blogging and don’t have the time or energy to dig up each link, but today I learned that the cops coached witnesses to say that they heard the shooter crying for help, that someone has systematically leaked private information to smear the victim’s character and that the Martin’s body did not have any sign of the kind of hand and knuckle injuries that you get when you severely beat someone with your bare hands, especially someone with a hundred pounds of muscle on you. I learned that the morgue identified the young victim right away but filed him as a ‘John doe’ until much later when his father filed a missing persons report. I read that the Sanford city council asked the DOJ to step in after they were utterly overwhelmed by police racism complaints at their last meeting.
The Martin/Zimmerman police report said that the shooter had a broken nose and grass all over his clothes, and Zimmerman claimed that his victim banged his head repeatedly on the road. Now ABC news has video of the night when they brought Zimmerman in for questioning and – surprise! – his shaved head looks pristine, his nose looks fine and his clothes look like he just washed them. If the cops thought he might have blood on him then protocol requires them to touch him with gloves. They seem fine with bare hands.
Anyone care to explain how this does not stink as bad as it seems? Anyone?
The NYPD has been infiltrating liberal groups long after the 2004 Republican convention, which was their original justification for doing so:
Police said the pre-convention spying was necessary to prepare for the huge, raucous crowds that were headed to the city. But documents obtained by The Associated Press show that the police department’s intelligence unit continued to keep close watch on political groups in 2008, long after the convention had passed.
In April 2008, an undercover NYPD officer traveled to New Orleans to attend the People’s Summit, a gathering of liberal groups organized around their shared opposition to U.S. economic policy and the effect of trade agreements between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
When the undercover effort was summarized for supervisors, it identified groups opposed to U.S. immigration policy, labor laws and racial profiling. Two activists—Jordan Flaherty, a journalist, and Marisa Franco, a labor organizer for housekeepers and nannies—were mentioned by name in one of the police intelligence reports obtained by the Associated Press.
Here’s a snippet from a review of a book about the LAPD’s notorious Red Squad:
After unions were legitimized in the late ‘30s and during World War II, the Red squads turned to Red-hunting, joining in McCarthy-era hysteria. In the ‘60s, they turned on civil rights groups. Here, the cops infiltrated black and Latino advocacy organizations. In the late ‘60s and ‘70s, the anti-war movement was a target. Today, it is vaguely defined as “terrorists.”
Sounds familiar. We’ve had Red Squads for more than 100 years and it looks like we’ll have them for another hundred.
Pandora is the greatest web service/mobile app ever.
Discuss.
Or whatever you want to talk about, like water polo.
EDIT: This is fucked up: Berkeley, CA Police Chief sent one of his Sergeants to the home of a local reporter to request changes to a story.
Minutes after reading a late-night news story online about him that he perceived to be inaccurate, Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan ordered a sergeant to a reporter’s home insisting on changes, a move First Amendment experts said reeked of intimidation and attempted censorship.
Meehans’s actions were “despicable, totally despicable,” said Jim Ewert, general counsel of the California Newspaper Publisher’s Association. “It’s the most intimidating type of (censorship) possible because the person trying to exercise it carries a gun.”
Bay Area News Group reporter Doug Oakley said he was shaken by the 12:45 a.m. Friday knock on the door of his Berkeley home. He said at first he and his wife thought something was drastically wrong or perhaps that a relative had died.
Meehan apologized Friday.
When I was a kid, and through most of the 1990s, Berkeley was like the haven for hippiedom. A couple of months ago Oakland PD rolls up on a bunch of peaceful protesters and beats the hell out of them and damn near kills a couple, and now this? What the fuck is going on in the SF Bay Area?
Here’s the story- cops pull over a diabetic man in shock who they think is drunk driving. They go all cowboy with guns drawn, kicking the window of his car, screaming conflicting orders at him, and then a half-dozen cops pull him out of the car, and beat and kick him before discovering insulin in his pocket:
I’m not really sure what my favorite part of this video is- first, the warning for offensive language. Actually, the words “mother fucker” don’t bother me any where near as much as watching some douchebag cop run in and kick a man in the neck when he is clearly restrained and not resisting. Check out that real tough guy with a badge at 45 seconds in. Any chief that keeps that guy on the force is part of the damned problem.
My next favorite part is when these morons start asking each other if they are ok. What could they hurt? Their toes on the guy’s head?
And then, of course, the laughter afterwards, when instead they should be shaken up by how bad they screwed the pooch and how poorly they handled the situation.
If you’ll notice, the guy has done what you are supposed to do when you get pulled over, doing so even in a diabetic shock. He’s stopped the car, his hands are on the wheel, and he waits for instruction. Yet our Rockette Rambo has to go over guns drawn, kicking the window, acting like a maniac. I always thought the point of police was to defuse a situation, not escalate it.
At this point, though, with our politicians and courts bending over backwards to negate our rights and to look the other way when cops misbehave, I suppose we should all be happy they didn’t just execute the guy on the spot. Thank god there was no dog in the car.
And by the way, in my near ten years in the military, with all the exhaustive weapon training I received on a number of firearms, never once did an instructor inform me that the proper thing to do with a drawn and loaded weapon was to kick one foot up into the air. If you did that shit on any range in the world, they would kick you out and might possibly give you an article 15. What would happen if his foot slipped and he discharged? What if he shot the guy because of that? Or himself? Would the other cops think he had been shot when they heard the discharge and saw him on the ground and then unload into the driver? Just terrible fucking policework.
*** Update ***
From the comments:
Honestly, the first 30 seconds look like an episode of Reno 911, but without the guy in the really tight shorts.
Distraught over the loss of her grandfather and her parents’ divorce,” 14-year-old Jakadrien Turner ran away from home, WFAA Dallas reports. Arrested for shoplifting in Houston, she used a fake name that actually belonged to a 22-year-old undocumented immigrant wanted for arrest. What follows is a nightmarish series of mistaken identities and institutional failures, culminating in a teen girl trapped alone and pregnant in a third-world prison.
In a harshly worded critique of the country’s best-known sheriff, the Justice Department accused Joe Arpaio of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office of engaging in “unconstitutional policing” by unfairly targeting Latinos for detentions and arrests and retaliating against those who complain.
After an investigation that lasted more than three years, the civil rights division of the Justice Department said in a 22-page report that the sheriff’s office has “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos” that “reaches the highest levels of the agency.” The department interfered with the inquiry, the government said, prompting a lawsuit that eventually led Mr. Arpaio and his deputies to cooperate.
“We have peeled the onion to its core,” said Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, noting during a conference call with reporters on Thursday morning that more than 400 inmates, deputies and others were interviewed as part of the review, including Mr. Arpaio and his command staff. Mr. Perez said the inquiry, which also included jail visits and reviews of thousands of pages of internal documents, raised the question of whether Latinos were receiving “second-class policing services” in Maricopa County.
More bothersome to me than Arpaio is the fact that there are apparently enough voters in that area sick enough to keep supporting a sociopath like him.
