Continuing the police madness in the US

[Albert Doyle]

I'm uncertain if Antonio Martin pulled a gun or not in the police shooting that occurred in the town right next to Ferguson. His friend who was right there needs to be located and interviewed.

[Peter Lemkin]

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You're Either a Cop or Little People': The American Police State in 2014

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Now thereare those who still insist that they are beyond the reach of the police statebecause they have done nothing wrong and have nothing to fear. Yet the lessonof 2014 is simply this: in a police state, you're either a cop or you're one ofthe little people. Right now, we are the little people, the servants, theserfs, the grunts who must obey without question or suffer the consequences.

If there isto be any hope in 2015 for restoring our freedoms and reclaiming our runawaygovernment, we will have to start by breathing life into those three powerfulwords that set the tone for everything that follows in the Constitution: "wethe people."
Get mad,get outraged, get off your duff and get out of your house, get in the streets,get in people's faces, get down to your local city council, get over to yourlocal school board, get your thoughts down on paper, get your objectionsplastered on protest signs, get your neighbors, friends and family to join theirvoices to yours, get your representatives to pay attention to your grievances,get your kids to know their rights, get your local police to march in lockstepwith the Constitution, get your media to act as watchdogs for the people andnot lapdogs for the corporate state, get your act together, and get your housein order.
In otherwords, get moving. Time is growing short, and the police state is closing in.Power to the people!

[Magda Hassan]

Report: Cop Turned Himself In For Allegedly Attacking MTA Worker At Subway Station

Yesterday, the NYPD asked for the public's help in identifying the man who allegedly attacked an on-duty subway conductor at the East Tremont Avenue station in the Bronx. Now, WCBS 2 is reporting that a police officer recognized himself from the surveillance video and subsequently turned himself in.
According to to police, at 2:30 a.m. on December 23, a 28-year-old female MTA employee, who was on duty and in her full uniform, was "approached by a male on the southbound platform of the D Train at the East Tremont Train Station. The male grabbed the MTA employee in a bear hug from behind and pushed her to the platform floor, and then began to choke her."
The conductor had been on the platform to let passengers know about service changes. The Post's source said, "He was livid about the service and took it out on the conductor." The MTA workers' union, TWU Local 100, says that another conductor pulled the attacker off the victim. The injured conductor was treated for head, neck and back injuries at a hospital.
WCBS 2 reports, "The officer"who was off-duty during the incident"told investigators the woman cursed at him after he asked her a question, and grabbed his phone to prevent him from taking her picture, police alleged."
No one has been charged. Yet.
http://gothamist.com/2015/01/01/cop_turn...egedly.php

[Paul Rigby]

First they came for the Shih Tzus,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Shih Tzu-owner.

Then they came for the Jack Russells,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jack Russell-owner.

Then they came for the Doberman Pinschers,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Doberman Pinscher-owner.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to bark warning for me.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2...e-doc-cops

For many of us our pets are family members. We love them and care for them their whole lives, watching them grow, learn, play and age. When they die it can be hard, devastating even.

But imagine if your pet's life was cut short--not by an accident or disease but by someone you're supposed to trust: a cop. Worse yet, imagine having your pet gunned down right in front of you for what turned out to be a mistake or an overreaction or the callous nature of an unapologetic stranger.

Police officers unnecessarily shooting dogs has become a silent epidemic. It's called "puppycide," and every 98 minutes there's another victim:

Lily, a border collie, was killed in her own backyard. The officer shot the dog despite pleas from her owner that Lily wasn't dangerous. The officer was at the wrong address.

Cisco, an Australian cattle dog, was killed in his driveway after an officer was sent to investigate a domestic dispute. He was also at the wrong address.

Less than two weeks ago Patches, a 12-pound jack russell terrier, was killed by a 300-lb. officer who claimed the dog came toward him "in an aggressive manner."

These are innocent dogs whose only transgression was barking at an unfamiliar face. These are unsuspecting owners who suffer horrifying losses. These are law enforcement officers who choose lethal force as their first course of action.

There are thousands of instances of puppycide across America. Every state. Every income level. Every demographic. This is a national tragedy without a voice. Puppycide must end NOW. And with your help, we can stop it.

Police tools and tactics--from dashboard cameras to Miranda rights--are frequently influenced by the demands of the public. But for the public to desire change they must first be made aware. And that is what a documentary can do.

That's why we're making Puppycide, a feature length documentary that takes a journey with victims of puppycide, the dogs and their owners. From the moment they meet and seal their emotional bonds to the excruciating trauma of loss, we follow the dog owners' battles for justice with police culture and the legal system, both of which treat puppycides as acceptable collateral damage.

This appalling litany of horror at the hands of deranged uniformed fanatics in America should prompt reflection among the nation's elite.

As John F. Kennedy sagely remarked, "A nation whose policeman are afraid of its dogs is barking."

Not content with blasting away at the nation's pets with a bewildering variety of hand guns, it now seems that America's entirely deranged police are intent upon engaging them in hand-to-dog combat - provided, of course, there's a handy knife around to tilt the scales when it matters. Here is another deeply disturbing incident:

Officer Held Down A Dog While Fellow Officer Slit Her Throat- Cleared of Wrong Doing

http://12160.info/page/2649739:Page:1528801

Baltimore, MD All charges have been dropped against Officer Thomas Schmidt, a Baltimore police officer who had been charged with multiple counts of animal cruelty after allegedly holding down a small dog while Officer Jeffrey Bolger slit its throat.

Schmidt, a 24-year veteran of the department, retired in September and will not be returning to the force. The trial for Bolger is scheduled for August.

A medical examiner has been hired by the defense as an expert and is expected to testify that the dog strangled itself with the dog pole Schmidt was holding, and was already dead and lifeless for 5 minutes when Bolger slit the pet's throat.

"Agent Bolger could not be certain whether the dog had died or was dying and unconscious after it was removed from the dog pole," Bolger's attorneys wrote in a motion to dismiss the charges. "Consequently, in the event that it was still alive, Agent Bolger wanted to end its suffering."

That statement about Bolger's big heart heavily contradicts Bolger's statement prior to the slashing where he was overheard saying "I'm going to gut this (expletive) thing."

The seven year old Shar-Pei named Nala had reportedly got loose from her back yard and bit the hand of a woman who had approached her, leaving a superficial wound. Her owner, Sarah Gossard, was searching for the dog and posting photos of her beloved pet to local Facebook groups when the killing occured. The dog was also wearing tags with Gossard's phone number that they could have easily called after they had caught her.

According to Baltimore PD spokesperson, Kat Garrota, the city's police love animals, though not in an unnatural way. "Do I sound like a person who would strangle a dog?" she asked WBAL-TV crime reporter Pony Slayer.

[Magda Hassan]

Apart from some urgent therapy the poice of the USA need lessons is map reading and basic geography.

[Paul Rigby]

From Neighborhood Cops To Robocops: The Changing Face Of American Police

by Tyler Durden on 01/15/2015

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-15...can-police

"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards." ? Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means
If 2014 was the year of militarized police, armored tanks, and stop-and-frisk searches, 2015 may well be the year of technologized police, surveillance blimps and scan-and-frisk searches.

Just as we witnessed neighborhood cops being transformed into soldier cops, we're about to see them shapeshift once again, this time into robocops, complete with robotic exoskeletons, super-vision contact lenses, computer-linked visors, and mind-reading helmets.

Similarly, just as military equipment created for the battlefield has been deployed on American soil against American citizens, we're about to see military technology employed here at home in a manner sure to annihilate what's left of our privacy and Fourth Amendment rights.

For instance, with the flick of a switch (and often without your even being aware of the interference), police can now shut down your cell phone, scan your body for "suspicious" items as you walk down the street, test the air in your car for alcohol vapors as you drive down the street, identify you at a glance and run a background check on you for outstanding warrants, piggyback on your surveillance devices to listen in on your conversations and "see" what you see on your private cameras, and track your car's movements via a GPS-enabled dart.

That doesn't even begin to scrape the surface of what's coming down the pike, with law enforcement and military agencies boasting technologies so advanced as to render everything up until now mere child's play.

Once these technologies, which used to belong exclusively to the realm of futuristic sci-fi films, have been unleashed on an unsuspecting American public, it will completely change the face of American policing and, in the process, transform the landscape of what we used to call our freedoms.

It doesn't even matter that these technologies can be put to beneficial uses. As we've learned the hard way, once the government gets involved, it's only a matter of time before the harm outweighs the benefits.

Imagine, if you will, self-guided "smart" bullets that can track their target as it moves, solar-powered airships that provide persistent wide-area surveillance and tracking of ground "targets," a grenade launcher that can deliver 14 flash-bang grenade rounds, invisible tanks that can blend into their surroundings and masquerade as a snow bank or a soccer mom's station wagon, and a guided mortar weapon that can target someone up to 12 miles away.

Or what about "less lethal weapons" such as the speech jammer gun, which can render a target tongue-tied; sticky foam guns, which shoot foam that hardens on contact, immobilizing the victim; and shock wave generators, which use the shockwaves from a controlled explosion to knock people over.

Now imagine trying to defend yourself against such devices, which are incapable of distinguishing between an enemy combatant and a civilian. For that matter, imagine attempting to defend yourself or your loved ones against police officers made superhuman thanks to technology that renders them bullet-proof, shatter-proof, all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful.

Does rendering a government agent superhuman make them inhuman, as well, unable to relate to the mass of humanity they are sworn to protect and defend?

Pointing out that the clothes people wear can affect how they act, Salon magazine reporter Geordie Mcruer notes that "when clothing has symbolic meaning such as a uniform that is worn only by a certain profession it prepares the mind for the pursuit of goals that are consistent with the symbolic meaning of the clothing."

Mcruer continues:

When we dress our police officers in camouflage before deploying them to a peaceful protest, the result will be police who think more like soldiers. This likely includes heightening their perception of physical threats, and increasing the likelihood that they react to those threats with violence. Simply put, dressing police up like soldiers potentially changes how they see a situation, changing protesters into enemy combatants, rather than what they are: civilians exercising their democratic rights…

When police wear soldiers' clothing, and hold soldiers' weapons, it primes them to think and act like soldiers. Furthermore, clothing that conceals their identity such as the helmets, gas masks, goggles, body armor and riot shields that are now standard-issue for officers at peaceful protests will increase the likelihood that officers react aggressively to the situation. As a result of the fact that they are also dressed like soldiers, they are more likely to interpret the situation as hostile and will more readily identify violence as the best solution.
While robocops are problematic enough, the problem we're facing is so much greater than technology-enhanced domestic soldiers.

As I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we're on the cusp of a major paradigm shift from fascism disguised as a democracy into a technocratic surveillance society in which there are no citizens, only targets. We're all targets now, to be scanned, surveilled, tracked and treated like blips on a screen.

What's taking place in Maryland right now is a perfect example of this shift. With Congress' approval and generous funding (and without the consensus of area residents), the Army has just launched two massive, billion dollar surveillance airships into the skies over Baltimore, each airship three times the size of a Goodyear blimp, ostensibly to defend against cruise missile attacks. Government officials claim the surveillance blimps, which provide highly detailed radar imaging within a 340-mile radius, are not presently being used to track individuals or carry out surveillance against citizens, but it's only a matter of time before that becomes par for the course.

In New York, police will soon start employing mobile scanners that allow them to scan people on the street in order to detect any hidden objects under their clothes, whether it be a gun, a knife or anything else that appears "suspicious." The scanners will also let them carry out enhanced data collection in the fieldfingerprints, iris scans, facial mappingwhich will build the government's biometric database that much faster. These scanners are a more mobile version of the low radiation X-ray vans used to scan the contents of passing cars.

Google Glass, being considered for use by officers, would allow police to access computer databases, as well as run background checks on and record anyone in their line of sight.

One program, funded by $160 million in asset forfeiture funds, would equip police officers and vehicles with biometric smartphones that can scan individuals' fingerprints and cross check it against criminal databases. The devices will also contain real-time 911 data, warrant information from federal, state and city databases, photographs of missing persons, suspects, Crime Stoppers posters and other persons of interest, and the latest cache of information on terror suspects.

Stand-off lasers can detect alcohol vapors in a moving car. "If alcohol vapors are detected in the car, a message with a photo of the car including its license plate is sent to a police officer waiting down the road. Then, the police officer stops the car and checks for signs of alcohol using conventional tests."

Ekin Patrol cameras, described as "the first truly intelligent patrol unit in the world," can not only detect the speed of passing cars but can generate tickets instantaneously, recognize and store the license plates of stopped, moving or parked vehicles, measure traffic density and violation data and engage in facial recognition of drivers and passengers.

Collectively, all of these gizmos, gadgets and surveillance devices render us not just suspects in a surveillance state but also inmates in an electronic concentration camp. As journalist Lynn Stuart Parramore notes:

The Information Age … has turned out rather differently than many expected. Instead of information made available for us, the key feature seems to be information collected about us. Rather of granting us anonymity and privacy with which to explore a world of facts and data, our own data is relentlessly and continually collected and monitored. The wondrous things that were supposed to make our lives easiermobile devices, gmail, Skype, GPS, and Facebookhave become tools to track us, for whatever purposes the trackers decide. We have been happily shopping for the bars to our own prisons, one product at a time.
Unfortunately, eager as we are for progress and ill-suited to consider the moral and spiritual ramifications of our planned obsolescence, we have yet to truly fathom what it means to live in an environment in which we are always on red alert, always under observation, and always having our actions measured, judged and found wanting under some law or other intrusive government regulation.

There are those who are not at all worried about this impending future, certain that they have nothing to hide. Rest assured, soon we will all have nowhere to hide from the prying eyes of a government bound and determined to not only know everything about uswhere we go, what we do, what we say, what we read, what we keep in our pockets, how much money we have on us, how we spend that money, who we know, what we eat and drink, and where we are at any given momentbut prepared to use that information against us, whenever it becomes convenient and profitable to do so.

Making the case that we're being transformed as citizens, neighbors and human beings, Parramore identifies six factors arising from a society in which surveillance becomes the norm: a shift in power dynamics, in which the "watcher" becomes all-seeing and all-powerful; an incentive to turn citizens into outlaws by criminalizing otherwise lawful activities; diminished citizenship; an environment of suspicion and paranoia; a divided society comprised of the watchers and the watched; and "a society of edgy, unhappy beings whose sense of themselves is chronically diminished."

As Parramore rightly concludes, this is "not exactly a recipe for Utopia."