From the Free Thought Project:
WATCH: School Cops Handcuff Mentally Disabled 8yo Boy, Bring Him to Adult Prison for Misbehaving
WATCH: Incompetent Cop Tasers Fellow Officer Causing Him to Shoot Unarmed Man
Residents Outraged After Cops Open Fire on 5 Children, Ages 9-16, After They Rolled a Stop Sign
On the day Hugh Hefner died I posted a picture on Twitter with a quote in which he puts forth the idea that we own our minds and bodies, and for church or state to attempt to limit that, is inappropriate. A random Tweeter deduced from the comment that if “his own mind dictated to him that he build a foundry on HIS property and it poisoned the area that would be perfectly fine.” Mind you he’d be poisoning himself as well but…
This is the type of reply you come to expect when you wake up to the fact that you were born to be free of rulers and pursue what makes you happy. When you get vocal about it, these types of responses become typical.
The meme above addresses one of the most essential natural rights that you possess: the right to be left alone, or privacy. I remind you that it has nothing to do with a magical piece of paper and only you can defend it. A typical response when it comes to privacy, which the government says you must give up for the sake of “safety,” is clear in the meme. Even if you’re not doing something wrong, do you want someone constantly looking over your shoulder?
Taibbi’s new piece is called: “Our Man in Cambridge.” It’s about Stephen Halper’s assistant, Steven P. Schrage, who has now written this new piece, “The Spies Who Hijacked America.”
Update: Steven Schrage’s interview with Maria Bartiromo:
Mark Joseph Stern at Slate. The bureaucratic state passes laws that make it easy for cops to stop anyone at anytime for minor offences. The system incentives cops to lie and protects them from scrutiny. It is so bad that DA offices are keeping secret databases of unreliable police officers that they won’t allow to testify in court cases.
This tendency to lie pervades all police work, not just high-profile violence, and it has the power to ruin lives. Law enforcement officers lie so frequently—in affidavits, on post-incident paperwork, on the witness stand—that officers have coined a word for it: testilying. Judges and juries generally trust police officers, especially in the absence of footage disproving their testimony. As courts reopen and convene juries, many of the same officers now confronting protesters in the street will get back on the stand.
Defense attorneys around the country believe the practice is ubiquitous; while that belief might seem self-serving, it is borne out by footage captured on smartphones and surveillance cameras. Yet those best positioned to crack down on testilying, police chiefs and prosecutors, have done little or nothing to stop it in most of the country. Prosecutors rely on officer testimony, true or not, to secure convictions, and merely acknowledging the problem would require the government to admit that there is almost never real punishment for police perjury.
Officers have a litany of incentives to lie, but there are two especially powerful motivators. First, most evidence obtained from an illegal search may not be used against the defendant at trial under the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule; thus, officers routinely provide false justifications for searching or arresting a civilian. Second, when police break the law, they can (in theory) suffer real consequences, including suspension, dismissal, and civil lawsuits. In many notorious testilying cases, including Parham’s, officers blame the victim for their own violent behavior in a bid to justify disproportionate use of force. And departments will reward officers whose arrests lead to convictions with promotions.
Ryan Whitacker was shot and killed by Phoenix police on May 22, 2020 after a neighbor called in a noise complaint. The neighbor didn’t just call the cops and complain about the noise, he told the 911 dispatcher “It could be physical”.
Eric July writes: “A neighbor called the police about a noise complaint. The neighbor was just answereing the questions from the dispathcer fast because he was annoyed and wanted it dealt with. In the 911 call he says “it could be physical. I could say yeah if that makes anyone hurry on up. Get anybody here faster.” So he was willing to make it sound like there was domestic violence, but there wasn’t. He simply wanted the noise to stop because he needed to get to work in the morning.”
It turns out Ryan and his girlfriend were just making salsa and playing games.
Eric July is going to talk more about this today
I'll have a video on this tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/wX9y6hBXeR
— Eric July (@EricDJuly) August 8, 2020
More here
This killing follows the shooting of James Porter Garcia who was shot by Phoenix police in the driveway of a friends house after a neighbor reported a man had stabbed him.
“It sounded like a war had broken out in front of my house,”
“According to police, someone called 911 about 1 p.m. Saturday to report that a man who had tried to kill him a week before had returned, threatening to harm him. The caller said he was hospitalized after the man stabbed him a week before. Police arrived in the area of the 5600 block of West Glenrosa Ave., which is north of Indian School Road and west of 55th Avenue. Officers talked to the 911 caller “who pointed out a specific home where he said the stabbing suspect was,” police said in a news release on Saturday. Police talked to “several people including a man inside of the vehicle in the driveway,” said the spokeswoman, Mercedes, in the YouTube video. “Officers talked to the man for approximately 10 minutes, asking him to leave his car so they could secure the scene. He refused and eventually rolled up the windows and pulled out a gun,” she said. “Officers ordered the man to drop the gun but he refused. The man repeatedly told officers to shoot him and lifted the gun toward officers. That’s when two officers fired their weapons.”
There was no indication from the police that Garcia had anything to do with the stabbing incident.
youtube video released by Phoenix P.D.
More on the problems with the Phoenix Police Department here.
There are some subjects that must be discussed multiple times until people fully grasp them. The subject of the “double standard” when it comes to State actors and their actions is one that I think about every day.
On the right of the meme is a list of actions that you or I would be thrown in a cage for were we to perform them. Yet when the “State actor” does it, it is normalized.
Let’s look at what the State calls “Enhanced Interrogation.” If they feel the need to get information out of a suspect, they have been given the right (mind you, by people that do not possess that right to start with) to beat, maim and kill to get it.
What if your child were lost and you had a friend that said they saw he/she headed into the woods with a neighbor. If you took it upon yourself to do to your neighbor what the State does to their suspects, that same State would lock you in a cage. I know I am beating the horse to death but where do they get this right from if an individual or group cannot convey it? And why do you accept it?
Maybe it’s because they attach a fancy phrase to it like “enhanced interrogation” instead of what it is actually is, torture.
That will teach that n-word to have epilepsy!
WARNING: DISTURBING. Shaheen Mackey had a seizure at Luzerne Co. Correctional Facility. Staff covered his face with a spit mask, cuffed his hands behind his back, shackled his feet, and STILL tased him. By the time they realize he was dead, it was already too late… Sickening!! pic.twitter.com/Hgw2tmsjJC
— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) August 6, 2020
Don’t worry, thin blue line folks out there!: There is zero chance any of your beloved government-employee murderers will be held accountable for their crime. Everybody knows that.
One of the main arguments you hear against a massive reduction in the State (or its complete abolition) is that there are just some services the private sector can’t provide. The sophist will jump right to “who will build the roads?” The individual who has thought more about it mentions police/fire rescue/military. Who can blame them? From a young age we are taught that the State must keep a monopoly over these things. “How would they get paid?” “If they were privatized wouldn’t there be widespread corruption?” (The latter is my personal favorite)
The included meme references how on October 9, 2016, a Nebraska man who couldn’t reach his grandmother in Florida used the private sector to make sure she was OK after a hurricane had hit a couple days previous. The power went out that Friday and her cell phone died so they couldn’t verify her safety.
Now please understand this. Had the man called police or any public service, they would not have gone to check on grandma. That is not their job. Warren vs. District of Columbia decided that the police have no duty to protect you. They are not here to keep individuals safe, they are here to enforce laws. Please research Warren vs. D.C.
Knowing that the government wouldn’t help, this man called a private company asking them to deliver a pizza so that the family would know that she was well. Upon arrival if the driver found that grandma was in distress, then he could call an ambulance (usually another private entity) and get her the help she needed. Incidents such as this should teach you two things:
1. The police are not there to serve you although you are paying their salary.
2. Even though Papa John’s is not a rescue service, they became one because it benefited them financially. (Maybe an idea for an after-disaster rescue service?)
