Fuck the Police State

[the_unnatural]

2.70 yuan per kilogram

[trish]

I don't necessarily agree with all the points discussed in the following articles, but they do point in directions distinct from the course taken by the dominant contributors to this thread.

http://woodgatesview.com/2014/06/02/...s-vs-gun-nuts/

http://anarchistnews.org/content/left-gun-nuts

[fred41]

just read this today...pertains more locally, but overall...
still pertains and explains.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/b...icle-1.1883343

[Ben]

Fuck this shit Im sick of it - every day I turn around there is another abuse of power by the jackboot Police State abusing their power to protect and serve themselves...

and dont even get me started about the department of homeland security - the last time we saw someone "protecting" the population in the name of the "Homeland" their uniforms were different colors and they had a heavy German accent.

All power systems want to increase their own power. That's the nature of power. It doesn't matter if it's the state or corporations.
And, too, it's not just themselves that political actors serve. For the most part they serve and protect corporate power. (Both parties serve the ultra rich and corporate power.)
Corporations have launched a pretty effective propaganda campaign over the last 30 years or so that it's the power of the government that's inherently frightening. It's true. Government power is frightening. But we do have some say with respect to government. With corporations, well, we've no say.
And, too, it's in the interests of corporations to demonize government. Because, after all, in theory the people are the government. (Government has a big flaw: they're potentially democratic.) So, corporations demonize government. But government does provide some protection against overwhelming corporate power. When the government recedes -- as has happened over the last 30 years or so -- corporate power becomes more prevalent.
Ya know, you and I have a say on the CEO of America. We've no say on the CEO of Exxon or Microsoft etc., etc., etc.
So a note of caution: be wary of corporate propaganda --

[the_unnatural]

Second Anal Probe Lawsuit Being Filed Against N.M. Police

Drug dog with expired certification allegedly alerted cops to nonexistent drugs twice.

By Steven Nelson Nov. 6, 2013 | 5:48 p.m. EST + More

A second man is alleging that Hidalgo County, N.M., police violated his rights and escalated a minor traffic stop into an anal-probing nightmare as they searched in vain for drugs.
Timothy Young was stopped on Oct. 13, 2012, for allegedly turning without a signal, KOB-TV first reported Tuesday evening. A K-9 dog erroneously indicated he had drugs in his vehicle and he was taken to the Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City, N.M., where doctors performed an x-ray scan and a digital anal probe.
Young went public after a similar case attracted intense national and local coverage this week.
Albuquerque civil rights attorney Shannon Kennedy told U.S. News Wednesday she is filing a lawsuit on Young's behalf.
[EARLIER: Man Seeks Millions After N.M. Police Force Colonoscopy in Drug Search]
Kennedy is also representing David Eckert, who was stopped on Jan. 2, 2013, by Deming, N.M., police for allegedly rolling through a stop sign. Eckert was also taken to the Gila Regional Medical Center – where he was x-rayed, forcibly given enemas and then given a colonoscopy.
Three Deming policemen and three Hidalgo County officers were allegedly involved in the Eckert case, which may be settled out of court. Named defendants include the six policemen, the medical center, two doctors and a deputy district attorney who secured a warrant authorizing an anal probe.
No drugs were found in the possession of either man.
KOB-TV reports that a K-9 dog named "Leo" incorrectly alerted police to the existence of drugs in each of the men's vehicles. The station reports that Leo's drug-sniffing certification expired in April 2011.
"You can talk to our attorney," a member of the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office said Wednesday when asked for comment. Attorneys for the office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
More News:

• Senators Say Sugar Subsidies Are No Sweet Deal
• Christie's Broad 2016 Appeal Questioned
• Explosions Rock Chinese Communist HQ

Man Pulled Over for Routine Traffic Stop Given Anal...

BUTT WHY?: Man Pulled Over for Routine Traffic Stop Given Anal Search and Colonoscopy







Correction 11/06/13: This article originally said a lawsuit was filed on behalf of Timothy Young. The lawsuit has not yet been filed.
TAGS:crimeNew Mexico

+ More

• Steven Nelson is a reporter at U.S. News & World Report. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at snelson@usnews.com.
  

[the_unnatural]

Texas state troopers caught on camera probing women's privates aren't isolated incidents: lawyers

Multiple highway patrol officers in Texas have been captured by dash cams doing 'unconstitutional' cavity searches on women's genitals during traffic stops. Lawyers and civil rights advocates say the 'mind-boggling' searches are all too common.

BY Deborah Hastings
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, August 2, 2013, 5:45 PM


KTXA-TV Dash cam footage shows Ashley Dobbs, 24, with Texas state trooper Kelley Hellenson, who conducted body cavity searches on two women after a traffic stop for allegedly throwing cigarettes out of the car's windows. No ticket was issued.
The first video was graphic enough. Two women, as shown in a Texas state trooper’s dash cam recording, are probed in their vaginas and rectums by a glove-wearing female officer after a routine traffic stop near Dallas.
A few days later, a second video surfaced. It was an eerily similar scenario, but this time the traffic stop was just outside Houston, and with different troopers. Two women, pulled over for allegedly speeding, are subjected to body cavity searches by a female officer summoned to the scene by a male trooper.
Unlike the earlier tape, this one had clear audio. Yells can be heard as the female trooper shoves her gloved finger inside one woman.
In both invasive incidents, the female troopers don't change gloves between probes, according to the horrified victims.
Texas officials say the searches are unconstitutional. So do attorneys for the shaken women, who have filed federal lawsuits.
But lawyers and civil rights advocates tell the Daily News these cavity searches are really standard policy among the Texas Department of Public Safety’s state troopers, despite their illegality — not to mention that they were conducted on the side of the road in full view of passing motorists.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Dallas attorney Peter Schulte, a former Texas cop and prosecutor. “We would never put our hands anywhere near someone’s private parts,” he said of his time as a police officer in the city of McKinney. “When I saw that video I was shocked. I was a law enforcement officer for 16 years and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw, who oversees state troopers, denied an interview request from The News. In an earlier statements about the videotaped traffic stops, McCraw said his department “does not and will not tolerate any conduct that violates the U.S. and Texas constitutions, or DPS training or policy.”
So how did Texas troopers hundreds of miles apart get captured on dash cams conducting body cavity searches under nearly identical conditions?
“The fact that they both happened means there is some sort of (department) policy” advocating their use at traffic stops, Jim Harrington of the Texas Civil Rights Project told the Daily News. “It’s such a prohibited practice. I don’t know why they think they can do this. It’s mind-boggling.”
Schulte said he doubts the policy is written, and that the practice may have spread from region to region, instead of from the top down.
KHOU After being stopped for allegedly speeding, two women were subjected to body cavity searches by a female Texas highway patrol officer near Houston.
“I think the Department of Public Safety is trying to figure out who in the world trained these troopers to think that this is OK,” Schulte said. “The law just doesn’t support that. It just doesn’t.”
There have also been two recent cavity-search controversies in other states: Last year in Florida a Citrus County woman, who’d recently been charged with driving under the influence, was pulled over by sheriff’s deputies while driving with her children. In a federal lawsuit, the woman claimed she was given a cavity search on the roadside; in Milwaukee, police were disciplined after 2012 reports surfaced that eight cops had conducted genital searches on arrested suspects without the legal authority to do so.
But those cases don't approach the blatantness of the Texas incidents captured on video, which appear to illustrate a pattern, rather than isolated incidents.
“The odds of two female troopers conducting the same kind of search within six weeks of each other? Come on,” attorney Scott Palmer told The News. He recently settled a federal suit filed against the Department of Public Safety on behalf of clients Angel and Ashley Dobbs, the aunt and niece who were cavity-searched in the first dash cam video to go viral.
No ticket was issued following the lengthy traffic stop in July 2012, and no drugs were found. Angel Dobbs, 38, told The News that trooper David Farrell pulled her over on a Friday night, while she was driving to Oklahoma with her niece, Ashley, 24.
On the patrol car’s loudspeaker, he ordered her off the highway and onto a side road, she said.
He told the women they had thrown cigarette butts out of the car's windows. That wasn’t true, Dobbs said, but she didn’t argue. A long series of questions followed: Where were they going? Who were they going to see? Why were they going? Why was her niece with her?
Then he said he smelled marijuana. The women denied having any. He took the women’s IDs and went to his patrol car.
“He was back there for like 25 minutes,” Dobbs said. “My niece said ‘What's taking him so long?’”
They were ordered out of the car and told to stand in a field by the roadside. Farrell told them he had called for a female office to come and search them, Dobbs said.
KHOU Dash cam documents trooper Nathaniel Turner shortly after pulling over Brandy Hamilton, who was driving home after a day at the beach with friend Alexandra Randle. He was later suspended. The female officer who conducted cavity searches on the women was fired.
“Do you have anything in your socks? In your shoes? In your underwear?” Dobbs said she was asked. Then trooper Kelley Helleson showed up.
At this point Dobbs started protesting, saying the situation was ridiculous and that she had no drugs and had done nothing wrong. The female officer told her to “shut up and turn around,” Dobbs said.
She did as she was told. Then the trooper’s gloved hand went down her sweat pants in the back and in the front.
The trooper's attorney has said there was no penetration and that both women submitted to the searches.
Dobbs disagrees: “She knows there was penetration. On both sides. Along the side of the road. She knows what she did.”
The dash cam video shows the aunt and niece alternately standing in front of Farrell’s patrol car, holding their arms out while Helleson pats their breasts and puts her hand down the front and back of their pants.
“They didn’t even search my socks or my shoes,” Dobbs said. "I just couldn’t fathom how you could search someone’s butt and their vagina, and not search their socks or shoes.”
Finally, and after Dobbs passed a field sobriety test, she was given a written warning for littering and told she could go.
“We were assaulted on the side of the road,” Dobbs said.
She complained to the troopers’ supervisor in August. In October, investigators from the Texas Rangers interviewed her about what happened. She was frustrated it had taken more than two months to get a response.
KTRK Alexandra Randle, in red jacket, and Brandy Hamilton, right, at press conference announcing their federal lawsuit against the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other defendants including two state troopers, for violating their civil rights by subjecting them to body cavity searches during a traffic stop.
Then she got a lawyer. Her lawsuit was filed in December. “We had a press conference the next day,” Dobbs said. In January, the case was presented to a Dallas County grand jury. Helleson was later charged with two counts of sexual assault and was fired.
Farrell was indicted on one charge of theft, over a missing bottle of Vicodin from the aunt’s purse, and was suspended pending an internal investigation.
“Until the news got involved, nothing happened,” Dobbs said.
“My heart goes out those ladies,” in the Houston incident she continued. “I know how it feels.”
In late June, Dobbs and her attorneys settled their case for $184,000. Criminal trials against Helleson and Farrell are pending.
“Someone is telling (troopers) that this is a reasonable policy,” said attorney Palmer. “They’re just refusing to acknowledge this is a policy.
Across the state, no criminal charges have been filed in the Houston area traffic stop. But it began in much the same way.
Brandy Hamilton and Alexandria Randle were pulled over for speeding in Brazoria County by Texas state trooper Nathaniel Turner on Memorial Day in 2012. They were on their way home to Houston after spending the day at Surfside Beach on the Gulf of Mexico.
Turner said he smelled marijuana, then ordered Hamilton, the driver, out of the car. “Can I please put on my dress, because I have on a swimsuit,” she asks the trooper, according to the dash cam video.
“Don’t worry about that,” he says, “come on out here.”
Texas Department of Public Safety The seal of the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees state troopers. Its motto is "Courtesy. Service. Protection."
By the side of Highway 288, Hamilton, wearing a bikini, and Randle, in shorts, are asked a series of questions about whether they have drugs on them or in the car. They say no, just some cigars.
“Is there anything in your bra or underwear?” Turner asks Hamilton. She says no.
Turner calls for a female officer to come and search the women.
Trooper Jennie Bui arrives, and asks for gloves because she doesn’t have any.
“She is about to get up close and personal with some womanly parts,” Turner tells Hamilton. “She is going to search you, I ain’t, because I ain’t about to get up close and personal with your woman areas.”
Hamilton, who is handcuffed, is bent over the patrol car’s passenger seat and probed by Bui.
“Do you know how violated I feel?” Hamilton pleads.
According to the women’s federal lawsuit, filed in June, Randle is then penetrated by Bui, who is wearing the same set of gloves from her search of Hamilton.
The video captures the sound of her screaming.
“They basically raped them on the side of the road,” said Houston attorney Allie Booker, who represents the women. They were part of a two-car caravan of family and friends that had spent the national holiday at the beach.
KHOU A woman is strip searched in Texas.
When the occupants of the other vehicle realized Hamilton and Randle were no longer behind them, the driver pulled a U-turn and backtracked. Seeing the women standing by the road with Texas troopers, the other car pulled in behind, the lawsuit said.
The video shows an officer asking for their IDs and telling them to stay in the car.
“The other family members were there,” Booker said. “They could hear the screams. They saw the gloves go on.”
The Department of Public Safety fired Bui on June 29. Turner was suspended pending an administrative review.
Texas Rangers investigators have reviewed the case, Booker said, and recommended three weeks ago that it be taken before a grand jury. Brazoria County prosecutors are reviewing those findings, she said.
“Texas is a very big state,” Booker said. “It alarms me that something that happened in north Texas also happened down here in the south.” Since the federal lawsuit became public, the attorney says her office has received about five phone calls from women saying they, too, had been subjected to cavity searches by state troopers.
Booker has also consulted with another lawyer who represents a woman who filed a similar body cavity search complaint with the DPS involving Trooper Bui.
“A lot of people are scared to come forward,” Booker said. “But people are contacting us. They say ‘hey, this happened to me, too.’’’
ON A MOBILE DEVICE? CLICK HERE TO SEE VIDEO OF DALLAS INCIDENT.
CLICK HERE TO SEE VIDEO OF HOUSTON STOP.

[trish]

http://www.odmp.org/search/year

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...lled-work.html

[my my my!]

http://www.odmp.org/search/year

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...lled-work.html

thanks for the links, may they rest in peace. and the good ones continue to catch the baddies. but...

the other ones, that outnumber the good ones, need to chill the fuck out, and remember they have a responsibility of showing respect to the public without taking their dignity or exercising brutality.

[trish]

Outnumbered? You're being misled by your own cherry picking.

There is no excuse for police violence, nor brutality nor misconduct. The weaponry and armor available now to law enforcement is indeed unprecedented.

Though there is no excuse for violent behavior there are reasons why such behaviors are on the rise and reasons why the voters put police departments above public schools.

No, it’s not because we’re being manipulated by Wall Street bankers who rule the country like a police state through the use of brutal intimidation and force.

What kind of police state does not by law have a national registry of guns?
What kind of modern police state does not, by law, have gun sale records that can be digitally searchable? (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_2572908.html )
What sort of police state grants ordinary citizens, by law, the right to own firearms?
What sort of growing police state legalizes concealed carry?
What sort of police state outlaws zoning against the carry of firearms in churches and schools?
What sort of emerging police state relaxes firearm regulation even as the majority of the population pleas for more restrictive gun controls?

As anti-government, anti-law enforcement and pro-gun propaganda floods the media, stand your ground shoot outs and violent crime is on the rise.
The number of police killed on the job is up by 13%.
Are the increased expenditures on armor and weapons by law enforcement surprising?
Is the increase in law enforcement manpower unexpected?
Is it surprising that more cops are ill-trained and out of control?
Is it surprising that a brutalizing job brutalizes?

There is no excuse for police violence. The policeman who kills an innocent citizen in a choke hold should be thrown in jail. Policemen who continue to beat a man senseless after he’s been subdued should be prosecuted. Yet no one here has yet provided a modicum of evidence that we’re living in a police state. Rather we are a nation in the grip of a kind of arms escalation. We love guns. So the police are jumpy, armored and armed to the teeth. Surprise, surprise!

In addition to the escalation of arms we see cities, towns and counties attempting to save money by deferring the costs of enforcement and courts to offenders. So now police are encouraged to make arrests and confiscate property. This idea doesn’t come from on high. Its source isn’t Wall Street or the White House. Its source is the grass roots idiots who no longer believe that government (any government... local, state or federal) should collect revenue through taxes; and it is the response of local and State governments to this attitude. This is not a police state. This is most definitely the consequence of government ruled from the bottom up.

There are indeed manufacturers who profit from the sale of arms. There are politicians who will cherry pick the news and argue that government needs to be weakened and everything deregulated in the interest of “freedom” (but really just to win elections by appealing to the basest elements of their base.)
But those politicians, like all the other politicians owe their offices to the electorate. They spend money and take every opportunity to dance and perform for your vote. Bankers don’t put them in office. Corporations don’t put them in office. Neither the police nor the military keep them in office (as would be the case in a police state). You do (if you're a U.S. Citizen who votes). You elect them; and you keep electing them. If you don’t like the consequences of the policies you voted for, re-think those policies next time before you vote.

[the_unnatural]

It would seem to me that pointing out police abuse would be one way to motivate the voters to push for changes. Or is that discourage because, as you say, we don't have a police state?

No need to answer, because I'm sure your response will be more One Trish, Two Cups.