Thug government.

7 Federal Marshalls arrest man over defaulted $1,500 loan.

//That's what happened to Paul Aker. Seven armed U.S. marshals arrived at his door in Houston last Thursday, arrested him on the spot, and took him to jail. He owed all of $1,500, outstanding since 1987. Aker told Fox 26 that without any warning, his 29-year-old debt was forcibly being collected; the marshals took him to federal court and made him sign a payment plan. “It was totally mind-boggling,” Aker told Fox 26.

Texas congressman Gene Green explained to Fox 26 that the federal government has been contracting out student-loan collections to private debt collectors, who are allowed to deploy the U.S. marshals as their enforcement arm.//

A default judgment leads to US Marshalls arresting someone?????

I've taken lots of defaults and I've had people not attend hearings or orders of examination, but I've never been able to send a single cop, much less 7 federal Marshalls, as a show of force to intimidate a judgment debtor.

Too bad....I've got a few debts I would like to collect.

This is troubling. It is right up there with the SWAT team that broke into the wrong house to arrest the wrong person who it left sitting on the curb in handcuffs for hours.

Policing by consent...

Stross's recent "The Annihilation Score" mentions the 9 Principles of Policing formulated by the founder of the London Metropolitan Police, one of which is that the police act by consent of the policed.

This article reminds us of why that is a good idea.

//My unit began to patrol on foot almost exclusively, which was exceptionally more dangerous than staying inside our armored vehicles. We relinquished much of our personal security by entering dimly lit homes in insurgent strongholds. We didn’t know if the hand we would shake at each door held a detonator to a suicide vest or a small glass of hot, sugary tea.

But as a result, we better understood our environment and earned the allegiance of some people in it. The benefits quickly became clear. One day during that bloody summer, insurgents loaded a car with hundreds of pounds of explosives and parked it by a school. They knew we searched every building for hidden weapons caches, and they waited for us to gather near the car. But as we turned the corner to head toward the school, several Iraqis told us about the danger. We evacuated civilians from the area and called in a helicopter gunship to fire at the vehicle.

The resulting explosion pulverized half the building and blasted the car’s engine block through two cement walls. Shrapnel dropped like jagged hail as far as a quarter-mile away.

If we had not risked our safety by patrolling the neighborhood on foot, trusting our sources and gathering intelligence, it would have been a massacre. But no one was hurt in the blast.

Domestic police forces would benefit from a similar change in strategy. Instead of relying on aggression, they should rely more on relationships. Rather than responding to a squatter call with guns raised, they should knock on the door and extend a hand. But unfortunately, my encounter with officers is just one in a stream of recent examples of police placing their own safety ahead of those they’re sworn to serve and protect.//

Laws are for the little people.

Recording of police speed trap letting police officers speed with impunity.

Watch the video.

Why does a citizen have to "sir" the officer, but the police officer doesn't have to "sir" the citizen?

The cop is a servant to the citizen.

And demanding that the citizen move here and do that is nonsense.

Conservatives worried about the police acting like an "occupying force."

If the police are losing the "law and order conservatives," then they will have problems.

Good for this kid.

It's time for people to claim the right of citizens.

WTF? Nation.

The cause of small government may be a matter of life and death.

Police officer who rousts crippled man will not be fired.

Here's the video:

WALB.com, Albany News, Weather, Sports



Well, at least it wasn't "suspicion of untaxed cigarettes"

//This is not to say that the actual manner by which the police took Garner down should not be thoroughly explored. NYPD guidelines apparently forbid the use of chokeholds, yet The New York Times story notes that a review board has received more than 1,000 complaints of police using chokeholds going back to 2009. The Times also notes that one of the officers who has been plunked on desk duty has been sued twice in federal court for civil rights violations, including one case where he pulled over a vehicle for a broken taillight and then strip-searched its inhabitants on the side of the road.

We should be concerned that the reason why the police swarmed Garner in the first place is getting lost. He allegedly possessed "untaxed cigarettes." That is it. There is this press focus on how the police took Garner down, and the problem with that focus is the question, "Well, what do you do when a 400-pound man refuses to cooperate when you try to arrest him?" Or to put it another way: Would there be an objection to police using a chokehold to take down and subdue man who was engaged in violent activity harming others? Because you know that's going to be part of the defense of this behavior.//

The laws are for little people.

The cop pulls a Gestappo move.

Laws are for the little people...

....and the peasant population.

The police lie.

Things went from bad to worse for one Wisconsin woman after a sheriff's deputy ran a stop sign and T-boned her car.

In February 2013, Tanya Weyker's car was hit by Milwaukee County Sheriff's Deputy Joseph Quiles, resulting in her neck being broken in four places. Although she was sober (blood tests later confirmed this), Weyker was arrested for drunk driving, and Quiles filed a police report stating that he had come to a complete stop and the accident was Weyker's fault. Even after the tests came back proving Weyker hadn't been drunk, and surveillance camera footage was released showing Quiles not stopping at the stop sign, the county still demanded that Weyker pay for damages from the accident.

It took five more months, but Weyker's case finally went to the DA's office, where a prosecutor decided not to file charges. No one bothered to call Weyker, however, just like no one bothered to reprimand Quiles for falsifying police reports (he admitted that he was at fault for the accident once the surveillance tape surfaced). More than a year later, Weyker is still waiting for the county to pay her expensive medical bills. Quiles hasn't worked since the crash, and — despite apparently suffering minimal harm in the crash he caused — has filed for permanent duty disability. Weyker isn't giving up easily; she told Fox 6 Milwaukee: "I knew I was innocent this whole time.... A lot of people are too afraid to stick up for themselves against someone in such high power." //

The Food and Drug Administration has a SWAT team?

Why?

The year before the raid on Wright, a SWAT team from the Food and Drug Administration raided the farm of Dan Allgyer of Lancaster, Pa. His crime was shipping unpasteurized milk across state lines to a cooperative of young women with children in Washington, D.C., called Grass Fed on the Hill. Raw milk can be sold in Pennsylvania, but it is illegal to transport it across state lines. The raid forced Allgyer to close down his business.

Brian Walsh, a senior legal analyst with the Heritage Foundation, says it is inexplicable why so many federal agencies need to be battle-ready: “If these agencies occasionally have a legitimate need for force to execute a warrant, they should be required to call a real law-enforcement agency, one that has a better sense of perspective. The FBI, for example, can draw upon its vast experience to determine whether there is an actual need for a dozen SWAT agents.”//

But they only lie against bad people....

... until they decide you are a bad person.

One by one, five police officers took the witness stand at the Skokie courthouse late last month for what would typically be a routine hearing on whether evidence in a drug case was properly obtained.

But in a “Perry Mason” moment rarely seen inside an actual courtroom, the inquiry took a surprising turn when the suspect’s lawyer played a police video that contradicted the sworn testimony of the five officers — three from Chicago and two from Glenview, a furious judge found.

Cook County Circuit Judge Catherine Haberkorn suppressed the search and arrest, leading prosecutors to quickly dismiss the felony charges. All five officers were later stripped of their police powers and put on desk duty pending internal investigations. And the state’s attorney’s office is looking into possible criminal violations, according to spokeswoman Sally Daly.

“Obviously, this is very outrageous conduct,” a transcript of the March 31 hearing quoted the judge, a former county prosecutor, as saying. “All officers lied on the stand today. … All their testimony was a lie. So there’s strong evidence it was conspiracy to lie in this case, for everyone to come up with the same lie. … Many, many, many, many times they all lied.”

All five are veteran officers. Glenview Officer Jim Horn declined to comment Monday, while the other four — Sgt. James Padar and Officers Vince Morgan and William Pruente, all assigned to narcotics for Chicago police, and Glenview Sgt. Theresa Urbanowski — could not be reached for comment.

And:

There are a number of reasons for the “testilying” problem. As Alexander points out, even since Younger’s time, the federal government only worsened the incentives by instituting a number of grants that reward police agencies for raw numbers of stops, arrests and convictions, particularly in drug cases. There are professional and financial incentives for racking up the stats, for police agencies as a whole, for the brass who lead them and for individual police officers. And there’s very little pushback for going too far to achieve those numbers.

But video may be making cops honest:

 

Perhaps not in 1967. But that is more and more the case today. All of those recordings are catching more and more cops in the act of lying. Every time a recording shows a cop to have lied, a number of things happen. First, that particular cop is (hopefully) disciplined. That probably doesn’t happen as often as it should, but judges and prosecutors tend to treat perjury much more seriously than they do an illegal search. Yes, in an ideal world, cops would be disciplined as harshly for the act of violating someone’s civil liberties as they are for lying about doing so to a judge or jury after the fact. But we have to work with what we have.

Second, it serves as a warning to other cops who are lying or might lie in the future in police reports and courtrooms. The cameras are rolling. Eventually, you’ll be exposed. And third, it begins to undermine the prestige that police testimony holds with judges, prosecutors and political officials. It isn’t that cops are inherently dishonest people. But they are in fact merely people, subject to the same failings, temptations, bad incentives and trappings of power as someone in any other profession. Put another way, the problem isn’t that cops aren’t capable of telling the truth. The problem is that the courts have treated cops as if they’re incapable of lying. Video is changing that.

Rewarding the bullies.

The Rise of the Warrior Cop

If one accepts, as I do, the premise that SWAT teams are often misused, it’s important to understand why this is so.  One explanation that occurs to me may at first seem counterintuitive: the availability of military-style hardware has the effect of rewarding timidity on the part of police managers.  For example, when I first began participating in search warrants in the mid-1980s, the oversight for warrant preparation and service within the LAPD was minimal, with only my immediate supervisor and the lieutenant above him providing input under ordinary circumstances.  The tactical plans we drew up in preparation for warrant service were one or two pages, and the process of receiving information, verifying it, and then preparing and serving a search warrant might be accomplished inside of a few hours.

Today, the LAPD’s search warrant tactical plan is nine pages long, and the approval process, even before a warrant is presented to a judge, can go up the chain of command all the way to a deputy chief.  As in most police departments, one does not ordinarily advance in the ranks of the LAPD by being a seasoned investigator or tactical officer, but rather by avoiding these jobs.  So, when presented with a proposed search warrant, the timorous manager, knowing that his name will now be associated with the operation, asks himself two questions: What can go wrong, and how can I avoid being blamed for it when it does?  He then satisfies himself by directing that every available resource be devoted to the operation, whether tactically necessary or not.//

The militarization of the police....

...continues apace.

The militarization of the police...

...turns the police into an army of occupation.

At a time when over 4 million people have had their health insurance canceled, it’s good to know that some Americans can still access prompt medical treatment, even if they don’t want it. David Eckert was pulled over by police in Deming, N.M., for failing to come to a complete halt at a stop sign in the Walmart parking lot. He was asked to step out of the vehicle, and waited on the sidewalk. Officers decided that they didn’t like the tight clench of his buttocks, a subject on which New Mexico’s constabulary is apparently expert, and determined that it was because he had illegal drugs secreted therein. So they arrested him, and took him to Gila Regional Medical Center in neighboring Hidalgo County, where Mr. Eckert was forced to undergo two abdominal X-rays, two rectal probes, three enemas, and defecate thrice in front of medical staff and representatives of two law-enforcement agencies, before being sedated and subjected to a colonoscopy — all procedures performed against his will and without a valid warrant.

The hospital sent Mr. Eckert a bill for $6,000 for services.

I'm tenpted to suggest that that violates the Third Amendment - the one pertaining to where soldiers cannot be "quartered."

It's like funding...

...If you have it, you have to use it.

//The Dallas County Sheriff's Office gets an MRAP tactical military vehicle, used for counterinsurgency fighting in Iraq, as law enforcement becomes a collection of SWAT teams pursuing not-always-guilty Americans.

In early August, a SWAT team broke through the gates of a 3.5-acre farm in Arlington, Texas, that promotes a sustainable lifestyle and did a 10-hour search of the property. Residents were handcuffed and held at gunpoint as police looked for nonexistent marijuana plants and various city code violations.

As the owners watched, 10 tons of their private property was hauled off in trucks — dangerous items such as blackberry bushes, okra, tomatillo plants, native grasses and sunflowers that provided food and bedding for animals, everything from furniture to compost.

The city said the code citations were issued to the farm after complaints by neighbors "concerned that the conditions" at the farm "interfere with the useful enjoyment of their properties and are detrimental to property values and community appearance."
The SWAT raid came after "the Arlington Police Department received a number of complaints that the same property owner was cultivating marijuana plants on the premises," the city's statement said. So why not just knock on the door with a search warrant?

An Arlington spokeswoman said the raid was perfectly legal and appropriate. "The purpose was to improve the quality of life, to resolve safety issues within neighborhoods and to hold the property owner responsible for creating blight conditions on their property," she stated, not really explaining how this or even marijuana cultivation requires a SWAT team.

This is just one example of SWAT teams and SWAT-style tactics becoming the rule rather than the exception as police forces arm themselves with military gear. As such gear is used more frequently to carry out routine law-enforcement activities, Americans find themselves in increasingly dangerous and absurd situations.//

The Rise of the Warrior Cop 

Radley Balko on the militarization of our police and why they view themselves as being at war with us.

Outrageous.

Bailiff sexually assaults women in Court and then arrests her for making "false accusation against a police officer."

The video is disturbing.

Suspect that someone made an illegal bet?

Send in SWAT.

The one that puzzles me is when they send in SWAT on child porn cases.

Do we really think that those kinds of people are sitting on stashes of machine guns?

Police and Democracy

Check out this video of a DUI checkpoint and how the police went out of their way to screw with this respectful but not obsequious American for insisting on his constitutional rights.

Videotaping the Police can get you arrested...

...and you dog killed.

Check out this video:



And this newstory:

A video posted yesterday on YouTube shows the grisly shooting of a dog by a police officer in Hawthorne, California. 

The 130-pound, 3-year-old Rottweiler named Max was shot to death after he escaped through a window in a parked car and ran over to his master, Leon Rosby, who was being arrested for filming the scene on his phone. 

The video (watch original on YouTube) shows Rosby, 52, walking his dog Sunday around 7 p.m. near a house with several police squad cars parked outside. 

 He is seen filming the scene in order 'to make sure nobody's civil rights were being violated,' he told DailyBreeze.com. 

Rosby is then seen talking to a pair of police officers in the distance. 

Hawthorne Police Lt Scott Swain said that officers were warning Rosby to turn down the music in his car. 

'It's distracting the officers. It's interfering with what they are able to hear,' Lt Swain said. 'It's not just a party call. It's an armed robbery call. The officers need to hear what's going on with the people being called out of the residence. That music in his car is bleeding over and it's distracting them.'

A neighbor who witnessed the event said they heard Rosby yell 'It's my (expletive) radio!' to officers. 

But Rosby said that didn't happen because as a Christian he doesn't swear. 

'I do apologize if I didn't immediately comply,' Rosby said. 'The music may have been a little loud but I was complying.'

For that, the police actually cuff Rosby.

Then, when his dog gets out of the car, and isn't threatening the police, they shoot the dog.