A dissident frequency
Today we celebrate our nation's birthday. Hot dogs, apple pie, but where's the freedom?
"This isn't just a second amendment issue, it's not just a firearms issue. It's an issue of an overreaching government that wants to come into your kitchen, that wants to come into your living room, and just see what you're doing," says Dimitrios Karras, CEO of Ares Armor in Oceanside, Calif.
Last week, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) raided Ares Armor to confiscate 80 percent polymer receivers for AR-15s. These receivers are the lower part of the gun that contain the trigger operations when fully completed. The polymer version that the ATF is contesting is not completed and requires the purchasers to finish machining it. The ATF claimed that these are unlicensed firearms, but Karras says otherwise.
"It's an object that's in the shape of a receiver, but it hasn't been completed to a point that it would be considered a firearm," says Karras. "This was a nice way for them to get their arm inside of the business and grab the information that they are actually looking for. To think that this is over a piece of plastic is ludicrous."
Karras says the true reason for the ATF's piqued interest in his shop was his refusal to relinquish the list of customers who had purchased the polymer product. He sat down with Reason TV's Tracy Oppenheimer to discuss why he plans to continue fighting the ATF to maintain his customers' privacy and other Constitutional issues at stake.
"They have trampled on the entire Bill of Rights," Karras says.
University professors have teamed up with the Chicago police department to develop a new technology which will allegedly predict violent criminal behavior. Using a computerized algorithm, Chicago has now generated a "Heat List" which indexes approximately 400 individuals they see as likely to commit violent crimes in the future. And some of the people on the list are not criminals at all.Custom Notifications in Chicago - Pilot Program
D13-09
I. Purpose
This directive announces the Chicago Police Department's pilot program for custom notification under the Violence Reduction Initiative in partnership with John Jay College of Criminal Justice Community Team, which will serve as outreach partners within the social service and community partners assembly.
II. Scope
The pilot program is effective 07 July 2013 and will continue until further notice in the 015 District.
III. General Information
A. While the Violence Reduction Strategy (VRS) is predicated upon group accountability, individuals within certain groups are identified as having the increased likelihood of victimization or engagement in criminal activity. The custom notification will identify those at-risk individuals and reach out to advise them of the risks and consequences of their actions should they engage in criminal conduct. The goal is to ensure the individual is not only informed of the law enforcement consequences for deciding to engage or continue in gun violence, but also of the devastating impact of gun violence within their community. Opportunities for seeking assistance will also be provided during the custom notification. However, it is ultimately the decision of the individual to choose not to engage in criminal activity.
B. For the identified individuals, custom notifications serve as notice that law enforcement action will not be random, but rather targeted and specific to the individual, and the failure to follow the clear and consistent message to cease participating in gun violence will have specific and cognizable penalties, as contained within the custom notification.
IV. Definitions
A. "Custom Notification" is a process that identifies potential criminal actors and victims associated with the continuum of violence. Once identified, the individual is notified of the consequences that will result should violent activity continue. The Custom Notification is predicated upon national research that concluded certain actions and associations within an individual’s environment are a precursor to certain outcomes should the individual decide to or continue to engage in criminal behavior. The Custom Notification will include a description of both federal and state sentencing options where applicable, as well as identification of the potential for seized assets and other consequences as appropriate.
1. Initial custom notifications may be predicated upon the Heat List generated by the Crime Prevention and Information Center (CPIC).
2. Ongoing custom notifications may be linked to public violence incidents (hot spots) or associated with call-ins as necessary and as approved by the district commander.
B. The "Heat List" is a rank-order list of potential victims and subjects with the greatest propensity for violence. The list is generated based on empirical data compared with known associates of the identified person.
C. "Influentials" are those individual seen as having importance or the ability to influence an individual’s actions. These can be both positive and negative influences.
D. The Custom Notification Letter will be used to inform individuals of the arrest, prosecution, and sentencing consequences they may face if they choose to or continue to engage in public violence. The letter will be specific to the identified individual and incorporate those factors known about the individual inclusive of prior arrests, impact of known associates, and potential sentencing outcomes for future criminal acts.
1. The Bureau of Organizational Development will work with the Office of Legal Affairs to develop a letter template for the Custom Notification.
2. The Office of Legal Affairs will provide review and approval of the Custom Notification Letter prior to distribution. The purpose is to confirm the range of outcomes identified as it applies to potential prosecution and sentencing outcomes.
3. The letters will be signed by the district commanders.
V. Procedures
A. District intelligence officers will:
1. continually review and update information relative to individuals linked to gun violence. These reviews will include, but are not limited to:
a. review of the Heat List for the district including the identification of those individuals who live within district.
b. CPIC information relative to criminal activity and conflicts within the district.
c. the District Gang Audit and other database information.
d. intelligence information relayed from district officers, area-assigned officers, and officers assigned to the Bureau of Organized Crime and Bureau of Detectives.
e. review of those individuals who have attended previous call-ins within the district.
2. identify those individuals eligible for custom notifications. Factors for eligibility include, but are not limited to:
a. placement on the Heat List;
b. victim of a shooting incident, where prosecution has been declined for lack of cooperation;
c. identification as a repeat offender for public violence crimes; and
d. other factors as developed and linked to public violence within the district.
3. when an individual is identified and:
a. residency is established, inform the district commander who will ensure the Custom Notification procedure is initiated.
b. residency cannot be verified, forward such information to CPIC and record the information in the district Heat List database pending subsequent confirmation of a new address. Residency will be verified and notification will occur at a future date.
B. The Custom Notification will be conducted under the direction of the district commander.
1. Those present for notifications may vary, based upon identified criminal factors, identified influentials, and other factors as identified in the review process.
2. A CPD officer will always be present for a custom notification.
C. The Custom Notification Team will:
1. generally conduct the notification at the identified individual's residence;
2. explain the Custom Notification program and the contents of the Custom Notification Letter;
3. deliver the letter to the identified individual.
NOTE:
When an identified individual is not present at the time of the custom notification, or refuses to participate, the Custom Notification Team may deliver the letter and explain the program to a family member or leave the letter at the residence.
D. When a recipient of the custom notification engages in criminal activity for which he or she is arrested, then the district commander will ensure:
1. notification to and coordination with the appropriate Bureau of Detectives Area to ensure appropriate charging occurs. The highest possible charges will be pursued for any individual in the VRS Custom Notification Program.
2. Court advocacy volunteers are notified of the date, time, and place of the bond hearing or other court hearings and encourage attendance at the hearing to demonstrate the community’s support in decreasing the violence.
3. coordination with the Cook County State's Attorney Community Prosecutions Unit as appropriate.
E. A copy of the custom notification will be forward to the CPIC and maintained within the district.
Garry F. McCarthy
Superintendent of Police
13-080 TRH
After shopping at a Wal-Mart store, David Eckert failed to make a complete stop at a stop-sign before he pulled into traffic to leave the plaza. He was stopped by police for the infraction. 1. Eckert's abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.
2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert's anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
4. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
5. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a second time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
6. Doctors penetrated Eckert's anus to insert an enema a third time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.
8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert's anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines. No narcotics were found.
"We follow the law in every aspect and we follow policies and protocols that we have in place." -Chief Brandon Gigante
"If the officers in Hidalgo County and the City of Deming are seeking warrants for anal cavity searches based on how they're standing and the warrant allows doctors at the Gila Hospital of Horrors to go in and do enemas and colonoscopies without consent, then anyone can be seized and that's why the public needs to know about this." -Shannon Kennedy, Attorney
DALLAS — A Dallas police officer who shot a mentally ill man in a disputed incident caught on tape has been fired and charged with felony aggravated assault, police said Thursday.
Police Chief David Brown apologized for the actions of the officer, who had been on administrative leave following the Oct. 14 shooting.
http://www.policeone.com/legal/articles/6544952-Dallas-officer-who-shot-mentally-ill-man-is-fired/
As if the National Football League’s regulations couldn’t get any more draconian, one NFL stadium is moving to impose even tighter gun restrictions – and this time they’re targeting the supposed good guys.
According to Cleveland.com, a memo went out to Cleveland police stating FirstEnergy Stadium, home of the Cleveland Browns, would begin outlawing firearms for off-duty cops, essentially lowering officers to the same level as the other disarmed peasants.
“Off-duty officers who attempt to bring firearms into an NFL facility will be denied entry. An armed officer will only be allowed inside a league facility if they are working an NFL game or event in an official capacity, according to the memo,” reports Brandon Blackwell.
The president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, Jeff Folmer, says the NFL’s decision is “disappointing.”
Read the rest of this article at InfoWars.com
4.5 SWAT Raids Per Day
Maryland's SWAT transparency bill produces its first disturbing results
Cheye Calvo's July 2008 encounter with a Prince George's County, Maryland, SWAT team is now pretty well-known: After intercepting a package of marijuana at a delivery service warehouse, police completed the delivery, in disguise, to the address on the package. That address belonged to Calvo, who also happened to be the mayor of the small Prince George’s town of Berwyn Heights. When Calvo's mother-in-law brought the package in from the porch, the SWAT team pounced, forcing their way into Calvo's home. By the time the raid was over, Calvo and his mother-in-law had been handcuffed for hours, police realized they'd made a mistake, and Calvo's two black Labradors lay dead on the floor from gunshot wounds.
As a result of this colossal yet not-unprecedented screw-up, plus Calvo's notoriety and persistence, last year Maryland became the first state in the country to make every one of its police departments issue a report on how often and for what purpose they use their SWAT teams. The first reports from the legislation are in, and the results are disturbing.
Over the last six months of 2009, SWAT teams were deployed 804 times in the state of Maryland, or about 4.5 times per day. In Prince George's County alone, with its 850,000 residents, a SWAT team was deployed about once per day. According to a Baltimore Sun analysis, 94 percent of the state's SWAT deployments were used to serve search or arrest warrants, leaving just 6 percent in response to the kinds of barricades, bank robberies, hostage takings, and emergency situations for which SWAT teams were originally intended.
Worse even than those dreary numbers is the fact that more than half of the county’s SWAT deployments were for misdemeanors and nonserious felonies. That means more than 100 times last year Prince George’s County brought state-sanctioned violence to confront people suspected of nonviolent crimes. And that's just one county in Maryland. These outrageous numbers should provide a long-overdue wake-up call to public officials about how far the pendulum has swung toward institutionalized police brutality against its citizenry, usually in the name of the drug war.
But that’s unlikely to happen, at least in Prince George's County. To this day, Sheriff Michael Jackson insists his officers did nothing wrong in the Calvo raid—not the killing of the dogs, not neglecting to conduct any corroborating investigation to be sure they had the correct house, not failing to notify the Berwyn Heights police chief of the raid, not the repeated and documented instances of Jackson’s deputies playing fast and loose with the truth.
Jackson, who's now running for county executive, is incapable of shame. He has tried to block Calvo's efforts to access information about the raid at every turn. Last week, Prince George's County Circuit Judge Arthur M. Ahalt ruled that Calvo's civil rights suit against the county can go forward. But Jackson has been fighting to delay the discovery process in that suit until federal authorities complete their own investigation into the raid. That would likely (and conveniently) prevent Prince George's County voters from learning any embarrassing details about the raid until after the election.
But there is some good news to report here, too. The Maryland state law, as noted, is the first of its kind in the country, and will hopefully serve as a model for other states in adding some much-needed transparency to the widespread use and abuse of SWAT teams. And some Maryland legislators want to go even further. State Sen. Anthony Muse (D-Prince George's), for example, wants to require a judge's signature before police can deploy a SWAT team. Muse has sponsored another bill that would ban the use of SWAT teams for misdemeanor offenses. The latter seems like a no-brainer, but it's already facing strong opposition from law enforcement interests. Police groups opposed the transparency bill, too.
Beyond policy changes, the Calvo raid also seems to have also sparked media and public interest in how SWAT teams are deployed in Maryland. The use of these paramilitary police units has increased dramatically over the last 30 years, by 1,000 percent or more, resulting in the drastic militarization of police. It's a trend that seems to have escaped much media and public notice, let alone informed debate about policies and oversight procedures. But since the Calvo raid in 2008, Maryland newspapers, TV news crews, activists, and bloggers have been documenting mistaken, botched, or disproportionately aggressive raids across the state.
Lawmakers tend to be wary of questioning law enforcement officials, particularly when it comes to policing tactics. They shouldn't be. If anything, the public employees who are entrusted with the power to use force, including lethal force, deserve the most scrutiny. It's unfortunate that it took a violent raid on a fellow public official for Maryland's policymakers to finally take notice of tactics that have been used on Maryland citizens for decades now. But at least these issues are finally on the table.
Lawmakers in other states should take notice. It's time to have a national discussion on the wisdom of sending phalanxes of cops dressed like soldiers into private homes in search of nonviolent and consensual crimes.
Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason magazine.
