This should make your blood boil!
March 14, 2014
3/14/2014 07:52:00 PM
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Moscow (AFP) - A United States surveillance drone has been intercepted above the Ukranian region of Crimea, a Russian state arms and technology group said Friday.
"The drone was flying at about 4,000 metres (12,000 feet) and was virtually invisible from the ground. It was possible to break the link with US operators with complex radio-electronic" technology, said Rostec in a statement.
The drone fell "almost intact into the hands of self-defence forces" added Rostec, which said it had manufactured the equipment used to down the aircraft, but did not specify who was operating it.
"Judging by its identification number, UAV MQ-5B belonged to the 66th American Reconnaissance Brigade, based in Bavaria," Rostec said on its website, which also carried a picture of what it said was the captured drone.
The photograph appeared to show an apparently armed drone in flight, rather than debris.
The Crimean port of Sevastopol is home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which is believed to be equipped with detection equipment.
Crimea, where pro-Kremlin forces have control, is to hold a referendum on Sunday on the peninsula joining Russia, in what Moscow says is a fair expression of self identity but the West views as an illegal annexation of sovereign territory.
Source: Yahoo News
"The drone was flying at about 4,000 metres (12,000 feet) and was virtually invisible from the ground. It was possible to break the link with US operators with complex radio-electronic" technology, said Rostec in a statement.The drone fell "almost intact into the hands of self-defence forces" added Rostec, which said it had manufactured the equipment used to down the aircraft, but did not specify who was operating it.
"Judging by its identification number, UAV MQ-5B belonged to the 66th American Reconnaissance Brigade, based in Bavaria," Rostec said on its website, which also carried a picture of what it said was the captured drone.
The photograph appeared to show an apparently armed drone in flight, rather than debris.
The Crimean port of Sevastopol is home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which is believed to be equipped with detection equipment.
Crimea, where pro-Kremlin forces have control, is to hold a referendum on Sunday on the peninsula joining Russia, in what Moscow says is a fair expression of self identity but the West views as an illegal annexation of sovereign territory.
Source: Yahoo News
3/14/2014 06:45:00 PM
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A Las Vegas woman is suing the Metropolitan Police Department saying she was literally given the "third degree."
Local artist Cristina Paulos received third degree burns during an encounter with police after a traffic accident.
It all began on a hot August day when a car crash and a woman's arrest led to severe burns from scorching pavement and a lawsuit alleging excessive force.
"So, this is two years of healing. So, it's got a lot better, it used to look a lot worse," Paulos said.
The images of the woman's injuries are graphic. She fears she will forever bear the scars from an encounter with Metro Police in Aug. 2011.
"I was held down by police and security at the Palms property. And from that, I got third degree burns on my legs," Paulos said.
She admits driving her car into the exit lanes of the Palms hotel and hitting two cars in the process. But she was not drunk or high on drugs. She was later diagnosed as having a mental disorder that she now manages with medication. But her behavior was definitely erratic following the crash. She first ran from the scene then returned and climbed into one the car's she hit.
Casino surveillance video shows her getting out of that car and coming face-to-face with a Metro officer, who, after a brief interaction, takes her to the pavement. The high temperature that day was 104 degrees, but the asphalt was certainly much hotter.
"I literally thought I was in hell, what I believed was hell at the time because my flesh was burning. My skin was burning," she said.
The I-Team wanted to see how long Paulos' body was in contact with the asphalt. A clock was started the moment she came into contact with the pavement and it shows she was on the hot ground for more than three minutes.
"People have been taken down but brought quickly up. That didn't happen here. She was held down and casino security officers helped out and assisted the police officer to hold her down and that's why you have the serious burns on her legs," said Cal Potter, Paulos' attorney.
"And I was screaming. It wasn't like I wasn't screaming. I was screaming, so they were very aware that I was in pain," Paulos said.
She has had skin grafts and her medical bills have risen above the $100,000 mark. She hopes to get those bills paid through her lawsuit. She says she also hopes the suit will make police officers more aware of what can happen when someone is taken into custody on a very hot day.
"They just have to be more aware." she said. "There are safer ways to restrain someone so they don't walk away with burns for the rest of their life.
There are clearly other sides to this story and the lawsuit filed by Paulos represents only her version of events. Metro Police will not comment on pending lawsuits.
The Palms hotel also declined comment citing the same kind of policy. Metro's lawyers filed a written response to the suit denying allegations of wrongdoing and saying that any injuries sustained by Paulos were the result of her own negligence and/or actions.
3/14/2014 06:12:00 PM
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You've certainly seen the photo of Glenn Edward McDuffie. He's the sailor grabbing and kissing a nurse in the middle of Times Square after finding out WWII was over. The photo was shot August 14, 1945.We learned today of McDuffie's passing today at the age of 86. He died on March 9. He was positively identified as the sailor in that photo back in 2007 after many men claimed it was them.
McDuffie, a native of Kannapolis, North Carolina, moved to Houston in 1960 and lived here until 2009, when he moved to the Dallas area to spend his last years near his daughter.
McDuffie was preceeded in death by children Elene McDuffie and Mike McDuffie. He's survived by daughter Glenda Bell and Grand children Christopher Bell, 25, and Jordan Bell, 23.
3/14/2014 03:44:00 PM
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A United Nations committee charged with enforcing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights has come down hard on the United States for “gun violence,” code for the right to own firearms guaranteed by the Second Amendment, and a raft of other issues.Walter Kälin, a Swiss international human rights lawyer who sits on the committee, criticized the “extreme domestic habits” of Americans, including the upholding the cornerstone to the Constitution, the Second Amendment. Kälin cited a “staggering figure” to argue in favor of eliminating the right to own guns – there are 470,000 crimes committed with firearms each year, including about 11,000 homicides. “We appreciate the position taken by President Obama on these issues. Nevertheless, much more needs to be done to curb gun violence,” he said.
Obama and the Democrats tried unsuccessfully to outlaw entire classifications of firearms following Sandy Hook. The 112th Congress considered an inordinately large number of bills designed to chip away the right to own firearms.
Kälin and critics of the Second Amendment routinely ignore data showing how guns save lives and prevent violence. A Gun Owners of America factsheet shows guns were used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year — or about 6,850 times a day, according to research conducted by Dr. Gary Kleck, who was awarded the prestigious American Society of Criminology Michael J. Hindelang award for his research into guns and violence.
“Most uses of guns for either criminal or defensive purposes are less dramatic or consequential than one might think,” Kleck writes. “Only 3% of criminal gun assaults involves anyone actually being wounded, even nonfatally, and the same is true of defensive gun uses. More commonly, guns are merely pointed at another person, or perhaps only referred to (‘I’ve got a gun’) or displayed, and this is sufficient to accomplish the ends of the user, whether criminal or non- criminal.”
Even the government admits guns deter crime and violence.
“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies,” a report commissioned by the Obama administration and issued by the Centers for Disease Control states.
Moreover, most deaths by guns resulted from suicide, not homicide, a fact ignored by the United Nations. “Between the years 2000 and 2010, firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearm-related violence in the United States,” the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council noted in the CDC report.
The CDC report also doubts the effectiveness of gun control in reducing violence. It questions “whether gun restrictions reduce firearm-related violence” and characterizes the dubious efficacy of such laws as “an unresolved issue.” The report expresses uncertainty “that passage of right-to-carry laws decrease or increase violence crime” and admits that “gun turn-in programs are ineffective.”
The United Nations call to disarm and render Americans defenseless is contradicted by police. Earlier this month Detroit Police Chief James Craig told residents to arm themselves and shoot to kill assailants and robbers. “A lot of Detroiters are fed up,” he told WDIV-TV. “They’re tired and they’ve been dealing with this epidemic of violence. They’re afraid and they have a right to protect themselves.”
The United Nations, on the other hand, does not believe citizens should be empowered to protect themselves, either from criminals or government.
“A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government,” George Washington advised.
source: Infowars.com
3/14/2014 03:28:00 PM
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A small organic farm in Arlington, Texas, was the target of a massive police action last week that included aerial surveillance, a SWAT raid and a 10-hour search. Members of the local police raiding party had a search warrant for marijuana plants, which they failed to find at the Garden of Eden farm.
But farm owners and residents who live on the property told a Dallas-Ft. Worth NBC station that the real reason for the law enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. The police seized “17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants … native grasses and sunflowers,” after holding residents inside at GUNpoint for at least a half-hour, property owner Shellie Smith said in a statement. The raid lasted about 10 hours, she said.
Local authorities had cited the Garden of Eden in recent weeks for code violations, including “grass that was too tall, bushes growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house, and generally unclean premises,” Smith’s statement said. She said the police didn’t produce a warrant until two hours after the raid began, and officers shielded their name tags so they couldn’t be identified.According to ABC affiliate WFAA, resident Quinn Eaker was the only person arrested — for outstanding traffic violations.
The city of Arlington said in a statement that the code citations were issued to the farm following complaints by neighbors, who were “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 police 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. “No cultivated marijuana plants were located on the premises,” the statement acknowledged.
The raid on the Garden of Eden farm appears to be the latest example of police departments using SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics to enforce less serious crimes. A Fox television affiliate reported this week, for example, that police in St. Louis County, Mo., brought out the SWAT team to serve an administrative warrant. The report went on to explain that all felony warrants are served with a SWAT team, regardless whether the crime being alleged involves violence.
In recent years, SWAT teams have been called out to perform regulatory alcohol inspections at a bar in Manassas Park, Va.; to raid bars for suspected underage drinking in New Haven, Conn.; to perform license inspections at barbershops in Orlando, Fla.; and to raid a gay bar in Atlanta where police suspected customers and employees were having public sex. A federal investigation later found that Atlanta police had made up the allegations of public sex.
Other raids have been conducted on food co-ops and Amish farms suspected of selling unpasteurized milk products. The federal government has for years been conducting raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in states that have legalized them, even though the businesses operate openly and are unlikely to pose any threat to the safety of federal enforcers.
But farm owners and residents who live on the property told a Dallas-Ft. Worth NBC station that the real reason for the law enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. The police seized “17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants … native grasses and sunflowers,” after holding residents inside at GUNpoint for at least a half-hour, property owner Shellie Smith said in a statement. The raid lasted about 10 hours, she said.Local authorities had cited the Garden of Eden in recent weeks for code violations, including “grass that was too tall, bushes growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house, and generally unclean premises,” Smith’s statement said. She said the police didn’t produce a warrant until two hours after the raid began, and officers shielded their name tags so they couldn’t be identified.According to ABC affiliate WFAA, resident Quinn Eaker was the only person arrested — for outstanding traffic violations.
The city of Arlington said in a statement that the code citations were issued to the farm following complaints by neighbors, who were “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 police 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. “No cultivated marijuana plants were located on the premises,” the statement acknowledged.
The raid on the Garden of Eden farm appears to be the latest example of police departments using SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics to enforce less serious crimes. A Fox television affiliate reported this week, for example, that police in St. Louis County, Mo., brought out the SWAT team to serve an administrative warrant. The report went on to explain that all felony warrants are served with a SWAT team, regardless whether the crime being alleged involves violence.
In recent years, SWAT teams have been called out to perform regulatory alcohol inspections at a bar in Manassas Park, Va.; to raid bars for suspected underage drinking in New Haven, Conn.; to perform license inspections at barbershops in Orlando, Fla.; and to raid a gay bar in Atlanta where police suspected customers and employees were having public sex. A federal investigation later found that Atlanta police had made up the allegations of public sex.
Other raids have been conducted on food co-ops and Amish farms suspected of selling unpasteurized milk products. The federal government has for years been conducting raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in states that have legalized them, even though the businesses operate openly and are unlikely to pose any threat to the safety of federal enforcers.
3/14/2014 09:53:00 AM
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The last I checked, a man being held and beaten with a baseball bat by multiple assailants would seem to be under a clear assault with a deadly weapon, justifying a lethal force response in self defense.
That’s why I have to wonder what the heck is going on in Milwaukee, where a maintenance man being beaten in a stairwell with a baseball bat faces charges after killing his attackers:The 39-year-old man accused of shooting the two Wednesday afternoon while he was being beaten with a baseball bat is being held in the Milwaukee County Jail on possible homicide charges.
The shootings were reported about 1 p.m. Wednesday at an apartment building in the 1400 block of N. 27th St.
Police said an argument occurred between the janitor and three people: the teens and a 20-year-old man.
The argument in the apartment stairwell led to a physical altercation, during which the maintenance worker was being held while one of the three beat him with the bat, officials said Wednesday.
The janitor then drew a gun and fired, shooting the two teens, police said.
He was hospitalized for injuries related to the bat-beating and has since been released.
The maintenance worker is now being held in jail on two possible counts of first-degree intentional homicide, according to jail records.
The man who was with the teens is being held in jail on a potential substantial battery charge, Milwaukee police said Thursday.
Neither man had been named by police or charged in court as of Thursday afternoon. The Milwaukee County district attorney’s office was expected to begin reviewing the case Thursday, police said.
According to an earlier version of the story, there was cell phone video of the confrontation shot by the man who was with the teens.
The fact that they are considering charges would indicates either a very cautious investigation, the possibility that the maintenance man was a prohibited person not legally in possession of the handgun he used to defend himself, that he shot his attackers after they disengaged, or perhaps that he instigated the fight.
All that allowed, I can’t easily think of many situations where a jury would convict a man who was attacked by multiple assailants with a weapon who then defended himself.
This case bears watching.
Source: Bearingarms.com
3/14/2014 08:39:00 AM
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Amid the fearful talk of home invaders, Nazis and school shooters that has become routine in New Jersey’s gun control debates this past year, one voice stood out at an Assembly hearing Thursday: that of a 9-year-old competitive shooter.
“I am an example to others that kids and guns don’t always lead to bad things happening,” Shyanne Roberts told the Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee.
Shyanne Roberts holds her Crickett single-shot 22, her first gun, which she received as a gift for her sixth birthday.
Shyanne Roberts and her father, Dan Roberts, during Thursday's hearing.
“I am not a gangbanger or domestic terrorist,” Shyanne testified, speaking to the eight-member committee from a prepared text. It was unclear if she wrote the speech herself.
Shyanne, a fourth-grader whose feet barely reached the floor as she sat in front of the committee, was joined by her father. She began her testimony by apologizing if she sounded nervous, telling the legislators it was her first time speaking at a committee hearing.
The chamber was quiet as she spoke – without the usual background chatter of attendees and lawmakers – and the largely pro-gun crowd gave her a standing ovation when she finished.
Shyanne and her father, who live in Gloucester County, came to Trenton to speak against a bill that would limit the magazine capacity of firearms to 10 rounds, down from the current 15-round maximum. They and other opponents of the measure said legislation should target criminals without affecting legal gun owners. Similar arguments were made against several other gun-control bills the Legislature passed last year, most of which were ultimately vetoed by Governor Christie.
The bill passed the committee along party lines, 5-3, after more than three hours of testimony.
Shyanne, who has won several national sponsorships, has placed highly in several shooting competitions, including a second-place finish at the New Jersey State Ruger Rimfire Challenge. Her father said she entertains hopes of someday competing in the Olympics.
She is awaiting a custom AR-15 rifle, worth $3,000, from a sponsor, she said, which could become illegal if the magazine limit becomes law.
Shyanne’s appearance drew a sharp contrast with the child victims often cited by supporters of stricter firearm restrictions.
New Jersey’s debate over gun control picked up last year after 20 children and six adults were killed in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in late 2012 by a man who had earlier fatally shot his mother in the home they shared. The gunman killed himself at the school.
Parents of Sandy Hook victims have taken two trips to Trenton to push for tighter gun laws, and smaller magazine limits, in particular.
Shyanne’s speech also diverged from the arguments made by several other opponents of the bill. But as the Assembly committee’s hearing on Thursday wore on, the discussion increasingly turned from competitive shooting to fears about totalitarianism and home invasion.
“If you tried to tell the Marine Corps how many rounds they can carry in their magazines,” said Tony DeSantis, a veteran of the Marines, “you’d be speaking Japanese and German right now.”
The 10-round limit has been one of the most contentious proposals since new gun control measures began moving through the Legislature in January 2013, weeks after the shooting at Sandy Hook.
The Assembly approved a 10-round restriction in February 2013.
But the restriction would make gun owners less safe, the bill’s opponents argued, because they, too, would have fewer bullets at their disposal.
“Let’s not kid ourselves about this bill: It’s based on the fantasy that we could somehow wave a magic wand and be safer by removing a tool,” said Scott Bach, executive director of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs. “No one will be any safer under this feel-good legislation because madmen will ignore it or find another tool.”
Gun owners also argued that they shouldn’t have to face new restrictions because of the actions of criminals. Shyanne, the 9-year-old competitive shooter, made the point using her 4-year-old brother.
“I do not understand why the state wants to punish people like me … who have done nothing wrong because of the people who have,” she said. “I do not get in trouble or get punished at home because of something my little brother did.”
At a town hall event in Mount Laurel on Thursday, Governor Christie declined to take a position on the magazine limit.
“If they pass a bill like that and it comes to my desk, I have 45 days to read the fine print and talk to experts,” he said in response to a question.
“Here’s my view on this: It is a very emotional issue on both sides. Gun control and the Second Amendment are enormously emotional, combustible issues,” the Republican governor said. “My job as governor is to be the adult in the room.”
Christie vetoed many of the bills aimed at reducing gun violence that passed the Legislature last year, including the Democrats’ centerpiece legislation that would have overhauled the background check process for prospective gun buyers. He also rejected a ban on .50-caliber weapons – a measure that he had proposed only months earlier, but which he said went beyond the ban that he had called for.
Source: www.northjersey.com
“I am an example to others that kids and guns don’t always lead to bad things happening,” Shyanne Roberts told the Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee.
Shyanne Roberts holds her Crickett single-shot 22, her first gun, which she received as a gift for her sixth birthday.Shyanne Roberts and her father, Dan Roberts, during Thursday's hearing.
“I am not a gangbanger or domestic terrorist,” Shyanne testified, speaking to the eight-member committee from a prepared text. It was unclear if she wrote the speech herself.
Shyanne, a fourth-grader whose feet barely reached the floor as she sat in front of the committee, was joined by her father. She began her testimony by apologizing if she sounded nervous, telling the legislators it was her first time speaking at a committee hearing.
The chamber was quiet as she spoke – without the usual background chatter of attendees and lawmakers – and the largely pro-gun crowd gave her a standing ovation when she finished.
Shyanne and her father, who live in Gloucester County, came to Trenton to speak against a bill that would limit the magazine capacity of firearms to 10 rounds, down from the current 15-round maximum. They and other opponents of the measure said legislation should target criminals without affecting legal gun owners. Similar arguments were made against several other gun-control bills the Legislature passed last year, most of which were ultimately vetoed by Governor Christie.
The bill passed the committee along party lines, 5-3, after more than three hours of testimony.
Shyanne, who has won several national sponsorships, has placed highly in several shooting competitions, including a second-place finish at the New Jersey State Ruger Rimfire Challenge. Her father said she entertains hopes of someday competing in the Olympics.
She is awaiting a custom AR-15 rifle, worth $3,000, from a sponsor, she said, which could become illegal if the magazine limit becomes law.
Shyanne’s appearance drew a sharp contrast with the child victims often cited by supporters of stricter firearm restrictions.
New Jersey’s debate over gun control picked up last year after 20 children and six adults were killed in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in late 2012 by a man who had earlier fatally shot his mother in the home they shared. The gunman killed himself at the school.
Parents of Sandy Hook victims have taken two trips to Trenton to push for tighter gun laws, and smaller magazine limits, in particular.
Shyanne’s speech also diverged from the arguments made by several other opponents of the bill. But as the Assembly committee’s hearing on Thursday wore on, the discussion increasingly turned from competitive shooting to fears about totalitarianism and home invasion.
“If you tried to tell the Marine Corps how many rounds they can carry in their magazines,” said Tony DeSantis, a veteran of the Marines, “you’d be speaking Japanese and German right now.”
The 10-round limit has been one of the most contentious proposals since new gun control measures began moving through the Legislature in January 2013, weeks after the shooting at Sandy Hook.
The Assembly approved a 10-round restriction in February 2013.
But the restriction would make gun owners less safe, the bill’s opponents argued, because they, too, would have fewer bullets at their disposal.
“Let’s not kid ourselves about this bill: It’s based on the fantasy that we could somehow wave a magic wand and be safer by removing a tool,” said Scott Bach, executive director of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs. “No one will be any safer under this feel-good legislation because madmen will ignore it or find another tool.”
Gun owners also argued that they shouldn’t have to face new restrictions because of the actions of criminals. Shyanne, the 9-year-old competitive shooter, made the point using her 4-year-old brother.
“I do not understand why the state wants to punish people like me … who have done nothing wrong because of the people who have,” she said. “I do not get in trouble or get punished at home because of something my little brother did.”
At a town hall event in Mount Laurel on Thursday, Governor Christie declined to take a position on the magazine limit.
“If they pass a bill like that and it comes to my desk, I have 45 days to read the fine print and talk to experts,” he said in response to a question.
“Here’s my view on this: It is a very emotional issue on both sides. Gun control and the Second Amendment are enormously emotional, combustible issues,” the Republican governor said. “My job as governor is to be the adult in the room.”
Christie vetoed many of the bills aimed at reducing gun violence that passed the Legislature last year, including the Democrats’ centerpiece legislation that would have overhauled the background check process for prospective gun buyers. He also rejected a ban on .50-caliber weapons – a measure that he had proposed only months earlier, but which he said went beyond the ban that he had called for.
Source: www.northjersey.com
3/14/2014 08:13:00 AM
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he entire US power grid could be shut down for more than a month if just nine of the over 55,000 electric substations placed throughout the nation were sabotaged by terrorists or other criminals, according to a new report.
A study by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) found that just a handful of American substations provide much of the electricity that flows to large swaths of the country, sources familiar with the analysis told Rebecca Smith of the Wall Street Journal. Aside from nuclear power plants there are no federal rules requiring utilities to be protected.
This study, though, found that disabling just nine of these substations could leave much of the country without power for weeks, or possibly even months. There are an estimated 30 “crucial” substations that rely on large power transformers to increase the electricity’s voltage, thereby giving it the capability to move long distances.
The Journal report this week is only the first time the results of the study have been made public. Some officials have known about the results for months and have admitted that they would be open to updating security around the plants as well as changing the way electricity is delivered to Americans.
Former FERC chairman Jon Wellinghoff was one of the officials who briefed top US lawmakers on the contents of the report. He recommended that officials propose new security standards for the crucial facilities no later than June.
“There are probably less than 100 critical high voltage substations on our grid in this country that need to be protected from a physical attack,” he told the paper. “It is neither a monumental task, nor is it an inordinate sum of money that would be required to do so.”
The study was inspired by an apparent sniper attack on an electric power station in San Jose, California last April. Snipers opened fire on the power transformers, knocking out 17 and causing millions of dollars in damage. Officials avoided a regional blackout in this case by rerouting the voltage of the path.
No arrests have been made in the case and while the FBI has maintained that there is no evidence the shooting was the product of domestic terrorism, Wellinghoff remains unconvinced.
“This wasn’t an incident where Billy Bob and Joe decided, after a few brewskies, to come in and shoot up a substation,” he said, as quoted by Steve Johnson of the San Jose Mercury News. “This was an event that was well thought out, well planned and they targeted certain components.”
Still, the incident served as a reminder of how few stations are protected by much more than a night time security guard and a chain link fence. In a 2011 incident in Arizona, one transmission line failed, igniting the chain reaction that affected power for millions of people in Arizona and Southern California.
Paul Stockton, a former assistant secretary of defense and president of risk-assessment firm Cloud Peak Analytics, told the Journal that a new solution is overdue.
“The power grid, built over many decades in a benign environment, now faces a range of threats it was never designed to survive,” he said. “That’s got to be the focus going forward.”
A study by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) found that just a handful of American substations provide much of the electricity that flows to large swaths of the country, sources familiar with the analysis told Rebecca Smith of the Wall Street Journal. Aside from nuclear power plants there are no federal rules requiring utilities to be protected.
This study, though, found that disabling just nine of these substations could leave much of the country without power for weeks, or possibly even months. There are an estimated 30 “crucial” substations that rely on large power transformers to increase the electricity’s voltage, thereby giving it the capability to move long distances.
The Journal report this week is only the first time the results of the study have been made public. Some officials have known about the results for months and have admitted that they would be open to updating security around the plants as well as changing the way electricity is delivered to Americans.
Former FERC chairman Jon Wellinghoff was one of the officials who briefed top US lawmakers on the contents of the report. He recommended that officials propose new security standards for the crucial facilities no later than June.
“There are probably less than 100 critical high voltage substations on our grid in this country that need to be protected from a physical attack,” he told the paper. “It is neither a monumental task, nor is it an inordinate sum of money that would be required to do so.”
The study was inspired by an apparent sniper attack on an electric power station in San Jose, California last April. Snipers opened fire on the power transformers, knocking out 17 and causing millions of dollars in damage. Officials avoided a regional blackout in this case by rerouting the voltage of the path.
No arrests have been made in the case and while the FBI has maintained that there is no evidence the shooting was the product of domestic terrorism, Wellinghoff remains unconvinced.
“This wasn’t an incident where Billy Bob and Joe decided, after a few brewskies, to come in and shoot up a substation,” he said, as quoted by Steve Johnson of the San Jose Mercury News. “This was an event that was well thought out, well planned and they targeted certain components.”
Still, the incident served as a reminder of how few stations are protected by much more than a night time security guard and a chain link fence. In a 2011 incident in Arizona, one transmission line failed, igniting the chain reaction that affected power for millions of people in Arizona and Southern California.
Paul Stockton, a former assistant secretary of defense and president of risk-assessment firm Cloud Peak Analytics, told the Journal that a new solution is overdue.
“The power grid, built over many decades in a benign environment, now faces a range of threats it was never designed to survive,” he said. “That’s got to be the focus going forward.”
3/14/2014 07:51:00 AM
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A new Chinese stealth fighter jet’s design includes details obtained in a Chinese cyber-spying operation conducted seven years ago against the F-35 Lightning II, according to a new report based on conversations with US military officials and contractors.
The Chinese espionage plot, dubbed Operation Byzantine Hades by US intelligence agencies, primarily targeted government as well as US industry. While the US Office of National Intelligence is known to have more details about the plot, Bill Gertz of the Washington Free Beacon reported that new Chinese planes have incorporated technology previously only found in the F-35.
A video posted on a Chinese military message board was reportedly the first evidence that such a theft had taken place. The websites featured images of a newer version of the J-20 stealth jet, a twin engine aircraft currently under development by the Chinese People Liberation’s Army.
The initial J-20 prototype was revealed in 2011, however the aircraft shown in the video was equipped with a new electro-optical targeting system under its nose, an updated coating that will help the plane hide from radar, and newly hidden engine nozzle, according to the Free Beacon.
Pentagon officials have said that the data was first taken by a Chinese military group called the Technical Reconnaissance Bureau based in Chengdu province. The information was then given to the Aviation Industry Corp. (AVIC). The AVIC then passed it on to a subsidiary, the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group, to incorporate the information into the new design.
The US military first began development on the F-35 in 2006. Since then, the stealth fighter has a reported 100 percent success rate in its weapons testing in recent years, according to Michael Brissenden of ABC news in Australia, although reliability issues with the plane mean its design is not yet complete.
The F-35 was designed to carry out ground attacks and air missions, with advanced sensors attached to make up for any maneuvering vulnerabilities. Richard Fisher, a specialist on Chinese weapon systems, told the Free Beacon that technology installed under the J-20’s nose is remarkably similar to the F-35’s sensors.
“This targeting system and a set of distributed high-power infrared sensors give the F-35 a previously unrivaled ‘situational awareness,’ but now it is clear that the J-20 will have a similar targeting system and its own set of distributed sensors,” he said.
“If as part of their espionage, China had also gained engineering insights into the F-35’s very advanced sensor systems, that could prove disastrous to its combat potential barring a rapid redesign and improvements before entering service.”
Last year US officials denied that the Chinese had gained an edge on American military capabilities, although they did not refute that cyber-espionage is becoming more common in the tense world of geopolitics.
“The viciousness, and just the volume of attacks, not only by the Chinese but Russians and others trying to get the blueprints of our most sensitive material is just breathtaking – and they’re getting better,” Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN.
“It costs billions and billions of dollars extra to try to make sure that we’re staying ahead of our adversaries with technology. When they steal it, they leap ahead. That means we have to invest more, and change that technology. It is a serious problem,” he said.
Source: RT.com
The Chinese espionage plot, dubbed Operation Byzantine Hades by US intelligence agencies, primarily targeted government as well as US industry. While the US Office of National Intelligence is known to have more details about the plot, Bill Gertz of the Washington Free Beacon reported that new Chinese planes have incorporated technology previously only found in the F-35.A video posted on a Chinese military message board was reportedly the first evidence that such a theft had taken place. The websites featured images of a newer version of the J-20 stealth jet, a twin engine aircraft currently under development by the Chinese People Liberation’s Army.
The initial J-20 prototype was revealed in 2011, however the aircraft shown in the video was equipped with a new electro-optical targeting system under its nose, an updated coating that will help the plane hide from radar, and newly hidden engine nozzle, according to the Free Beacon.
Pentagon officials have said that the data was first taken by a Chinese military group called the Technical Reconnaissance Bureau based in Chengdu province. The information was then given to the Aviation Industry Corp. (AVIC). The AVIC then passed it on to a subsidiary, the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group, to incorporate the information into the new design.
The US military first began development on the F-35 in 2006. Since then, the stealth fighter has a reported 100 percent success rate in its weapons testing in recent years, according to Michael Brissenden of ABC news in Australia, although reliability issues with the plane mean its design is not yet complete.
The F-35 was designed to carry out ground attacks and air missions, with advanced sensors attached to make up for any maneuvering vulnerabilities. Richard Fisher, a specialist on Chinese weapon systems, told the Free Beacon that technology installed under the J-20’s nose is remarkably similar to the F-35’s sensors.
“This targeting system and a set of distributed high-power infrared sensors give the F-35 a previously unrivaled ‘situational awareness,’ but now it is clear that the J-20 will have a similar targeting system and its own set of distributed sensors,” he said.
“If as part of their espionage, China had also gained engineering insights into the F-35’s very advanced sensor systems, that could prove disastrous to its combat potential barring a rapid redesign and improvements before entering service.”
Last year US officials denied that the Chinese had gained an edge on American military capabilities, although they did not refute that cyber-espionage is becoming more common in the tense world of geopolitics.
“The viciousness, and just the volume of attacks, not only by the Chinese but Russians and others trying to get the blueprints of our most sensitive material is just breathtaking – and they’re getting better,” Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN.
“It costs billions and billions of dollars extra to try to make sure that we’re staying ahead of our adversaries with technology. When they steal it, they leap ahead. That means we have to invest more, and change that technology. It is a serious problem,” he said.
Source: RT.com
March 12, 2014
3/12/2014 09:55:00 AM
No comments
The NYPD is the biggest police force in the country, with over 34,000 uniformed officers patrolling New York’s streets, and 51,000 employees overall — more than the FBI. It has a proposed budget of $4.6 billion for 2013, a figure that represents almost 15 percent of the entire city’s budget.
NYC’s population is a little over 8 million. That means that there are 4.18 police officers per 1,000 people. By comparison, Los Angeles, the second largest city in the U.S. with 3.8 million people, has only 9,895 officers–a ratio of 2.6 police per 1,000 people.
What has the NYPD been doing with all that cash and manpower? In addition to ticketing minorities for standing outside of their homes, spying on Muslims who live in New Jersey, abusing protesters, and gunning down black teens over weed, the NYPD has expanded into a massive global anti-terror operation with surveillance and military capabilities unparalleled in the history of US law enforcement.
In an email published by WikiLeaks, an FBI official joked about how shocked Americans would be if they knew how egregiously the NYPD is stomping all over their civil liberties. But what we already know is bad enough. Here’s a round-up of what the department has been up to lately.
1. “I Have My Own Army”
Last fall, Mayor Bloomberg famously bragged, ”I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world.” So far he’s refrained from imposing military rule on the city, at least in the white neighborhoods, but the department nevertheless boasts an impressive arsenal.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told “60 Minutes” that the NYPD could shoot down a plane last year. When asked for details at a press conference, Mayor Bloomberg basically told reporters to fuck off, saying, “The NYPD has lots of capabilities that you don’t know about and you won’t know about.”
The New York Times has reported that the department’s Harbor unit has 6 submarine drones; four cost $75,000 and the two others cost $120,000, according to the Times. They are developing a portable radar that can see under clothes in order to search for weapons. Militaristic “Hercules teams,” are deployed to random parts of the city armed with automatic weapons and body armor. Their explicitly stated role is to terrify people. In a piece by Popular Mechanics, detective Abad Nieves described the unit’s job thusly: “The response we usually get is, ‘Holy s—!’ [...] That’s the reaction we want. We are in the business of scaring people–we just want to scare the right people.”
Last year, one of us asked a heavily armed Hercules team member what they were up to at the Lincoln Center. “Keeping you safe!” he barked, rolling his eyes at our unbelievable stupidity.
2. Relentlessly Expanding Their Global Presence
Whether you’re overseas or across the river in Jersey, there’s no longer any need to watch “NYPD Blue” for a glimpse at the famed officers. You can simply walk outside. The force operates in 11 foreign cities, including London, Lyons, Hamburg, Tel Aviv and Toronto. This year they added Kfar Saba, Israel, to their list of conquests — there, the NYPD has its own office complete with a department insignia and a banner inside which reads, “The New York Police Department. The Greatest Police Department in the World.”
NYPD officers have flown to Afghanistan, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, and Guantanamo, where they have been known to conduct “special interrogations,” according to New York Magazine. Domestically, the NYPD collaborates with the FBI in Washington. Under Commissioner Kelly’s watch, and with the blessing of the CIA, the force has also built a hidden counterterrorism bureau, complete with a Global Intelligence Room and a security area protected by ballistic Sheetrock.
3. Spying on Muslims and Fabricating the Results
In a Pulitzer prize-winning investigative series the AP revealed a NYPD surveillance program that makes the FBI and CIA look like civil liberties crusaders. To recap: for years, the department has been monitoring mosques, restaurants where Muslims eat, Muslim student organizations, and combing through the electronic communications of Muslim students at more than 13 colleges. Their investigations revealed such insightful observations as the fact that adherents to Islam pray 5 times a day.
The department insisted that their blanket surveillance of whole communities based entirely on their religion was perfectly legal. Apparently even members of the FBI disagreed. A new book by journalist Ronald Kessler (reported in the Daily News) reveals:
“What never came out is that the FBI considers the NYPD’s intelligence gathering practices since 9/11 not only a waste of money but a violation of Americans’ rights,” wrote Kessler [...] “We will not be a party to it,” an FBI source told Kessler.
The Mayor’s response was so glib that 10 House Democrats called it “underhanded and unprofessional,” reported the AP. When asked about criticisms by College Presidents about department surveillance of Muslim student websites, Bloomberg said, among other dismissive things, “I don’t know why keeping the country safe is antithetical to the values of Yale.”
Any time that the department is criticized for their civil liberties abuses, the mayor and police commissioner solemnly point to the number of terror attacks they’ve foiled since 9/11 — 14, a number trustingly repeated in the media. But ProPublica investigative reporter Justin Elliot went through the trouble of looking into the administration’s claim and found that of the 14 successes cited, only two could be credited to the NYPD. In the other instances, the plots were stopped by other agencies, or weren’t serious threats at all, or were instigated by NYPD informants providing alleged terrorists with money and bomb-making materials.
Meanwhile, a deposition on the Muslim surveillance program revealed that in six years of spying, the NYPD’s demographics unit had not come up with a single lead.
4. Targeting Activists
“They said they’d make me a deal,” Diego Ibañez, a 23-year-old Sunset Park resident, tells AlterNet. The deal, barked at him while he was in handcuffs, was that he erase the footage he’d captured of the cops arresting two young African American boys in the subway or that he could join them in jail. The “Cop Watch” initiative, in which New Yorkers exercise their legal right to film the police, has grown in response to increased police brutality, but the NYPD has been targeting anybody who tries to hold them accountable.
After spending nearly an hour under arrest, Ibañez walked away from his interaction with the police with a summons for blocking pedestrian traffic, a catch-all summons that, given that New York has a massive population crammed into the five boroughs, the police can literally use whenever they choose, which was more than 35,000 times last year. When he complained that a summons wasn’t part of the deal, the police said the deal was that he wouldn’t go to jail–that night.
“They said that filming the police was illegal, which it isn’t. But if it were illegal, then why didn’t they charge me for that?” Ibañez asked.
For more established Cop-Watchers, the police are more aggressive. One Cop Watch duo, Christina Gonzalez and Matthew Swaye, found fliers with their photos posted in police precincts criminalizing them as “professional agitators.” The NYPD targeted another long-time Harlem Cop Watcher, Joseph Hayden, slapping him with a charge of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, which means he faces two to seven years of jail time. The alleged weapons, according to Hayden and his laywer, were a souvenir Yankees baseball bat and a broken penknife that the police found in Hayden’s car after they scoured it for any excuse to nail him.
The suppression of Cop Watch is just the tip of the iceberg. The NYPD has used counter terrorism tactics including monitoring, targeting and mass arrests against activists involved in nonviolent social movements across New York City.
5. Constant Intrusion and Surveillance
In the decade after 9/11, Americans’ privacy rights have been violated in a variety of technologically intrusive ways, with the help of everything from spy drones to wiretaps. But few programs package together so many potential privacy infringements as ambitiously as the Domain Awareness System, (DAS) created by the NYPD in partnership with Microsoft.
24/7, DAS collects footage from CCTV cameras all over the city, checking the information against multiple databases, arrest records and 911 calls, and running it through license plate reader software that can track the movement of cars, and even take radiation readings. The department decides what information to archive and for how long. “Video will be held for 30 days and then deleted unless the NYPD chooses to archive it. Metadata and license plate info collected by DAS will be retained for five years, and unspecified “environmental data” will be stored indefinitely,” writes Fast Company.
Said Mayor Bloomberg at a press conference, “What you’re seeing is what the private sector has used for a long time. If you walk around with a cell phone, the cell phone company knows where you are…We’re not your mom and pop’s police department anymore.”
But they promise not to spy on Muslims or anything crazy like that! The information is analyzed at a centralized location in downtown Manhattan. Pam Martens reported last year that the surveillance control center has spots for representatives of those famous crime-fighters, Wall Street’s big banks. Reporter Neal Ungerleider from Fast Company also says he saw seats reserved for the Federal Reserve, Bank of New York, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, and Citigroup.
At a press conference, Bloomberg also said that the department has plans to export the technology to other police departments, for a profit. So, the tax money spent enriching Microsoft will be recouped if all goes according to plan and the entire nation falls under DAS surveillance in a timely manner.
The DAS system is the logical culmination of a years-long campaign to load up Manhattan with surveillance cameras. Impressed by how thoroughly the city of London tracks the movements of its citizens, Mayor Bloomberg initiated the lower Manhattan security initiative in 2005 – expanded to midtown a few years later — whose primary objective was to cover Manhattan, underground and above ground, with cameras.
6. Police Brutality
Last winter, NYPD officer Richard Haste murdered an 18-year-old unarmed boy named Ramarley Graham in his bathroom. Video footage shows the teenager calmly walking into his parents’ home in the Bronx, quickly followed by a team of police officers who broke down the door without a warrant. According to witnesses, the police officers then rushed into the bathroom and shot and killed Graham at close range.
Graham’s case is but one of thousands of police brutality cases leveled against the NYPD. Over the last decade, brutality lawsuits and other claims against the NYPD have cost NYC taxpayers nearly $1 billion in settlements, reports the AP. One officer was sued seven times for using excessive force and brutality during arrests.
In one video taped assault in the Bronx last year, a police officer punched 19-year-old Luis Solivan in the face while another restrained him. According to Solivan, the police duo followed him to his house from the corner store, broke down the door without a warrant, pepper sprayed him, punched him in the face, and then handcuffed him and threw his head into the wall so hard that it left a hole.
In May, the police made headlines over the brutal beating of 19-year-old Bronx resident named Jateik Reed. A video captured four police officers kicking, punching and beating the the teenager with a police baton as he lay on the ground handcuffed (read Kristen Gwynne’s reporting on the incident here.)
Some of the cases of brutality are more creative, if not less sadistic. Another cop “strangled” a man’s penis with the drawstring of his pants, causing lacerations along the shaft that required emergency room attention. And, just in case you thought police brutality was limited to the human species, think again. Two NYPD officers were recently caught on camera in September shooting a homeless man’s dog.
But if you call death what it is–murder–the police take to the slanderous allegations none too kindly. In July, a duo of plainclothes officers wielded a pair of paint brushes to cover over a mural in Inwood that called the NYPD murderers, because, according to the wall’s property owner, “the police were upset about the mural and wanted it changed.”
7. Just a Numbers Game
For four friends in Brooklyn, it was supposed to be a relaxing 4th of July–just a few beers outside on the stoop–until the undercover police car showed up. In a desperate effort to hit their quotas, the two officers ticketed all four for public drinking–on their own front steps.
The NYPD’s quota system, which it claims it has already abolished, is rife with such absurdity. Recently, one cop was busted citing dead people with traffic violation tickets in an effort to meet his quotas. Another picked up a grandmother, who had never been arrested in her life, for prostitution when the woman was on her way to the hospital for an asthma attack.
Most insidiously, one former NYPD narcotics detective testified last year that he regularly watched fellow police officers plant drugs on people in order to hit their arrest quotas.
In April, a Federal judge agreed to a class action lawsuit filed against the NYPD under the allegation that the quota system “leads street cops to hand out summonses even when no crime or violation has occurred just to meet productivity demands from their bosses.”
Quotas lead to an absurdly high number of summonses–a half million per year–many of which are so ridiculous that about half are dismissed the moment the accused arrives at the courthouse. But the real problem is that they are racist. Think about it. You impose an absurdly high “goal” for the number of people police officers must stop in a multiracial city where power and money is still concentrated in the hands of whites, and you get racism faster than a Black man gets busted for shoplifting in Bloomingdales. Even a criminal court judge in Brooklyn admitted this fact when faced with yet another defendant charged with drinking in public this past June.
“As hard as I try,” he wrote, “I cannot recall ever arraigning a white defendant for such a violation.”
In 2011, the NYPD issued nearly 125,000 summonses for drinking in public–some issued against people who were sitting in the doorway of their own homes. Drinking in public was the most-issued summons and about a quarter of the half-million summons the force issued in total.
And then there were the additional 700,000 “stop and frisks”, more than 80 percent committed against black or brown residents. The department has defended the practice as an effective way to get guns off the street, but guns are found in a minuscle number of cases, less than 0.2 percent according to the NYCLU. Nine out of 10 people stopped have been innocent. What the practice does accomplish, is “corrode trust between the police and communities, which makes everyone less safe,” as the NYCLU points out. The searches are often abusive, violent and demeaning.
Then again, sometimes the police harassment isn’t motivated by quotas at all. Sometimes it’s just the result of men suffering from the NYPD badge’s most common side effect: a twisted Napoleonic complex. Such was the case when two NYPD officers found 14-year-old Rayshawn Moreno tossing eggs on Halloween in his Staten Island neighborhood. To teach the child a lesson in crime and punishment, the cops picked him up, drove him to a swamp, took off his shoes and shirt, beat him a little, and then dumped him in the water. Good thing the boy knew how to swim.
8. Above the Law
In July, the police discovered a missing man bound and gagged in a Queens garage owned by NYPD detective Ondre Johnson. The evidence was staggering: the police traced a ransom call to a phone line in Johnson’s house. The kidnapped man’s hands were were bound with zip ties, a common substitute for handcuffs used by the NYPD. But despite the considerable suspicion, Johnson wasn’t even called in for questioning. Instead, everyone else connected with the house was hauled off to the precinct, while the police simply took their fellow officer at his word.
This case was far from the first time that a police officer has enjoyed the privilege of being protected by his fellow police officers when he may have broken the law. The Blue Shield of Silence is still well in effect in New York City, as a New York state Supreme Court justice recently discovered firsthand. After being karate-chopped in the throat by an enraged police officer during a protest, the judge tried to press charges, only to find that all the other officers on scene lied to protect the assaulting officer.
“For this to happen, for me to be attacked by a cop — and for the cops to do this huge cover up — it’s really changing my view of the force,” judge Thomas Raffaele told The Huffington Post.
Sometimes the extent of the cover ups are shocking. In 2001, for example, police officer Joseph Gray killed a four-year-old boy, a pregnant mother, and the boy’s aunt when he drove drunk through the streets of Sunset Park in a police van after hours of marathon drinking in a police precinct’s parking lot. He was eventually charged with manslaughter, much to the chagrin of his fellow officers, who had botched or destroyed various pieces of evidence throughout the investigation, including leaving full sections of the accident report blank, destroying on-the-scene photographs, and asking Gray which blood alcohol test he thought he could “beat.”
Another NYPD officer was recently arrested for trafficking firearms out of his precinct in the East Village, stealing guns from the lockers of his fellow officers in order to sell them to a police informer who then sold the guns right back to the department at a profit.
When police officers’ misconduct does actually land them in a jury trial, they are rarely convicted. Last summer, an NYPD officer was found not guilty of rape after he walked a woman home while he was on duty, tucked her into bed, snuggled with her while she was naked, and then, when she woke up the next morning with the memory of having been raped, assured her that he’d used a condom in a tape recorded conversation.
Police officers who break the code of silence often encounter fierce repercussions. When police officer Adrian Schoolcraft captured internal corruption on a hidden video camera and leaked the tapes to the press, the NYPD locked him up in a psychiatric ward.
9. Protecting Wall Street from Women Wielding Underwear
The Sunday before last, the NYPD arrested Code Pink member Rae Abileah for waving a pink bra over her head outside of a Bank of America branch during a protest against Spectra Pipeline, which the bank is allegedly financing, according to the Raw Story. As a diarist on the Daily Kos quipped, “An anonymous source, who quoted an anonymous city official, said that Wall Street criminals are now safe to wreak havoc on our financial system without fear of reprisal from women who toss underwear.” On the anniversary of OWS last Monday, police arrested around 200 protestors.
At least Wall Street has paid for the favor! JP Morgan’s $4.6 million donation to the NYPD got attention last year because of its proximity to the Occupy protests (although the bank actually made the donation before the start of OWS), but donations by 1 percent corporations to the force are an annual part of the companies’ gift-giving. In 2009-2010, Goldman Sachs, Barclays Capital, Bank of America and Murdoch’s News Corp all gave over $75,000 to the force.
Source: Alternet.org
NYC’s population is a little over 8 million. That means that there are 4.18 police officers per 1,000 people. By comparison, Los Angeles, the second largest city in the U.S. with 3.8 million people, has only 9,895 officers–a ratio of 2.6 police per 1,000 people.What has the NYPD been doing with all that cash and manpower? In addition to ticketing minorities for standing outside of their homes, spying on Muslims who live in New Jersey, abusing protesters, and gunning down black teens over weed, the NYPD has expanded into a massive global anti-terror operation with surveillance and military capabilities unparalleled in the history of US law enforcement.
In an email published by WikiLeaks, an FBI official joked about how shocked Americans would be if they knew how egregiously the NYPD is stomping all over their civil liberties. But what we already know is bad enough. Here’s a round-up of what the department has been up to lately.
1. “I Have My Own Army”
Last fall, Mayor Bloomberg famously bragged, ”I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world.” So far he’s refrained from imposing military rule on the city, at least in the white neighborhoods, but the department nevertheless boasts an impressive arsenal.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told “60 Minutes” that the NYPD could shoot down a plane last year. When asked for details at a press conference, Mayor Bloomberg basically told reporters to fuck off, saying, “The NYPD has lots of capabilities that you don’t know about and you won’t know about.”
The New York Times has reported that the department’s Harbor unit has 6 submarine drones; four cost $75,000 and the two others cost $120,000, according to the Times. They are developing a portable radar that can see under clothes in order to search for weapons. Militaristic “Hercules teams,” are deployed to random parts of the city armed with automatic weapons and body armor. Their explicitly stated role is to terrify people. In a piece by Popular Mechanics, detective Abad Nieves described the unit’s job thusly: “The response we usually get is, ‘Holy s—!’ [...] That’s the reaction we want. We are in the business of scaring people–we just want to scare the right people.”
Last year, one of us asked a heavily armed Hercules team member what they were up to at the Lincoln Center. “Keeping you safe!” he barked, rolling his eyes at our unbelievable stupidity.
2. Relentlessly Expanding Their Global Presence
Whether you’re overseas or across the river in Jersey, there’s no longer any need to watch “NYPD Blue” for a glimpse at the famed officers. You can simply walk outside. The force operates in 11 foreign cities, including London, Lyons, Hamburg, Tel Aviv and Toronto. This year they added Kfar Saba, Israel, to their list of conquests — there, the NYPD has its own office complete with a department insignia and a banner inside which reads, “The New York Police Department. The Greatest Police Department in the World.”
NYPD officers have flown to Afghanistan, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, and Guantanamo, where they have been known to conduct “special interrogations,” according to New York Magazine. Domestically, the NYPD collaborates with the FBI in Washington. Under Commissioner Kelly’s watch, and with the blessing of the CIA, the force has also built a hidden counterterrorism bureau, complete with a Global Intelligence Room and a security area protected by ballistic Sheetrock.
3. Spying on Muslims and Fabricating the Results
In a Pulitzer prize-winning investigative series the AP revealed a NYPD surveillance program that makes the FBI and CIA look like civil liberties crusaders. To recap: for years, the department has been monitoring mosques, restaurants where Muslims eat, Muslim student organizations, and combing through the electronic communications of Muslim students at more than 13 colleges. Their investigations revealed such insightful observations as the fact that adherents to Islam pray 5 times a day.
The department insisted that their blanket surveillance of whole communities based entirely on their religion was perfectly legal. Apparently even members of the FBI disagreed. A new book by journalist Ronald Kessler (reported in the Daily News) reveals:
“What never came out is that the FBI considers the NYPD’s intelligence gathering practices since 9/11 not only a waste of money but a violation of Americans’ rights,” wrote Kessler [...] “We will not be a party to it,” an FBI source told Kessler.
The Mayor’s response was so glib that 10 House Democrats called it “underhanded and unprofessional,” reported the AP. When asked about criticisms by College Presidents about department surveillance of Muslim student websites, Bloomberg said, among other dismissive things, “I don’t know why keeping the country safe is antithetical to the values of Yale.”
Any time that the department is criticized for their civil liberties abuses, the mayor and police commissioner solemnly point to the number of terror attacks they’ve foiled since 9/11 — 14, a number trustingly repeated in the media. But ProPublica investigative reporter Justin Elliot went through the trouble of looking into the administration’s claim and found that of the 14 successes cited, only two could be credited to the NYPD. In the other instances, the plots were stopped by other agencies, or weren’t serious threats at all, or were instigated by NYPD informants providing alleged terrorists with money and bomb-making materials.
Meanwhile, a deposition on the Muslim surveillance program revealed that in six years of spying, the NYPD’s demographics unit had not come up with a single lead.
4. Targeting Activists
“They said they’d make me a deal,” Diego Ibañez, a 23-year-old Sunset Park resident, tells AlterNet. The deal, barked at him while he was in handcuffs, was that he erase the footage he’d captured of the cops arresting two young African American boys in the subway or that he could join them in jail. The “Cop Watch” initiative, in which New Yorkers exercise their legal right to film the police, has grown in response to increased police brutality, but the NYPD has been targeting anybody who tries to hold them accountable.
After spending nearly an hour under arrest, Ibañez walked away from his interaction with the police with a summons for blocking pedestrian traffic, a catch-all summons that, given that New York has a massive population crammed into the five boroughs, the police can literally use whenever they choose, which was more than 35,000 times last year. When he complained that a summons wasn’t part of the deal, the police said the deal was that he wouldn’t go to jail–that night.
“They said that filming the police was illegal, which it isn’t. But if it were illegal, then why didn’t they charge me for that?” Ibañez asked.
For more established Cop-Watchers, the police are more aggressive. One Cop Watch duo, Christina Gonzalez and Matthew Swaye, found fliers with their photos posted in police precincts criminalizing them as “professional agitators.” The NYPD targeted another long-time Harlem Cop Watcher, Joseph Hayden, slapping him with a charge of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, which means he faces two to seven years of jail time. The alleged weapons, according to Hayden and his laywer, were a souvenir Yankees baseball bat and a broken penknife that the police found in Hayden’s car after they scoured it for any excuse to nail him.
The suppression of Cop Watch is just the tip of the iceberg. The NYPD has used counter terrorism tactics including monitoring, targeting and mass arrests against activists involved in nonviolent social movements across New York City.
5. Constant Intrusion and Surveillance
In the decade after 9/11, Americans’ privacy rights have been violated in a variety of technologically intrusive ways, with the help of everything from spy drones to wiretaps. But few programs package together so many potential privacy infringements as ambitiously as the Domain Awareness System, (DAS) created by the NYPD in partnership with Microsoft.
24/7, DAS collects footage from CCTV cameras all over the city, checking the information against multiple databases, arrest records and 911 calls, and running it through license plate reader software that can track the movement of cars, and even take radiation readings. The department decides what information to archive and for how long. “Video will be held for 30 days and then deleted unless the NYPD chooses to archive it. Metadata and license plate info collected by DAS will be retained for five years, and unspecified “environmental data” will be stored indefinitely,” writes Fast Company.
Said Mayor Bloomberg at a press conference, “What you’re seeing is what the private sector has used for a long time. If you walk around with a cell phone, the cell phone company knows where you are…We’re not your mom and pop’s police department anymore.”
But they promise not to spy on Muslims or anything crazy like that! The information is analyzed at a centralized location in downtown Manhattan. Pam Martens reported last year that the surveillance control center has spots for representatives of those famous crime-fighters, Wall Street’s big banks. Reporter Neal Ungerleider from Fast Company also says he saw seats reserved for the Federal Reserve, Bank of New York, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, and Citigroup.
At a press conference, Bloomberg also said that the department has plans to export the technology to other police departments, for a profit. So, the tax money spent enriching Microsoft will be recouped if all goes according to plan and the entire nation falls under DAS surveillance in a timely manner.
The DAS system is the logical culmination of a years-long campaign to load up Manhattan with surveillance cameras. Impressed by how thoroughly the city of London tracks the movements of its citizens, Mayor Bloomberg initiated the lower Manhattan security initiative in 2005 – expanded to midtown a few years later — whose primary objective was to cover Manhattan, underground and above ground, with cameras.
6. Police Brutality
Last winter, NYPD officer Richard Haste murdered an 18-year-old unarmed boy named Ramarley Graham in his bathroom. Video footage shows the teenager calmly walking into his parents’ home in the Bronx, quickly followed by a team of police officers who broke down the door without a warrant. According to witnesses, the police officers then rushed into the bathroom and shot and killed Graham at close range.
Graham’s case is but one of thousands of police brutality cases leveled against the NYPD. Over the last decade, brutality lawsuits and other claims against the NYPD have cost NYC taxpayers nearly $1 billion in settlements, reports the AP. One officer was sued seven times for using excessive force and brutality during arrests.
In one video taped assault in the Bronx last year, a police officer punched 19-year-old Luis Solivan in the face while another restrained him. According to Solivan, the police duo followed him to his house from the corner store, broke down the door without a warrant, pepper sprayed him, punched him in the face, and then handcuffed him and threw his head into the wall so hard that it left a hole.
In May, the police made headlines over the brutal beating of 19-year-old Bronx resident named Jateik Reed. A video captured four police officers kicking, punching and beating the the teenager with a police baton as he lay on the ground handcuffed (read Kristen Gwynne’s reporting on the incident here.)
Some of the cases of brutality are more creative, if not less sadistic. Another cop “strangled” a man’s penis with the drawstring of his pants, causing lacerations along the shaft that required emergency room attention. And, just in case you thought police brutality was limited to the human species, think again. Two NYPD officers were recently caught on camera in September shooting a homeless man’s dog.
But if you call death what it is–murder–the police take to the slanderous allegations none too kindly. In July, a duo of plainclothes officers wielded a pair of paint brushes to cover over a mural in Inwood that called the NYPD murderers, because, according to the wall’s property owner, “the police were upset about the mural and wanted it changed.”
7. Just a Numbers Game
For four friends in Brooklyn, it was supposed to be a relaxing 4th of July–just a few beers outside on the stoop–until the undercover police car showed up. In a desperate effort to hit their quotas, the two officers ticketed all four for public drinking–on their own front steps.
The NYPD’s quota system, which it claims it has already abolished, is rife with such absurdity. Recently, one cop was busted citing dead people with traffic violation tickets in an effort to meet his quotas. Another picked up a grandmother, who had never been arrested in her life, for prostitution when the woman was on her way to the hospital for an asthma attack.
Most insidiously, one former NYPD narcotics detective testified last year that he regularly watched fellow police officers plant drugs on people in order to hit their arrest quotas.
In April, a Federal judge agreed to a class action lawsuit filed against the NYPD under the allegation that the quota system “leads street cops to hand out summonses even when no crime or violation has occurred just to meet productivity demands from their bosses.”
Quotas lead to an absurdly high number of summonses–a half million per year–many of which are so ridiculous that about half are dismissed the moment the accused arrives at the courthouse. But the real problem is that they are racist. Think about it. You impose an absurdly high “goal” for the number of people police officers must stop in a multiracial city where power and money is still concentrated in the hands of whites, and you get racism faster than a Black man gets busted for shoplifting in Bloomingdales. Even a criminal court judge in Brooklyn admitted this fact when faced with yet another defendant charged with drinking in public this past June.
“As hard as I try,” he wrote, “I cannot recall ever arraigning a white defendant for such a violation.”
In 2011, the NYPD issued nearly 125,000 summonses for drinking in public–some issued against people who were sitting in the doorway of their own homes. Drinking in public was the most-issued summons and about a quarter of the half-million summons the force issued in total.
And then there were the additional 700,000 “stop and frisks”, more than 80 percent committed against black or brown residents. The department has defended the practice as an effective way to get guns off the street, but guns are found in a minuscle number of cases, less than 0.2 percent according to the NYCLU. Nine out of 10 people stopped have been innocent. What the practice does accomplish, is “corrode trust between the police and communities, which makes everyone less safe,” as the NYCLU points out. The searches are often abusive, violent and demeaning.
Then again, sometimes the police harassment isn’t motivated by quotas at all. Sometimes it’s just the result of men suffering from the NYPD badge’s most common side effect: a twisted Napoleonic complex. Such was the case when two NYPD officers found 14-year-old Rayshawn Moreno tossing eggs on Halloween in his Staten Island neighborhood. To teach the child a lesson in crime and punishment, the cops picked him up, drove him to a swamp, took off his shoes and shirt, beat him a little, and then dumped him in the water. Good thing the boy knew how to swim.
8. Above the Law
In July, the police discovered a missing man bound and gagged in a Queens garage owned by NYPD detective Ondre Johnson. The evidence was staggering: the police traced a ransom call to a phone line in Johnson’s house. The kidnapped man’s hands were were bound with zip ties, a common substitute for handcuffs used by the NYPD. But despite the considerable suspicion, Johnson wasn’t even called in for questioning. Instead, everyone else connected with the house was hauled off to the precinct, while the police simply took their fellow officer at his word.
This case was far from the first time that a police officer has enjoyed the privilege of being protected by his fellow police officers when he may have broken the law. The Blue Shield of Silence is still well in effect in New York City, as a New York state Supreme Court justice recently discovered firsthand. After being karate-chopped in the throat by an enraged police officer during a protest, the judge tried to press charges, only to find that all the other officers on scene lied to protect the assaulting officer.
“For this to happen, for me to be attacked by a cop — and for the cops to do this huge cover up — it’s really changing my view of the force,” judge Thomas Raffaele told The Huffington Post.
Sometimes the extent of the cover ups are shocking. In 2001, for example, police officer Joseph Gray killed a four-year-old boy, a pregnant mother, and the boy’s aunt when he drove drunk through the streets of Sunset Park in a police van after hours of marathon drinking in a police precinct’s parking lot. He was eventually charged with manslaughter, much to the chagrin of his fellow officers, who had botched or destroyed various pieces of evidence throughout the investigation, including leaving full sections of the accident report blank, destroying on-the-scene photographs, and asking Gray which blood alcohol test he thought he could “beat.”
Another NYPD officer was recently arrested for trafficking firearms out of his precinct in the East Village, stealing guns from the lockers of his fellow officers in order to sell them to a police informer who then sold the guns right back to the department at a profit.
When police officers’ misconduct does actually land them in a jury trial, they are rarely convicted. Last summer, an NYPD officer was found not guilty of rape after he walked a woman home while he was on duty, tucked her into bed, snuggled with her while she was naked, and then, when she woke up the next morning with the memory of having been raped, assured her that he’d used a condom in a tape recorded conversation.
Police officers who break the code of silence often encounter fierce repercussions. When police officer Adrian Schoolcraft captured internal corruption on a hidden video camera and leaked the tapes to the press, the NYPD locked him up in a psychiatric ward.
9. Protecting Wall Street from Women Wielding Underwear
The Sunday before last, the NYPD arrested Code Pink member Rae Abileah for waving a pink bra over her head outside of a Bank of America branch during a protest against Spectra Pipeline, which the bank is allegedly financing, according to the Raw Story. As a diarist on the Daily Kos quipped, “An anonymous source, who quoted an anonymous city official, said that Wall Street criminals are now safe to wreak havoc on our financial system without fear of reprisal from women who toss underwear.” On the anniversary of OWS last Monday, police arrested around 200 protestors.
At least Wall Street has paid for the favor! JP Morgan’s $4.6 million donation to the NYPD got attention last year because of its proximity to the Occupy protests (although the bank actually made the donation before the start of OWS), but donations by 1 percent corporations to the force are an annual part of the companies’ gift-giving. In 2009-2010, Goldman Sachs, Barclays Capital, Bank of America and Murdoch’s News Corp all gave over $75,000 to the force.
Source: Alternet.org
3/12/2014 09:45:00 AM
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Source: APNEWS.com
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon owners of a 22-pound housecat who trapped them in their bedroom after attacking their baby say they're not giving up on their pet and are getting it medical attention and therapy.
Two days after police arrived to subdue the 4-year-old part-Himalayan cat, owner Lee Palmer of Portland says he's taking the feline to a veterinarian. A pet psychologist also is due at the house to see the cat, named Lux.
Palmer says the animal attacked after the 7-month-old child pulled its tail. The baby wasn't injured.
On the 911 call, the cat can be heard screeching in the background as Palmer says in a panicked voice: "He's charging us. He's at our bedroom door." Palmer also tells the dispatcher the cat has a "history of violence."
Officers used a dog snare to capture the cat, and placed it in a crate.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon owners of a 22-pound housecat who trapped them in their bedroom after attacking their baby say they're not giving up on their pet and are getting it medical attention and therapy.
Two days after police arrived to subdue the 4-year-old part-Himalayan cat, owner Lee Palmer of Portland says he's taking the feline to a veterinarian. A pet psychologist also is due at the house to see the cat, named Lux.
Palmer says the animal attacked after the 7-month-old child pulled its tail. The baby wasn't injured.On the 911 call, the cat can be heard screeching in the background as Palmer says in a panicked voice: "He's charging us. He's at our bedroom door." Palmer also tells the dispatcher the cat has a "history of violence."
Officers used a dog snare to capture the cat, and placed it in a crate.
3/12/2014 09:37:00 AM
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JoAnne Miller was shot and killed by her husband, a state trooper, on Friday in Montgomery County, Pa. Image credit: YouTubeThe woman was 22 weeks pregnant at the time of the shooting; unfortunately the baby did not survive the incident despite efforts to save it at the Mercy Suburban Hospital.
The officer, Joseph Miller, was apparently cleaning his gun when it accidentally went off, killing his wife. The police have issued a statement claiming that the shooting was accidental, this despite there being no actual investigation into the incident yet.
The shooting took place at the couple’s home on the 3000 block of Stoney Creek Road in East Norriton Township, the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office said.
According to Patch.com
“Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman and East Norriton Township Police Chief Karyl Kates have opened a joint investigation into the shooting.”
The officer has not been detained as of yet, proving once again that somehow police and other government agents are immune to the laws which they enforce on the rest of us. According to the legal dictionary, an act of involuntary manslaughter consists of
“In most states involuntary manslaughter results from an improper use of reasonable care or skill while performing a legal act…”
What the officer has done clearly constitutes involuntary manslaughter but it is likely -considering it will be his fellow policemen investigating him- that he will not be charged with a crime.
March 11, 2014
3/11/2014 09:20:00 AM
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A man diagnosed with autism and learning difficulties was allegedly assaulted by police outside his home, on 20th February.33 year old Faruk Ali has severe autism, but has always enjoyed helping the binmen by putting out the bins for them outside his family home in Luton. On February 20th, he put on his slippers and went outside to do just that. But this time he was met by two uniformed police officers who thought he ‘looked suspicious’.
Neighbours claim to have seen the officers push Faruk into the wheelie bins, pin him to the ground and chase him, screaming, into the house. The family say they witnessed police punch Faruk once inside the house.
The Bedfordshire Police officers claimed they believed Faruk was committing a burglary at the time of the incident, despite the fact he was wearing slippers and a badge identifying him as autistic.
Faruk’s brother Dhobir told the Mirror:
“The family has been traumatised by the whole experience. Faruk hasn’t actually recovered yet, he’s still traumatised.
“He is scared to leave the house, he has become more anxious and agitated and he is terrified every time he sees the police.
“When he came in the house with the police behind him I saw the bruises and cuts and straight away knew what had happened to him.
“Why did the police use such force? They said he looked suspicious but he was wearing slippers at the time and he was wearing a big coat.
“The officers in question have not been suspended from duty and they did not report this incident to the office immediately after the event.
“We don’t really know if the police are taking it seriously or not. We want to see these officers suspended.
“The fact of the matter is my brother is not the only one who suffers from autism in Luton and we want to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Witness Musthafa Hussain claimed:
“They dragged him, they punched him, they held him hard. It was outrageous.”
The incident is being investigated by Bedforshire Police, and overseen by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) – but despite several witnesses, and the seriousness of the allegations, the officers involved have not been suspended while the investigation takes place.
The decision not to suspend the officers was met with anger. The Ali family held a public meeting in Luton this week, where it was revealed that Faruk had been a victim of a similar attack by police in 2012, and that the police officers involved in the February attack did not immediately report the incident to their superiors.
Local Police and Crime Commisioner Olly Martin’s attended the meeting and told local press that it had all the hallmarks of a hate crime:
“My agenda is about trying to get confidence to people to report hate crime.“When you have something like this, which on the face of it could be presented as a hate crime, it undermines the role I am trying to do in terms of improving the outcomes for victims and giving them the confidence to report in the first place.”
Bedfordshire Police said:
“Bedfordshire Police is sorry for the distress Mr Ali and his family feel regarding the actions officers took due to their concerns for Mr Ali’s wellbeing on February 20 in Whitby Road, Luton.”
A spokesman added: “This incident is being taken seriously and an investigation has been launched by the Beds, Cambs and Herts Professional Standards Department which will be supervised by the IPCC.”
After mass outcry, it was announced on Monday 10th March that the officers involved would be taken off public facing duties while the investigation takes place – while the disabled community were told to maintain their confidence in the police force.
But why on earth should disabled people have any faith in the police?
There have been more than 333 suspicious deaths in police custody since 1998…and zero officers convicted. Here are some of those who lost their lives, and whose families are still seeking justice.
3/11/2014 09:13:00 AM
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Despite a new city law in Sunnyvale, Cali., requiring gun owners get rid of their so-called “high capacity” magazines or face fines or arrest, none of the owners of said magazines have turned them in to police.
At midnight on Thursday, Sunnyvale began implementing a new law that requires residents with rifle magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition to dispose of them or else, but the law reportedly failed to produce the intended effect.
“The Oakland Tribune reported Saturday that since Sunnyvale’s ban went into effect midnight Thursday, not one of the now-illegal magazines has been turned in,” the Associated Press reports.
In Sunnyvale, a person caught with a “high capacity” magazine could be subject to a misdemeanor fine of up to $1,000, six months in jail, or both. The city is one of two Californian communities promoting a ban on magazines, the other being San Francisco, whose ban is set to take effect April 7.
While it’s possible gun owners are openly defying the law, as many have done in Connecticut, it is also possible gun owners are holding out to make a profit or break even.
“Owners had the choice of allowing police to destroy the magazines, sell them out of state or to a licensed gun dealer, or move them out of town,” writes Josh Richman for the Oakland Tribune.
One Sunnyvale resident told Richman he had never been in trouble with the law, but that the new ordinance would have turned him into a criminal overnight.
“I’ve lived here in Sunnyvale for more than 40 years and I’ve never had so much as a parking ticket,” Leonard Fyock, a 67-year-old Sunnyvale resident, stated.
Fyock said he was able to get his magazines out of town before the ban took effect, but that he hopes “somewhere down the line this will get overturned.”
Though the law technically criminalizes anyone in possession of the newly-banned magazines, the city is still encouraging people to show up to the police station and hand them over.
“Barring any unusual circumstances, we wouldn’t cite people for voluntarily turning in their large-capacity magazines to public safety even though it is legally possible at this time to cite them,” city spokeswoman Jennifer Garnett said.
Former Sunnyvale Mayor Tony Spitaleri, the prime mover of the law, acknowledged the ban essentially criminalizes law-abiding citizens and that the law is flawed because anybody who wants to could transport a “high-capacity” magazine into city limits. Still, he thinks the city will be better off. “It doesn’t move the needle – yet, but it always starts somewhere,” Spitaleri said.
Though the measure banning magazines passed with a 67 percent vote last year, the lack of residents who have complied speaks volumes, and may highlight the American people’s frustration with unconstitutional mandates.
The NRA is appealing the law with the Supreme Court after California’s 9th Circuit denied their request for an emergency hold on the law.
From: Infowars.com
At midnight on Thursday, Sunnyvale began implementing a new law that requires residents with rifle magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition to dispose of them or else, but the law reportedly failed to produce the intended effect.
“The Oakland Tribune reported Saturday that since Sunnyvale’s ban went into effect midnight Thursday, not one of the now-illegal magazines has been turned in,” the Associated Press reports.In Sunnyvale, a person caught with a “high capacity” magazine could be subject to a misdemeanor fine of up to $1,000, six months in jail, or both. The city is one of two Californian communities promoting a ban on magazines, the other being San Francisco, whose ban is set to take effect April 7.
While it’s possible gun owners are openly defying the law, as many have done in Connecticut, it is also possible gun owners are holding out to make a profit or break even.
“Owners had the choice of allowing police to destroy the magazines, sell them out of state or to a licensed gun dealer, or move them out of town,” writes Josh Richman for the Oakland Tribune.
One Sunnyvale resident told Richman he had never been in trouble with the law, but that the new ordinance would have turned him into a criminal overnight.
“I’ve lived here in Sunnyvale for more than 40 years and I’ve never had so much as a parking ticket,” Leonard Fyock, a 67-year-old Sunnyvale resident, stated.
Fyock said he was able to get his magazines out of town before the ban took effect, but that he hopes “somewhere down the line this will get overturned.”
Though the law technically criminalizes anyone in possession of the newly-banned magazines, the city is still encouraging people to show up to the police station and hand them over.
“Barring any unusual circumstances, we wouldn’t cite people for voluntarily turning in their large-capacity magazines to public safety even though it is legally possible at this time to cite them,” city spokeswoman Jennifer Garnett said.
Former Sunnyvale Mayor Tony Spitaleri, the prime mover of the law, acknowledged the ban essentially criminalizes law-abiding citizens and that the law is flawed because anybody who wants to could transport a “high-capacity” magazine into city limits. Still, he thinks the city will be better off. “It doesn’t move the needle – yet, but it always starts somewhere,” Spitaleri said.
Though the measure banning magazines passed with a 67 percent vote last year, the lack of residents who have complied speaks volumes, and may highlight the American people’s frustration with unconstitutional mandates.
The NRA is appealing the law with the Supreme Court after California’s 9th Circuit denied their request for an emergency hold on the law.
From: Infowars.com
March 9, 2014
3/09/2014 11:38:00 AM
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Connecticut Cop says he can't wait to kick in doors to confiscating weapons. Bloodshed will happen because of this unconstitutional law.
3/09/2014 10:43:00 AM
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From: Bearingarms.com
Do anti-gun Democrats in New Jersey live in a vacuum? Are they completely unaware of the problems unfolding in New York and Connecticut with their gun registration/confiscation schemes?
Or are they simply too power-mad to care?
The New Jersey Assembly’s Law and Public Safety Committee was scheduled to hold a public hearing on Monday (postponed for snow) about a bill that reduces the maximum magazine capacity from 15 to 10.
Since the legislation covers both detachable and fixed magazines, it has the effect of to banning popular, low-caliber rifles.
The Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs gave the draft legislation to top firearms experts in the country to determine what guns would fall under the expanded ban.
They discovered that the bill would affect tube-fed, semi-automatic rifles because the magazine cannot be separated from the gun
Thus, the experts found that at least 43 common rifles would suddenly be considered a prohibited “assault firearm,” such as the .22 caliber Marlin Model 60, Remington Nylon 66 and Winchester 190.
Just having one such gun would turn a law-abiding owner into a felon overnight.
Anti-gun state legislators are losing their collective minds. If they aren’t careful, that might not be all they lose.
3/09/2014 10:21:00 AM
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Are schools and colleges dangerous places, with lots of gun violence?
Some groups paint a picture of these places being particularly unsafe. Supposedly both murders and firearm suicides are very common at educational institutions. Last Wednesday, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s two groups, Moms Demand Gun Sense in America and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, jointly released a reportthat received massive uncritical news coverage.
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But their statistics are not what they seem. Included in the numbers are suicides. Also included are late night shootings taking place in school parking lots, on their grounds or even off school property, often involving gangs. As “shootings,” they also include any incident where shots were fired, even when nobody was injured.
Look at some of the cases included in their misleading statistics:
• A student at Eastern Florida State College retrieved his gun from his car when two men attacked him. One of the men was striking the student with a pool cue, and the student fired his gun wounding him. The gun was legally stored in the student’s car and the police found that he had acted in self-defense.
• A 19-year-old was killed at 9pm in a field near the Hillside Elementary School in San Leandro, California.
• A professor at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology committed suicide in an empty classroom.
• A 23-year-old man committed suicide late at night on school grounds when no one was around the Algona High/Middle School in Iowa.
• A 38-year-old man was shot to death at 2am on the grounds of the Clarksville, Tennessee High School.
• A 19-year-old man committed suicide in the parking lot of a Portland, Maine high school. No one at the school was threatened.
The list goes on and on. Overall,
• About 40 percent of the deaths (11 out of 28) were suicides.
• Out of the 28 K-12 school shootings, at least four, possibly as many as eight, were gang shootings. Several of the college cases probably also involved gangs.
Indeed, gangs are a major problem. But they aren’t just a threat off school campuses. And some schools just happen to be located near dangerous areas, so the gang activity spills over to school grounds. Linking such violence to the Newtown tragedy is highly misleading.
Also, some perspective is needed. Contrary to what many people believe, high school shootings have actually been falling over the last two decades. To illustrate this let’s compare the five school years 1992-93 to 1996-97 with the five school years from 2008-09 to 2012-13. During the first period, the number of non-gang, non-suicide shooting deaths averaged 25 a year. During the recent five-year period, it averaged less than half that, 10 per year – and that figure does include the horrific Newtown massacre.
To put these numbers in perspective, there are about 50 millionyoung people between the ages of 6 and 17. Another 21 millionpeople are enrolled in colleges.
One of the motivations behind the report put out by the gun control groups was that the media was ignoring these so-called “mini-Newtowns.” Yet, all of these cases received extensive coverage. A gun at a school (or even near a school) is considered newsworthy. For example, USA Today ran at least one story on 24 of these cases.
Scaring Americans may be Bloomberg’s only tool for drumming up support for gun control laws. But it ultimately shows how little faith that gun control advocates have in their case.
Source: Foxnews.com
3/09/2014 09:56:00 AM
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Use of stolen passports is a tactic of terrorists trying to avoid detection, while groups including al-Qaeda have sought to crash airplanes into oceans to cover up evidence, according to the experts. Oil slicks discovered yesterday in the Gulf of Thailand by Vietnam's military suggested the Boeing Co. (BA) 777-200 jetliner may have crashed there.
No evidence exists of terrorism at this point, said a U.S. official following the case who asked not to be identified because the investigation is in its early stages. Yet as the probe continues, investigators are likely to consider the two passengers "instant suspects" and will try to establish their real identities, said John Magaw, a former administrator of the Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
"That raised huge red flags -- the stolen passports and the plane crashing over water," said Magaw, who also was director of the U.S. Secret Service and now serves as a security consultant. "Those two things right there are highly, highly, highly suspicious."
The timing of a possible explosion over water "would indicate they were trying to destroy as much evidence as possible and to make it that much harder to trace," he said.
The Malaysian Airline System Bhd. (MAS) plane, en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, was carrying 239 people, including 153 Chinese passengers and three U.S. citizens, according to the airline and U.S. State Department.
Kip Hawley, a former administrator of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, said the stolen-passport report and the prospect the plane crashed into the Gulf of Thailand "makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck."
"It sounds like a lot of other plots," he said, referring to one in 2006 involving terrorists who wanted to down jetliners in the Atlantic Ocean by using liquid explosives. That plan was foiled by U.S. and British officials.
Hawley said that based on his experience, U.S. authorities will be looking for evidence that, if an onboard bomb brought down the Malaysian jet, it may have been a test run for a larger attack on multiple planes, as envisioned by various terrorist groups.
The governments of Italy and Austria confirmed that two passports used to board the flight were previously reported stolen by citizens of their countries. After investigators determine the identity of those who used the passports, they will check to see if they were on watch lists of suspected terrorists, Magaw said.
Hawley, a consultant and author of "Permanent Emergency," a book about his time at the TSA, said he has been especially concerned about bombs hidden in the shoes of passengers because they are powerful enough to bring down aircraft and security officials have grown lax about checking footwear.
U.S. security officials last month cautioned airlines about a credible threat posed by shoe bombs.
Hawley said he expects that U.S. authorities, working with counterparts in China and Malaysia, will be particularly interested in how the Malaysian checkpoints worked and whether they properly scanned shoes for explosives.
He said U.S. authorities will also be checking satellite images to see if they detected an explosion on the plane.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Council, Caitlin Hayden, said in a statement yesterday that "the United States Government is in communication across agencies and with international officials to provide any appropriate assistance in the investigation."
She also said U.S. officials "believe it is too early to comment on the causes" of the plane's disappearance. Her comments were followed by an announcement by the National Transportation Safety Board that it was sending a team of U.S. aviation-accident investigators to assist in the probe of Flight 370, joined by experts from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing.
Magaw and Hawley stressed that the jet's apparent crash could have been caused by other problems, ranging from pilot error to a failure of the airliner's systems.
Nations hunting for the plane had little to go on, with no distress calls, emergency-beacon signals, bad weather or other signs why an airliner would lose touch in one of the safest phases of flight.
Malaysia has been vulnerable to terrorist activity and has been used as a transit and planning hub for terrorists, according to a 2012 report by the U.S. State Department. Still, the department said the country hasn't suffered a serious terrorism incident for "several years."
The country doesn't require an entry visa for citizens of most countries on short-term visits, although it introduced a biometrics system in 2011 to record the fingerprints of travelers at its ports of entry, according to the State Department.
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