F*CK THE POLICE!!!

[D528]

Like the armed forces , brotherhood is a myth !


Instead of Helping a Female Officer Who Was Raped, Dept Covered For The Cop Who Raped Her
by William Norman Grigg

Spokane, WA — A young woman was allegedly raped at a party hosted by Spokane resident Doug Strosahl last October. When Spokane Police Sergeant John Gately learned the identity of the alleged rapist, he behaved in harmony with what he perceived to be his highest ethical duty: He contacted the suspect, fellow Spokane Sgt. Gordon Ennis, to warn him that he was the focus of a criminal investigation, and advise him of the contents of a search warrant that was being prepared.

Sgt. Gately, the head of the Spokane Police Guild, was charged last Friday with felony first-degree obstruction and rendering criminal assistance to a suspect, reports the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

"Our major concern is once we started investigating this was that somebody apparently tipped the suspect off as far as the search warrant and the components of the search warrant," Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich told KXLY News on November 13. "That's unacceptable." At the time, Gately's conduct resulted only in a paid suspension. Criminal charges were filed following a search of the police union official's phone.

For people not protected by Blue Privilege, felony charges usually result in an arrest, and when this occurs on a Friday the suspect will spend the weekend behind bars. However, "There was no indication in documents available late Friday [as to] when Gately is expected to be booked into the Spokane County jail," continues the Spokesman-Review report. "His arraignment is scheduled for December 21."

Ennis was one of several police officers who had gathered at Strosahl's home for a party. During that get-together, Ennis allegedly assaulted a fellow officer. A woman who attended described passing out after having several drinks. Upon waking up early the following morning in a guest bedroom, she found Ennis sitting next to her, with his hand down her pants. Ennis has been charged with second-degree rape and will be arraigned on December 7.

Ennis remained on paid leave until December 4, the day that charges were filed against Gately.

On October 25, a friend of the victim -- who reportedly is also a police officer — called Assistant Chief Selby Smith, who in turn contacted Gately to inform him about the allegation, as well as the identities of both the victim and the suspect. The Assistant Chief reportedly asked Gately to "care for the victim." The police union official, who belongs to the department's Personnel Assistance Team, acted on different priorities, placing a brief phone call to the suspect to warn him about the investigation.

"We could have helped the victim," complains Sheriff Knezovich, pointing out that it wasn't necessary for the SPD's Personnel Assistance Team to get involved. "They didn't have to do anything. It's just not a good idea to tell anyone about a criminal investigation, especially early on in the process."

Since this is a case in which both the alleged victim and accused perpetrators are police officers, it would be expected that the Personnel Assistance Team would focus on the needs of the former, rather than on protecting the latter. Gately heads a union notorious for "defending the troublemakers, lawbreakers, and liars among its ranks," observes the Inlander, an independent Spokane-area journal. The guilt "has come to symbolize the department's problems, stirring accusations of cronyism, dysfunction and entrenchment. Some critics have even likened the union to the mafia."

Gately's reaction to the reported rape of a female colleague would make perfect sense as an application of the blue mafia's version of omerta -- a code of silence under which a sexually exploited woman would be expected to remain silent for the sake of the tribe.

 

[D528]

Man Shot Twice by Cop After Being Mistaken For Robber Receives $1.5m
by Asa Jay

Taxpayers are on the hook for $1.5 million after a Long Island, New York man was shot in the stomach and spleen by a Suffolk County police officer who was looking for robbery suspects back in 2010.

Officer Luis Mangual was responding to a call that three Hispanic men had robbed a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut on New York Avenue in Huntington Station at about 3:50 a.m. on Jan. 11.

Police had been told the suspects had fled on foot and pulled over a car whose passengers matched their description about 20 minutes latter. In the back seat sat 37-year-old Honduran native Henry Morales.

According to court documents, Mangual said he approached the vehicle with his gun and flashlight drawn and yelled for the occupants to put their hands up.

The officer maintained that Morales, who is not fluent in English, did not raise his hands and bent down. Mangual said he was afraid the man was reaching for a weapon and fired two shots through the back passenger window.

Morales said in a deposition however, that his hands were up and that the officer had no reason to shoot him. Luckily for him, after the two shots were fired, Mangual's gun jammed. Otherwise, he may be dead.

Morales was then dragged out of the car and handcuffed. His attorney said he spent 15 weeks in the hospital and continues to suffer emotional and physical effects from the incident.

"He still cries when he talks about it," attorney William V. Ferro said. "It's as vivid in his mind today as it was the day it happened."

Morales filed a federal lawsuit in 2013 alleging assault, battery, false arrest and imprisonment, and civil rights violations. The $1.5 million settlement was approved on Tuesday by the Suffolk County legislature viaa 17-0 vote.

The other two men that were in the car with Morales on the morning of the shooting each received a $25,000 payout from the county as well.

Despite his actions, officer Mangual is still an active member of the force but was asked to apologize to Morales after the settlement was first announced in court in September.

According to Ferro, the officer did make that apology and "Morales shook his hands and embraced him with tears in his eyes."

"The county, by settling the case with Mr. Morales, acknowledged this was a horrible mistake that the police officer made," Ferro said. "Any person who is here in the country is protected by our laws and our courts."

 

[bearkat42]

lol ^.
Cops Respond to Hostage Situation by Killing The Victim -- Who Had a Lawsuit Against Them
by William Norman Grigg

Neenah, WI — The only casualty of an hours-long SWAT raid and hostage situation in Neenah, Wisconsin was a disabled veteran who had filed a $50 million civil rights suitafter he survived a similar SWAT raid three years ago.

Michael Funk, a co-owner of Eagle Nation Cycles, was shot and killed by police after being held hostage for several hours on December 5. Police evacuated several buildings and closed down an entire street in the city, which is located about 40 miles south of Green Bay.

"Mike worked there," observed attorney Cole White, who had represented him in his lawsuit against the City of Neenah and its police department. "Mike was a hostage ... not a suspect, he was not involved criminally. He was a hostage that was taken at gunpoint by this maniac."

A suspect was taken into custody at about 1:00 PM. His name has not been released, nor has the name of the officer who killed Funk. The official story is that Funk, who had a concealed carry license, refused to drop his gun in response to police commands after he fled the building.According to the preliminary police account, the still-unidentified officer who killed Funk was shot and suffered trivial injuries. It isn't known how the hostage situation began.

In 2012, the Lake Winnebago Area Metropolitan Enforcement Group staged a SWAT raid at Eagle Nation Cycles that resulted in 15 felony charges against Erato -- all of which were dismissed. He was eventually convicted of misdemeanor marijuana possession.

"They threw everything but the kitchen sink at him, and it turned out to be nothing," observed White, who is still representing Erato in the federal lawsuit.

During the raid, "The hyper-militarized force parked an armored tank-like vehicle outside of Eagle Nation, stormed the building, bombarding the occupants with assault weapons drawn, screaming profanities and abuse, all while wearing plainclothes (ununiformed) and face masks," recounted the lawsuit. The raid was supposedly justified because an informant with the task force supposedly witnessed a drug deal in the alley behind the motorcycle shop on the previous day.

The objective of the raid was to close down the business and seize the property on which it stood through "asset forfeiture," the suit contends. Just days ago, the City of Neenah had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

It's likely that one of the "tank-like" vehicles employed in the most recent raid at Eagle Nation Cycles was the $770,000 "Peacekeeper" armored vehicle, which the department obtained for "free" six months ago through the Pentagon's notorious 1033 "surplus property" program.

Responding to concerns expressed by municipal officials that acquisition of the "Peacekeeper" signified that the department is "moving ... philosophically toward becoming a military, agents of the federal government, much like the military would be, I certainly don't agree with that at all," Neenah Police Chief Kevin Wilkinson told the Green Bay Fox Affiliate. Wilkinson described the vehicle as similar in size and construction to "a snow plow or a garbage truck."

The "Peacekeeper" replaced the armored vehicle that had been used during the first SWAT assault on Eagle Nation Cycles, which was made in 1979 and was considered "incapable of keeping people safe from some of the armaments that have been used in the last few years," Chief Wilkinson continues.

Neenah Mayor Dean Kaufert clearly identified the "people" whose safety he prioritized: "The one thing I don't want to do during my tenure as mayor is ... to go to a policeman's funeral. And so if this vehicle can protect them I'm willing to accept that."

The "Peacekeeper" did nothing to protect Michael Funk, whom the Neenah Police supposedly set out to rescue. His death was the product of either incomprehensible misfortune or uncanny -- and malicious -- marksmanship on the part of a police department that institutionally had cause to resent him.

Mayor Kaufert has not indicated whether he will be attending Funk's funeral, but given that the deceased was a plaintiff in a civil rights lawsuit against the city it's likely that Kaufert and Wilkinson will somehow contain their bereavement.

Wait! Let's not jump to any conclusions. This probably makes perfect sense to the copsuckers of RIU. Woody333333?

 

[D528]

Sadistic Cop On Trial For Tasering Unresponsive Native Man 17 Times Until Bystanders Made Her Stop
By Jay Syrmopoulos

Rapid City, SD -- In August of 2014, Rebecca M. Sotherland, a police officer formerly employed for the Oglala Sioux Tribe, was videotaped tazering a citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe 17 times while he laid unresponsive on the ground on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Sotherland was indicted by a federal grand jury only days after the brutal incident and charged with violating the constitutional rights of 33-year-old Jeff Eagle Bull, by repeatedly using her Taser on him.

The federal trial for the indicted former officer began earlier this week. If found guilty, Sotherland faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The video footage shows Eagle Bull screaming in pain as he lay on the ground repeatedly being shocked with electricity by the officer. Never during the encounter did the man make any aggressive moves. Throughout the incident, he only lays on the ground writhing in pain screaming as he is being brutalized.

It's obvious from the video footage that Sotherland wasn't using the stun gun as a means of defense, as the man can be seen lying helplessly on the ground in handcuffs. She was using it as a means of sadistic punishment in an attempt to motivate him to get into her police cruiser.

Sotherland repeatedly yells at the helpless man to get in the car, eventually threatening that, "It's gonna get you again," referring to the 50,000 volts of electricity delivered by the tazer.

The disgraced cop continues screaming, "Hurry up! Get the car before it hits you again! Hurry up!" The brutal electrical assault continues as she keeps commanding the man to, "Get up and get in the car or it's gonna get you again."

Sotherland is seen on the now viral video standing over the top of a clearly helpless Eagle Bull. Eagle Bull was already in handcuffs and lying on the ground.

Finally in disgust the bystanders yell at the cop, "Let him go, quit tazing him! Just help him up! Just stop tazing him and help him up. One of these boys will help you."

Sotherland responds, "You guys gonna help him up?" To which the onlooker says, "Yeah." After that, a gentleman then can be heard saying, "I dunno, I don't trust her myself," referring to the cop after seeing what she has just done to the man on the ground.

At this point, a number of bystanders go over to assist the brutalized man into the police cruiser.

While the quick indictment of Sotherland was certainly a move in the right direction, it remains to be seen whether a South Dakota jury will actually hold the former officer accountable for her actions. Members of the tribe are skeptical that justice will actually be served, as South Dakota has a tenuous history with Native peoples.

Feelin the love he was............

 

[D528]

as it should be ! Im surprised they dont wear thier adolescent reaper hats out more often, lol.Oh thats right , the uniform says it all ! lol.
Dec 3, 7:30 PM EST

MORE US POLICE CHARGED WITH MURDER, MANSLAUGHTER IN 2015

BY DON BABWIN
ASSOCIATED PRESS

DEATHS
CHICAGO (AP) -- The number of U.S. police officers charged with murder or manslaughter for on-duty shootings has tripled this year - a sharp increase that at least one expert says could be the result of more video evidence.

In the past, the annual average was fewer than five officers charged. In the final weeks of 2015, that number has climbed to 15, with 10 of the cases involving video.

"If you take the cases with the video away, you are left with what we would expect to see over the past 10 years - about five cases," said Philip Stinson, the Bowling Green State University criminologist who compiled the statistics from across the nation. "You have to wonder if there would have been charges if there wasn't video evidence."

The importance of video was highlighted last week with the release of footage showing a Chicago officer fatally shooting a teenager 16 times. The officer said he feared for his life from the teen, who was suspected of damaging cars using a small knife. He also had a powerful hallucinogen in his bloodstream.

"This had all the trappings of a life-threatening situation for a law-enforcement officer - PCP-laced juvenile who had been wreaking havoc on cars with a knife," said Joseph Tacopina, a prominent New York defense attorney and former prosecutor who has represented several police officers. "Except you have the video that shows a straight-out execution."

When he was charged with first-degree murder last week, officer Jason Van Dyke became the 15th officer in the country to face such charges in 2015.

Over the last decade, law-enforcement agencies have recorded roughly 1,000 fatal shootings each year by on-duty police. An average of fewer than five each year resulted in murder or manslaughter charges against officers, Stinson found.

The cases are often difficult to prove. Of the 47 officers charged from the beginning of 2005 through the end of last year, about 23 percent were convicted, Stinson found.

"For forever, police have owned the narrative of what happened between any encounter between a police officer and a civilian," said David A. Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who has written extensively on police misconduct. "What video does is it takes that power of the narrative away from the police to some extent. And that shift in power of control over the narrative is incredibly significant."

In case after case, that is exactly what has happened this year.

Stinson said Van Dyke would "never, ever" have been charged without the video. He said the same is true for Ray Tensing, the white University of Cincinnati police officer who is charged with murder and voluntary manslaughter in the July 19 death of Samuel DuBose, a black motorist whom Tensing shot to death after pulling him over for a missing front license plate.

Tensing's attorney said the officer feared he would be dragged under the car as Dubose tried to drive away. But, Stinson said, the video from the officer's body camera shows that his explanation "doesn't add up."

Other cases around the country also reveal just how important the video is.

In Marksville, Louisiana, for example, two deputy city marshals were charged with second-degree murder after authorities reviewed video from one of the officers' body cameras, which showed a man with his hands in the air inside a vehicle when the marshals opened fire. The man was severely wounded and his 6-year-old autistic son killed.

Just how dramatically a video can shift the balance of power was apparent in North Charleston, South Carolina, when officer Michael Slager shot and killed Walter Scott, an unarmed black man as he ran away after a traffic stop.

Slager told investigators that Scott had tried to grab his gun and Taser. But after a video from a cellphone showed Slager taking careful aim at Scott as he ran away and then picking up his Taser and dropping it near Scott's body, Slager was charged with murder.

"If not for the recording, I have no doubt that the officer in the Walter Scott case would be out on patrol today," Harris said.

Videos have also played a key role in cases in which the victims were, in fact, armed - something that Tacopina said typically brings to a halt any thought of charging officers.

Chicago prosecutors concluded that McDonald did not pose a threat to Van Dyke, despite the small knife that he was carrying.

Likewise, prosecutors in Albuquerque, New Mexico, charged two officers with second-degree murder of a mentally ill homeless man who was holding two knives when he was shot to death. Defense attorneys have said the officers shot James Boyd out of concern for their lives, but Boyd appears to be turning away from the officers when the shots were fired.

In another case, an officer may owe her freedom to the camera that was attached to her stun gun.

Lisa Mearkle, a police officer in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, was charged with third-degree murder, voluntary and involuntary manslaughter after shooting an unarmed man twice in the back as he laid face-down in the snow. But after watching a video that showed the man's hands repeatedly disappear under his body as Mearkle shouted at him to keep his hands where she could see them, the jury acquitted Mearkle.

---

This story has been corrected to indicate that 10 criminal cases involved video, not nine, and that 47 officers were charged from the beginning of 2005, not 2004. Also, the University of Cincinnati officer was charged with voluntary manslaughter, not involuntary manslaughter.

© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

 

[D528]

Cop With History Of Brutality Caught Writing Racist Letter to Himself -- 'Black Officers Belong In The Toilet'
Chris Menahan | InformationLiberation

Connecticut officer Clive Higgins of the Bridgeport Police Department admitted he himself was the author of a racist letter which was titled "WHITE POWER" and called for him to be fired.

The officer found the letter in his mailbox at the police department earlier this year on February, 9th.

The racist letter stated "Officer Clive Higgins doesn't belong here in this Police Department" and "These Black Officers belong in the toilet."

The letter also chided him, saying "he didn't even support his fellow Officers in Court," referencing a 2011 police brutality case in which two of his fellow officers were convicted for beating and tasering drug suspect Orlando Lopez-Soto.

Officer Higgins was also captured on video kicking Lopez-Soto in the face, yet despite mass outrage he was acquitted by a jury. His fellow officers pleaded guilty to violating Lopez-Soto's civil rights and resigned, but Higgins refused to admit any guilt and after his acquittal managed to keep his job, though he was relegated to desk duty.

After the letter initially surfaced, a press conference was held demanding that whoever wrote the letter be fired:
<script type="text/javascript" charset="UTF-8" src="http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/portableplayer/?cmsID=292476801&videoID=HOi846_oNM4P&origin=nbcconnecticut.com&sec=news&subsec=local&width=600&height=360"></script>



When police investigated the incident they caught Higgins on surveillance video in the department typing and printing out documents, then saw him entering the room where he found the letter. Despite Higgins saying he "feared for his life" after finding the letter, police report he was seen smiling and talking when he returned from the room.

After confronting Higgins with photographic evidence, an affidavit from the Office of Internal Affairs' states "Higgins looked at the photographs and began rubbing and shaking his head."

"Higgins then admitted that [the racist letter in question] was in fact the hate letter he claimed to have found in his mailbox."

NBC New York reports he resigned from the department on July 6th and he is due in court on December, 16th.
_
Chris Menahan runs the alternative news site InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his articles here. Follow @infolibnews on twitter.

 

[D528]

Mom Calls 911 For Mental Help With Her Son, Cops Show Up, Taser Him to Death While He's Restrained
By Eva Decesare

Coweta County, GA — American police have once against demonstrated that their agenda is not to protect and serve, but to dominate and control by any means necessary. On November 20th, sheriff deputies in Coweta County, Georgia were summoned to help subdue a man having a psychotic breakdown and ended up tasing him to death.

Thirty-two-year-old Chase Sherman, together with his fiancée, Patti Galloway and his parents, Kevin and Mary Ann Sherman, were returning from a vacation. During a layover at the Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta, Chase started having hallucinations and acting agitated. According to his father, he "got nervous ... about planes crashing, and he just didn't feel comfortable on a plane. ... He thought nobody recognized him. I said, 'Chase, we're fine. We're going to get a car and drive home.' He didn't know where he was at." So they rented a car to drive the rest of the way to their home in Florida.

Chase's fiancée told his parents that he may have smoked "Spice"--also known as "synthetic marijuana"--before they had left on the five-day trip, which may have been the cause of the episode.

Chase's father described what happened next:

"We got him in the car and we took off on I-85. Chase's fiancée was driving and Chase was lying in the back with me. He had his head on my lap. He acted like he didn't know where we were going. And then he jumped up and started a disturbance in the car."

They pulled over, and Chase's mother dialed 9-1-1, but the father told her to hang up, thinking things were under control. After driving again for a few more minutes, Chase "got more violent," and they pulled over again and his mother again called 9-1-1.

"We were fighting, screaming, trying to calm him down. It was pretty horrendous in the car," his father said. "His fiancée jumped back to try to calm him down and she actually got bit. My wife told me just to hit him or something to try to get her arm loose. He let loose of the arm and the officers showed up."

When the three deputies arrived, "they reached across me trying to get the handcuffs on him. I got out of the car and they told me to go back by the ambulance." Still in the vehicle, Chase's mother says she heard one deputy tell Chase, "We're going to shoot you." She said, "Don't shoot him, don't shoot him," his father added. The deputy reportedly responded by saying, "I have to protect myself." Deputies then instructed everyone else to exit the vehicle. During the ensuing struggle, Chase was tased repeatedly. "More officers kept coming and we think they kept tasing him," Chase's father said. "They were treating him like a rabid dog."

During the struggle, the police kept EMTs back, saying the situation was not safe. Chase's parents maintain that the deputies were never in danger, that their son was not armed, and that if the deputies felt threatened they could have just stepped away and closed the vehicle doors. Instead, the father says, the officers "just went nuts."

"He was seat-belted in; he couldn't get out. And they couldn't just let him be and let him calm down," the father said, adding, "They treated my son like a piece of meat."

Eventually, Chase's fiancée and parents watched as deputies grabbed Chase's arms and pulled him from the vehicle.

"They dragged him out of the car like a dead dog. His head hit the ground. He was done. There was no movement, no nothing. We were screaming, 'They killed him.'"

The deputies wouldn't let the family go to him; then kept the parents and fiancée in a patrol car, keeping them for a time to be interviewed before allowing them to go to the hospital where Chase was being taken. Finally, at the Piedmont Newnan Hospital, when they said who they were there to see, they were led to a room by a security guard. "He said, 'I'm sorry for your loss,'" according to Chase's father. Mary Ann, Chase's mother, said that when she was talking to a deputy, "I can't remember what I asked him. All he answered was: 'We had to protect ourselves.'"

The incident is being investigated, and while we may not know exactly what happened unless the footage from the bodycams worn by the deputies is publicly released, it is hard to imagine why multiple armed police officers could not subdue an unarmed man, who was already handcuffed and trapped in a vehicle without killing him.

According to his father, Chase "was a very strong kid, but laying down in the seat belt … come on. With three guys on you? Come on. And to keep pushing the taser in you? Come on."

While we may not yet have the footage of this killing, we do know that this is one more case of an unarmed man ending up dead, with cops saying they feared for their safety. If only they showed a similar concern for the safety of those of us who don't wear badges and uniforms, maybe less innocent citizens would end up dead at the hands of crazed and cowardly killer cops.

This is the second case in just a short time frame of cops killing a man during a mental breakdown with tasers.

Multiple videos were released in November of 46-year-old Linwood "Ray" Lambert, who was killed by tasers. In a just a few minutes, three cops would hit Lambert with their tasers a total 20 times, according to the device reports issued by Taser International.

For a total of 87 seconds, Lambert had 50,000 volts running through his body -- a level capable of inflicting serious injury or death, according to federal guidelines.

As was the case with Chase Sherman, one hour after the police showed up, Lambert was pronounced dead.

 

[D528]

VIDEO: Off-Duty Cop Rams His SUV Into Man's Car For Trying To Hold Him Accountable For Reckless Driving
Man charged with 'assaulting an officer,' cop walks free
Chris Menahan | InformationLiberation

Newly released surveillance video shows an off-duty Montreal police officer ram his SUV into a man's car who was attempting to hold him accountable for speeding through a stop sign and driving recklessly.

The incident occurred on January 14, 2015, but surveillance video has only now been released.

Jeffery Pokora says the man in the SUV, who was later determined to be SPVM Police Officer Mr. Roberto Tomarelli, sped through a stop sign and cut him off, he responded by following the man to his home and attempting to hold him to account.

"After 10 months of therapy, I started realizing I need to start holding people accountable. Just like our politicians, everybody is accountable," Pokora said.

Both men are seen exiting their vehicles at which point a verbal exchange takes place.

“I asked the gentlemen, ‘excuse me sir, but you mind explaining to me what you, and why you, did what you did back there?’” Pokora said.

“The owner of the grey 4×4 then appeared to become enraged with such anger and hostility over my question, that he then proceeded to charge towards me, off his private property, and onto the public road way.”

Pokora says the off-duty cop then physically assaulted him.

“The owner of the grey 4×4 then proceeds to take his right index finger and starts to poke and drill me several times and repeatedly into my left shoulder, thus the owner was now illegally assaulting me.”

After their confrontation is over, Pokora is seen pulling his car behind the off-duty cop, blocking him into his own driveway. Pokora says he did so because he didn't want to be parked in the street while waiting for police.



"What happened next was EXTREMELY SHOCKING and DISTURBING to me," Pokora writes.

"The driver of the grey 4x4, after a 15 second delay then proceeded to ‘floor it’ in reverse. The grey 4x4 hit the passenger side of my large size sedan with so much impact that it forced my vehicle back out into the middle of the street on an angle. While I was in shock, and stunned that ANY human being could willing do such a thing, the grey 4x4 came at me again, but this time more of a head on approach and hits me two more times, in a panic and fear for my life, I scramble to compose myself and put my seat belt on. I managed to turn my vehicle around to try to get out of the situation, as I was doing so, the grey 4x4, again, charges the rear of my vehicle thus hitting me another two times. In such desperation, panic, fear, shock, and dismay I scrambled to call 9-1-1, failing to do so at lest three times due to shock of the situation I was in."

"I eventually was able to get a call through to 9-1-1 on my smart phone within minutes of this horrific event. I begged and pleaded with the emergency responder to help me, save me, he’s going to hit me again, please help me, he’s going to kill me, please, please help me (was crying with fear). The owner of the grey 4x4 pursued me at such high speeds, all the way down Des Oblats Street, to LaSalle Boulevard, and all the way down into the City Of Lachine, right until the corner of ‘Chemin du Musée’ and ‘Boulevard Saint Joseph’, in front of the Toyota car dealer, where finally the horrific events came to an end, when police were able to intervene and take over the situation, and arrest the owner or the grey 4x4, or so I thought."

Rather than arrest the officer, Pokora was arrested at gunpoint and charged with "assaulting a police officer" and issuing "death threats."

The officer was not hit with any charges and his police commander says he did nothing wrong.

"Let's put that this way.... If we have a sense that the action was not OK, or there could've been a problem, the officer could've been suspended," Montreal police Cmdr. Ian Lafrenière said.

"And now I'm telling you, he's still working for us."

Watch the full video below:



What do you think, did the officer have reason to "fear for his life," or was he the criminal in this situation?

 

[D528]

Two Brave Cops Under Attack For Exposing Militarization and Corruption in Their Department
by William Norman Grigg

Kristin Bantle, a sixteen-year veteran police officer, received notice of her termination from the Steamboat Springs, Colorado Police Department on August 10. Five days later she had her first court appearance on a contrived charge of “attempting to influence a public official.” Those events constitute official retaliation against Bantle for publicly criticizing the SSPD’s “culture of fear and intimidation” and its “militaristic” approach to law enforcement. Her trial on a fourth-degree felony charge is scheduled to begin on December 1.

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=53249

 

[D528]

Ex-cop indicted for fabrications found dead in Mass.

Bryan Johnson, a former Millis, Massachusetts, police officer, appears at his arraignment in Wrentham District Court Sept. 11, 2015.

WBZ-TV

• 
  
  
• Bryan Johnson, 24, was pronounced dead early Thursday, the Norfolk district attorney's office said in a statement.
  
  Police said they were called to the home by another resident of the house who found Johnson unresponsive at around 3 a.m. They said no signs of foul play were found at the scene and the death is not being investigated as a homicide.
  
  Authorities said an autopsy would be performed.
  
  A grand jury had indicted Johnson on Nov. 19 on a charge of willful communication of a bomb threat to a school, making a false police report, malicious destruction of property and unlawful discharge of a firearm. He had pleaded not guilty in district court and was free on bail.
  
  His Superior Court arraignment had not yet been scheduled, and the district attorney's office said that in light of his death, it no longer would pursue the case.
  
  Johnson had said a man in a pickup fired at his cruiser on Sept. 2. He said he returned fire, crashed into a tree and his SUV caught fire. His claims prompted a search by dozens of officers, a shelter-in-place order for residents and a school lockdown.
  
  An investigation determined his account was a hoax and that Johnson had used his own gun to shoot at his vehicle. He later told investigators he blacked out.
  
  Johnson, a part-time officer, subsequently was fired.
  
  According to court documents, Johnson told investigators the truth was "incredibly embarrassing," CBS Boston reports.
  
  He had been promoted from dispatcher to part-time officer last year and was scheduled to start training as a full-time officer for the town of about 8,000 residents on the Charles River about 25 miles southwest of Boston.
  

 

[D528]

NJ Cop Says He Was Suspended After Blowing Whistle On Dept. Misconduct
by Asa Jay

A New Jersey cop is claiming in a lawsuit that he was subjected to 4 years of retaliation by the Bedminster Township police department after informing superiors and prosecutors of misconduct by fellow officers.

Kyle Pirog says that his troubles began in June 2011, when as an acting sergeant he told higher-ups that officer John Dapkins had lied under oath to a judge to obtain a search warrant, and then also lied in police reports regarding a traffic stop.

This led to a review of a video of the stop by now-former-Lt. Craig Meyer, who told Dapkins to fix the report because it didn’t support his version of events. The amended report was then approved with no note of it being changed, the lawsuit says.

Pirog also accused Dapkins of targeting minorities with his stops, and alleges that the officer even strip searched a juvenile and sniffed his underwear because he falsely claimed they smelled like marijuana.

Believing that lying to a judge under oath, altering a police report with no note, and strip searching a minor constituted official misconduct, Pirog approached superiors – but after they did nothing – he went to the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office, the lawsuit says.

Pirog maintains that after informing prosecutors, he was suspended by the department in August 2011 and became the subject of an Internal Affairs investigation. He says he was charged with 12 policy violations and threatened with losing his job.

In order to avoid being fired, Pirog agreed to a three-month suspension without pay, a demotion, and to apologizing to Dapkins – the lawsuit says – which additionally asserts that as part of the agreement, the department said Pirog wouldn’t be subject to any further disciplinary action.

When Pirog returned to work however, he says he was denied authority over less experienced officers, assigned to undesirable shifts, had a GPS tracker placed in his patrol car, and was required to report as an underling to Dapkins – the very officer he had reported for misconduct.

The lawsuit says that in March 2014, retiring police chief W. Patrick Ussery told Pirog that as long as he or his successor were in charge, he would “never be promoted again.”

After Lt. Craig Meyer assumed the role of chief, Pirog says he was denied a promotion in favor of a less qualified officer – and when a sergeant voiced his disapproval, Meyer opened an Internal Affairs investigation on him as well, eventually leading to his resignation.

It was reported on Monday that Pirog filed the civil suit in Morris County alleging the township police department violated the Conscientious Employee Protection Act in its retaliatory measures taken against him.

“Police and police departments are entrusted to protect the well-being and safety of the public,” Pirog’s attorney Claudia A. Reis said. “[When] you have someone who steps out of that role and targets people… you need people to step forward and out of the blue code of silence… To then target those very people for retaliation undermines what police… do.”

Pirog says he is seeking unspecified damages in the suit and is still fighting for his job.

Documents show that Bedminster Township police officials are still seeking to fire the officer and allege five policy violations, including remaining stationary and running radar for long periods of time without performing his duties or making vehicle stops, and falsifying his daily blotter.

 

[D528]

'War On Cops': Cop Stages Fake Shootout, Sets Own Cruiser On Fire, Calls In Bomb Threat to School
Chris Menahan | InformationLiberation

I've said it before, I'll say it again: the only war on cops is the one they're waging against themselves.

Last week I covered 5 cases in the last few months all cited to justify the idea there's a "war on cops," all of them were proven to be staged hoaxes whereby the officers faked threats against themselves for personal advancement.

All were then ignored by the media and politicians who fanned the flames of the fake "war on cops."

Now we have another case out of Millis, Massachusets, where 24-year-old officer Bryan Johnson, who kicked off a manhunt back in September when he said he was fired at in his cruiser, is being accused by police of fabricating the entire event, shooting up his own cruiser, and then setting it on fire.

Additionally, the state now believes Johnson called in a bomb threat to a local high school on the same day.

Johnson was fired over the shooting incident but plead not guilty, he's now been indicted for addition charges of calling in a bomb threat to a school, misleading a criminal investigation, discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a dwelling, filing a false police report, and willful and malicious destruction of property.

I'm sure we'll find out he's entirely innocent.

<script type='text/javascript' src='http://WFXT.images.worldnow.com/interface/js/WNVideo.js?rnd=481757;hostDomain=www.myfoxboston.com;playerWidth=560;playerHeight=315;isShowIcon=true;clipId=12016150;flvUri=;partnerclipid=;adTag=News;advertisingZone=;enableAds=true;landingPage=;islandingPageoverride=false;playerType=STANDARD_EMBEDDEDscript_EMBEDDEDscript;controlsType=fixed'></script><a href="http://www.myfoxboston.com" title="Boston News, Weather, Sports | FOX 25 | MyFoxBoston">Boston News, Weather, Sports | FOX 25 | MyFoxBoston</a>

 

[D528]

Benevolance runnith over.lol.
Innocent Man Beaten By Cops After Being Mistook For Suspect Now Paralyzed
by Asa Jay

Family say a man beaten by three officers with the San Antonio police department last year is now paralyzed from the chest down after surgeons experienced complications attempting to repair his spine.

Forty-three-year-old Roger Carlos was in the 10600 block of Westover Hills Blvd. in May, 2014 taking photos of a building he had recently purchased that was to be his wife's new medical practice.

According to police, Carlos was approached by three officers at around 2:30 p.m: two SAPD SWAT-team members identified as Carlos Chavez and Virgilo Gonzalez, and one undercover drug task force officer whose identity has not been released.

The officers were pursuing a suspect nearby who was wanted on felony drug and weapons charges after he had fled from the cops along the Highway 151 access road. He had abandoned his car in a parking lot of a restaurant approximately a few hundred feet away from where Carlos was standing.

The cops reportedly mistook Carlos – who has no criminal record and was simply taking pictures with his phone – for their suspect, and struck him about 50 times even though he was not fighting back and complied with their orders, he says.

"All three of them started beating me on the head," Carlos said. "It was unbelievable. I couldn't believe it was happening to me. These guys, they beat me like a bunch of thugs."

After being handcuffed and explaining to officers that he owned the property, Carlos says he was approached by a fourth officer who said the real suspect was in custody close by.

The beating left Carlos with a brain aneurysm, broken teeth, and injuries to his face, neck, and back causing lose of feeling and movement. He was forced to undergo multiple surgeries to his spine to relieve pain and pressure from herniated discs costing 10s of thousands of dollars.

Family said on Friday that as a result of complications during surgery on November 3 at a San Antonio area hospital, a piece of bone broke off and compressed against his spinal cord causing paralysis from his chest down.

"Its hard to see it, its hard to believe that something like this occurred over a mistaken identity," Carlos' wife Ronnie said. "That is the hardest thing that has happened to us."

Following an internal affairs investigation in October of last year, the three officers that brutalized Carlos were originally given 15-day suspensions – but those "sanctions" were latter reduced to suspensions of only five days by then-police-chief William McManus.

Adding insult to injury, instead of serving their actual suspensions, the cops were allowed to use their accrued leave time to take a paid vacation. They did not receive any additional disciplinary action for their brutality.

Carlos may never walk again and is now even loosing feeling in his arms and wrists. Family say doctors are concerned that the complications could also lead to the father of three having trouble breathing.

"People need to stand up and say something about it. Just because a police officer has a right to do something like that based on a law that protects them, it's not right," Ronnie Carlos said. "Carelessness, just carelessness of these three officers, not realizing that they ruined his life."

The family has retained an attorney and is preparing to take legal action against the San Antonio police department. You can help contribute their medical expense fund HERE.

http://bcove.me/sayp0kjh

 

[D528]

Police as Prey: What a Real "War On Cops" Looks Like
by William Norman Grigg

Buffeted on one side by a surging crime rate, and by growing public hostility on the other, the police find themselves besieged and bloodied. More than 120 police officers have been murdered this year in the capital city alone. Across the nation, violent gangs, acting with breathtaking brazenness, target police in ambushes and assassinations, stealing their weapons and killing police who refuse to take bribes.

Such is the situation in Venezuela, a country where "violence is so commonplace that only the most spectacular of crimes (murders of celebrities, at funerals and in broad daylight) seem to make the news," reports the Miami Herald. In that country, the expression "War on Cops" is not mere hyperbole on the part of petulant police unions and their media allies.

If police in the U.S.A. had suffered violent on-duty deaths at the same rate as their Venezuelan counterparts during the first ten months of 2015, "it would be the equivalent of 6,572 police murders," the Herald points out. As of November 19, 112 U.S. police officers have died in the line of duty this year -- fewer than the number of Venezuelan police who have been killed in the Greater Caracas area during the same period. Of the on-duty police deaths in the U.S., only 43 were the result of criminal violence. Notwithstanding the incessant media attention to the supposed "war on police," line-of-duty deaths are down three percent in 2015 -- and the decline would have been more pronounced were it not for a substantial increase in the number of fatal automobile accidents.

Available statistics similarly dispel the claim that violent crime is spiking because of the so-called "Ferguson Effect" -- a growing timidity on the part of police officers to confront violent criminals out of fear that their actions would be captured on video, provoking social media outrage and public protests. This has supposedly led to a "spike" in violent crime nation-wide.

The violent crime rate is up in Baltimore (which was severely over-policed under future Democratic presidential hopeful Martin O'Malley, thereby alienating citizens who might otherwise cooperate in efforts to combat violent crime), and in Chicago, where police have been anything but timid. However, there is no substantive evidence of a dramatic increase nationwide. In New York City, for example, the past summer was the safest in years, according to the NYPD.

The situation is dramatically different in Venezuela.

"In recent weeks, gangs have ambushed police stations with hand grenades and machine guns," reports the Miami Herald. "Patrolmen are being hunted for their motorcycles, body armor and weapons."

"The police want to wage war against us, but they can't," boasted a man identified as "Enrique" and claiming to be the leader of a criminal gang. "Our weapons are meaner."

In October, according to Enrique, his gang killed a police officer who had arrested a member of the gang and refused to release him in exchange for a bribe. "He didn't take the money and our guy is still in jail so he had to die," claimed Enrique. "It was just revenge."

"To be a policeman in this country right now requires a great degree of heroism," insists Jesus Eduardo Lamas, assistant director of police in Miranda State. "The criminals are far better armed than we are.... They even have access to weapons we're not allowed to carry."

The population at large would probably balk at using the term "heroism" to describe Lamas' police force. Like police everywhere, law enforcement agencies in Venezuela serve the interests of the political class, and any protection they provide to persons and property is incidental to that primary mission. Extra-judicial killings and other abuses by Venezuelan police are commonplace.

In Venezuela, the boundaries between the military and domestic "security forces" have always been indistinct. In 2013, Nicolas Maduro, the country's increasingly dictatorial left-leaning president, enacted a "Secure Homeland Plan." This was coupled with a disarmament law that resulted in nation-wide firearms confiscation raids and the destruction of an estimated 84,158 "illegal" weapons. This did nothing to disarm the criminal element, but instead enhanced its ability to prey on an increasingly terrorized population: There were 24,764 homicides in Venezuela in 2013, as compared to 13,472 in the much larger United States during the same year.

Citizens of Venezuela -- including any conscientious police officers who actually try to uphold the law — are caught in the crossfire between an emboldened criminal underworld, and an overtly criminal political "over-world." That country is actually experiencing the kind of pandemic criminal violence described in the lurid and self-pitying rhetoric of police unions in the United States.

One popular and entirely uncorroborated claim made by what we could call the "Blue Lives Matter" movement is that "every six minutes a police officer is assaulted." If this were true, each year would bring at least 87,660 documented incidents in which cops are shot, stabbed, ambushed, or beaten in the heroic performance of the duties.

In 2013, the most recent year for which statistics are available, there were 49,851 reported "assaults on law enforcement," which -- although a much smaller number than what we would see if the "every six minutes" claim were true -- is a pretty formidable total. However, according to the FBI, fewer than one-third of the "victims" of such assaults sustained any injuries.

In addition, nearly eighty percent of those assaults involved "personal weapons" -- that is, hands, fists, or feet. What this suggests is that the overwhelming majority of such "assaults" take the form of desperate, ineffectual efforts by unarmed suspects to resist arrest at the hands of an armed police officer. It should also be remembered that it is common for police to file "assault" charges whenever they encounter resistance.

On the available evidence, the only way the "every six minutes" claim could be valid is if the "assaults" in question refer to social media criticism or similar violations of the occupational "safe space" demanded by privileged and self-preoccupied American police. If they want to know what a real "war on police" might look like, American cops should cast their eyes toward Venezuela.

 

[D528]

Cops On a Rampage, Looking For Suspects, Raid Innocent Man's Home and Kill Him
By Matt Agorist

Morgantown, VA — David Michael Romanoski, 48, of Morgantown was shot and killed earlier this month by police after they broke into his house in search of two robbery suspects.

Romanoski was not the suspect and was innocent.

Ten deputies arrived at the home, where Isaac Barker and Justin Knisell were believed to be living and instead found Romanoski. When deputies, some of whom were in plain clothes, entered the room where Romanoski was, one of them fired 7 rounds into him. He was then transported to the hospital where he died.

Immediately after killing this innocent man, police quickly attempted to justify the shooting by claiming to have found a handgun – as if owning a handgun is deserving of a death sentence.

The Monongalia County Sheriff's department was given body cameras earlier in the year, which could've shown the confrontation which led to the murder of Romanoski. However, the deputies chose to stop using them.

"The reason they weren't wearing body cameras is because the ones we had originally purchased, we found out after they were purchased that they are virtually useless in low light or darkness," Sheriff Al Kisner said, adding that the cameras also had a very short battery life.

David was a graduate of Morgantown High School and Miami University and an upstanding member of the community. In addition to his parents, he is survived by his fiancée, Karen Tackett.

After her fiancée was murdered by police, Tackett told the Dominion post that Romanoski was unarmed and did not deserve to be killed.

The death of Romanoski highlights the disastrous problem of violent and incompetent police in America and sadly no one cares. Because this man was murdered by public servants ‘just doing their jobs,’ the overwhelming majority of Americans will consider his death collateral damage in the officer’s ‘heroic’ duty of providing security.

 

[woody333333]

Wait! Let's not jump to any conclusions. This probably makes perfect sense to the copsuckers of RIU. Woody333333?

If he had a gun and refused to put it down it does

 

[bearkat42]

If he had a gun and refused to put it down it does

The fact that he was suing them is probably just a coincidence, right?

 

[D528]

Cops Have Killed Way More Americans In America Than Terrorists Have
By Xeni Jardin

Police have killed more Americans on U.S. soil since the year 2000 than the Islamist terrorists.

At Vox, Anand Katakam created an interactive map with data from Fatal Encounters, a nonprofit working to build a national database of police killings. This database, and the map Vox created, shows that US police have killed at least 5,600 people since the year 2000. That's many more than have died in terrorist attacks on American soil.
A huge majority of the more than 5,600 deaths on the map are from gunshots, which is hardly surprising given that guns are so deadly compared to other tools used by police. There are also a lot of noticeable fatalities from vehicle crashes, stun guns, and asphyxiations. In some cases, people died from stab wounds, medical emergencies, and what's called "suicide by cop," when someone commits suicide by baiting a police officer into using deadly force.Here's a full-page view of the interactive map.

why are cops not on the list lol.

from the fbi

 

[D528]

I ponder this often....part 1
Why Should Anyone Trust a Government That Kills, Maims, Tortures, Lies, Spies, Cheats, and Treats Its Citizens Like Criminals?
By John W. Whitehead

“Why should anyone trust a government that has condoned torture, spied on at least 35 world leaders, supports indefinite detention, places bugs in thousands of computers all over the world, kills innocent people with drone attacks, promotes the post office to log mail for law enforcement agencies and arbitrarily authorizes targeted assassinations? Or, for that matter, a president that instituted the Insider Threat Program, which was designed to get government employees to spy on each other and ‘turn themselves and others in for failing to report breaches,’ which includes ‘any unauthorized disclosure of anything, not just classified materials.’” — Professor Henry GirouxWhy should anyone trust a government that kills, maims, tortures, lies, spies, cheats, and treats its own citizens like criminals? For that matter, why should anyone trust a government utterly lacking in transparency, whose actions give rise to more troubling questions than satisfactory answers, and whose domestic policies are dictated more by paranoia than need?

Unfortunately, “we the people” have become so trusting, so gullible, so easily distracted, so out-of-touch, so compliant and so indoctrinated on the idea that our government will always do the right thing by us that we have ignored the warning signs all around us, or at least failed to recognize them as potential red flags.

As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the consequences of this failure on both our parts—the citizenry’s and the government’s—to do our due diligence in asking the right questions, demanding satisfactory answers, and holding our government officials accountable to respecting our rights and abiding by the rule of law has pushed us to the brink of a nearly intolerable state of affairs. Intolerable, at least, to those who remember what it was like to live in a place where freedom, due process and representative government actually meant something. (Remember that the people of Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany also failed to ask questions, demand answers, and hold their government officials accountable until it was too late, and we know how that turned out.)

There’s certainly no shortage of issues about which we should be asking questions of our government representatives, demanding truthful answers, and subsequently insisting on changes within our government. Keep in mind, however, that the government has mastered the art of evasion. Thus, it’s not enough to ask the questions. We need to demand answers, and when those answers aren’t forthcoming—either because a government official claims to not “know” or because it’s outside his or her jurisdiction—we need to demand that they find out.

To get the ball rolling, here are just a few dozen of the questions that require honest answers by those individuals and agencies that are supposed to be answering to us. For my part, I’m going to send this exact list of questions to my government representatives and see how responsive they are. I’d suggest you do the same.

To start with, what’s the rationale behind turning government agencies into military outposts? There has been a notable buildup in recent years of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies such as Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Education Department. As of 2008, “73 federal law enforcement agencies… [employ] approximately 120,000 armed full-time on-duty officers with arrest authority.” Four-fifths of those officers are under the command of either the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or the Department of Justice.

What’s with all of the government agencies stockpiling hollow point bullets? For example, why does the Department of Agriculture need .40 caliber semiautomatic submachine guns and 320,000 rounds of hollow point bullets? For that matter, why do its agents need ballistic vests and body armor?

Why does the Postal Service need “assorted small arms ammunition”? Why did the DHS purchase “1.6 billion rounds of hollow-point ammunition, along with 7,000 fully-automatic 5.56x45mm NATO ‘personal defense weapons’ plus a huge stash of 30-round high-capacity magazines”? That’s in addition to the FBI’s request for 100 million hollow-point rounds. The Department of Education, IRS, the Social Security Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service, are also among the federal agencies which have taken to purchasing ammunition and weaponry in bulk.

Why is the federal government distributing obscene amounts of military equipment, weapons and ammunition to police departments around the country? And why is DHS acquiring more than 2,500 Mine-Resistant Armored Protection (MRAP) vehicles, only to pass them around to local police departments across the country? According to the New York Times:
[A]s President Obama ushers in the end of what he called America’s “long season of war,” the former tools of combat — M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more — are ending up in local police departments, often with little public notice. During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft. The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units.Why is the military partnering with local police to conduct training drills around the country? And what exactly are they training for? In Richland South Carolina, for instance, U.S. army special forces are participating in joint and secretive exercises and training with local deputies. The public has been disallowed from obtaining any information about the purpose of the drills, other than that they might be loud and to not be alarmed. The Army and DHS also carried out similar drills and maneuvers involving Black Hawk helicopters in Texas, Florida, and other locations throughout the U.S., ostensibly in order to provide officers with realistic urban training.

What is being done to protect the American populace from the threat of military arms and forces, including unarmed drones, being used against them? Policy analysts point to Directive No. 3025.18, “Defense Support of Civil Authorities” (issued on Dec. 29, 2010), as justification for the government’s use of military force to put down civil unrest within the United States.

 

[D528]

part 2
Why is FEMA stockpiling massive quantities of emergency supplies? On January 10, 2014, FEMA made a statement enlisting the service of contractors who could “supply medical biohazard disposal capabilities and 40 yard dumpsters to 1,000 tent hospitals across the United States; all required on 24-48 hour notice.” This coincides with other medical requests seeking massive amounts of supplies, such as “31,000,000 flu vaccinations,” “100,000 each of winter shirts and pants and the same for summer” and other goods and services requests as well like tarps, manufactured housing units, and beverages. And why does the TSA need $21,000 worth of potassium chlorate, a chemical compound often used in explosives?

Why is the Pentagon continuing to purchase mass amounts of ammunition while at the same time preparing to destroy more than $1 billion worth of bullets and missiles that are still viable?

Moreover, what is really being done to hold the Pentagon accountable for its doctored ledgers, fraud, waste and mismanagement, which has cost the taxpayer trillions of dollars? According to Reuters, “The Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with a law that requires annual audits of all government departments. That means that the $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996, the first year it was supposed to be audited, has never been accounted for. That sum exceeds the value of China's economic output last year.”

Given the similarities between the government’s Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis, how much of what is being passed off as real is, in fact, being staged by DHS for the “benefit” of training law enforcement, leaving us none the wiser? These training exercises come complete with their own set of professionally trained Crisis Actors playing the parts of shooters, bystanders and victims in order to help “schools and first responders create realistic drills, full-scale exercises, high-fidelity simulations, and interactive 3D films.”

Given that Americans are 110 times more likely to die of foodborne illness than in a terrorist attack, why is the government spending trillions of dollars on “national security”? How exactly is the $75 billion given to 15 intelligence agencies annually to keep us “safe” being spent? And why is the DHS giving away millions of dollars’ worth of federal security grants to states that federal intelligence agencies ruled have “no specific foreign or domestic terrorism threat”?

Why is the government amassing names and information on Americans considered to be threats to the nation, and what criteria is the government using for this database? Keep in mind that this personal information is being acquired and kept without warrant or court order. It’s been suggested that in the event of nuclear war, the destruction of the US Government, and the declaration of martial law, this Main Core database, which as of 2008 contained some 8 million names of Americans, would be used by military officials to locate and round up Americans seen as threats to national security, a program to be carried about by the Army and FEMA.

Taken individually, these questions are alarming enough. However, when viewed collectively, they leave one wondering what exactly the U.S. government is preparing for and whether American citizens shouldn’t be preparing, as well, for that eventuality when our so-called “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is no longer answerable to “we the people.”