Birmingham terror arrests: Police get more time to quiz suspects. Police have been granted warrants of further detention to continue questioning six men being detained on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism in the UK (contrary to the Terrorism Act 2000). POLICE have been granted extra time to question six men arrested under the Terrorism Act in Birmingham yesterday. Officers now have until midnight on Sunday to charge, release or apply for an additional extension. The men, all from Birmingham and aged 25 to 32, were arrested last Sunday night and Monday morning as part of a major pre-planned counter terrorism operation. A 22 year old woman who was also arrested, on suspicion of failing to disclose information contrary to the Terrorism Act 2000, was released yesterday on police bail pending further enquiries. Forensic teams have conducted searches at a total of 16 properties in the city. Residents living near some of the raided homes today spoke of their shock.
The Militarization of the Police in America. Play by GOP Fascist rules or be arrested in lawless Fitzwalkerstan (9.13.11) Local police forces are now little armies. Why? ASK THIS | October 06, 2011 More and more, in dealing with nonviolent political protesters police across America show up in battlefield dress with intimidating military gear supplied by the Pentagon and Homeland Security. Writer John Hanrahan says reporters, instead of ignoring this ominous development, should ask local, regional and national leaders: Do we need this crap?
By John Hanrahanhanrahan@niemanwatchdog.org Last March, when some 500 activists arrived at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in northern Virginia to protest the abusive treatment that Pfc. Bradley Manning, the accused leaker of secret government documents to the Wikileaks website, was being subjected to while incarcerated there, they were confronted by a heavily-armed, riot-geared phalanx of dozens of state and local police, many of them on horseback for added measure. I was there and wondered what in the world was going on. Since then I found out police often dress like Darth Vader at protest rallies. Exclusion Zones. Policing public space—with deadly results—in Portland, Ore. The cases of Keaton Otis and James Chasse show the race and class bias implicit in terms like “quality of life” and “livability”—at least as they are applied to law enforcement.
On June 8, the Justice Department announced a civil rights investigation to see if police officers in Portland, Ore., were engaged in a “pattern or practice” of using excessive force against the mentally ill. The investigation comes after several incidents in which police shot people in psychological crisis. The problems with the mental health system are real enough, but this focus may obscure other dynamics propelling police violence–specifically, those relating to race and class. Two high-profile cases in Portland help illustrate the point. The lonesome death of James Chasse James Chasse was a well-known figure in downtown Portland, a writer and musician with a history of mental illness and occasional homelessness.
‘He could be a gangster’ Hired guns. The NYPD's secret spies. Heavily armed New York police officers on the streets (Sergey Shpakovsky) NEW DETAILS continue to emerge about the New York Police Department's (NYPD) secret program for spying on Muslims, with the cooperation of the CIA. The CIA has now been forced to launch an investigation into the legality of its own actions, given that the agency is prohibited from spying on Americans. The NYPD's Islamophobic and racist surveillance tactics have become one of the most glaring examples of how the "war on terror" serves not only as a justification for imperialist war and occupation, but also for domestic political repression. The NYPD Intelligence Division has long been known to infiltrate mosques and engage in surveillance without a warrant or any evidence of a crime, inside and outside New York City.
For example, it was involved in surveillance of antiwar activists in the lead-up to the 2004 Republican National Convention. THE CIA connections go beyond the head of the Demographics Unit. Cloud-Powered Facial Recognition Is Terrifying - Jared Keller - Technology. By harnessing the vast wealth of publicly available cloud-based data, researchers are taking facial recognition technology to unprecedented levels "I never forget a face," goes the Marx Brothers one-liner, "but in your case, I'll be glad to make an exception. " Unlike Groucho Marx, unfortunately, the cloud never forgets. That's the logic behind a new application developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College that's designed to take a photograph of a total stranger and, using the facial recognition software PittPatt, track down their real identity in a matter of minutes.
Facial recognition isn't that new -- the rudimentary technology has been around since the late 1960s -- but this system is faster, more efficient, and more thorough than any other system ever used. Why? Because it's powered by the cloud. Often, the problems with facial recognition are rooted in the need for greater processing power, human and machine. I think judgment matters. Image: kentkb/Flickr. What Are We Capable Of - THIS IS ANONYMOUS! Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit | Stories from the Heartland. Our Creeping Police State: How Going to the Mall of America Can Land You in an FBI Counterterrorism Report | Civil Liberties. September 7, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email.
On May 1, 2008, at 4:59 p.m., Brad Kleinerman entered the spooky world of homeland security. As he shopped for a children’s watch inside the sprawling Mall of America, two security guards approached and began questioning him. Although he was not accused of wrongdoing, the guards filed a confidential report about Kleinerman that was forwarded to local police. The reason: Guards thought he might pose a threat because they believed he had been looking at them in a suspicious way. Najam Qureshi, owner of a kiosk that sold items from his native Pakistan, also had his own experience with authorities after his father left a cell phone on a table in the food court. The consequence: An FBI agent showed up at the family’s home, asking if they knew anyone who might want to hurt the United States.
One Iranian man, now 62, began passing out during questioning. 17 Justice Dept. Investigations Into Police Departments Nationwide | Criminal Justice | FRONTLINE. We’ve been telling you about the Justice Department’s examination of the New Orleans Police Department as part of our Law & Disorder investigation into six cases of questionable police shootings in the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina. In March, DOJ released a blistering report describing “systemic violations of civil rights” by the NOPD, and just last week it was announced that two FBI agents will be stationed full time in the NOPD’s Public Integrity Bureau to investigate allegations of significant corruption or civil rights violations. But the NOPD investigation is just one of 17 active investigations into law enforcement agencies across the country currently being conducted by DOJ’s Civil Rights Division — “more than at any time in the division’s history,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez told Congress last week.
Some of the other departments currently being investigated include: the fatal shooting … of First Nations woodcarver John T. Prosecutors seek student emails in Northwestern wrongful conviction case. August 10, 2011 More than 500 emails between beleaguered Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess and his students detailing their effort to free a man serving a life sentence should not be protected under state law that shields journalists from revealing unpublished work, Cook County prosecutors argued Tuesday.
In seeking the release of the communications, Assistant State's Attorney Celeste Stack said the student journalists investigating the alleged innocence of Anthony McKinney were essentially "generating evidence" at the behest of Northwestern's Center on Wrongful Convictions, not acting as working reporters. "There was no business of collecting news for publication," Stack told Criminal Courts Judge Diane Cannon. "They collected evidence to present in court. … It's clear that the lawyers were running the show. " "Even yellow journalism is still journalism," said attorney Gabriel Fuentes.
Cannon said she will rule on Sept. 7 jmeisner@tribune.com. Teen Girl Forced to Give Cop Oral Sex -- What the Sick Abuse of Authority Says About Our Rape Culture | News & Politics. September 6, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. In our authority-oriented society, we're expected to put our trust in certain powerful figures: the police officers charged with protecting us, the clergy charged with guiding us.
So why is a culture of sexual abuse so rampant in many outposts of these kinds of institutions? The answer lies in the question: wherever there is unquestioned power and authority, we'll see sexual abuse, because in our "rape culture" rape is above all about power, domination, and violence. And when the attacker feels that he or she can get away with it--as those who are revered or set aside by society do--the problem worsens. Over Labor Day weekend, a chilling story came to light in Kansas City, Missouri. From Courthouse news service: A teen-age girl says a Jackson County police officer forced her to give him oral sex in his squad car after he found her and some friends in a park after curfew. Judge rules Northwestern students must turn over emails in murder case. September 07, 2011 | By Jason Meisner | Tribune reporter A Cook County judge today ordered that more than 500 emails between former Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess and his students detailing their efforts to free a man serving a life sentence should be turned over to prosecutors.
After two years of legal wrangling, Judge Diane Cannon ruled that the Medill School of Journalism students were “acting as investigators in a criminal proceeding.” “In this case, the Medill students worked at the direction of Anthony McKinney’s attorneys, conducting interviews, gathering evidence,” Cannon said. “While a book may be written or an article published…the information is subject to the rules of discovery.” It has been almost three years since Northwestern lawyers petitioned for a new trial for McKinney, convicted of a 1978 shotgun slaying in Harvey. “It’s been a frustrating two years, but it was an important issue,” Stack said. 5 Kicked Out and 3 Arrested at Paul Ryan Town Hall For Asking Questions. Paul Ryan held his PPV town hall event at Klemmer’s Banquet Hall in Milwaukee. When some protesters who had paid their $15 stood up and asked him questions about jobs and the Bush tax cuts, Ryan not only had them kicked out. He also had three of them arrested.
Here is the video: The protesters got involved when Rep. Ryan tried to claim that our job crisis is directly related to our debt crisis. One person stood up and asked, “Our debt is out of control because of the tax cuts you’re giving…Our unemployment in 2003 was 6.2% before the tax cuts went through. This lady was shown the door. An older man got angry when Ryan mentioned entitlement programs, and said that he paid into unemployment, Medicare, and Social Security for 50 years, and got himself kicked out. Did You See This? Police Morph Into Military. By Candelora Versace on Oct 4, 2011 Maybe in all the memorials and analyses of post-9/11 life in America, you missed a comprehensive article on Huffington Post about the militarization of local police forces, not just in the past 10 years but since the Reagan-era inception of the war on drugs. Frankly, we think “war on drugs” morphs all too readily into “war on everybody.”
Case in point: an out-of-control police force in New York using excessive force against the peaceful protesters in the Occupy Wall movement. Video coverage of police brutality in lower Manhattan has gone viral, but there’s scant coverage in that city’s own paper of record. As author Randy Balko rightly points out, with so much federally-funded military equipment now making its way into big cities and small towns alike, police increasingly see themselves as soldiers fighting an enemy instead of public servants devoted to keeping the peace and protecting civil rights. 42Reddit 7Google + Comment Policy:Keep it civil.
Protesters try to close B of A accounts. B of A and Police say: No can do. NFL adopts TSA-style full body pat-downs for fans at stadiums. L.A. confidential. The meeting that could have prevented the Los Angeles Police Department’s blockbuster Rampart scandal took place in Chief Bernard Parks’ office at the department’s Parker Center headquarters in the second week of September 1998. Officer Rafael Perez, whose tales of police brutality, unjustified shootings and false arrests would later trigger the worst scandal in LAPD history, had been arrested two weeks earlier on charges of stealing cocaine confiscated as evidence. But so far, none of Perez’s chilling story had become public. On that September day two years ago, Detective Russell Poole, the Robbery-Homicide Division veteran who had sniffed out Perez and personally arrested him, met with LAPD brass to brief them on another investigation.
This one involved a disturbing station-house beating that happened to take place at Perez’s station, Rampart Division. At the Parker Center meeting, Poole explained the details of the beating case to the chief and other assembled brass. Lt. Deputy D.A. Another BART protest planned for tonight in San Francisco. By Amy Hollyfield, Jonathan Bloom, and Sergio Quintana SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Thursday evening, BART reopened the Powell Street Station after police shut it down when protesters swarmed the area in the sixth demonstration since BART police shot and killed a homeless man in July. This time, reporters and photographers were ordered to leave, but not all did. The aim of demonstrators this time around was to jam up the entry gates for passengers to get onto the platform below. The demonstration lasted about 20 minutes before BART police decided it was too dangerous because of the close quarters, so they closed the whole station down for about two hours.
The main goal of this group called 'No Justice No BART' was to force BART into allowing passengers to ride the trains for free. The idea was to make the station so congested, that officials would have no choice, but to open the emergency gates. "The next thing I knew like, basically we were completely surrounded. BART Vandalism Tags: CIA reviewing ties with New York police department. Chicago Police Allegedly Beat Up Man Who Videotaped Them Dragging Man Outside of Squad Car. 1, September 13, 2011 by jonathanturley Brad Williams has filed a lawsuit against the Chicago police department after he said he was beaten by police in response to his filming an officer holding and dragging a man outside of his squad car.
As we have seen in other cases, one of the officers falsely told Williams that citizens were not allowed to film police officers in public, according to the complaint. He said that he was handcuffed and grabbed by the throat in the encounter. His mother was injured after she says that an officer caused her to stumble to the ground. The eight-count suit claims excessive force, false arrest and imprisonment. The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit became the latest court in a recent decision to rule that police efforts to bar such videotaping is a violation of the First Amendment. These cases continue to occur because officers are not disciplined for such abuses. Source: WLSam Like this: Like Loading... The Police State and Occupy Wall Street - The Bloody Cross Roads - The Bloody Cross Roads. Judge: Medill students acting as investigators, not protected by Ill. shield law. New Jersey Cop Attacked Woman Who Filmed Him at DWI Checkpoint. BART’S UNBALANCED VIEWS OF SAFETY AND SPEECH Jay Leiderman, Leiderman Devin.
NoBART. 'Troubling' frequency of Oakland cops pulling guns. Late Night FDL: OpBART-5, The Evolving Aerobic Version.