Tag: Law Enforcement Misconduct

Objectively Pro Fascist

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Let’s be clear here:  This is not an isolated case.

Police have been openly and aggressively supporting white supremacists and militia members, no where more so than in Oregon:

A Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy was placed on administrative leave Saturday after a video was posted online of the deputy claiming anti-fascist activists had been starting fires in the area.

The patrol deputy’s statements in the video are in direct conflict with efforts by law enforcement to dispel false rumors that antifa is responsible for wildfires burning in Clackamas County.

The deputy, whose face and name badge are not fully shown in the video, is recorded saying: “Antifa motherfuckers are out causing hell, and there’s a lot of lives at stake. And there’s a lot of people’s property at stake because these guys got some vendetta.”

The sheriff’s office said in a statement Saturday that the on-duty patrol deputy was tasked with ensuring residents knew of wildfire hazards in the area. The agency said he has been placed on administrative leave while its Professional Standards Unit investigates a potential policy violation. The deputy has not been publicly identified.

………

Law enforcement officials across the state, including with the FBI, are attempting to dispel rumors that political groups, including antifa — a loosely defined leftist group that is a frequent focus of far-right conspiracy theorists — are behind the unprecedented wildfires that have burned more than 1 million acres in Oregon. One plea law enforcement has made is that conspiracy theories take resources away from law enforcement who are attempting to keep the public safe.

There needs to be a persistent and aggressive effort to get right-wing terrorists and right-wing terrorist sympathizers out of law enforcement.

Rats Turn on Each Other

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The police officers charged in the Georgy Floyd murder are beginning to turn on one another.

What can I say but, “Pass the Popcorn.”

The four former Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s killing appear to be turning on one another, with each offering significantly different versions of the infamous arrest that acknowledge Floyd should not have been allowed to die that day but also deflect the blame to others.

The four men have said in court documents that they all thought someone else was in charge of the scene on May 25 — with rookie officers arguing they were deferring to a veteran, and the veteran saying he was simply assisting in an arrest that was in progress. All have said in court documents that the relationship between the veteran officer — Derek Chauvin — and the others is at the heart of the issue, as each officer perceived their role, and who was in charge, quite differently. Chauvin was the officer shown with his knee on Floyd’s neck as he struggled to breathe in videos of the ill-fated arrest.

“There are very likely going to be antagonistic defenses presented at the trial,” Earl Gray, a lawyer for Thomas K. Lane, wrote in a legal motion filed here this week. “It is plausible that all officers have a different version of what happened and officers place blame on one another.”

It’s nice when people who are ordinarily beneficiaries of the corrupt “Thin Blue Line” start turning against each other.

Here’s hoping that they all screw each other into a jail cell.

Yes, This is Fascism

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They have filed a conspiracy charge because she spoke at a protest against a confederate monument.

Lavrentiy Beria would be proud of them:

The felony case against Virginia’s most senior Black lawmaker, state Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth), is a preposterous example of rogue local police making a mockery of justice.

Almost nothing about the charges against Ms. Lucas, the first African American and female president pro tempore of the 244-year-old state Senate, contains an iota of sense. Portsmouth police brought the charge of conspiracy to topple a Confederate monument without the assent of state prosecutors, which is highly unusual. No grand jury was convened to seek an indictment. The case involves Ms. Lucas making public statements, including to the police. Her statements may or may not have been wise; the idea that they amounted to taking part in a felonious conspiracy is farcical.

If Ms. Lucas committed any offense, it was to stick her nose into a matter over which she had no direct authority, which is more or less a state legislator’s job description.

The incident in question occurred around midday on June 10, amid protests that swept the nation following George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis. Racial justice protesters and community leaders in Portsmouth, a majority-Black city, were intent on covering and defacing a prominent Confederate monument downtown, whose removal had been debated for several years. The monument — an obelisk ringed by statues of four military figures — had been covered by protesters the previous day, without police interference, then uncovered overnight. When two local NAACP leaders returned that morning to re-cover it, they were arrested.

………

That night, hours after Ms. Lucas departed, protests intensified, and the monument was defaced and vandalized. One of the soldier statues was pulled down, falling on a protester and gravely injuring him. At that point, police intervened. (The monument has since been dismantled and placed in storage.)

It was not until Aug. 17, more than two months later, that police got around to charging Ms. Lucas with conspiracy. That was after the local commonwealth’s attorney declined to do so — and no wonder, given the absence of evidence.

Ms. Lucas’s defenders contend that the case against her is payback for her advocacy of tough reform measures for law enforcement. There’s no evidence for that, either. Just as likely, it could be retribution by the police chief, whose resignation Ms. Lucas called for after the monument was pulled down while officers stood watching.

In fact, they waited until the Senate was coming into session to deal with comprehensive police reform, so this was more about trying to sabotage a vote on police accountability, a nakedly and corruptly political ploy:

Greene announced the warrants one day before Lucas was due to join other legislators in Richmond for a special session of the General Assembly called, in part, to address issues of racial inequity and police brutality raised after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody in May.

Lucas was not in police custody and intended to attend the session, according to several Democrats who said they spoke with her on Monday.

These is no excuse for this.

The Portsmouth PD needs to be shut down,

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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The Justice Department is taking over the defense in the E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump.

She alleges sexual assault, and has stated that she is lying and she has never met her. (There are multiple pictures of them together)

The government is claiming that even though the (alleged) rape occurred in the mid 1990s, that his denial of meeting her was made when he was President, so the DOJ should defend him at taxpayer expense, and that the case should be moved to federal court.

This is a transparent attempt to delay the case.

It is also the single most corrupt thing that any US Attorney General has ever done, because this could not have proceeded without Bill Barr specifically directing this:

The Justice Department moved on Tuesday to replace President Trump’s private legal team with government lawyers to defend him against a defamation lawsuit by the author E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.

In a highly unusual legal move, lawyers for the Justice Department said in court papers that Mr. Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he denied ever knowing Ms. Carroll and thus could be defended by government lawyers — in effect underwritten by taxpayer money.

Though the law gives employees of the federal government immunity from most defamation lawsuits, legal experts said it has rarely, if ever, been used before to protect a president, especially for actions taken before he entered office.

“The question is,” said Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, “is it really within the scope of the law for government lawyers to defend someone accused of lying about a rape when he wasn’t even president yet?”

The motion also effectively protects Mr. Trump from any embarrassing disclosures in the middle of his campaign for re-election. A state judge issued a ruling last month that potentially opened the door to Mr. Trump being deposed in the case before the election in November, and Ms. Carroll’s lawyers have also requested that he provide a DNA sample to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress that Ms. Carroll said she was wearing at the time of the encounter.

Bill Barr makes John Mitchell look like Perry Mason.

This is real banana republic sh%$#.

Support Your Local Police

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So, a mother calls because her 13 year old, who is on the autism spectrum, is having a meltdown because of separation anxiety.

The cops promptly escort her out of the house, (great way to deal with a separation anxiety freakout) and almost as promptly shoot the boy multiple times.

Clearly, we should expect a statement from the police that this kid was no angel.

Bastards:

A 13-year-old boy with autism was shot several times by police officers who responded to his home in Salt Lake City after his mother called for help.

Linden Cameron was recovering in a Utah hospital, his mother said, after suffering injuries to his shoulder, both ankles, his intestines and his bladder.

Golda Barton told KUTV she called 911 to request a crisis intervention team because her son, who has Asperger’s syndrome, was having an episode caused by “bad separation anxiety” as his mother went to work for the first time in more than a year.

“I said, ‘He’s unarmed, he doesn’t have anything, he just gets mad and he starts yelling and screaming,’” she said. “He’s a kid, he’s trying to get attention, he doesn’t know how to regulate.”

She added: “They’re supposed to come out and be able to de-escalate a situation using the most minimal force possible.”

Instead, she said, two officers went through the front door of the home and in less than five minutes were yelling “get down on the ground” before firing several shots.

“He’s a small child,” she said. “Why didn’t you just tackle him? He’s a baby. He has mental issues.”

In a briefing on Sunday, Sgt Keith Horrocks of Salt Lake City police told reporters officers were responding to reports “a juvenile was having a mental episode” and thought Cameron “had made threats to some folks with a weapon”.

………

Regarding the incident in Salt Lake City, Neurodiverse Utah said in a statement: “Police were called because help was needed but instead more harm was done when officers from the SLPD expected a 13-year-old experiencing a mental health episode to act calmer and [more] collected than adult trained officers.”

Barton launched a fundraiser to cover her son’s medical bills. She described Cameron as a typical young boy who loves “video games, four wheeling and long-boarding”. She also demanded answers about why her son was not subdued.

Let’s be clear, this was not just violence, it was extreme cowardice.

These cops are cowards, and they are trained to be cowards, living their lives in bed wetting fear.

That’s what all the hyper violent training, including the notorious Killology, is all about maintaining a state of hypervigilance reinforced by a willingness to use hair-trigger violence.

It is not just cowardice, it is a recipe for creating PTSD, and I do not want peace officers to have PTSD.

Finest Journalist in the United States is a Brit

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I am referring, of course, to John Oliver.

He masterfully juxtaposes the lie fest at the RNC with the events in Kenosha.

It’s sad that a comedian is pretty much the only person in the main-stream-media providing good context and analysis.

As an aside, I think that John Oliver is much better than Jon Stewart ever was.

Stewart subscribed to the “View from nowhere”, and Oliver does not hide his opinions.

This is Contemptible

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Authorities in Kentucky have still not arrested the police officers who murdered Breonna Taylor on March 13. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is now in charge of the case, had time to speak at the Republican National Convention last week, but he has not found the time to bring to justice the three cops who shot Taylor in her own apartment.

What have the authorities been doing for the past five and a half months?

Earlier this week, we learned the answer: The authorities have been busy harassing the Black men who knew Taylor, while trying to name Taylor, posthumously, as a criminal defendant. Instead of building a case against the police officers who killed her, it would appear that Kentucky prosecutors have been doing everything they can to build a case against Taylor, in a desperate yet classic attempt to blame a Black person for “forcing” the cops to kill them.

………

Now the two men who have been hounded by the authorities while Taylor’s killers march around free are starting to speak out through their attorneys and legal action. On Tuesday, attorneys filed a civil lawsuit on behalf of Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, against Louisville police, the city, and other officials. The suit is comprehensive: It alleges serious police misconduct and intimidation, gives new details on Taylor’s murder, and seeks to protect Walker from future harassment through a novel use of Kentucky’s “stand your ground” law.

………

But Walker’s case doesn’t stop there. In addition to the delicious legal jujitsu of using this white supremacist law against the forces of white supremacy, Walker’s complaint also focuses on the behavior of the cops once the shooting stopped. I am drawn to the allegations of police intimidation that Walker has suffered from the moment cops finished murdering his girlfriend. In his lawsuit, Walker claims that cops on the scene expressed disappointment when they found that Walker had not been shot. He claims the cops threatened to sic their dogs on him while they were marching him out of the apartment. And prosecutors charged Walker initially with murder of a police officer, a factual impossibility (because Jon Mattingly, the one officer who was wounded, was very much alive the whole time) that prosecutors must have been well aware of.

All of those tactics are part of a very big problem. They represent attempts by the police to make innocent people accept responsibility for things they did not do or implicate other innocent people in crimes. Killing a cop can get you a death sentence in Kentucky. A person might falsely plead to all sorts of things to avoid such a charge, especially when the police have already established that they are sorry they didn’t kill you during the initial confrontation and have threatened to let their dogs maul you like they’re a bunch of Ramsay Boltons with badges.

Unfortunately, Walker isn’t the only acquaintance of Breonna Taylor who has been subjected to this kind of witness intimidation after her death. Jamarcus Glover, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, who is ostensibly the person the police were actually going after on the night they murdered Taylor, missed a court appearance this week. As that began to make news, his lawyers released documents showing the lengths to which prosecutors have gone to get Glover to implicate Taylor in crimes she did not commit.

………

The local prosecutor, Tom Wine, denies that such a plea deal was “offered” to Glover, but he admits that the concession was part of a “draft” plea sheet ahead of plea negotiations. Wine also said that Taylor’s name was removed “out of respect for Ms. Taylor.” Notice the wording there: Wine isn’t saying that the allegations about Taylor aren’t true; he’s saying he didn’t include them in the official plea negotiation “out of respect.”

Everything that is happening to the men who knew Taylor is happening because prosecutors do not want to hold Taylor’s murderers accountable. This is what the system does when it does not want to secure a conviction. Prosecutors themselves try to poison the jury pool against their own case, creating avenues of doubt before any trial process gets going. They try to impugn the character of people who will have to be witnesses for the prosecution. They try to avoid doing forensic research so that they have no “hard” evidence to present to the jury, should it come to that. And they try, desperately, to get anybody to speak out against the victim so the defense can use those statements against the prosecution at trial.

The cops shot Taylor under the cover of darkness, but prosecutors are trying to lose the case in broad daylight.

This is aggressively and brazenly corrupt, and everyone in the various prosecutors’ offices who are a part of this should prosecuted and disbarred.

Would You like Cheese to Go with Your Whine?

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The FBI has issued a warning that doorbell cams may tip off residents that the police are planning a raid on their home.

Typical cops. More surveillance, until it touches on them:

The rise of the internet-connected home security camera has generally been a boon to police, as owners of these devices can (and frequently do) share footage with cops at the touch of a button. But according to a leaked FBI bulletin, law enforcement has discovered an ironic downside to ubiquitous privatized surveillance: The cameras are alerting residents when police show up to conduct searches.

A November 2019 “technical analysis bulletin” from the FBI provides an overview of “opportunities and challenges” for police from networked security systems like Amazon’s Ring and other “internet of things,” or IoT, devices. Marked unclassified but “law enforcement sensitive” and for official use only, the document was included as part of the BlueLeaks cache of material hacked from the websites of fusion centers and other law enforcement entities.

The “opportunities” described are largely what you’d expect: Sensor-packed smart devices create vast volumes of data that can be combed through by curious investigators, particularly “valuable data regarding device owners’ movements in real-time and on a historic basis, which can be used to, among other things, confirm or contradict subject alibis or statements.”

The downside for police, who have rushed to embrace Ring usage nationwide as the Amazon subsidiary aggressively marketed itself to and sealed partnerships with local departments, is that networked cameras record cops just as easily as the rest of us. Ring’s cameras are so popular in part because of how the company markets their ability to detect motion at your doorstep, providing convenient phone alerts of “suspicious activity,” however you might define it, even when you’re out of the house. But sometimes the police are the unannounced, unwanted visitor: “Subjects likely use IoT devices to hinder LE [law enforcement] investigations and possibly monitor LE activity,” the bulletin states. “If used during the execution of a search, potential subjects could learn of LE’s presence nearby, and LE personnel could have their images captured, thereby presenting a risk to their present and future safety.”

The document describes a 2017 incident in which FBI agents approached a New Orleans home to serve a search warrant and were caught on video. “Through the Wi-Fi doorbell system, the subject of the warrant remotely viewed the activity at his residence from another location and contacted his neighbor and landlord regarding the FBI’s presence there,” it states.

Sauce for the Gander.

Hold off the Praise

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There are a lot of people praising Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler to the skies for cutting Donald Trump a new one at a press conference.

I also know that he is right when he says, “It’s you who have created the hate and the division. And now you want me to stop the violence that you helped create. What America needs is for you to be stopped so that Americans can come together,” among other things in a remarkably similar vein.

He’s right, and I appreciate what he said.

That being said, most of the people do not understand Portland, Oregon’s form of government, because they have never lived there.

I did.  My family Moved there in 1977, and I went to high school there, and my dad lived there almost continuously for the next 42 years.

Portland, and Portland politics, were fodder at the kitchen table.  (My dad thought that former Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt was a bit of a skunk, which was proved by later developments)

One of the peculiarities of Portland is that it has a city commission form of government, an increasingly rare form of government, a form of government that originated in Galveston, TX in 1900, but it is increasingly rare, having generally been replaced by the council-manager form of government since the end of the first world war.

The peculiarity of the city commission form of government is that each city councilman is the head of some part of the municipal bureaucracy.

One might be the head of sanitation, one of housing, one of transportation, one of water, one of Fire/EMS, and one of them is ……… wait for it ……… police commissioner.

Mayor Wheeler is the police commissioner, and has been since he was sworn in as Mayor at the beginning of 2017, he has been in charge of the cops, and he has done nothing about the racist and right-wing cesspool that is the Portland Police Bureau, nor anything about their flagrantly abusive and unconstitutional behavior toward the protesters, and their support for white supremacist terrorists.

A former ally on the Portland City Commission called him for his unwillingness to confront the police over their misconduct, saying that the police misconduct had made Trump’s federal intervention inevitable.

Meanwhile, he has presided over a police crackdown on the homeless. (also here and here)

The protests in Portland have been exacerbated and intensified by the brutality and the bias of the police, Mayor Ted Wheeler’s police, which he was, and is, in charge of.

He a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.

Support Your Local Police

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As if it were not blatantly obvious from their behavior, it turns out that the FBI has been following largely successful efforts of white supremacists to infiltrate the police throughout the country:

White supremacist groups have infiltrated US law enforcement agencies in every region of the country over the last two decades, according to a new report about the ties between police and far-right vigilante groups.

In a timely new analysis, Michael German, a former FBI special agent who has written extensively on the ways that US law enforcement have failed to respond to far-right domestic terror threats, concludes that US law enforcement officials have been tied to racist militant activities in more than a dozen states since 2000, and hundreds of police officers have been caught posting racist and bigoted social media content.

The report notes that over the years, police links to militias and white supremacist groups have been uncovered in states including Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.

………

The exact scale of ties between law enforcement and militias is hard to determine, German told the Guardian. “Nobody is collecting the data and nobody is actively looking for these law enforcement officers,” he said.
………

This week, police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, faced intense scrutiny over their response to armed white men and militia groups gathered in the city amid demonstrations by Black Lives Matter activists and others over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black father of three who was left paralyzed after being shot in the back. On Wednesday, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old who appeared to consider himself a militia member and had posted “blue lives matter” content, was arrested on suspicion of murder after the fatal shooting of two protesters.

………

German told the Guardian on Wednesday: “Far-right militants are allowed to engage in violence and walk away while protesters are met with violent police actions.” This “negligent response”, he added, empowers violent groups in dangerous and potentially lethal ways: “The most violent elements within these far-right militant groups believe that their conduct is sanctioned by the government. And therefore they’re much more willing to come out and engage in acts of violence against protesters.”

There is growing awareness in some parts of the government about the intensifying threat of white supremacy. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have directly identified white supremacists as the most lethal domestic terrorist threat in the country. According to German’s report, the FBI’s own internal documents have directly warned that the militia groups the agency is investigating often have “active links” to law enforcement.

So not a surprise.

Absolutely everything that we have seen over the past 40 years has supported this conclusion.

The right wing has been actively trying to infiltrate the US state security apparatus for years.

Kenosha

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Blaming the victims, this is pretty shocking

pic.twitter.com/XmUmclMlrO

— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) August 26, 2020

Blaming the Victims

A 17 y/o white supremacist, Kyle Rittenhouse, drove from Illinois to Wisconsin w/ an AR-15 to TERRORIZE BLM PROTESTORS

He shot several people ended up killing 2. Then is able to casually walk around police as if he didn’t just murder!

WHAT THE FUCK?!pic.twitter.com/eSdQm5eJ4Z

— StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) August 26, 2020


The police don’t care, it’s only black people

Just after the shooting, another member of that militia (who was seen in pre-shooting pictures with the killer) described how the police told him they planned to push the protesters out of the park and towards the militia.

Which is exactly what they did. pic.twitter.com/jFsZQK8Dl1

— Lee J. Carter (@carterforva) August 26, 2020

Police were collaborating with right wing militias

There is a life cycle for bad cops.  They go to the academy at a large city, and eventually wash out, either at academy or after becoming an officer, because of incompetence, stupidity, and bigotry.

They go to a smaller municipality and get a job there, because someone else has already paid for their training, and they are cheap, and wash out to smaller, and smaller towns, because the smaller (and more resource limited) a police department is, the more it has to take on a police officer who got the boot from the big show.

At the end of the line, it appears is Kenosha, where following a domestic violence call, a police officer (or officers) shot Jacob Blake 7 times in the back, paralyzing him.

It was caught on video, and there have been protests.

The police have responded with violence and provocation.

Last night, a 17-year-old white supremacist,Kyle Rittenhouse, and his AR-15, were driven to Kenosha from Illinois by his mom, he opened fire on the protesters.

The police blamed the victims, describing premeditated murder as, “The use of firearms to resolve whatever conflict.”

The officers literally ignored him as he walked past the cops, gun in hand, and was later arrested by Illinois law enforcement and charged with 1st degree murder.

The police were caught on video planning with with white supremacist militias, including the shooter.

It appears that the white supremacists are a part of Kenosha’s police auxiliary, and play a major role in the department’s legendary corruption:

“Corruption, lies, multiple evidence plantings, and deceit existed throughout the entire Kenosha criminal justice system,” concluded one report, commissioned by the Wisconsin state Supreme Court in 2017 after officers allegedly lied and planted evidence in a murder case.

Of course, this may not matter to the “Silent Majority” that Donald Trump is so enthusiastic about, but this is already hitting them, because the Milwaukee Bucks are  boycotting Game 5 of their playoff series vs. The Orlando Magic in protest. (They should be calling it a strike)

The boycott has since expanded to include NBA playoff games between Houston & Oklahoma City, and the Los Angeles & Portland, as well as games in Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, and the WNBA.

All those folks who freaked out over Colin Kaepernick, including the orange inverted traffic cone, can bite my shiny metal ass over this one.

In refusing to respond in a serious manner to a very real problem, they have made more extreme actions, and more extreme protests, inevitable.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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Kevin Alfaro was at a Black Lives Matter protest in Nutley, New Jersey, when his ordeal began.

The anti-racism demonstration, prompted by the police killing of George Floyd, was met by a group of mostly white counter-protesters, some chanting “all lives matter”, and Alfaro felt the police were treating the rightwing crowd favorably.

In a climate where anti-racism protesters have been met with violence from police, Alfaro took a photo of one officer, and posted it to Twitter. “If anyone knows who this bitch is, throw his info under this tweet,” Alfaro wrote.

………

Alfaro had been charged with cyber-harassment, a fourth-degree felony, and a charge that carries a prison sentence of up to 18 months.

It fit a pattern. Since protests against racism and police brutality began protesters across the country have been hit with punitive, felony charges for acts of civil disobedience, in what civil rights experts say is a “suppression tactic” aimed at quashing the anti-racism movement.

In New York City, a man was charged after allegedly shouting through a loudspeaker in a police officer’s ear. In Miami, an activist was hit with a strong-arm robbery charge after being accused of stealing pro-Donald Trump flags. Perhaps the most egregious case is in Utah, where a group faces up to life in prison after allegedly throwing paint on a building.

………

In Salt Lake City, Utah, police say Madalena McNeil bought red paint at a Home Depot before she and three other activists threw it on a district attorney’s office, and broke windows, during a 9 July protest.

The group was charged with felony criminal mischief and riot charges, and prosecutors added a “charging enhancement” claiming the protesters operated as a gang. That means the group could face life in prison.

The prosecutors and the cops are using their positions and abusing the law to prevent scrutiny of their actions.

It is whistle-blower retaliation, and in many places it is a crime, though no one will ever be charged, since those making the decision are those who would be targeted.

Florida, Man

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It’s always Florida, isn’t it?

In this Marion County Florida, and future plague victim, Billy Woods has banned his officers, and all people who want to enter the sheriff’s office from wearing masks.

On Tuesday, as Florida set a daily record for covid-19 deaths, Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods prohibited his deputies from wearing masks at work. His order, which also applies to visitors to the sheriff’s office, carves out an exception for officers in some locations, including hospitals, and when dealing with people who are high-risk or suspected of having the novel coronavirus.

In an email to the sheriff’s department shared with The Washington Post, Woods disputed the idea that masks are a consensus approach to battling the pandemic.

“We can debate and argue all day of why and why not. The fact is, the amount of professionals that give the reason why we should, I can find the exact same amount of professionals that say why we shouldn’t,” Woods wrote in the email, which was first reported by the Ocala Star-Banner.

………

All visitors to sheriff’s department buildings will be asked to take off their masks in the lobby, Woods said, linking that rule to the ongoing protests against police brutality.

“In light of the current events when it comes to the sentiment and/or hatred toward law enforcement in our country today, this is being done to ensure there is clear communication and for identification purposes of any individual walking into a lobby,” he wrote.

Seriously, what the actual f%$#?

What the F%$#?

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What the hell is going on in Chicago?

Hundreds of people swept through the Magnificent Mile and other parts of downtown Chicago early Monday, smashing windows, looting stores and confronting police after officers shot a suspect in Englewood hours earlier.

The mayhem marked the second time since late May that the city’s upscale shopping district has been targeted by looters amid unrest, reigniting the debate over policing as city leaders continued to point fingers and downtown again was shut down overnight heading to Tuesday.

As businesses owners boarded up shops and braced for the possibility of additional looting, some cautioned against simplifying the situation or blaming any single issue.

“It’s not just people looting,” said Patsy Mullins, whose Gold Coast store, Accessorize, was completely emptied. “Let’s dig to the root of the problem, let’s not look at the surface. … We need to get to the bottom of this. Otherwise, well, this problem will never be solved and it will continue again and again.”

City officials said the seeds for the crime spree were sown on social media Sunday afternoon, after officers shot and wounded a 20-year-old man who allegedly had fled and fired shots at them.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Monday decried “a false rumor on social media” that police officers killed a 15-year-old boy. That led residents to clash with police officers in Englewood and prompted calls to head toward downtown.

Needless to say, racist dirt-bags and senior Chicago police officials (but I repeat myself) have been quick to accuse the Mayor and the new DA of coddling “troublemakers”.

“This was not an organized protest,” Chicago police Superintendent David Brown said. “Rather, this was an incident of pure criminality. This was an act of violence against our police officers and against our city.”

Black Lives Matter Chicago, which protested outside a Near South Side police precinct Monday night, blasted Lightfoot for accepting the police version of events and not doing more to institute reforms. The organization suggested the man was right to flee authorities, given the department’s history of racism and abusive tactics.

“In a predictable and unfortunate move, she did not take this time to criticize her officers for shooting yet another Black man,” the organization’s statement read. “Lightfoot instead spent her time attacking ‘looters.’ The mayor clearly has not learned anything since May, and she would be wise to understand that the people will keep rising up until the CPD is abolished and our Black communities are fully invested in.”

On the bright side, Chicago protesters have learned an important lesson:  Hold your protests in THEIR neighborhood, not YOUR neighborhood.

Cops are not going to drop a bomb on the Magnificent Mile and let the neighborhood burn down.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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A protester saw a cop who he believed was behaving inappropriately, so he posted the photo to Twitter, and he and those who retweeted him were charged with felony cyber harassment.

The extremes to which prosecutors go to protect police officers from the consequences of their malfeasence boggle the mind: (Note:  After this blew up in the media, the prosecutor dropped charges)

When Kevin Alfaro noticed a masked police officer befriending a counterprotester who had threatened him at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Nutley, N.J., on June 19, he whipped out his phone and took a picture.

Then he tweeted: “If anyone knows who this b—- is throw his info under this tweet.”

Now, Alfaro and four others who retweeted the post have been charged with cyber harassment, a fourth-degree felony that carries up to 18 months of incarceration and a $10,000 fine.

A complaint sent July 20 to Georgana Sziszak, who retweeted the post, first reported by the Verge and reviewed by The Washington Post, claims that the tweet caused the officer to “fear that harm will come to himself, family and property.”

………

Alfaro wrote on a GoFundMe page that he was at a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest on June 29 when a group of counterprotesters became physically threatening. He then saw a Nutley police officer, later identified as Detective Peter Sandomenico in Sziszak’s summons, acting friendly with the counterprotesters. Sandomenico had covered up his badge number and was wearing a “Blue Lives Matter” mask, Alfaro added.

“As a citizen exercising my First Amendment rights, I felt threatened that a public servant was befriending blatant racists,” Alfaro said.

We need to make it a crime for uniformed officers to cover their badges, and every single person involved in bringing these charges should be under criminal investigation.

Not a Surprise

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After President Trump ordered federal law enforcement officers into Portland, Ore., earlier this month, the protests largely ended the same way for days: with tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests.

On Thursday, the first protest held since the federal agencies agreed to pull back their officers was a markedly more peaceful affair.

As the Black Lives Matter-inspired vigil wound down early Friday morning, there was virtually no sign of the Oregon State Police officers who had taken over protection of the federal buildings at the center of the protests.

Instead of being forcibly removed from downtown’s Lownsdale Square and the adjacent Chapman Square, which lie opposite the barricaded Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse, the crowd thinned out on its own, with many protesters heading home of their own accord.

This is not a surprise.  The purpose of sending federal thugs to Portland was not to keep the peace, but to create violence and chaos.

Data Point of the Day

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Donald Trump has made warnings about the threat of antifa and “far-left fascism” a central part of his re-election campaign. But in reality leftwing attacks have left far fewer people dead than violence by rightwing extremists, new research indicates, and antifa activists have not been linked to a single murder in decades.

A new database of nearly 900 politically motivated attacks and plots in the United States since 1994 includes just one attack staged by an anti-fascist that led to fatalities. In that case, the single person killed was the perpetrator.

Over the same time period, American white supremacists and other rightwing extremists have carried out attacks that left at least 329 victims dead, according to the database.

More broadly, the database lists 21 victims killed in leftwing attacks since 2010 , and 117 victims of rightwing attacks in that same period – nearly six times as much. Attacks inspired by the Islamic State and similar jihadist groups, in contrast, killed 95 people since 2010, slightly fewer than rightwing extremists, according to the data set. More than half of these victims died in a a single attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016.

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While researchers sometimes disagree on how to categorize the ideology of specific attacks, multiple databases that track extremist violence, including data maintained by the Anti-Defamation League, and from journalists at the Center for Investigative Reporting, have found the same trend: It’s violent rightwing attacks, not “far-left” violence, that presents the greater deadly threat to Americans today.

If the right wing were treated as the threat that they actually are, we’d have hundreds of co-conspirators in prison serving sentences or awaiting trial right now.

Support Your Local Police

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Police and right-wing militias have been thick as thieves for decades:

In mid-June, on a sunny late afternoon, dozens of protesters led by Indigenous and youth organizers gathered in front of the Albuquerque Museum at the feet of La Jornada, a statue of Spanish conquistador Don Juan de Oñate. They called for the statue’s removal, saying it was a monument to a genocidal colonial history. On the outer banks of the crowd, at least six militiamen from the New Mexico Civil Guard, a civilian militia, flanked the protest in a tight semicircle, some of them shouldering assault rifles.

When some of the protesters began taking a pickax and chain to the statue, a man in a blue shirt — later identified as Steven Baca Jr. — sprayed a cloud of Mace at them. Then he threw a woman to the ground. Her head hit the pavement with an audible smack, and Baca fled, with protesters trailing him, shouting at him to leave. Baca turned to face a man in jeans and a black hoodie, who tackled him. A bystander’s video caught the scuffle that followed: Baca drew a handgun from his waistband and fired four shots. “There’s a man down,” someone shouted. “There’s a man down!”

Throughout the hours-long demonstration, Albuquerque police had waited behind the museum with an armored car, some watching from museum security cameras. Meanwhile, members of the so-called Civil Guard, dressed in Army uniforms and helmets, tried to keep protesters from the statue. They were there, they claimed, to keep peace and enforce the law. After Baca shot the protester three times, the militia surrounded him, protecting him as he sat in the street. The nearby police took four minutes to arrive. The protester, Scott Williams, was eventually taken to the hospital in critical condition.

The shooting at La Jornada, Spanish for “the expedition,” occurred several weeks after the beginning of #BlackLivesMatter protests in Albuquerque. At those demonstrations, too, a disquieting camaraderie between official police and another militia, the New Mexico Patriots, emerged. “We’re all here for the same cause, man,” an Albuquerque police officer said to a group of body-armored gym-goers and militiamen before a #BLM protest, according to a video taken by a militia member and shared online. “We’re here to help.”

The incidents are in line with the deeper history of the Albuquerque police’s behavior during the civil rights movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. High Country News unearthed archival documents from the Center for Southwest Research illuminating a history of police cooperation and cross-pollination with radical right-wing and vigilante groups in New Mexico. According to police and FBI reports, newspaper clippings and the testimony of activists, that cooperation included surveillance, harassment and misinformation campaigns against social justice movements by informants and radical provocateurs.

The culture of policing in the United States is rotten to the core.

Not Just Violent, Corrupt

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Accused murderer, and one time Minneapolis cop, Derek Chauvin has been charged with tax fraud, so in addition to being a brutal thug, he’s a rather more mundane criminal as well:

The fired Minneapolis police officer charged with killing George Floyd was charged along with his wife Wednesday with felony tax crimes dating back to 2014 that allege failure to claim more than $460,000 in income — at least $96,000 of that in his off-duty security work.

 Derek Chauvin and Kellie Chauvin, of Oakdale, were each charged by summons in Washington County District Court with nine felony counts of aiding and abetting false or fraudulent tax returns or failing to file returns.

 From 2014 to 2019, the Chauvins underreported $464,433 in joint income and owed a total of $21,853 in taxes, according to the charges. With interest and late filing and fraud penalties, they owe $37,868, the complaints said.

 Derek Chauvin, 46, remains jailed on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in connection with the death of Floyd while in police custody on May 25. Three other ex-officers, Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao are charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin.

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The filing includes a litany of allegations. Among them, prosecutors say the Chauvins bought a new BMW X5 in January 2018 for $100,230 from a Minnetonka dealership and registered the SUV in Florida — they own a condo in Windermere, outside Orlando — and paid $4,664 in taxes in that state.

However, the vehicle was serviced 11 times in Minnetonka and never in Florida, investigators say they found. Kellie Chauvin told investigators they opted for Florida because it was less expensive. The taxes due on the SUV had it been registered in Minnesota were $5,053.

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The charges document various sources of income for the couple. The complaints said that between 2014 and 2019, Derek Chauvin made between $52,000 and $72,000 annually as a police officer. He also worked off-duty security nearly every weekend in that time at El Nuevo Rodeo dance club, Cub Foods, Midtown Global Market and EME Antro Bar on E. Lake Street.

During that span, Chauvin failed to pay taxes on nearly $96,000 he earned from El Nuevo Rodeo alone, investigators estimated.

Beginning in June 2019, he routinely worked off-duty at EME Antro Bar on weekends from 11 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. after his MPD shift and was paid $250 in cash each night, said investigators, who located no corresponding tax papers.

I would note that the entire “Cops being paid cash for security by a club” thing is probably pretty common in Minneapolis.

Tax authorities take note.