#Investigate indict prosecute incarcerate

[simply-ivanka]

This is our America under the Democrats.

Is this acceptable to you?

This is not acceptable to me!

[simply-ivanka]

James Comey is responsible for the deplorable state of the FBI today! The FBI should be disbanded and reformed with a clean slate of personnel.

[beardedmrbean]

A luxury handbag designer has been jailed after pleading guilty to smuggling purses made of the skins of protected reptiles, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Nancy Teresa Gonzalez de Barberi, found of the luxury handbag company Gzuniga, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday for illegally importing merchandise from Colombia to the United States that was made from protected wildlife, authorities said.

Mauricio Giraldo, an associate of Gonzalez, was also sentenced to prison, according to the Department of Justice.

“Gzuniga was ordered to forfeit all handbags and other previously seized product, banned for three years from any activities involving commercial trade in wildlife and sentenced to serve three years of probation,” officials said. “Gonzalez was sentenced to 18 months in prison with credit for time served, a supervised release of three years and to pay a special assessment. Giraldo was sentenced to time served, approximately 22 months based on incarceration in Colombia and the United States since his extradition, a year of supervised release and to pay a special assessment.”

Another co-conspirator, John Camilo Aguilar Jaramillo, had previously pleaded guilty on April 8 and is set to be sentenced on June 27, authorities said.

Gonzalez, Giraldo and Jaramillo are Colombian citizens and were extradited to the United States to face the charges brought against them.

The caiman and python species the company was making bags out of are protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), to which both the United States and Colombia are signatories. The trade in caimans and pythons is not completely banned but is strictly regulated under CITES rules.

“The United States signed on to CITES in an effort to help protect threatened and endangered species here and abroad from trafficking,” said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division in a statement released by the Department of Justice on Monday. “We will not tolerate illegal smuggling. We appreciate the efforts of our many federal and international partners who have helped with the investigation, extradition and prosecution of this case.”

The conspirators brought “hundreds of designer purses, handbags and totes into the United States by enlisting friends, relatives and even employees of Gonzalez’s manufacturing company in Colombia to wear the designer handbags or put them in their luggage while traveling on passenger airlines,” authorities said.

Once the merchandise was in the United States, the bags were delivered or shipped to the Gzuniga showroom in New York to be displayed and sold.

“The United States, in company with the international community, has established a system for overseeing the trafficking in protected species of wildlife. That system relies on a system of permits and oversight by many agencies and demands strict compliance by all those engaged in such trade,” said U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe for the Southern District of Florida. “The press of business, production deadlines or other economic factors are not justification for anyone to knowingly flout the system and attempt to write their own exceptions to wildlife trafficking laws. In cooperation with our international partners, our Office will continue to require strict adherence to laws that protect our endangered species.”

An indictment charged Gzuniga, Gonzalez, Giraldo and Jaramillo with one count of conspiracy and two counts of smuggling for illegally importing designer handbags made from caiman and python skin from February 2016 to April 2019.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is deeply committed to combatting wildlife trafficking in all its forms. The Gonzalez case underscores the importance of robust collaboration with federal and international partners to disrupt illegal wildlife trade networks,” said Assistant Director Edward Grace of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Office of Law Enforcement. “This investigation uncovered a multi-year scheme that involved paid couriers smuggling undeclared handbags made of CITES-protected reptile skins into the U.S. to be sold for thousands of dollars. The Service will continue to seek justice for protected species exploited for profit, and we will hold accountable those who seek to circumvent international controls meant to regulate their sustainable trade.”

[bbc2pastmidnight]

I’m replaying Rise from the Ashes and the first time I played and watched this obviously I got weirddddd vibes from Gant specifically in regard to edgeworth. Obviously, he and the judge have something weird going on but that seems more to point towards the thematic motif of judicial corruption and how police and prosecution feed into that etc. That’s not what this post is about tho I am going to make a wild reading of edgeworths childhood (based in real text, true, but which is maybe ~darker~ or whatever than the series intended to be overtly stated. Idk it’ll make sense if you read it but more below the cut.)

I have always assumed some level of abuse on manfred von karma’s part, though the extent of it depends on what kind of reading I’m engaging with, I guess. Clearly he wasn’t a great father in any reading.

The standard way I see it (though this can vary like I said), Von karma had something Weird going on with Gregory. The extent of This can also vary as i can see lots of degrees of valid readings but at its core the relationship was at least a bit obsessive, at Least on von karma’s side, and At Least from Gregory’s murder onward. Okay.

So then he has this guys Kid in his house who grows to be exactly like him but NOT. He has this little Gregory he can mould into a weird twisted version of the older man. A controllable version desperate enough for his approval that he’ll do whatever von karma wants him to do.

This is probably just how I was raised and my childhood and my projection etc. But I DEFINITELY see edgeworth as having been raped as a kid. Maybe by von karma when young so he was terrified mixed with reverent but didn’t know why, but also — and this is my big point here — very legibly by damon gant.

Gant and von karma are clearlyyyyyy old friends. Gant tells phoenix and ema in the second day of investigation that the prosecutors office has been in turmoil for the past two months because of phoenix’s having von karma indicted; he implies that phoenix “fixed it” so that von karma would be found guilty on some sort of illegitimate charge, and that phoenix did something very wrong in both backing edgeworth in that trial, and in going against the ‘old school’ so to speak, ie. against von karma — and due to their connected corrupted natures — through him, against gant himself.

Von Karma was always a prosecutor, and he never lost a case. You can’t do that if you’re also presenting the truth. In order to consistently get false evidence and to consistently get away with it, he would need to be closely tied to police higher ups. He and Gant probably rose through the ranks of their respective careers together, protecting one another (because of their mutually assured destruction, most likely).

Edgeworth was also shoe-horned into a cozy prosecuting job extremely young, and was given falsified evidence and almost entirely faked investigations so he could continue getting 100% guilty verdicts for gant and von karma. Though he may have felt like he was investigating and coming to conclusions on his own, as can be inferred from the end of RFtA, for the first 3.5 years of his prosecuting career, edgeworth was little more than a tool the police wielded to get high incarceration rates.

(As a side note, that is SO fucked. If you want to read generously or give him any benefit of the doubt, at least part of edgeworth was at Least Telling Himself that the system worked like this because the police were only arresting guilty people to begin with, and that’s why all evidence always pointed to guilty, and why the judge always judged them guilty, and why the criminals were always hanged accordingly. It was simple and effective and black and white and AWESOME if you’re miserable and have autism.)

The point is, Gant is the kind of figure who would have been over at the von karma household if they ever entertained. He’s someone edgeworth would have seen at the heads of tables when he was a little boy. Then they were probably encouraged to talk to each other as he got older and it became known and expected that he would become a prosecutor. This little plan for him would have been concocted by von karma and gant years before he was even old enough to really appreciate everything that was going on around him. And the way I read their interactions in court… it seems most likely that von karma would have “offered” the young edgeworth to gant. To, excuse the wording, use for whatever he wanted. As a show of good will between two old allies. I’m sure gant sent him a bottle of wine, a young employee of his, something.

And whatever this arrangement was, edgeworth definitely seems to remember it. At least, he clearly has an inkling. And the way gant takes pleasure humiliating him in court, idk. I get the sense that it started in like childhood maybe but continued sporadically throughout his teens and early career. Maybe it tapered off to something predatory and gropey and Off during his teen years but juuuust restrained enough that edgeworth would put up with it for the sake of pleasing everyone and doing a good job and not wanting to upset von karma and besides, who is he going to complain to ? He probably tried to repress any memory from his childhood and operate under the assumption that gant just made him nervous and a little uncomfortable, especially since he was someone he had feared and respected so much as a kid now treating him so casually. This assumption made it just bearable. It was fine. Everyone had to put up with unfortunate coworkers. Yeah, in investigation day two, he tells phoenix and ema that sl-9 was his “first case working with [gant]… I was nervous.”

Oh but the thing I really was just GOBSMACKED by playing through this again was that. With all this CRAZY dialogue in court and poor edgeworth’s emotional reaction having to see him again unprepared only two months after the whole thing with von karma (he’s probably been avoiding his associates like the plague) during dl-6, the craziest thing is that they retroactively, after seeing edgeworth’s type in the next two games, designed gant to be the prototype for that. That’s SO fucked up. Muscular / broad, probably hairy, pointy hair, weird-ass eyebrows. At least a little mean to him (excepting gumshoe. Some people wouldn’t say there’s like an Attraction there but there sure is Some sort of d/s going on).

Anyway. Dog. Oh my god man what the fuck

[reasoningdaily]

Donald Trump is expected to be indicted this week by a Manhattan grand jury following an investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. into whether Trump’s alleged payment of hush money to former porn star Stormy Daniels rose to felony-level criminality on the part of the ex-president. Once again, Trump is facing court over allegedly shady dealings, and his chief nemesis is a Black man, only this time that Bragg isn’t trying to rent one of Trump’s apartments, he’s seeking a historic conviction that could mark the first time a former president ends up incarcerated.

If it feels like Trump has spent the last 50 years being sued over his business practices and antagonizing Black people, your instinct isn’t far off. In 1973, the Justice Department sued Trump for discriminating against Black prospective tenants in his then rental real estate portfolio. Trump settled, and to this day claims he did nothing wrong. That lawsuit foreshadowed two themes in Trump’s life that this week could also begin his downfall: court battles over his business practices and tussles with Black folks who refused to be cowed by his racist public policy and rhetoric.

Since then, Trump been accused of jerking contractors who worked on his construction sites out of their money. The Trump Organization reorganized under federal bankruptcy protection three times. The company was convicted last year of tax fraud. He bought an infamous full-page New York Times ad asking for the death penalty (which didn’t exist in New York at the time) for five Black teenagers who were ultimately exonerated for the rape of a white woman who was jogging in Central Park. His presidential campaign and four years in the White House centered on anti-Black and anti-immigrant demagoguery.

So you’re not wrong if you also think it’s fitting that since leaving office, the biggest threats to his fortune and his freedom are investigations led by three Black prosecutors: Bragg, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, whose office could still indict Trump over his attempts to undo Georgia’s 2020 election results, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is suing the Trump Organization in civil court over the kind of accounting practices at the company’s criminal conviction.

Trump has tried hard to delay or derail all those investigations. He challenged subpoenas. He filed an unsuccessful countersuit against James. He made veiled threats against Willis. He was seen sticking a banana in the tailpipe of Bragg’s chauffeured SUV (ok, that didn’t happen but you can’t stop seeing the visual, can you?). As late as Monday morning, his legal team filed paperwork to try to get Willis thrown off the case and to seal her grand jury’s report, which recommends criminal charges against multiple, unnamed people. Wanna guess who one of those people just might be? So far, none of it has worked.

Still, that it’s Bragg whose investigation appears to have reached the finish line first is ironic. A year ago this week, I questioned whether Bragg was pulling punches on Trump after one of the former lead prosecutors from Bragg’s team wrote a scathing resignation letter that accused his ex-boss of ignoring overwhelming evidence that Trump had committed multiple felonies. Back then, it looked like if any of the investigations against Trump would implode, it would be Bragg’s.

I’ve interviewed Bragg several times since and asked him directly about the Trump investigation. Every time, he was measured and cautious with his words, demure about discussing an ongoing grand jury proceeding. But never once did he close the door on the idea that his office would prosecute Trump if evidence led the grand jury to indict. And as I noted in last year’s piece, it’s pretty easy for New York prosecutors to get grand juries to bring charges if they really want to.

Of course, an indictment is a long, long way from a conviction and the trial of a former president–especially one that would play out in a New York courtroom–would be a spectacle that would do more pay-per-view buys than a Floyd Mayweather fight. But if boxing is the appropriate metaphor for Trump’s current legal woes, maybe with all his antagonizing, he finally picked the wrong opponent, somebody he couldn’t push around the ring too easily. Somebody willing to punch back, or even go on the offensive. Maybe this time, he finally loses.

[city24times]

11 people indicted for soaking paper in drugs and smuggling

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Ohio announced indictments against 11 people for their roles in an elaborate scheme to smuggle synthetic drugs into prison.

The indicted individuals have been identified as:

Roy Kahn, 48

Christopher Adams, 41

Irwin Jose Vargas, 43

Manuel Lopez, 58

Wayne Fabian, 47

Giuseppe Cellura, 45

Brian Perez-Ayala, 38

Andres Garcia, 41

Jesus Parra-Felix

Miguel Forteza-Garcia, 35

Eduardo Rivera-Ocana, 36

According to the indictment, Kahn was the leader of a multi-state drug ring that obtained synthetic narcotics, including the lethal drug fentanyl, from China and distributed the drugs to inmates in federal prison between 2015 and 2018.

The drug pages would be used to create photographs, books and pamphlets, such as Harry Potter coloring books, and fake legal documents that would be brought into the prisons by suspects who impersonated actual attorneys.

The drug-infused paper would be sold to inmates for significant profits, often charging at least $500 for a sheet of drug-infused paper.

“The job is (expletive)…they drown those sheets…and then they hang them…like photographs, they have them with clips and leave them to dry,” Vargas stated according to the indictment.

All the defendants, with the exception of Kahn, Adams, Lopez and Cellura, are currently in federal prison.

“Concealing dangerous, deadly, illegal drugs and smuggling into prisons by any method in order to profit from incarcerated drug users is quite crafty, but utilizing infusion methods onto paper causes extreme risks to innocent people who may handle the paper." FBI Acting Special Agent in Charge Robert Hughes said.

The FBI, Federal Bureau of Prisons Joint Information Sharing Initiative, the Ohio High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, and U.S. Postal Inspection Service assisted in the investigation.

Kahn’s organization then used these drug pages to create photographs, books and pamphlets, such as Harry Potter coloring books. They also used the drug pages to create legal mail such as briefs and motions bearing the names of real attorney or fictitious attorney personas they created. The purpose of these actions was to circumvent prison security.

Inmates paid Kahn, Vargas and others through the Bureau of Prisons’ payment system, money orders, wire transfers and other means. Kahn, Vargas and others engaged in a variety of money laundering techniques to make these payments appear legitimate.

Kahn then used the profits from the prison drug smuggling scheme to finance the purchase of more fentanyl analogues and other opioids from China for further distribution in the United States.

The indictment details how the defendants charged at least $500 for a sheet of drug-infused paper. Vargas stated: “The job is badass…they drown those sheets…and then they hang them…like photographs, they have them with clips and leave them to dry,” according to the indictment.

If convicted, the defendant’s sentence will be determined by the Court after review of factors unique to this case, including the defendant’s prior criminal record, if any, the defendant’s role in the offense and the characteristics of the violations.  In all cases, the sentence will not exceed the statutory maximum and, in most cases, it will be less than the maximum.

This case is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Prisons Joint Information Sharing Initiative, the Ohio High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Cronin and Elliot Morrison.

An indictment is only a charge and is not evidence of guilt.  A defendant is entitled to a fair trial in which it will be the government’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

[whereareroo]

EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL

WF THOUGHTS (6/12/23).

Tomorrow--June 13th--all eyes will be glued to Donald Trump. A few days ago, for the second time in three months, he was criminally indicted. This time, he's facing the music in federal court. Tomorrow, he will booked as a federal defendant and he'll appear in court for the formal reading of the charges against him. Of course, he'll plead "not guilty" to everything.

There's a ton of misinformation out there regarding the specific charges against Trump. Let me give you the truth.

If for some reason you're in posession of government documents relating to America's national security, and you receive an official request demanding the return of the documents, you are required to return the documents to the federal government. It's a federal crime to "willfully retain" such documents after the government has made a request. Trump wrongfully took hundreds of classified documents from the White House, and after being asked to return them he only returned a few. Some of the documents--31of them--were particularly sensitive. The first 31 counts against Trump relate to his unlawful retention of those documents after he was asked to return them. It's that simple.

As we all know from Watergate and various Mafia prosecutions, it's also a crime to "cover up" criminal activity. The remaining six counts against Trump relate to crimes that he committed in connection with the cover up. He obstructed justice, concealed documents, withheld information, impeded an investigation, and made false statements. This is routine criminal behavior.

The charges against Trump are not unusual. Hundreds of people have gone to jail for wrongfully retaining classified documents. Thousands of people have gone to jail for participating in the cover up of a crime.

Instead of thinking about Trump tomorrow, I think that everybody should be thinking about another Florida resident--Robert Birchum. He lives in Tampa, not that far from Trump. After almost 30 years in the Air Force, Birchum was investigated for wrongfully retaining classified documents at his home. The documents were far less consequential than the documents wrongfully retained by Trump. Unlike Trump, Birchum admitted his wrongdoing and he plead guilty. On June 1st, only a few days ago, he was sentenced. He's going to prison for three years.

The prosecutors had asked for a sentence of six years. Birchum's lawyers asked for probation. Despite his years of service to America, the Judge was not very impressed with Mr. Birchum. She complained that he had wrongfully retained the documents out of "hubris." She said: "You did it because you could do it." She was troubled by his lack of remorse. There was no evidence that Birchum had disclosed any of the documents. At the sentencing, the Judge noted that Birchum didn't have a plan to do anything with the documents. Nonetheless, the Judge concluded that a significant period of incarceration was warranted to demonstrate that there are serious consequences for the mishandling of classified information.

Over the past few days, Trump has been claiming that he's the victim of a political witchhunt and that "nobody gets prosecuted for these things." Maybe he should look into Birchum's recent experience in Florida. Don't the Judge's comments remind you of Trump? I bet that the Judge in Miami will be very aware of the recent case inTampa.

If Birchum is going to jail, shouldn't Trump go to jail too?

[simply-ivanka]

Judicial Watch: FBI Records Indicate Fauci Agency Funded Gain-of-Function Wuhan Lab Research ‘Would leave no signatures of purposeful human manipulation’ | Judicial Watch

[abcnewspr]

ABC NEWS STUDIOS DOCUMENTARY HOUR EXPLORES USE OF LYRICS IN CRIMINAL CASE AGAINST HIP-HOP STARS YOUNG THUG AND GUNNA

‘Rap Trap: Hip-Hop on Trial’ Traces Rise and Impact of Young Thug and Gunna

Documentary Explores Historical Mischaracterizations of Hip-Hop and Revisits Case of Rapper and Activist McKinley Phipps Jr.

‘Rap Trap: Hip-Hop on Trial’ Begins Streaming Thursday, Feb. 23, Only on Hulu

*ABC News

The 2022 arrest and indictment of hip-hop stars Young Thug (Jeffery Williams) and Gunna (Sergio Kitchens) stunned the hip-hop world and reignited a national conversation about the use of lyrics in the courtroom. For some, the lyrics were evidence of potential wrongdoing. But for others, the case spotlighted a disturbing trend of criminalizing Black art that goes back decades, prompting a national movement to protect art and creative expression. A new ABC News Studios documentary hour, “Rap Trap: Hip-Hop on Trial,” explores the criminal case against the rappers and asks the question: Should rap lyrics be used in criminal prosecutions, and what effect would that have on artists’ free speech rights?

The documentary dives into historical perceptions of the genre and other examples of when lyrics have been used against an artist in the courtroom, including the case of activist and rapper McKinley Phipps Jr., who served 21 years in prison for a crime he says he did not commit. Phipps and his family open up about the lasting impact of incarceration and the healing power of art. “Rap Trap: Hip-Hop on Trial” also features interviews with hip-hop artists will.i.am, Jerrika Karlae, Fat Joe and Killer Mike, who reflect on the importance of protecting and standing up for artists’ right to express themselves. Additional interviews include Kevin Liles, co-founder and CEO of 300 Elektra Entertainment, who spearheaded the “Protect Black Art” movement; scholar Michael Eric Dyson; and Erik Nielson, co-author of “Rap on Trial.” “Rap Trap: Hip-Hop on Trial” begins streaming Thursday, Feb. 23, only on Hulu.

“Rap Trap: Hip-Hop on Trial” is produced for Hulu by ABC News Studios.

ABOUT ABC NEWS STUDIOS

ABC News Studios, inspired by ABC News’ trusted reporting, is a premium, narrative non-fiction original production house and commissioning partner of series and specials. ABC News Studios champions untold and authentic stories driving the cultural zeitgeist spanning true-crime, investigations, pop culture, and news-adjacent stories. Its subsidiary, ABC News Films, acquires and produces feature documentary films.

*COPYRIGHT ©2023 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. All photography is copyrighted material and is for editorial use only. Images are not to be archived, altered, duplicated, resold, retransmitted or used for any other purposes without written permission of ABC. Images are distributed to the press in order to publicize current programming. Any other usage must be licensed. Photos posted for Web use must be at the low resolution of 72dpi, no larger than 2x3 in size.

-- ABC --

[offender42085]

Post 0431

Bryant Shipman, Strafford County New Hampshire Inmate; born 1992, incarceration intake in 2018 at age 26;  sentenced to 1 year jail confinement; since released

Possession of Fentanyl, Cocaine

A correctional officer accused of attempting to bring in cocaine and opiates into the Strafford County jail on March 22, 2017 waived arraignment and was held on $35,000 cash bail.  Shipman was taken into custody by the Sheriff's department at the beginning of his shift that day. The Court agreed to convert his custody to personal recognizance upon acceptance into the county's community corrections program.

Strafford County Correctional Officer Bryant Shipman, 25, of Rochester, was charged with three felony level charges — two counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to distribute and one count of delivery of articles to prisoners.

Strafford County Attorney Tom Velardi, who is prosecuting the case, said Shipman's original high cash bail was set on the belief that Shipman could be immediately deployed as an Air Force National Guardsman. It was later learned that those deployment orders have been canceled.  It was disclosed that his weapons clearance as an Air Force Firefighter had been taken away.  With roots in the region, it was felt that there is no longer a belief that Shipman is a flight risk.

At the time of the arrest, Shipman had been a correctional officer with Strafford County since April 2015. 

Shipman, who arrived in court in his Strafford County House of Corrections jail uniform, was being housed in a booking cell so he has no direct contact with other inmates or staff at this point in the county jail.

Sheriff David Dubois said the investigation began in January, and he praised the jail staff from the assistance they received during the process.

"The vast majority of correctional officers at this house of corrections, and I'm sure throughout this state and this country, are professionals doing a very difficult job in a very stressful environment," he said. "The officers here should be able to take great pride in the level of cooperation my officer received during this investigation from staff at the house of corrections."

Less than 2 months after his arrest, Shipman pleaded guilty to a single charge of drug possession and was sentenced to a year in jail.  He will be housed at another facility.  Shipman had been indicted on trafficking charges the year before in a separate matter, but that charge was dropped.

Officials estimated at the time he was carrying $2,000-$5,000 of what is believed to be fentanyl or heroin and cocaine.

Resulting in the end of his Air Force and Law Enforcement careers, he retooled and works with HVAC installation and maintenance. 

2o

[steveyockey]

alright, while baltimore state’s attorney marilyn mosby gets indicted on federal perjury charges, could be a good time to read this

In January 2016, seven months after surviving that barrage of police gunfire inside Big Herb’s Auto Repair, Keith Davis Jr. was found not guilty of the armed robbery when the driver repeated what he’d said all along: The cops chased and shot the wrong guy. Davis, who’d just bought a pack of cigarettes from a convenience store, had run, with others, when someone yelled, “Gun!”—dashing across Reisterstown Road into Big Herb’s alley garage. Shortly before going to court, prosecutors had dropped the most serious charges, the counts of firing a weapon at police. Kelly thought her nightmare was coming to a close.

Instead, days after Davis’ acquittal, the City State’s Attorney’s Office—without a hint to Davis, his family, Kelly, or his defense attorney since his shooting by police—indicted him for murder in the seemingly unrelated slaying of a Pimlico security guard…. To date, the State’s Attorney’s Office has failed four times to convict Davis of the same murder. Incarcerated ever since he was moved from Sinai to Central Booking with shrapnel still in his neck, Davis now awaits a fifth murder trial set for May.

“Keith Davis Jr.,” says Miller, who co-hosts the podcast Undisclosed, which investigates wrongful convictions and highlighted Davis’ case in 2019, “is the most aggressively prosecuted man in American history.”

[abolitioncommunism]

“Congressional Democrats want to make it easier to identify and prosecute police misconduct; Joe Biden wants to give police departments $300 million. But efforts to solve police violence through liberal reforms like these have failed for nearly a century.

Enough. We can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police.

There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black people. Policing in the South emerged from the slave patrols in the 1700 and 1800s that caught and returned runaway slaves. In the North, the first municipal police departments in the mid-1800s helped quash labor strikes and riots against the rich. Everywhere, they have suppressed marginalized populations to protect the status quo.

So when you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man’s neck until he dies, that’s the logical result of policing in America. When a police officer brutalizes a black person, he is doing what he sees as his job.

Now two weeks of nationwide protests have led some to call for defunding the police, while others argue that doing so would make us less safe.

The first thing to point out is that police officers don’t do what you think they do. They spend most of their time responding to noise complaints, issuing parking and traffic citations, and dealing with other noncriminal issues. We’ve been taught to think they “catch the bad guys; they chase the bank robbers; they find the serial killers,” said Alex Vitale, the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, in an interview with Jacobin. But this is “a big myth,” he said. “The vast majority of police officers make one felony arrest a year. If they make two, they’re cop of the month.”

We can’t simply change their job descriptions to focus on the worst of the worst criminals. That’s not what they are set up to do.

Second, a “safe” world is not one in which the police keep black and other marginalized people in check through threats of arrest, incarceration, violence and death.

I’ve been advocating the abolition of the police for years. Regardless of your view on police power — whether you want to get rid of the police or simply to make them less violent — here’s an immediate demand we can all make: Cut the number of police in half and cut their budget in half. Fewer police officers equals fewer opportunities for them to brutalize and kill people. The idea is gaining traction in Minneapolis, Dallas, Los Angeles and other cities.

History is instructive, not because it offers us a blueprint for how to act in the present but because it can help us ask better questions for the future.

The Lexow Committee undertook the first major investigation into police misconduct in New York City in 1894. At the time, the most common complaint against the police was about “clubbing” — “the routine bludgeoning of citizens by patrolmen armed with nightsticks or blackjacks,” as the historian Marilynn Johnson has written.

The Wickersham Commission, convened to study the criminal justice system and examine the problem of Prohibition enforcement, offered a scathing indictment in 1931, including evidence of brutal interrogation strategies. It put the blame on a lack of professionalism among the police.

After the 1967 urban uprisings, the Kerner Commission found that “police actions were ‘final’ incidents before the outbreak of violence in 12 of the 24 surveyed disorders.” Its report listed a now-familiar set of recommendations, like working to build “community support for law enforcement” and reviewing police operations “in the ghetto, to ensure proper conduct by police officers.”

These commissions didn’t stop the violence; they just served as a kind of counterinsurgent function each time police violence led to protests. Calls for similar reforms were trotted out in response to the brutal police beating of Rodney King in 1991 and the rebellion that followed, and again after the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. The final report of the Obama administration’s President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing resulted in procedural tweaks like implicit-bias training, police-community listening sessions, slight alterations of use-of-force policies and systems to identify potentially problematic officers early on.

But even a member of the task force, Tracey Meares, noted in 2017, “policing as we know it must be abolished before it can be transformed.”

The philosophy undergirding these reforms is that more rules will mean less violence. But police officers break rules all the time. Look what has happened over the past few weeks — police officers slashing tires, shoving old men on camera, and arresting and injuring journalists and protesters. These officers are not worried about repercussions any more than Daniel Pantaleo, the former New York City police officer whose chokehold led to Eric Garner’s death; he waved to a camera filming the incident. He knew that the police union would back him up and he was right. He stayed on the job for five more years.

Minneapolis had instituted many of these “best practices” but failed to remove Derek Chauvin from the force despite 17 misconduct complaints over nearly two decades, culminating in the entire world watching as he knelt on George Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes.

Why on earth would we think the same reforms would work now? We need to change our demands. The surest way of reducing police violence is to reduce the power of the police, by cutting budgets and the number of officers.

But don’t get me wrong. We are not abandoning our communities to violence. We don’t want to just close police departments. We want to make them obsolete.

We should redirect the billions that now go to police departments toward providing health care, housing, education and good jobs. If we did this, there would be less need for the police in the first place.

We can build other ways of responding to harms in our society. Trained “community care workers” could do mental-health checks if someone needs help. Towns could use restorative-justice models instead of throwing people in prison.

What about rape? The current approach hasn’t ended it. In fact most rapists never see the inside of a courtroom. Two-thirds of people who experience sexual violence never report it to anyone. Those who file police reports are often dissatisfied with the response. Additionally, police officers themselves commit sexual assault alarmingly often. A study in 2010 found that sexual misconduct was the second most frequently reported form of police misconduct. In 2015, The Buffalo News found that an officer was caught for sexual misconduct every five days.

When people, especially white people, consider a world without the police, they envision a society as violent as our current one, merely without law enforcement — and they shudder. As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm.

People like me who want to abolish prisons and police, however, have a vision of a different society, built on cooperation instead of individualism, on mutual aid instead of self-preservation. What would the country look like if it had billions of extra dollars to spend on housing, food and education for all? This change in society wouldn’t happen immediately, but the protests show that many people are ready to embrace a different vision of safety and justice.

When the streets calm and people suggest once again that we hire more black police officers or create more civilian review boards, I hope that we remember all the times those efforts have failed.”

[vintagecoldcases]

The Disappearance of Etan Patz

Etan Kalil Patz, was born on October 9th, 1972 to Stanley and Julie Patz. His family lived in the SoHo neighbourhood of Lower Manhattan, New York. On the morning of May 25th, 1979, Etan walked two blocks from his home at 113 Prince Street to his bus stop at the crossroad of West Broadway and Prince Street before school. This was the first time he was ever allowed to walk alone. On this day, he was wearing a black “Future Flight Captain” pilot cap, a blue corduroy jacket, blue jeans, and blue sneakers with fluorescent stripes.

At school, his teacher noticed he had not shown up but had not reported the absence to the principal. Julie had called the police when she had noticed that Etan did not return home from school that day. Police suspicion was first turned on the Patzes, thinking they may have something to do with Etan’s disappearance but that was quickly overturned. Police began to search that evening with over 100 officers and a team of bloodhounds. This search continued for weeks and generated no leads, from even the missing children’s posters. Stanley was a photographer and had an array of portraits of Etan that were published on missing children’s posters and even shown in Times Square. Etan’s disappearance even started the missing children's movement. He was also one of the first children to have his photo displayed on a milk carton. Ronald Reagan also declared the anniversary of his disappearance, May 25th, in 1983 to be National Missing Children’s Day. His disappearance also played a role in founding the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children.

In 1985, after the case had been turned over to Assistant US Attorney General, Stuart R. GraBois, Jose Antonio Ramos was pointed as the primary suspect. Ramos was a convicted child predator who had been a friend of Etan’s former babysitter. Before this, in 1982, police were told by multiple boys that Ramos had been trying to lure them into a drainpipe in the area near where he lived. In 1990, GraBois was deputized as a deputy state attorney general in Pennsylvania. This was to help prosecute a case against Ramos for the sexual abuse ofyoung boys and to try to gather more information about Etan's case. When first questioned, Ramos stated that, on May 25th, 1979, he had abducted a young boy and taken him back to his apartment to rape him. Ramos said that he was "90 percent sure" it was Etan, due to the photos he’s seen on the tv. However, Ramos did not use Etan's name and only referred to him as “the boy on tv”. This made Ramos’ confession quite problematic since there was not a definitive link in the case. Ramos also claimed he had "put the boy on a subway" and that he had left him alive.

In 1991, while Ramos was incarcerated, an informant reclaims that Ramos bragged about knowing more about what happened to Etan. Ramos claimed he knew intimate details of Etan’s disappearance and even drew a map of Etan's school bus route, showing that he knew that Etan's bus stop was the third one on the route. This alerted police that Ramos was further involved in the case but with no substantial evidence, he could not be charged. Etan’s body was never found but he was declared legally dead in 2001. Julie and Stanley pursued and won a civil case against Ramos in 2004 where they were awarded $2 Million which they never collected. Ramos was never criminally prosecuted for the murder of Etan as there was no substantial evidence in order to do this. Every year, on Etan's birthday and the anniversary of his disappearance, Stan Patz would send Ramos a copy of his son's missing-child poster with the same message typed on the back, “What did you do to my little boy?". Ramos has adamantly denied that he killed Etan. Hedid serve a 20-year prison sentence in the State Correctional Institution in Dallas, Pennsylvania, for child molestation. He was released from prison on November 7, 2012. Soon after his release he was arrested on a Megan's Law violation.

On May 25th, 2010, Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr, officially reopened the Etan Patz case. On April 19, 2012, FBI and NYPD investigators began excavating the SoHo basement of a nearby neighbor of the Patzes at 127-B Prince Street. This residence had been newly refurbished shortly after Etan's disappearance in 1979. Before, the basement had been the workshop and storage space of a handyman. After a four-day search of the property, investigators announced that there was "nothing conclusive found."

On May 24, 2012, New York Police Commissioner, Raymond Kelly, announced that a man was in custody who had implicated himself in Etan's disappearance. A law enforcement official identified the man as 51-year-old, Pedro Hernandez of Maple Shade, New Jersey. Hernandez allegedly had confessed to strangling the child. He stated in his written confession to police, "I’m sorry, I choke him." According to a 2009 book written about the case, After Etan, Etan had a dollar and had told his parents he planned to buy a soda to drink with his lunch. At the time of Etan's disappearance, Hernandez was an 18-year-old convenience store worker in a neighborhood bodega. Hernandez said that he later threw Etan's remains into the garbage. Hernandez was charged with second-degree murder. According to a New York Times report from May 25, 2012, the police at that time had no physical evidence to corroborate his confession.

In 2012, Hernandez’s brother-in-law, Jose Lopez who hails from New Jersey, reached out to investigators stating he believed that Hernandez was in fact responsible for Etan's disappearance. Statements also collected from Hernandez's sister, Nina Hernandez, and Tomas Rivera, a leader of a Charismatic Christianity group at St. Anthony of Padua, a Roman Catholic church in Camden, New Jersey, indicated that Hernandez may have publicly confessed in the presence of fellow parishioners in the early 1980s to murdering Etan. Nina claimed that Etan’s murder was “an open family secret that Pedro had confessed in church.” A grand jury indicted Hernandez on November 14, 2012, on charges of second-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping. His lawyer has stated that Hernandez was diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder, which included hallucinations. The lawyer has also stated that his client has a low IQ of around 70, which is "at the border of intellectual disability.”

After a long gruelling process of many years, Hernandez was found guilty of kidnapping and felony murder on February 14th, 2017. Hernandez’s sentencing hearing was scheduled for February 28, with Hernandez facing up to 25 years to life in prison. However, Hernandez's attorneys were granted a temporary delay so as to be able to challenge the verdict, and no new sentencing date was set. Finally on April 18th, 2017, Pedro Hernandez was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

[storiesweneedtotell]

Samuel Little

[WARNING: Graphic Content]

Samuel Little was convicted in 2012 for the murders of three women in California between 1989 - 1989, and in 2018 for the murder of one woman in Texas in 1994. He’s allegedly murdered many other women across 19 states over a quarter of a century ending around 2005.

1961, Little was sentenced to three years in prison for breaking into a furniture store in Lorain; he was released in 1964. By 1975, he had been arrested 26 times in 11 states for crimes including theft, assault, attempted rape, fraud and attacks on government officials.

1982, Little was arrested in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and charged with the murder of Melinda Rose LaPree (22), who had gone missing in September of that year. A grand jury declined to indict Little for the murder of LaPree. 

However, while under investigation, Little was transferred to Florida to be brought to trial for the murder of Patricia Ann Mount (26), whose body was found in September 1982. Prosecution witnesses identified Little in court as a person who spent time with Mount on the night before her disappearance. Due to mistrust of witness testimonies, Little was acquitted in January 1984. 

October 1984, he was arrested for kidnapping, beating and strangling Laura Barros (22), who survived. One month later, he was found by police in the backseat of his car with an unconscious woman, also beaten and strangled, in the same location as the attempted murder of Barros. Little served two and a half years in prison for both crimes. Upon his release in February 1987, he immediately moved to L.A. and committed more than 10 additional murders. 

He was arrested on September 5 2012, at a homeless shelter in Kentucky, and extradited to California to face a narcotics charge, during with authorities tied Little’s DNA to three murders between 1987 and 1989. He was charged on January 7 2013.

Bittersweet Linings: Since his incarceration, Little has been linked to 93 murders in total, meaning the families of the victims are closer to closure.

[simply-ivanka]

To have confirmed that former President Obama and members of his Administration conspired to interfere with and disrupt the time honored Constitutional transfer of power to the incoming Trump Administration by unleashing and empowering the CIA, FBI and other agencies to investigate Trump and members of his incoming Administration is painful, disheartening and requires investigation of the highest integrity.

For years people fawned over former President Obama like he was the second coming of Jesus. Now Obama has been outed, stripped clean for the World and history to see.

Obama acted in a criminal manner, with specific intent to violate traditions, principles and the law of the United States.

Former President Obama must be investigated by a non-political committee, along with any co-conspirators so identified.

They must be subjected to the process of Law in public hearings. No deals, no considerations. Complete transparency.

They must pay the price for damaging these United States and her citizens.

WE STARTED RUSSIAGATE

[daesungindistress]

His fans & ot5s are getting really cocky.. they’re saying because they found no new evidence like before that his second arrest warrant will be turned down and denied. It’s always the media making everything look ‘bad’ why are they picking on him still with no new evidence or information blah blah blah. I wish they’d just arrest him all ready....

I wasn’t going to reply to this… but as usual… I’ve been thinking…

First of all, lol @ “no new evidence.” Such bravado, such bluster. They’re all talk but they don’t know what they’re talking about. The prosecution has been conducting their investigation all this time without transparency; Seungri’s supporters have no idea what additional evidence they’ve uncovered, if any. None of us do. But I will say that without new evidence it’s unlikely prosecutors would be making this move and trying to arrest him again, so… you know. Connect the dots.

From what I’ve seen, I think what his fans are struggling to wrap their heads around is the part where he’s facing most of the same charges as before, plus two. Remember, these are the charges these clowns collectively convinced themselves were cleared long ago. They can’t fathom or accept that they were dead wrong, that he has been under continued investigation by the prosecution since June. I’ve been trying to tell them for ages that the charges were still valid, that they were pending review, but did they listen? No, they were so sure their baby panda had been “proven innocent”! I have to laugh.

That said, I will admit even I’m a little surprised by this news, only because I didn’t expect them to try to detain him again. Pretty sure police forwarded his case to prosecutors with the recommendation of indictment without detention after the first request was denied. So my question now is: why? Why not go ahead and indict him? Why try again to take him into custody? And what makes them think this request will be approved, unlike the first one? He didn’t quite meet the criteria before, such as being a flight risk, immediate danger to society, etc. So here are some possible answers:

1) They have stronger evidence or evidence of more instances than previously reported, and this ups the overall severity of the charges. I mean, when you consider everything together, it paints quite a picture.

2) The addition of the “hwanchigi” charge, or illegal foreign exchange transactions, could be the key to pushing the warrant through this time.  It seems to me that Korea takes financial crimes pretty seriously. In his previous hearing police listed embezzlement as the main charge, which seemed to indicate that was the crime that carried the greatest penalty and was most likely to land him behind bars. And that was the one the judge claimed had room for dispute.

I also find it interesting that they’ve decided to add the illegal exchange transactions to his list of charges since I thought police said they wouldn’t be pursuing that when they finished investigating at the end of October. This tells me that even though the recommendation for that was non-indictment, prosecutors continued to look into it and must have found more evidence to support it. They’ve added gambling too, but I don’t think that’s a jailable offense based on the frequency and monetary amount spent.

3) They may be hoping they can put his case before a different judge this time. Not too long ago I saw it said by someone who seems pretty “in the know” about politics in Korea that the judge who presided over Seungri’s first hearing is… let’s just say not a popular one.

Still, I won’t be surprised if the warrant is denied a second time. If that happens, I don’t expect it will have much bearing on the legal proceedings to follow, just as the first being denied did not derail the investigation or hinder its progress. That they are making this move now tells me they’re reaching the end of their investigations and are ready to proceed with indictment, i.e,. formally charging him and taking his case to trial.

“But why bother with arresting him? Why not go straight to trial?” The question remains. Then it hit me: this may be an attempt to prevent him from enlisting. The Military Manpower Administration said they would wait for the prosecution to conclude their investigation before allowing him to enlist. After that, however, his case will transfer from a civilian court to a military court, and that will likely be the last we, the public, hear of it.

But there’s a catch: since the beginning it’s been said by the MMA that his military service can be delayed indefinitely if he is incarcerated. I can’t help but wonder if this second attempt to detain him is the prosecution’s way of trying to prevent him and his case from disappearing quietly into the military and leaving everyone with unanswered questions. In other words, they’re trying to keep him and his case in the public eye, possibly for accountability purposes and/or out of some sense of obligation to the public. Or maybe the military just doesn’t want to deal with him, lol

Whatever the case, as always, I’ll be keeping a close eye on proceedings. Very curious to see where this goes.