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mcrane21ahsgov · 4 years ago

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Political Party Action

Blog post 3:

Criminal Law Reform: Mass Incarceration: Drug Law, Bail, Sentencing, and Parole Reform

Republican:

PLATFORM: The Republican party believes in “law and order”. They do not believe in the decriminalization of marijuana, and they promote states following the feudal law. They believe in capital punishment in prisons, including the death penalty. They call on the rest of the country to make feudal courts a model for Americans, protecting victims and their families.

AGREE/DISAGREE: I do not agree with the republican party's stance on criminal law reform. I do not believe in capital punishment and I believe states should be able to make laws for each state and do not necessarily need to follow federal laws.

Democrat:

PLATFORM: Democrats believe that police brutality is a very pressing issue in America and that the high incarceration rate, specifically among BIPOC, is something that we as a country need to address. Democrats also believe that defunding the police and allocating funds to places like mental health professionals and rehab facilities will decrease the deaths and incarceration rates among BIPOC. Something the Democrats are very much for is the decriminalization of marijuana and eliminating the use of cash bail as it is very unfair to people in a hard financial situation. Overall the Democrats would like to lower the incarceration rates for everyone and help people stay out of jail.

QUOTES: “America is the land of the free, and yet more of our people are behind bars, per capita, than anywhere else in the world”

“It is past time to end the failed “War on Drugs,” which has imprisoned millions of Americans—disproportionately Black people and Latinos—and hasn’t been effective in reducing drug use. Democrats support policies that will reorient our public safety approach toward prevention, and away from over-policing—including by making evidence-based investments in jobs, housing, education, and the arts that will make our nation fairer, freer, and more prosperous.”

AGREE/DISAGREE: I very much agree with democrats on this topic. I believe being addicted to drugs or being poor is not a reason for you to be in jail. While this issue of mass incarceration has been growing for many many years and is not one person's fault, I believe that if Joe Biden is elected he and his team will do something about this and aid to help those in need in our criminal justice system.

Green:

PLATFORM: The green party wants to reduce the prison population, invest in rehabilitation, and end the failed war on drugs. Their priorities include efforts to prevent violent crime and address the legitimate needs of victims while addressing the socio-economic root causes of crime and practicing policies that prevent recidivism. Their solutions include treating substance abuse as a medical problem, not a criminal problem, free all non-violent incarcerated prisoners of the drug war, increase funding for rape and domestic violence prevention and education programs, and never house juvenile offenders with adults. Their stance on parolees involves, providing incarcerated individuals the right to vote by absentee ballot in the district of their domicile, and the right to vote during parole.

QUOTES: “The negative effects of imprisonment are far-reaching. Prisoners are isolated from their communities and often denied contact with the free world and the media. Access to educational and legal materials is in decline. Prison administrators wield total authority over their environments, diminishing procedural input from experts, and censoring employee complaints.”

“Greens also call attention to the fact that more than forty percent of those 2.3 million locked down come from America's black one-eighth.”

AGREE/DISAGREE: I mostly agree with the green party's stance on criminal justice. I agree that we should allow no violent criminals to vote, and the right to vote during parole. I also agree with releasing anyone in prison there for marijuana or nonviolent drug charges. I do not entirely know where I stand on a few issues they stand for like never housing juvenile offenders with adults.

Libertarian:

PLATFORM: The Libertarian party believes that the government is creating laws that only pertain to “life liberty and property”. They are not in favor of punitive damages, designed to punish the wrongdoer. They oppose the prosecutorial practice of “overcharging” in criminal prosecutions to avoid jury trials by intimidating defendants into accepting plea bargains.

QUOTE: “Therefore, we favor the repeal of all laws creating “crimes” without victims, such as gambling, the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes, and consensual transactions involving sexual services.”

AGREE/DISAGREE: I do not agree with most of the libertarian party's views, as I believe they do not better our criminal justice system. I believe most of their “rules' ' are one-sided and don't take into account others. I do agree with how they want to make marijuana legal and decriminalize sex workers.

Peace and Freedom:

PLATFORM: The peace and freedom party or otherwise known as the “feminist socialist party”, wants to repeal the Patriot Act, abolish the Department of Homeland Security, stop state-sponsored spying on and violence against progressive organizations, democratically-controlled police review boards with powers of subpoena and discipline, abolish the death penalty, repeal the Three Strikes law, stop trials and imprisonment of juveniles as adults, decriminalize victimless activities including drug use and consensual sex, legalize marijuana, end the "war on drugs," which is primarily directed against poor and working-class people, abolish all torture in prisons, uphold prisoner rights, among other things.

QUOTE: “The bosses use laws against victimless activities, "legal" and illegal expansion of police powers, military and paramilitary occupation of poor and minority communities, and diversion of resources to police and jails, to keep workers intimidated and dependent.”

AGREE/DISAGREE: I agree with some of their positions like the legalization of marijuana, the abolishment of torture in prisons, and abolish the death penalty. I do not agree with abolishing the Department of Homeland Security or stopping trials and imprisonment of juveniles as adults in certain cases.

REFLECT:

I agree with the democrat party the most, which is not surprising as i identify as a democrat. I believe the Democrat party will do the cost to reform prisons and they have a solid plan to deal with mass incarceration in America. If i was 18 I would vote for Joe Biden.

PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE:

My issues were somewhat addressed. They address the looting and rioting going on in cities and how police officers are not held to the same standards as citizens in terms of the law. During the debate it seemed like Biden carried a lot more about these issues, than Trump. As Biden does not condemn the violence going on in our cities he does not believe that we should send in the national guard like Trump does. Biden believes in de escalating the situation, not making it worse.

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srandhawa21ahsgov · 4 years ago

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Political Party Action

1. Criminal Law Reform and the positions/opinions of each Party:

Republican - On the Republican side, Criminal Law Reform is given, but only to a certain people depending on their crime. They look at the bigger picture and state that “every human life matters”. Republicans expect that “the essential role of federal law enforcement personnel in protecting federal property and combating interstate crime should not be compromised by diversion to matters properly handled by states and local authorities”. Also, they see both sides of the story. They mourn for citizens that are treated unfairly due to inequality and they also mourn for officers that have sacrificed their lives to protect out country. Through a Republicans perspective, reform occurs for non-violent offenders only. For example, non-violent people that have committed crimes have options including “community sentencing, accountability courts, drug courts, veterans treatment courts, and guidance by faith based institutions with the proven track records of rehabilitation, our platform emphasized restorative justice to make the victim whole and put the offender on the right path”. Republicans encourage states to capture people and hold them in mandatory prison for people that assault or cause serious injury to law enforcement. They also encourage that people who are locked up have the right to educational resources. Juvenile justice is put first ahead of adult justice in order to break the cycle of crime within a teen. The Republicans have a theory that “tyranny and injustice thrive when America is weakened. The oppressed have no greater ally than a confident and determined United States, backed by the strongest military on the planet”. I would agree with the Republicans Criminal Reform views because I think it is important to keep our country safe from violent offenders that intentionally harm our country but if the offender is non-violent then there are other ways that we can fix a person to make better decisions and get them on a good path to success. Prison time is not going to be beneficial for someone that is hooked on drugs. Proper care and treatment for that individual will help them become sober and create a life that they may have never had the opportunity to have. The Republicans do not mention anything about the wrongdoing that some law enforcement people have done. If we don’t change the fact that police officers have little or no consequence when it comes to murdering another citizens, then this is only going to cause more diversion and inequality within our nation. This is where the Republicans start to go wrong. Although, I do think that they do not pay enough attention to how serious inequality is and how certain people (people of different color, or race) are treated differently to white people.

Democrat - Democrats believe that our criminal law justice system is “failing” and it needs to be changed from top to bottom. Their beliefs give people more opportunity, but especially for the convicted. They emphasize on the fact that we don't offer the incarcerated a chance to turn their lives around. Instead, this country as of right now wants prisons to be overcrowded and continue to rely on inhumane methods of punishment. Where is the change and reform? With the recognization of police brutality, Democrats think that it is “unacceptable that more than 1,000 people, a quarter of them Black, have been killed by police every year since 2015”. Those numbers will continue to rise unless we seek action and change. On the juvenile justice scale, Democrat's believe that every school should have sufficient funding and resources to employ guidance counselors, social workers, nurses, or school psychologists to help guarantee age-appropriate and racially equitable student disciplinary practices, rather than turning to police and locking them up in juvenile detention facilities. They will encourage federal government to stop incarcerating kids, and create community based alternatives “to prison and detention centers for youth and invest in after-school programs, community centers, and summer jobs to provide opportunities for young people at risk”. They support the ban of chokeholds and carotid holds and permitting deadly force only when necessary to prevent an imminent threat to life. Democrat's believe that we need to change our criminal law reform system from top to bottom meaning, increasing the use of drug courts, harm reduction and interventions, provide treatment diversion programs for those struggling with substance use disorder, eliminate use of cash bail, abolish death penalty, provide rehab, and ensure access to transitional housing for returning citizens (mental health and substance treatment). Democrats also acknowledge the change that needs to happen to all Law enforcement agencies. Changes will include “no-knock warrants”, improve “training and education for judges, corrections officers, prosecutors, public defenders, and police officers to ensure transgender and gender non-conforming people receive fair and equitable treatment in the criminal justice system”, increase diversity among the ranks of police departments, end the use of “private prisons and private detention centers, and will take steps to eliminate profiteering from diversion programs, commercial bail, electronic monitoring, prison commissaries, and reentry and treatment programs”. Personally, I 100% agree with the the Democratic Party. We as a country have NOT had an equal justice system for a long time. The Democrats want to submit a lot of change within our country and I think that everything they plan on doing will be very beneficial. Teaching police officers when to use extreme force and when not to use extreme force is very important. Creating a system where we provide treatment instead of locking people up will be more beneficial to creating a unified nation again. Even on the juvenile justice scale I think that the Democrats are going to do an excellent job. A teens brain isn’t even fully developed for many years because of the frontal lobe with makes teenagers prone to irrational decision making which is why they need support to head on the right path.

Libertarian - This party believes in constitutional rights meaning they support the constitution. They favor “the repeal of all laws creating “crimes” without victims, such as gambling, the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes, and consensual transactions involving sexual services”. They support that restitution needs to be paid back to the victim that lost x amount fo money or property. The only thing that this party talks about is their view on crime and certain consequences that need to be done to the offender. I did not find anything about my topic which is criminal law reform. They did not talk about what needs to be changed about our criminal justice system. They did not talk about the fact that people are being locked up for the wrong reason. They did not talk about the fact that people with substance abuse should have the right to rehab or some facility to get support. THEY DID NOT MENTION REFORM. I think they didn't mention criminal law reform because it is too controversial and they don’t want to have people that disagree with them. Personally, I think it is a winning tactic to persuade people to vote for them because they didn’t form their own personal views about criminal justice, and criminal law reform. Also, I don't think it is a big enough party for them to go into depth about these topics.

Green - The Green Party has many requests to reform the criminal justice system. There view is that prisons are being overcrowded, and the fact that our law enforcement places to much emphasis on “drug-related and petty, non-violent crimes, and not enough on prosecution of corporate, white collar, and environmental crime”. They understand that forty percent of those 2.3 million locked down come from America's black one-eighth. The Green Party suggests that in order to reform our criminal justice system we need to abolish death penalty, repeal three strikes laws, establish and fund program to strengthen self-help and community action through neighborhood centers that provide legal aid, alternative dispute-resolution practices, mediated restitution, community team policing, access to local assault care shelters, restrict police use of weapons and restraining techniques such as pepper spray, stun belts, tasers and choke holds, establish freedom on bail as a right of all defendants charged with non-violent crimes. Incorporate mental health and social services in bail agreements, protect victims' rights, ensure the opportunity for victims to make victim-impact statements. Consider forms of restitution to victims, eliminate the gun show loophole that permits sale of weapons without background checks, extend background checks to all private sales of firearms. The Green Party only considers prison time as a “last resort”. Not only do they talk about reform, they also talk about what needs to be done within prisons and jails to make the prisoners more productive during prison life. For example, they want to provide access to education, provide addiction and psychological treatment, and even consider job training while attending a prison. Personally, I agree with this party's position. I think that their opinions to reform the justice system is productive and can create a lot more change within our society. They recognize inequality within our justice system and they want to recognize ALL PEOPLE not just CERTAIN PEOPLE.

Peace and Freedom - The Peace and Freedom Party believe that “Working class people are the primary victims both of street crime and of police reaction to it. The bosses use laws against victimless activities, "legal" and illegal expansion of police powers, military and paramilitary occupation of poor and minority communities, and diversion of resources to police and jails, to keep workers intimidated and dependent. This party’s idea of reforming our justice system is to abolish death penalty, repeal the three strikes law, stop trials and imprisonment of juveniles as adults, provide rehabilitation, decriminalize victimless activities including drug use and consensual sex. Legalize marijuana, stop unwarranted searches and seizures and restore constitutional rights, prosecute crimes of the wealthy and powerful against workers and the environment, abolish all torture in prisons and uphold prisoner rights. Personally, I agree with the Green Party. I think they lack to understand and publicize the problem of inequality but their forms of reform are great! They want to see less imprisonment and more rehabilitation and change.

2. I identify with the democrats the most because they seem to recognize most inequality problems and they provide the most reform. I don't think that locking an individual with a drug addiction is smart and rational. I think that for non-violent offenders we need to seek change and reform to build a better nation and give people the benefit of the doubt. Yes I would vote for this presidential candidate.

3. Yes my civic action was a topic during the debate. Biden did not give a specific plan about what he will do with racial inequality, and injustice. He only tells the American people what he wants to see happen not what he is going to physically do. He politically slanders Trump multiple times, and gives little fact about the issue. He has not done anything to make this issue better. He thinks that a psychiatrist would help a cop calm down to not make irrational decisions like kill someone but a cop's job is to already know these things. You should not be a cop if you are scared of getting hurt. But resulting to violence is not rational. Also, he sees the violent protests and thinks they are peaceful even when people are burning down things, and stealing things from stores. THIS IS NOT PEACEFUL!!! On the other hand, Trump slanders Biden by saying “you call African Americans superpredators”, who knows if this was true or not. Trump did not conduct a plan for decreasing racial justicement, or a treatment for treating inequality but he does make a good point by saying that he has law enforcement on his side and Biden has none. Biden couldn't even admit to have one 1 enforcement support coming to watch him. The difference between Biden and Trump in this situation is that Trump see’s reality and Biden sees fantasy. I don't think that Trump liked the violent protesters where people were going around destroying cities, this does nothing besides cause more violence. These were the things talked about in the presidential debate regarding justice, and reform. Personally, I did not agree with either of the candidates but after me reading the plan for what the Democrats plan to do about criminal law reform I 100% agree with their positions. I don’t think that the debate was constructive in any way shape or form which makes me think that both candidates messages did not support their party platform. Most of the debate was full of arguing, and slandering each candidate rather that respecting both sides. I think Biden did a better job at stating his facts. I think he was very effective at staging his facts based on his arguments, and specific policy plans.

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masterofd1saster · 4 years ago

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CJ current events 9 nov 20

The incoming Los Angeles district attorney, who was funded by George Soros, announced sweeping changes to his office’s law enforcement strategy immediately after assuming office on Monday.

“NEW: L.A.'s new District Attorney George Gascon being inaugurated & making major announcements today,” Fox 11 Los Angeles reporter Bill Melugin tweeted Monday as George Gascon was set to be inaugurated as the 43rd district attorney. “No more death penalty, an end to cash bail, getting rid of all sentencing enhancements (gang, three strikes, etc), disbanding of the special circumstances committee.”***

Additionally, Gascon's office will no longer prosecute certain misdemeanors, including trespassing, prostitution, and resisting arrest with some exemptions.***

Gascon received over $2 million in campaign funding from Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, who has funneled money into district attorney races across the country for several years with the hopes of implementing policies such as the ones Gascon is already carrying out.

Chicago District Attorney Kim Foxx, St. Louis Prosecutor Kim Gardner, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby have all received financial support from Soros or his surrogates. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/newly-elected-soros-funded-los-angeles-da-announces-sweeping-reforms-on-first-day-in-office-including-end-to-cash-bail

***

Anyone who wants to be a police officer in California would have to get a bachelor’s degree or turn 25 before starting their careers under a proposed new law.

Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles, who planned to introduce the proposal Monday, said the change could help reduce the number of times police officers shoot or hurt people.

“These jobs are complex, they’re difficult, and we should not just hand them over to people who haven’t fully developed themselves,” said Jones-Sawyer, who is chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee.*** https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article247622645.html

One should note that in the case of the late George Floyd, it was the oldest officer who knelt on his neck.

***

Cure the Streets Spotlight: Cotey Wynn July 21, 2020 As a Program Supervisor with OAG’s Cure the Streets, Cotey Wynn leads a team of six violence interrupters and outreach workers. When observing Cotey at work, you see a respected professional, a loving father, a devoted friend, and a pillar of the community.***

Fast forward to two years later, and Cotey is now a full-time Program Supervisor at the Ward 5 Cure the Streets Trinidad site. Cotey’s workdays are completely booked with community engagement activities. Whether helping people find employment, hosting a local event, or mediating a conflict. Sometimes Cotey and his team receive calls in the late hours of the night from community members who need their help, because, as he says, “the community loves our program, they trust us.”*** https://oag.dc.gov/blog/cure-streets-spotlight-cotey-wynn

WASHINGTON (FOX 5 DC) - A violence interrupter with the D.C. Attorney General's Office "Cure the Streets" program has been charged in connection with a homicide that happened in 2017.

On February 17, 2017, police say at around 9:21 p.m., officers responded to the scene after hearing reports of gunshots in the 900 block of 12th Street, Northeast.***

53-year-old Eric Linnair Wright was the victim. He soon died at a hospital.

On Friday, D.C. Police say 39-year-old Cotey Wynn, of Southeast, was charged with Second Degree Murder while Armed in connection with Wright's murder.

Police say Wynn has a prior arrest history that includes Felony Murder, First Degree Murder, Possession With Intent to Distribute Crack Cocaine, and Distribution of a Controlled Substance. At the time of his arrest, Wynn was under the supervision of the Pretrial Services Agency for the District of Columbia.*** https://www.fox5dc.com/news/dc-violence-interrupter-charged-in-connection-with-2017-homicide

DC’s attorney general says that the homicide occurred before he was hired as a violence interrupter.

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lodelss · 5 years ago

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How to Slash the Incarceration Rate in Half We did the math so presidential candidates don’t have to.

Over the last several months, volunteers for the ACLU’s Rights for All campaign have been fanning out across the first four primary states asking all of the 2020 presidential candidates a straightforward question: Will you commit to cutting the nations’ prison and jail population in half?

That question has never been more urgent, with the United States incarcerating more people than any other country in the world. Mass incarceration has destroyed communities, deepened racial injustice, and wasted dollars that could have been spent investing in local communities, all without making our neighborhoods any safer.

But some of the presidential candidates initially balked at the question. “I want to do a little math on that,” said Pete Buttigieg when asked by an ACLU volunteer to pledge to a 50 percent cut. Similarly, Joe Biden initially told our volunteer that cutting the incarcerated population in half was “arbitrary” and “not a rational way of going about it.”

The truth is that the U.S. could cut incarceration by half and still have more people locked up than any other country in the world. And it could do so safely — over the last 10 years, 27 states have reduced both incarceration and crime rates.

So what is the math that would result in a 50 percent reduction? The fact is, our criminal legal system locks people up so often, for so long, and for so many different reasons that there are many different paths to safely get to a 50 percent reduction.

The ACLU just shared a “Presidential Roadmap for Ending Mass Incarceration” with all the presidential candidates. The Roadmap contains dozens of different policy reforms that would each slash the number of people locked up at every point in the process, and combined would reduce the overall incarcerated population by far more than 50 percent.

The Roadmap includes reforms addressing the front end of the criminal legal system, like policing and prosecutors, all the way to changes to parole and re-entry at the very back end, and everything in-between. The Roadmap also allows every presidential candidate to put together their own plan that would reach the 50 percent goal.

Reforms in just these four areas would reduce incarceration by half:

Ending the War on Drugs by decriminalizing all drug possession

Bail reform that reduces the number of people we lock up before trial, often simply because they are too poor to afford cash bail;

Shortening extraordinarily excessive sentencing practices and abolishing rigid “mandatory minimums” and “three strikes” laws;

Granting clemency to people trapped in prison who are elderly, sick, or have already served more than enough time for their offense;

The numbers do add up. And you don’t just have to take the ACLU’s word for it.

After our initial request to Pete Buttigieg, he since committed to our 50 percent goal, agreeing that “This is not a random target, but the hard math on how many Americans should not be locked up in the first place.” This week, Joe Biden also agreed, telling an ACLU volunteer that he would, in fact, commit to reducing incarceration in half and that he’s put together a plan that will go further than 50 percent.

Buttigieg and Biden join a growing number of presidential candidates who have now committed to reducing incarceration by half. As have Cory Booker, Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Wayne Messam, and Beto O’Rourke. We will keep asking until every presidential candidate has made the same commitment.

Other candidates, like Kirsten Gilibrand and Marianne Williamson have made the pledge, but the policy reforms they've endorsed--like abolishing private prisons and decriminalizing marijuana--are important but would have almost no impact on decarceration. Our Roadmap will help them better understand which reforms can make their commitment to a 50% reduction a reality.

Once all candidates recognize that 50 percent is not only rational and achievable, but urgently necessary, we will start checking their homework to see if their math adds up. Our next president must take many more steps to ending America’s shameful era of mass incarceration.

Published July 12, 2019 at 07:30PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/2Y2HrkO

#IFTTT #Blogger

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grugq · 8 years ago

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Some very amusing tale of a smallish retail business. The main points on the opsec are pretty terrible actually. Using burners is very poor form for the modern day and age.

I want to point out a few things from this crew which are security related:

Never get in somebody’s car. No meeting in bars—you have to be in their apartment. No meeting in parties. No handoffs on the street. A cop might be checking you out. Dress professionally and in character. No marijuana anything on your shirt. No cute little shorts.” She points to one girl who’s wearing a dress that leaves most of her breasts exposed. “This is too low.” The girl, flustered, pulls up her dress over her chest. “We’re selling weed, going to men’s apartments. Boobs out for customers—no.”

I'm not sure why she insists on apartments. Thats risky for video surveillance. She seem to want the couriers to dress attractively enough that they don't get searched, but not so attractively they are memorable? Or at risk? I'm not entirely clear on that one.

The character we’re going for isn’t that of a pot dealer. It’s the student, the professional, the regular girl. Play the part—cool, calm, and collected. If a cop in the subway asks to see what’s in your makeup bag, just be cool, calm, and collected.”

Not a bad cover. There is huge security issue where she allows an outsider to not only meet her entire organisation to to write them all up for GQ. That is insane.

Never give the customer your real name or number. Follow your intuition. If you’re feeling unsafe, go into a bodega. “You’re working for an illegal business,” Honey reminds them. “It’s only a little illegal, but don’t tell your friends.”

This lady is no AlpraKing and these guidelines are nothing like his. I wouldn't trust her to operate this sort of organisation. She isn't being truthful about the risks, and she isn't giving them great security guidelines. Plus, again, inviting a reporter from a high profile to meet the entire organisation is just crazy.

Honey returns to the subject of what to do if stopped by the police. A runner’s main weapon is her smile, her ability to talk to the cops: “Say, ‘I love the NYPD! You guys are the best,’ ” Honey says, fluttering her eyelashes and making a heart sign with her hands. “The number one thing cops look for is lack of eye contact.” Honey urges all the runners to memorize her phone number, promising, “If you get in trouble, we’ll get you out in two hours.”

This is at least fairly useful. How to use apparent cover (pretty girl) to manipulate the law enforcement officers. Also knowing who to call to come get bailed out seems definitely useful.

She fields a question: “And if they ask you to open the box?” “Say you don’t have the code.”

This does not sound like a very plausible or reliable way to deflect attention. I'd think that an officer would just get interested and start with follow up questions that the courier may not have answers too.

One of the Angels suggests using a tote bag instead of a backpack to carry the box. She generally uses a WNYC tote bag, which is given out to donors to the public-radio station.

Nice cover, too bad that police are now going to be checking for young pretty girls with tote bags. Still, the concept of using good cover is solid.

Honey tells the girls to get a work phone from MetroPCS, which costs $100. When buying it, they should pay in cash and have a name in mind to put down on the form, in case the police check. “I like to use the names of girls who were my enemies growing up,” Honey says.

Tells couriers to get a burner phone. This is 2017, not 2003. Burners are dead as dead can be for drug dealer tech. Also, using the names of real people that are linked to you is a bad idea. Better to get real names of random people and create a full cover identity.

At the end of the meeting, I ask the girls for their names and phone numbers and they cheerfully oblige, writing them in my notebook. But then Honey calls out, “Give him your burner numbers. Don’t give him your real names.” An Angel comes up and takes my notebook and rips off the sheet with the numbers. They write again, with a new set of names; I’m using fake names in this story as well.

These girls are not very street smart, I think would be the polite way to put it.

next week, I walk over to the drug den again. I press C1, which has a black mark next to it made with a Magic Marker: one long and two short presses of the button. The door buzzes in response. Upstairs, I meet Charley, one of the five dispatchers on duty. She has been in the drug den since 11:30 a.m., and she’ll stay until midnight—a double shift.

I hope that is not the real code to get let in.

The apartment has a bedroom in which the supplies are kept, a bathroom, and a living room with an open kitchen. It’s centrally located for a business that serves both Brooklyn and Manhattan, and the neighbors don’t mind all the traffic—most of the other units are Airbnb rentals. Every six months, Honey changes to a new location.

Using a roaming safehouse that is situated in a block of AirBnB units where no one pays attention to anyone else's coming or going is a good technique.

The Green Angels average around 150 orders a day, which is about a fourth of what the busiest services handle.

Kinda small time, but still large enough that the police would be interested in the bust.

When a customer texts, it goes to one of the cell phones on the table in the living room. There’s a hierarchy: The phones with the pink covers are the lowest; they contain the numbers of the flakes, cheapskates, or people who live in Bed-Stuy. The purple phones contain the good, solid customers. Blue is for the VIPs. There are over a thousand customers on Honey’s master list.

that is not a good list to be on. o.O

To place an order, a customer is supposed to text “Can we hang out?” and a runner is sent to his apartment. No calling, no other codes or requests. Delivery is guaranteed within an hour and a half. If the customer isn’t home, he gets a strike. Three strikes and he’s 86’d. If he yells at the runner, he’s 86’d immediately.

That is actually a pretty good system. The couriers carry a large supply with them so they dont need to take the order beforhand. They can fulfill it onsite with the customer, allowing for just a simple signal to indivate that they want a transation. This is pretty safe.

To be honest, the real safety of these girls their white skin, socio economic status and good looks. Definitely safer to be a pretty young white girl slanging dope than a young black male.

The Angels work only by referral. The customers should refer people they really know and trust, not strangers, and no one they’ve met in a bar. If you refer someone who becomes a problem, Charley says, you lose your membership

The allow their customers to do the vetting, which is a bit difficult. Transitive trust, isn't. Any organisation needs growth if it wants to keep operationing because there is bound to be churn from the natural attrition of their existing clientele.

A text comes in asking for Charley by name. That’s a no-no. You’re not allowed to request a specific Angel. Another runner texts saying a customer is late and she’s been kept waiting. In such cases, Charley says, “We nicely scold them.”

Not sure what this particular protection is against, but it seems to be more about the security of the girls than the security of the operation.

Throughout the day, the texts ebb and flow. Lunchtime is busy, and then the afternoon is slack. Then it gets really busy between 5:30 and 8:30, as people come home from work. On the weekends, it’s busy between noon and 6 p.m. Bad weather is good for business; on a beautiful day, someone is not going to sit around at home waiting for a weed delivery.

I wonder if this information could be used to detect potential drug operations. They have a pattern of operation which doesn't really match up with a pattern for meeting with pretty girls. It doesn't fit with their cover that someone want to meet with them in the middle of the day, rather than later at night. Or maybe I'm wrong. It does seem like it would be a good heutristic to detect a drug dealer. Hundreds of texts messages a day at predictable hours to the same few numbers, all saying "can we hang out?"

A customer has moved, and the runner doesn’t know his new address.

lol, the types ot real problems that real operations face all the time.

Then Marie gets a text from a new number. She shows it to me, saying she won’t respond to an unknown number. She advises the sender, “Please have whoever recommended you send me a text.”

On the one hand, not sending illegal substances to an unknown customer is good security. On the other hand, they're kinda sloppy about their OPSEC to interact so blatantly.

She stares in horror at a text: “I got two sativas and an indica if you want one.” It’s obviously misdirected, meant for some lucky friend of the texter. “That’s a strike. What a dumb-ass!” She calls a customer. “Can you open the door, please? I’ve been waiting ten minutes. Next time, can you be a little closer to the phone?” Then, after she hangs up, “That’s a strike, absolutely.”

How they are still in business is beyond me. I suspect that the DEA simply doesnt care. or the NYPD.

She tells me I’ll have to change everyone’s name, and I can’t say too much about her wholesalers, “or they’ll kill me.” She’s dealt with multiple death threats throughout her career. The wholesalers call her if she’s late on payments and say, “I’ll come to your parents’ house and shoot them.” Honey gives it back to them. “I say, ‘I’ll call the feds and have you shipped back to China. I’m waiting for you. I’m gonna fucking blow your head up, and then I’ll blow your mother’s head up.’ ” People are scared of a crazy girl, she notes.

Guess it is chinese providers. Given how lax the security is for this outfit, those guys should drop them and find another retailer.

she’s paying more than $3,000 per pound for good indoor-grown hydroponic weed. Selling it off an eighth of an ounce at a time, she can mark it up 100 percent. Honey’s business is always on credit. She buys $300,000 worth and pays it back when the weed sells. Sometimes it doesn’t move, especially when the quality is poor. The pot she sees on her buying trips may not be what actually arrives. Other times, if it’s coming over by truck, it could get cooked in the hot trailer on its way across the country; by the time she sees it, it’s like hay. The growers will try their luck sending a shipment that’s half bad “because they figure in New York, anything moves.”

The supply side guys seem to be taking a huge risk.

These days, most of Honey’s weed comes via FedEx. If she ships the stuff herself, it costs her $500 per pound; with FedEx, the cost comes to about $200 per pound, even though she’s more likely to lose a box or two that way. The FedEx employees steal more packages than the post-office workers. “A lot of them took the jobs because they know about it.” If you go to a FedEx parking lot, she says, you’ll notice that the drivers come to work in sports cars.

much lol.

There are FedEx inspectors who try to intercept the drugs. They will send a control box to the address and then bust in to arrest the recipient. Honey has a device that she waves over and all around the FedEx box, which will emit a signal if it detects a tracking device or transponder.

A controlled delivery would lead to an immediate arrest. What good would having that frequency detector do? It would be relevant after the arrest is made. Or it wouldn't matter because she'd find the tracker when she opened and repackaged the product. It makes no sense.

At the hospital, after the delivery—the baby girl was eight pounds six ounces—Honey heard the nurses arguing outside her room. “It’s only weed!” one said. They came in and took the baby away and put her in the NICU, where she was the biggest child in a room full of preemies. Child Protective Services told Honey that a doctor had reported her after they tested her urine; her THC levels were the highest they had come across in the hospital that year.

OPSEC fail.

#drug war #opsec

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nancydhooper · 4 years ago

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The Democratic Platform Heads in Right Direction on Criminal Justice, but Still Misses the Moment

As Democrats gather this week to nominate their presidential candidate, they will also adopt the party’s proposed platform. On criminal justice reform, the platform continues to move the party away from its harmful tough-on-crime past. But it also misses an opportunity to respond to Americans’ desire to seek transformational changes in the criminal legal system. For the past 60 years, presidential politics have played an outsized role in criminal justice policy-setting, despite this issue being largely the domain of states and localities. Of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States, 90 percent are under state or local jurisdiction. Barry Goldwater was the first national politician to focus on criminal justice issues as part of a presidential election, invoking tough-on-crime rhetoric and racist attacks on the civil rights movement. The five-term U.S. senator from Arizona was the 1964 Republican presidential nominee and ran on a law-and-order platform that denounced the civil rights movement as lawless and equated it with criminal behavior. He lost the 1964 presidential election, but his candidacy provided a boost for future law-and-order candidates. In the 1968 elections, Richard Nixon made law-and-order a central theme of his winning campaign, dedicating 17 speeches to the topic. He deployed the “Southern strategy” to appeal directly to Southern white working-class voters who opposed racial desegregation and the advances being made by the civil rights movement. It was during the Reagan administration that the full development of the law-and-order strategy began to take hold. While Nixon called for a war on drugs in 1971, President Ronald Reagan brought Frankenstein to life — dramatically increasing law enforcement budgets and slashing funding for drug treatment, prevention, and education. By the early 1990s, Democratic politicians wanted to wrest control of criminal justice issues and began a bidding war with Republicans on who could impose harsher penalties. In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton vowed that he would never permit any Republican to be perceived as tougher on crime. Weeks before the New Hampshire primary, he flew home to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, who was mentally incapacitated. During Clinton’s tenure, he slashed funding for public housing by 61 percent while boosting corrections funding by 171 percent, made it easier for public housing to exclude anyone with a criminal history, and signed into law the infamous 1994 Crime Bill. By 1996, the Democratic Party platform invoked law-and-order rhetoric that differed little from what Republicans expressed two decades earlier:

“The Democratic Party under President Clinton is putting more police on the streets and tougher penalties on the books … President Clinton made three-strikes-you’re-out the law of the land, to ensure that the most dangerous criminals go to jail for life, with no chance of parole. We established the death penalty for nearly 60 violent crimes … We provided almost $8 billion in new funding to help states build new prison cells … [W]hen young people commit serious violent crimes, they should be prosecuted like adults. We established boot camps for young non-violent offenders.”

It wasn’t until 2008 that the tone of the Democratic Party platform began to change, and by 2016, in response to the killing of Freddie Grey at the hands of Baltimore police and other high profile instances of police violence, Democrats called for “reforming our criminal justice system and ending mass incarceration.” Which brings us to this year’s proposed platform. It blasts police violence and private prisons and calls for a reduction in the nation’s incarceration rate. It supports front-end reforms like tackling the school-to-prison pipeline, fighting mandatory minimum laws and ending cash bail, as well as back-end reforms, such as reentry services for people leaving prison and increasing the use of presidential clemency powers to release people serving long sentences. Compared to past DNC platforms, this year’s proposed platform represents a dramatic shift from the 1990s. The Democratic Party has reversed course on certain positions, now saying it is “unjust — and unjustifiable — to punish children and teenagers as harshly as adults,” the opposite of the party’s 1996 platform. This year’s proposed platform also responds to the Black Lives Matter movement by recognizing systemic racism and calling for a dramatic change in the legal standard for police use of deadly force. And it has reversed course on the death penalty, now opposing it. But even while recognizing this evolution of the platform and the challenges of finding consensus among a party with diverse viewpoints, it is still disappointing to see the platform fail in some respects to meet the demands of the moment. For example, the proposed Democratic platform calls for an end to the “failed war on drugs, which has imprisoned millions of Americans,” yet fails to support policies that would actually end this failed war that has disproportionately harmed Black and Brown communities. Not only does the platform neglect to call for the decriminalization of all drug possession, which would strike a genuine blow to the war on drugs, it fails to even support marijuana legalization, which is supported by a large majority of Americans. The call to end the war on drugs is meaningless without these basic proposals. Moreover, on policing, the platform is silent on the call to slash police budgets and redirect those resources into alternatives to policing, and to reinvest in communities historically targeted by the police. Instead, the platform mostly continues to tout procedural reforms and calls for greater transparency and accountability. These are important reforms, but they miss the mark on what millions of people are marching on the streets to demand — a fundamental reorientation of public safety, divesting resources away from police and into alternatives to police and towards resources that will build long-term safety and stability. Finally, even though during the campaign trail candidate Joe Biden and a dozen other candidates committed to the ACLU to cut incarceration rates by 50 percent if they were to become president, the Democratic Party platform is now silent on setting this or any other concrete reduction goal. The Democratic Party has a terrible track record on criminal justice issues. It has now clearly broken away from this tarnished past, and the party platform recognizes the destructive crisis of mass incarceration. Yet the party still fails to recognize the need for transformational change, and until it does so, it will miss providing a home for the millions of Americans who are tired of tinkering around the edges and are looking for transformational change of a criminal legal system rooted in white supremacy and racism.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/the-democratic-platform-heads-in-right-direction-on-criminal-justice-but-still-misses-the-moment via http://www.rssmix.com/

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coin-news-blog · 5 years ago

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The Demand for Permissionless Freedom Is Just Getting Started

New Post has been published on https://coinmakers.tech/news/the-demand-for-permissionless-freedom-is-just-getting-started

The Demand for Permissionless Freedom Is Just Getting Started

Every year the world seems to be getting crazier and more people are starting to realize that it stems from oppressive government transgressions against a peaceful society. The world has noticed millions of people from France, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Indonesia and more are rising up because citizens are sick and tired of the manipulation. Because of all the money printing, hyperinflation, capital controls, austerity measures, and privacy-invasive tactics, groups and individuals have discovered that cryptocurrencies are profound tools for achieving economic freedom and the interest in permissionless money has only just begun.

Individuals Worldwide Are Protesting Against Oppressive Governments and the Growing Wealth Disparity

Three years after the 2008 economic crisis, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests started in New York City’s Zuccotti Park and quickly spread across the world. OWS protest camps were staged internationally and there were many other types of similar demonstrations like the Arab Spring protests, the British student protests, the bank bail-out protests, and the Iranian election demonstrations. All of these activists had been fighting against economic inequality and the huge wealth disparity within the world. Now, little more than eight years later, people are rising up again for the same reasons. Revolution-style protests are taking place in Argentina, Venezuela, Indonesia, Netherlands, France, India, Russia, Hong Kong, Chile, Lebanon, Peru, Haiti, Egypt and Syria, and the whole world is watching closely.

Argentina

The Argentines have literally watched their government destroy the economy slowly. The socialist leaders recently initiated currency controls as the country’s central planners have failed to fend off hyperinflation. In September, the Argentine government told the public the peso was extremely weak and restricted foreign currency purchases. Hundreds of thousands of Argentines took to the streets in Buenos Aires demanding that the government fix the situation.

There’s also been a massive food crisis and nourishment has been hard to come by in the Latin American country. Ivan Martinez, a protester in Buenos Aires, told news outlet Al Jazeera: “The situation is dire for all of us.” “I’m a construction worker but there is no work. It’s difficult to feed my children. That’s why I come here because the president’s policies are slowly killing us,” he added.

Chile

Similar to Argentina, Chile is also facing serious economic problems and the country’s citizens have risen up in protest. For a while, Chile was known as Latin America’s economic powerhouse with seemingly never-ending prosperity. But this year is very different as Chile is suffering from rapid inflation and pension shortages. The government has been raising prices, despite the economic outlook, thinking that austerity measures and tax hikes will solve the problem. The capital’s subway operator Metro de Santiago raised the price of tickets to $1.15 during rush hour and Chilean politicians also increased electricity costs by 10%. Much like the OWS protests, the Chilean government doesn’t know who is behind the uprisings that can be seen throughout major cities across Chile. The media details the movement was largely organized on the internet using social media platforms.

France

The streets of Paris this year saw thousands of yellow vests demonstrating against rising taxes, the manipulated banking system, and the region’s unethical bureaucrats. The group known as Gilets Jaunes formed marches in Paris that saw hundreds of thousands of people in the streets. Banks were vandalized and one group of Gilets Jaunes started burning banknotes at the bill printing factory.

“Starting today we start to burn foreign bills stock — The first paper ream we have here is for Israeli banknotes,” the bill factory employees stressed. “We start with this, then we burn everything — If the French government doesn’t change, all foreign countries that are waiting for their bills, will not be delivered.” It’s unknown how far the group of employees went with the burn, but the economic uncertainty in France remains dire.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong has seen weeks and weeks of protests that don’t seem to be ending anytime soon. The demonstrations stem from Hong Kong citizens wanting to partition themselves from Beijing as China has been in full control over the territory since the British handover. However, activists have been striking at the root of Chinese banks located in the country following massive sit-ins at the national airport and demonstrations across several locations citywide.

In mid-August pro-independence activist, Chen Haotian, told protesters to initiate a bank run on China’s banks. That week, Haotian called upon the people to withdraw bank deposits. Chinese financial institutions were also attacked again on October 1, as China honored the 70th anniversary of communist rule. Dissenters besieged a Bank of China branch in Hong Kong, while also smashing the storefront glass of another Chinese bank called China Life the same day.

Indonesia

Citizens of Indonesia have been protesting as well, as students demonstrated against a proposed ban on extramarital sex. But just like Hong Kong, the protest reports go well beyond the controversial ban and dissenters on the streets have said government rules have been constantly overbearing. The Indonesian protests stem from a deteriorating economy and poor central planning, and the rise ups have been growing fervently thanks to social media. Civil rights, basic freedoms, and privacy are the main issues, many Indonesian protests participants will tell you. “It’s not a one-issue protest,” explained Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch in Indonesia. “And it’s also not a unified or organised movement.”

India

An economic crisis is devastating India according to various reports from news.Bitcoin.com’s Kevin Helms. It all started at the end of September when the Reserve Bank of India told 137 smaller financial institutions to limit withdrawals to 1,000 rupees ($14) and the public erupted in protest. “Depositors will be allowed to withdraw a sum not exceeding ₹ 1,000 (rupees one thousand only) of the total balance in every savings bank account or current account or any other deposit account by whatever name called, subject to conditions stipulated in the RBI directions,” the bank told the public. To this day, customers are still having problems withdrawing their hard earned money from a number of cooperative banks.

Egypt

Egyptians are protesting their oppressive government right now because even though the economy is doing well, the country’s bureaucrats are the only ones reaping the benefits. Just like the Egyptian rise ups in 2011, the people are looking to see certain politicians arrested and jailed for their transgressions.

The three weeks of demonstrations in Egypt are no different than what’s happening throughout various countries across the world. Egyptians are upset about the draconian repression, increased political corruption, and government-imposed austerity measures. Thousands of Egyptians have been arrested and the latest demonstrations have people questioning “whether the Egyptian political system is about to collapse.”

Lebanon

The people living in Lebanon want a new government and word on the streets is the overreaching politicians continue to hurt the average working-class citizen. Lebanese are tired of the bureaucrats taxing the people on every single thing they do and the recent protests started after a tax proposal on Whatsapp calls. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in anti-government protests against a 20-cents-per-day charge for using voice over internet protocol (VOIP) platforms. The most popular is Whatsapp in Lebanon, but Lebanese also use Facebook messenger. Lebanese activists have called for a new government and the latest demonstrations are the largest since 2005.

Russia

The youth in Russia have been protesting Vladimir Putin’s authority since 2012 and Putin doesn’t seem to care. Dissidents in Russia keep protesting and the police just continue to arrest the activists immediately. A protest last July saw 1,300 student arrests at opposition demonstrations. People in Russia are tired of the laws against Russian protesters and in September roughly 20,000 took to the streets to put an end to prosecutions tied to mass protests. Russian prosecutors had started an oppressive criminal case against demonstrators when people rallied against alleged rigged elections.

Social Media, Encrypted Chats, Precious Metals, and Cryptocurrencies

Throughout all of these events and the financial turbulence worldwide, safe-haven assets like precious metals and cryptocurrencies are being used as tools for economic freedom. Other tools such as the use of guerilla-styled social media tactics and encrypted chats are being deployed globally.

Do you want to learn how digital currencies like Bitcoin Cash (BCH) can help bolster economic freedom? You can start here. You can also purchase Bitcoin without visiting a cryptocurrency exchange. Buy BTC and BCH directly from our trusted seller and, if you need a Bitcoin wallet to securely store it, you can download one from us here.

Millions of people from other nation states like Venezuela, Netherlands, Peru, Syria, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Haiti, and Spain are rising up against their corrupt governments as well. It’s pretty easy to see why they are growing tired of the manipulation and it’s safe to say the central planners’ band-aids and money printing tactics are not helping.

Source: news.bitcoin

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premimtimes · 5 years ago

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In the second report of a three-part undercover investigative series, FISAYO SOYOMBO exposes how the courts short-change the law, and the prisons are themselves a cesspool of the exact reasons for which they hold inmates.

Too many unforeseen obstacles had sprung up against me by the time I arrived at the gates of Ikoyi Prison, Ikoyi, Lagos, on July 12: I had had my most tortuous night in the police cell; I had been messed up by the typically ruthless Friday evening Lagos traffic; I had arrived under the cover of darkness, which wasn’t the plan. Even the few things that went well would later come back to haunt me.

Proceedings were well underway at Court III when we stepped into the Chief Magistrate Court, Yaba, Lagos, after my unlawful detention for five consecutive days at Pedro Police Station, Shomolu. It was a little afternoon — or thereabouts. A funny but very contentious matter was ongoing. The protagonist, a woman, was being tried for, allegedly, illegally selling a piece of land belonging to a former associate of hers. This woman — ostensibly in her late 50s or early 60s — claimed, vehemently so, that the complainant indeed owed her millions of naira in accumulation of unpaid earnings for executed projects. She sold the land because she had been instructed to, to defray the cost of her service, she said. But the prosecutor insisted otherwise, arguing that the sale was fraudulent. The woman, irritated and incandescent, embraced and perhaps enjoyed every window to have a go at the prosecutor. Once, the prosecutor got under her skin by scoffing at how two of her high-profile witnesses were deceased. “Excuse you!” the woman fired back in protest. “Are you suggesting I killed them? Is it my fault that you’ve been dragging me from one police station to another and from court to court for more than 10 years?”

The magistrate — a dark, soft-spoken, middle-aged man whose eyes often evaded the lens of his pair of glasses when talking — adjourned the matter, as expected. And after two or three other cases, mine was mentioned. His orders: remanded in prison custody, two sureties in like sum of N500,000 each, N150,000 to be paid into the Registrar’s account by each surety, sureties to be from father’s side of the family. Not long after, the court rose, to be followed by my preparations for a long and difficult journey to the prison.

PRISON WARDERS ASK FOR BRIBES RIGHT IN COURT

Before the authorities take my freedom away from me, the first thing they do is give me a final semblance of it by unfettering my hands from the handcuff, as is the custom. That was just before entering the dock. Minutes later, the same man who released the handcuff returns to hand me over to a policeman who, accompanied by Zainab Sodiq, the lady posing as my sister, leads me downstairs. First stop on the ground floor is the office of the prisons service. Manning it, comfortably sitting opposite the entrance, is a gun-wielding prison warder, legs waggling, whose shirt hangs loosely on the wall inside, leaving his trunk scantily covered by a singlet. Inside that office are three more warders. The next room is a holding cell — for momentarily detaining inmates until the arrival of the prisons bus that conveys them to Ikoyi. I expect to be led to the holding cell, but I am taken into the prisons office and encouraged to “take a seat”. What manner of magnanimity is this? I was wrong!

The three officers summon my sister. “You can have a look at that holding cell and see if it’s the kind of place a human being should stay,” one of them tells her with feigned sympathy. “Your brother can stay in our office but it will cost you N10,000.” My sister takes a moment to peep into the holding cell, then returns to bargain. The negotiating parties reach an agreement of N5,000, collected by the singlet-donning warder.

Money in the bag, the warders’ initial measured disposition turns happy-go-lucky; I notice the ease with which they regale one another with tales of similarly shady financial dealings. “The day Naira Marley was billed to be taken to prison, I was on this chair making cool money,” says one of them. “I made some good money, I won’t lie. Transfers were just going up and down.” Naira Marley, the hip hop artiste whose original name is Azeez Fashola, had been arraigned at a Federal High Court in Lagos on May 20 by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), on 11 counts of alleged Internet and credit card fraud.

A second warder describes how he facilitated the payment of N300,000 to a senior colleague of his in Abuja, by a man who wanted to ‘smuggle’ all his three children into the employ of the Nigerian Prisons Service (recently renamed the Nigerian Correctional Service) during a recruitment “some years ago”. Though unqualified, all three were eventually employed by the service. It suddenly dawns on the warder that an ongoing promotion exercise in the prisons service offers him fresh opportunity for corrupt enrichment. “Let me quickly call the man; he may be interested in a deal to facilitate his children’s promotion,” he adds, running his hand through his breast pocket for his phone.

‘IF YOU HAVE YOUR MONEY, YOU CAN NEVER SUFFER IN PRISON’

Seeing the lack of restraint with which they discuss acts of bribery and corruption, I approach them for guidance on the allocation of accommodation in prison. Apparently, it’s a high-wire fraud involving prison officials in court and those in the yard proper.

“You can get a cell for N30,000,” one of the warders tells me. “You can also get for N100,000 or N150,000. You can even get a N1.5million cell.”

“A million and five hundred thousand?” I protest.

“Of course!” he insists. “When Ayodele Fayose was remanded in Ikoyi Prison, what kind of cell did you think he stayed in?” Fayose, the immediate past former Governor of Ekiti State, was remanded at Ikoyi Prison in October 2018 at the start of his N2.2billion fraud trial initiated by the EFCC.

Another warder cuts in. “Don’t worry, you can never suffer in the prison yard,” he says. “As long as you have your money.”

Patience, a third urges me. “The warders at the prison have warned us off striking deals with inmates while still in court,” he explains. “They’ve told us to leave them to push their own deals when the inmates get to the prison. So, when we get there, we will hand you over to the warders you will negotiate with.”

EMERGENCY BAIL FOR SALE BY ‘THE MAGISTRATE’S MAN’ AND PRISON OFFICIALS

Minutes later, one of the warders — dark, mild-mannered and diminutive — walks up to me to ask if I’m making progress with my bail conditions. The question confounds me. Who makes progress on bail application within two hours of a court hearing?

“My lawyer is working on it,” I reply, “but it’s too early to know since it’s just a few hours ago we left court.”

“No, no; it doesn’t mean,” he says. “I have a lawyer in this court who will help you perfect your bail ‘today today’. In fact, you will not get to Ikoyi Prison at all; you will go home straight from here. He works in concert with the court authorities. I can call him right now and he’d be here any minute, if you want.”

Stunned and curious in one breath, I nod in the affirmative. In a matter of minutes, the lawyer, ostensibly in his late 40s or early 50s, shows up. He speaks in carefully considered and restrained patches, sporadically wiping the lens of his glasses with a silky piece of cloth.

“What exactly is your offence?” he begins, then proceeds to hearing my bail conditions. He assures me that the problematic components of my bail requirements would be waived, but the process would cost me money.

“Did the Magistrate order you to pay any money to the Registrar’s account?”

“Yes. N150,000,” I say in error. It should have been N300,000 — at the rate of N150,000 per surety.

“Okay, that’s no problem,” ‘Mr. John’, as he introduces himself, says. “Can you make everything N200,000?”

I tell J I can’t. That’s a lot of money. Fifty thousand naira on top of the N150,000 is a lot of cash. But he disagrees. “You see, I am very close to the Magistrate,” he says. “I am very close to the man; therefore, we will waive many of these bail conditions for you.” We haggle for a while: N180,000, N170,000, N180,000. We eventually settle for N170,000.

John takes a quick look at his watch; it’s a little past 3 pm. “Hurry and get the money. It’s almost too late already — why did you wait till this long?” he laments. “Today may or may not be possible. If you had mentioned it immediately the court rose, say around 2 pm, I would have been able to totally guarantee you that you would go home today without ever reaching the prison.”

We exchange numbers and I promise to call, but I never do (The plan, really, is to end up at Ikoyi Prison.). Instead, I fold my secret device and tuck it away carefully. Yes, I’d taped all the conversations held inside the prisons office in the court premises. The original plan was to put the device away before going to prison, then retrieve it afterwards. I had been told that there was literally nothing I wanted to smuggle into the prison that I couldn’t; I only needed to grease the palms of warders and they would fetch it for me. But with accommodation negotiations set to take place on arrival at the prison, I began to nurse the ambition of smuggling in the device outright at point of entry. This was not the original plan. But if it works out, I would more evidence of prison-yard corruption. If it fails, I’m doomed. Big risk, I know. But I do it all the same.

PHYSICAL PAIN IN EXCHANGE FOR DIGGING THE STORY

Sunkanmi Ijadunola, the Assistant Chief

The prison warders do not quite know what to make of me when they find a hidden device on me, a supposed inmate, during the routine search at the entryway shortly after an Ikoyi Prison bus conveying the latest inmates pulled over at the prison gate. After a second, more thorough search during which nothing else is found on me, they hand me over to the ‘Section’ — a position occupied by the most senior convict in a cell — of the welcome cell. As I would later find out, this was under strict instructions: no phone calls, no out-of-cell movement, no frivolous interaction with inmates.

Very early the following morning, Sunkanmi Ijadunola, the third most senior warder in Ikoyi Prison, sends for me. They had seen the videos; they’d extracted the memory card from the device and watched footages of the five prison officials demanding bribes from me and the court official negotiating a premature bail with me. Sunkanmi, as he is widely known, asks me to confess: “Who are you and what is your mission here?” But he was asking the question a few hours too late. I’d spent half of the night deliberating on what to expect in the morning. I had imagined that in the best scenario, some senior official would have been thoroughly mortified by the sight of their bribe-demanding colleagues captured on tape, and would be keen to convince me about helping to further unravel the bad guys in the system. I didn’t deceive myself, though: this thinking was more or less illusory. I’d also thought that in the bad scenario, I’d be handed over to the Police; and in the worst, I’d be extrajudicially executed. After several hours of carefully considering all possibilities overnight, I resolved that even if they held a gun to my head, I would not disclose my true identity. I knew once I did, that was the end of the story. After five excruciating, emotionally and psychologically destructive days in a police cell, I wasn’t prepared to ruin everything so cheaply.

Seeing I am unwilling to offer any useful information, Sunkanmi, the Assistant Chief, accuses me of plotting a jailbreak. “You’re here to understudy the prison security so that you can send the videos to your gang members outside,” he says. “You’re planning a jailbreak. Or you’re working for Boko Haram; you’re a Boko Haram spy!”

I do not flinch. Instead, I stick to the original storyline I’d preconceived to offer in the improbable circumstance that my cover was blown. At this point, Sunkanmi sends for a cane and orders me to remove my shirt and trousers, leaving only my singlet and boxer briefs. Then he descends on me. Three rounds of beating: the first with several lashes of the cane searing straight into my skin and leaving me with blood and blisters; the second in similar pattern, with my hands cuffed behind my back; and the last with a thick stick targeting the interior and exterior joints of my ankles, knees, hips, elbows and shoulders.

Still, I refuse to disclose that I’m a journalist. By enduring the beating, I succeed in buying myself at least another 24 hours of understudying the corruption seeping through the different layers of prison operations. Bearing the pain was worth it in the end; someone needed to expose the scale of criminal corruption going on in that prison.

Corruption-Laced Registration

The first benefit of enduring the pain is that I am still accorded the treatment of a regular inmate, therefore I am sent for registration and documentation. The documentation holds inside a building opposite the Assistant Chief’s office. It’s a fairly big office with a small inner room littered with stacks of ragged files and paper, plus a narrow, hollow, open cell to the left where awaiting-documentation inmates sit without much latitude to stretch their legs. The inner room is manned by a warder easily noticeable by the ungracefulness of his chemical-bleached yellow skin. A light-skinned, heavily-built woman-warder spearheads the documentation process in the major office, assisted by three convicts. The documentation is both manual and digital, but to avoid compromising the security of the prison, I’ll skip the details. Prison warders are themselves the biggest threat to prison security, but I won’t aid them.

In the very final stage, a convicted inmate tells me to step forward for my cash. The procedure is always that an inmate turns in his possessions, including cash, at the gate. At the end of documentation, the money goes to the records department, from where he can retrieve a small sum every time it is required for a specific purpose. Just before I collect mine, one of the three convicts — they’re easily recognizable in their deep blue uniforms — whispers some instructions into my ears. “You will give that woman N1,000,” he tells me, “then you can have the rest.” It’s standard practice, I soon find out. Every inmate who comes in with cash must give up some of it at every registration point in bribes demanded through proxy, but with the full knowledge of the receiving warder. It looks a small amount but by month end it could be some stash of notes in dubious earning. In my one week in that prison, there were 16 new inmates on the day with the least number of new inmates. On one day, there were 45. If only five had enough cash to forfeit N1,000, that’s N5,000 daily, amounting to a little below or above N100,000 — depending on the number of court sittings in the month. Numerous honest, hard-working Nigerians do not even earn that!

I give up N1,000 of my N7,200 as instructed, and I receive a slip indicating my new cell will be D2 — that is, Block D Cell 2. I ask to be given the outstanding N6,200 but the convict tells me the money will be handed over to the warder overseeing the block — a happy-go-lucky albino who seemed very popular among inmates. Six thousand two hundred naira quickly becomes N5,200. This fresh N1,000 deduction, I am told, is to guarantee nobody in the cell lays hands on me. Again, if five inmates forfeit a thousand naira daily, that’s another N100,000 in corruptly-earned money by month-end. This is more than thrice the national minimum wage approved by President Muhammadu Buhari in April, but which still hasn’t taken off five months after!

COVER BLOWN BUT TOO LATE TO CONCEAL CORRUPTION

My stay at D2 is short-lived. Two members of my backup team show up as planned. They had been unable to reach me but they assumed all had gone well so far. With the extra scrutiny around me, it doesn’t take too long before they’re found out. It leaves me with no option but to admit I’m an investigative journalist and to fully disclose my mission. I just couldn’t see them endure the pain I had. This was a watershed moment in the investigation, as from then on, the prisons service bends over backwards to put its best foot forward while also eliminating my exposure to all ongoing ills. I remember overhearing a prisoner say even a death-row convict should still have the sense of self-worth to ignore the beans that was served that Saturday morning; but in my eight days at the prison, the warders ensure that I do not come in contact with the food served to inmates by the prison. The authorities relocate me from D2 to the welcome cell, with strict warnings never to leave the cell on my own under any circumstance. Unfortunately for them, it was too little too late.

Before they knew who she was, one of my visitors had actually been made to pay a bribe of N1,000 at the prison gate before she could be allowed to see me, much like the setting at the police station. This wasn’t at the discretion of the visitor; it was no act of voluntary tipping. Rather, she was expressly asked to part with her money as a condition for access to me. On the surface, this looks a pittance, but not so when viewed in the context of the human traffic to the prison. On Saturday evening, I had managed to do a headcount of visitors: 18 of them in an hour. Do the math! This Ikoyi-visit corruption has grown in leaps and bounds, evidently; back in 2016, a N200 bribe gave a visitor access to an inmate. Not anymore!

Also, one of the few lawyers who visited me was nearly asked at the gate if he was willing to enter a deal to relocate me to a more enjoyable cell. “You look too clean for your client to be in D2,” a warder at the prison gate had told the lawyer, who, several years before his admission to the bar, had earned a reputation among colleagues for his clean shaves and bespoke suits. The warder waved the lawyer in, all smiles and niceties, and suspiciously keen to converse. Once a second warder turned up abruptly to announce the name of the client in D2, everything changed. The first warder slipped into jitters; his eyes became reddened, his face contouring into a frown. “You cannot sit there,” he said as the lawyer attempted to settle into a seat. “Come this way; remove your glasses; we need to thoroughly search you.”

N10,000 IS THE COST OF DELETING YOUR DETAILS FROM THE PRISON’S RECORDS

Until I was called to come receive my visitors, I made my every second in Block D count. Even before reaching the block, I knew I was on borrowed time. I was certain that it was only a matter of hours before I would have to reveal my true identity. So, in between registration, feeding and dispatch to D2, I mixed with inmates as often as I could. On one of those occasions, I overheard three inmates discuss a birthday celebration by a ‘Yahoo boy’ — Nigerian lingo for internet fraudster — in prison the previous week. “It was ‘lit’,” one of them said. A second, obviously the shortest-serving inmate of the trio, asked how some of the birthday items were smuggled in. “It’s the warders,” the third answered. “With N5,000 and above, most warders will help you smuggle anything you need into the yard.”

Elsewhere, I’d also run into a group of four inmates fielding questions from an inmate who was worried about the implications of his conviction. I was interested in it, knowing the consequences are long-lasting. Section 107(1)(d) of 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) states explicitly that no person shall be qualified for election to a House of Assembly if “within a period of less than ten years before the date of an election to the House of Assembly, he has been convicted and sentenced for an offence involving dishonesty or he has been found guilty of a contravention of the Code of Conduct”. A similar provision in Section 137 (1)(e) makes it clear that a person shall not be qualified for election to the office of President if “within a period of less than ten years before the date of the election to the office of President he has been convicted and sentenced for an offence involving dishonesty or he has been found guilty of the contravention of the Code of Conduct”.

“What’s your business with that?” one of the inmates fires, irritated. “We will delete your name from the records. There will be no trace of you. Nobody will have any evidence that you ever came here, so forget whatever the implication is. My brother’s friend did it before and it cost him only N10,000. I’ll link you to the warder who did for him; he will help you too, but that will only be after you have regained your freedom.”

SODOMY, BOOZE, SEX AND DRUGS… AS LONG AS YOU HAVE YOUR MONEY

While in prison, I’d exchanged contacts with an awaiting-trial inmate who had promised to reach out once he regained freedom. True to his words, he called on the day he exited Ikoyi Prison. Weeks after, I drove about 340km out of Lagos to meet up with him.

“I saw how you were beaten up in prison and I didn’t want you to suffer in vain,” he says as we exchanged handshakes, each sizing the other up for elements of trust. “I’m going to help you by giving you additional information to what you already have. But this will be a very brief meeting, and this will be the only time ever you’d see me. That’s the best way for me to stay alive, because I know these bad guys will come after me if they trace any information to me.”

He explains that the special accommodation mentioned by the prison warders in court, which I was shielded from seeing, is called ‘Nicon Luxury’. It’s an apartment where inmates pay between N20,000 and N50,000 for a night’s sleep, plus access to cigarettes, drinks, Indian hemp, drugs and girls.

“The apartment has air conditioners, good couches and mattresses; meanwhile, 118 inmates are packed like sardines into one room that should normally hold 30 inmates. Those at Nicon are not only political prisoners or people of influence; just people who have the money.”

He describes the unfair world that the prison is, with only the poor truly imprisoned while the rich live fine.

“There is a lot of impunity in the prison,” he says. “An inmate, so long he is rich, can have almost everything, even sex. Inmates sleep with prostitutes. If you want to have sex, just tell the warders. They will bring a girl to the Nicon Luxury for you, set the two of you up; you f**k, you pay. It’s that easy,” he reveals.

“There is free flow of drugs in prison, which is impossible without the facilitation or compromise of warders. You’ll find Colorado [a hard drug] in huge sale; I took it myself. I paid just N5,000 each time I wanted it. Tramadol and refnol are sold, too, but Colorado is the highest in demand.

READ PART ONE HERE: INVESTIGATION (1): Bribery, Bail For Sale… Lagos Police Station Where Innocent Civilians Are Jailed And Criminals Are Recycled

“Look at Vaseline, it is a very scarce commodity in prison but it is available at expensive rates for use in sodomy. At Ikoyi Prison, the powerful inmates sodomise the others, and it happens right under the nose of prison authorities. They know that these things happen. But, you see, the warders are the problem — because inmates do not have access to the outside world, and those coming from outside are screened from head to toe. Therefore, nothing can enter the prison without the knowledge of warders.”

NOTHING LIKE REFORMATION OR CORRECTION IN PRISON

Nurudeen Yusuf

Despite the signing of the Nigerian Correctional Service Act 2019 into law by President Muhammadu Buhari, to reflect the new thrust of inmate reformation and correction, Nurudeen Yusuf, a Lagos-based legal practitioner and human rights activist, says any prison reforms that doesn’t kick off with warders is an “absolute waste of time”.

“With the sex, sodomy and abuse of drugs at Ikoyi and other prisons, there can be no reformation in the prison system. Under the law, inmates only have a right to one stick of cigarette a day, but look at the sheer availability of drugs to them,” he says.

“For instance, we got a guy out of Ikoyi Prison through our advocacy programme; we paid his bail sum of N100,000. We were shocked that he was desperate to go back. In less than three weeks, he got himself sent to prison — because of the big life he enjoyed there.

Infograph: Inmate Life

“The prison world is like an animal world. Inmates who have access to drugs, money and gadgets use that power to oppress the others. You see prisoners who have access to phones, they can extort outsiders right from inside the prison. Many prisoners convicted for fraud and murder are rich, and they live a big man’s life in there. Prisoners make cash transfers from their accounts while in prison.

“While in prison, inmates are supposed to learn new hands-on skills with which they can earn legitimate income after serving their time. But many of the workshop centres are not functioning, even in Kirikiri Maximum prisons; no materials, no resources to work with.”

Yusuf says he has had clients who were sodomised at Ikoyi Prison but the warders turned a blind eye because the victims were suspected Boko Haram members. “These people are innocent until proven guilty in court,” he noted. “Therefore, sodomising them is criminal; and this happens at almost every prison in the country.”

Possible. A 31-page piece titled ‘Sodomy of Children in Maiduguri Prison and The ICRC Conspiracy of Silence’, released by imprisoned-for-life Independence Day bomber Charles Okah in March, details child prostitution, sodomy, abortions and even outright murder at the Maiduguri Maximum Security Prison, Borno State. Then Governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, subsequently set up a panel to investigate Okah’s claims, but its work was frustrated by Ja’afaru Ahmed, the Controller-General of the Nigerian Prisons Service and Sanusi Mu’azu Danmusa, the Maiduguri State Controller.

‘SET THE PRISONERS FREE, JAIL THE WARDERS’

Ikoyi Prison Warders

Prisons in Nigeria, exist to “take into lawful custody all those certified to be so kept by courts of competent jurisdiction, produce suspects in courts as and when due, identify the causes of their anti-social dispositions, set in motion mechanisms for their treatment and training for eventual reintegration into society as normal law-abiding citizens on discharge, and administer Prisons Farms and Industries for this purpose and in the process generate revenue for the government”.

The NPS continues to fulfil all these basic functions, bar two — identify the causes of misbehaviour, and kick off treatment and reintegration to society. Incidentally, these two are the most important of the lot.

Yusuf worries that prison sentence is turning a catalyst for more crime rather than the deterrence it was intended to be. “The implication is that inmates have no remorse over the offence for which they have been convicted,” he says. “They are willing to commit more crimes. They have just become terrors unto the society, either in prison or out of it. If you have money, you can live the life of a governor while in prison. The only difference is that you don’t have freedom to go out of the prison.”

My ex-inmate-friend sums it up more chillingly. “I was convicted for fraud but I left the prison knowing I was a better human that many of those warders,” he tells me. “You see those warders, they’re the ones who should be in jail. They’re far more fraudulent than I was. Their freedom should be in my hands, not mine in theirs!”

—

This investigation was published with collaborative support from Cable Newspaper Journalism Foundation and the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR)

INVESTIGATION(2): Drug Abuse, Sodomy, Bribery, Pimping… The Cash-And-Carry Operations Of Ikoyi Prison In the second report of a three-part undercover investigative series, FISAYO SOYOMBO exposes how the courts short-change the law, and the prisons are themselves a cesspool of the exact reasons for which they hold inmates.

#apc #buhari #corruption #EFCC #Fisayo Soyombo #icir #ICPC #ikoyi prison #investigation #Justice system #Naira Marley #Nigeria #PDP #police brutality #PREMIUM TIMES #The Cable #Undercover Reporting

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oldguardaudio · 5 years ago

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World Markets – Schools – Financial outlooks- Trump goes it alone

Trump – my turn

If Trump cured cancer

45th President of The United States Donald Trump wins HoaxAndChange.com

This is a great read!!! Just wish the American people understood this. Trump does and does his best to correct the problems without any Dem support and in some cases no support either from some Rep.. If he loses the next election, we all had better started looking for a remote island to get away from the insanity. Prophet of doom maybe, but a realist for sure.

For the past ten months we have been deluged by opinions about inverted yield curves. Some recent research was done that shows that as rates dropped, there was a rush to refi, and that means prepay mortgages. That means institutions holding mortgage backed bonds were left with unbalanced portfolios, and had to buy other new hedges, or new bonds of longer duration in order to better match the duration of their liabilities to pay pensions or annuities. That was triggered in most cases by algorithms that manage the portfolio balance. That triggers buying large quantities of longer dated bonds including ten and thirty year maturities as the cash from prepayments rolls in. One expert postulated that rates would be as much as 25BP higher if it were not for the rush of institutional investment to reinvest proceeds from prepaid bonds as rates declined, thereby triggering more ten and thirty year bond buying. Bottom line, don’t take the inversion as a clear sign of pending recession. It might be partially due to technical factors driven by algorithms.

In another study covering whether it is best to float or fix, they concluded several things. Ignore economists’ predictions of rates. They are mostly wrong. In fact, most bond traders, and other pundits, are wrong if they try to predict rates over the next 5 years. Old time bond traders from Solomon Bros days mostly said trying to predict where rates will be over several years is usually a losing exercise. We have seen this to be true over the recent periods. So as a general rule, when rates are very low, as now, fix, and when rates are high and rising stay floating, and over time the net cost of interest will be lower than if you fix at high points and pay the premium that long term fixed carries over floating. If you fix when rates go high thinking you will protect from even higher rates, you will likely make the wrong decision. There has been extensive long term research to show this. It pays, if you float, to examine if a good hedging strategy is needed, and at what strike price. I am not an interest rate expert, nor very knowledgeable about hedging, so go to a good firm that does those things for specific advice. Just keep in mind that when a bank sells you a cap or hedge, they are trying to make a profit on that trade, so it is best to go to an independent firm that does interest rate management, and let then help you decide, and then let them buy the hedge for you. It will normally be less costly and will be documented better for you.

What to make of Brexit now is another impossible exercise. Johnson has lost control of events. Johnson was right to threaten the EU with a hard Brexit, but Parliament, like Congress had no understanding of how to negotiate these things. Parliament made a mess of this, again. I thought nobody was more stupid than the US congress, but now I think Parliament has surpassed us. The deal May struck was terrible, and what Johnson was attempting to do was materially improve it to make it the Brexit that people voted for. By trying to force another 3 month delay, Parliament told the EU, just stand firm, and it is OK to screw us. Similar to what the Dems are trying to with Iran negotiations, USMCA, and the border. It is now unclear if Brexit ever happens, given that the deal on the table was rejected three times, but now the EU has no reason to agree to any changes. It is clear now that the UK is a mess, and it is not going to get better for quite a while. In the US, since there is no longer any bipartisanship, Trump has to go it alone. If he let the Dems have their way we would be back to the terrible Iran deal Obama made, and the bad NAFTA deal, and the Iranians, Putin and Chinese would run all over us, as they did with Obama. The world would be much worse off. Just look at Micron trying to help Iran cheat and get $15 billion cash so they agree to comply with what they already agreed to do, and nothing more. How stupid is that. Macron acts just as Obama did, so the Iranians can continue to pay Hezbollah and Hamas, and support attacks on Israel, and the Saudis. Macron is who the liberals want as part of the US negotiating team with XI, along with others from the EU. It demonstrates how weak the EU really is. I am sure Putin is noting all this. They have the same issues in Britain as we do- a legislative branch that has no clue about how to negotiate, and is trying to undercut the chief executive to the detriment of the country.

The teachers union has now convinced virtually every Democrat governor and Mayor to stop charter schools. None are being opened at this moment. The waiting line of minority kids to get in is very long and growing. No matter what teaching methods are introduced, including all kids having computers and online work, reading and math scores in minority schools have not improved, or have declined. More computers and more money has done nothing for the kids. They are still failing, and their futures are being sacrificed to the teachers unions and pensions. Disruptive kids are not punished now in urban schools because that is deemed to be racist and unfair. So all the kids suffer badly because learning is disrupted. Political correctness is destroying thousands of minority kids hope for a better future. Charters do not tolerate that crap. The well run charters way out perform public schools. Until minority parents take an active interest, and demand a change of polices, and a change to non-union schools, and until the community culture of assumed failure is ended and replaced with the hard work drive for success of the Asian culture, we are going to have failing schools and a lack of opportunity for thousands of black kids. It is not discrimination that has the Asian kids outperforming even white kids in school, and black kids being materially behind as measured by the standard tests. There is no evidence that diversity in university makes education and future success any better for anyone, and there is plenty of evidence it makes it worse for black kids who are accepted to schools where they are not qualified just to fill the black quota.

There were 7 young black men murdered this past weekend in Chicago. 30 more were shot, in just one weekend, in just this one city. That is the same number who died in the random shooting in Odessa. There were lots more black on black murders last week in Baltimore, St Louis, Newark, LA, and other urban cities run by Democrats. Over the past 5 years there were 65 US soldiers who died in Afghanistan in combat. They kill that many young blacks in Chicago in less than two months. Do you hear a word from any Democrat about this carnage. All you hear is attacks on Republicans and Trump over gun laws. Shooters in Chicago do not buy guns legally. They buy them on the street where they are readily available. Yet Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in America. So now the mayor blames the Republicans for the gun violence claiming it is because gun sales are legal in Indiana. Classic. She takes no responsibility at all, and does nothing, but blame the GOP. The real problem is the city agreed to an ACLU agreement which keeps the cops from doing their job. Now judges let them out with no bail or minor bail, so the violence continues. A step NYC has just taken to have no arrests for many misdemeanors and no bail. Congrats to the ACLU for materially increasing the number of murders and shootings in Chicago. In the past two weeks the arrest rate in NYC dropped 13% since the Pantilo decision by the commissioner. The Dems just do not get it. Giuliani showed how it is done, but the left thinks letting cops stop and frisk and take guns off the street, and be aggressive, is racist, so instead black kids die or get shot, and black neighborhoods become worse than actual war zones. And you wonder why these kids act out in school? It is just like the school problem. Do not touch the black kids, and do not really punish them, so instead they all fail or die. That is current left wing policy at work.

George Banks // Managing Partner// Priderock Capital Partners, LLC 525 Okeechobee Blvd. // Suite 1650 // West Palm Beach // FL // 33401 T: 561-653-9332 x222 // C: 561-379-9178 // F: 561-653-9942

World Markets – Schools – Financial outlooks- Trump goes it alone World Markets - Schools - Financial outlooks- Trump goes it alone This is a great read!!! Just wish the American people understood this.

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kacydeneen · 5 years ago

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ICE Is Descending on Courthouses; Advocates Are Watching

As Cesar Vargas and Ismary Calderón strolled the Richmond County Supreme Court’s perimeter, they could have easily blended in with other pedestrians.

But instead, they wore black vests with neon orange stripes, outfits that guaranteed everyone — including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — would notice them.

Bernie Sanders' $16T Climate Plan Builds on Green New Deal

“Our community is so vulnerable when they’re in the shadows, when there’s no eyes out there. But we want to be those eyes and bring light to any enforcement action,” said Vargas.

He and other advocates lead between 60 and 70 volunteers who are patrolling Staten Island locations where federal officers arrest immigrants. Their aim is to educate the immigrant community about their rights and watch over them, while also monitoring ICE and holding the agency accountable for any lies or illegal activity.

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Inspired by Vargas' own military training, volunteers are taking on erratic shifts around the borough that sometimes begin before the sun rises so they can retain the element of surprise and be on the streets when ICE is most likely to strike.

Earlier this month, Vargas and Calderón landed at the Staten Island courthouse for an hour of patrolling, looping around the building’s facade while peeking into car windows. From parking lots to vehicles on the side of the road, ICE officers could be lurking anywhere.

Ex-Colorado Gov. Hickenlooper Says He's Running for Senate

Courthouses where defendants, witnesses and victims congregate for justice may seem like shoo-ins for a “sensitive location” designation, which ICE already applies to schools, places of worship and health care facilities, and which means enforcement activities are usually averted. But ICE actions have become widespread at courthouses in recent years, leaving immigrants fearful that a routine court appearance may end in detention or deportation.

ICE resumed aggressive practices at courthouses across the United States soon after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The agency began arresting far more people who had been charged but not convicted of crimes, according to ICE data, denying immigrants their right to due process guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. At the same time, officers started targeting individuals who had not been enforcement priorities under President Barack Obama’s administration, which focused on detaining immigrants with serious criminal records.

In fiscal year 2018, nearly 33,000 administrative arrests made by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations nationwide were of people with pending criminal charges, compared to less than 6,300 in fiscal year 2016. DUIs were the most common offense that resulted in an arrest, with drug and other traffic offenses trailing closely behind.

ICE’s data don’t indicate where the arrests were made, but it's clear that courthouses have become a convenient enforcement site. In 2018, the Immigrant Defense Project tracked more than 200 ICE arrests or sightings around courts in New York state, according to a 2019 report. That’s up from 11 arrests two years prior, at the end of Obama’s second term.

“Courthouse arrests are one extremely disturbing trend that just exacerbates fear and is an attempt to send a message that they will go to extreme ends," said Jane Shim, an IDP advocacy staff attorney.

ICE activity at the courts occurs often in places where local police have stopped cooperating with ICE detainers, said Randy Capps, director of research for U.S. programs at the Migration Policy Institute. The New York City Police Department, for example, hasn’t complied with ICE detainers since 2014, which means the federal agency can no longer easily pick up targets who are in NYPD custody. In a directive from January 2018, then ICE Acting Director Thomas D. Homan wrote that enforcement at the courts is often "necessitated" by lack of cooperation from jurisdictions that refuse to turn immigrants in jails or prisons over to ICE.

"Federal, state, and local law enforcement officials routinely engage in enforcement activity in courthouses throughout the country because many individuals appearing in courthouses for one matter are wanted for unrelated criminal or civil violations," Homan wrote. "ICE’s enforcement activities in these same courthouses are wholly consistent with longstanding law enforcement practices, nationwide."

In the directive, Homan argued that because most people who enter courthouses are screened for weapons, actions there could reduce safety risks for the public, officers and even the target. He said enforcement at courts would focus on convicted criminals, gang members, safety threats, people who have been ordered removed but haven’t left the country, and immigrants who have re-entered the U.S. illegally.

But IDP found that friends and family members who attend court with a loved one are also at risk of being detained, as are vulnerable immigrants such as survivors of domestic violence or trafficking.

Descriptions of dramatic arrests have established a fact pattern for how ICE conducts its enforcement activities at courthouses, IDP’s 2019 report suggests. Officers in plainclothes with unmarked vehicles often refuse to identify themselves and use force to detain their targets; bystanders occasionally believe they’re witnessing a kidnapping when ICE drags someone away.

As immigrants have learned about the potential perils that await them at court, they have had to weigh whether to risk going, or whether to dodge the court system and face consequences that could potentially be even more severe. In a survey from June 2017, mere months after Trump took office, 29% of 225 advocates and attorneys involved at New York courts reported working with immigrants who failed to make a court appearance because they were afraid of ICE. Among those who helped survivors of violence, more than two-thirds had clients who chose not to seek help through the courts because they feared immigration enforcement.

Jorge, who is in the country illegally and asked not to use his full name, told NBC his partner reported him to the police for an incident that he adamantly denies ever happened. He has three U.S. citizen children and has been stateside for three decades. On the eve of a court appearance in Staten Island, he said he was afraid ICE might grab him.

“I’ve been hearing stories, I’ve seen in the news, cases that have happened,” he said in Spanish. “So I’m afraid that these kinds of problems can happen to me.”

More than two years after advocates began noticing an uptick in courthouse arrests, policymakers and the courts are finally actively pushing back against ICE’s enforcement techniques that are intimidating people and impeding the justice system — but not all of the measures are foolproof.

In New York, the state’s Office of Court Administration adopted new rules in April that restricted ICE officers without a judicial warrant or order from arresting a target inside most courthouses. The Protect Our Courts Act in the state’s legislature goes even further. It codifies those rules, applies them to courts in the state that are currently not covered, and protects immigrants who are on the way to or leaving court, as many arrests take place outside the courthouse itself.

The bill did not become law in 2019, but state Sen. Brad Hoylman, one of its lead sponsors, said he is hopeful that next year he and his peers could get the legislation to the floor and passed in the Senate. He believes ICE enforcement at courthouses represents a “systematic denial of New York residents of their due process.”

“First and foremost, every New Yorker should have a right to attend a court proceeding, regardless of their immigration status, without fear of arrest,” said Hoylman.

“But secondly,” he continued, “we all have a stake in this process. Our state’s justice system depends on victims, witnesses, defendants, family members appearing in court proceedings and delivering testimony.”

New York is not the only state that has taken action against the federal government on this matter. In May, New Jersey tried to limit arrests by requiring ICE officers to show courthouse security personnel warrants, and in June, a judge in Massachusetts temporarily prohibited ICE from arresting immigrants who are going to court for official business.

Meanwhile, advocates such as Vargas are on the streets, informing immigrants of their rights and trying to hold ICE accountable. “It’s a hard time, but there is always mobilization and community in these types of moments,” said Shim.

In Staten Island, where the Statue of Liberty looms large on people's morning commutes, and where Trump won Richmond County by nearly 17%, reactions to the federal government’s divisive rhetoric and hardline immigration policy have been mixed. Some people are buying into what the White House is doing, screaming “Build the Wall” at soccer players and commenting on social media about how to contact ICE, said Vargas. But others are fighting back because they feel the United States is acting contrary to the values it was founded on, said Gonzalo Mercado, executive director of La Colmena Community Job Center, one of the partner organizations on the patrols.

“We’ve never seen our country this way before, and people feel that they have to stand up. Because right now it’s immigrant communities, you know, but we know how that goes,” Mercado said.

On that warm August day at the Richmond County courthouse, Vargas and Calderón bantered as they walked. Past a sign that read “HIS NAME WAS ERIC GARNER,” commemorating the life of a black man who died in Staten Island at the hands of the police. Past a man who asked them what they were doing, and who seemed glad they were doing it. Past car, after car, after car, any one of them a threat — especially those that blended in.

The minutes passed, and they didn’t spot any ICE officers. All was quiet, just as Vargas had hoped.

“That’s always a good thing,” he had said earlier. “I’d rather have a boring patrol than a patrol where I actually have to, we have to, see ICE.”

Photo Credit: Alexandra Villarreal This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. ICE Is Descending on Courthouses; Advocates Are Watching published first on Miami News

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furynewsnetwork · 7 years ago

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By Kitty Testa

As I rode into work Friday morning, I switched on the radio and happened upon The Mike Gallagher Show. I caught him in mid-sentence, complaining about malcontents who criticize the police. He was discussing the fatal shooting of Justine Damond by Minneapolis police officer, Mohamed Noor. Apropos of nothing, Gallagher quickly pivoted to another story in the news, that of Officer Scott Naff of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, who was denied service at a McDonald’s drive-thru while he was in uniform. “This is the kind of thing that police have to put up with every day!” said Gallagher, as if suffering a slight at a McDonald’s drive-thru were the equivalent of losing one’s life to a police bullet. The Police State has its fans.

There is a dangerous hero-worship of police in particular and law enforcement in general, specifically among neoconservatives. The police are always right; the civilian is always wrong. When police kill or injure a civilian, the civilian had it coming, as if the proper role of police is to serve as holy agents of karma. When the actions of a police officer are ridiculously difficult to justify, the actions are excused because “police have a hard job.”

During Donald Trump’s campaign for president, the candidate made clear his affinity for the law-and-order crowd. He praised “our men and women in blue.” He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose treatment of prisoners in his Tent City Jail (which is currently being shuttered) has been inhumane. Using examples like the city of Chicago’s bloody street violence, Trump’s campaign speeches painted a horrific picture of escalating crime in America, despite the fact that, on the whole, violent crime has been decreasing overall.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions was an early Trump supporter, and Trump praised him effusively during his campaign. It was obvious that Sessions would be granted a high-ranking position in Trump’s cabinet. I was hoping he might be named ambassador to Zanzibar or something equally innocuous, where the former senator and Alabama Attorney General could do little harm to the country. When Trump nominated Jeff Sessions as Attorney General I knew that Trump was serious about his unquestioning support for law enforcement, including its excesses.

About 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the United States in federal, state and local jails. About 20% of them have never been convicted of a crime and are simply unable to make bail. 35% of prisoners have been convicted of violent offenses, while 16% have convictions for drug offenses. The remaining 29% or so are split evenly between inmates who have been found guilty of property crimes, and those who were found guilty of public order offenses, including weapons charges. We have no idea how many are actually innocent, but both 2015 and 2016 were record years for proving wrongful convictions, and 2017 is proving to be on track to break those records.

Evidently there aren’t enough prisoners in the United States for Jeff Sessions.

Sessions has made it clear that he believes that many more of his countrymen deserve to be rotting away in prison, and given far longer sentences. As chief law enforcement officer of the United States, Sessions supports policies that will lead to more abuse by law enforcement across the country, more people charged with crimes, and more people in jail for non-violent offenses. Not one of these five policies will make us any safer, and may put innocent people at greater risk as they increase the power of police and threatens individuals’ rights.

1. Escalating the Failed War on Drugs

If you’re sitting in your living room enjoying a marijuana cigarette or a whiff of hash oil, Jeff Sessions believes you ought to be in prison. Seriously. He would think it perfectly reasonable to send a SWAT team into your home to terrorize you and your family. If they happened to kill you or someone else in your home, well, that would be your fault. Sessions is a drug warrior with a deep-seated hostility towards drug users. At a Senate drug hearing in April 2016, he stated, “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

I, myself, prefer scotch on the rocks or a classic gin martini, but my particular drug of choice doesn’t bother Mr. Sessions. When my kids were teenagers, I warned them about the dangers of drugs, specifically addictive drugs such as heroin and cocaine that they were certain to encounter. When it came to pot, I warned them about the dangers of the police. While the opioid epidemic was developing, with upper-middleclass teens overdosing on oxycodone and heroin, law enforcement’s response was to go after marijuana with a vengeance, as if picking up every kid with a pipe in his pocket was going to address the health crisis of addiction. Focusing on a non-causal correlation between cannabis users and heroin users, law enforcement determined that to save kids from heroin, we needed to save them from weed. Science does not back up this claim, and it has fallen out of favor with the populace, and now most Americans support decriminalization of marijuana.

The congress was so concerned about the AG’s belief in reefer madness that they specifically adopted a budget amendment that prohibited the Department of Justice from using any of its allocated funds to prevent any state “from implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

In addition to Sessions’ irrational fear of pot, there are other reasons the War on Drugs has been maintained for so long. The myriad of government employees who work in law enforcement are now welcoming the AG’s position. Surely, some of them have good intentions, but many derive income and power from drug criminalization. Prohibition has been very profitable for many stakeholders. More drug laws means we need more cops. More prosecutors and defense attorneys. More judges. More courtrooms. More jails. More lab technicians. More probation and parole officers. More fines. More pharmaceuticals. The participants in the War on Drugs are in some ways no different than a pusher who wants to get you addicted. Both are in it for profit and neither cares if you’re a victim of their enterprise.

2. Supporting Civil Asset Forfeiture

Civil asset forfeiture may be the most un-American law on the books. First, for the state to lay claim to your assets, the state needn’t even charge you with a crime. Second, in the civil legal procedure, you are tasked to prove that you did not obtain your property through illicit means, i.e., you are presumed guilty. Also, if you cannot afford a lawyer, one will not be provided to you by the state, because the process is—quite cleverly—civil as opposed to criminal.

Civil asset forfeiture has been the Howitzer in the War on Drugs. The idea was simple: take drug money away from drug dealers and use it to fund police departments, who share in the proceeds of the property they lay claim to by mere suspicion. Who knew that a few decades on police departments would end up funneling billions of dollars in seized property to the Department of Justice? While the fight against illegal drugs was initially the rationale for those who supported the program, most certainly it’s been a cash cow, and they don’t want to give that up, including Jeff Sessions. While many states have been reforming their asset forfeiture laws to address abuses, the Attorney General issued a directive aimed to override such reforms.

So now, even if your state has curtailed or eliminated civil asset forfeiture programs, you are not safe from having your cash, car or house stolen by the police just because they happen to think you’re up to no good.

3. Seeking the Highest Possible Charges Against Suspects

Another of Sessions’ directives instructs US attorneys to pursue the highest charges possible against all indictable suspects. This is an about face from the Obama administration’s policy to avoid mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug offenders. As a blanket policy, this may result in those who should be charged with manslaughter being charged with first-degree murder, or those who should be charged with assault being charged with battery, or a person who sells cannabis oil in one state to a sick relative in another state would be tried just as if he were a drug king pin.

This policy may, in fact, backfire. The DOJ may find that juries are not likely to concur with severe charges that result in extended, harsh sentences for people whom they feel may have had extenuating circumstances. They can’t count on every juror to be a fan of The Mike Gallagher Show.

Sessions’ directive also deprives prosecutors who are familiar with facts of a case of the ability to make a discretionary call about how to proceed with charges. It is a blanket push to put more people in jail for longer periods of time.

4. Pushing Mandatory Minimum Sentences

Along with pushing for the most severe criminal charges, Sessions also strongly supports mandatory minimum sentences which were introduced in the 1980s and were codified in 1994 at the federal level.

Mandatory minimum sentences were implemented to undercut judicial discretion as many felt that too many judges were soft on crime. The sentencing rules also include so-called three-strikes laws, where mandatory life sentences were established for those who received three felony convictions. Because many felony convictions are related to drug possession, many non-violent offenders have ended up serving life sentences.

The end result has been a massive increase in prisoners in the United States that is costly to taxpayers and has placed increased economic pressure on already impoverished communities. Despite the fact that crime is decreasing, AG Sessions, along with a lot of Americans, support these punitive policies against non-violent offenders, despite the fact that they don’t affect violent crime rates.

Ironically, neoconservatives who generally support lower taxes do not seem to see the connection between rising taxes and the costs of law enforcement from cops on the beat to housing the prison population.

5. Rejection of Forensic Science Reforms

The National Commission on Forensic Science was an advisory panel to the DOJ which was chartered in 2013 to address junk science used as forensic evidence, faulty interrogation techniques, and other procedural flaws in law enforcement. Sessions did not renew the commission when its second term expired in April.

It’s quite possible that the people who make up juries across the country have developed an admiration for forensic science from watching TV shows which have glamorized the profession, from the 1970s show Quincy, M.E. to the current iterations of CSI. In reality, forensic science is not fool-proof. Bite mark analysis, firearms identification, hair sampling, and a variety of other forensic methods are not scientifically validated.

According to The Innocence Project, the misapplication of forensic science is the culprit in 46% of wrongful convictions based on DNA evidence.

Still, many people are convicted based on faulty forensic evidence, and law enforcement clings dearly to these methods because it helps them do what they aim to do: put more people in jail.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is now the leader of the Prison Industrial Complex. He is hostile to individual rights, states’ powers to reflect their citizens’ views on law enforcement, and to any reforms that would improve our criminal justice system. Recently President Trump has expressed frustration with Sessions, not for the reasons outlined here, but because he did not believe that Sessions should have recused himself from the investigation into Russian influence during the 2016 election. Regardless of Trump’s reasons, Sessions was a poor choice to head the DOJ, and we will all be better served if Trump makes a call to Sessions and says, “You’re fired.”

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dorukhaber06 · 7 years ago

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USA killings that stunned.

On July 5, a young Pennsylvania man disappeared. Three other men went missing two days later.

On July 14, two cousins were charged with homicide and several other crimes after the missing men's bodies were discovered mutilated and buried on farmland in Bucks County. In the space of those 10 days, the county would gain notoriety as the scene of grisly killings that stunned residents and investigators alike. Based on four separate criminal complaints, several court hearings, public statements and other CNN reporting, here's what we know about how the killings transpired. Day 1

Alleged killer Cosmo Dinardo holds a firearm in an undated photo posted on social media. Jimi Patrick, a 19-year-old college student who lives with his grandparents, leaves his home in Newtown Township at 6 p.m. He agrees to meet with Cosmo Dinardo, 20, of nearby Solebury Township to buy 4 pounds of marijuana for $8,000, according to a criminal complaint. Dinardo has a history of mental illness. He struggled with schizophrenia, said Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub. The year before, he was involuntarily committed to a mental institution, according to Bensalem Police Department Director of Public Safety Fred Harran. Dinardo was also known to local authorities, and had over 30 contacts with Bensalem Police since 2011, said Harran. He was arrested in February and charged with possession of a firearm, which was illegal because of his mental illness, a criminal complaint states. The charge was dismissed in May because of an issue with the mental health paperwork and mental health delegate testimony, Harran said. On this evening, Dinardo picks up Patrick at his grandparents' home and they drive to Dinardo's parents' sprawling farmland in Solebury, according to a criminal complaint. He takes Patrick to a remote part of the property, where Patrick says he only has $800. Dinardo offers to sell Patrick a shotgun for that money, gives him the weapon, and then shoots and kills him with a .22-caliber rifle, Dinardo tells detectives after his arrest. Dinardo drives the property's backhoe to that remote location and digs a hole about six feet deep, puts Patrick's body in the ground and buries him, the complaint states. Day 2 Richard Patrick reports his grandson missing to Newtown police, telling them that he last saw the college student leaving their home the evening before. Day 3

Sean Kratz allegedly joined his cousin Cosmo Dinardo in a plan to rob local men. Acting on the missing-persons report, police ask the public for help locating Patrick. Patrick fails to show up for work at a restaurant-bar in nearby Doylestown. Meanwhile, Dinardo sets up two other drug deals, according to a criminal complaint. He first agrees to meet with Dean Finocchiaro, a 19-year-old from Middletown Township, and sell him a quarter-pound of marijuana for about $700. Before the meeting, Dinardo picks up his cousin Sean Kratz, according to a complaint. Kratz, 20, has a long criminal history, with all his arrests and charges related to theft or burglary. Together, they decide that rather than sell marijuana to Finocchiaro, they will rob him, and Dinardo gives his mother's Smith-and-Wesson .357 handgun to Kratz, Dinardo later tells police. The cousins drive to Finocchiaro's home, pick him up and bring him back to the Dinardo's family property. Finocchiaro is last seen at about 6:30 p.m. getting into an unidentified vehicle, according to police. At the property, Finocchiaro is shot and killed in a barn, a complaint states. Kratz later tells police Dinardo shot Finocchiaro. Dinardo doesn't deny shooting Finocchiaro, but says his cousin shot the man first. Dinardo wraps Finocchiaro's body in a blue tarp and then uses the backhoe to place him into a metal tank that Dinardo calls the "pig roaster," according to police. ++++++++ Later the same day, Dinardo makes plans to sell marijuana to Thomas Meo, a 21-year-old from Plumstead Township, according to a criminal complaint. Meo is with his friend and co-worker Mark Sturgis, 22, of Pennsburg. Dinardo meets with Meo and Sturgis, and they follow him in Meo's 1996 Nissan Maxima to Dinardo's family home. A mobile license plate reader spots Dinardo's vehicle, a Silver 2016 Ford pickup truck, in Solebury at 7:49 p.m. The plate reader also spots Meo's Nissan Maxima seconds later, according to the complaint. After arriving at the house, Meo and Sturgis get into Dinardo's truck and drive to the family's farmland property, where Kratz remained. As Meo and Sturgis exit the truck, Dinardo shoots Meo in the back, Dinardo later tells police. Meo collapses to the ground, screaming. Sturgis starts to run away and Dinardo shoots at him, striking and killing him. Dinardo, out of ammunition, gets in the backhoe and drives over Meo, crushing him to death, the complaint states. Dinardo uses the backhoe to pick up Meo and Sturgis and put their bodies in the same metal tank where he earlier had placed Finocchiaro's body. He pours gasoline into the metal tank and lights it, a complaint states. Dinardo and Kratz then leave the farm without burying the burned bodies of the three men. Later that evening, after Finocchiaro fails to show up for work, his mother Bonie Finocchiaro reports him missing to the Middletown Township Police Department. Day 4 Meo and Sturgis fail to show up for work at their construction job. Worried, Melissa Fretanduno-Meo contacts the Plumstead Township Police Department to report her son missing. In the afternoon, Dinardo and Kratz return to the farm and use the backhoe to dig a 12.5-foot-deep hole -- about 1/2-mile away from Patrick's grave -- and bury the "pig roaster" containing the charred bodies of Finocchiaro, Meo and Sturgis, the complaint states. Dinardo then gives Kratz two firearms: a revolver and an Intratec Tec 9, the complaint adds. At about 5 p.m., Dinardo contacts an unidentified male friend in Bensalem. They meet up and Dinardo offers to sell him a 1996 Nissan Maxima for $500 -- Meo's vehicle, according to a complaint. Day 5

A man sits at the end of driveway in Solebury, as the search continues for four missing young men feared to be the victims of foul play. After Sturgis fails to return home and show up for work, his parents report him missing to Pennsylvania State Police. Police locate Sturgis' vehicle in an area known as Peddler's Village in Bucks County at 2:10 a.m., less than two miles from where the men were killed, a complaint states. Two hours later, investigators locate Meo's 1996 Nissam Maxima at Dinardo's family home in Solebury. The keys and title to the vehicle, still in Meo's name, hang on the wall inside the garage, a complaint states.

Meo's life-saving diabetic kit sits unused in the car, according to the complaint. Meo's family tell police that he is insulin dependent and would not intentionally leave the kit behind. Bucks County detectives interview Dinardo at 2:30 p.m., questioning him about his interactions with Finocchiaro on the night he went missing. Dinardo tells police that he picked up Finocchiaro at his home at about 7:00 p.m. on July 7 and that Finocchiaro asked him to drive to Langhorne for "a big coke deal," the complaint states. Dinardo tells police that he told Finocchiaro he did not want to do that drug deal. He says he made Finocchiaro get out of his truck and then went fishing. Dinardo denies to police that he was in the Solebury area that evening. Later that afternoon, Bucks County detectives interview Dinardo's friend from Bensalem. He tells them that Dinardo offered to sell him an older-model Nissan Maxima, according to the criminal complaint. Day 6

From left: Jimi Patrick, Thomas Meo, Dean Finocchiaro and Mark Sturgis. With four missing men on their radar, authorities kick their investigation into high gear. The search team includes five local police departments, Bucks County detectives, Pennsylvania State Police and the FBI, according to Bucks County District Attorney Weintraub. Cadaver dogs and construction equipment are also enlisted to help. Investigators search several locations for evidence. But a signal from one of the missing men's cell phones leads them to the Dinardo family's farmland property, according to CNN affiliate WPVI. They execute a search warrant there, a complaint states, hoping to find the men alive. The same day, police arrest Dinardo for the unrelated and formerly dismissed firearms charge dating back to February. His bail is set at $1 million. Day 7

Investigators gather under tents as they search a property in Solebury for four missing men. Antonio Dinardo pays 10 percent of his son's $1 million bail in cash, setting Dinardo free. About 50 local, state and federal law enforcement officers search the family's farmland for the missing men, according to Weintraub, who describes the effort as "all hands on deck." Overhead video of the scene shows construction equipment and several makeshift tents shielding a team of investigators digging for evidence. "I am still encouraged by the pace of the investigation, but as you can imagine, it's just massive in scope," Weintraub said. "Take the biggest (investigation) you've ever seen and multiply it by a million," he later added. Although Weintraub names Dinardo as a "person of interest" in the disappearances, he cautions that Dinardo is not accused of any crimes related to the investigation. Day 8

Investigators with dogs search Solebury for four missing men. With pressure mounting to find the missing men, Weintraub announces that officers have recovered several important pieces of evidence but that the investigation remains "wide open." Police later re-arrest Dinardo for allegedly stealing and then trying to sell Meo's vehicle one day after he went missing, according to a criminal complaint. In court, Weintraub says Dinardo has a history of schizophrenia. The judge says Dinardo is a "grave risk" and sets bail at $5 million. Not long after, investigators discover the body of Finocchiaro, as well as other unidentified human remains, in a grave on the farmland property. The other remains are later identified as Meo and Sturgis. At a midnight press conference, Weintraub announces the discovery of the bodies in a "common grave," and praises the cadaver dogs that led officers to the site. "This is a homicide, make no mistake about it," Weintraub says. "We just don't know how many homicides." Day 9

District Attorney Matthew Weintraub updates the media on the search for four missing men. Detectives interview Dinardo a second time, during which he admits lying to officers in his first interview. He confesses to his and Kratz's involvement in the murders, offering the gruesome details, according to a complaint. Dinardo tells detectives where to find Patrick's body, buried in a separate grave on the property, says a criminal complaint. In exchange for that confession, Weintraub agrees not to pursue the death penalty against Dinardo, an attorney for Dinardo says. As Dinardo is being led to a police vehicle, he tells a reporter "I'm sorry."

After Dinardo's confession, detectives detain and interview Kratz, who says he did not shoot anyone, but was present when Dinardo allegedly killed Finocchiaro, Meo and Sturgis, according to a complaint. He also directs police to a home in Upper Dublin Township, where detectives find the Smith-and-Wesson .357 handgun used in the killings and an Intratec TEC-9, the complaint states. SEE ALSO: Miranda Kerr : Grace Kelly wore when she married Prince Rainier Day 10

A law enforcement official escorts Cosmo DiNardo to a vehicle in Doylestown. The District Attorney's office files charges against Dinardo and Kratz, accusing them of multiple counts of homicide, robbery and abuse of a corpse, among other charges. Dinardo faces four criminal homicide charges, and Kratz faces three criminal homicide charges, according to a criminal complaint. In court, the judge enters a not guilty plea on the defendants' behalf and orders them held without bail. Weintraub praises the work of the massive team of investigators who solved the case, and says that "we'd still be looking" for Patrick's body if not for Dinardo's confession. "I don't know what convinced him (to confess)," Weintraub says. "I'd like to think that he wanted to help us get these boys home." Click to Post

#killings #USA

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