Animal Farm

The Pine Bluff PD: From Merely Dysfnctional to Downright Deadly

"No tactical genius is necessary to bring about a bloodless end to a standoff involving a 107-year-old man armed with a handgun and surrounded by police officers inside an otherwise vacant house. All that is necessary is a willingness on the part of the officers to accept a minimal amount of risk, and a time horizon longer than a half hour. In fact, only someone with a perverse appetite for gratuitous bloodshed could arrange to end that confrontation with the violent death of the centenarian suspect. As it happens, the valiant men of the Pine Bluff, Arkansas Police Department’s SWAT team were equal to that task. That’s why 107-year-old Monroe Isadore was killed in a torrent of gunfire on September 7." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingThe Pine Bluff PD: From Merely Dysfnctional to Downright Deadly

Plainclothes deputy in unmarked car pulls gun; 5 officers attack and tase brothers

"The use of Tasers against two brothers in Algiers last year by Jefferson Parish deputies – a confrontation partially caught on a cell phone video – is now the subject of a federal civil rights lawsuit. Casey and Sean Warren filed the suit last week against Sheriff Newell Normand and seven deputies in connection with the Sept. 9 police stop that resulted in both men being hit with Tasers multiple times. In the lawsuit, the brothers claim they were victims of a host of civil rights violations, including excessive force, unlawful arrest and improper seizure. The lawsuit also notes that the deputies were outside of their jurisdiction when they followed Casey Warren to his home in Algiers." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingPlainclothes deputy in unmarked car pulls gun; 5 officers attack and tase brothers

Deputies punished for actions during 1:30 am wrong-address arrest

"Deputies went to a house in Ellenwood on July 26 to serve an arrest warrant. The family told CBS Atlanta News they were startled at 1:30 a.m. when deputies beat on their front door. Fearing for their safety, the family said they took their time to open the door. Once inside, an officer used excessive force and aggressive language, according to one family member. 'If the police come to your house and need to come in, whether you agree or not that they need to come into the home, you need to open the door,' said DeKalb County Sheriff Thomas Brown." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDeputies punished for actions during 1:30 am wrong-address arrest

North Carolina Court To Decide Whether Firemen Can Perform Traffic Stops

"Gordon Shatley, a Chapel Hill Fire Department lieutenant, was responding to a fire alarm when he stopped his fire engine at the intersection of Estes Drive and Fordham Boulevard at 10:30pm on May 27, 2011. To his left he saw a light-colored Mercedes stopped with a window partially rolled down in pouring rain with only parking lights and the interior dome light on. He found it odd. Shatley called the police and followed the vehicle which began weaving toward oncoming traffic. Shatley had the red flashing lights of the fire truck activated and the siren blasted twice. The Mercedes pulled over." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNorth Carolina Court To Decide Whether Firemen Can Perform Traffic Stops

Court: School Officials Accountable for Strip-Searching 10-Year-Old Over $20

"A federal court has agreed to hold school officials accountable for stripping a 10-year-old boy down to his underwear in an aggressive strip-search that included rimming the edge of his underwear, allegedly in an attempt to find another student’s missing $20 bill (which was later found on the cafeteria floor). The Rutherford Institute had challenged the school’s attempt to have the lawsuit against it dismissed, insisting that there is no justification for the school’s decision to so egregiously violate the fifth-grader’s Fourth Amendment rights or for the alleged failure to train school employees in how to appropriately deal with such matters." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCourt: School Officials Accountable for Strip-Searching 10-Year-Old Over $20

NSA slides: Steve Jobs Is ‘Big Brother’ And Smartphone Users Are ‘Zombies’

"A private individual referring to iPhone customers as 'zombies' is one thing. The NSA doing it is quite another. People who don't take an active effort to protect their information are being labeled as sub-human by a government agency. If these smartphones users don't care about the data they're leaking, then they really don't have an 'expectation of privacy' to be steamrolled. That's the argument. As Der Spiegel puts it, the agency is arguing that the smartphone-buying public is 'complicit in its own surveillance.' But they aren't, as one recent decision on acquiring cell phone location data without a warrant pointed out." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNSA slides: Steve Jobs Is ‘Big Brother’ And Smartphone Users Are ‘Zombies’

Personal Retirement Accounts Are Great only if You Can Stop Confiscation

"Most Western nations have huge long-run fiscal problems because of unfavorable demographics and misguided entitlement programs. That’s the bad news. The good news is that dozens of nations have fully or partially shifted to mandatory private savings as a pro-growth way of modernizing bankrupt tax-and-transfer Social Security systems. But good news in the short run doesn’t mean good news in the long run if greedy politicians decide to loot the wealth accumulated in personal retirement accounts. That’s already happened in Argentina and Hungary, and now it’s happened in Poland." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingPersonal Retirement Accounts Are Great only if You Can Stop Confiscation

Ethan Saylor’s death at hands of cops spurs demand for investigation

A spokeswoman says Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is committed to improving police training after a man with Down syndrome died in the custody of Frederick County deputies in January. The 26-year-old died of asphyxia as three deputies, moonlighting as mall security officers, tried to remove him from a movie theater because he hadn't bought a ticket for a repeat viewing. 'We want to know what occurred without a detail left out. No matter what the outcome is, it's the truth,' said Patti Saylor, his mother. A Frederick County grand jury declined to indict the deputies for what was ruled a homicide." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingEthan Saylor’s death at hands of cops spurs demand for investigation

Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart would let prisoners ‘pay for freedom’

"Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart has suggested that non-violent prisoners could pay their way out of jail and become tax-paying workers to boost the economy. In a column for the Australian Resources and Investment magazine, the mining heiress said the country needed more workers as the population ages, and getting criminals back into the workforce would bolster tax revenues. She said while some offenders might be able to pay to be allowed back into the community, others could agree to forgo their rights to vote or to a passport if they were unable to come up with the money." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingAustralia’s richest person Gina Rinehart would let prisoners ‘pay for freedom’

British Somalis dread ban of ‘herbal high’ khat

"When Britain bans the herbal stimulant khat, Mohamod Ahmed Mohamed will lose his livelihood. But he fears most for his small Somali community without the leaf that fuels its social life. 'I can switch to another business but what about the youth, where are they going to go — the street, the mosque, to hard drugs?' he says at his khat warehouse near London’s Heathrow airport. 'You are taking away their freedom. Why target us? You will never find somebody falling over on the street or fighting from khat like they do when they are drunk.' Mohamed supplies khat to many of Britain’s 100,000 Somalis, Ethiopians and Yemenis, for whom chewing the bushy shrub is as normal as going to the pub." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBritish Somalis dread ban of ‘herbal high’ khat