Police State

LAPD takes another step toward deploying drones domestically

"Advocates say camera-mounted drones could help protect officers and others by collecting crucial information during high-risk situations or searches without jeopardizing their safety. For many privacy advocates and police critics, however, the drones stir Orwellian visions of unwarranted surveillance or fears of militarized, weapon-toting devices patrolling the skies. LAPD brass, along with police commissioners, tried to ease those concerns last fall by promising careful restrictions on when the drones would be used, and strong oversight of the pilot program."

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2017 Was Safest Year for Cops in Nearly 50 Years—Worst For Citizens

"Data from 2017 reveals that the idea that there is a 'war on cops' is nothing more than police propaganda, as the number of officers killed in the line of duty dropped to the second-lowest total in more than 50 years. Conversely, there were over 1,000 people killed by cops for the fourth year in a row, according to the website killedbypolice.net, which operates a database of individuals killed by law enforcement officers."

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CA “Heroes” Beat Motorist Over Tinted Windows, “Missing” Front Plate

"In Pasadena, CA some 'heroes' (aka, law enforcers) noticed a motorist driving a car with windows that were tinted 'too much' and which was missing its front license plate. These are heinous offenses against the peace, you see. Can’t that let that go. A stop was initiated. Which quickly led to a violent beat down of the unarmed, unresisting motorist."

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How Immigration Crackdowns Screw Up Americans’ Lives

"Although the U.S. has been illegally deporting citizens for over a century, the number started soaring when Congress eliminated the right to judicial review for criminal aliens in the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The idea was to remove the barriers to ejecting immigrants who posed a danger to Americans. But the result was a general weakening of legal protections and the rise of an unaccountable immigration bureaucracy that itself has become a danger to Americans."

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Police Chief Arrested After Soliciting Cop Posing Online As 14-Year-Old

"A Pennsylvania police chief—who gained widespread attention after losing his arm in a summer fireworks accident—was arrested after soliciting sex from a teenage girl during an online sting. Forty-year-old Chief Mike Diebold is being charged with two felonies: unlawful contact with a minor and criminal attempt to involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, WPXI, an NBC-affiliate in Pittsburgh reported. Diebold reportedly sent inappropriate photos through an online messaging app while soliciting sexual contact, under the name 'KuteCop4You'. Little did he know, he was in contact with a fellow police officer - albeit undercover."

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Jury rules cops were justified in SWAT raid over family’s loose-leaf tea

"No one disputes that the Hartes are innocent of any criminal wrongdoing. No one disputes that the officers conducted a raid on their home after mistaking tea for marijuana. And no one disputes that the officers improperly used the results of notoriously unreliable field tests as probable cause for the mistaken raid, instead of sending the tea to a lab for more rigorous testing. No one disputes any of these things. Yet the system failed to compensate the Hartes for what happened to them, and the system failed to hold any of the law enforcement officers accountable for their mistakes."

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Conservatives Were Wrong about Ending Stop-and-Frisk

"I and others argued that crime would rise. Instead, it fell. We were wrong. Major crime in New York City has continued to decline almost across the board in the four years of the de Blasio administration, to the lowest rates since New York City began keeping extensive records on crime in the early 1960s. Crime is literally off the charts — the low end of the charts. To compare today’s crime rate to even that of ten years ago is to observe a breathtaking decline."

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Renewal of FISA Section 702 with ‘abouts’ collection slated for Thursday

"The powers in question allow the government to target foreigners overseas, collecting their communications. But Americans’ communications — even those in the U.S. — can be snared if they are part of conversations that the targets are having. The bill allows 'abouts' collection, which is when the government scoops up communications that mention a target, even if he or she isn’t the sender or receiver."

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An Ex-Cop Talks About Police Shootings

"The graphic video from the killing of Daniel Shiver was released after the jury decided to acquit ex-Mesa police officer Philip Brailsford of second-degree murder and reckless manslaughter. The Mesa police department and Mesa police union both supported Brailsford, but it’s important to receive feedback from police sources who don’t have a vested interest in the case."

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Cliven Bundy-FBI debacle: Another example of why Feds need to be leashed

"Judge Navarro slammed the FBI for withholding key evidence. Unfortunately, this seems to be standard procedure for the FBI — including in their investigations of both the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns as well as the Las Vegas shooter who slaughtered concert goers last October. FBI officials have also been caught routinely twisting the truth to burnish prosecutions. False FBI trial testimony may have helped sentence 32 innocent people to death, as the Washington Post reported in 2015. How many other innocent people have been put behind bars because of federal misconduct?"

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