The Days of Your Friendly Neighborhood Cop are Over

Lately you can't find a day that goes by without watching another violent police beating of a civilian. Our local police look more and more like the military, and harsh treatment is becoming the rule, instead of the exception. Here's a video of a police chase that ends with the suspect's vehicle being overturned and the suspect being thrown clear and lying unconscious by the side of the road. Watch the heroic actions of the police as they take this dangerous unconscious suspect into custody. Thankfully, five of them have been fired.


















Copyright @ 1998-2009
All Rights Reserved

Bush's 9/11 Legacy: A Loss of Individual Freedom

To Serve and Protect -- 2009 Style

The events of September 11, 2001, have left a trail of sadness in America. In response to those events which may very well have been known in advance to some in the administration, America has seen a drastic change on the domestic front. Local law enforcement agencies have their own SWAT units. Over the course of eight (8) years we have seen police departments change before our eyes hiding behind the Patriot Act to resemble military units with little regard for the rights of the American people.

Unfortunately, despite the election of Barack Obama who very much believes in individual freedoms, there is little he can do to quickly change the environment created by the Bush administration and its love for torture and intimidation. Stories of police beatings and shootings of American citizens have increased exponentially and the arrogance and insolence of police is evident at every turn.

Check points are popping up all over the nation. Bush created an environment which encourage the police to disregard your rights. Welcome to an America no longer resembling the Land of the Free. Here is the story of a young man who is a pastor of a church and a liberal when it comes to his voting preference. His story is a frightening example of life in America today. Here is the story of this young man who was stopped at an Arizona check point.

"I told them I was a US citizen. I told them I was on a business trip. I told them I had no drugs or humans in the car. That wasn't enough. They wanted to search the car, and I invoked my 4th amendment rights. I DID NOT RESIST OR FIGHT BACK. YET I WAS TAZERED REPEATEDLY AND SHOVED IN BROKEN GLASS REPEATEDLY! I was IN the United States!!! I had crossed no international border!!!"

For this we can thank George W. Bush.


















Copyright @ 1998-2009
All Rights Reserved

Blacks Pulled Over and Robbed by Texas Cops

Tehana, Texas

This is really one for the books. 

March 11, 2009

Reporting from Tenaha, Texas -- You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana state line if you're African American, but you might not be able to drive out of it -- at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables. That's because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Instead they offer out-of-towners a grim choice: Sign over your belongings to the town, or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes.

More than 140 people reluctantly accepted that deal from June 2006 to June 2008, according to court records. Among them were a black grandmother from Akron, Ohio, who surrendered $4,000 in cash after Tenaha police pulled her over, and an interracial couple from Houston, who gave up more than $6,000 after police threatened to seize their children and put them into foster care, the court documents show. Neither the grandmother nor the couple were charged with or convicted of any crime.

Officials in Tenaha, along a heavily traveled state highway connecting Houston with several popular gambling destinations in Louisiana, say they are engaged in a battle against drug trafficking, and they call the search-and-seizure practice a legitimate use of the state's asset-forfeiture law. That law permits local police agencies to keep drug money and other property used in the commission of a crime and add the proceeds to their budgets. But civil rights lawyers call Tenaha's practice something else: highway robbery. The attorneys have filed a federal class-action lawsuit seeking unspecified damages and a halt to what they contend is an unconstitutional perversion of the law's intent, used primarily against African Americans who have done nothing wrong. Tenaha officials "have developed an illegal 'stop and seize' practice of targeting, stopping, detaining, searching, and often seizing property from apparently nonwhite citizens and those traveling with nonwhite citizens," asserts the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.

Partial to Minorities

David Guillory, an attorney in nearby Nacogdoches who filed the federal lawsuit, said he combed through Shelby County court records from 2006 to 2008 and discovered nearly 200 cases in which Tenaha police seized cash and property from motorists. In about 50 of the cases, suspects were charged with drug possession. But in 147 others, Guillory said the court records showed, the police seized cash, jewelry, cellphones and sometimes even automobiles from motorists but never found any contraband or charged them with any crime. Of those, Guillory said he managed to contact 40 of the motorists directly -- and discovered that all but one of them were black.

SOURCE: LA TIMES
By Howard Witt




















Copyright @ 1998-2009
All Rights Reserved