Abuse of Power Thread (Cops, Governments, Etc.)

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

This thread is to expose the corruption from those in power that choose to weild their power in a way that abuses others instead of helping those that are in a lesser position than them. Most cops are good people doing a job and most Governments at least put on an appearance that they are helping those they serve. This thread is to shed light on those that would abuse their power and cause harm or unrest to the people they serve.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Cop Forces His Way Into Terrified Black Man's Home and Arrests Him


[YT]-fY20sSeikw[/YT]

Yesterday, the New Orleans Police Department announced that its officers will begin wearing cameras to record all of their interactions with the public. This video is an example of why that might be necessary.

The video above, which appeared on WorlstarHipHop yesterday, shows a Jeffersons Parish Sheriff's Department officer forcing his way into a man's home, pushing the man onto his couch, and handcuffing and arresting him, all while the man pleads "You're scaring me" and "Why are you doing this?" The cop orders the bystander recording the interaction to "get out of here," to which the bystander replies, "But this is my house!" At one point the man being arrested begins to panic, yelling "Please don't shoot me!"

The Times-Picayune identifies the man who was arrested as Donrell Breaux, and says that Breaux was charged with "battery of a police officer, resisting arrest with violence, disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace." Breaux says that he had a verbal dispute with a neighbor, and the officer who arrested him is a friend of that neighbor.

http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/8799320-171/body-cameras-to-record-all

This is ridiculous and this man should have been left alone in peace. There was no reason for the force used against him and the charges are bogus. Glad this was captured on video and even more glad they will have to wear cameras in the future to prevent stuff like this from happening again. Anywhere a police man is there should be a recording not only to protect the public but for the officers as well

 

[BestGirl]

Anyone hear about the mentally ill Albuquerque man who was murdered by the police? Disgusting story:

Captured by a video camera on one of the officer’s helmets, the slaying by Albuquerque police of a homeless camper in the foothills outside the city two weeks ago apparently leaves room for interpretation. The city says it was justifiable self-defence. To others it looked like extra-judicial execution.

The grisly clip, which is still viewable for anyone with a strong stomach, has an awful power all of its own. But it has also become the tragic totem of a wave of civic anger directed at the city’s heavily militarised police department that on Sunday erupted into hours of unrest across the downtown area, leading to serial arrests and a plea for calm from the city’s mayor who said his streets had turned to “mayhem”.

For James Boyd, the fury comes too late. With a long history of mental problems and episodes of violence, he was challenged by three officers on 16 March for camping in an unauthorised area near the city limits. They woke him from sleeping. A three-hour stand-off ensued until, at dusk, he is heard telling the officers he is done arguing and was “going to walk” with them. That is where the episode might have ended.

Instead, as Mr Boyd gathers up his things, one of the officers shouts “Do it”. A flash-bang device is fired at his feet. A startled Mr Boyd drops his bags and seems to take out a knife. He turns away from the officers, two of whom shoot multiple live rounds into his back. Mr Boyd falls, a dog is loosed to check he has been immobilised, the officers approach and cuff his wrists.

He was pronounced dead later in a city hospital.

The killing of Mr Boyd, who was 38, prompted more than the usual handwringing because it seemed less an isolated incident than a confirmation of a pattern.

Since 2010, the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) has been involved in 37 shootings, 23 of them fatal. According to the group ProgressNow, its officers shot more people than the NYPD over the same period did in New York – a city 16 times larger.

The broader debate is about the APD navigating the thin line between reasonable and unreasonable force to maintain order, and the apparent unwillingness of the city’s leaders to make sure it isn’t crossed.

“I was a police officer for a decade,” says Patrick Davis, executive director of ProgressNow New Mexico. “The over-militarized approach to law enforcement is having a very real effect on people’s lives here in New Mexico and our leaders who should be taking real action seem to be taking it all in stride.”

 

[CFE]

It's minor compared to the stories shared but it's also a personal experience.

My roommate for this last Spring semester of college holds the fact that he's enlisted in the Army over my head...suggesting that his being in the Army makes him more of a man than me.

Not really a full on abuse of power but something about him making that claim seemed really wrong to me, even if it hadn't been directed towards me.

He's also disgusting and doesn't clean up after himself. Which you'd think...Army, discipline, cleanliness...but no, not at all.

Just because you're enlisted in the military doesn't give you credence to abstain from human dignity and it sure as hell doesn't mean you get to walk around declaring how much better you are than civilians.

 

[Mike_D202]

http://forums.superherohype.com/showthread.php?t=474483&page=13

 

[Teelie]

LAPD officers monkey-wrenched cop-monitoring gear in patrol cars

The police want the right to watch and surveil us (the fewer legal hurdles the better in their opinion) but not have that same thing done to themselves. So they broke the law instead and removed the ability to be observed.

Imagine how much corruption and claims of corruption could be easily verified or debunked with video and audio supporting what really happened.

The irony is thick and heavy in this story.

The Los Angeles Police Commission is investigating how half of the recording antennas in the Southeast Division went missing, seemingly as a way to evade new self-monitoring procedures that the Los Angeles Police Department imposed last year.

The antennas, which are mounted onto individual patrol cars, receive recorded audio captured from an officer’s belt-worn transmitter. The transmitter is designed to capture an officer’s voice and transmit the recording to the car itself for storage. The voice recorders are part of a video camera system that is mounted in a front-facing camera on the patrol car. Both elements are activated any time the car’s emergency lights and sirens are turned on, but they can also be activated manually.

According to the Los Angeles Times, an LAPD investigation determined that around half of the 80 patrol cars in one South LA division were missing antennas as of last summer, and an additional 10 antennas were unaccounted for. Citing a police source, the newspaper said that removing the antennas can reduce the range of the voice transmitters by as much as a third of the normal operating distance.

The Police Commission, an independent body that oversees LAPD policy, was only notified of the situation two months ago. Neither the commission nor the LAPD immediately responded for comment.

"On an issue like this, we need to be brought in right away," commission President Steve Soboroff told the Times. "This equipment is for the protection of the public and of the officers. To have people who don't like the rules to take it upon themselves to do something like this is very troubling."

The self-monitoring had been imposed by the LAPD as the result of federal monitoring of its police activities that formally ended last year after more than a decade.

An LAPD spokesperson, Cmdr. Andrew Smith, told the Times that new rules since last fall require patrol officers to account for both antennas at the beginning and end of every shift, with additional unannounced spot checks. Since then, only one antenna has gone missing.

Oh, the irony

Sid Heal, a recently retired commander who evaluated technology during his decades-long tenure at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, reiterated an obvious point: "No one likes to be monitored," he noted by e-mail.

Meanwhile, Neil Richards, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, lamented the LAPD's actions but said he understood them.

"First, it’s fascinating but entirely understandable that the police don’t like being watched," he told Ars by e-mail. "Maybe they worry about their actions being taken the wrong way by their superiors. Maybe they worry that worrying about being watched distracts them from their jobs. Maybe they might have something to hide, but the wide spread of this phenomenon suggests that they just don’t like being watched. (But it’s interesting and ironic that those who watch us to stop us from breaking things themselves broke things so they wouldn’t be watched!)"

"Second, it shows that the police, just like all of us, react viscerally to being watched all the time. Pervasive surveillance of this sort makes us jittery and distracted; it’s stressful as we all need times and places—even during the work day—when we can be alone and be ourselves!"

Last fall, when Boston proposed putting GPS trackers on all of its patrol cars, some officers were similarly antagonistic toward the changes.

“No one likes it. Who wants to be followed all over the place?” said one officer who spoke anonymously to the Boston Globe (department rules forbid police from speaking to the media without authorization). “If I take my cruiser, and I meet [a reluctant witness] to talk, eventually they can follow me and say, 'Why were you in a back dark street for 45 minutes?' It’s going to open up a can of worms that can’t be closed.”

Ars Technica

 

[NickNitro]

I hate this thread already. I try to actively avoid news like this. It upsets me too much.

 

[Destructus86]

Proof that you and I have no power and no rights that cannot be taken away at will by the Government.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...standoff-federal-government-article-1.1751348

 

[Teelie]

If only it were so simple.

Per the article itself:

The beef has built up since 1993 when Bundy, whose family has long worked the land in Clark County some 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, refused to pay grazing fees on 600,000 acres of public land, dubbed Gold Butte, surrounding his 160-acre farm.

And it's been going on for 20 years so this isn't something that just happened. It's been building for two decades.

 

[Hotwire]

I hate this thread already. I try to actively avoid news like this. It upsets me too much.

Same here. Threads like this sensationalize events like these to make them seem far more common than they actually are. Statistically speaking, of all the cops in this country, only about 1% fall into this category.

 

[I'm Old Greg]

has anyone seen this?

A NYC man riding the Subway home was attacked by a Serial Killer while two NYC Police officers hid behind the conductors door,.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZKVSNjlSp0&list=TLwB2BTktfT3E64zof2fOfgN4-rIpnG2b_

I never seen this before.

 

[Teelie]

The whole thing sounds very fishy and paranoid to me but it is the NYPD who I wouldn't put it past so I'm not going to dismiss it as either fake or exaggerated claims yet. I'm going to see what I can dig up on it.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

FBI Wants 52 Million Photos in its Face Recognition Database by 2015

New documents released by the FBI show that the Bureau is well on its way toward its goal of a fully operational face recognition database by this summer.

EFF received these records in response to our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for information on Next Generation Identification (NGI)—the FBI's massive biometric database that may hold records on as much as one third of the U.S. population. The facial recognition component of this database poses real threats to privacy for all Americans.

What is NGI?

NGI builds on the FBI's legacy fingerprint database—which already contains well over 100 million individual records—and has been designed to include multiple forms of biometric data, including palm prints and iris scans in addition to fingerprints and face recognition data. NGI combines all these forms of data in each individual's file, linking them to personal and biographic data like name, home address, ID number, immigration status, age, race, etc. This immense database is shared with other federal agencies and with the approximately 18,000 tribal, state and local law enforcement agencies across the United States.

The records we received show that the face recognition component of NGI may include as many as 52 million face images by 2015. By 2012, NGI already contained 13.6 million images representing between 7 and 8 million individuals, and by the middle of 2013, the size of the database increased to 16 million images. The new records reveal that the database will be capable of processing 55,000 direct photo enrollments daily and of conducting tens of thousands of searches every day.

NGI Will Include Non-Criminal as well as Criminal Photos

One of our biggest concerns about NGI has been the fact that it will include non-criminal as well as criminal face images. We now know that FBI projects that by 2015, the database will include 4.3 million images taken for non-criminal purposes.

Currently, if you apply for any type of job that requires fingerprinting or a background check, your prints are sent to and stored by the FBI in its civil print database. However, the FBI has never before collected a photograph along with those prints. This is changing with NGI. Now an employer could require you to provide a "mug shot" photo along with your fingerprints. If that's the case, then the FBI will store both your face print and your fingerprints along with your biographic data.

In the past, the FBI has never linked the criminal and non-criminal fingerprint databases. This has meant that any search of the criminal print database (such as to identify a suspect or a latent print at a crime scene) would not touch the non-criminal database. This will also change with NGI. Now every record—whether criminal or non—will have a "Universal Control Number" (UCN), and every search will be run against all records in the database. This means that even if you have never been arrested for a crime, if your employer requires you to submit a photo as part of your background check, your face image could be searched—and you could be implicated as a criminal suspect—just by virtue of having that image in the non-criminal file.

Many States Are Already Participating in NGI

The records detail the many states and law enforcement agencies the FBI has already been working with to build out its database of images (see map below). By 2012, nearly half of U.S. states had at least expressed an interest in participating in the NGI pilot program, and several of those states had already shared their entire criminal mug shot database with the FBI. The FBI hopes to bring all states online with NGI by this year.

The FBI worked particularly closely with Oregon through a special project called "Face Report Card." The goal of the project was to determine and provide feedback on the quality of the images that states already have in their databases. Through Face Report Card, examiners reviewed 14,408 of Oregon's face images and found significant problems with image resolution, lighting, background and interference. Examiners also found that the median resolution of images was "well-below" the recommended resolution of .75 megapixels (in comparison, newer iPhone cameras are capable of 8 megapixel resolution).

FBI Disclaims Responsibility for Accuracy

At such a low resolution, it is hard to imagine that identification will be accurate.1 However, the FBI has disclaimed responsibility for accuracy, stating that "[t]he candidate list is an investigative lead not an identification."

Because the system is designed to provide a ranked list of candidates, the FBI states NGI never actually makes a "positive identification," and "therefore, there is no false positive rate." In fact, the FBI only ensures that "the candidate will be returned in the top 50 candidates" 85 percent of the time "when the true candidate exists in the gallery."

It is unclear what happens when the "true candidate" does not exist in the gallery—does NGI still return possible matches? Could those people then be subject to criminal investigation for no other reason than that a computer thought their face was mathematically similar to a suspect's? This doesn't seem to matter much to the FBI—the Bureau notes that because "this is an investigative search and caveats will be prevalent on the return detailing that the [non-FBI] agency is responsible for determining the identity of the subject, there should be NO legal issues."

Nearly 1 Million Images Will Come from Unexplained Sources

One of the most curious things to come out of these records is the fact that NGI may include up to 1 million face images in two categories that are not explained anywhere in the documents. According to the FBI, by 2015, NGI may include:

46 million criminal images
4.3 million civil images
215,000 images from the Repository for Individuals of Special Concern (RISC)
750,000 images from a "Special Population Cognizant" (SPC) category
215,000 images from "New Repositories"
However, the FBI does not define either the "Special Population Cognizant" database or the "new repositories" category. This is a problem because we do not know what rules govern these categories, where the data comes from, how the images are gathered, who has access to them, and whose privacy is impacted.

A 2007 FBI document available on the web describes SPC as "a service provided to Other Federal Organizations (OFOs), or other agencies with special needs by agreement with the FBI" and notes that "[t]hese SPC Files can be specific to a particular case or subject set (e.g., gang or terrorist related), or can be generic agency files consisting of employee records." If these SPC files and the images in the "new repositories" category are assigned a Universal Control Number along with the rest of the NGI records, then these likely non-criminal records would also be subject to invasive criminal searches.

Government Contractor Responsible for NGI has built some of the Largest Face Recognition Databases in the World

The company responsible for building NGI's facial recognition component—MorphoTrust(formerly L-1 Identity Solutions)—is also the company that has built the face recognition systems used by approximately 35 state DMVs and many commercial businesses.2MorphoTrust built and maintains the face recognition systems for the Department of State, which has the "largest facial recognition system deployed in the world" with more than 244 million records,3 and for the Department of Defense, which shares its records with the FBI.

The FBI failed to release records discussing whether MorphoTrust uses a standard (likely proprietary) algorithm for its face templates. If it does, it is quite possible that the face templates at each of these disparate agencies could be shared across agencies—raising again the issue that the photograph you thought you were taking just to get a passport or driver's license is then searched every time the government is investigating a crime. The FBI seems to be leaning in this direction: an FBI employee email notes that the "best requirements for sending an image in the FR system" include "obtain[ing] DMV version of photo whenever possible."

Why Should We Care About NGI?

There are several reasons to be concerned about this massive expansion of governmental face recognition data collection. First, as noted above, NGI will allow law enforcement at all levels to search non-criminal and criminal face records at the same time. This means you could become a suspect in a criminal case merely because you applied for a job that required you to submit a photo with your background check.

Second, the FBI and Congress have thus far failed to enact meaningful restrictions on what types of data can be submitted to the system, who can access the data, and how the data can be used. For example, although the FBI has said in these documents that it will not allow non-mug shot photos such as images from social networking sites to be saved to the system, there are no legal or even written FBI policy restrictions in place to prevent this from occurring. As we have stated before, the Privacy Impact Assessment for NGI's face recognition component hasn't been updated since 2008, well before the current database was even in development. It cannot therefore address all the privacy issues impacted by NGI.

Finally, even though FBI claims that its ranked candidate list prevents the problem of false positives (someone being falsely identified), this is not the case. A system that only purports to provide the true candidate in the top 50 candidates 85 percent of the time will return a lot of images of the wrong people. We know from researchers that the risk of false positives increases as the size of the dataset increases—and, at 52 million images, the FBI's face recognition is a very large dataset. This means that many people will be presented as suspects for crimes they didn't commit. This is not how our system of justice was designed and should not be a system that Americans tacitly consent to move towards.

For more on our concerns about the increased role of face recognition in criminal and civil contexts, read Jennifer Lynch's 2012 Senate Testimony. We will continue to monitor the FBI's expansion of NGI.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/fbis-next-generation-identification-database

And people were worried about RFID chips haha silly folks, what concerns me about this is it's a true big brother program and criminals and non-criminals alike will be cataloged. That seems like an invasion of most of our privacy and they even stated that right now it is a very low resolution so cops could show up and question you about stuff you have no idea about just because you kind of look like someone that did something wrong that you had no part of. I'm really not liking where this is going

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

NYU President Gave Son Duplex Dorm During Campus Housing Shortage

In case you forgot for a second that being the spawn of someone rich and powerful affords you countless ways to circumvent your problems, here's another: NYU president John Sexton, center, turned two single dorms into a duplex during a housing shortage for his son, the New York Post reports.

In 2002, the then-33-year-old Jed Sexton moved with his wife into a duplex at 240 Mercer St. in New York's Greenwich Village. Per the Post, Sexton had two single-unit apartments combined into a larger space for his son, who was not attending or teaching at the school. The rooms were initially earmarked for law faculty, the department where Sexton was dean for a decade.

At the same time, NYU was dealing with what it called a "severe housing shortage." NYU spokesman John Beckman told the Post that the younger Sexton and his wife paid rent for the unit, but declined to specify the amount. In 2007, they left the apartment for a $1 million home in Connecticut.

Though the treatment of faculty housing might seem like a trivial concern, it was a key issue early in Sexton's presidency. NYU said it was having trouble attracting new faculty because of its lack of housing options, and one way Sexton initially worked around the issue was by having the school issue millions of dollars in loans for large summer homes.

Sexton himself received a $1 million loan from the school for a home on Fire Island, which probably makes a Greenwich Village duplex feel like loose change.

http://nypost.com/2014/04/16/nyu-scion-scored-spacious-faculty-apartment-during-housing-squeeze/

Of course this guy did that, why should his son go without his silver spoon?

 

[Teelie]

It's New York and it involves rich people. Why is this news? The two are synonymous with abuse. Combine the two and you have the Captain Planet of *******s.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Jews Are Being Ordered to Register in Russian-Controlled Ukraine

Jews over 16 in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk are being told to pay a special tax and register their identities with the pro-Russian militants who have taken over the town, according to multiple reports.

Early in the Euromaidan revolution that swept Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, a Russian ally, from power in Kiev, pro-Russian media had sought to portray Euromaidan as an anti-semitic, fascist-led movement that would wreak havoc on the Ukraine's Jews. But if the Donetsk orders are to believed, it's Russian forces and their proxies that now threaten Jews' safety and freedom of movement.

The orders were distributed on flyers throughout the city, according to the wire service JTA and USA TODAY. Those flyers bear the name and signature of Denis Pushilin, leader of the Russian-sympathetic separatist rebels who wrested control of Donetsk from Ukraine earlier in the month. Pushilin's forces have since patrolled the streets in black ski masks, AK47s slung over their shoulders.

Pushilin confirmed to one source that the flyers belonged to his group, which is calling itself "Donetsk's temporary government," although elsewhere he distanced himself from the flyers' content.

The leaflets, which accuse Ukraine's Jews of supporting nationalist, pro-Nazi leaders instead of "pro-Slavic" forces in World War II, were distributed on streets and around synagogues by masked men, according to JTA:

The flyers in Donetsk said all Jews who are 16 years old and above should register at the government building, which separatist protesters are occupying, and pay a registration fee of $50 by May 3.

"Jews supported the nationalistic gang of [Stepan] Bandera in Kiev," the authors wrote in reference to the Ukrainian Nationalist leader who in the 1940s fought with Nazi Germany against Soviet troops before he and his men took up arms against the German occupation.

The flyers also said Jews were hostile to the Donetsk Republic.

They were required to report any real estate and automobiles, the flyers also said.
Should Ukrainians of "Jewish nationality" fail to comply, they will lose their citizenship and "be forced outside the country with a confiscation of property," the flyers state.

http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/J...er-with-pro-Russians-in-Ukrainian-city-348695

Oh boy, I don't recall things going to good the last time something like this was attempted

 

[Teelie]

All of Compton was spied on by the police with mass surveillance technology aircraft (aka drones)

This is the future if nothing is done to stop it.

In a secret test of mass surveillance technology, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department sent a civilian aircraft* over Compton, California, capturing high-resolution video of everything that happened inside that 10-square-mile municipality.

Compton residents weren't told about the spying, which happened in 2012. "We literally watched all of Compton during the times that we were flying, so we could zoom in anywhere within the city of Compton and follow cars and see people," Ross McNutt of Persistence Surveillance Systems told the Center for Investigative Reporting, which unearthed and did the first reporting on this important story. The technology he's trying to sell to police departments all over America can stay aloft for up to six hours. Like Google Earth, it enables police to zoom in on certain areas. And like TiVo, it permits them to rewind, so that they can look back and see what happened anywhere they weren't watching in real time.

If it's adopted, Americans can be policed like Iraqis and Afghanis under occupation–and at bargain prices:

McNutt, who holds a doctorate in rapid product development, helped build wide-area surveillance to hunt down bombing suspects in Iraq and Afghanistan. He decided that clusters of high-powered surveillance cameras attached to the belly of small civilian aircraft could be a game-changer in U.S. law enforcement.

“Our whole system costs less than the price of a single police helicopter and costs less for an hour to operate than a police helicopter,” McNutt said. “But at the same time, it watches 10,000 times the area that a police helicopter could watch.”

A sargeant in the L.A. County Sheriff's office compared the technology to Big Brother, which didn't stop him from deploying it over a string of necklace snatchings.

Sgt. Douglas Iketani acknowledges that his agency hid the experiment to avoid public opposition. "This system was kind of kept confidential from everybody in the public,"he said. "A lot of people do have a problem with the eye in the sky, the Big Brother, so to mitigate those kinds of complaints we basically kept it pretty hush hush." That attitude ought to get a public employee summarily terminated.

He also gave this incredible quote:

"Our first initial thought was, oh, Big Brother, we're going to have a camera flying over us. But with the wide area surveillance you would have the ability to solve a lot of the unsolvable crimes with no witnesses, no videotape surveillance, no fingerprints."

Notice that he didn't conclude that the "wide area surveillance" wouldn't be like Big Brother after all, just that Big Brother capabilities would help to solve more crimes.

So why not try them out?

He later explains that while the public may think its against this, we'll get used to it:

I'm sure that once people find out this experiment went on they might be a little upset. But knowing that we can't see into their bedroom windows, we can't see into their pools, we can't see into their showers. You know, I'm sure they'll be okay with it. With the amount of technology out in today's age, with cameras in ATMs, at every 7/11, at every supermarket, pretty much every light poll, all the license plate cameras, the red light cameras, people have just gotten used to being watched.

The CIR story reports that no police department has yet purchased this technology, not because the law enforcement community is unwilling to conduct mass surveillance of their fellow citizens without first gaining the public's consent, but because the cameras aren't yet good enough to identify the faces of individuals. It's hard to imagine that next technological barrier won't be broken soon.

I'd be against mass surveillance of innocents in any case.

But it's especially galling to see law enforcement professionals betray the spirit of democracy by foisting these tools on what they know to be a reluctant public because they deem it to be prudent based on a perspective that is obviously biased.

Many Americans elect their own sheriffs. This is the future if nothing is done to stop them.

*An earlier version of this article erroneously called the aircraft a drone.

The Atlantic

Which is incredibly funny because the LAPD were also the ones who disabled being monitored themselves.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

The Supreme Court ruled today that police can pull drivers over based on anonymous tips, even if the cops don't witness any evidence of wrongdoing.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...US_TIPS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

The SCOTUS is on a roll lately

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Texas Prisons Are Hot Enough to Kill You

The state of Texas has strict rules about how to handle dangerous heat on pig farms; not so in their non-air-conditioned prisons, where 14 inmates have reportedly died of heat exposure since 2007. A new report says the state is doing nothing to address the issue.

Today's report from the Human Rights Clinic of the University of Texas School of Law finds that "In spite of repeated, serious, and egregious incidents, the TDCJ has yet to implement measures that effectively mitigate heat-related injury in inmate housing," and concludes that "current conditions in TDCJ facilities constitute a violation of Texas's duty to guarantee the rights to health, life, physical integrity, and dignity of detainees, as well as its duty to prevent inhuman or degrading treatment of its inmates." It recommends "installation of air conditioning units to keep temperatures in inmate housing areas below 85 °F"—a fairly modest goal, and a standard that most people would probably be shocked to find is not already met in the heat of Texas summers. A sample of the conditions in the metal-walled state prisons:

Recent TDCJ temperature logs have recorded heat indices surpassing 100 °F by 8:30 in the morning. Even if the climate remained in this state for the entire day, inmates already would be facing heat indices that the [National Weather Service] has identified as approaching with extreme caution due to an increased likelihood of heat-related injury. In some instances, records also show that air temperatures outside some TDCJ facilities have spiked above 110 °F by 10:30AM, resulting in a heat index exceeeding 149 °F. These temperatures can remain at that level for several hours;22 indeed, investigations into heat-related deaths at TDCJ facilities have found temperatures above 90 °F even past midnight. This heat far exceeds any levels of extreme danger identified by the NWS.
Also, "In 2012, 92 TDCJ correctional officers suffered heat-related injuries or illnesses." This is one of the rare issues that prison guards and prisoners can both agree on. Air condition your prisons, Texas. It really is the very least that you can do!

http://www.utexas.edu/law/clinics/humanrights/

Why would anyone put AC in their prisons when you live in a mostly desert climate? That's just crazy talk

 

[Teelie]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...US_TIPS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

The SCOTUS is on a roll lately

I can't believe that is true at face value. Unfortunately it's true. Someone can play a prank or get revenge on another person by claiming anonymously seeing you do something and get you pulled over.

 

[warhorse78]

Proof that you and I have no power and no rights that cannot be taken away at will by the Government.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...standoff-federal-government-article-1.1751348

I'd like to know what's really going on, because I got friends out there showing me video and pics on their cell phones where the government is actually killing the cattle and just using back hoes and dumping the animals into a large pit. It's disgusting.

There is more to this story than the government or the media is letting on. Don't know how true it is, but they say this whole thing is to do with some solar panel business deal that Harry Reid has going with the Chinese and that the Bundy ranch is the last obstacle standing in their way. Again, I don't know how true this is, but I did see the video of the cows being killed and dumped, and I'm not agreeing with that at all. Remove the animals and transport them to some auction house to be sold, not just slaughtered and dumped like that to be of no use at all. Where in the hell is PETA during all of this?

 

[Alex_Spider]

Anyone hear about the mentally ill Albuquerque man who was murdered by the police? Disgusting story:

Yeah, very sad story. I commented it actually in the other thread about police abuse. There's even a video of the shooting in case you haven't seen it and it is very disturbing. I don't want to post it right now, cause I am afraid I might get flagged by the mods for posting graphic content.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Lawsuit: FBI Used No-Fly List to Bully Muslims Into Becoming Informers

Four Americans, all of them Muslims, are suing the FBI, charging that the agency unfairly placed them on its "No-Fly List," and tried to use that as leverage to turn them into informers.

Why do people get placed on our government's no-fly list? It's a secret. Ostensibly it has something to do with terrorism and public safety, but the government will not answer any questions about it. The process is completely opaque. The four plaintiffs in the suit all have different stories, but the gist is that 1) They did not deserve to be on the no-fly list, and 2) The FBI tried to use their inclusion on the no-fly list as a blunt tool to recruit them to be spies on the Muslim community. Here, for example, the story of Naveed Shinwari, born in Afghanistan but living in Nebraska, who was repeatedly hassled and visited by FBI agents after trying to fly home after being married in Afghanistan. From The Guardian:

The following month, after Shinwari bought another plane ticket for a temporary job in Connecticut, he couldn't get a boarding pass. Police told him he had been placed on the US no-fly list, although he had never in his life been accused of breaking any law. Another FBI visit soon followed, with agents wanting to know about the "local Omaha community, did I know anyone who's a threat", he says.
"I'm just very frustrated, [and I said] what can I do to clear my name?" recalls Shinwari, 30. "And that's where it was mentioned to me: you help us, we help you. We know you don't have a job; we'll give you money."
Sometimes it seems as if the FBI's clumsy attempts to use unjust laws and regulations to bludgeon Muslim people into becoming informers is a sign that the FBI does not have a strong relationship with the American Muslim community. But that seems impossible, since the FBI is only trying to protect us all.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/23/no-fly-list-fbi-coerce-muslims

Who would have figured the FBI would use something that nobody knows how it gets made to do something like this?

 

[Teelie]

The FBI? Abusing their power? I can't believe it hasn't happened sooner.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

IRS Paid $1 Million in Bonuses to Employees Who Still Owed Back Taxes

A report released Tuesday revealed that the IRS paid out millions in bonuses to employees who still owed the IRS back taxes.

At least $2.8 million in bonuses between October 2010 and December 2012 went to employees with disciplinary issues like misuse of government credit cards, drug use, violent threats and fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits, according to the New York Times. According to the report, 1,150 employees who still owed back taxes were given bonuses.

According to the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, the bonuses are logically questionable, but not a violation of federal regulations.

"While not prohibited, providing awards to employees who have been disciplined for failing to pay federal taxes appears to create a conflict with the IRS's charge of ensuring the integrity of the system of tax administration," J. Russell George said in the report.

Overall, the IRS paid out about $198 million in bonuses during that time period, according to the AP.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/business/irs-gave-bonuses-to-workers-owing-back-taxes.html?_r=0

That's funny, when I owed back taxes they sure as heck took my refund without hesitation