Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, a psychologist believes that pot is harmless
In response to my post, “True Facts On Number Of Imprisoned Drug Offenders,” ‘darkcycle’, who identified himself as a psychologist, submitted several comments on PACOVILLA in support of the phony claims put forth by prison reformers that our prisons are bulging with drug offenders. The Justice Department reports that only 16 percent of all inmates incarcerated in state prisons are drug offenders.
In one of his comments, darkcycle mentions something about “growing a harmless plant, which can land you life.” Marijuana, a harmless plant? Me thinks the psychologist has been smoking too much funny tobacco if he really believes that to be true.
Here are some studies showing that contrary to being a harmless substance, marijuana is a very dangerous and addictive drug:
A study by Dr. Penny Whiting and her team at England’s University of Bristol found that cannabis does not ease pain, nausea and vomiting in chemotherapy patients, MS muscle contractions, sleep disorders or Tourette’s symptoms.
The federal government ruled that marijuana has no accepted medical use and should remain classified as a highly dangerous drug like heroin. In a June 2011 letter to organizations petitioning for a reclassification of marijuana, Michele Leonhart declared that marijuana "has a high potential for abuse," "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States" and "lacks accepted safety for use under medical supervision." The letter and 37 pages of supporting documents were published in the Federal Register.
A 20 year study by a team led by Professor Wayne Hall, a drug adviser to the World Health Organization, found cannabis is highly addictive, causes mental health problems, doubles the risk of developing psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia and opens the door to hard drugs.
There have been a number of studies showing that cannabis had caused heart problems in the young and middle-aged. Doctors in Wales noted that there is evidence pot can trigger heart attacks, with the risk increasing 4.8 times in the first hour after smoking the weed. They also noted that studies have shown marijuana affects blood flow, increases the heart rate, causes high blood pressure when sitting down and low pressure when standing up.
The American Glaucoma Society has written: "There is no scientific basis for marijuana's use in treatment," and there is evidence that it could actually do damage.
According to the journal of the American Epilepsy Society, "Marijuana itself has major shortcomings as an epilepsy treatment ... evidence for efficacy in treating seizures does not meet the necessary standard to recommend it to patients." Worse, researchers state that "marijuana use or withdrawal could potentially trigger seizures in susceptible patients."
The Journal of Neuroscience reports that researchers from Harvard Medical School and Chicago’s Northwestern University have discovered that smoking pot even casually once or twice a week can damage the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala, both core structures of the brain which are linked to emotion, motivation and addiction.
Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy says, “Smoking marijuana has a very negative effect on your ability to operate a motor vehicle. It’s quite dangerous to you, your passengers and others on the road.” (Apparently he hasn’t heard his boss declare that pot is less harmful than alcohol.)
The Drug Abuse Recognition Journal reports There is mounting evidence that cannabis may increase the risk for schizophrenia in the developing mind.
The Archives of General Psychiatry reports that people who smoke pot are more likely to develop a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia earlier than those who do not use marijuana.
The British Medical Journal reports that a review of nine studies found that drivers were more likely to be involved in a collision with another car after smoking marijuana. Smoking cannabis within three hours of getting behind the wheel could almost double the risk of a serious crash.
A study headed by Marie-Odile Krebs, professor of psychiatry at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) laboratory in France, found that among 190 patients with schizophrenia, 121 of whom had used marijuana, cannabis appeared to affect the age of psychosis onset in a subgroup of 44 patients. The affected patients either had their first symptoms within a month of smoking pot for the first time, or experienced a severe worsening of psychotic symptoms each time they smoked.
The proponents of pot and even our President would have us believe that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol. Yeah, right. And as for medical marijuana, that's a hoax too!
Friday, July 31, 2015
Thursday, July 30, 2015
PEOPLE PEEING, POOPING AND PUKING ON SAN FRANCISCO’S WALLS
Nah, please tell me it isn’t true. Since Kookfornia is such a trend setter, I’m worried that in the near future we will be seeing people peeing, pooping and puking on all those beautiful walls in Houston’s Third Ward. What? ….. You say they’ve been doing that for years. Shit!
SAN FRANCISCO TESTS PEE-REPELLANT PAINT TO WARD OFF PUBLIC URINATORS
BY Joseph Serna
Los Angeles Times
July 28, 2015
When it comes to odorous annoyances, San Francisco officials hope a fresh coat of paint will succeed where manners and bladders have failed.
Last week, crews with San Francisco Public Works began painting buildings in the city with a clear-coat sealant that, in theory, would splash back urine, or any other liquid sprayed onto it.
There are signs posted on the walls cautioning urinators of the risk they face if they relieve themselves, but some people “might learn the hard way,” chuckled the director of Public Works, Mohammed Nuru.
“The wall advises not to urinate there. It’s in three languages. If they happen to take that chance, they can get their feet or pants wet,” Nuru explained. “It does work. Believe me.”
Nuru admitted the issue isn’t the city’s No. 1 priority, but the proposed remedy is costing only a few hundred dollars to experiment with and would save labor hours and water.
Through mid-July, San Francisco’s Public Works department has received more than 7,500 requests for steam cleaning, the bulk of those (almost 60%) were connected to feces, urine and vomit, Nuru said.
The rest of the cleaning calls are connected to graffiti, bird poop and other symptoms of urban life.
Nuru discovered the paint online, where he found a news story about a bar in Germany that said its experiments with pee-repellent paint were working wonders with the local clientele.
Nuru tweeted out a link to the article in March, contacted the company and ultimately requested Bay Area residents to point out where folks were answering nature’s call publicly in San Francisco.
City staff identified three neighborhoods – South of Market, Mission and the Tenderloin – and chose 10 public and private buildings on which to test the paint for six months. The private businesses had requested they be in the program, he said.
So far the evidence is only anecdotal, but Nuru said he’s noticed a difference.
The paint is painted to about three feet above the ground and stretches the length of the buildings. If the program proves successful, Nuru will likely ask the City Council to expand it, he said.
SAN FRANCISCO TESTS PEE-REPELLANT PAINT TO WARD OFF PUBLIC URINATORS
BY Joseph Serna
Los Angeles Times
July 28, 2015
When it comes to odorous annoyances, San Francisco officials hope a fresh coat of paint will succeed where manners and bladders have failed.
Last week, crews with San Francisco Public Works began painting buildings in the city with a clear-coat sealant that, in theory, would splash back urine, or any other liquid sprayed onto it.
There are signs posted on the walls cautioning urinators of the risk they face if they relieve themselves, but some people “might learn the hard way,” chuckled the director of Public Works, Mohammed Nuru.
“The wall advises not to urinate there. It’s in three languages. If they happen to take that chance, they can get their feet or pants wet,” Nuru explained. “It does work. Believe me.”
Nuru admitted the issue isn’t the city’s No. 1 priority, but the proposed remedy is costing only a few hundred dollars to experiment with and would save labor hours and water.
Through mid-July, San Francisco’s Public Works department has received more than 7,500 requests for steam cleaning, the bulk of those (almost 60%) were connected to feces, urine and vomit, Nuru said.
The rest of the cleaning calls are connected to graffiti, bird poop and other symptoms of urban life.
Nuru discovered the paint online, where he found a news story about a bar in Germany that said its experiments with pee-repellent paint were working wonders with the local clientele.
Nuru tweeted out a link to the article in March, contacted the company and ultimately requested Bay Area residents to point out where folks were answering nature’s call publicly in San Francisco.
City staff identified three neighborhoods – South of Market, Mission and the Tenderloin – and chose 10 public and private buildings on which to test the paint for six months. The private businesses had requested they be in the program, he said.
So far the evidence is only anecdotal, but Nuru said he’s noticed a difference.
The paint is painted to about three feet above the ground and stretches the length of the buildings. If the program proves successful, Nuru will likely ask the City Council to expand it, he said.
FEMALE DEPUTY SHERIFF REHABILITATES ATTACKER
By Bob Walsh
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
July 29, 2015
A Bradley County, Tennessee female deputy sheriff is alive and well and an ambulatory turd is not as the result of an encounter early Tuesday morning.
Deputy Tiffany Oakley was working the night shift and went home about 2 a.m. for a bite to eat. The ambulatory turd, otherwise known as Allan F. White III, was hiding in her home. White, who had an arrest record for domestic assault, resisting arrest and burglary, tried to choke her out. She shot him. He died.
Don’t you just love happy endings?
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
July 29, 2015
A Bradley County, Tennessee female deputy sheriff is alive and well and an ambulatory turd is not as the result of an encounter early Tuesday morning.
Deputy Tiffany Oakley was working the night shift and went home about 2 a.m. for a bite to eat. The ambulatory turd, otherwise known as Allan F. White III, was hiding in her home. White, who had an arrest record for domestic assault, resisting arrest and burglary, tried to choke her out. She shot him. He died.
Don’t you just love happy endings?
TYPICAL BOYFRIEND, TYPICAL DAD
The Unconventional Gazette
July 30, 2015
Daughter asks her Dad: "Dad there is something that my boyfriend said to me, that I didn't understand. He said that I have a beautiful chassis, lovely airbags and a fantastic bumper."
Dad Replies: "You tell your boyfriend that if he opens your hood and tries to check your oil with his dipstick, I will tighten his nuts so hard that his headlights will pop out and he will start leaking out of his exhaust pipe."
July 30, 2015
Daughter asks her Dad: "Dad there is something that my boyfriend said to me, that I didn't understand. He said that I have a beautiful chassis, lovely airbags and a fantastic bumper."
Dad Replies: "You tell your boyfriend that if he opens your hood and tries to check your oil with his dipstick, I will tighten his nuts so hard that his headlights will pop out and he will start leaking out of his exhaust pipe."
MAINE JUST PUT WELFARE LEECHES IN THEIR PLACE
Every American needs to see what happened next
by Jason DeWitt
Top Right News
June 5, 2015
Governor Paul LePage of Maine isn’t running for president in 2016. But perhaps he should be.
Because he is doing in Maine exactly what Americans want to see — but other candidates are not even talking about.
Last November, just one week after his re-election, LePage did something unusual — he made good on a major campaign promise, by slashing funds for cities who give welfare to illegal aliens. The policy has already had a huge impact, with illegals fleeing in droves, and Democrat mayors having to defend giving handouts to illegal invaders before angry voters.
Now, just 6 months later, LePage is making good on another promise: to put an end to welfare leeches in his state, once and for all.
The results are something every American should see — an EPIC victory. And Democrats are FURIOUS.
Governor LePage passed a measure last year that requires recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program (SNAP) to complete a certain number of work, job-training, or volunteer hours in order to be eligible for assistance. The new requirement has resulted in a dramatic decline in food stamp enrollment, resulting in a logical win-win for all of Maine.
At the end of 2014 the enrollment count for SNAP was approximately 12,000 individuals. Now that individuals have to complete either 20 hours of part-time work a week, volunteer for at least 24 hours per month, or get involved in a vocational program, the amount of SNAP recipients has dramatically dropped from 12,000 to approximately 2,500 by the end of March — a nearly 80% reduction in welfare.
The drop in numbers exceeded Republicans’ expectations by leaps and bounds.
Instead of just giving welfare applicants an easy way out, Maine is forcing people to explore every opportunity for employment before allowing capable adults to take advantage of the system and the people of Maine.
Of course Democrats are insisting that the program targets those in poverty or rural areas but their argument is invalid. The individuals benefiting from the new food-stamp law are the ones who really need the assistance and aren’t just lazy parasites to society who suck the vitality out of taxpayers.
This is a huge victory for the Republicans of Maine and of course the sore loser Democrats are trying to tarnish the reformation’s success. Democrats are urging for special measures to ease back on some of the new requirements because they are “too strict”. Too strict to get off your butt and earn your money, or at least volunteer or learn a skill? Maine citizens aren’t buying it.
Maine was one of eight other states that took similar measures and declined a federal waiver for the new rule that requires welfare recipients to get off their behinds and contribute to society like everyone else.
This huge drop in the number of able-bodied welfare leeches after forcing them to work for their needs proves everything we’ve ever reported about welfare abusers. They’re only looking for the next handout.
Now if only we could get every American governor to do what Paul LePage is doing — against both illegal aliens, and welfare leeches — we might well save our nation.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Maine has a relatively small population. I have some doubts that this would work in heavy populated states like California and New York which have a significant number of poverty stricken minorities.
by Jason DeWitt
Top Right News
June 5, 2015
Governor Paul LePage of Maine isn’t running for president in 2016. But perhaps he should be.
Because he is doing in Maine exactly what Americans want to see — but other candidates are not even talking about.
Last November, just one week after his re-election, LePage did something unusual — he made good on a major campaign promise, by slashing funds for cities who give welfare to illegal aliens. The policy has already had a huge impact, with illegals fleeing in droves, and Democrat mayors having to defend giving handouts to illegal invaders before angry voters.
Now, just 6 months later, LePage is making good on another promise: to put an end to welfare leeches in his state, once and for all.
The results are something every American should see — an EPIC victory. And Democrats are FURIOUS.
Governor LePage passed a measure last year that requires recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program (SNAP) to complete a certain number of work, job-training, or volunteer hours in order to be eligible for assistance. The new requirement has resulted in a dramatic decline in food stamp enrollment, resulting in a logical win-win for all of Maine.
At the end of 2014 the enrollment count for SNAP was approximately 12,000 individuals. Now that individuals have to complete either 20 hours of part-time work a week, volunteer for at least 24 hours per month, or get involved in a vocational program, the amount of SNAP recipients has dramatically dropped from 12,000 to approximately 2,500 by the end of March — a nearly 80% reduction in welfare.
The drop in numbers exceeded Republicans’ expectations by leaps and bounds.
Instead of just giving welfare applicants an easy way out, Maine is forcing people to explore every opportunity for employment before allowing capable adults to take advantage of the system and the people of Maine.
Of course Democrats are insisting that the program targets those in poverty or rural areas but their argument is invalid. The individuals benefiting from the new food-stamp law are the ones who really need the assistance and aren’t just lazy parasites to society who suck the vitality out of taxpayers.
This is a huge victory for the Republicans of Maine and of course the sore loser Democrats are trying to tarnish the reformation’s success. Democrats are urging for special measures to ease back on some of the new requirements because they are “too strict”. Too strict to get off your butt and earn your money, or at least volunteer or learn a skill? Maine citizens aren’t buying it.
Maine was one of eight other states that took similar measures and declined a federal waiver for the new rule that requires welfare recipients to get off their behinds and contribute to society like everyone else.
This huge drop in the number of able-bodied welfare leeches after forcing them to work for their needs proves everything we’ve ever reported about welfare abusers. They’re only looking for the next handout.
Now if only we could get every American governor to do what Paul LePage is doing — against both illegal aliens, and welfare leeches — we might well save our nation.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Maine has a relatively small population. I have some doubts that this would work in heavy populated states like California and New York which have a significant number of poverty stricken minorities.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
TRUE FACTS ON NUMBER OF IMPRISONED DRUG OFFENDERS
Obama is either deliberately lying or ignorant of the true facts when he declares that the imprisonment of nonviolent drug offenders is “the real reason our prison population is so high”
When President Obama addressed the NAACP annual convention in Philadelphia July 14, he bemoaned the high incarceration rate of black nonviolent drug offenders and called for reform of the criminal justice system. He blamed our mass incarceration on the large number of nonviolent drug offenders sent to prison. Obama also said that mass incarceration prevents too many people, especially minority men, from contributing to society, the economy, and their children’s lives.
Obama is either deliberately lying or ignorant of the true facts when he declares that the imprisonment of nonviolent drug offenders is “the real reason our prison population is so high.”
“The Real Answer To Mass Incarceration,” an article by Gilad Edelman which was published the week of July 12 in The New Yorker, lays out the true facts about the number of inmates serving time for nonviolent drug offenses. The article notes that Obama is perpetrating a myth long held by prison reformers. The truth is, that while drug offenders make up about half of all federal prison inmates, they make up only 16 percent of the inmate population in state prisons. And the article noted that the federal prisons hold only 200,000 inmates, while the total number held in state prisons is 1.3 million inmates.
Here is an excerpt from “The Real Answer To Mass Incarceration” by Gilad Edelman:
Obama ….. repeated one of the most enduring myths of criminal-justice reform. “Over the last few decades, we’ve also locked up more and more nonviolent drug offenders than ever before, for longer than ever before,” the President said. “And that is the real reason our prison population is so high.”
It is simply not true that the growth of the prison population is mainly due to the sentencing of nonviolent drug offenders. About half of federal inmates are serving sentences for drug crimes, but the federal system only accounts for about two hundred thousand prisoners. In state prisons, which house about 1.3 million, only sixteen per cent of inmates are serving a sentence for nonviolent drug offenses, according to the latest Department of Justice statistics. About fifty-four per cent, by far the largest number, are there for violent crimes, and about nineteen per cent for property offenses, like burglary.
There is less data on the breakdown of the more than seven hundred thousand people in local jails; the most recent D.O.J. survey, in 2002, found that people with drug charges and violent-crime charges each made up about a quarter of jail inmates.
Prison reformers have fooled us into believing their lies about prisons being overcrowded with nonviolent drug offenders. Maybe they fooled the President too, but he and his speech writers had the Department of Justice statistics readily at hand.
In his address to the NAACP, Obama also implied that the criminal justice system is racist because, while blacks and Latinos make up about 30 percent of our population, they represent 60 percent of the inmates in our prisons.
I am not going to deny that in some instances the criminal justice system has been and may still be discriminatory. But I’ve got news for Mr. Obama. The reason those 60 percent of blacks and Latinos are imprisoned is because they are criminals. They’re not serving time for skipping Sunday school or singing off key in the church choir. They are murderers, rapists, child molesters, robbers, burglars and - yes - drug offenders.
Furthermore, if only 16 percent of all state prison inmates are drug offenders, that means 84 percent are incarcerated for murder, attempted murder, assaults that caused great bodily injury, rape, child molestation, robbery, burglary, grand theft and other felonies. Now, what about the Latinos and blacks Obama bemoans? Except for murderers, like most white inmates, those Latinos and blacks were repeat offenders, and not thrown in prison by a racist criminal justice system the first time they got caught committing a felony.
And what about all those poor ‘nonviolent’ drug offenders doing time in federal prisons? The feds do not prosecute small-time drug peddlers. All those federal drug offenders are doing time for the large-scale manufacture, distribution or sales of illegal drugs. Sorry Mr. President, but they’re not in the joint for smoking a joint.
When he visited the federal prison at El Reno, Oklahoma and met with six inmates doing time for drug offenses, Obama lamented their being in prison for making youthful ‘mistakes.’ Apparently, in the President’s mind, when black gangbangers go around shooting up black neighborhoods and dealing dope, they are making mistakes, youthful mistakes, rather than committing crimes.
As for the President’s phony baloney about the number of imprisoned drug offenders, the simple truth is that since they make up only 16 percent of the total state prison population, drug offenders cannot possibly account for the nation’s high prison population. Even a math dysfunctional high school dropout can figure that out, Mr. Obama!
When President Obama addressed the NAACP annual convention in Philadelphia July 14, he bemoaned the high incarceration rate of black nonviolent drug offenders and called for reform of the criminal justice system. He blamed our mass incarceration on the large number of nonviolent drug offenders sent to prison. Obama also said that mass incarceration prevents too many people, especially minority men, from contributing to society, the economy, and their children’s lives.
Obama is either deliberately lying or ignorant of the true facts when he declares that the imprisonment of nonviolent drug offenders is “the real reason our prison population is so high.”
“The Real Answer To Mass Incarceration,” an article by Gilad Edelman which was published the week of July 12 in The New Yorker, lays out the true facts about the number of inmates serving time for nonviolent drug offenses. The article notes that Obama is perpetrating a myth long held by prison reformers. The truth is, that while drug offenders make up about half of all federal prison inmates, they make up only 16 percent of the inmate population in state prisons. And the article noted that the federal prisons hold only 200,000 inmates, while the total number held in state prisons is 1.3 million inmates.
Here is an excerpt from “The Real Answer To Mass Incarceration” by Gilad Edelman:
Obama ….. repeated one of the most enduring myths of criminal-justice reform. “Over the last few decades, we’ve also locked up more and more nonviolent drug offenders than ever before, for longer than ever before,” the President said. “And that is the real reason our prison population is so high.”
It is simply not true that the growth of the prison population is mainly due to the sentencing of nonviolent drug offenders. About half of federal inmates are serving sentences for drug crimes, but the federal system only accounts for about two hundred thousand prisoners. In state prisons, which house about 1.3 million, only sixteen per cent of inmates are serving a sentence for nonviolent drug offenses, according to the latest Department of Justice statistics. About fifty-four per cent, by far the largest number, are there for violent crimes, and about nineteen per cent for property offenses, like burglary.
There is less data on the breakdown of the more than seven hundred thousand people in local jails; the most recent D.O.J. survey, in 2002, found that people with drug charges and violent-crime charges each made up about a quarter of jail inmates.
Prison reformers have fooled us into believing their lies about prisons being overcrowded with nonviolent drug offenders. Maybe they fooled the President too, but he and his speech writers had the Department of Justice statistics readily at hand.
In his address to the NAACP, Obama also implied that the criminal justice system is racist because, while blacks and Latinos make up about 30 percent of our population, they represent 60 percent of the inmates in our prisons.
I am not going to deny that in some instances the criminal justice system has been and may still be discriminatory. But I’ve got news for Mr. Obama. The reason those 60 percent of blacks and Latinos are imprisoned is because they are criminals. They’re not serving time for skipping Sunday school or singing off key in the church choir. They are murderers, rapists, child molesters, robbers, burglars and - yes - drug offenders.
Furthermore, if only 16 percent of all state prison inmates are drug offenders, that means 84 percent are incarcerated for murder, attempted murder, assaults that caused great bodily injury, rape, child molestation, robbery, burglary, grand theft and other felonies. Now, what about the Latinos and blacks Obama bemoans? Except for murderers, like most white inmates, those Latinos and blacks were repeat offenders, and not thrown in prison by a racist criminal justice system the first time they got caught committing a felony.
And what about all those poor ‘nonviolent’ drug offenders doing time in federal prisons? The feds do not prosecute small-time drug peddlers. All those federal drug offenders are doing time for the large-scale manufacture, distribution or sales of illegal drugs. Sorry Mr. President, but they’re not in the joint for smoking a joint.
When he visited the federal prison at El Reno, Oklahoma and met with six inmates doing time for drug offenses, Obama lamented their being in prison for making youthful ‘mistakes.’ Apparently, in the President’s mind, when black gangbangers go around shooting up black neighborhoods and dealing dope, they are making mistakes, youthful mistakes, rather than committing crimes.
As for the President’s phony baloney about the number of imprisoned drug offenders, the simple truth is that since they make up only 16 percent of the total state prison population, drug offenders cannot possibly account for the nation’s high prison population. Even a math dysfunctional high school dropout can figure that out, Mr. Obama!
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
35 WOMEN CANNOT ALL BE LYING
This week’s New York magazine pictured 35 women on its cover, each claiming to have been sexually assaulted by America’s father figure
Bill Cosby had been labeled America’s father figure, that is until three dozen women stepped forward to accuse the actor and comedian of raping them. This week’s New York magazine pictured 35 of the accusing women and an empty chair for any woman who hasn’t stepped forward yet. Inside the magazine, each woman described how they had been sexually assaulted by Cosby.
Cosby has not been charged in any of the rapes because the statute of limitations had run out for all the women but one. There is a possibility he could be charged in that one case.
While giving a deposition in a 2005 civil lawsuit, Cosby admitted giving qualudes to women so he could have sex with them.
Cosby and his attorneys say the 35 women are liars seeking publicity and money. Knowing they would face certain scrutiny into every facet of their lives by the media and considerable condemnation by Cosby’s supporters if they came out with their accusations, I seriously doubt they are lying.
I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when Cosby’s wife saw that cover of New York magazine.
I’ve been accused of a rush to judgement. Maybe so, but it sure looks like Bill Cosby, rather than America’s father figure, turns out to be one massive serial rapist.
Bill Cosby had been labeled America’s father figure, that is until three dozen women stepped forward to accuse the actor and comedian of raping them. This week’s New York magazine pictured 35 of the accusing women and an empty chair for any woman who hasn’t stepped forward yet. Inside the magazine, each woman described how they had been sexually assaulted by Cosby.
Cosby has not been charged in any of the rapes because the statute of limitations had run out for all the women but one. There is a possibility he could be charged in that one case.
While giving a deposition in a 2005 civil lawsuit, Cosby admitted giving qualudes to women so he could have sex with them.
Cosby and his attorneys say the 35 women are liars seeking publicity and money. Knowing they would face certain scrutiny into every facet of their lives by the media and considerable condemnation by Cosby’s supporters if they came out with their accusations, I seriously doubt they are lying.
I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when Cosby’s wife saw that cover of New York magazine.
I’ve been accused of a rush to judgement. Maybe so, but it sure looks like Bill Cosby, rather than America’s father figure, turns out to be one massive serial rapist.
FORMER LAPD OFFICIAL FINDS CALEXICO POLICE DEPARTMENT DYSFUNCTIONAL AND IN TURMOIL
By Joel Rubin
Los Angeles Times
July 27, 2015
CALEXICO, CALIF. -- Sitting hard up against a towering rusted fence that separates the United States from Mexico, this city is for most a dreary gantlet of fast-food restaurants and gas stations on the way to one of California's two official border crossings.
Calexico wasn't a place that Mike Bostic had ever visited. In fact, the former high-ranking Los Angeles police official thought it was in Mexico until he got a call from its new city manager in September.
The call led to a secret meeting in a San Diego hotel room. There, the city manager, Richard Warne, told Bostic that a group of veteran cops was running the department like a fiefdom, taking home big overtime checks while very little police work was getting done.
Calexico needed a new police chief, Warne said. And he wanted Bostic for the job.
But after three decades in the Los Angeles Police Department, Bostic had been out of policing for years, trading his badge for the tailored suits of the corporate world. The healthy paychecks, along with a six-figure pension check each year from the LAPD, had left him, he said, "with more money than I could ever spend."
Sure, Bostic, 63, liked the idea of being a chief — he had been unceremoniously pushed aside at the end of his LAPD career and later made an unsuccessful bid to be chief of a quiet Orange County city.
But putting a police uniform back on had stopped being part of his plan long ago — never mind for a hard-on-its-luck border town of 40,000 where residents and elected officials say years of political infighting has created a revolving door for public servants, and where faith in the Police Department has dwindled.
And yet Bostic is a man driven by his strong faith in two things: Christianity and himself. He couldn't shake Warne's offer.
"I just know that this is one of those things that God wanted me to do," he said. "If you are a believer, you can't ignore it."
---
One afternoon in October, while Bostic waited in his car outside, Warne summoned the city's chief into his office and promptly fired him. He then fetched Bostic, walked him into the town's one police station and introduced him to a stunned group of officers.
That first day, Bostic asked a sergeant for a rundown of all the criminal and internal investigations the department had open. It was a short conversation. The sergeant told him there were no investigations, he said.
It was, Bostic said, a department that essentially had ceased to function. Dispatch records showed each of the about two dozen officers on the force had responded, on average, to only five radio calls for help in a month. Many officers, Bostic said, were months behind on writing crime reports.
Even the fact that Calexico's crime rate appeared to be half that of a nearby city was not cause for encouragement. To Bostic, it was proof many residents had simply given up looking to the police for help and reporting crimes — a sentiment he said he heard repeatedly at town hall-style meetings.
"The community has been afraid even to call for too long," said Eddie Guzman, 61, a mortgage broker who has lived in Calexico for more than 50 years. "I'm hoping that things will change under him. We need someone from the outside to come in and clean this place up."
Guzman, like several other residents and city officials, chalked up the trouble in the Police Department — as well as the city government — to "the compadre system," a set of unwritten but deeply ingrained rules that they say form the underpinnings for civic life in Calexico. Under the compadre system, they say, favors are traded like currency and personal relationships often trump the rule of law.
"The city has a long history of favoritism, cronyism and corruption among city officials," Warne charged, noting he is the 26th city manager to be hired in the last 35 years. "The hiring of friends, relatives and mistresses has been a common practice — people who were clearly unqualified for their jobs. Goods and services are purchased based on personal connections without any consideration of quality."
Three police officers whom Bostic fired, leaders in the union representing the city's cops, object to his portrayal of a badly broken department. Instead, they argue, Bostic and Warne are part of a campaign by some City Council members to dismantle the union, which is a force in local politics and has battled reform-minded officials.
They acknowledge there were serious productivity issues in the department and few investigations done but blame it on inadequate staffing.
"Bostic is a scam artist. He's led everybody to believe all these terrible things are going on," one of the fired officers, Luis Casillas, said in an interview. "You have him and a city manager who say they need these outrageous salaries to clean up all this corruption … but really they see us as a political threat."
---
Since arriving in Calexico, Bostic has unabashedly presented himself as a savior, promising residents he will rid their Police Department of "the cancer living within it" — a refrain during his first months on the job.
"These people are so desperate for help," he said. "The LAPD has given me a unique set of skills and training that you can't get many places.... I know exactly what to do to fix this place."
Bostic hasn't shied away from such grand statements, touting the major role he played in reforming the LAPD. Although he did have a hand in trying to push through changes that followed some of the LAPD's worst episodes, the reality of his time there is more modest.
In the wake of the videotaped beating by officers of Rodney King, then-Chief Daryl Gates assigned Bostic to review the department's use-of-force and training procedures. In his role, Bostic was critical of some problems he identified but wasn't in a position to make significant changes himself.
Bostic testified as the government's use-of-force expert during the state trial against the officers. Defense attorneys picked him apart on cross-examination, however, forcing him to admit he had formed his opinion of the beating after only a few viewings of the tape. After acquitting the officers, jurors said that they did not find Bostic credible.
He climbed the ranks to become an assistant chief, at times running the department when the chief was away. But after Bostic clashed with William Bratton, who was hired as chief in 2002, Bratton demoted him and exiled him from his inner circle.
---
Soon after he took over in Calexico, Bostic said he contacted the FBI, relaying concerns he had about some of his officers. Then, on a morning in late October, dozens of agents descended on the police station, seizing computer hard drives and documents.
FBI officials acknowledged the ongoing investigation but declined to comment on its scope or focus. Bostic, for his part, has refused to elaborate on the probe. But it seems to have struck a sensitive chord with him. Twice after the raid, Bostic choked back tears when answering reporters' questions about the investigation.
"There could be nothing more embarrassing than to have your department under that kind of scrutiny.... It was literally the most disappointing day in all my years of policing," he said at one news conference after composing himself.
The problems, Bostic said, stemmed from half a dozen or so officers, who also held sway in the police officers union. Bostic said they effectively ran the department, threatening other officers with misconduct investigations if they got out of line and running the department's $450,000 annual budget for overtime to nearly $1.5 million.
"They believed they were untouchable. They still believe it, even since I've arrived. They've been protected for so long."
---
Until earlier this year, Luis Casillas, German Duran and Frank Uriarte were department veterans and union leaders. Bostic fired the three men along with a few others.
Citing privacy laws, Bostic has declined to say why he booted them, but they said they had been wrongly accused of taking inflated overtime payments, among other allegations of misconduct.
Casillas said the overtime allegations were baseless, chalking up the confusion to honest mistakes. "Everyone worked the hours they worked," he said. "We got fired for typos and technicalities in how the paperwork was filled out."
In response to Bostic's extortion claims, Casillas said: "No, never. None of us ever did that to any other officers. We never threatened anyone."
The former cops and like-minded members of the City Council have railed against the $19,000-a-month pay Bostic is receiving on his month-to-month contract — the equivalent of a $225,000 $228,000 annual salary. (By comparison, when LAPD Chief Charlie Beck was reappointed to a second term last summer, his salary was $325,000 — for a force of nearly 10,000 officers.)
In a lawsuit filed this month in federal court, officers fired by Bostic accused him of being "a rogue police chief" driven by greed who framed the former cops.
Dramatic allegations aside, such a sizable salary for the chief of a small department in a poor city has raised eyebrows even among some supporters. Bostic insists he's not in Calexico for the money, but he doesn't apologize for the pay.
"You get what you pay for. He will cost more than previous chiefs, but it's an investment that in the long run will be worth it," Councilman John Moreno said. "Some people have been critical of this outsider coming here to help us. It's not about being an insider or outsider. It's about being qualified."
So far, Bostic said, there hasn't been much time to implement fixes because his time has been consumed by internal investigations into possible misconduct by officers.
When council members opposed to Bostic and Warne thwarted efforts to give the men the multiyear contracts they've demanded, the council received a stern letter from an organization that provides Calexico the insurance policy every city needs to protect itself against lawsuits and other liabilities. The group made clear it considered the men two bright spots in an otherwise dysfunctional city government and threatened to pull Calexico's insurance coverage.
With the city facing collapse, one of the recalcitrant council members relented, agreeing last month to award Warne a contract. The vote cleared the way for Warne to negotiate a long-term deal with Bostic, who has said he needs two or three years to carry out his plans for remaking the department.
But in the hostile, tumultuous world of small-town politics in Calexico, there's no telling whether Bostic will get the time he says he needs. Armando Real, the council member who reluctantly approved Warne's deal, said he is determined to find a way to send Bostic packing.
It is, Moreno said with a resigned shake of his head, just business as usual in Calexico.
"Mike Bostic is here to fix our Police Department. I believe in him," Moreno said. "It'll take some time; he's going to need to step on some toes. But it can be done, as long as we let him stay around long enough."
Los Angeles Times
July 27, 2015
CALEXICO, CALIF. -- Sitting hard up against a towering rusted fence that separates the United States from Mexico, this city is for most a dreary gantlet of fast-food restaurants and gas stations on the way to one of California's two official border crossings.
Calexico wasn't a place that Mike Bostic had ever visited. In fact, the former high-ranking Los Angeles police official thought it was in Mexico until he got a call from its new city manager in September.
The call led to a secret meeting in a San Diego hotel room. There, the city manager, Richard Warne, told Bostic that a group of veteran cops was running the department like a fiefdom, taking home big overtime checks while very little police work was getting done.
Calexico needed a new police chief, Warne said. And he wanted Bostic for the job.
But after three decades in the Los Angeles Police Department, Bostic had been out of policing for years, trading his badge for the tailored suits of the corporate world. The healthy paychecks, along with a six-figure pension check each year from the LAPD, had left him, he said, "with more money than I could ever spend."
Sure, Bostic, 63, liked the idea of being a chief — he had been unceremoniously pushed aside at the end of his LAPD career and later made an unsuccessful bid to be chief of a quiet Orange County city.
But putting a police uniform back on had stopped being part of his plan long ago — never mind for a hard-on-its-luck border town of 40,000 where residents and elected officials say years of political infighting has created a revolving door for public servants, and where faith in the Police Department has dwindled.
And yet Bostic is a man driven by his strong faith in two things: Christianity and himself. He couldn't shake Warne's offer.
"I just know that this is one of those things that God wanted me to do," he said. "If you are a believer, you can't ignore it."
---
One afternoon in October, while Bostic waited in his car outside, Warne summoned the city's chief into his office and promptly fired him. He then fetched Bostic, walked him into the town's one police station and introduced him to a stunned group of officers.
That first day, Bostic asked a sergeant for a rundown of all the criminal and internal investigations the department had open. It was a short conversation. The sergeant told him there were no investigations, he said.
It was, Bostic said, a department that essentially had ceased to function. Dispatch records showed each of the about two dozen officers on the force had responded, on average, to only five radio calls for help in a month. Many officers, Bostic said, were months behind on writing crime reports.
Even the fact that Calexico's crime rate appeared to be half that of a nearby city was not cause for encouragement. To Bostic, it was proof many residents had simply given up looking to the police for help and reporting crimes — a sentiment he said he heard repeatedly at town hall-style meetings.
"The community has been afraid even to call for too long," said Eddie Guzman, 61, a mortgage broker who has lived in Calexico for more than 50 years. "I'm hoping that things will change under him. We need someone from the outside to come in and clean this place up."
Guzman, like several other residents and city officials, chalked up the trouble in the Police Department — as well as the city government — to "the compadre system," a set of unwritten but deeply ingrained rules that they say form the underpinnings for civic life in Calexico. Under the compadre system, they say, favors are traded like currency and personal relationships often trump the rule of law.
"The city has a long history of favoritism, cronyism and corruption among city officials," Warne charged, noting he is the 26th city manager to be hired in the last 35 years. "The hiring of friends, relatives and mistresses has been a common practice — people who were clearly unqualified for their jobs. Goods and services are purchased based on personal connections without any consideration of quality."
Three police officers whom Bostic fired, leaders in the union representing the city's cops, object to his portrayal of a badly broken department. Instead, they argue, Bostic and Warne are part of a campaign by some City Council members to dismantle the union, which is a force in local politics and has battled reform-minded officials.
They acknowledge there were serious productivity issues in the department and few investigations done but blame it on inadequate staffing.
"Bostic is a scam artist. He's led everybody to believe all these terrible things are going on," one of the fired officers, Luis Casillas, said in an interview. "You have him and a city manager who say they need these outrageous salaries to clean up all this corruption … but really they see us as a political threat."
---
Since arriving in Calexico, Bostic has unabashedly presented himself as a savior, promising residents he will rid their Police Department of "the cancer living within it" — a refrain during his first months on the job.
"These people are so desperate for help," he said. "The LAPD has given me a unique set of skills and training that you can't get many places.... I know exactly what to do to fix this place."
Bostic hasn't shied away from such grand statements, touting the major role he played in reforming the LAPD. Although he did have a hand in trying to push through changes that followed some of the LAPD's worst episodes, the reality of his time there is more modest.
In the wake of the videotaped beating by officers of Rodney King, then-Chief Daryl Gates assigned Bostic to review the department's use-of-force and training procedures. In his role, Bostic was critical of some problems he identified but wasn't in a position to make significant changes himself.
Bostic testified as the government's use-of-force expert during the state trial against the officers. Defense attorneys picked him apart on cross-examination, however, forcing him to admit he had formed his opinion of the beating after only a few viewings of the tape. After acquitting the officers, jurors said that they did not find Bostic credible.
He climbed the ranks to become an assistant chief, at times running the department when the chief was away. But after Bostic clashed with William Bratton, who was hired as chief in 2002, Bratton demoted him and exiled him from his inner circle.
---
Soon after he took over in Calexico, Bostic said he contacted the FBI, relaying concerns he had about some of his officers. Then, on a morning in late October, dozens of agents descended on the police station, seizing computer hard drives and documents.
FBI officials acknowledged the ongoing investigation but declined to comment on its scope or focus. Bostic, for his part, has refused to elaborate on the probe. But it seems to have struck a sensitive chord with him. Twice after the raid, Bostic choked back tears when answering reporters' questions about the investigation.
"There could be nothing more embarrassing than to have your department under that kind of scrutiny.... It was literally the most disappointing day in all my years of policing," he said at one news conference after composing himself.
The problems, Bostic said, stemmed from half a dozen or so officers, who also held sway in the police officers union. Bostic said they effectively ran the department, threatening other officers with misconduct investigations if they got out of line and running the department's $450,000 annual budget for overtime to nearly $1.5 million.
"They believed they were untouchable. They still believe it, even since I've arrived. They've been protected for so long."
---
Until earlier this year, Luis Casillas, German Duran and Frank Uriarte were department veterans and union leaders. Bostic fired the three men along with a few others.
Citing privacy laws, Bostic has declined to say why he booted them, but they said they had been wrongly accused of taking inflated overtime payments, among other allegations of misconduct.
Casillas said the overtime allegations were baseless, chalking up the confusion to honest mistakes. "Everyone worked the hours they worked," he said. "We got fired for typos and technicalities in how the paperwork was filled out."
In response to Bostic's extortion claims, Casillas said: "No, never. None of us ever did that to any other officers. We never threatened anyone."
The former cops and like-minded members of the City Council have railed against the $19,000-a-month pay Bostic is receiving on his month-to-month contract — the equivalent of a $225,000 $228,000 annual salary. (By comparison, when LAPD Chief Charlie Beck was reappointed to a second term last summer, his salary was $325,000 — for a force of nearly 10,000 officers.)
In a lawsuit filed this month in federal court, officers fired by Bostic accused him of being "a rogue police chief" driven by greed who framed the former cops.
Dramatic allegations aside, such a sizable salary for the chief of a small department in a poor city has raised eyebrows even among some supporters. Bostic insists he's not in Calexico for the money, but he doesn't apologize for the pay.
"You get what you pay for. He will cost more than previous chiefs, but it's an investment that in the long run will be worth it," Councilman John Moreno said. "Some people have been critical of this outsider coming here to help us. It's not about being an insider or outsider. It's about being qualified."
So far, Bostic said, there hasn't been much time to implement fixes because his time has been consumed by internal investigations into possible misconduct by officers.
When council members opposed to Bostic and Warne thwarted efforts to give the men the multiyear contracts they've demanded, the council received a stern letter from an organization that provides Calexico the insurance policy every city needs to protect itself against lawsuits and other liabilities. The group made clear it considered the men two bright spots in an otherwise dysfunctional city government and threatened to pull Calexico's insurance coverage.
With the city facing collapse, one of the recalcitrant council members relented, agreeing last month to award Warne a contract. The vote cleared the way for Warne to negotiate a long-term deal with Bostic, who has said he needs two or three years to carry out his plans for remaking the department.
But in the hostile, tumultuous world of small-town politics in Calexico, there's no telling whether Bostic will get the time he says he needs. Armando Real, the council member who reluctantly approved Warne's deal, said he is determined to find a way to send Bostic packing.
It is, Moreno said with a resigned shake of his head, just business as usual in Calexico.
"Mike Bostic is here to fix our Police Department. I believe in him," Moreno said. "It'll take some time; he's going to need to step on some toes. But it can be done, as long as we let him stay around long enough."
Monday, July 27, 2015
PROSTITUTE SNUFFS SUSPECTED SERIAL KILLER
A Charleston, West Virginia woman fights for her life against man who answered her ad and shoots him dead with his own gun
‘Heather’ placed an ad for her services on the website Backpage. Neal Falls, 45, answered the ad. On July 18 he appeared at her front door in Charleston, West Virginia, pointing a gun at her. Falls entered her apartment and started choking the prostitute. She tried to fight him off with a rake. He put the gun down in order to take away Heather’s rake. She managed to get the gun and shot Falls dead. She then ran next door to call 9-1-1.
The cops found four sets of handcuffs and a bulletproof vest in his car together with a ‘kill kit’ consisting of a shovel, two axes, two sledge hammers, a machete, three knives, bleach and a pair of hiking boots. They also found a list of ten prostitutes, all of whom are still among the living.
Falls is now the suspect in the murders of a dozen prostitutes in Nevada, Ohio and Illinois. All the victims placed ads for their services on websites like Backpage.
While Falls was living in Henderson Nevada, four Las Vegas prostitutes went missing. Their dismembered body parts were found scattered in California and Nevada, and the legs of one victim were found in Illinois. Falls is also suspected in six Ohio murders and two in Illinois, although the police have no evidence linking him to those victims.
The police say Heather will not be charged for snuffing Falls as his death resulted from a clear cut case of self-defense.
Now, this case serves as an example of problems associated with websites like Craiglist and Backpage. You never really know for sure what you’re going to get.
‘Heather’ placed an ad for her services on the website Backpage. Neal Falls, 45, answered the ad. On July 18 he appeared at her front door in Charleston, West Virginia, pointing a gun at her. Falls entered her apartment and started choking the prostitute. She tried to fight him off with a rake. He put the gun down in order to take away Heather’s rake. She managed to get the gun and shot Falls dead. She then ran next door to call 9-1-1.
The cops found four sets of handcuffs and a bulletproof vest in his car together with a ‘kill kit’ consisting of a shovel, two axes, two sledge hammers, a machete, three knives, bleach and a pair of hiking boots. They also found a list of ten prostitutes, all of whom are still among the living.
Falls is now the suspect in the murders of a dozen prostitutes in Nevada, Ohio and Illinois. All the victims placed ads for their services on websites like Backpage.
While Falls was living in Henderson Nevada, four Las Vegas prostitutes went missing. Their dismembered body parts were found scattered in California and Nevada, and the legs of one victim were found in Illinois. Falls is also suspected in six Ohio murders and two in Illinois, although the police have no evidence linking him to those victims.
The police say Heather will not be charged for snuffing Falls as his death resulted from a clear cut case of self-defense.
Now, this case serves as an example of problems associated with websites like Craiglist and Backpage. You never really know for sure what you’re going to get.
TICKETED MOTORIST POINTING FINGER JUST THE GREEN LIGHT COP NEEDED
The Onion
July 23, 2015
DANVILLE, VA—Recalling the provocation that came midway through a routine traffic stop, Danville police officer Dylan Hayden told reporters Thursday that driver Donald Watkins’ decision to frustratedly point his finger at him was just the green light he needed.
“Legally, I’m not allowed to touch the motorist after pulling him over, but when he extended his index finger directly toward me, I knew that gave me the go-ahead right there to take whatever action I deemed necessary,” said Hayden, adding that as soon as he noticed the conceivably threatening hand gesture, he had full authority to skip right ahead to exerting force. “Frankly, I probably would’ve had the okay to rock and roll after he cursed under his breath, but I wanted to be absolutely certain that I was in the clear. Once he pointed his finger at my chest from inside his vehicle, I knew I’d be covered no matter what happened next. He really left the door wide open for me with that one.”
Hayden expressed confidence that there was probably someone wanted for robbery who looks similar enough to Watkins to legally justify pulling him over in the first place.
July 23, 2015
DANVILLE, VA—Recalling the provocation that came midway through a routine traffic stop, Danville police officer Dylan Hayden told reporters Thursday that driver Donald Watkins’ decision to frustratedly point his finger at him was just the green light he needed.
“Legally, I’m not allowed to touch the motorist after pulling him over, but when he extended his index finger directly toward me, I knew that gave me the go-ahead right there to take whatever action I deemed necessary,” said Hayden, adding that as soon as he noticed the conceivably threatening hand gesture, he had full authority to skip right ahead to exerting force. “Frankly, I probably would’ve had the okay to rock and roll after he cursed under his breath, but I wanted to be absolutely certain that I was in the clear. Once he pointed his finger at my chest from inside his vehicle, I knew I’d be covered no matter what happened next. He really left the door wide open for me with that one.”
Hayden expressed confidence that there was probably someone wanted for robbery who looks similar enough to Watkins to legally justify pulling him over in the first place.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
NINE ACCUSED OF LAUNDERING $3.6M FOR DRUG TRAFFICKERS
Federal indictment says money was used to buy 35 Cessna planes
By Susan Shroder
The San Diego Union-Tribune
July 23, 2015
SAN DIEGO — A Tijuana airplane broker and eight others are accused in a San Diego federal grand jury indictment of laundering $3.6 million in drug-trafficking proceeds through the purchase of 35 Cessnas intended for drug smuggling, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
The broker, Vicente Contreras-Amezquita, 44, was arrested last week and appeared Thursday in federal court. In the 200-count indictment, he faces charges including conspiracy and aiding and abetting.
Contreras-Amezquita lived in San Diego when the crimes occurred from 2007 until 2012, prosecutors said in a statement.
His wife, Elizabeth Fregoso-Zamora, also is named in the indictment, along with seven others who are accused of being part of a money-laundering crew.
The indictment said that during the five-year period, the defendants opened 46 different checking and savings accounts in banks in California and five other states with cash deposits totaling $3.6 million.
The individual deposits were all under $10,000 in order to evade federal reporting requirements for currency transactions greater than that amount.
The money was transferred between accounts “in convoluted financial transactions” to facilitate the purchase of the Cessnas and plane parts, including heavy-duty tires for landings at “clandestine” airfields, the statement said.
“Cessna 206s and 210s are types of airplanes preferred by drug-trafficking organizations operating in Mexico because of their reliability, speed and ability to carry heavy payloads over long distances,” the indictment stated.
Contreras-Amezquita is accused of collecting the drug-sale proceeds in various locations, including strip malls, parking lots, fast-food restaurants and airplane hangars.
He remains in custody, with a detention hearing scheduled for July 30. If convicted, he faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison, prosecutors said.
His wife is accused of laundering money, opening bank accounts, making deposits, and making payments for planes from the accounts, the indictment said.
The case was investigated by U.S. Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
By Susan Shroder
The San Diego Union-Tribune
July 23, 2015
SAN DIEGO — A Tijuana airplane broker and eight others are accused in a San Diego federal grand jury indictment of laundering $3.6 million in drug-trafficking proceeds through the purchase of 35 Cessnas intended for drug smuggling, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
The broker, Vicente Contreras-Amezquita, 44, was arrested last week and appeared Thursday in federal court. In the 200-count indictment, he faces charges including conspiracy and aiding and abetting.
Contreras-Amezquita lived in San Diego when the crimes occurred from 2007 until 2012, prosecutors said in a statement.
His wife, Elizabeth Fregoso-Zamora, also is named in the indictment, along with seven others who are accused of being part of a money-laundering crew.
The indictment said that during the five-year period, the defendants opened 46 different checking and savings accounts in banks in California and five other states with cash deposits totaling $3.6 million.
The individual deposits were all under $10,000 in order to evade federal reporting requirements for currency transactions greater than that amount.
The money was transferred between accounts “in convoluted financial transactions” to facilitate the purchase of the Cessnas and plane parts, including heavy-duty tires for landings at “clandestine” airfields, the statement said.
“Cessna 206s and 210s are types of airplanes preferred by drug-trafficking organizations operating in Mexico because of their reliability, speed and ability to carry heavy payloads over long distances,” the indictment stated.
Contreras-Amezquita is accused of collecting the drug-sale proceeds in various locations, including strip malls, parking lots, fast-food restaurants and airplane hangars.
He remains in custody, with a detention hearing scheduled for July 30. If convicted, he faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison, prosecutors said.
His wife is accused of laundering money, opening bank accounts, making deposits, and making payments for planes from the accounts, the indictment said.
The case was investigated by U.S. Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
BOWE BERGDAHL CAUGHT IN RAID ON POT PLANTATION
When California authorities raided a Mendocino County pot plantation, Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl was there pass in hand
When the Mendocino County Drug Task Force raided a Redwood Valley marijuana plantation early Tuesday morning, U.S. Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl was one of the visitors caught there. Bergdahl, who had been there since Friday, readily identified himself and produced a pass from his duty station at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. 181 mature pot plants were seized during the raid. Because there was no evidence that Bergdahl was involved in the pot growing operation, he was released to military authorities.
Bergdahl, who was captured by the Taliban after deserting his outpost in Afghanistan in 2009, was exchanged for five high ranking Taliban fighters in 2014. At the time of the exchange, National Security Adviser Susan Rice all but described Bergdahl as a hero and President Obama held a gushy ceremony for his parents in the White House Rose Garden.
After a number of Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers complained that their former comrade had deserted his outpost, the army started a lengthy investigation which culminated in him being charged with one count of desertion. He is awaiting a court martial in September.
Now let’s see if I can get this right. During the Civil War, deserters on both sides were shot, usually without a court martial. During WW2, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, deserters who were caught were confined in a stockade while awaiting court martial. Apparently deserters from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars remain on active duty pending court martial and are provided with week-long passes to boot. What the fuck is going on here?
When the Mendocino County Drug Task Force raided a Redwood Valley marijuana plantation early Tuesday morning, U.S. Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl was one of the visitors caught there. Bergdahl, who had been there since Friday, readily identified himself and produced a pass from his duty station at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. 181 mature pot plants were seized during the raid. Because there was no evidence that Bergdahl was involved in the pot growing operation, he was released to military authorities.
Bergdahl, who was captured by the Taliban after deserting his outpost in Afghanistan in 2009, was exchanged for five high ranking Taliban fighters in 2014. At the time of the exchange, National Security Adviser Susan Rice all but described Bergdahl as a hero and President Obama held a gushy ceremony for his parents in the White House Rose Garden.
After a number of Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers complained that their former comrade had deserted his outpost, the army started a lengthy investigation which culminated in him being charged with one count of desertion. He is awaiting a court martial in September.
Now let’s see if I can get this right. During the Civil War, deserters on both sides were shot, usually without a court martial. During WW2, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, deserters who were caught were confined in a stockade while awaiting court martial. Apparently deserters from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars remain on active duty pending court martial and are provided with week-long passes to boot. What the fuck is going on here?
Saturday, July 25, 2015
COPS GONE WILD
LAPD officer Mary O'Callaghan got her former role as a U.S. Marine and her present role as a cop mixed up
There is no excuse for what LAPD officer Mary O'Callaghan did to Alesia Thomas and she’s lucky she was not charged in the victim’s death. O'Callaghan, a former U.S. Marine, acted during an arrest as if she were still in the Marine Corps.
O'Callaghan got one thing right though. When she noticed that Thomas was unconscious, she remarked, “That ain't a good sign.”
AT EMOTIONAL HEARING, LAPD OFFICER GETS 36 MONTHS IN JAIL FOR ASSAULT CAUGHT ON VIDEO
By Javier Panzar
Los Angeles Times
July 23, 2015
Wearing dark sunglasses inside a downtown L.A. courtroom, Sandra Thomas approached the witness stand Thursday and spoke about the Los Angeles police officer she holds responsible for her daughter's death.
“I have to ask God to help me learn how to forgive her,” she said to a judge before the sentencing of LAPD Officer Mary O'Callaghan. Thomas' 35-year-old daughter was handcuffed and assaulted by O'Callaghan during an arrest in 2012. She died shortly after being placed in the back of a squad car, complaining she couldn't breathe.
The encounter, which was captured on a dashboard camera, showed O'Callaghan striking Alesia Thomas — a mother of two — with an open hand and kicking her in the crotch. The officer then can be seen smoking a cigarette on the street, as Alesia Thomas fell unconscious.
Sandra Thomas, who works as a medical assistant, asked why O'Callaghan didn't show her daughter more sympathy and try to revive her.
“You have to show compassion for people,” she said. “It makes me feel like she wanted that to happen.”
When it was O'Callaghan's turn to address the court, she faced Sandra Thomas instead of the judge.
“Mother to mother,” O'Callaghan, a 50-year-old mother of three, said through tears, “I am extremely sorry for the loss of your daughter.”
Those were O'Callaghan's first public comments since Alesia Thomas' death and her arrest for assault.
O'Callaghan, a Marine veteran who had been with the LAPD for nearly 18 years, said she prays every day for Alesia Thomas' children.
After the emotional testimony, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta sentenced O'Callaghan to 36 months in jail, with the last 20 months suspended, meaning she could be released within five months with good behavior.
The case against O'Callaghan has attracted intense scrutiny amid the national criticism of excessive use of force by police. And the video evidence at trial underscored the value of monitoring police encounters with patrol and body cameras.
The LAPD is outfitting its officers with body cameras. Policy approved by the Los Angeles Police Commission in April required officers to turn their cameras on before most investigative or enforcement activities involving the public.
“It should be clear to everyone that the LAPD and the criminal justice system will hold officers accountable for their actions when they operate outside the law,” LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said in a statement after O'Callaghan's sentencing.
The jury forewoman in O'Callaghan's trial said the video played “a big role” in the jury's decision to find her guilty. One camera recorded conduct outside the vehicle while another documented activity inside the patrol car. That camera recorded O'Callaghan's assault and showed Thomas losing consciousness.
Thomas can be heard on the video saying, “I can't move. I can't breathe,” as O'Callaghan directs her into the back seat of the car.
As O'Callaghan gives Thomas commands about where to place her feet, Thomas says, “I can't, I can't.” The officer then screamed a profanity at Thomas and struck her throat with an open hand.
Thomas then glances directly at the camera with wide open eyes.
The officer tells Thomas she'll get “crushed” if she doesn't move her feet. As Thomas begins to sit up, O'Callaghan jams her boot into Thomas' groin three times. When O'Callaghan tries to readjust a nylon restraint around Thomas' feet, she compares it to “roping cattle.”
After the assault, the footage shows O'Callaghan smoking a cigarette. When she realizes Thomas is unconscious, O'Callaghan says, “That ain't a good sign.”
Thomas had asked officers for an ambulance more than 30 minutes before one was called.
O'Callaghan was not charged in connection with Thomas' death. An autopsy by the Los Angeles County coroner determined that cocaine intoxication was probably a “major factor” in the death. It wasn't possible to determine what role, if any, the struggle with O'Callaghan or other officers who took part in the arrest played in her death. The official cause was listed as “undetermined.”
O'Callaghan's attorney, Robert Rico, said his client had been relieved of duty by the LAPD pending the outcome of the trial. He said she will be fired because of her felony conviction and will also lose a job as an emergency dispatcher in Vermont that she got after her arrest.
Rico criticized Ohta's sentence as “excessively longer” than the 180 days in jail and probation the district attorney's office had recommended. “I wasn't shocked because this case has been politicized since Day One,'' Rico said.
After her tearful comments in the courtroom Thursday, O'Callaghan moved toward Sandra Thomas, who was seated with the rest of her family.
“Can I give her a hug?” Thomas asked Judge Ohta.
“No hugging,” he replied as bailiffs blocked her way. “Cannot be done.”
Later, outside the courtroom, Sandra Thomas said she was satisfied with the judge's sentence and O'Callaghan's contrition.
“I feel a great sense of relief,” she said.
There is no excuse for what LAPD officer Mary O'Callaghan did to Alesia Thomas and she’s lucky she was not charged in the victim’s death. O'Callaghan, a former U.S. Marine, acted during an arrest as if she were still in the Marine Corps.
O'Callaghan got one thing right though. When she noticed that Thomas was unconscious, she remarked, “That ain't a good sign.”
AT EMOTIONAL HEARING, LAPD OFFICER GETS 36 MONTHS IN JAIL FOR ASSAULT CAUGHT ON VIDEO
By Javier Panzar
Los Angeles Times
July 23, 2015
Wearing dark sunglasses inside a downtown L.A. courtroom, Sandra Thomas approached the witness stand Thursday and spoke about the Los Angeles police officer she holds responsible for her daughter's death.
“I have to ask God to help me learn how to forgive her,” she said to a judge before the sentencing of LAPD Officer Mary O'Callaghan. Thomas' 35-year-old daughter was handcuffed and assaulted by O'Callaghan during an arrest in 2012. She died shortly after being placed in the back of a squad car, complaining she couldn't breathe.
The encounter, which was captured on a dashboard camera, showed O'Callaghan striking Alesia Thomas — a mother of two — with an open hand and kicking her in the crotch. The officer then can be seen smoking a cigarette on the street, as Alesia Thomas fell unconscious.
Sandra Thomas, who works as a medical assistant, asked why O'Callaghan didn't show her daughter more sympathy and try to revive her.
“You have to show compassion for people,” she said. “It makes me feel like she wanted that to happen.”
When it was O'Callaghan's turn to address the court, she faced Sandra Thomas instead of the judge.
“Mother to mother,” O'Callaghan, a 50-year-old mother of three, said through tears, “I am extremely sorry for the loss of your daughter.”
Those were O'Callaghan's first public comments since Alesia Thomas' death and her arrest for assault.
O'Callaghan, a Marine veteran who had been with the LAPD for nearly 18 years, said she prays every day for Alesia Thomas' children.
After the emotional testimony, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta sentenced O'Callaghan to 36 months in jail, with the last 20 months suspended, meaning she could be released within five months with good behavior.
The case against O'Callaghan has attracted intense scrutiny amid the national criticism of excessive use of force by police. And the video evidence at trial underscored the value of monitoring police encounters with patrol and body cameras.
The LAPD is outfitting its officers with body cameras. Policy approved by the Los Angeles Police Commission in April required officers to turn their cameras on before most investigative or enforcement activities involving the public.
“It should be clear to everyone that the LAPD and the criminal justice system will hold officers accountable for their actions when they operate outside the law,” LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said in a statement after O'Callaghan's sentencing.
The jury forewoman in O'Callaghan's trial said the video played “a big role” in the jury's decision to find her guilty. One camera recorded conduct outside the vehicle while another documented activity inside the patrol car. That camera recorded O'Callaghan's assault and showed Thomas losing consciousness.
Thomas can be heard on the video saying, “I can't move. I can't breathe,” as O'Callaghan directs her into the back seat of the car.
As O'Callaghan gives Thomas commands about where to place her feet, Thomas says, “I can't, I can't.” The officer then screamed a profanity at Thomas and struck her throat with an open hand.
Thomas then glances directly at the camera with wide open eyes.
The officer tells Thomas she'll get “crushed” if she doesn't move her feet. As Thomas begins to sit up, O'Callaghan jams her boot into Thomas' groin three times. When O'Callaghan tries to readjust a nylon restraint around Thomas' feet, she compares it to “roping cattle.”
After the assault, the footage shows O'Callaghan smoking a cigarette. When she realizes Thomas is unconscious, O'Callaghan says, “That ain't a good sign.”
Thomas had asked officers for an ambulance more than 30 minutes before one was called.
O'Callaghan was not charged in connection with Thomas' death. An autopsy by the Los Angeles County coroner determined that cocaine intoxication was probably a “major factor” in the death. It wasn't possible to determine what role, if any, the struggle with O'Callaghan or other officers who took part in the arrest played in her death. The official cause was listed as “undetermined.”
O'Callaghan's attorney, Robert Rico, said his client had been relieved of duty by the LAPD pending the outcome of the trial. He said she will be fired because of her felony conviction and will also lose a job as an emergency dispatcher in Vermont that she got after her arrest.
Rico criticized Ohta's sentence as “excessively longer” than the 180 days in jail and probation the district attorney's office had recommended. “I wasn't shocked because this case has been politicized since Day One,'' Rico said.
After her tearful comments in the courtroom Thursday, O'Callaghan moved toward Sandra Thomas, who was seated with the rest of her family.
“Can I give her a hug?” Thomas asked Judge Ohta.
“No hugging,” he replied as bailiffs blocked her way. “Cannot be done.”
Later, outside the courtroom, Sandra Thomas said she was satisfied with the judge's sentence and O'Callaghan's contrition.
“I feel a great sense of relief,” she said.
Friday, July 24, 2015
HULK HOGAN PINNED BY THE ‘N’ WORD
A secret tape recording made eight years ago of a rant against his daughter for having a black boyfriend gets Hulk Hogan fired from the WWE
Eight years ago, professional wrestling star and Hollywood celebrity Hulk Hogan was royally pissed off at his daughter Brooke for having a black boyfriend. At the time he ranted:
"I’d rather if she was going to fuck some nigger. I’d rather have her marry an 8-foot-tall nigger worth a hundred million dollars! Like a basketball player!”
Alas, someone secretly recorded Hulk’s rant and it has now found its way to the internet. “One, two, three … You’re out.” Out of the WWE that is. As soon as the rant became public, the WWE fired Hogan.
I’ll bet old Hulk never figured he’d get pinned by a word.
Eight years ago, professional wrestling star and Hollywood celebrity Hulk Hogan was royally pissed off at his daughter Brooke for having a black boyfriend. At the time he ranted:
"I’d rather if she was going to fuck some nigger. I’d rather have her marry an 8-foot-tall nigger worth a hundred million dollars! Like a basketball player!”
Alas, someone secretly recorded Hulk’s rant and it has now found its way to the internet. “One, two, three … You’re out.” Out of the WWE that is. As soon as the rant became public, the WWE fired Hogan.
I’ll bet old Hulk never figured he’d get pinned by a word.
A SIMPLE EXPLANATION
The Unconventional Gazette
July 24, 2015
The mother-in-law arrives home from the shops to find her son-in-law, Paddy, in a steaming rage and hurriedly packing his suitcase."What happened Paddy?” she asks anxiously.
"What happened? I'll tell you what happened! I sent an email to my wife telling her I was coming home today from my fishing trip. I get home ... and guess what I found? Your daughter, my wife, Jean, naked with Joe Murphy in our marital bed! - This is unforgivable?? the end of our marriage. I'm done. I'm leaving forever!"
"Ah now, calm down, calm down Paddy!" says his mother-in-law. "There is something very odd going on here. Jean would never do such a thing! There must be a simple explanation. I'll go speak to her immediately and find out what happened."
Moments later, the mother-in-law comes back with a big smile.
"Paddy, there I told you there must be a simple explanation............... She never got your email"
July 24, 2015
The mother-in-law arrives home from the shops to find her son-in-law, Paddy, in a steaming rage and hurriedly packing his suitcase."What happened Paddy?” she asks anxiously.
"What happened? I'll tell you what happened! I sent an email to my wife telling her I was coming home today from my fishing trip. I get home ... and guess what I found? Your daughter, my wife, Jean, naked with Joe Murphy in our marital bed! - This is unforgivable?? the end of our marriage. I'm done. I'm leaving forever!"
"Ah now, calm down, calm down Paddy!" says his mother-in-law. "There is something very odd going on here. Jean would never do such a thing! There must be a simple explanation. I'll go speak to her immediately and find out what happened."
Moments later, the mother-in-law comes back with a big smile.
"Paddy, there I told you there must be a simple explanation............... She never got your email"
SHOOTING AT TRAINWRECK
By Bob Walsh
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
July 23, 2015
There was a shooting Thursday evening at a multiplex theater in Lafayette, Louisiana. Police report that a 58-year-old "lone white male" with a "criminal history" shot eleven people who were watching the movie Trainwreck in the theater, then killed himself. Two of his victims died, one is in critical condition.
I guess that movie really sucked. I have walked out of a couple of movies that disappointed me, but they were never so bad I wanted to kill other people let alone myself. (Well, there was that screaming kid one time, but I didn’t kill him. I only thought about it.)
Maybe the people he shot refused to shut down their smartphones. That could be justifiable homicide. Or maybe he was just a dingdong. I am confident the local constabulary will figure it out.
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
July 23, 2015
There was a shooting Thursday evening at a multiplex theater in Lafayette, Louisiana. Police report that a 58-year-old "lone white male" with a "criminal history" shot eleven people who were watching the movie Trainwreck in the theater, then killed himself. Two of his victims died, one is in critical condition.
I guess that movie really sucked. I have walked out of a couple of movies that disappointed me, but they were never so bad I wanted to kill other people let alone myself. (Well, there was that screaming kid one time, but I didn’t kill him. I only thought about it.)
Maybe the people he shot refused to shut down their smartphones. That could be justifiable homicide. Or maybe he was just a dingdong. I am confident the local constabulary will figure it out.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
WHAT PART DID MARIJANA PLAY IN THE SANDRA BLAND CASE?
The autopsy showed that Sandra Bland’s death in the Waller County jail was consistent with suicide and that she had high levels of marijuana in her system
The family of Sandra Bland believes she was killed while in the custody of the Waller County, Texas Sheriff’s Department. The media pounced on the story as another example of how black people are being victimized by white racist cops. As a result protests have been held in several parts of the country.
A Texas state trooper stopped Bland July 10 near Prairie View, Texas for changing lanes without signaling. After the simple traffic stop escalated into an altercation, Bland was booked into the Waller County jail on a charge of assaulting an officer, a felony. On July 13 jailers found her dead, hanging in her cell with a plastic trash bag around her neck
An autopsy performed by the Harris County medical examiner’s office in Houston found that Bland’s death was consistent with suicide. Bland's eyelids, eyeballs and overall face showed no evidence of a struggle, but a bruise on Bland's neck was consistent with suicide. Absent was any hemorrhaging in the neck and trachea area, which would have occurred had there been a violent struggle.
The autopsy also found high levels of marijuana in Bland’s system.
If there is any problem with this case, it is in how the state trooper handled a simple traffic stop. He should have never let the stop escalate into a physical altercation.
Now I wonder what part did marijuana play in this case? President Obama and the proponents of pot insist marijuana is less harmful than alcohol. Yeah, right.
The family of Sandra Bland believes she was killed while in the custody of the Waller County, Texas Sheriff’s Department. The media pounced on the story as another example of how black people are being victimized by white racist cops. As a result protests have been held in several parts of the country.
A Texas state trooper stopped Bland July 10 near Prairie View, Texas for changing lanes without signaling. After the simple traffic stop escalated into an altercation, Bland was booked into the Waller County jail on a charge of assaulting an officer, a felony. On July 13 jailers found her dead, hanging in her cell with a plastic trash bag around her neck
An autopsy performed by the Harris County medical examiner’s office in Houston found that Bland’s death was consistent with suicide. Bland's eyelids, eyeballs and overall face showed no evidence of a struggle, but a bruise on Bland's neck was consistent with suicide. Absent was any hemorrhaging in the neck and trachea area, which would have occurred had there been a violent struggle.
The autopsy also found high levels of marijuana in Bland’s system.
If there is any problem with this case, it is in how the state trooper handled a simple traffic stop. He should have never let the stop escalate into a physical altercation.
Now I wonder what part did marijuana play in this case? President Obama and the proponents of pot insist marijuana is less harmful than alcohol. Yeah, right.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
BOP SIGNS HISTORIC AGREEMENT WITH KALASHNIKOV USA
Kalashnikov USA will build a $50 million facility for the manufacture and assembly of AK-47s at the Federal Correctional Institution in Bastrop, Texas
WASHINGTON, D.C. – (AP) The importation of Russian-made AK-47s was banned when the U.S. imposed sanctions against Russia for its role in the Ukraine rebellion. RWC, the official importer and distributor of Kalashnikov AK-47s, announced in January that it planned to manufacture and assemble American-made AK-47s. RWC said that Kalashnikov USA was looking for sites in several states.
On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a historic agreement between the Bureau of Prisons and Kalashnikov USA. Flanked by BOP Director Charles Samuels and RWC CEO Thomas McCrossin, Lynch revealed that Kalashnikov USA would build a $50 million facility on the grounds of the Federal Correctional Institution in Bastrop, Texas and that the AK-47s would be manufactured and assembled only by inmates imprisoned for nonviolent drug offenses. The plant expects to employ about 235 inmates who will be paid the federal minimum wage.
Lynch said that although she and President Obama want to prohibit the possession of any kind of military-style rifles or assault weapons by civilians, the President gave his approval for the agreement because Congress will not pass such a ban and this agreement will offer nonviolent drug offenders gainful employment opportunities when they are released.
BOP Director Charles Samuels said, “This agreement with Kalashnikov USA will add a new chapter to our federal prison industries. This partnership will enable our nonviolent drug offenders to become machinists when they leave FCI Bastrop.” Samuels added that the money they earn will be put in a Bastrop bank savings account which they cannot withdraw until they are released.
When asked if he foresaw any security problems with inmates assembling deadly firearms, Samuels said he saw little danger in that because the inmates would be closely monitored by correctional officers and by security cameras. Any inmate caught with an AK-47 part will be fired and placed in administrative segregation.
RWC CEO McCrossin said his company looked at several potential sites before it occurred to him to explore a partnership with the federal Bureau of Prisons. Paying the minimum wage to non-union employees means that Kalashnikov USA is guaranteed a good profit and that its AK-47s can be offered at a competitive price.
The White House released the following statement:
The agreement between the BOP and Kalashnikov USA in no way means that the President is relenting in his efforts to have Congress pass legislation that prohibits civilian ownership and possession of military-style rifles or assault weapons. But since Congress refuses to pass such legislation, the BOP might as well take advantage of the opportunities this agreement offers nonviolent drug offender inmates.
The President is deeply concerned that the nation’s prisons are full of nonviolent drug offenders, most of them African-Americans who, because they made some youthful mistakes, had their lives ruined by a discriminatory criminal justice system that is in dire need of reform.
During his recent visit to the federal prison in El Reno, Oklahoma, President Obama said, “When they [nonviolent drug offenders] describe their youth, these are young people who made mistakes that aren't that different from the mistakes I made, and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made. The difference is, they did not have the kind of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes. ... That's what strikes me — there but for the grace of God.”
This agreement gives the participating inmates that second chance by providing them with real job opportunities once they have been paroled or have received a presidential commutation.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told the Associated Press he was appreciative that Kalashnikov USA selected the “gun friendly Lone Star State” for the site of its new plant. But the governor also expressed strong reservations about building the plant inside a prison. “I would much rather have that plant built anywhere else in our state,” said Gov. Abbott, “so that it would employ law abiding Texans instead of a bunch of law breaking convicts.”
When contacted by the Associated Press, ATF Director B. Todd Jones said he would have no comment on the agreement. Not so with outgoing DEA head Michele Leonhart when she was contacted.
“The Obama administration has taken leave of its senses," said Leonhart. "First it wants to ban AK-47s and now it wants to manufacture them. You can bet that once those drug dealers get out of prison, some of them will obtain the very AK-47s they themselves manufactured. This is a really dumb deal!”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – (AP) The importation of Russian-made AK-47s was banned when the U.S. imposed sanctions against Russia for its role in the Ukraine rebellion. RWC, the official importer and distributor of Kalashnikov AK-47s, announced in January that it planned to manufacture and assemble American-made AK-47s. RWC said that Kalashnikov USA was looking for sites in several states.
On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a historic agreement between the Bureau of Prisons and Kalashnikov USA. Flanked by BOP Director Charles Samuels and RWC CEO Thomas McCrossin, Lynch revealed that Kalashnikov USA would build a $50 million facility on the grounds of the Federal Correctional Institution in Bastrop, Texas and that the AK-47s would be manufactured and assembled only by inmates imprisoned for nonviolent drug offenses. The plant expects to employ about 235 inmates who will be paid the federal minimum wage.
Lynch said that although she and President Obama want to prohibit the possession of any kind of military-style rifles or assault weapons by civilians, the President gave his approval for the agreement because Congress will not pass such a ban and this agreement will offer nonviolent drug offenders gainful employment opportunities when they are released.
BOP Director Charles Samuels said, “This agreement with Kalashnikov USA will add a new chapter to our federal prison industries. This partnership will enable our nonviolent drug offenders to become machinists when they leave FCI Bastrop.” Samuels added that the money they earn will be put in a Bastrop bank savings account which they cannot withdraw until they are released.
When asked if he foresaw any security problems with inmates assembling deadly firearms, Samuels said he saw little danger in that because the inmates would be closely monitored by correctional officers and by security cameras. Any inmate caught with an AK-47 part will be fired and placed in administrative segregation.
RWC CEO McCrossin said his company looked at several potential sites before it occurred to him to explore a partnership with the federal Bureau of Prisons. Paying the minimum wage to non-union employees means that Kalashnikov USA is guaranteed a good profit and that its AK-47s can be offered at a competitive price.
The White House released the following statement:
The agreement between the BOP and Kalashnikov USA in no way means that the President is relenting in his efforts to have Congress pass legislation that prohibits civilian ownership and possession of military-style rifles or assault weapons. But since Congress refuses to pass such legislation, the BOP might as well take advantage of the opportunities this agreement offers nonviolent drug offender inmates.
The President is deeply concerned that the nation’s prisons are full of nonviolent drug offenders, most of them African-Americans who, because they made some youthful mistakes, had their lives ruined by a discriminatory criminal justice system that is in dire need of reform.
During his recent visit to the federal prison in El Reno, Oklahoma, President Obama said, “When they [nonviolent drug offenders] describe their youth, these are young people who made mistakes that aren't that different from the mistakes I made, and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made. The difference is, they did not have the kind of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes. ... That's what strikes me — there but for the grace of God.”
This agreement gives the participating inmates that second chance by providing them with real job opportunities once they have been paroled or have received a presidential commutation.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told the Associated Press he was appreciative that Kalashnikov USA selected the “gun friendly Lone Star State” for the site of its new plant. But the governor also expressed strong reservations about building the plant inside a prison. “I would much rather have that plant built anywhere else in our state,” said Gov. Abbott, “so that it would employ law abiding Texans instead of a bunch of law breaking convicts.”
When contacted by the Associated Press, ATF Director B. Todd Jones said he would have no comment on the agreement. Not so with outgoing DEA head Michele Leonhart when she was contacted.
“The Obama administration has taken leave of its senses," said Leonhart. "First it wants to ban AK-47s and now it wants to manufacture them. You can bet that once those drug dealers get out of prison, some of them will obtain the very AK-47s they themselves manufactured. This is a really dumb deal!”
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
MAN WAS PREPARED TO REPEL CHINESE INVADERS
Dead man had 1,200 firearms and two tons of ammo stashed in his Pacific Palisades home
LAPD officers responding to a ‘dead man in a car’ call last week not only discovered the corpse, but they also found 1,200 rifles, pistols and shotguns, together with two tons of ammunition stashed in his Palisades Drive home.
Many of the guns had never been fired and some still had their price tag. Many of the firearms were military-style weapons.
The man’s decomposing corpse was found in his car which was parked down the street from his home. There were no signs of foul play.
1,200 firearms and two tons of ammo? Supporters of the Second Amendment often claimed that knowledge of our armed citizenry kept Japan from invading the U.S. Now that the Japanese are no longer a threat, this guy must have been preparing to repel a Chinese invasion.
LAPD officers responding to a ‘dead man in a car’ call last week not only discovered the corpse, but they also found 1,200 rifles, pistols and shotguns, together with two tons of ammunition stashed in his Palisades Drive home.
Many of the guns had never been fired and some still had their price tag. Many of the firearms were military-style weapons.
The man’s decomposing corpse was found in his car which was parked down the street from his home. There were no signs of foul play.
1,200 firearms and two tons of ammo? Supporters of the Second Amendment often claimed that knowledge of our armed citizenry kept Japan from invading the U.S. Now that the Japanese are no longer a threat, this guy must have been preparing to repel a Chinese invasion.
MAN FLEEING FROM COPS CHOSE DEADLY PATH
An Oakland man died after fleeing cops on foot and getting wedged in a one-foot wide gap between two structures
After cops pulled him over Sunday evening on a traffic stop in East Oakland, California, the 23-year old driver took off and fled on foot. The cops couldn’t catch him and called for backup to search for the man for whom there was an outstanding $10,000 warrant.
About one-half hour later the cops found the 6-foot, 190 –pound man wedged in a one-foot wide gap between two structures. The cops managed to extricate the man and administered CPR until an ambulance arrived. The as yet unidentified man was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Police found a pound of pot in the man’s car. Medical marijuana, no doubt.
After cops pulled him over Sunday evening on a traffic stop in East Oakland, California, the 23-year old driver took off and fled on foot. The cops couldn’t catch him and called for backup to search for the man for whom there was an outstanding $10,000 warrant.
About one-half hour later the cops found the 6-foot, 190 –pound man wedged in a one-foot wide gap between two structures. The cops managed to extricate the man and administered CPR until an ambulance arrived. The as yet unidentified man was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Police found a pound of pot in the man’s car. Medical marijuana, no doubt.
Sunday, July 19, 2015
TRUMP’S MOUTH OVERLOADS HIS BIG ASS
Questioning John McCain’s heroism clearly goes beyond the pale
When Donald Trump broad brushed illegal Mexican immigrants as people who come to the U.S. to commit crimes, he was criticized by Sen. John McCain for making those remarks. The Donald did not wait long to retaliate.
Appearing on Saturday with other Republican candidates at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Trump attacked McCain by saying:
“He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Trump went on to repeat, “He’s a war hero because he was captured.”
How crass of a man who never served a single second in our nation’s armed forces. During the Vietnam War, Trump was the beneficiary of a student deferment from military service first and later was deferred because he had a bad foot.
McCain, on the other hand, flew numerous bombing missions over North Vietnam before he was shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese. During his captivity, the North Vietnamese offered to release McCain for propaganda purposes, but he refused, telling his captors he would not leave untill all the other American POWs had been released.
McCain was a true American hero. How dare Trump question his heroism. And Trump went beyond that when he said, “I like people who weren’t captured.” That was besmirching all POWs.
Trump clearly went beyond the pale. He has refused to apologize for his besmirching remarks.
I know that many of you like Trump for telling it like it is. But come on guys, wake up and smell the roses. The Donald doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected president. He may be telling it like he and you think it is, but he’s clearly not getting his facts right. And in his eagerness to get even with McCain, he let his mouth overload his big ass.
Trump has become a wrecking ball that is destroying the slim chances for a Republican to defeat Hillary Clinton.
During the Vietnam War, Trump was deferred for having a bad foot. He claims it was a bone spur, but I wonder if that wasn’t really a case of The Donald suffering from an incurable foot-in-mouth disease.
When Donald Trump broad brushed illegal Mexican immigrants as people who come to the U.S. to commit crimes, he was criticized by Sen. John McCain for making those remarks. The Donald did not wait long to retaliate.
Appearing on Saturday with other Republican candidates at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Trump attacked McCain by saying:
“He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Trump went on to repeat, “He’s a war hero because he was captured.”
How crass of a man who never served a single second in our nation’s armed forces. During the Vietnam War, Trump was the beneficiary of a student deferment from military service first and later was deferred because he had a bad foot.
McCain, on the other hand, flew numerous bombing missions over North Vietnam before he was shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese. During his captivity, the North Vietnamese offered to release McCain for propaganda purposes, but he refused, telling his captors he would not leave untill all the other American POWs had been released.
McCain was a true American hero. How dare Trump question his heroism. And Trump went beyond that when he said, “I like people who weren’t captured.” That was besmirching all POWs.
Trump clearly went beyond the pale. He has refused to apologize for his besmirching remarks.
I know that many of you like Trump for telling it like it is. But come on guys, wake up and smell the roses. The Donald doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected president. He may be telling it like he and you think it is, but he’s clearly not getting his facts right. And in his eagerness to get even with McCain, he let his mouth overload his big ass.
Trump has become a wrecking ball that is destroying the slim chances for a Republican to defeat Hillary Clinton.
During the Vietnam War, Trump was deferred for having a bad foot. He claims it was a bone spur, but I wonder if that wasn’t really a case of The Donald suffering from an incurable foot-in-mouth disease.
Friday, July 17, 2015
MISTAKES, MISTAKES, MISTAKES ….. WHAT MISTAKES?
During his visit to the federal prison at El Reno, Oklahoma, President Obama kept emphasizing the “mistakes” inmates made
On Monday, President Obama commuted the sentences of 46 “nonviolent” drug offenders doing time in federal prisons. On Thursday he visited the federal prison at El Reno, Oklahoma where he met with six “nonviolent” drug offenders. Afterwards he said:
Every single one of them emphasized the fact that they had done something wrong; they are prepared to take responsibility for it, but they also urged us to think about how society could’ve reached them earlier on in life to keep them out of trouble.
What a joke. Our president got conned with that “We done wrong” and “We take responsibility” convict horseshit. Had he talked to six rapists or murderers, they would have played exactly the same tune.
Obama went on to say:
I think we have a tendency sometimes to almost take for granted, or think it's normal, that so many young people end up in our criminal justice system. It's not normal. It's not what happens in other countries. What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things.
When they describe their youth, these are young people who made mistakes that aren't that different from the mistakes I made, and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made.
The difference is, they did not have the kind of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes. ... That's what strikes me — there but for the grace of God.
Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes ….. what mistakes? Those six inmates were not in prison for getting caught smoking a joint or littering the sidewalk. They are in prison for committing crimes, not for making mistakes. And they are not in prison for “doing stupid things.”
Hitting the wrong key on a computer keyboard is a mistake. Locking your keys inside the car is a mistake. Joyriding in a stolen car is a crime. Selling dope is a crime. Crimes are not mistakes. Criminals may do stupid things while committing a crime, but they’re still committing a crime. When Barack Obama was smoking marijuana, that may have been a stupid thing to do, but he was nevertheless committing a crime, not making a mistake.
Most prison inmates doing hard time for drug offenses are doing so for selling drugs. That’s a serious crime, not a mistake. And, by the way, while the sales of narcotics may be nonviolent, there is a lot of violence associated with the illegal sales of drugs.
When Obama made those 46 commutations, he did not commit a crime, but he may have made a mistake.
On Monday, President Obama commuted the sentences of 46 “nonviolent” drug offenders doing time in federal prisons. On Thursday he visited the federal prison at El Reno, Oklahoma where he met with six “nonviolent” drug offenders. Afterwards he said:
Every single one of them emphasized the fact that they had done something wrong; they are prepared to take responsibility for it, but they also urged us to think about how society could’ve reached them earlier on in life to keep them out of trouble.
What a joke. Our president got conned with that “We done wrong” and “We take responsibility” convict horseshit. Had he talked to six rapists or murderers, they would have played exactly the same tune.
Obama went on to say:
I think we have a tendency sometimes to almost take for granted, or think it's normal, that so many young people end up in our criminal justice system. It's not normal. It's not what happens in other countries. What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things.
When they describe their youth, these are young people who made mistakes that aren't that different from the mistakes I made, and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made.
The difference is, they did not have the kind of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes. ... That's what strikes me — there but for the grace of God.
Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes ….. what mistakes? Those six inmates were not in prison for getting caught smoking a joint or littering the sidewalk. They are in prison for committing crimes, not for making mistakes. And they are not in prison for “doing stupid things.”
Hitting the wrong key on a computer keyboard is a mistake. Locking your keys inside the car is a mistake. Joyriding in a stolen car is a crime. Selling dope is a crime. Crimes are not mistakes. Criminals may do stupid things while committing a crime, but they’re still committing a crime. When Barack Obama was smoking marijuana, that may have been a stupid thing to do, but he was nevertheless committing a crime, not making a mistake.
Most prison inmates doing hard time for drug offenses are doing so for selling drugs. That’s a serious crime, not a mistake. And, by the way, while the sales of narcotics may be nonviolent, there is a lot of violence associated with the illegal sales of drugs.
When Obama made those 46 commutations, he did not commit a crime, but he may have made a mistake.
CALIFORNIA’S PRISON POTTY-WATCH
Contraband is found on 41 percent of prison inmates put on “potty-watch”
By Richard Krupp, PhD
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
July 16, 2015
From what I remember, smuggling contraband during visits was a common method for inmates to get drugs, weapons, etc. A common occurrence is the exchange of a kiss between an inmate and his girlfriend or wife when departing the visiting room.
The drugs would be swallowed and eventually come out the other end. Recently the Sacramento Bee ran a story about this practice, but of course focused on the poor inconvenienced inmate.
The Bee appears to be a sympathetic to the crime-tolerant positions taken by the State of California. Many of their articles seem to evoke pity for our unfortunate criminals.
I found the most recent scoop somewhat amusing.
From the Bee, buzzing around to shock your sensibilities:
California’s invasive ‘contraband watch’ often yields little
California uses a controversial method to recover contraband from inmates believed to have swallowed it or concealed it in body cavities: “potty watches” where inmates are handcuffed and shackled for days or even weeks while guards watch around-the-clock until nature takes its course.
Prison officials say the watches are necessary to recover weapons, cell phones and notes passed among inmates to coordinate illegal gang activities. Some recovered items seem truly bizarre: a can opener, hearing aids, and an entire electric tattoo kit. The watches have been used 1,200 times in the last 2½ years, yet state reports show that they produced results less than 41 percent of the time.
“It was the worst two weeks of my life,” recalled Raymond Kidd, who was on contraband watch at Folsom State Prison for 13 days in 2011 that found nothing. “I had to be duct-taped and gift-wrapped and shackled, 24-7, even while I slept.” Kidd said his girlfriend was chewing gum when he kissed her in the visiting room; guards watching on a video screen suspected she had passed him a balloon full of drugs that he swallowed during the kiss.
Suspected smugglers are strip-searched, then placed in an isolation cell in which the toilet has been covered and the water turned off. Their clothing is taped shut at the waist and legs to prevent them from physically reaching body cavities, their hands are cuffed to a chain around their waist and their legs may be shackled. If they fight back, they can be strapped down by the arms and legs. What are known as “hand isolation devices” — similar to oven mitts — can be used with a warden’s approval.
There they stay for at least 72 hours or until they complete at least three closely watched bowel movements and a guard searches through the results. Something is recovered from about four out of 10 inmates. “It’s a fairly low percentage and people who aren’t guilty are being put through torture,” said Laura Magnani, an American Friends Service Committee program director who sits on a committee that mediates between the prison system and inmates. “I mean, people are shocked when they hear of this.”
“We still have to have some way to determine if inmates have something in their bodies or they don’t,” Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard said in an interview. He said the department has reduced the number of watches in recent years and is exploring scanning technology that could one day replace them. The watches were upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year…(for the full load read http://tinyurl.com/nzhryrg.)
Actually, a 41% success rate for potty-watch contraband is very impressive. A professional baseball player with a .410 batting average would be leading the league. This tells me that the Correctional Officers are doing a great job identifying the smugglers. Keep up the good work!
Of the 1200 potty watches over the 30 months reported in the above article there must have been almost 500 packages of drugs that were kept out of the prisons. Even the crime tolerant media thinks allowing drugs to enter a prison is bad. It interferes with all of those rehabilitation programs, not to mention facilitates prison violence.
I’m not sure why the Department of Corrections would want to reduce the number of potty-watches given that they are keeping drugs and gang communications out of the prisons. Besides, it has the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from the Court of Appeals. Perhaps Jeff Beard can’t tell time on his potty-watch—something about the movement I suspect.
I don’t think the Department is overly concerned about the can openers so much, unless they are used as weapons (or to bust out of the can.) I don’t know what to say about keistered cell phones, absent the obvious crappy reception.
There may be a lot a intrigue involved. Secret kisses, unseen exchanges, and surreptitious surveillance seems exciting to the general public, but in the end all is revealed.
Imagine being a correctional officer assigned to potty-watch. You really can’t tell the spouse and kids at the dinner table what you did all day at work.
The media should be more concerned about the correctional staff who have to endure this ordeal. They have to do the real dirty work.
By Richard Krupp, PhD
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
July 16, 2015
From what I remember, smuggling contraband during visits was a common method for inmates to get drugs, weapons, etc. A common occurrence is the exchange of a kiss between an inmate and his girlfriend or wife when departing the visiting room.
The drugs would be swallowed and eventually come out the other end. Recently the Sacramento Bee ran a story about this practice, but of course focused on the poor inconvenienced inmate.
The Bee appears to be a sympathetic to the crime-tolerant positions taken by the State of California. Many of their articles seem to evoke pity for our unfortunate criminals.
I found the most recent scoop somewhat amusing.
From the Bee, buzzing around to shock your sensibilities:
California’s invasive ‘contraband watch’ often yields little
California uses a controversial method to recover contraband from inmates believed to have swallowed it or concealed it in body cavities: “potty watches” where inmates are handcuffed and shackled for days or even weeks while guards watch around-the-clock until nature takes its course.
Prison officials say the watches are necessary to recover weapons, cell phones and notes passed among inmates to coordinate illegal gang activities. Some recovered items seem truly bizarre: a can opener, hearing aids, and an entire electric tattoo kit. The watches have been used 1,200 times in the last 2½ years, yet state reports show that they produced results less than 41 percent of the time.
“It was the worst two weeks of my life,” recalled Raymond Kidd, who was on contraband watch at Folsom State Prison for 13 days in 2011 that found nothing. “I had to be duct-taped and gift-wrapped and shackled, 24-7, even while I slept.” Kidd said his girlfriend was chewing gum when he kissed her in the visiting room; guards watching on a video screen suspected she had passed him a balloon full of drugs that he swallowed during the kiss.
Suspected smugglers are strip-searched, then placed in an isolation cell in which the toilet has been covered and the water turned off. Their clothing is taped shut at the waist and legs to prevent them from physically reaching body cavities, their hands are cuffed to a chain around their waist and their legs may be shackled. If they fight back, they can be strapped down by the arms and legs. What are known as “hand isolation devices” — similar to oven mitts — can be used with a warden’s approval.
There they stay for at least 72 hours or until they complete at least three closely watched bowel movements and a guard searches through the results. Something is recovered from about four out of 10 inmates. “It’s a fairly low percentage and people who aren’t guilty are being put through torture,” said Laura Magnani, an American Friends Service Committee program director who sits on a committee that mediates between the prison system and inmates. “I mean, people are shocked when they hear of this.”
“We still have to have some way to determine if inmates have something in their bodies or they don’t,” Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard said in an interview. He said the department has reduced the number of watches in recent years and is exploring scanning technology that could one day replace them. The watches were upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year…(for the full load read http://tinyurl.com/nzhryrg.)
Actually, a 41% success rate for potty-watch contraband is very impressive. A professional baseball player with a .410 batting average would be leading the league. This tells me that the Correctional Officers are doing a great job identifying the smugglers. Keep up the good work!
Of the 1200 potty watches over the 30 months reported in the above article there must have been almost 500 packages of drugs that were kept out of the prisons. Even the crime tolerant media thinks allowing drugs to enter a prison is bad. It interferes with all of those rehabilitation programs, not to mention facilitates prison violence.
I’m not sure why the Department of Corrections would want to reduce the number of potty-watches given that they are keeping drugs and gang communications out of the prisons. Besides, it has the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from the Court of Appeals. Perhaps Jeff Beard can’t tell time on his potty-watch—something about the movement I suspect.
I don’t think the Department is overly concerned about the can openers so much, unless they are used as weapons (or to bust out of the can.) I don’t know what to say about keistered cell phones, absent the obvious crappy reception.
There may be a lot a intrigue involved. Secret kisses, unseen exchanges, and surreptitious surveillance seems exciting to the general public, but in the end all is revealed.
Imagine being a correctional officer assigned to potty-watch. You really can’t tell the spouse and kids at the dinner table what you did all day at work.
The media should be more concerned about the correctional staff who have to endure this ordeal. They have to do the real dirty work.
Thursday, July 16, 2015
IN MEXICO, CRIME IS BIGGER THAN A CRIME BOSS
Stratfor Global Intelligence
July 14, 2015
Summary
The July 11 escape of the notorious Sinaloa crime boss, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, from a maximum-security prison in Mexico has drawn considerable Mexican and international media attention. While the brazen and elaborate nature of the escape will add to the lore already surrounding Guzman, the escape itself carries little significance for organized crime in Mexico — though it will place a momentary strain on coordination between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement. The forces that drive the evolution of organized crime and their impact on society in Mexico are simply greater than any single crime boss.
Analysis
Mexico's geography enabled drug traffickers like Guzman to operate on a global scale. As international law enforcement effectively dismantled the powerful Colombian cartels and stymied their maritime trafficking routes through the Caribbean in the 1980s and 1990s, Mexico became the lynchpin of new smuggling routes into the United States. This evolution took place just as the Mexican criminal networks that trafficked drugs broke down into smaller groups. Though crime bosses like Guzman rose in stature relative to others, all organized crime groups in Mexico are the result of a systematic decentralization in cartel structure that continues today.
In fact, by the time Guzman was arrested in February 2014, the Sinaloa Cartel was already fragmenting. Groups that operated in areas such as Chihuahua, Sonora, Sinaloa and Baja California states — areas that were once part of El Chapo's criminal network — were already acting autonomously. Some of them were even fighting one another. The arrest of Guzman and the subsequent capture of some of his lieutenants only accelerated this trend. Now, geographic domains that were controlled by Sinaloa-based crime bosses for decades are now controlled by other groups, including the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, which expanded from the Tierra Caliente region, and La Linea, which was once the enforcement group for the Juarez cartel.
Among the myths surrounding El Chapo were tales pertaining to his purported role as an arbiter of organized crime in Mexico. According to some of those myths, his organization preferred to expand its business operations through negotiation, rather than through violent conflict. But Guzman, in fact, was party to some of the most violent turf wars in Mexico, introducing rampant insecurity in places such as Tijuana, Nuevo Laredo and Ciudad Juarez. These conflicts had subsided by the time he was arrested but not before nationwide turf wars devolved into more localized conflicts. Guzman may attempt to re-consolidate the control he once had over Mexico's organized crime activities, but his previous efforts to do so failed, and the task would be even tougher now that his network has become even thinner.
Since 2012, Mexican organized crime has become increasingly balkanized amid government efforts to revamp public security institutions, and nationwide levels of organized crime-related violence have gradually diminished. Though having more crime groups means there are more bosses, these leaders have not been able to sustain violent offensives against their rivals and fend off the state as well as their predecessors did. And while waves of extreme violence can still emerge in places like Tamaulipas, they typically weaken as soon as security forces move in — in contrast to past conflicts in places like Juarez, where violence continued to climb despite repeated deployments of federal troops.
July 14, 2015
Summary
The July 11 escape of the notorious Sinaloa crime boss, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, from a maximum-security prison in Mexico has drawn considerable Mexican and international media attention. While the brazen and elaborate nature of the escape will add to the lore already surrounding Guzman, the escape itself carries little significance for organized crime in Mexico — though it will place a momentary strain on coordination between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement. The forces that drive the evolution of organized crime and their impact on society in Mexico are simply greater than any single crime boss.
Analysis
Mexico's geography enabled drug traffickers like Guzman to operate on a global scale. As international law enforcement effectively dismantled the powerful Colombian cartels and stymied their maritime trafficking routes through the Caribbean in the 1980s and 1990s, Mexico became the lynchpin of new smuggling routes into the United States. This evolution took place just as the Mexican criminal networks that trafficked drugs broke down into smaller groups. Though crime bosses like Guzman rose in stature relative to others, all organized crime groups in Mexico are the result of a systematic decentralization in cartel structure that continues today.
In fact, by the time Guzman was arrested in February 2014, the Sinaloa Cartel was already fragmenting. Groups that operated in areas such as Chihuahua, Sonora, Sinaloa and Baja California states — areas that were once part of El Chapo's criminal network — were already acting autonomously. Some of them were even fighting one another. The arrest of Guzman and the subsequent capture of some of his lieutenants only accelerated this trend. Now, geographic domains that were controlled by Sinaloa-based crime bosses for decades are now controlled by other groups, including the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, which expanded from the Tierra Caliente region, and La Linea, which was once the enforcement group for the Juarez cartel.
Among the myths surrounding El Chapo were tales pertaining to his purported role as an arbiter of organized crime in Mexico. According to some of those myths, his organization preferred to expand its business operations through negotiation, rather than through violent conflict. But Guzman, in fact, was party to some of the most violent turf wars in Mexico, introducing rampant insecurity in places such as Tijuana, Nuevo Laredo and Ciudad Juarez. These conflicts had subsided by the time he was arrested but not before nationwide turf wars devolved into more localized conflicts. Guzman may attempt to re-consolidate the control he once had over Mexico's organized crime activities, but his previous efforts to do so failed, and the task would be even tougher now that his network has become even thinner.
Since 2012, Mexican organized crime has become increasingly balkanized amid government efforts to revamp public security institutions, and nationwide levels of organized crime-related violence have gradually diminished. Though having more crime groups means there are more bosses, these leaders have not been able to sustain violent offensives against their rivals and fend off the state as well as their predecessors did. And while waves of extreme violence can still emerge in places like Tamaulipas, they typically weaken as soon as security forces move in — in contrast to past conflicts in places like Juarez, where violence continued to climb despite repeated deployments of federal troops.
NYC AWARDS CAREER CRIMINAL’S FAMILY $5.9 MILLION
Sergeants Benevolent Association head Ed Mullins describes the settlement with Eric Garner’s family "obscene" and "shameful"
One year ago, Eric Garner, 43, was selling untaxed cigarettes on a Staten Island street. Store owners nearby complained to the police. He had several previous arrests on the same offense and was out on bail awaiting trial on the latest charge. When NYPD officers attempted to arrest him, the 350 pound giant resisted arrest. One officer helped subdue him with an arm around the neck, which the media described as a prohibited chokehold. Garner croaked and the medical examiner labeled his death as a homicide.
On Monday the city awarded the family of Eric Garner $5.9 million as a wrongful death settlement.
Ed Mullins, head of the Sergeants Benevolent Association described the settlement as “obscene” and “shameful.” The sergeants union leader said:
Where is the justice for New York taxpayers? In my view, the city has chosen to abandon its fiscal responsibility to all of its citizens and genuflect to the select few who curry favor with the city government. Mr. Garner’s family should not be rewarded simply because he repeatedly chose to break the law and resist arrest.
NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer justified the extraordinary size of the settlement because of the “extraordinary impact” Garner’s death had on the entire country. Stringer said, “It forced us to examine the state of race relations, and the relationship between our police force and the people they serve.”
New York’s Sandinista loving Mayor Bill de Blasio said:
No sum of money can make this family whole, but hopefully the Garner family can find some peace and finality from today's settlement. By reaching a resolution, family and other loved ones can move forward even though we know they will never forget this tragic incident."
Stringer and de Blasio ought to be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. Stringer based the size of the settlement not on the circumstances surrounding Garner's death, but rather on the fact that the whole country got exercised over his death. And by approving the amount, de Blasio agreed with him. That truly is obscene and shameful.
Was Garner’s death a wrongful death? Far from it, in my professional opinion. Tragic it was, but when a career criminal with a history of more than 30 arrests and weighing 350 pounds resists arrest and it takes several officers to subdue him so that he subsequently dies, that is not a wrongful death.
Those who side or sympathize with Garner will say that most of his arrests were for petty crimes. True, but they were crimes nevertheless. And the city had ordered a crackdown on the sales of untaxed cigarettes, an offense Garner had made a career of.
Unlike the Garner case, there is a case in Gardena, California where the city shelled out $4.7 million to the family of an unarmed man who was shot dead by the police and to the family of another man who was wounded by the gunfire.
On June 2, 2013, Ricardo Diaz Zeferino was out looking for his brother’s stolen bicycle. Two of his friends, riding their own bikes, were also searching for the stolen bicycle. Gardena cops responding to the report of a bicycle stolen from a CVS pharmacy mistook Diaz Zeferino’s friends as the bike thieves. They were ordered to put their hands up. Diaz Zeferino ran up on foot to tell the cops they had the wrong men. When ordered to put his hands up, he kept raising and lowering them. According to the police report, when he appeared to remove something from his back pocket, the cops opened fire, killing him and wounding one of his friends.
On Tuesday U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson released dash cam videos of the shooting, the release of which had been fought by the city. The city filed a notice of appeal with the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The 9th quickly issued a stay which reversed the release, but it was too late because the videos had already hit the internet.
I can understand why the city fought against the release of the dash cam videos. The shooting really looks bad. On the videos it does not appear as though Diaz Zeferino presented an imminent threat to the lives of the officers.
That brings up a problem with videos. What appears to be a cold blooded killing may not at all have been what actually happened.
Illegal drugs may have played a part in the bizarre behavior of Diaz Zeferino. An autopsy revealed that at the time of his death he had alcohol and methamphetamine in his system.
The City of Gardena settled with the Diaz Zeferino family because it realized that if the family’s lawsuit went to trial, once a jury viewed those videos, its chances of winning were less than a snowball’s chance in hell. Not so with New York.
The Garner settlement sets a terrible precedent for NYC. From now on anytime cops kill an unarmed man and his death sets off disturbances and riots in other parts of the country, New York will have to shell out big bucks to offset the “extraordinary impact” the case had on the entire country.
One year ago, Eric Garner, 43, was selling untaxed cigarettes on a Staten Island street. Store owners nearby complained to the police. He had several previous arrests on the same offense and was out on bail awaiting trial on the latest charge. When NYPD officers attempted to arrest him, the 350 pound giant resisted arrest. One officer helped subdue him with an arm around the neck, which the media described as a prohibited chokehold. Garner croaked and the medical examiner labeled his death as a homicide.
On Monday the city awarded the family of Eric Garner $5.9 million as a wrongful death settlement.
Ed Mullins, head of the Sergeants Benevolent Association described the settlement as “obscene” and “shameful.” The sergeants union leader said:
Where is the justice for New York taxpayers? In my view, the city has chosen to abandon its fiscal responsibility to all of its citizens and genuflect to the select few who curry favor with the city government. Mr. Garner’s family should not be rewarded simply because he repeatedly chose to break the law and resist arrest.
NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer justified the extraordinary size of the settlement because of the “extraordinary impact” Garner’s death had on the entire country. Stringer said, “It forced us to examine the state of race relations, and the relationship between our police force and the people they serve.”
New York’s Sandinista loving Mayor Bill de Blasio said:
No sum of money can make this family whole, but hopefully the Garner family can find some peace and finality from today's settlement. By reaching a resolution, family and other loved ones can move forward even though we know they will never forget this tragic incident."
Stringer and de Blasio ought to be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. Stringer based the size of the settlement not on the circumstances surrounding Garner's death, but rather on the fact that the whole country got exercised over his death. And by approving the amount, de Blasio agreed with him. That truly is obscene and shameful.
Was Garner’s death a wrongful death? Far from it, in my professional opinion. Tragic it was, but when a career criminal with a history of more than 30 arrests and weighing 350 pounds resists arrest and it takes several officers to subdue him so that he subsequently dies, that is not a wrongful death.
Those who side or sympathize with Garner will say that most of his arrests were for petty crimes. True, but they were crimes nevertheless. And the city had ordered a crackdown on the sales of untaxed cigarettes, an offense Garner had made a career of.
Unlike the Garner case, there is a case in Gardena, California where the city shelled out $4.7 million to the family of an unarmed man who was shot dead by the police and to the family of another man who was wounded by the gunfire.
On June 2, 2013, Ricardo Diaz Zeferino was out looking for his brother’s stolen bicycle. Two of his friends, riding their own bikes, were also searching for the stolen bicycle. Gardena cops responding to the report of a bicycle stolen from a CVS pharmacy mistook Diaz Zeferino’s friends as the bike thieves. They were ordered to put their hands up. Diaz Zeferino ran up on foot to tell the cops they had the wrong men. When ordered to put his hands up, he kept raising and lowering them. According to the police report, when he appeared to remove something from his back pocket, the cops opened fire, killing him and wounding one of his friends.
On Tuesday U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson released dash cam videos of the shooting, the release of which had been fought by the city. The city filed a notice of appeal with the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The 9th quickly issued a stay which reversed the release, but it was too late because the videos had already hit the internet.
I can understand why the city fought against the release of the dash cam videos. The shooting really looks bad. On the videos it does not appear as though Diaz Zeferino presented an imminent threat to the lives of the officers.
That brings up a problem with videos. What appears to be a cold blooded killing may not at all have been what actually happened.
Illegal drugs may have played a part in the bizarre behavior of Diaz Zeferino. An autopsy revealed that at the time of his death he had alcohol and methamphetamine in his system.
The City of Gardena settled with the Diaz Zeferino family because it realized that if the family’s lawsuit went to trial, once a jury viewed those videos, its chances of winning were less than a snowball’s chance in hell. Not so with New York.
The Garner settlement sets a terrible precedent for NYC. From now on anytime cops kill an unarmed man and his death sets off disturbances and riots in other parts of the country, New York will have to shell out big bucks to offset the “extraordinary impact” the case had on the entire country.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
U.S. ILL PREPARED FOR CYBER WARFARE
Cyber warfare expert Richard Clarke accuses Obama administration of “almost criminal negligence”
The next great war may not be fought by soldiers on the traditional battlefield. It will likely be fought by geeks sitting behind computers. It’s called cyber warfare. Experts believe that in the near future wars can be won and lost without firing a shot. An all-out cyber attack, it is predicted, can cripple a nation’s power grid, infrastructure and military capabilities, thereby bringing it to its knees.
On Sunday’s ABC This Week With George Stephanopoulos the subject of cyber warfare came up. Richard Clarke, former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism and advisor to four presidents, had some harsh things to say about the Obama administration, accusing it of “almost criminal negligence,”
Clarke said that the networks we rely on as a country to protect us against cyber warfare are very fragile and that instead of 50 or 60 government agencies being responsible for cyber security, we need to create one authority in the federal government that has the mandate and the money to secure cyber space.
My suggestion is to do away with the worthless Department of Homeland Security and replace it with a Department of Cyber Security.
Here is a transcript of the interview with Richard Clarke:
STEPHANOPOULOS:Let's get more on this from cyber terror expert, Richard Clarke, key adviser to four presidents.
Welcome back, Richard.
We heard how worried about this OPM hack the FBI director was. You served four presidents, so your background likely looked at, as well.
Try to give a sense of how serious this breach was and what can be done with this information.
RICHARD CLARKE, CHAIRMAN & CEO, GOOD HARBOR RISK MANAGEMENT: Well, it's very serious because the -- the form that I had to shell out went on for almost 100 pages -- everything about my background. And they have that for 21 million Americans, date of birth, Social Security number, foreign contacts, foreign trips, any problems you've ever had medically or psychologically, any addiction problems you ever had.
They can use this information to blackmail people. They can use it to steal identities.
But, George, I don't blame the Chinese. This is what intelligence agencies do. This is what we, the United States, do. We steal this sort of information.
I blame the Obama administration for taking this issue not seriously enough.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But...
CLARKE: This is almost criminal negligence.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Criminal negligence, those are strong words, Richard. We just saw the incoming chair of the Joint Chiefs say that all options are on the table.
If there has been criminal negligence, what's the most important thing in the -- that needs to be done right now that's not being done?
CLARKE: We need to take the job of cyber security away from 50 or 60 small government agencies like OPM that clearly can't handle it and create one authority in the federal government that has the mandate and the money to secure cyber space.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Also, you said this week, you know, we saw these glitches hit the same day -- the New York Stock Exchange, United Airlines, "The Wall Street Journal" Web page. Computer software problems blamed. Every official who came out said no, no, no, there's not -- this is not an act of cyber war.
But you sounded a note of skepticism.
CLARKE: Well, they all said it wasn't cyber war within hours of it happening. And to find out, it actually takes weeks of forensic activity to go through the log files and do the -- the good, detailed forensics.
We know two things. Coincidences do happen in the world a lot. But we also know that in cyber war, people do trial runs. And they try to make those trial runs look like something other than what they are. They try to make them look like normal computer failure.
Either way, what it proves is that the networks that we rely on as a country are very fragile. And if this happens without anybody doing malicious activity, think of what could happen if someone did to malicious activity.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That is some point. Scary stuff.
OK, Richard Clarke, thanks very much.
In short, the U.S. is ill prepared against an all-out cyber attack. If our government doesn’t get its act together, in a war with China or Russia, we could conceivably be defeated without a shot being fired.
Obama may be gloating over the nuclear arms deal just reached with Iran, but in the not too distant future nuclear weapons could well be neutralized by cyber warfare.
The next great war may not be fought by soldiers on the traditional battlefield. It will likely be fought by geeks sitting behind computers. It’s called cyber warfare. Experts believe that in the near future wars can be won and lost without firing a shot. An all-out cyber attack, it is predicted, can cripple a nation’s power grid, infrastructure and military capabilities, thereby bringing it to its knees.
On Sunday’s ABC This Week With George Stephanopoulos the subject of cyber warfare came up. Richard Clarke, former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism and advisor to four presidents, had some harsh things to say about the Obama administration, accusing it of “almost criminal negligence,”
Clarke said that the networks we rely on as a country to protect us against cyber warfare are very fragile and that instead of 50 or 60 government agencies being responsible for cyber security, we need to create one authority in the federal government that has the mandate and the money to secure cyber space.
My suggestion is to do away with the worthless Department of Homeland Security and replace it with a Department of Cyber Security.
Here is a transcript of the interview with Richard Clarke:
STEPHANOPOULOS:Let's get more on this from cyber terror expert, Richard Clarke, key adviser to four presidents.
Welcome back, Richard.
We heard how worried about this OPM hack the FBI director was. You served four presidents, so your background likely looked at, as well.
Try to give a sense of how serious this breach was and what can be done with this information.
RICHARD CLARKE, CHAIRMAN & CEO, GOOD HARBOR RISK MANAGEMENT: Well, it's very serious because the -- the form that I had to shell out went on for almost 100 pages -- everything about my background. And they have that for 21 million Americans, date of birth, Social Security number, foreign contacts, foreign trips, any problems you've ever had medically or psychologically, any addiction problems you ever had.
They can use this information to blackmail people. They can use it to steal identities.
But, George, I don't blame the Chinese. This is what intelligence agencies do. This is what we, the United States, do. We steal this sort of information.
I blame the Obama administration for taking this issue not seriously enough.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But...
CLARKE: This is almost criminal negligence.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Criminal negligence, those are strong words, Richard. We just saw the incoming chair of the Joint Chiefs say that all options are on the table.
If there has been criminal negligence, what's the most important thing in the -- that needs to be done right now that's not being done?
CLARKE: We need to take the job of cyber security away from 50 or 60 small government agencies like OPM that clearly can't handle it and create one authority in the federal government that has the mandate and the money to secure cyber space.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Also, you said this week, you know, we saw these glitches hit the same day -- the New York Stock Exchange, United Airlines, "The Wall Street Journal" Web page. Computer software problems blamed. Every official who came out said no, no, no, there's not -- this is not an act of cyber war.
But you sounded a note of skepticism.
CLARKE: Well, they all said it wasn't cyber war within hours of it happening. And to find out, it actually takes weeks of forensic activity to go through the log files and do the -- the good, detailed forensics.
We know two things. Coincidences do happen in the world a lot. But we also know that in cyber war, people do trial runs. And they try to make those trial runs look like something other than what they are. They try to make them look like normal computer failure.
Either way, what it proves is that the networks that we rely on as a country are very fragile. And if this happens without anybody doing malicious activity, think of what could happen if someone did to malicious activity.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That is some point. Scary stuff.
OK, Richard Clarke, thanks very much.
In short, the U.S. is ill prepared against an all-out cyber attack. If our government doesn’t get its act together, in a war with China or Russia, we could conceivably be defeated without a shot being fired.
Obama may be gloating over the nuclear arms deal just reached with Iran, but in the not too distant future nuclear weapons could well be neutralized by cyber warfare.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
EL CHAPO TAUNTS TRUMP
The boss of the Sinaloa drug cartel threatens Trump in reaction to The Donald’s vow to “kick his ass”
In his announcement that he was running for president, Donald Trump accused Mexico of sending us criminals (illegal immigrants). Ever since then he has been trying to justify his broad-brushing of illegal immigrants. He even used the prison escape of Sinaloa drug cartel boss Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman in attacking Mexico and vowed he would kick El Chapo’s ass.
Even though he is being hunted by Mexican military forces and the federal police, El Chapo is not one to let idle chatter go by. A pissed off El Chapo tweeted Trump:
Sigue chingando y voy hacer que te tragues todas tus putas palabras pinche guero cagaleche
There have been two translations of El Chapo’s tweet:
Keep fucking around and I’m gonna make you swallow your bitch words you fucking whitey milkshitter
If you keep pissing me off I’m going to make you eat your words you fucking blonde milkshitter
In case you’re curious, “milkshitter” is the Mexican equivalent of the homosexual slur “faggot.” As for the two translations, I think the first one is the most accurate.
What did Trump do after El Chapo’s tweet? He ran to the Manhattan office of the FBI on Monday and asked them to investigate El Chapo’s threat.
Trump also released a statement which said, “I’m fighting for much more than myself. I’m fighting for the future of our country which is being overrun by criminals. You can’t be intimidated. This is too important.”
El Chapo also tweeted:
La vida da muchas vueltas, un dÃa estamos en el hoyo y otro dÃa estamos arriba
Life takes many turns, one day we are in the hole and another day we are on top
In his announcement that he was running for president, Donald Trump accused Mexico of sending us criminals (illegal immigrants). Ever since then he has been trying to justify his broad-brushing of illegal immigrants. He even used the prison escape of Sinaloa drug cartel boss Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman in attacking Mexico and vowed he would kick El Chapo’s ass.
Even though he is being hunted by Mexican military forces and the federal police, El Chapo is not one to let idle chatter go by. A pissed off El Chapo tweeted Trump:
Sigue chingando y voy hacer que te tragues todas tus putas palabras pinche guero cagaleche
There have been two translations of El Chapo’s tweet:
Keep fucking around and I’m gonna make you swallow your bitch words you fucking whitey milkshitter
If you keep pissing me off I’m going to make you eat your words you fucking blonde milkshitter
In case you’re curious, “milkshitter” is the Mexican equivalent of the homosexual slur “faggot.” As for the two translations, I think the first one is the most accurate.
What did Trump do after El Chapo’s tweet? He ran to the Manhattan office of the FBI on Monday and asked them to investigate El Chapo’s threat.
Trump also released a statement which said, “I’m fighting for much more than myself. I’m fighting for the future of our country which is being overrun by criminals. You can’t be intimidated. This is too important.”
El Chapo also tweeted:
La vida da muchas vueltas, un dÃa estamos en el hoyo y otro dÃa estamos arriba
Life takes many turns, one day we are in the hole and another day we are on top
CALIFORNIA IS A CRIME TOLERANT STATE
It’s time for the renegades to make their move
By Richard Krupp, PhD
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
July 14, 2015
There was a time in the past when California meant a great opportunity to people from all over the country and people outside the U.S. as well. These were people who wanted to not only do what was expected of them but go above and beyond that.
These renegades and underdogs showed strength and character. People who were legitimately disabled worked even harder to overcome their limitations.
In California today, the underdogs and disabled now include the criminals, bums, drug addicts and alcoholics, those with various loosely defined mental problems, and illegal aliens. These fringe groups of people should do what everybody else is expected to do. The word-police have sanitized these fringe groups with words like “homeless” “challenged” “undocumented” and “disordered”.
State and local governments have taken the redefining of abhorrent behavior to a broader level. Cities like San Francisco, Davis, and others label themselves “sanctuary” locations. This actually means they are areas where criminals can hide out and avoid sanctions for their illegal behavior.
The recent incident on Pier 14 in San Francisco is a perfect example of our down slide. These cities are evidently willing to sacrifice their law abiding citizens in an effort to assist low life bottom dwellers. They are now serving as magnets for law-breakers and the criminal element.
In the new crime-tolerant state of California, we bend over to help those who make no effort to help themselves. By accommodating those on the bottom we step on those in the middle, and knock down those who get to the top. It’s a long way down to achieve third-world status.
It will be even more difficult to stop the downward slide and attempt the climb back up. The ignorant and arrogant politicians and supporters of this idiotic trend in decision-making and policy are not capable of rational thought or common sense.
While some politicians try hard to explain how they may have supported sanctuary status in the past, in light of recent highly publicized policy failures, many are now opposed to it. Others steadfastly defend their defense of the fringe groups because those groups support them politically.
Once again the excuse factory is cranking out explanations. I’m not sure if the general public will be duped by the pro-crime groups.
Some of the most disturbing excuse mongers are at the highest level of the San Francisco police department. They offer excuses for releasing criminals that make them sound like lawyers and politicians. They should be ashamed.
California is now a crime-tolerant state. Maybe it’s time for the rank and file peace officers to take matters into their own hands.
Perhaps when it is known that San Francisco is going to release an illegal alien a phone call to ICE from an anonymous peace officer would be in order. We need some renegades, rebels and mutineers to overcome the high level of spineless crime tolerance.
I think the rank and file peace officers know that crime tolerance and sanctuary is wrong. Maybe they can lend a hand in overturning the pro-crime movement in California.
Take the state of California back.
By Richard Krupp, PhD
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
July 14, 2015
There was a time in the past when California meant a great opportunity to people from all over the country and people outside the U.S. as well. These were people who wanted to not only do what was expected of them but go above and beyond that.
These renegades and underdogs showed strength and character. People who were legitimately disabled worked even harder to overcome their limitations.
In California today, the underdogs and disabled now include the criminals, bums, drug addicts and alcoholics, those with various loosely defined mental problems, and illegal aliens. These fringe groups of people should do what everybody else is expected to do. The word-police have sanitized these fringe groups with words like “homeless” “challenged” “undocumented” and “disordered”.
State and local governments have taken the redefining of abhorrent behavior to a broader level. Cities like San Francisco, Davis, and others label themselves “sanctuary” locations. This actually means they are areas where criminals can hide out and avoid sanctions for their illegal behavior.
The recent incident on Pier 14 in San Francisco is a perfect example of our down slide. These cities are evidently willing to sacrifice their law abiding citizens in an effort to assist low life bottom dwellers. They are now serving as magnets for law-breakers and the criminal element.
In the new crime-tolerant state of California, we bend over to help those who make no effort to help themselves. By accommodating those on the bottom we step on those in the middle, and knock down those who get to the top. It’s a long way down to achieve third-world status.
It will be even more difficult to stop the downward slide and attempt the climb back up. The ignorant and arrogant politicians and supporters of this idiotic trend in decision-making and policy are not capable of rational thought or common sense.
While some politicians try hard to explain how they may have supported sanctuary status in the past, in light of recent highly publicized policy failures, many are now opposed to it. Others steadfastly defend their defense of the fringe groups because those groups support them politically.
Once again the excuse factory is cranking out explanations. I’m not sure if the general public will be duped by the pro-crime groups.
Some of the most disturbing excuse mongers are at the highest level of the San Francisco police department. They offer excuses for releasing criminals that make them sound like lawyers and politicians. They should be ashamed.
California is now a crime-tolerant state. Maybe it’s time for the rank and file peace officers to take matters into their own hands.
Perhaps when it is known that San Francisco is going to release an illegal alien a phone call to ICE from an anonymous peace officer would be in order. We need some renegades, rebels and mutineers to overcome the high level of spineless crime tolerance.
I think the rank and file peace officers know that crime tolerance and sanctuary is wrong. Maybe they can lend a hand in overturning the pro-crime movement in California.
Take the state of California back.
Monday, July 13, 2015
THOUSANDS OF CONFEDERATE FLAGS WAVED AT FLORIDA RALLY
An 8-mile long string of more than 1,500 motorcycles, pickup trucks and cars, all flying Confederate flags, paraded in support of the much maligned flag
A Florida Southern Pride Ride held Saturday in Ocala attracted around 4,500 supporters of the Confederate battle flag. The 17-mile long parade was made up of an 8-mile long string of more than 1,500 motorcycles, pickup trucks and cars, all flying Confederate flags.
The rally, at which thousands of the much maligned flags were waved, was held to protest the removal of the Confederate flag from government facilities in the South. People from as far away as California attended the rally. Many men, women and children in attendance wore Confederate flag t-shirts.
It’s a shame that the Confederate battle flag has been hijacked by the KKK and other white supremacy hate groups. Because of that, the flag has become a symbol of hate.
Personally, that flag has never symbolized hate to me, even though it has been prominently displayed at white supremacy rallies during which blacks and Jews have been condemned.
I see the Confederate battle flag as a historical reminder of the Civil War and, as such, a symbol of Southern heritage, not hate. Around 250,000 Confederate soldiers died under that flag and many more suffered amputations and other war wounds. For that reason, the Confederate battle flag deserves to be honored, not despised.
Oh by the way, in addition to the Confederate flag, the KKK and other white supremacy hate groups also prominently display the American flag at their public rallies.
A Florida Southern Pride Ride held Saturday in Ocala attracted around 4,500 supporters of the Confederate battle flag. The 17-mile long parade was made up of an 8-mile long string of more than 1,500 motorcycles, pickup trucks and cars, all flying Confederate flags.
The rally, at which thousands of the much maligned flags were waved, was held to protest the removal of the Confederate flag from government facilities in the South. People from as far away as California attended the rally. Many men, women and children in attendance wore Confederate flag t-shirts.
It’s a shame that the Confederate battle flag has been hijacked by the KKK and other white supremacy hate groups. Because of that, the flag has become a symbol of hate.
Personally, that flag has never symbolized hate to me, even though it has been prominently displayed at white supremacy rallies during which blacks and Jews have been condemned.
I see the Confederate battle flag as a historical reminder of the Civil War and, as such, a symbol of Southern heritage, not hate. Around 250,000 Confederate soldiers died under that flag and many more suffered amputations and other war wounds. For that reason, the Confederate battle flag deserves to be honored, not despised.
Oh by the way, in addition to the Confederate flag, the KKK and other white supremacy hate groups also prominently display the American flag at their public rallies.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
EL CHAPO ESCAPES PRISON THROUGH ELABORATE MILE-LONG TUNNEL
This is Sinaloa drug cartel boss Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s second escape from a Mexican maximum security prison
Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, did it again, his second escape from a Mexican maximum security prison. The boss of the Sinaloa drug cartel, who is wanted in multiple U.S. jurisdictions for funneling tons of illegal drugs into this country, bid an adios to the Altiplano prison Saturday evening by escaping through an elaborate mile-long tunnel.
Here is how AFP describes the tunnel:
After security cameras lost sight of Guzman, guards went into the cell and found a hole 10 meters (33 feet) deep with a ladder, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said.
The gap led to the 1.5-kilometer (one-mile) tunnel with a ventilation and light system, Rubido said, adding that its exit was in a building that was under construction in central Mexico State.
A motorcycle [modified to run] on a rail system was found in the tunnel and is believed to have been used to transport tools and remove earth from the space, which was 1.7 meters high and around 80 centimeters (2.6 feet) wide.
El Capo had been imprisoned since he was captured 17 months ago. Prior to his capture, he had been on the lam for 13 years. His first prison break occurred in 2001 when he escaped from another prison by hiding in a laundry cart.
The Altiplano prison, which is 55 miles west of Mexico City, houses Mexico's most notorious drug kingpins, murderers and kidnappers. This was the first escape ever from the Altiplano prison. Eighteen prison guards are under investigation and will be interrogated by federal prosecutors.
Authorities believe the tunnel was dug by members of the Sinaloa cartel, starting at a construction site one mile from the prison and using GPS to pinpoint the precise location of El Chapo’s shower stall.
The Mexican army, Mexican marines and the cops are conducting an extensive search for the elusive drug lord.
El Chapo’s escape makes the recent escape of Richard Matt and David Sweat from a New York state prison look like small-time.
Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, did it again, his second escape from a Mexican maximum security prison. The boss of the Sinaloa drug cartel, who is wanted in multiple U.S. jurisdictions for funneling tons of illegal drugs into this country, bid an adios to the Altiplano prison Saturday evening by escaping through an elaborate mile-long tunnel.
Here is how AFP describes the tunnel:
After security cameras lost sight of Guzman, guards went into the cell and found a hole 10 meters (33 feet) deep with a ladder, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said.
The gap led to the 1.5-kilometer (one-mile) tunnel with a ventilation and light system, Rubido said, adding that its exit was in a building that was under construction in central Mexico State.
A motorcycle [modified to run] on a rail system was found in the tunnel and is believed to have been used to transport tools and remove earth from the space, which was 1.7 meters high and around 80 centimeters (2.6 feet) wide.
El Capo had been imprisoned since he was captured 17 months ago. Prior to his capture, he had been on the lam for 13 years. His first prison break occurred in 2001 when he escaped from another prison by hiding in a laundry cart.
The Altiplano prison, which is 55 miles west of Mexico City, houses Mexico's most notorious drug kingpins, murderers and kidnappers. This was the first escape ever from the Altiplano prison. Eighteen prison guards are under investigation and will be interrogated by federal prosecutors.
Authorities believe the tunnel was dug by members of the Sinaloa cartel, starting at a construction site one mile from the prison and using GPS to pinpoint the precise location of El Chapo’s shower stall.
The Mexican army, Mexican marines and the cops are conducting an extensive search for the elusive drug lord.
El Chapo’s escape makes the recent escape of Richard Matt and David Sweat from a New York state prison look like small-time.
Saturday, July 11, 2015
INMATES SAWED, FOLDED NICHOLAS RODRUGUEZ IN HALF
Rodriguez was found stuffed in a garbage can 15 hours after a riot at California State Prison, Solano
The July 11 issue of the Daily Mail reports that inmate Nicholas Rodriguez, 24, who was serving an 8-year robbery sentence, turned up missing after a riot last May at California State Prison, Solano. Some 15 hours after correctional officers quelled the riot and locked down the prison, they found Rodriguez stuffed in a garbage can in a shower stall not far from his cell.
Rodriguez had been sawed nearly in half. His abdominal organs and most chest organs had been removed before he was folded and stuffed in the garbage can.
According to the Daily Mail, "Rodriguez had alcohol in his system and was dead before he was eviscerated, killed by blows to the head that left him with a deep star-shaped wound on his forehead among his multiple skull fractures, cuts and other wounds, according to the May 27 autopsy report conducted by the Solano County Sheriff coroner's office."
The early morning riot on May 4 involved 58 inmates in Rodriguez's housing unit. He wasn't discovered missing until a 4:40 p.m. headcount. His 46-year-old cellie, who is doing life for murder, is considered the only suspect in the gruesome killing.
His cellie seems like the logical culprit since they cannot blame Bush, and because Rodriguez was not beheaded, neither can ISIS be blamed for his demise.
Since the eviscerated organs were never found, I can only surmise that they were considered a delicacy and eaten by some of the inmates. Yummie, yummie!
The July 11 issue of the Daily Mail reports that inmate Nicholas Rodriguez, 24, who was serving an 8-year robbery sentence, turned up missing after a riot last May at California State Prison, Solano. Some 15 hours after correctional officers quelled the riot and locked down the prison, they found Rodriguez stuffed in a garbage can in a shower stall not far from his cell.
Rodriguez had been sawed nearly in half. His abdominal organs and most chest organs had been removed before he was folded and stuffed in the garbage can.
According to the Daily Mail, "Rodriguez had alcohol in his system and was dead before he was eviscerated, killed by blows to the head that left him with a deep star-shaped wound on his forehead among his multiple skull fractures, cuts and other wounds, according to the May 27 autopsy report conducted by the Solano County Sheriff coroner's office."
The early morning riot on May 4 involved 58 inmates in Rodriguez's housing unit. He wasn't discovered missing until a 4:40 p.m. headcount. His 46-year-old cellie, who is doing life for murder, is considered the only suspect in the gruesome killing.
His cellie seems like the logical culprit since they cannot blame Bush, and because Rodriguez was not beheaded, neither can ISIS be blamed for his demise.
Since the eviscerated organs were never found, I can only surmise that they were considered a delicacy and eaten by some of the inmates. Yummie, yummie!
HOW SANCTUARY POLICIES HAVE DIRECTLY LED TO THOUSANDS OF CRIMES AGAINST AMERICANS
By Hans von Spakovsky
The Daily Signal
July 9, 2015
There has been a fiery debate over the past few weeks about illegal aliens and crime, which has intensified with the murder of Kate Steinle in San Francisco by a seven-time felon and five-time deportee as the direct result of the city’s sanctuary policy.
What seems to have been overlooked in the back and forth on this is some of the very disturbing, actual data on crimes committed by illegal aliens, which should concern every American—particularly those who live in sanctuary cities like New Orleans or San Francisco that release criminal aliens rather than turning them over to the Department of Homeland Security.
As Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Study outlines, Department of Homeland Security records show that in just one eight-month period in 2014, more than 8,100 deportable aliens were released by sanctuary jurisdictions. Three thousand of them were felons and 62 percent had a prior criminal record. Nineteen hundred were later rearrested a total of 4,300 times on 7,500 different offenses.
Thus, these sanctuary policies directly victimized thousands of the residents of these sanctuary cities who were subjected to assaults, burglaries, sexual assaults, thefts and even murders that would not have occurred except for these sanctuary policies.
But there is more. In 2005, at the request of several members of Congress, the Government Accountability Office prepared two reports on criminal aliens—legal and illegal—in prison for committing crimes in the United States. Those reports are very revealing. For example, the first report (GAO-05-337R) released on April 7, 2005, found that:
The percentage of federal prisoners who are criminal aliens is about 27 percent;
In 2004, there were 49,000 such prisoners in federal jails;
In 2002, the federal government gave reimbursements to the 50 states under the “State Criminal Alien Assistance Program” (SCAAP) for incarcerating another 77,000 illegal aliens in state prisons; and
At the local level in 2002, the federal government reimbursed 750 local governments under SCAAP for incarcerating an additional 138,000 criminal illegal aliens, which jumped to 147,000 prisoners in 2003.
It is important to note that these reported numbers “represent only a portion of the total population of criminal aliens who may be incarcerated at the local level,” since the federal government does “not reimburse localities for all criminal aliens” and some states don’t submit requests for reimbursement. So where were all of these criminal aliens from? According to the GAO report, the breakdown was as follows:
Federal prisons: Mexico (63 percent); Colombia (7 percent); the Dominican Republic (7 percent); Jamaica (4 percent); Cuba (3 percent); El Salvador (2 percent); Honduras, Haiti and Guatemala (each 1 percent), and the remaining 11 percent from 164 other countries.
State prisons: In the five states (Arizona, California, Florida, New York and Texas) incarcerating about 80 percent of SCAAP criminal aliens, the prisoners were from Mexico (58 percent); Cuba (5 percent); Dominican Republic (5 percent); El Salvador (4 percent); Jamaica (3 percent); Vietnam (2 percent); and the remaining 22 percent from 148 other countries.
Local jails: In the five local jails with the largest criminal illegal alien populations, the prisoners were from Mexico (65 percent); El Salvador (6 percent); Guatemala (3 percent); Honduras (2 percent); South Korea, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic and the Philippines (each 1 percent); and the remaining 20 percent from 193 other countries.
Thus, it is clear that criminal aliens already represent more than a quarter of all of the prisoners in federal prisons and are present in large numbers in state and local jails.
The second GAO report (GAO-05-646R), released on May 9, 2005, looked at the crimes committed by 55,322 aliens who “had entered the country illegally and were still illegally in the country at the time of their incarceration in federal or state prison or local jail during fiscal year 2003.”
The path of destruction weaved by these 55,322 illegal aliens was truly shocking. According to GAO, these criminal aliens:
Were arrested a total of 459,614 times, averaging about eight arrests per illegal alien;
97 percent had more than one arrest, while 26 percent had over 11 arrests;
Committed almost 700,000 criminal offenses, averaging 13 offenses per illegal alien;
10 percent of these illegal aliens were arrested for committing 26 or more offenses;
Out of all of the arrests, 12 percent were for violent crimes such as murder, robbery, assault and sex-related crimes; 15 percent were for burglary, larceny, theft and property damage; 24 percent were for drug offenses; and the remaining offenses were for DUI, fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, weapons, immigration and obstruction of justice; and
80 percent of the arrests occurred in just three states: California, Texas, and Arizona
Of course, these statistics reflect the criminal histories of aliens who were in prison. Unfortunately, in fiscal year 2013, the Obama administration released over 36,000 convicted criminal aliens awaiting the outcome of deportation hearings upon an unsuspecting public, and another 30,558 in fiscal year 2014 according to the House Judiciary Committee.
The offenses for which they were convicted involved “dangerous drugs, assault and domestic violence, stolen vehicles, robbery, sex offenses, sexual assault, kidnaping, voluntary manslaughter, and even homicide.” As the House Judiciary Committee outlined, more than a quarter of these aliens “were so called ‘level 1s’ according to the administration—the worst of the worst.” And in 2013 alone, the administration didn’t even bring removal proceedings against an additional 68,000 criminal aliens convicted of everything from homicide to sexual assault.
If the over 134,000 aliens released by the administration in just the past two years follow the pattern of those aliens studied by the GAO in 2005, they will commit hundreds of thousands of more crimes, victimizing countless innocent Americans in crimes that could have been prevented.
How many Americans have to be assaulted, injured, raped or killed, or have their homes, cars and personal property burglarized, stolen or damaged before both the federal government and local governments like San Francisco will finally do what is necessary to lock up criminal aliens who are a danger to the safety and lives of the public?
The Daily Signal
July 9, 2015
There has been a fiery debate over the past few weeks about illegal aliens and crime, which has intensified with the murder of Kate Steinle in San Francisco by a seven-time felon and five-time deportee as the direct result of the city’s sanctuary policy.
What seems to have been overlooked in the back and forth on this is some of the very disturbing, actual data on crimes committed by illegal aliens, which should concern every American—particularly those who live in sanctuary cities like New Orleans or San Francisco that release criminal aliens rather than turning them over to the Department of Homeland Security.
As Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Study outlines, Department of Homeland Security records show that in just one eight-month period in 2014, more than 8,100 deportable aliens were released by sanctuary jurisdictions. Three thousand of them were felons and 62 percent had a prior criminal record. Nineteen hundred were later rearrested a total of 4,300 times on 7,500 different offenses.
Thus, these sanctuary policies directly victimized thousands of the residents of these sanctuary cities who were subjected to assaults, burglaries, sexual assaults, thefts and even murders that would not have occurred except for these sanctuary policies.
But there is more. In 2005, at the request of several members of Congress, the Government Accountability Office prepared two reports on criminal aliens—legal and illegal—in prison for committing crimes in the United States. Those reports are very revealing. For example, the first report (GAO-05-337R) released on April 7, 2005, found that:
The percentage of federal prisoners who are criminal aliens is about 27 percent;
In 2004, there were 49,000 such prisoners in federal jails;
In 2002, the federal government gave reimbursements to the 50 states under the “State Criminal Alien Assistance Program” (SCAAP) for incarcerating another 77,000 illegal aliens in state prisons; and
At the local level in 2002, the federal government reimbursed 750 local governments under SCAAP for incarcerating an additional 138,000 criminal illegal aliens, which jumped to 147,000 prisoners in 2003.
It is important to note that these reported numbers “represent only a portion of the total population of criminal aliens who may be incarcerated at the local level,” since the federal government does “not reimburse localities for all criminal aliens” and some states don’t submit requests for reimbursement. So where were all of these criminal aliens from? According to the GAO report, the breakdown was as follows:
Federal prisons: Mexico (63 percent); Colombia (7 percent); the Dominican Republic (7 percent); Jamaica (4 percent); Cuba (3 percent); El Salvador (2 percent); Honduras, Haiti and Guatemala (each 1 percent), and the remaining 11 percent from 164 other countries.
State prisons: In the five states (Arizona, California, Florida, New York and Texas) incarcerating about 80 percent of SCAAP criminal aliens, the prisoners were from Mexico (58 percent); Cuba (5 percent); Dominican Republic (5 percent); El Salvador (4 percent); Jamaica (3 percent); Vietnam (2 percent); and the remaining 22 percent from 148 other countries.
Local jails: In the five local jails with the largest criminal illegal alien populations, the prisoners were from Mexico (65 percent); El Salvador (6 percent); Guatemala (3 percent); Honduras (2 percent); South Korea, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic and the Philippines (each 1 percent); and the remaining 20 percent from 193 other countries.
Thus, it is clear that criminal aliens already represent more than a quarter of all of the prisoners in federal prisons and are present in large numbers in state and local jails.
The second GAO report (GAO-05-646R), released on May 9, 2005, looked at the crimes committed by 55,322 aliens who “had entered the country illegally and were still illegally in the country at the time of their incarceration in federal or state prison or local jail during fiscal year 2003.”
The path of destruction weaved by these 55,322 illegal aliens was truly shocking. According to GAO, these criminal aliens:
Were arrested a total of 459,614 times, averaging about eight arrests per illegal alien;
97 percent had more than one arrest, while 26 percent had over 11 arrests;
Committed almost 700,000 criminal offenses, averaging 13 offenses per illegal alien;
10 percent of these illegal aliens were arrested for committing 26 or more offenses;
Out of all of the arrests, 12 percent were for violent crimes such as murder, robbery, assault and sex-related crimes; 15 percent were for burglary, larceny, theft and property damage; 24 percent were for drug offenses; and the remaining offenses were for DUI, fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, weapons, immigration and obstruction of justice; and
80 percent of the arrests occurred in just three states: California, Texas, and Arizona
Of course, these statistics reflect the criminal histories of aliens who were in prison. Unfortunately, in fiscal year 2013, the Obama administration released over 36,000 convicted criminal aliens awaiting the outcome of deportation hearings upon an unsuspecting public, and another 30,558 in fiscal year 2014 according to the House Judiciary Committee.
The offenses for which they were convicted involved “dangerous drugs, assault and domestic violence, stolen vehicles, robbery, sex offenses, sexual assault, kidnaping, voluntary manslaughter, and even homicide.” As the House Judiciary Committee outlined, more than a quarter of these aliens “were so called ‘level 1s’ according to the administration—the worst of the worst.” And in 2013 alone, the administration didn’t even bring removal proceedings against an additional 68,000 criminal aliens convicted of everything from homicide to sexual assault.
If the over 134,000 aliens released by the administration in just the past two years follow the pattern of those aliens studied by the GAO in 2005, they will commit hundreds of thousands of more crimes, victimizing countless innocent Americans in crimes that could have been prevented.
How many Americans have to be assaulted, injured, raped or killed, or have their homes, cars and personal property burglarized, stolen or damaged before both the federal government and local governments like San Francisco will finally do what is necessary to lock up criminal aliens who are a danger to the safety and lives of the public?
PROSECUTORS DROP RIDICULOUS ‘FLEEING POLICE’ CHARGE FOR CAUTIOUS DRIVER, BUT NOT BEFORE EXPOSING A BIGGER ISSUE
By Nick Wing
Huffington Post
July 10, 2015
Last month, DaJuawn Wallace was given a choice: Plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit, or continue to fight the charge and take his chances in the criminal justice system.
At least that's the way county prosecutors in Saginaw, Michigan, laid it out for him following a preliminary hearing on June 12. Robertson, a 24-year-old graduate student at Saginaw Valley State University, had reason to consider caving. At issue was a felony count of fleeing and eluding police, a charge that carries a potential two-year jail sentence. Preparing a defense for a criminal trial is an expensive and time-consuming process, and it's difficult to predict the outcome of any case, even when the facts seem to be in your favor.
The charge stemmed from a February incident in which Wallace drove slowly for over a mile to a lit parking lot after a police officer attempted to initiate a traffic stop at 2 a.m. along a dark road. Wallace said he was just being cautious. Fake cops have drawn attention in Michigan, and he claimed police impostors had recently robbed his friends. The prosecution heard Wallace's explanation and expressed sympathy -- in the form of a deal that would allow him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge instead of a felony. Wallace rejected the offer, maintaining his innocence and noting that a misdemeanor charge would still come with significant consequences to his job and financial aid.
Prosecutors dropped the charge earlier this week amid a flurry of media scrutiny, bringing an end to a ridiculous and needless legal standoff.
"As of right now, the charge is dismissed. It was a unique set of facts and (a unique) situation," said Christopher Boyd, chief prosecutor for Saginaw County, according to MLive.
But the fact that prosecutors tried to pressure Wallace into pleading guilty in a case they likely couldn't have won -- or perhaps never even intended to take to trial -- is a symptom of the broader problem with plea bargaining in the criminal justice system.
Much of the focus on this issue has been placed on the rampant use of plea bargains in settling federal criminal cases. According to a 2014 report by U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff in the New York Review of Books, 97 percent of all federal cases closed in 2013 were resolved through plea bargains, in part due to the incredible power many prosecutors now wield over the process thanks to mandatory minimum sentences and other strict sentencing guidelines. Critics claim this trend leads many innocent, often disadvantaged people to plead guilty to lesser charges in order to avoid the prospect of more severe punishment should the case go to trial. Rakoff estimates there are as many as 20,000 people in prison after pleading guilty to crimes they didn't actually commit.
But this isn't just a problem for poorer defendants facing serious federal charges. The same basic calculation emerges in countless cases like Wallace's playing out in lower courts around the nation.
"After all, the typical person accused of a crime combines a troubled past with limited resources," Rakoff writes. "[H]e thus recognizes that, even if he is innocent, his chances of mounting an effective defense at trial may be modest at best."
It is likely this vulnerability that led prosecutors to believe they could manipulate Wallace into pleading guilty to a crime he didn't commit. While he had no criminal record, neither did Wallace have infinite resources at his disposal to fight the charge. He also had plenty riding on the case. Wallace is just a few semesters away from earning his master's degree in health administration from SVSU. It would have been hard to fault him for thinking it safer simply to accept the lesser charge, especially if prosecutors were hanging the possibility of jail time and a hefty fine over his head. If Wallace conceded, the Saginaw County prosecutor's office would have been able put another tally in the win column, thereby improving its conviction rate. If he didn't, they could continue to threaten Wallace with a felony charge, only to back down just days before a preliminary examination scheduled for Thursday. Which is exactly what happened.
This prosecution's underhanded yet commonplace behavior wasn't lost on the handful of people who on Wednesday gathered in support of Wallace outside the Saginaw County Governmental Center.
"It wasn't fair how it was carried out," one protester told NBC 25. "For them to wait to do the right thing and wait for civil unrest and media outpour, they should have done the right thing in February."
Huffington Post
July 10, 2015
Last month, DaJuawn Wallace was given a choice: Plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit, or continue to fight the charge and take his chances in the criminal justice system.
At least that's the way county prosecutors in Saginaw, Michigan, laid it out for him following a preliminary hearing on June 12. Robertson, a 24-year-old graduate student at Saginaw Valley State University, had reason to consider caving. At issue was a felony count of fleeing and eluding police, a charge that carries a potential two-year jail sentence. Preparing a defense for a criminal trial is an expensive and time-consuming process, and it's difficult to predict the outcome of any case, even when the facts seem to be in your favor.
The charge stemmed from a February incident in which Wallace drove slowly for over a mile to a lit parking lot after a police officer attempted to initiate a traffic stop at 2 a.m. along a dark road. Wallace said he was just being cautious. Fake cops have drawn attention in Michigan, and he claimed police impostors had recently robbed his friends. The prosecution heard Wallace's explanation and expressed sympathy -- in the form of a deal that would allow him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge instead of a felony. Wallace rejected the offer, maintaining his innocence and noting that a misdemeanor charge would still come with significant consequences to his job and financial aid.
Prosecutors dropped the charge earlier this week amid a flurry of media scrutiny, bringing an end to a ridiculous and needless legal standoff.
"As of right now, the charge is dismissed. It was a unique set of facts and (a unique) situation," said Christopher Boyd, chief prosecutor for Saginaw County, according to MLive.
But the fact that prosecutors tried to pressure Wallace into pleading guilty in a case they likely couldn't have won -- or perhaps never even intended to take to trial -- is a symptom of the broader problem with plea bargaining in the criminal justice system.
Much of the focus on this issue has been placed on the rampant use of plea bargains in settling federal criminal cases. According to a 2014 report by U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff in the New York Review of Books, 97 percent of all federal cases closed in 2013 were resolved through plea bargains, in part due to the incredible power many prosecutors now wield over the process thanks to mandatory minimum sentences and other strict sentencing guidelines. Critics claim this trend leads many innocent, often disadvantaged people to plead guilty to lesser charges in order to avoid the prospect of more severe punishment should the case go to trial. Rakoff estimates there are as many as 20,000 people in prison after pleading guilty to crimes they didn't actually commit.
But this isn't just a problem for poorer defendants facing serious federal charges. The same basic calculation emerges in countless cases like Wallace's playing out in lower courts around the nation.
"After all, the typical person accused of a crime combines a troubled past with limited resources," Rakoff writes. "[H]e thus recognizes that, even if he is innocent, his chances of mounting an effective defense at trial may be modest at best."
It is likely this vulnerability that led prosecutors to believe they could manipulate Wallace into pleading guilty to a crime he didn't commit. While he had no criminal record, neither did Wallace have infinite resources at his disposal to fight the charge. He also had plenty riding on the case. Wallace is just a few semesters away from earning his master's degree in health administration from SVSU. It would have been hard to fault him for thinking it safer simply to accept the lesser charge, especially if prosecutors were hanging the possibility of jail time and a hefty fine over his head. If Wallace conceded, the Saginaw County prosecutor's office would have been able put another tally in the win column, thereby improving its conviction rate. If he didn't, they could continue to threaten Wallace with a felony charge, only to back down just days before a preliminary examination scheduled for Thursday. Which is exactly what happened.
This prosecution's underhanded yet commonplace behavior wasn't lost on the handful of people who on Wednesday gathered in support of Wallace outside the Saginaw County Governmental Center.
"It wasn't fair how it was carried out," one protester told NBC 25. "For them to wait to do the right thing and wait for civil unrest and media outpour, they should have done the right thing in February."
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