http://news.yahoo.com/…

When undercover detectives busted Jose and Maximo Colon last year for selling cocaine at a seedy club in Queens, there was a glaring problem: The brothers hadn’t done anything wrong.

But proclaiming innocence wasn’t going to be good enough. The Dominican immigrants needed proof.

“I sat in the jail and thought … how could I prove this? What could I do?” Jose, 24, recalled in Spanish during a recent interview.

As he glanced around a holding cell, the answer came to him: Security cameras. Since then, a vindicating video from the club’s cameras has spared the brothers a possible prison term, resulted in two officers’ arrest and become the basis for a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

The officers, who are due back in court June 26, have pleaded not guilty, and New York Police Department officials have downplayed their case.

But the drug corruption case isn’t alone.

On May 13, another NYPD officer was arrested for plotting to invade a Manhattan apartment where he hoped to steal $900,000 in drug money. In another pending case, prosecutors in Brooklyn say officers were caught in a 2007 sting using seized drugs to reward a snitch for information. And in the Bronx, prosecutors have charged a detective with lying about a drug bust captured on a surveillance tape that contradicts her story.

Elsewhere, Philadelphia prosecutors dismissed more than a dozen drug and gun charges against a man last month when a narcotics officer was accused of making up information on search warrants.

The revelations in New York have triggered internal affairs inquiries, transfers of commanders and reviews of dozens of other arrests involving the accused officers. Many drug defendants’ cases have been tossed out. Others have won favorable plea deals.

The misconduct “strikes at the very heart of our system of justice and erodes public confidence in our courts,” said Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson.

Despite the fallout, authorities describe the corruption allegations as aberrations in a city where officers daily make hundreds of drugs arrests that routinely hold up in court. They also note none of the cases involved accusations of organized crews of officers using their badges to steal or extort drugs or money for personal gain — the story line of full-blown corruption scandals from bygone eras.

Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, agrees the majority of narcotics officers probably are clean. But he also believes the city’s unending war on drugs will always invite corruption by some who don’t think twice about framing suspects they’re convinced are guilty anyway.

Prohibition creates a black market and a black market creates a distorted market situation waiting to be exploited. And those who are most incentivized to exploit it are those closest to it with the most power to cover up their actions.

… the news headlines could have read if I was an actual terrorist.

I was on my way out of the office and heading for the South Ferry 1 train. I noticed a group of three NYPD officers standing to the right of the turnstiles with their sign saying they can ask to search bags leaning up against the decorative gating. I see this from the bottom of the steps at the old N and R entrance and so I prepare myself for the possible bag search request.

Lately there has been an obvious increase in the frequency of these stations. Perhaps its a result of the grants from the federal government to expand the city security theater or something related to the recent stimulus bill. I don’t know and I’m not going to chat it up with one of the blue light gang to see if they know either.

So I always carry with me a cheap digital camera just in case I need to snap a photo of the growing police state or an official abusing their so called authority. Near the Metrocard machines at the N/R entrance I took the camera out of my pocket, made sure it was on video mode, and turned it on. Or so I thought.

As I walk toward the turnstiles and the officers a young woman with a large bass in a case with a single wheel walks out in from of a pillar and I pause to let her go around me. As that is occurring I’m tucking my copy of Ludwig Von Mises’ Socialism under my left arm pit so my left hand was free to take the Metrocard out of the sheath I keep in my right pocket in which I store my work ID and government transportation cards. Before the woman is able to get around me I hear: “HEY BUDD!” I know its directed at me since a prior survey of those walking with me showed no one else with a bag. I ignore it and continue to reach for my card but have yet to move forward again from stopping for the bassist. “HEY!” I hear again. I hesitate for what was not more than 500ms but surely felt longer in order to decide if I should respond or play deaf. I turned and with a innocent but slightly concerned and questioning look said: “Excuse me?”

I don’t recall if it was “Can we” or “We need to” “check your bag.”

I’ve gone through this situation before and in one case a far more intimidating scenario where I had already gone through the turnstile and was absolutely the only person around except for the officers standing three feet in front of me demanding to look through my things. So I’ve done mental exercises in hopes of better handling a similar encounter in the future. Maybe something to the effect: “For what reason? Under what authority? Do you have a warrant? Why can’t I use the subway? What if I just go down the street to the next station? What’s your name and badge number?” Unfortunately that all went out the window when I was in the spotlight and it came time for my response.

I say with a completely different demeanor from a second early, one of seriousness and likely contempt: “No.”

“You’re going to have to leave the subway then.”

Acting ignorant… “Can’t go over there either?” Pointing to the N/R entrance.

“No. Gotta go outside.”

“Hmm… OK.”

While this back and forth occurred I had turned to the right to face them and meandered a little to their left. To collect myself and put away my Metrocard. I notice the other office who was not behind the table talking to me but to his left was getting real close to me as if to escort me out. He didn’t lead me out but did follow me as I slowly walked toward where I entered. I kept peaking back and he eventually stopped and starred me down as I walked up the steps.

I started down the street toward the Bowling Green station. Turning back occasionally to see if I was being followed. After less than a block I decided I wasn’t in the mood to put up with that or take the Green line to Grand Central Station and then go to Port Authority by way of the Shuttle. I was already running late and given that the news of the MotorhomeDiaries crew’s arrest and imprisonment was still trickling out I wanted to get home as soon as possible.

So I turned around… headed back down the steps carefully checking to see if the officers were watching for me or in my direction. The way they were positioned give them the ability to see all those who entered so if I was going to get onto a train I needed to be careful or face arrest. So I waited a few minutes for a crowd to come down the steps and followed it to the turnstiles of the N/R and walked through down to the platform and onto the train. There was a slight scare when a couple stops down the train was held for several minutes without a reason and I noticed some officers on the south bound side looking around. But the doors eventually shut and I made it home with an elevated heart rate but otherwise untouched by the actors of the police state that is NYC.

So as I and many others have said hundreds of times before… baggage checks are nothing but security theater. In this instance I pushed it and entered the same station secretly but other times before the new South Ferry 1/N/R station combo I would be denied entry to the 1 and then just walk back across the street to the N/R and head uptown without a hitch. It’s extraordinarily ridiculous. If I’m rejected at 1… I’d suspect I’m not legally allowed to enter the N/R or any other station. Do they expect that once you are denied entry once that you can never ride again? If I’m a terrorist and am on my way to blow some train station up and am actually stopped… what keeps me from just going to the next station or waiting a few minutes and hiding in a crowd as it enters? Shouldn’t that officer followed me until I was off the island? It’s a big joke… on the public. They get to pay taxes to further oppress themselves with absolutely no gain. At least in Benjamin Franklin’s quote he assumed that the individual was giving up freedom for more security. In our case it is freedom for less security and explicit tyranny.

So my camera turned out not to be recording for the beginning of the brief conversation. I caught only the last of it and then I have a bunch of subway noise from when I made my reentrance. In the future I’ll just turn it on before I go in and leave it on. I’m thinking a digital audio recorder with an extended mic with a clip that I could have on my shirt would be better or maybe an audio/video recording wrist watch.

I’m going to try to better prepare myself for my next encounter by going over my script more and when I see the officers stationed in front of the enterance again I will pause, collect myself, go over the plan, start the recorder, breath deeply, and then go in. We’ll see…

http://www.nydailynews.com/…

The NYPD wants to cloak midtown with the same security blanket it rolled out for lower Manhattan: camera license plate readers, and radiation and bio scanners.

Those measures covering Manhattan south of Canal St. will slowly be applied to midtown, from 34th to 59th Sts., river to river, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the City Council Public Safety Committee.

“We want to take that model, protecting the 1.7 square miles south of Canal and replicate it in midtown Manhattan,” Kelly said after the hearing Tuesday.

The NYPD wants $21 million in federal homeland security dollars to put toward the midtown project, estimated to cost $58 million.

Modeled after London’s “Ring of Steel,” the NYPD opened its coordination center last November, with cops monitoring feeds from 300 cameras and 30 mobile license plate readers in lower Manhattan.

The 24-hour center, based in a nondescript Broadway building, keeps tabs on high-profile terror targets such as the World Trade Center site and Wall Street.

Plans are underway to have some 3,000 cameras, public and privately owned, and as many as 96 fixed license-plate readers feeding into the center south of Canal St.

The NYPD is also looking to install permanent license plate scanners at each of the 20 crossings into Manhattan as part of an elaborate new safety scheme.

Police also want to install sensors to detect biological and radiological weapons.

The lower Manhattan plan costs an estimated $92 million. The department has already invested about $84 million to secure Manhattan south of Canal St., river to river.

It’s getting ridiculous in Manhattan. They recently opened the new 1, R, W station downtown at the South Ferry. Since then the NYPD has had a table set up to search people at least 50% of the time I’ve left work. Far more often than the old 1 station. I’ve yet to be stopped but mostly because I come in from behind them and they focus on the new entrance rather than the opened area coming from the R,W entry. I still plan on pressing my luck by informing the officer that since I’ve been denied entrance to the 1 I’ll take the R.

Today was the MLP convention for 2009. Things went well. Election results are as followed.

• Isaiah Matos => Chair
• Mark Axinn => Secretary and Treasurer
• Gina Miller => Media Relations Director
• Ron Moore => Director of Fund Raising
• Antonio SJ Musumeci => Director of Membership

Congratulations to all of them. I was approached to run for chair but declined and recommended Isaiah. He’s got strong connections with the Queens LP and the NYC Campaign for Liberty movement.

The speakers were pretty good. Economist Cameron Weber speech on the past 70 years of Keynesian economic policy was a little rough but obviously topical. Alan Gura from the Heller DC gun case gave a good rundown of the gains made through the winning of that case. I was told that at some point down the road New Jersey will likely be challenged on its registration laws and given the outcome of the Heller case they will probably be shot down. Eric Sundwall, NYS Libertarian Party Chair and producer of Capital Outsider, lost his notes and so opened up the floor to questions about the LP and the NYSLP. About Bob Barr and the direction of the party. After the convention we all went to a near by bar and while talking with Eric I mentioned the Liberty Activism Repository. He invited me to potentially be a guest on Capitol Outsider to discuss the site, what I’m trying to do with it and whatever else I may be doing. It’d require a trip to Schenectady, NY which is about 2.5 hours north of me so I’m no so sure but it’s likely worth it to help get the word out. The last speaker was Adam Kokesh of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Speaking with him afterwards in the bar after mentioning left libertarianism he brought up that he was in the ALL Facebook group but didn’t realize they were an actual physical group which went out and did things. Perhaps they would be interested in working with Adam to some degree. He’s currently a fairly well known face in the anti-war movement which most know and Adam mentioned is full of those on the left and he’s a libertarian working within their ranks attempting to show them the truely peaceful path. Adam will also be attending the Free State Project’s Liberty Forum in March.

I took video of just about everything. I’m currently uploading some of the more easily edited stuff and will post something later with all footage. I’ll also be sending my video to Gary Popkins who puts together Hardfire and there may be an episode using it.

Overall things went well. The turnout was pretty good for the speakers but I would have liked twice as many for the business part.

http://wcbstv.com/…

NEW YORK (CBS) ― City officials have ordered 22 New York churches to stop providing beds to homeless people.

With temperatures well below freezing early Saturday, the churches must obey a city rule requiring faith-based shelters to be open at least five days a week — or not at all.

Arnold Cohen, president of the Partnership for the Homeless, a nonprofit that serves as a link with the city, said he had to tell the churches they no longer qualify.

He said hundreds of people now won’t have a place to sleep.

The Department of Homeless Services said the city offers other shelters with the capacity to accept all those who have been sleeping in the churches. The city had 8,000 beds waiting.

The homeless can be coaxed indoors but not forced unless their life is in danger.

At times in the past it’s been hard to show the causation between the regulations the State makes, the social programs it provides and the decline in private charities. This time however its not only outright obvious but downright horrible. What next? Soup kitchens must provide several types of soup, including a vegetarian one, or else they can’t feed the homeless?

… will be the day these tables are surrounded by cops, I’m ask to have my bag checked, I say no, I’m told I can’t enter, I tell them I’ll be taking another bus…

… and I either get home on an alternate bus or am arrested.

This image is from the entryway to the Port Authority terminal for the NJ Transit bus I take twice a day. This evening on my way home I saw for the first time tables positioned as shown with the sign. I’ve seen the sign before but never with tables and always pushed into a corner.

There is simply no way I will tolerate being searched on my way to or from work.

Oh… and do you like the “If you see something, say something” sign in the background? Those are all around the subway stations too.