FBI anti-terrorism agents raided the Queens home of a self-described anarchist charged with tweeting protesters with instructions on how to evade police at the G-20 summit.

A dozen gas masks, liquid mercury, backpacks containing hammers and anarchist literature were among the dozens of items seized Thursday at the Jackson Heights home where Elliot Madison, 41, lives with his wife Elena, 39.

Madison is free on bail after Pittsburgh cops arrested him on Sept. 24 and charged him with hindering prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possessing criminal instruments.

The two men were seated in front of personal computers and telecommunications equipment, wearing headphones and microphones and surrounded by maps, contact numbers and police and EMS scanners.

Cops claim they were using Twitter to direct the movements of protesters and update them on the location and actions of law enforcement.

But Assistant US Attorney Andrew Goldsmith argued that some of the items raised alarm, including a pound of liquid mercury in the house, alongside “books about poisons” and a microscope.

The feds also found metal triangles that are used to puncture tires and two boxes of ammunition. Goldsmith said agents left a collection of machetes, samurai swords and daggers at the house, because they didn’t fall within the scope of the search warrants.

Two whole boxes of ammo? The man was a real danger obviously. Anyone with a microscope certainly can’t be trusted. I feel so much safer now that Madison and his mercury is off the streets. Err… well I’m glad  his evil Tweeting ways have stopped. Listening to the open, unencrypted radio transmissions of the police and transcribing them to the Internet is a big deal… somehow.

At best this man abused the terms of service for the Internet access service provided by the hotel and that none of the governments business. This story is feels like something out of a dystopia police state story… perhaps V for Vendetta. I’m surprised they allowed for this to be reported on. Perfect scenario for their national security letters.

I guess these guys weren’t using TOR?

Related posts:

1. A story of police state excessiveness on innocents
2. Police State: Memphis Part 2
3. Police State: Memphis

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

The recording begins with the sound of a child’s voice. It belongs to a little girl and she is clearly bewildered and distressed.

At one point she begins to cry. At other times she is sobbing uncontrollably. ‘Have you seen the judge yet?’ she can be heard asking pitifully in between the tears before pleading: ‘I want to go home with [you] Mummy and Daddy.’

The recording – and dozens of others just like it – was made during a supervised meeting between the youngster and her parents after their daughter was taken away from them by social workers.

They are known as ‘contact visits’ in the soulless vernacular of the care system, and took place in a room with a table and chairs and a few toys.

One hour. Once a month. That’s the extent of the relationship now between this little seven-year-old girl and her traumatised parents.

There are some parents who do not deserve to see their children more than once a month. Irresponsible parents. Neglectful parents. Abusive parents.

According to care workers, the mother and father of this little girl were found to fall into this category after their home was raided by the RSPCA and at least 18 police officers to deal with a complaint about supposed mistreatment of dogs.

But what if social workers have got it wrong? In the light of Baby P and so many other scandals, it’s hardly impossible is it?

Certainly, the recordings stored on a computer at the family’s home on the South Coast seem to contradict the damaging claims by social services that the girl, whom we shall call Jenny – the girl’s real identity has been suppressed by the courts – did not wish to return to live with her parents.

Jenny’s father spent months taking down every word of the recordings by hand, only to be told by a judge that they had to be professionally transcribed.

By the time they were, it was too late. Moves to put Jenny up for adoption were under way.

This week, after 74 separate court hearings over two harrowing years, the family finally lost their fight to have Jenny returned to them.

The Court of Appeal in London ruled that their daughter must be given up for adoption. If and when she is, they may never see her again.

Jenny was five when she was taken away, and seven now. Before we examine the peculiarly troubling details of this case, it is worth considering the comments of the family’s MP, Charles Hendry.

He says: ‘This case has concerned me more than any other in my 13 years as a member of Parliament.’ And, he went on to describe Jenny’s mother and father as ‘devoted parents’.

Furthermore, one of the experts brought in to examine the child’s removal, a psychiatric social worker, concluded the local authority had ‘mismanaged the case’. Needless to say, his advice was ignored.

They are not lone voices: more than 200 local people, including neighbours, friends and members of the couple’s church, planned to take part in a march through their village shortly after the family’s ordeal began in April 2007.

Posters were printed, which read ‘Social Services Have Kidnapped Our Daughter. Please Help The Fight To Get Her Back Where She Belongs.’ Above the words was a picture of Jenny.

Of course, you won’t have read about the protest, because it never took place. The march was just about to begin when the police, acting on the advice of social services, stepped in.

They warned Jenny’s parents they risked being jailed, as they had broken the law by identifying their daughter on the placards.

Just another example of the terrifying lack of transparency that now surrounds the removal of children from their families.

Reforms to open up cases such as Jenny’s to public scrutiny were introduced earlier this year. But the truth is, an almost Stalinist culture of secrecy still exists in family courts.

Jenny was never physically harmed, and was ‘thriving and happy before being taken away’, the Court of Appeal was told.

One of the reasons for the decision was that Jenny’s father had been unwilling to undergo a further assessment.

Wouldn’t other parents in his position have done the same?

After all, the case had already dragged on for two years and he believed yet another ‘assessment’ would delay the tortuous process even more.

Yet, here we are today on the cusp of Jenny being spirited away from her family for ever.

No one suggests that Jenny’s parents – whom we’ll call Susan and Richard – are perfect. But over the past few weeks, our reporters have come to know the family. And one thing seems undeniable – their love for their daughter, and her love for them.

Jenny is a beautiful child with a mop of chestnut hair. She loved ballet, swimming and Susan and Richard paid for her to have private tennis lessons.

Her bedroom – with her own ensuite bathroom – in the family’s home is almost unchanged from the day she last slept there.

Her favourite pink teddy bear is still sitting under the windowsill. And a collection of her videos are on a shelf.

‘She loved Grease and pretending to be Olivia Newton-John,’ her mother told me last night as her eyes filled up with tears. ‘It’s hard to come into my daughter’s room without crying.’

Susan, in her 40s and involved in her local Conservative Association, used to be a beautician before becoming a fulltime mother – that was how important her child was to her.

Her husband Richard, 32, runs a dog breeding business from their home. They have been married for 13 years.

They were just a normal, happy family, it seems, until the RSPCA, backed up by 18 police officers, arrived at their house early one April morning in 2007, following a tip-off that dogs were being mistreated, and that there might be guns in the house.

No guns were ever found. No criminal charges were brought, nor does Richard have a criminal record.

He was later, however, convicted of docking the tails of his puppies. But the raid was to have far more catastrophic consequences.

Both Richard and Susan were arrested for failing to cooperate with officers. By the time they were released from custody later that day, Jenny was the subject of an emergency protection order.

So an operation which had begun for entirely different reasons had ended with the heartbreak of their daughter being taken away.

There were two reasons for what happened, and both have been bitterly contested by the family.

The first was the state of the house. Police said it was covered in rabbit entrails – used as food for the dogs they raised – and animal excrement.

The couple claim most of the mess was caused during the raid. They say, the doors were left open, allowing the dogs in. Normally, they insisted, their home was ‘clean and tidy’.

Only a few weeks earlier a policewoman had visited them – after a puppy had been stolen – and backed up what they said.

She also said that Jenny was ‘happy’. Their home, it should also be stressed, was always immaculate when we visited the couple.

Attention was drawn to the fact that there was a hole in a downstairs bedroom ceiling. But the family point out that a pipe had recently leaked and could not be repaired until the beams had dried out. It has now been fixed.

Nor, it was claimed by the authorities, were there any clothes for Jenny in her wardrobe. Did the police look in the wrong wardrobe – the one in her parent’s bedroom?

The wardrobe in Jenny’s own bedroom, her parents say, was full of her belongings.

‘We always put Jenny first,’ said Susan. ‘We have receipts from Monsoon [the fashion store] proving we spent hundreds of pounds on Jenny in the couple of months before she was taken from us. If anything, we spoilt her.’

The second reason, according to social services, that Jenny was not returned to her parents, was that she had apparently made it clear she didn’t want to return to the house.

But why would she? Jenny was later diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) following the raid.

In fact, it would be impossible to imagine a more traumatic situation than the ‘chaotic scenes’ which unfolded at the house that morning and which culminated in her mother and father being led away in handcuffs.

In other words, not wanting to return home didn’t necessarily mean she didn’t want to be with her parents.

Those tapes made during ‘contact meetings’ in which she tearfully begs to be returned to her ‘Mummy and Daddy’ would seem to confirm this.

‘She was hysterical when the police came in,’ says Susan. ‘It’s the damage they have done to our little girl which really concerns us. I fear she will never be the same.’

There is also another sad twist to this troubling story. Susan and Richard didn’t just lose Jenny that day.

Susan was three months pregnant with twins. She says she was in a police cell when she began to miscarry.

‘I started bleeding heavily and knew that could only mean one thing,’ she said. ‘I was taken to hospital where doctors confirmed my worst fears.’

Even so, she was taken back to the police station later, where she says she suffered another haemorrhage. ‘I rang the buzzer and they brought me sanitary towels. Later, I was allowed home.’

But another nightmare was just unfolding. Susan was charged with neglecting Jenny – on the strength, she says, of the conditions in the house.

Three months later, all the charges were dropped.

Many would also argue that this is when the social services case against the couple should also have been dropped.

But, like other families who have been through a similar experience, once they were in the ’system’ they found it impossible to get out.

It is a view supported by their MP. ‘I was very concerned about the case from the outset,’ says Mr Hendry.

‘Every time I have attempted to discuss it with the director of children’s services for the county council, I have been told they cannot discuss it because of the legal proceedings.

‘What it has brought home to me is how difficult it is for parents to get back a child once a decision has been made to take the child away.

‘It is clear to me they are devoted parents whose only goal is get their child returned. I have never seen the evidence to justify taking their daughter away from them.’

In fact, the ‘evidence’ is based on the testimony of two independent experts. Two others gave the couple positive assessments. But let’s deal with the critical reports.

One ‘expert’ suggested, after spending just one hour with Jenny, that she had been sexually abused by her father.

And the proof? He came to this conclusion, it seems, after Jenny had described choking on a lollipop which, so the expert said, could ’signify the child being forced to have oral sex with her father’.

There was indeed an incident, says her mother, in which Jenny got a lolly (a sugar-free one from the health shop, incidentally) stuck in her throat when she was playing.

‘She started coughing,’ says Susan. I thought: “Oh my God, she is choking.” I patted her on the back and she was OK.’

The second expert concluded that Susan and Richard were suffering from ‘paranoid personality disorders’.

On one occasion, the police were called when Richard began taking photographs of the social services centre where a ‘contact meeting’ with Jenny was taking place.

Why? Because the grounds of the building were littered with syringes and mounds of rubbish – not a fit place, he claimed, for them to meet their bewildered child.

‘The social workers didn’t want to challenge these experts, at all,’ says Richard. ‘I would say to them: “Where is the evidence for this allegation or that allegation?” Or “produce a witness”.

‘They felt we were being obstructive to the local authority’s care plan. But what we supposed to do? Just give up. We would never do that.’

The allegations about the sexual abuse and the paranoia were dismissed by other experts, including Dr Peter Dale, a psychiatric social worker, who concluded the local authority had ‘mismanaged the case’.

They made, he said, fixed assumptions about the parents at the outset, and had not done the necessary investigations to check whether those assumptions were correct.

Dr Dale said: ‘Jenny had suffered significant harm as a result of being removed from her parents, and was likely to suffer fears of abandonment by them for some time to come and would be particularly at risk during adolescence.

‘She needed urgent therapeutic input to help her make sense of what had happened to her.’

He continued: ‘Plans for reunification [with her parents] should be established on a very urgent basis.’

Instead, Jenny is being put up for adoption. If Susan and Richard refuse to accept the decision, they could be prevented from ever seeing their daughter again. It is an outcome which their neighbours and friends can barely contemplate.

One couple are among dozens of people who have supported the couple in their desperate fight to get their only daughter back.

The pair, who have both worked in social services, say they are ‘disgusted’ with the way the case has been handled, and yesterday insisted the parents were ‘the best mother and father a child could wish for’.

The 44-year-old woman, says: ‘I worked with children in social services for 25 years and I have never seen anything like this.

‘We have been friends with the family for about five years and the only criticism I could ever make of them is that they love their little girl too much. They spoil her rotten.

‘She has spent a lot of time in our home playing with our daughter, who is a bit older, and our daughter was always over at their home.

‘She is a bright, funny, intelligent child. She is always happy and giggling. Every time we saw her she was immaculately dressed, often showing off a new frock or jewellery.

‘The way they were raided like criminals and their child snatched from their arms is disgusting.

‘There are so many children out there who do need to be monitored by social services, as demonstrated by Baby P. This little girl is not one of them.’

Last night, Jenny’s mother, tears rolling down her cheeks, described the impact on the family.

‘I go to bed thinking about Jenny and I wake up thinking about Jenny,’ she said. ‘There’s hardly a moment in the day when we are not thinking about her. It’s torture.

‘To think that our beautiful daughter is probably going to be advertised on a social services website is unbearably painful.’

No one – particularly a newspaper – has a copyright on wisdom in tragic cases such as this. But surely – in the name of justice – there are too many questions raised by the couple’s MP, neighbours and independent experts, for anyone to be certain that it’s right for Jenny to be torn away from her biological family.

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3. Canada’s courts are seriously screwed up : 12 y/o has father’s punishment overturned

A $226,000 armored vehicle for the North Richland Hills Police Department SWAT team arrived a few days ago to replace one the agency got in 1990.

To many people that vehicle — and others like it used by police departments across the country — will go unnoticed. The public seems to largely accept the use of military-type equipment, technology and tactics as not only appropriate but also necessary to fight crime and make communities more safe and secure.

Armored vehicles are used by law enforcement agencies in Fort Worth, Arlington and Bedford and at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, just to name a few. Some police departments have assault rifles, noise-flash devices and grenade launchers. Arlington even sought federal money for a drone aircraft.

But some criminal-justice experts are troubled by law enforcement agencies’ growing use of military-style equipment. Rather than employ such equipment only in extreme situations, the critics say, their use is becoming commonplace, leading police to use unnecessary force and intimidating residents. For example, some cite an episode last year in which police used a battering ram to raid a Duncanville swingers club when no one answered a knock.

“We have been witnesses to a little-noticed but nonetheless momentous historical change — the traditional distinctions between military/police, war/law and internal/external security are rapidly blurring,” said criminal justice professor Peter Kraska, of Eastern Kentucky University, in one on his studies on the militarization of police departments.

Local police officials note that growing populations, rising crime rates and more-lethal weapons available to criminals have forced officers to keep up. They also say they rely on training to make sure equipment is used appropriately.

“For years, there’s always been a parallel between law enforcement and the military,” said Bedford Police Chief David Flory, former director of training for the Texas Tactical Peace Officers Association. “Of course, the big difference is the rules of engagement. The military in Afghanistan or Iraq is dealing with warfare. We as officers have the U.S. Constitution and the Texas Penal Code that we must follow.”

Growing use nationwide

Law enforcement agencies’ use of military equipment began in Los Angeles during the race riots in the 1960s. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration supplied police with more military equipment for the war on drugs.

In 1994, the Defense Department authorized the transfer of military equipment and technology to state and local police.

Local police officials said two events later in the 1990s forced law enforcement agencies to bolster their equipment.

In the North Hollywood bank shootout in 1997, officers didn’t have the firepower to match two heavily armed bank robbers dressed as commandos.

Police officials also said that the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999, as well as other school shootings, proved that such violence could happen in smaller suburban cities. The two teenage shooters at Columbine were armed with military-style weapons and had made bombs.

After 9-11, more military-style equipment became available to local and state police from Homeland Security funds. North Richland Hills paid for its new armored vehicle through a state Homeland Security grant.

In recent months, more equipment has been purchased with federal stimulus funds. According to StimulusWatch.org, Arlington at one point requested $1.6 million in stimulus money for a mobile command unit, explosive entry program, armored vehicle and support vehicle, plus the unmanned drone for surveillance and security that StimulusWatch lists at $625,000.

Law enforcement experts estimate that more than 17,000 local and state police forces are equipped with such military equipment as Black Hawk helicopters, machine guns, grenade launchers, battering rams, chemical sprays, body armor, night vision and rappelling gear.

But the military influence goes beyond that, to every aspect of law enforcement: Uniforms, insignias, language and command structures are essentially products of the military.

Advertisements in law enforcement magazines even tout the military background.

In the May issue of Police Magazine, an ad for a gas mask proclaims, “No other law enforcement gas mask has this military pedigree.” It also says the mask has the “latest U.S. military technology.”

Not without controversy

Debate on the use of military-style equipment by police has gone on for decades.

Several police officials said that the sophisticated military-style equipment is needed to protect the area’s growing communities. Several Tarrant cities have nearly doubled in the past couple of decades.

And while major-crime rates fell across Texas and in most large Tarrant County cities last year, there were more major crimes than in 1980, state statistics show.

The number of Texas officers assaulted last year increased by 17.9 percent from 2007.

Still, some criminal-justice experts say that too often SWAT teams with military-style equipment and tactics are deployed for routine duties, such as serving warrants.

“In the past, SWAT teams and their military-type equipment were used in extreme circumstances and that was rare,” Eastern Kentucky’s Kraska said in a recent interview with the Star-Telegram. “Now, it’s much more.”

Kraska said that nationwide, SWAT teams were dispatched about 3,000 times each year in the 1980s.

Last year, that happened about 55,000 times, he said.

“The legitimate argument is that these armored vehicles and SWAT teams should be used in extreme, dangerous situations,” Kraska said. “But that’s it.”

Former Kansas state trooper Greg Evensen, who has written articles on the militarization of police departments, has also criticized the trend. “What ever happened to local ‘peace officers’?” Evensen wrote in 2006. “You remember. The cop everyone knew, liked and respected because of his courage, devotion to duty and the citizens of his/her community.”

Several criminal-justice professors have said the trend will likely continue for several years, even though the military-style equipment could be expensive to maintain.

Flory, Bedford’s police chief, said the equipment must be used wisely.

Bedford used its armored vehicle and SWAT team a week ago when a woman held police at bay from her apartment for more than two hours. The standoff ended when the woman shot herself.

“The funding and the technology is what police departments are looking for to curb crime rates,” Flory said. “It makes good sense to use what’s available.”

North Richland Hills’ new armored vehicle will be put to various public-safety uses and can be deployed to nearby communities, emergency management coordinator Sean Hughes said.

The vehicle, made by Lenco, has steel armor that can repel multiple attacks from assault weapons and multi-hit ballistic glass. The ceilings and floor are blast-fragmentation-resistant. Some Lenco vehicles have gun ports and roof hatches with rotating turrets.

“In my opinion, it’s a multifaceted public-safety vehicle,” Hughes said. “It will be used by police, but it has detection equipment that could be used by the Fire Department.”

But the military/police issue apparently remains a delicate one in the city; police officials declined to have the new armored vehicle photographed.

Increasingly distrubing.

Related posts:

1. Police State University
2. Not that we don’t already have McCain’s dream military style police state
3. Police State: Memphis Part 2

Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers – eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 – face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots – BAM! BAM! – fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence – an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

“Our end goal is to create more agents,” said April McKee, a senior Border Patrol agent and mentor at the session here.

The law enforcement posts are restricted to those ages 14 to 21 who have a C average, but there seems to be some wiggle room. “I will take them at 13 and a half,” Deputy Lowenthal said. “I would rather take a kid than possibly lose a kid.”

Just as there are soccer moms, there are Explorers dads, who attend the competitions, man the hamburger grill and donate their land for the simulated marijuana field raids. In their training, the would-be law-enforcement officers do not mess around, as revealed at a recent competition on the state fairgrounds here, where a Ferris wheel sat next to the police cars set up for a felony investigation.Their hearts pounding, Explorers moved down alleys where there were hidden paper targets of people pointing guns, and made split-second decisions about when to shoot. In rescuing hostages from a bus taken over by terrorists, a baby-faced young girl screamed, “Separate your feet!” as she moved to handcuff her suspect.

In a competition in Arizona that he did not oversee, Deputy Lowenthal said, one role-player wore traditional Arab dress. “If we’re looking at 9/11 and what a Middle Eastern terrorist would be like,” he said, “then maybe your role-player would look like that. I don’t know, would you call that politically incorrect?”

This is seriously fucked up. YAY fascist police state Hiter youth brigade!

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The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.

In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation’s drug issues.

“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”

The Obama administration is likely to deal with drugs as a matter of public health rather than criminal justice alone, with treatment’s role growing relative to incarceration, Mr. Kerlikowske said.

The administration also said federal authorities would no longer raid medical-marijuana dispensaries in the 13 states where voters have made medical marijuana legal. Agents had previously done so under federal law, which doesn’t provide for any exceptions to its marijuana prohibition.

James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest law-enforcement labor organization, said that while he holds Mr. Kerlikowske in high regard, police officers are wary.

“While I don’t necessarily disagree with Gil’s focus on treatment and demand reduction, I don’t want to see it at the expense of law enforcement. People need to understand that when they violate the law there are consequences.”

1. You can’t convince people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product’ because that’s impossible and just as ridiculous as a ‘war on terror’ or ‘war on a tactic.’ They see it as a war on them because it is. Drug and products exist only because people desire them. You must go after the actor behind the drug or product. The user or seller or manufacturer. Whenever you prohibit something you will enveitably make that problem worse and cause negative side effects you didn’t account for. Whether that be drugs, guns, prostitution or fast food.
2. While forced treatment is likely better than forced incarceration you will still have asset forfeiture happening. You’re still forcing people to do something against their will for what was likely a consensual, non-violent, voluntary ‘crime.’
3. Treating it as a ‘health’ issue doesn’t make me feel any better. Health in general but specifically mental health has been a tool used by violent fascist governments throughout time to remove those who they disagreed with. Many states in the USA practiced eugenics before Hitler or anyone else. Many regimes would use vague mental ‘disorders’ to lock up political advisories in padded rooms and in most countries including the United States you can be held practically forever without the same well documented legal rights that a normally imprisoned individual has. Not that that always helps.
4. Medical-marijuana dispensary raids? Oh yes because that promise was so well kept. I’m totally going to just ignore all of Obama’s lies and believe his drug ‘czar’ on this one.
5. This has been said many times but… czar? Really? Must they be so blatantly power hungry? I’ve no doubt these guys think of themselves as little emperors. It’s sick.
6. Even if treatment goes up will incarceration go down? Will he ask Obama to release/pardon all or some or even one of the non-violent federally held drug ‘criminals?’ The USA has the largest prison population both in total number of prisoners and per capita. The prison system is one of the fastest growing industries. To make room for non-violent drug offenders California last I heard was planning on releasing violent prisoners out early. Seems wrong on several levels.
7. Oh… and what about obeying the actual laws of the land Mr. Kerlikowske? You know… the US Constitution? The 9th and 10th Amendments. Would you be so kind as to point out the section in Article 1 that gives congress the power to pass such prohibitions?
8. Of course James Pasco is wary of the proposed changes. As he says: “I don’t want to see it as an expense of law enforcement.” What he really means is that he doesn’t want the war on drugs to shrink because then he may not get the funding or get to use his fun SWAT equipment as much. Can’t have a reduction in the police state. Gotta keep them boys employed. Can’t make it look like they aren’t enforcing the rule of law. Even though they are breaking their oath to be peace officers and to the Constitution regularly.

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South Brunswick police raided a massage parlor in Dayton today, seizing thousands of dollars and accusing the owner and staff of prostitution.

The bust of June Spa II in Liberty Mall on Route 522 comes two years after cops raided the same location three times when it was operated under different names, according to township police.

Because of the recurring issues, police said, they charged the owner of the property, Tobia Scotto Daniello, of North Brunswick, with maintaining a nuisance.

Detectives started looking into the businesses after Mayor Frank Gambatese’s office received an anonymous complaint that it was a front for prostitution, a department news release said.

When officers executed a search warrant, they seized records, nearly $2,000 in cash, records and approximately $5,000 dollars worth of property.

Arrested in the raid were business owner Mi Hee Lee, 56, of Palisades Park; Manager Susan Kim, 58, of Fort Lee; and Ae S. Son, 60, of Flushing, N.Y. They were held on $2,500 bail.

Sounds like a real dangrous group. So proud their business is destroyed, the employees are for the time jobless and these people perhaps will end up in jail.

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The Obama administration will ask Congress for another $83.4 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of September, Democratic congressional sources said Thursday.

The request is expected to pay for those conflicts for the rest of the 2009 budget year, two Democratic congressional sources said.

The money would bring the running tab for both conflicts to about $947 billion, according to figures from the Congressional Research Service.

More than three-quarters of the $864 billion appropriated so far has gone to the war in Iraq, where most of the U.S. troops involved in those conflicts have been deployed, the agency estimated.

Since taking office in January, President Obama has announced plans to shift troops out of Iraq and beef up U.S. forces in Afghanistan, where American troops have been battling al Qaeda and Taliban fighters since al Qaeda’s 2001 attacks.

The additional money is needed “to fund the new strategy in Afghanistan and fund the process in Iraq that will lead to a drawdown of all of our combat troops,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

About $75 billion of the requested funds would pay for military operations, with the rest going to diplomatic programs and development aid.

The measure is likely to be the last supplemental request submitted to Congress to pay for the wars.

Likely the last supplemental request? Is it the last just like the DEA raids in California were to stop?

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3. Obama ‘approved 13,000 more troops’ to Afghanistan

On April Fools Day BitTorrent users were having fun thanks to leaked copies of an unfinished version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. 20th Century Fox quickly issued a statement that was the equivalent of a war cry, and the FBI raided a Texas data center, allegedly to obtain records related to Wolverine’s spread.

Wolverine first leaked to BitTorrent on April Fools Day, reportedly in DVD quality. This version is said to be incomplete, however, with a number of missing scenes, unfinished special effects, and scores from other films spliced in for portions of the soundtrack. Nevertheless, the leaked Wolverine was promptly downloaded over 75,000 times within the first few hours of its premature Internet debut.

20th Century Fox issued a statement later that day about the leak, acknowledging that an “early version” of Wolverine has been “posted illegally on websites.” The studio also fired a warning shot across the bow of whoever leaked it, stating that “we forensically mark our content so we can identify sources that make it available or download it.” Fox also mentions that the MPAA and FBI are investigating the crime, and that it will “prosecute the source and any subsequent postings to the fullest extent of the law.”

If Matthew Simpson, owner of Texas data center Core IP Networks, is right, Fox is indeed making good on its word. The FBI raided Simson’s business and home yesterday on a search and seizure warrant, claiming “millions of dollars in computer equipment.” The agency would not tell Simpson its exact reason for the investigation, only that it is “investigating a company that has purchased services from Core IP Networks in the past” which it used to pirate movies and software.

According to a letter Simpson posted online, he was in Arizona at the time of the raid. The FBI has “seized all equipment belonging to our customers,” and even threatened to arrest customers who arrived at the data center to try and retrieve their computers. “Currently nearly 50 businesses are completely without access to their email and data,” Simpson continues. “Citizen access to Emergency 911 services are being affected, as Core IP’s primary client base consists of telephone companies.”

Looks like it’s happening already.

If a business wants to restrict the propogation of their works they should be doing it themselves using DRM or other means. The State should have no role in creating monopolies.

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2. FBI raids Liberty Dollar office
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THE NARCOTICS officers knew they were being watched on video surveillance moments after they entered the bodega.

Officer Jeffrey Cujdik told store owner Jose Duran that police were in search of tiny ziplock bags often used to package drugs. But, during the September 2007 raid, Cujdik and fellow squad members seemed much more interested in finding every video camera in the West Oak Lane store.

“I got like seven or eight eyes,” shouted Officer Thomas Tolstoy, referring to the cameras, as the officers glanced up. “There’s one outside. There is one, two, three, four in the aisles, and there’s one right here somewhere.”

For the next several minutes, Tolstoy and other Narcotics Field Unit officers systematically cut wires to cameras until those “eyes” could no longer see.

Then, after the officers arrested Duran and took him to jail, nearly $10,000 in cash and cartons of Marlboros and Newports were missing from the locked, unattended store, Duran alleges. The officers guzzled sodas and scarfed down fresh turkey hoagies, Little Debbie fudge brownies and Cheez-Its, he said.

What the officers didn’t count on was that Duran’s high-tech video system had a hidden backup hard-drive. The backup downloaded the footage to his private Web site before the wires were cut.

Although Duran has no video of the alleged looting, he has a 10-minute video that shows the officers using a bread knife, pliers, milk crates and their hands to disable the surveillance system.

The officers didn’t “touch the money with the system looking,” said Duran, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic 15 years ago and has no prior criminal record in Philadelphia.

They touched “the money after they destroy all the system,” he said.

Duran, 28, of South Jersey, a technology buff, said that he was upset that the officers had wrecked his $15,000 surveillance system.

“That was his main complaint – that they destroyed his surveillance system,” Duran’s attorney, Sonte Anthony Reavis, said last week. “I believed him.”

Duran’s video bolsters allegations by eight other Philadelphia store owners who said that Cujdik and other officers destroyed or cut wires to surveillance cameras. Those store owners also said that after the wires were cut, cigarettes, batteries, cell phones, food and drinks were taken. The Daily News reported the allegations March 20.

The officers also confiscated cash from the stores – a routine practice in drug raids – but didn’t record the full amount on police property receipts, the shop owners allege.

Six more store owners or workers, including Duran, contacted the Daily News after the March 20 article. All six described similar ordeals involving destroyed cameras and missing money and merchandise.

The officers arrested the stores’ owners for selling tiny bags, which police consider drug paraphernalia. Under state law, it’s illegal to sell containers if the store owner “knows or should reasonably know” that the buyer intends to use them to package drugs.

Duran alleged that the officers seized nearly $10,000 in the raid on his store, on 20th Street near 73rd Avenue. He said that the money included a week’s worth of profits and cash to pay his three employees.

The property receipt filed by the officers said that they had confiscated only $785.

Told of the new allegations, George Bochetto, an attorney representing Cujdik, said that he stood by his earlier response:

“Now that the Daily News has created a mass hysteria concerning the Philadelphia Narcotics Unit, it comes as no surprise that every defendant ever arrested will now proclaim their innocence and bark about being mistreated.

“Suffice it to say, there is a not a scintilla of truth to such convenient protestations.”

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said that he’s disturbed by the store owners’ allegations.

“It’s pretty serious and I want to get to the bottom of it,” Ramsey said last week.

Cujdik is at the center of an expanding federal and local probe into allegations that he lied on search warrants to gain access to suspected drug homes and became too close with his informants.

Ramsey said that Duran’s video now “needs to be made part of this larger investigation.”

The video also calls into question the validity of the search warrant that enabled the officers to raid Duran’s store.

In a search-warrant application, Officer Richard Cujdik – Jeffrey Cujdik’s brother – wrote that he “observed” a confidential informant enter Duran’s store to buy tiny ziplock bags at about 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2007.

The informant left the store two minutes later and handed two bags to Richard Cujdik, according to the search-warrant application.

Two-and-a-half hours later, at about 7 p.m., the Cujdik brothers and four other officers, including Tolstoy, Thomas Kuhn, Anthony Parrotti and squad supervisor Sgt. Joseph Bologna raided the store.

The Daily News watched the time-stamped Sept. 11 surveillance footage between 4 and 5 p.m.: Not a single customer asked for or bought a ziplock bag.

“At the time, I had no reason to question the validity of the warrant,” said Reavis, Duran’s attorney.

When told by the Daily News that no bags were sold during that time frame, Reavis expressed shock.

“That’s manufacturing evidence,” Reavis said. “If the basis for the search warrant is a lie, that’s perjury. It’s illegal. It’s criminal on the officer’s part.”

Richard Cujdik also wrote in the search-warrant application that the same informant had bought ziplock bags from Duran twice before – on Sept. 5 and 6, 2007. Duran said he was unable to locate the footage from those days.

The Daily News attempted to contact each of the officers who took part in the raid. Except for Bochetto’s response on behalf of Jeffrey Cujdik, none returned messages seeking comment.

The footage from the day of the raid is crystal-clear:

Duran is chatting on his cell phone in front of the cash register when the officers enter the store. With gun drawn, Tolstoy is in the lead. Most of the officers are wearing vests or shirts with the word “Police.”

Tolstoy handcuffs Duran. The officers ask routine questions: Does Duran have a gun? Does anyone live on the second floor? Are there dogs in the basement?

Then Sgt. Bologna looks up and waves his finger toward the ceiling: “Whaddya got, cameras over there? . . . Where are they hooked up to?”

In fact, every officer seems fixated on the surveillance system.

“Where’s the video cameras? The cassette for it?” Richard Cujdik asks.

“Does it record?” Jeffrey Cujdik quickly adds.

Officer Kuhn then steps up on a milk crate that he had placed underneath a ceiling camera and struggles to reach it. “I need to be f—ing taller,” Kuhn mumbles as another officer laughs.

“You got a ladder in here, Cuz?” Kuhn asks Duran.

“Yo,” Tolstoy calls out from behind the register. “Does this camera go home? Can you view this on your computer, too?”

“I can see [at], yeah, home, yeah,” Duran replies.

“So your wife knows we’re here, then?” Tolstoy asks.

“My wife? No. She not looking the computer right now,” Duran says.

“Hey, Sarge . . . Come ‘ere,” Tolstoy shouts out.

Bologna ambles over to the front counter.

Jeffrey Cujdik leans in and whispers, “There’s one in the back corner right there.”
“It can be viewed at home,” Tolstoy says.

As the others talk, Officer Parrotti reaches up to another camera in front of the register. He pulls the wire down and slices it with a bread knife taken from the store’s deli.

“OK. We’ll disconnect it,” Bologna assures Tolstoy. “That’s cool.”

Meanwhile, Parrotti’s hand covers the camera lens and he appears to yank the camera from the ceiling.

The screen goes black.

“They could watch what’s happening at the store at your house?” Bologna asks.

The audio cuts out.

There is footage of Kuhn looking for a camera outside the store and of Richard Cujdik searching Duran’s white van. In the audio portion of the video, Richard Cujdik asks Duran, “Is that your – whose white van is that?”

Then Richard Cujdik simply asks for the keys and heads outside. The search warrant for the store makes no mention of a van. The Daily News could not find a search warrant for the van in court records.

The officers arrested Duran on misdemeanor charges of possessing and selling drug paraphernalia, specifically tiny ziplock bags.

The next day, while Duran was in jail, his brother-in-law Anthony Garcia entered the store, which had been locked after the officers left.

The place was trashed, Garcia said. Goods had been knocked off shelves onto the floor. The oven and deep fryer were left on and the refrigerator door was left open, spoiling the food inside.

“It looked like they were having a party in there,” he said. “There was a lot of money missing.”

Garcia said that Duran’s van was left unlocked with the keys in the center console.

The initial police report says that the officers “also recovered in the store . . . eight (8) overhead cameras.” The officers, however, do not list the cameras on any property receipt or state why they took them, according to police documents.

During the raid, Jeffrey Cujdik told Duran that he was seizing the cameras and computer monitor “as evidence because you’re selling drug paraphernalia. So we gotta get rid of it. . . . You got yourself on video selling drug paraphernalia.”

Duran’s cameras, however, were digital and contained no tape and, therefore, no evidence.

Commissioner Ramsey said that he couldn’t think of any official reason for police officers to cut camera wires.

He said that the officers could confiscate surveillance equipment, including the cameras, if they believed that the footage provided evidence connected to the drug-paraphernalia case. But, Ramsey added, the officers must include the equipment on a property receipt and explain why they had confiscated the cameras.

“You wouldn’t just cut it and take it, because that’s somebody’s private property,” Ramsey said.

During the raid, Richard Cujdik told Duran that the ziplock bags were illegal. Duran tried to explain that he bought the store fully stocked and the bags were already inside.

“OK, it don’t matter,” Richard Cujdik told him. “You should know your business.”

In February 2008, Municipal Court Judge James M. DeLeon sentenced Duran to nine months’ probation after he pleaded “no contest” to the charges. He paid $5,000 in attorney’s fees.

And Duran, who was renting the first floor that housed the store, lost his lease. The building owner said that Duran had to leave to prevent the city from taking the building in forfeiture, Duran said.

He now operates a grocery in Camden County, but remains angry about the raid.

“That’s not fair, what they did to me,” Duran said. “That’s no way to treat me when they don’t know me.

“You work 18 hours [a day] and they come in and do that?”

Transcript of the raid
Police Raw Video 1
Police Raw Video 2
Police Raw Video 3
Tainted Justice: A Daily News series on a police investigation into questionable claims by a drug-case informant and their ramifications.

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Police officers accused of drunken driving. A female officer’s alleged promiscuity and infidelity. A commander whose critics labeled his son a child molester.

Jeff Pataky said he uses negative complaints and anonymous tips to fuel his blogging crusade against Phoenix police. A headline on his Web site suggests rewards would be provided for “dirt” on police indiscretions.

Pataky, a former software sales and marketing executive who now focuses his energy shoveling content on www.badphoenixcops.com, said he believes his online criticism of the department – along with past criticisms of police investigations – led officers to serve a search warrant at his home last week.

Police officials said Wednesday that a Phoenix detective prompted the investigation after complaining about harassment, though they declined further comment.

Pataky said he felt the investigation was a response to a lawsuit he filed on Monday in U.S. District Court saying he was maliciously prosecuted by police in 2007 after his ex-wife accused him of harassment, a case later dropped. In his lawsuit he’s asking for an unspecified amount for damages. City officials declined to comment on pending litigation.

Pataky’s blog is known in law-enforcement circles for its off-color language that, according to the blogger, is aimed at Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris, Maricopa County Andrew Thomas and other public officials.

“Too bad. They need to get over it,” Pataky said. “They are held to a higher accountability.”

Pataky said he edits the blog and works with four or five people who receive tips from a variety of sources, including sworn and retired officers.

Investigators confiscated computer material and other items from Pataky’s north Phoenix home, which he considered a threat to quit writing.

“We have heard internally from our police sources that they purposefully did this to stop me,” Pataky said. “They took my cable modem and wireless router. Anyone worth their salt knows nothing is stored in the cable modem.”

Phoenix Assistant Chief Andy Anderson said the harassment case is unique because of the connection to an unaccredited grassroots Web site. He said the blog is one part of the case, though he did not provide specifics of the ongoing investigation.

I’ve not gone as far as Pataky here on this blog but I have been harrassed by the local police due to the reporting I’ve done with regard to acquiring gun permits. I have no doubt this was a personal attack.

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