Cops who stole and gobbled weed candy complain that security camera violated their privacy

Remember those militarized cops who raided a California medical marijuana dispensary, harassed a disabled patient in the store, and were recorded on a security camera gobbling what was almost certainly marijuana-infused edibles that they swiped during the raid? Well, those cops are under investigation, and are trying to get off the hook by claiming that the security camera violated their right to be bullying, hypocritical asshats without be recorded on video. From The Daily Beast:

As brazen as the apparent behavior of officers that day is the argument being made by their lawyers. The three unidentified officers and their union are attempting to suppress the video’s use in ongoing disciplinary action against them by the city and police department.

In a lawsuit, the Santa Ana Police Officers Association and the three police officers argue that the video does not paint a fair version of events, and that it should not be allowed as evidence because the police had a reasonable expectation of privacy since they thought they had disabled all of the dispensary’s cameras.

“We believe that under California law, if you are being recorded, or eavesdropped on – which is the legal term for it – without your knowledge or consent, that it is illegal,” Corey Glave, the attorney representing the SAPOA and the three officers, told The Daily Beast. “Upon the direction of supervisors, all the cameras were disabled, so once those cameras were disabled, there was no expectation that there were any other cameras or that they were being recorded.”

There are signs all over Sky High saying that the premises is being recorded by video cameras, and not just clearly visible cameras.

Besides recording the cops as they ate edibles, the camera also recorded the cops saying nasty things about the disabled patient in the dispensary:

What that camera saw is now adding a new chapter to an ongoing and tragic American saga of the profoundly troubling behavior that some police officers engage in when they think no one is looking.

It saw one male and one female officer talking threateningly about [Marla] James, who is missing her left leg. “Did you punch that one-legged old Benita?” asks the guy.

“I was about to kick her in her fucking nub,” the lady cop appears to reply.

So what did James do to rile the cops up so much? She told the truth and she exercised her legal rights.

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Cop Who Became President of Mothers Against Drunk Driving Gets Caught Drunk Driving

The reason for his resignation has sent shockwaves through communities involved in the organization.

Deputy Griffin was actually pulled over in June and charged with impaired driving.

Deputy Griffin was a cop for 45 years.

One wonders, how many times did he directly or indirectly contributed to punishing citizens for drunk driving.

Deputy Griffin was also the president of MADD in Canada.

One also wonders how many days he spent railing against others for drunk driving.

And now here he is, charged for doing the same thing.

On June 5, Griffin was pulled over and charged with two alcohol-related driving crimes.

He has not yet entered a plea.

But we are guessing he will at most receive administrative leave.

There is no word as to whether he was even handcuffed when he was caught driving — any ordinary citizen would have been cuffed.

This article will be updated when more information becomes available concerning Griffin’s sentencing.

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Video: Cop Draws Sidearm On Man For Filming “

A California police officer drew his firearm on a man who was merely filming in his own neighborhood, in an intense moment caught on film.

The incident began last Wednesday when Rohnert Park resident Don McComas says he noticed an officer in a patrol vehicle observing him while he latched his boat onto his SUV.

“I stood up and just watched him,” McComas described. “He ever so slowly pulled away, circled the court opposite my house and then just parked facing my house. After an honest couple of minutes I pulled out my camera and pressed record.”

At the start of filming, the officer pulls into and stops in the middle of McComas’ cul-de-sac and appears to call in his license plate number.

The officer then proceeds to draw his cell phone and bizzarely begins to film McComas.

“He thinks he’s being funny now,” McComas comments.

“Go ahead and take your hand out of your pocket,” the unidentified officer upon exiting the cruiser orders McComas, who refuses saying, “No sir I’ve done absolutely nothing. No.”

The incident takes a serious turn when the officer removes his sidearm from his holster and begins approaching McComas menacingly.

“As minor as some would say it was, when I saw his gun gripped in his hand I really thought he was going to shoot me and claim my hand was in my pocket,” McComas says in the Youtube video description.

When McComas demands to know why the officer got out of his car, the officer replies, “You’re taking a picture of me, I’m taking a picture of you.”

The officer then argues he has the right to be on the sidewalk outside of the man’s house, as McComas expresses his family has been persistently harassed by police.

“What’s wrong with you, man?” the officer asks.

“Your station is corrupt,” McComas answers.

“Oh ok,” the officer says, before asking, “Are you some kind of a constitutionalist? Crazy guy or something like that?”

After cooling down, the officer walks back to his vehicle defeated, telling McComas to “go ahead and put it on Youtube.”

The video is sparking outrage, with many police accountability activist groups calling out the flagrant disregard for the rule of law and common decency.

“This is a blatant abuse of power and a disgrace to the man, as well as to the Rohnert Park Police Department if they choose to ignore their officers extreme methods,” Cop Block notes.

The mayor and city manager of the City of Rohnert Park have released a statement saying they will “conduct an internal review to verify that appropriate protocols were followed.”

Message about video of Rohnert Park Public Safety Officer
Posted Date: 8/4/2015
Regarding video of Rohnert Park Public Safety Officer:

We’ve been made aware of this matter and we are taking it seriously. We understand the concerns that have been raised by our community and others and we want the public to know that your trust in law enforcement in our City is a top priority. As a result, we will conduct an internal review to verify that appropriate protocols were followed. We will also review our protocols because we want to make sure we are using the best practices for the highest level of safety for both our officers and the community. 

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In an Attempt to Prevent Drug Overdoses, Politicians Propose to Ban Music Festivals

Los Angeles, CA — After a number of tragic overdoses at music festivals in the Los Angeles area, politicians are responding in typical statist fashion to prevent any further overdoses — ban music festivals.

According to Fox11, Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis introduced a motion at a board meeting this week that would ban all music festivals on county property. The motion is a reactionary step following the death of two people at last weekend’s HARD Summer music festival at the Pomona Fairgrounds.

“I am deeply troubled by the fact that this is the third such death to happen in my district in the last year and a half. No one — no one should have to lose their life while attending a public concert,” Solis said.

She added that “these kinds of events on county-owned land should be banned until we conduct a full investigation into this matter.”

 

However, festivals and other events are not to blame for overdoses, or other personal decisions that attendees make on their own. This is especially important to consider when the events host anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 people.

In an area with that many people, as populated as some towns are, it is inevitable that a wide variety of situations can pop up. In fact, any large event that hosts so many people see occasional deaths. Due to the large volume of people, the chances increase that something will go wrong somewhere. This goes for sporting events to parades and other types of events that are considered wholesome and family-friendly.

 

Some other factors to consider are the many unintended consequences of the drug war, which causes drugs to be more dangerous, and limits harm prevention policies that could be put into place to prevent overheating and drug overdoses.

In the black market, one of the major drawbacks is that there is no accountability among the people selling the drug. Since anyone can get kidnapped and thrown in a cage for even dealing with the stuff, it really doesn’t make sense for people to be plastering their names and logos all over the drugs.

In this age of corporate mercantilism, logos and branding may seem like a really tacky idea, but when looking at the black market we can see the value in such things. Someone who is selling a product with their name on it is going to go to far greater lengths to ensure the quality of their product, as opposed to someone who would remain anonymous.

This anonymity creates an incentive for people to be dishonest with what they sell. This could lead to rip-offs or downright contamination of the drug with unwanted harmful substances. This is why there was bathtub gin that would make you go blind if you drank it during alcohol prohibition. The drug war actually protects the identities of those selling deadly drugs by making it acceptable for them to be anonymous. On the streets, you get what you get and you deal with the consequences.

This is also the reason some of the harder street drugs today are cut with toxic chemicals that increase the chance of overdose ten fold. The fact that the drugs need to be smuggled also creates the incentive to make drugs more potent, and thus in some circumstances more dangerous. The increased potency and decreased availability inevitably leads to a massive increase in cost. The increased cost is a whole other issue with its own unique side effects in regards to drug safety. When the price of the real drugs go up, people just start huffing paint thinner, smoking bath salts and cooking up crystal meth in their basements, which is many times more dangerous than the unbranded drugs on the black market.

To fight against adultered drugs, many volunteers have created drug testing centers such as Dance Safe and The Bunk Police, but this year they have been kicked out of a number of festivals because promoters are afraid of appearing as if they condone drug use. This type of attitude has discouraged promoters from enacting common sense safety measures, like drug testing, free water centers, EMS tents and safe haven policies for people who are in danger of overdose. 

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Risk assessments are being used to sentence people to jail and death

 

States are trying to reduce prison populations with secretive, new psychological assessments to predict which inmates will commit future crimes and who might be safe to release, despite serious problems and high-profile failures.

Fred Osher, who heads the behavioral health division of the 

Council of State Governments’ Justice Center

 said: 

“We do not have the capability to predict violent actions.” "Arrest and incarceration,” Osher continued, “are not an acceptable substitute for providing an individual with appropriate care.”

Five things to know about risk assessment surveys:

THEY COULD BE USED IN A COURT SYSTEM NEAR YOU: Dozens of different surveys are being used across the country. The surveys vary in the kinds of questions asked and how they are used. Largely confined to parole and probation decisions, these surveys are increasingly being used for sentencing.IT'S A SECRET: The survey results — and in some cases the actual survey questions — are clouded in secrecy. Some states never release the evaluations, shielding government officials from being held accountable for decisions that affect public safety.100 QUESTIONS: Some of the surveys can include more than 100 questions and explore a defendant's education, family, income, job status, history of moving, parents' arrest history, or whether he or she has a phone. A score is affixed to each answer and the result helps shape how the defendant will be supervised in the system.HONEST CRIMINALS: Many of the surveys rely on criminals to tell the truth, though jurisdictions do not always check to make sure the answers are accurate. Something as basic as the age of an offender's first arrest could have an impact on the risk score.PUNISHED FOR BEING POOR: Some of these surveys have the potential to punish people for being poor or

 uneducated by attaching a lower risk to those who have steady work and high levels of education.

According to the Marshall Project 

"Pennsylvania is on the verge of becoming one of the first states in the country to base criminal sentences not only on what crimes people have been convicted of, but also on whether they are deemed likely to commit additional crimes." "Risk assessments have existed in various forms for a century, but over the past two decades, they have spread through the American justice system, driven by advances in social science. The tools try to predict recidivism — repeat offending or breaking the rules of probation or parole — using statistical probabilities based on factors such as age, employment history and prior criminal record."They are now used at some stage of the criminal justice process in nearly every state. Many court systems use the tools to guide decisions about which prisoners to release on parole, for example, and risk assessments are becoming increasingly popular as a way to help set bail for inmates awaiting trial. 

Threat assessments are being used in Texas and many other states...

“In Texas, the determination of who lives and who dies is based on predictions of future dangerousness that have been renounced as unreliable and without scientific validity by the leading mental health associations,” said Andrea Keilen, Deputy Director of Texas Defender Service. “The integrity of the Texas sentencing scheme is on par with medieval trials by ordeal. We would do just as well to drop people in boiling water to see whether they float” Keilen said.

* Click 

here

 & 

here

 to find out more about Texas's risk assessment program.

* Click 

here

 & 

here

 to read about California's. 

* Click 

here

 & 

here

 to read about New York's 

* Click 

here

 & 

here

 to read about Florida's 

The American Psychiatric Association even wrote an 

amicus brief

 explaining no one can predict with any degree of reliability that an individual will commit crimes in the future: 

“The unreliability of psychiatric predictions of long-term future dangerousness is by now an established fact within the profession.” The Association continues to urge that expert psychiatric testimony on future dangerousness be deemed inadmissible at capital sentencing hearings.  

“There are strong reasons to question the accuracy of predictions of violence made by prosecution experts in capital murder trials. It seems impossible to reconcile the glaring inaccuracy of the predictions made by these experts with the requirement that death sentences be meted out in a non-capricious manner,” said Dr. John Edens. “It is incumbent on mental health experts to avoid engaging in fraudulent testimony that is lacking in any meaningful scientific foundation.”

"Psychiatric predictions based on hypothetical situations sometimes bear more resemblance to medieval fortune-telling than to modern scientific techniques."

The Dept. of Justice (DoJ) and the 

Pretrial Justice Institute

 (PJI) wrote a B.S. study claiming pretrial assessments are scientifically valid called the "

State Of the Science Of Pretrial Risk Assessment

":

"The 

Bureau of Justice Assistance

 (BJA) is committed to assisting local jurisdictions as they strive to meet national, evidence-based standards on pretrial release. As part of this commitment, the Bureau convened leading researchers and professionals in the field of pretrial justice to discuss the efficacy and implementation of pretrial risk assessment. The purpose of the meeting was to determine how best to successfully assist local systems in the development and use of an evidence-based approach to pretrial justice. This document raises many questions and issues worthy of further investigation and study, but it also demystifies much of the misunderstandings involved in the development and application of these useful tools."  

Is this a joke? There are numerous scientific articles saying pre-crime assessments are B.S. so why are they claiming it's scientific? It's all about money, EVERYONE in the criminal justice system profits by keeping 2.5 million Americans behind bars!

FYI, the BJA is part of the DoJ which has close ties to DHS.

"Our thanks to the Pretrial Justice Institute (PJI) for organizing the meeting and continually supporting the use of validated pretrial risk assessments in every jurisdiction and the National Institute of Justice for its participation in this meeting."

The PJI has close ties to DHS, their new Executive Director Fanno Burdeen, Chairman of The Board 

used to work for DHS

. PJI's Director Emeritus Timothy Murray used to work with 

DHS and the TSA

. 

If one had any hopes of an unbiased study about pretrial criminal assessments they've just gone out the cell door!

Why does the NACDL, ACLU, Innocence Project etc. all support pretrial sentencing?

The PJI Survey results indicate that objective pretrial risk assessment instruments are increasingly being used by jurisdictions across the country. 

The PJI survey found that of those pretrial programs that do risk assessment, 42% report having developed their risk assessment procedures based on research done in their own jurisdictions on the factors that are related to pretrial misconduct, and about one third adapted their risk assessments from other jurisdictions. 

So to recap, the DoJ thinks its fine for states to make up their own risk assessments which are used to sentence or kill defendants!

Survey results indicate that 48% of pretrial programs have never validated their instruments, a statistic that has remained unchanged from 2001 to 2009. One concern, however, is that there is no standard method being used for the “validation of a risk assessment instrument.”

I'm trying not to vomit as the DOJ and the PJI admitted there are no national standards for risk assessments and nearly 50% of the assessment programs are junk but trust them, they're looking out for defendants rights! 

"Pretrial risk assessment is the determination of a quantitative or qualitative value of risk related to a pretrial defendant and his or her specific circumstances, and the first step in the risk management process. Risk management means balancing the constitutional rights of the defendant with the risk the defendant poses using effective supervision and strategic interventions."

The American Police State is assessing every student, home and much more:

American students from 

kindergarten through college

 are being given RISK ASSESSMENTS.

American students are also being given 

MENTAL HEALTH RISK ASSESSMENTS

.

Americans travelling inside the country are being given 

RISK ASSESSMENTS

.

Americans homes are being given 

COLOR CODED THREAT RATINGS (ASSESSMENTS).

 

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Drugs or No Drugs, K-9s Will Alert to Your Car Nearly Every Time

J

Bloomington, IL — Police are now speaking out about a decision from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that drug dogs signal for drugs nearly every time they are sent to sniff a vehicle or home. This decision shows that police dog searches are not legitimate and that they are just used as a pretense for officers to violate the rights of innocent people.

The case stemmed from a 2010 traffic stop in which 20 kilograms of cocaine were found in a vehicle after a search from a police dog named “Lex.”

The suspect ended up taking the case to court, and while his sentence was upheld, some very interesting points were uncovered during the investigation.

It was revealed that Lex, the drug dog in question, signaled for drugs 93% of the time, even when there were no drugs present. These findings show that dog sniffs are not accurate and are simply used as a tool to justify a full police search. The findings also indicated that Lex was incorrect roughly 40% of the time.

“Lex’s overall accuracy rate … is not much better than a coin flip,” the ruling stated.

Now the police are speaking out against the ruling, saying that Lex was at the bottom of his class and not a good representation of how most police dogs operate.

“Lex is lucky the Canine Training Institute doesn’t calculate class rank. If it did, Lex would have been at the bottom of his class,” a recent police statement said.

 

Police representative Michael Bieser said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune that “The opinion is unfair and very one-sided. He’s is a very, very good dog.”

In many cases, police dogs are trained with positive reinforcement if they are able to find contraband, a situation that will obviously lead to false positives. However, police deny that this tactic is used in training, despite the fact that it is known to be commonplace.

“We didn’t do it because we agree rewards confuse dogs, but they will use the practice against us in court,” Bieser said.

Last year, we reported on the high-profile case of Timothy Young. Young was pulled over for failure to use his turn signal when a police K-9 was said to have alerted to his vehicle. After police found no evidence of drugs in his car or on his person, he was then handcuffed and driven to a hospital an hour away. During this forced visit to the hospital, Young was x-rayed and sodomized in search of non-existent substances.

Still think if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear? Ask Mr. Young that question…..

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2 Men Open Fire On Soldiers At Jade Helm Training Site In Mississippi

Authorities are searching for two men suspected of firing shots at military personnel from a car. There were no injuries.

AP Staff via Talking Points Memo:

Perry County Sheriff Jimmy Dale Smith tells WDAM-TV (http://bit.ly/1UlrHi6) that the shots were fired just after noon Tuesday. The soldiers were training at Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center in Hattiesburg.

…

A vehicle matching the description of the two suspects’ truck was found near New Augusta off Old Augusta Road, according to WDAM. The suspects were driving a red Ford Ranger with the words “broken arrow” on the windshield.

Two men are being questioned by MHP, but are not under arrest at this time. Authorities say they are still looking for two white males who allegedly fired from the vehicle and fled in the vehicle.

 Read the entire report here.

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Apple stock plummets for a fifth straight day, wiping out $113billion of its value, as the company struggles to meet raised expectations

• The world's most valuable public company saw its stock price drop for a fifth straight day on Tuesday 
• Apple shares are now down 14 percent since closing at a record $133 in February 
• That loss breaks down to $113.4billion in paper wealth 
• iPhone sales were not quite as good as some analysts predicted, and the lukewarm forecast for the current period is causing the drop

Apple is slumping as the usually high-flying tech stock struggles with the burden of raised expectations.

The world's most valuable public company saw its stock price drop for a fifth straight day on Tuesday, falling as much as $5.19 or 4.4 percent, to $113.25 as investors fretted over China's economy and whether Apple can keep growing at the pace it's maintained over the last few quarters.

Apple shares are down 14 percent since closing at a record $133 in February. That puts Apple in a 'correction,' which is Wall Street jargon for price declines of 10 percent or more from a peak.

That loss breaks down to $113.4billion in paper wealth according to USA Today. 

Scroll down for video 

Bad times: The world's most valuable public company saw its stock price drop for a fifth straight day on Tuesday (Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks above at an October 2014 event)

The stock also dropped below its 200-day moving average, a technical indicator that traders use to gauge momentum.

Apple sold more than 47 million of its signature iPhones in the last quarter, or 35 percent more than a year earlier. That drove the company's profit and earnings above Wall Street estimates. 

But iPhone sales were not quite as good as some analysts predicted, and executives gave a lukewarm forecast for the current period. That has sent the stock into a decline since Apple reported earnings on July 21.

Shareholders are also worried about recent hiccups in China's economy, because the country is viewed as one of Apple's biggest markets for expansion, said Daniel Ives, a managing director and senior analyst for FBR Capital Markets.

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