Offi­cer Regina Tasca Goes “Rogue” [Pro Lib­er­tate]

Every so often I run across a story about a good cop. These sto­ries inevitably include a men­tion that the good cop isn’t a cop any­more because he or she was fired for being good. This par­tic­u­lar arti­cle includes an unusu­ally clear exam­ple of why it is that cops all seem to be vicious psychopaths–in Regina Tasca’s case, she stopped other cops from beat­ing a defense­less man for no rea­son, and was then fired for being “psy­cho­log­i­cally unfit” to be a cop. Or in other words, cops tend to be vicious psy­chopaths because that’s a require­ment of the job.

Scenes from a Mil­i­ta­rized Amer­ica.

About a thou­sand pro­test­ers showed up at the Vir­ginia state cap­i­tal over the week­end to protest pend­ing anti-abortion leg­is­la­tion. Cour­tesy of Style Weekly, here’s how the Vir­ginia State Police responded:

[The Agi­ta­tor]

The third pic­ture, with the two masked sol­diers (excuse me, “police”) stand­ing in front of an aban­doned sign say­ing “No War on Women” seems par­tic­u­larly appropriate.

Sprint fed cus­tomer GPS data to cops over 8 mil­lion times.

Christo­pher Soghoian, a grad­u­ate stu­dent at Indi­ana University’s School of Infor­mat­ics and Com­put­ing, has made pub­lic an audio record­ing of Sprint/Nextel’s Elec­tronic Sur­veil­lance Man­ager describ­ing how his com­pany has pro­vided GPS loca­tion data about its wire­less cus­tomers to law enforce­ment over 8 mil­lion times. That’s poten­tially mil­lions of Sprint/Nextel cus­tomers who not only were prob­a­bly unaware that their wire­less provider even had an Elec­tronic Sur­veil­lance Depart­ment, but who cer­tainly did not know that law enforce­ment offers could log into a spe­cial Sprint Web por­tal and, with­out ever hav­ing to demon­strate prob­a­ble cause to a judge, gain access to geolo­ca­tion logs detail­ing where they’ve been and where they are.

[Ars Tech­nica]

It’s well known by now (at least, to any­one who pays atten­tion) that cell phones are used to spy on the loca­tion and move­ment of their own­ers. This is the first solid infor­ma­tion I’ve seen on just how often the cops spy on people–and keep in mind that this is only one com­pany. It’s pretty much guar­an­teed that other com­pa­nies are equally eager to col­lab­o­rate with Big Brother.

Why The Inno­cent Flee From The Police. Each encounter between the police and inno­cent civil­ians is a poten­tially deadly expe­ri­ence for the lat­ter. Thus the real ques­tion is not “Why do inno­cent peo­ple flee from the police?” but rather, “What ratio­nal per­son would sub­mit to the police if he had any rea­son­able hope of elud­ing or resist­ing them?” [Pro Lib­er­tate]

Train­ing the Police State’s Next Gen­er­a­tion.

Remem­ber when the Boy Scouts were merely about help­ing old ladies across the street, learn­ing how to tie a decent knot, and exclud­ing gay people?

Meet the post-9/11 Scouts.

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.”

This is really despi­ca­ble stuff.

[The Agi­ta­tor]

It’s not at all sur­pris­ing, though. It’s nat­ural for any oppres­sive police state to cre­ate its own ana­log to the Hitler Youth and Young Pio­neers.

Dead Dog Tales.

Two dogs killed this week in Gwin­net County, Geor­gia. Two very dif­fer­ent reac­tions from local authorities.

Here’s the first:

Gwin­nett police are ask­ing for the public’s help in track­ing down the per­son who stabbed and dis­mem­bered a dog before dis­card­ing the car­cass behind a Duluth store.

[…]

A stab wound led to the dog’s death, said Gwin­nett police spokes­woman Cpl. Illana Spellman.

Spell­man said inves­ti­ga­tors are espe­cially anx­ious to get leads that could point them to the cul­prit in the “grue­some” crime, adding that “any­body that is capa­ble of doing that is capa­ble of doing any­thing,” Spell­man said.

Who­ever killed the dog is sub­ject to be charged with aggra­vated cru­elty to ani­mals, which car­ries a penalty of one to five years in prison and fines of up to $15,000, police said.

Here’s the other story:

A fam­ily in Gwin­nett County was out­raged Wednes­day night after they say police offi­cers shot their beloved dog.  The home­own­ers said the inci­dent hap­pened because police went to the wrong house.

[…]

The home­owner said when police went into the garage she heard three shots.  The home­owner said an offi­cer told her they shot the dog and the dog ran off.

[…]

Offi­cer said they were look­ing for a mate­r­ial wit­ness in a gang member’s trial, but they entered the wrong home.  Police entered 1468B, instead of 1468A.

Offi­cers said the dog charged and the offi­cer felt he was in immi­nent dan­ger and shot the dog.

The vicious beast was a 2-year-old Dalmatian.

It’s the sec­ond time in 10 days that cops in Gwin­nett County have forced their way into the wrong home.

[The Agi­ta­tor]

I don’t often see a Gestapo spokesman (or woman) tell the truth, but when this thug said that “any­body that is capa­ble of [bru­tally killing a dog] is capa­ble of doing any­thing,” she was clearly not spec­u­lat­ing, but speak­ing from per­sonal experience.

Another Iso­lated Inci­dent.

But not a drug raid.  A pros­ti­tu­tion raid.

It was a lit­tle before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn’s home in Galve­ston. She was busy prepar­ing her chil­dren for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daugh­ter, Dymond, to pop out­side and turn the switch back on.
 
As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rush­ing toward her. One of them grabbed her say­ing, “You’re a pros­ti­tute. You’re com­ing with me.”

Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started scream­ing, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” One of the men cov­ered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.

As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galve­ston police offi­cers who had been called to the area regard­ing three white pros­ti­tutes solic­it­ing a white man and a black drug dealer.

All this is accord­ing to a law­suit filed in Galve­ston fed­eral court by Mil­burn against the offi­cers. The law­suit alleges that the offi­cers thought Dymond, an African-American, was a hooker due to the “tight shorts” she was wear­ing, despite not fit­ting the racial descrip­tion of any of the female sus­pects. The police went to the wrong house, two blocks away from the area of the reported ille­gal activity…

So you’d think that after the police fig­ured out they had the wrong house, they’d apol­o­gize, and pos­si­bly even com­pen­sate the girl and her fam­ily. Accord­ing to the law­suit, you’d be wrong:

After the inci­dent, Dymond was hos­pi­tal­ized and suf­fered black eyes as well as throat and ear drum injuries.

Three weeks later, accord­ing to the law­suit, police went to Dymond’s school, where she was an honor stu­dent, and arrested her for assault­ing a pub­lic ser­vant. Grif­fin says the alle­ga­tions stem from when Dymond fought back against the three men who were try­ing to take her from her home. The case went to trial, but the judge declared it a mis­trial on the first day, says Grif­fin. The new trial is set for February.

I have a call into the Galve­ston dis­trict attor­ney and with Dymond Milburn’s lawyer. We’re going on a press account of one side of a law­suit, here.  So it’s possible—and I would hope—that there are some impor­tant details missing.

Oth­er­wise, a police mis­take leads to an inno­cent 12-year-old get­ting vio­lently snatched up and roughed up by a group of plain­clothes cops jump­ing out of a van … and they charge her for resist­ing?

[Hit and Run]

A com­ment on this post linked to a court doc­u­ment that iden­ti­fies the kid­nap­ping scum­bags as Sergeant Gilbert Gomez (badge #987), Offi­cers David Roark (badge #332), Justin Popovich (badge #336), and Sean Stew­art (badge #392). Nat­u­rally there have been, and will be, no offi­cial action taken against these cop­scum, because what they did is the epit­ome of good police work in the Evil Empire. How­ever, since their iden­ti­ties are known, I hold out hope that all four of them will mys­te­ri­ously get shot in the head at some point.