Author Topic: Police State - Official Thread  (Read 983028 times)

Skeletor

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5100 on: April 25, 2021, 08:04:51 PM »
This KY man was wrongly jailed for 14 months. Then they billed him for his stay.

A Winchester factory worker spent 14 months locked in jail on child porn charges before prosecutors agreed to drop the case because repeated searches of his apartment and digital devices failed to turn up evidence against him.

But as David Allen Jones finally walked free, his life in ruins, the Clark County Detention Center handed him a bill for $4,008. Citing a 2000 state law, the jail demanded that Jones help pay for the cost of his incarceration.

On Wednesday, the Kentucky Supreme Court will be asked to decide if that’s constitutional. Jones is suing Clark County and its jailer, Frank Doyle, to ask that his bill be dismissed.

Jones’ lawyers call the jail’s actions “an affront to the bedrock American principle that a citizen is presumed innocent until proven guilty.”

“The government can’t punish people unless and until they are found guilty of the crimes they are alleged to have committed. Yet Kentucky counties have for years routinely kept the money they confiscate from persons on admission to their jails, allegedly to offset the costs of their confinement, after the charges against such persons have been dismissed or they have been acquitted,” Jones’ lawyers wrote in their briefs for the high court.

So far, however, the justice system has mostly ruled against Jones. Last year, the Kentucky Court of Appeals said it was proper for jails to bill prisoners for their confinement even if they are never convicted of any crime.

“The Constitution does not guarantee that only the guilty will be arrested,” U.S. District Judge Robert Wier wrote two years ago, dismissing a separate malicious prosecution lawsuit that Jones filed against Clark County, seeking damages from the episode.

That second suit has since been reinstated by a federal appeals court and is now scheduled for trial in June.

https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article250794574.html

Skeletor

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5101 on: April 26, 2021, 12:24:59 AM »
DC cop cars totaled after officers drag race in NE, says commander

2 D.C. police cars were totaled after officers decided to drag race each other, according to an internal email obtained exclusively by FOX 5’s Lindsay Watts.

"Yesterday two 6D scout cars were totaled because officers decided instead of fighting crime, patrolling their beats, or engaging the community – they decided to drag race each other on Anacostia Avenue at 5 pm in the evening," reads the email from 6D Commander Durriyyah Habeebullah.

Sources say the email was sent to command staff following the crash Thursday.

DC Police would not provide the incident report Sunday because the department only provides traffic reports through FOIA.

Sources tell FOX 5 the officers involved, who are new to the department, started racing each other on Anacostia Ave. NE near Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Garden and reports indicate they were traveling at least 60 mph.

https://www.fox29.com/news/dc-cop-cars-totaled-after-officers-drag-race-in-ne-says-commander

Skeletor

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5102 on: April 26, 2021, 02:37:38 PM »
This must be another one of those "split second decisions" these "brave heroes" have to make every day while they "fear for their lives"....

They fractured the arm of a 73 year old woman with dementia who weighed just 80 lbs... These uniformed thugs should be sent to the electric chair.


Loveland police face federal civil rights lawsuit over arrest of 73-year-old woman

A Loveland law office has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Loveland Police Department over the arrest of a 73-year-old Loveland woman last summer that the woman’s attorney called “a nightmare.”

According to a press release from attorney Sarah Schielke, the Life and Liberty Law Office filed the lawsuit and initiated the case Wednesday, alleging excessive use of force against the department and officers Austin Hopp and Daria Jalali and Sgt. Phil Metzler for the arrest of Karen Garner on June 26, 2020.

The arrest left Garner with a fractured arm and dislocated shoulder, the suit says.

As of 6 p.m. Wednesday, the Loveland Police Department had not provided an official comment on the case.

The suit alleges that Garner, who is 5 feet tall and weighs 80 pounds, suffered a fractured upper arm and dislocated shoulder, along with other injuries.

According to the suit, in the late afternoon of June 26, 2020, Hopp “violently assaulted Garner without provocation” as she was walking home from the east Loveland Walmart.

The suit says Garner suffers from dementia and sensory aphasia, which impairs her ability to communicate and understand. She had left the store at 1325 N. Denver Ave. without paying for $13.38 worth of items, according to the suit. Employees stopped her at the exit to retrieve the items but reportedly refused to let her pay for them.

https://www.greeleytribune.com/2021/04/14/loveland-police-face-federal-civil-rights-lawsuit-over-arrest-of-73-year-old-woman/




Just when you thought it doesn't get any worse. The "brave heroes" celebrating the abuse of a frail 73 year old woman weighing just 80 lbs and laughing when they hearing her arm break.

 Life without parole or death penalty is the only way to deal with these sick violent criminals. But of course they haven't even been charged or arrested even though this happened almost 1 year ago and only now is there any information released.


New information released on Karen Garner incident; officers seen laughing over her arrest in newly released video

Officer Austin Hopp, the Loveland Police Department officer who arrested Karen Garner in 2020 can be seen laughing with other police officers in newly released video footage as he reviews body camera footage from her arrest - an arrest the has prompted a civil rights lawsuit against the Loveland Police Department and several of its employees.

Early in the video, Blackett can be heard asking if Hopp read Garner her Miranda rights when arresting her.

"Nope, I did not", he responds.

Later in the released footage, the officers are seen re-watching Hopp's body camera footage together while laughing about the incident. As Hopp watches his body camera footage, he can be heard laughing and "celebrates" with Jalali and Blackett.

In the video, Jalali can be heard saying that "bodycams are my favorite thing to watch". Just minutes later she can be seen pulling her hat down over her face saying "I hate this".

"This is great", Hopp responds.

"Ready for the pop? Hear the pop?" Hopp can be heard saying in the video in regards to the alleged dislocation of the 73 year old woman's shoulder.


According to the release, during the first hour Garner was in custody she can be heard saying:
"they hurt my shoulders" 22 times
"they hurt my wrists" 13 times
"they keep hurting" 8 times
"it hurts" 8 times".

Garner was allegedly not given any medical treatment while at the Loveland Police Department.

https://www.reporterherald.com/2021/04/26/new-information-released-on-karen-garner-incident-officers-seen-laughing-over-her-arrest-in-newly-released-video/


Skeletor

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5103 on: April 27, 2021, 02:34:40 AM »
Declassified FISA Opinion Shows More FBI Abuses

The FBI Continued to Spy on Americans Without a Warrant.

A FISA Court opinion and order declassified today reveals continued FBI abuses of “raw FISA-acquired information.” After a DOJ National Security Division review, the FISA Court noted “the FBI’s failure to properly apply its querying standard when searching Section 702-acquired information was more pervasive than was previously believed.”

This opinion includes these findings:

April 2019 - July 2019: An FBI technical information specialist was involved in “Compliance incidents” by conducting 124 queries of Section 702-acquired information on (1) Volunteers who had requested to participate in the FBI’s “Citizens Academy”; (2) Persons who needed to enter the field office to perform repairs; and (3) Persons who reported they were victims of a crime.

August 2019 - October 2019: An FBI Task Force Office “conducted approximately 69 queries using names and identifiers of individuals…” The redactions keep secret the identity of the victims.

Other Violations:

One FBI intelligence analyst “conducted 110 queries for analytic paper.”

Another analyst conducted improper queries for “ongoing vetting of confidential human sources” as well as “overly broad queries” and “mistakenly failed to opt out of querying against raw FISA-acquired information.”

Judge James Boasberg, who presides over the FISA Court, found little issue with these abuses. In fact, Boasberg concluded:

“[T]he Court is willing to again conclude that the improper queries described above do not undermine its prior determination that, with implementation of the documentation requirement, the FBI’s querying and minimization procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.”

However, Boasberg then concludes that the government has reported numerous incidents involving searches of FISA information without warrants.

In other words, the FBI is using FISA acquired information to investigate domestic crimes - not matters of foreign intelligence. These included investigations of “health-care fraud, transnational organized crime, violent gangs, domestic terrorism involving racially motivated violent extremists, as well as investigations relating to public corruption and bribery.”

“Public corruption and bribery.” I highlight that last part because it means the FBI continued to improperly use FISA-acquired information to spy on government officials.

As we previously reported, Boasberg declined to sentence former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith to prison - not even a day - after Clinesmith altered a CIA email and lied about it to others within the FBI in furtherance of a Carter Page FISA renewal. The FISA heightened duty of candor doesn’t come with heightened punishments for violating that duty.

After the latest revelations of abuse and unaccountability, perhaps it’s time for FBI Director Wray, Judge Boasberg, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to go.

https://technofog.substack.com/p/declassified-fisa-opinion-shows-more

Skeletor

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5104 on: April 27, 2021, 04:49:39 PM »

This guy seems to have quite a history: several accusations of racketeering, theft, retaliating against people who sued him, shooting a woman in the abdomen while "practicing police tactics", arresting the wife of a man who was also running for sheriff over emails she sent.

5 stars and stripes... He must think he is a Field Marshall.



And here he is without with any of the stars while being booked in jail:



Let's see if he'll be treated the same way he treated others.
 

Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill indicted for alleged civil rights abuses

A federal grand jury indicted Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill for alleged civil rights abuses to detainees in Clayton County Jail.

Hill faces four counts of deprivation of federally protected rights.

FOX 5's Aungelique Proctor has learned the indictment cites the sheriff's office's use of restraint chairs against four inmates. The indictment also alleges the sheriff ordered his employees to use excessive force at the jail last year.

"The indictment alleges specifically, that without justification, Hill ordered his employees to strap his detainees into a restraint chair and keep them there for hours in violation of their constitutional rights," said Kurt R. Erskine, acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.

Erskine said Hill deprived the detainees of due process because the force was so excessive it amounted to punishment. Erskine said each charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison if it is found beyond a reasonable doubt that the use of force caused pain and bodily injury.

"Badges and guns don’t come with the authority to ignore the Constitution," said Christopher Macrae, FBI Special Agent in Charge. "They come with the responsibility to protect it from anyone who would violate it, especially another public servant."

Erskine said the federal investigation is still open.

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/clayton-county-sheriff-victor-hill-indicted-for-alleged-civil-rights-violations

Skeletor

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5105 on: May 05, 2021, 04:18:18 PM »
Your car is spying on you, and a CBP contract shows the risks
A “vehicle forensics kit” can reveal where you’ve driven, what doors you opened, and who your friends are.


U.S. Customs and Border Protection purchased technology that vacuums up reams of personal information stored inside cars, according to a federal contract reviewed by The Intercept, illustrating the serious risks in connecting your vehicle and your smartphone.

According to statements by Berla’s own founder, part of the draw of vacuuming data out of cars is that so many drivers are oblivious to the fact that their cars are generating so much data in the first place, often including extremely sensitive information inadvertently synced from smartphones.

Indeed, MSAB marketing materials promise cops access to a vast array of sensitive personal information quietly stored in the infotainment consoles and various other computers used by modern vehicles — a tapestry of personal details akin to what CBP might get when cracking into one’s personal phone. MSAB claims that this data can include “Recent destinations, favorite locations, call logs, contact lists, SMS messages, emails, pictures, videos, social media feeds, and the navigation history of everywhere the vehicle has been.” MSAB even touts the ability to retrieve deleted data, divine “future plan,” and “Identify known associates and establish communication patterns between them.”

The kit, MSAB says, also has the ability to discover specific events that most car owners are probably unaware are even recorded, like “when and where a vehicle’s lights are turned on, and which doors are opened and closed at specific locations” as well as “gear shifts, odometer reads, ignition cycles, speed logs, and more.” This car-based surveillance, in other words, goes many miles beyond the car itself.

iVe is compatible with over two dozen makes of vehicle and is rapidly expanding its acquisition and decoding capabilities, according to MSAB.

MSAB spokesperson Carolen Ytander declined to comment on the privacy and civil liberties risks posed by iVe. When asked if the company maintains any guidelines on use of its technology, they said the company “does not set customer policy or governance on usage.”

The people behind CBP’s new tool are well aware that they are preying on consumer ignorance. In a podcast appearance first reported by NBC News last summer, Berla founder Ben LeMere remarked, “People rent cars and go do things with them and don’t even think about the places they are going and what the car records.” In a 2015 appearance on the podcast “The Forensic Lunch,” LeMere told the show’s hosts how the company uses exactly this accidental-transfer scenario in its trainings: “Your phone died, you’re gonna get in the car, plug it in, and there’s going to be this nice convenient USB port for you. When you plug it into this USB port, it’s going to charge your phone, absolutely. And as soon as it powers up, it’s going to start sucking all your data down into the car.”

In the same podcast, LeMere also recounted the company pulling data from a car rented at BWI Marshall Airport outside Washington, D.C.:

“We had a Ford Explorer … we pulled the system out, and we recovered 70 phones that had been connected to it. All of their call logs, their contacts and their SMS history, as well as their music preferences, songs that were on their device, and some of their Facebook and Twitter things as well. … And it’s quite comical when you sit back and read some of the the text messages.”


MSAB’s technology is doubly troubling in the hands of CBP, an agency with a powerful exception from the Fourth Amendment and a historical tendency toward aggressive surveillance and repressive tactics. The agency recently used drones to monitor protests against the police murder of George Floyd and routinely conducts warrantless searches of electronic devices at or near the border.

https://theintercept.com/2021/05/03/car-surveillance-berla-msab-cbp/

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5106 on: May 11, 2021, 11:16:05 AM »
The FBI Seized Heirlooms, Coins, and Cash From Hundreds of Safe Deposit Boxes in Beverly Hills, Despite Knowing 'Some' Belonged to 'Honest Citizens'
https://reason.com ^ | ERIC BOEHM | 5.10.2021 10:15 AM
Posted on 5/11/2021, 1:53:07

Victims of the FBI's constitutionally dubious raid say they've been told to come forward and identify themselves if they want their stuff back.

Dagny discovered that the FBI had seized the contents of her safe deposit box—about $100,000 in gold and silver coins, some family heirlooms like a diamond necklace inherited from her late grandmother, and an engagement ring she'd promised to pass down to her daughter—almost by accident.

She'd been asked by a friend to recommend a convenient and secure location for keeping some valuables. Dagny searched Yelp to find the phone number for U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills facility where she'd rented a safe deposit box since 2017. That's when she saw the bad news.

"Permanently closed."

After a brief moment of panic, some phone calls, and several days, Dagny and her husband Howard (pseudonyms used at their request to maintain privacy during ongoing legal proceedings) figured out what happened. On March 22, the FBI had raided U.S. Private Vaults. The federal agents were armed with a warrant allowing them to seize property belonging to the company as part of a criminal investigation—and even though the warrant explicitly exempted the safe deposit boxes in the company's vaults, they were taken too. More than 800 were seized.

Howard tells Reason there was no attempt made by the FBI to contact him, his wife, or their heirs—despite the fact that contact information was taped to the top of their box. Six weeks later, the couple is still waiting for their property to be returned. (Both individuals are supporters of Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website.)

The FBI and federal prosecutors have "no authority to continue holding the possessions of some 800 bystanders who are not alleged to have been involved in whatever USPV may have done wrong," Benjamin Gluck, a California attorney who is representing several of the people caught up in the FBI's raid of U.S. Private Vaults, tells Reason.

Legal efforts to force the FBI to return the items seized during the March 22 raid have so far been unsuccessful, but at least five lawsuits are pending in federal court.

A federal grand jury indicted U.S. Private Vaults (USPV) on counts of conspiracy to distribute drugs, launder money, and avoid mandatory deposit reporting requirements.

In legal filings, federal prosecutors have admitted that "some" of the company's customers were "honest citizens," but contend that "the majority of the box-holders are criminals who used USPV's anonymity to hide their ill-gotten wealth."

Whatever the original motivation for the raid, the FBI's seizure of hundreds of safe deposit boxes held by U.S. Private Vaults raises serious Fourth and Fifth Amendment issues. In order to have the contents of their boxes returned, federal authorities are asking owners to come forward, identify themselves, and describe their possessions. Some owners may be unwilling to do that—U.S. Private Vaults allowed anonymous rentals of safe-deposit boxes—while others may rightfully object to being subjected to the scrutiny of federal law enforcement when they have done nothing wrong.

"The constitution does not abide guilt by association," argues Robert Frommer, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, in an op-ed published by The Orange County Register.

"What the government has done here is completely backward," writes Frommer. "The government cannot search every apartment in a building because the landlord is involved in a crime. After all, when somebody rents an apartment, that apartment is theirs."

Indeed, the unsealed warrant authorizing the raid of U.S. Private Vaults granted the FBI permission to seize the business's computers, money counters, security cameras, and "nests" of safe deposit boxes—the large steel frames that effectively act as bookshelves for the boxes themselves.

Importantly, the warrant "does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safe-deposit boxes," according to a copy of the warrant contained in court filings. The warrant also states that it "authorize the seizure of the nests of the boxes themselves, not their contents."

But the FBI's own policies seem to have allowed a roundabout legal rationale for seizing the boxes as well. Agents are required to take into custody any property that could otherwise be stolen or left "in a dangerous manner" after carrying out a warrant. To put it in the context of a simpler situation: If the FBI seized a truck carrying cargo, it would not simply dump the cargo on the side of the road. Instead, there is a specific procedure for law enforcement to follow, which involves identifying and notifying rightful property owners, as well as securing the property.

In court filings, however, Gluck and other attorneys representing anonymous plaintiffs argue that the seizure of the nests "does not appear to be the government's true purpose here."

"A reasonable person could easily conclude that taking and searching the contents of the boxes was the true purpose of the USPV seizure, not just an unintended but unavoidable byproduct as the government seeks to portray and justify it," they write.

Now that the FBI has nearly 1,000 safe deposit boxes in its custody, anyone who comes forward to identify themselves and claim their possessions risks becoming the target of a criminal investigation. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California told the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal industry publication, last month that "each box is being considered on a case-by-case basis, and we will investigate the boxes, or claims made on them" to determine if "the contents are related to criminal activity."

Attorneys for the plaintiffs argue that this amounts to an admission that prosecutors intend "to use any information gleaned in the claims process in order to conduct criminal investigations." U.S. Private Vaults had assured its customers that their anonymity would be protected, and people could have valid, non-criminal reasons for wanting to keep their identities a secret.

The rights violations are bad enough, but the FBI raid seems to have had serious procedural shortcomings as well. One 80-year-old woman represented by Gluck—and identified in court documents only as "Linda R."—may have lost a significant portion of her life savings due to what legal filings say are shoddy inventories of the safe deposit boxes' contents.

In a lawsuit filed on April 26, Linda R.'s attorneys argue that the FBI "failed to account for or return" 40 gold coins worth an estimated $75,000 that had been stored in a safe deposit box housed at U.S. Private Vaults. Department of Justice documentation detailing the contents of Linda's box makes note of "miscellaneous coins" without any specific amounts or other identification of the coins—Linda's attorneys note that the description could apply to everything from a pair of pennies to a box full of 1933 double eagle gold coins, some of the rarest and most valuable coins ever minted. For now, it remains unclear whether the government even possesses an accurate accounting of what was in her safe deposit box when it was seized.

Despite the broad claims of criminality from prosecutors, Linda has been charged with no crimes but may have lost tens of thousands of dollars of her retirement savings anyway. Even if the FBI's raid of U.S. Private Vaults eventually uncovers criminal activity relating to some of the safe-deposit boxes stored there, that hardly seems to justify the potential losses incurred by innocent bystanders like Linda, who kept her retirement savings there because she distrusted the banking system, according to court filings.

"It was improper that the government seized these possessions in the first place, unconscionable that they are using them as hostages to pressure owners to divulge private information, and outrageous that they apparently treated the possessions so carelessly that they seem to have lost at least some of them," Gluck tells Reason.

Jeffrey B. Isaacs, an attorney for another anonymous customer of U.S. Private Vaults—identified in court records as "James Poe"—tells the Los Angeles Times that the FBI's raid is "as illegal a search and seizure as I've ever seen."

For Dagny and Howard, the situation seems particularly cruel. They'd rented the box at U.S. Private Vaults after having their home burgled several years ago. They have the key and rental agreement for the box—and, Howard notes, they paid for the box with a credit card, hardly the sort of thing you'd do if you were trying to hide your identity from the feds or engage in criminal conduct. None of that has made a difference so far.

Because this time, the burglars wore badges.

Skeletor

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5107 on: May 11, 2021, 11:29:51 AM »
The FBI Seized Heirlooms, Coins, and Cash From Hundreds of Safe Deposit Boxes in Beverly Hills, Despite Knowing 'Some' Belonged to 'Honest Citizens'
https://reason.com ^ | ERIC BOEHM | 5.10.2021 10:15 AM
Posted on 5/11/2021, 1:53:07

Victims of the FBI's constitutionally dubious raid say they've been told to come forward and identify themselves if they want their stuff back.

Dagny discovered that the FBI had seized the contents of her safe deposit box—about $100,000 in gold and silver coins, some family heirlooms like a diamond necklace inherited from her late grandmother, and an engagement ring she'd promised to pass down to her daughter—almost by accident.

She'd been asked by a friend to recommend a convenient and secure location for keeping some valuables. Dagny searched Yelp to find the phone number for U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills facility where she'd rented a safe deposit box since 2017. That's when she saw the bad news.

"Permanently closed."

After a brief moment of panic, some phone calls, and several days, Dagny and her husband Howard (pseudonyms used at their request to maintain privacy during ongoing legal proceedings) figured out what happened. On March 22, the FBI had raided U.S. Private Vaults. The federal agents were armed with a warrant allowing them to seize property belonging to the company as part of a criminal investigation—and even though the warrant explicitly exempted the safe deposit boxes in the company's vaults, they were taken too. More than 800 were seized.

Howard tells Reason there was no attempt made by the FBI to contact him, his wife, or their heirs—despite the fact that contact information was taped to the top of their box. Six weeks later, the couple is still waiting for their property to be returned. (Both individuals are supporters of Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website.)

The FBI and federal prosecutors have "no authority to continue holding the possessions of some 800 bystanders who are not alleged to have been involved in whatever USPV may have done wrong," Benjamin Gluck, a California attorney who is representing several of the people caught up in the FBI's raid of U.S. Private Vaults, tells Reason.

Legal efforts to force the FBI to return the items seized during the March 22 raid have so far been unsuccessful, but at least five lawsuits are pending in federal court.

A federal grand jury indicted U.S. Private Vaults (USPV) on counts of conspiracy to distribute drugs, launder money, and avoid mandatory deposit reporting requirements.

In legal filings, federal prosecutors have admitted that "some" of the company's customers were "honest citizens," but contend that "the majority of the box-holders are criminals who used USPV's anonymity to hide their ill-gotten wealth."

Whatever the original motivation for the raid, the FBI's seizure of hundreds of safe deposit boxes held by U.S. Private Vaults raises serious Fourth and Fifth Amendment issues. In order to have the contents of their boxes returned, federal authorities are asking owners to come forward, identify themselves, and describe their possessions. Some owners may be unwilling to do that—U.S. Private Vaults allowed anonymous rentals of safe-deposit boxes—while others may rightfully object to being subjected to the scrutiny of federal law enforcement when they have done nothing wrong.

"The constitution does not abide guilt by association," argues Robert Frommer, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, in an op-ed published by The Orange County Register.

"What the government has done here is completely backward," writes Frommer. "The government cannot search every apartment in a building because the landlord is involved in a crime. After all, when somebody rents an apartment, that apartment is theirs."

Indeed, the unsealed warrant authorizing the raid of U.S. Private Vaults granted the FBI permission to seize the business's computers, money counters, security cameras, and "nests" of safe deposit boxes—the large steel frames that effectively act as bookshelves for the boxes themselves.

Importantly, the warrant "does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safe-deposit boxes," according to a copy of the warrant contained in court filings. The warrant also states that it "authorize the seizure of the nests of the boxes themselves, not their contents."

But the FBI's own policies seem to have allowed a roundabout legal rationale for seizing the boxes as well. Agents are required to take into custody any property that could otherwise be stolen or left "in a dangerous manner" after carrying out a warrant. To put it in the context of a simpler situation: If the FBI seized a truck carrying cargo, it would not simply dump the cargo on the side of the road. Instead, there is a specific procedure for law enforcement to follow, which involves identifying and notifying rightful property owners, as well as securing the property.

In court filings, however, Gluck and other attorneys representing anonymous plaintiffs argue that the seizure of the nests "does not appear to be the government's true purpose here."

"A reasonable person could easily conclude that taking and searching the contents of the boxes was the true purpose of the USPV seizure, not just an unintended but unavoidable byproduct as the government seeks to portray and justify it," they write.

Now that the FBI has nearly 1,000 safe deposit boxes in its custody, anyone who comes forward to identify themselves and claim their possessions risks becoming the target of a criminal investigation. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California told the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal industry publication, last month that "each box is being considered on a case-by-case basis, and we will investigate the boxes, or claims made on them" to determine if "the contents are related to criminal activity."

Attorneys for the plaintiffs argue that this amounts to an admission that prosecutors intend "to use any information gleaned in the claims process in order to conduct criminal investigations." U.S. Private Vaults had assured its customers that their anonymity would be protected, and people could have valid, non-criminal reasons for wanting to keep their identities a secret.

The rights violations are bad enough, but the FBI raid seems to have had serious procedural shortcomings as well. One 80-year-old woman represented by Gluck—and identified in court documents only as "Linda R."—may have lost a significant portion of her life savings due to what legal filings say are shoddy inventories of the safe deposit boxes' contents.

In a lawsuit filed on April 26, Linda R.'s attorneys argue that the FBI "failed to account for or return" 40 gold coins worth an estimated $75,000 that had been stored in a safe deposit box housed at U.S. Private Vaults. Department of Justice documentation detailing the contents of Linda's box makes note of "miscellaneous coins" without any specific amounts or other identification of the coins—Linda's attorneys note that the description could apply to everything from a pair of pennies to a box full of 1933 double eagle gold coins, some of the rarest and most valuable coins ever minted. For now, it remains unclear whether the government even possesses an accurate accounting of what was in her safe deposit box when it was seized.

Despite the broad claims of criminality from prosecutors, Linda has been charged with no crimes but may have lost tens of thousands of dollars of her retirement savings anyway. Even if the FBI's raid of U.S. Private Vaults eventually uncovers criminal activity relating to some of the safe-deposit boxes stored there, that hardly seems to justify the potential losses incurred by innocent bystanders like Linda, who kept her retirement savings there because she distrusted the banking system, according to court filings.

"It was improper that the government seized these possessions in the first place, unconscionable that they are using them as hostages to pressure owners to divulge private information, and outrageous that they apparently treated the possessions so carelessly that they seem to have lost at least some of them," Gluck tells Reason.

Jeffrey B. Isaacs, an attorney for another anonymous customer of U.S. Private Vaults—identified in court records as "James Poe"—tells the Los Angeles Times that the FBI's raid is "as illegal a search and seizure as I've ever seen."

For Dagny and Howard, the situation seems particularly cruel. They'd rented the box at U.S. Private Vaults after having their home burgled several years ago. They have the key and rental agreement for the box—and, Howard notes, they paid for the box with a credit card, hardly the sort of thing you'd do if you were trying to hide your identity from the feds or engage in criminal conduct. None of that has made a difference so far.

Because this time, the burglars wore badges.

Gestapo tactics. These thugs don't give a fuck about the Constitution.

Skeletor

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5108 on: May 12, 2021, 10:59:01 AM »
Even after being convicted for murder, a cop still gets paid vacation.

Officer convicted of murder still gets paid in Alabama

An Alabama police officer convicted of murder for shooting a suicidal man who was holding a gun to his own head has been taken off duty but will continue to be paid, the city of Huntsville said.

Officer William Darby, who was initially placed on desk duty following the killing of Jeffrey Parker in 2018, can't continue working as an officer because of the conviction and went on leave Monday, city spokeswoman Lucy DeButy told news outlets.

"This is the normal process until formal proceedings under the City of Huntsville’s personnel policies and procedures are complete,” she said in a statement. Darby was freed on $100,000 bond soon after the verdict on Friday.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/officer-convicted-murder-paid-alabama-77620115

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5109 on: May 18, 2021, 11:32:48 AM »
He was "caught on camera physically abusing a 2 year old child.  Miller punctured the child with an unknown object". Not only that but the accused cop works at the unit which is supposed to investigate exactly these types of crimes.


GBI Arrests Savannah Police Department Detective in Child Abuse Investigation

On Saturday, May 15, 2021, at approximately 9:23 p.m., the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was requested by the Savannah Police Department to assist with a child abuse investigation.

The preliminary investigation reveals that while off duty, Savannah PD SVU Detective Vincent Miller, age 32, of Savannah, GA, was at a neighbor’s house when he was caught on camera physically abusing a 2 year old child.  Miller punctured the child with an unknown object.

Miller was arrested and charged with one count of first degree Cruelty to Children.

The investigation is active and ongoing.  Once the investigation is complete, it will be submitted to the Chatham County District Attorney’s Office for prosecution.

https://gbi.georgia.gov/press-releases/2021-05-17/gbi-arrests-savannah-police-department-detective-child-abuse




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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5110 on: May 18, 2021, 11:40:48 AM »
Despite these failures, police dogs are upheld as some infallible gold standard for detecting anything from drugs to guns to electronics.

The Police Dog Who Cried Drugs at Every Traffic Stop

Don't blame Karma. The police dog simply followed his training when he helped local agencies impound vehicles that sometimes belonged to innocent motorists in Republic, Washington, an old mining town near the Canadian border.

As a drug detection dog, Karma kept his nose down and treated every suspect the same. Public records show that from the time he arrived in Republic in January 2018 until his handler took a leave of absence to campaign for public office in 2020, Karma gave an "alert" indicating the presence of drugs 100 percent of the time during roadside sniffs outside vehicles.

Whether drivers actually possessed illegal narcotics made no difference. The government gained access to every vehicle that Karma ever sniffed. He essentially created automatic probable cause for searches and seizures, undercutting constitutional guarantees of due process.

Similar patterns abound nationwide, suggesting that Karma's career was not unusual:

Lex, a drug detection dog in Illinois, alerted for narcotics 93 percent of the time during roadside sniffs, but was wrong in more than 40 percent of cases.

Sella, a drug detection dog in Florida, gave false alerts 53 percent of the time.

Bono, a drug detection dog in Virginia, incorrectly indicated the presence of drugs 74 percent of the time.


Despite the frequent errors, courts typically treat certified narcotics dogs as infallible, allowing law enforcement agencies to use them like blank permission slips to enter vehicles, open suitcases, and rummage through purses.

The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, shows a financial motive for the snooping in its 2020 report, Policing for Profit. Local, state, and federal agencies have raked in more than $68.8 billion in proceeds since 2000 through a process called civil forfeiture.

The money making scheme, which allows the government to seize and keep assets without a criminal conviction, often starts with a police search, which requires probable cause, which often comes with a K-9 sniff. Institute for Justice clients in Wyoming, Oklahoma, and elsewhere all lost cash and had to fight to get it back after police dogs gave false alerts outside their vehicles.


Some handlers jokingly refer to their K-9 partners as "probable cause on four legs." But Wendy Farris, a real estate agent from Great Falls, Montana, did not laugh when Karma gave an alert outside her red Toyota Prius on August 17, 2018.

Her ordeal, which led to a civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, started with a birthday party invitation. Farris promised her grandson that she would attend his celebration in Oregon, so she packed her car and hit the road.

Rather than drive directly to the event, she made plans to visit a friend near Republic. While there, the friend's estranged daughter called for help, explaining that she was living on the streets in California and wanted to come home.

Farris agreed to go with her friend on a rescue mission—more than 1,300 miles round trip with few breaks—leaving both women exhausted and sleep-deprived when they returned to Washington with the contrite daughter. Despite the fatigue, Farris remained determined to attend her grandson's party, so she got back in her car and headed south alone.

Predictably, she almost immediately felt drowsy and decided to park in a safe spot and rest at the junction of U.S. Route 20 and state Route 21 in Republic. A Ferry County sheriff's deputy found Farris asleep behind the wheel and ordered her to submit to a field sobriety test. Farris, who had no prior arrests and doesn't drink, had not consumed any drugs or alcohol (which a blood test later confirmed) yet the deputy arrested her on suspicion of driving while intoxicated and called a K-9 unit to the scene.

That's when Karma showed up with his handler, Loren Culp, who served as Republic's police chief until the city dissolved its department in November 2020. Culp led Karma on a leash around Farris' vehicle twice. Then Culp paused and pointed to a rear panel with the palm of his hand, and Karma sat down—his trained final response indicating the presence of drugs.

The alert gave Culp and the deputy probable cause to impound the vehicle, while Karma got to chew on his favorite toy as a reward for his work. The only unhappy person at the scene was Farris, who knew her car contained no alcohol, drugs, drug residue, paraphernalia, or weapons. A search at the impound yard turned up $4,956 in cash but nothing illegal.

Rather than release Farris and apologize, the county locked her up and held her over the weekend without charges.
She eventually got her cash and vehicle back, but she missed her grandson's party. Instead of birthday cake and ice cream, she got jail food and a bill for hygiene supplies.

Motorist Fares I. Said met a similar fate after an encounter with Karma. When a Washington State Patrol officer clocked Said going 70 mph in a 55 mph zone, the officer pulled him over. When Said acted "suspicious and evasive" in answering questions, the officer called Culp and asked for K-9 backup.

Karma circled the Jeep and sat down. Based on the alert, the police impounded the vehicle. A search later produced "several $100 bills" but no drugs or paraphernalia. Said, who lived at the time in Lynnwood north of Seattle, was innocent but got stuck with impound fees and an eight-mile walk back to town.

Social Media Darling

Overall, the police found drugs in 29 percent of the vehicles that Karma flagged during his time in Republic. Other vehicles contained paraphernalia, bringing Karma's combined score to 64 percent.

The result would be respectable (better than a coin toss!) if it were based on a random sample of vehicles. But the police do not work that way. When they deploy a drug dog at a traffic stop, they often have prior knowledge or suspicion that a search will produce something interesting.

Many motorists in Republic made things easy for officers. One SUV driver admitted to using heroin and having needles in her vehicle. The owner of a Ford Expedition confessed to meth and marijuana use, and the arresting officer seized drug paraphernalia from the man's pockets prior to Karma's arrival on the scene.

In nearly every case, officers had probable cause to conduct searches without a narcotics sniff. Yet Culp led Karma on a leash around the vehicles anyway, and then bragged on Facebook about the dog's uncanny ability to find drugs.

"Once again Karma's nose knows where the drugs are," Culp wrote on his Facebook page following a November 2018 stop.

What Culp failed to mention was that prior to Karma's involvement, the driver had led police on a chase, crashed his Toyota RAV4 at the Ferry County Fairgrounds and fled on foot—leaving his girlfriend behind. Search and seizure of the vehicle were inevitable even without Karma's nose.

The real confirmation of the dog's detective skills would have come from walking around a drug-free vehicle and not giving a trained final response. Karma failed this test every time. When he had a chance to stop the impound of an innocent owner's vehicle, his success rate was zero percent.

Born To Please

False alerts, which create problems for people like Farris and Said, sometimes have nothing to do with a dog's nose. Brain scientist Federico Rossano, who studies animal communication with humans at the University of California, San Diego, says dogs have an innate sense of loyalty that can override their sense of smell.

"The tendency of producing signals even when they detect nothing comes from the desire to please the human handler," he says.

Essentially, intelligent animals pick up subtle cues from their handlers and respond. Rossano says the communication often occurs by accident without anyone being aware.

Clever Hans, a horse celebrated in the early 1900s for his math ability, provides the most prominent example. The proud owner truly believed that Hans could solve arithmetic problems, but skeptics later proved that the horse merely was responding to facial expressions and body language from his human companion.

A 2011 study from the University of California, Davis, shows how cues can influence drug detection dogs. When human handlers believed that narcotics were hidden in test areas, their canine partners were much more likely to indicate the presence of drugs—even when no drugs actually existed.

Police participants did not like the implications. But rather than using the findings to improve their training techniques, they denounced the study and refused further cooperation.

They preferred a 2014 study from Poland, which eliminated the potential for false positives. Rather than simulating real-world conditions, researchers ensured that every test included measurable quantities of narcotics.

Participating dogs had no opportunity to sniff drug-free vehicles and communicate a lack of odor. The only correct answer was an indication for drugs. Karma could have aced such a test simply by sitting down every time. He would have looked like a prodigy, but a broken dial stuck on "alert" would have achieved the same result.


Something like this might have happened with Karma. Culp reports on Facebook that his dog passed his training with "zero misses" in 2018 and again in 2019. Culp cites the perfect scores as evidence of Karma's skills, but law enforcement consultant Mary Cablk sees a red flag.

"That's a problem," she says. "It shouldn't be like that."

Cablk, who studies narcotics detection at Desert Research Institute in Nevada, says effective training must mimic real-world conditions as much as possible. If dogs have certain error rates in the field, they should have similar error rates in experimental environments.

"In training if a dog is perfect and never misses, and never is recorded to make a mistake, then there are a couple of problems," Cablk says. "Either the training is not rigorous or the recordkeeping is bad."

Courts tend to overlook the complexities when evaluating evidence from a dog sniff, but Cablk recently testified in a Utah case that put K-9 teams on alert. Rather than accepting all training programs as equal and infallible, a federal judge looked deeper and raised serious concerns about shortcuts in Utah.

Other jurisdictions could benefit from this type of scrutiny, although increased oversight would not affect Culp and Karma. Both have moved on to new opportunities. After losing in 2020 as the Republican gubernatorial nominee, Culp filed paperwork to challenge Rep. Dan Newhouse to represent Washington's 4th Congressional District. Meanwhile, Karma moved to private security with Spokane-based Phoenix Protective Corporation.

https://reason.com/2021/05/13/the-police-dog-who-cried-drugs-at-every-traffic-stop/

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5111 on: May 18, 2021, 11:39:57 PM »
Amazon’s Ring is the largest civilian surveillance network the US has ever seen

One in 10 US police departments can now access videos from millions of privately owned home security cameras without a warrant.

In a 2020 letter to management, Max Eliaser, an Amazon software engineer, said Ring is “simply not compatible with a free society”. We should take his claim seriously.

Ring video doorbells, Amazon’s signature home security product, pose a serious threat to a free and democratic society. Not only is Ring’s surveillance network spreading rapidly, it is extending the reach of law enforcement into private property and expanding the surveillance of everyday life. What’s more, once Ring users agree to release video content to law enforcement, there is no way to revoke access and few limitations on how that content can be used, stored, and with whom it can be shared.

Ring is effectively building the largest corporate-owned, civilian-installed surveillance network that the US has ever seen. An estimated 400,000 Ring devices were sold in December 2019 alone, and that was before the across-the-board boom in online retail sales during the pandemic. Amazon is cagey about how many Ring cameras are active at any one point in time, but estimates drawn from Amazon’s sales data place yearly sales in the hundreds of millions. The always-on video surveillance network extends even further when you consider the millions of users on Ring’s affiliated crime reporting app, Neighbors, which allows people to upload content from Ring and non-Ring devices.

Then there’s this: since Amazon bought Ring in 2018, it has brokered more than 1,800 partnerships with local law enforcement agencies, who can request recorded video content from Ring users without a warrant. That is, in as little as three years, Ring connected around one in 10 police departments across the US with the ability to access recorded content from millions of privately owned home security cameras. These partnerships are growing at an alarming rate.

Data I’ve collected from Ring’s quarterly reported numbers shows that in the past year through the end of April 2021, law enforcement have placed more than 22,000 individual requests to access content captured and recorded on Ring cameras. Ring’s cloud-based infrastructure (supported by Amazon Web Services) makes it convenient for law enforcement agencies to place mass requests for access to recordings without a warrant. Because Ring cameras are owned by civilians, law enforcement are given a backdoor entry into private video recordings of people in residential and public space that would otherwise be protected under the fourth amendment. By partnering with Amazon, law enforcement circumvents these constitutional and statutory protections, as noted by the attorney Yesenia Flores. In doing so, Ring blurs the line between police work and civilian surveillance and turns your neighbor’s home security system into an informant. Except, unlike an informant, it’s always watching.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/18/amazon-ring-largest-civilian-surveillance-network-us

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5112 on: May 19, 2021, 12:25:53 PM »
Facial recognition, fake identities and digital surveillance tools: Inside the post office's covert internet operations program

The post office’s law enforcement arm has faced intense congressional scrutiny in recent weeks over its Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP), which tracks social media posts of Americans and shares that information with other law enforcement agencies. Yet the program is much broader in scope than previously known and includes analysts who assume fake identities online, use sophisticated intelligence tools and employ facial recognition software, according to interviews and documents reviewed by Yahoo News.

Among the tools used by the analysts is Clearview AI, a facial recognition software that scrapes images off public websites, a practice that has raised the ire of privacy advocates. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service uses Clearview’s facial recognition database of over 3 billion images from arrest photos collected from across social media “to help identify unknown targets in an investigation or locate additional social media accounts for known individuals,” according to materials reviewed by Yahoo News.

Other tools employed by the Inspection Service include Zignal Labs’ software, which it uses to run keyword searches on social media event pages to identify potential threats from upcoming scheduled protests, according to Inspection Service documents. It also uses Nfusion, another software program, to create and maintain anonymous, untraceable email and social media accounts.

The Inspection Service’s expansive surveillance program has raised concerns among lawmakers and privacy and civil liberties experts, and the use of sophisticated software tools raises even more questions.

https://news.yahoo.com/facial-recognition-fake-identities-and-digital-surveillance-tools-inside-the-post-offices-covert-internet-operations-program-214234762.html

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5113 on: May 20, 2021, 12:03:52 AM »
This must be another one of those "split second decisions" these "brave heroes" have to make every day while they "fear for their lives"....

They fractured the arm of a 73 year old woman with dementia who weighed just 80 lbs... These uniformed thugs should be sent to the electric chair.


Loveland police face federal civil rights lawsuit over arrest of 73-year-old woman

A Loveland law office has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Loveland Police Department over the arrest of a 73-year-old Loveland woman last summer that the woman’s attorney called “a nightmare.”

According to a press release from attorney Sarah Schielke, the Life and Liberty Law Office filed the lawsuit and initiated the case Wednesday, alleging excessive use of force against the department and officers Austin Hopp and Daria Jalali and Sgt. Phil Metzler for the arrest of Karen Garner on June 26, 2020.

The arrest left Garner with a fractured arm and dislocated shoulder, the suit says.

As of 6 p.m. Wednesday, the Loveland Police Department had not provided an official comment on the case.

The suit alleges that Garner, who is 5 feet tall and weighs 80 pounds, suffered a fractured upper arm and dislocated shoulder, along with other injuries.

According to the suit, in the late afternoon of June 26, 2020, Hopp “violently assaulted Garner without provocation” as she was walking home from the east Loveland Walmart.

The suit says Garner suffers from dementia and sensory aphasia, which impairs her ability to communicate and understand. She had left the store at 1325 N. Denver Ave. without paying for $13.38 worth of items, according to the suit. Employees stopped her at the exit to retrieve the items but reportedly refused to let her pay for them.

https://www.greeleytribune.com/2021/04/14/loveland-police-face-federal-civil-rights-lawsuit-over-arrest-of-73-year-old-woman/




Just when you thought it doesn't get any worse. The "brave heroes" celebrating the abuse of a frail 73 year old woman weighing just 80 lbs and laughing when they hearing her arm break.

 Life without parole or death penalty is the only way to deal with these sick violent criminals. But of course they haven't even been charged or arrested even though this happened almost 1 year ago and only now is there any information released.


New information released on Karen Garner incident; officers seen laughing over her arrest in newly released video

Officer Austin Hopp, the Loveland Police Department officer who arrested Karen Garner in 2020 can be seen laughing with other police officers in newly released video footage as he reviews body camera footage from her arrest - an arrest the has prompted a civil rights lawsuit against the Loveland Police Department and several of its employees.

Early in the video, Blackett can be heard asking if Hopp read Garner her Miranda rights when arresting her.

"Nope, I did not", he responds.

Later in the released footage, the officers are seen re-watching Hopp's body camera footage together while laughing about the incident. As Hopp watches his body camera footage, he can be heard laughing and "celebrates" with Jalali and Blackett.

In the video, Jalali can be heard saying that "bodycams are my favorite thing to watch". Just minutes later she can be seen pulling her hat down over her face saying "I hate this".

"This is great", Hopp responds.

"Ready for the pop? Hear the pop?" Hopp can be heard saying in the video in regards to the alleged dislocation of the 73 year old woman's shoulder.


According to the release, during the first hour Garner was in custody she can be heard saying:
"they hurt my shoulders" 22 times
"they hurt my wrists" 13 times
"they keep hurting" 8 times
"it hurts" 8 times".

Garner was allegedly not given any medical treatment while at the Loveland Police Department.

https://www.reporterherald.com/2021/04/26/new-information-released-on-karen-garner-incident-officers-seen-laughing-over-her-arrest-in-newly-released-video/




It took almost a year to charge these violent thugs... Quite certain they won't get their arms broken when they're arrested.

Karen Garner Arrest: 2 Former Loveland Police Officers, Austin Hopp, Daria Jalali, Face Charges

Two former Loveland police officers are facing charges relating to the arrest of Karen Garner last summer. Austin Hopp and Daria Jalali are facing charges related to the 73-year-old’s arrest in June 2020.

Garner is living with dementia and experienced a broken arm, separated shoulder and sprained wrist during the arrest.

Hopp is facing charges of felony assault, causing serious bodily injury, attempting to influence a public servant, and misconduct. Jalali is facing charges of failing to report use of force, failing to intervene and misconduct.

Both Hopp and Jalali resigned April 30 along with officer Tyler Blackett, who was not charged.

https://denver.cbslocal.com/2021/05/19/austin-hopp-daria-jalai-loveland-police/

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5114 on: May 20, 2021, 11:20:02 AM »
And we know how hopeless, useless and fragile dementia patients are. Heck, we have one trying to run the country.


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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5115 on: May 20, 2021, 12:36:20 PM »
When stopping innocent motorists he would often turn off his body camera, plant drugs and then conveniently turn on the camera again after he "discovered" the drugs.

Former deputy Zachary Wester convicted on drug planting charges, taken to jail in handcuffs



Nearly three years after former North Florida deputy Zachary Wester first faced suspicions that he secretly planted drugs on innocent motorists, jurors convicted him on numerous charges in the crooked cop case.

A six-person jury on Tuesday split its decision, finding Wester guilty on 19 counts involving three of his alleged victims and not guilty on 48 other counts involving the other nine victims.

The jury announced its decision after deliberating more than seven hours Monday and Tuesday. In all, Wester was convicted on charges of racketeering, official misconduct, fabricating evidence, false imprisonment and possession of controlled substances and drug paraphernalia.

https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/2021/05/18/zachary-wester-verdict-update-trial-drug-planting-case-court-jury-guilty-not/5143472001/

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5116 on: May 21, 2021, 11:21:40 AM »
"I can't breathe".

Apparently this only works for certain categories of people so don't expect any rioting, looting or "peaceful" protests.

'You shouldn't be able to breathe,' officer tells man before he dies

He repeatedly told deputies he could not breathe.

But the deputies and police officers he struggled with taunted him until he died.

An exclusive NewsChannel 5 investigation is raising questions about the death of William Jennette last May inside the Marshall County Jail in Lewisburg, Tennessee.

His daughter has filed a lawsuit against the county, the city of Lewisburg and several officers for the "beating, suffocation and resultant death" of Jennette.

Video obtained by NewsChannel 5 Investigates shows three Marshall County jailers called for police back-up on May 6 of last year after Jennette refused to get into a restraint chair.

When Lewisburg Police Officer Christopher Stallings ran into the room, Jennette yelled that corrections officers were trying to kill him.

Officers wrestled Jennette to the floor where he died minutes later.

Jennette screamed for officers to get off his back. He was face down on the floor in handcuffs continuing to struggle.

"Go get leg restraints before you do anything else, go get leg restraints," an officer said as officers were on Jennette's back.

Seconds later, Jennette said for the first time he could not breathe.

But a female officer was not sympathetic.

"You shouldn't be able to breathe, you stupid bastard," she exclaimed.

Officers stayed on Jennette's back and even bent his legs to his back, until finally one officer said be careful of suffocating him.

"Easy, easy -- remember asphyxiation, guys."

Another officer responded, "That's why I'm not on his lungs, to let him breathe."

Jennette's last words were: "I'm good."

But an officer with his knee on Jennette's back talked back to him.

"No, you ain't good. You're going to lay right there for a f*****g minute," the officer said.

The autopsy listed the cause of death as "acute combined drug intoxication" with meth in his system.

But it also listed "asphyxia" as a "contributory cause of death" and ruled it a homicide.

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/you-shouldnt-be-able-to-breathe-officer-tells-man-before-he-dies


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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5117 on: May 28, 2021, 04:07:48 PM »
Fired and rehired by the same department 6 times. Now he has been fired a 7th time.

‘I’ve lost count.’ Notorious Opa-locka police sergeant German Bosque fired for 7th time

German Bosque, the Opa-locka police sergeant who became notorious for repeatedly getting fired and getting his job back, has been canned yet again.

“I’ve lost count. I don’t know if it was the seventh or eighth time,” Bosque said when reached on Wednesday evening. “It’s a wrongful termination. Again, I’ll be getting my job back again.”

It’s actually the seventh time Bosque has been fired in the nearly 28 years he’s worked for Opa-locka police. The Herald-Tribune found that of Bosque’s 40 internal affairs complaints, 16 of them were for battery or excessive force. He’s been arrested three times. Once, before he was a cop. Another time in Broward County and a third time in 2013 for his alleged actions while on duty against the youth counselor. He was acquitted or the cases were dropped all three times.

In the most recent case, prosecutors said, Bosque in August 2011 punched the youth counselor after responding to a domestic dispute. Soon after, the man showed up at the police station to file a complaint. A dispatcher summoned Bosque, who was alleged to have grabbed the man’s cellphone, hurled it across the police lobby, pushed him up against the wall and handcuffed him.

https://www.miamiherald.com/article251706088.html

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5118 on: June 04, 2021, 10:59:29 AM »
In Police State USA, even reading a news story is a suspicious activity.

USA Today fights subpoena aimed at readers of Florida FBI shooting story

Newspaper publisher Gannett is fighting an effort by the FBI to try to determine who read a specific USA Today story about a deadly shooting in February near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., that left two FBI agents dead and three wounded.

The subpoena, served on Gannett in April, seeks information about who accessed the news article online during a 35-minute window starting just after 8 p.m. on the day of the shootings. The demand — signed by a senior FBI agent in Maryland — does not appear to ask for the names of those who read the story, if the news outlet has such information. Instead, the subpoena seeks internet addresses and mobile phone information that could lead to the identities of the readers.

The information being sought “relates to a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI,” the subpoena says.

In a filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, lawyers for Gannett said the demand violates the First Amendment. They also complained that the FBI appears to have ignored the Justice Department’s policy for seeking information from the media.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/03/usa-today-subpeona-florida-shooting-491847

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5120 on: June 09, 2021, 10:37:53 AM »
Hitting and overturning the car of a pregnant woman while she was trying to find a safe spot to pull over. Another "brave hero".

Woman files lawsuit hoping for policy change surrounding PIT maneuvers

A Central Arkansas woman wants a policy change after she claims a State Police trooper negligently used a PIT maneuver, causing her car to overturn on the interstate.

Several recent FOX 16 Investigates uncovered how troopers are using PIT maneuvers more often, sometimes leading to deadly wrecks.

In July 2020 Nicole Harper was driving home on I-67/167 outside Jacksonville when Senior Cpl. Rodney Dunn clocked her speeding.

Dunn says she fled, Harper clams she was trying to find a safe place to stop on a section of interstate that has a reduced shoulder. Dash camera video from Dunn’s patrol car showed Harper pulled into the right lane, slowed down, and turned on hazards.

Less than 2 minutes after turning on his blue lights, Dunn performed a PIT maneuver, which caused Harper’s car to crash into the concrete median and flip.

“In my head I was going to lose the baby,” said Harper, who was pregnant with her daughter at the time of the crash.

Dunn’s body mic recorded him talking with Harper after the crash.

“Why didn’t you stop?” Dunn questioned.

“Because I didn’t feel it was safe,” Harper said.  Dunn responded, “well this is where you ended up.”

Harper went on to say, “I thought it would be safe to wait until the exit.” Dunn said, “no ma’am, you pull over when law enforcement stops you.”

The PIT happened less than a mile from where the next exit and where the interstate shoulder widens.

In May Harper filed a lawsuit against Arkansas State Police, claiming the PIT maneuver was negligent and excessive use of force.

The lawsuit points to the dash camera video, arguing it showed how Harper signaled she wanted to stop.

“I feel like I had heard that’s what you do, you slow down, you put your flashers on and you drive to a safe place,” Harper explained.

Turns out that’s textbook what to do according to State Police’s “Driver License Study Guide.” Under “What to do When You Are Stopped,” number 1 says to use, “emergency flashers to indicate to the officer that you are seeking a safe place to stop.”

State Police turned down several requests for interviews about what happened in Harper’s case and about PITs in general. State Police Director Col. Bill Bryant sent a statement saying in every case it’s up to the driver to stop.

https://www.fox16.com/news/investigates/fox-16-investigates-woman-files-lawsuit-hoping-for-policy-change-surrounding-pit-maneuvers/


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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5121 on: June 21, 2021, 06:49:33 AM »
The FBI’s Mafia-Style Justice: To Fight Crime, the FBI Sponsors 15 Crimes a Day
THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE ^ | 06/20/2021 | John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
Posted on 6/21/2021, 12:40:59 AM by SeekAndFind

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry - purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure - has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government.



Think about it.

Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars. Domestic extremism. The COVID-19 pandemic.

In almost every instance, the U.S. government (often spearheaded by the FBI) has in its typical Machiavellian fashion sown the seeds of terror domestically and internationally in order to expand its own totalitarian powers.

Who is the biggest black market buyer and stockpiler of cyberweapons (weaponized malware that can be used to hack into computer systems, spy on citizens, and destabilize vast computer networks)? The U.S. government.

Who is the largest weapons manufacturer and exporter in the world, such that they are literally arming the world? The U.S. government.

Which country has a history of secretly testing out dangerous weapons and technologies on its own citizens? The U.S. government.

Which country has conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins? The U.S. government.

What country has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting? The U.S. government.

Are you getting the picture yet?

The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from terrorism.

The U.S. government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror.

Consider that this very same government has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.—and used it against us, to track, control and trap us.

So why is the government doing this? Money, power and total domination.

We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.

Case in point: the FBI.

The government’s henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused. Indeed, far from being tough on crime, FBI agents are also among the nation’s most notorious lawbreakers.

Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work.

For example, this is the agency that used an undercover agent/informant to seek out and groom an impressionable young man, cultivating his friendship, gaining his sympathy, stoking his outrage over the injustices perpetrated by the U.S. government, then enlisting his help to blow up the Herald Square subway station. Despite the fact that Shahawar Matin Siraj ultimately refused to plant a bomb at the train station, he was arrested for conspiring to do so at the urging of his FBI informant and used to bolster the government’s track record in foiling terrorist plots. Of course, no mention was made of the part the government played in fabricating the plot, recruiting a would-be bomber, and setting him up to take the fall.

This is the government’s answer to precrime: first, foster activism by stoking feelings of outrage and injustice by way of secret agents and informants; second, recruit activists to carry out a plot (secretly concocted by the government) to challenge what they see as government corruption; and finally, arrest those activists for conspiring against the government before they can actually commit a crime.

It’s a diabolical plot with far-reaching consequences for every segment of the population, no matter what one’s political leanings.

As Rozina Ali writes for The New York Times Magazine, “The government’s approach to counterterrorism erodes constitutional protections for everyone, by blurring the lines between speech and action and by broadening the scope of who is classified as a threat.”

This is not an agency that appears to understand, let alone respect, the limits of the Constitution.

Just recently, it was revealed that the FBI has been secretly carrying out an entrapment scheme in which it used a front company, ANOM, to sell purportedly hack-proof phones to organized crime syndicates and then used those phones to spy on them as they planned illegal drug shipments, plotted robberies and put out contracts for killings using those boobytrapped phones.

All told, the FBI intercepted 27 million messages over the course of 18 months.

What this means is that the FBI was also illegally spying on individuals using those encrypted phones who may not have been involved in any criminal activity whatsoever.

Even reading a newspaper article is now enough to get you flagged for surveillance by the FBI. The agency served a subpoena on USA Today / Gannett to provide the internet addresses and mobile phone information for everyone who read a news story online on a particular day and time about the deadly shooting of FBI agents.

This is the danger of allowing the government to carry out widespread surveillance, sting and entrapment operations using dubious tactics that sidestep the rule of law: “we the people” become suspects and potential criminals, while government agents, empowered to fight crime using all means at their disposal, become indistinguishable from the corrupt forces they seek to vanquish.

To go after terrorists, they become terrorists. To go after drug smugglers, they become drug smugglers. To go after thieves, they become thieves.

For instance, when the FBI raided a California business that was suspected of letting drug dealers anonymously stash guns, drugs and cash in its private vaults, agents seized the contents of all the safety deposit boxes and filed forfeiture motions to keep the contents, which include millions of dollars’ worth of valuables owned by individuals not accused of any crime whatsoever.

It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or if we’ve gone straight to an idiocracy.

This certainly isn’t a constitutional democracy, however.

Some days, it feels like the FBI is running its own crime syndicate complete with mob rule and mafia-style justice.

In addition to creating certain crimes in order to then “solve” them, the FBI also gives certain informants permission to break the law, “including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies,” in exchange for their cooperation on other fronts.

USA Today estimates that agents have authorized criminals to engage in as many as 15 crimes a day (5600 crimes a year). Some of these informants are getting paid astronomical sums: one particularly unsavory fellow, later arrested for attempting to run over a police officer, was actually paid $85,000 for his help laying the trap for an entrapment scheme.

In a stunning development reported by The Washington Post, a probe into misconduct by an FBI agent resulted in the release of at least a dozen convicted drug dealers from prison.

In addition to procedural misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, the FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, and harassment.

For example, the Associated Press lodged a complaint with the Dept. of Justice after learning that FBI agents created a fake AP news story and emailed it, along with a clickable link, to a bomb threat suspect in order to implant tracking technology onto his computer and identify his location. Lambasting the agency, AP attorney Karen Kaiser railed, “The FBI may have intended this false story as a trap for only one person. However, the individual could easily have reposted this story to social networks, distributing to thousands of people, under our name, what was essentially a piece of government disinformation.”

Then again, to those familiar with COINTELPRO, an FBI program created to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and neutralize” groups and individuals the government considers politically objectionable, it should come as no surprise that the agency has mastered the art of government disinformation.

The FBI has been particularly criticized in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks for targeting vulnerable individuals and not only luring them into fake terror plots but actually equipping them with the organization, money, weapons and motivation to carry out the plots—entrapment—and then jailing them for their so-called terrorist plotting. This is what the FBI characterizes as “forward leaning—preventative—prosecutions.”

Another fallout from 9/11, National Security Letters, one of the many illicit powers authorized by the USA Patriot Act, allows the FBI to secretly demand that banks, phone companies, and other businesses provide them with customer information and not disclose the demands. An internal audit of the agency found that the FBI practice of issuing tens of thousands of NSLs every year for sensitive information such as phone and financial records, often in non-emergency cases, is riddled with widespread violations.

The FBI’s surveillance capabilities, on a par with the National Security Agency, boast a nasty collection of spy tools ranging from Stingray devices that can track the location of cell phones to Triggerfish devices which allow agents to eavesdrop on phone calls.

In one case, the FBI actually managed to remotely reprogram a “suspect’s” wireless internet card so that it would send “real-time cell-site location data to Verizon, which forwarded the data to the FBI.”

The FBI has also repeatedly sought to expand its invasive hacking powers to allow agents to hack into any computer, anywhere in the world.

Indeed, for years now, the U.S. government has been creating what one intelligence insider referred to as a cyber-army capable of offensive attacks. As Reuters reported back in 2013:

Even as the U.S. government confronts rival powers over widespread Internet espionage, it has become the biggest buyer in a burgeoning gray market where hackers and security firms sell tools for breaking into computers. The strategy is spurring concern in the technology industry and intelligence community that Washington is in effect encouraging hacking and failing to disclose to software companies and customers the vulnerabilities exploited by the purchased hacks. That's because U.S. intelligence and military agencies aren't buying the tools primarily to fend off attacks. Rather, they are using the tools to infiltrate computer networks overseas, leaving behind spy programs and cyber-weapons that can disrupt data or damage systems.

As part of this cyberweapons programs, government agencies such as the NSA have been stockpiling all kinds of nasty malware, viruses and hacking tools that can “steal financial account passwords, turn an iPhone into a listening device, or, in the case of Stuxnet, sabotage a nuclear facility.”

In fact, the NSA was responsible for the threat posed by the “WannaCry” or “Wanna Decryptor” malware worm which—as a result of hackers accessing the government’s arsenal—hijacked more than 57,000 computers and crippled health care, communications infrastructure, logistics, and government entities in more than 70 countries.

Mind you, the government was repeatedly warned about the dangers of using criminal tactics to wage its own cyberwars. It was warned about the consequences of blowback should its cyberweapons get into the wrong hands.

The government chose to ignore the warnings.

That’s exactly how the 9/11 attacks unfolded.

First, the government helped to create the menace that was al-Qaida and then, when bin Laden had left the nation reeling in shock (despite countless warnings that fell on tone-deaf ears), it demanded—and was given—immense new powers in the form of the USA Patriot Act in order to fight the very danger it had created.

This has become the shadow government’s modus operandi regardless of which party controls the White House: the government creates a menace—knowing full well the ramifications such a danger might pose to the public—then without ever owning up to the part it played in unleashing that particular menace on an unsuspecting populace, it demands additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threat.

Yet the powers-that-be don’t really want us to feel safe.

They want us cowering and afraid and willing to relinquish every last one of our freedoms in exchange for their phantom promises of security.

As a result, it’s the American people who pay the price for the government’s insatiable greed and quest for power.

We’re the ones to suffer the blowback.

Blowback is a term originating from within the American Intelligence community, denoting the unintended consequences, unwanted side-effects, or suffered repercussions of a covert operation that fall back on those responsible for the aforementioned operations.

As historian Chalmers Johnson explains, “blowback is another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows.”

Unfortunately, “we the people” are the ones who keep reaping what the government sows.

We’re the ones who suffer every time, directly and indirectly, from the blowback.

Suffice it to say that when and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America: how a nation that once abided by the rule of law and held the government accountable for its actions has steadily devolved into a police state where justice is one-sided, a corporate elite runs the show, representative government is a mockery, police are extensions of the military, surveillance is rampant, privacy is extinct, and the law is little more than a tool for the government to browbeat the people into compliance.

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

We can persuade ourselves that life is still good, that America is still beautiful, and that “we the people” are still free. However, as science fiction writer Philip K. Dick warned, “Don’t believe what you see; it’s an enthralling—[and] destructive, evil snare. Under it is a totally different world, even placed differently along the linear axis.”

In other words, as I point out Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all is not as it seems.

The powers-that-be are not acting in our best interests.

“We the people” are not free.

The government is not our friend.

Skeletor

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5122 on: June 23, 2021, 09:53:53 AM »

Supreme Court Restricts Police Powers To Enter A Home Without A Warrant

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police cannot enter a home without a warrant when pursuing someone for a minor crime.

By a unanimous vote, the court declared that police violated the rights of a California man by pursuing him into his garage for allegedly playing loud music while driving down a deserted two-lane highway late at night.

Writing for the court majority, Justice Elena Kagan said police had no right to enter the man's home without a warrant for such a trivial offense.

"On many occasions, the officer will have good reason to enter – to prevent imminent harms of violence, destruction of evidence, or escape from the home," she wrote. "But when the officer has time to get a warrant, he must do so – even though the misdemeanant fled."

The court's ruling came in the case of Arthur Lange, who was playing loud music in his car late one night, at one point honking his horn several times. A California highway patrol officer, believing Lange was violating a noise ordinance, followed him, and when the motorist slowed to enter his driveway, the officer put on his flashing lights.

Lange, who later said he didn't notice the police car, drove into his garage. The officer, in "hot pursuit," got out of his car and put his foot under the closing garage door sensor to force the door open again. He had no warrant to enter the home, but once inside, he said, he smelled liquor on Lange's breath and arrested him, not only for the noise violation, but also for driving under the influence.

Lange appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, contending that the officer had no right to enter his home without a warrant and that the DUI evidence had been illegally obtained.

The Supreme Court has long held that police may conduct a warrantless search when pursuing a fleeing felon. The question in Lange's case was whether police are free to do the same thing when pursuing someone suspected of a minor offense like playing loud music.

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/23/999913516/supreme-court-restricts-police-powers-to-enter-a-home-without-a-warrant

Skeletor

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5123 on: June 23, 2021, 10:28:33 AM »
Man sues 7 L.A. County sheriff’s deputies, alleging he lost sight in one eye after vicious Inglewood beating

A lawsuit against seven Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies accused them of beating a man dozens of times in the face, leaving him with broken bones and loss of sight in one eye, his attorneys announced Monday.

Christopher Bailey has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the deputies and the Sheriff’s Department over the May 2020 beating in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, he and his lawyers said at a press conference in Century City.

Bailey was returning home from work as a mail-sorting contractor for the U.S. Postal Service when his car was pulled over at around 2 a.m. for allegedly straddling a lane.

Attorneys for Bailey said he was attacked even though he complied with deputies’ orders, although a police report said he resisted arrest.

“He sustained 64 to 86 total body and face hits. He was pummeled in the face approximately 35 to 44 times,” attorney Toni Jaramilla said during a news conference.

Bailey lost teeth, suffered broken bones in his face and can’t see out of his left eye, Jaramilla said.

Bailey was charged with three felony counts of resisting arrest but the charges were later dropped, his attorneys said. They want the deputies criminally charged.

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/man-sues-7-l-a-county-sheriffs-deputies-alleging-he-lost-sight-in-one-eye-after-vicious-inglewood-beating/

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Re: Police State - Official Thread
« Reply #5124 on: June 24, 2021, 05:37:20 AM »
FBI tears innocent New Yorker’s life into shreds after Jan. 6
New York Post ^ | June 23, 2021 | Miranda Devine
Posted on 6/24/2021, 8:17:07 AM by karpov

Joseph Bolanos was a pillar of his community. President of his Upper West Side block association for the past 23 years, he looked out for his neighbors during the pandemic. He dropped off masks and kept extra heaters in his rent-controlled apartment for seniors. He raised morale with a weekly street dance to show his support for essential workers.

A Red Cross volunteer after the 9/11 attacks, the 69-year-old security consultant once received a police commendation for heroism after saving a woman from being mugged.

Unmarried, and caring for his 94-year-old mother, he was a well-loved character in the quiet residential area.

But now his neighbors think he is a domestic terrorist.

Yes, he attended then-President Donald Trump’s rally in Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, but he never entered the Capitol. He was in a friend’s room at the JW Marriott a 30-minute walk away when the Capitol breach occurred.

Nonetheless, he was raided in February by the FBI anti-terrorism task force, handcuffed, paraded and detained for three hours while his apartment was ransacked and all his devices confiscated. Four months later, he hasn’t been charged and doesn’t have his devices back, but his neighbors are shunning him, and he’s had two strokes from the stress.

“It’s destroyed my reputation,” he says. “I’m not a violent invader . . . I do not condone the criminality and violence on [Jan. 6] whatsoever.”

The FBI told Bolanos he was raided because of a tip to the Jan. 6 hotline from a neighbor who said he had overheard him “boasting” about being at the Capitol.

An FBI agent phoned Bolanos the Sunday after the riot and left a message. He returned the call the next day, but never heard back.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...