Showing posts with label SWAT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SWAT. Show all posts

Do Badges Grant Special Rights? Cop Shoots Unarmed Marijuana Dealer in Face and Kills Him, Walks Free

by Matt Agorist.    Derek Cruice was a kind and loving young man who was murdered in cold blood by state agents because he allegedly sold a plant that is legal in five states. In March, a heavily militarized police SWAT team, knowing that Cruice had never been convicted of a crime, descended on his home on Maybrook Drive in Deltona. Police  ... MORE

Woman Flips Off Mayor, So He Sends SWAT Team After Her

by John Vibes.   Cops deployed as tools for politician. Tina Warren has been fighting her local government over rising water bills, leaving her at odds with the town’s mayor, Bill Kirkpatrick. Warren has been running a number of campaigns against his policies, and she has even been flipping the mayor the middle finger every time she sees him. Tina’s     ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: ‘Minority Report’ Is 40 Years Ahead Of Schedule: The Fictional World Has Become Today's Reality

Examples abound.     We are a scant 40 years away from the futuristic world that science fiction author Philip K. Dick envisioned for Minority Report in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams will crack a few skulls to bring the populace under control. Unfortunately,  ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: ‘Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death’ - The Loss Of Our Freedoms In The Wake Of 9/11

To comply or to resist?   What began with the passage of the USA Patriot Act in October 2001 has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse. Since then, we have been terrorized, traumatized, and acclimated to life in the American Surveillance State. The bogeyman’s names and faces    ... MORE

Mark Meckler: The Overarmed And Dangerous Police State

More guns than brains makes for a bad combo. Imagine waking up at 5:30 a.m. in your third-floor apartment to a SWAT team raiding your family with guns drawn. You’re barely clothed, but you immediately grab your seven-year-old and 18-month-old daughters. You begin praying, hoping that everything will be okay and you will all survive.     ... MORE

Martin Kaste: Police State America - Why Utah Is The Only State Trying To Track And Limit SWAT-Style Raiding Tactics

It's about fighting the drug war 80 percent of the time.  The phrase police militarization conjures up an image of cops wrapped in Kevlar, barging into homes with semi-automatic weapons. But familiar as that image is, we don't know how common it is. There are simply no good statistics on police tactical operations in America. The federal    ... MORE

SWAT Raids, 'No-Knocks' On Rise In Frequency And Profile

By Brad Petrishen. Exploiting the legal monopoly on violence. A 7-year-old girl shot in the head and killed while sleeping in her Detroit home. A 1-year-old boy permanently disfigured in Georgia by a flashbang grenade that landed in his crib. Closer to home, a 68-year-old grandfather of 12 shot and killed inside his house in Framingham while       ... MORE

‘Stop F*cking Crying', Demands Cop Holding Naked Woman And Children At Gunpoint After Raiding Wrong Apartment

by Travis Gettys.   Public masters or public servants? Police terrorized a naked woman and her children at gunpoint last week during a no-knock raid on the wrong apartment. Marianne Diaz said she was awakened about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday by SWAT officers knocking down the door to her Worcester, Massachusetts, apartment as officers wearing      ... MORE

We Are The Government: The Power Of Jury Nullification

by John W. Whitehead. Saddled with a corporate media that marches in lockstep with the government, elected officials who dance to the tune of their corporate benefactors, and a court system that serves to maintain order rather than mete out justice, Americans often feel as if they have no voice and no recourse when it comes to holding government    ... MORE

A Bogus Warrant, A Burned Baby, And An Immoral War

by Jacob Sullum.   Bad cops manufacture probable cause. Shortly after midnight on May 28, 2014, Habersham County, Georgia, Deputy Sheriff Nikki Autry asked Magistrate Judge James Butterworth for a "no knock" warrant to search a house on Lakeview Heights Circle in Cornelia. In her application, Autry, a special agent with the Mountain Judicial   ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Federal Grand Jury Charges Georgia Cop With Lying To Justify Drug Raid That Multilated A Toddler

Cop tossed flash-bang grenade into playpen. Today John Horn, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, announced that a federal grand jury has approved an indictment charging former Habersham County Deputy Sheriff Nikki Autry with lying when she applied for the search warrant authorizing a May 2014 drug raid that   ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: Freedom Or The Slaughterhouse?

The American Police State from A to Z.    For those whose minds have been short-circuited into believing the candy-coated propaganda peddled by the politicians, here is an A-to-Z, back-to-the-basics primer of what life in the United States of America is really all about.  A is for the AMERICAN POLICE STATE. As I point out in my book   ... MORE

5 Eye-Opening Facts, Figures on No-Knock Warrants

by Sean Piccolli. Stats illustrate America's move to a police state. At a time of anxiety over policing in the United States and heated debate about "militarized" law enforcement, the practice of conducting "no-knock raids" – in which heavily armed SWAT teams burst unannounced into homes – has come under widespread scrutiny. Here are facts, figures, and     ... MORE

Matt Agorist: Family Raided by SWAT, Their Home Trashed And Their Dog Shot For Not Being Able To Pay Utility Bill

Police state USA. Nothing says Police State USA quite like a SWAT team raiding a family home and killing their dog because they are unable to pay their natural gas bill. The woman whose dog was killed and home destroyed by SWAT officers is Angela Zorich, and her story about her police state experience will shock the conscious. According to a federal ... MORE

Sheriff’s Office Stoops To New Low: Claims Infant At Fault For SWAT Team Blowing His Face Apart With A Grenade

by Mike Sawyer.  “Merely by being in that room, Bou-Bou had assumed the risk of coming under attack by a SWAT team. By impeding the trajectory of that grenade, rather than fleeing from his crib, Bou-Bou failed to “avoid the consequences” of that attack.” Habersham County Sheriff, Joey Terrell, has allegedly given the most asinine    ... MORE

Doug Newman: They Thought They Were Fighting For Freedom But Are Now Abused By America's Police State

Veterans abused by government.    It is easy to stand up and cheer for your favorite government activity. It is quite another to acknowledge what it means in the real world. I almost never try to speak for other people. However, I think it is fairly safe to say that the average military recruit firmly believes that he joins the military so that you and   ... MORE

Derrick Broze: Introducing REVERSE DRUG STINGS: The Latest Tool For Creating Criminals In The War On Drugs

More criminal tactics from government.   "The time has come to remind the Executive Branch that the Constitution charges it with law enforcement — not crime creation,” one California judge writes in a damning indictment of the practice, while another describes agents as “trolling poor neighborhoods.” Since Sept. 11, 2001, law       ... MORE

Josie Wales: IRS Continues SWAT Raids For Evasion While Hundreds Of Thier Agents Avoid Paying Any Taxes At All

Government's tax cheats are low priority.  The Associated Press has reported that over 1,600 IRS employees have willfully committed tax evasion in a 10-year span; most still employed in spite of a 1998 law calling for termination in such cases. Even worse, it has been reported that many of the tax-evading agents were active in enforcing the federal  ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: Turning America Into A Battlefield

A blueprint for locking down the nation.     Americans now find themselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military and have just as little regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain ... MORE