America’s Destruction is an Inside Job

Police State 4

Invisible Empire

Criminalizing Everyone……Police State Rising

By Brian W. Walsh

“You don’t need to know. You can’t know.” That’s what Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, was told when she tried to ask court officials why, the day before, federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search.

The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris’ longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.

The six agents, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with – get this– the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Kathy and George Norris lived under the specter of a covert government investigation for almost six months before the government unsealed a secret indictment and revealed why the Fish and Wildlife Service had treated their family home as if it were a training base for suspected terrorists. Orchids.

Evil Orchid Growers

That’s right. Orchids.

By March 2004, federal prosecutors were well on their way to turning 66-year-old retiree George Norris into an inmate in a federal penitentiary – based on his home-based business of cultivating, importing and selling orchids.

Mrs. Norris testified before the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime this summer. The hearing’s topic: the rapid and dangerous expansion of federal criminal law, an expansion that is often unprincipled and highly partisan.

Chairman Robert C. Scott, Virginia Democrat, and ranking member Louie Gohmert, Texas Republican, conducted a truly bipartisan hearing (a D.C. rarity this year).

These two leaders have begun giving voice to the increasing number of experts who worry about “overcriminalization.” Astronomical numbers of federal criminal laws lack specifics, can apply to almost anyone and fail to protect innocents by requiring substantial proof that an accused person acted with actual criminal intent.

Mr. Norris ended up spending almost two years in prison because he didn’t have the proper paperwork for some of the many orchids he imported. The orchids were all legal – but Mr. Norris and the overseas shippers who had packaged the flowers had failed to properly navigate the many, often irrational, paperwork requirements the U.S. imposed when it implemented an arcane international treaty’s new restrictions on trade in flowers and other flora.

The judge who sentenced Mr. Norris had some advice for him and his wife: “Life sometimes presents us with lemons.” Their job was, yes, to “turn lemons into lemonade.”

The judge apparently failed to appreciate how difficult it is to run a successful lemonade stand when you’re an elderly diabetic with coronary complications, arthritis and Parkinson’s disease serving time in a federal penitentiary. If only Mr. Norris had been a Libyan terrorist, maybe some European official at least would have weighed in on his behalf to secure a health-based mercy release.

Krister Evertson, another victim of overcriminalization, told Congress, “What I have experienced in these past years is something that should scare you and all Americans.” He’s right. Evertson, a small-time entrepreneur and inventor, faced two separate federal prosecutions stemming from his work trying to develop clean-energy fuel cells.

The feds prosecuted Mr. Evertson the first time for failing to put a federally mandated sticker on an otherwise lawful UPS package in which he shipped some of his supplies. A jury acquitted him, so the feds brought new charges. This time they claimed he technically had “abandoned” his fuel-cell materials – something he had no intention of doing – while defending himself against the first charges. Mr. Evertson, too, spent almost two years in federal prison.

As George Washington University law professor Stephen Saltzburg testified at the House hearing, cases like these “illustrate about as well as you can illustrate the overreach of federal criminal law.” The Cato Institute’s Timothy Lynch, an expert on overcriminalization, called for “a clean line between lawful conduct and unlawful conduct.” A person should not be deemed a criminal unless that person “crossed over that line knowing what he or she was doing.” Seems like common sense, but apparently it isn’t to some federal officials.

Former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh’s testimony captured the essence of the problems that worry so many criminal-law experts. “Those of us concerned about this subject,” he testified, “share a common goal – to have criminal statutes that punish actual criminal acts and [that] do not seek to criminalize conduct that is better dealt with by the seeking of regulatory and civil remedies.” Only when the conduct is sufficiently wrongful and severe, Mr. Thornburgh said, does it warrant the “stigma, public condemnation and potential deprivation of liberty that go along with [the criminal] sanction.”

The Norrises’ nightmare began with the search in October 2003. It didn’t end until Mr. Norris was released from federal supervision in December 2008. His wife testified, however, that even after he came home, the man she had married was still gone. He was by then 71 years old. Unsurprisingly, serving two years as a federal convict – in addition to the years it took to defend unsuccessfully against the charges – had taken a severe toll on him mentally, emotionally and physically.

These are repressive consequences for an elderly man who made mistakes in a small business. The feds should be ashamed, and Mr. Evertson is right that everyone else should be scared. Far too many federal laws are far too broad.

Mr. Scott and Mr. Gohmert have set the stage for more hearings on why this places far too many Americans at risk of unjust punishment. Members of both parties in Congress should follow their lead.

As if Corporal Punishment isn’t already powerful Enough

Earlier models of the wired taser, above, delivered a five-second shock. The XREP projectile can deliver a 20-second, 500 volt blow.

A new Taser that fires wireless electric shock projectiles up to 30 metres is being considered for use by UK police forces, the Home Office has confirmed.

The eXtended Range Electronic Projectile (XREP), which went on sale in the US last month, attaches itself to its target with a series of barbed electrodes and delivers a 20-second, 500 volt shock.

If the subject tries to grab the device to pull it off, “reflex engagement electrodes” activate to complete a circuit that sends the shock through the subject’s body out to their hand.

The makers of the XREP, Taser International, say it is a “revolutionary” step that will allow police to safely immobilize potentially dangerous suspects from a much greater distance than before – the traditional hand-held Taser stun guns used in the UK only fired darts up to 25 feet – and then give them time to reach the target before he or she is able to move again. Previous Tasers have only delivered a five-second shock, which could be re-triggered.

But Amnesty International said it was “seriously concerned” about the XREP and worried by the news it could be authorized in the UK.

“This is effectively a shotgun that fires electric-shock bullets,” Amnesty International UK’s arms programme director, Oliver Sprague, said, adding: “Because this bullet can be fired wire-free from a standard shotgun there is a heightened risk of causing serious injury to the face and head.

“We’re also concerned by the fact that these weapons will deliver an excruciatingly painful shock for 20 seconds. Amnesty would be very alarmed if the Home Office were to consider authorising this weapon to police officers in the UK.”

Taser’s footage of the device being manually activated on already wired-up volunteers shows them tensing up in pain, groaning and slumping towards the floor.
Watch Taser’s promotional footage Link to this video

On the Discovery Channel’s Future Weapons programme, one heavily muscled volunteer was asked afterward s how the shock had felt.

“Like my toes curled back to touch my behind,” he said. “There’s no way I could fight through that.”

Rick Smith, Taser International’s CEO, told the show the device “can drop the largest, scariest people on the planet”.

Last month Taser co-founder Rick Smith told analysts the wireless systems would “leave more of a mark”.

“It’s a bigger projectile to reach out to extended ranges,” he said in a conference call. “It’s moving faster; it’s going to, potentially, cause a much bigger bruise, contusions. It’s going to be a pretty bad thing.”

This meant law enforcement would use the devices more sparingly, in only very high risk situations, Smith added.

The Home Office confirmed it was evaluating the XREP for possible use by law enforcement in Britain. “The Home Office Scientific Development Branch are considering it as part of their ongoing remit to evaluate new less lethal technologies” a spokesman said.

Taser rejected Amnesty’s concerns, saying the XREP would cause less pain when it hit than other “less lethal” impact munitions and was a safer way to immobilize someone than shooting them with live ammunition.

“The premise behind the XREP is not to cause or impart physical pain, it is to cause incapacitation,” spokesman Steve Tuttle said.

“I’m not saying this is risk free: it will leave potential bruising and it could cause a contusion. But when you compare it to a traditional impact munition it will be significantly less likely to cause injury and much more accurate.”

Cops use Americans for Target Practice

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Alonzo Heyward carried a rifle around his low-rent neighborhood one day last month, ranting about suicide and ignoring the pleas of friends for hours before six Chattanooga police officers surrounded him on his front porch and decided it had to end.

His father says Heyward told the officers, “I’m not out here to hurt anybody.”

But the police, who tried unsuccessfully to disarm Heyward, fired 59 rounds to kill him on July 18. The medical examiner found 43 bullet wounds in his chest, face, arms, hands, legs, buttocks and groin. Police contend Heyward was a danger to others and threatened the six officers.

Chattanooga police spokeswoman Jerri Weary described the case as “suicide by cop.”

As questions continue to surround the shooting, Heyward’s family and civil rights leaders take issue with the police response.

“We have a large concern about the amount of shots fired,” said Valoria Armstrong, president of the NAACP branch in Chattanooga.

A Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial cartoon asked “IS THIS EXCESSIVE FORCE?” — spelling out the question with letters labeling the wounds in a drawing based on Heyward’s autopsy report.

His father, James Marine, 61, does not believe Heyward really wanted to kill himself or that he was trying to commit “suicide by cop.”

“He just needed somebody to talk to,” Marine said. … “I believe he was just depressed at that time.”

A Tennessee Bureau of Investigation probe is ongoing. Federal and local authorities are awaiting the TBI report before they do their own examinations of the case. Hamilton County District Attorney Bill Cox said he wants to see the TBI report before deciding whether to pursue a criminal case.

Heyward, a 32-year-old moving company employee, was black. The six officers are white. They were temporarily placed on administrative leave but have since returned to work.

Police spokeswoman Weary said the officers confronted Heyward when they responded to a report of three men wrestling over a gun in the street just after 4 a.m.

Heyward’s father said there was never any wrestling over the .44 Magnum rifle that his son was carrying and sometimes pointing at his chin.

Police said the officers tried but failed to disarm Heyward with a stun gun. Weary said Heyward ignored repeated commands to drop the rifle and officers fired when they felt threatened by the way he moved it.

Police accounts and a patrol car video indicate the shots were fired in three volleys, all within 30 seconds. Each officer used a .45-caliber pistol. Some officers emptied their magazines, reloaded and fired again, while others didn’t fire all their bullets, Weary said.

Some of the gunshots ripped through the unoccupied front room of the house Heyward was renting from his employer, the owner of a local moving company. No one else was injured.

The FBI and Justice Department do not keep national “suicide by cop” statistics. FBI records from September 2008 show 391 “justifiable homicides” by law enforcement in 2007, up slightly from the previous year.

Eugene O’Donnell, a former policeman and prosecutor who is now a professor of police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, said there is “no magic number” when it comes to officers firing at a suspect.

If death is believed to be imminent “there isn’t anybody in the country who can tell the cops 10 shots and no more,” O’Donnell said.

“Unfortunately this is replicated all over the country. When you send the police they bring deadly force with them. They come armed and they come predisposed to use force,” O’Donnell said.

According to court records, Heyward had been charged three times in the past with domestic assault. The first two were dismissed. The third, from a January 2008 incident, remained pending at the time of his death.

He was sentenced in 2005 to 11 months, 29 days in the county workhouse for passing worthless checks, but the sentence was suspended for good behavior and he was given probation.

He also had a few driving related charges on his record, including a violation of the auto registration law for which he received a 30 day suspended sentence in 1997.

The morning he died, Heyward was distraught after returning from a party where he had been drinking, his father said.

“He didn’t think anybody cared about him,” Marine said.

Heyward was also upset about not seeing his children — a daughter and two sons — according to brother James Heyward.

The video shows that police were told Heyward was drunk and talking about killing himself before they started shooting.

Chattanooga police officers get two to four hours of training annually on dealing with people who are mentally ill or under the influence of drugs or narcotics. But Weary said the training could not be applied in this case because the situation was too fluid and unfolded too quickly.

Weary wouldn’t say whether Heyward had a history of mental health problems, citing the ongoing investigation. Marine said his son had no history of mental illness.

Amanda Counts, Heyward’s girlfriend, and neighbor Darrell Turner said they witnessed the shooting. They said Heyward was lying on the porch on top of the rifle when officers opened fire.

“Before the first shot was fired he was down,” Counts said. “Not one time did he threaten anyone.”

Citing the ongoing investigation, police declined to answer questions about Heyward’s position when officers started shooting.

Counts and Turner both said that during the first brief interruption in the barrage of police gunshots, they heard Heyward ask, “Why are you shooting me?”

That cannot be heard in the recording provided by police.

Police Chief Freeman Cooper this month told Chattanooga radio station WGOW the simultaneous shooting by all six officers shows they acted properly.

“We are saying that our people did what we trained them to do,” the police chief said.

The officers involved in the shooting had between three and six years on the force.

Heyward’s father said he thinks a different police response could have brought the incident last month to a peaceful conclusion.

“I believe he would have put that weapon down,” Marine said. “They should have said, ‘Mr. Heyward, put the weapon down. We’re here to help you.’ … He wasn’t threatening no one.

Protect & Serve FBI to probe Minneapolis police beating

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The FBI has agreed to investigate the beating of a man by Minneapolis police officers, after a video of the incident was released.

Derryl M. Jenkins was arrested in February 2009 during a traffic stop, and charged with assault and refusing to submit to alcohol tests.

The charges were later dropped but police chief Tim Dolan has admitted that some of the responding officers’ actions are cause for concern.

A video of the incident has since been released on the request of Jenkins.

It shows several officers arrive at the scene after one policeman tried to make the initial arrest. Many of the backup officers are seen punching and kicking Jenkins as they try to handcuff him.