How to Train Cops Right

This isn't the comprehensive Guardian training that should replace the counter-productive and lethal Warrior training American cops get now, but it's a start.

Crooks and Liars:

Prince George's County is just north of Washington, D.C. in Maryland, and home to the wealthiest majority-minority population in the United States. It also just elected it's first woman as County Executive, Angela Alsobrooks. Their school system educates the largest number of students with disabilities in the state. This makes the partnership between Prince George's Police Department and the Maryland Department of Disabilities so fitting, and such an encouraging move forward.

WAMU reported,

Police officers in Maryland are required to get training on how to handle interactions with people with disabilities. But the law doesn’t say how police academies should achieve that goal. Starting this fall at Prince George’s Community College, people with disabilities are doing the teaching — and they’re doing it through improv.

During one recent training, trainers acted out a short play in front of a small audience: A mom can’t get her teenage son to stop playing video games. Things escalate, and soon the son threatens to hurt her. She calls the police. When they arrive, she tells them her son has autism. Eventually, he opens his bedroom door for the officers, who take the time to calm him down. The mother, son and police officers in the play were all acting, but some elements feel real: The scene was unscripted, the officers are actual police officers and the man playing the son does have autism.

According to the ACLU, "in 2018 alone, police have shot and killed 64 people with mental health disabilities." There are laws that guide how police are required to proceed when dealing with those with disabilities, and when they don't, consequences are tragic and deadly. Rarely are officers held accountable for such deaths.

SNIP

The program is considered "best practices" because it includes people who have disabilities, rather than simply hiring people without disabilities to portray them in the role-playing situation. This creates a more authentic scenario for the police officers, and helps them practice patience, deescalation, and calm. All the while, the person with a disability who has been hired has been trained thoroughly, reassured, and understands this is a role-play situation, and that they are safe.

Racist KY Police Chief Is Just Tip of Iceberg

The Orange Loser gave this motherfucker the freedumb to put his lethal racism on the record, but don't think there's not at least one White Supremacist asshole on every city and county police force in the state. 

Zandar:

Prospect, Kentucky is a suburb of Louisville just north of the 265 loop near the river, about an hour from where I live.  It's a nice little town of 5,000 or so with broad streets and trees and good schools and oh yeah, a screamingly racist police chief who tells his new recruits that it's okay to shoot black kids for smoking pot.

A former assistant police chief for a Kentucky police department allegedly instructed a police recruit to shoot black minors if he were to catch them smoking marijuana, according to court documents.

In an Aug. 31 letter to Prospect, Kentucky Mayor John Evans, Jefferson County Attorney Mike O'Connell wrote that he has "serious concerns" about the then-assistant police chief Todd Shaw, who at the time was acting chief for the city of Prospect, a suburban city in the Louisville metropolitan area.

When senior Jefferson County prosecutors met with members of the Louisville Metro Police Department, they reviewed "highly disturbing racist and threatening Facebook private messages" Shaw exchanged with a former LMPD police recruit, the letter states. The prosecutors were at the department to conduct an investigation to determine whether to file criminal charges against Shaw, O'Connell said.

The prosecutors found the messages while investigating a case in which Shaw allegedly tried to assist another officer by improperly accessing the National Crime Information Center database, his attorney in the criminal case, Nick Mudd, told ABC News. Prosecutors have dropped efforts file criminal charges against Shaw in that case, Mudd said, adding that he "did nothing wrong."

The Facebook messages of concern, which accompanied the letter O'Connell sent to Evans, occurred from September to October 2016, O'Connell said.

In the Facebook messages, Shaw and the recruit discussed a scenario for the recruit's training in which he had to write a paper on the "right thing to do" if he were to come across three juveniles who were smoking marijuana, O'Connell wrote. The recruit appears to have come to Shaw for advice, telling him, "I'm so confused about this paper," in the message, dated Oct. 5, 2016.

"F--- the right thing," Shaw allegedly wrote. "If black shoot them."

Shaw allegedly made other "racially threatening statements," which included instructions on "how to handle the juveniles' parents," according to the letter.

"...if mom is hot then f--- her," Shaw allegedly wrote. "...if dad is hot then handcuff him and make him s--- my d---."

Shaw allegedly continued, "Unless daddy is black...Then shoot

I have friends who live in Prospect. Not liberals, but voting Democratic recently.  Nice people, but my guess is that their reaction to this story is horror not at the racism, but at the stupidity of saying it out loud.  We keep our racism - even the deadly kind - behind closed doors in the Bluegrass State.

him..."

No, a jury did NOT find a white cop guilty of murdering an unarmed black man.

After a state jury mistrial on murder, the piece of shit pleaded guilty to federal charges of violating civil rights.  He'll get 20 years in prison, and the judge called it "murder,"but This. Is. Not. Justice.

Not until white cops stop shooting black men and women because the cops are sure that even an all-white jury will find them guilty.

From Crooks and Liars.

To Attack and Suppress

This is the militarization needed by tin-pot dictators with massive insecurity complexes, not policing by a democratically-elected administration ...  Oh, wait.

Erik Loomis:

One of the scariest parts about this horrible administration is how law enforcement at all levels, from local cops to the fascists who work for ICE to the Border Patrol union, are chomping at the bit to do whatever Trump wants. We’ve seen this most aggressively from ICE of course, but our law enforcement loves a fascist president and will do everything they can to ensure more of them. Sarah Jaffe has a good piece detailing this.

This is no longer an issue of one election; Trump may not have kept many of his promises, but he is keeping the ones he made to the police officers who supported him. And it’s also not just about Trump; around the country, police work hand-in-hand with far-right politicians orchestrating crackdowns on immigrants, harsher penalties for crimes, and so-called “blue lives matter” bills that make crimes against police equivalent to crimes against marginalized and oppressed groups. In California, for example, the California State Sheriffs’ Association is working hard to bury a “sanctuary state” proposal, and one sheriff even publicly floated the idea of her county simply ignoring the law if it were to pass.

While the occasional story of an officer with neo-Nazi tattoos or apparent ties to white supremacist websites does surface from time to time, this is not a matter of individual officers going rogue. It is a belief system produced through the decades of American policing, a history that includes police collusion with white supremacist vigilantes in the South and elsewhere, as Vitale points out. There is also police overlap with militia groups like the Oath Keepers—in 2015, reporting for my book, I spoke with Sam Andrews, a former Oath Keeper who had left the organization over its refusal to endorse an open-carry march he held with black residents of Ferguson and the greater St. Louis area. For the police in the organization, he said, such a thing was a bridge too far.

These days, open collusion with white supremacist groups might be less common, but an offensive post made to the Instagram account of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of Newburgh, New York, this August struck a nerve because it seemed to echo the policy on the ground in Charlottesville.

The image, rapidly denounced by the PBA and the police department, showed a Confederate flag juxtaposed with a photo of young black men with sagging pants, with the words “This does not offend me” emblazoned over the flag and “This bullshit does” over the photo. It was a sign, once again, of just who “us” and “them” is.

And so, in the age of Trump, police and the institutions that represent them continue to double down on their siege mentality. As protesters confront white supremacists in city after city—as I write this, Berkeley’s streets are full of red flags and tear gas—police still seem to see protesters, particularly protesters of the political left, as a sign of disorder. The movement for black lives, along with its demands for accountability or even abolition of the police, is felt to be a particular threat to police officers, and Trump has done his best to encourage this feeling. With his approval ratings at an all-time low and officials departing his administration like proverbial rats from a sinking ship, Trump has sent a signal to what Marcy Wheeler has noted is the “respectable” part of his base—the police—that anything goes. This should concern us.

This is also incredibly dangerous. If the worst nightmares of Trump severely eroding democracy do come to fruition, law enforcement will be at the center of it. And yet even today, law enforcement are almost immune to real criticism in the public sphere. Yes, we all need law enforcement from time to time. What we don’t need is a Providence police officer coming to my house after it gets robbed and telling me to my face that if voters don’t put Buddy Cianci in the mayor’s office next month, the animals are going to take over the city. We can have policing without fascism, beatings of protestors, and mass deportations of peaceful people. But we may not get that with the police as presently constructed. There also needs to be a lot more deep diving into the salting of police forces with white supremacists, which is something I hear a lot of rumors about but haven’t seen anything real solid.

Charlie Pierce:

And we conclude, as is our wont, in the Great State Of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Copper Dowser Friedman Of The Plains brings us yet another tragedy that has befallen our brave men in blue. From The Daily Beast:

He was pronounced dead at the scene. The 35-year-old was on his front porch holding a two-foot-long pipe when police arrived in the area to investigate a hit-and-run accident. Police ordered Sanchez to drop the pipe, but he could not hear them. He walked toward the officer and waved the pipe in his right hand, officials said. Neighbors nearby saw the situation unfolding and ran toward officers, screaming. “Don’t kill him! He’s deaf,” a 12-year-old girl yelled. “Don’t do it!” Six other neighbors joined in before another officer arrived and shot him.

He should have complied. Being deaf is no excuse for not obeying orders that you can’t hear. Also, he could’ve laid waste to six young, well-trained police officers with that pipe of his. Did I cover everything?

killer martinis, who was on the ground during recent police riots in St. Louis, for Wonkette:

If you want me to feel like the police aren’t my enemy STOP SENDING THEM TO GAS ME FOR DOING MY FUCKING JOB AS A JOURNALIST.

 

If you don’t want people to get het up about how many black people you’ve killed, STOP KILLING BLACK PEOPLE.

Meanwhil, the FBI is pulling out all the stops to arrest activists, not the criminals the activists exposed.

Poor Little WATB Cops

The Orange Loser and the confederate pixie between then are guaranteeing that no cop in the land will lack the military or legal firepower to steal from and torture and kill at will any peaceful citizen they choose.

Yet all cops can do is cry that they are so oppressed.

Erik Loomis at LGM:

For all the tough guy antics around service and respect, the police whine and cry at the slightest criticism, not to mention when they actually murder someone. Killing a 12 year old black kid? Totally OK! Engaging in a mild form of silent protest against that action? Browns Stadium might as well be a Khmer Rouge killing field!

Nonetheless, stripping the police of their collective bargaining rights will do nothing to solve these problems.

So the police are special snowflakes and the national anthem is their safe space that needs protection from big mean protestors? I am sure glad these tough guys can handle the most difficult situations without crying.

Total Immunity for All Cops

So a prosecutor finally has the courage to put on trial a murdering cop not once, but twice, and his reward for two mistrials is the police union demanding his dismissal or they will start enforcing martial law.

Zandar:

Understand that the issue with Sgt. Heine's testimony is a smokescreen, the issue is that Deters dared to ever indict Tensing.  The police union is making it very clear that the collaborative agreement between the police, the City Council, the Mayor, and the black community is dead unless Deters is fired, and that's something Mayor Cranley can't afford to let crumble as he faces re-election.

That puts Cincinnati in a very bad place.  If the police union bails from the Collaborative Agreement, Cranley is toast and he knows it

Bringing in an outside prosecutor won't fix this; cops will punish the city all the same.

Banning police unions will usher in massive, nation-wide strikes by cops who are now armed with state-of-the-art military weapons.

No, I don't think the Orange Loser's exhortation to cops to beat suspects was accidental at all.

When Only Blue Lives Matter

I guess Jay-Walking While Black is not yet an offense rating summary execution.  But I'm sure Jeffy Beau's Department of Injustice is working round the clock to make it so.

Think Progress:

On April 8, Officer Zachary Rosen of the Columbus Police Department in Ohio stomped the head of a young black man into a sidewalk, according to video footage of the event that was uploaded last week.

The video was filmed just two weeks after Rosen eluded criminal charges for fatally shooting a 23-year-old black man.

As seen in the video, DeMarco Anderson is lying flat on the ground and in the process of having his hands cuffed behind his back when Rosen runs up and kicks him in the head. Seconds before the blow, Anderson can be heard asking, “Why are you being aggressive, sir?” as an officer kneels on top of him. After his head hits the pavement, Anderson says, “Are you serious? I got cuffs on, sir,” as three additional officers surround him. Moments later, he is escorted to a police vehicle.

The Return of Boiling Alive

Every single supposedly progressive white person who says "I don't see color" should be held to account for horrific torture like this.  Because it is exactly the refusal to acknowledge what happens every fucking day to non-white people that makes it not even a crime to murder them by literally boiling them alive.

Erik Loomis At LGM:

Another day, more police officers getting off scot free after the wanton murder of African-Americans.

On June 23, 2012, Darren Rainey, a schizophrenic man serving time for cocaine possession, was thrown into a prison shower at the Dade Correctional Institution. The water was turned up top 180 degrees — hot enough to steep tea or cook Ramen noodles.

As punishment, four corrections officers — John Fan Fan, Cornelius Thompson, Ronald Clarke and Edwina Williams — kept Rainey in that shower for two full hours. Rainey was heard screaming “Please take me out! I can’t take it anymore!” and kicking the shower door. Inmates said prison guards laughed at Rainey and shouted “Is it hot enough?”

Rainey died inside that shower. He was found crumpled on the floor. When his body was pulled out, nurses said there were burns on 90 percent of his body. A nurse said his body temperature was too high to register with a thermometer.

And his skin fell off at the touch.

But in an unconscionable decision, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s office announced Friday that the four guards who oversaw what amounted to a medieval-era boiling will not be charged with a crime.

“The shower was itself neither dangerous nor unsafe,’’ the report says. “The evidence does not show that Rainey’s well-being was grossly disregarded by the correctional staff.’’

What is there even to say at this point?

 Only Blue Lives Matter.

The Blue Lives KY Repugs Think Need Protecting

This is what they do with the power they already have.  The "Blue Lives Matter" bill now on Gov. Matt "Trump's Butt Boy" Bevin's desk will give them unchecked power to rape, steal and murder without consequences.

Andrew Wolfson at the Courier:

In a lawsuit packed with explosive allegations, a former member of the Louisville Police youth program says he was raped and sexually abused by two officers during a two-year period and the police concealed it.

The plaintiff, identified as "N.C.," said he was sodomized by Officer Kenneth Betts and Brandon Wood from the time he was 17 to 19 years old and that the abuse occurred in their homes and police vehicles. The suit also alleges that Betts and Wood recorded the episodes and used them to make pornography.

The suit, filed Wednesday in Jefferson Circuit Court, was sealed by Judge Judith McDonald-Burkman, but the Courier-Journal obtained a copy. The man’s attorney, David Yates, who moved to seal the complaint, has previously said his client was sexually abused by “people in power” and that Yates believes there was an attempted cover-up.

"N.C." also says in the suit that the “deliberate conduct” of Betts and Woods was designed to intimidate, degrade and control him for their sexual gratification and to force him to remain silent.

The Resistance: Solidarity

Scott Walker used this trick in Wisconsin six years ago, and it's not working any more.  Cops and firefighters know they can't trust elected repugs any more, and their only hope of survival is solidarity.

Zandar:

Cops and firefighters across America voted for the Trump and the Party of Law And Order® and all that, and they expect Republicans to treat them well.  The problem with that is cops and firefighters are still government employees with strong public sector unions, pensions, and benefits, and Republicans will not let those remain.  Iowa is a good example of this, where first responders are finding out the hard way that they voted themselves into oblivion.

.In the highly contentious battle to extinguish public worker rights, Iowa Republicans have attempted a divide-and-conquer approach to pit unions against each other. Their legislation splits public workers into two groups, one that’s “public safety workers,” and one that isn’t. The idea was to strip away nearly all collective bargaining rights from most public employees, but keep most of it for police and firefighters, who are politically more difficult to go after.

It didn’t work.

Hundreds of helmeted firefighters have flooded the Statehouse in the last week and police officers and sheriffs have lined up at committee hearings to speak against it. They don’t trust that this carve-out for their jobs will last long, nor do many of them feel it’s appropriate to deny the bargaining rights they have to fellow workers who have also had them for over 40 years.

"Blue Lives Matter More Than Your Civil Rights" Bill Advances in KY

So, you're driving along at the speed limit when a state trooper pulls you over. You say "I don't think I was speeding" and he drags you out of the car, throws you face down on the hood and cuffs your hands behind your back while screaming "Stop Resisting!  Stop Resisting."

And now you're in jail, facing fines and prison time for the crime of "attacking" a police officer by merely asking why you were stopped.


That's going to be life in Kentucky if this piece of shit passes.

Daniel Desrochers at the Herald:

A bill that would make police officers, firefighters and emergency medical personnel a protected class under Kentucky’s hate crime law passed easily through a House committee Wednesday.

State Rep. Kevin Bratcher, the sponsor of House Bill 14, said the proposal is intended to protect police and give judges more “tools” when sentencing people who attack officers.

“I just want people to know that if you’re going to harm one of our first-responders, that we’re going to give you the maximum that we can,” Bratcher said.

SNIP

Opponents argued that police are different than others protected by the hate crime law because they chose to go into the profession. Including an occupation on the list of protected classes would water down the law by expanding it beyond historically oppressed minorities.

“This is not about making police officers safe,” said Rep. Darryl Owens, D-Louisville. “This is about something else. Bottom line, there is no place for this in hate-crime legislation. Where do you stop?”

You don't.  This bill gives cops carte blanche to arrest, abuse, even torture by taser anyone they want.  All the cop has to do is claim he was attacked, even as his "attacker" lies unconscious and bloody at the feet of the untouched cop.

Or as veteran Stephen Gardiner wrote to his legislators:

It is important to keep the purpose of hate crimes laws in focus. They are not just a way to tack on penalties for motivations considered particularly offensive. From their conception, such laws have been a way to recognize that certain types of violence impact not just individuals, but whole communities. Hate crimes discourage entire groups of people from exercising their rights. The long and ugly history of lynching is only the most blatant example of the impacts hate crimes have by intent. The origins of racist terror groups such as the Ku Klux Klan were in an intent to deter Black people from voting, assembly, speech and other rights guaranteed by the constitution. 

HB 14 is political theater. It ignores the real problems faced by police officers, chronic over-policing in Black and low-income neighborhoods, and worsening police-community relations. It ignores our Commonwealth realities of mass detention. It ignores our extraordinary incarceration rates and already overcrowded jails. 

Police work is difficult, at times dangerous. To be clear, willfully targeting a law enforcement officer because of their occupation is a heinous crime. However, Kentucky law already provides enhanced penalties for assaulting a police officer and treats the murder of an officer as a capital crime, without the burden of proving motivation. HB 14 is an attempt to legislate “respect” for law enforcement even while their benefits dwindle, training is inappropriate or underfunded, and their mission as it exists has led to overflowing jails, the disproportionate and aggressive policing of Black neighborhoods, and mutual mistrust between police and the most vulnerable communities in the state. 

Meanwhile, this bill suggests Kentucky has a kind of trouble Kentucky does not have. According to the highly motivated tracking of the Officer Down Memorial Page, across our entire state, no officers were killed in 2016. Even one would be too many, but HB 14 encourages a misperception that Kentucky and particularly Black neighborhoods in Kentucky are dangerous places for officers to work. The data suggests the opposite is true. 

Charges of resisting arrest and intimidation are extraordinarily discretionary. HB 14 transforms discretionary misdemeanors, for petty offenses or no offense at all, into discretionary felonies. This is an obvious threat and offense against Black neighborhoods and youth who are already too aggressively policed. In the current political climate and according to early showings of how similar bills are enforced elsewhere, these discretionary felonies are all too likely to be realized on the bodies of peaceful protesters as well. In this way, HB 14 fits well among the recent slew of reactionary anti-protest laws nationwide. Poor, homeless and mentally ill people are extraordinarily vulnerable to HB 14, as they may be less able to negotiate tense and frightening encounters with police, and less able to contest unjust charges.

The only purposes HB 14 serves are to allow legislators to make a public show of support for police that is show only, and to further the abuse of Black people and protesters. Kentucky doesn’t need this bill.

It will pass of course and Governor "Trump's dick tastes like caviar" Bevin will sign it.  There are many steps on the road to totalitarianism, and this bill takes a giant one.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article131495739.html#storylink=cpy

The Resistance: Come and Get Me

Daylin Leach is a Pennsylvania state senator who is obviously extremely popular with his constituents.

 

From Crooks and Liars:

Follow

Daylin Leach @daylinleach

Hey @realDonaldTrump I oppose civil asset forfeiture too! Why don't you try to destroy my career you fascist, loofa-faced, shit-gibbon!

1:58 PM - 7 Feb 2017

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  10,828 10,828 Retweets
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  25,243 25,243 likes

Dissent Being Outlawed

They've tried it before, many times, and failed.  But they never had an all-authoritarian government and judiciary to support them before.

Charlie Pierce:

For example, in North Dakota, they are considering a law that would decriminalize…wait for it…"accidentally" running over protesters. From KTLA:

Rep. Keith Kempenich introduced the bill, which states that if a driver "unintentionally" causes injury or death to someone blocking traffic on a roadway, then the driver will not be liable for damages. Kempenich said he was spurred to act after Dakota Access Pipeline protesters last year moved to block public roadways, scaring some of his constituents. "It turned from a protest to basically terrorism on the roadways, and the bill got introduced for people to be able to drive down the roads without fear of running into somebody and having to be liable for them," he told CNN.

What kind of a mind comes up with this? Presumably, if he'd been in Selma in 1965, Representative Kempenich would have run down those terrorists on the Edmund Pettus Bridge because they were keeping him from getting to the Piggly Wiggly. The problem is that there's a kind of fever for suppressing dissent out in the states that has been unleashed with the inauguration of an authoritarian president.

In Minnesota, a proposed law would increase the penalties for public protest on a highway, and another proposed law would force any protester convicted of illegal assembly or public nuisance to recoup the police expenses for monitoring the demonstration. In Indiana, they're pushing a similar bill, as The Indianapolis Star reports.

An Indiana lawmaker says disturbing newscasts of chaotic and sometimes violent protests across the U.S. helped lead him to propose a bill that would direct police to use "any means necessary" to breakup mass gatherings that block traffic.

Any means, Gracie? Boy, this must be a real problem.

When asked, Tomes could not cite specific instances where protesters prevented or delayed an emergency response.

But…but…scary newscasts!

But he said he's seen troubling scenes on the nightly news and thinks people are overcomplicating the issue. "People get off track and get off on sidebars on this. It's just to get the streets opened up for traffic flow, for emergency personnel, for commerce — that's all," said Tomes, who added that he thinks protesters should get a permit if they want to block-off a street. As written, the bill would give authorities 15 minutes to "dispatch all available law enforcement officers" after receiving a report of 10 or more people illegally blocking traffic "with directions to use any means necessary to clear the roads."

But leave it to the newly insane state of North Carolina to come up with a new law dedicated merely to the protection of delicate fee-fees. The News Observer tells the tale.

The proposed legislation would "make it a crime to threaten, intimidate, or retaliate against a present or former North Carolina official in the course of, or on account of, the performance of his or her duties," Bishop said. "Because lines are being crossed," Bishop, a Republican who represents the 39th District in the North Carolina Senate, wrote in an email from his Senate campaign account.

And who is brother Bishop? Glad you asked.

Bishop was one of the sponsors of House Bill 2, or "the bathroom bill" which McCrory signed into law. The bill was criticized for nullifying local non-discrimination ordinances statewide, directing transgender people to use restrooms and locker rooms matching the gender on their birth certificate in government-owned buildings and initially revoking the right to sue in state court for discrimination.

Which, it should be said, is the reason that people are so upset with McCrory in the first place. Nevertheless, Bishop is soldiering on.

Bishop said such behavior should come with a five-year prison sentence and said he'll introduce the legislation to make it so in North Carolina, similar to an ordinance in the District of Columbia. "So should it be in North Carolina," he wrote. "This is dangerous. Jim Hunt, Bev Purdue and other governors never faced riotous mobs in their post-service, private lives, without personal security." Bishop said he also will urge his fellow legislators "to take other appropriate steps to guarantee the personal safety of Gov. McCrory by all means necessary."

These are going to be hard days for public protest and, if things keep up the way they're going, there are going to be more and more public protests. I genuinely fear for the safety of the protesters at the Standing Rock camp. But, more than that, I'm afraid that too many people don't understand the purpose of public protest anymore. We're going to have to remember that there is no provision in the Constitution providing for freedom of convenience.

More from Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

Thus, someone's "right" to make money (enumerated in the Bill of Rights somewhere?) would be considered superior to another's exercising 1st Amendment rights, both according to state law and Ericksen's values. If the protesters carried guns, it would become a 2nd Amendment issue and a different matter altogether. Ericksen was Donald Trump's deputy campaign director in Washington.

Kentucky Will Arrest You for No Reason and Take All Your Money

One of the many unjust and unconstitutional consequences of repug budget-cutting.

Kevin Drum:

Adam Liptak tells us that the Supreme Court is pondering whether to hear a case from Ramsey County, Minnesota, which confiscates money from people it arrests. That's what happened to Corey Statham, who was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, and then released:

But the county kept $25 of Mr. Statham’s money as a “booking fee.” It returned the remaining $21 on a debit card subject to an array of fees. In the end, it cost Mr. Statham $7.25 to withdraw what was left of his money.

 

....Kentucky bills people held in its jails for the costs of incarcerating them, even if all charges are later dismissed.

SNIP

I continue to be gobsmacked by all of this. I've heard all the arguments about due process and civil vs. criminal and so forth, and not a single word of it strikes me as anything but an obvious sham. And yet courts—all the way to the Supreme Court—and judicial agencies—all the way to the Department of Justice—accept them without blinking. It's the kind of thing that makes me wonder if I'm stuck in some kind of Kafka-based virtual reality. How can something so obviously wrong be approved with a shrug by so many people?

My bold italics. County running short at the end of the month? Round up a bunch of ni**ers and spics on bogus charges and collect their mothers' last dimes.

The War on Abused Children

Divine Irony:

And Phillippine mass murderer Duterte is proving it with his executions of thousands of addicts.

Cops Already Have All Your Info, Just Waiting for the Right Charge

And under the Fascist Tangelo, Living While Non-White, Non-Male, Non-xian and Non-Straight will be capital crimes.

Patricia J. Williams at The Nation:

This lack of regulation—and public ignorance of such systems’ existence—means that police departments are able to use facial recognition to identify and track law-abiding citizens as well as criminal suspects. Many police departments are able to run “continuous, real-time scans of people walking by a surveillance camera”—without warrant, reasonable suspicion, or any other limitation. The report found that of 52 agencies polled, only one prohibits officers from “using face recognition to track individuals engaging in political, religious, or other protected free speech.” In addition, facial-recognition technologies are manufactured by private companies using proprietary algorithms generally classified as intellectual property or trade secrets. Hence, few measures exist for ensuring accuracy through public oversight, regular maintenance, or published operating standards.

In addition, the potential for error—particularly racially based error—seems built into the machine

Having “nothing to hide” only gets you so far when there is no way to contest the judgments of a hidden gaze. “We don’t want the bad guys to know that we’re out there,” declared Rhodes. “We want them to worry about whether or not they’re being watched.” This appropriation of surveillance authority creates a pervasive us versus them mentality, eradicating the boundary between liberty and license. So here we are, fellow citizens—at a moment when libertarianism’s distaste for oversight intersects with technological totalism. We flow seamlessly, helplessly, into sweeping currents of the quietly totalitarian.

Your Hero of the Day

Fuck You, Trumpians:  John Choi is on the job.

Minneapolis Tribune:

Philando Castile’s fatal encounter last July with St. Anthony police Officer Jeronimo Yanez lasted only a minute, but quickly escalated from a “respectful and compliant” exchange to one steeped in confusion and fear.

In an extraordinary move by a Minnesota prosecutor, authorities said the officer, not the civilian, is to blame for the tragic events that turned a traffic stop in a Twin Cities suburb into a flash point in the national debate over racial profiling and police use of force.

Yanez pulled Castile, a 32-year-old, over at 9:05 p.m. July 9 on Larpenteur Avenue near Fry Street in Falcon Heights. By 9:06 p.m., the young officer had fired seven shots into Castile’s car, killing him as his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter watched.

For those actions, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said at a news conference Wednesday morning, Yanez will be charged with three felony counts — second-degree manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm. He’s the first Minnesota officer charged in an on-duty killing in modern memory.

“To those of you who may say this incident was Philando Castile’s fault, I would submit that no reasonable officer — knowing, seeing and hearing what officer Yanez did at the time — would have used deadly force under these circumstances,” Choi said. “I have given officer Yanez every benefit of the doubt on his use of deadly force, but I cannot allow the death of a motorist who was lawfully carrying a firearm under these facts and circumstances to go unaccounted for.”

For the Non-Crime of Emailing While in Possession of a Vagina

Amazing how they don't know or care what their hate reveals.

Digby:

Meanwhile, the FBI is leaking like the Titanic. Right wing authoritarian thugs want to put Hillary Clinton in jail not only for a crime she didn't commit but for something that isn't even a crime. They just hate her --- for reasons that have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with something dark and ugly inside themselves and their institution.  And this country.

Verdicts A Whiter Shade of Pale

Charlie Pierce:

There is a cruel, stupid irony about living in a country when, on the same day, a bunch of gun-toting rubes who have less understanding of the Constitution than a wombat does of nuclear fusion get acquitted after an armed takeover of federal property in Oregon while, half a country away, peaceful protesters doing nothing but praying on land to which they have a right guaranteed by treaty get rousted, roughed up, and hauled away by a militarized police force acting largely at the behest of a private company. For those of you who are sorry you missed the last Gilded Age, hang in there. You're going to get your wish fairly soon.

The white privilege embedded in the two competing narratives is almost too garish to contemplate, and it is beyond argument.

Kentucky Man Arrested for Brandishing Gun - in Florida?

Wait a minute.  Florida is the most infamous stand-your-ground state in the nation.  In Florida, you can shoot a teenager down in cold blood just for kicks and then walk.

If the kid is black.

And you are white.

Wonder what the racial breakdown was this time.

A Kentucky man made an impression in a popular Florida beach vacation spot and landed in jail.

Kendall Bryce McFarland, 19, of Russell Springs, was driving over the Marler Bridge in Destin, Fla., on Sunday morning when he allegedly started tailgating a silver Chevrolet, according to the Northwest Florida Daily News and WJHG. After he pulled up beside the couple’s car, he exchanged hand gestures before displaying a 9 mm handgun and pulling back its slide.

Sheriff’s deputies later found McFarland, and his apparently loaded gun was under the front seat, the paper reported. McFarland admitted displaying the gun but said he didn’t point it at the couple. Two of his passengers corroborated the couple’s account.

McFarland told deputies that the couple made him mad for driving too slowly, according to the Daily News and WJHG. His charges included aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and carrying a concealed weapon.

 

Post by Northwest Florida Daily News.

 UPDATE:  There is a facebook page for a Kendall Bryce McFarland who appears to be white.  No word on the race of his victims.