Thursday, March 31, 2016
Ham-Handed Arrest at Pediatric Clinic Highlights Official War on the Powerless
h/t Wirecuter
Forget that "war on cops." Unaffordable penalties, incompetent courts, and heavy-handed tactics are all evidence of an official assault on regular Americans.
The cops raided my wife's pediatric practice looking for a fugitive, last week.
My wife, Dr. Wendy Tuccille, was on her way to the office in Cottonwood, Arizona, when her phone rang. Frantic staff called to tell her that the clinic's parking lot was full of cops, there to arrest one of her employees, C.H. (it's a small town so we'll stick with her initials), on an outstanding warrant.
When my wife arrived she found a gaggle of cops—12 to 15 she told me, some in battle jammies—in plain view at the rear corner of the building. The parking lot was full of police vehicles, in sight of families and children arriving to be seen and treated.
"Who's in charge here?" she asked, demanding that they move the Fallujah reenactment out of view.
"We were already in the process of moving the vehicles at this time," Cottonwood Detective Sergeant Tod Moore insisted in a statement to me. "It should be noted only 1 marked police unit was in the main parking lot area of the business." (The clinic's staff dispute that point.) Moore also claimed that only 10 officers were present. They included three detectives dressed in civilian clothes—and tactical vests—who arrived to initiate the arrest, joined by seven additional officers, including SWAT members, who transported another suspect with them on the trip to deliver the arrest warrant that the detectives hadn't brought along.
C.H.'s crime? It was an eight-year-old "amended charge of 28-1381A1 DUI to the Slightest Degree," according to Court Clerk and Associate Magistrate Anna M. Kirton. Kirton signed C.H.'s release order after my wife paid $1,300 to spare her employee 26 days in jail. More accurately, C.H. was arrested for making only partial payment of the fines and fees she'd been assessed, and for missing a court appointment that she never knew about.
"I was young and stupid," C.H. told me about the day in 2008 when her 21-year-old self was pulled over for a broken license plate light. She and her friends had open beer bottles in the car, and a marijuana pipe that C.H. claims wasn't hers, but which ended up in her purse. The original arrest, then, was for open containers and "drug paraphernalia," which was pled down to an even lesser charge.
After a night in jail, C.H. went to court, only to discover that there was no record of her arrest or charge to face, so she was sent home.
Years later, she was pulled over again and arrested on the original charge after the court got its paperwork in order. As Kirton told me, "On January 19, 2011, the Defendant entered into a plea with the State. She plead guilty to an amended charge of 28-1381A1 DUI to the Slightest Degree, (13-3415A was dismissed per the plea). She was sentenced to the mandatory minimum sentence required by law in the State of Arizona. Part of this sentence included fines and fees totaling $2005.00."
Actually, that was all of the sentence—provided she made her payments.
That's where things get a bit fuzzy. C.H. tells me she thought she paid in full. The court says otherwise. C.H. got married at that time, so things may have fallen through the cracks in the confusion. Court records show an official notice to C.H. returned because of a bad address on September 24, 2012 and a failure to appear recorded against her the next day. A warrant for her arrest was issued a week later.
The "bad address" in the court files is C.H.'s mother's house. It was the first place the police looked for her last week, so they have it accurately recorded somewhere as the place to find her. That house stopped being her official mailing address sometime last year, but it remains a convenient place to contact her—it was her mom who told police about C.H.'s job.
For whatever reason, the court notice of a command appearance never reached C.H., she remained unaware that the county thought she still owed $1,300, and last week a small army showed up to collect.
For all of its drama, the arrest was nothing special, in itself—just part of a regular bureaucratic spring cleaning. In response to my (very pointed) query, Detective Sergeant Moore wrote, "a Verde Valley Wide Warrant Sweep was conducted by members of the Cottonwood Police Department to include SWAT Members, Yavapai County Sheriff's Office, PANT [Partners Against Narcotics Trafficking], GIITEM [Gang and Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission], Camp Verde Marshall's Office, Clarkdale Police Department, US Marshall's Office and HSI [Homeland Security Investigations]. The purpose of this sweep was to try and reduce the large number of outstanding warrants currently held by the numerous agencies listed."
But why the small army? (Neither the U.S.Marshals Service nor Homeland Security responded to queries by press time.)
"The teams were tasked to apprehend people who had a variety [of] offenses," Cottonwood Patrol Division Commander Jody Makuch said in an email. "While we cannot predict the behavior of the people who fail to meet their obligations, we do have to be prepared for a worst case scenario to protect the public and the officers."
They had a quota to meet, so they went with one-size-fits-all.
Read the rest here
Europe Courting Godfather Erdogan
Some key excerpts..
- Erdogan has boasted that he is proud of boldly blackmailing EU leaders into paying him protection money.
- Erdogan's threats were almost criminally sinister: "... the EU will be confronted with more than a dead boy on the shores of Turkey. There will be 10,000 or 15,000. How will you deal with that?"
- According to the agreement, 80 million Turkish citizens will have visa-free access to the European Union.
- The nightmare scenario for a desperate EU is that no matter how much it bows to extortionist demands from Turkey, the migrant crisis will continue to grow. Even if Turkey closes down all migrant routes from Turkey into Europe, refugees could take new routes through North Africa or the Caucasus.
- Meanwhile, 800,000 migrants are currently on Libyan territory
waiting to cross the Mediterranean, according to French Defense Minister
Jean-Yves le Drian.
"We can open the doors to Greece and Bulgaria anytime and we can put the refugees on buses ... So how will you deal with refugees if you don't get a deal? Kill the refugees?" This was the question Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in true mafia style, asked European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on November 16, 2015 in a closed meeting in Antalya, Turkey, where the three met after the G20 summit."
Read the rest @ The Gatestone Institute here
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Court ruling allows police to stop and question anyone within 100 miles of border
image credit: ACLU
The United States Border Patrol operates 71 traffic checkpoints, including 33 permanent traffic checkpoints, near the southern border of the United States. Also, there are a number of Border Patrol checkpoints in the northern border states (New York or Maine), within 100 miles from the Canadian border. Close to 200 million Americans live within the 100-mile interior checkpoint zone.
Things are about to get much worse, expect to see more checkpoints across the U.S. after the recent Rynearson v. The U.S. ruling.
Below are two excerpts taken from page 5 of the Appeals Court ruling...
"Border patrol agents at interior checkpoints may stop a vehicle, refer it to a secondary inspection area, request production of documents from the vehicle’s occupants, and question the occupants about their citizenship. The purpose of the stop is limited to ascertaining the occupants’ citizenship status."
“The permissible duration of an immigrant checkpoint stop is therefore the time reasonably necessary to determine the citizenship status of the persons stopped.”
Court allows police to stop and question anyone without suspicion of any wrongdoing.
"In contrast, the Supreme Court has granted agents at immigration checkpoints the right to stop and question a vehicle’s occupants regarding their citizenship without reasonable suspicion of any wrongdoing. That grant of authority is readily distinguishable from the authority granted by Terry."
The Supreme Court has concluded that “all that is required of the vehicle’s occupants is a response to a brief question or two and possibly the production of a document evidencing a right to be in the United States.”
New Hampshire Senate Bill 382 will let DHS/CBP arrest motorists.
For purposes of this section, “a certified federal law enforcement officer” means a federal law enforcement officer who:
"Is employed as a law enforcement officer of the federal government as a specialagent or border patrol agent of the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection."
Fyi, many northern states already allow DHS/CBP to arrest motorists...
"Other states that share a border with Canada already have legislation in place that is similar to SB382, Senator Jeff Woodburn said."
In 2010, Richard Rynearson started recording his interactions with the CBP because he was tired of being hassled at checkpoints. CBP/DHS asked Rynearson for his ID which he provided, but he declined to roll down his window all the way and declined to get out of his car He repeatedly asked if he was free to go and, if not, why he was being detained. Which further angered the CBP agents, see the video below.
Rynearson's Border Patrol Incident
This is only Part 1 of Rynearson's CBP incident.
Court says, refusing to answer a cops unlawful questions is "unorthodox."
"The facts indicate that Rynearson generally asserted his right against unlawful searches and seizures while the agents had difficulty determining how to respond to his unorthodox tactics."
This is truly disturbing, the Appeals Court claimed his tactics were unorthodox because he asserted his rights!
Court says, standing up for ones Constitutional rights is not clearly established!
"We have not discovered nor been shown any authority supporting Rynearson’s claim that the constitutional rights he chose to stand on were clearly established. Accordingly, we conclude that these governmental officials, at worst, made reasonable but mistaken judgments when presented with an unusually uncooperative person, unusual at least in the facts described in any of the caselaw."
In other words, the DOJ thinks that everyone should answer a cops unlawful questions.
A lone judge, Jennifer Walker dissented...
Moreover, while he provided the information needed to prove his citizenship, Rynearson explained several times that he would not indulge the officers’ commands when he thought that they exceeded the limited scope of the immigration checkpoint inquiry. Standing on one’s rights is not an “unorthodox tactic.” It is a venerable American tradition.
"Firm assertions of one’s rights are far from “unorthodox” in a Republic that insists constitutional rights are worth insisting upon and that tasks the courts with protecting those rights Walker said."
What can Americans expect when they're pulled over by police in the future?
"Border Patrol agents routinely ignore or misunderstand the limits of their legal authority in the course of individual stops, resulting in violations of the constitutional rights of innocent people."
"Since 2010, 46 people have been killed by border agents by use-of-force and coercion. Many more have been brutally beaten. No CBP agent has been held accountable since January 2010, even in some of the most egregious cases."
For more info. about DHS/Police abuse click, here, here & here.
This ruling gives cops free reign to conduct warrantless searches of anyone's vehicle and tells Americans they're expected to comply with police and ignore our Constitution!
Does anyone still think America is the land of the free?
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