As I sat at my computer the other day, preparing for Sunday’s radio show, a thought crossed my mind. It troubled me that the people of this country were so shallow. I found it disturbing that their thought process didn’t go past what Rush Limbaugh had said about Sandra Fluke or that Barack Obama took money from Bill Maher after his comments about Sara Palin. We seem to get all upset about trivial matters, but not about the fact that America is being turned into a police state.
After 9/11 the PATRIOT Act was passed and took away some of all of our Constitutional freedoms.
Illegal wire taps were just the first stage, there was more to come. Next it was being forced to take off your shoes and belt at the airport, place your other belonging on a conveyor belt to be x-rayed and go through a metal detector.
Since Barack Obama took office your loss of freedoms has escalated. Go to the airport now and be x-rayed, groped and in many ways treated like a terrorist. If you refuse you will not be able to travel and if you complain you could be arrested.
Next you have the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, which has turned the entire United States of America into a battleground. You could be arrested and detained for an indefinite period of time with no legal counsel. This means that your family will have no contact with you and they will not know where you are. Your rights have been taken.
Enter the Department of Homeland Security. Their perverse treatment of you and your family at airports has expanded to bus terminals, train stations, shopping malls, sporting events and to the highways. Their groping goes nationwide. Now they want to place TSA agents on buses to check your bags, grope you and question you while you go to work or shopping all in the name of safety and catching terrorists.
Have you thought about this? The terrorist will normally attack a public place with a suicide bomber exploding him or herself to get the maximum effect of fear. They are not going to board a plane or bus just to get you. They are not a group of high tech whiz kids.
Look at the bombings in the Middle East. They are random and not well planned out. They go for soft targets, where the chance of success is high and fear is the result. They are not trying to kill 3000+ people at once. If they get 5 or 10 killed and many more injured and induce fear they have done their job.
Barack Obama said that he wanted a civilian security force as well equipped and well funded as the military, and he has it in the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security.
The NDAA and many presidential executive orders have stripped you of your Constitutional rights. The Dept of Homeland Security is the enforcement arm just like the SS or the Gestapo. They are not there to catch terrorists but to control you. The job of catching terrorists and protecting America falls on the FBI.
The terrorist has never had it so good. The level of fear in this country has grown to a point where weak willed Americans just want to be safe no matter what the cost and that cost is your freedoms. Welcome to the American police state.
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American police state: officer may be fired for protecting young man from police brutality
By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
The United States’ descent into a hellish police state continues and appears to only get worse as the years go by. The case of Officer Regina Tasca of the Bogota Police Department in New Jersey is a troubling example of just how far gone some law enforcement agencies are today.
In this case, Officer Tasca is being declared “psychologically incompetent” for stepping in to save an emotionally disturbed young man from a brutal beating at the hands of police.
Here at End the Lie I have covered just a few of the troubling things police are able to get away with, such as murdering elderly tourists with pepper spray while they are restrained and brutally beating senior citizens suffering from dementia.
I have also pointed out how when the good police officers out there actually do their job and stand up for justice, they are targeted for harassment or in some cases even thrown in a psychiatric ward.
The things that police officers end up actually getting in trouble for tend to be outright absurd, like mowing the lawn in shorts, yet no one is held responsible for the most egregious violations like those listed above.
Officer Regina Tasca’s ordeal started back in April of last year when she turned on her dashboard camera before attempting to stop two officers from brutally beating a 22-year-old emotionally disturbed man.
It was just a matter of days after Tasca stepped in to defend the helpless man that she was informed she was being suspended without pay. One year later and she is still suspended and awaiting her internal trial. According to WPIX, the Bogota Police Department is looking to see her fired.
The incident occurred when a mother, Tara, called to have her emotionally disturbed son, Kyle, taken to the hospital.
While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Bogota police responded. Officer Tasca was the only officer on the road – the Bogota PD has a mere 20 officers in total – so she followed protocol and called for backup.
Two officers from the Ridgefield Park police showed up, and that’s when everything went horribly wrong.
Keep in mind, Tasca had just finished being trained to work with emotionally disturbed individuals as part of a state-mandated training program.
“The Ridgefield Park officer automatically charges and takes him [Kyle] down to the ground. I was quite shocked. As he’s doing that, another Ridgefield Park officer flies to the scene in his car, jumps out and starts punching him in the head,” Officer Tasca described.
When viewing the disturbing video (which can be seen here), we hear Kyle and his mother Tara screaming, “Stop punching me!” and “Why are you punching him?”
Astoundingly, the two Ridgefield Park Sergeants responsible have never refuted the claims that they repeatedly assaulted the 22-year-old man as he was waiting for medical assistance.
Even more insane is that Kyle was never arrested or charged for any offense whatsoever.
Officer Tasca says that is because Kyle never threatened the officers, did not possess a weapon and most importantly, was not violent and did not resist.
Tasca was eventually able to pull off one of the Ridgefield Park officers who was striking Kyle and his mother actually called Tasca personally to thank her.
“Thank you Regina. I appreciate you standing up for him, for protecting him while the officer attacked him. I can’t figure out what i would have done without you at the scene,” Tara said in the message.
Officer Regina Tasca says she is “the only female–the first female ever–and the first and only gay female also,” in the Bogota Police Department. When asked if she thinks this blatantly unfair has anything to do with her sexual orientation and gender, she said, “Yes,” unhesitatingly.
Tasca also said that she is being punished for actually doing her job is because she crossed the so-called “blue line” by refusing to support another officer who was guilty of using excessive force. It definitely doesn’t help that she is one of just 20 other officers.
Tasca is going to be assisted by Catherine Elston, an attorney and former police officer herself, during the week-long department trial.
“This was excessive force used against an emotionally disturbed person,” Elston said. “This was an unlawful tackle, this was a punching an emotionally disturbed person whose arms were pinned under his chest with his face pushed into the ground.”
After the incident, she met with her superior officer and, “The next thing I know he asks me to turn over my weapon and be sent for a fitness for duty exam,” she recalled.
Once Tasca recounted he events, the Bogota PD apparently believed that she was psychologically incompetent and thus unable to be a police officer.
She was sent for testing but the Ridgefield Park officers were never so much as questioned.
No investigators from the department’s internal affairs even interviewed the officers and they are currently still on the streets and continue to be paid.
This is all while there is photographic evidence from the hospital showing the bruises the 22-year-old sustained on his head, back, arms and wrists from the assault.
While letting the officers responsible for the beating off the hook completely, Bogota PD opted to suspend Tasca, an 11-year veteran with multiple commendations.
Tasca’s trial, which will be held before a retired judge who will be the only person making the final decision, began on April 17.
“If another officer is using excessive force, it’s my duty to make sure you stop it. And that’s what I did,” Tasca said.
“They’re not just terminating her. They’re destroying her reputation,” Elston said.
It is great to see that there are indeed still police officers out there who join the force for the right reasons and continue to actually do their job, which is to protect and serve the people, not ruthlessly beat them for no reason.
Hopefully Tasca will have her name cleared, have all back pay paid and both of the officers responsible will be stripped of their positions and ideally charged with assault.
The fact that the Bogota PD thought that this decision was in any way rational or legitimate is, in my opinion, deeply troubling and a disturbing sign of the times in which we live today.
Connecticut bill would allow citizens to sue police who arrest them for filming in public
By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
CT State Senator Eric Coleman
Thankfully, recently individuals have been striking back through lawsuits and in some cases charges have been dropped. Furthermore, an Illinois judge declared their state wiretapping law unconstitutional in a case which surrounded recording police in public.
That being said, police are still engaging in deplorable activities like confiscating cell phones and destroying evidence and flipping out for no reason when being filmed.
Connecticut’s state Senate is now taking a stand by recently approving a bill, Senate Bill 245, which would allow citizens to sue police officers if they arrest them for legally recording in public.
Carlos Miller points out that this legislation is apparently the first of its kind in the United States, something which I personally find to be quite troubling. Why aren’t more state legislatures making an effort to protect their citizens’ ability to hold police accountable?
After all, the fact that cameras were on the scene at the Occupy Davis protests to capture the pepper spray attack carried out by Lieutenant John Pike is the only reason why we know that the police’s claims that the spraying was justified are nothing short of laughable.
“What concerns me is but for the reality of the Kroll report finding something like 60 tapes of what happened, without that, folk would have a tendency to believe exactly what was said, that the officers were afraid for their lives,” said former California Supreme Court Associate Justice and professor emeritus at the UC Davis School of Law, Cruz Reynoso, in a report on the incident.
The right of the people to hold law enforcement accountable for their activities while on the job is absolutely vital and every incident like the one mentioned above just reinforces this reality.
Currently, police are able to harass and in some cases assault individuals for legally filming them while knowing that the worst that could possibly happen to them is that the taxpayer is forced to pay out as a result of lawsuits.
The Connecticut bill, introduced by Democratic Senator Eric Coleman, passed the Senate with a 24-11 vote.
The bill must now go before the House and then be signed by the governor before it would become effective on October 1, 2012.
Instead of placing the liability on the taxpayer, this bill, the full name of which is “An Act Concerning the Recording of Police Activity by the Public: To protect the right of an individual to photograph or video record peace officers in the performance of their duties” (read it here), would make the police officer liable for damages.
The relevant text reads:
This bill makes peace officers potentially liable for damages for interfering with a person taking a photograph, digital still, or video image of either the officer or a colleague performing his or her job duties. Under the bill, officers cannot be found liable if they reasonably believed that the interference was necessary to (1) lawfully enforce a criminal law or municipal ordinance; (2) protect public safety; (3) preserve the integrity of a crime scene or criminal investigation; (4) safeguard the privacy of a crime victim or other person; or (5) enforce Judicial Branch rules and policies that limit taking photographs, videotaping, or otherwise recording images in branch facilities.Officers found liable of this offense are entitled, under existing law, to indemnification (repayment) from their state or municipal employer if they were acting within their scope of authority and the conduct was not willful, wanton, or reckless.
This bill does, in fact, include exemptions and yet some opponents wanted to see even more exemptions included in the bill.
According to The Day, one of the opponents was Senator Kevin Witkos, who just happens to be a sergeant in the Canton Police Department.
Witkos sought out yet another liability exemption if an individual allegedly intended to “inconvenience or alarm” an officer performing their duties.
How exactly this would be determined is unclear at best, yet Witkos said that he was seeking to protect police against “ill-intentioned videographers who seek to interfere with police.”
Once again, it is anyone’s guess how Witkos thinks these intentions would be determined.
“I do believe that the public has a right, if they’re not in the way of a police officer doing their job, of filming all they want,” he said.
However, we have seen professional photojournalists be arrested and harassed for filming police when they were in no way interfering with their job.
That doesn’t stop them from claiming that the individual was interfering with police activities, so Witkos’ proposal is, in my opinion, naïve (or perhaps he is well aware of what police do since he has that first-hand experience and thus is acting to protect them).
Thankfully, the state lawmakers were not dumb enough to lap up Witkos’ attempts to eviscerate the power of the bill.
Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney pointed out that the Witkos amendment “would render the bill without meaning.”
Looney also rightly pointed out that it is already a crime to interfere with a police officer and this law would do absolutely nothing to change that.
Senator Eric Coleman, the co-chair of the judiciary committee, said, “To adopt this amendment would do nothing more than muddy the waters,” an assessment which I find wholly accurate.
Other proposed amendments included one which would have completely exempted police assigned to the Capitol building from the law and one which would have placed the burden of proof on the person bringing forth the lawsuit.
According to the Hartford Courant, the bill was prompted by a 2009 incident in which a Catholic priest was arrested for recording police harassing immigrants in a store.
The incident sparked a criminal investigation carried out by the FBI wand federal prosecutors, eventually leading to the arrest of four police officers on charges of obstructing justice and excessive force.
The priest involved in the incident, James Manship, attended a press conference during which Democratic Senators stated that if the law had been in effect at the time, Manship’s actions would have been protected.
Hopefully this will set a precedent and encourage similar legislation protecting our right to hold law enforcement accountable.
Furthermore, it only makes sense to shift the liability away from bankrupt municipalities (and thus the local taxpayers who likely are already \ stretched thin financially like so many of us) and onto the officers responsible.
Without being able to hold on-duty officers responsible for their actions, the only reasonable assumption is that abuses of power and deplorable incidents will continue.
After all, without the police’s dash cameras, we wouldn’t know about the incident wherein an officer brutally assaulted a 66-year-old man with dementia for no apparent reason or when two officers attacked a 22-year-old emotionally disturbed man who was not threatening, resisting or otherwise doing anything that would justify the actions.
However, police are able to turn these devices off, which means that it is absolutely vital that citizens’ right to film police in public be preserved and protected as much as possible.
I recommend you contact your state representatives and point out this legislation and how important it is to protect this right. Maybe they can use it as “model legislation” like that put for by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which works with corporations to craft bills given directly to legislators.
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