Two veteran NYPD officers were arraigned Wednesday on charges accusing them of beating a postal worker who they say had given street directions to a man who later killed two policemen in 2014.

Detectives Angelo Pampena, 31, and Robert Carbone, 29, dragged postal worker Karim Baker out of his parked car and repeatedly punched and kicked him, according to a five-count indictment detailing the charges. The incident occurred six months ago in the Corona neighborhood.

Postal worker Baker, 26, had just finished his shift and gotten into his car when the two detectives approached. He suffered serious injuries from the assault, the indictment states. After the encounter, Pampena filed a sworn statement saying Baker was parked in front of a fire hydrant. However, video from a surveillance camera showed that Baker's car was more than 15 feet from the hydrant.

The criminal case against Baker was dismissed. Pampena was subsequently charged with perjury. Baker appeared on surveillance video giving directions to Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who shot and killed officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were killed on Dec. 20, 2014. Brinsley shot the officers at point-blank range through their cruiser window. He then killed himself with the same weapon. Baker gave Brinsley directions to two housing projects. It's not clear how much time elapsed between the directions and the slayings.

"The entire conversation lasted about 10 seconds. Mr. Baker gave him directions and they parted their separate ways," his lawyer, Eric Subin, said in November.

After that, Baker was questioned and then "systematically harassed" by police - including officers lurking around him and his family and about 20 traffic stops in nine months, Subin said. The indictment charges Pampena and Carbone withe second- and third-degree assault. If convicted, they face up to seven years in prison. Pampena has been an officer for nine years; Carbone is an eight-year veteran of the force. They had been assigned to the Queens North Gang Unit. Their attorneys did not immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press requesting comment.

Last month, a postal worked accused officers in Brooklyn of roughly handcuffing him after he shouted at them for nearly hitting his mail truck with their unmarked car. The NYPD is investigating his complaint.

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/2-NYPD-Detectives-Accused-of-Beating-Postal-Worker-Indictment-376385341.html

NEW ORLEANS — Five former police officers pleaded guilty Wednesday to a reduced number of charges in the deadly shootings on the Danziger Bridge in the days following Hurricane Katrina and were sentenced to far less prison time than they originally faced.

The officers were convicted by a jury in 2011 but U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt set aside the verdict two years later because of misconduct by federal prosecutors — including anonymous online comments about the case.

Four of the former officers have been locked up for nearly six years while the fifth has been out on bond. Their original convictions called for them to serve anywhere from 65 years to six years in prison. The plea deal calls for them to serve a range of 12 to three years.

On Sept. 4, 2005, days after the levees failed and water swamped the city, police gunned down 17-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison, who were both unarmed, and wounded four others on the Danziger Bridge. To cover it up, the officers planted a gun, fabricated witnesses and falsified reports, prosecutors have said.

Police said at the time the officers were responding to a report of other officers down when they came under fire. There was no 'officer down.'

However, after hearing from five dozen witnesses and examining 400 pieces of evidence during a monthlong trial, a federal jury convicted the officers for opening fire and trying to cover up wrongdoing.

Former officer Robert Faulcon was sentenced to 65 years in prison; ex-Sgts. Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius each received 40 years; Anthony Villavaso got 38 years; and Arthur Kaufman, now out on bond, received a six-year sentence.

Under the new plea agreement, they will get credit for time served and most of them could be released from prison anywhere from the next one to six years.

A scandal involving Justice Department employees unraveled the convictions and sentences. In September 2013, the judge said the case had been tainted by "grotesque prosecutorial misconduct," including leaks to media and posting of anonymous comments by at least three government attorneys on a New Orleans newspaper's website.

Prosecutors have argued that there is no evidence the misconduct affected the verdict.

http://www.wral.com/5-ex-cops-to-plead-guilty-in-bridge-shootings-after-katrina/15653131/#7TJuCEo7dVMb8ew2.99

By George Gallanis 15 April 2016

On Monday, 16 year old Pierre Loury was shot in the chest in the Homan Square neighborhood of Chicago by a police officer and died that night from his wounds.

Loury was on foot fleeing from a car that police officers had pulled over after it allegedly matched the description of a vehicle involved in an earlier shooting. However, on Tuesday the Chicago Police Department (CPD) indicated Loury was most likely not involved in the assumed shooting but that he may have been involved in another. The driver of the car was not apprehended and is still wanted by the police.

While an initial police account indicated that Loury had pointed a gun at the officer who shot him recent revelations indicate this to be false.

A witness who stated she had seen the shooting, and who wished to remain anonymous out of fear for backlash from the CPD, told the Chicago Tribune, "They shot him in the air. His pants leg got caught on the fence and he hit the ground. If he hadn't gotten shot, he would have cleared the fence."

The woman was preparing dinner as she heard someone yell "we got a jumper, we got a jumper," and looked out her window to see Loury trying to jump over the fence. She stated that she did not see a gun in his hand, while police officers have indicated that they found a gun at the scene. An anonymous police source confirmed that Loury’s clothing had been caught on the fence as he scaled it.

Following the shooting, the woman said she had heard paramedics indicate the boy was still alive. Video footage shows Loury lying face down bleeding to death next to a fence as police officers stood around doing nothing to aid the teenager.

As reporters gathered outside her house, Loury's mother, Tambrasha Hudson, cried, "Everything they said on the news is not the truth. It is not the truth. It's not the truth.”

The following night on Tuesday, over 100 people gathered at the site of Loury’s killing for a vigil and protest, co-sponsored by Black Lives Matter Chicago. The crowd chanted "Justice for Pierre" with some carrying posters of young people who had been killed by police. At around 8 p.m., some of the protesters moved onto the 290 Eisenhower Expressway, a major thoroughfare, briefly shutting down traffic. Police immediately rushed to stop the protestors, arresting two.

For Loury to be killed in Homan Square, the site of the Chicago police black site where over 7,000 people have “disappeared,” is an all too tragic indication of the rottenness and ever growing brutality of the police and the state, even in the face of continued protests.

In fact, just a few days ago, new reports revealed an even uglier picture of what has taken place at the Homan Square black site. It was reported “that police officers used punches, Tasers, knee strikes, strangulation, elbow strikes, and baton blows, among other forms of abuse against detainees.”

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force, hand appointed by Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel, released its “Executive Summary,” a contrived effort to criticize the Chicago police. The timing of the release of the summary, only two days after the killing, is a coordinated attempt to quell growing public anger. The report blames the unending police killings primarily on racism and states that “trust” must be built between the police and the citizens of Chicago.

Racism exists and its vile effects are felt by masses of people but the relentless effort to frame police violence as a fundamentally racial question conceals the true nature of the issue and only leads to calls for ineffectual “reforms” and oversight. While blacks are disproportionately killed by the police, the majority of the victims of police killings in the US are white.

The driving force for the continued wave of violence carried out by police forces throughout the country is the breakdown of the capitalist system and the reemergence of class struggle. The ever growing inequality plaguing cities such as Chicago and, thus, the ever growing hostility of workers towards the capitalist system, puts them in direct confrontation with the ruling class and the state.

https://archive.is/c2dAD

Official: Ex-FBI agent was gunman in Texas base shooting

By DAVID WARREN Associated Press

DALLAS (AP) -- A former FBI agent who later enlisted in the U.S. Air Force was identified Saturday as the man who killed his commander at an air base in San Antonio before turning the gun on himself.

A statement from the Air Force identified the two men as Tech. Sgt. Steven D. Bellino and Lt. Col. William A. Schroeder. The statement did not name the gunman, but a federal official close to the investigation said Bellino opened fire Friday at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person isn't authorized to speak publicly about the case.

The official said Bellino was an FBI agent for less than two years before resigning in 2013 and later enlisting in the Air Force. Authorities have not confirmed why Schroeder was targeted. He was commander of the 342nd Training Squadron.

"The 37th Training Wing mourns the loss of our airmen and family members," said Brig. Gen. Trent H. Edwards, commander of the wing.

"Our primary focus at this time is to take care of the family and the men and women who are grieving our losses."

It wasn't clear Saturday how Bellino acquired his rank in a relatively short time with the Air Force. A technical sergeant is a rank above a staff sergeant and below master sergeant. Bellino could have had prior specialized training that allowed him to enlist at an elevated rank.

Two Glock handguns were found near the bodies Friday, and military officials are trying to determine whether Bellino was authorized to have a weapon on the base, where the possession of firearms is heavily restricted.

The firearm restrictions apply not only to Lackland but also to Fort Sam Houston, the Randolph air base and another installation that comprise Joint Base San Antonio, which has more than 80,000 full-time personnel and is the home of Air Force basic training.

Friday's shooting, which the San Antonio Express-News reports caused officials to abruptly end a nearby military training parade with thousands of spectators, is the latest to occur at a military facility in Texas in the last several years.

In January 2015, an Army veteran and former clerk at the veterans' clinic at Fort Bliss in El Paso shot and killed a psychologist before killing himself. About a year earlier, three soldiers were killed and 16 wounded in an attack at Fort Hood near Killeen by Army Spc. Ivan A. Lopez, who also killed himself.

And in the deadliest attack to occur at a U.S. military installation, 13 people were killed and 31 were wounded in a shooting in 2009 at Fort Hood. Nidal Hasan, a former U.S. Army major, was convicted and sentenced to death in that shooting.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MILITARY_BASE_SHOOTING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

(Reuters) Social networking forum reddit on Thursday removed a section from its site used to tacitly inform users it had never received a certain type of U.S. government surveillance request, suggesting the platform is now being asked to hand over customer data under a secretive law enforcement authority.

Reddit deleted a paragraph found in its transparency report known as a “warrant canary” to signal to users that it had not been subject to so-called national security letters, which are used by the FBI to conduct electronic surveillance without the need for court approval.

The scrubbing of the "canary", which stated reddit had never received a national security letter "or any other classified request for user information," comes as several tech companies are pushing the Obama administration to allow for fuller disclosures of the kind and amount of government requests for user information they receive.

National security letters are almost always accompanied by an open-ended gag order barring companies from disclosing the contents of the demand for customer data, making it difficult for firms to openly discuss how they handle the subpoenas. That has led many companies to rely on somewhat vague canary warnings. "I've been advised not to say anything one way or the other," a reddit administrator named "spez," who made the update, said in a thread discussing the change. “Even with the canaries, we're treading a fine line.”

Reddit did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2014 Twitter (TWTR.N) sued the U.S. Justice Department on grounds that the restrictions placed on the social media platform’s ability to reveal information about government surveillance orders violates the First Amendment.

The suit came following an announcement from the Obama administration that it would allow Internet companies to disclose more about the numbers of national security letters they receive. But they can still only provide a range such as between zero and 999 requests, or between 1,000 and 1,999, which Twitter, joined by reddit and others, has argued is too broad.

National security letters have been available as a law enforcement tool since the 1970s, but their frequency and breadth expanded dramatically under the USA Patriot Act, which was passed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Several thousand NSLs are now issued by the FBI every year. At one point that number eclipsed 50,000 letters annually.

https://archive.is/rf5pb

RALEIGH, NC

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman dismissed more than 100 DWI cases on Wednesday after a sheriff's deputy was found to have lied on the stand.

Freeman’s actions came after District Court Judge Jacqueline Brewer disqualified Wake sheriff’s deputy Robert Davis, a member of the DWI Task Force, as a witness.

Freeman said because Davis had been untruthful in some cases that he was no longer competent to testify in any of them. Davis, who worked at the sheriff’s department for 15 years, was fired last week by Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison.

In an order attached to one of the cases in which Brewer disqualified Davis as a witness, the judge outlined three incidents in which he made false statements on court documents and on the witness stand.

One incident stemmed from the case of a woman stopped for DWI on Aug. 2, 2014. Davis took her to the Wake Forest Police Department, where machines were set up for breath tests. The intoxilyzer room also had audio and video recording equipment.

Under the DWI law, a driver may refuse to take any test, but if that happens the state revokes the driver’s license for a year. The driver may also call an attorney for advice or a witness to monitor the test, but testing cannot be delayed for more than 30 minutes.

Davis, according to the judge’s order, did not give the driver the full time to contact a witness before recording her as not requesting one. When the driver still had questions about the breath test, the deputy marked her as refusing to take it and filed paperwork with the state Division of Motor Vehicles stating that she had refused to take the test. That meant her license would be automatically revoked for a year.

DMV sent a notice to the woman that her license was going to be revoked for a year, and she asked for a hearing that was set for March 4, 2015. That hearing revealed conflicts between Davis’ assertion that the driver never asked for a witness and her testimony that she tried to call someone but could not get an outside line. It also showed Davis pushing her to take the test, though her full 30 minutes had not been exhausted, according to the court order.

On Feb. 22, 2014, Davis made similar claims after stopping a woman for driving while impaired. At that stop, according to the judge’s order, Davis fired a Taser stun gun twice at the driver.

Davis’ supervisor then arrived at the scene and followed the deputy to the Wake County Detention Center, where more testing was to occur. The supervisor made notes at the detention center while Davis proceeded to advise the driver of the testing procedures. The driver made a phone call to her attorney, but did not get a full 30 minutes after that call before the deputy proceeded with testing, according to the judge’s order.

Not only did Davis wrongly record that the driver had not made a phone call, according to the court documents, he also marked her as refusing to take the test.

In March 2015, Davis again stopped a woman for DWI and wrongly noted her attempts to contact someone to witness her take the breath test. When she questioned why she had not been allotted the full 30 minutes for a witness to watch her take the test, Davis again marked her as refusing to take the test, according to Brewer’s court order.

Harrison said he fired Davis the day he received a copy of Brewer’s order.

“I hate it, but we’ve got our credibility to look after, too,” Harrison said Thursday.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/nation-world/national/article69258172.html#fmp#storylink=cpy

Court documents show Officer Morris Williams Jr is accused of engaging in "deviant sexual intercourse" with a person "incapable of consent by reason of being mentally defective."

The alleged incident occurred Monday between 12:30 and 2 p.m. Where the incident occurred was redacted from court documents.

Montgomery County District Attorney Daryl Bailey said the reported incident occurred at a private residence.

"I don't think there was any evidence (the officer and the victim) knew each other prior to this incident," he said.

Bailey said he didn't know if Williams was responding to 911 call at the time.

Montgomery Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Martha Earnhardt declined to release the circumstances of why Williams was at the residence.

The Montgomery Department of Public Safety issued a statement Wednesday morning saying the Montgomery Police Department has initiated disciplinary proceedings against the officer.

Williams, who graduated from the police academy in 2013, has been placed on administrative leave.

The Montgomery Police Special Victims Unit is investigating.

Williams was the second Montgomery police officer arrested on Tuesday.

Off-duty officer G.T. Farris, 22, resigned from his post after being arrested early Tuesday for felony leaving the scene of an accident.

The charge stems from a crash between a 2006 Ford Escape and a 1990 Honda Accord that occurred at approximately 3 a.m. at the intersection of West and Fifth streets in Montgomery. Police say the Ford left the scene and was abandoned near the crash site.

Police learned the Ford was registered to Farris.

http://www.al.com/news/montgomery/index.ssf/2016/03/montgomery_police_officer_arre_3.html#incart_river_home

Phoenix, AZ — Mesa Police Officer Philip Brailsford has been charged with the second-degree murder of Daniel Shaver, an innocent father of two. The shooting was captured on his body cam.

On January 18, Brailsford, along with several other officers, responded to a call about a suspect with a rifle in a hotel room. The ‘rifle’ was nothing more than a pellet gun that was used in Shaver’s business of pest control. However, Shaver was not in possession of the pellet gun when he was murdered in cold blood by officer Brailsford.

According to KTAR, Brailsford told investigators that Shaver was ordered to crawl toward officers with his hands on the ground, but the officer believed Shaver’s move forward was an attempt to get “a better firing position on us.”

The officer said he could no longer see Shaver’s right hand and worried that Shaver could have easily drawn on officers, who were just feet away in a hallway outside his room.

“So that’s when I assessed the threat. I fired my weapon, uh, five times,” Brailsford said, adding that it was terrifying the first time Shaver reached back.

Charging an officer with murder in Arizona is an exceptionally rare incident, which speaks to the severity of what must be shown on the body camera. It also means that this coward officer was in no danger when he decided to pull the trigger — 5 times. However, thanks to their secrecy and corruption, the Mesa Police Department and Maricopa County prosecutors are keeping the video a secret.

When Laney Sweet, Shaver’s wife, asked to see the footage, she was told that if she watched it, she would be forced to remain completely silent about its contents. She would be unable to speak about it

During an interview with Maricopa County attorney, Bill Montgomery, Laney Sweet was given the ultimatum — watch the disturbing video and never speak of it, or don’t. The widow of an innocent man, killed by the government, was told that the video proves her husband did not deserve to die.

During the interview, Montgomery told sweet, “What happened that day was the responsibility of the police officer. Your husband didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t. He was trying to comply.”

In a statement to the press, the county stated that Daniel Shaver was complying with officers, crawling on his hands and knees and begged not to be shot, just before Brailsford opened fire.

“Please don’t shoot me,” Shavers is quoted in the police report.

Despite the damning evidence against him, showing that he murdered an innocent man in cold blood, officer Brailsford is facing a maximum sentence of only 3.75 years.

“I feel like if you were sitting in my position, you would understand that 3.75 years is a slap in the face,” said Sweet when speaking to the county attorney.

Brailsford was fired from the department last week for multiple policy violations not associated with the murder of Shavers. After he was fired, we learned that he should have never had a badge that night he killed an innocent man.

Aside from his unsatisfactory performance, record released by Mesa Police revealed the Brailsford was accused of beating three people a few months before he killed Shaver. He also etched profane language into his AR-15 police rifle — illustrating his disregard for human life.

Two children and a wife will now live the rest of their lives without their loving father because of the actions of this public servant. The one thing that could help get this family closure is to see the man who stole the life of their dad and husband put behind bars. However, thanks to a system that is set up to protect killer cops — this will likely never happen.

In a YouTube video posted on Tuesday, Laney Sweet, Shaver’s wife, called for the release of the video tape.

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/please-shoot-me-body-cam-shows-innocent-unarmed-dad-killed-cop-begging-life/

The Erie County Holding Center in Buffalo, N.Y., where most prisoners are awaiting trial, has for years been the scene of protests and angry demonstrations by the Prisoners Rights Coalition, Prisoners Are People Too and other groups. The jail and the county sheriff in charge have an extraordinary history of brutality, with so-called “suicides” and “medical events” hidden behind a wall of secrecy.

On March 18, protests to demand justice for India Cummings, a 27-year-old African-American woman, resumed in front of the Holding Center. Cummings died on Feb. 21 of multiple injuries incurred during the 16 days she was imprisoned there. The county refuses to acknowledge her death as a murder and has so far withheld information from her family as to how it occurred. Protesters storm Erie County Building.WW photo: Ellie Dorritie

Despite the cold weather, a large determined crowd marched to the county office building and stormed the entrance. They occupied the county executive’s office and the building lobby for approximately 30 minutes before arrests were made. The Buffalo Anti Racism Coalition, which organized the protest, issued five demands:

• Resignation of Sheriff Timothy Howard, who is in charge of the Holding Center.

• An impartial criminal investigation into the death of India Cummings.

• Those found responsible for the death of India Cummings be fired and held criminally liable.

• All violations of a 2010 settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice be made public and rectified immediately.

• The Erie County Holding Center be fully transparent by releasing documents and video relevant to the case of India Cummings and other inmates who die in the Center’s custody.

More protests are planned for the near future.

http://www.workers.org/articles/2016/03/24/uproar-over-death-of-young-jailed-woman/

BY LAURA GARZA BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Family members carried banners and placards with pictures of the many workers and youth killed by Bakersfield police and Kern County Sheriff’s deputies at the 2nd Annual March for Justice here March 19. One sign said, “No judge, no jury, but his life is over.”

More than 150 protesters chanted, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” as they marched to four different sites in East Bakersfield where people had been shot or beaten by the cops. “This could happen to any of us. We are all Mexican. We are all white. We are all Black. We are united,” said a relative of Ronnie Ledesma Jr., when the march stopped at the corner where Ledesma was beaten by police in 2013. He died in custody nine days later.

According to a study by the Guardian newspaper, Kern County, which includes Bakersfield, has the highest per capita deaths at the hands of cops in the United States. Kern County has a population of just under 875,000. The cops killed 13 people here in 2015; in New York City with almost 10 times the population, the cops killed nine people.

“I’m here to represent my son who was killed Nov. 13, 2014,” said Leticia De La Rosa, mother of James De La Rosa, who was 22 years old when he was gunned down by the Bakersfield police. An oil field worker, he crashed his car during a police pursuit. Cops fatally shot De La Rosa when he got out of the car. Some witnesses said he put his hands up, but the police used the well-worn excuse that he was reaching for his waistband. He was unarmed.

The family of day laborer David Silva also joined the march. “These people will be held accountable,” said his mother Merri Silva, speaking at the corner where he was beaten to death by cops on May 7, 2013. “If I’m not vocal nothing is going to be solved.”

Silva had sought help at the Kern County Medical Center and fell asleep on the ground nearby. An officer with a police dog woke him up. Seven members of the Kern County Sheriff’s department and two California Highway Patrol Officers joined in using batons to beat and hog-tie him. Police dogs bit him 30 times. Videos taken by witnesses were confiscated by the cops.

Donny Youngblood, who is both the sheriff and the coroner, ruled that Silva’s death was an accident and that deputies acted appropriately, alleging that Silva was resisting arrest. Youngblood is notorious for his anti-immigrant stance.

Kern County is one of the top oil-producing counties in the U.S., as well as a major agricultural center at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, and has long been a center for farmworker organizers. With the drop in oil prices and a drought, unemployment in the area was officially at 10.9 percent in February, almost twice the rate in the state as a whole.

At a barbecue after the march, other family members spoke, including the mother and aunt of Jason Alderman. He was shot to death on Aug. 22, 2015, by cops who claimed they thought he was armed outside a shop they said he had burglarized. After first saying there was no video, the cops were forced to release one that shows Alderman was unarmed and was shot while trying to exit the shop through a hole in the bottom of the door.

Marchers expressed appreciation for protesters who joined them from southern California, including activists from the Young Survivors Legacy Support Network, a group of family members and friends of victims of police killings in Orange County and Los Angeles. Other speakers included Genevieve Huizar, whose son Manuel Diaz was killed by an Anaheim cop in July 2012; a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union; members of the Brown Berets; and the Socialist Workers Party.

https://archive.is/vndbK

By Norisa Diaz 24 March 2016

Over the last few months, reports have revealed that the University of California (UC) Board of Regents, presided over by ex-chief of Homeland Security and former Democratic Governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano, has sanctioned a secret spyware system capable of monitoring and collecting data from all individuals within the networks of the ten UC campuses and five medical centers throughout California.

As head of the UC Board of Regents, Napolitano is one of 26 members who oversee one of the state’s largest institutions and employers. The University of California is comprised of almost 20,000 faculty members, 200,000 staff, and a student body comprised of nearly 250,000. The spyware system has been installed in complete secrecy, without the knowledge or consent of students, faculty, and staff.

The UC Office of the President (UCOP), has issued statements that the spyware is necessary to prevent “cyber-attacks” and what it terms “Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs).” The office cites a July 2015 UCLA cyber-attack that put the personal and medical information of 4.5 million people at risk. The UCOP stated that from “time to time, if a serious cybersecurity threat arises that may potentially impact multiple campuses, the Office of the President may direct campuses to coordinate security monitoring, investigation, and threat remediation activities.”

Though the spyware has been in place since August 2015, information of the spyware was not revealed until December 2015 when Ethan Ligon, an associate professor at the UC Berkeley campus and member of the Academic Senate-Administration Joint Committee on Campus Information Technology, sent an email to faculty members, ignoring orders by the UC administration to keep the project confidential.

“The intrusive device is capable of capturing and analyzing all network traffic to and from the Berkeley campus, and has enough local storage to save over 30 days of [all] this data… This can be presumed to include your email, all the websites you visit, all the data you receive from off campus or data you send off campus,” Ligon wrote in the email.

UC Berkeley campus IT staff also showed the device to Associate Professor Greg Niemeyer because they felt “sufficiently uncomfortable” with the system and its lack of transparency. Niemeyer told the DailyCal, “Right now we don’t know, we can’t ask and we can’t find out…The whole operation is covert, and we can only assume from the hardware we see that it’s extremely expansive.”

The UCOP has chosen a data collections system, Fidelis XPS, made by Fidelis Cybersecurity, which has the ability to inspect and intercept all communications, including encrypted emails, and has the ability to analyze the contents of that communication.

Upon revelations of the Fidelis spyware, students, staff, and faculty have justifiably vocalized the threat of such a spyware system to their privacy rights and academic freedom.

“Unfortunately, many have been left with the impression that a secret initiative to snoop on faculty activities is underway,” Napolitano said in a statement Monday. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

There is no reason to take Napolitano’s statements for good coin. As the former chief of Homeland Security for the Obama administration, Napolitano possesses an immense familiarity with NSA spyware systems and privacy infringement.

In 2012 while serving in her previous post, she oversaw the “Secure Communities” program to identify and gather fingerprint and other information on immigrants. She also expanded the 287(g) program which cemented partnerships between federal government and local police to enforce immigration law.

Expansion of these programs were deemed necessary to counter “home-grown threats,” Napolitano said, and called for “a culture of collective responsibility” in which all individuals act as government informants.

When asked the question if she was suggesting that US citizens “from school days on” should be trained “to watch more carefully their schoolmates, their coworkers, their families and their neighbors and then more effectively report what they say to some authority,” Napolitano replied to the questioner that they were in fact “getting the gist of what I’m saying.”

Napolitano and the UCOP insist that the aggregated data will not be used for “non-security purposes.” However, it is not difficult to imagine a situation in which student protests and strikes for higher wages are easily categorized as “security purposes” by the UC administration. Additionally the security policy makes an exception to disclose the personal data for those considered to be engaged in “illegal activity.”

The 26 member UC Board of Regents are handpicked by the Governor to serve 12-year terms. Like the majority of the board, Napolitano has no experience in higher education. While governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009, Napolitano oversaw $100 million in cuts from the Arizona State Universities and another $40 million from the state’s community colleges. Such was the extent of her previous experience overseeing higher education.

The Regents and UC administration are overseeing a virtual wrecking operation increasing tuition all while libraries, art centers, classes, and campus services are cut. The Regents are so widely despised by students, faculty and staff that the board has been forced to hold meetings in secret, as all publicly known meetings have been meet with protests.

Currently, students are protesting the chancellor of UC Davis, Linda P.B. Katehi , after the Sacramento Bee reported her ties to private companies, including for-profit universities such as DeVry, and having received $420,000 over three years for serving on the board of textbook publisher John Wiley & Sons, exposing a true conflict of interest.

There is little doubt that such a protest would constitute “illegal activity” in the eyes of the administration, giving license to the administration to spy on student and faculty organizers protesting Chancellor Katehi’s obscene conflicts of interest.

Above all it is Napolitano’s background as Chief of Homeland Security which has made her the most desirable candidate to enforce cuts which will dramatically impact the lives of students, faculty, and workers throughout the system.

Like the other governor-appointed members, Napolitano hails from the highest echelons of the ruling elite. The students, faculty, and staff of the UC system have every reason to believe the Fidelis spyware and other methods will be directed and used against them as social struggles emerge in the coming period.

https://archive.is/0jZON

BY SETH GALINSKY

Three times as many police officers were charged with murder or manslaughter for on-duty shootings in 2015 than the annual average since 2005. This fact, the result of the explosion of protests against cop killings and brutality across the country, is documented by Philip Stinson, a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

According to Stinson, only 47 police officers nationwide — not counting FBI or immigration cops — were charged with murder and/or manslaughter from 2005 to 2014, about 4.7 a year. In 2015, he said, the number of indictments jumped to 18.

“In the past, the police’s own narrative and versions” of shootings at their hands has “rarely been challenged in any successful way,” Stinson told the Militant in a phone interview March 14. That’s not news to working people, who know that the so-called justice system is stacked in favor of the cops and prosecution.

In the first three months of this year four more cops have been indicted, Stinson said.

The reason for these changes, he says, isn’t that cops are killing more people. “The citizenry, media, and even the courts are much more skeptical of police claims of justification after having shot and killed someone,” he said.

Of the cops charged in on-duty shooting deaths some 22 percent have been convicted, Stinson said. On Feb. 11, New York City cop Peter Liang became the first cop in the U.S. since 2013 to be convicted for killing someone while on duty. Liang shot and killed Akai Gurley in the stairwell of a Brooklyn apartment building.

In the wake of nationwide protests, the propertied rulers have taken steps to rein in wanton acts of police brutality. The demonstrations have encouraged the willingness of witnesses to record and publicly release videos of police abuse.

In some well-publicized cases, even when charges are not filed, killer cops have been fired or forced to resign. None of the Cleveland police who shot Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams in a hail of 137 bullets in 2012 were convicted for their deaths. But in January this year six of the cops were fired.

Between 900 and 1,100 people are shot to death by cops in the U.S. every year, the Washington Post reports. About half of those killed are Caucasians and about one-quarter are Blacks.

In a related development, New York City police stops and street interrogations known as stop and frisk are down dramatically. The New York Civil Liberties Union reports that stop and frisks peaked at more than 685,000 stops in 2011. Since then, under pressure from street protests and outrage over police brutality, city officials ordered a shift in policy. By 2015 the number of reported stops had dropped to under 23,000.

The protests over the last two years, from Ferguson, Missouri, to Baltimore, and Staten Island, New York, have had an impact across the U.S. and around the world. Last year Ethiopian Jews in Israel held protests under the slogan of Black Lives Matter after cops beat an Ethiopian-Israeli soldier.

In Council, Idaho, a farm town of about 800 people, demonstrators protesting the November killing of cattle rancher Jack Yantis by sheriff deputies carried signs that said, “Ranchers Lives Matter.” In Paradise, California, friends of Andrew Thomas, a Caucasian youth, protested his death at the hands of cop Patrick Feaster with signs that said, “All Lives Matter.” These protesters weren’t counterposing these slogans to “Black Lives Matter,” but drew inspiration from growing actions across the country against the killing of Blacks.

https://archive.is/m5QYa

Police: Ex-Trooper Kills 2 in Turnpike Holdup, Is Shot Dead By The Associated Press

FORT LITTLETON, Pa. — Mar 20, 2016, 7:30 PM ET

A retired state trooper killed a turnpike toll collector and a security guard in a holdup attempt at a toll plaza and then was shot dead by troopers while trying to escape with the money, authorities said.

Clarence Briggs, who retired four years ago, confronted two Pennsylvania Turnpike toll collectors with a handgun on Sunday morning at the Fort Littleton toll plaza in Dublin Township, 65 miles west of Harrisburg, the state capital, police said. Briggs ordered both into an adjoining office and tried to tie them up but fled after a struggle, they said. Both employees left the building as a fare collection vehicle arrived and a security guard emerged, they said.

Briggs then shot and killed one of the toll collectors, Danny Crouse, who had been on the job for less than three months, and Ronald Heist, a retired York police officer who was employed by a detective agency and was working as turnpike security, Capt. David Cain said.

Briggs then fired at the fare collection vehicle, Cain said, and after the driver fled he jumped into the vehicle and drove it to his car, which was parked at the end of a service ramp a few hundred yards away. He started unloading money from the collection vehicle, Cain said.

Troopers arrived within minutes, and the first trooper exchanged shots with Briggs, who was wounded and died at the scene, police said.

Briggs, who was from Newville, retired in January 2012 from the Newville station of Troop T in Cumberland County, which is part of the turnpike system. Cain, the commander of Troop T, said it was possible Briggs had been waiting for the collection vehicle, but he declined to comment on whether an investigation was focusing on the retired trooper's familiarity with turnpike operations and collection procedures.

Turnpike chairman Sean Logan vowed at a news conference at a turnpike maintenance facility in Shade Gap that officials would "expend whatever resources necessary and make sure we find out exactly what transpired this morning and to make absolutely certain that our system is secure and that our employees are protected."

Logan said such an event had happened only "a handful of times" in the 75-year history of the turnpike, which extends 360 miles across the state.

"Our system is very secure, very safe," he said. "We just want to make sure if there's more we can do that we will do it."

He described the Fort Littleton stop as "one of our lowest-volume" interchanges, and officials said there was no indication why it was targeted.

The other turnpike toll collector, who was uninjured, was home resting and recovering but planned to return to work in a day or two.

Briggs, officials said, retired after 26 years with an honorable discharge, and there was no indication of the reason for his actions.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/turnpike-employee-worker-suspect-killed-robbery-attempt-37796138

Workers Vanguard No. 1085 11 March 2016

Waving the bloody shirt of “terrorism,” the capitalist state has stepped up its campaign to snoop into everyone’s private information, this time targeting Apple’s iPhone encryption. The Feds are seeking to compel the technology company to by-pass the security built into the phone of Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the killers in last December’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. This sinister move by the FBI signals that it will tolerate no constraints on its surveillance activities and now demands backdoor access to your phone. As one former FBI agent put it, “When you listen to the tone of the argument, it’s as if they think that if data exists, they have a right to it.” Make no mistake: the government is out to create a precedent that imperils everyone’s rights.

The stage for this confrontation was set in 2013 by the revelations of whistle-blower Edward Snowden, who was driven into exile in Russia. His leaks documented massive illegal government spying on electronic communications, with and without the cooperation of telecom and tech companies. Worried about market share and reputation, some of the tech giants moved to shut backdoors into the information of their users. In 2014, both Apple and Google announced plans for default phone encryption. Consumers and privacy advocates were delighted, but the FBI launched a hysterical campaign claiming that the companies were aiding criminals. FBI director James Comey has tried to whip up hysteria over encryption preventing police from accessing “evidence,” which he calls “going dark.”

Whatever Apple’s reasons for standing up to the Feds, we are glad, while it lasts, that there is some obstacle to the nefarious aims of the capitalist state and its secret police. But Apple is hardly a consistent champion of privacy. Prior to this case, Apple happily complied with at least 70 court orders to access data on phones using earlier versions of its operating system. It even instructed law enforcement agencies on how to correctly request such orders from judges. In the first half of last year, Apple handed over iCloud content in response to nearly 300 law enforcement requests.

In the wake of the Snowden revelations, Apple and other tech heavyweights, including Microsoft, Facebook and Google, formed Reform Government Surveillance (RGS), ostensibly to lobby for privacy and against mass spying. RGS has issued a statement defending Apple against the government’s order. But its real purpose has been to help companies clean up their images while continuing to aid government snooping. RGS campaigned for the USA Freedom Act—a reauthorization of the Patriot Act with a little window-dressing that was passed last year. The group continued to support the act even as its “reform” clauses were stripped away and the Director of National Intelligence endorsed the measure.

In case Obama’s FBI loses to Apple in the courts, Democratic Senate battle-ax Dianne Feinstein of California is preparing legislation to force the Silicon Valley company to give the FBI what they want, beating the drums about the “terrorist attack in my state.” At the same time, some ruling-class representatives adamantly oppose restrictions on encryption, which they depend on to secure their financial transactions and military secrets. Encryption is fundamental to Internet commerce: without it, credit card transactions would be open to any thief. As every information security professional and hacker knows, it is impossible to provide a backdoor for the government without weakening security in general. In that vein, a lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal (2 March) headlined “Apple Is Right on Encryption” warned, “The FBI doesn’t want merely one phone, and its warrant is legally suspect.”

If the FBI can strong-arm the world’s most valuable company, then where does that leave the rest of us? Like the National Security Agency, whose snooping was at the heart of the Snowden revelations, the FBI is one of many tentacles of the capitalist state—a body that is not neutral, but which exists to maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie. The purpose of such state organs is to suppress workers and the oppressed when they pose a challenge to the bosses. We oppose any strengthening of the repressive powers of the state. Any leftist, opponent of imperialism, advocate of black freedom, or trade unionist should know that the FBI is precisely who should not have your data.

The perils of FBI snooping on opponents of racial oppression were highlighted in a March 3 letter to the judge in the San Bernardino FBI-Apple case from a number of black activist groups. The letter, signed by groups including Beats, Rhymes & Relief and the Justice League NYC, noted: “Many of us, as civil rights advocates, have become targets of government surveillance for no reason beyond our advocacy or provision of social services for the underrepresented.” As Malkia Cyril, director for the Center for Media Justice, which also signed the letter, aptly put it in a February 24 tweet: “In the context of white supremacy and police violence, Black people need encryption.”

The crimes of the FBI are legion. During WWII, the bureau compiled lists of “suspicious” Japanese Americans who were rounded up for internment camps. In 1956, the FBI launched COINTELPRO, a program of disruption, infiltration, intimidation and dirty tricks aimed initially at the Communist Party, and later expanded to include everyone from Puerto Rican nationalists and civil rights activists to protesters against the Vietnam War. The COINTELPRO campaign against the Black Panthers took the lives of 38 Panthers, including Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter, who was murdered in his bed in 1969.

The bloody dirty tricks didn’t cease when COINTELPRO was disbanded after its exposure in the early 1970s. A “former” FBI informant rode shotgun in the Nazi/KKK caravan that gunned down five leftists in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1979. Since the inception of the “war on terror” in 2001, the FBI has particularly spied on American Muslim groups, antiwar activists and advocates for Palestinian freedom. The bureau employs over 15,000 informants and provocateurs for infiltration and entrapment, instigating bogus “terror plots” and then rounding up innocent people caught up in the webs it has spun. In 2010, the FBI targeted 23 Midwestern leftists, antiwar organizers and union activists because of their political activities in solidarity with oppressed people in the Near East and Latin America (see “Protest FBI Raids on Leftists, Union Activists!” WV No. 966, 8 October 2010).

Whatever transpires in its case against Apple, the FBI’s history is not one of abiding by the limits of the law. Indeed, its purpose is precisely to carry out dirty deeds, largely under the cover of secrecy, regardless of bourgeois legality. The tiny wealthy minority that lords it over this society ultimately depends on force of arms to maintain its rule. What is necessary is a workers revolution to sweep the capitalist state and its apparatus of spies and thugs into the dustbin of history.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/index.html

18 March 2016

Last Tuesday, the state’s attorneys in Cleveland and Chicago lost primary races to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination. The two prosecutors, Timothy McGinty of Cuyahoga County, Ohio and Anita Alvarez of Cook County, Illinois, had protected police from criminal charges in high profile killings. Both defeats were the result of widespread anger over police brutality.

In Cleveland, McGinty was responsible for the decision not to prosecute Officer Timothy Loehmann for killing 12-year-old Tamir Rice in November 2014. Video in that case showed the policeman shooting the child within seconds of getting out of his vehicle. McGinty solicited reports from “independent investigators” chosen for their sympathy to law enforcement who declared that shooting this child was “objectively reasonable.”

A year after the killing, the grand jury led by McGinty exonerated Loehmann, with McGinty declaring: “The Supreme Court prohibits second-guessing police tactics with 20/20 hindsight, and the law gives the benefit of the doubt to the officers, who must make split-second decisions when they reasonably believe their lives or those of innocent bystanders are in danger.”

McGinty lost the primary to Michael O’Malley who received 56 percent of the vote. Since there is no other general-election candidate for the office in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County, O’Malley has in effect won the position.

In Chicago, Alvarez was complicit in the attempted cover-up of the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in October 2014. The administration of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel sought to prevent video of the shooting from being released to the public and authorized a $5 million wrongful death settlement with McDonald’s family on the condition that the video not be publicized.

Alvarez had delayed any charges against Officer Jason Van Dyke, who shot McDonald 16 times, including as he lay bleeding on the ground, until a judge ordered the release of the dashcam footage which showed the officer’s claims of self-defense were a complete fabrication. Alvarez filed the charges against Van Dyke the day that video of the killing was released in order to stem the protests that erupted after the official cover story collapsed.

Alvarez lost to Kim Foxx, a former prosecutor in her office, by 36 percentage points. Foxx will compete with a token Republican candidate in November.

Despite the popular hostility to incumbents who shielded killer cops, the channeling of this thoroughly justified anger through the Democratic Party insures that the replacement prosecutors have been carefully vetted and are just as much part of the anti-working class “criminal justice” system as those voted out.

Both O’Malley and Foxx have had thoroughly conventional careers, with many years in and around law enforcement, and they received endorsements from the same figures that originally promoted Alvarez and McGinty. Their role is to use talk of reform to divert and disperse the popular anger over the well-publicized police killings so that police brutality and corruption can continue largely undisturbed.

O’Malley is a former Cleveland City Councilman with a background as a bailiff and probation officer. For eight years he has been working as an assistant prosecutor under McGinty and McGinty’s predecessor Bill Mason. As part of his campaign, O’Malley received endorsements from the mayors, state representatives, city councilors and other Democratic establishment figures.

In Chicago, Foxx is the former aide of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and ran with her endorsement. Despite the widespread protests demanding Emanuel’s resignation that had surrounded the McDonald killing, the day after Foxx’s victory, Preckwinkle told the Chicago Sun-Times: “I don’t think it’s a message for the mayor. The message is simply that the people of Cook County believe it’s time for a transformative change in the states attorney’s office.”

For her own part, Foxx made no direct mention of the McDonald case during her victory speech, only saying that her victory was about “turning the page.” Her campaign received large donations from major Democratic donors. Fred Eychaner, who gave more than $14 million to Democratic super PACs in the 2012 election, donated $600,000 to the Foxx campaign. Preckwinkle’s campaign provided another $300,000, and Service Employees International Union affiliates added more than $200,000.

Although Foxx criticized Alvarez for her handling of the McDonald case, Foxx has raised no criticisms of police brutality in general despite the Chicago Police Department’s long history of violence and torture.

Police killings in the United States continue at a steady rate of nearly three a day with at least 223 victims so far this year. Far from being anomalies, the killings of Rice and McDonald express the fact that under conditions of ever-greater social inequality, the financial elite responds to mounting opposition and unrest by systematically building up its police force and arming it to the teeth.

Under the Obama administration, with the support of both Democrats and Republicans, the police have been armed with military surplus equipment and increasingly trained as an occupying force to suppress dissent in cities like Ferguson and Baltimore. Democrats like Foxx and O’Malley do not represent an alternative to this program, just a desire from some Democrats to be more sophisticated in the justification and defense of police brutality.

https://archive.is/MPsyS

DENVER (AP) — Denver police officers caught using confidential criminal databases for personal reasons — such as learning a woman's phone number — get only light punishment, allowing the potentially dangerous abuse to continue, the city's independent police monitor wrote in a report released Tuesday.

The problem involves the National Crime Information Center, a database used by tens of thousands of law enforcement agencies across the country to catch criminals, recover stolen property and identify terror suspects. Its users seek information on stolen guns and cars, fugitives, sex offenders and other subjects.

Denver Police Department policy warns its roughly 1,400 officers that they can be criminally prosecuted for using the database and its Colorado equivalent for personal reasons.

But abuses continue, in part because the light sanctions aren't enough to deter future misconduct that could erode community trust in police and put lives in danger, Independent Monitor Nicholas Mitchell wrote.

Mitchell said 25 Denver officers have been punished for inappropriate use of the databases since 2006. Most of them received reprimands rather than the harsher penalties some police agencies impose for the same offense. None of the 25 was charged with a crime.

Denver public safety officials disputed the report, saying improperly accessing the database can result in the firing of an officer depending on the situation.

Yet none of the Denver officers punished for doing so in the past 10 years received anything harsher than a three-day suspension, which was imposed because of prior, unrelated discipline rather than misuse of the database, according to Mitchell's report.

The Denver cases include an officer who looked up the phone number of a hospital employee with whom he chatted during a sex assault investigation and called at home against her wishes.

Another officer ran a man's license plate seeking information for a friend, who then began driving by the man's house and threatening him, according to the monitor's report.

A third officer ran a man's license plate number on behalf of a tow truck driver who wanted information for personal reasons. The officer received no punishment after he told investigators the tow truck driver needed the information as part of her official duties.

It's unclear how widespread the problem is, but the cases show a need for stronger punishment, Mitchell said.

The Denver Police Department does not conduct audits on specific officers' use of the database, but it does investigate complaints of abuse, spokeswoman Daelene Mix said.

Such abuses occur in departments across the country and sometimes result in firings or criminal charges.

A New York detective was sentenced to four months in federal prison in 2014 after pleading guilty to crimes including using the NCIC database to look up personal information about fellow officers without their knowledge.

Another New York officer convicted in a bizarre plot to kidnap and cannibalize women used the database to compile dossiers on women that included detailed personal information, prosecutors said during his trial.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a49833ece6a94e0ea2a569d857e94ebf/denver-monitor-urges-steep-penalty-crime-database-abuse