This sorry excuse for a police officer was convicted of negligent homicide after shooting a motorist to death. He was fired from his job, but later had his conviction expunged and has now been hired in another town as the department's chief.
“You put the uniform back on and you look at yourself in the mirror, and you think, I’m back,” he said. “It’s a good feeling.”
Just goes to show, yet again, that police can literally get away with murder, and whatever the hell else they feel like pulling.
I try to be as unbiased as possible when it comes to cases of police brutality. Indeed, I have made several posts here defending the police even when they have acted violently, because I understand that it is a difficult job and at times it does in fact require violence to get the job done. I am not squeamish and I am not prone to knee-jerk reactions. I have seen things from both sides of the line, having been both first-responder and victim of a vicious assault by police.
I must say though, that at the end of the day, I have little sympathy for police and the job they do when I hear stories like this one. This is not just about a few bad apples beating the crap out of innocent civilians. This is about institutionalized corruption and brutality. Let's check out the video, and I will continue below.
So we see there are two separate incidents here to discuss. In the first, we see police beat, tase, and strangle a woman who is handcuffed in the back of the police cruiser. Personally, I can't think of any legitimate reason why police should be beating on anyone in handcuffs. I can understand that suspects in cuffs can still be unruly and do things like start spitting in the backseat and so forth. I can see how that would make a police officer angry, but it really still does not excuse beating up a suspect in a punitive manner. It certainly does not excuse using the taser on someone, and it absolutely does not excuse choking a woman. Here in NY State, choking a woman is a crime in and of itself, aside from standard assault-type charges.
Imagine for a moment that what you saw there was a man beating on his wife in that manner. If the public were to see something of that nature there would be absolute outrage in a community, calling for all sorts of horrible things be done to a man who would dare to do something like that to a woman. But because it is a police officer doing this to a suspect, the public is apathetic, as if in a trance, or even openly defend the actions of police in cases like this. But this wasn't just one officer either, it was two. Two powerful men beating the crap out of a woman in the back seat of a car in the middle of the night. Is there really any excuse for that?
With the new strangulation law on the books, I find it hard to believe that a man would be excused for simply choking a woman even if she came at him with a kitchen knife screaming bloody murder, much less pummeling and tasing a woman. Certainly there would be no excuse whatsoever for a man to do this to a defenseless, unarmed woman restrained in handcuffs, unless he was a cop of course.
Next we see the case of a man who had his rib cage crushed in for the crime of not understanding a police order. Instead of putting his hands behind his back as instructed, he puts his hands in the air. A typical reaction really for anyone who watches television and instinctively thinks "hands up" if they are ever in trouble with the police. It is also quite easy for a police officer to take a suspect into custody from that position. You simply snap the cuff on one wrist, guide the suspects arm down toward the buttocks, do the same with a firm grasp on the other arm, and lock the second wrist into the open cuff. Easy as that, suspect in custody.
Instead, one officer decided to body slam the suspect to the concrete, while the other decides to use a knee to blow out the man's ribcage. And of course, no police beating would be complete without the application of the taser a few times. Even if the man had been a little unruly, a bit uncooperative, not fully understanding what was happening, there was nothing there to show he was being violent, or to warrant that level of force that we saw used against him.
As a general rule, the police are expected to follow the Use of Force Continuum. Not every department uses the same model, and the standards are not universal among the different models, but generally speaking the principle is to only apply that force which is necessary to safely bring a suspect into custody. As safely as possible for the officer and the suspect I might add. I saw nothing in that video which showed the suspect was assaultive in any way. If there was intentional resistance at all, it appears to have been passive. I didn't see any active resistance as in attempts to break free or flee. Even if that were the case, once the suspect was down, that should have been the extent of the force necessary to pull the suspects arms behind his back and get the cuffs on. Tasing him and breaking five ribs is clearly an excessive use of force in this case.
So what we have seen there, yet again, are a few more instances of gratuitous, unwarranted violence by police against a civilian. Almost every day we see a new video of this nature pop up on YouTube, but we are still expected to believe that these are all "isolated" incidents, the work of "a few bad apples." Never mind that thousands of cases like this never make it to the light of day. More often than not, the victim is not lucky enough to have a video camera rolling when they are pummeled by police. And without a tape, there is little chance of finding a lawyer who will bother to handle your case. Even with a tape, it is clearly an uphill battle to hold the police accountable for their crimes.
In one instance linked here, a reporter was facing 21 years in prison for airing an excessive force complaint. He was subsequently convicted on three felony counts of violating wiretapping laws, for posting the content on YouTube.
In another incident, a man was arrested and had his head split open by police simply because he asked for a complaint form.
Time and time again I have heard people say something along the lines of "well, if a bad cop does something to you, you should report it to their supervisor." The notion that a civilian can find justice when they are the victim of a crime at the hands of police, or that police will be held accountable for such crimes, is false. How could we possibly expect an officer's supervisor to take such a complaint seriously, when we see what happened in those two incidents above in the main video? The police charged the victims of their brutal assault with a crime, resisting arrest. Not just one "bad apple" but three police officers in these two incidents alone, not only covering for one another but actually participating in the violence. Their supervisors, right on up to the chief of police were well aware of what was on those tapes, yet the charges against the victims stood, and the officers were not held accountable in any way. Beyond the police department protecting their own, the county district attorney's office also saw the tapes, and failed in their duty to even investigate, much less to actually prosecute those officers for the brutal assaults.
How many other cases has the DA's office refused to prosecute over the years, simply because the perpetrators were police officers? How complicit is the top brass in any department, in any county, even in any state, in covering up crimes committed by cops? How many thousands, even millions of people have been viciously beaten, wrongfully prosecuted, and even killed by police, without anyone ever being held accountable and without justice ever being served?
Ladies and gentleman, this is not about running down the police for the sake of running down the police. This is the reality of the totalitarian police-state we now live in. The boys in blue today are no better than the "brown shirt" terrorists who put the Nazis in power. It makes no difference if you are a trouble-maker or an innocent person just going about your business. Any one of you reading this could find yourself, or a loved one, being beaten in the back of a police car in the middle of the night, having your rib cage shattered along some lonely road by a few thug cops, or worse, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.
EXTRA:
No sooner had I posted this article, another story popped up that just goes to prove that police can literally get away with murder even when they are caught and prosecuted. Cop Made Chief After Negligent Homicide Conviction
Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT is a Schedule I drug according to the Federal government and the DEA.
Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Schedule I drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence. -SOURCE
Because of this classification, anyone reading this article is felon. You are not only in possession of DMT, but also a user, and a manufacturer of it. You see, DMT is a naturally ocurring chemical in the brains of humans, animals, and elsewhere in nature as well. Which also makes you a distributor of Schedule I drugs if you give away free kittens, or sell your lawn clippings to your neighbor for landfill.
Check out a more in-depth article from Natural News.
Mainstream scientists don't seem to be challenging the find as a hoax. It was a legitimate archeological dig that uncovered these bizarrely shaped skulls in the outskirts of a Mexican village, Onavas, south of Sonora. They do not claim they have uncovered aliens though, but rather examples of skull-binding, or the deliberate malformation of the skull as a sign of social status.
'This is the first pre-Hispanic cemetery in the state,' say the researchers. 'It is 1000 years old. These practices of cranial deformation and dental mutilation have never been seen before in groups in Sonora.'"-Source
Strange elongated or otherwise deformed skulls have been discovered before, from time to time, though never in that region of Mexico. There seems to be an ongoing debate between mainstream science, and UFO/Alien researchers as to whether or not these skulls are proof of another race of beings who once lived on Earth alongside man, or whether these skulls really are just humans who were subject to extreme body modification.
Of course, a lot of conspiracy theorists are quick to call these artifacts alien remains, as in extra-terrestrials, but even if they are not human, that does not necessarily make them from another planet either. For all we know, they are examples of a now extinct race of indigenous humanoid from right here on Earth. Who is to say for sure?
In at least one case, there seems to be substantial DNA evidence to show that not all of these deformed skulls are in fact human at all. So there might be some merit to the notion that mainstream science is engaged in a sort of coverup, or at least in denial, turning a blind-eye to the real science of these discoveries.
Meanwhile though, we can have a gander at this latest strange discovery. What you are looking at here is not a prop from a movie set or a snippet from a viral ad campaign. That is indeed one of the 13 skulls archeologists pulled out of the Mexican dirt. Freaky.
The Massachusetts legal system is reeling in the wake of a 27-count indictment against one of their leading laboratory technicians. 35-year-old drug lab worker Annie Dookhan has been accused of tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice.
The full impact of her alleged crimes may never be known, and cannot be overstated. In this day and age of scientific law-enforcement, with so much of the public convinced that laboratory work is the "holy grail" in any criminal prosecution, the integrity of those labs is the pinnacle of public trust; the very bedrock of how we have come to even define justice itself, in so many cases, in the modern era. Popular television shows reinforce this idea that laboratory evidence is irrefutable and absolute. Prosecutors are want to nurture this sentiment among jurors.
Of course, any reasonable person might consider that even in science there are errors from time to time. With DNA evidence for example, we sometimes hear the "odds" of accuracy. Sometimes as accurate as one in a hundred-thousand. Sometimes though, huge odds are defied as in the case of lab analyst Kathryn Troyer, who discovered a near-match defying 1-in-113 billion odds between two felons in the same state.
What happens though, when we throw in a more human element to the science? Something that undermines even the very best science. Personally, I never really thought too much about it, but always sort of assumed that the relationships between lab staff and the legal system were kept sterile, to a large degree. I assumed that some measures were in place to ensure lab workers were not only ethically impartial, but also that systems of anonymity and lab-controls were in place to reinforce the ethical standard. I even assumed that lab work was double-checked. In other words, I foolishly believed in the system and never thought that something like this could happen. I certainly never thought I would ever see a case of this nature, of such magnitude.
Annie Dookhan began her career at the state's Jamaica Plains drug lab in 2003. In that time, she has handled evidence in more than 34,000 cases. Any convictions stemming from evidence she processed are now likely to be overturned. Worse, this has called into question the integrity of the entire lab, and countless more cases. The lab has since been shut down and numerous people have been fired or resigned, but not before the damage was done.
In June of 2011 she was caught improperly removing drugs from evidence storage in 60 different cases, but apparently her supervisors did nothing to stop her from being involved in more drug cases after that. Later that year she wrote in a private email to Norfolk Assistant District Attorney George Papachristos, “I have full access to anything and everything, one of the advantages, so some of the other chemists are resentful of me.”
The long and often quite personal email exchanges with Papachristos have been closely scrutinized and seen by many as unethical from both a professional and personal standpoint. Dookhan's marriage has been on the rocks since her husband uncovered emails back in 2009. The prosecutor has not been charged with any crime himself though, and it is not known if the flirtatious banner ever led to more than a handful of personal meetings. Nonetheless, it does show a much closer relationship than one might expect between a prosecutor, and a lab technician who is expected to be impartial. So much so, that Papachristos resigned from the DA's office.
Clearly, from her own words, impartiality was never even something she considered. She did not see her job as being a technician who processes evidence, but rather her stated goal was “getting [drug dealers] off the streets.” It should go without saying here, that this was certainly not her job as a lab technician. Nevertheless she was all too happy to do favors for prosecutors, while shunning defense attorneys even when she was required to give evidence to them. She saw herself as part of the prosecution team, as did many prosecutors themselves, with one declaring "No no no!!! I need you!!!" when Dookhan said she would not be able to testify in a case.
Dookhan is alleged to have lied on the witness stand in court about having a Master's degree in chemistry, and shot out emails giving herself grandiose job titles she simply did not have. In correspondence with various agencies she identified herself with self-appointed titles like "special agent of operations” or "on-call terrorism supervisor." She even went so far as to create fake email conversations with a US attorney, who's name she misspelled, and forwarded to other recipients.
Assuming of course that all of these allegations are true, one has to wonder how such an obviously pathological liar could go on for so long without anyone bothering to consider that something like this might happen. Police and prosecutors were clearly willing to look the other way and even cultivate a close relationship with Dookhan, to encourage her, in order to secure easy convictions. As of yet, there are no criminal charges against anyone else aside from the lab-tech herself, but it seems clear that ethical and moral obligations were tossed aside in favor of making their jobs easier.
As a result, hundred of millions of dollars have been wasted. Entire careers have been built to be little more than sandcastles. And tens of thousands convicted felons are now poised to flood the streets of Massachusetts, then out across the country. If it was their intent to actually make the public safe, then the government certainly failed miserably in that mandate. Not only because of the threat posed by these potentially dangerous criminals being set loose upon society, but because of the threat posed by the government itself.
It may be all-too-easy to assume that all or even most of these convicts were actually guilty, but that simply does not hold up to the facts, and certainly carries no weight against the core values of our entire justice system. In the face of reasonable doubt, the presumption of innocence is paramount. Without these standards, we might just go ahead and just give the police a license to kill at will and close down the courts.
Understanding this, we must assume now that the government sent more than 34,000 innocent people to prison on the word of just one deluded lab technician. That my friends, is more dangerous than any drug dealer. Even if only in our hearts we assume that just some of these convicts were actually innocent, imagine for a moment that one of them happened to be you, your spouse, your parent or child. Imagine for a moment how many lives have been irreparably laid to waste by the lies of just one woman, and a government who did not care. A government that in fact has a vested interest in securing more convictions even if they are not justified. A government that encouraged this woman to commit her crimes against the people. A government that presumes guilt of anyone who crosses into their sights, and has even dispatched agents to threaten the hundreds of inmates who have already been exonerated.
"We tell them, 'Listen, we know what you were doing before and we're watching you.'" -Boston Police Commissioner, Edward Davis
Perhaps the most frightening aspect to all of this is that this can only be the tip of the iceberg. This woman was so clearly delusional and so easily cultivated this relationship with prosecutors, it begs the question how prevalent this sort of thing is throughout the country. Especially in labs and agencies where this sort of thing is likely done more discreetly. If there are no practical standards in place to prevent something like this from happening, how could we possibly trust that this sort of thing is not rampant? How many lab workers compromise cases for monetary gain, for romantic favors, for promotions, or to simply stroke their own ego? How many might even quietly carry on the work of a zealot in their own private war against people they see as evil? Are we supposed to ignorantly believe that this is simply an isolated incident, one bad apple, and assume that it would never happen again? Are we honestly supposed to believe that some fear of the law will prevent lab-techs from committing these sorts of crimes, when the government itself benefits from these crimes?
If convicted, will Annie Dookhan be sentenced to as much time in prison as the innocent people she put there would have done?
On the tenth anniversary of the United States invasion of Iraq, we have decided to share this one video as an example, and a reminder, of just how terrible war really is. The mission, muddled, the enemy, undefined, the effort, a waste of time. This video of one single incident can almost summarize the entire misguided American adventure there.
For an overview on some of our coverage related to the so-called War on Terror, a few highlights were posted on our FACEBOOK page. You might also review labels such as 9/11, war on terror, etc., in the sidebar at right.
Today, the latest headline on the subject is about a United States Marine who had his legs blown off in combat, but was made to endure a rigorous inspection by TSA authorities in Phoenix.
Reading the story, it's certainly enough to piss off any patriot. The fact that the man is a Marine seems to be the focus of the attention being given the report and the Congressman.
Rep. Duncan Hunter said in his letter Monday that the Marine, who is still on active duty and showed TSA agents his military identification, was still forced to undergo that scrutiny... The congressman asked TSA to detail its procedures to inspecting wounded U.S. troops at airports, and to consider whether agents should show “situational awareness.”
But should it really matter if the man is active duty or not? Should it matter how he was injured or what his disability is? Not to the TSA it shouldn't. Not if we are going to accept that their job really is in the interest of public safety as the government claims.
Now don't get me wrong, I am not unsympathetic at all to this Marine, his sacrifices, and the crappy ordeal they put him through there at the airport. But really, why should it even be considered that he be exempt from this sort of humiliation and pain that the rest of the people in this nation must endure?
After all, a terrorist could pretend to be a wounded veteran, show a fraudulent I.D. that he was an active-duty member of the military, or even actually be an active-duty member of the armed forces while bent on destruction and mayhem. This is all just as possible as, let's say, airline pilots themselves having things like guns on-board aircraft. TSA rules led to pilot’s gun firing in flight
Should we even be considering exemptions at all, for anyone? If for troops, then why not for police, or people who have a lot of money, or white people, or non-Jews?
Maybe it's a good thing that troops are getting a slap-in-the-face wake up call about what is happening here in this country. This is the freedom they are fighting for.
So what exactly is this magic ingredient that will be appearing in a new version of Pepsi, and how is it made? Unfortunately, those questions are hard to answer. Senomyx... refers to them only as 'enhancers' or 'ingredients'... The products work by triggering receptors on the tongue and tricking your taste buds into sensing sweetness — or saltiness or coolness, in the case of the company's other programs...
So are Senomyx's covert ingredients safe? That, too, is anyone's guess... many of its enhancers have 'been granted'GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status, but all that means is that the company did its own assessment and then concluded everything was fine. We don't know whether Senomyx did any testing since the company isn't required to submit anything to the FDA.
There's no reason to think that Senomyx's products will cause harm, but until or unless Pepsi decides to share details about how exactly it's achieving a 60 percent reduction in sugar while keeping the taste the same, customers will be drinking their 'scientifically advantaged' sodas completely in the dark.”
The lack of labeling requirements is particularly troublesome and will probably become an issue in the future. Since these compounds (whatever they are) are used in such minute quantities, they don’t have to be listed on the label. They’ll simply fall under the generic category of artificial and/or natural flavors. What this means is that the product will appear to be much “healthier” than it might otherwise be, were a flavor enhancer not used.
According to a 2010 CBS report, Senomyx’s flavor enhancers were already being sold outside the US at that time. For example, Nestle was by 2010 using an MSG flavor enhancer in its Maggi brand soups, sauces, condiments and instant noodles, and Ajinomoto was also using a similar ingredient in products for the Chinese market. This means less of the artificial sweetener is needed to create the same sweet taste as before, but while one could argue that this is a good thing, I suspect we will ultimately learn that this flavor enhancement method has multiple unforeseen adverse consequences — metabolically, and biologically. Consequences of Food Alteration are More the Rule than the Exception...
There are many reasons why you're better off choosing natural whole foods in lieu of processed alternatives, but one of the primary ones is that junk foods contain additives that increase your toxic load, which in turn may increase your tendency to develop cancer. As of yet, there is NO medical research to back up the assertion that manipulating your taste buds in the way Senomyx’ products do is safe and healthy in the long term. As an example, I would point to the evidence now available showing that one of the reasons why artificial sweeteners do not work as advertised is because the taste of sweet itself is tied into your metabolic functioning in a way that we still do not fully understand... As a result, artificially sweetened products, oftentimes boasting zero calories, actually result in greater weight gain than sweetened products when used “in the real world.”
It's easy to forget that the processed, pre-packaged foods and fast food restaurants of today are actually a radical change in terms of the history of food production. Much of what we eat today bears very little resemblance of real food. Many products are loaded with non-nutritive fillers — purposely designed to just “take up space” to make you think you’re getting more than you really are — along with any number of additives. Many additives have been shown to have harmful effects on mood, behavior, metabolic functioning and biochemistry.
Now, with the introduction of untested engineered flavor enhancers, you’re left wondering whether processed foods with “cleaner” labels really are safer and healthier or not...
Remember, because Senomyx’ flavor enhancers are used in such low concentrations they are not required to undergo the FDA's usual safety approval process for food additives. The disease trends we're now seeing are only going to get worse as much of the processed foods consumed today are not even food-based. Who knows what kind of genetic mutations and malfunctions we're creating for ourselves and future generations when a MAJORITY of our diet consists of highly processed and artificial foods that contain substances never before consumed by humans in all of history.
Ever eat anything that tasted like vanilla, strawberry or raspberry? Chances are you have eaten the juice secreted from the anal gland of a beaver. It is commonly used as a flavoring additive in foods like ice cream, soda, and chewing gum, and labeled as "natural flavoring."
Castoreum (pronunciation: /kæsˈtɔriəm/) is the exudate from the castor sacs of the mature North American Beaver (Castor canadensis) and the European Beaver (Castor fiber). Within the zoological realm, castoreum is the yellowish secretion of the castor sac in combination with the beaver's urine, used during scent marking of territory.[1][2] Both male and female beavers possess a pair of castor sacs and a pair of anal glands located in two cavities under the skin between the pelvis and the base of the tail.[3] The castor sacs are not true glands (endocrine or exocrine) on a cellular level, hence references to these structures as preputial glands or castor glands are misnomers.[4]
Just for the record, no one here is supporting North Korea or Communism. But this is a chilling film exposing our own weaknesses as a society.Weakness that will be exploited by the Commie bastards. Before we look at our enemies, we have to take a cold hard look at ourselves....
This is pretty weird. I remember someone folding a $20 at the bar one night and showing me this, but I have never seen the whole sequence before. Really makes you wonder why they never changed the design of the $1.
Defense attorneys for 10 people charged by the Dutchess County Drug Task Force have 30 days to file additional motions in Dutchess County Court, after a task force member involved with their cases was charged with lying to police.City of Beacon Detective Sgt. Richard Sassi Jr., 34, a Drug Task Force member, is facing a charge of third-degree falsely reporting an incident, a misdemeanor. The attorneys will be able to file new motions that challenge the legitimacy of the evidence against their clients, ask for an additional hearing or withdraw any guilty pleas. “The officer’s credibility is now, quite properly, the subject of intense scrutiny,” said Thomas O’Neill, who represents one of the defendants.
While a misdemeanor seems like a rather minor thing to most of us, it is important to keep in perspective that this is a police Detective Sergeant we are talking about. When a civilian is charged with a crime, police will go out of their way to scrape up every last charge on the books that can be construed in any way as being applicable, even seeking to make felony charges stick for relatively minor offenses. On the other hand, police never arrest another police officer under any circumstances, unless they are absolutely forced to, and even then will only charge the bare minimum that they must in order avoid looking outright incompetent or even criminally complicit. Usually, it will be when an officer is caught right in the middle of a crime, red-handed, that other police will be forced to arrest an officer. Or, in this case, when the officer was caught with his pants down.
The local media has been rather protective of the Sergeant, but this blogger was not so kind. Gotta love the non-corporate press when it comes to getting the real scoop. Please show your support for visiting the orginal site where the following article was posted, by clicking the link in the title.
Known for: Litigiousness, unwanted seductions, brutality allegations.
Fatal mistake: Ineptly seducing an informant.
The circumstances: In August 2012, Sassi, a detective sergeant in Beacon, N.Y., decided to visit one of his confidential informants. According to Sarah Bradshaw of the Poughkeepsie Journal, Sassi arrived at the informant’s apartment with beer and amorous intentions, allegedly touching her leg and fumbling with her shirt in what appears to have been an exceedingly awkward and creepy situation. (Talk about non-consensual encounters.) Sassi was interrupted when the uncomfortable informant heard a strange noise outside.
The noise turned out to be the informant’s boyfriend, who entered the apartment. A presumably nervous Sassi hid in a closet and, according to Bradshaw, here’s what happened next:
The boyfriend found Sassi in the closet, wearing only his boxers, court records said. He pushed the police officer and threw his clothes out of reach, and tried to take cellphone photographs of him. Sassi is accused of pointing his gun at the boyfriend, saying he was a police officer and the man should back up. Sassi then called 911 to report a robbery, identifying himself as “Mike Smith,” according to court records.
It wasn’t long before the authorities realized that there was no robbery, and that the mysterious “Mike Smith” was actually their colleague, Det. Sgt. Sassi. He was suspended from duty and faces a third-degree misdemeanor charge of lying to authorities, not to mention the bemused scorn of his co-workers. ‘“Our policy is a minimum of two officers have to be present when meeting with informants,”’ said Beacon’s current police chief, adding that “drinking is prohibited for on-duty officers and that sexual relations with informants ‘would not be proper.’ ” Well, it would’ve been nice to have known that at the time, you stupid chief!
Background: Where to begin? Sassi has been a Beacon police officer since 2001, and was promoted to detective in 2007, under controversial circumstances. He is the son of Beacon’s former police chief, also named Richard Sassi, who was suspended and demoted in 2006 by then-mayor Clara Lou Gould after, among other things, pursuing an internal affairs investigation against Beacon policeman Jose “Tony” Rios, who was promoted to detective ahead of his son. Mayor Gould accused Sassi Sr. of “gross insubordination” and said that his “misconduct has resulted in a complete lack of trust on all levels of City government.”
It’s not hard to understand why the younger Sassi was initially passed over for promotion. In 2007, Sassi Jr. was named in a lawsuit alleging that he and another officer beat and pepper sprayed a man during a 2002 traffic stop, then “grabbed his head and banged his face into the sidewalk.” (The city paid a $20,000 settlement in the case.) A U.S. District Court memorandum mentioned “a report by the local branch of the NAACP where unspecified ‘community members’ voiced concerns about Officer Sassi's harassment and arrogance.” And in 2006, according to Beacon City Council Member Lee Kyriacou, Officer Sassi earned $90,000 of his $150,000 salary in overtime pay.
Despite all that, Sassi filed two separate discrimination lawsuits against the City of Beacon in 2006, claiming he had been denied a promotion to detective because of the city’s unfair anti-nepotism policy. Sassi explained that, because of his father’s status, he had been “humiliated, public embarrassed [sic], subjected to per se defamation, held up to public ridicule, impaired in his professional career, damaged financially, rendered anxious and upset, and otherwise rendered sick and sore.”
"Nepotism doesn't apply here because Officer Sassi wasn't qualified enough for the job," said Kyriacou at the time, noting that, as opposed to the candidate who was ultimately promoted, "Officer Sassi has no detective training, is not bilingual, and did not get an award for heroism. The only thing that puts him above the rest is his last name.”
Good cop or bad cop?: Let’s give Det. Sgt. Sassi the benefit of the doubt here. It’s possible that he was denied a promotion because of discrimination. It’s possible that he never read the section of the cop manual that said it was inappropriate to seduce an informant. It’s possible that, back in 2002, that traffic violator really had it coming.
But it’s not likely. Bad cop.
So all in all, if drugs are so bad that we have to set up all these task forces and spend huge amounts of tax dollars on this bullshit "war on drugs" shouldn't it be a felony to compromise an investigation by committing a crime? If he is found guilty, is this cop going to reimburse the taxpayers for the millions of dollars in man-hours that went into building these cases that are going to get tossed now because he committed a crime?
This may seem like a relatively minor incident overall, but it is downright frightening when you consider the true gravity of the situation. This isn't about just another "bad apple" but rather symptomatic of the regular oppression the civilian population faces in this nation on a daily basis. This is a nation where our so-called protectors can hit someone with a car, and then blame the victim for it. Where a cop can commit a crime, and then prosecute the innocent for it.
It is all the more frightening when you realize that a simple traffic incident can spiral out of control so badly, that a person could wind up being thrown into solitary confinement and tortured for two years without ever going before a judge, simply on the word of one cop.
This is an absolutely chilling example of just how depraved our justice system has become, and how detrimental to public safety the law-enforcers really are.
Stephen Slevin was locked in a New Mexico solitary confinement cell for 22 months. He was never convicted of any crime. Being locked away anywhere without due process is a horrid thought to any freedom-loving American, but what this man endured goes well beyond that.
Solitary confinement alone is considered by many to be inhumane, or downright torture by some definitions. Even under the most sanitary and well-monitored standards, the effects on a person's mental state can be devastating. Mr. Slevin spent his time rocking back and forth, and even lost his desire to go free while in his Dona Ana County Jail cell. But still, what he endured went beyond being locked away and completely forgotten about by the world.
Even under solitary confment conditions, it is common practice to allow prisoner one hour per day outside of their cell. In this case, that standard was rarely adhered to, even for sanitary reasons. Denied showers, Slevin's skin became infested with fungus. Denied basic hygiene maintenance, his toenails grew so long that they wrapped around his foot. Denied medical care, he was forced to rip his own tooth from his skull.
What he endured goes far beyond what any normal person can possibly even comprehend.
All of this, based on an allegation that he was driving while intoxicated in a stolen car. It was later shown that the car belonged to a friend, and the intoxication was never proven.
In a subsequent civil lawsuit brought by Slevin and his attorneys, he was awarded $22 million dollars, which has since been reduced to $16 million in arbitration. But the money will never replace what was lost, or repair the damage done.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy there has been a big push to put armed guards, police, even troops in our schools. Personally, I don't believe that militarizing our school and turning them into prison camps any more than they are now is really the answer. Making a uniformed target for someone looking to shoot up a school is not exactly a well thought out tactic either.
But I am no anti-gunner. I believe the solution is simple. Lift the ban on school employees from exercising their 2nd Amendment rights. There is no need to hire additional resources or enact new laws, when the 2nd Amendment has been there for us since the nation was founded. There is no reason why a person who is legally permitted to own and carry a gun should not be allowed to carry it with them to work. Teachers and staff at schools should not be barred from exercising their rights, but rather encouraged.
Now, when we see indicents like this, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that police are some sort of special superhumans that make them any more qualified than the rest of us to carry a firearm.
In this particular incident, a part-time Town of Lloyd police officer and School Resource Officer for Highland High School accidentally discharged his service weapon in a school hallway.
Here is another example of how police are not perfect:
UPDATE:
What are the odds of two accidental discharges in a school on the same day? This story out of Manchester, Connecticut now where a SWAT officer was wounded in an unintentional shooting.
MANCHESTER, Conn. (AP) — The campus of Manchester Community College was locked down Wednesday after a student reported seeing a man with what she believed to be a gun in his waistband, and one of the officers involved in the response was apparently injured in an accidental shooting. -SOURCE
UDPATE 2: The officer in the Highland case has resigned. He does not face any criminal charges.
It's no secret that underground places have long offered a refuge for mankind, particularly in times of trouble. The ancient underground cities of Cappadocia are a wonderful example of the lengths man will go to in order to use the Earth for protection against danger.
But today we don't really think of underground cities as being part of our modern reality. Our houses have basements where we might hole up in case of a bad storm, maybe a tornado shelter out in the yard. Many of our cities do extend underground with utility tunnels and subway tunnels, but we don't really think of those places as underground cities. In places like London the stark utility corridors beneath the city did serve as a place of refuge from the bombs of enemies, but areas like that beneath our cities are not designed for permanent nor comfortable living.
During the Cold War some folks took to building actual bomb shelters in their basements and back yards. Larger buildings like schools and office buildings stocked more elaborate fallout shelters in their basements. Of course, the government had the most elaborate facilities dug below ground and under mountains. Thousands of subterranean nuclear missile silos were all answerable to what may be the world's most famous underground bunker.
The Cold War is over now though. The mission of NORAD still exists, but has taken on a largely different more diversified role than the bunker was originally purposed for. Nuclear missile silos have been abandoned or sold off as unique real-estate opportunities. Fallout shelters have become the relics of a bygone era, sometimes tourist attractions, but mostly used to store old furniture.
The threat of a nuclear holocaust being rained down on us from the skies above is over. The need for these underground secret and secure places appears to have passed. Or has it really?
Conspiracy theories abound of secret underground places of all sorts. Everything from new and ongoing construction, to secret bases infested with aliens, even to a theory that the Earth itself is actually hollow and an populated by a hidden civilization. Mysterious Denver Airport (VIDEO)
Hollow Earth, aliens? Well, maybe maybe not. That's a big leap, but we need less faith for other theories, especially when seeing is believing. There are rumors of a vast underground network of cities, massive storage facilities, roadways, and maybe even a supersonic underground railroad. The network is believed to span the entire continent with hubs in many major cities.
I personally have spoken with a truck driver who made numerous deliveries to a massive underground facility just outside of Albany, the state capitol of NY, which he described as being much like what we are about to see here in these videos. This was about two years ago now, and he said the facility appeared to still be under construction. He is not really the conspiracy theory sort at all, an old school hard working, simple sort of man, so I didn't really have any reason to doubt him. But of course, you can't believe everything you read on the internet, and my acquaintance did not provide me with any pictures that I could share with you. Fortunately, other truck drivers have captured glimpses of facilities like this all over the country.
This particular branch of the conspiracy theory realm is often termed "D.U.M.B.S." or Deep Underground Military Bunkers. I believe this is a bit of misnomer though. From what we see there in those very real bits of footage it there is nothing specifically military, but rather they appear to be corporate controlled facilities. That is not to say that the military is not involved at all of course, or ultimately in charge even, but the corporate influence cannot be ignored.
The Iron Mountain company is a leading example of a relationship between government and the corporate world when it comes to underground secrets. Established on the banks of the Hudson River in 1951, the company was reformed in the 1970's and now it's most famous facility the one featured in this news report.
One curious point I note though, is the difference between what we see there in the Iron Mountain video, and what we saw in the other videos. The sheer difference in size, when it comes to the dimensions of the tunnels and passageways is curious indeed. Then of course, we also have to ask why companies and/or the government are going to such expense, a hidden expense at that, for such a vast underground network. Surely all of these facilities can't be there simply to store business documents and historical artifacts.
And again, we have to consider that these facilities may be interconnected, all or most of them anyway. Numerous truck drivers have reported driving from one region of the country to another, completely underground. Frankly, I believe that much. The way they talk about it, certain details, just strikes me as credible testimony.The technological feat is impressive, but not impossible. The only reason I would really have to doubt it, is that there is no clear or obvious motivation for the power that be to go to all that trouble, unless of course they know something they aren't telling us. (Or, maybe this is just the way the uber-wealthy piss away their fortunes while the working stiff hovers on the edge of starvation in order to feed their corporate mechanisms.)
If we accept that this underground network of cities, facilities and roadways does indeed exist, then it is no stretch to accept the evidence of a massive facility under the Denver airport. The evidence of that is already strong anyway. But an airport right smack dab in the middle of the country would be ideal as a central transportation and distribution hub for goods to be transported by air, on land, and below it. Not to mention the fact too that the Denver airport is not very far from the Cheyenne Mountain facility in Colorado Springs, the central hub of U.S. military power outside of the Pentagon, and the one most likely to have command of U.S. forces after some cataclysmic event like nuclear war or perhaps an asteroid impact.
So all in all, it looks like some of the stuff that conspiracy theorists are admonished for, and called crackpots or lunatics, actually has some pretty common sense conclusions. Maybe we don't know exactly why they are doing this, but at the same time, it really doesn't seem any more far-fetched than a secret underground bunker for Congress under a famous resort.
Well, that's about it for now. Hope you enjoy the material. This is Captain Six reporting for the Underground, from the Underground, on the underground.
Instead, one officer decided to body slam the suspect to the concrete, while the other decides to use a knee to blow out the man's ribcage. And of course, no police beating would be complete without the application of the taser a few times. Even if the man had been a little unruly, a bit uncooperative, not fully understanding what was happening, there was nothing there to show he was being violent, or to warrant that level of force that we saw used against him. 
Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT is a Schedule I drug according to the Federal government and the DEA. 
