NYAG Wants to Prosecute Police Violence Cases

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@schneidermanNY
Courtesy of my friends at the new and improved Albany Project comes news that Attorney General Eric Schneiderman formally asked Governor Cuomo to transfer the investigation and prosecution of excessive police violence cases over to the AG’s office.

The problem stems from the fact that local DAs and police work hand-in-hand as colleagues, and there are questions as to whether these cases are taken seriously and prosecuted as vigorously as non-police violence cases.

DAs are already opposed to the idea.

In the wake of the gobsmackingly unreasonable and astonishing refusal by a Staten Island grand jury to indict the officers who killed Eric Garner, Governor Cuomo demanded a “soup to nuts” review of the justice system, but for some reason lawmakers who think themselves “law and order” types are resisting any such query.

 

Not just that, but in the minds of some of these mostly Republican “law and order” people, that term doesn’t apply to cop conduct. Even body cameras, additional training – not to mention the use of special prosecutors for police brutality cases – appear to be non-starters in New York State.

Now, it’s up to Governor Cuomo to decide whether to let Schneiderman’s office take excessive force cases. Albany Project isn’t hopeful,

No way he hands Schneiderman a victory, even if it means denying meaningful justice for victims of police violence.

NYCLU Sues Erie County Sheriff

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The New York Civil Liberties Union is suing the Erie County Sheriff’s Office over its use of cellphone surveillance. The Stingray device is used by law enforcement to locate and track people; it mimics a cell tower, prompting a cell phone to transmit its location and identifying information.

Although a warrant is not always needed for some surveillance, sometimes it is.

Via Slate

 

The problem isn’t just broad-based surveillance of people’s cell phone signals, but the fact that law enforcement agencies refuse to comply with Freedom of Information requests seeking data on how and how often the Stingray is used.

NYCLU is suing the Erie County Sheriff over its refusal to turn over information on its use of Stingrays, pursuant to FOIL:

“The Sheriff’s Office has spent more than $350,000 since 2008 on this surveillance equipment – it is ridiculous for them to suggest they have no paperwork or records on the matter,” said NYCLU staff attorney Mariko Hirose. “The blanket denial of our entire request, without any explanation, only underscores their wholesale disregard for the right to privacy.”

She also questioned the sheriff’s claim that the information the NYCLU is seeking could reveal criminal investigative techniques or endanger the life or safety of a person. She said the information “will enhance the public’s understanding of the sheriff’s use of Stingrays.”

The NYCLU says the surveillance devices were developed for military use and are about the size of a briefcase. It says the devices mimic cellphone towers and surreptitiously prompt cellphones in their vicinity to deliver data to them.

“Armed with Stingrays,” it says, “law enforcement can – without any assistance or consent from cellphone carriers – pinpoint a person’s location in the home, in a place of worship or in a doctor’s office, collect the phone numbers that a person has been texting and calling, and in some configurations, intercept the contents of communications.

“Stingrays also can be used to conduct mass surveillance on people in an area, whether for a protest or a lecture or a party,” it says. “Even when used to target a particular suspect, Stringrays sweep up information about innocent individuals who happen to be in the vicinity.”

Good for NYCLU. It’s not that law enforcement shouldn’t have this tool; it’s that we have a right to know how it’s used, and whether it’s being appropriately used.

Obama Channels Presidents Romney and Gingrich

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In 2012, Mitt Romney told Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin that by the end of his first Presidential term (i.e., 2016), he would get the unemployment rate “down to 6 percent, perhaps a little lower”:

HALPERIN: Would you like to be more specific about what the unemployment rate would be like at the end of your first year?
ROMNEY: I cannot predict precisely what the rate would be at the end of one year. I can tell you that over a period of four years, by a virtue of the polices that we put in place, we get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent, perhaps a little lower.

He later went on Fox News to repeat his promise, and added,

“People all across the country are saying, ‘Wow, 6 percent sounds pretty good,’”

Mitt Romney lost. So, how did the unemployment rate do under Marxist Fascist n0bummer?

Well, consider this:

1. During George W. Bush’s second term, the US saw a net loss of 671,000 jobs. So far, in President Obama’s second term, the U.S. has a net gain of 4,784,000 jobs.

2. Friday’s jobs report showed 321,000 new jobs, and 91% of them were not in health care, showing that other sectors are showing signs of growth, confidence, and improvement.

3. Here’s how employment has gone, starting with the 2008 Bush economic collapse:

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Courtesy @ddiamond

In 2012, President Newt Gingrich blamed President Obama for high gas prices, claiming that he had a plan to bring prices at the pump at or below $2.50/gallon. Just about anyone with a brain dismissed Gingrich’s promise as utter nonsense. The President has no power over global oil prices, much less the cartel of oil producing nations. The price of gasoline had climbed during the last decade with turmoil and supply disruptions arising out of the Iraq war, and was exacerbated by Hurricane Katrina, which took a huge chunk of America’s refining capacity offline. Gas prices plummeted in late 2008 / early 2009 thanks to the global economic downturn, but oil prices soon rebounded and until recently had been north of $100/bbl.

But OPEC leaders recently were unable to agree on production cuts to prop up the price of oil, and prices have plummeted – both crude and at the pump. The average price for a gallon of gas right now is reaching $2.50 nationally.

 

Of course, when you compare the national average to Buffalo, you get higher spikes locally, and much slower responses to drops in prices.

Even if you compare us to Rochester, it’s evident that Buffalo seems to be taken advantage of.

I don’t think it’s because we’re at the end of some pipeline, and it can’t be taxes. It’s something else, and it’d be nice if someone figured out what.

But if you look at the national average, Gingrich’s dopey promise is coming true. The national average for a price of a gallon of gas is close to $2.50, and that’s under President n0bama.

So, thankfully we didn’t have to do a thing – the economy has been making improvements in spite of Congressional gridlock and malfeasance, such as the 2013 shutdown. The price of gas has fallen in recent months because of things that have happened in the global marketplace, rather than by Presidential fiat.

As consumers find they pay less to fill up cars that are now significantly more fuel efficient than 20 years ago – the average MPG has jumped from 20 to 25 just since 2007 – that’s money back in their pockets and helps to stimulate other spending. American crude oil production has skyrocketed since Obama took office, thanks in large part to shale oil (not to be confused with hydrofracking, which produces natural gas).

So, more efficient cars help to lower demand, and a combination of increased domestic production, and OPEC stalemate help to keep supplies high, and even with a rebounding domestic economy, we’re seeing gas prices come down to Gingrichian levels.

The current unemployment rate is 5.8%, which outperforms what Mr. Romney promised might happen under him by 2016. December’s jobs report represented the 10th straight month of job gains surpassing 200,000.

Thanks, President Obama!

Mike Madigan’s Defamation Per Se

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An open letter to Mike Madigan, tea party activist and former candidate for Congress.

Dear Mr. Madigan:

On November 26th, you published two items to your Twitter account, reproduced and linked-to below:

Please be advised that these Tweets are patently false, misleading, and defamatory.

Specifically:

1. I am not “obsesed w” [sic] or “stalking” Kathy Weppner or any member of her family. “Stalking” is a crime in New York, and in accusing me of committing this crime, your defamation is actionable per se.

2. I did not take “her name”; i.e., I am not the person behind the @kathyweppner4ny Twitter account, nor have I started or maintained any Twitter account to parody or otherwise comment on Kathy Weppner or her campaign. More to the point, there is not a single syllable that I wrote or spoke about Kathy Weppner that was not done under my own name.

3. “Bullying”: Weppner was a candidate in an adversarial election, and under no circumstances did I “bully” her. Unless you believe that using Weppner’s own words and beliefs against her within an electoral context is “bullying”, in which case we might have a fun time examining your past pronouncements.

Furthermore, like stalking, harassment is a crime in the State of New York, and accusing me of same is also libel per se. I have not gone after Weppner’s family in any meaningful way, and I was not the person who captured images from her childrens’ apparently open Facebook accounts in order to criticize them.

I am not @kathyweppner4NY, and I have committed no crime. Although I am arguably a public person, you accused me of “taking” Weppner’s “name” via that Twitter account with no proof whatsoever of that fact.  You didn’t even bother to ask. Under the law, you made your false statement of fact on that point with actual malice; i.e., with reckless disregard to its truth or falsity.

I tried to respond on Twitter, first with anger, then with humor, but you have chosen repeatedly to ignore me, so I find myself forced to make this demand.

As such, demand is hereby made that you immediately delete the aforementioned Tweets, and issue a retraction to your followers. If not removed before December 16th, I reserve the right to take any further action I deem necessary, including, but not limited to, seeking compensatory and punitive damages.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact me directly.

(The foregoing was sent to Mr. Madigan yesterday by email and via Facebook message. I have not heard back, but he promptly blocked me on Facebook, indicating receipt.)

The United States of America is the Most Tolerant Nation in the World

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The United States of America is the most tolerant nation in the world.

  • We tolerate the highest number of homicides among industrialized nations.
  • We tolerate growing and harmful inequality.
  • We tolerate black on black crime.
  • We tolerate white on white crime.
  • We tolerate citizen on citizen crime.
  • We tolerate ignorance.
  • We tolerate racism. 
  • We tolerate violence.
  • We tolerate our crumbling infrastructure.
  • We tolerate mistreatment of veterans.
  • We tolerate poverty, and blame its victims.
  • We tolerate endless wars in Asia.
  • We tolerate sexism.
  • We tolerate female income inequality.
  • We tolerate cultural stereotypes.
  • We tolerate xenophobia.
  • We tolerate anti-Semitism.
  • We tolerate discrimination and hatred cloaked in the mantle of “religious freedom”.
  • We tolerate religious persecution.
  • We tolerate religious discrimination and violence.
  • We tolerate homophobia.
  • We tolerate rape and the rape/bro culture.
  • We tolerate everyone’s guns.
  • We tolerate outrageous and ridiculous CEO pay.
  • We tolerate homelessness.
  • We tolerate poverty.
  • We tolerate the erosion of the labor movement.
  • We tolerate the erosion of the middle class, which built this country.
  • We tolerate the deification of the super-wealthy as “job creators” who are above law and policy.
  • We tolerate people not having access to health care.
  • We tolerate our idiotic, wasteful health “insurance” system.
  • We tolerate truancy.
  • We tolerate the assault on public education.
  • We tolerate religious fanaticism.
  • We tolerate government overreach.
  • We tolerate governmental corruption.
  • We tolerate do-nothing incumbents, year after year.
  • We tolerate unlimited money in politics.
  • We tolerate hate speech and hate radio.
  • We tolerate the dictatorship of the bureaucracy.
  • We tolerate institutional reluctance to modernize and change.
  • We tolerate not being the best at things, and we tolerate not caring about it.
  • We tolerate economic and political theories long proven to be nonsense.
  • We tolerate cops killing unarmed people for minor offenses.
  • We tolerate government violence and police brutality.
  • We tolerate segregation.
  • We tolerate the privatization of essential public services.

Like I said, America is the most tolerant place in the world. We need to stop using that word as something positive.

When used in that context we mean to say, be nice to one-another. Don’t discriminate or be hateful. But that’s a given. We should replace the wishy-washy trope of “tolerance” with “kindness” or “acceptance” if not silence.

For instance, if you do a Google image search of “tolerance”, it’s replete with pictures of the “COEXIST” bumper sticker, and people being kind to others. No one is urging anyone to be tolerant of the list shown above.  “Tolerance” of terrorism, assault, or murder isn’t on the table.

We should aspire to be more than – better than – just “tolerant” of people’s differences, but embrace the good and combat the bad – together.

Stop being so damn tolerant. Start being kind and just.

#BlackLivesMatter

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Oh, hey. It’s been a banner week for cops killing unarmed black people. First a grand jury in Missouri refused to indict Darren Wilson, who shot and killed an unarmed kid last summer from 150 feet away, and yesterday a New York grand jury refused to indict Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who killed an unarmed Eric Garner on Staten Island.

Let’s not forget the 12 year-old who was “open-carrying” a pellet gun, who was shot by a cop in Cleveland before he could so much as say, “stop” or “hands up”.

Unlike the case of Michael Brown, which raised much uncertainty due to the he said / they said nature of the evidence, the homicide of Eric Garner was captured on video.

Here it is.

I heard some people on the radio Wednesday talking about how Garner had a long rap sheet.

So?

Garner was a city employee – he was a horticulturalist for the city. His rap sheet wasn’t for anything violent. It was for selling loose cigarettes and vehicle and traffic law issues. He was married with 6 kids. He was a man. He was a human being. He wasn’t a thug or any other epithet you can muster.

Garner was arrested while standing on a sidewalk. Seriously, that’s something you get arrested for? That’s not a ticket? Anyhow, Garner was standing on the sidewalk when police approached him, and he said, “I was just minding my own business. Every time you see me you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today!” After the cops tried to subdue Garner, and after he told the cop holding him in an illegal chokehold that he couldn’t breathe, Garner died.

Died. He died because he was standing on a sidewalk, and cops thought he might be selling loose cigarettes.

The video shows the whole thing.

How about now? Now is it ok with you if black people are angry and upset? Tell me more about how black people are supposed to trust and cooperate with law enforcement. Don’t try and change the subject to “black on black crime” this time – it was irrelevant then, and it’s irrelevant now. This isn’t about a neighborhood beef – this is about violence taking a life under color of law; this is a fundamental civil rights issue.

You want to go on Facebook or elsewhere and bitch about how racism is over, or how there was no racism before Kenyan Muslim Usurper n0bummer got into office?

Here are white people pointing assault rifles at federal agents. None of them went to jail, no one was arrested, no one was shot and killed on sight.

Now, I don’t know whether the cops in New York intended to kill – much less harm – Eric Garner, but that’s what happened. Cops are allowed to use reasonable force to do what they need to do – protect themselves, protect others, or subdue and arrest a suspect. Was the chokehold in this instance “reasonable force”? Could some other method have been employed to subdue and arrest this man who was standing on the sidewalk? This is why we have trials. But if a grand jury doesn’t bring an indictment, you won’t have a criminal proceeding.

And even when you do have a criminal proceeding against a cop who needlessly kicked a handcuffed, prone suspect repeatedly in the head, the cop gets away with a slap on the wrist. In Buffalo.

Should Garner have simply gone with the cops and not resisted? Sure, that would have been swell, too. But he resisted, so the police had the right to use reasonable force to arrest him. They did not have the right to end his life, however.

Don’t touch me, please. I can’t breathe.

A trial. That’s all that was on the table – arresting the officer and requiring that he answer for this homicide. Grand juries – secret law enforcement proceedings – are not where these things should be adjudicated.

There’s some consolation in the fact that the Justice Department is looking into this case, and the family will bring a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the cop and the city. But none of this can undo something that never should have happened.

Here’s the kicker – unlike high school graduate Michael Brown, who had enrolled in college – Garner couldn’t be accused of being violent or belligerent. In fact, just moments before he was killed, he had broken up a fight. He was a peacemaker. (By the way, even if it’s true that Michael Brown had cursed at a cop, it’s not a crime to curse at a cop.) From the Daily News,

But Esaw Garner and other family members said it was a trumped up claim.

“They’re covering their asses, he was breaking up a fight. They harassed and harassed my husband until they killed him,” she said. Garner’s family said he didn’t have any cigarettes on him or in his car at the time of his death.

She said she pleaded with police at the hospital to tell her what happened, but they brushed her off.

“They wouldn’t tell me anything,” she said.

I don’t think the cop on Staten Island was racist, and I don’t think he killed Eric Garner because he was black. But black lives matter, and the system should work for you no matter what your skin color.

The quip about grand juries being able to indict a ham sandwich has to do with the fact that the grand jury process is controlled completely by the District Attorney – if they wanted an indictment, you bet your ass they’d have gotten it. People in New York and Missouri are scratching their heads, wondering why these particular homicides don’t even merit a trial.

Just a trial.

The police are not above the law. A little justice isn’t too much to ask, is it?

BREAKING: Erie County Legislature Does its Job

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Logo_ErieCo_tpKudos to the members of the Erie County Legislature for acting like grown-ups (for the most part), and reasonably negotiating a 2015 budget that will lower the tax rate to under $5.00/$1,000 of assessed value, and ensuring that cultural and library funding remains in place.

The Republican majority trimmed about $2 million from County Executive Mark Poloncarz’s original budget proposal, and $300,000 was added to protect culturals.

There was some acrimony at the start of the session, with the Democratic minority complaining that the Republicans had not provided a breakdown of its proposals to them in advance. The session likely took longer than it needed to because of that, but in the end the budget was passed unanimously.

I’m still of the opinion that county government, whose main job is to act as a pass-through for state funding, is superfluous and unnecessary.  Abolishing county government is something I’ve been talking about since the budget crisis from the last decade, but it’s no less relevant now. The vast majority of what the legislature does is mandated and ministerial. Do we need this entire stratum of government to debate the small percentage of stuff that’s discretionary?

Protests and Riots, Same as it Ever Was

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In the week since a Missouri grand jury returned no indictment against Darren Wilson, the killer of Michael Brown, a lot of whitesplaining has taken place, mostly from non-lawyers who deliberately or ignorantly misapprehend what a grand jury is and how it works. That’s before we get to Darren Wilson’s unvetted story.

Here are three facts: there was no trial, there was no verdict, and Darren Wilson was not found innocent, much less “not guilty”.

In that time, there have been protests both peaceful and violent, and I’ve seen many commentators dismiss the rioters as “animals” and “thugs”, or worse.

Rioting, however, doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

From the Buffalonian, via Reddit, here is a summary explaining why African-Americans on Buffalo’s East Side rioted in the summer of 1967.

A preliminary report

Looking at and considering the reasons why people riot isn’t the same as excusing it or condoning it. But if we want to stop violence like that from happening again, perhaps we – as a society – could consider what’s working, what isn’t, and why the problems identified in 1967 persist so pervasively to this day.

The Ferguson riots didn’t happen in a vacuum. It doesn’t matter anyway, because even when African-Americans have the audacity to protest peacefully – whether in Buffalo, Los Angeles, or St. Louis – there will be white people around to remind them that they’re being uppity, and that it’s not at all their place.

Which is it? That they should protest peacefully, or that they should STFU and not protest at all because a “jury” reached a “verdict” that Wilson was “not guilty”?

People in Ferguson were angry there won’t be a trial. Courtesy of PBS Newshour, here is why there should have been a trial. Not a guilty verdict – just a trial.

Maybe that’s why people in Ferguson reacted violently – years’ worth of frustration, sparked by apparent and perceived injustice.

table-finalfinalup4

Click to enlarge

 

Dino Fudoli: Leadership

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dfThis is an astonishing interview from an elected official, where he talks over the anchors, gets upset, and calls everyone who got stuck in the Snowvember storm “irresponsible”.

The first thing you’ll notice is that Dino Fudoli talks really, really fast. The next thing you’ll notice is the astonishing content of what he has to say.

LET THE FREE MARKET MELT THE SNOW!

But seriously, this is what you get when you elect someone to government who thinks that government is “the enemy“.

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