Dominic Holden, who works at Seattle’s alt-weekly The Stranger, had an unpleasant run-in with some local cops and isn’t going to take it: […] When the US Department of Justice alleged that the Seattle Police Department was routinely using excessive force, federal prosecutors stressed in their 2011 report that officers were escalating ordinary interactions into …
Criminal Justice
“Pretty Good Job”
More details on the SOD program Anne Laurie mentioned yesterday, from Reuters: A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents …
Monday Evening Open Thread: Citizens Against Sex Toys
John Dolan at NSFWCorp interviews Ian “David Koch” Murphy about his recent incarceration: Ian Murphy, notorious reporter and artist for The Buffalo Beast, just got out of the Erie County jail after being sentenced to 15 days for “disturbing a religious service,” the prosecutor’s dubious term for disorderly conduct/obscenity at an anti-gay demonstration. His real …
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SOD Us All
Why I subscribe to the Washington Post, despite its flaws. Brian Fung, “The NSA is giving your phone records to the DEA. And the DEA is covering it up.” A day after we learned of a draining turf battle between the NSA and other law enforcement agencies over bulk surveillance data, it now appears that …
In Fairness, It Was a Really Scary Fawn
Give these guys powerful weapons and armored vehicles and kevlar and body armor, and they are going to want to use it. And so they do: WISN 12 News investigates an operation raising questions about the use of government resources and the state policy that meant a death sentence for a fawn. “It was like …
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I Swear It Was in Self Defense
Bad Sheriffs are everywhere. In Baton Rouge (via Atrios): According to a special report from theBaton Rouge Advocate, the Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office is conducting stings to find men willing to have consensual gay sex and arresting them for crimes against nature. No money is discussed in these exchanges; the men are being targeted and humiliated …
Later Night Open Thread: In This Week’s ‘Worst Person’ Competition…
To cap the recent discussion of ‘people who should never be put in a position to abuse the authority they crave’, a snippet from NYMag: “Pepper spraying a bunch of seated student protesters might turn out to be one of the best career decisions John Pike ever made, despite the fact that the former University …
Later Night Open Thread: In This Week’s ‘Worst Person’ Competition…Post + Comments (56)