Criminal Justice

Rocks Are Not Guns: #AskJoseAntonio

Tucson, AZ - President Donald Trump said members of the U.S. military sent to the southern border to keep out thousands in a migrant caravan would "fight back" and “anybody throwing rocks or stones at the military service members will be considered to be using a firearm.” His statements Thursday November 1 are unfolding amidst the courtroom proceedings of the second federal trial of a border patrol officer Lonnie Swartz who shot into Mexico through the border wall in Nogales, Arizona/Sonora, killing 16-year old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez on October 10, 2012.

One Year After, Portland Still Protests Murder Of Quanice Hayes

February 12, 2018 pdx law grrrl, Twitter. Resist! Criminal Justice, killed by police, Violence

On February 9, 2017 a Portland police officer shot & killed 17-year-old Quanice Hayes. After Quanice was killed cops found a toy gun. Not a single police officer told the grand jury that they saw a gun before Quanice was shot. Nevertheless, the grand jury didn’t indict. This last week, Quanice Hayes’ family filed notice that they will sue the city and the Portland Police Bureau officers involved in Quanice’s death.

Newsletter: Dissent Under Attack By Government & Corporations

November 18, 2017 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Criminal Justice, Dissent, Inauguration Day, Media, Police violence, Social Media, Trump

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers. It is often hard to tell how close popular movements are to success or whether they are even a threat to the status quo power structure. Despite vigorous protests, it is common to worry whether or not movements are having an impact. One tell-tale sign is when government and big business interests take action to stop or silence a movement. These days, there is a lot of push back against resistance movements in the United States. While it may be riskier for us when they fight back, it is a positive sign and means that the movement needs to escalate, build power and increase its pressure.

DA Drops Charges Against 3 In Confederate Monument Case

November 11, 2017 Virginia Bridges and Joe Johnson, www.heraldsun.com Resist! Confederacy, Criminal Justice, Racism

By Virginia Bridges and Joe Johnson for The Herald Sun. Durham County District Attorney Roger Echols said Thursday he has dropped charges against some of the dozen people charged with toppling a Confederate monument in downtown Durham in August. Echols said he signed the dismissals against three of the 12 people charged in the Aug. 14 toppling. “There was no actual visual evidence or any type of evidence that they would have participated in the physical toppling or pulling down of the property,” Echols said.

Exposed: Brutal FBI Tactics To Recruit Informants

October 15, 2017 Trevor Aaronson, www.theintercept.com Educate! Criminal Justice, FBI, Immigrant Rights, Informants

By Trevor Aaronson for The Intercept. Florida - A bailiff pushed Jabar Ali Refaie’s wheelchair into a federal courtroom in Tampa, Florida, on September 20. Dressed in an orange jumpsuit and looking weak from not having had the drugs he takes to treat his multiple sclerosis, the 37-year-old Refaie was here for a bond hearing after being indicted on felony charges that allege he sold counterfeit BMW logos and diagnostic software on eBay. Refaie’s case seemed by appearances to be about a lot more than selling shady car parts on the internet. That much was obvious from Assistant U.S. Attorney Carlton C. Gammons’s stiff bond requests — $25,000, a GPS monitoring device, the surrender of his passport, and the removal of all firearms from his residence — as well as the six U.S. Homeland Security agents who packed into the courtroom for Refaie’s hearing.

San Francisco, Oakland Sue Oil Giant Over Climate Change

September 21, 2017 Staff, www.insideclimatenews.org Resist! Climate Change, Criminal Justice, Oil and Gas

By Inside Climate News. San Francisco and Oakland sued five major oil companies in the state courts on Wednesday in the latest attempts to hold fossil fuel producers accountable for the effects of climate change. The parallel lawsuits call for the companies to pay what could become billions of dollars into a fund for the coastal infrastructure necessary to protect property and neighborhoods against sea level rise in the sister cities, which face each other across San Francisco Bay. The moves follow similar lawsuits filed against 37 fossil fuel companies earlier this summer by three other coastal California communities at risk from sea level rise.

Protester: ‘Is This My Last Free Birthday?’

June 11, 2017 Patrick Strickland, www.aljazeera.com Resist! Black Bloc, Criminal Justice, Inauguration Day, Trump

By Patrick Strickland for Al Jazeera. Washington, DC - When Olivia Alsip travelled to the capital to protest against the inauguration of right-wing US President Donald Trump, she didn't imagine she would end the day behind bars and later face up to 80 years in prison. Thousands of people journeyed from across the US to Washington, DC, to protest on the first day of Trump's presidency, January 20. During the swearing-in, Alsip was among the more than 230 protesters arrested when officers from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) blocked off a large area and hauled off nearly everyone. "I am wondering if my 24th birthday next week will be my last as a free person," she says by telephone from Chicago. "I've never in my life had such a painful and stressful experience. There are no words to convey the severity of this."

Convicted For Protesting Jeff Sessions Is No Laughing Matter

May 7, 2017 Tighe Barry, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Criminal Justice, DOJ, Free Speech, Government

By Tighe Barry. In the recent past, frivolous charges like these would have been thrown out of court. But, Trump and his cronies in the Justice Department are going out of their way to crackdown on dissent, especially in the form of nonviolent protest. Republican officials are jumping on Trump’s bigoted bandwagon to restrict liberties at the local, state and national level. We see laws being passed in over a dozen states to make protesting a crime, while at the same time, North Dakota has passed a law where running over a protester is not a crime. We see state laws being passed to criminalize campaigns that support Palestinian rights. We see that over 200 people who protested Trump's inauguration have been prosecuted and charged with ridiculous offenses, such as felony rioting charges. We should see our Justice Department prosecuting real criminals, like those responsible for war, not convicting people for laughing in Congress. Unless we rise up and demand our first amendment right to dissent, then the joke will be on the American people. And that is no laughing matter.

FBI Has Already Gathered Millions Of ‘Faceprints’ for Facial Recognition

March 26, 2017 Derrick Broze, www.activistpost.com Educate! Courts, Criminal Justice, Facial Recognition, FBI, Mass Surveillance

By Derrick Broze for Activist Post. A House Committee questioned Kimberly Del Greco, Deputy Assistant Director at the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, about why the bureau broke the law by failing to file a privacy impact statement acknowledging the collection of millions of Americans’ faces for the agency’s new biometric identification system. The FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) system is made up of fingerprints, iris scans, faceprints, and other facial recognition data. The NGI organizes Americans’ biometric data into a single file that includes personal and biographic data like name, home address, ID number, immigration status, age, race, etc. The Committee reports that nearly half of all adult Americans’ photographs are in the database. The 2013 U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there are over 242 million adults living in the U.S. If the Committee’s numbers are correct, over 121 million adults are in the FBI’s database. Other revelations include that 18 states have a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the FBI to share photos with the federal government, including from state departments of motor vehicles (DMV).

Journalists & Dissent Under Attack In The United States

January 25, 2017 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Black Bloc, Criminal Justice, Inauguration, Media, Resist J20

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance. When we discussed these specific arrests with Chris Hedges over email his view was "This is just the start." On our radio show, Hedges described how cowering the media is a key part of silencing dissent. If the media is not there to cover the mistreatment of protesters, then law enforcement will become even more abusive. Reporters Without Borders described the media as "Public Enemy Number One for the Trump administration," writing it is "alarmed by the new administration’s repeated attacks on the media and blatant disregard for facts in the first three days of Donald Trump’s presidency. . . In the first 72 hours since the 45th President of the United States took his oath of office, his administration has executed a coordinated attack on the media and demonstrated a clear disregard for facts." Margaux Ewen, Advocacy and Communications Director for RSF North America, said: It is clear that Trump views the media as his number one enemy and is taking every single opportunity to try to weaken their credibility.

Changing Bail Policy For Misdemeanors Isn’t Enough

January 15, 2017 Jarvis DeBerry, www.nola.com Create! Bail, Courts, Criminal Justice

By Jarvis DeBerry for The Times-Picayune. If ours is a country where people are presumed innocent until they're proved guilty, then we shouldn't demand that criminal suspects dig into their pockets to get out of jail before they are tried. If we are legitimately afraid that some suspects are a threat to the public, then we shouldn't be comfortable with them getting out before trial no matter how much money they can pay. In March, Loyola law professor Bill Quigley wrote about two Texas church ladies who spent almost a week in jail in New Iberia on the suspicion that they pilfered two hot dogs, milkshakes and an Icee from a convenience store. Even though they drove the 400 miles from Dallas to plead not guilty and present receipts they said proved their innocence, the judge decided that because they were from out of town, he needed to set bail to guarantee their appearance. He expected the women to come up with $1,740 each. They stayed in jail until an attorney in town heard about their plight and paid for their release.

Verdict In Montrose 9 Necessity Defense Trial: Guilty!

December 3, 2016 Resist Spectra, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Criminal Justice, Oil and Gas, Pipelines, Spectra

By Resist Spectra. Cortlandt, NY — Four months after conclusion of the trial, today Judge Daniel McCarthy found the “Montrose 9” guilty of disorderly conduct for blocking traf c in Cortlandt Town Court. The “Montrose 9,” local residents and environmental advocates who were arrested for blocking access to a ware yard in Montrose to halt construction of Spectra Energy’s AIM pipeline on November 9, 2015, claimed that their actions were necessary to prevent a greater harm. At the Press Conference after Judge McCarthy's verdict, Defense Counsel, Martin Stolar, a prominent social justice attorney, said “I am extremely disappointed with respect to the necessity defense, which seems so obviously true. We will take it up on appeal. They (the defendants) are heroes, not criminals.”

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio Officially Charged With Criminal Contempt

October 27, 2016 Megan Cassidy, www.azcentral.com Resist! Criminal Justice, Racism

By Megan Cassidy for The Republic - With a federal judge's signature on a proposed order initially submitted by prosecutors Oct. 17, the deal is sealed: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is criminally charged with federal contempt of court. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was officially charged Tuesday with criminal contempt of court when a federal judge affixed her signature, a formality that throws the lawman’s political and personal future into a level of crisis never before seen in his 23 years in office.

Dejuan Yourse Arrested For Sitting On His Porch

October 2, 2016 Carla Herreria, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Accountability, Criminal Justice, Police abuse, Racism

By Carla Herreria for Huffington Post. City council members in Greensboro, North Carolina voted this week to strip the law enforcement credentials of a police officer who is accused of violently arresting a man sitting on his porch after body camera footage of the arrest was made public. The council voted unanimously Monday to permanently sanction Officer Travis Cole for using excessive force during the June arrest. The body camera footage shows Cole roughly throwing Dejuan Yourse to the floor of the porch and punching him as Yourse waited for his mom to come home and let him into the house, according to local news WREG. The council pushed for criminal charges against Cole, but the district attorney refused, saying he wouldn’t “rehash the same evidence,” the Greensboro News & Record reported.

Even Nixon Let Out More Prisoners Than Obama

August 28, 2016 Meagan Day, www.timeline.com Create! Commutations, Criminal Justice, Obama, Pardons, Prisons

By Meagan Day for Timeline. Throughout his tenure, President Obama’s hesitation to use his executive pardon power has left critics scratching their heads. He granted zero clemencies during the first two years of his first term — except for Thanksgiving turkeys, of course — and the numbers have been in the low double digits every year since. But recently Obama picked up the pace, commuting the sentences of 214 federal inmates. All of them were non-violent drug offenders, sending a clear message to the legislative branch. But Obama has released for fewer prisoners than many presidents, including Richard Nixon. Even if Obama grants a slew of commutations here at the end of his presidency, it will hardly make a dent in the number of inmates that have been stuffed into federal prison since the beginning of the tough-on-crime era.

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