Starvin Larry

3% is way too optimistic.

A new report has revealed a disturbing set of tactics used in the pursuit of domestic terrorism in the USA. Among the findings was the fact that the FBI directly and repeatedly involves itself in planning a large percentage of foiled terror plots — often by convincing impressionable or mentally disabled people to join FBI plots, then arresting them.

Human Rights Watch published the 214-page report, titled “Illusion of Justice: Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions.” It documents a number of cases which the group describes as being marred by overly-aggressive prosecution, entrapment, and draconian treatment of prisoners.

“Americans have been told that their government is keeping them safe by preventing and prosecuting terrorism inside the U.S.,” said Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. “But take a closer look, and you realize that many of these people would never have committed a crime if not for law enforcement encouraging, pressuring, and sometimes paying them to commit terrorist acts.”

Post-9/11 anti-terrorism investigations have often utilized secret evidence, anonymous juries, extensive pretrial incarceration, and reached convictions for allegations significantly removed from actual plots, the report shows.

While noting that some terror plots are genuine, the report contends that “in some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act.”

This startling phenomenon occurs when the FBI uses its confidential informants — paid assets of the bureau — to incubate fake terror plots and lead individuals to act in ways that will lead to their arrest. There are about 15,000 paid informants employed by the FBI (2008 estimate). These assets played an “active role” in setting up sting operations to arrest suspects in fake terror plots in roughly 30% of terrorism investigations since 2001.

When approaching designated individuals, FBI actors would often make comments on “politically sensitive” subjects “that appeared designed to inflame the targets.” If the targets’ “opinions were deemed sufficiently troubling,” the FBI would often move forward with staging an event and enticing the target to play a role.

One such operative joined a mosque in a downtrodden community in Bronx County, NY. Bearing expensive gifts and touting radical opinions, he stood out amongst other locals; many living in boarded-up houses, and suffering from addictions, poverty, and high rates of crime. In the months that followed, the FBI operative meticulously planned every aspect of a completely fake scheme, promoting it to several black Muslim men he met at the mosque. The FBI operative even went so far as to offer one man $250,000 to participate. Ultimately, the sting operation netted 4 “terrorists” who each received 25-year prison sentences.

Read the whole thing  Here

Since Jan. 1, 2015, police in the United States have killed a staggering 745 people.

According to statistics provided to Mic by research collective Mapping Police Violence, American police are on track to kill around 1,200 people in 2015 if the slayings continue at the same pace through the remainder of the year.

The map below shows how many individuals have died in each of the 50 states and D.C. While there’s a clear correlation between the number of officer-involved homicides and the population size, a few states stand out as having extremely high numbers of deaths.

Read the rest Here

San Jose councilman wants to “possibly deter thieves from coming into our city.”

San Jose, California, America’s 10^th largest city, isn’t just content to put license plate readers on police cars anymore—rather, it now wants to deputize garbage trucks to be an additional tool in its ongoing surveillance.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, the mayor and one city councilman put forward a new proposal Wednesday that would allow sanitation vehicles to use the scanning devices and feed the data automatically to city police.

“We can cover every street at least once a week and possibly deter thieves from coming into our city,” Councilman Johnny Khamis told the paper.

If passed, the city would likely become the first in the country to expand the law enforcement tool to another public entity besides parking enforcement.

Currently, only six San Jose Police Department cars currently have license plate readers (LPRs), but there are plans to acquire two more to cover this city of over one million people.

By contrast, the nearby city of Oakland, California, with a population of 390,000, has 33 LPRs mounted on police vehicles.

In March 2015, Ars obtained the Oakland Police Department’s 4.6 million reads of over 1.1 million unique plates, which were gathered between December 23, 2010 and May 31, 2014, as part of a public records request. The dataset showed precisely how revelatory such information can be.

The council member justified the use of LPRs with a refrain common among proponents of the technology—that people driving on public roads have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

“You’re not expecting privacy on a public street,” he added.

But, aware that privacy advocates would be scrutinizing how the data was going to be collected, he also noted the city would “talk to the [American Civil Liberties Union] before we do anything.”

Source

The weekly newspaper Texas Lawyer reported today that all 177 persons arrested after the Twin Peaks Massacre in Waco, Texas last May 17 are likely to either be indicted or cleared by a grand jury that might not meet for another two months. All of the accused have been charged with engaging in organized criminal activity.

More than a dozen of the accused had hoped to have the blatantly spurious charges against them dismissed and their good names cleared by compelling state authorities to present evidence against them at so-called examining trials. The first of those trials was held Tuesday before a visiting judge named James Morgan. In what turned out to be a bogus proceeding, the judge ruled that there was probable cause to arrest a married couple named William and Morgan English because both wore a small tab on the front of their vests that read “I Support The Fat Mexican.” The phrase is a reference to the Bandidos Motorcycle Club which is the preeminent motorcycle club in Texas.

Examining Trials Cancelled

Other defendants began cancelling their examining trials almost immediately. Examining trials scheduled yesterday for defendants Daniel Pesina of San Antonio and John Robert Wilson of Waco were cancelled yesterday morning.

According to Texas Lawyer correspondent Miriam Rozen. “Two separate grand juries will conduct investigations into the shootings.” One jury will decide the fates of the 177 civilians who were taken into custody after the worst incident of biker violence in American History. The other grand jury, which seems to be already meeting, “will investigate police officer use of deadly force.”

McLennan County District Attorney Abelino “Abel” Reyna discussed his plan to use two grand juries in a letter to Sam Bassett who is the president of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.

Reyna

Basset wrote Reyna after it was announced that Waco detective James Head had been named foreman of the presently convened grand jury.

“While we express no opinion as to detective James Head’s personal ethics or integrity,” Basset wrote, “we are greatly concerned that this grand jury should under no circumstances be the grand jury that considers indictments in the biker cases, especially since there are reports that he had some involvement in the investigatory process. TCDLA urges you to consider for this case a special grand jury that contains no members of law enforcement who are involved in the biker cases.”

Read the rest at The Aging Rebel