Starvin Larry

New York, NY — A report by the Police Reform Organizing Project (PROP) was released Thursday touching on 117 accounts of alleged NYPD disrespect and abuse.

Detailed in this report were trumped-up and ridiculous arrests over non-crimes, including the “crime” of “manspreading.”

Manspreading, or man-sitting, is the practice of sitting in public transport with legs wide apart, thereby covering more than one seat.

The act of holding your legs open so wide that they extend in front of other seats is particularly uncouth. But is it an arrestable offense?

According to the report, the NYPD have engaged in heavy-handed policing by using manspreading to arrest people for the transit rule which bars the occupation of more than one seat.

According to the Prop report:

On a recent visit to the arraignment part in Brooklyn’s criminal court, PROP volunteers observed that police officers had arrested two Latino men on the charge of “man spreading” on the subway, presumably because they were taking up more than one seat and therefore inconveniencing other riders. Before issuing an [adjournment contemplating dismissal] for both men, the judge expressed her skepticism about the charge because of the time of the arrests: “12:11AM, I can’t believe there were many people on the subway.”

The judge dismissed the charges outright, but that is not always the case.

Gothamist reports:

Manspreading arrests are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to numbers-driven policing in the subway system, which often takes place in the middle of the night, according to Gangi. Underground is where Broken Windows champion and police commissioner Bill Bratton got his start at the NYPD as transit chief, and fare evasion consistently ranks among the most common types of misdemeanor arrests. But the maddening tickets and criminal charges recounted in the PROP report come in many shapes and sizes, for behavior like puttinga foot on a subway seat or walking between cars (always illegal, whether or not you’re bothering anybody). Gangi said that he has no concrete proof that quotas exist, but that it’s the only explanation for the volume of questionable cases he sees coming through court.

One of the vignettes from the PROP’s report details this quota system of abuse.

A police officer issued a summons to a man for walking between the cars of a stopped subway train. The officer apologized: “I’m sorry, but it’s the 26th of the month and I have to make my quota.”

To sum up the lack of logic applied in the aforementioned account, this officer was scared of getting reprimanded for not issuing enough citations for victimless crimes. So, in an effort to avoid the grief from his bosses, he issued a piece of paper which translates into the threat of violence for non-payment to a man who had not caused harm to anyone.

Does this make sense?

Perhaps one of the most horrifying accounts in the PROP report was of an African-American man who was kidnapped and brought to a hospital for 2 days to search his body for drugs.

An African-American man was walking home with a bag of dog food in Brooklyn when three plainclothes officers grabbed him, accused him of swallowing drugs, and tackled him. After a strip search in the precinct and a series of forced and invasive medical tests over two days at Interfaith Hospital, no contraband was found. The hospital billed him $9,500 for its services.

Even if this man would’ve had drugs on him, which he did not, the only real criminals in this situation were the police officers. They assaulted a man, kidnapped him, deprived him of his freedom, violated the inside of his body, and charged him for this, all to search for a substance that their bosses tell them is “illegal.” This man had harmed no one.

It is no question, criminals do not like the police. But to stop critical thought at this point, is entirely irresponsible.

Waco, TX — If there is anything we know about the Waco biker brawl that occurred earlier this month, it’s that the public is largely in the dark about what actually went on that day.

The original narrative put out by the Mainstream Media stated a fight broke out at the Twin Peaks and spilled into a parking lot. Police said that the bikers began shooting at each other and then at the police, who were forced to return fire.

However, there is another side to this story which few people have heard.

According to the website, The Aging Rebel, 

The shove in the bathroom became a scuffle in the restaurant. When about 30 Bandidos, Cossacks, Scimitars and other bikers spilled into the parking between the Twin peaks and the Don Carlos Mexican restaurant next door, the police were waiting for them. The scuffle became a knife fight and several men were stabbed. When one of the combatants produced a gun the Swat team opened fire with automatic weapons. Multiple sources have told The Aging Rebel that all of the dead were killed by police.

One woman, who goes by the name “Sadness,” explained how her loved one, Jake, was gunned down by police for doing nothing wrong.

Jake was the one in a pale yellow sleeveless tshirt, lying on the bed of a truck, being given CPR by his friends, in some media pictures. He had been sitting, after lunch, talking with his friends, when he heard a scuffle start. He walked about 40ft, just around a corner, to see what the skirmish was about, and that’s when he was shot in the neck and killed. He had no gun. He had never owned a gun. He hated guns. He had no criminal record. He’d had the same job for almost 20 years. And he hated drugs (but he did love beer). It’s killing me to see all these guys painted as violent criminals and losers. That just isn’t the case.

“Jake” can bee seen receiving CPR from a biker in the back of a pickup truck in the image below.

image: http://tftppull.freethoughtllc.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/jake-killed.jpg

According to a U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives study, first reported by the Intercept, biker gangs have recruited scores of employees of federal, state and local governments, police and firefighters, National Guardsmen and reservists, some of them with government security clearances, to help them “maim and murder” in support of their “insatiable appetite for dominance.”

The Waco Tribune also reported on the U.S. military ties to the Bandidos and other biker gangs which were detailed in a U.S. Justice Department report published last year. The report concluded the gangs were using “active-duty military personnel and U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) contractors and employees to spread their tentacles across the United States.”

Knowing the above two details, the notion that police could have been involved in deliberately killing bikers, is not too far fetched.

Since the massacre, police have issued statements claiming that bikers are planning attacks on Texas officers that would include “Molotov cocktails, grenades, firearms” and even “running over officers.” Fortunately, this alleged threat has failed to materialize.

What has come to light however, is the fact that dozens of bikers, who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time are being held on bonds deliberately inflated to punitive levels; an utterly unconstitutional move by local officials.
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/bikers-plan-massive-protest-dozens-innocent-bikers-waco-jail-held-1-million-bonds/#dFvLUdaYhtAz98Sp.99