Posts Tagged ‘abuse of power’

Denver: USPS Surveillance Cams Capture License Plates, Faces

Posted: March 12, 2015 by gamegetterII in Police state USSA
Tags: , , , , , ,
1

Photo by: Jonathan McIntosh

Around Thanksgiving of 2014, a US Postal Service customer noticed something odd: surveillance cameras outside a local Golden, Colorado post office that were aimed to capture vehicle license plates and the faces of customers exiting the building.

Just recently, a Denver Fox TV affiliate confirmed the presence of these surveillance cameras in an investigative report. Although the US Postal Inspection Service claimed that they were for law enforcement and security, there were no surveillance cameras that captured activities at the employee entrance or loading dock at the building.

Pamela Durkee, a U.S. Postal Inspector explained in an email to FOX31, “(We) do not engage in routine or random surveillance. Cameras are deployed for law enforcement or security purposes, which may include the security of our facilities, the safety of our customers and employees, or for criminal investigations. Employees of the Postal Inspection Service are sworn to uphold the United States Constitution, including protecting the privacy of the American public.”

But according to Lee Tian, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, these cameras violate the spirit of the Constitution.  “Part of being a responsible, constitutional government is explaining why it is doing surveillance on its citizens,” Tian said. “The government should not be collecting this kind of sensitive information. And it is sensitive! It’s about your relationships, your associations with other people, which can be friendship or political or religious. The idea that we give up that privacy simply because we use the U.S. mail is, I think, a silly idea.”

Tian continues: “The idea that they [law enforcement] would be able to keep that information forever and search through it whenever they want to – that seems very, very wrong to us because it means you’ll be able to accumulate over time a lot of innocent peoples’ information and then use it in the kinds of ways that would not be overseen by any kind of court or independent third party.”

ACTION ALERT! —————————–

Want to help a Forward Observer project?  Then we need photos and locations of these types of surveillance cameras at post offices around you.  Help us create a map of known locations where surveillance cameras capture the license plates and/or faces of innocent post office customers.  Send in your information to: USPS (at) readfomag (dot) com!

The CIA is giving its surveillance tech to US law enforcement

Posted: March 11, 2015 by gamegetterII in Police state USSA
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

Las Cruces Air

The Justice Department’s newest electronic dragnet–plane-mounted “dirtboxes” that can slurp thousands of cellular phone ID’s from the air — was originally developed by the CIA to hunt terrorists in the Middle East, The Wall Street Journal reports. Now however, it’s being used domestically to track American citizens. That’s not good.

According to a new report from the WSJ, the US Marshals Service, with assistance from both the CIA and Boeing, developed these Cessna-mounted devices. They are electronic sniffers that mimic cellular tower signals to incite any cellular telephone within range to broadcast its identifying registration information. It’s essentially an aerial man-in-the-middle attack and one that has cost US taxpayers more than $100 million to create. With this information, US Marshals can effectively locate, identify, and lock on to specific cell phones — out of a sample population of thousands or even tens of thousands of devices — to within an accuracy of just three yards. What’s more, once the suspect phone is found, Marshals can then listen in on any calls originating from it. According to the WSJ, these devices have been in operation since 2007, mounted on Cessna aircraft flying out of five metropolitan airfields throughout the US and can access a majority of the US population.

This isn’t the first time that this technology has been put to use by US officials, mind you. Dirtbox technology first debuted in the Middle East where it was utilized in the hunt for terrorists in both Afghanistan and Iraq. However, this new program marks a troubling collaboration between domestic law enforcement and the nation spy agency that blurs a very important operational distinction between the two agencies.

That is, the CIA is an outward-looking agency; its purpose is to gather information from abroad regarding external threats to national security. The US Marshals (and the DOJ in general), instead is tasked with enforcing federal law here in the States. To provide the DOJ with more than a million dollars worth of equipment designed specifically to hunt people that aren’t protected by the Constitution and then allow federal officials to listen in on calls may conform to the letter of the law — as both the CIA and DOJ have asserted to the WSJ — but it certainly doesn’t conform to the spirit. And it could very well lead to further and more aggressive domestic surveillance efforts in the future.

Both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union have already filed FOIA requests regarding the program and have requested “additional information about the Department of Justice’s and Department of Homeland Security’s acquisition, possession, and use of cell site simulators deployed on aircraft” ahead of any further legal action.

We’ve already seen that the Feds have very few qualms about utilizing digital dragnets like PRISM. This Dirtbox technology appears to signal a newfound readiness to apply these overreaching information gathering practices to not just our online lives but to our mobile devices as well.

Source  http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/10/the-cia-is-giving-its-surveillance-tech-to-us-law-enforcement/

How DNA Is Turning Us Into a Nation of Suspects, by John W. Whitehead

Posted: March 10, 2015 by gamegetterII in Police state USSA
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

 

Orwell’s Big Brother on ‘roids

Moreover, despite the insistence by government agents that DNA is infallible, New York Times reporter Andrew Pollack makes a clear and convincing case that DNA evidence can, in fact, be fabricated. Israeli scientists “fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva,” stated Pollack. “They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.” The danger, warns scientist Dan Frumkin, is that crime scenes can be engineered with fabricated DNA.

Now if you happen to be the kind of person who trusts the government implicitly and refuses to believe it would ever do anything illegal or immoral, then the prospect of government officials—police, especially—using fake DNA samples to influence the outcome of a case might seem outlandish. But for those who know their history, the probability of our government acting in a way that is not only illegal but immoral becomes less a question of “if” and more a question of “when.”

Robert Gore's avatarSTRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Big Brother is collecting your DNA. From John Whitehead, at theburningplatform.com:

“The year is 2025. The population is 325 million, and the FBI has the DNA profiles of all of them. Unlike fingerprints, these profiles reveal vital medical information. The universal database arrived surreptitiously. First, the Department of Defense’s repository of DNA samples from all military personnel, established to identify remains of soldiers missing from action, was given to the FBI. Then local police across the country shadowed individuals, collecting shed DNA for the databank. On the way, thousands of innocent people were imprisoned because they had the misfortune to have race-based crime genes in their DNA samples. Sadly, it did not have to be this way. If only we had passed laws against collecting and using shed DNA….”—Professor David H. Kaye

Every dystopian sci-fi film we’ve ever seen is suddenly converging into this present moment in a dangerous trifecta…

View original post 377 more words

Another day, another drug raid fatality

Posted: March 8, 2015 by gamegetterII in Police state USSA
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

From Balko…

Meet Derek Cruice, your latest collateral damage in the drug war:

A deputy shot and killed an unarmed man while attempting to serve a narcotics search warrant in Deltona, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators said deputies were entering the home on Maybrook Drive when Derek Cruice, 26, allegedly advanced on a member of the SWAT team around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday.

“Volusia County Sheriff’s Office narcotics investigators and the Street Crimes Unit were attempting to serve a search warrant at a residence. They were met with resistance and a shooting occurred,” Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson said.

A deputy shot Cruice in the face right in the doorway, investigators said.

Cruice was taken to Florida Hospital Fish Memorial Hospital in Orange City as a trauma alert, but later died.

There were five other people inside the home at the time of the shooting, but no one else was injured.

If he was shot in the doorway, it seems unlikely he had much time to process what was going on around him. In fact, not only was Cruice unarmed, according to his roommates, he was wearing only basketball shorts. The roommates also dispute the police account that Cruice “advanced” on them.

Two of Cruice’s friends, who told WESH 2′s Claire Metz that they were inside the house when he was shot, insist that he did not threaten or resist the deputy.

“That is completely a lie. I was there; I watched the whole thing. There was no advancement. There was no reaching for anything. The guy was wearing basketball shorts like I am. It’s kind of hard to conceal anything or hide anything when this is all you have on,” said Cruice’s friend, who asked not to be identified.

Another friend called the incident “murder.” There were no weapons in the house.

It seems likely that Cruice was dealing pot. The police say they found a ledger book, a scale, about a half-pound of marijuana and some cash. It also seems likely that if the police had simply knocked on the door and waited, or apprehended Cruice as he was coming or going, Cruice would be still be alive. This insistence on serving drug warrants by barreling into homes creates needless violence, confusion and confrontation. They’re designed to do this. I doubt that Cruice knowingly decided to take on a raiding police team armed only with his basketball shorts. It seems far more likely that he thought they were criminal intruders and was either trying to confront them, or was trying to escape. But there is no room for errors in judgment for the people on the receiving end of these raids — even though sowing confusion and disorientation are the stated aim. But it is only the suspects, the targets of the raids, who are expected to do everything right. When the police screw up and kill someone, they’re generally forgiven, owing again to the volatility of the situation.

So judging from the many, many prior incidents similar to this one, it’s probably safe to say that this officer will be cleared of any wrongdoing. It’s also probably safe to say that any investigation will determine that there’s nothing wrong with the police department’s warrant service policies. At least that’s how these investigations usually go. And if it is determined that the cops in these cases are following policy, and that there’s nothing wrong with the policies themselves, then the only conclusion we can draw is that the police agencies believe unarmed men getting shot in the face is an acceptable consequence of the effort to stop people from getting high on marijuana.

Of course, even that is an illusion. If there’s one thing we can say with near-absolute certainty, it’s that it is no more difficult to buy pot in Volusia County, Fla., today than it was before Derek Cruice was gunned down in his own home. And so we add another body to the pile.

Private Police: Mercenaries for the American Police State

Posted: March 6, 2015 by gamegetterII in Police state USSA
Tags: , , ,
0

By John W. Whitehead
March 03, 2015

“Corporate America is using police forces as their mercenaries.”—Ray Lewis, Retired Philadelphia Police Captain

It’s one thing to know and exercise your rights when a police officer pulls you over, but what rights do you have when a private cop—entrusted with all of the powers of a government cop but not held to the same legal standards—pulls you over and subjects you to a stop-and-frisk or, worse, causes you to “disappear” into a Gitmo-esque detention center not unlike the one employed by Chicago police at Homan Square?

For that matter, how do you even begin to know who you’re dealing with, given that these private cops often wear police uniforms, carry police-grade weapons, and perform many of the same duties as public cops, including carrying out SWAT team raids, issuing tickets and firing their weapons.

This is the growing dilemma we now face as private police officers outnumber public officers (more than two to one), and the corporate elite transforms the face of policing in America into a privatized affair that operates beyond the reach of the Fourth Amendment.

Mind you, it’s not as if we had many rights to speak of, anyhow.

Owing to the general complacency of the courts and legislatures, the Fourth Amendment has already been so watered down, battered and bruised as to provide little practical protection against police abuses. Indeed, as I make clear in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we’re already operating in a police state in which police have carte blanche authority to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance. Expanding on these police powers, the U.S. Supreme Court recently gave law enforcement officials tacit approval to collect DNA from any person, at any time.

However, whatever scant protection the weakened Fourth Amendment provides us dissipates in the face of privatized police, who are paid by corporations working in partnership with the government. Talk about a diabolical end run around the Constitution.

We’ve been so busy worrying about militarized police, police who shoot citizens first and ask questions later, police who shoot unarmed people, etc., that we failed to take notice of the corporate army that was being assembled under our very noses. Looks like we’ve been outfoxed, outmaneuvered and we’re about to be out of luck.

Indeed, if militarized police have become the government’s standing army, privatized police are its private army—guns for hire, if you will. This phenomenon can be seen from California to New York, and in almost every state in between. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the private security industry is undergoing a boom right now, with most of the growth coming about due to private police doing the jobs once held by public police. For instance, Foley, Minnesota, population 2600, replaced its police force with private guards

Technically, a private police force is one that is owned or controlled by a non-governmental body such as a corporation. Those who advocate for privatized services and limited government hail the shift towards private police as a step in the right direction by getting the government out of the business of policing and allow market principles to dictate an officer’s success, i.e., if an officer abuses his authority, he can easily be fired.

Read the fine print, however, and you’ll find that these private police aka guns-for-hire a.k.a. private armies a.k.a. company police officers a.k.a. secret police a.k.a. conservators of the police a.k.a. rent-a-cops don’t exactly remove the government from the equation. Instead, they merely allow them to work behind the scenes, conveniently insulated from any accusations of wrongdoing or demands for transparency. Indeed, most private police officers are either working for private security firms that are contracted by the government or are government workers moonlighting on their time off.

What began as a job detail for wealthy communities and businesses looking to discourage burglaries has snowballed into a lucrative enterprise for private corporations. Today these private police can be found wherever extra security is “needed”: at hospitals, universities, banks, shopping malls, gated communities, you name it.

As historian Heather Ann Thompson notes, “private security firms have come substantially to supplement, if not completely to replace, the publicly-funded public safety presence of troubled inner cities ranging from Oakland, to New Orleans, to small towns in states such Minnesota, to entire neighborhoods—sometimes extremely rich, sometimes desperately poor—in urban centers such as Atlanta and Baltimore.”

For example, in New Orleans, a 50-person private police squad funded by a “voluntary” hotel tax is being charged with enforcing traffic, zoning and other non-emergency laws in the French Quarter.

In Seattle, off-duty Seattle Police officers moonlighting as a private security force patrol wealthy neighborhoods “approximately six nights/days a week for five hours each shift. Officers are in uniform, carry police radios and their police firearms and drive unmarked personal vehicles.”

In California, private mercenaries—many of them ex-U.S. Special Forces, Army Rangers and other combat veterans—equipped with AR-15 rifles use unmarked helicopters to police cannabis farms and cut down private gardens without a warrant.

Yet while these private police firms enjoy the trappings of government agencies—the weaponry, the arrest and shoot authority, even the ability to ticket and frisk— they’re often poorly trained, inadequately screened, poorly regulated and heavily armed. Now if that sounds a lot like public police officers, you wouldn’t be far wrong.

First off, the label of “private” is dubious at best. Mind you, this is a far cry from a privatization of police. These are guns for hire, answerable to corporations who are already in bed with the government. They are extensions of the government without even the pretense of public accountability. One security consultant likened the relationship between public and private police to public healthcare: “It’s basically, the government provides a certain base level. If you want more than that, you pay for it yourself.”

The University of Chicago’s police department (UCPD) is a prime example of how private security firms are being entrusted with the legal status of private police forces (which sets them beyond the reach of the rule of law) and the powers of public ones. With a jurisdiction that covers a six-square-mile area and is home to 65,000 individuals, the majority of whom are not students, UCPD is one of the largest private security forces in America.

The private police agency, modeled after the tactics of NYPD chief William Bratton, criminalizes nonviolent activities such as loitering, vandalism, smoking marijuana, and ​dancing “reck​l​essly” and punishes minor infractions severely in order to “discourage” violent crime. To this end, the UCPD can search, ticket, arrest, and detain anyone they choose without being required to disclose to the public its reasons for doing so. Not surprisingly, the UCPD has been accused of using racial profiling to target individuals for stop-and-frisks.

Second, these private contractors are operating beyond the reach of the law. For example, although private police in Ohio are “authorized by the state to carry handguns, use deadly force and detain, search and arrest people,” they are permitted to keep their arrest and incident reports under wraps. Moreover, the public is not permitted to “check the officers’ background or conduct records, including their use-of-force and discipline histories.” As attorney Fred Gittes remarked, “There is no accountability. They have the greatest power that society can invest in people — the power to use deadly force and make arrests. Yet, the public and public entities have no practical access to information about their behavior, eluding the ability to hold anyone accountable.”

So what happens when the government hires out its dirty deeds to contractors who aren’t quite so discriminating about abiding by constitutional safeguards, especially as they relate to searches and heavy-handed tactics? If you think police abuses are worrisome, security expert Bruce Schneier warns that “abuses of power, brutality, and illegal behavior are much more common among private security guards than real police.”

As Schneier points out, “Many of the laws that protect us from police abuse do not apply to the private sector. Constitutional safeguards that regulate police conduct, interrogation and evidence collection do not apply to private individuals. Information that is illegal for the government to collect about you can be collected by commercial data brokers, then purchased by the police. We’ve all seen policemen ‘reading people their rights’ on television cop shows. If you’re detained by a private security guard, you don’t have nearly as many rights.”

Read the rest @  https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/private_police_mercenaries_for_the_american_police_state

Sensenbrenner Bill Would Abolish ATF Over Bullet Ban

Posted: March 6, 2015 by gamegetterII in BATFEIEIO
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

A House Republican is introducing legislation to abolish the beleaguered Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives amid a contentious debate over the agency’s proposed ban on a bullet used in AR-15 rifles.

Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said the policies under ATF’s jurisdiction could be easily incorporated into other agencies, The Hill reports.

And, he adds, the agency has been caught up in too many controversies in recent years, including the botched “Fast and Furious” gun-tracking operation.

“The ATF is a scandal-ridden, largely duplicative agency that lacks a clear mission,” the lawmaker said, according to The Hill. “Its ‘Framework’ is an affront to the Second Amendment and yet another reason why Congress should pass the ATF Elimination Act.”

The agency has come under fire recently for its proposed ban on some types of 5.56 mm rounds used in widely available and popular AR-15-style rifles because the bullets can also be used in some new types of handguns.

Republicans also have complained \hunters frequently use the bullets, The Hill notes.

But the bureau says it initiated the regulation to help protect law enforcement officers from bullets that can pierce armored vests – a contention that has been shot down by the leader of the Fraternal Order of Police.

Sensenbrenner’s bill would transfer the ATF’s functions related to guns, explosives and violent crime to the FBI; responsibilities regarding alcohol and tobacco laws would fall under the Drug Enforcement Administration’s jurisdiction, The Hill reports.

The ATF director would have 180 days, or about six months, to submit a plan to Congress on how to wind down the agency.

Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, previously introduced a bill in 1993 to turn over the ATF’s duties to other parts of the Justice Department.

Meanwhile, 239 members of the House have now signed a letter opposing the bullet ban, Fox News reports.

“This attack on the Second Amendment is wrong and should be overturned,” Virginia Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who started the petition, told Fox News. “A clear, sizable majority of the House agree.”

CPD releases fact sheet on Homan Square facility

Posted: March 1, 2015 by gamegetterII in Police state USSA
Tags: , , , , ,
0
CHICAGO (WLS) —

The Chicago Police Department released a fact sheet Sunday disputing claims they operate a secretive facility in Homan Square on Chicago’s West Side where criminal suspects are denied basic rights.

The fact sheet is three pages: one detailing facility facts, one addressing what experts are saying regarding claims of abuse and the last page explaining the department’s arrest and interview procedures.

The information refutes all claims of abuse. Police say Homan Square open to the public as home to CPD’s Evidence and Recovered Property Section, where “members of the public can collect evidence recovered during now complete criminal investigations, or found property.”

They also say Homan Square is “the base of operations for officers working undercover assignments. These men and women dress in plain clothes and work to disrupt gang activity and clear drug markets out of neighborhoods. Advertising their base of operations could put their lives at risk, which is why Homan Square features little signage.”

Regarding allegations that a death at the facility may have been the result of physical violence from Chicago police officers, the fact sheet says, “The allegation that physical violence is part of interviews with suspects is unequivocally false… Published news reports indicate the Medical Examiner’s autopsy report shows the man died of an accidental heroin overdose.”

Saturday, activists gathered outside the Homan Square facility for a protest, where they made demands including calls for a town hall meeting.

“If Chicago Police Department doesn’t have anything to hide, then open up the doors!” said Rev. Greg Greer of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “Open up the doors!”

The “Fact Sheet”…

CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT FACT SHEET
March 1, 2015
THE FACTS ABOUT CPD’S HOMAN SQAURE FACILITY
Recently, inaccurate and misleading information reg
arding Homan Square has been making
its way around the Internet. The below provides fac
ts about the facility and its uses, and the
arrest and interview procedures of CPD.
Homan Square is a facility owned and operated by th
e Chicago Police Department since
1999. It serves a number of functions, some of whic
h are sensitive and some of which are
not, however
it is not a secret facility
.
In fact, Homan Square is home to CPD’s Evidence and
Recovered Property Section, which is
open to the public. Homan Square is the only CPD fa
cility where members of the public can
collect evidence recovered during a now complete cr
iminal investigation, or found property.
Portions of the facility are sensitive. Homan Squar
e is the base of operations for officers
working undercover assignments. These men and women
dress in plain clothes and work to
disrupt gang activity and clear drug markets out of
neighborhoods. Advertising their base of
operations could put their lives at risk, which is
why Homan Square features little signage.
Other sensitive units housed at the facility includ
e the Bureau of Organized Crime (including
the narcotics unit), the SWAT Unit, Evidence Techni
cians, and the CPD ballistics lab.
Like more than 25 CPD facilities throughout the Cit
y, such as district stations and detective
bureaus, Homan Square contains several standard int
erview rooms. Most individuals
interviewed at Homan Square are lower-level arrests
from the Narcotics unit. There are
always records of anyone who is arrested by CPD, an
d this is no different at Homan Square.
EXAMPLES OF FALSE INFORMATION RECENTLY PUBLISHED
•
The allegation that physical violence is a part of
interviews with suspects is
unequivocally false, it is offensive, and it is not
supported by any facts whatsoever.
•
The articles say a man died in one of the Homan Squ
are interview rooms, and imply
this may have been a result of physical violence at
the hands of CPD officers.
Published news reports indicate the Medical Examine
r’ autopsy report show the
man died of an accidental heroin overdose.
•
The articles describe Homan Square as a “secretive
warehouse” despite the fact that
the public is able to claim inventoried property th
ere and members of the media
have been invited on tours of the facility on a reg
ular basis. CPD has even held press
conferences inside the facility.
•
One of the articles implies that during an intervie
w police turned up the heat in an
interview room at Homan Square to get an individual
to admit to a crime, yet there
is no way to regulate heat in individual rooms at t
he facility. Any change in
temperature would affect an entire floor or zone, a
nd can only be done by calling in
a building engineer.
***It takes an engineer to turn up a thermostat?***

Chicago protesters demand probe of what they call police ‘black site’

Posted: March 1, 2015 by gamegetterII in Police state USSA
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

By Tracy Rucinski

CHICAGO (Reuters) – About 200 protesters gathered outside a police facility in Chicago on Saturday, demanding an investigation into a media report denied by police that the site functions as an off-the-books interrogation compound.

British newspaper The Guardian said in a report earlier this week the Chicago Police Department holds suspects and witnesses for long periods of time at a former warehouse called Homan Square, without giving them access to attorneys or phone calls to family and without recording their detention.

The piece was the subject of intense debate in recent days in Chicago, with some criminal justice experts saying it was exaggerated and others giving it credence.

The protest represented an effort by organizers to pressure city leaders to look into the matter.

The Guardian has compared the location to a CIA “black site” facility, and in a piece posted on its website on Tuesday it quoted a man who said he was held in shackles at the site for 17 hours.

“Everything that happens in this facility is off the books, so they can’t prove that these things never happened,” said Travis McDermott, one of the organizers of the protest.

Chicago police spokesman Martin Malone did not immediately return a call requesting comment on Saturday.

Earlier in the week, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) in a statement said it “abides by all laws, rules and guidelines pertaining to any interviews of suspects or witnesses” at Homan Square and other facilities.

“There are always records of anyone who is arrested by CPD, and this is not any different at Homan Square,” it said.

The city of Chicago has paid millions of dollars to settle lawsuits arising from Chicago police commander Jon Burge’s torture methods in the 1970s and 1980s.

The controversy over the site comes as the city prepares for a mayoral election on April 7, with incumbent Rahm Emanuel facing opponent Jesus “Chuy” Garcia. Crime has been a top issue during the campaign.

Roughly 200 people braved frigid temperatures to join the protest on Saturday. Its organizers included Black Lives Matter and the Stop Mass Incarcelation Network

Prosecutor: Charges dismissed for man with antique gun

Posted: February 27, 2015 by gamegetterII in anti-gun asshattery
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

Via Daniel J. Kov, dkov@thedailyjournal.com

BRIDGETON A felony gun charge against a Port Elizabeth resident arrested by police last year for possessing an unloaded antique weapon has been dismissed by the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office, according to a news release issued Wednesday.

Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae announced in the release that the state will exercise “prosecutorial discretion to dismiss” the second-degree unlawful possession of a weapon charge against Gordon N. Van Gilder.

“Accordingly, the public should be forewarned about the prescriptions against possessing a firearm — even an antique — in a vehicle,” she continued.

Webb-McRae declined to comment further on the dismissal.

Van Gilder’s Eatontown attorney Evan Nappen said he was delighted to hear charges were dropped.

The attorney learned of the dismissal while in an interview with The Daily Journal.

THE DAILY JOURNAL

Longtime Millville educator arrested for antique gun

“That is very good,” he said while reading the news release over the phone. “I commend the prosecutor for exercising her dis

cretion accordingly.”

If convicted of the second-degree charge, Van Gilder could have faced a maximum of 10 years behind bars

The charge also carried a minimum 3.5-year sentence that could have seriously jeopardized Van Gilder’s public school pension, his right to vote and his reputation in the community, Nappen said.

“I’m very appreciative that they exercised their discretion here and did the right thing,” Nappen said.

Nappen said his client will follow up on trying to retrieve the centuries-old “Queen Anne” flintlock antique pistol now in custody of the county.

“It’s a valuable collector’s item,” he said.

The dismissal comes after a two-week long public outcry against state and law enforcement officials, with many charging that officials overstepped in their pursuit of charges against the elderly man over an unloaded antique weapon.

THE DAILY JOURNAL

Ex-teacher in gun case was trying to buy drugs: Sheriff

Van Gilder, a 72-year-old former educator at Millville Senior High School, was arrested at his Port Elizabeth home by members of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department on Nov. 21, 2014.

The arrest came a day after he and 22-year-old Adam Puttergill were stopped in their Toyota Tacoma by Sheriff’s Department officers in a Millville neighborhood.

The two said they were in the process of returning to their Port Elizabeth home after visiting a Vineland pawn shop, at which Van Gilder purchased the 300-year-old flintlock pistol.

Puttergill was acting as the driver for Van Gilder, who suffers severe arthritis, he said.

He also lives with Van Gilder, who informally adopted him about a decade ago.

Cumberland County Sheriff Robert Austino later said his officers pulled the two over because they were in a suspicious neighborhood known for illegal drug activity.

While talking to the two, officers at the scene discovered empty heroin bags and a broken scale used for measuring drugs, Austino said.

The discovery prompted a full search of the vehicle and officers also found Van Gilder’s 300-year-old flintlock pistol wrapped in cloth inside the glove compartment.

Puttergill was taken into custody on an outstanding Vineland Municipal Court contempt warrant, he told The Daily Journal last week.

He also was charged with possessing two prescription pills that were not in their pharmacy container. The drug charge has since been handled by Puttergill’s attorney in Millville Municipal Court, resulting in a conditional discharge of the charge.

While Van Gilder was let go at the scene, Sheriff’s Officers returned to his home the next day and arrested and booked the 72-year-old on the unlawful weapons charge for his unregistered gun.

The incident quickly went on to attract state and national attention following revelation of the arrest by The Daily Journal last week.

Nappen and other public supporters of Van Gilder accused the Sheriff’s Department of a “smear campaign” for charging the elderly man with what they view as an egregious and overstepping charge.

The incident even spurred at least two New Jersey lawmakers to introduce bills that would provide state judges with sentencing discretion in such future cases involving those charged with unlawful weapons possession.

A bill sponsored by state Sen. Jeff Van Drew and Assemblyman Bob Andrzejczak, whose district includes Millville, would further revise the Graves Act, allowing courts to permit a person convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm admittance to pretrial intervention or supervisory treatment if they had no known association with a criminal street gang and no criminal convictions.

165 114 LINKEDIN 2 COMMENTMORE

Illinois Democrat’s ‘Firearms Registration Act’ may test new paradigm

Posted: February 25, 2015 by gamegetterII in anti-gun asshattery
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0
David Codrea
Gun Rights Examiner

Setting the state up for massive gun owner civil disobedience along the lines of what has occurred in California and is currently happening in New York and Connecticut, Democrat State Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins filed the Firearms Registration Act with the Secretary of State on Friday. The act was then presented for first reading and referred to the Democrat-dominated Assignments Committee.

Is Democrat Illinois State Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins ready to enforce her demands against gun owners who will not comply?

Collins’ measure “[p]rovides that every person in the State must register each firearm he or she owns or possesses in accordance with the Act,” the official synopsis declares. It also “[p]rovides that a person shall not purchase or possess ammunition within this State without having first obtained a registration certificate identifying a firearm that is suitable for use with that ammunition, or a receipt demonstrating that the person has applied to register a suitable firearm under the Act and that the application is pending.”

In addition, it requires “the Department of State Police must complete a background check of any person who applies for: (1) a registration certificate for a firearm that was lawfully owned or possessed on the effective date of the Act, was brought into the State by a new resident, or was acquired by operation of law upon the death of the former owner; or (2) a renewal of a registration certificate unless, within 12 months of the date the renewal application is submitted, the applicant passed a background check conducted by the Department in connection with the applicant’s acquisition of another firearm.”

Ominously, it also “Provides that it is a Class 2 felony to sell or transfer ownership of a firearm to another person without complying with the registration requirement of the Firearms Registration Act.” That can get someone three to seven years, a punishment equivalent to that people who intentionally transmit HIV are sentenced to.

This new batch of proposed infringements is in addition to requirements already imposed by Illinois State Law requiring gun owners to have a Firearms Owner Identification Card to purchase firearms and ammunition. In fact, it’s an in-your-face to gun owners from an avowed gun hater.

Collins is a former CBS-TV in Chicago “news” editor with credentials from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, among other credentials from “progressive” academia. Fittingly, she was a “2001 Legislative Fellow for U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.” She was also endorsed by the Brady campaign at the same time it threw its weight behind (former?) “gun communist” Bobby Rush and future felons (and prohibited persons) Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Rod Blagojevich.

When she joined rabidly anti-gun “priest” Mike “Snuffy” Pfleger for a media blood dance, they were strangely silent on the fact that the ones doing the killings in Chicago are exempt from gun registration schemes they would impose on the law-abiding. That’s because in Haynes v. U.S., the Supreme Court ruled that requiring felons to register guns violated Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.

Collins knows this, of course, as do all gun-grabbers who would require registration, which is a prerequisite for confiscation. That increasing numbers of gun owners know that and have defiantly told those enacting such Intolerable Acts to get bent is not lost on impotent and enraged state monopoly of violence cultists, who vent their fury by demanding others employ that violence to bend the “scofflaws” to their will.

Whether or not Collins’ latest deliberate act of spitting on freedom stands a chance of being enacted remains to be seen. Regardless, a critical mass of gun owners will not let that alter their resolve to hold fast to their rights and to not back up another inch. There’s a new paradigm, with a growing number of determined citizens recognizing what colleague Mike Vanderboegh has identified as two countries sharing the same territory, and where his fundamental question “Do the people serve the government or does the government serve the people?” has yet to be ultimately tested in our time.

Whether or not it is tested depends on how far domestic enemies with “appetites for the liberty and property” of others are willing to press those they would compel obedience from. If they’re not willing to enforce against all, it will show a self-defeating weakness in the Chicago machine, and encourage other gun owners to join in and spread mass defiance even further. And if they are, we’ll all get an unequivocal answer to that question.

http://www.examiner.com/article/illinois-democrat-s-firearms-registration-act-may-test-new-paradigm?CID=examiner_alerts_article

Older Entries
Newer Entries