Can they really be this stupid?

Police Back off on Plan to Take Explicit Photo

By MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press

Police in Virginia said Thursday that they no longer will pursue efforts to take sexually explicit photos of a 17-year-old in an effort to prove a sexting case against him.

Police and prosecutors faced a wave of criticism following news media reports that they had obtained a warrant to take photos of the teen's erect penis. Police wanted the pictures to compare against photos he is accused of sending to his 15-year-old girlfriend at the time.

On Thursday, Manassas Police Lt. Brian Larkin said the Police Department will not proceed with the plan to take the pictures and will let a search warrant authorizing the photos to expire.

Privacy advocates had criticized the plan as a violation of the teen's constitutional rights.

The teen's aunt, who serves as his legal guardian, said she had not heard of the police department's reversal until contacted by an Associated Press reporter Thursday afternoon. She said she would be ecstatic if police follow through on their statement that they will no longer pursue the photos. But she said she won't be fully satisfied until the case against her nephew is dropped entirely.

The aunt had sent her nephew to West Virginia, where he grew up, for the past several weeks, fearful that police would show up to enforce the search warrant. The teen's defense lawyers said authorities had explained that they intended to take the teen to a hospital and chemically induce an erection to facilitate the photographs.

The Associated Press is not identifying the teen or the aunt in accordance with a policy of not identifying juvenile suspects.

Manassas Police Chief Douglas Keen posted a statement Thursday saying that "the decision to pursue prosecution or not lies with the Commonwealth Attorney's Office and not the Police Department."

Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert declined to comment on the case in detail, citing ethical rules about discussion of pending cases outside the courtroom.

The teen is charged in juvenile court with felony counts of possession and manufacture of child pornography. The aunt maintains that the charges are overblown and said the plan to pursue photos of her nephew in an aroused state came about only after she and her nephew refused to accept a plea bargain that had been offered.

Larkin said he had no information on why the department no longer plans to pursue the photos. On Wednesday night, the department issued a statement saying it was not their policy "to authorize invasive search procedures of suspects in cases of this nature" but made no definitive statements about whether they would continue to pursue the photos that had been specifically authorized in the search warrant.

Rebecca Glenberg, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, said the pursuit of the photos would have raised serious constitutional questions, compounded by the fact that the subject of the photos would have been a minor and by the fact that authorities apparently intended to induce an erection through a medical injection.

"People have a constitutional right to control their bodies," said Glenberg, who was unaware of any similar case.

The aunt felt certain that the tidal wave of criticism against authorities is the only reason police reversed course.

"They would have gotten away with this. They were not going to back off," she said.

Manassas City Manager Patrick Pate acknowledged Thursday that the department and the city had been fielding irate calls from across the country and internationally after the story broke. He said the city was being portrayed unfairly, given the fact that the photos were never actually taken. He also downplayed the possibility that they would ever have been taken, even though he acknowledged that a warrant authorizing them had been issued.

The teen's lawyers did not immediately return calls seeking comment Thursday.

The ACLU of Massachusetts posed a question to their followers on facebook: “West Springfield police have two grenade launchers - why?”

The ACLU of Massachusetts posed a question to their followers on facebook: “West Springfield police have two grenade launchers - why?”
Before the turn of the millennium, the West Springfield Police Department received two M79 grenade launchers and seven M14 rifles through a Department of Defense program.
The Department of Defense excess property program, commonly known as the 1033 program, allows the Secretary of Defense to transfer excess DoD equipment and supplies to state and local law enforcement agencies. There is no purchase fee for the program, though agencies are required to pay for any shipping or transportation costs.
Records of the requests show most departments request rifles. Westfield obtained 15 M14 rifles and 19 M16 rifles through the program. Monson received three M14s and three M16s. Springfield was given four M14s.
West Springfield was the only department that received grenade launchers.
Of the grenade launchers, Chief Ronald P. Campurciani said they have never been used in the field nor will they ever be.
"I cannot think of a scenario where we would employ those weapons," Campurciani said.

Cops: The Myth of the 'Most Dangerous Job"?

 | AmericaWakieWakieamericawakiewakie.com

Often we hear the echo of our security culture tell us policing is an inherently dangerous job, and that therefore we should give deference to these people’s judgment whenever potentially hostile situations arise. In such scenarios whereby the killing of a civilian occurs, we are perpetually told the use of lethal force was not only necessary, but simply part of an ‘incredibly dangerous’ profession — that these killings merely are a result of cops protecting themselves in life-threatening situations.

Well I call bullshit.

On October 22 last year, Andy Lopez, a Mexican-American 13 year old boy, was shot seven times by Santa Rosa officer Erick Gelhaus, a man with a history of using excessive force in his duties. Lopez was walking home from a friend’s house holding an airsoft toy-gun designed to resemble an assault rifle. Gelhaus has claimed he thought the child was holding an AK-47, a detail suggesting he could see the toy-gun with clarity. Gelhaus says he shouted to the 13 year old to drop the ‘gun’. Andy turned around, allegedly holding the toy up. Lopez died thereafter, taking multiple gunshots — one of which through his chest — when Gelhaus opened fire.

Gelhaus did not wait for backup. He did not investigate what he thought he saw. He was in absolutely no danger. His judgement smacked of shoot now, think later. In fact, Andy Lopez, like the rest of us, was more in need of protection from Gelhaus the moment the deputy saw him than Gelhaus needed to ‘protect’ himself from Lopez.

Cops Are More Likely To Shoot You Than You Are To Shoot Them

Last November the Activist Post ran a story about the propensity of police officers killing civilians. Stated was the following:

"Since 9/11, and the subsequent militarization of the police by the Department of Homeland Security, about 5,000 Americans have been killed by US police officers. The civilian death rate is nearly equal to the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq. In fact, you are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist.”

That statistic is alarming enough considering if the 4,489 American soldiers killed in combat in Iraq constitute a condition of war, then the killing of 5,000 American civilians by United States police departments ought to be viewed as a war on we the People by our very own government.

Still, having watched the Lopez family struggle for justice thus far, I wanted to know better how more civilians have been killed by cops in the United States than soldiers have died in Iraq.

I decided to compare the number of American citizens’ deaths by police directly to the number of police officers’ deaths by citizens since the start of the Iraq war; after all, if an officers job is so dangerous, it is we the policed who make it dangerous.

Since 2003, as documented by the FBI, there have been approximately 587 deaths in the line of duty directly as result of civilians’ felonious actions, i.e., lethal assault, shooting, manslaughter etc. Below is the breakdown by year.

Officers Feloniously Killed Since the Start of Iraq War

2003 — 52

2004 — 57

2005 — 55

2006 — 48

2007 — 57

2008 — 41

2009 — 48

2010 — 56

2011 — 72

2012 — 48

2013 — 53 (data not yet available, substituted 10 year average)

Total = 587

The Myth of the Most Dangerous Job

After a minute of simple math (5,000/587 = 8.52), what might seem obvious became much clearer: A cop is far more likely — 8.5 times — to kill you than you are to kill a cop. Stated another way, when an officer comes into contact with you, you are far less of a threat to them than the perception our culture proliferates. The police are, in fact, more of a threat to YOU.

The idea that police have an incredibly dangerous job is what we Southerners call a tall-tale, a stretch of the truth to bolster an ego unwilling to accept mediocrity. Not to take away from what many fair-minded officers do every day, but as those stubborn things called facts would have it, policing is less dangerous than farming, fishing, logging, and trash collecting, as well as six other professions. 

Now is the time to burst the cop myth and to stop giving them the deference to murder our friends and family in the street. 

John Geer, unarmed and shot dead by the Fairfax County Police, left to bleed for one hour before help arrived while the cops were ten feet away 

Cop shoots dog in parked car, claims “vicious pitbull” lunged at him

Cop shoots dog in parked car, claims “vicious pitbull” lunged at him. The cop shoots through a half-rolled down window.

An officer shot and killed a pit bull on Wednesday morning near 8th Street and Sherman. Investigators described the dog as a “vicious” pit bull and said it lunged at the officer. However, the dog’s owner said the dog was not a pit bull but a black lab (pictured above).
When an officer approached the van with his gun drawn, the dog lunged out of the open driver’s side window according to Coeur d’Alene Police Department leaders. The officer said the pit bull lunged at his face. Investigators said the officer fired one round from his service weapon and shot the dog in the chest. The dog later died.