Society's ChildS

Camcorder

Woman accuses cop of racism, police counter with bodycam footage that reveals otherwise

Dawn Hilton-Williams
A South Carolina woman named Dawn Hilton-Williams posted a video to Facebook Live on April 27 in which she accuses a Virginia cop who pulled her over for a speeding violation of being a "racist." In the tearful rant, which soon went viral, Hilton-Williams describes the interaction as a lynching and invokes the name of Sandra Bland, a black woman who killed herself in her jail cell after a traffic stop.


Comment: Suicide seems unlikely, though the circumstances surrounding Sandra Bland's death were highly dubious.


"I was just bullied by a racist cop," claims Hilton-Williams in the 11-minute video. "This is where we got lynched. This is where we got lynched, even in today's day."

She continues: "I mean pulling you out of a car doesn't seem like a big deal, but when you are African-American and you get pulled out of the car you get shot or you get tased, or you get Sandra Bland-ed. ... I said 'I'm not putting my signature on that ticket.' He said 'if you don't sign this ticket, then I'm going to pull you out of the car and I'll arrest you, and I'll impound the car.'"

After the video was posted, many concerned citizens called the Brunswick County Sheriff's Office with questions and outrage. This prompted the sheriff's office to release the full video of the traffic stop, which paints a very different picture than what Hilton-Williams' describes. Contrary to the woman's claim, the deputy never threatened to "pull" her out of her car when she refused to sign the summons and there are no references or innuendos to race or racial antipathy.

Handcuffs

Bail set for Boston firefighter charged with child rape

Samuel Perez Rosado
Samuel Perez Rosado leaves court in handcuffs.
A Boston firefighter accused of sexually assaulting a minor last week has been ordered held on $50,000 cash bail.

Firefighter Samuel Perez Rosado, 38, who works at the Engine 10/Tower Ladder 3 company, was arrested while on duty Sunday after police say he had sexual intercourse with a child between the ages of 12 and 16 this past Friday, according to court paperwork.

Perez Rosado has been working for the department for between five and six years and is currently on administrative leave, fire officials said.

He was arraigned Monday in South Boston District Court on charges of rape of a child and assault and battery, a spokesman for the Suffolk DA's office said.

Stock Up

Renting a two-bedroom home in the US is unaffordable for most

hourly wage two bedroom home
Affordable housing is already a hot button political issue. Housing advocates have long pointed out the lack of affordable options in big cities with booming tech sectors, like San Francisco, but where does that leave the rest of the country? We wanted to find out, so we created a new map that illustrates how much an average worker would need to earn to afford a typical two-bedroom apartment in each state.

We found the data for our map through the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), an organization focused on creating public policies that help poor Americans afford decent homes. The organization analyzed the combination of an average worker's wage and the cost of housing to determine which states have the worst housing problems, keeping in mind that people should not spend more than 30% of their income on housing. We developed an intuitive, color-coded map highlighting how much money you need to earn to afford a two-bedroom home, revealing the places with the biggest problems in housing affordability.

Black Cat

Shady lawyer Avenatti threatens news site for reporting allegations about his past misconduct

Michael Avenatti
© Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesMichael Avenatti
Michael Avenatti, the lawyer representing porn star Stormy Daniels, threatened to sue a news organization and individual journalists on Monday after they reported on his alleged past shady business dealings and connections.

Avenatti threatened The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) and individual journalists at the news organization after they reported:
Avenatti's past is littered with lawsuits, jilted business partners and bankruptcy filings. People who have worked with the lawyer described him to TheDCNF as ruthless, greedy and unbothered by ethical questions.
In an email, Avenatti accused the DCNF of being part of a conspiracy theory that involved President Donald Trump directing them to write false and defamatory statements about him.

Wolf

With the spotlight on lawyer Avenatti, his own dodgy past is emerging

Michael Avenatti
© Reuters/Lucas JacksonMichael Avenatti, lawyer for adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, speaks to media outside federal court in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., April 16, 2018.
Much of the developments surrounding Stormy Daniel's lawsuit again President Donald Trump have focused on the business dealings of attorney Michael Cohen, but an investigation by The Daily Caller News Foundation reveals that Daniel's counsel, Michael Avenatti, has his own questionable history.

Avenatti's past is littered with lawsuits, jilted business partners and bankruptcy filings. People who have worked with the lawyer described him to TheDCNF as ruthless, greedy and unbothered by ethical questions.

Dillanos Coffee CEO David Morris claimed last Tuesday that Avenatti never paid him for over $160,000 worth of coffee that Dillanos supplied to Avenatti's company. "So @StormyDaniels hot shot lawyer Michael owes my small company @Dillanos $160,179 for coffee," Morris wrote on Twitter. "He talks a big talk about integrity. We trusted him."

Comment: Stormy's suit seems to be just another stop on Avenatti's quest for fame and fortune. She appears to have made an ill-judged pick for a lawyer.


Pistol

Deep state terror cell? Man claiming to be federal agent found in hotel with weapons arsenal and psych meds

waikiki hotel rifles drugs
After a man's social media posts were flagged by the FBI, a tip to the Honolulu Police resulted in officers finding a large cache of loaded weapons during a welfare check at his hotel room.

Hawaii News Now reported that the FBI alerted local authorities to "suspicious" social media posts in which a person was claiming to be a federal agent. The specific contents of the messages or how the FBI was initially alerted has not been made public.

In an email regarding the incident, the Honolulu Police Department stated:
"HPD officers responded to a report of a suspicious male in Waikiki yesterday. The male was located and taken to a hospital for evaluation, where he remains. No charges have been filed at this time.

Investigators recovered the man's belongings, which included firearms and knives. HPD and FBI investigators are continuing to work on this case, and no further information is being released at this time."
Strangely, the 38-year-old man reportedly told law enforcement that he was on a mission hunting terrorist cells, according to Hawaii News Now.

Comment: Presumably these men really believed they were on "secret government missions". If so, it begs the question as to why. Are they really? Have the been led to believe so? Or is it just something 'in the air'? And how many dead 'mass shooters' and 'terrorists' have had similar beliefs, and for similar reasons?


Heart - Black

Willful blindness: People delude themselves to justify persecution of Julian Assange

twitter caroline goode julian assange
"I'll tell you what else is dying - common decency, respect, compassion, consideration for others, dignity, honesty, integrity, positive patriotism, credibility, kindness, manners, social norms and mores," tweeted a former Detective Superintendent of London's Metropolitan Police Service in response to a news story about a White House official making light of Senator John McCain's death.

"We must never normalise hatred. Love conquers all," she added.

A few days later, this same law enforcement official tweeted the following at Julian Assange's mother, who was expressing concern for her son's declining health and isolation in an Ecuadorian embassy:
"I don't know what he's told his old Mum, but he can leave any time he chooses. Tell him to come on out. Btw, how did you let your baby boy be the smelly kid in class?"

Comment: Persecution of Assange proves him right


Star of David

SOTT Focus: Killing Gaza - a documentary

gaza deaths cartoon
© Mr. Fish
Israel's blockade of Gaza-where trapped Palestinians for the past seven weeks have held nonviolent protests along the border fence with Israel, resulting in scores of dead and some 6,000 wounded by Israeli troops -- is one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters. Yet the horror that is Gaza, where 2 million people live under an Israeli siege without adequate food, housing, work, water and electricity, where the Israeli military routinely uses indiscriminate and disproportionate violence to wound and murder, and where almost no one can escape, is rarely documented. Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen's powerful new film, Killing Gaza offers an unflinching and moving portrait of a people largely abandoned by the outside world, struggling to endure.

Killing Gaza will be released Tuesday, to coincide with what Palestinians call Nakba Day -- "nakba" means catastrophe in Arabic-commemorating the 70th anniversary of the forced removal of some 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 by the Haganah, Jewish paramilitary forces, from their homes in modern-day Israel. The release of the documentary also coincides with the Trump administration's opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

Handcuffs

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf hit with lawsuit for tipping off illegal immigrants to ICE sweep

Libby Schaaf ICE sanctuary city
Oakland, California mayor Libby Schaaf
The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) will file a lawsuit Monday seeking to force Oakland, California, to produce documents related to its mayor Libby Schaaf's decision to tip off illegal aliens to a major enforcement action in February, IRLI Executive Director Dale Wilcox revealed for the first time on Sirius XM's Breitbart News Sunday.

We're "tired of these state and local jurisdictions who are thumbing their nose at our duly enacted immigration laws," Wilcox told Breitbart News Deputy Political Editor Amanda House.

In February, a San Francisco Bay-wide operation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) aimed at criminal illegal aliens netted 232 apprehensions, including 115 with serious criminal records. But, according to ICE Director Thomas Homan, more than 800 others escaped after Libby Schaaf broke the secrecy of the action, explicitly in order to protect illegals from discovery.

Comment:


Eye 2

Tracking your every move: California city implements online monitoring of citizen's social media accounts

Sacramento California online tracking citizens
The California city of West Sacramento decided to spy on its citizens, becoming the first American city to utilize social media to do so.
Plenty of people don't like the cities they live in. Perhaps the crime rate is too high, or the city has ridiculous laws about the right to keep and bear arms. Perhaps the traffic is just terrible, or the city is notably corrupt, or the city has a history of making silly purchases, like a rail car that can't run during the winter.

It's not uncommon to complain on social media about such a city. But now, West Sacramento is the first city in the nation to monitor social media accounts to see what residents are saying about the city. City officials claim that they're implementing the online tracking tool to 'listen more' to their citizens, and that it's 'good' for the citizenry. However, it seems like they're just doing whatever they want, and it's almost a surprise that the city alerted its citizens to the monitoring plot.

The city is using a system called Zencity, which is designed to crawl through social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and find out what residents are saying about their city.

It sorts through topics of conversation on the various social networking sites, and determines what is trending, and whether it is positive or negative.

Then it provides a snapshot of the content to city leaders.

Comment: Wouldn't it be simpler and far less expensive for the city to have an online platform for citizens to share information and their concerns? Only if one assumes that the stated reasons for establishing the tracking system are valid.