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Texas 'city' fires police force, hires private firm, experiences 61% drop in crimes

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 20:06 UTC
Image
© Free Thought Project
Sharpstown is a Texas community, located just southwest of Houston, and the way they maintain security in this community has gotten our attention.

In 2012, they fired their cops.

The Sharpstown Civic Association then hired S.E.A.L. Security Solutions, a private firm, to patrol their streets.

The statist fearmongers will have you believe that "privatizing" anything would result in mass chaos and a Mad Max scenarios of warlords and rampant crime. But they are wrong.

"Since we've been in there, an independent crime study that they've had done [indicates] we've reduced the crime by 61%" in just 20 months, says James Alexander, Director of Operations for SEAL.


Comment: Where is said study? According to another source, "the head of the SCA (Sharpstown Civic Association) only states that monthly home burglaries declined from 20 to 11". Is that the study?!


Government police, despite not acting like it, are still part of the government. This means that any progressive change for the better takes ten times longer than it would in the private sector; if it happens at all. Government police are not driven by efficiency and threats from liability, as neither one of these things are needed when you have a tax farm to rob when things get tight.

Contrary to the government apparatus, private police, must be efficient as well as safe, for one small mistake or claim could end their entire operation. If an inefficiency is spotted within the system, changes must be implemented swiftly to avoid the loss of revenue.

The reason for the success rate of SEAL Security is that they can see a problem and quickly adapt versus trying to spin the rusty cogs of the bureaucratic process. And that is exactly what SEAL did in Sharpstown.

According to guns.com, Alexander cites the continuous patrol of SEAL's officers in their assigned neighborhoods as opposed to the strategy of intermittent presence that the constable embraced. "On a constable patrol contract, it's either a 70/30 or an 80/20. Meaning they say they patrol your community 70 percent of the time, [while] 30 percent of the time they use for running calls out of your area or writing reports."

Comment: Sharpstown is not a real city, it is Sharpstown Civic Association and is more like a master-planned community. According to Texas Monthly, it never had a police force to begin with, but apparently did have a have a pretty high crime rate. Interesting that this bit of news is making its way around the alternative news sites. Considering Blackwater and what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, this may be a bad idea regardless. Time will tell.

See also:

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Eye 2

Boko Haram militants kill 45 in north-eastern Borno


The Guardian
Thu, 05 Mar 2015 20:48 UTC
Combatiente Boko Haram
© FLICKR/ KUNLE OGUNFUYI
Boko Haram militants
At least 45 people were killed on Tuesday by suspected Boko Haram militants in a remote village in the north-eastern Borno state of Nigeria, according to sources from the military and authorised vigilante groups.

The insurgents started shooting into houses in Njaba at about 5.30am, local time, a military source in Maiduguri told Reuters on Thursday. The village is close to the town of Damboa and about 60 miles south of the state capital, Maiduguri.

"The attack was not immediately known because the village is very remote and our men couldn't access the area," the source said.

Comment: Without US, Algerian, and French help, would these murderers be able to run rampant in Nigeria? Massive economic crises haven't helped:
With such domestic oil production challenges undermining Nigeria's oil export revenues, the fuel subsidy slash has pushed the brunt of the crisis onto the population, escalating the poverty and inequality that is a recruiting sergeant for Islamist terror.
And it seems the corrupt Nigerian government has welcomed these developments as well. As usual, it fits into the "games" that people in positions of power play, in order to gain more power. For more info, check out:

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Quenelle

No dissent allowed: Russia Today faces investigation into anti-Western comments on Ukraine

John Plunkett
The Guardian
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 19:47 UTC
Image
© Dzhavakhadze Zurab/Itar-Tass/Corbis
Media regulator to launch investigation into views expressed during Crosstalk programme on Kremlin-backed broadcaster

Russia Today is to be investigated by media regulator Ofcom over anti-western comments in a late-night discussion on Ukraine - its sixth ongoing inquiry into the Kremlin-backed news channel following complaints by viewers.

The regulator, which threatened Russia Today, or RT, with statutory sanctions after repeated breaches of broadcasting regulations on impartiality last year, faces a new investigation over its Crosstalk programme broadcast on 23 December last year.

The programme is understood to have featured a number of anti-western views in the discussion between the presenter and three studio guests, prompting one viewer to complain.


Comment: Gasp! Anti-Western views?!?!? No one is allowed to present an opinion that is anything other than glowing in praise towards the West. What was RT thinking?

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Airplane

Delta flight skids off runway, La Guardia airport closed

Everett Rosenfeld
CNBC
Thu, 05 Mar 2015 17:53 UTC
laguardia airplane
© kristinagrossmann/Instagram
Delta Airlines plane at LaGuardia airport
This story is developing. Please check back for further updates.

Delta flight 1086 from Atlanta to LaGuardia Airport slid off the runway when landing, according to a Federal Aviation Administration official.

According to that official, the McDonnell Douglas MD-88 aircraft skidded during a Thursday morning snowstorm. New York's LaGuardia Airport was closed immediately after the incident occurred. The FAA said the airport is expected to reopen at 6:59 p.m. EST.

"Travelers with flights scheduled to arrive and depart from the airport should check with their carrier to determine the status of their flight," the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in a release. "The Port Authority will provide more information as it becomes available."
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Laptop

Government employees hard to fire even when caught watching six hours of porn daily on work computers

Warner Todd Huston
Breitbart
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 17:50 UTC
porno
© unknown
The red tape involved in firing federal employees is so bad that the government hasn't even been able to fire employees who were caught watching up to six hours a day of porn at work.

A recent report from CBS News finds that government employee unions and civil service rules make it almost impossible to fire employees, and it's costing the taxpayer big bucks.

In one instance, CBS found an employee who had 7,000 pornographic files on his office computer and was tracked sometimes spending up to six hours a day watching porn at work. But this employee is still being paid as his years-long appeals process continues.

In other cases, abusive or troubled employees remain employed even after caught sending threatening emails to other employees and bosses.

Comment: Your tax dollars at work!

Who watched most porn in 2012? Here's the shocking answer!

EPA employee downloaded 7,000 files of porn, watched 2 to 6 hours daily and is still on government payroll

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Brick Wall

Lost in detention: Where suspects, by the thousands, disappear

Alison Parker
The Marshall Project
Wed, 04 Mar 2015 00:00 UTC
Image
© Paul J. Richards/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
ICE detention centers: Practice runs for something even more ominous?
A recent article in the Guardian described an "off-the-books interrogation compound" where Chicago police secretly hold criminal suspects for questioning for hours on end, beyond the reach of lawyers, family members, and basic constitutional protections.

"I had been looking for him for six to eight hours, and every [police official] I talked to said they had never heard of him," one Chicago attorney says of a client, who, like other detainees at the nondescript warehouse on the city's west side, was kept out of official booking databases.

People are rightly shocked to learn that police in the US have allegedly been "disappearing" criminal suspects and subjecting them to ill-treatment. But it bears pointing out that in the parallel legal universe that is the U.S. immigration system, hundreds of thousands of people are routinely held in detention facilities under similar circumstances — for days, weeks, even months at a time — while they await court hearings or deportation for civil immigration violations.

Family members and lawyers of immigrant detainees often have a tough time finding them. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has custody over immigrants caught in the interior of the US, often doesn't enter names into its online detainee locator system until at least 72 hours after they have been taken into custody, and sometimes longer. And that's assuming ICE spells their names correctly in its database,which is not always the case. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which has authority over immigrants caught within 100 miles of US borders, doesn't provide a locator service at all for the individuals detained in at least 130 small substationsdotting the border.

Comment: Whether its immigrants, the economically disadvantaged, politically "suspect", or just the unlucky, it appears as though an ever larger number of people are falling prey to the prison security complex that has become the United States of America.

See also:

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Pistol

Cop shoots and kills little girl's pony


Counter Current News
Thu, 05 Mar 2015 03:46 UTC
Image
An Oregon family is demanding answers after a Sheriff's deputy shot and killed their pony. The family says they had no idea the officer was going to shoot the family pet, and it all happened without their knowing and for no good reason whatsoever.

Crista Fitzgerald of Clackamas County explained that the 30-year-old American Miniature Horse, named Gir, had no problems aside from being old. But when he escaped from his stall in a Molalla barn overnight on February 18th, an officer shot and killed him.

"I locked his stall door, and I always do a double check. The next morning I came back out before I had class in the morning, which is around 10, and he was gone," Crista explained.

She said that Gir didn't get very far from the barn before being shot.

"We started knocking door-to-door. And the first house we came to he was laying in their yard," she recounted.

Comment: How psychopathic is that? Totally uncalled for!

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Airplane Paper

Hysterical society: Colorado 6-year old suspended for pointing his fingers in the shape of a gun

Dana Molina
KRDO.com
Tue, 03 Mar 2015 07:36 UTC
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© KRDO
A Colorado Springs first-grader was suspended from school after pointing his fingers at a classmate in the shape of a gun.

Six-year-old Elijah goes to Stratton Meadows Elementary School. On Monday, he pointed at a classmate in the shape of a gun and said, "You're dead."

According to his behavior report, an administrator spoke with him about what being dead means and about not confusing "make-believe" or things in games with reality. And he received a one-day suspension for threats against peers.

"I know they have zero tolerance, but more of a maybe no recess," his dad, Austin Thurston said. "Going as far as a one-day suspension is a little extreme for a six-year-old in a first-grade class."

A spokesperson for Harrison School District 2, which Stratton Meadows is a part of, couldn't give specifics about the case, because it's part of the student's personal record. But she said school administrators feel they issued the appropriate disciplinary action.

She also said school staff speaks with students and parents before a suspension, and they consider current as well as previous behaviors.

Elijah has been at the school since January. His dad said while he had minor behavioral incidents in his previous school, this was the first time he got in trouble at Stratton Meadows.

"Of course I think he was playing," Thurston said. "What six-year-old doesn't play cops and robbers, or cowboys and Indians?"

Thurston said he and his wife have spoken with the boy about guns.

"We just told him there's a time and a place for everything, and we told him school is never a place for that. We let him know that the guns in the wrong hands will be very dangerous," he said. "He knows the difference between really doing that, and just putting your finger up and saying, 'boom you're dead.' We made sure he understands the severity of what he said."

Although the school didn't require it, Elijah is writing an apology letter to the school stating he understands his actions.


Comment: That is the most absurd thing to do to a 6-year old. A far better letter would be: Elijah, you are living in a hysterical, ponerized police state. We are sorry that we are so dumbed down, drugged up and and entertained that we allowed this to happen.

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Take 2

Funding from U.S. trains Christians for private war on Iraq jihadists


Middle East Online
Thu, 26 Feb 2015 00:00 UTC
VanDyke, who rose to fame as a foreign fighter backing Libyan rebels against Gathafi, is training Christian volunteers to take on jihadists in Iraq.

VanDyke
© www.20min.ch
American Matthew VanDyke
After fighting with rebels in Libya and Syria, Matthew VanDyke has rolled up in northern Iraq, but the celebrity American revolutionary-cum-filmmaker has traded his fatigues for a three-piece suit.

VanDyke, who rose to fame as a foreign fighter backing Libyan rebels against Moamer Gathafi, has just finished leading his new military contracting firm through its first assignment -- training Christian volunteers to take on jihadists.

Funded by Christian groups from abroad, mainly from the United States, the Nineveh Plains Protection Unit (NPU) aims to bring a local Christian militia to bear against the Islamic State group that has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria.

VanDyke is one of the best-known -- and least camera-shy -- figures in an expanding and complex constellation of foreign fighters, organisations and donors getting involved in a private war against the jihadists.

"This is an extension of my work as a revolutionary," he says as he takes a sip from his cappuccino in a cafe in the Kurdish capital of Arbil. "What gives somebody else the right to sit home and do nothing?"

Comment: Update from February 25, 2015 - Matthew VanDyke no longer involved with NPU. A NPU spokesman stated that VanDyke continued to misrepresent himself and use the NPU as a means to promote his business, SOLI. VanDyke received a letter from the American Mesopotamia Organization's attorney ordering him to take down all references to the NPU on his websites and online postings, visual images and related text. (To date he has not complied.) Apparently there is now legal action against VanDyke. SOLI is headquartered in New York, NY.

As if the ME isn't complicated enough, there are new semi-independent, semi-naive, wide-eyed factions coming into play to "fight ISIS" starting literally from scratch. Do they even know who and what they are fighting against? A strategy?

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V

#Gitmo2Chicago: Thousands expected to attend Chicago protest against Homan Square torture site


Sputnik
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 01:29 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/ Jeff Roberson
Hundreds of people are expected to gather at Chicago's Homan Square on Saturday to protest about an alleged police interrogation facility where detainees are denied basic rights.

The Chicago police department reportedly operates a secret interrogation compound, similar to the CIA's black sites, at the Homan Square warehouse. Practices at the site allegedly include beatings, prolonged shackling and denying detainees legal counsel.

"I have spoken with several people who have been detained and several attorneys who have represented the detained, so people are coming forward, but the more people who do, the harder it will be for CPD to claim this isn't happening at Homan Square," one of the organizers, Billy Joe Mills, wrote on the protest's Facebook event page.

Some 1,500 people are listed as attending, while another 300 have responded that they may be going.

The goals of the demonstration are a public inspection of the alleged interrogation site, a roundtable discussion on the matter, making information available to the public, and for all Chicago detainees to be given access to their attorneys, according to the Facebook page.

Organizers, which include Chicago Anonymous, urge anyone who has been detained at the Homan Square to come forward, as well as police officers who have knowledge of the situation.
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