Society's ChildS


Sheriff

Audit finds police who work on campus where they live rent-free ignoring over 90 percent of emergency calls

Image
© WPLG
The Resident on Campus Security (ROCS) program - which allows police officers to live rent- and utility-free in trailers on Broward County Public Schools campuses - is coming under fire after an internal audit determined that the program is "not adequately supervised," "operating with an expired lease agreement," and that almost 91 percent of the emergency calls from ROCS campuses are answered by local police departments instead of ROCS officers.

The ROCS program was founded in the 1980s to address theft, vandalism, and trespassing on school campuses, but according to the school board's chief auditor, Patrick Reilly, even if it were adequately overseen, it would still be unnecessary.

"The existing technology of alarm systems and fire alarm systems, along with the implementation of single point of entry, surveillance cameras, [Broward District Schools Police Department] staff on call and an Alarm Monitoring Unit that monitors security alarms at all school sites 24 hours a day, 7 days per week," makes the ROCS officers an expensive luxury.

According to WPLG, the program is "in shambles."

Sheriff

Dashboard cam shows cops shooting unarmed man with hands raised

Image
© Screen Shot (NJ.com)
Dashboard footage from a fatal police shooting in Bridgeton, New Jersey confirm eyewitness accounts that the victim was stepping out of the car with his arms raised when officers shot and killed him, the Press of Atlantic City reports.

Police in Bridgeton pulled over the car in which Jerame Reid was a passenger on December 30th. Prosecutors said that "during the course of the stop a handgun was revealed and later recovered," but witnesses said that Officers Braheme Days and Roger Worley opened fire and killed Reid as he was peacefully exiting the vehicle.

Tahli Dawkins told the Press of Atlantic City that he watched the officers approaching the car yelling, "Don't effing move!" and that they opened fire without provocation.

Denzel Mosley told KYW-TV that Reid's hands were "in plain sight," and that the officers "were telling him, 'Get out [of] the car,'" then yelling "'Stop!' and they started shooting."

Ben Mosley - a retired sheriff's deputy - said that Reid may have attempted to get back into the car when the officers yelled the contradictory order to "Stop!" but that he did not believe that justified firing upon him.

Comment: Will these police be held responsible for what is cold-blooded murder? Unlikely, based on the recent events surrounding cops killing unarmed citizens. This is the reality of living in a police state - the authorities have the right to kill at will with no repercussions. This is the U.S.A. right now, we are no longer protected by police, we are the enemy.


Stormtrooper

9 Fox News segments they would have been sued for if the U.S. had laws like France

Image
© YouTubeBill O'Reilly
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said on Tuesday that she planned to sue Fox News after the network repeatedly reported that there were so-called "no-go zones" in the city where Muslims had taken control.

Although French law makes a successful prosecution more likely, here are a few of the times Fox News might have been taken to court in the United States over the years if the U.S had laws like France.

1. Bill O'Reilly demonized abortion Dr. George Tiller before he was killed in 2009

Salon wrote in 2009 that there was "no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly" than Fox News Bill O'Reilly. After years of being attack on air by O'Reilly, Tiller was killed by an anti-abortion activist in 2009.


Eye 2

Burmese woman publicly beheaded in Saudi Arabia following murder conviction

Saudi Arabia
© Pablo Martinez Monsivias / AP Photo
A Burmese woman was publicly beheaded in the Saudi city of Mecca on Monday, January 12, triggering a heated debate regarding the cruelty of the punishment.

"Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, a Burmese woman who resided in Saudi Arabia, was executed by sword on Monday after being dragged through the street and held down by four police officers," the Independent reported.

The woman was convicted of the physical abuse and murder of her seven-year-old step-daughter.

Hardhat

Cincinnati bridge collapse another example of US' crumbling infrastructure

Image
Cincinnati Bridge Collapse Kills Construction Worker
"Deteriorating infrastructure does not magically get better by ignoring it," says senator

In an op-ed published Tuesday, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) pointed to Monday's Cincinnati bridge collapse, which killed one person, as further evidence that the U.S. desperately needs to upgrade its infrastructure - from bridges and roads to railways and levees.

"Our infrastructure is collapsing, and the American people know it," wrote Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "The Interstate 75 bridge collapse in Cincinnati on Monday is only the latest example."

The Cincinnati overpass, which was undergoing demolition, collapsed late Monday and killed a construction worker.

While the overpass did not appear to have any structural issues, one of nine bridges in the U.S. is in fact structurally deficient and nearly a quarter are functionally obsolete, Sanders said - illustrating his point: "For many years we have underfunded the maintenance of our nation's physical infrastructure. That has to change. It is time to rebuild America."

Comment: In addition to the deterioration of bridges, highways and dams, the US is littered with aging nuclear reactors, and it has been reported that all of them have irreparable safety issues. Poverty and homelessness are at record levels, yet the elites spend billions on a manufactured war of terror to convince us that we need them to keep us safe. So much for American exceptionalism!


House

Another face of the tyrannical police state: Your home is your prison

Image
© Flickr.com/photos/65047661@N00
If they were moved all at once, they could almost replace the population of Jamaica (2.7 million) and they would leave Qatar, Namibia, Macedonia, or Latvia swimming in extra people. I'm talking about the incarcerated in America -- an estimated 2.4 million people at any moment in "1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,259 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails, and 79 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the U.S. territories." That's just about one of every 100 Americans, more than 60% of whom are people of color. Add in another almost five million on probation or in some way under the supervision of the criminal justice system and you've reached about seven million, the equivalent of the population of Serbia or Paraguay. In other words, a reasonably sized nation of prisoners.

Not surprisingly, that's also the largest prison population on Earth. No other country comes close. Put another way, on any day of your choice, the United States, with 5% of the world's population, has close to 25% of the people imprisoned on this planet. That population, by the way, has risen by 700% since 1970, a tidal movement for incarceration that only in recent years has shown small signs of finally ebbing. In short, state by state or as a country, the U.S. leaves the rest of the world in the dust. (USA! USA!)

And that's just to scratch the surface of what, if we were being honest, would have to be called the American Gulag, a vast carceral archipelago that no other country can match and into which millions of human beings are simply deep-sixed. The urge to reform such a system should be applauded, but as with so many "reforms" in our era, the latest "alternative" forms of confinement may, in the end, only be extending and expanding the prison system into other parts of American life. It may, suggests Maya Schenwar, editor-in-chief of Truthout and author of the new book Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better, ensure that new concepts of how to lock down America are coming to a neighborhood near you. Tom

Your Home Is Your Prison
How to Lock Down Your Neighborhood, Your Country, and You
By Maya Schenwar

On January 27th, domestic violence survivor Marissa Alexander will walk out of Florida's Duval County jail -- but she won't be free.

Alexander, whose case has gained some notoriety, endured three years of jail time and a year of house arrest while fighting off a prison sentence that would have seen her incarcerated for the rest of her life -- all for firing a warning shot that injured no one to fend off her abusive husband. Like many black women before her, Alexander was framed as a perpetrator in a clear case of self-defense. In November, as her trial date drew close, Alexander accepted a plea deal that will likely give her credit for time served, requiring her to spend "just" 65 more days in jail. Media coverage of the development suggested that Alexander would soon have her "freedom," that she would be "coming home."

Comment: See also:'Neo-slavery' in America's for-profit prison system


Stock Up

110% rise in anti-Muslim incidents in France

french muslim
© AFP Photo / Stephane De Sakutin
There has been a huge increase in anti-Muslim incidents in France following the Islamist attacks in Paris two weeks ago. At 116 confrontations this month, it's more than double the amount recorded for the whole of January, 2014.

The National Observatory Against Islamophobia said over one hundred incidents have been reported to the police since the terrorist attacks of January 7-9. Three French Islamists killed 17 people during their shooting spree. The human rights group says there have been 28 attacks on places of worship and 88 threats have been made, as reported by AFP.


Comment: How long before citizens start making friendly calls to the security services, informing on their Muslim neighbors?


Comment: A troubling development, for sure. But one we all should have seen coming: Holocaust 2.0: Coming soon!


Comet

Ukrainians march in Kiev, holding 'Je Suis Volnovakha' banners

Image
© AFP/SERGEI SUPINSKY
After visiting the Unity March in Paris last week, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko attends yet another march holding a placard written in French. This time, it is "Je Suis Volnovakha" during a rally in Kiev, meant to commemorate victims of a tragic incident in eastern Ukraine that killed 13 people.

Thousands of Ukrainians have marched on the streets of Kiev Sunday, holding banners that read "Je Suis Volnovakha", at a rally meant to commemorate victims of a tragic incident in eastern Ukraine, in which 13 people were killed.

Top Ukrainian officials, including the country's President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk joined the march.

The title under which the march was organized is a copy-cat slogan of the now-famous "Je Suis Charlie" that started in Paris, after gunmen killed 12 journalists of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine on January 7.

The bus attack in Volnovakha resulted in the death of 12 people, injuring at least 17 others. Kiev said that the bus was hit by rockets fired from the east, where local independence fighters were allegedly present at the time. However, the authorities of the self-proclaimed people's republic of Donetsk (DPR) have stressed that they were not involved in the attack.

On Saturday, the OSCE released a report that said the rockets, which hit the bus, were fired from a north-north-eastern direction. Earlier, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine confirmed that Kiev forces and DPR have agreed on the launch of a joint inquiry into the attack.


Comment: As with the Charlie Hebdo attack, it seems Volnovakha bus attack was also a false flag event.

CyberBerkut hacktivists leak docs suggesting Volnovakha bus attack was a false flag

Along with shouting Je Suis Volnovakha, the authoritarian followers attending the rally also shouted kill Russian.




Attention

Benzene found in drinking water supply downstream from Yellowstone oil spill

drinking water benzene glendive montana
© AP Photo/The Billings Gazette, Larry MayerCrews work to contain an oil spill from Bridger Pipeline's broken pipeline near Glendive, Mont., in this aerial view showing both sides of the river on Monday, Jan. 19, 2015. Officials said that they were bringing truckloads of drinking water to Glendive after traces of 50,000 gallons of oil that spilled into the Yellowstone River were found in the city's water supply.
A cancer-causing component of oil has been detected in the drinking water supply of an eastern Montana city just downstream from a crude oil spill that entered the Yellowstone River.

Elevated levels of benzene were found in water samples taken from a treatment plant that serves about 6,000 people in the agricultural community of Glendive near the North Dakota border, officials said.

Scientists from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the benzene levels are above those recommended for long-term consumption but don't pose a short-term health hazard.

Truckloads of bottled water were coming in Tuesday, and residents were warned not to drink or cook with water from their taps.

Some residents criticized the timing of the Monday advisory, which came more than two days after 50,000 gallons of oil spilled from a break in 12-inch pipeline owned by Wyoming-based Bridger Pipeline Co. It emerged as a concern over the response to the Saturday accident.

Adding to the frustrations was uncertainty over how long the water warning will last and why company and government officials still don't know how to remove crude trapped beneath the ice-covered Yellowstone River.

Comment: See: 50,000 gallons of crude oil spills into partially frozen Yellowstone River


Pistol

Shooting brawl that involved 100 people in San Antonio, TX leaves two dead

shooting san antonio
A chaotic brawl and shooting on the East Side left two people dead and others wounded late Monday night, San Antonio police say.

Police believe a total of seven people were shot when gunfire rang out before 10:30 p.m. at a car wash on North New Braunfels Avenue and Gibbs Street.

Officers arrived at the scene and also had to break up a disturbance that followed the shooting, and may have involved as many as 100 people.

According to a preliminary SAPD report, several unknown suspects drove up into the car wash and began to fire multiple rounds at a crowd of victims.

Comment: Society continues its downward spiral in the US, no doubt fueled by skyrocketing poverty and the stress of living under the rule of psychopaths.