Society's Child

Detroit policed sued for wrongful arrest based on facial recognition

Adi Robertson
The Verge
Tue, 13 Apr 2021 12:17 UTC

A man who was falsely accused of shoplifting has sued the Detroit Police Department for arresting him based on an incorrect facial recognition match. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of Robert Williams, whom it calls the first US person wrongfully arrested based on facial recognition.

The Detroit Police Department arrested Williams in 2019 after examining security footage from a shoplifting incident. A detective used facial recognition technology on a grainy image from the video, and the system flagged Williams as a potential match based on a driver's license photo. But as the lawsuit notes, facial recognition is frequently inaccurate, particularly with Black subjects and a low-quality picture. The department then produced a photo lineup that included Williams' picture, showed it to a security guard who hadn't actually witnessed the shoplifting incident, and obtained a warrant when that guard picked him from the lineup.

Student that fired on officers at Tennessee high school killed

CNBC
Mon, 12 Apr 2021 16:15 UTC

© Brianna Paciorka | News Sentinel | USA Today Network | via Reuters
Police at a shooting at Austin-East Magnet High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, April 12, 2021.

A student opened fire on officers responding to a report of a possible gunman at a Tennessee high school Monday, and police shot back and killed him, authorities said. The shooting wounded an officer and comes as the community reels from off-campus gun violence that has left three other students dead this year.

Police found the student in a bathroom at Austin-East Magnet High School in Knoxville, a city about 180 miles (290 kilometers) east of Nashville, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David B. Rausch said at a news conference. They ordered the student to come out, but he wouldn't comply, and that's when he reportedly opened fire, Rausch said. Police fired back.

The student died at the school, and the officer was taken into surgery after being shot at least once in the upper leg, authorities said. The officer was expected to recover, and no one else was hurt. It wasn't yet clear why the student brought a gun to school or why he fired at officers.

Comment: See also: New Mexico police release dashcam showing drug dealer killing officer

The CRT commissars in public education

Rod Dreher
The American Conservative
Mon, 12 Apr 2021 20:24 UTC

This blog really does have some great readers. Over the weekend, I heard from this one, whose identity I'm protecting:

I've been reading your blog for a couple years now. I sometimes disagree with your takes, but I steadfastly agree about the damage Critical Race Theory (CRT) is doing to our nation. I'm a high school teacher in [state] and currently taking the last class required for my master's degree in education through [university]. The class covers some of the science behind how people (and specifically children) learn.

The latest modules, however, deal with CRT and its tenets, such as the permanence of racism, the failure of liberalism, the myth of colorblindness, and others. It has been difficult to complete the assignments because I disagree with nearly all of them. I find myself staring at the screen in gridlock because the work presupposes all of these beliefs. How can I answer from a perspective I feel is inherently wrong? As an example, some of my assignments are attached below.

To make the situation more interesting, the class is taught by a white female professor and the students are nearly all white women. One student may be Indian, but it's hard to tell since we've only met virtually. As a person of color, I have more experience living as a minority in this society than all of them, yet I'm supposed to pretend I believe these insane ideas.

My [spouse] knows and understands my frustration. I just have to "suck it up" and finish this class so I can get my degree. I will never accept CRT because its tenets are antithetical to the Gospel. However, I wanted to write to you so you and others can see what happens in teacher education right now in our country. If conservatives ever want to right this ship, they need to start getting involved in public education, and, preferably, become teachers themselves.

I'm going to share the documents below. But first, I wrote back to this reader to ask why conservatives and traditional Christians should get involved in a profession in which everything is stacked against them?

India overtakes Brazil as second worst-hit Covid-19 country

Yahoo News
Mon, 12 Apr 2021 20:10 UTC

India on Monday overtook Brazil as the country with the second-highest number of coronavirus infections, as it reported a new daily record of more than 168,000 cases.

The vast nation of 1.3 billion people has been reporting a rapid increase in new infections in recent weeks, with the surge taking the total toll to 13.5 million cases, above Brazil's 13.48 million.

Experts have warned that huge, mostly maskless and tightly packed crowds at political rallies in poll-bound states, mass religious festivals and at other public places were fuelling the new wave of infections.

"The whole country has been complacent -- we allowed social, religious and political congregations," Rajib Dasgupta, a health professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told AFP.

"No-one queued up (for social distancing) anymore."

The country has recorded more than 873,000 cases in the last seven days -- an increase of 70 percent compared to the previous week, according to data compiled by AFP.

Comment: Seasonality probably has a lot to do with this. And a daily reminder: lockdowns won't/don't work.

Democrat Rashida Tlaib goes extreme: 'No more policing' and 'incarceration,' 'it can't be reformed'

Ryan Saavedra
Daily Wire
Tue, 13 Apr 2021 19:53 UTC

© Saul Loeb / Agence France-Presse File
From left: US Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan)

Far-left Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was widely slammed online on Monday after she made arguably the most extreme far-left proposal of any notable public figure over the last year, calling for there to be "no more policing" and "incarceration" because the system "can't be reformed."

Comment: In practice this means criminals run free - plus the establishment of a secret police force (largely staffed by those criminals) to eliminate all dissidents.

Tlaib's remarks came after 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot as he attempted to run from police who pulled him over on Sunday over expired license plate tags. Wright had a warrant out for his arrest for running from police and for a weapons charge. Police later said that the officer who shot Wright thought she was using her taser.

"It wasn't an accident. Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist," Tlaib said. "Daunte Wright was met with aggression & violence. I am done with those who condone government funded murder. No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can't be reformed."

Comment: There's no evidence racism had anything to do with Wright's death. Tlaib is exploiting his death to play revolutionary politics.

Tlaib was widely slammed online by people who called the proposal insane and who noted that the "no more policing" slogan would be a killer for the Democrats in the upcoming 2022.

Man finds out government is lying on a monumental scale: Still thinks they're doing good

Rob Slane
The Blogmire
Tue, 13 Apr 2021 19:19 UTC

A man who spent last year believing everything the Government and media said about Covid-19 and Lockdowns, only to find out that none of the things he'd believed are true, has announced his continued belief that they must be acting out of purely altruistic motives. Brian Sprocket, a 38-year-old teaching assistant from Barnsley, spent most of last year staying home, wearing a mask on the few occasions he ventured out, and ensuring he stayed away from all human beings, whom he regarded as walking virus carriers.

But at the beginning of this year, he was forced to think for the first time about what was going on, after his television stopped working. With nothing to watch, Brian decided to look at an email sent to him by a friend last autumn, which he had previously dismissed as a conspiracy theory:

As vaccine passports are rolled out across the world, what price freedom?

Lockdown Sceptics
Sun, 11 Apr 2021 00:00 UTC

It used to be that the crazy ideas of politicians seldom came to fruition because Government IT projects dragged on for years before being cancelled anyway. We were all protected by the ineptitude of civil servants who built the wrong things in the wrong way. That is not the case these days. Last year's NHS COVID19 app was a well-engineered piece of software, deployed at massive scale to 21 million people. In just two months it became one of the world's most downloaded medical software products.

It was certainly built in the right way, but did it live up to the barely credible claims made by the politicians? Has anyone heard NHSX, the app's creator, defending its claim that its venue QR codes "will help avoid the reintroduction of lockdown measures and support the country to return to a normal way of life"? That was two lockdowns ago, by the way.

Or can anyone provide evidence in support of NHSX's claim that "for every 1 to 2 people who download the app, an infection could be prevented"? Given that we know it was downloaded 21 million times that implies 11-21 million averted infections. The Alan Turing Institute gushed over its estimated 284,000 averted infections but failed to point out that meant NHSX were out by a factor of 56. We are indeed in an era of being able to successfully build the wrong systems in the right way.

Poll: 15% of Americans worse off a year into pandemic

Sarah Skidmore Sell
AP
Tue, 13 Apr 2021 00:00 UTC

While most Americans have weathered the pandemic financially, about 38 million say they are worse off now than before the outbreak began in the U.S.

Overall, 55% of Americans say their financial circumstances are about the same now as a year ago, and 30% say their finances have improved, according to a new poll from Impact Genome and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. But 15% say they are worse off.

The problem is more pronounced at lower-income levels: 29% of Americans living below the federal poverty line say their personal finances worsened in the past year. Roughly that many also find themselves in a deepening financial hole, saying they struggled to pay bills in the past three months.

One officer accused in pepper-spraying of black army officer during traffic stop fired

Washington Times
Sun, 11 Apr 2021 08:40 UTC

© Windsor Police via AP
In this image made from Windsor, (Va.) Police video, A police officer uses a spray agent on Caron Nazario on Dec. 20, 2020, in Windsor, Va. Nazario, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, is suing two Virginia police officers over a traffic stop during which he says the officers drew their guns and pointed them at him as he was dressed in uniform. Caron Nazario says his constitutional rights were violated by the traffic stop in the town of Windsor in December.

One of two police officers accused of pepper-spraying and pointing their guns at a Black Army officer during a traffic stop has since been fired, a Virginia town announced late Sunday, hours after the governor called for an independent investigation into the case.

The town of Windsor said in a statement that it joined calls from election officials, including Gov. Ralph Northam, in requesting an investigation by Virginia State Police into the December 2020 encounter in which two Windsor officers were accused of drawing their guns, pointing them at U.S. Army second lieutenant Caron Nazario and using a slang term to suggest he was facing execution.

Nazario was also pepper-sprayed and knocked to the ground by the officers, Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker, according to the lawsuit he filed earlier this month against them.

Comment: This is rich, coming from Northam. The Virginia governor is not popular even in his Democratic party because of his hypocrisy. The same party canceled college mascots and syrup logos because of Black Lives Matter, but it was ok for him to be photographed in blackface mask with a guy with a KKK mask, and to offend black people publicly. The media were silent about that. Note the asymmetry - conservatives wouldn't be able to get away with any of that. And the media are happy to amplify the asymmetry wherever and whenever possible.

See also:

Get the kids early: Scrabble goes woke, bans 400 words in latest culture war salvo

Frank Furedi
RT
Tue, 13 Apr 2021 16:47 UTC

Scrabble has followed Mr Potato Head and Barbie in trying to impose woke values on your children. Remember when toys and games used to be fun rather than tools used to ensure kids think in what's deemed an 'acceptable' manner?

Just when you imagined that the woke-inspired culture war could not get any crazier, you realise that they are desperately serious about turning people's lives upside down.

The toy manufacturer Mattel, which owns the rights to Scrabble outside North America, has just announced that it has decided to remove 400 words it considers derogatory from its list of officially accepted terms.

Comment: The kids are sitting ducks. It doesn't bode well.

On afterthought, where are the Hispanos in this controversy??? They have been MIA in the racist BLM movement.

expat in chile

Articles like this one make me physically sick. Seriously. I consider natural and normal the ethical husbandry of animals for human consumption....

Heosphorus

This sentence is the best I've read all day: "We know that building resiliency against hardship is the best weapon against depression and...

Heosphorus

Not required, maybe, but some people could use a good ego death. It sure opened my eyes!

endescent

The gov. is going to have to increase sales tax on everything to make up for the loss of revenues. Something else to blame the smokers for I...

Demore

Society's Child

Detroit policed sued for wrongful arrest based on facial recognition

Student that fired on officers at Tennessee high school killed

The CRT commissars in public education

India overtakes Brazil as second worst-hit Covid-19 country

Democrat Rashida Tlaib goes extreme: 'No more policing' and 'incarceration,' 'it can't be reformed'

Man finds out government is lying on a monumental scale: Still thinks they're doing good

As vaccine passports are rolled out across the world, what price freedom?

Poll: 15% of Americans worse off a year into pandemic

One officer accused in pepper-spraying of black army officer during traffic stop fired

Get the kids early: Scrabble goes woke, bans 400 words in latest culture war salvo

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