A Thousand Cuts

Purity squads, then and now.

127. But now, they call it “community policing”: from 1947project’s always-fascinating social history blog On Bunker Hill, the Los Angeles “Purity Squad” raids the Saratoga Hotel in 1919, arresting 32 people “on charges of living in a house of prostitution.” And some alibis never change:

Many of those arrested said they worked in the movies as extras, but police determined that “extra work is not considered real work.”

128. Police in North Platte, Neb., respond to a complaint of a wedgie administered to an unfortunate youngster. No arrests were made, but a police spokesman warned such behavior would not be tolerated: “You might get away with that in Lincoln or Omaha. But we’re not going to allow wedgies in North Platte.” Because today’s wedgie-puller could be tomorrow’s school shooter.

129. The legislature and police have been busy in Florida:

• The state Senate passes a bill to criminalize salvia divinorum, citing its increasing availability online as a threat to children. (North Dakota has already banned the psychoactive herb and police in Bismarck have made an arrest.)
• An Opa-Locka family demands an apology from cops who busted down their door (wrongly, they say) during the ominously-named “Operation D-Day” drug sweep.

But most importantly, the Florida Senate has passed an amendment to ban “Truck Nutz” (see # 22, here), because ridding rear bumpers of hanging genitalia will prevent the terrorists from winning. Or at least they won’t be quite so offended while they’re here.

130. Hang up the damn dog and drive!

131. The long arm of morality laws has caught up with a San Diego wife and mother of three. Marie Walsh was arrested Apr. 24 by U. S. Marshals after she was identified by Michigan authorities as Susan Lefevre, who walked out of a Detroit corrections facility 32 years ago. She was convicted in 1975 on drug trafficking charges and sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison. She must serve at least nine more years before she is eligible for parole, at which point “mitigating circumstances”, such as the quiet family life she led in San Diego, may be heard to determine if she can be freed.

132. Crying over spilled milk: a Pennsylvanian Amish farmer was arrested, and his dairy operation shut down, for not having a state permit to sell raw milk. He also had been transporting the milk to Delaware and New York City, where the product is illegal but in apparently high demand. The farmer remains defiant: “The government doesn’t have the right to dictate what I eat, and never will.”

133. Denver police may be gearing up for a serious crackdown on protesters at the Democratic National Convention, which comes to town in August. In the past the police have issued citations for misdemeanor offenses committed by protestors, but now the city plans to arrest and detain protestors. The DPD first employed the policy at last year’s Columbus Day parade, where they arrested more than 80 people for attempting to block the parade route. At least now I know why they’re building the new county jail right downtown.

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Misdemeanors and misunderstandings.

118. A Federal appeals court rules that laptops can be subject to warrantless searches and seizures at customs checkpoints in airports, just as they are allowed at border crossings.

119. Frustrated that drivers arrested for DUI might actually be acquitted, a Tennessee lawmaker is pushing a bill that would ban defense attorneys from advertising DUI-related services.

120. While we’re in the Volunteer State, aspiring johns may wish to know that they could lose their car if arrested for soliciting prostitution.  Not convicted, mind you.  As Memphis Police director Larry Godwin put it, “I’d say seize every dadgum vehicle and send a message.”

121. Boston puts the kibosh on bottle service in bars and clubs, because according to the licensing board chairman, Beantown “has a lot more to offer than just getting people inebriated”.

122. Actor Wesley Snipes receives the maximum sentence—36 months—for not voluntarily filing his tax returns, although he was acquitted of the more serious charges of tax fraud and conspiracy.

123. Sheriff Joe, on the go: the self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America” sweeps through Arizona’s Maricopa County and rounds up troublesome Mexicans, half of whom might actually be here illegally.

124. Senate leaders agree to jack up taxes on fuel for private jets by 65 percent.

125. A Seattle man who smokes marijuana legally for medical purposes has been denied a life-saving liver transplant due to his drug use.

126. A utility subcontractor in Brooklyn Park, Minn., became lightheaded from chemicals in the bathroom of a home where he was installing a hot water heater.  He called the police, and on his word alone, they raided the home on suspicion that it housed a meth lab.  Instead they found vinegar and pickling lime, which the homeowner used to maintain his saltwater fish tank.

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Police, porn and power.

111. The police in Whitewater, Wisc. crack down hard on online bullies - particularly when they’re the target.

112. A-raiding we will go:

• Massive sweeps in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas nets hundreds of arrests, 1,300 traffic tickets and some seized cash.  All in the name of keeping us safe from terrorists.
• Police in Akron, Ohio continue a “Gun Violence Retention Sweep” that resulted in 72 arrests, although no guns were confiscated.

113. Minnesota seeks to conscript banks into its ranks of tax collectors, requiring them to rat out customers who owe the state money.

114. Another isolated Tasing incident leaves a a University of Miami graduate in critical condition.

115. Flying the heavily scanned skies:

• L. A. International Airport will start using body-imaging scanning to search for contraband under passengers’ clothing.  The technology “essentially shows how the person looks without clothing.”
• The Department of Homeland Security leans on airlines and cruise lines to collect fingerprint data from all foreign travelers departing the U. S.  Industry lobbyists claim the effort is cost-prohibitive.

116. Porn film producer John Stagliano faces multiple Federal charges of distributing obscene material.  Said “Buttman” of the charges: “With the war in Iraq going so well, Osama bin Laden captured, the economy thriving, our public school system fixed, and our crumbling infrastructure completely repaired, the Bush administration’s top priority seems to be harassing filmmakers and watching our movies.”

117. Shock to the system: a Colorado man convicted of murder served 20 years in prison, where the state put his electrician skills to good use, transporting him all around the correctional system, and even driving him to Denver to take his exams and paying his license renewal fees.  But now that he’s paroled, the state licensing board is threatening to pull his license based on his murder conviction, even though they’ve known about it for years.

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Uprooting the tree of Liberty.

103. More isolated incidents: an ATF squad hits the wrong house in Miami, damaging the front door and breaking windows from tear-gas canisters fired into the house.  Among the non-criminals in the house were a woman and her 3-year-old son.

104. Hey you damn kids, get off my monument: a group of libertarians observe Thomas Jefferson’s birthday by heading down to his D. C. memorial for a midnight dance (to music played through iPods).  The National Park Police take exception to such a brazen display of revelry and break up the fun, arresting one of the participants in the process.

105. The Supreme Court heard arguments this week on whether Louisiana can put child rapists to death in a case that could have wide-ranging implications for other states looking to expand the death penalty to crimes other than capital murder.

106. Sheriff José, er Joe Arpaio uses Maricopa County tax dollars and funds from RICO seizures to provide training and equipment to Honduras police, although they’re tightlipped on why they’re doing it or how taxpayers in Arizona might benefit.  Cheaper bananas, maybe?

107. But at least Arizona is cracking down hard on working mothers for driving under the influence, even when they’ve had hardly anything to drink.

108. Other things you can no longer do in motorized vehicles: stay in one spot for longer than an hour in a taco truck in Los Angeles (see #91, below), or smoke in the car when kids are present in Maine.

109. In the hallowed halls of public education:

• A philosophy professor at a Long Island community college demands that his students acknowledge that their religious beliefs may be in error in order to participate in his class.  The American Center for Law and Justice is on the case.
• A high school student in Texas is suspended after receiving a phone call during class from his father, who is stationed in Iraq.

110. Apparently it’s a no-no in New Mexico to decline someone’s business on the basis of one’s religious beliefs.  Remember, the First Amendment is just printed on a goddamned piece of paper.

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Would the government ever lie to you?

97. Our heroic war on drugs:

• Two teens are shot by a Howard County, MD police officer during an investigation into suspected drug activity.
• A couple in Pennsylvania, Steve and Karen Haver, narrowly avoids losing their home after police, while investigating a burglar alarm at their residence, found five marijuana plants growing in their basement.  Although state law authorizes forfeiture of property, including homes, after a drug arrest (not just conviction), the couple agreed to a plea deal that allowed them to keep their home.  But Haver’s wife has already been fired from her job, and Haver expects to lose his when his contract expires in June.
• A Denver man is shot to death by police during a drug raid after undercover officers purchased crack from him a few days earlier.  Family members claim that Nathan Aguillard suffered from schizophrenia and was “too paranoid” to sell drugs to other people.  “They chose what seems to be the most confrontational approach to arrest him,” said a lawyer for the family.

98. The California legislature considers a bill to ban metallic balloons filled with helium, which can float away and make contact with power lines, causing power outages.  While they’re at it, I hope they can do something about those damn sneakers that always get hung up there.

99. The Pentagon prepares to issue hand-held lie detectors to U. S. troops in Afghanistan in the ongoing war on terror.  I promise you, these will never be used here on civilians.

100. Government money grabs:

• Dallas drops the timing of yellow lights at select intersections to below the minimum standards set by the Texas Department of Transportation in an effort to increase red-light violations.
• The state of New York plans to raise its cigarette tax to $2.75 per pack, which could push the price of a pack in New York City to more than $9.  Already the high taxes on smokes have led to a healthy black market.
• And not content to tax smokers into oblivion, New York also plans to go after Internet shoppers with a new online sales tax.
• The District of Columbia goes after a Montgomery County man for a $200 parking ticket . . . which had been issued to his car after it was stolen.

101. The Army kills a suspected terrorist, approximately seven pounds and answered to the name of “Fluffy”.

102. Police in Oakland ask very nicely if they can enter people’s homes and search for guns.

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Blitzkrieg

92. Police agencies in Kentucky go on a “Byrne Blitz”—a concerted effort to increase drug seizures and arrests to ensure that the Federal funding spigot continues to flow freely.

93. First Amendment follies:

• A Santeria priest sues a Texas town over their prohibition against animal sacrifice.
• An Illinois delegate for Barack Obama resigned after she used the word “monkeys” to refer to black kids playing in a tree. The real insult, however, is that she was issued a $75 citation for disorderly conduct.
• A professor at Lake Superior State University faces a formal reprimand for offensive material posted on his office door. The university claims the cartoons and other material create a “hostile environment”; the professor says he’s being singled out for his conservative political views.

94. Now go away, or we shall punish you a second time: an Orange County, CA man was wrongly convicted for carjacking and spent 16 months in prison before he was freed. Now the state says it has no obligation to compensate him for the wrongful imprisonment because he implicated himself by accepting a plea deal on the original charge.

95. Infamous until proven innocent: police in Arizona are posting mug shots of accused shoplifters online as a “deterrent”. Hell, what are they waiting for? Just lop off their right hand when they arrest ‘em!

96. Our incorruptible public servants:

• So if you’re convicted of accepting bribes, you lose your job, right? Not necessarily, if you’re a public school teacher.
• Don’t worry, Daddy will take care of it: Federal employees have been racking up personal charges on government credit cards to the tune of $2 million.

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Apologia

Sorry for the extended hiatus here; the last couple of months have not been conducive to making regular updates.  I am reworking how I keep track of stories for the blog, which I’m hoping will make it easier for me to post nightly and not let the backlog pile up.  I’ve saved off so many articles just in the past two months on all the outrageous abuses of power by police, bureaucrats and politicians that there was no way I’d ever catch up, so I’m starting fresh, and hope to bring new cuts to our liberties every day.  Come bleed with me.

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Lighters, lockups and lunch trucks.

89. Dispatches from around the United Nanny States of America:

• The Dallas City Council passes new laws banning the use of cell phones while driving through school zones and requiring increased monitoring of Internet usage in public libraries, joining other recent laws banning toy guns in parks and restricting panhandling.  They’re also considering expanding the public smoking ban, which currently includes restaurants, to bars.
• Maine becomes the first state in the country to protect children from the menace of novelty lighters.
• Virginia now requires that public schools offer Internet safety courses.  No word on whether they’ll provide supplemental courses for parents on properly supervising their children while on the Internet.  Nah, that would be a violation of parental rights!

Speaking of smoking bans, a new study suggests that they may lead to an increase in driving under the influence.  And Warren Meyer expresses his own frustration with the unintended consequences of nanny statism.

90. To serve and protect:

• Two Florida SWAT officers bring their kids on a drug raid.  What, they can’t afford a baby sitter on their salaries?
• A Somalian refugee studying at Metro State College in Denver spent eight days in police lockup last fall on auto theft charges, which were dismissed when the prosecutor finally noticed he didn’t look anything like the suspect in a mug shot.  This despite the fact that he produced multiple forms of ID at the time of his arrest to prove he wasn’t the guy cops were looking for.
• An investigation by the Orange County Register uncovered nearly a million vehicles registered to state and local government employees whose home addresses are kept secret in DMV records, allowing drivers to bypass highway tolls, run through camera-enforced red lights, and ignore parking tickets.  “They’ve exempted themselves from the rules they’re enforcing,” says a traffic safety activist.

91. Follow the taco truck: Los Angeles considers a new ordinance that would make it a crime for food trucks (known as loncheras if they serve Mexican food) to stay in one place for more than 30 minutes.  Denver has had a similar row over loncheras in years past; a 2002 ordinance requiring food trucks to move every four hours and limiting their hours of operation imposes a $1,000 fine and jail time for violators.

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Greetings from your friendly neighborhood SWAT team.

79. It’s for the children: the Colorado legislature considers a bill that would criminalize negligent storage of firearms.

80. Aside from the top-secret Camp 7 within the Gitmo terrorist camp, it’s now possible that detainees convicted of terrorism could face the death penalty and be executed on Gitmo, which would be “largely beyond the reach of U. S. courts”.

81. Voter confusion over a poorly-designed ballot in Los Angeles County may have led to as many as 776,000 “Nonpartisan” ballots to be ignored in the vote count.

82. Do you have any undeclared vegetables, plants or hard drives?  Customs agents are seizing computers and other electronic devices, without a warrant or even probable cause, from international travelers and copying any data found on them.

83. The smell of drug money: an Oregon man is busted for running an indoor marijuana farm after a bureaucrat notices that the money he used to pay a tax bill smelled like pot.

84. Narcs for the New World Order, unite!  United Nations anti-drug bureaucrats claim that new marijuana vending machines in California violate international drug treaties and should be shut down.  And the DEA threatens San Francisco landlords with property seizure if they continue to rent to medical marijuana dispensaries, even though they are legal in California.

85. The Feds seize cash, computers and financial records of a Denver business which they say operated a high-end prostitution ring, but have not arrested or charged the owner or employees with a crime.

86. It’s for the children, pt. 2: Boston cops go door-to-door in poor neighborhoods, “asking” if they can search the house for illegal guns.

87. In the wake of a Lima, Ohio SWAT raid in which a young woman was shot to death and her one-year-old son wounded, protesters at the Lima City Council meeting are greeted by SWAT snipers on the rooftops.

88. A Barstow, Calif. man is also greeted by SWAT, in the form of a flash-bang grenade thrown into his home, causing second- and third-degree burns.  They then drag the disabled man out on his porch, where he is kicked and beaten.  “They weren’t acting like professional policemen,” observed a neighbor. “They were acting like thugs.”

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Garnishments, gambling and grilled hot dogs.

68. Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says she might be willing to garnish workers’ wages in order to ensure universal health care coverage. She might want to ask Mitt Romney, late of the Republican nomination race, how that has worked out.

69. President Bush sends a $3.1 trillion budget to Congress, looking for big cuts in health care spending but big increases for homeland security.

70. More wrongful convictions based on flimsy evidence overturned: a Greeley, Colorado man goes free after spending nearly a decade in prison for murder when DNA tests show he wasn’t the killer. The evidence police used against Tim Masters consisted of knives (but not the murder weapon), gory sketches and stories, and a psychologist’s testimony that Masters’ creative output indicated an obsession with rape and murder. And in Indiana, DNA testing also clears another man in the bludgeoning death of an 89-year-old Terre Haute woman, after he had already spent 25 years in prison for the murder. David Scott, who was 15 at the time and learning disabled, was convicted based on his own confession. The DNA testing technology which exonerated both of these men has been available for years.

71. The FBI embarks on a $1 billion odyssey to build the world’s largest biometrics database, incorporating facial scans, fingerprints, iris patterns and other identifying characteristics.

72. Because if you blah blah, the terrorists win again: some law students from the University of Denver find that the very rules they’re fighting at the Federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo. may also bar them from seeing the inmates they’re representing in civil-rights lawsuits against the government.  The Justice Department’s argument: because they’re not yet lawyers, the students may be more likely to aid the terrorists in passing messages to the outside.  Right, because lawyers always become less corruptible after they get their licenses.

73. The U. S. strikes a deal with the World Trade Organization to allow the Federal online gambling ban to remain in place, at a cost of billions of dollars in trade concessions.  Blogger Ed Brayton files a Freedom of Information Act request to get a copy of the agreement with the WTO.  The government denies the request, citing a matter of “national security”.

74. REAL ID roundup: a DHS official suggests that a national ID card could be required to purchase over-the-counter medication to combat meth.  And CNET has a series of stories on the controversial initiative, covering the impact REAL ID will have on travel, visits to Federal facilities, privacy and more.

75. Concerned neighbors set fire to a trailer in front of a home where they found out a registered sex offender lives.  Too bad it was the wrong house.

76. Cops in Virginia Beach charge an Abercrombie & Fitch store manager with obscenity and confiscate two of the store’s racy ad posters.  (The obscenity charge was later dropped.)  One of the posters depicted teenage boys running with their pants falling down, which led to police concerns that they would not be able to enforce city dress codes.

77. A Maryland lawmaker introduces a bill to require all driver license applicants under the age of 21 to submit to drug and alcohol testing.  Because it will save lives, of course, at least during the driving test.  Trevor Bothwell rips this one to shreds.

78. A story in LA Weekly digs deep into Los Angeles’ grilled bacon-wrapped hot dogs wars: they’re so good, they’re illegal.

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