Free Republic

Four members of CODEPINK arrested By Andy Birkey 9/3/08 8:24 PM Four members of the CODEPINK women’s peace movement were arrested Wednesday afternoon. The women, Desiree Fairooz, 52, of Arlington, Texas, Toby Blome, 53 of El Cerrito, Cali., Kit Siemen, 50, of Quilcene, Wash., and Nancy Mancias, 38, of San Francisco, were protesting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin near the St. Paul Hotel when police pushed them to the sidewalk and into the fence surrounding the security perimeter.CODEPINK’s media contact Jean Steven’s sent this message along: In protest of the war and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s pro-war and pro-drilling positions,...

Politics: You'll be hearing a lot in coming weeks about Sarah Palin's "abuse of power" in trying to get a state cop fired. Here's the back story you won't be hearing.Palin's political enemies have a stink bomb set to go off late in October, just before the election. That's when voters will see fruits of a legislative investigation into the charge that the governor fired Alaska's Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan because he wouldn't get rid of Mike Wooten, a state trooper and Palin's ex-brother-in-law. We can see where this is headed. Palin will be found to have done nothing...

Just thought I would wake up the trolls with the truth behind "troopergate" again in PDF form! Between threatening to put a bullet into her Palin's Father, calling Bristol Palin vulgar names in public, stalking Governor Palin, tasering his 10 year old son, I just wonder how much rope the left is willing to give this state trooper? The document is 12 pages or so but worth reading. There is an amazing story here and it is not a negative for Palin!

Gov. Sarah Palin wants a state board to review the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan -- taking the unusual step of making an ethics complaint against herself. Her lawyer sent an "ethics disclosure" Monday night to Attorney General Talis Colberg. The governor asked that it go to the three-person Personnel Board as a complaint. While ethics complaints are usually confidential, Palin wants the matter open. The lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, also asked the state Legislature to drop its own investigation into the Monegan matter. He says the Personnel Board has jurisdiction over ethics. A senator...

Excerpt - ~ snip ~ But Gov. Palin, in papers filed with the request for investigation, said she never knew the trooper had been disciplined until after she removed the commissioner over what she called a dispute over budget and other issues and his personnel files were made public. In the papers, she said the trooper since 2005 has continued to behave aggressively toward her family, taunting them "that he was a trooper and nothing would bring him down." For example, Gov. Palin alleged the trooper confronted her daughter Bristol at a football game, calling her an obscenity. ~ snip...

Everyone knew it was coming but I thought they’d wait longer to do it. Presumably they decided to take advantage of the raging river of information and push it out now rather than wait until things quiet down, when the media can focus all of its attention on it. Here’s the PDF. The recitation of facts is only around 10 pages; pay special attention to the short section on the Bailey phone call, which is where she’s most likely to have problems. This is, ostensibly, a legal document written for ethics investigators, but the true aim of course is to...

Mayor of Maryland town, his dogs dead, still waiting for apology Cops in Prince George's County, Md., have a proud tradition to maintain. In May, a former county officer was sentenced to 45 years in prison for shooting two furniture delivery men at his home last year, one of them fatally. (He claims they attacked him.) In June, a suspect jailed in the death of a local police officer was found strangled in his cell. Authorities have no idea how that could have happened. It's unlikely Mayor Cheye Calvo of Berwyn Heights, Md., was thinking of his county's behaviorally challenged...

Armed with a battering ram and shotguns, Buffalo police looking for heroin broke down the door and stormed the lower apartment of a West Side family of eight. The problem is that the Wednesday evening raid should have occurred at an apartment upstairs. And, that’s only the tip of the iceberg, according to Schavon Pennyamon, who lives at the mistakenly raided apartment on Sherwood Street with her husband, Terrell, and six children. Pennyamon alleges that after wrongly breaking into her apartment, police proceeded to strike her epileptic husband in the head with the butt end of a shotgun and point...

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The violent assault on Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo’s home late last month was certainly not the first bungled raid by a government SWAT team, but the bad publicity it generated should make it the last time these trigger-happy squads target innocent civilians. Tracking a 32-pound package of marijuana that had been addressed to Calvo’s wife, Trinity Tomsic, Prince George’s sheriff’s deputies forcibly entered the mayor’s home on July 29 and killed his two dogs before handcuffing him and his mother-in-law. But like so many other SWAT team raids across the country, this one turned out...

Police said yesterday they have cleared Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo and his family of any wrongdoing in connection with a package of marijuana that police intercepted en route to his home, leading to a violent raid in which deputy sheriffs killed the family's two dogs. Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin C. High delivered the news in a telephone call Thursday to Calvo, saying police and State's Attorney Glenn F. Ivey determined that Calvo and his family were innocent victims caught up in a drug-smuggling ring. High exonerated the mayor and his family and expressed regret that they were...

4 gunmen bust doors, yell ‘FBI,’ loot home BY JACOB QUINN SANDERS ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE Two men kicked in the front door, splintering it near the bolt-lock. Two more kicked in a side door. All four had guns. It was 3 a.m. “FBI! FBI!” the men shouted, one pulling what looked like a badge out of his shirt before stuffing it back in. “Where’s your money?” Lloyd McCuien lay facedown on the living-room floor of his Pulaski County house — off Arkansas 365 outside Maumelle and within sight of Interstate 40 — surrounded by seven family members. “It took me about...

I saw the local police are angry about the swat team going into the Mayors house. Not only are they Friends of the mayor, the local Police Chief said that if one of his guys had been driving by when 5 heavily armed men in plain clothes and masks were kicking in the Mayor’s front door, they would have been fired on them thinking they were terrorists attacking the mayor’s home. Besides the shooting of dogs for no reason, which is bad enough, why do they have masks over their faces? Bad guys were masks so they can’t be identified...

Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo on the police raid on his home earlier this month: "The reality is that this happens all the time in this country and disproportionally in Prince Georges county and most of the people to whom it happens don't have the community support and the platform to speak out. So I appreciate you paying attention to our condition but I hope you'll also give attention to those who may not have the same platform and voice that we have." -snip- Here are a few excerpts from Calvo's letter to the Justice Department requesting that investigation:...

Prince George's County police Chief Melvin C. High said yesterday that a suburban Washington mayor and his wife were "innocent victims of drug traffickers"....

The FBI has launched a review of the violent law enforcement raid of the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo in Prince George's County last week that resulted in the deaths of the family's two dogs. The agency has begun "reviewing the events that occurred at Mr. Calvo's residence," said Richard J. Wolf, spokesman for the FBI in Baltimore, which has jurisdiction over federal civil rights investigations in Maryland. (snip) Courts across the country in recent years have ruled that it is almost always unacceptable for police to kill pets in the course of searching a home. Cases in...

Berwyn Heights' mayor is expected today to ask federal officials to investigate possible civil rights violations stemming from last week's raid of his Prince George's County home by police officers who shot and killed his two dogs, his attorney said. Mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, will ask for a U.S. Department of Justice inquiry during a 2 p.m. news conference today outside their Berwyn Heights home, said Timothy Maloney, their attorney. "They're going to call for the Justice Department to come in," Maloney said. Calvo's home was raided by the county Sheriff's Office SWAT team and narcotics...

On Monday, Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan handed out honors to a team of officers involved in a botched raid at an innocent family's home more than seven months ago. The family is upset and their attorney criticizes the awards and questions the timing. Just days before Christmas, the sound of intruders breaking into their home in North Minneapolis prompted Vang Khang to grab his shotgun to protect his six children. His terrified wife called 911. Khang fired several shots at the "intruders" who turned out to be members of the Minneapolis Police Department's SWAT team. The officers returned fire....

On a gray, rainy morning last month, Jon and Barbara Scoll calmly sipped coffee on their private dock while 100 feet away a SWAT team broke down the front door to their Edina home and swarmed across the threshold, guns held high. The team's breach man had to pound the door five times with his steel battering ram before it finally gave way. "He should have gotten in with two hits," said St. Louis Park police officer Mike Merwin to the Scolls. "You had a good door." "Who knew?" said Barbara Scoll. Most people, of course, are anything but nonchalant...

SALAH AD DIN PROVINCE — Whooping and whistling like children on a roller coaster ride, Iraqi Police soared through the sun-soaked July sky on their way home from a successful mission. Their enthusiasm was not borne of the high-speed helicopter ride, but of the hard day’s work, which helped save the lives of countless Iraqi citizens. In the predawn hours of July 12, Iraqi Police, along with Soldiers from the 1st Special Troops Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, conducted an air assault into the arid farmlands north of Balad. Throughout the burning July morning, the Iraqi SWAT...

BALAD, Iraq – Hillah Special Weapons and Tactics team captured a suspected terrorist in Mosul May 29. ISWAT conducted the operation based on a warrant issued by a Mosul judge to arrest a suspected terrorist operating in the area. The suspect is reportedly responsible for kidnapping, murder of Iraqi Policemen, and improvised explosive device attacks against Iraqi and Coalition forces. Two additional suspects were detained. “This operation is expected to disrupt terrorist activity and reduce attacks against Iraqi and Coalition forces in the greater Mosul area,” said Col. Bill Buckner, MNC-I spokesman. -30- FOR MORE INFORMATION OR FOR HIGH-RES PHOTOS,...

About a month ago I got a call from a reporter for the Arkansas Times inquiring about my research into paramilitary drug raids. He'd been reporting on a raid in North Little Rock involving a 40-year-old man named Tracy Ingle. When he told me the story over the phone, I was floored, even given all the abuses and mistakes I've reported and read about over the last few years. What makes the case especially egregious is not that the police may have gotten the wrong home, that they shot a man, or that they were covering it up or going...

OPA-LOCKA, Fla. -- Federal agents on the hunt for criminals on Thursday raided the wrong house while searching for drugs. Police and federal agents raided 50 marijuana grow houses around Florida on Thursday, calling it "Operation D-Day." They seized $7 million worth of pot plants, but they also kicked in the door of Noel Llorente's Opa-locka home and found nothing but bewildered homeowners. "I was frightened for my husband because they threw him on the ground," Llorente's wife said. "I was scared. Llorente said he was just leaving for work when unmarked cars pulled up, Drug Enforcement Administration agents jumped...

MIAMI -- Officers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives barged into a South Florida home Wednesday only to discover they had the wrong address. The ATF agents were supposed to conduct a raid at a home in the 2600 block of Northwest 49th Terrace in northwest Miami-Dade County, but they were off by one block. They entered a house on Northwest 49th Street instead. A mother and her 2-year-old boy were among the innocent people inside the home when the agents came in

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- Two SWAT officers are being counseled after bringing their young children along with them on a drug raid. The Orange County SWAT team searched a house on Napoleon Street Friday, arresting three people and recovering guns and drugs. The two officers who brought their children on the raid will not be disciplined. Both officers said the incident will not happen again, Local 6 reported.

LIMA, Ohio - A white police officer accused of fatally shooting a black woman as she held her 1-year-old son during a drug raid was charged with two misdemeanors Monday, outraging activists and relatives of the woman who said he should face tougher penalties. Sgt. Joseph Chavalia was charged with negligent homicide in the death of Tarika Wilson, 26, who was killed in a January SWAT raid at her house while looking for her boyfriend. He was charged with negligent assault in the wounding of her son Sincere Wilson, whose finger had to be amputated. Chavalia pleaded not guilty Monday...

The LAPD's assault on SWAT Would you rather have an elite fighting force made up of the best cops, or of officers who 'look like L.A.'? By Robert C.J. Parry March 16, 2008 On a Sunday afternoon in the summer of 2005, Jose Peña fueled himself with cocaine and grabbed a 9-millimeter pistol. Waving the gun at the head of his 19-month-old daughter, Suzie, he told the LAPD officers who arrived at the scene that he was Tony Montana -- the character played by Al Pacino in "Scarface" -- and that he was going to kill his daughter and himself....

Citing recent killing rampages in the United States, a federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out a Maryland firefighter’s claim that Gaithersburg police unreasonably searched his home and took his collection of 41 guns and ammunition after responding to a report that he was armed, suicidal and could be a threat to his co-workers. In a 3-0 ruling, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the police were justified in conducting the warrantless search and seizure in an era of unprecedented domestic carnage at schools, workplaces and shopping malls. “Police, then, simply must be entitled to take effective preventive...

HOBOKEN - The city has issued disciplinary charges against "a number" of police officers connected to the SWAT scandal, but is keeping mum on the details. "This is a personnel matter . and it's not appropriate to say more than we're saying," Hoboken Corporation Counsel Steven Kleinman said yesterday. Kleinman declined to say how many people are to be disciplined, who they are, or what the disciplinary actions are.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A suicide bombing at a funeral for a police officer killed at least 30 people and wounded 62 others Friday in northwestern Pakistan, a police official said. The attack occurred in a government high school in Mingora town while funeral prayers were being held for a police officer killed in a roadside bombing earlier in the day, said Deputy Inspector General of Police Syed Akhtar Ali Shah. Mingora, in Swat Valley, is 105 miles from Peshawar, a town at the border with Afghanistan. Pakistan's army was deployed in Swat earlier this year to quell an uprising led...

RYAN FREDERICK is no hero, no matter what they're saying about him on the Internet. He's the 28-year-old Chesapeake man being held in the Jan. 17 shooting death of Detective Jarrod Shivers. Shivers, 34, was executing a drug search warrant at Frederick's residence the night he was killed. According to police, the eight-year police veteran was hit in the arm and chest by a shot fired from inside the house. In a jailhouse interview, Frederick said he was in bed when the police came to his door about 8:30 p.m. Awakened by his barking dogs, Frederick said, he thought his...

Hello All, I wanted to pass along some observations for people that weren't able to make it to Randy's funeral yesterday. I don't think I ever met Randy, but had heard of him from others following his death. I think like a lot of officers, we wanted to show up to pay our respects. I figured out some years ago that a lot of the funerals are really for the families, since we are really writing the last "chapter" of our officer's professional life, from the perspective of their family. I figured that if a lot officers show up, and...

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Superintendent Warren Riley on Tuesday used the floor of the Superdome to display more than $1 million in new armament and other equipment, largely for use by the SWAT squad in emergency and riot situations, including a fully equipped mobile command post, two armored cars and modern assault rifles.

It's a typical morning in the court system designed to protect California's children from abuse and neglect: Justice is being strangled by the clock. In this Sacramento courtroom, attorneys spend two minutes on the case of a 3-year-old sent to the children's shelter after being found in a filthy home.

LOS ANGELES - One veteran SWAT officer was killed and another wounded during a shootout with a man who called police and said he had killed three members of his family, police said Thursday. The standoff with the barricaded gunman continued at 5 a.m., first-assistant police Chief Jim McDonnell said at a news conference. The standoff started at 9 p.m. Wednesday when a man called police and said he had killed three members of his family, McDonnell said. When the SWAT officers arrived, there was a shootout and the pair were shot.

LOS ANGELES - One veteran SWAT officer was killed and another wounded during a shootout with a man who called police and said he had killed three members of his family, police said Thursday. The standoff with the barricaded gunman continued at 5 a.m., first-assistant police Chief Jim McDonnell said at a news conference. The standoff started at 9 p.m. Wednesday when a man called police and said he had killed three members of his family, McDonnell said. When the SWAT officers arrived, there was a shootout and the pair were shot.

In the first counterterrorism strategy of its kind in the nation, roving teams of New York City police officers armed with automatic rifles and accompanied by bomb-sniffing dogs will patrol the city’s subway system daily, beginning next month, officials said on Friday. Under a tactical plan called Operation Torch, the officers will board trains and patrol platforms, focusing on sites like Pennsylvania Station, Herald Square, Columbus Circle, Rockefeller Center and Times Square in Manhattan, and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. Officials said the operation would begin in March. Financing for the program will be funneled to the Police Department and will...

Mother warns community about 'Nazi' home invasion Officers told her 'rights' were 'only in the movies' Posted: January 10, 2008 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Bob Unruh © 2008 WorldNetDaily.com The mother of an 11-year-old boy abducted by SWAT team members and taken to a hospital after he was bruised while horsing around is warning members of her community of the "Nazi" tactics she endured, including a statement from the officers that her "rights" were "only in the movies." The case involves Jon Shiflett, who injured himself while trying to grab the handle of a door on a car his sister...

The Colorado sheriff who dispatched a SWAT team to break into a family's home, hold them at gunpoint and take custody of an 11-year-old boy for a medical exam sought by Social Services is defending the actions, saying the boy's father told officers to "bring an army" if they returned.

The mother of an 11-year-old boy abducted by SWAT team members and taken to a hospital after he was bruised while horsing around is warning members of her community of the "Nazi" tactics she endured, including a statement from the officers that her "rights" were "only in the movies."

World Net Daily reports: Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team in western Colorado punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family's home with guns drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy who had had an accidental fall accompany them to the hospital, on the order of Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak. The boy's parents and siblings were thrown to the floor at gunpoint and the parents were handcuffed in the weekend assault, and the boy's father told WND it was all because a paramedic was upset the family preferred to care for their son themselves....

LIMA, Ohio — Darla Jennings walked through the streets of south Lima last night sobbing as hundreds of people behind her called for justice after the shooting of her daughter, who was killed by police as she held her baby. Tarika Wilson, 26, was shot and her 1-year-old son was wounded when Lima police conducted a drug raid on their home Friday night, prompting members of the black community to organize a candlelight vigil and demand answers from police. "They shot my daughter and her baby," Ms. Jennings said through tears while being consoled by other family members.

Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team in western Colorado punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family's home with guns drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy who had had an accidental fall accompany them to the hospital, on the order of Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak. The boy's parents and siblings were thrown to the floor at gunpoint and the parents were handcuffed in the weekend assault, and the boy's father told WND it was all because a paramedic was upset the family preferred to care for their son themselves. Someone, apparently the unidentified...

Dispatch for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office received a call June 12, 2006, by a man claiming to be Jim Proulx of Alvarado. The caller said he was high on hallucinogenic drugs and had killed several family members with an AK-47 submachine gun. He threatened to kill remaining family members unless he was given $50,000 and safe passage out of the country. Sheriff’s deputies and Cleburne police, including the police SWAT team, surrounded Proulx’s home about 1 a.m. Proulx hadn’t shot anyone and had no hostages, officials soon discovered. Instead, he was sound asleep when officers arrived. It was a...

Police blamed bad information for sending a SWAT team into a north Minneapolis house early Sunday morning in a raid that ended with shots exchanged between police -- who were struck by bullets -- and the resident, who said he was just defending his family. The homeowner, who does not speak English, told his brother that he thought the police were the "bad guys" after they broke through the back door of the house, where he lives with his wife and six children. He fired and hit two police officers, who were not injured thanks to their bullet-proof vests and...

MINGORA, Pakistan - The Pakistani army has driven Islamic militants from all the towns in a scenic northern valley and killed 290 of the followers of a pro-Taliban cleric who has called for a holy war against the government, a general said Saturday. The militants, followers of firebrand preacher Maulana Fazlullah, had taken control of at least eight towns in the Swat valley since July, scattering outgunned police and erecting "Taliban station" signboards outside former police stations. Officials accuse them of imposing a reign of terror, shuttering schools for girls and beheading locals who opposed them. Their seizure of the...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30, 2007 – Iraqi special weapons and tactics police targeted two known insurgent bomb makers during raids near Nasiriyah today, officials said. Nasiriyah’s police are working to disrupt several extremist networks operating near the municipality. These networks are responsible for multiple roadside-bomb and explosively formed projectile attacks against coalition and Iraqi forces. One individual is reported to be an extremist company commander and a primary facilitator for a bomb network. The second targeted individual reportedly is a key bomb builder in the area. He is believed to be involved in at least eight attacks between April and November....

Cops wrecked her door, nerves in botched raid The cops were at the right spot, but at the wrong time. A SWAT team from the Milwaukee Police Department burst into Denise Berndsen's apartment and turned the place upside down looking for evidence of child porn. Oops. The man they were targeting had moved out five weeks earlier. Instead they roughed up Berndsen, who had returned home from back surgery that day, her 74-year-old father, and a man she had just started dating and who for a few terrifying minutes wondered what he got himself into. Pray you don't follow any...

LAWRENCEBURG, Ind. -- A SWAT team raids the wrong home in Lawrenceburg, Ind., now the homeowner wants some answers.Police said they were led to the Village Apartments on the trail of fugitive Sean Deaton.Convinced he was inside apartment 407G, the Lawrenceburg SWAT unit surrounded the building.

LAWRENCEBURG, Ind. -- A SWAT team raids the wrong home in Lawrenceburg, Ind., now the homeowner wants some answers. Police said they were led to the Village Apartments on the trail of fugitive Sean Deaton. Convinced he was inside apartment 407G, the Lawrenceburg SWAT unit surrounded the building. "It looked like they were ready to go to war," one neighbor said. "Some of the ones out here had AR15's and shotguns." Neighbors said police spent hours, ordering Deaton to surrender. But when that didn't work, they responded with tear gas and forced entry. "It looked like my apartment was on...

WNYW-TV: What you're about to see raises serious questions about the character and reputation of an elite and highly trained part of the police department.