Free Republic

Late last month, Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo took the unusual step of filing a civil rights lawsuit against the police department of his own county. The suit stems from a 2008 SWAT team raid on Calvo's house that resulted in the shooting deaths of his two black Labrador retrievers. In pushing back against the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Prince George's County police department, the mayor is helping expose a more widespread pattern of law enforcement carelessness and callousness throughout the state of Maryland. Prince George's police originally obtained a warrant to search Calvo's home...

Drugs cops burst through a lecturer's front door, handcuffed him in front of his wife and three young children, then said: "Sorry... wrong house." Dr Ike Ogbar was reduced to tears after police in helmets and riot gear smashed their way in with a battering ram. Officers swooped after the address was given by someone who believed the Nigerian-born marketing expert was part of a Vietnamese drugs ring. Dr Ogbar, 35, whose wife Faith, also 35, and their three children, aged nine, eight and six, were present, said: "There were three massive bangs - I thought the house was falling...

Welcome to Shreveport: Your rights are now suspended. According to Cedric Glover, mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, his cops "have a power that [. . .] the President of these Unites States does not have": His cops can take away your rights. And would you like to guess which rights he has in mind? Just ask Shreveport resident Robert Baillio, who got pulled over for having two pro-gun bumper stickers on the back of his truck -- and had his gun confiscated. While the officer who pulled him over says Baillio failed to use his turn signal, the only questions he...

I would welcome fellow Freeper input on an exchange I had with the police last night. First a little background. I've got 20 years in the military, started out my life giving police officers a great deal of respect and knee jerking to their defense. Over the course of years, however, I've lost a lot of respect for the police via watching continual police traffic violations, watching unprofessional behavior and seeing shows of petty tyranny over their fellow citizens. Although I'd still like to be wholeheartedly pro-law and think the way to get respectable enforcement officers is to demand professionalism,...

Friday, June 19, 2009 NRA-ILA has recently received several calls from NRA members in border states who have been visited or called by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In some cases, agents have asked to enter these people's homes, and requested serial numbers of all firearms the members possess. In each case, the agents were making inquiries based on the number of firearms these NRA members had recently bought, and in some cases the agents said they were asking because the members had bought types of guns that are frequently recovered in Mexico. This kind...

Hear video from Tom Gresham’s Gun Talk radio show of a conversation between a Shreveport man and Shreveport Mayor Cedric Glover. Robert Baillio was stopped by a police officer who, without a warrant or without probable cause, took a gun from his truck. When Mr. Baillio called Mayor Glover for an explanation, he was told, more than once that ‘when you are stopped by a police officer, your rights are suspended’. The Mayor owes an explanation for his remarks. Listen to the broadcast and to Mr. Baillio’s conversation with the Mayor here: 090614guntalkA.mp3 The mayor's comments start at 12:30 into...

HAVERHILL — Keni Garcia told police he intended to use the 30,000 bullets they found in his car and home for target practice. That is hard to believe, the prosecutor at Garcia's arraignment said, because if he were to fire a gun for eight hours a day, it would take weeks for him to use all of it. Garcia, who allegedly bought thousands of rounds of ammunition and had 10,000 bullets in his car when he was stopped by police Thursday, was ordered held on $500,000 cash bail yesterday.

Absolutely remarkable. A 51 year-old man lives with his father in a trailer. Thirty-four years ago - as a minor - the man was arrested with a friend that had forged a check. That made him a "former felon." His father collects guns. The dozen or so guns are secured in a safe. With search warrant in hand, "15 officers from the U.S. bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and local police" surround the trailer, use a battering ram on an unlocked door, throw people to the floor, point guns at their heads, handcuff them, and proceed to trash...

Andrew Leonard was watching television with his wife not long after returning from Ash Wednesday services when police burst through the front door of his North Baltimore home. He was handcuffed, plunked in a chair and told to keep quiet as officers rifled through the house and interrogated him for 15 minutes about drugs and a dealer he knew nothing about. As it turned out, police had the wrong house. The man they were looking for lived two doors down. Leonard, a 33-year-old chemist who has no criminal record, said he and his wife, a 29-year-old credit analyst, were frightened...

CLEVELAND (AP) — The sister of an Ohio soldier killed in Iraq was ticketed for speeding and missed a ceremony awarding him a posthumous Bronze Star and Purple Heart. The ticket was issued by a state trooper to 25-yearold Rebecca Davis of Cuyahoga Heights along Interstate 77 on Thursday despite her request for a warning and to call and confirm her situation. The ticket was withdrawn about three hours later when a State Highway Patrol lieutenant went to the funeral home and apologized. A relative of Davis, who is a police officer, had called to complain about the ticket. She...

MILWAUKEE - Outdoorsman, gun enthusiast and NRA member Ben Auer believes Wisconsin Attorney General JB Van Hollen just made it easier to carry a gun in public. “He looked at our right and he confirmed it,” Auer told TODAY’S TMJ4 reporter Tom Murray. Van Hollen told prosecutors in a memo that simply carrying a firearm should not result in a disorderly conduct charge. “A number of different district attorneys from around the state requested our opinion on this issue,” Van Hollen said. “When you have people who openly believed that carrying a firearm in and of itself was disorderly conduct,...

Milwaukee, Wisconsin Chief of Police Ed Flynn is hopefully going to be out of a job soon. This is a good thing. Take a deep breath and read this excerpt from a recent Associated Press release. MADISON (AP) — Milwaukee’s police chief said today he’ll go on telling his officers to take down anyone with a firearm despite Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s finding that people can carry guns openly if they do it peacefully. Please take the time to read the entire piece (JPFO copy) This is very important information for any gun owner. Chief Flynn then goes on...

My friend Yael from Boker Tov Boulder sent me this story which was not as shocking as is horrifying. This report indicates the United States Government was spying on the peaceful tax day Tea Party Demonstrations: ....unsuspecting Tax Day TEA Party participants were being closely watched during the demonstration planning stages in a covert operation that began on or about March 23, 2009. ... Media cameras, however, were not the only cameras taking video at these events, something that has at least one current FBI agent concerned over the future of America. According to this agent.... covert surveillance was “planned...

Most Americans that complain about too many taxes likely pays very little taxes themselves. Our roads, bridges, and other infra-structure are crumbling. Our healthcare system is a disaster. Do you think this can be fixed with less money into the government coffers?

Live now on Fox -- White House is blocking TEA Party set for the Treasury in DC,. despite the demonstration already having been granted a permit. Second TEA Party at Lafayette Park to proceed, but White House blocked the unloading of 1M tea bags. This comes upon the DHS report warning that such demonstrations are "hate groups" that must be monitored closely as such demonstrators are "prone to owning guns and being violent."

WASHINGTON – A newly unclassified Department of Homeland Security report warns against the possibility of violence by unnamed "right-wing extremists" concerned about illegal immigration, increasing federal power, restrictions on firearms, abortion and the loss of U.S. sovereignty and singles out returning war veterans as particular threats. The report, titled "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," dated April 7, states that "threats from white supremacist and violent anti-government groups during 2009 have been largely rhetorical and have not indicated plans to carry out violent acts." However, the report goes on to suggest worsening economic...

Grand jury indicts London physician on grenade charge BY LINDA SATTER ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE Dr. Randeep Mann of Pope County was formally indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Little Rock on a single charge of possessing 98 unregistered grenades. Last month, Mann, 50, was arrested by federal agents after Pope County sheriff’s deputies responded to a call from public works employees for the city of London who had stumbled upon a partially buried plastic bag in a wooded area. Inside the bag, buried 875 feet from Mann’s home, was a military canister containing the explosives, which were designed to...

In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department. Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging. The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment - which he says makes it obvious the raid was an...

Are you a terrorist suspect? Did you support Ron Paul for president last year? Do you believe there are people actively working to merge the U.S. with Mexico and Canada? Do you display an American flag? Did you ever display a Libertarian Party bumper sticker on your car? Do you buy gold? Any of these characteristics might lead law enforcement authorities to conclude you represent a danger to the republic. You are more likely to be a militia member or a domestic terrorist, according to a document distributed to Missouri police and, potentially, law enforcement authorities nationwide. That is the...

Porn, Pot and Abortion You may have read that the Obama administration has altered United States government policy and has sanctioned "medical" marijuana by ending raids on "clinics" where "medical" marijuana is passed out. The use of quotes in the paragraph above is deliberate. It's my view and the views of millions of conservatives that there is no such thing as "medical" marijuana...or at least in the way it's being presented to the public. "Medical" marijuana is simply a term for pot being sold for profit under the guise that it helps a plethora of medical problems. The "clinics" are...