Daily Archives: 24 December 2011

We Killed Your Daughter; You’re Under Arrest

open quoteThe pair was crossing a street at a widely-recognized intersection when they were fatally blindsided by a vehicle traveling at a speed well in excess of the posted speed limit. Despite the fact that darkness had descended, the driver hadn’t turned on his headlights. The victims were killed instantly.

Within minutes, police swarmed the scene, and arrests were made — none of which involved the driver, Deputy John Swearengin of the Kern County Sheriff’s Office. The four people arrested were relatives of the victims, who got into what the Sheriff’s Office described as an “altercation” with California Highway Patrol officers when they attempted to identify the victims.

“I was at home on Friday night working on my car when someone came running over and told me that a deputy ran over my daughter in the street,” recalls Jimmy Clevenger, Jolley’s father. “I ran down here, I was very upset…. The next thing I know, they had me by the neck and threw me to the ground and said I resisted arrest. My daughter was dead in the street and it was their fault.”

The outraged relatives were taken to jail, and face criminal charges. Swearengin, the killer, was taken to the hospital and wasn’t compelled to undergo drug or alcohol screeningclose quote (Read more)

Police employ Predator drone spy planes on home front

open quoteArmed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.

Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

He also called in a Predator B drone.

As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.

But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.

“We don’t use [drones] on every call out,” said Bill Macki, head of the police SWAT team in Grand Forks. “If we have something in town like an apartment complex, we don’t call them.”

The drones belong to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which operates eight Predators on the country’s northern and southwestern borders to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers. The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate.close quote (Read more)

Pentagon Santa Offering Free Military Hardward to Local Police Depts

open quoteThe U.S. military has some of the most advanced killing equipment in the world that allows it to invade almost wherever it likes at will.

We produce so much military equipment that inventories of military robots, M-16 assault rifles, helicopters, armored vehicles, and grenade launchers eventually start to pile up and it turns out a lot of these weapons are going straight to American police forces to be used against US citizens.

Benjamin Carlson at The Daily reports on a little known endeavor called the “1033 Program” that gave more than $500 million of military gear to U.S. police forces in 2011 alone.close quote (Read more)