Obama Pursues Gun Control via Executive Action

From The New American by Alex Newman, May 8, 2013

In the wake of a humiliating defeat for gun-control advocates in the Senate last month, President Obama and a coalition of allied anti-Second Amendment extremists vowed not to give up the fight. Unlike its failure in keeping many promises, however, the administration is already making good on that particular lawless threat, seeking to bypass Congress and use “executive actions” to impose a controversial assault on gun rights and healthcare privacy through Kathleen Sebelius’ Department of Health and Human Services.

If approved, the new “regulation” would — by executive decree — shred remaining federal privacy-protection laws keeping patient data confidential. The HHS’s proposed rule would also, among other radical changes, encourage psychiatrists to report their clients to the FBI’s background check system by waiving the legal prohibition on sharing private healthcare information contained in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

While the administration claims the scheme is aimed at keeping weapons out of the hands of “potentially dangerous” people, critics of the plan, and especially gun rights activists, see it as part of an ongoing effort to disarm increasingly wide swaths of the public. In a press release about the scheme, the Department of Health and Human Services said it was just part of Obama’s “common sense plan to reduce gun violence.” For opponents, however, the scheme is “crazy” — yet another backdoor assault on the rights of Americans as well as an attack on the Constitution and congressional authority.

According to HHS, privacy protections in HIPPA “may” be preventing states from reporting certain mental health data to the FBI’s controversial National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). As such, the proposed new “rule,” part of Obama’s 23 unconstitutional “executive actions” attacking gun rights, would target over a dozen states that the Obama administration believes should be sending more names of “prohibited persons” to the federal government.

“In order to protect our children and communities, we must ensure that information on potentially dangerous individuals who are prohibited from possessing firearms is available to the background check system,” HHS Secretary Sebelius said in a statement. “At the same time, it is important to note that the vast majority of Americans with mental health conditions are not violent and that those with mental illness are in fact more likely to be victims than perpetrators.”

Perhaps attempting to preempt some concerns that have already been trumpeted by critics, Sebelius also noted that the administration was aware of at least one of the potential negative consequences of the move. “We do not want to discourage individuals who need help from seeking mental health services, and our actions will be carefully tailored to ensure patient confidentiality as well as public health and safety,” she claimed.

The proposed measure, quietly unveiled last month by the HHS so-called Office for Civil Rights (OCR), is currently accepting public comments about the rule as required by law. “Through the public comment process, we will use the data and information provided by states, health providers, patient advocates and others to determine how best to remove unnecessary barriers to NICS reporting while protecting patient privacy,” claimed OCR Director Leon Rodriguez in the statement.

Opponents of the move, however, are urging gun-rights activists to send in their own comments calling for the “crazy” proposal to be shot down entirely. Gun Owners of America, for example, widely viewed as the most principled major organization defending the right to keep and bear arms in Congress, sent out an e-mail to supporters blasting the proposed HHS rule and urging opponents to make their voices heard.

“The Obama Administration is trying to unilaterally undo our recent victory in the Senate — and to undo the ‘damage’ that all of us inflicted together,” the group said, referring to gun-rights advocates’ recent victory over the most brazen assault on the Second Amendment in decades. “Barack Obama has just concluded that ‘he don’t need no stinkin’ Senate.’”

In the message to supporters, GOA explained that the failed Obama-backed amendment to establish so-called universal background checks offered by an “unholy alliance” — Senators Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), and anti-gun zealot Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — would have also prodded psychiatrists to turn their patients into the FBI’s gun-ban list. The National Rifle Association, GOA, other gun rights groups, and a bipartisan coalition of senators who “found it to be odious and a violation of the Second Amendment,” however, managed to stop the effort.

Still, neither the Constitution nor the crushing defeat in the Senate deterred Obama and his anti-Second Amendment allies. Indeed, as The New American reported, the administration is still charging full-speed ahead on gun control. Shortly after the Senate vote, Obama threw a now-infamous fit, promising that the battle was not over. “Even without Congress, my administration will keep doing everything it can to protect more of our communities,” he said.

More recently, during a trip to Mexico, the president essentially blamed U.S. gun laws for the wild Mexican murder rate despite that nation’s virtual total ban on private firearm ownership. “Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States,” Obama alleged, falsely. Of course, the president omitted any reference to his administration’s gun-running program known as Fast and Furious, which armed certain Mexican drug cartels with heavy weapons at U.S. taxpayer expense. The resulting violence was also used to push more restrictions on the Second Amendment.

While the hundreds killed with Obama’s Fast and Furious guns were left unmentioned, the president vowed to keep pushing gun control in the United States, drawing applause from the crowd. “I will continue to do everything in my power to pass common-sense reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people,” he said. “That can save lives here in Mexico and back home in the United States. It’s the right thing to do.”

The latest bid to expand gun control through executive rule making, however, is a serious threat that must be stopped, GOA said. “Understand a couple of things: First, the standard which your doctor would use to turn you in is embodied in Clinton-era ATF language and in the anti-gun Veterans Disarmament Act of 2007,” the group explained. “Specifically, your doctor would ‘drop a dime’ on you if he suspected you were even a slight ‘danger to yourself of others’ or were ‘unable to manage your financial affairs.’”

According to the organization’s analysis, the HHS scheme would seek to deny the gun rights of anyone who the government claims cannot balance a checkbook — ironic considering Washington’s trillion-dollar deficits. Another major problem is that as soon as a psychiatrist gets sued for failing to report a patient, the rule of thumb will become “see a shrink; lose your guns.”

Meanwhile, more than 150,000 veterans have already had their rights infringed upon because of similar schemes, with government-sector mental health authorities continuing to strip America’s soldiers of their ability to defend themselves. If and when the HHS “rule” is approved, private-sector psychiatrists would be forced to comply, meaning all Americans would be in the administration’s anti-gun crosshairs. In some states, it is already happening.

On top of constitutional problems, privacy issues and fears that such reforms will have unintended (or not) consequences — people refusing to visit psychiatrists due to concerns about potentially being stripped of their right to keep and bear arms, for example — opponents also say the background check system is a de facto gun-registration scheme. In a phone interview with The New American, GOA chief Larry Pratt made it clear how serious the threat is.

“The instant background check is gun registration,” he explained, saying it was crucial that citizens continue fighting back against efforts to infringe on the Second Amendment. “The government will not answer when we ask how they are destroying the names and addresses, as required by law, of those that have been checked. They just don’t respond; ‘so sue us’ is kind of the attitude that they have.”

Gun-rights activists across America have been pushing back hard — multiple states, cities, counties, and sheriffs, for example, have already vowed to resist any federal attack on the Second Amendment. However, the administration, and HHS in particular, have opened another front in the battle. Analysts on both sides of the issue say that for gun rights to survive in the long term, citizens must stay engaged until the effort to trample on the constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms is ultimately crushed.

Pinellas Co., FL Sheriff’s Deputy Wrestles, Subdues Unruly Alligator

Florida Wildlife Official Advises Not To Do What Deputy Jeff Crandall Did

From www.grindtv.com by Dave Strege, May 1, 2013

A sheriff’s deputy didn’t bother to wait for a trained alligator trapper to deal with an unruly alligator that was snapping at cars near a dentist’s office in Oldsmar, Florida. Nope, Pinellas County Deputy Jeff Crandall decided to take action himself, since the animal was heading toward the roadway.

According to numerous reports, Crandall grabbed a rope from his trunk, lassoed the gator’s neck, jumped on its back and taped its huge mouth shut—exactly what wildlife officials tell you not to do.

Nevertheless, photos of Crocodile Crandall atop the alligator are priceless, even if his actions were ill-advised.

A 911 call alerted officials to the problem gator early Tuesday morning. Crandall, a 30-year squad veteran, was the first to respond. He subdued the gator and, with the help of a backup deputy, tied it up and put it in the back of the truck.

Nobody, not even a Sheriff’s Deputy with past experience dealing with alligators, should attempt to do this, a wildlife official told the Tampa Bay Times.

“Unless it’s an absolutely necessity, we advise Sheriff’s Deputies to wait until we get there in these situations,” Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Gary Morse told the Tampa Bay Times. “Large, powerful animals like that are always dangerous.”

Apparently, Crandall, who declined to be interviewed by the Times, has dealt with alligators before. The Times said he subdued an unruly alligator outside Oldsmar’s Forest Lakes Elementary School.

Unfortunately for this recent gator, after meeting its match in Crandall, it will now be put down.

 Photos of Crandall atop alligator courtesy of Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department. Photo of alligator in truck is a screengrab from report by WTSP News 10, Tampa. 

 

Boston Lockdown … and Calls for More Police-state Measures

From The New American by William F. Jasper,  April 30, 2013

“Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down. These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law,” wrote Ron Paul, the former congressman from Texas and presidential candidate, in an April 29 column for LewRockwell.com.

^{Photo of police in Watertown, Mass.: AP Images}

“The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself,” Paul said.

Ron Paul points out that “the suspect was not discovered by the paramilitary troops terrorizing the public. He was discovered by a private citizen, who then placed a call to the police. And he was identified not by government surveillance cameras, but by private citizens who willingly shared their photographs with the police.”

Others, however, see the Boston bombing as an excuse to ratchet up the police-state measures: fewer restrictions on domestic intelligence, more warrantless searches, more surveillance cameras, etc. Richard Falkenrath, Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), in an April 25 interview with Jonathan Masters on the CFR website, claimed the failure of the FBI to apprehend the Tsaraev brothers, the alleged perpetrators, before the attack, is evidence of “system” failure.

“The problem is inherent in our system of government, which does not have a domestic intelligence service,” said Falkenrath, adding that “so long as you want to have a system in which the activities of your domestic law enforcement agencies are tightly circumscribed by law and jurisprudence, you will have these sorts of mistakes and tensions.” He sees the so-called Patriot Act of 2001 as a good start, but would like to further “liberalize” our laws to allow more invasive monitoring of all citizens. He is also a big advocate of vastly expanding the deployment of surveillance cameras.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (CFR), meanwhile, said the country’s interpretation of the Constitution will “have to change” to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks.

Europol in the United States — Beginning of an EU-U.S. Police Merger?

From The New American by William F. Jasper, April 27, 2013

Europol, the burgeoning police and intelligence agency of the European Union, has many people in Europe concerned about its continuously expanding mission and powers (see here and here). Now the agency appears to be getting ready to extend its reach into the United States in new ways, as part of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being promoted by President Obama and a powerful coalition (see here and here ) of Wall Street one-worlders and globalist corporate executives.

 

On April 16, the Delegation of the European Union to the United States and Europol welcomed more than 140 members of the U.S. and European law enforcement communities for an in-depth discussion of transatlantic cooperation on law enforcement in Washington, D.C. According to the EU delegation’s press release on the event, the conference topics covered would include “cyber crime, terrorism, and crimes related to intellectual property rights.”

“As globalization intensifies, we have to recognize that crime has also become increasingly multinational, multifaceted, innovative and disruptive, and not in a good way,” EU Ambassador to the United States Joao Vale de Almeida said during his introduction. “The onus is on us, the EU and the U.S., public and law enforcement officials, to ensure that as we prepare to deepen our economic ties [through a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership], we adapt effectively to this transformation. We also need to consider how to align our law enforcement resources to ensure that as we open up the opportunity for businesses and working families, we also keep criminal interests in check.”

Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Jane Holl Lute reinforced the EU-U.S. convergence theme. She said, “Working together, we have already begun to see how we can transform the way in which we protect our nations, and our citizens, against the shared threats that we face. Whether those threats are from terrorists, cyber criminals, or those who seek to steal intellectual property … the cooperation between our law enforcement agencies, governments, and our nations have never been stronger, and its impact has never been greater.” (A video recording of the conference can be viewed on You Tube here.)

The sparse reportage of this important development in EU-U.S. relations left unmentioned the fact that Europol, like so many of the EU’s institutions, has incrementally taken on increased powers, with the European Commission always citing some crisis or exigency allegedly requiring more centralized police authority.

The EU’s steady erosion of the independence and sovereignty of its member states is not occurring by chance. As The New American has previously reported in many articles (see articles listed below), the architects of the Common Market (as the EU was known in one of its earliest incarnations) insisted from the start that the “project” would never evolve into a central government or in any way compromise the sovereignty of the nations involved. All the while, the same designers — as their correspondence and private speeches and communications show — were working assiduously to create a supranational federal government that would completely override the nation states of Europe. With the conclusion of the Lisbon Treaty, the people of the European Union were tricked, bribed, browbeaten, and cajoled into jettisoning almost every remaining vestige of sovereignty.

EU Ambassador to the U.S. Joao Vale de Almeida (quoted above) has been a key functionary in this subversion of sovereignty, including assisting in negotiating the deceptive and subversive Lisbon Treaty. As we reported earlier this week, many of the most influential people in the U.S. government and foreign policy and economic establishments are completely in tune with this subversive process. Our article “CFR Applauds European Union’s ‘Real Subversion of Sovereignty’” links to a video of a recent panel discussion at which top members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) explicitly acknowledge and applaud the fact that “there’s real subversion of sovereignty by the EU that works.”

It is not surprising then to see the CFR well represented at this recent Europol conference. Among those attending the conference for the United States — and speaking at it — were:

• Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (CFR)

• Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Jane Holl Lute (CFR)

• Director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, Washington Institute for Near East Policy Matthew Levitt (CFR)

“Eroding Sovereignty Piece by Piece”

In 1974, CFR member Richard N. Gardner penned a signal article in the CFR journal Foreign Affairs entitled “The Hard Road to World Order.” Since hopes for “instant world government” under the United Nations had proven illusory, he wrote, the best hope for building “the house of world order” lay in a longrange “end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece.” This could best be done, he noted, on an ad hoc basis with treaties and international “arrangements” — on environment, trade, security, etc. — that could later be brought within “the central institutions of the U.N. system.” Gardner, now a professor emeritus of law at Columbia University, served in ambassadorial and diplomatic posts for Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton.

The Council on Foreign Relations has been pursuing that end-run strategy around national sovereignty — through both Republican and Democrat administrations — for many decades now. In a 2006 op-ed entitled “State sovereignty must be altered in globalized era,” CFR President Richard Haass argued that “in the age of globalization, states should give up some sovereignty to world bodies.” The CFR chief claimed that “sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker.” Haass and his fellow one-worlders in the CFR globalist cabal are now pushing to destroy U.S. sovereignty in the same way that the EU has all but completely destroyed the national sovereignty of its member states. The primary vehicle currently being promoted by the CFR and the Obama administration to entangle the United States in the EU project is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). President Obama is calling on Congress to give him “fast track” Trade Promotion Authority that would enable him to push the TTIP through Congress with little or no debate and no amendments.

Obama Condemns Efforts to Protect Unborn

From The New American by Dave Bohon, April 28, 2013

President Obama spoke at Planned Parenthood’s annual gala April 26, using the platform to affirm his continued support of the abortion giant, while attacking states that have worked to protect the unborn and their mothers by passing legislation to defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.

^{President Obama at 2013 Planned Parenthood National Conference in Washington: AP Images}

Significantly, Obama is the first sitting president to address the so-called “family planning” organization. Just as significant is the fact that nowhere in Obama’s lengthy speech could he bring himself to utter the word “abortion,” although Planned Parenthood is responsible for 40 percent of the murderous procedures done in the United States, and abortion makes up a significant portion of its revenue stream.

Instead, the president played on Planned Parenthood’s penchant for posing as the friend of women — particularly low-income women who sometimes use its clinics for cancer screenings, contraceptives, and such. “Somewhere there’s a woman who just received a new lease on life because of a screening that you provided that helped catch her cancer in time,” crooned Obama to his Planned Parenthood audience. “Somewhere there’s a woman who’s breathing easier today because of the support and counseling she got at her local Planned Parenthood health clinic.”

And — without speaking the abhorrent “A” word — the president noted that “somewhere there’s a young woman starting a career who, because of you, is able to decide for herself when she wants to start a family.” By which he meant that Planned Parenthood has been only too willing to kill the pre-born babies of countless women who decided that, for whatever reason, a baby would be an unnecessary inconvenience.

As he ingratiated himself to the Planned Parenthood audience by affirming the group’s contraception and abortion agenda, Obama also affirmed his commitment to aggressively oppose those who are fighting for the pre-born and their mothers by working to defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. Referring to such states as North Dakota, which recently passed legislation that would ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and Mississippi, where pro-life lawmakers were unsuccessful in their attempts to pass a personhood measure that would have protected all humans from the moment of conception, Obama fairly sneered that “after decades of progress, there’s still those who want to turn back the clock to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century. And they’ve been involved in an orchestrated and historic effort to roll back basic rights when it comes to women’s health.”

Ridiculing the over 40 states where lawmakers have introduced or passed laws to protect the unborn, Obama quipped to the supportive chuckles of the pro-abortion audience: “When you read about these laws you want to check the calendar. You want to make sure you’re still living in 2013. Forty years after the Supreme Court affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to privacy, including the right to choose [abortion], we shouldn’t have to remind people that when it comes to a woman’s health, no politician should get to decide what’s best for you.”

During his talk the president admitted that his ObamaCare “Affordable Care Act” socialized medicine scheme will be a financial windfall to the folks at Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. “Because of the ACA, most insurance plans are now covering the cost of contraceptive care,” the president announced, “so that a working mom doesn’t have to put off the care she needs just so she can pay her bills on time. Because of the Affordable Care Act, 47 million women have new access to preventive care like mammograms and cancer screenings with no copay, no deductible, no out-of-pocket costs, so they don’t have to put off a mammogram just because money is tight.”

Add to that the ACA’s infamous contraception mandate rider that would require businesses to provide free contraception — including abortion-inducing drugs — to their employees, and Planned Parenthood is set to add more billions to the hundred of millions in federal tax dollars it receives.

Re-affirming his commitment to do everything in his power to protect the abortion giant, which ponied up some $15 million in its efforts to help re-elect Obama in 2012, the president concluded his speech with the declaration that if he, his attorney general, and a core of federal judges get their way, “Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere. It’s not going anywhere today. It’s not going anywhere tomorrow.”

After the president’s patronizing address, Planned Parenthood’s head, Cecile Richards, returned the favor, crowing that “President Obama has done more than any president in history for women’s health and rights” — even while she conceded that Planned Parenthood faces “unprecedented attacks” from states that have grown tired of pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of the abortion business.

Predictably, during his speech Obama made no mention of the alarming testimony offered recently by a Planned Parenthood representative during a Florida legislative session, in which she refused to condemn what has euphemistically been termed “post-birth abortion” — the killing of a baby moments or more after he or she has been successfully delivered by a mother.

Nor did the president make any allusion to the high-profile trial of Philadelphia’s “House of Horrors” abortionist Kermit Gosnell, charged with the “post abortion” murders of several babies born alive at his climic. A grand jury report laid out the horrific conditions inside Gosnell’s clinic, and speculated that hundreds of newborns were murdered over the years by Gosnell and his workers.

Marjorie Dannenfelser of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List accused Obama of intentionally turning a blind eye to the fact that Planned Parenthood admitted to having been informed about the conditions inside Gosnell’s clinic “yet chose not to act to help end the killing of newborn babies and butchering of women,” charged Dannenfelser. “President Obama blatantly ignored this inconvenient truth about the abortion industry’s horrific lack of oversight, and disparaged the pro-life advocates who wake up each morning with the goal of saving the lives of unborn children and women from the pain of abortion.”

She added that “not even eyewitness accounts of Gosnell-style conditions” in Planned Parenthood’s own clinics appeared to be enough “to make President Obama reconsider his unyielding support for Planned Parenthood, which in a single year performed more than 333,000 abortions and received half a billion dollars in taxpayer money.”

Specifically, noted LifeNews.com, Planned Parenthood’s own annual report “shows the abortion giant did a record 333,964 abortions on unborn children during the 2011-2012 fiscal year. Those abortions were estimated to have generated $150 million dollars for the ‘nonprofit’ organization. While the number of abortions reached a record high, only 2,300 Planned Parenthood customers were referred to adoption agencies during the 2011-2012 fiscal year.”

NYPD Whistle-Blowers Testify at Stop-Frisk Trial

By TOM HAYS and COLLEEN LONG | Associated Press, April 28, 2013

After Officer Pedro Serrano decided to testify in federal court about what he sees as wrongdoing within the New York Police Department, a rat sticker appeared on his locker.

Associated Press/Jim Wells, File – In this Dec. 13, 1971 file photo, New York City Detective Frank Serpico, right, sits beside his attorney, Ramsey Clark, in New York, during the Knapp Commission hearings.

That was the least of his problems.

Serrano claims he’s been harassed, micromanaged and eventually transferred to a different precinct and put on the overnight shift.

“It hasn’t been a picnic,” he said in an interview this week. “They have their methods of dealing with someone like me.”

Serrano and other whistle-blowers took the stand in a civil rights case challenging some of the 5 million streets stops made by police in the past decade using a tactic known as stop and frisk. They believe illegal quotas are behind some wrongful stops of black and Hispanic men.

“A lot of people told me not to come forward because of what would happen — they said the department would come after me,” Serrano said. “But I’ve been thinking about it since 2007. I felt I couldn’t keep quiet.”

Several other officers and police brass testified to the opposite: They say there are no quotas. Most officers follow the letter of the law, and low-performing cops like Serrano are lazy malcontents who make the city less safe.

Under NYPD policy, officers are required to report corruption without fear of retribution to the internal affairs bureau, which investigates the claims.

But starting with legendary whistle-blower Frank Serpico in the 1970s, corruption scandals large and small have exposed a clannish culture that critics say encourages police officers to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing and never question authority — or else face harassment by peers and punishment by superiors.

As a plainclothes officer, Serpico was labeled a traitor for refusing payoffs and reporting corruption. On Feb. 3, 1971, he was shot in the face during a drug raid; he says other officers purposely failed to back him up. He recovered and testified before the Knapp Commission — a story etched in popular culture by a hit movie starring Al Pacino.

In the early 1990s, an internal affairs investigator who pursued drug-dealing officers was blackballed by his commanders before an independent investigation by the Mollen Commission proved him right. And the 1997 police assault of Abner Louima resulted in charges against officers who kept quiet because of a so-called blue wall of silence — an unspoken code among the rank-and-file to never “rat” on each other.

“Nothing’s changed,” the 76-year-old Serpico said in a recent phone interview when asked about the current crop of whistle-blowers. “It’s the same old crap — kill the messenger.”

In the ongoing federal trial over stop and frisk, lawyers for men who have sued police are seeking to show a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic men are being wrongly stopped in part because officers are under too much pressure to keep enforcement numbers up.

Serrano, along with Officers Adhyl Polanco and Adrian Schoolcraft secretly recorded hours of patrol briefings, meetings with bosses and encounters on the streets that they say show they were being targeted by overzealous officials bent on making their precincts look good. The recordings were played at trial.

Both Serrano and Polanco said they made stops they didn’t think were right as a result.

“I was extremely bothered with what I was seeing out there,” Polanco testified. “The racial profiling, the arresting people for no reason, being called to scenes that I did not observe a violation and being forced to write a summons that I didn’t observe.”

Polanco said he agonized over the decision to come forward.

“I was afraid,” he said. “It’s not that easy to report corruption. … Look at what happened to Schoolcraft.”

Schoolcraft, who didn’t appear in court because he has filed his own federal suit, was taken to a psychiatric ward in 2009 by his superiors, he says against his will. He remains suspended.

Polanco was suspended with pay for years after internal affairs officers brought charges of filing false arrest paperwork; he says the charges came because he detailed a list of complaints to internal affairs.

Serrano testified that he received poor evaluations, was denied vacation days and was forced to work overtime as punishment because he tallied too few arrests and stop-and-frisk reports.

“There’s a whole bunch of things they do, but they’re minor,” Serrano said. “But when you put it all together, it becomes a hostile work environment.”

For example, he says, he never saw his commanding officer until word got out about his quota allegations — then the official was personally checking Serrano’s shift paperwork. He says he was forced to drive around with a sergeant and issue summonses and stop people until he brought up his numbers. Even after his numbers improved, his evaluations didn’t. And he claimed he was forced to come in during a massive snowstorm even though he was nearly in a car accident.

When asked whether Serrano’s complaints were considered punishment, several other officers who testified said no — it’s just part of the job.

Most officers “leave their house every day to go to work to protect the city. They have the best intentions all the time, and they do it,” Joseph Esposito, the former chief of the department, testified. “There is a small percentage … we’re talking about in any profession, there is a group that will try to do the least amount and get paid the most.”

After Serrano appeared in court last month, he was transferred from the Bronx to a Manhattan precinct where he now works the midnight shift.

Serpico, who adopted a pet rat after he was accused of being one, says he holds the bosses responsible.

“Their message is ‘Do you want to write a summons or do you want to be delivering pizza? As a police officer, you’re duty-bound to refuse an illegal order. … But where do you go? The police department doesn’t want to hear it.”

Serpico, who now lives in upstate New York, still feels like an outsider to the police. He says he’s there to listen when fellow whistle-blowers reach out.

“I’ve become their grandfather,” he said. “They don’t want nothing. They just want somebody who knows what they’re going through. I give them moral support.”

Manhunt on After girl, 9, Stabbed to Death by Intruder

By NBCBayArea.com, April 28, 2013

Authorities in the Northern California town of Valley Springs are searching for an intruder who killed a 9-year-old girl at her house.

The Calaveras County Sheriff’s office said Saturday that the man was considered armed and dangerous, and authorities are warning residents in the country town to lock their doors.

The office declined to release details on the slaying.

NBC’s Sacramento affiliate KCRA reported the victim’s 12-year-old brother encountered an intruder in his home and saw the man run away. The boy went to check on his sister and found she had been stabbed.

The girl was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Valley Springs is a town of about 3,500 some 60 miles southeast of Sacramento.

Charges Filed Against Burglar Who Punched Police Dog

By NBCPhiladelphia.com, April 28, 2012

Numerous charges have been filed against a burglary suspect who allegedly punched a police dog that helped apprehend him in northern New Jersey.

Clifton police tell The Record of Woodland Park that 22-year-old Angel Mendez ran from police on Friday and was found a short time later hiding under the front porch of a home. Mendez allegedly punched the police dog as he was being arrested, and the canine bit Mendez on the upper thigh.

Mendez, who has no known address, faces four counts of burglary.

He’s also charged with aggravated assault of a police dog, resisting arrest and obstruction of justice. A telephone number for Mendez could not be found Saturday, and it was not known if he has retained an attorney.

Feds Caught Promoting Welfare to Foreigners

Judicial Watch report: Obama Cannot be Trusted to Protect Borders

From http://www.wnd.com, April 27, 2013

The U.S. government has been caught promoting the delivery of taxpayer-funded welfare benefits to foreigners, and Judicial Watch’s conclusion is that the Obama administration “cannot be trusted to protect our borders.”

Judicial Watch, the Washington watchdog which is known for tracking down and trying to stamp out government corruption, has issued a report revealing that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is working with the Mexican government to promote the U.S. food stamp program to illegal aliens.

The report said the program, called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, features a Spanish-language flyer supplied to the Mexican Embassy by the USDA “with a statement advising Mexicans in the U.S. that they do not need to declare their immigration status in order to receive financial assistance.”

Just so they don’t miss the idea, the message is in bold and underlined on the brochure: “You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children.”

“The revelation that the USDA is actively working with the Mexican government to promote food stamps for illegal aliens should have a direct impact on the fact of the immigration bill now being debated in Congress,” said Tom Fitton, the president of the organization.

“These disclosures further confirm the fact that the Obama administration cannot be trusted to protect our borders or enforce our immigration laws. And the coordination with a foreign government to attack the policies of an American state is contemptible,” he said.

Last year, Judicial Watch reported that Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., wrote to USDA chief Tom Vilsack asking questions about the Obama’s administration partnership with Mexican officials to hand out taxpayer-paid benefits to those illegally in the U.S.

At the time, Sessions wrote, “It defies rational thinking for the United States – now dangerously $16 trillion in debt – to partner with foreign governments to help us place more foreign nationals on American welfare and it is contrary to good immigration policy.”

Now Judicial Watch has released documents it obtained in response to a Freedom of Information Act request made to USDA on July 20, 2012. The FOIA request sought: “Any and all records of communication relating to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals, and migrant communities, including but not limited to, communications with the Mexican government.”

The results revealed USDA is trying to give away tax benefits “with no effort to restrict aid to, identify, or apprehend illegal immigrants who may be on the food stamp rolls.”

One document was an email to Jose Vincente and Borjon Lopez-Coterilla, in the Mexican Embassy, from January 2012.

Yibo Wood of the Food and Nutrition Service in the U.S. sympathized with illegals, saying, “FNS understands that mixed status households may be particularly vulnerable. Many of these households contain a non-citizen parent and a citizen child.”

It followed a request from the Mexican Embassy that the Obama administration prevent Kansas from making a proposed change in a food stamp procedure that would limit financial help to illegals.

Judicial Watch also showed the USDA asked Mexico for permission to draft a letter to consulates to encourage Mexican employees to participate in training intended to promote enrollment in the tax benefits program.

An earlier document reveals the USDA made contact with Mexican officials in New York regarding benefits programs over “maximizing participation among Mexican citizens.”

Also, according to the report, “The USDA and the Mexican Consulate exchange ideas about getting the First Ladies of Mexico and United States to visit a school for purposes of creating a photo opportunity that would promote free school lunches for low-income students in a predominantly Hispanic school. Though a notation in the margin of the email claims that the photo op never took place, UPI reported that it actually did.”

The report continues that taxpayer money was used to run Spanish-language television ads “encouraging illegal immigrants to apply for government-financed food stamps. The Mexican Consul in Santa Ana, Calif., at the time even starred in some of the U.S. government-financed television commercials, which explained the program and provided a phone number to apply. In the widely viewed commercial the consul assured that receiving food stamps ‘won’t affect your immigration status.’”

Alcoholism Disability Claim: Can Fired Officer Win this $6 Million Lawsuit?

Alcoholism disability claim: An Oregon policeman says he was fired due to alcoholism, which he’s claims is illegal under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

By Steven Dubois, Associated Press / April 27, 2013

A police officer fired for driving drunk in an unmarked police car while off-duty has filed a $6 million lawsuit against the city of Gresham, the police chief and others, alleging his rights were violated under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The lawsuit filed in Portland alleged the officer, Jason Servo, was suffering from alcoholism, a recognized disability under the act, and shouldn’t have been dismissed.

The suit also alleged Servo was denied due process, and the police union failed to represent him adequately.

“Just as with any type of disability or disease, they should have made some kind of effort to accommodate that, or some kind of effort to work with him, and not simply sever all ties,” said Shawn Kollie, one of Servo’s attorneys.

Police Chief Craig Junginger was out of the office Friday. City spokeswoman Laura Shepard said officials would not discuss the case because their policy is to not talk about pending litigation.

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Servo, 43, was arrested in January 2011 after he crashed into a ditch while off-duty. The lawsuit said that Servo, a detective who was the department’s lead firearms instructor, had taken the police vehicle to a firearms training session in the nearby city of Troutdale. He later joined fellow officers for dinner and drinks.

“This was a common practice among (Gresham) officers and had become an inherent part of the culture,” according to the lawsuit filed late Thursday.

Servo was alone when his vehicle veered into a ditch and he was not hurt. Though Servo refused to take breath or field sobriety tests, the Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy who arrested him later testified before the state Department of Public Safety Standards and Training that Servo was probably one of the top 10 most intoxicated people he had arrested in almost 15 years of drunken-driving investigations.

Two months after the accident, Servo pleaded guilty to drunken driving and entered a diversion program. He fulfilled the program’s requirements and the DUI was dismissed.

Servo also voluntarily entered an in-patient program at a Serenity Lane drug-and-alcohol treatment center, where he was diagnosed as an alcoholic.

“There were times where I went home and I couldn’t get crime scenes out of my head; I went to drinking for that and there are other officers that do the same thing,” Servo said Friday, adding that he has now been sober for 818 days.

The lawsuit alleged the chief fired Servo to save money, ignoring the known disability of alcoholism.

“I know it sounds kind of like a conspiracy theorist’s claim,” Kollie said, “but we do believe there was a funding issue in the Gresham police department at the time.”

It could not immediately be determined how common it is for alcoholics to claim their rights have been violated under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in a fact sheet, provides an example of how an alcoholic can justly be fired, and it’s similar to the Servo case.

In its example, a federal police officer is involved in an accident for which he is charged with drunken driving. About a month later, he gets a termination notice stating that his conduct makes it inappropriate for him to continue. The officer says the arrest made him realize he is an alcoholic and that he is obtaining treatment. According to the EEOC, the employer may proceed with the firing.

The example, of course, is not precise because Servo’s crash happened while he was off-duty.

“The ADA has provisions in it, across the board, to not require employers to subject other people to unreasonable risk to accommodate a disability,” said Bob Joondeph, executive director with Disability Rights Oregon.

Joondeph said he couldn’t comment on any specifics in the Servo case, but generally accommodations for an alcoholic might include letting the worker attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings — not allowing them to drink on the job or drive drunk.

Separate from the lawsuit, Servo is appealing the standards-and-training agency’s decision to strip him of his police certification.

Servo is currently working as a private investigator.