With protesters thronging the streets of Chicago demanding police accountability and clamoring for the resignation of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the city’s police union is frantically trying to destroy decades of records documenting police misconduct. As is always the case, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) sees “officer safety” as the highest priority – including protection from legal accountability.
“I protect all my members, and I will continue to do that,” Dean Angelo, president of the Chicago FOP, explained to CNN.
An injunction filed by the FOP insists that preserving those records violates Section 8.4 of its bargaining agreement with the City of Chicago. That provision specifies that all files of misconduct investigations and officer disciplinary histories “will be destroyed five (5) years after the date of the incident or the date upon which the violation is discovered, whichever is longer, except that not sustained files alleging criminal conduct or excessive force shall be retained for a period of seven (7) years after the date of the incident or the date upon which the violation is discovered, whichever is longer….”
Once that deadline passes, the episode of excessive force or other misconduct “cannot be used against the Officer in any future proceedings in any other forum” unless it deals with a matter subject to litigation during the five year period or “unless a pattern of sustained infractions exists.” This element of the bargaining agreement creates an incentive for the police department to delay, obstruct, and obfuscate investigations of misconduct and abuse complaints until the deadline expires – and to keep the process opaque to the public.
“Basically, they bargained away transparency and accountability,” points out Chicago University Law Professor Craig Futterman, who is fighting in court to prevent the destruction of the officer misconduct records. “In a world where an incident like [the fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald] happens and the public statements are `Deny, deny, deny,’ and then close off and circle the wagons, and then a code of silence and an exoneration at the end of the day – in that system, you cannot create public trust,” Futterman explained to theChicago Daily Law Bulletin.
Working with independent journalist Jamie Kalven, Futterman was able to exhume the video of the McDonald shooting and the autopsy report showing that he had been shot sixteen times – evidence that completely contradicted the official account that described the shooting as “self-defense.” Jason Van Dyke, the officer who shot McDonald, has been charged with first-degree murder, an all but unprecedented development involving an on-duty police shooting in Chicago.
Through freedom of information requests, Futterman has also pried loose a small portion of the disciplinary files, which are available in an online database. The records Futterman seeks to preserve date back to 1967, and cover decades of corruption and abuse, including the now-notorious Jon Burge torture scandal and the unlawful detentions, interrogations, and abuse of citizens at the Homan Square “black site.” The FOP-negotiated contract requiring the destruction of records after five years went into effect on July 1, 2012 – and it is by no means clear that it applies retroactively to misconduct cases that occurred prior to that agreement. The FOP is essentially seeking to re-litigate the agreement for the purpose of obstructing an ongoing Justice Department investigation into the Chicago PD.
Although FOP President Angelo pouts that “I don’t understand why a 77-year-old retirees’ complaint in 1967 needs to be on a database,” the records his union seeks to destroy include disciplinary histories directly relevant to very recent incidents of excessive force.
According to CNN, “a search for Jason Van Dyke, the officer charged with the first-degree murder in the killing of Laquan McDonald, shows that he had 19 complaints before he fatally shot the teen, including 10 for use of force. The officer who shot and killed Cedrick Chatman has 30 complaints in the system, including 10 for use of force. None of the complaints, for either officer, resulted in disciplinary action. Van Dyke’s attorney says his client feared for his life in his encounter with McDonald. The Chatman shooting was ruled justified.”
Preserving the records, and making them publicly accessible, could help identify officers who pose potential threats to the public they supposedly serve. The FOP, in keeping with its long-established priorities, is more concerned about preserving blue privilege.
Some of Burge’s erstwhile comrades in torture are still under investigation – and the documents necessary to continue that probe would be fed into a shredder if the FOP prevails in court. Those records most likely would also contain information about the Chicago PD’s off-the-records interrogation facility at Homan Square, a CIA-style “black site” where thousands of people were detained without cause and interrogated without constitutionally mandated access to an attorney, reports the Guardian of London.
An estimated 82 percent of the 7,000 people who were arrested and illegally held at Homan Square are black. Angel Perez, who was chained to a metal bar in a second-floor interrogation room at the facility in October 2012, alleges that he was sodomized with a metallic object by officers who taunted him with threats of prison rape if he didn’t cooperate. During a December 15 hearing before the Cook County Commission, several other detainees described being denied access to lawyers and being pressured to become police informants.
“There they interrogated me, asking me things that I had no idea about, for murder and things of that nature,” testified Kory Wright. “And I sat in that room, and they turned the temperature up and I was zip-tied to a bench.”
This Gitmo-style “rendition” site operated under Rahm Emanuel’s tenure, and it features very prominently in the accumulating demands for his resignation. With protests growing in intensity, the Mayor under political siege, and the police department desperately seeking to destroy evidence of long-festering corruption and misconduct, Chicago’s municipal government is beginning to look like an authoritarian dictatorship in the throes of a terminal crisis – Tehran circa 1978, perhaps, or Romania in December 1989.
Ties between Turkey and Israel are reportedly improving after a five-year rift between the two sides.
Speedy progress in talks to import Israeli natural gas by Turkey has raised expectations of a thaw in relations. Israel’s once-strong ties with Turkey soured in 2010 after Israeli commandoes killed 10 Turkish peace activists on board a ship seeking to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Despite the tensions, Ankara and Tel Aviv have maintained bilateral relations including military and trade ties.
Note: he spoke of a black SUV. Note also that he got verbal confirmation from off-camera. This indicates that there were other eyewitnesses.
The only eyewitness identifications that I can find speak of three white men.
I looked at several published timelines of the shootings. You can, too. Search for “timeline,” “Farook,” “San Bernardino.” No victim identified the two suspects immediately after the shootings, which had ended by the time the police and firefighters arrived at 11:05 a.m. The police had no clues regarding Farook and his wife. The two were shot in a firefight at 3 p.m. They were in a black SUV . . . four hours after the attack.
Four hours. What were they doing during this time? Where were they?
The New York Daily News reported this: “The suspects had escaped the blood-spattered murder scene without swapping a single gunshot with the horde of law enforcement descending on the center, a social services facility for people with developmental disabilities.”
The SUV was spotted four hours later, two miles from the crime scene. How did the police find this SUV? The Daily News says only this: “a tip.”
Think about this. Two people shoot 35 people, and escape unnoticed the police. They then disappear for four hours. Then “a tip” informs the police of their whereabouts: two miles away from the crime scene.
As the police close in on the vehicle, which is traveling surprisingly slowly, it is not clear whether the gunshots heard are being fired by cops or by the suspects.
‘They’re killing that guy,’ the man taking the video shouts as he ducks for cover.
Just moments later, after the recording ended, police stopped the SUV and killed the two suspected shooters in a gun battle that left an officer injured.
Note: the report does not say that a policeman was shot, only injured.
Watch this video. There is an introduction by a reporter, then the video. As the SUV drives slowly down the street, the driver is turning the headlights off and on. Why? There is no shooting at this point. The SUV passes by. Then the shooting starts.
The post-shootout photo of the SUV shows the windshield riddled with bullet holes. These bullet holes came from in front of the SUV. The media report says this: they fired 76 rounds, while police fired 380.
Who did the counting? When? Who verified this?
How did they shoot at police from inside the SUV? For how long? How long would it take to fire 76 rounds with semi-automatics? This time includes replacing empty clips. We are supposed to believe that it took 380 rounds to kill them. If so, these are not sharpshooters.
The two are dead. So, there is no legal liability for naming them the killers. There is no “alleged” visible in the media. This ends all discussion. Of course they acted alone. Everyone knows this.
“What are you, a conspiracy theorist?” Yes, I am. We conspiracy theorists — revisionist historians — have a highly developed sense of smell, developed over years of sniffing around. We know when official accounts do not pass the smell test. This story does not pass it.
Here is what I have been waiting for: a forensics report that identifies some of the estimated 100 spent bullets at the massacre with at least one of the rifles recovered in the SUV. I have searched the Web for this report. I have not found it. Is this too much to ask of the authorities? You bet it is.
We need more unofficial investigations. We are not going to get any further official investigation. Case closed. “Move along. There’s nothing to see here.”
My advice: Don’t believe the first official government report. Suspend judgment. Keep snooping. Things are not always what they seem.
Coolies: How Britain Reinvented Slavery tells the astonishing and controversial story of the systematic recruitment and migration of over a million Indians to all corners of the Empire. It is a chapter in colonial history that implicates figures at the very highest level of the British establishment and has defined the demographic shape of the modern world.
Islamic State terrorists in Syria received all necessary materials to produce deadly sarin gas via Turkey, Turkish MP Eren Erdem has told RT, insisting there are grounds to believe a cover up has taken place.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) member, Erdem, brought up the issue for public discussion in parliament last week, citing evidence from an abruptly-closed criminal case. He accused Ankara of failing to investigate Turkish supply routes used to provide terrorists with toxic sarin gas ingredients.
“There is data in this indictment. Chemical weapon materials are being brought to Turkey and being put together in Syria in camps of ISIS which was known as Iraqi Al Qaeda during that time,” Erdem told RT.
Sarin gas is a military-grade chemical that was used in a notorious attack on Ghouta and several other neighborhoods near the Syrian capital of Damascus in 2013. The attacks were pinned on the Syrian leadership, who in turn agreed to get rid of all chemical weapons stockpiles under a UN-brokered deal amid an imminent threat of US intervention.
Addressing parliamentarians on Thursday, Erdem showed a copy of the criminal case number 2013/120 that was opened by the General Prosecutor’s Office in the city of Adana in southern Turkey.
The investigation revealed that a number of Turkish citizens took part in negotiations with Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) representatives on the supply of sarin gas. Pointing to evidence cited in the criminal case, he said that wiretapped phone conversations proved that an Al-Qaeda militant, Hayyam Kasap, acquired sarin.
“These are all detected. There are phone recordings of this shipment like ‘don’t worry about the border, we’ll take care of it’ and we also see the bureaucracy is being used,” continued Erdem.
Based on the gathered evidence Adana authorities conducted raids and arrested 13 suspects in the case. But a week later, inexplicably, the case was closed and all the suspects immediately crossed the Turkish-Syrian border, Erdem said.
“About the shipment, Republic prosecutor of Adana, Mehmet Arıkan, made an operation and the related people were detained. But as far as I understand he was not an influential person in bureaucracy. A week after, another public prosecutor was assigned, took over the indictment and all the detainees were released. And they left Turkey crossing the Syrian border,” he said.
“The phone recordings in the indictment showed all the details from how the shipment was going to be made to how it was prepared, from the content of the labs to the source of the materials. Which trucks were going to be used, all dates etc. From A to Z, everything was discussed and recorded. Despite all of this evidence, the suspects were released,” he said.
“And the shipment happened,” Erdem added. “Because no one stopped them. That’s why maybe the sarin gas used in Syria is a result of this.”
Speaking to RT, Erdem said that according to some evidence Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation was also involved, with some unconfirmed reports pointing in the direction of a government cover up, with Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdag’s involvement.
Certain evidence suggests Bozdag wanted to know beforehand from the sarin gas producer when and if the Islamists will use the chemical weapon.
“When I read the indictment, I saw clearly that these people have relationships with The Machinery and Chemical Industry Institution of Turkey and they don’t have any worries about crossing the border. For example in Hayyam Kasap’s phone records, you hear him saying sarin gas many times, saying that the ateliers are ready for production, materials are waiting in trucks which were supposedly carrying club soda,” he told RT.
The parliamentarian said that now he feels like there is a witch hunt against him, after he confronted the justice minister. Bozdag, according to Erdem denied only the part that he wanted to get notified about the operations beforehand.
Furthermore, Erdem argues that the West purposely blamed the regime of Bashar Assad for the August 2013 attacks and used it as part of the pretext to make US military intervention in Syria possible. The MP said that evidence in Adana’s case, according to his judgment, proves that IS was responsible.
“For example the chemical attack in Ghouta. Remember. It was claimed that the regime forces were behind it. This attack was conducted just days before the sarin operation in Turkey. It’s a high probability that this attack was carried out with those basic materials shipped through Turkey. It is said the regime forces are responsible but the indictment says it’s ISIS. UN inspectors went to the site but they couldn’t find any evidence. But in this indictment, we’ve found the evidence. We know who used the sarin gas, and our government knows it too,” he said.
At the same time, Erdem also accused the West and Europe in particular for providing “basic materials” to create such a powerful chemical weapon.
“All basic materials are purchased from Europe. Western institutions should question themselves about these relations. Western sources know very well who carried out the sarin gas attack in Syria. They know these people, they know who these people are working with, they know that these people are working for Al-Qaeda. I think is Westerns are hypocrites about the situation,” he concluded.
Shortly after Montenegro’s bid to join the North Atlantic Alliance was given the green light, thousands flooded the streets of the capital to protest the upcoming membership and remind people of lives taken during the NATO invasion of 1999.
Former Montenegrin President Momir Bulatovic and opposition leaders called the rally on Saturday in Montenegro’s capital, Podgorica. They gathered at least 5,000 supporters outside the parliament, according to the local Vijesti newspaper. The protesters held national flags while patriotic and pro-Russian chants rang out from the assembled crowd.
Bulatovic, who was also prime minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1998 to 2000, told the rally that joining NATO would mean the “blood of innocent people on our hands,” and emphasized his country had been against the alliance’s wars until recently.
“What has Afghanistan done wrong, what has Iraq done wrong? Why has Libya been destroyed, what’s happening today in Syria? Can we close our eyes to that?” he said.
He added that Montenegro’s ascension into NATO is strange, because “in 1999 NATO attacked Yugoslavia [and] bombs fell on Montenegro as well.”
“It’s impossible to erase such [actions] with an apology,” he said as quoted by Sputnik, adding that by letting his country in, NATO simply wants to have “a few more soldiers against Russia.”
The protesters chanted “Russia” as well as “NATO Murderers” in reference to NATO’s war in 1999 against the former Yugoslavia, which took the lives of many civilians in the alliance’s nationwide bombing raids against what were called military targets.
One of the placards raised by the protesters showed the faces of six civilians – including children – who died in NATO’s airstrike on the small Montenegrin village of Murino in May 1999. The village had no military significance, nor did it host any troops at that time. The bombing added further to the so-called “collateral damage” log of NATO’s war against the former Yugoslavia. No official apology or inquiry followed that incident.
Montenegro was offered NATO membership at the alliance’s summit on December 2. It was pushed forward by the current pro-Western President Milo Djukanovic. Montenegro remained part of a union with Serbia until 2006 and has since been actively integrating in EU and NATO structures. According to recent polling by the Podgorica-based Center for Democracy and Human Rights, 37 percent of surveyed Montenegrins oppose NATO membership, with 36 percent welcoming it. The country is home to 600,000 people.
Another anti-NATO protest took place in Montenegro’s capital earlier in October, involving as many 5,000 people who clashed with police after demanding President Djukanovic step down due to his pro-alliance stance.
This 1990 publication is the first comprehensive and balanced account of the most controversial and well-known espionage organization in the world, taking readers through the complex web of politics and personal ambition that led to such disasters as the brutal violence on the West Bank.
The amount of detail in this book certainly lends some credence to the book’s subtitle, and the journalist authors have also uncovered some fascinating new information: Israel has a number of top secret agencies, including one devoted to protecting their nuclear program and another for rescuing Jews from unfriendly countries; nuclear weapons using submarine-based launch platforms are nearly a reality; and Israel has been spying on the United States for years. The authors work diligently in this book to convince the world of the high morality of the Israeli cause. Israeli intelligence has been a popular subject for fiction and nonfiction, but there has yet to be a definitive nonfiction account on the subject. This readable and entertaining book is recommended for larger Middle East collections. –David P. Snider, Casa Grande P.L., Ariz. – Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Dan Raviv is/was a Washington-based correspondent for CBS News and host of the national radio magazine Weekend Roundup. New book published in July 2012: SPIES AGAINST ARMAGEDDON: INSIDE ISRAEL’S SECRET WARS. Most of his books are co-authored with Yossi Melman, and Dan wrote COMIC WARS about the Marvel Comics bankruptcy and renaissance. An earlier book with Yossi, EVERY SPY A PRINCE, was a national best seller; and they have a book about U.S.-Israel relations, FRIENDS IN DEED. Now they are again writing about the history of Israeli espionage — and how Israel intends to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The book is largely aimed at Kindle readers — because if something big happens in the Middle East, the authors will update the e-book immediately. Again, the title: SPIES AGAINST ARMAGEDDON: INSIDE ISRAEL’S SECRET WARS.
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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The amount of detail in this book certainly lends some credence to the book’s subtitle, and the journalist authors have also uncovered some fascinating new information: Israel has a number of top secret agencies, including one devoted to protecting their nuclear program and another for rescuing Jews from unfriendly countries; nuclear weapons using submarine-based launch platforms are nearly a reality; and Israel has been spying on the United States for years. The authors work diligently in this book to convince the world of the high morality of the Israeli cause. Israeli intelligence has been a popular subject for fiction and nonfiction, but there has yet to be a definitive nonfiction account on the subject. This readable and entertaining book is recommended for larger Middle East collections. –David P. Snider, Casa Grande P.L., Ariz. – Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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