Orange, TX Police Officer Robert Arnold (who has a history of violence) shot and killed unarmed James Whitehead.

Arnold is black. Arnold was not in his uniform and did not have a badge. Whitehead got into a verbal altercation about a bad part for his vehicle. James Whitehead did not ever get violent or attack Arnold or anyone else. Whitehead was wrong to get into a verbal altercation but at most he would have gotten a ticket and a fine. Whitehead decided to stop arguing and just leave and that is when Arnold shot the unarmed man dead right on the spot. Arnold was fired for the incident and for his other violent past incidents. Even Arnold's fellow police officers wanted Arnold to be charged with murder. Arnold was never charged and got away with murder. Arnold has enlisted race baiter Lawyer Cade Bernsen (the white Al Sharpton) to sue the city claiming he was fired because he was black and not because he shot an unarmed white man.

A district judge today dismissed all charges against three Nazareth men accused of plastering the borough with tiny "Fire Trachta" stickers targeting the police chief.

Jeremy Peters, 22, Trevor Gehret, 30, and Daniel Logothetis, 23, all of Nazareth, in June were charged for allegedly creating more than 250 stickers calling for police Chief Thomas Trachta's termination. They were also accused of placing them in such areas of the borough as street signs, fountains, newspaper dispensers, parking meters, mailboxes and benches.

The activity had cost the borough more than $500 to clean up.

All three were charged with criminal mischief, harassment, scattering rubbish and disorderly conduct. The judge threw out the criminal mischief charges against the three men and found them not guilty of harassment, scattering rubbish and disorderly conduct.

Nazareth police officer Daniel Troxell, prosecuting the case, failed to prove the disorderly conduct was a public inconvenience, that the trio acted in a criminal manner or the intent was hazardous or physically offensive in nature, according to District Judge Jacqueline Taschner, who presided over the 3 1/2-hour preliminary hearing.

"When you get into protected speech, it's a very, very fine line," Taschner said. "This is public speech and even if their intent was to cause Chief Trachta annoyance or alarm, the constitutional considerations outweigh them."

Legislation introduced to the Californian Senate earlier this year mandating ‘kill switches’ on all smart phones has been passed and sent to the Governor’s desk for approval.

Governor Jerry Brown is expected to sign bill CA SB 962 in the coming weeks, meaning that it will be against the law for any supplier or carrier in the State to sell a mobile phone that is not fitted with the technology.

Manufacturers will have until July 1, 2015 to ensure that all their phones are equipped with the means to “render the essential features of the smartphone inoperable when not in the possession of the authorized user.”

The legislation, introduced in February, passed on a vote of 53-20.

Danielle Wolf was not having a good night at the Kroger grocery store in North Augusta, S.C., where she moved with her family just three weeks ago.

She says her husband kept squishing the bread in their cart by putting frozen pizzas on top of it, and Wolf expressed her displeasure at the situation.

That's when her night got really bad. A fellow shopper approached her and accused her of using the F-word in front of her kids.

"I'm like, 'When did I say this to my kids?'" Wolf tells WJBF. "I said that to my husband, that he was smashing the bread."

But somehow the police were called, and Wolf ended up getting arrested in the incident late Sunday.

According to Wolf, the shopper who originally complained didn't actually want Wolf arrested: "I didn't harm nobody. I didn't hurt nobody. The lady said she was having a bad day. So, because you're having a bad day you're going to ruin somebody's life."

But the shopper denies having a bad day, and says Wolf used profanity repeatedly — and even cursed at her after she approached the family to complain.

Wolf faces disorderly conduct charges, and is due in court next month, KGO reports.

According to Salon, which looked up the city ordinance, disorderly conduct is defined as "riotous conduct of any kind," "cry[ing] out in a noisy, scandalous, or abusive manner" in a public place, or "utter[ing], while in a state of anger, in the presence of another, any bawdy, lewd, or obscene words or epithets."

Police in Ferguson, Missouri, arrested seven people last night as they were enforcing a midnight curfew imposed on residents. However, none of the seven arrested were engaged in any violent activity. They were minding their own business inside their own vehicles when police approached and pulled them out of their cars.

The area, where police shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, was subjected to an escalation in police control as Governor Jay Nixon issued a state of emergency and ordered a curfew from 12 pm to 5 am. Nixon claimed this would help stop the looting of businesses.

The New York Times, as well as other media organizations reported that police arrested protesters who “defied” the curfew and that this happened in the context of smoke bombs and tear gas that was fired to disperse a small of group of people refused to end their demonstration late last night. But these seven people were not out protesting when they were arrested.

Joshua Hampton, who resides in Berkeley nearby Ferguson and was at his aunt’s home “not even a quarter of a mile from the QuikTrip,” where many of the protests have been unfolding, spoke to Firedoglake about how police in military fatigues pulled his girlfriend, her sister and him out of his car at about 2 am.

His aunt did not want him to smoke inside the house. He figured given the situation in Ferguson it might be better to be inside his car parked on his aunt’s driveway. His girlfriend, her sister and him sat in the car smoking until suddenly there were light behind his car and a “bunch of guys with guns.”

“Get out the ******* car! Get out the ******* car!” they shouted.

“It was kind of like I was scared to open [my door],” Hampton recalled. There was “maybe five or six cops.” They had a “big SWAT truck.”

“I went ahead, and I had my hands up and I put them on the window and he opened up the door and he told his friend to cover his back. Took the gun and pressed my chest with the gun,” Hampton added. Then, his sister and girlfriend got out of the car.

Another car parked in front of his aunt’s house, with people inside who he did not know, was targeted by police. Hampton recalled police grabbed a girl by her hair and “slammed her on the back of her car.”

Five people total were arrested. He was later moved to another truck with two others who had been arrested. Hampton said that, of the seven, five were blacks, one was white and one Hispanic.

Ferguson is not just about systemic racism — it's about class warfare and how America's poor are held back, says Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

[...]

The Department of Justice study shows that in the U.S. between 2003 and 2009, among arrest-related deaths there’s very little difference among blacks, whites, or Latinos. However, the study doesn’t tell us how many were unarmed.

This fist-shaking of everyone’s racial agenda distracts America from the larger issue that the targets of police overreaction are based less on skin color and more on an even worse Ebola-level affliction: being poor.

[...]

Fifty million [poor] voters is a powerful block if they ever organized in an effort to pursue their common economic goals. So, it’s crucial that those in the wealthiest Point One Percent keep the poor fractured by distracting them with emotional issues like immigration, abortion and gun control so they never stop to wonder how they got so screwed over for so long.

One way to keep these 50 million fractured is through disinformation. PunditFact’s recent scorecard on network news concluded that at Fox and Fox News Channel, 60 percent of claims are false. At NBC and MSNBC, 46 percent of claims were deemed false. That’s the “news,” folks! That's only 30% more bullshit per serving size!

[...]

How can viewers make reasonable choices in a democracy if their sources of information are corrupted? They can’t, which is exactly how the Point One Percent controls the fate of the Ninety-Nine Point Nine Percent.

[...]

The real reason we flock to see Donald Sutherland’s porcelain portrayal in Hunger Games of a cold, ruthless president of the U.S. dedicated to preserving the rich while grinding his heel into the necks of the poor is that it rings true in a society in which the Point One Percent gets richer while our middle class is collapsing.

That’s not hyperbole; statistics prove this to be true. According to a 2012 Pew Research Center report, just half of U.S. households are middle-income, a drop of 11 percent since the 1970s; median middle-class income has dropped by 5 percent in the last ten years, total wealth is down 28 percent. Fewer people (just 23 percent) think they will have enough money to retire. Most damning of all: fewer Americans than ever believe in the American Dream mantra that hard work will get them ahead.

Rather than uniting to face the real foe—do-nothing politicians, legislators, and others in power—we fall into the trap of turning against each other, expending our energy battling our allies instead of our enemies.

Ferguson is not just about systemic racism — it's about class warfare and how America's poor are held back, says Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Parties acknowledge and agree that the media and members of the public have a right to record public events without abridgement unless it obstructs the activity or threatens the safety of others, or physically interferes with the ability of law enforcement officers to perform their duties.

Overnight, several journalists reported being detained, threatened or otherwise prevented from covering the unfolding story. The arrest late Sunday night of three reporters — Robert Klemko of Sports Illustrated, Chicago-based Financial Times reporter Neil Munshi and Rob Crilly, a foreign correspondent for the Telegraph (and no stranger to war zones) — reportedly came as the journalists attempted to gather more information while police faced off with protesters.

They were ordered arrested by Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson, who has been serving as a critical bridge between the Ferguson community and law enforcement.

Twenty months in jail is nowhere near sufficient punishment for an Iowa cop who brutally beat a motorist, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled on Thursday. Des Moines Police Officer Mersed Dautovic had been convicted assaulting Octavius Bonds with a baton during a September 12, 2008 traffic stop.

...

"The district court acted within its discretion when it decided to vary downward based on Dautovic's history and characteristics and on its policy disagreement with the guidelines, but these considerations do not justify the imposition of a twenty-month sentence in this case," Judge Roger Leland Wollman wrote for the three-judge appellate panel. "Dautovic's offense conduct involved aggravating circumstances, including the use of a dangerous weapon, the physical restraint of Bonds during the course of the beating, and the infliction of serious injury. Moreover, acting under the color of law, Dautovic tried to conceal his wrongdoing by falsifying a police report and lying under oath. When the totality of the circumstances is considered, a variance from the guidelines range of 135 to 168 months' imprisonment to a twenty-month sentence is unreasonably lenient"

Police told him that journalists were gathering on the other end of the street, in the large shopping mall, for security reasons.

"We felt there were no threats, everything is completely peaceful, and we said that we would stay on and take the photos we wanted," Graw wrote.

Then a young police officer says: "Okay, but only if you keep moving. The moment you stay standing, you'll be arrested. That's the last warning."

Graw took the pictures walking around in small circles in an attempt to assuage the officer, but was then cuffed in zip ties anyway. The officer gave his name as Donald Duck.

The journalists were processed, relieved of their personal belongings and transported to a jail in St. Louis. Requests for water were ignored. Requests for a phone call were always answered with "later".

After three hours, the journalists were released without explanation.

This was Graw's first arrest.

"This was a very new experience. I've been in several conflict zones: I was in the civil war regions in Georgia, the Gaza strip, illegally visited the Kaliningrad region when travel to the Soviet Union was still strictly prohibited for westerners, I've been in Iraq, Vietnam and in China, I've met Cuba dissidents. But to be arrested and yelled at and be rudely treated by police? For that I had to travel to Ferguson and St. Louis in the United States of America."