White L.A. Sheriff to Face Trial in Corruption Case [alleged scheme involved destruction of records, cover-ups, interference with a grand jury investigation, tampering with witnesses, and the threatening of an FBI agent]

Courthouse News

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca on Monday withdrew a guilty plea of lying to federal investigators, a decision that means he will face a trial and potential obstruction of justice charges.

     Baca returned to U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson's courtroom after the judge ruled two weeks ago that a six-month sentence would be too lenient for the official's alleged part in a conspiracy to obstruct an investigation into jailhouse abuses.

     After Baca's attorney Michael Zweiback made clear that his client would not accept the option of a harsher sentence, Anderson asked Baca at a brief Monday afternoon hearing if he wanted to withdraw his plea.

     "Yes, your honor," said Baca, who stood before the judge wearing a gray pin-striped suit and pink tie.

     Outside the courthouse, Baca told reporters that he had entered the plea to "avoid a lengthy and expensive trial and to minimize the court drama associated with this case."

     "I have made this decision due to the untruthful comments about my actions made by the court and the U.S. Attorney's Office that are contradicted by the evidence in this case," Baca said.

          At his sentencing hearing two weeks ago, Anderson had said six months would not account for Baca's culpability in a scheme that had involved the destruction of records, cover-ups, interference with a grand jury investigation, tampering with witnesses, and the threatening of an FBI agent.

     In April, former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka was convicted as the ringleader of a conspiracy to hide informant Anthony Brown within the jail system after the discovery of an FBI phone in his cell. Tanaka was sentenced to five years in June.

     Prosecutors said that Baca, who entered his plea agreement in February, "knowingly and willfully" made false statements to investigators during an interview in April 2013.

     After jailers discovered the phone and concluded that Brown was cooperating with the FBI, Baca ordered Brown isolated from the rest of the jail population, prosecutors said.

     In August 2011, Baca asked Tanaka to investigate how the phone had ended up with the inmate.

     The following month, Baca allegedly instructed officials to "do everything but put handcuffs" on FBI agent Leah Marx, who was investigating the case.

     In an infamous videotaped encounter, two Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau officers, Sgt. Scott Craig and Sgt. Maricela Long, threatened Marx — now known as Leah Tanner — outside her apartment complex after she returned home from work on Sept. 26, 2011.

     Craig told Tanner she was the "named suspect in a felony complaint" and said he was "in the process of swearing out a declaration for an arrest warrant."

     Anderson set a trial date for Sept. 20, 2016, at 8:30 a.m.

     Zweiback indicated that he would seek a continuance and told reporters outside the courtroom that he expected a superseding indictment to include similar obstruction of justice charges that were proven against Tanaka, though he went to pains to explain that he believes the cases are quite different.

Exonerated Black Man John Thompson Asks Department of Justice to Investigate White New Orleans Prosecutors

Innocence Project 

Exoneree and founder of Innocence Network project Resurrection After Exoneration John Thompson will file a formal complaint today asking the Department of Justice to investigate alleged incidents of prosecutorial misconduct during the tenure of former Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick.

Thompson will ask the department’s Civil Rights Division to review all cases handled by former Assistant District Attorney James Williams, one of the prosecutors who sentenced Thompson to death in 1985 for a murder he did not commit.

Two people convicted under Williams, including Thompson, were later exonerated and two others had their sentences commuted. Thompson said in a statement that

prosecutorial misconduct was systemic at the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office for years and that other innocent people languish in prisons as a result.

“That same misconduct obviously didn’t stop at our cases,” Thompson said in the statement. “We were just lucky enough to have lawyers to prove it.”

Read the Times-Picayune story here.

Learn more about John Thompson’s case here.

Right-Wing Media Outraged That Border Patrol Won’t Arrest Immigrants In Schools, Churches, And Hospitals

Media Matters

Right-wing media attacked the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s “sensitive location” policy, which forbids border patrol officers from surveilling and arresting immigrants in locations such as churches, hospitals, and schools, without prior authorization as “lawlessness” and accused the agency of “advising” illegal immigrants on how to avoid arrest.

U.S. Immigration And Customs Enforcement Enacts “Sensitive Locations Policy”

U.S. Immigration And Customs Enforcement Announces Policy. In a 2011 memorandum to field officers, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) detailed its sensitive locations policy, which forbade customs officers from conducting arrests, interviews, searches, and surveillance in “sensitive locations” such as schools, hospitals, churches and public protests. From the memorandum:

The enforcement actions covered by this policy are (1) arrests; (2) interviews; (3) searches; and (4) for purposes of immigration enforcement only, surveillance. Actions not covered by this policy include actions such as obtaining records. documents and similar materials from officials or employees, providing notice to officials or employees, serving subpoenas, engaging in Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) compliance and certification visits. or participating in official functions or community meetings.

The sensitive locations covered by this policy include. but are not limited to, the following:

• schools (including pre-schools, primary schools, secondary schools, post-secondary schools up to and including colleges and universities, and other institutions of learning such as vocational or trade schools);

• hospitals;

• churches, synagogues, mosques or other institutions of worship, such as buildings rented for the purpose of religious services;

• the site of a funeral, wedding, or other public religious ceremony; and

• a site during the occurrence of a public demonstration, such as a march, rally or parade. [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 10/24/11]

“Absolute Lawlessness”: Right-Wing Media Freak Over Policy

Fox’s Trish Regan Reports Illegal Immigrants Evading Arrest Are “Getting Help” From Border Patrol. Fox host Trish Regan and guest Paul Babeu reported that undocumented immigrants hiding from police are “getting help from the U.S. Border Patrol.” Regan and Babeu criticized Obama for the creation of the sensitive locations policy and for “telling everyone where they are”:

TRISH REGAN (HOST): Illegal immigrants hoping to avoid capture are now getting help from the U.S. Border Patrol? An advocacy advisory on the agency's own website offers a whole list of places that are off-limits for agents to search. Those include schools, churches, hospitals, and protests. It's all part of the Department of Homeland Security's sensitive locations policy and sheriff Paul Babeu from Pinal County, Arizona, says you know what? It's just plain old ridiculous. Sheriff, good to see you.

PAUL BABEU: Good to see you.

REGAN: What bothers you the most about all this?

BABEU: This continues the march of President Obama for absolute lawlessness. Not only there's a lack of enforcement or consequences for law, now he's provided actual sanctuaries throughout the entire country, not just cities, throughout the entire country, of no-go places for us in law enforcement to enforce the law. Our heroes in the border patrol.

REGAN: He’s not only putting them out there, he's telling everyone where they are as well.

BABEU: Absolutely.

REGAN: So if you’re an illegal immigrant you know you can go to X, Y, or Z for shelter. [Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto, 8/2/16]

Sean Hannity: Government Is “Actually Advising” Illegal Immigrants Where To Cross. Sean Hannity asked his guest Newt Gingrich if Trump should focus on his “hallmark issues” like border security and said that the U.S. Border Protection Agency was “advertising safe zones where illegals” can enter the United States:

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Would it be good advice for Donald Trump to focus in these remaining 97 days until Election Day on jobs, the economy, protecting the homeland, and, by the way, other issues that have become the hallmark of his campaign, like border security, et cetera. I don’t know if you know this -- story out today that U.S. Border Protection Agency is advertising safe zones where illegals can cross. We’re actually advising them where to cross. And all this talk about taking in refugees, did you know that this year alone Obama took in 6,877 Syrian refugees, 6,834 were either Sunni, Shia, or just generic Muslim, and we seem to already be discriminating against Syrians if they are Christian, because as we know and we’ve been chronicling, there’s been genocide against Christians and the world barely pays attention to it.

NEWT GINGRICH: Exactly. That’s why you have to recognize -- and the fact that they just announced that they’re going to give 18 months of sanctuary to 8,700 Syrian refugees. You have to ask yourself the question, why is it that they're willing to risk American lives on behalf of people about whom we know nothing? [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 8/2/16]

Fox News Reports Obama Administration Is Giving Illegal Immigrants “Advice” On “How To Avoid Being Caught.” Bret Baier reported that the Obama administration’s border enforcement website offered advice “to illegal immigrants about how to avoid being caught,” citing the sensitive locations policy that bars officers from “interviewing, searching or arresting” suspects in places such as churches and schools:

BRET BAIER (HOST): Critics are calling the Obama administration’s approach to border enforcement schizophrenic over the advice on the border patrol's own website to illegal immigrants about how to avoid being caught. It has to do with “safe zones,” where agents are barred from interviewing, searching ,or arresting suspected illegal immigrants. Such places as schools, churches and medical treatment facilities are listed on that website. [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 8/2/16]

Policy Provides Officers Means Of Enforcement And Enhances “Public Understanding And Trust”

Sensitive Locations Policy Provides Exceptions And Serves Public Purpose. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection website states a customs officer may carry out enforcement actions at sensitive locations if he receives prior approval from a supervisor or faces “exigent circumstances necessitating immediate action.” The department stated the sensitive location policy is “meant to ensure that ICE and CBP officers and agents exercise sound judgment” and to “ensure that people seeking to participate in activities or utilize services provided at any sensitive location are free to do so, without fear or hesitation.” From the department website:

The policies provide that enforcement actions at or focused on sensitive locations such as schools, places of worship, and hospitals should generally be avoided, and that such actions may only take place when (a) prior approval is obtained from an appropriate supervisory official, or (b) there are exigent circumstances necessitating immediate action without supervisor approval. The policies are meant to ensure that ICE and CBP officers and agents exercise sound judgment when enforcing federal law at or focused on sensitive locations, to enhance the public understanding and trust, and to ensure that people seeking to participate in activities or utilize services provided at any sensitive location are free to do so, without fear or hesitation.

[...]

ICE and CBP officers may carry out an enforcement action at a sensitive location without prior approval from a supervisor in exigent circumstances related to national security, terrorism, or public safety, or where there is an imminent risk of destruction of evidence material to an ongoing criminal case. [U.S. Customs and Border Protection, accessed 8/2/16

Immigration Agents Don’t Follow The Law When It Comes To Asylum Seekers

ThinkProgress

A Bangladeshi asylum seeker who arrived at the southern U.S. border was turned away after a border agent told him to seek asylum in Mexico. Another Central American asylum seeker was told by an immigration agent that he would be deported, regardless of whether he signed a statement testifying that he would be at risk of persecution or torture if he was returned to his country. And yet a third immigrant was told that it would be “better if you just ask to be deported” or “we’re going to throw you out.”

These anecdotes come from a new report by a U.S. government commission that makes federal policy recommendations, which documented the inconsistent experiences with immigration agents that asylum seekers and refugees encountered when they claimed a credible fear of being returned to their home countries and were instead put into an expedited removal process from the United States.

In the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) report — which follows up on a two-volume report released more than ten years ago — researchers found that these immigrants continue to confront barriers found in the 2005 report, including agents who did not refer immigrants to other agencies when they expressed a fear of being returned, openly skeptical or hostile agents, and a lack of official interpreters.

Asylum seekers and refugee have the legal right to ask for humanitarian relief either at the border or within the United States if they can prove that they have a valid reason to stay in the country. Under U.S. law, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have to document that an asylum seeker or refugee expressed fear, then send that person’s file to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency, which is responsible for assessing the fear claim, known as a credible fear determination. But researchers found that initial interviewers sometimes sent immigrants home without sending their files on to the proper immigration agencies. [MORE]

Election Rigged for HRC

4th Media

Most glimpses into past history provide insights on what is taking place in the real time current society. When applied to the realm of politics and raw power, the established order gets their way.

Ignoring the will of the people is so evident that only a dedicated flunky for maintaining the false narrative of democratic rule would deny the reality of the illicit system.

Allowing voters to actually elect their leaders is a risk that the masters of the world order will not tolerate.

Even the first Trilateral Commission President admits the truth in 2016: 2016: The Year Americans Found out Our Elections Are Rigged.

“Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. senators and congress members.” — Former President Jimmy Carter

Do not be naïve. Presidential elections in America have rarely been a reflection of populist sentiment under – one person one vote legitimacy. Now that computerized selections have become the norm, Voter Fraud Inevitable from Digital Elections becomes the primary method of stealing elections.

A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America by Victoria Collier provides some crucial lessons on how elections really work.

1. If there is any conceivable way to tamper with or rig an election — someone will attempt it. This includes average citizens as well as officials charged with protecting the process.

2. Every voting system is open to tampering, but paper ballots counted in public are the easiest system to protect and monitor. (It’s estimated that only 2% of Americans still vote on a hand-counted paper ballot).

3. Secret vote counting is illegal. Remember: counting them faster is not a justification for counting them secretly.

4. When machines began to take over our vote counting systems, election rigging became an exciting new national industry.

5. Lever machines were the first to appear, and they were riggable in a number of ways. One could rig the lever machine itself, or, much more easily, the electronic scanning machines that counted the ballots. (See the Votescam video for footage of ballot rigging under the supervision of both parties and the Dade County Election Supervisor).

6. Computerized voting machines are the easiest to rig. Their software is not open to public scrutiny, or the scrutiny of Election Supervisors (rendering their title meaningless). There are nearly infinite ways to program the machines to count votes fraudulently. Since they are accessible by modem, they can be controlled from a remote, centralized location.

7. Voting machine companies operate with no federal oversight, certification process, standards or restrictions. Controlling members of some of the most powerful voting machine corporations are convicted criminals, some are politicians with obvious conflicts of interests, others are not even American citizens. Just two companies –Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and Diebold Voting Systems — now control about 80% of the vote count in the U.S.

8. Vote fraud on a statewide and national scale is not possible without the complicity of (among others) corrupt Election Supervisors, Secretaries of State, Judges, voting machine corporations, and top officials of the major media outlets.

9. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have been complicit in vote rigging for decades, to their mutual benefit. Vote rigging is NOT a partisan issue (though recent evidence suggests Republicans might be gaining the upper hand in the race to control our elections).

10. The corporate major media networks play a vital role in perpetrating and covering up vote fraud. Media methods of vote rigging are explored in the Votescam book, including the role of Voter News Service (VNS). (VNS was a consortium of all the major media outlets. It recently closed up shop and scurried off into the shadows, but for decades, under two different corporate names, it controlled the compilation and dissemination of national vote totals, with the power to alter the reported results. The networks have actually not competed for vote totals, as they claim to have done, since 1965. They got all their numbers from VNS, which operated behind an iron curtain of secrecy. Any questions regarding their operation were met with the ubiquitous response: “This is not a proper area of inquiry.” Most people erroneously thought they were simply a polling organization, though no evidence of their supposedly massive polling operation could be found by investigators). See my interview with Bill Headline, former head of VNS, at http://www.votescam.com/articles.php

11. Election Day media polls are untrustworthy at best, and very likely fabricated to influence voter decisions and to support phony vote results.

White Chicago Cop's credibility questioned by judges in at least 13 cases, defense attorneys told

Chicago Tribune 

Cook County prosecutors recently notified defense lawyers in at least 10 criminal cases that a judge found the court testimony of a veteran Chicago police officer to be false, a determination about the officer's credibility that could affect the cases as they move to trial.

The state's attorney's office also has told defense lawyers in at least three other cases that another Cook County judge has cast doubt on testimony from two other police officers, raising questions about those cases as well.

Prosecutors notified the lawyers through a type of court filing commonly called a disclosure notice, and followed a Chicago Tribune investigation in May that found Chicago police were rarely punished when a judge found they had testified falsely or in a way that raised questions about their credibility.

The state's attorney's office, in fact, had done nothing about any of the officers' testimony until the Tribune investigation raised questions about the cases. The office then issued the disclosure notices, which the Tribune obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. [MORE]

The Delaware Supreme Court struck down the state’s death-penalty statute

The Atlantic

The Delaware Supreme Court struck down the state’s death-penalty statute Tuesday, ruling that the latitude it granted to judges during the sentencing phase violated the Sixth Amendment.

Most high-profile death-penalty cases revolve around the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. But Rauf v. Delaware instead centers on the Sixth Amendment and the right to a jury it protects.

States with the death penalty generally require a jury to weigh aggravating and mitigating circumstances before sentencing a defendant to life imprisonment or death. At the start of 2016, three states—Alabama, Delaware, and Florida—allowed judges to impose a death sentence independent of the jury’s determination. In some cases, judges could override a jury’s recommendation of a life sentence and impose death instead.

Those statutes came under renewed scrutiny in January after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s death-penalty statute in Hurst v. Florida. Florida’s procedures only allowed jurors to render an “advisory sentence” during the sentencing phase; state judges could then independently weigh the factors and hand down life or death.

The Court struck down the scheme by an 8-1 vote. Writing for the majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that like earlier sentencing procedures quashed by the Court, “Florida does not require the jury to make the critical findings necessary to impose the death penalty.” By handing that power to the judge, the system ran afoul of the Sixth Amendment.

The Court’s ruling in Hurst proved fatal to Delaware’s death-sentencing procedures. Under state law, jurors only need to unanimously agree that at least one aggravating factor exists for a judge to hand down a death sentence. Jurors then also determine whether the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors. But, unlike in almost all other states with the death penalty, that calculus doesn’t bind the judge, who can hand down a death sentence of his or her own accord.

In a concurring opinion joined by two other justices, Delaware Chief Justice Leo Strine laid out a lengthy history of American capital punishment and the paramount role juries played in it. A fourth justice partially concurred with the decision, arguing that some of the questions answered by the Court should have been left to the Delaware legislature.

Only Justice James Vaughn Jr. argued against applying Hurst to the state’s death-sentencing procedures. Central to his reasoning were significant differences between Florida’s unusual system and the methods used by Delaware.

“Since the jury’s role was purely advisory, the judge could reject a jury finding that no statutory aggravating factor existed and sentence the defendant to death based on his or her own findings,” he wrote, describing the Florida scheme struck down by Hurst. “That cannot happen under Delaware’s statute,” which requires the jury to find at least one aggravating factor before proceeding, he noted. [MORE]

New website allows white people to offer ‘reparations’ directly to people of color

WashPost

One Louisiana native just wanted some books. A mother from Oklahoma simply wanted some help to buy a new laptop battery.

So they, along with dozens of other people of color, took to a new website to ask for help from those who have discriminated against them for decades: white people. Simultaneously, white people came to the site, called Reparations, to offer what they could and to start to answer the question: What can I do to help fix racial injustice? [MORE]

Amos Wilson: What is Power?

THE DEFINITIONS OF POWER are various and conflicting. This is due mainly to the multifarious nature of power itself, rather than due to its unreality or ephemeral spirit. Few, if any of us, doubt the reality of power and the tangible effects its application engenders. Our confusion as to its exact definition more likely flows from the fact that power, depending on context and circumstance, assumes ubiquitous shapes and forms, varying degrees of transparency and visibility. Power is a chameleon: it takes on the texture of its environment.

It is not our purpose here to untangle the web of power definitions. It is not necessary for us to do so. However, a review of a number of definitions and of several forms of power will provide an intuitive understanding of its essential meaning, which is all that is necessary to our mission. 

Power comes with being; with interactive existence; with being alive. It is the essence of life and the motive force of growth and development and of the adaptability of living things to environmental changes and demands. Power refers to the ability to do, the ability to be, the ability to prevail. Beingness and aliveness originate with power. To be powerless is to be will-less, impotent and lifeless; without effect or influence; to be nothing, of no account. Thus, we concur with Rollo May when he contends that:

Power is essential for all living things. Man, in particular, cast on this barren crust of earth aeons ago with the hope and the requirement that he survive, finds he must use his powers and confront opposing forces at every point in his struggle with the earth and with his fellows. 

The unimpeded intentionality of living systems, including especially human beings, is self-realization and self-actualization, the fulfillment of genetic potential or possibilities. This intentionality must be empowered to be realized. Thus, to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, "Wherever we find the will to live, there we find the will to power." Power is essential to our existence and the most influential factor in determining our quality of life. As Wartenberg contends, "Power is one of the central phenomena of human social life." And as Parenti argues, "All sorts of interpersonal [and we may add, intergroup] relationships can be seen as involving power, including between lovers or between parent and child." Power! There is no escaping its presence in some form. There is no escaping its use by others to influence in some form our person, our minds and behavior and our own use of it to influence the persons, minds and behavior of others.

We deny the ubiquity of power to our peril. It does not vanish from reality or lose its influence by our refusal to acknowledge its existence. Therefore, we are behooved to recognize its permanent reality and make the best of it, control it and use it to good purpose. Power in and of itself "can be both a detrimental and a beneficial aspect of social relationships" and can be made to play "the negative as well as the positive role... in the constitution of human social life" (Wartenberg). Power can be utilized to achieve personal, social, political and material ends if it is appropriately developed, organized and applied. The question of whether power is beneficial or harmful can only be answered in regard to the specific use to which it is put in a particular situation. 

Many in our audience will find this discussion of power disturbing or diseasing. Having been victimized by the abuse and misuse of power, often crushed by the powers-that-be, the reader who identifies himself as among the powerless or as a member of a relatively powerless group, e.g., an Afrikan American, will be the more perturbed by our discussion. The oppressed and downtrodden, having been traumatized by the abuse of power by their powerful oppressors, often come to perceive power itself as inherently evil, as by nature corrupting and therefore as something to be eschewed, denied and renounced. The pursuit of power is viewed as unworthy of virtuous persons, and the desire to possess it as sinful. Therefore, many among the powerless and poor feel compelled to find in their powerlessness and poverty the emblematic signs of their Godliness and redemptive salvation. How convenient a precept for rationalizing and maintaining the power of the haves over the have-notsl As the result of their ideological manipulation by the powerful and their own reactionary misperception of reality, the poor and powerless have been made to perceive the pursuit, possession and application of power in their own behalf as unbecoming to themselves. This is even more the case when through their naive acceptance of the self-serving deceptive propaganda perpetrated by the powers-that-be, their own reactionary self-negation, and their nursing of their internalized inferiority complexes, the poor huddled masses perceive the possession and exercise of power as the inherent and exclusive prerogative of the ruling classes or races.

There are many Blacks who have been convinced by racist propaganda that supreme power is divinely deeded to dominant Whites. They therefore suffer anxiety attacks and feel as if they are blasphemously rebelling against God, Himself, if they — even for a moment — seriously dare consider conspiring to wrest power from the hands of their oppressors. More unfortunate than this sorely mistaken theological perception is the self-abnegating perception by many Blacks that they are inherently incapable of mounting a successful campaign against oppressive White power and therefore must sulkingly seek the least onerous accommodation to it. This perception of and orientation toward power on the part of Afrikan peoples, is but a prescription for their unending subordination, exploitation, and ultimately, when it is convenient to the purposes of their oppressors, their genocidal demise. Therefore, if they are to survive and prosper in freedom then, like it or not, Afrikan peoples must come to terms with power. We must be ever conscious of the fact that "the establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain its control, kill us."

 The Typology of Power

In perhaps its most general sense, Rollo May defines power as "the ability to cause or prevent change." Power is fundamentally ambivalent in that it exists in both latent and manifest forms, is both stabilizing and destabilizing, both a causal factor in bringing about certain changes in social and environmental circumstances as well as in preventing them. Power may conceivably refer to the ability to achieve a desired goal, or to the ability to willfully resist or overcome certain social and environmental conditions imposed on oneself by others, or the ability to impose on others against their will or outside their awareness, certain social, environmental circumstances and behavioral demands.

Click to read more ...

PARIS - Break The Grip Of Shame

BART footage of Oscar Grant getting shot in the back by Overser Cops with audio

NY Times Video on Willie Brown

Propaganda was Successful: Dallas Police Department Sees Surge in Applications After Mass Shooting

Time

The Dallas Police Department has seen job applications surge threefold following the mass shooting that killed five officers earlier this month.

The department received 467 job applications in the 12 days after the July 7 shooting, Reuters reported on Friday, citing city officials. That number represents a 344% increase from just 136 applications during 12 days in June.

At a press conference last week, Dallas Police Chief David Brown asked people to “become a part of the solution” and apply for a job. He also spoke out immediately after the shooting about how his officers “don’t feel much support most days.”

White Media Insists there is a race war [govt vs. you?] - Schedule of Upcoming Gun Shows

Gunshhows-usa

Two Latino Men Released From Prison After 23 Years of Wrongful Incarceration Based on "profoundly alarming acts of misconduct" by police

Chicago Tribune 

On Wednesday, Jose Montanez and Armando Serrano were released from prison after 23 years when prosecutors dismissed the murder charges against them.

Montanez and Serrano were convicted of a 1993 murder based on the testimony of an incentivized witness who was allegedly fed information about the crime by Reynaldo Guevara, a former Cook County detective who is now under scrutiny for many similar accusations of misconduct.

The men maintained they had nothing to do with the crime and solicited the help of the Medill Justice Project. In 2004 after a series of interviews, the key witness in the case recanted, saying Guevara coerced his testimony.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel launched an investigation into cases involving Guevara a number of years ago and determined that at least four people, including Montanez and Serrano, were likely wrongfully convicted as a result of Guevara’s misconduct.

Montanez and Serrano were embraced by their families as they left the Leighton Criminal Court Building on Wednesday.

“I knew I was innocent so that made me hopeful that someday I would get justice, and fortunately that day is today,” Serrano told the Chicago Tribune.

Serrano and Montanez were convicted on the testimony of Francisco Vicente, a heroin addict facing four felony charges who allegedly told Guevara that the two men had confessed to fatally shooting Rodrigo Vargas in his van as he left his Humboldt Park apartment for work.

In 2004, after a series of interviews with students from the Medill Innocence Project, Vicente recanted his testimony, saying Guevara had fed him the story.

Dozens of Montanez's and Serrano's family members and supporters packed a courtroom at the Leighton Criminal Court Building on Wednesday, laughing as Judge LeRoy Martin asked attorneys for the men if they had any objection to charges being dismissed.

Outside the courtroom they embraced, some in near-disbelief that a day they had waited two decades for had finally arrived.

The announcement by prosecutors came after a harshly worded appeals court ruling last month found that "profoundly alarming acts of misconduct" had led to the convictions of Montanez and Serrano for a 1993 murder.

Attorneys for the men said they hoped the decision was a signal that Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez was taking a fresh look at all cases involving former Detective Reynaldo Guevara.