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A Montara man walking two lapdogs off leash was hit with an electric-shock gun by a National Park Service ranger after allegedly giving a false name and trying to walk away, authorities said Monday. The park ranger encountered Gary Hesterberg with his two small dogs Sunday afternoon at Rancho Corral de Tierra, which was recently incorporated into the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, said Howard Levitt, a spokesman for the park service. Hesterberg, who said he didn't have identification with him, allegedly gave the ranger a false name, Levitt said. The ranger, who wasn't identified, asked Hesterberg to remain at...

Not an actual photo ​Every once in a while, amid the stacks of semi-literate, pro se habeas corpus petitions, trademark suits and product liability complaints, there comes a federal filing so disturbing, so completely awful, that it leaves the reader with nothing but questions. This week, it's Danny Cantu v. The City of Dallas and a whole passel of named and unnamed police officers. According to the complaint, which made its way to Courthouse News yesterday, Cantu, a diesel mechanic, was making his lunch January 22, 2010, when he saw a few cops streaking across his yard. A deafening...

A Kihei couple is suing the Maui Police Department in federal court after officers allegedly raided their home while executing a search warrant on the wrong address last year. April and Norman Freeland allege that police forced them outside and searched their home for nearly half an hour, even after they knew they were at the wrong location. Attorney Sam MacRoberts of the Law Office of Philip Lowenthal said the couple still has never seen a warrant for the search. --SNIP-- The Freelands' lawsuit naming Maui County, Maui Police Chief Gary Yabuta and Maui Police officer Jerald Perkett was filed...

The foul-mouthed Canton, OH police officer who threatened to shoot an armed citizen in the head over his concealed pistol last summer has been fired, but he reportedly plans to appeal. Harless confronted a private citizen named William Bartlett in early June 2010 when the officer stopped to check out a vehicle parked on the side of the street. Bartlett’ sin was in not immediately advising Harless and another officer that he was carrying a concealed handgun, as required by Ohio statute. The problem, as can be seen by viewing the video, is that Harless never gave Bartlett the chance,...

--SNIP-- Miles was beaten nearly to death by three Pittsburgh police officers who say they mistook a bottle of MountainDew in Miles’ pocket for a gun ... The cops claimed they confronted Miles because a neighbor had complained that the music student with no criminal record was skulking about her property. That neighbor denies ever making such a complaint. The cops also say Miles should have known they were cops, and say he’s responsible for his own beating for fleeing them. Miles is suing. Which brings us to the update: In response to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by...

A Wake County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed a couple’s 3-year-old dog Wednesday night while searching for a runaway teenager. John and Linda Super say two deputies came to their home on King Circle, looking for a 15-year-old neighbor who had run away and had often spent time with them. One of the couple’s dogs, Elvis, forced his way out the front door and ran outside as the couple talked to the deputies, they said. One of the deputies shot Elvis twice, including once in the back of the head, killing him, according to the Supers. “All we’ve got is...

When Pompton Lakes police seized Darren Richardson’s car on a rainy September afternoon, they told him it was headed for an impound lot. When they returned it three weeks later, he says, the 2004 BMW belonged in a junk yard. The instrument cluster and leather dashboard were gone. The caramel-colored seats were torn up. The gear shift was ripped out and stray wires hung limp everywhere. Geico, Richardson’s insurance company estimated the damage at $12,636.42 — more than he paid for the car — and declared the vehicle a "total loss." According to police reports, the damage to the black...

The Transportation Security Administration isn't just in airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country... The TSA's 25 "viper" teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year. According to budget documents, the department spent $110 million in fiscal 2011 for "surface transportation security," including the TSA's viper program, and is asking...

BOSTON -- A Peabody woman says a cupcake she tried to take on a flight with her sparked a potential security threat this week. Rebecca Hains says she was going through security at the airport in Las Vegas when a TSA agent pulled her aside and said the cupcake frosting was “gel-like” enough to constitute a security risk. She said she was able to pass through Logan International Airport security with two cupcakes, but she was stopped on the way back when she tried to return with one of them.

GULFPORT -- Spook was chained in his front yard on 20th Street when police officers with a search warrant went to the house and one of them shot the 3-year-old pit bull, witnesses said. **** She said Spook was a gentle inside dog but was outside on a chain while relatives were outside. Clark was inside when she heard the commotion. “If the officer felt threatened by my dog, he had time to back off. I kept hearing my child saying over and over, ‘Please don’t shoot my dog,’” Clark said. “My dog was my best friend,” she said. Clark’s...

The Minneapolis City Council approved a $1 million settlement Friday after a botched drug raid in 2010 in which an officer threw a "flash-bang" grenade into a Minneapolis apartment burning the flesh off a woman's leg. The payout to Rickia Russell, who suffered permanent injuries, was the third largest payout for alleged Minneapolis police misconduct on record. --SNIP-- On the night of Feb. 16, 2010, 18 officers were executing a search warrant on the apartment at 5753 Sander Drive based on a tip that narcotics were being sold at the address by someone named David Conley. In what Bennett called...

The U.S. military has some of the most advanced killing equipment in the world that allows it to invade almost wherever it likes at will. We produce so much military equipment that inventories of military robots, M-16 assault rifles, helicopters, armored vehicles, and grenade launchers eventually start to pile up and it turns out a lot of these weapons are going straight to American police forces to be used against US citizens. Benjamin Carlson at The Daily reports on a little known endeavor called the "1033 Program" that gave more than $500 million of military gear to U.S. police forces...

An 84-year-old grandmother in a wheelchair abused by Transportation Security Administration screeners at John F. Kennedy airport plans to sue the TSA, complaining of injuries and extreme humiliation suffered during a strip search. Homeland Security spokesmen, however, said “proper procedures were followed” and later claimed that the victim’s clothes were not fully removed. In a phone interview with The New American, the traumatized 103-pound woman, Lenore Zimmerman, warned that America was in “deep trouble” if manhandling frail grandmothers was what “security” had come to. But she plans to seek justice and has already contacted an attorney. “They stopped me to...

An 85-year-old Long Island grandmother says she plans to sue the TSA after a humiliating strip search on Tuesday by agents at JFK Airport. Lenore Zimmerman, who lives in Long Beach, says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes. “I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she said sarcastically. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.” TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the...

Remember a few weeks back when a Tea Party group in Virginia made a fuss about fees they paid the city for meeting space? Their argument, with which I agree, was that it was unfair for them to be charged thousands of dollars in fees when the city of Richmond was allowing occupiers to use public land without permits: It’s not fair, the City of Richmond’s picking and choosing whose first amendment rights trump someone else’s first amendment rights and we thought – well that’s fine, then they can refund our money. If that’s how they’re going to run the...

Garland wants to be your boss, your big brother, your nanny, your wet nurse and your house sitter all rolled into one. Heather Fazio, Texas Libertarian Party Membership Coordinator, issued the following Action Alert about Garland's city council meeting scheduled for November 14: Council is requested to consider the recommendation of the Building and Fire Code Board and the Plumbing and Mechanical Code Board to adopt the 2009 International Fire, Residential, Building, Energy Conservation, Plumbing, Mechanical, Property Maintenance and Fuel Gas Codes along with local amendments. What this means, Fazio explains, is that the city wants to make it mandatory...

Matthew Spaulding says he and his family were terrorized at their own home by police who slammed his grandmother to the ground and shot his dogs-- missing his head by less than an inch. "Told us to get on the ground. I got on the ground they put me in handcuffs," Spaulding recalls, "Then they threw my dad to the ground and my dog Sadie was right here sniffing my head. She was next to me. They shot her. The blood got on my face and then she took off running behind me and they shot her like three more...

Using a pseudonym on Facebook or fibbing about your age on a dating site could be illegal if the U.S. Department of Justice has its way. The DOJ is going to Congress today to argue that Web sites' terms of service policies should be enforceable by law, according to CNet. For that purpose, the department seeks an expansion of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a 25-year-old law that mainly deals with hacking, password trafficking, and threatening to damage a computer. By outlawing terms of service violations, the department would have an easier time prosecuting cyberbullies such as Lori Drew,...

The idea of “safety” or “security” is a powerful tool in the collection of emerging dictatorial governments that are not yet able or willing to use outright force to crush the entire population into compliance with the freedom-robbing desires of the rulers of the state. How many freedoms and liberties have we already willingly given up for “security’s” sake? How much more burdensome is air travel in the wake of 9-11, because we simply had to crack down on dangerous, old ladies leaning on walkers and potential terrorist toddlers in diapers? Our blossoming police state is growing scarier by the...

FULLERTON – Acting Police Chief Kevin Hamilton publicly apologized Tuesday night for four narcotics detectives mistakenly entering the wrong house while searching for a suspect. Hamilton, a captain filling in for the chief, who is on medical leave, also outlined during the City Council meeting several policy changes resulting from the incident. On Oct. 20, 2010, detectives entered the home of Chuck and Robyn Nordell, in the 200 block of Ventura Place. The suspect who police were looking for was actually in the house next door. The Nordells, along with their 23-year old daughter and 26-year old son, were home...

In September 2009, 28-year-old Jonathan Ayers pulled into a gas station in Stephens County, Georgia, to withdraw money from an ATM. Ayers, a pastor, had just given $23, all the cash he had in his pocket, to Johanna Barrett, a drug addict alleged to be a prostitute to whom Ayers had been ministering. His purpose was to help Barrett pay rent at the motel where she was living with her boyfriend. According to friends and family members, it wasn’t unusual for Ayers to give the money he was carrying to help those to whom he was ministering get out of...

STOCKTON (CBS13) — The San Jose Police Department stormed into a Stockton home searching for an accused killer, but they left without him, and left behind a complete mess. “I feel like a war was taken on here, and we lost,” homeowner Joann Rice told CBS13. Almost all of the windows are smashed in, there are holes in the wall, and there’s a layer of tear gas in the air so thick breathing it in makes you cough. That is the home Rice came back to after the San Jose police held a fruitless 12-hour search on Saturday for Steve...

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas. The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup. Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as "flaking," on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose...

An internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security document indicates that a controversial program designed to predict whether a person will commit a crime is already being tested on some members of the public voluntarily, CNET has learned. If this sounds a bit like the Tom Cruise movie called "Minority Report," or the CBS drama "Person of Interest," it is. But where "Minority Report" author Philip K. Dick enlisted psychics to predict crimes, DHS is betting on algorithms: it's building a "prototype screening facility" that it hopes will use factors such as ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate to "detect cues...

We’re talking hundreds of thousands of Americans. From Gun Owners Of America: With the stroke of a pen, the U.S. Justice Department has just subjected hundreds of thousands of Americans to a lifetime gun ban. In an open letter to all licensed firearms dealers, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) unilaterally decided that any person who is prescribed marijuana for medical purposes is prohibited from possessing a firearm. That means over 300,000 people in the states that allow medical marijuana suddenly cannot buy or possess a gun. Oh yeah, and for the many who already own firearms,...

A defense lawyer says a police officer has been charged with murder in the death of a mentally ill homeless man in Southern California. Attorney John Barnett says his client, Fullerton police Officer Manuel Ramos, surrendered to authorities Wednesday and was being charged with second-degree murder. The Orange County district attorney's office was set to announce the charge in the death of 37-year-old Kelly Thomas after a violent confrontation on July 5 with Fullerton officers. Six officers were placed on paid administrative leave after the incident that occurred while police were investigating reported vehicle break-ins at a transit hub. Thomas...

INDIANAPOLIS -- The Indiana Supreme Court on Tuesday reaffirmed its earlier ruling in a controversial case involving unlawful police entry. The court granted a rehearing, then supplied a five-page opinion on its May 12 opinion that declared that Hoosiers no longer had a legal right to resist police officers who enter their home without a legal basis to do so.

On August 30, the Cleveland Scene reported that after having attempted to get police to return her collection of firearms for an entire year, a Lakewood, OH veteran was finally forced to file a lawsuit against the police department, which had confiscated the collection from her home when she was away. From the article: Francesca Rice no longer serves in her country's armed forces, but she brought a piece of the action back home with her. It seems the Lakewood vet had stockpiled her Edgewater Towers condo with a home arsenal including handguns, shotguns, a sniper rifle — plus a...

Does SWAT Need to Be Explained? Written by Ed Sanow I get frustrated with the educational sessions at chief’s conferences on SWAT. The attendees are treated like kindergarten kids. “There are some vewy, vewy bad people out there. They won’t do what the nice police officers tell them. So, sometimes, those nice police officers need help from ‘special’ police officers.” You got to be kidding me! Some 90% of agencies serving populations of more than 50,000 people, and 70% of agencies serving smaller populations have some kind of SWAT team. Yet, SWAT has to be explained like it is something...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A major NewsChannel 5 investigation has uncovered serious questions about Tennessee's war on drugs. Among the questions: are some police agencies more concerned about making money off the drugs, than stopping them? At the center of this months-long investigation are laws that let officers pull driver over looking for cash. Those officers do not even have to file criminal charges against a person to take his/her money. It turns out, those kind of stops are now happening almost every day in Middle Tennessee. Case in point: a 2009 stop where a tractor trailer was stopped for a...

Dashboard cameras are supposed to help protect police officers and sheriff's deputies from groundless complaints, but a graphic dash cam video obtained by FOX17 NEWS has some Humphreys County lawmen at the center of a TBI investigation. It was January 23 on the outskirts of Waverly when sheriff's deputies roll up to a house on Bearcat Lane. It started otu peacefully enough, with authorities questioning 35 year old Darrin Ring on the left and 2 other men who say they live next door to the home, but the peace was quickly shattered. 3 Humphreys County sheriff's deputies converge on Ring...

Francesca Rice no longer serves in her country’s armed forces, but she brought a piece of the action back home with her. It seems the Lakewood vet had stockpiled her Edgewater Towers condo with a home arsenal including handguns, shotguns, a sniper rifle — plus a Thompson sub-machine gun, just in case the pizza guy got fresh. Her cache somehow caught the attention of Lakewood Police, who paid a visit last September. When they found Rice wasn’t home, they asked an obliging employee of the complex to open up the apartment without her consent. Once inside, they raided the gun...

The front page of last Tuesday's Times-Dispatch carried a startling photo: Richmond police officers taking a suspect into custody. What was startling was the display of force. The officers, accompanied by a robot and decked out in full riot gear with shield and combat helmets, could have been mistaken for American soldiers on patrol in Iraq. Yet they were going up against a single man — and they were not even sure was armed. Regrettably, this is not a new development. In recent years police forces across the country have become increasingly militarized. To a small degree, that trend represents...

A Concord man giving away lemonade at a farmer's market was threatened with wiretapping charges last Saturday when he refused to stop filming a police officer and a fellow vendor. Garret Ean didn't have a permit to sell lemonade, which drew the ire of the president of the Concord Farmer's Market. Ean filmed the confrontation, and continued to film when a Concord cop showed up and threatened to arrest him for wiretapping. Photojournalist Carlos Miller (who we interviewed for the November issue of Reason about the war on photography) has the story: The man, whom Ean identified as Steve Blasdell,...

Organized crime cannot exist without public corruption, and there's no freakin' way the Mexican drug cartels can move $50 billion in bulk product and bundled cash each year throughout the United States without a little help from well-placed friends. Indeed, in the last sixteen months nine South Texas lawmen have been charged with "using their badges to sneak drugs or guns through the U.S.-Mexico border region from Laredo to Brownsville" as reported by Dane Schiller for the Houston Chronicle: Interviews and court records and testimony show the South Texas cases often involve one officer at a time pulled to the...

A federal jury awarded $333,000 to a Chicago family Thursday after Chicago police officers raided its South Side home with guns drawn and shot its dog in a search that found no criminal activity in the apartment. Teenage brothers Thomas and Darren Russell were in their second-floor apartment in the 9200 block of South Justine Street in February 2009 when officers announced they had a warrant to search both units of the two-flat. Thomas Russell, then 18, opened the door and found officers with their guns drawn, according to the lawsuit. Russell said that he put his hands in the...

The dog's owner said he has no idea why police officers thought it was necessary to gun down his Labrador mix. Terry Boyle, of Birmingham, said four police officers shot and killed his 5-year-old dog, Buddy, Saturday night. Boyle said he rushed home to hear the horrifying news from neighbors who said they witnessed police officers shoot his dog four times. "From what I have been told he was not aggressive at all and he tried to get away from officers when all four approached him at the same time," said Boyle. According to police reports, officers have responded to...

Government critics deserve their day in court. You wouldn't think Aaron Tobey and Donald Rumsfeld have much in common. Tobey is the guy who stripped down to his shorts at the Richmond, Virginia airport last December. Rumsfeld is the former Defense Secretary under George W. Bush. Tobey, who was protesting the invasive airport screening practices that have outraged a good portion of the traveling public, is a stickler for constitutional rights. Rumsfeld? Not so much. The two of them, however, are united by a common case: Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents. The other day a federal appeals court said...

FULLERTON – Surveillance video surfaced Monday of two witnesses describing a fatal confrontation between a homeless man and six police officers. The video from an Orange County Transportation Authority bus shows a woman and a man getting on the bus shortly after the July 5 incident between the officers and Kelly Thomas, 37, a homeless man who suffered from schizophrenia. The woman, who appears agitated, gets on the bus at the Fullerton Transportation Center and tells the driver "the cops are kicking this poor guy over there. ... He's almost halfway dead." The male witness tells the driver that...

"As soon as I opened the door, somebody grabbed me and took me outside and put me on the grass," Tossa said. "The first thing I thought was they were terrorists who want to kill me because I served in Iraq." The DEA agents were executing a search warrant. “I kept asking, what’s going on?” he said. “And they held my neck to the ground so I can’t talk.” According to the report, the DEA was executing a search warrant for Tossa’s landlord’s son, who apparently uses Tossa’s one-story house’s address for mailing. “Before they raid any house, they should...

DURHAM (WTVD) -- Did a member of a Durham police SWAT team go too far when he shot and killed a dog during a raid in April? Some say it was unnecessary force. ABC11 cameras captured the incident at a home on Dunstan Avenue April 12. Officers were looking for Pete Moses and Vania Sisk. According to search warrants, Moses is a suspect in the disappearance of a woman and a 5-year-old boy. Sisk is the boy's mother.

<p>A shocking video has been released allegedly showing police officers tasering and beating a homeless man to death who they claim was resisting arrest. Though the video is not clear, eye witnesses say the homeless man - Kelly Thomas, 37 - was unable to put up any resistance and was lying on the ground on his front when the attack took place on July 5. His screams and cries for his father can be heard amid the tasering noises.</p>

VIPR Searches and the American Citizen: 'Dominate. Intimidate. Control.' By John W. Whitehead 7/5/2011 "They're trying to scare the pants off the American people that we need these things... Fear is a commodity and they're selling it. The more they can sell it, the more we buy into it. When American people are afraid, they will accept anything."--Kate Hanni, passengers' rights advocate "Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government...Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and...

Napolitano’s V.I.P.R. Vows to “Dominate,Intimidate and Control”the American People BY COACH COLLINS,ON JULY 15TH,2011 By Doug Book,staff writer Since its inception in 2002,the Department of Homeland Security has grown increasingly contemptuous of the rights of the American people. Indeed,the Gestapo-like tactics of one of the Department’s better known masters of overreach–the TSA–are responsible for countless examples of the organizations daily assault on the Constitution. But recently,another of Janet Napolitano’s handmaidens of harassment has begun to make news…albeit only on the web,of course. It is the TSA’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response task force–or VIPR. Organized into mobile swat teams,VIPR has...

Since its modern mutation in 1968 (via the “Gun Control Act of 1968), and with an infusion of power to it in 1972 by Treasury Department Order No. 120-1, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE) has amassed a truly sordid record of “gun control.” Although it’s website somewhat outlandishly claims a history going back to 1789, BATFE’s modern roots go to its failed attempts at the enforcement of Prohibition (another stupid idea from the federal government). There’s hardly anything as pathetic as a bloated government agency, in search of a mission. So the “BAT” got their...

The unfolding scandal over a gunrunning investigation allegedly botched by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives could do what years of criticism of the long-beleaguered agency never quite accomplished — result in its demise. That, at least, is the view of some former ATF employees and advocates on both sides of the gun control debate who have watched the agency struggle to contain the damage from an operation intended to trace the traffic of illegal guns to Mexico that has reignited the harsh criticism often directed at the ATF in the past. The agency, which moved from the...

Are you enraged by an agency that thinks it can play god by unconstitutionally subjecting citizens to appear naked before its bureaucrats? There is great cause for hope if we will understand and leverage the power of economics to fight TSA tyranny. Economics has long borne the ignoble moniker, the dismal science, but economic principles lend insight into the source, effects, and solutions to the TSA’s overreach. The Source of TSA Tyranny: Follow the Money Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has promoted the TSA’s voyeur machines and lobbied on behalf of private business interests...

Americans must to decide if, in the name of homeland security, they are willing to allow TSA operatives to storm public places in their communities with no warning, pat them down, and search their bags. And they better decide quickly. Bus travelers were shocked when jackbooted TSA officers in black SWAT-style uniforms descended unannounced upon the Tampa Greyhound bus station in April with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and federal bureaucrats in tow. A news report by ABC Action News in Tampa showed passengers being given the signature pat downs Americans are used to watching the Transportation Security...

We want to know what you think: were SWAT officers justified in shooting Guerena?

The five SWAT officers who shot and killed 26-year-old Jose Guerena while serving a search warrant May 5 have been cleared of any wrongdoing. The Pima County Regional SWAT team members -from four law enforcement agencies in the county - were justified in using deadly force against Guerena, according to an investigation by the Pima County Attorney's Office.