Burning Man fans say cops too heavy-handed

Burned at Burning Man? Revelers say heavy hand of law a downer at Nevada desert festival

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NOPD Officer Says They Were Ordered To Shoot Looters After Katrina

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POLICE BRUTALITY: SCUMBAG COP “I SHOT YOUR DOG BECAUSE IT BARKED”

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G20 cops ‘threatened women with rape’

(RAW STORY)   Journalists covering the G20 summit in Toronto, Canada,  have accused the local police of threatening them with rape, using male officers to strip-search young women, and even inappropriately touching an underage girl.

Four reporters have filed complaints with the province of Ontario’s police oversight agency. According to the Canwest News Service, those four include Jesse Rosenfeld, a freelancer for the UK’s Guardian whose alleged beating at the hands of Toronto police was chronicled on Twitter, as well Amy Miller of the Alternative Media Center.

Miller told a press conference earlier this week that she had her press pass ripped away from her and was “throttled by the neck and held down” while trying to record a confrontation between police and protesters. She was detained for 13 hours in a cage in a converted film studio on the city’s east side, along with about 25 other women.

“I was told I was going to be raped, I was told I was going to be gang-banged, I was told that I was never going to want to act as a journalist again by making sure that I would be repeatedly raped while I was in jail,” Miller said.

Miller described the police’s alleged behavior as “repulsive and completely inappropriate.”

She also said she saw women being strip-searched by male officers, and that many of the women who emerged from detention were “definitely traumatized.”

Reporters also allege that “one under-aged girl was improperly touched by a male officer while held at an Eastern Ave. detention center,” the QMI news agency reports.

In a rare criticism of Canada, Amnesty International called on the country’s political leadership to hold a public inquiry into the policing of the G20 summit, which ran from June 26 to 27 and attracted between 10,000 and 25,000 protesters. All told, more than 900 people were arrested during the summit — reportedly a record high for this kind of summit meeting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHInAH_rcK0

Faced with growing criticism, political leaders and Toronto police chief Bill Blair have been fighting back against accusations that the police response to a gang of black-clad anarchists setting police cars on fire and breaking windows was excessive.

Chief Blair held a conference Tuesday where he described the vandals as “terrorists” and put on display a cache of weapons evidently seized from protesters at the summit. But the public-relations triumph turned to embarrassment when it emerged that some of the weapons on display were not related to the G20 protests.

The Toronto Sun reports that some of the weapons there, including arrows seized by police near the G20 site, were toys that belonged to a man who was on his way to a fantasy role-playing game when he was stopped by police, a day before the G20 summit.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association said that police conduct during the meeting of the leaders of the world’s top economies, was “at times, disproportionate, arbitrary and excessive.”

The response to pockets of criminal activity was also “unprecedented, disproportionate and, at times, unconstitutional,” the rights group said in a report.

The abuses “exceeded the threshold of a few isolated incidents” and “they demand accountability,” it said in calling for an inquiry into police conduct.

Toronto’s mayor and police chief Blair said the city’s Police Services Board, a civilian oversight panel, would review the squad’s actions, which they also defended.

“The fact that there were no serious injuries arising from all of the actions of the police over the course of the weekend is quite frankly extraordinary under the circumstances,” said police chief Bill Blair.

Officers “showed remarkable restraint in the face of enormous provocation,” he added. “They did their jobs.”

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0630/g20-cops-threatened-women-rape/

Police Raids Organic Food Stores

(LA TIMES)   With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts.

Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid’s target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk.

“I still can’t believe they took our yogurt,” said Rawesome volunteer Sea J. Jones, a few days after the raid. “There’s a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they’re raiding us because we’re selling raw dairy products?”
Cartons of raw goat and cow milk and blocks of unpasteurized goat cheese were among the groceries seized in the June 30 raid by federal, state and local authorities — the latest salvo in the heated food fight over what people can put in their mouths.

On one side are government regulators, who say they are enforcing rules designed to protect consumers from unsafe foods and to provide a level playing field for producers. On the other side are ” healthy food” consumers — a faction of foodies who challenge government science and seek food in its most pure form.

They want almonds cracked fresh from the shell, not those run through a federally mandated pasteurization process that uses either heat or a chemical to kill off salmonella and other possible contaminants. They hunger for meat slaughtered on the farm. And they’re willing to pay a premium — $6, $8 or more — for a gallon of milk straight from the cow.

So despite research outlining the dangers of consuming raw milk and other unprocessed foods, they’re finding ways to circumnavigate federal, state and local laws that seek to control what they can serve at the dinner table. Such defiance, they said, comes from growing distrust of a food sector that has become more industrialized and consolidated — and whose products have been at the root of some of the country’s deadliest food contamination cases.

“This is about control and profit, not our health,” said Aajonus Vonderplanitz, co-founder of Rawesome Foods. “How can we not have the freedom to choose what we eat?”

Scientists and regulators point to epidemiological evidence linking disease outbreaks to raw milk: The milk can transmit bacteria such as E. coli O157:H7, salmonella, campylobacter and listeria, which can result in diarrhea, kidney failure or death.

“This is not about restricting the public’s rights,” said Nicole Neeser, program manager for dairy, meat and poultry inspection at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. “This is about making sure people are safe.”

Demand for all manner of raw foods — including honey, nuts and meat — has been growing, spurred by heightened interest in the way food is produced. But raw milk in particular has drawn a lot of regulatory scrutiny, largely because the politically powerful dairy industry has pressed the government to act.

It is legal for licensed dairies to sell raw milk at retail outlets in California and 10 other states, according to research by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Twenty states allow people to buy unpasteurized milk directly from farms, or take part in a “cow sharing” program (in which a person buys part ownership of an animal and gets some of its milk).

But in the case of Rawesome, regulators allege that the group broke the law by failing to have the proper permits to sell food to the public. While the raid was happening at Rawesome, another went down at one of its suppliers, Healthy Family Farms in Ventura County. California agriculture officials said farm owner Sharon Palmer’s processing plant had not met standards to obtain a license. Palmer could not be reached for comment.

Rawesome’s fans, though, shrugged off such concerns.

“I always had problems with my stomach and digestion with normal milk,” said Darin Nellis, 41, who runs a nonprofit production company in Culver City and has been a member of Rawesome for three months. “I like how raw goat milk tastes, and I feel better.”

Such sentiments exasperate officials at the Food and Drug Administration, which bans interstate sales of raw milk and advises that both milk and honey should be pasteurized.

The debate has boiled at the state level for years. Alta Dena Dairy founder Harold J.J. Stueve fought for decades to help keep raw milk sales legal in California. This year, Wisconsin legislators approved a bill aimed largely at allowing the state’s struggling small farmers to sell more raw milk products. But Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed that bill under pressure from large producers. In neighboring Minnesota, whose official state drink is milk, authorities recently raided a private club similar to Rawesome in south Minneapolis.

Such battles have had a chilling effect on some retailers. Whole Foods Market used to carry raw milk and raw milk products in California and three other states. But in March, the chain pulled all but a few cheeses off its shelves. Part of the reason, it said in a statement, was “the realities of the very high additional costs for liability insurance … because of the potential risks from selling unpasteurized milk and milk products.”

Rawesome was born of consumer frustration. In 1998, James Stewart — a vegetarian who drank raw milk — couldn’t find the stuff in Southern California grocery stores. So he started making road trips to dairies in northern California and to Whole Foods in San Jose, which at the time carried raw milk. Word spread. Family and friends wanted it too.

So Stewart and Vonderplanitz created a private food club where, for a $25 annual fee, members “lease” the land and livestock directly from a farmer. Then, members pay an additional service fee attached to each grocery item, which they say covers the cost of transporting each food item from the farm to Venice.

The pair reasoned that they didn’t need to obtain a license from state or local agencies because they weren’t technically retailers. In 2004, Rawesome opened on Rose Avenue in Venice. “We’re just a place where people come to pick up the products they already own,” Vonderplanitz said.

The L.A. County Public Health Department didn’t see it that way. Vonderplanitz said that in 2005 the agency told Rawesome staff they needed a food-business license. Vonderplanitz said that he objected in a letter, and that the county never replied or followed up. (County officials declined to comment.)

Five years passed. Rawesome now boasts 1,600 members, who battle for street parking every Wednesday and Saturday when the club is open.

Squeezed between a coffee shop and a vintage guitar store, Rawesome looks from the outside like a forgotten storage unit. A tiny club sign hangs on the 10-foot-tall corrugated fence that hides the windowless storefront.

But inside, the shop is bright and airy, a bohemian farmers market surrounded by burnt-orange walls and a white tarp roof to keep out the rain. Boxes of coconuts and ginger from Hawaii sit nestled next to crates of California squash. Labels identify where each bite of produce was grown: onions from the Viva Tierra farm in Harlingen, Texas, and King’s Crown Organic farm in King Hill, Idaho.

The members — a mix of tattooed young people and middle-aged executives in Italian shoes — chat as they head to the walk-in cooler in the back. It is jam-packed with meat and dairy. Ziploc bags are filled with chicken, beef and pork. Many don’t have an expiration date. The other side is stocked with Amish buttermilk ($7.95 a quart), Amish cream cheese ($12.75 a pound) and whole milk ($8.59 per half-gallon).

Agencies that participated in the raid on Rawesome included the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Investigators confiscated the club’s computer and 17 coolers packed with, among other things, 24 bottles of organic honey, 10 gallons of raw whole milk and two bottles of raw cane syrup. Stewart said the health department slapped a closure notice on the club’s front door that said it was “operating a food facility without a valid public health permit.”

The health department, district attorney’s office and the FDA declined to comment, citing the pending investigation. The state Department of Food and Agriculture, which was the agency of record on the search warrant, said it continues to work with the district attorney’s office.

Co-op members are undeterred. Four days after the raid, Rawesome reopened its doors. The shelves were restocked. They have remained so ever since.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, the line stretched halfway down the block. A stern young man in baggy cargo pants and sunglasses guarded the entrance, checking drivers’ licenses. Lela Buttery, a Rawesome volunteer and professional biologist, handed out legal waivers to sign.

One woman, digging into her green grocery bag for a pen, asked, “You guys got shut down last week?”

“Yes,” Buttery said.

“That’s nuts,” the woman replied. “You’re not going to stop, right?”

Buttery grinned. “Can I see your membership card?”

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-raw-food-raid-20100725,0,7940288,full.story

Another flier’s run-in with the TSA

(Daniel Rubin)   Nancy Anne Phillips, a 63-year-old retired professor from Southern California, was passing through Philadelphia in April when, she says, she had one of those nightmares at the airport that give this city a bad name.

Her knees have been replaced with titanium, and a metal plate supports her back. She’s used to setting off alarms.

But she’s not used to the sort of screening she experienced April 5 when a Transportation Security Administration worker motioned Phillips to the side for a secondary screening. Phillips says the screener’s metal-detecting wand went north of the retirees knees and brushed against her crotch.

Phillips jumped, aghast.

And when she asked for a different female screener, she says, a standoff led to her being detained for nearly two hours – until a Philadelphia police sergeant sent her on her way.

Phillips says her problem was not having metal implants; it was complaining. Because she rocked the boat, she says, she was threatened, accused, harassed, and humiliated.

“Something is very wrong at the Philadelphia airport . . .,” she wrote me. “Shameful. Shame on you, Philadelphia. I’m sure this represents a small group of renegade employees of the TSA and the Philadelphia police, but they should be held accountable.”

TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis says her agency has a starkly different view of what happened. She says statements from TSA employees portray Phillips as “defensive and uncooperative.” And videotape showed nothing wrong with the initial screening, Davis said.

But she says that tape has been destroyed according to airport policy, which calls for erasure of most digital recordings after 30 days.

We’ll go back to that part later.

Phillips was flying from Barcelona, Spain, to San Diego, changing planes in Philadelphia. A Ph.D. in education from Claremont Graduate University, she works as a school psychologist and was reading reports in the air when not watching episodes of Nip/Tuck.

She cleared customs and wound up at a TSA screening area between Gates B and C by 3:40 p.m. After the alarm went off, she recalls, she told the screener, “It’s my knees.” The screener, a woman, directed Phillips to an area no more than 10 feet away, in view of other passengers.

Phillips saw the outlines of two feet on a mat below her, so she opened her stance to accommodate the screener. “Wider,” she recalls the woman saying. After the wand brushed her pants at the crotch, she asked if someone else could finish the screening.

That’s where accounts diverge. “Each person I spoke to tried to escalate this to a higher level to cover for the prior person,” Phillips says, and no TSA employee would take a report of her complaint.

She was screened twice more after refusing to go into a private room, which to her felt unsafe. She was told her airline was on notice that she was being detained. A TSA supervisor named Mike told her that he “hadn’t decided yet whether or not I was going to be able to get on my plane to go home,” she says.

A police officer came and ran a background check. “I felt like I was treated like a terrorist,” Phillips says. He asked her if she wanted to make a criminal complaint. She didn’t.

Davis, of the TSA, says that even before the screening, Phillips had caught the attention of airline officials. A US Airways supervisor told her that Phillips was “irate” when her flight from Spain arrived late and she was told she would have to take a later plane to San Diego.

The video, Davis adds, shows that the initial screener held the wand correctly, horizontally, and that Phillips reacted before any unwelcome contact was made.

“It was like she was anticipating a negative experience,” Davis says, “vs. actually having one.”

Phillips asked that a police sergeant get involved. He reviewed what had happened, then told her she was free to go.

“Looks like you had a few personalities that clashed,” says Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman.

I agree, although it’s hard to get to the bottom of what happened. Was Phillips a difficult passenger who was already agitated over having to take a later flight? Or was she a distressed passenger with a valid complaint, who couldn’t get anyone to listen?

What is beyond dispute is this: The TSA should have to keep the tapes. Particularly when a complaint has been lodged. Particularly at an airport that’s been such rich fodder for columns this year, what with the University of Michigan student who had a bag of white powder planted in her bag by a joking TSA employee, and the 4-year-old disabled boy made to walk without his leg braces through the metal detectors.

One other case has particular relevance – that of Nadine Pellegrino, a Florida businesswoman jailed for 17 hours after she objected to a screening by TSA workers who say she assaulted them.

Once Municipal Judge Thomas F. Gehret heard that the TSA had erased the tape of Pellegrino, he threw out the charges against her because she’d been denied the best evidence. Her record has been expunged.

In that case, airport security manager Renee Tufts testified that the electronic memory required to keep all tapes was not within the city’s budget.

“With all the stuff that is happening, I would think you’d want to keep it. You could keep that forever,” Gehret said. He was talking about terrorism. But he could have been talking about complaints like Phillips’.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20100614_Daniel_Rubin__Another_flier_s_run-in_with_the_TSA.html

POLICE BRUTALITY: Nephew of Justice Clarence Thomas Was Beaten & Tased at Hospital

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Man arrested for taking picture of cop in his own home

(RAW STORY)   A Texas man has sued his local police department, saying he was arrested for taking a picture of a police officer when the officer entered his home without permission.

According to the lawsuit (PDF), Sgt. Justin Alderete of the Sealy, Texas, police department arrived at the home of Francisco Olvera in October, 2009, apparently responding to a noise complaint. Olvera had been playing music on his computer speakers while working outside on his patio.

The sergeant asked Olvera for identification. When Olvera went inside his home to grab his ID, Sgt. Alderete followed him inside. Believing the officer didn’t have a right to enter his home without permission, Olvera picked up his cellphone and took a photo of the officer. At that point, the lawsuit states, Alderete accused Olvera of “illegal photography” and arrested him.

Olvera was charged with “loud music” and “public intoxication” — the officer had seen a beer can on the kitchen table, the lawsuit asserts.

In January, Olvera was acquitted of all charges.

The lawsuit names Alderete, Sealy Police Chief John Tollett, and the city of Sealy. It alleges that Olvera was the victim of “unlawful search and seizure,” “unlawful arrest” and “malicious prosecution.”

The lawsuit further alleges that Alderete made a racist remark against Olvera during booking.

“Do you know what I tell Mexicans when they get loud?” the lawsuit alleges Alderete asked. “No chinges con migo pinche culero.” (“Don’t be f**king with me,” another officer translated,)

Olvera’s lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for his legal costs in the criminal trial; for “emotional distress” and punitive damages “as allowed by law.”

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0623/man-arrested-picture-cop-home/

LAPD threw Fox reporter like a rag doll, coworker tells court

(RAW STORY)   A Fox TV camerawoman told a court hearing Tuesday that the Los Angeles police violently threw reporters and activists to the ground after an immigration rally, offering the most detailed testimony of a bizarre 2007 incident which she described as a “war zone.”

“The police officer threw her around like a rag doll,” Fox camerawoman Patricia Ballaz told the court.

Courthouse News, an insider publication that tracks court cases, adds details: “Under direct examination from her lawyer, Browne Greene, Ballaz described May 1, 2007 at MacArthur Park near downtown Los Angeles as an ordinary scene and an ordinary news day. It was like any other work day, Ballaz said. People were picknicking and music was playing in the park.”

But as reporters moved closer to the police, they saw people screaming and running in the other direction. Ballaz said she then saw a policeman hitting another news reporter. “He was just an average man doing nothing,” Ballaz said. “I had no idea why this was happening. It was like a war zone.”

She testified that after the beating she took from the LAPD, she had to have multiple surgeries on her hand, elbow and ankle and may still need more surgeries. Greene showed pictures of Ballaz’s hands and elbows that were taken after the surgery. The pictures showed distinct stitch marks on her hand and her arms.

“How painful is it to have surgery on your hand all the time?” Greene asked.

“It’s painful all the time … and you can’t do much except take pain pills,” Ballaz said. “I can’t, I can’t do much of anything.”

When Greene asked Ballaz what all these surgeries and physical obstacles mean to her, Ballaz answered, “It means the life I knew before is gone … I feel like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for me.”

In an earlier Courthouse News report filed Friday by Chie Akiba, an expert witness testified that the police had used excessive force.

“There was no hindering of the police officers at all,” the expert, who had been called by the plaintiff’s lawyer, said.

A police expert testified at the trial over the violent break-up of a May Day rally that the police charge through a group of reporters “was no legitimate use of force.”

As a witness called by lawyers for a FOX TV camerawoman, Lou Reiter said one of the fundamental tasks of law enforcement is to protect people’s civil rights. Plaintiff’s lawyer Browne Greene asked Reiter whether, based on his review of the evidence, the use of force by the policemen at the rally was reasonable.

“No, the force used was unreasonable,” Reiter said.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0630/lapd-threw-fox-reporter-rag-doll-coworker-tells-court/

Police Taser 86-Year-Old Bedridden Granny

COP: She took ‘aggressive posture in her bed’…

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