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Teamster Horsemen, benefitting victims of Alzheimer’s
This is a motorcycle ride and event sponsored by the Teamster Horsemen, benefitting victims of Alzheimer’s; Riders will roar off from Glendale Harley-Davidson at 11 AM and will end at Local 848 in Long Beach.
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The Snitch’s Tale
OFF THE WIRE
agingrebel.com
There is a battle for history going on in America. The winners will write it and for all the rest of human time the losers will be whatever the winners say they are. The fight is hardly over truth, justice, philosophy or perspective. It is all about the dollars. And a good illustration of this new history in our recently commoditized world is a book “written” by a self-proclaimed hero currently named Charles Falco with the assistance of the “true crime” writer Kerrie Droban.
The book is titled Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America’s Deadliest Biker Gangs. It will be officially published by the Thomas Dunne division of St. Martin’s Press on February 5, 2013.
I started looking for this Falco guy in May 2012 after he was interviewed by a Fox crime reporter in Los Angeles. The reporter’s name is Chris Blatchford. His “investigative report” was titled “The Green Nation is on a mission to replace the Hells Angels as the baddest outlaw biker gang.” The Green Nation – for anyone who just stumbled upon these words while searching for discounted beauty products or classic rock CDs – refers to the Vagos Motorcycle Club. Members of that club tend to wear a lot of green.
Police have long accused the Vagos of being a ruthless mafia. And, although the Vagos sincerely feel exactly the same way about the police, correct thinking Americans are compelled by both right wing and left wing social orthodoxy to agree with the cops. At the same time there is no denying that outlaw bikers are now a mass media commodity. You’ve probably noticed this. If you haven’t there may be other subtleties of the post-millennial world that yet elude you. Like, that little thing you see everywhere that looks like a model of one the black slabs in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is called an iPhone. Yes. It is spelled just like that. Welcome to Eisenhower’s nightmare.
An unignorable segment of the world’s male population, with a correspondingly obvious pile of loose cash, is fascinated with men like the Vagos. Motorcycle outlaws are the new James Bond. Like Bond, no one wants to defend them, no one wants to know them, no one in his right mind even wants to stand next to one of them lest they get blown up but very many men want to be them: Because of the untraceable guns; the uninhibited stompings and stabbings; the beautiful, easily available, wanton, multi-orgasmic women; the forbidden intoxicants; and, best of all, because outlaws demand the fear and respect that is usually reserved only for political nerds and the business school graduates who majored in stealing other people’s houses and pensions. The Vagos represent something unacknowledged but unforgotten in postmodern males. And, this fantasy identification with capable, confident, free, proud and dangerous men may say something about what has gone wrong with America. It might even partly explain the continuing cablecast of Sons of Anarchy on FX and The Devils Ride on Discovery. But, history is no longer about meaning. Blatchford illustrates that.
Blatchford was working both sides of this street during his two part, Sunday night, sweeps month news event. The story was so important that Fox devoted almost 15 minutes to the subject, divided between two newscasts, betting that Blatchford could manufacture enough vicarious thrills that his audience would tune in and then not change channels minute after minute after endless, commercial free, television minute. Fox accused the Vagos of being traffic scofflaws, psychopaths and sexists. Blatchford owns a George Foster Peabody Award, but in L.A. he is more famous for his dramatic delivery. He is to Los Angeles something like what John Facenda once was to Philadelphia. Blatchford explained one snatch of footage with a stentorian, “Even their own women, as you can see spelled out on the back of their jackets, are branded property of the Vago who owns them.” No matter how this pronouncement might look on a page it sounded more important when Blatchford said it.
Falco was one of the biker authorities Blatchford interviewed on camera. Falco is a large man with a slight lisp. He wore cool, dark glasses and the television reporter identified him as “Charles Falco who infiltrated the Vagos for two and a half years.”
I have a long and continuing interest in the world of motorcycle clubs and it seemed to me at the time that what Blatchford’s story really meant was that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was preparing for the long-expected racketeering case against the Vagos by softening up the jury pool. Now I think Blatchford’s expose had at least as much to do with history, cross media synergy and, of course, bucks.
The ability to type words into the Google search field also revealed that Falco was the subject of a forthcoming book then titled Inside Out: My Life Undercover with the Vagos. It took months to find the capsule review Blatchford wrote for Falco’s book. Chris loved it. “The paranoia of crooks, the desperation of incarceration, the fear of getting whacked, and survival working undercover in a brutal biker world devoid of common decency. You can read about it all in this book. But Charles Falco actually lived it and miraculously came out a better man. Chris Blatchford, author of The Black Hand”
Falco’s name used to be Ashley Charles Wyatt. I don’t quite believe him when he tells me this but I later learn that he is at least named Ashley Wyatt and he has always answered to Charles. He went to high school in the San Fernando Valley and he has Wyatt tattooed on the back of his head. At one point he also had a Vagos Victorville side rocker tattooed on his right torso. Vagos remember him well.
In the club he was called Charles or sometimes Tijuana Charles – the latter because he was almost arrested one night for pissing on a wall down Mexico way. The club name he gives himself in interviews including his interview with Blatchford and in “his” book is Quickdraw. That phrase was a jest thrown at him one night in a bar. The throwaway line was preserved on audio, in a device hidden in his asthma inhaler and apparently, after almost seven years reflection, he decided he liked Quickdraw better than Charles. There isn’t anything particularly wrong or unusual about revising one’s personal recollections. “Yes, I have a thousand tongues,” Stephen Crane confessed, “And nine and ninety-nine lie.” I think the lies mean something different with Falco than they did with Crane though, because Crane was honest and self-deprecating about his life while Falco now seeks to alchemize his personal recollections into a valuable commodity.
“What do you think when you hear that? ‘Quickdraw,’” a gracious gentleman asks me as I prepare to write this.
“Gunfighter,” I answer. The gentleman makes a silent, contemptuous gesture.
Falco also claims that members of the American Outlaws Association may remember him as “Chef,” possibly a reference to a previous career he claims as a methamphetamine manufacturer.
Falco has a Reno phone number but, he tells me, “I do not live in Reno and never have. I entered the Witness Protection Program in 2007. Thus, I was given a complete new identity which is what I use now.”
After riding with the Vagos the snitch earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, mostly online, in Bible Studies from Liberty Christian University and he went significantly into debt doing it. That surprised me. I had not previously known that a seeker could actually go into debt studying the Bible but Falco told me he had. And, even the United States Marshals are powerless against the kingpins of the student loan racket. “The Marshals do not allow you to get out of past debt,” Falco explains. “So in my case I owed several thousand dollars in student loans that I still pay under Ashley. These bills are sent to Marshal mail drops, which are then sent to DC, which are then sent to my area Marshal field office, who then sends them to me. I have several of these Marshal mail drops in California and Nevada that I use. Kind of cool on how this works! I am no longer in this program, but they still forward my mail. Even after you leave the WPP you keep your new identity, since it is now your legal new name. I hope that makes sense.”
The logistics made sense even if the part about going into debt reading the Bible did not. A face-to-face interview might have helped me better understand but my conversations with the snitch were accomplished in writing, by email with his muse and chronicler Kerrie Droban acting as an intermediary.
Falco has a GMX.com email address. Global Mail Exchange is a German telecommunications company. And, after I wrote to him at charlesfalco@gmx.com he insisted that we use one of Droban’s email accounts. I suspect he is in Phoenix. If he wanted to avoid Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws as he has reasons to do, he might feel most safe in Cave Creek near Sonny Barger’s home, but that is only my blind hunch.
Even if Falco is exactly where I think he is as long as he is careful he will remain virtually invisible. There are at least two other Charles Falcos in Arizona. One of them is an almost famous, Harley riding, physics professor in Tucson. That Charles Falco was one of the curators of the Guggenheim museum’s famous exhibit “The Art of the Motorcycle.” So if you just Google Charles Falco and Arizona and motorcycle you will get the wrong man every time. The professor and the snitch both wear dark mustaches. A second Charles Falco in Arizona is an old guy in Yuma.
I begin with the obvious. “Will you be answering the questions or Kerrie? I’m sure it would be lovely to have a conversation with her but I would prefer to have a conversation with you.”
“I don’t know how to prove to you that I am not Kerrie,” the snitch replies promptly, “but I can tell you that she is a much better writer than me.” He answers multiple questions in a single paragraph. “I have never had anything to do with the HA. They were hunting us as Outlaws though, so I know how they operate. I never heard of a five part plan to get rid of motorcycle clubs. The ATF is not interested in motorcycle clubs, just motorcycle gangs. I think the ATF has done a great job in decreasing the amount of criminal activity these gangs participate in. If you compare the U.S. biker gangs of the seventies and eighties with current U.S. biker gangs, they have about ten percent of the criminal power they once had. I believe this (is the result of) the great job law enforcement (has done) in bringing these gang members to justice. I truly believe that.” Maybe he truly does.
The interview with the snitch stretches out. Near its conclusion, I while away a pleasant evening near the Beverly Hills end of the Sunset Strip with some gracious gentlemen who knew Ashley Charles Wyatt during all of his adventure with the Vagos. In the course of the conversation, as the night turned cold and I began to shiver, I asked the gentlemen to summarize Ashley Wyatt for me.
“Pussy,” one answered immediately.
“Snake!” A gracious gentleman shook his finger and another nodded his head up and down. “In a word, snake.”
“Punk,” one of them added in case I missed their point.
“Also, he is stoned all the time.”
“Like obnoxiously stoned. Constantly.”
“And, he’s not very smart.”
Falco’s stupidity may be why he, unlike most biker authorities, has heard of me. “I have been reading your articles for years,” he tells me, “and I know you lean toward the one percenter side of stories.” He is broadminded and tolerant of my shortcomings. “While, I know most of what you believe about the ATF is incorrect I still value your right to free speech.”
If only we had been able to meet face to face I’m sure I would have said, “Thank you.”
Falco is evasive and vague about the events that led him to betray a group of men who all call each other “brother.”
The gracious gentlemen in West Hollywood are much more straightforward. “Charles was arrested in 1995 in Las Vegas for armed robbery. He got 5 years. Not sure if it was suspended or how that ended up. He was then rearrested at LAX for failing to declare over twenty thousand in cash that he was carrying on his person. Then he admitted it was drug money. He sold himself to the world and in March 2004 he started hanging around the Vagos. The raids were in March 2006 so he was around the club for a few days less than two years. Does that help?” It helped.
While Wyatt/Falco was awaiting sentencing, “he called every police force he could find and volunteered to work for them. He finally hooked up with the DEA and then with the ATF.”
Falco’s version is more cinematic. It is also contradicts what I have been told by multiple sources. Not that that means anything. Truth plus two dollars will buy you a cup of coffee.
“I was one of the most loyal criminals I had ever met. I made most of my closest friends a small fortune. During those years I would have died before turning. That was before I was betrayed by everyone, loved ones, friends and business partners. Of course, shortly after this life changing betrayal, the DEA and US Customs raided my house. I had been betrayed in every way even though I had been loyal in every way. When the cops raided my house I was in a bottomless pit and that day my life was saved. I became an informant. But not by betraying friends. Instead I worked the streets like an undercover going after criminals that I had no prior relationship with. I started to enjoy the work and started realizing the horribleness of my past deeds. Working undercover made me feel like I was repenting for my misdeeds and I felt like I was paying back society.
“After two years of working for the DEA I decided that I wanted to do something big, like infiltrating a gang, but I was not sure which kind or which one. I convinced my DEA handler that me infiltrating a gang was the best way I could help society and myself. My handler referred me to a Detective in the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department who worked organized crime groups. I spoke with this detective and told her I could infiltrate any gang that a white male could become a member of and that all I needed to know was where they hung out. She said the gang that was committing a high amount of serious crimes was the Vagos MC. I had heard of them, but I had no prior relationship with any biker gang members, period. So she gave me the names of the bars where they hung out and from that information I was able to infiltrate the Victorville Chapter of the Vagos. Once I started to get close to some of the Vagos and it seemed I might be able to get in I was introduced to Koz and Carr (ATF Agents Darrin Kozlowski and John Carr). From there, the DEA handed me over to the ATF and Koz became my handler.”
“Koz is my hero. No other man has done more for me than him. He is a great man! You have wrong impressions of this guy and the rest of his team. They never, ever, went after these gangs as a personal vendetta. The ATF works gangs, that’s what they do.
“Koz is a great man. He always treated me with respect. He never looked down on me. He became a friend. He has always been there for me. Since I was an honest and devoted CI the ATF treated me as one of their own. In fact, they told the Vagos this when they arrested them. They still treat me this way. In fact, everyone I meet in law enforcement treats me as an equal, which is awesome. The government is much more loyal, fair, respectful and honest than any biker gang, criminal organization or maybe even any organization period. They are a true brotherhood of loyal, and honest friends.
“Ciccone (ATF Agent John Ciccone), Carr and Koz work biker gangs not because they have something personal against biker gangs but because it is their job to bring gang members to justice. The conspiracy stories are fiction when it comes to these three guys.”
In his book Falco describes himself as “a former Marine and ‘hard-core drug dealer,’ a ‘coyote’ who once smuggled human cargo across the border from Mexico.”
When asked to elaborate on his days in the drug business the snitch tells me, “I did move weight…I was a horrible man. From 1991 to 1995 I was a mid-level cocaine dealer. In 1996 I switched to selling meth. From 1998 to 2001 I manufactured about 125 pounds a year in meth, mostly in LA.”
I wanted to know more about his tragic betrayal by his friends.
“My betrayal I will not go too much into because I have forgiven and gone on with my life. It is very painful to reflect back, but I will tell you that everyone I was close to, with the exception of one person, betrayed me. Shortly, after the betrayals I became addicted to my own meth and shortly after that I was busted, so the police came at the perfect time. I was near death when they raided my house which turned around my life. After getting out of federal jail, I gave up meth and gave up living as a criminal.”
Falco’s statements to me and in his book are all a weird mix of truth and lies. It is obvious that he thinks I am so stupid that I will never catch on – and that I am so clueless that I will never try to verify what he says. For example, he does not tell me the name of the “Detective in the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department who worked organized crime groups.” In his book Falco calls her “Samantha Kiles.” Multiple public documents call her “Shelli Kelly.” The lie about Samantha/Shelli/Kiles/Kelly stands out in hindsight because it is blatantly gratuitous. I began to realize that Wyatt/Falco lies because he likes to lie and also because he can’t stop himself.
He tells me: “I was not paid anything for Operation 22 Green…. You don’t work for the ATF for money. If you are doing it for money you would work for the FBI or DEA…. I did it because I felt like I was doing something great for our society and the government asked for my help.”
So I asked him, “How did you survive while you were doing volunteer undercover work? The usual procedure is that registered CIs earn a salary, which is now up to about $2,500 a month. In general, CIs participate in criminal activity. That is the point of CIs. Officially UCs, undercover agents and TFOs, tactical field officers, cannot commit crimes so CIs do the crimes instead. In general, CIs keep the profits from their crimes. Additionally, CIs are paid a performance bonus that typically reaches six figures when their work on their case is done. Let me ask you again, what and how were you paid?”
He replies, “While I was doing the Vago case I was told even a DUI could put me back in jail. We knew I would have to get in bar fights occasionally, but that was it. I took it on myself to take a hit of a marijuana joint if it was passed around and I was in front of a large group of Vagos. I did this so that they would not think I was a law enforcement officer. The ATF did not want me to even do something as minor as smoking a joint, but I thought I needed to. Otherwise, I would have looked too clean. If a CI is committing serious crimes while working undercover he or she would be charged for a crime just like anyone else. Just because you’re a CI does not mean you are above the law.”
I am still too dull to understand how Falco kept a roof over his head, food in his belly and gas in his tank.
“It was fair that I did not get paid for Operation 22 Green; I was still under heavy charges. Even though I had already done a couple years of work for the government I felt like and still do that I owe them my life. For me Rebel, the government saved me, so I feel forever indebted.”
“I am a Christian. I teach the youth group at my church. For me God and the Government saved my life.”
“I do not have anything personal against one percenters. I look at them as the same as any other gang, no worse no better, but they are a gang. They fight and kill over territory they do not own. While doing the Vagos’ investigation I worked a 9 to 5 job. I delivered car parts for a dealership. I also worked as a handyman for the Vago chapter president of the chapter I infiltrated.”
That Victorville chapter President was Scott “Psycho” Sikoff. He was Wyatt/Falco’s most loyal friend and defender in the club and his only visible means of support. The snitch later reported to his handlers that his friend had sold him weed and fought by his side. Sikoff was subsequently charged with assault with a deadly weapon and distribution of marijuana.
“These one percenter clubs, gangs, are not as loyal as people think. After Operation Black Diamond (Falco’s last infiltration for the ATF) more than half the members (of the American Outlaws Association that were) charged turned. The loyalty and brotherhood these clubs say they have for each other is one hundred percent bullshit. Not only do they betray each other after being arrested, but they were doing it all the time behind each other’s backs – fucking each other’s old ladies, lying, gossiping, and backstabbing each other for power. Betrayal is the normal part of the outlaw lifestyle and I don’t say this just because of my betrayal when I was a drug dealer, but because it was a constant part of what the outlaw bikers did to each other. I witnessed it day in and day out. It is not CIs and UCs these gangs should be watching out for. It is themselves.”
Some of what Falco tells me about this counterculture is true and some of it is not. The Vagos, like all outlaw clubs, strictly forbid adultery with a club brother’s woman. The old lady to whom he refers was the wife of the other ATF confidential informant in Operation 22 Green. All motorcycle outlaws gossip and they probably gossip a little more about each other than the general population because clubs tend to be very closed societies. I am not sure Falco really wants me to pursue the subject of truth and lies with him.
“I have told some people that I am interviewing ‘a snitch,’” I write. “Is that a fair term, in your opinion? Do you consider yourself a cop? I watched a little of a bad Tommy Lee Jones movie called Black Moon Rising the other day. The blurb described Jones’ character as a ‘freelance FBI agent.’ Ever consider yourself a ‘freelance ATF agent?’”
“Calling me a snitch is a little harsh, since I did not snitch on these guys, but I can picture you referring to me as a ‘snitch,’” he answers. “Again, I was never (one of those) one percenter(s) who got busted and decided to rat his friends out so he did not have to go to jail. From the first second, I met these guys I was working for the government. Their true brothers that betrayed them would be snitches, not me. I always called myself a private government contractor. Of course, I don’t think I am a cop. I’m not crazy. But they do treat me as one of their own.”
I sought and interviewed Falco/Charles/Tijuana Charles/Ashley because I was interested in the psychology of men who do what the snitch did. My first guess was that maybe he identified with the police. And near the end of his book he or Droban wrote, “Post-traumatic stress – it floated through my subconscious…. I escaped into the company of other agents. We formed our own brotherhood bound by common trauma…. All of us prepared each day to sacrifice our lives for a greater cause…. Like the other agents, I lived my life off duty.”
I conclude the snitch is a narcissist and probably a psychopath. No, I am not a psychologist. You don’t exactly have to be Sigmund Freud to see that Falco is a narcissist. You only have to have gone to community college. That one time. For a couple of days. Or so.
Most Americans think police investigate crimes. Ciccone’s gang tries to catch club members in the act of committing crimes. Sometimes they suggest the crimes. Frequently, these government agents facilitate real or imagined crimes – going so far as to act out episodes of “guerilla theater” (a term used by an Assistant U.S. Attorney following one of these investigation) including staged gunfights and game planned drug transactions. Typically, these investigations involve extensive electronic and other surveillance and data mining of club members in the hopes of catching someone somewhere doing something illegal. What those members get caught doing are usually minor assaults and minor drug and firearms transactions that would be prosecuted in state court if they were committed by anybody but a motorcycle club member. But, motorcycle club members and associates are almost always prosecuted under the racketeering statutes called RICO and VICAR which carry penalties of up to life imprisonment. Although it is not illegal to belong to a motorcycle club, club members are frequently coerced into pleading guilty to that non-existent crime. The ATF, to a lesser extent the FBI, and with increasing frequency the Department of Homeland Security are all at war with motorcycle clubs. The war is international and it is intended to drive all motorcycle clubs out of existence. Creative legal strategies have been devised to punish members for simply belonging to clubs like the Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws.
In the most successful investigations, ATF agents or their proxies, called Confidential Informants or Sources of Information, actually join clubs in order to both gather information about the membership and practices of the target organization but also, when the opportunity presents itself, to discover or manufacture reasons to prosecute club members. It is an astonishingly expensive war on social and political dissent. It has intensified since the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks. It is, in fact, the greater part of the domestic “war on terror.” This part of the war against Al Qaeda is legitimized by rhetoric. Members and associates of clubs like the Vagos and the Outlaws are routinely called “domestic terrorists” and “street terrorists.” The clubs themselves are usually called “transnational gangs.”
Falco was an agent proxy in Operation 22 Green, Operation Black Rain and Operation Black Diamond. The names of these investigations are coined by bureaucrats for their estimated public relations effect.
Operation 22 Green employed two confidential informants, many dozens of ATF Agents and local police and lasted three years. During that time Falco and another informant made 25 alleged contraband purchases. At the conclusion of the long investigation police seized 132 legal firearms and two illegal firearms, 46 grams of cocaine, a total of about ten ounces of methamphetamine (I neglected to ask Wyatt/Falco if he cooked that crank), $15,000 in currency that was all later returned, firecrackers which were identified in the press as “explosives,” more than one thousand rounds of legally purchased and owned ammunition and numerous articles of clothing that indicated the wearer belonged to or supported the Vagos. Police also confiscated personal computers, photo albums, family souvenirs, cell phones and other personal items. The raids themselves were intended to punish their victims for belonging to a motorcycle club. At the conclusion of 22 Green 700 militarized police carried out an infantry assault intended mostly to punish club members and their families by wrecking their homes.
During the raids one Vago was found to have a Chinese throwing star embedded in a wall. He was charged with possession of a deadly weapon. Another Vago, a former martial arts instructor, home made a set of nunchucks thirty years before then literally nailed them to his garage wall as a decoration. He was charged with manufacturing a deadly weapon. During the dawn raids, a mother was pulled from her shower and dragged outside naked. A nine-year-old girl was only allowed to urinate if she let two Sheriffs watch.
Falco’s crowning achievement in this investigation was the tape recording of incriminating statements by a man who had knowledge of a homicide. The homicide was the result of a drug robbery gone wrong. One shot was fired, arguably by accident. One man was killed and a woman was wounded by the same bullet. Two subjects were charged with murder. One of them became a cooperating witness and was sentenced to one year in jail for voluntary manslaughter. The other suspect, Daniel Lee Foreman, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. It was not an open and shut case. Foreman would later write, “I was originally offered a seven year plea agreement on this same case…. The fact is, I turned it down on principle. Why should I accept any time for a crime I hadn’t committed?”
Falco told me, “Operation 22 Green was successful in my eyes, just for the murder case alone….”
After entering the witness protection program in 2007 Falco relocated to Lynchburg, Virginia and worked as a mechanic. He decided the next year “to return to my life undercover, but this time as a well-paid informant.” He volunteered with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to try to infiltrate the Hells Angels in Ontario in return for $1 million. When that fell through his mentor and hero Kozlowski introduced him to the Richmond, Virginia chapter of the Mongols. At the same time, Kozlowski was working undercover as a member of the Cypress Park, California chapter of the Mongols. It was the conclusion of ATF Operation Black Rain and the Virginia Mongols were entirely the invention of the ATF. The Bureau, using a paid confidential informant named Daniel Horrigan and a source of information named Lars Wilson, established the Virginia Mongols as a way to gain information about other motorcycle clubs in Virginia. After the raids that officially concluded Black Rain, the three ATF agents and two paid confidential informants who comprised the Virginia Mongols applied for membership in another motorcycle club, the American Outlaws Association.
That investigation was eventually named Operation Black Diamond. Twenty-seven Outlaws were indicted for racketeering in June 2010. Most of them pled guilty to racketeering, which might sound impressive unless you understand that under current case law every organization is a racket and every member who has broken any law in the last ten years is a racketeer. The Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church are, technically, rackets. Virtually no one beats a racketeering charge at trial. Everybody except for the very rich and powerful pleads guilty to racketeering because it is usually the smart move. One Outlaw was gunned down by federal agents in Maine. The charges against another were dropped. The racketeering acts with which the men were charged included having illegal slot machines in Outlaws clubhouses, buying and selling contraband and several minor and not so minor assaults.
The big target in Operation Black Diamond was Outlaws National President Jack Rosga, a 53-year-old grandfather with no criminal record who was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Falco/Chef played virtually no part in Operation Black Rain and was mostly an observer during Operation Black Diamond. All of the war on the motorcycle outlaw menace in this moment in America is a kind of a circus. And in that circus Ashley/Falco/Charles/Chef was once one of the clowns. And that proves to be the single most annoying thing about “his” book. The putative author has no story to tell.
“I saw Kerrie on Gangland,” the snitch answers. “So, I read her book. I thought it was great. I found her email address and asked if she would be interested in writing my book.”
Blatchford?
“Blatchford was doing a story on the Vagos and he was referred to me. We talked on the phone and I told him I would love to do an interview with him. I watched him for years in L.A. and have always enjoyed his reports. He was very nice, professional. Other than that I don’t know much more about him.”
“Who referred you?”
“Blatchford was referred to me by my agent. He seemed to be a bright and nice guy. He loves to expose the truth about gangs, which I think is a noble thing.”
Falco’s agent is San Diego literary agent Jill Marsal. Marsal politely declined to comment about the Falco book. But she probably represents Falco in only a limited way called “hip-pocketing” which means she represents Falco for this one project. Her relationship with Kerrie Droban is more established.
Droban is an attorney, a former prosecutor and a mother who practices law in a country club suburb north of Phoenix. She aspires to earn what Robert Frost’s called the “gift word,” which is “poet.” Droban is widely reviled in the outlaw world. Many club members think her total lack of sympathy for and her fatuousness about motorcycle outlaws is annoying. And, just when she is starting to enjoy some commercial success she seems to be fading as a writer. Long before she became a biker authority Droban wrote a few lines I particularly like.
I’ll tell you about my days in Kenya: Inevitably, flying termites litter the porchWith wings in the season of heavy rain.Males struggle naked on the stones,Their female mates already gone.Umbula, the cook, fries them in chocolate. I cannot describe the tasteThere has never been much money in poetry and after her days in Kenya, if there actually were days in Kenya, Droban became a prosecutor. Her prince turned out to be a Glendale, Arizona homicide detective named Sergei Droban. She turned to prose and she had no more success than most writers until her social and professional connections introduced her to the ATF infiltration of the Arizona Angels. Her first publishing success was Running With The Devil. It was the best book published about Operation Black Biscuit. Although, that is faint praise. The other writers were the pompous and self-important Julien Sher, the psychotherapeutically intriguing Jay “Bird” Dobyns and the children’s book author Nils Johnson-Shelton.
Voila! The poet began to appear in publicity photos wearing a black leather jacket. Step by step, Droban stopped being a writer and instead became a “brand.” As dogs learn to sit up and beg, she learned to say, “My author brand is graphic realism. Raw, gritty stories that demand an audience.” Marsal became her agent and she sold Droban’s second biker book, Prodigal Father, Pagan Son: Growing Up Inside the Dangerous World of the Pagans Motorcycle Club, to a mystifyingly successful writer and editor at St. Martin’s Press, named Rob Kirkpatrick.
Kirkpatrick, 43, became a big success after he wrote a bad and un-insightful book about the year 1969 called 1969. He sold and was paid for what the world most needs now, yet another biography of Bruce Springsteen, and he published a biography of former Senators shortstop Cecil Travis. He has been described as “a journalist, a historian, a sociologist, and a sportswriter.” He has been a talking head on the History Channel and he “also writes about film, music, sports, and cultural issues for The Huffington Post.” After he published Prodigal Father, Pagan Son he bought the rights to Droban’s collaboration with Wyatt/Falco in November 2011.
About his work as an editor Kirkpatrick has written, “I specialize in narrative nonfiction and have built an eclectic list including history, sports, pop culture, and biography/memoir. I look to publish entertaining and compelling stories – especially books that should have been written before but hadn’t – and seek to effectively position all my books with memorable titles, enthusiastic blurbs, and eye-catching covers. In my ‘free’ time, I’ve also completed a PhD in English….”
Kirkpatrick ignored a request to answer basic questions about the Falco book. The questions he would not answer included “How was the book fact checked? Was it submitted to the ATF for authorization?” “Should a ‘true-crime’ book be true? Is it necessary that it be true?” And, “Briefly, in what ways are you responsible for this book?”
I believe he wrote the book blurb that he expects will “effectively position” the Wyatt/Falco/Droban collaboration. The blurb argues, “In separate investigations that spanned years and coasts, Falco risked his life, suffering a fractured neck and a severely torn shoulder, working deep undercover to bring violent sociopaths to justice.” Falco’s injuries are significantly overstated. The snitch couldn’t keep up with an ATF agent while riding his motorcycle in the rain in Virginia, ran onto the grass and went over the high side.
Kirkpatrick continues, “Falco’s engrossing account of the dangers of the biker underworld and justice is perfect for fans of FX’s Sons of Anarchy as well as Hunter Thompson’s classic Hell’s Angels.”
Kirkpatrick’s job is to create book products that pander to niche marketing categories. With this book he is chasing the Sons of Anarchy audience. He is also chasing after people who have read Hunter Thompson’s book about the Angels. He wants to tell those audiences a story that looks to him like a proven success. In other words he thinks the snitch’s tale is the exact same story that has sold well for almost fifty years. And also, he thinks Falco’s book is exactly the same as a story that was invented in a conference room in Hollywood. He either doesn’t care or notice that neither Droban or Falco is exactly in Thompson’s league as a writer, or for that matter even Kurt Sutter’s.
You should know about Kirkpatrick because whatever story Falco told Droban, and whatever story Droban wrote, it has now been tailored to fit a well worn editorial formula. This is simply how modern publishing works – just as Blatchford trading his cache as a journalist to ingratiate himself to Marsal and Kirkpatrick is exactly how modern journalism works. This is how Jenna Bush became a best selling author and journalist. Kirkpatrick exemplifies what Jay Dobyns meant several years ago, by “some 5th Avenue pogue whose biggest risk in life has been to decide how much of his 401k to take out to buy his yacht.” St. Martin’s offices are on 5th Avenue in Manhattan.
Because Falco did so little other than get stoned and incriminate a man who may or may not be guilty of murder, much of the book attempts to describe what Wyatt/Falco dreamt. “I dreamed of rushing rapids, of light shallow water, of warning Vs in the ripples. There’s something down there, I shouted into cold winds. But no one heard me. River left. I paddled furiously toward shore. River left. Get out. Get out. Eddy the boat. Obstacle ahead.” Apparently Droban thought that if she just free associated enough of this crap, the word count might eventually total the number specified in her contract.
Most of the book is written in a narrative voice authors usually use to manipulate their readers into closely identifying with a fictional hero. “My heart hammered against my chest. Surrounded by dark shapes clad in denim and dirty patches of heat, I had never felt more alone. As an informant, I had no backup, no surveillance team, no one to hear the bullet penetrate my skull if things soured…. Not only had I confirmed for the government that the Vagos trafficked in drugs and illegal weapons; I had also established they were involved in committing homicides, the violent trademark of motorcycle gangs. I swelled with a sense of duty, of serving society. My role was no longer about self-preservation, it was about justice.”
Over and over Falco wears his duplicity like a Silver Star:
“I wanted to shout out, ‘Not me, not me, I’m not one of them. I’m one of the good guys.” “I wasn’t my costume, I wasn’t a badass. I was one of the good guys.” “Through our testimony we would likely join the ranks of other ‘brave and noble’ men who paid the price to crush Al-Qaeda terrorists or chill further mob violence.” “Meanwhile, Koz worried that I had become too soft, ‘too nice, too much of a gentleman’ gangster. He didn’t want me to be like ‘fucking James Bond,’ but he urged me to ‘be more aggressive, act more like a real gangster.’” “For three years I knew my role, and the culmination of my life’s work.” “Strangely, the lying bothered me the most even though I had been deceptive about my life since I was nineteen years old: first as a drug dealer, then as an informant and now as a completely revised person.” “Like soldiers returning from war, I imagined I experienced similar post-traumatic stress.” “Neither Twist nor the Vagos loved me or each other, they loved the idea of me and their brotherhood.” “For the briefest of moments I felt what a celebrity must.” “The whole idea that Vagos would defend each other, even die for each other, was bullshit. Code, club colors was all illusion and delusion. The seduction of being someone else was an addiction.” “I drifted off to my safe place, my subconscious.” “Some experiences are too profound to translate: war, military service, and life undercover.” “In a few hours, I would return to that lonely place, to the underworld, inhabited by undercover operatives, where my life completely transformed.”
Really sings doesn’t it? Maybe it was the prose Blatchford loved. How about you? Do you think you would like to read another 70,000 words of this?
The phony Falco informs his eager audience that all Vagos are phonies. “The notion that motorcycle gangs had any interest in charities or children was perverse. They needed money to fund their drug and arms deals. And they fit into the real world the way sociopaths blended, by mimicking human emotion and wearing acceptable masks, by pretending to care about children’s causes.”
And, among other atrocities, members of the Outlaw Motorcycle Club are anti “little people.” In one of the dozens of story lines in this insider account Falco becomes afraid that his new club brothers might force him to fuck the three-foot-tall porn star Bridget the Midget. “That night I crawled into the van, but sleep eluded me. Bridget floated into my conscience.” Into his “conscience.” Not his consciousness but his conscience.
I want to punch Falco in the face that night on the Strip. I want to punch somebody in the face as I make the always thrilling, diving right turn from Sunset onto La Cienega with a very important taxi in a hurry just behind me. I want to punch the cab driver in the face. I want to punch somebody in the face because I have been told, by people who love me, that I have anger issues.
And, also I want to punch somebody in the face because we now live in a moment of lies. The government lies to us. The government lies to itself. The police lie to judges. Doctors lie to patients. Charles Falco, Kerrie Droban and Rob Kirkpatrick are all lying. And, I know those lies are tomorrow’s historical truth. And, if I throw enough punches at history maybe I will leave a mark.
agingrebel.com
There is a battle for history going on in America. The winners will write it and for all the rest of human time the losers will be whatever the winners say they are. The fight is hardly over truth, justice, philosophy or perspective. It is all about the dollars. And a good illustration of this new history in our recently commoditized world is a book “written” by a self-proclaimed hero currently named Charles Falco with the assistance of the “true crime” writer Kerrie Droban.
The book is titled Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America’s Deadliest Biker Gangs. It will be officially published by the Thomas Dunne division of St. Martin’s Press on February 5, 2013.
I started looking for this Falco guy in May 2012 after he was interviewed by a Fox crime reporter in Los Angeles. The reporter’s name is Chris Blatchford. His “investigative report” was titled “The Green Nation is on a mission to replace the Hells Angels as the baddest outlaw biker gang.” The Green Nation – for anyone who just stumbled upon these words while searching for discounted beauty products or classic rock CDs – refers to the Vagos Motorcycle Club. Members of that club tend to wear a lot of green.
Police have long accused the Vagos of being a ruthless mafia. And, although the Vagos sincerely feel exactly the same way about the police, correct thinking Americans are compelled by both right wing and left wing social orthodoxy to agree with the cops. At the same time there is no denying that outlaw bikers are now a mass media commodity. You’ve probably noticed this. If you haven’t there may be other subtleties of the post-millennial world that yet elude you. Like, that little thing you see everywhere that looks like a model of one the black slabs in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is called an iPhone. Yes. It is spelled just like that. Welcome to Eisenhower’s nightmare.
An unignorable segment of the world’s male population, with a correspondingly obvious pile of loose cash, is fascinated with men like the Vagos. Motorcycle outlaws are the new James Bond. Like Bond, no one wants to defend them, no one wants to know them, no one in his right mind even wants to stand next to one of them lest they get blown up but very many men want to be them: Because of the untraceable guns; the uninhibited stompings and stabbings; the beautiful, easily available, wanton, multi-orgasmic women; the forbidden intoxicants; and, best of all, because outlaws demand the fear and respect that is usually reserved only for political nerds and the business school graduates who majored in stealing other people’s houses and pensions. The Vagos represent something unacknowledged but unforgotten in postmodern males. And, this fantasy identification with capable, confident, free, proud and dangerous men may say something about what has gone wrong with America. It might even partly explain the continuing cablecast of Sons of Anarchy on FX and The Devils Ride on Discovery. But, history is no longer about meaning. Blatchford illustrates that.
Blatchford was working both sides of this street during his two part, Sunday night, sweeps month news event. The story was so important that Fox devoted almost 15 minutes to the subject, divided between two newscasts, betting that Blatchford could manufacture enough vicarious thrills that his audience would tune in and then not change channels minute after minute after endless, commercial free, television minute. Fox accused the Vagos of being traffic scofflaws, psychopaths and sexists. Blatchford owns a George Foster Peabody Award, but in L.A. he is more famous for his dramatic delivery. He is to Los Angeles something like what John Facenda once was to Philadelphia. Blatchford explained one snatch of footage with a stentorian, “Even their own women, as you can see spelled out on the back of their jackets, are branded property of the Vago who owns them.” No matter how this pronouncement might look on a page it sounded more important when Blatchford said it.
Falco was one of the biker authorities Blatchford interviewed on camera. Falco is a large man with a slight lisp. He wore cool, dark glasses and the television reporter identified him as “Charles Falco who infiltrated the Vagos for two and a half years.”
I have a long and continuing interest in the world of motorcycle clubs and it seemed to me at the time that what Blatchford’s story really meant was that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was preparing for the long-expected racketeering case against the Vagos by softening up the jury pool. Now I think Blatchford’s expose had at least as much to do with history, cross media synergy and, of course, bucks.
The ability to type words into the Google search field also revealed that Falco was the subject of a forthcoming book then titled Inside Out: My Life Undercover with the Vagos. It took months to find the capsule review Blatchford wrote for Falco’s book. Chris loved it. “The paranoia of crooks, the desperation of incarceration, the fear of getting whacked, and survival working undercover in a brutal biker world devoid of common decency. You can read about it all in this book. But Charles Falco actually lived it and miraculously came out a better man. Chris Blatchford, author of The Black Hand”
2
I started looking for Falco approximately as an ugly, old drunk looks for love. I blindly bumped into bodies until eventually, one metaphorical closing time, I got lucky.Falco’s name used to be Ashley Charles Wyatt. I don’t quite believe him when he tells me this but I later learn that he is at least named Ashley Wyatt and he has always answered to Charles. He went to high school in the San Fernando Valley and he has Wyatt tattooed on the back of his head. At one point he also had a Vagos Victorville side rocker tattooed on his right torso. Vagos remember him well.
In the club he was called Charles or sometimes Tijuana Charles – the latter because he was almost arrested one night for pissing on a wall down Mexico way. The club name he gives himself in interviews including his interview with Blatchford and in “his” book is Quickdraw. That phrase was a jest thrown at him one night in a bar. The throwaway line was preserved on audio, in a device hidden in his asthma inhaler and apparently, after almost seven years reflection, he decided he liked Quickdraw better than Charles. There isn’t anything particularly wrong or unusual about revising one’s personal recollections. “Yes, I have a thousand tongues,” Stephen Crane confessed, “And nine and ninety-nine lie.” I think the lies mean something different with Falco than they did with Crane though, because Crane was honest and self-deprecating about his life while Falco now seeks to alchemize his personal recollections into a valuable commodity.
“What do you think when you hear that? ‘Quickdraw,’” a gracious gentleman asks me as I prepare to write this.
“Gunfighter,” I answer. The gentleman makes a silent, contemptuous gesture.
Falco also claims that members of the American Outlaws Association may remember him as “Chef,” possibly a reference to a previous career he claims as a methamphetamine manufacturer.
Falco has a Reno phone number but, he tells me, “I do not live in Reno and never have. I entered the Witness Protection Program in 2007. Thus, I was given a complete new identity which is what I use now.”
After riding with the Vagos the snitch earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, mostly online, in Bible Studies from Liberty Christian University and he went significantly into debt doing it. That surprised me. I had not previously known that a seeker could actually go into debt studying the Bible but Falco told me he had. And, even the United States Marshals are powerless against the kingpins of the student loan racket. “The Marshals do not allow you to get out of past debt,” Falco explains. “So in my case I owed several thousand dollars in student loans that I still pay under Ashley. These bills are sent to Marshal mail drops, which are then sent to DC, which are then sent to my area Marshal field office, who then sends them to me. I have several of these Marshal mail drops in California and Nevada that I use. Kind of cool on how this works! I am no longer in this program, but they still forward my mail. Even after you leave the WPP you keep your new identity, since it is now your legal new name. I hope that makes sense.”
The logistics made sense even if the part about going into debt reading the Bible did not. A face-to-face interview might have helped me better understand but my conversations with the snitch were accomplished in writing, by email with his muse and chronicler Kerrie Droban acting as an intermediary.
Falco has a GMX.com email address. Global Mail Exchange is a German telecommunications company. And, after I wrote to him at charlesfalco@gmx.com he insisted that we use one of Droban’s email accounts. I suspect he is in Phoenix. If he wanted to avoid Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws as he has reasons to do, he might feel most safe in Cave Creek near Sonny Barger’s home, but that is only my blind hunch.
Even if Falco is exactly where I think he is as long as he is careful he will remain virtually invisible. There are at least two other Charles Falcos in Arizona. One of them is an almost famous, Harley riding, physics professor in Tucson. That Charles Falco was one of the curators of the Guggenheim museum’s famous exhibit “The Art of the Motorcycle.” So if you just Google Charles Falco and Arizona and motorcycle you will get the wrong man every time. The professor and the snitch both wear dark mustaches. A second Charles Falco in Arizona is an old guy in Yuma.
3
Falco agrees to be interviewed. “I am not doing this interview because I think you will make my book a best seller,” he explains. “My main purpose is to give you correct information.”I begin with the obvious. “Will you be answering the questions or Kerrie? I’m sure it would be lovely to have a conversation with her but I would prefer to have a conversation with you.”
“I don’t know how to prove to you that I am not Kerrie,” the snitch replies promptly, “but I can tell you that she is a much better writer than me.” He answers multiple questions in a single paragraph. “I have never had anything to do with the HA. They were hunting us as Outlaws though, so I know how they operate. I never heard of a five part plan to get rid of motorcycle clubs. The ATF is not interested in motorcycle clubs, just motorcycle gangs. I think the ATF has done a great job in decreasing the amount of criminal activity these gangs participate in. If you compare the U.S. biker gangs of the seventies and eighties with current U.S. biker gangs, they have about ten percent of the criminal power they once had. I believe this (is the result of) the great job law enforcement (has done) in bringing these gang members to justice. I truly believe that.” Maybe he truly does.
The interview with the snitch stretches out. Near its conclusion, I while away a pleasant evening near the Beverly Hills end of the Sunset Strip with some gracious gentlemen who knew Ashley Charles Wyatt during all of his adventure with the Vagos. In the course of the conversation, as the night turned cold and I began to shiver, I asked the gentlemen to summarize Ashley Wyatt for me.
“Pussy,” one answered immediately.
“Snake!” A gracious gentleman shook his finger and another nodded his head up and down. “In a word, snake.”
“Punk,” one of them added in case I missed their point.
“Also, he is stoned all the time.”
“Like obnoxiously stoned. Constantly.”
“And, he’s not very smart.”
Falco’s stupidity may be why he, unlike most biker authorities, has heard of me. “I have been reading your articles for years,” he tells me, “and I know you lean toward the one percenter side of stories.” He is broadminded and tolerant of my shortcomings. “While, I know most of what you believe about the ATF is incorrect I still value your right to free speech.”
If only we had been able to meet face to face I’m sure I would have said, “Thank you.”
Falco is evasive and vague about the events that led him to betray a group of men who all call each other “brother.”
The gracious gentlemen in West Hollywood are much more straightforward. “Charles was arrested in 1995 in Las Vegas for armed robbery. He got 5 years. Not sure if it was suspended or how that ended up. He was then rearrested at LAX for failing to declare over twenty thousand in cash that he was carrying on his person. Then he admitted it was drug money. He sold himself to the world and in March 2004 he started hanging around the Vagos. The raids were in March 2006 so he was around the club for a few days less than two years. Does that help?” It helped.
While Wyatt/Falco was awaiting sentencing, “he called every police force he could find and volunteered to work for them. He finally hooked up with the DEA and then with the ATF.”
Falco’s version is more cinematic. It is also contradicts what I have been told by multiple sources. Not that that means anything. Truth plus two dollars will buy you a cup of coffee.
4
“I started as a DEA informant,” Falco says, beginning where all good story tellers begin, in the middle of things, “and I was one for two years before I became an informant for the ATF. Prior to becoming an informant for the DEA, I was a drug dealer.“I was one of the most loyal criminals I had ever met. I made most of my closest friends a small fortune. During those years I would have died before turning. That was before I was betrayed by everyone, loved ones, friends and business partners. Of course, shortly after this life changing betrayal, the DEA and US Customs raided my house. I had been betrayed in every way even though I had been loyal in every way. When the cops raided my house I was in a bottomless pit and that day my life was saved. I became an informant. But not by betraying friends. Instead I worked the streets like an undercover going after criminals that I had no prior relationship with. I started to enjoy the work and started realizing the horribleness of my past deeds. Working undercover made me feel like I was repenting for my misdeeds and I felt like I was paying back society.
“After two years of working for the DEA I decided that I wanted to do something big, like infiltrating a gang, but I was not sure which kind or which one. I convinced my DEA handler that me infiltrating a gang was the best way I could help society and myself. My handler referred me to a Detective in the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department who worked organized crime groups. I spoke with this detective and told her I could infiltrate any gang that a white male could become a member of and that all I needed to know was where they hung out. She said the gang that was committing a high amount of serious crimes was the Vagos MC. I had heard of them, but I had no prior relationship with any biker gang members, period. So she gave me the names of the bars where they hung out and from that information I was able to infiltrate the Victorville Chapter of the Vagos. Once I started to get close to some of the Vagos and it seemed I might be able to get in I was introduced to Koz and Carr (ATF Agents Darrin Kozlowski and John Carr). From there, the DEA handed me over to the ATF and Koz became my handler.”
“Koz is my hero. No other man has done more for me than him. He is a great man! You have wrong impressions of this guy and the rest of his team. They never, ever, went after these gangs as a personal vendetta. The ATF works gangs, that’s what they do.
“Koz is a great man. He always treated me with respect. He never looked down on me. He became a friend. He has always been there for me. Since I was an honest and devoted CI the ATF treated me as one of their own. In fact, they told the Vagos this when they arrested them. They still treat me this way. In fact, everyone I meet in law enforcement treats me as an equal, which is awesome. The government is much more loyal, fair, respectful and honest than any biker gang, criminal organization or maybe even any organization period. They are a true brotherhood of loyal, and honest friends.
“Ciccone (ATF Agent John Ciccone), Carr and Koz work biker gangs not because they have something personal against biker gangs but because it is their job to bring gang members to justice. The conspiracy stories are fiction when it comes to these three guys.”
In his book Falco describes himself as “a former Marine and ‘hard-core drug dealer,’ a ‘coyote’ who once smuggled human cargo across the border from Mexico.”
When asked to elaborate on his days in the drug business the snitch tells me, “I did move weight…I was a horrible man. From 1991 to 1995 I was a mid-level cocaine dealer. In 1996 I switched to selling meth. From 1998 to 2001 I manufactured about 125 pounds a year in meth, mostly in LA.”
I wanted to know more about his tragic betrayal by his friends.
“My betrayal I will not go too much into because I have forgiven and gone on with my life. It is very painful to reflect back, but I will tell you that everyone I was close to, with the exception of one person, betrayed me. Shortly, after the betrayals I became addicted to my own meth and shortly after that I was busted, so the police came at the perfect time. I was near death when they raided my house which turned around my life. After getting out of federal jail, I gave up meth and gave up living as a criminal.”
Falco’s statements to me and in his book are all a weird mix of truth and lies. It is obvious that he thinks I am so stupid that I will never catch on – and that I am so clueless that I will never try to verify what he says. For example, he does not tell me the name of the “Detective in the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department who worked organized crime groups.” In his book Falco calls her “Samantha Kiles.” Multiple public documents call her “Shelli Kelly.” The lie about Samantha/Shelli/Kiles/Kelly stands out in hindsight because it is blatantly gratuitous. I began to realize that Wyatt/Falco lies because he likes to lie and also because he can’t stop himself.
He tells me: “I was not paid anything for Operation 22 Green…. You don’t work for the ATF for money. If you are doing it for money you would work for the FBI or DEA…. I did it because I felt like I was doing something great for our society and the government asked for my help.”
So I asked him, “How did you survive while you were doing volunteer undercover work? The usual procedure is that registered CIs earn a salary, which is now up to about $2,500 a month. In general, CIs participate in criminal activity. That is the point of CIs. Officially UCs, undercover agents and TFOs, tactical field officers, cannot commit crimes so CIs do the crimes instead. In general, CIs keep the profits from their crimes. Additionally, CIs are paid a performance bonus that typically reaches six figures when their work on their case is done. Let me ask you again, what and how were you paid?”
He replies, “While I was doing the Vago case I was told even a DUI could put me back in jail. We knew I would have to get in bar fights occasionally, but that was it. I took it on myself to take a hit of a marijuana joint if it was passed around and I was in front of a large group of Vagos. I did this so that they would not think I was a law enforcement officer. The ATF did not want me to even do something as minor as smoking a joint, but I thought I needed to. Otherwise, I would have looked too clean. If a CI is committing serious crimes while working undercover he or she would be charged for a crime just like anyone else. Just because you’re a CI does not mean you are above the law.”
I am still too dull to understand how Falco kept a roof over his head, food in his belly and gas in his tank.
“It was fair that I did not get paid for Operation 22 Green; I was still under heavy charges. Even though I had already done a couple years of work for the government I felt like and still do that I owe them my life. For me Rebel, the government saved me, so I feel forever indebted.”
“I am a Christian. I teach the youth group at my church. For me God and the Government saved my life.”
“I do not have anything personal against one percenters. I look at them as the same as any other gang, no worse no better, but they are a gang. They fight and kill over territory they do not own. While doing the Vagos’ investigation I worked a 9 to 5 job. I delivered car parts for a dealership. I also worked as a handyman for the Vago chapter president of the chapter I infiltrated.”
That Victorville chapter President was Scott “Psycho” Sikoff. He was Wyatt/Falco’s most loyal friend and defender in the club and his only visible means of support. The snitch later reported to his handlers that his friend had sold him weed and fought by his side. Sikoff was subsequently charged with assault with a deadly weapon and distribution of marijuana.
5
When I become too annoying Falco writes, “I think you still look at our society from a one percenter view point which is anti-social. I could be wrong but your opinions seem slanted that way. I hope that does not offend you. In no way do I think I am better than you or anybody else. As an ex-criminal the first thing I had to change when going straight was the way I thought. When you’re a criminal or gang member you try to justify why you do what you do. When I was a criminal I thought the only thing that was wrong to do was hurt or kill the innocent or snitch. That is a completely anti-social way of looking at the world.”“These one percenter clubs, gangs, are not as loyal as people think. After Operation Black Diamond (Falco’s last infiltration for the ATF) more than half the members (of the American Outlaws Association that were) charged turned. The loyalty and brotherhood these clubs say they have for each other is one hundred percent bullshit. Not only do they betray each other after being arrested, but they were doing it all the time behind each other’s backs – fucking each other’s old ladies, lying, gossiping, and backstabbing each other for power. Betrayal is the normal part of the outlaw lifestyle and I don’t say this just because of my betrayal when I was a drug dealer, but because it was a constant part of what the outlaw bikers did to each other. I witnessed it day in and day out. It is not CIs and UCs these gangs should be watching out for. It is themselves.”
Some of what Falco tells me about this counterculture is true and some of it is not. The Vagos, like all outlaw clubs, strictly forbid adultery with a club brother’s woman. The old lady to whom he refers was the wife of the other ATF confidential informant in Operation 22 Green. All motorcycle outlaws gossip and they probably gossip a little more about each other than the general population because clubs tend to be very closed societies. I am not sure Falco really wants me to pursue the subject of truth and lies with him.
“I have told some people that I am interviewing ‘a snitch,’” I write. “Is that a fair term, in your opinion? Do you consider yourself a cop? I watched a little of a bad Tommy Lee Jones movie called Black Moon Rising the other day. The blurb described Jones’ character as a ‘freelance FBI agent.’ Ever consider yourself a ‘freelance ATF agent?’”
“Calling me a snitch is a little harsh, since I did not snitch on these guys, but I can picture you referring to me as a ‘snitch,’” he answers. “Again, I was never (one of those) one percenter(s) who got busted and decided to rat his friends out so he did not have to go to jail. From the first second, I met these guys I was working for the government. Their true brothers that betrayed them would be snitches, not me. I always called myself a private government contractor. Of course, I don’t think I am a cop. I’m not crazy. But they do treat me as one of their own.”
I sought and interviewed Falco/Charles/Tijuana Charles/Ashley because I was interested in the psychology of men who do what the snitch did. My first guess was that maybe he identified with the police. And near the end of his book he or Droban wrote, “Post-traumatic stress – it floated through my subconscious…. I escaped into the company of other agents. We formed our own brotherhood bound by common trauma…. All of us prepared each day to sacrifice our lives for a greater cause…. Like the other agents, I lived my life off duty.”
I conclude the snitch is a narcissist and probably a psychopath. No, I am not a psychologist. You don’t exactly have to be Sigmund Freud to see that Falco is a narcissist. You only have to have gone to community college. That one time. For a couple of days. Or so.
6
Factually, Falco was a participant in three, intertwined, ATF run, biker investigations. All three were connected to a small cadre of ATF agents that members of the Bureau have frankly called “Ciccone’s Gang” after ATF biker specialist John Ciccone. Ciccone, who expects to retire in another two years, has spent most of his career in the Bureau investigating, collecting intelligence about and making cases against outlaw motorcycle clubs. He has – by his own account but there is no reason to doubt him – participated in more than 200 motorcycle club investigations. He works out of the ATF Field Office in Glendale, California. And since 1997, beginning with a “One Percenter Task Force” investigation of the Hells Angels and the Sundowners Motorcycle Clubs in Los Angeles, Ciccone has worked with ATF agents William Queen, Jay Dobyns, Vincent Cefalu, John Carr and Darrin Kozlowski on multiple occasions. Ciccone is a short, appealing and handsome man who has taken pains to avoid public attention but two of the associates, Queen and Dobyns, have written best selling books. Dobyns and Cefalu have reinvented themselves as “ATF whistleblowers.” Carr has participated in a direct way in at least four investigations of biker clubs. Kozlowski has participated in undercover investigations of the Vagos twice, the Warlocks twice, the Outlaws, the Hells Angels, the Mongols and the Sons of Silence. An outlaw named Kevin “Spike” O’Neill who is now serving a life sentence has called Kozlowski a psychopath.Most Americans think police investigate crimes. Ciccone’s gang tries to catch club members in the act of committing crimes. Sometimes they suggest the crimes. Frequently, these government agents facilitate real or imagined crimes – going so far as to act out episodes of “guerilla theater” (a term used by an Assistant U.S. Attorney following one of these investigation) including staged gunfights and game planned drug transactions. Typically, these investigations involve extensive electronic and other surveillance and data mining of club members in the hopes of catching someone somewhere doing something illegal. What those members get caught doing are usually minor assaults and minor drug and firearms transactions that would be prosecuted in state court if they were committed by anybody but a motorcycle club member. But, motorcycle club members and associates are almost always prosecuted under the racketeering statutes called RICO and VICAR which carry penalties of up to life imprisonment. Although it is not illegal to belong to a motorcycle club, club members are frequently coerced into pleading guilty to that non-existent crime. The ATF, to a lesser extent the FBI, and with increasing frequency the Department of Homeland Security are all at war with motorcycle clubs. The war is international and it is intended to drive all motorcycle clubs out of existence. Creative legal strategies have been devised to punish members for simply belonging to clubs like the Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws.
In the most successful investigations, ATF agents or their proxies, called Confidential Informants or Sources of Information, actually join clubs in order to both gather information about the membership and practices of the target organization but also, when the opportunity presents itself, to discover or manufacture reasons to prosecute club members. It is an astonishingly expensive war on social and political dissent. It has intensified since the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks. It is, in fact, the greater part of the domestic “war on terror.” This part of the war against Al Qaeda is legitimized by rhetoric. Members and associates of clubs like the Vagos and the Outlaws are routinely called “domestic terrorists” and “street terrorists.” The clubs themselves are usually called “transnational gangs.”
Falco was an agent proxy in Operation 22 Green, Operation Black Rain and Operation Black Diamond. The names of these investigations are coined by bureaucrats for their estimated public relations effect.
Operation 22 Green employed two confidential informants, many dozens of ATF Agents and local police and lasted three years. During that time Falco and another informant made 25 alleged contraband purchases. At the conclusion of the long investigation police seized 132 legal firearms and two illegal firearms, 46 grams of cocaine, a total of about ten ounces of methamphetamine (I neglected to ask Wyatt/Falco if he cooked that crank), $15,000 in currency that was all later returned, firecrackers which were identified in the press as “explosives,” more than one thousand rounds of legally purchased and owned ammunition and numerous articles of clothing that indicated the wearer belonged to or supported the Vagos. Police also confiscated personal computers, photo albums, family souvenirs, cell phones and other personal items. The raids themselves were intended to punish their victims for belonging to a motorcycle club. At the conclusion of 22 Green 700 militarized police carried out an infantry assault intended mostly to punish club members and their families by wrecking their homes.
During the raids one Vago was found to have a Chinese throwing star embedded in a wall. He was charged with possession of a deadly weapon. Another Vago, a former martial arts instructor, home made a set of nunchucks thirty years before then literally nailed them to his garage wall as a decoration. He was charged with manufacturing a deadly weapon. During the dawn raids, a mother was pulled from her shower and dragged outside naked. A nine-year-old girl was only allowed to urinate if she let two Sheriffs watch.
Falco’s crowning achievement in this investigation was the tape recording of incriminating statements by a man who had knowledge of a homicide. The homicide was the result of a drug robbery gone wrong. One shot was fired, arguably by accident. One man was killed and a woman was wounded by the same bullet. Two subjects were charged with murder. One of them became a cooperating witness and was sentenced to one year in jail for voluntary manslaughter. The other suspect, Daniel Lee Foreman, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. It was not an open and shut case. Foreman would later write, “I was originally offered a seven year plea agreement on this same case…. The fact is, I turned it down on principle. Why should I accept any time for a crime I hadn’t committed?”
Falco told me, “Operation 22 Green was successful in my eyes, just for the murder case alone….”
After entering the witness protection program in 2007 Falco relocated to Lynchburg, Virginia and worked as a mechanic. He decided the next year “to return to my life undercover, but this time as a well-paid informant.” He volunteered with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to try to infiltrate the Hells Angels in Ontario in return for $1 million. When that fell through his mentor and hero Kozlowski introduced him to the Richmond, Virginia chapter of the Mongols. At the same time, Kozlowski was working undercover as a member of the Cypress Park, California chapter of the Mongols. It was the conclusion of ATF Operation Black Rain and the Virginia Mongols were entirely the invention of the ATF. The Bureau, using a paid confidential informant named Daniel Horrigan and a source of information named Lars Wilson, established the Virginia Mongols as a way to gain information about other motorcycle clubs in Virginia. After the raids that officially concluded Black Rain, the three ATF agents and two paid confidential informants who comprised the Virginia Mongols applied for membership in another motorcycle club, the American Outlaws Association.
That investigation was eventually named Operation Black Diamond. Twenty-seven Outlaws were indicted for racketeering in June 2010. Most of them pled guilty to racketeering, which might sound impressive unless you understand that under current case law every organization is a racket and every member who has broken any law in the last ten years is a racketeer. The Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church are, technically, rackets. Virtually no one beats a racketeering charge at trial. Everybody except for the very rich and powerful pleads guilty to racketeering because it is usually the smart move. One Outlaw was gunned down by federal agents in Maine. The charges against another were dropped. The racketeering acts with which the men were charged included having illegal slot machines in Outlaws clubhouses, buying and selling contraband and several minor and not so minor assaults.
The big target in Operation Black Diamond was Outlaws National President Jack Rosga, a 53-year-old grandfather with no criminal record who was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Falco/Chef played virtually no part in Operation Black Rain and was mostly an observer during Operation Black Diamond. All of the war on the motorcycle outlaw menace in this moment in America is a kind of a circus. And in that circus Ashley/Falco/Charles/Chef was once one of the clowns. And that proves to be the single most annoying thing about “his” book. The putative author has no story to tell.
7
“How did you connect with Kerrie Droban?”“I saw Kerrie on Gangland,” the snitch answers. “So, I read her book. I thought it was great. I found her email address and asked if she would be interested in writing my book.”
Blatchford?
“Blatchford was doing a story on the Vagos and he was referred to me. We talked on the phone and I told him I would love to do an interview with him. I watched him for years in L.A. and have always enjoyed his reports. He was very nice, professional. Other than that I don’t know much more about him.”
“Who referred you?”
“Blatchford was referred to me by my agent. He seemed to be a bright and nice guy. He loves to expose the truth about gangs, which I think is a noble thing.”
Falco’s agent is San Diego literary agent Jill Marsal. Marsal politely declined to comment about the Falco book. But she probably represents Falco in only a limited way called “hip-pocketing” which means she represents Falco for this one project. Her relationship with Kerrie Droban is more established.
Droban is an attorney, a former prosecutor and a mother who practices law in a country club suburb north of Phoenix. She aspires to earn what Robert Frost’s called the “gift word,” which is “poet.” Droban is widely reviled in the outlaw world. Many club members think her total lack of sympathy for and her fatuousness about motorcycle outlaws is annoying. And, just when she is starting to enjoy some commercial success she seems to be fading as a writer. Long before she became a biker authority Droban wrote a few lines I particularly like.
I’ll tell you about my days in Kenya: Inevitably, flying termites litter the porchWith wings in the season of heavy rain.Males struggle naked on the stones,Their female mates already gone.Umbula, the cook, fries them in chocolate. I cannot describe the tasteThere has never been much money in poetry and after her days in Kenya, if there actually were days in Kenya, Droban became a prosecutor. Her prince turned out to be a Glendale, Arizona homicide detective named Sergei Droban. She turned to prose and she had no more success than most writers until her social and professional connections introduced her to the ATF infiltration of the Arizona Angels. Her first publishing success was Running With The Devil. It was the best book published about Operation Black Biscuit. Although, that is faint praise. The other writers were the pompous and self-important Julien Sher, the psychotherapeutically intriguing Jay “Bird” Dobyns and the children’s book author Nils Johnson-Shelton.
Voila! The poet began to appear in publicity photos wearing a black leather jacket. Step by step, Droban stopped being a writer and instead became a “brand.” As dogs learn to sit up and beg, she learned to say, “My author brand is graphic realism. Raw, gritty stories that demand an audience.” Marsal became her agent and she sold Droban’s second biker book, Prodigal Father, Pagan Son: Growing Up Inside the Dangerous World of the Pagans Motorcycle Club, to a mystifyingly successful writer and editor at St. Martin’s Press, named Rob Kirkpatrick.
Kirkpatrick, 43, became a big success after he wrote a bad and un-insightful book about the year 1969 called 1969. He sold and was paid for what the world most needs now, yet another biography of Bruce Springsteen, and he published a biography of former Senators shortstop Cecil Travis. He has been described as “a journalist, a historian, a sociologist, and a sportswriter.” He has been a talking head on the History Channel and he “also writes about film, music, sports, and cultural issues for The Huffington Post.” After he published Prodigal Father, Pagan Son he bought the rights to Droban’s collaboration with Wyatt/Falco in November 2011.
About his work as an editor Kirkpatrick has written, “I specialize in narrative nonfiction and have built an eclectic list including history, sports, pop culture, and biography/memoir. I look to publish entertaining and compelling stories – especially books that should have been written before but hadn’t – and seek to effectively position all my books with memorable titles, enthusiastic blurbs, and eye-catching covers. In my ‘free’ time, I’ve also completed a PhD in English….”
Kirkpatrick ignored a request to answer basic questions about the Falco book. The questions he would not answer included “How was the book fact checked? Was it submitted to the ATF for authorization?” “Should a ‘true-crime’ book be true? Is it necessary that it be true?” And, “Briefly, in what ways are you responsible for this book?”
I believe he wrote the book blurb that he expects will “effectively position” the Wyatt/Falco/Droban collaboration. The blurb argues, “In separate investigations that spanned years and coasts, Falco risked his life, suffering a fractured neck and a severely torn shoulder, working deep undercover to bring violent sociopaths to justice.” Falco’s injuries are significantly overstated. The snitch couldn’t keep up with an ATF agent while riding his motorcycle in the rain in Virginia, ran onto the grass and went over the high side.
Kirkpatrick continues, “Falco’s engrossing account of the dangers of the biker underworld and justice is perfect for fans of FX’s Sons of Anarchy as well as Hunter Thompson’s classic Hell’s Angels.”
Kirkpatrick’s job is to create book products that pander to niche marketing categories. With this book he is chasing the Sons of Anarchy audience. He is also chasing after people who have read Hunter Thompson’s book about the Angels. He wants to tell those audiences a story that looks to him like a proven success. In other words he thinks the snitch’s tale is the exact same story that has sold well for almost fifty years. And also, he thinks Falco’s book is exactly the same as a story that was invented in a conference room in Hollywood. He either doesn’t care or notice that neither Droban or Falco is exactly in Thompson’s league as a writer, or for that matter even Kurt Sutter’s.
You should know about Kirkpatrick because whatever story Falco told Droban, and whatever story Droban wrote, it has now been tailored to fit a well worn editorial formula. This is simply how modern publishing works – just as Blatchford trading his cache as a journalist to ingratiate himself to Marsal and Kirkpatrick is exactly how modern journalism works. This is how Jenna Bush became a best selling author and journalist. Kirkpatrick exemplifies what Jay Dobyns meant several years ago, by “some 5th Avenue pogue whose biggest risk in life has been to decide how much of his 401k to take out to buy his yacht.” St. Martin’s offices are on 5th Avenue in Manhattan.
8
The product of all these invisible social and economic forces, of Wyatt/Falco’s egomania, Kirkpatrick’s fatuousness and Droban’s ambition, is a dismal and bloated vampire novel with Falco starring in the role of Van Helsing. Just as the snitch now called Falco truly believes in his own importance I truly believe that publishing this waste of perfectly good trees should be prosecuted as an environmental crime. Most of what Wyatt/Falco/Droban/Kirkpatrick tell readers are lies. Not mistakes, not hyperbole but simply lies. There are so many lies that a legion of fact checkers would go blind trying to correct them all. Over and over, Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws are described as rabid, ravenous wolves. Civilians are innocent, fluffy, little bunnies. Oh no, little bunny! Don’t go in that bar! No! No!Because Falco did so little other than get stoned and incriminate a man who may or may not be guilty of murder, much of the book attempts to describe what Wyatt/Falco dreamt. “I dreamed of rushing rapids, of light shallow water, of warning Vs in the ripples. There’s something down there, I shouted into cold winds. But no one heard me. River left. I paddled furiously toward shore. River left. Get out. Get out. Eddy the boat. Obstacle ahead.” Apparently Droban thought that if she just free associated enough of this crap, the word count might eventually total the number specified in her contract.
Most of the book is written in a narrative voice authors usually use to manipulate their readers into closely identifying with a fictional hero. “My heart hammered against my chest. Surrounded by dark shapes clad in denim and dirty patches of heat, I had never felt more alone. As an informant, I had no backup, no surveillance team, no one to hear the bullet penetrate my skull if things soured…. Not only had I confirmed for the government that the Vagos trafficked in drugs and illegal weapons; I had also established they were involved in committing homicides, the violent trademark of motorcycle gangs. I swelled with a sense of duty, of serving society. My role was no longer about self-preservation, it was about justice.”
Over and over Falco wears his duplicity like a Silver Star:
“I wanted to shout out, ‘Not me, not me, I’m not one of them. I’m one of the good guys.” “I wasn’t my costume, I wasn’t a badass. I was one of the good guys.” “Through our testimony we would likely join the ranks of other ‘brave and noble’ men who paid the price to crush Al-Qaeda terrorists or chill further mob violence.” “Meanwhile, Koz worried that I had become too soft, ‘too nice, too much of a gentleman’ gangster. He didn’t want me to be like ‘fucking James Bond,’ but he urged me to ‘be more aggressive, act more like a real gangster.’” “For three years I knew my role, and the culmination of my life’s work.” “Strangely, the lying bothered me the most even though I had been deceptive about my life since I was nineteen years old: first as a drug dealer, then as an informant and now as a completely revised person.” “Like soldiers returning from war, I imagined I experienced similar post-traumatic stress.” “Neither Twist nor the Vagos loved me or each other, they loved the idea of me and their brotherhood.” “For the briefest of moments I felt what a celebrity must.” “The whole idea that Vagos would defend each other, even die for each other, was bullshit. Code, club colors was all illusion and delusion. The seduction of being someone else was an addiction.” “I drifted off to my safe place, my subconscious.” “Some experiences are too profound to translate: war, military service, and life undercover.” “In a few hours, I would return to that lonely place, to the underworld, inhabited by undercover operatives, where my life completely transformed.”
Really sings doesn’t it? Maybe it was the prose Blatchford loved. How about you? Do you think you would like to read another 70,000 words of this?
The phony Falco informs his eager audience that all Vagos are phonies. “The notion that motorcycle gangs had any interest in charities or children was perverse. They needed money to fund their drug and arms deals. And they fit into the real world the way sociopaths blended, by mimicking human emotion and wearing acceptable masks, by pretending to care about children’s causes.”
And, among other atrocities, members of the Outlaw Motorcycle Club are anti “little people.” In one of the dozens of story lines in this insider account Falco becomes afraid that his new club brothers might force him to fuck the three-foot-tall porn star Bridget the Midget. “That night I crawled into the van, but sleep eluded me. Bridget floated into my conscience.” Into his “conscience.” Not his consciousness but his conscience.
Postcript
I finish Falco/Wyatt/Charles/Droban/Kirkpatrick’s rotten book and abandon the interview with him. I know before I write half of it that this article is already a loser. I don’t want to write about Falco. I don’t like Falco. I want to punch him in the face.I want to punch Falco in the face that night on the Strip. I want to punch somebody in the face as I make the always thrilling, diving right turn from Sunset onto La Cienega with a very important taxi in a hurry just behind me. I want to punch the cab driver in the face. I want to punch somebody in the face because I have been told, by people who love me, that I have anger issues.
And, also I want to punch somebody in the face because we now live in a moment of lies. The government lies to us. The government lies to itself. The police lie to judges. Doctors lie to patients. Charles Falco, Kerrie Droban and Rob Kirkpatrick are all lying. And, I know those lies are tomorrow’s historical truth. And, if I throw enough punches at history maybe I will leave a mark.
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Ten Most Notorious Outlaw Biker Gangs
Ten Most Notorious Outlaw Biker Gangs.
BY: William J. Felchner
Source: factoidz.com
US - The outlaw biker gang can trace its origins to the period after World War II where returning veterans and other roadies began to organize themselves in clubs, pining for the freedom, action and nonconformity that the motorcycle offered. One of the seminal events in outlaw biker history was "The Hollister Riot," which took place over the July Fourth 1947 holiday weekend in Hollister, California, where some 4,000 motorcycle enthusiasts invaded the small town. The ensuing ruckus was later sensationalized in the July 21, 1947, issue of Life magazine, marking a famous milestone in biker history.
The Hollister Gypsy Tour, as the event was billed, included the Boozefighters, a South Central Los Angeles motorcycle club founded in 1946 by World War II vet William "Wino Willie" Forkner (1921-1997). Forkner reveled in his reputation as a biker hellraiser, and reportedly served as the inspiration for Lee Marvin's Chino character in Columbia Pictures' The Wild One (1953), which also starred Marlon Brando as bad boy Johnny Strabler, leader of the fictional Black Rebels.
Here are ten notorious outlaw biker gangs that rule the road in biker history. These are the so-called "1%ers," the bikers who operate out of the mainstream as compared to the other 99% of motorcyclists who abide by the law and norms of society. Kick start your engines and show your colors…
Hells Angels (1948-present)
Unarguably the best-known outlaw biker gang in history, Hells Angels owes its name to World War II and possibly the 1930 Howard Hughes movie of the same name. During Big Two, there did exist the United States Army Air Forces 303rd Heavy Bombardment Group (H) of the U.S. 8th Air Force which billed itself as Hell's Angels, flying B-17 combat missions out of Molesworth, England, from 1942-45.
Hells Angels was formed in the Fontana/San Bernardino, California, area on March 17, 1948 as an offshoot of the Pissed Off Bastards of Bloomington, a California motorcycle club founded in 1945 by American veterans of the air war. Other independent chapters of Hells Angels later sprouted up in Oakland, Gardena and San Francisco.
Hells Angels eventually spread its wings, with the club now sporting charters in 29 countries, including Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Russia, Greece, Denmark, France, Turkey and the Dominican Republic.The Hells Angels insignia is the infamous "death's head," designed by Frank Sadilek, a former president of the San Francisco chapter.
Both American and Canadian law enforcement have labeled the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) a crime syndicate, asserting that its members routinely engage in drug trafficking, extortion and violence. Hells Angels garnered notoriety at the Altamont Free Concert on December 6, 1969, when they were hired by the Rolling Stones to act as stage security. Mayhem ensued at the drug/alcohol fueled event that boasted of a crowd of 300,000, with four people losing their lives.
Mongols (1969-present)
The Mongols was founded on December 5, 1969 in Montebello, California, by Hispanic veterans of the Vietnam War. Reportedly denied membership in Hells Angels because of their race, the Mongols eventually branched out, currently boasting of chapters in 14 states and four foreign countries.
Law enforcement has classified the Mongols as a criminal enterprise, engaging in loan sharking, drug trafficking, racketeering, theft and murder for hire. ATF agent William Queen, using the alias Billy St. John, successfully infiltrated the Mongols in 1998, resulting in 53 Mongol convictions.
The Mongols and their hated rivals Hells Angels engaged in an infamous brawl and gunfight at Harrah's Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, in 2002. When the smoke had cleared, one Mongol and two Hells Angels lay dead on the casino floor.
Pagans (1959-present)
Lou Dobkins, a biochemist at the National Institute of Health, founded the Pagans in Prince George's County, Maryland, in 1959. By the late 1960s, the Pagans were the dominant biker club on the East Coast, riding British Triumph motorcycles (later traded in for Harley Davidsons) and sporting their distinctive patch depicting the Norse fire god Sutr wielding a flaming sword.
The Pagans currently operate in eleven states, with Delaware County, Pennsylvania, serving as their Mother chapter. American law enforcement has classified the Pagans as a criminal enterprise, engaging in a host of illegal activities, including gun running, drug trafficking, arson, methamphetamine production and distribution, prostitution, racketeering and murder for hire.
In 2002, the Pagans and Hells Angels clashed at the Hellraiser Ball in Long Island, New York, where ten people were wounded and one Pagan was allegedly shot and killed by a Hells Angels member. Three years later, the Vice President of the Hells Angels Philadelphia chapter was killed by gunfire while driving his truck on the Schuylkill Expressway, with the Pagans allegedly carrying out the hit.
Outlaws (1935-present)
The Outlaws can trace their history back to 1935 when the McCook Outlaws Motorcycle Club was formed out of Matilda's Bar on old Route 66 in McCook, Illinois. In the ensuing years, the club morphed into the McCook Outlaws, the Chicago Outlaws and the American Outlaws Association (A.O.A.). Their first out of state chapter came in Florida in 1967. In 1977, the Canadian biker gang Satan's Choice joined the Outlaws franchise, making it the first chapter outside of the United States. Today, the Outlaws are active in some 14 states, with international chapters in the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, Sweden, Thailand, Norway, Poland, the Philippines, et al.
The Outlaws sport a distinctive patch comprised of a skull and crossed pistons. Their official motto, adopted in 1969, is "God forgives, Outlaws don't."
Law enforcement has categorized the Outlaws as an organized crime syndicate, engaging in drug trafficking, murder, extortion and prostitution. The Outlaws have had their run-ins with police and other biker gangs. In 2007, Outlaws member Frank Rego Vital was shot and killed outside the Crazy Horse Saloon in Forest Park, Georgia, by two Renegades motorcycle club members who had reportedly acted in self-defense.
Bandidos (1966-present)
The Bandidos was founded by Marine Corps and Vietnam War veteran Don Chambers in San Leon, Texas, in 1966. The club's official motto is "We are the people our parents warned us about," with a big Mexican in sombrero brandishing a machete and pistol adorning the club's distinctive patch. The Bandidos currently boast of 104 chapters in the United States, along with international chapters in Germany, Australia, Denmark, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Costa Rica, Belgium and the Channel Islands.
Law enforcement has classified the Bandidos as an organized crime syndicate, engaging in murder, drug trafficking, money laundering, extortion, gun running and witness tampering. From 1994 to 1997 the so-called "Great Nordic Biker War" was waged in Scandinavia pitting Bandidos versus Hells Angels in a bloody turf war that resulted in eleven murders. Vagos (1965-present)
Originally called the Psychos, Vagos was formed in Temescal Valley, California, in 1965. The club's distinctive green/red patch pictures the Norse god Loki straddling a motorcycle. Vagos currently operates mainly in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.
Both the FBI and the ATF consider Vagos an outlaw biker gang, engaging in drug trafficking, gun running, auto theft, money laundering and murder. In 2002, however, Vagos members turned in the estranged wife of a Pomona, California, police detective who had attempted to hire a Vagos hit man to murder her husband.
Law enforcement has successfully conducted several undercover investigations of Vagos and their illegal activities. In 2004, authorities arrested 26 Vagos members/associates and seized $125,000 in cash, drugs and weapons.
Pennsylvania Warlocks (1967-present)/Florida Warlocks (1967-present)
The Pennsylvania Warlocks was founded in Philadelphia in February 1967. The club's distinctive patch features the Harpy, the legendary winged beast from Greek mythology. The Pennsylvania Warlocks boast of chapters in New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, Florida, Minnesota and Massachusetts. The Pennsylvania Warlocks have been linked to organized crime and methamphetamine production and distribution.
The Florida Warlocks was founded by U.S. Navy veteran Tom "Grub" Freeland in Orlando, Florida, in 1967. The club's logo is a blazing eagle while their official motto is "To find us you must be good. To catch us…you must be fast. To beat us…you must be kidding!" The Florida Warlocks have chapters in South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, New York, the United Kingdom and Germany. The Florida Warlocks were successfully infiltrated by the ATF in 1991 and again in 2003, with convictions for drug and weapon charges resulting from the latter.
Sons of Silence (1966-present)
The Sons of Silence was founded in Niwot, Colorado, in 1966. The club sports a distinctive patch featuring the American Eagle superimposed over a large "A" – highly reminiscent of the Anheuser-Busch logo. The gang's official motto is "Donec mors non separat" – Latin for "Until death separates us."
The Sons of Silence boast of chapters in Illinois, Wyoming, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Kentucky, North Dakota, Mississippi and Germany. The Sons of Silence have been implicated in drug trafficking and weapons violations.
Highwaymen (1954-present)
The Highwaymen was established in Detroit, Michigan, in 1954. The club's distinctive patch features a winged skeleton sporting a leather jacket, motorcycle cap and the black and silver colors. "Highwaymen forever, forever Highwaymen" serves as the gang's official motto.
The Highwaymen currently have chapters in Michigan, Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Norway. The Highwaymen Motorcycle Club has been the subject of intense law enforcement scrutiny through the years. In 2007, the FBI arrested 40 Detroit Highwaymen members/associates on a variety of charges, including drug trafficking, theft, racketeering, insurance fraud, police corruption and murder for hire.
Gypsy Joker (1956-present)
The Gypsy Joker was founded in San Francisco, California, on April 1, 1956. The club's official patch features a grinning skull. Forced out of San Francisco by Hells Angels, the Gypsy Joker headed north to Oregon and Washington state in the late 1960s.
The Gypsy Joker has some 35 chapters worldwide, including active clubs in Australia, Germany, South Africa and Norway. The club is especially high profile in Australia, where in 2009 five Gypsy Jokers engaged in a drug-related shootout with a rival "bikie" gang (as they are called Down Under) in Perth.
Ten More Notorious Outlaw Biker Gangs
Here are ten more infamous biker gangs, along with where established and years active.
•Free Souls (Eugene, Oregon, 1968-present) •The Breed (Asbury Park, New Jersey, 1965-present) •Rebels (Brisbane, Australia, 1969-present) •Grim Reapers (Calgary, Canada, 1967-1997) •Iron Horsemen (Cincinnati, Ohio, mid-1960s-present) •The Finks (Adelaide, Australia, 1969-present) •Brother Speed (Boise, Idaho, 1969-present) •Devils Diciples (Fontana, California, 1967-present) •Solo Angeles (Tijuana, Mexico, 1959-present) •Diablos (San Bernardino, California, 1964-present) About William J. Felchner William J. Felchner's many feature articles have appeared in such periodicals as True West, Hot Rod, Movie Collector's World, Sports Collectors Digest, Persimmon Hill, Big Reel, Corvette Quarterly, Old West, Antiques & Auction News, Storyboard, Goldmine, Autograph Collector, Warman's Today's Collector, The Paper & Advertising Collectors'
Frontier Times, Television History, Illinois and Military Trader.
BY: William J. Felchner
Source: factoidz.com
US - The outlaw biker gang can trace its origins to the period after World War II where returning veterans and other roadies began to organize themselves in clubs, pining for the freedom, action and nonconformity that the motorcycle offered. One of the seminal events in outlaw biker history was "The Hollister Riot," which took place over the July Fourth 1947 holiday weekend in Hollister, California, where some 4,000 motorcycle enthusiasts invaded the small town. The ensuing ruckus was later sensationalized in the July 21, 1947, issue of Life magazine, marking a famous milestone in biker history.
The Hollister Gypsy Tour, as the event was billed, included the Boozefighters, a South Central Los Angeles motorcycle club founded in 1946 by World War II vet William "Wino Willie" Forkner (1921-1997). Forkner reveled in his reputation as a biker hellraiser, and reportedly served as the inspiration for Lee Marvin's Chino character in Columbia Pictures' The Wild One (1953), which also starred Marlon Brando as bad boy Johnny Strabler, leader of the fictional Black Rebels.
Here are ten notorious outlaw biker gangs that rule the road in biker history. These are the so-called "1%ers," the bikers who operate out of the mainstream as compared to the other 99% of motorcyclists who abide by the law and norms of society. Kick start your engines and show your colors…
Hells Angels (1948-present)
Unarguably the best-known outlaw biker gang in history, Hells Angels owes its name to World War II and possibly the 1930 Howard Hughes movie of the same name. During Big Two, there did exist the United States Army Air Forces 303rd Heavy Bombardment Group (H) of the U.S. 8th Air Force which billed itself as Hell's Angels, flying B-17 combat missions out of Molesworth, England, from 1942-45.
Hells Angels was formed in the Fontana/San Bernardino, California, area on March 17, 1948 as an offshoot of the Pissed Off Bastards of Bloomington, a California motorcycle club founded in 1945 by American veterans of the air war. Other independent chapters of Hells Angels later sprouted up in Oakland, Gardena and San Francisco.
Hells Angels eventually spread its wings, with the club now sporting charters in 29 countries, including Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Russia, Greece, Denmark, France, Turkey and the Dominican Republic.The Hells Angels insignia is the infamous "death's head," designed by Frank Sadilek, a former president of the San Francisco chapter.
Both American and Canadian law enforcement have labeled the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) a crime syndicate, asserting that its members routinely engage in drug trafficking, extortion and violence. Hells Angels garnered notoriety at the Altamont Free Concert on December 6, 1969, when they were hired by the Rolling Stones to act as stage security. Mayhem ensued at the drug/alcohol fueled event that boasted of a crowd of 300,000, with four people losing their lives.
Mongols (1969-present)
The Mongols was founded on December 5, 1969 in Montebello, California, by Hispanic veterans of the Vietnam War. Reportedly denied membership in Hells Angels because of their race, the Mongols eventually branched out, currently boasting of chapters in 14 states and four foreign countries.
Law enforcement has classified the Mongols as a criminal enterprise, engaging in loan sharking, drug trafficking, racketeering, theft and murder for hire. ATF agent William Queen, using the alias Billy St. John, successfully infiltrated the Mongols in 1998, resulting in 53 Mongol convictions.
The Mongols and their hated rivals Hells Angels engaged in an infamous brawl and gunfight at Harrah's Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, in 2002. When the smoke had cleared, one Mongol and two Hells Angels lay dead on the casino floor.
Pagans (1959-present)
Lou Dobkins, a biochemist at the National Institute of Health, founded the Pagans in Prince George's County, Maryland, in 1959. By the late 1960s, the Pagans were the dominant biker club on the East Coast, riding British Triumph motorcycles (later traded in for Harley Davidsons) and sporting their distinctive patch depicting the Norse fire god Sutr wielding a flaming sword.
The Pagans currently operate in eleven states, with Delaware County, Pennsylvania, serving as their Mother chapter. American law enforcement has classified the Pagans as a criminal enterprise, engaging in a host of illegal activities, including gun running, drug trafficking, arson, methamphetamine production and distribution, prostitution, racketeering and murder for hire.
In 2002, the Pagans and Hells Angels clashed at the Hellraiser Ball in Long Island, New York, where ten people were wounded and one Pagan was allegedly shot and killed by a Hells Angels member. Three years later, the Vice President of the Hells Angels Philadelphia chapter was killed by gunfire while driving his truck on the Schuylkill Expressway, with the Pagans allegedly carrying out the hit.
Outlaws (1935-present)
The Outlaws can trace their history back to 1935 when the McCook Outlaws Motorcycle Club was formed out of Matilda's Bar on old Route 66 in McCook, Illinois. In the ensuing years, the club morphed into the McCook Outlaws, the Chicago Outlaws and the American Outlaws Association (A.O.A.). Their first out of state chapter came in Florida in 1967. In 1977, the Canadian biker gang Satan's Choice joined the Outlaws franchise, making it the first chapter outside of the United States. Today, the Outlaws are active in some 14 states, with international chapters in the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, Sweden, Thailand, Norway, Poland, the Philippines, et al.
The Outlaws sport a distinctive patch comprised of a skull and crossed pistons. Their official motto, adopted in 1969, is "God forgives, Outlaws don't."
Law enforcement has categorized the Outlaws as an organized crime syndicate, engaging in drug trafficking, murder, extortion and prostitution. The Outlaws have had their run-ins with police and other biker gangs. In 2007, Outlaws member Frank Rego Vital was shot and killed outside the Crazy Horse Saloon in Forest Park, Georgia, by two Renegades motorcycle club members who had reportedly acted in self-defense.
Bandidos (1966-present)
The Bandidos was founded by Marine Corps and Vietnam War veteran Don Chambers in San Leon, Texas, in 1966. The club's official motto is "We are the people our parents warned us about," with a big Mexican in sombrero brandishing a machete and pistol adorning the club's distinctive patch. The Bandidos currently boast of 104 chapters in the United States, along with international chapters in Germany, Australia, Denmark, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Costa Rica, Belgium and the Channel Islands.
Law enforcement has classified the Bandidos as an organized crime syndicate, engaging in murder, drug trafficking, money laundering, extortion, gun running and witness tampering. From 1994 to 1997 the so-called "Great Nordic Biker War" was waged in Scandinavia pitting Bandidos versus Hells Angels in a bloody turf war that resulted in eleven murders. Vagos (1965-present)
Originally called the Psychos, Vagos was formed in Temescal Valley, California, in 1965. The club's distinctive green/red patch pictures the Norse god Loki straddling a motorcycle. Vagos currently operates mainly in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.
Both the FBI and the ATF consider Vagos an outlaw biker gang, engaging in drug trafficking, gun running, auto theft, money laundering and murder. In 2002, however, Vagos members turned in the estranged wife of a Pomona, California, police detective who had attempted to hire a Vagos hit man to murder her husband.
Law enforcement has successfully conducted several undercover investigations of Vagos and their illegal activities. In 2004, authorities arrested 26 Vagos members/associates and seized $125,000 in cash, drugs and weapons.
Pennsylvania Warlocks (1967-present)/Florida Warlocks (1967-present)
The Pennsylvania Warlocks was founded in Philadelphia in February 1967. The club's distinctive patch features the Harpy, the legendary winged beast from Greek mythology. The Pennsylvania Warlocks boast of chapters in New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, Florida, Minnesota and Massachusetts. The Pennsylvania Warlocks have been linked to organized crime and methamphetamine production and distribution.
The Florida Warlocks was founded by U.S. Navy veteran Tom "Grub" Freeland in Orlando, Florida, in 1967. The club's logo is a blazing eagle while their official motto is "To find us you must be good. To catch us…you must be fast. To beat us…you must be kidding!" The Florida Warlocks have chapters in South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, New York, the United Kingdom and Germany. The Florida Warlocks were successfully infiltrated by the ATF in 1991 and again in 2003, with convictions for drug and weapon charges resulting from the latter.
Sons of Silence (1966-present)
The Sons of Silence was founded in Niwot, Colorado, in 1966. The club sports a distinctive patch featuring the American Eagle superimposed over a large "A" – highly reminiscent of the Anheuser-Busch logo. The gang's official motto is "Donec mors non separat" – Latin for "Until death separates us."
The Sons of Silence boast of chapters in Illinois, Wyoming, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Kentucky, North Dakota, Mississippi and Germany. The Sons of Silence have been implicated in drug trafficking and weapons violations.
Highwaymen (1954-present)
The Highwaymen was established in Detroit, Michigan, in 1954. The club's distinctive patch features a winged skeleton sporting a leather jacket, motorcycle cap and the black and silver colors. "Highwaymen forever, forever Highwaymen" serves as the gang's official motto.
The Highwaymen currently have chapters in Michigan, Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Norway. The Highwaymen Motorcycle Club has been the subject of intense law enforcement scrutiny through the years. In 2007, the FBI arrested 40 Detroit Highwaymen members/associates on a variety of charges, including drug trafficking, theft, racketeering, insurance fraud, police corruption and murder for hire.
Gypsy Joker (1956-present)
The Gypsy Joker was founded in San Francisco, California, on April 1, 1956. The club's official patch features a grinning skull. Forced out of San Francisco by Hells Angels, the Gypsy Joker headed north to Oregon and Washington state in the late 1960s.
The Gypsy Joker has some 35 chapters worldwide, including active clubs in Australia, Germany, South Africa and Norway. The club is especially high profile in Australia, where in 2009 five Gypsy Jokers engaged in a drug-related shootout with a rival "bikie" gang (as they are called Down Under) in Perth.
Ten More Notorious Outlaw Biker Gangs
Here are ten more infamous biker gangs, along with where established and years active.
•Free Souls (Eugene, Oregon, 1968-present) •The Breed (Asbury Park, New Jersey, 1965-present) •Rebels (Brisbane, Australia, 1969-present) •Grim Reapers (Calgary, Canada, 1967-1997) •Iron Horsemen (Cincinnati, Ohio, mid-1960s-present) •The Finks (Adelaide, Australia, 1969-present) •Brother Speed (Boise, Idaho, 1969-present) •Devils Diciples (Fontana, California, 1967-present) •Solo Angeles (Tijuana, Mexico, 1959-present) •Diablos (San Bernardino, California, 1964-present) About William J. Felchner William J. Felchner's many feature articles have appeared in such periodicals as True West, Hot Rod, Movie Collector's World, Sports Collectors Digest, Persimmon Hill, Big Reel, Corvette Quarterly, Old West, Antiques & Auction News, Storyboard, Goldmine, Autograph Collector, Warman's Today's Collector, The Paper & Advertising Collectors'
Frontier Times, Television History, Illinois and Military Trader.
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Espinoza's Leather
I just received my cut in the mail, It`s perfectly made, with attention to details you rarely find done.. NUFF SAID..
Espinoza's is the place to go, Best leather works ever bro, those guys fucking kick ass,
MLH&RESPECT
Philip aka Screwdriver
Contact Info
Phones
(626) 307-5049 Work
Address
8730 E Garvey Ave
Rosemead, CA 91770
Website
http://
Facebook http://facebook.com/
I just received my cut in the mail, It`s perfectly made, with attention to details you rarely find done.. NUFF SAID..
Espinoza's is the place to go, Best leather works ever bro, those guys fucking kick ass,
Espinoza's is the place to go, Best leather works ever bro, those guys fucking kick ass,
MLH&RESPECT
Philip aka Screwdriver
Contact Info
Phones
(626) 307-5049 Work
Address
8730 E Garvey Ave
Rosemead, CA 91770
Website
http://
Facebook http://facebook.com/
Philip aka Screwdriver
Contact Info
Phones
(626) 307-5049 Work
Address
8730 E Garvey Ave
Rosemead, CA 91770
Website
http://
Facebook http://facebook.com/
↧
ILLUSION MOTORSPORTS.......
LET,RUSTY OR KO, KNOW THAT YOU SAW IT HERE..
THANK YOU, PHILIP
" The premiere motorcycle customizing shop of Orange County California "![Picture]()
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One of the cleanest and best organized motorcycle shops anywhere.
As an EPA/CARB certified motorcycle manufacturer we can build or sell you a bike that is legal in California or all 50 states.
Business hours 8-5 Mon-Fri. Pick-up and delivery available.
* PARTS * FABRICATION * PAINT * ELECTRICAL * TUNE UPS * SERVICE on custom and OEM motorcycles * CUSTOMIZING * NEW OR USED MOTORCYCLES * COLLISION REPAIR
714-894-1942 office
714-894-1922 fax
714-262-2370 alternate
14726 goldenwest Street #F Westminster, Ca. 92683
illusionoc@gmail.com email
http://www.facebook.com/illusionmotorsports
These bag extensions save money and look good. Quick install too. 399.
Alot of new products and apparel from Illusion coming your way.
Bars, club style fairings, billet wheels, overdrive kits for 5 speeds, crash bars, risers, and brakes.
Machining, motor upgrades and rebuilds, tune ups, paint. insurance claims.
5 inch pullback on our t bars with a 2 inch drop. comfortable and your wrist angle is right..
Sickist t bars around. Dom tubing. Pre drilled and set up for electonic throttle or cable. Smooth polished welds. Perfect chrome..
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THANK YOU, PHILIP
" The premiere motorcycle customizing shop of Orange County California "
One of the cleanest and best organized motorcycle shops anywhere.
As an EPA/CARB certified motorcycle manufacturer we can build or sell you a bike that is legal in California or all 50 states.
Business hours 8-5 Mon-Fri. Pick-up and delivery available.
* PARTS * FABRICATION * PAINT * ELECTRICAL * TUNE UPS * SERVICE on custom and OEM motorcycles * CUSTOMIZING * NEW OR USED MOTORCYCLES * COLLISION REPAIR
714-894-1942 office
714-894-1922 fax
714-262-2370 alternate
14726 goldenwest Street #F Westminster, Ca. 92683
illusionoc@gmail.com email
http://www.facebook.com/illusionmotorsports
These bag extensions save money and look good. Quick install too. 399.
Alot of new products and apparel from Illusion coming your way.
Bars, club style fairings, billet wheels, overdrive kits for 5 speeds, crash bars, risers, and brakes.
Machining, motor upgrades and rebuilds, tune ups, paint. insurance claims.
5 inch pullback on our t bars with a 2 inch drop. comfortable and your wrist angle is right..
Sickist t bars around. Dom tubing. Pre drilled and set up for electonic throttle or cable. Smooth polished welds. Perfect chrome..
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USA - MCANSG - MOTORCYCLE CLUBS ARE NOT STREET GANGS
MOTORCYCLE CLUBS ARE NOT STREET GANGS ™is a trademark and service mark of MCANSG PROGRAM, a California nonprofit corporation.
Mission
We are here to carry the message and to stop the misuse of California Penal Code 186.20, aka The California STEP ACT, as in "the California Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act." This law is being misused on Motorcycle Clubs.The California STEP Act is a series of laws designed to combat Los Angeles street gangs. This law is being used improperly against Motorcycle Clubs, WHY? Because we, like everyone else are being forced to defend ourselves, our homes, families, communities and events from street gangs, too. But, when we attempt to Protect ourselves and our events and take a Defensive stand against those criminal street gangs, we are repeatedly blamed and represented as “the problem”. Why? Frankly because we are the only ones that stay and answer to the Community when there are problematic and often violent situations.
Authorities don't like us because we won't participate in their system. And, we won't because the System of Law Enforcement and the Penal system DO NOT work.
Additionally, recent California state budget cuts are devastating police budgets. Hence, law enforcement lobbyists combined with DRAMA oriented TV documentaries, the exagerated news media and opportunistic-elected officials (and candidates) have devised a scheme to create the illusion that Motorcycle Clubs are Gangs and that these imaginary MC Gangs are creating an imaginary siege that involves drug manufacturing, prostitution, and other deplorable stuff like human trafficking, murder for hire, and any other cartoon fantasy that they can make up, to make legislators and other government agencies pony up cash.
Frankly, lots of things happened in the 1960's & 1970's, BUT, frankly, that was 50 years ago. We all did things in our youth that we would NEVER consider today.
Finally, the Law Enforcement political community has been spinning these cartoons and compiling "Fantasy OMG Binders" depicting us as criminals and they give these fairytale OMG Binders to legislators and demand money for their police "TASK FORCES" and departments.
In other words the political community in law enforcement has devised this scheme to fund their coffers and candidates on the backs of the Motorcycle Club community in this time of financial crisis for everyone. It's how they plan to extort the legislatures fortheir Police Dept clients and get them their TASK FORCE CASH.
Historically the Bike Rider Community has remained silent thru these blatant lies and police lobbyist are hoping and counting on us remaining silent, again.
Well, we Are NOT staying silent this time. This time, come one come all!!! WE ARE GOING TO FIGHT! We are going to fight them in the Courtrooms with Lawyers and Experts and we are going to meet them in the Capitols and in our Legislatures, from Sacramento to Salem -- to Mazoola -- to Washington DC. Our punches are going to be "Voters Registration and Politcal Capitol" and that means $$$ Cash, as in PAC fund Cash, to support our own Electeds and Candidates, too. We are raising money and registering Voters and Organizing our "1%'er Bike Rider Community". So let them know:
"Motorcle CLUBS Are NOT Street Gangs"
"Outlaw doesn't mean criminal"
WE are close to 1 Million Licensed Bike Riders just in California. We are Families, Union Members, home-owners, taxpayers and cornerstones in our Communities. Our neighborhoods are typically the safest in our cities.
Let's tell them "THEY CAN'T CALL US NAMES AND GET AWAY WITH IT", not without a fight! Lets fight them their way. Register to VOTE and get our patch so we can raise the money to get our Canidates and our Electeds, elected.
Thanks
Respectfully
Superman
Company Overview
MOTORCYCLE CLUBS ARE NOT STREET GANGS ™is a trademark and service mark of MCANSG PROGRAM, a California nonprofit corporation.
| mcansg2@gmail.com | |
| Website | http://www.MCANSG.org |
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Illustration of 4th Amendment....& 5th Amendment........
OFF THE WIRE
CHECK OUT THE VIDEO...
http://youtu.be/UfpRVlHDkQU
CHECK OUT THE VIDEO...
http://youtu.be/UfpRVlHDkQU
To search or remove any of your items an officer must have a search warrant. If you consent you have given up your rights. Problem today, is most don't know their rights. Most are willing to give up their rights. Most complain about losing their rights without doing a darn thing about it. Americans are getting harder and harder to find.
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This is on the Federal Level. Call Washington D.C. on this!!!!
OFF THE WIRE
This is on the Federal Level. Call Washington D.C. on this!!!!
“STOP MOTORCYCLE CHECKPOINT FUNDING ACT” INTRODUCED IN CONGRESS
Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has introduced “a bill to prohibit
the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) from providing funds to
state and local authorities for the purpose of creating motorcycle only
checkpoints.”
Filed on May 7, the Stop Motorcycle Checkpoint Funding Act, H.R. 1861,
“also contains language to force the DOT to focus motorcycle safety
efforts on crash prevention programs, not national helmet mandates,”
according to Rep. Sensenbrenner. “This will stop the DOT from
manipulating State policies with federal money.”
Contact your federal representatives and request they support H.R.
1861, and that they sign on as a co-sponsor of Sensenbrenner’s bill.
You can call members of Congress through the Capitol Switchboard at
(202) 224-3121.
KY's Delegation with direct phone numbers:
Rep. John Yarmuth - Louisville area
202-225-5401
Rep. Andy Barr - Lexington area
202-225-4706
Rep. Ed Whitfield - far Western KY
202-225-3115
Rep. Bret Guthrie - just west of Louisville area
202-225-3501
Rep. Thomas Massie - Northern KY
202-225-3465
Rep. Hal Rogers - Southeastern KY
202-225-4601
![]()
This is on the Federal Level. Call Washington D.C. on this!!!!
“STOP MOTORCYCLE CHECKPOINT FUNDING ACT” INTRODUCED IN CONGRESS
Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has introduced “a bill to prohibit
the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) from providing funds to
state and local authorities for the purpose of creating motorcycle only
checkpoints.”
Filed on May 7, the Stop Motorcycle Checkpoint Funding Act, H.R. 1861,
“also contains language to force the DOT to focus motorcycle safety
efforts on crash prevention programs, not national helmet mandates,”
according to Rep. Sensenbrenner. “This will stop the DOT from
manipulating State policies with federal money.”
Contact your federal representatives and request they support H.R.
1861, and that they sign on as a co-sponsor of Sensenbrenner’s bill.
You can call members of Congress through the Capitol Switchboard at
(202) 224-3121.
KY's Delegation with direct phone numbers:
Rep. John Yarmuth - Louisville area
202-225-5401
Rep. Andy Barr - Lexington area
202-225-4706
Rep. Ed Whitfield - far Western KY
202-225-3115
Rep. Bret Guthrie - just west of Louisville area
202-225-3501
Rep. Thomas Massie - Northern KY
202-225-3465
Rep. Hal Rogers - Southeastern KY
202-225-4601
↧
Mark Your Calendar for the Rosarito Beach Harley Run
RosaritoBeach Harley Run
Saturday, July 13, 2013
![https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/?view=att&th=13db3da0f5b5004b&attid=0.4&disp=inline&realattid=a1c9d8fbfe172d1e_0.4&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P-YbIBR9gFJR9kIvN8QIF6b&sadet=1368295529315&sads=68ch-XxjMQP0Guky0gxKUJX0SPg]()
Pre-Registration: The first 200 participants to per-register(Registration form Attached) for the upcoming Rosarito Harley Run, you will receive our HOT NEW 2013 Patch. We’re anticipating a record high for this summers run so please don’t hesitate and register now! The registration process is quite easy and while you’re at it, log onto: www.rollingdeep4charities.com and check out our updated website along with our continued sponsors.
Pre-Registration: The first 200 participants to per-register(Registration form Attached) for the upcoming Rosarito Harley Run, you will receive our HOT NEW 2013 Patch. We’re anticipating a record high for this summers run so please don’t hesitate and register now! The registration process is quite easy and while you’re at it, log onto: www.rollingdeep4charities.com and check out our updated website along with our continued sponsors.Shirts: T-shirts are now on sale: $20.00(See Attachment)
Email me your size(s) along with a check addressed to:
Martin Resendez
20239 Alta Hacienda Drive
Walnut , CA 91789
Hotel Info: Rosarito Beach Hotel
Martin Resendez
20239 Alta Hacienda Drive
Walnut , CA 91789
Hotel Info: Rosarito Beach Hotel
Reservations: 1-800-343-8582
SPECIAL RATE FOR ROSARITO CHARITY EVENT
Standard Rooms (1 King bed or 2 doubles) $89.00
Suites (1 bedroom suite with 1 queen bed) $109.00
Condominium Tower
1 Bed room condominium (for 2 adults) $139.00
Standard Rooms (1 King bed or 2 doubles) $89.00
Suites (1 bedroom suite with 1 queen bed) $109.00
Condominium Tower
1 Bed room condominium (for 2 adults) $139.00
Make your reservations early before it’s sold out!
Thank you for your continued support!
Thank you for your continued support!
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A RICO Primer
OFF THE WIRE
agingrebel.com
![A RICO Primer]()
Many readers, including defense attorneys, continue to seem confused by RICO. The usual response to a RICO charge is, “How can they do this?” The following passages, from the book Out Bad, might help clear up some confusion.
From Out Bad
RICO was the centerpiece of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. The law was written by a Senatorial aide named G. Robert Blakey, who is now the William and Dorothy O’Neill Professor of Law at Notre Dame. And, it is named for the fictional character Rico “Little Caesar” Bandello who was inhabited on film by Edward G. Robinson.
Robinson’s Rico character, in turn, was a parody of a notorious entrepreneur named Alphonse Gabriel “Scarface” Capone. “Every time a boy falls off a tricycle,” Capone once lamented, “every time a black cat has gray kittens, every time someone stubs a toe, every time there’s a murder or a fire or the Marines land in Nicaragua, the police and the newspapers holler ‘get Capone.’”
Capone regretted his reputation as a criminal. Starting in 1926 he tried to diversify into legitimate businesses. Eventually he discovered milk. “Honest to God, we’ve been in the wrong racket right along,” Capone exclaimed when he discovered that the profit margins were higher in milk than in whiskey. In February 1932, three months before he went to prison, Capone invested $50,000 in a legitimate business named Meadowmoor Dairies. In the 1960s the descendants of Capone liked to invest in bowling alleys because they were a good way to explain where the money came from. The upshot of that was that the main supplier of automatic pin setting machines, the AMF company, became prosperous enough to buy, and almost ruin, the Harley-Davidson company.
The original intent of the RICO statute – at least by the Congressmen who voted for it – was to protect legitimate dairies, bowling alleys and other businesses, from investment by thugs like Al Capone. That did not work because the threat posed to the nation by the Italian-American Mafia was always overblown and because as years went by the very same acts the Mafia had always been condemned for doing began to be accepted as standard business practice. The Mafia used to sell sin. The gangsters profited from gambling, usury, prostitution, liquor, drugs and theft. Now states, the nation, Indian tribes, rural counties in Nevada, credit card brands, mortgage lenders, banks in general and asset confiscating police all profit from exactly the same sins.
This may or may not be a good thing. It is certainly not something new in the American pageant. Wyatt Earp enforced the law for big banks and mining companies. Before that he was “muscle.” Before that he was a pimp. Honore de Balzac said, “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” Crime used to be understood as a kind of cheating for personal gain. Now a crime is anything. Racketeering is anything. The point is to find an excuse to make people suffer.
RICO, as it has evolved, is not intended to punish what most people consider to be crimes, which is to say actions like murder, robbery or what Roman Polanski did to that 13-year-old girl – crimes that lawyers call malum in se. RICO is designed to punish crimes lawyers call malum prohibitum which is Latin for actions that are illegal because they are illegal – like possessing illegal intoxicants or talking on the telephone about illegal intoxicants or smoking in a public place or having a loud and embarrassingly ugly argument with your wife on a Saturday night.
RICO prosecutions virtually ignore malum in se crimes, the actions you have always thought to be a “crime,” although at least a dozen of those did occur or emerge during the Mongols investigation. The predicate crimes that RICO exploits are often trivial and are always state crimes that until 1982 would have been prosecuted in state courts. For example, after the Labor Day Murders, none of the Hells Angels who were charged were ever found guilty of the murders. They confessed to talking about the murders. They confessed to hating Mongols.
Turkette
Then, almost five years later, on June 17, 1981 the law changed. Congress did not write a new law. The United States Supreme Court did. In a case called United States v Turkette, the Supreme Court changed the meaning of an existing law, called the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO. The decision wasn’t even close. Conservatives and liberals agreed.
Turkette opened a philosophical and legal Pandora’s Box that redefined the meaning of words like “crime” and “racket;” and redefined whatever separation or connection might once have existed or not existed between local, state and federal crimes. Today a federal prosecutor can federalize virtually any crime he wants federalized. Under federal law punching somebody in the nose can be a “predicate crime.” This evolution of federal law also created a special circumstance under which defendants can be denied a presumption of innocence.
The Turkette decision changed the meaning of “criminal enterprise” away from a legitimate bar, bowling alley or labor union that had been corrupted by “the mob.” The Scheidler decision a decade later decreed that the “criminal enterprise” no longer had to exist for the purpose of making money. After Turkette and Scheidler, a class reunion could be a criminal enterprise. A federal prosecutor only had to imagine it.
Scheidler
National Organization of Women, Inc. v Scheidler was a civil RICO case brought on behalf of abortion providers against a political organization called Operation Rescue. Joseph Scheidler, for whom the decision is named was one of the leaders of Operation Rescue. Members believed that first-term abortion was morally wrong and should be legally prohibited. They protested outside abortion clinics and harassed and intimidated the women who tried to enter. There was a national consensus that members of Operation Rescue were loutish, cruel and unreasonable. The National Organization of Women accused them of being a racket.
“’We cannot tolerate the use of threats and force by one group to impose its views on others,’” NOW’s lawyer. Fay Clayton explained.
A Federal District judge, dismissed the case on the grounds that RICO could only be applied to “enterprises” motivated by financial gain. The Supreme Court overruled him. A racket could then be any group who members were contemptuous of the law. It was a great victory for federal policemen and prosecutors.
Professor G. Robert Blakely, who wrote the RICO Act and gave it its ironic name, lamented that he had never meant for his law to be applied to political and fraternal groups. He said he was “concerned” that after Scheidler RICO might be used against labor unions and other fringe groups like gay rights activists. Since Scheidler, RICO has been most commonly used a basis for the prosecution of outlaw motorcycle clubs.
RICO Praxis
There are several obvious reasons for the federal prosecution of state crimes. First, RICO allows the investigation of these local crimes by vast police bureaucracies like the ATF. These bureaucracies are self perpetuating and have virtually unlimited resources. All they need to persist are crimes to investigate and RICO provides that. Secondly, RICO allows federal prosecutors a legal fiction that can be used to connect what are actually, in reality, unconnected crimes into a vast, imaginary, criminal conspiracy. Additionally, RICO prosecutors do not have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants actually committed the “predicate crimes” of which they are accused. State prosecutors do but RICO allows federal prosecutors to prove crimes by the civil standard which is a “preponderance of the evidence.” Finally, RICO provides a nice, secure, recession proof way for many lawyers, policemen, and prison guards to make a good living.
Under RICO, if Barack Obama, Henry Louis Gates and Angelina Jolie all like to attend an annual seminar together, and if three people at the seminar have committed two or more criminal predicates, like making a false statement to a federal official or shoplifting, they may be collectively and individually charged with racketeering. They could all be convicted of “the affecting interstate commerce” clause in the RICO law if they sent each other Christmas cards. And the penalty for that racketeering is twenty years in a federal prison.
Many bright and cynical people who should know better still blindly assume that what police do is investigate and solve real crimes. The opposite is true in racketeering investigations. What the ATF, particularly in biker investigations, does is find a way to tie crimes to many related individuals and then create crimes that can be used to prosecute them all. This law enforcement approach is called the “Enterprise Theory of Investigation” and it has a long and twisted history.
A sociologist named Edwin Sutherland coined the term “white collar crime” in the 1930s and wrote a book on the subject in 1949. Sutherland in essence, believed that all businessmen were criminals. With all the best of intentions, after the heartbreak of the Great Depression, Sutherland thought unethical businessmen should be treated worse than murderers. He thought they should be punished for their economic crimes so he advocated that a “person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation” should be presumed guilty until proven innocent. Sutherland also attacked the legal concept of mens rea, or guilty mind, which states that a person cannot be guilty of a crime unless he intends to commit a crime. Sutherland’s theories became popular in two seemingly disparate communities – academia and the FBI.
A Sutherland protégé named Donald Cressey created the “enterprise” concept that quickly became the Enterprise Theory of Investigation. Cressey was particularly not talking about bands of anti-materialistic, socially alienated bikers. He intended to oppose what he saw as social injustice. “The people of the business world are probably more criminalistic than the people of the slums,” he wrote in a book he co-authored with Sutherland. The idea of factoring wealth and privilege into the criminal justice equation was attractive to intellectuals. The federal police liked the parts that made prosecutions easier. Of course, in the manner of police bureaucracies everywhere, lest the amateurs know what the professionals are talking about, the Enterprise Theory of Investigation has become simply the ETI.
“The ETI has become the standard investigative model that the FBI employs in conducting investigations against major criminal organizations,” an FBI author explains. “Unlike traditional investigative theory, which relies on law enforcement’s ability to react to a previously committed crime, the ETI encourages a proactive attack on the structure of the criminal enterprise. Rather than viewing criminal acts as isolated crimes, the ETI attempts to show that individuals commit crimes in furtherance of the criminal enterprise itself. In other words, individuals commit criminal acts solely to benefit their criminal enterprise.”
The current idea of the criminal enterprise is very close to what Hannah Arendt meant when she wrote, “Classical totalitarianism predicts possible crimes on the basis of one’s status as an ‘objective enemy.’”
By “criminal enterprise,” the FBI author means any group any Federal Prosecutor decides to prosecute. The Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America have not yet been prosecuted as rackets because to do so would create a terrible public backlash. But there is no backlash when the organization is an outlaw motorcycle club. The Scheidler decision completed the legal magic trick by making the “financial motive” disappear.
In motorcycle club cases, in general and against the Mongols in particular, the government uses RICO to enforce a de facto “Bill of Attainder.” Bills, sometimes the word is “writs,” of Attainder are specifically prohibited by Article One, Clause three of the Constitution. This prohibition appears so early in the principal American law because it was one of the “rights” for which the revolutionaries fought and died. Technically, in America it is not illegal to belong to Al Qaeda, the Nazi party, the Ku Klux Klan, La Cosa Nostra, the Communist party or even a motorcycle club. In a case named Uphaus v Wyman in 1959, the Supreme Court called guilt by association “a thoroughly discredited doctrine.”
But RICO allows prosecutors to turn that ruling on its head. It is the same when mass media leads the general public to believe that motorcycle clubs, right wing militias and “cults” are criminal.
Motorcycle clubs are particularly prone to prosecution under RICO because that are so blatantly “organizations” and because their members tend to believe, as Harley-Davidson’s ad agency put it, “in bucking the system that’s built to smash individuals like bugs on a windshield.” More than tribes, more than thugs, motorcycle clubs are an American ideology. And, also for better or worse, a national consensus seems to be building that America is better for renouncing this ideology.
Under RICO, state crimes punishable by months or a year in jail can be punished like murders. RICO also allows the seizure of assets like motorcycles because, the indictments always allege, no motorcycles no motorcycle gang. The enterprise theory also allows indicia searches, which are searches for proof that someone actually belongs to a motorcycle club. In effect, these searches are house wrecking parties. They are inevitably very terrible. Doors and windows are blown open with explosives. Threats like pets are eliminated. Men are beaten and sometimes executed. Wives and children are roughed up. Much glass is broken. Family photo albums, computers and mementos are confiscated.
The nature and practice of modern policing and particularly of racketeering law may help readers understand the trivial nature of many of the charges made in the indictment against the Mongols. The fact that the Mongols are a gossipy family also worked against them because the men who infiltrated the club wrote down all of the gossip. The “preponderance of evidence” rule in RICO cases made that gossip more damning than it would ever be in an ordinary criminal case. The fact that club members often disagreed about Doc Cavazos gave undercover investigators an excuse to get members talking. And, in the end RICO meant that prosecutors didn’t have to use any of the mountains of “evidence” they had collected. They only had to threaten defendants with it. Actually, in many cases they didn’t even show defendants the “evidence.” In many cases prosecutors only alluded to the “evidence” or spread their arms wide and told public defenders the evidence was in two boxes “this big.”
Summing Up
Most of the nonsense that is written about motorcycle outlaws, that they are “international crime empires” and all of that, is based on an amalgamation of sixty years of American history and on a conflation of what most people understand to be the definition of racketeering with the technical, legal definition of racketeering. Most people understand racketeering, a term coined in the 1920s, to refer to something like “protection rackets” or corrupt labor unions, fixed horse races, loan sharking or the Countrywide Home Loan racket. But the Scheidler decision four years before had made it possible to convict almost any fringe group of racketeering.
Depending on where you draw the lines, there were at least four Mongols racketeering cases although subsequent RICO cases against the Pagans and the Outlaws resulted from the same investigation. The main case which began in one Los Angeles courtroom and eventually spread to another Los Angeles courtroom and a courtroom in Orange County, was named United States versus Cavazos and Others. A much smaller case called US versus Maestas and Others was adjudicated in Denver. The smallest racketeering case, against a lone Mongol, is called US versus Christopher Ablett and years after the Mongols bust it is still being contested in Oakland. The fourth case, a civil case over the matter of whether any cop can simply seize what he believes to be “Mongols paraphernalia” when he sees it, was called Ramon Rivera versus Ronnie A. Carter, Acting Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); John A. Torres, Special Agent in Charge, ATF Los Angeles Field Division; and Eric H. Holder, United States Attorney General.
The obvious clumsiness of even naming the main court cases hints at, but does not begin to explain, why so little was written about the Mongols after the raids in October 2008. None of the usual biker experts has written about the investigation. The prosecution has been, for all practical purposes, secret. But the case is still important enough that even people who detest the Mongols and “their ilk” should know about it because it is a bright marker on the road of flight from the old to the new and improved America.
The point of Operation Black Rain was to put every outlaw in America out bad – to seize his cut, his motorcycle and his memorabilia, to rough him up, wreck his home, scare him and tell him “don’t come around this club no more.” It was, simultaneously emotionally, financially and legally devastating for the men involved. The point of the “enforcement effort” described in this book was never to punish “criminals.” The point was to crush a set of seductive, romantic, dangerous, and maybe obsolete, ideas.
CONTINUE READING
agingrebel.com
agingrebel.com
Many readers, including defense attorneys, continue to seem confused by RICO. The usual response to a RICO charge is, “How can they do this?” The following passages, from the book Out Bad, might help clear up some confusion.
From Out Bad
RICO was the centerpiece of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. The law was written by a Senatorial aide named G. Robert Blakey, who is now the William and Dorothy O’Neill Professor of Law at Notre Dame. And, it is named for the fictional character Rico “Little Caesar” Bandello who was inhabited on film by Edward G. Robinson.
Robinson’s Rico character, in turn, was a parody of a notorious entrepreneur named Alphonse Gabriel “Scarface” Capone. “Every time a boy falls off a tricycle,” Capone once lamented, “every time a black cat has gray kittens, every time someone stubs a toe, every time there’s a murder or a fire or the Marines land in Nicaragua, the police and the newspapers holler ‘get Capone.’”
Capone regretted his reputation as a criminal. Starting in 1926 he tried to diversify into legitimate businesses. Eventually he discovered milk. “Honest to God, we’ve been in the wrong racket right along,” Capone exclaimed when he discovered that the profit margins were higher in milk than in whiskey. In February 1932, three months before he went to prison, Capone invested $50,000 in a legitimate business named Meadowmoor Dairies. In the 1960s the descendants of Capone liked to invest in bowling alleys because they were a good way to explain where the money came from. The upshot of that was that the main supplier of automatic pin setting machines, the AMF company, became prosperous enough to buy, and almost ruin, the Harley-Davidson company.
The original intent of the RICO statute – at least by the Congressmen who voted for it – was to protect legitimate dairies, bowling alleys and other businesses, from investment by thugs like Al Capone. That did not work because the threat posed to the nation by the Italian-American Mafia was always overblown and because as years went by the very same acts the Mafia had always been condemned for doing began to be accepted as standard business practice. The Mafia used to sell sin. The gangsters profited from gambling, usury, prostitution, liquor, drugs and theft. Now states, the nation, Indian tribes, rural counties in Nevada, credit card brands, mortgage lenders, banks in general and asset confiscating police all profit from exactly the same sins.
This may or may not be a good thing. It is certainly not something new in the American pageant. Wyatt Earp enforced the law for big banks and mining companies. Before that he was “muscle.” Before that he was a pimp. Honore de Balzac said, “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” Crime used to be understood as a kind of cheating for personal gain. Now a crime is anything. Racketeering is anything. The point is to find an excuse to make people suffer.
RICO, as it has evolved, is not intended to punish what most people consider to be crimes, which is to say actions like murder, robbery or what Roman Polanski did to that 13-year-old girl – crimes that lawyers call malum in se. RICO is designed to punish crimes lawyers call malum prohibitum which is Latin for actions that are illegal because they are illegal – like possessing illegal intoxicants or talking on the telephone about illegal intoxicants or smoking in a public place or having a loud and embarrassingly ugly argument with your wife on a Saturday night.
RICO prosecutions virtually ignore malum in se crimes, the actions you have always thought to be a “crime,” although at least a dozen of those did occur or emerge during the Mongols investigation. The predicate crimes that RICO exploits are often trivial and are always state crimes that until 1982 would have been prosecuted in state courts. For example, after the Labor Day Murders, none of the Hells Angels who were charged were ever found guilty of the murders. They confessed to talking about the murders. They confessed to hating Mongols.
Turkette
Then, almost five years later, on June 17, 1981 the law changed. Congress did not write a new law. The United States Supreme Court did. In a case called United States v Turkette, the Supreme Court changed the meaning of an existing law, called the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO. The decision wasn’t even close. Conservatives and liberals agreed.
Turkette opened a philosophical and legal Pandora’s Box that redefined the meaning of words like “crime” and “racket;” and redefined whatever separation or connection might once have existed or not existed between local, state and federal crimes. Today a federal prosecutor can federalize virtually any crime he wants federalized. Under federal law punching somebody in the nose can be a “predicate crime.” This evolution of federal law also created a special circumstance under which defendants can be denied a presumption of innocence.
The Turkette decision changed the meaning of “criminal enterprise” away from a legitimate bar, bowling alley or labor union that had been corrupted by “the mob.” The Scheidler decision a decade later decreed that the “criminal enterprise” no longer had to exist for the purpose of making money. After Turkette and Scheidler, a class reunion could be a criminal enterprise. A federal prosecutor only had to imagine it.
Scheidler
National Organization of Women, Inc. v Scheidler was a civil RICO case brought on behalf of abortion providers against a political organization called Operation Rescue. Joseph Scheidler, for whom the decision is named was one of the leaders of Operation Rescue. Members believed that first-term abortion was morally wrong and should be legally prohibited. They protested outside abortion clinics and harassed and intimidated the women who tried to enter. There was a national consensus that members of Operation Rescue were loutish, cruel and unreasonable. The National Organization of Women accused them of being a racket.
“’We cannot tolerate the use of threats and force by one group to impose its views on others,’” NOW’s lawyer. Fay Clayton explained.
A Federal District judge, dismissed the case on the grounds that RICO could only be applied to “enterprises” motivated by financial gain. The Supreme Court overruled him. A racket could then be any group who members were contemptuous of the law. It was a great victory for federal policemen and prosecutors.
Professor G. Robert Blakely, who wrote the RICO Act and gave it its ironic name, lamented that he had never meant for his law to be applied to political and fraternal groups. He said he was “concerned” that after Scheidler RICO might be used against labor unions and other fringe groups like gay rights activists. Since Scheidler, RICO has been most commonly used a basis for the prosecution of outlaw motorcycle clubs.
RICO Praxis
There are several obvious reasons for the federal prosecution of state crimes. First, RICO allows the investigation of these local crimes by vast police bureaucracies like the ATF. These bureaucracies are self perpetuating and have virtually unlimited resources. All they need to persist are crimes to investigate and RICO provides that. Secondly, RICO allows federal prosecutors a legal fiction that can be used to connect what are actually, in reality, unconnected crimes into a vast, imaginary, criminal conspiracy. Additionally, RICO prosecutors do not have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants actually committed the “predicate crimes” of which they are accused. State prosecutors do but RICO allows federal prosecutors to prove crimes by the civil standard which is a “preponderance of the evidence.” Finally, RICO provides a nice, secure, recession proof way for many lawyers, policemen, and prison guards to make a good living.
Under RICO, if Barack Obama, Henry Louis Gates and Angelina Jolie all like to attend an annual seminar together, and if three people at the seminar have committed two or more criminal predicates, like making a false statement to a federal official or shoplifting, they may be collectively and individually charged with racketeering. They could all be convicted of “the affecting interstate commerce” clause in the RICO law if they sent each other Christmas cards. And the penalty for that racketeering is twenty years in a federal prison.
Many bright and cynical people who should know better still blindly assume that what police do is investigate and solve real crimes. The opposite is true in racketeering investigations. What the ATF, particularly in biker investigations, does is find a way to tie crimes to many related individuals and then create crimes that can be used to prosecute them all. This law enforcement approach is called the “Enterprise Theory of Investigation” and it has a long and twisted history.
A sociologist named Edwin Sutherland coined the term “white collar crime” in the 1930s and wrote a book on the subject in 1949. Sutherland in essence, believed that all businessmen were criminals. With all the best of intentions, after the heartbreak of the Great Depression, Sutherland thought unethical businessmen should be treated worse than murderers. He thought they should be punished for their economic crimes so he advocated that a “person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation” should be presumed guilty until proven innocent. Sutherland also attacked the legal concept of mens rea, or guilty mind, which states that a person cannot be guilty of a crime unless he intends to commit a crime. Sutherland’s theories became popular in two seemingly disparate communities – academia and the FBI.
A Sutherland protégé named Donald Cressey created the “enterprise” concept that quickly became the Enterprise Theory of Investigation. Cressey was particularly not talking about bands of anti-materialistic, socially alienated bikers. He intended to oppose what he saw as social injustice. “The people of the business world are probably more criminalistic than the people of the slums,” he wrote in a book he co-authored with Sutherland. The idea of factoring wealth and privilege into the criminal justice equation was attractive to intellectuals. The federal police liked the parts that made prosecutions easier. Of course, in the manner of police bureaucracies everywhere, lest the amateurs know what the professionals are talking about, the Enterprise Theory of Investigation has become simply the ETI.
“The ETI has become the standard investigative model that the FBI employs in conducting investigations against major criminal organizations,” an FBI author explains. “Unlike traditional investigative theory, which relies on law enforcement’s ability to react to a previously committed crime, the ETI encourages a proactive attack on the structure of the criminal enterprise. Rather than viewing criminal acts as isolated crimes, the ETI attempts to show that individuals commit crimes in furtherance of the criminal enterprise itself. In other words, individuals commit criminal acts solely to benefit their criminal enterprise.”
The current idea of the criminal enterprise is very close to what Hannah Arendt meant when she wrote, “Classical totalitarianism predicts possible crimes on the basis of one’s status as an ‘objective enemy.’”
By “criminal enterprise,” the FBI author means any group any Federal Prosecutor decides to prosecute. The Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America have not yet been prosecuted as rackets because to do so would create a terrible public backlash. But there is no backlash when the organization is an outlaw motorcycle club. The Scheidler decision completed the legal magic trick by making the “financial motive” disappear.
In motorcycle club cases, in general and against the Mongols in particular, the government uses RICO to enforce a de facto “Bill of Attainder.” Bills, sometimes the word is “writs,” of Attainder are specifically prohibited by Article One, Clause three of the Constitution. This prohibition appears so early in the principal American law because it was one of the “rights” for which the revolutionaries fought and died. Technically, in America it is not illegal to belong to Al Qaeda, the Nazi party, the Ku Klux Klan, La Cosa Nostra, the Communist party or even a motorcycle club. In a case named Uphaus v Wyman in 1959, the Supreme Court called guilt by association “a thoroughly discredited doctrine.”
But RICO allows prosecutors to turn that ruling on its head. It is the same when mass media leads the general public to believe that motorcycle clubs, right wing militias and “cults” are criminal.
Motorcycle clubs are particularly prone to prosecution under RICO because that are so blatantly “organizations” and because their members tend to believe, as Harley-Davidson’s ad agency put it, “in bucking the system that’s built to smash individuals like bugs on a windshield.” More than tribes, more than thugs, motorcycle clubs are an American ideology. And, also for better or worse, a national consensus seems to be building that America is better for renouncing this ideology.
Under RICO, state crimes punishable by months or a year in jail can be punished like murders. RICO also allows the seizure of assets like motorcycles because, the indictments always allege, no motorcycles no motorcycle gang. The enterprise theory also allows indicia searches, which are searches for proof that someone actually belongs to a motorcycle club. In effect, these searches are house wrecking parties. They are inevitably very terrible. Doors and windows are blown open with explosives. Threats like pets are eliminated. Men are beaten and sometimes executed. Wives and children are roughed up. Much glass is broken. Family photo albums, computers and mementos are confiscated.
The nature and practice of modern policing and particularly of racketeering law may help readers understand the trivial nature of many of the charges made in the indictment against the Mongols. The fact that the Mongols are a gossipy family also worked against them because the men who infiltrated the club wrote down all of the gossip. The “preponderance of evidence” rule in RICO cases made that gossip more damning than it would ever be in an ordinary criminal case. The fact that club members often disagreed about Doc Cavazos gave undercover investigators an excuse to get members talking. And, in the end RICO meant that prosecutors didn’t have to use any of the mountains of “evidence” they had collected. They only had to threaten defendants with it. Actually, in many cases they didn’t even show defendants the “evidence.” In many cases prosecutors only alluded to the “evidence” or spread their arms wide and told public defenders the evidence was in two boxes “this big.”
Summing Up
Most of the nonsense that is written about motorcycle outlaws, that they are “international crime empires” and all of that, is based on an amalgamation of sixty years of American history and on a conflation of what most people understand to be the definition of racketeering with the technical, legal definition of racketeering. Most people understand racketeering, a term coined in the 1920s, to refer to something like “protection rackets” or corrupt labor unions, fixed horse races, loan sharking or the Countrywide Home Loan racket. But the Scheidler decision four years before had made it possible to convict almost any fringe group of racketeering.
Depending on where you draw the lines, there were at least four Mongols racketeering cases although subsequent RICO cases against the Pagans and the Outlaws resulted from the same investigation. The main case which began in one Los Angeles courtroom and eventually spread to another Los Angeles courtroom and a courtroom in Orange County, was named United States versus Cavazos and Others. A much smaller case called US versus Maestas and Others was adjudicated in Denver. The smallest racketeering case, against a lone Mongol, is called US versus Christopher Ablett and years after the Mongols bust it is still being contested in Oakland. The fourth case, a civil case over the matter of whether any cop can simply seize what he believes to be “Mongols paraphernalia” when he sees it, was called Ramon Rivera versus Ronnie A. Carter, Acting Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); John A. Torres, Special Agent in Charge, ATF Los Angeles Field Division; and Eric H. Holder, United States Attorney General.
The obvious clumsiness of even naming the main court cases hints at, but does not begin to explain, why so little was written about the Mongols after the raids in October 2008. None of the usual biker experts has written about the investigation. The prosecution has been, for all practical purposes, secret. But the case is still important enough that even people who detest the Mongols and “their ilk” should know about it because it is a bright marker on the road of flight from the old to the new and improved America.
The point of Operation Black Rain was to put every outlaw in America out bad – to seize his cut, his motorcycle and his memorabilia, to rough him up, wreck his home, scare him and tell him “don’t come around this club no more.” It was, simultaneously emotionally, financially and legally devastating for the men involved. The point of the “enforcement effort” described in this book was never to punish “criminals.” The point was to crush a set of seductive, romantic, dangerous, and maybe obsolete, ideas.
CONTINUE READING
agingrebel.com
↧
How To Piss Off A Cop, QUOTE THE CONSTITUTION........
OFF THE WIRE
Edmond Dantes
copblock.org
QUOTE THE CONSTITUTION
As many of you probably know, the State of California recently passed a law saying a warrant is needed for police to search your cellphone if you are placed under arrest. Policeone.com picked up the story and the police officers who commented on the story let their true feelings on the Constitution be known.
In the story, the author noted that this law, which forces police officers to follow the Constitution, was opposed by The Peace Officers Research Association of California. Why did the oppose it? Well because it threatens their auhtority to do whatever they want, law be damned.
PoliceOne.com user kas9kas posted this on the website,
Hey Johnny Lubeck, what do you think about this?
Hey Thomas John Staubly Jr., you’re the next contestant on “I hate you private citizens who make us follow the law, I hope you fucking die” (In case there is confusion, I don’t hope he dies, I’m implying he wants you to die)
Like I said earlier though, there are good cops who are in favor of this new law, I was unaware there was so many thuggin gangbangers with badges, like Christopher Powell.
But the real problem is that Probable Cause is never really defined in the Constitution. Cops use this all the time, they just saw “I had probable cause to believe that…….” and they can search anything without a warrant.
It’s time to stand up for your rights, if you aren’t already. If you are pulled over, and a cop asks if he can search something (your car, cell phone, laptop, whatever) tell him no. Just be prepared to deal with a pissed off cop, and maybe carry a pocket constitution with you at all times.
Bottom-line, the majority of the cops today are punk ass cowards who are in their line of work because they can prey on civilians. Cops either want to take your money and property or injure you. It’s why they’re cops. Take away their badges and guns and their true pussy character comes out. Ever notice how often lone cops shoot unarmed civilians or that most physical confrontations involve several cops beating the shit out of one person?
That’s because the cops these days are pussies. When I was a kid almost all of the cops were World War II or Korean War veterans. They weren’t afraid to duke it out, one on one with a suspect. They almost never pulled their guns. Nowadays, nothing but a bunch pussies. They will shoot you or gang thump you for looking at them wrong. They will shoot your dog for target practice. Not only are today’s cops sadistic cowards, they also break more laws than the average civilian. And that’s because they think they are superior to everyone else The law doesn’t apply to them. In California, most cops game the system for their own benefit. One example is the well documented phenomena of the majority of cops getting some kind of disability within a year of retirement. That way they pad their already outrageously large pensions with tax free disability payments. In the civilian world that’s called fraud. In the cop world it’s them taking something from civilians that cops are owed because they are superior.
Probable cause was never meant to be read as one term, viewed as reasonable suspicion of any “crime”. The most legitimate way in which we should read that phrase: probably have a cause or the cause is probable. And that one simple way of reading this often misinterpreted clause clears up all the mystery.
A cause in the common law of England meant a cause of action, a suit, a claim. And in these actions one would have to prove up their standing by presenting the corpus delecti, the actual proof of harm or injury. Thus, properly understood and enforced, the probable cause requirement of the 4th Amendment would eliminate the enforcement of virtually all victimless crimes. Too bad, so sad, it ain’t like that.
The blatant misconduct of law enforcement officers is horrifying. These are the people that we trust to uphold the Constitution of the United State of America, protect our civil liberties, and keep order in our society. When any one of them has the audacity to break the trust that has been placed in them by the citizens, it sickens me to my core.
I am all for doing the job that needs to be done, especially in the case of felons. However, what I am NOT a supporter of is the willingness of those sworn to uphold the law to break it. That spells doom and gloom for our nation if we allow those with authority, of any kind, to misuse it and abuse it.
A lawyer once came to speak at my college for Constitution Day. He had recently defended a man charged with murder, who was later found not guilty. When asked why he would choose to defend a person like that, he said, it may have been reprehensible for him to defend a person like that, but just because they are accused of a crime doesn’t mean that they lose the rights afforded to them by the Constitution of the United States of America. It may not always be what’s right, but that’s at least fair.
There should be no isolated incidents,but like you said,there are, most search warrant “probable cause” is gained, when a cop gives a “snitch” a break on an arrest, for information about other “crimes”,and a snitch will stretch the story as much as “it” has too.I’m sure you know the “MAJORITY” of the time,cops word the police report to their benefit. Most judges hand out search warrants like Halloween candy,and thats the real “SOB STORY”. But you believe cops should break the law,in order to enforce it. Bet back in school, when the teacher left the classroom,you filled her in on who did what. Then went home to tell mom your version of how you were, “KICKIN ASS AND TAKIN NAMES” Sorry I’m merely voicing an opinion from the other side.
Edmond Dantes
copblock.org
QUOTE THE CONSTITUTION
As many of you probably know, the State of California recently passed a law saying a warrant is needed for police to search your cellphone if you are placed under arrest. Policeone.com picked up the story and the police officers who commented on the story let their true feelings on the Constitution be known.
In the story, the author noted that this law, which forces police officers to follow the Constitution, was opposed by The Peace Officers Research Association of California. Why did the oppose it? Well because it threatens their auhtority to do whatever they want, law be damned.
The Peace Officers Research Association of California, which opposed the law, argued: “Restricting the authority of a peace officer to search an arrestee unduly restricts their ability to apply the law, fight crime, discover evidence valuable to an investigation and protect the citizens of California.”And that is just the tip of the iceberg, the quotes on the PoliceOne website and on their facebook page just go to prove what we already knew, cops are not fans of the Constitution when it comes to restrictions on their authority. These people crave power, whether or not it is why they took the job, the power gets ahold of most officers and like the famous saying “power currupts”
PoliceOne.com user kas9kas posted this on the website,
A person arrested loses their fourth ammendment when Peace Officers seize their person and property. Anything found on an arrestee has always been fair game in the courts eyes. If we find counterfeit money in a wallet, a childs porno picture, or narcotics, it was still evidence that was legally obtained by arrest.User sevans is really in favor of “Law Enforcement” Officers following the law
Boy am I glad I left California. The whacko legislature and governor know not what they do, unless allowing more criminals to avoid prosecution is their intent. I cannot believe they enacted this law after the California Supreme Court, one of the most liberal in the Country, upheld the search. I started in California and retired from Oregon. I’m truly surprised the liberal Oregon Court (either Court of Appeals, or Supreme Court) didn’t follow California.I’ve noticed time and time again that anyone that is opposed to something a cop does, or just pisses them off in anyway, is a liberal in the minds of a PoliceOne.com commenter. I’ve yet to figure that out. But before I go on, let’s just take a look at what the US Constitution has to say about searching a persons property
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.This is an amendment that was written because British soldiers and were allowed to search any home they liked, at any time and for whatever reason they wanted. And since many Founding Fathers were smugglers, they did not like this. But if you want to piss off a cop, just quote the 4th amendment. Make sure you tell them that you have the right to be secure in your effects. This really sets them off, especially PoliceOne user rhaney1313
OK everybody…lets all of us standup and applause the absolute morons in Sacramento and that awesome looser Gov. Jerry (Sunshine) Brown. He and his merrymen and dancing babes did it again. Another BAD law………….From all of us real Californians…My apologies to the United States of America and to the citizens in each State.That’s right, a real Californian is against getting a warrant to search someones property, and that is what your cell phone and any other electronic device you have in your car is, your private property. Now not all cops are against the Constitution restricting their path to absolute authority, USO131 is one of the good guys.
When you start eliminating the need for a warrant you start to go down a very slippery slope of the loss of your constitutional rights..Glockman39 is another one of the good guys, however small that group may be. Here he responds to rhaney1313
If you can’t wrap your head around what I am saying then wrap it around this… Some one is arrested for DUI and all the contents in their electronic device was downloaded? The key here is the subject was arrested… Their cell phone was searched even when the reason for the arrest had nothing to do with possibly of any evidence to USE AGAINST THEM MIGHT BE ON THAT CELL PHONE…
Again remember this YOU CAN AND WILL BE SEARCHED LIKE THIS AS WELL…
You want to stand up an applaud the upholding of the constitution? That document which you were, I assume, sworn to uphold?A warrant isn’t always needed, most people are too afraid to say no to an officer, and they know it. One trick cops use all the time, one which I fell for during a traffic stop a few years back, is just simply asking the person if they can search their property, as coolcoin points out
Tell me, what reason would you have to search an individual’s cell phone for, say, an open container arrest? Are you hoping to find pictures of him imbibing on previous occasions?
We have the fourth amendment, and warrants signed by judges for a reason. The same reason we have the second amendment right to protect ourselves with individual firearms ownership.
Really, folks, I can’t fathom why some of you are so upset by this, unless you are too lazy to put in the extra effort required to protect individual liberty.
And this isn’t a left/right issue. It’s a rule of law issue.
Hey, just ask for consent, most of the time you will get it, just like consent to search a car. The morons think they are smarter than you, and if they give you permission, they are banking on you being too lazy to follow through, because “they have nothing to hide”, right?Yep, you heard it correct, this officer thinks we’re all morons, at least he admits it. Over at the PoliceOne.com facebook page, where officers are always more bold and hateful, commenter Matt Osborne expresses his disdain by claiming his job will me millions of times harder if he has to follow the rules he swore to uphold.
damn bunch of tree huggers. California is the i hate police state lets make their job 8000000000000 times harder. Every police officer just needs to take a day off at the same time and see how they fill about that.Nothing says “fuck you, respect my authority” like an idle threat written with the wrong word (see how they FEEL about that)
Hey Johnny Lubeck, what do you think about this?
The best thing that can happen for the country is a west coast earthquake, where it seperates Cali, and it floats out into the pacific.Oh, I see. That was rather……harsh.
Hey Thomas John Staubly Jr., you’re the next contestant on “I hate you private citizens who make us follow the law, I hope you fucking die” (In case there is confusion, I don’t hope he dies, I’m implying he wants you to die)
next their gunna make officers get a warrant before they can even knock on their door….this is absurd. thank god i live in a redf state that is actually pro-law enforcement and actually let them do their damn jobsOh I’m sorry Thomas, you weren’t done? You had something else to say about freedom loving Americans who love the Constitution and limits on governmental power, like someone else, who was it? Oh yeah, the Founding Fathers. But anyways, I believe you had something else to add to the conversation later on
lets face it, these people who take issues with these type of searches arent hurt or offended by the searches. the ones who take issue with this are the anti leo and/or thuggin gangbangers trying to get out of a charge. if you dont have anything to hide and arent committing any crime, then quess what, you likely wont get searched. keep your nose out of crime and this wont be an issue. the majority of supreme court decisions are made from some thug trying to get out of a charge or some liberal nut case who is super anti-leoOh that’s right, anyone who stands up for their rights must be a….hold on, I wanna get this term correct…..thuggin gangbanger. Well he showed us! Good upstanding people wipe their ass with the Constitution, thuggin gangbangers are the ones who want their rights to be upheld.
Like I said earlier though, there are good cops who are in favor of this new law, I was unaware there was so many thuggin gangbangers with badges, like Christopher Powell.
some of you are crazy or lazy…how is it anti-le to say that someones cell phone is subject to protections of the 4th ammendment? Ask somebody if you can look at their cell phone, if they tell you no, than get a warrant…if you don’t have PC or enough to get a warrant, then you probably have no business looking anyway.It’s really scary to see what cops honestly think of this ruling. So many of them are bold enough to come right out and say they don’t want to have to get a warrant to search a persons property, even though they swore to uphold a document that says they do.
But the real problem is that Probable Cause is never really defined in the Constitution. Cops use this all the time, they just saw “I had probable cause to believe that…….” and they can search anything without a warrant.
It’s time to stand up for your rights, if you aren’t already. If you are pulled over, and a cop asks if he can search something (your car, cell phone, laptop, whatever) tell him no. Just be prepared to deal with a pissed off cop, and maybe carry a pocket constitution with you at all times.
Bottom-line, the majority of the cops today are punk ass cowards who are in their line of work because they can prey on civilians. Cops either want to take your money and property or injure you. It’s why they’re cops. Take away their badges and guns and their true pussy character comes out. Ever notice how often lone cops shoot unarmed civilians or that most physical confrontations involve several cops beating the shit out of one person?
That’s because the cops these days are pussies. When I was a kid almost all of the cops were World War II or Korean War veterans. They weren’t afraid to duke it out, one on one with a suspect. They almost never pulled their guns. Nowadays, nothing but a bunch pussies. They will shoot you or gang thump you for looking at them wrong. They will shoot your dog for target practice. Not only are today’s cops sadistic cowards, they also break more laws than the average civilian. And that’s because they think they are superior to everyone else The law doesn’t apply to them. In California, most cops game the system for their own benefit. One example is the well documented phenomena of the majority of cops getting some kind of disability within a year of retirement. That way they pad their already outrageously large pensions with tax free disability payments. In the civilian world that’s called fraud. In the cop world it’s them taking something from civilians that cops are owed because they are superior.
Probable cause was never meant to be read as one term, viewed as reasonable suspicion of any “crime”. The most legitimate way in which we should read that phrase: probably have a cause or the cause is probable. And that one simple way of reading this often misinterpreted clause clears up all the mystery.
A cause in the common law of England meant a cause of action, a suit, a claim. And in these actions one would have to prove up their standing by presenting the corpus delecti, the actual proof of harm or injury. Thus, properly understood and enforced, the probable cause requirement of the 4th Amendment would eliminate the enforcement of virtually all victimless crimes. Too bad, so sad, it ain’t like that.
The blatant misconduct of law enforcement officers is horrifying. These are the people that we trust to uphold the Constitution of the United State of America, protect our civil liberties, and keep order in our society. When any one of them has the audacity to break the trust that has been placed in them by the citizens, it sickens me to my core.
I am all for doing the job that needs to be done, especially in the case of felons. However, what I am NOT a supporter of is the willingness of those sworn to uphold the law to break it. That spells doom and gloom for our nation if we allow those with authority, of any kind, to misuse it and abuse it.
A lawyer once came to speak at my college for Constitution Day. He had recently defended a man charged with murder, who was later found not guilty. When asked why he would choose to defend a person like that, he said, it may have been reprehensible for him to defend a person like that, but just because they are accused of a crime doesn’t mean that they lose the rights afforded to them by the Constitution of the United States of America. It may not always be what’s right, but that’s at least fair.
There should be no isolated incidents,but like you said,there are, most search warrant “probable cause” is gained, when a cop gives a “snitch” a break on an arrest, for information about other “crimes”,and a snitch will stretch the story as much as “it” has too.I’m sure you know the “MAJORITY” of the time,cops word the police report to their benefit. Most judges hand out search warrants like Halloween candy,and thats the real “SOB STORY”. But you believe cops should break the law,in order to enforce it. Bet back in school, when the teacher left the classroom,you filled her in on who did what. Then went home to tell mom your version of how you were, “KICKIN ASS AND TAKIN NAMES” Sorry I’m merely voicing an opinion from the other side.
↧
Supreme Court Says Never Speak to a Police Officer
Supreme Court Says Never Speak to a Police Officer
PoliceCrimes.com Breaking News and Top Stories
Supreme Court Says Never Speak to a Police Officer
by WaTcHeR
Read what rights you have when dealing with a police officer http://www.policecrimes.com/police.html
Washington — The Supreme Court retreated from strict enforcement of the famous Miranda decision on Tuesday, ruling that a crime suspect's words could be used against him if he failed to clearly invoke his rights clearly and, instead, answered a single question.
In the past, the court has said the "burden rests on the government" to show that a crime suspect has "knowingly and intelligently waived" his rights.
But in a 5-4 decision Tuesday, the court said that a citizen must invoke his rights. If he fails to do so, anything he says can be used to convict him, the justices said.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that police were "not required to obtain a waiver" of the suspect's "right to remain silent before interrogating him."
In this case, Michigan police had informed the suspect, Van Thompkins, of his rights, including the right to remain silent. Thompkins said he understood, but he did not tell the officer he wanted to stop the questioning or speak to a lawyer.
But he sat in a chair and said nothing for about two hours and 45 minutes. At that point, the officer asked, "Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?"
"Yes," Thompson said and looked away. He refused to sign a confession or speak further, but he was convicted of first-degree murder, based largely on his one-word reply.
The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Thompkins' conviction on the grounds that the use of the incriminating answer violated his right against self-incrimination under the Miranda decision.
The Supreme Court reversed that ruling of a lower court ruling and reinstated the conviction. "A suspect who has received and understood the Miranda warnings and has not invoked his Miranda rights waives the right to remain silent by making an uncoerced statement to the police," Kennedy said. He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
The court ruled that an ambiguous situation would be treated in favor of the police.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent longer than the majority opinion, argued that the majority misread precedent and reached beyond the facts of the case to impose a tough new rule against defendants.
"Today's decision turns Miranda upside down," Justice Sotomayor wrote. "Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent—which, counter intuitively, requires them to speak."
Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer joined her dissent.
The majority ruling is in line with the position taken by the Obama administration and Supreme Court nominee U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan. In December, she filed a brief on the side of Michigan prosecutors and argued that "the government need not prove that a suspect expressly waived his rights."
She said that "if a suspect knows and understands his Miranda rights," anything he says can be used against him in court."Cops that lie, need to die!" A police officer that lies to get an arrest or send someone to prison should be shot.
"In the U.S., a cop with a gun can commit the most heinous crime and be given the benefit of the doubt."
"The U.S. Government does not have rights, it has privileges delegated to it by the people."
WaTcHeR
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Re: Supreme Court Says Never Speak to a Police Officer
by WaTcHeR » 02 Aug 2010, Mon 8:30 pm
Supreme Court trims Miranda warning rights: `Death by a thousand cuts' says defense attorney
You have the right to remain silent, but only if you tell the police that you're remaining silent.
You have a right to a lawyer — before, during and after questioning, even though the police don't have to tell you exactly when the lawyer can be with you. If you can't afford a lawyer, one will be provided to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you, which, by the way, are only good for the next two weeks?
The Supreme Court made major revisions to the now familiar Miranda warnings this year. The rulings will change the ways police, lawyers and criminal suspects interact amid what experts call an attempt to pull back some of the rights that Americans have become used to over recent decades.
The high court has made clear it's not going to eliminate the requirement that police officers give suspects a Miranda warning, so it is tinkering around the edges, said Jeffrey L. Fisher, co-chair of the amicus committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
"It's death by a thousand cuts," Fisher said. "For the past 20-25 years, as the court has turned more conservative on law and order issues, it has been whittling away at Miranda and doing everything it can to ease the admissibility of confessions that police wriggle out of suspects."
The court placed limits on the so-called Miranda rights three times during the just-ended session. Experts viewed the large number of rulings as a statistical aberration, rather than a full-fledged attempt to get rid of the famous 1966 decision. The original ruling emerged from police questioning of Ernesto Miranda in a rape and kidnapping case in Phoenix. It required officers to tell suspects taken into custody that they have the right to remain silent and to have a lawyer represent them, even if they can't afford one.
The court's three decisions "indicate a desire to prune back the rules somewhat," Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victims' rights group. "But I don't think any overruling of Miranda is in the near future. I think that controversy is pretty much dead."
The Supreme Court in 2000 upheld the requirement that the Miranda warning be read to criminal suspects.
This year's Supreme Court decisions did not mandate changes in the wording of Miranda warnings read by arresting police officers. The most common version is now familiar to most Americans, thanks to television police shows: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?"
However, the court did approve one state version of the Miranda warnings that did not specifically inform suspects that they had a right to have a lawyer present during their police questioning.
The Miranda warning used in parts of Florida told suspects: "You have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any of our questions. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed for you without cost and before any questioning. You have the right to use any of these rights at any time you want during this interview."
Lawyers — and the Florida Supreme Court — said that didn't make clear that lawyers can be present as the police are doing their questioning. But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing the 7-2 majority decision, said all the required information was there.
"Nothing in the words used indicated that counsel's presence would be restricted after the questioning commenced," Ginsburg said. "Instead, the warning communicated that the right to counsel carried forward to and through the interrogation."
The next day, the court unanimously limited how long Miranda rights are valid.
The high court said for the first time that a suspect's request for a lawyer is good for only 14 days after the person is released from police custody. The 9-0 ruling pulled back from an earlier decision that said that police must halt all questioning for all time if a suspect asks for a lawyer.
Police can now attempt to question a suspect who asked for a lawyer — once the person has been released from custody for at least two weeks — without violating the person's constitutional rights and without having to repeat the Miranda warning.
"In our judgment, 14 days will provide plenty of time for the suspect to get reacclimated to his normal life, to consult with friends and counsel and to shake off any residual coercive effects of his prior custody," said Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion.
And finally, the court's conservatives used their 5-4 advantage to rule that suspects must break their silence and tell police they are going to remain quiet if they want to invoke their "right to remain silent" and stop an interrogation, just as they must tell police that they want a lawyer.
All the criminal suspect needs to say is he or she is remaining silent, wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy. "Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his 'right to cut off questioning.' Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent."
But Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority's decision "turns Miranda upside down."
"American citizens must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent — which counter intuitively requires them to speak." "At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so."
Police officers will look at these decisions and incorporate them into their training, said James Pasco of the National Fraternal Order of Police. "Officers are expected to adapt to changes required by the Supreme Court," Pasco said. "This will be no different."
But Fisher thinks the court's Miranda decisions will make it easier for police to get confessions out of people who don't want to confess. "Those decisions open up ways for cops to work around Miranda," Fisher said.
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0802/expert ... k-miranda/"Cops that lie, need to die!" A police officer that lies to get an arrest or send someone to prison should be shot.
"In the U.S., a cop with a gun can commit the most heinous crime and be given the benefit of the doubt."
"The U.S. Government does not have rights, it has privileges delegated to it by the people."
WaTcHeR
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Re: Supreme Court Says Never Speak to a Police Officer
by WaTcHeR » 02 Aug 2010, Mon 8:31 pm
When U.S. law enforcement officials captured suspected Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, they did the unthinkable: They read him his Miranda rights. Despite the fact that Shahzad continued to cooperate after the reading of his rights, defense hawks criticized the move as soft on terrorism. Now, one member of Congress has introduced a startling solution:
The bill filed Thursday by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) would change federal law by creating a procedure to question a suspected terrorist for up to four days before taking him or her to court without jeopardizing prosecutors’ ability to use statements made by a suspect during that time.
It would also express Congress’s view that authorities can delay reading Miranda warnings “for as long as is necessary” to elicit intelligence from a terror suspect.
The White House has yet to take a position on Schiff's bill, but you can bet Attorney General Eric Holder will like what he sees.
Under the bill, the attorney general or the director of national intelligence or their top deputies could certify to a court that an individual is a terrorism suspect and “may be able to provide intelligence to protect the public safety.” In such cases, authorities could question the individual for up to 48 hours without facing an automatic presumption that the statements couldn’t be used in court. A judge or magistrate could extend the period for another 48 hours “for good cause shown.”
While "for good cause shown" sounds like the legal equivalent of "just for fun," Ben Wittes, an analyst at the Brookings Institution, said he liked the bill, except for the only-four-days-of-detention part.
Wittes also said 48 to 96 hours really doesn’t give interrogators much time to talk to a suspect. “If you’re going to do this, you might as well give the government more time than that,” the Brookings expert said.
That's right, federal authorities "might as well" gain the power to hold and question suspected criminals for extended periods of time. While one would expect less hawkishness from a bill written by a California Democrat, the fact that Schiff is up for re-election against this guy puts things in context. When your opponent lists his first two credentials as "former military, former law enforcement," it's time to move to the right, no matter how misguided curtailing prisoners' rights may be.
The bill filed Thursday by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) would change federal law by creating a procedure to question a suspected terrorist for up to four days before taking him or her to court without jeopardizing prosecutors’ ability to use statements made by a suspect during that time.
It would also express Congress’s view that authorities can delay reading Miranda warnings “for as long as is necessary” to elicit intelligence from a terror suspect.
The White House has yet to take a position on Schiff's bill, but you can bet Attorney General Eric Holder will like what he sees.
Under the bill, the attorney general or the director of national intelligence or their top deputies could certify to a court that an individual is a terrorism suspect and “may be able to provide intelligence to protect the public safety.” In such cases, authorities could question the individual for up to 48 hours without facing an automatic presumption that the statements couldn’t be used in court. A judge or magistrate could extend the period for another 48 hours “for good cause shown.”
While "for good cause shown" sounds like the legal equivalent of "just for fun," Ben Wittes, an analyst at the Brookings Institution, said he liked the bill, except for the only-four-days-of-detention part.
Wittes also said 48 to 96 hours really doesn’t give interrogators much time to talk to a suspect. “If you’re going to do this, you might as well give the government more time than that,” the Brookings expert said.
That's right, federal authorities "might as well" gain the power to hold and question suspected criminals for extended periods of time. While one would expect less hawkishness from a bill written by a California Democrat, the fact that Schiff is up for re-election against this guy puts things in context. When your opponent lists his first two credentials as "former military, former law enforcement," it's time to move to the right, no matter how misguided curtailing prisoners' rights may be.
http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/02/those ... y-coming-t"Cops that lie, need to die!" A police officer that lies to get an arrest or send someone to prison should be shot.
"In the U.S., a cop with a gun can commit the most heinous crime and be given the benefit of the doubt."
"The U.S. Government does not have rights, it has privileges delegated to it by the people."
WaTcHeR
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Re: Supreme Court Says Never Speak to a Police Officer
by WaTcHeR » 25 Mar 2011, Fri 7:42 pm
New rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades.
The move is one of the Obama administration's most significant revisions to rules governing the investigation of terror suspects in the U.S. And it potentially opens a new political tussle over national security policy, as the administration marks another step back from pre-election criticism of unorthodox counterterror methods.
The Supreme Court's 1966 Miranda ruling obligates law-enforcement officials to advise suspects of their rights to remain silent and to have an attorney present for questioning. A 1984 decision amended that by allowing the questioning of suspects for a limited time before issuing the warning in cases where public safety was at issue.
That exception was seen as a limited device to be used only in cases of an imminent safety threat, but the new rules give interrogators more latitude and flexibility to define what counts as an appropriate circumstance to waive Miranda rights.
Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said the memo ensures that "law enforcement has the ability to question suspected terrorists without immediately providing Miranda warnings when the interrogation is reasonably prompted by immediate concern for the safety of the public or the agents." He said "the threat posed by terrorist organizations and the nature of their attacks—which can include multiple accomplices and interconnected plots—creates fundamentally different public safety concerns than traditional criminal cases."
The new guidelines could blunt criticism from Republicans, many of whom have pushed for terror suspects to be sent to military detention, where they argue that rigid Miranda restrictions don't apply. But many liberals will likely oppose the move, as might some conservatives who believe the administration doesn't have legal authority to rein in such rights.
The Justice Department believes it has the authority to tinker with Miranda procedures. Making the change administratively rather than through legislation in Congress, however, presents legal risks.
New York Republican Peter King, chairman of the House homeland-security committee, is among the lawmakers who welcomed Mr. Holder's call to change Miranda. At a hearing last year, Mr. King said, "It's important that we ensure that the reforms do go forward and that at the very least the attorney general consults with everyone in the intelligence community before any Miranda warning is given."
The Miranda protocols have been controversial since the high court formalized a practice that was already in use by the FBI, albeit not uniformly. Conservatives have long argued that the warning impedes law enforcement's ability to protect the public.
President Barack Obama has grappled with a web of terrorism policies cobbled together since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Before becoming president, Mr. Obama had criticized the Bush administration for going outside traditional criminal procedures to deal with terror suspects, and for bypassing Congress in making rules to handle detainees after 9/11. He has since embraced many of the same policies while devising additional ones—to the disappointment of civil-liberties groups that championed his election. In recent weeks, the administration formalized procedures for indefinitely detaining some suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, allowing for periodic reviews of those deemed too dangerous to set free.
The Bush administration, in the aftermath of 9/11, chose to bypass the Miranda issue altogether as it crafted a military-detention system that fell outside the rules that govern civilians. Under Mr. Bush, the government used Miranda in multiple terror cases. But Mr. Bush also ordered the detention of two people in a military brig as "enemy combatants." The government eventually moved both suspects—Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, and Ali al-Marri, a Qatari man—into the federal criminal-justice system after facing legal challenges. In other cases, it processed suspects through the civilian system.
An increase in the number of domestic-terror cases in recent years has made the issue more pressing.
The Miranda change leaves other key procedures in place, notably federal rules for speedy presentation of suspects before a magistrate, normally within 24 hours. Legal experts say those restrictions are bigger obstacles than Miranda to intelligence gathering. The FBI memo doesn't make clear whether investigators seeking exemptions would have to provide a Miranda warning at the time of such a hearing.
Also unchanged is the fact that any statements suspects give during such pre-Miranda questioning wouldn't be admissible in court, the memo says.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 19898.html"Cops that lie, need to die!" A police officer that lies to get an arrest or send someone to prison should be shot.
"In the U.S., a cop with a gun can commit the most heinous crime and be given the benefit of the doubt."
"The U.S. Government does not have rights, it has privileges delegated to it by the people."
PoliceCrimes.com Breaking News and Top Stories
Supreme Court Says Never Speak to a Police Officer
by WaTcHeR
Read what rights you have when dealing with a police officer http://www.policecrimes.com/police.html
Washington — The Supreme Court retreated from strict enforcement of the famous Miranda decision on Tuesday, ruling that a crime suspect's words could be used against him if he failed to clearly invoke his rights clearly and, instead, answered a single question.
In the past, the court has said the "burden rests on the government" to show that a crime suspect has "knowingly and intelligently waived" his rights.
But in a 5-4 decision Tuesday, the court said that a citizen must invoke his rights. If he fails to do so, anything he says can be used to convict him, the justices said.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that police were "not required to obtain a waiver" of the suspect's "right to remain silent before interrogating him."
In this case, Michigan police had informed the suspect, Van Thompkins, of his rights, including the right to remain silent. Thompkins said he understood, but he did not tell the officer he wanted to stop the questioning or speak to a lawyer.
But he sat in a chair and said nothing for about two hours and 45 minutes. At that point, the officer asked, "Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?"
"Yes," Thompson said and looked away. He refused to sign a confession or speak further, but he was convicted of first-degree murder, based largely on his one-word reply.
The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Thompkins' conviction on the grounds that the use of the incriminating answer violated his right against self-incrimination under the Miranda decision.
The Supreme Court reversed that ruling of a lower court ruling and reinstated the conviction. "A suspect who has received and understood the Miranda warnings and has not invoked his Miranda rights waives the right to remain silent by making an uncoerced statement to the police," Kennedy said. He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
The court ruled that an ambiguous situation would be treated in favor of the police.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent longer than the majority opinion, argued that the majority misread precedent and reached beyond the facts of the case to impose a tough new rule against defendants.
"Today's decision turns Miranda upside down," Justice Sotomayor wrote. "Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent—which, counter intuitively, requires them to speak."
Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer joined her dissent.
The majority ruling is in line with the position taken by the Obama administration and Supreme Court nominee U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan. In December, she filed a brief on the side of Michigan prosecutors and argued that "the government need not prove that a suspect expressly waived his rights."
She said that "if a suspect knows and understands his Miranda rights," anything he says can be used against him in court."Cops that lie, need to die!" A police officer that lies to get an arrest or send someone to prison should be shot.
"In the U.S., a cop with a gun can commit the most heinous crime and be given the benefit of the doubt."
"The U.S. Government does not have rights, it has privileges delegated to it by the people."
WaTcHeR
Moderator
Posts: 8268
Joined: 04 Mar 2007, Sun 1:25 pm
Location: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Website Top
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Re: Supreme Court Says Never Speak to a Police Officer
by WaTcHeR » 02 Aug 2010, Mon 8:30 pm
Supreme Court trims Miranda warning rights: `Death by a thousand cuts' says defense attorney
You have the right to remain silent, but only if you tell the police that you're remaining silent.
You have a right to a lawyer — before, during and after questioning, even though the police don't have to tell you exactly when the lawyer can be with you. If you can't afford a lawyer, one will be provided to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you, which, by the way, are only good for the next two weeks?
The Supreme Court made major revisions to the now familiar Miranda warnings this year. The rulings will change the ways police, lawyers and criminal suspects interact amid what experts call an attempt to pull back some of the rights that Americans have become used to over recent decades.
The high court has made clear it's not going to eliminate the requirement that police officers give suspects a Miranda warning, so it is tinkering around the edges, said Jeffrey L. Fisher, co-chair of the amicus committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
"It's death by a thousand cuts," Fisher said. "For the past 20-25 years, as the court has turned more conservative on law and order issues, it has been whittling away at Miranda and doing everything it can to ease the admissibility of confessions that police wriggle out of suspects."
The court placed limits on the so-called Miranda rights three times during the just-ended session. Experts viewed the large number of rulings as a statistical aberration, rather than a full-fledged attempt to get rid of the famous 1966 decision. The original ruling emerged from police questioning of Ernesto Miranda in a rape and kidnapping case in Phoenix. It required officers to tell suspects taken into custody that they have the right to remain silent and to have a lawyer represent them, even if they can't afford one.
The court's three decisions "indicate a desire to prune back the rules somewhat," Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victims' rights group. "But I don't think any overruling of Miranda is in the near future. I think that controversy is pretty much dead."
The Supreme Court in 2000 upheld the requirement that the Miranda warning be read to criminal suspects.
This year's Supreme Court decisions did not mandate changes in the wording of Miranda warnings read by arresting police officers. The most common version is now familiar to most Americans, thanks to television police shows: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?"
However, the court did approve one state version of the Miranda warnings that did not specifically inform suspects that they had a right to have a lawyer present during their police questioning.
The Miranda warning used in parts of Florida told suspects: "You have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any of our questions. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed for you without cost and before any questioning. You have the right to use any of these rights at any time you want during this interview."
Lawyers — and the Florida Supreme Court — said that didn't make clear that lawyers can be present as the police are doing their questioning. But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing the 7-2 majority decision, said all the required information was there.
"Nothing in the words used indicated that counsel's presence would be restricted after the questioning commenced," Ginsburg said. "Instead, the warning communicated that the right to counsel carried forward to and through the interrogation."
The next day, the court unanimously limited how long Miranda rights are valid.
The high court said for the first time that a suspect's request for a lawyer is good for only 14 days after the person is released from police custody. The 9-0 ruling pulled back from an earlier decision that said that police must halt all questioning for all time if a suspect asks for a lawyer.
Police can now attempt to question a suspect who asked for a lawyer — once the person has been released from custody for at least two weeks — without violating the person's constitutional rights and without having to repeat the Miranda warning.
"In our judgment, 14 days will provide plenty of time for the suspect to get reacclimated to his normal life, to consult with friends and counsel and to shake off any residual coercive effects of his prior custody," said Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion.
And finally, the court's conservatives used their 5-4 advantage to rule that suspects must break their silence and tell police they are going to remain quiet if they want to invoke their "right to remain silent" and stop an interrogation, just as they must tell police that they want a lawyer.
All the criminal suspect needs to say is he or she is remaining silent, wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy. "Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his 'right to cut off questioning.' Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent."
But Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority's decision "turns Miranda upside down."
"American citizens must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent — which counter intuitively requires them to speak." "At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so."
Police officers will look at these decisions and incorporate them into their training, said James Pasco of the National Fraternal Order of Police. "Officers are expected to adapt to changes required by the Supreme Court," Pasco said. "This will be no different."
But Fisher thinks the court's Miranda decisions will make it easier for police to get confessions out of people who don't want to confess. "Those decisions open up ways for cops to work around Miranda," Fisher said.
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0802/expert ... k-miranda/"Cops that lie, need to die!" A police officer that lies to get an arrest or send someone to prison should be shot.
"In the U.S., a cop with a gun can commit the most heinous crime and be given the benefit of the doubt."
"The U.S. Government does not have rights, it has privileges delegated to it by the people."
WaTcHeR
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Re: Supreme Court Says Never Speak to a Police Officer
by WaTcHeR » 02 Aug 2010, Mon 8:31 pm
When U.S. law enforcement officials captured suspected Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, they did the unthinkable: They read him his Miranda rights. Despite the fact that Shahzad continued to cooperate after the reading of his rights, defense hawks criticized the move as soft on terrorism. Now, one member of Congress has introduced a startling solution:
The bill filed Thursday by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) would change federal law by creating a procedure to question a suspected terrorist for up to four days before taking him or her to court without jeopardizing prosecutors’ ability to use statements made by a suspect during that time.
It would also express Congress’s view that authorities can delay reading Miranda warnings “for as long as is necessary” to elicit intelligence from a terror suspect.
The White House has yet to take a position on Schiff's bill, but you can bet Attorney General Eric Holder will like what he sees.
Under the bill, the attorney general or the director of national intelligence or their top deputies could certify to a court that an individual is a terrorism suspect and “may be able to provide intelligence to protect the public safety.” In such cases, authorities could question the individual for up to 48 hours without facing an automatic presumption that the statements couldn’t be used in court. A judge or magistrate could extend the period for another 48 hours “for good cause shown.”
While "for good cause shown" sounds like the legal equivalent of "just for fun," Ben Wittes, an analyst at the Brookings Institution, said he liked the bill, except for the only-four-days-of-detention part.
Wittes also said 48 to 96 hours really doesn’t give interrogators much time to talk to a suspect. “If you’re going to do this, you might as well give the government more time than that,” the Brookings expert said.
That's right, federal authorities "might as well" gain the power to hold and question suspected criminals for extended periods of time. While one would expect less hawkishness from a bill written by a California Democrat, the fact that Schiff is up for re-election against this guy puts things in context. When your opponent lists his first two credentials as "former military, former law enforcement," it's time to move to the right, no matter how misguided curtailing prisoners' rights may be.
The bill filed Thursday by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) would change federal law by creating a procedure to question a suspected terrorist for up to four days before taking him or her to court without jeopardizing prosecutors’ ability to use statements made by a suspect during that time.
It would also express Congress’s view that authorities can delay reading Miranda warnings “for as long as is necessary” to elicit intelligence from a terror suspect.
The White House has yet to take a position on Schiff's bill, but you can bet Attorney General Eric Holder will like what he sees.
Under the bill, the attorney general or the director of national intelligence or their top deputies could certify to a court that an individual is a terrorism suspect and “may be able to provide intelligence to protect the public safety.” In such cases, authorities could question the individual for up to 48 hours without facing an automatic presumption that the statements couldn’t be used in court. A judge or magistrate could extend the period for another 48 hours “for good cause shown.”
While "for good cause shown" sounds like the legal equivalent of "just for fun," Ben Wittes, an analyst at the Brookings Institution, said he liked the bill, except for the only-four-days-of-detention part.
Wittes also said 48 to 96 hours really doesn’t give interrogators much time to talk to a suspect. “If you’re going to do this, you might as well give the government more time than that,” the Brookings expert said.
That's right, federal authorities "might as well" gain the power to hold and question suspected criminals for extended periods of time. While one would expect less hawkishness from a bill written by a California Democrat, the fact that Schiff is up for re-election against this guy puts things in context. When your opponent lists his first two credentials as "former military, former law enforcement," it's time to move to the right, no matter how misguided curtailing prisoners' rights may be.
http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/02/those ... y-coming-t"Cops that lie, need to die!" A police officer that lies to get an arrest or send someone to prison should be shot.
"In the U.S., a cop with a gun can commit the most heinous crime and be given the benefit of the doubt."
"The U.S. Government does not have rights, it has privileges delegated to it by the people."
WaTcHeR
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Re: Supreme Court Says Never Speak to a Police Officer
by WaTcHeR » 25 Mar 2011, Fri 7:42 pm
New rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades.
The move is one of the Obama administration's most significant revisions to rules governing the investigation of terror suspects in the U.S. And it potentially opens a new political tussle over national security policy, as the administration marks another step back from pre-election criticism of unorthodox counterterror methods.
The Supreme Court's 1966 Miranda ruling obligates law-enforcement officials to advise suspects of their rights to remain silent and to have an attorney present for questioning. A 1984 decision amended that by allowing the questioning of suspects for a limited time before issuing the warning in cases where public safety was at issue.
That exception was seen as a limited device to be used only in cases of an imminent safety threat, but the new rules give interrogators more latitude and flexibility to define what counts as an appropriate circumstance to waive Miranda rights.
Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said the memo ensures that "law enforcement has the ability to question suspected terrorists without immediately providing Miranda warnings when the interrogation is reasonably prompted by immediate concern for the safety of the public or the agents." He said "the threat posed by terrorist organizations and the nature of their attacks—which can include multiple accomplices and interconnected plots—creates fundamentally different public safety concerns than traditional criminal cases."
The new guidelines could blunt criticism from Republicans, many of whom have pushed for terror suspects to be sent to military detention, where they argue that rigid Miranda restrictions don't apply. But many liberals will likely oppose the move, as might some conservatives who believe the administration doesn't have legal authority to rein in such rights.
The Justice Department believes it has the authority to tinker with Miranda procedures. Making the change administratively rather than through legislation in Congress, however, presents legal risks.
New York Republican Peter King, chairman of the House homeland-security committee, is among the lawmakers who welcomed Mr. Holder's call to change Miranda. At a hearing last year, Mr. King said, "It's important that we ensure that the reforms do go forward and that at the very least the attorney general consults with everyone in the intelligence community before any Miranda warning is given."
The Miranda protocols have been controversial since the high court formalized a practice that was already in use by the FBI, albeit not uniformly. Conservatives have long argued that the warning impedes law enforcement's ability to protect the public.
President Barack Obama has grappled with a web of terrorism policies cobbled together since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Before becoming president, Mr. Obama had criticized the Bush administration for going outside traditional criminal procedures to deal with terror suspects, and for bypassing Congress in making rules to handle detainees after 9/11. He has since embraced many of the same policies while devising additional ones—to the disappointment of civil-liberties groups that championed his election. In recent weeks, the administration formalized procedures for indefinitely detaining some suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, allowing for periodic reviews of those deemed too dangerous to set free.
The Bush administration, in the aftermath of 9/11, chose to bypass the Miranda issue altogether as it crafted a military-detention system that fell outside the rules that govern civilians. Under Mr. Bush, the government used Miranda in multiple terror cases. But Mr. Bush also ordered the detention of two people in a military brig as "enemy combatants." The government eventually moved both suspects—Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, and Ali al-Marri, a Qatari man—into the federal criminal-justice system after facing legal challenges. In other cases, it processed suspects through the civilian system.
An increase in the number of domestic-terror cases in recent years has made the issue more pressing.
The Miranda change leaves other key procedures in place, notably federal rules for speedy presentation of suspects before a magistrate, normally within 24 hours. Legal experts say those restrictions are bigger obstacles than Miranda to intelligence gathering. The FBI memo doesn't make clear whether investigators seeking exemptions would have to provide a Miranda warning at the time of such a hearing.
Also unchanged is the fact that any statements suspects give during such pre-Miranda questioning wouldn't be admissible in court, the memo says.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 19898.html"Cops that lie, need to die!" A police officer that lies to get an arrest or send someone to prison should be shot.
"In the U.S., a cop with a gun can commit the most heinous crime and be given the benefit of the doubt."
"The U.S. Government does not have rights, it has privileges delegated to it by the people."
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DISCRIMINATION ON THE BASIS OF CLOTHING OR CLUB MEMBERSHIP IS ILLEGAL
OFF THE WIRE
Comment,
- Law enforcement love this shit and are probably also posing as bikers, posting comments and feeding into the hype… divide and conquer. The attention from the real threat to the MC world and society as a whole keeps getting diverted.
- At this very moment in the United States, this has become the norm …. Law enforcement officers are involved in criminal activity. In addition, these individuals are involved in violating citizen’s civil and constitutional rights and they have more latitude to cause death, physical, financial and emotional harm to U.S. citizens than any other organization. Their actions are overlooked and encouraged by their department leadership, making those individuals complicit in the crimes.
- America’s #1 Terrorist Threat is Law Enforcement
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ACLU, Civil Rights
The Unruh Civil Rights Act (C-C Section 51 et seq) provides that “All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin or blindness or other physical disability are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.”
Any person whose exercise or enjoyment of rights secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States has been interfered with, or attempted to be interfered with may institute and prosecute a civil action for injunctive and other appropriate equitable relief, including the award of compensatory monetary damages. The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Cohen V. California 403 US 15 (1971) that individuals have the constitutional right under the First Amendment to wear clothing which displays writing or designs.
In addition, the right of an individual to freedom of association has long been recognized and protected by the United States Supreme Court Thus, a person’s right to wear the clothing of his choice, as well as his right to belong to any club or organization of his choice is constitutionally protected and persons or establishments who discriminate on the basis of clothing or club membership are subject to lawsuit.
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Know Your Rights When Dealing With Police Officers
OFF THE WIRE
"I DON'T WANT TO TALK UNTIL MY LAWYER IS PRESENT"
A Police Officers Worst Enemy Is A Well Informed Citizen Who Knows Their Rights!
Police officers hate to hear these words:
"Am I free to go?"
"I don't consent a search."
"I'm going to remain silent."
When a Police Officer Stops You
To stop you a police officer must have a specific reason to suspect your involvement in a specific crime and should be able to tell you that reason when you ask. This is known as reasonable suspicion. A police officer usually will pull you over for some type of "traffic violation," such as speeding or maybe not using your blinker. Throwing a cigarette butt or a gum wrapper out your car window is reason enough for the police to pull you over, ticket you for littering and start asking you all sorts of personal questions.
Your Rights During a Traffic Stop. Top Five (5) Things to Know About Protecting Yourself from the Police:
#1 - Safety. The first thing is your safety! You want to put the police officer at ease. Pull over to a safe place, turn off your ignition, stay in the car and keep your hands on the steering wheel. At night turn on the interior lights. Keep your license, registration, and proof of insurance always close by.
Build a trust with the police officer be a "good citizen" be courteous, stay calm, smile and don't complain. Show respect and say things like "sir and no sir." Never bad-mouth a police officer, stay in control of your words, body language and your emotions. "All this takes practice, try practicing with a friend." The idea is to get the police officer to understand that you're just an average ordinary citizen and let you get on your way down the road. Never touch a police officer and don't run away!
#2 - Never Talk To A Police Officer. The only questions you need to answer is your name, address and date of birth and nothing else! Instead of telling the police officer who you are, simply give him your drivers license or I.D. card. All the information the police officer needs to know about you can be found on your drivers license. Don't volunteer any more information to the police officer, if he ask you any other questions politely say "Am I free to go?" and then don't say another word.
#3 - I'm Going to Remain Silent. The Supreme Court has made a new ruling that you should Never Talk to a Police Officer without an attorney, but there's a CATCH! New Ruling Before you're allowed NOT to talk to a police officer, you must TELL the police officer "I'm Going to Remain Silent" and then keep your mouth shut!(How can you be falsely accused and charged if you don't say anything?) Anything you say or do can and will be used against you at any time by the police.
#3 - I'm Going to Remain Silent. The Supreme Court has made a new ruling that you should Never Talk to a Police Officer without an attorney, but there's a CATCH! New Ruling Before you're allowed NOT to talk to a police officer, you must TELL the police officer "I'm Going to Remain Silent" and then keep your mouth shut!(How can you be falsely accused and charged if you don't say anything?) Anything you say or do can and will be used against you at any time by the police.
#4 - Just Say NO to Police Searches! If a police officer didn't need your permission to search, he wouldn't be asking. Never give permission to a police officer to search you, your car or your home. If a police officer does search you, don't resist and keep saying "I don't consent to this search."
#5 - "Am I Free to Go?" As soon as the police officer ask you a question ask him "Am I free to go?" You have to ask if you're "free to go," otherwise the police officer will think you are voluntarily staying. If the police officer says that you're are being detained or arrested, say to the police officer"I'm Going to Remain Silent"
#5 - "Am I Free to Go?" As soon as the police officer ask you a question ask him "Am I free to go?" You have to ask if you're "free to go," otherwise the police officer will think you are voluntarily staying. If the police officer says that you're are being detained or arrested, say to the police officer"I'm Going to Remain Silent"
Anything You Say Can And Will Be Used Against You!
Police officers need your permission to have a conversation, never give it to them!
Never voluntarily talk to a police officer, there's no such thing as a "friendly chat" with a police officer. The Supreme Court has recently ruled that you should NOT talk to a police officer without a lawyer and you must say "I'm going to remain silent." It can be very dangerous to talk to a police officer or a Federal Agent. Innocent people have talked to a police officer and ended up in jail and prison, because they spoke to a police officer without an attorney.
Police officers have the same right as you "Freedom of Speech," they can ask you anything they want, but you should never answer any of their questions. Don't let the police officer try and persuade you to talk! Say something like "I'm sorry, I don't have time to talk to you right now." If the cop insists on talking to you, ask him "Am I free to go?" The police officer may not like when you refuse to talk to him and challenge you with words like, "If you have nothing to hide, why won't you speak to me? Say again "I told you I don't have time to talk to you right now, Am I free to go?" If you forget or the police officer tricks you into talking, it's okay just start over again and tell the police officer "I'm going to remain silent."
The Supreme Court has ruled that if a police officer doesn't force you to do something, then you're doing "voluntarily." That means if the police officer starts being intimidating and you do what he ask because you're "afraid," you still have done it voluntarily. (Florida v. Bostick, 1991) If you do what the police officer ask you to do such as allowing him to search your car or answer any of his questions, you are 'voluntarily' complying with his 'requests.'So don't comply, just keep your mouth shut unless you say "Am I Free to Go?" or "I don't consent to a search."
You have every right NOT to talk to a police officer and you should NOT speak to a police officer unless you have first consulted with a lawyer who has advised you differently. Police officers depend on fear and intimidation to get what they want from you. Police officers might say they will "go easy" on you if you talk to them, but they're LIARS! The government has made a law that allows police officers to lie to the American public. Another reason not to trust the police! So be as nice as possible, but stand your ground on your rights! Where do some of your rights come from? Read the Fourth and Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Traffic Stops and Your Rights
First of all keep your license, registration and proof of insurance in an easily accessible place such as attached to your sun visor. The less time it takes for you to get to these items, the less time the officer has to look through your windows and snoop. When pulled over by a police officer stay in the car, turn on the cab lights and keep your hands on the steering wheel. Sit still, relax and wait for the officer to come to you. Any sudden movements, ducking down, looking nervous or appearing to be searching for something under your seat is dangerous! Just sit up naturally be still and try to put the officer at ease."
Police officers like to ask the first question and that usually is, "do you know the reason I pulled you over?" The police officer is trying to get you to do two things, admit that you committed a traffic violation and to get you to "voluntarily" start a conversation with him.Remember the police officer is not your friend and should not be trusted! The only thing you should say is "I'm going to remain silent and am I free to go?"
The police officer might start asking you personal questions such as "where are you going, where have you been and who did you see, ect." At that point it's the perfect time to exercise your rights by asking the police officer "AM I FREE TO GO?" There is NO legal requirement that American citizens provide information about their comings and goings to a police officer. It's none of their damn business! Keep asking the police officers "AM I FREE TO GO?" You have to speak up and verbally ask the police officer if your allowed to leave, otherwise the courts will presume that you wanted to stay and talk to the cops on your own free will.
Passengers in your vehicle need to know their rights as well. They have the same right not to talk to a police officer and the right to refuse a search "unless it's a 'pat down' for weapons." The police will usually separate the passengers from each other and ask questions to see if their stories match. All passengers should always give the same answer and say, "I'm going to remain silent and am I free to go?" Remember you have to tell the police officer that you don't want to talk to him. It's the law
How long can a police officer keep you pulled over "detained" during a traffic stop? The Supreme Court has said no more than 15 minutes is a reasonable amount of time for a police officer to conduct his investigation and allow you to go FREE. Just keep asking the police officer "AM I FREE TO GO?"
A good time to ask "AM I FREE TO GO," is after the police officer has given you a "warning or a ticket" and you have signed it. Once you have signed that ticket the traffic stop is legally over says the U.S. Supreme Court. There's no law that requires you to stay and talk to the police officer or answer any questions. After you have signed the ticket and got your license back you may roll up your window, start your car and leave. If you're outside the car ask the police officer, "AM I FREE TO GO?" If he says yes then get in your car and leave.
Car Searches And Body Searches
Remember the police officer wouldn't be asking you, if he didn't need your permission to search! "The right to be free from unreasonable searches is one of America's most precious First Liberties."
Just because you're stopped for a traffic violation does NOT allow a police officer to search your car. However if you go riding around smoking a blunt and get pulled over, the police officer smells marijuana, sees a weapon or drugs in plain view he now has "probable cause" to search you car and that's your own stupid fault!
Police officers swore an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and not to violate your rights against unreasonable search and seizure Fourth Amendment. Denying a police officers request to search you or your car is not an admission of guilt, it's your American right! Some police officers might say, "if you have nothing to hide, you should allow me to search." Politely say to the police officer "I don't consent to a search and am I free to go?"
The police officer is allowed to handcuff you and/or detain and even put you in his police car for his safety. Don't resist or you will be arrested! There's a big difference between being detained and being arrested. Say nothing in the police car! Police will record your conversation inside the police car, say nothing to your friend and don't talk to the police officers!
If you are arrested and your car is towed, the police are allowed to take an "inventory" of the items in your car. If anything is found that's illegal, the police will get a warrant and then charge you with another crime.
Police Pat Downs...
For the safety of police officers the law allows the police to pat down your outer clothing to see if you have any weapons. If the police officer feels something that he believes is a weapon, then he can go into your pockets and pull out the item he believes is a weapon.
A police officer may ask you or even demand that you empty your pockets, but you have the right to say "NO, AM I FREE TO GO?" There's NO law that requires you to empty your pockets when a police officer "ask you." The only time a police officer should be taking your personal property out of your pockets is after you have been arrested.
If a Police Officer Knocks at Your Door at Home-You Don't Have to Open the Door!
If the police knock and ask to enter your home, you DON'T have to open the door unless they have a warrant signed by a judge. "If the police have a warrant they won't be knocking, they'll be kicking in your door!" There is NO law that requires you to open your door to a police officer.* Don't open your door with the chain-lock on either, the police will shove their way in. Simply shout to the police officers "I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY" or just don't say anything at all.
Guest and roommates staying in your home/apartment/dorm need to be aware of their rights specially "college students" and told not to open the door to a police officer or invite police officers into your home without your permission. Police officers are like vampires, they need your permission to come into your home. Never invite a police officer into your home, such an invitation not only gives police officers an opportunity to look around for clues to your lifestyle, habits, friends, reading material, etc; but also tends to prolong the conversation.
If you are arrested outside your home the police officer might ask if you would like to go inside and get your shoes or a shirt? He might even be nice and let you tell your wife or friend goodbye, but it's a trick! Don't let the police officer into your house!
If you are arrested outside your home the police officer might ask if you would like to go inside and get your shoes or a shirt? He might even be nice and let you tell your wife or friend goodbye, but it's a trick! Don't let the police officer into your house!
Never agree to go to the police station if the police want to question you. Just say, "I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY."
* In some emergency situations (for example when a someone is screaming for help from inside your home, police are chasing someone into your home, police see a felony being committed or if someone has called 911 from inside your house) police officers are then allowed to enter and search your home without a warrant.
Children have rights also, if you're under 18 click here. If your children don't know their rights and go talking to a teacher, school principal, police officer or a Federal agent without an attorney could cost your family dearly and change the lives of your family forever!
If a Police Officer Stops You On The Sidewalk...
NEVER give consent to talk to a police officer. If a police officer stops you and ask to speak with you, you're perfectly within your rights to say to the police officer "I do not wish to speak with you, good-bye. "New Law At this point you should be free to leave. The next step the police officer might take is to ask you for identification. If you have identification on you, tell the officer where it is and ask permission to reach for it. "Some states you're not required to show an I.D. unless the police officer has reasonable suspicion that you committed a crime." Know the laws in your state!
The police officer will start asking you questions again, at this point you may ask the officer "Am I Free to Go?" The police officer may not like this and may challenge you with words like, "If you have nothing to hide, why won't you speak to me?" Just like the first question, you do not have to answer this question either. Just ask "Am I Free to Go?"
Police officers need your permission to have a conversation, never give it to them. There is NO law that says you must tell a police officer where you are going or where you have been, so keep your mouth shut and say nothing! Don't answer any question (except name, address and age) until you have a lawyer.
Police officers need your permission to have a conversation, never give it to them. There is NO law that says you must tell a police officer where you are going or where you have been, so keep your mouth shut and say nothing! Don't answer any question (except name, address and age) until you have a lawyer.
Probable Cause...
A police officer has no right to detain you unless there exists reasonable suspicion that you committed a crime or traffic violation. However a police officer is always allowed to initiate a "voluntary" conversation with you. You always have the right not to talk or answer any questions a police officer ask you. Just tell the police officer "I'm going to remain silent."
Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, police may engage in "reasonable" searches and seizures. To prove that a search is reasonable, the police must generally show that it's more likely than not that a crime has occurred and that if a search is conducted it is probable that the police officer will find evidence of the crime. This is called "probable cause."
Police may use first hand information or tips from an informant "snitch" to justify the need to search your property or you. If an informant's information is used, the police must prove that the information is reliable under the circumstances to a judge.
Here's a case when police officers took the word of a "snitch," claiming he knew where a "drug dealer" lived. The police officers took it upon themselves to go to this house that the snitch had "picked at random" and kick in the door at 1:30 in the morning ,without obtaining a search warrant from a judge. The aftermath was six police officers firing over 30 shots and shooting an innocent man 9 times in the back as he laid on the ground. Read How Police In Texas Are Allowed to Murder Innocent People and Get Away With It
Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, police may engage in "reasonable" searches and seizures. To prove that a search is reasonable, the police must generally show that it's more likely than not that a crime has occurred and that if a search is conducted it is probable that the police officer will find evidence of the crime. This is called "probable cause."
Police may use first hand information or tips from an informant "snitch" to justify the need to search your property or you. If an informant's information is used, the police must prove that the information is reliable under the circumstances to a judge.
Here's a case when police officers took the word of a "snitch," claiming he knew where a "drug dealer" lived. The police officers took it upon themselves to go to this house that the snitch had "picked at random" and kick in the door at 1:30 in the morning ,without obtaining a search warrant from a judge. The aftermath was six police officers firing over 30 shots and shooting an innocent man 9 times in the back as he laid on the ground. Read How Police In Texas Are Allowed to Murder Innocent People and Get Away With It
Can We Trust Police Officers?
Are police officers allowed to lie to you? Yes the Supreme Court has ruled that police officers can lie to the American public. Police officers are trained at lying, twisting words and to be manipulative. Police officers and other law enforcement agents are very skilled at getting information from people. So don't try to "out smart" the police officer or try being a "smooth talker" because you will loose! If you can keep your mouth shut, you just might come out ahead more than you expected.
Teach your children that police officers are not always their friend and police officers must contact a parent for permission before they ask your child any questions. Remember police officers are trained to put you at ease and to gain your trust. Their job is to find, arrest and help convict a suspect and that suspect is you!
The federal government created a law that says citizens can't lie to Federal Agents and yet the government can lie to American Citizens. Makes perfect since doesn't it? The best thing you can do is ask for a lawyer and keep your mouth shut. How can you be charged with something if you haven't said anything?
Although police officers may seem nice and pretend to be on your side they are wanting to learn your habits, opinions, and affiliations of other people not suspected of wrongdoing. Don't try to answer a police officers questions, it can be very dangerous! You can never tell how a seemingly harmless bit of information that you give to a police officer might be used and misconstrued to hurt you or someone else. Keep in mind that lying to a federal agent is a crime. "This why Martha Stewart went to prison, not for insider trading but for lying to a Federal Agent."
Police officers may promise shorter sentences and other deals for statements or confessions from you. The police cannot legally make deals with people they arrest, but they can and will lie to you. The only person who can make a deal that can be enforced is the prosecutor and he should not talk with you without a lawyer present.
Lies That Police Officers Use To Get You To Talk...
There are many ways a police officer will try to trick you into talking. It's always safe to say the Magic Words: "Am I free to leave, if not I'm going to remain silent and I want a lawyer."
The following are common lie's the police use when they're trying to get you to talk to them:
* "You will have to stay here and answer my questions" or "You're not leaving until I find out what I want to know."
* "I have evidence on you, so tell me what I want to know or else." (They can fabricate fake evidence to convince you to tell them what they want to know.)
* "You're not a suspect, were simply investigating here. Just help us understand what happened and then you can go."
* "If you don't answer my questions, I won't have any choice but to take you to jail."
* "If you don't answer these questions, you'll be charged with resisting arrest."
* "Your friend has told his side of the story and it's not looking good for you, anything you want to say in your defense?"
If The Police Arrest You...
"I DON'T WANT TO TALK UNTIL MY LAWYER IS PRESENT"
* Don't answer questions the police ask you, (except name, address and age)until you have a lawyer.
* Even if the police don't read your Miranda Rights to you, refuse to say anything until your lawyer/public defender arrives. If you "voluntarily" talk to the police , then they don't have to read your Miranda Rights.
* If you're arrested and can not afford an attorney, you have the right to a public defender. If you get a public defender always make it clear to the judge that the public defender is not representing you, but merely is serving as your counsel.
* Do not talk to other jail inmates about your case.
* Within a reasonable time after your arrest or booking, you have the right to make a local phone call to a lawyer, bail bondsman, relative or any other person. The police may not listen to the call to the lawyer.
* If you're on probation or parole tell your P.O. you've been arrested and say nothing else!
COMMENT
COMMENT
Yesterday, when I was discussing this law with a group, a citizen asked "If you have nothing to hide, why not comply with the officer?" I answered with a sime question: "If the police have no probably cause, why are they intruding into my life?"
When did government intrusion become patriotic or accepted? For heaven's sake, this country was founded on the government staying out of our lives.
Lawyer Motorcycle Association
If a police officer demands that you produce identification, that demand is not a valid.
In The Hiibel case, the US Supreme Court (highest court in the land) specifically interprets Nevada's "Duty to Identify" statute (NRS 171.123) and ruled:
"It apparently does not require him to produce a driver's license or any ...other documentation. If he chooses either to state his name or communicate it to the officer by other means, the statute is satisfied and no violation occurs." Hiibel v Sixth Judicial Court of Nevada, 542 US 177 (2004)
Please note: the driver of a vehicle is required to produce a driver's license under a different law (but NOT the passenger)
COMMENT`
Don’t kill a cop. You will lose in Court. Enjoy life, get even as a juror (providing you’re eligible for jury service) and vote not guilty no matter what the evidence shows.
Slapstick and Pig,
If driving or riding and you have been pulled over, turn over your license, registration and insurance when asked. If cop starts asking ANY questions simply ask “am I free to leave?” If cop says “yes” then leave. If cop says “no” then say I “want a lawyer.” And continue to remain silent!
If walking down street and cop detains you in any way ask if you are free to go about your business. If cop says no then request a lawyer and remain silent. You do NOT have to take off your glasses, hat, do-rag, whatever … You do NOT have to turnover your cell phone. Do NOT allow a cop to search you or your house, car, bike, etc. without a warrant. When the cop does search without a warrant in violation of your Constitutional Rights immediately file a complaint against that cop. Immediately! Go to the cops station/division and file that complaint.
Cops put paper on us, we put paper on them. That simple.
And ALWAYS password protect your cell phone. Cops can search your cell phone in many instances without a warrant. Remain silent and don’t give up the password.
All of the above aggravates the shit out of cops. I know, I have done it many times.
![]()
When did government intrusion become patriotic or accepted? For heaven's sake, this country was founded on the government staying out of our lives.
Lawyer Motorcycle Association
If a police officer demands that you produce identification, that demand is not a valid.
In The Hiibel case, the US Supreme Court (highest court in the land) specifically interprets Nevada's "Duty to Identify" statute (NRS 171.123) and ruled:
"It apparently does not require him to produce a driver's license or any ...other documentation. If he chooses either to state his name or communicate it to the officer by other means, the statute is satisfied and no violation occurs." Hiibel v Sixth Judicial Court of Nevada, 542 US 177 (2004)
Please note: the driver of a vehicle is required to produce a driver's license under a different law (but NOT the passenger)
COMMENT`
Don’t kill a cop. You will lose in Court. Enjoy life, get even as a juror (providing you’re eligible for jury service) and vote not guilty no matter what the evidence shows.
Slapstick and Pig,
If driving or riding and you have been pulled over, turn over your license, registration and insurance when asked. If cop starts asking ANY questions simply ask “am I free to leave?” If cop says “yes” then leave. If cop says “no” then say I “want a lawyer.” And continue to remain silent!
If walking down street and cop detains you in any way ask if you are free to go about your business. If cop says no then request a lawyer and remain silent. You do NOT have to take off your glasses, hat, do-rag, whatever … You do NOT have to turnover your cell phone. Do NOT allow a cop to search you or your house, car, bike, etc. without a warrant. When the cop does search without a warrant in violation of your Constitutional Rights immediately file a complaint against that cop. Immediately! Go to the cops station/division and file that complaint.
Cops put paper on us, we put paper on them. That simple.
And ALWAYS password protect your cell phone. Cops can search your cell phone in many instances without a warrant. Remain silent and don’t give up the password.
All of the above aggravates the shit out of cops. I know, I have done it many times.
↧
Citizen’s Right to Video-Record Police Activity
Karen from NY sent me a link to what the AELE has to say for themselves as a result of research on the topic of
Officer Privacy and a Citizen’s Right to Video-Record Police Activity
http://www.aele.org/law/2009all05/2009-05MLJ201.pdf
Conclusions the AELE arrived at:
While no citizen has a right to impede police actions or to expose an officer to danger, the First Amendment generally protects the right to photograph or video-record the activities of law enforcement personnel while engaged in their duties.
...
Although First Amendment rights are always subject to reasonable time, manner and place restrictions, a uniformed police officer does not have a right to privacy while performing his duties.
Also, see the COPWATCH Handbook
http://www.berkeleycopwatch.org/resources/Handbook_06.pdf
COPWATCH is a group of community residents and students who have become outraged by the escalation of police misconduct, harassment and brutality in recent years. We have joined together to fight for our rights and the rights of our community by taking on the task of directly monitoring police conduct.
The home page of COPWATCH is http://www.berkeleycopwatch.org/
Another information source is the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press:
A Practical Guide to Taping Phone Calls and In-Person Conversations in the 50 States and DC.
http://www.rcfp.org/taping/index.html
Tape recording laws at a glance:
http://www.rcfp.org/taping/quick.html
State by state summaries:
http://www.rcfp.org/taping/states.html
Officer Privacy and a Citizen’s Right to Video-Record Police Activity
http://www.aele.org/law/2009all05/2009-05MLJ201.pdf
Conclusions the AELE arrived at:
While no citizen has a right to impede police actions or to expose an officer to danger, the First Amendment generally protects the right to photograph or video-record the activities of law enforcement personnel while engaged in their duties.
...
Although First Amendment rights are always subject to reasonable time, manner and place restrictions, a uniformed police officer does not have a right to privacy while performing his duties.
Also, see the COPWATCH Handbook
http://www.berkeleycopwatch.org/resources/Handbook_06.pdf
COPWATCH is a group of community residents and students who have become outraged by the escalation of police misconduct, harassment and brutality in recent years. We have joined together to fight for our rights and the rights of our community by taking on the task of directly monitoring police conduct.
The home page of COPWATCH is http://www.berkeleycopwatch.org/
Another information source is the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press:
A Practical Guide to Taping Phone Calls and In-Person Conversations in the 50 States and DC.
http://www.rcfp.org/taping/index.html
Tape recording laws at a glance:
http://www.rcfp.org/taping/quick.html
State by state summaries:
http://www.rcfp.org/taping/states.html
↧
What Are My Rights When I'm Pulled Over By a Cop?
OFF THE WIRE
Officer Identification
- You have the right to ask for the officer to identify himself and show his badge and identification. This information is important for two reasons: first, you want to ensure that you aren't about to become the victim of a criminal impersonating a police officer. Second, you will need this information if you feel that you were ill treated by the officer and want to file a complaint.
Do Not Answer Questions
- When you are pulled over, be very careful of what you say. Besides providing your name, drivers license, vehicle registration and proof of insurance, you do not have to answer questions the officer directs at you. You are allowed to answer questions questions like "Do you know why I pulled you over" or "Do you know how fast you were going" with a simple "yes" or "no." You can also choose not to give an answer. Silence is not an admission of guilt, but the officer can use anything you say to write a ticket.
Vehicle Search
- If you are pulled over by the police, they do not automatically have the right to search your car. However, if the officers have probable cause then they can. Probable cause can be established by the officers seeing something in your car through the windows, or by your actions. For example, if they see you throwing something out of your car as you are pulling over or if your actions create suspicion after they pull you over.
Admission of Guilt
- When a police officer gives you a ticket for a driving infraction, it is not a summary judgment. Rather, the citation is a charge from the officer to which you can either plead "no-contest" and pay or challenge in court. As this is the case, you do not have to admit anything to the officer when you are pulled over. If he informs you that you were speeding, you can say "I see" or some other non-committal comment. You only have to acknowledge that you are being given a ticket, not that you deserve it.
↧
USA - When Dealing With The Police - a helpful cheat sheet
OFF THE WIRE
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↧
↧
USA - Know Your Rights: A Primer
OFF THE WIRE
Live and let live – it’s an adage that, if put into practice, would help eliminate the need for these precautions. But right now some folks are putting faith into a badge idea – arbitrary authority. Fortunately, ideas have consequences.
Filming your interactions has several advantages. Most importantly, it will help to safeguard you at that moment, as it very-likely will deter potential aggression, and it will act as an indisputable, objective, transparent record of the incident. The deck is usually stacked against you in cases which come down to just your word against theirs.
Ask “Am I being detained?”
This question is important for several reasons. One is that certain rules regarding evidence that can be collected are dependent on whether you have been officially detained and whether the person stopping you has sufficient cause to detain you in the first place. Getting them on record regarding these issues can aid you greatly in the future if contesting such evidence becomes necessary.
Another reason to ask this is that it will serve as an indicator to the police employee you are interacting with that you are aware of your rights. While this doesn’t always make a difference, letting them know that you understand those rights and are willing to assert them will sometimes make them less likely to disregard them.
![]( "remember-your-camera-know-your-rights-a-primer-copblock")
If you’re told “No”, then you can leave the scene. Sometimes, discretion is the better part of valor.
If you’re told “Yes”, stay calm, cool, and collected. You can choose to remain silent or you can choose to engage.
Police employees default to being on the offensive. Strive to be calm, cool and collected, while confident – knowing that you’ve not acted in the wrong and in fact it is they who acting with hostile. Ask yourself: what is reasonable.
Always strive to deescalate situations, and thus increase the likelihood you’ll leave under your own volition rather than under the control of a stranger. It will also allow those who may later view video of the interaction to easily and clearly see just who is the aggressor. A video recording means that facts can be shared immediately with a large number of people; you can move more-quickly to the next stage, thus making it more-likely they’ll support you if needed and be more-likely to speak out against injustice themselves.
Police employees can and do lie – something that courts have ruled is perfectly acceptable – in an attempt to solicit information from you or to get you to admit to engaging in an action they believe gives them the right to kidnap and cage you (even though said action may not cause a victim). Be aware of this and act accordingly.
In fact, police employees are actually trained in methods of deception designed to trick people into giving up their rights and/or cooperating against themselves and or their friends. They are taught to act friendly as if they want to help you in order to gather information, which eventually could be used against you or others. In addition, they are instructed to phrase questions in a way that they sound like statements (I’m going to _____, okay?) in order to trick you into giving consent.
If you do engage, answer questions with questions. Ask, “Where is the victim?”, “Why do you believe you have the right to prevent my freedom of movement?” etc. Treat the police employee no differently than you would someone not wearing the same costume who approached and questioned you.
They know there is usually very little chance they will be held accountable for such tactics. In most cases, the charges are later dismissed, but that doesn’t eliminate the time and indignities suffered by their victims during even a brief period within one of their cages. Pushing back against this culture of abuse is important both to protect your own rights and deter its future use against others.
Don’t panic. The world won’t end. Now is the time to engage in damage control and move-forward to mitigate any further harassment and to seek accountability for the real aggressors.
Write down a detailed summary of what unfolded. Create an objective overview that will bring someone totally unfamiliar with the incident up-to-speed.
You may have an inclination to put this off until later, but it’s actually very important to do so while the incident is fresh. Details that are now clear will become forgotten with the passage of time. Plus, you’ll see just how useful making time to tackle this really is when you realize that it’s actually a time-saver. Instead of repeating the same story multiple times to different people, you can just point them to your write-up.
Where did the interaction happen? What was going on immediately prior to the interaction? What was the date and time? Who were the parties involved? What were their badge numbers, employers, contact information? What was given as rationale for stopping you? What was said during the exchange?
Share your overview at http://copblock.org/submit
Submit a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (note that this is known by different names depending on the area). Inquire of the police department if they have a form for this – they usually do not. Don’t fret. Just write and submit your own. Include a sentence or two overview of who you are, the information sought, and your contact information.
You can use the text below as a template:
“To Whom It May Concern:
“This document is to serve as a Freedom of Information Act request. Please provide to me any and all content, including but not limited to dashcam video and related audio, dispatcher logs, police reports, internal memos, related departmental policies, from the incident that occurred on DATE at LOCATION involving YOUR NAME & CASE NUMBER/CHARGES IF KNOWN. Also, please include any and all information related to the number, date, and outcome of complaints made against POLICE EMPLOYEE NAME/BADGE NUMBER.
“YOUR NAME PRINTED
YOUR PHONE NUMBER
YOUR MAILING ADDRESS”
Or utilize this much-more thorough FOIA request template shared by Virginia Cop Block
When submitting the FOIA request film the exchange. Or better yet, have a friend accompany you who can film. The more transparency the better.
![]( "COPBLOCK_crime_-_law_enforcement_01")
Ask for a receipt, or a signed/stamped copy of your FOIA request.
Inquire to learn the legislated time-limit the police department has to respond to your request (often five-ten days). Due to the inefficiency of the bureaucratic, centralized police department, you may be contacted during that time-frame to inform you that an extension is needed.
Note that you can be charged for copying fees of documents, video and other content. Be sure to state when you submit the FOIA request that you want to have the ability to review everything before it’s taken/paid for. That way, if dozens of pages of unrelated material are included, you won’t be on the hook.
Add the information gotten from the FOIA request to your post about the incident as an update. If you have access to a scanner, scan the documentation and save it to http://scribd.com. You can create a free account there if you don’t already have one.
Win in the Court of Public Opinion
If you’ve done nothing wrong don’t be afraid. Instead, voice as loudly and clearly as you can, the rights-violations you suffered and continue to face due to the actions of the police employee and prosecutor.
Demand a jury trial, even for something as trivial as a speeding ticket. Currently about 95% of cases are plead out before that stage. That does nothing to disincentivize the same or a greater level of police statism. If we each stood-up for what we knew was right, it’d frankly be impossible for this level to continue, and in fact it would lessen until it reached the point where no one claimed extra rights based on their attire.
Share pertinent information so others can easily get on the same page. Cultivate media contacts and share them as well. Encourage others, who have a grasp on your situation thanks to your write-up, and inclusion of relevant pictures and/or video, to call on your behalf and demand justice.
It’s not uncommon for court dates to be pushed back or for the “prosecutor” to stack threats against you. While court employees might hope such tactics will wear you down, point to such tactics as examples of their inability to make right by dismissing the charges levied at you and calling-out the real aggressors.
Court is called “legal land” for a reason. It’s an environment void of logic and common sense. Where public officials who purport to be acting to obtain justice in reality act to safeguard themselves and their colleagues. Don’t be surprised at or let yourself get worn down by their actions. Stand on your conscience and know that, at the end of the day, you did no harm. Not only will this resonate with you but it will embolden others to speak out and do what they know is right, until one day, the harassment meted out by those with badges, and the double-standards others afford them, are no more.
———–
Connect with others who know that badges don’t grant extra rights http://copblock.org/groupsHaving support on the ground in these situations can be critical.
Check out all documents in the “Know Your Rights” Collection housed at http://scribd.com/copblock
Educate yourself: http://copblock.org/knowledge
Interacting with police employees
Always document exchanges you have with police or those that you witness, preferably via video, if possible. Even better, stream the interaction in real-time to the Internet using a free smartphone application (see: http://copblock.org/apps). This prevents it from being erased or tampered with should your equipment be stolen by police. In addition, it can increase the speed with which word can get out should you need outside support.Filming your interactions has several advantages. Most importantly, it will help to safeguard you at that moment, as it very-likely will deter potential aggression, and it will act as an indisputable, objective, transparent record of the incident. The deck is usually stacked against you in cases which come down to just your word against theirs.
Ask “Am I being detained?”
This question is important for several reasons. One is that certain rules regarding evidence that can be collected are dependent on whether you have been officially detained and whether the person stopping you has sufficient cause to detain you in the first place. Getting them on record regarding these issues can aid you greatly in the future if contesting such evidence becomes necessary.
Another reason to ask this is that it will serve as an indicator to the police employee you are interacting with that you are aware of your rights. While this doesn’t always make a difference, letting them know that you understand those rights and are willing to assert them will sometimes make them less likely to disregard them.
If you’re told “No”, then you can leave the scene. Sometimes, discretion is the better part of valor.
If you’re told “Yes”, stay calm, cool, and collected. You can choose to remain silent or you can choose to engage.
Police employees default to being on the offensive. Strive to be calm, cool and collected, while confident – knowing that you’ve not acted in the wrong and in fact it is they who acting with hostile. Ask yourself: what is reasonable.
Always strive to deescalate situations, and thus increase the likelihood you’ll leave under your own volition rather than under the control of a stranger. It will also allow those who may later view video of the interaction to easily and clearly see just who is the aggressor. A video recording means that facts can be shared immediately with a large number of people; you can move more-quickly to the next stage, thus making it more-likely they’ll support you if needed and be more-likely to speak out against injustice themselves.
Police employees can and do lie – something that courts have ruled is perfectly acceptable – in an attempt to solicit information from you or to get you to admit to engaging in an action they believe gives them the right to kidnap and cage you (even though said action may not cause a victim). Be aware of this and act accordingly.
In fact, police employees are actually trained in methods of deception designed to trick people into giving up their rights and/or cooperating against themselves and or their friends. They are taught to act friendly as if they want to help you in order to gather information, which eventually could be used against you or others. In addition, they are instructed to phrase questions in a way that they sound like statements (I’m going to _____, okay?) in order to trick you into giving consent.
If you do engage, answer questions with questions. Ask, “Where is the victim?”, “Why do you believe you have the right to prevent my freedom of movement?” etc. Treat the police employee no differently than you would someone not wearing the same costume who approached and questioned you.
If you get arrested
Police employees often make arrests they know to be without merit, simply as a way to harass those who question their authority. Several vague “go-to” charges are often used for such purposes including, but not limited to, disturbing the peace, trespassing, obstruction, interfering with an officer/investigation, failure to follow lawful orders, etc. In cases involving police brutality, charges of resisting arrest and/or assaulting an officer can often be used to justify the police employees own use of force (having the unbiased and unimpeachable witness that video represents is especially crucial in this instance).They know there is usually very little chance they will be held accountable for such tactics. In most cases, the charges are later dismissed, but that doesn’t eliminate the time and indignities suffered by their victims during even a brief period within one of their cages. Pushing back against this culture of abuse is important both to protect your own rights and deter its future use against others.
Don’t panic. The world won’t end. Now is the time to engage in damage control and move-forward to mitigate any further harassment and to seek accountability for the real aggressors.
Write down a detailed summary of what unfolded. Create an objective overview that will bring someone totally unfamiliar with the incident up-to-speed.
You may have an inclination to put this off until later, but it’s actually very important to do so while the incident is fresh. Details that are now clear will become forgotten with the passage of time. Plus, you’ll see just how useful making time to tackle this really is when you realize that it’s actually a time-saver. Instead of repeating the same story multiple times to different people, you can just point them to your write-up.
Where did the interaction happen? What was going on immediately prior to the interaction? What was the date and time? Who were the parties involved? What were their badge numbers, employers, contact information? What was given as rationale for stopping you? What was said during the exchange?
Share your overview at http://copblock.org/submit
Document, Document, Document
Obtain as much related information as possible. The more comprehensive you are, the less-likely it is that frivolous charges will be levied against you and the more-likely it is that charges will be dropped.Submit a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (note that this is known by different names depending on the area). Inquire of the police department if they have a form for this – they usually do not. Don’t fret. Just write and submit your own. Include a sentence or two overview of who you are, the information sought, and your contact information.
You can use the text below as a template:
“To Whom It May Concern:
“This document is to serve as a Freedom of Information Act request. Please provide to me any and all content, including but not limited to dashcam video and related audio, dispatcher logs, police reports, internal memos, related departmental policies, from the incident that occurred on DATE at LOCATION involving YOUR NAME & CASE NUMBER/CHARGES IF KNOWN. Also, please include any and all information related to the number, date, and outcome of complaints made against POLICE EMPLOYEE NAME/BADGE NUMBER.
“YOUR NAME PRINTED
YOUR PHONE NUMBER
YOUR MAILING ADDRESS”
Or utilize this much-more thorough FOIA request template shared by Virginia Cop Block
When submitting the FOIA request film the exchange. Or better yet, have a friend accompany you who can film. The more transparency the better.
Ask for a receipt, or a signed/stamped copy of your FOIA request.
Inquire to learn the legislated time-limit the police department has to respond to your request (often five-ten days). Due to the inefficiency of the bureaucratic, centralized police department, you may be contacted during that time-frame to inform you that an extension is needed.
Note that you can be charged for copying fees of documents, video and other content. Be sure to state when you submit the FOIA request that you want to have the ability to review everything before it’s taken/paid for. That way, if dozens of pages of unrelated material are included, you won’t be on the hook.
Add the information gotten from the FOIA request to your post about the incident as an update. If you have access to a scanner, scan the documentation and save it to http://scribd.com. You can create a free account there if you don’t already have one.
Win in the Court of Public Opinion
If you’ve done nothing wrong don’t be afraid. Instead, voice as loudly and clearly as you can, the rights-violations you suffered and continue to face due to the actions of the police employee and prosecutor.
Demand a jury trial, even for something as trivial as a speeding ticket. Currently about 95% of cases are plead out before that stage. That does nothing to disincentivize the same or a greater level of police statism. If we each stood-up for what we knew was right, it’d frankly be impossible for this level to continue, and in fact it would lessen until it reached the point where no one claimed extra rights based on their attire.
Related resources:
- NeverTakeaPlea.org
- Don’t Take the Plea Deal– tri-fold flyer
- Jury Nullification: Why you shoulud know what it is– essay
Share pertinent information so others can easily get on the same page. Cultivate media contacts and share them as well. Encourage others, who have a grasp on your situation thanks to your write-up, and inclusion of relevant pictures and/or video, to call on your behalf and demand justice.
It’s not uncommon for court dates to be pushed back or for the “prosecutor” to stack threats against you. While court employees might hope such tactics will wear you down, point to such tactics as examples of their inability to make right by dismissing the charges levied at you and calling-out the real aggressors.
Court is called “legal land” for a reason. It’s an environment void of logic and common sense. Where public officials who purport to be acting to obtain justice in reality act to safeguard themselves and their colleagues. Don’t be surprised at or let yourself get worn down by their actions. Stand on your conscience and know that, at the end of the day, you did no harm. Not only will this resonate with you but it will embolden others to speak out and do what they know is right, until one day, the harassment meted out by those with badges, and the double-standards others afford them, are no more.
———–
Connect with others who know that badges don’t grant extra rights http://copblock.org/groupsHaving support on the ground in these situations can be critical.
Check out all documents in the “Know Your Rights” Collection housed at http://scribd.com/copblock
Educate yourself: http://copblock.org/knowledge
At the end of the day, if you did nothing wrong then you should not be afraid to speak the truth. As we each stand-up we’ll empower others to do the same, and together, we’ll get there.
↧
Flipping Off Police Officers Constitutional, Federal Court Affirms
OFF THE WIRE
WASHINGTON -- A police officer can't pull you over and arrest you just because you gave him the finger, a federal appeals court declared Thursday.
In a 14-page opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that the "ancient gesture of insult is not the basis for a reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation or impending criminal activity."
John Swartz and his wife Judy Mayton-Swartz had sued two police officers who arrested Swartz in May 2006 after he flipped off an officer who was using a radar device at an intersection in St. Johnsville, N.Y. Swartz was later charged with a violation of New York's disorderly conduct statute, but the charges were dismissed on speedy trial grounds.
A federal judge in the Northern District of New York granted summary judgement to the officers in July 2011, but the Court of Appeals on Thursday erased that decision and ordered the lower court to take up the case again.
Richard Insogna, the officer who stopped Swartz and his wife when they arrived at their destination, claimed he pulled the couple over because he believed Swartz was "trying to get my attention for some reason." The appeals court didn't buy that explanation, ruling that the "nearly universal recognition that this gesture is an insult deprives such an interpretation of reasonableness."
WASHINGTON -- A police officer can't pull you over and arrest you just because you gave him the finger, a federal appeals court declared Thursday.
In a 14-page opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that the "ancient gesture of insult is not the basis for a reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation or impending criminal activity."
John Swartz and his wife Judy Mayton-Swartz had sued two police officers who arrested Swartz in May 2006 after he flipped off an officer who was using a radar device at an intersection in St. Johnsville, N.Y. Swartz was later charged with a violation of New York's disorderly conduct statute, but the charges were dismissed on speedy trial grounds.
A federal judge in the Northern District of New York granted summary judgement to the officers in July 2011, but the Court of Appeals on Thursday erased that decision and ordered the lower court to take up the case again.
Richard Insogna, the officer who stopped Swartz and his wife when they arrived at their destination, claimed he pulled the couple over because he believed Swartz was "trying to get my attention for some reason." The appeals court didn't buy that explanation, ruling that the "nearly universal recognition that this gesture is an insult deprives such an interpretation of reasonableness."
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How to File a Complaint Against a Police Officer
OFF THE WIRE
Never ... ever... walk into a police station by yourself and try to file a complaint against a police officer. Civilian testers have shown that you may be harassed or falsely arrested for doing so.
Never ... ever... walk into a police station by yourself and try to file a complaint against a police officer. Civilian testers have shown that you may be harassed or falsely arrested for doing so.
Police complaints are allegations of misconduct and you as a citizen have the right to file a police complaint. When someone files a police complaint against a police officer an incident report is placed in the officer's record, so as to hopefully keep the officer from continuing to abuse his or her authority. It also makes the officers superiors aware that there might be a problem with an individual police officer that needs to be addressed. Filing a police complaint and reporting police misconduct is a step towards ending this abuse of power by police.
Examples of police misconduct:
Rudeness
Excessive force
Soliciting or accepting bribes
Drinking on duty
Harassment
Making a false report (good for alleging in the case of traffic tickets)
Use of narcotics (on or off duty)
Discrimination
Altering information on an official document
Careless driving (driving rapidly and/or aggressively to a minor call
Racial or ethnic intimidation
Malicious threats or assault
Sexual harassment
Police complaints will not get a victim compensated for police abuse. Police complaints are not law suits. If you file a complaint against a police officer and the police clear themselves as they often do, the only recourse you may have is a civil law suit. A civil law suit you may receive compensation if you and your attorney can prove damages or civil rights violations. Contact a competent civil rights attorney if you need more information about filing a law suit for civil rights violations.
To file a complaint on a police officer "one of a less serious nature," you need to send a written complaint "certified mail with return receipt." You can send the police complaint to Internal Affairs. Certified mail gives you some type of proof that you actually filed a complaint against a police officer. If you don't send the complaint certified mail the letter sometimes gets lost or misplaced by someone at the police department.
As soon as possible write down everything that happened. Don't worry about sending your complaint off right away. Wait a few days and go back over your written complaint and see what you might have forgotten the first time you wrote it. There's no need for "emotions" to be involved, when you write your complaint and the most important thing is to be truthful! If the police catch you in a lie, your complaint won't be credible nor will any other complaints you send in the future. You could even be charged for making a false report against a police officer and in some states be sued.
The more information in your written complaint the better. Your compliant should include:
Who is the officer you're filing a complaint against? Name or badge number?
What the officer said or did? Was he rude, abusive or used excessive force?
When did it happen? Date and time.
Where did it occur? Location?
How did the incident occur?
Do you have corroborating witnesses, whose story does not conflict with yours? If you have witnesses you should ask each of them to write a separate account of the incident.
Do you have any type of evidence, like pictures or a video recording? If you do, don't send the "original" to the police, send only a copy.
Mail the complaint "certified mail with return receipt requested," to Internal Affairs at the police department or the sheriffs department where the officer works. The complaint will be investigated and you should receive a letter back from the police agency on the status of your complaint. Most police complaints will be in the favor of the police officer, but the good thing is the complaint will stay on the police officers record.
The police may try and contact you by phone or mail to do a "follow up" about your complaint. Don't answer any questions and never go down to the police station for an interview. Tell them everything they need to know is in your letter you sent and then say good bye. Stick to what you said in your complaint letter and say nothing else!
There is a time limit on how long you have to file a complaint against a police officer. For minor police misconduct you may have only 60 days and up to 6 months for more serious allegations.
If you're interested in knowing what complaints have been filed against police officers in your community, you may request a copy of that information be sent to you from that police agency. Send your request "certified mail with return receipt requested." Request a copy of complaints of police officers from that agency be mailed to you under the "Freedom of Information Act." DON'T ever walk into a police station and ask for this information! Police officers either start acting real stupid on the subject or they get mad and start threatening you.
Never file a complaint directly with a police agency specially if the complaint is of a serious nature, see an attorney! If you do plan on hiring an attorney, get one who doesn't work in your area. Don't get a lawyer from your town, county or from the surrounding counties. Local lawyers work with same judges, prosecutors and police officers on a daily basis and may not want to win your case as bad as you do.
You may also contact your State Attorney General. For serious incidents call the ACLU hot line 1-877-634-5454 or contact the Department of JusticeClick here for the (DOJ) site.
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The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
2. 5th Amendment..
Tim illustrates 5th Amendment.avi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQqQF7bWlFw
3. Now Let's See what happens to those Uppity Bikers when they demand their Constitutional Rights!
Fools who stand up for their Constitutional Rights
VC 27802 (a) The regulations shall include, but are not limited to, the requirements imposed by Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 218 (49 C.F.R. Sec. 571.218) and may include compliance with that federal standard by incorporation of its requirements by reference.