Courtesy  SFGate:

(12-12) 19:15 PST BERKELEY — Eight people were in custody Saturday after a crowd of angry protesters broke windows and threw burning torches at UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s campus residence in protest of fee hikes and budget cuts, authorities said.

As many as 75 people – some of them carrying torches – surrounded the mansion, known as University House, on the north side of campus off Hearst Avenue at about 11:15 p.m. Friday, police said.

The crowd, including a man taken into custody in a university protest a day earlier, chanted, “No justice, no peace,” and began smashing planters, windows and lights. Several hurled their torches at the building, said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof.

Birgeneau was sleeping at the time and was awakened by his wife, Mary Catherine, Mogulof said. They were frightened, but unharmed, he said.

“These are criminals, not activists,” Birgeneau said in a statement issued Saturday morning. “The attack at our home was extraordinarily frightening and violent. My wife and I genuinely feared for our lives.”

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger condemned the attack Saturday as a form of terrorism.

-Article continues @ Source.

Courtesy Rawstory:

A police raid of a Democratic congressional candidate’s backyard fundraiser has become the subject of a San Diego County Sheriff’s Department investigation, the department said on Monday according to an area report.

The fundraiser was for Francine Busby, a Democrat who is running against incumbent Republican Brian Bilbray of California’s 50th congressional district. The fundraiser was being held in the backyard of a suburban home in Cardiff, which apparently riled a neighbor who reportedly shouted profanity at the group. Then, around 9:30 p.m., two-year veteran Deputy Marshall Abbott showed up, seemingly in response to a noise complaint from the heckler.

By the time it was over, several of Busby’s supporters had been pepper sprayed and the party’s hostess, Shari Barman, was arrested for resisting and obstructing a peace officer.

“‘He had a raged look in his eyes, and his head was bobbing from side to side,’ said Kimberley Beatty, 42, a stay-at-home mother who attended the fundraiser,”according to a report by Sign on San Diego. “Beatty said she called 911 to report that [Deputy Abbott] ‘appeared to be out of control.’”

Continued at Article Source.

YouTube Link

Updates at Mountain Justice.

Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) — A divided U.S. Supreme Court gave prosecutors more ability to use evidence obtained in violation of the Constitution, ruling against a man who was arrested and searched only because of a police clerical error.

The justices, voting 5-4 along ideological lines, upheld Bennie Dean Herring’s conviction for illegal possession of the methamphetamine and pistol he was carrying when he was arrested in 2004 in Coffee County, Alabama.

“In such a case, the criminal should not go free because the constable has blundered,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, using a line from a 1926 Supreme Court decision.

Herring was arrested when he came to the Coffee County sheriff’s department to retrieve something from an impounded truck. At the time, a neighboring county’s computer system showed an active arrest warrant for Herring’s failure to appear in court on a felony charge. That warrant in reality had been recalled, so Coffee County police lacked any legal basis to arrest Herring.

The Supreme Court in some past cases has applied the so- called exclusionary rule to illegally obtained evidence, barring its use at trial. The court has restricted use of the exclusionary rule under Roberts and his predecessor as chief justice, William Rehnquist.

Not Deliberate

“As laid out in our cases, the exclusionary rule serves to deter deliberate, reckless or grossly negligent conduct, or in some circumstances recurring or systemic negligence,” Roberts wrote. “The error in this case does not rise to that level.”

Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedyjoined Roberts’s opinion.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter, John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer dissented.

-Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

From Chris Vogel on The Houston Press blog:

It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn’s home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.

As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, “You’re a prostitute. You’re coming with me.” Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.

As it turned out, the three men were plain-clothed Galveston police officers who had been called to the area regarding three white prostitutes soliciting a white man and a black drug dealer.

All this is according to a lawsuit filed in Galveston federal court by Milburn against the officers. The lawsuit alleges that the officers thought Dymond, an African-American, was a hooker due to the “tight shorts” she was wearing, despite not fitting the racial description of any of the female suspects. The police went to the wrong house, two blocks away from the area of the reported illegal activity, Milburn’s attorney, Anthony Griffin, tells Hair Balls.

After the incident, Dymond was hospitalized and suffered black eyes as well as throat and ear drum injuries.

Three weeks later, according to the lawsuit, police went to Dymond’s school, where she was an honor student, and arrested her for assaulting a public servant. Griffin says the allegations stem from when Dymond fought back against the three men who were trying to take her from her home. The case went to trial, but the judge declared it a mistrial on the first day, says Griffin. The new trial is set for February.

Read the rest of this insanity here.

El Reno, OK — In Oklahoma, a driver went into severe diabetic shock, but instead of getting help, he was tasered and handcuffed.

The video shows what happened in El Reno, Oklahoma last month after the man’s truck spun out on the interstate.

The town’s police chief says his officers thought the 53-year-old man was under the influence of drugs or alcohol and was resisting arrest.

He says after they realized that wasn’t the case, they called an ambulance.

Click here to see the video.

Read the rest of the article here.

Courtesy SFGate:

Two Las Vegas police officers who were seriously hurt after being shocked by Taser weapons in 2003 have sued its makers, saying the company failed to properly warn the department about the potential for injury.

About a dozen officers around the country have made similar claims in suing Taser International Inc., questioning the company’s safety claims.

A third Las Vegas officer sued Taser but settled last year. Terms were not disclosed.

The Las Vegas police department has stopped a practice of shocking officers during training. During training, officers had been told that they couldn’t truly understand the weapon until they had been shocked by it.

-Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

FLORIDA TODAY

A 45-year-old wheelchair-bound man who allegedly robbed a Space Coast Credit Union branch on Merritt Island this afternoon was arrested minutes later near the parking lot of a FLORIDA TODAY office a block away from the bank, the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office said.

Merritt Island resident Christopher Reed was arrested about 4:20 p.m., about 10 minutes after the bank was robbed, according to investigators. 

Investigators said Reed, who is a paraplegic confined to a motorized wheelchair, entered the bank on the 400 block of Fortenberry Road on Merritt Island, and demanded money, after telling the employees that he was armed with an explosive device. 

“He left the bank with an undisclosed amount of money,” according to Brevard County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Vic DeSantis. 

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Courtesy The Washington Post

The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.

olice Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.

The department started sending letters of notification Saturday to the activists, inviting them to review their files before they are purged from the databases, Sheridan said.

“The names don’t belong in there,” he told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. “It’s as simple as that.”

The surveillance took place over 14 months in 2005 and 2006, under the administration of former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R). The former state police superintendent who authorized the operation, Thomas E. Hutchins, defended the program in testimony yesterday. Hutchins said the program was a bulwark against potential violence and called the activists “fringe people.”

Sheridan said protest groups were also entered as terrorist organizations in the databases, but his staff has not identified which ones.

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Courtesy Chron (The Houston Chronicle)

GALVESTON — About 1,000 prisoners and a full jail staff remained in the Galveston County Jail on Galveston Island this morning, even as the island began to be battered by the onslaught of Hurricane Ike.
The reason for not evacuating the prisoners is a security issue and cannot be discussed, sheriff’s spokesman Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo said.
“The prisoners and their safety and well-being are paramount and it will be handled,” Tuttoilmondo said.
Any decision to move the prisoners would be kept secret for security reasons, as happened before Hurricane Rita in 2005, he said.
“We did this during Rita and no one knew until it was absolutely done,” Tuttoilmondo said.
The prisoners were in the jail as of 10 a.m. today, leaving little time to transfer them to the mainland. Hurricane-force winds are expected to strike the island later today, making exit across the causeway to the mainland difficult.
Tuttoilmondo declined to say how many deputies were at the jail, but said a full jail staff and relief shifts remained on duty at the lockup at 57th Street and Broadway.
He also declined to discuss measures the Sheriff’s Office would take to make sure the prisoners and jail staff remained safe if a storm surge floods the jail.

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

*Thank you to Betsy, The HORN’s Texas Ninja for this Article.