By ZACK HUFFMAN
The Boston Police Department spent over a year dodging public records requests from a pro bono legal services group seeking drug-test records, the group claims in court.
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice wants records about the hair drug test used to screen officers, which has been challenged for being less reliable when testing African-American hair.
The committee is also seeking records that detail the racial makeup of BPD's recruiting class at its training academy, according to a lawsuit it filed last week against the City of Boston, the Boston Police Department (BPD) and Police Commissioner Williams Evans.
Specifically, the committee requested documentation of the number of officers tested for drug use, divided by race, and divided by the method of testing - either by hair, since 2007, or urinalysis, since 1998. Of those, the organization also requested the number of officers who tested positive for cocaine use.
The first records request was made on Dec. 5, 2014, and the second request was made Dec. 22, 2015. The committee's lawsuit alleges BPD has not responded to either request.
"The requests in question seek documents that are critical to ascertaining the racial impact of BPD employment practices," the Jan. 20 complaint states. "BPD's use of this test is highly controversial, particularly in light of questions regarding the test's reliability in testing African-American hair. Records concerning BPD's use of this test, and its impact on African-American officers, are critical public documents that should not be shielded from public view."
At the Time Jim Jones Was Calling Dan Mitrione His "Close Friend" Mitrione Was Teaching Latin American Dictatorships Torture Techniques. Mitrione is depicted by an actor in the classic film, "State of Siege." He was eventually kidnapped and executed by Tupamaro Guerrillas.
_____________
Jonestown "Death Tape"
(FBI File No. Q042)
Recorded November 18, 1978
Source: Internet Archive
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LT. COL. JAMES “BO” GRITZ AND JONESTOWN: "All The Niggers Are Dead" (Excerpt)
By "Gunny G"
The officer in charge of all U.S. Army Special Forces
for Latin America at the time of the Jonestown holocaust was Lt. Col.
James “Bo” Gritz. Gritz was the original soldier after which the movie
character “Rambo” was patterned. Gritz was the most decorated soldier to
come out of the Vietnam war.
The Guyana massacre was carried out by Bo Gritz’ men (along with British SAS troops). *Flatland* (#10) magazine, in an interview with Gritz, asked him:
Question: You trained Special Forces that went into Jonestown? What was the precise nature of the operation?
“I
don’t know precisely because it was a compartmentalized operation. The
only thing that I do know for certain is what the Sergeant I quote
coming out of Jonestown, he was insistent because he was disgusted, on
writing this book. He was, without compromise, going to call it *All the
Niggers Are Dead.* I asked him, ‘Why would you want to entitle anything
such an offensive way?’ ‘It doesn’t make a difference what your color,
your creed, your sex,’ he said, ‘when you are treated the way they were,
that’s what you are; you’re a nigger, you’re nothing else.’ I think
that those soldiers saw things that affected them and made them very
angry. I’ve seen other things like that in combat where there have been
abuses. I wrote about one of them in my book where the Captain tortured
the young severely and the young Sergeant put on a swastika and said,
“If I’m going to act like a Nazi I’m going to look like one.’ I think
that the same kind of negative impact occurred in Jonestown.”
Gritz
has more about Jonestown in his autobiography, *Called to Serve.*
Perhaps you simply cannot believe what I am telling you. Will you
believe it if told to you by the Green Beret officer in charge of the
men who did the killing? He admits that the information was
“compartmentalized” and it was not until later that he learned what his
men were actually doing. The following information is from pages 584-587
of his book:
“The true story of the Jonestown camp in
Guyana has been brought to light through an extensive investigation
conducted by John Judge, from Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and
other dedicated researchers and investigators. The truth, which was
thoroughly suppressed by the American media, is that it was actually a
slave-labor camp run by Jones with the assistance of the CIA.
Most of the information which follows is from John Judge’s summary of
the investigation, supplemented with information provided by Special
Forces teams I had earlier trained and commanded, who were sent in to
‘clean up the remains of Jonestown.’
“Most of the
black and Hispanic poor people and social activists who became the
inmates of the camp were brought there either by force or coercion, or
lured under false pretenses, where extensive experiments of drug-induced
mind control were performed on them. Even before they were moved to
Guyana, reports of beatings, kidnappings, sexual abuse and mysterious
deaths had leaked out to the press about the earlier Peoples’ Temple in Ukiah, California.
“Jim Jones had a very interesting past which was overlooked by the media: During the time his friend Dan Mitrione
was teaching torture techniques to the Brazilian and Argentineans,
Jones was also sent to Brazil where his house, transportation and
groceries were provided to him by the U.S. Embassy, and he frequently
traveled to Belo Horizonte, the CIA headquarters in Brazil.
“Jones
had been contacted in Ukiah by ‘Christian missionaries’ from World
Vision (World Vision is a CIA controlled front operation), an
evangelical order which had performed espionage work for the CIA in
Southeast Asia. Most of Jones’ top lieutenants were from wealthy,
educated backgrounds, many with connections to the military or
intelligence agencies. These were the people who were involved in
setting up the bank accounts, complex legal transactions and financial
agreements which put people under the control of the Peoples’ Temple.
“Some of Jones’ Lieutenants were: Dr. Lawrence Layton was chief of Chemical and Biological Warfare Research at Dugway Proving Grounds
in Utah for many years and later worked as Director of Missile and
Satellite Development at the Navy Propellant Division at Indian Head,
Maryland. His wife, Lisa, was the daughter of Hugo Phillips, who had
represented the huge Nazi manufacturing cartel, I.G. Farben, as a
stockbroker. Their daughter, Debbie, met and married George Philip
Blakey, whose parents had extensive stock holdings in Solve Drugs, a
division of I.G. Farben.
“Blakey was reputed to be
training mercenaries in Jonestown who were sent to work with CIA-backed
UNITA forces in Angola. Terri Buford’s father, Admiral Charles T.
Buford, worked with Naval Intelligence. Marie Katsaris’ father was
minister with the Greek Orthodox Church, thought to be a conduit of CIA
funding, and she claimed she had proof he was a CIA agent. The ‘official
survivors’ were represented upon their return to the U.S. by Joseph
Blatchford, an attorney who had been named in a prior scandal involving
CIA infiltration of the Peace Corps.
“The people who
were taken from San Francisco to begin their ‘new life’ in Guyana were
bussed to Florida and arrived in Guyana bound and gagged, where they
were forced to work 16 hours or more daily, and were fed on minimum
rations. As more and more rumors began to filter back to the United
States of druggings, beatings, torture, sexual humiliations and coercion
at the Guyana site, Congressman Leo Ryan decided to go to Guyana and
verify the situation for himself.
“Ryan had challenged
the CIA’s overseas operations before, as a member of the House
Committee responsible for oversight on intelligence. He was co-author of
the controversial Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which would have required
advance CIA disclosure to the congressional committees of all planned
covert operations. The amendment would be defeated shortly after his
death in Jonestown.
“With Ryan on the way to
Jonestown, the secrecy surrounding the camp would be broken and
desperate measures would need to be taken to keep the truth from
escaping, much less the inmates. In a futile attempt to test their
conditioning methods, the leaders at Jonestown apparently tried to
implement an actual suicide drill, but it was obviously ignored.
Official stories first numbered the victims at 408, but later revised
the toll upward to 913. It was claimed that some 505 bodies had been
covered by those of the first 408 who had fallen directly on top of
them, confusing those who had been counting from aerial photographs. – a
blatant and ridiculous attempt at cover-up.
“However,
the first reports were true – 408 had died, and 700 fled to the jungle
where British Black Watch troops and American Special Forces were
conducting ‘training exercises.’ Of the 700, 505 who had been
deliberately shot in the jungle were added to the count of those who had
supposedly committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool Aid.
Was There A CIA Conspiracy to Destroy Jonestown? (Excerpt)
By Laurie Efrein-Kahalas, San Diego State University
The last person to leave the scene alive, Stanley Clayton, told the coroner’s jury in Matthews Ridge (an adjoining town) that when he left, only 100-200 people were still alive, and that although the scene was gruesome, it was peaceful, with Marceline Jones hugging people saying "I’ll see you in your next life." Indeed, there was an explicit final letter left at Jonestown (see FINAL WITNESS), which is specific about people passing on in a peaceful, if grief-laden procession.
So who was it who desecrated the bodies at Jonestown in such a gruesome manner? First, what might be the motive? One motive is clear: Make Jim Jones look like a brutal murderer of his own people, to bolster the claim that he had "ordered" the assassination of the Congressman. That would deflect investigation of the facts, much less consideration of a frame. Surely Jim Jones was responsible for everything. Case closed.
Who was responsible for the desecration? Who arrived at Jonestown before the coroner; before, indeed, anyone else arrived "officially"? Had forces arrived clandestinely, and if so, who were they, and how much time did they have to make the scene appear as they wanted?
The answer to these two questions appears to be, respectively, "Yes" and "A lot of time." First, the tragedy happened the night of Saturday, November 18th. The first team brought in "officially" was the Guyanese Defense Force, along with survivors from Jonestown brought back to identify bodies. That did not happen until Monday morning, November 20th. For the entire day of Sunday, November 19th, presumably no one was at Jonestown at all.
Yet two completely separate sources confirm that U.S. Special Forces (Green Berets) were in Jonestown within five or six hours. The first was a source from within the U.S. military, one Charles Huff from the U.S. Army Special Forces in Panama. According to FREEDOM Magazine, he was "one of the Green Berets who were the first American troops on the scene following the massacre." He said they were into Jonestown within about five hours. Indeed, Clayton told the coroner’s jury of the community falling completely silent following the deaths for 45 minutes, and that then, suddenly, there was a chorus of shouts, as well as gunfire. The source of the sounds and the gunfire, has never been identified.
Huff elaborated that "’We saw many bullet wounds as well as wounds from crossbow bolts." Huff noted that those with fatal bullet or bolt wounds appeared to have been running towards the jungle that surrounded Jonestown. Huff said that the adults who had not been shot had been killed by injections between the shoulder blades." Then enigmatically, "The killers escaped before the arrival of Huff and his team." Huff also claims that of the troops early into Jonestown, sixteen of them later "committed suicide." Given that only two Peoples Temple survivors committed suicide in the wake of the tragedy, sixteen "suicides" amongst trained combat personnel defies believability. But sixteen "suspicious deaths" is indeed a high figure, which compels investigation.
Who desecrated the bodies? Nearly no one "escaped" from Jonestown except for the tiny handful of people who ran into the jungle, and who were surely not responsible for any carnage. How could one not suspect that it was the Green Beret force itself who inflicted the purported damage?
An unexpected confirmation of U.S. troops clandestinely on site just showed up recently in a Russian book called "The Jonestown Carnage: A CIA Crime" printed by Progress Press in Moscow. Their claim was that "At about 18.00 [that’s 6 p.m. on November 18th], several S-141 military transport planes took off from military bases in Panama and Dover [Delaware] and headed for Guyana. The estimated time of flight was 3 hours 40 minutes. … Two hours later, without notifying the local authorities in the area of Venezuela where the Americans had their private missions (which served as a front for C.I.A. secret operations), three helicopters took off in the direction of Jonestown, which was 1 hour 10 minutes away."
What is startling in the Russian account, is that both their account and the American account of the arrival of Green Berets, designate the country of origin as Panama. The two independent reports tally with each other perfectly.
Equally ominous, the A & E special this past November, called "Jonestown: Mystery of a Massacre" revealed that the deaths at Jonestown were originally confirmed via a CIA radio channel, NOIWON, at 3:29 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, November 19th. The producer speculated that Richard Dwyer, the alleged C.I.A. plant in the State Department who had accompanied the Congressman to Jonestown, was the only one on site who could have made this call. But now we can see that it could have just as easily been made by U.S. Green Berets already on site, and undoubtedly under the control of the C.I.A.
What were Green Berets doing at Jonestown in the middle of the night? The C-141 MEDEVAC plane to assist the survivors of the airport shooting, according to official State Department records, did not even arrive at Georgetown from Charleston, SC until 7:55 a.m.! The Green Berets, meanwhile, were flown in immediately, before the situation at Jonestown had even been officially ascertained. They arrived in the middle of the night, but not to assist medically – rather for secret, classified work specifically at Jonestown, leaving the injured at an airstrip only seven miles away, completely unattended. Meanwhile, the MEDEVAC plane shows up on the official State Department log, but the Green Berets do not.
Was there any real concern for the people of Jonestown – their deaths, rapid evacuation of the bodies, possible survivors? Medical personnel such as the Guyanese coroner, were not sent into Jonestown for two more days! This bizarre reversal of priorities, involving moreover clandestine forces under separate command, is unsettling if not appalling, and requires investigation. Even the fact that confirmation of the suicides was received at 3:29 a.m. on the morning of the 19th, yet the incoming MEDEVAC personnel were not sent to investigate the death of over 900 people a mere seven miles away, implies not just lack of coordination between open and secret military commands, but utter disregard for human life.
Lastly, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty (also uncovered by Freedom Magazine), claimed that "The Joint Chiefs of Staff had prepared air shipments of hundreds of body bags. … Within hours, they began to shuttle them down to Georgetown, the main city. They couldn’t possibly have done that without prior knowledge that it was going to happen. It shows that there was prior planning."
Every time an unarmed person is killed or abused by a cop the police department and corporate media rush to publicize the victim's history. If the victim was ever arrested, it's publicized. If the victim ever posted photos on social media holding a gun, it's publicized. If the victim was ever suspended from school, it's publicized. If the victim has any drugs in his or her system, its publicized. Yet the killer cop is never subjected to breathalyzer or drug tests. The following articles demonstrate that cops may well be killing and brutalizing people drunk and/or drugged while on duty. All police officers must be tested for blood levels of alcohol and drugs whenever they are involved in violent incidents.
Compiled by Ronald David Jackson
NYPD Officer John Finley
was charged with drunken driving after he crashed into a guardrail in
Staten Island and officers found his blood alcohol level to be .430%,
more than five times the legal limit, officials said.
NYPD officer with blood alcohol level 5 times the legal limit charged with drunken driving
By Thomas Tracy
A veteran NYPD highway cop found himself on the other side of the law after crashing his SUV and registering a blood alcohol content more than five times the legal limit of .08%, authorities said Saturday.
Police Officer John Finley, 45, along with the rest of the department, is tasked with putting the brakes on traffic accidents and drunken drivers as part of the city’s Vision Zero initiative.
But those lofty goals were chucked out his passenger-side window when his blood-alcohol level landed at a mind-boggling .43% during the Aug. 8 crash on Staten Island, stunned officials said.
“At that level of toxicity he shouldn’t have been walking, let alone driving," a law enforcement source said.
The pie-eyed patrolman was alone in his 2009 GMC Envoy when he rammed the SUV into a guardrail on the West Shore Expressway near Meredith Ave. in Travis about 10:15 a.m. that Saturday — three days before his 45th birthday, police sources said.
A bottle of Georgi Vodka was found inside the SUV, officials said.
Finley — who has been on the job since October 1990 — was so drunk that he was “unintelligible in speech,” according to court documents.
Cop Runs Stop Sign, Hits Sober Driver, NYPD Covers it Up By Framing the Man For DUI
Oliver Wiggin's (left) attorney, Scott Rynecki, shows a photo of the smashed police car to the media. Wiggins was
framed for DUI because the NYPD was trying to cover up for a cop who was driving a patrol car while drunk.
By Mike Sawyer
On April 19, Oliver Wiggins was driving his Nissan Maxima on Glenwood road when he was suddenly t-boned by an NYPD cop. The officer was driving without his flashing lights and did not have on his siren when he blew through a stop sign and plowed into Wiggins.
In typical police fashion, the officer, instead of apologizing and admitting he made a mistake, treated Wiggins as if it were his fault. The officer accused Wiggins of being drunk. He was then arrested and charged with DUI.
Wiggins, knowing full well that he wasn’t drinking, submitted to a blood test. The results showed his blood alcohol content to be zero. The test also showed that there were no traces of drugs in his system either.
Wiggins has since hired an attorney who is requesting an investigation into the incident.
“We believe this arrest was improper and solely motivated to cover up the actions of the police officers in failing to yield at a stop sign,” said lawyer Scott Rynecki.
Despite the negative blood tests, the charges were not dropped until last week.
“I think the whole thing was insane,” Wiggins told the Daily News. “They ran a stop sign and I think they were trying to hide that they caused the accident.”
“I have never been in handcuffs in my life,” Wiggins said. “I’ve lost my trust in police. It’s scary they can frame an innocent person.”
Drunk Cop Fires Gun Inside Boyfriend's Patrol Car—On Video
By Maureen O'Connor
Dallas' Police Department released a video of 27-year-old Officer Kelly Beemer getting dragged out of a bar, and another one of Beemer screaming, whipping out her gun, and firing it into the floor of her cop boyfriend's patrol car.
The Dallas Police Department presumably released the footage to cover its ass for when they fire Beemer, because this dashboard camera footage is testament to why she should never be allowed to have a gun, again. In the first video, on-duty cops Miguel Jamaica and Zachary Helm (who is Kelly's boyfriend) drag their sloppy drunk colleague out of Lee Havey's bar in a tank top and jeans, her head lolling from side to side as she moans in drunken horror, "I can't believe you would do this to me, Jamaica."
In the second video, Kelly's voice is steadier. As Helm drives her home, she announces, "I swear to God, you need to fucking stop now. I fucking swear to god, Zach." There is a clattering noise, then Officer Helm's voice: "Oh, shit! Fuck! Kelly, please drop the gun!" The gun goes off and the car sits at a red light as Jamaica apparently gets out of his car and to assist Helm, their voices chiming together, "DROP THE GUN, KELLY! DROP THE GUN!"
Citizen Pulls Over Drunken Cop, Locks Him in his Own Cruiser
By Matt Agorist
Meet Russell George. Russell was driving Stott Street one Sunday night last year, when he noticed a police van driving fast and recklessly.
The van was swerving and turned into oncoming traffic.
“At this point I was concerned about the safety of other road users,” self-employed George told The Witness.
“He suddenly jammed on his brakes and came to a complete stop.”
“I got out of my car and went towards him and I asked him if he knew what he was doing. He started his car and carried on driving,” he said.
Continuing to drive recklessly, the policeman turned into Logan Road and came to a stop at the Howard Road intersection.
George decided it would be best to call the police. He was told the police would be there shortly.
“After five minutes, no one had arrived. So I jumped out of my car and I approached the driver’s side and asked him to come out. He looked at me and I could smell that he had been drinking.
“I asked him again, and he refused.
“I then grabbed his keys, pulled him out and locked him in the back of his own van,” George said.
He added that the police van was badly damaged, as if it had been involved in an accident.
Witnesses said that the officer who’d been locked in the back of the van began crying.
Russell George, we salute you sir! This took some serious guts and you are very lucky that the responding officers did not beat you down.
Reprinted with permission from Free Thought Project
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Drunk Cop Plows Into Young Woman, Sending Her To Critical Care
By Michael Heise
A police officer is being charged with misdemeanor DUI charges after he hit a woman who was waiting to cross the road early in the morning last Sunday.
The officer must have actually run over the sidewalk if the woman was just waiting to cross.
The blow left injuries so severe that the woman was taken into emergency care and was said to be in critical condition.
Chicago Police Department is keeping the officer’s identity a mystery, but they have relieved him of police duty pending an investigation.
Whether that is unpaid or not has not been released either.
We do know the cop has been on the force for two years and is 40 years old.
He will be facing 2 counts of misdemeanor DUI and failure to exercise due care with a pedestrian on the roadway.
Drunk Police Chief Pulled Over And Given A Ride Home Instead Of Being Arrested
Belchertown Police Chief Francis Fox: He apparently has a drinking problem.
The Granby police chief on Wednesday said his officers were placed in a
compromising situation when forced to pull over a vehicle last winter
and discovered Belchertown Police Chief Francis Fox was the operator.
Marijuana Dispensary Suing Mayor After Cops Raid Shop and Eat Edibles
Edible marijuana products in shop window, Amsterdam (Photo by nickolette)
By Don Shay
A raid on a California medical marijuana dispensary at the end of May revealed questionable police practices by the officers involved. Now, Sky High Holistic is suing Santa Ana mayor Miguel Pulido, claiming he ordered police to shut down the dispensary because they did not pay a $25,000 bribe that would guarantee their place in a lottery system for a license.
“Santa Ana mayor Miguel Pulido was named in the suit along with city employee Yvette Aguilar and the city itself. It alleges the city solicited $25,000 payments and gifts from marijuana dispensaries which would guarantee businesses would be granted a license in a lottery system. It also claims police were used to shut down operations that did not pay up.”
“It’s deplorable that city officials and people seeking financial gain would use the police to accomplish their self-serving goals,” said attorney Matthew Pappas, who is representing the raided shop.
Last week, the nonprofit group Voice for OC released video footage of cops raiding Sky High Holistic on May 27th. Authorities alleged the dispensary lacked the proper permit to operate. The video footage depicts armed officers with ski masks barging into the sales room with their guns drawn. Those inside were all ordered to the ground. Officers kicked everyone out and attempted to break all of the visible cameras. Unbeknownst to them, there were also hidden cameras that caught the aftermath. The footage showed the cops nonchalantly consuming the edible marijuana treats. One cop was heard laughing and making a comment referring to one of the disabled customers in the shop. “Did you punch that one-legged old bonita?” asks ones. A female cop responds, “I was about to kick her in her f—ing knob”. The police claimed they were conducting an investigation.
The officers knew they were going to act questionably, evident in that they attempted to tear down visible cameras. This behavior is very similar to what armed thugs do. How long will cannabis vendors that pose no harm be targeted by law enforcement? Santa Ana is a city that runs rampant with gang violence and hard drug abuse, so why is the mayor is targeting pot shops? When will the police actually focus their attention on critical issues instead of on harassing non-violent pot smokers?
By Travis Waldron
The headline news from 60 Minutes interview with Anthony Bosch, the
crank doctor at the center of the Biogenesis drug scandal that enveloped
Major League Baseball throughout 2013, is easy to spot: Bosch claims he
supplied New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who Saturday
was handed the longest drug-related suspension in baseball history, with
performance enhancing drugs like human growth hormone, insulin growth
factor-1, and testosterone. Sometimes, Bosch even personally injected
Rodriguez, and he did it all in exchange for $12,000 a month...
Start with the fact that Bosch provided details that, if true, aren’t
just damning for Rodriguez but for the entire testing regime Major
League Baseball has in place. Bosch claims that he began providing
Rodriguez with banned drugs in 2010, two-and-a-half years before the
Yankee star was implicated as part of the Biogenesis scandal. During
that time, Bosch says, Rodriguez passed no less than a dozen
MLB-required drug tests. How easy were the tests to beat? Bosch said he
gave Rodriguez one product, a testosterone “gummy,” that could be
ingested before a game, improve Rodriguez’s performance, and be out of
his system by the time he returned to the locker room nine innings
later. Whether Bosch is being completely truthful about the drugs he
gave Rodriguez or their effect, this much is clear: Rodriguez never
failed a test. So either he didn’t take the drugs, as he asserts, or the
tests failed to catch him.
[60 Minutes] could have followed up that information by asking Bosch and,
more importantly, Selig and other MLB officials a simple question: if
it’s that easy to beat tests, how can we possibly know how many players
are using without getting caught? In other words, how do we know
baseball’s testing system is effective at all?
This is not the only case where sloppy forensics may have sent thousands to prison on flawed "evidence." The FBI is also guilty of mishandling forensic evidence, calling into question cases relying on the FBI's hair and fiber analysis going back to 1985.
Annie Dookhan, the former state chemist whose
mishandling of evidence in drug cases threw the state’s criminal justice
system into turmoil, pleaded guilty today in Suffolk Superior Court and
was sentenced to three to five years in prison.
“You plead guilty here because you are
guilty?” Judge Carol S. Ball said as she explained the rights Dookhan
was giving up because of her guilty plea.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Dookhan said meekly.
Dookhan’s falsification of drug tests, in an
attempt to look like a highly productive employee, prompted the release
of hundreds of convicts, raised questions about thousands of cases, and
forced the state to spend millions to address the problems.
