Scientific Dictatorship

Philly Police Harass, Threaten to Shoot Man Legally Carrying Gun

Fox News

A story in today's Philadelphia Daily News shows why it's so important that citizens be allowed to videotape cops - it can be citizens' only way to fight back against police abuse of power.

This incident happened several weeks ago in Philadelphia to Mark Fiorino, a 25-year-old IT worker who carries a gun on his hip at all times for self defense. He got the gun after several friends were mugged.

But he didn't count on attacks by police:

On a mild February afternoon, Fiorino, 25, decided to walk to an AutoZone on Frankford Avenue in Northeast Philly with the .40-caliber Glock he legally owns holstered in plain view on his left hip. His stroll ended when someone called out from behind: "Yo, Junior, what are you doing?"

Fiorino wheeled and saw Sgt. Michael Dougherty aiming a handgun at him.

What happened next would be hard to believe, except that Fiorino audio-recorded all of it: a tense, profanity-laced, 40-minute encounter with cops who told him that what he was doing - openly carrying a gun on the city's streets - was against the law.

"Do you know you can't openly carry here in Philadelphia?" Dougherty asked, according to the YouTube clip.

"Yes, you can, if you have a license to carry firearms," Fiorino said. "It's Directive 137. It's your own internal directive."

Fiorino was right. It was perfectly legal to carry the gun. But that didn't matter to the cop:

Fiorino offered to show Dougherty his driver's and firearms licenses. The cop told him to get on his knees.

"Excuse me?" Fiorino said.

"Get down on your knees. Just obey what I'm saying," Dougherty said.

"Sir," Fiorino replied, "I'm more than happy to stand here -"

"If you make a move, I'm going to f------ shoot you," Dougherty snapped. "I'm telling you right now, you make a move, and you're going down!"

"Is this necessary?" Fiorino said.

It went on like that for a little while, until other officers responded to Dougherty's calls for backup.

Fiorino was forced to the ground and shouted at as he tried to explain that he had a firearms license and was legally allowed to openly carry his weapon.

"You f------ come here looking for f------ problems? Where do you live?" yelled one officer.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen," Fiorino said. "If I'm under arrest, I have nothing left to say."

"F------ a------, shut the f--- up!" the cop hollered.

The cops discovered his recorder as they searched his pockets, and unleashed another string of expletives.

Fiorino said he sat handcuffed in a police wagon while the officers made numerous phone calls to supervisors, trying to find out if they could lock him up.

When they learned that they were in the wrong, they let him go.

But only temporarily. Fiorino posted the audio recordings on youtube, and now they are harassing him again:

A new investigation was launched, and last month the District Attorney's Office decided to charge Fiorino with reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct because, a spokeswoman said, he refused to cooperate with police... He's scheduled for trial in July.

If one listens to the audiotapes, it's hard to imagine how a reasonable person could charge Fiorino (and not the cops) for disorderly conduct.

SHOCKING AUDIO: Philadelphia Police violate rights of open carrier at gunpoint



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-vUYeJXSrA

Uploaded by pistolpackintim on Mar 23, 2011

Labels: 2nd amendment, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

DA: West Philadelphia abortion doctor killed 7 babies with scissors



WEST PHILADELPHIA - January 19, 2011 (WPVI) -- A doctor whose abortion clinic was described as a filthy, foul-smelling "house of horrors" that was overlooked by regulators for years was charged Wednesday with murder, accused of delivering seven babies alive and then using scissors to kill them...

[Full Articles]

Labels: abortion, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

TSA-Style Pat Downs Hit The Streets

In Philly, You Don’t Have To Go To The Airport To Be Molested By The Government

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, December 6, 2010

In Philadelphia, you don’t have to visit the airport to have the government molest you, TSA-style “stop, question and frisk” pat downs are already being conducted by police on the streets targeting people who act suspicious, by doing things like putting their hands in their coat pocket.

As we have repeatedly warned, everything unfolding in the airports, from naked radiation body scanners to pat downs, is now being implemented on mass transit as well as every major street corner in America. Constitutional protections of privacy and immunity from unreasonable search and seizure have been abolished, replaced with guilty until proven innocent.

As Judge Napolitano reports, residents in the “city of brotherly love” are being patted down by police officers on the streets as part of an aggressive “stop, question and frisk” policy instituted by Mayor Nutter. The program is now the subject of a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU which accuses police of routinely violating civil rights, including those of Rep. Jewell Williams, a former Temple University police officer, who was handcuffed and bundled into a squad car after enquiring about the safety of two elderly men police had detained and then threatened to beat up.

In the video, Philadelphia radio host Dom Giordano attempts to defend the unconstitutional policy by claiming residents were “happy” with being treated like criminals by “specially trained squads” who target people for “holding their hands in their coat on a street corner.”

Confronted with the fact that such policies are right out of North Korea or East Germany and have no place in a free country, Giordano invoked the non-existent “constitutional right to not have your kid shot,” which could also be enforced if authorities simply placed the entire population under house arrest and prevented them from ever going outside.

Much to Giordano’s chagrin, Napolitano responded by paraphrasing the most famous Philadelphian of all, founding father Benjamin Franklin, who said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

The stops have increased from 102,319 in 2005 to 253,333 in 2009 – an increase of 148 percent – with just 8 per cent of all stops leading to arrests. An alarming one in six residents of the entire city of Philadelphia has been stopped and frisked under the program, far more than would ever be subjected to a TSA groping at an airport.

“These unconstitutional actions have had and continue to have a devastating effect on the lives of many Philadelphians,” attorney Paul Messing said. “Beyond that, these police practices have had no real impact on stemming criminal conduct in our city. They just subject innocent people to humiliating and degrading treatment.”

“Most of those arrests had nothing to do with the reason they were stopped,” Messing said. “The charges were often for disorderly conduct because they complained they were stopped for no reason.”

By harassing people for putting their hands in their pockets, US authorities are mimicking the British stop and search policy, which by no coincidence has become notorious for its failure to catch any real criminals.

Indeed, in 2008 our own writer Steve Watson was stopped by goons in yellow jackets who proceeded to bark orders at him while standing at a bus stop in Trafalgar Square, London. His crime? He adjusted his clothing and put his hand in his pocket, an action that put him into the category of a potential terrorist, according to section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

In Britain, stop and search powers have been routinely abused to intimidate political protesters and break up demonstrations. Out of the hundreds of thousands of stop and search incidents, not one has led to the arrest or apprehension of a terrorist, and the powers have recently been ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights.

Americans who believe they can avoid being molested by the authorities by simply not flying are going to be in for a rude awakening when they find that body scanners and pat downs have become mandatory to enter shopping malls, sports events, or to simply walk down the street.

Unless we stand up in unison and revolt against such unconstitutional intrusions no matter where they take place, America will increasingly resemble the former Soviet Union, where agents of the state ceaselessly demand to see our papers and feel us up as part of the process of humiliation that trains the slaves to fawn over and acquiesce to the orders of their masters.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.

Labels: pat-down, Paul Joseph Watson, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, police state

Pa. School Settles 2 Webcam Spy Lawsuits For $610K

13WMAZ

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A Philadelphia-area school district will pay $610,000 to settle two lawsuits over secret photos taken on school-issued laptops.

The Lower Merion School District admits it captured thousands of webcam photographs and screen shots from student laptops in a misguided effort to locate missing computers.

Harriton High School student Blake Robbins says the district photographed him 400 times in a two-week period, sometimes as he slept in his bedroom.

District officials voted Monday to pay Robbins $175,000, a second student $10,000 and their lawyer, Mark Haltzman, $425,000.

The district's insurer will pay $1.2 million toward legal and settlement costs.

The FBI investigated but declined to bring a criminal wiretap case.

Labels: laptop, lawsuit, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, spying

Philly requiring bloggers to pay $300 for a business license

It looks like cash hungry local governments are getting awfully rapacious these days:

Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To [Marilyn] Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.

“The real kick in the pants is that I don’t even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous,” Bess says...


[Full Article]

Labels: bloggers, license, Philadelphia

No criminal charges for school that spied on kids through laptops

The federal prosecutor investigating the case of a Pennsylvania school district that spied on its students via remote-controlled laptop cameras says the school district won't face criminal charges in the case.

US Attorney Zane David Memenger said in a statement that there is no evidence the Lower Merion School District, in suburban Philadelphia, had any criminal intent when it remotely activated cameras on laptops issued to students.

"For the government to prosecute a criminal case, it must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person charged acted with criminal intent," Memeger said, as quoted at Information Week. "We have not found evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that anyone involved had criminal intent."

The issue came to light in February, when the parents of Harriton High School student Blake Robbins filed a class-action lawsuit alleging the school district invaded Robbins' privacy by filming him in his home through his school-issued laptop. It emerged later that the school district photographed Robbins 400 times in a two-week period, in various states of undress and even during his sleep.

Investigators found that the remote-controlled cameras took some 56,000 pictures of Lower Merion School District students over a two-year period, with the cameras sometimes left on for weeks at a time...

[Full Article]

Labels: cameras, education, laptop, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, privacy, school, spying

FBI Gets Evidence In Student Webcam Scandal

A federal judge has granted the FBI access to evidence linked to a webcam scandal at a Philadelphia suburban school district.

Federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania said they were investigating “possible criminal conduct” (.pdf) in the 6,900-student Lower Merion School District.

U.S. District Judge Jan DuBois is presiding over a federal civil lawsuit alleging the district secretly snapped tens of thousands of webcam images (.pdf) of students using school-issued laptops, without the pupils’ knowledge or consent...

Labels: big brother, Philadelphia, privacy, school, webcam

Police Back Officer Who Tasered Fan



(CBS/ AP) Philadelphia police say an officer appears to have acted appropriately when he used a Taser to subdue a teenager who ran onto the field during a Phillies game.

Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman, says Commissioner Charles Ramsey reviewed the tape and felt the officer had acted within the department's guidelines, which allow officers to use Tasers to arrest fleeing suspects. Vanore says internal affairs is still investigating.

The fan, wearing a baseball cap, red T-shirt and khaki shorts, hopped a fence and scurried around the outfield at Citizens Bank Park, eluding two security officers in the bottom of the eighth inning against the St. Louis Cardinals...

Labels: baseball, Philadelphia, taser

School Spycams Case Explodes As Feds Initiate Probe

PBS show highlights ease of using big brother technology

The case of the Lower Merion school district in Philadelphia spying on students in their homes via school issued laptops has gone viral, with the FBI announcing that it has opened an investigation into the matter...

Labels: big brother, Philadelphia, privacy, school, surveillance