Chris Christie’s New Jersey: 61 Year Old Grandmother Body Slammed During Traffic Stop

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s performance at last week’s Republican party debate showed that he is all about big government fascism and would be a menace to America were he to win the presidency. Much to our good fortune the big fat bully has about as much chance as a snowball in hell of being elected to national office. He could however end up as Attorney General in a “Jeb!” administration where he would be allowed to trample whatever remains of the U.S. Constitution like a wild elephant that has stumbled across a meth lab.

The big man makes no bones about how much he adores the police state. Whether it be calling for Rand Paul to be hauled in front of a tribunal for opposition to illegal domestic surveillance or vowing to loose the federal government dogs over legal marijuana in Colorado. So it isn't surprising that some cops in Jersey may share his zeal according to a horrific story about how a 61 year old grandmother was put into the hospital after being body slammed during a traffic stop.

The New York Daily News reported on the incident in the piece entitled “Grandmother Body Slammed by New Jersey Cop During Traffic Stop, Family Claims”:

A 61-year-old grandmother is out of the hospital after she was allegedly body slammed by a New Jersey cop during a traffic cop.

Antoniette Dilorio had been placed in a medically-induced coma following Friday's incident in Clark. Officers had stopped her son Fortunato Riga for going through a stop sign when she apparently tried to intervene.

"All of a sudden he grabbed my mother-in-law by the arm, lifted her off her feet in mid-air and slammed her on the ground," Riga's fiancee Crystal Palmieri told ABC. "All you saw was blood pouring out of her face."

Dilorio's front teeth were knocked out and she suffered multiple fractures, NJ.com reported. She was feeling well enough to be released from University Hospital in Newark this week, according to the news website.

Riga was charged with obstruction and the injured Dilorio was hit with obstruction and resisting arrest charges, according to NJ.com.

The Union County Prosecutor's Office is investigating the incident, and the family is still looking for an explanation. Riga and Palmieri's young son, who is just 5, was in the car.

"My mom is 61 years old, if she weighs 105 pounds it's a lot," Riga told ABC. "They tried saying my mom jumped on the cop's back. My mom grabbed the cop and said 'why are you going after my son like this?'. He was like, shut up boom and just slammed her, she went face first."

The officer was defended by Clark Mayor Sal Bonaccorso who claimed that the woman jumped on his back but an ex-Marine versus a frail sixty one year old is more than a bit of a mismatch and could be seen by some as excessive force. While Mr. Riga has a history of violations and sounds like more than a little bit of a scumbag, it still isn’t an excuse for pile-driving granny into the pavement. Mayor Bonaccorso seems to be an adherent to the Chris Christie school of “punch you in the face” dispute resolution which only serves to reinforce New Jersey’s stereotype as a state populated with hostile people who act like muscle men for the mob. The governor of course is the biggest one of them all.

California Cop on Leave After Attacking Woman With Baseball Bat

The northern California city of Walnut Creek is the location of a bizarre incident that has landed a local police officer on administrative leave. Gregory Thompson, who is described as a 53 year old police veteran was arrested in August for allegedly attacking a woman in the early morning hours as she walked in a residential area. Not that police brutality is anything to be surprised about in 2014 America, especially with the federal government encouraging more aggressive attitudes by giving away surplus military equipment. What makes the Walnut Creek case an oddity is that officer Thompson was off duty and wearing a mask when the attack took place.

According to a story from the website of Oakland television station KTVU entitled "Walnut Creek officer accused of beating woman with bat":

A man who’d been in charge of upholding the law for three decades is now accused of breaking it.

Richmond police arrested an off-duty Walnut Creek Police Officer for allegedly donning a mask and beating a woman with a baseball bat on August 16. The attack happened around 2 a.m., in a residential neighborhood on Clinton and San Pablo avenues in Richmond.

53-year-old Gregory Thompson has been with the Walnut Creek Police Department for 30 years. He was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and felony vandalism after the attack.

Neighbors on Clinton Avenue recalled the commotion they heard the morning of the attack, around 2 a.m..

“We'd already gone to bed, kept hearing a banging, thumping noise,” neighbor Carus Culver, said.

Richmond police came to the area after getting several calls from neighbors about a woman screaming

“Police came knocking on our doors,” neighbor Jason Peneyra, said. “They were looking for a suspect.”

That suspect turned out to be Thompson

“A woman came down the street yelling that he had tried to attack her and another woman,” Culver recalled.

Richmond police found Thompson sitting in his car nearby and said he identified himself as a law enforcement officer. Investigators found a mask on the floor of his car and a baseball bat in the trunk.

“It's alarming for a police officer to do that,” Peneyra said. “That's weird. That's really weird.”

But what is even more “weird” is an account from the website of the San Francisco Chronicle that provides additional detail on the contents of Thompson’s car:

Richmond Police Capt. Bisa French says the 53-year-old Thompson was not wearing a police uniform or in a patrol car at the time of the alleged random attack. Officers discovered Thompson inside a car and found a ski mask as well as a baseball bat, two guns and zip ties.

The presence of the "zip ties" adds a particularly kinky element to the story.  If this is what some cops get their kicks out of doing on their off time then it is obvious that there are terrible personality types being attracted to the police profession. In addition to recruitment problems there seems to be an absence of proper training as well as protocol and adequate internal controls are not being implemented. You would think that regular psychological evaluations would be a requirement for police work these days to quickly detect trauma related disorders. Such screenings are badly needed  now that the quaint old slogan of “to protect and to serve” has been tossed away in favor of the unspoken rule of “to search and to destroy”.

This is seriously strange story but alas there will be tales that even stranger forthcoming as America completes the transformation into an authoritarian, fascist police state.

The War at Home: We Are the Enemy in State of Undeclared Martial Law

It needs to be noted right off the bat that John Whitehead isn’t exactly a weepy, bleeding-heart, Obama supporting,  liberal whiner. It was after all his Rutherford Institute that provided legal assistance to Paula Jones in her lawsuit against the sexual depravity of former president Bill Clinton.  The man has serious gravitas as a conservative so when he comes out with a blistering critique of the militarized police state it merits paying attention.  With the now typical divisiveness that only benefits the elite that is arising out of the events in Ferguson, Missouri splitting the country into warring factions yet again, Whitehead hits the target on the most important of all issues. The transformation of America into a nascent totalitarian police state.

Mr. Whitehead has for years been writing of the dangers of incipient American fascism and smacks it out of the ballpark in his latest piece entitled "Turning America Into a War Zone, Where ‘We the People’ Are the Enemy" in which he writes:

What Americans must understand, what we have chosen to ignore, what we have fearfully turned a blind eye to lest the reality prove too jarring is the fact that we no longer live in the “city on the hill,” a beacon of freedom for all the world.

Far from being a shining example of democracy at work, we have become a lesson for the world in how quickly freedom turns to tyranny, how slippery the slope by which a once-freedom-loving people can be branded, shackled and fooled into believing that their prisons walls are, in fact, for their own protection.

Having spent more than half a century exporting war to foreign lands, profiting from war, and creating a national economy seemingly dependent on the spoils of war, we failed to protest when the war hawks turned their profit-driven appetites on us, bringing home the spoils of war—the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.—to be distributed for free to local police agencies and used to secure the homeland against “we the people.”

It’s not just the Defense Department that is passing out free military equipment to local police. Since the early 1990s, the Justice Department has worked with the Pentagon to fund military technology for police departments. And then there are the billions of dollars’ worth of federal grants distributed by the Department of Homeland Security, enabling police departments to go on a veritable buying spree for highly questionable military-grade supplies better suited to the battlefield.

Is it any wonder that we now find ourselves in the midst of a war zone?

We live in a state of undeclared martial law. We have become the enemy.

In a war zone, there are no police—only soldiers. Thus, there is no more Posse Comitatus prohibiting the government from using the military in a law enforcement capacity. Not when the local police have, for all intents and purposes, already become the military.

In a war zone, the soldiers shoot to kill, as American police have now been trained to do. Whether the perceived “threat” is armed or unarmed no longer matters when police are authorized to shoot first and ask questions later. 

Interestingly and very ominously, the divisiveness over the shooting of the unarmed teenage thug Michael Brown and the overwhelming response of militarized police to protests are not only splitting into the standard black versus white. We are increasingly seeing a division between those who find it acceptable and actually preferential to live under the red, white and blue jackboot of apple pie authoritarianism and those who are finally, like John Whitehead, saying that enough is enough.

The Whitehead piece riffs off of an article gone viral, written by a Los Angeles police veteran named Sunil Dutta who has now become the poster boy for the American police state. In the piece, Dutta proclaims that “If you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you." It is the ultimate declaration of the blue supremacy that has metastasized through American law-enforcement like a cancer. Dutta's declaration of police godhood ran in the Washington Post and is entitled "I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me."

The piece has drawn both deserved condemnation as well as praise from those who have a skewed idea of what it is to live in a free country with a system of legal checks and balances. No matter how much that the U.S. Constitution has been gutted by Clinton, Bush and Obama it is still the only document that truly matters if we are to still live in that shining city on the hill as President Ronald Reagan liked to refer to America.

More terrifying than the militarized police and the "undeclared state of martial law" that Rutherford refers to is that so many are lining up in lockstep unity behind the government goon squads. There will always be those who support the hard-liners, skull-crackers, knuckle-draggers and whichever alpha male politician emerges from the pack to lead them. There is a certain percentage of those who are prone to authoritarianism in every society. These types have been chronicled in many a work including Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer" of which President Dwight D. Eisenhower reportedly was a fan. Ike truly understood the dangers of fascism from a real first hand perspective as the Supreme Commander of the American forces that defeated the Nazis. He also understood the menace of the Military Industrial Complex which he famously warned of in his farewell address - the American police state is the bastard child of this.

The true believers, the authority worshippers and the adherents of the cult of the uniform are of particular danger in these twisted times but even worse are the apathetic and clueless Americans, the sheeple as they are often referred to. Whitehead also addresses them in  "Turning America Into a War Zone, Where ‘We the People’ Are the Enemy":

You see, what Americans have failed to comprehend, living as they do in a TV-induced, drug-like haze of fabricated realities, narcissistic denial, and partisan politics, is that we’ve not only brought the military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan home to be used against the American people. We’ve also brought the very spirit of the war home.

This is what it feels like to be a conquered people. This is what it feels like to be an occupied nation. This is what it feels like to live in fear of armed men crashing through your door in the middle of the night, or to be accused of doing something you never even knew was a crime, or to be watched all the time, your movements tracked, your motives questioned.

This is what it’s like to be a citizen of the American police state. This is what it’s like to be an enemy combatant in your own country.

So if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, by all means, stand down. Cower in the face of the police, turn your eyes away from injustice, find any excuse to suggest that the so-called victims of the police state deserved what they got.

But remember, when that rifle finally gets pointed in your direction—and it will—when there’s no one left to stand up for you or speak up for you, remember that you were warned.

The window of opportunity to stop - or at least slow the momentum of the juggernaut - is rapidly closing. People should heed the warnings of patriotic Americans such as John Whitehead instead of sitting on their couches and just tuning out. It will be too late when their doors are kicked down by militarized police shock troops in the middle of Dancing With the Stars.

Surveillance Video Threatens National Debate Over Police Militarization

The surveillance video that was released on Friday by police in Ferguson, Missouri nicely serves to change the subject from the threat of the militarized police into yet another racially charged issue. The video does appear to show the teenager Michael Brown, who was gunned down by a local police officer in the process of committing what may be a crime. However, the series of events leading up to the shooting of Brown and the overwhelming response by fully weaponized police shock troops to the protests (and rioting) are two separate issues and should remain as such.

What is shown on the video, taken in a convenience store flies in the face of the narrative that Brown was a gentle giant instead of an intimidating, brown-skinned version of the incredible Hulk. The Ferguson police also can't get their stories straight about whether or not Brown was being stopped as a suspect in the stealing cigars from the convenience store.  Brown certainly was not an innocent, more likely was a bit of a gangsta and there will inevitably be more reports verifying his true nature. As for the video release, quite frankly the timing of it stinks of a deliberate distraction. There is after all a lot of money to be made in arming the police with battlefield style equipment and nobody with a vested interest wants to risk the killing of the goose that laid the golden egg.

Just when politicians and critics were beginning to acknowledge the danger of the heavily militarized police forces by publishing columns as Senator Rand Paul did in Time and calling for legislation the video was launched into the media spin cycle. After a day of relative calm when the armored St. Louis County goons were replaced by Missouri Highway Patrol, unrest again broke out in Ferguson last night in a reaction to the video release.

According to a story in The Guardian entitled "Ferguson police clash with Michael Brown protesters again overnight":

Police in riot gear clashed overnight with small groups of protesters in Ferguson, Missouri amid signs of renewed tensions over the shooting of an unarmed teenager by a local patrol officer.

 The flareups, breaking a period of relative calm, came after police released surveillance footage that implicated Michael Brown, 18, in the theft of a packet of cigars from a convenience store a few minutes before he was shot. Brown's family condemned the revelation as a "character assassination" designed to smear the teenager and divert attention from the actions of police.

One of the flashpoints in the early hours of Saturday came at the store where the robbery was alleged to have taken place. Police fired a teargas canister at a crowd of around 200 people who had gathered there. Some protesters threw bottles at officers in riot gear and shouted "hands up, don't shoot", the chant that has come to characterise the protests. According to some accounts, Brown had his hands up when he was shot.

A small crowd later looted the convenience store. A meat market was also looted and other businesses had windows smashed. Police did not intervene.

Ironically the store that was looted is the same one that the surveillance video allegedly came from. My personal opinion is that there is never an excuse for looting and those who engage in it are the worst type of criminals and parasites. They should be shot on sight - by the owners of the property exercising their Second Amendment rights.

The fact is that the truth about Brown and the officer who killed him should be kept entirely separate from the response of the militarized police in the aftermath. Authorities and the courts will appropriately deal with sorting it out over time as an investigation is conducted. Still, no matter what Brown did which -  appears to be shoplifting - or as it is now being called by some in the media "strong-armed robbery" it does not merit an extrajudicial execution by police.

The cop, if he believed that he was being threatened by Brown then all that he had to do was to call for backup and once more units arrived an arrest could have been made. Tasers could have been used to subdue Brown being that he was not armed and his fat ass could have been thrown into a jail cell. It's really that simple. The race-baiting should be left to the racists on right-wing radio and FOX News as well as professional charlatans like the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Both of whom have made a very nice career of descending like buzzards wherever they can find a fresh carcass to feast upon and to sow the seeds of racial discontent wherever they land. The only winners in a system where race is only used to divide and conquer are those who are a part of an entrenched and corrupt establishment.

The primary and most dangerous threat to the future of freedom in America are the militarized police forces and the mass surveillance apparatus that serves as the central nervous system of the police state. Let us not waste the opportunity to fight back now that there is real pressure being exerted on the war zone style response of heavily armed Kevlar coated police goons in Ferguson.

It is very important to keep our eye on the ball and to keep these two issues separate as the greatest benefit will be to those who profit from the continued militarization of the police.

Let the courts handle the criminals - whether they be uniformed ones or not.

Woman Armed With Cordless Drill Gunned Down By Police

In a bizarre incident police gunned down a 19 year old woman who was wielding a black cordless power drill.  San Jose police allegedly were responding to a 911 call from a woman threatening to kill her family with an Uzi if they didn't show up. As is becoming ever more typical in the American police state, the cops did show up and the incident ended with a hail of gunfire. Granted the power drill did somewhat resemble a gun but one would expect that professionally trained police officers would be able to somehow tell the difference in broad daylight. The incident took place before 11 am on a clear California morning not in darkness which would have at least made the inability to identify the drill as not being a gun more feasible.

According to a story on the incident from the San Jose Mercury News entitled "San Jose police: Officer shoots, kills drill-wielding woman who threatened her family":

The young woman called 911 and said she was going to kill her family with an Uzi if the cops didn't show up.

When they arrived, the 19-year-old woman emerged from her home with what looked like a weapon in each hand. Officers yelled at her to drop what she was holding.

She released something from one hand but continued approaching them, still holding a larger item.

As she drew closer, Officer Wakana Okuma fired and the woman crumpled to the ground.

That's how police and witnesses described the dramatic scene Thursday morning that ended with the fatal shooting of a mentally ill woman in front of her duplex on busy Blossom Hill Road, two blocks east of Oakridge Mall in South San Jose.

Police later discovered that the woman had been holding a power drill, which was painted painted black and measured about 13 inches long on one end and 12 inches on the other, they said in a news release.

But there are still many unanswered questions about the city's second officer-involved shooting of the year, including who the woman was and why she threatened her family.

But police said the 911 call required a quick and strong response.

"We had a call, somebody with an Uzi threatening to kill family members," San Jose police spokesman Officer Albert Morales said. "It was a very serious situation, a very dangerous situation for our officers."

Note that Morales’s statement addresses that the situation was “a very dangerous situation for our officers", an all too familiar refrain that underlies the “us versus them” mentality that has manifested itself within the psyche of American police personnel. Other than taking out the woman with extreme prejudice there apparently wasn’t much thought given to any others who could have been caught up in the crossfire. Just acceptable collateral damage to the shoot first and ask questions later police here in The Homeland.

There seems to be a growing reluctance to actually attempt to deescalate such situations or use non-lethal methods to deal with potential threats, it is always all about the cops now. That such violence is becoming more commonplace should be very alarming to Americans, especially when combined with the ongoing militarizing of the police.