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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing a California police department for using excessive force to arrest a teenager who walked through a residential neighborhood while on his way to get prom tickets.

A lawsuit states that the interaction between then-high school student Pablo Simental Jr. and officers with the Delano Police Department (DPD) occurred on April 11, 2019. Simental and three of his friends were walking to Wonderful College Prep Academy to get prom tickets. The trip took them through a residential neighborhood.

While in the neighborhood, the suit alleges that DPD officers, including Ruben Ozuna, Michael Strand, and Guadalupe Contreras, approached the teens and began to question them. The teens invoked their right to remain silent.

That's when the lawsuit says the officers used excessive force on the teens, some of which was captured on video and shared on social media.

The lawsuit alleges that the officers purposefully veered their patrol vehicle toward the teens, almost hitting them, and began conducting arrests for jaywalking. The behavior worsened after the Simental and the other teens pulled their cellphones out and began to film the officers. The officers reportedly tried to take the phones by force, forcing some teens to the ground and handcuffing them. Ozuna ran toward Simental, body-slammed him, and put his body on top of Simental to handcuff him tightly.

The lawsuit says this caused "severe pain."

Though criminal charges were not filed against Simental in court, he remained in jail for several hours with his hands cuffed tightly behind his back.

Following the incident, Simental received a letter stating that the DPD conducted an investigation and exonerated the officers of misconduct.

The ACLU is now suing the officers and the city for damages in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Californiaarguing that the defendants violated Simental's First Amendment right against retaliation by reacting with force when the teens questioned the officers and recorded their actions. The ACLU also argues that the defendants violated Simental's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizure and excessive force.

The DPD issued the following statement last year about the events, admitting to using force:

The Delano Police Department is aware of videos posted to Facebook showing officers making several arrests on the 2400 block of Liverno Drive. These subjects were initially found in the roadway and refused officers' orders to move. Officers attempted to detain them however, they refused to comply. Force was then used to make arrests, some of which can be seen in the video.

Whether Simental and his friends were simply walking through a neighborhood or jaywalking, like the cops claim, neither action is ever egregious enough for force to be used in such a manner.

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Lawsuit Alleges California Cops Used Excessive Force on Teens for Walking Through a Neighborhood - Reason

As Ive noted before, the words fascist and fascism are generally overused. That may, however, be due for a change.

Originally, those terms referred to a political and economic system that arose in Europe during the middle part of the last century. Contrary to popular myth, fascism was a form of statism and therefore an ideology of the left a first cousin to socialism and communism.

No less an authority than Benito Mussolini referred to fascism as the third way, meaning another statist alternative to those other two (truly) deplorable isms.

The key difference is that, under fascism, the means of production remain ostensibly in private hands. The government simply regulates all industries in order to make them do what it wants, essentially picking winners and losers.

These days, if fascist has come to mean anything more than I dont like your politics, it is authoritarian or heavy-handed. However, the term is most often used to insult ones political opponents. Paradoxically, this is especially prevalent on the left. The irony of masked thugs employing Brownshirt tactics while calling themselves anti-fascist cannot be lost on any rational person.

In the United States, fascism has long been part of the Progressive DNA, dating back to Woodrow Wilson and American entertainers, industrialists and intellectuals of the 1920s and 30s, many of whom initially embraced fascist rhetoric.

But never has the lefts incipient fascism been more apparent than during the current coronavirus panic, as Progressive politicians across the country have seized the opportunity to implement authoritarian, unconstitutional diktats in furtherance of statist goals, such as universal basic income and Medicaid for all.

While red states slowly open for business, blue states like Michigan, Oregon, and Illinois are extending lockdowns into the summer, perhaps beyond. Californias beaches remain closed while Floridas welcome residents and vacationers alike.

Meanwhile, Progressive governors, mayors, and judges have attempted to ban religious services, peaceful protests and other public gatherings, in direct contravention of the First Amendment. Several have floated the idea of blowing up the Fourth Amendment, too, by requiring mandatory tracking or vaccinations.

So, my anti-fascist friends, who exactly is being heavy-handed and authoritarian now? Who is subordinating the rights of individuals to the supposed needs of the state? Who is picking economic winners and losers by declaring some peoples livelihoods non-essential?

Ill give you a hint: Its not Donald Trump, and its not most Republican governors.

As a Georgian, Im grateful for the courageous, rational, and (above all) constitutional leadership of Gov. Brian Kemp during this time of turmoil and uncertainty. I cant imagine the nightmare if we were now being ruled by his Progressive opponent in the last election. Georgia could easily be another Illinois or Oregon.

Thats something to keep in mind next time you vote. Obviously, Progressive Democrats cannot be trusted with power. In times of crisis, their inner fascist just surges to the top.

Now, more than ever, the world needs trustworthy reportingbut good journalism isnt free.Please support us by subscribing or making a contribution today.

Rob Jenkins is a college professor. The views expressed here are his own. You can email Rob at rob.jenkins@outlook.com.

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JENKINS: Now we know who the real fascists are - Gwinnettdailypost.com

WASHINGTON The plan for a pandemic drone didnt last long in Westport, Conn.

Within days in late April, the police department of the coastal town outside New York City reversed course on using drone-mounted cameras to scan crowds for fevers and coughs.

The department had said it would use the technology at beaches, train stations, recreation areas and shopping centers. Biometric readings would help the department understand population patterns and respond to potential health threats.

Feedback from some of the towns 28,000 residents was quick and laden with concern, Lt. Anthony Prezioso said, so the department canned the program.

This is not really a time to divide people, Prezioso said. If this was an issue that would create more angst and division among our community, it wasnt the time.

At least 40 law enforcement agencies across the country have used drones in the past few months for coronavirus-related purposes, according to a Stateline review of police websites and news reports. Law enforcement drones have hovered over a homeless encampment to invite people to get a free health assessment, flown over parks to check for social distancing and broadcast messages asking crowds to disperse.

But as in Westport, drones raise the question of what surveillance the public will accept in a tense time. The new measures monitoring social distance, scanning crowds, testing temperatures also worry civil liberties advocates and some in the drone industry.

This is not a time to be, in my opinion, ramrodding the aircraft into the air, said Matt Dunlevy, who owns SkySkopes, a Grand Forks, N.D.-based drone company.

SkySkopes is testing how drones can be used to deliver supplies or spray disinfectant across areas such as playgrounds, gyms and stadiums. It is also doing limited indoor testing with a thermal imaging camera.

I think that this is a time to take particular care as to how drones are used, Dunlevy said. I would personally encourage all drone operators to make sure that they take the utmost care and operate with the utmost sensitivity.

Roughly 1,100 law enforcement agencies have acquired drones over the past few years, according to research by the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York. Agencies tout their uses for evaluating crime scenes and searching for missing persons.

The Federal Aviation Administration requires drone pilots to be certified and keep drones in sight and not above people, with some exceptions. As long as its rules are followed, the agency doesnt regulate how a drone is used.

I think its so cool that all these agencies are doing stuff, said Ian Gregor, a spokesperson for the FAA. We wrote the authorizations and regulations broadly. When we wrote them, we had no idea wed be seeing this kind of public health agency use.

Since 2013, at least 44 states have enacted laws addressing drones, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. For example, some states bar flights over correctional facilities.

At least 18 states require law enforcement agencies to get a search warrant to use a drone for surveillance or to conduct a search, the group said.

But those laws leave room for uses such as crowd surveillance and broadcasting social distancing messages, experts said.

Either of those use cases dont violate the Fourth Amendment because people in public places dont have a reasonable expectation of privacy, said Gregory S. McNeal, a professor of law and public policy at Pepperdine University in California.

The other bigger question is whether we as a society want drones flying around as the enforcers of these bureaucratic rules, whether by blaring these commands by speaker, or by other means, McNeal said. Thats less of a legal question and more of a social acceptance question.

Civil liberties advocates worry that the pandemic will push law enforcement agencies to go to extreme lengths to adopt fast-moving technology.

In a rush to do something, we need to be very cognizant that hastily implemented systems could pose unnecessary and significant risks to privacy, civil rights and civil liberties, said Kara Gross, legislative director and senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

Gross pointed to similar civil liberties discussions amid expanded government surveillance after 9/11. In times of crisis we are seeing our country relax protections for individuals, she said.

Do we really want to live in a state where we have this ever-present eye in the sky thats collecting information about individuals, about their private, personal health? Gross said.

Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst with Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group based in San Francisco, said he was skeptical of the accuracy of thermal imaging cameras and questioned their use by law enforcement rather than public health officials. But even sending a drone with loudspeakers toward a crowd gave him pause.

It normalizes policing and governance by robot, he said.

And, he warned, even if a technology is adopted under the guise of short-term use, its less likely to be removed after the crisis.

It might be for policing social distancing now, but in seven or eight months it might be sending that drone over protests against a presidential election, Guariglia said.

The CEO of the company behind the Westport drone program, while commending the departments decision to back out, said he thinks other police departments will give it a try.

They did the right thing by being transparent about it and providing the community a chance to voice their concern, said Cameron Chell, CEO of Draganfly. The Saskatchewan, Canada-based company with offices in Los Angeles and Raleigh, North Carolina, has been working with public safety agencies for about 15 years.

The thermal imaging software was developed in partnership with the University of South Australia and Australias defense department, he said. It can detect body temperatures, respiratory rates and heart rates from 190 feet away. The cameras dont have facial recognition abilities, he said.

It could provide us real-world information instead of guesses, Chell said.

Chell said hes working with both law enforcement agencies and private industry groups to start more pilot programs. He declined to name any of the groups.

Police in another Connecticut town, Meriden, started a drone program a few months ago with plans to use it to investigate crash scenes and search for missing people. Instead, police have used it to hover over two large parks and see whether residents are social distancing.

In one snapshot, you can see areas of concern, said Sgt. Jeff Herget. On the first Sunday in May a warm, spring day the parks were full of families walking and hiking, he said.

Using a speaker on the drone, the police played four or five announcements over about six hours reminding groups to keep a safe distance apart.

Reactions were mixed. Many people at the park responded positively and wanted to see how the drone worked, Herget said, but online commenters were less supportive.

Of ways to use the drones, he said, I dont think any of us thought wed be doing social distancing.

2020 Stateline.org

Visit Stateline.org at http://www.stateline.org

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): CORONAVIRUS-POLICE-DRONES

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Did that drone just tell us to stay 6 feet apart? - yoursun.com

Asked to define what crimes Donald Trump is alleging Barack Obama and other former members of his administration committed under his "Obamagate" conspiracy theory, the president's top spokeswoman instead focused on alleged "wrongdoing."

When pressed, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany only mentioned one potential crime: The leaking of the identity of Michael Flynn, Mr Trump's first national security adviser to reporters that showed up in articles indicating the retired Army three-star general was the subject of a federal probe.

Instead, Ms McEnany pointed to the highly disputed "dossier" of negative information compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, which has been disputed by Mr Trump and his team.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Ms McEnany, who is an attorney, complained about "wrongdoing" by the FBI.

She complained that Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act court warrants were improperly issued so federal investigators could monitor communications involving members the 2016 Trump campaign.

Additionally, she contended that Sally Yates, a former senior Justice Department official, was "stunned" when then-President Barack Obama informed her of a federal probe of Mr Flynn.

But only once, contending that a leak of Mr Flynn's name to reporters, did she mention a possible criminal act because, she said, such a leak might have been "a violation of his (Flynn's) Fourth Amendment rights."

Cornell Law School defines that amendment to the US Constitution this way: "The Fourth Amendment originally enforced the notion that "each man's home is his castle", secure from unreasonable searches and seizures of property by the government. It protects against arbitrary arrests, and is the basis of the law regarding search warrants, stop-and-frisk, safety inspections, wiretaps, and other forms of surveillance, as well as being central to many other criminal law topics and to privacy law."

Mr Trump alleged unspecified criminal actions by former Obama administration officials in a tweet last weekend, writing: "The biggest political crime in American history, by far!"

But on Monday, when asked to spell out those alleged crimes during a press conference, Mr Trump could not or would not.

"You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours," he told a Washington Post reporter.

"Obamagate" is a web of complicated and semi-related actions and investigations by and ordered by then-Obama administration officials. Mr Trump, cobbling them together, alleges they prove a push inside the Obama administration to take down his 2016 presidential bid and then hobble his presidency. Mr Obama has responded with a one-word tweet: "Vote."

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Trump's spokeswoman focuses on 'wrongdoing' rather than crimes when pressed on 'Obamagate' charges - The Independent

90.5 WESAs An-Li Herring reports on the privacy concerns that contact tracing apps raise.

If you test positive for COVID-19, a contact tracer will call to find out who you interacted with since 48 hours before you felt sick. Some people, though, want the phones themselves to help with the work.

At a news conference earlier this month, Allegheny County Health Department Director Debra Bogen said her agency is considering how smartphone apps could help to investigate cases.

We have looked at a variety of options, and I think were all sort of learning what those options are, Bogen said. The problem is that there are many. And there are privacy issues.

Experts say communities must expand their capacity to test, trace and isolate COVID-19 cases before they can safely resume daily life amid the coronavirus pandemic. Contact tracing apps, meanwhile, are credited with helping to contain the coronavirus in some countries.

The programs start by tracking location, Bluetooth, or other datastored in cell phones. If the data suggests an app user has interacted with an infected patient, the user gets a notification. Contact tracers could also draw on the same information to chase down other likely contacts, and tell them to quarantine or get tested.

But there are concerns the technology reveals too much about users and yet also not enough.

Public health v. privacy rights

Dierdre Mulligan, a professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, said the law allows some privacy rights to be eroded when officials need to respond to a public-health crisis.

And were actually going to make decisions that might intrude on your privacy, Mulligan said, because we understand that were all in this together.

After all, contracting the coronavirus doesnt just risk the well-being of infected people, but also that of anyone they come into contact with. So, the detective work involved in contact tracing itself, and the collection of confidential information in public health databases is legal, Mulligan said.

But she added that privacy rights do come into play when phones proactively track and record individuals contacts before they've been infected.

Mulligan and others say that contact tracing technology poses legitimate privacy threats. Some worry, for example, that employers will require workers to use contact tracing software, while others dread the potential for hacking.

Mulligan noted that some fear police could use the technology to target people who have interacted with a criminal suspect.

People have already suggested, Well, wouldnt [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] like to know that? because theyd be able to identify other people who might be illegally in the country," she added. "You can imagine lots of ways in which there could be pressure to repurpose the system thats being built.

While some countries mandate the use of contact-tracing apps, Mary Catherine Roper, Deputy Legal Director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said in the U.S., participation must be voluntary.

In our country, we dont allow the government to conduct mass surveillance on us, Roper said. The Constitution doesnt permit that. Our culture doesnt permit that.

In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that the Fourth Amendment bars law enforcement from accessing cell phone location data without a search warrant.

Roper said when contact tracing apps are voluntary, the companies and governments that sponsor them must spell out exactly what participants are signing up for.

What reasonably could you have thought you were agreeing to? And what precautions have been taken to make sure that this data is not used in ways beyond what you thought you were agreeing to? the ACLU lawyer said, listing the types of questions that app use policies should answer.

'Not a perfect science'

Jennifer King, who serves as Director of Consumer Privacy for Stanford Law Schools Center for Internet and Society, noted that such terms of service often are very non-transparent and could make it difficult for users to make an informed choice about whether to opt in to contact tracing.

My concern is that even if [the apps are launched] by public health agencies, King said, well see a process that looks like what we already see on the consumer side of things, where you get a very legalistic privacy policy that doesnt do a good job of trying to explain to you in plain English what youre engaging in, what youre participating in, and for how long your data might be used.

App developers in the U.S. have made a point to adopt privacy safeguards. For example, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University built a program that alerts users if theyve come close to someone who has the disease, while alsokeeping participants anonymous and not reporting the alerts to anyone else.

Google and Apple, meanwhile, are teaming up to establish a system that will only share coronavirus data with public health agencies and only until the end of the pandemic.

Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Jason Hong noted that while privacy protections are essential, they limit public health benefits. In other countries like China and South Korea, governments have used a host of data sources, including GPS and credit card records, to pinpoint locations. But in the U.S., apps rely on less precise technology.

If you are on the opposite side of a building from a person, or even on a different floor, and you never really met this person, you could still be having false positives that youre actually close to them, Hong said, describing one shortcoming with the Bluetooth signals that apps in the U.S. are expected to rely on.

King added that the technology wont work if users dont have their Bluetooth and location services turned on, or if they simply dont have their phones with them.

This is not a perfect science at all, she added. Its just a way potentially to try to identify the gaps that as humans we may have trouble trying to remember or put together.

Kathleen Carley, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, said that on balance, those possible benefits make the apps worth adopting. She thinks they would help contact tracers to do their jobs.

The contact apps get rid of a lot of that guesswork and would actually make it much safer for people, Carley said. I personally think its a great idea, and that we should be doing it.

Not everyone agrees: Polls show that at most, only about half of Americans are open to downloading contact tracing software. That might be a problem, because experts say 60 percent of the population must opt in for the apps to have an impact.

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Do Contact Tracing Apps Pit Privacy Against The Public Good? - 90.5 WESA