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Threat to our freedom

Buddy Bankhead, from Carthage, expressed truthfully what needed to be said (letter, April 16). The biggest threat to freedom has always been the federal government. Look at what is happening right now!

Do you even remember when we had law and order? Do you remember what it was like to have secure borders? Criminals were held accountable and children were excelling in education?

Trump does not want to make our country a socialist and Marxist third-world country. Trump is fighting for us every day, every hour. If he wasnt, we would be under attack ourselves! Dont talk about socialism. Talk about our loss of freedom.

Dont give immigrants the right to vote. Dont give immigrants everything free when you dont take care of our veterans and homeless. What really has Biden done for you?

People in foreign countries are laughing at Biden. They did not laugh when Trump was president.

When you dont have capitalism, free markets, liberty, freedom, fundamental rights protected, bad things will happen.

Our Founding Fathers put in the Fourth Amendment to protect us from unwarranted searches of our private homes, but look at the illegal raid on Trumps home.

God bless America. Fellow Americans, stand and fight! Freedom is not free!

June Strohsahl, Longview

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Letter: Threat to our freedom | Opinion | news-journal.com - Longview News-Journal

Waltham Mayor Jeannette A. McCarthy and Waltham Police Chief Kevin OConnell did not respond to requests for comment, and a spokesperson for the police department declined to comment. Neither the Department for Children and Families nor SEIU Local 509, the union for social workers, could immediately be reached for comment.

Last July, Perkins brought the couples 3-month-old son to the emergency room for a fever, according to the complaint. While the baby was there, hospital staff discovered an older, healed fracture on one of his ribs and notified DCF, the complaint said. Unknown to the family, DCF opened a child abuse investigation.

Around 1 a.m. on July 16, DCF workers and Waltham police appeared at the familys front step without a warrant, the lawsuit alleges, and threatened to break down the door if they didnt turn over the baby and his 3-year-old brother.

The children were taken to a foster home, and Sabey and Perkins were not granted full custody until four months later when they were cleared of any wrongdoing, the complaint said.

Sabey said his family has endured lingering trauma as a result of the separation; routine visits to the doctor have become a source of gripping anxiety.

It was incredibly stressful, incredibly traumatic, and now its kind of hard to tell what the long-term effects are on our psychology and how were able to move on, he said.

Joshua Thompson, the parents attorney, said that while defense lawyers may argue that police and DCF workers believed there was an imminent threat to the childrens safety, there was more than enough time to obtain a warrant in the days after DCF learned of the rib injury including the many hours that the couple remained in the hospital.

An imminent threat, in typical Fourth Amendment parlance, means someone had a knife to someone elses throat and you could see it through the window, Thompson said. It doesnt mean that [DCF] discovered a rib injury and then three days later broke into the Sabeys home at one in the morning.

The seizure of the children, which was first reported by the Washington Post in December, sparked public outrage. Neither Sabey nor Perkins have ever been charged with any civil or criminal offense related to their parenting, according to the lawsuit.

The states legal aid agency and public defenders office, the Committee for Public Counsel Services is among those pushing for more oversight. Meanwhile, some legislators hope to change state law so that social workers can only take temporary custody of children without a court order in cases where theres no time to go before a judge.

The allegations made in this lawsuit echo what we hear from our clients across the state every single day: DCF is frequently overzealous in separating families, and removing children from their homes after hours and without court oversight has long-term, irreversible effects on children and their parents, Mike Dsida, who leads the committees Children and Family Law Division, said in a statement.

Dsida said the lawsuit outlines a fact pattern that is all too common. Families in Massachusetts deserve better, and if this suit leads to change, it would be a welcome step in the right direction.

Josh Gupta-Kagan, professor at Columbia Law School, identified three ways an organization can push DCF toward policy change. The first would be to sue the agency itself for a pattern or practice of civil rights violations, he explained. The second would be to seek injunctive relief in a lawsuit, which sets a precedent for how an agency is allowed to operate in similar cases moving forward. Finally, in the event that the case is appealed up to the US Court of Appeals or the US Supreme Court, there is a likelihood that the federal court would set a legal precedent that applies not only to child welfare practices in Massachusetts, but more broadly across the country.

Gupta-Kagan also noted that lawsuits against individual employees, like the one filed by the Sabey family, still have the potential if successful to spur structural change within an agency.

By allowing one officer to be sued in an individual capacity, its supposed to create a deterrent effect for someone else in the future, he said. Then the agency is supposed to be thinking, Oh wait, if I screw up again and violate a familys rights, then [our employees] could be held liable.

Sabey said hes trying to raise awareness about the issue, going as far as writing a book about his familys experience to spread the word. One of the greatest frustrations about it all, Sabey said, is the number of hurdles preventing families from taking legal action against agencies responsible for systemic problems.

The individuals were just really just cogs in the system thats forced to do what it does by its own policies and perceived responsibilities, he said. And that system just churns out injustice after injustice.

Ivy Scott can be reached at ivy.scott@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @itsivyscott.

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Parents file lawsuit alleging civil rights violations after children were ... - The Boston Globe

by April Corbin Girnus, Nevada Current

Untold numbers of sexual assault cases nationwide have been solved after DNA evidence linked perpetrators to their crimes, but victims of sexual assault should not have to worry that their own DNA will be used against them.

Senate Bill 321 would protect victims of sexual assault from having the DNA they submit as part of a rape kit used to prosecute them for crimes. Such samples could only be used to prosecute the perpetrator of their sexual assault. The bill passed the Nevada State Senate unanimously on April 25 and was heard by the Assembly Judiciary committee Tuesday.

State Sen. Lisa Krasner, R-Reno, brought forward the bill, and 19 lawmakers across both chambers and parties have signed on as primary or co-sponsors.

Krasner pointed to a high profile incident in California as a reason why Nevada should be proactive on the issue of protecting victims of sexual assault.

San Franciscos district attorney last year revealed the citys police crime lab used DNA collected during a rape kit in 2016 to tie a sexual assault victim to a burglary in 2021. The citys police chief called it a horrendous mistake and vowed it would not happen again, but the incident sparked broad calls for states to strengthen safeguards against such use.

Sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes. Fear that their DNA or other forensic evidence collected during a rape kit might be used against them in unrelated cases is believed to be contributing to underreporting. Other reasons why victims dont come forward include fear of not being believed, fear of retribution by their assailant, or feeling like justice is futile. (Just under 20% of reported rapes in Nevada in 2022 resulted in an arrest, according to the Department of Public Safety.)

We have to do better, said Krasner. Collecting and properly processing sexual assault crime evidence and rape kits is vital to that effort. We must do everything we can to help victims feel safe in coming forward.

In 2019, she added, citing FBI data, Nevada had one of the highest rates of reported rape per capita. Since then, the states rate of reported rapes per capita has seen a small but steady decline.

We have to wonder if that just means that victim survivors are choosing not to come forward and report the rape to law enforcement, she said.

Nevada already has a Sexual Assault Survivors Bill of Rights, which specifies that forensic evidence from a sexual assault survivor cannot be used to prosecute that survivor for any misdemeanor or offense related to a controlled substance. SB321 would expand that protection to any crime.

No Assembly Judiciary committee member expressed objections to the proposed bill.

Besides the humanity and sensitivity of the issue, its also a Fourth Amendment issue, said Democratic Assemblywoman Britney Miller, referring to the right to privacy established in the U.S. Constitution. Even if you cant extend yourself to humanity and sensitivity, it is a strong constitutional issue.

SB321 is being supported by a broad coalition that includes the Nevada District Attorneys Association, the public defenders offices in Clark and Washoe counties, and several law enforcement groups, including the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

LVMPD lobbyist Beth Schmidt said during her testimony in support that Metro does not run sexual assault victim DNA through the national DNA database known as CODIS, or the Combined DNA Index System.

We appreciate codifying this into statute, she added.

Steve Gresko, the administrator of CODIS for Nevada and a supervising criminalist at the Washoe County Sheriffs Office, also testified that CODIS does not currently include victim DNA.

Gresko said law enforcement agencies will occasionally turn to forensic evidence collected through a rape kit if the victim of a sexual assault later becomes a missing person and no other DNA reference sample can be found. In those cases, the purpose is not to prosecute but only to identify the person.

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Nevada moves to strengthen protections around use of sexual ... - This Is Reno

Warrantless searches of US residents' communications by the FBI dropped sharply last year from about 3.4 million in 2021 to 119,383 in 2022, according to Uncle Sam.

But that is still likely tens of thousands more people than should have been caught up in the FBI's domestic surveillance efforts, according to advocates for reform of Section 702 the legislative instrument that allows warrantless snooping.

The numbers mentioned above were revealed in the annual Office of the Director of National Intelligence report, released at the end of last week. The report came just after Congress held a subcommittee hearing on Section 702 surveillance authority.

Section 702 is a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and gives US government snoops the authority to surveil Americans' electronic communications without a warrant. The power is set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress renews it.

While law enforcement has long argued [PDF] that Section 702 saves lives and is an indispensable tool when it comes to fighting terrorism, data privacy and civil liberties groups maintain it violates the Fourth Amendment and needs a major overhaul to prevent further unconstitutional surveillance.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence report [PDF] gives several reasons for the decline in Section 702 searches related to US citizens and residents. For one, the FBI changed the methodology used to calculate the number of Section 702 searches, and says previous years' reports used duplicative counting methods.

A better estimate of 2021's warrantless communications searches puts the number closer to 3 million, not 3.4 million, for example, according to the government report.

This is like doing a touchdown dance because you threw an incomplete pass instead of an interception

Even at just 3 million, the 2021 number is a massive spike versus 2020's approximately 853,000 searches, and the report attributes this to "a number of large batch jobs" in the first half of 2021 related to one particular investigation into "attempts by foreign cyber actors to compromise US critical infrastructure."

"These queries, which included approximately 1.9 million queries related to potential victims including US persons accounted for the vast majority of the increase in US person queries conducted by FBI over the prior year," it notes.

Additionally, over the past year the FBI implemented new processes around Section 702 searches, including mandatory query training and "enhanced approval requirements for certain 'sensitive' queries, such as those involving domestic public officials or members of the news media."

It also now requires FBI agents to "opt-in" if they wish to run a search against Section 702-acquired data, instead of having queries run against this data by default.

All of these measures contributed to the drop in warrantless searches, according to the report.

Proponents of Section 702 reform take a slightly different view, unsurprisingly.

Around 119,000 queries represents an "undeniably a big drop" from previous years' searches, said Jake Laperruque, deputy director of Center for Democracy and Technology's Security and Surveillance Project.

"But to me, this is like doing a touchdown dance because you threw an incomplete pass instead of an interception," he told The Register.

"It's still a very bad thing in desperate need of reform. We're still talking about hundreds of thousands of searches for Americans' private wireless data."

For comparison, Laperruque pointed to the 2,245 wiretaps authorized by state and federal judges in 2021 and the application process and judicial review that law enforcement must go through to obtain these surveillance tools, compared to the "backdoor search loophole" in Section 702.

"The fact that this was being framed as like a major decline just shows how much of a bizarre world we are in with this provision of FISA," he said.

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Feds rethink warrantless search stats and oh look, a huge drop in numbers - The Register

He called it the Cruzing to Victory Tour 2023.

A northwest Missouri man convicted for his role in the Capitol riot took to the highways last week, riding his motorcycle to Washington, D.C., for his sentencing on Tuesday.

Lloyd Casimiro Cruz Jr., of Polo about 50 miles northeast of Kansas City saw the event as a way to raise funds for his legal bills and highlight what he says are the bogus cases brought against him and other J6ers charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

The Justice Department, however, saw it as a failure to take responsibility for his actions and one of multiple reasons why he should be sentenced to a year in jail.

On Tuesday morning in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Reggie B. Walton handed down a sentence of 45 days incarceration followed by one year of supervised release and $500 restitution for the nearly $2.9 million in damages the government said resulted from the attack.

Cruz, 40, was facing up to 18 months incarceration, restitution and a $5,000 fine. The government requested 12 months incarceration, one year of supervised release, 60 hours of community service, and $500 restitution.

The stay-at-home father of four had declined to accept a plea deal and instead agreed to a Jan. 13 bench trial before the judge, waiving his right to a trial in front of a jury. He was found guilty of one count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building and one count of entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds. Both charges are misdemeanors.

Prior to his conviction, Cruz filed a motion to dismiss his case, saying the charges were undeniably unconstitutional and that he was merely exercising his First Amendment rights when he entered the Capitol. In another motion, Cruz argued that the evidence obtained from the search of cellular location data that showed he was in the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack should be suppressed and the case dismissed because it originated with a massive violation of the Fourth Amendment.

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The judge denied both motions.

Cruz, the first Missouri Capitol riot defendant to go to trial, created a website about his case and a GiveSendGo site to raise money that he said would help pay for his lawyer and other court expenses. Anything left over, he said, would be given to other Jan. 6 defendants for their legal costs.

Please help with anything you can I am looking at 2 years for only walking around the Capitol, he wrote on the fundraising site. There were no signs nor no one saying I couldnt be in there.

As of Tuesday morning, hed received $9,995 of the $35,000 requested.

Thank you Patriot brother to you and your family, wrote Bryan Nicklow, who donated $200 last week. Godspeed as you embark on your journey on behalf of yourself and all J6ers and freedom loving Americans. I am praying for your safety and success.

Cruzs case has attracted the attention of his state representative, Mazzie Boyd, a Republican from Hamilton. His website features photos of Boyd posing with him and his family around the motorcycle.

In an April 12 letter To the Great People of Missouri, Boyd whose bio says she has worked in the Trump White House and in the congressional office of Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote that it is disheartening to see the United States Judicial system being perverted.

Not only has it been used as a political tool against President Donald Trump, but also against my Constituent Lloyd Cruz, she wrote.

She called Cruz a political prisoner, adding that the only reason he is being charged is because of his support for President Trump.

Cruz left Kansas City on Wednesday and live streamed updates on Rumble, an online video-sharing site. He told supporters that he has paid a high price for his actions.

I went to D.C. to support President Trump and because I thought that if it was his last time, then at least I got to see him one last time, he said on his stream Saturday night. And from there, it was spur-of-the-moment. He said he walked into the Capitol on Jan. 6, walked around briefly, then left.

Never said a word, never touched anything, he said. For walking around for less than seven minutes, its literally cost me everything. Ive received hate mail people I thought were close to me, they tossed me aside, too my own family refused to help me out when I needed it.

Prosecutors described Cruzs Jan. 6 involvement in a sentencing memorandum filed last week.

Cruz drove with two others to Washington to attend the pro-Trump Stop the Steal rally, the document said. After the rally, it said, he walked to the Capitol, where he joined a mob of rioters that had gathered on the West Plaza.

While there, he observed and video-recorded police officers deploying flash bangs and chemical spray to disperse the crowd of rioters. Around 2:10 p.m., the document said, Cruz followed the protesters who had broken through police lines.

As Cruz ascended the stairs to the Upper West Terrace, Cruz exclaimed, We broke down the gate. We broke through the gate and Im going inside! the sentencing document said.

The mob chanted Whose House? Our House! as Cruz approached the Senate Wing Door, and he saw rioters entering the Capitol through broken windows, the document said. Cruz entered the building through the Senate Wing Door at 2:14 p.m., one to two minutes after the initial breach at that location.

Prosecutors say this photo from U.S. Capitol surveillance video shows Lloyd Casimiro Cruz Jr., of Polo, Missouri, entering the building through the Senate Wing Door.

Cruz roamed the building with rioters as they chanted in the halls, then entered the Crypt about 2:17 p.m., according to the governments filing. He left through the Senate Wing Door about 2:20 p.m., recording everything on his GoPro camera.

Cruz first denied going into the building, the government said, stating that he went on the Capitol grounds to help injured people. Later, he gave the FBI a thumb drive that contained photos and videos of his trip to D.C. He said that reviewing the videos reminded him that he entered the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021.

After being charged, the government said, Cruz created a Twitter account in which he posted repeated solicitations for donations, and politically charged content, including conspiracy theories about what occurred on January 6.

And in the days leading up to his trial, the sentencing document said, Cruz repeatedly posted statements minimizing his conduct.

Since his conviction, Cruz has continued to post statements downplaying the riot, the government said. Those posts, it said, include conspiracy theories that Cruz would know from his own experience are false, such as that the rioters were let in to the building by police and the Capitol riot was a set up.

The government also mentioned the Cruz for Victory motorcycle ride to D.C. and Cruzs GiveSendGo donation site, where he makes blatantly false statements about his conduct on January 6, 2021, the sentencing document said.

Those examples illustrate Cruzs complete failure to take responsibility for his actions, the government said. It added that his continued attempts to garner sympathy based on false statements about his own conduct, false statements about what happened at the Capitol on January 6, and statements portraying himself as a victim are repugnant.

The government said Cruz also has a significant criminal history that includes four felony convictions from 2004 to 2007 for distribution of a controlled substance; possession of forged instruments; theft/receiving stolen property; and forgery of a check/commercial instrument. Some of the convictions, it said, resulted in prison sentences.

Cruz has failed to pay thousands in fines and costs ordered by the court in those cases, the government said, further demonstrating that he has no respect for the law and specific deterrence for this defendant is greatly needed in this case.

In Cruzs own sentencing memorandum filed last week, his attorney, John Pierce, said Cruz cooperated with the investigation and voluntarily spoke to the FBI on four occasions. Cruz also handed over photos and videos taken when he was at the Capitol, Pierce said.

Pierce asked the court not to require Cruz to pay restitution for damage to the Capitol but to instead order a fine of $2,000 to $3,000.

He did not stipulate to nor was he charged with damaging anything or hurting anyone, Pierce wrote. He would consider it a problem with his conscience and honor to be ordered to pay restitution when he never harmed anything or anyone.

As for Cruzs criminal history, Pierce wrote that other than his current case, the record shows that the Defendant had clearly reformed and become a law-abiding citizen after some unfortunate early incidents.

This indicates that his early mistakes had a profound impact on him and caused him to turn away from them.

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Its literally cost me everything. Missouri man gets jail time in Capitol riot case - Yahoo News