Excerpt:

> But he and a sergeant who shot at unarmed suspect Marquis Jackson were cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, according to Sheriff Eric Aden. > > Jackson, who sat handcuffed in the back of the patrol car as deputies opened fire, was not injured. Hernandez resigned while being investigated.

!the-pigs!xi-gun-2 🌰

dystopian shit, that somehow is not even the worst thing on here

https://truthout.org/articles/teen-charged-with-murder-after-officer-had-heart-attack-while-assaulting-him/

>On May 19, 2023, Virgilio Aguilar Méndez, an 18-year-old Indigenous-Maya farmworker, was eating and talking to his mother on the phone outside of his Super 8 motel room in St. Augustine, Florida, where he was staying with three other farmworkers. He was working to send money to his family in Guatemala. St. Johns County police Sergeant Michael Kunovich approached Aguilar Méndez and described him to the dispatcher as a “suspicious Hispanic male” according to an ABC News reporter who reviewed the body camera and audio of the incident.

Suspiciously Hispanic.

>As Kunovich began to question Aguilar Méndez, who speaks the Mayan language Mam, the young man couldn’t understand the questions and started apologizing. He expressed multiple times that he did not speak English and that he was residing in the motel.

>Kunovich started searching the teenager for weapons, according to the Florida Times-Union. Startled, the confused 5-foot-4, 115-pound teen resisted.

When cops become startled and confused they're legally allowed to execute you.

>During the eight minute struggle, Kunovich called two other deputies to assist him. They pushed and pinned Aguilar Méndez to the ground, held him in a chokehold, and stunned him with his taser six times in two minutes.

>Five minutes after they handcuffed the teenager and put him in a patrol car, Kunovich collapsed and was transported to a hospital where he died. Medical examiners found this to be cardiac arrest and ruled Kunovich’s death to be by natural causes. The ABC reporter, who obtained a copy of Kunovich’s autopsy report, wrote that it said, “These cardiac changes, while recent, predate the struggle with the subject. The circumstances do not fully meet the criteria for a homicide manner of death.”

>Still, the St. John’s County Sheriff’s Office and the Office of the State Attorney for the 7th Judicial Circuit of Florida charged Aguilar Méndez with aggravated murder, which is punishable by life in prison.

>In the time after Kunovich’s death, St. John County Sheriff Robert Hardwick held a press conference in which he said that Aguilar Méndez was stopped because he was trespassing and that he had pulled a knife on Kunovich. After the press conference, body camera footage was released showing that a small pocket knife was found in his pants pocket after he was handcuffed was never pulled on Kunovich. Aguilar Méndez said the knife was “para sandía,” or “for watermelon,” alluding to his job.

The cops lied about the knife? !shocked-pikachu

>The teen has been held without bail for eight months, even after circuit judge R. Lee Smith in December found him incompetent to stand trial because he does not understand English or Spanish and is unable to understand the criminal justice system, the Times-Union reported. The prosecution disagreed and the judge said he needed “more time to mull the complicated issues.” Since then, the public defender’s office filed an amended motion to set bond, which would ask for him to be released, and is expected to file a motion to dismiss the charges soon, said Phillip Arroyo, Aguilar Méndez’s lawyer.

>“This is a great injustice. It is a violation of his constitutional and civil rights, which, contrary to popular belief, also protect undocumented immigrants,” Arroyo told ScheerPost. “Although this case has nothing to do with immigration, our client’s right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure was violated that day, in addition to being a victim of excessive force.”

>Arroyo also has stated to the ABC reporter that the state would have to prove that Aguilar Méndez knew the officer had a heart condition and did something negligent that caused his death.

>According to a report from the CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance, “Immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants, are likely to be victimized far more often than native-born U.S. citizens,” even though they are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born citizens.

>In addition, the U.S. has a diverse population in which more than 67 million people, or one in five, speak a language other than English. An estimated 25 million people in the United States have limited English proficiency. Scholars and advocates of criminal justice reform have questioned if law enforcement is doing enough to provide proper resources to ensure language services for those who need it.

>Arroyo urges people to sign the Change.org petition to free Aguilar Méndez, created on Jan. 3 by Mariana Blanco of the nonprofit The Guatemalan-Maya Center. The petition calls for Aguilar Méndez’s immediate release and charges to be dropped, and is to Governor Ron DeSantis and 7th circuit state attorney, RJ Larizza. It has generated over 549,000 signatures since it was started.

>“If Virgilio is convicted and sentenced to prison for this incident, it will create an extremely dangerous precedent in this country; because if a police officer dies from a heart attack during a police-citizen encounter, anyone in this country can be charged, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for that officer’s death,” reads the petition.

Thursday, January 18, 2024, marks one year since Manuel “Tortuguita” Esteban Paez Terán was killed by police in the South River Forest outside Atlanta. A 26-year-old queer anarchist, Tortuguita had been an active participant in the movement against “Cop City” for months before Georgia State Patrol took their life during an early morning raid to clear protesters from the woods.

>Chris Avell, pastor of Dad's Place in Bryan, Ohio, was arraigned in court last Thursday because he kept his church open 24/7 to provide warmth to the unhoused.

>Ohio law prohibits residential use in first-floor buildings in a business district. Since the church is zoned as a Central Business, the building is restricted from allowing people to eat or sleep on the property.

>According to the city, Avell was sent a letter on Nov. 3 informing him the homeless were prohibited from sleeping at the church overnight. Avell ignored the letter, and during a New Year’s Eve service, police arrived and issued violations.

>“Many of these people have been rejected by their families and cast aside by their communities. So, if the church isn’t willing to lay down its life for them, then who will? This is what we’re called to do,” Avell said in a Fox News interview.

linky

https://nitter.net/ChrisA3030911/status/1735629245697626490

https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/18fdsly/toronto_police_surround_and_knee_a_protestors/

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/protester-at-pro-palestine-rally-in-toronto-arrested-for-allegedly-assaulting-police-officer/article_1cf578be-9798-11ee-ab4f-678894a9968f.html

> altercation broke out between a protester and police at a pro-Palestinian rally Sunday afternoon outside the U.S. Consulate in Toronto, leading to an arrest. Afterwards, thousands of protesters from two separate rallies converged on 52 Division at University Ave. and Dundas St. to demand his immediate release. > > The Star observed a police officer on foot appearing to use his bicycle to ram the bicycle of a woman standing in front of him. It was not clear what instigated the action. The woman, who was holding her bicycle, fell over as the bike toppled. > > A man ran up after and shoved an officer to the ground in retaliation. Police then tackled, beat and arrested him

Archive

Sending death squad trigger happy nutjobs to a mental health call.

The autopsy report shows Lyon was shot 21 times, including 17 shots to the back and one to the back of the neck. Sixteen of the shots to the back were within a 12-by-6-inch space on the upper left side, hitting major organs, including his heart and lungs. The other shots hit him in the chest, face and an arm.

> This is the funniest one of these I've ever seen. The dollar amount. The selection of items. Just posting this image with no caption or context and immediately limiting replies. Thank you for emptying out the glove compartment of a 17 year-old's 2006 Ford Fiesta. > > Nitter

The original tweet is by the Barrie Police of Barrie, Ontario.

\---

Edit

In the original photo it turns out the numbers on the credit card are visible. So I blacked out the numbers and I reuploaded the photo. Fucking cops, man.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dexter-wade-buried-mississippi-id-home-address-lawyer-says-rcna125511

I think you are hurting some feelings

>San Francisco Police Department officials struggled to answer questions from the city’s Police Commission at a Wednesday meeting when asked to explain how, in a city where Black people make up only 5% of the population, they somehow made up 44% of police use-of-force incidents during the first half of the year, far more than any other race or ethnicity.

>From January through June of this year, the San Francisco Police Department reported using force against Black people 502 times, compared with 311 times against Hispanic people, 223 against white people and 80 times against Asian people. SFPD categorized 35 incidents as against other racial groups.

>According to the Police Department’s report, which cites 2021 population totals by race, officers were 17 times as likely to use force on a Black person in the city as they were to use force against a white person.

>The department also reported using force against people experiencing homelessness 144 times and against juveniles 47 times through the first half of 2023.

. . .

>The San Francisco Police Officers’ Association is skeptical of the report’s reliability because it compares uses of force to the city’s residential population instead of to criminal suspects, union president Tracy McCray said in a statement. “The report relies solely on the residential population of the various racial categories instead of looking at who the SFPD comes into contact with,” McCray said. If the commission looked at the racial makeup of crime suspects and arrested individuals, the uses of force against Black people would not seem so disproportionate, she said.

A $43 million police headquarters for a small city that took in $50 million in revenue last year.

>San Pablo is a city with a significant foreign-born population, where incomes and homeownership rates lag far behind the statewide average. Almost 80% of residents are people of color and most residents are renters.

>Last month, dozens of people gathered outside the square, stucco building that houses City Hall to advocate for better tenant protections. Efforts to do so have so far been unsuccessful, said Anya Svanoe, communications director for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, which organized the Sept. 30 rally.

. . .

>Spending on a police headquarters isn’t in violation of the intentionally broad act, Auxier said, though it might not be the expected use of COVID relief funds. Alabama used almost 20% of its COVID aid to build prisons.

. . .

>City officials have pointed to a July 2021 survey to contend there is broad public support for the project. The city-conducted survey found almost four in five residents in favor of it. The city received 302 responses to that survey, less than 1% of the population, which leading public opinion pollsters don’t consider representative.

>“They don’t want us to do any type of defunding programs that’s been done in surrounding cities like Richmond, Berkeley and Oakland,” said Rodriguez, the city manager.

>Richmond, Berkeley and Oakland have all increased police spending in recent years.

. . .

>“[Opposition] is from outside extremist groups from Oakland and Berkeley,” Rodriguez said without offering evidence. “Unfortunately, they’re coming to San Pablo to discredit our project and spread some misinformation.”

Those damn outside agitators, always interfering with civil rights violations . . .

Fuck this shit. Not even $70 worth and he was trying to return them !luau

https://nitter.net/bykenarmstrong/status/1701451004825448780

The first paragraph...

> COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio authorities on Friday released bodycam video showing a police officer fatally shooting Ta’Kiya Young in her car in what her family denounced as a “gross misuse of power and authority” against the pregnant Black mother.

!officer-down

I'm leaning towards yes, because despite their inclusivity and the general feel-good vibes of the stories, the characters themselves flirt with police brutality quite a bit, and who knows exactly what they get up to in their lives outside the novels.

Any more nuanced views from my fellow hexbearians (and lemmings)? I'm slightly less articulate than Detritus on a hot day, and I wonder how much the politics and views of Terry Pratchett comes up in leftist discourse.

A slew of Antioch and Pittsburg officers were arrested following an FBI probe into civil rights violations and investigation tampering.

Nine officers across two police departments in East Bay, Calif. were arrested by FBI agents Thursday after being indicted by a federal grand jury. Of those officers were the slimy Antioch cops exposed for calling Black people gorillas, n-words and all types of degrading insults in their texts.

Over 100 FBI agents were deployed to arrest current and former officers from the Antioch and Pittsburg police departments, according to KRON4 News. The 30-page federal indictment accuses the group of crimes including college degree benefit fraud and violating the civil rights of civilians. As if the APD isn’t in enough hell upon the state and federal probes into their employees’ bigoted banter, two of them were accused of slinging anabolic steroids. They were also accused of trying to destroy the evidence. Another APD cop, Morteza Amiri, was accused of excessive force for deploying his K-9 on 28 people and then saving images of the bloody dog bites in his camera roll.

At this point, what haven’t they been accused of?

cw: graphic violence

Eric Rombough, Devon Wenger and Mortez Amiri have been accused of conspiring to “injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate” residents in Antioch, a city of roughly 114,000 people located 45 miles northeast of San Francisco, according to a 30-page indictment filed in federal court in California’s Northern District.

In a 2020 text, Wenger told Amiri that they needed to “go 3 nights in a row dog bite!!!” Amiri emphasized the message, according to the indictment, and Wenger replied with a homophobic slur about a senior officer, saying they should give the lieutenant “something to stress out about lol.”

In another text that year, Amiri sent Wenger eight graphic images of people with dog bites and described the work week as “very eventful,” according to the indictment.

Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe, who was a target of the racist police messages, issued a statement in response to the arrest calling it a “dark day” for the city.

“People trusted to uphold the law allegedly breached that trust and were arrested by the FBI. Today’s actions are the beginning of the end of a long and arduous process. Today’s arrests are demonstrative of the issues that have plagued the Antioch Police Department for decades,” he said.

Simultaneously, the Contra Costa DA’s office, FBI and California Attorney General’s Office are investigating the officers involved. Over the past 2 two years of the probes, nearly half the Antioch Police Department was accused of something. More arrests could be on the way.

He was only arrested after multiple officers showed up to the scene.

Public urination is never a good idea, but arresting an innocent child for doing something like that is maybe taking the law a little too seriously. Unfortunately, that’s what happened to a 10 year old in Mississippi, Fox Memphis reports.

On August 10th, Latonya Eason stopped by an attorney’s office in Senatobia, MS for some legal advice. Her two children, a daughter and her 10 year old son Quantavious, waited in the car while she was in the office. At some point, Quantavious needed to use the restroom, so he got out of the car and went to pee behind it. At the same time, a Senatobia Police officer just happened to be passing by and caught the kid peeing behind the car.

But it was no biggie; Latonya said the officer was just going to give them a warning: “I was like son, why did you do that? He said, ‘Mom, my sister said they don’t have a bathroom there.’ I was like you knew better, you should have come and asked me if they had a restroom. [The officer] was like you handled it like a mom. He can get back in the car,” she said to Fox Memphis. It wasn’t a big deal — until other officers became involved.

Eason said several other officers showed up, including a lieutenant who said that Quantavious had to be arrested and taken to jail for peeing. Eason admits her son shouldn’t have peed, but she says arresting him over it was doing too much.

“No, him urinating in the parking lot was not right, but at the same time I handled it like a parent, and for one officer to tell my baby to get back in the car, it was okay, and to have the other pull up and take him to jail? Like no. I’m just speechless right now. Why would you arrest a ten year old kid?” she said.

Quantavious said he was scared and started shaking when the officers took him to jail. Once there, they held him in a cell, charged him with “child in need of services” and then released him to his mother.

keep reading : https://jalopnik.com/police-arrested-10-year-old-peeing-behind-his-moms-car-1850752223

Stonewall was a riot — but in some cities, Pride officials have banned “political” groups and welcomed cops. Now activists are organizing radical Pride marches to show that Pride is a protest, not just a party.

In 2016, Toronto was preparing for its annual Pride march. For the first time, Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, would attend alongside the thousands in the parade, with Black Lives Matter (BLM) as guests of honor. But BLM was angry, after years of seeing Blockorama — the only Pride month event for black queers — moved further from the march, even as police were welcomed at the parade. Objecting to their presence, BLM blocked the march for thirty minutes.

This cop involvement especially mattered because Toronto Pride had first begun in 1981 as a protest against a police raid on four bathhouses in the city. That February, officers armed with crowbars and sledgehammers had arrested over two hundred fifty gay men in “Operation Soap.” Black activists who participated in that first Pride were back in 2016 and were joined by both younger protesters and indigenous drummers in bringing the march to a halt. Faced with the protests, Toronto Pride’s executive director, Mathieu Chantelois, signed off on BLM’s demand not to allow the police to return in future — but then backtracked, claiming he had only done so to get the march moving again. After widespread criticism, Chantelois resigned; next time around, the police float was noticeably absent.

Toronto is hardly the only city where police have joined Pride. In a similar action in Britain last year, activists from Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants (LGSM) broke through the barriers at London’s Pride march to stage a die-in. Holding funeral bouquets and draped in pink veils, they held up the march for twenty-three minutes — one minute for each person that had died in police custody since 2020 — to protest metropolitan police officers joining the parade.

One participant in the protest, Ink, explains, “I watched friends cheer on the police at London Pride, despite understanding their role in oppressing queer people. In the wake of Black Lives Matter, the presence of police at pride became especially unconscionable and we felt it was important to reclaim Pride as a space hostile to the presence of the state and its violence.”

Criticisms of mainstream Pride, made by queer participants like Ink who would prefer to see it returned to its roots in protest, have been bubbling under the surface for years. In 2001, Sylvia Rivera, a transgender activist who cofounded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries alongside fellow Stonewall riots veteran Marsha P. Johnson, called modern Pride “a big smokescreen.” Baulking at how corporations use Pride to present themselves as virtuous — what we now call pinkwashing — she mourned a modern Pride that only believes in the “almighty dollar,” stating “this is no longer my Pride.”

Gay rights have progressed, but activists still debate assimilation versus liberation — whether queer people should adapt to the norms and values of wider society or else change society to one that doesn’t privilege certain queer identities. Indeed, as Pride events have become mainstream, so too have certain versions of fitting in. Equality for some LGBTQ people means the freedom to marry, adopt kids, or even to get a well-paying job at an arms company with the same rights and protections as a straight colleague. That is lauded as progress whilst queers who can’t — or don’t want to — obey such norms continue to be marginalized.

Corporations and the state use diversity and inclusivity in this way to wash themselves clean. At this year’s Pride in Washington DC, arms industry giant Lockheed Martin drove a sponsored float through the city, much to the disgust of socialists and queer activists. This year in London, big oil was the target of protests as activists picketed the annual LGBTQ awards sponsored by BP, Shell, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Santander, Amazon, and Nestlé. Days later, this July 1, five activists from Just Stop Oil were arrested after jumping in front of BP’s float and halting London’s Pride parade, reminding onlookers that there will be no pride on a dead planet.

In recent years, Reclaim Pride groups sharing these criticisms of contemporary Pride celebrations have sprung up from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Oslo, Norway, and New York City. Some groups have tried to reclaim Pride by protesting, as BLM and LGSM have. Others have chosen opt out and create their own celebrations that stay true to Pride’s roots in a riot against police violence.

In 2019, as preparations were underway for the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots, activists in New York City organized an opposing Queer Liberation March instead. The official parade ran for twelve hours because there were so many corporate floats, notes Paul Nocera from New York’s Reclaim Pride Coalition. He told Jacobin how activists had become disillusioned with Pride — and the way acceptable queerness was policed by letting in some people and shutting out others: “The barricades don’t just contain people, they set up an entertainment dynamic where the people on one side are the audience and the people on the inside are the entertainment. This is a march, we’re not the entertainment,” he explains. “It really gives so much control over the message, the method, the anger. All the aspects of what we’re trying to do in our march get squashed . . . the cops want to have a march that doesn’t mean anything, that doesn’t make any complaints.”

For activists in New York, it was important to have a protest with radical politics to mark the anniversary. Each year since, they have held one on the same day as New York’s official Pride parade. Sometimes — Nocera told me — he gets disillusioned and exhausted, “It’s really tough because we do this every year and I don’t see anything changing — so what the hell are we marching for? But I was reminded that this is the moment when the community gathers together and link arms. Whether were faced outward and yelling and screaming or faced inward and having a teary eye, it’s still the gathering of the community, and that’s hugely important,” says Nocera. “To not have a march, to not have any radical gathering of people and spirits, that would be a huge loss.”

Over in England, Sheffield Radical Pride (SRP) took things a step further and organized the city’s only Pride march this year, scheduled for July 22 to coincide with Tramlines music festival when tens of thousands descended on the city. In 2018, the previous organizers declared the event was a march of “celebration, not protest.” They banned political groups from taking part and demanded banners and placards be inspected for approval to avoid causing offense. This sparked outrage from many in the queer community, who criticized Pride Sheffield for conveniently forgetting the previous fifty years of history. Since the pandemic, Sheffield has struggled to organize a Pride and 2023 marks the third year the council has not funded one.

Over winter, a group of young, largely transgender activists started conversations about how their organizing could reach the wider city and decided they should step in and organize this year’s event. They want to turn Pride back into a street movement they hope those at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 could be proud of. A month before the march, SRP announced cops and corporations were banned. “It’s exciting and it’s fun . . . I’m glad that we have the opportunity to make Sheffield’s only Pride one that is genuinely radical and one that is free of corporations and cops,” says Alex, one of the organizers.

This year, the theme for the Queer Liberation March in New York was “Trans + Queer; Forever Here!” Nocera says trans people have been at the forefront of organizing the march for years, but they felt in 2023 trans liberation needed special attention. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is currently tracking 491 anti-LGBTQ bills in the United States, and a large number of those attack trans people in various ways such as limiting their access to health care and preventing social transition or education about trans people in schools. Some have already passed laws attempting to limit drag performances and prevent cross-dressing. In New York, where trans people led the Stonewall riots, Nocera says the focus of this year’s march has given a sense of “continuing the legacy of Stonewall which is protest, resistance and resilience as a community.”

Organizers of Sheffield’s trans-led march have also seen the recent attacks on the trans and queer community from both far-right street mobilization and the UK government. One of the recent attacks from the British state came from the Tories’ so-called equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch. In April, she announced plans to change the legal definition of “sex,” which could see the trans community lose vital rights and protections.

For the trans community, pride has to be a protest — because pretending they can safely celebrate their identity simply isn’t an option. Across the UK, grassroots Trans Pride marches have appeared, with the largest held annually in London. Another of their organizers, Matt, tells me that the vitriol targeted at trans people is the first step to revoking everyone’s rights: “This pushback and backlash against trans rights is a gateway to repealing more equalities and targeting more minorities. It’s being done by some people in the name of feminism and women’s rights but really, these people are partnering with fascists.” He adds, “Rights aren’t this permanent thing once you’ve achieved them — they can also go away.”

In making Sheffield Pride a protest, Matt and Alex hope honest conversations can be had about queer liberation and the challenges it faces: “We’re not putting on this façade about how everyone’s super-accepting and how some company is going to sell you products and hire you and therefore homophobia is over,” says Matt. “We’re not going to radicalize everyone who comes. But we can tell people how it is for queer people now and we can’t be silenced through threats over funding or permissions.”

As groups like Sheffield Radical Pride and the Reclaim Pride Coalition continue organizing marches, we can hope Pride is slowly returning to something Sylvia Rivera might recognize — and be proud of.

!fash-infighting !officer-down

Report on law enforcement being caught placing GPS trackers on an activist’s car in so-called Michigan. For more information and photos, go here.

On Monday August 1st, Michigan activist Peatmoss found 2 GPS tracking devises attached with powerful magnets to the rear axle of their car, see pictures here. This happened after Peatmoss spent a week hanging out with friends at the Camp Gayling Week of Action against the Camp Grayling national guard base.

A lawyer calling the police on Peatmoss’s behalf relayed that the police confirmed the trackers were placed by law enforcement, though they refused to name the agency.

Three days before, on the evening of Friday July 28th, Peatmoss was arrested outside Lansing, MI after being followed by a large blue Ford pickup truck into a church parking lot to meet two other folks. The arrest stemmed from a warrant issued in another area of Michigan. During the arrest the police verbally stated that they believed the car had been present at a recent legal demonstration put on by Sunrise Ann Arbor on the sidewalk in front of Accident Fund headquarters, an insurer of the Cop City project. The cops stated they knew the car had driven by the home of Accident Fund CEO Lisa Corless, which was nearby at 3945 Turnberry Lane, Okemos, Michigan.

While in custody police attempted to coerce consent to a DNA sample by threatening Peatmoss with a longer detention. Peatmoss refused and was released without giving a sample. They also noticed their file had an “FBI number” highlighted underneath their SSN.

The second week of May, Peatmoss was followed for 45 minutes by a blacked out Ford sedan. The car began following them at their legal residence, the first time they had been home in several months. The car followed them onto the highway, off the highway, around in circles in a neighborhood, and then back onto the highway, only leaving when they were about to cross the Michigan-Ohio state border. They had given their legal name and address when putting money on many Atlanta Solidarity Fund defendants’ commissary accounts earlier this year.

We, comrades and supporters of Peatmoss, wish to remind all of our comrades that repression is ongoing, but that we can build resilience together. This means affirming our solidarity and standing behind those targeted and sharing information broadly about repressive tactics. Understand that surveillance, like that faced by Peatmoss, can be both a tool for repression from the legal system, but also, conspicuous surveillance can be a tool of repression on its own as a way to chill otherwise legal activity, spread fear and distrust.

We encourage everyone to speak with comrades openly about repression they are facing or concerned about, and to educate yourselves on best practices when dealing with law enforcement or facing criminal charges.

Report on law enforcement being caught placing GPS trackers on an activist’s car in so-called Michigan. For more information and photos, go here.

On Monday August 1st, Michigan activist Peatmoss found 2 GPS tracking devises attached with powerful magnets to the rear axle of their car, see pictures here. This happened after Peatmoss spent a week hanging out with friends at the Camp Gayling Week of Action against the Camp Grayling national guard base.

A lawyer calling the police on Peatmoss’s behalf relayed that the police confirmed the trackers were placed by law enforcement, though they refused to name the agency.

Three days before, on the evening of Friday July 28th, Peatmoss was arrested outside Lansing, MI after being followed by a large blue Ford pickup truck into a church parking lot to meet two other folks. The arrest stemmed from a warrant issued in another area of Michigan. During the arrest the police verbally stated that they believed the car had been present at a recent legal demonstration put on by Sunrise Ann Arbor on the sidewalk in front of Accident Fund headquarters, an insurer of the Cop City project. The cops stated they knew the car had driven by the home of Accident Fund CEO Lisa Corless, which was nearby at 3945 Turnberry Lane, Okemos, Michigan.

While in custody police attempted to coerce consent to a DNA sample by threatening Peatmoss with a longer detention. Peatmoss refused and was released without giving a sample. They also noticed their file had an “FBI number” highlighted underneath their SSN.

The second week of May, Peatmoss was followed for 45 minutes by a blacked out Ford sedan. The car began following them at their legal residence, the first time they had been home in several months. The car followed them onto the highway, off the highway, around in circles in a neighborhood, and then back onto the highway, only leaving when they were about to cross the Michigan-Ohio state border. They had given their legal name and address when putting money on many Atlanta Solidarity Fund defendants’ commissary accounts earlier this year.

We, comrades and supporters of Peatmoss, wish to remind all of our comrades that repression is ongoing, but that we can build resilience together. This means affirming our solidarity and standing behind those targeted and sharing information broadly about repressive tactics. Understand that surveillance, like that faced by Peatmoss, can be both a tool for repression from the legal system, but also, conspicuous surveillance can be a tool of repression on its own as a way to chill otherwise legal activity, spread fear and distrust.

We encourage everyone to speak with comrades openly about repression they are facing or concerned about, and to educate yourselves on best practices when dealing with law enforcement or facing criminal charges.

For more information on resisting political repression:

https://ccrjustice.org/if-agent-knocks-booklet https://www.nlg.org/know-your-rights-english/ https://crimethinc.com/2017/08/24/when-the-police-knock-on-your-door-your-rights-and-options-a-legal-guide-and-poster http://grandjuryresistance.org/ http://resistgrandjuries.net/ https://ssd.eff.org/en

https://nitter.net/radleybalko/status/1687897806906732544