What He's Not & What He Is

Stephen Carroll
School Resource Officer
Scranton PA

He's not an immigrant

He's not gay

He's not Muslim

He's not trans

He's not a drag queen

He's white

He's a cop

He's a rapist

He's a total fuckin' dirtbag

SCRANTON, Pa. — A former Scranton police officer faces child sex charges.

According to court documents, 49-year-old Stephen Carroll sexually assaulted multiple students while he was an officer with the Scranton Police Department assigned to West Scranton High School as the school resource officer.

Investigators say Carroll used social media to arrange sexual encounters and receive obscene and other sexual materials from students. Police say four of the students were underage at the time.

Carroll is also accused of drugging some of the victims before allegedly assaulting them.

He faces rape, aggravated indecent assault, and related charges in Lackawanna County.

Today's Cops

Shout out to good cops doing good cop stuff.

This is what we need to see more of - what good police work should be.

Cops

There's something wrong with these fucking cops.

The France Thing

I've been wondering about Marie Le Pen's gang - where they might factor in, and how Le Pen would play this thing.

I think I have the beginnings of my answer now.

She probably didn't directly encourage assholes to deface a holocaust memorial, and it's not likely she wrote a memo to any of the French equivalents of Proud Boys and 3%-ers saying they should rush right down to their local protest and amp things up.

But she can point at the "Muslim Problem" and then sit back and carp about "rampant violence" and the need to restore order, and how that weak sister Macron isn't able to do enough because what we really need is a strong leader to clamp down on immigration and stand up to rioters and show 'em who's boss and blah blah blah.  

Rioters in France vandalizing a Holocaust memorial
by u/padmanabhapillai in facepalm

Race riots in France could give far-right the edge Marine Le Pen needs to win in 2027

When Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old of North African origin, was shot dead by police at a traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on Tuesday morning, it looked like an event that would unite the French in shock and revulsion at the long-known violence and racism in the law enforcement community.

The killing was condemned across the political community, with President Emmanuel Macron calling it “inexplicable” and “inexcusable”, and even police authorities distancing themselves from the incident, which involved a teenager being shot at point-blank range simply because he refused to comply with the officer’s demands.

France’s far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, was initially on the back foot: this case, filmed and posted on the internet, seemed to prove the argument that minorities were systematically targeted by a police force that considers itself above the law. Meanwhile, the left-wing opposition, led by radical firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, said it was the consequence of decades of neglect in the banlieues, the poor, multi-ethnic, high-density suburbs around the big cities.

But that was before the riots. The five nights since the shooting saw Paris and other French cities plunge into chaos as rioters have run rampage. Schools, police stations and city halls have been set torched, while cars, trucks and buses have been set ablaze.

Mr Macron, whose second term has already been disrupted by opposition to his pension reforms, is now facing perhaps the biggest challenge to his presidency yet. Although tens of thousands of police have been deployed to contain the violence, the anger has spread across the country, to Marseille, Lyon and Lille, with fears growing that they could disrupt the Tour de France cycling race. Mr Macron himself was obliged to cut short an EU summit in Brussels on Friday to return to Paris, and to postpone this week’s planned three-day state visit to Germany.

The rioting has also transformed the political discourse. The initial horror over the shooting of a teenager has now turned into a debate about law and order.

This is fertile territory for Ms Le Pen, who has long railed against what she sees as France’s drift into permissiveness and lawlessness. She lambasted the government on Twitter on Sunday as “a power that abandons all constitutional principles for fear of riots, which contributes to aggravating them”, adding, “Our country is getting worse and worse and the French are paying the terrible price for this cowardice and these compromises.”

She did not directly address the shooting but condemned the National Assembly for holding a minute’s silence for Nahel last week, saying, “Unfortunately, there are young people in our country every week…It’s terrible, but I think that the National Assembly should perhaps measure a little the minutes of silence that are carried out.”

And in a video address yesterday she lambasted the “anarchy”, called on authorities to declare a state of emergence or curfew, and attacked Mr Mélenchon for “conniving” and “morally exempting these criminal acts”, promising that they would face a reckoning with “the nation and history”.

This appeal to law and order is in direct contrast with her energetic encouragement of the violent yellow vest or “gilets jaunes” anti-government fuel protests in 2019 and 2020.

Ms Le Pen has detoxified her image in recent years. She changed the name of her party from the National Front to the National Rally, and in last year’s presidential campaign, her posters simply call her “Marine”, handily distancing her from her xenophobic father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

The 54-year-old put pocketbook issues at the heart of her campaign, pointing to sharply rising fuel and food prices as proof of Mr Macron’s economic mismanagement. Her pivot was aimed at working-class voters struggling with rising costs, as she campaigned in rural France and former industrial towns.

She recast her party as a movement for the forgotten masses, bypassed by globalisation and the Paris elites, and even talked up her struggles as a single mother and her cat breeding. The rebrand has worked: she has neutralised many fears of her and normalised her image, with polls today rating her the nation’s second favourite political personality, behind the former prime minister Édouard Philippe.

The riots put Mr Macron in a bind. He was quick to capture the emotion after the shooting but has so far failed to contain the momentum of the subsequent anger. If he echoes Ms Le Pen’s language, he risks being called a hypocrite over the killing.

However, the longer the violence continues, the more Ms Le Pen will benefit. She can continue to blame the authorities for the chaos, saying this is the inevitable result of the moral laxity she has always warned against. And with Mr Macron term-limited, Ms Le Pen can look to the next presidential election, in 2027, as her moment.

Meet Your Pusher

What the fuck is wrong

with these fucking cops?

San Jose police union executive charged with distributing opioids

The executive director of the San Jose Police Officers Association was charged with distributing opioids, according to federal officials. The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday said the U.S. Attorneys Office has charged a civilian, Joanne Segovia, 64, with ordering thousands of opioid and other pills to her home between October 2015 and January of this year.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - The executive director of the San Jose Police Officer's Association was charged with distributing opioids, according to federal officials.

The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday said the U.S. Attorney's Office has charged, Joanne Segovia, 64, with ordering thousands of opioid and other pills to her home between October 2015 and January of this year.

Investigators believe she used both personal and work computers to then distribute them across the U.S.

KTVU has learned Segovia is on paid leave in her executive position with the police officer's union.

She is alleged to have smuggled the opioids from foreign locations including; Hong Kong, Hungary, India, and Singapore. According to a criminal complaint she smuggled them in as wedding party favors, makeup, chocolate and sweets.

Officials began intercepting these packages as early as 2019 and found the contents were illicit substances including Tramadol and Tapentadol. Officials said certain parcels were worth thousands of dollars.

The complaint alleges Segovia used the encrypted communications app, WhatsApp, to arrange shipments with someone from a phone that used an India country code.

Segovia is alleged to have used her office at the police union as a means to distribute the substances.

The complaint alleges she continued to order controlled substances even after being interviewed by federal officials in February 2023.

Segovia had no lawyer on record listed in her court file.

She is supposed to appear in U.S. District Court in San Jose before Magistrate Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi on Friday.

The police officers union in a statement said no one at the union had prior knowledge of Segovia's alleged acts.

"The Board of Directors is saddened and disappointed at hearing this news and we have pledged to provide our full support to the investigative authorities," Tom Saggau an San Jose Police Officers Association spokesperson said.

We spoke to one of Segovia's neighbors who said, "I would equal that to you know, your neighbor Mr. Rogers is a serial killer. You know? Totally stunned," said Chris Noller. Other neighbors said they were totally shocked. Neighbors said they never would have suspected her of any illegal activity.

"I did get a call from my wife that, um…there were 10 or 11 people outside that looked like police officers. When you think of drug activity coming and going, but if this is going across the country it sounds like drug Amazon. Pretty wild," Noller said.

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau of The Fifth Column

I get that they have to be careful with Prior Restraint, but when a law enforcement agency opposes applying a very sensible standard like: You don't get to join the force if you've been posting racist shit online - we have to ask, "Where the fuck have you been getting your recruits?"

Today's Big Idea

Let's send the Uvalde police

to guard Brett Kavanaugh

Ari Melber

"This happens all the time."

And the furor over the difference between cops killing unarmed black people and cops pampering armed white people is not to be construed to mean we want the cops to start killing the white guys too - THE COPS AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE KILLING ANYBODY.

The Beat with Ari Melber

About Those Cops

All those clear-eyed pragmatic management-by-the-numbers guys need to wake the fuck up and look at what their support for a kick-ass-and-take-names approach to law enforcement is actually getting us, compared with what it's costing us - just in terms of dollars and ROI.

WaPo: (pay wall)

The hidden billion-dollar cost of repeated police misconduct

More than $1.5 billion has been spent to settle claims of police misconduct involving thousands of officers repeatedly accused of wrongdoing. Taxpayers are often in the dark.

About 8:30 one Thursday evening in Detroit, Tony Murray was getting ready for bed ahead of his 6 a.m. shift at a potato chip factory. As he turned off the final light in the living room, he glanced out of his window and saw a half-dozen uniformed police officers with guns drawn approach his home.

As the officers banged on the door, Murray ordered Keno, his black Labrador retriever, to the basement. As Murray let the officers in, one quickly pushed him to the floor and at least two others ran to the cellar, he said. “Don’t kill my dog. He won’t bite you,” Murray pleaded. The sound of gunshots filled the house. Keno’s barking, the 56-year-old recalled, morphed into the sound of “a girl screaming.”

Officers searched Murray’s home for nearly an hour, flipping his sofa and emptying drawers. Outside, Murray approached the officers standing by their vehicles. One handed him a copy of the search warrant, which stated they were looking for illegal drugs. Murray noticed something else: The address listed wasn’t his. It was his neighbor’s.
Tony Murray, 56, sits on his porch. In 2014, police raided Murray’s house and fatally shot his dog, Keno. (Nick Hagen for The Washington Post)

Months after the 2014 raid, Murray, who was not charged with any crimes, sued Detroit police for gross negligence and civil rights violations, naming Officer Lynn Christopher Moore, who filled out the search warrant, and the other five officers who raided his home. The city eventually paid Murray $87,500 to settle his claim, but admitted no error by police.

That settlement was not the first or last time that Detroit would resolve allegations against Moore with a check: Between 2010 and 2020, the city settled 10 claims involving Moore’s police work, paying more than $665,000 to individuals who alleged the officer used excessive force, made an illegal arrest or wrongfully searched a home.

Moore is among the more than 7,600 officers — from Portland, Ore., to Milwaukee to Baltimore — whose alleged misconduct has more than once led to payouts to resolve lawsuits and claims of wrongdoing, according to a Washington Post investigation. The Post collected data on nearly 40,000 payments at 25 of the nation’s largest police and sheriff’s departments within the past decade, documenting more than $3.2 billion spent to settle claims.

The investigation for the first time identifies the officers behind the payments. Data were assembled from public records filed with the financial and police departments in each city or county and excluded payments less than $1,000. Court records were gathered for the claims that led to federal or local lawsuits. The total amounts further confirm the broad costs associated with police misconduct, as reported last year by FiveThirtyEight and the Marshall Project.

The Post found that more than 1,200 officers in the departments surveyed had been the subject of at least five payments. More than 200 had 10 or more.

The repetition is the hidden cost of alleged misconduct: Officers whose conduct was at issue in more than one payment accounted for more than $1.5 billion, or nearly half of the money spent by the departments to resolve allegations, The Post found. In some cities, officers repeatedly named in misconduct claims accounted for an even larger share. For example, in Chicago, officers who were subject to more than one paid claim accounted for more than $380 million of the nearly $528 million in payments.

The Post documented nearly 40,000 payments involving allegations of police misconduct in 25 departments, totaling over $3 billion. Departments usually deny wrongdoing when resolving claims.

Response from the police department: “We will decline to comment on civil litigations,” said Miguel Torres, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department.

The Post analysis found that the typical payout for cases involving officers with multiple claims — ranging from illegal search and seizure to use of excessive force — was $10,000 higher than those involving other officers.

Despite the repetition and cost, few cities or counties track claims by the names of the officers involved — meaning that officials may be unaware of officers whose alleged misconduct is repeatedly costing taxpayers. In 2020, the 25 departments employed 103,000 officers combined, records show.

“Transparency is what needs to be in place,” said Frank Straub, director of the National Police Foundation’s Center for Mass Violence Response Studies, adding that his organization has called for departments nationwide to publicize cases with settlements. “When you have officers who have repeated allegations … it calls for extremely close examination of both the individual cases and the totality of the cases to figure out what’s driving this behavior and these reactions and to see if there is a pattern in an officer’s behavior that triggers these cases.”

Defenders of police have a different view.

City officials and attorneys representing the police departments said settling claims is often more cost-efficient than fighting them in court. And settlements rarely involve an admission or finding of wrongdoing. Because of this there is no reason to hold officers accountable for them, said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police labor union with more than 364,000 members.

“If there’s never been a finding of guilt or anyone’s fault, why put that in an officer’s record?” Pasco said. “That would be such a glaring omission of due process where in the legal system in the United States, a person is innocent until proven guilty.”

The Post reached out to scores of officers named in claims that led to payments. Some were no longer working for the departments. Most had no comment or, like Moore, did not return phone calls.
Lynn Christopher Moore, right, now an officer at the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department, takes notes during roll call at the Pontiac, Mich., substation in June 2020. (Clarence Tabb Jr./ Detroit News)

Two officers in Boston who had the highest number of claims settled have since retired. But both said the allegations — ranging from excessive force to wrongful arrest — did not accurately portray their work while on the force.

Paul Murphy, who was named in four lawsuits totaling about $5.2 million in payments, said he “tried to do the best he could” as an officer. But he added, “sometimes things happened.” He declined to elaborate.

Gerald Cofield was named in three lawsuits that totaled about $306,000 in payments. Cofield said he wished the city had fought the claims instead of settling because he believed city attorneys would have won, and his name and reputation would have been cleared. “We are not the bad guys these lawsuits paint us to be,” he said.

One Detroit officer said he wished the city had fought the lawsuits because he believed the cases had no credibility and those making the allegations had been armed or resisting arrest. “It’s called the Detroit lottery,” said the officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he had not received permission to speak publicly. “People have been convicted and are in prison filing lawsuits knowing they can get paid.”

Multimillion-dollar settlements regarding allegations of police misconduct often generate headlines. Minneapolis paid $27 million to the family of George Floyd, and Louisville paid $12 million to Breonna Taylor’s family.


Those cases are the exception: The median amount of the payments tracked by The Post was $17,500, and most cases were resolved with little or no publicity.

Many of the officers who had the highest number of claims against them were participating in task forces targeting gangs, drugs or guns, records show.

Pasco said he is not surprised that these officers would be the subject of multiple lawsuits, given the assignments. And given, he said, that the nation has become a “litigious society.”

“It’s the cost of policing,” he said. “That’s the reason crime, until recently, has declined.”

New York, Chicago and Los Angeles alone accounted for the bulk of the overall payments documented by The Post — more than $2.5 billion. In New York, more than 5,000 officers were named in two or more claims, accounting for 45 percent of the money the city spent on misconduct cases. In New York, four attorneys who have secured the highest number of payments for clients separately said the high rate of claims is because of poor training, questionable arrests and a legal department overwhelmed by lawsuits.

In Philadelphia, six officers in a narcotics unit generated 173 lawsuits, costing a total of $6.5 million. In 2014, those officers were federally charged with theft, wrongful arrest and other crimes but eventually acquitted at trial. Some 50 additional lawsuits are pending, many alleging misconduct dating back more than a decade, said Andrew Richman, a spokesman for the city’s legal department.

In Palm Beach County, Fla., officials paid out $25.6 million in the past decade: One-third of that was generated by 54 deputies who were the subject of repeated claims.

The data provided by cities included no demographic information about the people who filed the claims. But Chicago attorney Mark Parts, who has handled scores of lawsuits against police, said most of his clients have been Black or Hispanic.

“The folks who are aggressively policed and confronted by officers in the course of their daily lives are people of color,” Parts said. “I have found the majority of those whose rights are repeatedly violated are African Americans and Hispanics.”

In the D.C. region, more than 100 officers have been named in multiple claims that led to payments.

In Prince George’s County, Md., 47 officers had their conduct challenged more than once, resulting in at least two payments each accounting for $7.1 million out of $54 million paid within the decade. Two in five payments involved an officer named in more than one claim. The totals are skewed by a $20 million payment to the family of 43-year-old William Green, who was fatally shot while his hands were cuffed behind his back in the front seat of a police cruiser.

Cpl. Clarence Black was the subject of four settled cases, the most in the department. In 2010, the county paid $125,000 to a husband and wife who alleged Black assaulted them. In 2013, a Temple Hills family received $60,000 after alleging Black and four other officers illegally entered their home. In 2014, a woman got $10,000 after alleging Black punched her shoulder. And in 2019, a man collected $190,000 after alleging that Black illegally handcuffed him as he retrieved a bottle of water.

Black, a former officer of the year who joined the force in 2002, was indicted in August on two counts of second-degree assault and two counts of misconduct in office after being accused of assaulting a driver during a traffic stop in Temple Hills. Black’s attorney did not return calls requesting comment. He has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in July.

In the District, 65 officers have been named in repeated claims, accounting for $7.6 million of the more than $90 million in claims paid — the fifth-highest overall of the 25 cities surveyed. That total includes $54 million paid on four claims involving officers who were named in no other cases.

Officer Fredrick Onoja was the subject of five cases that led to payments from 2014 to 2019 totaling $116,000, the most of any officer on the force. Five Black men separately sued Onoja accusing him of wrongful arrests and harassment. They alleged that the 44-year-old Onoja — who has been on the force since 2011 — fabricated evidence against them in the 5th District neighborhood he patrolled.

Dustin Sternbeck, a D.C. police spokesperson, said Onoja had been “disciplined” for his actions, but declined to elaborate. Onoja, through the department, declined to comment. In a statement, Sternbeck said the department investigates allegations against officers made in lawsuits. “If the investigation sustains misconduct, the department takes appropriate action, ranging from retraining to termination, depending on the nature of the misconduct sustained,” he wrote.

In Fairfax, the county settled seven cases, totaling $6.1 million. Two of the cases involved five officers and led to $5 million in payments. Only one officer was named in more than one claim.

Officer Hyun Chang, who has been with the department since 2010, was the subject of a claim that resulted in a $750,000 settlement in 2018 with the family of a 45-year-old autistic man who died in 2016 as he was subdued by Chang and another officer. According to police, the victim, Paul A. Gianelos, of ­Annandale, Va., became combative as the officers tried to return Gianelos to his caretakers. A Virginia medical examiner determined Gianelos died as a result of a heart attack related to the restraint.

In 2014, Chang was one of a dozen officers named in a $190,000 settlement after a Hispanic woman charged the officers with excessive force, false arrest, unreasonable search of her home and racial profiling. He did not return requests for comment through a Fairfax police spokesperson.

In general, the government officials in many of the cities who were interviewed said the decisions to settle claims are made on a case-by-case basis.

In Chicago, officials “evaluate cases for potential risk and liability, and to take appropriate steps to minimize financial exposure to the city,” said Kristen Cabanban, spokesperson for the city’s Law Department.

It is often cheaper to settle a case than pay attorneys’ fees “that in many cases dwarf the actual damages award,” said Casper Hill, a spokesman for the city of Minneapolis.

Even when payments are covered by insurance claims, taxpayers ultimately still pay as those claims drive up the cost of the insurance.

The Post found that few cities publicize their payments or make it easy for the public to identify the officers involved. Of the 25 cities surveyed, four reported tracking payment information. The others declined to answer or said they were unaware of any city department that did such tracking.

Minneapolis, Palm Beach County, Fairfax County and Detroit were among the few places that recorded payments by officers’ names in the records provided to The Post. Portland organized cases by the officers’ badge numbers.

Most cities reported payments by the name of the person who filed the claim or, if the case led to a lawsuit, the number assigned in court. The Post identified the officers involved in tens of thousands of cases by reviewing individual claim summaries and court records.

There are disincentives to such tracking, legal and policing experts said.

“If an officer has multiple lawsuits, then the city is in jeopardy of negligent retention,” says Stephen Downing, a retired deputy chief with the Los Angeles Police Department and current adviser with the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a criminal justice reform group. “Few cities want to risk retaining that information to avoid being part of an even more costly lawsuit.”

Policing experts also noted that prosecutors rely on officers to testify in criminal cases; settlement tracking could be used by defense attorneys to challenge an officer’s credibility.

The $10,000 air freshener


In Portland, Officer Charles B. Asheim, 40, was the subject of three payments costing the city $40,001. The city spent more than $90,000 in legal fees fighting those three claims and $250,000 defending three other claims involving Asheim that resulted in no payments, according to Heather Hafer, a spokeswoman with the city’s Office of Management and Finance.


In 2014, Marqueeta Clark and her then-boyfriend, Jahmarciay Barr, were leaving Barr’s aunt’s house on their way to the movies in Barr’s blue 1991 Chevrolet Caprice. At the time, Clark was a 19-year-old early-childhood education major at Western Oregon University, and Barr was a 20-year-old community college student and UPS employee.

As the couple drove along the highway, they saw a police cruiser heading in the opposite direction.

Seconds later, Clark said, they noticed the cruiser make a U-turn and begin to follow them. Barr stopped at a traffic light with the cruiser behind them. When the light turned green, as they pulled away, the cruiser’s lights came on and police pulled them over.

Asheim, an officer with the gang unit, told the couple they were stopped because Barr had changed lanes without using his turn signal, Clark said. She said she disputed the claim, telling police she could hear the blinker’s ticking.

Then Asheim, she said, one of three officers at the scene, told the couple that police had pulled over the car because there was a green, pine-tree air freshener dangling from the car’s rearview mirror. The air freshener, Asheim told them, obstructed the driver’s line of sight and created a driving hazard, she said.

Barr, still seated in the car, grew angry and refused to cooperate with Asheim when the officer asked for his driver’s license and registration, she said.

Sitting in the passenger seat, Clark said she begged the officers to allow her to reach into the glove compartment to pull out Barr’s documents. But Asheim refused and continued to argue with her boyfriend, she said. “In my head, I was thinking these gang task forces are going to treat us as gang members. … I was terrified,” she said.

Asheim then pulled Barr through the driver’s side window and placed him in handcuffs, she said.

In his official report, Asheim gave a different account: He wrote that he and his colleagues unhooked the driver’s seat belt, opened the door and forced Barr to stand up outside the vehicle. Asheim added that Barr accused police of stopping him because “he was Black.” The officers, according to Asheim’s report, “calmly and simply” explained the reason for the stop, but the boyfriend “continued screaming.”

Asheim also noted that Barr was becoming more “threatening and unpredictable,” and that he threatened to “kick our f---ing ass.”

Clark denied that Barr threatened the officers. “I remember watching Asheim laughing at us. It was really humiliating, embarrassing and frustrating.”

The officers searched the car and found nothing illegal, according to the police report.

Police arrested the couple. Clark was charged with interfering with a police officer and disorderly conduct. Barr, who could not be reached for comment, was charged with failure to carry and present his license, disobeying an officer and disorderly conduct. He pleaded guilty to failure to carry and present a license and was ordered to pay $250 in fines. Prosecutors dismissed the other charges against him.

Clark chose to fight her charges. Eventually, the judge dismissed the case.

Still, Clark remained furious. She and Barr sued the city, alleging that the stop by Asheim — who is White — and his two colleagues was part of a pattern of racially discriminatory police tactics. “I really wanted people to know how the majority of the Black community was being treated by police,” she said. “It was never about the money for me.”

Growing up in Portland, Clark said being stopped by police and having guns drawn was “the norm for us.” She said that she and her boyfriend were stopped by police about a half-dozen times in a four-year period.


In 2017, the city agreed to settle their claims, eventually paying Clark and Barr $5,000 each. Officials did not apologize or admit wrongdoing.

They were among the city’s 89 payments for alleged police misconduct during the past decade. Of the more than $7.5 million spent, nearly half of it has involved officers named in more than one claim.

“What Asheim did, stopping people for having an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, was the practice of the gang enforcement team,” said Gregory Kafoury, Clark’s attorney. “These officers were driving around and obviously looking for Black faces.”

Kafoury said he has represented dozens of people in lawsuits against Portland officers, the majority of his clients people of color.

“Historically, officers who are sued are never penalized, even when the city has to pay large settlements or verdicts for their misconduct,” Kafoury said. “The officers who are the most brutal and the most dishonest tend to move up in the ranks because they are seen as trustworthy and they are admired for their physicality. And that culture gets strengthened as these types of bullies move up and control the culture of the police department.”

Sgt. Kevin Allen, a Portland police spokesman, denied Kafoury’s assertions. “Our promotions process is extremely competitive and thorough and includes a 360-review in most ranks, taking in the candidate’s discipline record, commendations, community engagement and more,” Allen said.

Asheim has been with the force for 13 years and is a detective, Allen confirmed. He declined to answer questions about Asheim or the cases that led to settlements. Allen said he forwarded The Post’s request for comment to Asheim, who has not responded.

‘I’ll never forget him’


Early one evening in March 2014, Gregory Williams, 34, was walking to buy cigarettes at a gas station on the west side of Chicago. A man rushed up behind him, hit him on the head with a gun and pushed him against a fence, Williams said. He thought he was being robbed.

The man, however, was a Chicago police officer in plain clothes.

An unmarked police car pulled up. Inside was Officer Armando Ugarte — who from 2010 through 2020 would be a subject of 16 payments totaling more than $5 million for claims that included excessive force and wrongful arrests.


That night, Ugarte and two other officers told Williams, a father of two and student at Strayer University, that they were arresting him for distributing a controlled substance: heroin. They drove Williams to a precinct called Homan Square, a former Sears and Roebuck warehouse that police used as an interrogation site.

While he was handcuffed, Williams said, Ugarte and the other officers pressed him to identify heroin dealers. When he said he could not, he alleges that they grabbed him by his neck, put him in a chokehold, threw him to the floor and punched and kicked him.

“I’ll never forget him,” Williams said about Ugarte.

In the arrest report, Ugarte wrote he had purchased drugs from Williams as part of a “controlled buy” that night while working undercover. Williams was charged with two counts of felony manufacturing or delivering a controlled substance.

At the time, Williams had been on parole for less than a year following a conviction for heroin possession. He said he believes this is why the officers targeted him to be an informant or face a return to prison.

After a year in jail, Williams went to trial. In court, Ugarte and two other officers testified that they had purchased heroin from Williams. But there were no other witnesses or evidence, according to the lawsuit. The jury acquitted Williams.

While in jail, Williams lost his personal assistant job with the Chicago Department of Human Services and dropped out of Strayer University, where he was pursuing a degree in business administration. “They took all that away from me because I wouldn’t work for them. I wouldn’t be a snitch,” he said.

In 2018, he filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that Ugarte and the five other officers and their supervisor had violated his civil rights through unlawful search and seizure, excessive force and malicious prosecution. “I don’t think they really understand how hard it is coming from that place, coming out of prison,” he said.

After more than two years of hearings and lengthy court filings, the city settled the case in 2020 for $85,000, but denied any wrongdoing.

In records provided to The Post, Chicago officials had not recorded Ugarte’s name with Williams’s settlement. The Post identified him as an officer involved in the case through Williams’s attorney, the amount and date of the payment and court records.
Williams and his attorney, Torreya L. Hamilton, outside a courthouse in Chicago in September. (Taylor Glascock for The Washington Post)

Williams’s attorney, Torreya L. Hamilton, said the case was the second one she had handled involving Ugarte. In 2017, the city paid $88,500 to a man she represented who also alleged that Ugarte wrongfully arrested him and was part of a team of officers that fatally shot a dog in front of a 12-year-old child.

“This same team of officers was busting into people’s homes and killing dogs. In front of kids,” said Hamilton, who began her career as a prosecutor and now focuses on police misconduct and whistleblower cases. In the past five years, Hamilton said 95 percent of her clients who have sued Chicago police for excessive force or wrongful arrests have been Black or Hispanic.

“Why are they still working?” Williams asked. “There’s no punishment. They can do what they want. There are no repercussions behind it.”

The Post’s analysis found Chicago had the highest rate of misconduct claims involving officers named in multiple cases. More than 70 percent of the city’s roughly 1,500 payments over the decade involved at least one officer with repeated claims.

Ugarte, 47, was “relieved of police powers” in October and reassigned to the department’s alternative response section, according to Anthony Spicuzza, a police spokesman. The division handles non-emergency calls. Spicuzza declined to answer questions about Ugarte’s work or the payments involving him. Ugarte joined the force in 2005, according to the Citizens Police Data Project, a Chicago-based nonprofit that tracks information about officers, including use of force, complaints and awards.

Ugarte did not return a Post reporter’s calls. Spicuzza did not respond to requests for a response from Ugarte. “Due to a pending investigation, we will not comment further,” Spicuzza said.

Poor communication


In Detroit, after receiving questions from The Post about the repeated payments involving Officer Moore and the raid at Murray’s home, police officials said they have begun to use the city’s claims data to monitor which officers are repeatedly named in lawsuits, to determine if they need additional training or should be reassigned or removed from the force.

Christopher Graveline, director of the professional standards unit for Detroit police, said his department as of September is working closely with the city’s legal department to identify officers with more than two lawsuits or claims and make sure they are “flagged” in the department’s risk management system.

Since The Post started asking the city about its repeat officers in September, 13 officers have been “flagged” for being sued multiple times and have been subject to “risk assessments,” according to a department spokesman.

“There wasn’t a good communication between the city law and police department. We weren’t being aware of settlements and potential judicial findings touching upon our officers,” Graveline said.

Graveline, who oversees internal affairs, said the department was often unaware of findings in civil cases, including determinations that officers had withheld evidence.

From 2010 to 2020, Detroit made 491 payments on behalf of officers, totaling nearly $48 million, records show. More than half were on behalf of officers with more than one claim.

In addition to the 10 payments on claims involving Moore in that time, The Post also documented three before 2010 and one in 2021. During Moore’s 23 years on the force, Detroit paid 14 claims arising from his police work.

Moore was part of the city’s narcotics unit, a division that conducts many search warrants, Graveline said.

Graveline declined to comment on Moore’s lawsuits but acknowledged other officers in the unit were not named in as many lawsuits. “That’s one of the reasons we are taking steps to actively identify officers with similar patterns with multiple lawsuits,” he said.

During a deposition in the lawsuit following the search of Murray’s home, Moore testified that he had always intended to raid that residence. He said the wrong address on the warrant was a typo.

Moore said an informant told him about drug dealing at Murray’s home. Moore also noted in his report that police found two tiny bags of marijuana during their search, which Murray disputes.

In a separate report, one of Moore’s colleagues wrote that he shot Murray’s Labrador because the dog charged them and was “showing teeth and growling.” Also in the report, the officer misidentified Murray’s dog as a “grey pit bull.”

“We are not just going into these houses killing people’s dogs for no reason. That would be ridiculous and absurd,” said Moore, who was in the house when his fellow officers killed Keno. “Unfortunately, I’ve killed quite a few dogs. I would say I’ve killed over 10, 15 animals in the course of my career.”
When police began banging on his door, Murray sent his dog, Keno, to the basement to stay out of the way. (Nick Hagen for The Washington Post)

In response to questions from Murray’s attorney, Kenneth Finegood, Moore testified that while he was with the drug unit, he had been the subject of internal investigations “once or twice a month.” Moore, 49, also said he had never been found guilty of the accusations, which he said happened “constantly” when he was in narcotics.

Personnel records obtained through a public records request show Moore joined the department in 1996 and has received seven awards or commendations.

The records also show that Moore was reprimanded for failing to fill out a use-of-force report during a 2010 arrest and was suspended for five days for “willful disobedience of rules or orders” during a 2015 police chase. An investigation determined that Moore failed to notify the dispatcher of the initial traffic stop and then failed to broadcast the speed of the vehicle being pursued. The suspension was later overturned in arbitration.

Moore left Detroit in 2019 and is now an officer at the nearby Oakland County Sheriff’s Department, according to Detroit police and the sheriff’s department. The sheriff’s department did not answer follow-up questions.

Since Moore’s departure from Detroit, allegations about his conduct when he was an officer have continued to cost the city financially.

Last year, Detroit officials settled a man’s claim that Moore and three other officers tackled and injured him in 2016 as he stood on his front porch. Police said they were searching for a shooter who allegedly fit his description, according to the lawsuit. The city settled for $150,000.

Detroit reached a second settlement concerning Moore in 2020 when the city paid $10,000 to resolve a claim by two men who alleged that Moore and other officers illegally handcuffed and searched them in 2016.

During the encounter, Moore and his colleagues confiscated $579 from one of the men, according to the complaint.

Moore wrote he searched the man and found six Baggies of a “leaflike substance.” Police arrested the man on drug-related charges and towed his friend’s car.

The car’s owner had to pay $350 to retrieve his vehicle from the impound lot, the suit alleged.

In addition to the drug charge — which was later dropped — Moore gave the man a citation for loitering, a misdemeanor offense. Moore wrote the man was in a “known narcotics location.”

The man, according to the lawsuit, was standing in the driveway of his home.

Cuz I write the report

Something Wrong With Some Of The Cops

Maybe the Vermont cops wanted to stay quiet about tracing the guy's phone number because they want more of these assholes to show their hands(?)

But knowing what we know about certain events - not exclusive to Jan6 and cops murdering black people - and knowing the tendency of way too many cops to close ranks and protect their own, I'll proceed with an increased sense of skepticism about parts of a Law Enforcement establishment that seems a little too willing to get a lot too cozy with the bad guys.

It's all just a little too curious.

Rachel has a rundown:

And here's the Reuters piece:

Nov 9 (Reuters) - In Arizona, a stay-at-home dad and part-time Lyft driver told the state’s chief election officer she would hang for treason. In Utah, a youth treatment center staffer warned Colorado’s election chief that he knew where she lived and watched her as she slept.

In Vermont, a man who says he works in construction told workers at the state election office and at Dominion Voting Systems that they were about to die.

“This might be a good time to put a f------ pistol in your f------ mouth and pull the trigger,” the man shouted at Vermont officials in a thick New England accent last December. “Your days are f------ numbered."

The three had much in common. All described themselves as patriots fighting a conspiracy that robbed Donald Trump of the 2020 election. They are regular consumers of far-right websites that embrace Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods. And none have been charged with a crime by the law enforcement agencies alerted to their threats.

They were among nine people who told Reuters in interviews that they made threats or left other hostile messages to election workers. In all, they are responsible for nearly two dozen harassing communications to six election officials in four states. Seven made threats explicit enough to put a reasonable person in fear of bodily harm or death, the U.S. federal standard for criminal prosecution, according to four legal experts who reviewed their messages at Reuters’ request.

These cases provide a unique perspective into how people with everyday jobs and lives have become radicalized to the point of terrorizing public officials. They are part of a broader campaign of fear waged against frontline workers of American democracy chronicled by Reuters this year. The news organization has documented nearly 800 intimidating messages to election officials in 12 states, including more than 100 that could warrant prosecution, according to legal experts.

The examination of the threats also highlights the paralysis of law enforcement in responding to this extraordinary assault on the nation’s electoral machinery. After Reuters reported the widespread intimidation in June, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a task force to investigate threats against election staff and said it would aggressively pursue such cases. But law enforcement agencies have made almost no arrests and won no convictions.

In many cases, they didn’t investigate. Some messages were too hard to trace, officials said. Other instances were complicated by America’s patchwork of state laws governing criminal threats, which provide varying levels of protection for free speech and make local officials in some states reluctant to prosecute such cases. Adding to the confusion, legal scholars say, the U.S. Supreme Court hasn’t formulated a clear definition of a criminal threat.

For this report, Reuters set out to identify the people behind these attacks on election workers and understand their motivations. Reporters submitted public-records requests and interviewed dozens of election officials in 12 states, obtaining phone numbers and email addresses for two dozen of the threateners.

Reuters was able to interview nine of them. All admitted they were behind the threats or other hostile messages. Eight did so on the record, identifying themselves by name.

In the seven cases that legal scholars said could be prosecuted, law enforcement agencies were alerted by election officials to six of them. The people who made those threats told Reuters they never heard from police.

All nine harassers interviewed by Reuters said they believed they did nothing wrong. Just two expressed regret when told their messages had frightened officials or caused security scares. The seven others were unrepentant, with some saying the election workers deserved the menacing messages.

Ross Miller, a Georgia real-estate investor, warned an official in the Atlanta area that he’d be tarred and feathered, hung or face firing squads unless he addressed voter fraud. In an interview, Miller said he would continue to make such calls “until they do something.” He added: “We can’t have another election until they fix what happened in the last one.”

The harassers expressed beliefs similar to those voiced by rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, trying to block Democrat Joe Biden’s certification as president. Nearly all of the threateners saw the country deteriorating into a war between good and evil – “patriots” against “communists.” They echoed extremist ideas popularized by QAnon, a collective of baseless conspiracy theories that often cast Trump as a savior figure and Democrats as villains. Some said they were preparing for civil war. Six were in their 50s or older; all but two were men.

They are part of a national phenomenon. America’s federal elections are administered by state and local officials. But the threateners are targeting workers far from home: Seven of the nine harassed officials in other states. Some targeted election officials in states where Trump lost by substantial margins, such as Colorado – or even Vermont, where Biden won by 35 percentage points.

“These people firmly believe in the ‘Big Lie’ that the former president legitimately won the election,” said Chris Krebs, who ran the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security. Krebs was fired by Trump last year for declaring that the 2020 election had been conducted fairly. By terrorizing election officials, he said, they’re effectively acting as Trump’s “foot soldiers.”

A Trump spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Representative John Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat, introduced legislation in June to make it a federal crime to intimidate, threaten or harass an election worker. The bill, which has not come up for a vote, followed a Reuters investigation into such threats published the same month.

“I think we’re on a dangerous path,” Sarbanes said last week when told the threats were continuing with little law enforcement intervention. “We want there to be some effective and sustained push back on this kind of harassment.”

YOU'RE 'ABOUT TO GET F------ POPPED'

Only one of the nine harassers Reuters interviewed wouldn’t reveal his identity: the man threatening Vermont officials. Before reporters started examining him, law enforcement officials had decided against investigating, as many other agencies have done in similar cases nationwide.

Late last year, between Nov. 22 and Dec. 1, he left three messages with the secretary of state’s office from a number that state police deemed “essentially untraceable,” according to an internal police email obtained through a public-records request. The man identified himself as a Vermont resident in one voicemail.

Police didn’t pursue a case on the grounds that he didn’t threaten a specific person or indicate an imminent plan to act, according to emails and prosecution records. State police never spoke with the caller, according to interviews with state officials, a law enforcement source and a review of internal police emails.

Reuters did.

Reporters connected with him in September on the phone number police called untraceable. In five conversations over four days spanning more than three hours, he acknowledged threatening Vermont officials and described his thinking.

He soon grew agitated, peppering two Reuters reporters with 137 texts and voicemails over the past month, threatening the journalists and describing his election conspiracy theories.

The man telephoned the secretary of state’s office again on Oct. 17 from the same phone number used in the other threats. This time he was more explicit. Addressing state staffers and referring to the two journalists by name, he said he guaranteed that all would soon get “popped.”

“You guys are a bunch of f------ clowns, and all you dirty c---suckers are about to get f------ popped,” he said. “I f------ guarantee it.”

The officials referred the voicemail to state police, who again declined to investigate. Agency spokesperson Adam Silverman said in a statement that the message didn’t constitute an “unambiguous reference to gun violence,” adding that the word “popped” – common American slang for “shot” – “is unclear and nonspecific, and could be a reference to someone being arrested.”

Legal experts didn’t see it that way. Fred Schauer, a University of Virginia law professor, said the message likely constituted a criminal threat under federal law by threatening gun violence at specific individuals. “There’s certainly an intent to put people in fear,” Schauer said.

After Reuters asked Vermont officials about the October threat, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began an inquiry into the matter, according to two local law enforcement officials.

The FBI declined to confirm or deny any investigation into that threat and others reported in this story. In a statement, the bureau said it takes such acts seriously, working with other law enforcement agencies “to identify and stop any potential threats to public safety” and “investigate any and all federal violations to the fullest."

'I'M A PATRIOT'

Many of the harassers have been radicalized by a growing universe of far-right websites and other sources of disinformation about the 2020 election. Like Trump, they bashed mainstream news outlets and cast them as complicit in an elaborate scheme to steal the election.

Jamie Fialkin of Peoria, Arizona, talked of a grand conspiracy of those controlling the media, the banking system and social media companies. “When you have those three things, you can get away with anything – you can tell people, ‘black is white, white is black,’ and people go, ‘OK,’” Fialkin said.

On the surface, nothing about Fialkin’s biography suggests extremism. A former stand-up comedian from Brooklyn, New York, Fialkin said he has a degree in actuarial science, the study of insurance data. In 2017, he self-published a book marketed as a “survival guide” for first-time older parents. The 54-year-old said he spends most days taking care of his two young daughters and driving part-time for Lyft.

At a 2006 comedy show, he poked fun at his “professional bowler” physique, balding head, and inability to play golf. The self-described Orthodox Jew also took aim at Palestinians and described his political views as “a little more to the right.”

Fialkin said in an interview that he’s no longer in a joking mood.

He believes America is headed for civil war. He endorsed Trump’s false claims that millions of fraudulent votes swung the election to Biden. He said he’s convinced that former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and progressive philanthropist George Soros bought fake ballots from China, another debunked theory promoted by Trump’s allies.

Fialkin blamed one person in particular for Trump’s Arizona loss: Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the state’s top election official. On June 3, Fialkin called Hobbs’ office and left a message saying she’d hang “from a f------ tree.”

“They’re going to hang you for treason, you f------ bitch,” Fialkin said.

Minutes later, Fialkin left another voicemail in which he recommended a “good slogan” for Democrat Hobbs’ campaign for governor: “Don’t vote for me, for one reason. Back in December, I got hung for treason.”

Fialkin said he never intended to harm Hobbs, but was unapologetic.

“I’m not denying anything,” he said, “because I’m a patriot.”

Fialkin said he changed his Republican voter registration to independent because the party didn’t fight hard enough for Trump.

“I’m like most Americans,” he said. “We’re just waiting to see when the civil war starts.”

Fialkin’s messages were part of a barrage targeting Hobbs. Two others came from Jeff Yeager, a 56-year-old self-employed electrician from Los Angeles, California. Yeager, too, called for her execution.

“When Katie the c--- is executed for treason, what are you f------ traitors going to be doing for work?” Yeager said in a June 17 voicemail left for Hobbs and her staff. Months later, on Sept. 8, he left another voicemail warning she’d be executed.

Yeager acknowledged leaving the messages and said he didn’t care if Hobbs felt threatened. “If she thinks that I’m a threat to her, I’m not,” he said. “But the public is going to hang this woman.”

Yeager said he sees the mainstream media as full of disinformation; he called Reuters “one of the most evil organizations on the planet.” He said he gets his news from “alternative websites that are not censored,” including social network Gab and Bitchute, a video-sharing site known for hosting far-right figures and conspiracy theorists.

“Everything we’re being told is a lie,” he said.

In an interview, Hobbs said the threats by Fialkin, Yeager and others have been “emotionally draining” for her and her staff. The messages from Fialkin and Yeager were sent to the FBI, her spokesperson said. Some threats triggered a security detail, Hobbs said.

Jared Carter, a Cornell University law professor specializing in constitutional free-speech issues, said the threats by both men could be prosecuted under federal law. “In light of the multiple voicemails from the same person, and the overall tone of the messages, a court could find them to be true threats,” Carter said.

Election administrators such as Hobbs are part of a broader array of public officials targeted by Trump supporters. The day before Yeager spoke with Reuters in September, he said, two FBI agents visited him at his Los Angeles home to discuss threats he made to two national politicians: Republican Senator Mitt Romney and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both of whom denounced Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection. He said the FBI agents produced transcripts of his calls to Pelosi and Romney. Yeager said the transcripts quoted him as saying “we will kill you.”

The agents instructed him how to lawfully express his political views, Yeager said, and left without arresting him. “I’m not making any more calls to anybody,” he said. “I may have crossed the line in one sentence, but I’m no danger to anybody.”

Spokespeople for Romney and Pelosi declined to comment on Yeager’s threats.

INSPIRED BY TRUMP

Others who threatened election officials told Reuters they were directly inspired by Trump or his prominent allies, who have denounced specific election offices nationwide for allowing voter fraud, turning them into targets.

Eric Pickett, a 42-year-old night staffer at a youth treatment center in Utah, said his anger boiled over after watching an Aug. 10 “cyber symposium” held by pillow magnate Mike Lindell, a Trump ally who has pushed false election conspiracy theories.

Pickett said he paid close attention as one of the symposium’s speakers, Tina Peters, a Republican clerk in Colorado’s Mesa County, criticized Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Griswold has been leading an investigation into Peters over a voting-system security breach in Mesa, one of the state’s most conservative counties. At the symposium, Peters, an election-fraud conspiracy theorist, claimed Griswold “raided” her office to produce false evidence and “bully” her.

None of that was true, according to state officials. Nonetheless, Pickett snapped. He got on Facebook and sent Griswold a message.

“You raided an office. You broke the law. STOP USING YOUR TACTICS. STOP NOW. Watch your back. I KNOW WHERE YOU SLEEP, I SEE YOU SLEEPING. BE AFRAID, BE VERRY AFFRAID. I hope you die.”

A Griswold spokesperson said the August message was promptly referred to state and federal law enforcement. The threat was reported by Reuters in September.

Pickett said in an interview that he “got wrapped up in the moment.” He was surprised Griswold found the message threatening and expressed regret for causing alarm.

“I didn’t know they would take it as a threat,” he said. “I was thinking they would just take it as somebody just trolling them.”

Colorado State Patrol, in response to a records request, said they had no investigative reports on the threat. A spokesperson, Sergeant Troy Kessler, said the State Patrol reviewed all messages it received from Griswold’s office and that no one had been arrested.

Three legal experts said the message met the threshold of a threat that could be prosecuted under federal law. “The whole purpose of the threats doctrine is to protect people from not only a prospect of physical violence, but the damage of living with a threat hanging over you,” said Timothy Zick, a William & Mary Law School professor.

Lindell and Peters did not respond to requests for comment.

TARRED AND FEATHERED

Trump’s stolen-election claims about Georgia, traditionally a Republican stronghold, have sparked some of the most serious election threats.

In a Dec. 10 hearing organized by Georgia Republican lawmakers, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani played a short snippet of surveillance footage from Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, which was used as a tabulation site. He claimed it showed Fulton County election workers pulling out suitcases full of fraudulent ballots in Biden’s favor. State investigators and county officials have said the “suitcases” were standard ballot containers and the video shows normal vote-counting.

Ross Miller, the real-estate investor in Forsyth County, Georgia, saw the video. He left a Dec. 31 voicemail for Fulton County Elections Director Richard Barron, saying he “better run” and that he’ll be tarred and feathered and executed unless “ya'll do something” about voter fraud. Barron forwarded the threat to police, according to a county email.

However, Fulton County Police Chief Wade Yates said his agency did not contact Miller after concluding the message did not constitute a threat under Georgia law.

In an interview, Miller acknowledged making the call.

“I left the message because I’m a patriot, and I’m sick and tired of what’s going on in this country,” he said. “That’s what happens when you commit treason: You get hung.”

Miller, who said he was in his sixties, said he’s been kicked off Twitter seven times for his views. He follows “Tore Says,” a podcast popular with QAnon adherents whose host, Terpsichore Maras-Lindeman, has called for a “revolutionary movement.”

“You've got to stand up,” said Miller. “You're either a patriot for the freedom of this country or you're a communist against it.”

'YOU'RE ALL F------ DEAD'

Some Vermont officials questioned why the man intimidating state officials wasn’t investigated or prosecuted, highlighting a broader national debate over how to respond to post-election threats. In a pattern seen across America, Vermont law enforcement officials decided this man’s repeated menacing messages amounted to legally protected free speech.

The threatener focused on one of the central conspiracy theories promoted by Trump and his allies: That officials had rigged vote-counting technology from Dominion Voting Systems to flip millions of votes to Biden.

“Just let everybody know that their days are f------ numbered,” he said in a Dec. 1 voicemail. “There are a lot of people who are going to be executed.”

Around that time, officials at Dominion’s headquarters in Colorado received three unsettling voicemails. “You’re all f------ dead,” said one message. “We’re going to f------ kill you all.” The caller’s telephone number and voice matched those on the Vermont threats.

The threats to Dominion were referred to the Denver Police Department and the FBI. Denver police failed to identify the caller, a department spokesperson said.

The Vermont secretary of state’s office is located in a historic 19th-century brick Queen Anne-style house in the capital of Montpelier. The staff helps register voters and administer elections in a state with one of America’s lowest rates of violent crime. The voicemails terrified some staffers.

“I had to try to calm people down,” Secretary of State Jim Condos said in an interview. “We were all on edge.”

After the Dec. 1 threats, Vermont Deputy Secretary of State Chris Winters expressed astonishment that police wouldn’t pursue the caller, according to emails between secretary-of-state officials and police obtained through a records’ request.

“I am trying to make sense of this,” Winters wrote in an email to Daniel Trudeau, the criminal division commander of the Vermont State Police. “If someone makes a veiled threat to come to the Secretary of State’s office and execute only the guilty ones on the election team, without naming names, they’ve not broken the law?” Winters added that he wanted to know “who we’re dealing with.”

Trudeau replied that he had consulted with other officers and didn’t see a crime, because the caller did not specify that he would come to the secretary of state’s office and did not say that he personally would execute anyone.

Vermont’s state police intelligence unit tried but failed to identify the caller. Police examined the number, which bore a Vermont area code, but said it was untraceable, according to an email between state police officials. The unit’s commander, Shawn Loan, wrote to Trudeau saying that the threats could be part of a “larger campaign” and the calls “may have been scripted.” He added that the caller used voice-over-internet technology. Two former FBI agents said such calls can be harder to trace than those made from landlines or cellular phones.

Loan was not immediately available for comment, a spokesperson said.

Vermont State Police didn’t pursue the threatener. Rory Thibault, the state’s attorney in Washington County, which includes Montpelier, supported Trudeau’s decision in a four-page Dec. 15 memo to state police. The messages were “protected speech,” Thibault wrote, because they were not “directed at a single person or official.” They were “conditional” on a “perception of malfeasance in the election process,” and the caller didn’t indicate he would personally inflict harm, he said.

Zick, the William & Mary professor, said a threat doesn’t necessarily have to single out a specific individual to be prosecuted under federal law. If someone calls in a bomb threat to Congress rather than to a specific senator’s office, for instance, “that’s still a threat.”

In an interview, Thibault said Vermont laws pose unique challenges for pursuing such cases because they offer greater protections for individual rights than federal laws. He added that the threats and the rise of extremist rhetoric are leading to a push for tougher anti-harassment laws.

Vermont State Representative Maxine Grad said she plans to introduce a bill in the January session aimed at broadening protections for people who have received criminal threats, such as election workers.

On Dec. 16, a day after the state’s attorney ruled out an investigation, the unidentified caller taunted Vermont election officials in a new voicemail. “All the traitors will be punished” in the “next few weeks,” he said. “Kill yourself now.”

This time, the caller used a different number that appeared to be a pre-paid “burner” phone.

Montpelier Police Chief Brian Peete was concerned. “Very disturbing,” he wrote to state police, security and secretary of state officials after reviewing the Dec. 16 threat. “Fits profile of someone who may act.”

Again, state police declined to investigate because the caller didn’t threaten a specific individual, according to police emails.

The phone numbers used by the caller left few clues about his identity. One reverse phone lookup service linked his number to Bennington, a town of about 15,000 people in southwest Vermont. Denver police couldn’t identify the caller, but found “decent information” linking the number to Bennington, according to a Denver Police Department report on the threats to Dominion.

Surrounded by the Green Mountains, the Bennington area is known for its picturesque farm houses, a towering Revolutionary War battle monument and blazing autumn foliage. Less known is that the rural, mostly white town and other parts of southern Vermont have seen a rise in Trump-inspired militia activity in recent years, residents and state officials say.

In April, the town agreed to pay a $137,500 settlement to Kiah Morris, the state legislature’s only black female elected official, who resigned in September 2018, following complaints that Bennington police failed to properly investigate racially motivated harassment against her. Morris declined to comment for this story.

The calls from the still-unidentified man threatening election officials and reporters were referred to the FBI, according to police emails.

Reuters first reached the man on Sept. 17. In a brief interview, he referenced the Dominion conspiracy theory. Asked for his name, he swore and hung up.

A week later, the journalists contacted him again on the same number. He admitted leaving the voicemails to express his “absolute dissatisfaction” in the election. In three subsequent phone interviews on Oct. 6 and 7 that spanned a total of two and a half hours, he opened up about his views.

The man said he believed thousands of fake ballots were cast in Arizona, repeating debunked claims. He said members of the media would face tribunals and be executed like the Nazi leaders who were hung after the Nuremberg trials in the 1940s and that perpetrators of election fraud would be sent to military prison.

He said he lived “in the woods,” and worked in construction. He didn’t own a gun, but said he had “a baseball bat and a machete.” He shared videos from the far-right website Bitchute and said he watched “all kinds of stuff that definitely needs to be investigated.”

Then he turned on the Reuters journalists.

In an Oct. 11 voicemail, he threatened to sue the reporters for obtaining his telephone number from state records. Over the next 25 days, he texted them 91 times, sharing misinformation on the origins of the coronavirus and other conspiracy theories. On Oct. 17, he left the new voicemails at the Vermont secretary of state’s office, including the one threatening that the reporters and election staffers would get “popped.”

The next morning, the caller followed up with more texts to the journalists. “I am going to destroy you and that is a threat.” In multiple texts, he said he would “ruin” the life of one of the reporters. On Oct. 30, he left two more voicemails for them. “You are all going to f------ hang. I’m going to make sure of it,” said one. “Bad s--- is gonna to happen to you,” said the other. “Your days are f------ numbered.”

He also sent the reporters four messages with the same picture: a grainy black-and-white photograph of a public execution that has been shared widely in far-right social media, with a caption claiming it showed “members of the media” hanging in “Nuremberg, Germany.” (In fact, the photo was taken in Kiev, Ukraine, depicting Nazi officers being hung for war crimes.)

The man’s threats and the rise in extremism in Vermont and nationwide since the election are a concern for Peete and his small staff in the Montpelier Police Department.

“It’s something that keeps me and all of us here up at night,” the police chief said.

I Gotcher Conspiracy Right here

Hey, "conservatives", do you really wanna do that conspiracy thing? Here's one.

What if you make a political move that takes cops off the streets, and do it thru the unions, which kinda short-circuits the lefties' pushback?

Put this together with - oh, I dunno - that horseshit going on down there in Texas where they've legalized Vigilantism, and whaddya got?

The Guardian:

Police departments face a shortage as unions enable officers to refuse vaccines

Representatives say the mandates violate the officers’ rights while city leaders are trying to keep the public safe

Sgt Randy Huserik and all other officers with the Seattle police department who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 are prepared to report at 7am Tuesday morning to any of the city’s five precincts rather than their usual assignments. Some detectives could even be responding to 911 calls instead of following up on their case load, he said.

That’s because the city is implementing a vaccine mandate for officers on 18 October and preparing to fire hundreds of officers who refuse to get the vaccine, which could leave the department significantly understaffed.

“We will have additional bodies available to handle 911 calls but obviously there is going to be a backlash on that for all the officers assigned as detectives who then won’t be working on their caseload, which will then back up as additional cases come in,” said Huserik, who has been with the department for 28 years and works in public affairs.

The standoff between the city and officers is just one conflict among many across the United States, with city leaders stating that they are trying to keep the public safe and some officers and their union representatives saying that the mandates violate their rights. In Chicago, the issue has even led to the mayor and the local police union trading legal actions.

While the penalties for officers who decline to get the vaccine differ from city to city, there is a common resistance among police unions to various restrictions.

And policing experts warn that even if officers’ resistance to the vaccination is misguided, issuing mandates could further deplete departments that are already understaffed and thus hurt public safety.

“I think you should encourage them, but I don’t think you can make anybody do anything and think that relationship is going to be amicable and trustworthy down the line,” said David Thomas, a professor of forensic studies at Florida Gulf Coast University.

The resistance to the vaccines comes despite the fact Covid-19 has caused 473 deaths among law enforcement officers in the United States, making it the largest cause of death for the group in 2020 and 2021, according to Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks the deaths.

“You would think that is enough to encourage everybody to get vaccinated,” said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which advises police departments across the country. “It’s just mind-boggling to think that the creation of [police] unions was to protect officers’ rights and what could be more significant than the right to live a good life?”

Brian Higgins, a former police chief and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, attributes the resistance in part to the fact that police “are a little more skeptical” and “are not used to being told what to do”, he said.

And there it is - the cops "are not used to being told what to do."

Well then, you need to get used to it, fellas.

You are not the law.

You are not above the law.

You will comply with the fucking law.