Saturday, April 09, 2022
CAM-IN-A-BAR CATCHES OFF-DUTY COPS
The recording is disturbing. It shows the off-duty cops acting as aggressors while presumably under the influence. The aftermath — as was first reported by the Billings Gazette — exposes the officers’ belief they could get away with assaulting someone if they concocted a story about a shooting.
Bar Security Camera Exposes Off-Duty Officers’ Lies About Their Unprovoked Assault Of Another Bar Patron
from the shitcan-these-bozos-before-they-can-be-indemnified dept
That’s just the way it is.
That’s just the way it is.
"It shouldn’t be this way. Cops are given an incredible amount of power and expected to handle it responsibly. But when they start doing things they shouldn’t be doing, out come the lies. Accountability may as well be a foreign term of legal art because cops understand it about as well as they understand the laws they’re supposed to enforce: i.e., not at all.
When cops are allowed to deliver the narrative, it goes something like this:
An off-duty deputy was struck by a possible bullet fragment after an argument in front of a Billings bar turned violent early Saturday morning, and one person was hospitalized due to a rollover crash after fleeing the scene.
Billings Chief of Police Rich St. John provided what details were available about an altercation at the Grandstand Sports Bar and Casino during a press conference held Saturday afternoon. No arrests have been made, but at least one round from a handgun was possibly fired by a suspect. Both the deputy and a civilian who was involved are expected to fully recover, while the man pulled from the crash suffered life-threatening injuries.
That’s from the Billings (MT) Gazette’s original reporting about an altercation at a local bar. The police chief noted an investigation was ongoing and details were limited, but still provided enough details to make it appear the off-duty officer was a victim, rather than one of the perpetrators. . .
The Grandstand is a bar. The off-duty officers were drinking. They did not merely “meet,” a term that makes it appear the officers were fully in control of their mental and physical facilities when the so-called “altercation” took place. Also, it’s clear from this statement that the only story provided was delivered by the off-duty officers, considering the other person involved was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.
The real story arrived a few days later. CCTV footage from the bar provided a completely different — and an almost completely inarguable — depiction of the so-called altercation. The officers’ statements to Billings PD investigators were lies. The entire chain of events was set in motion by two off-duty officers (and one other person who has yet to be identified, but is suspected to be a recently retired officer) who decided they had the right and the power to apprehend and physically assault someone who offended them by driving through the parking lot while they stood in it, presumably intoxicated.
. . .
What’s on display here is these officers’ bullying behavior — something encouraged by the immense amount of power they’ve been given and the complete lack of accountability that often accompanies this power. It shows the officers felt they could not only assault a “civilian” with impunity but that they could get away with it — a not totally unreasonable assumption given how most law enforcement agencies minimize, if not completely ignore, officer misconduct.
These officers had no idea a camera captured the whole incident. That’s why they felt comfortable lying to the 25 officers who rushed to the scene of the nonexistent shooting of an off-duty officer. Now they’re going to be facing an internal investigation and a civil rights lawsuit from Louis Delgado without the ability to lie about what actually happened that night. Hopefully they’ll be out of a job long before Delgado’s lawsuit has run its course, making it almost impossible for them to ask taxpayers to foot the bill for their wrongdoing.
Filed Under: billings, billings pd, louis delgado, matt frank, montana, police, police brutality
U.S. - Russian Economic Sanctions Altered to Keep "Free Parts" of Russian Internet Going
US eases sanctions that may lead to Russia's Internet isolation
"Today, the U.S. has announced exemptions on previously imposed sanctions on Russia related to telecommunications and internet-based communications, likely to prevent Russians from being isolated from Western news sources.
This move comes amid successive announcements of additional sanctions against key Russian entities, and it appears to be a very targeted and purposeful retraction.
The revised sanctions released today and signed by Deputy Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, Bradley Smith, re-opens the possibility for US companies to license, export, sell, or supply services for software, hardware, and IT technology related to communications. . .
Cloudflare recently reported on the effects of widespread blockages in Russia, pushing many users in the country to seek reliable information sources on Western news sites via VPN.
Also, a month ago, Russia launched its own TLS certificate authority in response to the sanctions that prevent websites from renewing their expiring certificates, which ultimately raised grave privacy risks for users.
Other side-effects of the severe sanctions on IT equipment include software licensing issues and a currently-unfolding data storage crisis that threatens to jeopardize internet services in Russia.
Handling these issues with measures that are compliant with standard industry practices is unlikely, so they are expected to have detrimental effects on accessing reliable information from within Russia.
Russian digital rights activism organization Roskomsvoboda pleaded for these sanctions to be lifted in a statement addressed to Western IT firms and governments last month. As the message stated (machine translated):
We live in a historical period, our country can further fence itself with a wall from the whole world, which will have to be destroyed for years, if not decades. With carpet sanctions, tech companies are cementing it even harder.
Companies mindlessly hit everyone with sanctions, but they miss the mark, and they fall into the most vulnerable groups of journalists, activists and IT people who have always opposed military operations and bravely did their job.
This not only destroys the trust they had in technology when they could not hope for the law, but also creates the conditions for digital obscurity, which is in the hands of aggressors who spread fakes and zombify the population.
As such, the United States government may be easing software and hardware sale and licensing restrictions to keep the "free" parts of the Russian internet going, which is crucially important to prevent the country from becoming isolated from the rest of the world.
The part of the newly announced provision that lifts restrictions is the following:
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (c) of this general license, all transactions ordinarily incident and necessary to the receipt or transmission of telecommunications involving the Russian Federation that are prohibited by the Russian Harmful Foreign Activities Sanctions Regulations, 31 CFR part 587 (RuHSR), are authorized.
(b) Except as provided in paragraph (c) of this general license, the exportation or reexportation, sale, or supply, directly or indirectly, from the United States or by U.S. persons, wherever located, to the Russian Federation of services, software, hardware, or technology incident to the exchange of communications over the internet, such as instant messaging, videoconferencing, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos, movies, and documents, web browsing, blogging, web hosting, and domain name registration services, that is prohibited by the RuHSR, is authorized.
However, the updated sanctions still prevent companies from working with the Central Bank of Russia, the National Wealth Fund, and the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation.
Moreover, all transaction prohibitions announced in Executive Orders 14066 and 14068 still apply, and so do all applicable licensing requirements handled by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security.
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