Six More Houston Cops Involved In Deadly Drug Raid Are Now Facing Criminal Charges
Furnished content.
We still haven't seen an end to the fallout resulting from a botched (and bogus) drug raid in Houston that ended with two residents killed by police officers. It also ended with five officers wounded -- one of them paralyzed. The raid was predicated on false statements made by Officer Gerald Goines, who secured permission from a judge to perform a no-knock raid, claiming the residents were armed and selling heroin.While guns were recovered, no heroin was. Indeed, no evidence of drug dealing was recovered -- just personal amounts of marijuana and cocaine. The informant that supposedly made the heroin buy never existed and the supposed result of this controlled buy was actually heroin pulled from an officer's squad car. All of Goines' lies led to two deaths and five injured officers. Goines is currently facing a slew of charges, including two counts of felony murder.Other participants in the raid are facing charges as well. KHOU reports six more Houston PD officers have been indicted for their involvement in the raid or for other criminal acts they engaged in while working in the department's narcotics unit.On Monday, a Harris County grand jury indicted another officer for murder and five others for engaging in criminal activity.The six officers indicted Monday are in addition to the six officers who have already been indicted.Felix Gallegos, the officer charged with murder, fired the shot that killed Dennis Tuttle, according to court documents. That's 12 officers, all under indictment, and all involved in the drug raid. Following the ill-fated raid, the Houston PD investigated its own narcotics unit, "discovering" that it had been given free rein for years. Paperwork routinely went unreviewed and unapproved. And that's when there was any case-related paperwork to be found. In some cases, no warrants were filed. In others, supporting documents were missing. Multiple discrepancies in evidence and expense reporting were also uncovered. This hands-off approach is directly responsible for the travesty the Houston PD calls a "narcotics unit."And it's this hands-off approach that's led to the charges facing five of these recently indicted officers -- all accused of falsifying records to obtain pay for overtime hours they apparently didn't work. Some of this has been going on for a long time, which means the resulting sentences will be longer, too. Three officers are facing hefty felony charges for this time theft, ones that carry with them a maximum sentence of life in prison:Oscar Pardo – (HPD) Engaging in Organized Criminal Activity, to wit: Aggregate Theft by a Public Servant ($30,000 or more but less than $150,000) and Tampering with a Governmental Record (1st degree)Cedell Lovings – (Status Unclear) Engaging in Organized Criminal Activity, to wit: Aggregate Theft by a Public Servant ($30,000 or more but less than $150,000) and Tampering with a Governmental Record (1st degree)Nadeem Ashraf – (HPD) Engaging in Organized Criminal Activity, to wit: Aggregate Theft by a Public Servant ($30,000 or more but less than $150,000) and Tampering with a Governmental Record (1st degree) Two more officers -- Clemente Reyna and Thomas Wood -- have had identical theft charges added to the charges they're already facing for their participation in the drug raid.And another two officers are facing lesser theft charges, but ones that still carry potential 20-year sentences. Five of these officers retired as soon as it became clear they might face criminal charges. The other seven are apparently still employed, though that will likely change now that they're under indictment.There was a lot of trust to go around in the Houston Police Department. Not a lot of verification, though. It took the senseless killing of two harmless Houston residents to force the PD to take a look at what its officers were doing. And it's probably going to take several criminal trials to force the PD to actually care about officer accountability so it doesn't get to the point of felony murder charges and hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegally obtained paychecks before the PD can be bothered to police its own.This isn't the final postscript on this horrific incident. There will certainly be more to come, what with a dozen officers facing the possibility of a trial and the PD forced to provide what will certainly be damning information in response to discovery requests.
Read more here
posted at: 12:00am on 02-Feb-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)
RIAA Launches Brand New Front Group Pretending To Represent Independent Artists
Furnished content.
A few days ago, a friend asked if I'd ever heard of the "Digital Creators Coalition," an apparently new group that claimed to be representing independent artists. I was unfamiliar with it, and its website provided basically no information about who was actually behind it, beyond this vague statement on its "who we are" page:The Digital Creators Coalition (DCC) is a group of associations, companies and organizations that represent individual creators, independent producers, small-and-medium-size enterprises (SMEs), large businesses, and labor organizations from the American creative communities. We contribute significantly to U.S. GDP, exports and employment - collectively employing or representing millions of American creators, and contributing billions of dollars to the U.S. economy. Right... but... uh... who? There's no named staff. There's nothing that shows who these associations, companies, and organizations actually are. Though, if you click through on the website to their "comments" page, it takes you to two separate letters that were sent nearly a year ago to negotiators trying to sort out a US-UK trade agreement, asking for the most extreme versions of copyright possible, including copyright term extension, secondary liability on websites that host content, no language on "balance" or "fair use" (yes, they explicitly say neither term should be mentioned). It's insanity.Of course, that letter also reveals who they are, and it's a who's who of industry associations that lobby for the interests of the largest gatekeepers, and not, as the organization's website suggests, small and independent creators:I mean, you've got basically all the copyright maximalist extremist groups there: the RIAA, the MPA, the Author's Guild, Creative Future, the Recording Academy, ASCAP, SoundExchange, NMPA, the IIPA. Not surprisingly, but incredibly disappointing is that the News Media Alliance is there. The News Media Alliance used to be the Newspaper Association of America, and, as such, you'd think would be supportive of free speech and the 1st Amendment. Considering how much newspapers rely on fair use, you'd think it would be odd that they're now against fair use. But, over the past few years, the leaders of the News Media Alliance have become so obsessed and infatuated with "GOOGLE BAD!" that apparently they have no problem throwing their lot in with copyright maximalists against their own members' interests. The organization literally came out against fair use a few years ago, and has since become just as bad (in some ways worse!) than some of the other organizations here.But, just as if to prove that this group has nothing to do with small and independent creators, and is just a front for the big gatekeepers who screw over small and independent creators, the RIAA itself put out a press release announcing this group's official launch. Oh, and in case there was any doubt who is really behind this group, a simple whois lookup on who registered the website reveals all:Yup. This organization set up to supposedly support small and independent artists... was literally set up by the RIAA itself.This would be the same RIAA whose chairman and CEO's key claim to fame is that while he was a Congressional staffer, he snuck four words into an unrelated bill that literally would take the copyrights from artists and give them to record labels. No one realized he had done this until after it was passed and became law, at which point, the RIAA immediately hired him, and where he's moved up the ranks until he was in charge. This move set off a huge fight with tons of artists screaming about how the RIAA had actually "stolen" their copyrights out from under them, and Congress had to go in and fix this.That's who's protecting the interests of small and independent creators? Don't make me laugh.This is also the same RIAA made up of the major labels who have a long and detailed history of screwing over some of its biggest artists through creative accounting (the only thing the RIAA really does that is creative) to make sure it never needs to pay artists and to keep them tied to the system. These are not the friends of independent artists.Notice who is not a part of this coalition? Any of the companies who have made it possible for actual small and independent artists to make, distribute, promote, build an audience, and make a living these days. No Apple. No YouTube. No TikTok. No Kickstarter. No Patreon. No Spotify. No Bandcamp. No Substack. Odd, isn't it? Then again, maybe not.But seeing as this group is now officially "launched" you can expect to see a bunch of bullshit quotes from them that gullible reporters will repeat without question, saying that it's a group to support artists. Don't believe them. This is an organization to support the copyright maximalism of groups that have spent decades screwing over independent artists.
Read more here
posted at: 12:00am on 02-Feb-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)
|
|
