Slavoj Zizek: Political correctness solidifies hatred, it doesn’t work
Published on May 12, 2015
Revolutions are often initiated by idealists, carried out by fanatics and hijacked by scoundrels. These observations by philosopher Thomas Carlyle still ring true about many of the revolutions we’ve seen in recent years. To what extent can revolutionary goals be achieved through violence, and when is the cost of change too high? Oksana is joined by influential philosopher Slavoj Zizek to analyse these issues.
Oksana, line of questioning in defense of the status Quo, is flawed from my perspective, she questions presuming our reality, without acknowledging the lies, our reality is wrought up on, one after another lie, misconception and misunderstanding. Our reality is more illusion, than anything else. Her questioning perspective view point, angles from an understanding, that we have what we have, and that’s it. When instead, we actually have, what we have been told we have, or are allowed to have, from the stand point of control through Political correctness.
We need to see each other in ourselves, I see me in you and you in me !
Aren’t all the Abrahamic religious books just the victors versions, plagiarized from the spoils of Kemet ? Isn’t their development seen out of Kemet and toward present day through Auha Miser, the Zoroastrians and Hellenistic Romans? Are we being kept from recognizing the obvious scientific answer, to what is or who should be considered chosen, in this present day and age of our existence. I mean whom on earth we celebrate our existence too and come together around.
Scientifically, the black woman is the only organism that
possesses the mitochondrial DNA that has all variations possible for
every different kind of human being on this Earth (the african,the
albino, the european, the middle eastern,ect) When the DNA of a black
woman mutates all other types of human beings comes about. You can
research this topic & it is true. This is called the “Eve Gene” and
is ONLY found in black women.
As we contemplate reforming the financial industry, is there anyway to insure the accountability of boardrooms save revoking charters and turning all corporations into democratically operated Co-operatives ?
American corporations in the 20th century were for the most part governed by an autocratic, virtually unaccountable few chief executives. Their malfeasance supported and possibly in many cases propagated by boards of directors given clear indemnity as a perk for signing the bylaws of their fiduciary responsibilities.
I blame the boards for the subsequent failures of corporations to act ethically, humanely, socially responsible or within good business practices, as they devour their own consumer base and finite resource supply . This is where I call out the global political corporate board class, as to their direct as well as enabling roll in catastrophic global war, theft, murder, rape, pillage and plunder, from a ways back then, til today and now.
Accountability comes with increased exposure
In Dec 30, 2009 Dr. Ken Eisolda practicing psychoanalyst as well as organizational consultant and author of ‘Hidden Motives’ a look at the hidden factors that really drive our social interactions. Read now Published ‘Unaccountable Boards’ (read below) and asked Why corporate board members don’t take their jobs seriously. I believe the answer he seeks lies in the long track record of the unaccountable nature of the board room, where actors are given a large measure of UN-accountability in their call to stand accountable.
For Whom Do They Work?
Modern nonprofit board governance — passion is not enough! | Chris Grundner | TEDxWilmington
Published on Sep 8, 2014
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Chris Grundner is the president and CEO of the Delaware Alliance for Nonprofit Advancement. Since his arrival in February 2012, he has enabled the organization to nearly double its membership and significantly expand its reach. Grundner, originally from Buffalo, NY, received his Bachelors in Business Administration from the State University of New York at Fredonia. He earned his MBA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. In 1999, Grundner moved to Wilmington to join the co-brand credit card division of First USA Bank as the Director of Business Development. Due to his significant achievements, Grundner became one of the organization’s youngest Senior Vice Presidents in early 2002. However, later that same year, his wife, Kelly, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor at the age of 29. Grundner left his job at JPMorgan Chase in 2004 after her passing and started The Kelly Heinz-Grundner Brain Tumor Foundation in 2005 with the goal of bringing national attention to the disease. Through the foundation, Grundner has launched two brain tumor awareness initiatives – GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME® and Tulips Against Tumors™ – both of which became national programs when the organization merged with the National Brain Tumor Society (NBTS) in March 2010.
Unaccountable Boards
Why corporate board members don’t take their jobs seriously.
“You might think that board members overseeing businesses that cratered in the credit crisis would be disqualified from serving as directors at other public companies,” writes Gretchen Morgenson in last Thursday’s New York Times. (See, “What Iceberg? Just Glide to the Next Boardroom.”)
She has a point. Board members have a legal and moral responsibility to serve the interests of shareholders, those who actually own the companies they serve. Their duty is to ensure that their companies are run soundly and profitably. But recent experience suggests that there is, in fact, little if any accountability.
She quotes Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at the Corporate Library, a corporate governance research firm: “None of these directors have stood up and said, ‘We made a mistake here by not calling management to account.'” He adds, “They have certainly avoided the limelight as far as blame is concerned. Moreover, they continue to get work as directors at other companies.”
One reason for this is that it the rules governing the selection and retention of board members are stacked in their favor. It takes a massive effort to challenge an official slate of board members. And there seems to be no interest within boards themselves to establish accountability – for several reasons.
It is generally in their interest to go along with management and continue receiving the perks they enjoy. Morgenson offers an amusing quote from Frederick E. Rowe, president of Investors for Director Accountability: “Here’s a conversation you’ll never hear: ‘Yes, I get paid $475,000 a year. I play golf with the C.E.O.; he’s a personal friend. I go to interesting places for board meetings, I am around interesting people, and I would never say one word that would jeopardize my position on the board.'”
But there is a group culture as well that instills conformity. Board members are often drawn from similar backgrounds and maintain outside relationships with each other through other corporate boards as well as country clubs, charities, and national associations. Collectively they form a kind of national community, with strong common interests and identities, a point that was established by Michael Useem’s research at Wharton 25 years ago.
Moreover, it is easy for “groupthink” to flourish among board members. Usually small in size, operating in secrecy, they receive limited information, and are prone to maintaining cohesiveness and preserving their established business identities along with their self-esteem. They want to support the CEO they selected as long as they can. As a result, they will often collude in ignoring disturbing information, in accepting excuses, stifling criticism. Certainly, they have little motivation to blame each other – or themselves.
John Gillespie, co-author with David Zweig, of “Money for Nothing,” a forthcoming book on board failures, notes that the culture of boards “doesn’t allow directors to do an effective job even if they wanted to.”
They are intelligent, experienced and accomplished people so there can be little doubt that they know about their responsibilities as board members, even if they don’t always know they know it. In this case, they don’t seem to want to know about their failure to ask tough questions and provide strict oversight.
As we are thinking about reforming the financial industry, is there anyway to get them to take their jobs more seriously? Psychology Today
What is a Cooperative?
A co-operative is a group of people acting together to meet the common needs and aspirations of its members, sharing ownership and making decisions democratically.
Co-operatives are not about making big profits for shareholders, but creating value for customers – this is what gives co-operatives a unique character, and influences our values and principles.
Own The Change: Building Economic Democracy One Worker Co-op at a Time
A short, practical guide for those considering worker owned cooperatives, made by GRITtv & TESA, the Toolbox for Education and Social Action. Featuring conversations with worker-owners from Union Cab; Ginger Moon; Arizmendi Bakery, Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance (AORTA); New Era Windows; and more. Educational kits for use with the doc are available at: http://store.toolboxfored.org/own-the…
People need to end the Two party Corporate Fascist political fraud and the Congress “In Trust” system
Excerpt advances to #10 thru #14;
#10. 1861:The Civil War begins. ‘Congress’ adjourns for lack of quorum and without a date to reconvene. Lincoln organizes a Delaware Corporation and the remaining members of Congress begin functioning as a Board of Directors.
•
#11. 1862: The “Corporate Congress”—a body of men no different than the Board of Directors of IBM, change the meaning of a single word —only and explicitly for use within their corporation. That word is “person”. From then on the word “person” is deemed to mean “corporation” for federal government purposes. (37th “Congress”– Second Session, Chapter 49, Section 68.)
•
#12. 1863: Lincoln signs the Lieber Code as Commander in Chief and puts the Union Army, the Grand Army of the Republic, in charge of the nation’s future and money supply. A day later, he bankrupts the original United States (Commercial Company).
•
13. 1865: Lee’s Army surrenders to Grant and a general armistice is declared. The Southern States are in ruins and under military occupation by the Union. The original Northern States are bankrupt. Foreign banks are in control of the new “United States of America, Inc.” and the Union Army reigns supreme. Over the next two years President Andrew Johnson will three times publicly declare peace on the land jurisdiction of the Continental United States, but peace is never declared in the international Jurisdiction of the Sea controlled by the Federal United States under the trusteeship of the British Monarch.
•
#14. 1868: The Corporate Congress writes itself a new Corporate Constitution, called “the Constitution of the United States of America” and palms off this look-alike, sound-alike private corporate document “as if” it were the actual Constitution. This is fraud on many levels. The Constitution of the United States of America purposefully sought to confuse and delude people into thinking it was the actual Equity Contract obligating the States to receive services and subrogate their international jurisdiction to the federal government.
Verizon’s executive management happens to be right up there in what many would consider stratospheric – and unaccountable – executive compensation. CEO Ivan G. Seidenberg pocketed nearly $30 million last year and more than $130 million over five years. No surprise that he’s now #10 on Forbes’ list of the top-paid CEOs. Research further:
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer is teaming up with other pension funds to improve corporate governance.
He launched the Boardroom Accountability Project last week in conjunction with a number of other large public pension plans, such as calPERS. The goal is to pressure individual companies to allow shareholders that control three per cent or more of the company to nominate their own candidates to sit on the board of directors. Corporate Knights sat down with Stringer last week to discuss the project:
CK: How did the Boardroom Accountability Project (BAP) come about? Read further:
Throughout the 20th century, American corporations were governed by autocratic, almost unaccountable chief executives. Their word was law, and the only check on their power was a board of directors composed of their friends and allies. Then, in a stunning reversal, a momentous series of firings deposed the heads of some of the world’s best-known companies. Explore further:
A national effort spearheaded by City Comptroller Scott Stringer to empower shareholders at companies in which the New York City pension system invests has begun picking up support as corporations throughout the country begin to vote on his proposal. Read more:
The International Co-operative Alliance is an independent, non-governmental organization that unites, represents and serves co-operatives worldwide. It exists to provide an effective and efficient global voice and forum for knowledge, expertise and co-ordinated action for and about co-operatives.
All co-operative businesses are run using the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity to guide them. In the tradition of their founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.
Plague of boils strikes Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan
May 28, 2016 – A catastrophic outbreak of Aleppo boil is underway in the Middle East, according to scientists collating data and information from refugee camps and conflict zones in the region.
The disease, properly known as cutaneous leishmaniasis, is caused by a parasite in the blood stream and transmitted through the bite of the sand fly. It provokes disfiguring lesions on the body, which are liable to secondary infection.
Plague of Boils Strikes Syria, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan
http://undergroundworldnews.com
A catastrophic outbreak of Aleppo boil is underway in the Middle East, according to scientists collating data and information from refugee camps and conflict zones in the region.
The disease, properly known as cutaneous leishmaniasis, is caused by a parasite in the blood stream and transmitted through the bite of the sand fly. It provokes disfiguring lesions on the body, which are liable to secondary infection.
Hundreds of thousands of people across the Middle East region are now affected by cutaneous leishmaniasis, which until recently was contained to areas around Aleppo and Damascus in Syria.
Accirding to the CDC until 1960, cutaneous leishmaniasis prevalence in Syria was restricted to 2 areas to which it is endemic (Aleppo and Damascus); preconflict (c. 2010) incidence was 23,000 cases/year.
However, in early 2013, an alarming increase to 41,000 cutaneous leishmaniasis cases was reported.
The regions most affected are under Islamic State control; 6,500 cases occurred in Ar-Raqqah, Diyar Al-Zour, and Hasakah.
Because these places are not historical hotspots of cutaneous leishmaniasis, this change might be attributed to the massive human displacement within Syria and the ecologic disruption of sand fly habitats.
Dan Gandacu1, Yael Glazer1 , Emilia Anis, Isabella Karakis, Bruce Warshavsky, Paul Slater, and Itamar Grotto
Author affiliations: Israel Ministry of Health, Jerusalem, Israel (Y. Glazer, D. Gandacu, E. Anis, I. Karakis, B. Warshavsky, P. Slater, I. Grotto); Hebrew University and Hadassah–Braun School of Public Health, Jerusalem (E. Anis); Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Department of Public Health, Be’er Sheva, Israel (Y. Glazer, I. Karakis, I. Grotto)
Cutaneous leishmaniasis has long been endemic in Israel. After a 15-year period of moderate illness rates, reported incidence increased from 0.4 cases per 100,000 population in 2001 to 4.4 cases per 100,000 population in 2012, and the disease emerged in areas where its presence had previously been minimal. We analyzed all cases reported to the national surveillance system and found that outbreak patterns revealed an expansion of Leishmania major infections over large areas in the southern part of the country and the occurrence of spatially focused L. tropica outbreaks in the northern part of the country. Outbreaks often followed new construction in populated areas. Further study of factors affecting the transmission of cutaneous leishmaniasis is needed in Israel, as well as the development of effective methods to control the disease, an increase in awareness among health care professionals, and intensive public education regarding control measures in areas of known leishmaniasis foci.
Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by parasites of the genus Leishmania (Trypanosomatidae: Kinetplastida); global incidence approaches 2 million cases annually (1,2). Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL), the most common form of the disease (3), is endemic in most Mediterranean countries (4). Humans become hosts of the disease when the parasitic infection develops in the immune system and causes skin lesions. The lesions tend to heal spontaneously after 3–18 months (5) but often result in disfiguring scars (6,7). Functional complications are rare (8).
CL has long been endemic in Israel, and the disease is known colloquially in the region as the “Rose of Jericho.” Historically, the main source of the disease in Israel has been L. major parasites; cases resulting from this species have been widely distributed in the Negev region in the Southern health district, the arid and semi-arid area of southern Israel that that is sparsely populated and accounts for ≈60% of the country’s land. More recently, illness caused by L. tropica parasites has been reported in several semi-arid hilly areas in Israel’s more densely populated, and less dispersed, central and northern population centers (9,10). Continue researching:
Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL), a vector-borne parasitic disease, is a risk for persons, including military personnel, who travel to or live in areas of the tropics, subtropics, and southern Europe where the disease is endemic. This report provides preliminary data about 22 cases of CL in military personnel deployed during 2002-2003 to three countries in Southwest/Central Asia (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait). The patients were evaluated and treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) in the District of Columbia during August 2002-September 2003. U.S. health-care providers should consider the possibility of CL in persons with chronic skin lesions who were deployed to Southwest/Central Asia or who were in other areas where leishmaniasis is endemic.
A prevalence survey in Kabul City showed that 2.7% and 21.9% of persons have active leishmaniasis lesions or scars, respectively. Incidence of disease was estimated to be 2.9% (29 cases/1,000 persons per year; 95% confidence interval 0.018 to 0.031). Disease was associated with age and gender; logistic regression analyses showed significant clustering of cases.
In Afghanistan, the majority of leishmaniasis cases are caused by Leishmania tropica (1), which is transmitted anthroponotically (i.e., humans are the reservoir) by the sandfly (Phlebotomus sergenti) (2). Anthroponotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (ACL) is generally characterized by large and/or multiple cutaneous lesions with a variable tendency to self-cure (3). Because of sandfly exposure, most lesions occur on the face, often leading to severe stigmatization in affected persons (e.g., women with lesions are often deemed unsuitable for marriage or raising children). Anecdotal reports suggest that because of the political instability and destruction of the housing and health infrastructure during the Mojahedin and Taliban regimes, L. tropica cases have increased during the past decade, with current World Health Organization (WHO) estimates of 200,000 ACL cases in Kabul alone (4). Also, because of several factors (the mass migration of L. tropica–infected [and infectious] Afghan refugees; the sporadic treatment of ACL cases by WHO and nongovernmental organizations; and the virtual absence of vector-control strategies), L. tropica has spread to areas where ACL was previously nonendemic (e.g., northwestern Pakistan) (5). The Study
Is the next generation of black and poor students in particular being conditioned to occupy a permanent lower class, for Neo-Feudalism ?? When they are not being criminalized, they’re being brutalized.
Protect your Children from your Governments next generation of Social engineering
Student Arrested For Drinking Milk While Black!?!?!
-Published on May 25, 2016
Thom shares the story of a child who was arrested for “stealing” milk from school – despite being on the free lunch program – and asks why we are criminalizing our kids?
Criminalizing the Classroom: Inside the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Published on Oct 28, 2015
New York City has more than 5,000 police officers patrolling the city’s schools—that’s more than the combined number of school guidance counselors and social workers. Nationwide, more than 17,000 officers work in the school. What happens when students are arrested in the classroom? We look at what many experts call the “school-to-prison pipeline.”
Democracynow.org – Democracy Now!, is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on 1,300+ TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9am ET: http://democracynow.org
Answers:
Guilty for being a black girl? What the SC ‘body slam’ incident says about police brutality
Published on Oct 28, 2015
The video of school officer Ben Fields manhandling and throwing a student across a South Carolina high school classroom caused outrage across the country, leading to Fields being fired and an investigation into his actions. However, many critics see the incident as an example of a bigger problem – namely how minorities are disproportionality targeted in public schools. Simone Del Rosario speaks with Brittney Cooper, professor at Rutgers University, about the issue of police brutality in American schools.
Welcome to Cybrary! The world’s first free and open, online Cyber Security and IT training platform. We believe Cyber Security and IT learning should be free and open, and here at Cybrary, it will remain that way forever! There are over 1,000,000 unfilled cyber security jobs globally. Cybrary’s free training, will help fill that skills gap and get people jobs! Work hard, study hard and lets get those jobs!
Richard Wolff: On Bernie Sanders and Socialism | #GRITtv
Published on Jul 14, 2015
This week: On Sanders and Socialism. Is socialism still an American taboo? Not so much, says professor Richard Wolff; nor was it in the past, says Nation columnist John Nichols. Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, and a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School University in New York City. He has authored or co-authored more than a dozen books, including his most recent; Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown 2010- 2014, and he hosts the weekly Economic Update podcast. John Nichols’ many books include The “S” Word: A Short History of an American Tradition…Socialism, and, most recently, Dollarocracy: How the Money-and-Media-Election Complex is Destroying America. This episode also features an commentary from Laura on renaming capitalism.
so·cial·ism
ˈsōSHəˌlizəm/
noun
noun: socialism
a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
synonyms: leftism, welfarism; More
radicalism, progressivism, social democracy;
communism, Marxism, labor movement
"my appreciation for certain aspects of socialism does not mean I'm a socialist"
policy or practice based on the political and economic theory of socialism.
synonyms: leftism, welfarism; More
radicalism, progressivism, social democracy;
communism, Marxism, labor movement
"my appreciation for certain aspects of socialism does not mean I'm a socialist"
(in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.
cap·i·tal·ism
ˈkapədlˌizəm/
noun
noun: capitalism
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
synonyms: free enterprise, private enterprise, the free market; enterprise culture
"the capitalism of emerging nations"
How Slavery Led To Modern Capitalism
Bloomberg View | By Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman
Posted: 02/24/2014 10:38 am EST
Bloomberg View: When the New York City banker James Brown tallied his wealth in 1842, he had to look far below Wall Street to trace its origins. His investments in the American South exceeded $1.5 million, a quarter of which was directly bound up in the ownership of slave plantations.
Brown was among the world’s most powerful dealers in raw cotton, and his family’s firm, Brown Brothers & Co., served as one of the most important sources of capital and foreign exchange to the U.S. economy. Still, no small amount of his time was devoted to managing slaves from the study of his Leonard Street brownstone in Lower Manhattan.
Like the movements before, Sanders movement will live well beyond his campaign and should live well beyond what is likely his coming betrayal of the movement when he endorses Hillary Clinton and remains a member of the counter-revolutionary Democratic Party.
The June 10th Bernie Sanders interview was really telling, to start with Bernie states in the interview, that his father came from Poland, yet It is well known that anyone claiming Jewish identity has a right to return to a Palestine they’ve never seen, which is nuts in itself, they must only show the effort to return. Bernie did this and lived in Israel for a short time in the 60’s, if it was over 3 months he is automatically a citizen or Israeli national. That being said, Bernie Proclaimed he does not have dual citizenship and that he was American.
Ambiguous but good enough for me at the time. Then he answered the question of ‘if he knew of any dual citizens working in the Congress’ and he answered proclaiming, “I honestly don’t know but I have read that on the internet,” and there went all credibility I had for Bernie Sanders and any inside hope I fantasized of, from those working within the US government. You see I also understand that the intent of allegiance can be shown by the person’s statements or conduct. Protecting his Jewish brethren with dual citizenship in congress, tells me where his true loyalty is nested.
Bernie Sanders made a big show of denying he was an Israeli dual citizen in an interview with NPR’s Diane Rehm on June 10. Rather than ask him if he is a dual citizen, she stated it as a fact. Here’s the conversation as reported by Jared Sichel in the Jewish Journal:
Diane Rehm: Senator, you have dual citizenship with Israel.
Bernie Sanders: Well, no I do not have dual citizenship with Israel. I’m an American. I don’t know where that question came from. I am an American citizen, and I have visited Israel on a couple of occasions. No, I’m an American citizen, period.
Rehm: I understand from a list we have gotten that you were on that list.
Sanders: No.
Rehm: Forgive me if that is—
Sanders: That’s some of the nonsense that goes on in the internet. But that is absolutely not true.
Rehm: Interesting. Are there members of Congress who do have dual citizenship or is that part of the fable?
Sanders: – I honestly don’t know but I have read that on the internet. You know, my dad came to this country from Poland at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket. He loved this country. I am, you know, I got offended a little bit by that comment, and I know it’s been on the internet. I am obviously an American citizen and I do not have any dual citizenship. [The Interview click thru;]
A person who comes to Israel on an Oleh (immigrant) visa or changes to the status of Oleh while in Israel automatically acquires Israeli citizenship unless he files a declaration refusing it within three months of his arrival or change of status. In the latter case, he becomes a permanent resident, non-citizen. Otherwise, he automatically acquires Israeli citizenship at the end of the three months, retroactive to the date of arrival in Israel or change of status. It is also possible to waive the three month waiting period, but that is not recommended. Read further at U.S. Israeli Citizenship
– THE LIST OF DUAL CITIZENS –
OBAMA ADMINISTRATION [Current] [9]
Jack Lew – Chief of Staff to the President
David Plouffe – Senior Advisor to the President
Danielle Borrin – Associate Director, Office of Public Engagement; Special Assistant to the Vice Preisdent
Gary Gensler – Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Dan Shapiro – Ambassador to Israel
Gene Sperling – Director National Economic Council
Mary Schapiro – Chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
Steven Simon – Head of Middle East/North Africa Desk at the National Security Council
Eric Lynn – Middle East Policy Advisor
PAST OBAMA ADMINISTRATION [13]
Rahm Emanuel (2009-2010) Chief of Staff to the President
David Axelrod (2009-2011) Senior Advisor to the President
Elena Kagan (2009-2010) Solicitor General of the United States
Peter Orszag (2009-2010) Director of the Office of Management and Budget
Lawrence Summers (’09-’11) Director National Economic Council
Mona Sutphen (2009-2011) Deputy White House Chief of Staff
James B. Steinberg (’09-’11 ) Deputy Secretary of State
Dennis Ross (2009-2011 ) Special Assistant to the President, Senior Director for the Central Region to the Secretary of State
Ronald Klain (2009-2011) Chief of Staff to the Vice President
Jared Bernstein (2009-2011) Chief Economist and Economic Policy Advisor to the Vice President
Susan Sher (2009-2011) Chief of Staff to the First Lady
Lee Feinstein (2009) Campaign Foreign Policy Advisor
Mara Rudman (2009) Foreign Policy Advisor Sources: White House
112 CONGRESS (current)
THE US SENATE [13]
Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Benjamin Cardin (D-MD)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Al Franken (D-MN)
Herb Kohl (D-WI)
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Joseph Lieberman (Independent-CT)
Carl Levin (D-MI)
Bernard Sanders (Independent-VT)
Charles Schumer (D-NY)
Ron Wyden (D-OR)
Michael Bennet (D-CO)
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES [27]
Gary Ackerman (D-NY)
Shelley Berkley (D-NV)
Howard Berman (D-CA)
Eric Cantor (R-VA)
David Cicilline (D-RI)
Stephen Cohen (D-TN)
Susan Davis (D-CA)
Ted Deutch (D-FL)
Eliot Engel (D-NY)
Bob Filner (D-CA)
Barney Frank (D-MA)
Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ)
Jane Harman (D-CA)
Steve Israel (D-NY)
Sander Levin (D-MI)
Nita Lowey (D-NY)
Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)
Jared Polis (D-CO)
Steve Rothman (D-NJ)
Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
Allyson Schwartz (D-PA)
Adam Schiff (D-CA)
Brad Sherman (D-CA)
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)
Henry Waxman (D-CA)
Anthony Weiner (D-NY)
John Yarmuth (D-KY)
Section 101(22) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) states that “the term ‘national of the United States’ means a citizen of the United States, or a person who, though not a citizen of the United States, owes permanent allegiance to the United States.” Therefore, U.S. citizens are also U.S. nationals. Non-citizen nationality status refers only individuals who were born either in American Samoa or on Swains Island to parents who are not citizens of the United States. The concept of dual nationality means that a person is a national of two countries at the same time. Each country has its own nationality laws based on its own policy. Persons may have dual nationality by automatic operation of different laws rather than by choice. For example, a child born in a foreign country to U.S. national parents may be both a U.S. national and a national of the country of birth.
A U.S. national may acquire foreign nationality by marriage, or a person naturalized as a U.S. national may not lose the nationality of the country of birth. U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one nationality or another. Also, a person who is automatically granted another nationality does not risk losing U.S. nationality. However, a person who acquires a foreign nationality by applying for it may lose U.S. nationality. In order to lose U.S. nationality, the law requires that the person must apply for the foreign nationality voluntarily, by free choice, and with the intention to give up U.S. nationality.
Intent can be shown by the person’s statements or conduct. The U.S. Government recognizes that dual nationality exists but does not encourage it as a matter of policy because of the problems it may cause. Claims of other countries on dual national U.S. nationals may conflict with U.S. law, and dual nationality may limit U.S. Government efforts to assist nationals abroad. The country where a dual national is located generally has a stronger claim to that person’s allegiance.
However, dual nationals owe allegiance to both the United States and the foreign country. They are required to obey the laws of both countries. Either country has the right to enforce its laws, particularly if the person later travels there. Most U.S. nationals, including dual nationals, must use a U.S. passport to enter and leave the United States. Dual nationals may also be required by the foreign country to use its passport to enter and leave that country. Use of the foreign passport does not endanger U.S. nationality. Most countries permit a person to renounce or otherwise lose nationality.
Information on losing foreign nationality can be obtained from the foreign country’s embassy and consulates in the United States. Americans can renounce U.S. nationality in the proper form at U.S. embassies and consulates abroad.
Cynthia McKinney Explains the Power Israel Has Over the U.S. Government That Bernie Sanders “honestly” fails to see.
Published on Sep 14, 2013
September 11, 2013 In New York City, Anthony Antonello spoke with former Congress Woman Cynthia McKinney about Israel and the power they wield over the United States Government.
Like the movements before, Sanders movement will live well beyond his campaign and should live well beyond what is likely his coming betrayal of the movement when he endorses Hillary Clinton and remains a member of the counter-revolutionary Democratic Party.
‘Tis the season once again. You should know it well by now: a “progressive” Democrat running in the primaries for president of the United States. We’ve seen it all before, from Jesse Jackson to Dennis Kucinich, left-leaning voters have time-and-again been asked to support candidates that are working to transform the corrupt and war-hungry Democratic Party from within. And each and every time this strategy has failed — not only to elect a progressive Democrat into the White House, but to alter the party that offer themselves up as a lighter shade of neo-con.
This time around that “progressive” Democrat is self-proclaimed “socialist” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Even though it’s early in the primary push, Bernie is hitting the trail, spreading a message of hope for working class people that he’s there to fight for their cause. He wants to create new jobs, challenge Wall Street crooks and take on the corporate control of our political quagmire. These are fine positions to take, but what Bernie isn’t about to tell you is that in order to radically alter the system in favor of workers, the Democrats must be abandoned altogether — for it’s their neoliberal policies, from Bill Clinton on down, that exacerbated the sell-out of the American workforce.
Sure, Bernie will talk tough when it comes to these failed policies. He’ll criticize fast tracked free-trade agreements and corporate plutocracy, but his hardy embrace of the Democrats continues to undermine his own criticisms. It’s as if Bernie got a job at a coal mining outfit in hopes of stopping the melting of ice caps in the Arctic. His bid for the White House is simply a dead end and a waste of scarce resources. Progressives would be better off working to reinvigorate the antiwar movement and Occupy than spending time and money on Bernie’s hollow campaign.
Even so, while Bernie may come across as sincere about class politics, make no mistake, he’s is a militarist that isn’t about to challenge U.S. supremacy. He supported the ugly war on Kosovo, the invasion of Afghanistan, funding for the endless Iraq disaster as well as the losing and misguided War on Terror. He voted in favor of Clinton’s 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which expanded the federal death penalty and acted as the precursor to the PATRIOT Act.
Chris Hedges on Bernie Sanders
As for Israel, Bernie has been a hawkish advocate that would never halt the $3 billion the U.S. government sends to the country every year. Last summer he backed Israel’s murderous bombing of Gaza. He’s even had some nasty words about Palestine’s right to resist. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that several former members of Bernie’s staff have also been employed by AIPAC, including Israel apologists David Sirota and Joel Barkin. His is a disgusting record. Want to change in the U.S.’s meddling in the Middle East? Bernie isn’t your guy.
If the Senator’s support for ongoing war and the occupation of Palestine don’t make you squeamish, then you may as well stop reading. I doubt you’ll grasp the importance of challenging empire by refusing to cast a vote for a party that pumps fuel into the war machine’s tank. Such an effort requires a willingness to step out on the Democrats, especially at the national level, where they have waged war on workers at home and employed a blood-thirsty foreign policy abroad.
The Bernie Sanders campaign, while a slight breath of fresh air in the national debate on class issues, is a complete loser in terms of impact. There’s no sign he’ll break from the Democrats and challenge both parties down the road. Bernie doesn’t oppose U.S. power, nor does his campaign do a single thing to build independent politics in the country, perhaps the last chance to salvage any democracy we may have left. In the end, Bernie Sanders will play the lesser-evil card and plea for us all to hold our noses and vote for Hillary Clinton, who guarantees a future of more war and economic inequality.
That’s why Bernie’s is not a bandwagon I’ll be jumping on anytime soon.
JOSHUA FRANK is managing editor of CounterPunch. He is author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland and Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, both published by AK Press. He can be reached at brickburner@gmail.com. You can follow him on Twitter@brickburner.
Like the movements before, Sanders movement will live well beyond his campaign and should live well beyond what is likely his coming betrayal of the movement when he endorses Hillary Clinton and remains a member of the counter-revolutionary Democratic Party.
How can there be any good cops, when they’re labeled whistle blowers and forced to be silent. We should also be questioning local legislatures the Media’s code of silence.
It’s all a farce, the local legislatures policing for profit policies directing these corporate statute enforcers, need be held accountable with all law breakers.
#NYPDBlue12 SUING the NYPD over POLICE QUOTAS w Graham Weatherspoon
From the Press Release,, JUSTICE LEAGUE NYC STANDS IN SOLIDARITY WITH “NYPD BLUE 12” IN THEIR FIGHT AGAINST RACIALLY BIASED POLICING NEW YORK, NY: Justice League NYC and New York Police Department officer/whistle-blower featured in New York Times Magazine cover story, Edwin Raymond, and their attorneys will host a press conference this Tuesday, March 1st to discuss the instances of bias that led to the class action lawsuit by officers of color. The case brings in question the continued use of arrest and ticket quota directives used predominantly in communities of color. Justice League NYC is an initiative conceived to advocate for criminal justice reform and police accountability. These instances of profiling via quotas from New York, to Baltimore to Ferguson, Missouri, illuminate the need for immediate reform. Justice League NYC is taking a stance with the brave officers who recognized the practice of bias within the NYPD and had the fortitude and bravery to stand against it. These officers appear to be the victims of retaliation for their efforts.
“If you snitch, your career is done. Nobody’s going to work with you.”
“Good” Cops Under Attack
A growing number of “Good” Cops have been retaliated against and terminated, forced out of law enforcement, issued dishonorable discharges, after reporting police misconduct.
Breaking the Blue Wall: One Man’s War Against Police Corruption , by Justin Hopson
During his first few days as a rookie New Jersey State Trooper, Justin Hopson witnessed an unlawful arrest and false report made by his training officer. When he refused to testify in support the illegal arrest, his life veered into a dangerous journey of hazing and harassment.
He uncovered evidence of a secret society within the State Police known as the “Lords of Discipline” whose mission it was to keep fellow troopers in line.
Trooper Hopson blew the whistle on the Lords of Discipline, which sparked the largest internal investigation in State Police history.
This book is a story of fear, courage, and integrity, showing how Justin Hopson persisted with his mission of exposing police corruption. Through many unexpected twists of fate, Hopson tells his story with a strong message that one committed individual can make a successful stand against social forces of fear and intimidation. ABC News, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Star-Ledger, and other media outlets have interviewed Mr. Hopson about police corruption.
Biography
Justin Hopson born 1973 in New Jersey, is an award winning author, licensed private investigator, and retired New Jersey State Trooper. Justin holds a Master of Arts degree in management and has been certified as a New Jersey State Police Instructor and American Heart Association Healthcare Provider.
In 2009, Justin was appointed to the Charleston County Alcohol and Drug Abuse Advisory Board and in 2010 became a member of the South Carolina Association of Legal Investigators.
In August 2012, he was appointed Co-Chair of the National Whistleblower Day Committee. In July 2013, Mr.Hopson was selected and appointed to the State Advisory Committee by Governor Nikki Haley. Justin Hopson has been interviewed by ABC News, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Star-Ledger, and 20/20 concerning police corruption.
Justin has successfully testified in federal, state, and municipal court proceedings. His “Test of Integrity” Presentation and award winning book have been featured at universities, business conferences, high schools, and churches. He reminds audiences that, “I was an ordinary cop with an extraordinary cause. My mission is tounearth corruption and shine a light on integrity because it seems like integrity these days has become the exception rather than the rule.”
Justin is married and has two daughters. His family resides in South Carolina.
Publisher: WestBow Press (December 28, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 144970378X
ISBN-13: 978-1449703783
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Good NYPD Cops Reveal Their Department Have Arrest Quotas Target Blacks, Latinos Gays
Published on Apr 2, 2016
10 NYPD cops have taken a stand against arrest quotas. The cops have filed a law suit against the NYPD for discrimination and retaliation for reporting on the quotas.(Source:NBC 4 New York)
Retaliation Against “Good” Cops reporting “Bad” Cops is a Threat to Public Safety
About a quarter of the sample told us that whistle blowing is not worth it, and more than two thirds reported that police officers were likely to be given a “cold shoulder” by fellow officers if they reported incidents of misconduct. Even when it came to reporting serious criminal violations, a surprising 6 in 10 report that police officers did not always report serious criminal violations involving abuse of authority by fellow officers.
“The pervasiveness of the code of silence is itself alarming.” … One policeman who admits to corrupt and brutal practices, former NYPD officer Bernard Cawley, testified that he never feared another officer would turn him in because there was a “Blue Wall of Silence. Cops don’t tell on cops….[I]f a cop decided to tell on me, his career’s ruined….[H]e’s going to be labeled as a rat.”
Other officers who testified concurred with Cawley, including one who kept his identity hidden during the Mollen Commission hearings precisely because of the code, and who stated that officers first learn of the code in the Police Academy, with instructors telling them never to be a “rat.” He explained, “[S]ee, we’re all blue…we have to protect each other no matter what.”
“When an officer finally gets fed up and comes forward to speak the truth, that will mark the end of his or her police career. The police profession will not tolerate it, and civilian authorities will close their eyes when the retaliatory machinery comes down on the officer.”
Or Donna Watts. You might have seen her in the viral dashcam video pulling over at gunpoint an off-duty cop who was flying down the interstate at 120+ mph. After that incident, she was relentlessly harassed by other officers until she finally quit.
Houston Police Officer Paulino Zavala was arrested for money laundering and placed on administrative leave, after reporting discrimination in HPD. The grand jury, however, refused to indict Zavala on these charges; in fact, the foreman advised the District Attorney’s office that the grand jury was convinced that HPD had attempted to Zavala. HPD nevertheless continued Zavala’s administrative leave for an additional eight months after the grand jury returned a “no bill,” ) Officer Zavala attorney stated that Zavala was retaliated against after reporting discrimination and “that all officers know that breaking the code is dangerous.
The son of two NYPD cops, Joseph Crystal was put in charge of his police academy cadet class on day one.
“Being a cop was all I ever wanted to do,” Crystal said in an email interview with Photography is Not a Crime. “A dream come true.”
In November 2012, Detective Crystal found a dead rat placed under his car’s windshield wiper.
Three months earlier, Crystal came forward and told prosecutors he had observed a fellow officer brutally beating a man who had already been detained.
Crystal resigned from the Baltimore police force last August after two years of harassment from fellow officers and his own supervisors.
During an October 2011 arrest, officers chased a man suspected of carrying drugs and found him after he kicked in the back door of a woman’s house to hide. The woman called the police, and her boyfriend, an off-duty officer named Anthony Williams. After the police had already apprehended the suspect and put him in a van, the police drove the suspect back to the house when Williams arrived. The suspect was then dragged back into the house.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘What the hell?’” Crystal said. “I was baffled…I can hear the assault, I hear the banging. I hear the guy hit the floor. A couple minutes later, they bring the guy out, his shirt’s ripped, he’s having trouble standing. Later on, I found out his ankle was broken. It was obvious not just to any cop but to any person that saw it what had just transpired.”
When Crystal called his sergeant and explained what happened, the sergeant told Crystal, “If you snitch, your career is done. Nobody’s going to work with you.”
That sergeant was correct. Crystal met with prosecutors, and just days later a sergeant called him “a snitch” and left a hand-drawn picture of a rat and cheese on his desk.
The officers in Crystal’s unit refused to ride with him, calling him a rat and a snitch to his face. On the streets when Crystal called for backup, twice nobody showed up. On one occasion Crystal’s supervisor called his cellphone and “gave him a direct order to return back to the district and that he would not be given backup.”
Crystal was also demoted from chasing drug kingpins and gun traffickers and working with the FBI. Instead, his security clearance was revoked, he was put on a midnight-shift burglary detail, and he was eventually told to clean out his office without any instruction of where to go. The day after Thanksgiving 2012, Crystal and his wife returned home to find a dead rat on the windshield of his car.
Crystal testified anyway, and Williams was convicted of assault and obstruction of justice for the incident. He was sentenced only to 45 days in jail even after telling the court he’d do it all over again. Williams no longer works for the Baltimore police department. A year and a half later, in June 2014, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts finally created a team of four investigators from outside Baltimore to conduct an investigation into who put the dead rat on Crystal’s car.
The abuse of Crystal continued unabated, as someone created a fake Twitter account in Crystal’s name and tweeted to reporters that he cheated on his wife. To combat a potential lawsuit, BPD initiated an investigation of Crystal using a police car to drive his wife home, and tried to convice Crystal to sign an agreement promising not to sue or speak out against the BPD in exchange for dropping their investigation. Crystal refused and resigned from the Baltimore Police Department in September.
On Dec. 22, he filed suit against Batts, his former supervisor Sgt. Robert Amador, and the BPD for $2.5 million. Crystal’s lawsuit contains pages worth of additional accounts of BPD’s attempted cover-ups and harassment of Crystal for telling the truth.
The story of Joe Crystal is bigger than Crystal himself, or even the Baltimore Police Department.
The cover-up of crimes committed by police officers and banishment of officers with the integrity to stand up against criminal behavior has led to police departments across the country where every officer is viewed as a criminal or an accomplice. Crystal’s story is far from unique, and the weight of the multiple accounts of police cover-ups stacked together has created an atmosphere of extreme distrust of American law enforcement.
In Arkansas, a police officer was recently fired after reporting to his superiors that an “undercover” officer had sex with a prostitute and then arrested her. Don Paul Bales, formerly a sergeant for the Fort Smith Police Department, is now suing the department to get his job back after being fired for supposedly breaking eight department rules, including not being truthful, giving false testimony, revealing confidential information, releasing a confidential report and not respecting his superiors.
Bales had received an affidavit and a photo exposing his fellow officer’s conduct, and was fired after reporting the misconduct to his superiors and consulting with a lawyer to protect himself.
The undercover officer, who claimed that his actions were “necessary to gather the proof needed to convict the person for violating the prostitution statute,” was not disciplined.
In October of 2009, Adrian Schoolcraft of the NYPD was involuntarily committed to a hospital by fellow officers, who handcuffed him tightly to a bed for six days and prevented him from using a telephone. Schoolcraft had recorded conversations inside his precinct that highlighted the department’s commitment to making arrests, regardless of whether they were justified, in order to fill a quota.
In one recording, precinct commander Steven Mauriello ordered a raid on a public street, saying, “Everybody goes. I don’t care. You’re on 120 Chauncey and they’re popping champagne? Yoke ’em. Put them through the system. They got bandanas on, arrest them. Everybody goes tonight.
They’re underage? Fuck it. Bring ‘em in. Lodge them. You’re going to go back out and process it later on.”
This policy had led to a nine-fold increase in illegal police “stop-and-frisks,” hundreds of arrests without charges or on trivial charges, and an effective 8:30 curfew in neighborhoods being targeted. Days after Schoolcraft spoke about his concerns with NYPD investigators, twelve high-ranking officers gained access to Schoolcraft’s apartment by telling his landlord that he was suicidal and then involuntarily committed Schoolcraft to a psychiatric ward of Jamaica Hospital. Schoolcraft was suspended from the force and stopped receiving a paycheck.
Schoolcraft sued the NYPD in August 2010 for $50 million in a lawsuit that has yet to be decided.
“Before I came forward I had never heard of any other officers coming forward to report crimes,” said Joe Crystal. “After I left the police department I had a group of police officers from Long Beach, California who contacted me to give support. They had been through something very similar in their department which the media there had called Lobstergate. Our stories had a lot of similarities. The thing that shocked me the most was Anthony Batts (Baltimore City Police Commissioner) was the Chief of Police there during that incident as well. This shocked me more than words can describe. The officers from Long Beach have been so supportive and I am so grateful they have reached out to me. When I was a kid my parents drove home what being a good cop meant and what the badge meant. My parents always said ‘Being a cop is not a right it’s a privilege.’ My mom always said as a cop I would face hard choices but to never compromise my integrity. I believe a large percentage of cops are great and do the right thing. I think if cops do not come forward it is because they are scared. There was recently a video posted in the media of a Baltimore City Police Officer beating a man at a bus stop in front of two other officers. The two officers did not stop the assault. In fact a female citizen had to get between the officer and the male citizen. The two officers did nothing but watch. I can not speak for the officers personally but I believe they were scared to act and scared of what would happen if they spoke up.”
In 1971, after testifying that fellow NYPD officers were involved in a wide-scale operation of shaking down drug dealers and pocketing millions of dollars, Frank Serpico was shot in the face during a drug bust in a Brooklyn apartment. His fellow officers provided him with no back-up and left him there to die. An elderly man in the building, not the other cops, called 911 to send an ambulance. The officers that left Serpico to die were later awarded medals for saving his life.
Forty years later, Serpico still gets hate mail from active and retired police officers. Last October, Serpico spoke out on police culture and the steps needed to make a change. The whole piece is worth a read, but a few selected excerpts are posted below.
Law enforcement agencies need to eliminate those who use and abuse the power of the law as they see fit. As I said to the Knapp Commission 43 years ago, we must create an atmosphere where the crooked cop fears the honest cop, and not the other way around. An honest cop should be able to speak out against unjust or illegal behavior by fellow officers without fear of ridicule or reprisals. Those that speak out should be rewarded and respected by their superiors, not punished.
Every time I speak out on topics of police corruption and brutality, there are inevitably critics who say that I am out of touch and that I am old enough to be the grandfather of many of the cops who are currently on the force. But I’ve kept up the struggle, working with lamp lighters to provide them with encouragement and guidance; serving as an expert witness to describe the tactics that police bureaucracies use to wear them down psychologically; testifying in support of independent boards; developing educational guidance to young minority citizens on how to respond to police officers; working with the American Civil Liberties Union to expose the abuses of stun-gun technology in prisons; and lecturing in more high schools, colleges and reform schools than I can remember. A little over a decade ago, when I was a presenter at the Top Cops Award event hosted by TV host John Walsh, several police officers came up to me, hugged me and then whispered in my ear, ‘I gotta talk to you.’
The sum total of all that experience can be encapsulated in a few simple rules for the future:
Strengthen the selection process and psychological screening process for police recruits. Police departments are simply a microcosm of the greater society. If your screening standards encourage corrupt and forceful tendencies, you will end up with a larger concentration of these types of individuals;
Provide ongoing, examples-based training and simulations.Not only telling but showing police officers how they are expected to behave and react is critical;
Require community involvement from police officers so they know the districts and the individuals they are policing. This will encourage empathy and understanding;
Enforce the laws against everyone, including police officers. When police officers do wrong, use those individuals as examples of what not to do – so that others know that this behavior will not be tolerated. And tell the police unions and detective endowment associations they need to keep their noses out of the justice system;
Support the good guys. Honest cops who tell the truth and behave in exemplary fashion should be honored, promoted and held up as strong positive examples of what it means to be a cop;
Last but not least, police cannot police themselves. Develop permanent, independent boards to review incidents of police corruption and brutality—and then fund them well and support them publicly. Only this can change a culture that has existed since the beginnings of the modern police department.
For the burgeoning police reform movement throughout the country, the first action needed is protection for good cops who blow the whistle, or light the lamp, as Frank Serpico describes it.
As Serpico once said, “A policeman’s first obligation is to be responsible to the needs of the community he serves. The problem is that the atmosphere does not yet exist in which an honest police officer can act without fear of ridicule or reprisal from fellow officers. We must create an atmosphere in which the honest officer fears the dishonest officer, and not the other way around.”
After his recent experience, Joe Crystal expressed the same need for protection of the officers who want to do good.
“I believe police departments need solid leadership and leaders at the top that have the same integrity that they want their officers to have,” Crystal told PINAC. “I believe all police departments need to have policies for whistleblowers and their respective local government should consider making legislature for this as well. Officers need to know they will be protected and they need to know that the departments have true integrity.
Reform can only happen if the police departments are serious about supporting good cops and getting rid of cops that break the law.”
Change must start with people that want reform. For those that concur with the ideas in this article, now is the time to take action. Find and support the people in your community who want to clean up law enforcement and will back up their talk by running for mayor or city council.
Share this story with those unsure as to why people are protesting the police. And please use your words only to encourage peaceful discourse.
For those who support the police and view this story from the officers’ side, yes there are criminals that police must interact with on a daily basis. But to treat suspects as guilty until proven innocent is to look at the world as if every person is a scumbag who deserves to be treated as such. The job of police is to create a safer world, but viewing the general public as dangerous criminals creates an environment that is unsafe for everyone, police officers included. To the people out there who would chant, “We support the blue!” – support yourselves with self-respect, and kindly extend that same respect to everyone in the community.
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Real War on Cops Continues, 2 Officers Attacked by Dept for Exposing Fellow Cops’ Corruption
On April 25, 2014, Officer Worden responded to a call at a downtown Wal-Mart. Officer Nicholas Smith and his supervisor, Sgt. Fred Mears, were already on the scene. Upon his arrival Worden witnessed an argument between Smith and a juvenile suspect, who was handcuffed in the back of a squad car.
Sgt. Mears told Worden to unshackle the teenager. Worden did as instructed, then Officer Smith removed his badge and gun belt in an effort to provoke a fight. Rather than taking charge of his subordinate, Sgt. Mears actually encouraged him to escalate the situation in the apparent hope of punishing the mouthy teenager for “contempt of cop.” As the only practicing adult on the scene, Officer Worden moved to prevent what could have been a vicious episode of “street justice” by handcuffing the teen and putting him back in the cruiser. He then reported the incident to his superior, Sgt. Scoggins.
“They did exactly what every citizen of Dallas wants their police officers to do,” attorney Chris Livingston, who represents the whistleblowers, commented to the Dallas Morning News. “They said `This needs to be investigated because it’s wrong.’”
Mears and Smith each admitted their actions and were given administrative punishments. Within a few months, similar treatment was handed out to Scoggins and Worden as well – but in their case, it was done for the purpose of retaliation, not legitimate disciplinary action.
In September 2014, reported Dallas’s CBS affiliate, Scoggins and Worden responded to a “shots fired” report. Following a vehicular pursuit the officers cornered the suspect, who was still armed and refused commands to keep his hands raised. Instead of shooting and killing the suspect, the officers took him to the ground and handcuffed him.
Rather than being commended for apprehending an armed suspect without killing or injuring him, Scoggins and Worden were accused of excessive force. According to the lawsuit, Worden was placed on administrative leave and then given a punitive transfer to a less desirable assignment. In the case of Sergeant Scoggins, the Internal Affairs department recommended a demotion. The officers appealed the disciplinary recommendation to Chief David Brown, who overturned that finding and restored them to their previous duty assignments. The damage to the officers’ reputations on the force had already been done, however, and a message had been sent to other potential whistleblowers.
“Officers are being told, `You better not report it because, if you do, we’re going to punish you for it,’” comments Livingston.
Richard Todd, president of the Dallas Fraternal Order of Police, denies that the complaint was an act of retaliation by Sergeant Mears for reporting the incident in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Speaking on Mears’ behalf, Todd said that the officer “recognized that his behavior that day was wrong” while insisting that he “wouldn’t retaliate against the officers who reported it.”
However, according to the whistleblower suit, when Mears heard that Worden had been placed on administrative leave, he “celebrated … with a fist pump in front of at least two other sergeants.”
Assuming that allegation is true, Worden’s behavior says a great deal about what passes for his character. Something very different can be learned about Scoggins’ character from a commendation he recently received.
Unlike most police officers, Scoggins has actually faced potentially deadly situations in the field. Like a growing number of law enforcement whistleblowers, he can testify of the professional perils posed by the real “war on police” – the ever-escalating campaign within law enforcement to stifle and punish conscientious officers who are unwilling to countenance corruption and abuse behind the Blue Wall.
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Breaking The Code of Silence – Former HPD Officer Katherine Swilley a Victim of Speaking Out
Houston Police Department
Houston Forward Times 10 September 2013 written by Jeffrey L. Boney
“You have the right to remain silent!”
This is the beginning phrase from the warning a criminal suspect usually hears when they are being read their Miranda rights from a member of law enforcement, and prior to them saying anything that could harm them in any way and lead to a self-incriminating result.
For many current and former Houston Police Department (HPD) officers, many believe that they have had to work in an environment where they have been the victim of a work environment built upon a foundation of retaliation and an unwritten “code of silence” that has proven problematic for them.
HPD RETALIATION RULING
For the second time in one year, a federal jury has determined that the Houston Police Department (HPD) retaliated against one of their own.
After more than three weeks of testimony and jury deliberation, HPD Officer Christopher Zamora was awarded $150,000 for compensatory damages which include emotional distress and damage to his professional reputation and standing in the law enforcement community.
On December 2012, another federal jury also ruled in favor of Officer Zamora against HPD for the same allegations, but a U.S. Supreme Court ruling necessitated a new trial.
Officer Zamora is the son of a retired HPD Lieutenant who, along with 23 other Hispanic police officers, filed a lawsuit alleging discrimination within HPD against Hispanics in the promotions process.
According to the jury ruling, Officer Chris Zamora, who was not involved in the original case, was subjected to a hostile work environment and labeled “UNTRUTHFUL” by the HPD Internal Affairs Division and HPD command staff. Meanwhile, during the five-year pendency of the federal lawsuit against HPD, Officer Chris Zamora received the 2008 South Patrol Officer of the Year Award within HPD and was also named Officer of the Year by “The 100 Club,” a popular non-profit organization that supports families of officers killed in the line of duty.
“I am proud that Officer Chris Zamora’s name has finally been cleared,” said Kim Ogg, Zamora’s attorney. “Chris Zamora was wrongfully branded a ‘liar’ when his father and he broke the “code of silence” by speaking out against must change and the ‘good old boy’ system of turning a blind eye to wrongdoing within must stop now.”
BLUE CODE OF SILENCE
The Blue Code of Silence is an unwritten rule among police officers in the U.S. not to report on the errors, misconducts or crimes of one of their fellow officers. According to the unwritten code, if an officer is questioned about an incident of misconduct involving another officer, the officer being questioned will claim to be unaware of another officer’s wrongdoing.
The term “whistleblower” comes to mind, when being used to describe someone who breaks the unwritten blue code, similar to a referee blowing their whistle to indicate an illegal or foul play. Federal laws strongly prohibit officer misconduct, including officers who follow the blue code by neglecting to report any officer who is participating in corruption. If an officer is in violation of any of the officer misconduct federal laws, only the federal government can issue a suit. The police department is only responsible for preventing corruption among officers.
If an officer is convicted, they may be forced to pay high fines or be imprisoned. To be convicted, however, the plaintiffs must prove that the officer was following the blue code or was participating in negligent and unlawful conduct. It is often hard to convict an officer of following the blue code or other forms of corruption because officers are protected by defense of immunity, which is an exemption from penalties and burdens that the law generally places on regular citizens.
Many officers fail to challenge the blue code, because doing so could mean they are challenging long-standing traditions and feelings of brotherhood within the law enforcement family.
“They are blackballing good police officers to cover up discrimination,” said long-time community activist Johnny Mata. “Instead of addressing claims of discrimination by police officers fairly, HPD retaliates and we have noticed a pattern of Internal Affairs Division sham investigations ultimately used to compromise the complaining officers’ credibility.”
One of the other primary reasons that officers choose to follow the blue code and keep their mouths shut, is because they fear facing the consequences that come as a result of it; such as being shunned, losing friends, losing back-up, receiving threats, having one’s own misconduct exposed and more importantly, being terminated.
Being shunned, receiving threats and being terminated are attributes of breaking the blue code of silence that former HPD Officer Katherine Swilley knows all too well.
KATHERINE SWILLEY
Katherine Swilley was a well-respected and dedicated HPD officer, who served the City of Houston for over 20+ years. Swilley received numerous “Outstanding” performance ratings and commendations from the public, her superiors and from two City of Houston Mayors. Her star was definitely on the rise.
Swilley was also an outstanding public citizen and public servant. Swilley started a nonprofit organization in 2000 called “Texas Cops & Kids”-Cops Giving Kids Quality Time…Not Jail Time. Using most of her own funds to support the program, Swilley started the juvenile delinquency prevention program based on the concerns she had with the lack of options that disadvantaged youth had in some of Houston’s poorest neighborhoods.
Swilley’s community service work led to City of Houston Mayor Bill White awarding her with the City of Houston’s prestigious Bravo Award in September 2005. Upon receipt of this prestigious award, she was both publicly and privately praised by her supervisors.
As a matter of fact, the City of Houston’s Bravo Award website still lists her accomplishment, as well as lists statements from her supervisors stating that “she is an incredible person with a true passion and mission in life.” In addition, the Mayor’s office extended a public “thank you” to Swilley “for being another example of what makes Houston Police Officers so special.”
After receiving the Bravo Award, Police Chief Harold Hurtt reassigned Swilley to the Public Affairs Division on special assignment in May 2006 to initiate his “Kids at Hope Program.” This is when Swilley says everything changed and went downhill for her at HPD.
In 2008, Swilley’s problems began when she reported what she believed was discrimination within the Houston Police Department’s Public Affairs Division, due to her supervisors’ lack of support for the inner city delinquency prevention program that served at risk youth. Swilley filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and she states that as soon as that happened, HPD opened up a criminal investigation on her for misappropriating funds with her non-profit; none of which was ever proven.
Swilley states that she was unlawfully retaliated against and terminated in March 2008, in direct connection to her filing an EEOC complaint, and after she revoked her willingness to be bound by a “Last-Chance” Compromise Waiver Agreement that required her to vacate and relinquish the rights guaranteed to her by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was unlawful retaliation.
Swilley states that officers who report police misconduct find themselves being investigated by HPD’s Internal Affairs Division on unsubstantiated allegations and bogus trumped-up charges of untruthfulness and/or insubordination, and required to take some sort of deal in order to save their jobs.
She states that these deals include taking mental fitness tests and/ or program for officers with discipline problems, forced medical retirements and/ or sign “Last Chance” compromise waiver agreements to accept a lesser discipline and drop any and all discrimination complaints they may have filed with EEOC. “I did nothing wrong, so there was no need for me to sign anything” says Swilley. “Officers who refuse to accept these deals are terminated and removed from their careers in law enforcement followed by erroneous dishonorable discharges based on bogus charges, ending their law enforcement careers.”
Swilley states that she never would have imagined in a million years being framed on a baseless criminal investigation, as well as being bullied and forced out of a police career that she loved and was committed to for over 20 years. According to HPD Internal Affairs documents received by the Houston Forward Times, Swilley is shown to have been terminated based on the initial charges of “UNTRUTHFULNESS,” which is the same thing that prompted the lawsuit from Officer Christopher Zamora. Other documents reveal irrefutable evidence that the ‘UNTRUTFULNESS” charges related to Swilley’s termination letter were proven untrue and that Swilley received an improper dishonorable discharge. There are affidavits and documents from HPD Internal Affairs investigators that clearly state that they have no evidence or proof that Swilley committed any crime or deserved to be terminated.
FEAR OF HER LIFE
Swilley admits that she has been in fear for her life and simply wants HPD to do the right thing.
“For two years, I was under a protective order and ordered not to discuss my case, while atrocious lies were spread throughout the police department and the community about me,” says Swilley. “I have had my integrity and credibility attacked and I have even been threatened with dead animals on my yard and threatening phone calls.”
Swilley says that she has been subjected to the harassment of having officers show up at her home, claiming that they were responding to alarm calls or calls for help at her home. She says that suspicious vehicles have been parked in front of her home; dead animals have been found in her yard, including a dead opossum in front of her home with its throat cut; her computer has been hacked; and random vehicles have driven by and fired shots in front of her home.
She goes further to say that since she filed complaints, the threats have escalated, with someone ringing her doorbell in the middle of the night and someone writing the words “F@#$ Y@%” with the “F” shaped as a Swastika sign on the sidewalk in front of her home.
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Houston Police Department
Officers are forced to choose between their jobs and their civil rights
In many police departments female and minority officers are under attack, retaliated against and targeted for termination, after reporting discriminatory practices in their department.
The Houston Police Department has a long standing systematic pattern and practice of retaliating against female and minority officers who break the code of silence to report discrimination or sexual harassment. These officers are targeted for termination, subjected to impromptu meetings with their supervisors, after filing EEOC complaints.
Although not supported by corroborating evidence they’re subjected to harassment with repeated Internal Affairs Investigations, followed by Loudermill (termination) Hearings based on unsubstantiated allegations, and trumped-up untruthfulness and/or insubordination charges. These allegations and charges are used as bargaining tools to intimidate and coerce officers forced under economic duress officers to take deals that, include some sort of discipline, to take mental fitness tests and/ or program for officers with discipline problems, and/ or sign “Last Chance” Compromise Waiver Agreements to accept a lesser discipline and drop any and all complaints they may have filed with EEOC in order to save their job.
The waiver agreements states officers will waive their rights to file lawsuits alleging a State or Federal cause of action, or in any other manner arising out of, or related to the IAD investigation.
Officers who agree to the terms of the “Last-Chance” Compromise Waiver Agreement to drop their discrimination complaints with EEOC were not terminated. While officers who refused to be bound by the terms in the “Last Change” Compromise Waivers Agreements are terminated and issued erroneous dishonorable discharges based on unsubstantiated discipline charges, ending officers’ law enforcement careers, shattering the lives of countless officers and their families.
Officers who make claims of discrimination are viewed as potential liability to the city. Despite that the Houston Police Department records reveal over 300 officers’ who have been cited more than once with either or both untruthfulness and insubordination charges, local news reports, report that the department has 296 active duty officers who HPD determined as having committed criminal activity.
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Houston Police Department
The Houston Police Department and its leaders have created a coercive and retaliatory culture, a Gestapo type police environment, where female and minority officers and even minority commanders are forced to work in an oppressed environment, afraid to speak out about police misconduct, because those who speak out are retaliated against; as in the words of former Chief Sam Nucha to Officer Sharp, a sexual harassment case, Chief Nucha stated “you will be subject to retaliation because it is your destiny; [for speaking up when improprieties are observed]”;or the opinion of 5th Circuit Judge Jerry Smith’s in Sharp v City of Houston, a sexual harassment case stated “During her (Sharp) participation in the Internal Affairs investigation she was subjected to retaliation by fellow officers for breaking the code of silence, a custom within HPD of punishing officers who complain of other officers misconduct or who truthfully corroborate allegations of misconduct. HPD has a policy, custom, or practice of enforcing the code of silence”; or as in the words of counsel Fred Keys , attorney for Plaintiff Officer Paulino Zavala, who was framed on a baseless criminal charge, after reporting discrimination, counsel Fred Keys , statedthat all officers know that breaking the code is dangerous,“when an employee comes forward with a whistle-blower type thing, no matter what it may be, the department [commanders and up] use every official mean within its power to make that guy’s life miserable. As a result, officers are very reluctant to come forward. Everybody knows that if you buck the department, they’re going to get you.”;or in the words Sam T. Alvarado, an arbitrator, who filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Complaint on behalf of 25 Hispanic officers. Mr. Alvarado stated that Spanish Speaking Officers did not raise any of the issues (discrimination) in the complaint earlier for fear of retaliation;or in EEOC’s findings that Sergeant Pete’s supervisor, Assistant Chief Dorothy Edwards orchestrated his discharged due to her belief that he was unnecessarily raising racial tension, after Sergeant Wilbert Pete reported discrimination; or in the words of a Houston City Council Member, who stated Swilley make the choice to be fire, if Swilley had listened to her attorney’s advice to drop her EEOC complaint, she would not have been fired.
The Houston Police Department Internal Affairs has an ongoing pattern and practice of retaliating against officers who report discrimination, or sexual harassment and operate under a code of silence in which officers retaliate against fellow officers who complained, speak out against others officers, or filed complaints or lawsuits. Since 1998 -2015, the City of Houston and the Houston Police Department has been held liable by EEOC and the Courts for retaliating against officers who reported discrimination and/ or sexual harassment. Between May 2005 and May 2010 approximately 100 officers reported discrimination, and or retaliation, including 31 sexual harassment complaints with HPD.
The latest case Zamora v City of Houston dated August 19, 2015, IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT, the Houston Police Department was once again been held liable in for retaliating against an Officer. Officer Zamora presented evidence that his supervisors’ awareness of his protected activity was particularly likely to cause retaliatory animus. Zamora’s expert testified that the Department operated under a “code of silence” in which officers would retaliate against those who complained, spoke out against others, or filed complaints or lawsuits.
01/24/2006 – A group of Hispanic police officers has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and Chief Harold Hurtt, alleging racial discrimination.
The Houston Police Department’s “Chicano Squad,” a highly decorated homicide investigative team, has been subjected to ethnic slurs, disparate pay and heavier workloads than their counterparts for more than 20 years, a job discrimination complaint alleges.
Twenty-three unnamed former and current members of the squad filed the complaint Nov. 29 against the city of Houston alleging that high-ranking homicide officers frequently have used such slurs to create an “atmosphere of inferiority, isolation and intimidation.”
“The most important thing they want is equity so future Hispanic officers do not have to face what they’ve had to face,” said Sam T. Alvarado, an arbitrator who filed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint. The Hispanic officers, who also belong to the Houston Police Organization of Spanish Speaking Officers, did not raise any of the issues earlier for fear of retaliation, Alvarado said.
The Chicano Squad, created 25 years ago to investigate crime in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, has recently been required to work extra hours to combat the city’s rise in violent crimes, Ferrell said. Squad members called in for additional duty were compensated either with overtime pay or time off, he said.
The Hispanic officers complain they rarely are allowed days off and are unable to prepare for promotional exams because of the heavy caseload. Non-Hispanic officers meanwhile are granted time off to study, Alvarado said. “The Chicano Squad has got a better average of closed cases than anybody,” he said. “National and State organizations have honored them, but not by the Houston Police Department.”
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HPD reform is needed
New hires and body cameras are not the only solutions for the Houston police department.
If Houston is going to hire new police officers, then City Hall has to find a way for them to bring a new attitude to policing. (Eric Kayne/For the Chronicle) Photo: Eric Kayne, Freelance
Something amazing has happened across the country ever since smart phones put a camcorder in every pocket: There’s been a sudden drop in the number of reported UFO sightings and a spike in accounts of police brutality. It isn’t as if the aliens have grown camera-shy or law enforcement officers took a turn for the worst. Our nation’s self-imposed surveillance state has only revealed what’s been there the whole time: no ET, too many cruel cops.
These videos don’t tell us anything that people didn’t already know through dry numbers or reporting. Still, there is something about the visceral image of officers tasing, tackling or even killing unarmed citizens that elicits a gut response beyond the written word.
For good, hard-working police officers, this creates a new atmosphere of hostility. Law-abiding citizens may take an antagonistic attitude toward routine policing, viewing every cop through the frame of the most recent video.
That constant scrutiny can be tough, but it is well-earned. Law enforcement officers have all the power – the guns, the badge, the governmental monopoly on violence. Our courts have granted police a wide discretion to use physical force in situations where other citizens would face prosecution under the law.
Because of this power, people should demand perfection.
Houston isn’t immune to the problems of overpowered police. HPD has developed the reputation of a department where police brutality goes unpunished. In 2013, the Texas Observer ran an award-winning, two-part article titled “Crimes Unpunished,” which documents routine problems of officers failing to do their jobs while getting off after unnecessarily resorting to violence.
“Out of 706 complaints about excessive force, HPD disciplined only 15 officers.
For 550 shootings, HPD disciplined none,” the Observer reported, documenting the statistics from 2007 through 2012. “The message is clear: Either Houston police almost never abuse their power, or they abuse it with impunity.”
These numbers should be troubling not only for civil rights advocates, but also for average Houston taxpayers who want to know that their police department is doing its job correctly. At their core, officers are supposed to serve as lookouts, life preservers and taxis: They either protect people around them, help people in need, or shuttle dangerous people into the criminal justice system. Now Houstonians are paying for inconsistent results.
In his campaign for mayor, state Rep. Sylvester Turner announced a plan Thursday to spend $85 million on 540 more police officers to fill the Houston Police Department‘s ranks (“Turner would expand police,” Page B1, Friday). This follows on Police ChiefCharles McClelland‘s request for $105 million to hire 1,200 new officers.
If Houston is going to hire new cops, then City Hall has to find a way for them to bring a new attitude to policing, as well.
Mayoral candidate Ben Hall, a former city attorney, has called for more body cameras to serve as a check on officers (“Hall plans permanent HPD body cameras,” Page B1, Aug. 12). Cameras are a right step, but they haven’t proven effective in preventing unnecessary violence from officers. After all, a dashboard camera didn’t stop a state trooper from threatening to shoot Sandra Bland with a Taser.
Technology can’t fix a broken soul. City Hall needs to impose upon any new recruits that their job first and foremost is to protect and serve the people, and allow the courts to dole out punishments. Houston will soon see a change in the mayor’s office, but a grander reform is needed.
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More Trouble for Hopkins Suspended APD officer incurs new sanctions
Jermaine Hopkins‘ arbitration hearing concerning his Oct. 2014 indefinite suspension (civil service parlance for “termination”) from the Austin Police Department is still a month away, but the exiled cop is already considering future sanctions. Last month, Hopkins received an email from Asst. Chief Brian Manley saying that APD was launching a new internal affairs investigation into his efforts to stand as witness in two separate criminal defense trials during the past three months.
According to Manley’s email, and confirmed by the accused, Hopkins was financially compensated $700 for time spent preparing for and testifying as an expert witness in Judge Nancy Hohengarten‘s county court during a March trial. Hopkins was also barred by Judge Brandy Mueller from serving as an expert witness in Caroline Callaway‘s DWI arrest trial last month (see “Woman Suing APD Beats DWI,” April 24). Manley’s email says Hopkins’ actions are in violation of APD Policies 949 and 935. Policy 949 pertains to secondary employment and bars officers from engaging in “any type of secondary employment which may bring the Department into disrepute or impair the operation and/or efficiency of the Department.” (It also requires those seeking secondary employment to receive approval from APD’s Real Time Crime Center, one’s chain of command, and APD’s Special Events Unit.) Policy 935, which covers court appearances, dictates that employees will notify their supervisors of any subpoenas or agreements they’ve made to testify in court, and mandates that officers will not receive compensation for testimony as an expert witness without the approval of Chief Art Acevedo or a designee.
At this point it’s tough to fit Hopkins’ disciplinary backstory into a relatively concise paragraph (full story available via “House Arrest,” Dec. 19, 2014). In short, the Bay Area native and Army veteran-turned-APD cop responded so proactively to an eight-day suspension for his handling of the fallout from a May 2013 arrest – questioning the legality of each and every disciplinary decision levied upon him with vigor, rigidity, and thorough record-keeping – that he was eventually assigned to home duty (and told not to leave his house while on duty) for two stints of time totaling more than one calendar year.
He finally lost his job, last October, for a series of infractions including insubordination, unreasonable disruption, and acts bringing discredit upon the department – not surprisingly for attempting to testify as an expert witness at a criminal trial. Since then, he’s filed multiple charges of discrimination against the city of Austin for harm suffered since last June, and, among other actions, has formally requested that District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg remove herself from investigating any of his complaints because she identified Chief Acevedo as a “friend” when she was popped for a DWI in the spring of 2013. Last Monday, May 18, in the wake of this new IA investigation, Hopkins filed his latest complaint of departmental retaliation with the Texas Workforce Commission’s Civil Rights & Discrimination division.
The news that he’s the subject of another internal affairs investigation – for his two latest efforts to serve as an expert witness – particularly concerns Hopkins, since he believes he’s no longer actually employed by the Austin Police Department. That designation ended on Oct. 31, 2014, when he received his notice of indefinite suspension, handed his badge in, and stopped receiving paychecks, he says. He explained to the Chronicle that eight months will have passed between his suspension and subsequent arbitration hearing, and that he has to make money to sustain himself. He added that he believes the department’s expectation that he read departmental emails is in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which sets regulations with respect to minimum wage.
“This memo here says that I’ve engaged in work off-duty, but they’re actually imposing the work on me by sending me work to my personal email,” he said. “They want me to read these documents, and I’m not getting paid for that.”
Public information officers and department administrators from APD and the city’s Civil Service Commission were not able to explain the bureaucratic details, and a city attorney did not respond to requests for comment (nor did Asst. Chief Manley), but Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday told the Chronicle that the discrepancy boils down to the stipulation that those appealing indefinite suspensions are still subject to APD’s rules and standards of civil service. (He added that the APA supports Hopkins’ right to appeal.) In any event, it’s likely that any disciplinary action the department would try to levy upon Hopkins in the wake of the new IA investigation would only be considered if he wins his arbitration hearing in June. According to Chapter 143 of the Texas Local Government Code, department heads are limited to the original written statement and charges on the officer’s disciplinary memo, which may not be amended. Any disciplinary actions must be part of another hearing.
Hopkins’ arbitration hearing is currently set to begin June 15. Examiner Tom Cipolla will preside over the hearing. Should Hopkins emerge victorious, it’s quite possible that he’ll face another round of discipline as soon as he’s reinstated.
Hello All,
My name is Raymond Carnation. I along with two other white Philadelphia Police Officer that opposed racism against African Americans in the Philadelphia Police Department was retaliated against and fired 1999. This occurred under the command of William Colarulo now a Chief Inspector in the Philadelphia Police department. In May of 2008 we won our Precedential racism case and the jury awarded us $10 Million Dollars.
The case is Myrna Moore vs. The City Of Philadelphia NOS. 03-1465 and NOS. 03-1473. Feel free to Google the case and my name for a better understanding.
We are now experiencing extreme retaliation from this bias Federal Judge Mary A. McLaughlin, and still the City of Philadelphia after the verdict decision. This is now the second time we have been victimized by government agencies, the City of Philadelphia and now the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Court. They are trying to keep a tight lid on the police racism problem in Philadelphia. I believe the media as well as the public should be aware of this problem and scandal in Philadelphia. We are seeking national attention on this matter and would like to see Oprah, Dateline, or 20/20 take a interest.
I hope you and your staff will give us the opportunity and privilege to tell our story. Together we will be able to properly address police racism, the cover up, and the disturbing behavior of Federal Judge Mary A. McLaughlin. Below are article written on our case. Thank you so much for your time and concern. I hope to hear from you in the near future.
Warmest Regards,
Raymond Carnation
around4life@aol.com
cell# (267) 231-8143
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Jackson Mississippi Troopers
JACKSON — Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson says some black troopers have been fired and others reassigned in retaliation for filing a federal complaint against the Mississippi Department of Public Safety.
The NAACP filed a complaint on behalf of the state’s 200 black troopers earlier this year with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
In July, the EEOC said it found evidence of discrimination and forwarded those findings to the U.S. Justice Department.
Johnson said Monday a retaliation complaint was filed last week with the EEOC.
“We have now reports of three officers who have been terminated. We have reports of officers being reassigned away from their home bases. Some officers have to drive three hours just to report in to work, and that results in an economic hardship,” Johnson said.
During a news conference in Jackson, Johnson declined to provide further details or to identify the officers.
Department of Public Safety spokesman Jon Kalahar had no immediate comment on the retaliation claims.
Johnson said the NAACP filed the complaint on behalf of the black troopers to protect the law officers from retaliation. After a months-long investigation, the EEOC said it determined that the patrol had discriminated against black troopers in regard to assignment, demotions, discharges, discipline, harassment and promotions.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the EEOC findings.
The Highway Patrol has 540 troopers; 208 of them are black.
Johnson said MDPS Commissioner Steve Simpson and Col. Michael Berthay, head of the Highway Patrol, began a “barrage of retaliatory acts” after the EEOC determined discrimination existed at the patrol. Johnson said vacant positions were filled without procedural announcements and unsubstantiated investigations were launched through the internal affairs division.
“The overall atmosphere and culture of the agency has become a very negative work environment,” Johnson said.
Johnson said he’s awaiting the action of the Justice Department, which could sue the state or could issue a right to sue letter to the NAACP.
The EEOC had asked the state to begin settlement talks with the troopers, but Simpson said he wanted more information about the federal agency’s findings.
Simpson said he had several concerns about the EEOC’s investigation and has asked the agency to reconsider its determination. He has said his agency wasn’t provided with names, positions or other relevant information about alleged discriminatory practices.
The Highway Patrol was forced to racially integrate after a lawsuit by black law enforcement officers in the 1970s, and the patrol remained under a federal consent decree until early this decade. The decree was designed to eliminate discriminatory practices in hiring, firing and promotions.
“Nearly 40 years ago, African Americans sued to have the right to be highway patrolmen and it is a shame that 40 years later they have to sue to be treated as equals,” Johnson said Monday.
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Springfiled Police Department
By CHRIS DETTRO
THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
Posted Sep 01, 2009 @ 11:30 PM
Last update Sep 02, 2009 @ 06:37 AM
Former police lieutenant Rickey Davis wasn’t picked to head the Springfield Police Department’s criminal investigations division in 2003 because new Police Chief Don Kliment wanted someone who wasn’t in the vision already, a city attorney said Tuesday.
Davis, who is black, claims in a lawsuit against the city that police officials retaliated against him because he spoke up about racial issues.
Assistant city attorney Frank Martinez said in opening statements in the lawsuit trial that evidence will show that Davis was transferred from criminal investigations to patrol in 2006 because of his performance, not because of his race or in retaliation for him speaking out.
“Homicide investigations were missing reports, and some files were just stuck up on shelves,” Martinez said. “That’s why he was transferred. There was no retaliatory conduct whatsoever.”
Donna Harper, Davis’ St. Louis attorney, said in her opening statement that police leadership “targeted him (Davis) because he was the spokesperson for equal opportunity and against racial discrimination in the department.”
Harper said Davis suffered humiliation and “career damage” because “the police department chose to ignore what he was saying and decided to go after him.”
She cited five internal affairs investigations started against Davis over the last five months he worked as a police officer.
Davis joined the force in 1981 and retired in January 2007 after having been on medical leave since March 6, 2006.
Harper said William Rouse, who was named to head the criminal investigations division in 2003, kept notes about Davis’ job performance, but didn’t do that for any other officer. She said evidence will show Davis was scrutinized unfairly.
Martinez said the internal affairs investigations concerning Davis found that he twice left crime scenes to get coffee, leaving other officers without senior supervision, and that Davis failed to complete an end-of-year report that Rouse had requested. He also was investigated because Sgt. Tim Young failed to complete in a timely fashion a report requested by Rouse while Davis was Young’s supervisor, she said.
Martinez said white officers, including Young and Rouse, also had been disciplined as a result of incidents in the criminal investigations division. Young and Rouse also are retired.
The jury must decide if it is more likely true than not that Davis suffered retaliation, a lesser burden of proof than beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard in a criminal case.
U.S. Judge Jeanne Scott, who is presiding over the trial, said it might take 2 1/2 weeks to conclude.
In a separate lawsuit last year, Davis was awarded $150,000 by a federal jury that decided he had suffered retaliation for speaking publicly about racial issues in the police department.
Chris Dettro can be reached at 788-1510.
Former police lieutenant Rickey Davis wasn’t picked to head the Springfield Police Department’s criminal investigations division in 2003 because new Police Chief Don Kliment wanted someone who wasn’t in the division already, a city attorney said Tuesday.
Davis, who is black, claims in a lawsuit against the city that police officials retaliated against him because he spoke up about racial issues.
Assistant city attorney Frank Martinez said in opening statements in the lawsuit trial that evidence will show that Davis was transferred from criminal investigations to patrol in 2006 because of his performance, not because of his race or in retaliation for him speaking out.
“Homicide investigations were missing reports, and some files were just stuck up on shelves,” Martinez said. “That’s why he was transferred. There was no retaliatory conduct whatsoever.”
Donna Harper, Davis’ St. Louis attorney, said in her opening statement that police leadership “targeted him (Davis) because he was the spokesperson for equal opportunity and against racial discrimination in the department.”
Harper said Davis suffered humiliation and “career damage” because “the police department chose to ignore what he was saying and decided to go after him.”
She cited five internal affairs investigations started against Davis over the last five months he worked as a police officer.
Davis joined the force in 1981 and retired in January 2007 after having been on medical leave since March 6, 2006.
Harper said William Rouse, who was named to head the criminal investigations division in 2003, kept notes about Davis’ job performance, but didn’t do that for any other officer. She said evidence will show Davis was scrutinized unfairly.
Martinez said the internal affairs investigations concerning Davis found that he twice left crime scenes to get coffee, leaving other officers without senior supervision, and that Davis failed to complete an end-of-year report that Rouse had requested. He also was investigated because Sgt. Tim Young failed to complete in a timely fashion a report requested by Rouse while Davis was Young’s supervisor, she said.
Martinez said white officers, including Young and Rouse, also had been disciplined as a result of incidents in the criminal investigations division. Young and Rouse also are retired.
The jury must decide if it is more likely true than not that Davis suffered retaliation, a lesser burden of proof than beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard in a criminal case.
U.S. Judge Jeanne Scott, who is presiding over the trial, said it might take 2 1/2 weeks to conclude.
In a separate lawsuit last year, Davis was awarded $150,000 by a federal jury that decided he had suffered retaliation for speaking publicly about racial issues in the police department.
An attorney for the Beaumont Police Officers’ Association said Friday that it plans to proceed with a lawsuit against the city, claiming police Chief Frank Coe retaliated against officers who questioned his leadership.
The union and three Beaumont police officers, Scot Davis, Brian Ford and Jeremy Harris, filed a complaint last year claiming Coe refused to promote officers and left several positions vacant after the union questioned his leadership of the department.
The City Council voted in December to deny the claim.
An Upland law firm that specializes in police matters is representing the union.
It also represents Enoch Clark, a Beaumont police officer and former chairman of the police union, who was charged with four felonies. Clark is accused of using excessive force with pepper spray during a February traffic stop that left a woman blinded.
Union members and police say the complaint against the city and the grand jury indictment against Clark are unrelated. Clark is on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of his case.
An attorney for the union, former Riverside police Officer Chris Gaspard, said in an email Friday that he expects to proceed with a lawsuit “with a very strong likelihood of success.”
“I believe that it will be very clear to a jury that Chief Coe and Commander (Greg) Fagan have retaliated against these three officers for the exercise of their free speech and that Chief Coe has created and fostered an environment of retaliation within the department,” Gaspard said.
Coe said he could not respond to direct allegations from the police association’s claim. He said Clark’s indictment has not affected department operations.
“There are really not any significant issues,” Coe said Friday. “The recent events have not affected our operation as a whole.”
He said the department of 57 sworn officers is committed to its motto of “exceeding expectations” of the community.
“We’re small, but we’re a very close and tight-knit department,” Coe said. “When issues like this arise, we take whatever steps are necessary to address them.”
In April 2011, the association voted to conduct an evaluation of the police chief. During an association meeting, Davis and Ford spoke out against the Coe’s performance, according to the claim.
The union sent a letter to the city manager’s office, critiquing Coe’s job performance.
“Chief Coe was furious about the association’s letter and immediately initiated a campaign of retaliation and discrimination against the association and its members intended to silence their speech and punish them for their speech…,” the claim stated.
The association said the department had announced openings for sergeant positions in March, and that Davis and two other members applied. Union members accused the police chief of purposely leaving the positions vacant after his leadership was questioned.
Two police corporals were sent to leadership training instead of promoting anyone to sergeant, according to the claim.
The three officers who filed the claim were also disciplined for what they described as “minor allegations of misconduct.”
The pending lawsuit would seek withheld wages and damages from the city, Coe and the police department, the claim states.
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Meriden police officer claims retaliation
Posted: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 7:03 pm | Updated: 10:43 am, Thu Feb 16, 2012.
MERIDEN – One of the officers alleging widespread favoritism and misconduct in the police department has notified the city that he plans to sue various members of the police department, Personnel Director Caroline Beitman and the police union over alleged harassment and retaliation against him.
In late March, officers Donald Huston and Brian Sullivan requested an investigation into allegations that certain officers, including Evan Cossette – the son of Police Chief Jeffry Cossette – were being inadequately disciplined for misconduct, including police brutality.
In the notice, filed by Attorney Frank P. Cannatelli of Wallingford on Huston’s behalf, Huston claims that members of the department have created a hostile atmosphere, lodged false Internal Affairs claims against him and asked officers to withhold evidence that would support his allegations.
“They have used the police Internal Affairs Division to hurt Huston and other officers who have cooperated with official investigations, and have created a corrupt Internal Affairs Division that acts based upon favoritism, and nepotism,” it reads.
The notice names Beitman, Jeffry and Evan Cossette, Deputy Chief Timothy Topulos, Capt. Michael Zakrzewski, former internal affairs officers Sgt. Leonard Caponigro and Lt. Glen Milslagle, police union President Det. Michael Siegler and chief union steward Det. John Williams.
Siegler, the union’s president, said Huston was “a very desperate person.”
“The investigation is coming to an end and he knows the outcome will not show what he claimed, therefore he’s grasping at straws,” Siegler said via email. “I hope the city doesn’t settle this.
They need to follow through and make him prove these false allegations. He’s done enough damage here, he needs to move on.”
The notice alleges various violations under the federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, including obstruction of justice, tampering with witnesses and “retaliation for cooperating with authorities to correct illegal police conduct.”
Huston claims the police union instructed officers not to cooperate with investigations into incidents involving Pedro Temich and Robert Methvin, both of whom have filed federal lawsuits against Evan Cossette for allegedly beating them during arrests in 2010.
Numerous internal affairs complaints have been filed against Huston and Sullivan since their allegations became public last year, most of which have claimed they were untruthful or negligent in their duties as officers. Many of those complaints were filed after Williams, the union’s chief steward, sent an email to members urging them to combat Huston and Sullivan’s claims through internal affairs.
Williams also filed several grievances with the city claiming Huston and Sullivan were receiving preferential treatment in the wake of their allegations.
Associate City Attorney Jack Gorman said the city does not comment on pending litigation, but said he found it difficult to distinguish how the notice of intent to sue differed from the charges Huston made in his letter to the city last year.
“It makes a lot of broad general allegations. It’s hard to perceive what he’s alleging beyond things that he’s already raised his complaints with,” he said.
Cannatelli said Wednesday that he will file two more notices of pending suits against the city and the police department on behalf of two other officers over the next week, but would not identify the officers. He also said he plans to file a complaint with the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities on behalf of all three officers.
Prior to the new notice, Huston had been represented by New Britain attorney Sally A. Roberts, who is still serving as his counsel in a defamation of character suit against Chief Cossette. Roberts is also representing Temich, Methvin and Joseph Bryans, another man alleging he was brutalized by Evan Cossette, in federal lawsuits against the city and department.
Huston and the other parties named in the notice either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
One summer day in 2009, a woman walked into the police station house of the 81st Precinct, in Brooklyn, to report that her car had been stolen. She was well into her second day of trying to file a report, having already spoken to five or more officers in two precincts and was waiting, exasperated, for a lieutenant to turn up as he had promised.
Richard Perry/The New York Times
Officer Adrian Schoolcraft has filed a lawsuit against the New York Police Department, claiming the department had him taken forcibly to a psychiatric ward when he brought up a suspicion that serious crimes were underreported.
Then an officer named Adrian Schoolcraft emerged and heard her story. She wrote an account for him. He bundled it with a dozen other cases of crime victims who found themselves trapped in bureaucratic hamster wheels that seemed to have purposely been set up to make it hard to report serious crimes. It was a pattern, Officer Schoolcraft was convinced.
That October, he met with investigators and told them about the woman and her car, and others who were the victims of felonies but whose cases either disappeared from statistics or wound up classified as misdemeanors: a Chinese-food deliveryman who was beaten and robbed; a cabby held up at gunpoint; a man who was beaten and robbed of his wallet and cellphone, a case that the 81st Precinct classified as “lost property.”
Officer Schoolcraft’s career in the Police Department was about to take a turn for the worse.
On the evening of Oct. 31, 2009, Officer Schoolcraft, who had gone home sick from work, was forcibly taken from his home in Queens by senior police officials and delivered to a hospital psychiatric ward.
He had been telling the truth like crazy.
This week, the findings of an internal police investigation into his claims were reported in The Village Voice in an article by Graham Rayman, the latest installment in a series that has won awards for chronicling the case of Officer Schoolcraft and the corruption of police crime statistics. The investigation found “a concerted effort to deliberately underreport crime in the 81st Precinct.”
The 85-page report, never released by the Police Department, vindicated Officer Schoolcraft, who has been suspended without pay for more than two years. He has filed a lawsuit, charging that he faced retaliation for telling the truth.
Officer Schoolcraft recorded all the precinct roll calls for two years, and also recorded the raid on his home when he was brought to the psychiatric ward. One senior official confiscated his audio recorder during that encounter, but he had secreted a backup.
The question of crime statistics is a matter of great sensitivity in the Police Department and at City Hall, which regularly boasts of New York’s safety. But more than 100 retired police commanders told researchers that intense pressure for annual crime reductions had led some officials to manipulate statistics. The department set up a panel in January 2011 to investigate the claims and report in three to six months, but authorities have said nothing of it or its work since then.
The investigation of Officer Schoolcraft’s claims does not provide any camouflage for those involved in manipulating crime reports.
A portion of the document headed “Incident No. 10, Handwritten Letter From Complainant” gives a road map of the difficulties faced by ordinary citizens trying to make a report.
On July 30, 2009, a woman discovered that her car, parked a few blocks from her home, had been stolen. “She called 911 from her residence,” the report states, and the matter was assigned to the police in the precinct where she lived, the 79th.
“Officers from the 79 responded,” it continues. She told them where the vehicle had been parked. The officers informed her that she had to report the theft to the 81st Precinct. The next day, she went to the 81st Precinct, and was told that she had to go to the street where the car was stolen.
There, she was met by a lieutenant from the 81st, who told her to go back to the station house and that he would meet her there, according to the report. “While waiting for the lieutenant, she encountered Officer Schoolcraft and wrote the letter that she provided to case investigators.”
Finding out what happened to the Schoolcraft case was as daunting as trying to file a crime report. Using the state’s Freedom of Information Law, Mr. Rayman of The Village Voice sought the report, which was completed in June 2010. The police denied his request. He appealed. They denied it again. He finally obtained a copy through back channels and published an article this week.
It was, as he points out, not nuclear launch codes, but a factual recitation of everyday bureaucratic activities in a police station house.
The government does not have a Fifth Amendment right to silence.
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Retaliation against black police denied City department asks EEOC for evidence it violated civil rights law
Names, documents sought U.S. agency had found officers charging bias were targeted in probe
December 29, 1998|By Peter Hermann | Peter Hermann,SUN STAFF Sun staff writer Gerard Shields contributed to this article.
An article in yesterday’s Marlyand section gave an incorrect first name for Walter Shook, Baltimore Community Relations supervisor of investigations.
The Sun regrets the error.
Baltimore police strongly denied yesterday retaliating against black officers who complained of racism, and they asked that a federal agency turn over evidence that proves entrenched bias in the department.
FOR THE RECORD – CORRECTION
The chief legal counsel for the police, Gary May, sent a letter to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last week asking for names of witnesses and documents used to conclude that the department violated federal civil rights laws.
“It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to address the facts in this case when the report cited no facts and did not cite any documents,” May said yesterday. “We categorically deny having retaliated against any police officer.”
The letter, sent Wednesday and released yesterday, is the first formal response to the EEOC report that concluded officers who complained of racial bias were targeted for investigations and that blacks were disciplined more harshly than whites.
Former Sgt. Louis H. Hopson Jr., a black officer who was fired this year and was the catalyst for the EEOC complaint, said yesterday that the department “is still in the denial stage.”
Hopson, who said he was dismissed for exposing racial disparities, called May’s response typical of the agency. “It’s a Baltimore City Police Department ploy to question the integrity of anybody who looks at them,” he said. “That’s always been their problem.”
The Police Department’s letter will likely delay a meeting with the EEOC to discuss possible remedies. May said he needs the documents and witness names to draft a response to the EEOC’s charges, which could take two weeks. He said the EEOC has not answered his letter, and officials there could not be reached for comment.
Hopson said he would use the EEOC findings to seek a criminal federal rights investigation of the department and is considering filing a class action civil lawsuit on behalf of black officers.
Police officials believe they have made strides to end racial disparity on the force by revamping the disciplinary process, and they say they are eager to show their new system to federal investigators.
The department made the changes two years ago after the Baltimore Community Relations Commission concluded that discrimination existed in the way officers were disciplined. The 3,200-member department is 36 percent African-American.
Wayne Shook, the commission’s supervisor of investigations, said yesterday that Baltimore police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier has implemented all the recommendations. “It was worse before Frazier,” he said. “Frazier has definitely taken some steps to remedy the situation.”
But, Shook added: “I don’t think he understands the depths of the problems he’s dealing with. You can’t be neutral. You have to be more than neutral.”
The letter May sent gives a glimpse of the department’s defense. Much of it will center on Hopson, who was fired after a police trial board concluded he had made a false statement during a trial in Baltimore Circuit Court in 1994.
Hopson had testified as a character witness for an officer accused of a crime, and prosecutors questioned him about a 15-day suspension he had received in 1987 related to making false statements in a search warrant affidavit.
Guilty finding denied
On the witness stand, Hopson denied being found guilty of administrative charges of perjury. He said he accepted a 15-day sus- pension on an administrative misconduct charge related to giving false testimony.
After Hopson’s testimony, Assistant State’s Attorney Sharon H. May (who is not related to Gary May) wrote a letter Dec. 23, 1994, to police internal investigators asking for an inquiry. A month later, the state’s attorney’s office told the Police Department that it would drop all cases in which Hopson was the only witness.
An internal police investigation concluded that Hopson “was knowingly misrepresenting facts pertaining to previously sustained internal investigation complaints.” He was fired after a department hearing in February 1996.
Gary May said the department’s response to the EEOC “will rely very heavily on the fact that the complaint against Hopson arose from outside the Police Department. We didn’t solicit it. The complaining witness was a state’s attorney.”
‘Serious misconduct’
The department’s legal counsel said the city will defend any class action suit brought against it. “The people who are claiming retaliation are officers who were fired for very serious misconduct,” May said. “They are just hiding behind claims of retaliation.”
Pub Date: 12/29/98
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NYPD whistleblower Palestro reports alleged corruption at 42nd Precinct – and he was union delegate
Officer Frank Palestro was a union delegate at the 42nd Precinct until last week.
The NYPD‘S latest whistleblower comes from a most unlikely place – the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.
Officer Frank Palestro was a union delegate at the 42nd Precinct until last week, when he was outed as the tipster who secretly reported allegations of corruption by a lieutenant to Internal Affairs.
After a mousetrap with his name on it was found inside the South Bronxstationhouse, Palestro was transferred to another command for his safety.
“I was the PBA delegate, and now I’m labeled a rat for doing what I was supposed to do,” the nine-year veteran told the Daily News yesterday.
“This will stay with me for the rest of my career,” he said.
“There’s a handful of guys on the job who say they’ve got my back, but there are also people who won’t answer my calls. My reputation is shot, but I know I did the right thing.”
Palestro’s allegations targeted Lt. Susana Seda, the former midnight platoon commander, who declined comment.
He said she ordered cops to write summonses for traffic violations they did not witness, refused to take crime complaints and tampered with a gun at a crime scene.
“She ordered me to write a summons at the scene of a vehicle accident, and recently I had to testify in traffic court that I didn’t witness the red light violation,” he said.
Palestro, one of three elected union reps in the precinct, acknowledges it’s unheard of for a PBA official to drop a dime on a fellow officer.
Even as he faces being ostracized as a whistleblower, he says he had to report what he and other cops saw.
“I wrestled with it for a while because I’m a delegate and we don’t do things like this,” Palestro said.
“But these cops are young, and they came to me because they trusted me, and I felt I had no choice because it was about corruption and they didn’t know what to do.”
Palestro said Seda was driven by the pressures of the Compstat and Trafficstat strategies, which rate police performance based on statistics.
“The Four-Two Precinct is clearly in need of oversight,” said lawyer Eric Sanders of the Law Firm of Jeffrey Goldberg in Lake Success, who has met with Palestro.
Palestro made three anonymous calls to the IAB between September and December 2009 from his personal cell phone.
The phone number is on a confidential document – called a “log” – which somehow found its way to the precinct, stuffed in the vent of Palestro’s locker.
“[Seda] told everybody I was a ‘f—— rat,’” he said.
Police sources said the IAB is probing the allegations against Seda. No action has been taken, and the NYPD had no comment. The IAB also is investigating how Palestro was unmasked, and it went to the precinct after the mousetrap was found.
“I hope IAB finds out who did this,” he said, adding that he has not gotten flak from the union.
Forty-two years after he left the New York City Police Department, Frank Serpico never thought he’d still be fighting for police reform.
In the 1960s, Serpico was behind one of the biggest scandals in NYPD history. After being wounded in the line of duty, he testified before a grand jury and exposed widespread corruption throughout the department. He says that when he spoke out about the officers selling drugs, guns, shields and favors, he was shut out by the police force.
“I still have a bullet in my head,” he said, “and I was lucky to come out with my life.”
In 1973, Serpico’s story was immortalized in the Oscar-nominated film that bears his name, with his role famously portrayed by Al Pacino. But these days, the 78-year-old stays out of the limelight. His interview with America Tonight was the first time he’s spoken on camera in years.
We caught up with Serpico in Upstate New York about the spat between the NYPD and Mayor Bill de Blasio, the issue of excessive force in police departments across the country and why it’s so hard to hold officers accountable when they shoot unarmed civilians. The questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Looking at what’s happening, not just in New York, but in Ferguson and across the country, what compelled you to come and speak out now about what’s happening between the police and the public?
This is a national issue. In some places with little more than a high school equivalency diploma, you get a gun and a shield and you can take a man’s life like that and not even be accountable. Where are we going here?
You’ve talked a lot and written a lot about the culture within the police force, and how that culture extends to the same body that then investigates their actions. Can you describe that culture a little bit?
Frank Serpico.
It’s that you don’t talk about your own kind; you don’t expose your own kind or maybe we’ll expose you. So it’s like one hand washes the other. But that shouldn’t be the rule in an honorable, respectful profession.
At least in Ferguson, a lot of people have talked about a predominantly white police force policing a majority African-American community. Do you think that’s the problem? Do you think the way to a solution is to just diversify the police force?
The police should reflect the society they’re policing. The other thing is it’s a matter of credibility … I’m not saying put your life on the line. That’s not what you’re asked to do. But you’re also not asked to come home safe at the risk of an innocent life.
And we are not living in a vacuum. This is happening. It’s the same lie as [the] drone program. You drop a drone and you kill 28 innocent people. Do you expect to gain the respect and the hearts and minds of the people [when] you’re killing their children and their families? It’s the same thing with the police. We have to realize – lest we lose our moral fiber in this culture and elsewhere – that when any member of a family loses a loved one, they all grieve alike.
Why do you think that the police are incapable of policing themselves?
I only speak from my own experience, but why? Because they want to garner favor with their buddies and keep going up the ladder. You don’t make waves. You go along to get along. And when that mentality gets changed, that’s when things will start to improve.
The police should reflect the society they’re policing.
Frank Serpico
What do you think about the way the NYPD commissioner and the mayor have handled things so far with the Eric Garner case?
They’re making good gestures. Let’s see if they follow through.
But the police en masse turned their backs on the mayor. What do you think about that?
Hey, if I were the commissioner, I’d fire them. That’s setting a bad precedent, not only to the society, [but] to other police officers, and [it’s] disrespect[ful] to the men that gave their lives to that uniform … There are terrible hypocrisies within people that wear that uniform. It’s just that they have too much power and they don’t want to give up that power. There’s no compassion.
I’ve had officers write me back when I call them on things and they say, “Well, maybe you just run with the poodles, you know?” I said, “I’m not looking for fans. I didn’t start this looking for fans. I started this to look for justice.” And you have to have respect for another human being. You’re not the judge, the jury and the executioner; that’s not your job. But there’s this mentality.
Why do you think is it so difficult to hold police accountable when they shoot unarmed civilians?
Because the district attorney works with the police and it’s usually their job to convict anybody that they bring in. It’s usually not to find the police officer guilty of some infraction, so you might say there’s a bit of favoritism there.
Do you think you’ll see change in police forces in your lifetime? Or anytime soon?
In a way, I would never have thought that I’d be sitting here today 42 years later talking about pretty much the same subject. So don’t blame the people when they rise up and want change, because that’s what this society needs in order to survive.
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New details about accused officer’s past
Tanya Eiserer, WFAA2:28 p.m. CST January 9, 2015
Tanya Eiserer, WFAA2:28 p.m. CST January 9, 2015
DALLAS — When Shanna Lopez heard that Dallas police Senior Cpl. David Kattner had been arrested on charge of sexual assault involving a prostitute, she wasn’t surprised.
Lopez, a former rookie police officer, said it seemed like a “natural progression.”
Seven years ago, Lopez publicly came forward to allege that Kattner and three other Central police officers had systematically mistreated prostitutes and other street-level offenders. She claimed she was terminated from the force after she told another trainer what she had seen Kattner doing.
Shanna Lopez said she was fired from the Dallas Police Department after alleging misconduct by a colleague in 2006. (Photo: WFAA)
Lopez said she never saw Kattner sexually abuse any of the prostitutes during her time in the department. But she believes — based on what the department knew in 2006 — they had plenty of warning that something wasn’t right.
“Those are real people,” she said. “Each and every one of those people were not only degraded and humiliated and targeted and hunted on a nightly basis for years.”
According to a Dallas police arrest warrant, Kattner called the woman and told her to follow him to follow him to the cemetery on Webb Chapel Road around 1:20 a.m. on December 21. She told police that he made her perform a sex act on him in his squad car while his hand was on his duty weapon. His other hand was down her pants, she told investigators.
The woman told police that this wasn’t the first time. She said she had engaged in sex acts with Kattner on two other occasions after he displayed outstanding warrants for her and told her he knew where her daughter lived.
Kattner is currently on administrative leave, pending his likely termination.
Dallas police declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
A veteran Dallas police officer remains off the job after being accused of using his position to get a known prostitute to perform sex acts on him. Tanya Eiserer / WFAA
POLICE CAREER DERAILED
On the day Lopez graduated from the Dallas Police Academy in March 2005, she was full of hope.
“I just couldn’t wait to actually get to work,” she said.
Rookie officers must successfully complete several months of field training. David Kattner was her first trainer.
“He believed in ‘working smart, not working hard,’ and citations lead to warrants, which lead to jail activity,” Lopez later wrote in an statement to internal investigators.
Almost nightly, she said Kattner would sit at the computer at the station, looking up information on the county’s criminal computer database to fill out tickets. She said he would fill out blank citations on prostitutes for minor violations like jaywalking. He would drop the citations in the mail slot.
“He would say he saw them out ‘whoring’ last night,” Lopez wrote.
She said he called it “seeding the field” with Class C citations “that would eventually turn into warrants,” Lopez told internal investigators.
Lopez said Kattner would write “at large” citations, which are supposed to be mailed to the defendant. The department later strictly limited the circumstances in which an at large citation can be issued as a result of the abuses uncovered at central patrol.
While working the streets, Lopez said Kattner spent all this time tracking prostitutes because they were “easy targets” and didn’t typically carry weapons.
“TIRED, ANGRY, AND … NUMB”
She said Kattner and three other officers he typically worked with were obsessed with prostitutes and street-level offenders. Other officers did not like working around them because of their reputation, internal affairs records show. Female officers did not want to search for them.
Supervisors, however, frequently lauded their work because they wrote lots of tickets and made numerous arrests.
Shanna Lopez said she was fired from the Dallas Police Department after alleging misconduct by a colleague in 2006. (Photo: WFAA)
“They were not loved at Central,” Lopez told News 8. “They were tolerated, I think.”
She said one of the two officers told her that he had the “crack whores so trained that he sometimes will tell them to sign the ticket ‘blank,’ and I’ll decide later what to charge you with,” she told internal investigators.
“I became tired, angry, and eventually numb to the daily verbal abuse I heard directed at the women,” Lopez told internal investigators.
During her second phase of training, Lopez said she mentioned offhand to her trainer that the county computer database seemed like a “useful tool” to write citations.
“I said, ‘Well it seemed like of like it kind of came in handy with my other trainer since I’d see him use it to use it to write tickets all the time,” Lopez wrote. “He was like, why would he use that to write tickets, because usually you have someone in your custody and you write a ticket and there they go. I was like, ‘I don’t know; he’d write four or five tickets a night before we’d ever leave the station and then write a few more when we would be at Lew Sterrett while I’d be typing up my jail report, turn them in at the end of the night .’ He said he was the number one ticket writer at Central.”
She said the other trainer was shocked when she told him that they never “stopped and detained” the people.
“He’s like, ‘You can’t do that. That’s illegal,’” Lopez wrote.
She said she asked the trainer not to mention anything, but she later found out that he had told a sergeant.
“That’s when I suddenly became incompetent and on and on,” she wrote.
DISMISSAL FROM THE DEPARTMENT
Lopez told internal investigators that she was approached by a sergeant who said that she had heard that Lopez was going around talking “about illegal activity of officers at Central and false arrests.” She said the sergeant asked her if she made recordings of what her trainers had told her, which Lopez said she did not do.
Outside Central Patrol, she said Kattner confronted her one night shortly before she was dismissed from the department.
“He said he had heard that I was going around saying he was writing tickets to people that don’t exist,” Lopez said. “He was like, ‘I will hunt you down and hurt you.’”
For that reason, Lopez said she has no trouble believing that Kattner could have threatened the woman in the current criminal case.
Two days after receiving a commendation for helping catch a fleeing hit-and-run suspect, Lopez was placed on administrative leave. She was terminated in October 2006 for “failing to make her probationary period,” according to department records.
She was fired at the end of her third phase. She requested a copy of her end of phase observation report — paperwork that department rules require. A memo from the department stated that no such report existed.
“How do you fail when you were never graded?” Lopez asked News 8.
Around the same time that Lopez went to D Magazine, another police officer had come forward to publicly accuse Kattner and the other officers.
In the ensuing fallout, two of those officers were fired following a joint investigation by WFAA and The Dallas Morning News that exposed misconduct in their ticket-writing practices. A third officer was suspended.
Kattner wasn’t disciplined.
“I LOST EVERYTHING. SLOWLY”
Lopez also was allowed to reapply to the department after signing a 10-page settlement agreeing not to sue the department over her earlier termination. She was rejected for rehire after background investigators wrote a detailing memo claiming — among other things — that she associated with gang members and street criminals and had dated a neighbor who was a gang member.
The December 17, 2007 memo stated that gang unit officers had obtained sworn affidavits attesting to those facts. But those affidavits were dated January 9, 2008 — more than three weeks after the date of that memo. Police officials told News 8 that they are looking into the date discrepancy.
Lopez denies the allegations detailed in the memo. She believes the department never had any intention of rehiring her.
After she was fired, she said she went for more than a year unable to get a job.
“I lost everything. Slowly,” she said.
Lopez applied to other police departments, but they couldn’t hire her. She asked that News 8 not reveal where she’s currently working. She’s still in the criminal justice field, but not as a police officer.
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Good Cop Fired for Stopping Fellow Cop from Beating a Mentally Ill Man, Gets her Job Back!
Bogota, NJ — A New Jersey police officer has won her job back after being fired from preventing her fellow cops from brutally beating an emotionally-disturbed young man.
Despite the incident being caught on dashcam, Officer Regina Tasca was fired for stopping a case of police brutality in April of 2011.
According to Pix 11:Two officers called by Bogota parents to assist their emotionally-disturbed son into an ambulance instead tackled the man, and punched him in the head. The officers at the time even threatened the victim’s father, captured on tape. “As soon as I get off him I’ll get to you,” he threatened the father of Kyle Sharpe.
Kyle’s mother Tara, a former Bogota City Council member recounted that day. “In that moment, my son was jumped and punched, had she not been there to protect him, I can say with certainty things would have turned out quite differently.”
“I consider myself a peace officer,” Tasca told Pro Libertate. “My thing is to help make sure that people are safe, and that they don’t have a reason to fear the police – that we treat them like human beings. The incident that started all of this was one in which I intervened to prevent excessive force against a kid who was the subject of a medical call, not a criminal suspect.”
After she had been fired, Tasca expressed her feelings to a local news station. “Being fired means I did something wrong. I know I didn’t. I protected that kid. I did what I’m supposed to do,” she said.
Tasca, who was the only female in the department at the time, filed several complaints with her superiors about the harassment she faced. But those complaints fell on deaf ears.
During her hearing to get her job back, the attacking officer, from neighboring Ridgefield Park Police, Sgt. Joseph Rella, admitted to covering up punching the victim. He also admitted to lying about his training in dealing with emotionally disturbed people, and violating protocol with his tackle and punch.
Rella never faced any discipline for his brutal actions that day.
Tasca’s boss, Captain Jim Sepp, also admitted to lying in his report to get her fired. He failed to interview witnesses, twisted quotes from Tasca and destroyed his notes used to make his report.
Sepp never faced any discipline for lying to get a good cop fired.
Sadly, the only person to be punished in this entire conspiracy was the only who deserved not to be.
Instances of “good cops” being punished by their departments seem to be on the rise. This year alone, we’ve already reported on several.
This cycle of the “blue line” of protection can only persist for so long before there is no one left with enough courage to call out the corruption.
As Shannon Spalding, one of the whistleblowers from the CPD points out, this blue code of silence and punishment is already an unfortunate reality for most.
“It’s no secret that if you go against the code of silence, and you report corruption, it will ruin your career,” Spalding said.
Luckily, in the case of Tasca, the justice system seems to have righted a wrong.
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Whistleblower Cop Calls Out Corruption in Her Department, Naturally She’s Being Fired for It
“She is being disciplined for bringing those allegations to light”
Louisville, KY — A New Albany police officer of 19-years is being fired after she blew the whistle on her department.
In May, Officer Laura Schook made several claims against her department including corruption, padded overtime and discrimination.
“My supervisors [were] padding their overtime, stealing time from the city, also doing other jobs while they were at work, essentially being paid for two jobs at one time,”Schook said in an interview.
After the allegations were made, Chief Sherri Knight and Assistant Chief Greg Pennell both resigned and asked to be reassigned within the police force.
WDRB’s Valerie Chinn asked Schook if the requests were related or coincidental.
“Coincidental, yet corroborating at the same time,” Schook said. “I mean, that’s the way I would look at it. I believe that it corroborates what I said. There has to be some truth to what I said or they wouldn’t be scrambling around like they are.”
After an “investigation” was launched into Schook’s allegations, Floyd County prosecutor Keith Henderson decided not to bring criminal charges against anyone in the Department and the Merit Commission voted to terminate Schook from the department.
New Albany Police Chief Todd Bailey sent a statement to WDRB Monday night, which read:
The Merit Commission voted unanimously to terminate Schook pending the results of an upcoming hearing. I’m making no additional statement this evening due to the matter being an employee disciplinary action.
Laura Landenwich, Schook’s attorney says her client is being disciplined for being a whistleblower and that during the hearing they will present this evidence.
“She is being disciplined for bringing those allegations to light,” Landenwich said.
Unfortunately this response from Schook’s department seems to be standard operating procedure for departments across the country when it comes to rogue officers calling out corruption in their departments.
Last month, also in Kentucky, a sheriff’s deputy was fired for “insubordination” after pointing out that the sheriff had planted drugs in another deputy’s car. Even though the sheriff was indicted, the deputy was still fired.
Earlier this month we broke the story of a cop in Buffalo, NY who was beaten and fired after she stopped a fellow cop from nearly killing a handcuffed man. She is still fighting for her pension.
In September we exposed the Baltimore police department’s attempt to intimidate a whistleblower officer. Detective Joe Crystal became a target of intimidation for his entire department after testifying against other officers in a misconduct case. Following his testimony, he received threats from other officers, and even found a dead rat on his car one day.
Buffalo , NY– While killer cops get sent on paid vacations, it’s hard to imagine what one has to do to actually be fired. It turns out, the answer is be a good cop.
Former Buffalo Police Officer, Cariol Horne is fighting for her pension since she was fired after 19 years on the force, over an incident in 2006 when she stopped a fellow officer from choking a handcuffed suspect.
Horne had received a call that Officer Gregory Kwiatkowski was at the scene of a domestic dispute and in need of assistance. When she arrived, she witnessed Kwiatkowski violently punching the handcuffed suspect in the face.
Horne and other officers on the scene removed the suspect from the house, but once outside Kwiatkowski pounced again, this time choking the handcuffed man. Believing Kwiatkowski to be out of out of control, Horne removed his arm from around the man’s neck.
“Gregory Kwiatkowski turned Neal Mack around and started choking him. So then I’m like, ‘Greg! You’re choking him,’ because I thought whatever happened in the house he was still upset about so when he didn’t stop choking him I just grabbed his arm from around Neal Mack’s neck,” Horne toldWKBW.
Infuriated that she had crossed the thin blue line, Kwaitkowski then punched Horne in the face. The punch so was hard that Horne ended up having to have her bridge replaced. She was then injured again as officers dragged her away from trying to defend herself.
Here is where things get crazy.
The good cop, who was trying to stop abuse by her peer, was fired for “jumping on Officer Kwaitkowski’s back and/or striking him with her hands,” something that Kwaitkowski himself denied ever happening in a sworn statement.
The bad cop, who was choking a man and then punched his female co-worker in the face, kept his job. It wasn’t until he choked another officer at a district station house that he was forced to retire. He was already under investigation for punching another officer while he was off-duty at a local bar.
In May of this year Kwiatkowski and two other officers were indicted for civil rights violations against four black teenagers, just days before the statute of limitations was due to expire. One of the teens was also the son of a Buffalo police officer.
Kwaitkowski is accused of using excessive force while the victim was already under arrest. His fellow officers then shot at a handcuffed teenager with the teens own BBgun, after the boy was aready handcuffed and in the back seat of their police vehicle.
Imagine if just one of the officers who stood around watching Eric Garner’s life being taken had the courage Horne had.
Unfortunately, they would probably be in the same situation she is.
This incident is hardly isolated either. Earlier this month we brought you the story of a 20 year veteran of the CSU Monterey Bay police force who was given a notice of termination for choosing NOT to immediately resort to violent escalation during a confrontation with a suicidal student.
In almost every single video we see, there are other officers present and allowing it to happen. Sadly, with departments across the nation upholding their reputation of vilifying anyone who dares to cross the thin blue line, it’s no wonder there is such a shortage of police willing to speak out against the atrocities we have been witnessing.
While many police may choose this line of work because they want to be “heroic,” Horne is a true hero- and she does not regret her actions. Nobody ever said being a hero is easy.
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Almost 80% of home users use Microsoft Windows daily, as it’s their OS of choice and pretty easy to use. Most Hackers, like myself, are against using Windows as it’s a very insecure environment for a normal user to work in. Plus, most of the people don’t understand the kind of threats they’re facing and think installing antivirus software is a solution for all their problems. So, I thought that I should teach you guys the steps to create a multi-layered security shield. But before starting, let me give you guys some more info.
What Do I Mean By a Security Shield ?
For me, a security shield means multiple layers of security that can increase the security of a common Windows User at the level it should be. If you use your favorite Linux based hacking distro, like Kali, on virtual machine like most Hackers do, you’re also vulnerable because the security of the VM depends upon the security of Host OS which is usually Windows.
How Will a Security Shield Protect Me ?
I want to protect everyone from some no-so-smart people who call themselves H@ckers, who, in reality, don’t understand How Stuff Works. Trust me, most of the time, they’re a very big threat. Any good Hacker will easily manage to defeat the security, but if they can’t even protect you from a N00B, then that’s a great concern for me.
So, let’s get started…
1. First Layer : Desktop Locker :-
Everyone knows they should setup a startup password on their computer to outsiders from accessing it. But, there’s a ton of software’s that can bypass the Windows Logon screen. Protect yourself by downloading a Desktop locking solution. This software has proved difficult to evade. Some of this software is USB Raptor, Eusing Maze Lock, etc.
2. Second Layer : Antivirus :-
Antivirus software is the second layer of defense against threats that a common user faces. Some people don’t favor using antivirus. In my opinion, antivirus can be helpful in making your computer secure. You don’t need to buy an expensive one. Download a free antivirus like AVG or Avast, and it will be enough. Don’t run two antiviruses at the same time because they will make your computer more vulnerable. Once you have the software installed, keep it up to date. Set a password so that no one can mess with it easily.
3. Third Layer : Firewall :-
A properly configured firewall can defeat a wide array of threats like remote hacking and backdoors. Sadly, Windows builtin firewall doesn’t get the job done because it’s easy to defeat and it’s a pain to configure properly. So, you might need a new firewall. There are free firewalls available that are more than enough for a normal user. I recommend using Comodo Free Firewall or Zonealarm Firewall because they’re very effective and easy to implement and configure. Just installing the firewall won’t help; you should configure it to make it a tough wall against all threats. Like antivirus software, set up a password so that no one can modify the rules you set when you’re not around.
4. Fourth Layer : Antikeylogger :-
Keyloggers are one of those threats that are usually neglected. When securing our systems, we think that protection against keyloggers will be provided by the antivirus and the firewall. In reality, there’s a 90% chance that keylogger will easily defeat your defense. They are easy to code and install in the computer. Not only can they log all your keystrokes, they can also hack your webcam, take pics of your computer’s screen, etc. That’s why they’re considered just as much a threat as many other things. There’s a lot of Antikeyloggers software available; most of them will fail to stop most keyloggers. However, there’s a free software called “Key Scrambler,” which is the best antikeylogger solution I’ve found. It doesn’t detect whether a software is trying to log keystrokes. Instead, it encrypts every keystroke you enter. If a keylogger manages to log keystrokes, all he gets is a encrypted letter which is worth nothing. I recommend using it.
5. Fifth Layer : Virtualization :-
You could download a file from the web that might contain a Trojan horse. There’s no easy way to protect yourself from this threat, but there’s software called ‘SandBox’ which might prove helpful. Once you’ve downloaded a file from the Web, run it in SandBox and check if the file causes a suspicious process to run. This is little bit difficult for non-experienced users. Practice with this tool and you’ll learn how to do it. Bonus: The file runs in Virtual Environment and doesn’t effect your computer.
6. Sixth Layer : Browser Security :-
We all use web browsers that are highly vulnerable. I recommend that you not store your passwords in your Web Browser as they are very easily to be grabbed. Also, use SSL if possible. Another good thing to do is to install some security extensions like HTTPS. Everywhere, AdBlock, etc. in your browser, which will provide additional protection.
7. Last Layer : Use Your Brain :-
All layers above can be easily evaded if you have your head in the clouds. Keep everything up to date and keep installing Windows patches regularly. Download software from trusted sources and keep an eye out for any suspicious activity happening on your computer.
A Few Last Words :
I’ve tried to give you some tips for improving the security of your computer. If you don’t understand any of the terms mentioned above, Google them. Remember that getting hacked by an Elite Hacker is possible but getting hacked by a N00B is an insult of your abilities. Implement countermeasures to prevent this from happening. For assistance, suggestions or support, email me at “Usmanaura47@gmail.com”
Technological Unemployment and the Fight for the Right to Slavery
Published on Jun 23, 2015
Using Twilight Zone’s “The Brain Center at Whipple’s”, this video discusses the labor collapse that is Technological Unemployment. With cuts from Carl Sagan, Roxanne Meadows and Peter Joseph.
These Will Be The Top Jobs In 2025 (And The Skills You’ll Need To Get Them)
As work changes at warp speed, here are 2025’s hottest job sectors (and the skills you’ll need to work in them).
Two-thirds of Americans believe that, in 50 years, robots and computers will do much of the work humans now do. The World Economic Forum’s 2016 report,The Future of Jobs, estimates that 5 million jobs will be lost to automation by 2020 and that the number will keep growing. Jobs that once seemed like “safe bets”—office workers and administrative personnel, manufacturing, and even law—will be hit hardest, the report estimates.
“There are some overarching shifts poised to change the nature of work itself over the next decade,” says Devin Fidler, research director at Institute for the Future, a nonprofit research center focused on long-term forecasting. That includes a demand for new skills and strategies that could help people to thrive in future work environments,
So what do you need to work on to be marketable in 2025? Here are six skill areas that the experts recommend, as well some of the strongest job-growth categories, as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and other sources—that relate to them.
Technology And Computational Thinking
It’s no surprise that tech skills will be in demand. However, Fidler says that “computational thinking”—the ability to manage the massive amounts of data we process individually each day, spot patterns, and make sense out of all of it—will be valued.
THE END OF SLAVERY
The labor-for-income slave game has come to a grinding halt. Automation (Technological Unemployment) is, by design, unstoppable and increasing at an exponential rate – relentlessly displacing vast numbers of workers on a global scale across the entire spectrum of industry. This means that the current economic system is unsustainable, cannot persist, hence propels itself towards an explosive collapse beyond reckoning.
Two-thirds of Americans believe that, in 50 years, robots and computers will do much of the work humans now do. The World Economic Forum’s 2016 report,The Future of Jobs, estimates that 5 million jobs will be lost to automation by 2020 and that the number will keep growing. Jobs that once seemed like “safe bets”—office workers and administrative personnel, manufacturing, and even law—will be hit hardest, the report estimates.
“There are some overarching shifts poised to change the nature of work itself over the next decade,” says Devin Fidler, research director at Institute for the Future, a nonprofit research center focused on long-term forecasting. That includes a demand for new skills and strategies that could help people to thrive in future work environments,
So what do you need to work on to be marketable in 2025? Here are six skill areas that the experts recommend, as well some of the strongest job-growth categories, as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and other sources—that relate to them.
Technology And Computational Thinking
It’s no surprise that tech skills will be in demand. However, Fidler says that “computational thinking”—the ability to manage the massive amounts of data we process individually each day, spot patterns, and make sense out of all of it—will be valued.
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“As the total amount of information coming at you increases and increases, the ability to manage that in a way that you’re not overwhelmed, is pretty key,” he says.
Related jobs:Software developer jobs will grow 18.8% between now and 2024, according to the BLS, while computer systems analyst jobs will increase 20.9% by 2024. Market research analyst and marketing specialist jobs, which also require those analytical skills, will increase 18.6%.
Caregiving
As more people live longer, every aspect of the health care sector is poised for growth. And while telemedicine, robotic surgical equipment, and other forms of automation are changing how some health care is delivered, demand for caregivers is going to increase as we commit to providing health care for more of the population—a population that is growing and living longer, says John Challenger, CEO of outplacement and career coaching firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, Inc.
Related jobs: Challenger’s firm analyzed the hottest job sectors from 2018 through 2025 and half of the sectors were caregiving and health-related. Hot fields included medical technicians, physical therapists, and workplace ergonomics experts. Veterinarians will also be in demand, the report found. BLS also found that support jobs related to caregiving, such as medical secretaries and medical assistants will also be in high demand. Home health aide jobs are expected to grow a whopping 38.1%.
Social Intelligence And New Media Literacy
It’s going to take a long time for robots to be good at soft skills, like social and emotional intelligence and cross-cultural competency, “which are hugely valuable in a world where you or I could go and be working with somebody in the Philippines within an hour. Virtual collaboration itself is really useful in that environment as well,” Fidler says. In addition, new media literacy—understanding various media platforms and how to best communicate effectively in them—are valuable skills that robots won’t be likely to match any time soon.
Related jobs: Sales and related jobs are one of the top five growth areas worldwide, according to the WEF report. In the U.S., BLS projects that jobs for retail and other sales representatives, marketing specialists, and customer service representatives are each projected to grow between 6.4% and 18.6%, depending on the category by 2024.
Lifelong Learning
With the world moving as fast as it is, we need to become a society of people who are always learning new things, says Julie Friedman Steele, board chair of the World Future Society, a membership organization for futurists. But we’re also going to need to shift how we learn, she says. As so many things advance quickly, it will be difficult for teachers and trainers to keep up with the latest thinking. Instead, we’ll use technology to find the best sources of information to keep our knowledge and skills current.
Antonia Cusumano, people & organization leader at consulting giant PwC says that we’ll also need to turn to more dynamic resources. “You’re going to have 10 minutes on your bus ride home when you’re commuting. You’re going to pull up an app from one of the many businesses out there that are doing these mini-clips of video learning. I’d like to learn 10 minutes on C++ so that I can brush up on my coding. You’re going to see learning shift to these little mini bite-sized chunks of information that you can get on the go and when you need it and at any given time,” she says.
Related jobs:Teachers and trainers made Challenger’s firm’s list of eight hot fields through 2025. Education and training is number six on the WEF report’s list of growth sectors.
Adaptability And Business Acumen
With opportunities in innovation and entrepreneurship and the rise of the “gig economy,” Cusumano says understanding how businesses work is essential. Even if you’re working for a company, you have to have a better understanding than ever of how the business operates. “It’s how the millennial generation has been raised. They are more in tune to collaborate. They know how to do project-based work and move quickly, which I think is inherent in today’s economy,” she says.
Answers:
The Sobering Truth and Global Non Compliance
The Truth As It Changes; 