The press cameras started clicking when the chug of the motorcycle became louder and louder, nearing the room’s front entrance. Paul Teutul Jr., the mustachioed and baseball-hatted owner of biker merchandise company Paul Jr. Designs, revved and wobbled his motorcycle through the door up to the speech podium on the first floor of 90 West Street, a dowdy Financial District building not far from the Battery.
Mr. Teutul was soon joined by Governor Andrew Cuomo, World Trade Center contractor Dan Tishman and 9/11 Memorial president Joe Daniels. They all praised the return of the bike to its place in the 9/11 Memorial Visitor Center, which had come under four feet of water one month ago during Hurricane Sandy and had been the chopper’s home since October of last year.
The motorcycle, which includes gold plating and parts modeled after the design of the new World Trader Center buildings, was completely submerged except for a tiny piece of its handlebars. To repair the damage done by the saltwater, Teutul took the bike back to his workshop upstate, from where it made its triumphant return today.
“In many ways this is to me a metaphor for exactly what we’re doing right now,” the governor said. “The 9/11 site was badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy. I saw the water filling the site from every direction imaginable.” He said that New Yorkers recovered and “We come back better than before. This bike is just a perfect symbol and metaphor for that.”
Though a motorcycle is perhaps an odd recovery symbol for a city where the majority of residents don’t own a car, the best way to get to the southern tip of Manhattan until recently may still have been by motorcycle, as PATH trains began running again this morning and some subway stations around Battery Park remain closed. Also, it may be an especially fitting symbol for the governor, as he is an avowed gearhead.
Apart from using an outlaw-style motorcycle as a visualization for the rebuilding of downtown, Mr. Cuomo spent time praising the bike’s artistry to the audience, which was an odd mix of men in suits, men in motorcycle hoodies and press. He repeated that he is a “motorcycle aficionado,” saying that he rode on Thanksgiving because he rides even in the cold.
The governor, who some progressives may associate with the churlish and rogue stereotype of bikers for his refusal to voice definitive support for a Democratic majority in the State Senate, did not straddle the motorcycle, to the disappointment of pretty much everybody. Mr. Cuomo’s lack of staged motorcycle photos differentiates him from his fellow New York pol, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who probably has a smaller collection of refurbished bikes.
"The Illinois eavesdropping statute
makes it a felony to audio record “all or any part of
any conversation” unless all parties to the conversation
give their consent. 720 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/14-2(a)(1). The
statute covers any oral communication regardless of
whether the communication was intended to be private.
Id. 5/14-1(d). The offense is normally a class 4 felony but
is elevated to a class 1 felony—with a possible prison term of four to fifteen years—if one of the recorded individuals
is performing duties as a law-enforcement officer.
Id. 5/14-4(b). Illinois does not prohibit taking silent video
of police officers performing their duties in public;
turning on a microphone, however, triggers class 1 felony
punishment. The question here is whether the First Amendment
prevents Illinois prosecutors from enforcing the eavesdropping
statute against people who openly record
police officers performing their official duties in public. Concerned that its videographers would
be prosecuted under the eavesdropping statute, the
ACLU has not yet implemented the program. Instead,
it filed this preenforcement action against Anita Alvarez,
the Cook County State’s Attorney, asking for declaratory
and injunctive relief barring her from enforcing the
statute on these facts. The ACLU moved for a preliminary
injunction. We reverse and remand with instructions to allow
the amended complaint and enter a preliminary injunction
blocking enforcement of the eavesdropping statute
as applied to audio recording of the kind alleged here."
-JUDGE DIANNE S. SYKES, United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit, No. 11-1286, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF ILLINOIS v. ANITA ALVAREZ, DECIDED MAY 8, 2012 (full text)
"Today, the Supreme Court of the United States denied a request by Cook County State’s Attorney to review a May 2012 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit regarding Illinois’ eavesdropping law. The appellate court ruled for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois in the case and the federal district court has entered a preliminary injunction, blocking the Cook County State’s Attorney from prosecuting ACLU staff for audio recording police officers performing their public duties in a public place and speaking loudly enough to be heard by a passerby. The Illinois eavesdropping law has been the subject of much debate of late. Two state court judges have ruled that the application of the law to prosecute individuals for recording police in a public place is unconstitutional. And, a Cook County jury last year acquitted a young woman charged with the offense. We are pleased that the Supreme Court has refused to take this appeal. Now, we can focus on the on-going proceedings in the federal district court."
-ACLU of Illinois, Development in ACLU v. Alvarez – Illinois Eavesdropping Law, November 26, 2012 (click link for all case documents)
FTP. The last time The Dragonater videotaped police on the Dragon it caught Tennessee's top state trooper committing perjury outside of his jurisdiction on federal property, and his bogus speeding case was dismissed by a prosecutor without a single word spoken in court. The trooper claimed to have radar turned on but my video/audio proved that was a lie. Public records published by the Tennessean newspaper proved this cop is paid over $100,000/year to do nothing but write speeding tickets. The Dragonater's video case also proved the speed limit at Deals Gap is 65 mph.
By Jason Meisner
Chicago Tribune
November 26, 2012
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal of a controversial Illinois law prohibiting people from recording police officers on the job.
By passing on the issue, the justices left in place a federal appeals court ruling that found that the state's anti-eavesdropping law violates free-speech rights when used against people who audiotape police officers.
A temporary injunction issued after that June ruling effectively bars Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez from prosecuting anyone under the current statute. On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit against Alvarez, asked a federal judge hearing the case to make the injunction permanent, said Harvey Grossman, legal director of the ACLU of Illinois.
Grossman said he expected that a permanent injunction would set a precedent across Illinois that effectively cripples enforcement of the law.
Alvarez's office will be given a deadline to respond to the ACLU request, but on Monday, Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for Alvarez, said a high court ruling in the case could have provided "prosecutors across Illinois with legal clarification and guidance with respect to the constitutionality and enforcement" of the statute.
Illinois' unconstitutional eavesdropping law is one of the harshest in the country, making audio recording of a law enforcement officer — even while on duty and in public — a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
Public debate over the law had been simmering since last year. In August 2011, a Cook County jury acquitted a woman who had been charged with recording Chicago police internal affairs investigators she believed were trying to dissuade her from filing a sexual harassment complaint against a patrol officer.
Judges in Cook and Crawford counties later declared the law unconstitutional, and the McLean County state's attorney cited flaws in the law when he dropped charges in February against a man accused of recording an officer during a traffic stop.
Alvarez argued that allowing the recording of police would discourage civilians from speaking candidly to officers and could cause problems securing crime scenes or conducting sensitive investigations.
But a federal appeals panel ruled that the law "restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests."
Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy has said he would favor a change allowing citizens to tape the police and vice versa.
Meanwhile, several efforts to amend the statute in Springfield have stalled in committee amid heavy lobbying from law enforcement groups in favor of the current law.
Victory for activists who want to record police officers
March 03, 2012
By Jason Meisner
Chicago Tribune
A Cook County judge on Friday declared the state's controversial eavesdropping law unconstitutional, securing an important victory for activists who want to videotape the police in public but muddying the legal waters as the city gears up for potentially thousands of demonstrators for the G-8 and NATO summits in May.
In a 12-page decision, Criminal Courts Judge Stanley Sacks ruled that the law is too broad and potentially criminalizes "wholly innocent conduct." He cited as an example a parent recording her child's soccer game and inadvertently capturing a conversation between two bystanders.
"Although it is extremely unlikely that this doting parent would be charged with a felony offense, the fact remains that she could, thusly punishing innocent conduct," Sacks wrote.
The decision came in the case of Christopher Drew, an artist who was arrested in 2009 for selling art on a Loop street without a permit. Drew was charged with eavesdropping after he used an audio recorder in his pocket to capture his conversations with police during his arrest.
In a statement Friday, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez defended bringing the charges and said her office plans to appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court.
Drew's case joins an increasingly complicated mix of court opinions, pending appeals and proposed legislation that could put enforcement of the law in limbo as thousands of protesters — many likely with electronic devices that could record police actions — descend on the city for the summits.
"I think this decision gives the cause more momentum," said Ed Yohnka, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union in Chicago, which has a pending federal lawsuit against Alvarez over the issue. "But I don't think I would argue there is clarity yet."
Illinois' eavesdropping statute, one of the strictest in the nation, makes it a felony to record any conversation without the consent of all parties. It carries stiffer sentences — of up to 15 years in prison — if a police officer or court official is recorded without his or her knowledge.
The debate over the state law began to heat up last year with a series of high-profile cases. In August, a Cook County jury acquitted a woman who had been charged for recording Chicago police internal affairs investigators she believed were trying to dissuade her from filing a sexual harassment complaint against a patrol officer.
The next month, a judge in southeastern Illinois' Crawford County declared the law was unconstitutional in the case of a man accused of recording police and court officials without their consent. Prosecutors there have appealed, and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is scheduled to file a brief with the state Supreme Court later this month.
Perhaps most importantly, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could rule soon in a lawsuit by the ACLU against Alvarez that argues the law violates First Amendment rights. Months ago a three-judge panel of the Chicago court, including influential Judge Richard Posner, heard oral arguments, the final stage before a decision.
Depending on how the various rulings shake out, the entire issue could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court at some point, according to legal experts and court watchers.
"Everybody is kind of waiting for everybody else," said Josh Kutnick, Drew's attorney. "But I think in the reasonably near future we are hopefully going to see all of these chips fall into place."
While the court cases wind their way through the legal system, a bill introduced by state Rep. Elaine Nekritz, D-Northbrook, seeks to modify the current law to make it legal for citizens to record law enforcement officers who are on duty and in public.
The bill cleared a House committee last month following a showdown between law enforcement opponents and supporters who want the law changed before the G-8 and NATO summits begin. Though it could go to a vote in the House this month, it remains up in the air if there is time for it to pass in both chambers and reach Gov. Pat Quinn's desk.
On Friday, Nekritz was encouraged that there appeared to be a growing consensus that the law needs to be changed, but "that doesn't always translate into votes," she said.
Chicago police Supt. Garry McCarthy has said he doesn't object to audio recording of police officers as they perform their public duties. After all, a key strategy for police at the summits will be to try to manage protests and prevent police brutality lawsuits by recording how officers treat demonstrators. "If the law is changed, it would make our lives a lot easier," McCarthy recently told the Tribune.
But other law-enforcement groups, including the Fraternal Order of Police, oppose easing recording restrictions, saying that would have a chilling effect on witnesses' coming forward to aid police and could create situations in which victims of crime are re-victimized by viral videos of their suffering.
With the current law under attack, one central Illinois prosecutor is opting simply to not enforce it. Earlier this week, McLean County State's Attorney Ron Dozier in Bloomington cited flaws in the statute when he dropped charges against a man accused of recording an officer during a traffic stop.
"I just did not want to be in the position of prosecuting this," Dozier told the Tribune on Friday. "It's just wrong to say someone should get a felony on their record for just recording what's happening in public."
Meanwhile, Christopher Drew will remain free on bond while his case is appealed.
"I'm pretty happy after 21/2 years of dealing with this," said Drew, 61. "It's a good decision."
Behind him, a small group of supporters held up their smartphones, the red lights blinking, recording every word.
When Chicago police answered a domestic disturbance call at the home of Tiawanda Moore and her boyfriend in July 2010, the officers separated the couple to question them individually. Moore was interviewed privately in her bedroom. According to Moore, the officer who questioned her then came on to her, groped her breast and slipped her his home phone number.
Robert Johnson, Moore's attorney, says that when Moore and her boyfriend attempted to report the incident to internal affairs officials at the Chicago Police Department, the couple wasn't greeted warmly. "They discouraged her from filing a report," Johnson says. "They gave her the runaround, scared her, and tried to intimidate her from reporting this officer -- from making sure he couldn't go on to do this to other women."
Ten months later, Chicago PD is still investigating the incident. Moore, on the other hand, was arrested the very same afternoon.
Her crime? At some point in her conversations with internal affairs investigators, Moore grew frustrated with their attempts to intimidate her. So she began to surreptitiously record the interactions on her Blackberry. In Illinois, it is illegal to record people without their consent, even (and as it turns out, especially) on-duty police officers.
"This is someone who is already scared from being harassed by an officer in uniform," said Johnson. "If the police won't even take her complaint, how else is a victim of police abuse supposed to protect herself?"
Moore's case has inspired outrage from anti-domestic abuse groups. "We just had two Chicago police officers indicted for sexual assault, there have been several other cases of misconduct against women," says Melissa Spatz of the Chicago Task Force on Violence Against Girls & Young Women. "And now you have Moore, who was trying to report this guy, and she gets arrested. The message here is that victims of unwanted sexual advances by police officers have no recourse -- that the police can act with impunity."
If the Chicago cops recently indicted for sexual assault are convicted, they'll face four to 15 years in prison. That's the same sentence Tiawanda Moore is facing for trying to document her frustrations while reporting her own alleged sexual assault: Recording an on-duty police officer in Illinois is a Class 1 felony, the same class of crimes as rape.
ILLINOIS' PROBLEM WITH PRIVACY
Last summer the U.S. media took note of several stories about citizens arrested for photographing or recording on-duty police officers. National coverage of these incidents has since died down, but the arrests haven't stopped.
Some of these arrests have come under decades-old wiretapping laws that never anticipated the use of cellphones equipped with cameras and audio recording applications. Others have come under vaguer catch-all charges like refusing to obey a lawful order, disorderly conduct, or interfering with a police officer. In both cases, the charges rarely stick, and in most cases, it's the cops themselves who are violating the law.
The media have largely done a poor job reporting on what the law actually is in these states. Technically, so long as a person isn't physically interfering with an on-duty police officer, it's legal to record the officer in every state but Massachusetts and Illinois. Arrests still happen in other states, but there's little legal justification for them, and the charges are usually dropped, or never filed at all.
But Illinois is the one state where the law clearly forbids citizens from recording of on-duty cops. And so it seems likely that if the Supreme Court or a federal appeals court does eventually decide if pointing a camera at a cop is protected by the First Amendment (so far, they haven't), the case will come from Illinois. (Courts in Massachusetts have generally held that secretly recording police is illegal, but recording them openly isn't.)
Illinois' wiretapping law wasn't always this bad. Originally, the statute included a provision found in most other state wiretapping laws stating that, in order for someone to be prosecuted for recording a conversation, the offended party must have had a reasonable expectation that the conversation was private.
So far, every court in the country to have considered the issue has found that on-duty cops have no such expectation of privacy. This makes sense. Police not only work for the public, they're also entrusted with enormous power: They can arrest citizens and detain them or kill them.
In 1986, the Illinois Supreme Court threw out the eavesdropping conviction of a man who had recorded two police officers from the back of a patrol car for just that reason. The court ruled that the officers had no expectation of privacy.
So in 1994 the Illinois state legislature removed the wiretap law's privacy provision. It was an explicit effort to override the decision eight years earlier. Technically the amended law covers everyone -- anyone whose voice is recorded without their permission, for any reason, could file a complaint and ask to press charges -- but it's used almost exclusively to protect police.
So far, HuffPost has yet to find anyone who has actually been convicted under the law. Instead, police arrest and charge someone they catch recording them, but the charges are dropped or reduced to misdemeanors before trial.
In 2004, for example, documentary filmmaker Patrick Johnson was arrested under the law while recording footage for a movie about relations between blacks and police in the Illinois cities of Champaign and Urbana. Johnson fought the charges with help from the state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). But after the district attorney who was prosecuting him lost in the next election, the new prosecutor dismissed the charges.
THE STATE v. CITIZENS
An actual conviction under the eavesdropping law would likely bring a constitutional challenge, which could well lead to the law being overturned in court. It could also lead to the U.S. Supreme Court or the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit more broadly affirming a First Amendment right to record police, which of course would have ramifications outside of Illinois.
As long as no one is convicted, the law is unlikely to be challenged. That means police can continue to rely on it to harass and intimidate citizens who try to hold them accountable, or who want an independent record of what they believe to be police harassment.
Moore's case may prove to be just the opportunity free speech advocates are looking for. But her case was continued again this week, despite the fact that she's been asking for months to go to trial.
The person pursuing the charges against Moore is Anita Alvarez, the state's attorney for Cook County, home to Chicago. (Alvarez's office declined to comment for this report.)
It's difficult to think of another big city in America where citizens would be more justified in wanting an objective account of an interaction with a police officer. At about the time Moore's story hit the pages of The New York Times earlier this year, for example, former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for lying under oath about his role in the routine torture of hundreds of suspects in police interrogation rooms for more than a decade. Nearly everyone else involved in the tortures, including the police commanders and prosecutors who helped cover them up, couldn't be prosecuted due to statutes of limitations.
Over the last few years, surveillance video has also exposed a number of police abuses in Chicago, including one episode in which an off-duty cop savagely beat a female bartender who had refused to continue serving him. He was sentenced to probation.
In 2008, the city made national headlines with another major scandal in which officers in the department's Special Operations Unit -- alleged to be made up of the most elite and trusted cops in Chicago -- were convicted of a variety of crimes, including physical abuse and intimidation, home robberies, theft and planning a murder.
In a study published the same year, University of Chicago Law Professor Craig B. Futterman found 10,000 complaints filed against Chicago police officers between 2002 and 2004, more than any city in the country. When adjusted for population, that's still about 40 percent above the national average. Even more troubling, of those 10,000 complaints, just 19 resulted in any significant disciplinary action. In 85 percent of complaints, the police department cleared the accused officer without even bothering to interview him.
Yet Alvarez feels it necessary to devote time and resources to prosecuting Chicagoans who, given the figures and anecdotes above, feel compelled to hit the record button when confronted by a city cop.
In addition to Moore's, there are two other cases that may present an opportunity to challenge the Illinois law. One is that of Michael Allison.
This Robinson, Ill., man is facing four counts of violating the eavesdropping law for the recordings he made of police officers and a judge. Allison was suing the city to challenge a local zoning ordinance that prevented him from enjoying his hobby fixing up old cars: The municipal government was seizing his cars from his property and forcing him to pay to have them returned. Allison believed the local police were harassing him in retaliation for his lawsuit, so he began to record his conversations with them.
When Allison was eventually charged with violating the zoning ordinance, he asked for a court reporter to ensure there would be a record of his trial. He was told that misdemeanor charges didn't entitle him to a court reporter. So Allison told court officials he'd be recording his trial with a digital recorder.
When Allison walked into the courtroom the day of his trial, the judge had him arrested for allegedly violating her right to privacy. Police then confiscated Allison's digital recorder, where they also found the recordings he'd made of his conversations with cops.
Allison has no prior criminal record. If convicted, he faces up to 75 years in prison.
In a hearing last week, Allison argued that the Illinois eavesdropping case was a violation of the First Amendment. The judge ordered a continuance so that the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan can prepare a response. (Madigan's office did not respond to HuffPost's request for comment.)
The other case to challenge the wiretap law is that of Christopher Drew, an artist who was arrested in December 2009 for selling art without a permit on the streets of Chicago. Drew recorded his arrest, and now faces four to 15 years for documenting the incident.
In a hearing last December, Cook County Assistant State Attorney Jeff Allen invoked homeland security, arguing that Drew's recording could have picked up police discussing anti-terrorism tactics. Drew's case was suspended after he was diagnosed with lung cancer earlier this year.
Both Allison and Drew say they won't accept the sort of plea bargain Illinois prosecutors have offered in the past. Both say they're willing to risk prison time to get the law overturned.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TRANSPARENCY
The ACLU of Illinois is also challenging the law. But in January, U.S. District Court Judge Suzanne B. Conlon ruled against the organization. Conlon wrote that the First Amendment does not protect citizens who record the police. The ACLU has appealed and expects to participate in oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit sometime in the fall.
In a report released just this month, the United Nations noted the importance of Internet access and personal technology in facilitating the recent Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East. Technology has given citizens all over the world a remarkable and historic tool to bring transparency to the most brutal and oppressive governments.
But even as Americans have criticized those countries for attempting to prevent protesters from uploading photo, video, blog posts and Twitter accounts of government crackdowns, government officials in the U.S. are still arresting, threatening, intimidating and harassing Americans who attempt to document police abuse in America. (See this example over Memorial Day in Miami.)
No, America isn't Egypt or Yemen or Iran. But while the scale of the suppression is different, the premise is the same: When a citizen and a police officer have a confrontation, the police officer's narrative has always been given deference by prosecutors, judges and juries -- in the same way governments in more oppressive parts of the world have the power to project their own version of events as truth.
Citizens in America and across the globe now have the ability to preserve and present a more objective narrative. This is a positive thing -- for democracy, for good government and for a fairer criminal justice system. U.S. courts and legislatures need to make it abundantly, unambiguously clear that not only do citizens have the right to record on-duty police officers, but that cops and prosecutors who violate that right will be held accountable.
The audacity of the Maryland State Police is not that one of its plainclothes officers pulled his gun out on a motorcyclist after pulling him over for speeding.
We wouldn’t expect anything less from them.
The audacity is that they are threatening the man with prison for posting a video of the incident online.
The motorcyclist, an Air National Guardsman named Anthony Graber, was wearing a video camera on his helmet when he was pulled over. Not much different than the dash cams the cops use in their cars.
And the cop, as thuggish as he came across in the video, had absolutely no expectation of privacy when he pulled Graber over and pulled his gun out on him.
But now police are claiming that Graber recorded the cop illegally because Maryland is a two-party consent state when it comes to recording people, according to WJZ-13.
However, that law usually applies to when people have an expectation of privacy. Not when they are pulling a gun out on a citizen on the side of a busy road in broad daylight.
Here is an analysis of the Maryland law posted on the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which reveals that these Maryland cops are pulling laws out of their asses.
State courts have interpreted the laws to protect communications only when the parties have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and thus, where a person in a private apartment was speaking so loudly that residents of an adjoining apartment could hear without any sound enhancing device, recording without the speaker’s consent did not violate the wiretapping law. Malpas v. Maryland, 695 A.2d 588 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1997); see also Benford v. American Broadcasting Co., 649 F. Supp. 9 (D. Md. 1986) (salesman’s presentation in stranger’s home not assumed to carry expectation of privacy).
The obvious truth is that these cops are embarrassed about coming across as thugs on video. In fact, Graber thought he was about to get murdered.
“I was afraid. I thought the person, at the time I didn’t know it was an officer, was going to shoot me,” Graber told the TV news station.
Graber was cited on location for traveling more than 100 mph on his bike. He was also accused of popping wheelies. And Graber apparently paid the fines because the case was then closed.
But police showed up to his house more than a month later after they saw the video he had posted online.
Then they threatened him with prison after accusing him of breaking the wiretapping law.
Maryland is a two-party consent state. That means you can’t record somebody without telling them. It’s a felony to break that law.
That’s exactly what state police told the motorcyclist when they came to his house more than a month after he’d been pulled over.
“I don’t want to go to jail. I haven’t really done anything wrong. It wasn’t a violent crime. No one was injured. No one was hurt,” said Graber.
The Harford County state’s attorney is handling the case but has not charged the motorcyclist.
We’ve seen cops use that same law several times in several states only for it to be thrown out of court. This one shouldn’t even make it to court.
Chris Moore arrested by police state death squad for riding motorcycle with Go-Pro video camera
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – On Memorial Day weekend, Chris Moore was riding his motorcycle down Interstate 35 in West Dallas with a gaggle of other bikers when he was pulled over.
He said he’d just bought a Go-Pro camera and strapped it atop his helmet to document the ride, which was “a Memorial ride for some fallen riders,” Moore said.
“Just riding with a group, going down the highway, then the mayhem started,” Moore added.
Dallas Sheriff’s Deputy James Westbrook pulled him over. Moore’s camera captured about a dozen riders headed down the freeway. The deputy then pulls up behind, Moore pulls over and then Westbrook tells him he needs to take the camera as evidence.
Here’s the full conversation:
Moore: Was I doing something wrong? What am I being pulled over for?
Westbrook: The whole group of you, yes.
Moore: No, I was not individually sir; how can you pull me over?
Westbrook: The reason you’re being pulled over is because I’m going to take your camera and we’re going to use it as evidence of the crimes that have been committed by other bikers.
Moore: I have not committed any crimes and you cannot take my personal property from me, sir.
Westbrook then goes back to his squad car for a few minutes. When he gets out, he tells Moore he’s being arrested for having an obstructed license plate.
“I was in shock,” Moore said. “Totally surprised; I didn’t think anything I did deserved an arrestable offense.”
The thing is, Moore’s camera may have only caught about a dozen riders, but dash cam footage from a deputy squad car shows it being surrounded by more than 100 bikers. When Westbrook pulled Moore over and told him he was taking the Go-Pro camera, the deputy was hoping it caught higher quality footage that could help incriminate some of that group.
A group that, Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Carmen Castro says, was caught on dash cam driving the wrong way down the freeway.
However, Hunter Biederman, Moore’s attorney, said they want an apology and “are still exploring all our legal options.”
The Dallas County Sheriff’s Department said it’s also looking into the way Westbrook acted.
“We acknowledge the incident and currently we are taking a look to see if officer Westbrook’s conduct is in question,” said Carmen Castro, Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman. “We had been dispatched by DPD to go to the scene because another deputy was being surrounded by a hundred bikers.”
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – On Memorial Day weekend, Chris Moore was riding his motorcycle down Interstate 35 in West Dallas with a gaggle of other bikers when he was pulled over.
He said he’d just bought a Go-Pro camera and strapped it atop his helmet to document the ride, which was “a Memorial ride for some fallen riders,” Moore said.
“Just riding with a group, going down the highway, then the mayhem started,” Moore added.
Dallas Sheriff’s Deputy James Westbrook pulled him over. Moore’s camera captured about a dozen riders headed down the freeway. The deputy then pulls up behind, Moore pulls over and then Westbrook tells him he needs to take the camera as evidence.
Here’s the full conversation:
Moore: Was I doing something wrong? What am I being pulled over for?
Westbrook: The whole group of you, yes.
Moore: No, I was not individually sir; how can you pull me over?
Westbrook: The reason you’re being pulled over is because I’m going to take your camera and we’re going to use it as evidence of the crimes that have been committed by other bikers.
Moore: I have not committed any crimes and you cannot take my personal property from me, sir.
Westbrook then goes back to his squad car for a few minutes. When he gets out, he tells Moore he’s being arrested for having an obstructed license plate.
“I was in shock,” Moore said. “Totally surprised; I didn’t think anything I did deserved an arrestable offense.”
The thing is, Moore’s camera may have only caught about a dozen riders, but dash cam footage from a deputy squad car shows it being surrounded by more than 100 bikers. When Westbrook pulled Moore over and told him he was taking the Go-Pro camera, the deputy was hoping it caught higher quality footage that could help incriminate some of that group.
In many states, you can record police in public spaces without their consent, but one Illinois man is facing 75 years in prison for doing just that.
What exactly did he do? The man, Michael Allison, recorded police officers on duty in his front yard inspecting vehicles he was repairing.
Allison was fined for failing to register the vehicles, and so he requested an ordinance hearing, and once again he brought his camera into the court and hit record.
For those simple acts, Allison is facing five felony charges calling for 15 years in prison per each count– a possible total of 75 years. If found guilty, he could easily spend the rest of his life behind bars for “eavesdropping.”
WTWO-TV Channel 2 in Indiana reported on the whole ordeal back in June when Allison was arrested and has more details. According to the outlet, Allison’s spat with police started because he fixed old cars on his mother’s property but refused to register the vehicles (and pay a registration fee, of course). Despite being fined, as mentioned earlier, authorities also confiscated the cars he was working on. That’s the exchange he initially recorded.
Allison then went to the Robinson police department with his cell phone camera in hand for an ordinance hearing. He claimed that officers selectively applied the car registration statutes against him, and told the judge he had recordings of his interaction with the officers. He also recorded those proceedings, and told the judge he was doing so.
It was on his way out from the hearing that Allison was immediately arrested, and charged with the five felony eavesdropping counts.
In Illinois, recording law enforcement officers without their consent is considered a serious crime — or at least the authorities choose to interpret an old eavesdropping statute that way. According to WBBH, 12 other states have a similar interpretation of the law, including Florida, Massachusetts, and Maryland.
But could this be a brazen double standard? Consider that police in Illinois are specifically exempted from the eavesdropping law, and constantly record citizens without their consent. Citizens such as Allison, however, can go to jail for it.
Allison was offered a plea deal for a lesser felony with a guarantee of no jail time, but he turned it down. He believes the law under which he is being prosecuted is grossly unconstitutional, and he is doing a service for fellow citizens of Illinois by seeing the case through.
“You’ve got to stare down the face of this big government that we have,” he told WBBH in an interview about the case, “If you don’t fight for these freedoms here at home, we’re all going to lose them.”
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Man who filmed plainclothes cop pulling gun on him now threatened with prison
The audacity of the Maryland State Police is not that one of its plainclothes officers pulled his gun out on a motorcyclist after pulling him over for speeding.
We wouldn’t expect anything less from them.
The audacity is that they are threatening the man with prison for posting a video of the incident online.
The motorcyclist, an Air National Guardsman named Anthony Graber, was wearing a video camera on his helmet when he was pulled over. Not much different than the dash cams the cops use in their cars.
And the cop, as thuggish as he came across in the video, had absolutely no expectation of privacy when he pulled Graber over and pulled his gun out on him.
But now police are claiming that Graber recorded the cop illegally because Maryland is a two-party consent state when it comes to recording people, according to WJZ-13.
However, that law usually applies to when people have an expectation of privacy. Not when they are pulling a gun out on a citizen on the side of a busy road in broad daylight.
Here is an analysis of the Maryland law posted on the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which reveals that these Maryland cops are pulling laws out of their asses.
State courts have interpreted the laws to protect communications only when the parties have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and thus, where a person in a private apartment was speaking so loudly that residents of an adjoining apartment could hear without any sound enhancing device, recording without the speaker’s consent did not violate the wiretapping law. Malpas v. Maryland, 695 A.2d 588 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1997); see also Benford v. American Broadcasting Co., 649 F. Supp. 9 (D. Md. 1986) (salesman’s presentation in stranger’s home not assumed to carry expectation of privacy).
The obvious truth is that these cops are embarrassed about coming across as thugs on video. In fact, Graber thought he was about to get murdered.
“I was afraid. I thought the person, at the time I didn’t know it was an officer, was going to shoot me,” Graber told the TV news station.
Graber was cited on location for traveling more than 100 mph on his bike. He was also accused of popping wheelies. And Graber apparently paid the fines because the case was then closed.
But police showed up to his house more than a month later after they saw the video he had posted online.
Then they threatened him with prison after accusing him of breaking the wiretapping law.
Maryland is a two-party consent state. That means you can’t record somebody without telling them. It’s a felony to break that law.
That’s exactly what state police told the motorcyclist when they came to his house more than a month after he’d been pulled over.
“I don’t want to go to jail. I haven’t really done anything wrong. It wasn’t a violent crime. No one was injured. No one was hurt,” said Graber.
The Harford County state’s attorney is handling the case but has not charged the motorcyclist.
We’ve seen cops use that same law several times in several states only for it to be thrown out of court. This one shouldn’t even make it to court.
September 27, 2010|By Peter Hermann, The Baltimore Sun
In a decision that could make it easier for citizens to record police officers in Maryland, a Harford County judge ruled Monday that state police and prosecutors were wrong to arrest and charge a man for taping his own traffic stop and posting it on the Internet.
Circuit Court Judge Emory A. Plitt Jr.'s ruling helps clarify the state's wire tap law and makes it clear that police officers enjoy little expectation of privacy as they perform their duties.
"Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public," Plitt wrote. "When we exercise that power in a public forum, we should not expect our activity to be shielded from public scrutiny."
Plitt threw out four counts of the grand jury indictment against Anthony Graber dealing with the recordings he made with a helmet-mounted camera and posted to YouTube after he was stopped by a trooper in an unmarked car on an Interstate 95 off-ramp in March.
"This is one of the best days in my life that I've ever had," Graber said Monday evening. "It's such a huge relief, I can't even explain." The judge left intact only traffic violations that include speeding and reckless and negligent driving.
Plitt cited the videotaped recording of the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles and the explosion of "rapid fire information technology" to note that virtually anyone in a public place should expect their actions could be recorded and broadcast.
The judge wrote that Graber's encounter "took place on a public highway in full view of the public. Under such circumstances, I cannot, by any stretch, conclude that the troopers had any reasonable expectation of privacy in their conversation with the defendant which society would be prepared to recognize as reasonable."
The case was being closely watched to determine the limits of the state's wire tap law, which critics contend was written decades before video cameras fit inside cell phones — even before cell phones — and was designed to prevent people from breaking into phone lines and secretly recording conversations.
Plitt "makes it crystal clear that the conduct Anthony engaged in was not and could not be a crime," said David Rocah, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Maryland, which defended Graber in court.
"I think it means that police officers around the state are on notice that it simply is not a crime to tape a police officer or any other public official engaged in the public performance of their duties," Rocah said.
But Harford County State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly said the ruling "will make it more difficult for the police to do their jobs" and warned that people armed with cameras might soon point their lenses at car accident scenes "and eavesdrop as police take medical history" from patients. Cassilly could appeal, but said on Monday that he had not yet read the judge's ruling.
The video that Graber posted online showing the plainclothes trooper, J.D. Uhler, jumping from his sedan with his gun drawn quickly became a Web sensation. The trooper had pursued Graber, alleging he was recklessly speeding on the highway and passing cars on one wheel.
Uhler issued the 24-year-old Maryland Air National Guard sergeant several traffic citations and let him go. But after Graber posted the video, troopers obtained a warrant, raided Graber's Abingdon house and seized his equipment.
If he had been convicted, Graber faced 16 years in prison, the loss of his job as a consultant for a defense contractor and his government security clearance.
Hours after the ruling, Graber said that it was "very unfortunate that I had to go through all this." He did not dispute he was driving fast on his 2008 Honda CR-V motorcycle while testing the $300 helmet cam he had just purchased. But he denied accusations from prosecutors that he purposely goaded police to pull him over so he could record the confrontation.
"How could I entice a police officer to pull me over when he was undercover and in plainclothes?" Graber said. "I wasn't trying to record myself doing anything illegal."
Graber said he has since sold the motorcycle for $5,000, far less than the $10,500 he says he paid for it a year earlier. He said he still owed several thousand dollars on the bike but took the loss. "I don't want to ever have a motorcycle again," he said.
Police officers throughout Maryland have cited the law to seize cameras of people at crime scenes or those who are recording their activities. A Baltimore police officer at the Preakness last year sternly told an amateur cameraman to stop recording the arrest of a woman, telling him, "It's illegal to record anybody's voice or anything else in the state of Maryland."
The U.S. government allowed Mexican drug cartel hit men working as “confidential informants” for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to murder people inside the United States, an American federal law enforcement supervisor told the private intelligence firm Stratfor in e-mails released by WikiLeaks. ICE neither confirmed nor denied the allegations when contacted by The New American.
Additionally, a U.S.-based Mexican diplomat and other sources claimed that Washington, D.C., was working with certain favored drug cartels — especially Sinaloa — in an effort to put smaller criminal organizations out of business. The e-mails echoed allegations made in numerous reports and statements by officials, drug-cartel operatives, and other sources, indicating that the U.S. government was deeply involved in the narcotics trade.
Perhaps the most astounding information, however, had to do with the U.S. government allegedly allowing Mexican cartel hit men across the border into the United States to murder targets. A Stratfor source identified in the documents as “US714,” whom the firm described as a “US law enforcement officer with direct oversight of border investigations,” made that explosive accusation in an e-mail dated April of last year.
“Regarding ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] screwing up informants: They [ICE] were handling big hit men from Juarez and letting them kill in the U.S.,” explained the federal law enforcement supervisor, who in a separate e-mail also said American troops were already in Mexico engaged in joint operations with Mexican forces.
Instead of expressing shock about the major allegations against ICE, a Stratfor employee responded by mentioning that the intelligence-gathering outfit had already written about the issue, pointing to a 2009 piece published online entitled “Confidential Informants: A Double-Edged Sword.” In that article, Stratfor highlighted the story of a confidential ICE informant, Ruben Rodriguez Dorado, who was involved in the murder of yet another confidential ICE source in Texas.
When asked by The New American about the federal law enforcement supervisor’s allegations in the correspondence with Stratfor, ICE refused to either confirm or deny the accusations. Instead, ICE spokesman Brandon Montgomery with the Department of Homeland Security offered a statement explaining the importance of confidential informants to criminal investigations.
“Confidential Informants (CI) are an extremely valuable and necessary part of law enforcement efforts to disrupt and dismantle criminal organizations. One of the most effective ways to do this is by turning insiders within these organizations and utilizing their information as CIs,” Montgomery explained. “Insiders can provide information that cannot be obtained through any other means.”
According to Montgomery, ICE will substitute an undercover federal agent for its confidential informant as soon as possible to ensure that the investigation is carried out by trained law enforcement professionals. “ICE initiates a CI through a regulated and controlled process and ICE takes significant steps, including training of ICE agents and audits of CI files when working with CIs,” the spokesman concluded.
Analysts focused on the Mexican drug war and the roles of U.S. officials, meanwhile, were not surprised by the most recent allegations leveled against ICE either. In fact, as noted by multiple analysts, it would not be the first time that the U.S. government has been involved in eerily similar scandals.
“Though Stratfor source US714’s revelation may seem too dark to be true, Narco News has already documented, via the multi-year House of Death investigative series, that ICE, with the approval of US prosecutors, allowed one of its informants to participate in multiple murders inside Mexico in order to make a drug case,” wrote investigative reporter Bill Conroy, one of the premier journalists covering the broader drug war.
The so-called “House of Death” scandal surrounded another ICE informant, Guillermo “Lalo” Ramirez Peyro, who was simultaneously working with the Juarez cartel. In that case, federal officials knew their paid informant was involved in torture and multiple murders, yet continued to give him what numerous analysts and other officials described as a “license to kill.”
When the truth eventually came out, the federal government fired the customs agent, Raul Bencomo, who was “handling” the murderous CI. But according to Bencomo, he was simply made into a scapegoat to protect higher-ranking officials at ICE and their bosses all the way into the heart of the federal government who knew exactly what was happening.
"He [CI ‘Lalo’] would report a murder, and either we heard it on a phone, nobody told us to stop doing the case," Bencomo told NPR in a 2010 interview after being fired over the scandal. "We were told to continue, so for them to say that they didn't know about it, that is a total lie."
Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council (LEOAC) chief Andy Ramirez told The New American that there were some differences between the “House of Death” scandal and the more recent allegations surrounding ICE. For one, the informant was not killing in the United States — those murders took place at a property in Mexico.
When that scandal began to unravel, though, a cover-up began almost immediately, said Ramirez, who tried to get lawmakers to investigate. “Lalo was locked away with an attempt to deport him to Mexico that lasted several years until we got Congress involved in Lalo's case,” he explained. “But the ‘hey’ here is DOJ and DHS knew and knew the Mexican government knew. Mexico ultimately wanted border and immigration policies changed by Junior Bush's Administration almost immediately.”
According to Ramirez, such facts have become “common” considering what he described as “mismanagement” by DHS, to which ICE answers, as well as the Department of Justice. “CIs are used for what they can gain info-wise and then hung out to dry without thought, just as our Border Patrol Agents are,” Ramirez said.
But there is a reason not much has been done to investigate the problems, let alone hold anyone accountable. “Congress has ignored the criminality of these cases in order to protect their presidents as titular party heads,” said Ramirez, who regularly speaks out against abuses under both parties. “I know because I reported the House of Death case personally to the Hill and was ignored by what up to that point were ‘friends’.”
While working with confidential informants is hazardous by its very nature — they tend to be hardened criminals, often have ulterior motives, and can sometimes be serving as “double agents” — the questions being raised must be addressed. Was ICE deliberately allowing cartel hit men to murder in the United States? What sort of investigation, giving ICE the benefit of the doubt, could possibly justify such a scheme?
Whether or not the whole truth will ever emerge about the federal government’s nefarious activities surrounding the drug wars remains unclear. But from what is already known, the picture that emerges is highly disturbing, according to analysts — at least that much is clear. Activists say it is past time for Congress to find out what exactly is going on and hold those responsible for criminal activity to account.
Felonious Florida cops cause 300 crashes that murder 19 innocent people
ORLANDO, FLORIDA -- The investigative news team at WKMG-TV in Orlando received tips that there were habitual speeders in the area, sometimes going in excess of 100 miles-per-hour, apparently getting off scott-free. Turns out there was a reason they weren't being ticketed oct prosecuted: they were off-duty police.
The investigators tracked suspected speeding cops heading to work, or leaving work to off-duty part-time jobs. After measuring the exact time it took law enforcers to travel the distances between toll plazas in July, Local 6 mapped those distances and created a computer database to isolate the most frequent and fastest speeders in police vehicles.
The results: Fourteen Orlando police vehicle not responding to a call were clocked at between 90 mph and 115 mph 37 times. Additionally, sixteen Orange County sherrif's deputies--also not being dispatched to a call--were driving between 90 and 109 mph some forty times that month.
Orlando police chief Paul Rooney, after being presented with the evidence, suspended one officer's take-home driving privileges (driving a police car him after shift) and placed eleven other officers under investigation. There are two additional officers the chief said he is trying to identify from the video surveillance.
Habitual speeding cases like this are not uncommon in police departments. But this sting carried out by WKMG-TV with such compelling video has a chance to resonate across the country to deter police from abusing authority when off duty.
'I love that she is asleep right now and does not have the slightest clue of what we have planned. She looks tasty doesn't she?'
-NYPD cop Gilberto Valle
Funny how this story is censored by CNN, Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC "News" in USA... Because we need a bigger Police State sticking hands in Miss America's vagina to keep us safe, that just bought 1.5-BILLION bullets for Fatherland Security!
'Cook her over low heat, keep her alive as long as possible': NYPD 'cannibal' cop who 'kept files on 100 women he planned to kidnap, rape, kill, cook, and eat' held without bail and could face LIFE in prison
•Gilberto Valle 'created list of up to 100 victims with a picture of each'
•He 'used law enforcement databases to carry out surveillance on them'
•He 'outlined plans to cook and abduct women in emails to co-conspirators'
•Had one file entitled: 'Abducting and Cooking [victim's name]: A Blueprint'
•Valle, who has been with department for six years, in court on Thursday
Oct 26, 2012 -- A New York police officer allegedly plotted to kidnap up to 100 women, roast them in his oven or over a fire, and eat them, federal authorities said.
According to a criminal complaint, Gilberto Valle, an active New York Police Department officer, discussed "kidnapping, cooking and eating body parts of women" with an with an unnamed witness.
The duo allegedly discussed using chloroform to knock their prey out, then bring them back to 28-year-old Valle's kitchen, where the officer said he had a big enough oven "if I folded their legs."
Slow cooking her on a spit over an open fire or roasting her alive in a cage were also considered.
Valle, who was reportedly stationed in Harlem, was arrested on Wednesday at his home in the New York borough of Queens.
The co-conspirator, who has not been identified, was not charged and there was no further detail about the individual or others involved.
The US attorney's office for Manhattan said referred to multiple co-conspirators.
NYPD precinct where Cannibal Cop plotted his feast using NYPD database on women
No women were harmed, but FBI acting assistant director Mary Galligan said the stomach-churning allegations were beyond comment.
"The allegations in the complaint really need no description from us. They speak for themselves," she said. "It would be an understatement merely to say Valle's own words and actions were shocking."
New York police chief Ray Kelly called the case "bizarre."
The FBI learned about Valle's plan in September when it found that he'd spent months discussing details on emails and instant messages from his home computer, according to the complaint.
Mommy with cannibal cop
A search of his computer allegedly revealed files kept on at least 100 women, each with a name and photograph and often personal details such as address and descriptions.
Valle is said to have illegally used law enforcement databases to draw up a target list of women.
Then he concocted a "plan to abduct and cook an identified woman, researching methods of disabling and drugging women, and agreeing with at least one other individual to kidnap a woman in exchange for a sum of money."
During one online conversation that took place in July between Valle and the unidentified co-conspirator, the complaint says, Valle was asked: "How big is your oven?"
Son of Son of Sam?
Valle allegedly answered: "Big enough to fit one of these girls if I folded their legs."
Further discussing the culinary aspects of the plot, the co-conspirator allegedly asked Valle what his "favorite cut of meat" was and advised against using a spit over a fire.
"Spitting kills the girl. Have to put her into a kind of cage," the co-conspirator wrote.
"I was thinking of tying her body onto some kind of apparatus," Valle allegedly responds. "Cook her over a low heat, keep her alive as long as possible."
Although no murders took place, Valle allegedly went as far as meeting one of his intended victims. The co-conspirator asked him "How was your meal?" to which Valle is alleged to have replied: "I am meeting her."
The ghoulish meeting took place, the FBI says, in a restaurant.
According to the complaint, Valle was preparing to do the kidnapping, for which the co-conspirator promised to pay him $5,000 a victim.
"This is very risky and will ruin my life if I'm caught," he allegedly wrote. "I really need the money and I can't take under $5,000."
Chief Manhattan federal prosecutor Preet Bharara said: "Gilberto Valle's alleged plans to kidnap women so that they could be raped, tortured, killed, cooked, and cannibalized shock the conscience.
"This case is all the more disturbing when you consider Valle's position as a New York City police officer and his sworn duty to serve and protect."
Valle faces up to life in prison if convicted on a kidnapping conspiracy charge and five years if found guilty of illegally accessing an official computer.
Despite the horror movie quality to the alleged plot, online news watchers were quick to start cracking jokes.
On The Daily Beast, one reader referred to the NYPD's mission to protect and serve, then quipped that Valle was "taking the second part seriously."
I'm calling bullshit. She only "won" 1 Indycar race in her career (mechanics won it in the pits) as Indycar died and went bankrupt. She has never won a NASCAR race, usually qualifies in 30th position. TV ratings boost!!!!! When I attended a racing school in Daytona back in 1994, the owner/instructor told the class Dale EARNhart never had to put his car through tech inspection at the Daytona 500, which is pre-approved cheating. Dale was raking in $40-million/year or more in advertsing contracts, which NASCAR/Daytona Motorsport Group got a cut of. This was diring a dinner with Mike Joy, the ESPN sports commentator, who agreed with that observation. Looks like GoDaddy Girl is getting the same Don King treatment. Experts say all pro sports are rigged as to who wins the big games, and the teams share the payout so the "loser" teams don't get too butthurt. Pro teams get fined $100,000 after they refuse to play their 3 best players then lose a big game, "because their star players needed a vacation." College is perhaps the same way, including at UT. Gambling, TV advertising and team sales are multi-billion business. I wonder if that was Pat Head's big secret to success? -The Dragonater
Knoxville News Gatekeeper and Associated Press tell yet another big stinkin pile of crap lie
21 February 2013
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Danica Patrick has won the Daytona 500 pole, becoming the first woman to secure the top spot for any race in NASCAR's top circuit.
Dan Ika lost her boobies -- can you help her find them?
It was the biggest achievement of her stock-car career.
"We have a lot more history to make and we're eager to do it," Patrick said.
Patrick went out eighth in the qualifying session Sunday and covered the 2½-mile superspeedway in 45.817 seconds, averaging 196.434 mph.
She waited about two hours as 37 fellow drivers tried to take her spot. Only four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon even came close to knocking her off.
"That's a huge accomplishment," team owner and fellow driver Tony Stewart said. "It's not like it's been 15 or 20 years she's been trying to do this. It's her second trip to Daytona here in a Cup car. She's made history in the sport. That's stuff that we're proud of being a part of with her. It's something she should have a huge amount of pride in.
"It's never been done. There's only one person that can be the first to do anything. Doesn't matter how many do it after you do, accomplish that same goal. The first one that does always has that little bit more significance to it because you were the first."
Gordon was the only other driver who topped 196 mph in qualifying. He locked up the other guaranteed spot in next week's season-opening Daytona 500.
"It's great to be part of history," Gordon said. "I can say I was the fastest guy today."
The rest of the field will be set in duel qualifying races Thursday.
However the lineup unfolds, all drivers will line up behind Patrick's No. 10 Chevrolet SS for "The Great American Race."
Patrick joked about wanting to get Monday and Tuesday off, but then quickly realized her accomplishment likely will result in more attention and more demands.
"I feel a scheme coming on," she said. "I feel a plane coming. I feel nervous."
Patrick has been the talk of Speedweeks. Not only did she open up about her budding romance with fellow Sprint Cup rookie Ricky Stenhouse Jr., but she was considered the front-runner for the pole after turning the fastest laps in practice Saturday.
And she didn't disappoint.
She kept her car at or near the bottom of the famed track and gained ground on the straightaways, showing lots of power from a Hendrick Motorsports engine.
"It's easy to come down here in your first or second year as a driver and clip the apron trying to run too tight a line or do something and scrub speed off," Stewart said. "That's something she did an awesome job. Watching her lap, she runs so smooth. ... She did her job behind the wheel, for sure."
The result surely felt good for Patrick, especially considering the former IndyCar driver has mostly struggled in three NASCAR seasons. Her best finish in 10 Cup races is 17th, and she has one top-five in 58 starts in the second-tier Nationwide Series.
She raced part-time in 2010 and 2011 while still driving a full IndyCar slate. She switched solely to stock cars last season and finished 10th in the Nationwide standings.
She made the jump to Sprint Cup this season and will battle Stenhouse for Rookie of the Year honors.
But taking the pole will make her the talk of the town for another week. She also won the pole at Daytona for last year's Nationwide race.
This is considerably bigger.
The previous highest female qualifier in a Cup race was Janet Guthrie. She started ninth at Bristol and Talladega in 1977.
Patrick shattered that mark Sunday, putting her squarely in the spotlight for the next week. It's a position she's comfortable in, evidenced by her racing career, her television commercials and her sudden openness about her personal life.
"I think when pressure's on and when the spotlight's on, I feel like it ultimately ends up becoming some of my better moments and my better races and better results," Patrick said. "I don't know why that it. I'm grateful for it because the opposite of that would be I probably wouldn't be here today, I wouldn't be in the position I'm in. I guess thanks mom and dad. Thanks for the genetics. Thank you for all that.
"I just understand that if you put the hard work in before you go out there that you can have a little peace and a little peace of mind knowing that you've done everything you can and just let it happen."
I heard they brought Earnhardt Sr.'s special restrictor plates out of retirement for her. Wink, wink--nod, nod.
Can anyone spell R I G G E D ??
Doubting its the first pole she's ever been on top of...
sitting on the pole
will she have her left turn signal on the whole time?
Checking her oil Her tank is now full
Trying to erase the INDY fail by changing to NASCAR.
she acts like a big dumb slut for GoDaddy
hope she doesn't get rear ended to many times
I wouldn't mind hitting her rear end
Does this fire-suit make my butt look big???
The conspiracy mounts. Think about where sports are going. First the NFL with the Patriots winning the Super Bowl right after 9/11. Later it comes out that they were cheating to get it done. Then right after Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, the New Orleans Saints win the Super Bowl. Later it comes out that they too were cheating with their bounty program while the NFL turned a blind eye to illegal hits. Now Nascar follows suit. Do you really think that Danica won the pole? Of course not. The clock accidentally started keeping time a few tenths of a second after she started her time trial thus giving her a faster lap time. The proof will be that she will not lead even one lap. Sports have entered the realm of bullshit fantasy. There is no more realism in sports today. Let the chips fall where they may.
Nascar's ratings are sagging faster than a 50 year old biker chick's tits. So they rigged the clocks to put Danica on the pole in hopes of higher ratings. I would rather watch Danica pole dance than sit on the pole, personally. Maybe watching her sit on a pole would also be better.
A good driver based on what? You mean based on her inability to finish a race? Maybe based on her ability to crash a car. The truth of the matter is that she has never won a Nascar race. She has never even come close to contending for a championship. Plain and simple, she sucks. There are drivers who have lost their ride because they weren't productive enough yet are way better racers than Danica. Nascar is bullshit.
She will be guzzling so much fuel this year...I hope they have the catch-can ready.
A catch-can under her chin to catch all the cum she guzzles.
Don't get me wrong, I like Danica. I'd love to fuck her ass and shoot a couple loads down her throat. However, as far racing is concerned, she has no business in Nascar.
I'd love to watch Danica pole dance or sit on a pole. That would be pay-per-view worthy. She needs to stick to what she is good at and that is pleasing a man's cock.
Maybe they can have an in-car camera so that we can watch her shift gears. I'll be she handles that stick like a real pro! I wonder if her pussy gets wet when she gets too close to the outside wall on the track?
Danica might not be much of a driver but she sure is hot. She is hotter than most porn stars and prettier than most Hollywood actresses. What a delicious piece of ass! Yummy!!!
I can't believe all these big belly, toothless shitheads who are claiming only cheating allowed the stunningly beautiful Mrs. Patrick to take the pole because they are so very intimidated by a woman who can drive faster and better than they can. What a herd of gob smacked losers.
Cheating did it, period. You are the toothless idiot. Danica can suck a long hard one. I'll shoot a load up her ass or down her throat. That's about all she's good for.
How much of your life have you spent watching televised sports, attending games, talking about sports, listening to sports radio, checking websites for updated scores, and then taking in SportsCenter or another highlight show at the end of the day? How much of your thoughts have been consumed with the upcoming game? How many nights have you stayed awake wondering how your team blew that huge lead? How often have you reminisced about that impossible comeback win as if you played in the game? How much money have you emptied out of your pocket on tickets, DirectTV packages, bets, jerseys, hats, trading cards, autographs and overpriced beers over the course of your lifetime?
What if all of that time, emotion, and money has been wasted on a lie? What if the action on the field isn’t what it appears to be? What if you, and millions others like you, have been duped – outright lied to – by those franchises you hold so dear to your heart, all in the name of making an easy buck?
Well, my friend, it has happened. And although your name might not be “Mark”, you have certainly become one to those running the carnival known as professional sports.
When a win seems too good to be true - it is. When an impossible turn of events changes the course of a game - it is. When the story of an improbable underdog rises to the top like some sort of Hollywood screenplay - it is.
The leagues, hand-in-hand with the TV networks which pour billions of dollars into professional sports, have fixed their own games to squeeze every ounce of drama they can out of each season and to ensure you remain committed to their sport and glued to your TV.
This website is dedicated to shining the light into those dark corners and exposing professional sports leagues and their athletes for the money grubbing hypocrites they are. Some may call these sports conspiracy theories. I call them the truth.
How do you rate Eslick and the 1200cc Buell's "win" over the Japanese 600s? None of the above 91%. It's a sad and pathetic joke. We are now, officially, a laughingstock. MotoGP World Champion Kevin Schwantz says, "It's interesting to see an 1150 cc winning the 600 class. It's a little bit funny."
The top points scorer in Superbike will cash a $3500 check in 2010 DMG Superbike. Which is the same amount paid to the Daytona 200 winner.
I paused and asked Roger Edmondson, as only one man who has known another man for twenty years can, "What the hell are you doing? Why are you getting back into motorcycle racing?"
From the expression on his face, Roger didn't appreciate my question, but he never looked away. He said, simply, almost sternly, "I have unfinished business in motorcycle racing." He glared at me for a few more seconds and then walked away, I think muttering a good-bye. Later came the still cloaked in mystery "purchase" of AMA Pro Racing and sad events which led to AMA Superbike racing in America devolving into a farce.
Post-sale, a smart businessman or entity might have tried to fuse the racing scene into one will behind them, the rising tide raises all craft approach. Not these guys.
Along the way, Edmondson's comments and the actions of DMG managed to offend nearly everyone but Erik Buell. He told some of the Japanese manufacturers, the ones who had invested to build the championship into one that, at times, rivaled WSBK, that they would now have little say in the running of the series, that DMG wasn't in the business of selling motorcycles (the latter words so unimaginably toxic in today's racing climate) and told the riders that they have the comfort zone of an insect in terms of track safety.
The resulting damage was so vast that there are still people today who are convinced that DMG only bought the Superbke series with an intent to destroy it, to silence those pesky riders, drive away the Japanese factories, to turn the Daytona 200 into some kind of club race, and position the series for a glorious return to Loudon.
If Edmondson really is gone (many people seem to be skeptical that he hasn't just moved to a puppeteer role) then the DMG folks may have an opportunity here for a possible second and very final chance at redemption. Where it should start on this journey is at the beginning.
The AMA should release all details of the sale of AMA Pro Racing assets to DMG. How much money they received, what was purchased and where that money is now. And if the AMA won't disclose this, then AMA members should demand of Rob Dingman, the AMA's President and CEO, an explanation of how the AMA could sell an asset which brought in nearly ten million dollars to the association and then just decide not to tell the members any details about it at all.
Cheat on Sunday, bankrupt on Monday. Buell Motorcycle Company officials thanked the company's customers, employees and dealers for an unforgettable ride, following today's announcement by Harley-Davidson, Inc. that it will discontinue the Buell product line as part of Harley-Davidson's crash business strategy to export US jobs and loot investors.
A wholly owned subsidiary of Harley-Davidson, Inc. since 1998, Buell Motorcycle Company was founded in 1983 by Erik Buell and produced more than 135,000 motorcycles. Over the past 26 years, Buell motorcycles won numerous design accolades and awards, and countless races and championships around the world, including the AMA Pro Daytona SportBike championship in 2009, competing agaisnt bikes half its size.
Buell will continue to supply parts to dealers to support racers who want to go racing next season. However, the racing support program and contingency will be discontinued. Fuck you Eslick.
The news that Harley was dropping two lineups came as the struggling manufacturer also said that its third-quarter income fell 84% to $26.5 million, or 11 cents a share, from $166.5 million, or 71 cents a share, a year ago.
In July 2008, Harley wasted $109 million buying MV Agusta, which will be sold at a massive loss to shareholders, rather than use that money to build a Buell factory. The Italian company produces the F4CC model that sells for $120,000 and includes a wristwatch. Good riddance.
The NBA fined the San Antonio Spurs $250,000 on Friday for sending four players home Thursday before their game Thursday night in Miami.
Commissioner David Stern said in a statement that the Spurs "did a disservice to the league and our fans" when they didn't bring Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili or Danny Green to Miami for the final game of their six-game road trip.
"The result here is dictated by the totality of the facts in this case," Stern said. "The Spurs decided to make four of their top players unavailable for an early-season game that was the team's only regular-season visit to Miami. The team also did this without informing the Heat, the media, or the league office in a timely way."
Teams are required to report as soon as they know a player will not travel because of injury.
The league's statement said the Spurs were in violation of league policy reviewed with the board of governors in April 2010 against resting players in a manner "contrary to the best interests of the NBA."
After that meeting, Stern said owners had discussed the issue of sitting healthy players but that there was "no conclusion reached, other than a number of teams thought it should be at the sole discretion of the team, the coach, the general manager, and I think it's fair to say I agree with that, unless that discretion is abused."
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We all know the wheels are falling off the Tiger Woods bandwagon at a record pace. The man has gone from the top of the sporting world to a punchline for a string of bad jokes. His marriage is in ruins, his image is shattered, and his marketability has vanished overnight.
As the revelations and rumors of numerous affairs mount with each passing day, another bombshell rumor—one that is far from being substantiated—has dropped: the story of Tiger's doctor being linked to performance enhancing substances.
What the hell happened to Tiger Woods?
How did a once fan-friendly face become yet another poster child for all that is wrong with modern athletes?
Perhaps, and I write this knowing full well that much of what follows is conjecture, perhaps Tiger's problem began when he became buddy-buddy with the likes of Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley.
In his heyday, Jordan was the NBA, the same as Tiger became the PGA. But Jordan was never a saint. As his reputation and fame grew, so did his ego. He quickly spun out of both the Chicago Bulls' and the NBA's control.
Jordan was womanizing behind his wife's back. Jordan had a serious gambling issue (one that I believe led directly to his first "retirement" that may have instead been a NBA mandated suspension in order to seek help for an addiction). Jordan was, in reality, a first class jack-ass.
But the NBA couldn't touch Jordan. They couldn't afford to. He meant too much money to too many corporations (Chevy, McDonalds, and Nike to name a few). He was the league's meal ticket and came at a time that the NBA deperately needed the attention he brought with each championship won.
The sports media as well refused to turn on MJ. Reporters needed access to him to get their puff pieces written. Jordan was known to kick reporters out of the locker room if they dared question him or show him in any sort of negative light. Jordan played them, and in return, everyone got what they wanted.
Sound anything like Tiger Woods?
So one day, Jordan and Tiger meet up thanks to Jordan's love of golfing. They become friends. Stories are exchanged. And once his divorce was finalized, a single Jordan begins to entertain Tiger.
Then Charles Barkley enters the scene. Barkley, too, befriends Tiger. Barkley himself has some gambling issues (of course, that isn't a "problem" for Barkley because, as he once said, he "can afford to lose $10 million gambling") and other related baggage (DUI, anyone?).
The pair introduce Tiger to the high life. The downfall has begun.
Soon rumors of Tiger's gambling begin. Nothing confirmed, but nothing necessarily illegal either. This wouldn't surprise anyone as Tiger is as competitive as any athlete out there, and its that competitiveness that drives many a gambler to his ruin.
Then the women come into the picture. Jordan, always the player, knows what fame and fortune can bring. Tiger, as we've all discovered, plays along.
What Tiger learns from Jordan and Barkley is how the fame game is really played. Jordan, being too big for the NBA to punish, becomes Tiger's role model. He may think, "if Jordan could do all this and not face any trouble from the NBA or the adoring media, what's gonna stop Tiger Woods?"
What Tiger fails to understand is that the media of 2009 is a far cry from the media of 20 years earlier. Jordan wasn't faced with the 24/7 coverage Tiger Woods now faces. And the PGA doesn't have the pull the combined forces of the NBA and NBC once did.
Tiger quickly learns that what may have been true for Jordan and Barkley, that they were "too big to fail," doesn't necessarily apply to him. But it's now too late. The cat's out of the bag, and Tiger's wrecked because of it.
I don't believe Tiger's not responsible for his own problems, but could Jordan and Barkley been the worst role models for Tiger to have? Could befriending them been the beginning of the his end?
The Supreme Court today decided not to hear the appeal in the lawsuit brought by disgruntled New York Jets fan Carl Mayer against the New England Patriots over the “Spygate” scandal. Mayer, a lawyer, was suing the Patriots on behalf of all Jets’ fans, seeking millions in damages for essentially cheating.
By not hearing this case, the Supreme Court not just upheld the lower court’s dismissal of Mayer’s suit, but in a very real sense helped prove that a league like the NFL could legally fix its own games.
What this case boiled down to was this: the Patriots “cheated” by improperly videotaping opposing teams’ coaching signals. They then used that knowledge to win more games. This was something the Patriots’ coaching staff participated in for years, likely dating to when Head Coach Bill Belichick started with the team in 2000.
The NFL finally “caught” Belichick and the Patriots in 2007. Both were subsequently fined: Belichick for $500,000 and the Patriots organization for $750,000 plus a first round draft pick. They have not won a championship since the Spygate scandal broke.
Mayer’s suit alleged that he and other Jets fans had been duped by the Patriots. He argued that they deserved their money back for the games between the two teams played at the Jets’ home stadium, the Meadowlands, because for those seven years, the playing field was clearly not level.
The lawsuit originally reached all the way to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. It was here that two revelations were made.
The first was that the Patriots’ lawyers argued that had Jets fans known the Patriots were cheating via this illegal videotaping system, they would have still purchased tickets to the games.
In essence, lawyers for the NFL stated that fans are such suckers for NFL football, cheating or not, they’ll purchase tickets to any game played.
Yet the larger, more important fact to come from the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals was this—as directly quoted from the precendential opinion of Circuit Judge Cowen: “At best, he [Mayer] possessed nothing more than a contractual right to a seat from which to watch an NFL game between the Jets and the Patriots, and this right was clearly honored.”
In other words, your NFL ticket gives you a license to see a NFL game. It doesn’t mean it has to be played by any specific rules, or that the rules must be enforced, or that the game has to be legitimate. If you paid good money and witnessed a rigged game—no matter—you paid to see a NFL game, and that is what they provided to you.
As Cowen also wrote, “Mayer possessed either a license or, at best, a contractual right to enter Giants Stadium and to have a seat from which to watch a professional football game. In the clear language of the ticket stub, ‘[t]his ticket only grants entry into the stadium and a spectator seat for the specified NFL game.’ Mayer actually was allowed to enter the stadium and witnessed the ‘specified NFL game[s]’ between the Jets and Patriots. He thereby suffered no cognizable injury to a legally protected right or interest.”
To make matters worse, Cowen concluded with this: “We do not condone the conduct on the part of the Patriots and the team’s head coach, and we likewise refrain from assessing whether the NFL’s sanctions (and its alleged destruction of the videotapes themselves) were otherwise appropriate. We further recognize that professional football, like other professional sports, is a multi-billion dollar business. In turn, ticket-holders and other fans may have legitimate issues with the manner in which they are treated….Significantly, our ruling also does not leave Mayer and other ticket-holders without any recourse. Instead, fans could speak out against the Patriots, their coach, and the NFL itself. In fact, they could even go so far as to refuse to purchase tickets or NFL-related merchandise….However, the one thing they cannot do is bring a legal action in a court of law. [emphasis in original].”
The Supreme Court upheld this decision. This is just further proof of how the NFL can mistreat its fans, perhaps even fix their own games, and legally get away with it.
The Super Bowl. Is there a bigger event in sports today? The NFL is the most popular and most successful business in the sports world and their championship game is so popular its watched by millions around the world. It cost $3 million for a 30 second ad during the game. With this much focus and attention being drawn to one particular game, its important for the NFL to "put on a good show". In the 80's and 90's, it wasn't always a good game. There were quite a few blowouts. The Bears blowing out the Patriots 46-10, San Francisco blowing out the Broncos 55-10, then blowing out the Chargers 49-26, the Cowboys destroying the Bills 52-17... I think you get the idea. These games were over by halftime. The Super Bowl was getting to be known as the "Super Blowout". Nobody was watching by the second half and advertisers were not interested in buying ad time during the second half since less people would see it. The match ups were somewhat boring as well. What story was there behind San Diego vs San Francisco? They're both California teams... so what? Dallas and Buffalo... nothing in common, no story. There was hardly any story behind the match ups. Well that was until the 2001 season. Everything then magically changed.
St. Louis Rams vs New England Patriots 2001 - In wake of 9/11, the NFL decided to make the theme of the Super Bowl a "patriotic" one. This was the year of the infamous "tuck rule". Oh you know, that play where Brady does a pump fake, resets, gets hit, fumbles, Oakland recovers the fumble, Brady goes the sidelines and puts his head down, Belichick takes off his headset, Oakland gets ready for a kneel down... but suddenly the refs get together, review the play and say that the fumble was actually an incomplete pass. Uhhh yeah sure... The Patriots were allowed to keep the ball, they score a TD, win the game and then go onto the Super Bowl. The Patriots playing in the patriotic super bowl, what a coincidence! Not only that, but they go on to win with a last second 48 yard field goal. The whole nation (except St Louis) was so happy to see the Patriots do our our country proud by winning the Super Bowl!
Oakland Raiders vs Tampa Bay Buccaneers 2002 - The Raiders old coach Jon Gruden leaves Oakland and takes the head coaching job in Tampa. Less than a year later, wouldn't you know it, Gruden is facing his old team in the Super Bowl. What are the odds of that happening?
Carolina Panthers vs New England Patriots 2003 - The Patriots failed to make the playoffs in 2002, which gave some conspiracy theorists a reason to believe that what they did in 2001 was the work of the NFL especially with the whole "tuck rule" incident. Well that Pats make it back to the Super Bowl and its almost an exact replay of the game from two years ago. Ricky Proehl scores a late TD for the other team to tie it, Vinateri kicks a field goal to win it in the final seconds. Yay for "America's team" again.
New England Patriots vs Philadelphia Eagles 2004 - Not since the 70's Steelers have we seen 3 Super Bowl victories in 5 years. What a story it would be if "America's Team" the Patriots won 3 out of 4. They would be a dynasty and possibly the greatest team of all time!
Seattle Seahawks vs Pittsburgh Steelers 2005 - In this season the Super Bowl location is Detroit. Kind of an odd place for a big game, but not unprecedented, it was there in 1982. Wouldn't you know it though, future Hall of Famer and Steelers RB Jerome Bettis was born in Detroit and he let it be known that this was going to be his last year. What a way to go, winning the Super Bowl in your hometown. Going out on top! What a story!
Indianapolis Colts vs Chicago Bears 2006 - For the last several seasons, the Colts were one of the top teams in the league, but could never quite get over the hump. They had great regular season records and every year you would hear about Tony Dungy possibly being the first black head coach in the Super Bowl. Finally it was he year and wouldn't you know it, he would be coaching against another African American coach Lovie Smith. The two were already very good friends and would make history together by being the first two black head coaches in the Super Bowl with one of them being the first black coach to win the Super Bowl. Great feel good story!
New York Giants vs New England Patriots 2007 - It was discovered earlier in this season that "America's Team" was a fraud. They got caught cheating during their championship seasons and the public was outraged. Outraged that it happened and outraged that the NFL merely gave them a slap on the wrist when they were caught (They also destroyed the evidence of the cheating, which is very odd to say the least). People were starting to say that the cheating was the only reason they won. What could save the face of the NFL and the integrity of the league? Ohhh how about a 16-0 regular season without cheating? Then go into the Super Bowl 18-0 with the chance to be called the greatest team of all time. Unfortunately for the NFL, the Giants won the Super Bowl in the final minute causing the Patriots to go 18-1. But you know what? A team blowing their chance at perfection in the final minute of the last game is a huge story!
Pittsburgh Steelers vs Arizona Cardinals 2008 - When long time head coach Bill Cowher retired, the Steelers had a choice to make. Who do they make the next head coach? Current OC Ken Whisenhunt, offensive line coach Russ Grimm or Rooney Rule candidate Mike Tomlin. The Steelers, of course, went with Tomlin, while Whisenhunt and Grimm went off to the desert in Arizona. Wouldn't you know it, one year later, its Tomlin vs Whisenhunt and Grimm in the Super Bowl? What are the odds, right? Especially since the Cardinals hadn't even been to any type of championship game since 1947. The Steelers win, Tomlin shows the Rooney's they made the right choice and Pittsburgh is known as "Sixburgh".
New Orleans Saints vs Indianapolis Colts 2009 - In the Saints 42 year history, they have never even made it to the Super Bowl. They were the laughing stock of the league for decades. The "Aints", as they were called, only had one good player even worth mentioning and that was QB Archie Manning. He was the lone bright spot on a very dark franchise history. With Hurricane Katrina destroying the city of New Orleans it really is a fantastic story that this city was able to be rebuilt and recover. Wouldn't it be great though if the Saints actually went to the Super Bowl too? Heck, not only would it be great if they went to the Super Bowl, but what if they were to go up against Archie Manning's son, Peyton?! Wouldn't that be an awesome story?!
Pittsburgh Steelers vs Green Bay Packers 2010 - Green Bay's first round pick from 2005, Aaron Rodgers, didn't get to start in his first NFL game till 2008 thanks to the "evil" Brett Favre holding him down. At the beginning of the year, Favre wanted to give it one last go to win a Super Bowl before retiring. However the "evil" Favre wasn't very good, he lost to his old team twice, got injured numerous times, watched his consecutive games streak come to an end as well as his career. Meanwhile, in the city that the "evil" Favre used to dwell, a new hero comes to the light in the form of Aaron Rodgers, the guy Favre was trying to hold down. Rodgers first championship season is also Favre's last year. As Favre's light is extinguished, Rodgers light shines brightly through the NFL world as he offers more promise to Green Bay than the "evil" Favre ever did.
That's a pretty incredible span. 10 games in a row with an intriguing storyline. Half of them were decided by 4 points or less. Only one game was won by more than 14 points. With the exception of the Patriots lost perfect season, all of them are considered to be "happy endings", at least in the minds of the NFL/average American football fan with no interest in either team. A dynasty, history being made, going out on top, former allies matched up against one another. It was quite the decade huh?
I'm not saying that the NFL is "fixing" their games, but its naive to think this is all happening naturally. It went from being just two really good teams playing each other, most of the time it ended up in a blow out, to every game is really close and has an intriguing back story for the media to hype for two weeks prior to the game being played. The NFL needs this game to have it all and for the last 10 Super Bowls, it has. Coincidence or fixed? You tell me.
Her tank is now full
