CONVICTED! The March 26, 2017 arrests of socialist marchers finally came to trial last Friday. We were all found GUILTY! OF MARCHING! YES! Because that’s a crime in Colorado Springs. It's disguised as a misdemeanor offense called “Obstruction.” On the other hand, all four defendants were acquitted of the more serious charge of Failure to Desist or Disperse, of which we were equally culpable, if you consider the police dispersal order lawful. 52940
Tag: Colorado Springs Police Department
CSPD Intelligence doesn’t have much
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO- Like the term Military Intelligence, "police intelligence" is an oxymoron. At least that's the old joke. Wednesday's hearing about the CSPD's undercover operation against the Colo. Springs Socialists reinforced the adage. The good news is that Metro VNI, that is, Vice Narcotics & Intelligence, doesn't have much intelligence, as in smarts, haha, OR constructive data. The impetus of CSPD's efforts to infiltrate local activists has been to track ANTIFA, a nefarious worldwide anti-fascist organization apparently. Lieutenant Mark Comte, who heads Metro-VNI, testified to what they know so far. ANTIFA members wear black and cover their faces. When protesters do that, they're Antifa.
Springs municipal judge gives blessing to lucrative yet illegal I-25 speed trap.
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO.- Local municipal court judge Matthew Ramirez was presented with evidence today that the city is operating an UNJUSTIFIED SPEED LIMIT TRAP in the construction zone at the intersection of Highway-24 and Interstate-25. Though drivers are regularly cited for exceeding a 30mph speed limit, the posted speed does not meet the 85% compliance rule, nor the "pedal test" for enforceable speed reductions. Both are characteristics of improper and legally unenforceable "speed traps". Plus, it turns out, 30pmh is not even the minimum speed required to cross under I-25 before the traffic light turns red. 51608
Who is this El Paso Sheriffs undercover infiltrator provocateur? We don’t care!
COLO. SPRINGS-- Lawyers for the city are fighting defense team efforts to expose who, how, when and why local law enforcement agencies infiltrated a campus political activist group. The 2017 undercover operation was revealed in CSPD bodycam videos, but city courthouse lawyers and judges are preventing the evidence from being made public. 51100
City plan to snuff socialist infiltration hearing blows up in courtroom’s face
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO-- If you attended today's evidentiary hearing about the police infiltration of a local student group, you are no doubt left wondering what happened. Where were the defendants and why was the judge so angry? The outcome was not what either side wanted, but still it was a huge false step for the city. The defense was not provided the police witnesses it requested, but the prosecution was prevented from quashing those subpoenas outright. As a truant co-defendant, I had a unique vantage point on today's anticlimax and I apologize I was unable to explain it in person. 51028
Police body cameras reveal Colorado Springs law enforcement used arrests to infiltrate a student socialist group.
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO- Police body worn camera footage accidentally discovered to defendants in the March 26, 2017, protest cases, has revealed a mysterious side story at the Colorado Springs Socialists’ “March Against Imperialism”. At that march, six participants were cited for marching in the street. Meanwhile, a curious seventh was detained, driven off, but not cited. CSPD Officer Krueger’s body-cam recorded what happened and more. 50392
Colo. Springs police disperse March 26 anti-imperialism rally because it was easier than listening to socialists
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO- Local socialists assembled at City Hall on Sunday to "March Against Imperialism". After a brief march and an half-hour rally while encircled by CSPD, the socialists were informed they were "free to carry on with their assembly" but whoever lingered would be issued a citation for having been in the street. Making no distinction for who had and who hadn't, the police began handcuffing participants and the couple dozen others quickly dispersed. Five socialists were issued citations for "pedestrian in the highway" and "failure to disperse" while another was arrested and detained for failing to show an ID while filming the police. That person was taken to the downtown police station and held until officers finally informed her of the charges for which she was being cited, after which she identified herself. Throughout her detainment, multiple officers kept up a harassment of questions, refusing her requests that she contact her lawyer. CSPD never issued an order to disperse, a fact that is borne out by witness video. But in effect that is what the officers accomplished. They threatened the legal assembly with citations, for failure to disperse! 49720
Now Colorado College students have to ask permission if they want to protest
COLORADO COLLEGE- How do you protest having to seek permission to protest? Do it without. But Colorado College students learned on Wednesday that protesters risk arrest for trespassing: trespassing on the private property of a private college ostensibly protecting the non-dissenting students from having to see dissent. It would be interesting to see college administrators have to explain that on their campus, the freedom to speak didn't include the freedom to hear.
On #D12 #OccupyCS takes on Walmart, company store of the global plantation.
OCCUPIED COLORADO SPRINGS- Showing the flag today on the Occupy corner of Acacia Park in advance of tomorrow's 12/12 WALMART BOYCOTT. You might well ask why we passed on a sunny, pre-Chrismas shopping weekend to picket the 8th Street Walmart on a MONDAY. Easy. Our boycott is timed with other OCCUPY actions on #D12, the shutdown of Oakland's port by #OccupyOakland and #OccupyDenver's blocking of the Loveland Colorado Walmart distribution center. Solidarity. So we thought we'd dry our new signs today and recruit for tomorrow's event. The cops came early. 29487
News 5 Report: “cost to taxpayers of Occupy CS”
What extreme fucking gall. Their station, and their Pathetic Used-Snot-Rag of a Newspaper partner The Gazette are owned by a failed Corporation called Freedom Corp. That means for the past two years while they've been BANKRUPT they've been getting enormous tax breaks and even TAX REBATES to keep flooding our airwaves and "news" stands with their Extremist Right-Wing Garbage. The ultimate example of a Corporate "person" which cannot feed itself depending on Corporate Welfare to do it for... damn what pronoun should I use? "it' would be singular, rather than the suppurated oozing scab on the ass of humanity made up of thousands of parasites. He or She, same problem plus, the cesspool contains both, and quite a few of the parasites are neither. And what does this festering gaping open wound on our collective arse say is the cost to the taxpayers? The cost of the police constantly harrassing us. That's right(wing), they're making a statement that would be like the Gestapo sending a bill to the Jewish people for the cost of the Holocaust. Like the Sons of Confederate Veterans sending a bill to black people for their cost in trying to preserve slavery. The Arrogant sons of perdition have actually
Self-named snake in grass Jason Warf presses charges against Occupy Jack
OCCUPY COLORADO SPRINGS has an asshole problem, fortunately it's just one asshole, and it's not Occupy Jack Semple. Colorado Springs Occupiers passed a no-snitch policy Tuesday, in line with Occupies nationwide, but that doesn't stop Jason Warf, as permit holder for his personal "occupy" franchise, from calling the police on activists trying to make the Acacia Park encampment about more than Warf's media-whore ego. Fellow occupiers are forbidden to speak and act as anything other than solitary individuals, whether addressing City Council about the 1st Amendment, or answering media questions about what they hope to achieve with OWS. Whereas Jason Warf, self-officialized spokesman talks only about divisions and who's not part of his movement. 29209
War is over, so they say…
Said, in different words, that the illegal conquest Iraqi Oilfields and National Prison-camp Ghetto Rebuilding has been secured and that the Iraqi Puppet Army and Police are sufficiently trained in Western Style Police Brutality. What a victory for Righteousness and Decency! Strange that they never found all those WMDs, though, ain't it? Meanwhile neighboring Syria and Iran are targeted and Guess Which Really Stupid Lie They're Telling Us to justify that? Go on, guess... Ok I'll tell you. WMDs. Apparently a nation like the U.S. which employs torture and assassinations that have historically killed about twenty times as many non-combatants as they do "terrorists" and many of whose political leaders believe they should establish a fundamentalist religious dictatorship worldwide, is the only nation morally fit to have WMDs. Add in that the U.S., which has more of every class of weapon than the entire rest of the world combined, is also the only nation to have used all three classes of WMD, Biological, Nuclear and Chemical. And routinely uses gas and is experimenting with mass Pain weapons against "their own" citizens. Sort of a high-tech version of what they accuse Gadafi and Hussein of doing. And make no mistake, the American Cop or Soldier
CSPD Junior Police Explorers learn early to swagger and menace like pros
2011 DIVERSITY FAIR, NOTES, PART 1- What is our police department doing with high school age "explorers?" They're uniformed and have their own shoulder patch. Exploring what? The limits to which they impose their weight against peoples' rights? I'm at a civic festival in Confluence Park, across from a canopy whose shade does not conceal a mass of blue uniforms, adult officers bulky with bullet-proof vests and leather, holstering all manner of law enforcement weaponry, and CSPD apprentices, skinnier for lack of the armor and accouterments, but otherwise dressed exactly like police officers, and adopting the swagger which comes of trooping the colors, emboldened by the anonymity of the requisite Ray-Bans. 26188
Princess Lisa, “conservative” spends city funds threatening opposition.
Princess Lisa sent this Email, cc'ed to Dennis Hisey, Amy Lathen and Sallie Clark, her TeaBag Terrorist accomplices, and to the Fascist Sheriff and Police Chief: I assume these are copyright violations. Ed, I am forwarding this on to Chief Meyers of the Colorado police department and El Paso County's Sheriff Maketa. Your videos are inappropriate, threatening, include sexual content, promote violence and hate, you have written defamatory statements against elected officials, and are probably violating copyright laws. I will ask for appropriate instruction to go through the formal process to keep you away from me. 23314
Ms Czeladtko, temper temper…
Threatening people with police action for making fun of you? That's not the actions of somebody who isn't Fascist. Especially when the most pointed barbs were about your sneering condemnation of people you consider inferior because of their economic status. Apparently, making the arbitrary decision that people who are so desperately poor that they're actually not able to find housing... are "insane".. That's a little over the top, don't you see? Saying further that anybody who even LOOKS homeless should be banned from parks and other publicly funded places and services, "to protect the children" was really just God-damned stupid. Also hateful. Vicious. And displays the attitude that PikesPeakOcean and JCP1800 lampooned so thoroughly. 22795
Grandmas Against The War…
I LOVE the way these kids operate These are the ones who went to the Recruiting Offices in Manhattan and tried to enlist. In their 70s and 80s. This has an other link off on the sidebar to your right, on The Rag Blog. But I figured the more the merrier. 22789
Protest of police state lures police
COLORADO SPRINGS- Outnumbered! Though we comprised a perfectly respectable half-dozen on the hastily organized protest of FBI tactics meant to intimidate, scouting the city blocks which formed our periphery revealed motorcycle cops poised unseen behind corners. Is that merely obligatory, post-9/11, when activists speak out against intelligence agencies? Except for a building security guard who warned us the elevated planters along the sidewalk were private property, CSPD and state troopers kept an unobtrusive distance -- well, enough to mask their number. Our sign-holding was the usual peaceful vigil, but our minders parked a solitary unmarked cruiser smack in our faces to keep up with [menacing] appearances. The proverbial chill on free speech.
PPJPC drops justice & peace in favor of Judas kiss & Participatory militarism
You don't care what our neighborhood Pikes Peak Justice & Peace Commission has gotten its leash tangled around --I shouldn't-- but the latest is just too funny. FIRST, in November they sponsored an Israel-BDS protest to boycott a local Ahava outlet and promptly got two participants arrested. Wrongly of course, but the police were awaiting them with a letter fashioned for the occasion by the City Attorney giving the CSPD authority to drive the activists from the private property. Although planning had been kept on the QT, do you think the reception might have been due to monthly confabs which the PPJPC executive director keeps with city law enforcement? Later in debriefing, the director pronounced his incredulity that the "new policy" hadn't been spelled out to him at the last meeting. So what kinds of things do the PPJPC & CSPD discuss? SECOND, just as the PPJPC fell for the Save Darfur intervention-as-peacemaking faketivism, then zipped it for Obama's false hopetivism, now the pitiful dupes call their Muslim-Jewish-Christian "Evening in Jerusalem" gathering a THREE CUPS OF TEA PARTY! Would this be in deference to Greg Mortenson's Western Empire [school] building enterprise? That puts the PPJPC in the company
CSPD intimidates student activists with threat of arrest and inferred brutality
COLORADO SPRINGS- When word got round to CSPD that local college students might be planning a camp out to protest the inhumanity of the city's recent anti-homeless ordinance, a police commander put another message up the grapevine: all would be summarily arrested. The courtesy call to a local organizer was simply to ensure, he said, that participants be prepared for arrest, and wouldn't result in chaos with the potential for unintended brutality. The warning worked its charm, never mind the police offering no basis for how and why such a protest would be illegal.
Being without a home is not a crime
The CSPD and Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful are proposing an ordinance to make camping illegal. On February 5th, Coloradans For Peace will be joining Ed Billings' call: DON'T CRIMINALIZE THE HOMELESS. "Bring a sign, and a friend" Friday at noon, in front of Colorado Springs City Hall, 107 N. Nevada Ave. Ed's made an ad to promote the protest: 14060
Boycott vs. Chapel Hills Mall monitors
Please contact CFP if you can take a half-hour shift tomorrow. Gaza remains imprisoned, the FGM activists and aid convoy are still forbidden entry. The peace protesters are being roughed up in Egypt, and DAY 2 of our little Chapel Hills Mall action wasn't without excitement either. 13256
Colorado Springs government and police continue to lie about their raids on the Homeless
HOMELAND INSECURITY REPORT- The CS police, under the direction of Police Cap Ricky 'Liars' Myers, are continuing to fudge and pretend their innocence about their raids and harassment against the Homeless population in the city, on behalf of the Business Community which simply hates these unfortunate people. They want them all gone but can't find a way to get it done without attracting public attention. So they have to play all sorts of mind games using the local press as conduit for their song and dance. 6811
Springs ranks 3rd in arresting drinkers
IS COLORADO SPRINGS THE NATION'S 3RD DRUNKEST CITY? Relax, we rank third in criminalizing social drinkers for the sake of city revenues. The statistics used in the Men's Health Magazine study do not measure per capita consumption of alcohol as the title might imply, but are weighed heavily with law enforcement figures, among them, the number of DUI arrests and number of M.A.D.D. programs mandated. 5517
COS drops convention trespass charges
COLORADO SPRINGS- At this morning's motions hearing in Municipal Court, the city attorney asked Judge Spencer Gresham to dismiss their case. Due to "discovery issues we cannot resolve" and "internal misunderstandings," the city dropped the trespassing charges against Peter Sprunger-Froese and I. So let's see. They arrest us in front of hundreds at the World Arena, detain us until our chance to protest the State Convention is over, put us through five court appointments, then decide we shouldn't have been arrested? And they didn't even say that. 4512
Will free speech arrest merit a jury trial?
COLORADO SPRINGS- I figured our Motions Hearing today would be a perfunctory affair. Wrong! The city is denying there is more evidence, they want us to waive our right to a speedy trial, and, they asked the judge to deny us a jury trial. Can they do that? The judge will give his written decision by Friday. On whether we have a Constitutional Right to a Trial by Jury. 4296