America has a whole bunch of police impersonators.  It's an extension of the "stolen valor" mindset. It's almost always men, people who couldn't or wouldn't make it through academy for whatever reason.  The king of them is a guy named Jeremy DeWitte, who runs a whole crew and gets up to all kinds of weirdness.

But this isn't funny, these cop wannabes.  I'm not saying this particular guy is guilty of any specific criminal offense.  But he clearly wishes people would think he's in some way affiliated with law enforcement.  He's gone out of his way to make his vehicle look like a police car.  He's rolling around with a gun.

In this incident he's accused of having tried to initiate a traffic stop, then tried to ram the people and followed them up the road when they wouldn't comply.

"Do you know how odd this is, Dennis?" the officer asks after inspecting the assortment of lights, sirens, and radios in Dennis' personal vehicle.  He asks what the handcuffs are for.

Dennis has a dash cam video, which should be awesome.

The scenario in this video stems from a road-rage incident.  I've seen other situations where they tried to pull over a stripper for "speeding" or "weaving across the line."  This kind of thing is really dangerous for women and people who don't speak English that well or aren't really familiar with American law enforcement.

And there are a lot of them, more than you'd imagine.  I'm reminded of the BTK killer, who was also the town's petty enforcer, I think the guy who would write people tickets about their pets and minor code violations on their homes.  Similar voyeuristic, control freak mindset without having whatever it would take to actually complete police academy and get sworn in.

America is a place where people will shoot you dead if their fast-food order isn't exactly the way they want it.  Seriously.

The police have subsequently found this suspect, who has a prior record for having stabbed a pregnant woman. 

This is another story where the reporting is almost as infuriating as the story itself.

They never use the words "rape" or "sexual assault," which is what it's called when teachers have sex with the children in their care.  It's child molestation.  Maybe because it's women, they're calling it "sexual misconduct" and "having inappropriate relations with students."  The latter term really infuriates me.  That's not a thing.  That's victim-blaming, assigning consent to someone who couldn't possibly provide it.

Staff and students had both complained about Wingerter for years.  That's no different than every male teacher accused of sexually assaulting students when I was growing up.  Boat rockers got punished in my day, not rapey teachers.

The charges are "sexual conduct between an educator and student" and "indecent behavior with a juvenile."  So res ipsa loquitur on both counts, the thing speaks for itself all the way around. 

Both women stand accused of sexual contact with multiple male students.  This had been reported by multiple people.  It's alleged that nothing was done because of who Wingerter is within the school board and who she is related to.

St. Tamany Parish School Board President James Braud is shocked, shocked I tell you, to find gambling in Casablanca. 

The only reason people cared about this story, the only reason the grandmother was able to rescue this kid, was because of the father's involvement in professional sportsball.   I wish they cared about it because of the dangers posed to the children involved.  And there are others.

Look at the Manson lamps on the man in the thumbnail -- who is innocent of all charges until proven guilty in a court of law.  Look at that gigantic man, and imagine being punched repeatedly in the head by him as a 14-year-old, sweet Jesus.

But young Bryson Muir's maternal grandmother became concerned when she saw that he had a black eye and split lip.  Bryson told her his father, former NFL player Daniel Muir, had done it to him. 

The grandmother was unable to convince Bryson to stay with her.  He went back to his parents, who took him to the premises of the high-demand religion they belong to, Straitway.

The father was accusing Bryson of sexual abuse of other children.  He said that if they were living "in his religious homeland," that Bryson would have been "put to death" for what he had done.  All of that is obviously extremely disturbing.

Bryson is 14 years old.  If he did sexually abuse other kids in the compound -- WHICH IS A BIG "IF" --  that's wouldn't be surprising based on the life he appears to be living.  As Plato once said, "Shit rolls downhill."  Kids who have no control in their own environment are likely to abuse younger kids.  And high-demand religions in general are notoriously full of sexual abusers preying on the children, who in turn may harm younger children.

The part about wanting to be in a religious homeland where he could put Bryson to death for having allegedly been sexually inappropriate as a 14-year old is res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself.  Hopefully he's never allowed around children again.  There is a photo of Bryson's face.

About the "church" Daniel Muir belongs to, Straitway, back in 2020 Sports Illustrated did a story calling it a cult.  It takes a long time for the sportsball people to think stuff is rapey, at least compared to me.  'Nuff said there.

But the Muirs and others had apparently pooled a lot of their personal wealth and property into the Straitway religion.  It all reminds me of what Jodi Hildebrandt had in mind with looking for property out in Arizona.  She had a huge sack of cash money when she was arrested, which belonged to the emaciated children according to their father.  That was intended to buy some land out in Arizona.  The area where she lived out in Jesus' Armpit,  Utah wasn't quite remote enough for that level of alleged child abuse,  obviously.

The way Bryson wouldn't stay with his grandmother harkens back to the way Ruby's daughter was afraid to leave with her rescuers.   It also reminded me of the deeply Christian Turpin family, specifically the victim impact statements at their sentencing.  They belonged to the fundamentalist, high-demand Quiverfull movement and kept their children isolated.  They did every vile thing to those kids. 

And at the victim impact statement part of the sentencing hearing, the children's mindsets went the full gamut from Jordan, the oldest one who had escaped and gotten them rescued, to the younger ones who still empathized with the parents and didn't understand they had been abused.   Jordan realized there was a better world outside, that life wasn't all just being zip tied to her bedposts, when she saw Justin Bieber videos.

I remember one of the younger making excuses like, "Father needed the food so he could work."  People who grew up in reasonable families can't imagine.  It's not fair to expect the children to escape and get help.  What Ruby Franke's son did in getting help was an inestimable act of bravery.  He was turning himself in for arrest, actually.  That's what he thought would happen.  He'd rather just go to prison and face their consequences, than live with whatever Ruby and Jodi were dishing out.

God bless this grandmother who called.  I don't know what there is to be done about the other kids in that place.

Cold cases are only ever bittersweet at best.  The reporting on this is semi-brain-melting as usual.  The reporter says, "He left her body..." but the woman apparently survived.  He's not being charged with murder.  The cop says, "She was just minding her own business..." as if somehow other people who get sexually assaulted deserved it.  This is where our rape-kit backlog comes from.  Sometimes it's our own fault, according to the police.  Even getting down to the actual facts is just infuriating. 

In this case the suspect, Jorge Post, was a 17-year-old who lived with his mother a block away from the scene of the crime.  He was questioned by police at the time.   It seems to me that maybe some more investigative elbow grease at the time, detectives working a little harder on it, leaning on that teenager with the anger problems, who lives a block away maybe could have broken the case ten years ago, but what do I know.

Even when it is a blind woman who was minding her own business, it takes them 8 years to test the DNA.  They turned the DNA sample over to the FBI in 2022.  Genetic genealogy traced the lead down to Post in a matter of months.  Then they were able to get a DNA sample from a coke can by following Post around.

My issue is the giant gap between the woman being assaulted so severely that all of the bones in her face were fractured back in 2014, and the DNA being turned over to the FBI in 2022.  Right?  Hello, Mesquite Police Department?  WTF?  What has this joker done in the interim, and to whom?

I say this based on my personal experience with the Fayetteville, NC Police Department keeping every one of their fucks intact when I was cornered in my apartment's gym by the North Ramsey Street Rapist, Darold Bowden.  The local PD made zero effort to follow up on that after leaving me alone with him for half an hour.  And I was working as a paramedic in their county at the time.  Then they waited 10 years to catch him through genetic genealogy.  These are the fucks they give about safeguarding women from sexual violence.  It's a ten-year turnaround on average.

I have a 9-year-old Mexican-American child that I love.  I've been telling her for years that when she turns 18, I hope to take her on a vacation with me to Italy, to visit my grandparents' villages.  I'm hoping to have money by then to take her to some other places too, like maybe Spain.  I send her links to different art exhibits and fashion shows there.  I think it would be good for her to see Spain and how Spanish is spoken there.

And then I watched this video, and just no.  No, no, no.

• Spain was historically one of the most brutal and prolific colonizers in the world.  500 million people currently speak Spanish worldwide.  It's the official language of 20 countries.  So you want to physically attack people for visiting you politely?  Wow.  Anyone who doesn't think having some rando throw water on them constitutes assault, has never had it done to them.
  
• The woman in the video describes legitimate problems that exist in mostly every major city of the world:  locals can't afford to live in the tourist areas.  I grew up in Chicago, and never thought I'd be able to afford a place anywhere the tourists go.  It's odd to me for anyone but the wealthy to expect to be able to live in the tourist areas.
  
• She says her issue is not with individual tourists.  She understands that the issue is Air BnB and other similar components of end-stage capitalism, where people make more money doing short-term rentals to tourists as opposed to renting long-term to locals. So she supports this protest where they spray tourists in the face with water, rather than taking it up with her local officials. 
  
• This was basically Barcelona's Brexit, a little tantrum by adult babies who think themselves special and have no ability to look around and see what other people are experiencing or  give to them.  The colonizers want to have their cakes and eat them too.  Because I promise you plenty of Spaniards go on vacation in other countries, and they don't expect to be attacked for it.  Just like the people of England all ran to search "What is Brexit?" the morning after it passed, and now 65% of them regret it, all I can do is laugh at what a giant butthole Barcelona is.  I'll be happy to never go there.  And they should never come anywhere I live, either.  Spray water on me and find the fuck out.
  

This is a really difficult story. 

The facts themselves are so difficult to digest.  It's hard to process what these girls went through.  There were 11 kids living with their parents in a one-bedroom house.  And two of the older boys are charged with having done horrific sexual sadism against two of the younger girls for many years.

In the bodycam video of the arrest of one of the brothers, he seems genuinely baffled by the appearance of the police.  When he's told it's about child rape, still confused.  When they get him to the car and tell him the names of the complainants, he has a light bulb moment.

He calmly elaborates for the officers.  He didn't think of this as child rape, or anything that the police would be coming about.  Because they'd apparently already dealt with this through their Mormon Church.  The boys had agreed they'd stop the behavior.  And that was the end of it.

This reporting from the Bellingham Herald describes the complainants as being girls who were "known to" the Drake brothers.  But I believe these are their own siblings.  From that same reporting:

The woman recounted horrific details of the abuse in which the Drake brothers would gag her with a cloth, saltine crackers, peanut butter or white bread and duct tape her mouth to muffle her screams while they raped her. The woman said Brian and Aaron Drake “would team up” and restrain her using twine, rope, clothing, zip ties and wrist restraints to hold her down while they sexually abused her.

She also told detectives that Brian and Aaron Drake used multiple foreign objects to sexually assault her, the court records state. The woman also disclosed to detectives incidents where she was suffocated and choked by Brian Drake. She said Brian Drake threatened her by telling her that if she told anyone, “things were going to get worse.” Brian Drake also told the girl he would kill her if she said anything, according to court records. The woman said that when she was around 8 or 9 years old, Aaron and Brian Drake would sexually assault her at the same time. The woman told detectives that she would often be forced into a room with Brian and Aaron Drake and one would block the door while the other sexually assaulted her. The men would then switch, the records state.

That's some highly sociopathic shit for young kids to be doing as a team.  But here's where it gets really, really bad.  And I don't know whether there are only two parents, or as many as six different parents in this scenario.  But I suspect only two.  And I can't imagine what conversation they had with the police.

The woman told detectives the sexual assaults stopped when Brian and Aaron Drake’s parents found one of Aaron Drake’s journal entries on his computer. Aaron Drake had written that he was sorry for what he did, and named a second female child in his apology. The entry did not include details, but did state that Aaron Drake was sorry, court documents show.

The first woman told detectives she and the second girl didn’t fully disclose the abuse to the Drake brothers’ parents because they were scared. Brian and Aaron Drake’s parents told detectives that they sought help from their church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the Mormon Church. The church told Brian and Aaron Drake’s parents to separate the boys from the two girls, according to court records.

When contacted by sheriff’s detectives, the bishop of the church confirmed he had met with Brian and Aaron Drake’s parents in 2009 or 2010. The bishop said he was told there were “some inappropriate actions toward” the girls. The bishop told detectives that “safety measures” had been put in place “to protect the girls” and that Brian and Aaron Drake’s parents were seeking legal counsel, according to court records.

Okay, that's where everything is 100 percent off the rails for me.  The charges that led to the above bodycam video happened as a result of one of the girls, now in her 20s, regaining her memory as I did.  And she disclosed to her husband.  He encouraged her to go to the police.  She went to the police with her mother, according to the reports.

Is that the same mother who didn't ask enough follow-up questions to know what she was sweeping under the rug by way of the Mormon Church when it happened?  Who agreed that they would just separate them from the boys and march forward like nothing had happened?  And if so, why are they not facing charges?

I understand why the Mormon Church isn't facing charges for constantly failing to report child sexual abuse and endangerment.  It's not an issue for them for the same reason that's simply not a problem anywhere in America.  The Mormon Church used to refer people to Jodi Hildebrandt for child-raising and marriage counseling, end conversation.  Law enforcement in America doesn't do much protection of human life.  It's much easier for them to look after property.  They like to focus on that.

Meanwhile, Aaron Drake is nowhere to be found.  Still from the same article linked above:

Aaron Drake is also facing a separate child sex crime case in Montana, in which he is accused of sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl who was known to him. He has been charged with one count of sexual intercourse without consent, one count of assault that inflicts bodily injury or the victim is under age 16, and two counts of assault with a weapon in the Montana case. He was arrested last year for the alleged crimes, the court records state.

So basically the boys' parents discovered what they were up to because one of them felt bad about it.  They went to the church for counseling.  The church did a basic under-rug-sweep, no investigation, and told them to separate the kids.  Apparently that did cause the abuse of those two girls to stop.  And Brian went along believing that was really the end of things.

Still from the same Bellingham Herald article referenced throughout:

Sheriff’s detectives also contacted Brian Drake’s ex-wife, with whom he has a 5-year-old daughter.

The woman told detectives that “she has been waiting for several years for a call from law enforcement,” court documents state. The woman told detectives in February 2018 that the first woman disclosed to her that she had been sexually abused by Brian Drake as a child. Brian Drake’s ex-wife told detectives she didn’t remember specifics, but remembered the woman told her Brian Drake raped her.

Brian Drake’s ex-wife confronted him about the allegations later that same day and recorded the conversation. During the confrontation, Brian Drake admitted to sexually abusing the second woman and did not deny sexually abusing the first woman, according to court documents. On the recording, Brian Drake said “he thought that part of his life was ‘done and over with and buried.’” He then told his ex-wife that he had gone to the bishop and the stake president at the church about the abuses and “received counseling,” the records state. “That was who I was and that’s not who I am anymore,” Brian Drake said on the recording. He also told his ex-wife that there had been something wrong with him since he was at least 3 years old and that “there’s something incredibly wrong with him,” according to court records.

Brian's wife divorced him and distanced their young daughter from him physically -- entirely understandable.  He can never be around a 5-year-old after the things he admitted to her, no matter how sorry he is.

Meanwhile is Aaron sitting in jail like Brian?  No.  Aaron's in the breeze, as far as I know.   So while I don't expect the city to keep his shitty murals up, I expect Brian to go down like a bag of bricks.  And I'm not sure I understand the legalities of charging him as an adult for things he did while a teenager.  But he needs help for sure.  And I hope they find Aaron sooner than later.  God bless the girls who survived this nightmare.

It was very good of Steve van Zandt to lend his big name to someone who almost never gets talked about in the media:  Leonard Peltier.

Leonard Peltier is the poster child of why I can't fully trust or respect the FBI, despite their excellent work on child sex crimes.  Because as van Zandt lays out so well below, Peltier is still being held captive in some weird shrine to J. Edgar Hoover and all that he stood for.

The letter is really well-written.  So I'll just let him speak for himself.  But I appreciated that he took the time and used his voice in this way.   Below is Steve van Zandt's open letter in its entirety. God bless Leonard.

***
From CNN:Editor’s Note: Stevie Van Zandt is a musician, songwriter, producer, director and actor. He is an author and a member of the New Jersey Hall of Fame and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.
CNN  —  I support law enforcement. I’m an independent, “law and order” liberal. My friend, former New York Police Department detective Kevin Schroeder, and I proudly hold a huge fundraiser for law enforcement charities in the US every year in New York City. I count many friends on the job.

I also have friends in the FBI. I’m very grateful for the excellent job the FBI does in keeping us safe every day from a world that seems to grow increasingly and more dangerously insane by the day. Whether it’s the never-ending threat of foreign terrorism or former President Donald Trump’s zealots who have chosen to follow their leader in ignoring the rule of law, the FBI has helped to thwart what feel like hourly threats to our nation’s safety.
I’m sure it doesn’t always feel that we are a grateful nation, but still, on behalf of all Americans, I thank all members of the FBI, including its leadership.
And it’s in that spirit, as a citizen who deeply respects the work of the FBI, that I now write to call on FBI Director Christopher Wray to right a wrong. Wray recently opposed the parole of Native American activist Leonard Peltier. Peltier is serving two consecutive life sentences after being convicted of first-degree murder for killing two FBI agents on June 26, 1975, on the Oglala Lakota Nation’s Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Peltier denies he killed the agents. He has been denied parole before, but now he is 79 and in ill health.
Peltier’s imprisonment has been controversial since the incident that precipitated it. In his letter opposing Peltier’s release, Wray wrote: “Peltier is a ruthless murderer who has shown an utter lack of remorse for his many crimes. His release would strike a serious blow to the rule of law.”
But that’s not the full story. The historical context for this incident was the war that former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was waging against anyone and everyone that he perceived as a threat. His dangerous and illegal tactics under COINTELPRO — the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program, active from 1956 to 1971 — were a direct assault on American citizens. This distorted sensibility continued for far too long after Hoover’s death in 1972. The FBI that pursued Peltier was largely Hoover’s creation.

Wray’s outreach in opposition to Peltier’s release seeks to deny a 79-year-old man on a walker not just parole, but compassionate release. It seems clear to me that only an FBI that is completely detached from its own history would want to end this chapter in this way.
Though some still contest it, the simple reality of the case is this:
Peltier has served nearly 50 years on evidence that decades’ worth of observers have called into question. Witnesses were coerced and advocates say evidence was falsified. Two of the other men charged with the same crime were acquitted. In addition, a witness whose information was key to Peltier’s extradition from Canada to stand trial for the murders later said she made up her story under pressure from the FBI.
My question to Director Wray is also simple. Why would you feel the need to defend Hoover’s FBI by condemning Peltier to die in prison when you have been an integral part of making the contemporary FBI into the law-abiding organization in the righteous defense of the American people it is today?

This isn’t about re-litigating Peltier’s case. It’s about the fact that Hoover’s completely irrational paranoia in regard to the American Indian Movement, the Black Panthers, the Women’s Liberation Movement and other groups encouraged the perpetual harassment of these organizations and members of these movements, leading inevitably to countenanced acts of violence, numerous shootouts and assaults in an environment of constant life-and-death-level fear. It’s about multiple examples of un-American, extralegal activity under the guise of the phony premise of “protecting“ society, in some cases resulting in deaths.
If there was any true historical justice in this world, Hoover’s name would be removed from the building where your organization is headquartered.
Why would you want to defend the actions of a Hoover FBI that considered the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast for School Children Program a threat to the FBI’s efforts to protect democracy?
Why would you choose to defend a Hoover FBI that bugged Martin Luther King Jr.‘s hotel rooms to try to embarrass him with the full intention of destroying the Civil Rights Movement?
Let me say it again: Hoover’s FBI did everything it could to consciously and deliberately derail the Civil Rights Movement.

I appreciate loyalty, perhaps more than most, but does the FBI really want to defend any part of that chapter in its history when it doesn’t have to? After all it has accomplished to become an organization Americans can be proud of?
I just don’t understand it. It is my hope that Wray will do as much due diligence as he possibly can on this case and consider writing new letters, explaining that with additional light on the subject, and in the interest of American justice, Leonard Peltier should be released from prison immediately.

Wow, Karen is really out of control!

Just kidding.  This is men and more men, who are said to do 80% of the reported violence.  This was actually random AF.

From ABC7:

Cell phone video, which has since been posted to TikTok, shows the driver of the silver SUV ramming the white SUV.

The driver of the white SUV - who is seen wearing a white T-shirt and white pants - then retaliates. He's seen holding a knife with his right hand. Suddenly, he goes up to the driver of the silver SUV and stabs him several times.

The driver was injured but didn't need to go to the hospital. The man with the knife fled the scene but was later arrested.

Meanwhile, everyone can agree that the behavior of white women is so far beyond the range of everyone else that there needs to be a call-out specifically for that one demographic, right?  Interesting.

Back to this story.  Holy shit, the free-flowing rage.  The video just goes on and on, with the alleged stabber running across the street and almost getting hit, then the other vehicle allegedly ramming the stabber's vehicle.

America is a nation of lunatics.  I do a lot of cop-watching.  And I need to balance it out with a fair share of citizen-watching, too.  This is a nation of actual crazy people.  And the police are often called to deal with situations that are basically the Seinfeld of violence, about absolutely nothing, like this right here.  It's just people who can't calm down or go on about their day.  They're addicted to conflict.  And America is full of them.  You know, Karen.

Let me take a moment to spell out everything I appreciate about street racers... done.

In this horrifying incident, a Cleveland bus driver was making her last stop of the route at approximately 2:30 am.  when her bus was swarmed by a large group of street racers.

You can hear the panic in her voice:

Driver:  Bruh, I'm stuck.  It's like 1,000 Cleveland people on my bus right now.  Please send help.  And I'm stuck on my last trip.

At first I thought flash mobs were cool, when it was people suddenly dancing in train stations.

Then it was robbing department stores and "teen takeovers."

When I lived in Long Beach, I was out in front with some kids when street racers came and did multiple donuts in the intersection next to us.  It was extremely loud, and left a cloud of horrible smelling smoke that made us have to retreat indoors and lingered in the air for quite a long time.  They're scum.