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.

I recently reported on the new pandemic ravaging America:  mayors.  At the time of that reporting I hadn't heard about Marty Small of Atlantic City or his horrible wife, Dr. La'Quetta Small.

I'm a person who uses a mobility device, and a true crime blogger.  So naturally this video upset me.  I would like to call her everything in the world other than Dr. La'Quetta Small.  My grandmother wouldn't approve though.  So I will always call her Dr. La'Quetta Small.  That might be my new code word when I want to call someone a bad name.  I'll just call them Dr. La'Quetta Small instead.  Because she's the worst.

I believe that the way you do anything is the way you do everything. That's why everything about this video seems like the tip of a corruption iceberg.

They taught me in paramedic school res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself.  Everything about this bodycam video of the superintendent of schools for Atlantic City, Dr. LaQuetta Small is a red flag about herself and her husband, Mayor Marty Small of Atlantic City.  He chose her.  He's presumably who she was on the phone with while caught red-handed.  They're both also charged with child abuse.

They both need to be booted out of office by the voters so hard that they fly 40 feet through the air as though they had been hit full speed by the Canyonero that Dr. La'Quetta Small parks in the wheelchair spots.

While researching this infuriating situation -- which I expect the judge will let her get away with -- I found the following snippet which is behind a paywall, from "The Press of Atlantic City:  ACEA President Praises La'Quetta Small amid abuse charges -- May 22, 2024 — Atlantic City Education Association President Tim Mancuso praised schools Superintendent La'Quetta Small during a Board of Education meeting ..."  I don't intend to pay them for kissing her crooked butt that way. 

So I went to the public record, the minutes of that meeting, and found this.

So the subordinate being replaced next week is praising her on his way out the door?  Sure, wear that on your hat.  Below I share reporting discussing someone else being suspended for failure of their mandatory reporting responsibilities for failure to report the abuse claims of the Smalls' daughter when she came forward.  Mandatory reporting is very serious shit for educators.  And the school that she runs didn't report the mayor and his wife to the police department that he runs.  YIKES.

Also, I searched that 76-page pdf for the praise they mentioned and didn't find it.  I found where Mancuso was voted out.  But I found no reference to either La'Quetta or Small.

Let's get back to what we can see Dr. La'Quetta Small doing in the wheelchair space in the video.  I'm going to inventory what's allegedly wrong with it.

1.  She's apparently using a government vehicle for personal errands.
2. I don't understand why the school superintendent needs to have Marge Simpson's Canyonero at the taxpayers' expense.  Really, why?  And what funds were used to pay for those red umbrellas?
3. She's allegedly using a disabled placard to park in two disabled spaces at Home Depot.
4. The disabled person the placard is issued to doesn't appear to be with her.  This is the most-obvious problem, not the issue of blocking the ramp space.
5. She doesn't have the registration for the placard which is required to remain with it when it's in use.  That would allow the police to instantly verify that she's misusing it.
   Officer:  "Especially since it's a city vehicle, we need to verify that you, specifically, have the placard."
6. At 2:32 Officer:  "Is that handicapped placard for you?" Smalls:  "Yes."
   At 4:40 Smalls:  "It would be in my mother's name.  She's the handicapped individual which I transport her.  She doesn't drive.  Okay?  So I'll send this to you." 
   It's against the law to lie to the police in New Jersey.  Smalls is not called out on the above-highlighted contradiction.  I watch a lot of bodycam videos.  Providing conflicting information to the police normally upgrades their suspicion/investigation of you and increases their likelihood of ticketing/prosecuting you rather than just warning.  That and having a bad attitude/poor accountability in general.
7. At 4:10 (presumably to her husband) "I don't understand.  I can't get a break."  She's pretending the whole problem is that she's in two spaces, and not that she has no right to be in even one of those spots.  He's handing her the mulligan about emailing him the registration later.  "This Officer Hartman is asking that I send him the registration card... I'll get it from my mom."  Between telling This Officer Hartman the placard was issued to herself, then admitting it was her mother's, Dr. La'Quetta Small dropped his name to his boss, the Mayor.  And then the little contradiction she told This Officer Hartman at 2:32 was less bothersome, if you follow me.  He's already bending over backwards, allowing her to email it to him later.  I've never seen that before in any bodycam video, anywhere.  It's a city vehicle apparently being doubly misused.
8. At 4:52 he  asks  Dr. La'Quetta Small to "do him a favor" and explains that if she's going to use the placard, her mother has to be with her.
9. According to this report, a city worker shows up to help Dr. La'Quetta Small load her vehicle.  This would explain how her husband knew what was going on and called her during the police investigation.  From the linked report:  "But officers were not the only ones who responded, Exadaktilos told BreakingAC. An Atlantic City worker also showed up.  The man helped Small pack the two red umbrellas she purchased into her vehicle and took a photo of Exadaktilos' license plate, he claimed."

Dr. La'Quetta Small, after explaining that it's actually her mother's placard, walks away from This Officer Hartman that she's just talked to the mayor about.  This Officer Hartman finishes explaining how disabled placards work to Dr. La'Quetta Small's butt.

She then walks back up to This Officer Hartman and says, "I wish the person who complained had complained about the person next to me," blah blah about why it's that other lady's fault she had to take two wheelchair spaces and not just one.  She firmly refuses to acknowledge her apparent misuse of the placard in the first place.  There's no discussion of why she's in a city vehicle.  Someone else wonders if she paid for the umbrellas, because she raised a big fuss when she came out.  The police turn off their body cams to discuss the possible shoplifting.

I still wonder who paid for the umbrellas and where they're going, why the mayor sent the school superintendent in a Canyonero to buy them and a municipal employee to load them.  But all of that is well beyond the many other shady problems here.

In other words, in my opinion and understanding of the laws regarding disabled placards, the judge needs to permanently revoke that placard and let Dr. La'Quetta Small's mother go fuck herself from now on. 

That's how it works when you allow family members to abuse your parking placard.  They're supposed to take it away.  In real life, those placards are almost always a hall pass for every parking scofflaw in America who knows an old person.  Calling the cops so rarely works anyway.  I don't even use them when I can use a regular spot, and I have a permanent plate.  It's hard to get the cops there fast enough to catch them.  And when they do, it's this bullshit.

Will the judge do anything about Dr. La'Quetta Small at all?  Will she be charged with intimidating this police officer as she appears to do in this video?  Probably not.  Totally infuriating.

From NJ Spotlight News:

"Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, spoke with NJ Spotlight News about the city’s long history and what could be in store for the resort’s political future.

The news certainly raises questions over what comes next for the leadership of city government and school administration. Mayor Small can be removed from office if convicted, according to New Jersey law, but a trial and verdict are likely months away. Superintendent Small, meanwhile, could be removed by the Atlantic City Board of Education, but it is unclear if the politically connected board would make such a move."

What do they mean by "politically connected?"  Well,  according to CBS Philadelphia, the Atlantic City School Board declined to discuss the child abuse allegations against Dr. La'Quetta Small.

Like Judge Christina Peterson, who still went on the news with her lawyer crying foul after being arrested in a melee with her titty hanging out after being charged with 50 counts of judicial misconduct herself, Dr. La'Quetta Small has the audacity to want the complainant addressed by police when caught dead to rights misusing a wheelchair placard in TWO spots, while already under investigation for child abuse. 

Some people truly believe everything they do is F-I-N-E.

And the also-under-investigation mayor apparently helps her bully This Officer Hartman about it, and has an employee photograph the complainant's license plate.  The fact that it looks that way to me, means that it's irrelevant who was on the other end of the line.  Because if I got it, for sure This Officer Hartman smelled what she was stepping in.

From DownbeachBuzz.com, there's a letter from the Mayor and Board of Education of Ventnor City about the child abuse allegations of the Smalls' child and how they were allegedly swept under the rug.

"The wife of Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small is AC school district superintendent, LaQuetta Small. Both she and her husband have been accused of allegedly abusing their own daughter.The Small’s young teen is a student at AC High where she allegedly reported the abuse to the ACHS principal.

Principal Mandy Days Chapman did not, by law, report that abuse. She’s now suspended.

Ventnor, a ‘sending district’ to ACHS now asking why AC school boss LaQuetta Small isn’t suspended as well?

The letter goes on to stand up in a good way and demands action against the Smalls.

Me of little faith does not expect the judge to do the following:

1. Permanently revoke that disabled placard
2. Fine Dr. La'Quetta Small for illegally parking in two disabled spaces as shown in the video
3.  Punish Dr. La'Quetta Small for lying to the police during the investigation and initially saying the placard was issued to her.
4. Pursue charges of intimidation of This Officer Hartman as shown in the video.  She totally played the "do you know who I am?" card.  And she was allowed to get away with a thick stack of bullshit.

As a crime blogger who loves children, I have zero faith that the Smalls will go to prison for child abuse and thus lose their jobs.  I don't see the American justice system working that well against empowered sociopaths on average, especially with child victims.

The local community does seem to be on to them, though, for example the citizen who called This Officer Hartman.  I hope the voters rock these two out of office so hard they can't find their asses with both hands.  I hope Dr. La'Quetta Small spends the rest of her life asking people if they want fries with that.  I can only dream of her walking at least one mile from wherever she has to park, to wherever she has to go, forever.

The title of this video, "Man Gets SASSY as Karen Coworker Shields Him At WORK," convinced me to unsub from this channel.  The whole "Karen" meme is a conversation ender for me, especially the way it's used here.  "Karen" is code for "Shut up, white woman."  I stop listening to Kevins who dally in "Karen" Valley like pigs roll in slop.  He can fuck straight off.

Here's my basic question about "Karen" once again:  What's different about white women than every other demographic, that makes it okay to give them a nickname based on race and gender when you don't like their behavior?  Why don't you do that for any other demographic group?  Why are you so comfortable doing it to "Karen" when you wouldn't do it to any other group?  What's different about white women than every other kind of human?

Are white women so much worse than every demographic that this demonization is required to maintain civic order?  We all need to be on the lookout for Karen?  And are you so much more virtuous than every white woman, on such higher moral ground by birth, that you're the one to change her name and put her in her place because she spoke?  You're the arbiter of decency who keeps Karen in check?   How so?  Who checks you?

That's the way these Kevins are rolling in this video.  I didn't even watch it.  But I can see that they felt the need to put his coworker on blast about the skin she woke up in, unlike everybody else who does the same thing because they don't understand what's going on.  That happens often enough in these videos.  They surprise people at work.

The first time I watched their content, I thoroughly enjoyed the interrogation, which was followed by an arrest of someone who would otherwise have gone on chatting with minors unabated.

As I watched more of the content, however, I became increasingly uncomfortable with how exploitative and frankly full of shit the boys are.  Their moral high ground is only a half step above the pedos they track down, basically.  Their mockery is barely restrained.  They're obviously playing to an audience the whole time.   While the people they're talking to are awful, I don't like them, either. They believe themselves much nicer guys than they actually are.

So while I do appreciate that the end result is a net positive, I still feel exploited by assholes, basically.  There are a lot of things I appreciate about people who spend their time hunting down pedophiles.  But if they aren't willing to address their own blazing misogyny at very basic levels, fuck them.

The other problem is that they won't address this because their audience, the people they're shilling merch to on Rumble, are the same Kevins who are all about the outrage porn about all the rapey stuff in Ukraine and Gaza.  They won't STFU about that no matter how much I ask them to.  It's all "in the name of" people like me, I don't get it.  And if people like me don't like the way the righteous Kevins talk about it, we can shut the fuck up, Karen.

I'm really torn about the FBI.  Because on the one hand, they're the vanguard of prosecuting child sex crimes.  They and the NCMEC are the go-to prosecutors for that, all around the world actually.  Because even if you're trading child porn in Russia, or Vietnam, or wherever, chances are your interwebs usage crossed into US telecommunication lines at some point.  And now our legal system can and will fuck you over.  For this, I send them all my donuts.

But this bullshit, wow.

This is why I can't forget that these are J. Edgar's boys in real life.  They started out as the dirty tricks brigade, the ones the federal government sent out to work the dark arts against Martin Luther King and the American Indian Movement, as well as the gays and everybody else who wasn't John Q. Whiteman.

So the audacity and overstep being described by the attorneys in this clip doesn't surprise me at all.  The FBI was Wile E. Coyote in a suit when I was growing up.  Even the whiter side of my family knew it, much less the Italians.  The FBI was the internal version of the CIA, which wanted to get rid of Fidel Castro by blowing up his cigars and dosing him with LSD.  I can't even begin to imagine all of the bizarre, dastardly shit our government has concocted and actually done over the years that we'll never know about.  Me of little faith.

So nothing about how the FBI decided to just yank the goodies out of all of these boxes because it was investigating the company that owns them was a surprise.  Because of course all of the various private citizens renting security deposit boxes were uninvolved and not being investigated.  The FBI didn't know who they were, and ignored the emergency contact information available on the outside of the locked boxes.  

But the FBI called all of them criminals and seized their assets because it was investigating the owners of the private vault company.  That they're still doing this kind of shit under 2021 in a Democratic administration is grim.

The federal government knows that each of these individuals will have to fight the federal government in court if they want their stuff back.  And they know how hard that is to do.  The federal government is far and away the biggest law firm in the country, and probably one of the biggest ones in the world. 

The federal government is really hard to fight in the court they own and operate.  Ask anybody who's ever accepted a plea bargain -- from either side, defendant or victim.  Once he's made up his mind, you pretty much have to go along with what the boss wants to do.  Once the wheels roll over you, you're screwed.  Ask Pablo Cano's survivors.  Or Timothy Barber's.  Plea bargaining is the dick that keeps on fucking.  American "justice" is what it is.  The smaller you are, the truer that is.

In this case, the government determined that any box containing more than $5,000 cash would be seized as criminal assets.  They made that determination without knowing who actually owned the money.  So they couldn't possibly have known that it was criminally gained.  They hadn't given the citizen any opportunity to prove rightful ownership.  So they had to conceal that part of the plan from the magistrate in order to get the warrant in the first place.

The FBI decided in advance they were taking all the money in these boxes, period.  The plan was to scoop everything up and sort it out later, basically.  The difference between the FBI and the mafia in this case is that they wrote out exactly what they were going to do and filed it in court first -- omitting minor details so the magistrate wouldn't get upset.  LOL

The FBI later explained in discovery for the ensuing lawsuit, that they derived the $5K amount by their own administrative costs.  It costs them $5,000 to do the asset forfeiture process.  So if they don't take that much, it's not worth their time.

Like former Officer Chapman from Charlotte, apparently the FBI saw that big pile of goodies and just couldn't resist.  And because they're the federal government and there's nobody to stop them, away they went.

So of course they "lost" and damaged a ton of stuff behind their "omnibus forfeiture act," in other words "we swoop and scoop."  Remember that billion dollars that got misplaced in Iraq, and those migrant kids who were forcibly removed from their parents at the border?  Right.  They train heavily on raids and going in.  They're not experts at inventorying and returning stuff.  Other people's things can disappear -- whoopsie

Surprisingly, the people who owned the jewelry store, and stored gold and silver coins as well as cash, got totally screwed.  The FBI denied she had any cash in her box at all.  They totally tried to "Officer Chapman" her shit.  And they only minimally inventoried anything anyway, "miscellaneous coins" when obviously there can be a huge difference in number, type, and value when discussing the sort of coins one puts into a vault versus what's in a jar in my cupboard.

Bottom line, not having every second of everything on videotape in 2021 is inexcusable.  In paramedic school they taught me res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself.  The mafia doesn't videotape their criminal activity either, because they're professionals too.

From the video above:

"After months of arguing, the FBI somehow 'found' 47 of Don's coins, but it hasn't returned Don's other 63 coins, which are worth over $100,000."

Now.  If you send your local beat cop over to somebody's house because you have evidence that they went into your safe deposit box and took your coins without your permission.  And that cop is able to eventually get them to produce some, but not all of those coins.  That joker is under arrest, boo.

There's a whole problem because he and the jewelry store owner both had emergency contact information right on the top of the box.  They owned that property lawfully and were holding it there lawfully.  And they had 4th Amendment rights for the FBI to just leave it alone in the first place.

The court has ruled resoundingly in favor of the plaintiffs about the 4th Amendment issue on the first case to come up.  They violated the terms of the warrant, concealing their forfeiture plans from the magistrate in the first place.  The court called the use of a drug-sniffing dog going over all of the cash improper. 

But mostly it's the part where they lied to the magistrate about their intentions to just take everything that was worth taking.  So it's great that the first case was won by the plaintiffs.  Let's see how the chips fall, what fallout ensues.  Let's see if I hear about this in my FBI newsletter LOL

Like lady mayors, we didn't used to have lady police chiefs when I was a kid.  So it's good to see we can do this job just as badly as men, too.

Chief Tressa Beltran of Hartford, Michigan, was busted in a sting operation. 

From CBS News:

"Tressa Beltran, 57, is charged with delivery or possession with intent to deliver less than 50 grams of a controlled substance, extortion, embezzlement by a public official over $50 in value, misconduct in office, larceny in a building, possession of less than 25 grams of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance, and possession of a Schedule 5 controlled substance."

The sheriff's office investigated Beltran after receiving a tip about her selling drugs.  They set up a drug drop box to see if she would take anything.  She took the bait and resold it, and now here we are.

All she got was 3 years.  Think about that.  She'd been selling drugs out of her patrol car as the chief of police, for long enough that word got around to the sheriff.  Then when they set up a sting, she actually stole the drugs they left, sifted through them, and resold anything worth selling.  Wow, man.  Who knows what else she was up to?  And all she got was 3 years?

But at least she can't be a cop anymore.

Bye, Felicia.