Daily Archives: August 8, 2022

The Ethical Society of Police said it was not part of discussions to create the Civilian Oversight Bill.

ST. LOUIS St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones accused the Ethical Society of Police of lying on its Facebook page after the membership group issued a statement accusing her administration of excluding them from discussions about a controversial civilian oversight bill.

Jones signed Board Bill 47Wednesday, which she said will hold officers more accountable by creating a Civilian Oversight Board that the police union says has the power to discipline officers, review personnel records and all categories of complaints levied against officers.

The Ethical Society of Police is a membership organization for primarily Black Officers.

The statement signed by its board that drew Jones ire read: Today, the City of St. Louis Board Bill 47 was signed. Though ESOP along with the other two labor unions opposed the bill, we understand the need for a civilian oversight board. We were never brought to the table to provide insight for the bill, which was written too broadly. We've had discussions with the other two labor unions and are in agreement that there needs to be fair representation in amending the bill. ESOP is concerned that, if it is not implemented carefully, good officers could be targeted by persons with a hidden agenda against law enforcement.

Jones replied to the Facebook post with, That's not true and is a bold-faced LIE. We've been talking about this bill for nearly a year. Ald. Clark Hubbard had three hearings and you didn't show up and testify. I had quarterly meetings with your leadership and no one said a word. Again, if you're a good officer, you have nothing to worry about. I thought ESOP stood for holding bad actors accountable? I think you should give the law a chance to work before suggesting amendments. Be blessed.

The Ethical Society of Police then responded to her post with, It is not our intent to publicly debate the extent to which input from our organization and others was sought during the crafting of this legislation. Our only intent is to ensure this legislation doesnt have an unintended negative impact on the Department and the community. Waiting until damage has been done is neither wise nor an attribute of an effective leader.

We strongly object to the Mayor's unprofessional response and attempt to degrade our organizational values or marginalize our commitment to the fair and equitable treatment of the community we serve. ESOP has been and will always be about accountability, and we welcome an oversight board. We are calling for the thoughtful implementation of this bill and input from organizations that represent constituents. This should be welcome, not controversial.

Jones responded back with: Ethical Society of Police, you dont want to publicly debate this but you made a public statement on a public platform and didnt attend any of the public hearings to publicly express your thoughts and insight about the bill when it was being debatedin public. Might I add that your former president, who is now the Deputy Public Safety Director, was at the table for almost every discussion of this bill. I frequently heard her push back and change several provisions with every day officers in mind. Heather (Taylor) brings her entire lived experience as an officer and as former president of ESOP to the table with her every single day. Are you also saying that shes wrong? Again, if youre a good officer, you dont have anything to worry about.

On Friday morning, the Ethical Society of Police responded.

"We did not want to get into the weeds with the Mayor of the City of St. Louis on social media. However, the continued allegations that we are lying must be corrected.

"The leadership of the Ethical Society of Police was unaware of Board Bill 47 until June 2022. We were not informed of any public hearings or invited to provide input. The bill was not brought up with the Mayor because we were not aware of the bill any of the times we met. She did not bring it up.

"On June 27, 2022, at the 18th Ward Community Meeting, the ESOP President expressed to the citizens that ESOP was in support of a Civilian Oversight Board (COB), but we could not support the bill as it was written because the language was unclear. Alderwoman Clark-Hubbard was present at this meeting.

"There was no further outreach or invitation for input until Alderwoman Clark-Hubbard sent an email to the ESOP President on July 12, three days before voting. We felt it was too late to hold a meeting and dissect this lengthy and broad bill. We informed her after the ESOP general membership meeting that we could not support the bill and it 'should be shelved until it is amended to be fair to those officers and civilians of the SLMPD.'

"During the week of voting, we made two official statements detailing our specific concerns with the bill and encouraging the public to vote against the bill in its current form. We have made it clear that we support the Civilian Oversight Board and officers should be accountable for use-of-force incidents.

"While the Mayor is speaking disrespectfully by saying we Bold Face Lie, we are the same officers who are voters and residents and who endorsed her for Mayor. We do not understand this unprofessional approach to question the integrity of an organization that advocates for officers instead of addressing real concerns in the bill, such as how a teenager could be allowed to sit on the COB. Let's discuss our concerns and how the bill can be implemented to mitigate those concerns.

"The St. Louis Police Officers Association is one of the labor associations ESOP referenced in their statement. The unions attorney Brian Millikan said the issue with the citys ordinance is not about whether an officer is a good one or not its about protecting their rights as citizens.

What were concerned with is the ordinance has to comply with state law and it needs to comply with basic due process requirements afforded under the law, Millikan said. For us, this is more about complying with state law and giving city employees due process.

The police union is preparing to file a lawsuit against the city because of the bill, Millikan said.

The state statute authorizes cities to create civilian review boards, and I stress review thats what the statute allows, Millikan said. It allows them to investigate, review and make recommendations to the agency on what the review board believes should be appropriate discipline.

This goes way beyond that.

The state statute also identifies categories of complaints civilian review boards can review, but the citys new bill gives the civilian oversight board the power to review complaints carte blanche, Millikan said.

It also violates numerous provisions of the Police Officer Bill of Rights and allows investigators to compel officers to immediately answer questions about any use of force or internal investigation on a citizen complaint, Millikan said.

One of the key provisions of the citys bill that violates the Missouri Police Officers Bill of Rights requires officers to give statements immediately following an incident, Millikan said.

Police officers have 24 hours to obtain counsel prior to being interrogated, Millikan said.

And the citys bill also allows statements officers give to Internal Affairs investigators to be used against them in criminal investigations which violates one of the most established laws known as the Garrity rule. Its based on a case called Garrity v. New Jersey in which the court decided statements officers are forced to give as a condition of their employment cannot be used against them in a criminal investigation.

The citys ordinance calls for a comingling of information between the criminal and internal investigations, he said. Officers are citizens of this country and have constitutional rights against self-incrimination just like anyone else.

In an internal investigation, they dont have the right to remain silent. The Supreme Court has said officers are immune in those situations from having those statements used against them otherwise it violates their fifth amendment privilege to remain silent.

Millikan said the police union is also concerned about the dissemination of a police officers personnel records, as the citys ordinance calls for public reports from the Civilian Oversight Board.

"Accountability is the first step of building trust," said Jones in a news conference regarding the bill signing Wednesday. Jones said good law enforcement officers should continue to serve the community and bad officers would be held accountable.

"We've never worked so hard on a bill we pray we never have to use," said Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard.

Dan Isom said it was a step to strengthen trust between the public and police.

"The division of civilian oversight builds on our current accountability system giving our oversight process actual teeth with more investigative and subpoena power, the division will take the role of Internal Affairs in conducting investigations into use of force and allegations of officer misconduct," Isom said.

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'A bold-faced LIE': St. Louis mayor blasts Black police officer groups criticism of oversight bill - KSDK.com

In front of a microphone with the cameras on him, Alex Jones looked comfortable on his first day of testimony. The delusional provocateur and conspiracy peddler sauntered to the witness stand in an Austin, Texas, courtroom, shirt unbuttoned without a tie, and introduced himself to the jury with his characteristic, gravelled intonation.

I actually feel good because I have a chance to say whats really going on instead of the corporate media and high-powered law firms manipulating what I actually did, Jones said. My big frustration is people saying Im personally going after them, when I question every event.

Jones, who has stoked dangerous fires of disinformation and distrust on the far right for decades, was facing trial last week to determine how much he owes families of the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting which he long proclaimed was a hoax.

Outside the courtroom last week, a new documentary that casts him as a free-speech activist was released. Throughout, Jones has continued to broadcast lies and disinformation to a huge audience online.

In court, however, he was held to a different standard. After testifying for two days including a rigorous cross-examination that left Jones sweating and visibly uncomfortable a Texas jury ordered him to pay a total of $49.3m (40.8m) in damages to the parents of one of the Sandy Hook victims. He still faces several lawsuits from other families.

The judge, Maya Guerra Gamble, scolded Jones, after he told untruths at least twice on the stand. It seems absurd to instruct you again that you must tell the truth when you testify, but here I am: you must tell the truth while you testify, she said. This is not your show.

Jones tried to interject, saying he had only said what he believed to be the truth.

You believe everything you say is true, but it isnt. Your beliefs do not make something true. That is what were doing here, the judge said.

The new documentary, Alexs War, was directed by Alex Lee Moyer and made with the cooperation of Jones. It charts his rise from a fringe public-access TV host to leader of rallies on 6 January 2021 that ended in a violent insurrection at the US Capitol.

Jones says in the documentary that he grew up a voracious reader. Starting with comic books and science-fiction, an obsession with history books began when he read Shakespeares Julius Caesar. He lists a number of books written about the second world war and the Nazi regime that he read as a young man. Among the ones that most shaped his thinking, he says, was None Dare Call it a Conspiracy, by Gary Allen, a prominent member of the ultraconservative John Birch Society. The book claims that an all-powerful group of businessmen, communists and socialists are secretly trying to take control of the world.

But Jones didnt take to the airwaves with his conspiracy theories until after the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, Texas, a few hours north of Austin. The botched raid, in which four federal officers and 82 civilians were killed, stirred up anti-government sentiment in many far-right circles. For Jones, it was a call to action.

He began hosting a show on Austins public-access television station, where he was a fringe personality who ranted about impending martial law, and began developing the on-air persona that would make him rich later in life.

After the domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh said he bombed an Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 as retribution for the Waco raid, Jones began interviewing people who claimed the government had staged the attack. Apparently unable to accept that he shared the same view as McVeigh, he rationalised the Oklahoma bombing as a false-flag operation.

He moved his show to Austins talk radio station in 1996, and helped raise $93,000 to memorialise the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. His show was cancelled in 1999 because his views made it difficult for the station to find sponsors.

But in the early days of the internet, Jones set up shop in a spare bedroom of his Austin home and started broadcasting online with a new name Infowars and sold his show to nearly 100 FM and AM stations across the US.

After the 9/11 attacks, he began spreading more theories that the terrorist attacks were staged. He lost some syndication for his wild views, but online, his popularity continued to grow. I dont do it for the monetary thing. I do it for the truth, Jones said at his trial last Tuesday, and the monetary thing comes with it because people can tell Im not reading from a script. Im not lying like the corporate media on purpose.

On his regular Infowars show, Jones is bombastic and animated. He gets worked up into fierce diatribes about such matters as demons and politics, fluoride in the water supply and an interlinked global conspiracy that is responsible for everything from Covid to gun control.

During the Obama administration, Jones ramped up racist and virulent rants against the nations first Black president. His influence and audience continued to grow, bolstered by, and helping to spread, a bigoted and nationalistic alt-right movement.

Jones also continued to spread untrue theories about terrorist attacks, mass shootings and major tragedies, claiming they were false-flag events where paid crisis-actors showed up to promote an agenda from a globalist new world order. When I say staged, I mean they knew it was going to happen and stood back and let it happen, Jones testified last week. Thats what I thought about Sandy Hook.

Jones purports to be a free speech advocate, and that the lies he spreads are protected by the US constitution. But limits to the first amendment include speech that defames someone or is dangerous.

In some ways, there is no question that Alex Jones exercises his first amendment right to express himself and raise questions about public events, says Roy Gutterman, director of the the Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University. But this case also shows that the law of defamation does limit what false and potentially harmful statements some speakers may make.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks hate and extremist groups in the US, calls Jones the most prolific conspiracy theorist in contemporary America. Michael Edison Hayden, an investigative reporter and spokesman for the SPLC, says Joness ability to influence a huge audience makes his speech dangerous. He is an amusing carnival barker so we kind of ignore many of the things that are staring us right in the face about how hateful he is, Hayden says. He has probably done more to further the cause of hate in this country than almost anyone outside of Donald Trump himself.

Jones has been able to grow his Infowars platform through a lucrative sales model where he hawks specially made products on air, such as a variety of survivalist gear and a line of overpriced and ineffective vitamins and supplements. He testified last week that the company raked in $165m in sales between September 2015 and December 2018. With Jones, fascism is a business, Hayden says.

As the Infowars audience grew in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, Jones also gained a new fan and regular guest: Trump. He ramps up his grift through the rise of extremist activism under Trump and sort of hitches his wagon of sales to Trumps rise, Hayden says. To me, thats Jones in his final form, which is just coming from this libertarian, entrepreneurial, conspiracy-obsessed world to becoming something that is much more what we would call fascist.

Dan Friesen had heard of Alex Jones before the 2016 election, but had mainly seen his conspiracy videos in online rabbit holes, not taking him terribly seriously. The Chicago comedian was surprised to see Jones aligning with Trump.

I just thought it was kind of like a guy who was trying to hold the system accountable, because thats the presentation of what the show is, Friesen says. He began looking into Joness broadcasts more. As we went along, it became so clear how so many of the things that he does are awful. I found so many problems with his ideology, and also the way he abuses information, that I started to take it more seriously.

Now Friesen co-hosts a podcast, Knowledge Fight, where he breaks down Infowars shows and Joness rhetoric. He says that Jones uses the same toolbox of disinformation tactics to mislead listeners. Often, he will share a real headline from a mainstream news outlet on air, but make up what is in the actual article. He also regularly uses illegitimate sources, but tells listeners it is from the most prestigious expert.

Its just a complete farce of information, Friesen says. He doesnt care about anything except for what he can use to defend the point he intends to make.

Friesen came to Austin last week to cover the Sandy Hook trial for the podcast. Its tiring work, he says, but important. He has heard from listeners who say his podcast has helped them reconnect with family members whose relationships have been damaged by the dangerous theories Jones spreads.

Things like Alex, its nonsense and propaganda that has an effect on the real world, Friesen says. People are seeing this one way or another, whether or not its being given an appropriate critical view.

The investigations into Joness involvement with the 6 January insurrection and Sandy Hook trials could have an impact on Infowars, but it is unlikely Jones will disappear completely. Recently, the SPLC reported that an anonymous donor gave an $8m bitcoin donation to Infowars, despite its parent company filing for bankruptcy during the trial.

I dont see what would be stopping him, Friesen says. I mean, if your entire existence has been about yelling, for like, 20-odd years, and relishing that attention, I dont know how you can go away.

By aligning with Trump, Joness popularity and influence grew rapidly. Trump used false and misleading Infowars headlines to prop up his to become president. Jones said on his show that Obama and Hillary Clinton were demons from hell and smelled of sulphur.

In 2017, Jones helped spread the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory that wrongly posits that Trump was working to overthrow a cannibalistic, satanist, paedophilic cabal that secretly controlled the US government.

Over the next several years, tech platforms began banning Jones and Infowars for spreading misleading information and hate speech against a number of minority groups. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, Apple and others have removed his content and banned his accounts.

Jones supported Trumps re-election campaign and organised stop the steal rallies across the US after he lost. According to the New York Times, he helped fundraise for the rallies on 6 January before the violent insurrection. That day, he participated in the march to the Capitol, and posted an Infowars video saying: We need to understand were under attack, and we need to understand this is 21st-century warfare and get on a war-footing.

His ties to other far-right groups that organised the insurrection have made him a key witness for the US Houses committee investigating the 6 January attack. Jones sued Congress when he was subpoenaed for his mobile phone records and text messages, but eventually spoke to the committee, invoking his fifth amendment right not to give self-incriminating evidence more than 100 times, according to his lawyers. Later, he sought immunity from federal prosecutors.

During Joness testimony last week, attorneys for the Sandy Hook family presented evidence showing he had lied under oath, even though he ultimately admitted the attack was 100% real. Jones dodged and found ways to talk around questions he didnt want to answer, while still calling out corporate media whenever he had a chance.

But on the sixth day of testimony, before Jones took the stand, the parents of six-year-old victim Jesse Lewis told jurors how Jones had made the past decade even more unbearable. They talked about extended trauma and near-constant fear of attack from Joness listeners who believe that they are paid actors and that their son never existed.

Alex was the one with the match that started the fire, the boys father, Neil Heslin testified. He had a strong voice and he had a platform and he had power.

At that moment, Jones was not in the courtroom but in his Austin studio, calling Heslin slow and continuing to peddle his inane theories about the 2012 shooting.

When Jones returned from his studio that afternoon, Scarlett Lewis, the boys mother, testified that losing her child was like losing a limb. She still has phantom pains, she says, like he should be there but is not.

We went from having a child murdered and this impossible, lifelong journey but its something you can process. This, I cant, she said. Its this element thats always in the background, of fear, [that] keeps me from healing.

The parents testified that Joness reach went beyond just unhinged theorists online. Lewis said she has had death threats, and received harassing emails and phone calls from Joness listeners. One Christmas, a man pulled up in front of the house and began taking photos of her and the property. Another time, someone drove by firing a gun and shouting Alex Jones and Infowars. Lewis now sleeps with a knife and a gun nearby.

Truth, truth is so vital to our world. Truth is what we base a society on, she testified, speaking directly to Jones across the courtroom. I think you know that Sandy Hook is real and that it happened, but I dont think you understand at all the repercussions of going on air with a huge audience and lying It seems so incredible to me that we have to do this, that we have to implore you not just implore you, punish you to stop you from lying.

Heslin and Lewis were seeking $150m in compensation, but said they were pleased with the verdict. It also emerged last week that Joness lawyer had inadvertently passed Joness text messages from the past two years to Heslin and Lewiss attorney, Mark Bankston. The House committee investigating 6 January has requested to see them.

Bankston said,With punitive damages still to be decided and multiple [other pending legal matters], it is clear that Mr Joness time on the American stage is finally coming to an end.

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He has done more to further the cause of hate in the US than almost anyone: the rise and fall of Alex Jones - The Guardian

In early January 2022, seven months after the district attorney told the court he believed Ciria was innocent, Giorgi finally delivered her response. She wrote that she questioned the reliability of the Peoples investigation through the Innocence Commission, as the State simply did not do enough. Arguing that she couldnt assess the credibility of the witnesses using only the commissions report, Giorgi ordered an evidentiary hearing. Now, both sides would have to do exactly what they assumed the DAs decision would make unnecessary: come to court to question the witnesses in front of a judge.

Eggers, Cirias attorney, was livid. I thought it was extremely unusual and unfortunate that a Superior Court judge would choose to ignore the fact that both sides were in total agreement on someones innocence. That seems appalling to me, she told me later. Most frustrating to her was that if the judge believed a hearing was necessary anyway, she could have ordered it more than half a year before time that Ciria had spent sitting in Folsom.

Bazelon took a more measured tone. A judge is not a potted plant. They dont have to do what the DA and defense counsel tell them to do, she said. But, she added, To me, the orders read more like advocacy, the advocacy of a traditional prosecutor. And that was also not what I was expecting, to be honest.

Giorgis response was less surprising to Patricia Cummings, who recently became the director of the National Registry of Exonerations after several years running the conviction integrity unit in Philadelphia, one of the most successful in the country. Cummings told me she encountered similar skepticism from judges in Philly while working for Larry Krasner another figurehead of the progressive prosecution movement.

Judges get confused and very, you know, distrustful, because all of a sudden, youve got a prosecutor whos not advocating for conviction and punishment, she said. When facing a new investigative body, operated by a prosecutor whose priorities they dont necessarily trust, Cummings explained, some judges opt to put on the brakes and check the work themselves.

Cummings sees some of that as reasonable judges wanting to do their due diligence. But some times, she said, it comes down to an old-fashioned understanding of courtroom roles, and the person who bears the burden is the one waiting in prison. The Supreme Court has decreed that prosecutors have a two-fold mandate: to ensure that guilt shall not escape nor innocence suffer. But in extreme cases, judges have gone so far as to argue that addressing a wrongful conviction is not within the DAs power even when everyone else believes the person innocent.

Also hard to separate out, Cummings said, is plain old politics. By the time Cirias case got to Giorgi, the debate surrounding a district attorneys role had grown more heated in San Francisco than perhaps anywhere else in the country. While many on the left saw Boudins reforms as a necessary corrective to a cruel and inequitable system, he was also facing a recall campaign from a growing contingent of San Franciscans who accused him of making the city less safe, and his every move met with intense scrutiny.

This summer, I emailed Giorgi to ask if the controversy around the DA had shaped her approach to Cirias case. She declined to comment, citing the judicial code of ethics.

But in Bazelons mind, there was little question that the drama engulfing Boudin was having an impact on this case. If Chesa had been a middle of the road or, you know, right-leaning prosecutor, it would have gone completely differently, she later told me.

Whatever the reason, it was clear that the DAs faith in Cirias innocence had not cleared the way for his release. The Court is not bound to the concessions of the parties, Giorgi wrote in January. And rather than preparing to help Ciria reenter the world, his lawyers found themselves getting ready for court.

For the hearing, the case was assigned a new judge: Brendan Conroy. When Bazelon and Hurtado met with him in early February, Conroy seemed to have few of Giorgis reservations about the commissions investigation. The record as to the alibi witnesses, Socorro, and the identification issues appears to be fully developed and will be considered, he wrote in an email the next day, asking only to hear from George Varela the young man whod implicated Ciria and the two women whod told Eggers hed later admitted lying. Conroy scheduled the first day of the hearing for just a week and a half later.

Over the next two months, the parties met in the courtroom three times to interview the witnesses. Denise Corretjer, Varelas older sister, testified that her brother had told her years later that he knew Ciria was innocent, and that hed just gone along with what the police wanted him to say. Speaking over Zoom from prison, Caridad Gonzalez a longtime friend of Varelas family explained that hed told her the same.

Hurtado, cross-examining the witnesses on behalf of the district attorneys office, asked questions aimed at clearing up credibility: whether Ciria had asked the witnesses to help him, what their criminal records were, why they hadnt come forward sooner. Her tone was respectful. For spectators used to the theatrics of a traditional trial, this quiet, collaborative courtroom was almost bizarre. Rather than trying to catch an opposing witness off-guard or manipulate the facts into a more convenient and compelling story, both the prosecution and the defense were probing for the truth. And on that matter, there was no dispute: both sides had publicly proclaimed their belief in Cirias innocence months before.

In early April 2022, Ciria watched over Zoom from Folsom as the young man hed considered a stepson was led into the room in handcuffs. (Varela, whod never agreed to speak to the commission, had refused to answer the judges subpoena, and had arrived in court only after he was arrested for a different crime.)

But the long-awaited moment was anticlimactic. After each question (Did you allegedly drive Mr. Ciria to the scene of where Mr. Felix Bastarrica was murdered? Did you see him shoot anyone on that day? Did the police pressure you into saying that Mr. Ciria was the person who killed Mr. Bastarrica?) Varela invoked his fifth amendment rights. Answering the questions truthfully would likely have meant admitting hed been lying on the stand in 1991, and the DAs office declined to offer him immunity from perjury. So the opportunity to hear what had really happened on the night of March 25, 1990 from the prosecutions key witness disappeared. Now, Conroy had all the evidence he was going to get.

Just over a week later, on April 18, the parties gathered a final time for the judges ruling. Ciria was allowed to attend in person. Behind him in the courtroom, his son watched, too.

Conroy said the evidence against Ciria at trial had not been overwhelming, but not weak, either. Still, he said, hed found the testimony in the courtroom plus that of Socorro before the commission to be convincing. Combined with the faulty eyewitness tactics the commissions expert had explained, he found it reasonably likely that one juror would change their mind.

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Even the District Attorney Believed Joaquin Ciria Was Innocent. Why Did It Take So Long to Set Him Free? - POLITICO