“Mr. Castro fired his service weapon at the front door of the home, knowing there were people inside who presented absolutely no threat to him or anyone else,” Moriarty said. “That bullet punched through the front door and struck Mr. Sosa-Celis’ leg before traveling through a closet and lodging in the wall of a child’s bedroom.”

Crossposting to [email protected]

The owner of a company that trained paramilitary Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents testified that he was involved in at least four lethal shootings, according to a 2021 deposition related to a lawsuit reviewed by WIRED.

…

Customs and Border Protection did not respond to WIRED’s questions about how many SRT teams and operators went through the Gilbert, Arizona, company’s training course.

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Once reserved for armed or high-risk suspects, manhunts, and potentially dangerous building entries, the SRTs are now being used for civil immigration enforcement, crowd control, and basic warrant service, operations that the unit was once restricted from performing. Both Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed while protesting the militarized federal immigration surges in Minnesota, with SRT members implicated in both of their deaths. While recent debate over Homeland Security’s violent immigration sweeps have focused on whether agents receive adequate training, the background of SRT’s training contractor raises questions about who is training ICE’s and CBP’s paramilitary units, and what they are being trained to do.

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The Phoenix PD’s overall high rate of police shootings, along with the brutality of city cops towards the homeless population, prompted the US Department of Justice to open a civil rights probe into the agency in August 2021. In June 2024, federal investigators probing the practices of Phoenix PD as a whole issued a findings report establishing a “pattern or practice” of violent, unconstitutional policing in Arizona’s largest city, including unjustified uses of lethal force.

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Special Response Teams, along with the Border Patrol’s BORTAC and BORSTAR paramilitary units, have been at the heart of clashes with protesters during DHS’s militarized sweeps in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis. In the fatal shootings of both Good and Pretti, the tactics of the SRT officers raised questions: SRT agent Jonathan Ross walked in front of Good’s SUV while recording with a cell phone before drawing his pistol and firing four rounds into her SUV. In the Pretti shooting, a Sig Sauer pistol the ICU nurse legally possessed was taken from his belt holster by a federal agent as several others dogpiled on top of him. Even after viewing multiple videos of the incident and speaking with other law enforcement officials, it is unclear whether Pretti’s gun misfired or if something else caused CBP SRT operator Raymundo Gutierrez and Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa to shoot him several times.

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According to ICE’s website, as of fall 2024, there are at least 22 Special Response Teams for Homeland Security Investigations around the US (up from 18 in 2021 and five in 2005). Each SRT has 16 to 18 “operators” who all went through a three-week training course at Fort Benning in Georgia similar to the one that TruKinetics ran. After completing an intensive three-day selection course involving “pushups, sprints, burpees, pullups, obstacles, weighted sprints and dummy drags followed by intense marksmanship training,” SRT operator candidates are required to pass a 40-hour training course at Fort Benning, which is home to the Army’s training centers for Infantry, Armor, Airborne, and Ranger units.

The incident unfolded when several agents followed a woman into a public elevator at 26 Federal Plaza. Eyewitnesses confirmed they did not announce an arrest was about to be made.

Moses stepped into the elevator, and the two agents instantly grabbed him and shoved him without giving him a chance to leave on his own accord. Another agent then pushed another photographer, Olga Fedorova, backwards, slamming her and a third photojournalist, Vural Elibol, to the floor. Elibol took the worst of the fall and wound up being hospitalized.

Despite the whole thing being caught on camera, Harrington appeared to alter the sequence of events in the court filing.

“The officers identified themselves as ICE and advised the alien they were taking her to the 10th floor for further screening and processing. The officers took the alien into the elevator. A reporter followed the officers into the elevator, which interfered with effectuating the arrest. The officers asked the reporter to leave the elevator, but he resisted and the officers grabbed his shoulders and arms to escort him out of the elevator,” Harrington wrote.

The ICE supervisor went on to contradict the events filmed and posted to social media that day, claiming that the photographers tripped.

“Multiple people began to congregate around the elevator. As the reporter was being escorted out of the elevator, an unknown journalist tripped on another individual and fell. This incident was the result of the journalists’ interference with ICE officers performing their duties. I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief,” Harrington added.

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Lander, who was arrested by the federal agency himself last year and is fighting his case in court to demand accountability from the agency, told amNewYork that he believes the supervisor committed perjury by lying on the document.

“To lie so blatantly, to the court to put your name on a legal document and lie when there’s video and witnesses who all saw the truth. I mean, that is gaslighting, and it’s perjury, and I really believe it should be prosecuted. We cannot allow officers of the government to perjure themselves in federal court as though the truth is irrelevant,” Lander said. “They wanted to say to journalists, if you do your job, you’re at risk of assault. And that’s the same thing they did to me.”

Philadelphia police have broad authority to revoke gun licenses, including for failing to properly secure their weapons, associating with people convicted of felonies, or — in the group’s case — for “good cause,” per city correspondence obtained by Axios.

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Video Source: https://reddit.com/comments/1t7uxy8

Video Source: https://reddit.com/comments/1ta4fzg

Sign up for a local community garden.

Don’t grow mushrooms in a draw at the office.

Dry goods is better than canned.

But you guys ever harvest a lot of stuff from your garden and store them in an earth cellar?

“Like actually literally, for realz”

Chat GPT tokens

The first country that Hitler invaded was Germany.

Millions of eligible American voters are being disenfranchised with the effective destruction of the Voting Rights Act. We are witnessing a return of Jim Crow, and this is all happening legally. The system will not save us.

I suggest everyone prepare for what may come next.

I don’t know what the best thing to do is. But I do think we have to at minimum be aware and prepare. Having a local community network of any kind will be useful. At the minimum, you should get to know your neighbors better and learn who might be trustworthy.

The lawsuit, filed by the nonprofit Rural Organizing Project, claims state police have long-violated Oregon’s decades-old sanctuary law, which prohibits state and local resources from being used towards immigration enforcement. Last year alone, immigration authorities queried state-run databases — which includes license plate and drivers license information — 1.4 million times, according to the lawsuit.

Its called The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room.

I recommend you give the video a watch.

Shart of the deal

Aphids hate this one simple trick.