Migrant gangs take over Colorado suburbs

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Important Takeaways:

  • As Colorado combats rising gang violence from illegal immigration, six counties are suing the state over a law they say hobbles their ability to tackle migrant crime.
  • Those counties are battling a state law that prohibits local law enforcement from communicating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
  • The issue is boiling over in the region as at least one Denver suburb is seeing an unprecedented influx of transnational gang activity and armed migrants were recently seen taking over an apartment complex.
  • Douglas County Commissioner Abe Laydon said “We have been apprised that there has absolutely been an increase in property crimes, assault and trafficking, and it’s specific issues with the cartels coming out of Venezuela.”
  • Officials in Aurora, a city within Douglas County nine miles east of Denver, previously told Fox News Digital that the notorious Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua had developed a strong foothold in their community, putting “entire apartment complexes under gang control.”
  • Days later, video went viral of armed members of the gang storming an Aurora apartment complex just before a shoot-out occurred in the parking lot.
  • “Parts of the city are absolutely under this gang control. The local media is downplaying this,” Aurora City Council member Danielle Jurinsky said. “I believe politics is being played with people’s lives. … Nothing is being done to help the American citizens that are being trapped under this gang’s control.”
  • The handful of red counties suing Colorado don’t share the sanctuary city policies that brought more than 40,000 migrants to Denver, and several instituted their own laws in an effort to barricade themselves against migrant populations expanding outward.
  • “We feel that it simply doesn’t make any sense for a law enforcement agency to not have the ability to work with any other law enforcement agency but then have a restriction on our ability to work with immigration,” El Paso County Commissioner Stan VanderWerf said
  • “It’s incredibly frustrating to be in a state where our state government is completely ignoring reality. We have been telling our state government this is very problematic. I hope that they will take note. I don’t have a lot of confidence. We are seeing the leadership in our state not wanting to accept reality.”
  • Chris Swecker, the former head of the FBI’s criminal investigation division, previously told Fox News Digital that this influx of gang members was “predictable and preventable” and that federal law enforcement agencies would be needed to combat it.
  • “At this point, federal agencies should get involved,” he added. “The bureau has to get involved with ATF and DEA, share their intelligence and approach this as an international crime problem.”

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Show us the receipts: Text messages show law enforcement knew of Thomas Crooks 90 minutes before attempted assassination of Trump

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Important Takeaways:

  • Text messages revealed that law enforcement responsible for monitoring former President Trump’s Pennsylvania rally spotted his would-be assassin and flagged him to colleagues as suspicious at least 90 minutes before he opened fire.
  • The messages, obtained by Fox News Digital from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who obtained them from Beaver County Emergency Services Unit, showed that officers flagged 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks after he was spotted using a range finder – but did not approach him.
  • The first screenshot is a group chat of Beaver ESU officers, while the second is from one Beaver County sniper departing his shift at around 4:30 – approximately an hour-and-a-half before Trump took the stage. The New York Times first reported the text screenshots.
  • In a group chat, around 4:36 p.m., when one of the officers texted that his shift was ending, he warned that a man, later identified as Crooks, had parked nearby their vehicle.
    • “Someone followed our lead and snuck in and parked by our cars just so you know,” the text from an officer read.
  • A follow-up message said that Crooks was about 50 yards from the rally’s exit, sitting at a picnic table.
  • Two other counter-snipers responded with a thumbs up emoji and responded, writing, “Roger that.”
  • Approximately 45 minutes later, at 5:10 p.m., officers flagged that Crooks was on the move and had positioned himself near the American Glass International (AGR) building. Crooks would later perch himself on top of the AGR building to target the former president.
  • While Crooks waited, an officer snapped a picture of the 20-year-old suspect.
    • “Kid learning around building we are in,” an officer wrote in a text message, along with an image of Crooks. “AGR I believe it is. I did see him with a range finder looking towards stage. FYI. If you wanna notify SS snipers to look out.”
    • “I lost sight of him,” the officer added.
    • A follow-up message said: “Call it in to command and have a uniform check it out.”
  • By 6:11 p.m., approximately 1 hour after the last text message was sent, the “kid” would be killed by a counter-sniper after he opened fired on the rally goers.
  • Trump was grazed by a bullet on his ear, while three rallygoers were also shot, including Corey Comperatore, 50, who was killed protecting his family from danger.
  • David Dutch and James Copenhaver were injured after being shot at the rally. Copenhaver was recently released from the hospital on Friday.

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Artificial Intelligence to help Judges write and decide rulings

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Important Takeaways:

  • Consider this: England’s 1,000-year-old legal system — wigs, robes and all — is giving judge’s permission to ‘use artificial intelligence to help produce rulings’
  • Yes, you read that right
  • “The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary last month said AI could help write opinions but stressed it shouldn’t be used for research or legal analyses because the technology can fabricate information and provide misleading, inaccurate and biased information.
  • ‘Judges do not need to shun the careful use of AI’, said Master of the Rolls Geoffrey Vos, the second-highest ranking judge in England and Wales. ‘But they must ensure that they protect confidence and take full personal responsibility for everything they produce’.”
  • S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts did address artificial intelligence usage in his annual report, but the federal court system in America has no guidance on AI.
  • US State and county courts, furthermore, are too fragmented for a universal approach.
  • Cary Coglianese, law professor at the University of Pennsylvania: “’It is certainly one of the first, if not the first, published set of AI-related guidelines in the English language that applies broadly and is directed to judges and their staffs’, Coglianese said of the guidance for England and Wales. ‘I suspect that many, many judges have internally cautioned their staffs about how existing policies of confidentiality and use of the internet apply to the public-facing portals that offer ChatGPT and other such services’
  • The danger of the technology has already manifested itself in the infamous incident where two New York lawyers relied on ChatGPT to write a legal brief that quoted fictional cases. The two were fined by an angry judge who called the work they had signed off on ‘legal gibberish’.

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Law Enforcement Analyst says orders have gone out for every police officer in NYC to be in uniform in case of civil unrest

Revelations 6:4 “And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.”

Important Takeaways:

  • CNN Analyst Says NYPD Has Ordered Every Cop In The City Of Every Rank To ‘Show Up In Uniform Tomorrow’
  • CNN Law Enforcement analyst John Miller says orders have gone out from the NYPD for every cop in the city “of every rank” to “show up in uniform tomorrow” following the criminal indictment of former President Donald Trump.
  • JOHN MILLER: Well, as of a few moments ago, a teletype went out to all NYPD commands in New York City, ordering that all members of the department, no matter what their rank or assignment, show up in uniform tomorrow. So clearly, the NYPD is preparing to have all of its options open in case they have to mobilize a large number of police officers. Right now as they’re scanning, they’re not seeing any plans for any major protests, but that could change overnight because this news is very fresh.
  • There’s 36,000 police officers in the NYPD. And large groups of them that are specially trained in disorder control…

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Executive Order is cornucopia of bad ideas including Men in Women’s prisons, Conservative Christians ousted from law enforcement

Mark 13:13 “You will be hated by all because of My name, but the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Biden administration is focused on putting men in women’s prisons and pushing Christians and political dissenters from transgender ideology out of law enforcement.
  • As far as the Biden administration is concerned, anyone who doubts that toddlers can really be transgender, is a bigot with no place in law enforcement.
  • Forcing Woke Ideology on Local Police
  • A lot of good cops are going to be pushed out over this, but at least criminals will be referred to by their preferred pronouns.

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People’s Convoy Continues Through the Week

Important Takeaways:

  • ‘People’s Convoy’ Protests for Second Day Against COVID Mandates, Circling America’s Capital All Week
  • According to The Washington Post, the group of truckers circled the 64-mile highway Sunday for more than four hours.
  • As CBN News has reported, the group said they had “zero plans to go into D.C. proper.”
  • The convoy used the Hagerstown, Maryland, Speedway located 80 miles north of D.C. as a staging event for the demonstration.
  • The organizer also had a direct message for Congress. “We will hold the line! YOU WORK FOR US!”
  • D.C. police and other law enforcement agencies are preparing for major traffic disruptions this week, much like those in Canada following a month of protests.

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U.S. schools boost security after online posts warn of Friday violence

By Julia Harte

(Reuters) – U.S. schools and law enforcement authorities responded to vague warnings of violence at schools on Friday with bulletins to parents, heightened security and, in a few cases, canceled classes.

The bulletins to parents largely referred to postings on the social media app Tik Tok.

One of the nation’s largest school districts, in Florida’s Palm Beach County, said in its letter on Friday that local police were aware of a “video circulating on Tik Tok nationally, encouraging violence in schools.”

Tik Tok said on Friday that it had been unable to find any credible threats on its platform, only “alarmist warnings” of rumored threats. Palm Beach County Schools did not respond to a request for details about the alleged video.

“We continue to aggressively search for any such content on our platform, but we are deeply concerned that the proliferation of local media reports on an alleged trend that has not been found on the platform could end up inspiring real world harm,” Tik Tok said in a statement.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement posted to Twitter on Friday that it did not have information indicating any specific, credible threats to schools either, but encouraged communities to “remain alert.”

The warnings began circulating this week as the United States was reeling from the deadliest school shooting of 2021, a November shooting at a Michigan high school that left four students dead and seven people wounded. It was the latest in a decades-long string of lethal American school shootings.

Most schools and law enforcement officials noted in messages to parents on Thursday and Friday that this week’s warnings of attacks were not specifically directed at their school, nor were they credible.

Multiple schools around the country canceled classes on Friday, though it was unclear whether the cancellations were connected to the perceived Tik Tok threats.

In Gilroy, California, the superintendent of the unified school district announced online that classes at Gilroy High School would be canceled on Friday because of threats of violence directed at the high school on “several social media accounts.”

Gilroy High School did not respond to questions about the threats.

Other schools did not cancel classes but heightened security. The Fitchburg, Massachusetts, public school system said in a Thursday news release that police would be present at each school in the district on Friday as an added precaution because of an alleged Tik Tok post threatening “every school in the USA even elementary.”

The Fitchburg public school system did not respond to questions about the post.

(Reporting by Julia Harte; Editing by Howard Goller)

U.S. civil rights groups protest ‘out-of-touch’ Justice Department police commission

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Prominent U.S. civil rights groups are refusing to appear before a Justice Department law enforcement commission set up to recommend ways to increase respect for police and reduce crime, calling it out of touch with public anger over policing.

The Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice was established in January, before the latest wave of mass protests over police use of force against Black Americans set off by the May killing of George Floyd.

Its mission statement did not mention racial disparities in criminal justice or address excessive use of force by police, and unlike a similar Obama administration commission, its members represent only federal, state and local law enforcement, with no civil rights advocates, defense attorneys or even big-city police departments taking part.

Civil rights leaders told Reuters they only received invitations to testify after the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sued the commission in April, contending it was violating federal open-meeting laws and lacked diverse viewpoints. That case is pending, and the Justice Department has asked a federal judge to have it dismissed.

“It is so completely out of touch with what is happening,” said Kanya Bennett, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

After the protests over Floyd’s death began, the commission held some hearings about the excessive use of force and community policing, but they were announced with little advanced warning and were closed to the public. President Donald Trump has struck a strict “law-and-order” tone in his response to the protests.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said the commission would be addressing the issues outlined in a police reform executive order signed by Trump in June including “accreditation and how to assist law enforcement and communities in their response to homelessness, addiction and mental health.”

The commission is expected to release a report in October offering recommendations for decreasing crime, addressing mental health and homelessness issues, and promoting respect for police officers.

‘SHAM COMMISSION’

U.S. civil rights groups including the ACLU have refused to attend the hearings, submitting only written testimony.

“The ACLU is not going to participate in a sham commission that was formed for the sole purpose of promoting a ‘blue lives matter’ narrative,” Bennett said.

Commission Chairman Phil Keith said at a June meeting that of the nearly 30 civil rights and other advocacy groups invited to testify, only a handful accepted, including the North Carolina-based Racial Equity Institute and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).

Deena Hayes-Greene, a co-founder of the Racial Equity Institute, said she learned other groups had declined invitations at the meeting she attended. Norman Reimer, executive director of the NACDL, said he was cynical about the commission but thought it was important to express his group’s views.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund said it had not received an invitation to participate.

The commission “fails to consider … the long and fraught history of police community relations, especially in Black and brown communities and the nexus between unconstitutional policing and the violations of civil rights,” said Sakira Cook, director of the justice reform program with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Outpouring of rage over George Floyd killing tests limits of U.S. police tactics

By Sarah N. Lynch and Jonathan Allen

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Responses by law enforcement authorities in the U.S. capital and in Flint, Michigan, to protests over the police killing of George Floyd illustrated starkly contrasting approaches to handling angry crowds on American streets and repairing relations with grieving communities.

Sheriff Christopher Swanson of Michigan’s Genesee County was keenly aware that some protests in other cities against police brutality after the May 25 death of Floyd, an unarmed black man, in police custody in Minneapolis had descended into arson and looting.

Tensions were rising in Flint on Saturday when Swanson saw a few officers actually exchange friendly fist-bumps with protesters. So Swanson removed his helmet, strode into the crowd, hugged two protesters and told them, “These cops love you.” Swanson then joined the march.

“We’ve had protests every night since then. … Not one arrest. Not one fire. And not one injury,” Swanson said in a telephone interview.

Federal law enforcement officers took a far less conciliatory approach on Monday evening in confronting a crowd of peaceful protesters outside the White House. The officers charged and used tear gas to clear a path for President Donald Trump to walk to a nearby church for a photo opportunity holding up a copy of the Bible.

“Not only is it a terrible tactic and unsafe … it also is sending a tone as if this is the president that has ordered this,” said Ronald Davis, who headed the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services under Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama.

Davis oversaw a task force that in 2015 released new federal guidelines for improving police practices after demonstrations that turned violent over the 2014 police killing of a young black man named Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, one of a long list of similar killings.

The guidelines addressed ways to improve trust between police and their communities and included recommendations to prevent protests from escalating into violence.

They advised officers to ease rather than rush into crowd control measures that could be viewed as provocative, to consider that anger over longstanding racial disparities in the American criminal justice system was the root cause of such protests and to not to start out with the deployment of masked, helmeted officers and military-style weapons.

That approach appears to have been seldom used in protests that have engulfed many U.S. cities since Floyd’s death after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes during his arrest.

LACK OF TRUST

For example, police in New York City have used pepper spray on protesters, hit people with batons and in one case drove two cruisers into a crowd. In New York and some other cities police themselves have been the target of violence.

“If we were dealing with traditional, peaceful protest, everything would have been different,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters on Monday.

Candace McCoy, a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, noted police face a complicated task.

“They know that there are people who have announced beforehand that they intend to do violence both to property and to other people,” McCoy said. “The notion that the property destruction could have somehow been prevented is, I think, perhaps naive.”

New York police were heckled by some demonstrators when some officers knelt in solidarity at a Brooklyn protest. During a Manhattan protest, a police officer shook the hand of a young woman wearing a T-shirt showing slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King and hugged her. Just a few minutes later, another officer zip-tied the woman’s arms behind her back and detained her.

U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said he plans a hearing on police conduct and race.

“This committee has a unique opportunity to build on some things that the Obama administration did and ask ourselves some hard questions,” Graham said.

Some Obama administration law enforcement reforms aimed at reducing racial discrimination and improving community policing came to a halt after Trump became president in 2017 and his Justice Department took actions such as ceasing investigations into police departments suspected of systemic racial bias.

Civil rights advocates have taken heart over conciliatory approaches displayed in places like Camden, New Jersey, as well as Baltimore, a city torn by violent protests following the 2015 death in police custody of another black man, Freddie Gray.

“I’ve been somewhat encouraged to see that there are some police departments that have demonstrated that police can make the decision to operate in a constitutional fashion and give protesters an opportunity to speak to exercise their First Amendment rights to vent their anger,” Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told reporters this week, referring to the right of free speech.

Community policing experts said that will be important.

“You have to be transparent and police need to be held accountable when they make mistakes,” said Roberto Villaseñor, the former police chief of Tucson, Arizona, who worked on the 2015 guidelines. “What we need to do is just listen.”

 

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Jonathan Allen; Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Will Dunham)

FBI points to China as biggest U.S. law-enforcement threat

By Mark Hosenball and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The FBI on Thursday identified China as the biggest law enforcement threat to the United States, and its director said Beijing was seeking to steal American technology by “any means necessary.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray told a conference the bureau currently had about 1,000 investigations open into Chinese technology theft across its 56 regional offices.

FBI counterintelligence chief John Brown said the bureau arrested 24 people in 2019 in China-related cases and had already arrested 19 people in 2020.

He told the conference at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that the FBI believed “no country poses a greater threat than Communist China.”

Wray said the threat needed to be dealt with through action across the whole of the U.S. government.

“As I stand here talking with you today, the FBI has about 1,000 investigations involving China’s attempted theft of U.S.-based technology in all 56 of our field offices and spanning just about every industry sector,” he said.

Wray added that China was aggressively exploiting U.S. academic openness to steal technology, using “campus proxies” and establishing “institutes on our campuses.”

William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told the conference China was placing particular priority on stealing U.S. aircraft and electric vehicle technology.In advance of Thursday’s event, Evanina estimated the theft of American trade secrets by China costs the United States “anywhere from $300 to $600 billion” a year.

The FBI data shows an aggressively stepped-up campaign by U.S. authorities to root out Chinese espionage operations pursuing American secrets. This has snared a growing group of Chinese government officials, business people, and academics.

In 2019 alone, public records show U.S. authorities arrested and expelled two Chinese diplomats who allegedly drove onto a military base in Virginia. They also caught and jailed former CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency officials on espionage charges linked to China.

China’s efforts to steal unclassified American technology, ranging from military secrets to medical research, have long been thought to be extensive and aggressive, but U.S. officials only launched a broad effort to stop alleged Chinese espionage in the United States in 2018.

CHINA SAYS CHARGES ‘ENTIRELY BASELESS’

The Chinese embassy in Washington rejected the U.S. allegations as “entirely baseless.”

“The people-to-people exchange between China and the US is conducive to stronger understanding between the two peoples and serves the fundamental interests of our two countries,” it said in an emailed statement.

According to CSIS, of 137 publicly reported instances of Chinese-linked espionage against the United States since 2000, 73% took place in the last decade,

The CSIS data, which excludes cases of intellectual property litigation and attempts to smuggle munitions or controlled technologies, shows that military and commercial technologies are the most common targets for theft.

In the area of medical research, of 180 investigations into misuse of National Institutes of Health funds, diversion of research intellectual property and inappropriate sharing of confidential information, more than 90% of the cases have links to China, according to an NIH spokeswoman.

One main reason Chinese espionage, including extensive hacking in cyberspace, has expanded is that “China depends on Western technology and as licit avenues are closed, they turn to espionage to get access,” said CSIS expert James Lewis.

In late January alone, federal prosecutors in Boston announced three new criminal cases involving industrial spying or stealing, including charges against a Harvard department chair.

Prosecutors said Harvard’s Charles Lieber lied to the Pentagon and the NIH about his involvement in the Thousand Talents Plan: a Chinese government program that offers mainly Chinese scientists working overseas lavish financial incentives to bring their expertise and knowledge back to China. They said he also lied about his affiliation with China’s Wuhan University of Technology.

During at least part of the time he was signed up with the Chinese university, Lieber was also a “principal investigator” working on at least six research projects funded by U.S. Defense Department agencies, court documents show.

A lawyer for Lieber did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball and David Brunnstrom; editing by Chris Sanders, Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)