Chicago mayor plots changes to police policy after deadly shootings

By Dave McKinney16 hours ago

By Dave McKinney

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chicago police will get new equipment and training to help them defuse tense situations and limit their use of lethal force, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said on Wednesday, following weeks of protests calling for him to resign over his handling of fatal police shootings.

The number of Tasers, or electric stun guns that are generally not lethal, for the police department will be doubled to 1,400 so that every patrol unit that goes out at night has one, Emanuel said at a news conference.

"Just because you are trained that you can use force, doesn't mean you should," Emanuel said at the news conference, flanked by top officials including interim Police Superintendent John Escalante.

Emanuel ended his Cuba vacation early this week to deal with fallout from the police shooting to death a 55-year-old mother and a 19-year-old college student, whom relatives said had suffered from mental issues.

The Chicago Police Department, already the subject of a federal civil rights investigation over its use of deadly force and other issues, has admitted the woman's death was an accident.

Emanuel to announce changes to CPD conflict traini …Play video

The latest shootings came after protesters had called for Emanuel's resignation after a video was released last month showing Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke, who is white, shooting 17-year-old African-American Laquan McDonald in 2014. Van Dyke has pleaded not guilty to murder.

That, and other shootings of black men by police officers over the past 18 months, have led to protests across the country and the issue has fueled a civil rights movement under the name Black Lives Matter.

Chicago police shoot more than 50 people a year, 74 percent of them black, with an average of 17 fatal shootings a year between 2007 and 2014, according to the Independent Police Review Authority, which examines complaints about the Chicago police and all its uses of force.

Escalante said the aim was to discourage aggression and confrontation.

"The goal is to change the way officers think when they approach a critical incident by establishing time and distance to allow for more prudent thinking and physical space to promote a safer environment," he said.

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The daughters of Bettie Jones, along with friends and supporters, hang a picture of her during a vig …

"We expect that every police officer develops skills and abilities that allow them to help dissolve confrontations by the using the least amount of physical or lethal force necessary," he said.

The city has already announced it will add more body cameras to police equipment and that officers involved in fatal shootings will be put on a mandatory 30-day period of desk duty, compared with the current three-day policy.

Most U.S. police receive little or no training on how to de-escalate crisis situations involving the mentally ill or people under the effect of drugs or alcohol, despite the growing frequency of such encounters and fatal results in a number of recent cases.

Meanwhile in Cleveland, more protests were planned two days after a grand jury decided not to charge two white police officers in the 2014 shooting death of Tamir Rice, a black 12-year-old boy who was playing in a park with a toy gun that shoots plastic pellets.

Cleveland officials said on Tuesday they will review Rice's shooting to determine if the officers involved or others should face disciplinary action.

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CHICAGO, IL - DECEMBER 29: Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke leaves the Criminal Courts Buildin …

TASERS

The Chicago police department, with some 12,000 officers, currently has 700 Tasers, which fire dart-like electrodes that incapacitate but are generally non-lethal.

None of the eight police officers at the scene of McDonald's shooting in 2014 had a Taser, though they had asked for a unit equipped with a Taser to come to the scene.

The turmoil after that shooting led Emanuel to fire the police superintendent and create a task force to review police accountability.

While Emanuel was on vacation, Bettie Jones, 55, and Quintonio LeGrier, 19, were killed on Dec. 26 by an officer responding to a call that LeGrier was threatening his father with a metal baseball bat, another situation that critics said police could have addressed with a Taser.

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People protest a grand jury’s decision not to indict two white Cleveland police officers in th …

Tasers can be used at a distance of up to 35 feet (11 meters), depending on the model, and some can also be pressed onto the target's body without firing the projectiles.

A 2009 evaluation of conducted electrical weapons - the generic name for Tasers - by the Police Executive Research Forum, compared law enforcement departments that used the devices and departments that did not, and found that the former had reduced officer and suspect injuries.

The study did not show an impact on suspect deaths, although the researchers said that could be due to a small sample size.

(Additional reporting by Mary Wisniewski in Chicago and Kim Palmer in Cleveland; Writing by Fiona Ortiz and Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Bill Rigby)

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Midwest braces for more flooding as rain-swollen rivers rise

1 hour ago

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Submerged roads and houses are seen after several days of heavy rain led to flooding, in Arnold, Missouri, December 30, 2015. REUTERS/Kate Munsch

(Reuters) - Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma braced for more flooding on Thursday as rain-swollen rivers, some at record heights, overflowed their banks, washing out hundreds of structures, closing major highways and leaving thousands of people displaced from their homes.

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Days of downpours from a winter storm that set off deadly tornadoes in Texas and significant snowfall in New England has pushed rivers in the U.S. Midwest to levels not seen in decades, the National Weather Service and local officials aid.

The flood has closed sections of Interstate 44 and Interstate 55, both major trucking routes, along with many local roads near rivers, the Missouri Department of Transportation said on Thursday.

Freezing temperatures in the area in the coming days will cause some flooded areas in Missouri and Illinois to turn icy, adding to challenges, forecasters said.

At least 27 people have died in the region's flooding since the weekend, mostly from driving into flooded areas after storms dropped up to 12 inches (30 cm) of rain, officials said.

Flooding has destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses and overflowing rivers could menace Southern states as the water moves downstream toward the Gulf of Mexico, the National Weather Service said.

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Residents assess how quickly the water is rising following days of heavy rain which caused flooding …

"Floodwaters will move downstream over the next couple of weeks, with significant river flooding expected for the lower Mississippi into mid-January," the NWS said.

Water rose to the rooftops of some structures in Missouri towns. Governor Jay Nixon spoke with President Barack Obama on Wednesday and received a pledge of federal support.

Two rivers west of St. Louis crested at historic levels, flooding towns, disabling sewer plants and forcing hundreds of residents from their homes.

Some evacuees stayed with family or friends or went to hotels, while others found refuge in Red Cross shelters set up in the area.

Eureka, Missouri, Mayor Kevin Coffey said his town had not seen such bad flooding in 150 years and some of its oldest businesses have been damaged. He said about 2,000 people in Eureka were cut off due to flooded roads.

The Mississippi River, the third longest river in North America, is expected to crest in the next few days in Thebes, Illinois, at 47.5 feet, more than a foot and a half (46 cm) above the 1995 record, the National Weather Service said.

Several levees, including one along the Meramec River near St. Louis, were at risk of a breach, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said.

(Reporting by Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles and Mary Wisniewski in Chicago; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Bill Trott)

Stocks Down, Bonds Down, Gold Down, Crude Down, Dollar Down

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/30/2015 09:13 -0500

Sell Mortimer, Sell!

Traders are selling stocks...

And bonds (no safe haven there)

Bloomberg Sponsored Content

And gold (no safe haven there)

As Crude tumbles...

Even as the dollar drops..

And Europe is getting slammed...

Charts: Bloomberg

12/30/2015 — WASHINGTON STATE STRUCK — SEATTLE / VANCOUVER M4.9 (M4.8) EARTHQUAKE — WEST COAST UNREST OBVIOUS

________

The latest round of seismic unrest should now stand out to almost everyone. As if Oklahoma being struck, causing power outages, and widespread damage isn’t enough of a sign that heavy movement is currently underway.

Multiple dormant volcanoes were struck, as well as multiple larger earthquakes along faults extending to the North and South of the West coast United States. People along the West coast, and edge of the craton need to be on watch for similar (or possibly even larger) activity to occur over the next several days.

This graphic below shows the past 7 days of earthquakes M3.9 and greater — clearly things are in a state of flux along the West coast and Midwest United States.

________

This earthquake follows on the heels of a series of other larger M4.0+ earthquakes which struck over the past several days along the West coast / California + Nevada border.

This newest M4.9 earthquake epicenter in Washington State was warned for coming movement, quite literally Washington was named for M4.0 to M5.0 activity to strike in the near term.

The warnings were issued multiple times over the past several days.

_______

Warning Issued Yesterday for Washington State:

December 29, 2015 4pm CT / 2pm PT

“Overall, this recent uptick in volcanic earthquakes along the West coast is a sign of building pressure in the region, which means we need to be on watch for larger activity in the near term in the adjacent areas to this current activity.

This puts the areas of Oregon / Washington into the mix, as well as Southern California along the Coast going into Baja Mexico. Keep watch over the next several days for possible similar (or larger) movement to strike.”
_________

Warning issued 2 days prior for larger West coast movement to strike:

December 28, 2015

“West Coast / California earthquake Warning / Watch:

ANOTHER Volcanic earthquake along the West coast — This now makes FOUR different volcanoes struck in the same amount of days (4 days time)… all along the West coast in California.

Keep watch for greater possible movement in the near term.

________

Even warnings were issued to my viewers / readers via text replies I hand typed in comment form. Seriously trying to get the word out for preparation.

Just a few hours prior to this M4.9 striking near Seattle / Washington State, a viewer replied and asked me if Washington state would see large movement.

I replied that we should see similar size movement as the other activity currently striking in the M4.8 – M5.0 range. Now we see that a M4.9 has struck.

Switzerland Follows Iceland In Declaring War Against The Banksters

DECEMBER 30, 2015

By Isaac Davis

“If you want to continue to be slaves of the banks and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.” – Josiah Stamp

Iceland has gained the admiration of populists in recent years by doing that which no other nation in the world seems to be willing or capable of doing: prosecuting criminal bankers for engineering financial collapse for profit.

Switzerland is in a key position to play a revolutionary role in changing how global banking functions. In addition to being the world’s safest harbor for storing wealth, it is also home to theBank for International Settlements (BIS), a shadowy private company owned by many of the world’s central banks, and acting as a lender to the central banks. The BIS is the very heart of globalreserve banking, the policy that enables banks to lend money that does not actually exist in their bank deposits, but is instead literally created electronically from nothing whenever a bank extends a line of credit.

Reserve banking is the policy that guarantees insurmountable debt as the outcome of all financial transactions.

The Sovereign Money initiative in Switzerland aims to curb financial speculation, which is the intended and inevitable result of reserve banking, the tool that makes financial adventurism possible by supplying the banks with endless quantities of fiat money.

Limiting a bank’s ability to produce money from nothing would be a direct blow to the roots of the banking cartel, and would cripple their ability to manipulate the world economy. Here’s how it works, in rather simplified terms:

…if we had access to the same computer terminals the banks have, we could magic in or out of existence all the imaginary stuff we are trained to think of as important – money – in whatever quantities we liked.

This is how it works: when they print quite a lot of this stuff there is a boom. When they print too much of it, there is inflation (actually, the printing of money is inflation). When they stop printing it or simply hold on to it, there is a depression. [Source]

In Switzerland, 90% of all money in circulation is electronic, and for this, The National Bank of Switzerland has become the direct target of the Sovereign Money Campaign. Swiss law has in the past required required banks to back all currency creation with collateral assets like physical silver or gold, however in recent decades the climate has changed, and, “due to the emergence of electronic payment transactions, banks have regained the opportunity to create their own money.”

The grassroots campaign said in a public statement regarding the intentions of the referendum, “banks won’t be able to create money for themselves any more, they’ll only be able to lend money that they have from savers or other banks.”

This is an interesting twist in the human saga of man vs. banks, and while it remains to be seen if the referendum passes or not, it must be pointed out that it does have its own problems, articulated by Sam Gerrans:

… it does say that the central bank should be given sole right to create money. This would essentially leave the creation of money in the same hands as those who control the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England rather than allow them to farm out the process. But at least it shows that people are beginning to wake up to where the true power lies.

In the unlikely event that this grass-roots movement in Switzerland should get its way and its proposed legislation be enacted, and then begin to morph into something which really does threaten the banking elite, we must not be surprised if Switzerland is shortly discovered to be harboring weapons of mass destruction, or to have masterminded 9/11, or to be financing Islamic State.

Part of the cultural conditioning of our time is an ingrained, presumed dependency on sacred cow institutions like banking. Just like it is impossible for most Americans to envision a world withoutDemocrats and Republicans, it is difficult for most people to imagine a world without predatory global banking.

Yet, there are a number of other possibilities for trading, storing wealth, and facilitating development in the world. This is not the only economic system we can imagine, and as Iceland has proven, people can regain control of their collective wealth, so perhaps this revolution will foment further in Switzerland, presenting a chance to at least bring greater awareness to the truth about central banking.

Image Credit

Isaac Davis is an outspoken advocate of liberty and an honest society from the top down. He is a contributing writer for WakingTimes.com. Follow him on Facebook, here.

This article (Switzerland Follows Iceland in Declaring War Against the Banksters) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commonslicense with attribution to Isaac Davis and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.


(activistpost.com)