Louisiana Police Claim Hakkens Said They Were "Taking a Journey to the Armageddon”

In response
to overwhelming calls for information about the Florida couple who
"abducted" their own children yesterday, the Slidell Police
Department in Slidell, Louisiana, has issued a press release about
the
June 2012 arrest of Joshua Hakken and the confiscation of his
children: 

In June of 2012, Joshua and Sharon Hakken were staying at a
local hotel in Slidell. The Slidell Police Department
was called in reference to a disturbance involving Mr. and
Mrs. Hakken. When police arrived, both Mr. and Mrs.
Hakken were acting in a bizarre manner that alarmed officers.
They were talking about “completing their ultimate journey”
and were traveling across the country to “take a journey to
the Armageddon”. Let it be noted that both of their
children were present in the hotel room at the time.

Based off their behavior, and the fact that narcotics and
weapons were located inside of the hotel room,
officers contacted the Office of Child Services (OCS). OCS
determined that the children were in danger and needed to be
taken into custody by the State of Louisiana and temporarily
placed in a foster home. Mr. Hakken was placed under arrest
for Possession of Marijuana, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia,
and the Use of a Controlled and Dangerous Substance in
the Presence of Minors. Officers also took custody of several
weapons for safe keeping.

Approximately two weeks later, Slidell Police were notified that
Mr. Hakken had shown up to the foster family home (somewhere
in Hammond, LA) with a firearm demanding the return of his
children. The foster parents called 911, and Mr. Hakken fled
without his children. We have heard nothing until yesterday.
Slidell Police was contacted by the FBI and the authorities
from Florida to inform us about the kidnapping. They requested any
and all information that we had on the Hakken’s.

I asked the Slidell Police Department for Hakken's arrest
report, and was told that it's being kept private because Hakken's
drug charges are still pending. As I noted in an update a few
minutes ago, the Slidell Police Department says the claim that
Hakken was arrested at an "anti-government rally" simply isn't
true, and they don't know where it came from.

Earlier today, the Tampa Bay Times reported that Hakken
uses the name "SailingBull" on various message boards (he owns a
sailboat, and he's a graduate of USF, which has a bull mascot).
After looking through nearly all of
Hakken's 190+ posts on the Kel-Tec Owner's Group, I got the
impression of a normal guy with libertarian/Tea Party leanings. He
posted about opposing the death penalty, the war on drugs, and the
Patriot Act; about loving his wife and sons; and about his
enthusiasm for sailing, firearms, and building a new grill in their
backyard. The "Armageddon" line is particularly confusing seeing as
Hakken appears to be a member of secularhomeschool.com,
where, in 2010, he described himself as an atheist: 

I definitely plan on teaching about different religions to my
children when it comes up in context of other studies: i.e.
history, social studies, geography, philosophy... Right now we're
in the pre-preschool phase so I've got time.

As far as teaching the dogma of any particular religion, I will
probably limit my teaching of that in context with what / why
people believe and how it has / will affect the actions of
people. 

Personally, I think every religion from Christianity to Athiesm
is a plague. The notion that we can answer questions we have no
knowledge base for is rediculous. While there may be redeeming
lessons from a particular religion, most organized faiths have
historically been used to shed personal responsibility while
stripping the individual of personal rights and freedoms of it's
congregation.

Religion does not teach moral value, the best it can accomplish is
to coexist and not intrude on such values.

It's worth noting that law enforcement in Florida are painting
the Hakkens as anti-government extremists at the same time police
in Louisiana are describing them as death cultists. I suppose they
could be both, but they could also be neither. 

Previous posts on the Hakkens, who are still at large,
here and
here. 

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Bad Cop

Three years ago, an Arkansas court found police officer Coleman
Brackney guilty of
negligent homicide in the shooting death of James Ahern.
Brackney spent one month in jail and was fired from the Bella Vista
police department. But he later got the conviction expunged, and a
state board ruled that he could once again serve as a police
officer. The Sulphur Springs City Council recently hired Brackney
as their new police chief.

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E! 'Fashion Police' Writers Claim They're Owed More Than $1 Million In Unpaid Wages

Eight writers on E!'s reality show "Fashion Police" on Wednesday filed a claim with state labor officials alleging that they're not being fairly compensated for the hours they've been working.

“The most I’ve been paid for a show has been for eight hours of work,” said "Fashion Police" writer Eliza Skinner. “In reality, I put in anywhere from 12 to 32 additional hours on each show -- time I should have been compensated for. On top of that is all the unpaid overtime we regularly work. There are some shows where we are required to work 16-hour days, from 2:30 p.m. until around 5:30 the following morning.”

Also read: Reality TV: The Invisible Front in Hollywood's Labor Wars

"Fashion Police," which debuted in the fall of 2010, features hosts Joan Rivers, Giuliana Rancic, Kelly Osbourne and George Kotsiopoulos commenting on celebrity fashions.

The network, which is owned by NBC/Universal, issued this statement in response to the filing: “E! values our Fashion Police writers and we pay them fairly and in full legal compliance.”

The claim was filed with the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. If upheld, it could result in the cable TV network having to pay more than $1 million in back wages, according to the Writers Guild of America West, which is providing legal assistance to the writers.

Also read: Moving From 'Mob Wives' to Kardashians: Jeff Olde Joins E! From VH1

According to the writers, who are not working under a guild contract, "Fashion Police" ignores the California laws that require an employer to pay hourly employees their regular wage rate for all time worked in an eight-hour period. In addition, the law requires paying overtime for employment beyond eight hours in any workday or more than 40 hours in any workweek. 

“We love writing for 'Fashion Police,' but the company needs to do the right thing and pay us fairly for all the hard work and time we put into it,” said writer Bryan Cook. “We’ve helped make it one of the network’s top-rated shows and E! needs to start treating us like professional writers.”

SEE ALSO: "Game of Thrones" premiere breaks piracy record >

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Judges Rule on Police Practices Along the Canada-New York Border: No Unreasonable Searches, No Unreasonable Stops

A U.S. district judge ruled on Friday that cops
in Niagara County, New York were wrong to detain a couple for hours
for having windows tinted beyond what’s allowed in the state (it
was a permissible tint in Tennessee, where the car was registered)
and that, further, from the
Newspaper:

"Given that material issues of fact exist as to whether
the continued detention of plaintiffs was constitutionally
permissible, a reasonable fact-finder could find that it was
objectively unreasonable for the officers to conclude that removal
of plaintiffs to a border facility, a further search and x-ray of
their car without their consent, and their continued detention for
an unspecified amount of time, did not violate plaintiffs'
constitutional rights," Judge [Richard] Arcara ruled.

The couple says in the lawsuit they were stopped because they
were black.

Meanwhile, a county judge in St. Lawrence, New York
earlier ruled the Border Patrol
could not stop somebody just for driving carefully, even if a
subsequent search turned up drugs. From the
Newspaper:

Agent [Brandon] Carrier became suspicious and about an
hour into the stop a drug dog was called to the scene, and a tire
filled with marijuana was found in the trunk. This evidence,
however, was thrown out because the traffic stop itself was deemed
invalid and the Border Patrol had no business stopping them.


"The court believes that Officer Carrier decided to follow the
white SUV and do a radio run because the driver appeared nervous,"
Judge [Kathleen] Rogers ruled. "Her actions were completely
consistent with a person who was not engaged in any criminal
activity. There was no basis to believe that a vehicle with a NYS
license plate and registration had crossed the border or was
engaged in any way with smuggling persons or contraband across the
border."


Agent Carrier testified that he also became suspicious when he
learned the car was registered to someone with the common Indian
name of Deer.


"A vehicle stop must be valid at its inception: it cannot be
bootstrapped into reasonable suspicion by mounting concerns over
diverging explanations from the vehicle occupants as to their
intended destination," Judge Rogers ruled. "His candid testimony
that the occupants looked like Mohawks and that one had what
Carrier believed is a Mohawk name, and that the car was listed for
an address near the Mohawk Indian reservation bordered on improper
racial profiling."

It may have turned out differently in the agent had said his dog
alerted him from the beginning, based on
the recent unanimous Supreme Court ruling that a dog’s ok was
enough to warrant a search by police.

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How A Corrupt Cop Allegedly Ended Up Controlling The Gambling Underworld In Pakistan's Deadliest City

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — A corrupt, low-level cop with a healthy dose of street smarts rises to control hundreds of illegal gambling dens in Pakistan's largest city. By doling out millions of dollars in illicit proceeds, he protects his empire and becomes one of the most powerful people in Karachi.

The allegations against Mohammed Waseem Ahmed — or Waseem "Beater" as he is more commonly known — emerged recently from surprise testimony by a top police commander before a crusading anti-crime Supreme Court judge. The story has given a rare and colorful glimpse into the vast underworld in Karachi, a chaotic metropolis of 18 million people on Pakistan's southern coast.

The sprawling city has become notorious for violence, from gangland-style killings and kidnappings to militant bombings and sectarian slayings. Further worrying authorities have been signs that the Pakistani Taliban are using the chaos to gain a greater foothold in the city.

For months, the Supreme Court's Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has been leading special hearings on Karachi's crime, berating the city's top police officers for failing to act. This past week, he demanded they move in to clean up so-called "no-go" areas — entire neighborhoods where police fear to tread — according to local press reports.

Further fueling the problem is rampant police corruption, undermining efforts to combat the city's violent gangs and extremists. Among the public, the police nationwide are seen as the country's most crooked public sector organization, a high bar given claims of pervasive corruption throughout the government.

The allegations surrounding Ahmed further fuel questions about the overlap between Karachi's underworld and its police forces. After the testimony to the Supreme Court earlier this year, police officials in Karachi provided The Associated Press with additional details over his reported rise.

The AP made repeated attempts to contact Ahmed, who has been removed from the force and fled to Dubai, but was not successful.

Ahmed came from a poor family in Karachi's old city and joined the police force in the 1990s. He soon started working as a "beater," a low-level thug who works for more senior cops to collect a cut from illegal activities in their area, such as gambling, prostitution and drug dealing, said half a dozen police officers who knew him personally at the time. They all spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Ahmed, who sports a bushy black mustache and usually dresses in a simple, white shalwar kameez, earned a reputation for carrying out his illicit work efficiently, said two police officers who have known him ever since he joined the force. That reputation helped him forge relationships with more senior figures, and eventually he was collecting money for some of the top police officers and civilian security officials in Karachi, they said.

The heavyset 40-year-old also attracted the attention of a local boss who controlled the largest concentration of illegal gambling dens in Karachi, located in the city's rough and tumble Ghas Mandi area, where Ahmed worked, said the policemen and a local journalist. The two teamed up to expand their gambling empire to other parts of Karachi and surrounding Sindh province.

Gambling was not always illegal in Pakistan, a nation of 180 million people that gained independence from Britain in 1947 as a sanctuary for Muslims who did not believe they could thrive as part of what is now India, a majority Hindu state. Despite the religious undertones of Pakistan's founding, the country's major cities, such as Karachi and Lahore, were relatively liberal places in the first few decades after independence. Alcohol flowed freely in nightclubs filled with dancing girls.

But in 1977, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto banned gambling and alcohol for Muslims in an attempt to appease Islamic hard-liners. Drinking and gambling, which are forbidden in Islam, didn't stop, but much of it was driven underground.

The gambling dens in Ghas Mandi are hidden behind nondescript facades down dark alleyways with tangled electrical wires hanging overhead in one of the oldest and densest populated parts of Karachi.

In one den, a dozen men dressed in shalwar kameez sat in a semicircle on the floor playing a local card game, mang patta, beneath bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The men sipped tea and tossed 100 rupee ($1) poker chips at the dealer.

In an adjacent room, a handful of men played chakka, a game that involved guessing the numbers that would appear when the dealer rolled three dice out of what looked like an old leather Yahtzee cup. Rupee notes were placed on a table as bets and held in place by a large metal washer. Everyone stopped their games when the Muslim call to prayer came over a loudspeaker from a nearby mosque — and they promptly resumed the dice and cards once the prayer ended.

Ahmed earned tens of thousands of dollars each day from hundreds of such gambling dens, said the policemen and journalist who knew him. He also collected extortion money from drug dealers and brothels and smuggled diesel fuel into Karachi from neighboring Iran, where it is much cheaper, they said.

He distributed cash to senior officials, and the pay-outs made him one of the most powerful people in Karachi's police force, said his acquaintances. He won significant influence over who was posted to senior positions, thus providing him with protection, they said. Known as a man of few words who rarely loses his cool, Ahmed also handed out money to Karachi's powerful criminal gangs and traveled with roughly a dozen armed guards as an insurance policy.

He was sailing smoothly through the underworld until one of the Supreme Court sessions in January.

A petitioner outlined to the court allegations of Ahmed's illicit activities and his power in the police force. Chief Justice Chaudhry then asked senior police officers and civilian officials who were present about the allegations. They all expressed ignorance.

But Deputy Inspector General Bashir Memon spoke up and backed the petitioner's claims.

"I said yes, Waseem 'Beater' is present among the ranks of the Karachi police. He controls the gambling business in Karachi," Memon told The Associated Press. "I also confirmed that he is involved in the transfer and posting of junior and senior police officers."

Another senior police officer in Sindh province, Sanaullah Abbasi, also testified that he knew Ahmed and that he controlled gambling dens in Karachi.

Chaudhry lambasted the senior officials for not going after Ahmed and asked Memon whether he was concerned about contradicting his colleagues.

"I replied, 'I only told you the truth,'" Memon told the AP.

As a sign of Ahmed's power, Memon said he was told the same day he would be transferred out of Karachi, but the Supreme Court canceled the transfer order.

Ahmed was dismissed from the police force after the Supreme Court hearing, according to two senior police officers, and government records indicate he flew to Dubai and has not returned.

Hassan Abbas, an expert on the Pakistani police at the New York-based Asia Society, said Ahmed's case provides a stark illustration of the level of corruption in the Karachi police force, which he described as the worst in any of Pakistan's major cities. Criminal cases are currently pending against 400 police officers serving in Karachi, said Abbas.

Civilian officials, who also benefit from corruption, have shown no willingness to reform the system, making the force relatively ineffective in cracking down on criminal gangs and Islamist militants in the city, said Abbas.

"The chaos in Karachi provides criminal gangs with the cover they need to operate," said Abbas. "Corruption provides an incentive to continue that chaos."

____

Follow Sebastian Abbot on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sebabbot

Copyright (2013) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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After Deadly Gang Rape, Delhi Police Report Huge Surge In Sexual Abuse Complaints

Police announced Saturday a sharp jump in sex crimes reported in the Indian capital since the fatal gang-rape of a student and attributed the rise to more confidence among victims to report complaints.

"More women are shedding their inhibitions and registering complaints with us. After the December 16 gang-rape, nobody in Delhi wants to brush crime under the carpet," Deepak Mishra, law and order commissioner, told AFP.

There was a 148 percent leap in rape accusations lodged with police to 359 incidents between January 1 and March 24 this year from the same period in 2012 and a 590 percent rise in molestation reports to 794, police said.

The brutal attack on a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus in New Delhi on December 16 that resulted in her death nearly two weeks later sparked nationwide outrage and prompted parliament to toughen penalties for sex crimes.

Though gang-rapes and sexual harassment are common in India, the case touched a nerve and led to a flood of criticism about the treatment of women in society.

"Cases of sex crimes have shot up in 2013 because we are following a strict rule of not ignoring a single incident of crime," said Mishra, who is responsible for crime prevention in the capital.

Before the December gang-rape, Mishra said, Delhi police had a policy in many instances of investigating incidents before registering a formal case, leading to complaints by women that authorities were turning a blind eye to sex crimes.

But now "the instruction is clear -- every crime incident should be recorded", said Mishra.

The city has a burgeoning population of at least 16 million and has long had a reputation of being the country's "rape capital" as it records the highest number of rapes annually.

In 2012 there were 700 rapes reported in New Delhi, a 23 percent rise from the previous year, police said.

Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association, a rights group, also attributed the sharp jump in sex cases in New Delhi to more confidence among women to register complaints.

"They are more open to using the word 'rape' as before it was considered too much a shameful word to utter" for fear of being stigmatised in sexually conservative India, she told AFP.

At the same time, Krishnan noted that while Indian authorities have announced a string of measures to help women feel safer "incidents of sex crimes are not decreasing".

Earlier this month, a Swiss cyclist was allegedly gang-raped in central Madhya Pradesh state and a British tourist in Agra jumped off a hotel balcony fearing she was going to be sexually attacked.

Copyright (2013) AFP. All rights reserved.

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Covered at Reason 24/7: Police Want Traffic Cameras Used for Wider Surveillance

Traffic cameras. Don't you hate the damned
things? It's bad enough having some robo-snitch ratting on you for
going a few miles over the limit on an open road or shaving a
yellow without worrying that it actually picked up a guy passing
you but snapped your plate instead. Then again, it could be worse —
traffic cameras could just be general surveillance cameras,
tracking your face and your license plate and monitoring the public
in a wild display of Bloomberg-esque mission creep.

Come to think of it, that just may come to pass. Lawmakers in
both Washington and Oregon are considering changing the law to
allow traffic cameras to be used as ... well ... Big Brother's
all-seeing eyes. The Washington measure already passed the House
and awaits Senate approval. Oregon hasn't advanced that far, yet,
but give 'em time.

Police say they won't use the cameras to track people for minor
crimes. Of course not.

From
Northwest Watchdog:

PORTLAND – Police in Oregon and Washington want to expand the
reach of red light cameras to catch the really bad guys –
murderers, child abductors, armed robbers.

Both state legislatures are considering proposals that would
eliminate provisions in the state laws that keep police from using
the cameras for anything but red light running.

Police say they just want to use it to catch felons.

In Washington, police say being able to use the license plate
image captured by red light cameras might have helped them catch a
suspect in the drive-by shooting of a 21-year-old woman in Seattle.
As the law stands now, police can only use the image to enforce
traffic infractions.

But civil liberties advocates fear changing the red light camera
law is one step closer to broadening government surveillance.

Follow this story and more at Reason 24/7.

If you have a story that would be of interest to Reason's
readers please let us know by emailing the 24/7 crew at
24_7@reason.com, or tweet us stories at @reason247.

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Jacob Sullum on New York's Unconstitutional Stop-and-Frisk Program

Last week a federal judge began to hear testimony
in a class action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the
New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk program. Senior Editor
Jacob Sullum says the suit makes a persuasive case that the program
violates the Fourth Amendment because police routinely stop people
without reasonable suspicion that they are engaged in criminal
activity.

View this article.

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