Reasons to Watch the McCloskey Case

Posted on July 15, 2020July 15, 2020 by Denise Simon

Fact sheet:

1. Both Mark and his wife Patricia are personal injury trial lawyers.

2. Their home is on a private gate no trespassing street.

3. The couple was featured in St. Louis Magazine for their impressive renovation of the famous estate in 1988. Now more than 30 years after purchasing the home, which was once owned by Edward and Anna Busch Faust — the son of a revered St. Louis restaurateur and daughter of the beer-making Busch family — they have restored the Renaissance palazzo back to its original glory.

St Louis lawyers who pulled a gun on BLM protesters at war ... source

Mark McCloskey told the magazine, “All the plumbing was made by Mott, which was the premiere manufacturer at the turn of the century, and all the door and window hardware was made by P.E. Guerin.” Patricia McCloskey noted “the glass in the windows” was from the second-floor reception hall at the 14th century Palazzo Davanzati in Florence, “and the shutters, at least the ironwork, are probably original.” The property is appraised at $1.15 million, according to St. Louis city property records.

4. McCloskey is representing a victim of police brutality in a lawsuit against a Missouri police department and officer. According to the Associated Press, David Maas, a Woodson Terrace Police officer at the time, was caught on dashcam video appearing to assault a man and was indicted on a federal charge in March.

5. While some on social media have claimed the McCloskeys are registered Democrats, it was not immediately possible to determine whether the couple are actually registered as Democrats or if they are registered Republicans. But Federal Election Commission records show Mark McCloskey has contributed thousands of dollars to the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, the Republican National Committee and Donald J. Trump for President Inc. He also made contributions to a Republican congressional candidate, Bill Phelps, in 1996, and to the Bush-Quayle campaign in 1992.

Patricia McCloskey also made a contribution to the RNC in 2018 and to a Republican Senate dinner in 1988.

source

Attributions in part

6. Missouri Castle Doctrine in part:

Justified Use of Force

Physical force:

May be used when individuals reasonably believe that the physical force used is necessary for the defense of themselves (or others) from an imminent attack of unlawful force from another person.
May be used when individuals believe that the force is reasonably necessary to prevent another person from stealing, causing property damage, or tampering.

Deadly force:

May be used when a person reasonably believes that the level of force is necessary for self-defense or defense of others (including unborn children) in response to an imminent threat.

No Duty to Retreat

A person has no duty to retreat:

From their dwelling, residence, or vehicle
From their private property
If the person is any other location where they have the right to be

7. Mr McCloskey said he started trying to arrange private security for the house when the couple received a tip saying the protesters were planning to come back to ‘get us and burn the house’. ‘We had been told that the city police had been ordered to stand down, we had been told there was going to be no official help,’ he said. ‘Our neighbourhood association put out a flyer saying if people broke in they were just going to let them. ‘So we started trying to hire private security and entity after entity said they did not want to get involved.’ The situation became so bad that the couple started ‘hiding’ their valuables and were told by one security firm of former special forces members to ‘walk away’ and ‘abandon’ the house.

8. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department confirmed that it executed a search warrant on the McCloskeys’ house on Friday. The department said the search was authorized by a judge, but would not comment on any other aspect of the investigation.

“Our Department executed a search warrant, which was issued by the Courts,” a department spokeswoman told the Free Beacon. “Since the investigation is ongoing, we have no further comment to provide.”

The rifle held by Mark McCloskey during the altercation was seized by police during the search, according to KSDK. The handgun held by Patricia McCloskey was turned over to police by the couple’s former attorney Albert Watkins, who told the St. Louis American the gun was inoperable at the time of the incident.

9. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said Tuesday that President Trump would be “getting involved” in the case of the St. Louis couple who pointed guns at a group of protesters passing outside their home last month, and who are under review for criminal charges.

On Tuesday, both the president and Republican governor offered separate impassioned defenses of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who went viral after brandishing guns at protesters on the private street outside their mansion on June 28.

Parson, who said the couple had “every right to protect their property,” said he spoke with Trump just before the governor’s coronavirus news briefing. He said Trump made it clear he “doesn’t like what he sees and the way these people are being treated,” referencing the McCloskeys.

He said Attorney General William P. Barr “was represented on the call,” and he thinks the president and the attorney general “are going to take a look” at the McCloskeys’ case.

10. Kim Gardner, the prosecutor targeting the McClosky’s has a very dark resume herself.In 2019, Gardner admitted to repeat campaign finance violations dating back to her time as a Missouri State Legislator. These violations included using campaign donations to pay for a private apartment. Gardner reached an agreement with the Missouri Ethics Commission to pay a settlement of $6,314 in lieu of a $63,009 fine. The Circuit Attorney’s Office has experienced a more than 100% turnover rate in staff since Gardner took office. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in September 2019 that “over 65 attorneys with a combined experience of over 460 years in prosecutorial experience” have left the Circuit Attorney’s office under Gardner. On June 3, 2020, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the Circuit Attorney’s office had released all of the 36 rioters who had been arrested. This drew criticism from the Gardner’s longtime public opponent Eric Schmitt, the Attorney General of Missouri.^[38] Gardner’s office responded that the individuals were released due to insufficient evidence.

11. The Safety & Justice Committee, a George Soros PAC was a large donor to Gardner. St. Louis Today reported in June of 2016 in part: Gardner’s campaign reported to the Missouri Ethics Commission a $24,548.37 in-kind donation from the same federal campaign committee, a day after reporting a $25,738.86 contribution from that super PAC. Then on July 29, Gardner reported an additional $72,770.27 from Safety & Justice, bringing the Soros-backed super PAC total contribution to Gardner’s campaign to at least $190,750.73.

Gorsuch at SCOTUS Give up the State of Oklahoma?

Posted on July 15, 2020July 15, 2020 by Denise Simon

So many news reports on the recent decisions of the Supreme Court as the session came to a close and those that did reach the news were covered as they were political in scope. But one very consequential majority opinion authored by Neil Gorsuch did not have any coverage at all it is will ripple through law offices and lobbyists as well as other states for years to come. It may also come down to Congress to resolve the land claims and treaties.

Supreme Court sneaks in another Indian Country case to the ...

The case comes from an Indian-American convicted for rape. He was sentenced to over 1000 years plus life. After so many motions and appeals, one such filing reached the Supreme Court. This will be argued in many state legislatures, by owners of property, by tax revenue experts and by corporations especially those in the oil industry. Jimcy McGirt vs. Oklahoma lawsuit

The eastern part of Oklahoma, about half of the state’s total land, was granted by Congress to Native American tribes in the 19th century, and is still under tribal sovereignty, the Supreme Court has ruled. Kmusser, based on 1890s data/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Land in eastern Oklahoma that the United States promised to the Creek Nation in an 1833 treaty is still a reservation under tribal sovereignty, at least when it comes to criminal law, the Supreme Court ruled on July 9. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, “Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word.”

To most Americans, it may seem obvious that a government should live up to its word. But the United States has regularly reneged on the promises that it made to American Indian nations in the nearly 400 treaties that it negotiated with them between 1778 and 1871. Many people feared that the Supreme Court would turn a blind eye to another treaty breach in this case, McGirt v. Oklahoma.

For decades, the state of Oklahoma has prosecuted tribal citizens for committing crimes on lands in eastern Oklahoma that the United States granted to tribes in treaties. In 1997, Jimcy McGirt, a citizen of the Seminole Nation, was convicted in an Oklahoma state court of three sex crimes, including rape, that happened within the historic territory of the Creek Nation. He was sentenced to 500 years in state prison.

McGirt argued that the judgment was invalid because under an 1885 federal law, only federal courts – not state courts – have the authority to try American Indians accused of committing serious crimes on Indian reservations.

Who has jurisdiction?

In response to McGirt, Oklahoma had argued that even if the treaty granting land to the Creek Nation created a reservation, that treaty was no longer relevant. Oklahoma claimed that the lands, which included the places where McGirt’s alleged crimes happened, were no longer under tribal jurisdiction.

As the case made its way through state courts and then to the Supreme Court, Oklahoma claimed that even if the land was within the Creek reservation and therefore under Creek Nation jurisdiction, the state should be allowed to continue to prosecute tribal citizens on the land because it had done so for decades.

But the Supreme Court ruled that the terms of an 1833 treaty still apply, acknowledging that the Creek Nation had received the lands in eastern Oklahoma as partial compensation for surrendering and leaving their lands in what are now parts of Alabama, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina. The court affirmed that the Creek lands in Oklahoma land remain the tribe’s reservation.

Gorsuch wrote, in a 5-4 decision supported by justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, that the state’s prosecutions of American Indians for crimes on the tribe’s reservation violated federal law and the Creek Nation’s treaty rights.

“Unlawful acts, performed long enough and with sufficient vigor, are never enough to amend the law,” he wrote. “To hold otherwise would be to elevate the most brazen and longstanding injustices over the law, both rewarding wrong and failing those in the right.”

For Oklahoma, the ruling means the state cannot continue to prosecute tribal citizens on tribal lands – which includes about half of Oklahoma’s territory because the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Seminole nations have similar treaties with the United States granting them land in Oklahoma, too.

The state had argued in court that the ruling would cause all sorts of problems with law enforcement and the economy in Oklahoma. But within hours of the ruling, state officials and leaders of the five American Indian nations had released a joint statement assuring the public that they are negotiating agreements that will fix any problems that might arise.

The statement declared that all the authorities “are committed to ensuring that Jimcy McGirt … and all other offenders face justice for the crimes for which they are accused.” Under the Supreme Court decision, McGirt faces retrial by a federal court.

Beyond Oklahoma, the decision’s effects will vary by tribe and state. States from Florida to Michigan have sought to curtail tribal sovereignty, and this decision clearly affirmed tribal sovereignty and treaty rights. It also emphasized the limited powers that states have over American Indian tribes under the U.S. Constitution. States may now think twice before ignoring treaty promises or challenging tribal jurisdiction.

They may decide it’s better to negotiate than to fight in court.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Law Enforcement Surveillance of BLM/Protests Goes Tech AI

Posted on July 15, 2020July 15, 2020 by Denise Simon

Meet Dataminr, the leading artificial intelligence platform for real-time event and risk detection. In a world characterized by unexpected and rapidly moving events that can impact operations in innumerable and unforeseen ways, relevant information can surface anywhere at any time. Dataminr discovers, distills and delivers alerts from the increasingly diverse and complex landscape of publicly available information—including social media, blogs, information sensors, and the dark web—ensuring that businesses have the knowledge they need to act with confidence.

Build the Movement to Defeat Racism!/¡Construir un ... source

Back in January, The New York Post had a short article on how the NYPD on Monday was ordered to respond to a request for records related to its surveillance of Black Lives Matters protestors’ cell phones and social media.

The secret police documents were among a Freedom of Information Law request by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Millions March NYC, an activist group affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement.

But, the Glomar response kicked in. What is that? It is used often actually. It is where an agency refuses to confirm or deny the existence of responsive records. The term “Glomar” originates from a case related to the CIA’s classified Glomar Explorer project, in which the agency sought to recover materials for military and intelligence purposes from a sunken Soviet submarine in the Pacific Ocean.

George Floyd protests: Trump blames 'antifa' for violence ... source

It is not just about Black Lives Matter, add in ANTIFA, The Youth Liberation Front and Boogaloo among others, perhaps even MS-13.

Okay, circling back to Dataminr.

Leveraging close ties to Twitter, controversial artificial intelligence startup Dataminr helped law enforcement digitally monitor the protests that swept the country following the killing of George Floyd, tipping off police to social media posts with the latest whereabouts and actions of demonstrators, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept and a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

Dataminr helps newsrooms, corporations, and governments around the world track crises with superhuman speed as they unfold across social media and the wider web. Through a combination of people and software, the company alerts organizations to chatter around global crises — wars, shootings, riots, disasters, and so forth — so that they’ll have a competitive edge as news is breaking. But the meaning of that competitive edge, the supercharged ability to filter out important events from the noise of hundreds of millions of tweets and posts across social media, will vary drastically based on the customer; the agenda of a newspaper using Dataminr to inform its breaking news coverage won’t be the same as the agendas of a bank or the FBI. It’s this latter category of Dataminr’s business, lucrative government work, that’s had the firm on the defensive in recent years.

In 2016, Twitter was forced to reckon with multiple reports that its platform was being used to enable domestic surveillance, including a Wall Street Journal report on Dataminr’s collaboration with American spy agencies in May; an American Civil Liberties Union report on Geofeedia, a Dataminr competitor, in October; and another ACLU investigation into Dataminr’s federal police surveillance work in December. The company sought to assure the public that attempts to monitor its users for purposes of surveillance were strictly forbidden under its rules, and that any violators would be kicked off the platform. For example, then-VP Chris Moody wrote in a company blog post that “using Twitter’s Public APIs or data products to track or profile protesters and activists is absolutely unacceptable and prohibited.” In a letter to the ACLU, Twitter public policy chief Colin Crowell similarly wrote that “the use of Twitter data for surveillance is strictly prohibited” and that “Datatminr’s product does not provide any government customers with … any form of surveillance.”

Dataminr continues to enable what is essentially surveillance by U.S. law enforcement entities, contradicting its earlier assurances to the contrary, even if it remains within some of the narrow technical boundaries it outlined four years ago, like not providing direct firehose access, tweet geolocations, or certain access to fusion centers.

Dataminr relayed tweets and other social media content about the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests directly to police, apparently across the country. In so doing, it used to great effect its privileged access to Twitter data — despite current terms of service that explicitly bar software developers “from tracking, alerting, or monitoring sensitive events (such as protests, rallies, or community organizing meetings)” via Twitter.

And despite Dataminr’s claims that its law enforcement service merely “delivers breaking news alerts on emergency events, such as natural disasters, fires, explosions and shootings,” as a company spokesperson told The Intercept for a previous report, the company has facilitated the surveillance of recent protests, including nonviolent activity, siphoning vast amounts of social media data from across the web and converting it into tidy police intelligence packages.

Dataminr’s Black Lives Matter protest surveillance included persistent monitoring of social media to tip off police to the locations and activities of protests, developments within specific rallies, as well as instances of alleged “looting” and other property damage. According to the source with direct knowledge of Dataminr’s protest monitoring, the company and Twitter’s past claims that they don’t condone or enable surveillance are “bullshit,” relying on a deliberately narrowed definition. “It’s true Dataminr doesn’t specifically track protesters and activists individually, but at the request of the police they are tracking protests, and therefore protesters,” this source explained. There is much more detail here from The Intercept.

So, if law enforcement in various locations has a partnership with Dataminr, it puts to question why destructive protests of an ongoing basis continues to happen costing lives, injuries and ruining business and livelihoods. Ah that is a question for governors, mayors, prosecutors and judges but you can be assured that in many cases arrests have been made and investigators have additional tools for build cases against alleged criminals.

So, if there is to be law and order and any kind of restoration to community peace or civil society, tools such as Dataminr are valuable that is if the unlawful acts are prosecuted in the first place.