Category: reason

Sterling Wheaten, a K9 handler for the Atlantic
City, New Jersey, Police Department, has a special talent for
making unpleasant waves without consequences—so far. Only five
years on the job, and he’s been named in half-a-dozen lawsuits, and
investigated (but “exonerated”) repeatedly by Internal Affairs.
Now, just months after siccing his dog on a man who was already
lying on his face on the ground after being pounded by other police
officers (see the image at right), he’s accused of jumping and
arresting a woman because she videorecorded him roughing up her
brother.

From
Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia:

[Janine] Costantino says Wheaten arrested her brother after he
got into an altercation with another patron.

“Wheaten had my brother in a headlock and his arms were limp and
his legs were weak,” Costantino said. “I screamed out that it was
police brutality and that I was videotaping it all.”
That’s when she claims Wheaten turned on her.

“He was running at me and he says, ‘Give me the phone you
b**h,’” she said. “He grabbed my bun and he was slamming my
forehead into the floor.”

Wheaten then arrested Costantino but court records show the
charges against her were later dropped. Costantino says she’ll
never forget what one officer told her the night of the
incident.

“He’s like, ‘Oh, that’s your first mistake,’” she said. “You
shouldn’t be videotaping police officers.”

Wheaten is one of six officers under investigation for using
excessive force against 20-year-old David Connor Castellani.
Castellani had been ejected from a casino for being under age.
Surveillance video of the incident (see below) shows him mouthing
off at the cops as he walked away. Apparently wounded in their
pride, the cops rushed him (he was across the street) and laid into
him with fists, feet, and batons. Late-arriver Wheaten let his dog
do the work after Castellani was down.

From Wallace McKelvey at
pressofAtlanticCity:

Atlantic City officials and activists called for increased
scrutiny Tuesday as more allegations of excessive force surfaced
about one of six police officers recorded on video allegedly
beating a 20-year-old Linwood man this summer.

David Connor Castellani filed a lawsuit against the city, its
police department and six officers Tuesday in U.S. District Court
in Camden.

On June 15, Castellani was removed from the Tropicana Casino and
Resort. A short time later, at 3:10 a.m., Tropicana surveillance
video obtained via subpoena showed him being tackled by police,
with a K-9 released on him. Castellani’s injuries required 200
stitches and ongoing physical therapy, family members say. …

At least six other lawsuits filed in the last three years allege
that Sterling Wheaten, the K-9 officer seen in the video, abused
his power during the course of arrests. Wheaten graduated from the
Atlantic County Police K-9 Academy this May. Tracy Riley, his
attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. One
of the lawsuits was dismissed and another settled out of court.

That article details the six lawsuits naming Wheaten and
predating the Castellani lawsuit, alleging such acts as punching,
beating, and throwing people down stairs. One plaintiff also claims
that Wheaten attacked him with a police dog.

The Comcast report refers to “an internal police report which
shows that Atlantic City Police internal affairs investigated
Wheaten 15 times between 2008 and 2010 for allegations of
misconduct, some of those allegations being excessive force. Each
time however, the department concluded Wheaten did nothing wrong or
that there was not enough evidence to clearly prove he did
something wrong.”

McKelvey says there are “21 complaints against Wheaten over a
three-year period” and that complainants included then-Chief John
Mooney and Deputy Chief Henry White. White alleged excessive force
and Mooney complained of “simple assault and standard of
conduct.”

The former police chief and the deputy chief complained
about Wheaten and he’s still on the job? You have to wonder just
what kind of photos he has filed away. And how long the people of
Atlantic City will have to tolerate him and his buddies.

Update: Costantino’s phone is MIA, along with her
video. According to a pressofAtlanticCity
report:

“Wheaten stood up and handed the phone to a smaller man in a
plaid shirt and said, ‘you got this?’,” the suit reads. “To which
the man in the plaid shirt said in sum and substance, ‘yah, I’ll
take care of it. Don’t worry’.”

That man, also unidentified in the suit, allegedly put the phone
in his pocket and walked away. The phone was never recovered after
the arrest.

So we’ll have to make do with video of the Castellani
incident.

Yesterday, a bunch of environmental and social
activists staged what they were pleased to call a “massive” walkout
from the UN climate change conference venue in Warsaw. I watched it
take place and took some cell phone photos,  and then reported
that perhaps a 100 activists, or to be really generous, maybe 150,
had
“massively” walked out.

I returned on Friday to the conference where I hear it repeated
numerous times by various remaining members of “civil society” that
800 activists had actually joined the walkout. Then I start
googling around and find that some news outlets had reported that
number as being factually so, e.g,. Reuters,

Environment News Service, and
Grist. Really?

Amusingly, as I walked into the National Stadium today, I
overhead the following conversation between two young activists
while we three waited to hand over our coats at the cloakroom:

He: I walked out yesterday, did you?

She: Yes, but I had to walk back in almost immediately because
we had meeting with a delegation.

I kid you not.

When I was a reporter in Central America, I was introduced to
the concept of “lying for justice” by some supporters of the
Sandinistas who explained to me that sometimes one had to tell lies
in order to be heard.

Reports exaggerating theatrical performances of this sort are a
disservice to readers, listeners, and viewers of the news.

Yesterday, a bunch of environmental and social
activists staged what they were pleased to call a “massive” walkout
from the UN climate change conference venue in Warsaw. I watched it
take place and took some cell phone photos,  and then reported
that perhaps a 100 activists, or to be really generous, maybe 150,
had
“massively” walked out.

I returned on Friday to the conference where I hear it repeated
numerous times by various remaining members of “civil society” that
800 activists had actually joined the walkout. Then I start
googling around and find that some news outlets had reported that
number as being factually so, e.g,. Reuters,

Environment News Service, and
Grist. Really?

Amusingly, as I walked into the National Stadium today, I
overhead the following conversation between two young activists
while we three waited to hand over our coats at the cloakroom:

He: I walked out yesterday, did you?

She: Yes, but I had to walk back in almost immediately because
we had meeting with a delegation.

I kid you not.

When I was a reporter in Central America, I was introduced to
the concept of “lying for justice” by some supporters of the
Sandinistas who explained to me that sometimes one had to tell lies
in order to be heard.

Reports exaggerating theatrical performances of this sort are a
disservice to readers, listeners, and viewers of the news.

As the
Senate Armed Forces Committee works on
the latest iteration of the National Defense Authorization Act,
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va) sees it as a good opportunity to
try again to pass cybersecurity legislation. He has submitted the
Cybersecurity Act of 2013, legislation passed in the Senate
Commerce Committee this summer after the failure of CISPA to gain
momentum. Though the legislation failed to pass Congress this
summer, the president issued an executive order to implement some
of the objectives anyway, or, as the Hill
reports:

The measure is far more modest than legislation that
Rockefeller and other Senate Democrats backed last year. That bill
would have pressured critical infrastructure companies, such as
banks and power plants, to meet minimum cybersecurity
regulations.

After opposition from Republicans killed last year’s bill,
President Obama issued an executive order instructing the Commerce
Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
to craft voluntary cybersecurity best-practices for critical
infrastructure companies.

Rockefeller’s amendment would codify the executive order into law.
It would also boost cybersecurity education, research and
development for cyber threats. 

The text of the two amendments Rockefeller submitted (among more
than 500 NDAA amendments) can be read here
and here.

Yesterday,
I wrote about a number of European nations that have formed a
“drone club,” which aims to develop UAVs that can compete with
American and Israeli drones. In the same post I briefly mentioned
the Chinese Wing Loong drone, which bears some resemblance to the
American Predator drone, leading some analysts to conclude that
Chinese espionage may have played a role in its development.

Today, there is more drone news. According to Chinese state
media, the Chinese flew a stealth drone for the first time
yesterday, the latest example of Chinese military development,
which U.S. officials believe is changing the security situation in
the Pacific. The most recent annual report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review
Commission (USCC), released on Wednesday, says the following
(PLA stands for “People’s Liberation Army”):

PLA modernization is altering the security balance in the Asia
Pacific, challenging decades of U.S. military preeminence in the
region.

The U.S. is understandably wary of recent Chinese military
developments, especially given American military presence and
diplomatic obligations in Asia and the Pacific. The USCC report
highlighted the Hongzha-6K bomber, which the Chinese air force
received in June, that is capable of carrying nuclear warheads and
of reaching Guam.

From the USCC report (LACM stands for “land attack cruise
missiles”):

In June 2013, the PLA Air Force began to receive new Hongzha- 6K
(H–6K) bomber aircraft. The H–6K has an extended range and can
carry China’s new long-range LACM. The bomber/LACM weapon system
provides the PLA Air Force with the ability to conduct conventional
strikes against regional targets throughout the Western Pacific,
including U.S. facilities in Guam. Although the H–6K airframe could
be modified to carry a nuclear-tipped air-launched LACM, and
China’s LACMs likely have the ability to carry a nuclear warhead,
there is no evidence to confirm China is deploying nuclear warheads
on any of its air-launched LACMs.

The ongoing dispute between
China and U.S. ally Japan over uninhabited islands puts the U.S. in
an awkward position. Last year,
I wrote on how Hugh White, professor of strategic studies at
the Australian National University, believes the U.S. could get
dragged into whatever conflict that could result from this
territorial conflict escalating.

Last month, a
The New York Times wrote an article on White and the views
he outlines in his book
The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power.
White believes that conflict between the U.S and China is a
possibility if China and the U.S. continue to try and assert
themselves as the dominant power in the Pacific:

If the two countries continue to compete for primacy in the
Pacific, a new Cold War — or worse, an open conflict — will be the
result, he says. Many American analysts agree that conflict between
China and the United States is possible, maybe increasingly likely.
But few buy the argument that the United States is losing ground to
China and must consider a power-sharing arrangement to avoid
war.

“The strategic rivalry between the United States and China is
driven by their different and incompatible roles in the region,”
Mr. White said during a recent visit to Beijing, where he spoke to
several academic groups, including a generally favorable audience
organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “The principal
aim of the United States is to preserve American primacy in Asia.
China conversely wants, as a minimum objective, at least an equal
role with United States. Primacy for the United States, equality
for China — they are inherently incompatible.”

It of course remains to be seen if the far-from-ideal
relationship between China and Japan will drag the U.S. into a new
conflict. But if it does, China’s recent military developments will
ensure that the conflict will be quite different to the sort of war
the U.S. has been waging since the beginning of the 21st
century

For more from Reason.com on China and drones here and here.

A police union in New York City is not
pleased with how the NYPD’s Internal Affairs bureau conducted
itself after an off-duty cop was beaten nearly to death.
From the New York Post:

The NYPD sergeants union wants the head of the
department’s Internal Affairs Bureau fired because IAB
investigators searched the car of an off-duty cop brutally beaten
outside a Queens diner on Sunday.

The union on Tuesday demanded Chief Charles Campisi be canned for
treating Sgt. Mohamed Deen like a suspect. They not only rifled
through the BMW, but also interrogated his wife while he was in a
medically induced coma recovering at Jamaica Hospital on Sunday,
the union said.

Police say questioning witnesses in a crime is standard 
operating procedure, but the police union  called it
“harassment” and stopped a second round of questioning. The
Queens Chronicle
reports on details of the incident, which was preceded by a
verbal argument and the alleged attacker following the off-duty cop
for more than a mile.

In a
separate incident, an off-duty cop was forced into the back of
her car at gunpoint. She identified herself as a cop to the muggers
and had her badge stolen.

Follow these stories and more at Reason 24/7 and don’t forget you
can e-mail stories to us at 24_7@reason.com and tweet us
at @reason247.

Anti-smoking activists in Sacramento have
submitted to the attorney general a proposed ballot measure to
boost taxes on a pack of cigarettes by $2, and use the revenues to
fund research into the treatment of tobacco-related diseases. It’s
the latest effort to crush smoking by significantly hiking the
costs of tobacco. But, Steven Greenhut points out, tax hikes offer
diminishing benefits and can lead to black markets.

View this article.

Note: I’ll be talking about JFK’s foreign policy on
Huffington Post Live at about 12.25pm ET today.
Go here to watch. The channel’s program “What if JFK had
lived?” starts at noon ET.

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein asks the obvious
question after reading various attempts to blame the assassination
of John F. Kennedy on a generalized “atmosphere of hate” pervading
Dallas, Texas in the early 1960s. Was Dallas a hotbed of right-wing
paranoid fantasies back then? Sure was. But – and this is really
kinda important – it wasn’t the likes of nutjub Gen. Edwin Walker
who plugged the president. It was Lee Harvey Oswald, a Castro
supporter who had defected to the Soviet Union out of a mix of
Marxist idealism and anti-Americanism.

Look, guys. Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK. Oswald was
a Communist. Not a small c, “all we are
saying is give peace a chance and let’s support Negro civil rights”
kind of Communist, but someone so committed to the cause (and so
blind to the nature of the USSR) that he actually went to live in
the Soviet Union. And when that didn’t work out, Oswald became a
great admirer of Castro. He apparently would have gone to live in
Cuba before the assassination if the Cubans would have had him.
Before assassinating Kennedy, Oswald tried to kill a retired
right-wing general. As near as we can tell, he targeted Kennedy in
revenge for Kennedy’s anti-Castro actions.

More here.

For more on the 50th anniversary of JFK’s murder, go here.

And watch our recent interview with Roger Stone, author of The
Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ. I ain’t buying the
conspiracy theory – though I did literally buy his book and found
it a really captivating read, right up there with Don DeLillo’s
novel on “Oswaldskovich” (the nickname given Oswald by his fellow
Marines because he wouldn’t shut up about how great the USSR was),
Libra.

Note: I’ll be talking about JFK’s foreign policy on
Huffington Post Live at about 12.25pm ET today.
Go here to watch. The channel’s program “What if JFK had
lived?” starts at noon ET.

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein asks the obvious
question after reading various attempts to blame the assassination
of John F. Kennedy on a generalized “atmosphere of hate” pervading
Dallas, Texas in the early 1960s. Was Dallas a hotbed of right-wing
paranoid fantasies back then? Sure was. But – and this is really
kinda important – it wasn’t the likes of nutjub Gen. Edwin Walker
who plugged the president. It was Lee Harvey Oswald, a Castro
supporter who had defected to the Soviet Union out of a mix of
Marxist idealism and anti-Americanism.

Look, guys. Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK. Oswald was
a Communist. Not a small c, “all we are
saying is give peace a chance and let’s support Negro civil rights”
kind of Communist, but someone so committed to the cause (and so
blind to the nature of the USSR) that he actually went to live in
the Soviet Union. And when that didn’t work out, Oswald became a
great admirer of Castro. He apparently would have gone to live in
Cuba before the assassination if the Cubans would have had him.
Before assassinating Kennedy, Oswald tried to kill a retired
right-wing general. As near as we can tell, he targeted Kennedy in
revenge for Kennedy’s anti-Castro actions.

More here.

For more on the 50th anniversary of JFK’s murder, go here.

And watch our recent interview with Roger Stone, author of The
Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ. I ain’t buying the
conspiracy theory – though I did literally buy his book and found
it a really captivating read, right up there with Don DeLillo’s
novel on “Oswaldskovich” (the nickname given Oswald by his fellow
Marines because he wouldn’t shut up about how great the USSR was),
Libra.

“We came out and said there was a digital revolution happening
and it was going to change everything,” says Louis Rossetto, who
co-founded Wired magazine 20 years ago in 1993. “And
[that] it wasn’t the priests, the pundits, the politicians, and the
generals who were creating positive change.”

Rossetto was no stranger to bold predictions. In 1971, he
co-authored a
cover story in the New York Times
Magazine announcing that libertarianism was the next
great transformative ideology and that young people were rejecting
the played-out politics of the right and the left. After editing a
publication called Electric Word in the late 1980s,
he and Jane Metcalfe launched Wired, the
publication that not revolutionized magazine design but chronicled,
critiqued, and in many ways created the Internet Age. The
concept was to cover the real change makers, far from the
halls of power in Washington or established business capitals such
as New York, who were ushering in a new digital era that would
transform society. “That meta-story,” says Rossetto, “was
absolutely spot on.”

View this article.