angiEmedia

Under US law knowns as “civil forfeiture,” governments claim they can take property suspected to be involved in a crime without arrest, prosecution, or conviction of the owner of the property. They don’t even have to prove any crime was committed. All they have to do is state the property is suspected to have been used in a crime or to have been acquired as a result of a crime. Nobody has to be convicted for the owner to lose the property to the government. The government can then liquidate it and keep the proceeds unless their victim is wealthy enough to be able to fight them in court at significant expense.

How are the proceeds from government theft (civil forfeiture) used? There are few if any restrictions. The use is typically at the discretion of whomever runs the agency receiving the proceeds of the government-backed theft. The funds can be used to pay a police chief’s salary, or to buy private gym memberships for law enforcement officers, or to throw a Christmas party for the cops involved in the theft.

Motel Customers Can Cost Motel Owners Their Properties

The Caswell family of Lowell, Massachusetts, is about to lose its motel to the Federal government because criminals who rented motel rooms sold drugs or committed crimes on the premises.

The Institute of Justice, which is helping the Caswells fight the government action, points out that only about 0.05% of their 125,000 room rentals over the past two decades resulted in arrests of customers committing crimes. That works out to around 3 or 4 arrests per year.

Despite this, the government plans to take the motel valued at over $1 million. If they succeed, it will be a windfall for them because the motel is free and clear without a mortgage. They then plan to split up the proceeds between the US Federal Government and local law enforcement.

This same abusiveness is often applied by the government against many others, not just owners of motels. A more common example is that you loan your car to a friend who then uses it to do something like transporting yet another person who was carrying drugs or stolen property. Even though your car was used to commit a crime without your knowledge or approval and your friend may not have even known what was happening either, you will likely lose your car to the government without any reimbursement.

Police Dogs Help Cops Steal

The cops don’t even have to file a case against you to do steal your property. They don’t even have to arrest anybody for a crime. All they have to do is claims there is a suspicions of a crime involving your property. All they need to do is to get a police dog to act suspicious around your property and they can then take your property.
Read more…

As the government continues to treat citizens as guilty upon accusation without evidence, even mothers who have been traditionally favored in all matters of family are being faced with arrest when falsely accused of crimes against their children absent any supporting evidence. This is a familiar but disturbing occurrence for many fathers, but mothers should realize that they may face the same offense of being treated as guilty by accusation and arrested without evidence simply because of a malicious allegation.

Tammy Cooper was arrested by the La Porte Police Department after her neighbor Shelley Fuller reported that she had “abandoned” her children, ages 6 and 9, by letting them play outside. She claims she told police that she was home the whole time and her children were merely riding their scooters in the cul-de-sac outside their home.
They then went to talk some more with the neighbor.

Police then say that the neighbor alleged she had hit one of the children playing in the street with her car. This prompted the police to arrest Tammy Cooper, despite there being no evidence of either child being hit by a car and Cooper and her children saying it is not true.
Read more…

Family law courts habitually fail to recognize that women can be sociopaths that are dangerous to the children. Even when they show strong signs of a sociopathic personality disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder, the courts and government agencies like CPS often ignore warning signs and fail to act to protect the children when there is clear reason to believe they are in danger from their disturbed mothers. They make orders that indicate a belief the children are somehow better off living with a female sociopath who breaks the law and court orders than with a safe and sane father who is repeatedly falsely accused of things he did not do and is following the law and court orders.

This pattern is exactly what we are seeing play out in the case of Gordon Smith and Tiffany Smith of Delaware. Tiffany Smith has executed a distortion and harassment campaign against Gordon for more than three years. He has been repeatedly arrested based upon false accusations. Reports from late August 2012 were 8 arrests for 14 false allegations.

The exact numbers of the moment, which have changed rapidly in the past few months as many more false allegations were made by Tiffany Smith, is not particularly important. What matters is that the cost to Gordon has been the loss of his time with the children, severe harm to his career, major financial damages, and repeated suffering from false arrests and incarcerations. All this happened despite him having not been convicted of a crime and the police being in possession of solid evidence that many of the accusations were outright lies.

The Smith children suffer from lack of their father and living with a mother for whom two of her foremost goals in life is to prevent them from seeing their father and to put their father in prison using malicious false allegations. Tiffany Smith clearly isn’t thinking of the best interests of the children, but the courts continue to leave the children in the custody of a monster.

Tiffany Smith Finally Arrested

Until recently, Tiffany Marie Smith got away with her abuse of Gordon Smith with zero consequences to herself. On August 31 or September 1, 2012, Dover Police Department finally arrested Tiffany Smith for recent false allegations and reports to police because they had clear cut evidence that she lied to them which had caused them to falsely arrest Gordon Smith. The official police department statement is:
Read more…

On August 16, 2012, decorated US Marine combat veteran Brandon Raub of Virginia was detained and incarcerated in a mental hospital by the FBI, Secret Service, and local law enforcement of Chesterfield County acting on Federal government requests. The Rutherford Institute obtained his release after about a week of incarceration because the government had nothing to charge him with and could not show there was anything wrong with him.

Federal government agents, with police backup, showed up at Raub’s home to “interview” him. Below is a video of the cops hauling Raub away. Chesterfield police claim this was not an arrest, but the video shows what looks to any ordinary honest person to be an arrest. The video was reportedly filmed on the cell phone of a relative of Raub’s:

Raub was treated to what amounts to unwarranted arrest and incarceration because he posted controversial song lyrics and political views on his Facebook pages. In particular, the government claims he should be detained for psychiatric evaluation because he wrote “ominous” posts on Facebook on August 13 and 14, 2012.

Quoted from Outcry after military veteran detained for anti-government Facebook posts:

In one message earlier this month according to authorities, Raub wrote: “Sharpen my axe; I’m here to sever heads.”

Police — acting under a state law that allows emergency, temporary psychiatric commitments upon the recommendation of a mental health professional — took Raub to the John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell. He was not charged with any crime.

That Facebook message is a paraphrase of the lyrics of the song Bring Me Down by the Canadian hip hop band Swollen Members who sang:

Sharpen up my axe and I am back, I’m here to sever heads.

On one of his multiple Facebook pages, Raub lists that he works for the “Ron Paul Revolution”, clearly referring to US Congressional Representative Ron Paul and his Libertarian political views. But the government interprets Raub’s Facebook post “The Revolution is about to start” as a sign that he is mentally ill.

Raub also questions how the government even learned about some of his posts because some of them were made on a private Facebook page he used to communicate with his relatives that was not visible to the general public.
Read more…

Over the past couple of years, Gordon Smith has been accused of domestic violence more than a dozen times and arrested at least eight times by Delaware law enforcement. The exact number of allegations and arrests is difficult to track because it keeps growing in many recent months. The man must report to a probation officer and wear a GPS tracking device at all times. From this, you might surmise that he was convicted of one or more crimes. But in fact, Gordon Smith has not been convicted of a crime.

Tiffany Marie Smith, Serial False Accuser

Tiffany Marie Smith

Evidence points to repeated lying by his ex-wife Tiffany Marie Smith to block Gordon’s contact with their children and to harm him. When she filed a report that he made “terroristic threats” over the phone to her, he was in fact in a courthouse where cell phones are not allowed and court video surveillance did not show him using a phone. When she filed a report that he left a note threatening to kill her and the kids, witnesses and other evidence placed him several hundred miles away in Georgia. When she claimed he was violating a restraining order by being at her home, video surveillance at a Taco Bell shows he was eating there at the time. When she made another allegation of a threatening note, GPS tracking showed he was nowhere near where she claims a new threatening note was left on her car.

The GPS tracking of Gordon Smith is being done by the government that has forced him to report to a probation officer and submit to restrictions on his freedoms deemed suitable for convicted domestic violence offenders when in fact he has not been convicted of any such crime.

The evidence suggests that he is the victim of crime. But instead of helping Gordon escape harassment by a malicious lying ex-wife, the government is helping encourage and reward what appears to be ongoing criminal filing of false police reports and perjury by Tiffany Smith.

While it is not possible to prove that Tiffany lied about every allegation, none of her allegations to date have been substantiated. For at least four of her allegations, there is solid evidence that she lied including filing false police reports. There is also a consistent pattern of what appear to be false and unsubstantiated reports going back more than two years that have been repeatedly used as basis to falsely arrest Gordon Smith and to engage in systematic violation of his civil and Constitutional rights.

The police seem to be suggesting that Tiffany Smith might have just been “wrong” without malice in some of her allegations and that nobody can prove who actually left the notes. However, the sheer quantity of the allegations and the number of times it is clear she was lying makes it evident she is a serial false accuser, liar, and perjurer who has the unlawful aid of the police and courts in her reign of terror over her ex-husband.

Gordon Smith’s Civil Rights Suit Against Police

Smith has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the police. It has merit in part because the police have acted against him completely without any legal authority to do so whatsoever. They arrested him for trying to call his kids, who were 3 and 4 years old, by calling his ex-wife’s cell phone. There was no basis for them to arrest him for this, and in fact it is fairly ordinary for child custody orders to require that parents are to permit the children to talk with the other parent.

In Delaware, a complaint such as “I told him not to call” or a false accusation “he threatened to kill me on the phone” by the ex is all that is needed for you to be arrested, forced into a probation program, and even to have a GPS tracking device attached to your body by the government.

Quoted from Injustice in Delaware:

There are a few things already quite clear. This is a nightmare turned real for Mr. Smith, who, among other things, was arrested by the Delaware State Police for calling his ex-wife’s cell phone to make contact with his children, who were not old enough at the time to initiate contact with him (3 and 4 years old respectively), when there was no restraining order preventing him from doing so. He was arrested simply on the word of his former wife, who told police that she had asked him not to call.

Gordon Smith is being harassed, persecuted, and harmed in violation of the US Constitution to reward his ex-wife’s baseless complaints and continued lying. The Delaware State Police are co-conspirators in these crimes as they arrested him without checking readily available evidence and then, when evidence show Tiffany lied, they failed to file charges and arrest her for filing false police reports.
Read more…

Why is it that government seems so resistant to punishing sociopaths in family law disputes? These people frequently use false allegations, lies, distortion and vilification campaigns, perjury, false reports to law enforcement and child protection agencies, and other tactics to badly harm an ex-spouse and his or her family and friends. Many of their abusive and illegal actions are crimes that trigger significant unwarranted expenses on the part of government including law enforcement, child protection, and courts. Given the adverse financial impact on taxpayers that is tantamount to committing fraud, society should have a strong incentive to punish these people and to make them pay restitution for their crimes. Yet this virtually never happens, even when there is clear proof of criminal conduct by these people.

There must be a reason for why these people are not being held accountable for their crimes. Often judges and lawyers say perjury is not punished because it is “too expensive” to prosecute perjury and false reports to law enforcement agencies. The few cases of perjury you do see prosecuted are usually pursued for political reasons even when there is little to no identifiable harm done by the particular lies made under oath.

When you consider other examples of crimes the government does prosecute people for doing, that “too expensive” argument rings false. The government routinely prosecutes people for minor drug crimes that have created nowhere near the damage caused by sociopathic attacks in family law disputes, and they often spend many tens of thousands of dollars pursuing these minor offenders even when there are no identifiable victims besides the drug abuser himself or herself.

Who does more damage to society, the casual drug addict or the sociopath in a family law dispute? The drug addict who gets high in his or her home a few times per week for years but doesn’t drive under the influence and doesn’t sell drugs might do some damage to others, but often it is hard to even identify what that damage is.

On the other hand, the sociopathic liar who files false child abuse reports, lies about domestic violence or rape, and triggers many years of law enforcement investigations, court hearings, CPS actions, and causes the victims of the lies (the children and the falsely accused parent) to be deprived of their rights and financial security. Sometimes people are even incarcerated on the basis of the lies.

The damage often continues for many years, sometimes even decades. Not infrequently, it leads to severe damage to the children and even death by stress or suicide of the falsely accused. Such a sociopath also causes financial damage to taxpayers running into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars over the years.

But judging by the almost zero prosecutions for perjury and malicious false reports to law enforcement agencies in obvious cases of malicious lying in family law disputes, it is evidently public policy to not prosecute such a sociopath’s crimes, even when there are multiple identifiable victims and the damages are often extreme.

Why is it that the government may be willing to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute and imprison a drug user who has hurt possibly nobody but himself or herself but is not willing to prosecute and imprison a perjurer or false reporter who has hurt many others?

One commonly cited reason is that it is against the government’s financial interests to stop extorting the life savings from people stuck in family court. They would much rather keep these conflicts going for years and even decades, lining the pockets of many involved in the courts.

However, there is certainly job security and money to be made that could be found prosecuting sociopathic liars as there are so many of them to be found in family law disputes. Thus there must be another reason for why perjurers and false reporters are not being prosecuted.

A second and possibly more important reason why government does not prosecute perjurers and false reporters is that prosecuting these people would also call unwanted attention to the tactics they use. The government does not want these tactics to be seen for what they are because the abusive and illegal tactics used by a sociopath in a family law dispute are similar to tactics frequently used by government employees including politicians, law enforcement officers, child protection social workers, and court employees such as judges. Character assassination using lies, making false allegations, and harassment including vilification campaigns are the common tools of sociopaths in family law disputes and sociopaths in government.

The government does not want to punish sociopaths in family law disputes because government itself is filled with sociopaths who use the same abusive and illegal strategies to get their way. If they prosecute sociopaths in family law disputes, they increase their own risk for prosecution, too. Much better for them to protect the sociopaths and protect themselves, too.

As a result, I strongly believe that anybody who is seriously interested in advocating for family law reform must also join up with and support groups fighting against other forms of abuse and corruption in the government. Government will consistently oppose necessary reform of family law not just because of greed, but also because such reforms might pave the way to action against the liars, cheats, crooks, and fraudsters that fill the ranks of the political class. Without cleaning up the government and replacing the sociopaths in it with people who will follow the law, there is no real hope of family law reform ever succeeding.

Further Reading

Abusive Conduct and Failure To Follow Law by Judge William Watkins Requires His Removal From Bench

Los Angeles DA Must Prosecute Wanetta Gibson for False Rape Allegation Against Brian Banks

Former Gov. Jesse Ventura Rightly Labels United States the “Fascist States of America”

San Diego Custody Evaluators Generate Cash Flow by Victimizing Families Using Restraining Orders

How Sociopathic Parents Use Police Reports for Defamation

Prosecuting Civil Perjury Is Unusual, but It Can Mean Prison

Leila Marie Tarantino (DOB 10/24/1976) of Citrus Springs, Florida, claims that on July 17, 2011, she was pulled over by Citrus County Sheriff Department officers on South Columbia Street in Beverly Hills, Florida, for rolling through a stop sign, an offense she denies committing. She claims she fully stopped at the stop sign, then a police car did a U-turn to stop her vehicle. She says her two kids ages 4 and 1 were in the car with her and got a full view of the malevolent antics of the police as they pointed a gun in her face, removed her from her car, and put her in a squad car for two hours. She claims that when backup arrived, the cops then proceeded to strip search her along the side of the road, and forcibly pulled a tampon out of her in a search for contraband. She was then released with a traffic citation for violating restrictions on her driver’s license.

Here’s a copy of the lawsuit filed against the Sheriff Jeffrey Dawsy (who is alleged to have personally approved of the strip search in this incident), the department, the Citrus County government, and six other unnamed officers including five men and one woman. The female police officer is the one alleged to have pulled the tampon out from Tarantino.

Tarantino Tampon Lawsuit

According to Florida Statute 901.211, strip searches are unlawful for such a traffic stop:

2011 Florida Statutes: 901.211 Strip searches of persons arrested; body cavity search

(1) As used in this section, the term “strip search” means having an arrested person remove or arrange some or all of his or her clothing so as to permit a visual or manual inspection of the genitals; buttocks; anus; breasts, in the case of a female; or undergarments of such person.
(2) No person arrested for a traffic, regulatory, or misdemeanor offense, except in a case which is violent in nature, which involves a weapon, or which involves a controlled substance, shall be strip searched unless:
(a) There is probable cause to believe that the individual is concealing a weapon, a controlled substance, or stolen property; or
(b) A judge at first appearance has found that the person arrested cannot be released either on recognizance or bond and therefore shall be incarcerated in the county jail.
(3) Each strip search shall be performed by a person of the same gender as the arrested person and on premises where the search cannot be observed by persons not physically conducting or observing the search pursuant to this section. Any observer shall be of the same gender as the arrested person.
(4) Any body cavity search must be performed under sanitary conditions.
(5) No law enforcement officer shall order a strip search within the agency or facility without obtaining the written authorization of the supervising officer on duty.
(6) Nothing in this section shall be construed as limiting any statutory or common-law right of any person for purposes of any civil action or injunctive relief.

Is Tarantino Truthful?

But did this incident happen as Tarantino describes? The Citrus County Sheriff Department says Tarantino is lying and making false accusations. They point to Tarantino’s extensive court history including criminal history including a history of alleged domestic violence in 2011 and numerous traffic violations including hit and run driving, repeated DUIs, and repeatedly driving with a suspended license.
Read more…

Brian Banks was a 16 year old high school football star in Long Beach, California, when a lying girl and the government collaborated to ruin his life. He was falsely accused of rape by classmate Wanetta Gibson after the two had kissed in a stairwell. Gibson concocted an elaborate story claiming that Banks dragged her across campus and raped her. Even though Banks did not commit the crime and in fact there had been no rape at all, his attorney advised him to seek a plea bargain to get a lighter sentence as the government was threatening him with 41 years to life in prison. Choosing what he saw as the lesser of two bad options after his lawyer suggested he would be convicted because he is black, Banks plead “no contest” and was imprisoned for over five years was then put on probation. Upon release, he was forced to wear a GPS monitor, register as a violent sex offender, and was restricted from living near or going near schools.

False accuser Wanetta Gibson is the real rapist (as in financial rape) in this story. She and her family got a large settlement (variously reported as either being $750,000 or $1.5 million) from the Long Beach School District on the basis of her lies and claims that lax school security contributed to causing her “rape”.

Gibson this year admitted Banks did not rape her, but was worried she might have to repay the fraudulently obtained settlement. Students, investigators, and attorneys associated with the California Innocence Project helped to obtain evidence that Gibson had falsely accused Banks which resulted in the overturning of his conviction on May 24, 2012.

As the California Innocence Project web page on the Banks case explains:

Banks was faced with an impossible decision at the time – either fight the charges and risk spending 41 years-to-life in prison, or take a plea deal and spend a little over 5 years of actual prison confinement. Although it would mean destroying his chance to go to college and play football, a lengthy probationary period, and a lifetime of registration as a sex offender, Banks chose the lesser of two evils when he pleaded no contest to the charges.

Teri Stoddard of SAVE (Stop Abusive and Violent Environments) is calling for the prosecution of Wanetta Gibson as part of their effort to quash the epidemic of false allegations of crime and violence that are ruining the lives of many innocent people. She reports that roughly ten percent of Americans have been falsely accused of child abuse, domestic violence, or sexual assault and there are very few protections for such people.

Gibson should be prosecuted for perjury. But that doesn’t go far enough. She should also be prosecuted for criminal fraud that cost taxpayers and insurers an enormous settlement plus legal fees in this case featuring a lying girl and an irresponsible government that encourages more liars to level false allegations by failing to prosecute such crimes.

Significant financial restitution and assistance to Brian Banks and his family is also warranted. It should be paid by the LA County District Attorney, the State of California, and Gibson to Banks and his family.

This boy was placed into prison at the age of 16 years old for 5 years for a rape that did not occur simply because a girl lied against him and the government failed to do its job to determine the truth, instead preferring to bully an innocent child into letting himself be steamrolled by the government because he was male and black and therefore was assumed to be guilty based merely upon a disputed accusation and his race and gender.

Brian Banks is a poster case for the injustices against men and African-American men in particular. If his accuser had been of some other racial group (she is African-American, too), you can get her crime would be the fuse in a powder keg of a potential racial uprising in Los Angeles. There is no doubt that racial bias played a part in the success of the State of California coercing Banks into pleading no contest.
Read more…

Soner Yasa is a cab driver in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, who experienced a horrific ordeal that presented a dire threat to his personal freedom. Yasa was falsely accused of a crime against women. As so many men experience, the police are ready and willing to abuse the actual victim of a crime and encourage future criminal conduct when the criminal is a dishonest woman and the victim is a man.

In Yasa’s case, four drunk women reported to police that he had sexually assaulted them as a ploy to refuse to pay a $13 cab fare. It was only thanks to his cab’s audio and video surveillance equipment that he was spared jail.

Yasa had picked up the four women outside a bar on Whyte Avenue. He says they hopped into his cab “uninvited” and then demanded to be driven to a residential neighborhood. At least one of the intoxicated women tried smoking in his cab. He told them they could not do this because it is illegal and could trigger a $500 fine. They demanded he stop the cab and refused to pay the $13 fare. The women then proceeded to falsely report their allegation of sexual assault to the police and to their friends and onlookers, allegedly triggering a mob of people to acting threateningly towards Yasa until police arrived and could investigate.
Read more…

Recently I was listening to an Internet talk show featuring Dr. Tara Palmatier of Shrink4Men and Paul Elam of A Voice for Men. A caller related a story about how his friend showed up for a court hearing to finalize his divorce and was physically assaulted in the court house by his ex and then falsely accused by her and arrested by the police. This story and several others I have heard and read provide ample cause for a revision in US laws to permit private video and audio recording in courthouses to be used for the protection of the people who are forced to appear in courthouses.

It occurred to me that some people may think being arrested for being a victim of assault in a courthouse sounds far out, but in fact it is not unusual conduct for abusers to go after their target in a court or public setting by staging attacks or simply making up false allegations. For details on this particular incident, listen to the radio program about 64 minutes into the show if you don’t have the time to listen to the whole program.

Another person who has been attacked by his ex in a courthouse is family law reform activist Ben Vonderheide of Pennsylvania. His ex and her new boyfriend conspired to attempt to frame him for assault in a courthouse and made false reports to police to attempt to get him arrested. But because he relentlessly employs audio and video recording devices, even when he is threatened over how they are not allowed and he thereby risks his own false arrest, he was able to prove they assaulted him. This resulted in what is claimed to be the one and only prosecution for perjury in a family law case in the United States.

Ben Vonderheide Exposes Pennsylvania’s Abusive Child Profiteering Racket

Vonderheide’s abusive ex and her latest boyfriend Theodore Yoder were convicted of repeatedly lying to police to try to get Vonderheide arrested on false allegations. The convictions occurred in part because Vonderheide had very convincing evidence. He video and audio records constantly because of his extended experience with pathological liar Flanders, especially if she might be in the area. If he didn’t have those recordings, he might have wound up in prison for a very long time. That’s because in the US, domestic violence and restraining order violation allegations are treated as guilty until proven innocent crimes in violation of the US Constitution. You have to prove your innocence, yet even when you do, you can still be hounded with persecution via a record of criminal accusations that will cost you jobs, income, and your reputation potentially for the rest of your life.

Vonderheide finds himself a frequent target for physical violence and false allegations because he asks questions of backers of the abusive family courts and gender-biased domestic violence laws. These people seek to intimidate and harass him any way they can. When he showed up at the US Senate to ask questions of those backing renewal of the sexist VAWA law, National Organization of Women attorney Lisalyn R. Jacobs physically assaulted him. This abusive physically violent woman is a domestic violence expert for CNN and the New York Times. She espouses the “men are violent, women are victims” drivel that is one the primary reasons behind the total failure of the DV industry to put a stop to violence in families, yet she herself is violent and her actions prove she is a liar when it comes to the DV claims pursued by her gender-biased organization.
Read more…