{"id":134869,"date":"2014-08-04T16:16:42","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T16:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=134869"},"modified":"2014-08-04T16:16:42","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T16:16:42","slug":"criminals-outlaws-eyes-american-police-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/criminals-outlaws-eyes-american-police-state\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re All Criminals and Outlaws in the Eyes of the American Police State"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why are we seeing such an uptick in Americans being arrested for such absurd \u201cviolations\u201d as\u00a0letting their kids play at a park unsupervised<\/a>,\u00a0collecting rainwater and snow runoff on their own property<\/a>,\u00a0growing vegetables in their yard<\/a>, and\u00a0holding Bible studies<\/a>\u00a0in their living room?<\/p>\n

Mind you, we\u2019re not talking tickets or fines or even warnings being issued to these so-called \u201clawbreakers.\u201d We\u2019re talking felony charges, handcuffs, police cars, mug shots, pat downs, jail cells and criminal records.<\/p>\n

Consider what happened to\u00a0Nicole Gainey<\/a>, the Florida mom who was arrested and charged with child neglect for allowing her 7-year-old son to visit a neighborhood playground located a half mile from their house.<\/p>\n

For the so-called \u201ccrime\u201d of allowing her son to play at the park unsupervised,\u00a0Gainey was interrogated, arrested and handcuffed in front of her son, and transported to the local jail where she was physically searched, fingerprinted, photographed and held for seven hours and then forced to pay almost $4000 in bond in order to return to her family<\/a>. Gainey\u2019s family and friends were subsequently questioned by the Dept. of Child Services. Gainey now faces a third-degree criminal felony charge that carries with it a fine of up to $5,000 and 5 years in jail.<\/p>\n

For\u00a0Denise Stewart<\/a>, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, whether or not she had done anything wrong, was sufficient to get her arrested.<\/p>\n

The 48-year-old New York grandmother was dragged half-naked out of her apartment and handcuffed after police mistakenly raided her home when responding to a domestic disturbance call. Although it turns out the\u00a0911 call came from a different apartment on a different floor<\/a>, Stewart is still facing charges of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.<\/p>\n

And then there are those equally unfortunate individuals who\u00a0unknowingly<\/em>\u00a0break laws they never even knew existed.John Yates<\/a>\u00a0is such a person. A commercial fisherman, Yates was sentenced to 30 days in prison and three years of supervised release for throwing back into the water some small fish which did not meet the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission\u2019s size restrictions. Incredibly, Yates was charged with violating a document shredding provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was intended to prevent another Enron scandal.<\/p>\n

The list of individuals who have suffered similar injustices at the hands of a runaway legal system is growing, ranging from the\u00a0orchid grower jailed for improper paperwork<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0lobstermen charged with importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0former science teacher labeled a federal criminal for digging for arrowheads in his favorite campsite<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As awful as these incidents are, however, it\u2019s not enough to simply write them off as part of the national trend towards overcriminalization\u2013although it is certainly that. Thanks to an overabundance of\u00a04500-plus federal crimes and 400,000 plus rules and regulations<\/a>, it\u2019s estimated that\u00a0the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nor can we just chalk them up as yet another symptom of an overzealous police state in which militarized police attack first and ask questions later\u2013although it is that, too.<\/p>\n

Nor is the problem that we\u2019re a crime-ridden society. In fact, it\u2019s just the opposite. The number of violent crimes in the country is down substantially, the\u00a0lowest rate in 40 years<\/a>, while the\u00a0number of Americans being jailed for nonviolent crimes, such as driving with a suspended license, is skyrocketing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s really behind this drive to label Americans as criminals?<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why are we seeing such an uptick in Americans being arrested for such absurd \u201cviolations\u201d as\u00a0letting their kids play at a park unsupervised,\u00a0collecting rainwater and snow runoff on their own property,\u00a0growing vegetables in their yard, and\u00a0holding Bible studies\u00a0in their living room? Mind you, we\u2019re not talking tickets or fines or even warnings being issued to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":134870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1616],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-134869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}