Rochester cop reportedly arrested protester for ‘being an idiot’

Best headline of the day

A Rochester activist who tried to crash a city press conference amid protests over the police-involved death of Daniel Prude was told she was being locked up for “being an idiot,” according to a report.

Black Lives Matter organizer Stanley Martin, who is also a member of the group Free the People Roc, was among a group of activists who attempted to get into the city Public Safety Building where Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren was due to brief reporters about the unrest, WXXI-TV reported.

“No, no, stop it!” Martin shouted as a cop chased her out of the room.

“You want to get tased?” the officer responded. “All right, you’re going to get tased.”

The cop pointed a Taser at the activist but holstered it after others in the building urged him to do so.

“You’re arresting me for what?” Martin asked.

“Being an idiot,” the officer shot back.

“You’re a racist pig,” Martin answered.

Martin was then told she was being charged with trespassing.

The protests were sparked by the release of police bodycam footage Wednesday of the arrest of Prude, who died on March 30, one week after the visibly disturbed 41-year-old was restrained and held down until he stopped moving and breathing.

The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.

Rochester police said in a statement early Thursday that nine people had been arrested during protests, including for trespassing.

Martin’s arrest came after she and other protesters, including Free the People Roc organizer Ashley Gantt, entered the government building following a news conference outside City Hall, WXXI said.

“This is a public building, we can come in,” Gantt told police. “Where is the law that says we can’t come in?”

https://nypost.com/2020/09/03/rochester-cop-reportedly-arrested-protester-for-being-an-idiot/

This is fear porn and hysterical but idiots will believe it

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8697839/Three-Chinese-families-different-floors-infected-virus-spread-plumbing.html

EXCLUSIVE: Longtime Neil Young Guitarist Releases Pro-Trump Song And Video As Part Of Sugarcane Jane

AUGUST 31, 2020 By Emily Jashinsky

Anthony Crawford spent years playing guitar in Neil Young’s band. He’s toured with Steve Winwood and Dwight Yoakam. His songs have been cut by Kenny Rogers, Lorrie Morgan, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, among (many) others. Now, Crawford is making music to support Donald Trump.

“How can you hate a man that’s draining the swamp and exposing all the greed?” he asks in “That’s What I See,” the latest single from Sugarcane Jane, a roots duo comprised of Crawford and his wife, Savana Lee. In the accompanying video, shared first with The Federalist, Crawford and Lee stand side-by-side, wielding their instruments and singing into a single lens

Asked about the song’s inspiration, the couple told The Federalist, “This is the most important election of our lifetime. We have three young children that we want to grow up in the same America that we did. Now is not the time to be silent.”

“We felt we had no choice but to come out in support of President Trump,” they continued. “The man has been taking body blows for the last four years undeservedly, yet still continuing to accomplish so much for the American people.”

I wondered what reaction Sugarcane Jane received from their peers in the industry after revealing their support for the president. “We knew by supporting him, we would polarize ourselves with at least half of our fan base,” they emailed, “but we made that sacrifice to support the President and our core values.”

Crawford and Lee said they “were told by multiple music promoters that they would pass on the album, even though they have promoted our previous releases.”

“Clearly their bias and hatred towards President Trump could not be separated from their jobs. The music industry, like Hollywood, is run by the liberal elite,” the couple wrote. “We took a leap of faith and wanted to be counted among the conservative community. It’s the least we could do for our country. Whatever happens with this album, we are proud of it and all it stands for. God bless the USA.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/31/exclusive-longtime-neil-young-guitarist-releases-pro-trump-song-and-video-as-part-of-sugarcane-jane/

'Miles of Files'

Robots to Help Manage Billions of Pages at New FBI Central Records Complex

I thought this interesting related to Qs post of FBI logs

The warehouse complex and its state-of-the-art automated storage and retrieval system is one of the biggest in the world, with capacity for more than 360,000 bins, each about the size of a suitcase. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) partnered with the FBI on the facility’s design and standards.

“The use of innovative technology to consolidate these files in one single location not only represents a huge cost savings but will also help the FBI most effectively carry out its mission,” said Arlene Gaylord, assistant director of the Information Management Division (IMD).

Information in case files is frequently sought by agents, investigators, prosecutors, and even members of the public through Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts (FOI/PA) requests. When requests are made, the original files are digitized and sent back. Until now, those file requests would be distributed to individual offices and their staffs. Having everything under one roof—along with a dedicated staff and an army of robots to do their bidding—will ease the burden on field offices and make retrieving files more efficient.

“Having all the case files together and easily accessible is an important step in IMD’s quest to become a leader in information management, in order to best serve the FBI and the American people,” said Gaylord, who was a linguist for the FBI in San Diego in the 90s and played an early role in the push to digitize FBI records, an effort informally referred to as “miles of files.”

The sheer volume of paper records—some going back to the Bureau’s earliest days—made wholesale digitization unfeasible, though all requests for files are made electronically. IMD staff approximate that, all told, there are about 117 linear miles of paper en route to the Central Records Complex, or close to two billion pages. One estimate determined that digitizing everything—at current staffing levels—would take more than 40 years. Just shipping all the paper records to Winchester and then feeding that into bins for the robots to shelve is expected to take two years. Every day, robots deposit about 26 pallets of files—the equivalent of a tractor-trailer—into the storage grid after multiple staff confirm the contents of each file.

The push for better records management began in the early 2000s when the National Archives released new regulations for managing federal records. Congressional funding and authority came later, in 2014, when the Bureau received the go-ahead to partner with the General Services Administration to build a new facility. In preparation for the transition, IMD staff have trained field offices on how to prep all their files before they are boxed, put on pallets, and shipped to Winchester.

“To have the building done and to be able to walk in and work here every day, it’s really a thrill,” said Teresa Fitzgerald, a former Archives staffer who joined the Bureau in 2003 and has spent the better part of her FBI career preparing for this transition.

About 500 people staff the new complex. Since robots will handle the heavy lift of depositing and fetching bins of files, IMD’s sentient beings have more time to determine which files should be preserved and which ones should be scheduled for destruction—in accordance with NARA guidelines.

“By taking care of that menial task of storing and retrieving, we can free people up with the expertise to do things like records scheduling and disposition,” said James Klipfer, chief of the Bureau's Technology Innovation Section.

And while a few private commerce warehouses have similar automatic-storage systems as part of their distribution systems, Klipfer said he’s not aware of any other government facilities like the Central Records Complex.

Here’s how they work: bins of products are stacked 16-high in an elaborate steel grid that the robots traverse by following X, Y, and Z coordinates. When summoned, a robot fetches a requested bin and then re-deposits any bins it has displaced in the process, keeping track of their new coordinates. Over time, the most frequently requested records will remain near the top of the grid and other files will sink to lower positions, which creates its own efficiency.

Cases are closed every day, assuring a steady flow of paper that needs to be safely stored or scheduled for destruction. The new complex is designed to meet the need. “It is sized to have the ability to take in new case files as they are closed,” Fitzgerald said.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/robots-help-manage-billions-of-pages-at-new-fbi-central-records-complex-081220

Florida Man Arrested In Connection With Attack On Rand Paul Outside RNC

The District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s Office announced late Wednesday that 27-year-old Brennen Sermon was arrested and charged in connection with an attack on Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) outside the Republican National Convention last week that left one of Paul’s police guards with severe injuries to his face.

Sermon is from Orlando, Florida — quite a distance from Washington, D.C. — but the report did not specify whether Sermon was in town specifically to protest at the RNC, or whether Sermon has any deeper connection to a national organization, only that Sermon was captured in the vicinity of the attack last Thursday night after throwing a punch at a police officer who was protecting Paul and other RNC guests.

The report states that “at about 12:30 am on August 28, 2020, a Metropolitan Police Department officer was holding a police line at 14th and F Street NW when the defendant kicked his bicycle and fled. The officer pursued, and the defendant punched the officer in the left side of his face.”

The officer’s affidavit, filed after the attack, “further reports that the officer sustained a laceration and severe swelling above his left eye, was transported to the hospital, and received stitches. A supplemental Gerstein affidavit filed after the initial report was prepared which clarified that a preliminary review of body-worn camera showed that the individual kicking the bicycle and the individual throwing the punch appear to be wearing different color shirts. Therefore, the defendant is presently charged only with respect to the punching allegation.”

Brendan Gutenschwager, a journalist known on social media as @BGOnTheScene, captured footage of protesters confronting Paul as he left President Donald Trump’s RNC acceptance speech Thursday night. The protesters crushed in on Paul and his wife, bypassing and, in some cases, muscling out Paul’s security team.

As they tried to reach Paul, the protesters shouted for the Senator to acknowledge the death of Breonna Taylor, an emergency room technician who was killed by Louisville Police Officers executing a warrant, and shouted that “white silence is violence.”

Sen. Rand Paul authored the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act, which would, if passed, prohibit police from executing so-called “no-knock” warrants.

Paul later told Fox News that he feared for his life in the confrontation and believes that, if the Metropolitan Police Department had not been present, he could have been killed. He also speculated that the protesters who confronted RNC attendees were paid and could have been from out of state.

“They were yelling threats. They were trying to push the police over to get to me,” Paul told the network. “They were grabbing at us, and it got worse and worse and worse, and then finally, we decided to make a move. I said we’ve got to move. If there’s not gonna be reinforcements, we have to try to get to the hotel, which was another block, and they were shouting threats to us, to kill us, to hurt us, but they were also saying, shouting, ‘Say her name, Breonna Taylor,’ and it’s like, you couldn’t reason with this mob, but I’m actually the author of the Breonna Taylor law to end no-knock raids.”

https://www.dailywire.com/news/florida-man-arrested-in-connection-with-attack-on-rand-paul-outside-rnc