Penny Dean and Your Rights

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.

The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.

Cory Booker made that claim yesterday. As CNN notes, there’s a 2015 study backing him up.

Since the day it came out, that study has been driving me insane.

In 2016, the National Security Agency gathered 151 million call records even though Congress made rules to reduce the federal government's sweeping surveillance of Americans' phone records.

A Florida police officer has been convicted of a misdemeanor but acquitted of attempted manslaughter for shooting at a severely autistic man and wounding the man’s caretaker.

A jury deliberated for four hours late Monday before finding North Miami police Officer Jonathan Aledda guilty of culpable negligence in the 2016 shooting of caretaker Charles Kinsey, who was trying to protect 27-year-old Arnaldo Rios Soto. Aledda faces up to a year in jail but because he was acquitted of a felony, he might be able to remain a police officer.

Kate Nixon worked as a compliance manager on the second floor of Operations Building 2 in the Virginia Beach Municipal Center. The 42-year-old was described as “always helping others.” She was president of the Pembroke Meadows Civic League and a devoted church goer at St. Gregory the Great Catholic Church.

Kate was also one of the 12 people killed by another employee, DeWayne Craddock.

As far as the national media has been concerned, that was the story.

From covering up data breaches to data mining, big tech companies are no strangers to negative press. This is especially true with how easy it is to access people's information when they use apps or the internet to use these companies' products.

The most recent company to be accused of improperly using their customer's data is Apple. More specifically, customers have filed a class action lawsuit alleging that Apple sold their information on iTunes to third parties. They seek more than $5 million in damages.

After the Virginia Beach shooting, the New York Times reran an essay on gun control by Nicholas Kristof, which contains this paragraph:

It is true that guns are occasionally used to stop violence. But contrary to what the National Rifle Association suggests, this is rare. One study by the Violence Policy Center found that in 2012 there were 259 justifiable homicides by a private citizen using a firearm.

Today, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a 53 page majority opinion, a 2 page concurring decision by Justice Baer and a 16 page concurring opinion by Justice Dougherty which Justice Mundy joined, in the case of Commonwealth v. Hicks, which addressed whether the mere open or concealed carrying of a firearm constitutes reasonable suspicion of a crime.