Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“The city of Allentown has spent more than $2 million settling excessive force claims, and yet the police still crack down on civilians exercising their constitutional rights.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/23/police-officer-threatens-to-run-over-protester-for-filming-on-the-sidewalk/
“”The FBI took Linda’s savings without clearly saying what she did wrong. That shouldn’t happen in America, but taking on the entrenched federal civil forfeiture system is challenging,” said Bob Belden, an attorney at I.J. (which represented Martin), in a statement via email. “Unfortunately, there is not a clear path to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. We know that several Justices are alarmed at how civil forfeiture works in America and hope that the right case will work its way to the Court.”
…
“Owners must decide whether to fight against the federal government, default, or plead for mercy, all without knowing why the FBI is doing this to them,” he says. “It’s therefore little surprise that 93% of federal forfeitures never get to a court, meaning the FBI gets to keep the money without ever telling anyone why they should be allowed to”—which, at least for now, will remain the status quo.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/28/the-fbi-took-her-40000-without-explaining-why-she-fought-back-and-lost/
“Over the past three months, the Trump administration has filed lawsuits against Los Angeles, Illinois, Colorado, New York state, New York City, and other places for the express purpose of forcing them to abolish their “sanctuary city” policies and start aiding the feds in rounding up undocumented immigrants and enforcing federal immigration laws.
But unless the U.S. Supreme Court rapidly overturns several of its own precedents, including a recent one from 2018, all of these cases will be constitutional losers for President Donald Trump. Why? Here is how the late conservative legal hero and long-serving Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once spelled it out.
“The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems,” Scalia wrote for the Court’s majority in Printz v. United States (1997), “nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.”
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federal agents still retain their own independent authority to enforce federal immigration law inside of sanctuary states and cities, just as federal authorities retain the independent authority to enforce other federal laws in states and cities. The key point under Printz is that it is unconstitutional for the feds to compel local officials to lend them a helping hand in carrying out the enforcement of federal law.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/31/on-sanctuary-cities-its-trump-vs-the-10th-amendment/
Police control gang databases and they have low barriers for putting people on them. Non-gang members get put on the lists for stupid reasons.
Protestors have been added to the lists.
It can be hard to get your name off these lists, and you can be added without your knowledge.
Former gang members are still on the lists.
Police use the poorly made lists as justifications to deport peaceful people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlR8d9JVWtQ
“On the face of it, Gomez’s alleged gunplay, which involves a human victim, is more alarming than his vicious treatment of the baby rabbit. But combined, the allegations make you wonder what sort of people Grant County is trusting with guns and badges. It is especially worrisome that two supervisors not only saw nothing wrong with the behavior that one of them jovially documented but actually egged on Gomez as he sought to torment Salas with the sort of casual cruelty that is usually seen as a marker of dangerously antisocial tendencies.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/11/watch-a-new-mexico-sheriffs-deputy-jovially-hurl-a-baby-rabbit-to-its-death-as-his-supervisors-laugh/
“Former interim NYPD commissioner Tom Donlon is suing the department, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and several former and current police executives alleging the nation’s largest police force operated as a vast criminal enterprise designed to enrich top officials.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/16/former-nypd-chief-accuses-top-city-officials-including-the-mayor-of-overseeing-coordinated-criminal-conspiracy-in-lawsuit-00455791
“Think about the timeline in Martin’s case. The feds invaded her home and held her at gunpoint while her terrified seven-year-old son cowered in a different room, all because the officers could not be bothered to perform basic due diligence—are we actually at the right house?—before breaking down the (wrong) door and detonating a flash grenade. This deplorable and entirely avoidable misdeed occurred eight years ago, which means that this family has been fighting an uphill battle for redress and accountability from the government for the better part of a decade. And their fight is still not over yet, even after securing an important win at the highest court in the land.
To say the least, it should not be so hard—and it should definitely not take so long—to hold the government to account for such blatant wrongdoing.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/17/dont-let-rights-violating-federal-agents-dodge-accountability/
Federal Courts Shrug at Potentially Lethal Wrong-Door Raids
https://reason.com/2025/06/18/federal-courts-shrug-at-potentially-lethal-wrong-door-raids/
“Years after a SWAT team in Texas destroyed an innocent woman’s home while trying to apprehend a fugitive, the local government will have to pay her $60,000 in damages plus interest, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
That decision may sound like common sense. But the ending was far from guaranteed in a legal odyssey that saw Vicki Baker of McKinney, Texas, left with a dilapidated house—and the bill for the damages—even though she was never suspected of wrongdoing.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/06/police-blew-up-this-innocent-womans-house-and-left-her-with-the-bill-a-judge-says-shes-owed-60000/
“Government employees, including law enforcement officers, generally don’t have the presumption of privacy when it comes to information such as their names, salaries, and business conducted in public. Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped police and politicians from accusing people of “doxxing” officers for releasing public information.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/06/marsha-blackburn-wants-secret-police/