People struggling with mental health issues could soon see another treatment option in Illinois.

A new bill would legalize “magic mushrooms,” for adult supervised use. Under the proposal, people would only be able to use the psychedelic drugs at a licensed service center. The FDA has considered the mushrooms a “breakthrough therapy” to help people with PTSD and depression who are resistant to other treatments.

Advocates, like Jean Lacy say if this becomes law it could be a big help. Lacy is the founder and Executive Director of the Illinois Psychedelic Society.

“People are really, at large they’re pretty desperate for new tools to help us with our mental health,” Lacy said. “I think collectively we’re all under a lot of stress, and that you know, I think there are serious consequences to continue to withhold these medicines form the people who need them.”

The bill’s sponsor says they’ve been working with law enforcement organizations on this proposal. She says the Illinois Sheriff’s Association is hesitant about the bill. If it becomes law, Illinois would be the third state to legalize magic mushrooms.

The proposal would not let people sell or have the drug the recreational use.

The Kansas legislature passed a bill Wednesday that would classify organized retail crime (ORC) a felony offense, joining nine other states that have passed similar laws in the last year. 

ORC refers to orchestrated groups of shoplifters who commit smash-and-grab robberies of stores or target cargo carriers.

The state’s upper chamber passed the Substitute House Bill 2144, which would split the felony charges into two tiers. A theft of merchandise valued at more than $3,000 would be classified a felony and those convicted would face between 31 and 136 months behind bars. If the amount stolen exceeds $15,000, the sentence range is between 38 and 172 months. 

'BURGLARY TOURISM' PLAGUES SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AS UNVETTED FOREIGNERS RAID LUXE HOUSES

The bill still has to be signed by Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, before it goes into effect. 

In support of the bill, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach wrote that ORC isn’t "mere shoplifting."

"These crimes typically involve stealing for personal use. It is large-scale theft of retail merchandise that represents a concerted effort to victimize a business, often with the intention of reselling the items for financial gain and often using those financial proceeds to fund additional criminal activity," he said.

A 2023 report from the National Retail Federation, the world’s largest retail association, found that organized retail crime was a primary driver of the massive amount of "shrink" retailers saw in 2022, with non-employee stealing making up 36%. 

The term "shrink" typically means theft and other forms of inventory losses, and retailers nationwide experienced $112 billion in losses in 2022. 

Texas, Virginia, Alabama, Indiana, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Oregon enacted retail theft laws last year, while California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana and North Carolina passed ORC laws in 2022. 

"While theft has an undeniable impact on retailer margins and profitability, retailers are highly concerned about the heightened levels of violence and threat of violence associated with theft and crime," the NRF wrote on its website. 

State Senate Republicans who voted for the bill argued that ORC needs its own category since shoplifters who steal for their own use versus those who are part of a broader organized scheme are charged the same way. 

"Currently we don’t have the proper tools to prosecute that type of crime, so that’s what this bill does," state Sen. Kellie Warren, a Republican, said of the bill, The Topeka Journal reported. 

Some states hit hard by retail theft have gone so far as to create their own law enforcement task forces to address it. The NRF found that Los Angeles was one of the hardest-hit cities in California for ORC, leading the LA County Sheriff Department to create the Organized Retail Theft Crime Task Force.

Meanwhile, opponents of tough-on-crime laws such as these argue the harsher penalties are too extreme for the crimes and could prevent a person from being rehabilitated. Maine’s legislature passed a bill in the House this week that would prohibit charging people who already have two prior convictions of theft if the third theft is worth less than $500. The state’s current law permits a felony charge for the third conviction if the crimes all occur within a decade. 

A 47 year old man is unhappy and deals with it by threatening children. Then claims to be the real victim because of "transphobia". No sir you're just a regular violent man.

By Anna Slatz. October 16, 2023

Reduxx has learned that a trans-identified male was arrested in Perry County, Illinois, after making threats to commit a school shooting and murder children on behalf of the transgender community in response to transphobic “bullying.”

On August 14, the Springfield-area FBI intercepted a live-stream on social media they deemed “suspicious.” In the video, an individual was seen making a number of disturbing threats towards schools and local children, specifically indicating there were plots in-progress to commit a school shooting, though no single institution was named.

Using the IP address associated with the stream, the FBI was able to identify the individual making the threats as 47-year-old Jason L. Willie, also known as Alexia Willie. An address in northern Perry County was quickly traced, and local law enforcement was notified at approximately 8:00 pm.

Speaking to Reduxx, Perry County Sheriff Chad Howard explained that nearby Washington County police were initially notified due to a confusion in the address, but that officers acted quickly and liaised with his team. Both Washington County Police and Perry County Police descended on Willie’s residence that same night with a warrant for his arrest.

Booking photo for Jason “Alexia” Willie.

Willie’s male partner was at the home, and cooperated fully with police in providing information necessary for the arrest to occur. He asserted that there were no weapons in the home.

But while Sheriff Howard was reading Willie the Miranda warning, he says the suspect began “acting up” and actively resisting arrest. Willie’s behavior became so unmanageable that he had to be tased by a Washington County officer in order to secure his compliance in the police vehicle.

Because Willie was arrested approximately 12 hours prior to schools opening, no classes were cancelled. But Sheriff Howard explains that he and other officers were on site at the local schools in their jurisdiction the next day as a precautionary measure.

Among the threats Willie made included “we’re going to shoot your kids” and “the FBI can’t stop us,” leading to initial confusion about how many individuals were involved.

“At the time, we didn’t know if there was more than one person involved in this because Willie was speaking in plural — he was saying ‘us, we.'”

Sheriff Howard explains that he later learned that Willie was making a collective threat on behalf of the transgender community.

“At the time, we were under the impression that, possibly, there was more than one person involved. As it turns out, he was speaking about the transgender community,” Sheriff Howard says.

“He made the comment in a [police] interview when asked about what he meant by ‘we’ and ‘us.’ He said he was specifically tired of being made fun of and bullied for being transgender. So when he was saying ‘we’ and ‘us’ he was representing the transgender community as a whole.”

Disturbingly, Willie made multiple references to the horrific March shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. During that incident, a trans-identified female left 6 dead, 3 of whom were children aged 9, in an act of brutality that left the nation stunned.

“In the interview, he used ammunition from the Tennessee shooting. I didn’t even bring it up. Willie mentioned that the transgender individual in Tennessee was tired of being made fun of, and he used that as a reason why he was speaking on behalf of the transgender community.”

Willie was released on $0 bond approximately 48 hours after being booked, and while he was initially charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, Sheriff Howard says the charges related to the threats were dropped due to a lack of specific target.

“Because there was no one individual person or individual school directly threatened, the disorderly conduct did not stick. It was not capable of being filed.”

Shortly after Willie was released into the community on bond, the FBI contacted Perry County police once again, reporting that Willie was making similar comments on social media.

Sheriff Howard and a deputy attended the residence as law enforcement support for the FBI agents who arrived to question Willie on the comments.

“The FBI contacted me and showed up with a team of investigators. We secured the property while the FBI took Willie in for questioning right there on the scene in their van. They did not have enough to place Willie under arrest,” Sheriff Howard says.

According to Perry County court records, Willie has not yet entered a plea on his charge of resisting arrest, but Sheriff Howard explains that even if he is found guilty he will likely walk away with a fine.

“It’s more or less going to end up going to be a hearing. Now with the state of Illinois having the SAFE-T Act, which went into effect on September 18, those types of crimes are no longer containable. You just bring [a suspect] in for booking, processing, and biometrics and then you release them with a court date and it is all handled by the courts from there on out.”

Willie’s next hearing is scheduled for January 2, 2024.

The Crop Circle Mystery | Crop Circles in England Controversy

Let's explore how the crop circles or crop circles in England are man-made landscape art, debunking the myth of alien involvement.

Explanation - The Crop Circle Mystery:-

Crop circles are a simple phenomenon: they are landscape art created by people.

Despite proof to the contrary, certain individuals still think that aliens transported by UFOs created crop circles.

But how did mysterious flying objects become associated with flattened swaths of cereal grains? And why are these styles historically connected to southern England?

The answers to these questions are straightforward: Doug Bower and Dave Chorley. Chorley and Bower were buddies who resided near Winchester in England. In 1978, both of them were sitting in a bar, "thinking about what they could do for something of a laugh," Chorley recalled in Time magazine in 1991. Inspired by earlier reports of UFO landings — the UFO craze was growing in the late 1970s, having gained traction shortly after a retired military officer gave an interview regarding the Roswell event, stating a mysterious alien had fallen in the New Mexico desert in 1947 — Chorley and Bower decided to build their own fictitious UFO landing site.

Bower and Chorley went into a field, armed with some boards, rope, and a twist of wire affixed to the brim of a baseball hat to sit their patterns and began working on their masterpiece. Nobody noticed. The two needed to make repeated trips to the southern English area over a few years before the global media picked up their newly constructed crop circles in England. When the tale went viral and UFO enthusiasts showed them in droves, the painters stepped forward and admitted to the fake.

Since then, crop circles have become both an outdoor art form and a visitor attraction. Their credibility as otherworldly artefacts have faded, but devout believers, known as "croppies," continue to believe aliens have been accountable for at least some crop circles. Marketers are now more likely to be to blame, with crop circles being used to promote games and chips for computers. 

What is a crop circle?

Crop circles are massive designs created by flattening crops like wheat, barley, and canola. Crop circle artists continue to stomp out patterns with boards of wood, as a National Geographic movie made in 2004 showed. The painters cover their tracks in current tractor-tire ruts, giving the impression that the pattern fell from the sky.

Crop circles can be easy or complex. England remains a hotbed for crop circle creators, with masterpieces featuring triangles, spinner forms, and crescents. They've also appeared elsewhere in the world, with one story in the Illinois daily Courier & Press describing them as a "plague" in the state during the 1990s. "We feel it's possibly just kids," Rock Island County Sheriff Tod VanWolvelaere told the publication decades later.

A Reference to The Edge of Wonder TV:-

Join Edge of Wonder TV for a detailed video on how crop circles are man-made landscape art, debunking the myth of alien involvement. Doug Bower and Dave Chorley were the individuals behind the creation of these mysterious formations in southern England. Find out the weirdest news in history, hidden facts and mysteries, and much more only on the Rise TV Show.

Join Chronicles of Psychic Spy on The Rise TV Show to watch the full episode on the crop circle mystery that is uncovered by remote viewing of many different crop circles to understand if they come from the same source.

Famous crop circles:-

The first mention of a crop-related enigma currently associated with crop circles was a woodcut chapbook, or tiny book containing ballads, songs, and tracts, titled "The Mowing Devil," which dates back to 1678. As stated by Oxford Reference, this chapbook depicts the story of a low-wage farmer who declined to pay a labourer to chop his oats. The devil accomplished the job overnight, "shaving them in rounds." Though the oats in the narrative were mowed rather than flattened, crop circle proponents used this anecdote to support their claims about crop circles' long-standing origins.

In 1996, a spectacular crop circle named the "Julia Set" emerged near Stonehenge. Following the Skeptical Inquirer, a local pilot claimed to have flown over the area for an hour before the crop circle formed and seen nothing, before returning to witness a spiral of ever larger circles. The crop circle's purported abrupt appearance fueled speculation that it was of otherworldly origin. However, according to the Skeptical Inquirer, these testimonies from witnesses were dubious — and the regional creator claimed to know who created the Julia set and that it was done the night before the crop circle was discovered, rather than in broad daylight.

Final Thoughts:-

Crop circles are large designs made by flattening crops, often created by artists using wood boards. They can be found in various shapes and have been reported in different parts of the world, including England and Illinois. Some believe that kids make them.

Bower and Chorley created crop circles in a field in England using simple tools, but it took years before their work gained attention. Once the media picked up the story and UFO enthusiasts flocked to see the circles, the artists revealed that they were responsible for the hoax.

The story of "The Mowing Devil," a woodcut chapbook from 1678, is often cited by crop circle proponents as evidence of the long-standing origins of crop circles, even though the oats in the story were mowed rather than flattened.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 12, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

In Marion, Kansas, yesterday morning, four local police officers and three sheriff’s deputies raided the office of the Marion County Record newspaper; the home of its co-owners, Eric Meyer and his 98 year old mother, Joan Meyer; and the home of Marion vice mayor Ruth Herbel, 80. They seized computers, cell phones, and other equipment. Joan Meyer was unable to eat or sleep after the raid; she collapsed Saturday afternoon and died at her home.

The search warrant alleged there was probable cause to believe the newspaper, its owners, or the vice mayor had committed identity theft and unlawful computer acts against restaurant owner Kari Newell, but Magistrate Laura Viar appears to have issued that warrant without any affidavit of wrongdoing on which to base it. Sherman Smith, Sam Bailey, Rachel Mipro, and Tim Carpenter of the nonprofit news service Kansas Reflector reported that federal law protects journalists from search and seizure and requires law enforcement instead to subpoena materials they want.

On August 2, Newell had thrown Meyer and a Marion County Record reporter out of a meeting with U.S. Representative Jake LaTurner (R-KS), and the paper had run a story on the incident. Newell had complained on her personal Facebook page, 

On August 7, Newell publicly accused the newspaper of illegally getting information about a drunk-driving charge against her and giving it to Herbel. Eric Meyer says the information—which was accurate—was sent to him and Herbel over social media and that he decided not to publish it out of concerns it was leaked to help Newell’s estranged husband in divorce proceedings. Those same concerns made him take the story to local police. Newell accused the newspaper of violating her rights and called Meyer to accuse him of identity theft.

Meyer told journalist Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket that the paper was also investigating the new police chief for sexual misconduct, and he noted that the identities of people making those allegations are on the computers that got seized. “I may be paranoid that this has anything to do with it,” Meyer told Kabas, “but when people come and seize your computer, you tend to be a little paranoid.”  

On Friday, Newell wrote on her Facebook page: “Journalists have become the dirty politicians of today, twisting narrative for bias agendas, full of muddied half-truths…. We rarely get facts that aren’t baited with misleading insinuations.” 

Meyer worked at the Milwaukee Journal for 20 years and then taught journalism at the University of Illinois, retiring from there. He doesn’t take a salary from the Marion County Record. He told Kabas, “I’m doing this because I believe that newspapers still have a place in the world and that the worst thing that a newspaper could do was shrink its reporting staff, stop reporting, fill itself with non-news when there’s still news out there. And if you do a good job of providing news, you will get readers…. [W]e’re doing this because we care about the community.” 

He said he worries that people are afraid to participate in politics because “there’s gonna be consequences and they’re going to be negative.” 

The Marion County Record will sue the city and the individuals involved in the raid, which, the paper wrote in its coverage, “legal experts contacted were unanimous in saying violated multiple state and federal laws, including the U.S. Constitution, and multiple court rulings.” “Our first priority is to be able to publish next week,” Meyer said, “but we also want to make sure no other news organization is ever exposed to the Gestapo tactics we witnessed today. We will be seeking the maximum sanctions possible under law.” 

Executive director of the Kansas Press Association Emily Bradbury noted “An attack on a newspaper office through an illegal search is not just an infringement on the rights of journalists but an assault on the very foundation of democracy and the public’s right to know. This cannot be allowed to stand.”

Americans have taken up this cause before. In 1836 the House of Representatives passed a resolution preventing Congress from taking up any petition, memorial, resolution, proposition, or paper relating “in any way, or to any extent whatsoever, to the subject of slavery or the abolition of slavery.” This “gag rule” outraged antislavery northerners. Rather than quieting their objections to enslavement, they increased their discussion of slavery and stood firm on their right to those discussions. 

In that same year, newspaperman Elijah P. Lovejoy, who had been publishing antislavery articles in the St. Louis Observer, decided to move from the slave state of Missouri across the Mississippi River to Alton, Illinois. He suggested to his concerned neighbors that his residence in a free state would enable him to write more about religion than about slavery. But, he added in a statement to them, “As long as I am an American citizen, and as long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write and to publish whatever I please, being amenable to the laws of my country for the same.”

Lovejoy became a symbol of the freedom of the press.

When “a committee of five citizens” in Alton, appointed by “a public meeting,” asked Lovejoy if he intended to print sentiments to which they objected, he refused to “admit that the liberty of the press and freedom of speech, were rightfully subject to other supervision and control, than [the laws of] the land.” He reminded them that “‘the liberty of our forefathers has given us the liberty of speech,’ and that it is ‘our duty and high privilege, to act and speak on all questions touching this great commonwealth.’” “[E]very thing having a tendency to bring this right into jeopardy, is eminently dangerous as a precedent,” he said. 

Popular pressure had proved unable to make Lovejoy stop writing, and on August 21, 1837, a mob drove off the office staff of the Alton Observer by throwing rocks through the windows. Then, as soon as the staff had fled, the mob broke into the newspaper’s office and destroyed the press and all the type. 

On August 24, Lovejoy asked his supporters to help him buy another press. They did. But no sooner had it arrived than a gang of ten or twelve “ruffians” broke into the warehouse where it had been stored for the night and threw it into the river. 

When yet another press arrived in early November, Lovejoy had it placed in a warehouse on the riverbank. That night, about thirty men attacked the building, demanding the press be handed over to them. The men inside refused and fired into the crowd, wounding some of the attackers. The mob pulled back but then returned with ladders that enabled them to set fire to the building’s roof. When Lovejoy stepped out of the building to see where the attackers were hiding, a man shot him dead. As the rest of the men in the warehouse ran to safety, the mob rushed into the building and threw the press out of the window. It broke to pieces when it hit the shore, and the men threw the pieces into the Mississippi River.

But the story did not end there. Elijah Lovejoy’s younger brother, Owen, saw Elijah shot. "I shall never forsake the cause that has been sprinkled with my brother's blood," he declared. He and another brother wrote the Memoir of Elijah P. Lovejoy, impressing on readers the importance of what they called “liberty of the press” in the discussion of public issues. 

Owen then turned to politics, and in 1854 he was elected to the Illinois state legislature to stand against those southerners who had silenced his brother. The following year, voters elected him to Congress. His increasing prominence brought him political friends, including an up-and-coming lawyer who had arrived in Illinois from Kentucky by way of Indiana, Abraham Lincoln. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER SCOTT RICHARDSON

Nikolas Cruz bought the AR-15 that he used to kill 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School because it was “cool-looking.” That’s what he told a Broward Sheriff’s detective, according to court documents.

It was cool-looking.

Cruz’s trial isn’t over yet. The prosecution has rested, and the defense is making its case against the death penalty, after his guilty plea. But even as the jury continues its heartbreaking job, one so agonizing it would be beyond the endurance of many, the AR-15-style gun marketed as “America’s rifle” continues to plague us all.

Cruz chose the same style of weapon as the shooter in Uvalde, the one in Las Vegas, the one at Pulse in Orlando, the one at Sandy Hook, the one in Buffalo, the one in Highland Park, Illinois. These are guns that trace their roots to the Vietnam War. They’re designed to kill lots of people and to look pretty much the same as ones used in the military.

It makes us numb, that list of shootings. But how many of us would still feel that way — could still feel that way — if we’d seen what the jurors in the Cruz trial have had to see? They don’t have the luxury of averting their eyes from the carnage. They can’t duck from the reality of what this country allows: Cruz purchased his weapon legally.

That has to change.

The graphic photos of human beings’ destruction — the tiny entrance wound, the gaping, obscene exit wound — were shielded from the public, considered too awful for most of us to contemplate. But the jurors deciding Cruz’s fate had to see them. Reporters covering the case also viewed them, including David Ovalle.

Ovalle is the Miami Herald’s veteran court reporter. He’s seen some of the worst things that humans can do to each other. But even he struggled to comprehend the horrific damage depicted in the photos.

“For me, the exit wounds were so jarring to view,” he said. “It’s hard to even describe them, because the descriptions of gaping wounds, ragged flesh and deep-red-colored holes just don’t do enough to convey the devastation caused by these weapons of war.”

He talked about one boy, shot eight times, with exit wounds on his forearm — “a massive hole of ragged flesh” — and one of his legs. And about a girl, lying on the floor in front of a classroom lectern, “her eyes wide open as if she’s in pain, her mouth slightly open.” The side of her head is missing, her brain pulverized by a high-velocity bullet.

None of us should have to know about the damage that high-velocity bullets can do. And yet, as the shootings continue, so many of us do.

‘Snowstorm’ of damage Medical examiners have offered more grim lessons during this trial. They told jurors that the bullets that AR-15-style weapons use are created to inflict massive internal damage. Forensic pathologists testified about how the bullets tore through flesh and hit bone, creating a “snow storm” of bullet fragments peppering the person’s insides, often fatally.

As former Broward chief medical examiner Craig Mallak described it, “It’s a very small bullet, but it’s moving at 3,000 feet per second. There’s so much energy with these bullets. It just tears skin, bones, organs.” It’s a path 20 times to 30 times the size of the actual bullet, he said.

He performed the autopsy on 14-year-old Cara Loughran, who suffered three wounds: one small entry wound to the left upper back and two gaping exit wounds in the upper chest.

One bullet entered the rib area of 14-year-old Alaina Petty. “After that, the bullet was fragmented into multiple fragments that perforated the lungs, liver, kidney and exits on the left lateral side of the torso,” Associate Medical Examiner Iouri Boiko testified.

Meadow Pollack’s wounds were catastrophic. The 18-year-old was shot seven times, one fracturing her spine. A bullet that grazed her opened a five-inch gash on her skull. It wasn’t a direct hit. But the energy of the bullet was so powerful, she had no chance.

Marketing works This style of weapon isn’t popular by accident — it’s marketing. The Washington Post recently published a story outlining how one of the manufacturers of AR-15-style rifles tried to run an ad during the Super Bowl, knowing the NFL would probably reject it but ready to launch accusations of censorship and hypocrisy. The ad was rejected. And the counterattack was “by far” the most successful marketing the company had ever had, one company exec said.

The United States banned assault weapons before, from 1994 until 2004. In that 10-year period, mass-shooting deaths were reduced, according to at least one study, published in 2019 in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. In July, the House passed new assault-weapons ban legislation, largely along party lines. It’s unlikely to advance in the evenly split Senate, but at least it is some recognition that the Second Amendment doesn’t confer unlimited rights.

And there is support from the White House. President Biden, in a Pennsylvania speech on safer communities and gun control Tuesday, said the county “is awash in weapons of war.” Parents whose children died in the Uvalde shooting, he said, had to supply DNA for identification, “because the AR-15 just rips the body apart.”

Still-life horror Jurors in the Parkland case are doing what no one should have to do. Instead of shielding themselves from the dreadfulness of this mass shooting, they have to immerse themselves in it. They’ve listened to the anguished parents, siblings and friends. They’ve visited the still-life horror of Building 12 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, preserved since 2018 for the trial: dried pools of blood on the floor, overturned chairs, discarded headphones, a chess game still in the middle of play, broken glass that still crunches underfoot.

And they’ve seen those photos, the nightmarish pictures of slaughter four years ago on Valentine’s Day committed by someone who thought an AR-15 looked “cool.”

There have been so many shootings. We try to preserve our own sanity by turning away, afraid of having those images of blood and terror and viciousness branded into our consciousness forever.

But maybe we shouldn’t turn away. Maybe if all of us, including our elected officials, had to see those photos, pictures out of our worst nightmares, we could build some kind of consensus, again, on something that seems so simple it shouldn’t need saying: Weapons of war have no place in a civilized society.

Oct 15 (Reuters) - An Illinois man was charged with hate crimes for stabbing a 6-year-old Muslim boy to death and wounding his mother in an attack that targeted them for their religion and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas, officials and Muslim rights activists said on Sunday.

The boy was stabbed 26 times with a military-style knife with a 7-inch (18-cm) serrated blade, the Will County Sheriff's Office said in a statement. The 32-year-old woman had multiple stab wounds and is expected to survive the attack that occurred on Saturday in Plainfield Township, about 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Chicago.

U.S. President Joe Biden said the boy's family were Palestinian Muslims who "came to America seeking what we all seek - a refuge to live, learn, and pray in peace."

"This horrific act of hate has no place in America," Biden said in a statement.

The suspect, Joseph Czuba, 71, was charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of hate crime and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, the sheriff's office said.

"Detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the on-going Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis," the Will County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.

Reuters could not identify an attorney for Czuba. He was in jail awaiting his initial court appearance, the office said.

Although Czuba did not make any statements to detectives, as is his constitutional right, police said they determined the charges though through interviews and evidence.

When police arrived at the scene, they said they found Czuba sitting on the ground outside the home with a cut to his forehead. The victims were in a bedroom.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) identified the boy as Wadea Al-Fayoume and said the woman, Hanaan Shahin, was his mother.

"The Islamophobic rhetoric and anti-Palestinian racism being spread by politicians, media outlets, and social media platforms must stop," CAIR said on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

FBI Director Christopher Wray warned the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference to stay vigilant "in this heightened environment."

"There's no question we're seeing an increase in reported threats, and we've got to be on the lookout, especially for lone actors who may take inspiration from recent events to commit violence of their own," Wray told the conference in San Diego on Saturday, according to the FBI website.

Former Illinois police chief caught shoplifting from Florida Walmart, officials say

Former Police Chief Arrested for Shoplifting in Florida Retirement Community In an unexpected turn of events, a former small-town police chief found himself in hot water, caught shoplifting at a Walmart located in the renowned retirement community of The Villages, Florida. The incident took place on October 5th, resulting in the arrest of 59-year-old Christopher Radz, as reported by the Sumter County Sheriff's Office. Radz faced charges of petit theft, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by FOX 35 Orlando. The alleged shoplifting incident unfolded when a vigilant loss prevention officer at Walmart noticed Radz picking up various items from a display, placing them in a Walmart plastic bag, and then calmly walking past all the checkout points without making any attempt to pay for the items, according to deputies. Upon his arrest, Radz was read his Miranda rights but chose not to engage with the deputy making the arrest, as reported by Villages-News. Christopher Radz, formerly associated with the Alsip Police Department in Illinois, had dedicated 32 years of his life to law enforcement, from 1985 to 2017. Beginning his career as a dispatcher, he steadily climbed the ranks, eventually assuming the position of police chief in 2009, a role he fulfilled until his retirement in 2017. Alsip, a small village, had a population of just over 18,000 people, as indicated by the latest census data. Reacting to the surprising news of Radz's arrest, current Chief Jay Miller expressed his astonishment, stating, "The news surrounding his arrest is something I'm surprised to hear, as it's out of character for the Chris I worked with for more than a decade." He added, "The actions described in the media are not representative of well-being, and I hope Chris is able to address any potential needs that may have arisen in the six years since his retirement while the courts in Florida ensure that justice is served." Following his arrest, Radz was taken into custody at the Sumter County Detention Center on a $500 bond, but he has since been released. Read the full article

https://www.thepublica.com/were-going-to-shoot-your-kids-trans-identified-man-arrested-in-illinois-over-live-streamed-threats-against-school/?s=09

Trans-Identified Male Arrested After Threatening To Murder Children In Illinois Over Transphobic “Bullying”

Reduxx has learned that a trans-identified male was arrested in Perry County, Illinois, after making threats to commit a school shooting and murder children on behalf of the transgender community in response to transphobic “bullying.”

On August 14, the Springfield-area FBI intercepted a live-stream on social media they deemed “suspicious.” In the video, an individual was seen making a number of disturbing threats towards schools and local children, specifically indicating there were plots in-progress to commit a school shooting, though no single institution was named.

Using the IP address associated with the stream, the FBI was able to identify the individual making the threats as 47-year-old Jason L. Willie, also known as Alexia Willie. An address in northern Perry County was quickly traced, and local law enforcement was notified at approximately 8:00 pm.

Booking photo for Jason “Alexia” Willie.

Speaking to Reduxx, Perry County Sheriff Chad Howard explained that nearby Washington County police were initially notified due to a confusion in the address, but that officers acted quickly and liaised with his team. Both Washington County Police and Perry County Police descended on Willie’s residence that same night with a warrant for his arrest.

Willie’s male partner was at the home, and cooperated fully with police in providing information necessary for the arrest to occur. He asserted that there were no weapons in the home.

But while Sheriff Howard was reading Willie the Miranda warning, he says the suspect began “acting up” and actively resisting arrest. Willie’s behavior became so unmanageable that he had to be tased by a Washington County officer in order to secure his compliance in the police vehicle.

Because Willie was arrested approximately 12 hours prior to schools opening, no classes were cancelled. But Sheriff Howard explains that he and other officers were on site at the local schools in their jurisdiction the next day as a precautionary measure.

Among the threats Willie made included “we’re going to shoot your kids” and “the FBI can’t stop us,” leading to initial confusion about how many individuals were involved.

“At the time, we didn’t know if there was more than one person involved in this because Willie was speaking in plural — he was saying ‘us, we.'”

Sheriff Howard explains that he later learned that Willie was making a collective threat on behalf of the transgender community.

“At the time, we were under the impression that, possibly, there was more than one person involved. As it turns out, he was speaking about the transgender community,” Sheriff Howard says.

“He made the comment in a [police] interview when asked about what he meant by ‘we’ and ‘us.’ He said he was specifically tired of being made fun of and bullied for being transgender. So when he was saying ‘we’ and ‘us’ he was representing the transgender community as a whole.”

Disturbingly, Willie made multiple references to the horrific March shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. During that incident, a trans-identified female left 6 dead, 3 of whom were children aged 9, in an act of brutality that left the nation stunned.

“In the interview, he used ammunition from the Tennessee shooting. I didn’t even bring it up. Willie mentioned that the transgender individual in Tennessee was tired of being made fun of, and he used that as a reason why he was speaking on behalf of the transgender community.”

Willie was released on $0 bond approximately 48 hours after being booked, and while he was initially charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, Sheriff Howard says the charges related to the threats were dropped due to a lack of specific target.

“Because there was no one individual person or individual school directly threatened, the disorderly conduct did not stick. It was not capable of being filed.”

Shortly after Willie was released into the community on bond, the FBI contacted Perry County police once again, reporting that Willie was making similar comments on social media.

Sheriff Howard and a deputy attended the residence as law enforcement support for the FBI agents who arrived to question Willie on the comments.

“The FBI contacted me and showed up with a team of investigators. We secured the property while the FBI took Willie in for questioning right there on the scene in their van. They did not have enough to place Willie under arrest,” Sheriff Howard says.

According to Perry County court records, Willie has not yet entered a plea on his charge of resisting arrest, but Sheriff Howard explains that even if he is found guilty he will likely walk away with a fine.

“It’s more or less going to end up going to be a hearing. Now with the state of Illinois having the SAFE-T Act, which went into effect on September 18, those types of crimes are no longer containable. You just bring [a suspect] in for booking, processing, and biometrics and then you release them with a court date and it is all handled by the courts from there on out.”

Willie’s next hearing is scheduled for January 2, 2024.

Special thank you to Manager Stephanie Waller and Journalist Pete Spitler at the local Pickneyville Du-Quoin Weekly Press for their assistance.

[ad_1] Police say a semitruck carrying ammonia overturned in an Illinois county, spilling the chemical and causing an evacuation of area residentsByThe Associated PressSeptember 30, 2023, 3:57 AMTEUTOPOLIS, Ill. -- A semitruck carrying ammonia overturned in an Illinois county, spilling the chemical and causing an evacuation of area residents Friday night, police said.The Effingham County Sheriff's Office said the accident happened less than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) east of Teutopolis near an intersection of Route 40 and residents were evacuated from the area and provided shelter, WCIA-TV reported.Effingham County Coroner Kim Rhodes told the television station that one person was killed and five people were transported for emergency medical care with unknown injuries,Rhodes said a hazardous materials unit was at the scene and additional details about the accident were not immediately available, WCIA reported.Teutopolis is about 92 miles (148 kilometers) southeast of Springfield, the capital of Illinois. [ad_2]

Just days after Illinois became the ninth U.S. state to ban assault rifles, the state already hit a roadblock to implementing the law: defiant sheriff's offices.

At least 74 Illinois sheriff's departments have publicly vowed to defy elements of a recent gun-control law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, which banned assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and switches. The offices have vowed to not check if weapons are registered with the state or house individuals arrested only for not complying with the law.

As the number of uncooperative sheriff's offices increased, Pritzker has made his own vow – to ensure those members of law enforcement who fail to "do their job… won't be in their job."

The Illinois Sheriffs' Association issued a statement Wednesday expressing continued opposition to the law. Simultaneously, dozens of sheriff's offices began to post nearly identical messages promising they would not check for compliance with the law or arrest offenders of the law.

Jim Kaitschuk, executive director of the Illinois Sheriffs' Association, said he drafted the statement which sheriff's offices began to sign or modify.

"Therefore, as the custodian of the jail and chief law enforcement official for DuPage County, that neither myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the State, nor will we be arresting or housing law abiding individuals that have been charged solely with non-compliance of this Act," DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick wrote in a statement, which was mirrored by dozens of other offices.

With a population of over 920,000 residents, DuPage County is the largest county to defy the law.

ABC News was able to identify at least 59 sheriff's offices that issued a nearly identical statement, the main identifiable difference between the statements being the letterhead and name of the county in the text of the statement.

In total, at least 74 offices said they plan to not use resources to enforce elements of the law, impacting nearly 4,000,000 Illinois residents, or over 30 percent of the state's residents.

Other than DuPage county, the most populous counties in Illinois – Cook, Lake, and Will Counties – have not issued any statement opposing the law. The deadly 2022 Highland Park parade shooting took place in Lake County, which is enforcing the law. Most of the sheriff's offices opposing the law reside in counties with less than 100,000 residents, though nine defiant counties have populations exceeding 100,000.

Kaitschuk said he disagreed with the idea that sheriffs have an obligation to check compliance with the law or house offenders in their jails.

"That is not a charge that is provided to us, or mandated to us in the bill that passed and was signed by the Governor," he said.

Many of the sheriffs defying the law have described their opposition to the law as akin to civil disobedience to protect the Second Amendment.

"We will not be enforcing it in this county; I will also not house anyone in my jail that has violated this act because we know it to be an unlawful act by the general assembly and the Governor," Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Bullard Sr. said in an online video.

Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell, whose jurisdiction covers nearly 200,000 residents, signed a modified version of the statement. In an interview with ABC News, Campbell based his opposition to the law due to both adherence to the Constitution and the ineffectiveness of the law.

"The law will have zero impact on the murder rate in the state of Illinois," Campbell said.

Some offices took less defiant stances which include waiting for movement from the courts or legislative action.

"I understand that our nation had witnesses frequent tragedies involving gun violence and I am in no way attempting to minimize the impact these events have had," St. Clair County Sheriff Richard Watson wrote in a statement, in which he said he opposed the law but did not promise to defy it.

When asked why he decided to not enforce the law rather than wait for action from the courts, Campbell returned his belief that the law is unconstitutional and will eventually be struck down.

"Because between now or Tuesday when the bill was signed into law by the Governor, how many people can have their constitutional rights violated?" he asked. “And I don’t believe any U.S. citizens should ever have their country’s rights violated at anytime."

Pritzker addressed the defiance, commenting that members of law enforcement who fail to enforce it might lose their job.

"The fact is that yes there are of course people who are trying to politically grandstand, who want to make a name for themselves by claiming that they will not comply," he said. "But the reality is that the state police is responsible for enforcement, as are all law enforcement all across our state and they will in fact do their job or they won't be in their job."

Kaitschuk rebutted the idea that Pritzker has the authority to fire members of law enforcement, especially elected sheriffs.

"I'm just not aware of any provision that provides the Governor that opportunity to do so," he said.

Eric Ruben, a law professor at Southern Methodist University and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, told ABC News that the public statements made by the sheriffs could significantly impact residents' behavior.

"Even if it's posturing and political, it does send a signal to residents in these communities that they don't have to worry about the law," he said.

Ruben added when sheriffs made public statements about the enforcement and constitutionality of a similar 2013 New York state law requiring the registrations of assault rifles, New York received far fewer registrations than expected, suggesting noncompliance with the law.

"Ultimately, it's not the sheriff's job to decide on the constitutionality of laws," he said. "That's generally something that the courts do."

On Thursday, Pritzker reaffirmed his stance that the sheriff's offices should not be making decisions about which laws to enforce and which to ignore.

"You know, you can have all the resolutions and declarations that you want," Pritzker said. "The reality is that the laws that are on the books, you don't get to choose which ones people are going to follow."

Ruben added that the sheriffs' public statements about checking that residents register their guns could be a "red herring" or distraction since the law does not call on law enforcement to check that citizens register their firearms unprompted.

Pritzker made a similar point on Friday, noting that registering the guns is ” not something that requires the intervention of a sheriff.”

Kaitschuk said the Illinois Sheriffs' Association does not intend to challenge the law in court; however, on Tuesday, the Illinois State Rifle Association declared its intention to go to court.

"Challenge accepted. The Illinois State Rifle Association will see the State of Illinois in court," Richard Pearson, the association's executive director, said.

During a bill signing on Friday, Pritzker remarked he was confident the state law was constitutional.

Authorities discovered the body after they were alerted to a strong odor

Human remains found inside a box in an Illinois storage unit have been identified as a former police chief, authorities said.

A statement from Knox County Sheriff's Office confirmed the body discovered on October 7, 2022, in a storage facility in Maquon belonged to Richard R. Young. The 71-year-old was identified after DNA samples were matched with samples taken from family members.

Young was a former village police chief in Maquon, a town about 150 miles southwest of Chicago.

Police said the victim's family has been notified and the investigation into his death remains active.

The body was discovered after complaints of a strong odor coming from a unit at Roberts Self Storage, the Associated Press reported.

Related:17-Year-Old Who Was 'Most Loving and Outgoing Person' Was Allegedly Stabbed to Death by Woman, 18

Marcy Oglesby, 50, faces charges related to the case and is in custody at the Knox County Jail.

Authorities had initially charged Oglesby with first-degree murder, but WQAD and KWQC reported the murder charge and other charges were dropped during a motion hearing on March 16. WGIL reports the charges were dropped because a judge found Oglesby's right to a speedy trial had been violated.

Now, Oglesby is charged with one count of concealment of a death, two counts of forgery and two counts of possession of a firearm without requisite firearm owner's identification card.

In an email to KWQC, Knox County State's Attorney Jeremy Karlin said, "This office respectfully disagrees with Judge Doyle's interpretation of Illinois law and his decision. We intend to file an immediate appeal of his ruling to the Fourth District Appellate Court in Springfield."

PEOPLE has contacted Illinois Courts to confirm her current charges.

Danny Thomas, the former mayor of Maquon, told WQAD that Young "would do anything for anybody."

"He was always there," Thomas said. "I mean, it didn't matter what time of day or night it was, if there was something happening, he was there."

Anyone with information that may help the investigation is urged to contact the Knox County Sheriff's Office at 309-344-0044.

A man who literally attacked women’s access to healthcare is now identifying as trans

A trans-identified male who led a far-right militia to commit a number of sexist and racist crimes has been sentenced to 14 years on assorted domestic terrorism charges. The sentence comes in addition to the 53 years he was already serving for his role in a Mosque bombing.

Hari, a former Sheriff’s deputy, was responsible for establishing right-wing militia group known as the Patriot Freedom Fighters, later re-named to the White Rabbits. 

Hari, along with the small group, began engaging in criminal activity in 2017 with the intention of carrying out acts of domestic terrorism. In August of that year, Hari’s group set an improvised incendiary device near the Imam’s office of the Dar-al Farooq Islamic Center. One of Hari’s associates, Micheal McWhorter, would later confirm the purpose of the attack was to “scare Muslims out of the United States.” No one was injured in the attack.

In November of 2017, Hari and his ‘militia’ targeted the Women’s Health Practice in Champaign, Illinois, where they threw a pipe bomb into the building. The bomb did not detonate and was found by a receptionist of the clinic who called police to 

safely extract the device from the facility. 

Hari and his militia would go on to engage in a series of petty crimes in an attempt to gather the funds to continue their operations, including robbing a Hispanic man and holding up two local WalMarts in Clarence, Illinois in December of 2017.

In early 2018, Hari and his ‘militia’ attempted to sabotage railroad tracks near Effingham, Illinois with a bomb. After the attack, the group sent ransom emails demanding $190,000 in cryptocurrency under threat they would damage the railway further. 

Shortly after, Hari tried to frame another individual for the crimes, but the effort would only lead to Federal Investigators more easily tracking him and the members of his militia down.

Hari and his colleagues were ultimately arrested, and, in 2021, Hari was sentenced to 53 years for his role in the Dar al-Farooq bombing.

On July 11, Hari was sentenced to an additional 14 years on a number of other charges related to his domestic terrorist activity after pleading guilty to the charges in February. According to a release by the Department of Justice, Hari was sentenced for threats of violence, attempted arson, unlawful possession of a machine-gun, and unlawful possession of a firearm as a felon. The sentence will be 

served concurrently, meaning the maximum time he will serve is still 53 years.

During his trial, it was revealed that Hari identified as a transgender ‘woman.’ While leading the White Rabbit militia, he had been searching terms such as ‘sex change,’ ‘transgender surgery,’ and ‘post-op transgender’ on the internet. Hari allegedly planned on fleeing to Thailand to get ‘gender affirming’ surgeries.

Hari had previously asked the court to take his gender dysphoria into consideration, and made a request for an amended Federal prison placement based on his identity. The details of his request were placed under a seal and the presiding Judge stated he would defer to the Bureau of Prisons to make the final call. 

While Hari does not currently appear in any inmate registry, recent amendments to the Bureau of Prison’s transgender housing policy made since Hari’s initial sentencing indicate a strong possibility that Hari is currently incarcerated in a women’s prison.

On January 13, the Bureau of Prisons re-issued its Transgender Offender Manual, which included guidelines previously scrubbed by the Trump administration with respect to gender self-identification for federal inmates. 

Under Trump, housing based on biological sex alone was taken into consideration for offender housing, but the revised policies stated that a transgender inmate’s “personal safety” was a priority.

The guidelines also stated that ‘misgendering’ inmates was expressly forbidden, and that prisons must provide cosmetic surgeries, sex hormones, and brassieres for men who claim to identify as transgender.

The Bureau of Prisons houses roughly 155,554 inmates at 122 facilities around the U.S. Of these, the agency estimates that approximately 1,300 self-declare a transgender status.

Prior to his involvement with the White Rabbit group, Hari had a criminal history which included abducting his own daughters. In 2006, Hari was sentenced to 30 months probation for kidnapping his two children and taking them to a Mennonite colony in Belize. At the time, he said he would only return them to their mother if they were sent to appear on Dr. Phil. 

Both the Department of Justice and media reports about Hari’s sentencing uniformly referred to him as a ‘woman.’ The Wikipedia page on the Dar al-Farooq bombing has similarly removed references to Hari being male, and instead refers to him by feminine pronouns.

By Lavy Shwan Lavy is a writer and social media content creator at Reduxx. A refugee from Iraq, she currently lives in the United States, where she immerses herself in Marxist and feminist theory, and advocates for women's rights.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 12, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

On February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky. Exactly 100 years later, journalists, reformers, and scholars meeting in New York City deliberately chose the anniversary of his birth as the starting point for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). They vowed “to promote equality of rights and eradicate caste or race prejudice among citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for their children, employment according to their ability, and complete equality before the law.” The spark for the organization of the NAACP was a race riot in Springfield, Illinois, on August 14 and 15, 1908. The violence broke out after the sheriff transferred two Black prisoners, one accused of murder and another of rape, to a different town out of concern for their safety. Furious that they had been prevented from vengeance against the accused, a mob of white townspeople looted businesses and burned homes in Springfield’s Black neighborhood. They lynched two Black men and ran most of the Black population out of town. At least eight people died, more than 70 were injured, and at least $3 million of damage in today’s money was done before 3,700 state militia troops quelled the riot. When he and his wife visited Springfield days later, journalist William English Walling found white citizens outraged that their Black neighbors had forgotten “their place.” Walling claimed he had heard a dozen times: “Why, [they] came to think they were as good as we are!” “If these outrages had happened thirty years ago…, what would not have happened in the North?” wrote Walling. “Is there any doubt that the whole country would have been aflame?” Walling warned that either the North must revive the spirit of Lincoln and the abolitionists and commit to “absolute political and social equality” or the white supremacist violence of the South would spread across the whole nation. “The day these methods become general in the North every hope of political democracy will be dead, other weaker races and classes will be persecuted in the North as in the South, public education will undergo an eclipse, and American civilization will await either a rapid degeneration or another profounder and more revolutionary civil war….” He called for a “large and powerful body of citizens” to come to the aid of Black Americans. Walling was the well-educated descendant of a wealthy enslaving family from Kentucky and had become deeply involved in social welfare causes at the turn of the century. His column on the Springfield riot prompted another well-educated social reformer, Mary White Ovington, to write and offer her support. Together with Walling’s friend Henry Moskowitz, a Jewish immigrant from Romania who was well connected in New York Democratic politics, Walling and Ovington met with a group of other reformers, Black and white, in the Wallings’ apartment in New York City in January 1909 to create a new civil rights organization. In a public letter, the group noted that “If Mr. Lincoln could revisit this country in the flesh he would be disheartened and discouraged.” Black Americans had lost their right to vote and were segregated from white Americans in schools, railroad cars, and public gatherings. “Added to this, the spread of lawless attacks upon the negro, North, South and West—even in the Springfield made famous by Lincoln—often accompanied by revolting brutalities, sparing neither sex, nor age nor youth, could not but shock the author of the sentiment that ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.’” The call continued, “Silence under these conditions means tacit approval,” and it warned that permitting the destruction of Black rights would destroy rights for everyone. “Hence,” it said, “we call upon all the believers in democracy to join in a national conference for the discussion of present evils, the voicing of protests, and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty.” A group of sixty people, Black and white, signed the call, prominent reformers all, and the next year an interracial group of 300 men and women met to create a permanent organization. After a second meeting in May 1910, they adopted a formal name, and the NAACP was born, although they settled on the centennial of Lincoln’s birth as their actual beginning. Supporters of the project included muckraking journalists Ray Stannard Baker and Ida B. Wells, and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, who had been a founding member of the Niagara Movement, a Black civil rights organization formed in 1905. In 1910, Du Bois would choose to leave his professorship at Atlanta University to become the NAACP’s director of publicity and research. For the next 14 years, he would edit the organization’s flagship journal The Crisis. While The Crisis was a newspaper, a literary magazine, and a cultural showcase, its key function reflected the journalistic sensibilities of those like Baker, Wells, and especially Du Bois: it constantly called attention to atrocities, discrimination, and the ways in which the United States was not living up to its stated principles. At a time when violence and suppression were mounting against Black Americans, Du Bois and his colleagues relentlessly spread knowledge of what was happening. That use of information to rally people to the cause of equality became a hallmark of the NAACP. It challenged racial inequality by calling popular attention to racial atrocities and demanding that officials treat people equally before the law. In 1918 the NAACP published Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889–1918, reporting that of the 3,224 people lynched during that period, 702 were white and 2,522 Black. In 1922 it took out ads condemning lynching as “The Shame of America” in newspapers across the country. When Walter Francis White took over the direction of the NAACP in 1931, the organization began to focus on lynching and sexual assault, as well as on ending segregation in schools and transportation. In 1944 the secretary of the NAACP’s Montgomery, Alabama, chapter, Rosa Parks, investigated the gang rape of 25-year-old Recy Taylor by six white men after two grand juries refused to indict the men despite their confessions. Parks pulled women’s organizations, labor unions, and Black rights groups together into a new “Committee for Equal Justice” to champion Mrs. Taylor’s rights. In 1946 it was NAACP leader White who brought the story of World War II veteran Isaac Woodard, blinded by a police officers after talking back to a bus driver, to President Harry S. Truman. Afterward, Truman convened the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, directly asking its members to find ways to use the federal government to strengthen the civil rights of racial and religious minorities in the country. Truman later said, “When a Mayor and City Marshal can take a… Sergeant off a bus in South Carolina, beat him up and put out… his eyes, and nothing is done about it by the State authorities, something is radically wrong with the system.” And that is what the NAACP had done, and would continue to do: highlight that the inequalities in American society were systemic rather than the work of a few bad apples, bearing witness until “the believers in democracy” could no longer remain silent.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

In Marion, Kansas, yesterday morning, four local police officers and three sheriff’s deputies raided the office of the Marion County Record newspaper; the home of its co-owners, Eric Meyer and his 98 year old mother, Joan Meyer; and the home of Marion vice mayor Ruth Herbel, 80. They seized computers, cell phones, and other equipment. Joan Meyer was unable to eat or sleep after the raid; she collapsed Saturday afternoon and died at her home.

The search warrant alleged there was probable cause to believe the newspaper, its owners, or the vice mayor had committed identity theft and unlawful computer acts against restaurant owner Kari Newell, but Magistrate Laura Viar appears to have issued that warrant without any affidavit of wrongdoing on which to base it. Sherman Smith, Sam Bailey, Rachel Mipro, and Tim Carpenter of the nonprofit news service Kansas Reflector reported that federal law protects journalists from search and seizure and requires law enforcement instead to subpoena materials they want.

On August 2, Newell had thrown Meyer and a Marion County Record reporter out of a meeting with U.S. Representative Jake LaTurner (R-KS), and the paper had run a story on the incident. Newell had complained on her personal Facebook page, 

On August 7, Newell publicly accused the newspaper of illegally getting information about a drunk-driving charge against her and giving it to Herbel. Eric Meyer says the information—which was accurate—was sent to him and Herbel over social media and that he decided not to publish it out of concerns it was leaked to help Newell’s estranged husband in divorce proceedings. Those same concerns made him take the story to local police. Newell accused the newspaper of violating her rights and called Meyer to accuse him of identity theft.

Meyer told journalist Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket that the paper was also investigating the new police chief for sexual misconduct, and he noted that the identities of people making those allegations are on the computers that got seized. “I may be paranoid that this has anything to do with it,” Meyer told Kabas, “but when people come and seize your computer, you tend to be a little paranoid.”  

On Friday, Newell wrote on her Facebook page: “Journalists have become the dirty politicians of today, twisting narrative for bias agendas, full of muddied half-truths…. We rarely get facts that aren’t baited with misleading insinuations.” 

Meyer worked at the Milwaukee Journal for 20 years and then taught journalism at the University of Illinois, retiring from there. He doesn’t take a salary from the Marion County Record. He told Kabas, “I’m doing this because I believe that newspapers still have a place in the world and that the worst thing that a newspaper could do was shrink its reporting staff, stop reporting, fill itself with non-news when there’s still news out there. And if you do a good job of providing news, you will get readers…. [W]e’re doing this because we care about the community.” 

He said he worries that people are afraid to participate in politics because “there’s gonna be consequences and they’re going to be negative.” 

The Marion County Record will sue the city and the individuals involved in the raid, which, the paper wrote in its coverage, “legal experts contacted were unanimous in saying violated multiple state and federal laws, including the U.S. Constitution, and multiple court rulings.” “Our first priority is to be able to publish next week,” Meyer said, “but we also want to make sure no other news organization is ever exposed to the Gestapo tactics we witnessed today. We will be seeking the maximum sanctions possible under law.” 

Executive director of the Kansas Press Association Emily Bradbury noted “An attack on a newspaper office through an illegal search is not just an infringement on the rights of journalists but an assault on the very foundation of democracy and the public’s right to know. This cannot be allowed to stand.”

Americans have taken up this cause before. In 1836 the House of Representatives passed a resolution preventing Congress from taking up any petition, memorial, resolution, proposition, or paper relating “in any way, or to any extent whatsoever, to the subject of slavery or the abolition of slavery.” This “gag rule” outraged antislavery northerners. Rather than quieting their objections to enslavement, they increased their discussion of slavery and stood firm on their right to those discussions. 

In that same year, newspaperman Elijah P. Lovejoy, who had been publishing antislavery articles in the St. Louis Observer, decided to move from the slave state of Missouri across the Mississippi River to Alton, Illinois. He suggested to his concerned neighbors that his residence in a free state would enable him to write more about religion than about slavery. But, he added in a statement to them, “As long as I am an American citizen, and as long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write and to publish whatever I please, being amenable to the laws of my country for the same.”

Lovejoy became a symbol of the freedom of the press.

When “a committee of five citizens” in Alton, appointed by “a public meeting,” asked Lovejoy if he intended to print sentiments to which they objected, he refused to “admit that the liberty of the press and freedom of speech, were rightfully subject to other supervision and control, than [the laws of] the land.” He reminded them that “‘the liberty of our forefathers has given us the liberty of speech,’ and that it is ‘our duty and high privilege, to act and speak on all questions touching this great commonwealth.’” “[E]very thing having a tendency to bring this right into jeopardy, is eminently dangerous as a precedent,” he said. 

Popular pressure had proved unable to make Lovejoy stop writing, and on August 21, 1837, a mob drove off the office staff of the Alton Observer by throwing rocks through the windows. Then, as soon as the staff had fled, the mob broke into the newspaper’s office and destroyed the press and all the type. 

On August 24, Lovejoy asked his supporters to help him buy another press. They did. But no sooner had it arrived than a gang of ten or twelve “ruffians” broke into the warehouse where it had been stored for the night and threw it into the river. 

When yet another press arrived in early November, Lovejoy had it placed in a warehouse on the riverbank. That night, about thirty men attacked the building, demanding the press be handed over to them. The men inside refused and fired into the crowd, wounding some of the attackers. The mob pulled back but then returned with ladders that enabled them to set fire to the building’s roof. When Lovejoy stepped out of the building to see where the attackers were hiding, a man shot him dead. As the rest of the men in the warehouse ran to safety, the mob rushed into the building and threw the press out of the window. It broke to pieces when it hit the shore, and the men threw the pieces into the Mississippi River.

But the story did not end there. Elijah Lovejoy’s younger brother, Owen, saw Elijah shot. "I shall never forsake the cause that has been sprinkled with my brother's blood," he declared. He and another brother wrote the Memoir of Elijah P. Lovejoy, impressing on readers the importance of what they called “liberty of the press” in the discussion of public issues. 

Owen then turned to politics, and in 1854 he was elected to the Illinois state legislature to stand against those southerners who had silenced his brother. The following year, voters elected him to Congress. His increasing prominence brought him political friends, including an up-and-coming lawyer who had arrived in Illinois from Kentucky by way of Indiana, Abraham Lincoln. 

MARION — In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the Marion County Record office, the newspaper’s reporters, and the publisher’s home.

Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the newspaper, said police were motivated by a confidential source who leaked sensitive documents to the newspaper, and the message was clear: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.”

The city’s entire five-officer police force and two sheriff’s deputies took “everything we have,” Meyer said, and it wasn’t clear how the newspaper staff would take the weekly publication to press Tuesday night.

The raid followed news stories about a restaurant owner who kicked reporters out of a meeting last week with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, and revelations about the restaurant owner’s lack of a driver’s license and conviction for drunken driving.

Meyer said he had never heard of police raiding a newspaper office during his 20 years at the Milwaukee Journal or 26 years teaching journalism at the University of Illinois.

“It’s going to have a chilling effect on us even tackling issues,” Meyer said, as well as “a chilling effect on people giving us information.”

The search warrant, signed by Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, appears to violate federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists. The law requires law enforcement to subpoena materials instead. Viar didn’t respond to a request to comment for this story or explain why she would authorize a potentially illegal raid.

Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, said the police raid is unprecedented in Kansas.

“An attack on a newspaper office through an illegal search is not just an infringement on the rights of journalists but an assault on the very foundation of democracy and the public’s right to know,” Bradbury said. “This cannot be allowed to stand.”

Meyer reported last week that Marion restaurant owner Kari Newell had kicked newspaper staff out of a public forum with LaTurner, whose staff was apologetic. Newell responded to Meyer’s reporting with hostile comments on her personal Facebook page.

A confidential source contacted the newspaper, Meyer said, and provided evidence that Newell had been convicted of drunken driving and continued to use her vehicle without a driver’s license. The criminal record could jeopardize her efforts to obtain a liquor license for her catering business.

A reporter with the Marion Record used a state website to verify the information provided by the source. But Meyer suspected the source was relaying information from Newell’s husband, who had filed for divorce. Meyer decided not to publish a story about the information, and he alerted police to the situation.

“We thought we were being set up,” Meyer said.

Police notified Newell, who then complained at a city council meeting that the newspaper had illegally obtained and disseminated sensitive documents, which isn’t true. Her public comments prompted the newspaper to set the record straight in a story published Thursday.

Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar signed a search warrant authorizing the police raid of the newspaper office.

Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar signed a search warrant authorizing the police raid of the newspaper office. (Sam Bailey/Kansas Reflector)

Sometime before 11 a.m. Friday, officers showed up simultaneously at Meyer’s home and the newspaper office. They presented a search warrant that alleges identity theft and unlawful use of a computer.

The search warrant identifies two pages worth of items that law enforcement officers were allowed to seize, including computer software and hardware, digital communications, cellular networks, servers and hard drives, items with passwords, utility records, and all documents and records pertaining to Newell. The warrant specifically targeted ownership of computers capable of being used to “participate in the identity theft of Kari Newell.”

Officers injured a reporter’s finger by grabbing her cellphone out of her hand, Meyer said. Officers at his home took photos of his bank account information.

He said officers told him the computers, cellphones and other devices would be sent to a lab.

“I don’t know when they’ll get it back to us,” Meyer said. “They won’t tell us.”

The seized computers, server and backup hard drive include advertisements and legal notices that were supposed to appear in the next edition of the newspaper.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he said. “We will publish something.”

Newell, writing Friday under a changed name on her personal Facebook account, said she “foolishly” received a DUI in 2008 and “knowingly operated a vehicle without a license out of necessity.”

“Journalists have become the dirty politicians of today, twisting narrative for bias agendas, full of muddied half-truths,” Newell wrote. “We rarely get facts that aren’t baited with misleading insinuations.”

She said the “entire debacle was brought forth in an attempt to smear my name, jeopardize my licensing through ABC (state Alcoholic Beverage Control Division), harm my business, seek retaliation, and for personal leverage in an ongoing domestic court battle.”

At the law enforcement center in Marion, a staff member said only Police Chief Gideon Cody could answer questions for this story, and that Cody had gone home for the day and could not be reached by phone. The office of Attorney General Kris Kobach wasn’t available to comment on the legal controversy in Marion, which is north of Wichita in central Kansas.

Melissa Underwood, communications director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, replied by email to a question about whether the KBI was involved in the case.

“At the request of the Marion Police Department, on Tuesday, Aug. 8, we began an investigation into allegations of criminal wrongdoing in Marion, Kansas. The investigation is ongoing,” Underwood said.

Meyer, whose father worked at the newspaper from 1948 until he retired, bought the Marion County Record in 1998, preventing a sale to a corporate newspaper chain.

As a journalism professor in Illinois, Meyer said, he had graduate students from Egypt who talked about how people would come into the newspaper office and seize everything so they couldn’t publish. Those students presented a scholarly paper at a conference in Toronto about what it has done to journalism there.

“That’s basically what they’re trying to do here,” Meyer said. “The intervention is just like that repressive government of Egypt. I didn’t think it could happen in America.”