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Monday, November 28, 2016
USA - MRF Update on Proposed Policy on Autonomous Vehicles.
OFF THE WIRE
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Monday, November 21, 2016
Friday, November 18, 2016
USA - A Checkpoint Primer
OFF THE WIRE
agingrebel.com
agingrebel.com
The Fourth Amendment states: “The right
of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The paragraph seems straight forward
enough and courts have ruled that to detain a person is to “seize” him.
So if you are stopped and detained you are seized and your seizure must
be reasonable. But there is also a significant body of case law that
authorizes police to set up roadblocks and detain drivers and riders in
states that do not have laws forbidding checkpoints and roadblocks.
Here is a brief primer on how the meaning of how the meaning of reasonable has evolved.
People v. De la Torre
The grandfather of all roadblock court decisions is a California appeals court case from 1967 titled People v. De la Torre.
The California legislature passed a law, Vehicle code 2814, which said:
“Every driver of a passenger vehicle shall stop and submit the vehicle
to an inspection of the mechanical condition and equipment of the
vehicle at any location where members of the California Highway Patrol
are conducting tests and inspections of passenger vehicles and when
signs are displayed requiring such stop.”
Fernando De la Torre was out on a
Saturday night. He was tipsy and he was arrested for driving under the
influence. He was convicted and he appealed on the grounds that the
traffic stop was an unconstitutional dragnet. The stop was, in fact, a defacto sobriety checkpoint. A lower court agreed with De la Torre and dismissed his case.
The state appealed and the appeals court
ruled ‘‘Upon holding Vehicle Code section 28141 unconstitutional on its
face the trial court granted defendant’s motion to dismiss the action.
Thus our task is strictly limited. We are not called upon to determine
the guilt or innocence of the defendant, nor whether the Vehicle Code
section was being used as a subterfuge by the police, nor whether an
otherwise constitutional statute was being unconstitutionally applied to
this defendant. We determine and hold only that Vehicle Code section
2814 properly used in accordance with the in¬tent of the Legislature
expressed therein is constitutional.”
That obscure, state court decision was the hole in the dikeUnited States v. Martinez-Fuerte
The leak became noticeable in a U.S. Supreme Court case titled United States v. Martinez-Fuerte.
Martinez-Fuente was stopped at a border patrol checkpoint on the San
Diego Freeway in San Clemente, California. The checkpoint is about 73
miles north of the Mexican border and it is still there. Legally the
Border Patrol is authorized to conduct searches in a border zone that
extends 100 miles inland from international borders and at virtual
borders, like international airports, no matter where they might be. The
defendant was transporting two Mexican nationals north to Los Angeles.
They admitted they were in the country illegally and he was charged with
two counts of illegally transporting aliens.
Martinez-Fuente wanted his passengers
statements suppressed. The Supreme Court ruled seven to two that the
checkpoint did not violate the fourth amendment because it wouldn’t be
practical to get search warrants for all the cars that passed through
the checkpoint and that the inconvenience to motorist was “minimal.” It
is legal, under Martinez Fuerte, to use profiling and to detain someone for further questioning because they look suspicious.
Delaware v. Prouse
Both of the above cases, were cited in 1979s Supreme Court decision, Delaware v. Prouse. In Prouse,
the Court ruled that police could stop anybody for any reason as long
as they treated everybody equally and did not arbitrarily decide to stop
some people and let others continue on their way. It was a curious
decision and it referenced People v. De la Torre, the
California decision from a dozen years before. Justice Byron “Whizzer”
White, a former All American football player, cautioned that “people are
not shorn of all Fourth Amendment protection when they step from the
sidewalks into their automobiles.” And then he wrote it would be alright
to stop people and check their vehicle registrations at a “checkpoint,”
like the one that caught De la Torre driving drunk. Police couldn’t set
up sobriety checkpoints but they could stop you, make you roll down
your window and hand over your papers.
The state had the right, the court
ruled, to enforce roadblocks that promoted traffic safety as long as
they didn’t search the stopped vehicles without probable cause.
Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz
The Court decided that sobriety checkpoints were legal in 1990 in a case titled Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz.
Michigan had started setting up
roadblocks to catch drunk drivers. Drivers had to stop, roll down their
windows and converse with police. If the cop smelled alcohol or detected
slurred words or some other impairment, the driver could be detained
and given a field sobriety test.
Justice John Paul Stevens thought that
stopping 126 cars to find two drunk drivers was unreasonable but the
rest of the court disagreed. Most of the court sought a balance between
the rights of citizens to be let alone and the “interest” of government.
The Court decided that the Michigan State Police had a preexisting
“substantial government interest,” that the impact on sober drivers was
“negligible” and that a brief interrogation to try to find reasonable
suspicion of driving drunk was not unconstitutional.
City of Indianapolis v. Edmond
The Supreme Court took another look at checkpoints in 2000 in City of Indianapolis v. Edmond.
That case finally put a limit on what police could do at checkpoints. In a nutshell, that decision said that after De la Torre, Martinez-Fuerte, Prouse and Sitz
the police could stop you, compel you to produce your papers, make you
talk to them and even profile you based on your appearance or other
intangible factors but they couldn’t greet everybody with a drug
sniffing dog.
That was the bright and shining line
between freedom and tyranny. On the free side of the line they couldn’t
greet you with a drug sniffing wonder dog, which, as everyone knows,
only “alerts” if you are actually in possession of drugs. On the free
side of the line they can’t so that to you unless you are at a border
crossing. Or in an airport.
The way American police get around Edmond
is by putting up signs that say “Drug Checkpoint Ahead.” If you
voluntarily pull over they can ask to search your car. Legally, there is
no checkpoint, just a sign. You don’t have to consent to a search. You
don’t have to roll down your window or talk to police. You don’t even
have to stop but most people think they do. And if you make an illegal
U-turn or you throw something away they can stop you for that. And, then
they can contrive to have a dog sniff you.
You might have to explain all this to your public defender sometime.Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Monday, November 14, 2016
Rusty Coones and Rodrigo Requejo Are Hell Raisers
OFF THE WIRE
For the Illusion Motorsports bike builders, life has been one wild ride
The backroom of Illusion Motorsports is full of bikes: some are set aside like museum pieces, others are jacked up on work tables, here a line of stripped-down and refurbished Harley-Davidsons, there the odd Triumph or Victoria. But two motorcycles in particular stand out inside the construction-in-progress custom-motorcycle shop in a Garden Grove business complex just off Interstate 405 at Golden West. They're distinguished less because of their physical appearance than for what they say about the store's owners, Rodrigo Requejo and Rusty Coones, and the amazing turn of personal fortune both men have experienced in the past few years.
The first bike, an Illusion Hellrazor with a 114-cubic-inch engine custom-manufactured exclusively for the shop, belongs to Kurt Sutter, the creator of the biker drama Sons of Anarchy that airs on FX. Requejo and Coones built the bike for Sutter earlier this year, but Sutter sent it back in for a custom fender and a one-of-its-kind aluminum fairing. It's the second bike Sutter has purchased from the store; the first was custom-made for the show in 2010, and then donated to the Wounded Warrior Foundation, a San Diego charity that benefits wounded and disabled veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Sons of Anarchy camera crew filmed Requejo and Coones building the bike from scratch for a special feature for the upcoming DVD release of the show's third season. Coones' heavy-metal band, Attika7, for which he plays lead guitar alongside vocalist Evan Seinfeld of Biohazard fame, also contributed two songs to the second season, as well as one (so far) for the upcoming fourth season. Sutter and his wife, actress Katey Sagal (who plays Gemma on the show), met Coones a few years ago on a toy run in the San Fernando Valley.
"My first impression: 'Fuck, he is big,'" Sutter says. "Then I was struck by his enthusiasm and genuine love of bikes and the motorcycle subculture. Plus, he was a huge Sons fan. We became friends when he started talking about bikes."
Sutter says that although he has been riding motorcycles for 20 years, the Hellrazor was his first custom-built motorcycle. "The bike is an incredible mix of art, power and comfort," he says. "Beautiful to look at, a force of nature on the road and easy to ride. I fucking love it."
While Sutter's Hellrazor symbolizes the success Coones and Requejo now enjoy, the other bike in question speaks to the dark days the two men shared in the not-too-distant past. It's a 2004 West Coast Chopper Dominator, gleaming with a spotless, satin black paint job, resting on a rack high up on one wall of the shop. It was a surprise gift to Coones from his pal Jesse James, who personally built it in celebration of Coones' Dec. 27, 2004, release from federal prison for his alleged role in what police, prosecutors and newspaper articles at the time described as Orange County's biggest drug-smuggling network.
Even as Coones walked out of prison a free man that day, Requejo was behind bars, having just been arrested for murder. For weeks, Requejo sat in jail, facing either the death penalty or life in prison without parole until finally being cleared of any wrongdoing. Both men look back at their pasts with a healthy dose of humility.
"You have to make the best of the bad," says Requejo, whose burly frame belies his soft-spoken, philosophical nature. "Every day, we're here making people happy, working on their bikes and having a good time. Life's been good to us. You have two guys who could have gone way down the wrong path and somehow made a U-turn."
* * *
A 6-foot-5-inch tower of tanned flesh and muscle, Howard Irvine Coones, known to friend and foe alike as Rusty, has piercing hazel eyes beneath his black-nylon skullcap. Scrolling down the back of both of his bulging biceps are flaming letters spelling out "Hells Angels." Coones is president of the Orange County chapter of the club, which he refuses to mention by name, much less discuss in detail, because its rules preclude members from doing so.
Coones was raised in the small Sacramento-area farming town of Madera in the 1960s. His father owned a crop-dusting business, and Coones began flying as a youngster, which is also when he began riding Harley-Davidsons. His dad wasn't too enamored of the hobby, and after a girl crashed into Rusty, totaling his bike but leaving him miraculously unscathed, his dad gave him an ultimatum. "He told me, 'If you get another Harley, I'm going to kick you out of the house, and I'm going to fire you,'" Coones recalls.
With nowhere to stay and no work to speak of in rural California in 1974, it seemed as though Coones' riding days were over. "But once you get a Harley, you get kind of hooked," he says. "So the day I got the insurance check, I went out and got a bike." Sure enough, Coones' dad both fired him and evicted him from the house on the spot. "So I rode my bike down here to Orange County and got a job with my uncle doing plumbing, and I've been here ever since."
John Gilhooley
Rusty Coones and Rodrigo Requejo
John Gilhooley
Requejo and an Illusion Motorsports creation
A Sons of Anarchy camera crew filmed Requejo and Coones building the bike from scratch for a special feature for the upcoming DVD release of the show's third season. Coones' heavy-metal band, Attika7, for which he plays lead guitar alongside vocalist Evan Seinfeld of Biohazard fame, also contributed two songs to the second season, as well as one (so far) for the upcoming fourth season. Sutter and his wife, actress Katey Sagal (who plays Gemma on the show), met Coones a few years ago on a toy run in the San Fernando Valley.
"My first impression: 'Fuck, he is big,'" Sutter says. "Then I was struck by his enthusiasm and genuine love of bikes and the motorcycle subculture. Plus, he was a huge Sons fan. We became friends when he started talking about bikes."
Sutter says that although he has been riding motorcycles for 20 years, the Hellrazor was his first custom-built motorcycle. "The bike is an incredible mix of art, power and comfort," he says. "Beautiful to look at, a force of nature on the road and easy to ride. I fucking love it."
While Sutter's Hellrazor symbolizes the success Coones and Requejo now enjoy, the other bike in question speaks to the dark days the two men shared in the not-too-distant past. It's a 2004 West Coast Chopper Dominator, gleaming with a spotless, satin black paint job, resting on a rack high up on one wall of the shop. It was a surprise gift to Coones from his pal Jesse James, who personally built it in celebration of Coones' Dec. 27, 2004, release from federal prison for his alleged role in what police, prosecutors and newspaper articles at the time described as Orange County's biggest drug-smuggling network.
Even as Coones walked out of prison a free man that day, Requejo was behind bars, having just been arrested for murder. For weeks, Requejo sat in jail, facing either the death penalty or life in prison without parole until finally being cleared of any wrongdoing. Both men look back at their pasts with a healthy dose of humility.
"You have to make the best of the bad," says Requejo, whose burly frame belies his soft-spoken, philosophical nature. "Every day, we're here making people happy, working on their bikes and having a good time. Life's been good to us. You have two guys who could have gone way down the wrong path and somehow made a U-turn."
* * *
A 6-foot-5-inch tower of tanned flesh and muscle, Howard Irvine Coones, known to friend and foe alike as Rusty, has piercing hazel eyes beneath his black-nylon skullcap. Scrolling down the back of both of his bulging biceps are flaming letters spelling out "Hells Angels." Coones is president of the Orange County chapter of the club, which he refuses to mention by name, much less discuss in detail, because its rules preclude members from doing so.
Coones was raised in the small Sacramento-area farming town of Madera in the 1960s. His father owned a crop-dusting business, and Coones began flying as a youngster, which is also when he began riding Harley-Davidsons. His dad wasn't too enamored of the hobby, and after a girl crashed into Rusty, totaling his bike but leaving him miraculously unscathed, his dad gave him an ultimatum. "He told me, 'If you get another Harley, I'm going to kick you out of the house, and I'm going to fire you,'" Coones recalls.
With nowhere to stay and no work to speak of in rural California in 1974, it seemed as though Coones' riding days were over. "But once you get a Harley, you get kind of hooked," he says. "So the day I got the insurance check, I went out and got a bike." Sure enough, Coones' dad both fired him and evicted him from the house on the spot. "So I rode my bike down here to Orange County and got a job with my uncle doing plumbing, and I've been here ever since."
By 1982, Coones was firmly entrenched in Southern California's outlaw-biker scene. He'd also developed a penchant for dealing drugs and collecting firearms, which were confiscated from his mansion in Laguna Canyon when police busted him there on drug and gun charges that year. After getting out of prison two years later, he returned to Laguna Beach and operated Lords of Limos and Custom Inc., a business that custom-built cars, limousines and motorcycles. A 1988 Los Angeles Times article about a local car-show appearance by surgically enhanced Playboy model—and mistress of disgraced televangelist James Bakker—Jessica Hahn describes Coones as a "33-year-old bodybuilder" who picked Hahn up at John Wayne Airport and drove her to the event in his "$75,000 gleaming silver limo truck with a computerized bar."
In 1986, Coones met his future wife, Katherine, a half-Italian, half-Mexican firecracker of a woman who goes by the nickname KO; he immediately began courting her, hoping she'd move into his million-dollar mansion. "Rusty is very kind and generous, a cement-covered marshmallow," she says. "He's never hurt me or lied to me and treats me like a princess. I remember when I met him, he had one of those $3,000 cell phones that was as big as a shoebox. He built me a walk-in closet in his home. He showered me with gifts and jewelry, and he had an airplane, a Cessna 210, all black and custom-painted, and would say, 'Let's fly up to San Francisco together.'"
In 1981, his brother shot himself in the head. "Rusty always carried that guilt," says KO. "He felt that it was his fault that he couldn't save him."
Local police, however, remained determined to put Coones back in prison, even going so far as to put local informants to work, trying to lure him into drug deals. One Sunday afternoon in 1991, Coones was drinking a beer at a biker bar in Laguna Canyon when a stranger asked if he could buy him a beer. Coones pointed at his own bottle and declined the offer. The following week, the same man showed up and once again offered to buy Coones a drink. Again, Coones, who already had his own, refused, at which point the man began to ask him for advice on how to invest cash from a court settlement he'd just received.
"I've got all this money I want to invest," he began. "What would you do with it?"
"Me, personally, I buy used bikes and sell them—that's my thing," Coones responded. "And real estate; I've never lost money on real estate."
"I'm thinking about something more lucrative," the man said.
"Like what?"
"You know, coke . . ."
Coones didn't let the stranger finish his sentence. "Get the fuck out of here," he commanded, leaning over the table. "I'll beat your ass."
For the next month, Coones watched the same helicopter hovering near his house and following him around town. He knew the cops were suspicious because of the size of his house and the fact he'd just taken a loan against the property for $400,000 cash. "So I'm flush with money and doing cars and bikes and trying to remodel the property and sell it, and all the time, I'm legit," Coones insists. "They didn't know that. They thought I was good for 100 kilos of coke."
Coones knows that number for a fact because it was in the search warrant police used to raid his house one morning in 1991 while he was meeting with a city official about his rehab program. A 60-man task force led by Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents backed by two helicopters surrounded his house and blew open his unlocked front door. They wrestled to the floor two guests who were sleeping in different rooms and had to call a fire truck after one of the explosions set off a small fire. One of the hapless houseguests, who, like Coones himself, was never arrested, later told Coones he overheard police saying that 21 bullets had been discharged inside the house as police went from room to room, rifles at the ready.
As it turned out, the police claimed to have an informant who said Coones had a house safe full of cocaine and machine guns, thus they were expecting armed resistance. "They looked like idiots," Coones says. "There wasn't anything to find. I told them they were years too late. They could justify that on the search warrant in front of any judge because, back in 1982, when I did get arrested there, I did have machine guns in my room. I had quite a collection."
In 1986, Coones met his future wife, Katherine, a half-Italian, half-Mexican firecracker of a woman who goes by the nickname KO; he immediately began courting her, hoping she'd move into his million-dollar mansion. "Rusty is very kind and generous, a cement-covered marshmallow," she says. "He's never hurt me or lied to me and treats me like a princess. I remember when I met him, he had one of those $3,000 cell phones that was as big as a shoebox. He built me a walk-in closet in his home. He showered me with gifts and jewelry, and he had an airplane, a Cessna 210, all black and custom-painted, and would say, 'Let's fly up to San Francisco together.'"
John Gilhooley
Rusty's wife, KO
Despite the bling, Coones insists that he went straight after his prison stint. Besides operating a successful bike shop and limo service, he opened First Step Treatment Centers of California, a rehabilitation facility for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics. Coones' younger brother was a heroin addict, and Coones had spent years trying to save him. "Even though I was into a lot of illicit-drug stuff, I wasn't a user," Coones explains. "But he was, and I would get him off the drugs and clean him up, and then he would go right back to it. It went on like that for seven or eight years."
Local police, however, remained determined to put Coones back in prison, even going so far as to put local informants to work, trying to lure him into drug deals. One Sunday afternoon in 1991, Coones was drinking a beer at a biker bar in Laguna Canyon when a stranger asked if he could buy him a beer. Coones pointed at his own bottle and declined the offer. The following week, the same man showed up and once again offered to buy Coones a drink. Again, Coones, who already had his own, refused, at which point the man began to ask him for advice on how to invest cash from a court settlement he'd just received.
"I've got all this money I want to invest," he began. "What would you do with it?"
"Me, personally, I buy used bikes and sell them—that's my thing," Coones responded. "And real estate; I've never lost money on real estate."
"I'm thinking about something more lucrative," the man said.
"Like what?"
"You know, coke . . ."
Coones didn't let the stranger finish his sentence. "Get the fuck out of here," he commanded, leaning over the table. "I'll beat your ass."
For the next month, Coones watched the same helicopter hovering near his house and following him around town. He knew the cops were suspicious because of the size of his house and the fact he'd just taken a loan against the property for $400,000 cash. "So I'm flush with money and doing cars and bikes and trying to remodel the property and sell it, and all the time, I'm legit," Coones insists. "They didn't know that. They thought I was good for 100 kilos of coke."
Coones knows that number for a fact because it was in the search warrant police used to raid his house one morning in 1991 while he was meeting with a city official about his rehab program. A 60-man task force led by Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents backed by two helicopters surrounded his house and blew open his unlocked front door. They wrestled to the floor two guests who were sleeping in different rooms and had to call a fire truck after one of the explosions set off a small fire. One of the hapless houseguests, who, like Coones himself, was never arrested, later told Coones he overheard police saying that 21 bullets had been discharged inside the house as police went from room to room, rifles at the ready.
As it turned out, the police claimed to have an informant who said Coones had a house safe full of cocaine and machine guns, thus they were expecting armed resistance. "They looked like idiots," Coones says. "There wasn't anything to find. I told them they were years too late. They could justify that on the search warrant in front of any judge because, back in 1982, when I did get arrested there, I did have machine guns in my room. I had quite a collection."
The next time the cops surrounded Coones' house didn't go so well, although the search came up empty for guns and drugs once again. Appropriately enough, the raid took place on D-Day: June 6, 1999. Under cover of darkness early that morning, Coones slipped out of his house in Garden Grove, having long since sold his Laguna mansion. He knew he'd been under surveillance for weeks by FBI agents driving everything from Dodge Intrepids to beat-up Volkswagen buses. Coones drove to KO's house in Orange. He knew his time was running out: The helicopter hovering somewhere nearby told him the feds were closing in on him.
"Man, it's coming down this morning," he said to himself. He told KO to get dressed. It was like a scene out of the film Goodfellas' climax, in which a coked-out Henry Hill becomes increasingly paranoid about the helicopter following him—except Coones wasn't on drugs. As the noise from the helicopter grew louder, he looked out the window and saw a California Highway Patrol car pull up three doors down. Several officers from the multi-agency task force that was hunting him crouched behind the vehicle, while others began to surround the wrong house. Not wanting any neighbors to end up dead, Coones calmly walked out the front door, his hands raised.
Unlike the other defendants, all of whom tried to work out plea deals, Coones refused to talk to the police or even his lawyer, who made the mistake of telling Coones he could get his bail reduced if he talked to the feds. "I had been taught since I was a youngster that you maintain your right to remain silent," Coones says. "It doesn't matter if you're innocent or guilty. You don't talk to them, and that's that, and that's what I did. I never cooperated, never interviewed, and they didn't expect me to cooperate because they knew that wasn't going to happen."
Coones eventually pleaded guilty to a single count of drug conspiracy for providing Ward with 108 pounds of ephedrine, a component of the highly potent methamphetamine known as "ice" that Ward was trafficking. "In actuality, I did have involvement in ephedrine and hooking people up," he acknowledges. "I introduced one party to another, and I never actually had my hands on it, but I was involved in that conspiracy."
After 21 months at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, Coones was sentenced to just more than eight years in federal prison; a jury later convicted Ward, who received a term of life in prison without the possibility of parole, while former prosecutor Kazarian, who was promptly fired by DA Tony Rackauckas, got off with a relatively lenient 33 months and a disbarment that was later reversed; he now works as a defense attorney in Westminster. While Coones admits to knowing Ward, he says he never met Kazarian.
"But according to the police reports, the prosecutors and the papers, I was supposed to be associated with him," he says. "It was so outlandish, and most of it was trumped up. They brought up every expert on the Hells Angels they could find."
Although Coones insists the club had nothing to do with his predicament, his status as a high-ranking Hells Angel turned him into a minor celebrity in the war on drugs while he was behind bars. After his arrest, KO took over Illusion Motorsports, selling motorcycles and other gear to pay Coones' legal bills and to keep the business' various state and local licenses current. To raise cash for Coones to use at the prison commissary, she sold "Free Rusty" T-shirts, and she set up a website to keep friends updated on his case and on which she published occasional essays by Coones about the hypocrisy and ineffectiveness of the drug war. While in prison, Coones took up the guitar and began writing songs, including "Lockdown" and "No Redemption," which he still performs with Attika7.
One of Coones' biggest supporters was fellow bike-builder Jesse James, who had worked with Coones on motorcycles and befriended him years before his arrest. During the four seasons that James appeared on Monster Garage, he wore several different "Free Rusty" T-shirts during taping in a quiet tribute to his friend. Then there was the motorcycle James built for Coones just days before Coones got out of prison. Actually, James gave the bike to KO because he wouldn't be able to do it in person.
"He told me that he and Sandy were leaving for Cabo," KO recalls, referring to James' then-wife Sandra Bullock. "'We won't be here when Rusty comes home, so you have to give him the bike.'" James knew that Coones had lost all his motorcycles to legal bills and would have nothing to ride. "He had tears in his eyes when he handed the keys to me. He said, 'KO, a Hells Angel needs a motorcycle.'"
Just six days before Coones walked out of prison a free man, Rodrigo Requejo was driving his battered Ford Dually truck home from a long day at Twisted Metal, his now-shuttered bike shop, when he took his eyes off the road for a few seconds, fumbling for his cell phone. When he looked up, he'd pulled up close behind a pickup. The then-31-year-old Argentinean immigrant and self-employed bike builder swerved around the vehicle and kept driving, unaware that his maneuver had antagonized its occupants. After exiting, he was sitting at a red light when two angry young men rushed his car and pulled him to the pavement.
What happened next is a blur in Requejo's mind. "They beat the hell out of me, man," he says. "I was in a big fog. I got hit so hard in the head and chest and everything. I thought I had pulled out a knife and scared them away. I didn't have a drop of blood on me." Covered in bruises, Requejo managed to fight off his attackers and retrieve his truck, which had rolled away. It wasn't until he saw the news the following day that he realized he had in fact stabbed both men, who turned out to be twins, and that one of them, Justin Ammann, died from his wounds.
The surviving brother, Jason, told police that Requejo, who was a Hells Angels prospect at the time, had forced them off the road and attacked them, yelling the name of the motorcycle club. Based on that version of events, police arrested Requejo, who was charged with murder and attempted murder, with a special-circumstances enhancement alleging the crimes were carried out for the benefit of the Hells Angels. Because of his status as a club prospect at the time, Requejo refused to give his side of the story to police; he even denied being involved in the fight when he was arrested.
"Who's going to believe me?" he wondered. "I'm a Hells Angels prospect. They are going to hang me for this. Had this happened at another place, where there were no witnesses, I'd be gone."
Indeed, at his arraignment, the judge coolly informed Requejo that, if convicted, he'd be eligible for the death penalty, despite the fact he'd never been arrested for a violent crime. In the end, Requejo was spared by pretrial media coverage. Eyewitnesses who saw what really happened came forward to contest the official story, saying it was the two brothers who started the fight and that Requejo had acted in self-defense.
On Feb. 3, 2005, after more than a month behind bars, prosecutors dropped all charges against Requejo. He had been living with two death sentences hanging over him, given that the Ammann brothers were members of the Orange County Skins, a violent white-supremacist street gang that had green-lighted a hit on Requejo. "I don't have a problem with them now," Requejo says. "But while I was inside, I had to watch out."
One inmate had torn a gang rival in half with an AK47, Requejo recalls. Another had murdered his probation officer; stolen his badge, gun and car; and led police on a freeway chase that ended in a shootout. When the cops caught up with him, they found the probation officer's ears in the man's pocket. "I was locked up with dudes who were nuts—you could see right through them," he says, "but there were dudes who were swearing their innocence up and down, and I could honestly believe a couple of them."
Requejo had first met Coones when he was 18 years old and Coones and another hulking Hells Angel showed up at his dad's motorcycle shop. He ran into him again at a bike run not long after he left jail. Requejo reintroduced himself. The two began talking about bikes, and before long, Requejo had shuttered Twisted Metal and become Coones' business partner in Illusion Motorsports. "We've been going at it since," Requejo says.
There was one hitch in the promising partnership, however. On July 27, 2008, several Hells Angels, including Requejo, were drinking beer at Blackie's By the Sea in Newport Beach when they got into a brawl with members of Phil Aguilar's Set Free Soldiers, an evangelical-Christian bike club (see "He Shall Be Set Free," Nov. 25, 2010). Requejo says he threw the first punch when a friend of one of the Set Free Soldiers "disrespected" one of the Hells Angels at the bar. Requejo told the man to mind his own business. "Fuck you," the man responded.
"For me, one 'fuck you' is one too many," Requejo says. "I wouldn't have cared if the president of the United States was there or 100 cops; if somebody tells me, 'Fuck you,' I am going to punch him in the mouth, and that's exactly what I did."
What happened next is well-known, and the security-video footage has since gone viral on YouTube: A dozen or more massive bikers explode in a blur of fists and flying pool cues before, just as suddenly, both sides withdraw and calmly leave the bar. Although he wasn't arrested, Requejo was already on probation for carrying a knife—he claims it was of legal length—so police charged him with seven felonies, including assault with a deadly weapon. They also raided his house; while officers ransacked his home, Requejo's mother suffered a heart attack and had to be taken to the hospital.
The first thing she did when she recovered was to beg her son to quit the Hells Angels. "I didn't want to quit," he recalls. "These were my friends, but she's my mother, man. If she had died in that hospital, I would have blown my brains out. I couldn't have lived with that on my conscience, her dying over me doing something stupid. So I did what I thought was right at the time."
Following the infamous Blackie's bar fight, Requejo pleaded guilty to one assault charge in return for probation, which is now just weeks from running out, at which point the charge will be expunged from his record. Nowadays, he divides his time between his two daughters, age 7 and 15; the bike shop; and racing the only sidecar bike with a Harley-Davidson engine in it at Costa Mesa Speedway on weekend nights. Not a day goes by when he doesn't regret killing another person or that he doesn't ponder the possibility of things working out differently. "What if I had my seatbelt on and I could have hit the gas before they pulled me out?" he asks. "What if I had locked my doors? The fate of that poor guy—I am never going to live that down. I took somebody's life. I'm going to have to answer to the man upstairs for that someday."
Nevertheless, Requejo is grateful for how well life is going now for both him and Coones. "It's a hard life we both have lived," he says. "At one part in both our lives, we had the great potential to be gone away forever, and I was thinking, 'I could never eat a steak or get a cup of coffee from Starbucks in the morning or lay down with a woman again.' Those things go through your mind."
Coones is also a busy man. Besides his work at the shop, he's often up halfway to dawn practicing with Attika7, who have played venues ranging from the Galaxy Concert Theatre and House of Blues in Anaheim to Irvine Lake. He was recently offered a principal role in a three-part film trilogy that has yet to be formally announced.
Thanks in part to his continued membership in the Hells Angels, police love to keep tabs on his movements. When Coones showed up for a Boys & Girls Club toy run in Santa Ana several weeks ago, police wouldn't let him ride with his club patch on. Coones refused to take it off as a matter of principle.
He doesn't complain about such incidents. "I'm just glad I'm where I'm at now and not having to go through the hard times I had," he says. "It's pretty exciting. We have a lot of things going on these days. We get to create art that rolls. Our work is fun; our play is fun. It's a good life."
Although it has been years since he was a member of the Hells Angels, Requejo says the police haven't forgotten about him, either. "I tell Rusty all the time, 'No matter how well we're doing in life, you always have one foot in the successful life and one foot in a prison cell somewhere,'" he says. "It's a balancing act. You have to put more weight on the good foot than the bad because it's easy to put more weight on the other foot and be gone. It's like you have a sidecar of doom."
Requejo is the first to admit he still has his "wild side." One Christmas Day a few years ago, he was eating brunch with his family at Costa Mesa's now-closed Omelette Parlor when he heard a familiar voice behind him. He walked around the corner and saw a table of police officers, including the one who had previously arrested him for carrying a knife. The cops stopped talking, and the one whose voice Requejo recognized walked up to him, facing him nose to nose.
"So I heard you quit," the cop said, referring to Requejo's resignation from the Hells Angels.
"Yeah, you heard right," Requejo responded.
"So you're done, huh?" the cop continued. "You quit. You're done?"
"Let me tell you something," Requejo answered. "I quit, but I'm not done. I'll never be done."
The cop walked back to his table, and Requejo rejoined his family.
This article appeared in print as "Hell Raisers: For Rusty Coones and Rodrigo Requejo of Illusion Motorsports, life has been one wild ride."
"Man, it's coming down this morning," he said to himself. He told KO to get dressed. It was like a scene out of the film Goodfellas' climax, in which a coked-out Henry Hill becomes increasingly paranoid about the helicopter following him—except Coones wasn't on drugs. As the noise from the helicopter grew louder, he looked out the window and saw a California Highway Patrol car pull up three doors down. Several officers from the multi-agency task force that was hunting him crouched behind the vehicle, while others began to surround the wrong house. Not wanting any neighbors to end up dead, Coones calmly walked out the front door, his hands raised.
Seconds later, just after 6:30 a.m., Coones was arrested in a massive operation targeting what authorities billed as a Hells Angels-tied smuggling scheme that brought untold quantities of methamphetamine from California to Hawaii, much of it stashed inside Harley-Davidson motorcycles, netting profits of $1 million per week. Among the 15 people arrested that day were John Ward, a 31-year-old drug kingpin from Orange who was known in Las Vegas as a flashy whale with a $25,000 Rolex on his wrist and whose fleet included Porches, Mercedeses and Ferraris, and Bryan Kazarian, an ambitious young deputy district attorney whose job was targeting street gangs in Orange County.
Coones eventually pleaded guilty to a single count of drug conspiracy for providing Ward with 108 pounds of ephedrine, a component of the highly potent methamphetamine known as "ice" that Ward was trafficking. "In actuality, I did have involvement in ephedrine and hooking people up," he acknowledges. "I introduced one party to another, and I never actually had my hands on it, but I was involved in that conspiracy."
After 21 months at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, Coones was sentenced to just more than eight years in federal prison; a jury later convicted Ward, who received a term of life in prison without the possibility of parole, while former prosecutor Kazarian, who was promptly fired by DA Tony Rackauckas, got off with a relatively lenient 33 months and a disbarment that was later reversed; he now works as a defense attorney in Westminster. While Coones admits to knowing Ward, he says he never met Kazarian.
"But according to the police reports, the prosecutors and the papers, I was supposed to be associated with him," he says. "It was so outlandish, and most of it was trumped up. They brought up every expert on the Hells Angels they could find."
Although Coones insists the club had nothing to do with his predicament, his status as a high-ranking Hells Angel turned him into a minor celebrity in the war on drugs while he was behind bars. After his arrest, KO took over Illusion Motorsports, selling motorcycles and other gear to pay Coones' legal bills and to keep the business' various state and local licenses current. To raise cash for Coones to use at the prison commissary, she sold "Free Rusty" T-shirts, and she set up a website to keep friends updated on his case and on which she published occasional essays by Coones about the hypocrisy and ineffectiveness of the drug war. While in prison, Coones took up the guitar and began writing songs, including "Lockdown" and "No Redemption," which he still performs with Attika7.
One of Coones' biggest supporters was fellow bike-builder Jesse James, who had worked with Coones on motorcycles and befriended him years before his arrest. During the four seasons that James appeared on Monster Garage, he wore several different "Free Rusty" T-shirts during taping in a quiet tribute to his friend. Then there was the motorcycle James built for Coones just days before Coones got out of prison. Actually, James gave the bike to KO because he wouldn't be able to do it in person.
"He told me that he and Sandy were leaving for Cabo," KO recalls, referring to James' then-wife Sandra Bullock. "'We won't be here when Rusty comes home, so you have to give him the bike.'" James knew that Coones had lost all his motorcycles to legal bills and would have nothing to ride. "He had tears in his eyes when he handed the keys to me. He said, 'KO, a Hells Angel needs a motorcycle.'"
Just six days before Coones walked out of prison a free man, Rodrigo Requejo was driving his battered Ford Dually truck home from a long day at Twisted Metal, his now-shuttered bike shop, when he took his eyes off the road for a few seconds, fumbling for his cell phone. When he looked up, he'd pulled up close behind a pickup. The then-31-year-old Argentinean immigrant and self-employed bike builder swerved around the vehicle and kept driving, unaware that his maneuver had antagonized its occupants. After exiting, he was sitting at a red light when two angry young men rushed his car and pulled him to the pavement.
What happened next is a blur in Requejo's mind. "They beat the hell out of me, man," he says. "I was in a big fog. I got hit so hard in the head and chest and everything. I thought I had pulled out a knife and scared them away. I didn't have a drop of blood on me." Covered in bruises, Requejo managed to fight off his attackers and retrieve his truck, which had rolled away. It wasn't until he saw the news the following day that he realized he had in fact stabbed both men, who turned out to be twins, and that one of them, Justin Ammann, died from his wounds.
The surviving brother, Jason, told police that Requejo, who was a Hells Angels prospect at the time, had forced them off the road and attacked them, yelling the name of the motorcycle club. Based on that version of events, police arrested Requejo, who was charged with murder and attempted murder, with a special-circumstances enhancement alleging the crimes were carried out for the benefit of the Hells Angels. Because of his status as a club prospect at the time, Requejo refused to give his side of the story to police; he even denied being involved in the fight when he was arrested.
"Who's going to believe me?" he wondered. "I'm a Hells Angels prospect. They are going to hang me for this. Had this happened at another place, where there were no witnesses, I'd be gone."
Indeed, at his arraignment, the judge coolly informed Requejo that, if convicted, he'd be eligible for the death penalty, despite the fact he'd never been arrested for a violent crime. In the end, Requejo was spared by pretrial media coverage. Eyewitnesses who saw what really happened came forward to contest the official story, saying it was the two brothers who started the fight and that Requejo had acted in self-defense.
On Feb. 3, 2005, after more than a month behind bars, prosecutors dropped all charges against Requejo. He had been living with two death sentences hanging over him, given that the Ammann brothers were members of the Orange County Skins, a violent white-supremacist street gang that had green-lighted a hit on Requejo. "I don't have a problem with them now," Requejo says. "But while I was inside, I had to watch out."
One inmate had torn a gang rival in half with an AK47, Requejo recalls. Another had murdered his probation officer; stolen his badge, gun and car; and led police on a freeway chase that ended in a shootout. When the cops caught up with him, they found the probation officer's ears in the man's pocket. "I was locked up with dudes who were nuts—you could see right through them," he says, "but there were dudes who were swearing their innocence up and down, and I could honestly believe a couple of them."
Requejo had first met Coones when he was 18 years old and Coones and another hulking Hells Angel showed up at his dad's motorcycle shop. He ran into him again at a bike run not long after he left jail. Requejo reintroduced himself. The two began talking about bikes, and before long, Requejo had shuttered Twisted Metal and become Coones' business partner in Illusion Motorsports. "We've been going at it since," Requejo says.
There was one hitch in the promising partnership, however. On July 27, 2008, several Hells Angels, including Requejo, were drinking beer at Blackie's By the Sea in Newport Beach when they got into a brawl with members of Phil Aguilar's Set Free Soldiers, an evangelical-Christian bike club (see "He Shall Be Set Free," Nov. 25, 2010). Requejo says he threw the first punch when a friend of one of the Set Free Soldiers "disrespected" one of the Hells Angels at the bar. Requejo told the man to mind his own business. "Fuck you," the man responded.
"For me, one 'fuck you' is one too many," Requejo says. "I wouldn't have cared if the president of the United States was there or 100 cops; if somebody tells me, 'Fuck you,' I am going to punch him in the mouth, and that's exactly what I did."
What happened next is well-known, and the security-video footage has since gone viral on YouTube: A dozen or more massive bikers explode in a blur of fists and flying pool cues before, just as suddenly, both sides withdraw and calmly leave the bar. Although he wasn't arrested, Requejo was already on probation for carrying a knife—he claims it was of legal length—so police charged him with seven felonies, including assault with a deadly weapon. They also raided his house; while officers ransacked his home, Requejo's mother suffered a heart attack and had to be taken to the hospital.
The first thing she did when she recovered was to beg her son to quit the Hells Angels. "I didn't want to quit," he recalls. "These were my friends, but she's my mother, man. If she had died in that hospital, I would have blown my brains out. I couldn't have lived with that on my conscience, her dying over me doing something stupid. So I did what I thought was right at the time."
Following the infamous Blackie's bar fight, Requejo pleaded guilty to one assault charge in return for probation, which is now just weeks from running out, at which point the charge will be expunged from his record. Nowadays, he divides his time between his two daughters, age 7 and 15; the bike shop; and racing the only sidecar bike with a Harley-Davidson engine in it at Costa Mesa Speedway on weekend nights. Not a day goes by when he doesn't regret killing another person or that he doesn't ponder the possibility of things working out differently. "What if I had my seatbelt on and I could have hit the gas before they pulled me out?" he asks. "What if I had locked my doors? The fate of that poor guy—I am never going to live that down. I took somebody's life. I'm going to have to answer to the man upstairs for that someday."
Nevertheless, Requejo is grateful for how well life is going now for both him and Coones. "It's a hard life we both have lived," he says. "At one part in both our lives, we had the great potential to be gone away forever, and I was thinking, 'I could never eat a steak or get a cup of coffee from Starbucks in the morning or lay down with a woman again.' Those things go through your mind."
Coones is also a busy man. Besides his work at the shop, he's often up halfway to dawn practicing with Attika7, who have played venues ranging from the Galaxy Concert Theatre and House of Blues in Anaheim to Irvine Lake. He was recently offered a principal role in a three-part film trilogy that has yet to be formally announced.
Thanks in part to his continued membership in the Hells Angels, police love to keep tabs on his movements. When Coones showed up for a Boys & Girls Club toy run in Santa Ana several weeks ago, police wouldn't let him ride with his club patch on. Coones refused to take it off as a matter of principle.
He doesn't complain about such incidents. "I'm just glad I'm where I'm at now and not having to go through the hard times I had," he says. "It's pretty exciting. We have a lot of things going on these days. We get to create art that rolls. Our work is fun; our play is fun. It's a good life."
Although it has been years since he was a member of the Hells Angels, Requejo says the police haven't forgotten about him, either. "I tell Rusty all the time, 'No matter how well we're doing in life, you always have one foot in the successful life and one foot in a prison cell somewhere,'" he says. "It's a balancing act. You have to put more weight on the good foot than the bad because it's easy to put more weight on the other foot and be gone. It's like you have a sidecar of doom."
Requejo is the first to admit he still has his "wild side." One Christmas Day a few years ago, he was eating brunch with his family at Costa Mesa's now-closed Omelette Parlor when he heard a familiar voice behind him. He walked around the corner and saw a table of police officers, including the one who had previously arrested him for carrying a knife. The cops stopped talking, and the one whose voice Requejo recognized walked up to him, facing him nose to nose.
"So I heard you quit," the cop said, referring to Requejo's resignation from the Hells Angels.
"Yeah, you heard right," Requejo responded.
"So you're done, huh?" the cop continued. "You quit. You're done?"
"Let me tell you something," Requejo answered. "I quit, but I'm not done. I'll never be done."
The cop walked back to his table, and Requejo rejoined his family.
This article appeared in print as "Hell Raisers: For Rusty Coones and Rodrigo Requejo of Illusion Motorsports, life has been one wild ride."
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Final Solution For Bikers
OFF THE WIRE
agingrebel.com
agingrebel.com
Yesterday the German Bundestag passed
legislation that will allow Germany’s federal government to prosecute
and pursue forfeiture actions against motorcycle clubs – Germany calls
them rockergrupen. The new legislation probably signals a refinement in the German war on bikers.
The Federal Republic of Germany is
comprised of 16 states. Since 1871, when Germany became a
politically unified nation rather than a culturally unified but
politically divided nation, police power has traditionally been reserved
to the various German states. The one exception was the Nazi era, when
police power was centralized. After Germany was reunified in 1990, most
police power continued to reside with the states. The duties of federal
police in Germany have been largely limited to securing the country’s
borders. And, since the advent of the European Union, which effectively
eliminated national borders in Europe, the federal police have been
mostly delegated to policing airports and trains.
In the United States investigations and
prosecutions of motorcycle clubs are always directed by the Department
of Justice and by federal police forces like the ATF, the FBI, the DEA
and the Department of Homeland Security.
National Menace
But in Germany, for example, the German
state of Berlin banned wearing the Hells Angels patch in May 2014; the
German state of North Rhine-Westphalia banned insignia associated with
both the Hells Angels and the Bandidos a couple of months later; and an
incident in which two Mongols were allegedly shot by Hells Angels in
Hamburg last December was investigated by police there.
A German appeals court recently
overturned the German patch bans. The new national legislation was
introduced after prosecutors in Hamburg dropped their appeal of that
decision.
Germany has seen motorcycle clubs as a
national menace for more than three decades but has been unable to
eliminate them. As Wolfgang Dick, a reporter for German broadcaster Deutsche Welle,
put it four years ago: “The main problem is that many members of
motorcycle gangs – mostly men aged 40 to 50 with a good education – have
regular jobs. They live in inconspicuous small houses with neat
gardens. They are well connected and have a strict, self-imposed code of
honor.”
“Because of that, we don’t receive any
testimony,” anti-biker zealot Frank Schleiden told the television
reporter. “Aggrieved gang members never betray the perpetrators. The
gangs shut themselves off completely and sort things out between
themselves.”
But Federal German Police, instigated by
American federal police, have been chomping at the bit to get in on the
action. After the 2014 Berlin ban, André Schulz, who is the director of
Germany’s Association of Criminal Police, told Speigel “that a
nationwide phenomenon like biker gangs…needs to be…centrally
investigated.” Today Germany is a step closer to doing that.
Friday, November 11, 2016
“Donald Trump’s Contract With The American Voter: My 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again.”
OFF THE WIRE
Six measures to clean up the
corruption and special interest
collusion in Washington, DC:
★
FIRST
, propose a constitutional amendment to
impose term limits on all members of Congress.
★
SECOND
, a hiring freeze on all federal employees
to reduce the federal workforce through attrition
(exempting military, public safety, and public health).
★
THIRD
, a requirement that for every new federal regulation,
two existing regulations must be eliminated.
★
FOURTH
, a fi ve-year ban on White House and
Congressional offi cials becoming lobbyists after they
leave government service.
★
FIFTH
, a lifetime ban on White House offi cials lobbying
on behalf of a foreign government.
★
SIXTH
, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising
money for American elections.
Seven actions to protect
American workers:
★
FIRST
, I will announce my intention to renegotiate
NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205.
★
SECOND
, I will announce our withdrawal from the
Trans-Pacifi c Partnership.
★
THIRD
, I will direct the Secretary of the Treasury to label
China a currency manipulator.
★
FOURTH
, I will direct the Secretary of
Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to
identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly
impact American workers and direct them to
use every tool under American and international
law to end those abuses immediately.
★
FIFTH
, I will lift the restrictions on the
production of
$50 trillion dollars’ worth of
job-producing American energy
reserves,
including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.
★
SIXTH
, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital
energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline,
to move forward.
★
SEVENTH
, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate
change programs and use the money to fi x America’s
water and environmental infrastructure.
Five actions to restore security
and the constitutional rule of law:
★
FIRST
, cancel every unconstitutional executive action,
memorandum and order issued by President Obama.
★
SECOND
, begin the process of selecting a replacement
for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list,
who will uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution.
★
THIRD
, cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities.
★
FOURTH
, begin removing the more than two million
criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel
visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back.
★
FIFTH
, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions
where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people
coming into our country will be considered “extreme vetting.”
I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures
and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:
Middle Class Tax Relief and
Simplification Act
An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year
and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive
tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade
reform, regulatory relief and lifting the restrictions on
American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the
middle class. A middle-class family with two children will get
a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced
from seven to three, and tax forms will likewise be greatly
simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35%
to 15%, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate
money overseas can now be brought back at a 10% rate.
End the Offshoring Act
Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off
their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship
their products back to the U.S. tax-free.
American Energy and
Infrastructure Act
Leverages public-private partnerships, and private
investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in
infrastructure investment over ten years. It is revenue neutral.
School Choice and Education
Opportunity Act
Redirects education dollars to give parents the right to send
their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or
home school of their choice. Ends Common Core and brings
education supervision to local communities. It expands
vocational and technical education, and makes two- and four-
year college more affordable.
Repeal and Replace
Obamacare Act
Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings
Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across
state lines and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms
will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are
over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want
to speed the approval of life-saving medications.
Affordable Childcare and
Eldercare Act
Allows Americans to deduct childcare and eldercare
from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-site
childcare services and creates tax-free dependent care
savings accounts for both young and elderly dependents,
with matching contributions for low-income families.
End Illegal Immigration Act
Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern
border with the full understanding that the country of
Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost
of such wall; establishes a two-year mandatory minimum
federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after
a previous deportation, and a five-year mandatory minimum
federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering for those
with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions
or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to
enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs
are offered to American workers first.
Restoring Community Safety Act
Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating
a task force on violent crime and increasing funding for
programs that train and assist local police; increases
resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal
prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent
offenders behind bars.
Restoring National Security Act
Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester
and expanding military investment; provides veterans
with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend
the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital
infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening
procedures for immigration to ensure those who are
admitted to our country support our people and our values.
Clean Up Corruption in
Washington Act
Enacts new ethics reforms to drain the swamp and reduce
the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.
I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures
and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:
On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity
to our economy, security to our communities and honesty to our government.
This is my pledge to you.
And if we follow these steps, we will once more have a government of, by and for the people..
Six measures to clean up the
corruption and special interest
collusion in Washington, DC:
★
FIRST
, propose a constitutional amendment to
impose term limits on all members of Congress.
★
SECOND
, a hiring freeze on all federal employees
to reduce the federal workforce through attrition
(exempting military, public safety, and public health).
★
THIRD
, a requirement that for every new federal regulation,
two existing regulations must be eliminated.
★
FOURTH
, a fi ve-year ban on White House and
Congressional offi cials becoming lobbyists after they
leave government service.
★
FIFTH
, a lifetime ban on White House offi cials lobbying
on behalf of a foreign government.
★
SIXTH
, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising
money for American elections.
Seven actions to protect
American workers:
★
FIRST
, I will announce my intention to renegotiate
NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205.
★
SECOND
, I will announce our withdrawal from the
Trans-Pacifi c Partnership.
★
THIRD
, I will direct the Secretary of the Treasury to label
China a currency manipulator.
★
FOURTH
, I will direct the Secretary of
Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to
identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly
impact American workers and direct them to
use every tool under American and international
law to end those abuses immediately.
★
FIFTH
, I will lift the restrictions on the
production of
$50 trillion dollars’ worth of
job-producing American energy
reserves,
including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.
★
SIXTH
, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital
energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline,
to move forward.
★
SEVENTH
, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate
change programs and use the money to fi x America’s
water and environmental infrastructure.
Five actions to restore security
and the constitutional rule of law:
★
FIRST
, cancel every unconstitutional executive action,
memorandum and order issued by President Obama.
★
SECOND
, begin the process of selecting a replacement
for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list,
who will uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution.
★
THIRD
, cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities.
★
FOURTH
, begin removing the more than two million
criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel
visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back.
★
FIFTH
, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions
where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people
coming into our country will be considered “extreme vetting.”
I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures
and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:
Middle Class Tax Relief and
Simplification Act
An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year
and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive
tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade
reform, regulatory relief and lifting the restrictions on
American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the
middle class. A middle-class family with two children will get
a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced
from seven to three, and tax forms will likewise be greatly
simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35%
to 15%, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate
money overseas can now be brought back at a 10% rate.
End the Offshoring Act
Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off
their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship
their products back to the U.S. tax-free.
American Energy and
Infrastructure Act
Leverages public-private partnerships, and private
investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in
infrastructure investment over ten years. It is revenue neutral.
School Choice and Education
Opportunity Act
Redirects education dollars to give parents the right to send
their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or
home school of their choice. Ends Common Core and brings
education supervision to local communities. It expands
vocational and technical education, and makes two- and four-
year college more affordable.
Repeal and Replace
Obamacare Act
Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings
Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across
state lines and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms
will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are
over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want
to speed the approval of life-saving medications.
Affordable Childcare and
Eldercare Act
Allows Americans to deduct childcare and eldercare
from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-site
childcare services and creates tax-free dependent care
savings accounts for both young and elderly dependents,
with matching contributions for low-income families.
End Illegal Immigration Act
Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern
border with the full understanding that the country of
Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost
of such wall; establishes a two-year mandatory minimum
federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after
a previous deportation, and a five-year mandatory minimum
federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering for those
with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions
or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to
enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs
are offered to American workers first.
Restoring Community Safety Act
Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating
a task force on violent crime and increasing funding for
programs that train and assist local police; increases
resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal
prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent
offenders behind bars.
Restoring National Security Act
Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester
and expanding military investment; provides veterans
with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend
the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital
infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening
procedures for immigration to ensure those who are
admitted to our country support our people and our values.
Clean Up Corruption in
Washington Act
Enacts new ethics reforms to drain the swamp and reduce
the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.
I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures
and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:
On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity
to our economy, security to our communities and honesty to our government.
This is my pledge to you.
And if we follow these steps, we will once more have a government of, by and for the people..
I wil
After Motorcycles
OFF THE WIRE
agingrebel.com
agingrebel.com
Best figures indicate that last year, 5010 motorcyclists died on American roads.
That represented about 13 percent of all
traffic deaths; which was a slight percentage decrease over the
previous two years when motorcycle fatalities amounted to about 14
percent of all traffic deaths.
According to the federal Fatality
Analysis Reporting System 424 more bikers died last year than in 2014.
Exact statistics are difficult to find but the National Safety Council
loudly thinks that 38.300 people died on the roads last year and “4.4
million were seriously injured.” In 2002 43.500 people died on the roads
and 3,270 of them were motorcyclists. And, at the risk of overloading
readers with numbers, it might lend context to know that in 1990, 44,599
people died in highway accidents and 3,244 of them were sitting on
motorcycles.
All of that, undeniably, represents far
too many buckets of blood. So yesterday a coalition of concerned
bureaucracies including the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Motor
Carrier Safety Administration and the National Safety Council announced
the launching of a hot air balloon called the “Road to Zero Initiative”
which proposes to end all road fatalities within 30 years.
Creamy Filling
From far off, the idea tastes great. The
devil is in the smooth, creamy filling. As Wayne Allard, who is vice
president of government relations for the American Motorcyclist
Association, noticed in a press release yesterday, “During the
announcement of this major initiative, no mention was made of
motorcycles or motorcyclists, even though the safety of other vulnerable
road users – including pedestrians, bicyclists, even joggers – was
specifically highlighted.”
Wonder why? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone? Raise your hands when you get it.
Don’t panic if you are quick. So far
this initiative only has $3 million with which to experiment. Initially,
your federal government hopes to increase seat belt use, install rumble
strips, develop more effective ways to spy on truck drivers and keep
them from speeding. The Road to Zero Initiative will also implement
“behavior change campaigns” and support “data driven enforcement.”
The strategies enclosed in quotes may need some explanation.Behavior Change Campaign
A behavior change campaign is a
propaganda blitz that is something more than standard public service
announcements. Like, imagine a commercial that starts with sunny film
footage of a Bobo, a member of the bohemian bourgeoisie –
Harley-Davidson’s emerging core demographic – sedately riding a Harley
Street 500 to the grocery store while a voice over announcer intones:
“Brad Brandywine, a beloved husband, father, raconteur and
philanthropist should have lived!”
Next, a stripper in a darkened club explains: “He helped me pay off my student loans.”
Then several, small, multicultural children weep: “He bought us a dog.”
After a quick edit, viewers see a very angry pitbull going: “Snarl. Muff! Fuff! Bark! Bark!”
That is quickly followed by a medium
wide shot of many grieving people intercut with a lock off of a mangled
Harley-Davidson Street 500 spotted with either red paint or blood: “But
he had to get on that damn motorcycle!”
Concerned policemen: “Motorcycle!”
Doctor: “Bad!”
Then quick cuts of many, pretty, stupid,
television newz casters saying:
“motorcycle…bad…motorcycle…risk…motorcycle…stupid risk…motorcycle…common
sense…motorcycle.”
Imagine you, your woman, your children,
your dog and your elderly parents all seeing that 400 times a day. A
behavior change campaign bombards everybody with a television, a
computer, a tablet or a smart phone with many messages like that.
DDACTS
Data driven enforcement would be the
bastard child of “Data-Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety
(DDACTS)” which “is a law enforcement operational model supported by a
partnership among the Department of Transportation’s National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration and two agencies of the Department of
Justice: the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the National Institute of
Justice.”
“Using geo-mapping to identify “hot
spots” – areas of high incidence of crimes and crashes – DDACTS uses
targeted traffic enforcement strategies that play two roles in fighting
crime and reducing crashes and traffic violations. The model responds to
the competing demands for police services that law enforcement
executives face every day.”
The government boilerplate seems to be
an oblique way of saying “more speed traps,” “more sobriety checkpoints
near entertainment districts,” and “more courtesy motorcycle safety
inspections.” It might mean more business for the companies that make,
install and monitor traffic enforcement cameras.
HAVs
The heart of the plan to end all traffic
deaths is the proliferation of self driving cars and trucks. Towards
the goal of keeping everything the government does as obtuse as
possible, the U.S. Department of Transportation calls them “Highly
Automated Vehicles” or “HAVs.”
HAVs, get used to hearing that, will
eliminate crashes caused by fallible humans who drink and drive, exceed
the posted speed limit, talk on the phone and glance at the Google map
on the little television screen built into their dashboard. Don’t blame
Google. Google is working on its own autonomous vehicle. Blame human
beings.
The AMA seems to be the only
organization in America which has questions about this inevitable march
of progress that will transform America into a risk-free Borg hive.
AMA
In yesterday’s testy press release, the
AMA’s Allard said, “The questions we have for the coalition and the DOT
are ‘Was the exclusion of motorcycles intentional?’ and ‘Is a ban on
motorcycles part of the plan to get to zero road deaths? It is hard to
imagine how you could eliminate all human decision making from the
operation of a vehicle, especially a motorcycle. If autonomous
motorcycles were ever developed, no one would ride them. We also are
particularly concerned that highly automated vehicles are not being
developed in a manner that takes into account the detection of
motorcycles.”
“Motorcyclists should have been included
in this project from the beginning, either through direct interaction
with the AMA or through the Motorcycle Advisory Council,” the AMA
groused. “Let’s not let another moment slip by without considering the
safety of this important segment of road users and taking steps to
secure the future of this popular form of transportation.”
Virtually all national print-news
outlets covered the announcement of the “Road to Zero Initiative.” None
of them seemed to care what motorcyclists thought about it. It wasn’t
much of a TV story. At least not yet. Not until it’s time to introduce
America to poor Brad Brandywine.
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Trump Day Two
OFF THE WIRE
Trump vows to open the spigots on the money pipes.
During his campaign for President,
Donald John Trump actively sought the support of outlaw bikers and, much
more importantly, the support of people who identify to some extent
with outlaw bikers, which at last glance amounted to about 59,704,886 of
your fellow Americans.
As we previously remarked, Nothing
better represents the traditional American values of independence,
self-sufficiency, courage, anti-authoritarianism, liberty, blood lust
and the unhindered pursuit of putting food in your baby girl’s belly by
any goddamn means necessary than a biker on a V-Twin motorcycle –
preferably a biker on a Harley with forward controls and ape hanger
handlebars. And bare arms. And a little, American flag decal. And a
Bowie knife. And a couple of tattoos.”
Love Bikers
Last April, a noisy group called Bikers
for Trump appeared and then sometime during the Republican Convention in
Cleveland, they disappeared like Brigadoon.
In May, Trump spoke at the annual
Rolling Thunder rally in Washington,. “Look at all these bikers,” Trump
said, standing in front of a statue of the President who presided over
the nation’s most horrific war, a stone’s throw from the sunken, black
chevron which commemorates the lost and the haunted of a war Trump used
his father’s wealth to avoid. “Do we love the bikers? Yes. We love the
bikers.”
On August 13, Ralph Hubert “Sonny”
Barger, the grey eminence of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club and the
current incarnation of Daniel Boone, Hawkeye and Wyatt Earp, wrote “I
for one, am voting for Trump, because it’s time to change.”
For the last two days very many
Americans who ride motorcycles and who do not ride motorcycles but who
feel alienated from and picked on by their government and its agents and
who feel misunderstood by and slandered by the American media
establishment have basked in Trump’s victory as if it was their own. But
it may not be.
Restoring Community Safety
Trump relied through most of the
campaign on his blunt and iconoclastic style which was soaked with
attitude and dry of specifics. Starting yesterday with a report by National Public Radio
that has been copied by a thousand or so news outlets so far, reporters
have been wondering what Trump might accomplish in his first hundred
days. All of the reports have relied on a speech Trump gave about two
weeks ago in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and a document released at the
same time titled “Donald Trump’s Contract With The American Voter: My 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again.”
Among the ten pieces of legislation
President Trump intends to “introduce…and fight for.” Is the “Restoring
Community Safety Act (which) reduces surging crime, drugs and violence
by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for
programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for
federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle
criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.”
Nobody knows what that means yet because
the “Restoring Community Safety Act” doesn’t appear to have actually
been written yet. But it is possible to make some educated guesses.
Police Militarization
First off, Trump seems likely to reverse the half-hearted limits on police militar-ization President Obama suggested last June.
Many readers here are already aware of the concept of extrajudicial punishment by way of Swat raid in service of an indicia warrant issued by a divorce judge under exigent circumstances in the middle of the night.
Radley Balko of The Washington Post has covered the subject extensively and even published a book titled The Rise Of The Warrior Cop
in 2013. Balko wondered: “How did we get here? How did we evolve from a
country whose founding statesmen were adamant about the dangers of
armed, standing government forces – a country that enshrined the Fourth
Amendment in the Bill of Rights and revered and protected the age-old
notion that the home is a place of privacy and sanctuary – to a country
where it has become acceptable for armed government agents dressed in
battle garb to storm private homes in the middle of the night – not to
apprehend violent fugitives or thwart terrorist attacks, but to enforce
laws against nonviolent, consensual activities.”
In 2014 the American Civil Liberties Union issued a report called War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing.
The ACLU protested: “Across the country, heavily armed Special Weapons
and Tactics teams are forcing their way into people’s homes in the
middle of the night, often deploying explosive devices such as flashbang
grenades to temporarily blind and deafen residents, simply to serve a
search warrant on the suspicion that someone may be in possession of a
small amount of drugs. Neighborhoods are not war zones, and our police
officers should not be treating us like wartime enemies.”
Police militarization has been going on
for a quarter century. It is almost entirely funded by the federal
government, and the limits Obama enforced seemed modest. No tanks. No
artillery. No heavy machine guns larger than .50 caliber. But police
forces across the country immediately protested being “handcuffed” in
the great crusade against reefer and dissent.
Obama saw police militarization are a
matter that resulted from giving police military weapons. The problem is
that ship has sailed. Police militarization is now a mindset. Whether
Trump embraces that mindset or not remains to be seen. But yesterday the
website PoliceOne.com noticed:
“Trump has gone out of his way to demonstrate support for law
enforcement throughout his presidential campaign. He has been
photographed and videotaped on numerous occasions shaking hands with
officers assigned to his protection detail. Officers have, in turn,
overwhelmingly thrown their support to the president-elect, with the
National FOP and myriad other police organizations endorsing the
candidate in the run-up to Election Day.”
So there is some possibility that Trump and the warrior cops might be on the same wavelength.
Money
Secondly, based on Trump’s rhetoric and the way federal police bureaucracies work, expect a new offensive against motorcycle clubs and other fringe groups like militias and wacky religions.
Federal crime fighting works exactly
opposite of how most people think it works. First the federal cops get
the money and then they invent a way to justify getting more. The Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives used to police fireworks,
untaxed cigarettes and moonshine. But the Bureau found it could get
millions more by promising to fight “violent motorcycle gangs.” Most
readers here know what happened next – expensive undercover operations.
Motorcycle clubs were easy to infiltrate because they were mostly based
on the idea of brotherhood. They were easy to criminalize because the
undercover agents always offer to buy drugs and guns for ridiculous
prices. So men literally go to gun stores to buy guns to illegally sell
to an undercover agent for twice the price because it is easy money. And
then they go to prison. And the ATF brags about its numbers.
The classic scam is the “guerilla street
theater” drug deal. Men who need money are offered $1,000 by a trusted
friend to provide a couple hours of “security” at some sort of meeting.
They go to a desert airstrip. They are handed guns and bullet proof
vests. A light plane flies in loaded with cocaine. While they watch
their trusted friend unloads the cocaine and hands the “drug dealer” a
suitcase of cash. They take the money and live and let live. Then the
trusted friend turn out to be an undercover agent who has been paid
$200,000 a year for years to ingratiate himself to his targets. He has
handlers and a chase team. The plane is a government plane. The cash is
government cash, The cocaine is government cocaine. The government
spends $60 million to indict, incarcerate, try and incarcerate again
something like ten guys. Everybody gets paid – the informants, the chase
team, the analysts, the Marshals, the prison guards, the judges, the
guys who clean the bathrooms at the palatial federal courthouse.
The root of this official evil is enormous amounts of money to fight contrived crimes.Trump vows to open the spigots on the money pipes.
John W. Terry
Finally, Trump is a great believer in
something called “Stop and Frisk” which, in practice, means authorizing
police to search anybody in public at any time for any reason.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal
on September 27, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who will probably be the next
Attorney General, wrote: “Stop and frisk is based on an 8-1 decision of
the Supreme Court, Terry v. Ohio. That ruling hasn’t been
overturned or even modified by the court since it was handed down in
1968. Stop and frisk is constitutional and the law of the land. The
majority opinion, written by then-Chief Justice Earl Warren, approved
the constitutionality of stopping a suspect if the police officer has a
reasonable suspicion that a person has committed, or was about to
commit, a crime. If the officer also has a reasonable suspicion the
person is armed, he can conduct a pat-down—that is, a frisk—of a
person’s outer clothing.”
The important words in this quote are “Stop and frisk is based on;” as the rocket ship is based on the hot air balloon.
These meet and greets used to be called
Terry stops and the idea behind them was that if a police detective
investigating a crime reasonably feared that the person he was
questioning was armed, he could cursorily pat that suspect’s outer
clothing to reassure himself that the suspect wasn’t about to shoot or
stab him. A policeman’s reasonable fear of harm was always the rationale
for this exception to the Fourth Amendment. Two years before John W.
Terry lost his final appeal, in a case titled Schmerber v. California,
Justice William Brennan had written, “The overriding function of the
Fourth Amendment is to protect personal privacy and dignity against
unwarranted intrusion by the State.”
Trump’s comprehension of Stop and Frisk
is basic – he seems to interpret it as a police right and he argued on
its behalf during the first Presidential Debate. The practice became
part of regular policing in New York City until it was discouraged by a
federal judge. Trump calls her “a very against-police judge.”
Stop And Frisk
The judge was Shira Scheindlin. The class action case was titled Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al.
Scheindlin ruled that the way New York conducted Terry stops was
unconstitutional. She wrote that the city had: “received both actual and
constructive notice since at least 1999 of widespread Fourth Amendment
violations occurring as a result of the NYPD’s stop and frisk practices.
Despite this notice, they deliberately maintained and even escalated
policies and practices that predictably resulted in even more widespread
Fourth Amendment violations…. The NYPD has repeatedly turned a blind
eye to clear evidence of unconstitutional stops and frisks.”
New York cops did not search people they
were interrogating to protect themselves. In New York, cops searched
for loose joints. The most common reason for initiating a search was
“furtive movement.”
In 2011, New York police stopped and
searched about 686,000 people. About 0.13 percent of them were found to
be in possession of a gun – which according to the Terry
decision, is the whole point of the search. Fifteen percent were found
to be in possession of marijuana. Forty-seven thousand women were
stopped and searched. Fifty-nine of them were found to be carrying a
weapon but the stops resulted in about 3,900 arrests of women for other
violations of the law.
Stop and Frisk as a police tactic has
spread throughout the nation. It has become a way to interrogate people
without cause, record their personal data and feed it into the
supercomputers of the fusion centers network. Police in Florida have
been accused of “Stop and Spit,” which uses the Terry exception to collect DNA from people the police decide to stop.
Chicago
Trump thinks Stop And Frisk will bring
down the murder rate in Chicago, for example. Through August, there were
474 murders in Chicago and an additional 2,358 people were shot but
survived. And the city already stops and frisks people in compliance
with the Terry decision. But Trump thinks Chicago police should be encouraged to be more aggressive. In an interview with Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy in September Trump said:
(Police Commissioner of the City of New
York) “Ray Kelly did a great job, and New York was not in a Chicago
situation, but it was really in trouble. It was in bad shape,
crime-wise. And with all the shootings and everything in it, it really,
they – Rudy Giuliani did a great job as mayor, and they really
straightened things out with stop and frisk, and it was used further by
the next mayor, Bloomberg. Now, they just – recently, not so recently,
but fairly recently they stopped it. But stop and frisk worked. We had
tremendous shootings, numbers of shootings. Now Chicago is out of
control. I was really referring to Chicago with stop and frisk. They
asked me about Chicago and I was talking about stop and frisk for
Chicago, where you had 3,000 shootings so far. Three thousand from
January 1. Obviously you can’t let the system go the way it’s going, but
I suggested stop and frisk and some people think that’s a great idea
and some people probably don’t like it, but when you have 3,000 people
shot and so many people dying, it’s worse than some of the places we’re
hearing about like Afghanistan, you know, the war-torn nations. It’s
more dangerous.”
“I think Chicago needs stop and frisk.
People can criticize me for that or people can say whatever they want,
but they asked me about Chicago and I think stop and frisk with good,
strong law and order, but you have to do something, can’t continue the
way it’s going.”
“How it’s not being used in Chicago,” in compliance with Terry v. Ohio,
“ is – to be honest with you, it’s quite unbelievable, and you know the
police, the local police, they know who has a gun who shouldn’t be
having a gun. They understand that.”
