Governor Christie Falsely Claims Nurse He Has Illegally Detained Is Sick

The NY Times details just how bad things have gotten in the first quarantine of the vaunted new Christie/Cuomo Ebola protocol:

A nurse who was being quarantined at a New Jersey hospital after working with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone criticized her treatment on Saturday as an overreaction after an initial test found that she did not have the virus.

...

She described being held in isolation for about seven hours at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday, left alone for long stretches and given only a granola bar when she said she was hungry.

Ms. Hickox, 33, was placed in quarantine under a new policy announced on Friday by the governors of New York and New Jersey. All people entering the United States through Newark Liberty and Kennedy Airports will now be quarantined for 21 days if they had direct contact with Ebola patients in Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone, even if they show no symptoms of infection.

On Friday night, New Jersey health officials said the nurse had developed a fever after arriving, but on Saturday, they said her blood had tested negative for Ebola. Additional tests will be conducted.

Ms. Hickox disputed that she had had a fever. She wrote that at the airport, a forehead scanner showed her temperature to be 101, but that came after four hours during which she had not been allowed to leave.

“My cheeks were flushed, I was upset at being held with no explanation,” she wrote. “The female officer looked smug. ‘You have a fever now,’ she said.”

She was eventually escorted by eight police cars to University Hospital in Newark and taken to a tent outside the building. An oral thermometer showed her temperature to be 98, she wrote.

She added that the doctor felt her neck and rechecked the temperature. “ ‘There’s no way you have a fever,’ he said. ‘Your face is just flushed.’ ”

Her complaints served as a broadside against the new quarantine policy, which goes further than recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Governor Christie isn't in New Jersey - he's in Iowa, running for freaking president.

But he claims Ms. Hickox needs to held because she is "ill":

Asked about the nurse’s essay while visiting Iowa, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said, “My heart goes out to her because she’s someone who has been trying to help others and is obviously ill.”

“I’m sorry if in any way she was inconvenienced but inconvenience that could occur from having folks that are symptomatic and ill out amongst the public is a much, much greater concern of mine,” he continued. “I hope she recovers quickly, and we’re going to do everything we can in New Jersey and in our public health system to make sure that she does.” 

In a telephone interview on Saturday night, Ms. Hickox’s father, Leon Hickox, said that his daughter “is not ill in any way.”

Folks, this is scary stuff - the governors of New York and New Jersey have decided they can illegally detain travelers who they believe have had contact with Ebola patients whether these travelers show any symptoms of having the virus or not, then lie about their condition when called to account by the press.

Ms. Hickox needs to challenge Christie in court:

If Ms. Hickox was asymptomatic, said Udi Ofer, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, he would have serious questions about the legality of her quarantine.

“Mandatory quarantine of people exhibiting no symptoms and when not medically necessary raises serious constitutional concerns about the state abusing its police powers,” Mr. Ofer said.

Authoritarians like Christie and Cuomo love crises like Ebola because they get to expand their powers exponentially from what they were before, all in the cause of keeping the public "safe."

Make no mistake, that's what's going on here.

The governors and of New York and New Jersey have just declared they have the right to illegally detain travelers through Port Authority airports.

You can bet if this outrageous expansion of power is not challenged, governors in the future will use it to detain all sorts of people who have nothing to do with Ebola or Ebola patients, all in the name of keeping the public "safe."

If we learned anything after 9/11, the Patriot Act and the Iraq war, it's that all sorts of constitutional rights go away in the name of "public safety."

CIA Agents Joined NYPD In Doing Domestic Surveillance

Not only does Bloomberg have his own army, he has his own spy agency too:

WASHINGTON — Four Central Intelligence Agency officers were embedded with the New York Police Department in the decade after Sept. 11, 2001, including one official who helped conduct surveillance operations in the United States, according to a newly disclosed C.I.A. inspector general’s report. 

That officer believed there were “no limitations” on his activities, the report said, because he was on an unpaid leave of absence, and thus exempt from the prohibition against domestic spying by members of the C.I.A. 

Another embedded C.I.A. analyst — who was on its payroll — said he was given “unfiltered” police reports that included information unrelated to foreign intelligence, the C.I.A. report said. 

The once-classified review, completed by the C.I.A. inspector general in December 2011, found that the four agency analysts — more than had previously been known — were assigned at various times to “provide direct assistance” to the local police. The report also raised a series of concerns about the relationship between the two organizations. 

The C.I.A. inspector general, David B. Buckley, found that the collaboration was fraught with “irregular personnel practices,” that it lacked “formal documentation in some important instances,” and that “there was inadequate direction and control” by agency supervisors. 

“While negative public perception is to be expected from the revelation of the agency’s close and direct collaboration with any local domestic police department, a perception that the agency has exceeded its authorities diminishes the trust placed in the organization,” Mr. Buckley wrote in a cover memo to David H. Petraeus, then the C.I.A. director.

Just another example of how we now live in a fascist police state where they're watching everything and spying on everybody.

Remember when the CIA wasn't supposed to operate domestically?

Oh, yeah - I remember.

That was back in the day.

 A day that is no more.

Cops Arrest NYC Social Worker For Criticizing Stop-And-Frisk

This is Ray Kelly's legacy:

The NYPD’s stop and frisk policy is under attack — and so is talking about it, a new lawsuit claims.

A NYC social worker was cuffed and tossed in jail for criticizing the under-siege crime-fighting program within earshot of a hypersensitive cop, the woman claims in the lawsuit.

Kaylan Pedine, 29, was chatting about the policy with friends in front of the Mercury Bar in Midtown when two officers pulled up. “I wish they would stop stop-and-frisk,” she said as they passed, the suit states.

Police Officer Craig Campion ordered the bewildered Pedine to turn around, and handcuffed her before gawking onlookers, according to the suit filed in Manhattan Federal court today.

After less than an hour in a cell, she was released and issued a summons for blocking vehicular traffic — but the Greenpoint resident claims she never stepped off the sidewalk.

So much for First Amendment rights in Bloomberg's New York City.

Criticize official policy, get cuffed and jailed.

That the NYPD feel safe enough to pull this stuff shows you just how unaccountable they have become in this city under Kelly and Bloomberg.

The End Game For The Reform Data Fetishists

The NY Times reports that one Texas district is piloting tracking students through electronic ID's:

SAN ANTONIO —  For Tira Starr, an eighth grader at Anson Jones Middle School, the plastic nametag hanging around her neck that she has decorated with a smiley face and a purple bat sticker offers a way to reflect her personal flair. For administrators, it is something else entirely: a device that lets them use radio frequency technology —  with scanners tucked behind walls and ceilings —  to track her whereabouts. 

Anson Jones is the first school in San Antonio’s Northside Independent School District to roll out the new nametags, which are part of a pilot program intended to ensure that the district receives all of the state dollars to which it is entitled. 

...

 

But the radio frequency identification nametags have prompted concerns from civil liberties groups and electronic privacy watchdogs, which fear a Big Brother atmosphere in Texas public schools.

Matthew Simpson, a policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said the technology was easy to acquire, meaning people outside a school might be able to monitor a student if they obtained the student’s unique tracking number. 

Mr. Simpson said the technology was originally designed for shipping goods and for cattle. “It was never intended for people,” he said.

Oh, boy - think of the data mining possibilities with this "innovation".

It's enough to give Joel Klein, Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch Texas-sized hard-ons without the Viagra pills.

And be sure, this abomination will spread, billed as some "safety" innovation or cost-savings.

But of course we know exactly why the powers that be want ID tags on students (and teachers too.)

It's easier to track everything they do, everything they buy, everything they eat, everywhere they go and, eventually, everything they think and feel.

That's why Gates was experimenting with the Galvanic skin response bracelets that measure so-called student engagement in the classroom.

The boys running the country want to control everything, as much for commercial purposes as for political purposes - and more and more, technology is allowing them to do just that.

It's not a mistake that the ID tags that used to be used for products and cattle are now on people.

We're the product.

NYPD Bills Family Of Man Killed During Chase For Dent To Cop Car

Brillaint - don't only just kill people, but charge the family fees for the privilege:

The mother of a man who was struck by a New York City police department car during a chase says cops want her to pay $710 to have the car repaired, New York Daily News reports.

Tamon Robinson, 27, was killed in April around dawn after he tried to outrun officers who were chasing him through his Brooklyn housing project. He was fleeing after being caught stealing decorative stones from the grounds, police said.

Now his mom, Laverne Dobbinson, 45, says she's been ordered to pay the cost of repairing the police car that killed her son, the paper reports.

"We're still grieving, and this is like a slap in the face," Dobbinson said."They want my son to pay for damage to the vehicle that killed him. It's crazy."

A letter dated Sept. 27 and mailed to her son seeks $710 for "property damage to a vehicle owned by the New York Police Department," according to New York Daily News. It also threatens to slap the family with a lawsuit if the claim isn't paid.

After being hit by the squad car, Robinson slipped into a coma and never regained consciousness, dying six days later of blunt impact head injuries.The city medical examiner ruled his death an accident.

At the time, Robinson worked at a muffin shop but also tried to make extra money hawking items, including paving stones to scrap dealers, his mother told the paper.
The police department's Internal Affairs Bureau is probing allegations from witnesses that Robinson was deliberately mowed down.

An NYPD spokesman did not return a call or e-mail from the paper seeking comment.

The NYPD is out of control - much more so now than during even the worst days of the Giuliani administration.

Here they deliberately run over a guy stealing freaking paving stones, then bill his family for the damage to the squad car.

Now that the story has made the news, you can be sure the city will drop the collection against the family.

Nonetheless, the story is emblematic of Mayor Bloomberg's New York.

Cops murder victim, get away with the murder with impunity, then bill the surviving family members for damages.

You can't make this up.