Free Keene

A recent mover within the last year, Andrew Mercer has kept a fairly low profile as far as activism goes, but he’s certainly still been active. He has gone to court hearings when he can, he’s been to a few 4:20 rallies, and he’s accompanied Sam on quests into City Hall for open records requests, he’s even been on a few CopWatching missions. Though he hasn’t gone out looking to push boundaries and engage in disobedience, but he was recently held in Vermont by state troopers just because one of them suspected he had an illegal plant in his possession.

However, Andrew just went to trial on an unrelated case out of Keene involving him being caught driving a car that didn’t have the correct license plate on it. At trial Andrew’s councel, FreeKeene blogger Nick Ryder, argued that the State could not prove that Andrew attached the wrong plate to the car, or allowed anyone else to.

See the officer’s arrest report on Andrew (PDF)
Hear the audio of the trial (27 min length)

Nonetheless, Judge Lane of the Keene District Court found Andrew guilty, and because of his resistance to paying fines to the government, Andrew will be committed to 50 hours in jail over two separate occasions. The first beginning this Tuesday afternoon (02-02-10).

He may be critiqued for “playing by the rules” in trying to defend himself “by the system” in court, but he’s costing the State several times the price of his $150 ticket. And if more people did that, the system would easily grind down.

Liberty-minded people called “Talkback” on WKBK last week to discuss stealing property, agreements, providing unwanted services, arbitrary extractions, and a tax revolt. We also hear from an offended caller, who calls liberty activists a “gang” – actually she calls them *my* gang, as though I’m in charge. The smarmy dartmouth guy also makes an appearance.

Grab the archive.

Please join us for our weekly chat and calling sessions on Saturday mornings from 11a-12p in the Liberty Radio Network Chat room. If you’re online, you can listen to Talkback streamed live via the Liberty Radio Network and if you’re in the Keene area you can tune in to WKBK 1290 AM or 104.1 FM. The Talkback discussion thread is here on the Free Keene Forum.

From Dave Ridley:

UK job placement agency rejects advertisement because looking for “reliable workers” discriminates against lazy people, US ethanol subsidies are leaving millions hungry, the Downsizer Dispatch, federal subsidies are at an all time high, and an upset parent has dictionaries which define “oral sex” banned from certain classrooms.

http://www.freemindsmedia.org

Ever sat in an arraignment on a Monday or Tuesday morning in Keene District Court? The room is usually packed full of people, the supermajority of which have never harmed another person. They are there for harmless traffic tickets, drug possession, open container, or some other nonsense “crime against the state”, where there is no true victim. Well, correction, the people who are in court for these “crimes” are actually the victims of aggression by the people calling themselves the state or city. They shuffle in and line up to cut a “deal” with the prosecutor and pay in many cases hundreds of dollars just to make the awful experience go away.

You can almost hear the cash register ring to the tune of thousands of dollars each day. Most of the people who are being caught for these things certainly cannot afford to pay these fines whether or not the economy is doing well. Many of them have to go on payment plans, because they certainly don’t want to go to jail, which is what is done if they don’t pay up. You’d think that with all that cash rolling in from these victimless “criminals” that the system would be in the black. You would be wrong. This is bureaucracy we’re talking about, and they don’t have the ability to run efficiently, period.

The Keene Sentinel’s Phil Bantz reports that the courts are in such dire financial shape, they have to shut down – not completely, but enough to make scheduling and “speedy trials” even more difficult. Many trials of local liberty activists are already set into late spring, and may be delayed even longer with the pending shutdown.

Perhaps if the police would stop aggressing against peaceful people then the caseload would be manageable and they wouldn’t have to be going through this.

Can you imagine what would happen if 5-10% of the victims of state aggression stopped plea bargaining and took their cases to trial? The entire system would crash and burn. Their power rests on your obedience, so set the example and refuse to take a plea. Make them pay to schedule a trial and if you can afford to, take the jail time rather than pay them fines so it costs them even more.

Perhaps they’ll eventually do the right thing and leave peaceful people alone and only go after real criminals who harm others. Here’s the Sentinel story:

Already understaffed and overloaded with cases, Keene District Court and Cheshire County Superior Court, in the heart of the city’s downtown, are bracing for monthly closures and temporary layoffs.

Saying it was the saddest moment of his 37 years in the state’s judicial system, Chief Justice John T. Broderick Jr. met with judges and marital masters last Friday and asked them to take furloughs, an unprecedented request. (Read on …)

Basically, the people calling themselves the city of Keene are trying to get the property owners to do the city’s dirty work and evict the homeless men from the lean-to behind the Hannaford shopping center. They are fining the owners hundreds of dollars each day the homeless are allowed to inhabit the land, so it will be up to the owners to remove them. Despite the homeless men working to improve their shack, one of the head aggressors makes it clear what the real issue is:

“The bottom line is there’s been no permit for the structure itself,”
Medard K. Kopczynski, assistant city manager

It doesn’t matter that these men worked to improve the safety of the structure they built and have happily occupied for months, you see, they didn’t BEG the city people for permission to build it in the first place. It’s not about safety – it’s about OBEDIENCE.

Now the city is threatening the property owners. If they don’t pay the fines (which they will), the city people will steal their property, just like they will do to you if you don’t pay their arbitrary extractions. Does anyone really believe that government is protecting you or serving you?

The Keene Sentinel’s David Greisman reports on the city gang’s continued aggression against peaceful homeless people. Story below. See OTN’s interview with the homeless men here.

The owners of a property where homeless men have taken shelter are facing an ultimatum from Keene city officials: have the men move out of the makeshift shack they built, or potentially pay up every day until that happens.

The land, behind the West Street Shopping Center in Keene, belongs to Timothy N. Robertson, a Democratic state representative from Keene, and his sister, Dorothy Arwe, also of Keene.

“My sister’s given in,” Robertson said this morning. “She’s the majority person behind the property. It’s a 60-40 deal. She says we’re going to do whatever they say (Read on …)

The Union Leader’s Jason Schreiber reports:

EPPING – A police officer who fought publicly to keep his job has resigned from the police department and has also been given the boot as a member of an international group that wants to legalize drugs.

Leaders of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which advocates liberalization of drug laws, moved to distance themselves from Officer Bradley Jardis, who suggested in recent online postings that he would not enforce certain drug laws.

Jardis, of Hooksett, quit the police department on Monday, saying he could no longer work there after comments that Police Chief Gregory Dodge made about his job performance when he tried to have him fired recently. (Read on …)

One of the Free Keene Forum’s youngest members, Bodhi Knight, has announced the creation of “Teens for Liberty”, a new Facebook group. Bodhi challenges all liberty-loving teens in NH to join the group at Teens.FreeKeene.com. You can also find the link at the top right column of this site. He hopes to get 50 members, so if you’re a teen, or would like to be involved, please join up. Here also is the forum thread about TFL.

Liberty-minded people called “Talkback” on WKBK last week to discuss government schools, the jail, victimless crimes, refusing to pay taxes, big government, and working in the system.

Grab the archive.

Please join us for our weekly chat and calling sessions on Saturday mornings from 11a-12p in the Liberty Radio Network Chat room. If you’re online, you can listen to Talkback streamed live via the Liberty Radio Network and if you’re in the Keene area you can tune in to WKBK 1290 AM or 104.1 FM. The Talkback discussion thread is here on the Free Keene Forum.

A few days back on this blog we posted the news that longtime NH police officer Brad Jardis was no longer going to arrest medical cannabis users. Jardis has shown much courage – far more than the average cop – in first coming out verbally against the insane war on drugs, and now taking the first step into actually doing the right thing and refusing to enforce bad laws.

Despite the courage he has and the support he has earned in the community because of it, the organization known as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition has unceremoniously booted him from their ranks. Brad posted the email he received from LEAP’s head, Jack Cole, on the Free Keene Forum. In it, Cole takes position that while LEAP members are encouraged to speak out about the horrors of prohibition, as long as they are employed as LEOs, they must enforce bad laws, because to not do so would be “unethical and wrong”. It’s a sad statement that outs LEAP as an organization of nothing more than a bunch of talkers, rather than doers. Of course, Cole is incorrect. Enforcing laws that harm peaceful people is what is unethical and wrong.

Other law enforcement officers, who are members of LEAP, have announced they will be sending in their resignations. Many other supporters of LEAP are sending in revocations of their membership, and explaining why. Some of these messages can be found on this forum thread.

Here’s the message Jack Cole sent to Brad, with Cole’s full contact info at the bottom.

Dear Bradley Jardis,

I have tried but am unable to reach you by telephone.

It has come to LEAP’s attention from the below blog entry, that you have
chosen to violate the oath you took on joining the police department; to
enforce all the laws of the federal and state governments in which your
police department has jurisdiction. And worse, you are calling on other law
enforcement officials to violate their oaths of office. (Read on …)