The “New Hampshire Nine” are a group of peaceful people who largely didn’t know each other that were arrested in October 2021 at a meeting of the “executive council”. They were arrested on victimless “crime” charges like “disorderly conduct”. Here’s video of their last court hearing where a crazed bailiff threatened “Absolute Defiance” founder Footloose in the lobby with video cameras.
Today, the nine and a courtroom packed full of supporters were back at Concord’s district court for a short status conference. During the hearing, Footloose was charged with additional counts of “disorderly conduct”. Now, in addition to the disorderly charge that kicked off the NH9 arrests, where he was sitting quietly in the audience, they are charging him with ANOTHER disorderly for speaking loudly in protest while he was being arrested. Further, he’s being hit with a disorderly and “breach of bail” for speaking in the hallway at the Legislative Office Building in November.
Stay tuned to Free Keene for more on this developing free speech case.
Here’s the full video of the entire hearing, where Footloose goes off on the court goons, getting much louder than he did outside Sununu’s house. He also outright refused to pay the fine and demanded he be put in jail instead – the robed woman ignored it and left the court. Enjoy!
Recently some busybody reported Jay Noone’s family to DCYF when his wife Shalon allegedly went into a store and left their 2-year-old strapped safely into a carseat with the car running. The meddling family-destroying goons dropped into the Noone’s “Domestead” in Henniker on Friday to try to search the premises. Despite showing Jay a written threat from a robed person, Jay refused to allow them in and wisely recorded the encounter. Stay tuned to Free Keene for updates.
First amendment auditor “Press NH Now” came to Keene this week and stood outside Samson Manufacturing on Optical Avenue, simply recording video in public and had Keene police gang members called on him. Press is experienced at interacting with the cops and doesn’t answer their questions, putting them in their place. Watch the video here:
New Hampshire HB 1682 was introduced by Rep. David Welch (R – Rockingham13) on 1/5/2022, followed by a public hearing on 1/14/2022. The House Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety voted that the bill “ought to pass with amendment” and has been referred to the House Finance Committee for further review.
On the Surface It Sounds Great: Hold Police Accountable for Their Actions
The idea of this bill is to establish a committee that’s considered “independent” and separate from local police jurisdictions in order to ensure police officers are held accountable for their actions (or inactions.) According to Rep. David Welch, the aim of the bill is “to establish a single, neutral, and independent statewide entity to receive complaints alleging misconduct regarding all sworn and elected law enforcement officers.” – HB 1682 public hearing, 1/14/2022 – watch here
As outlined in the bill, officers could potentially face the new Conduct Review Committee for a number of reasons, including: if they’ve been convicted of committing a felony, any sentence of incarceration, excessive use of force, driving while intoxicated, moral turpitude (dishonesty, deceit, theft), acts of omission, lying in a police report or criminal proceeding, falsification of records, tampering with or falsifying evidence, racist conduct or statements, etc.
This all sounds great, because of course law enforcement officers should be held accountable for their actions! Which makes me wonder, why aren’t they now?
Policing the Police With Police
There’s already an established Police Standards and Training Council that handles internal reviews in New Hampshire. The new Law Enforcement Conduct Review Committeewould fall under that umbrella, dealing exclusively with misconduct reviews. In recent years the public’s interest in holding police accountable has skyrocketed. Perhaps there are so many cases of police misconduct in the state that they can no longer handle the workload or process them quickly enough.
Since the new Conduct Review Committee would fall under the already established Standards Council, the governor would (again) be appointing its members. The current Police Standards and Training Council consists of mainly a bunch of police officers appointed by Governor Sununu. Since it is the governor who will be appointing members here again, I’m not sure this bill will be as effective as it looks. A politician hand-picking members within the context of “maintaining absolute objectivity” is a farce.
The Law Enforcement Conduct Review Committee would consist of:
Four law enforcement officers appointed by the governor
Three public members with no familial associations to a police officer, lawyer, or judge
