HB 1283 would prohibit DUI checkpoints in NH. It has already passed the house. This is full video of the senate judiciary hearing on the bill, featuring libertarian rebuttals to the head of Mothers Against Drunk Driving!
In April of 2017 Darryl and I were traveling back to Keene from Taco Beyondo in Hillsborough (they accept Bitcoin Core and DASH, by the way) and were waylaid by four armed, uniformed men. They surrounded the car and issued a written threat over what they call “misuse of plates” due to the Shire Society plate on the back of the car at the time.
This video contains the original pullover from April 2017, the full trial at Hillsborough District Court in New Hampshire in January 2018 and then the sentencing hearing from February 2018.
I was found guilty and sentenced to twelve hours of community service – but I had fun asking the cop some interesting questions in court. Enjoy the video:
Attorney Dan Hynes, also an A+ rated state representative by the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, appeared in the New Hampshire Supreme Court on Thursday morning and pointed out the absurdity of prohibiting female toplessness, absolutely eviscerating the city of Laconia’s clearly discriminatory ban. In contrast, the state’s attorney actually argued that it was an issue of morality as she simultaneously admitted that a woman could wear pasties over her nipples and then it would be legal, even if the pasties were printed photos of nipples!
Are there really people who believe that the sight of nipples on a woman is immoral, but because it’s legal to cover them with photos of nipples, then it’s now moral?
Further, what exactly is immoral about female nipples being shown in public?
Here’s the full hearing in front of the NH Supreme Court:
(Thanks to NHPR’s Annie Roepik for the audio.)
In case you missed it, here’s the original Free the Nipple trial from the original Gilford arrests (the case prior to this one, where the ladies won at the district court level). Hynes does an excellent job and the entire thing is pretty entertaining: (more…)
Border Patrol Agents Hassle Us Over Recording Video of their Checkpoint
Good news! The privacy-invading internal border patrol checkpoints that appeared in New Hampshire’s North Country this summer have been challenged in court by the NH Civil Liberties Union!
From their press release:
As stated in the ACLU-NH’s motion, during these border patrol checkpoints, the Woodstock Police Department (“WPD”) and the New Hampshire State Police separately worked in concert with United States Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) to circumvent the independent protections provided by the New Hampshire Constitution against dog-sniff searches in the absence of a warrant or reasonable suspicion. Specifically, federal CBP agents used dog-sniff searches in situations where New Hampshire law enforcement would have been barred from conducting similar searches. Resulting evidence from these federal searches was then turned over to state law enforcement for drug prosecutions. (more…)
Alfredo Valentin, Hero
Now Manchester police are shelling out $275,000 to Alfredo Valentin who was arrested for recording the police on his smartphone inside his own home during a drug raid. Police were raiding Valentin’s home searching for evidence against another man, Christopher Chapman. Though police already had Chapman in custody from an earlier arrest, they went ahead with a full swat raid against Valentin’s house, including, “firing incendiary devices through the property’s windows, kicking in the doors, and entering the property SWAT-style with semi-automatic weapons—damaging property, terrifying the two women who were still in the house, and creating an unjustifiable risk of accidental death or injury”. This according to the one million dollar lawsuit against Manchester brought by the excellent NH Civil Liberties Union.
Valentin was never charged for anything drug-related, only for “wiretapping” police. A lower court judge in NH ruled back in 2015 that even secretly recording police was legal in New Hampshire.
Darryl W Perry and Ian Freeman at the 2017 ACLU 1st Amendment Awards Dinner
Major thanks to the NHCLU for their excellent work holding Manchester police accountable. Too bad its taxpayers who have to foot the bill instead of the terrible, oppressive officers themselves.
Recently I wrote the eulogy for Cop Block, the national police accountability activist news website. Nothing lasts forever, especially in the world of activism, where doing the right thing rarely means one can make a living at it. Burnout is real and has happened to some of the brightest activists to ever hit the Cop Block scene.
Cop Block as a national organization may have died, but it’s not dead here in New Hampshire, where it was incubated – according to founder Pete Eyre – in Keene.
Though regular Cop Blocking patrols are more rare these days and more likely to happen in Keene than anywhere else, large numbers of activists still participate in the ongoing DUI checkpoint countering that happens multiple times a year in Manchester.
Toward the end of this summer, state and local police set up DUI checkpoints in Cheshire county for the first time in five years. Thomas Parisi from The Jail Paper came out with the group to document the checkpoint. It was set up just a few hundred feet from the bridge to Brattleboro, VT so we had multiple Cop Blockers on both points of entry to the checkpoint with multiple reflective signs alerting peaceful motorists to the upcoming harassment. Not surprisingly, state police statistics reported zero DUIs were found during the checkpoint, though they did write a bunch of motor vehicle violation tickets and make a few drug possession arrests. So, all victimless “crimes” – another huge waste of taxpayer dollars.
The Jail Paper also reported on Cop Block know-your-rights outreach that regularly happens in the Keene State College neighborhood. Here are both videos in one, courtesy of The Jail Paper:
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