This is Lucy, a neglected pup that reader and fellow writer David McElroy rescued  . . . from his neighbors. You can read the story here.

• Striking photos from the most populous place on earth.
• The real data on immigration.
• Headline of the day. (Also a really bizarre story.)
• Runner-up.
• I predict lots of squirrel-related programming.
• Let’s give some due praise to Jefferson Parish, Louisiana Sheriff Newell Normand.
• Gary Johnson wins the LP nomination for president. This is a good thing for the LP. Best thing in years, in fact.

From the good folks at Keep Columbia Free:

A few days ago, SWAT officers of the Fulton (Missouri) Police Department shot and killed a dog while serving a “narcotics” search warrant. The residents of the house asked if they could cage the dog. The officers denied the request, ordering that the dog to be chained to a tree. The dog got loose and was then shot eight times, the first six shots wounding the dog and the last two point-blank, shotgun blasts killing it. After finishing off the first dog, the officers turned their guns on caged puppies only stopping when confronted by concerned neighbors.

They found enough pot to charge the guy with a misdemeanor. There’s a local news account at the link.

By the way, Fulton, Missouri has all of about 13,000 people. But they do have their own SWAT team.

While researching the first chapter of my book, which is basically a broad look at policing from the colonial era up through about the early 1960s, I found the fascinating (or I guess fascinating-sounding—I haven’t yet read it) book, Licentious Gotham: Erotic Publishing and Its Prosecution in Nineteenth-Century New York.

While flipping through the index, I found a fun appendix of book titles that were named in New York City obscenity indictments between 1840 and 1860. It’s like browsing an adult bookshop in Victorian America. A few of my favorites:

The Amorous History and Adventures of Raymond DeB—and Father Andoullard, Detailing Some Curious Histories and Disclosing the Pastimes of a Convent, With Some Remarks on the Use and Advantages of Flagellation

The Auto-Biography of a Footman

The Cabinet of Venus Unlocked in a Series of Dialogues between Louisa Lovestone and Mariana Greedy, Two Cyprians! of the Most Accomplished Talent in the Science of Practical Love

The Confessions of a Voluptuous Young Woman of High Rank

The Curtain Drawn Up; or, the Education of Laura

The Life and Adventures of Silas Shovewell

The Lustful Turk

Wedding Secrets Revealed by the Torch of Hymen

Memoirs of the Life and Voluptuous Adventures of the Celebrated Courtesan Madamoiselle Celestine of Paris Written by Herself

The Secret Habits of the Female Sex

Wonderful as these are, part of me was hoping for some dirty puns on Victorian novels. Maybe Moby’s Dick. Or Scarlet Let Her. Tail in Two Cities. The House of Girth. Great Expectorations.

I’ll stop now.

Michael Tarbox of the great Tarbox Ramblers is running a Kickstarter campaign to fund a solo album. If you like the sound, consider throwing a few bucks his way.

Here’s one of my favorites from the band:

This video doesn’t show a dog killing, or a person killing, or a police beating. But in some ways, it’s more appalling than those sorts of videos. In it, you’ll see a “multi-agency” police task force arresting employees at a series of massage parlors in Houston. The businesses were apparently fronts for prostitution. The initial raid was conducted by a paramilitary police team, as you can see from the screen capture. In the video, the head of the task force steps out in full SWAT attire, including a balaclava, as he leads the women out of the building. He keeps the mask on throughout the video.

The women, all but one of whom were immigrants, are led out in handcuffs and leg shackles. One repeatedly struggles with and trips over her shackles on her way to the wagon. They all look terrified. The whole thing is stomach-turning. It’s an ugly, egregious, cock-waving display of power.

At worst, these these women provided a sexual service to willing customers in exchange for money. For that, a completely victimless crime, they get frog-marched in leg shackles on citywide TV.

But under that scenario the cops only look like bullies. There’s another possibility that makes them look thuggish and incompetent. In interviews with the local news, our brave and hooded vice warrior points out that these women could in fact be victims. That is, they may have been in the sex business involuntarily. We can’t know, he says, because they refuse to talk. He says they may fear that if they talk, their families back home will face repercussions.

Now let’s assume this is true. That means this multi-agency task force knew there was a possibility that these businesses were staffed with women who had been forced into prostitution. Aware of that possibility, they still scared the hell out of the women, cuffed and chained them, and—here’s the really galling part—tipped off the local news so it could all be put on TV. The humiliation is bad enough. But if there’s substance to the claim that these women fear retaliation against their families in their native countries, the potential repercussors now have video showing exactly which women were arrested. Back-slaps all around, guys.

And yes, there’s no question that the police tipped off the local news. Four (by my count) different TV stations don’t coincidentally show up at a run-of-the-mill strip mall just as a prostitution raid goes down. And while we’re passing out shame buttons, let’s slap a few on Houston’s local news teams, too. That’s you KHOU, Fox 26, ABC affiliate KTRK, and KPRC.  Think about what you’re putting on the air.  There’s no law that requires you to accommodate the police every time they want to flex their muscles on the evening news. In one of the videos linked above, the news team shoves a camera into a woman’s face as she’s stepping into the wagon. The reporter then shouts questions at the woman—this just after the reporter points out the possibility that the woman she’s humiliating and zooming in on may be a sex slave.

And about that balaclava. Yes, I realize the cop was probably protecting his identity. Take the hood off, and the next time he’s slabbed over a massage table, the 19-year-old Thai girl rubbing his back might recognize from TV, and decline to offer him extras. Thus ruining his investigation. He may also investigate other vice crimes, like narcotics, in which case revealing his identity could put him at risk. Understood. But here’s an easier way to protect your cover: Don’t call in the news cameras before you make your bust.

Look, I understand that cops enforce the laws, they don’t write them. And in this case it appears that (a) neighboring businesses were complaining, and (b) these massage parlors may have been engaged in sex trafficking. It’s hard to fault them for investigating (although in some of these massage parlor cases, the cops tend to investigate “to completion.”)

But how about some restraint? You’re “apprehending” 105-pound women here. Maybe you leave the ninja gear at home. Considering that you believe these women could be emotionally and/or physically abused, maybe you also do this bust quietly, bring along some social workers, and take the women away in vans. Maybe you have trained counselors talk to the women for a few hours before you give them the Whitey Bulger treatment. Then, once you have a better grasp on the nature of these businesses, you can hold yourself a press conference and bask in praise for keeping Houston safe from prostitutes.

You won’t get to go on TV dressed up in your riot gear that way. But you’ll at least know you’ve done your job with some professionalism—and some humanity.

• Murder of journalists is on the rise. As a journalist, I find this newsworthy.
• Favorite new panic story: New “trend” in which kids are climbing into trees, then drinking until they fall out.
• Chuck Schumer isn’t going to like this.
• No indictment in the police killing of Kenneth Chamberlain.
• Federal court gives John Yoo immunity from torture lawsuit.
• The Clap is back, and this time it’s angry.
• Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson finds a reason to praise Obama: His willingness to kill people.
• Headline of the day.
• Jacob Sullum on the outrageous prosecution of Marissa Alexander.

Portland, Oregon.

• The Washington City Paper profiles food freedom fighter and Agitator pal Baylen Linnekin.
• The U.S. government is not looking good in this Chen Guangcheng story.
• Speaking of China, the Chinese government has reluctantly agreed to allow dissident Mao Yushi leave the country . . . in order to accept an award from the Cato Institute for his work to advance the cause of freedom.
• Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug Czar Speeches.
• Former ICE intelligence chief, other top ICE officials scammed $600,000 from U.S. taxpayers. Seems like a more important story than, for example, the Secret Service hiring prostitutes in countries where prostitution is legal.
• Headline of the day. The actual story likely of interest to regular readers here. Still. Quite a headline.
• Two city officials in Dallas attack a reporter’s hat.
• Pennsylvania cop under investigation for Tasering a juvenile nine times while the kid was in a jail cell.
• Philly cop alleged to have sexually assaulted a woman during a drug raid won’t be be prosecuted because the DA’s office failed to bring the charges in time.

Portland, Oregon.

A reader pointed out to me that I missed my 10-year blogoversary. It was either sometime last month or sometime in mid-February, depending on whether you measure from when I started blogging, or when I started blogging on something resembling the site you see now.

It’s a bit hard to believe. But thanks to all the regular readers, commenters, and those of you who send leads and tips from day to day. I do still plan to do an e-book of favorite posts and articles from the last 10 years. I just had to push the project back for a while when someone offered to pay me to write an actual book. But that will still happen. Eventually.

Also,  I guess this is a good time to let you know that the site will soon be making the switch over to Huffington Post I mentioned about a year ago. We’re still working out the specifics. But I hope you’ll all continue to participate over there.

TV station KOAT sent cameras along on a recent drug raid in Los Lunas, New Mexico. This raid was to find marijuana.

Every time I see an image like this, I’m reminded of a blog post from conservative writer Michael Ledeen a few years ago. Ledeen was using a series of photos from a recent drug bust in Iran to point out what a totalitarian state it is. The post is no longer available online, but I excerpted it at the time on the Reason blog.

Terrifying pictures, to be sure. For me, the most revealing thing about them is that the police feel obliged to wear masks while conducting a drug bust in the capital. tells you something about the relationship between the people and the state.

Indeed it does. Here is what the Los Lunas cops found:

Thanks to Mike Riggs for the tip.

Portland, Oregon.

Jarring illustration of just how little consideration drug warriors have for the people they perceive as the enemy.

 A man taken into custody during a drug raid was left in a holding cell for five days, possibly without food or water.

The DEA says the suspect was accidentally left in one of the cells. During that time, he somehow gained access to methamphetamine.

Eugene Iredale says what happened to his client, 24-year-old Daniel Chong, isn’t something he’d wish on his worst enemy, and is now taking legal action against the DEA agents he says left the handcuffed UCSD student in a federal holding cell for nearly five days without food or water.

“He screamed hundreds of times for help,” Iredale said. “He began to hallucinate and he relates that he began to dig into the walls thinking he could get water that way.”

Federal authorities detained the engineering student after an ecstasy raid in University City April 21, where Chong admits he was smoking marijuana with friends. Officials say they seized 18,000 ecstasy pills, marijuana, prescription medication, mushrooms, several weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition in the raid.

DEA spokesperson Amy Roderick says Chong was one of nine people detained in the raid and each person was questioned, fingerprinted and photographed in separate rooms.

Chong claims the holding cells were filthy, and used a bag of what was later determined to be methamphetamines he found inside to stay awake. But after three days, he became suicidal, breaking his glasses with his teeth so he could cut his wrists.

“This is an S in pitch black trying to write ‘Sorry mom,’ but I couldn’t even aim so I gave up on that one,” Chong said, showing his wrist.

Eventually DEA agents found him and took him to Sharp Hospital, where he spent three days in intensive care.

It’s likely that the kid avoided dying of thirst by drinking his own urine.

Complete and utter government failure. On so many levels. Who wants to wager how many people get fired for this?

So just as I was good and irritated with the Occupy crowd for co-opting the official holiday of a political ideology responsible for 100 million murders . . . the NYPD goes and makes me feel some sympathy for them.

In anticipation [of May Day protests] Monday, the FBI and NYPD raided the homes of protesters.

“There were a number of visits between 6:00 and 7:30 in the morning and at other points in the day that appeared to target people that primarily the NYPD, but in one instance the FBI, wanted to ask certain questions to,” Gideon Oliver, a spokesman for the National Lawyers Guild, which often represents Occupy protesters, told Buzzfeed. “Questions included things like ‘what are your May Day plans?’ ‘Do you know who the protest leaders are?’ ‘What do you know about the May Day protests?’ and such.”

Gawker reports that Zachary Dempster said 6 officers broke down the door of his Bushwick apartment at 6:15 AM, reportedly executing a warrant for the arrest of his roommate on a 6-year-old open container charge. Dempster believes, however, that cops used the raid as an excuse to question him about May Day.

And an hour later in Bed-Stuy, one of Dempster’s activist friends’ apartment–which he shares with 6 other Occupy protesters– was also paid a visit by 6 of New York’s finest. From Gawker:

The activist said police used arrest warrants for two men who no longer lived there as pretext for the raid. The officers ran the IDs of everyone who was in the apartment, then booked our source when they discovered he had an outstanding open container violation. Police never asked about Occupy Wall Street or May Day, but our source said the message was clear: We’re watching you.“We’re experienced at accommodating lawful protests and responding appropriately to anyone who engages in unlawful activity, and we’re prepared to do both,” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne told Bloomberg.

Presumably that doesn’t include the unlawful activities of NYPD.

Think about what just happened, here. On a day strongly associated with the old Soviet bloc, armed government agents staged early morning raids on the homes of suspected political dissidents, detained them, then interrogated them about their plans and political affiliations. And of course this isn’t the first time this has happened. There were similar preemptive raids ahead of the 2008 RNC convention in Minneapolis. Almost none of the charges resulting from those raids stuck, and the city has since been handing out settlement checks like parade candy.

Bonus bit of May Day trivia: American Cold War presidents responded to the commie May Day celebrations by declaring May 1st “Loyalty Day.” Because nothing celebrates “freedom” like a presidential proclamation encouraging the citizenry to declare their loyalty to the government!

Bonus, bonus bit of May Day trivia: The old Catallarchy blog had a tradition of using May Day to commemorate the victims of communism. Here’s a particularly good entry from 2005.

• The hacktastic Center for American Progress sings Obama’s praises on the drug war.
• Massachusetts town wants to ban swearing. The article’s lede might be even dumber than yesterday’s World Net Daily lede.
• Headline of the day.
• Runner-up.
• The family of William Cooper, the 69-year-old Hampton, Virginia man killed in a drug raid earlier this year, has filed a lawsuit against the officers who conducted the raid.
• It’s time to panic again.

A DNA exoneration in Colorado:

A Colorado man wrongly convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a woman found strangled with a dog leash was exonerated on the basis of new DNA evidence and set free on Monday after spending more than 16 years behind bars.

Robert “Rider” Dewey walked out of a courthouse in Grand Junction, Colorado, a free man after a judge found him innocent of the 1994 killing and said his exoneration marked a “historic day” for the state.

“Mr. Dewey spent 6,219 days of his life incarcerated for a crime he did not do,” Mesa County District Judge Brian Flynn said during the brief hearing. “This is a reminder to the entire system that it’s not perfect.”

Flynn said prosecutors had not committed misconduct, Dewey had been represented by good defense attorneys, and an impartial jury had heard the case but added: “Despite all these things, the system didn’t work.”…

Prosecutors announced earlier on Monday they were seeking an arrest warrant for a new suspect in the 1994 killing who was identified by DNA testing and is already serving a life sentence for a similar 1989 murder.

And two more in Dallas County, Texas:

This morning, two men stood in the same courtroom where they were convicted of aggravated assault and sentenced to life in prison for a rape and shooting that happened almost 30 years ago. This time, both were smiling, as they were one step closer to exiting the criminal justice hell that consumed the last three decades of their lives.
Raymond Jackson and James Curtis Williams donned suits and were surrounded by friends, family and fellow exonerees, as Judge Susan Hawk, with her declaration of relief from conviction based on actual innocence, granted them entrance into the ever-expanding brotherhood of Dallas County exonerees. This morning’s double exoneration hearing comes just weeks after the exoneration of three men for one crime.

With dozens of men having come before them and about 10 sitting behind them in the audience, it’s clear that systematic flaws that have lead to so many wrongful convictions. Under District Attorney Craig Watkins, Dallas County has been famously proactive in freeing the wrongfully convicted. But what’s less readily apparent is how deep the problem runs.

“I know for a fact” there are other innocent men in prison, Williams said to the crowd gathered after the hearing. “You will not get the proper representation if you are poor,” he added. “A lot of them had to cop out to cases that they knew they was innocent on because they didn’t want to face the jury.”

I’ve made this point a number of times before, but it’s always worth making again: DNA testing did not “fix” the system, it only confirmed that the system is broken. DNA simply isn’t a factor in the vast, vast majority of criminal cases, including most murder cases. But the flaws that exist in the small percentage of cases where DNA is dispositive of guilt are almost certainly at work in all of those other cases, too.

Portland, Oregon.

Agitator favorites the Cold Stares have released a new cut from their forthcoming album.

My listening suggestion: Plug in a pair of headphones, turn up the volume until it hurts a little bit.

Portland, Oregon.

• But for video, Canadian edition.
• I’m a little late to this, but via Lucy Steigerwald, here is the “Texts from Drone” Tumblr. More biting than funny. But definitely biting.
• The most hilariously paranoid lede you’ll read today.
• Celebrities with vintage cameras. Oddly compelling.
• The bottom one percent.
• Glenn Greenwald takes on Democrats who celebrate Obama’s warmaking.
• U.K. photo homage to Greek mythology gets Ashcrofted.

From commenter “divadab,” here’s Maggie and Blackie-Mae.

One is 5. The other (I’m guessing Maggie, the lighter one) is an impressive 19-years-old.

• TSA to 79-year-old woman: “There’s an anomaly in the crotch area.”
• Last week was the hearing for Regina Tasca, the New Jersey police officer who lost her job after pulling two of her fellow cops off of the unarmed man they were beating.
• Who can and can’t get away with “structuring.” (Hint: It has something to do with whether or not you hold political office.)
• Georgia police kill a man, then arrest his parents for getting angry about it.
• Reuters does the reporting on George Zimmerman that should have been done a long time ago. Turns out, the guy is a three-dimensional human being.
• Shorter judicial philosophy of the New York Times editorial board: “Judges should exercise restraint when we like the law under review, and be aggressive when we dislike it.”

Back to Portland.

The City Council approved a $250,000 settlement Wednesday to a man mistaken by police as a tagger and was hit with a stun gun over and over.

A jury wanted the city to pay for a police officer using excessive force.

Police took down Dan Halsted while he was just innocently walking home. The officer stunned Halsted five times with a Taser in the back because he thought he sprayed some graffiti.

Halsted was tackled by a Portland police officer in the Northeast Portland neighborhood of Sullivan’s Gulch four years ago.

“I was walking home and all of a sudden a flashlight came on in my eyes and I stopped, and I heard a voice say, ‘Get him!’ And I heard footsteps coming at me, so I turned and I ran.”

In the pitch dark, Halsted thought he was being jumped.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” he said. “I was screaming to call the police the whole time, and I didn’t realize this was the police because they never identified themselves at all.”

Police had mistaken Halsted for a tagger who hit a nearby building.

“The arresting officer in his police report, he made up a whole other story and said that I had been running down the street with a couple other people.”

That’s the same thing the officer testified to in court when Halsted sued. In reality Halsted had been with friends at the Rose and Thistle Restaurant and was never charged with any crime.

The unsettling implication lurking beneath this story is that if Halsted had been spraying graffiti, this sort of treatment would have been perfectly appropriate. Also, I love this . . .

During the trial, the city’s attorney tried to use Halsted’s classic kung fu film collection against him, saying it proved he was violent.

Of course, taxpayers will pay the award. And as far as I can tell, Officer Benjamin J. Davidson is still on the police force. (The article above doesn’t mention his name.)

I was surprised to learn that under Oregon law, 60 percent of punitive damages awarded in suits like this go not to the brutality vicitim, but to a fund for crime victims. And another 10 percent goes to . . . a fund for Oregon state courts. Really.

But given that Halsted won in federal court, it isn’t clear to me that Oregon state law would apply to this case. Anyone know?