DNA from cigarette leads to Dakota Access arrest warrant 3 years later
kfgo.com
kfgo.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_protest...
> In September 2016, construction workers bulldozed a section of land the tribe had identified as sacred ground and when protesters entered the area security workers used attack dogs which bit at least six of the protesters and one horse.
>At least six protesters were treated for dog bites, and an estimated 30 were pepper-sprayed before the guards and their dogs left the scene in trucks.
>In May 2017, internal TigerSwan documents leaked to The Intercept and other documents obtained through public records requests revealed a close collaboration between the pipeline company and local, state, and federal law enforcement as they carried out "military-style counterterrorism measures" to suppress the protesters.
How many years did the security workers get in jail? In my country that would be quite a few for "intent to cause grievous bodily harm"
I doubt this DNA was combed from the scene three years later. This was a cigarette that was taken three years ago and has been in an evidence locker for years. Finally, today, an arrest is being made. We don't know whether it took three years to do the testing or whether they knew of the match years ago and only now decided to arrest. Three years is a common statute of limitations limit. They could have been working on this from day one and now, with a SOL looming, they have decided to move forwards.
Or maybe the DNA is the announced link and they had an identification by other means. Maybe by relying upon the cigarette they aren't announcing that they have been talking to witnesses/informers. The cigarette is enough to get the warrant, without the need to divulge the existence of informers just yet.
Especially if you haven't mandated DNA tests for Rape Kits and still have a backlog:
Rape, Murder, and Battery are one thing. Protesting and vandalism are quite another.
we need to remember this as they push for facial recognition, gait recognition, voice recognition, etc.
Besides the fact that that isn’t one of the charges filed here, and the cost of cleaning up litter can’t possible compare to the amount of police work spent to hunt down this person.
I think this is what happened. They probably found several cigarette butts inside the perimeter of the vandalized private property, they ran DNA tests for all of them and one matched this guy's DNA. There are only a few possible reasons for his DNA to be inside that perimeter:
1) He was a contractor doing work for the Dakota Access Pipeline operator (probably already ruled out, otherwise he wouldn't have been charged).
2) Somebody took his butt from outside and put it inside the perimeter (very unlikely).
3) He actually smoked that cigarette and dropped the butt in that location while he was vandalizing it (most likely scenario from the prosecution point of view).
4) He trespassed the property at a different time and smoked and dropped the cigarette butt at that time. This is still an unlawful behavior but is probably better than all the other charges. (This is a possible scenario but it would be pretty hard for his defense to demonstrate this is what actually happened).
Again. This is enough for prosecutors to charge this guy but it doesn't mean at all that this is good evidence to get a conviction. In my humble opinion, a cigarette butt with your DNA is pretty weak evidence in this particular case.
Only if you discount squirrels.
Those claiming now that everyone there committed federal crimes, I am here. Come arrest me. File your charges. I will ensure you are countersued for libel and false arrest. I will take you all down and as a lifelong successful engineer and entrepreneur I have the financial resources and legal advisors to ensure my rights. I committed no crime whatsoever. Bring it on, everyone making these claims. Bring it. I am here, waiting for all the internet basement accusers to make this real. Come now, let us grapple and let the courts determine the truth.
There was no illegal activity going on. Everyone told everyone else how sensitive things were. We were all on our toes. The true crimes were committed by the paid oil protectors, the cops, the companies making this project happen and the government.
They took a LOT of land from a lot of people, simply trying to get by. Even if you opposed it and refused any sort of financial compensation (which in fact several people tried to do) then the land was taken anyways.
It had a disruptive negative impact on many of the surrounding communities. And the state was left with a huge mess to clean up after all the protestors left.
Given that it also nearly doubled the size of the county, it probably kept those dying towns afloat.
>And the state was left with a huge mess to clean up after all the protestors left.
The state is also still spending tax money doing DNA tests to find a nonviolent protestor, not to mention the police bill rung up forcing all those protesters to leave.
Anyway one of these has a clip of some of the protesters blocking access to a certain area. First hand, that was my experience trying to drive a pickup truck through one of the areas. These guys blocked the roads, came up to the truck, were incredibly aggressive... swearing and posturing right off the bat. My dad, who's an enrolled member of the tribe, tried to tell them he was just getting through... he's in his 70s, and these guys mistook him for a pipeline worker. Yeah... I mean, it was just surreal having someone who clearly didn't sound like they were from North Dakota yelling at my Dad, who has lived there his entire life, about how we were violating and trespassing on sacred lands and they had the right to stop us from using the road.
* Ranchers Impacted by the DAPL Protests Voice Their Concerns | The Mighty 790 KFGO || https://kfgo.com/podcasts/ag-news-leader/1694/ranchers-impac...
* N.D. Pipeline Protests Have Agitated Area Farmers - AgWeb || https://www.agweb.com/article/nd-pipeline-protests-have-agit...
* My old comments on HN on this subject || https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
What would have helped? Put some of the local protesters on the road, people who didn't come off as quite so aggressive, to be the face of this thing. Who could have educated people on the issue. Instead, you get some guy in a bandanna, with a baseball bat, walking up to your truck, "Get the fuck off out of here!" Again, the absurdity of some non-native non-local telling a life-long resident native rancher, "I'm protecting my sacred lands..."
And if you ask the locals, there's no love for the protesters. People remember how you make them feel, right? It's impossible to defend the actions of a group of people who caused so much destruction and were such assholes to deal wtih. Any reason they couldn't tell the difference between pipeline workers and ranchers and just the the ranchers through? Ranchers are all older, I think the average age of ranchers in North Dakota is now over 50, and typically drive pretty beat up trucks (average income is $40k).
If you want to fight the 1%, you don't do it by trashing on some guy who's just out there doing an honest day's work. These are family men just trying to make ends meet. These families that lost equipment... they're still down 3 years later. Anyway that was my experience with this. I hate the militarization of police, and most police in general, but it's really hard for me to feel pity for anything that happened to the protesters after the way I saw them treat local ranchers. Just no excuse for a lot of that shitty behavior.
I also cried "censorship!" when 8chan got kicked off Cloudflare, when Facebook banned white nationalism, and when a cartoonist was fired from a rural newspaper after criticizing agribusiness.
I hope this helps you to a less strawman-like view of free-speech crusaders.
The issues of FB banning white nationalism and 8chan being kicked off of cloudflare incited a massive thread and attention here on HN. Then you have stories like this one with the government itself engaging in very selective measures in attempt to censure people and it doesn't gain nearly the same amount of attention as it should.
I've posted various similar stories here on HN and there is a very obvious slant towards what 'violations' of freedom of speech invoke a larger response here on HN or across the various tech communities.
Speaking for myself, I see stories of government prosecution used to stifle speech extremely rarely (unless we count every instance of the cops getting too rough with protestors). Which is not to say it happens rarely, it's just not reported on much.
There's another aspect to this, I think. Cops have been arresting protesters for centuries - we've reached equilibrium there. But censorship by globe-spanning private companies is new, as is the growing share of communication controlled by them. Which makes it scarier, and harder to predict if it'll get much worse in the coming decades.
Can you elaborate any more on "free speech crusaders" and why whoever you think they are deserve only your disdain and dismissal?
I'm actually not clear on why it's relevant.
Also, I find it interesting that a person who was there presumably out of respect for the environment, is polluting the environment by his smoking and littering.
1. is civil disobedience a crime, or the duty of all engaged citizens?
2. dna proves he was present AT SOME POINT, at that location, but not that he did anything illegal. I suspect they don't actually need to win the case, they just want to chase this guy down to chill further protests.
3. while I don't like cigarette butts littered around either, the environmental impact of a cigarette and its filter is so far outweighed by the impact of the pipeline in question. To compare the two is ridiculous.
If there is no crime, in the US it's just a lawful protest as permitted by the First Amendment.
On the trespass charges, most the land the protest took place on was on Standing Rock reservation, and used with permission, on federal land and used with explicit permission of the BLM, or on privately owned tracts of land and used with implicit permission in that the deeded landowner did not object to the use and their expressed objection would be necessary for it legally to be considered trespassing.
The destruction of property in this specific incident refers to a handful of people, including US Presidential Candidate Jill Stein, spray painting slogans on the scoop of a bulldozer. The main effect of this action was to protect the scoop against corrosion for a day or so before it was next used and the paint abraded again as it was once before on the first day the bulldozer was ever used after initially bought sporting a fresh coat of paint. Rather than bulldozer vandals from a scientific and practical viewpoint they would be more accurately described as bulldozer protectors.
There is also the issue that the specific land in question off the present "reservation" was acknowledged as being eternally the property of the Sioux people in a legitimate legal treaty ratified by the US Government, and the US Supreme Court has previously ruled that this treaty was legitimate and nothing abrogated it. So the issues of whether the US BLM correctly permitted the protest (they did) or the deeded landowner objected (he didn't) aren't even relevant at all from that legal viewpoint where all the land in question legally still belongs to the Sioux, not just from their own perspective, but from both ratified treaties and contemporary rulings of SCOTUS.
Either I can't write (which is possible) or you can't read (which is also possible), but where did that come from?
Civil disobedience wasn't a major factor in the protests.
The pipeline itself wasn't legal. It didn't properly comply with the permitting process. They "smurfed" the applications by dividing the pipeline into a series of tiny unrelated projects in order to avoid the required environmental reviews. Smurfing to avoid regulatory requirements is explicitly prohibited under federal law.
So yes, federal crimes were committed there. No evidence by this guy.
And were there crimes by any protestors? Yes! One woman, a convicted felon, fired a gun while being apprehended by police. It later turned out the gun was planted on her by an FBI informant who had sexually assaulted her, but legally she was in violation of federal law because she possessed a firearm. So that was illegal to be sure. A bit reminiscent of similar FBI operations where mentally deficient and gullible persons are recruited by FBI agents and coerced into plotting terrorists acts that are entirely designed and organized by the FBI.
The main protest acquired permission from relevant federal authorities and movement leaders clearly communicated to protestors that violence, weapons, and drugs were all unacceptable. This was a legitimate protest, not civil disobedience. Though obviously many like to argue it was illegal, and King's Birmingham march as well, and the dogs sicced on protestors and firehoses in Alabama by law enforcement were every bit as legal and justified as the dogs and firehoses deployed against protestors in the Dakotas during this decade.
Casual, personal items used to determine identity and lead to prosecution years later, are of societal concern for a lot of reasons.
The character smear of the subject in the story, with a statement that implies one cigarette in the wilderness is on par with some invented hypocrisy, is typical of baiting-style political talk, and probably not appreciated among thinking people who are actually considering the issues and circumstances.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." [1]
I think it's politically motivated abuse of process intended to curtail protest speech.
[1] attributed (attribution disputed) to Cardinal Richelieu: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu