By Scott Keyes on Mar 25, 2013 at 4:32 pm

A racist hate group at Towson University has announced plans to conduct its own nighttime police patrols on campus.

Founded last year, the White Student Union has stirred significant controversy already. The organization has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In addition, its founder, Matthew Heimbach (who goes by the title “Commander Heimbach”), and fellow organizer Scott Terry interrupted a minority outreach panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference this month in order to defend slavery, noting that slaveholders provided blacks with food and shelter. Terry later told ThinkProgress that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa” and he’d be “fine” living in a society where blacks are permanently subservient to whites.

The Towerlight has more on the vigilante plan:

The controversial White Student Union has resurfaced on Towson’s campus with plans to conduct random nighttime patrols, which members say are for students’ protection.

Some members of the group, equipped with flashlights, will conduct on-campus safety walks, and female members will carry pepper spray in an attempt to protect students from various crimes like sexual assaults and robberies, WSU President Matthew Heimbach said.

Heimbach said female members have also been enrolling in self-defense classes, and members have been going to local gun ranges as a group, but not in a “military way,” Heimbach said.
He said group members would carry no weapons on the nighttime walks.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/25/1772141/racist-hate-group-to-conduct-nighttime-patrols-on-college-campus/

The chief of police in Albany, New York says that his department just wanted a “realistic” setting when it frightened residents in a poor, predominately African-American neighborhood with SWAT training exercises that included firing blank ammunition and exploding flash grenades.

On Thursday, Albany’s SWAT team shocked nearby residents when it stormed a public housing complex that was scheduled to be demolished, according to the Times Union. Photos circulated on Facebook over the weekend showed police in tactical gear, spent shell casings and fake blood.

In a statement on Monday, Police Chief Steven Krokoff called the training “insensitive.”


“In light of the ever-increasing threats to communities across the nation, I have directed our department to provide the most up-to-date training in a manner that is as realistic as possible,” the police chief said. “I certainly did not mean to offend the very people that we are training to protect.”

“In retrospect, it was insensitive to conduct this type of training in the vicinity of occupied residences. We will review how we conduct our neighborhood-based training in the future and include the community in evaluating its appropriateness.”

Albany NAACP President Bernie Bryan wondered why police had chosen the housing project so close to a poor neighborhood.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/25/albany-police-swat-used-poor-black-neighborhood-for-training-because-its-realistic/

DALLAS (CBS 11 NEWS) - CBS-11 has learned two state troopers involved in a controversial roadside cavity search of two North Texas women have been indicted on criminal charges by a Dallas County Grand Jury.

CBS-11 has learned that one of the troopers, Kelley Helleson, who left the courthouse after testifying Friday, is charged with two counts of sexual assault and two counts of official oppression.

She was seen on dashcam video searching the body cavities — front and back — of the two women along an exit ramp of the Bush Turnpike in Irving last summer.

The Texas Department of Public Safety fired Helleson.

CBS-11 has learned the other trooper in the case, David Farrell, is charged with theft after one of the women said her prescription bottle of the painkiller hydrocodone was missing after the search.

Farrell initially stopped the women after seeing them throw a cigarette out of their car window.

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/03/22/two-texas-state-troopers-indicted-on-criminal-charges-after-roadside-cavity-search-of-two-women/