up on our t.v. police across the u.s. are given the responsibility to protect and serve but that's not always the case today will shine a spotlight on excessive force used by officers across the country. drones are used by the u.s. government to conduct warfare across the globe but a large number of police agencies are using drones to spy on citizens and that has leaders in a virginia city declaring themselves drone free that story is ahead. and the annual apac conference is underway here in washington and there are more warnings of military action against iran coming from israel we'll have a report on that meeting straight ahead. it's monday march fourth four pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you're watching. starting off this hour despite relentless efforts by the l.a.p.d. to shed its reputation of police recklessness case after case of excessive force

keeps coming to light this one involves a seventy one year old woman her daughter and a case of mistaken identity now you've probably heard it by now in the all out manhunt for a former police officer turned cop killer christopher dorner police opened fire on a vehicle with two innocent women inside and the hernandez is only shield to protect her daughter from hundreds of bullets was her own body are to correspondent ramon galindo takes a closer look at her story and a few other cases of police recklessness a tragic case of mistaken identity is the explanation given as to why los angeles police officers fired one hundred rounds at two unarmed women delivering newspapers neighbors are still shocked and frustrated we had a boy. in the upstairs bedroom also caused by the l.a.p.d. . roland belak house says his neighborhood has always been peaceful until the l.a.p.d. showed up he's still waiting for the city to pay for the damage to his home belak

house also astonished at the reckless gun fire that continues to mark his street their whole. idea their training is supposed to be on based on the law and not emotional reaction and they totally went against the whole training seventy one year old a mariner and as is still recovering from two gunshot wounds she suffered while trying to shield her daughter margy attorney lin jonas says that the women are still fearful for their lives they have a difficult. time grappling with the fact that the police essentially tried to execute them this is the quiet neighborhood where officers shot at a marina and as in marjah kuranda right next to this elementary school is this neighborhood where several homes are still riddled with bullet holes shooting no way it's going to be just fine if it is all hell's going to break loose. and all hell broke loose twenty years ago after the rodney king trial but many believe

violence that permeated the l.a.p.d. decades ago has been exposed once again this is a police department that really is a model of a paramilitary organization when it comes to urban neighborhoods especially people of color in two thousand and eleven law enforcement in los angeles county shot and killed fifty four people that is seventy percent higher than the previous year every time it happened is just a phony konami dates on kendrick was unarmed when he was shot and killed by police while what they stopped doing it they must all be justified they didn't pay to do it. you can put on administrative leave because of legal protections for police officers involved in shootings we may never be allowed to see the names or the testimony from officers who shot a grandmother am or now and as we do not trust the l.a.p.d. we do not believe any investigation issued by the police is going to come up with any tangible result we do not believe that bonnie can investigate quat

now the question remains if the officers who shot at civilians will be held accountable for their violent deed in los angeles ramon dillon though r t and that's not the only case of brutality and recklessness that we're hearing about today a few hours north of los angeles a u.s. district judge has ruled that police officers must face excessive force claims coming from occupy oakland the protesters claim that police news unusually harsh tactics to disperse a peaceful group of activists who are speaking. out against wishin hikes at the university of california berkeley the berkeley police use their baton to the protesters who had linked arms in order to avoid. meanwhile in new york occupy activist michael premia is was found innocent of assaulting a police officer when video evidence directly contradicted the new york police department's claim that he had abused the officers here to discuss this case of

michael primo i'm joined now by molly nestle a journalist of radio dispatch hey there molly so what did the video evidence alternately clear him of and what was shown innit. sure so mr primo was facing a number of charges including obstructing governmental administration resisting arrest and assaulting an officer and the officer in question had testified at the trial claiming that mr primo head farms had resisted and ultimately. his violent actions. violent actions had led to the officer. being injured and when the actual tape of the arrest was played in court it actually showed that mr primo was on the ground he had fallen down in the scuffle of the protest and had covered his his head to protect himself

as he was on the ground and as he tried to stand up was then tackled from behind by officers and there was basically video evidence of what the police officer had testified what happened so quite a different story from what the y.p. prosecutors and also the officer himself was saying now he was actually really lucky in this case that there wasn't fact video evidence to disprove what the officer in the prosecution worst saying but that's not obviously always the case do you get the sense that the n.y.p.d. whining on the stand is actually common practice or is this just an isolated incident. well there was another occupy a case that happened earlier in the past year involving a mr arbuckle and that was also a case where the police testimony contradicted the video evidence there had been a police in that case a police officer testifying that defendant had been in the streets of traffic i

believe the video evidence show that that wasn't where the defendant was standing so it's important to note that while mr prima was found not guilty because there was this video you know meanwhile there are you know hundreds more cases and certainly thousands of cases. where there is no video and an important case you know regarding police brutality we read who was arrested last year by the n.y.p.d. and violently beaten by them while handcuffed and because there was video evidence showing what happened. really dismissed what he was being charged with but there was a number of you know discrepancies between the police report and the video so you know i can't speculate as to how often it happens but it certainly you know as michelle alexander has written in the new york times in a jury trial you know if you have a police officer testifying. the jury might not have any reason not to believe that

police officers testimony if there is not video evidence they are to show that it was going to be my question to you is do you think a jury is more likely to believe a police officer than regular citizen and do you think that that should should be the case should we just believe what we're being told. well you know we were talking about the l.a.p.d. earlier and you know the rodney king video was so you know so groundbreaking because finally here is here is video and i think a lot of people in the communities of color in l.a. at that time were were not surprised to see that video because they knew that that was what was happening in their communities and so in terms of a jury you know i think it depends on the jury. you know. again as michelle alexander has written if you have a police officer on the one hand and a defendant on the other hand that is being discredited for a number of reasons maybe he's being discredited because he is an activist you know or an occupy person which against which there's this big smear campaign or maybe

he's a young man of color and the jury there might be all sorts of reasons regarding you know cultural biases or media representation is that the jury might be more likely to believe the police officer than the defendant but i think mr primos case is important because it shows that that's not always that's not always accurate and we just have a little bit of time ali but i have to ask you do you think we're going do you expect to see more video evidence used against police officers as a check on their power in the future. well that certainly has i think a great deal of potential to change the way the trials go you know people have smartphones now more people have access to video and photos than ever before in my seal you has an app that if you witness a stop and frisk happening you can you can videotape it so i think that you know that video will will hopefully if there's video available as trial showed it can it can serve as

a force to counteract the power of the police and of course videotaping police is legal in all but two states so we'll have to see how this plays out another cases dealing with occupy mali needful journalist at radio dispatch thank you for joining us thank you for having me by now the topic of unmanned aerial vehicles spying on u.s. citizens has become a major sticking point both in the halls of capitol hill as well as on news channels ordinary citizens are trying to find a way to protect themselves from drones whether it's through legislation or even protests but one city in virginia thinks it may have the answer charlottesville has become the first city to formally pass a measure barring courts from using information obtained by drones and it's calling the on the verge an estate family as well as congress to follow suit artie's just seen under health reports. charlottesville virginia home to thomas jefferson and the university of virginia has a long history of being

a voice for freedom now it can add freedom from drones to the list charlus rules anti drone resolution is the first of its kind in the nation we have a very active group of socially conscientiousness activists and they will often bring us issues that they see as emerging across the country and so we that is exactly what happened with the drone methylation the resolution which passed by a three to two vote calls on the virginia general assembly and congress to adopt legislation barring information obtained from drones by being used in court and the city has adopted such a ban locally the measure also endorses a proposed two year moratorium on drones in virginia council member dave norris who voted in favor of the bill sees the issue as urgent we know that these this technology is already being heavily marketed to local law enforcement agencies and other groups and there's even one county in virginia that already purchased two drones for surveillance and so we know it's coming and we just we want to get out

ahead of it however not everyone in charlottesville is on board vice mayor kristen seacoast voted against the resolution she told other council members that the action is premature and he joins them to me seems to be sort of like outline planes because bombs can be dropped from them the resolution that the council passed was a toned down version of activist david swanson script for a nose drone zone in there included a local ban on drone use in charlottesville public or private one thing they added was not a ban on local use of drones but a commitment from the city that they would never use drones for surveillance or weaponized should they ever use any drones in any way the legislation won't prevent federal or state operated john's from flying over charlottesville but the resolution high. raised awareness and prompted other cities and states to take similar measures i've heard from city council members in cities large and small

towns i never heard of before have contacted me asking for a draft resolution john whitehead the original author on the charlottesville resolution has now floated anti drone legislation in all fifty states we have about seventeen states that are considering our legislation which basically says that any type of domestic grown flaw in this country can have any kind of personal weapons into any information that they collect cannot be used against american citizens in a court of law since the resolution was passed lawmakers in other states have begun drawing up their own versions currently twenty seven states are considering anti drone legislation groups like the electronic privacy information center have praised charlottesville for its proactive measures we've seen a growing increase in recognition that this is a problem and there's a real privacy concern with the use of this technology these bills not only are going to be talked about but they're going to be passed and there's going to be real rules for surveillance in the united states even though privacy advocates

admit the drones have benevolent uses it might not be enough to outweigh potential negatives we have survived for millennia without coffee delivered by drones and you know if we have to sacrifice that to protect our fundamental constitutional rights and the future of representative government in this country you know i'm willing to do it and with the proliferation of anti drone resolution from the country this looks like the beginning of a new fight over constitutional rights in charlottesville just you know under how r.t. . well despite bradley manning's voluntarily voluntary guilty plea to ten of twenty two charges federal prosecutors have announced that they will pursue all charges against the private first class manning his defense had hoped that his plea of his guilty plea to some of the lesser charges would convince prosecutors to drop some of the other ones against him that would result in life imprisonment twenty five year old accused pled not guilty to espionage act the computer front and abuse act

aiding the enemy as well as improper use of government information systems among other accusations manning have his first chance to speak during pretrial hearings last week he took the time to justify some of his actions saying quote i believe that the public release of these cables would not damage the united states however i did believe that the cables might be embarrassing since they represented very honest opinions and statements behind the backs of other nations and organizations meanwhile the private first class has been nominated for the twenty thirteen nobel peace prize his supporters include members of iceland and sweden's parliaments who in a letter to the nobel committee claimed that manning helped motivate the arab spring movements he helped shed light on secret corporate influence of policies of the european nations and he contributed to the obama administration agreeing to withdraw all troops from iraq. well when readers flip through the opinion pages of

newspapers they expect to encounter a variety of viewpoints about today's trending topics that's why it's called the editorial section after all but have you ever wondered how the writers formulate his or her opinions and the motivations behind it all it turns out that some of those writers were actually paid by the malaysian government to write a critical piece of opposition leader anwar ibrahim buzz feed discovered that from may two thousand and eight until april two thousand and eleven conservative writer joshua trevino was paid nearly three hundred ninety thousand dollars to focus on politics of malaysia and some he used to track to ten other writers to write in columns in publications from the guardian to the washington examiner examiner and beyond you can see some of those titles there now to break down this case i'm joined by michael brooks he's a producer for the majority report hey there michael so this seems like a cut and dry case of a conflict of interest but really a defense insult by saying he's not

a journalist so is that an applicable defense here. meghan it's great to be talking with you you know that would probably come as news to many people who've read his columns and his blog posts he wasn't identified explicitly as representing the government so obviously implicitly or not implicitly very directly you would think that he was offering objective analysis and it's as simple as that i don't really think there's much nuance here he was dishonest in his dealings and his in his representation ok what about the other writers or media outlets that publish them should they be held equally responsible as he is being. well i think you know the other writers you know they have this notion of being sort of subcontracted or whatever maybe there's a little bit of murkiness but essentially yes i mean look this is a p.r. and communications operation that was posing as objective journalism i think the

only kind of clear tip off would be why would anybody be interested in publishing or why would these guys even want to be writing about malaysia certainly trevino is no expert in the region and didn't really have any credibility or a value added on the issue i think for the outlets that publish them it's embarrassing obviously and they should check their procedures and look at their processes i don't think they should be accountable on the same level but it's an embarrassment ok do you think if he and the other writers would have disclosed the fact that they had some sort of relationship with the malaysian government would that have made it ok or are we entering an age of journalism where more often journalists are part of the stories themselves should or should we just accept that . well there's a lot you know kind of tied up in that question it's a really good question i think that part of the problem is those contained in the

question with these guys because no one would have any interest in what they had to say about malaysia sensually some kind of you know conservative bloggers pundits journalists just came out and said hey look you know this article is part of my contract work for the malaysian government i don't think most people would have any interest in reading that you know the proposition is that there is some type of dispassion analysis here and this is why you should be interested in what i have to say about malaysia so if they were identifying themselves as such they wouldn't be performing their function anyways and i think that that's a critical distinction because this isn't just a piece of p.r. this is a very particular type of p.r. this is kind of astroturfing false representation of information that's supposed to come from objective arbiters but it really comes from. a skewed source which in this case is the malaysian government as money funneled through communications

firms which hired these guys so if they were identifying themselves they would have been hired to do what they were doing so intrinsic to what they were doing was the misrepresentation michael doesn't matter doesn't matter if it was appeared on the editorial pages or on the newspaper does that make really any any difference. again i think that in these guys' cases it would make some difference because of how they're identifying themselves and how they're broadcasting themselves i don't think there's anything wrong with somebody saying hey look. i work for the malaysian government or anybody else for that matter not making a case for them but when you come out and your role is to be some type of analyst you're not identifying who you're working for what you're representing i mean it just seems you know again it's seems almost simplistic because it is pretty simplistic it's a problem and it's a misrepresentation so what does this say about the state of fact checking today expression of the fact that writers themselves you know should we should have the

media outlets trust the writers or do they need to follow up expression when it comes to these freelancers. yeah i mean i think obviously there does need to be a bit more kind of follow up i think again specifically in these cases i don't know why anybody would be interested in what just trevino had to say about anwar ibrahim or malaysia i mean frankly the only other sort of public distinction that this guy has is calling for foreign governments to kill u.s. citizens when he recommended that you know the israeli government kill american citizens on a gaza flotilla a couple years ago i mean he's kind of a low balls propagandist not particularly interesting writer with not much to say so i think it's a tip off as to you know why is this guy writing about malaysia what's his interest here and what's the relevance of what he might have to say but obviously the

process in general should be tight because there are a lot of interested parties out there and a lot of different loosely getting information and if nothing else it should remind viewers too and readers to always check what they're being told before they just believe that michael brooks producer of the majority or part. you for joining us thank you so much it's that time of the year again time for hundreds of america's conservative elite to file into washington d.c. and gather for the annual american israel public affairs committee conference for years apac as it's known has been seen as a litmus test for political hopefuls to make their grand entrance into the spotlight of both the democratic and the republican parties but this conference has no interest for as much controversy as it does conservatism artie's international correspondent diana church of can was at the conference this week and takes a look at the latest push for intervention in iran a parent is pushing for a congressional resolution that would say should israel decided to strike iran the

u.s. would give all the support including military or oceanus mosque to humane on this day but. we have to stay do this time and again and we expect all of those who say to me that. this kind of a congressional green light for preemptive strike although non-binding is seen by some as a way to put pressure on the obama administration which so far has been reluctant to see the u.s. dragged into another war in the middle east with the us will never abandon their nuclear efforts unless they genuinely believe that america is serious about keeping all options on the table. i many of the conference said they thought the administration was soft on iran but that's a view that was expressed on the sidelines not from the podium the potential of it

is really nuclear defense is the only thing that's keeping the country alive not relying on america because obama has not been forthcoming in defending them against iran in fact he's been stalling them apac is also pushing for legislation that would designate israel as a major strategic ally of the united states the question many ask is why does the country that's perceived as being closest to america suddenly need the congressional seal of approval now according to an n.b.c. wall street journal poll that came out just a few days ago fifty five percent of americans now no longer want any sort of preference between the nuclear side of the israeli palestinian conflict the lobby maybe this is a chance particularly in the face of sequestration where there could be cut just across the board almost two hundred million dollars they could view this as a last chance to tie in support. despite huge you see of the subject the conflict with the palestinians has received considerably less attention

at the summit in iran but the general impression here is that what's widely regarded as the most influential lobby in the american politics has detected a potential threat not just from israel's neighbors but from inside washington itself. in the wake of two wars in a battered economy we see signs of an increasing decided to disengage from world events and focus inward. this growing yearning to untangle from what is perceived as too complicated a world effects both parties conservatives and liberals alike they just want out. for israel even the tendency toward isolationism is extremely dangerous refusing to speak on camera some of the delegates expressed frustration over the president's decision to nominate chuck hagel as defense secretary chuck hagel is known to have been critical of the pro israel lobby president obama will not be speaking at the conference this year but he'll be traveling to israel at the end of

the month and one of the speakers here said it's going to be a real challenge for him to show that deep down and i quote him he really understands israel and the threats that he faces that gives an impression that the package is not too happy about the administration seemingly trying to play down the war talk in washington i'm going to check out. and speaking of loading guns a thirty printing technology has got a big boost by president obama in his most recent state of the union address but this latest innovation isn't without its flaws last year a gun developer first of displayed an a r fifteen rifle that was composed of several printed parts but the printed parts only lasted for about six shots until today take a look at this. the developer is now claiming it has improved the receiver parts enough to allow it to fire over six hundred rounds so a major step forward for the three d.

printing industry and a big step back for gun control advocates the blueprints to the lower receiver have been freely distributed and downloaded by internet users which brings up serious questions about the feasibility of regulating printed weapons for now no gun exists that is composed solely of printed parts but the defense distributed company is in the process of developing other printed components for its guns we'll keep you updated on that story as it comes up and that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com america and don't forget to check out our web site for the latest and greatest information and all the stories we cover today and if you we just didn't have time to get to you can also follow me at on twitter at meghan underscore lopez see you at five. as powell was the envy of embryos. he never put his trust in anyone and

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