Free Republic

‘They came with a battering ram.” Cindy Archer, one of the lead architects of Wisconsin’s Act 10 — also called the “Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill,” it limited public-employee benefits and altered collective-bargaining rules for public-employee unions — was jolted awake by yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs’ frantic barking. The entire house — the windows and walls — was shaking. She looked outside to see up to a dozen police officers, yelling to open the door. They were carrying a battering ram. She wasn’t dressed, but she started to run toward the door, her body in full...

A federal law passed in February 2012 to help middle class families by creating jobs and cutting payroll taxes included a section mandating the creation of a nationwide interoperable broadband communications system for law enforcement and first responders. The system, which is being created under the direction of the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet), seeks to create a nationwide broadband network capable of being used for a variety of law enforcement purposes including remote surveillance, mobile biometric applications like field fingerprint scanning and facial recognition, as well as automated license plate reading. The system is currently in a pilot phase...

The Z-Ro Retinal Obfuscation weapon mounted to a handgun. Last summer’s riots in Ferguson, Missouri, prompted much talk by President Obama and certain members of Congress about the need to demilitarize local police forces. Nearly a year later, the opposite is happening. New and more powerful weapons are flowing into local police departments daily, and still others are new to the marketplace. One weapon about to make its debut is the “Z-Ro Retinal Obfuscation” gun. When fired, the gun allows an officer to temporarily blind his targeted subject for up to 15 minutes. The new “compliance weapon” made a...

Cherished family heirlooms were among the 21 firearms Michael Roberts surrendered to the Torrance Police Department in 2010, after his doctor filed a restraining order against him. The court order was the result of a dispute Roberts had with a member of the doctor’s staff and, after Roberts pleaded no contest, the matter was resolved. Yet, even though he filed the proper Law Enforcement Gun Release paperwork on four separate occasions, obtained clearance from the California Department of Justice and had two court orders commanding the return of his guns, police refused to hand them over. With the backing of...

It’s a phrase few Americans ever have the occasion to say: “I’m really getting pulled over by a tank right now.” The reasons why the Florida man said it are just as eyebrow-raising as the fact that he was pulled over by a “tank” in the first place. The whole encounter was captured on video. The Gainesville Sun reported Monday on the story of 23-year-old Lucas Jewell, a self-professed Navy veteran and Gainesville City Commission candidate, who was pulled over by sheriff’s deputies in an armored personnel vehicle after a University of Florida football game Saturday. At first, Jewell thought...

In August of 2014, military helicopters flew low over residential neighborhoods of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, engaged in a series of night-time training exercises. The exercises involved the Naval Warfare Development Group - a "special forces" component of the U.S. Navy - and were aimed at enhancing urban combat tactics. Just as they had two years earlier, military personnel had come to the Twin Cities to conduct counter-terrorism training operations in an urban environment. And just as before, those operations commenced with little advance notice to the public.

he Baltimore Police Department has used an invasive and controversial cellphone tracking device thousands of times in recent years while following instructions from the FBI to withhold information about it from prosecutors and judges, a detective revealed in court testimony Wednesday.. The testimony shows for the first time how frequently city police are using a cell site simulator, more commonly known as a "stingray," a technology that authorities have gone to great lengths to avoid disclosing. The device mimics a cellphone tower to force phones within its range to connect. Police use it to track down stolen phones or find...

Everything this nation once stood for is being turned on its head. Free speech, religious expression, privacy, due process, bodily integrity, the sanctity of human life, the sovereignty of the family, individuality, the right to self-defense, protection against police abuses, representative government, private property, human rights—the very ideals that once made this nation great—have become casualties of a politically correct, misguided, materialistic, amoral, militaristic culture. Indeed, I’m having a hard time reconciling the America I know and love with the America being depicted in the daily news headlines, where corruption, cronyism and abuse have taken precedence over the rights of...

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has crafted a new policy that would allow government officials to seize bank accounts involved in financial structuring schemes prior to filing criminal charges against the individuals who own those accounts. The new policy stems from the Justice Department’s ongoing review of its asset forfeiture program. The policy is aimed at preventing criminals from making a series of currency transactions under a certain monetary threshold in order to evade reporting the transaction to the authorities, according to a department statement. Those types of transactions typically lead to “the most serious illegal banking transactions” and occur...

A driver of a vehicle tried to ram a gate at the National Security Agency building in Fort Meade Monday morning, resulting in a shooting, authorities say. It is not clear if anyone has been injured. There are two vehicles with damage outside the gate. Anne Arundel County police say the National Security Agency is handling the investigation, WUSA9 reports. The incident happened around 9:30 a.m. local time.

Police opened fire on a vehicle that attempted to ram the gates at the National Security Agency, according to multiple media reports. It is unclear if there are any injuries. This a breaking news story and will be updated as more information comes available. Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/30/police-shoot-vehicle-ramming-nsa-gates-ft-meade-re/#ixzz3VsXmFSU4 Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

MSNBC correspondent Jeremy Lancaster sat down with government official Darrin Cornia to discuss recent rumors that have been in circulation in regard to registered motorcycle owners being placed on a classified FBI gang list. After a few moments of introduction, Lancaster bluntly asked the following question,” Mr. Cornia, if I were to make the statement, all registered motorcycle owners are currently showing on a classified FBI gang list, would the statement be true or false? Cornia responded by saying, “That would be a true statement, the FBI has been collecting and compiling Department of Motor Vehicles and Drivers License Division...

President Obama has lamented that special interests dominate the world of politics. My first reaction was to laugh out loud. After all, we are listening to the words of a politician/community activist who has done his very best job handing over the country to the communist bankers that are loosely referred to as the New World Order. This is the same Obama who has supported continued bail-outs of criminal bankers, has overseen and mandated a failing education system (i.e. Common Core), and has mandated a failing health care system that has instituted death panels (e.g. Obamacare age related treatment exclusions)....

Operation Jade Conditioning First, let’s cover what Joint Military Exercise Jade Helm 15 is not: it is not a covert plan for the military to conquer the Southwest and institute martial law. And no, the hundreds of special operations troops and thousands of other military personnel taking part in Jade Helm 15 are not bad guys who are out to establish tyranny in America. Those are straw man arguments, posited to be rejected. But the elimination of the straw men does not mean that Jade Helm 15 is benign. Reality check, please: does anybody reading this seriously believe that President...

The federal bureaucracy, in the form of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, recently announced a ban on ammunition used in AR-15 rifles, which are among the most common firearms in America, but then suddenly backed off. So breathe a sigh of relief and move on? Not if you like the Second Amendment, according to a National Rifle Association commentator. Colion Noir, a practicing attorney who graduated from the University of Houston, has been described by the Los Angeles Times as someone who doesn’t fit the stereotype of NRA members: “Old, fat, white guys.” “At 29, he’s not...

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” ― Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means If 2014 was the year of militarized police, armored tanks, and stop-and-frisk searches, 2015 may well be the year of technologized police, surveillance blimps and scan-and-frisk searches. Just as we witnessed neighborhood cops being transformed into soldier cops, we’re about to see them shapeshift once again, this time into robocops, complete with robotic exoskeletons, super-vision contact lenses, computer-linked visors, and mind-reading helmets. Similarly, just as military equipment created for the battlefield has been deployed on American soil against American citizens,...

Currently there are 73 federal agencies that have full-time armed officers with arresting authority. According to a 2008 report by the Department of Justice, there were 120,000 full-time law enforcement officers working for federal agencies and 24 different federal agencies employed at least 250 full-time officers. Federal agencies with at least 250 full-time officers included the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Mint, U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Veterans Health Administration. While speaking before the Constitutional Convention in 1787, James Madison said, “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.” Despite this...

A man, woman and their 4-year-old boy at an unidentified Inland Border Patrol checkpoint are ordered and pulled from their vehicle, questioned and taken into custody – all for the seeming offense of refusing to say where they were headed. A video of the incident, recorded by the family’s dashboard camera, opens with the man and woman chit-chatting with their son in the back, later identified as 4, and pulling up to a border checkpoint. The man, who’s driving, has his window a third of the way down.

The Los Angeles Police Department began exploring the deterrent approach a few years ago with a new model called predictive policing that deployed officers and patrol cars to areas where data suggested crime was more likely to occur. Criminologists say the use of helicopters is a natural, if highly unusual, expansion of that policing strategy. So far, LAPD officials say, the stats show the strategy is having a positive effect. Months of data show that the number of serious crimes reported in the LAPD's Newton Division in South L.A. fell during weeks when the helicopters conducted more flights.

Call it Common Core for police. But the White House, in cahoots with the Department of Justice, has set in motion a plan that will expand federal control of community police forces, via standards handed from above called the “Task Force on 21st Century Policing.” The plan was released Monday, Infowars reported. And its gist? Like Common Core, the education plan criticized by opponents as little more than a federal mandate that’s tied to funding, the just-released police plan would force local law enforcement agencies to follow federally set standards in return for receiving federal tax dollars. “The U.S. Department...