Posted on 05/11/2015 8:34:49 AM PDT by Perseverando
For close to 20 years now, I’ve been observing and reporting on a disturbing trend in law enforcement – the federalization and militarization of local police forces.
Until recently, practically no one noticed what was happening. But with the focus on police shootings and the civil disturbances that have followed – sometimes involving tanks, military-style gear and Kevlar – it’s hard not to notice that local cops don’t exactly look like Officer Joe Bolton anymore.
It was none other than Al Sharpton (I won’t call him reverend) who suggested recently that the answer to the use of excessive force by local police is to nationalize them – federalize them. If there were any doubt what a bad idea this is, consider its new champion.
Interestingly, we already have a model for a federalized police force in the United States – in Washington, D.C.
How’s that working out for us in terms of excessive force issues?
The answer can be found by Googling the name “Miriam Carey,” if it is so far unfamiliar to you. Carey was a dental hygienist and black mother who visited the nation’s capital in October 2013 with her infant daughter in a car seat. She made an apparent wrong turn near the White House and was inexplicably gunned down by Capitol Police and Secret Service agents.
While Al Sharpton and his ilk may think federalization of police forces equals perfect justice, Miriam Carey’s family disagrees. In fact, until recently, after WND filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Justice Department in pursuit of the official reports never released publicly on the case, a massive cover-up has been underway involving a multitude of federalized police agencies. Still, even now, all video recordings of the incident, including those captured by satellites, have been withheld. Yet the media and the
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
A national police force? It works well in a totalitarian state...
Ah, a trick question...
Correction - Obama’s CNSF speech was in July, 2008, not 2007. It was given at Colorado Springs, CO.
“A national police force? It works well in a totalitarian state...”
In California, we could call them Federales!
Kevlar? Nothing that a .30-06 or .223 won’t penetrate. One day they are really going to piss-off the wrong people.
“She made an apparent wrong turn near the White House and was inexplicably gunned down by Capitol Police and Secret Service agents.”
You forgot to include the bit about “she led police on an erratic & inexplicable high-speed chase thru DC, ending when she crashed her car into the WH fence.” The situation was more than just “an apparent wrong turn”.
More reason to avoid WND.
After the police opened fire on her she tried to escape them. And then when they caught her they executed her on video and validated her actions in fleeing for fear of being killed.
Bottom line: she was unarmed and her vehicle was inoperable at the time the police murdered her.
Her death was inexcusable.
Every local PD and state police agency in America that has accepted federal $$$$, equipment and training under the Patriot Act is just a pen and a phone call away from being federalized.
Ping.
-PJ
It’s the reason (among many others) this administration loves all that inflammatory speaking and inflammatory policy... pricing local police authority OUT of our communities.
Paying more and more in wages to police in increasing danger, more and more in training for local police and paying MORE and MORE in insurance/death benefits to families of injured and murdered officers will make the whole idea of local police obsolete. THAT’S the goal!!!
THAT’S when the Fed’s step in with THEIR ‘black shirts’ and ‘para’s’!
Ever since the so-called War On Drugs (WOD) and, now, the War On Terror (WOT) — actually more like the War On The Bill of Rights) — began, our civilian cops have been undergoing MILITARY training. The “authorities” gentle it down with the prefix “Para” but those “dynamic entry” teams would be more at home in Baghdad than Boston. (Well, unless they hit John Kerry’s front door at 3 am, Boston might not be a good example.) Watch “Dallas SWAT” for a dose of how it works.
I have long thought that that sort of activity within the ranks of otherwise “civilian” law enforcement was a push by those with an agenda to bypass posse comitatus for purposes BEYOND the WOD/WOT and other currently criminal behavior.
That the mass of that shrinking minority – the American citizen (thank you Mr. Open Borders Bush and Total Amnesty Obama) – has NOT objected to this erosion of personal liberty does NOT bode well for the future of freedom here.
I wonder what sort of body count of innocent grandmothers and others it will take before folks begin to grasp that they might be more at risk from the cops than the criminals and bring the situation back under control?
My Uncle Bob (R.I.P.) would be horrified.
My Uncle Bob was a 30-year veteran of a police force in suburban Cleveland. He was best man at my wedding in 1962. He served in an era when MOST cops embodied the now frequently hollow motto emblazoned on police units all over this country: “TO PROTECT AND SERVE.”
The last 10 years of his career were spent as the chief Juvenile Detective in his department. When he died, a number of the young men whose lives he had touched years before came forward to tell how his timely and sometimes tough-love intervention turned them around.
I know that many officers STILL try to live that creed today. I also know that there are officers out there who, despite the rulings by the Supremes that they have no obligation to specific, individual citizens (see Warren v. DC for some fascinating and frightening reading on that), would stand between one of us and a bullet – and have.
Having said that, I must also lament that SOME cops are “cowboys.” Too many are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take. It is these clowns who give credence to the wry bit of “humor” that there is no situation than cannot be made worse by the presence of the cops.
I believe this to be especially true of far too many federal law enforcement types who have allowed their egos and hubris to become as bloated as the bureaucratic federal behemoth they serve. (See footnote below). Their mandate is no longer to “…protect and serve” the citizens who pay their salaries: It is to crush any meaningful resistance to a growing body of procedures, regulations and policies – too frequently enforced under severely tortured interpretations of the underlying legislative enactments (if any) – and often put in place by executive fiat. The massively abused SEIZURE statutes – laws the author of which now seeks to RESCIND! — spring to mind.
And one cannot but help to wonder how the clear to anyone with half a brain criminality of the Clintons and now Obama – and their subsequent avoidance of any penalty – has played into the problem? There now seems to be a bright line between the easy, highly flexible, slap-on-the-wrist law for the rich and powerful and the rigidly enforced law against even the tiniest victimless “crimes” committed by those of us further down the food chain. Does anyone in his right mind believe THAT will NOT engender added disrespect for ALL law?
Could those things be a large part of the problem in some of the highly disturbing – and DEADLY (on BOTH sides) – confrontations we have witnessed over the past decade or so? Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Waco, Beck… This list WILL lengthen and we’d all better pray that WE will be spared.
Roman historian Tacitus warned that one could tell the level of corruption in a society by the NUMBER of its laws. Anyone doubt the level of corruption here?
Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.
Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.
The modern counterparts of my uncle would not object.
It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” — referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.
Dick Bachert (1999) Updated 12/2010
FOOTNOTE:
At a cocktail party back in the late 80’s, I struck up a conversation with a fellow — his name was Joe M. — whom I’d met on one or two previous events. After my first encounter, Joe’s neighbor and my boss at the time told me that Joe was an alcoholic who had just retired from 25 years with the IRS. Needless to say, I was guarded in expressing my political views to Joe as the IRS had helped my dad into an early grave in 1977 — at age 59 over an estate matter. Joe was pretty deep into his cups at the function in question and began telling IRS “war stories.” Most had to do with clear cases of criminal conduct by not very nice people. Joe — who was a few years short of 60 — sounded to me like someone who enjoyed helping getting really bad people off the street and I asked why he’d retired early. He told me that what he called “the service” had changed for the worse. Then I asked him about the new people coming in. He shook his head, actually teared up and said that many of them were “really bad.” I pressed. “Really bad” meant incompetent? “No — DANGEROUS,” he responded “they like to hurt people.”
It was then that I think I understood why Joe drank.
It also caused me to wonder how many of those folks bypassed the IRS and wound up in OTHER law enforcement organizations?
Something to think about as the civilian body count grows.
I have body armor that will stop .30-06 and .223 as do many other law enforcement officers. It’s heavy and cumbersome and only covers the torso but DARPA, Sandia Labs and other organizations are developing body armor that will defeat common rifle calibers, be made of lighter material and cover the entire body. The second amendment is becoming obsolete.
Would that be the goat/black widow dna crossing which produced the silk enzyme they are extracting from the resultant bred goats milk? This is new and startling in many ways.
Scientists breed goats that produce spider silk
May 31, 2010 by Lisa Zyga report
(PhysOrg.com) — Researchers from the University of Wyoming have developed a way to incorporate spiders’ silk-spinning genes into goats, allowing the researchers to harvest the silk protein from the goats’ milk for a variety of applications. For instance, due to its strength and elasticity, spider silk fiber could have several medical uses, such as for making artificial ligaments and tendons, for eye sutures, and for jaw repair. The silk could also have applications in bulletproof vests and improved car airbags.
Normally, getting enough spider silk for these applications requires large numbers of spiders. However, spiders tend to be territorial, so when the researchers tried to set up spider farms, the spiders killed each other.
To solve this problem, Randy Lewis, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Wyoming, and other researchers decided to put the spiders’ dragline silk gene into goats in such a way that the goats would only make the protein in their milk. Like any other genetic factor, only a certain percentage of the goats end up with the gene. For instance, of seven goat kids born in February 2010, three have tested positive for having the silk protein gene. When these transgenic goats have kids and start lactating, the researchers will collect the milk and purify the spider silk protein into “much, much higher quantities,” Lewis said.
Other than their ability to produce the spider silk protein, the goats do not seem to have any other differences in health, appearance, or behavior compared to goats without the gene, the researchers said.
In the future, the scientists plan to incorporate the silk genes into alfalfa plants, which they say could produce even larger quantities of silk. They explain that not only is alfalfa widely distributed, it also has a high (20-25%) protein content, making it an ideal crop to produce silk protein.
>> The answer to police brutality is to make the police even more powerful?
The context of the “police brutality” premise is completely bogus.
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