militarization of police

If the Public Shouldn’t Have Them, Why Does the IRS Need AR-15s?

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Here we go again. Stuck in the aftermath of a horrific shooting and all politicians think to do is scheme about how to take more rights from the citizenry. There are no good guys here. The Democrats want to railroad over due process by denying firearms to people on Orwellian watch lists, while Republicans plot to give the FBI more warrantless surveillance powers. This is the authoritarian knee-jerk response to tragedy we get from the U.S Congress.

Hypocritically, when it comes to foreign policy, all we hear are incessant calls for more militarism, more war and more regime change. As I warned in yesterday’s post, Is the Syrian War About to Experience a Major Escalation? — 51 State Department officials just issued a cable calling for the bombing of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. An event likely to lead to direct confrontation with Russia.

While all of that is bad enough, the U.S. government continues to eagerly and aggressively arm non-defense federal employees with weapons of war.

As Adam Andrzejewski of Open the Books and former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn noted in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed:

The number of non-Defense Department federal officers authorized to make arrests and carry firearms (200,000) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000).

For more, let’s take a look at a few excerpts from their piece, Why Does the IRS Need Guns?

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Washington Post Reporter Charged with “Trespassing” in Ferguson, Missouri as the “War on Journalism” Continues

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A year ago, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery, was arrested in a McDonald’s in Ferguson Missouri. The fast-food establishment had been used as a staging area for several reporters, including the Huffington Post’s Ryan Rilley, who was also arrested. Here’s last year’s video clip of Mr. Lowery being harassed by a paramilitary police officer.

Although the men were later released without charges, a year later, they are being charged with “trespassing” by St. Louis County. The Washington Post reports:

A Washington Post reporter who was arrested at a restaurant last year while reporting on protests in Ferguson, Mo., has been charged in St. Louis County with trespassing and interfering with a police officer and ordered to appear in court.

Wesley Lowery, a reporter on The Post’s national desk, was detained in a McDonald’s while he was in Missouri covering demonstrations sparked by a white police officer fatally shooting an unarmed black 18-year-old.

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Four Swedish Cops on Vacation in NYC Teach the NYPD a Lesson

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We’ve all seen the stats by now. U.S. police killed more citizens in March alone than UK police have killed in 100 years. We’ve seen the plethora of videos documenting unnecessary police brutality. There are so many in fact, I can’t even begin to document them all. We’ve also seen the militarized police in all its ghoulish display in Ferguson.

We’ve seen the wrong way to police in New York City, most recently when an unarmed Eric Garner was choked to death on the street in broad daylight for selling untaxed cigarettes. Now, finally, we see how real policing is supposed to be done, courtesy of four Swedish police officers who were on vacation in NYC.

First, a little background from the Free Thought Project:

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The National Guard Referred to Ferguson Protesters as “Enemy Forces” and “Adversaries” Ahead of Deployment

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Thanks to internal mission briefings received through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, we now know that the Missouri National Guard used highly charged, militarized terms when describing Ferguson protesters ahead of its deployment. Terms such as “enemy forces” and “adversaries” were used to describe American citizens justifiably angry about police violence, which is not isolated to the area, but appears to be an epidemic (see: U.S. Police Kill More Civilians in March than UK Police Killed in 100 Years).

The use of such language when describing a deployment to an American city takes on an elevated degree of significance when coupled with the fact that the Ferguson unrest served as the initial wakeup call for most Americans with regard to the militarization of domestic police. I wrote about this at the time in the post, “A Good Time Was Had By All” – The Obamas Dance the Night Away as Ferguson, Missouri Burns. Here’s an excerpt:

I believe Ferguson will be seen as a major turning point. The point in which many well-intentioned, but incredibly naive folks in white mainstream America woke up to what we have become. Many people, particularly those in the media, have been willfully ignorant about the destruction of freedom and civil liberties in America. The events in Ferguson have taken a gigantic mirror and successfully pointed it squarely at our civil society and the image it has reflected back is one of a horrific, militarized, authoritarian monster.

The following, reported by CNN, won’t help ease the above perceptions:

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Video of the Day – New Jersey Man Dies After Police Dog Violently Attacks Him While He’s Pinned Down on the Ground

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The hits just keep on coming. Less than an hour ago, I highlighted the latest case of an unarmed U.S. civilian killed unnecessarily by police in Oklahoma. In that incident, the cop claims to have mistakenly pulled out his gun instead of a taser (see: Another Police Killing Caught on Tape – Oklahoma Cop Shoots and Kills Unarmed Man in Tulsa).

Well it turns out another extremely disturbing video showcasing the recent epidemic of “death by civilian encounter with police” has surfaced. This time it’s a Vineland, New Jersey man. We see how Philip G. White is already pinned to the ground and repeatedly pounded on by a police officer, when he is then subjected to a sustained violent attack by a police dog. The man died in custody.

First, as reported by Gothamist:

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57-Year-Old Michigan Man Beaten to a Bloody Pulp by Police Officer Known as “RoboCop” for Running a Red Light

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Dent opened his door and was dragged out of his Cadillac; almost immediately, Melendez put him in a chokehold. Melendez then proceeded to deliver 16 blows to Dent’s temple. This all took place in about 15 seconds. Another officer arrived moments later and proceeded to use a taser stun gun against Dent, three times. In the video, Dent, with blood dripping from his forehead and cheek, appears not to be resisting Melendez’s efforts to arrest him.

Melendez’s record shows he has faced similar allegations before. At one point, he garnered more citizen complaints than any officer in Detroit, where he started his career in 1993 and served until his resignation in 2009. He entered Inkster’s police force a year later.

Over nearly two decades, Melendez has been named as a defendant in a dozen federal lawsuits, accused of planting evidence, wrongfully killing unarmed civilians, falsifying police reports and conducting illegal arrests. Some suits were settled out of court. Others were dismissed.

In 1996, Melendez, who was known in Detroit as “RoboCop”, and his partner shot and killed Lou Adkins. While Adkins was on the ground, several witnesses said the officers shot him 11 times, according to the Detroit Free Press. The case was settled for $1.05m, court records show.

– From the Guardian article: How a Traffic Stop Left a Michigan Man Beaten, Bloodied and Bitter at Police

Michigan police officer William Melendez has a sordid reputation. Amongst other things, he has come to be known as “Robocop” for his shady and often violent behavior. Additionally, he was “cited as the ringleader of numerous officers indicted by a federal grand jury in 2003 on civil rights violations.”

In contrast, Detroit native Floyd Dent worked at Ford for 37-years, has no criminal record and seems to be a decent and thoughtful citizen. He just happens to be black, driving at night, and had the unfortunate experience of running into William “Robocop” Melendez on the evening of January 28, 2015.

One of these individuals should be behind bars for a very long time, and one of them shouldn’t.

From the Guardian:

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Caught on Video – LAPD Guns Down Homeless Man in Broad Daylight

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Screen Shot 2015-01-30 at 12.44.27 PMThe following video of LAPD officers gunning down a homeless man in broad daylight is rightly getting a lot of attention. It’s not as if it was one officer dealing with a dangerous situation who panicked. There was a mob of police officers surrounding the victim, and rather than dealing with the situation like courageous, decent adults, they went ahead and treated the man like target practice. As we see with oligarch theft, this is the sort of thing you can expect more of when certain above-the-law groups in society fail to be held accountable for their actions.

WARNING: Graphic material and explicit language.

Absolutely disgusting.

For related articles, see:

The Police States of America – Elderly New Jersey Man Faces 10 Years in Jail for Possession of 18th Century Pistol

Protecting and Serving – Florida Police Raid 90-Year-Old Woman’s Home; Find No Drugs but Wreck Home

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Video of the Day – Watch as 8 Police Officers Fire 46 Shots and Kill a Homeless Man in Broad Daylight

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Screen Shot 2014-10-29 at 5.40.51 PMOut of control police brutality (including outright murder), and the militarization of cops across America, while significant issues in their own right, take on an even more pressing degree of concern when viewed as a reflection of society as a whole. For years now, I have been trying to point out the connection between banker bailouts, corruption in Washington D.C., imperialistic foreign policy and police aggression. They are all different sides of the same coin. All of these things are merely symptoms of the core cancer, which is a sociopathic elite running the nation and not applying the rule of law to those who are in power; wherever that power happens to reside.

This article is a perfect followup to my piece from earlier in the week, To Protect and Perve – California Cops Share Nude Photos Stolen from Citizens’ Cellphones, in which I wrote:

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Land of the Free – 1 in 3 Americans Are on File with the FBI in the U.S. Police State

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Screen Shot 2014-10-21 at 11.36.30 AMThe sickening transformation of these United States into an authoritarian police state with an incarceration rate that would make Joseph Stalin blush, has been a key theme of my writing since well before the launch of Liberty Blitzkrieg. One of the posts that shocked and disturbed readers most, was published a little over a year ago titled: American Police Make an Arrest Every 2 Seconds in 2012. In the event you never read it, I suggest taking a look before tackling the rest of this piece.

Fast forward to fall 2014, and the Wall Street Journal has a powerful article about how children in schools systems across the U.S. are being arrested or turned over to police custody for doing things that children have always done since the beginning of time. Things such as wearing too much perfume, sharing a classmates’ chicken nuggets, throwing an eraser or chewing gum.

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It’s Not Just the Police – The Feds are Also Militarizing Public Schools with Grenade Launchers, M16s and Tanks

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Screen Shot 2014-09-17 at 12.35.53 PMEvents last month in Ferguson, Missouri (read my detailed thoughts here) forced Americans to confront the frightening reality that many of of the nation’s police departments have been quietly, but consistently, militarizing over the past couple of decades. It’s one thing to intellectually understand that this has happened, it’s quite another to see cops deploy tanks and point sniper rifles at peacefully protesting U.S. citizens.

Just as disturbing as the scenes themselves, is the fact that this has been happening for so long under the 1033 transfer program with only muted criticism. The program was originated in the late 1990’s under the National Defense Authorization Act of 1997 (recall that the NDAA is also being used to allow for the indefinite detention of American citizens without trial), and it allows for the transfer of excess Department of Defense equipment to domestic police. In other words, it has been public policy for almost two decades to militarize the police.

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