How did it ever come down to abandoning peace keeping and accepting law enforcement by any means? Even the New York Times expresses alarm in, When the Police Go Military.
“The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally bars the military from law enforcement activities within the United States. But today, some local and city police forces have rendered the law rather moot. They have tanks – yes, tanks, often from military surplus, for use in hostage situations or drug raids – not to mention the sort of equipment and training one would need to deter a Mumbai-style guerrilla assault.”
World Net Daily offers a sad chronicle in the essay, The growing militarization of U.S. police.
“The SWAT concept was popularized by Los Angeles Police Chief Darryl Gates in the late 1960s in response to large-scale incidents for which the police were ill-prepared. But the use of SWAT teams has since exploded. Massive SWAT raids using military-style equipment are becoming routine methods for executing search warrants. One study estimates 40,000 such raids per year nationwide:
“These increasingly frequent raids… are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers.”
John W. Whitehead writes in the Huffington Post that “it appears to have less to do with increases in violent crime and more to do with law enforcement bureaucracy and a police state mentality.”
Mr. Whitehead is correct as usual. Unfortunately, few other constitutional conservatives seem to have the courage to criticize the thin blue line of establishment regulators.
In a rare moment of real civil liberties concern, the ACLU in The Militarization of Policing in America, initiates a worthwhile project.
“American neighborhoods are increasingly being policed by cops armed with the weapons and tactics of war. Federal funding in the billions of dollars has allowed state and local police departments to gain access to weapons and tactics created for overseas combat theaters – and yet very little is known about exactly how many police departments have military weapons and training, how militarized the police have become, and how extensively federal money is incentivizing this trend. It’s time to understand the true scope of the militarization of policing in America and the impact it is having in our neighborhoods. Since March 6th, ACLU affiliates in 25 states filed over 260 public records requests with law enforcement agencies and National Guard offices to determine the extent to which federal funding and support has fueled the militarization of state and local police departments.”
One of the “so called” unintended consequences of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is the intentional indoctrination of troops into the culture of excessive force, citizen combatant threats and indiscriminate brutality. The suppression of common law natural rights is the ultimate causality of this deranged and profane mind control.
The study Can a Veteran go into Law Enforcement after a PTSD Diagnosis?, inquiry provides a useful comparison chart of several police agencies. The summary concludes that several agencies stated that they had hired individuals with histories of PTSD and most agencies did not have specific protocols for evaluating PTSD.
If military training becomes instinctive and reactive, treating civilians as expected terrorists, why would society presume that stateside transition into a police academy course will purge the damaging traits of urban warfare?
Behind the curtain of “public safety” the real controllers adopt and practice their perverse version of, The Psychopathic Influence, that dominates the domestic police mentality.
Both the financial elite and their servants who maintain this system, appear to exhibit behavior that is consistent with symptoms associated with a medical disorder known as psychopathy.(*) Psychopaths, also called sociopaths, are categorized as those who exhibit superficial charm and intelligence, and are absent of delusions or nervousness. Their traits include:
– Unreliability
– Frequent lying
– Deceitful and manipulative behavior (either goal-oriented or for the delight of the act itself)
– Lack of remorse or shame
– Antisocial behavior
– Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience
– Incapacity for love
– Poverty of general emotions
– Loss of insight
– Unresponsiveness in personal relations
– A frequent need for excitement
– An inflated self-worth
– An ability to rationalize their behavior
– A need for complete power
– A need to dominate others
Often candidates with such a Napoleonic complex, demonstrate that they really are “little men”, when it comes to their desire to become goons. The Police Are Paramilitary Thugs, makes a valid point.
“In America, our cops are becoming less and less distinguishable from the security apparati of 1970s-era petty dictatorships in Central and South America. Where once they wore uniforms which were appropriate to civil servants, albeit ones with guns, they now don the habiliments of what more closely resembles a paramilitary organization, and they have the bullying, menacing, we’re-above-the-law attitudes to go along with them. These attitudes are demonstrated in this video, which unambiguously shows one such paramilitary — what point is there in referring to them any longer as “cops” since that term suggests a civil role? – Seizing a video recording device from an innocuous bystander. The transparently absurd justification for the seizure was that the device contained evidence that the person being arrested was “resisting”, and therefore, they were entitled to take it.”
The destructive role of federal involvement in local police functions is discussed in How Cops Became Soldiers: An Interview with Police Militarization Expert Radley Balko.
How did 9/11 alter the domestic relationship between the military and police?
“It really just accelerated a process that had already been in motion for 20 years. The main effect of 9/11 on domestic policing is the DHS grant program, which writes huge checks to local police departments across the country to purchase machine guns, helicopters, tanks, and armored personnel carriers. The Pentagon had already been giving away the same weapons and equipment for about a decade, but the DHS grants make that program look tiny.
But probably of more concern is the ancillary effect of those grants. DHS grants are lucrative enough that many defense contractors are now turning their attention to police agencies — and some companies have sprung up solely to sell military-grade weaponry to police agencies who get those grants. That means we’re now building a new industry whose sole function is to militarize domestic police departments. Which means it won’t be long before we see pro-militarization lobbying and pressure groups with lots of (taxpayer) money to spend to fight reform. That’s a corner it will be difficult to un-turn. We’re probably there already. Say hello to the police-industrial complex.”
The predictable consequences of the dominance from DC, is that the district of criminals impose a system that inevitably results in Botched Paramilitary Police Raids. An interactive map of botched SWAT and paramilitary police raids, released in conjunction with the Cato policy paper “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids,” by Radley Balko, illustrates his contention.
“To Protect and Serve” is now an euphemism for breaking heads. Police Thugs Claim They’re Here to “Serve” wants you to believe that “police are basically the same all over the world: they describe their role of carrying out the force and coercion required by those wanting to control others as being a role of “serving the people.” Those who are at the receiving end of the force and coercion are usually submissive and question nothing.” Tell that to Adam Kokesh.
The “Code of Silence” enables The Militarization of American Police, to blow smoke on a gullible public. Accountability and recourse is a myth. The SWAT system whacks the public as if they were nuisance flies.
“Police supporters claim the public already has plenty of oversight. But observers always find the same pattern: The internal investigations are not public, and the deputies stay on the force with no obvious punishment. The DA exonerates the deputies. The grand jury only gets involved in the most highly publicized cases, and such juries are controlled by the DA and represent a narrow, conservative demographic. (Around here, it’s mostly retired government workers who can afford to spend half their day working at the court for virtually no pay.) When a member of the public files a complaint with a police or sheriff’s department, it typically takes months to hear anything back. Then the only legal requirement is for the agency to say whether the complaint was “sustained” or “not sustained.” Such complaints are rarely sustained.”
The psychotic statists that have no problem with the militarization of law enforcement are enemies of the people. How far has this country fallen . . . Listen to the fateful words of the nature of the police by the original Godfather of the Chicago Gestapo. The demented and mentally deranged oligarchy, who is at war with the American public, is the true terrorist. Police need to examine, recite and act upon the Oath Keepers – Declaration Of Orders We Will Not Obey.
source:
http://batr.org/gulag/071413.html
related:
DHS Has Declared War On the USA
The MRAP: Brilliant Buy, or Billions Wasted?
… the biggest question was left hanging: did the nearly $50 billion investment in MRAPs make sense?