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by fruhmenschen » Fri Aug 15, 2014 11:59 am
by fruhmenschen » Tue Aug 19, 2014 10:47 am
by seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 20, 2014 9:36 am
Militarized Police and the Threat to Democracy
Posted: 08/18/2014 11:18 am EDT Updated: 08/18/2014 11:59 am EDT
As a former big city mayor of a racially diverse city, Cleveland, Ohio, I can understand the cross currents sweeping through Ferguson, Missouri.
We are at a moment of national crisis in the way our domestic law enforcement is being conducted. The killing of an unarmed civilian by a law enforcement officer is, sadly, not unique. But the police response to the protests has provided a powerful cautionary moment for America. The militarization of local police has led to the arrival today in Ferguson of the actual military, the National Guard.
This crisis comes from:
1) The erosion of a principle in federal law, Posse Comitatus, meant to restrict the use of the military in civilian law enforcement;
2) The Pentagon's dispersal of military equipment to domestic police units, which has increased since 9/11;
3) Military-style police training reliant upon weaponry, as opposed to peace keeping, including skills development for de-escalation of violent tensions.
An unarmed, African-American teenager was shot and killed by a policeman. As people protested, the Ferguson police response evoked images of an occupying army come home.
The show of military-style force in an American city has created a huge backlash because the underlying concerns for justice have not been addressed. Moreover, Americans don't want armies patrolling their streets, attempting to stifle public dissent.
There is something deep in the American psyche which resents and resists military-style force in our neighborhoods. The hard-edged military pose of armored vehicles, heavy duty weaponry, and sound cannons, which can permanently damage hearing, may seem like modern crowd control to some law enforcement officials. But to the people in the community who are on the receiving end, it is an escalation of violence, in real terms and by the law.
A quick review of pertinent American history:
The Boston Massacre of March 5, 1770, was a catalyst toward the American Revolution. Five civilians were killed by the British soldiers. The Declaration of Independence, in condemning the offenses against liberty by George III, stated:
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states
From our earliest beginnings, when John Adams spoke to "the dangers of standing armies," Americans have demanded accountability and rejected military presence in our daily lives.
Yet, for purposes of security, the Framers provided Congress with the power "To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions."
The invocation of that provision has a checkered history: The Army has been involved in enforcing slavery, strike-breaking, and interfering in the 1876 Hayes-Tilden election in the South.
Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, became president in a deal, "The Compromise of 1876," which led to federal troops being removed from the former Confederate states in the south, ending Reconstruction and dashing the hopes of African Americans for full civil rights.
Eighty years later the federal government would attempt to acquit itself of that sell-out by using a federalized national guard to challenge segregation, enforcing African-American students' rights to attend public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.
In 1877 a law was passed which forbade the use of federal military resources in domestic law enforcement in any manner. The proscription, popularly known as Posse Comitatus, held up for more than a century.
In the past two decades the United States Congress began to chip away at the firewall between democratic policing and militarization, passing legislation authorizing the Department of Defense to give local police information on military training, and to provide equipment and facilities.
Local police departments became the recipients of military-grade weaponry, guns, tanks, armor, planes and the like. With the military equipment came the mind-set of police becoming warfighters, in a hostile environment -- in one's own community.
The governor of Missouri did not have to invoke martial law in Ferguson for it to look like martial law.
As Americans become aroused over social, economic and political conditions which speak to the failure of government to protect the civil rights of all people and the failure to address the practical aspirations of the American people, this is the time to demand Congress understand the significance of the Declaration when it comes to protecting our freedoms in the 21st century.
Here are some suggestions:
1. Congress must firmly re-establish the firewall between civilian law enforcement and the military by reinstating the intent of the Posse Comitatus law. As member of Congress I warned in 2007 the dangers of a bill which permitted the government to put troops on the ground in the US.
2. The Department of Defense must stop providing war-fighting equipment to local law enforcement.
3. All equipment provided to local law enforcement by the Department of Defense, must be inventoried and stored, not used except under an executive order from the top civilian authority in a state, the Governor, or under orders of the President of the United States.
4. The General Accounting Office and the Inspector General of the Department of Defense must be asked by Congress to determine the extent to which the training and equipping of local police by the DOD has created a culture in local law enforcement which is adverse to democratic values.
5. The Justice Department needs to fund programs which will train or retrain local law enforcement in racial sensitivity, constitutional protections of suspects, including the right to freedom of speech and right to assemble.
6. The Justice Department must also fund, support and mandate that all local law enforcement receiving any federal funds whatsoever create community programs for dialogue between local police and people in the neighborhood. Local police become an occupying army through emotional distancing, fear and lack of contact with the community. That can change by having police and the community meet regularly to discuss mutual concerns.
Those who serve in local law enforcement are given special trust, special dispensation to serve and protect. Their work is essential. Local police would like to be supported. But we must demand strict adherence to the Constitution and protection of the freedoms given to us by the Bill of Rights.
Let's insist on the following principles:
Well trained, culturally diverse, de-militarized local police forces to protect our neighborhoods.
The military to defend our nation.
And a rule of law which applies to a man with a badge and a gun, just as it applies to an unarmed teenager.
The requirements of freedom demand no less.
by seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 20, 2014 4:09 pm
Militarized cops’ scary new toys: The ugly next frontier in “crowd control”
The horror we saw in Ferguson may be just the start. Here's some other police gear our military is working on
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
Militarized cops' scary new toys: The ugly next frontier in "crowd control"
Police form a line blocking traffic and access to Florissant Road in downtown Ferguson, Mo., Aug. 11, 2014. (Credit: AP/Sid Hastings)
Now that the sight of American police decked out as if they are replaying the events of Blackhawk Down has alerted the American public to the militarization of our police agencies, perhaps they will finally be receptive to the warnings that some of us have been making for years about the next generation of weapons that are being developed for “crowd control.” As we’ve seen over the past few days, regardless of whether it’s created for military purposes, this gear tends to eventually end up on the streets of the United States.
In Ferguson this week the police used one of these new weapons, the LRAD, also known as a sound cannon. These were developed fairly recently as an interdiction device to repel pirates or terrorists in the aftermath of the attack on the USS Cole. But their use as a weapon to disperse crowds quickly became obvious. In Ferguson it seems to have served mostly as a warning device, but it can cause substantial pain and hearing damage if it’s deployed with the intent to send crowds running in the opposite direction. It’s been used liberally by police departments for the past few years, even at such benign public gatherings as a sand castle competition in San Diego, California. The police chief (as it happens, the former FBI agent in charge at the Ruby Ridge standoff) explained that it was there in case they needed it. Evidently, San Diego takes its sand castle competitions very seriously.
But the LRAD is a toy compared to some of the other weapons the military industrial complex has been developing to deal with “crowd control.” Take Shockwave, the new electric shock weapon developed by Taser International, a sort of taser machine gun:
The cartridges are tethered by 25-foot wires, which can be fired from a distance of up to 100 meters in a 20-degree arc. The “probes” on the end of the cartridges can pierce through clothing and skin, emitting 50,000 volts of electricity in the process.
“Full area coverage is provided to instantaneously incapacitate multiple personnel within that region” Taser explains.
“Multiple Shockwave units can be stacked together (like building blocks) either horizontally or vertically in order to extend area coverage or vertically to allow for multiple salvo engagements.” The product description states.
The weapons can also be vehicle mounted or “daisy chained” according to Taser. Clearly it is anticipated that these things will be used on sizable crowds, meaning an increased likelihood of indiscriminate targeting.
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The Department of Defense touts the use of these weapons as battlefield devices, but considering the huge market for military gear among police forces, it’s fairly obvious that they have been developed for domestic use as well. You can watch a demonstration of the device here. You’ll note the demo opens with the question: “What if you could drop everyone in a given area to the ground with the push of a button?” (They leave out the part where they are all screaming and writhing in terrible pain …)
And then there’s Taser’s new shotgun style taser called the XREP (for Extended Range External Projectile).It has the advantage of being able to be shot from a real gun and it delivers 20 long excruciating seconds of unbearable pain as opposed to the wimpy 5 seconds of the regular taser — which kills people with regularity. (You can see a demonstration of that one here.) The Taser drone is still in development but it’s sure to be a very welcome addition to the electroshock weapon arsenal.
If we believe, as Joe Scarborough does, that citizens are required to instantly comply with police regardless of the situation, these devices are perfect enforcement tools. On the other hand, if you believe that citizens have a right to peacefully protest and that police are not automatically entitled to deference in all circumstances, then you might want to think twice about the use of these weapons. They are only barely better than allowing police to shoot into crowds with bullets. Tasers can kill people and cause them to badly injure themselves and they are far too easy for police to use indiscriminately since the public has been brainwashed into believing they are harmless.
But there’s more. The military has been developing something called the Active Denial System, also known as the Pentagon’s Ray Gun. “60 Minutes” did a laudatory story on it a few years back in which it showed the training exercises the Army was using to test the weapon for potential use in Iraq. The funny thing was that the exercises featured soldiers dressed as protesters carrying signs that said “world peace,” “love for all,” which the “60 Minutes” correspondent characterized as something soldiers might confront in Iraq. (Who knew there was a large contingent of American-style hippies in Iraq staging antiwar protests?) The weapon itself is something out of science fiction: It’s a beam of electromagnetic radiation that heats the skin to a painful 130 degrees allegedly without inflicting permanent damage. They claim there have been almost no side effects or injuries. It just creates terrible pain and panics the peaceniks into dispersing on command. What could be better than that? Imagine how great it would be if any time a crowd gathers and the government wants to shut it down, they can just zap it with heat and send everyone screaming in agony and running in the opposite direction.
In his thorough Harper’s investigation on this subject, reporter Ando Arike explained the purpose behind all these new technologies:
[We have] an international arms-development effort involving an astonishing range of technologies: electrical weapons that shock and stun; laser weapons that cause dizziness or temporary blindness; acoustic weapons that deafen and nauseate; chemical weapons that irritate, incapacitate, or sedate; projectile weapons that knock down, bruise, and disable; and an assortment of nets, foams, and sprays that obstruct or immobilize. “Non-lethal” is the Pentagon’s approved term for these weapons, but their manufacturers also use the terms “soft kill,” “less-lethal,” “limited effects,” “low collateral damage,” and “compliance.” The weapons are intended primarily for use against unarmed or primitively armed civilians; they are designed to control crowds, clear buildings and streets, subdue and restrain individuals, and secure borders. The result is what appears to be the first arms race in which the opponent is the general population.
As I wrote earlier, in a couple of weeks the Soft-kill Convention, also known as Urban Shield, will be holding its annual trade show in Oakland, California. Police agencies from all over the world will attend to try out the various types of modern weapons that will be on display there. The super high-tech weapons described above are probably some years away from the commercial market. But it’s highly likely they will make their way to the police eventually through one of the many ways the weapons manufacturers manage to put this equipment in the hands of civilian authorities — if the federal government continues to make money available for that purpose.
Hopefully, Ferguson has alerted the public to the danger to our civil rights and liberties brought by the federal government arming police forces to the teeth with military gear. But it’s going to take vigilance to ensure that the next time we see civil unrest and peaceful protests on the streets of America, the authorities won’t be responding with electroshock or laser weapons or electromagnetic radiation devices designed purely for the purpose of gaining instant compliance from people in a crowd. If Americans foolishly accept these weapons as an improvement on the harsher methods we might see today there is a grave danger that we will be giving authorities much more power to quell dissent. In a free society it shouldn’t be easy to quell dissent. If it is, that society won’t be free for very long.
by 8bitagent » Thu Aug 21, 2014 12:22 am
by Pele'sDaughter » Wed Aug 27, 2014 3:14 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sat Sep 06, 2014 10:14 am
THE PENTAGON IS GIVING GRENADE LAUNCHERS TO CAMPUS POLICE
By Hannah K. Gold Sep 5 2014
In 1968, students at Columbia University staged a mass uprising other college campuses in protesting not just the war in Vietnam, but their school’s collaboration with the Institute for Defense Analysis, a Defense Department affiliate that researches weapons technologies. Today, weapons produced by that institute are used by the US military throughout the world—and by campus police forces across the country. The war has come home.
The Pentagon’s 1033 program, which allows the Defense Department to unload its excess military equipment onto local police forces, has quietly overflowed onto college campuses. According to documents obtained by the website Muckrock, more than 100 campus police forces have received military materials from the Pentagon. Schools that participate in the program range from liberal arts to community colleges to the entire University of Texas system. Emory, Rice, Purdue, and the University of California, Berkeley, are all on the list.
In 1990, Congress enacted the National Defense Authorization Act, including the magnanimous section 1208, which since 1996 has been known as program 1033. Over the last 17 years, this trickle-down gift economy has distributed more than $4.3 billion worth of equipment, according to program administrators. As Ferguson police rolled up to peaceful protesters in military-grade tanks, firing tear gas and rubber bullets, President Obama ordered a review of the program, which reached new highs in regifting under his tenure.
It’s clear why a review of the program is in order, because it isn’t clear at all what sort of equipment these colleges are receiving. David Perry, the president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, told Politico that 1033 mostly funnels “small items” to college police forces for daily use. These could be anything from office supplies or uniforms or car parts, but it’s probably not all that tame. Campus Safety magazine recommends that universities take part in the 1033 program to cover a range of needs from storage units to grenade launchers. That is, after all, what the program was designed to achieve.
But program 1033 doesn’t even come close to explaining all the ways in which campus police have been militarized over the past two decades. Colleges can also apply for Homeland Security grants, the same ones made available to every municipal police department in the country after 9/11. In 2012, UC Berkeley tried to use the program to purchase an eight-ton armored truck. After a backlash, university officials ultimately decided the truck was “not the best choice for a university setting.” The following year, Ohio State University acquired a mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicle. So far, it has yet to be targeted.
Other college policies are even more difficult to quantify, though they pose immense obstacles to the cultures of free action and thought that academic institutions are supposed to cultivate. One such policy is the Memorandum of Understanding, in which local law enforcement enters into an official partnership with campus “peace officers.” Sometimes memoranda of understanding can have positive impacts on students, as when they are established between universities and rape crisis centers to ensure that anyone seeking help receives proper care. In this sort of arrangement, universities work with centers and both institutions train one another, so that resources and knowledge are shared. This is what happens with local and campus police arrangements: The departments draft vague language to work in concert on operations both on and off campus, but the actual extent of this partnership is not well documented, with the line between campus police forces and those controlled by local government fuzzy at best.
Several campus police forces have also been vigorously trained in paramilitary tactics since 2007. In a country where SWAT teams raid private residencies more than 100 times a day, mostly in neighborhoods where people of color live, the decision to train campus officers in this overindulged art is a vote in favor of racist policing tactics on the part of institutions of higher education, even before the training is ever put to use.
In the 1960s, campuses went into lockdown because students were occupying buildings; now, they often go into lockdown because campus police are itching to stretch their military muscles. Horrible crimes have been committed with guns at colleges, but using the Virginia Tech massacre and other shootings to justify turning universities into police states is disingenuous considering that campuses are still among the safest places in the country—and these tactics clearly aren’t making them any safer. But amped up fears have made it easy for the Pentagon and local law enforcement to align with campus police while being met with little pushback.
Just last month, campus police at Cal State San Marcos put the university on lockdown based on intelligence that a man was walking around campus with a gun. The suspect, they later learned, was armed only with an umbrella. In December 2013, American University in Washington, DC shut down its academic operations to search for a reported gunman who turned out to be an off-duty police officer. On Wednesday, Denison University and all other schools in the district of Granville, Ohio, were locked down after police received a phony threat of an impending shooting.
Concurrent with increasing lockdown drills and stockpiling of weapons is the stifling of student dissent. In 2009, during the G-20 Summit, student protestors at the University of Pittsburgh were demonstrating peacefully on their campus when cops demanded they disperse, then quickly proceeded to arrest several of them. Police sprayed pepper gas at passersby and onto the balconies of residences where students were watching the scene below.
There was also the infamous mass pepper spraying of Occupy demonstrators at UC Davis in 2011. Police used CS gas, pepper pellets, and beanbag rounds on UC student protesters throughout 2012. When students and workers at UC Riverside publicly demanded the scaling back of university privatization in a number of sectors, they were met with batons and paintball pellets.
The list of infringements upon student dissent, student space, and student bodies, is too long to enumerate here. Yet, importantly, it is also impossible to quantify, because incidents are never added up and detailed funding records never corralled into a comprehensible database. In the absence of serious oversight and accounting, narratives are stitched together, stories swapped, and a picture of violent state surveillance and control emerges. The picture squares with what we see in cities, towns, and communities across America.
And it squares with much of what’s taken place in response to the killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in important ways, including the swiftness and brutality with which police met protestors in Ferguson and the importance of young people and youth culture in conveying images of that brutality to the world. Most of the protesters in Ferguson and those marching in solidarity across the country are young, and young people are more likely to support curtailing police power than their aged peers.
Perhaps this has something to do with the channels through which the story unfolding in Ferguson was most urgently told: grainy feeds on guerrilla news sites, social media, and, yes, websites geared toward millennials like VICE. It probably also has to do with the fact that so many young people mistrust the government, no matter who’s in charge. But perhaps most important, it’s young people, mostly young people of color, who are the targets of policies that feed the warrior cop ethos: increased surveillance, stop-and-frisk, and arrest quotas fueled by government grants. Joel Anderson wrote for Buzzfeed that most of the protestors in Ferguson “are young black men and some women from Ferguson and the surrounding inner suburbs of St. Louis who see themselves in Brown—not just because he was 18 and black, but also because they have their own tales of being harassed by police.”
A few weeks ago, activist and journalist Mariame Kaba asked on Twitter: “How can we build a movement to divest from police? Is there a way for us to do this? Can we go after local police budgets?”
One place to start is with those college campuses whose police forces receive 1033 and Homeland Security funding. The time is ripe for student journalists and activists to use the information furnished by Muckrock and to do their own digging to take on police divestment campaigns with the tenacity, political savvy, and exuberance that’s pushed universities nationwide to divest from fossil fuels, private prisons, and Israeli occupation. Young people in solidarity with the people of Ferguson and the families who have lost sons and daughters at the hands of militant police are poised to illuminate these connections between education, state surveillance, and state violence in a uniquely powerful way.
by fruhmenschen » Sat Sep 06, 2014 11:09 am
by Pele'sDaughter » Sat Sep 06, 2014 2:37 pm
(Me, with scrambled eyeballs.)by seemslikeadream » Sun Sep 07, 2014 12:12 am
Photos: Inside Urban Shield, the Convention for Warrior Cops
Where else can you pick up a 3-D printed drone or a flashlight that blinds your target?
Fri Sep. 5, 2014 7:05 PM EDT
Each year, the Alameda County Sheriff's office hosts Urban Shield, a trade show and series of exercises for first responders, primarily police department SWAT teams from around the nation. (Similar events have also been held in Boston and Dallas.) The first two days are taken up by a trade show, where vendors show off gear from armored vehicles to dog-mounted cameras and anatomically correct medical dummies. Mother Jones' Shane Bauer is attending this year's event and has been tweeting some of the highlights
by 82_28 » Sun Sep 07, 2014 1:11 am
by American Dream » Sun Sep 07, 2014 12:40 pm
Regardless of what color policemen are, the suits they wear, what they call themselves, they are all the same. They are the same for the simple reason that a policeman exists in society as a behavior control mechanism. The basic principles of what is done, how it is done, and why it is done are the same.
by 82_28 » Sun Sep 07, 2014 1:02 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sun Sep 07, 2014 1:06 pm
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