Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
I have written some guest blogs in the past dealing with aspects of the issue of America becoming a Police State and will link to them at the end of this piece. There are so many issues that call for our concern and attention in this country today, that dealing with the entire dysfunctional state of our country becomes daunting due to the wealth of material. Finally, the stories on a given issue multiply in such a way that their effect is a realization across all political lines that enough is enough. The issue of our country’s continuing descent into a”Police State” equaling all we know of the vile systems in the USSR and the former East Germany is an issue that concerns me.. The situation is dire and the consequences have produced not only horrible injustices, but also the many unneeded maiming and deaths of innocent individuals. Our country imprisons more people per capita than any other country in the world by far. Part of the reason for that is the “War on Drugs” an abject failure that falls most heavily upon people with low incomes and people of color. One such incident caused Professor Turley to pen two blogs this week. They were about a man falsely suspected of drug possession who had all his bodily orifices and cavities checked in the local Arizona police’s vain attempt to find evidence of guilt. None was found and the procedures were not only traumatic, but invasive. Thus the “War on Drugs” is one major contributing force to turning our country into a Police State.
Another contributing Police State factor has been the Federal Government militarizing our local police forces. I’ve written about this as well and will link at those blogs at the end as well. Somewhere along the line, certainly hastened by 9/11 it appeared a necessity to some that are police should be turned from officers of the law into a paramilitary occupying army. There is a great distinction between an officer of the law and a paramilitary trooper. An officer of the law the way I see it, is empowered to enforce the criminal law in ways of lawful conduct that are deemed permissible via our Constitution and Statutes. Thus an officer of the law should be a citizen like the rest of us and in the performance of their jobs should respect the rights of the citizenry. A paramilitary trooper by definition perceives themselves operating in a hostile environment and so everyone in that environment that is not of their army is a potential “hostile”. This unerringly begets a certain level of brutality when dealing with the populace, because from a paramilitary perspective people are presumed guilty, until they are proven innocent. We have seen and I have documented in guest blogs that vast sums of money have come in from the Federal Government to help create paramilitary SWAT teams. Once created, the uses for these teams multiply far beyond their original purpose, because having a tool inevitably causes its usage. After the split I will discuss yet a third factor that adds to this police state mentality, but first I’d like to express the following. The issue of our country becoming a Police State should not be and is not a partisan issue. Just from the opinions of people who follow this blog and comment, we see general agreement that these police tactics violate our Constitution and our innate sense of propriety. We may not all agree on most aspects of government policy, but I would hope we can agree on the proper manner in which our law officers should enforce the peace.I begin with a quote from that great journalist Hunter S. Thompson: “There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks of not challenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.”–Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century”
This quote opened an article I read this week from OpEdNews http://www.opednews.com The title of the article is “Welcome to the United Police States of America, Where Police Shoot First & Ask Questions Later”. The author John Whitehead’s premise is that this uptick in police violently attacking suspected criminals is rooted in fear and that fear causes them to shoot first and ask questions later. I must admit that when I read it the idea had resonance with me because it related to much of my own thoughts on this subject. Since the advent of Television as our country’s dominant medium there have been two ongoing staples in the theme of TV drama. One that has dissipated through the years was the Western and indeed that was the dominant TV Drama in the 50’s along with innumerable “Private Detective” Shows such as “77 Sunset Strip”, “Hawaiian Eye”, “Surfside Six”, “Peter Gunn”, etc. One crime show rose above all though and that was Jack Webb’s “Dragnet” which was on top for many years. What was so interesting about “Dragnet” as opposed to today’s police procedural was that while it could at times go over the top, the sanctimonious marijuana episode for instance, it portrayed police detectives who were in control of their world and rarely had to use more than minimal force. Then too, the Detectives on the show followed criminal procedure and never cut corners in dealing with potential perpetrators. There was even a show or two where a disgusted Sgt. Friday busted a “dirty cop”. As the 60’s waned so did the TV western drama and the private eye shows to be replaced with shows like CHIPs which were standard police procedural.
The tumult of the 60’s though left its legacy and in the 70’s shows like “The Streets of San Francisco” began to dominate the TV drama scene. These shows were somewhat more edgy and their police detective heroes were at time less in control of their environment and often faced tremendous dangers. Then too at times, they “stretched” the law in ways that were constructed to garner audience approval of their actions. After all the police were presented as noble men who were working in a very dangerous world and so needed to at times go beyond the law to enforce it. By the beginning of the 1980’s this trend continued with the award winning “Hill Street Blues” which was a show I particularly loved, because each episode was laden with emotion and the acting was superb. The world portrayed in “Hill Street Blues” was a dangerous one and various cast members were either badly injured or killed, as ploy lienes during the show’s run. Indeed, each episode opened with the Duty Sergeant reading the roll, setting the day’s activities and ending with the ominous “Be careful out there.” “Blues” set the standard for TV shows to follow after and in setting that standard made all of us care about the officers and the great dangers they faced. If a sympathetic officer was killed, or badly wounded, we the viewer would each feel a stab of emotional pain. Today, all of the top rated TV dramas are police shows. They are well written, well acted, directed and scored. They portray the world of the police as a terribly dangerous one and because they give the officers “back stories”, family and children, the danger to them seems even more intense to the viewer.
These shows affect our cultural attitudes and I have no doubt effect the cultural attitudes of our country’s police officers. Whereas in the 50’s we see officers in control of their environment, in the Twenty First Century we see officers facing ever greater dangers and our instinct is to caution them to take care and preserve their lives. Then came 9/11 and our country became riddled with fear at the potential for disaster as we led our everyday lives. Police lost so many good people on that day that they too felt the infection of fear. We all should be aware that fear itself is infectious and it is an infection that spreads rapidly. To complement that we saw the formation of a Department of Homeland Security, one of whose main functions seems to be the militarization of our police forces and the doling out of weaponry of ever greater destructive power. Many of our police today work their jobs in constant fear and do so with a distrust of the people they are charged to serve. I believe this fear is behind much of the police abuse that we see spiraling out of control. As the author Mr. Whitehead puts it:
“No longer is it unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. What is unusual is our lack of outrage, the relative disinterest of our elected representatives, the media’s abysmal failure to ask questions and demand answers, and our growing acceptance of the status quo in the United Police States of America–a status quo in which “we the people” are powerless in the face of the heavy-handed tactics employed by the government and its armed agents.
However, as I document in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, it’s all part of the larger police state continuum. Thus, with each tragic shooting that is shrugged off or covered up, each piece of legislation passed that criminalizes otherwise legal activities, every surveillance drone that takes to the skies, every phone call, email or text that is spied on, and every transaction that is monitored, the government’s stranglehold over our lives grows stronger.
We have been silent about too many things for too long, not the least of which is the deadly tendency on the part of police to resort to lethal force. However, as Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” http://www.opednews.com/articles/Welcome-to-the-United-Poli-by-John-Whitehead-Police_Police-Abuse-Of-Power_Police-Brutality_Police-Killing-Children-131105-375.html
Mr. Whitehead talks about a “safety at all costs” mindset that permeates many of today’s police and contrasts it with statistics that show that “policing” is not quite as dangerous as we, or the police are led to imagine:
“Unfortunately, this police preoccupation with ensuring their own safety at all costs–a mindset that many older law enforcement officials find abhorrent in light of the more selfless code on which they were trained–is spreading like a plague among the ranks of police officers across the country, with tragic consequences for the innocent civilians unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet the fatality rate of on-duty patrol officers is reportedly far lower than many other professions, including construction, logging, fishing, truck driving, and even trash collection. In fact, police officers have the same rate of dying on the job as do taxi drivers.
Nevertheless, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 400 to 500 innocent people are killed by police officers every year. That does not include the number of unarmed individuals shot and injured by police simply because they felt threatened or feared for their safety. This is the danger of having a standing army (which is what police forces, increasingly made up of individuals with military backgrounds and/or training, have evolved into) that has been trained to view the citizenry as little more than potential suspects, combatants and insurgents.”
Mr. Whitehead provides many incidents but I’m just going to quote one that at the time was the subject of a blog by Professor Turley, because I think it might be worth your time to read his entire article:
“For the sake of 13-year-old Andy Lopez, we can be silent no more. The Santa Rosa teen was shot dead after two sheriff’s deputies saw him carrying a toy BB gun in public. Lopez was about 20 feet away from the deputies, his back turned to them, when the officers took cover behind their car and ordered him to drop the “weapon.” When Lopez turned around, toy gun in his hand, one of the officers–a 24-year veteran of the force–shot him seven times. The time span between the deputies calling in a suspicious person sighting and shooting Lopez was a mere ten seconds. The young boy died at the scene. Clearly, no attempt was made to use less lethal force.
Rationalizing the shooting incident, Lt. Paul Henry of the Santa Rosa Police Department explained, “The deputy’s mindset was that he was fearful that he was going to be shot.” Yet as William Norman Grigg, a commentator for LewRockwell.com, points out, such a “preoccupation with “officer safety’ ” leads to unnecessary police shootings. A peace officer is paid to assume certain risks, including those necessary to de-escalate a confrontation with someone believed to be a heavily armed suspect in a residential neighborhood. A “veteran’ deputy with the mindset of a peace officer would have taken more than a shaved fraction of a split-second to open fire on a small male individual readily identifiable as a junior high school student, who was carrying an object that is easily recognizable as a toy–at least to people who don’t see themselves as an army of occupation, and view the public as an undifferentiated mass of menace.
Unfortunately, this police preoccupation with ensuring their own safety at all costs–a mindset that many older law enforcement officials find abhorrent in light of the more selfless code on which they were trained–is spreading like a plague among the ranks of police officers across the country, with tragic consequences for the innocent civilians unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
In most areas of this country being a police officer is considered to be an honorable profession and in general police officers are well paid. Policing is an opportunity for many to enter the “middle class” and to do productive work for the community. I’ve known many police officers socially and through work. I’ve lectured on handling the mentally ill at police precincts in New York City. Some of those lectures revealed to me perfectly legal and ingenious strategies for dealing with people with mental illness, that were a revelation to me as a professional. The police are not our enemies. What are our enemies though are the mindset that separates police from civilian, the militarization of our police forces as a quick fix to a complex problem, the “thin blue line” wall of silence that prevents police officers from ratting on the bad apples among them and finally politicians who garner votes with their toughness on crime via legislation to solve problems that don’t exist. Murder rates have fallen as have crime rates around the country. Yet the government, with the approval of both parties, keeps shoveling out money and equipment to make the local police even more separated from those they are putatively sworn to protect. To me this is madness and we are far down the path to a USSR style police state. That we already imprison a hundred people per capita more than Putin’s Russia proves that. Finally the wars “terrorism and drugs” must end so that we can deal with the problems of each in rational manners. As Hunter S. Thompson wrote:
“Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear.”
My final words to you the reader return me to my favorite police show of yore, but this time are intended for all of us civilians when we encounter police: “Be careful out there.”
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Please note: These links below represent only a few of the many blogs written here on these issues. You can find many more by using the search function on the upper right.
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/03/09/swat-is-america-coming-under-martial-law/
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/04/20/swat-is-america-coming-under-martial-law-redux/
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/09/28/you-dont-need-a-weatherman-to-know-which-way-the-wind-blows/
Thank you. Good article. I shared it on Facebook & Twitter. Below please find a link to article just published by “The Imaginative Conservative” in which the dangers of becoming a police state are warned against, This article compares current trends of law enforcement with how, in the series Mayberry RFD, the Sheriff played by Andy Griffith would handle situations, and how he would reign in the overly officious deputy played by Don Knotts: http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2013/11/barney-fife-american-police-state.html
Are you all not seeing my posts? or just ignoring the question.
Also Mike Vanderboegh shares these sentiments on the police state, and is a strong backer of the Oath Keepers! Unlikely bedfellows indeed.
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/
Good point and good question Blouise.
There are some:
(American Feudalism – 7, links removed, bold in original). Let’s do whatever we can to spread the word about them.
Carefully please.
I will never forget Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, the man sent to New Orleans to bring order to the city following Hurricane Katrina. He was giving an interview on the street to news reporters as trucks full of soldiers were rolling by when he stopped mid-sentence, turned and strode to the middle of the street. “Lower those rifles!” he yelled at the soldiers in the trucks. “Barrels down, barrels down! These are citizens of the United States of America! LOWER THOSE RIFLES … NOW!!”
I wonder if there are any like him left in this country.
In the thread about the dad calling the police on his son in order to teach him a lesson, I spoke of my brother who recently retired from the a large city PD. as I said there, I met many of his friends who were on the Dept. Over the years and not one of them struck me as the type that would engage in these kinds of egregious incidents of police overkill. I wondered what had changed, was it the hiring or the training? After reading this blog post it’s evident it’s the training and the militarization of the PDs. My brother was on the TAC squad for several years and it took a toll on his health. He then, because he had obtained a MS in Psychology, became a counselor to cops who had some very serious issues, he had jumped from the pan into the fire I thought. He retired with lingering effects to his health from his many years on the PD, in my opinion.
There is a whole lot to do to save America. The police state situation definitely has to be rolled back, but you can trace our predicament back to Marxist ideas like income tax, which make the people subject to all the whims of the state. As long as the state has a legal right (never a moral right) to take your earned or gifted income, you will never be free & will continue to be subject to all manner of privacy violations.
AmeriKans: went in dumb, come out dumb too. Shufflin round Atlanta in their Alligator shoes…
You folks had the best the civilized world created and threw it in the sewer.
So said a guy at the bar in Amsterdam last night.
Related to Jill’s posting at 10:52 am (Rolling Stone article):
Matthieu Aikins** was on Democracy Now, a couple of days ago.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/11/7/war_crimes_in_afghanistan_10_bodies
Excerpts:
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A year ago yesterday, on November 6, 2012, tens of millions of Americans went to the polls to re-elect President Obama. On that same day, thousands of miles away, a 39-year-old Afghan farmer named Mohammad Qasim disappeared after being arrested by U.S. Special Forces. He was never heard from again.
Months later, an Afghan shepherd saw a feral dog digging at human remains now believed to be the farmer’s. His decaying body was found just outside a base used by a team of U.S. Special Forces known as “the A-Team.” The body was found just weeks after U.S. Special Forces were compelled by the Afghan government to leave the base amid allegations of torture and murder.
More and more bodies were soon found just outside the base located in Wardak province, west of Kabul. In total, Afghan officials say they have uncovered the bodies of 10 Afghan men, all of whom disappeared after being arrested by U.S. Special Forces. Eight other Afghans were killed by the Special Forces during operations.
AMY GOODMAN: The mystery behind the killings is the center of a shocking new article published by Rolling Stone magazine, which reports the disappearances and killings could amount to some of the gravest war crimes perpetrated by U.S. forces since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch said any U.S. personnel who participated in or were otherwise responsible for the abuses should be criminally prosecuted. So far only one person has been arrested: an Afghan translator who went by the name Zikria Kandahari, who had been working for the American team. He was arrested in July by the Afghan government. Rolling Stone reports the U.S. military opened a criminal investigation into the killings in July; however, none of the witnesses and family members who were interviewed by Rolling Stone in Afghanistan during five months of reporting say they’ve ever been contacted by U.S. military investigators.
…
MATTHIEU AIKINS: Sure. This is one of the most disturbing incidents that I came across. I don’t mention his name in the piece; I give him a pseudonym, Omar. But Omar and his neighbor, Gul Rahim, who was a 28-year-old shopkeeper, were digging a stump in front of their house when an IED hit the U.S. Special Forces team as they were traveling nearby their village of Polad Khan. This was on November 10th of last year. And they soon saw Americans sort of coming down the road toward them, so they went inside. And two translators and an American, a bearded American, burst into their house—this is what Omar recounted to me—started beating them, dragged them out to the orchard, where they had found a command wire for the IED. It was the next-door orchard; it didn’t belong to either of the men.
And as Omar watched, as one of the Americans held him and beat him, the other translator, this man Zikria Kandahari, took Gul Rahim about 10 paces away and raised his pistol to the back of his head and fired three shots, killing him, in front of the Americans. Omar then says that he was beaten and taken away to the U.S. Special Forces base. He was held for several days, suspended, whipped with cables, and interrogated by the Americans and the translators. Now, he was the only civilian witness that I spoke to, to Gul Rahim’s execution, but three different neighbors that I spoke to from the same village told me that they saw the American Special Forces team arrive, they heard gunshots from the orchard, and when they came afterwards they found his bullet-riddled body lying there among the apple trees, the skull shattered.
——
** Matthieu Aikins: “an award-winning investigative journalist based in Kabul who spent five months investigating the killings for his Rolling Stone article, “The A-Team Killing”) was on Democracy Now, a couple of days ago”
“The war time actions of this govt. are in the streets of USA.” -Jill
Tragically true. The full truth will “shock the conscience” of most Americans when it eventually comes to light.
Fear of “terrorists” is in the populace as a result of propaganda, even though:
(Terrorism We Can Believe In? – 3). And as Mike S pointed out, that fear can infect quickly.
It has done so to the police who are now also afraid without a rational reason:
(Mike S). Yes those who are paid to have less fear have too much fear, and so they mistreat, maim, and kill those who they are supposed to protect.
Perhaps they should drive around in Taxi Cabs if they would feel safer.
Thank you Mike. Tough sledding, but necessary. Tough because it’s a police state occurring when citizens lack resources to combat it due to the shifting of American wealth into the hands of a tiny, angry minority that has given up on governing, empathy, and any recognition that we all rise and fall together, even the rich.
The money must be taken out of politics.
The war time actions of this govt. are in the streets of USA.
“…members installed themselves in the spacious quarters of Combat Outpost Nerkh, which overlooked the farming valley and had been vacated by more than 100 soldiers belonging to the regular infantry. They were U.S. Army Green Berets, trained to wage unconventional warfare, and their arrival was typical of what was happening all over Afghanistan; the big Army units, installed during the surge, were leaving, and in their place came small groups of quiet, bearded Americans, the elite operators who would stay behind to hunt the enemy and stiffen the resolve of government forces long after America’s 13-year war in Afghanistan officially comes to an end.
But six months after its arrival, the team would be forced out of Nerkh by the Afghan government, amid allegations of torture and murder against the local populace. If true, these accusations would amount to some of the gravest war crimes perpetrated by American forces since 2001. By February 2013, the locals claimed 10 civilians had been taken by U.S. Special Forces and had subsequently disappeared, while another eight had been killed by the team during their operations…
Officials at the American-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, categorically denied these allegations, which came at an extremely delicate moment – as Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the American government were locked in still-unresolved negotiations over the future of American forces in Afghanistan. The sticking point has been the U.S.’s demand for continued legal immunity for its troops, which Karzai is reluctant to grant. Privately, some American officials have begun to grumble about a “zero option” – where, as in Iraq, the U.S. would rather withdraw all its forces than subject them to local law – but both sides understand that such an action could be suicidal for the beleaguered Afghan government and devastating for American power in the region. Yet a story like the one brewing in Nerkh has the potential to sabotage negotiations…
Last winter, tensions peaked and President Karzai ordered an investigation into the allegations. Then on February 16th, a student named Nasratullah was found under a bridge with his throat slit, two days, his family claimed, after he had been picked up by the Green Berets. Mass demonstrations erupted in Wardak, and Karzai demanded that the American Special Forces team leave, and by April, it did. That’s when the locals started finding bodies buried outside the American base in Nerkh, bodies they said belonged to the 10 missing men. In July, the Afghan government announced that it had arrested Zikria Kandahari, a translator who had been working for the American team, in connection with the murders, and that in turn Kandahari had fingered members of the Special Forces for the crimes. But the American military stuck to its denials.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/a-team-killings-afghanistan-special-forces#ixzz2kAC81jgd
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Yes, we have a police state. It is not the death by a thousand cuts but the death of our society by a thousand denials. People who have been speaking the truth have been verbally attacked, to include on this blog, by their fellow citizens. People who have peacefully protested the police state have been physically assaulted by Federal, state and local police forces.
Part of the problem has been a well propagandized populace who has refused, and in many cases, still refuses to come to grips with what this govt. is and what it is doing. By attacking truth tellers, our population played right in the hands of officials bringing in a police state. In fact, I believe, it would not have been possible to create a police state without the willingness of citizens to ally themselves with the powerful against their fellow citizens whose only “crime” was speaking up, saying uncomfortable truths.
I am hoping that instead of allying with the powerful, our population will begin to come together for the common good of restoring the rule of law, a just society and a living earth.
It is a sad state of affairs when our nations finest continue to be unashamed about being their worst!
Mike S.,
Very well stated…. This seems to be a combination of many areas of government as well as the final installment of the star chamber…..
Beginning with the judges and extending to the district attorneys and extending to police there is a presumption of immunity. When a judge or DA or policeman commits an act that if done by a civilian would be punished with long prison terms they are immune to any penalty.
“All animals are equal, some are more equal than others.” — Animal Farm
I just have one question.. Should law enforcement agents be charged with crimes against humanity, and war crimes in situation like this.. The cops consider themselves to be at war.. and cops have in the past used that basis to excuse themselves of wrong doing.
“They [police officers] made a mistake.
There’s no one to blame for a mistake. The
way these people were treated has to be
judged in the context of a war.”
—Hallandale, Florida, attorney Richard Kane,
after police officers conducted a late night drug raid
on the home of Edwin and Catherine Bernhardt.
I took notes as I read each word in Mike’s post today..
By the numbers:
I agree entirely–hear, hear. The essence is the flow of money to the top which is of course the subject matter of 1929 and the communism that exists amongst the Elite. FDR got this–Holder doesn’t. Simply put–if “corporations are people”, then “people are corporations” and under such IRS rules, FICA with holdings are illegal–like corporations, people should have the right to consider their money, pre-tax profits, and as such, they should be entitled to the same write offs, exemptions and costs of doing business that corporations enjoy. Therefore, the way to the money source, is by either mandating FICA on pre-tax corporate profits, or eliminating the FICA with holdings from individual workers. This shifts the onus of Citizens United v FEC ruling onto the IRS and its non-dividend paying with holdings. This should call for a review of all IRS codes and standards which the Treasury enjoys paying for debt it incurs by the FICA with holdings it does not pay the employee, even at the end of the year, if he or she is entitled to a refund. Also, Social Security should be paying dividends as well on money it holds in its escrow accounts. A legal argument should be made based on the FEC ruling, challenging whether corporations are people or people are corporations? Money has to flow back to the masses and it must come from the few who have enjoyed hood-winking the lesser sophisticated for decades now. It is at an all time necessity that we look at where the money is going to establish a route back to the people. Poverty is the process of procurement, the drug trade relies upon in building its cartels in the same fashion a corporate executive builds his company–by recruiting talent from the bottom up.