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Militarization Is More Than Tanks & Rifles: It’s a Cultural Disease, Acclimating Citizens To Life In A Police State
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“If we’re training cops as soldiers, giving them equipment like soldiers, dressing them up as soldiers, when are they going to pick up the mentality of soldiers? If you look at the police department, their creed is to protect and to serve. A soldier’s mission is to engage his enemy in close combat and kill him. Do we want police officers to have that mentality? Of course not.”— Arthur Rizer, former civilian police officer and member of the military
Talk about poor timing. Then again, perhaps it’s brilliant timing.
Only now—after the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense have passed off billions of dollars worth of military equipment to local police forces, after police agencies have been trained in the fine art of war, after SWAT team raids have swelled in number to more than 80,000 a year, after it has become second nature for local police to look and act like soldiers, after communities have become acclimated to the presence of militarized police patrolling their streets, after Americans have been taught compliance at the end of a police gun or taser, after lower income neighborhoods have been transformed into war zones, after hundreds if not thousands of unarmed Americans have lost their lives at the hands of police who shoot first and ask questions later, after a whole generation of young Americans has learned to march in lockstep with the government’s dictates—only now does President Obama lift a hand to limit the number of military weapons being passed along to local police departments.
Not all, mind you, just some.
Talk about too little, too late.
Months after the White House defended a federal program that distributed $18 billion worth of military equipment to local police, Obama has announced that he will ban the federal government from providing local police departments with tracked armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft and vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers, camouflage uniforms and large-caliber firearms.
Obama also indicated that less heavy-duty equipment (armored vehicles, tactical vehicles, riot gear and specialized firearms and ammunition) will reportedly be subject to more regulations such as local government approval, and police being required to undergo more training and collect data on the equipment’s use. Perhaps hoping to sweeten the deal, the Obama administration is also offering $163 million in taxpayer-funded grants to “incentivize police departments to adopt the report’s recommendations.”
While this is a grossly overdue first step of sorts, it is nevertheless a first step from an administration that has been utterly complicit in accelerating the transformation of America’s police forces into extensions of the military. Indeed, as investigative journalist Radley Balko points out, while the Obama administration has said all the right things about the need to scale back on a battlefield mindset, it has done all the wrong things to perpetuate the problem:
- distributed equipment designed for use on the battlefield to local police departments,
- provided private grants to communities to incentivize SWAT team raids,
- redefined “community policing” to reflect aggressive police tactics and funding a nationwide COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) program that has contributed to dramatic rise in SWAT teams,
- encouraged the distribution of DHS anti-terror grants and the growth of “contractors that now cater to police agencies looking to cash DHS checks in exchange for battle-grade gear,”
- ramped up the use of military-style raids to crack down on immigration laws and target “medical marijuana growers, shops, and dispensaries in states that have legalized the drug,”
- defended as “reasonable” aggressive, militaristic police tactics in cases where police raided a guitar shop in defense of an obscure environmental law, raided a home looking for a woman who had defaulted on her student loans, and terrorized young children during a raid on the wrong house based on a mistaken license plate,
- and ushered in an era of outright highway robbery in which asset forfeiture laws have been used to swindle Americans out of cash, cars, houses, or other property that government agents can “accuse” of being connected to a crime.
It remains to be seen whether this overture on Obama’s part, coming in the midst of heightened tensions between the nation’s police forces and the populace they’re supposed to protect, opens the door to actual reform or is merely a political gambit to appease the masses all the while further acclimating the populace to life in a police state.
Certainly, on its face, it does nothing to ease the misery of the police state that has been foisted upon us. In fact, Obama’s belated gesture of concern does little to roll back the deadly menace of overzealous police agencies corrupted by money, power and institutional immunity. And it certainly fails to recognize the terrible toll that has been inflicted on our communities, our fragile ecosystem of a democracy, and our freedoms as a result of the government’s determination to bring the war home.
Will the young black man guilty of nothing more than running away from brutish police officers be any safer in the wake of Obama’s edict? It’s unlikely.
Will the old man reaching for his cane have a lesser chance of being shot? It’s doubtful.
Will the little girl asleep under her princess blanket live to see adulthood when a SWAT team crashes through her door? I wouldn’t count on it.
It’s a safe bet that our little worlds will be no safer following Obama’s pronouncement and the release of his “Task Force on 21st Century Policing” report. In fact, there is a very good chance that life in the American police state will become even more perilous.
Among the report’s 50-page list of recommendations is a call for more police officer boots on the ground, training for police “on the importance of de-escalation of force,” and “positive non-enforcement activities” in high-crime communities to promote trust in the police such as sending an ice cream truck across the city.
Curiously, nowhere in the entire 120-page report is there a mention of the Fourth Amendment, which demands that the government respect citizen privacy and bodily integrity. The Constitution is referenced once, in the Appendix, in relation to Obama’s authority as president. And while the word “constitutional” is used 15 times within the body of the report, its use provides little assurance that the Obama administration actually understands the clear prohibitions against government overreach as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
For instance, in the section of the report on the use of technology and social media, the report notes: “Though all constitutional guidelines must be maintained in the performance of law enforcement duties, the legal framework (warrants, etc.) should continue to protect law enforcement access to data obtained from cell phones, social media, GPS, and other sources, allowing officers to detect, prevent, or respond to crime.”
Translation: as I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the new face of policing in America is about to shift from waging its war on the American people using primarily the weapons of the battlefield to the evermore-sophisticated technology of the battlefield where government surveillance of our everyday activities will be even more invasive.
This emphasis on technology, surveillance and social media is nothing new. In much the same way the federal government used taxpayer-funded grants to “gift” local police agencies with military weapons and equipment, it is also funding the distribution of technology aimed at making it easier for police to monitor, track and spy on Americans. For instance, license plate readers, stingray devices and fusion centers are all funded by grants from the DHS. Funding for drones at the state and local levels also comes from the federal government, which in turn accesses the data acquired by the drones for its own uses.
If you’re noticing a pattern here, it is one in which the federal government is not merely transforming local police agencies into extensions of itself but is in fact federalizing them, turning them into a national police force that answers not to “we the people” but to the Commander in Chief. Yet the American police force is not supposed to be a branch of the military, nor is it a private security force for the reigning political faction. It is supposed to be an aggregation of the countless local civilian units that exist for a sole purpose: to serve and protect the citizens of each and every American community.
So where does that leave us?
There’s certainly no harm in embarking on a national dialogue on the dangers of militarized police, but if that’s all it amounts to—words that sound good on paper and in the press but do little to actually respect our rights and restore our freedoms—then we’re just playing at politics with no intention of actually bringing about reform.
Despite the Obama Administration’s lofty claims of wanting to “ensure that public safety becomes more than the absence of crime, that it must also include the presence of justice,” this is the reality we must contend with right now:
Americans still have no real protection against police abuse. Americans still have no right to self-defense in the face of SWAT teams mistakenly crashing through our doors, or police officers who shoot faster than they can reason. Americans are still no longer innocent until proven guilty. Americans still don’t have a right to private property. Americans are still powerless in the face of militarized police. Americans still don’t have a right to bodily integrity. Americans still don’t have a right to the expectation of privacy. Americans are still being acclimated to a police state through the steady use and sight of military drills domestically, a heavy militarized police presence in public places and in the schools, and a taxpayer-funded propaganda campaign aimed at reassuring the public that the police are our “friends.” And to top it all off, Americans still can’t rely on the courts, Congress or the White House to mete out justice when our rights are violated by police.
To sum it all up: the problems we’re grappling with have been building for more than 40 years. They’re not going to go away overnight, and they certainly will not be resolved by a report that instructs the police to simply adopt different tactics to accomplish the same results—i.e., maintain the government’s power, control and wealth at all costs.
This is the sad reality of life in the American police state.
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F.T.P.
Police-state = manifestation of 99% of the population wanting to exert some type of control over other people.
Solution = none.
The state is what you get when everyone wants to control everyone else.
Democracy is everyone trying to control everyone else, or at least vote themselves everyone else's wealth, via the intermediary of the state.
Police states are what you get when the ruling class perceives a domestic threat to itself and/or its interests. This perception is almost always the result of paranoid delusion, because such threats, credible and material, are practically non-existent - that's what militias and (standing) militaries (or aristocracies, the warrior caste) are for.
True, the cost of running your own police state has never been lower, but so too has the need never been less.
When is it proper to shoot a cop in self-defence??
"Neighbors", "Co-Workers" etc. drop dime on people daily. It's no different than the way East Germany "maintained order".
Ah yes --- File Transfer Protocol...
This will continue until the dollar crisis. Then it's a whole new ballgame.
What happens when soldiers and police get paid in worthless script? What happens when EBT cards don't buy anything? What happens when the Free Shit Army goes on a rampage and there's no one in uniform to stop them?
Exactly! the lie needs to be propped up at all costs. Or it will be state control of all production to keep the machine going. That never turns out well.
Until checks bounce, then like always it falls apart.
RastaFarHigh, good to see a CPL post again..... any insight into CERN buildup this year into September and/or Jade Helm?
https://youtu.be/vUkWrEz0xoY this is a link to CERN was revving up @ the same time the Nepal Quake happened....the schedule is to go full power up 14Tev *(trillionelectronvolts) this September ....
Peace
Slavespeak
All Slavespeak is based on the premise that there exists external authority and that the individual must subordinate himself to that higher power. Since reality shows us quite clearly that those claiming “authority” over others are just human beings—the same as those over whom they claim to have power—then any such claim can be identified as being merely an inadequate attempt to justify a master/slave relationship. But once this concept of external authority has been accepted, then an avalanche of supporting words and terms can follow: Government, tax, war, citizen, democracy, Constitution, legislator. All rely on the premise that authority justly resides outside of individuals and must be obeyed. Slavespeak is dedicated to utilizing, while at the same time disguising or explaining away, this invalid concept of external authority. It hides the widespread master/slave relationship that exists in today’s societies by calling it a government/citizen relationship. The Slavespeak definitions for “government” and “citizen” make this perfectly acceptable to the citizens/slaves, many of whom actually take great pride in their citizenship.
This short clip from Game of Thrones sums it all up nicely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq7f9G-Em0g
That arrangement is as old as religion. Using something intangible and often invisible to explain authority when in reality no person hold authority over another. No one is different. No one is special. But we pretend nonetheless. That's why there are uniforms. That's why an officer is simply "an officer" and not Jim, Jack or Tucker. That's why the judge is "your honor". That's why Obama is "the president" and Bernanke is "the chairman".
Labels on walking sacks of fluid and meat. Oh, this one is special! That one isn't! That sack is worth 2 sacks. That one is worth a million!
Such bullshit! I'm tired of life. Don't think it's going to get any better. I hope I don't have to stick around to see the worst of it.
Fuck life. Nobody knows what, why and how, but acting like made up ideas are truths eternal. Sick and tired of life. Sick and tired!
Hang in the buddy, evil always implodes in the end and this time they may go down spectacularly and globally. 99% of the things people worry about never actually happen. Trying to take over the entire planet is a tad of a tall order, delusions of grandeur will be there downfall.
Something Kris Kristofferson said once,"Don't let the bastards grind you down."
I have no objection to Sinead O'connor's views on the Papacy. Calling a paying audience "bastards" because they express their views by booing her is elitist Krap from Kris Kristofferson.
dearest JuliaS, your misery is a result of your disbelief.
Seek, again, the truth, lost soul...
here! -
www.provokethegoyim.blogspot.com
Tyranny is Liberty!
'We require a civilian security force at least as heavily armed and comparable in strength to the American military...'
What more needs to be said...
That the crimes committed by police against the people must be reconciled and paid for in blood, not fiat money.
The right to bear predator drones.
Select your state and your county to see exactly how militarized your town has become.
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/military-hardware-local-pd-stockpiling-...
Thanks for the link.
I see my city (population ~100,000) picked up a helicopter worth $916,406.00. Who pays to maintain it? Oh, I guess I do. Damn!
I don't even want to know what the 82 high power rifles are for.
Massive mis-allocation of capital. Capital extracted from the productive.
Obama's new and improved policy regarding this didn't change shit. Police departments just need to jazz up their requests a bit more. Any moron can do it. Obama when he was running the first time said he wanted a national police force. Well - here it is!
The bitches in blue will don fake moustaches and buy plane tickets for Argentina when the shit really gets hairy.
No paycheck is worth your life when the people start shooting back in earnest.
Free shit army likely to be the first to be wiped out first then the illegals after these police departments side with the militias against the USAA. After all, what will the USAA have to offer when it comes to feeding their families. I still trust the majority of the police as well as military will not side with the fuckers burning down the country and many are just as aware as the ZH'ers who the real enemy is. They know they are not going anywhere. I spoke with a FBI agent one time down in Texas when the secession talk was surrounding Governor Perry and asked him what he would do for a job if Texas seceeded (jokingly). His answer surprised me, he said he would still have a job with the state of Texas.
Ever since they came up with that word Homeland, I've always said that it was the:
Homeland Security Prison System
Psyops running strong on the boobtube. Has anyone noticed that the police brutality in the new shows is happening without even the pretense of constitutional rights. No one ever says "Hey we cant do that", but "OK he's bad so we wont say anything". Its all just seen as part of doing what has to be done to get the bad guy. Chicago PD is especially bad. At least last night the bad guys were dirty cops. Good show, but just softening up the sheeple for life in camp.
Also, all the shows with leading women as secretary of state or president or some mercenary, its all just hilarious, but definitely softening up the sheeple for hillary.
My girlfiend likes to watch NYPD Blue on the TeeVee.
Explained why the show was so revolting to any critical thinker. She said Tom Selleck was hot.
(sigh)
In the end, the Thugs at the top (crafting the game plan), the Thugs in the middle (directing the game plan) and the Thugs at the bottom (carrying out the game plan), all have (1) thing in common that is different (hopefully) from You: They value their paycheck, dinner time and a cozy abode Moar than they value living out from underneath someone's boot, unlike You who simply values being left alone. Might as well accept your new identity - American Taleeban, because that's how you're going to be seen by the Control Freaks if you decide to bump up against the machine - or even, decide to 'opt-out'... Anything other than 'full compliance' will be seen as 'enemy combatant'...
just for the record:
we (well, not all fo us) fear terrorists more than the police, even though in the US you re 9 times more likely to be killed by y police officer than by a terrorist.
this rate will rise, while they steal all of our liberties for surveillance, that costs more than the benefits of it.