Not Concerned About Trump’s Militarization of Police? This Database Shows Why You Should Be

Washington, DC — This week the Trump administration announced that they were lifting an Obama administration ban on certain military grade weapons being sold to state and local police for pennies on the dollar. While there is a growing awareness that local law enforcement has received massive amounts of surplus military hardware under the federal 1033 program, authorized by the National Defense Authorization Act, exactly what equipment local law enforcement agencies have been stockpiling has remained largely obscured from the public’s view.

The public controversy over the militarization of the police, for many Americans, began during the 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri. Images beamed across the media echo chamber revealed what looked like a war zone in Afghanistan or Iraq — with police kitted out in Marine-issue camouflage and military-grade body armor, toting short-barreled assault rifles, and rolling around in MRAPs (mine resistant armored personnel) vehicles — virtually indistinguishable from US soldiers abroad.

In addition to Ferguson, the extreme militarization of police was clearly on display during the Standing Rock protest, as police looked and acted more like a heavily armed military contingent than peace officers sworn to uphold the law.

Shortly after the American public became widely aware, and largely outraged, over the extreme militarization of their local police forces, President Obama signed an Executive Order (EO) that blocked certain large-caliber weapons, armored vehicles with tracks, grenade launchers, bayonets, and other heavy military hardware from being re-purposed from battlefields across the globe to small town USA.

President Obama argued at the time, that police utilization of such weapons of war cast the police as an “occupying force,” and only served to deepen the divide between police and the community.

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“We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like they’re an occupying force, as opposed to a force that’s part of the community that’s protecting them and serving them,” Obama said in announcing the ban in 2015.

The new Trump plan for the 1033 program goes into effect immediately and completely rolls back the Obama EO that blocked state, county, and local police depart from obtaining military weapons of war.

The surplus sharing agreement, also known as the “1033 program,” was originally created by Congress nearly 30 years ago as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, and was intended to assist local law enforcement in drug investigations.

The program was expanded in 1997 to include all local law enforcement operations, including counter-terrorism. Since then, according to the government, more than $5 billion in gear has been transferred to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies.

Make no mistake that America has been quietly arming its police for battle with its own citizens, under the guise of the drug war, since the early 1990s.

As part of its misguided “war on drugs,” policy makers decided that if police were to act like drug warriors, they needed to be equipped like warriors. Since that time, almost $5 billion in military hardware was transferred from the military to law enforcement, according to a report by the ACLU. By giving military hardware to law enforcement for free, the NDAA and 1033 program encourages police to employ military-like tactics and weaponry.

To give you an idea of the absolute absurdity of the 1033 program, and how it unnecessarily militarizes small town police departments, law enforcement in Watertown, Connecticut, (population 22,514) acquired a mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicle (sticker price: $733,000), designed to protect soldiers from roadside bombs, for $2,800. To date there has never been a landmine reported in Watertown, Connecticut.

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Police in Bloomington, Georgia, (population: 2,713) acquired four grenade launchers through the program, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Police in small towns in Michigan and Indiana have used the 1033 Program to acquire “MRAP armored troop carriers, night-vision rifle scopes, camouflage fatigues, Humvees and dozens of M16 automatic rifles,” the South Bend Tribune reported.

The distribution of these weapons of war has largely been shielded from public view. However, the database below will show you what your department has acquired through the program.

Now anyone can look up this information on a database using information supplied by the military’s Defense Logistics Agency and Law Enforcement Support Office. All one has to do is type in their State and County jurisdiction and they are able to see exactly what their local law enforcement agencies have received under the federal 1033 program.

Take a look and see what type of military armaments your local police department is stockpiling; mine resistant armored personnel carriers, helicopters, M-16’s, M-14’s, M-4’s, grenade launchers?

The extreme militarization of the police begs the question: who are the local police preparing to use these weapons of war against?

Using history as an indicator, as the founding fathers clearly warned, Americans should be wary of the police operating as an oppressive standing army.

“The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”  – James Madison

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Select your state and your county to see exactly how militarized your local law enforcement agencies have become.

Trump Reinstates Program to Turn Police into the Standing Army Our Forefathers Warned Us About

Washington, DC — On Monday, the Trump administration lifted a ban on military surplus hardware being transferred to police departments across the United States. The controversial 1033 program became a source of citizen outrage after images of police armed with military grade weaponry, including grenade launchers and armored MRAPs, were beamed into people homes across the country during the battlefield-style police response to the rioting in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.

As many Americans noted, Ferguson, Missouri looked like a war zone, with police kitted out in Marine-issue camouflage and military-grade body armor, toting short-barreled assault rifles, and rolling around in armored vehicles — virtually indistinguishable from US soldiers.

Shortly after the American public became widely aware, and largely outraged, over the extreme militarization of their local police forces, President Obama signed an Executive Order (EO) that blocked large-caliber weapons, armored vehicles, grenade launchers and other heavy military hardware from being repurposed from battlefields across the globe to small town USA.

This was one of very few notable pro-liberty moves by the Obama admin, and now it’s gone.

The new Trump plan goes into effect immediately and completely rolls back the EO that blocked state, county, and local police departments from obtaining military weapons of war. Unsurprisingly, drug warrior extraordinaire, Attorney General Jeff Session led the charge to reinstate the program.

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The administration’s action, first disclosed by USA TODAY, would restore “the full scope of a longstanding program for recycling surplus, lifesaving gear from the Department of Defense, along with restoring the full scope of grants used to purchase this type of equipment from other sources,” according to an administration summary of the new program recently circulated to some law enforcement groups.

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Civil rights advocates were quick to warn that the 1033 program’s reinstatement threatened to inflame tensions in minority communities where such equipment has been deployed in the past.

“It is both exceptionally dangerous and irresponsible for the administration to lift the ban on the transfer of certain surplus military equipment to state and local law enforcement organizations,” Janai Nelson, associate director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told USA Today. “Just a few summers ago, our nation watched as Ferguson raised the specter of increased police militarization. The law enforcement response there and in too many places across the country demonstrated how perilous, especially for black and brown communities, a militarized police force can be.”

In addition to Ferguson, the extreme militarization of police was clearly on display in Standing Rock, as police looked and acted more like a military contingent than peace officers sworn to uphold the law.

“We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like they’re an occupying force, as opposed to a force that’s part of the community that’s protecting them and serving them,” Obama said in announcing the ban in 2015.

The ban on military gear was a policy recommendation from a White House advisory group which formed after the rioting in Ferguson. The Task Force on 21st Century Policing, chaired by former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Laurie Robinson, a former assistant attorney general, called on law enforcement officials to “minimize the appearance of a military operation” when policing mass demonstrations.

“Avoid using provocative tactics and equipment that undermine civilian trust,” the task force urged.

According to the USA Today report:

The previously-banned equipment also included tracked armored vehicles, bayonets and grenade launchers.

The Obama order did allow for the limited use of other surplus — aircraft, wheeled tactical vehicles, mobile command units, battering rams and riot gear — on the condition that such equipment was approved by the federal government.

The surplus sharing agreement, also known as the “1033 program,” was created by Congress nearly 30 years ago as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. It was originally intended to assist local law enforcement in drug investigations.

The program was expanded in 1997 to include all local law enforcement operations, including counter-terrorism. Since then, according to the government, more than $5 billion in gear has been transferred to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies.

Make no mistake that America has been quietly arming its police for battle with its own citizens, under the guise of the drug war, since the early 1990s.

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As part of its misguided “war on drugs,” US policy makers decided that if police were to act like drug warriors, they needed to be equipped like warriors. Since that time, almost $5 billion in military hardware was transferred from the military to law enforcement, according to a report by the ACLU. By giving military hardware to law enforcement, the NDAA and 1033 program encourages police to employ military-like tactics and weaponry against the American public.

According to a Newsweek report:

1033 procurements are not matters of public record. And the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which coordinates distribution of military surplus, refuses to reveal the names of agencies requesting “tactical” items, like assault rifles and MRAPs — for security reasons, a spokesperson for DLA told Newsweek via email. One can only trace “tactical” items as far the county of the requesting agency. In the case of Ferguson, that means St. Louis County.

To give you an idea of the absolute absurdity of the 1033 program, police in Watertown, Connecticut, (population 22,514) acquired a mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicle (sticker price: $733,000), designed to protect soldiers from roadside bombs, for $2,800. To date, there has never been a landmine reported in Watertown, Connecticut.

Police in Bloomington, Georgia, (population: 2,713) acquired four grenade launchers through the program, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Police in small towns in Michigan and Indiana have used the 1033 Program to acquire “MRAP armored troop carriers, night-vision rifle scopes, camouflage fatigues, Humvees and dozens of M16 automatic rifles,” the South Bend Tribune reported.

These are just a few out of hundreds of examples of the overkill this program not only allows but promotes.

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The proclivity to treat policing in a militarized manner is inherently dangerous. Given the proliferation of military hardware and military training among police agencies, law enforcement’s inability to de-escalate dangerous situations, and instead respond to these situations by escalating force, is no surprise.

The founding fathers warned of the dangers of a standing army – and police are increasingly looking like the standing army they cautioned us against. When your only tool is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail.

“The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”  – James Madison

‘Throw Rocks & Riot’: Washington Post Article Calls For Full-On Nazi Style Violence In The Streets

As extremism begins to grip American society on both sides of the ideological line, it’s worth noting that the mass media has been a catalyst for the sharpening of radical divide across the United States. Not since the Civil Rights-era has there been such a distinctly divided American nation. The Washington Post is right in the middle.

The violence witnessed in Charlottesville was indicative of a larger ideological battle that has, until recently, largely been played out in mass and social media, as the non-stop barrage of race-baiting news only serves to capitalize on the strife for clicks — ie increased revenue — at the expense of maintaining a civil society.

One can pinpoint the drastic recent sharpening of ideological divisions in the US to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. In many ways, Brown’s murder was a catalyst to the divisive nature of American society that we are seeing play out in the streets today.

What began as online battles between people that believed Brown to be a victim, and those that claim he was a “thug” have now taken on a new life, as we witness a drastic sharpening of identities. Make no mistake that what we saw in Charlottesville last weekend was simply the beginning of a hardening of conflict solidarity, and which could inevitably result in continued violence and death.

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The question now becomes: How did America come to resemble Weimar Germany – with socialist white nationalists engaged in violent altercations resulting in blood in the streets?

While racism has never left the proverbial building here in the US, the main drivers of the conflict actions now being seen are mainstream corporate media. After pushing identity politics en masse onto the American psyche, emboldened by extremist ideology, the systemic divisions of racial and ethnic groups have become the new norm, as the public discourse has been buried in the name of political correctness.

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The stoking of racial tensions for profit, at the expense of an ongoing and continuous healing of racial division, has without question gripped the mass media and played a large roll in the hardening of racial and ethnic identities.

One need look no further than a recent op-ed published by the Washington Post, written by N.D.B. Collins, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University. Collins breathlessly appeals to the left to engage in violence and rioting as a means of precipitating change – while ignoring the fact that this will simply result in an increase in identity solidarity for those targeted by the violence.

A never ending feedback loop of violence and death if you will.

Collins writes:

The white nationalist riot in Charlottesville, a city that boasts “diversity makes us stronger,” made a lot of things clear. One of them is that generic solutions to the racial problem — bland affirmations of inclusiveness, tolerance and “free speech” — will no longer work. Indeed, they have never worked, at least not on their own. …

[I]n April 1968, amid a flurry of other “rocks,” riots shook American cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It took that rolling unrest, not the promise of further economic growth, to spur President Lyndon Johnson and Congress to action. Within a week they had passed the Fair Housing Act.

Over the past century, liberalism, vexed by an ever-sharp, ever-cutting white supremacy, has needed these rocks. …

Segregationists have again assumed their pedestals in the Justice Department, the White House and many other American temples. Paper alone won’t drive them out. Start throwing rocks.

Rather than promoting peaceful solutions that de-escalate the increasing racial/ethnic strife, the Washington Post advocates ideas that will almost certainly result in more destruction, violence, and death in America.

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With strict standards for vetting op-eds, one of America’s most popular publications — albeit largely just a US government propaganda rag — essentially endorses violence as a solution to these complex racial and ethnic issues. One can reasonably assume, that since the piece was vetted by WaPo editors, they clearly understood the significance of allowing the promotion of violence to the American public at large.

When what is considered one of the publications of repute in the US, to those caught in the mainstream matrix, publishes an advocacy of violence, it becomes clear that they are now advocating by proxy political violence.

Please share this article in hopes of awakening others to the realization that the mainstream media is distinctly complicit in the sharpening of conflict solidarity on both sides of the ideological line – an extremely slippery slope that is likely to result in a devolution of American civil society, rioting, and even politically motivated killing.

In the words of the immortal Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cops Shoot, Handcuff 15yo Boy, Left Him in the Street for Hours as He Bled to Death

Stratford, CT — Sadly, America will add Jayson Negron’s name to the list of more than 1,000 people killed by police each year. Negron, a 15-year-old Sophomore at Bunnell High School in Stratford, had gone on a joyride May 9th, in someone else’s car. But Negron received the death penalty for his sins after encountering Bridgeport police officer James Boulay.

Police employ a number of ways to stop a fleeing automobile. Stop sticks often do the trick, immobilizing the tires by puncturing them. Then there’s the box method whereby officers surround a suspect vehicle with two or three other cars, and squeeze in, causing the car to come to a stop.

But with Negron, the only reported method for stopping the fleeing driver was for Boulay to shoot him in the chest. And now his parents are saying police left him to die in the street, thereafter.

Boulay was reportedly sworn in as an officer in September, after returning from the military. He’s reportedly devastated after the shooting, is on leave, and is expected to return to desk duty after the months-long state investigation is conducted.

Jazmarie Melendez, Negron’s sister, openly questioned Boulay’s killing of her brother. “I would never sit here and pretend to say ‘my innocent baby brother,’ ” Melendez said. “I acknowledge that. But what I’m saying is ‘were you trained to properly handle that situation?’”

She said all the major problems began when the Department of Child and Family Services (DCF) got involved. “DCF got involved…They didn’t care, they didn’t send truancy on him. Nothing. That’s why I’m so mad at DCF,” she said. “(They) dropped him off at a home where someone is doing drugs.”

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She said instead of staying with his dad, Negron began sleeping in cars. His cousin, Giovanni Rivera said the family was initially told police shot him in the head but found out later he’d been shot in the chest.

Rivera says his death was an injustice. She tweeted, “Police officers killed my little cousin for driving a stolen vehicle,” Rivera asked in another tweet, “How is that fair?!”

Family members literally mopped the street of his blood in what some have considered a moving display of emotion. Protests in the streets were directed towards police and calls for body cameras by legislators have resulted, with even the mayor of Bridgeport participating in the manifestations.

Mayor Joe Ganim spoke with reporters. “We’re all struggling,” Ganim said. “It’s a tragedy. All emotions are welcome tonight.”

Bridgeport police chief A.J. Perez told reporters at a press conference that Negron had attempted to ram his officers with the stolen car. “Almost pinning him under another vehicle,” he said before describing how his officer shot into the vehicle killing Negron and injuring the passenger traveling with him.

Perez said EMS arrived “relatively quickly,” but that fact is disputed by many who say Negron, like Michael Brown of Ferguson, laid helpless in the street for hours.

Cell phone footage taken at the scene shows Negron was lying face down in the street, his arms handcuffed behind him. The footage shows his head pointing to his right.

Later, a still photo shows his head facing to his left, an indicator to his family he was still alive while he lay still in the street. They say he stayed there for hours without any medical attention given to him.

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The whole community appears to be in an uproar with the thought police would simply shoot someone and leave them to die in the street.

Negron’s death is even making international news as the images of those sworn to protect and serve show they largely stood around while the boy was in need of medical attention.

It’s unclear how the teen acquired the stolen vehicle, but bait cars have been used in the past to lure citizens into committing a crime. It’s unknown if the stolen vehicle was such a vehicle.

But what is clear is Negron did not travel far on the road to his death, only going a few blocks before being shot by Boulay who said his car was hit by Negron.

Boulay sustained no injuries from the alleged incident.

As The Free Thought Project has frequently reported, officers will use the excuse that the vehicle was trying to hit them as an excuse to shoot their police-issued side arm. Sometimes those shootings lead to the officer’s exoneration. However, lately, officers have been charged and convicted of homicide for such shootings.

Shots Fired At Ferguson Market After CNN Broadcasts Fake News and Edited CCTV Footage…

CNN’s Fake News is going to get someone killed.

As we shared last night, CNN is promoting a highly charged false claim about new, heavily edited CCTV footage from the Ferguson Liquor Market on the night before Mike Brown was shot and killed.  We have thoroughly deconstructed the lies HERE.

CNN is promoting this fake documentary, “Stranger Fruit“,  that uses heavily edited footage of an earlier Mike Brown visit to the store.  According to the documentary Mike Brown was exchanging marijuana for store product at 1:13am the night (early morning) prior to his return and strong arm robbery of the same store.  The footage is edited to give the appearance of store employees accepting weed as barter for product.  This is false.

Secondarily, the producer of the video, Jason Pollock, is claiming the police never released the earlier in the day CCTV footage and instead tried to hide it.  Again, this is false.  Both the Grand Jury and the FBI were given -and reviewed- all of the CCTV footage including footage from the 1:13am visit.   However, CNN is promoting the falsehoods by the documentary producers in an effort to stir trouble.

Well, their collective antagonism worked:

FERGUSON –  Shortly before midnight, 7 or 8 shots were heard from an area across the street from the market. There appeared to be no injuries. Someone stuffed a rag in the gas tank of a police car, but the damage was minor.  (read more)

(snip)

As previously shared, these events are entirely based on Fake News.  The claims by the documentary producers are false:

December 2014 – Grand Jury evidence shows that Mike Brown was one of a group of three people who went to the Ferguson Liquor Market at 1:13am on the same day as the shooting. The Grand Jury saw CCTV evidence of his visit approximately 10 hours before the cigarillo robbery at the same locale – this would have been overnight between Friday 8/8 and Saturday 8/9/14.

(page 172)

Read more at The Conservative Treehouse

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Plot Twist: New Video Proves Mike Brown Never Robbed Store — Police Covered it Up

For years, Ferguson and St. Louis County law enforcement sanctimoniously declared police shooting victim Mike Brown a criminal and thief, sticking to the account the unarmed teenager had robbed a convenience store — a narrative debated for months by a furiously divided public attempting to come to terms with the contentious killing.

But, it turns out, police did not come forward publicly with evidence crucial to the case — a second video from the same store that contextualizes Brown’s interaction with the store’s clerks — a transgression so appalling by the very people tasked with enforcing the law, it could only be characterized as duplicitous.

“The footage shows Mr. Brown entering the store, Ferguson Market and Liquor, shortly after 1 a.m. on the day he died,” the New York Times reports. “He approaches the counter, hands over an item that appears to be a small bag and takes a shopping sack filled with cigarillos. Mr. Brown is shown walking toward the door with the sack, then turning around and handing the cigarillos back across the counter before exiting.

“Jason Pollock, a documentary filmmaker who acquired the new tape, says the footage challenges the police narrative that Mr. Brown committed a strong-armed robbery when he returned to the store around noon that day. Instead, Mr. Pollock believes that the new video shows Mr. Brown giving a small bag of marijuana to store employees and receiving cigarillos in return as part of a negotiated deal. Mr. Pollock said Mr. Brown left the cigarillos behind the counter for safekeeping.”

In fact, the second video, shown in Pollock’s Stranger Fruit, which premiered at South by Southwest on Saturday, does appear to show a congenial interaction between the clerks and the teen — the three store employees seem casual and relaxed, and the four do exchange items willingly.

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Two-and-a-half years after the incendiary shooting that exploded into a national movement against police brutality and militarization, this simple detail pulls the rug out from what Wilson’s supporters had championed as rock solid proof Brown was just a thug.

“They destroyed Michael’s character with the tape, and they didn’t show us what actually happened,” asserts Pollock, who researched in Ferguson for two years to film the documentary. “So this shows their intention to make him look bad. And shows suppression of evidence.”

Protesters who flocked to Ferguson after the fatal shooting have long condemned police for releasing the one video, saying it had been taken out of context and did not present an accurate account of what happened or of Brown’s character — so the second video, though welcome, is inexcusably overdue.

Of course, not everyone has seen the epiphanic video in the same light.

“There was no transaction,” insists Jay Kanzler, attorney for the convenience store and its employees. “There was no understanding. No agreement. Those folks didn’t sell him cigarillos for pot. The reason he gave it back is he was walking out the door with unpaid merchandise and they wanted it back.”

However dogged Kanzler and others might be in their belief no transaction occurred, video shows an interaction in which an exchange occurred — and the body language of all involved belies a lack of tension or disputation.

“There was some type of exchange, for one thing, for another,” Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, states in the film.

McSpadden questions why police released the video showing Brown shove a store clerk — but refused to release the second, which at least demands answers from law enforcement investigators.

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According to the Times, “Sgt. Shawn McGuire, a spokesman for the county police, said in an email on Saturday that footage of the earlier encounter had not been released because it was not relevant to the investigation.”

For an officer to state information that provides critical context to Mike Brown’s visit to the convenience store on August 9, 2014, isn’t relevant to his being killed should be expected from the same department who treated the taking of a life as a mundanity.

Brown’s family deserves to have every bit of evidence brought to light — as would any victim of police violence — no matter whom it proves correct.

Rise of Police Privilege — 32 Blue Lives Matter Bills in 14 States Introduced in 2017

Propaganda might tell you attackers lie in wait to pick off police at every opportunity, but the fact remains there simply is no war on cops — and while special protections and charges await anyone using violence against authorities, that hasn’t stopped 32 separate so-called Blue Lives Matter bills from being introduced in 14 different states. In just the first two months of the year.

Yes, last year unofficially saw the deaths of 64 officers — the highest tally since 2011, and well above the 41 who died in 2015 — but the figure more accurately proves the lack of an underlying agenda against police, given there were 134 officers killed in 1973. That in no way is meant to dismiss or lessen the tragedy of those deaths, of course, but to illustrate the inanity of claims cops are under siege.

In other words, choosing the occupation of police officer still won’t automatically put someone in mortal danger — no matter what the pro-police propagandists wish you would believe.

Rampant violence against police — however factually unsound — has provided the impetus for some of the most absurdly redundant, unnecessary, and rights-stripping legislation in a growing number of states.

Known as Blue Lives Matter laws, such legislation cements the armor of protectionist policies granted to an individual who, by free will, decides to become a police officer — offensively conflating an occupation with traditionally marginalized segments of society who face quite real prejudice and have endured violence en masse historically.

An assault undertaken because someone is black, gay, or Jewish, for example, would, of course, be considered a hate crime. Cops — an occupation taken by choice — are now being given the same protected status.

According to Huffington Post, which analyzed legislation passed, proposed, and failed in various states, “Last year, Louisiana became the first state to loop law enforcement into its state hate crime statute, with its so-called ‘Blue Lives Matter’ bill. Several states soon followed. The Mississippi state Senate advanced a similar bill on Jan. 26, and the Kentucky House of Representatives advanced its own version on Feb. 13.”

Sharp and bitter division between police and civilians has worsened, in particular, since 2014’s hotly contentious police killings of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and unarmed Eric Garner in New York City — and what is widely considered an epidemic of violence by police.

As far as bridging the chasm between cops and the communities they’re tasked with policing, imperiously claiming the choice to wear a uniform and badge should grant someone an additional shield of legal superiority isn’t the way to go.

Further, Blue Lives Matter laws aren’t needed.

“[C]ritics say adding police to hate-crime statutes is unnecessary because there are already laws mandating longer sentences for those convicted of attacking police. Unlike hate-crime laws, those laws do not require prosecutors to prove the motive for an assault,” Pew reports.

“Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) also worry that expanding hate-crime laws to cover police or other professions would dilute their original intent: ratcheting up the punishment for acts designed to intimidate whole communities.”

As senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Mark Potok, explained for HuffPost, “In the vast majority of states, you will get life or considerably less in prison for murder; but if you murder a police officer, you are almost certain to get death. So the truth is that including police in hate crime laws is merely a political statement ― and an unnecessary one at that.”

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Unnecessary and, thus, also a passive-aggressive thumbed nose at the communities who experience greater violence, profiling, and general harassment by cops — particularly African Americans, given the pompous usurpation of the phrase begging for a level playing field in the first place, Black Lives Matter.

Remember, police aren’t under siege at all — but that mythos has so inundated popular culture and is parroted by authoritarian politicians intent on molding a compliant populace slavish to the rule of law, that it’s generally blindly accepted without necessary questions.

Ardent police supporters will undoubtedly point to the increase in duty-related deaths last year as an admonishment to get serious about protecting officers — but that would be a mistake, according to Northeastern University criminologist, Jack Levin, who told HuffPo this is “hardly a long-term trend.”

“Police officers are doing better as victims of crime than they have for many decades,” he continued. “This is, hopefully, a short-term blip and not a trend. If we see that the number of ambushes of police officers continues to rise, then it may be worth taking another look at the possibility of including them in hate crime laws.”

Again, Blue Lives Matter legislation isn’t necessary, not now and probably not in the future, but laws to protect Americans’ rights when dealing with violent and sometimes corrupt cops, actually is.

Incidentally, police protectionist law often makes holding police accountable for wrongdoing an even more Herculean task than it already was — particularly for those marginalized by both police and society.

“These movements to hold police accountable are not about targeting individuals, but they’re targeting a system that is highly trained, highly weaponized, and has a great deal of power over some of the most marginalized communities that exist in society,” explained Shelby Chestnut, director of community organizing and public advocacy with The New York City Anti-Violence Project.

In fact, many members of such communities have called cops’ bluffs, saying police protectionism isn’t a misinterpretation of current law nor necessary to alleviate a war on police — but instead intends a snide message on the absolute power held by the badge.

“Any legislation for a ‘Blue Lives Matter’ bill seeks to instill intimidation and fear,” Mike Lowe, a San Antonio area Black Lives Matter activist, told HuffPo. “These protections make it easy to silence the voices of those seeking justice and accountability. I will not be silenced by it. All we want is justice and accountability, and law enforcement officers must be held accountable.”

Sadly, Police State provisions like the military giveaway, 1033 program, and legislation granting cops privileged status — not to mention pervasive impunity, given officers actually charged and found guilty of wrongdoing are a rarity — virtually guarantee police accountability will go by the wayside.

Blue Lives Matter laws constitute a slap in the face and a demand for respect — but respect has to be earned, not cajoled. Training officers not to use excessive and deadly force on a whim, and lengthy sentences for misbehavior, would go orders of magnitude further to win over civilians than any privileged status law ever will.