A tiny police department in a small Delaware town has been using the newly reinstated 1033 program to amass an arsenal of vehicles, weapons, and equipment and they are keeping it secret.
The post Dept With Only 8 Cops Secretly Acquired an Arsenal of 19 Military Vehicles Using 1033 Program appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
Another shooting, another day in America.
Or so it seems.
With alarming regularity, the nation is being subjected to a spate of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country’s fragile ecosystem, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.
Take this latest mass shooting that took place at a small church in a small Texas town.
The lone gunman—a former member of the Air Force—was dressed all in black, wearing body armor, a tactical vest and a mask, and firing an assault rifle.
Devin Patrick Kelley, the 26-year-old gunman, was described as a “regular guy” by those who knew him.
This “regular” guy’s shooting rampage left at least 26 people.
President Trump and the Governor of Texas have chalked the shooting up to mental illness.
That may well be the case here.
Still, there’s something to be said for the fact that this shooting bore many of the same marks of other recent attacks: the gunman appeared out of the blue without triggering any alarms, he was dressed like a soldier or militarized police officer, he was armed with military-style weapons and clearly trained in the art of killing, and the attacker died before any insight could be gained into his motives.
As usual, we’re left with more questions than answers and a whole lot more fear and anxiety.
That sense of unease is growing.
How do you keep a nation safe when not even seemingly “safe places” like churches and rock concerts and shopping malls are immune from violence?
The government’s answer, as always, will lead us further down the road we’ve travelled since 9/11 towards totalitarianism and away from freedom.
Those who want safety at all costs will clamor for more gun control measures (if not at an outright ban on weapons for non-military, non-police personnel), widespread mental health screening of the general population and greater scrutiny of military veterans, more threat assessments and behavioral sensing warnings, more CCTV cameras with facial recognition capabilities, more “See Something, Say Something” programs aimed at turning Americans into snitches and spies, more metal detectors and whole-body imaging devices at soft targets, more roaming squads of militarized police empowered to do random bag searches, more fusion centers to centralize and disseminate information to law enforcement agencies, and more surveillance of what Americans say and do, where they go, what they buy and how they spend their time.
All of these measures play into the government’s hands.
As we have learned the hard way, the phantom promise of safety in exchange for restricted or regulated liberty is a false, misguided doctrine that has no basis in the truth.
Still, why do these things happening?
Clearly, America is in the midst of a national nervous breakdown.
Things are falling apart, and the inmates in the asylum are starting to turn on each other.
This breakdown - triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, militarization and militainment (the selling of war and violence as entertainment), a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing corruption, the government’s alienation from its populace, and an economy that has much of the population struggling to get by - is manifesting itself in madness, mayhem and an utter disregard for the very principles and liberties that have kept us out of the clutches of totalitarianism for so long.
When things start to fall apart or implode, as they seem to be doing lately, I have to wonder who stands to benefit from it. In most cases, it’s the government that stands to benefit by amassing greater powers at the citizenry’s expense.
See, we’re like lab mice, conditioned to respond appropriately to certain stimuli.
Right now, we’re being conditioned to be reactionaries capable of little more than watching and worrying. Indeed, we are fast becoming a nation of bad news junkies, addicted to the steady and predictable drip-drip-drip of news—be it sensational, devastating, demoralizing, disastrous, or just titillating—that keeps us plastered to our screen devices for the next round of breaking news.
So much is happening on a daily basis that the average American understandably has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from reality.
We are suffering from “the crisis of the now.”
All the while, the government continues to amass more power and authority over the citizenry.
This is how the corporate elite controls a population, either inadvertently or intentionally, and advances their agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.
Rod Serling, the creator of the Twilight Zone, imagined just such a world in which the powers-that-be carry out a social experiment to see how long it would take before the members of a small American neighborhood, frightened by a sudden loss of electric power and caught up in fears of the unknown, will transform into an irrational mob and turn on each other.
It doesn’t take long at all.
So you see, Devin Patrick Kelley may have pulled the trigger that resulted in the mayhem in that small Texas church, but something else is driving the madness.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re caught in a vicious cycle right now between terror and fear and distraction and hate and partisan politics and an inescapable longing for a time when life was simpler and people were kinder and the government was less of a monster.
Our prolonged exposure to the American police state is not helping.
As always, the solution to most problems must start locally, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and in our communities. We’ve got to refrain from the toxic us vs. them rhetoric that is consuming the nation. We’ve got to work harder to build bridges, instead of burning them to the ground. We’ve got to learn to stop bottling up dissent and disagreeable ideas and learn how to agree to disagree. We’ve got to de-militarize our police and lower the levels of violence here and abroad, whether it’s violence we export to other countries, violence we glorify in entertainment, or violence we revel in when it’s leveled at our so-called enemies, politically or otherwise.
Unless we can learn to live together as brothers and sisters and fellow citizens, we will perish as tools and prisoners of the American police state.
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
This latest mass shooting in Las Vegas that left more than 50 people dead and more than 500 injured is as obscure as they come: a 64-year-old retiree with no apparent criminal history, no military training, and no obvious axe to grind opens fire on a country music concert crowd from a hotel room 32 floors up using a semi-automatic gun that may have been rigged to fire up to 700 rounds a minute, then kills himself.
We’re left with more questions than answers, none of them a flattering reflection of the nation’s values, political priorities, or the manner in which the military-industrial complex continues to dominate, dictate and shape almost every aspect of our lives.
For starters, why do these mass shootings keep happening? Mass shootings have taken place at churches, in nightclubs, on college campuses, on military bases, in elementary schools, in government offices, and at concerts. This shooting is the deadliest to date.
What is it about America that makes violence our nation’s calling card?
Is it because America is a gun culture?
Is it because guns are so readily available? After all, the U.S. is home to more firearms than adults. Curiously enough, the majority of gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides, not homicides.
Is it because entertainment violence is the hottest selling ticket at the box office?
Is it because the government continues to whet the nation’s appetite for violence and war through paid propaganda programs (seeded throughout sports entertainment, Hollywood blockbusters and video games) - what professor Roger Stahl refers to as “militainment” - that glorify the military and serve as recruiting tools for America’s expanding military empire?
Is it because the United States is the number one consumer, exporter and perpetrator of violence and violent weapons in the world? America spends more money on war than other countries. America polices the globe, with 800 military bases and troops stationed in 160 countries. And the war hawks have turned the American homeland into a quasi-battlefield with military gear, weapons and tactics. In turn, domestic police forces have become roving extensions of the military - a standing army.
Or is the Second Amendment to blame, as many continue to suggest? Would there be fewer mass shootings if tighter gun control laws were enacted?
Then again, could it be, as some have speculated, that these shootings are all part of an elaborate plan to incite fear and chaos, heighten national tensions and shift us that much closer to a complete lockdown? After all, the military and our militarized police forces have been predicting and preparing for exactly this kind of scenario for years now.
Perhaps there’s no single one factor to blame for this gun violence. However, there is a common denominator, and that is a war-drenched, violence-imbued, profit-driven military industrial complex that has invaded almost every aspect of our lives.
Ask yourself: Who are these shooters modelling themselves after? Where are they finding the inspiration for their weaponry and tactics? Whose stance and techniques are they mirroring?
In almost every instance, you can connect the dots back to the military.
We are a military culture.
We have been a nation at war for most of our existence.
We are a nation that makes a living from killing through defense contracts, weapons manufacturing and endless wars.
In order to sustain the nation’s appetite for war over the long haul in spite of the costs of war in lives lost and dollars spent—and little else to show for it—the military has had to work overtime to churn out pro-war, pro-military propaganda. It’s exactly what President Eisenhower warned against (“the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”) in his 1961 farewell address.
We didn’t listen then and we’re still not listening now.
All the while, the government’s war propaganda machine has grown more sophisticated and entrenched in American culture.
All of the military equipment featured in blockbuster movies such as X-Men and Transformers is provided—at taxpayer expense—in exchange for carefully placed promotional spots aimed at indoctrinating the American populace into believing that patriotism means throwing their support behind the military wholeheartedly and unquestioningly.
Even reality TV shows have gotten in on the gig.
It’s estimated that U.S. military intelligence agencies (including the NSA) have influenced over 1,800 movies and TV shows.
And then there are the growing number of video games, a number of which are engineered by or created for the military, which have accustomed players to interactive war play through military simulations and first-person shooter scenarios.
This is how you acclimate a population to war.
This is how you cultivate loyalty to a war machine.
Not satisfied with peddling its war propaganda through Hollywood, reality TV shows and embedded journalists whose reports came across as glorified promotional ads for the military, the Pentagon turned to sports to further advance its agenda, “tying the symbols of sports with the symbols of war.”
The military has been firmly entrenched in the nation’s sports spectacles ever since.
Remember, just before this Vegas shooting gave the media, the politicians and the easily distracted public something new to obsess over, the headlines were dominated by President Trump’s feud with the NFL over players kneeling during the national anthem.
That, too, was yet another example of how much the military entertainment complex - which paid $53 million of taxpayer money between 2012 and 2015 to pro sports teams for military tributes—has infiltrated American culture.
Are you starting to get the picture now?
When you talk about the Las Vegas mass shooting, you’re not dealing with a single shooter scenario. Rather, you’re dealing with a sophisticated, far-reaching war machine that has woven itself into the very fabric of this nation.
You want to stop the gun violence?
Stop the worship of violence that permeates our culture.
Stop glorifying the military industrial complex with flyovers and salutes during sports spectacles.
Stop acting as if there is anything patriotic about military exercises and occupations that bomb hospitals and schools.
Stop treating guns and war as entertainment fodder in movies, music, video games, toys, amusement parks, reality TV and more.
Stop distributing weapons of war to the local police and turning them into extensions of the military—weapons that have no business being anywhere but on a battlefield.
Most of all, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, stop falling for the military industrial complex’s psychological war games.
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order clearing the way for local police in America to receive military gear such as grenade launchers, high-calibre weapons, and armored vehicles. Trump and the DOJ have just reversed former President Barack Obama’s restrictions that allows local police departments to receive surplus military equipment.
Restoring the program will “ensure that you can get the lifesaving gear that you need to do your job,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a cheering crowd at a national convention of the Fraternal Order of Police in Nashville, Tennessee. The group, America’s largest organization of rank-and-file officers, endorsed Trump for president after he promised to revamp the program.
The big move by Trump comes at a time where American inner cities such as Baltimore and Chicago are in absolute turmoil. The President has been very vocal about the prior administration’s unfair criticism of police forces and it was an easy win to appease his core supporters.
On the other hand, civil liberties groups and various lawmakers are not enthused about the militarization of local police and argue this will only lead to a further escalation of violence.
Kanya Bennett, legislative counsel for the ACLU,
“Tensions between law enforcement and communities remain high, yet the president and the attorney general are giving the police military-grade weaponry instead of practical, effective ways to protect and serve everyone”
Let’s not kid ourselves, America by the day is turning into a police state where power through police force is the objective. The citizens of the police state may experience restrictions on social or financial mobility, or even on their freedom to express or communicate alternative political views.
There is another startling development in the Police States of America (PSA), in the next 8-years military drones will be replacing police helicopters. The report from Defense One states “enormous military-style drones” could be policing the skies from 2,000 ft..
Back in 2014-2015, Baltimore was a testing ground for the deep state’s military spy blimps….
Back to the Police States of America (PSA), earlier this year, I was able to see first hand the militarization in Baltimore County’s police force…
Conclusion
Like it or not, the Police States of America (PSA) is here. This time around the war comes home and the government is preparing through the militarization of local police forces. America is in a transitional period healing itself from decades of democratically controlled leadership in the inner cities, along with massive amounts of deindustrialization that has left our country rotting from the inside.
* * *
Ron Paul asks "Is a Militarized Police The Answer To Inner City Turmoil?"
Is President Trump"s decision being "tough on crime," as he likes to claim, or is it all about controlling the population and undermining civil liberties?
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
READ MORE: Video: 40 Cops With Riot Gear, Armored Vehicle and LRAD Swarm 5 Praying Native Americans at DAPL
Select your state and your county to see exactly how militarized your local law enforcement agencies have become.
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
Forget everything you’ve ever been taught about free speech in America.
It’s all a lie.
There can be no free speech for the citizenry when the government speaks in a language of force.
What is this language of force?
Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality.
This is not the language of freedom.
This is not even the language of law and order.
Unfortunately, this is how the government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble in public and challenge the status quo.
Recently, this militarized exercise in intimidation reared its ugly head in the college town of Charlottesville, Va., where protesters who took to the streets to peacefully express their disapproval of a planned KKK rally were held at bay by implacable lines of gun-wielding riot police. Only after a motley crew of Klansmen had been safely escorted to and from the rally by black-garbed police did the assembled army of city, county and state police declare the public gathering unlawful and proceed to unleash canisters of tear gas on the few remaining protesters to force them to disperse.
To be clear, this is the treatment being meted out to protesters across the political spectrum.
The police state does not discriminate.
As a USA Today article notes, “People demanding justice, demanding accountability or demanding basic human rights without resorting to violence, should not be greeted with machine guns and tanks. Peaceful protest is democracy in action. It is a forum for those who feel disempowered or disenfranchised. Protesters should not have to face intimidation by weapons of war.”
A militarized police response to protesters poses a danger to all those involved, protesters and police alike. In fact, militarization makes police more likely to turn to violence to solve problems.
You want to turn a peaceful protest into a riot?
Bring in the militarized police with their guns and black uniforms and warzone tactics and “comply or die” mindset. Ratchet up the tension across the board. Take what should be a healthy exercise in constitutional principles (free speech, assembly and protest) and turn it into a lesson in authoritarianism.
Frankly, any police officer who tells you that he needs tanks, SWAT teams, and pepper spray to do his job shouldn’t be a police officer in a constitutional republic.
All that stuff in the First Amendment sounds great in theory. However, it amounts to little more than a hill of beans if you have to exercise those freedoms while facing down an army of police equipped with deadly weapons.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
There are other, far better models to follow.
For instance, back in 2011, the St. Louis police opted to employ a passive response to Occupy St. Louis activists. First, police gave the protesters nearly 36 hours’ notice to clear the area, as opposed to the 20 to 60 minutes’ notice other cities gave. Then, as journalist Brad Hicks reports, when the police finally showed up:
They didn’t show up in riot gear and helmets, they showed up in shirt sleeves with their faces showing. They not only didn’t show up with SWAT gear, they showed up with no unusual weapons at all, and what weapons they had all securely holstered. They politely woke everybody up. They politely helped everybody who was willing to remove their property from the park to do so. They then asked, out of the 75 to 100 people down there, how many people were volunteering for being-arrested duty? Given 33 hours to think about it, and 10 hours to sweat it over, only 27 volunteered … and were escorted away by a handful of cops. The rest were advised to please continue to protest, over there on the sidewalk … and what happened next was the most absolutely brilliant piece of crowd control policing I have heard of in my entire lifetime. All of the cops who weren’t busy transporting and processing the voluntary arrestees lined up, blocking the stairs down into the plaza. They stood shoulder to shoulder. They kept calm and silent. They positioned the weapons on their belts out of sight. They crossed their hands low in front of them, in exactly the least provocative posture known to man. And they peacefully, silently, respectfully occupied the plaza, using exactly the same non-violent resistance techniques that the protesters themselves had been trained in.
As Forbes concluded, “This is a more humane, less costly, and ultimately more productive way to handle a protest. This is great proof that police can do it the old fashioned way - using their brains and common sense instead of tanks, SWAT teams, and pepper spray - and have better results.”
It can be done.
Police will not voluntarily give up their gadgets and war toys and combat tactics, however. Their training and inclination towards authoritarianism has become too ingrained.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if we are to have any hope of dismantling the police state, change must start locally, community by community. Citizens will have to demand that police de-escalate and de-militarize. And if the police don’t listen, contact your city councils and put the pressure on them.
Remember, they work for us. They might not like hearing it—they certainly won’t like being reminded of it—but we pay their salaries.
We must adopt a different mindset and follow a different path if we are to alter the outcome of these interactions with police.
The American dream was built on the idea that no one is above the law, that our rights are inalienable and cannot be taken away, and that our government and its appointed agents exist to serve us.
It may be that things are too far gone to save, but still we must try.
Authored by Ted Galen Carpenter via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
For at least three decades, experts have noted the growing militarization of America’s police forces. The proliferation of Special Weapons and Tactics forces, or SWAT forces, is the most obvious example of that trend. Originally, such units were designed to deal with exceptionally dangerous situations (such as mass hostage incidents) in which lightly armed police would be outgunned. Not surprisingly, the first SWAT contingents originated in America’s largest and most dangerous cities.
That situation has changed dramatically. Small cities and even some modest-sized towns now have such heavily armed units utilizing military hardware and traveling in armored vehicles. They look—and act—far more like military combat units than anyone’s traditional conception of police. And the missions of SWAT forces have greatly expanded since their original formation. Increasingly, local authorities use them in routine matters that involve little or no danger of major violence from the targets of police action.
A recent incident in Hutto, Texas, a sleepy, outlying suburb of Austin, illustrates just how dangerously promiscuous the utilization of SWAT teams has become. On June 26, local police conducted a raid to implement a search warrant on a house in a low-crime, middle-class neighborhood. The alleged crime? Police suspected that some residents of the target house were involved in gambling. Investigators were backed up by a SWAT unit with nearly a dozen officers in full combat regalia pouring out of an armored vehicle.
Needless to say, the neighbors were both stunned and alarmed to see such an operation take place in their quiet community. One mother stated: “I went to my daughter’s room and looked outside their window to see if I could get a better view of what was going on, and there was a man in fatigues with a sniper rifle laying in my neighbor’s driveway.”
Unfortunately, such incidents have become all-too-common as local authorities seek new missions to justify the existence of SWAT teams and to keep the personnel alert and well trained. The expansion of SWAT units and missions is closely correlated to the existence of federal programs making surplus military hardware available at little or no cost to local police forces.
Such deadly toys have become a prime justification for law enforcement budget increases and the receipt of federal grants in communities around the country.
The war on illegal drugs has been the primary justification that authorities use to create and expand SWAT units, and antidrug raids are their primary mission. The drug-war rationale has some plausibility, since narcotics traffickers are sometimes extremely violent criminals. As concerns about terrorism became more salient, especially after the 9/11 attacks, that mission augmented the drug-war justification. Politicians, even in small communities with virtually a nonexistent possibility of being a terrorism target, highlight the alleged danger (along with the menace of illegal drugs) to pump-up police budgets and gain the military hardware from Washington.
Thus far, efforts to rescind or even curtail the federal program have proven unsuccessful. The militarization of America’s local police proceeds unabated. That is an alarming development. General Colin Powell, at the time chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, observed that the military’s purpose is to “kill people and break things.” Military forces operate in enemy territory and tend to view all people there as potential adversaries who could prove deadly to them.
The purpose of America’s police forces is (or at least should be) totally different. Their legitimate role is to protect the life, liberty and property of people living in a free, constitutional republic. It is extremely unwise to confuse or conflate that role with the function of the U.S. military. Yet, that is what is occurring at an alarming rate.
The Posse Comitatus Act, which Congress passed in 1878, severely restricts the role of the military in domestic law enforcement. Unfortunately, that restriction has experienced significant erosion in recent decades, with some prominent political figures deriding the statute as “archaic.”
Even if the language of the act remains more or less intact, it will have little relevance if the proliferation of SWAT units continues. SWAT personnel are combat soldiers in everything but name. It matters little if they are technically police operating as part of a local government if their weapons and tactics are those of an occupying army. The old adage that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck, applies to the SWAT phenomenon. The sight of such combat forces deployed in civilian neighborhoods in the United States is jarringly reminiscent of the images Americans once believed confined to repressive police states. It is tragic that such images are now the norm in America itself.
The police do not care about keeping you safe. If they did, they wouldn’t put innocent people in danger every day by driving unmarked cars, behaving unprofessionally, and performing no-knock raids. All these things make it quite easy to impersonate an officer in order to commit a crime.
People know their lives are literally in jeopardy if they disobey even the most minor order from a police officer. Innocent people are no exception, and simply questioning an officer, or asserting one’s rights has gotten people beaten, arrested, and even killed.
Because of this environment created by an overbearing oppressive police state, a perfect opportunity has opened up for criminals to easily exploit their victim’s fear of police. Criminals simply need to pose as police, and any resistance on the part of their victims melts away.
Posing as Cops to Commit Crimes
It’s not just for big heists like in the movie The Town that criminals dress as police to commit crimes. It actually happens terrifyingly often.
The practice is so common in Miami-Dade that the police have a special task force to investigate instances of criminals impersonating officers. A family in Miami-Dade earlier this year suffered a home invasion after they opened their door to three men in police uniforms.
Last year in Tampa a 28-year old woman was pulled over by a fake officer and raped.
In April thieves in Tuscon dressed as police to invade a home. In May three suspects still on the loose did the same in Honolulu.
A Los Angeles man was convicted last week of fondling two women while posing as an officer and attempting to force another to take her clothes off while pretending to be a detective investigating counterfeit money.
In early June a man and a woman were arrested for dressing as federal agents and attempting to break into an apartment in Fresno California.
In Cleveland Ohio, a man was recently arrested and charged for handcuffing children on many different occasions in what appears to be a fake “scared straight” operation. The man was not a police officer, but wearing a gun and vest convinced school and court officials that he was an officer.
Even police have been fooled by fake officers, including a 14-year-old boy who simply walked into a Chicago police station and showed up for roll call.
Officers handed him a radio and told him to ride along with a female officer. The teenager even helped make an arrest.
“After four or five hours, she asks, ‘Who is this guy?’ ” recalled Jody P. Weis, who was the Chicago police superintendent at the time. “He’s in a uniform, he has a goofy badge, he doesn’t have a weapon and he’s a high school kid. It was so embarrassing.” (The embarrassment did not end there for Mr. Weis, who said he had recommended against punishing the teenager in juvenile court because no harm had been done. Three months later, the boy was arrested and charged with stealing a car.
Impersonating officers is not uncommon as you can see. This blind obedience to officers has caused women to be sexually assaulted, and homes to be invaded. But it is not just the fake cops you have to worry about.
Actual Police Commit Crimes Too
Real police commit crimes too, which is all the more reason not to place some members of society above fellow citizens.
If a police officer engages an innocent person, that person must essentially ask permission to walk away from the encounter. The fact that police demand unquestioning obedience, and act violently enraged if their authority is challenged only helps criminals get away with their crimes while posing as police officers.
But this same bullying extralegal behavior is used by police to commit crimes. Last year a Texas officer sexually assaulted a female driver, and a Honolulu officer was accused of raping a 14-year-old girl.
Unfortunately, rape and sexual assault by police officers appear to be extremely common. And even when the case is “resolved” with a conviction of the officer, the sentence is a miscarriage of justice.
One woman was offered a ride home by an officer after an incident had been resolved without any arrests.
She said she didn’t consent, but didn’t resist or say no because she was scared for her life.
“If I would’ve fought him back, yes, he would’ve murdered me. He would’ve took my life and I have kids,” she said.
The officer ended up being convicted and sentenced to one year in prison.
61% of all victims of police crimes are women. In San Diego, patrol officers working alone at night committed a number of sexual assaults against women they pulled over.
…of all the officers arrested, for offenses ranging from murder to drunken driving, only 54 percent were fired, and 37.5 percent arrested for domestic violence lost their jobs.
The study also found that roughly two-thirds of all the arrests were made by an agency that didn’t employ the officer…
Police also invade homes. An 80-year-old-man was shot to death by police after they broke into his home in a no-knock raid. They had obtained a search warrant with the only evidence being that they smelled chemicals associated with making meth. Hearing a home invasion, the elderly man picked up a pistol and was shot to death in his bed without firing a shot. No meth was found. The officers were not charged with the murder and were found to have acted appropriately.
This highlights how the drug war, no knock raids, and militarized police also contribute to the problems faced when trying to protect your life from thugs in real or fake uniforms.
But sometimes cops don’t even get a trumped up warrant before murdering innocent civilians.
One man was murdered by police when he took his legally owned firearm with him to open the door after a loud knock late at night. The officer did not identify himself, but seeing a gun, shot the man to death. For some reason, the officer was not charged, and the court prevented the man’s family from suing him, citing qualified immunity. They said it was not clear that the officer had committed any crime in murdering the homeowner.
The problem with police committing crimes is so voluminous that we can only scratch the surface here. But one thing is for sure, you have almost as much reason to fear becoming the victim of a crime from a real uniformed officer as from someone posing as an officer.
Solution
Indiana passed a law in 2012 that allows citizens to shoot an officer who illegally enters their home. It is unclear why this law was needed since it is illegal for anyone to invade a home, whether they are a cop or not. Having to codify something so obvious shows just how far the government will go to protect their criminal officers. Still, at least Indiana offered some legal cover to citizens forced to protect themselves from police.
Of course, most government solutions simply double down on the divide; prosecute impersonating an officer harder, and simply make it illegal to buy a badge or police uniform. Maybe while they are at it, they should ban Dodge Chargers for civilians, and prohibit civilians from wearing matching shirt and pants in any blues, blacks, or tans.
As usual, the solution from the government is to make more things illegal and punish pre-crimes like owning objects that might someday be used in a crime. Never does the problem come from the government’s end! It is always the damn civilians getting in the way of our brave heroes!
But the reality of the situation is that it doesn’t matter how many police-like tools and clothing they make illegal, or how hard they punish people who dress up as cops for Halloween. There is a divide between the police and the average citizen, and only by holding police accountable for their actions will the dangers of fake police be mitigated.
The only reason criminals have such success with this tactic is the population’s blind unquestioning obedience to police, beat into them over the course of years by bullies in blue who ignore the law to assert their will. It’s not the uniform, it is that we cannot tell the difference between the behavior of cops and criminals because they act in strikingly similar ways.
The solution is to stop giving police extra rights and privileges. It doesn’t make any sense that they are held to a lower standard for criminal activity than the rest of the population when they have more responsibility than most to behave appropriately. Any crime committed by an officer should be punished two-fold based on his position of trust and power over civilians, yet all too often they are not punished for their crimes.
A criminal is a criminal, whether his uniform and badge are fake or real. Civilians shouldn’t have to wait to find out if the officer is real, and they shouldn’t have to lay down and allow a real officer to have their way with them, with the only redress being later court action if they are alive to pursue it. This especially because people can be legally barred from pursuing civil action. Also, many police will not be charged or convicted of their crimes, or will receive ridiculously lenient sentences.
The two reasons people should not have to fear using such deadly force against home-invading cops is because A) if they are real police they are behaving criminally and everyone has the right to defend themselves from a criminal, and B) they might not be real cops at all, and everyone has the right to defend themselves from a criminal.
Not having to stop and wonder if this is a real police officer and wonder if you will be going to prison for decades simply for defending yourself makes you much safer and able to defend yourself and your loved ones.
If police are not given extra rights, there will be no reason to impersonate them.
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
No doubt about it.
The coup d’etat has been successful.
The Deep State - a.k.a. the police state, a.k.a. the military industrial complex - has taken over.
The American system of representative government has been overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic corporate state bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad.
When in doubt, follow the money trail.
It always points the way.
Every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought—lock, stock and barrel—and made to dance to the tune of the Deep State.
Enter Donald Trump, the candidate who swore to drain the swamp in Washington DC.
Instead of putting an end to the corruption, however, Trump has paved the way for lobbyists, corporations, the military industrial complex, and the Deep State to feast on the carcass of the dying American republic.
Just recently, for instance, Trump agreed to sell Saudi Arabia more than $110 billion in military weapons.
Meanwhile, Trump—purportedly in an effort to balance the budget in 10 years—wants to slash government funding for programs for the poor, ranging from health care and food stamps to student loans and disability payments.
The military doesn’t have to worry about tightening its belt, however. No, the military’s budget—with its trillion dollar wars, its $125 billion in administrative waste, and its contractor-driven price gouging that hits the American taxpayer where it hurts the most—will continue to grow, thanks to Trump.
This is how you keep the Deep State in power.
The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, the military will get more militaristic, America’s endless wars will get more endless, and the prospect of peace will grow ever dimmer.
As for the terrorists, they will keep on being played for pawns as long as Saudi Arabia remains their breeding ground and America remains the source of their weapons, training and know-how.
Follow the money. It always points the way.
As Bertram Gross noted in Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, “evil now wears a friendlier face than ever before in American history.”
Writing in 1980, Gross predicted a future in which he saw:
…a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion...
We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.
The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished.
It will not be revived or restored without a true revolution of values and a people’s rebellion the likes of which we may not see for a very long time.
America is a profitable business interest for a very select few, and war—wars waged abroad against shadowy enemies and wars waged at home against the American people—has become the Deep State’s primary means of income.
After all, war is big business.
In order to maintain a profit margin, one would either have to find new enemies abroad or focus on fighting a war at home, against the American people, and that’s exactly what we’re dealing with today.
Had the government tried to ram such a state of affairs down our throats suddenly, it might have had a rebellion on its hands. Instead, the American people have been given the boiling frog treatment, immersed in water that slowly is heated up—degree by degree—so that they’ve fail to notice that they’re being trapped and cooked and killed.
“We the people” are in hot water now.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the Constitution doesn’t stand a chance against a federalized, globalized standing army protected by legislative, judicial and executive branches that are all on the same side, no matter what political views they subscribe to: suffice it to say, they are not on our side or the side of freedom.
From Clinton to Bush, then Obama and now Trump, it’s as if we’ve been caught in a time loop, forced to re-live the same thing over and over again: the same assaults on our freedoms, the same disregard for the rule of law, the same subservience to the Deep State, and the same corrupt, self-serving government that exists only to amass power, enrich its shareholders and ensure its continued domination.
The republic has fallen to fascism with a smile.
Elections will not save us.
Learn the treacherous lessons of 2008 and 2016: presidential elections have made a mockery of our constitutional system of government, suggesting that our votes can make a difference when, in fact, they merely serve to maintain the status quo.
Don’t delay.
Start now—in your own communities, in your schools, at your city council meetings, in newspaper editorials, at protests—by pushing back against laws that are unjust, police departments that overreach, politicians that don’t listen to their constituents, and a system of government that grows more tyrannical by the day.
If you wait until 2020 to rescue our republic from the clutches of the Deep State, it will be too late.
The intensive militarization of America’s police forces is a serious topic of which the mainstream media somewhat ignores. On my travels to Hunt Valley, Maryland, I stumbled upon a family oriented charity event for law enforcement at the University of Maryland Extension. I was shocked to find unattended assault rifles and military gear loosely displayed. (Weapons had safety features in place)
Armored military vehicle with turret
Baltimore County, Maryland police helicopter
Military grade optics on the helicopter. By the way, FLIR systems is head quartered right here in Hunt Valley, Maryland
Conclusion: Baltimore County law enforcement looks like a small private army that should be somewhere in the Middle East. Nevertheless, this is a first hand account of the militarism in US police forces.
Bonus: Like it or not, the march towards a police state is here
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“It’s 4 in the morning, there’s headlights that are shining into your house; there’s a number of different officers that are now on the premises; they’re wearing tactical gear; they have weapons; and they approach your front door. Do you think that the ordinary citizen in that situation feels that they have an obligation to comply?”— Michigan Supreme Court Justice Richard Bernstein
It’s 1:30 a.m., a time when most people are asleep.
Your neighborhood is in darkness, except for a few street lamps. Someone—he doesn’t identify himself and the voice isn’t familiar—is pounding on your front door, demanding that you open up. Your heart begins racing. Your stomach is tied in knots. The adrenaline is pumping through you. You fear that it’s an intruder or worse. You not only fear for your life, but the lives of your loved ones.
The aggressive pounding continues, becoming more jarring with every passing second. Desperate to protect yourself and your loved ones from whatever threat awaits on the other side of that door, you scramble to lay hold of something—anything—that you might use in self-defense. It might be a flashlight, a baseball bat, or that licensed and registered gun you thought you’d never need. You brace for the confrontation, a shaky grip on your weapon, and approach the door cautiously. The pounding continues.
You open the door to find a shadowy figure aiming a gun in your direction. Immediately, you back up and retreat further into your apartment. At the same time, the intruder opens fire, sending a hail of bullets in your direction. Three of the bullets make contact. You die without ever raising your weapon or firing your gun in self-defense. In your final moments, you get a good look at your assailant: it’s the police.
This is what passes for “knock-and-talk” policing in the American police state.
“Knock-and-shoot” policing might be more accurate, however.
Whatever you call it, this aggressive, excessive police tactic has become a thinly veiled, warrantless exercise by which citizens are coerced and intimidated into “talking” with heavily armed police who “knock” on their doors in the middle of the night.
Poor Andrew Scott didn’t even get a chance to say no to such a heavy-handed request before he was gunned down by police.
It was late on a Saturday night—so late that it was technically Sunday morning—and 26-year-old Scott was at home with his girlfriend playing video games when police, in pursuit of a speeding motorcyclist, arrived at Scott’s apartment complex, because a motorcycle had been spotted at the complex and police believed it might belong to their suspect.
At 1:30 a.m., four sheriff’s deputies began knocking on doors close to where a motorcycle was parked. The deputies started their knock-and-talk with Apartment 114 because there was a light on inside. The occupants of the apartment were Andrew Scott and Amy Young, who were playing video games.
First, the police assumed tactical positions surrounding the door to Apartment 114, guns drawn and ready to shoot.
Then, without announcing that he was a police officer, deputy Richard Sylvester banged loudly and repeatedly on the door of Apartment 114. The racket caused a neighbor to open his door. When questioned by a deputy, the neighbor explained that the motorcycle’s owner did not live in Apartment 114.
This information was not relayed to the police officer stationed at the door.
Understandably alarmed by the aggressive pounding on his door at such a late hour, Andrew Scott retrieved his handgun before opening the door. Upon opening the door, Scott saw a shadowy figure holding a gun outside his door.
Still police failed to identify themselves.
Unnerved by the sight of the gunman, Scott retreated into his apartment only to have Sylvester immediately open fire. Sylvester fired six shots, three of which hit and killed Scott, who had no connection to the motorcycle or any illegal activity.
So who was at fault here?
Was it Andrew Scott, who was prepared to defend himself and his girlfriend against a possible late-night intruder?
Was it the police officers who banged on the wrong door in the middle of the night, failed to identify themselves, and then—without asking any questions or attempting to de-escalate the situation—shot and killed an innocent man?
Was it the courts, which not only ruled that the police had qualified immunity against being sued for Scott’s murder but also concluded that Andrew Scott provoked the confrontation by retrieving a lawfully-owned handgun before opening the door?
Or was it the whole crooked system that’s to blame? I’m referring to the courts that continue to march in lockstep with the police state, the police unions that continue to strong-arm politicians into letting the police agencies literally get away with murder, the legislators who care more about getting re-elected than about protecting the rights of the citizenry, the police who are being trained to view their fellow citizens as enemy combatants on a battlefield, and the citizenry who fail to be alarmed and outraged every time the police state shoots another hole in the Constitution.
What happened to Andrew Scott was not an isolated incident.
As Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch recognized in a dissent in U.S. v. Carloss: “The ‘knock and talk’ has won a prominent place in today’s legal lexicon… published cases approving knock and talks have grown legion.”
In fact, the Michigan Supreme Court is currently reviewing a case in which seven armed police officers, dressed in tactical gear and with their police lights on, carried out a knock-and-talk search on four of their former colleagues’ homes early in the morning, while their families (including children) were asleep. The police insist that there’s nothing coercive about such a scenario.
Whether police are knocking on your door at 2 am or 2:30 pm, as long as you’re being “asked” to talk to a police officer who is armed to the teeth and inclined to kill at the least provocation, you don’t really have much room to resist, not if you value your life.
Mind you, these knock-and-talk searches are little more than police fishing expeditions carried out without a warrant.
The goal is intimidation and coercion.
Unfortunately, with police departments increasingly shifting towards pre-crime policing and relying on dubious threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state, we’re going to see more of these warrantless knock-and-talk police tactics by which police attempt to circumvent the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement and prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.
We’ve already seen a dramatic rise in the number of home invasions by battle-ready SWAT teams and police who have been transformed into extensions of the military. Indeed, with every passing week, we hear more and more horror stories in which homeowners are injured or killed simply because they mistook a SWAT team raid by police for a home invasion by criminals.
Never mind that the unsuspecting homeowner, woken from sleep by the sounds of a violent entry, has no way of distinguishing between a home invasion by a criminal as opposed to a government agent.
Too often, the destruction of life and property wrought by the police is no less horrifying than that carried out by criminal invaders.
These incidents underscore a dangerous mindset in which civilians (often unarmed and defenseless) not only have less rights than militarized police, but also one in which the safety of civilians is treated as a lower priority than the safety of their police counterparts (who are armed to the hilt with an array of lethal and nonlethal weapons).
In fact, the privacy of civilians is negligible in the face of the government’s various missions, and the homes of civilians are no longer the refuge from government intrusion that they once were.
It wasn’t always this way, however.
There was a time in America when a person’s home was a sanctuary where he and his family could be safe and secure from the threat of invasion by government agents, who were held at bay by the dictates of the Fourth Amendment, which protects American citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures.
The Fourth Amendment, in turn, was added to the U.S. Constitution by colonists still smarting from the abuses they had been forced to endure while under British rule, among these home invasions by the military under the guise of writs of assistance. These writs were nothing less than open-ended royal documents which British soldiers used as a justification for barging into the homes of colonists and rifling through their belongings.
James Otis, a renowned colonial attorney, “condemned writs of assistance because they were perpetual, universal (addressed to every officer and subject in the realm), and allowed anyone to conduct a search in violation of the essential principle of English liberty that a peaceable man’s house is his castle.” As Otis noted:
Now, one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom-house officers may enter our houses when they please; we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient.
To our detriment, we have now come full circle, returning to a time before the American Revolution when government agents—with the blessing of the courts—could force their way into a citizen’s home, with seemingly little concern for lives lost and property damaged in the process.
Actually, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we may be worse off today than our colonial ancestors when one considers the extent to which courts have sanctioned the use of no-knock raids by police SWAT teams (occurring at a rate of 70,000 to 80,000 a year and growing); the arsenal of lethal weapons available to local police agencies; the ease with which courts now dispense search warrants based often on little more than a suspicion of wrongdoing; and the inability of police to distinguish between reasonable suspicion and the higher standard of probable cause, the latter of which is required by the Constitution before any government official can search an individual or his property.
Winston Churchill once declared that “democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman.”
Clearly, we don’t live in a democracy.
No, in the American police state, when you find yourself woken in the early hours by someone pounding on your door, smashing through your door, terrorizing your family, killing your pets, and shooting you if you dare to resist in any way, you don’t need to worry that it might be burglars out to rob and kill you: it’s just the police.
In a daring swipe at First Amendment rights, North Dakota lawmakers have proposed bills directly targeting protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). If passed, the bills would add insult to injury for Native Americans and their supporters attempting to protect the water source of the Standing Rock Sioux.
Introduced by so-called ‘small government conservatives,’ one bill would make it a crime for people to have face coverings at protests. Another bill, introduced by Rep. Keith Kempenich (R), would make it legal to run over protesters if the driver says he or she didn’t mean to do it.
House Bill Number 1203 states:
“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a driver of a motor vehicle who unintentionally causes injury or death to an individual obstructing vehicular traffic on a public road, street, or highway, is not guilty of an offense.”
Kempenich, an ally of the oil industry sure to benefit from a completed DAPL, cited complaints by his mother-in-law in justifying his proposed bill, going so far as to say a tragedy could occur “if [drivers] have punched the accelerator rather than the brakes.” He did not provide any actual examples of protesters getting hit or data on complaints from other citizens.
The bill is set for a hearing in the House Transportation Committee on Friday, but the Senate Majority Leader has expressed concerns about lawsuits. Interestingly, he also said it could add to the state’s prison population “that’s soared due to crime accompanying the rise in oil production.” But lawmakers are pumping out the disinformation.
“When people are having their lives disrupted, you’re going to see things move up here,” said Sen. Kelly Armstrong, an oil company executive and GOP chairman. “It’s very difficult to write ‘protest laws.’ We need to make sure there is reasonable application of the law in all circumstances, whether protest-related or not.”
READ MORE: 13 Cops Dispatched to Arrest One 15-year-old Girl, Because a Cop "Smelled Weed"
Not satisfied with having law enforcement violently cracking down on protesters, Kelly believes assaulting the fundamental rights of citizens is the next step. Perhaps Kelly and his political colleagues are feeling emboldened by incoming president Donald Trump, a strong fossil fuel advocate who is ready to embrace authoritarianism.
Lawmakers, eager to begin raking in tax revenue from DAPL, make no mention of the fact that Native American rights were ignored in the process of granting the pipeline right-of-way. They claim the pipeline is necessary to transport oil from shale fields, even though oil production is steadily falling and existing transport infrastructure is already underused – making DAPL nothing more than a high-risk investment by oil barons.
In yet another indication of their readiness to use big government, the same lawmakers are proposing “legislation that would require the state attorney general to sue the federal government to help cover costs for policing a protest.”
They’ve already spent $22 million of state taxpayers’ money acting as militarized protection services for oil companies, and now they feel everyone else should pay them back. There is no confirmation yet if Energy Transfer Partners will or already has reimbursed law enforcement for their help.
This comes after a bill, already withdrawn, that would have had North Dakota claim land and mineral rights in the pipeline’s path under the Missouri River to reimburse law enforcement costs.
Cleary, these ‘small-government conservatives’ are desperate for payback and vengeance. The unabashed desire to wield state power against the most fundamental right of American citizens is truly a frightening prelude.
Resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is about to get a major boost. On Dec. 4, U.S. military veterans — possibly numbering in the hundreds — plan to gather “like a military unit” to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Having witnessed the police state brutality inflicted on Native Americans attempting to protect sacred land and natural resources, the former service members feel compelled to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux.
According to the Veterans for Standing Rock GoFundMe page:
“We are veterans of the United States Armed Forces, including the U.S. Army, United States Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Coast Guard and we are calling for our fellow veterans to assemble as a peaceful, unarmed militia at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on Dec 4-7 and defend the water protectors from assault and intimidation at the hands of the militarized police force and DAPL security.”
Tulsi Gabbard, the first Native American member of Congress and a combat war veteran, will be joining the act of resistance, according to the Facebook page Veterans Stand for Standing Rock.
As Task and Purpose notes, federal government ignored their duty under the National Historic Preservation Act to consult the Standing Rock Sioux before approving DAPL. Some of the pipeline construction will take place on sacred land that was taken from the tribe over the past 150 years, and the pipeline will be buried under the tribe’s drinking water source.
While federal government abandoned Native Americans once again, law enforcement are acting as militarized protection services for Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas-based company behind the 1,170-mile pipeline. State and local governments are set to reap millions in taxes once the oil begins flowing.
Numerous violent crackdowns have already been carried out by cops in riot gear – drenching protestors with water cannons in freezing temperatures, blowing arms apart with concussion grenades, choking protestors with tear gas and sending people into cardiac arrest.
“This country is repressing our people,” said Michael Wood, a Marine Corps veteran and former Baltimore police officer. “If we’re going to be heroes, if we’re really going to be those veterans that this country praises, well, then we need to do the things that we actually said we’re going to do when we took the oath to defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic.”
The main man behind it all is Wes Clark, Jr., son of Gen. Wesley Clark, a former Supreme Allied Commander who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. Clark Sr. called for action on climate change, and this motivation is also driving his son to fight against DAPL.
Wes Clark, Jr., is best known as a co-host for the Young Turks, and sees the Dec. 4 resistance at DAPL as “the most important event up to this time in human history.
Clark and Wood say they are prepared to take a bullet for the cause, and they are going in well-prepared. The veterans will don old military uniforms and be equipped with body armor, ear plugs and gas masks.
“Vets Standing For Standing Rock was announced via an official sounding letter formatted like a five-paragraph military operation order, breaking down the “opposing forces” — “Morton County Sheriff’s office combined with multiple state police agencies and private security contractors” — “Mission,” “Execution” and “Logistics,” among other things. A packing list virtually mirrors the ones issued to soldiers preparing to deploy to the field (minus the weapons). But there are also parts of the document that read like a revolutionary manifesto. Under the section titled “Friendly Forces,” for example, the op order states, “we are there to put our bodies on the line, no matter the physical cost, in complete nonviolence to provide a clear representation to all Americans of where evil resides.”
Clark and Wood have an “operations order” in place to so they can organize “like a military unit” to carry out their goals. With a group of possibly 500 other veterans and other brave souls, they will lock arms and cross the Missouri River to confront militarized police with “rifles, mace, batons, and dogs.” Traditional Sioux war songs will be played as they attempt to surround the drill pad from which the pipeline will be bored under the river.
“It’s simple and we have clearly defined goals, so people don’t get caught up in the confusion,” said Wood. “One of the issues the police are going to face is that our level of planning and coordination is vastly superior to theirs, so they may end up with a problem when it comes to that.”
Even if the veterans are unsuccessful in stopping DAPL, the confrontation is sure to draw national attention — even from a mainstream media that have virtually ignored the corporate and government abuse being carried out on Native Americans in the interest of big oil.
