Not the Anthem, Not the Flag: This is About Labor Rights

And of course racism.  If professional hockey players were kneeling, the Orange Loser would give them all the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Dave Zirin at The Nation:

In what has to rank among the worst ideas in the history of the National Football League—alongside decisions to cover up concussion research and ignore the issue of violence against women—NFL owners have come up with a new proposal to deal with players who protest police violence and racial inequity during the National Anthem. According to Sports Illustratedfootball scribe Albert Breer, “Per sources, one anthem idea being discussed: Leaving it up to home team on whether teams come out for the anthem; if teams do come out for the anthem, potential that teams could be assessed 15-yard penalties for kneeling.”

This idea is so terrible that one wonders if it was leaked by another owner as a way of preemptively humiliating whoever proposed it from ever uttering the notion again. One can only imagine an official saying, “Exercising of constitutional rights. On the kicking team. Fifteen-yard penalty. First down.” That the idea is almost The Onion–worthy is not the only reason why penalizing players for protest is a nonstarter. NFL players have had the space to protest during the anthem not out of the noblesse oblige of ownership but because it is enshrined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the union.

SNIP

The idea that some owners would even propose this without speaking to the union is a sign of how drastically out of touch this group of aged billionaires is from the players in their league.

Charlie Pierce has another theory:

Or maybe none of this is about the anthem, but about fans being reminded—for less than two minutes—about how maybe the country isn't all great before they get to watch The Big Game. Maybe it has something to do with the complexion of most of those protesting, and the fact they've made many millions of dollars more than most of those watching will in their lifetimes—and they're still not "grateful." And maybe the owners are worried that embracing the social consciousness of their employees might cost them some money. So, after all, would closing the concession stands. The most important freedom in America is the free flow of dollar bills.

To Attack and Suppress

This is the militarization needed by tin-pot dictators with massive insecurity complexes, not policing by a democratically-elected administration ...  Oh, wait.

Erik Loomis:

One of the scariest parts about this horrible administration is how law enforcement at all levels, from local cops to the fascists who work for ICE to the Border Patrol union, are chomping at the bit to do whatever Trump wants. We’ve seen this most aggressively from ICE of course, but our law enforcement loves a fascist president and will do everything they can to ensure more of them. Sarah Jaffe has a good piece detailing this.

This is no longer an issue of one election; Trump may not have kept many of his promises, but he is keeping the ones he made to the police officers who supported him. And it’s also not just about Trump; around the country, police work hand-in-hand with far-right politicians orchestrating crackdowns on immigrants, harsher penalties for crimes, and so-called “blue lives matter” bills that make crimes against police equivalent to crimes against marginalized and oppressed groups. In California, for example, the California State Sheriffs’ Association is working hard to bury a “sanctuary state” proposal, and one sheriff even publicly floated the idea of her county simply ignoring the law if it were to pass.

While the occasional story of an officer with neo-Nazi tattoos or apparent ties to white supremacist websites does surface from time to time, this is not a matter of individual officers going rogue. It is a belief system produced through the decades of American policing, a history that includes police collusion with white supremacist vigilantes in the South and elsewhere, as Vitale points out. There is also police overlap with militia groups like the Oath Keepers—in 2015, reporting for my book, I spoke with Sam Andrews, a former Oath Keeper who had left the organization over its refusal to endorse an open-carry march he held with black residents of Ferguson and the greater St. Louis area. For the police in the organization, he said, such a thing was a bridge too far.

These days, open collusion with white supremacist groups might be less common, but an offensive post made to the Instagram account of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of Newburgh, New York, this August struck a nerve because it seemed to echo the policy on the ground in Charlottesville.

The image, rapidly denounced by the PBA and the police department, showed a Confederate flag juxtaposed with a photo of young black men with sagging pants, with the words “This does not offend me” emblazoned over the flag and “This bullshit does” over the photo. It was a sign, once again, of just who “us” and “them” is.

And so, in the age of Trump, police and the institutions that represent them continue to double down on their siege mentality. As protesters confront white supremacists in city after city—as I write this, Berkeley’s streets are full of red flags and tear gas—police still seem to see protesters, particularly protesters of the political left, as a sign of disorder. The movement for black lives, along with its demands for accountability or even abolition of the police, is felt to be a particular threat to police officers, and Trump has done his best to encourage this feeling. With his approval ratings at an all-time low and officials departing his administration like proverbial rats from a sinking ship, Trump has sent a signal to what Marcy Wheeler has noted is the “respectable” part of his base—the police—that anything goes. This should concern us.

This is also incredibly dangerous. If the worst nightmares of Trump severely eroding democracy do come to fruition, law enforcement will be at the center of it. And yet even today, law enforcement are almost immune to real criticism in the public sphere. Yes, we all need law enforcement from time to time. What we don’t need is a Providence police officer coming to my house after it gets robbed and telling me to my face that if voters don’t put Buddy Cianci in the mayor’s office next month, the animals are going to take over the city. We can have policing without fascism, beatings of protestors, and mass deportations of peaceful people. But we may not get that with the police as presently constructed. There also needs to be a lot more deep diving into the salting of police forces with white supremacists, which is something I hear a lot of rumors about but haven’t seen anything real solid.

Charlie Pierce:

And we conclude, as is our wont, in the Great State Of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Copper Dowser Friedman Of The Plains brings us yet another tragedy that has befallen our brave men in blue. From The Daily Beast:

He was pronounced dead at the scene. The 35-year-old was on his front porch holding a two-foot-long pipe when police arrived in the area to investigate a hit-and-run accident. Police ordered Sanchez to drop the pipe, but he could not hear them. He walked toward the officer and waved the pipe in his right hand, officials said. Neighbors nearby saw the situation unfolding and ran toward officers, screaming. “Don’t kill him! He’s deaf,” a 12-year-old girl yelled. “Don’t do it!” Six other neighbors joined in before another officer arrived and shot him.

He should have complied. Being deaf is no excuse for not obeying orders that you can’t hear. Also, he could’ve laid waste to six young, well-trained police officers with that pipe of his. Did I cover everything?

killer martinis, who was on the ground during recent police riots in St. Louis, for Wonkette:

If you want me to feel like the police aren’t my enemy STOP SENDING THEM TO GAS ME FOR DOING MY FUCKING JOB AS A JOURNALIST.

 

If you don’t want people to get het up about how many black people you’ve killed, STOP KILLING BLACK PEOPLE.

Meanwhil, the FBI is pulling out all the stops to arrest activists, not the criminals the activists exposed.

Poor Little WATB Cops

The Orange Loser and the confederate pixie between then are guaranteeing that no cop in the land will lack the military or legal firepower to steal from and torture and kill at will any peaceful citizen they choose.

Yet all cops can do is cry that they are so oppressed.

Erik Loomis at LGM:

For all the tough guy antics around service and respect, the police whine and cry at the slightest criticism, not to mention when they actually murder someone. Killing a 12 year old black kid? Totally OK! Engaging in a mild form of silent protest against that action? Browns Stadium might as well be a Khmer Rouge killing field!

Nonetheless, stripping the police of their collective bargaining rights will do nothing to solve these problems.

So the police are special snowflakes and the national anthem is their safe space that needs protection from big mean protestors? I am sure glad these tough guys can handle the most difficult situations without crying.

Ethnic Cleansing in America

And for those sent back to be tortured and murdered, mass deportation is nothing less than genocide.

Erik Loomis at LGM:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a fascist police force engaging in widescale ethnic cleansing of the United States. Now that Trump and Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (and I don’t care that Trump is bullying Sessions. That racist elf deserves everything that happens to him) have given ICE agents free run to be the racist strike force many of its employees want to be, they have acted wtih impunity. Because these victims of these fascists are poor, live in the shadows, and often don’t speak English (or even Spanish as many are indigenous), the mainstream reaction against Trump has put this issue too much on the backburner. But on the ground, it is horrifying.

Example A:

A 42-year-old Los Angeles pastor with two U.S. citizen children was detained by immigration authorities on Monday morning.

Noe Carias is the lead pastor at an Evangelical church near Echo Park, a position he has held for a number of years. He is originally from Guatemala and has been in the United States since he was 14 or 15, according to his wife. Carias was reportedly detained during a court appearance Monday during which he had been hoping to receive a stay of removal. His deportation order reportedly dates back to 1994 or 1995, according to advocates for the family. He previously received a stay of removal in 2014, and that same stay was extended in 2016.

“He has a U.S. citizen wife and he has two little children,” pastor and community organizer Martin Garcia told LAist. “They own a house, and at this moment the whole family is going to crumble because he was the economic support for the family. It’s going to have an impact.”

Then there are the legal immigrants snatched at INS offices where they came to get official papers.  And the orphans snatched out of adoptive homes and thrown into detention - and not the nice kind with protections against rape and beatings.

This revolting ethnic cleansing conducted with a government-approved fascist terrorist force has to be the top target of resisting Trump. Or a top target at least. We must not only demand that this stop, but that ICE should be disbanded and reconstituted with a different mandate and under a much more accountable authority. So long as we do not speak out against this agency and its agents on an individual agents if we know who they are, then we are culpable with the ethnic cleansing of our nation.

Shame on all of us who stand by and let this happen, good little germans that we are.

Patriots

Divine Irony:

Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.

Bertrand Russell (via philosophybits)

↵ REBLOGGED FROM PHILOSOPHYBITS
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Death Penalty for "Walking With Purpose"

When did police officers become spun-sugar snowflakes terrified of their own shadows?

 

I don't care if this guy was running toward the patrol car screaming "die, bitch, die."  He was UNARMED.

karoli at Crooks and Liars:

What does "walking with purpose" even mean? I was always taught to walk briskly with good posture and as though I had somewhere to go when I walked to avoid being targeted by rapists and things.

But for Ryan Keith Bolinger, that meant being shot dead by a cop.

A veteran police officer shot and killed an unarmed man this week in Des Moines, Iowa, after firing through the rolled-up window of her patrol car. Police say the man, identified as 28-year-old Ryan Keith Bolinger, “walked with purpose” toward officer Vanessa Miller’s vehicle when she fired the fatal shot.

New Ways to Keep the Coloreds Down

Honest to fucking dog, Mississippi, will you ever quit?

Crooks and Liars:

At every high school graduation the administrator in charge always tells parents to wait till the end to cheer for their students, and at every graduation, there's always a few parents who ignore that admonition and shout out. It's more or less a graduation tradition.

But I could see where families in Mississippi would truly be celebrating their child's graduation from high school, given the difficulty factor in actually reaching that milestone. One in four students in Mississippi drops out before graduation right now. If they do graduate, there's a good chance they'll go to college (80 percent do), so that high school diploma is a huge milestone.

However, at least one school superintendent objects to any public celebration in defiance of his orders. After the usual admonition about waiting till the end was disobeyed by enthusiastic parents, Superintendent Jay Foster tossed them out.

ADVERTISING

“My 18-year-old daughter, Lanarcia Walker, graduated from Senatobia High,” Linda Walker said.

The pomp and circumstance did not last long for some Mississippi families.

“He said ‘you did it baby’, waived his towel and went out the door,” Walker explained.

“When she went across the stage I just called her name out. ‘Lakaydra’. Just like that,” Ursula Miller said she shouted about her niece.

Miller and Henry Walker were two of the four people asked to leave Senatobia High School’s graduation ceremony for cheering.

Well, that's one of the consequences of breaking the rules. I get that. But what came next seems quite heavy handed to me. Instead of letting the whole issue die right there, Foster decided to serve them with a summons to court, one these families cannot afford to defend against.

Senatobia Municipal School District Superintendent Jay Foster filed ‘disturbing the peace’ charges against the people who yelled at graduation.

Officers issued warrants for their arrests with a possible $500 bond.

“It’s crazy,” Henry Walker said. “The fact that I might have to bond out of jail, pay court costs, or a $500 fine for expressing my love, it’s ridiculous man. It’s ridiculous.”

To be fair, it's just more blatant in Mississippi, but it's happening everywhere: the criminalization of non-conformist behavior as an excuse to intimidate and jail everyone who can't afford bail or a lawyer.

Catch any non-white doing anything but obeying a white's orders, and it's prison for "disturbing the peace."

And why not?  It's worked like a charm in every totalitarian dictatorship you can name.

Let's Stop Expecting Hammers to Install Air-Conditioners

Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic:

Police officers fight crime. Police officers are neither case-workers, nor teachers, nor mental-health professionals, nor drug counselors. One of the great hallmarks of the past forty years of American domestic policy is a broad disinterest in that difference. The problem of restoring police authority is not really a problem of police authority, but a problem of democratic authority. It is what happens when you decide to solve all your problems with a hammer. To ask, at this late date, why the police seem to have lost their minds is to ask why our hammers are so bad at installing air-conditioners. More it is to ignore the state of the house all around us. A reform that begins with the officer on the beat is not reform at all. It’s avoidance. It’s a continuance of the American preference for considering the actions of bad individuals, as opposed to the function and intention of systems.

And of course the reason we are expecting police to be social workers and teachers and mental-health professionals and drug counselors is because thirty years of austerity budgets and tax cuts for the rich have left local governments without the money to hire anyone but cops.

Tax the motherfucking mooching rich out of existence and use the money to restore government that works: government with all the teachers, social workers, mental-health professionals and drug counselors we need and then some.

Not to mention janitors and engineers and hospital orderlies (remember them?) and park rangers and researchers and maintenance workers and artists and scientists and philosophers and musicians.

The booming economy of the 1950s and 1960s that grew the world's strongest and most affluent middle class ran on millions more government workers - paid with 90 percent taxes on the rich - than we have today.

And millions more government workers, paid with the same soak-the-rich taxes, is what it's going to take to not just restore that economy, but stop the epidemic of cops murdering people who need help.

The Inhumanity of Being of a Cop

Cops deny the humanity of people who are not cops, and in doing so destroy their own humanity. There is no solution to this, other than dismantling the entire law enforcement system in this country and building something very different from scratch.

At TPM, Aurin Squire talks candidly with cops who are family and friends, and discovers that even the least conservative and aggressive are too conservative and aggressive:

Our chorus of sad and angry laughter echoed through my head as I took notes— disbelieving laughter at how far we still had to go, but hope for how far we have come. (I was sitting in the student lounge at Juilliard, after all). The system was racist, yes, but after hearing officers describe their jobs, I realized the very nature of their profession is one of infuriating contradictions and compromises. Regardless of color, to be an American cop means being both powerful enough to take someone’s life, and powerless to change the societal systems that breed crime and fear.

“You can’t fix anything. You don’t have an answer. You have a mandate,” said Wright. “The ritual of doing the job”—seeing people at their worst, barking orders at them— “makes you disconnect from yourself and the world…It only takes three to five years for your humanity to be gone.”

Which makes it very easy to shoot to death a mentally ill teenaged girl.

Digby:

Yes, there is undoubtedly something else they could have done. This was a mentally disturbed teen-age girl with a knife. They could have retreated, called for some help to try to talk her down or even used a taser if they really felt afraid for their lives. But why should they bother? This is easier. 

Remember, these cops have very tough jobs. We can't second guess their actions even when it might seem obvious to anyone with half a brain and the tiniest common sense that there might be other options besides opening fire on a disturbed teenage girl inside a police station. 

 How did we get here?  Another TPM piece gives a brief history of policing.

And Gaius Publius at Hullabaloo cites another piece on the origins of police and comments:

"The police were created to use violence"

I'll close with what for me is his main point. This is hard to believe, and hard to grasp, but it's the only way to make sense of news that comes at us like a train. Chris Hayes could do "killer cop goes free" stories from now till the rest of his life, never run out, and in our hearts, every one of us knows it. There's an endless supply of "killer cops" and their stories, most hidden from view, never prosecuted unless there's an outcry, and rarely even then.

So why is there seemingly no way ever to curb the violence of the police? The answer's in front of us. Because:

The police were created to use violence to reconcile electoral democracy with industrial capitalism. Today, they are just one part of the “criminal justice” system that plays the same role. Their basic job is to enforce order among those with the most reason to resent the system — in our society today, disproportionately among poor black people.

Every word a true one. Remember your Dickens, then remember that you can't have a world owned and harvested by men like David Koch and Jamie Dimon without an enforcement mechanism.

It continues in yet another example of cop terrorism, cop racism, cop power-tripping, cop attacks for no reason.

Flashbanged for Jaywalking, But Only If You're Black

Flashbangs aren't smoke bombs. They're bombs: weapons of war that kill people.

No, cops aren't soldiers.  They're fucking thugs.

Digby:

These bombs were invented to help special forces in hostage situations. Which makes sense. If civilian lives are in danger then it's reasonable to take risks. When it's over a baggie full of pot, not so much.

I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that they tend to only throw them into the homes of African Americans:

SNIP

Read the whole thing. As you know by now, the attitude of the police is that we are at war in the streets of America and their primary duty is to keep each other safe. All they want is to kill the "enemy" and get through their tour in one piece. But selling beer on Sunday is not jihad, African Americans are not the Taliban and protesters are not ISIS. Just because they wear the costumes and carry all the gear it doesn't make them soldiers.

Do your local cops have military bombs? Who are they using them on?

On Second Thought, Just Fire Them All

Digby:

I continue to be stunned at these police officers' lack of maturity and professionalism. I understand that they're upset at both the protests and the shootings of their fellows in NYC and that's fine. But their antics in the face of criticism proves in living color what we see in so many individual incidents: they don't just want respect, they want submission. They will brook no discussion and accept no accountability, have no use for psychology or patience because the weapons in their holsters should be sufficient to gain instant compliance.  We cannot call ourselves a free society as long as that is the case.

Your Local Occupation Army Doesn't Work for You

Charlie Pierce:

This is the Big Government issue of our time. Can the police steal from us? Can they kill some of us while others of us applaud? Do we govern or are we governed? Do we occupy or are we occupied?

You work for us.

Read the whole infuriating thing.

Mine-Resistant Vehicles Coming to Get You in Kentucky

Of the military combat equipment infesting local police departments, Kentucky has relatively little compared to some states, but holy fuck did you know that Kenton County in Northern Kentucky has a fucking MINE RESISTANT VEHICLE? 

Jefferson County/Louisville, Henderson County and McCracken County/Paducah have fucking MINE RESISTANT VEHICLEs.

Franklin County, home of the capital city of Frankfort, got 1,401 assault rifles to deal with a population of 50,000 mostly sedentary, overweight and beaten-down state employees. Also four helicopters and two planes. Planes? Fuck, you can drive across the county in 20 minutes.

You know the last time Kenton County had a MINE?  Never, that's the last time Kenton County had a mine.

Never is also the last time there was a MINE in Paducah, Henderson or fuck even Louisville.

Beware, Kenton, Jefferson, Henderson and McCracken Countians.  If they have one, they will use it.

On you.

Here's the map:

State and local police departments obtain some of their military-style equipment through a free Defense Department program created in the early 1990s. While the portion of their gear that comes from the program is relatively small (most of it is paid for by the departments or through federal grants), detailed data from the Pentagon illustrates how ubiquitous such equipment has become. Highlighted counties have received guns, grenade launchers, vehicles, night vision or body armor through the program since 2006.

And here a retired Marine gives quick run-down on the various types of military equipment now being deployed against American citizens by our supposed public servants.  Also points out how deadly, counter-productive, ridiculous and stupid using them in an American city is.

These Are Your Cops, America

From a well-respected member of the profession and acknowledged expert now teaching the subject, asked to write in one of the nation's (formerly) premier newspapers:

if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you…  

"... just do what I tell you." Does that include orders like that cop favorite "suck my dick, bitch"?

Here's the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments bottom line:
 

Cops cannot under any circumstances whatsoever order you to do anything unless you are under arrest.

Period.  Nobody realizes this any more because cops have gotten away with being motherfucking stormtroopers for two hundred years.

No, I don't want anybody to be another "killed for resisting arrest" statistic because she followed my advice and refused to let another cop get away with this shit.

I want the democratically elected officials of this country to fire every motherfucking special-ops wannabe and hire cops who understand that citizens - even black, poor, obscenity-spouting, jay-walking citizens - are their employers, not the enemy.

Believe Zandar, who knows whereof he speaks:

Believe me when I say that 98% of cops believe the same as Dutta here does.  They are police officers, and you are not.  When they tell you to do something, you do it or else, regardless of what that may be.

So when these guys swing their weight around and go after black men and women and Latino men and women, they expect obedience, respect and fear.  If you are black or brown and the President of the United States, for that matter, and a cop like Dutta pulls you over, it's because he knows he has 100% of the power in the encounter.  It's because he knows he has the power to take your life if he sees fit.  You only continue to draw breath because he allows it.

So yes, black fathers and Latino fathers have "The Talk".  That you assume all cops are Officer Dutta, and you do 100% of what they say, or they will end you.

How difficult is it to cooperate for "that long"?  For a black man, "that long" is his entire lifespan.

Or that lifespan may end.

PZ Myers:

I’m not endorsing calling a policeman a racist pig, but if someone is angry and does, is it really appropriate cause to pull out your gun and shoot them? Officer Dutta seems to think it is. That’s what’s objectionable: that the police have acquired an attitude that justifies excessive force in response to physically weak actions — that calling them a rude name warrants whipping out every tool in their arsenal to kill, maim, or subdue miscreants. When someone is killed for jaywalking (or possibly shoplifting) by a policeman, I think it’s clear that a line has been crossed — that the attitude that the police have complete authority and discretion to use their weapons without being limited by reasonable concerns has led to police who treat crime in a community as an opportunity for a military-style assault.

Popehat gets the last word:

The outrageous thing is not that he says it. The outrageous thing is that we accept it.

Would we accept "if you don't want to get shot, just do what the EPA regulator tells you"? Would we yield to "if you don't want your kid tased, do what the Deputy Superintendent of Education tells you"? Would we accept "if you don't want to get tear gassed, just do what your Congressman tells you?" No. Our culture of individualism and liberty would not permit it. Yet somehow, through generations of law-and-order rhetoric and near-deification of law enforcement, we have convinced ourselves that cops are different, and that it is perfectly acceptable for them to be able to order us about, at their discretion, on pain of violence.

It's not acceptable. It is servile and grotesque.

Only Bad Guys Demand to See Your Papers

It's in all the movies. Nazis, Commies, dictators of all stripes. The defining characteristic of a totalitarian hellhole is the demand that innocent citizens present proof of submission to authority at any time, any place.

And yes, it's us.

Digby:

So we now have "interior checkpoints" in America where they demand your papers? Who knew? Ryan Grim has the story:  

SNIP 

Evidently, the Border Patrol has set up "interior checkpoints all over the Southwest sometimes a hundred miles from the border where they can search anyone without probably cause and demand your papers. And it is obviously at this American airport examining papers and ID --- for people on flights within the country. The Border Patrol. WTH?

Such checkpoints are located throughout the Southwestern U.S. border, comprising of a 100-mile wide, Bill-of-Rights-free strip where authorities have claimed the privilege to do things they would not be permitted to do anywhere else in the country, such as executing a “routine search" without a warrant or probable cause, or asking American citizens for papers.

I had family living in Mexico for many years and went over the California border literally hundreds of times and never faced anything like this. The border was murder and I've had my car thoroughly searched and been heavily questioned many times, but once in the US you're in. I've flown out of airports all over the US and have never encountered border patrol. TSA, yes. But this wasn't TSA.

Saving the City From Terrorist Toddlers

My prediction: Not only will none of the attempted murderers in this case be charged, much less prosecuted, but the family will be harassed, persecuted and hounded out of their jobs and their home.

Digby:

From the "if you build it, they will use it" files:

A 19-month-old boy is fighting for his life after a SWAT team threw a stun grenade into his crib during an overnight home raid, the toddler's family says.

Police were looking for Wanis Thometheva, who sold methamphetamine to an undercover officer Tuesday evening, police said.

But when the team raided his Georgia home, the Phonesavanh family was inside — not Thometheva.

The horror of this is almost too much to bear. A poor little 19 year baby may die and will surely be severely impacted if he lives because an explosive device was thrown into his crib, next to his head. It's hard to see how this could be seen as anything less than manslaughter.

But I think we have to ask ourselves why in the world the police felt it necessary to stage a military style raid on any home, much less fail to do the due diligence to find out who lived there, over a sale of illegal drugs. This wasn't terrorism. It wasn't a gang selling automatic weapons out of the back yard. It wasn't the home of a suspected kidnapper holding someone for ransom. It wasn't anything that one could construe as an immediate danger to the public requiring such aggressive military tactics.  And yet, the police do this all over the country and they are constantly making mistakes, misidentifying the occupants or the residence, wounding and sometimes killing people.

Why do they do this?  Because of the militarization of our police forces which are in the business of buying more and more military-style gear and assuming more and more military tactics and strategies. And inevitably, they have also assumed the posture of an occupying army.

I don't suppose that Eisenhower saw this as one of the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex, but it is one. The government spends trillions on combat gear and military training somebody's going to use it. There are only so many land wars they can get away with fighting. So police agencies are fighting the "war on drugs" here at home and the enemy is the American public.

Thometheva, Phonesavanh: Irish, right? 'Cause this shit happens in white neighborhoods all the time.
.

Militarization of Small-Town Cops Brings Tragedy

I don't understand how I can maintain a reputation for being naiive when stories like this just leave me paralyzed with shock.

Alternet:

For nearly half a century, the general trend within America’s police precincts has been toward greater militarization, a transformation initiated by the culture wars of the 1960s and facilitated by the war on drugs, fear of inner-city crime, and anxieties over the threat of terrorism.

Fear of drugs, crime and terrorism have been used to justify the expansion of SWAT programs and the acquisition of military grade weaponry and vehicles in America’s smaller towns. Citing previous work, investigative journalist Radley Balko writes that the number of SWAT teams in municipalities with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 “increased by more than 300 percent between 1984 and 1995,” and that 75% of all of these towns had their own SWAT teams by the year 2000. Small precincts acquired wartime weaponry and a warrior culture was engendered among community police.

The ACLU is currently working on a major investigation to illuminate the extent of militarization across America. Here are four shocking examples of militarized police in America's small towns. 

1. Keene, New Hampshire

A town with a murder count of two since 2009, Keene’s city officials surreptitiously accepted a $285,933 grant from the Department of Defense in 2012 to purchase a Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck, or BearCat.

The grant was offered through the 1033 program, which was signed into law in 1997 and created a pipeline for the DOD to pass surplus military gear to local police precincts. It may seem preposterous that a sleepy New England town would need to commandeer a tank intended to withstand IED attacks, but in the post-9/11 era, nearly any degree of militarization can be justified with the threat of terrorism.

“We don't know what the terrorists are thinking,” warned Jim Massery, sales manager for the creator of the Bearcat, Lencor Armored Vehicles, to investigative journalist Radley Balko, before questioning whether residents who took issue with the BearCat “just don’t think police officers’ lives are worth saving.”

A series of town meetings led by city councilor Terry Clark revealed a sizable number of city residents opposed the local SWAT’s acquisition of a BearCat. “This is an agreement between the government and arms dealers, essentially,” noted Clark after a representative for Lencor revealed that the transfers of military equipment allow them to tap into the DOD’s $34 billion terrorism budget.

Despite resistance, the Keene police department put the BearCat to use, starting in the fall of 2012, and it was used 21 times as of summer 2013: 19 times for training exercises, once in response to a barricaded person and once in response to a person threatening suicide.

Surrounding cities have signed pacts with Keene to borrow the BearCat when needed, and support throughout the state for similar vehicles remains strong: A state bill to halt the purchase of military equipment by New Hampshire police departments was shot down in late March, making it likely that more departments will seek BearCats from the DOD, in addition to the 11 that already have them.

 Have you ever laughed at your local deputy?  Complained about the speed of your town's first reponders? Questioned the intelligence of the chief of police, even jokingly?

You should probably seriously consider moving to another state. Far away. Where you will keep your mouth shut

To protect and to serve. But only those who do as they are told.

Americans More Like to Die By Cop Than By Terrorist

But the security system created by our anti-terrorist hysteria does nothing to deter terrorism while ramping up the mindless militarism in law enforcement that makes death by cop so frequent.

Firedoglake:

- Despite crime in the U.S. declining to levels not seen since the 19th century, the police forces have been militarized to levels not seen since, well, ever. Americans are more likely to die at the hands of police officers than from terrorists in spite of the continually pushed message

Crying Afterward Does Not Excuse Cold Blooded Murder

Cops who think they're Special Forces are roaming the nation, murdering innocent citizens for no reason and getting wrist-slapped.

The only thing that will make them stop is throwing guys like this in prison for life.

Dashcam video released this week shows a South Carolina deputy breaking down in tears after shooting a 70-year-old man during a traffic stop last month.

York County, S.C. deputy Terrance Knox fired at Bobby Canipe after mistaking Canipe's cane for a shotgun, according to the Associated Press. Knox had pulled Canipe over for an expired tag, and the dashcam video shows Canipe pulling over quickly after Knox put on his lights and siren. Canipe then gets out of his truck, and reaches for his cane in the truck bed. Knox can be heard yelling as Canipe swings the cane and points the end of it in his direction.

Knox ran up to Canipe after shooting him. According to the Associated Press, another officer arrived a few minutes after the shooting, and at that point Knox began to sob.

"I promise to God I thought it was a shotgun," Knox said.

Pleading "my invisible friend forgives me" doesn't excuse it, either, moron.
 
Fuck this guy. No excuses. No forgiveness. Fuck this guy.

No, Not An Imperialist War Machine At All

From Firedoglake (not the Onion):

- A woman was rejected for citizenship in the U.S. because she objected to war on moral grounds

Think about that.  If you object to war on moral grounds, you are not fit to be an American citizen.

No wonder non-violent peace protesters are beaten, tasered, tortured and imprisoned. They are, according to the official immigration rules of the United States government, literally anti-American.

Even if they fought, killed and were wounded in the service of their country.