Tag: United Police States of America

Off With His Head

Without the police who would decapitate the illegal chickens and leave the heads behind to traumatize children:

Ashley Turnbull said she knows she violated the city’s ordinance that prohibits fowl and acknowledges she was told Aug. 7 by police to remove the three chickens and two ducks.

But she said Police Chief Trevor Berger went too far when he came onto her property about a week later, when nobody was home, and clubbed, killed and decapitated a small, red hen with a shovel.

The fact that the officer snuck onto the property, clubbed the chicken to death, and beheaded it already raised the creepy factor to 10. But the officer took it to 11 when he justified his actions:

Berger said killing the chicken was justified.

“It’s against city ordinance for a chicken to be in the city and running around in people’s yards,” he said.

Because clubbing and beheading the chicken was the only conceivable solution to the problem of illegal chicken ownership. The officer couldn’t have called animal control to capture the bird or arranged for a nearby farmer to take it in. Nope. It had to be decapitated!

This is the problem with modern policing. Violence is its tool and we’re all nails. Modern policing has become almost entirely about law enforcement instead of protecting people and property. When you consider that all laws, and there are a lot of fucking laws, are enforced at the point of a gun this prioritization isn’t ideal for anybody but the state and its cronies.

A Scared Citizen is a Good Citizen

The Islamic State (IS), formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Syria (ISIS), has been front page material for weeks now. After being unable to make citizens fear Iran and North Korean and only having moderate success at making citizens fear Vladimir Putin the state and its corporate media partners have been trying to make the IS the thing for fashionable citizens to be afraid of. But the IS is way the fuck over in the Middle East so why should an American citizen fear it? Here we see Allen West, one of the state’s most effective agents at instill fear in the hearts of neocons, entering stage right:

Judicial Watch reports that ”Islamic terrorist groups are operating in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and planning to attack the United States with car bombs or other vehicle borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED).”

“High-level federal law enforcement, intelligence and other sources have confirmed to Judicial Watch that a warning bulletin for an imminent terrorist attack on the border has been issued. Agents across a number of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense agencies have all been placed on alert and instructed to aggressively work all possible leads and sources concerning this imminent terrorist threat. Specifically, the government sources reveal that the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is confirmed to now be operating in Juarez, a famously crime-infested narcotics hotbed situated across from El Paso, Texas.”

This article combines the IS, illegal immigration, and drug cartels into one giant fear smoothy! Oh, I also forgot to mention, that it is almost certainly bullshit. Why would Mexican drug cartels, which are not exactly apostles of Islam, work with an organization that seems bent on destroying anything not Islam? If the only answer you can come up with is “Because drug cartels hate Americans.” then you don’t understand how drug cartels work. Americans are their biggest source of revenue. The last thing they want is for their customers to get slaughtered en masse, which the IS is supposedly interested in doing.

Another question one should be inclined to ask is why anybody would give weight to a government terror warning. Since 9/11 this country has lived in a constant state of terror warnings. Statistically if we looked at the number of terror warnings issued since 9/11 versus the number of actual instances of terrorism in this country we would see that the percentage is almost in the negative (for those of you who don’t believe I understand how percentages work please look up hyperbole)!

But the state needs a scared citizenry. Tyrannical bullshit is very hard to sell by itself. That’s why tyrannical acts are usually preceded by a period of fear mongering. The United States government has been trying to get widespread support from the citizenry to turn this country into a prison. We’re told that our “unprotected” border will let communists (removed from the latest version of the Newspeak Dictionary) violent drug cartels, terrorists, and other people who want to kill every American across. And since the threats looking to cross today are far more dangerous than the nuclear armed militaries that were supposedly trying to cross previously we’re also told that the police must be militarized. Supposedly if our police officers aren’t roaming the streets in armored personnel carriers, clad in body armor, and armed with machine guns we’re all going to be killed by terrorists!

But fences, guard towers, and barbed wired are interesting in their ability to equally keep things outside of an area and inside of an area. The more secure a border becomes the more difficult it is to cross it when escape is your goal. Uprising are also more difficult to successfully pull off when you’re facing a force that is much better armed than yours. People know this, which is why selling tyranny is difficult unless you have a good pitch. Fear is probably the best pitch of them all.

Whenever you hear people like Allen West, Bill O’Reilly, Anderson Cooper, and Wolf Blitzer talk about why you should be afraid of the week’s boogeyman just remember that their revenue is generated by generating fear. Fear leads to page clicks, video views, and better Nielsen ratings. They’re also in, what George Carlin referred to as, the big club. If you’re in the big club the tyrannical shit being enacted by the state doesn’t impact you. But we’re not in the big club so we should be wary of people peddling fear because what they claim we need sure as the hell will impact us.

Must Have Been a Contortionist

There has been a small trend of instances where detainees have been cuffed, placed into the back of cop cars, and ended up shooting themselves. We can now add another occurrence of this strange phenomenon to the list but this time more than just speculation stands against the cop’s story:

A coroner’s report obtained exclusively by NBC News directly contradicts the police version of how a 22-year-old black man died in the back seat of a Louisiana police cruiser earlier this year — but still says the man, whose hands were cuffed behind his back, shot himself.

In a press release issued March 3, the day he died, the Louisiana State Police said Victor White III apparently shot himself in an Iberia Parish police car. According to the police statement, White had his hands cuffed behind his back when he shot himself in the back.

But according to the full final report of the Iberia Parish coroner, which was released nearly six months later and obtained exclusively by NBC News, White was shot in the front, not the back. The bullet entered his right chest and exited under his left armpit. White was left-handed, according to family members. According to the report, the forensic pathologist found gunshot residue in the wound, but not the sort of stippling that a close-range shot can sometimes produce. He also found abrasions on White’s face.

I’m shocked that the officer’s version of the story didn’t hold up. After all it’s perfectly reasonable to believe that a person was handcuffed, almost certainly searched, and placed into a cop car only to have smuggled in a firearm in his ass so he could pull it out if captured and execute himself. What part of that story isn’t completely plausible?

Now we wait to see what comes of this information. My guess is jack shit. The officers that arrested the man and potentially shot him will probably remain on duty and the media will fail to report further on this fiasco. Then if riots erupt in the area the cops will claim they have no idea why it did and call in the storm troopers to violently suppress the rioters.

Boom, Headshot

More and more modern policing is becoming indistinguishable with common thuggery. Less effort has been put into protecting and serving and more effort has been put into beating and subjugating. Scenes like this, at one time a rare occurrence, are becoming expected behavior when interacting with a police officer:

Greenville officers approached a man at a Walmart parking lot on Saturday. The man appeared to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and didn’t respond to police questions or instructions. Eventually, the officers followed the man inside the store, where they attempted to detain him. The deputies claim the man resisted, though video footage of the incident certainly makes said resistance look passive, rather than violent. But once the two cops had the man on the ground, one of them immediately began punching him in the head. I count at least 20 blows.

Hitting somebody in the head 20 times isn’t an appropriate way to apprehend them. There are far more effective and less dangerous methods of physical restraint. What really gets me though are the reactions of the witnesses. They did plead with the officer to stop but none of them intervened. I understand not intervening when a violent thug is beating on somebody, it is dangerous for your person, but there are times when it’s necessary and this is one of those times. The man being beating by the officer was in immediate danger of death or great bodily harm and that officer should be in a cage on charges of aggravated assault.

Keep Digging that Hole Officers

The law enforcers in Ferguson, Missouri seem determined to prove that under their rule the First Amendment has been entirely suspended. After the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought this point up you would think the law enforcers would back down a little bit just to create the illusion that they would respect the freedom of speech and press. Nope! Instead they decided to verbally threaten a reporter for Al Jazeera America. From the transcript of what the reporters filmed:

Officer 1: [To me] You need to take a hike.

Me: We need to shoot the sign first.

Officer 1: No, you don’t.

Me: Yeah, we do.

Officer 1: No, you don’t. You come back when it’s daylight.

Me: Sir, could you —

Officer 1: Did you hear what I said? … You want to go, we’ll go.

At this point, the officer approached me and grabbed my wrist.

Officer 1: [Holding my arm] Don’t resist. I’ll bust your ass. I’ll bust your head right here.

Me: [To JP] Are you filming this?

Officer 1: Film it! I don’t give a s—. Because you’ll go, and I’ll sure confiscate your film for evidence.

Classy. But that’s not all! As an added bonus the law enforcers all arrested a reporter for the Intercept:

Intercept reporter Ryan Devereaux was arrested this morning while on the ground covering the protests in Ferguson, Mo. According to St. Louis Post-Dispatch photographer David Carson, who witnessed the apprehension, Ryan and a German reporter he was with were both taken into custody by members of a police tactical team. They were handcuffed and placed in a wagon, and Carson was told they were being taken to St. Louis County jail.

We haven’t been able to reach officials with the St. Louis County Police Department or Ferguson Police Department to find out if Ryan has been charged, or under what pretext he was detained. But needless to say, it’s an outrage that he was stopped and handcuffed by police in the course of lawfully doing his job on the streets of Ferguson. We are trying to contact Ryan now.

I think the law enforcers in Ferguson fail to understand that we live in the era of social media and ubiquitous cameras. Silencing journalists isn’t enough to suppress a story. Any individual can take pictures and record video to post on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other sites. Events can no longer be censored and every attempt to do so just stirs up more anger.

But Police Need Military Gear

I’m firmly in the camp that says police officers should have all surplus military gear stripped from them. They’ve been handed this gear and proven to be irresponsible with it. But there are a lot of people claiming that the police need that equipment. Sadly most of the people making this claim do so because they want the police to be protected when they’re initiating aggression against nonviolent individuals not for protecting people. Take these two letters sent to the Star Tribune by, presumably, readers:

After reading Ross Douthat’s commentary “When the police dress for war” (Aug. 19), I’m thinking he has very little firsthand experience with enforcing the law. I’m thinking that he might completely reconsider his final comment — “time to take their toys away” — if he were sent to a “drug house” on a no-knock warrant, pushed to the front of the line of cops and told to “go in there with your six-shooter and take those drugs and weapons away from those hooligans.” One or two entries like that, and I believe we would find old Ross standing in front of the line at the “SWAT store” buying the latest, greatest offerings that would put him on par with what the criminals are toting.

Richard Greelis, Bloomington

You see the police need all of those toys so they are better protected when they kick in a person’s door, burn their baby with a flashbang grenade, and shoot the family pet all in the name of stopping them from smoking a plant or using some other unpatentable drug.

Every cop who stops a car knows things can go from routine to life-or-death without warning. This is true night or day, even with Volvos driven by middle-aged white men like the author of the Aug. 17 Short Takes (“Questioning authority: Trooper wanted to be in control”). If the writer chooses to drive with illegally tinted windows, then it is he, not the law officer, who is being rude and disrespectful.

By the way, the weather was bright and sunny when the officer from West St. Paul was recently murdered. I’m sure you get the picture.

Dennis H. Roberts, Maplewood

Police officers also need those toys so they can pull you over for exceeding the arbitrarily selected speed limit, create a dangerous situation by forcing motorists to slam on their brakes or pile into another lane in order to avoid hitting the dumbass getting out of his vehicle on a major highway, and issue you a citation for being a safe driver by driving with the flow of traffic.

This is a trend I’ve noticed with police apologists. They usually use examples where police officers are the aggressors and seldom discuss situations where officers are actually protecting lives. Perhaps this is because modern police spend so much time doing the former that nobody realizes that they’re ideally supposed to be doing the latter. But I haven’t heard an apologist say that the police need surplus military gear to handle hostage situations in a way that saves the hostages’ lives or to respond to calls from wives being viciously attacked by their husbands. Some have mentioned that they need that gear to stop riots like those occurring in Ferguson but I don’t give points to government goons who “solve” problems that they created in the first place (I’m harsh, I know).

No First Amendment Rights in Ferguson

At this point it’s pretty fucking obvious that the First Amendment doesn’t apply in Ferguson, Missouri anymore. But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has finally come out and declared it so:

Police in Ferguson, Mo., on Monday began telling protesters – who have been gathered for days demanding justice for the death of an unarmed teenager at the hands of police – that they were no longer allowed to stand in place for more than five seconds, but had to keep moving.

“When inquiries were made to law enforcement officers regarding which law prohibits gathering or standing for more than five seconds on public sidewalks,” the ACLU of Missouri wrote in its emergency federal court filing to block the apparent policy, “the officers indicated that they did not know and that it did not matter. The officers further indicated that they were following the orders of their supervisors, whom they refused to name.” The ACLU argued the policy was a prior restraint on speech and asked for a temporary restraining order.

As if the emphasis the ACLU’s point law enforcers in Ferguson put their boots on the faces of nine protesters, one of whom was a 90 year-old Holocaust survivor:

She knew about a gathering in downtown St. Louis to protest Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s decision to activate the National Guard. As she and her fellow protesters peacefully marched towards the Wainwright Building, where Nixon keeps an office, they chanted “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! National Guard has got to go!” and “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” according to The Nation. Some people gave speeches. Others held signs. Epstein says she and her fellow protesters aimed to walk into Nixon’s office and formally ask him to de-escalate the situation in Ferguson. But police and security officers blocked the door, preventing them from entering.

“I really didn’t think about being arrested or doing anything like that,” Epstein told Newsweek. “I was just going to be somebody in the crowd. I guess maybe I was impulsive: Someone said, ‘Who is willing to be arrested if that happens?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m willing.’”

A police officer informed the crowd that Nixon and his staff were not in the building, Epstein says, and urged them to leave. When she and eight other protesters refused, they were arrested for failure to disperse. Police handcuffed Epstein behind her back and took her to a nearby police substation. She was booked, given a court date of October 21, and then told she could leave.

I’m sure that won’t fan the flames even more! Sheesh. With the way law enforcers in Ferguson are acting you’d think they were trying to ignite the powder key that city has become.

We keep hearing about the violence occurring in Ferguson as a justification for law enforcer tactics. But law enforcer tactics are instigating violence by depriving people of peaceful means of addressing this situation. When people are being arrested for reporting on the situation, tear gassed for assembling peacefully, and being prevented from petitioning their government then the people perpetuating violence are going to feel justified and the people barred from peaceful action may turn to violent action instead.

Civil unrest needs to be handled with calm and cool heads. When the civil unrest is caused by police actions then the only way to properly resolve the situation is to have a neutral third party investigate the matter and make all information regarding the investigation available to the people. By actively oppressing peaceful protesters and restricting information regarding the investigation the law enforcers of Ferguson are guaranteeing continued civil unrest.

Victim Blaming

With all of the shit hitting the fan in Ferguson I think it’s a good idea to figure out what one needs to do in order to not get their ass kicked or shot by the police. Fortunately Sunil Dutta, a man who was an officer for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for 17 years, was kind enough to pen an article explaining exactly that:

Sometimes, though, no amount of persuasion or warnings work on a belligerent person; that’s when cops have to use force, and the results can be tragic. We are still learning what transpired between Officer Darren Wilson and Brown, but in most cases it’s less ambiguous — and officers are rarely at fault. When they use force, they are defending their, or the public’s, safety.

Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: 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, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?

Emphasis mine. Did you get that? If an officer uses force, in a majority of cases, it’s the victim’s fault. You see the victim refused to roll over and be an obedient serf so the officer had no other choice but to beat his ass or shoot him! After all police officers truly love us and sometimes we make them do violent things by failing to properly respond to their love. Admittedly there are a few bad apples out there but for the most part cops only beat you because they love you.

Talk about unapologetic victim blaming. Mr. Dutta’s argument can basically be summed up as “Shut up, slave!” It doesn’t surprise me that a 17 year veteran of the LAPD holds this attitude. Although no statistics exist, as far as I know, documenting the reason for police interactions I believe, based on the way laws are enforced, that a vast majority of encounters involve the officer initiating force. A majority of police activity involves extorting money from the populace. We see this in the form of speeding tickets, parking citations, civil forfeitures, fines for drinking alcohol in public parks, littering, and other nonviolent acts. In each of those instances a police officer is approaching a nonviolent individual and threatening them with force (because all laws are ultimately enforced at the point of a gun). In those cases the person approached by police is the victim and the officer is the aggressor.

There is no reason, other than the threat of violence made by an officer, for anybody to be polite to a another person who approaches solely to make a threat. In fact anybody making threats should expect to get an impolite response. Police officers are fortunate that most Americans are polite to a fault. Even when an officer threatens a person that person will usually say a few harsh words, passively resist being kidnapped, or spit in an officer’s face. While police officers often talk about how dangerous their job is in reality they have it pretty easy in this country. Only once in a great while do they have to make good on their threats. Otherwise people blow off a little steam and pay the demanded extortion money.

But, as Mr. Dutta points out, even if your show the slightest amount of displeasure towards a badge-wearing aggressor you risk being pummeled or murdered. And this is somehow the victim’s fault.

The Angry Mob Has Arrived

A lot of people have been debating whether or not Michael Brown robbed a story and how that justified Darren Wilson’s actions. I feel as though that argument misses the big picture, which is how the situation in Ferguson has been handled by police. To say it was handled stupidly would be giving too much credit Ferguson’s law enforcement. Roughing up and arresting reporters, tear gassing news camera crews, arresting photographers, and tear gassing nonviolent protesters is not a good way to handle civil unrest generated by a general feeling of police corruption. Keeping the name of the officer who shot Brown secret for so long didn’t help matters nor has the secrecy surrounding the internal investigation.

The people of Ferguson are pissed and when the angry mob rises it comes knocking. Protesters apparently tried to storm Governor Nixon’s office yesterday. That doesn’t surprise me but the fact that the building’s security was able to keep the angry mob out does.

In all likelihood this situation is going to burn itself out soon. Riots have a habit of simmering down fairly fast, which is why they’re seldom effective at enacting any meaningful change. But the National Guard could always decided to follow in the steps of the previous law enforcement officers tasked with putting Ferguson back under the state’s foot and bring this entire mass to the flashpoint again. It will be interesting to see how this entire situation turns out. My guess is that the internal investigation, that is to say Wilson’s fellows in the state’s police force, will find no wrongdoing on Wilson’s part. That’s the usual outcome of these investigations. If that happens things could get really interesting.

680,000 Names on the Government’s Various Terrorist Watch Lists

When the government announced the Terrorist Screening Database (TSD), which is the source for the various terrorist watch lists, most people probably assume that it would only contain a handful of names. After all, if the government had evidence that somebody is a terrorist they would arrest them, right? Wrong. As it turns out there are 680,000 names in the TSD and almost half of them aren’t believed to be affiliated with any known terrorist organization:

Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

Now we know for a fact that the database has nothing to do with people affiliated with known terrorist organizations. That means everybody is a potential terrorist. What’s even funnier (in a sick sort of way) is that the man who promised to save us from George W. Bush’s police state is responsible for most of the names appearing in the database:

The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush.

This is why I laugh every time somebody tells me that we live in the freest country on Earth. Only a police state could have a list 680,000 names long of suspected enemies. I wonder if getting on the list qualifies an individual as a potential drone target.