Thread: Drudge Report: UNREST IN HEARTLAND

Document: Army Preparing to Use Lethal Force Against “Unarmed Civilians” During “Full Scale Riots” in U.S.

Training manual outlines "sniper response" during crowd control operations









http://www.infowars.com/document-arm...-riots-in-u-s/

The Democrat's Great Society.

LOOTER: 'I'M PROUD OF US. WE DESERVE THIS'



by WYNTON HALL
19 Aug 2014
DeAndre Smith justifies the looting in Ferguson

DeAndre Smith, 30, of Ferguson, justifies the looting that happened in Ferguson. He spoke with Kim Bell of the Post-Dispatch on Monday morning as the burned-out QuikTrip still smoldered in the background.

Video at Link:






According to the Washington Post, a looter in Ferguson, Missouri, expressed pride and admiration for looters and said their actions are justified.

"I'm proud of us. We deserve this, and this is what's supposed to happen when there's injustice in your community," said DeAndre Smith, whom the Washington Post says was "fresh from looting the QuikTrip."

One officer told the Post that widespread looting has spawned "looting tourism" wherein thieves as far away as Illinois and Texas are traveling to Ferguson to steal.

"It's like looting tourism," said the officer. "It's like they are spending their gas money to come down here and steal."

The presence of outside forces could be seen during Monday evening's clashes. CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill said two white individuals, one an "anarchist" and another from a "revolutionary Communist group in Illinois," lobbed water bottles into a crowd of protestors and were shunned by protestors who told them to "go back to your neighborhood with that instead of coming in here and messing with us."

The Post says a 27-year-old "militant" from Chicago explained that the time for peace has passed.

"This is not the time for no peace. We are jobless men, and this is our job now--getting justice," the Chicago militant told the Post. "If that means violence, that's okay by me. They've been doing this to us for years."

http://cdn.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/19/Looter-I-m-Proud-of-Us-We-Deserve-This

This incident in 1997 was a wake up call to police departments all across the country. The police in Ferguson have no idea what they could be up against and they apparently have prepared for the worst.

400 Cops - VS - Two heavily-armed and armored bank robbers / True events 1997


chihuahuazz

Uploaded on Sep 16, 2009
The North Hollywood shootout was an armed confrontation between two heavily-armed and armored bank robbers, Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr. and Emil Matasareanu, and patrol and SWAT officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in North Hollywood, California on February 28, 1997. It happened when responding patrol officers engaged Phillips, 26 [2] and Matasareanu, 30 [3] leaving a bank which the two men had just robbed. Ten officers and seven civilians sustained injuries before both robbers were killed.[4] Phillips and Matasareanu had robbed several armored vehicles prior to their attempt in North Hollywood and were notorious for their heavy armament, which included automatic rifles.

Local patrol officers at the time were typically armed with a 9 mm or .38 Special pistols on their person, with some having a 12-gauge shotgun available in their cars. Phillips and Matasareanu carried fully automatic rifles, with ammunition capable of penetrating police body armor, and wore body armor of their own. Since the police handguns could not penetrate the bank robbers' body armor, the patrol officers' efforts were ineffective. SWAT eventually arrived with weapons that could penetrate and they also appropriated several semi-automatic rifles from a nearby firearms dealer. The incident sparked debate on the appropriate firepower for patrol officers to have available in similar situations in the future.[5]

The shootout
Larry Phillips, Jr. (left) and Emil Matasareanu (right) engaged LAPD officers in a firefight after robbing a branch of Bank of America.

On the morning of February 28, 1997, after months of preparation, including extensive reconnoitering of their intended target—the Bank of America branch on Laurel Canyon Boulevard—Phillips and Matasareanu loaded five illegally modified fully automatic rifles: three Romanian AIM rifles (an AK-47 copy), a modified HK91 and an AR-15. They also possessed two 9 mm Beretta 92F pistols, a .38 caliber revolver, and approximately 3,300 rounds of ammunition in box and drum magazines, and made their way from their apartment to the bank in a white Chevrolet Celebrity.[14] They wore their homemade body armor, as well as metal trauma plates to protect vital organs, and they took phenobarbital to calm their nerves.[15]

Phillips and Matasareanu arrived at the Bank of America branch office at the intersection of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Archwood Street in North Hollywood around 9:17 a.m., and set their watch alarms for 8 minutes, which was the amount of time they estimated it would take for law enforcement officials to respond. Phillips had been using a radio scanner to listen to police transmissions to determine this time.[15] However, as they walked into the bank they were spotted by an LAPD patrol car driving down Laurel Canyon, and the officers in the car radioed in a possible 211, code for an armed robbery.[16]

Inside the bank, Phillips and Matasareanu forced the assistant manager to open the vault. They fired at least 100 rounds to scare the approximately 30 bank staff and customers[4] inside the bank to discourage resistance.[17] They were only able to get $303,305, instead of the expected $750,000 because the bank had altered the delivery schedule.[13]

At 9:38 a.m. Phillips exited the bank through its north doorway and Matasareanu through its south doorway. Both encountered dozens of LAPD patrol officers who had arrived after the first-responding officers radioed a "shots fired" call.[18] Television news helicopters responding to the "shots fired" LAPD dispatch arrived minutes later, and, despite being shot at by the gunmen themselves, broadcast throughout. SWAT commanders used the live helicopter broadcasts to pass critical, time-sensitive information to the officers on the scene.

Phillips and Matasareanu engaged the officers in a firefight, firing armor-piercing rounds into the patrol cars that had been positioned on Laurel Canyon in front of the bank.[14] The patrol officers were armed with standard Beretta 92-type 9 mm pistols and .38 caliber revolvers, and some also carried 12-gauge pump-action shotguns, but the body armor worn by Phillips and Matasareanu was strong enough to withstand them.[13] Multiple officers and civilians were wounded in the seven to eight minutes spanning from when the shooting began to when Matasareanu entered the robbers' white sedan to make a getaway; Phillips remained outside of the vehicle and continued firing on the police.[13] A tactical alert was issued, and 18 minutes after the shooting had begun, a SWAT team armed with automatic weapons arrived; they also commandeered an armored truck which they used to extract wounded civilians and officers who were pinned down.[13]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsOWSDtxERU

"I'm proud of us. We deserve this, and this is what's supposed to happen when there's injustice in your community," said DeAndre Smith, whom the Washington Post says was "fresh from looting the QuikTrip."

One officer told the Post that widespread looting has spawned "looting tourism" wherein thieves as far away as Illinois and Texas are traveling to Ferguson to steal.

This adds new meaning to the ghetto/criminal mindset.......so 3rd world.....

Zo’s Take on Ferguson, MO: Democrat Cities are Dangerous Places to Live

Posted on 19 August, 2014 by AmyElizabeth



http://gopthedailydose.com/2014/08/1...s-places-live/

Breaking: Special Ops Contractors & Former Navy SEALS Deploying to #Ferguson
Asymmetric Solutions is a Division of Applied Defense Technologies.
www.thegatewaypundit.com


Breaking: Special Ops Contractors & Former Navy SEALS Deploying to #Ferguson

Posted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, August 20, 2014, 12:20 AM




Asymmetric Solutions is a Division of Applied Defense Technologies. The St. Louis-based company is staffed by combat experienced SpecOps vets, including: Army Green Berets, Army Delta, Navy SEALs, SEAL 6, and Agency SOF. The company offers a real-world training environment with exceptional instructors on self defense from criminal violence.

On Tuesday Assymetric Solutions tweeted out that they were being deployed to Ferguson, Missouri.

Asymmetric Solutions @AsymmetricUSA Follow
We've been to Baghdad, Kabul, KL, Manilla, Peshwar, Bogata. Never guessed we would deploy a high threat team in our own city.

#furgeson
4:04 PM - 19 Aug 2014

This comes after several dozen North County businesses were looted and destroyed by violent protesters this week in Ferguson.

1776 Channel reported:

Missouri-based private security contractor Asymmetric Solutions, which employs elite former U.S. military special operators, tweeted Tuesday afternoon that the company is deploying a “high threat team in our own city”.

When responding via Twitter to a request for information, a spokesperson said “we cannot professionally hand out that information, regardless of client or location. We put a security team of former SOF personnel into the STL area at the request of a client.”

Hat Tip Andrea Shea King


http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014...Speed=noscript

Why Do These Cops Look Like Navy Seals?

How the excessive militarization of the police has turned cops into counterinsurgents.

Matthew Harwood
August 14, 2014



A member of the St. Louis County Police Department points his weapon in the direction of a group of protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. August 13, 2014. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.
Jason Westcott was afraid.
One night last fall, he discovered via Facebook that a friend of a friend was planning with some co-conspirators to break in to his home. They were intent on stealing Wescott’s handgun and a couple of TV sets. According to the Facebook message, the suspect was planning on “burning” Westcott, who promptly called the Tampa Bay police and reported the plot.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, the investigating officers responding to Westcott’s call had a simple message for him: “If anyone breaks into this house, grab your gun and shoot to kill.”
Around 7:30 pm on May 27, the intruders arrived. Westcott followed the officers’ advice, grabbed his gun to defend his home, and died pointing it at the intruders. They used a semiautomatic shotgun and handgun to shoot down the 29-year-old motorcycle mechanic. He was hit three times, once in the arm and twice in his side, and pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.
The intruders, however, weren’t small-time crooks looking to make a small score. Rather, they were members of the Tampa Bay Police Department’s SWAT team, which was executing a search warrant on suspicion that Westcott and his partner were marijuana dealers. They had been tipped off by a confidential informant, whom they drove to Westcott’s home four times between February and May to purchase small amounts of marijuana, at $20–$60 a pop. The informer notified police that he saw two handguns in the home, which was why the Tampa Bay police deployed a SWAT team to execute the search warrant.
In the end, the same police department that told Westcott to protect his home with defensive force killed him when he did. After searching his small rental, the cops indeed found weed, two dollars’ worth, and one legal handgun—the one he was clutching when the bullets ripped into him.
Welcome to a new era of American policing, where cops increasingly see themselves as soldiers occupying enemy territory, often with the help of Uncle Sam’s armory, and where even nonviolent crimes are met with overwhelming force and brutality.
The War on Your Doorstep
The cancer of militarized policing has long been metastasizing in the body politic. It has been growing ever stronger since the first Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams were born in the 1960s in response to that decade’s turbulent mix of riots, disturbances and senseless violence like Charles Whitman’s infamous clocktower rampage in Austin, Texas.
While SWAT isn’t the only indicator that the militarization of American policing is increasing, it is the most recognizable. The proliferation of SWAT teams across the country and their paramilitary tactics have spread a violent form of policing designed for the extraordinary but in these years made ordinary. When the concept of SWAT arose out of the Philadelphia and Los Angeles Police Departments, it was quickly picked up by big-city police officials nationwide. Initially, however, it was an elite force reserved for uniquely dangerous incidents, such as active shooters, hostage situations or large-scale disturbances.
Nearly a half-century later, that’s no longer true.
In 1984, according to Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop, about 26 percent percent of towns with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 had SWAT teams. By 2005, that number had soared to 80 percent and it’s still rising, though SWAT statistics are notoriously hard to come by.
As the number of SWAT teams has grown nationwide, so have the raids. Every year now, there are approximately 50,000 SWAT raids in the United States, according to Professor Pete Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies. In other words, roughly 137 times a day a SWAT team assaults a home and plunges its inhabitants and the surrounding community into terror.
Upping the Racial Profiling Ante
In a recently released report, “War Comes Home,” the American Civil Liberties Union (my employer) discovered that nearly 80 percent of all SWAT raids it reviewed between 2011 and 2012 were deployed to execute a search warrant.
Pause here a moment and consider that these violent home invasions are routinely used against people who are only suspected of a crime. Up-armored paramilitary teams now regularly bash down doors in search of evidence of a possible crime. In other words, police departments increasingly choose a tactic that often results in injury and property damage as its first option, not the one of last resort. In more than 60 percent of the raids the ACLU investigated, SWAT members rammed down doors in search of possible drugs, not to save a hostage, respond to a barricade situation, or neutralize an active shooter.
On the other side of that broken-down door, more often than not, are blacks and Latinos. When the ACLU could identify the race of the person or people whose home was being broken into, 68 percent of the SWAT raids against minorities were for the purpose of executing a warrant in search of drugs. When it came to whites, that figure dropped to 38 percent, despite the well-known fact that blacks, whites and Latinos all use drugs at roughly the same rates. SWAT teams, it seems, have a disturbing record of disproportionately applying their specialized skill set within communities of color.
Think of this as racial profiling on steroids in which the humiliation of stop and frisk is raised to a terrifying new level.
Everyday Militarization
Don’t think, however, that the military mentality and equipment associated with SWAT operations are confined to those elite units. Increasingly, they’re permeating all forms of policing.
As Karl Bickel, a senior policy analyst with the Justice Department’s Community Policing Services office, observes, police across America are being trained in a way that emphasizes force and aggression. He notes that recruit training favors a stress-based regimen that’s modeled on military boot camp rather than on the more relaxed academic setting a minority of police departments still employ. The result, he suggests, is young officers who believe policing is about kicking ass rather than working with the community to make neighborhoods safer. Or as comedian Bill Maher reminded officers recently: “The words on your car, ‘protect and serve,’ refer to us, not you.”
This authoritarian streak runs counter to the core philosophy that supposedly dominates twenty-first-century American thinking: community policing. Its emphasis is on a mission of “keeping the peace” by creating and maintaining partnerships of trust with and in the communities served. Under the community model, which happens to be the official policing philosophy of the US government, officers are protectors but also problem solvers who are supposed to care, first and foremost, about how their communities see them. They don’t command respect, the theory goes: they earn it. Fear isn’t supposed to be their currency. Trust is.
Nevertheless, police recruiting videos, as in those from California’s Newport Beach Police Department and New Mexico’s Hobbs Police Department, actively play up not the community angle but militarization as a way of attracting young men with the promise of Army-style adventure and high-tech toys. Policing, according to recruiting videos like these, isn’t about calmly solving problems; it’s about you and your boys breaking down doors in the middle of the night.
SWAT’s influence reaches well beyond that. Take the increasing adoption of battle-dress uniforms (BDUs) for patrol officers. These militaristic, often black, jumpsuits, Bickel fears, make them less approachable and possibly also more aggressive in their interactions with the citizens they’re supposed to protect.
A small project at Johns Hopkins University seemed to bear this out. People were shown pictures of police officers in their traditional uniforms and in BDUs. Respondents, the survey indicated, would much rather have a police officer show up in traditional dress blues. Summarizing its findings, Bickel writes, “The more militaristic look of the BDUs, much like what is seen in news stories of our military in war zones, gives rise to the notion of our police being an occupying force in some inner city neighborhoods, instead of trusted community protectors.”
Where Do They Get Those Wonderful Toys?
“I wonder if I can get in trouble for doing this,” the young man says to his buddy in the passenger seat as they film the Saginaw County Sheriff Office’s new toy: a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. As they film the MRAP from behind, their amateur video has a Red Dawn–esque feel, as if an occupying military were now patrolling this Michigan county’s streets. “This is getting ready for ****ing crazy times, dude,” one young man comments. “Why,” his friend replies, “has our city gotten that ****ing bad?”
In fact, nothing happening in Saginaw County warranted the deployment of an armored vehicle capable of withstanding bullets and the sort of improvised explosive devices that insurgent forces have regularly planted along roads in America’s recent war zones. Sheriff William Federspiel, however, fears the worst. “As sheriff of the county, I have to put ourselves in the best position to protect our citizens and protect our property,” he told a reporter. “I have to prepare for something disastrous.”

Police in riot gear in Ferguson, Missouri (AP Photo/Jeff Robertson)
Lucky for Federspiel, his exercise in paranoid disaster preparedness didn’t cost his office a penny. That $425,000 MRAP came as a gift, courtesy of Uncle Sam, from one of our far-flung counterinsurgency wars. The nasty little secret of policing’s militarization is that taxpayers are subsidizing it through programs overseen by the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department.
Take the 1033 program. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) may be an obscure agency within the Department of Defense, but through the 1033 program, which it oversees, it’s one of the core enablers of American policing’s excessive militarization. Beginning in 1990, Congress authorized the Pentagon to transfer its surplus property free of charge to federal, state and local police departments to wage the war on drugs. In 1997, Congress expanded the purpose of the program to include counterterrorism in section 1033 of the defense authorization bill. In one single page of a 450-page law, Congress helped sow the seeds of today’s warrior cops.
The amount of military hardware transferred through the program has grown astronomically over the years. In 1990, the Pentagon gave $1 million worth of equipment to US law enforcement. That number had jumped to nearly $450 million in 2013. Overall, the program has shipped off more than $4.3 billion worth of materiel to state and local cops, according to the DLA.
In its recent report, the ACLU found a disturbing range of military gear being transferred to civilian police departments nationwide. Police in North Little Rock, Arkansas, for instance, received 34 automatic and semi-automatic rifles, two robots that can be armed, military helmets, and a Mamba tactical vehicle. Police in Gwinnet County, Georgia, received fifty-seven semi-automatic rifles, mostly M-16s and M-14s. The Utah Highway Patrol, according to a Salt Lake City Tribune investigation, got an MRAP from the 1033 program, and Utah police received 1,230 rifles and four grenade launchers. After South Carolina’s Columbia Police Department received its very own MRAP worth $658,000, its SWAT Commander Captain E.M. Marsh noted that 500 similar vehicles had been distributed to law enforcement organizations across the country.
Astoundingly, one-third of all war materiel parceled out to state, local and tribal police agencies is brand new. This raises further disconcerting questions: Is the Pentagon simply wasteful when it purchases military weapons and equipment with taxpayer dollars? Or could this be another downstream, subsidized market for defense contractors? Whatever the answer, the Pentagon is actively distributing weaponry and equipment made for US counterinsurgency campaigns abroad to police who patrol American streets and this is considered sound policy in Washington. The message seems striking enough: what might be necessary for Kabul might also be necessary for DeKalb County.
In other words, the twenty-first-century war on terror has melded thoroughly with the twentieth-century war on drugs, and the result couldn’t be anymore disturbing: police forces that increasingly look and act like occupying armies.
How the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice Are Up-Armoring the Police
When police departments look to muscle up their arms and tactics, the Pentagon isn’t the only game in town. Civilian agencies are in on it, too.
During a 2011 investigation, reporters Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz discovered that, since 9/11, police departments watching over some of the safest places in America have used $34 billion in grant funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to militarize in the name of counterterrorism.
In Fargo, North Dakota, for example, the city and its surrounding county went on an $8 million spending spree with federal money, according to Becker and Schulz. Although the area averaged less than two murders a year since 2005, every squad car is now armed with an assault rifle. Police also have access to Kevlar helmets that can stop heavy firepower as well as an armored truck worth approximately $250,000. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1,500 beat cops have been trained to use AR-15 assault rifles with homeland security grant funding.
As with the 1033 program, neither DHS nor state and local governments account for how the equipment, including body armor and drones, is used. While the rationale behind stocking up on these military-grade supplies is invariably the possibility of a terrorist attack, school shooting or some other horrific event, the gear is normally used to conduct paramilitary drug raids, as Balko notes.
Still, the most startling source of police militarization is the Department of Justice, the very agency officially dedicated to spreading the community policing model through its Community Oriented Policing Services office.
In 1988, Congress authorized the Byrne grant programs in the Anti–Drug Abuse Act, which gave state and local police federal funds to enlist in the government’s drug war. That grant program, according to Balko, led to the creation of regional and multijurisdictional narcotics task forces, which gorged themselves on federal money and, with little federal, state or local oversight, spent it beefing up their weapons and tactics. In 2011, 585 of these task forces operated off of Byrne grant funding.

(AP Photo/Jeff Robertson)
The grants, Balko reports, also incentivized the type of policing that has made the war on drugs such a destructive force in American society. The Justice Department doled out Byrne grants based on how many arrests officers made, how much property they seized and how many warrants they served. The very things these narcotics task forces did very well. “As a result,” Balko writes, “we have roving squads of drug cops, loaded with SWAT gear, who get money if they conduct more raids, make more arrests, and seize more property, and they are virtually immune to accountability if they get out of line.”
Regardless of whether this militarization has occurred due to federal incentives or executive decision-making in police departments or both, police across the nation are up-armoring with little or no public debate. In fact, when the ACLU requested SWAT records from 255 law enforcement agencies as part of its investigation, 114 denied them. The justifications for such denials varied, but included arguments that the documents contained “trade secrets” or that the cost of complying with the request would be prohibitive. Communities have a right to know how the police do their jobs, but more often than not, police departments think otherwise.
Being the Police Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
Report by report, evidence is mounting that America’s militarized police are a threat to public safety. But in a country where the cops increasingly look upon themselves as soldiers doing battle day in, day out, there’s no need for public accountability or even an apology when things go grievously wrong.
If community policing rests on mutual trust between the police and the people, militarized policing operates on the assumption of “officer safety” at all costs and contempt for anyone who sees things differently. The result is an “us versus them” mentality.
Just ask the parents of Bou Bou Phonesavanh. Around 3 am on May 28, the Habersham County Special Response Team conducted a no-knock raid at a relative’s home near Cornelia, Georgia, where the family was staying. The officers were looking for the homeowner’s son, whom they suspected of selling $50 worth of drugs to a confidential informant. As it happened, he no longer lived there.
Despite evidence that children were present—a minivan in the driveway, children’s toys littering the yard, and a Pack ’n Play next to the door—a SWAT officer tossed a “flashbang” grenade into the home. It landed in 19-month-old Bou Bou’s crib and exploded, critically wounding the toddler. When his distraught mother tried to reach him, officers screamed at her to sit down and shut up, telling her that her child was fine and had just lost a tooth. In fact, his nose was hanging off his face, his body had been severely burned, and he had a hole in his chest. Rushed to the hospital, Bou Bou had to be put into a medically induced coma.

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The police claimed that it was all a mistake and that there had been no evidence children were present. “There was no malicious act performed,” Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It was a terrible accident that was never supposed to happen.” The Phonesavanhs have yet to receive an apology from the sheriff’s office. “Nothing. Nothing for our son. No card. No balloon. Not a phone call. Not anything,” Bou Bou’s mother, Alecia Phonesavanh, told CNN.
Similarly, Tampa Bay Police Chief Jane Castor continues to insist that Jay Westcott’s death in the militarized raid on his house was his own fault. “Mr. Westcott lost his life because he aimed a loaded firearm at police officers. You can take the entire marijuana issue out of the picture,” Castor said. “If there’s an indication that there is armed trafficking going on—someone selling narcotics while they are armed or have the ability to use a firearm—then the tactical response team will do the initial entry.”
In her defense of the SWAT raid, Castor simply dismissed any responsibility for Westcott’s death. “They did everything they could to serve this warrant in a safe manner,” she wrote the Tampa Bay Times— “everything,” that is, but find an alternative to storming the home of a man they knew feared for his life.
Almost half of all American households report having a gun, as the ACLU notes in its report. That means the police always have a ready-made excuse for using SWAT teams to execute warrants when less confrontational and less violent alternatives exist.
In other words, if police believe you’re selling drugs, beware. Suspicion is all they need to turn your world upside down. And if they’re wrong, don’t worry; the intent couldn’t have been better.
Voices in the Wilderness
The militarization of the police shouldn’t be surprising. As Hubert Williams, a former police director of Newark, New Jersey, and Patrick V. Murphy, former commissioner of the New York City Police Department, put it nearly twenty-five years ago, police are “barometers of the society in which they operate.” In post-9/11 America, that means police forces imbued with the “hooah” mentality of soldiers and acting as if they are fighting an insurgency in their own backyard.
While the pace of police militarization has quickened, there has at least been some push-back from current and former police officials who see the trend for what it is: the destruction of community policing. In Spokane, Washington, Councilman Mike Fagan, a former police detective, is pushing back against police officers wearing BDUs, calling the get-up “intimidating” to citizens. In Utah, the legislature passed a bill requiring probable cause before police could execute a no-knock raid. Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank has been a vocal critic of militarization, telling the local paper, “We’re not the military. Nor should we look like an invading force coming in.” Just recently, Chief Charlie Beck of the Los Angeles Police Department agreed with the ACLU and the Los Angeles Times editorial board that “the lines between municipal law enforcement and the US military cannot be blurred.”
Retired Seattle police chief Norm Stamper has also become an outspoken critic of militarizing police forces, noting that “most of what police are called upon to do, day in and day out, requires patience, diplomacy, and interpersonal skills.” In other words, community policing. Stamper is the chief who green-lighted a militarized response to World Trade Organization protests in his city in 1999 (“The Battle in Seattle”). It’s a decision he would like to take back. “My support for a militaristic solution caused all hell to break loose,” he wrote in The Nation. “Rocks, bottles and newspaper racks went flying. Windows were smashed, stores were looted, fires lighted; and more gas filled the streets, with some cops clearly overreacting, escalating and prolonging the conflict.”
These former policemen and law enforcement officials understand that police officers shouldn’t be breaking down any citizen’s door at 3 am armed with AR-15s and flashbang grenades in search of a small amount of drugs, while an MRAP idles in the driveway. The anti-militarists, however, are in the minority right now. And until that changes, violent paramilitary police raids will continue to break down the doors of nearly 1,000 American households a week.
War, once started, can rarely be contained.

Read Next: Zoë Carpenter on what’s exceptional about Ferguson, Missouri—and what isn’t.

Matthew Harwood
August 14, 2014

http://www.thenation.com/article/181...ook-navy-seals#

Michelle Malkin

Gov. Jay Nixon, D-Mo., calls for "vigorous prosecution" of police officer Darren Wilson. Not investigation, but prosecution.

Twitchy has the video ==> http://twitchy.com/2014/08/19/gov-ja...s-prosecution/

The Federalist Papers

Do you agree this is outrageous and a real abuse of power?



SCUMBAG: Missouri Governor Jay Nixon Issues OUTRAGEOUS Video Message, Calls For...
thefederalistpapers.org

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon Issues OUTRAGEOUS Video Message, Calls For Vigorous Prosecution

By Steve Straub On August 19, 2014 · Leave a Comment · In US



This is outrageous and interference in an investigation for purely political purposes. Democrats have no shame, or respect for the rule of law.

Via Twitchy:

Late Monday night, just minutes before tear gas began to be deployed against protesters in Ferguson, Mo., Democrat Gov. Jay Nixon issued a tweet asking the people of Ferguson to “show the world that we can protest peacefully and passionately.”

That certainly didn’t happen, but tonight the governor is trying again, this time with a YouTube video “about the difficult but important test facing us all.”

He also called for a “vigorous prosecution.” Not investigation, but prosecution.

He made the comments today even though the investigation is ongoing.

Watch the video:



Here are a few excerpts from the statement via the Gateway Pundit:

…Amid all the pain and distrust and anger, we’ve also seen tremendous acts of grace, courage, and kindness as the people of Ferguson try to maintain peace, while they call for justice for the family of Michael Brown. In Ferguson, people of all races and creeds are joining hands to pray for justice. Teenagers cooking meals for law enforcement officers. Community leaders demonstrating courage and heroism throughout the night in standing against armed and violent instigators…

…But we will not be defeated by bricks and guns and Molotov cocktails. With the help of peaceful demonstrators, pastors and community leaders, Captain Johnson and law enforcement will not give up trying to ensure that those with peace in their hearts are not drowned out by those with senseless violence in their hands.

Second, a vigorous prosecution must now be pursued.

The democratically elected St. Louis County prosecutor and the Attorney General of the United States, each have a job to do.

Do you think it’s outrageous for the Governor to do this while the investigation is continuing?


http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/u...us-prosecution