Thread: The United States of SWAT? Military-style units are wreaking havoc on citizens

National Review
April 18, 2014 4:00 AM
By John Fund

”Indeed, the U.S. Constitution’s Third Amendment, against the quartering of troops in private homes, was part of an overall reaction against the excesses of Britain’s colonial law enforcement. “It wasn’t the stationing of British troops in the colonies that irked patriots in Boston and Virginia,” Balko writes. “It was England’s decision to use the troops for everyday law enforcement.”

The United States of SWAT?

Military-style units from government agencies are wreaking havoc on non-violent citizens.



Regardless of how people feel about Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with the federal Bureau of Land Management over his cattle’s grazing rights, a lot of Americans were surprised to see TV images of an armed-to-the-teeth paramilitary wing of the BLM deployed around Bundy’s ranch.

They shouldn’t have been. Dozens of federal agencies now have Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams to further an expanding definition of their missions. It’s not controversial that the Secret Service and the Bureau of Prisons have them. But what about the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? All of these have their own SWAT units and are part of a worrying trend towards the militarization of federal agencies — not to mention local police forces.

“Law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier,” journalist Radley Balko writes in his 2013 book Rise of the Warrior Cop. “The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop — armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.”The proliferation of paramilitary federal SWAT teams inevitably brings abuses that have nothing to do with either drugs or terrorism. Many of the raids they conduct are against harmless, often innocent, Americans who typically are accused of non-violent civil or administrative violations.

Take the case of Kenneth Wright of Stockton, Calif., who was “visited” by a SWAT team from the U.S. Department of Education in June 2011. Agents battered down the door of his home at 6 a.m., dragged him outside in his boxer shorts, and handcuffed him as they put his three children (ages 3, 7, and 11) in a police car for two hours while they searched his home. The raid was allegedly intended to uncover information on Wright’s estranged wife, Michelle, who hadn’t been living with him and was suspected of college financial-aid fraud.

The year before the raid on Wright, a SWAT team from the Food and Drug Administration raided the farm of Dan Allgyer of Lancaster, Pa. His crime was shipping unpasteurized milk across state lines to a cooperative of young women with children in Washington, D.C., called Grass Fed on the Hill. Raw milk can be sold in Pennsylvania, but it is illegal to transport it across state lines. The raid forced Allgyer to close down his business.

Brian Walsh, a senior legal analyst with the Heritage Foundation, says it is inexplicable why so many federal agencies need to be battle-ready: “If these agencies occasionally have a legitimate need for force to execute a warrant, they should be required to call a real law-enforcement agency, one that has a better sense of perspective. The FBI, for example, can draw upon its vast experience to determine whether there is an actual need for a dozen SWAT agents.”

Since 9/11, the feds have issued a plethora of homeland-security grants that encourage local police departments to buy surplus military hardware and form their own SWAT units. By 2005, at least 80 percent of towns with a population between 25,000 and 50,000 people had their own SWAT team. The number of raids conducted by local police SWAT teams has gone from 3,000 a year in the 1980s to over 50,000 a year today.

Once SWAT teams are created, they will be used. Nationwide, they are used for standoffs, often serious ones, with bad guys. But at other times they’ve been used for crimes that hardly warrant military-style raids. Examples include angry dogs, domestic disputes, and misdemeanor marijuana possession. In 2010, a Phoenix, Ariz., sheriff’s SWAT team that included a tank and several armored vehicles raided the home of Jesus Llovera. The tank, driven by the newly deputized action-film star Steven Seagal, plowed right into Llovera’s house. The incident was filmed and, together with footage of Seagal-accompanied immigration raids, was later used for Seagal’s A&E TV law-enforcement reality show.

The crime committed by Jesus Llovera was staging cockfights. During the sheriff’s raid, his dog was killed, and later all of his chickens were put to sleep.

Many veteran law-enforcement figures have severe qualms about the turn police work is taking. One retired veteran of a large metropolitan police force told me: “I was recently down at police headquarters for a meeting. Coincidently, there was a promotion ceremony going on and the SWAT guys looked just like members of the Army, except for the police shoulder patches. Not an image I would cultivate. It leads to a bad mindset.”Indeed, the U.S. Constitution’s Third Amendment, against the quartering of troops in private homes, was part of an overall reaction against the excesses of Britain’s colonial law enforcement. “It wasn’t the stationing of British troops in the colonies that irked patriots in Boston and Virginia,” Balko writes. “It was England’s decision to use the troops for everyday law enforcement.”

There are things that can be done to curb the abuses without taking on the politically impossible job of disbanding SWAT units. The feds should stop shipping military vehicles to local police forces. Federal SWAT teams shouldn’t be used to enforce regulations, but should focus instead on potentially violent criminals. Cameras mounted on the dashboards of police cars have both brought police abuses to light and exonerated officers who were falsely accused of abuse. SWAT-team members could be similarly equipped with helmet cameras.
After all, if taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill and cede ground on their Fourth Amendment rights, they have the right to a transparent, accountable record of just what is being done in their name.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...swat-john-fund

Obama Promised a ‘Civilian National Security Force’ – Today There Are Over 120,000 Armed Federal Agents

Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, April 20, 2014, 12:21 AM

Armed federal agents at the Cliven Bundy ranch in Nevada, April 2014. (Natural News) In 2008, Barack Obama announced his plan to build a massive “civilian national security force” here in America. It would be just as well funded as the US military.



Today in America there are over 120,000 armed federal agents who work for 40 different agencies.
FOX News reported:

The recent uproar over armed EPA agents descending on a tiny Alaska mining town is shedding light on the fact that 40 federal agencies – including nearly a dozen typically not associated with law enforcement — have armed divisions.

The agencies employ about 120,000 full-time officers authorized to carry guns and make arrests, according to a June 2012 Justice Department report.

Though most Americans know agents within the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Prisons carry guns, agencies such as the Library of Congress and Federal Reserve Board employing armed officers might come as a surprise.

The incident that sparked the renewed interest and concern occurred in late August when a team of armed federal and state officials descended on the tiny Alaska gold mining town of Chicken, Alaska.

The Environmental Protection Agency, whose armed agents in full body armor participated, acknowledged taking part in the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force investigation, which it said was conducted to look for possible violations of the Clean Water Act.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014...ederal-agents/

Are All Those Guns and Ammunition for Obama’s Civilian National Security Force?

5/8/14
2 photos

The Only Thing The Police Don’t Shoot Is Video

May 9, 2014


In



Published on May 9, 2014
In the few weeks since the Albuquerque Police Department's propensity to shoot and kill the public was put in the national spotlight after a homeless man was killed on video, 3 more killings by the APD have taken place and the citizens commandeered a city council meeting, threatening to arrest Sheriff Eden.

Ethical questions have also arisen about the cozy relationship between newly retired Police Chief Schutlz and TASER. Over $2 Million of body cameras have been ordered but none were turned on when a 19 year old girl, Mary Hawkes was killed recently. As the Military Industrial Complex expands its new profit center — the Police State Industrial Complex — we see the same pattern of revolving doors and influence peddling.

In the few weeks since the Albuquerque Police Department’s propensity to shoot and kill the public was put in the national spotlight after a homeless man was killed on video, 3 more killings by the APD have taken place and the citizens commandeered a city council meeting, threatening to arrest Sheriff Eden.

Ethical questions have also arisen about the cozy relationship between newly retired Police Chief Schutlz and TASER. Over $2 Million of body cameras have been ordered but none were turned on when a 19 year old girl, Mary Hawkes was killed recently. As the Military Industrial Complex expands its new profit center — the Police State Industrial Complex — we see the same pattern of revolving doors and influence peddling.

Read more at http://libertycrier.com/thing-police...be7qqwRPU3L.99

michael powers's photos

9-year-old led away in handcuffs by Portland police prompts outrage, push for policy changes


Portland police Officer David McCarthy and Officer Matthew Huspek, who are assigned to a special police detail at New Columbia, placed a 9-year-old girl in handcuffs last May and took her to police headquarters in downtown Portland to be fingerprinted and photographed in connection with an alleged assault against another girl at a local youth club, according to their police reports. (Portland Police Bureau)




By Maxine Bernstein | mbernstein@oregonian.com
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on May 05, 2014 at 6:30 PM, updated May 07, 2014 at 4:19 PM

Two uniformed Portland police officers showed up at the home of a 9-year-old girl last May, questioned her on the front porch about a fight at a youth club six days earlier, then handcuffed her as she stood in a blue-and-white bathing suit.
They drove her to police headquarters in downtown Portland, where she had her fingerprints and mugshot taken.
Latoya Harris couldn't believe what was happening as she watched the officers head off with her daughter in the back seat. The girl was still wet after running through a neighborhood sprinkler, wearing flip flops and a pink Velco wrap-around towel over her swimsuit.
"When they put handcuffs on, I thought, 'Wait a minute, this has got to be a joke,' '' Harris recalled Monday. "The look on my daughter's face went from humiliation and fear, to a look of sheer panic.''
Harris is speaking out publicly after she complained to the city's Independent Police Review Division and no significant discipline resulted.
Her account is now prompting citizen members of a police oversight panel and youth justice advocates to press for new city guidelines that would prevent police from taking children into custody under the age of 10 without a juvenile court order.
"I'm just a mother at the end of her rope,'' Harris said. "I'm going to advocate for my daughter, but no child should have to go through that.''
The police encounter resulted from an argument between several girls near the basketball courts outside the Boys & Girls Club on North Trenton Street in Portland's New Columbia neighborhood on April 26, 2013.
Harris' 9-year-old daughter, witnesses told police, got in the middle of a dispute between two other girls who had been arguing because one told on the other in school earlier in the day for drawing on a desk.
The 9-year-old ended up in a fistfight with one of the other girls outside the club, according to a police report. A staff member broke the fight up, but said Harris' daughter continued to try to strike and kick the other girl before they were separated in different rooms.
Both girls apologized to each other. Staff members found no obvious injuries on any of the girls, they told police. The 9-year-old was sent home and suspended from the club for one week.
But later that day, the mother of one of the girls called Portland police to report the fight. The mother accused Harris' daughter of striking her child in the face and bashing her head against a brick wall, and told police she wanted an arrest made. Police took a cell phone photo of a red bruise on the girl's cheekbone. Officers went to Harris' home to try to talk with her daughter, but were told she was at her aunt's house.
Portland Officers David McCarthy and Officer Matthew Huspek returned to the Harris home six days later on May 2 to question the girl. McCarthy wrote in his report that the 9-year-old gave "vague answers'' and appeared to get angry when pressed for more details.
"I observed (her) breathing speed up, she looked down at the ground ... crossed her arms and would eventually answer my questions,'' McCarthy wrote.
Finding the 9-year-old's statements "inconsistent'' with witnesses who described her as the aggressor, the officers took her into custody, accusing her of fourth-degree assault, the police report said.
"Officer Huspek and I handcuffed (her) and no inventory was performed due to the tight clothing (the girl) wore,'' McCarthy wrote. The report did not mention that the girl was wearing a bathing suit.
Harris said the officers aggressively questioned her daughter. "They repeatedly asked her, 'Why don't you tell me what really happened?'"
When they led her daughter to the patrol car, Harris asked to go with them, but said the officers wouldn't let her. They did offer to drive the 9-year-old girl back home after she was fingerprinted and photographed.
Harris said she wasn't about to let police bring her daughter back in a police car. "This has got to be some kind of mistake. She's just a child,'' Harris said she kept thinking.
Harris said she took a bus to police headquarters because she didn't have a car. The girl was photographed and fingerprinted on the 12^th floor of the Justice Center at the police Forensic Service Division and held in a holding area for just over an hour until her mother arrived.
A year later, Harris said, her daughter "is a different child.'' The girl, now 10, had been a talented and gifted student at Rosa Parks Elementary, but transferred in October to another school because of teasing and has been in counseling since June, Harris said.
The district attorney's office never brought charges against the girl, and Harris filed a complaint.
The Independent Police Review Division, under oversight of Portland's auditor, found officers violated no Police Bureau policies, and forwarded the complaint to the officers' supervisors at North Precinct for a "service improvement opportunity,'' essentially a debriefing.
Perturbed by the lack of response, Harris last month told her story to the Citizen Review Committee, a panel that hears complaints of alleged officer misconduct against Portland police. The Portland Mercury first reported Harris' account.
On Wednesday, the panel is inviting Harris back, and digging deeper into whether the city or Police Bureau should adopt more restrictive guidelines for taking children into custody.
"We really don't think there's circumstances where children under 10 should be taken into custody,'' said Mark McKechnie, executive director of Youth, Rights & Justice, a not-for-profit law firm that serves vulnerable children.
The Citizen Review Committee also has invited juvenile advocates to the meeting. "We just want to hear what some of these experts say, and based on that, decide if we want to weigh in and make a recommendation,'' said Rodney Paris, the committee chair.
McKechnie and Joseph Hagedorn, chief supervising attorney for the Metropolitan Public Defender's juvenile unit, said they've talked in the last week about two potential changes to city ordinances and police directives that would:
-- Prevent police from taking a child under 10 years old into custody without an order from a juvenile court judge.
-- Allow police to take children ages 10 and 11 into custody only on Class A or B felonies. For less serious offenses, a court order would be needed.
Both said they were concerned about why police made the arrest almost a week after the fight, and particularly, when the girl was at home with a parent.
"It was way over the top for them to do that,'' Hagedorn said.
Jamie Troy, a member of the Citizen Review Committee, said he was disturbed that the 9-year-old was handcuffed. "While there are some instances where handcuffing of kids may be necessary, I would hope that would only be in very rare instances. As a community, we need to come together and sort this out."
Police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson said officers use handcuffs as a safeguard, and acted according to bureau policy.
The policy (PPB Directive 640.70) says juveniles taken into custody for any felony or Class A misdemeanor "shall'' be fingerprinted and photographed at the forensics division, while juveniles taken into custody for Class B and C misdemeanors "may'' be fingerprinted and photographed. It makes no age distinctions. Police consider those under age 18 as juveniles. Fourth-degree assault is a Class A misdemeanor.

Harris said she never got an answer about why the officers needed to handcuff her daughter and lead her off.
"In my opinion, they were trying to scare and humiliate her,'' she said. "All they had to do was give her a talking to. We're talking about two grown men in uniform with guns.''
--Maxine Bernstein

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/i...n_handcuf.html

Well I have to disagree with you there buddy!!!! They are doing that all on their own!! They took the Oath of Office and it clearly shows what it meant to them when they took it!!!




Officer who forced dozens of anal cavity searches for fun gets only 2 years in prison - http://bit.ly/1chHpBN