Is America a Police State?

[RMX]

Is America a Police State?  Discuss.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6476

Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America
by Radley Balko

Radley Balko is a policy analyst specializing in civil liberties issues and is the author of the Cato study, "Back Door to Prohibition: The New War on Social Drinking."


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Executive Summary

Americans have long maintained that a man’s home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.



>>>>>Click Link Above
 for an interactive map which shows innocent raids, deaths, etc....good stuff

[RMX]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2007/240107_b_Empire.htm


Your Local Police Force Has Been Militarized
The Empire Turns Its Guns on the Citizenry
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

In recent years American police forces have called out SWAT teams 40,000 or more times annually. Last year did you read in your newspaper or hear on TV news of 110 hostage or terrorist events each day? No. What then were the SWAT teams doing? They were serving routine warrants to people who posed no danger to the police or to the public.

Occasionally Washington think tanks produce reports that are not special pleading for donors. One such report is Radley Balko's "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America" (Cato Institute, 2006).

This 100-page report is extremely important and should have been published as a book. SWAT teams (Special Weapons and Tactics) were once rare and used only for very dangerous situations, often involving hostages held by armed criminals. Today SWAT teams are deployed for routine police duties. In the US today, 75-80% of SWAT deployments are for warrant service.

In a high percentage of the cases, the SWAT teams forcefully enter the wrong address, resulting in death, injury, and trauma to perfectly innocent people. Occasionally, highly keyed-up police kill one another in the confusion caused by their stun grenades.

Mr. Balko reports that the use of paramilitary police units began in Los Angeles in the 1960s. The militarization of local police forces got a big boost from Attorney General Ed Meese's "war on drugs" during the Reagan administration. A National Security Decision Directive was issued that declared drugs to be a threat to US national security. In 1988 Congress ordered the National Guard into the domestic drug war. In 1994 the Department of Defense issued a memorandum authorizing the transfer of military equipment and technology to state and local police, and Congress created a program "to facilitate handing military gear over to civilian police agencies."

Today 17,000 local police forces are equipped with such military equipment as Blackhawk helicopters, machine guns, grenade launchers, battering rams, explosives, chemical sprays, body armor, night vision, rappelling gear and armored vehicles. Some have tanks. In 1999, the New York Times reported that a retired police chief in New Haven, Connecticut, told the newspaper, "I was offered tanks, bazookas, anything I wanted." Balklo reports that in 1997, for example, police departments received 1.2 million pieces of military equipment.

With local police forces now armed beyond the standard of US heavy infantry, police forces have been retrained "to vaporize, not Mirandize," to use a phrase from Reagan administration defense official Lawrence Korb. This leaves the public at the mercy of brutal actions based on bad police information from paid informers.

SWAT team deployments received a huge boost from the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program, which gave states federal money for drug enforcement. Balko explains that "the states then disbursed the money to local police departments on the basis of each department's number of drug arrests."

With financial incentives to maximize drug arrests and with idle SWAT teams due to a paucity of hostage or other dangerous situations, local police chiefs threw their SWAT teams into drug enforcement. In practice, this has meant using SWAT teams to serve warrants on drug users.

SWAT teams serve warrants by breaking into homes and apartments at night while people are sleeping, often using stun grenades and other devices to disorient the occupants. As much of the police's drug information comes from professional informers known as "snitches" who tip off police for cash rewards, dropped charges, and reduced sentences, names and addresses are often pulled out of a hat. Balko provides details for 135 tragic cases of mistaken addresses.

SWAT teams are not held accountable for their tragic mistakes and gratuitous brutality. Police killings got so bad in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for example, that the city hired criminologist Sam Walker to conduct an investigation of police tactics. Killings by police were "off the charts," Walker found, because the SWAT team "had an organizational culture that led them to escalate situations upward rather then de-escalating."

The mind-set of militarized SWAT teams is geared to "taking out" or killing the suspect-- thus, the many deaths from SWAT team utilization. Many innocent people are killed in night time SWAT team entries, because they don't realize that it is the police who have broken into their homes. They believe they are confronted by dangerous criminals, and when they try to defend themselves they are shot down by the police.

As Lawrence Stratton and I have reported, one of many corrupting influences on the criminal justice (sic) system is the practice of paying "snitches" to generate suspects. In 1995 the Boston Globe profiled people who lived entirely off the fees that they were paid as police informants. Snitches create suspects by selling a small amount of marijuana to a person who they then report to the police as being in possession of drugs. Balko reports that "an overwhelming number of mistaken raids take place because police relied on information from confidential informants." In Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, 87% of drug raids originated in tips from snitches.

Many police informers are themselves drug dealers who avoid arrest and knock off competitors by serving as police snitches.

Surveying the deplorable situation, the National Law Journal concluded: "Criminals have been turned into instruments of law enforcement, while law enforcement officers have become criminal co-conspirators."

Balko believes the problem could be reduced if judges scrutinized unreliable information before issuing warrants. If judges would actually do their jobs, there would be fewer innocent victims of SWAT brutality. However, as long as the war on drugs persists and as long as it produces financial rewards to police departments, local police forces, saturated with military weapons and war imagery, will continue to terrorize American citizens.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

[Jray]

SWAT teams should only be for the most dangerous situation when no other options will succeed, as for serving drug warrents those people pose minimal threats and could easily be arrested by two or three officers. As for the police having tanks, what the hell do they use them for.

[RMX]

What do you think they are used for?  ^^^

[piercehawkeye45]

Keeping people in order.

[JC]

I have said this quote before but I like it so I will say it again.

"If you cant trust the people how can you trust the police?"

[RMX]

I have said this quote before but I like it so I will say it again.

"If you cant trust the people how can you trust the police?"

Thats a very broad statement.  Is it all the people, to include you and I or what??

[JC]

No, you misunderstand, this is the position from authority and the argument for police that people "cant be trusted" so we need police. Then the anarchist reply that if the people cant be trusted and the police are people so how can they be trusted.

[RMX]

Oh ok...now I understand. 

"You [police] were put here to protect us, but who protects us from you?"
KRS ONE

[RMX]

Keeping people in order.

Thats an understatement....but yes its true.  It is also true that tanks are used to destroy people and property..what are these police thinking when they ordered a tank with tax dollars??

[caised]

On the day of 9-11,  in a suburb of my city of Chicago. a mob of 250 men and women wielding confederate and POW-MIA flags and sporting raggedy sweatshirts marched on a mosque, seeking vengeance for 9-11. Living only 20 minutes from this suburb, I rode my bike to the scene and watched as the police held back the rag-tag team as they chanted "USA, USA, USA!"

Then I noticed that about a dozen or so SWAT soldiers. They were perched on the roof of an Islamic school near the mosque and standing in front of the houses in the neighborhood. Each SWAT held an automatic, pointed at the crowd of angry white trash.

This was far beyond what was needed to control the crowd. There were already 40 or so other officers on the scene, with Chicago police joining them later. What if one of the SWATS was trigger happy? Is the need to enforce public order such that these weapons are necessary?

The crowd was lucky. If, for instance, it had been a crowd of blacks or hispanics coming to protest the tearing down of public housing, the police would have shot at the crowd. Then again, at most public housing rallies, the police block the exits to most of the larger CHA buildings so the residents can't protest at all.  The same goes for demonstrations against cop shootings of teenagers from behind. I am sure the Chicago PD have plenty of toilet paper engraved with the first amendment in their bathrooms.

On another occasion, I was visiting a client in a rural suburb, 30 miles west of Chicago. I noticed a man outside swinging a machete at a police officer, who was backing away from him. The officer called for backup. The man walked past the officer and sat in front of a single story motel. Five squad cars arrived with eight or nine uniformed and plainclothed detectives. The police stood about 10 yards in front of the man and tried to persuade him to give up the weapon. The man stood up and began swinging the machete.

Seven of the eight cops pulled their weapons and shot him dead. When I called the states' attornies' office to bring this to their attention, nobody returned my call. You should have read the news reports: "The man was pointing a gun....." Lady Macbeth come wash your blood!

"America" is not only a police state. It is a state where psychosis governs and decides who shall in peace and who shall not. It is a culture where rational thought and respect for the individual are suspended in favor of crude will, the assuaging of fears,  and insecure feelings. And "America" has the gall to call other cultures barbaric.

 It is a state where every man is constantly in search of enemies because there is no internal satisifaction with whom one is and with the possibilities opened by one's destiny. There are religious enemies. There are racial enemies. There are generational enemies (The old and the young are the greatest prey). There are political enemies. One's very condition must always be changed and hence one's lack of wealth is a problem to be overcome. Being poor and modest is a crime. The poor have become enemies.

 Problems are reduced to their day or night; the world is made simple because there is little patience or foresight to revel in ambiguities.
The Iranians have nuclear weapons! Let us attack them. We cannot allow barbarism to spread! The Iraqis are fighting our troops! How dare they, the terrorists?! Send in more troops! This young man has a few grams of crack on him. The agent of the devil! We must not allow him to walk the streets amongst our daughters! Toss him in jail for most of his adult life!

This is not only what the government thinks, but what most of the middle classes think. They are fearful and feel as helpless as babies. So long as they do, Uncle Sam will have to babysit them.

[betoAYAK]

The US isnt a police state, but it's on the precipice of becoming one if the gov't so chooses.  There have been places and times when certain areas of the United States have become police states.

[atlien]

These discussions are pointless if we approach them with archaic mindsets.

Like the discussions I so often hear about fascism (is it hear or not?) we seem to analyze the situation as if our metrics are white guys with eraser mustaches goose-stepping through our living rooms is the indication that we have arrived.

That, and other silly outdated things like it, will never happen and are inadequate for serious analysis.  By the metric of corporate control of gov't, the country has long been fascist.  The discussion is stale, decades too late.  Which is, perhaps not incidentally, the perfect segue into the police state question.  Not too late an inquiry, just wrong.  Wrong question. 

The fact that we are decades late in asking whether or not this is a fascist state is directly linked to the police nature of the state.  When America went fascist, it wasn't announced (at least not using the term fascist).  Malcom X talked about our beloved fascist state all of the time but since

1.  He was non-white (and even worse, black)
2.  He didn't use the proper white Leftist/Marxist terminology in his analysis

he was ignored or not taken seriously, by whites, as a social scientists and philosopher.  My dad took him seriously.  Most non-whites and tiny groups of whites took him seriously.  And there have been others that talked about and analyzed the fascist state called the US.  History is a funny thing here in the US.  Whites write it.  They make the rules.  Consequently, so many things that happen, didn't happen. 

Translation: Those commentators haven't yet been sanctioned by white authority and become part of the common narrative.  This obviously goes for the White Ruling Class.  But it also applies to the White Left which, in regards to race, operates very much like the White Ruling Class.

And so even though prominent political curmudgeons have talked about the arrival, implementation and operation of fascism in the US for some time now, because they weren't the right commentators, their analysis has been excised from the narrative and we still bounce these questions around as if they haven't been definitively addressed long ago.

I got side tracked a few sentences ago.  I wanted to make the point that our inability to discern when fascism arrived and how it looks and operates is linked to the question of whether or not we have a police state in the sense that unlike the Soviet regime and fascist Italy, fascism here grew up in a rhetorical (not a functional) democratic republic with a mature propaganda (can we say public relations??) industry as opposed to the fledgling PR industries existing during the tenure of the big three (Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin).  Because of our advance propaganda industries ascendant fascism achieved in America what it could not in Europe, public consent.

The success of the propaganda (PR) industry in the US is the reason leftists(!!!) message boards are still having the discussion not about what is to be done with American fascism but when will it arrive.  Same goes for this question of when will the police state arrive.  We're waiting for the jackboot state to come goose-stepping down Main St when the police state arrived long ago with fascism.

The police state is in our heads.

[RMX]

I agree but some will still argue and say that America is not a fascist state.  Some refute the power grab of the police, (encouraged by gov't) and the yoke around their minds. I phrased the question as such to have it open for discussion.  I know what condition we are in yet many do not or will not acknowledge it.   I found the question to be more appealing as it requires the reader to answer it, hopefully they will, honestly.   

Malcolm X is one of my personal heros and one of my best teachers, ever.  I listened when he spoke

[JC]

For those who didnt know.

fas·cism     /ˈfæʃɪzəm/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[fash-iz-uhm] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1.   (sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
2.   (sometimes initial capital letter) the philosophy, principles, or methods of fascism.
3.   (initial capital letter) a fascist movement, esp. the one established by Mussolini in Italy 1922–43.

The US fits this definition.

[aknappjr]

America is increasingly becoming a police state. You need to ask permission to open a business (sometimes granted), build a house (sometimes not), and if you ask permission to smoke a joint, they'll search and seize YOUR OWN PROPERTY.  And if you don't pay THEIR taxes on YOUR LABOR, they'll put you in jail!  And if you resist arest, they'll shoot you.

[atlien]

I think I see where you're going with that, aknappjr.  But I would ask, at what point will you say that the US is a police state?  I ask the question because I often see comments like yours that imply that the police state isn't far away, but hasn't arrived yet. 

By my metrics, it arrived long ago.  Again, it doesn't look like Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini and I think that is throwing people off in regards to recognizing it.

And while your comments as far as seizure of property and arrest of person are valid, haven't they been doing that stuff to sectors of the population for some time now?  Are there specific people or a specific group the state has to brutalize before it can credibly be declared a police state?

[Godfather of Soul]

This depends largely on one's perspective.  As a black man, I can say that the US has been a police state for us since we were brought here in chains.  That is a position that cannot be assailed because all laws have a disparate impact on US because WE are the ones who have been feared and marginalized above all others.  We have never had the same level of rights, access to power and acceptance that a white man has.  We have never had full control over our own economic decisions.  Everything is carefully designed to either exploit or exclude us.

From the perspective a middle class white person, the US is moving more and more closely to a police state.  However, IMO it is still FAR from what a true police state is.  A true police state suppresses ALL dissent.   A true police state engages in open assassinations of internal resistance.  A true police state creates a level of mistrust within the people itself that one does not know if s/he is being spied on at any given moment by his or her neighbors (forget the state, it is bad when snitching is the norm amongst the people).  Is the US this?  No.  Has the US come close to this in the past?  Yes, during the Civil War, during and after WWI, during and after WWII, and it attempted to rise to this level during Vietnam.

With all of that being said I don't think it will happen here.  I think they will push it to the brink, but they will never have the unquestioned resources to go about their program without resistance.  The US was split nearly 50/50, even at the height of the terrorist scares...that is not a recipe for totalitarian police statism...it is a recipe for massive conflict if one side decided to move towards police statism.

[aknappjr]

I think I see where you're going with that, aknappjr.  But I would ask, at what point will you say that the US is a police state?  I ask the question because I often see comments like yours that imply that the police state isn't far away, but hasn't arrived yet. 

By my metrics, it arrived long ago.  Again, it doesn't look like Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini and I think that is throwing people off in regards to recognizing it.

And while your comments as far as seizure of property and arrest of person are valid, haven't they been doing that stuff to sectors of the population for some time now?  Are there specific people or a specific group the state has to brutalize before it can credibly be declared a police state?

Fair enough.  We went rapidly toward the police state, it seems to me, after the Civil War, and certainly after we went off the Gold Standard and FDR made it illegal to have more than I believe $10,000 worth of Gold.  This, and the federal reserve and progressive movement (socialism) and tax on labor (income tax) lead to increasing state control over our lives.  You have me convinced; we're there.

I think a fairly good definition of a police state is one where the state, in the name of the public good, tries to PREVENT crime instead of prosecuting those who COMMIT crimes.  Another definition is one in which one's fundamental right to life, liberty, and private property are abrogated to the states designs.  By either of these two definitions, America is a police state today.

[Godfather of Soul]

You think socialism is responsible for the rise of the police state in the US.  That's almost laughable...in fact, it is laughable.  You are buying a whole lot of right wing propaganda if you think socialsim has happened in the US beyond a very limited scope or that it has helped institute a police state.   Socialism, at its core, is anti-police, at least real socialism.  Why?  Because socialism does not believe that private property should be an absolute right and that those who protect property and the propertied/capitalist classes, the police, should be given any respect.