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Paul Merrell

Fresno Police Roll Out Dystopian 'Threat Ranking' System - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...212684

surveillance state Fresno citizen-threat-ranking Intrado Beware trade-secrets

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • “On 57 monitors that cover the walls of the center, operators zoomed and panned an array of roughly 200 police cameras perched across the city. They could dial up 800 more feeds from the city’s schools and traffic cameras, and they soon hope to add 400 more streams from cameras worn on officers’ bodies and from thousands from local businesses that have surveillance systems.” Though the intricate surveillance apparatus described above seems straight from a dystopic novel, it is actually the Washington Post’s recent description of the the visual data collection system employed by a local California police department. The police department in Fresno, California, has taken extreme measures to combat high rates of crime in the city. As the Post reports, Fresno’s Real Time Crime Center, buried deep in the police station’s headquarters, has developed as a response to what many police call increasing threats. The system, according to police officials, can “provide critical information that can help uncover terrorists or thwart mass shootings, ensure the safety of officers and the public, find suspects, and crack open cases” — a feature they say is increasingly important in the wake of events like the November terror attack in Paris and the San Bernardino shooting last month.
  • “Our officers are expected to know the unknown and see the unseen,” Fresno Chief of Police Jerry Dyer said. “They are making split-second decisions based on limited facts. The more you can provide in terms of intelligence and video, the more safely you can respond to calls.” Programs similar to the Real Time Crime Center have launched in New York, Houston, and Seattle over the course of the last decade. Nationwide, the use of Stingrays, data fusion centers, and aerial drone surveillance have broadened the access local police have to private information. In another example, the FBI is continually developing a comprehensive biometric database that local police access every day. “This is something that’s been building since September 11,” says Jennifer Lynch, a senior attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Like the problem of police militarization, Lynch traces the trend back to the Pentagon: “First funding went to the military to develop this technology, and now it has come back to domestic law enforcement. It’s the perfect storm of cheaper and easier-to-use technologies and money from state and federal governments to purchase it.”
  • While many of these programs may fail to shock Americans, one new software program takes police scrutiny of private citizens to a new level. Beware, a software tool produced by tech firm Intrado, not only surveils the data of the citizens of Fresno, the first city to test it — it calculates threat levels based on what it discovers. The software scours arrest records, property records, Deep Web searches, commercial databases, and social media postings. By this method, it was able to designate a man with a firearm and gang convictions involved in a real-time domestic violence dispute as the highest of three threat levels: a bright red ranking. Fresno police say the intelligence from Beware aided them, as the man eventually surrendered and officers found he was armed with a gun. Beware scours billions of data points to develop rankings for citizens, and though few recoil at the thought of catching criminals and miscreants, the program provides particular cause for concern because of both its invasiveness and its fallibility.
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  • These shortcomings have sparked concern among Fresno’s city council members, who discussed the issue at a meeting in November. At that meeting, one council member cited an incident where a girl who posted on social media about a card game called “Rage” was consequently given an elevated threat ranking — all because “rage” could be a triggering keyword for Beware. At that same meeting, libertarian-leaning Republican councilman Clinton J. Olivier asked Chief Dyer to use the technology to calculate his threat level. In real-time, Olivier was given a green, or non-threatening ranking, but his home received a yellow, or medium, threat ranking. It was likely due to the record of his home’s prior occupant. “Even though it’s not me that’s the yellow guy, your officers are going to treat whoever comes out of that house in his boxer shorts as the yellow guy,” Olivier told Dyer. “That may not be fair to me.” He added later, “[Beware] has failed right here with a council member as the example.” “It’s a very unrefined, gross technique,” Fresno civil rights attorney, Rob Nabarro, has said of Beware’s color-coded levels. “A police call is something that can be very dangerous for a citizen,” he noted, echoing Olivier’s worries.
  • Further, though Fresno police use Beware, they are left in the dark about how it determines rankings. Intrado designates the method a “trade secret,” and as such, will not share it with the officers who use it. This element of the software’s implementation has concerned civil rights advocates like Nabarro. He believes the secrecy surrounding the technology may result in unfair, unchecked threat rankings. Nabarro cautioned that between the software’s secrecy and room for error, Beware could accidentally rank a citizen as dangerous based on, for example, posts on social media criticizing police. This potential carries with it the ability for citizens to be punished not for actual crimes, but for exercising basic constitutional rights. Further, it compromises the rights of individuals who have been previously convicted of crimes, potentially using past behavior to assume guilt in unrelated future incidents. Chief Dyer insists concerns are exaggerated and that a particular score does not guarantee a particular police response. Police maintain the tools are necessary to fight crime. Nevertheless, following the heated November meeting, Dyer suggested he would work to turn off the color-coded threat ranking due to citizens’ concerns. “It’s a balancing act,” he admitted.
  • It remains to be seen if Fresno police and residents will move forward with the technology or shut it down over privacy concerns. City officials in Oakland, California, for example, recently scaled back plans to establish a Real Time Crime Center after outraged citizens protested. At the very least, as Northern California ACLU attorney Matt Cagle said, “[W]henever these surveillance technologies are on the table, there needs to be a meaningful debate. There needs to be safeguards and oversight.”
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 16
     
    Claiming trade secrecy for the software's selection criteria for threat ranking actually constitutes policy policy, the trade secrecy claim would probably not survive judical review. It's at least arguably an unconstitutional delegation of a government function (ranking citizens as threats) to a private company. Police departments in Florida were sued to produce records of how a related surveillance device, the Stingray IMSI device that intercepts cell phone calls by mimicking a cell-phone tower, and only averted court-ordered disclosure of its trade secret workings by the FBI swooping in just before decision to remove all the software documentation from local police possession, custody, and control.    There is a long chain of case law holding that information that is legitimately trade secret and proprietary loses that protection if adopted by local or federal government as law. With a software program that classifies citizens as threats for governmental purposes if they meet the program's selection criteria, the software is performing a strictly governmental function that is in reality law. 
Paul Merrell

Ferguson Police Militarization: Cash Flowed To Lawmakers Who Voted To 'Militarize' Police - 0 views

www.ibtimes.com/oted-militarize-police-1659804

war & peace police-militarization corruption Congress

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • As local law enforcement has deployed martial tactics against those protesting the police killing of an 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, a debate is suddenly raging over how municipal police forces came to resemble military units. A new report suggests the trend may, in part, have to do with campaign contributions to congressional lawmakers. At issue is the federal government’s so-called 1033 Program, which permits the Pentagon to give military hardware to local police departments. 
  • The group’s new report looked at a June congressional vote on legislation, offered by U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., that would have blocked the Pentagon from spending resources on transferring military hardware to local police agencies. The bill was defeated 62-355.  According to data compiled by Maplight, the lawmakers “voting to continue funding the 1033 Program have received, on average, 73 percent more money from the defense industry than representatives voting to defund it.” In all, the average lawmaker voting against the bill received more than $50,000 in campaign donations from the defense industry in the last two years. The report also found that of the 59 lawmakers who received more than $100,000  from defense contractors in the last two years, only four voted for Grayson’s legislation. Though thought of as a political force primarily in federal policymaking, the defense industry also spends on state politics, which influences law enforcement procurement decisions. According to data compiled by the National Institute for Money in State Politics, more than $8 million of campaign contributions has been dumped into state elections in the last decade by military contractors and their employees.
  • Police officials say the equipment helps them better secure local communities. By contrast groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have recently launched a national campaign to demilitarize local police departments. That campaign got a boost this week when Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a prospective 2016 presidential candidate, published an editorial in Time magazine echoing the ACLU’s message in the wake of the Ferguson shooting.  “When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury — national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture — we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands,” he wrote.
Paul Merrell

The Pentagon gave local cops nearly 12,000 bayonets over the past 8 years - Vox - 0 views

www.vox.com/...3-program-obama-administration

police-militarization 1033-program bayonets

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Through the 1033 program, the federal government has geared America's local police departments with military-grade equipment — ranging from airplanes to bayonets — worth hundreds of millions of dollars. NPR combed through the transaction data for the program to find out where the equipment went and what kind of gear was involved. Since 2006, the Pentagon distributed more than 79,000 assault rifles, 205 grenade launchers, nearly 12,000 bayonets, nearly 4,000 combat knives, 50 airplanes, 479 bomb detonator robots, and much more to America's local cops. One chart from NPR shows the counties that got the most guns per 1,000 people through the program
  • It's not immediately clear why some of these places would need so much military-grade equipment. With the notable exception of Starr County, Texas, the counties and states on the list have modest crime rates, and they aren't hotbeds for drug or terrorist activity — the two main targets of the federal government's police militarization schemes.* The proliferation of such weapons could soon come to an end. Following outcry against police militarization during the August protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the Obama administration ordered a review that will consider whether local police should have the equipment, whether they need to receive more training if they obtain the gear, and how the federal government can better oversee the equipment's use. The Pentagon said it could even take back some of the equipment if it's deemed necessary.
  • The federal government has been arming local police departments with military-grade equipment for decades through multiple federal schemes, particularly the 1033 program. The 1033 program transfers surplus military-grade equipment from the Pentagon to local police. It does not, however, provide training or oversight for the equipment's use. The program is also loaded with what many experts view as a perverse incentive: to keep the equipment, local police must use it within a year. This incentive, some experts argue, might encourage police to use the weapons even when they're not necessary.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 14
     
    Bayonets for police? Good grief! We couldn't even get them in the Army  in Viet Nam.
Gary Edwards

Civil Unrest Ahead - LewRockwell.com - 0 views

www.lewrockwell.com/...civil-unrest-ahead

Ron-Paul Libertarian

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The Victimized Inner Cities
  • This social disruption has motivated the enthusiastic growth and militarization of our local police departments. The law and order crowd thrives on excessive laws and regulations that no US citizen can escape. The out-of-control war on drugs is the worst part, and it generates the greatest danger in poverty-ridden areas via out-of-control police. It is estimated that these conditions have generated up to 80,000 SWAT raids per year in the United States. Most are in poor neighborhoods and involve black homes and businesses being hit disproportionately. This involves a high percentage of no-knock attacks. As can be expected many totally innocent people are killed in the process. Property damage is routine and compensation is rare. The routine use of civil forfeiture of property has become an abomination, totally out of control, which significantly contributes to the chaos. It should not be a surprise to see resentment building up against the police under these conditions. The violent reaction against local merchants in retaliation for police actions further aggravates the situation —hardly a recipe for a safe neighborhood.
  • Civil liberties are ignored by the police, and the private property of innocent bystanders is disregarded by those resenting police violence.
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  • The entitlement mentality is a source of much anger and misunderstanding. It leads people who see themselves as victims to one conclusion: they are entitled to be taken care of.
  • If one trillion dollars per year doesn’t do the job, then make it $2 trillion. If the war on poverty’s $16 trillion hasn’t worked, make it $32 trillion.
  • The wealthy special interests, such as banks, the military-industrial complex, the medical industry, the drug industry, and many other corporatists, quickly gain control of the system.
  • Honest profits of successful entrepreneurs are quite different than profits of the corporate elite who gain control of the government and, as a consequence, accumulate obscene wealth by “robbing” the middle class.
  • Crumbs may be thrown to the poor, but the principle of wealth transfer is hijacked and used for corporate and foreign welfare instead of wealth transfers to the poor.
  • To blame and destroy those who make an honest living by satisfying consumers without the use of special benefits from the government is destructive to liberty and wealth.
  • True satisfaction comes from productive effort and self-reliance and not from a government transferring wealth in an effort to bring about an egalitarian society.
  • The people have too little confidence that most problems can be solved in a voluntary manner in a society that cherishes civil liberties. There’s never an admission that government problem-solving doesn’t work. Government-created problems are a road to poverty and resentment. Too many people believe that “free stuff” from the government can solve our problems. They mistakenly believe that deficits don’t matter and that wealth can come from a printing press.
  • The high profile episodes of police violence and overreaction are a consequence of conditions that in many ways were generated by government policy.
  • equal justice requires the end of welfare redistribution
  • Redistribution is a process that is always destined to help a small minority, whether in an economy like ours that endorses central economic planning or in one run by radical fascists or communists.
  • Retraining the police won’t touch the complex problems that pit the police against the victims of complex social conditions generated by hate, violence and bad economic policies.
  • Under an authoritarian regime, those in power take care of themselves. This always leads to poverty and discrepancy in wealth distribution.
  • Eventually the social strife that is predictable leads to an overthrow of the government.
  • The strife that we are witnessing is a reflection of a growing number of people who are recognizing the discrepancy between rich and poor, the weak and the powerful, Wall Street and Main Street.
  • Both political parties are financed by Wall Street, the big banks, and the military-industrial complex. Getting rich by being part of the government class is the problem.
  • Indeed the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. The extreme current inequality is not a consequence of free markets and true liberty. Rather it results from the welfare state that, as always, morphs into a system that provides excesses for the powerful few.
  • The economic interventionist system under which we live today rewards those who benefit from government economic planning by the Federal Reserve, access to government contracts, and targeted special regulations to help one group over the other
  • We must limit the government’s role to protecting equal justice in defense of life, liberty, and property.
  • Police brutality and militarization may well induce a violent event far beyond what we have seen in Ferguson. It also can serve as an excuse. But it is not the root cause of turmoil. The real cause is poverty, the entitlement mentality, and the breakdown of the rule of law. Moral decay and the national police state are the real culprits.
  • There are two problems. First is conceding the principle that government has the moral authority to redistribute wealth. Second is believing the redistribution will be managed wisely and without corruption.
  • We have too many police, too many laws, and too much exemption of government officials from the crimes they commit.
  • There has to be an understanding that productive effort and self-reliance on the part of everyone is required for a free society to thrive.
  • Welfare, for the rich or poor, cannot exist without the sacrifice of the principal of property ownership.
  • The loss of our liberty has sharply accelerated since the 9/11 attacks. We have done to ourselves what no foreign enemy could have possibly accomplished.
  • The national police are made up of over 100,000 bureaucrats and police officials who carry guns to enforce federal law on the American citizens.
  • Today every American is a suspect. Our president has established a policy that an American citizen can be assassinated without even being charged with a crime.
  • The Founders and our Constitution intended that policing powers would be the responsibility of the individual states. That was forgotten a long time ago
  • the Feds are there taking charge over all local officials and property owners,
  • The Founders did not even want a standing army. They wanted only a militia.
  • Old-fashioned colonialism was deemed necessary by various European powers to secure natural resources along with control over sea lanes and markets for selling manufactured goods.
  • European-style colonialism — supporting a mercantilistic economy — came to be seen as politically unrealistic and unnecessary.
  • We are now subject to an out-of-control domestic police force while the US military maintains our Empire overseas.
  • When free-trade principles were utilized, colonialism did not die; it only changed form. Mercantilism in various forms and degrees drove trade policies of nations with strong economies and militaries.
  • The United States military presence around the world provides a “private” police force to protect US and other international companies against any local resistance or leaders that turn unfriendly. Our military presence overseas has nothing to do with protecting our freedoms and defending our Constitution.
  • The international monetary system is a powerful tool for the select few.
  • In fact, the real heroes are the ones who expose the truth and refuse to fight foreign wars for the international corporations.
  • The “one percenters,” generally speaking, are internationalists who are not champions of individual liberty and free trade. They are supporters of managed trade and international institutions like the WTO where the interests of the one percent can influence the rulings that frequently have little to do with advancing advertised goals of low tariffs and free trade.
  • Disengaging our troops from around the world and refusing to defend American neocolonialism is pursuing a course compatible with the qualities that Americans claim to stand for.
  • The obsession with continuing all the same policies has increased our poverty, increased violence between the classes, and lowered the standard of living for all except the elite one percent. And worst of all, the sacrifice of liberty was for naught.
  • Losing both liberty and the right to truly own property undermines the ability to create wealth.
  • Tax revenues will continue to rise, aiding the policy of the government spending the people’s money rather than those who earned it.
  • When this process gets out-of-control the economy goes into a death spiral, in the beginning of which we currently find ourselves. Without a correction to the basic understanding of the proper role of government, the downward spiral will continue.
  • Wall Street will be protected, and the trillions of dollars of big banks derivatives will be absorbed by the Fed, the FDIC, and ultimately by the American taxpayers in the next financial crisis.
  • Authoritarianism has overtaken our economic system as the welfare mentality takes over at every level of government.
  • There’s no doubt the poor will get poorer and the rich richer until the spirit of revolution in the people calls a halt to the systematic destruction of freedom in America.
  • Once the initiation of force by government is accepted by the people, even minimally, it escalates and involves every aspect of society. The only question that remains is just who gets to wield the power to distribute the largess to their friends and chosen beneficiaries.
  • It’s a recipe for steady growth of the government at the expense of liberties, even if official documents and laws written to limit government power are in place.
  • Restraining the few who thrive on the use of force to rule over us is the challenge. Fortunately they are outnumbered by those who would choose liberty yet lack the will to challenge the humanitarian monsters who gain support from naive and apathetic citizens.
  • The sentiments supporting secession, jury nullification, nullification of federal laws by state legislatures, and a drive for more independence from larger governments will continue.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Jan 15
     
    "If Americans were honest with themselves they would acknowledge that the Republic is no more. We now live in a police state. If we do not recognize and resist this development, freedom and prosperity for all Americans will continue to deteriorate. All liberties in America today are under siege. It didn't happen overnight. It took many years of neglect for our liberties to be given away so casually for a promise of security from the politicians. The tragic part is that the more security was promised - physical and economic - the less liberty was protected. With cradle-to-grave welfare protecting all citizens from any mistakes and a perpetual global war on terrorism, which a majority of Americans were convinced was absolutely necessary for our survival, our security and prosperity has been sacrificed. It was all based on lies and ignorance. Many came to believe that their best interests were served by giving up a little freedom now and then to gain a better life. The trap was set. At the beginning of a cycle that systematically undermines liberty with delusions of easy prosperity, the change may actually seem to be beneficial to a few. But to me that's like excusing embezzlement as a road to leisure and wealth - eventually payment and punishment always come due. One cannot escape the fact that a society's wealth cannot be sustained or increased without work and productive effort. Yes, some criminal elements can benefit for a while, but reality always sets in. Reality is now setting in for America and for that matter for most of the world. The piper will get his due even if "the children" have to suffer. The deception of promising "success" has lasted for quite a while. It was accomplished by ever-increasing taxes, deficits, borrowing, and printing press money. In the meantime the policing powers of the federal government were systematically and significantly expanded. No one cared much, as there seemed to be enough "gravy" for the rich, th
Paul Merrell

The Pentagon's slush fund is arming a War Zone on Main Street. Let's end the local-cop ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...rica-militarized-police-forces

police-militarization

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • What many other communities across America have learned since is that we're living in what the writer Radley Balko calls the age of the "warrior cop". And when warrior cops want a straight-outta-Baghdad toy, it's increasingly and unnecessarily simple for them to use a federally enabled slush-fund to wreak havoc – particularly against minorities, and even at a pumpkin festival. It's also pretty simple to start accounting for all the high-tech violence."Before another small town's police force gets a $700,000 gift from the Defense Department that it can't maintain or manage," Rep Hank Johnson of Georgia told me this week, "we need to press pause and revisit the merits of a militarized America."
  • The ACLU released a devastating report this week examining more than 800 incidents of Swat team deployments conducted by 20 law enforcement agencies between 2010 and 2013. It's a small sample of the estimated 45,000 deployments that occur in the US each year (up from 1,400% from the '80s), but the report reveals a picture of law enforcement as flash-bang assault unit, with hardly an actual suspect in harm's way: pandemonium in a baby's crib; a grandfather of 12 killed by a discharged gun; Swat officers gunning down a mother as she died, child in her arms. According to the ACLU study, 79% of the incidents surveyed involved a Swat team searching a person's home, and more than 62% of the cases involved searches for drugs. That's not what Swat teams were made for.America is winding down wars abroad – depending on what the hell happens in Iraq, of course – but we are fueling an addiction to armed conflict here at home.As Balko notes in his book, The Rise of the Warrior Cop, "America's cops have increasingly come to resemble ground troops."
  • But the federal government has been enabling even more localized branches of law enforcement to get its hands on heavy-duty artillery for the last 20 years, when the Reagan administration formalized the Pentagon's so-called 1033 Program. It sends "excess" military equipment to local police departments, and combined with the Homeland Security operation that provides grants to purchase such equipment, we've got a veritable firearms sale funnelling from Washington on down to the local station house. And when local law enforcement is making hundreds of thousands of dollars off seized drug money – sometimes illegally – you've got the makings of a War Zone on Main Street.Rep Johnson has plans to introduce a bill that would reform the 1033 Program, which donated at least $500bn per year in military gear to virtually every police department in the country. "We not only lack serious oversight and accountability," Johnson wrote me in an email on Tuesday, "but we need some parameters put in place for what is appropriate." His legislation would put limitations on the transfer of certain kinds of military-grade equipment, and require the Pentagon to account for transfers of all such equipment in an annual report to Congress.
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  • The ACLU also made several recommendations in its report – state laws to restrain Swat teams, plus transparency and strict oversight – that all make sense, as do training sessions for more of our trigger-happy "rescue" officers. But this was perhaps the most endemic part of that report:Overall, 42% of people impacted by a Swat deployment to execute a search warrant were black and 12% were Latino. This means that of the people impacted by deployments for warrants, at least 54% were minorities.Whether this is by accident or design, the racial reality of America's militarized law enforcement offers yet another compelling reason why the dangerous trend of warrior-style policing needs to be re-examined – and then reversed.When the first Swat team was deployed in the late '60s, its target was a single remaining cell of the Black Panthers. Nearly half a century later, all the nation's a theater, and we are merely the pumpkin eaters – with half a million bucks worth of smashing, exploding, high-artillery gear for the taking.
Paul Merrell

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing | American Civil Libe... - 0 views

www.aclu.org/litarization-american-policing

police-militarization ACLU report liberty tyranny

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • All across the country, heavily armed SWAT teams are raiding people’s homes in the middle of the night, often just to search for drugs. It should enrage us that people have needlessly died during these raids, that pets have been shot, and that homes have been ravaged. Our neighborhoods are not warzones, and police officers should not be treating us like wartime enemies. Any yet, every year, billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment flows from the federal government to state and local police departments. Departments use these wartime weapons in everyday policing, especially to fight the wasteful and failed drug war, which has unfairly targeted people of color. As our new report makes clear, it’s time for American police to remember that they are supposed to protect and serve our communities, not wage war on the people who live in them.
  • t is widely known that policing tactics across the country often unfairly target communities of color. According to our investigation, the use of paramilitary weapons and tactics appears to be no different. These maps show the distribution of SWAT raids by racial composition of neighborhoods in two cities, but this trend is echoed nationwide. Read the complete report for more.
  • It’s not uncommon for SWAT teams to brutalize bystanders in their search for a suspect. One family in Atlanta was woken up in the middle of the night when officers burst into their home and threw a flashbang grenade into the playpen where a toddler was sleeping. This is their story.  
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  • Nearly 80% of the SWAT raids the ACLU studied were conducted to serve search warrants, usually in drug cases. With public support for the War on Drugs at an all-time low, police are using hyper-aggressive, wartime tools and tactics to fight a war that has lost its public mandate.
  • Hyper-aggressive policing won’t go away simply by identifying a couple “bad apples” or dismissing the problem as a few isolated instances. As this map makes clear, excessive militarization is a nationwide trend.
  • Not every situation requires 20 heavily armed SWAT officers and an armored personnel carrier. And yet, we collected reports of full deployments to homes where no contraband was found, where there was no clear reason for thinking the people inside would be armed or awake, and where children and the elderly were present. We need to ensure that hyper-aggressive tools and tactics are only used in situations where they are truly necessary to protect people. It’s also time to push for greater transparency and ensure that the federal government is not incentivizing the militarization of our state and local police.
Paul Merrell

The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site' | US news ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ce-detain-americans-black-site

police-militarization Chicago-PD black-sites Homan tyranny civil-liberties

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.
  • The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown. Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.
  • The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.
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  • The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights. Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include: Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases. Beating by police, resulting in head wounds. Shackling for prolonged periods. Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility. Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15. At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.
  • The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights. Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include: Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases. Beating by police, resulting in head wounds. Shackling for prolonged periods. Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility. Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15. At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.
  • Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the “Nato Three”, was held and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and charged.
  • “Homan Square is definitely an unusual place,” Church told the Guardian on Friday. “It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.”
  • The secretive warehouse is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. While those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown. Unlike a precinct, no one taken to Homan Square is said to be booked. Witnesses, suspects or other Chicagoans who end up inside do not appear to have a public, searchable record entered into a database indicating where they are, as happens when someone is booked at a precinct. Lawyers and relatives insist there is no way of finding their whereabouts. Those lawyers who have attempted to gain access to Homan Square are most often turned away, even as their clients remain in custody inside.
  • “It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there,” said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes. Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution. “This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of the practice that dates back more than 40 years,” Taylor said, “of violating a suspect or witness’ rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or otherwise coerced into giving a statement.”
  • “It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there,” said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes. Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.
Paul Merrell

Controversies - Unions Successfully Beat Back Movement to De-Militarize Police - AllGov... - 0 views

www.allgov.com/...to-de-militarize-police-141202

war & peace police-militarization 1033-program

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Critics of the post-9/11 trend of militarizing police forces across the United States thought the controversy in Ferguson, Missouri, would provide the momentum to roll back the armoring up of officers. But then the police unions showed off their power in Washington and reform efforts fizzed. As Bloomberg’s David Weigel wrote, even one of the most outspoken opponents of the federal 1033 program, which provides military surplus equipment to law enforcement, suddenly stopped talking about demilitarizing the police after labor groups lobbied Congress. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) said in August: “We must demilitarize the police.” “The militarization of our law enforcement is due to an unprecedented expansion of government power in this realm,” Paul wrote in an op -ed. “It is one thing for federal officials to work in conjunction with local authorities to reduce or solve crime. It is quite another for them to subsidize it.”
  • Paul, however, has stopped making noise about changing 1033, as have other politicians. That’s because groups like the National Sheriffs Association and the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) had their members make phone calls to senators and representatives telling them how important it was to use military-type weapons for public safety purposes. FOP Executive Director Jim Pasco told Weigel that the uproar over the shooting of Michael Brown was mostly “some members of Congress had kneejerk reactions to the optics of Ferguson or the rhetoric of Ferguson,” said Pasco. “They thought there was something problematic about the equipment they saw on the streets. In the intervening period, some of them have come to see that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s not what the equipment looks like, it’s what its utility is,” Pasco said.
Paul Merrell

The US government doesn't want you to know the cops are tracking you | Trevor Timm | Co... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ng-calls-stingray-surveillance

surveillance state local-law-enforcement location-data stingrays

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • All across America, from Florida to Colorado and back again, the country's increasingly militarized local police forces are using a secretive technology to vacuum up cellphone data from entire neighborhoods – including from people inside their own homes – almost always without a warrant. This week, numerous investigations by major news agencies revealed the US government is now taking unbelievable measures to make sure you never find out about it. But a landmark court ruling for privacy could soon force the cops to stop, even as the Obama administration fights to keep its latest tool for mass surveillance a secret.So-called International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) catchers – more often called their popular brand name, "Stingray" – have long been the talk of the civil liberties crowd, for the indiscriminate and invasive way these roving devices conduct surveillance. Essentially, Stingrays act as fake cellphone towers (usually mounted in a mobile police truck) that police can point toward any given area and force every phone in the area to connect to it. So even if you're not making a call, police can find out who you've been calling, and for how long, as well as your precise location. As Nathan Freed Wessler of the ACLU explained on Thursday, "In one Florida case, a police officer explained in court that he 'quite literally stood in front of every door and window' with his stingray to track the phones inside a large apartment complex."
  • Yet these mass surveillance devices have largely stayed out of the public eye, thanks to the federal government and local police refusing to disclose they're using them in the first place – sometimes, shockingly, even to judges. As the Associated Press reported this week, the Obama administration has been telling local cops to keep information on Stingrays secret from members of the news media, even when it seems like local public records laws would mandate their disclosure. The AP noted:Federal involvement in local open records proceedings is unusual. It comes at a time when President Barack Obama has said he welcomes a debate on government surveillance and called for more transparency about spying in the wake of disclosures about classified federal surveillance programs.
  • Some of the government's tactics to hide Stingray from journalists and the public have been downright disturbing. After the ACLU had filed a records request for information on Stingrays, the local police force initially told them that, yes, they had the documents and to come on down to the station to look at them. But just before an ACLU rep was due to arrive, US Marshals seized the records and hid them away at another location, in what Wessler describes as "a blatant violation of state open-records laws".The federal government has used various other tactics around the country to prevent disclosure of similar information.USA Today also published a significant nationwide investigation about the Stingray problem, as well as what are known as "cellphone tower dumps". When police agencies don't have Stingrays at their disposal, they can go to cell phone providers to get the cellphone location information of everyone who has connected to a specific cell tower (which inevitably includes thousands of innocent people). The paper's John Kelly reported that one Colorado case shows cellphone tower dumps got police "'cellular telephone numbers, including the date, time and duration of any calls,' as well as numbers and location data for all phones that connected to the towers searched, whether calls were being made or not."
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  • You may be asking: how, exactly, are the local cops getting their hands on such advanced military technology? Well, the feds are, in many cases, giving away the technology for free. When the US government is not loaning police agencies their own Stingrays, the Defense Department and Homeland Security are giving federal grants to cops, which allow departments to purchase the gear at the cost of $400,000 a pop from defense contractors like Harris Corporation, which makes the Stingray brand.
  • It's scary enough to think that the NSA is collecting so much information, but this mass location and metadata tracking at the local level all may be about to change. This week, the ACLU won a historic victory in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals (serving Florida, Alabama and Georgia), which ruled that police need to get a warrant from a judge before extracting from your cellphone the location data obtained by way of a cell tower. This ruling will apply whether cops are going after one person, the whole tower and, one can assume, Stingrays. (The case was also argued by the aforementioned Wessler, who clearly is this month’s civil liberties Most Valuable Player.)This case has huge implications, and not just for the Stingrays secretly being used in Florida. It virtually guarantees the US supreme court will soon have to tackle the larger cellphone location question in some form – and whether police across the country have to finally start getting a warrant to find out where your precise location for days or weeks at a time. But as Stanford law professor Jennifer Granick wrote on Friday, it could also have an impact on NSA spying, which relies on the theory that indiscriminately collecting metadata is fair game until a court says otherwise.
  • Like Stingrays, and the NSA's phone dragnet before them, the militarization of America's local cops is a phenomenon that's only now getting widespread attention. As journalist Radley Balko, who wrote a seminal book on the subject two years ago, said this week, the Obama administration could easily limit these tactics to "cases of legitimate national security" – but has clearly chosen not to.No matter how much President Obama talks about how he has "maintained a healthy skepticism toward our surveillance programs", it seems the Most Transparent Administration in American History™ remains much more interested in maintaining a healthy, top-secret surveillance state.
Paul Merrell

2015: The Year Police Killings In America Were Counted - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...212393

police-militarization homicides stats 2015

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The Black Lives Matter movement that swept the country in 2015 has—among other accomplishments—forced global media outlets to afford victims of police killings the most basic acknowledgement: a public record of their names and deaths. Such a grim tally was maintained this year by both the Guardian and the Washington Post, following the consistent failure of the U.S. government to keep adequate records. According to the Guardian, 1,126 people were killed by police so far in 2015, averaging more than three a day, with 27 percent of those slain facing mental health issues. The numbers confirm the racial injustices highlighted by nationwide protests. Among black people in America, 6.9 per million were killed by police, compared to 2.86 white people per million. In other words, African-Americans were nearly 2.5 times as likely to be killed by police as their white counterparts. Native-Americans and Latinos were also disproportionately likely to have their lives taken by law enforcement, with 3.4 per million and 3.35 per million killed respectively.
  • The high number of killings was corroborated by the Washington Post, which only tracks fatal police shootings—not killings by taser, beating, and other forms of force, such as the high-profile death of African-American man Freddie Gray in Baltimore. The paper concluded, nonetheless, that nearly 1,000 civilians were shot and killed by police this year. What’s more, the Post‘s analysis found that the FBI, which is tasked with tracking such shootings, is dramatically undercounting killings because “fewer than half of the nation’s police departments report their incidents to the agency.” “The Post documented well more than twice as many fatal shootings this year as the average annual tally reported by the FBI over the past decade,” journalists Kimberly Kindy, Marc Fisher, Julie Tate, and Jennifer Jenkins reported this week.
  • But perhaps, more than anything, both databases show that heightened visibility, in itself, will not end police killings or bring justice to its victims.
Paul Merrell

War Gear Flows to Police Departments - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ows-to-police-departments.html

war & peace politics of fear police-militarization

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft. The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs.
  • As the nation’s wars abroad wind down, many of the military’s surplus tools of combat have ended up in the hands of state and local law enforcement. Totals below are the minimum number of pieces acquired since 2006 in a selection of categories.
  • Congress created the military-transfer program in the early 1990s, when violent crime plagued America’s cities and the police felt outgunned by drug gangs. Today, crime has fallen to its lowest levels in a generation, the wars have wound down, and despite current fears, the number of domestic terrorist attacks has declined sharply from the 1960s and 1970s.Continue reading the main story Police departments, though, are adding more firepower and military gear than ever. Some, especially in larger cities, have used federal grant money to buy armored cars and other tactical gear. And the free surplus program remains a favorite of many police chiefs who say they could otherwise not afford such equipment.
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  • The number of SWAT teams has skyrocketed since the 1980s, according to studies by Peter B. Kraska, an Eastern Kentucky University professor who has been researching the issue for decades.The ubiquity of SWAT teams has changed not only the way officers look, but also the way departments view themselves. Recruiting videos feature clips of officers storming into homes with smoke grenades and firing automatic weapons.
  • The Pentagon program does not push equipment onto local departments. The pace of transfers depends on how much unneeded equipment the military has, and how much the police request. Equipment that goes unclaimed typically is destroyed. So police chiefs say their choice is often easy: Ask for free equipment that would otherwise be scrapped, or look for money in their budgets to prepare for an unlikely scenario.
  • Pentagon data suggest how the police are arming themselves for such worst-case scenarios. Since 2006, the police in six states have received magazines that carry 100 rounds of M-16 ammunition, allowing officers to fire continuously for three times longer than normal. Twenty-two states obtained equipment to detect buried land mines.Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story AdvertisementIn the Indianapolis suburbs, officers said they needed a mine-resistant vehicle to protect against a possible attack by veterans returning from war.
  • The police in 38 states have received silencers, which soldiers use to muffle gunfire during raids and sniper attacks.
Paul Merrell

Oakland activists block Israeli ship for third day | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...gaza-oakland-protest.html

war & peace Israel Palestine BSD Oakland

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Pro-Palestinian protesters on Monday continued a campaign to block an Israeli commercial vessel from docking in Oakland, California, for a third day. About 20 protesters arrived at the port at 5 a.m. local time to block the container ship, owned by Zim Shipping Services Ltd., one of the world’s largest container shipping companies, from entering the Port of Oakland and unloading cargo. Two demonstrators were detained and cited, according to the Oakland Police Department.  Another protest was planned for 6 p.m. — an action quickly organized after rumors spread that the ship would again attempt to dock. In addition to picketing at the docks, protesters have been attempting to gain the support of the longshoremen who would handle the unloading. “It’s not clear yet whether this will be a sustained action,” said Daniela Kantorova, who spoke with Al Jazeera on her way to the port. “It takes a lot of effort and energy to sustain this action. But these ships arrive every Saturday. People are thinking of making this a regular action, a weekly action.” 
  • Inspired by a call from Palestinian civil society to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel until it ends its occupation of Palestinian lands, the action was part of a series of events organized by Block the Boat, a loose Oakland-based coalition of grass-roots organizations. Saturday’s protest, which launched the campaign, drew 3,000 to 5,000 protesters. Block the Boat organizers are planning similar actions in Seattle, Vancouver and other U.S. and Canadian ports in coming weeks.
  • The port blockade, organizers say, aims not just to put a dent in the Israeli economy but also to expose Americans to all elements of the U.S. relationship with Israel — a partnership they say is also resulting in the militarization of U.S. police forces nationwide. This, the organizers charge, has led to a recent surge in police brutality against communities of color and the killings of young black men like Brown. “We will no longer stay silent as our governing bodies play a role in what’s happening with Israel as we will no longer stand for the violence against communities here in the U.S.,” said Reem Assil, one of Block the Boat’s organizers. It remains unclear whether Israeli police techniques are being employed in Ferguson, but St. Louis County police have received instruction from their counterparts in Israel.  In April 2011, then–St. Louis County Police Chief Timothy Fitch was sent to Israel “to study counterterrorism” measures, where he was “briefed by senior members of the Israel National Police as well as the Israel Defense Forces and intelligence/security organizations,” according to a press release from the St. Louis County Police.
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  • Fitch traveled to Israel as part of the National Counter-Terrorism Seminar in Israel, an initiative by the Anti-Defamation League, which "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects civil rights for all," according to its website. Since 2004, more than 175 law enforcement executives have participated in the NCTS programs in Israel, according to the ADL website. “The same police that orchestrated the brutal crackdowns on protesters [in Ferguson] were trained by Israeli police,” said Mohamed Shekh, 26, another organizer of the Oakland port protest Saturday.
  • Shekh said his fellow activists are organizing a protest at a police weapons and training expo, Urban Shield, which will be held in Oakland Sept. 5 through 8. Israeli police and vendors have in recent years figured prominently at Urban Shield events, according to the Urban Shield website. Participants have also hailed from nations across the Middle East. 
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Aug 14
     
    I have a very clear memory of a similar demonstration in Oakland during the last couple of years before the apartheid South African government fell. If the longshoremen vote to participate, that's the end of Israeli shipping to western U.S. ports. Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions in action. 
Paul Merrell

North Dakota Allows Cops To Arm Their Drones With Tasers And Tear Gas | ThinkProgress - 0 views

thinkprogress.org/...north-dakota-taser-drones

war & peace police-militarization drones weaponization

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • There’s a new sheriff on the high plains. Or rather, just above them. North Dakota’s police agencies can fly drones armed with Tasers, tear gas, bean-bag cannons, and other “less-lethal” weapons, thanks to fierce lobbying from the law enforcement industry on a bill that was initially meant to restrict police use of the flying robots rather than outfit them with weapons. While other local police departments have flirted with weaponizing their drones, North Dakota is the first state to explicitly allow the armaments. When State Rep. Rick Becker introduced H.B. 1328, the law both banned weaponized drones and established a procedure for law enforcement to seek a warrant before using drones in searches. Only the warrant requirement survived. After stiff lobbying and a multi-stage public relations effort by law enforcement and drone proponents, first reported by The Daily Beast, the version of the bill that ultimately passed authorized police to arm their unmanned aerial vehicles with sound cannons, pepper spray, and other weapons not designed to kill. The weaponization of law enforcement drones could facilitate police abuse of force. Military drone pilots can develop a “Playstation mentality” toward their deadly work, according to United Nations official. The physical remove of a drone pilot desensitizes him, the thinking goes, and makes it easier to be rash about deploying his armaments. Pilots themselves contest this desensitization claim, however, and there’s reason to think military drone operators experience post-traumatic stress disorder despite sitting far from the battlefield.
  • Police drones won’t have Hellfire missiles, of course. But the weapons North Dakota’s law enforcement drones are authorized to use under state law are still capable of causing serious injury and death. 39 people have been killed by police Tasers in 2015 thusfar, according to The Guardian. Rubber bullets can kill, and most non-lethal weapons can inflict grievous and lasting harm. Law enforcement operations are already monitoring civil rights activists affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, using a combination of undercover officers, social media snooping, and cell phone monitoring technology called Stingray. An FBI-provided aerial surveillance plane was also on hand during the unrest in Baltimore following the killing of Freddie Gray by police. Should drones equipped with remote-controlled Tasers and tear gas come into wider use, it seems likely they’d be incorporated into crowd control and demonstration monitoring efforts. In such uses, officers far from the scene of unrest could make bloodless decisions about how to deploy drone weaponry, potentially escalating tense situations.
Paul Merrell

Judge bars release of 2013 videos of fatal shooting by Chicago cops -- for now - Chicag... - 0 views

www.chicagotribune.com/...ting-video-20151209-story.html

police-militarization Chicago Emanuel suppressed-videos

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • s Mayor Rahm Emanuel was apologizing Wednesday for the broken system of police accountability exposed by the Laquan McDonald case, city attorneys argued before a federal judge that footage of an officer fatally shooting a 17-year-old carjacking suspect nearly three years ago should be kept from public view.Lawyers for Cedrick Chatman's family allege the videos of his January 2013 killing contradict statements from police that Chatman had turned and pointed a dark object at police as he ran, prompting Officer Kevin Fry to fire in fear of his life. City attorneys argue releasing the footage — which they described as low-quality and incomplete — could inflame the public and jeopardize a fair trial.At a brief hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said the records should stay sealed for the time being. But the judge said he would likely lift the protective order next month if he was going to be asked to consider the videos in any pretrial rulings, a move that would automatically make them part of the public record.
  • "If it's likely going to come out through pretrial motions, then there really is no reason to wait," said Gettleman, who set a hearing on the issue for Jan. 14.Gettleman's ruling came three weeks after police dash-cam video of 17-year-old McDonald being shot 16 times by Officer Jason Van Dyke went viral, sparking protests and leading to the resignations of both police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and Scott Ando, who headed the Independent Police Review Authority, which has drawn criticism for its lax enforcement on excessive-force complaints.
  • Earlier this year, Lorenzo Davis, the IPRA supervisor who headed up the Chatman probe, filed a federal lawsuit alleging he was fired by Ando for concluding that officers in several shootings — including Chatman's — were not justified in using lethal force.Davis, who viewed the surveillance video as part of the IPRA inquiry, told the Tribune last month he did not see Chatman aim at or turn toward the officers."Cedrick was just running as the shots were fired," Davis said. "You're taught that deadly force is a last resort and that you should do everything in your power to apprehend the person before you use deadly force. I did not see where deadly force was called for at that time."An investigator on Davis' team alleged that Fry violated the department's deadly force policy, but that claim was ruled "unfounded" in the final IPRA report.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 15
     
    If the videos "could inflame the public and jeopardize a fair trial," then they must show a different story than the police have been telling, yes? 
Paul Merrell

Obama Orders Review Of Transfers Of Military Surplus To Local Police : The Two-Way : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...litary-surplus-to-local-police

police-militarization 1033 Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • President Obama has ordered a review of federal programs that supply local law enforcement agencies with military weapons and equipment after concerns over how the police handled unrest in Ferguson, Mo., in the aftermath of the shooting death of Michael Brown. A senior Obama administration official says the president "whether state and local law enforcement are provided with the necessary training and guidance; and whether the federal government is sufficiently auditing the use of equipment obtained through federal programs and funding." The official also says the review would include input from the Domestic Policy Council, the National Security Council, the Office of Management and Budget, as well as the departments of Defense, Justice, Homeland Security and Treasury.
  • "There is a big difference between our military and our local law enforcement, and we don't want those lines blurred," the president told reporters at the White House. "That would be contrary to our traditions."
  • In June, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a report that warned of the excessive militarization of American law enforcement. As we reported at the time, the report highlighted, among other things, the growing use of SWAT teams for such seemingly mundane tasks as serving drug warrants.
Paul Merrell

Federal Bureau of Investigation - Cincinnati [...] (via noodls) / Former Columbus Polic... - 0 views

www.noodls.com/...6703A98D66746DB406005D5AAA6649

police-militarization 1033-program DoD

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • COLUMBUS, OH-Former Columbus Police Officer Steven Edward Dean, 49, of Columbus, was sentenced in U.S. District Court to 30 months in prison for misappropriating and selling heavy equipment and other property the Columbus Division of Police received through a Department of Defense surplus program. Carter M. Stewart, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio; Kevin Cornelius, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); Brian Reihms, Special Agent in Charge, Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS); and Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs announced the sentence handed down today by U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson. According to court documents, an investigation by the Columbus Division of Police, the FBI and DCIS concluded that between October 1, 2005 and June 1, 2012, Dean diverted property with a fair market value of $251,570.94 the police department had received from the Defense Reutilization Marketing Office (DRMO) program. The embezzled items included $133,554.59 of heavy equipment, construction equipment, and vehicles; restaurant equipment; $94,163.25 of materials sold for scrap; and $16,353.15 worth of items, including diesel generators, sold to private persons. This conclusion was based on records obtained from the U.S. Department of Defense DRMO program, the state of Ohio offices involved with the DRMO program, scrapyard receipts, Craigslist online point-of-sale website records, restaurant supply records of sold equipment, and by viewing the items of property themselves.
  • Federal Bureau of Investigation - Cincinnati Field Office 08/13/2014 | Press release Former Columbus Police Officer Sentenced for Embezzling from Defense Department Surplus Program
  • "This is a major theft and embezzlement case involving a uniformed police officer stealing from his own department and involving property which should have otherwise been used to assist law enforcement, and all the equipment and vehicles were originally purchased with taxpayer dollars," Assistant U.S. Attorneys Doug Squires and Deborah Solove told the court prior to sentencing. "Today's sentencing demonstrates the Defense Criminal Investigative Service's ongoing commitment to combating fraud and corruption that impacts the Department of Defense's vital programs and operations," said Brian Reihms, Special Agent in Charge, Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), "DCIS, with our partner agencies, will continue to work tirelessly to investigate fraud involving the DoD's DRMO Law Enforcement Support Office which transfers excess property to law enforcement organizations across the United States." Dean pleaded guilty in February to one count of embezzlement from a program receiving federal funds and one count of theft of public property. Under terms of the plea agreement, Dean will forfeit $251,570.94 less the value of the recovered equipment. Dean was also sentenced to three years of supervised released following inprisonment. U.S. Attorney Stewart commended the investigation by DCIS, the FBI, and CPD, as well as Assistant U.S. Attorneys Doug Squires and Deborah Solove, who prosecuted the case.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Sep 14
     
    Thanks for keeping us safe, Officer Dean. Related: http://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/leso/Pages/default.aspx (DoD section1033 law enforcement donation program) and http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/2576a ("Notwithstanding any other provision of law and subject to subsection (b), the Secretary of Defense may transfer to Federal and State agencies personal property of the Department of Defense, including small arms and ammunition, that the Secretary determines is- (A) suitable for use by the agencies in law enforcement activities, including counter-drug and counter-terrorism activities; and (B) excess to the needs of the Department of Defense.") 
Paul Merrell

No, Israel Does Not Have the Right to Self-Defense In International Law Against Occupie... - 0 views

www.jadaliyya.com/...ave-the-right-to-self-defense-

war & peace Israel Palestine occupation-law

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • On the fourth day of Israel's most recent onslaught against Gaza's Palestinian population, President Barack Obama declared, “No country on Earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.” In an echo of Israeli officials, he sought to frame Israel's aerial missile strikes against the 360-square kilometer Strip as the just use of armed force against a foreign country. Israel's ability to frame its assault against territory it occupies as a right of self-defense turns international law on its head.  A state cannot simultaneously exercise control over territory it occupies and militarily attack that territory on the claim that it is “foreign” and poses an exogenous national security threat. In doing precisely that, Israel is asserting rights that may be consistent with colonial domination but simply do not exist under international law. 
  • Admittedly, the enforceability of international law largely depends on voluntary state consent and compliance. Absent the political will to make state behavior comport with the law, violations are the norm rather than the exception. Nevertheless, examining what international law says with regard to an occupant’s right to use force is worthwhile in light of Israel's deliberate attempts since 1967 to reinterpret and transform the laws applicable to occupied territory. These efforts have expanded significantly since the eruption of the Palestinian uprising in 2000, and if successful, Israel’s reinterpretation would cast the law as an instrument that protects colonial authority at the expense of the rights of civilian non-combatants.  
  • International Law places the responsibility upon the commanding general of preserving order, punishing crime, and protecting lives and property within the occupied territory. His power in accomplishing these ends is as great as his responsibility.  The extent and breadth of force constitutes the distinction between the right to self-defense and the right to police. Police authority is restricted to the least amount of force necessary to restore order and subdue violence. In such a context, the use of lethal force is legitimate only as a measure of last resort. Even where military force is considered necessary to maintain law and order, such force is circumscribed by concern for the civilian non-combatant population. The law of self-defense, invoked by states against other states, however, affords a broader spectrum of military force. Both are legitimate pursuant to the law of armed conflict and therefore distinguished from the peacetime legal regime regulated by human rights law. 
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  • Military occupation is a recognized status under international law and since 1967, the international community has designated the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as militarily occupied. As long as the occupation continues, Israel has the right to protect itself and its citizens from attacks by Palestinians who reside in the occupied territories. However, Israel also has a duty to maintain law and order, also known as “normal life,” within territory it occupies. This obligation includes not only ensuring but prioritizing the security and well-being of the occupied population. That responsibility and those duties are enumerated in Occupation Law.  Occupation Law is part of the laws of armed conflict; it contemplates military occupation as an outcome of war and enumerates the duties of an occupying power until the peace is restored and the occupation ends. To fulfill its duties, the occupying power is afforded the right to use police powers, or the force permissible for law enforcement purposes. As put by the U.S. Military Tribunal during the Hostages Trial (The United States of America vs. Wilhelm List, et al.)
  • When It Is Just to Begin to Fight  The laws of armed conflict are found primarily in the Hague Regulations of 1907, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and their Additional Protocols I and II of 1977. This body of law is based on a crude balance between humanitarian concerns on the one hand and military advantage and necessity on the other. The post-World War II Nuremberg trials defined military exigency as permission to expend “any amount and kind of force to compel the complete submission of the enemy…” so long as the destruction of life and property is not done for revenge or a lust to kill. Thus, the permissible use of force during war, while expansive, is not unlimited.  In international law, self-defense is the legal justification for a state to initiate the use of armed force and to declare war. This is referred to as jus ad bellum—meaning “when it is just to begin to fight.” The right to fight in self-defense is distinguished from jus in bello, the principles and laws regulating the means and methods of warfare itself. Jus ad bellum aims to limit the initiation of the use of armed force in accordance with United Nations Charter Article 2(4); its sole justification, found in Article 51, is in response to an armed attack (or an imminent threat of one in accordance with customary law on the matter). The only other lawful way to begin a war, according to Article 51, is with Security Council sanction, an option reserved—in principle, at least—for the defense or restoration of international peace and security.
  • Once armed conflict is initiated, and irrespective of the reason or legitimacy of such conflict, the jus in bello legal framework is triggered. Therefore, where an occupation already is in place, the right to initiate militarized force in response to an armed attack, as opposed to police force to restore order, is not a remedy available to the occupying state. The beginning of a military occupation marks the triumph of one belligerent over another. In the case of Israel, its occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai in 1967 marked a military victory against Arab belligerents.  Occupation Law prohibits an occupying power from initiating armed force against its occupied territory. By mere virtue of the existence of military occupation, an armed attack, including one consistent with the UN Charter, has already occurred and been concluded. Therefore the right of self-defense in international law is, by definition since 1967, not available to Israel with respect to its dealings with real or perceived threats emanating from the West Bank and Gaza Strip population. To achieve its security goals, Israel can resort to no more than the police powers, or the exceptional use of militarized force, vested in it by IHL. This is not to say that Israel cannot defend itself—but those defensive measures can neither take the form of warfare nor be justified as self-defense in international law. As explained by Ian Scobbie:  
  • To equate the two is simply to confuse the legal with the linguistic denotation of the term ”defense.“ Just as ”negligence,“ in law, does not mean ”carelessness” but, rather, refers to an elaborate doctrinal structure, so ”self-defense” refers to a complex doctrine that has a much more restricted scope than ordinary notions of ”defense.“  To argue that Israel is employing legitimate “self-defense” when it militarily attacks Gaza affords the occupying power the right to use both police and military force in occupied territory. An occupying power cannot justify military force as self-defense in territory for which it is responsible as the occupant. The problem is that Israel has never regulated its own behavior in the West Bank and Gaza as in accordance with Occupation Law. 
  • Noura Erakat
Paul Merrell

LAPD scopes out Israeli drones, 'Big Data' solutions | Nation | Jewish Journal - 0 views

www.jewishjournal.com/...eli_drones_big_data_solutions1

surveillance state LAPD Israel Verint surveillance-technology Big-Data-Intelligence-Conference Unit-8200

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • For the first nine days of February, eight of the Los Angeles Police Department’s top brass were 7,500 miles away from home, being shuttled around Israel in a minibus.
  • LAPD Deputy Chief Jose Perez, a good-natured 30-year veteran of the department who oversees its central bureau, tweeted updates at nearly every stop. On Feb. 2, he shared a group photo of the Los Angeles delegation visiting the corporate headquarters of Nice Systems, an Israeli security and cyber intelligence company that can intercept and instantly analyze video, audio and text-based communications. (A seemingly tongue-in-cheek inspirational poster on the wall behind them reads: “Every voice deserves to be heard.”)
  • The group visited private security firms and drone manufacturers, as well as the terror-prone Ashdod Port, a museum in Sderot full of old rockets shot from nearby Gaza (the same one United States President Barack Obama visited on his 2008 campaign trip to Israel), and a “safe city” underground control center in the large suburb of Rishon LeZion, which receives live streams from more than 1,000 cameras with license plate recognition installed throughout the city.
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  • Frank was joined by seven of his fellow command staff at the Big Data Intelligence Conference hosted by i-HLS in the beach town of Herzliya, Israel, on Feb. 6. “On behalf of my chief of police, Chief Charlie Beck, and the 13,000-plus sworn and non-sworn members of the Los Angeles Police Department, a very heartfelt thanks to all of you for having me here,” Frank said in an opening statement for the conference, which brought together some of Israel’s — and the world’s — top cyber security and intelligence experts.
  • Frank said he was especially impressed by what he saw while visiting Israeli companies Nice Systems (as tweeted by Perez) and Verint, one of the companies whose services the National Security Administration (NSA) reportedly used in the infamous United States wiretapping scandal. Both companies already count the LAPD as a client. But, Frank said, “we’re looking at some of their additional solutions … They have a lot of new technologies that we are very much interested in.” Nice System’s  president of security, Yaron Tchwella, spoke at the conference about the company’s ability to help government agencies capture and store the billions of calls, emails, messages and social media posts that their populations generate each day, then analyze it in real time to detect potential threats.
  • Perez said he hoped the LAPD, too, would eventually be able to “use technology to incorporate all the systems that we have. That’s the wave of the future. We’re definitely looking at the ability to get that information out to the officers on the beat with a handheld. Something happens, and you’re looking at the handheld — almost like ‘The Bourne Supremacy’ — here’s a picture of the guy you’re looking for.”
  • Also in Khan’s crosshairs is Special Order 1, an LAPD policy that allows officers to document any otherwise lawful activity that they, or other members of the community, deem suspicious. (Including, for example, the photographing of certain government sites.) And new LAPD intel collection methods or surveillance drones, said Khan, would only be “adding more to their toolbox of being highly militarized in counterinsurgency forces” against protesters and movements such as Occupy. “Yet it is wrapped in this whole language of community policing.” Two separate L.A. Weekly investigations in 2012 found that the LAPD uses expensive StingRay devices, which can locate cellphones (and their users) by acting like cellphone towers, and license-plate recognition cameras that track millions of drivers. Although both devices technically require a warrant to be used in a police investigation, there is little way to know whether police are always complying with the rules.
  • Surveillance drones manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Sky Sapience were also hot items on the LAPD tour. Both Frank and Perez lit up when talking about the HoverMast, a new tethered drone from Sky Sapience that was just released to the IDF late last year. “There are several things on the wish list, but we did like Sky Sapience — that was incredible,” Perez said. “For me personally, just for my command, which is five stations, and all the special events that I have, crowd control and being able to see everything would be some technology that is needed immediately.” However, Frank added, the HoverMast “has its challenges: from a political standpoint, convincing our political leaders, and from a community standpoint, convincing the community that it’s not Big Brother watching over you.”
  • A spokeswoman for Sky Sapience said the HoverMast can intercept wireless communications, and its cameras are capable of facial recognition. A spokeswoman for IAI said that while showing LAPD officers their drones, the company “wanted to emphasize the fact that drones can be very helpful in giving intelligence in urban scenarios… you need it now, you need it quick, you need to see what’s inside a window, and what’s behind this building.”
  • Many of the companies attracting LAPD interest have one thing in common: They were formed by veterans of the IDF’s elite, top-secret 8200 Unit, better known as Israel’s version of the NSA.
  • Perez emphasized that as a local police agency, the LAPD has much tighter legal constraints than federal agencies to adhere to when adopting army-born surveillance and “big data” technologies.
Paul Merrell

Cost of Medical Bills for Baby Hit by SWAT Grenade? Over $800,000. County's Refusal to ... - 0 views

www.theorganicprepper.ca/usal-to-pay-priceless-08192014

police-militarization

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Remember back in May when a gang of uniformed thugs from the  Habersham County SWAT team threw a flash-bang grenade right on top of a sleeping baby? Well, stellar group that they are, they’ve refused to pay the over $800,000 in medical bills for the child that they permanently disfigured and nearly killed. That’s right. They aren’t paying the bills and are leaving the family to try and cover the costs for the toddler’s care. Our militarized police forces are claiming too many innocent victims, and they aren’t being held accountable.
  • The family’s attorneys, from the Davis Bozeman Law Firm in Decatur, Georgia, released a statement this morning: The family of Bounkham “Baby Bou Bou” Phonesavanh, the child severely injured on May 28, 2014 by a flash bang grenade thrown in his play pen during a botched police raid while his family was staying in Georgia, received a copy of the notice sent to their son’s doctor’s office that Habersham County reneges on their public promise to pay for the medical expenses of this working class family’s child. “Bounkham “Baby Bou Bou” Phonesavanh has to date incurred an estimated $800,000 worth of expenses due to his injuries. Shortly after severely burning “Baby Bou Bou” with a flash bang grenade the Habersham County Sheriff’s Department vowed to pay for the child’s medical expenses.  Last week the family discovered through medical providers that the county will not pay any medical bills.  The county stated that it would be “illegal” to pay. Recently, Alecia Phonesavanh shared her son’s injuries are so severe that doctors predict several more surgeries throughout his life to repair the hole in his chest and major facial injuries.
  • he Habersham County Attorney responded on behalf of the county Board of Commissioners with this vague explanation. “The question before the board was whether it is legally permitted to pay these expenses. After consideration of this question following advice of counsel, the board of commissioners has concluded that it would be in violation of the law for it to do so.”
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  • It’s important to remember a few things regarding this case. 1.) There is no question or denial that the SWAT team threw a grenade right on top of a sleeping baby. 2.) No drugs were found on the premises. 3.) The person they were looking for was not present at the time of the no-knock raid. It’s bad enough that it happened.  But to cripple the family financially with nearly a million dollars in medical expenses on top of that? This isn’t even about the shoddy police work, the bad intel, or the poor decision to throw a grenade (that was designed to be rolled) into a room full of children. Nor is it about the slimy sheriff of Habersham County, who, if you recall, defended the actions of his SWAT team.
  • This is about a complete lack of accountability. A refusal to take responsibility for a horrible mistake that crosses into criminal negligence, at the very least. What an absolutely repulsive group of individuals. They blew a hole through the face and chest cavity of a 19 month old child, permanently disfigured him,  put him through an unfathomable amount of agony with treatments and repeated surgeries, and now, the family, which was already struggling financially after losing their home in a fire, is stuck with the bill, which will continue to climb, since Bou Bou is looking at several more operations.
Paul Merrell

Pentagon: Military arms transfers to police not 'program run amok' - Stripes - 0 views

www.stripes.com/-not-program-run-amok-1.299031

police-militarization 1033 DoD

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • The Defense Department is pushing back against criticism that it’s helping militarize local police forces by supplying them with surplus gear. “We don’t push equipment on anybody … It is made available to law enforcement agencies if they want it and if they qualify for it,” Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said Tuesday. “There’s a lot of due diligence here. This isn’t some program run amok.”
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Aug 14
     
    If this "isn't some program run amok" then it's a program whose leadership has run amok. 
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