Nightscopes,
military assault rifles, grenade launchers and 14-ton Mine-Resistance
Ambush-Protected vehicles built for taking down terrorist enclaves are becoming
part of the toolbox of local police departments under a federal program that
ships such equipment out on request and without charge.
The issue came to national attention
when law-enforcement
officers in Ferguson, Missouri,
outfitted like an invading army, were deployed against violent protesters
outraged by the shooting death of black teen Michael Brown by a white police
officer.
WND
reported there are some 17,000 police
departments nationwide equipped with $4.2 billion worth of equipment ranging
from Blackhawk helicopters and battering rams to explosives, body armor and
night vision.
It’s all under the federal government’s 1033 program that supplies
“surplus” military weapons to local officers, departments and agencies.
But now resistance to such militarization of local police
has been enacted with a bill signed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie that bans
local law-enforcement agencies from obtaining such equipment without
authorization from their local government.
According to the Tenth
Amendment Center, which monitors and reports on
issues of state and federal authority, it’s “an important first step toward
blocking federal programs that militarize local police.”
The bill, S2364, by state Sen. Nia Gill, a Democrat, puts
local government officials directly between the federal government and local
law enforcers.
“This law interposes the local government in the process,
giving the people of New Jersey the power to end it, and at the least, forcing
the process into the open,” the report said.
It was approved on votes of 36-0 and 70-0 in the legislative
chambers.
“With Christie’s signature, it’s the first state law of its
kind directly addressing the endless flow of military equipment to state and
local police,” the report said.
The bill “wouldn’t put an end to the militarization of New
Jersey law enforcement, but it does create a mechanism for local communities to
stop the free-flowing tide of equipment.”
“Citizens now have the power and forum to pressure their
elected officials at a city or county level to vote against such acquisitions
or face the consequences come the next election. The new law also creates an
environment of transparency that didn’t exist before,” the center said.
Center officials told WND at
least eight other states are considering similar or related language, including some that have significantly stronger language
than New Jersey’s.
Tenth Amendment Center spokesman Michael Boldin told WND:
“Our view is that the New Jersey law is significant because it represents the
first salvo by states against an unfettered flow of military equipment from
Washington, D.C., to state and local law enforcement. Other states are likely
to take stronger steps forward in the near future. Good policing is about
acting like peace officers, not a command and control military force. With more
federal control over local police being a goal of some in the federal
government, the New Jersey law giving final say over the receipt of such
military equipment to local communities is an important victory.”
WND recently reported the American Civil Liberties Union was
critical of the 1033 program.
Cheryl Chumley, author of “Police
State USA: How Orwell’s Nightmare is Becoming our Reality,” said the information is “insightful and informative.”
“The ACLU is dead wrong on a number of issues – but on this,
on the red flag raised on militarized police, the group is dead on correct,”
she said.
She said the Obama administration has had little interest
until recently in examining the process of distributing war weapons to police
departments.
“He’s likely been quiet because of statements he made in
mid-2008 calling for a civilian police force akin to the size and power of the
nation’s military – and now he sees the fruits of that desire are not so
appetizing after all.”
WND reported
at the time that a copy of Obama’s Colorado Springs speech posted online
apparently was edited to exclude Obama’s specific references to the new force.
Are members of the American public in danger because of the
program?
Some would say yes. The
Review-Journal in Las Vegas has reported a
lawsuit by members of a family claiming civil rights violations by police.
The report explains police thought a neighbor of Michael and
Linda Mitchell, and their adult son Anthony, had barricaded himself and a child
in a nearby home.
SWAT team members demanded that the Mitchells leave their
home so police could use it for a tactical “advantage” during the crisis. They
refused and “police later knocked down Anthony Mitchell’s door with a metal ram
and entered his house without either a warrant or his permission,” their claim
alleges. Mitchell was arrested, the report said.
NJ.com
last fall documented the weaponization in
New Jersey. The news site reported Jersey City police “have the firepower of an
army, with an inventory of 155 surplus M16 military assault rifles, able to
spit out hundreds of rounds a minute.” “And the Bergen County sheriff’s office
has a grenade launcher.”
NJ.com said that according to an analysis of Defense
Logistics Agency transfers to New Jersey, surplus military items “ranging from
office equipment, sleeping bags, computers, digital cameras and clothing to
aircraft, vehicles and weapons meant for a battlefield have been shipped to
departments across the state.”
Included are 529 military-issue M16 assault rifles “that
went to 15 counties; 365 M14s, a rifle still used by Navy SEAL teams, sent to
17 New Jersey counties; night vision goggles and range finders able to find
targets in the dark; dozens of Army Humvees and armored trucks; five bomb
disposal robots; and a $412,000 mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored
vehicle, known as MRAP, meant for war zone patrols.”
At the time, Ari Rosmarin, the public policy director for
the ACLU in New Jersey, told the site: “We’re building a culture in our local
sheriff police departments of a warrior mentality. The more police officers see
themselves as warriors, the more they’ll begin seeing members of the community
as the enemy.”
Barnegat resident James D’Arienzo told the site a fleet of
Humvees stored on the grounds of an old skateboard parks look out of place.
“It looks like we’re living in North Korea,” he said. “There
is no need for any of these vehicles.”
WND
also has reported on a trend in
which cities and counties are returning the war weapons.
“Whenever this kind of armament is brought into a community,
it should only be done with the knowledge and consent of the citizenry,” John
Whitehead, a constitutional attorney based in Charlottesville, Virginia, said
in a statement released to WND.
The report noted law enforcement
agencies across the country have quietly returned more than 6,000 unwanted or
unusable items to the Pentagon in the last 10 years, according
to Mother Jones magazine.
The report noted that during the 1980s, SWAT raids numbered about
3,000 a year but now occur more than 80,000 times per year.
The results sometimes are
horrendous. WND
previously reported on an incident in rural Habersham County, Georgia, in which a SWAT team threw a flash-bang grenade
into a home where officers believed a drug dealer was hiding out. The grenade
landed in the crib of a 19-month-old boy and blew open his face. The toddler
spent five weeks in the hospital following the May 28 incident which the local
sheriff called “a mistake.”
Source:http://www.wnd.com/2015/03/resistance-to-militarized-cops-begins/
Comments
Swat deployment to homes and no-knock
warrants and private property seizure by police and other government agencies
should be banned as unconstitutional.
We should send our excess military equipment
to the Mexican border-states and to counties with Mosques, Muslim camps and
drug cartels to equip state controlled National Guard units and keep them in the
states. We need a military presence in border “no-go” zones and to protect
ranches and towns on the Mexican border.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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