'Secret police'
plan called 'unprecedented'
'Officers could be effectively immunized from wrongdoing and
able to act with impunity', by Bob Unruh, 2/24/16, WND
A
prominent civil-rights organization is calling out lawmakers in Virginia for a
pending plan to create a “secret police” force that would allow officers to be
“effectively immunized from wrongdoing and able to act with impunity.”
The letter was dispatched on
Wednesday
from the Rutherford Institute to James LeMunyon, chairman of the House of
Delegates’ General Laws subcommittee.
The
legislative proposal, Senate Bill 552, would classify the names of all police
officers as “personnel records,” making them exempt from disclosure.
“American
citizens have a right to know when government agencies and government officials
have engaged in wrongdoing,” said constitutional attorney John Whitehead,
president of the Rutherford Institute and author of “Battlefield America: The
War on the American People.”
“Whether
those individuals occupy a public office or are employed by a law-enforcement
agency is immaterial. If a government employee has been charged with
misconduct, it is the right of the taxpayer to know both the name of the
individual and the charge against them.”
He noted
all across America people are demanding more transparency, not less.
“What we
cannot afford to have happen in Virginia is the kind of backlash against law
enforcement misconduct and subsequent cover-ups that resulted in community-wide
protests and acts of civil disobedience in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore,”
the letter said.
“By
ensuring that the identities of police officers could be kept completely
secret, SB 552 would ostensibly result in the creation of secret police forces
throughout the Commonwealth. If police are allowed to operate anonymously
without the moderating influence that comes from public oversight of their
activities, officers could be effectively immunized from wrongdoing and able to
act with impunity and in disregard of the civil rights of citizens.”
Lawsuits
over violation would be impossible, the letter said, since no defendant could
be named. That would kill “a crucial deterrent to police misconduct.”
The Institute
noted that any “law enforcement officer” is defined in Virginia as any fulltime
or part-time employee of a police department or sheriff’s office, as well as
employees of multiple other agencies.
“Efforts
to circumvent greater government transparency which, in the process,
potentially shields government wrongdoing will only weaken that which makes our
system of government strong: a system of checks and balances, public accountability,
and government agencies and employees that are fully cognizant of the fact that
they serve the taxpayers,” the letter said.
The bill
now is scheduled for a hearing before a subcommittee in the House.
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Comments
Georgia’s
version of this Bill is GA HB 941 and it just passed. When similar Bills show
up at State Legislatures, we need to ask who is sending these. I suspect it is the Obama Administration. In Georgia, the goal was to remove Police and
government employee from citizen participation in the grand jury box.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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