War And Peace War And Police

I promise this post is shorter than the first proposed title would indicate. But the subject it addresses - the military-style up-armoring and officer training of America's police departments - is already underway and growing rapidly. Tom Engelhardt has the basics in his article at The Nation, What Does the Future Hold for a Country Forever at War? — The domestic arms race in America is a one-way street—and the question is what awaits us up the road. Two paragraphs out of the middle should crystallize what concerns me... and of course Engelhardt himself... so much:

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Reminder to officers:
Don't be a cartoon!

The occasion for such reflections: machine guns in my hometown. To be specific, several weeks ago, New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton announced the formation of a new 350-officer Special Response Group (SRG). Keep in mind that New York City already has a police force of more than 34,000—bigger, that is, than the active militaries of Austria, Bulgaria, Chad, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kenya, Laos, Switzerland or Zimbabwe—as well as its own “navy,” including six submersible drones. Just another drop in an ocean of blue, the SRG will nonetheless be a squad for our times, trained in what Bratton referred to as “advanced disorder control and counterterror.” It will also, he announced, be equipped with “extra heavy protective gear, with the long rifles and machine guns—unfortunately sometimes necessary in these instances.” And here’s where he created a little controversy in my hometown. The squad would, Bratton added, be “designed for dealing with events like our recent protests or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris.”

Now, that was an embarrassment in liberal New York. By mixing the recent demonstrations over the police killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and others into the same sentence with the assault on Mumbai and the Charlie Hebdo affair in France, he seemed to be equating civil protest in the Big Apple with acts of terrorism. Perhaps you won’t be surprised then that the very next day the police department started walking back the idea that the unit would be toting its machine guns not just to possible terror incidents but to local protests. A day later, Bratton himself walked his comments back even further. (“I may have in my remarks or in your interpretation of my remarks confused you or confused the issue.”) Now, it seems there will be two separate units, the SRG for counterterror patrols and a different, assumedly machine-gun-less crew for protests.

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The cop to viewer left
does not give me confidence...

In America, the police should emphatically not be viewed as a branch of the military, or as a separate military entity for domestic use. That way lies the demise of our freedom, probably quickly and certainly not cheaply in money or lives. The situation is not mitigated by the obvious readiness with which grand juries nationwide are willing to no‑bill law enforcement officers who may have committed crimes in performance of their purported duties. (We'll never know, will we, if no trials ever take place.). The people who put these institutions in place in virtually every big city in America (and not a few smaller ones) need to read their goddamned history! And they need to do it before we find ourselves living in pre‑W.W. II Germany. (Yeah, I know; that knocks on the door of Godwin's Law. Better that than a no‑knock raid...)

The other great loss, of course, is that of the wisdom conveyed by active public protest. (If you think there is no such wisdom, you've probably ended up on the wrong blog; maybe you need something more toward the right.) In my younger, healthier days, I felt confident in standing in the Main Street esplanade traffic circle in Houston, holding my own handmade sign or one end of a banner, with people of similar mind, demonstrating (word chosen advisedly) the nonviolent alternative to conventional wisdom to a public that might otherwise never give it a thought... the conventional wisdom always being "go to war, America!". For better or worse (I can see it either way), the groups I participated with were always orderly, never violent and on the rare occasions a permit was required (usually when we anticipated blocking traffic), duly filed for one. That was enough to keep us out of jail, though that was not a primary goal.

Today, literally any protest, however orderly, would be deemed "terrorism," and paddy-wagons full of protesters would promptly be on the way to jail or, worse, to a hospital to be patched up after they were beaten. Yes, by cops, drunk on the power conferred by all their new equipment and (inadequate) military training.

Do we want to have and keep the freedoms talked about by our nation's founders and fleshed out by many of our forebears since the founding? This is sure as Hell not the way to get to them!

Baltimore Fox Affiliate Edits Video Of Protesters To Make Them Appear To Be Chanting, ‘Kill A Cop’

Where to begin. (Sigh.)

First, for lack of a better summary, yesterday's article by Brendan James at TPM. Go there; read it in order; note that at least one viral video is named "[Al] Sharpton's 'Go Kill A Cop' march in Wash DC", a rather provocative title.

So did the poster of the YouTube version that went viral make up the attribution of "Kill a Cop" to Sharpton? Um, no. The Fox station in Baltimore did that, and the Gawker article has the original video and the Fox-tampered version one right after the other.

The actual words chanted, as revealed by the unaltered tape:

We won't stop!
We can't stop!
'til killer cops are in cell blocks!

The Fox-modified version:

We won't stop!
We can't stop!
So kill a cop!

(NOTE: Gawker has inadvertently swapped "won't" and "can't" in both transcriptions. The actual chant and Fox's modification are both correctly rendered above.)

The bolded last line is the one never spoken by the protesters. But that won't matter to a RWNJ who shows up at the next protest by this group, which calls itself "Justice for All". People so stooopid they believe anything that comes via Fox won't hesitate to carry a gun and flip the sense of the alleged last line by shooting at a protester.

In short, this local Fox station's postprocessing crew suborned murder.

Ten to twenty years ago, I used to hit the streets, protesting all kinds of things with all kinds of groups... the death penalty with the local Amnesty International; Baby Bush's Iraq War with a variety of groups, etc. I even appeared on TV a couple of times. On the whole, I felt physically safe in those protests: in the good old days, all a protester needed to know is how to assert her- or himself in a nonaggressive manner, and of course what his/her rights are and how to claim them as diplomatically as possible. I was never even arrested, let alone assaulted.

Now, even if I were sufficiently recovered to resume participation in street protests, I would feel a real sense of personal risk, from the police, from agents provocateurs, from opposing protest groups (a regular feature of antiwar protests; you'd be amazed how many people don't believe Americans other than themselves have the right of free speech)... and now we can add to that list, Fox News.

Fox can go straight to Hell as far as I'm concerned.

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UPDATE: for what it's worth, Fox 45 Baltimore has apologized and offered some minimal air time to some protesters. That really doesn't mitigate the dangerous nature of their act in falsifying, on air, what the protesters said in the first place. Protesters' lives are in danger because of the Fox station. As far as I'm concerned, there's no going back from that act.

‘Hands Up, Don't Shoot!’ — St. Louis Rams

Yes, they really did: the St. Louis Rams came out on the field, each raising both arms, palms outward, in the "hands up, don't shoot" gesture used by many of the protesters of Michael Brown's killing by Darren Wilson. (Daily Kos, Huffington Post)

According to the Kos article, many Rams fans were not amused. And now the St. Louis Police Officer's Association is "condemning the display." Did they get their lil' fee-fees hurt? Awwww, that's too bad... at least no one shot them dead in cold blood when they were unarmed and mouthing off.

But y'know what? A great many of the Rams players are African American. In their place, I'd probably make a similar statement. If the league punishes them, the league board should be taken to court for a First Amendment violation. Yeah, I know; that would never happen...

‘Lachrymator’: Banned In Warfare, Used Freely By Police

That's right: the most common lachrymator (also spelled lachrimator) known as tear gas is banned in international treaties as a weapon of war, but various Missouri police departments (along with many others) use it to "keep the peace," i.e., suppress demonstrations. msmolly at FDL provides a few details.

The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention explicitly exempts domestic law enforcement use of tear gas, pepper spray etc. from its prohibition under the terms of the treaty. What nation insisted on the inclusion of that provision? The United States of America, of course. Our powers-that-be have been planning this kind of thing for a long, long time.

U-S-A! U-S-A! Welcome to the land of the free and the home of "if you know what's good for you, you'll confine your protests to staying home and quietly writing letters."

Examples of Police Use of Tear Gas
Thailand	Turkey
Brazil	USA, Ferguson, MO

In the first three examples, I admit I don't know what prompted the police to use tear gas; it could have been genuine riots... or not. But in Ferguson, MO? Apart from the inevitable agents provocateur, are there even enough people in Ferguson to foment a riot? Police are to all appearances determined to suppress African American protest of the killing of Michael Brown; it is hard to put a positive spin on their use of a toxic chemical on demonstrators.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Just as things begin to settle in Ferguson, there is now a web site (sorry; no link from here) where you can contribute money to the officer who shot Michael Brown. I do not approve, but I am not surprised: if "no good deed goes unpunished," I suppose no bad deed goes unrewarded.

Missouri Has Gone Mad

... or so I gather from The Nation's Steven Hsieh's article "St. Louis Police Arrest Nine Protesters Demanding Justice for Michael Brown". Among the nine arrested... a 90-year-old woman, wearing a T-shirt captioned "Only Human". That's more than you can say of those St. Louis cops. Oh, and the charge? "Failure to disperse." It's kind of hard... indeed, impossible... to protest when you're dispersed.

AFTERTHOUGHT: the protesters' demand was that Gov. Nixon withdraw the 1000 National Guard troops from Ferguson. A state's National Guard is a military organization, not a police force. Draw your own conclusions.

Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) Used Against Peaceful Protest Of Detroit Water Shut-Off

You knew when you read about the development of the LRAD that its use would extend far beyond mere acoustic communications over long distances.

You knew from its use against protesters at the 2004 Republican National Convention that its use as a police weapon would not be confined to control of violent crowds.

And you learned last Friday that Detroit police used it against peaceful protesters at the entrance to Homrich, "a demolition contractor working on a $5.6 million deal to perform the water shutoffs on residents." There's a video on the linked post; despite the manifestly peaceful nature of the protest, the LRAD fires up near the end of the video. All claims aside, the actual clear purpose of the LRAD is physical intimidation of protesters.

Live in Detroit. Miss a water bill. Have your water shut off along with thousands of other households, as part of a "Detroit Water Collection Project." Join an organized peaceful protest of that over‑the‑top action which surely endangered public health. And in response, have your protest physically assaulted by a sound weapon intended for military use or violent crowd control. Got the picture?

The first arrest the cops made was of a guy in a wheelchair. I've spent time in a wheelchair; I didn't attend any protests while I was wheel-bound... it's just not safe. You've got to admire the man for his courage. I hope he was treated with basic human respect. But I wouldn't bet on it.

The cops used presumably the same weapon or its cousin against Occupy Detroit in May 2012, dispersing another pointedly peaceful protest. Do you see a pattern here?

"Land of the free, home of the brave"... MFA!

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A small hand-portable LRAD. Notice that it is illustrated as held by police, not military personnel. Even the smallest LRADs are capable of generating sound at levels capable of damaging human hearing. As small as they are, devices like this one have a range of about a half mile.

Drones That Fire Pepper Spray Bullets

Using a BBC technology article as a source, Bruce Schneier tells us about these newly available weapons:

Desert Wolf's website states that its Skunk octacopter drone is fitted with four high-capacity paintball barrels, each capable of firing up to 20 bullets per second.

In addition to pepper-spray ammunition, the firm says it can also be armed with dye-marker balls and solid plastic balls.

The machine can carry up to 4,000 bullets at a time as well as "blinding lasers" and on-board speakers that can communicate warnings to a crowd.

If you're planning the next-generation Occupy movement, you may want to consider the casualties to be inflicted on practitioners of a legal and once-respectable civic activity, and prepare by having several hospitals at your disposal. Given the thirst for violence evidenced by some big-city police departments in the original Occupy protests, one may be confident this isn't going to be pretty.

Oh, Great— 'Constitution' Truckers To Clog Roadways

Hunter Walker of TPMMuckraker:

'Constitution' Truckers Plan To Shut Down D.C. With Protest Convoy

A group billing itself as the "Independent Truckers of America" has vowed to flood the nation's roadways this weekend with a "Ride For The Constitution" in order to "save our nation" from "domestic enemies such as Barack Obama, John Kerry, Lindsay Graham and John McCain."

According to the Ride For The Constitution website, this "Truckers Shutdown" will feature "potentially hundreds of thousands of truckers and millions of citizens" converging Friday through Sunday on the nation's capital. There will also be affiliated rallies at rest areas and displays on highway overpasses. The faces of this event are a right wing radio host, outspoken gun activist and "libtard" hater Mark Kessler, as well as a former trucker who believes President Barack Obama is "a radical Islamist."

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What could possibly go wrong?

(I have stripped the link to the truckers' web site because it starts immediately with audio that sounds like it might be a right-wing radio station. Go through the TPM article if you want to subject yourself to that; they have a link.)

Chicago, The New Battleground, Following NY, LA, Oakland, Etc. ... Is Your City Next?

Chicago PD came prepared to do violence, and they did violence. The new standard response to nonviolent protest is suppression of protest, serious injury to and arrest of protesters, false witness against protesters. This is all happening right now. Please read Adgita Diaries, Chicago Cops Attack Veterans, L'Enfant de la Haute Mer, At NATO Summit in Chicago, Police Clash with Protesters (14 photos), and Bryan, Chicago Ninja Terrorists? regarding police behavior.

NTodd and others, now may not be a good time to introduce your young children to the reality of protest. Some skulls are being cracked, and the Chicago police seem utterly indiscriminate about whose. Reportedly LRADs are being used as well, and permanent hearing damage is a real possibility.

This is as bad as I had expected. A mere four years ago, I never imagined it would come to this. But it has, and I am no longer surprised.

Chicago PD Raids Of NATO Protesters: Real Evidence Of Bomb-Making, Or Warrantless Searches Finding Common Household Items?

Avedon Carol tells the story well, so I will simply leave it to her:

Chicago police raided an apartment housing anti-NATO protesters late on May 16. Interestingly, The Chicago Tribune didn't try to soft-soap the story, making it clear that the police ran around breaking into people's homes in the early morning hours without even offering a pretext. "According to law enforcement sources and police reports obtained by the Tribune, the arrests were the result of a monthlong investigation into a group suspected of making Molotov cocktails - crude bombs usually created by filling glass bottles with gasoline. But the National Lawyers Guild criticized the police raid, saying the nine NATO protesters only had beer-making equipment in their possession." Most people have the ingredients in their homes for making various sorts of bombs, so it's a claim that can be made about almost anyone. A bag of flour is also useful for making a bomb. Every kitchen is a potential arms manufacturing plant. You don't need "equipment" to make a Molotov cocktail - presumably you already have a bottle and a rag, and you can siphon some gasoline out of a car. A bit of motor oil, a dash of kerosene - you can see that pretty much every suburban home is terrorist bomb factory. This is what "probable cause" is all about - if the cops don't have to show a specific reason for coming after you, they can break down any door in the middle of the night on the grounds that you had "the equipment" for making a bomb. And that's just what they're doing now, and they're not doing it to anyone who is genuinely suspected of terrorism, but to people who are known not to be terrorists of any kind. I'm sure these cops didn't all just decide after a few drinks to go out and terrorize some protesters, and I'm just as sure there will be no consequences to the people who decided to use the cops as a weapon to terrorize some protesters. But the law is meaningless without consequences to violators, so it's pretty clear we are on notice that our 1st and 4th Amendment rights are gone. "Witnesses described police officers dressed all in black armed with battering rams and guns drawn swarming into the building, conducting warrantless searches and refusing to tell them what was going on."

That is, indeed, what "probable cause" is all about. All of us, inevitably as a result of having homes to run and gasoline-powered vehicles to maintain, have "bomb-making equipment" around home. If police can break down doors with no demonstrable probable cause to believe a crime is intended, they can always find "bomb-making equipment" in the home of any person, including people whose most nefarious actual intention is nonviolent protest. This is the soul and substance of the Fourth Amendment. Without it, as Avedon says, our rights of protest and our protections against unreasonable searches are gone.

Clearly Obama's buddies (read: Rahm Emanuel) and their private police forces (Chicago PD) are down with this approach to squelching protest. My question is to what degree Obama himself supports Chicago PD in this matter. You know, that Obama-Biden graphic in my sidebar is not glued down...

Can Occupy Use Techniques And Approaches From The Civil Rights Movement?

In a long, thought-provoking piece, Ted Rall says NO, and explains his reasons at length and in considerable detail.

For better and worse, the 1950s and 1960s are long, long past. Many conditions of that era which permitted the civil rights movement to accomplish its goals are either absent or completely reversed in today's federal government.

Read what Rall has to say; we all have some hard thinking to do about what comes next.

Chicago To Be Locked Down For NATO Meeting May 20-21

Details available from Kevin Gosztola of FDL. First Amendment assembly rights are slated to be nearly nonexistent... Chicago is requiring permits to protest, and applications for said permits are being steadfastly ignored by the city.

You know, when Rahm Emanuel became mayor of Chicago, I winced. But I've since come to see him as the perfect mayor for a city run by bosses rather than by its people: he's just the guy to do the dirt that has to be done in such a government. And this event is the perfect follow-up, 44 years later, of the Democratic National Convention in that fair city.

I celebrated my 50th birthday in Chicago with Stella. First-timers both, we were utterly awed by the city. A city-dweller myself since birth, I have not felt awed by the sheer size and vitality of very many cities... Vienna, perhaps... but Chicago impressed me, and even intimidated me a bit. I gave serious consideration to moving there.

Now I am ever so grateful I did not. I would feel obliged to join the protest, and I really don't need my skull cracked at my age...