With the pepper spraying of the women @ OWS, the two vets hurt in Oakland, the tactics used on various Occupy groups, sadly I needed to create a separate tree for this ongoing event. Military Quietly Grants Itself the Power to Police the Streets Without Local or State Consent. The manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects offered the nation a window into the stunning military-style capabilities of our local law enforcement agencies. For the past 30 years, police departments throughout the United States have benefitted from the government’s largesse in the form of military weaponry and training, incentives offered in the ongoing “war on drugs.”
For the average citizen watching events such as the intense pursuit of the Tsarnaev brothers on television, it would be difficult to discern between fully outfitted police SWAT teams and the military. The lines blurred even further Monday as a new dynamic was introduced to the militarization of domestic law enforcement. By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. The most objectionable aspect of the regulatory change is the inclusion of vague language that permits military intervention in the event of “civil disturbances.”
“These phrases don’t have any legal meaning,” says Afran. Déjà vu. » UPDATED: SWAT situation ends peacefully in NE Heights. 6:55 p.m. — After a two-hour standoff, 42-year-old Markell Greene surrendered peacefully to police after they tried to arrest him on several felony warrants. Sheriff’s deputies were watching Greene in the 10000 block of Natalie Court NE. Greene fled from his house and barricaded himself in a house next door. The neighbor’s house was empty and Greene was coaxed out by SWAT team and crisis negotiators. Greene was wanted on several warrants for being a felon in possession of a firearm and drugs. Sheriff’s deputies and the SWAT team are dealing with a “barricaded subject on the 10000 block of Natalie Court NE, according to a sheriff’s office spokesman. The initial alert about the SWAT situation did not say whether the suspect was armed or had hostages, but updates should be forthcoming soon.
Keep with ABQJournal.com for updates. ACLU Launches Nationwide Police Militarization Investigation. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched a nationwide campaign to assess police militarization in the United States. Starting Wednesday, ACLU affiliates in 23 states are sending open records requests to hundreds of state and local police agencies requesting information about their SWAT teams, such as how often and for what reasons they're deployed, what types of weapons they use, how often citizens are injured during SWAT raids, and how they're funded.
More affiliates may join the effort in the coming weeks. Additionally, the affiliates will ask for information about drones, GPS tracking devices, how much military equipment the police agencies have obtained through programs run through the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, and how often and for what purpose state National Guards are participating in enforcement of drug laws. The militarization of America's police forces has been going on for about a generation now. The George W. Also on HuffPost: Amtrak Joins the Police State by Wendy McElroy. Will a Militarized Police Force Facing Occupy Wall Street Lead to Another Kent State Massacre? | Civil Liberties. May 3, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Today is an ugly anniversary in American history: 42 years ago, National Guardsman opened fire on anti-Vietnam protesters at Ohio’s Kent State University, killing four students.
Ten days later, Mississippi police fired on civil rights protesters taking refuge in a women’s dormitory at Jackson State University and killed two more students. Four decades later, as police across the country deploy paramilitary tactics developed for fighting foreign terrorists on Occupy and some May Day protests, and as campus police ratchet up responses to tuition hike protests, we must ask, is this where things inevitably are headed—toward deadly confrontations between overly armed police and angered protesters, or just as likely, innocent bystanders caught in a crossfire? Some of us lived through the Kent State shootings, anti-war protests and assassinations of that era. Excessive Police Force. Caught on Camera: 10 Shockingly Violent Police Assaults on Occupy Protesters. November 18, 2011 | Like this article?
Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Occupations across the country have born the brunt of some violent police tactics, and in a world where everyone has a camera-phone, a lot of their brutish behavior has been caught in photographs and on video. Police work is difficult and dangerous, and the majority of officers on the street behave like pros.
But being human, cops are also prone to fear and rage like everyone else. Unlike protesters, cops are also armed, and it's difficult to hold them accountable for their actions when they don't behave professionally. Below are some of the most stunning incidents of police officers going wild on Occupy protesters around the country. 1.
This now-iconic image was captured by The Oregonian in Portland on November 17. 2. In this video, a group of college students are huddled on the ground in a defensive position at UC Davis on November 18. The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy | Naomi Wolf. US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.
But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? Bizarre: Woman Roughed Up, Arrested for Reciting the Constitution During TSA Inspection. Oct. 17, 2011 Albuquerque International Sunport Security Checkpoint: I pass a camera crew filming the ticket counter. I stop and consider telling them what I am about to do, but decide against it. They probably won't care. Instead, I wheel my baggage to the security area.
I can feel my heart beat in my chest. I've never done anything like this. New Mexico is far warmer than my native Pacific Northwest. I've come here to moonlight from my real job. My heart kicks it up another notch when I get to the conveyor belt. Come on, I tell myself, what are they going to do? I take off my shoes and strip my backpack of computer and the baggie of incidentals. When it is my turn, I decline to go through the monitor that scans under your clothes, as I always do. I'm speaking loud and clear so those around me can hear. He asks me to go with him to some undisclosed location to “talk”. He asks me what airline I'm on. He says, "If you keep this up I'll call the police. " The police do come, two of them.
Police allegedly attacked military veterans, arrested 50 others with Occupy Boston. At approximately 1:20 a.m ET Tuesday morning, Police allegedly attacked protesting U.S. military veterans and arrested 50 others with Occupy Boston. The Boston Globe reports that arrested protesters were “put on [their] stomach, cable-tied, and dragged off …” The AP reports the police were sent in to protect $150,000 worth of newly-planted shrubs at the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, site of a large Occupy Boston contingent. As news of the arrests spread across Twitter early Tuesday, several videos emerged that support the claim that members of Veterans for Peace were attacked by the police.
Police Executive Research Forum. What if police would coördinate raids on democr/repuli meetings?