But first off, I want to give a shout out to all of the alternative media outlets that tirelessly cover issues of police abuse, and show us just how common these violations are:
Now, just why should we be skeptical of the police? Well where do I begin….
1. The Police Have No Duty To Protect You
It’s plastered right on the side of many police cruisers: “To Protect And to Serve”, but this serves as little more then a PR slogan for the public to feel more comfortable and trusting of the police. In 2005 the supreme court ruled in a case titled Warren Vs The District of Columbia it was ruled that police do not have a constitutional duty to protect, all the way to and including against a women who has a protection from abuse order from a husband and is being attacked by said husband. Being stalked? No duty to protect. Locked away somewhere by an attacker. No duty to protect. Being raped? Well, you get the point, unfortunately. The court went as far as to say “”[t]he duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists. ”. Supporters of this verdict will tell you that it is because individuals are expected to protect themselves and their loved ones, which is true, but many states such as New York, and New Jersey get in the way of that with their draconian gun laws, effectively making them reliant on police, who then have no duty to oblige. A viscous cycle indeed.
2. Private Prisons Have “Lockup Quotas”
In 2011 Management & Training Corp threatened to sue the state of Arizona over a line in the contract between the two that required that the prison remain 97% full. The lawsuit threat was spurred after 3 murder convicts escaped from the prison, and the state found the prison to be “dysfunctional” and thus stopped sending inmates to the facility. The state caved and paid 3 Million dollars in tax payer dollars to a prison that let 3 murderers escape from their facility to cover the losses created by the diverted prisoner population. This notion of “lockup quotas” or “guaranteed occupancy rates” has actually found to be a common practice after analyzing over 60 contracts between states and prisons, with some Arizona prisons having an expectation of 100% occupancy!
This could help to explain why even though Crime is consistently falling over the past 20 years, The U.S continues to maintain the worlds largest prison populations as lawmakers look to write laws to appease prison contracts instead of serving the people. There are more prisons then schools in this country. Think about that for a second.
3. Police Profit From Enforcing the War On Drugs
Did you know that when the police arrest somebody for a drug charge, even marijuana, they actually earn money? Yup, for any low level arrest, a department can make $153 per arrest in federal grants, called Byrne Grants. This totally changes the incentives for what police work is. When you combine this, with the fact that drugs are widely available, hugely demanded, very profitable, and in some states, marijuana is becoming legal, the fact that there are lockup quotas, this makes the average citizen a fish to be baited into the system for profit, more then a master that is to be served, as all government is supposed to be. Then there is asset forfeiture, another very profitable revenue stream. This is where alleged drug dealers have their property stolen under the suspicion that they got that property from nasty drug money. It’s literally legal theft. It’s such an unsustainable method of revenue generation that many departments have a blanket opposition to legalized marijuana, despite its overwhelming medical potential in addition to the moral hazard of assuming what control over what people can do with their own bodies, that departments have even expressed that the stability of their budgets is dependent on this insane practice.
4. SWAT Teams Are Corporations, And Are Used VERY Commonly
In a 2014 report on police militarization, the ACLU was effectively told by Massachusetts SWAT agencies, that they are private corporations, and thus are not subject to open records requests, and generally not obligated to answer to the public. The report went on to find that SWAT are overseen by LECs or Law Enforcement Councils made up of police chiefs in the surrounding area, and funded by these same departments. Somehow, even though it’s a police agency made up of police departments and police officers, these LECs were able to incorporate into 501(c)(3) status, granting them corporate privacy. In Massachusetts alone 240 of the existing 351 departments belong to these LECs, effectively creating a blanket of secrecy over SWAT and it’s operations.
This is met with a dramatic rise in the use of SWAT teams over the past 25 years. It is commonly thought that SWAT are used for hostage crises and other extreme situations, but more often then not, they are used for suspected drug raids. And as we have seen, they often get it tragically wrong. The methods used for a lot of these drug raids are overwhelmingly forceful using no knock, forced entry, flash grenades, and other excessive shows of force, even for $2 worth of marijuana. Some studies have shown that SWAT teams are called out as much as 40,000 Times a year.
5. Police Can, And Do, Lie To The Public
Many people think that as “authority figures” that police have an obligation to be honest, but that is untrue. The most common example of this is undercover police telling suspects that they are not undercover. But this extends quite a bit. Police commonly use intimidation tactics in order to scare or trick you into giving up your rights to privacy and not to incriminate yourself. They can tell you that a witness has seen you that hasn’t, that a confession was made that never was, that you are legally obligated to do things that you aren’t, like submit to searches. The most effective defense is knowledge, courage, and a camera.
Read all of it here
Did you know that when the police arrest somebody for a drug charge, even marijuana, they actually earn money? Yup, for any low level arrest, a department can make $153 per arrest in federal grants, called Byrne Grants. This totally changes the incentives for what police work is. When you combine this, with the fact that drugs are widely available, hugely demanded, very profitable, and in some states, marijuana is becoming legal, the fact that there are lockup quotas, this makes the average citizen a fish to be baited into the system for profit, more then a master that is to be served, as all government is supposed to be. Then there is asset forfeiture, another very profitable revenue stream. This is where alleged drug dealers have their property stolen under the suspicion that they got that property from nasty drug money. It’s literally legal theft. It’s such an unsustainable method of revenue generation that many departments have a blanket opposition to legalized marijuana, despite its overwhelming medical potential in addition to the moral hazard of assuming what control over what people can do with their own bodies, that departments have even expressed that the stability of their budgets is dependent on this insane practice.
4. SWAT Teams Are Corporations, And Are Used VERY Commonly
In a 2014 report on police militarization, the ACLU was effectively told by Massachusetts SWAT agencies, that they are private corporations, and thus are not subject to open records requests, and generally not obligated to answer to the public. The report went on to find that SWAT are overseen by LECs or Law Enforcement Councils made up of police chiefs in the surrounding area, and funded by these same departments. Somehow, even though it’s a police agency made up of police departments and police officers, these LECs were able to incorporate into 501(c)(3) status, granting them corporate privacy. In Massachusetts alone 240 of the existing 351 departments belong to these LECs, effectively creating a blanket of secrecy over SWAT and it’s operations.
This is met with a dramatic rise in the use of SWAT teams over the past 25 years. It is commonly thought that SWAT are used for hostage crises and other extreme situations, but more often then not, they are used for suspected drug raids. And as we have seen, they often get it tragically wrong. The methods used for a lot of these drug raids are overwhelmingly forceful using no knock, forced entry, flash grenades, and other excessive shows of force, even for $2 worth of marijuana. Some studies have shown that SWAT teams are called out as much as 40,000 Times a year.
5. Police Can, And Do, Lie To The Public
Many people think that as “authority figures” that police have an obligation to be honest, but that is untrue. The most common example of this is undercover police telling suspects that they are not undercover. But this extends quite a bit. Police commonly use intimidation tactics in order to scare or trick you into giving up your rights to privacy and not to incriminate yourself. They can tell you that a witness has seen you that hasn’t, that a confession was made that never was, that you are legally obligated to do things that you aren’t, like submit to searches. The most effective defense is knowledge, courage, and a camera.
Read all of it here
No comments:
Post a Comment