Filed under: 2nd Amendment, ACLU, Babylon 5, Civil Rights, Constitution, Daily Kos, Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Government, Guns, J. Michael Straczynski, JMS, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, RKBA, Science Fiction, Society, Survival
There’s a line from a Babylon 5 episode (I’m a big fan of the series) which has always stuck with me. Several characters are discussing the political situation on Earth following the imposition of martial law. One character says that people love it – crime is down, things are calm, peaceful.
“Yeah, the peace of the gun,” replies another character.
And that, my friends, is what we have today, here in the US. Specifically, in one small city in Arkansas:
HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark. – Officers armed with military rifles have been stopping and questioning passers-by in a neighborhood plagued by violence that’s been under a 24-hour curfew for a week.
On Tuesday, the Helena-West Helena City Council voted 9-0 to allow police to expand that program into any area of the city, despite a warning from a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas that the police stops were unconstitutional.
Police Chief Fred Fielder said the patrols have netted 32 arrests since they began last week in a 10-block neighborhood in this small town on the banks of the Mississippi River long troubled by poverty. The council said those living in the city want the random shootings and drug-fueled violence to stop, no matter what the cost.
“Now if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I’m fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here,” Mayor James Valley said. “The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution.”
From another source:
Controversial Curfew in Helena-West Helena
Mayor James Valley has given residents in one high-crime neighborhood two choices…. go home or go to jail.
Valley’s issued a mandatory curfew for Second Street and the surrounding blocks — a place he considers to be a “hot spot” for crime. The curfew applies to anyone of any age at any time of day.
* * *
“This turf belongs to taxpaying citizens, not to hustlers and drug dealers….We are going to pop them in the head,” Mayor Valley said.
* * *
The mayor only has the power to issue a 48 hour curfew – so he says when this one expires, he’ll issue another one, and another one.
Predictably, the ACLU is taking a rather dim view of this:
The ACLU has written a letter to Helena-West Helena Mayor James Valley protesting the curfew he imposed on a portion of the city. The mayor says he’s received the letter, but believes it’s intentions are misplaced.
* * *
Mayor James Valley says no constitutional rights have been violated — he says they’re doing what’s needed to clean up the streets.
No doubt. And he’s willing to be reasonable:
Helena-West Helena Curfew Changes
Leaders in Helena-West Helena have come up with a new plan after criticism by the ACLU of the mayor’s recent curfew on a particular part of town.
This past weekend, Mayor James Valley issued a mandatory curfew for Second Street and the surrounding blocks — a place he considers to be a “hot spot” for crime.
* * *
Valley’s curfew will remain in place for all minors, but adults will be allowed out if they can answer questions about their need to be outside their homes.
See, like I said – he’s being perfectly reasonable about this. You can leave your house. If you can explain to authorities why you need to do so.
How could anyone possibly object to this?
*sigh*
This is nothing more or less than the peace of the gun. This is the abrogation of civil liberties as a solution for incompetent governance. Of course people like it – let things get bad enough that they fear for their lives more than they value their liberties, and you can get people to do almost anything. Mayor Valley is just applying the same logic as he applied in mid July when he, well, here’s the news report:
Mayor Orders Dogs Released Into Forest
You’ve heard it before…..Arkansas animal shelters struggling to take care of unwanted dogs and cats. One mayor has decided the best way to fix the problem in his town is to set the animals free.
KARK visited the Helena-West Helena animal shelter back in January. Conditions were dirty and animals were in poor health.
Thursday, KARK learned the town’s mayor James Valley has taken the unconventional approach of releasing the animals into the wild. In a press release, the mayor says “we fed and watered them and took them to the St. Francis National Forest.”
Yeah, he just turned them loose.
Like I said, incompetence. Let things get so bad, and then you can take absurd steps.
Like imposing martial law.
Is this just a trial run for other cities? Other levels of government? Because you can be damned sure that there are power-hungry people watching this situation very closely, and drawing their own conclusions. If a small-town mayor can get away with it, why not a large city mayor? Or a governor? Or a president?
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI and Daily Kos.)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Daily Kos, General Musings, Government, Guns, Politics, Society, Violence
Last week, in the investigation of a major drug distribution network, police staged a no-knock entry into a private residence. They seized over 30 pounds of marijuana. Two guard dogs who were a threat to the police had to be killed in the execution of the raid. Two people in the residence at the time were handcuffed at the scene and questioned as to their involvement in the crime.
Sound pretty straight forward? More or less standard procedure when police are investigating a large quantity of narcotics?
Well, how about this version of the story?
It now appears that the entire raid on Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo may have been illegal. Last week, police stormed Calvo’s home without knocking, shot and killed his two black labs, and questioned him and his mother-in-law at gunpoint over a delivered package of marijuana that police now concede may have been intended for someone else.
The Washington Post reports that the police didn’t even bother to get a no-knock warrant, which means the tactics they used were illegal:
A Prince George’s police spokesman said last week that a Sheriff’s Office SWAT team and county police narcotics officers were operating under such a [no-knock] warrant when they broke down the door of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo, shooting and killing his black Labrador retrievers.
But a review of the warrant indicates that police neither sought nor received permission from Circuit Court Judge Albert W. Northrup to enter without knocking. Northrup found probable cause to suspect that drugs might be in the house and granted police a standard search warrant.
“There’s nothing in the four corners of the warrant saying anything about the Calvos being a threat to law enforcement,” said Calvo’s attorney, Timothy Maloney. “This was a lawless act by law enforcement.”
Oh, a couple more things to fill in the blanks. One of the labs shot was running away from the police:
As the police came in, Calvo said, they shot his 7-year-old black Labrador retriever, Payton, near the front door and then his 4-year-old dog, Chase, also a black Lab, as the dog ran into a back room. Walking through his house yesterday, Calvo pointed out a bullet hole in the drywall where the younger dog had been shot.
The police were the ones who delivered the package:
Calvo’s home was raided after he brought a package addressed to his wife inside from his front porch. Police had been tracking the package since a dog sniffed the presence of drugs in Arizona. It was delivered to the house by police posing as deliverymen and left on the porch on the instruction of Calvo’s mother-in-law.
Police are required to provide a copy of any search warrant at the time the search is conducted. They got around to doing this several days later:
Another issue that could arise in court is whether officers provided Calvo a copy of the warrant at the time of the raid, as required by law. Maloney [attorney for Calvo] said they did not, even though a detective signed a sworn statement to the judge indicating that he had. Instead, the detective brought the warrant to Calvo several days later, Maloney said.
*Sigh*
Let’s recap: In the course of investigating a suspected drug distribution network known to be using false deliveries to private homes, police intercept one such package. Posing as delivery personnel, they take it to the home of Cheye Calvo. Where they are told to leave it on the porch. (Who the hell would leave an expected shipment of 32 pounds of pot sitting on the porch???) When Mayor Calvo gets home, he takes the package inside and sets it aside, leaving it unopened. A short time later, a SWAT team kicks in his door, and shoots his dogs, rather than having coordinated with local police to gain access to the suspect and home without the need to resort to violent tactics. Calvo and his MIL are handcuffed and interrogated at the premises for hours. No warrant authorizing the raid is produced until days after the event.
One more quote from the Washington Post story yesterday:
Were Calvo or his wife, Trinity Tomsic, to be charged in the case, the issue of the search could come up if prosecutors tried to introduce the box of marijuana as evidence. More likely, experts said, the issue could form the basis of a civil rights lawsuit filed by the family against the county in the incident.
No shit. The authorities responsible for this debacle are facing a huge lawsuit. And they’re damned lucky that the only bodies on the floor were dogs (as tragic as that itself is).
And consider for just a moment how this situation might have been reported differently were Calvo and his wife black or Hispanic, had they not lived in a nice middle-class home, had he not been well established and politically connected. Consider for just a moment if this situation had happened to you.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to Daily Kos and UTI.)
Makes it sound almost reasonable, doesn’t it?
Small problem – the ‘he’ was a 16 year old kid who had fallen from a highway overpass and had broken his back. So, naturally, since he didn’t respond to the authoritah of the cops on the scene, the cops had to Taser him. 19 times.
See, kids, never make the mistake of not instantly jumping up to comply with instructions given by a cop. Just because you’re severely injured is no excuse.
And of course, the multiple “rides” on the Taser didn’t help his injuries. I’m sure there was the usual spasmodic response that happens when about 50,000 volts of juice hit you. And it also delayed surgery to correct the damage of the initial fall:
His dad says the use of the stun gun delayed what would have been immediate surgery by two days.
“The ‘Tasering’ increased his white blood cell count and caused him to have a temperature so they could not go into the operation.”
I smell lawsuit.
But that’s not the only such incident from down this way. Just last week we had a very similar thing happen in my hometown:
Police review Taser use
Captain says device escalated situation.A man injured in a Taser-related fall from the Providence Road pedestrian bridge over Interstate 70 remained in critical condition last night at University Hospital as Columbia police sought to defend their use of force in the incident that began with a man threatening to jump from the overpass.
Phillip McDuffy, 45, suffered two broken arms, a fractured skull and possibly a broken jaw in the fall, Columbia police Capt. Zim Schwartze said yesterday. Police estimate McDuffy fell about 15 feet onto a concrete embankment beside I-70, landing on his right side after the 1½-hour standoff.
Yeah, they didn’t want him to hurt himself, so they Tased him. Gee, too bad that he fell and broke all those bones. Who would have expected *that* to happen?
The police use of Tasers is just simply out of control in this country. Seriously. My dad was a cop, and a lot of my family’s friends growing up were cops. They’ve got a tough job. I know that the use of Tasers have protected the lives of officers. But this is insane. It is no longer just the odd asshole who happens to make the Greatest Hits of Police Abuse on YouTube. It has now become commonplace for the police to grab their Taser anytime someone doesn’t immediately do what they’re told. Time to get rid of the things, nationwide.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to Daily Kos and my blog.)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Daily Kos, Government, Politics, Predictions, Society, Terrorism, Travel, Violence
The Washington Times ran an interesting story last week:
Want some torture with your peanuts?
Just when you thought you’ve heard it all…
A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser®. According to this promotional video found at the Lamperd Less Lethal, Inc. website, the bracelet would be worn by all airline passengers (video also shown below).
This bracelet would:
• Take the place of an airline boarding pass
• Contain personal information about the traveler
• Be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage
• Shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes
The Electronic ID Bracelet, as it’s referred to, would be worn by every traveler “until they disembark the flight at their destination.” Yes, you read that correctly. Every airline passenger would be tracked by a government-funded GPS, containing personal, private and confidential information, and would shock the customer worse than an electronic dog collar if the passenger got out of line.
“Just when you thought you’ve heard it all… ” indeed.
Now, I’m not a big fan of the Washington Times, so I checked the website mentioned in the article. Where I found this statement:
The bracelets remain inactive until a hijacking situation has been identified. At such time a designated crew member will activate the bracelets making them capable of delivering the punitive measure – but only to those that need to be restrained. We believe that all passengers will welcome deliverance from a hijacking, as will the families, carriers, insurance providers etc. The F-16 on the wingtip is not to reassure the passengers during a hijacking but rather to shoot them down. Besides activation using the grid screen, the steward / stewardess will have a laser activator that can activate any bracelet as needed by simply pointing the laser at the bracelet – that laser dot only needs to be within 10 inches of the bracelet to activate it.
Got that? “This is for your own good”.
Never mind that there are dozens of potential problems I can see how this technology could be abused, inadvertently misused, or accidentally triggered. Never mind that Tasers use a similar type of electro-muscular disruption technology and have been suspect in the deaths of perhaps hundreds. Never mind that it is likely that someone wanting to hijack a jet would figure out a way to disable such a bracelet (it’s activated by a laser pointer? Just wrap something around the bracelet when you move to act.) Consider solely what this does to you: makes you someone else’s pet or slaughter animal.
Airline travel is grim and degrading enough as it is, and most of the airlines are struggling to avoid bankruptcy. If they decide to go forward and implement the use of this kind of technology, a significant percentage of travelers will give up on flying altogether (it’s actually a shame that likely a majority would probably play along, thanks to the conditioning we’ve already received).
I know I sure as hell would give up flying under those conditions.
Sheesh.
Jim Downey
(Via dKos. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: ACLU, Civil Rights, Constitution, Daily Kos, Government, Politics, Privacy, Society, Terrorism, YouTube
. . . and weep for the Fourth Amendment:
And people wonder why Congress has an approval rate of 9%.
Sheesh.
UPDATE: FISA passed in the Senate, 69 – 28:
WASHINGTON – The Senate approved and sent to the White House a bill overhauling controversial rules on secret government eavesdropping Wednesday, bowing to President Bush’s demand to protect telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.
The relatively one-sided vote, 69-28, came only after a lengthy and bitter debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks. It ended almost a year of wrangling over surveillance rules and the president’s warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The House passed the same bill last month, and President Bush is expected to sign it soon. He scheduled a 4 p.m. EDT White House statement to praise the passage.
Jim Downey
(Via Daily Kos. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Fireworks, Government, Heinlein Centennial, Religion, Society, Violence
(I was busy with the Heinlein Centennial last year for the Fourth, and didn’t post anything. I thought this year I would post something I wrote two years ago, and I hope you enjoy it.
Happy Fourth!
Jim Downey)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thoughts on This Day
One birthday, when I was nine or ten, I woke with anticipation of the presents I would receive. Still in my pajamas I rushed into the kitchen where my parents were having coffee, expecting to get the loot which was rightfully mine. My father happily handed over a small, wrapped box. I opened it eagerly, to find a little American flag on a wooden stick. My father said that since my birthday was July 4th, he thought I would appreciate the gift.
Horror-struck first at not getting anything better, then a moment later at my own greed, I guiltily told my parents that I thought it was a fine gift.
After a moment, of course, my folks brought out my real presents, and there was a fair amount of good-natured teasing and laughing about the little trick they had played on me.
That was almost 40 years ago, and I can no longer tell you what presents I received that day. But the lesson in expectations and perspective my dad taught me that morning always remained with me. My dad had been a Marine, fought in Korea, and was a deeply patriotic cop who was killed while on duty a couple of years after that birthday. I have no idea what happened to that little flag on a stick, but I do still have the flag taken from my father’s coffin, carefully and perfectly folded at the graveside when we buried him.
I’ve never looked at the American flag without remembering what a fine gift it really is and, as so many others have written, what it represents in terms of sacrifice. I love my country, as any Firecracker Baby is probably destined to do. You just can’t ignore all that early training of patriotism, fireworks, and presents all tied up together.
But that doesn’t mean that I am blinded by patriotism. As I’ve matured and gained life experience, I’ve learned many other lessons. Lessons about tempering expectations, living with occasional disappointment, accepting that things don’t always work out the way you plan no matter how hard you work, how good your intentions, or how deserving you are. Still, you learn, grow, and do the best you can. This, it seems, is also the story of America. I believe we are an exceptional people, holding great potential, with our best years still to come. But nothing is guaranteed. We must honestly, and sometimes painfully, confront our failures, learn from them, and move on. The original founders of our country were brilliant, but flawed as all humans are flawed. Some of their errors led directly to the Civil War, that great bloody second revolution of the human spirit. That they made mistakes does not negate their greatness; rather, it shows us our potential even though we are not perfect. They knew, as we should know, that only we are responsible for our self-determination. Not a king, not a God, not a ruling political class. Us.
Today we’ve been gifted with a small box with a flag inside. A token of our history. Let us not take it for granted. Let us not think that the thing itself is more important than what it represents. Let us look on it and declare our own responsibility, our own self-determination.
Happy Independence Day.
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, General Musings, Government, NYT, Preparedness, Religion, Society
Here in the Midwest there is a real and significant problem with meth – to the point of paranoia on the part of both the population and government. This has led to laws restricting access to certain precursor drugs and chemicals, reports of environmental damage (meth labs tend to produce some really nasty chemical contamination), and the development of special task forces of local, state and federal police agencies to target meth production and distribution. It is the War on (Some) Drugs on steroids.
So it is fairly easy to see how something like this can happen:
Town Finds Drug Agent Is Really an Impostor
GERALD, Mo. — Like so many rural communities in the country’s middle, this tiny town had wrestled for years with the woes of methamphetamine. Then, several months ago, a federal agent showed up.
Busts began. Houses were ransacked. People, in handcuffs on their front lawns, named names. To some, like Mayor Otis Schulte, who considers the county around Gerald, population 1,171, “a meth capital of the United States,” the drug scourge seemed to be fading at last.
* * *
But after a reporter for the local weekly newspaper made a few calls about that claim, Gerald’s anti-drug campaign abruptly unraveled after less than five months. Sergeant Bill, it turned out, was no federal agent, but Bill A. Jakob, an unemployed former trucking company owner, a former security guard, a former wedding-performing minister, a former small-town cop from 23 miles down the road.
Ah, yes, that is a bit of a problem.
Read the whole piece, and you’ll likely be astonished that this guy was able to pull off this con job for so long. He had no documentation. He claimed that he didn’t need a warrant to enter people’s homes and businesses. He got by on cop-like swagger, a black T-shirt that said “POLICE”, a cop-wannabe car, and a short haircut.
Oh, and on the fact that the local police and government wanted him to succeed for their own purposes.
See, this is the thing. Pesky things like due process and respecting the civil rights of people slows down drug investigations. Or terror investigations. This can frustrate cops at about every level, who see a problem and honestly want to fix it. Along comes someone who says that he has the solution, and it is easy to believe him.
This is what the Wars on Drugs and Terror have brought: a willingness to trust authority at the cost of civil liberties. A willingness to cut corners to ‘meet the threat’. A perception that we’re in a crisis, and only by extraordinary means can we survive.
It starts by recognizing a problem. Then, because identifying and targeting a problem brings with it increased budget and power for the agency/department tasked with dealing with the problem, there is a tendency to inflate the problem, convince the public that the problem is growing, or deeper than initially thought. Things spiral, slowly at first, then with increasing speed. Unchecked, this positive-feedback loop takes on a life of its own, until it culminates in stupidity and horror.
This is the basic mechanism of what happened with the Inquisition. With the Salem Witch Trials. With the Red Scare(s). And now with the Wars on Drugs and Terror.
Think that I am over simplying? Here’s what Bill Jakob’s attorney, one Joel Schwartz, said about how his client got into this mess:
“It was an innocent evolution, where he helped with one minor thing, then one more on top of that, and all of the sudden, everyone thought he was a federal agent,” Mr. Schwartz said. “I’m not saying this was legal or lawful. But look, they were very, very effective while he was present. I don’t think Gerald is having the drug problem they were having. I’ve heard from some residents who were thrilled that he was there.”
That right there explains why and how these things happen. The way to stop them is well known: legal protection and due process. Those mechanisms were developed slowly over the centuries, with notable culminations in Magna Carta, our own Constitution, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We ignore those protections at our peril.
Jim Downey
Cross posted to UTI.
Communion Of Dreams 