FOP Lodges Embrace Enhanced Professionalism And Training Like The NEA Embraces Weight Loss

noahpinion  |  So far I’ve talked about police “professionalization” purely in terms of hours of training. But it’s also important to get the right kind of training — for example, the “warrior mentality” training that some cops currently receive seems a lot less likely to be useful than the “procedural justice” training that has been shown to reduce violence.

And in fact, I think professionalization should probably go beyond training, to include education. Usually, when we think of a “profession”, we think of something that requires a degree. In the U.S., policing tends to be a blue-collar, low-education profession — in California, only 42% of officers have even a bachelor’s degree.

I’m all for expanding opportunity for American workers who didn’t go to college. But policing seems like a special case, because it’s about much more than wages and work — it’s about public safety and the legitimacy of U.S. institutions. Being able to sit through some lectures on Plato and do a bit of algebra homework shouldn’t be a requirement to get a decent, good-paying job in the U.S., but it seems like a pretty low bar for the people who are responsible for deciding when to deal out violent death to citizens on the street. We make teachers get a college degree, so why not cops? In fact, many teachers get a Master’s in Education after college; we should think about expanding the use of Master’s degrees in law enforcement as well.

Requiring higher education works through at least two separate channels. First, it creates positive selection effects — it means that the police of the future would come from a more educated, intellectual subset of the populace. (The military already does this with the AFQT and ASVAB.) But it also changes people’s lifestyles in generally positive ways. A number of studies have established a causal link between higher education and healthier lifestyles, leading to reduced mortality and better overall health. It seems likely that more education would also give cops a healthier mental and emotional outlook as well, which would result not just in less confrontational interactions with civilians, but in better overall policing and crime reduction as well.

Again, requiring cops to get more education would raise the costs of policing in the United States, because educated workers command higher salaries. This would not sit well with some activists, but it seems to me like something worth spending money on.

So I think that when we talk about professionalizing the police, it should mean exactly that: Making policing a profession rather than just a job. Doctors, teachers, lawyers, etc. all serve specialized and critical functions in our society, for which we require not just extensive training but also formalized and specialized education. I fail to see any good reason why we shouldn’t treat law enforcement as a similarly critical function, deserving of similar investments of time, money, and care.

American Policing Does Not Exist To Protect And Serve Citizens

welcometohellworld  |  The other day I asked if people had ever been helped by cops when they’ve been robbed. The consensus was lol no. They’ll probably just show up and shoot your dog many people joked which is funny because it’s true but also not funny because it’s true. Read all the other replies down below. First let’s talk about a recent police murder in LA.

Look at this press release put out by the LAPD about “an officer involved shooting” from last week. It reads in part:

As the officers arrived at the location, they began a search for the suspect. During that search, officers located a female who was suffering from various injuries and bleeding. They encountered the suspect a short distance away and an officer involved shooting occurred. The suspect was struck by gunfire and taken into custody. Fire department paramedics responded and determined the suspect deceased at scene.

Unbeknownst to the officers, a 14-year-old girl was in a changing room behind a wall, that was directly behind the suspect and out of the officers’ view. She was in the changing area with her mother when the officers encountered the suspect and the officer involved shooting occurred. During a search for additional suspects and victims, officers found the girl and discovered she had been struck by gunfire. She was pronounced dead at the scene. At this preliminary phase of the investigation, it is believed that victim was struck by one of the rounds fired by an officer at the suspect.

Police Chief Michel R. Moore commented: “This chaotic incident resulting in the death of an innocent child is tragic and devastating for everyone involved…”

Here’s how the media relations department initially described the incident.

Update: As officers contacted the suspect and OIS occurred, one of the officer’s rounds penetrated a wall that was behind the suspect, beyond that wall was a dressing room. Officers search the dressing room and found a 14 year old female victim who was struck by gunfire.

— LAPD PIO (@LAPDPIO) December 24, 2021

Setting aside the standard exonerative tense always used by police to absolve themselves of agency in any situation the picture painted here is one of a highly dangerous and “chaotic” situation right? You might read this and easily imagine the officer intervening in the midst of a deadly attack during which a tragic but accidental death also occurred. Well you wouldn’t but one might read it that way.

Here’s how the NYT originally reported it for what it’s worth.

The fucking bullet did it.

What the police body camera video footage actually shows is that the chaos here was set into motion by the police themselves (no surprise there) and by one cop in particular who surveyed the situation for mere seconds then decided to fire off his assault rifle in the middle of a crowded store at a man who posed no threat to anyone else at the time. No warning was given.

It’s a hard video to watch but you should do so anyway.

Content Warning: Bad Police Shooting.

Indefensible. pic.twitter.com/pgGbZqH8xn

— Film The Police LA (@FilmThePoliceLA) December 28, 2021

The shooter the last cop on the scene barrels through all the other cops — a couple of whom seem to be wielding more appropriately non-lethal weapons — pushes them aside and immediately starts blasting.

The anguished screams you can hear after the shooting are from the mother of the girl who the cop shot to death through the dressing room wall.

Valentina Orellana-Peralta was trying on quinceañera dresses when she was killed by the police. She came to the States from Chile earlier this year and “she dreamed of becoming an American citizen and an engineer, and looked forward to seeing LeBron James play basketball in person,” the Guardian reported.

What Exactly Is This SCORPION Unit - Will Those In Charge Be Held Accountable?

psrmemphis  |  Memphis police officers watched as a man with a handgun bulging from his right hip walked past them and into a convenience store where he attempted to make a purchase.

It was busy that Friday night in Parkway Village, the day before several of these same officers would become entangled in a deadly encounter with Tyre Nichols – a violent altercation that resulted in the 29-year-old motorist’s death in a hospital bed three days later.

The action grew intense – and violent – on this night, too.

Members of the Memphis Police Department’s SCORPION Team One swooped onto this gas station parking lot when they saw some young men loitering about.

After witnessing what they believed was a drug transaction, officers chased down one man and, during a struggle, pepper-sprayed him. They arrested another man who, like Nichols, had no criminal record. Carrying a pistol in his belt, he apparently violated the edges of Tennessee’s permitless carry law by entering a business displaying signs that guns are prohibited.

“Suspect … refused to cooperate and listen to detectives and immediately started screaming,’’ Officer Demetrius Haley wrote in a report charging the 22-year-old man with misdemeanor offenses of disorderly conduct and unlawfully possessing a gun.

An investigation by the Institute for Public Service Reporting found that Haley and four other officers terminated by MPD last week in connection with Nichols’ death were affiliated with a special unit called SCORPION, a data-driven initiative that identifies crime hotspots and attempts to suppress them with saturation patrols.

Records show the unit’s aggressive tactics often trigger volatile interactions with members of the public.

Launched in 2021 by MPD Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis as part of Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s war on crime, the Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods, or SCORPION, unit identifies upticks in motor vehicle theft and violent crime and then targets those areas with patrolling SCORPION officers – at times in unmarked cars. An opens in a new windowMPD video promoting the unit appears to show some of the officers dressed in plainclothes.

Discussing SCORPION in a January 2022 address, opens in a new windowStrickland said the unit of “four, 10-man teams” had made 566 arrests in its first three months alone, seizing more than “$103,000 in cash, 270 vehicles and 253 weapons.”

The mayor said then the unit targets homicides, aggravated assaults, robberies and carjackings.

Yet dozens of reports reviewed by the Institute for Public Service Reporting found SCORPION officers also appear to engage in “zero-tolerance” or “proactive policing”-type activities, at times stopping motorists for tinted windows or for failing to wear seat belts and confronting or arresting others for loitering, gambling, drug possession and other low-level offenses – controversial tactics now at the heart of a national debate on how best to balance public safety and community trust.

A thorough analysis of SCORPION’s activities was not possible on deadline for this story. Some reports show officers removing dangerous individuals from the streets. Policy experts warn, however, that such aggressive tactics, if not properly supervised, can lead to discrimination and abuse, and can erode faith in police.

“They can be very effective,’’ said former Memphis Police Director E. Winslow “Buddy” Chapman. “But they must be very closely controlled and monitored.

“The danger is exactly what happened in this case,’’ he said, referring to the death of Nichols.

Cop City Protester Killing Reveals Treacherous Black Faces In High Places...,

BAR  |  What could possibly go wrong with a $90 million, 85-acre police training ground that the community doesn't want? Someone could be killed, and that happened before Atlanta's awful Cop City project has even been built.

The city of Atlanta, Georgia is often presented as a “Mecca” for Black people. Every mayor of that city who has held office since 1974 has been Black, and celebrities have made it their home. Major Historically Black Colleges and Universities are located there. Atlanta is thought of as a place where Black people thrive.

Except it is like every other major American city, where Black people are more likely to be low wage workers or among the unhoused. The Black people in leadership positions are allowed to occupy them precisely because they have taken a pledge not to upset the established political order.

These caveats must be kept in mind when discussing the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, known popularly as Cop City. The purported Black Mecca municipality is spending $30 million to construct an 85-acre militarized police training camp in the Weelaunee Forest. Cop City will feature a mock town with a gas station, bank, bar, nightclub, school, residential homes, apartments, park, and splash pad. There will also be a warehouse on site for training in “crowd control.”  A survey of area residents indicates that 98% of them are opposed to the facility which will be constructed by the Atlanta Police Foundation. The Foundation has pledged to raise an additional $60 million for the project from corporate donors.

The impetus for this theft of public land and training ground for brutality began in 2020. In that year millions of people across the country rose up in protest after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. But Atlanta then experienced its own rebellion when police there killed Rayshard Brooks. Brooks was killed by police after an altercation which began when he fell asleep in his car in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. Such circumstances are common in police killings which usually happen during traffic stops, mental health crises, and even calls for help. Only one-third of police killings occur during the commission of violent crimes.

Brooks' death created another rebellion, this time in Atlanta itself, which years before was falsely dubbed, the “city too busy to hate.” The response was classic, as the city’s white fathers ordered their Black puppets to crack down and thus the idea for Cop City was born. Its funders are a who’s who of corporate giants including Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Chick-Fil-A, Home Depot, United Parcel Service, Delta airlines, Amazon and Waffle House. All of these entities claim to have some sort of racial equity program and pledge workplace diversity. Some of their CEOs made grand gestures like “taking a knee” in 2020, but when not creating feel good photo opportunities they use police foundations to help fund police departments across the country. These efforts are little more than slush funds which help police departments spend more money without any accountability to the public.

The protests against Cop City also attracted forest defenders , who camped out to save the old growth trees from destruction. But their peaceful protest of civil disobedience was met with brute force. Some of them have been arrested and charged with “domestic terrorism.” But the worst was yet to come. On January 18, 2023 a forest defender named Manuel Esteban Paez Terán was killed by the police.They claim that Paez Terán shot one of them first. But there has been no independent investigation and conveniently none of the police or members of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation who raided the protectors’ encampment were wearing body cameras. Cop City is killing people before it even exists.

Of course protests ensued after Paez Terán was killed and there were arrests. Mayor Andre Dickens channeled the segregationists of old when he said, "It should be noted that these individuals were not Atlanta or Georgia residents. Most of them traveled into our city to wreak havoc." The representatives of the Black Mecca have resurrected the old “outside agitator” trope.

Police surveillance in Georgia didn’t start with Cop City. In 2007 the plans for what is now Operation Shield were put in place. More than 10,000 video cameras and license plate readers make Atlanta the most surveilled city in the country and one of the most surveilled in the world. Corporate funders to the Atlanta Police Foundation paid for this hyper policing too.

Cop City shows the nexus between oligarchic control, the police state, and their errand girls and boys in the Black political class. The end result of their dirty dealing is the Cop City monstrosity. Police don’t need a training center. They are already trained. They know quite well that their job is to keep Black people under physical control and lock them up as often as possible. A mock town teaching riot control is the last thing Black people need. Haphazard brutality would be transformed into an efficient and well oiled machine.

Obviously Cop City should be opposed, but so should corporate control over our lives, and treacherous Black faces in high places. There will surely be more killings if Cop City becomes a reality.

These Assclowns Will Be Convicted Without Ever Revealing Who Authorized Their "Scorpion Unit"?

 

localmemphis |Five former MPD officers indicted & charged

This comes after all five former Memphis Police officers who were fired following the death of Tyre Nichols were indicted on charges and booked into the Shelby County Jail Thursday morning.

WATCH: “This could’ve been prevented if Internal Affairs took action like I asked.”

DA @SteveMulroy901 confirmed the cops were with @MEM_PoliceDept’s “SCORPION UNIT” — this man was hassled by them… called IA… SILENCE. Now #TyreNichols is dead.

MORE: https://t.co/ZCfj3fE8Zx pic.twitter.com/3hk5vsaj7u

— The Memphis Holler (@MemphisHoller) January 26, 2023

The officers were fired last week after MPD said they were found to be "directly responsible for the physical abuse of Mr. Nichols.”  They were identified as Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Bean, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr. and Justin Smith.

Haley, Smith, Bean, Mills, and Martin are each charged with second degree murder, aggravated assault – acting in concert, aggravated kidnapping causing bodily injury, aggravated kidnapping while possessing a weapon, official misconduct thru unauthorized exercising of official power, official misconduct thru failure to perform a duty imposed by law, and official oppression.

Read the full indictment HERE.

The TBI said all five are in custody in the Shelby County Jail. Bond for Haley and Martin was set at $350,000, while bond for Bean, Mills and Smith is set at $250,000.

Charges explained

Mulroy explained the charges during his news conference, saying second-degree murder is a knowing killing, and appropriate in this case. 

In a news release, the D.A. said "first-degree murder usually falls into one of the following two categories: Premeditated, intentional killings and felony murder. Second-degree murder is generally either an unplanned, intentional killing (reacting in the heat of the moment when angry) or a death caused by a reckless disregard for human life."

He said if it was a legal detention, it became illegal at some point... and aggravated means that someone was harmed. 

Mulroy said official misconduct means they intentionally or knowingly exercised unlawful authority, and that law enforcement officers should prevent misconduct.

Mulroy said official oppression is knowing mistreatment during the course of carrying out official duties.

Academics Intentionally Making Up Shit Opportunistically Create Confusion

MIT  | Since 2014, viral images of Black people being killed at the hands of the police—Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, and many, many others—have convinced much of the public that the American criminal legal system is broken. In the summer of 2020, nationwide protests against police racism and violence in the wake of George Floyd’s murder were, according to some analysts, the largest social movement in the history of the United States.² Activists and academics have demanded defunding the police and reallocating the funds to substitutes or alternatives.³ And others have called for abolishing the police altogether.⁴

Here is the article in which Harvard profs call for greatest expansion of militarized police surveillance bureaucracy in Western history. Below I discuss the flagrant ethical and intellectual problems and how elite academia can be so dangerous. https://t.co/Cq1fFCdWR2

— Alec Karakatsanis (@equalityAlec) November 3, 2022

It has become common knowledge that the police do not solve serious crime, they focus far too much on petty offenses, and they are far too heavy-handed and brutal in their treatment of Americans—especially poor, Black people. This is the so-called paradox of under-protection and over-policing that has characterized American law enforcement since emancipation.⁵

The American criminal legal system is unjust and inefficient. But, as we argue in this essay, over-policing is not the problem. In fact, the American criminal legal system is characterized by an exceptional kind of under-policing, and a heavy reliance on long prison sentences, compared to other developed nations. In this country, roughly three people are incarcerated per police officer employed. The rest of the developed world strikes a diametrically opposite balance between these twin arms of the penal state, employing roughly three and a half times more police officers than the number of people they incarcerate. We argue that the United States has it backward. Justice and efficiency demand that we strike a balance between policing and incarceration more like that of the rest of the developed world. We call this the “First World Balance.”

We defend this idea in much more detail in a forthcoming book titled What’s Wrong with Mass Incarceration. This essay offers a preliminary sketch of some of the arguments in the book. In the spirit of conversation and debate, in this essay we err deliberately on the side of comprehensiveness rather than argumentative rigor. One of us is a social scientist, and the other is a philosopher and legal scholar. Our primary goal for this research project, and especially in this essay, is not to convince readers that we are correct—but rather to encourage a more explicit discussion of the empirical and normative bases of some pressing debates about the American criminal legal system. Even if our answers prove unsound, we hope that the combination of empirical social science and analytic moral and political philosophy we contribute can help illuminate what alternative answers to those questions might have to look like to be sound. In fact, because much of this essay (and the underlying book project) strikes a pessimistic tone, we would be quite happy to be wrong about much of what we argue here.

In the first part of this essay, we outline five comparative facts that contradict much of the prevailing way of thinking about what is distinctive about the American criminal legal system. In the second part, we draw out the normative implications of those facts and make the case for the First World Balance.

American Police Don't Exist To Protect And Serve You...,

theintercept  |  The more details that emerge about how police responded to the massacre in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, the clearer it is that the already well-funded, heavily armed and amply trained law enforcement officers on the scene failed to save the lives of 19 children and two of their teachers.

Here’s what we know so far, based on haunting videos from the scene outside Robb Elementary School and statements from police officials themselves. Salvador Ramos murdered 21 people. Despite earlier, misleading claims from law enforcement officials, it appears that no police officers engaged with the shooter before he entered the school. Instead of rushing in to protect the children and staff when reports of a gunman approaching the school were made at 11:30 a.m., police instead waited outside and aggressively confronted parents who were begging them to enter. The parents were threatened with arrest — one cop brandished a Taser — as they attempted to access the school to save their kids themselves.

One mother who was urging the police to enter the building, Angeli Rose Gomez, was handcuffed. When she was released, she managed to run into the school, grab her kids, and bring them out to safety, which is the alleged job of the police. According to one Texas Department of Public Safety lieutenant interviewed by local news, some officers did run into the school — but only to grab their own children.

The Border Patrol SWAT team that eventually engaged with and killed the shooter — 40 minutes to an hour after first shots were reported — was not able to break down the door to the classroom where the killer was holed up with more children. A staff member had to unlock it with a key. According to the chilling firsthand account of a fourth grader in the room, cops told children to yell “if you need help”; when one little girl did, the gunman immediately shot her.

The police failed at protecting the schoolchildren, yes, but we should not be under the illusion that this is an example of the cops failing at their jobs. As far we can tell from reports, police at the scene acted as they usually do, in accordance with standard policing practice: Rather than risk a hail of gunfire to stop the killer, they kept themselves safe.

As Akela Lacy noted on Wednesday in The Intercept, the approach is not an outlier: “As the number of school resource officers has ballooned over the last two decades, so has the number of school shootings. There is no evidence that police have the ability to stop these shootings from happening.”

Police Protection For Cowardly Uvalde IQ-75 LARPS In Uniform?

dailybeast  |  As families in this rural town prepare to bury the 19 children and two adults gunned down in a brutal school massacre this week, they are left shell-shocked by not only the devastation the gunman wrought, but by the revelation that, as they see it, those who were sworn to protect and serve them did just the opposite.

“While those babies were in there dying, they stood there with their thumbs in their asses trying to figure out what to do,” said Roger Garza, a friend of the family of teacher Irma Garcia, who was killed by the gunman as she tried to shield her fourth-grade students.

“I mean don’t we pay them to rush in and protect people? Somebody needs to be held accountable for this,” Garza told The Daily Beast.

“We were waiting outside and yelling about how we wanted to go in and storm the classroom,” said Javier Cazares, whose fourth-grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack. “I came running and the police were in a panic trying to figure out what to do. Now we know children, including my daughter, were dying in there. That is what hurts. Knowing they could have maybe protected her and those other kids.”

Cazares wants to know why they didn’t do anything; it is a question that everyone here is asking.

“While those children sat in there with this madman, as many as 19 officers had to think about what to do,” said Ignacio Perez, who was doing his best to comfort Cazares. “I promise you these parents had a plan and were ready to act on it. Where was the bravery? In those kids. That is where it was.”

Amid the growing outrage over the botched police response, authorities in Uvalde have reportedly called in reinforcements from around the state to protect the local officers from potential threats.

The additional cops, from various agencies in other jurisdictions, will supplement Uvalde’s ranks for an unspecified period, and will also provide security for the mayor, officials with the Texas Police Chiefs Association told CBS DFW.

In the immediate aftermath of the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary, Gov. Greg Abbott lauded the police response, insisting that officers had acted heroically and saved numerous lives. But he lashed out angrily when a different narrative later emerged, saying he was “livid” over having been “misled.” Federal agents on the scene said no one seemed to be in charge, and at one point, agonized parents waiting outside considered rushing the school themselves.

One Uvalde cop claimed there “was almost a mutiny,” telling People magazine that he and his colleagues “felt like cowards” for not storming the building earlier.

 

 

How'd I Miss The Canadian Intelligence Community Assessment That The Freedom Convoy Is Russian?

dailymail |  Canada's state broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, is spreading a bizarre and unfounded conspiracy theory that 'Russian actors' are behind the 'Freedom Convoy' trucker vaccine mandate protests currently being held in Ottawa and at the US border.

During a broadcast Friday on the CBC - which is funded by the Canadian government - anchor Nil Koksal offered Parliament member Marco Mendicino the theory, citing the country's current relationship with the Ukraine, a former Soviet nation currently at odds with Russia, as evidence.

'Given Canada's support of Ukraine, in this current crisis with Russia, I don't know if it's far-fetched to ask,' Koksal told Mendicino, the county's minister of public safety, during the Friday interview. 'But there is concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows. Perhaps even instigating it from, from the outset.'

The Freedom Convoy, a coalition of 50,000 drivers protesting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers that formed last month, has been described as a grassroots movement and has no known ties to Russia.  

Protests began in Ottawa last month on January 23 and at the US-Canada border in Alberta on Saturday and are still going strong, despite warnings from Royal Canadian Mounted Police that things will get ugly for revelers if they do not abandon their 'Freedom Convoy' campaign, where tens of thousands of truckers have blocked crucial roads at both locations with their parked vehicles.

Trudeau, 50, has refused to meet with the group to discuss their qualms with his new policy, which was put into effect in January and requires Canadian truckers to be vaccinated in order to enter and exit the country on their routes.  

On Tuesday, after four days of protests, police threatened to arrest truckers blockading the US border in Alberta unless they leave the area immediately.

Once The Shine Of Trust Is Off Authoriteh - Its Mob Tactics Become Plain For All To See

 LATimes |  On paper, the deputies are scattered around the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in various assignments. One is supposed to be working patrol in Lancaster, another in West Hollywood. A third is assigned to a gang crime unit.

In reality, though, the group of nine men and women make up a little-known team of investigators formed by Sheriff Alex Villanueva and other top sheriff’s officials.

Much of what they do, by design, is a mystery to the public and even to most within the department. But as some of the investigations handled by the team have come to light, a common thread has emerged: Their targets are outspoken critics of Villanueva or the department.

The unit, named the Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail, has pursued a long-running investigation into one of Villanueva’s most vocal critics, L.A. County Inspector General Max Huntsman, and others despite sheriff’s officials being told by the FBI and state law enforcement officials that it appeared no crimes had been committed, a senior sheriff’s official said.

The team also has an open criminal inquiry into a nonprofit that is run by a member of a county board that oversees the sheriff and is associated with county Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, both of whom have clashed fiercely with Villanueva and called for his resignation.

Concern over the team has caused consternation both inside and outside the department. Even the union representing rank-and-file deputies put out a warning that a member of the detail was using “unconventional tactics” to question deputies. 

George Gascón, the county’s district attorney, decided he wanted nothing to do with the unit after sheriff’s officials proposed the two agencies create a task force to collaborate on public corruption investigations.

“He’s only targeting political enemies,” Gascón told The Times about Villanueva. “It was obvious that was not the kind of work I wanted to engage in, so we declined.”

Shortly after Gascón refused to partner with the Sheriff’s Department, Villanueva came out as a strong supporter of a recall campaign to kick the district attorney out of office.

The unit has spurred a bitter confrontation between Villanueva and the Civilian Oversight Commission, which oversees the sheriff and his agency. Commission members say they fear the sheriff is using it to intimidate people who challenge him and to score points in personal vendettas, not conduct legitimate inquiries into possible crimes.

Why Don't Police Have To Get Public Approval Before Getting Expensive New "Public Safety" Toys?

gothamist |  Thanks to FEMA cash the NYPD has a bulletproof boat, but that isn't close to the only toy in the Department's nautical arsenal. A story in today's Times takes a look at the NYPD Harbor Unit, which has become increasingly important to counterterrorism in the past few years. All of which is to say, the NYPD's six remote-controlled submarines will put those flimsy (banned) motorized model boats in Central Park to shame!

Seriously, these are some fancy and expensive toys (four of them, bought in 2007, cost $75,000 each and the other two, bought in 2008, cost $120,000 a pop!) that are crucial, along with the 34 vessels in the department's fleet, in helping the NYPD look around under boats and bridges in our expansive waterways for potential bombs (and drugs, contraband and criminals). So far the drone submarines haven't actually found a bomb, but when they do, the Harbor Unit is ready...to call in the Navy to deal with the bomb ("We mark the location, get out of the water and call them," a detective explains). 

dnainfo |   The NYPD’s International Liaison Program that posts detectives in nearly a dozen foreign cities is a waste of money that has not prevented any attacks, say sources who have dealt with the officials overseas.

Former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly systematically began assigning NYPD personnel in foreign port-of-calls — using money from a charity to pay for it — not long after taking office in post-9/11 New York. He was eager to get information quickly and directly from his own personnel rather than rely on the feds.

But former federal officials who served overseas told “On The Inside” the NYPD detectives are ineffective, often angering and confusing the foreign law enforcement officials they are trying to work with, and are usually relegated to the sidelines because they lack national security clearance.

nypost |  The NYPD will part ways with “Digidog,” the robotic police dog that earned Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s wrath and became the subject of a City Council subpoena after images of it went viral.

The department told The Post on Wednesday that it ended a contract with Boston Dynamics to lease the four-legged robo-cop.

“The contract has been terminated and the dog will be returned,” a spokesperson said.

The sudden termination comes after a clip of the machine patrolling a Manhattan housing project went viral, sparking backlash and drawing comparisons to the dystopic TV series “Black Mirror.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio then urged the NYPD to “rethink” its use of the robot. Eventually, City Council leaders agreed and decided to subpoena the NYPD to find out its cost.

It's Not An Accident That Neither Policing Or BLM Is Transparent Or Accountable

 

About those "rulers of BLM" - Never forget that Obama is the poster child and his cousin Warren Buffett is the money behind Black Lives Matter. Once you understand these basic facts, you can transcend the useless idiocy of talking in terms of "left" and "right", communist, fascist, conservative, progressive, etc..., rather, you can maintain laser-focus on who is doing the behavior and what their concrete-specific objectives can be discovered to be.

There is, however, another version of events, in which the heartfelt dedication to racial justice is only the forward-facing side of a more complicated movement. Behind the street level activism and emotional outpouring is a calculated machinery built by establishment money and power that has seized on racial politics, in which some of the biggest capitalists in the world are financially backing a group of self-described “trained Marxists”—a label that Cullors enthusiastically applies to herself and the group’s other co-founders. These bedfellows, whose stories and fortunes are never publicly presented as related, are in reality intertwined under the umbrella of a fiscal sponsor named the International Development Exchange. A modestly endowed West Coast nonprofit with origins in the Peace Corps—which for decades supported local farmers, shepherds, and agricultural workers across the Global South—IDEX has, in the past six years, been transformed into two distinct new things: the infrastructure back end to the Black Lives Matter organization in the United States and also, at the very same time, an investment fund vehicle driven by recruited MBAs and finance experts seeking to leverage decades of on-the-ground grantee relationships for novel forms of potentially problematic lending instruments . And it did so with help from the family of one of the most famous American billionaires in history—the Oracle of Omaha himself.

About the police, as currently configured, these economic burdens have been determined to be obsolete and a decision has been taken to do away with their current barely governable configuration. Part of the War on Drugs was to keep cops from policing their own neighborhoods. Even if they live in the city they serve, they cannot work in the jurisdiction they live in, as it may create a conflict of interest. Police not knowing residents is policy, not accident.

Many police, firefighters/EMTs, and other city employees do not live in the cities that employ them. As the ratio of local residents working for a city steadily declines, so does the performance of that city’s government. It’s a terrible situation, made demonstrably worse by state laws that struck down residency requirements for city employees statewide, in contravention of home rule guarantees. State preemption of local control is destroying municipal governments throughout numerous states. Again, this is a matter of policy, not accident.

With the military, it seems odd that progressives are just now waking up to the idea that an all-volunteer force somehow may mysteriously end up with a disproportionate number of right-wing members. Maybe we have a similar phenomenon with police. So I would suggest a draft not only for the military but also for local police. Everyone at a young age should experience one or the other, or maybe both, for a few years. Then perhaps we could have informed discussions and dispense with most of the righteous ranting.

We should also dispassionately consider how dangerous a police officer’s job actually is – compared to a truck driver, carpenter, farmer and host of other jobs…. hint, you will find that a cops level of danger in their job does not make the top ten list. And as for stopping crime, the police are really, really bad at it. According to FBI stats, only 4% of major crimes reported to police end in someone being convicted of a crime and only half of all major crimes are reported. Again, this is a matter of policy, not accident.

If we are actually concerned with public safety, with crime control, with having a public institution who’s mandate is actually to serve and protect the citizenry, then we need to design a whole new system from the ground up. Trying to reform the policing system we have into doing what we want it to do is doomed to fail. We need to start with a system that is accountable to the populace it serves, and that is designed specifically to provide security to that populace. We should not waste another moment trying to reform a system that was designed for entirely different purposes than to protect and serve the public.

So all the soap opera and machismo pushed by cops – that their job is so tough and dangerous – reduces to mush when held to the light of evidence. Continuing in that vein, by and large, police officers are exceptionally well-paid for the minimal qualifications required to get the job. Moreover, there are the power and prestige attractions associated with being narratized as heroic first responders and all that folderal. When you take into consideration official overtime pay, and the pay available for moonlighting, policing is one of the few remaining occupations in which a certain demographic with nothing more than a high-school diploma can realistically achieve a 6 figure income. Again, this is a matter of policy, not accident.

This is why police have so little difficulty parting with the 6-8% annual vigorish to their “fraternal orders”. The fraternal lodges are the real command and control systems for police departments. The chief of police is typically a bureaucratic figurehead whose job it is to run interference with politicians – and to a limited degree – the public.

In the interest of supporting citations – I offer the following link - but recommend a google search on – fop brad lemon tow lot scandal

This is a wonderful mid-sized urban anecdote of most of the moving parts involved with the structure of power, prestige, and accountability in contemporary policing. Abusive policing is concentrated among a relatively small proportion of police officers. The majority of U.S. police probably spend their entire careers without any incidence of corruption or brutality.  The problem is that police abuse is protected, unconditionally, resulting in either no or disproportionately low consequences for their actions. What results is that some naturally violent or naturally corrupt people will seek out police careers because it allows them to fulfill these desires without consequence. Again, this is a matter of policy, not accident.

The Consequences of Catholicism for Political Theory

There’s an endemic debate over what people are saying when they refer to ‘the west’. Is the west defined by its whiteness, its wealth, its liberal democracy? Should we call it the ‘highly developed countries’, the ‘advanced economies’, the ‘first world’, or the ‘global north’? I think most of these terms misses what is distinctive about this set of places. The countries we think of as ‘western’ are all countries where Catholicism was once dominant but is now in varying levels of retreat. Western countries are ‘post-Catholic’.

Catholicism has certain distinctive effects on a place. Crucially, Catholicism situates politics as subordinate to morality. In medieval Catholic states, the monarch derives authority from the pope or from divine right. This means the monarch’s legitimacy depends on the monarch having the right moral orientation. In other parts of the world, politics and morality were more heavily enmeshed. In the Byzantine Empire, the emperor was supreme in both religious and temporal matters. In the Islamic world, the caliph combined both political and religious authority. In China, different dynasties embraced and promoted the teachings of many different schools of thought at varying points. It was only in the Catholic west that politics and morality were firmly separated, with the former rendered clearly subordinate to the latter.

Are corporations now deriving their "authoriteh" from the rump "professional" class mediocrities comprising the diversity-inclusion-equity clergy? Can the ecclesiastical congregation of diversity-inclusion-equity offer absolution? Or merely economic cancellation...,

Given the weakness of post-Catholic morality - the only pervasive corporate values I see nowadays boil down to Overton's Window of permitted discourse - and - expected prompt and unquestioning compliance on the part of economically captured consumers. The pretend ethics of diversity-inclusion-equity have been quickly and none too subtly supplemented by "trust the science" indoctrination and compliance. If our corporate feudal lords can only police what we say or have ever said, that only scratches the surface of intended moral orthodoxy. If they can police what we do in ways that extend down to our genomes, then the post-Catholic corporatism has transcended the wildest fantasies of the pre-reformation Holy Roman Church.

The government can't police your intentions or your expressions or your behaviors anywhere near as well as corporations with amorphous community standards and big data, algorithms, and inexpensive filipino and south asian comment moderators.

Did you happen to see Warren Buffett's cousin and the diversity commander-in-chief peddling some highly suspect "trust the science" theocracy just last sunday on teevee? When everything's said and done, if we can't persuade you to comply, we've got some community standard digital passports coming your way here shortly so that you can show and prove your true belief in a way that the penitents of old never previously had to do in their confessionals...,

 

France, Its Muslims And A Template For The Great Resetting Of Your Civil Liberties

greenwald |  Whether out of political calculation, conviction or some combination of both, French President Emmanuel Macron has seized on the grotesque murder last month of Samuel Paty to push two extreme assaults on core civil liberties. One is a law, approved by the French Parliament on Saturday, that “ban[s] the publication of images of on-duty police officers as well as expand[s] the use of surveillance drones and police powers” — a new restriction which press freedom groups argue criminalizes the attempt to hold police officers accountable for brutality and excess force and allows the government even greater powers of domestic spying. The other is an even more sweeping measure that would, among other things, ban homeschooling and require registration of children with the state.

A state of emergency declared in France after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo murders and multi-venue terror attacks gave the state virtually unlimited powers to detain citizens without due process and domestically spy with essentially no checks. That resulted, as intended, in the mass infiltration of mosques by police informants, surveillance of imams, and even the sweeping up by police of large numbers of Muslim citizens who were never charged with let alone convicted of any crimes.

Anyone who believes in the necessity of free speech, free expression, privacy rights and due process — and that includes those who cheered the massive free speech rally in Paris after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo murders, led by some of the world’s worst despots — has to be concerned about the growing French demands for still greater crackdowns, if not due to a belief in universally applied civil liberties principles then at least out of self-interested concern that this framework is going to be applied throughout the west: not only against Muslims but against anyone deemed on the margins or fringes or inside the realms of dissent.

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To explore the growing controversies over civil liberties and France — which are absolutely a harbinger of similar debates already occurring, with still more to come, throughout the west — I spoke with one of France’s most knowledgeable civil liberties analysts and activists, Yasser Louati.

Politically - The FOP Is A Pimple On A Gnat's Ass Compared With The Teacher's Unions...,

influencewatch |  The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) is a membership association and labor union comprised of more than 330,000 law enforcement officers. Officers are members of local chapters known as “lodges,” which act as labor unions or fraternal organizations, and number over 2,200 nationwide. The FOP claims to improve working conditions for police officers as well as maintain safety for the public through education, community involvement, and legislation, among other things.^[1] Lodges engage in collective bargaining on behalf of police officers in states that permit such bargaining.^[2]

The FOP has a full-time lobbying component, the Steve Young Law Enforcement Legislative Advocacy Center, which advocates for or against legislation to protect government worker labor unions, law enforcement, and the FOP’s interests.^[3] The FOP has spent nearly $6 million lobbying since 1998.^[4] In the 116^th Congress, FOP supported legislation like the Social Security Fairness Act, legislation that would eliminate the exemption for state and local government workers from Social Security;^[5] the Law Enforcement Officers Equity Act covering police retirement administration;^[6] and the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, legislation that would require states and municipalities to engage in collective bargaining with police unions like the FOP local lodges.^[7][8]

The FOP opposes any potential legislation that may negatively affect law enforcement, including legislation that would weaken protections for police officers regarding healthcare and overtime, create or support civilian review boards, or normalize relations with countries like Cuba and Mexico, which the FOP deems safe havens for “cop-killers.” ^[9] The FOP also opposes any amendment or legislation that would weaken the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA) of 2000.^[10] CAFRA was seen as favoring law enforcement over citizens by only increasing law enforcement’s burden of proof to a preponderance of evidence, as opposed to clear and convincing evidence, when seizing property alleged to have been used for criminal purposes. CAFRA also allowed formerly secret information to be shared between prosecutors and authorities seeking civil asset forfeiture.^[11]

Though the FOP has supported some Republicans (most prominently endorsing Republican candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election^[12]), its federal political action committee has in most election cycles contributed the larger share of its donations to Democrats; in 2014, it made no contributions to any federal Republicans, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.^[13]

The FOP was established in 1915 by two police officers in Pittsburgh. It became a national organization in 1917.^[14]

Urban Warfare Personalized With Individuals And Their Families Targeted

Gestapo Surveillance was invented during America's Conquest of the Philippines...,

Counterpunch |  Entitled Future Strategic Issues/Future Warfare [Circa 2025], the PowerPoint presentation anticipates: a) scenarios created by U.S. forces and agencies and b) scenarios to which they might have to respond. The projection is contingent on the use of hi-technology. According to the report there are/will be six Technological Ages of Humankind: “Hunter/killer groups (sic) [million BC-10K BC]; Agriculture [10K BC-1800 AD]; Industrial [1800-1950]; IT [1950-2020]; Bio/Nano [2020-?]; Virtual.”

In the past, “Hunter/gatherer” groups fought over “hunting grounds” against other “tribal bands” and used “handheld/thrown” weapons. In the agricultural era, “professional armies” also used “handheld/thrown” weapons to fight over “farm lands.” In the industrial era, conscripted armies fought over “natural resources,” using “mechanical and chemical” weapons. In our time, “IT/Bio/Bots” (robots) are used to prevent “societal disruption.” The new enemy is “everyone.” “Everyone.”

Similarly, a British Ministry of Defence projection to the year 2050 states: “Warfare could become ever more personalised with individuals and their families being targeted in novel ways.”

“KNOWLEDGE DOMINANCE”

The war on you is the militarization of everyday life with the express goal of controlling society, including your thoughts and actions.

A U.S. Army document on information operations from 2003 specifically cites activists as potential threats to elite interests. “Nonstate actors, ranging from drug cartels to social activists, are taking advantage of the possibilities the information environment offers,” particularly with the commercialization of the internet. “Info dominance” as the Space Command calls it can counter these threats: “these actors use the international news media to attempt to influence global public opinion and shape decision-maker perceptions.” Founded in 1977, the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command featured an Information Dominance Center, itself founded in 1999 by the private, veteran-owned company, IIT.

“Information Operations in support of civil-military interactions is becoming increasingly more important as non-kinetic courses-of-action are required,” wrote two researchers for the military in 1999. They also said that information operations, as defined by the Joint Chiefs of Staff JP 3-13 (1998) publication, “are aimed at influencing the information and information systems of an adversary.” They also confirm that “[s]uch operations require the continuous and close integration of offensive and defensive activities … and may involve public and civil affairs-related actions.” They conclude: “This capability begins the transition from Information Dominance to Knowledge Dominance.”

“ATTUNED TO DISPARITIES”

The lines between law enforcement and militarism are blurred, as are the lines between military technology and civilian technology. Some police forces carry military-grade weapons. The same satellites that enable us to use smartphones enable the armed forces to operate.

In a projection out to the year 2036, the British Ministry of Defence says that “[t]he clear distinction between combatants and non-combatants will be increasingly difficult to discern,” as “the urban poor will be employed in the informal sector and will be highly vulnerable to externally-derived economic shocks and illicit exploitation” (emphasize in original). This comes as Boris Johnson threatens to criminalize Extinction Rebellion and Donald Trump labels Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists.

In 2017, the U.S. Army published The Operational Environment and the Changing Character of Future Warfare. The report reads: “The convergence of more information and more people with fewer state resources will constrain governments’ efforts to address rampant poverty, violence, and pollution, and create a breeding ground for dissatisfaction among increasingly aware, yet still disempowered populations.”

BLM And Antifa Clowning Have Paved The Way For A Vast Expansion Of Urban Police State Apparatus

theintercept |  In August, 40 federal agents arrived in Memphis. Some were already on the ground by the time U.S. Attorney Michael Dunavant announced the onset of Operation Legend and the city became, along with St. Louis, the seventh to be targeted by the Justice Department’s heavy-handed initiative to reduce violent crime. Many of the agents are on temporary assignment, working in collaboration with police; nearly half will relocate by November. But they will leave behind a city flush with grant money for local police — and heightened surveillance capabilities.

In Memphis, organizers have long battled police surveillance. The fight came to a head in 2017, when a lawsuit against the city of Memphis revealed years of close surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists and union organizers. “We knew we were being watched and monitored and surveilled,” said Hunter Demster, an activist who was tracked on social media by MPD. The suit was successful, and in 2018, a federal judge ordered an independent monitor to oversee policing in the city. Now, activists there say that Operation Legend is a serious blow.

Operation Legend and its December precursor, Operation Relentless Pursuit, are both funding surveillance technology in cities across the country. Through Operation Legend, Memphis and four other cities received grants for gunshot detection technology, which lines cities with sensors to detect gunfire, despite longstanding concerns about its efficacy. Other more opaque grants from the Justice Department, like a $1.4 million grant to Shelby County, which surrounds Memphis, in April and a $1 million grant in July to the city of Cleveland, are to be used in part for “technological solutions” or “support” for investigations.

Awash in these federal funds, cities have doubled down on their surveillance investments, even as they face general budget shortfalls in the tens of millions. On August 4, two days before Operation Legend was formally announced in the city, Memphis signed a new contract with Cellebrite, an Israeli forensics manufacturer popular with law enforcement, whose products can hack and extract data from smartphones. The estimated $65,000 contract would double previous annual spending on the technology, per city procurement records. The Memphis police declined an interview request for this story and did not respond to several additional inquiries about the purchases.