Archive for the 'Police' Category

The Small Wars Journal has a tradition of publishing white papers and opinion pieces on the relationship of counterinsurgency tactics to community policing, even advocating the use of regular U.S. military forces to couple with police in the States, and the latest is entitled Counterinsurgency and Community Policing: More Alike than Meets the Eye.

I won’t duplicate what ends up being a very long article here, since you can study it yourself.  But I will make several observations.  The first has to do with his MOS.  By training and trade the author is a LEO who apparently deployed as a Naval Reserve Intelligence Officer.  He wasn’t the pointy end of the spear as was my son and many others.

What you don’t get is the perspective of someone who had to engage in room clearing operations against people shouting Allahu Akbar, chopped boats and people to pieces with an M2 aboard a helicopter, who were boating across the Euphrates River after you had locked down Fallujah, or who constructed your FOB on your back handing sandbags over your head to the next Marine while you were being shot at.

I’m not recounting this brief history for fun – it wasn’t for my son.  I am mentioning it in order to explain what you do mainly get with this paper: happy face COIN, or the mythical story told to the masses in order to get them to support state-building across the pond.

The author sets up the article with this:

The term counterinsurgency has long been associated with military operations and soldiers.  It conjures visions of violent urban combat action, population relocation, social engineering, and a tool for dealing with foreign political emergencies.  These visions are not inaccurate as they represent some of the methods and strategies used in COIN operations throughout history.  But these methods and strategies do not encapsulate all aspects of COIN.  As COIN operations shift from combat to peace keeping and community-building they begin to resemble traditional community policing activities in which the public servant controls through education and raising ethical stature in communities.  It is in the transitional phase – when the soldier transitions into the policeman and community facilitator – that COIN and Community policing share the same strategies and tactics.

Part of the happy face is in his presentation of typical policing:

COIN is typically employed by uniformed soldiers, armed with assault rifles and supported by light and heavy armored vehicles and tactical air assets.  Community Policing is conducted by uniformed police officers, representatives of the community they serve, with a badge, a holstered pistol, and a number of less-lethal tools.  In COIN, soldiers control population movement and space through use of roadblocks, cordoning off, house to house search and clearing operations, and patrolling villages and neighborhoods in HUMVEE’s and Armored Personnel Carriers.  In Community Policing, police patrol neighborhoods in police cars, bicycles, foot beats, and horses, people are free to move about and there is no outward show of force.

He is intentionally ignoring the militarization of police in America, or perhaps better yet, he is attempting to show both the militarized presence and the so-called population-centric community building he believes police do.

He says “COIN and Community Policing are intrinsically linked,” and then makes this pregnant statement:

In addition to the non-kinetic imperatives mentioned above, similarities can also be found in traditional policing activities such as crime prevention, traffic control, crime investigation, and overall public safety.  In COIN operations powers of arrest are generally left to the police organizations of the host nation.  However, soldiers stand side by side with their host nation counterpart and provide assistance in the form of identifying and, when necessary, arresting insurgents.

As a successful COIN operation, he uses the British experience in Northern Ireland where British troops coupled with local police.  But it is important to get the thrust of his article in the alignment, or nexus, of tactics to achieve the overall strategy.  He ends with this:

Ultimately, the desired end state is a strategy that is seen as legitimate, employing social, political, economic, and security measures that meet the population’s needs, including adequate mechanisms to address the grievances that may have fueled support of the insurgency.

In his world, police become social planners, and employ various tools to meet the population’s needs and address grievances, while at the same time coupling with a more militarized presence to tamp down violence and insurgency.

This thinking isn’t foreign to American police.  They have been playing social planner and policy-maker for decades now, making better sense of the recent blame the Chicago chief of police laid with the availability of guns for violence in Chicago.

But heretofore, this thinking i.e., alignment of military with local police, was indeed foreign to military strategists.  With papers like this it is becoming more commonplace and when something becomes commonplace and worthy of consideration, it becomes easier to engage.

Take note of these things.  Not only are the police becoming more militarized, the armed forces is studying policy-making, trying to learn to employ the tools of social engineering and building human terrain systems, and talking about addressing grievances and meeting community needs.

It all continues a rich tradition of flirtation with treasonous theories at the SWJ.  After all, it worked so well in Iraq and Afghanistan, why not try it in the United States?

Radley Balko:

As part of the American Civil Liberties Union’s recent report on police militarization, the Massachusetts chapter of the organization sent open records requests to SWAT teams across that state. It received an interesting response.

As it turns out, a number of SWAT teams in the Bay State are operated by what are called law enforcement councils, or LECs. These LECs are funded by several police agencies in a given geographic area and overseen by an executive board, which is usually made up of police chiefs from member police departments. In 2012, for example, the Tewksbury Police Department paid about $4,600 in annual membership dues to the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, or NEMLEC. (See page 36 of linked PDF.) That LEC has about 50 member agencies. In addition to operating a regional SWAT team, the LECs also facilitate technology and information sharing and oversee other specialized units, such as crime scene investigators and computer crime specialists.

Some of these LECs have also apparently incorporated as 501(c)(3) organizations. And it’s here that we run into problems. According to the ACLU, the LECs are claiming that the 501(c)(3) status means that they’re private corporations, not government agencies. And therefore, they say they’re immune from open records requests. Let’s be clear. These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because they’ve incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The state’s residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against.

The reddit comments are priceless:

If they are private corporations, then they shouldn’t have immunity from being sued. That’s just bullshit.

Can you say “secret police?”  Or Gestapo?  This argument is the most crass, brazen, insulting thing SWAT could have done concerning truthfulness in law enforcement.  Not even Soldiers and Marines get to claim secrecy like this if they get charged with violation of the ROE.

And this certainly doesn’t comport with Herschel’s law (named by Ned Weatherby).  As for the Massachusetts SWAT teams, they have long ago lost the mandate of heaven.  When that happens, it’s not immoral to treat them like the criminals they are.

By now you are all aware of the SWAT raid where in Cornelia, just outside of Atlanta, where cops threw a flash bang into a crib.  Here’s an update and first hand account, a perspective you need to hear.

After the SWAT team broke down the door, they threw a flashbang grenade inside. It landed in my son’s crib.

Flashbang grenades were created for soldiers to use during battle. When they explode, the noise is so loud and the flash is so bright that anyone close by is temporarily blinded and deafened. It’s been three weeks since the flashbang exploded next to my sleeping baby, and he’s still covered in burns.

There’s still a hole in his chest that exposes his ribs. At least that’s what I’ve been told; I’m afraid to look.

My husband’s nephew, the one they were looking for, wasn’t there. He doesn’t even live in that house. After breaking down the door, throwing my husband to the ground, and screaming at my children, the officers – armed with M16s – filed through the house like they were playing war. They searched for drugs and never found any.

I heard my baby wailing and asked one of the officers to let me hold him. He screamed at me to sit down and shut up and blocked my view, so I couldn’t see my son. I could see a singed crib. And I could see a pool of blood. The officers yelled at me to calm down and told me my son was fine, that he’d just lost a tooth. It was only hours later when they finally let us drive to the hospital that we found out Bou Bou was in the intensive burn unit and that he’d been placed into a medically induced coma.

[ … ]

As of the afternoon of 6/24/2014, Baby Bou Bou has been taken out of the medically induced coma and transferred to a new hospital to begin rehabilitation. The hole in his chest has yet to heal, and doctors are still not able to fully assess lasting brain damage.

So the officer prevented a mother from assisting her screaming child who had just had a hole blown in him, and lied to her about the condition of her child.  The man who did this deserves to be hung by his scrotum until it decays and falls off.  And unless you repent, you sorry sack of shit, God will not forget your actions.  You will pay for your sins.

But hey, the cops got to push around some folks, blow a hole in a child, perhaps inflict TBI, and go home safely at the end of their shift.  Mission accomplished.  I hope their mothers are all proud of what they’ve become.  Make sure, cops, to tell your mothers what you did that night.

NY Daily News:

CBS Miami:

A police officer mistakenly fired his rifle Wednesday morning while in court in front of the judge.

A Miami-Dade Police Officer, according to police, was demonstrating a scenario to a judge on the 30^th floor of the Lawson E. Thomas Court House around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday.

After demonstrating, police say the officer mistakenly fired one shot from his police issued rifle, an AR-15.

The bullet hit the floor and there were no injuries.

Hey folks, forget what I’ve said about trigger discipline.  Remember that cops are highly trained, and are the only ones who can be trusted to own and use weapons.

WRSA has a link on a recent North Carolina National Guard rapid reaction force training exercise.  This is par for the course concerning the use of military to police American citizens, and the theoretical underpinnings were started a while back.  It isn’t to be taken lightly.

But I think there is a little more than meets the eye here.  Let me remind you of what we discussed concerning N.G. troops on the Southern border.  From one in-line commander, there was this.

Unfortunately, I must report that “Armed does not always mean “armed” as most Americans would understand. There are various states of being “armed.” These are called “Arming Orders (AO)” which define where the weapon “is,” where the magazine “is,” where the bullets “are” and where the bayonet “is.” They start at Arming Order One which could best be described as a “show of force” or “window dressing” in the worse case.

After considerable searching, I was able to find a complete copy of the Memorundum of Understanding/Rules of Engagement pertaining to the National Guard Deployment (“Operation Jump Start”), which I could then review.

After reviewing the MOU/ROE, I contacted several senior “in the loop” National Guard Officers that I have previously served with, to determine how many soldiers would be “armed” and their Arming Order number. After confirming The El Paso Times article that “very few soldiers there would carry weapons,” I was advised that during the next 90 days, amongst the few soldiers that have weapons, no soldier will have an Arming Order greater than AO-1, which means that an M-16 will be on the shoulder, there will be no magazine in the weapon (thats where the bullets come from), and the magazines stored inside the “ammunition pouch” will in most cases have no ammunition, they will be empty.

It was also conveyed to myself that in the unlikely event that a soldier is ever harmed on the border, the Arming Order will not be raised. Every individual I spoke to envisions no circumstance where there will ever be soldiers at AO-3/4, where a magazine with ammunition would be immediately available. Instead the soldiers will simply be kept farther away from the border if needed. They will be deliberately kept out of harms way.

So the question in a case of deployment like this would be, “Are they under arming orders?”  The most likely answer is no, although it would be interesting to see the actual arming orders for the N.G. during Katrina in New Orleans (not rumor, not innuendo, but a PDF of the actual arming orders).  In the mean time, there are more pressing matters.

… in recent years, military servicemen and women — many of whom are decorated — have found themselves increasingly targeted for surveillance, censorship, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, labeled as extremists and/or mentally ill, and stripped of their Second Amendment rights, all for daring to voice their concerns about the alarming state of our union and the erosion of our freedoms.

For example, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program dubbed Operation Vigilant Eagle tracks military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and characterizes them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”

For example, Jose Guerena, a Marine who served in two tours in Iraq, was killed in 2011 after an Arizona SWAT team kicked open the door of his home during a mistaken drug raid and opened fire. Apart from his military background, Guerena had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home. [Editorial Note: My link on Guerena is here].

John Edward Chesney, a 62-year-old Vietnam veteran, was killed by a SWAT team allegedly responding to a call that the Army veteran was standing in his apartment window waving what looked like a semi-automatic rifle. SWAT officers fired 12 rounds into Chesney’s apartment window. It turned out that the gun Chesney reportedly pointed was a “realistic-looking mock assault rifle.”

Ramon Hooks, a 25-year-old Iraq war veteran, was using an air rifle gun for target practice outside when a Homeland Security Agent, allegedly house shopping in the area, reported him as an active shooter. Hooks was arrested, his air rifle pellets and toy gun confiscated, and charges filed against him for “criminal mischief.”

Although no toy guns were involved in Brandon Raub’s case, his fact scenario is even more chilling, given that he was targeted for exercising his First Amendment rights on Facebook. The 26-year-old decorated Marine actually found himself interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys.

On August 16, 2012, a swarm of local police, Secret Service and FBI agents handcuffed and transported Raub to police headquarters, then to a medical center, where he was held against his will due to alleged concerns that his Facebook posts were “terrorist in nature.” Meanwhile, in a kangaroo court hearing that turned a deaf ear to Raub’s explanations about the fact that his Facebook posts were being read out of context, Raub was sentenced to up to 30 days’ further confinement in a psychiatric ward. Thankfully, The Rutherford Institute came to Raub’s assistance and brought about his release. Even so, within days of Raub being seized and forcibly held in a VA psych ward, news reports started surfacing of other veterans having similar experiences.

A federal judge actually dismissed Raub’s lawsuit challenging the government’s Operation Vigilant Eagle campaign and its increasing view of veterans as potential domestic terrorists as “farfetched.” Yet what may sound farfetched to the courts is a grim reality to Americans who are daily being targeted for daring to exercise their constitutional rights to speak their minds, criticize the government and defend themselves and their families against overreaching government surveillance and heavy-handed police tactics.

This is even more dangerous partly because the judicial system sides comprehensively, completely, absolutely and without reserve with the police and all of their chosen tactics.  Before it’s time to worry over the N.G. or regular troops – many or most of whom likely won’t turn on American citizens anyway – let’s remember the daily and growing threat of the police.

Remember what Kurt Hofmann and I have been saying.  The easiest, fastest workaround to Posse Comitatus is the militarization of the police.

CBS Houston:

Round Rock police officers shot and killed a family dog after home’s alarm system was activated.

Hope Lane tells KVUE-TV that her granddaughter forgot to shut the front door all the way after leaving for school, causing it to blow open, tripping the alarm.

Two officers arrived to Lane’s home Friday, entering the house and shouting verbal warnings. Round Rock authorities say when they came upon the 120-pound Rottweiler named Bullet, the dog became aggressive toward them and made threatening actions.

That’s when, according to KVUE, the officers shot Bullet a total of seven times.

The dog was taken away by police by the time Lane got back to her house.

“I thought my dog would still be there, I may have wanted to bury my dog in my backyard,” she told KVUE. “Who told you to take my dog away?”

Lane said 8-year-old Bullet, who suffered from hip dysplasia, is not aggressive.

“My dog is in his home, in his room, laying down chilling like he does and he takes a long time. Anybody can come in the house and be like, ‘I thought you had a dog?’ And I do, but he’s not an aggressive dog,” Lane told KVUE.

Lane added that the dog’s blood was cleaned up off the floor, but that bullet holes remain in the wall and the futon Bullet slept on.

“That tells me something is not right,” she told KVUE. “I can’t speculate what’s not right, but something is truly not right.”

They didn’t just quickly leave if the dog did indeed approach them.  Because the police don’t care about your beasts.

Breitbart:

On May 29 three people allegedly approached an East Point, Georgia, apartment posing as police officers, “intending to force their way inside” when the woman inside the apartment shot one of the would-be invaders.

According to WSB-TV 2, the renter “cracked the door to take a look outside and that’s when police say the three tried to push their way inside.”

Police say said that “one of the suspects raised a handgun but the woman fired first,” grazing one attacker “on the head and the backside.”

The suspects fled, but the wounded one was apprehended.

And this, along with bad muzzle discipline, and wrong addresses, and many more reasons, is why we can’t trust police when they assault our doors.

The video has the complete story.  Notice the same elements I point to every time I link one of these sorry tales.  Lack of muzzle discipline (if you or I pointed rifles at someone we would be arrested for assault with a deadly weapon), lack of discernment, assumption that everyone is a criminal, destruction of private property, lose of confidence in the police, and refusal of the police to apologize or explain.

In fact, notice at the very end of the video.  The Houston Police Department obviously lied to the press, claiming that police never entered the home.  As I’ve said before in the context of the reflexive shooting of family dogs in SWAT raids (parroting one of my commenters), “if you need to speak with the occupant of the home, make an appointment.”  I don’t give a damn about your evidence-gathering.

News from Florida:

Now for the event post-mortem.  Someone lied on the report.  Huggins’ finger was not outside the trigger guard at the time of the negligent discharge.  Guns don’t just go off.  Someone has to pull the trigger.  I suspect that he stumbled and had a sympathetic muscle reflex, causing him to squeeze the trigger.  A person can be trained to overcome this sympathetic reaction (like my son during his pre-deployment workup as a SAW gunner), but this officer is a goofball, and few if any civilian police will ever be trained to such a level.

As for the knife, they only imagined that they “had to wrestle Mease to take away a 9-inch knife he had on his side.”  They didn’t really have to do that.  They just made that up.  They could have decided to carry only their side arm, shake his hand, and ask how he was doing.  Instead they decided to act like members of the local gang.

Finally, as I note every time I write about these events (and they happen on a daily basis in America), notice the lack of muzzle discipline.  As one commenter of mine put so well, “If you need to speak with the occupant, make an appointment.”  They have no right to invade domiciles and point weapons at people.  In this instance the police were played for idiots, and they decided to act the part.