Radley Balko on MSNBC discusses police militarization and Rise Of The Warrior Cop

I highly recommend this book.




http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americas/dp/1610392116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373684719&sr=1-1


Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces [Hardcover]

Radley Balko (Author)

Publication Date: July 9, 2013


Book Description:

The last days of colonialism taught America’s revolutionaries that soldiers in the streets bring conflict and tyranny. As a result, our country has generally worked to keep the military out of law enforcement. But according to investigative reporter Radley Balko, over the last several decades, America’s cops have increasingly come to resemble ground troops. The consequences have been dire: the home is no longer a place of sanctuary, the Fourth Amendment has been gutted, and police today have been conditioned to see the citizens they serve as an other—an enemy.

Today’s armored-up policemen are a far cry from the constables of early America. The unrest of the 1960s brought about the invention of the SWAT unit—which in turn led to the debut of military tactics in the ranks of police officers. Nixon’s War on Drugs, Reagan’s War on Poverty, Clinton’s COPS program, the post–9/11 security state under Bush and Obama: by degrees, each of these innovations expanded and empowered police forces, always at the expense of civil liberties. And these are just four among a slew of reckless programs.

In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Balko shows how politicians’ ill-considered policies and relentless declarations of war against vague enemies like crime, drugs, and terror have blurred the distinction between cop and soldier. His fascinating, frightening narrative shows how over a generation, a creeping battlefield mentality has isolated and alienated American police officers and put them on a collision course with the values of a free society.


Editorial Reviews:

Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union
“Excessively militarized policing is easy to ignore when a SWAT team is ramming down someone else’s door or tear-gassing someone else’s protest. What makes Rise of the Warrior Cop so important is that Mr. Balko makes police militarization real for all of us. This is a meticulously researched history book that casts needed light on a central civil liberties issue.  Police militarization is something we should all care about, and Rise of the Warrior Cop will show you why.”

Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief, The Huffington Post
“With his thorough reporting and compelling storytelling gifts, Radley Balko builds a powerful narrative of the militarization of our police forces, which both liberals and conservatives have allowed to flourish. And he shows the chilling results of both parties’ unwillingness to stand up to increasingly aggressive police tactics that often pit cops against those they are sworn to protect.”

Ron Paul, former Texas congressman and Republican presidential candidate
“Rise of the Warrior Cop is a comprehensive look at the reasons for, and the results of, the increasing militarization of law enforcement. Civil libertarians on the left and limited government conservatives on the right should pay especially close attention to Radley Balko’s examination of the link between the ‘the war on drugs’ and law enforcement’s increased use of police state tactics.”

Norm Stamper, thirty-four-year police veteran and police chief of Seattle, Washington, 1994–2000
“A rich, pertinent history, with unexpected but critically important observations of the increased militarization of American policing. And so well presented: clear, lucid, elegantly crafted.  Rise of the Warrior Cop should be on the shelves of every police chief, sheriff, and SWAT commander in the country. A huge contribution.”

Glenn Greenwald, constitutional lawyer, Guardian columnist, and New York Times bestselling author
“Vibrant and compelling. There is no vital trend in American society more overlooked than the militarization of our domestic police forces, and there is no journalist in America who is more knowledgeable and passionate about this topic than Radley Balko. If you care about the core political liberties of Americans, this is a must-read.”

Peter Kraska, Chair and Professor, Police and Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University
“Balko excels at an excruciatingly difficult task:  telling the history of police militarization in a way that will grip any curious mind – without any loss of intellectual rigor. A fascinating, highly educational, and deeply disturbing read.”

Publishers Weekly
“’Are cops constitutional?’ It’s a bold and provocative question, and the more Balko delves into the history of law enforcement, the more that question seems worth considering. … After reading Balko, you’ll be aware, alright—and scared.”

Simple Justice
“It's critical to appreciate the history of policing, to understand that what we now see as normal and inescapable wasn't always the case. For most of our history, this country did not have a group of people with shields and guns who wandered the streets ordering people about.… If there is any hope of changing the course of the militarization of law enforcement, it will come from a greater understanding of why this was never meant to be the internal norm of this country, and that it doesn't have to be. Radley Balko has done an exceptional job of making the case. Every person who hopes to preserve the integrity of his Castle from dynamic entry needs to read The Rise of Warrior Cop.”


About the Author:

Radley Balko is an award-winning investigative journalist who writes about civil liberties, police, prosecutors, and the broader criminal justice system. He is currently a senior writer and investigative reporter for the Huffington Post. Previously, he was a senior editor for Reason magazine and a policy analyst for the Cato Institute. In 2011, the Los Angeles Press Club named him “Journalist of the Year.”

7 Ways The Obama Administration Has Accelerated Police Militarization

Posted: 07/10/2013 3:57 pm EDT | Updated: 07/10/2013 7:37 pm EDT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/obama-police-militarization_n_3566478.html

There were signs that President Barack Obama might rein in the mass militarization of America's police forces after he won the White House. Policing is primarily a local issue, overseen by local authorities. But beginning in the late 1960s with President Richard Nixon, the federal government began instituting policies that gave federal authorities more power to fight the drug trade, and to lure state and local policymakers into the anti-crime agenda of the administration in charge. These policies got a boost during Ronald Reagan's presidency, and then another during President Bill Clinton's years. Under President George W. Bush, all of those anti-drug policies continued, but were supplemented by new war on terrorism endeavors -- yet more efforts to make America's cops look, act and fight like soldiers.

But Obama might have been different. This, after all, was the man who, as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2004, declared the war on drugs an utter failure. As Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum wrote in a 2011 critique of Obama's drug policy:

Obama stood apart from hard-line prohibitionists even when he began running for president. In 2007 and 2008, he bemoaned America’s high incarceration rate, warned that the racially disproportionate impact of drug prohibition undermines legal equality, advocated a “public health” approach to drugs emphasizing treatment and training instead of prison, repeatedly indicated that he would take a more tolerant position regarding medical marijuana than George W. Bush, and criticized the Bush administration for twisting science to support policy -- a tendency that is nowhere more blatant than in the government’s arbitrary distinctions among psychoactive substances.

Indeed, in his first interview after taking office, Obama's drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, said that the administration would be toning down the martial rhetoric that had dominated federal drug policy since the Nixon years. "Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them," Kerlikowske told The Wall Street Journal. "We're not at war with people in this country."

This was an notable break from previous administrations. Rhetoric does matter, and for a generation in the U.S., cops had incessantly been told that they were in a war with drug offenders -- this, in a country where about half the adult population admits to having smoked marijuana.

Unfortunately, while not insignificant, the change in rhetoric has largely been only that. The Obama administration may no longer call it a "war," but there's no question that the White House is continuing to fight one. Here's a quick rundown of where and how Obama's policies have perpetuated the garrison state:

1. Pentagon Giveaways

In 1997, Congress added a section to a defense appropriations bill creating an agency to transfer surplus military gear to state and local police departments. Since then, millions of pieces of equipment designed for use on a battlefield -- such as tanks, bayonets, M-16s, and armored personnel carriers -- have been given to domestic police agencies for use on American streets, against American citizens.

Under Obama, this program has continued to flourish. In its October 2011 newsletter (motto: “From Warfighter to Crimefighter”), the agency that oversees the Pentagon giveaways boasted that fiscal 2011 was the most productive in the program's history. And by a large margin. “FY 11 has been a historic year for the program,” wrote program manager Craig Barrett. “We reutilized more than $500M, that is million with an M, worth of property in FY 11. This passes the previous mark by several hundred million dollars. ... Half a billion dollars in reutilization was a monumental achievement in FY 11.”

2. Byrne Grants

In 1988, Congress created a new federal crime-fighting program called the Byrne grant, named for Edward Byrne, a New York City narcotics officer killed by a drug dealer. Over the years, these grants have created multi-jurisdictional anti-drug and anti-gang task forces all over the country. Because these task forces usually cover more than one jurisdiction, they often aren't fully accountable to, say, a police chief or an elected sheriff. Moreover, they're often funded either with additional Byrne grants, or with money seized in asset forfeiture proceedings. They can operate with little or no funding from the polities they police.

The results have been unsettling. These task forces have caused numerous deaths, been responsible for botched drug raids on the wrong houses, and have been implicated in corruption scandals. It was Byrne-funded task forces that were responsible for the debacles in Tulia and Hearne, Texas, about a decade ago, in which dozens of people -- nearly all poor and black -- were wrongly raided, arrested and charged with drug crimes. One woman falsely charged in Hearne was Regina Kelly, subject of the movie "American Violet." In a 2007 interview, Kelly told me that the violent raids had been going on for years in Hearne before the task force was finally caught.

"They come on helicopters, military-style, SWAT style,” Kelly said. “In the apartments I was living in, in the projects, there were a lot of children outside playing. They don’t care. They throw kids on the ground, put guns to their heads. They’re kicking in doors. They just don’t care.”

The George W. Bush administration had actually begun phasing out the Byrne program. It had been funded at a half-billion dollars per year through most of the Clinton presidency. By the time he left office in 2008, Bush had pared it to $170 million a year. But the grants have long been a favorite of Vice President Joe Biden. And so Obama campaigned on fully restoring their funding, declaring that the Byrne grant program “has been critical to creating the anti-gang and anti-drug task forces our communities need.” On that promise at least, he has delivered. As part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Obama infused the program with $2 billion, by the far the largest budget in its history.

3. COPS Grants

The Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, program has followed a similar trajectory. Its aim is noble, at least in theory. Community policing is the idea that cops should be proactive, and consider themselves part of the communities they serve. They should know the names of school principals, be friendly with business owners, attend neighborhood meetings.

This isn't the definition of community policing held by many police officials. In the late 1990s, criminologist Peter Kraska found, for example, that many police chiefs consider frequent SWAT raids and similarly aggressive policing to be a core part of a community policing strategy. In fact, some said they considered sending SWAT teams to patrol entire neighborhoods to be sound community policing.

Moreover, police department budgets are fungible -- there's really no way to control how these grants are spent once they arrive at the police station. A 2001 report by the Madison Capital Times found that many Wisconsin police agencies that received COPS grants in the 1990s had in fact used them to start SWAT teams. When presented with these findings, one criminologist was aghast, telling the paper, "Community policing initiatives and stockpiling weapons and grenade launchers are totally incompatible.”

Just as it had with Byrne grants, the Bush administration was phasing out the COPS program in the 2000s. But like the Byrne grants, COPS grants have long been a favorite of Biden. In fact, Biden often takes credit for creating the program, and claims it's responsible for the sharp drop in violent crime in America that began in the mid-1990s. (There's no evidence to support that contention, and a 2007 analysis in the peer-reviewed journal Criminology concluded “COPS spending had little to no effect on crime.”)

And so Obama resurrected COPS, too. During his first year in office, he increased the program's budget by 250 percent.

4. DHS Anti-Terror Grants

The Department of Homeland Security has been giving its own grants to police agencies. These grants have been used to purchase military-grade equipment in the name of fighting terrorism. The grants are going to cities and towns all over America, including to unlikely terrorist targets like Fargo, N.D.; Fond du Lac, Wis.; and Canyon County, Idaho. Once they have a new armored personnel carrier, or new high-powered weapons, most of these police agencies then put them to use in more routine police work -- usually drug raids.

According to a 2011 report by the Center for Investigative Reporting, the federal government has handed out $34 billion in grants since Sept. 11, 2001. The grants have also given rise to contractors that now cater to police agencies looking to cash DHS checks in exchange for battle-grade gear. All of which means there's now an industry -- and inevitably a lobbying interest -- dedicated to perpetuating police militarization.

5. Medical Marijuana Raids

Despite campaign promises to the contrary, Obama has not only continued the Bush and Clinton administration policy of sending SWAT teams to raid medical marijuana growers, shops, and dispensaries in states that have legalized the drug, he appears to have significantly increased enforcement. Just two years into his presidency, Obama's administration had conducted about 150 such raids. The Bush administration conducted around 200 medical marijuana raids over eight years.

Obama has also stepped up the heavy-handed raids often used to enforce immigration laws. In 2012, his administration deported more people than in any prior year in American history. He's on pace to deport 2 million people by 2014, a figure equal to the total number of people ever deported from American until 1997.

6. Heavy-Handed Police Tactics

In 2011, an armed team of federal agents raided the floor of the Gibson guitar factory in Nashville, Tenn. The raid made national headlines and picked up traction in the the tea party movement, largely because it had been conducted to enforce the Lacey Act, a fairly obscure environmental law -- not the sort of policy most people would think would be enforced by armed federal agents. The same year, a SWAT team from the Department of Education conducted a morning raid of what they thought was the home of a woman who was suspected of defrauding federal student loan programs -- again, not the sort of crime usually associated with a SWAT action. (They also got the wrong house -- the suspect had moved out months earlier.)

The Obama administration has defended the use of aggressive, militaristic police actions in court. In the case Avina v. U.S., DEA agents pointed their guns at an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old during a drug raid on the wrong house. The agents had apparently mistaken the license plate of a suspected drug trafficker for the plate on a car owned by Thomas Avina. Obama's Justice Department argued in federal court that the lawsuit should be dismissed before being heard by a jury because the agents’ actions were not unreasonable.

To be fair, the Justice Department almost always defends federal employees from lawsuits. And it seems likely that any other modern administration would do the same thing. But it wasn't always this way. In 1973, even the drug-warring Nixon administration fired, and then criminally indicted, 12 narcotics cops for raiding the wrong homes and terrorizing innocent families. Obama may be no different than Bush, Clinton, or his rivals for the presidency in defending drug cops who point guns at children during botched raids. But there was a time in America when even the original tough-on-crime administration was appalled enough at the idea to hold such overly zealous drug cops accountable.

7. Asset Forfeiture

Under the policy of civil asset forfeiture, the government can seize any cash, cars, houses, or other property that law enforcement can reasonably connect to a crime -- usually a drug crime. The owner of the property must then go to court to show that he legitimately earned or owns it. Often the owner is never actually charged with a crime. And often, these seizures are made against people suspected of low-level crimes, so the value of the property seized can be less than the costs and hassle of hiring an attorney and going to court to win it back.

If the owner doesn't try to get his assets back, or if the court rules against him, asset forfeiture proceeds go to the police department that made the seizure. Critics say the policy creates perverse incentives for police to find drug connections that may not exist. But the policy has been lucrative for police agencies, and has been a huge contributor to the growth and use of SWAT teams to serve drug warrants. SWAT teams can be expensive to maintain. Instead of reserving them only for genuinely dangerous situations, asset forfeiture (along with Byrne grants) creates a strong incentive to send them on drug raids. A number of states have tried to curb forfeiture abuses by requiring that proceeds from seizures go to schools, or to a general fund. But under the Justice Department's equitable sharing program, a local police agency simply needs to ask the DEA for assistance with a raid. The operation then becomes federal, and is governed by federal law. The DOJ takes a cut of the assets, then sends a large percentage back to the local police agency, effectively getting around those state laws.

Under Obama, forfeiture has flourished. According to a 2012 report from the General Accounting Office, the Justice Department's forfeiture fund swelled to $1.8 billion in 2011, the largest ever. That same year, equitable sharing payouts to local police agencies topped $445 million, also a record.

Obama has fought for broad asset forfeiture powers in court, even for local governments. In the 2009 case Alvarez v. Smith, the Obama administration defended a provision of Illinois' asset forfeiture law that allows police to seize property they believe is connected to drug activity with little evidence, then hold it for up to six months before the owner gets an opportunity to win it back in court. It's one of the harshest such laws in the country.

The argument could be made here that the Justice Department has a responsibility to defend law enforcement in court. But Obama has shown a willingness to back down from laws he opposes -- notably by instructing government attorneys to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act from court challenges.

But even if one believes that the solicitor general has an obligation to defend federal law, this is a state law. Moreover, it's a state law that's actually harsher on property owners than corresponding federal laws. The Illinois law also applies only to property valued at less than $20,000, meaning it disproportionately affects the poor. The Obama administration could have plausibly argued against the law, or simply not taken a position. Instead, Justice Department attorneys argued for it to be upheld. The Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the case without ruling on the law.

In many of these examples, Obama is merely continuing policies that began in previous administrations. And there are some areas where he has made progress, notably by apportioning a greater portion his anti-drug budget to treatment instead of enforcement. But in several of the examples above, he has actually stepped up the policies he inherited.

Obama the candidate made some unusually frank and critical statements about the drug war, incarceration, and the criminal justice system. His drug czar then showed some rare insight into the dangers of war rhetoric when discussing domestic policing. Obama the president has been more of the same, and in some cases worse.

Somebody who has also written a book on this same subject (or it might be the same person) was on Huckabee and he told stories like you have, Anti. In another thread you told of dogs and people killed in these attacks when the police got the wrong house and this is exactly what kind of stories this guy was telling. Even a 7 year old girl on a couch was killed. One guy had 60 bullet holes in him and they let him lie there without even trying to stop the bleeding. And the one thing joining all these stories together? These people were innocent! The police got the wrong houses! But they just break in and start shooting. He said in 1980 there were 3000 unannounced attacks by police, in 2011 there were 80,000. Quite an increase! He also said when the Pentagon started giving out military style products to local police, is when he thinks all this got so bad.

I just can't believe this goes on in our country. So scary!!

Law enforcement people are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.  It's not an easy job.

I'd still rather live here than most other countries.  At least we can voice our opinion without having our heads chopped off.

God bless America!

I agree. And we have family members who are cops. However, when you listen to these true stories, it just gives you the chills. We are heading toward a new time. It sounds like other countries, not ours. So scary!

Donzel wrote:Law enforcement people are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.  It's not an easy job.

I'd still rather live here than most other countries.  At least we can voice our opinion without having our heads chopped off.

God bless America!

1) Police departments now have to hire drug-abusers because have no longer have a cadre of "abstainers" to pick from; worse, they're hiring from the "ME" generation.  

2) Anti-Federalist hasn't seen the hour-long video of the infamous Bank of America bank robbery, where REAL M-16s were fired by the bad guys. (NOT semi-autos...) Concrete lighting poles in the parking lot were worn away by bullets!

(The Police Department ran to a local gun shop to buy semi-auto rifles to counter the threats by just two robbers).

Donzel wrote:Law enforcement people are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.  It's not an easy job.

I'd still rather live here than most other countries.  At least we can voice our opinion without having our heads chopped off.

God bless America!

Foolish non-sequitor is foolish.

"Well, we're sinking, but hey, we're not sinking as fast as the Titanic."

You are ten times more likely to be killed by a cop than a terrorist.

I have zero, and I mean zero concern that ululating Jihadists are going to storm my home in the middle of the night, grenade my children, kill my dog, abuse my family, shove automatic weapons in our face and possibly cut us all to ribbons with machine gun fire if any of us so much as twitches funny.

Zero.

Now, replace "ululating Jihadists" with "Officer Friendly and his Buddies in a FedCoat supplied tank", my concern level and chances of such an event occurring, skyrockets.

This was Boston, on the anniversary of the "Shot heard round the world".



That's not a picture of a free country.

"Oh, stop" you say, "we can still voice our opinion".

Does Bluffdale, Utah mean anything to you?

Man gets into argument with drunk, off-duty cop, in the AM no less, so his buddies decide to SWAT the whole family.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/lawsuit-swat-officers-dragged-10-year-old-bathtub-made-him-stand-naked-next-4-year

July 26, 2013

Pittsburgh SWAT officers must face claims that they raided a family's home, violently dragged a child from the bathtub, and "terrorized" them at gunpoint, a federal judge ruled.

Georgeia Moreno and her family sued Pittsburgh, its police chief and 14 police officers in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

The events unfolded as Georgeia, her husband, William; and her stepfather, Mark Staymates were watching television in their living room as Georgia's sick mother, Darlene, slept upstairs at 7 p.m. on Dec. 7, 2010. They suddenly heard a loud explosion and saw bright lights, "as if grenades were going off," the complaint states.

Pittsburgh Police SWAT officers wearing helmets and facemasks then broke and "stormed through" the front and back doors of the home, according to the complaint.

Those officers allegedly never identified themselves, pointed assault rifles at the family, shouted obscenities and destroyed their property.

Although the team purportedly sought to arrest William for quarreling with a drunk, off-duty police officer at a local veterans club early that morning, the family says that their "terrorization" continued for another 45 minutes after William was apprehended.

The officers threw to the floor, kicked and handcuffed Georgeia, her stepfather and her adult son Billy. They also injured Mark's shoulder and forced Billy to lie face down in broken glass, according to the complaint.

When Georgeia pleaded repeatedly that she had young children in the house, at least one officer allegedly stated, "You think you can get one of ours, and we won't get one of yours?"

The family says the police proceeded to drag Georgeia's 10-year-old son Trentino violently from the bathtub, injuring his ankles. They allegedly then made the boy stand naked at gunpoint next to his 4-year-old sister Briseis.

Officers have continued to harass and threaten the family since the raid, telling them "that's how we do things here" and that they should move out of Pittsburgh, the complaint states.

The family asserts claims for violations of their Fourth and 14th amendment rights and seeks $50,000 in damages.

U.S. District Judge Nora Barry Fischer refused to dismiss the case Monday, holding that the plaintiffs' claims are not time-barred, and the officers knew or should have known that the action would be brought against them.

You left this out of your post: "Fact discovery will close on Aug. 5, the judgment states".

This article has a lot of he said, she said, in it.

There are a million good things that law enforcement officers do that you seem to over look for some reason.

However as I said:  "At least we can voice our opinion without having our heads chopped off."

Donzel wrote:You left this out of your post: "Fact discovery will close on Aug. 5, the judgment states".

This article has a lot of he said, she said, in it.

There are a million good things that law enforcement officers do that you seem to over look for some reason.

However as I said:  "At least we can voice our opinion without having our heads chopped off."

Because I have been following this a long time now.

Just because cops help rescue a kitten or foil a bank robbery today, does not negate the fact that they will terrorize somebody in early morning SWAT raid tomorrow.

And as far as voicing our opinion, I ask again, does Bluffdale, Utah ring any bells at all?

Cops are the million man standing army that the founders warned us about.

We ignore that at our peril.

IL - Cop Taser and kill 95 year old man for waving a cane, shoe horn and knife at them.

Nursing home resident dead after confrontation with police

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/27/19720753-nursing-home-resident-dead-after-confrontation-with-police?lite

A 95-year-old resident of an Illinois nursing home died early Saturday, hours after being shocked with a Taser and bean bag rounds in a confrontation with police.

Authorities said John Warna was a resident at Victory Centre of Park Forest, on the 100 block of South Main Street in the south suburb. He was threatening paramedics and staff with a cane and a metal shoehorn when police arrived at the complex, they said.

Police said they struck him with a Taser and bean bag rounds after he threatened officers with a 12-inch butcher knife.

Warna was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center, where he later died.

A cause of death was not released by Saturday evening.

Man shot in his driveway by police while looking for a cigarette in his mother’s car

http://topinfopost.com/2013/07/28/man-shot-in-his-driveway-by-police-while-looking-for-a-cigarette-in-his-mothers-car?fb_source=pubv1

Lying in a hospital bed the night after he was shot by Escambia County sheriff’s deputies in his own front yard, Roy Middleton only had one question: Why?

Middleton, 60, of the 200 block of Shadow Lawn Lane in Warrington, was shot in the leg about 2:42 a.m. Saturday while trying to retrieve a cigarette from his mother’s car in the driveway of their home.

A neighbor saw someone reaching into the car and called 911. While he was looking into the vehicle, deputies arrived in response to the burglary call.

Middleton said he was bent over in the car searching the interior for a loose cigarette when he heard a voice order him to, “Get your hands where I can see them.”

He said he initially thought it was a neighbor joking with him, but when he turned his head he saw deputies standing halfway down his driveway.

He said he backed out of the vehicle with his hands raised, but when he turned to face the deputies, they immediately opened fire.

“It was like a firing squad,” he said. “Bullets were flying everywhere.”

The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on the incident Saturday.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating, as is standard in deputy-involved shootings. The deputies, who have not been publicly identified, have been placed on paid administrative leave.

In Baptist Hospital and groggy on Saturday, Middleton said he would be in recovery for several weeks. His wounds are not life-threatening.

“I’m just glad they didn’t hit me here or here,” he said, pointing toward his head and chest. “My mother’s car is full of bullet holes though. My wife had to go and get a rental.”

The neighborhood where Middleton lives was quiet Saturday afternoon, and there was no evidence the shooting had even occurred. However, neighbors said only a few hours earlier the area had been congested with law enforcement vehicles and yellow crime scene tape.

Several neighbors said they heard the commotion, but weren’t entirely sure why events unfolded the way they did. A teenage girl who said she witnessed a portion of the incident said she never saw Middleton provoke the deputies.

“He wasn’t belligerent or anything,“ she said.

Middleton, too, said he doesn’t understand how or why the incident escalated so quickly. He also said deputies never offered him an explanation or an apology.

“Even if they thought the car was stolen, all they had to do was run the license plate,” he said. “They would have seen that that car belonged there.”

OMG, this is just awful.

I heard last night of two women who were stopped and the cops suspected they had marijuana, so they did a body cavity search right there on the side of the road. I couldn't believe it! (All inclusive cavity search)

WHL wrote:OMG, this is just awful.

I heard last night of two women who were stopped and the cops suspected they had marijuana, so they did a body cavity search right there on the side of the road.  I couldn't believe it! (All inclusive cavity search)

That has happened more than once.

Let me find a few recent examples.

That is just unbelievable! It is just shocking! It is just horrible! What else can I say?

WHL wrote:That is just unbelievable!  It is just shocking! It is just horrible!  What else can I say?

Want to be really shocked?

For every incident that is reported, I figure about 100 go unreported.

Maybe more.

And if any of those people had fought back against this rape, in any meaningful way, they would have been executed on the spot, for "failure to comply with an Officer's commands".

It's not a question of "if" anymore, we now live in a fully militarized "police state".

I want to do like most people. Block my ears and cover my eyes! So scary!

Nothing says freedom like cops hut hutting around in tanks.



Concord, NH, Cops Want Armored SWAT Vehicle to Combat "Free Staters" (And Others)

Brian Doherty - Jul. 29, 2013

http://reason.com/blog/2013/07/29/concord-nh-cops-want-armored-swat-vehicl

The New Hampshire Union Leader reports on the desire of Concord, NH, police to get all militaried up with Bearcat armored SWAT vehicles, paid for by the federal Department of Homeland Security, natch.

In its grant application to DHS, the police department said New Hampshire's experience with terrorism "slants primarily towards the domestic type," and said "the threat is real and here."

"Groups such as the Sovereign Citizens, Free Staters and Occupy New Hampshire are active and present daily challenges," the application stated. In addition to organized groups, it cited "several homegrown clusters that are anti-government and pose problems for law enforcement agencies."

Union Leader article:
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20130728/NEWS07/130729284

Copy of the grant application to the FedCoats:
http://fpp.cc/?p=6244#sthash.FbT3Hjfq.dpbs

I don't know much about the other groups, but the Free Staters seem to be peace loving. They just want to be left alone. The problem is they dare to disagree with the system.

WHL wrote:I don't know much about the other groups, but the Free Staters seem to be peace loving.  They just want to be left alone.  The problem is they dare to disagree with the system.

That is not permitted any longer.

Am I seeing double or are you posting things in two threads??? It doesn't take much to confuse me you know.

WHL wrote:Am I seeing double or are you posting things in two threads??? It doesn't take much to confuse me you know.

LOL - Sorry, yes...I felt that Concord tank story deserved it's own thread.

Can you post any from NH?