"What's the worst that can happen?" asks Bradshaw about targeting "anti-government extremists".... |
“What
does it hurt,” asked
Sheriff Ric Bradshaw of Florida’s Palm Beach County, “to have somebody knock on
the door and ask, `Hey, is everything OK?’”
The
answer to that question obviously depends on the identity of the “Somebody” who
is making that inquiry. What Sheriff Bradshaw had
in mind was a strike force composed of deputies, social workers, and
“mental health” professionals from a “Behavioral Sciences Unit” (BSU) who would
be on-call twenty-four hours a day, ready to be deployed to visit the homes of
what the Soviets used to call “socially dangerous people.” In the Soviet Union,
such people would often be involuntarily committed to a psihuska, or psychiatric prison.
“We
want people to call us if the guy down the street says he hates the government,
hates the mayor and he’s gonna shoot him,” Bradhsaw told the Palm Beach Post in describing the BSU,
which would be funded through a $1 million grant from the state government.
That grant hasn’t been formalized, but if the state legislature balks, it’s
quite likely the Feds will chip in: In a speech last February 6
to the Alliance of DelRay Residential Organizations, Bradshaw said that he
would prefer to fund the unit “through a federal grant.”
This
is precisely the kind of pilot program the Feds would find worthwhile – indeed,
it represents a model of “preventive intervention” that the federal government
has been promoting for at least two decades.
In
1993, another law enforcement personality with roots in Florida, then-Attorney
General Janet Reno, proposed
the creation of specialized units composed of police and social workers who
would fan out in troubled urban regions, knocking on doors, conducting “safety”
evaluations, and connecting residents to government “services.”
During
her reign
of terror as Dade County Prosecutor – in which she displayed unalloyed
viciousness in tearing children from their homes and persecuting
innocent parents – Reno created “Neighborhood Resource Teams” teams
composed of “community-friendly, highly respected police officers, social
workers, public health nurses, [and] community organizers, working full time
within a narrow neighborhood,” she recalled in a May 1993 speech to the
National Forum on Prevention of Crime and Violence.
Reno
had the temerity to offer her program as a national model just weeks after
presiding over the April 19 holocaust at Waco, where she and her underlings
provided the indispensable service of annihilating dozens of innocent children
after torturing them for fifty-one days.
Like
Reno, Bradshaw describes the purpose of his proposed Behavioral Science Unit in
therapeutic terms. The objective, he insists, is “violence prevention” and
“referral to services,” rather than an arrest. To those on the receiving end of
that intervention, this distinction is entirely theoretical: Being taken into
custody by armed strangers is an arrest, irrespective of the semantic
camouflage, and every encounter between the public and the State’s costumed
enforcers is pregnant with life-threatening violence against the innocent.
It
should also be understood that Bradshaw’s real objective is not “violence
prevention,” but rather civilian disarmament. This was also explained by
the sheriff in his February 6 address. The purpose of the BSU, the sheriff
said, is to “identify people with a propensity and inclination to go do violent
things and stop them from accessing firearms.” A
system of preemptive disarmament of people considered to be psychologically
unstable or otherwise “dangerous” has actually been in place in Connecticut
since 1999. Although it has resulted in the confiscation of firearms from
thousands of innocent people, it did nothing to prevent the horror that
unfolded last December at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Employing
the services of “mental health professionals” to certify that people are
dangerous to themselves or others would negate the need for an actual criminal
prosecution. And for Bradshaw, the most potent indicator that a given
individual is a “socially dangerous person” is a hatred for the
institutionalized affliction called “government.”
The
man accused of shooting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords “was telling other people about
how much he hated government and government officials,” Bradshaw told his audience.
The assumption here is that such opinions are symptoms of incipient criminal
behavior. This is why the sheriff intends to create a 24-hour tipline through
which neighbors, family, friends, and others can inform on people who display
such dangerous attitudes.
“It’s
the same principle that’s used by the Secret Service that’s very successful,”
he insisted. The S.S. has a hotline that can be used to report impious and
supposedly threatening comments about the murderous bureaucrat who occupies the
Oval Office, on the assumption that blasphemy against the divine person of the
Dear Leader is itself a criminal act.
While
Bradshaw and others of his ilk regard idle words to be dangerous, if not
criminal, they can’t see how people could perceive a threat in the sudden,
unsolicited presence of armed state functionaries on their doorstep. After all,
asks the sheriff, what would it hurt to send his deputies to confront people
who aren’t suspected of a crime?
If
he possessed a particle of honesty, Sheriff Bradshaw would pose that question
to Dennis Gaydos, and listen carefully to the answer. Because of the kind
ministrations of Bradshaw’s deputies, Gaydos is now missing an ear and an eye.
What
makes his case an even more compelling precautionary example is the fact that, according
to a lawsuit he filed against Bradshaw, Gaydos – a homeless man -- had
“contacted a local assistance agency by telephone for the purpose of a referral
for residential resources, financial aid, and general counseling.” While he was
on the phone, the helpful social workers with whom he was speaking made a
“referral” of their own to Bradshaw’s agency, which responded by dispatching a
SWAT team.
Gaydos
had established a shelter on a parcel of land behind a church. The pastor in
charge of the congregation had given Gaydos permission to be there. Shortly
after Gaydos called for help, a combined tactical force composed of deputies
from the sheriff’s office and officers from the Palm Springs Police Department
-- kitted out in paramilitary drag, carrying the familiar assortment of
weapons, and supplemented with a helicopter -- set up a staging area near
Gaydos’s shelter.
Although
they were dealing with a sickly, unarmed homeless man who was not a criminal
suspect, the Berserkers treated the incident as a combat situation. As they
approached the encampment, Gaydos – who was holding his cell phone – stood up.
Without a word of warning, he was shot twice in the head with rubber bullets.
The first round damaged an ear; the second one destroyed his left eye. The
assailants later tried to justify the head shots by claiming that they had seen
a knife in Gaydos’s hand – but since no knife was ever recovered, this can be
dismissed as a self-serving lie of the kind routinely offered by police
officers after they kill or mutilate an innocent person.
Apparently
satisfied merely to leave their victim partially deaf and partially blinded,
the officers never arrested Gaydos. At the time of this March 2007 incident,
the PBSO SWAT team was under the command of Lt.
Dan Burrows, an oxycontin addict who was accused
of stealing pain medicine and a rifle from a terminally ill former deputy.
About
a year before the PBSO participated in the assault that mutilated Gaydos, Captain
David Carhart, the head of the department’s violent crimes division, was
purged from the force following multiple incidents in which he broke into the
home of former girlfriends. One of them, Tracey Seberg, filed a complaint with
the sheriff’s office – and Carhart responded by threatening to kill her if she
didn’t retract it. According
to Seberg, Carhart told her that he “felt like God when in uniform” and
thus didn’t believe that he was subject to the rules that apply to mere
Mundanes.
Although
Carhart faced up to 15 years in prison for burglary and stalking, he was
demoted to lieutenant and then quietly dismissed from the department in a mass
layoff, receiving a $120,000 severance package.
Neither
Burrows nor Carhart is presently available for duty with the Behavioral Science
Unit. However, Sheriff Bradshaw will be able to make use of the services of Sgt.
Brent Raban, a sociopath who was discharged from the force after boasting
about his habit of beating suspects – and then reinstated, with the expectation
of $150,000 in back pay, through the intervention of the police union.
Like
the members of a hyper-violent police gang in Milwaukee, Sgt. Raban has an adolescent
fixation on a comic book character called the Punisher. This wouldn’t be a
problem to anybody else if Raban hadn’t been given a state-issued costume and
official permission to act out his violent fantasies on helpless people. He
advertised his intentions by accessorizing his costume with a
camouflage-colored skullcap displaying the word “Punishment.”
“It’s
not crime-fighting – I’m dealing out PUNISHMENT!” observed
Raban in a 2009 Facebook
post written while he was patrolling Belle Glade, a city whose
residents are besieged by both private crime and officially-sanctioned police
violence. Raban wasn’t concerned about facing charges, he gloated, because “Like
a good batterer, I know the areas that hide the marks well.” In another post he complained that it had been
at least two weeks since he had beaten somebody, and that this prolonged dry
spell had left him “itchy.”
When
on-shift opportunities to beat handcuffed suspects became scarce, Raban found
other ways to indulge what his boss calls a “propensity and inclination to go do
violent things.” On one occasion he parked his squad car behind a school bus
that was decanting young children, turned on his blue lights, and used his PA
system to insult and upbraid parents who were picking up their kids – most likely
in the hope that one of them would be provoked into offering him an excuse to
inflict “punishment.”
From Sgt. Raban's Facebook page. |
He
was eventually fired after a woman in his neighborhood complained that he had parked
his patrol car on the sidewalk in front of her home and used his position as a
deputy to harass her family.
By that time, Sheriff Bradshaw – who had
reluctantly been forced to have Raban sign a “last-chance contract” – was compelled
to fire Raban. But in Florida, as is the case in most other states, it is
practically impossible to fire a law enforcement officer.
In
April of this year, an
arbitrator ordered Bradshaw to reinstate Raban and pay him back wages.
According to the people responsible for imposing “accountability” on law
enforcement officers, Raban’s sociopathic behavior does not disqualify him for
service as a Palm Beach County Deputy – which may well include working with the
BSU to visit and take into custody people anonymously accused of “hating the
government.” After all, what other personality type would be interested in a
job of that kind?
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
My friends, I am indebted beyond measure for your unfathomably generous response to the appeal I posted a couple of weeks ago. During that interval I have spent most of my time flat on my back while undergoing daily (for a while, twice-daily) antibiotic treatments.
I'm still facing weeks of treatment, but things are looking immeasurably better now than they did two weeks ago, and our prospects have been made much brighter through the immense and Providential generosity you have displayed to me and my family. Thank you so much for your help; your kindness has literally reduced me to tears on several occasions.
Without intending to slight anybody who has helped us, I want to make special public mention of Lew Rockwell, Ernie Hancock, Scott Horton, and Dr. Stan Monteith, each of whom used his influence to let many other people know about my plight. I intend to express personal thanks to everybody who has donated to help us out in this crisis, as well. God bless all of you -- and thank you, once again, on behalf of my entire family.
Dum spiro, pugno!
15 comments:
Cousin Adolf, Uncle Joe, and Dishonest Abe would be very proud of the SS Reichsfuhrer (or KGB Commisar) for Palm Beach County.
Of course this begs the question as to why this sociopathic sherriff gets to stay in office? Much like the one in my former home town they're political ticks that burrow their way under the publics skin and you can only get rid of them by fire or they die in place.
That smirking prick who fancies himself "The Punisher" has an extremely punchable face...
the real issue is tolerance of those types featured by the public. it seems the public is masochistic by allowing such trash to remain in place, enabling the sadism of the creeps featured and their ilk to be visited upon the society at large.
it will stop if citizens demand such and continue demanding until such time as the creep(s) are removed.
bullies are universally hated and bullies with costumes and badges are are at the top of the list. may they get their just desserts, in spades, delivered coldly.
The problem is that liberty-loving individualists are being assaulted from both the Left and the Right. The Left are now pursuing an undisguised plan for radical collectivization throughout society, and all the attendant aggrandizement of the State. Meanwhile, the mainstream Right continues to be composed of people who have a Law & Order fetish, and tend to be reflexive apologists for anything done by the police or military.
I used to be one of those types of conservatives, believing all that stuff about Officer Friendly there to help elderly widows cross the street and stopping genuinely bad guys, etc. In reality most of them are just frustrated aggro types who get off on dominating citizens with virtual impunity. Low level enforcers for the biggest Mafia organization of them all: the State.
Will,
There are many of us who appreciate your writings and look forward to each new post.
While I can't speak for everyone here, I will be glad to continue to assist as I and my family are able to do so.
Best wishes
I'm so glad we left Palm Beach County. We now live in a County with an American Sheriff.
People always assume that the police only do these things to "bad people" who fit the stereotype of whatever group they don't like ie: racial minorities, right wing extremists etc. The L & O Republicans are getting scared now because of the current occupant of the White House. When Bush III gets in office it will be the other side's turn for outrage.
Learning
Sheriff Bradshaw, if you get around to reading this, a statement and a question.
First: FUCK YOU and your entire Nazi department.
Second: When do you intend to take Rush Gasbaugh into custody and/or refer him to services?
Dear Will,
I am so glad to see you back in action! You were sorely missed.
It's interesting how certain State crimes escalate based on the condition of the economy. Bradshaw is merely one of many cogs making up an alarming barometer measuring when the government will finally, officially and with brute force systematically murder its population. All under the pretense of keeping the ones they don't murder, maim, rape, torture and kidnap 'safe'. The fact that violence and force have become a plausible alternative to civility to these people should clearly point the tin-foiled, padded glove finger at the esteemed Sheriff and anyone idiotic and bloodthirsty enough to follow his orders.
G-d Bless you, Will and I'm so glad you're getting better.
Sincerely,
Julie
MissAnthropy said..." I used to be one of those types of conservatives, believing all that stuff about Officer Friendly there to help elderly widows cross the street and stopping genuinely bad guys, etc. "
I wonder what enlightened you?
I wonder if it can be replicated or bottled?
I imagine such can only be learned the hard way if one hasn't learned by now.
thanks to those aiding mr grigg financially and otherwise in the important works he accomplishes for the Lord
we are to tithe to those actually DOING God's work -- not to fat "pastors" and their megachurches, nor to faceless NGOs supposedly pursuing "good causes"
put your money directly into the hands of those who MOST need it
well done mr grigg, fear no evil, but God alone
If I had a nickle for every punisher patch I saw while overseas .. or at the local police/sheriff's office. Maybe I could sell Chinese made, slave labor Punisher patches in various assortments, to every locality, I would be a rich man.
History repeats;
“An appeal to Arms and the God of Hosts is all that is left us.” Patrick Henry
HEY Mr Grigg!
What many may not know {re Rabid Raban} is that the last two letters are silent.
That cap really says "Punish me"
:-)
LAVA
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