“The police are
worthless. I don't know what we're paying them for.”
That familiar,
despairing lament was voiced by a friend here in Payette after his family had lost
$20,000 worth of property a burglary. The crime was solved before the police intervened:
Some of the pilfered property was still in possession of the suspects, who
admitted that it didn't belong to them. Working on their own initiative, my
friend and his adult daughter -- the primary victim -- tracked down more of the
stolen goods at local yard sales and garage sales.
A phone call to
the Payette PD led to a visit by an officer who was courteous, professional,
and who provided no practical help of any kind. He did arrest one suspect, a
mentally deficient man who readily admitted to the officer that he had taken
the property because an unspecified “they” had told him it was “all right” to
do so.
Neither the
responding officer, nor the colleague who took over the case when the first
officer went on vacation, expended any effort to identify who “they” were, or
to press charges against the accomplices. The case was closed with the arrest
of a solitary man – a registered sex offender -- who “became somewhat upset
[because] he was the only one who was going to be in trouble for the thefts
that occurred, because he was honest,” as an investigative report summarized.
“The police
wouldn't bother to fingerprint my stolen property,” Elizabeth Puckett, the
owner of the property, recounted to me. “When I asked why, the officer said,
`Well, we're not CSI.'” It shouldn't be assumed that the Payette PD is
consistently insouciant about the collection of forensic evidence. A few years
ago, Puckett recalls, she received a visit from the Animal Control officer (an official with whom I've had some
experience) after the
department received a report that “we had a dog that looked like a pit bull.”
A county ordinance enacted several years ago during a spasm
of civic alarm forbids residents to “own, possess, keep, exercise control over,
maintain, harbor, transport, buy or sell” pit bulls or “dangerous dogs”
displaying pit bull characteristics. Those who owned such dogs prior to
enactment of the ban were required to register them with the police (who were
exempt from the ordinance, of course), “keep $1 million liability insurance,
have a microchip ID … implanted in the dog, and pay an annual pit bull license
fee.” Dogs owned by people not in compliance with the edict “are subject to
impoundment and destruction.”
“The officer told
us that if we were going to keep it we would have to have a blood test,”
Elizabeth recalled. “So I would have had to pay $100 for a blood test, and
still could lose the dog if it displayed the wrong `characteristics.' So I just
let the dog go.”
The same Payette
Police Department that couldn't help Elizabeth recover her stolen property was diligent in taking her property, even though she had done no injury to anybody
else. This is because the Payette PD, like every other agency of its kind, is
involved in law enforcement, rather than the protection of persons and
property. It defines its role in terms of what its officers can do to
people, rather than what they are required to do for people.
No, Police Don’t Work for
You
When a disgusted
citizen tells an abusive police officer that he pays the officer's salary, the
victim is committing a category
error. Those of us who constitute the productive sector don't pay the
police; they are paid by the people who plunder our property at gunpoint. Once
it is understood that police employed by the people who commit aggression
against our property, we shouldn't be surprised that police are of practically
no value in terms of protecting property against
criminal aggression. Police are properly seen as retail-level distributors of violence
on behalf of the coercion cartel.
Law enforcement
is a “product” we are forced to buy, and severely punished – through summary
application of torture, or even by death – if we refuse. Since law enforcement operates as a
monopoly, rather than through the market, there is no legitimate pricing
mechanism to guide rational allocation of resources, and no way to measure
“customer” satisfaction – although using the term “customer” in this context is
a bit like using the term “girlfriend” to describe a rape victim.
Indeed, the
institutional response of law enforcement to public dissatisfaction is to
expand and escalate the behavior that inspired the discontent, and treat
persistent criticism as evidence of criminal intent. Witness recent
developments in Albuquerque, where outrage over serial police homicides –
including the death squad-style murder last March of James Boyd, an unarmed
homeless man – generated a substantial organized protest movement.
After infuriated protesters took control of a
city council meeting to
place the defiant APD Chief Gorden Eden “on trial,” the city government’s
reaction was not to cashier the official who had instigated the outrage, but
rather to impose new restrictions on citizen participation in city council meetings.
When protesters
held a subsequent public “mock trial” of Chief Eden at a peaceful public
demonstration, the gathering was infiltrated by a
several undercover police officers, including a detective who had shot a
20-year-old in the stomach during a drug sting in 2010. As public frustration and discontent
continue to rise in Albuquerque, the APD has responded to the growing
dissatisfaction of its “clientele” by spending $350,000 to purchase 350
AR-15 rifles – the same
type that were used to slaughter Boyd in the foothills outside the city just a
few weeks earlier.
The Albuquerque
Police Department, like dozens of others nation-wide, has displayed what the
Justice Department calls a “pattern and practice” of excessive force. If it
were a private corporation, it would be the target of lawsuits and, most
likely, criminal prosecution. Unlike a private entity, however, a police
department is protected by the fiction of “sovereign immunity,” and its
employees are shielded from personal accountability through “qualified
immunity.”
While exceptionally
corrupt police departments are occasionally disbanded, their “markets” are quickly
captured by other agencies that will provide the same “service.” Individual
police officers who distinguish themselves through abusive and criminal
behavior -- which, given the competition, is a significant accomplishment – sometimes
find themselves briefly unemployed. However, they often become “gypsy cops” and find employment elsewhere as
state-licensed purveyors of violence.
“Operational Security”
rather than Accountability
One fact not
adequately understood by the public is that even geographically local police
departments are not locally accountable. Police chiefs are not elected
officials; they are appointed by the municipal corporation that employs them.
Police departments describe themselves as public agencies for the purpose of
“qualified immunity.” However, as the recent ACLU report on police
militarization revealed,
an increasing number of police agencies
are claiming to be “private corporations” exempt from open records laws.
This isn’t the
only tactic employed by police agencies to impede transparency and
accountability to the public supposedly “served” by them.
I recently filed
a public records request with the Malheur County Sheriff’s Office regarding the disposal of a huge quantity of
marijuana that had been seized by a nearby multi-jurisdictional narcotics task
force. Undersheriff Travis Johnson informed me that he could provide “photo
documentation” of the marijuana being buried at a local landfill. “The cost to
produce those records will be one hour of labor at $48.11 and one CD at $10 for
a total of $58.11,” according to Johnson.
Both the “labor”
and materials involved in fulfilling that records request have already been
paid for. The information – which, interestingly, was not provided to the
defense as discovery during a recently-concluded trial – should be easy to
find. All that is necessary would be for a MCSO functionary to insert a CD into
a computer and click a mouse. A single CD – assuming that Malheur County buys
them in bulk – would cost less than
twenty cents. The market rate for an hour of
labor by a “copy specialist” is less than nine dollars. The amount cited to
me by Undersheriff Johnson reflects the price structure of a monopoly, which in
this case is trying to impede public scrutiny of its actions by making it cost-prohibitive
to pursue public records requests.
Opacity of this
kind is hardly compatible with a “public service” agency. It is entirely
appropriate, however, for an entity that sees the public as hostile and thus
makes “operational security” a priority.
Even before “local”
police agencies were effectively satellitized by the federal government they
were paramilitary bodies designed to operate as occupation forces, rather than
as a protective service. In creating his London Metropolitan Police, Robert
Peel adapted the model he had employed in creating the “Peace Preservation
Force,” a specialized unit within the 20,000-man military contingent Peel
had commanded as military governor of occupied Ireland.
Peel’s Militaristic Model
Writing in the
December 1961 Journal of Modern History,
Galen Broekker observed that when Peel was appointed governor in 1814, his
objective in creating the Peace Preservation Force was “`pacifying’ a recalcitrant
population.” For several years prior to Peel’s appointment, rural insurgents
called “banditti” had been fighting among themselves and occasionally attacking
British outposts. Of much greater concern to occupation authorities, however,
was evidence of involvement by “respectable people” in “insurrectionary
activity of a political nature.”
At the time of Peel’s
arrival, the crime rate in Ireland wasn’t particularly high, so he took
advantage of a “lull” to “muster the forces of authority in anticipation of the
inevitable trouble to come” as English authorities took aggressive action to
stamp out separatism. The “Peace Preservation Force” – which was the prototype
for every modern police agency – wasn’t designed to protect person and property
from criminal aggression, but rather to protect a political elite. This is why Peel’s
London Metropolitan Police Force was initially greeted with hostility by
conservatives in the British Parliament and the public at large, who often
referred to officers as “Blue Locusts.” Within a decade, however, Peel’s model
was firmly entrenched in London, and migrated across the Atlantic to New York
City.
As evangelists of
“Manifest Destiny” carved their bloody path to the Pacific, an Americanized
version of Peel’s police concept was among the chief tenets of their gospel of
government-imposed “civilization.” It wasn’t until the early 1970s, however,
that the latent militarism of the police was given expression when the Nixon
administration declared “war” on drugs. This led to the proliferation of SWAT
teams, which were modelled after counter-insurgency units organized by the CIA
as part of its Phoenix Program in Vietnam.
Declining Crime, Escalating
Police Militarism
Beginning in the
1970s, the official rhetoric of law enforcement became overtly martial, a
tendency that has grown in crescendo. However, by most measures, violent crime has been
in decline for five decades. A similar trend is visible regarding on-the-jo
b police fatalities. Joseph McNamara, former NYPD Deputy Inspector, points
out that police “work” is actually much safer today than it has been in a
half-century or more. Law enforcement is not found in the top ten “most
dangerous occupations” in the annual list compiled by the Bureau of Labor
Statistics.
Yet police insist that the United States “has become a war
zone,” in
the words of Sheriff Michael Gayer of Indiana’s Pulaski County. This is
entirely true – but only in the sense that the police consider themselves at
war with the public, and have fully embraced a mindset compatible with their
role as an occupying army.
As was the case when Peel created his “Peace Preservation
Force” in Ireland two centuries ago, the Power Elite has been relentlessly
expanding its domestic army of occupation and indoctrinating those enlisted
therein to see the public as its enemy – “ in anticipation of the inevitable
trouble to come.”
Just a few weeks ago, the
House of Representatives recently rejected, by a dramatic margin, an amendment
to a military spending bill proposed by Florida Democratic Representative Alan
Grayson that would have placed theoretical limits on the transfer of
war-fighting assets to local police departments. Mind you, that measure would
not have shut down the Pentagon's pipeline to the police; it would have
forbidden future transfers of high-capacity
weaponry, including armed drones, armored vehicles, grenade launchers, “toxicological
agents,… guided missiles, ballistic missiles, rockets, torpedoes, bombs, mines,
or nuclear weapons.”
The amendment was rejected by a vote of 355 to 62 – which means
that 355 members of the
House of Representatives, the branch of the federal legislature supposedly most
accountable to the people, are on record refusing to rule out the transfer of nuclear
weapons to your “local” police agency. Some of the most outspoken critics
of Grayson’s amendment waxed indignant in condemning critics of the ongoing militarization
of the police.
“This is
absolutely ludicrous to think that the equipment that is utilized by law
enforcement is utilized for any reason except for public safety interests, and
it happens across this nation every day in a responsible way,” harrumphed
Florida Republican Representative Rich Nugent, a former sheriff. Nugent is
correct about one thing: Military-grade hardware and war-fighting tactics are used by police “every day”: On
average, there are 124 SWAT deployments every day, nearly all of them carried
out as drug enforcement raids or to enforce routine search warrants. Many, if not
most, of those raids are carried out after sunset or before the dawn.
There is no country on earth where citizens are more likely to experience the “midnight knock” than the United States of America. That fact surely reflects the interests of those who want to monopolize power, rather than a market demand for “security.”
Keynesian Cops
As part of the
Obama administration’s “stimulus” package in 2009, the Justice Department
increased spending on its Byrne grant and COPS programs – two major conduits
for local law enforcement subsidies – by more
than $4 billion. At the same time, the Pentagon expanded
its 1033 program, through which military-grade hardware and vehicles are
provided, on concessionary terms, to local police. The predictable, and
subsequently observed, impact of this example of police state Keynesianism was
a dramatic escalation in police militancy toward the public. But these
federally created distortions in the “security” market have created other, less
visible burdens on the public as well.
The police
department in Nampa, Idaho, a city of about 80,000 people with a crime rate well
below the national average, was
one of more than 400 to receive a Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP)
vehicle through the Pentagon’s 1033 program. Over the past two years, the
Nampa PD also purchased a new fleet of Ford Taurus Police Interceptor patrol
vehicles. However, in June Chief Craig Kingsbury went to the City Council to
ask for funding to purchase a dozen additional SUV patrol vehicles because the
Interceptors “aren’t popular with many of the department’s officers – they’re
cramped and uncomfortable for long patrols,” reported
the Idaho Press-Tribune.
In the hierarchy
of public concerns, “officer comfort” apparently resides very close to the
sacred imperative of “officer safety.” Rather than requiring his subordinates
to adapt to their vehicles in order to serve their “customers” better,
Kingsbury insists on getting another $441,000 in plundered funds to serve the
creature comfort of Nampa’s costumed tax-feeders.
Question: If the
need for new patrol vehicles is so acute, why doesn't the Nampa PD sell off its
spanking-new MRAP, which has a listed market value of about $500,000? Like
hundreds of other departments, the Nampa PD got the MRAP not because of an
actual need, but because the Pentagon was willing to give it to them at
practically no expense. If we were to assume that the SUV patrol vehicles are a
“necessity,” the MRAP should be regarded as a luxury and liquidated as such.
That’s how a market-based enterprise would operate, in any case.
However, the
only market for MRAPs consists of other police departments that can get
them from the Pentagon at negligible expense. Even if the people running the
Nampa PD were sufficiently rational and mature to sell off their dangerous new
toy, they wouldn’t find a buyer. Unless austerity is somehow imposed on the
Nampa PD, the city’s tax victims will eventually be forced to pay nearly the
entire price of the “free” MRAP that was provided to the department – a vehicle
that has no conceivable use other than providing “force protection” during SWAT
raids of the kind that have become commonplace.
Predation, not protection
Like most other
police agencies, the Nampa PD devours roughly half the municipal budget, and
much of that expense is devoted to salaries. In
2010, seven of the ten highest-paid municipal positions in Nampa were filled by
“public safety” officials, only one of whom – Fire Chief Karl Malott – was
not a police officer. Coming in at number four on that list was Corporal (now Sergeant)
Jason Cantrell, who received $104,173 in total compensation – nearly as much as
then-Chief Bill Augsburger. Another corporal, Chadrick Shepard, finished at
ninth place on the list with an annual haul of $93,559.
The median
salary for a Nampa patrol officer is $50,214 – about $4,000 more than Idaho’s
median household income, and roughly $14,000 more
than the typical household income in the city supposedly “served” by that
police department. A
“parking and compliance officer” for the Nampa PD – that is, a state
functionary who writes parking tickets – can expect a starting salary of $13.50
an hour. By way of contrast, an entry-level “security officer” employed by Secure Solutions to provide
protection for private and commercial property in neighboring Boise is
offered $10.00 an hour.
These disparities
in compensation are not the product of natural market forces, because police
and private security officers are not serving the same market: The later
protect property, the former protect those who prey upon it. Even in the era of
the all-encompassing Homeland Security State, privately
employed security officers outnumber government-employed cops by at least three
to one.
If government
law enforcement agencies performed the advertised function of “protecting and
serving” property rights, it wouldn’t be necessary for property owners to pay
for their own security services. It has been known for decades – specifically,
since the Police Foundation’s year-long study of the impact of "preventive patrols" on crime rates in the early 1970s --
that government law enforcement patrols do nothing to reduce or deter property
crimes, such as “burglaries, auto thefts, larcenies … robberies, or vandalism.”
Private security services, such as Detroit’s Threat Management
Center, provide much better protection – as
do armed citizens, as Detroit’s Police Chief James Craig has admitted.
Once
again, this
isn’t surprising: Government-employed police
have no enforceable duty to protect persons and property, even those to whom they
have made explicit promises of individual protection. In fact, citizens are
expected to protect the police – and
some have found themselves being sued by officers who accused them of failing
to provide that protection.
Hero: Joseph Lozito. |
New York City was the first jurisdiction to adopt Peel's model of paramilitary policing. Three years ago, NYPD officer Terrance Howell, who had been sent to find a deranged slasher-killer named Maxim Gelman, who had murdered three people, watched from the operator's booth of a subway car while a martial arts expert named Joseph Lozito tackled and subdued the suspect. As Gelman slashed at the back of Lozito's head, the desperate, bleeding man pleaded for help from Officer Howell, who did nothing to intervene. It was not until after Lozito had pinned Gelman to the floor and disarmed him that Howell emerged from his secure location and told Lozito, "You can get up now."
Howell, the "hero cop" who was photographed triumphantly escorting Gelman in handcuffs, admitted to a member of a grand jury that he had hid from the suspect out of fear for his safety. After Lozito filed a tort claim for negligence, city attorney David Santoro explained that "Under well-established law, the police are not liable for such incidents" because police have "no special duty" to protect any individual citizen -- even one who is literally bleeding to death a few feet away as he heroically subdues a psychotic murderer.
Coward: Terrance Howell. |
"Next time you hear people call cops trigger-happy or complain about their overtime and pensions, think of Police Officer Terrance Howell," pontificated the New York Daily News in a reflexive paean to the police after Gelman's arrest.
Ironically, that is a very good suggestion. Here is a better one: Next time you are told that police protect the public, remember Joseph Lozito.
Where
protection of property is concerned, police are much worse than useless. Their
job is to enforce the will of the predatory class that employs them, which is
why we would be safer without them.
Dum spiro, pugno!
18 comments:
"Police are properly seen as retail-level distributors of violence on behalf of the coercion cartel."
an excellent use of the language, Will.
the occupation forces are here. the willingly deaf, dumb and blind allow what is among us. it has and will continue to turn on us, increasing as each day passes.
will a critical point ever be reached? or will we become just another third world hellhole?
Personal story about police being useless up to a point. I had a bicycle stolen from me, and I reported it to the police along with the serial number. A year and a half later, someone took it to a pawn shop where it was discovered to be stolen. The police went and got it and talked to the person who pawned it. Of course, the guy who pawned my bike said he bought it from someone else but refused to say who he got it from--which in my book is called protecting a criminal. What do you think the police did with this guy? They let him go without charges.
At least I got my bike back. The criminal is still out there, probably stealing more bikes now that he knows he can get away with it, even after he's been caught!
Anonymous,
Don't ever try to sell that bike. If you do, it will pop up in their computer, and in the middle of the night a SWAT team will smash down your door and shoot you and everyone else in your house to death, unarmed or not - For trying to sell your own bike. Of course your death will be ruled a proper use of force and according to proper procedure. But it's better than being sent to jail, where you might be boiled to death or asphyxiated with a plastic bag filled with pepper spray tied over your head, not as nice ways to die as a bullet. So be grateful to the cops for their services to you.
http://www.policestateusa.com/
- LG
Great info about the cowardly nypd cop. Not a surprise that the New York daily news praised him with as anti gun as they are for the avg person.
http://www.examiner.com/article/right-to-arms-isn-t-only-freedom-progressives-want-to-eviscerate
Did you see this, grigg? The awful congresswoman Maloney is trying to have Larry Pratt and the GOA investigated by the police because of the recent Rolling Stone propaganda piece quoting Pratt as saying the 2nd amendment was meant to scare the govt and keep them in check from tyranny. She is basically proving the point of Madison in federalist 46 and Hamilton in federalist 28, and those guys were moderates compared to Sam Adams and Jefferson and mason!
While you're at it: the Constitution forbids the military from enforcing the law but there's nothing about militarizing the police and use them to subjugate the population.
It's interesting you noted that the modern police originated from Robert Peel is a reminder that like a singular currency and a standing military - the police force is a relatively modern invention. For much of history the rulers didn't issue currency and let the market decide. For much of history there was no official military but the men formed militias in times of invasion. And, of course, for much of history there was no standing police force so when crimes were committed it was expected the household had the right of self-defence but failing that the men would voluntarily band together into a militia to enforce the law.
"When a disgusted citizen tells an abusive police officer that he pays the officer's salary, the victim is committing a category error. Those of us who constitute the productive sector don't pay the police; they are paid by the people who plunder our property at gunpoint."
Truer words were never spoken. It's amazing how We the Sheeple mentally blank out this ugly reality.
The inner contradictions when a monopoly positivist legal system is enforcer, rather than the NAP.
With the NAP, this case is simple; no legs broken, no pockets picked.
now for the abuses of a positivistic monopoly: http://mic.com/articles/93295/why-are-police-officers-allegedly-trying-to-force-this-teen-to-get-an-erection
Hey William!
I'm a long time reader of yours and I was wondering if you ever write for reason.com? Some of their articles on police abuse are pretty good but nothing as detailed and succinct as your writings.
Please share and make the time to view Rob Hustle's 'Call The Cops' video on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlY9C6pzxKc
So so glad that younger people have a means to learn what's happening to society via this video.
Just like to remind you that the House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans--the very folks who are always crying about freedom. Looks to me like they have the freedom to profit from defense spending and we have the freedom to get tazed, shot, and choked.
It defies understanding that anybody could believe that the GOP is any less inhospitable to individual liberty and dignity than the other branch of the corporatist party:
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-triumph-of-reich-publican-party.html
If I'm not mistaken, both George Wallace and Ralph Nader have been quoted as saying "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democratic and Republican parties."
When we have that kind of consensus, is there really any doubt?
Anyone who hasn't been asleep like Rip van Winkles knows that both major US parties are puppets of the banksters who control the Federal Reserve System and other global financial entities.
Smart discerning citizens will access The Rutherford Institute's website:
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_stealing_of_america_by_the_cops_the_courts_the_corporations_and_co
Methinks that Mr. Rutherford and Mr. Grigg HAVE to be related. I wish they both were in my family!
One evening my son and his girlfriend were driving home and had to stop for a traffic light. They we hit from behind at full speed by a foreigner driving drunk. The driver and his SUV just backed up and went on the run. When police were notified they said there was nothing they could do. As the couple we en-route to the hospital for treatment of there injuries. My other son and I went looking for the driver. He was found passed out hidden by the underpass exit just blocks away from where the accident occurred. It was our effort that brought justice that day, not the police as they were more interested in their Doughnut Run than in helping the public that pay their salaries and whom they supposedly serve. I cannot remember how many times I used to assist officers in trouble. In that they now represent The System they are on their own.
After spending 500 dollars on various fruit trees and bushes, and several days of grueling hard work planting them, somebody vandalized my property and tore out more then half of the 30 or so plants. I called the police in our mostly rural county. They arrived within the hour and the first words from their lips were, "what's your date of birth and social security number?" They also didn't seem very concerned and treated the whole thing as a waste of their time. Since it's necessary to "dig a 100 dollar hole to plant a ten dollar tree," I had suffered a huge loss. That was the first time I'd ever called the police to report a crime. It is certainly the last.
This is easily the most interesting, and certainly the most frustratingly on - the - nose article about the emerging police state I've ever read. I can only hope more people find it as infuriating as I do. As for you, you have a new reader.
Will, the link you posted above concerning the Police Foundation's year-long crime study does not appear to be working. Just thought I'd point it out.
Great article btw.
Post a Comment