Busting Posse Comitatus: Military Cops Arrest Civilians in Florida City

Photo from Homestead ARB website.

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars

In Homestead, Florida, Posse Comitatus is dead. The Air Force now responds to civilian crime in the small city, population around 30,000.

“Here at Homestead Air Reserve Base we have the Crime Stop hotline that allows anyone either on base or off the installation to anonymously report a crime,” explains the Homestead Air Reserve Base website. “If you know of a crime that has been committed, if you see a crime in progress, or if you see a suspicious person, vehicle, or situation that makes you feel a crime may be occurring, call the Security Forces Crime Stop Hotline…”

On July 15, military police – known as Security Forces patrolmen – detained a criminal suspect at a Circle K in until Miami-Dade police arrived.

“Crime prevention is everyone’s responsibility, the better informed we are the safer we can make the installation and the surrounding community,” said t. Juan Lemus, Security Forces Police Services Chief.

Crime prevention off military bases is the responsibility of civilian police, not the military. In 1878, following Reconstruction, the Posse Comitatus Act was passed. It limited the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The statute prohibits Army and Air Force personnel and units of the National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress.

Infowars.com has reported numerous violations of Posse Comitatus since September 11, 2001. In 2009, the National Guard provided “security” in Kingman, Arizona. The Coast Guard, under the Department of Homeland Security, is now exempt from the Act.

The military participated in a checkpoint along with Tennessee cops and Homeland Security in April of 2009. The governor and state representatives were not aware of the illegal collaboration when contacted by the Alex Jones Show.

In 2008, the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center and the California Highway Patrol used the Christmas holiday as an excuse to collaborate on a drunk driving checkpoint in San Bernardino County.

Following a shooting in Alabama, the Army was dispatched from Fort Rucker to patrol the streets of Samson in 2009.

Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl called in the National guard to help in “domestic” disputes in 2009. Ravenstahl used a snow emergency as an excuse. He went on television and said “be advised that you will begin to see National Guard Humvees in some of your neighborhoods beginning this evening.”

The above represents just a small sampling of the military violating Posse Comitatus. The Act was violated in earnest following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The devastating storm proved to be a beta test for military violations of the law.

NORTHCOM announced in 2008 it would use battle-hardened troops from Iraq for “civil unrest and crowd control” in the United States. On September 30, 2008, the Pentagon announced the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team would be an “on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks,” the Army Times reported.
The mission soon expanded from disasters to every day police activity.

The firewall between military and civilian police duties was demolished with the passage of H.R. 5122, also known as the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007. It allowed the president to declare martial law under revisions to the Insurrection Act, and take charge of United States National Guard troops without state governor authorization when public order has been lost and the state and its constituted authorities cannot enforce the law.

The bill was repealed in 2008, but this has not stopped the military, numerous federal agencies, and the Department of Homeland Security from blurring the distinctions between military, federal and local police responsibilities.

According to John R. Brinkerhoff, acting associate director for national preparedness of FEMA from 1981 to 1983, “the Posse Comitatus Act is not only irrelevant but also downright dangerous to the proper and effective use of military forces for domestic duties.”

Brinkerhoff cites the Quadrennial Defense Review for 2001 that has declared homeland security to be the primary mission of the Department of Defense.

Brinkerhoff is a longtime martial law advocate. He borrowed his ideas on martial law from then FEMA director, Louis O. Guiffrida. In 1970 at the Army War College, Guiffrida outlined his plan for martial law in case of a national uprising by black militants. The paper advocated the roundup and transfer to “assembly centers or relocation camps” of at least 21 million “American Negroes,” the Miami Herald reported on July 5, 1987, during the Iran-Contra hearings.

Canceling Posse Comitatus is not about a benevolent Pentagon helping strapped local officials and over-burdened local cops save people from car accidents or the ravages of hurricanes and tornadoes. It has little to do with rioting “Negroes.”

It’s about imposing martial law. Propaganda campaigns portraying uniformed soldiers wielding the jaws of life soften people up for the presence of troops on the streets. Military checkpoints in California and Tennessee have nothing to do with drunk drivers or seat belts. They acclimate the public to soldiers manning checkpoints like they do in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Quadrennial Defense Review for 2001′s declaration that homeland security is the primary mission of the Department of Defense is particularly dangerous now that the government with the help of the corporate media has shifted the threat of terrorism from distant cave-dwelling Muslims to local “far right” extremists.