Deescalating the Police

I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear. Rosa Parks

Jack Mullen
Activist Post

Americans face a new crisis: police violence against citizens is escalating, blurring the line between criminal and public servant.

Escalating violence against American citizens by police has reached a bifurcation point; Americans are feeling the heat and are beginning to realize something must be done to deescalate police or soon America will join the ranks of hell holes of police crime and violence like Mexico, Haiti, Russia, Uzbekistan and elsewhere where police are independent gangs, violent and undisciplined and devolving into something closer to pirates – stealing property directly from their victims.

Horror stories of police murdering, beating, raping and plundering citizens are daily news in a cities large and small. One city, Albuquerque, NM is now murdering more people per capita than NYPD during arrests, yet NYC is 14 times more populated.

According to sources [1,2]:

The APD routinely kills more suspects per capita than the NYPD, which serves a metro area 16 times the size of Albuquerque and has 34,000 officers to the APD’s 1,000. Since 2010, the APD has been involved in 37 shootings in which 23 people died. Between 2010 and March 2012, the APD was involved in 18 fatal shootings to the NYPD’s 22 in the same time period. No officer involved in any of the cases has been prosecuted or even fired, despite a body trail that suggests a department with wildly inappropriate use-of-force.” [1]

Albuquerque may be the top of the list of police murders, but police departments around the country are beginning to exhibit similar behavior. The increasing number of police brutality and violence incidences, all seemingly happening at the same time in unrelated areas of the country, begs the question why?

Recent headlines from sites like policebrutality.info highlight outrageous, egregious escalation of police brutality and violent gang-like behavior, here are just a few recent headlines:

A survey of headlines from thegovernmentrag.com regarding police state activities reveals more of the same:

Escalating police violence and brutality is being witnessed and suffered by people around the country in towns large and small; the police are now far more dangerous to people than criminals.

There are numerous reasons for this type of police behavior with root causes to be found in a manufactured culture of fear and outsourcing of self responsibility to costumed authority groups with exaggerated legitimate authority.

Police are not arbitrators or representatives of a loving government acting in the capacity of surrogate parents; they are representatives of the state, looking for crimes committed against the state and the fines and fees that will result. Protection of people and their property are low priority, optional functions of police. For further proof see this article: “Justices Rule Police Do Not Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect Someone.” [B]

Whatever you do don’t call the Police

Family Calls 911 For Help With Special Needs Daughter, Cops Show Up And Shoot Her Dead: Neighbors claim girl was shot in the back

Headlines like the one above are clear indicators that Americans are failing in their duty as self-responsible people and are voluntarily abdicating their rights and individualism.

Calling the police to solve family problems or other non life threatening issues is like inviting a Vampire into your home to help with a paper cut.

Americans have been pre-prepared for this abuse of police powers for decades; television and movies glorifying police powers go back into nineteen fifties. The events of 9-11 catapulted the glorification of police and firefighters and other ‘officers and authorities’, including using military as ‘homeland’ protectors, into the position of a new religion.

TV shows depict people calling the police for all domestic problems; calling police in situations that historically and traditionally have never involved police or government social workers or any other agency of a soulless State.

Congenital Incompetence

Collectivism is a psychologically damaging idea promoted and indoctrinated by enslavers; the idea that we are our brother’s keeper, and government or the ‘authorities’ are the Biggest Brother. Collectivist doctrine encourages insinuating the State into the family structure of the organic human family.

Collectivism is a weaponized cultural virus-as-meme introduced by some to control all others. Collectivism is the mesmerizing mantra of a false culture working secretly at transferring individual responsibility and rights to a collection of nameless people for purposes of enslavement.

It is the promulgation of previously and tirelessly repudiated collectivist doctrine via national information channels such as public education, movies, books, magazine articles, news channels and via public drama depicted in reality shows and authority glorifying TV shows that normalizes appealing to a nameless servant of a cold and armed State to solve problems historically and naturally solved by family and friends.

Police and firefighters and military are now promoted as heroes in the news and police dramas airing on cable TV channels. The issue is not whether police and firefighters have dangerous jobs or, from time to time, that they may act heroically, the issue is about presenting police and other so-called ‘authorities’ as a category of heroes. Presenting workers in these professions as heroes and always the good guy is psychologically dangerous because it sets up a false representation of reality.

Historically, government police and military and ‘officials’ of a collectivist culture have been the most brutal and eventually evolve to be populated with the worse kinds of human beings – the opposite of good guys, in fact: the worst of mankind.

Collectivism holds that an individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group… and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by brute force — and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism – Ayn Rand [emphasis added]

Police and other uniformed ‘officials’ are public servants voluntarily serving and functioning in a position which has historically screened for certain personality characteristics; characteristics that were once thought to include superior morals, and a motivation to serve and protect others with intelligence levels sufficient to power a strength of will to think and act according to the rule of law and civilized behavior.

In America, the police officer must be aware of and act consistent with the fundamental principals of the U.S. Constitution and the Constitutions in their State of employment.

These are not the qualifications of a hero, rather the qualifications of honest, dedicated, fair, intelligent and morally sound individuals.

With television, the mainstream corporate media, movies and the indoctrination of public education presenting the ‘authority‘ figure as a super hero with perceived ‘legitimate dominion’ over the lives of the Citizen, it is easy to see how this mentally unhealthy contradiction of reality has empowered and emboldened those given such exaggerated importance and authority.

Federalization and Militarization of Police

It is clear the United States Federal government is encouraging and paying for city police, Sheriff’s and State police departments to train more like military soldiers than public safety and peace officers. The federal government is providing training, weapons, and military hardware to police departments in an unprecedented effort to create police departments rivaling the characteristics of military armies.

A recent article on a website highlighting South Carolina news noted Richland County Sheriff’s department receiving extra training as the “U.S. military carry out secretive – and noisy – joint exercise” [2]

The article quoted the Sheriff as saying this joint exercise was “Due to Sheriff Leon Lott’s longstanding commitment to making sure that deputies are trained and prepared for every event and potential threat and his desire to assist the military to ensure their preparations.” [2]

Justification for training police in the tactics of the military always defaults to statements like Sheriff Lott’s above, citing a need to be prepared for every event and potential threat. It is important to point out, police are not soldiers and are not paid or required to fight against foreign hostile enemies or in the case of ‘every possible threat’. Police are civilian peace keepers, law enforcement officers and servants of the community; police are NOT Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines.

Training police to fight and react to civilian threats in a manner consistent with a military response to an opposing enemy can only lead to escalating police violence against Citizens. Military tactics are based on delivering catastrophic blows to a non-citizen enemy, using superior force and firepower while shooting first and asking questions later.

In an article recently published in the “The New American”, an interview in the Wall Street Journal is cited with writer Radley Balko , author of the Rise of the Warrior Cop, in which Balko notes “police are really becoming an internal military, freed from the bounds of limited equipment and limited authority the new police have become more like an occupying army.” According to Balko:

Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment — from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers — American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop — armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.[3]

According to The New American, “Balko rightly connects the menace of the martial police with the decline in liberty and a disintegration of legal boundaries between sheriffs and generals”:

Americans have long been wary of using the military for domestic policing. Concerns about potential abuse date back to the creation of the Constitution, when the founders worried about standing armies and the intimidation of the people at large by an overzealous executive, who might choose to follow the unhappy precedents set by Europe’s emperors and monarchs.[3]

Training police as warriors is like having a standing army with no enemy; an enemy must be invented to continue to funding, training and justifying the army.

WAR IS DECLARED!

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. – Plato

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. . . . [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and . . . degeneracy of manners and of morals. . . . No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare . . . – James Madison

The so-called “War on Drugs” has been a long standing excuse for escalating police violence and escalating military training and tactics of police. The “War On Drugs” was instrumental in building police SWAT teams and for adding military hardware to traditional police equipment, including automatic weapons, tanks and heavily armored vehicles.

The “War On Drugs” was originally packaged and sold to Americans as a way to minimize the use of illegal drugs, punish those selling ‘illegal’ drugs and work against the overall drug supply. However it is clear the ‘Drug War’ objective has not been achieved; drug use has remained the same year after year since 1970, while the cost of the “War” has risen each year – now totaling at least $1.5 trillion dollars and rising drug-war related violence has turned inner cities into war zones. [4]

The ‘War on Drugs’ continues to consume more than 40 billion dollars per year, while destroying communities, families and lives of children. Children begin receiving drug-related indoctrination in most 5th grade curriculums, promoting premature interest in drugs and the drug culture and eventually turning a percentage of those children in addicts and convicts. This indoctrination is to feed the War on Drugs and is not an accidental byproduct of creating a drug prohibition.

A secondary consequence of the War on Drugs is the world’s largest prison population, according to University of Chicago economist Gary Becker :

The total number of persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the U.S. has grown from 330,000 in 1980 to about 1.6 million today. Much of the increase in this population is directly due to the war on drugs and the severe punishment for persons convicted of drug trafficking. About 50% of the inmates in federal prisons and 20% of those in state prisons have been convicted of either selling or using drugs. The many minor drug traffickers and drug users who spend time in jail find fewer opportunities for legal employment after they get out of prison, and they develop better skills at criminal activities.[5]

It is now clear that the “War on Drugs” is an abject failure and serves only to keep the prices of drugs high, while encouraging distribution and trafficking of narcotics through criminal organizations both in the governments and outside.

The “War On Drugs” is part of a medical monopoly to restrict the selling and distribution of legal and illegal drugs except by members of select group of pharmaceutical and illegal drug cartels; cartels cornering the market for mind-altering and medical substances.

The “War On Drugs” serves to grow police forces and is a fuel for corruption and is also the source of funding for opposing gangs; monopoly prices activate market forces escalating tactics required to capture and hold market share. Rising drug profits covers the cost of escalating violence.

The “War On Drugs” is an excuse for escalating violence in cities and near the border with Mexico and is responsible for exploding prison populations in America and a massive growth in the prison-industrial complex, including profitable private prisons operated as slave labor camps for inmates.

The wildly successful “War On Drugs”, successful because of the profitability to a select group of insiders, is a fantastic failure in terms of stated goals.

A War to End All War

Consistent with the Federal government’s ever-escalating war on American people, a new war has been launched; a new lifeline feeding the rise of the police state and an ever more brutal and violent attack on Americans: The “War On Terror.”

There are two levers for moving men: Interest and Fear. – Napoleon Bonaparte

Fear is the master manipulator; fear is the tool used for creating violent and spiteful police departments like the one in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Police departments relying on exaggerated and false predictions of ‘homegrown’ terrorism, have been panicked into preparing for some kind of war against America loving, patriotic, traditional values holding Americans.

Eric Holder Announces Task Force To Focus On “Domestic Terrorists”

To help feed this fear, the Federal government, and their pseudo-intellectual and complicit agents such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, are fostering a false narrative pretending traditional Americans will soon attack the government. Headlines, such as one above, chillingly expose the government’s continuing fanning of the flames of false flag fear.

To be ‘ready’ for these “homegrown terrorists”, police forces are also hiring former military and former mercenary officers trained in active and live combat to engage the ‘enemy’ in a military fashion. While traditional police officers, seeing their police force transformed into military units and recoiling from the horror of escalating police violence, are quitting police departments, leaving these departments with fewer and fewer traditionally trained and non-war traumatized officers.

According to Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of the Treasury and past editor of the Wall Street Journal:

The police have been militarized and largely federalized by the Pentagon and the gestapo Homeland Security. The role of the federal government in equipping state and local police with military weapons, including tanks, and training in their use has essentially removed the police from state and local control. No matter how brutal any police officer, it is rare that any suffer more than a few months suspension, usually with full pay, while a report is concocted that clears them of any wrong doing.

In America today, police murder with impunity. All the psychopaths have to say is, “I thought his wallet was a gun,” or “we had to taser the unconscious guy we found lying on the ground, because he wouldn’t obey our commands to get up.” [6]

After the False Flag attack on America during 9-11, fear of terrorism was seeded, grown and promoted – beginning first with a manufactured fear of Arabs and Middle Eastern turban-wearing men and then transforming into fear of terrorist in the form of white, Christian, Constitutional, limited government advocating, Citizens as Sovereigns – traditional Americans.

Using the hysteria of pretended imminent terrorist attacks, (according to DailyKos the odds of dying as a result of terrorism are 1 in 20 MILLION, you have better odds of dying from a lightning strike or a shark attack or legal execution), the police have been transformed into brutal troops, unresponsive to citizen safety, wrecking balls – threatening to tear away the line between criminals and police. [7]

According to Paul Craig Roberts:

The facts seem to support the case that police in the US commit more crimes and acts of violence against the public than do the criminals who do not wear badges. According to the FBI crime Statistics http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/summary in 2010 there were 1,246,248 violent crimes committed by people without police badges. Keep in mind that the definition of violent crime can be an expansive definition. For example, simply to push someone is considered assault. If two people come to blows in an argument, both have committed assault. However, even with this expansive definition of violent crimes, police assaults are both more numerous and more dangerous, as it is usually a half dozen overweight goon thugs beating and tasering one person.

The police situation in the United States is only going to get worse. The coming deliberate and artificially created banking and financial collapse will bring on exceedingly more difficult times for a large section of the American population. Growing unemployment, made worse by a usurped Federal government’s withdrawal of unemployment benefits and a reduction of food stamp purchasing power will lead to civil unrest and an explosion of unaccountable police violence.

The time is now to take steps to ‘deescalate’ the police and stop the violence and end the military occupation of cities and towns and countrysides.

We the People Declare

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. – Declaration of Independence

All it takes to push back tyranny is to actually push back. Do this alone or with a group of friends and family. Contact your city, county and state government ‘officials’ demanding they make changes to the governing policies of police departments.

Letters written to civilian elected ‘officials’ with governing powers, such as your local County Commissioners, Sheriffs, city councils and state level representatives is also required, so the ‘officials’ understand you are withdrawing consent for growing abuse and violence of police and other armed agencies of the government.

This is a short list of demands a Citizen can rightfully make of their local police departments:

Reduce antagonizing and aggressive appearance of police forces.

Note: Philip Zimbardo in his book The Lucifer Effect noted “a legitimate-seeming authority figure” donning masks or costumes (uniforms and badges and sunglasses and external symbols of authority) “were significantly more likely to torture, mutilate, and kill their enemies than warriors in cultures that didn’t engage in self-disguise.” [A]

Police and public servants should not be wearing sunglasses when speaking to a citizen.
Eliminate muscle cars and tinted windshields.
No military-style black full tactical or full armor outfits.
Have police fully pull off highways during a traffic stop — reducing danger to the officer and allowing traffic to flow freely around stopped vehicles.
Reduce intensity of blue lights so other motorists can see during a night time traffic stop.

Eliminate potentially disastrous police protocol and behavior.

Zero tolerance for the high-speed chase.
Limit the number of officers and units responding to routine police calls.
Eliminate NO KNOCK warrants and forced entry before notification.
Severely limit SWAT team use to precisely defined situations.
Make department heads responsible for excessive force.
Fire officers with history of violence against citizens and offenders.

Return or refuse to accept out of place and hyperbolic military hardware.

No tanks or MRAPs or other former military armored vehicles.
No automatic weapons of any kind.
No exotic weapons systems (sound cannons, microwave weapons etc.).

Refuse military training and Federal training and drills with scenarios depicting stereotyped historically honored American groups as ‘homegrown terrorists’.

No racial group scenarios as drill themes.
No drills with scenarios demonizing historically honored American groups including but not limited to:

Veterans

Gun Owners

Constitution Supporters

Libertarians

Political party affiliation groups such as the Tea Party

Christians

Other religious groups

No school “live action” drills terrorizing school children with blood and blank ammunition — These ‘drills’ are psychologically damaging to children and must be stopped.

Organize citizen Review Boards for police force activity guidance and criticism.

Create citizen review boards external from police for providing guidance and police policy review.
Create citizen review boards for examining cases of police brutality and excessive violence.

As a citizen it is possible to create a public, but external and without public funding, group to monitor police behavior and recommend policy changes when required. In fact, according to Human Rights Watch, “Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States:”

A study of 17 law enforcement agencies found that citizen review boards sustain police brutality complaints at a higher percentage than do the police themselves, suggesting that such boards operate more fairly… [9]

To force police departments to become accountable, citizens can form county and city Citizen Review Boards to advocate punishment and replacement of leaders in police organization hierarchy when brutality and violence against citizens and offenders becomes egregious.

Citizen review boards are typically met with “considerable opposition from the law enforcement community” [10], but such resistance is like an employee telling the owner how he wants the company run.

Through activism, citizens can insist police departments revamp hiring guidelines to favor non-military, non-mercenary applicants over those having served in repeated combat missions.

Police are paid by citizens and according to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the powers of government, including the police departments are delegated to the government by the people and FOR the people.

Police and other ‘authorities‘ serve the people – they are not surrogate mothers or fathers or masters – they are servants which have become dysfunctional and inconvenient.

Police forces like the one in Albuquerque, New Mexico can be brought under control by firing those in current positions of leadership and publicly advertising for replacements who meet the new police standards as described above. Officers with histories of violence against citizens should be removed immediately with failure to do so probable cause for civil lawsuits against these departments.

Many citizens have learned to fear the law enforcement system, as violence and physical assault by police is now a daily occurrence. In addition to the physical violence, there is the economic violence as states, counties and towns now swarm on motorists like ticks seeking blood – using so-called moving violations and victimless crimes as major sources of revenue; civil asset forfeiture and the ubiquitous DWI/DUI leading the top 5 ways to plunder during a traffic stop.

Police forces feeding on people is clearly creating rising tensions between the public-as-food and the police-as-predator with ever-escalating violence and confrontation as the natural consequence.

It is incumbent on citizens to tell local systems of government that using police as a major source of revenue generation will not be tolerated and those holding public office will be removed at the next election unless the predation stops. These same government representatives must also be put on notice: police brutality is a crime and these criminals will be prosecuted and, using the principle of vicarious liability, all those in the chain of command above those directly in charge will also be prosecuted.

42 U.S.C. § 1983, commonly referred to as “section 1983” provides:

Every person who under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, Suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. [8]

Bringing charges against police in civil suits for assault and brutality is a way to punish officers outside the internal affairs process of police departments. Many people are brutalized by police, which is then justified with resisting arrest charges. Civil suits bringing police videos and witnesses to bear against trumped up ‘resisting’ charges are absolutely necessary to stop this kind of rampant police abuse.

All we have to do to stop the police violence is do something — little efforts by many people have the cumulative force of large efforts by smaller groups. Everyone can DEMAND more accountable and less aggressive police forces.

Finally, it is important for all people to withdraw consent for increasing police intrusion in our lives. Do not call the police unless it is a life-threatening situation. Dialing 9-11 involves giving up your self-responsibility each time it is dialed. Solve your own problems, ask your family and friends for help — break down the barriers preventing strong family and friend relationships and excommunicate the third party, unrelated, ‘bigger brother’.

Notes:

[1,2] http://www.thestate.com/2014/01/19/3216402/richland-deputies-us-military.html
[3] http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/17515-local-police-adopt-military-technology-and-tactics
[4] http://www.thewire.com/national/2012/10/chart-says-war-drugs-isnt-working/57913/
[5] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324374004578217682305605070
[6] http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/09/16/police-are-more-dangerous-to-the-public-than-are-criminals-paul-craig-roberts/
[7] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/14/1215687/-Odds-of-Dying-by-Terrorist-Attack-20-000-000-to-1
[8] http://www.constitution.org/brief/forsythe_42-1983.htm#_edn3
[9] Human Rights Watch, “Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States,” June 1998, <http://www.hrw.org/reports98/police/uspo22.htm> (last accessed Aug. 4, 2003).
[10] http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/sac/wv0104/ch4.htm#_ftn3

[A ]http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2006/august-06/bad-apples-or-bad-barrels-zimbardo-on-the-lucifer-effect.html

[B]http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=0

General References:

The Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo

Virus of the Mind, Richard Brodie

The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand

Jack Mullen has been a businessman for more than 25 years, owning 3 radio stations, several technology based companies and a resource development company

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