Our founding fathers warned the people about the dangers of militarized police
The American approach to law enforcement was forged by the experience of revolution. Emerging as they did from the shadow of British rule, the country's founders would likely have viewed police, as they exist today, as a standing army, and therefore a threat to liberty. Even so, excessive force and disregard for the Bill of Rights have become epidemic in today's world. According to civil liberties reporter Radley Balko, these are all symptoms of a generation-long shift to increasingly aggressive, militaristic, and arguably unconstitutional policing—one that would have shocked the conscience of America's founders.
During the Virginia ratifying convention, James Madison described a standing army as the “greatest mischief that can happen.” His colleague and fellow delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, George Mason put a finer point on it:
No man has a greater regard for the military gentlemen than I have. I admire their intrepidity, perseverance, and valor. But when once a standing army is established in any country, the people lose their liberty. When, against a regular and disciplined army, yeomanry are the only defence [sic], — yeomanry, unskilful and unarmed, — what chance is there for preserving freedom? Give me leave to recur to the page of history, to warn you of your present danger. Recollect the history of most nations of the world. What havoc, desolation, and destruction, have been perpetrated by standing armies!
In The Federalist, No. 29, Alexander Hamilton echoes not only Mason’s warning against a standing army, but his solution to the threat, as well.
If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist. In commenting on Blackstone’s Commentaries, founding era jurist St. George Tucker speaks as if he foresaw our day and the fatal combination of an increasingly militarized police force and the disarmament of civilians:
Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. The connection between this professional, civilian standing army and the attack on the right of the people to keep and bear arms has been recognized by contemporary liberty-minded scholars, as well.
In his essay, “The Right to Keep and Bear Arms under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments: The Framers' Intent and Supreme Court Jurisprudence,” Stephen Halbrook writes:
Noah Webster, the influential federalist whose name still appears on dictionaries, stated: "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed... ." Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States 56 (P. Ford ed. 1888). In a similar treatise, Joyce Malcolm, a historian specializing in 17th century English constitutional history, makes the same point:
Where does this leave the American Second Amendment, with its reference to a well-regulated militia necessary to the security of a free state, and its insistence that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed? I would argue that the Second Amendment mirrors English belief in the individual's right to be armed, the importance of that right to the preservation of liberty, and the preference for a militia over a standing army. In an essay published in the Wall Street Journal last August, Radley Balko presented chilling and convincing evidence of the blurring of the line between cop and soldier:
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. 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. Given the critical role played by sheriffs in the protection of constitutionally guaranteed liberty, it is dismaying to read story after story describing the eager acceptance — and occasionally the full-time petitioning — of military materiel by county lawmen.
If the threat of the police becoming a standing army of the sort our forefathers believed to be “inconsistent with liberty” is to be diffused, Americans must not only exercise their right to demand that police recognize their responsibility to abide by the law rather than break it, but we must also fiercely resist every attempt to abridge our right to keep and bear arms while keeping ourselves ready to defend that right against all enemies.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/17587-militarized-police-the-standing-army-the-founders-warned-about
NH bill would ban police from buying BearCat vehicles: NH State Rep. JR Hoell, R-Dunbarton, filed HB 1307 because he feels law enforcement agencies are focusing more on intimidation than on building relationships within their communities.
"Our law enforcement agencies are becoming more militarized," said Hoell. "The focus shouldn't be on getting the latest military equipment. At the end of the day, this is about answering the question of: Are we safer having this equipment? My answer to that question is no."
Specifically, the bill would amend RSA 111:8 to read, "No state agency or political subdivision of this state shall acquire, purchase, or otherwise accept for use any military-equipped vehicle or military grade hardware, including but not limited to armored personnel carriers, Title II weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles, or unmanned ground vehicles, unless such military grade vehicle or hardware is readily available in an open national commercial market. The adjutant general shall notify the state attorney general of a violation of this paragraph. Any military-equipped vehicle or military grade hardware acquired in violation hereof shall be forfeited."
The National Guard would be exempt from this amendment.
The BearCat is an armored personnel carrier retrofitted with thick walls and glass that can stop high-caliber bullets. It can fit at least 10 officers and is equipped with gun ports on each side and a rotating center hatch.
Hoell said he feels funds spent on military-style equipment could have been used in better ways.
Hoell said he requested the bill be drafted following a vote last fall by the Concord City Council to accept a $258,000 federal grant to purchase a BearCat, after officials were presented with a petition signed by 1,500 people opposing acquisition of the vehicle, fearing it could be used against peaceful people.
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20140209/NEWS06/140209206
New Hampshire house unanimously bans NDAA's indefinite detention:
http://www.activistpost.com/2014/02/new-hampshire-house-unanimously-bans.html#more
TSA is using 'Behavior Detection' officers & bomb-sniffing dogs at airports:
FL - The TSA is working with Orlando International Airport to conduct new threat assessments, with the help bomb-sniffing dogs.
The TSA said it wants to stay away from a "one size fits all" approach when it comes to any security issue, and that starts by what ? Why searching innocent Americans of course!
The "one size fits all" approach is just a euphemism for everyone is a suspected terrorist and you & your kids will illegally searched by gov't officials.
"This basically allows us to take a group and put them in a pre-check lane, because we know about them through this individual instance coming through," said Jerry Henderson, the TSA's security director at MCO.
"We know about them"? In other words TSA has spied on their taxes, employment history, banking records, social media posts, smartphone records and more.
The process started Dec. 19., security dogs pace back and forth, sniffing passengers even before they get to the metal detectors. Behavior detection officers also keep their eyes out for any suspicious behavior.
Those BDO officers are trained to “identify passenger behaviors indicative of stress, fear, or deception and refer passengers”
People are then randomly allowed to go through expedited lines where they do not have to remove their belts or jackets, or take laptops out of their bags.
http://www.mynews13.com/content/news/cfnews13/news/article.html/content/news/articles/cfn/2014/2/7/orlando_airport_k9s.html
TSA spent $900 million on 'Behavior Detection' officers who didn't detect a single terrorist:
http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2013/11/tsa-spent-900-million-on-behavior.html
TSA's pre-flight background checks brazenly ignore our civil rights:
So what are the things they are looking in to? Here is a quick list from TSA:
private employment information to include who you work for
vehicle registrations
travel history
property ownership records and what property you claim
physical characteristics
tax identification numbers and tax history
past travel itineraries
law enforcement information
“intelligence” information (the key word list used by the NSA)
passport numbers
frequent flier information
other “identifiers” linked to DHS databases (including web history and information, critical speaking of the government)
I think the best way to look at it is as a pre-crime assessment every time you fly,” said Edward Hasbrouck, a consultant to the Identity Project, one of the groups that oppose the prescreening initiatives. “The default will be the highest, most intrusive level of search, and anything less will be conditioned on providing some additional information in some fashion.”
http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-tsas-pre-flight-background-checks.html