Police

Cops Now Using Prepaid Card Readers to Rob Motorists of Digital Funds on Roadside

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Justin Gardner – Civil asset forfeiture (CAF) is coming under increased criticism around the country, as the immoral nature of this drug war weapon becomes exposed. New Mexico became the first state to make meaningful reforms, and even law enforcement officers are speaking out against CAF.

prepaidCAF amounts to outright theft from innocent people since cash and assets can be taken with no conviction of a crime. It brings millions in revenue to police departments so they can turn around and get more gadgets of oppression.

Case in point—the Electronic Recovery and Access to Data (ERAD) Prepaid Card Reader. This tool, developed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is increasingly being deployed by local police departments.

The ERAD allows cops to swipe prepaid cards, check the balance, freeze the account and take all the money. The ostensible purpose is to go after “bad guys” with “dirty money,” as drug traffickers are turning to prepaid cards instead of bundles of cash when traveling.

However, this ERAD-enabled moral crusade by government will undoubtedly bring about more theft from innocent people, including those with no actual drugs and harmless users who might have a joint lying around. Continue reading →

The Raping of America: Mile Markers on the Road to Fascism

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“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”—Martin Luther King Jr.

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Michigan State Police (Bill Pugliano / Getty Images / AFP)

John Whitehead – There’s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of law and order manifested by an overt violence against the citizenry.

Despite the revelations of the past several years, nothing has changed to push back against the American police state. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

Despite the recent outrage and protests, nothing has changed to restore us to our rightful role as having dominion over our bodies, our lives and our property, especially when it comes to interactions with the government.

Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases—these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials. Thus far, the courts have done little to preserve our Fourth Amendment rights, let alone what shreds of bodily integrity remain to us.

Continue reading →

Battlefield America: The War On The American People

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“A government which will turn its tanks upon its people, for any reason, is a government with a taste of blood and a thirst for power and must either be smartly rebuked, or blindly obeyed in deadly fear.”—John Salte

John Whitehead – We have entered into a particularly dismal chapter in the American narrative, one that shifts us from a swashbuckling tale of adventure into a bone-chilling horror story.

policeAs I document in my new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, “we the people” have now come full circle, from being held captive by the British police state to being held captive by the American police state. In between, we have charted a course from revolutionaries fighting for our independence and a free people establishing a new nation to pioneers and explorers, braving the wilderness and expanding into new territories.

Where we went wrong, however, was in allowing ourselves to become enthralled with and then held hostage by a military empire in bondage to a corporate state (the very definition of fascism). No longer would America hold the moral high ground as a champion of freedom and human rights. Instead, in the pursuit of profit, our overlords succumbed to greed, took pleasure in inflicting pain, exported torture, and imported the machinery of war, transforming the American landscape into a battlefield, complete with military personnel, tactics and weaponry.

To our dismay, we now find ourselves scrambling for a foothold as our once rock-solid constitutional foundation crumbles beneath us. And no longer can we rely on the president, Congress, the courts, or the police to protect us from wrongdoing.

Indeed, they have come to embody all that is wrong with America. Continue reading →

Can Evil Be Defeated?

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Paul Craig Roberts – John W. Whitehead is a constitutional attorney. As head of the Rutherford Institute he is actively involved in defending our civil liberties. Being actively involved in legal cases, he experiences first hand the transformation of law from a shield of the American people into a weapon in the hands of the government.

American civil liberty was seriously eroded prior to 9/11 police a story I tell in How America Was Lost. Lawrence Stratton and I documented the loss of law as a shield of the American people in our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions (2000, 2008). Whitehead in his book, A Government of Wolves (2013) and in his just released Battlefield America (2015) shows how quickly and thoroughly the police state has taken root.

We live in an electronic concentration camp. We are addicted to images on screens that disinform and propagandize us to accept and even welcome the police state activities that have destroyed our autonomy, privacy, and independence.

I write many columns on this subject. The advantage of a book is that it all comes together under one cover, and that is what Whitehead has done in Battlefield America.

“The outlook for civil liberties grows bleaker by the day, from the government’s embrace of indefinite detention for US citizens and armed surveillance drones flying overhead to warrantless surveillance of phone, email and Internet communications, and prosecutions of government whistle-blowers. The homeland is ruled by a police-industrial complex, an extension of the American military empire. Everything that our founding fathers warned against is now the new norm. The government has trained its sights on the American people. We have become the enemy. All the while, the American people remain largely oblivious.”

Whitehead gives it to us straight. We are continually abused in the name of protecting us. Ordinary Americans are subject to far worst abuse from government than they ever could be from criminals and terrorists, both of which are bogymen used to justify the government’s terrorism of the citizenry. Continue reading →

American Police Are Out of Control

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“You get pulled over. The cop says he thinks you possess drugs or are otherwise involved in other illegal activity. He searches you and the car. You have $1,000. The cop intimidates you, saying that money came from illegal activities. Out of fear, and in lieu of being charged with a crime, you sign a piece of paper forfeiting your ownership of that $1,000. The cop and his department get to keep it and do with it what they wish. You’re never charged with a crime. You don’t fight because that would cost more than the cop stole from you to begin with.” – N Hodges

American police certainly have MilitarizedPolice4a bad name lately.

It isn’t all police, of course. The majority of them are great people.

But there are more than a few bad apples.

And the real problem is that the bad apples are routinely and unquestionably shielded by the good.

Things would be a lot different if cops who broke the law, or were even perceived to break the law, were dealt with like common criminals.

But instead they’re protected. Given the benefit of the doubt. Given administrative leave, not fired. Investigated by one of their peers with no real follow-up.

Often an incident boils down to “he said / she said,” with judges and juries historically siding with the one with a badge.

And it’s led to a litany of problems with police.

Absolute Power

Make no mistake. Police in this country have absolute power. They are able to kill someone in broad daylight largely without consequence. Continue reading →