COVID Relief Funds Are Being Used For Drones, Military Vehicles, And Weapons For Police Forces
Not for relief for small business or mental health or anything remotely resembling what the government talks about when it asks for the tax increases to buy this weaponry
”The model for police, and the constables and sheriffs before them prior to the late 20th Century, was that of a peace officer. In many states, it’s not even true that police are law enforcement officers – even though it’s a term frequently used by the police and their fans in the “Blue Lives Matter,” “Thin Blue Line,” and “Back the Blue” movements.
It’s a subtle, but important, distinction: Is the role of the police to enforce the law or to keep the peace? Consider the difference between the police force of a typical American city and the fictional Andy Taylor of The Andy Griffith Show. The former is concerned primarily with enforcing the law for its own sake and catching as many “lawbreakers” as possible. The latter, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with keeping the peace. Sometimes that means looking the other way when laws get broken.
This isn’t simply a matter of how pleasant or unpleasant it is to deal with the police. Law enforcement officers might be writing parking tickets in the middle of a burglary epidemic due to their need to enforce all the laws all the time. Conversely, a peace officer is going to ignore a lot of low-level, habitual crime – even when there are clear victims (for example, vandalism or loitering) – because he emphasizes going out and catching violent and dangerous criminals. There’s no impulse to arrest a guy who habitually smokes weed on a street corner if he’s providing the police with valuable information leading to the arrest of violent criminals.
Peace officers might have the need for a sidearm and a shotgun, but they have little or no need for, say, a tank, to say nothing of the variety of nasty DARPA weapons police departments are increasingly wanting and getting. …
There are a number of negative consequences arising from the existence of a militarized police force.
Civil Liberties: Chief among the problems presented by a militarized police force are civil liberties. Militarized police seems to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which forbids using the military to enforce domestic law in most cases and under ordinary circumstances.
Surveillance: The militarized police force also uses military-style forms of surveillance. A January 2017 report from the Cato Institute accused militarized police of “mission creep,” going beyond simple weapons and tactics and into surveillance.
Force: Veterans on the police force tend to have more complaints about excessive force and are more likely to discharge their weapons, according to a report from the Marshall Project.
Alienation: Militarized police are the antithesis of community policing, which leverages good community relations and the resources flowing from those relations to prevent and solve crimes. Military-style training for police, battle dress uniforms and even just the color black might provoke more aggression from officers. Named missions such as “War on Drugs” likewise make community policing more difficult.
Killing Dogs: There’s significant evidence suggesting that the more militarized a police force is, the more likely it is to shoot a dog. Yes, really. The Puppycide Database Project tracks these things.
Lack of Oversight: At the local, state and federal levels, there is little-to-no oversight when it comes to the militarization of the police. Most states do not keep tabs on the statistics of their SWAT teams. Where they do, reports are frequently incomplete and little-to-no action is taken on their basis. No federal agency collects information about local SWAT teams. There is little oversight of 1033 or SWAT teams either by the Department of Justice or the Department of Homeland Security.
All of this is perhaps why, under the Obama Justice Department, there was a push toward demilitarization of the police force. In 2015, the Task Force for 21st Century Policing recommended restriction of military hardware such as grenade launchers and armored vehicles. President Donald Trump has since reversed this, reinstating the entire 1033 program and remilitarizing police.
DARPA: Police Militarization of the Future
Since there is a clearly established pipeline running from the Pentagon’s latest and greatest toys, it’s not much of a stretch to say that the weapons being developed by the Pentagon today are going to be used on the streets of America in the very near future.
In fact, there’s an entire department of the Pentagon dedicated to developing futuristic weapons to help the United States win the new arms. It’s called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, commonly known as DARPA. This agency has not only developed weapons, but also a number of contemporary technologies most people take for granted – such as GPS, graphic user interface, the mouse, and even the internet itself. Recent research includes more intuitive prosthetic limbs as well as brain implants that will help those with memory loss regain their memory.
But DARPA isn’t just working on projects like these with the promise to revolutionize medicine and increase the quality of human life. They also work on some rather nasty little projects that will almost certainly trickle down to your local police department through the 1033 program. Some of the futuristic weapons currently in development by DARPA include:
Active Denial System: The active denial system is an invisible ray gun heating the skin of people in a given area to 130 degrees. The targets instinctively flee, something that DARPA calls the “goodbye effect.” The end result can leave second- or third-degree burns on up to 20 percent of the body’s surface. The weapon has already been tested in Afghanistan.
Taser X12: Nearly everyone is familiar with the Taser. The Taser X12 is effectively that in 12-gauge shotgun form. This extends the reach of a Taser weapon from about 20 feet to about 100 feet.
Skull Piercing Microwaves: Yep, you read that right. One of the projects DARPA is working on right now leverages the audio effect of microwaves. This creates shockwaves inside the skull, which are read by the brain as sound. This can result in discomfort, incapacitation and brain damage.
Long-Range Acoustic Device: Sirens might not sound like a big deal, but the current ones being worked on by DARPA are so loud they can cause permanent hearing damage very quickly. Pittsburgh police already used this against protestors in 2009. More advanced sonic weapons can be deadly, including the Thunder Generator developed by the Israelis
Voice of God: This one sounds impossible, but it’s not. The Voice of God is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It’s a weapon beaming words directly into your head so that you think God is talking to you. This leverages the same technology in LRADs, but for different effect.
These are just a few of the weapons that we know about. It's likely that there are far more frightening classified weapons coming down the pike over the next decade.
The tendency is strongly in the direction of increasingly militarized police. This renders the notion of “weapons of war on our streets” as a gun grabber argument exceptionally weak. They have weapons far in excess to that of the average citizen or even the average criminal. This means resisting them can easily be deadly, even when you’re within your legal rights.
We once again believe that the solution to overly militarized police is not the total elimination of the police, nor the radical disarming of the police. Rather, what is required is greater civilian attention to what police are doing. Police ought to be held accountable, through established civilian channels of oversight, not the court of public opinion. What’s more, care must be taken to ensure that the police are not afraid to ruthlessly enforce the law when the situation calls for it for fear of being taken to task by civilian oversight committees that have never walked a beat. Part of what makes the problem so difficult to solve is that there are no easy solutions.
There are, however, some quick wins. There is absolutely no reason for civil asset forfeiture to continue, nor should local smokies have access to equipment designed for federal law enforcement to snoop on organized crime and terrorist organizations. DARPA toys shouldn’t be in the hands of local police, either. Local police already have a number of riot dispersal tools at the ready. Where rioting is allowed to fester, it does so because of weak-willed civilian governments unwilling to allow the police to maintain public order.
Some have argued that an end to qualified immunity would do the trick. However, anytime a position is supported by the far left, it is worth examining the position further, no matter how reasonable it may seem.
What Is Qualified Immunity?
First, let’s talk about qualified immunity. Qualified immunity sounds like some arcane and esoteric application of the law that protects police and other government officials from all scrutiny and consequences.
What it means, however, in very simple terms, is that government officials cannot be held civilly liable in court unless their actions “violated a clearly established right” – i.e., where their conduct is “obviously unlawful.” It applies to all local, state, and federal executive branch officers, but it does not protect these officials from criminal prosecution (aside from prosecutors, who have absolute immunity). Police are protected, as are mayors, governors, medical board inspectors, prison guards, school administrators, and everyone else who is in the business of enforcing laws and regulations, including private individuals who act jointly with government officials.
Proponents of qualified immunity argue that it simply protects officials from having their lives and finances ruined in civil court, where standards of evidence and the bar for conviction are much lower. And again, it does not totally and wholly protect them from civil lawsuits, just in most cases where officials are reasonably acting in good faith. In the case of police, this allows them to work without having to balance their actions against losing their house and their children’s college fund. This is important because police often have to make heat-of-the-moment decisions in fractions of a second. And proponents argue this doctrine simply protects police from being “test cases” for what are and are not constitutional protections.
Opponents of qualified immunity argue that it’s an act of judicial policymaking because it’s not the result of a law passed by Congress, nor is it written in the Constitution. Thus the current doctrine as applied today in courts leads to hair-splitting and it is often impossible for plaintiffs to meet the burden. It’s also applied inconsistently and can greatly depend on the judge or judges involved in the case. And perhaps most importantly, this liability shield extends to everyone who is in the business of enforcing laws and regulations – not just the police.” https://ammo.com/articles/police-militarization-weapons-of-war-darpa-surveillance