Obama moves to take control of local law enforcement
........................................................................................
Beaufort Observer ^ | March 31, 2015 | Alex Newman
The controversial Obama administration demands for national standards for police come a few months after United Nations boss Ban Ki Moon called for American police to obey "international standards." The efforts to further nationalize and federalize law enforcement — a state and local responsibility under America's constitutional system — are also in line with Obama's campaign rhetoric about building a "civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the U.S. military. Of course, as Congress revealed in an official report, the Communist effort to nationalize American police forces goes back decades.
The Justice Department agency that would be responsible for bribing and bludgeoning police agencies into submission to Obama's "national standards" is also among the outfits that have been abused to militarize law enforcement all across America. As The New American reported last year amid the George Soros-funded chaos in Ferguson, Obama attacked the militarization of law enforcement — even though his administration has played a crucial role in militarizing police departments nationwide. The federal government, of course, has no constitutional authority to meddle in state and local law enforcement to begin with.
After meeting with his "task force" on "21st century policing," created via executive order, Obama celebrated the scheme to bring law enforcement further under the control of his administration. He also argued that it must be done quickly. "I'm going to be asking Eric Holder and the Justice Department and his successor to go through all of these recommendations so that we can start implementing them," Obama explained. "I know one area that's going to be of great interest is whether we can expand the [DOJ Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)] program that in the past has been very effective, continues to be effective, but is largely underfunded."
To Obama, of course, virtually every unconstitutional bloated federal agency and program is "underfunded." However, in reality, the Constitution he swore to uphold does not authorize a "COPS" program or anything like it, so any funding at all is too much funding based on the obective standard laid out in the Supreme Law of the Land. As the interim report was being released on March 2, though, Obama glossed over those issues, saying the plot offered a "great opportunity" to "really transform how we think about community law enforcement relations." "We need to seize that opportunity," Obama added, echoing the "never let a crisis go to waste" rhetoric of other statists. "This is something that I'm going to stay very focused on in the months to come."
According to the interim report by Obama's task force, two DOJ tentacles, the COPS scheme and the Office of Justice Programs, "should provide technical assistance and incentive funding to jurisdictions with small police agencies that take steps toward shared services, in return for receiving federal funds." Why the federal government cares whether small police departments share services was not entirely clear, though critics see a transparent effort to further strip local communities of their right to self-government and local accountability. The Office of Justice Programs recently came under fire for providing taxpayer-funded grants to a "community group" in New York that participated in the production of a rap video literally promoting the murder of police officers.
The stepped-up federalization of law-enforcement scheming also involves bribing state and local law enforcement with U.S. tax dollars to feed even more information on citizens to Washington, D.C., bureaucracies already infamous for abusing sensitive and private information. "There is a lack of uniformity in data collection throughout law enforcement, and only patchwork methods of near real time information exists," the controversial report complained. "These problems are especially critical in light of the threats from terrorism and cybercrime." The Justice Department came under major criticism in 2012 after it was exposed training state and local police to link mainstream political activism with terrorism — including just the display of political bumper stickers! [There more…]
|
