{"id":3168,"date":"2016-07-31T13:00:07","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T19:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/?p=3168"},"modified":"2024-09-23T13:29:21","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T19:29:21","slug":"obama-allies-seek-nationalize-local-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/obama-allies-seek-nationalize-local-police\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama and Allies Seek to Nationalize Local Police"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2014 Reprinted with Permission of The New American.com \u2014<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

On December 18, 2014, President Obama signed an executive order creating the President\u2019s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. In May 2015, the task force came out with its Final Report, which is commonly given the title \u201c21st Century Policing.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the report\u2019s recommendations, which the Obama-friendly media fixated on, concerns greater restrictions on transfers of military equipment to local police agencies. However, as we reported in a related article (“What’s Happening to Our Police?<\/a>“), the new \u201caccountability\u201d rules will not explicitly reduce the flow of war materials to law enforcement, but simply place more federal controls over local police. Moreover, the new Obama rules regarding military gear were just one component of a broader set of recommendations issued by Obama\u2019s plan for \u201c21st Century Policing\u201d \u2014 the overarching theme of which was promoting increased federal control over law enforcement.<\/p>\n

While speaking to a group of police at a carefully stage-managed event in Camden, New Jersey, the president also touted some of his other efforts to exert more control over police \u2014 officers who, in accordance with the Constitution, are supposed to serve and be accountable to local communities and the wishes of local citizens, not the mandates of the White House. Among other schemes, Obama boasted of his administration\u2019s alleged efforts to \u201cfight crime,\u201d improve relations between police departments and the communities they serve, and promote \u201ctransparency.\u201d He also touted a White House \u201cdata initiative\u201d aimed at prodding police departments into following federal \u201cguidelines\u201d on data and body cameras.<\/p>\n

Finally, Obama also celebrated federal \u201cgrants\u201d created by the administration to promote and fund the implementation of dubious policies associated with \u201ccommunity policing strategies.\u201d Those federal grants, of course, along with others, are at the heart of Obama\u2019s efforts to nationalize everything from healthcare and education standards to law enforcement. Among the schemes to be promoted with the new grants are national standards for police departments receiving federal funds. Some critics have started describing the plot as \u201cCommon Core for police,\u201d a reference to the Obama administration\u2019s Department of Education efforts to bribe states into imposing the deeply controversial national K-12 school standards and the associated federal testing regime. The effort also comes just a few months after United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, citing Ferguson, demanded that American police submit to \u201cinternational standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a report by Obama\u2019s task force released in March, two tentacles of the Department of Justice, the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and the Office of Justice Programs, \u201cshould provide technical assistance and incentive funding to jurisdictions\u201d that adhere to the White House plan, \u201cin return for receiving federal funds.\u201d The report also called for uniform federal standards for data collected by local police departments, and much more.<\/p>\n

Even before citing militarization of police as an excuse to usurp more control over local police, Obama was celebrating the recommendations of his task force, and demanding rapid implementation. \u201cI\u2019m 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,\u201d he explained. \u201cI know one area that\u2019s going to be of great interest is whether we can expand the COPS program that in the past has been very effective, continues to be effective, but is largely underfunded.\u201d<\/p>\n

The recommendations offered a \u201cgreat opportunity\u201d to \u201creally transform how we think about community law enforcement relations,\u201d Obama said. \u201cWe need to seize that opportunity,\u201d he continued, echoing the \u201cnever let a crisis go to waste\u201d rhetoric of other statists. \u201cThis is something that I\u2019m going to stay very focused on in the months to come.\u201d He certainly was not kidding.<\/p>\n

Just weeks after the report was released, the administration unveiled a list of six U.S. cities targeted to serve as \u201cpilot sites\u201d to develop and deploy federal guidance for local police \u2014 all of it supposedly to create \u201cbetter procedures, reduce racial bias, and regain citizens\u2019 trust.\u201d The plan, officially dubbed the \u201cNational Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice,\u201d will use U.S. taxpayer dollars to deploy \u201cexperts\u201d and \u201cresearchers\u201d charged with training officers to act in a manner that the DOJ deems just \u2014 in essence doing the bidding of the Obama administration. Officially, the Justice Department will be helping local officials \u201cfight crime\u201d under the scheme, according to news reports.<\/p>\n

Initially, the program, which will cost American taxpayers almost $5 million, will aim to \u201cassess\u201d the relationship between local police and the communities they serve. Then, the DOJ squads will work to develop plans supposedly aimed at enhancing \u201cprocedural justice,\u201d reducing bias, and supporting \u201creconciliation in communities where trust has been eroded,\u201d the Justice Department said in a statement announcing the plan. With more than two-thirds of Americans saying in a survey that the federal government is \u201cout of control\u201d and a \u201cthreat\u201d to their liberties, it was not immediately clear how \u201ctrust\u201d would be \u201crestored\u201d by deepening federal involvement.<\/p>\n

The first six cities to be targeted as pilot sites will be Birmingham, Alabama; Fort Worth, Texas; Gary, Indiana; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Stockton, California. Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price described the program as \u201ca tool to strengthen our partnership with the justice system.\u201d But other police departments are also in the cross hairs. According to the official announcement, an unspecified number of \u201cpolice departments and communities that are not pilot sites\u201d will also be targeted for more DOJ \u201ctraining\u201d and \u201ctechnical assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

It bears mentioning that the DOJ,\u00a0 which supposedly will guide local law enforcement in proper procedures, has in recent years been exposed training state and local police to view citizens\u2019 speech as potential indicators of terrorism \u2014 including among damning public expression mundane matters such as bumper stickers promoting the Bill of Rights or a U.S. withdrawal from the UN. Ironically, at the time of the announcements on pilot cities, the DOJ was being led by disgraced Attorney General Eric Holder, who was held in criminal contempt of Congress for trying to stonewall an investigation into the administration\u2019s \u201cFast and Furious\u201d scheme to arm Mexican drug cartels.<\/p>\n

The efforts to further nationalize and federalize law enforcement are also in line with Obama\u2019s campaign rhetoric about building a \u201ccivilian national security force that\u2019s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded\u201d as the U.S. military. And critics say the agenda should be ringing alarm bells nationwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmericans everywhere should be very concerned about oversight of local police agencies,\u201d explained former detective Jim Fitzgerald, the national field director for The John Birch Society, the parent organization of this magazine. The constitutionalist group, which has chapters in all 50 states, has been running a campaign for decades called \u201cSupport Your Local Police and Keep Them Independent.\u201d The effort is meant to, among other goals, protect local communities from having their police departments turned into tentacles of an all-powerful federal government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese steps to exercise and take control over police departments should raise a red flag among police officials and give deep concern to anyone who understands the history of national police forces,\u201d continued Fitzgerald. \u201cHave we so soon forgotten the Gestapo and the KGB, both national police agencies, that terrorized the citizens of Germany and Russia and led to the imprisonment and deaths of tens of thousands of innocent men and women? Has there ever been a national police force that benefited the citizens who live under it? Never!\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the nationalization of police did not begin with Obama, and it probably will not end with him. So-called fusion centers, pairing local and state officials with federal bureaucrats under the sprawling \u201cHomeland Security\u201d banner, have been in place since the George W. Bush administration. And a broad range of DOJ offices and programs has been quietly expanding federal control over police for decades. But the trends are accelerating, and the endgame is becoming more clear.<\/p>\n

\"police_under_fire_cover\"<\/a>Decentralized government is one of the cornerstones of America\u2019s freedom and its constitutional system of federalism. Even if Obama\u2019s radical plans to nationalize police departments were not unconstitutional, though, history provides numerous examples showing why national policing is not just unwise, but extremely dangerous to liberty. Congress must rein in Obama, and in the meantime, state and local governments should refuse to surrender self-government to an out-of-control White House in exchange for unconstitutional federal bribes. The American people, if they hope to preserve liberty and self-government, should work to support their local police, and keep them independent.<\/p>\n

The above article appears in\u00a0our\u00a0“Police Under Fire” special report.\u00a0(Click on the image to download a PDF of the full report.)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2014 Reprinted with Permission of The New American.com \u2014 On December 18, 2014, President Obama signed an executive order creating the President\u2019s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. In May 2015, the task force came out with its Final Report, which is commonly given the title \u201c21st Century Policing.\u201d One of the report\u2019s recommendations, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":3169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","cat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15987,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions\/15987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}