Group of retired & former law enforcement officers demand accountability & reform

Article first appeared in laprogressive.com

The National Coalition of Law Enforcement Officers For Justice Reform & Accountability (NCLEO) is a multi-cultural group of retired and former law enforcement officers. The NCLEO will meet with Rep. John Lewis (D. Alabama) in Washington, DC, next week, to further the discussion started by FBI Director James Comey in his speech on race relations between the police and the black community.

The NAACP urges national reforms & recommendations to address police abuse. Click here to read more.

This historic and unprecedented event will include retirees from police departments across the nation: St. Louis, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC Metro, Albuquerque, East Orange, New Jersey, Brockton, MA and the US Marshal Service as well as family members of Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man whose murder was the subject of the movie Fruitvale.

In addition, we are also supported by Kevin Murphy, former Alabama police chief who bought Representative Lewis to tears when he apologized to the noted civil rights leader for failing to protect the Freedom Riders during a trip to Montgomery in 1961.

There appears to be an ongoing and concerted effort by a some police departments to minimize and mitigate bad behavior on the part of police officers on a national level. It is understood, but not accepted, that court cases generated as a result of police misconduct are often swept under the rug to avoid costly lawsuits.

The belief is that police chiefs and commissioners routinely ‘circle the wagons’ to avoid agency embarrassment and exorbitant litigation. Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole recently “counselled” Officer Cynthia Whitlach after the police car dash-cam proved that Whitlach had falsified an arrest report of a 79-year-old black military veteran, William Wingate. If falsely stripping a citizen of his or her freedom is not grounds for dismissal – what is?

Then we have district attorneys, who at times, appear complicit in shielding bad cops.

Recently in New York, in the case of New York Police Department Officer Mirjan Lolja, the prosecutor used his “discretion” and charged Lolja with a misdemeanor rather than a felony for assaulting the subway conductor. Time for an independent prosecutor to handle police officers accused of criminal activity.

There is an abundance of evidence that police officers are given great deference by grand jurors in the discharge of their duties; most don’t want to second guess a police officer who uses physical violence that results in serious injury or death. 

So then, the questions that beg to be asked are: 

• Might there be a pattern of excessive force by officers?
• Is anger management an issue having been dismissed?
• Would periodic psychological evaluation help identify those police officers ready to ‘pop like a cork’?

It’s time for real and substantive change in the way police departments discipline errant behavior when discovered. It’s time for prosecutors to shed the appearance of collusion and favoritism with police departments and file the appropriate criminal complaints when officers break the law.

No desk duty when an officer is caught red-handed violating policy. No more counseling when termination should occur. No more resignation in an attempt to hide bad behavior, thus allowing employment on another police department.

Time to deter bad behavior with definitive consequences. Time to hold everyone accountable up and down the chain of command.

A police officer, in my opinion, is only able to commit egregious acts in the field because of a lack of managerial oversight. Where are the patrol sergeants? Where is the station’s watch commander? Who approved that booking of the suspect when there was insufficient probable cause for the initial detention, not to mention the subsequent arrest? Which supervisor signed that “use of force” report without interviewing the alleged suspect to verify the officer’s assertions? Every person along the way who had a hand in commission of an act or omission of supervision should be held personally accountability — officers, sergeants and lieutenants alike.
http://www.laprogressive.com/demand-police-accountability/

Former CIA analyst says Americans are next to be tortured in the “war on terror”

Former CIA analyst John Kiriakou revealed the U.S. government’s official policies on utilizing torture in the so-called “War on Terror.”

Kiriakou blew the whistle on the CIA's use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” methods. Kiriakou was subsequently imprisoned.

Abby Martin of RT sat down with Kiriakou in his home to discuss U.S. policy regarding torture in the so-called “War On Terror.” What Kiriakou says should make us all sit up and listen… he says that it’s not just a choice about being silent and ignoring what goes on “over there” anymore. He claims that all of us are “next” and that these torture tactics are being applied at home, not just abroad.

Jon Stewart from the Daily Show: Why does Obama prosecute whistleblowers? Click here watch the video.
http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/02/cia-whistleblower-warns-wake-up-youre-next/

Police state America 2015: Forced blood draws, DNA collection and biometric scans

Article first appeared in Rutherford.org:

“The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official. The framers would be appalled.”—Herman Schwartz, The Nation

Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—are being 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.

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 are being forced to accept that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

In the United States: we're all guilty until proven innocent.

What's the true cost of DHS/police surveillance of innocent Americans? It's in the hundreds of billions of dollars, click here to read more.

David Eckert was forced to undergo an anal cavity search, three enemas, and a colonoscopy after allegedly failing to yield to a stop sign at a Wal-Mart parking lot. Cops justified the searches on the grounds that they suspected Eckert was carrying drugs because his “posture was erect” and “he kept his legs together.” No drugs were found. During a routine traffic stop, Leila Tarantino was subjected to two roadside strip searches in plain view of passing traffic, during which a female officer “forcibly removed” a tampon from Tarantino. Nothing illegal was found. Nevertheless, such searches have been sanctioned by the courts,

Close to 600 motorists leaving Penn State University one Friday night were stopped by police and, without their knowledge or consent, subjected to a breathalyzer test using flashlights that can detect the presence of alcohol on a person’s breath. These passive alcohol sensors are being hailed as a new weapon in the fight against DUIs. However, because they cannot be used as the basis for arrest, breathalyzer tests are still required. And for those who refuse to submit to a breathalyzer, there are forced blood draws.

"Have You Seen The Light?" We've seen the "Light" and it's time we replace the police state 'Light' with the "Light" of Lady Liberty! This is not the America anyone wants, where everyone's a suspected terrorist.

One such person is Michael Chorosky, who was surrounded by police, strapped to a gurney and then had his blood forcibly drawn after refusing to submit to a breathalyzer test.  “What country is this? What country is this?” cried Chorosky during the forced blood draw. Thirty states presently allow police to do forced blood draws on drivers as part of a nationwide “No Refusal” initiative funded by the federal government.

Not even court rulings declaring such practices to be unconstitutional in the absence of a warrant have slowed down the process. Now the police simply keep a magistrate on call to rubber stamp the procedure over the phone. That’s what is called an end-run around the law, and we’re seeing more and more of these take place under the rubric of “safety.”

The National Highway Safety Administration, the same government agency that funds the “No Refusal” DUI checkpoints and forcible blood draws, is also funding nationwide roadblocks aimed at getting drivers to “voluntarily” provide police with DNA derived from saliva and blood samples, reportedly to study inebriation patterns. When faced with a request for a DNA sample by police during a mandatory roadblock, most participants understandably fail to appreciate the “voluntary” nature of such a request. Unfortunately, in at least 28 states, there’s nothing voluntary about having one’s DNA collected by police in instances where you’ve been arrested, whether or not you’re actually convicted of a crime. The remaining states collect DNA on conviction. All of this DNA data is being fed to the federal government. Indeed, the United States has the largest DNA database in the world, CODIS, which is managed by the FBI and is growing at an alarming rate.

Airline passengers, already subjected to virtual strip searches, are now being scrutinized even more closely, with the Customs and Border Protection agency tasking airport officials with monitoring the bowel movements of passengers suspected of ingesting drugs. They even have a special hi-tech toilet designed to filter through a person’s fecal waste.

Iris scans are funded by the Dept. of Justice and are being incorporated into police precincts, jails, immigration checkpoints, airports and even schools. School officials—from elementary to college—have begun using iris scans in place of traditional ID cards. As for parents wanting to pick their kids up from school, they have to first submit to an iris scan.

As for those endless pictures everyone so cheerfully uploads to Facebook (which has the largest facial recognition database in the world) are being accessed bypolice, filtered with facial recognition software, uploaded into the government’s mammoth biometrics database and cross-checked against its criminal files.Civil libertarians fear these databases could “someday be used for monitoring political rallies, sporting events or even busy downtown areas.”

As these police practices and data collections become more widespread and routine, there will be no one who is spared from the indignity of DNA sampling, blood draws, and roadside strip and/or rectal or vaginal searches, whether or not they’ve done anything wrong. We’re little more than economic units, branded like cattle, marked for easy identification, and then assured that it’s all for our “benefit,” to weed us out from the “real” criminals, and help the police keep our communities “safe” and secure.

What a bunch of B.S. these databases, forced extractions and searches are not for our benefit. They will not keep us safe. What they will do is keep us surveilled, targeted and controlled.
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/forced_blood_draws_dna_collection_and_biometric_scans_what_country_is_this

American citizens are being beaten by police & held without legal counsel

For everyone out there that claims we're all conspiracy nuts,  that our govt. would never throw citizens in a dark hole & beat them. I give you proof that Americans are being detained illegally.

The DHS run Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by families or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a DHS/CIA black site.

This is the NDAA act that no one wants to talk about in action! Any CITIZEN can be detained indefinitely and without legal representation by our government or DHS wink, wink.

Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:

• Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
• Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
• Shackling for prolonged periods.
• Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
• Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.

At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.

Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the “Nato Three”, was held and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and charged.

“Homan Square is definitely an unusual place,” Church told the Guardian on Friday. “It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.”

Church was held at the facility for just under 24 hours, most of that time spent cuffed to the furniture there. Though he had immediately asked to call legal counsel, this request was denied.

Neither he nor the 11 other protestors that were taken there were allowed to see legal counsel until finally Church's, and only Church's, lawyer was allowed in after 20 or so hours. Prior to that, police had been questioning him illegaly.

A team of attorneys could not find Church through 12 hours of “active searching”, Sarah Gelsomino, Church’s lawyer, recalled. No booking record existed. Only after she and others made a “major stink” with contacts in the offices of the corporation counsel and Mayor Rahm Emanuel did they even learn about Homan Square.

They sent another attorney to the facility, where he ultimately gained entry, and talked to Church through a floor-to-ceiling chain-link metal cage. Finally, hours later, police took Church and his two co-defendants to a nearby police station for booking. After serving two and a half years in prison, Church is currently on parole after he and his co-defendants were found not guilty in 2014 of terrorism-related offenses but guilty of lesser charges of possessing an incendiary device and the misdemeanor of “mob action”.

On February 2, 2013, John Hubbard was taken to Homan Square. Hubbard never walked out. The Chicago Tribune reported that the 44-year old was found “unresponsive inside an interview room”, and pronounced dead. The Cook County medical examiner’s office could not locate any record for the Guardian indicating a cause of Hubbard’s death. It remains unclear why Hubbard was ever in police custody.

It's quite a shame that we can't ask Mr. Hubbard because he died within the facility where lawyers are refused entrance, where detainees are kept out of the record books, and where the police appear to operate with impunity. Now, it's roughly around here where you're thinking one of two things. Some of you are thinking that such a claim as this is so outlandish that there's very little chance that it's true. Others must be thinking that the accusations of abuse and the denial of rights are rare mistakes made by a tiny percentage of officers. Too bad this secret wasn't all that secret.

“It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there,” said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.

Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.

“This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of the practice that dates back more than 40 years,” Taylor said, “of violating a suspect or witness’ rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or otherwise coerced into giving a statement.”

Criminologist dissects the Chicago black site:

Criminologist & executive director of the Chicago Justice Project Tracy Siska: "There was knowledge in the police-accountability community. We knew exactly where it was, but we couldn’t get the press in Chicago to cover the story. We think it started during [former Chicago Police Department Superintendent] Phil Cline’s time around 2006 or 2007 until about 2011 when the city had roving special units [that worked out of Homan Square.]"

 "I think that many crime reporters in Chicago have political views that are right in line with the police. They tend to agree about the tactics needed by the police. They tend to have by one extent or the other the same racist views of the police—a lot of urban police (not all of them by any stretch, but a lot of them) embody racism Siska said."

Q: What about Homan Square-like locations around the country?

Siska: I don’t know, but I would say that the creation of the fusion centers on a federal level gives me pause about how widespread Homan Square places are around the country.
(Click here & here to find out how DHS run Fusion Centers are being used to spy on innocent Americans.)

Q: Going back to the Guantanamo interrogation techniques associated with Homan Square, and just to be clear: These warehouses aren’t interrogating suspected terrorists, correct?

Siska: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. 99 percent of the people from this site are involved in some form of street crime: gang activities, drugs—urban violent crime. That’s what makes the site even worse. It takes Guantanamo-style tactics on urban street criminals and shreds the Bill of Rights.

Q: To clarify: What do “Guantanamo-style” tactics entail?

Siska: Isolation, deprivation of food, other outside contact. It’s meant to be a lot of touchless torture. So they’re not touching you, which in the human-rights field is more powerful and scary because it doesn’t leave marks but leaves huge internal wounds. Most of the time, people aren't physically abused. They’re cut off from society, not allowed phone calls, not fed as much. These are just tactics that are more sophisticated in urban-policing tactics.

The Chicago police used appalling military interrogation tactics for decades.

Then there is the highly decorated Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge who, during his 23-year tenure on the force from 1970 to 1993, used the techniques he learned from interrogating the Vietcong as a military policeman in Vietnam on black suspects in Chicago. These techniques included Russian roulette with pistols and shotguns, burning suspects on radiators, suffocation with typewriter covers, beatings with phone books and electric shocks to the ears, nose, fingers, and testicles.

Burge was a fast-rising and well-respected officer who operated with impunity; neither his colleagues nor his supervisors blew the whistle. Neither did prosecutors or officials in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. Instead, Burge was accorded hero status – until community activists, public interest lawyers and one lonely journalist at the city’s weekly exposed his horrid behavior what it really was: unacceptable.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site?CMP=share_btn_fb
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150224/10512730124/guardian-details-horrors-chicago-polices-cia-style-black-site.shtml
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/02/behind-the-disappeared-of-chicagos-homan-square/385964/

 Chicago Justice Project's Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10153072120602645&id=112042797644

Can the items you buy be used to identify you?

Article first appeared in Privacy Association.org

A Science magazine article analyzes credit card transaction data on 1.1 million individuals from an unnamed OECD country. One of the author’s key conclusions is that using only four transactions, 90% of the people are unique. Actually, they say that 90% of the people can be re-identified (ignoring the distinction between uniqueness and re-identification).

This conclusion has then been repeated uncritically by the science and general media communities.

Kahled El Elmen wrote a critique of the article on BMJ.com.

A credit card transaction consists of a date and a shop. For example, Sally may have gone to Pharmacy-R-Us on December 26^th and Butcher Joe on December 27^th. This would be an example of a two transaction trace for Sally. If Sally’s transaction trace is unique, it means that she is the only person who has that particular trace (i.e., she is the only person who shopped at these two locations on these two days).

If an adversary wants to re-identify individuals she needs to have background information about the data subject being re-identified. The authors seemed to assume that the adversary would know when the transaction occurred and where, as well as the price.

There is reason to believe that the 1.1 million people are from a country such that they are a sample from a population of approximately 22 million adults who could have credit cards. This means that the 1.1 million individuals in the data that was analyzed represent only five percent of the population. A most basic principle in measuring the risk of re-identification is that risk must be measured on the population and not from the sample. If 90% of the sample is unique that does not necessarily mean that 90% of the population is unique on a trace of four credit card transactions. In fact, the number of unique individuals in the population could be much smaller and you could still have 90% unique individuals in the 1.1 million sample.

The best way to illustrate the implications of this is to do a simulation. With a 5% sample of 1.1 million people. It is very unlikely that 90% of the people in the 1.1 million person sample are unique if his population is also 90% unique. In fact, the population needs less than 1% uniqueness to get 90% uniqueness in the Science magazine study. A much more likely conclusion from the data is that less than 1% of the population is unique on four credit card transactions. The key point here is that having 90% unique individuals in his sample data does not translate directly to 90% unique individuals in the population—and the discrepancy can be huge.

The authors of the study drew conclusions based on uniqueness in the sample, which inflates the re-identification risks, especially when the sample is as small as 5%. This is a basic disclosure control principle. The actual risk value needs to be computed from the population.

The analysis in that article was incorrect and the estimates very likely exaggerated the re-identification risk.
https://privacyassociation.org/news/a/on-re-identification-not-really-unique-in-the-shopping-mall/

4,000 Pages Of Stingray Surveillance Documents: EPIC

EPIC has obtained nearly $30,000 in litigation fees as a result of a Freedom of Information Act case against the FBI concerning a new surveillance technology. EPIC's lawsuit produced the release of more than 4,000 pages of documents about a phony cell tower technique called "Stingray."

The documents obtained by EPIC revealed that the FBI used the devices to monitor cell phones without a warrant, and provided Stingrays to other law enforcement agencies.
https://epic.org/foia/fbi/stingray/#foia

Security is an illusion, American spying is the worst in world history

Andrew Demeter interviews the world's most interesting man, John McAfee, on issues of privacy and security. "Security is an illusion... We don't get out of life alive — none of us, so there can be no absolute security. That's the certainty," McAfee told Demeter.

He also explained why privacy is so important. "Without privacy in society, there would be chaos."

Worst spying in world history, is occurring right now in the U.S.

Americans are the most spied upon people in world history.

Top NSA officials previously said that we’ve got a “police state” … like J. Edgar Hoover – or the Stasi – on “super steroids”.

Spying by the NSA is also worse than in Nazi German:

The tyrants in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia and Stasi Eastern Europe would have liked to easedrop on every communication and every transaction of every citizen.  But in the world before the internet, smart phones, electronic medical records and digital credit card transactions, much of what happened behind closed doors remained private.

Indeed, a former lieutenant colonel for the East German Stasi said the NSA’s spy capabilities would have been “a dream come true” for the Stasi.

NSA contractor Edward Snowden said in 2013 that NSA spying was worse than in Orwell’s book 1984.

The NSA is spying on us through our computers, phones, cars, buses, streetlights, at airports and on the street, via mobile scanners and drones, through our smart meters, and in many other ways.

The NSA is laughing at all of us for carrying powerful spying devices around in our pockets. And see this.

A security expert said the same year:

We have to assume that the NSA has EVERYONE who uses electronic communications under CONSTANT surveillance.

What’s happened since these statements were made?  Spying has only gotten worse. The government is doing everything it can to completely destroy privacy.

Postscript:  Nothing has changed … and it will keep on getting worse and worse unless we the people stand up for our rights against those who want to take our freedom away.

Bill Binney is the high-level NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information. A 32-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency, Binney was the senior technical director within the agency and managed thousands of NSA employees.

While the spying programs that we have heard about so far deal with the “who and what” and on occasion the “why” of what people on the planet are doing, Treasuremap is the NSA/GCHQ/etc. program to acquire and follow the movements of people (objective is to follow 4 billion folks) simultaneously in near real time. So, Treasuremap gives them the “when and where” aspects of individual lives. 

All in all, this gives the participating governments (primarily the Five Eyes countries) unrestricted knowledge of individual lives.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/nsa-spying-worse-stasi-nazi-germany-j-edgar-hoover-orwells-1984.html
http://cryptome.org/2014/09/nsa-treasure-map-der-spiegel-14-0914.pdf

Find out if you've been spied on and join the fight for privacy

Have you ever made a phone call, sent an email, or, you know, used the internet? Of course you have!

Chances are, at some point over the past decade, your communications were swept up by the NSA's mass surveillance program and passed onto Britain's intelligence agency GCHQ.

A recent court ruling found that this sharing was unlawful but no one could find out if their records were collected and then illegally shared between these two agencies… until now!

Because of our recent victory against the UK intelligence agency in court, now anyone in the world — yes, ANYONE, including you — can find out if GCHQ illegally received information about you from the NSA.

Join the campaign by entering your details on the link below to find out if GCHQ illegally spied on you, and confirm via the email we send you. We'll then go to court demanding that they finally come clean on unlawful surveillance.
https://www.privacyinternational.org/?q=illegalspying

 

Disturbing "peace officer" video

Peace Officer is a documentary about the increasingly militarized state of American police as told through the story of Dub Lawrence, a former sheriff who established his rural state's first SWAT team only to see that same unit kill his son-in-law in a controversial standoff 30 years later. Driven by an obsessed sense of mission, Dub uses his own investigation skills to uncover the truth in this and other recent officer-involved shootings in his community, while tackling larger questions about the changing face of peace officers nationwide.

DHS/NHTSA studies claim drunk driving is decreasing, allege drugged driving is increasing

 

Drunk driving has decreased by one-third since 2007 and three-quarters since 1973, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) 2013-2014 Roadside Survey of Alcohol and Drug Use by Drivers. The NHTSA used FORCIBLY collected oral fluid or blood samples from 11,100 drivers at 60 locations across the country to make the determination .

If drunk driving is down, why is there an increase in illegal no-refusal blood draw checkpoints across the country? 

DHS has partnered with the NHTSA, click here & here to read more.

NHTSA & DHS are providing police across the country 'No Refusal DUI' toolkits! Click here & here to find out more.

NHTSA's 2013 'Alcohol Impaired Driving' study shows drunk driving in America is has been declining for years!

"The alcohol-impaired-driving fatality rate in the past 10 years has declined by 23 percent, from 2004 - 2013."

Click here to read another study showing DWI arrests in America are declining.

Don't forget MADD's close relationship with DHS, click here & here to read more.

If MADD/DHS have there way, they'll put breathalyzers in every vehicle.
 

DHS has been illegally detaining Americans near the border for years. An internal memo titled “Enforcement Options With Alcohol-Impaired Drivers” directs U.S. Border Patrol agents in the Tucson, Arizona sector to “release” individuals under the influence and “allow them to go on their way.”

 

The document acknowledges that this feels counter-intuitive for Border Patrol agents, but eases concerns by answering a hypothetical question for the officers who have sworn to uphold the law: “If you allow this driver to continue down the road and they kill someone, aren’t you liable?” The answer is no, according to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memo. “There is no legal requirement for a Border Patrol agent to intervene in a state crime, including DUI,” the order says, adding that “therefore there is generally no liability that will attach to the agent or agency for failing to act in this situation.”

 

Think about that the next time you're pulled over or questioned by police. If DHS is running police departments across the country, they have no legal right to intervene i.e., stop a suspected drunk/drugged driver anywhere in the country!

 

Be wary of DHS/NHTSA's biased studies, their agenda is to increase illegal checkpoints and to B.S. the public into believing there's an epidemic of drugged (marijuana) impaired drivers across the country.

 

Last year I reported on a marijuana breathalyzer that's in development and why our rights are in jeopardy.  

 

Last year, during a congressional hearing on the threat posed by stoned drivers, a representative of the NHTSA was asked how many crash fatalities are caused by marijuana each year. "That's difficult to say," replied Jeff Michael, NHTSA's associate administrator for research and program development. "We don't have a precise estimate." The most he was willing to affirm was that the number is "probably not" zero.

According to the NHTSA or should I say DHS, nearly one-quarter of drivers tested positive for at least one drug that could affect safety, according to the survey, which has been conducted five times during the last 40 years.
 

Drivers with evidence of drugs in their system on weekend nights climbed from 16.3 percent in 2007 to 20 percent in 2014, and those with marijuana in their system grew by nearly 50 percent during that same period.

Over all, drivers who tested positive for active THC were 25 percent more likely to be involved in crashes. But once the researchers took sex, age, and race/ethnicity into account, the risk ratio shrank from 1.25 to 1.05 and was no longer statistically significant:

This analysis shows that the significant increased risk of crash involvement associated with THC and illegal drugs…is not found after adjusting for these demographic variables. This finding suggests that these demographic variables may have co-varied with drug use and accounted for most of the increased crash risk. For example, if the THC-positive drivers were predominantly young males, their apparent crash risk may have been related to age and gender rather than use of THC.

A second study, the Crash Risk Study, found that marijuana use by drivers is associated with a greater risk of crashes, but the study notes that marijuana users are more likely to be in population segments (i.e. young males) that crash at higher rates regardless of drug use.

http://reason.com/archives/2015/02/16/drugged-drivers-who-aren't
 

Click on the link below to read the studies:

http://www.nhtsa.gov/Driving+Safety/Research+&+Evaluation/Alcohol+and+Drug+Use+By+Drivers

The internet is the only free press we have

Article first appeared in lewrockwell.com.

Washington has learned to avoid dissent from its wars by using a volunteer army of men about whom no one of influence cares. The use of “drones” further reduces public interest, and today the major media, owned by corporations aligned with arms manufacturers and manned by intimidated reporters, hide the results on the battlefield. For practical purposes, today’s press is an arm of government.

The old checks and balances, however modest in their effects, have withered. The Supreme Court is now a branch office of Madame Tussaud’s, Congress a two-headed corpse, the Constitution a scrap of moldering parchment remembered only by hopeless romantics, and Washington a sandbox of unaccountable hacks inbred to the point of hemophilia. Obama has discovered that he can do almost anything, calling it an executive order, and no one will dare challenge him.

In its rare waking moments, the Supreme Court has shown little inclination to protect the Bill of Rights, which Washington regards as quaint at best and, usually, an annoyance to be overcome by executive order and judicial somnolence. The obvious reality that having the government read every email, record every telephone conversation, monitor every financial transaction and so on is a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment bothers neither the Supremes nor, heaven knows, the President. It is clearly unconstitutional, but we do not live in constitutional times. Governments aggregate power.
They do not relinquish it, short of revolution.

Today the internet is the only free press we have, all that stands against total control of information. Consider how relentlessly the media impose political correctness, how the slightest offense to the protected groups—we all know who they are—or to sacred policies leads to firing of reporters and groveling by politicians.  The wars are buried and serious criticism of Washington suppressed. That leaves the net, only the net, without which we would know nothing.

Which is why it must be and will be censored, sooner if Washington can get away with it and later if not. The tactics are predictable. First, “hate speech” will be banned. The government will tell us whom we can hate and whom we cannot. “Hatred” will be vaguely defined so that one will never be sure when one is engaging in it and, since it will be prosecutable, one will have to be very careful. Disapproval of favored groups, or of their behavior, will be defined as hatred. National security will be invoked, silencing whistle-blowers or, eventually, anything that might make the public uneasy with Washington’s wars.

The next step probably will be to block links to foreign sites deemed to transgress. China is good at this. The most likely avenue will be executive orders of increasingly Draconian nature, about which Congress and the Dead—the Supreme Court, I meant to say—will do nothing.

Our increasingly characterless young, raised to ignorance and Appropriate Thought by government schools, will question nothing. They will have no way of knowing that there is anything to question.

I suppose it can be debated whether the current enstupidation of the rising generations is deliberate or merely the consequence of a return to peasantry inescapable in a democracy. The petulance and immaturity running through so much of society may be inevitable in a spoiled people who have never had to do anything and have never been told “no.” Certainly things today resemble the end games of other once-dominant cultures.

Many college graduates can barely read. Their ignorance of history, politics, and geography (and practically everything else) is profound, and they see no reason why they should know anything. They seem not to suspect that there might be things worth knowing.

I am hard pressed to think of a society in such internal decline that has turned itself around, and I cannot imagine how ours might do so. One sure thing is that, once the internet is weakened (censored), there will be no hope at all. And the assault has begun.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/02/fred-reed/the-internet-is-our-only-free-presse280a8/

CIA controls mass media like the NY Times, Time Magazine and much more

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit.

There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

The use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence‑gathering employed by the CIA. Although the Agency has cut back sharply on the use of reporters since 1973 primarily as a result of pressure from the media), some journalist‑operatives are still posted abroad.

Further investigation into the matter, CIA officials say, would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships in the 1950s and 1960s with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals in American journalism.

The US government has no external “need to manipulate” mass media outlets such as “Time magazine, for example, because there are Agency [CIA] people at the management level.”

Former CIA employee Barry Eisler explains why you shouldn't trust the CIA, click here to listen to the podcast.

Remember there are SIX corporations that control America's media.

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune. By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.

The CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress. The general outlines of what happened are indisputable; the specifics are harder to come by. CIA sources hint that a particular journalist was trafficking all over Eastern Europe for the Agency; the journalist says no, he just had lunch with the station chief. CIA sources say flatly that a well‑known ABC correspondent worked for the Agency through 1973; they refuse to identify him. A high‑level CIA official with a prodigious memory says that the New York Times provided cover for about ten CIA operatives between 1950 and 1966; he does not know who they were, or who in the newspaper’s management made the arrangements.

The Agency’s special relationships with the so‑called “majors” in publishing and broadcasting enabled the CIA to post some of its most valuable operatives abroad without exposure for more than two decades. In most instances, Agency files show, officials at the highest levels of the CIA usually director or deputy director) dealt personally with a single designated individual in the top management of the cooperating news organization.

The aid furnished often took two forms: providing jobs and credentials “journalistic cover” in Agency parlance) for CIA operatives about to be posted in foreign capitals; and lending the Agency the undercover services of reporters already on staff, including some of the best‑known correspondents in the business.

CIA officials almost always refuse to divulge the names of journalists who have cooperated with the Agency. They say it would be unfair to judge these individuals in a context different from the one that spawned the relationships in the first place. “There was a time when it wasn’t considered a crime to serve your government,” said one high‑level CIA official who makes no secret of his bitterness. “This all has to be considered in the context of the morality of the times, rather than against latter‑day standards—and hypocritical standards at that.”
http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php

Image source: http://owni.eu/2011/11/25/infographic-media-consolidation-the-illusion-of-choice/

Has our Constitution become a worthless piece of paper?

Story originally published at lewrockwell.com

By Judge Napolitano:

During George W. Bush's  presidency, Congress enacted the Patriot Act. This legislation permits federal agents to write their own search warrants when those warrants are served on custodians of records — like doctors, lawyers, telecoms, computer servers, banks and even the Post Office.

Such purported statutory authority directly violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right to privacy in our “persons, houses, papers and effects.” That includes just about everything held by the custodians of our records. Privacy is not only a constitutional right protected by the document; it is also a natural right. We possess the right to privacy by virtue of our humanity. Our rights come from within us — whether you believe we are the highest progression of biological forces or the intended creations of an Almighty God — they do not come from the government.

This is not an academic argument. If our rights come from within us, the government cannot take them away, whether by executive fiat, popular legislation or judicial ruling, unless we individually have waived them. If our rights come from the government, then they are not rights, but permission slips

Eric Snowden revealed that the NSA, pursuant to President Obama’s orders and the authorization of these judges meeting in secret (so secret that the judges themselves are not permitted to keep records of their own rulings), was actually capturing and storing the content of all emails, text messages, telephone calls, utility and credit card bills, and bank statements of everyone in America. They did this without a search warrant based on probable cause — a very high level of individualized suspicion — as required by the Constitution.

Snowden revealed that Obama’s lawyers had persuaded these secret judges, without any opposition from lawyers representing the victims of this surveillance, that somehow Congress had authorized this and somehow it was constitutional and somehow it was not un-American to spy on all of us all the time. These judges actually did the unthinkable: They issued what are known as general warrants. General warrants were used against the colonists by the British and are expressly prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. They permit the bearer to search wherever he wishes and seize whatever he finds. That’s what the NSA does to all of us today.

Then there's the NSA spying program that's so secret, judges can't explain why it can't be challenged!

Last week, we learned how deep the disrespect for the Constitution runs in the government and how tortured is the logic that underlies it. In a little-noted speech at Washington and Lee Law School, Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of both the CIA and the NSA, told us. In a remarkable public confession, he revealed that somehow he received from some source he did not name the authority to reinterpret the Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy so as to obliterate it. He argued that the line between privacy and unbridled government surveillance is a flexible and movable one, and that he — as the head of the NSA — could move it.

This is an astounding audacity by a former high-ranking government official who swore numerous times to uphold the Constitution. He has claimed powers for himself that are nowhere in the Constitution or federal statues, powers that no president or Congress has claimed, powers that no Supreme Court decision has articulated, powers that are antithetical to the plain meaning and supremacy of the Constitution, powers that any non-secret judge anywhere would deny him.

If the terms and meaning of the Constitution could be changed by the secret whims of those in the executive branch into whose hands they have been reposed for safekeeping, of what value are they? No value. In such a world, our Constitution has become a worthless piece of paper.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/02/andrew-p-napolitano/like-a-soviet-commissar/

The govt reads all your old emails and doesn't need a warrant

If you don't clean out your email in-box every month, here’s some incentive: The federal government can read any emails that are more than six months old without a warrant.

That means, the NSA, DHS, FBI etc., are spying on all your old emails.

Little known to most Americans, ambiguous language in a communications law passed in 1986 extends Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure only to electronic communications sent or received fewer than 180 days ago.

The language, known as the “180-day rule,” allows government officials to treat any emails, text messages or documents stored on remote servers – popularly known as the cloud – as “abandoned” and therefore accessible using administrative subpoena power, a tactic that critics say circumvents due process.

As you rush to purge your Gmail and Dropbox accounts, however, be forewarned that even deleted files still could be fair game as long as copies exist on a third-party server somewhere.

“The government is essentially using an arcane loophole to breach the privacy rights of Americans,” Yoder said. “They couldn’t kick down your door and seize the documents on your desk, but they could send a request to Google and ask for all the documents that are in your Gmail account. And I don’t think Americans believe that the Constitution ends with the invention of the Internet” Rep. Kevin Yoder said.

Most Americans probably aren’t aware that the government doesn’t need a warrant to read the content of emails older than 180 days, Yoder said.

“In fact, when I discuss this with constituents at home, they’re frankly stunned to know that in this day and age government still believes they can sift through and spy on Americans’ email correspondence without any sort of due process,” Yoder said. “I would say many members of Congress were not aware of this and are becoming aware and the momentum is growing.”

Legislation to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act has foundered in Congress for years. But in the wake of revelations about the National Security Agency’s spying on Americans, momentum is building for the 2015 version of Yoder’s bill, the Email Privacy Act, as a growing coalition of liberals and conservatives find all-too-scarce common ground on the need to strengthen digital privacy protections.

Organizations as far apart on the political spectrum as the conservative Heritage Foundation and the liberal American Civil Liberties Union are united in support of the bill.

“Privacy crosses political aisles, especially when we see the government expanding domestic spying in secret in so many different ways,” said Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group that has been pushing the bill for years.

Major tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Google have been lobbying in favor of the bill, too.

But as Tien points out, the Email Privacy Act doesn’t address all of the concerns raised by the tech companies and privacy advocates. It does not, for example, restrain the government’s collection of a user’s metadata, which includes information about the communications a user sends and receives but not the content of those communications.

In other words, the Email Privacy Act would not extend Fourth Amendment protections to “non-content” data. Even if the bill becomes law, customers’ names, locations, addresses, routing information and subscriber network addresses still could be subpoenaed without a warrant and without notice, although accessing the content of their conversations would require the authorization of a judicial magistrate or judge.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/02/11/256304/government-wonders-whats-in-your.html

DHS claims revealing info. about "Internet kill switch" will endanger law enforcement

An Appeals Court in Washington, DC has ruled that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may withhold from the public a secret procedure for shutting down cell phone service.

Ironically a committee called the 'President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee'(NSTAC) claims their should be a single governmental process to impede phone & internet service.

Can anyone guess what branch of govt controls the NSTAC? If you guessed DHS you get a gold star.

Below is an excerpt from the DHS website:

"Meeting our Nation’s critical national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) challenges demands attention to many issues. Among these, none could be more important than the availability and reliability of telecommunication services."

DHS would have you believe they will ... "preserve the public trust in the integrity of our communications services" during an emergency by giving them the exclusive power to turn it off!

The only thing the public was told is that its called SOP 303, what those procedures are and when they can be used, the public doesn't have a right to know!

“The Department (DHS) appeals, invoking FOIA Exemption 7(F) on the ground that production of SOP 303 could reasonably be expected to endanger many individuals’ lives or physical safety. Upon de novo review, we hold that the plain text of Exemption 7(F) protects law enforcement records the disclosure of which “could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual,” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(F), during a critical emergency, without requiring the withholding agency to specifically identify the individuals who would be endangered, and that much if not all of SOP 303 is exempt from disclosure.”

SOP 303 “provides detailed procedures for the [NCC] to coordinate requests for the disruption of cellular service,” certain subsection headings, and the title of Appendix E (“External Agency Cellular Service Disruption Implementation Instructions”)

So there it is, that's all you're allowed to know. If DHS told the public anymore it “could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual."

Laughably DHS claims "bad actors"could shutdown or reactivate the wireless network by impersonating officials. Who they are and what they look like? You're not allowed to know. Just know that's the B.S. reason the public is being spoon fed.

EPIC pursued the DHS policy after government officials in San Francisco disabled cell phone service during a peaceful protest in 2011.

EPIC sued DHS when the agency failed to release the criteria for network shutdowns. A federal judge ruled in EPIC's favor. On appeal, the D.C. Circuit held for the DHS but said that the agency might still be required to disclose some portions of the protocol.
https://epic.org/2015/02/in-epic-v-dhs-dc-circuit-backs.html

Police and social workers using govt questionnaire to see if you & your family could be terrorists

Are you, your family or your community at risk of turning to violent extremism? That’s the premise behind a rating system devised by the National Counterterrorism Center, according to a document marked For Official Use Only.

The document–and the rating system–is part of a wider strategy for Countering Violent Extremism, which calls for local community and religious leaders to work together with law enforcement and other government agencies. The White House has made this approach a centerpiece of its response to terrorist attacks around the world and in the wake of the Paris attacks, announced plans to host an international summit on Countering Violent Extremism on February 18th. 

 

The rating system, part of a 36-page document dated May 2014 and titled “Countering Violent Extremism: A Guide for Practitioners and Analysts,” suggests that police, social workers and educators rate individuals on a scale of one to five in categories such as: “Expressions of Hopelessness, Futility,” “Talk of Harming Self or Others,” and “Connection to Group Identity (Race, Nationality, Religion, Ethnicity).” The ranking system is supposed to alert government officials to individuals at risk of turning to radical violence, and to families or communities at risk of incubating extremist ideologies.

 

Families are judged on factors such as “Awareness of Each Other’s Activities,” as well as levels of “Parent-Child Bonding,” and communities are rated by access to health care and social services, in addition to “presence of ideologues or recruiters” as potential risk factors.

 

A low score in any of these categories would indicate a high risk of “susceptibility to engage in violent extremism,” according to the document. It encourages users of the guide to plot the scores on a graph to determine what “interventions” could halt the process of radicalization before it happens.

 

“The idea that the federal government would encourage local police, teachers, medical and social service employees to rate the communities, individuals and families they serve for their potential to become terrorists is abhorrent on its face,” said Mike German, a former FBI agent who is now with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. German called the criteria used for the ratings “subjective and specious.”

Arun Kundnani, a professor at New York University said  “There’s no evidence to support the idea that terrorism can be substantively correlated with such factors to do with family, identity, and emotional well-being.”

DHS/Police community outreach programs are being used to spy on innocent kids & families.

A grant proposal from the St. Paul Police Department to the Justice Department, which the Brennan Center obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI, lays out a plan in which Somali-speaking advocates would hold outreach meetings with community groups and direct people toward the Police Athletic League and programs at the YWCA. The proposal says that “the team will also identify radicalized individuals, gang members, and violent offenders who refuse to cooperate with our efforts.”

“It’s startling how explicit it was – ‘You don’t want to join the Police Athletic League? You sound like you might join al-Shabab!’” said Michael Price, an attorney with the Brennan Center.

Click here to read more.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/09/government-develops-questionnaire-see-might-become-terrorist/

Dept. of Justice claims the only limit on spying is, census data(maybe)

The Department of Justice (DOJ) released an opinion (pdf), written by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in 2010, that concluded that Section 215—the provision of the Patriot Act the NSA relies on to collect millions of Americans’ phone records—does have a limit: census data.

The Commerce Department requested an OLC opinion on whether any provisions of the Patriot Act could override the privacy requirements of the Census Act, provisions which, as the opinion acknowledges, “have long provided assurances of confidentiality to” census participants. The opinion contrasts the “broad authority” and “substantial new powers” provided by Section 215 with the “long history of congressional enactments providing broad confidentiality protection to census information.” Ultimately, OLC concluded that “section 215 should not be construed to repeal otherwise applicable Census Act protections for covered census information” and that the “Patriot Act, as amended, does not alter the confidentiality” of census data.

That, however, was not the view of the DOJ's National Security Division (NSD). As the opinion notes, the National Security Division “disagreed, contending that section 215 . . . may allow for a court order to compel the Secretary [of Commerce] to disclose furnished census information.” Importantly, the National Security Division is the division of DOJ that represents the government in cases before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the secret court that oversees much of the government’s domestic spying operations. Thanks to disclosures in EFF’s lawsuit, we know that NSD ultimately cited and relied on this opinion in proceedings before the FISC. That application, however, remains secret.

Don't forget EVERY smartphone user's info, pictures & text messages are being tracked by the NSA/ police.

Fortunately, and as EFF has long argued, the opinions of the OLC are the law of the executive branch. So, even if attorneys in the National Security Division disagreed with OLC’s conclusions, they were obligated to follow it. The judge in EFF’s FOIA case, who reviewed the government’s application to the FISC that relied on the opinion, acknowledged as much in her opinion (pdf): “The Court’s in camera review confirms that DOJ cited the Census Memorandum in an application to the FISC, referencing it as DOJ’s legal position on the census-related issues therein, and contrasting it with other legal issues argued in the application. DOJ offered the Census Memorandum as a statement of the law to bolster its legal arguments concerning matters unrelated to the subject of the Census Memorandum itself.”

The federal government has a sad history of using census data to target politically vulnerable groups, but we’re pleased that the executive branch, in this opinion, has recognized the important privacy protections Congress has established for census data. We’re also pleased that the government, for once, has acknowledged Section 215 has its limits, wink, wink.

It shouldn’t have taken a four-year court battle for the public to know what the government thinks the law is.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/first-government-acknowledges-limits-section-215

Police change tactics, call tanks "armor protected ambulances" and rescue vehicles

 



In the above video a police officer actually calls it an armored ambulance can you believe this crap?

 

Not a tank? It's as though police are reading from a script. Oh, right they are and its Homeland Security's B.S. script.

 

Council members in San Leandro, Calif. voted in favor of allowing the city to use a grant to purchase a controversial armored rescue vehicle.

 

The Medevac Armored vehicle is the only one of its kind in Northern California.

 

"This is such a big step in the wrong direction (and) relations in the community," said Mia Ousley, who opposes the city purchasing armored rescue vehicle. "This is a tank."

 

Mike Katz-Lacabe, who also opposes the armored rescue vehicle, said "this ambulance comes with 11 gun ports -- that's not an ambulance."

 

Police said they have borrowed a similar vehicle from other agencies nine times over the past two years. The vehicle would mostly be paid by a $200,000 Homeland Security grant.

DHS wants police departments to have armored tanks & armored ambulances, why not just give them M1 Abrams tanks and stop the lying?

Below are numerous disturbing stories of DHS giving police armored ambulances:

“It’s a tool, it’s not a weapon,” said Vacaville, Calif. Police Chief John Carli.

Carli described the vehicle as a “bullet-resistant people mover” to be used in high-risk situations.

He claimed the vehicle would not be used when dealing with protests or other demonstrations, as it is part of SWAT and not the Mobile Field Force that is responsible for protests.

If you're wondering what the Mobile Field Force is, below is an excerpt from their website:

"The NIPAS Mobile Field Force was created in the Spring of 1994 to maximized the effectiveness of initial response efforts by police when a major civil disturbance occurs. Civil disturbances, union conflicts, public demonstrations, and other events involving large or disorderly crowds require skillful response by police agencies."

Police across the country train with the DHS & the military learning how to quell protestors etc.

Click here, here & here to find out more.

Police are trained to use armored rescue vehicles against protestors and used them in Ferguson, MO.

A search for 'armored rescue vehicles on 'Police The Law Enforcement Magazine' looks like a special forces website.

Another search of law enforcement publications revealed two disturbing articles one titled 'Tactics For Police Armored Rescue Vehicles'. Try not to vomit as you read it. It's basically a military or DHS how-to-guide for using a tank, but I digress.

Here's an excerpt about the effectiveness of their use during what's called "Rowdy Crowd Control"

"ARVs are extremely effective in riot and rowdy crowd situations, offering officers protection from assault, thrown objects, and gunfire. Police in Europe have been using ARVs to quell riots for many years. However, unlike our European counterparts, American ARVs are not supported by water cannon trucks.

The psychological advantage of ARVs in crowd/riot situations cannot be underestimated. A good example is the tactical team that deployed its vehicle against a large crowd of rioters throwing rocks and bottles at police. The instant the ARV appeared, the rioters ran away. The vehicles are also a proven, effective counter-measure against snipers, one of the hallmarks of urban riots.

ARVs make excellent rolling chemical and less-lethal launching platforms. With almost no difficulty, they can also negotiate most obstacles rioters place in the way to obstruct police. In Germany, it is common for police ARVs to operate with clearing blades to remove manmade barriers such as downed trees, or flipped or flaming vehicles. A police ARV is often the vehicle of choice to spearhead a mobile field force convoy. Members of an entire mobile field force will become more confident because of the vehicle’s presence."

So its an effective use against snipers, good to know. But how many protests have had snipers shooting at police?

Anyone? NOT A GODDAMN ONE.

Armored ambulances are being used for "psychological advantage" to quell demonstrations across the country!

DHS run police departments are training their officers to use them like our military would.

The second article entitled 'Police Armored Vehicles: Tactical Rescues Considerations' reveals how police are using them like Spec-Ops soldiers would.

"In neighborhoods where respect for the law is thin and bad guys think that they can deal with any responding police, the appearance and intervention of a no-nonsense police armored rescue vehicle (ARV) can make them reconsider. Most law enforcement agencies have experienced incidents where bad guys surrender without further resistance when the ARV arrives. If part of the mission is medical evacuation of the wounded, sick, or injured, then the arrival of the vehicle has expedited the rescue and medical care.

A basic medical evacuation tactic is to position the ARV between the armed bad guy(s) and the wounded person(s). Then the wounded are loaded into the ARV. Buildings and terrain features can be utilized by the ARV’s driver to provide addition cover. In other situations ARVs can be used for observation, gaining entry into barricaded buildings, and protection of the team. Kevlar skirts can be placed onto hooks on the exterior of an ARV prior to deploying it into rescue situations. These skirts are optional ARV protective equipment rather than an integral part of ARV rescues; they hang to the ground to prevent ricochets.

Once the casualties are loaded into the ARV and a decision has been made for it to transport the casualties to a secured, soft skin ambulance or medical facility, law enforcement personnel should be given the word it is leaving. The reason? The arrival of an ARV is a law enforcement morale builder, and its departure can be a let down. The size of the ARV rescue crew will vary depending on the situation, and it is often accompanied by a rescue team on foot using the ARV as cover."

If you think America has turned into a battlefield you'd be right, its protestors & activists who've become the enemy. When was the last time a protestor used a high-powered AP or HE round that could penetrate these so-called ambulances" in the U.S.?

NEVER, It's all a lie.

West Bloomfield Police Chief Michael Patton said that a number of vehicles were deployed to the scene and were used to either protect the lives of the police and fire responders, or to rescue residents who were hiding in their homes in the neighborhood.

“People always sit back and refer to it as a tank. It’s not a tank; it doesn’t shoot anything,” Patton said. “There is a lot of misunderstanding as to why agencies would want something like this. … From an occupational safety standpoint, we’re obligated to provide protective measures to our staff.”

Does this look like a rescue vehicles to you?

The vehicle, called "Rescue One," would serve as an armored rescue vehicle, Horn County Police Chief Saundra Rhodes said. It can accommodate 10 tactical officers during transportation operations; cross rivers with a depth of 3 feet; drive over large obstacles and debris; and enable rescue from rooftops, according to the agency.

Horry County, South Carolina police unveiled Rescue 1 on Monday, the department’s first armored Caiman vehicle that will be available for rescues and hazardous transportation.

The 60,728 pound vehicle is a military surplus vehicle that came from Sealy, Texas and was obtained through a federal program administered by the S.C. Budget and Control Board, Horry County police Chief Saundra Rhodes said Monday.

Click here to find out more about Lenco's Bearcat Medevac tactical vehicles.