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May 10, 2000
The War Came Home
And We're Losing It
The Jackboot State
Maybe Elian
Gonzalez will have achieved a miracle after all, alerting mainstream
America to the fact that the Bill of Rights has disappeared,
restrictions on the role of the military in domestic affairs
have been thrown overboard, and all the appurtenances of a fully
fledged police state in place. Twenty-five years after the war
ended in Vietnam we see what happened when that war came home.
We lost abroad. And at home we've lost too.
For blacks and hispanics the reactions to
that famous photograph of the Elian snatch by the INS team have
been comic in a macabre sort of way. After all, they've been
putting up with these no-knock forcible entries by heavily armed
cops or INS agents for decades. As Illinois rep Jesse Jackson
Jr put it, "I see them [i.e., law enforcement] knocking
down doors every day. I've never seen African-American people
more excited about a raid."
On the religious right, fears about the onrush
of tyranny hardened into certainty back at the time of Waco,
in the dawn of the Clinton era. The intervening years have done
nothing to lessen such fears and in a way the Elian raid has
come a kind of welcome reminder of the evil of Clinton and Reno.
Listen to Steve Myers, who publishes the right-wing DC e-mail/fax
journal Exegesis.
"History will record that, on April 22,
2000, at 2319 NW Second Street in Miami, the home of Lazaro Gonzalez,
Bill Clinton had his Krystallnacht [sic]. At 5:15 am, his foul-mouthed
storm troopers ensured that fascism was no longer merely knocking
on America's door: it didn't knock at all. Rather, it burst right
through the door during the night, using a battering ram, tear
gas, pepper spray and submachine guns, to abduct a child from
freedom to slavery, shattering their windows, damaging their
home, and smashing a statue of the Blessed Mother as they went.
"In the photograph we shall never forget,
notwithstanding the media's best efforts, you saw the thugs of
Fuhrer Clinton's authoritarian police state, the obscenity-spewing,
armed government thugs, servants of the nation, whose salary
you pay, in the process of spending three quarters of a million
dollars of your money by attacking and invading the private home
of honest, law-abiding, unarmed civilians in the middle of the
night, without a search warrant, for the sole purpose of destroying
Elian Gonzalez's deceased mother's cherished dream for her son
to grow up in freedom."
So much for the right. Until recently the
liberal-left had been relatively complaisant about the modern
police state, preferring to watch re-runs of the McCarthy hearings
of the l950s, while remaining tranquil about Waco or Ruby Ridge.
The rampages of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr did perturb
them, but mostly because Starr was chasing a Democratic president.
But the week before the Elian raid, the left experienced its
own evocation of Kristallnacht, in the week of demonstrations
in Washington DC against the World Bank and the WTO, where our
latest CounterPunch newsletter, exclusive to subscribers, reports
that the police had shoot-to-kill orders.
Here's how Sam
Smith, longtime Washington reporter and editor of The Progressive
Review evoked the events unfolding in the capital: "Illegal
sweep arrests. Print shops intimidated into closing by police.
Universities canceling public forums under pressure from officials.
Homes of opposition leaders broken into and ransacked. Headquarters
of the opposition raided and closed by police. These were the
sort of things by which we defined the evil of the old Soviet
Union. These were some of the reasons we said we had to bomb
Yugoslavia. And now they have become characteristics of the federal
government's handling of the current protests."
What happened in Washington was a replay of
similar cop mayhem in Seattle last December. It's now emerged
that a big factor in cop violence was the US Army's Delta Force
whose presence in Seattle was a clear violation of the
Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, forbidding the US military any role
in domestic law enforcement. This ban is increasingly a dead
letter. The Delta Force was at Waco and came to Seattle under
the pretext that there might be terrorist bio-chem assaults.
As the Seattle Weekly reported, "Using
high tech equipment, the Force mapped out potential problem areas
as well as identified possible violent demonstrators. Some Deltas
wore lapel cameras, continuously transmitting pictures of rioters
and other demonstrators to a master video unit in the motel command
center, which could be used by law enforcement agencies to identify
track suspects." The Weekly's Rick Anderson quotes a former
Special Forces Ranger as saying, "These guys are the army
hotshots, the cowboys. They were wigged out about security here.
They thought something drastic had to be done. I'd say they got
heard."
In other words, a secret Army unit spied on
US citizens on US soil and dictated police tactics to an intimidated
local police force which promptly declared the civilian equivalent
of martial law in downtown Seattle, suspending civil liberties.
It should be added that both in Seattle and
Washington, the treatment of arrested people (some of them delegates
swept up in the cop rampage) makes for hair-raising reading,
with random beatings, denials of food and water for 24 hours,
racial abuse, threats of rape, refusals to allow consultations
with attorneys. As in the l960s white middle class demonstrators
(and their parents) are learning what happens to poor people
all the time.
There's no sign that mainstream politicians
were a whit perturbed by police conduct in Seattle or Washington
DC. The picture of the Elian snatch did elicit some reaction.
Illinois rep and House Speaker Dennis Hastert proclaimed sternly
that "Our government has invaded the home of American citizens
who deserve the protection of our laws and a certain respect
for their rights." That puissant legislator from Texas,
House majority whip Tom DeLay bemoaned the fact that Elian Gonzalez
had not been read his Miranda rights. That the hated word "Miranda"
passed the lips of DeLay shows the transformative powers of which
Janet Reno is capable. "You bet there'll be congressional
hearings," DeLay fumed on the House floor. "I think
both branches, the legislative branch and the judiciary branch,
should look into this in depth, because this is a frightening
event, that American citizens can expect that the executive branch
on their own can decide to raid a home."
Will Congress take
a serious look at the rise and rise of our jackboot state? On
the evidence of the last thirty years, No. Both parties have
eagerly conjoined in militarizing the police, extending police
powers and carving away basic rights. Very often the Democrats
have been worse. It was Republican Rep Henry Hyde of Illinois
who led the recent and partially successful charge against asset
seizure. It was Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York
who was the errand boy of the US Justice Department in trying
to head off Hyde and his coalition.
After the Elian raid, Hardball's Chris Matthews
bleated in his syndicated column, apropos the Elian photo, "That's
not a good picture. It says that the way to measure and display
legitimate authority is by having the biggest gun capable of
shooting the most bullets the fastest." Back in the mid-1980s
Matthews was a top aide to then House speaker Tip O'Neill as
the Massachusetts Democrat orchestrated the most repressive drug
laws passed by Congress since the days of Harry Anslinger, prompting
many raids of the sort Matthews now laments.
The insane drug war has been a bipartisan
affair. Its consequences are etched into the fabric of our lives.
Just think of drug testing, now a virtually mandatory condition
of employment, even though it's an outrageous violation of personal
sovereignty, as well as being thoroughly unreliable. Last year
about 700,000 were arrested for marijuana offenses, about 87
per cent for possession. This is more than double the equivalent
number in the early 1990s.Of the federal prison population of
150,000, about 60 per cent are in for drug law violations, the
largest proportion for marijuana. So maybe Al should feel a special
kinship for these federal inmate. Drug offenders comprise about
a quarter of the 1.2 million in state prisons and of the 500,000
in local jails. In the state pens most of these are in for heroin
or cocaine-related offenses. In the era when America has been
led by two self confessed pot smokers Clinton and Gore
the number of people held for drug crimes in federal prisons
has increased by 64 per cent.
Gone is "probable
cause". The snitch prime bacterium of the police state
is paramount. Here are some cases described by James Bovard,
author of the excellent Lost Rights: The Destruction of American
Liberty.
"On August 25, 1992, officials from the
U.S. Customs Service and the DEA, along with local police, raided
the San Diego home of businessman Donald Carlson, setting off
a bomb in his backyard (to disorient Carlson), smashing through
his front door and shooting him three times after he tried to
defend himself with a gun. Police even shot Carlson in the back
after he had given up his gun and was lying wounded on his bedroom
floor. Amazingly, Carlson survived the raid. The Customs Service
mistakenly believed that there were four machine guns and a cache
of narcotics in Carlson's home.
"Carlson related in congressional testimony
in 1993 that even after agents failed to find any drugs, 'No
one offered me medical assistance while I lay on the floor of
my bedroom. Eventually, paramedics arrived and took me to the
hospital. I was shackled and kept in custody under armed guard
for several days at the hospital. During that time, I was aware
of the hospital personnel referring to me as a criminal and of
police officers and agents coming into my room.'
"The raid was based on a tip from a paid
informant named Ron, who later told the Los Angeles Times, that
he had never formally identified a specific house to be searched.
Customs officials had Carlson's house under surveillance for
many hours before they launched the raid. The agents could easily
have arrested Carlson when he arrived home at ten P.M. but instead
watched and waited to attack until after midnight, when Carlson
was asleep, in order to maximize the surprise. Although they
had a search warrant based on the house being a drug storehouse,
agents carried out the raid even after it became obvious that
Carlson was living a normal life there.
"The government finally admitted limited
liability for Carlson's medical costs in March 1994, but the
chief federal prosecutor, Alan Bersin, simultaneously hailed
the 'courageous law enforcement efforts in the area of drug interdiction'
involved in the case. 'The tragedy for everyone involved is that
no one acted other than in good faith,' Bersin asserted. 'We
were deceived by our informant and must accept responsibility
for that.' Bersin's statement implies that when federal agents
launch a raid on someone's home based solely on an allegation
by a government informant, a 'tragedy' occurs only when the informant
deceives the agents. The Justice Department indicated that no
federal agents will be prosecuted for their actions before, during
or after the raid."
Bovard notes that unfortunately,
no-knock raids are becoming more common as federal, state and
local politicians and law enforcement agencies decide that the
war on drugs justified nullifying the Fourth Amendment. "As
Charles Patrick Garcia noted in a 1993 Columbia Law Review article,
'Seven states, favoring strong law enforcement, have chosen a
`blanket approach', which holds that once police have established
probably cause to search a home for drugs, they are not required
to follow the constitutional knock-and-announce requirement.'
"The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in
February that police could forcibly enter a home without knocking
in any case in which there was 'evidence of drug dealing.' Unfortunately,
'evidence of drug dealing' can be the uncorroborated assertion
of a single anonymous paid government informant. The Wisconsin
court said that the 'possiblity for violence' can be minimized
by allowing police to rely on 'unannounced, dynamic entry' --
though it's a good bet that the judges don't expect police to
carry out such raids in the judges' neighborhoods."
Even in states where search warrants require
a knock on the door before entry, police routinely disregard
that formality. In a 1991 corruption trial, a former Los Angeles
policeman testified that the accused officers falsely reported
that they had complied with the knock-and-announce rule. In reality
they violated the rule in 97 per cent of the search warrants
they executed. No knock raids in response to alleged narcotics
violations presume that the government should have practically
unlimited power to endanger some people's lives in order to control
what others ingest. "The right to batter down a door apparently
includes the right to kill any citizen who tries to stop the
police from forcibly entering his or her home."
As a result of both federal and local actions,
America is moving towards the normalization of paramilitary forces
in law enforcement. There's a useful summary by David Kopel and
Paul Blackman in the Akron Law Review for l997. For example,
the police in Fresno, California, have taken the next step towards
militarization of local law enforcement. The Fresno SWAT team,
in full battle gear, now deploys a full-time patrol unit in the
city. Deeming the SWAT patrol an "unqualified success,"
the Fresno police department "is encouraging other police
agencies to follow suit."
About twenty percent of police departments
in cities over 50,000 have already put their own paramilitary
units into street police work. In many cases, funding for street
deployment of paramilitary units is funded by "community
policing" grants from the federal government. The majority
of police departments use their paramilitary units to serve "dynamic
entry" search warrants. SWAT teams also get deployed in
missions very foreign to ordinary police work. The SWAT Team
in Chapel Hill, NC conducted a large-scale crack raid of an entire
block in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. The raid,
termed "Operation Redi-Rock," resulted in the detention
and search of up to 100 people, all of whom were African-Americans.
(Whites were allowed to leave the area.) No one was ever prosecuted
for a crime.
The major cause
of the militarization of American law enforcement has been the
"drug war." In 1981 and 1988, Congress created huge
exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act, to allow use of the armed
services, including the National Guard, in drug law enforcement.
Because of drug war exceptions created in the Posse Comitatus
Act, every region of the United States now has a Joint Task Force
staff in charge of coordinating military involvement in domestic
law enforcement.
In region six, the JTF's Operational Support
Planning Guide, in the edition current in 1993, enthused, accurately,
that "Innovative approaches to providing new and more effective
support to law enforcement agencies are constantly sought, and
legal and policy barriers to the application of military capabilities
are gradually being eliminated." Consistent with the trend
noted by the JTF, the 1995 session of Congress saw a proposal
to create a 2,500 member federal Rapid Deployment Force for the
Attorney General to deploy at er discretion to assist local law
enforcement.
There are signs of popular unrest and mutiny.
Bovard reports that "The ACLU and the National Rifle Association
have jointly called for President Clinton to appoint a commission
to investigate 'Lawlessness in law enforcement.' Congress should
establish explicit rules to limit the arbitrary and violent behavior
of federal agents carrying out searches and raids, and state
legislatures should repeal their laws granting unlimited no-knock-search
powers to police in their jurisdictions."
States with democratic processes such as ballot
initiatives have seen brave efforts to curb the war on drugs.
California has a medical marijuana law and Hawai'i's legislature
just passed one. Oregon and Arizona have also moved to decriminalize
personal use. The feds' reaction has been to attack these states
by threatening to withhold highway funds, the usual mode of persuasion.
Let's see what those legislators indignant
about the subversion of liberty do next. Right now the swelling
police state is an expression of the War on Drugs. No politician
that does not call for a cease fire and a rollback in that cruel,
futile war--our domestic Vietnam--has any standing to bewail
the loss of our freedoms. CP
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