Martial Law Masquerading as Law and Order: The Police State’s Language of Force

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

“Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents. We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet.”—Justice William O. Douglas, dissenting, Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104 (1972)

Forget everything you’ve ever been taught about free speech in America.

It’s all a lie.

There can be no free speech for the citizenry when the government speaks in a language of force.

What is this language of force?

Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality.

This is not the language of freedom.

This is not even the language of law and order.

This is the language of force.

Unfortunately, this is how the government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble in public and challenge the status quo.

This police overkill isn’t just happening in troubled hot spots such as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, Md., where police brutality gave rise to civil unrest, which was met with a militarized show of force that caused the whole stew of discontent to bubble over into violence.

A decade earlier, the NYPD engaged in mass arrests of peaceful protesters, bystanders, legal observers and journalists who had gathered for the 2004 Republican National Convention. The protesters were subjected to blanket fingerprinting and detained for more than 24 hours at a “filthy, toxic pier that had been a bus depot.” That particular exercise in police intimidation tactics cost New York City taxpayers nearly $18 million for what would become the largest protest settlement in history.

Demonstrators, journalists and legal observers who had gathered in North Dakota to peacefully protest the Dakota Access Pipeline reported being pepper sprayed, beaten with batons, and strip searched by police.

In the college town of Charlottesville, Va., protesters who took to the streets to peacefully express their disapproval of a planned KKK rally were held at bay by implacable lines of gun-wielding riot police. Only after a motley crew of Klansmen had been safely escorted to and from the rally by black-garbed police did the assembled army of city, county and state police declare the public gathering unlawful and proceed to unleash canisters of tear gas on the few remaining protesters to force them to disperse.

More recently, this militarized exercise in intimidation—complete with an armored vehicle and an army of police drones—reared its ugly head in the small town of Dahlonega, Ga., where 600 state and local militarized police clad in full riot gear vastly outnumbered the 50 protesters and 150 counterprotesters who had gathered to voice their approval/disapproval of the Trump administration’s policies.

To be clear, this is the treatment being meted out to protesters across the political spectrum.

The police state does not discriminate.

As a USA Today article notes, “Federally arming police with weapons of war silences protesters across all justice movements… People demanding justice, demanding accountability or demanding basic human rights without resorting to violence, should not be greeted with machine guns and tanks. Peaceful protest is democracy in action. It is a forum for those who feel disempowered or disenfranchised. Protesters should not have to face intimidation by weapons of war.”

A militarized police response to protesters poses a danger to all those involved, protesters and police alike. In fact, militarization makes police more likely to turn to violence to solve problems.

As a study by researchers at Stanford University makes clear, “When law enforcement receives more military materials — weapons, vehicles and tools — it becomes … more likely to jump into high-risk situations. Militarization makes every problem — even a car of teenagers driving away from a party — look like a nail that should be hit with an AR-15 hammer.”

Even the color of a police officer’s uniform adds to the tension. As the Department of Justice reports, “Some research has suggested that the uniform color can influence the wearer—with black producing aggressive tendencies, tendencies that may produce unnecessary conflict between police and the very people they serve.”

You want to turn a peaceful protest into a riot?

Bring in the militarized police with their guns and black uniforms and warzone tactics and “comply or die” mindset. Ratchet up the tension across the board. Take what should be a healthy exercise in constitutional principles (free speech, assembly and protest) and turn it into a lesson in authoritarianism.

Mind you, those who respond with violence are playing into the government’s hands perfectly.

The government wants a reason to crack down and lock down and bring in its biggest guns.

They want us divided. They want us to turn on one another.

They want us powerless in the face of their artillery and armed forces.

They want us silent, servile and compliant.

They certainly do not want us to remember that we have rights, let alone attempting to exercise those rights peaceably and lawfully.

And they definitely do not want us to engage in First Amendment activities that challenge the government’s power, reveal the government’s corruption, expose the government’s lies, and encourage the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

You know how one mayor characterized the tear gassing of protesters by riot police? He called it an “unfortunate event.”

Unfortunate, indeed.

You know what else is unfortunate?

It’s unfortunate that these overreaching, heavy-handed lessons in how to rule by force have become standard operating procedure for a government that communicates with its citizenry primarily through the language of brutality, intimidation and fear.

It’s unfortunate that “we the people” have become the proverbial nails to be hammered into submission by the government and its vast armies.

And it’s particularly unfortunate that government officials—especially police—seem to believe that anyone who wears a government uniform (soldier, police officer, prison guard) must be obeyed without question.

In other words, “we the people” are the servants in the government’s eyes rather than the masters.

The government’s rationale goes like this:

Do exactly what I say, and we’ll get along fine. Do not question me or talk back in any way. You do not have the right to object to anything I may say or ask you to do, or ask for clarification if my demands are unclear or contradictory. You must obey me under all circumstances without hesitation, no matter how arbitrary, unreasonable, discriminatory, or blatantly racist my commands may be. Anything other than immediate perfect servile compliance will be labeled as resisting arrest, and expose you to the possibility of a violent reaction from me. That reaction could cause you severe injury or even death. And I will suffer no consequences. It’s your choice: Comply, or die.

Indeed, as Officer Sunil Dutta of the Los Angeles Police Department advises:

If you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me.

This is not the rhetoric of a government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people.

This is not the attitude of someone who understands, let alone respects, free speech.

And this is certainly not what I would call “community policing,” which is supposed to emphasize the importance of the relationship between the police and the community they serve.

Indeed, this is martial law masquerading as law and order.

Any police officer who tells you that he needs tanks, SWAT teams, and pepper spray to do his job shouldn’t be a police officer in a constitutional republic.

All that stuff in the First Amendment (about freedom of speech, religion, press, peaceful assembly and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances) sounds great in theory. However, it amounts to little more than a hill of beans if you have to exercise those freedoms while facing down an army of police equipped with deadly weapons, surveillance devices, and a slew of laws that empower them to arrest and charge citizens with bogus “contempt of cop” charges (otherwise known as asserting your constitutional rights).

It doesn’t have to be this way.

There are other, far better models to follow.

For instance, back in 2011, the St. Louis police opted to employ a passive response to Occupy St. Louis activists. First, police gave the protesters nearly 36 hours’ notice to clear the area, as opposed to the 20 to 60 minutes’ notice other cities gave. Then, as journalist Brad Hicks reports, when the police finally showed up:

They didn’t show up in riot gear and helmets, they showed up in shirt sleeves with their faces showing. They not only didn’t show up with SWAT gear, they showed up with no unusual weapons at all, and what weapons they had all securely holstered. They politely woke everybody up. They politely helped everybody who was willing to remove their property from the park to do so. They then asked, out of the 75 to 100 people down there, how many people were volunteering for being-arrested duty? Given 33 hours to think about it, and 10 hours to sweat it over, only 27 volunteered. As the police already knew, those people’s legal advisers had advised them not to even passively resist, so those 27 people lined up to be peacefully arrested, and were escorted away by a handful of cops. The rest were advised to please continue to protest, over there on the sidewalk … and what happened next was the most absolutely brilliant piece of crowd control policing I have heard of in my entire lifetime. All of the cops who weren’t busy transporting and processing the voluntary arrestees lined up, blocking the stairs down into the plaza. They stood shoulder to shoulder. They kept calm and silent. They positioned the weapons on their belts out of sight. They crossed their hands low in front of them, in exactly the least provocative posture known to man. And they peacefully, silently, respectfully occupied the plaza, using exactly the same non-violent resistance techniques that the protesters themselves had been trained in.

As Forbes concluded, “This is a more humane, less costly, and ultimately more productive way to handle a protest. This is great proof that police can do it the old fashioned way – using their brains and common sense instead of tanks, SWAT teams, and pepper spray – and have better results.”

It can be done.

Police will not voluntarily give up their gadgets and war toys and combat tactics, however. Their training and inclination towards authoritarianism has become too ingrained.

If we are to have any hope of dismantling the police state, change must start locally, community by community. Citizens will have to demand that police de-escalate and de-militarize. And if the police don’t listen, contact your city councils and put the pressure on them.

Remember, they are supposed to work for us. They might not like hearing it—they certainly won’t like being reminded of it—but we pay their salaries with our hard-earned tax dollars.

“We the people” have got to stop accepting the lame excuses trotted out by police as justifications for their inexcusable behavior.

Either “we the people” believe in free speech or we don’t.

Either we live in a constitutional republic or a police state.

We have rights.

As Justice William O. Douglas advised in his dissent in Colten v. Kentucky, “we need not stay docile and quiet” in the face of authority.

The Constitution does not require Americans to be servile or even civil to government officials.

Neither does the Constitution require obedience (although it does insist on nonviolence).

This emphasis on nonviolence goes both ways. Somehow, the government keeps overlooking this important element in the equation.

There is nothing safe or secure or free about exercising your rights with a rifle pointed at you.

The police officer who has been trained to shoot first and ask questions later, oftentimes based only on their highly subjective “feeling” of being threatened, is just as much of a danger—if not more—as any violence that might erupt from a protest rally.

Compliance is no guarantee of safety.

Then again, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if we just cower before government agents and meekly obey, we may find ourselves following in the footsteps of those nations that eventually fell to tyranny.

The alternative involves standing up and speaking truth to power. Jesus Christ walked that road. So did Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and countless other freedom fighters whose actions changed the course of history.

Indeed, had Christ merely complied with the Roman police state, there would have been no crucifixion and no Christian religion. Had Gandhi meekly fallen in line with the British Empire’s dictates, the Indian people would never have won their independence.

Had Martin Luther King Jr. obeyed the laws of his day, there would have been no civil rights movement. And if the founding fathers had marched in lockstep with royal decrees, there would have been no American Revolution.

We must adopt a different mindset and follow a different path if we are to alter the outcome of these interactions with police.

The American dream was built on the idea that no one is above the law, that our rights are inalienable and cannot be taken away, and that our government and its appointed agents exist to serve us.

It may be that things are too far gone to save, but still we must try.

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22winmag - Guns now, due process later DJT 2-28-19

Is there a point to these columns?

Other than to distract and demoralize the average reader?

flash
flash

Is there a point to you coming here to shit on TBP content at every opportunity? If you want to control content, Mr. First Amendment, you should start you own blog. Why don’t you ? What’s holding you back?

Morongobill
Morongobill

Because he’d be lucky to get more than a hand full of readers.

22winmag - Repeal the 19th before November 2020

I donated and Admin posts this shit here so people like me (and you) can tear it apart if we like.

3/4 of the posts on this fine blog are mainstream crap than need to be weighed, measured, and ridiculed so people son’t take the shit for Gospel.

Trust me, Admin is too busy running the blog to give a fuck about my opinions, positive or negative, on various pieces.

flash
flash

‘Tearing apart’, which I presume to mean pointing out the fallacies in a post is quite different than incessant bitching about what does and doesn’t get posted according to your particular trutherism.
Reverse Engineer is that you ?
Regardless, carry on. Whatever floats you boat has always been the TBP modus operandi . I would never want to see that change.

llpoh
llpoh

It must be a cold day in hell. I am in entire agreement with flash.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Trust you? For what reason? I find the articles to be on point and makes me think about the crap I witness on msm. That will be all for now 22winmag, or might I say windbag.

Mygirl...maybe

Go post some more Miles Mathis bullshit….

22winmag - Repeal the 19th before November 2020

http://mileswmathis.com/jbrown.pdf

I knew the John Brown “hanging” was a hoax!

mark
mark

Why Miles Mathis is wrong!
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=15094

.22

What say you to these 17 pages?

Anonymous
Anonymous

the people that wrote all this crap are too stupid t even ague with

Tacitus
Tacitus

Where does the Bill of Rights require “non violence”? I’m not advocating violence, but one side has already initiated it, repeatedly. This only ends ONE WAY. I hope the police/feds enjoy driving to work in masks and being terrified for their families every day, because that is the future on the current trajectory. Americans are only so dumb, sooner or later wide scale, coordinated violent action will be employed by various groups. It’s almost amusing, because all the jibber-jabber about ghostly “domestic terrorists” will inevitably CREATE them. To all cops, best of luck to you all – the next 20 years is going to be a bee-yotch!!!!

TTrain
TTrain

I think you are off base with this. While I disagree with the tactics used by our police state, they do not respond evenly across the political spectrum. The often let the left rampage and destroy cities while stopping the right(whites expressing their options on their replacement) with extreme force. You are also not talking about race. When you have massive populations of violent non whites running around you have to respond with force if you hope to prevent further crime. If America was white and un corrupted by the Jew, police would hardly be necessary. They are glorified zoo keepers.
Your lack of commentary on race in America and how it affects police policy makes me wonder if you are only here to distract from the real problems this country faces.

Sionnach Liath
Sionnach Liath

No, the author makes some important points. If you can de-escalate without violence, that should be the first attempt. Violence should be the last effort, but when used it should be final.

TTrain
TTrain

In a white nation controlled by whites, that is how it works.

llpoh
llpoh

Not sure at all that de-escalation is the right way. Maybe. But maybe the right response to being fucked with is immediate escalation. People should never have to put up with being fucked with, and the fuckers, not just the fuckees, should understand that.

Llpoh
Llpoh

“The police state does not discriminate.”

Someone should tell Portland that.

Vote Harder
Vote Harder

And more news from the United Police States Of AmeriKa from one of the few sites dedicated to exposing this stuff;

Cop Arrested With Gloves, Knife, and Zip Ties While On His Way to Meet a Young Girl

Georgia Town Fires Entire Police Department, Chaos Does NOT Ensue

M G
M G

When did *protect and serve become RAPE and PILLAGE?

Mygirl...maybe

Protect and serve were never required as per the Supreme Court. I read an article about a New York female cop who was caught shop lifting, Her salary was over $105k. Her boobs were bigger than my head and she social media’d herself like a low class call girl.
Then you have the bully boy/gang banger with a badge and the somali ‘cop’ who killed a white woman because? Well, not sure, just know he blew her away….Then let us also remember the wonders of asset forfeiture AKA: theft, by our officer friendlies at the local and federal levels. Let us seize and arrest your house, your car, your money, your farm, your guns and anything else of value while charging you with nothing….just try to get your stuff back little citizen…ain’t gonna happen…because….we the authoritah….and we can kill you, your wife, your dog, toss flash bangs into your babies’ bed and get away with it because we the po po and don’t you forget….

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7427837/NYPD-sergeant-busted-shoplifting-clothes-Macys-department-store.html

Annie
Annie

I skimmed through this, but Johnnie boy thinks that the Antifa protesters in Charlottesville were “peaceful”. Given that, I’m not going to bother to read it any more carefully as I cannot believe anything that he says.

Montefrio

I’d forgotten why I stopped reading Mr W’s screeds. I remember now though. Thanks for your thoughts, Mr.W. Best wished for the future.

Anonymous
Anonymous

The Memorial Day wilding in Baltimore was just that, a wilding by out-of-control Blacks who created mayhem in order to steal what they could in the ensuing chaos. You can’t fool me. I reviewed the videos. You lie when you claim “police brutality gave rise to civil unrest” in Baltimore. Each of the examples you cite as a “militarized exercise in intimidation” was in fact a confrontation provoked by Leftist violence. You disgust me, Whitehead, when you blame police for Leftist violence. That’s OK, though. Go ahead and live in your make-believe media world where post-birth abortions are exercises in a mother’s right to choose and little kids are taught “alternative gender choices” by drag queens in public libraries. While you and your media cronies fret over mis-gendered pronouns and how you will twist the truth to blame Donald Trump for every social problem in America, the Left continues to escalate their violence. Sooner or later the Left will provoke civil war. When that happens, America will be ready. You, and those like you, will die by the millions. One minute after you’re gone, you will be forgotten. I hope you’re proud of yourself, Whithead. That will be your legacy.

gatsby1219
gatsby1219

If you think it’s bad now, just wait till they ban guns…

Allfather
Allfather

I like the facts presented in this piece about what used to be called, “peace officers”, becoming, “law enforcement officers”.

However, as in all essays, which rightfully promote the reality that we must all resist the police state, there never seems to be a real, well thought out, and effective tactic to counter the abuses on our natural rights. It seems that a good place to start is that the original founders of the USA were very well cognizant of these natural rights and then translated these rights into the first ten amendments to the US Constitution (the “Bill of Rights”, how that happened is a long story in itself but this is enough). Yet the constitution worked reasonable for 180 years. The problem with the government not adhering to the Constitution is that it is only ink on paper (or parchment) on its own; it means nothing if there are no strong, moral men to insist on its universal application to all Americans, otherwise, it ceases to exist. We have arrived there…

Ponder that, my fellow Americans. We now live in a post-constitutional republic, vis a vis, a police state. The author is correct in his article.

With no intended offense to the author, I would like to say that more emphasis needs to be placed on what we can do, especially, those of us that cannot purchase citizenships from foreign countries. The resistance plan for us “fly over people” always seem to be some vague: “We need to stand up to this.” That is not a battle plan for winning. The people need to get organized if they are to avert this disaster.

Here’s my plan that works for me:

I am not some naive person who thinks a single person can survive this next crisis. I grew up on a ranch, did the corporate shit for 20 years, and moved back to a farm (there is a big difference between ranches and farms).

I selected my farm for all the various reasons we all do: water, arable land, structures, fencing…

But, I decided on a lesser property to live in a valley where I know 3 other families that are like minded. We all realize that it will truly take all of us, including our families, to make it through what is coming. We are forming our own new local community. We are reviving the old co-op in this valley, trading crops, services, etc. Plus, we have lots of vets. Some still very fresh, including special forces types who seem to congregate in the country, and are all hard workers.

We will take care of ourselves, and, we will offer help to other people who deserve it and have something to make the community better.

I suggest to all of the other like minded people out there, that you diligently start creating a community in your own area. It’s important and makes things that would otherwise be impossible not just possible, but inevitable and done.

Allfather

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