xchrom (97,459 posts)
Time to be Afraid in America: The Frightening Pattern of Throwing Police Power at Social Problems
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/time-be-afraid-america-frightening-pattern-throwing-police-power-social-problems
If all you’ve got is a hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail. And if police and prosecutors are your only tool, sooner or later everything and everyone will be treated as criminal. This is increasingly the American way of life, a path that involves “solving†social problems (and even some non-problems) by throwing cops at them, with generally disastrous results. Wall-to-wall criminal law encroaches ever more on everyday life as police power is applied in ways that would have been unthinkable just a generation ago.
By now, the militarization of the police has advanced to the point where "the War on Crime†and “the War on Drugs†are no longer metaphors but bland understatements. There is the proliferation of heavily armed SWAT teams, even in small towns; the use of shock-and-awe tactics to bust small-time bookies; the no-knock raids to recover trace amounts of drugs that often result in the killing of family dogs, if not family members; and in communities where drug treatment programs once were key, the waging of a drug version of counterinsurgency war. (All of this is ably reported on journalist Radley Balko’s blog and in his book, The Rise of the Warrior Cop.) But American over-policing involves far more than the widely reported up-armoring of your local precinct. It’s also the way police power has entered the DNA of social policy, turning just about every sphere of American life into a police matter.
The School-to-Prison Pipeline
It starts in our schools, where discipline is increasingly outsourced to police personnel. What not long ago would have been seen as normal childhood misbehavior -- doodling on a desk, farting in class, a kindergartener’s tantrum -- can leave a kid in handcuffs, removed from school, or even booked at the local precinct. Such “criminals†can be as young as seven-year-old Wilson Reyes, a New Yorker who was handcuffed and interrogated under suspicion of stealing five dollars from a classmate. (Turned out he didn’t do it.)
Though it's a national phenomenon, Mississippi currently leads the way in turning school behavior into a police issue. The Hospitality State has imposed felony charges on schoolchildren for “crimes†like throwing peanuts on a bus. Wearing the wrong color belt to school got one child handcuffed to a railing for several hours. All of this goes under the rubric of “ zero-tolerance†discipline, which turns out to be just another form of violence legally imported into schools.
Wait!
You're telling us that if you pass laws about soda sizes, rain puddles are wetlands, what constitutes "fairness" on TV, zero tolerance rules, how many employees of complexion X have to be hired, what is "hate speech", what must be studied in college, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc then there might come a time that the enforcement mechanism of law, i.e. law enforcement, becomes so prolific that it becomes a threat to the very people the law was presumed to protect?
SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!
What sort of Rand Paul, anarcho-libertarian-fascist nonsense is this?
KG (24,241 posts)
1. I regret I have but one rec to give...
And that's about as far as you'll ever commit.
mtasselin (382 posts)
8. police state
The government our government, is going to use the police to control the American people, they know that an upraising is coming. All the military trucks that are coming back from our mid-east wars are going to be put to good use against us "We the People".
This retard ^ has a Warren 2016 bumper sticker in its sig line.
So, it wants a government that can tell you how much you're allowed to earn, how much you're allowed to keep and how much you must surrender to bolster the power of the state...
...but it's worried the state might abuse power.
Hestia (1,939 posts)
12. You are correct - what other conclusion could be drawn from all of this - fear of any police?
The Revolution will have to go Old School.
Maybe, but you are the enemy of freedom so...
Coyotl (9,173 posts)
13. Chase Madar is a lawyer in New York.
http://www.alternet.org/authors/chase-madar
Stories by Chase Madar
Chase Madar is a lawyer in New York. He reviews and reports for the London Review of Books, Le Monde Diplomatique, the American Conservative Magazine and CounterPunch.
Time to be Afraid in America: The Frightening Pattern of Throwing Police Power at Social Problems
Policing overkill has entered the DNA of America's social policy.
Our Government's Secrecy Has Caused Far More Deaths Than 9/11
Bradley Manning has done more for U.S. security than SEAL Team 6.
Handcuffing and Interrogating a 7-Year-Old? The Police State Crashes Into America's Schools
Reactionary policies after Newtown will only bolster the school-to-prison pipeline.
From Bradley Manning to Aaron Swartz -- The Government's Inhumane Persecution of Brave Truth Tellers
The Justice Department’s legal assault on Swartz is one of many attacks on people who carried important information into the public realm.
The WikiLeaks War Logs Don't Show Rare War Crimes--They Show The (Legal) Reality of War
The real problem with the laws of war is not what they fail to restrain but what they authorize.
How Scapegoating Bradley Manning Avoids the Truth About the American Military
Washington only seems to want to talk about the casualties of war when they're the entirely hypothetical ones they're trying to pin on Bradley Manning.
4 Reasons Bradley Manning Deserves the Medal of Freedom
We still don't know if he's guilty, but if he did leak the Wikileaks documents, Bradley Manning deserves commendation for exposing our secretive government's lies.
Why Bradley Manning Is a Patriot, Not a Criminal
Washington is clearly intent on destroying this young Army private and then putting him away until hell freezes over. It should not be this way.
No One Cares About Child Soldiers if They're in Guantanamo
In many ways, Guantanamo is not the exception, but far closer to the rule of our criminal justice system.
All this ^ occurred in The Glorious People's Democratic Republic of Obamaland,
heaven05 (4,381 posts)
14. please, been afraid
will always be afraid. Of power in the hands of the few(1%ers).
If only we could get that lawless Republican out of the WH and do something about the obstructionist GOP.
reddread (723 posts)
15. and "the War on Poverty"
all hit by the same hammer.
can we blame Bush for this?
or should we accept culpability?
DeSwiss (20,069 posts)
16. NO FEAR!
Oh, I'm definitely not afraid.
You idiots are at war with yourselves.
Just wait until WE decide to join the soiree.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024151902
