Police State Gears Up
By Dave Lindorff on Feb 17, 2014
BearCat in Boston lockdown
Thanks to the ending of the Iraq War, and the winding down of the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has 11,000 heavily armored vehicles that it has no use for. Called MRAPs—Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected—they are designed to protect against AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and IEDs. And as pitchman Paul Richards used to say of the ’69 Pontiac Firebird, “They’re practically giving them away!”
Correction, they are giving them away.
Nashville, TN, Police BearCat
There are a few downsides: the things get only five miles to the gallon, can’t go over most bridges, or under them, and have a nasty habit of tipping over on rough terrain.
For departments that find them too unwieldy, the Homeland Security Department is also offering grants to communities so they can buy smaller Lenco BearCats, lighter armored military-style vehicles that run about $280,000.
Since last summer, police departments across the country have taken possession of 165 DOD surplus MRAPs, and there are another 731 requests for the 14-foot-high vehicles. Even Ohio State University police got their hands on one, saying it would provide a “police presence” at football games. Most of the rest of the vehicles to date have gone to smaller community police forces—everywhere from Farmington, NM (pop. 45,000) to Hamburg Village, NY (pop. 9,500).
The number of BearCats purchased with Homeland Security grants isn’t readily available, but they were on conspicuous display in and around Boston last year during the metro-area-wide martial law lockdown while police and National Guard searched for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the wounded and unarmed 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.
Police BearCat and automatic weapons, Boston lockdown
The Concord Monitor reported that most of those opposing the purchase said they feared further militarization of their local police. Despite the opposition, the town government went ahead with the acquisition anyway.
Beating the MRAP
Enter State Representative J.R. Hoell, a libertarian Republican who represents Dunbarton, NH, just outside of Concord. Hoell recently introduced a bill, the Police Equipment and Community Engagement (PEACE) Act, in the state legislature.
The proposed legislation is now in committee. If it’s passed and signed into law by the governor, state and municipal agencies in New Hampshire will be barred from buying or even accepting free offers of “military style equipment” for police use, except with the approval of the assembled citizenry at a public town meeting.
That prohibition would include not just MRAPS and BearCats, but also things like fully automatic weapons or anything that is not “available in an open commercial market.” These restrictions would not apply to the National Guard.
Rep. Hoell spoke to us about his bill.
WhoWhatWhy: Why did you introduce this bill?
Rep. Hoell: I introduced the bill because the citizens of Concord were overwhelmingly opposed to their police department having MRAP vehicles and it was ordered anyway. I don’t see any reason for police to have armored vehicles, or even fully automatic weapons.
WhoWhatWhy: Why are you opposed to police having military equipment?
Rep. Hoell: The role of the state is to make sure the citizens have the best law enforcement and not one that’s overly militarized. Whatever happened to police wearing blue? Now they are dressed in black, head to toe, and when they go to serve warrants at people’s homes, they break the door down, and they wear masks.
WhoWhatWhy: Why the masks?
Rep. Hoell: I don’t know, maybe it’s a military thing. But it is not community policing.
WhoWhatWhy: What kind of support are you getting for this bill?
Hoell: I’m getting support from citizens of the state across the political spectrum.
WhoWhatWhy: Why do you think police in this country are becoming increasingly militarized?
Rep. Hoell: I can’t speculate about why this is happening, but I know that the citizens don’t want it. It needs to stop.
- See more at: http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/02/17/police-state-gears-up/#sthash.BNVVhRtd.dpuf
Breaking: US Army Trains for Martial Law In US
Shock investigation: Pentagon accelerates plan to confiscate guns, prosecute US conservatives.
Infowars.com
February 15, 2014
A mock small town Christian steeple sits among the martial law training infrastructure.
The federal government has been in a big hurry to build a 300 acre city in just 2 years at an expense of $96 million in taxpayer funds in order to train the military “for problems we don’t even know we have yet.” If you’ve been following Infowars, you’ve seen us document over and over again what they’re training for with a detailed American city like this: martial law within this nation.
And now, The Telegraph is confirming the construction of this small town military simulation that will be used to train troops for combat against the American people.
Unlike the urban training centers we’ve seen before where the buildings are just empty concrete block structures or even plywood facades, this town is very detailed with glass windows, handicap parking signs, speed limit signs, logos on the subway that match the DC metro, and even a small town steeple (that was originally claimed to be a mosque). They’ve made it clear in manual after manual, scenario after scenario that they perceive the enemy as gun owners, limited government conservatives, libertarians and Christians.
This article was posted: Saturday, February 15, 2014 at 10:00 am
February 15, 2014
A mock small town Christian steeple sits among the martial law training infrastructure.
U.S. Army Builds ‘Fake City’ in Virginia to Practice Military Occupation
Martial law training? 300 acre town includes sports stadium, school, underground subway
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
February 14, 2014
Infowars.com
February 14, 2014
The U.S. Army has built a 300 acre ‘fake city’ complete with a sports stadium, bank, school, and an underground subway in order to train for unspecified future combat scenarios.
The recently opened site is located in Virginia and was built at a cost of $96 million dollars, taking just two years to complete.
While the city was ostensibly built to prepare U.S. troops for the occupation of cities abroad, some will undoubtedly fear that the real intention could be closer to home. Although the site includes a mosque, the town looks American in every other way, with signs in English.
The fact that, as the Telegraph reports, “The subway carriages even carry the same logo as the carriages in Washington DC,” could suggest that the site was built to double both as a foreign city and a mock domestic town.
According to Colonel John P. Petkosek, “This is the place where we can be creative, where we can come up with solutions for problems that we don’t even know we have yet….This is where we’ll look at solutions for the future–material solutions and non-material solutions…anything from how you’re going to operate in a subterranean environment to how you dismount a Humvee to avoid an IED strike.”
The increasing demonization of domestic political groups as extremists has prompted numerous scenarios where commentators have suggested that U.S. Army and National Guard personnel could be needed to quell civil unrest.
In 2012, an academic study about the future use of the military as a peacekeeping force within the United States written by a retired Army Colonel depicted a shocking scenario in which the U.S. Army is used to restore order to a town that has been seized by Tea Party “insurrectionists”.
The study dovetailed with a leaked U.S. Army manual which revealed plans for the military to carry out “Civil Disturbance Operations” during which troops would be used domestically to quell riots, confiscate firearms and even kill Americans on U.S. soil during mass civil unrest.
The manual also describes how prisoners will be processed through temporary internment camps under the guidance of U.S. Army FM 3-19.40 Internment/Resettlement Operations, which outlines how internees would be “re-educated” into developing an “appreciation of U.S. policies” while detained in prison camps inside the United States.
Fort Hood soldiers are also being taught by their superiors that Christians, Tea Party supporters and anti-abortion activists represent a radical terror threat, mirroring rhetoric backed by the Department of Homeland Security which frames “liberty lovers” as domestic extremists.
Last year, former Navy SEAL Ben Smith warned that the Obama administration is asking top brass in the military if they would be comfortable with disarming U.S. citizens, a litmus test that includes gauging whether they would be prepared to order NCOs to fire on Americans.
During a recent Ohio National Guard exercise, second amendment proponents were portrayed as domestic terrorists as part of a mock disaster drill.
http://beforeitsnews.com/u-s-politics/2014/02/sandy-hook-lies-come-crashing-down-ex-state-trooper-exposes-cover-up-is-threatened-2462586.html
( Halbig asks lots of good questions ...... )
Former Florida state trooper Woolfgang Halbig does not believe that ANYONE was killed at the Sandy Hook gun confiscation hoax and has done the research to prove it. Not only does he believe that no one was killed there but he has ALSO been threatened for exposing this horribly played out hoax. KateSlate11 gives us her take on this new bombshell information in the first video below while the second video contains the entire interview with this wise man,an interview that must go viral for Americans to finally take back our country from the criminals who have stolen it away. Sandy Hook WAS an attempt to TAKE Americans guns and forever enslave us; this interview goes a long way towards proving that fact.
Wolfgang W. Halbig doesn’t believe anyone was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, and he’s looking for some answers. So many answers, in fact, that he was paid a visit by some police investigators telling him to back off.
Mr. Halbig isn’t your average “conspiracy theorist.” He’s worked in public education as a teacher, dean, assistant principal, principal of an alternative school and as the Director for School Safety and Security for the Seminole County Public Schools, a school district of approximately 65,000 students.
A former Florida State Trooper and United States Customs Inspector, Mr. Halbig was invited by the U.S. Department of Justice to train over 3,500 school police officers, school superintendents and school principals. He travels the country providing presentations and keynotes to a variety of school board associations and conferences and is a nationally-recognized school safety and security expert and consultant, who has provided safety training and school assessments for more than 4,000 school districts nationwide.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/License_plate_reading_firm_sues_Utah%2C_claiming_new_privacy_laws_curb_free_speech/32884/0/0/0/Y/M.html
SOURCE: RAWSTORY
In an odd twist on free speech rights, a firm which makes automated license plate readers is suing Utah for a law intended to protect drivers’ privacy.
Digital Recognition Network supplies machines that quickly read license plate numbers as drivers pass by. It posits that a new Utah law which bans license plate collection by private companies, effectively put it out of business in the state. The law was intended to keep data from falling into police hands without oversight, and is among the first by surveillance technology firms to argue against privacy laws invoking the First Amendment.
The Texas company fired back, arguing that collecting license plate numbers is free speech. The lawsuit draws upon a recent major Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United v. FEC, which overturned a law curbing corporate and union donations to political campaigns. In effect, the Court ruled that money is speech.
Read More...
Read More...
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Tens_of_thousands_of_Connecticut_residents_refuse_to_register_guns_under_new_law/32856/0/0/0/Y/M.html
SOURCE: RT
Last April, Governor Dannel Malloy signed into law a slew of new firearm restrictions that require, among other items, residents to register powerful assault weapons and high-capacity magazine with the state. Connecticutians had until the end of last year — almost one year to the day after the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre — to license their arsenals. Only a fraction has followed the new law, however, and they could all soon face serious consequences if the state decides to take action.
On Thursday this week, journalist Dan Haar of Connecticut’s The Courant newspaper wrote that state police had received only 47,916 completed registration forms by the end of last year. According to his reporting, that statistic is just a sliver of what it should be.
If the state has received 50,000 registrations by now, Haar wrote, then that could represent as little as 15 percent of the assault weapons now classified by the state as warranting new paperwork under last April’s law.
“No one has anything close to definitive figures, but the most conservative estimates place the number of unregistered assault weapons well above 50,000, and perhaps as high as 350,000,” Harr wrote.
“And that means as of Jan. 1, Connecticut has very likely created tens of thousands of newly minted criminals — perhaps 100,000 people, almost certainly at least 20,000 — who have broken no other laws By owning unregistered guns defined as assault weapons, all of them are committing Class D felonies,” he added.
Other reports out of New England this week suggested that lawmakers there are wrestling with how to handle registration forms that weren’t sent in ahead of the end-of-year deadline and therefore now considered illegal unless officials find a loophole.
“We’re trying to figure a way to accommodate the small number of people. Do we do it legislatively? Can we do it administratively?” Rep. Stephen Dargan, co-chairman of the Public Safety Committee, told the CT News junkie website this week. “Whatever our focus is, it has to be narrow in scope because it might open it up to other people’s concerns.”
As Harr reports, however, officials may have a much larger problem: while an estimated few hundred residents may have sent their registration forms in a day or two past deadline, a group of people estimated to be several times that size reportedly show no interest in submitting applications at all.
"I honestly thought from my own standpoint that the vast majority would register," said State Sen. Tony Guglielmo (R-Stafford) of the legislature's public safety committee said to Harr. "If you pass laws that people have no respect for and they don't follow them, then you have a real problem."
But even if some Connecticutians find the gun law improper, federal courts have so far said that’s not the case. Late last month United States District Judge Alfred Covello issued a 47-page ruling calling Gov. Malloy’s legislation constitutional, even though it imposed some restrictions on firearm owners.
"While the act burdens the plaintiffs' Second Amendment rights, it is substantially related to the important governmental interest of public safety and crime control," Covello ruled.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/PBS_News_Division_At_Center_Of_Corruption_Allegation/32888/0/0/0/Y/M.html
MINT PRESS REPORTS:
CALIFORNIA STATE EMPLOYEE DIANE GREAGOR JOINED HUNDREDS OF OTHER STATE EMPLOYEES AND SUPPORTERS IN A DEMONSTRATION AGAINST PROPOSED BUDGET CUTS TO STATE EMPLOYEE PAY, FURLOUGHS AND OTHER STATE SERVICES DURING A RALLY AT THE CAPITOL IN SACRAMENTO, CALIF. (AP PHOTO/RICH PEDRONCELLI)
Any police officer, teacher or janitor who works in city government until retirement and expects well-planned pension benefits should be worried about the status of his or her economic future.Powerful anti-pension lobbyists want to take that entitlement away from the masses, and they’re willing to bring the media in on their crusade, according to a journalist working for the San Francisco-based news website Pando Daily.In his piece on Wednesday, “The Wolf of Sesame Street,” David Sirota, an investigative journalist, author and nationally-syndicated columnist, alleges that the Public Broadcasting Service’s flagship station WNET in New York is colluding with “former Enron trader John Arnold, a billionaire political powerbroker who is actively trying to shape the very pension policy that the series claims to be dispassionately covering” in a new two-year news series entitled, “The Pension Peril.”The announcement of the show on Dec. 18 in a press release by WNET said the “reporting initiative will shine a spotlight on an expected $1 trillion-plus shortfall in funding for public employees’ retirement benefits, and what it means for cities and states, retirees and current workers, and taxpayers. “The Pension Peril” will introduce millions of Americans to the tough choices ahead and possible models of reform.”
Man Breaks Into Police Station, Beats Up, Hospitalizes Cops
It's not that the US has a scarcity of bizarre everyday stories - it does not. It is just that sometimes you encounter something so surreal, warped and ridiculous, that even the stock "market" makes sense by comparison. Such as this.
From WNEP of Scranton.
A man is locked up in Luzerne County after breaking into city hall in Pittston. Police said Max Deangelo of Blakeslee smashed one of the glass doors to get into city hall. The Pittston Police Department is also located in the building.Deangelo is also accused of kicking officers in the chest and face as they tried to arrest him. Deangelo and an officer were taken to the hospital for treatment.Investigators have not said why Deangelo broke into the building.Police said he is charged with burglary, aggravated assault, and more charges.
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