The American Police State

We all know the phrase, “Give ‘em an inch, and they’ll take a mile”. The thing about police states is, they don’t need to be given those inches, they take them without asking, and then stretch them into miles.

Power of any type tends to attract more power, whether granted, or coerced. Police departments are the most visible and common expression of government power in a person’s life, and police power tends to grow inexorably. The only thing that keeps it in check is resistence from the citizens. You cannot expect the government to resist growth of police power, it’s in their interest to encourage such. The more power the state has over the individual, the more power the representative has over their constituents, and the more secure that representative is in maintaining their position.

Here in America we’ve witnesses an incredible growth in policing in the last few decades, and a detachment from traditional police roles. Modern policing is mostly traffic patrol, drug enforcement, and emergency response. However, emergency response, and the ensuing investigation, are a money sink - they cost. Traffic and drug enforcement, on the otherhand, are a money pump - they earn. Ergo the economic calculus of policing means that, when money is the only consideration, and in capitalism it is, police departments not only grow, but their enforcement becomes more and more directed towards traffic and drug infractions.

Traffic enforcement tends to draw in money, but usually a consistent rate of low-value fines and court costs, say $80 here, $300 there, $150, $220, $50, nickels and dimes, really, to the state anyway. The big money maker is in enforcing drug laws, where they any cold cash they find you with, they seize and auction your home, your vehicles, your jewelry, your electronics, everything you have of value, no matter how you acquired it, is seized, auctioned, or sold, because you had drugs - or might have had drugs, or were suspected of possibly at some time having drugs. Many, and I would argue most, asset seizure occurs without the person ever being charged with a crime, much less convicted, and without any recourse to recover their property stolen by the “police”.

In Washington, DC, police stop black men on the streets in poor areas of the city, and “routinely confiscate small amounts of cash and jewelry.” Most confiscated property is not even recorded by police departments. “Resident Ben Davis calls it ‘robbery with a badge.’” [USA Today, 5/18/92.]

In Iowa, “a woman accused of shoplifting a $25 sweater had her $18,000 car – specially equipped for her handicapped daughter - seized as the ‘getaway vehicle.’” [USA Today, 5/18/92.]

Detroit drug police raided a grocery store, but failed to find any drugs. After drug dogs reacted to three $1.00 bills in the cash register, the police seized $4,384 from cash registers and the store safe. According to the Pittsburgh Press, over 92% of all cash in circulation in the US now shows some drug residue.

In Monmouth, New Jersey, Dr. David Disbrow was accused of practicing psychiatry without a license. His crime was providing counseling services from a spare bedroom in his mother’s house. Counseling does not require a license in New Jersey. That didn’t stop police from seizing virtually everything of value from his mother’s home, totaling over $60,000. The forfeiture squad confiscated furniture, carpets, paintings, and even personal photographs.

Kathy and Mark Schrama were arrested just before Christmas 1990 at their home in New Jersey. Kathy was charged with taking $500 worth of UPS packages from neighbors’ porches. Mark was charged with receiving stolen goods. If found guilty, they might have paid a small fine and received probation. The day after their arrest, their house, cars and furniture were seized. Based upon mere accusation, $150,000 in property was confiscated, without trial or indictment. Police even took their clothing, eyeglasses, and Christmas presents for their 10-year-old son.

On August 8, truck driver Anastasio Prieto of El Paso was stopped at a weigh station on US Highway 54 just north of El Paso. A police officer there asked for permission to search the truck for “needles or cash in excess of $10,000,” according to the ACLU. Prieto said he didn’t have any needles, but he was carrying $23,700 in cash. Officers seized the money and turned it over to the DEA, while DEA agents photographed and fingerprinted Prieto despite his objections, then released him without charges after he had been detained for six hours. Border Patrol agents sicced drug-sniffing dogs on his truck, but found no evidence of illegal drugs.

DEA agents told Prieto that to get his money back, he would have to prove it was his and not the proceeds of illegal drug sales. That process could take up to a year, the agents said.

Can anyone provide a reasonable explanation for this other than abuse of power? Asset seizure - it’s not “forfeiture”, that implies you’re forfeiting the assets. You’re not. They are being seizued, dammit, stolen outright by the people who are supposed to enforce the laws.

There’s two purposes to these actions. One, they are using their police power to increase “revenues” for their department. Two, they are demonstrating their unassailable domination of the general public, the working poor, the wage slaves who can’t afford to fight for years to get back their assets, to take on a losing battle as a matter of principle. Simply put, they are picking on people who can’t fight back, and they know it.

The increased assets of the department from seizures allows further expansion of their “enforcement” powers through additional staff, training, and equipment - witness the rise of SWAT teams paid for largely by the ill-gotten gains of asset seizure laws predicated on drug enforcement.

SWAT teams represent the full bear of violence against the American citizen - paramilitary raids on unarmed, nonviolent “offenders” who are merely suspected of wrongdoing, again, usually nonviolent “crimes”. The preferred type of raid by the SWAT team and other black-ops units is the “No-Knock Raid” - this is where they invade your house, typically very early in the morning, and attempt to subdue everyone without providing any notice of their action or announcing their identity. Often these raids result in the death of the “suspect”, either because the suspect thinks they are being invaded by criminals and tries to fight back, or just because the police put on their fancy duds and get trigger happy.

ATLANTA — Two police officers pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter in the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman during a botched drug raid last fall. A third officer still faces charges.

The charges followed a Nov. 21 “no-knock” drug raid on the home of Kathryn Johnston, 92. An informant had described buying drugs from a dealer there, police said. When the officers burst in without warning, Johnston fired at them, and they fired back, killing her.

Sometimes, like in this case, the police officers are reprimanded for their actions, but the department isn’t punishing them for executing no-knock raids against uninvolved citizens, they are reprimanding them for the bad publicity they generated by getting caught - for putting the department’s main source of “income” at risk. “Do it, but do it well, and secretly” is the message.

Anyway, getting on with it, these raids and seizures are used to generate revenue for the police department, which invest into growing their department and commisserate powers and abilities - like a business reinvesting in their own growth; only businesses tend to earn their money, whereas these cops steal it.

So what’s my point? The police have an interest in growing their power, and using it to abuse the civillian population. We’re all criminals in their eyes, suspects and perps, and they don’t value our existence as anything more than a slave class, fodder for their abuse and demonstrations of power. The police are the eponymous backyard bully. Now they have guns, body armor, APCs, and the backing of the state.

What can we do to solve this problem?

It’s simple, really.

End the Drug War.

The Drug War is a war on people, a war on individuals, a war on citizens, a war on freedom, and a war on personal choice. It is a war designed to subordinate the population to the capricious whims of the ruling class, and the police are a handy vehicle for that end.

Why is the War on Drugs important to ending the police state?

No-Knock Warrants and SWAT teams are primarily designed and deployed against supposed drug offenders. No matter what the media might claim, there are very few active terrorists in America, and even fewer that require a SWAT team to be available 24/7/365 in their black masks and jackboots. Removing “druuuuugzzzz” as a rationale for this behavior would severly curtail police department’s ability to rationalize their own violent totalitarian motivations.

The “ill-gotten” proceeds of people that supply drugs on the black market are easy targets and easy gains for the trigger happy police department. Almost all apologetics for asset seizure point to it as a “necessary tool” for enforcing drug laws.

Drug laws are the #1 enforcement priority in America. If you think I’m lying, look at the statistics.

Washington, DC: Police arrested a record 829,625 persons for marijuana violations in 2006, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual Uniform Crime Report, released today. This is the largest total number of annual arrests for pot ever recorded by the FBI. Marijuana arrests now comprise nearly 44 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.

The total number of marijuana arrests in the U.S. for 2006 far exceeded the total number of arrests in the U.S. for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

Did anybody else read that last part? The total number of arrests for cannabis alone is more than the total number of arrests for all violent crimes. Wow. Astonishing, isn’t it? How far have we fallen from society that we spend more time enforcing cannabis laws, a natural medicinal and industrial plant that is beyond arguing less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, to the neglect of historical police priorities like violent crime.

What would the police be doing all day if they weren’t out arresting potheads and suiting up for a no-knock warrant on some grandma suspected of smoking ganja for her glaucoma?

I dunno, good question. It’s certain we’d need less cops, and the cops we do have would be a lot freer to deal with unsolved murders, rapes, assaults, and all that boring crap. What a waste of time, isn’t it, to have cops going out and solving crime that negatively affects other citizens, instead of dredging up vice that doesn’t affect anyone but the person engaging in it?

Imagine, less cops needed, greatly curtailed asset seizure and no-knock warrants, and crimes actually getting solved. As someone who has been the vicitim of an extremely expensive vandalization, and several car break-ins that the cops “didn’t have time for”, I would really, really like to see our cops get out of their SWAT gear, get on the street, and solve these murders. Hell, they might even have the manpower to tackle some white-collar crime, where the real bucks are - embezzlement, fraud, monopolistic behavior… but, ooops, that might endanger the ultra-wealthy who have bought and sold our goverment.

In the end, from the policeman’s perspective, solving murders doesn’t make any money, and it certainly doesn’t help to control and subdue the population and indoctrinate us into a police state, so what’s the damned point, anyway?