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On March 1, 2011, after a long, dreary winter, my twenty-something daughter and a girlfriend were heading to a local tanning salon less than a mile from their house. On the way they noticed they were following a Maryland transportation authority vehicle equipped with rear mounted cameras and other equipment and joked that they should say nice things about the police in case they were being audio recorded. Upon arrival at the salon, they were surprised to find they were blocked in by this same vehicle. The officer stated he ran her tags and found her registration was suspended (not true) and the car insurance had lapsed (also not true). When she tried to check her tags he blocked her movement and confiscated her tags, issued her two citations amounting to around $400.00 and told her to get the car towed. In the meantime another officer arrived, unidentified, in an official car while the first officer, having now run her license, noted a DUI over 2 years old which had long been resolved and subsequently proceeded to not only search both women’s purses, but tore the car apart. A few days later, documentation in hand, my daughter attempted to retrieve her tags from the department of motor vehicles only to be told they had been destroyed. The case will go to court in June and the DMV has no idea why. Best case scenario? A glitchy database and an over zealous or bored employee. Whether this was an illegal stop remains to be determined. That this was an illegal search is clear. We want access to the video and audio of the stop and all written documentation. Without a lawyer and a subpoena, this will not be available to us until after adjudication in June, when this evidence is likely to go the way of the tags. Case closed? We’ll see.
Why tell this little story about my daughter? Whatever your political affiliation, it’s hard to explain the use of such elaborate and expensive “homeland security” equipment, paid for by taxpayers, to pursue two local women who were not breaking any law. A few years ago I wrote an article on St Johns County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and the resources available in case of disaster. I was treated professionally and granted access to the center, the director and several employees. There was an almost plausible denial when I asked about the county’s relationship with the Joint Terrorism Task Force which led me later to further research on resources that could be brought to bear against the public in times of dissent.
A little history here: Way back in October 2003, when just about everybody realized after 9/11 that rescue operations needed to be on the same page, not to mention the same kind of radios, President Bush issued HSPD 5 and HSPD 8. (Homeland Security Presidential Directives). HSPD 5 told jurisdictions to get their act together on incident reporting by "establishing a single, comprehensive national incident management system." HSPD 8 required "a national domestic all-hazards preparedness goal, with established mechanisms for improved delivery of Federal preparedness assistance to State and local governments." St Johns County stepped up early to comply.
Here are some of the resources St Johns County can bring to bear during any “disaster”:
A comprehensive, scalable plan with reporting, tracking and cooperation among Emergency Support Functions and with lots of ancillary organizations like Salvation Army, churches and Red Cross,
A brand new Emergency Operations Center out SR 16, off CR 208,
5 Stationary cameras around town with zoom and infrared capabilities (with more planned) feeding into the EOC,
Access to various aircraft from other regions and 1 county helicopter with live video feed capability to the emergency operations center, media, and government,
A SWAT team and SWAT vehicles,
A Hazmat team and vehicle,
A bomb robot, a certified bomb team and bomb truck,
A mobile media communications center with TV, satellite, radio, internet and video feed capabilities,
A Command Task Force Unit with conference area, flat screens monitors, video mast, radio, TV, internet capabilities,
Underwater rescue vessel and diving teams,
and a Mutual Aid Agreement with other counties, regions and the state if things get really crazy, which brings me to several other levels of “support”.
From their website: “Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) are small cells of highly trained, locally based, passionately committed investigators, analysts, linguists, SWAT experts, and other specialists from dozens of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. It is a multi-agency effort led by the Justice Department and FBI designed to combine the resources of federal, state, and local law enforcement.”
Local “task force fusion centers” have been set up all over the nation to provide the coordination between federal (FBI, ICE and DHS) state and local law enforcement in the event of an “attack”, a natural disaster and “civil unrest”. These centers have armed security guards authorized to shoot to kill in the event of an emergency. Ours is conveniently located in Jacksonville, the one no one seemed to want to discuss during the writing of my article.
Then there’s Infragard, a creepy corporate/security coalition that demands the anonymity of an AA meeting. From their Jacksonville website which is updated as of this writing: “InfraGard is a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) program that is dedicated to promoting information sharing between the public and private sectors regarding critical infrastructure protection issues.
The goal of InfraGard is to enable the flow of information so that the owners and operators of infrastructure assets can better protect themselves and so that the United States government can better discharge its law enforcement and national security responsibilities.” I don’t think their main focus is merely making sure citizens have access to drinking water or shelter in case of a hurricane.
However, not just anyone can join and once you’re in, you can’t really talk about anything to anybody and you have to agree to some “procedures” when discussing what Infragard really does:
“Independent of the type of presentation, (interview, brief, or published documentation) the InfraGard leadership and the local FBI representative should be made aware of the upcoming presentation. The InfraGard member and the FBI representation should agree on the theme of the presentation.
The identity of InfraGard members should be protected at all times. Names of individual members or their employers should not be disclosed without the permission of the individual and the employer.” What do you call this unholy and secretive alliance of corporate/government/local law enforcement? I call it alarming.
There’s more. Local law enforcement agencies have been receiving military equipment courtesy of Department of Homeland Security for years. We’re talking semi-automatic weapons, helicopters, tanks, combat gear. Some municipalities are now dressing their forces in black, resembling SWAT commandos instead of your friendly local peace officer.
Finally let’s not forget HR 1955, passed in an overwhelming 400-to-6 vote by the House of Representatives in 2007 in “Patriot Act” haste: The Homegrown Violent Radicalization Terrorism Act, which died in the Senate, twice, thankfully.
H.R. 1955 defines "homegrown terrorism" and "violent radicalization" nebulously; the former is merely "the use, planned use or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives," while the latter means "the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious or social change." Ideologically based violence, in turn, is defined as "the use, planned use or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious or social beliefs." Force or violence is conveniently not defined.
Sounds fair enough, until you start crunching the language and come to the realization that practically anyone protesting anything, on any given day, could fit the description. Which is vague on purpose, as one realizes the further one digs.
We still have in place the National Security Letters which enable FBI access to private citizens’ library records, telecommunications and personal residences and businesses. We still have the telecommunications industry’s monitoring without warrant our calls and location. Witness the recent congressional pandering by Apple and others that this information is secure and necessary. Uh huh. And now the Judiciary Committee in Congress is set to pass the renewal of the mostly still unread and misunderstood Patriot Act which keeps most of these ridiculous spying-on-Americans tactics in place.
As the economy worsens, particularly here in Florida with draconian cuts to crucial social services, an unemployment rate of over 11% with the legislature just cutting benefits by 3 weeks, mandatory drug testing (paid for by these unfortunate individuals as well as all state employees based on no evidence of drug use at all) just so that corporations can receive tax breaks that will have no impact on the “deficit”, people will become angry, desperate and start to resist. Now that you’re aware of just some of the force that can be brought to bear against peaceful protestors, you’re bound to be as intimidated as my daughter. On her small case, we have decided to fight back. We want answers. We have decided some things are worth standing up for, like what used to be called the Fourth Amendment.
The First Amendment guarantees us right of peaceful assembly among other things. Can we defend our Constitution by standing our ground and not, as so many claim to be doing right now, in wrong-headed, vicious and uneducated words? Will we be intimidated or will we fight? Knowledge is power and now you have some knowledge. That means you have the power and that means you have to fight. This issue is beyond politics. This issue is at the very core of what we used to call “freedom” in America. We cannot remain silent. We cannot back down. We cannot give up. It will call for courage and sacrifice, in big ways and small. Can we do it?
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