Police State

Another take on it. California police behave better when they're on camera:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/04/california-police-body-came...

The Coward Rusbridger  -  by Craig Murray

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38386.htm

"The Guardian not only destroyed the Snowden hard drives, but spent an entire month hiding the fact from the public. They only came clean and published after the arrest of David Miranda led Glenn Greenwald to refuse to keep it quiet any longer. Remember this is the same newspaper which sent the young and extremely brave whistleblower Sarah Tisdall to prison rather than protect their source.

Now Rusbridger poses as though smashing the computers was an act of defiance. I couldn't resist a comment on this appalling piece of hypocrisy in the Guardian thread below that link.

There was a time when the Guardian was something more than just another neo-con mouthpiece...It seems increasingly devoted to Israel.

I understand now that Rusbridger is entirely a neo-con tool, and that their efforts with Assange, Snowden and Greenwald were no more than control and channeling, and broke down when that became obvious..."

I am glad more people 'get' that the Guardian is 'just another neo-con mouthpiece' It should be obvious from its coverage but apparently not. Good for Murray for reminding us...

Canada Govt Spying on Social Media to be Reviewed Over Privacy Breach Concerns

http://rt.com/news/158152-canada-social-privacy-breach/

"Canada's government is collecting data from its citizens through social media 'without regard for accuracy, currency and accountability, and despite users' certain expectation of privacy,' said privacy commissioner Chantal Bernier..."

Former CIA Director: 'We Kill People Based on Metadata' (and vid)

http://rt.com/usa/158460-cia-director-metadata-kill-people/

"At a recent debate concerning the National Security Agency's bulk surveillance programs, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden admitted that metadata is used as the basis for killing people.

You can also watch his explanation around the 14 minute mark on the embedded video..."

Top Canada Court Rules Cops Don't Need Warrants To Search Cell Phones

http://rt.com/news/213635-canada-allows-phone-searches/

"In a major blow to privacy rights, the Supreme Court of Canada has decreed that police are allowed to conduct limited searches of suspect's cellphones upon arresting without obtaining a search warrent.

Writing for the majority, Justice Thomas Cromwell*, said that the ability of law enforcement to effectively do their jobs outweighs a suspect's right to privacy."

*Harper appointee

jas wrote:

War Gear Flows to Police Departments

 

I'm really torn over this.

On one hand I think Cops with armored personal carriers can be a very positive thing.   The presence of one can serve to deescalate a situation pretty fast.  There are good examples of cops using the armor protection of these suckers to rescue and evacuate wounded people who have been shot by gunmen or whatever. Mobile bunkers, mobile first aid stations and great for making a hole in a building.

On the other hand police dressing up with military-style gear can have some serious consiquences.   Role creep is one.  When cops start dressing like soldiers they're going to act like soldiers. (see Stanford Prison experiment)   Soldiers aren't trained to be nice for lack of a better phrase. The motto of the infantry, for example, is to 'close with and destroy the enemy'.  I'm sure everyone will agree we don't want cops seeing Canadians as "the enemy".

In all honesty these cops are dressed and equipped MUCH better than the regular military and especially our regular military.

One of th emany lessons learned out of Afghanistan, especially studied by the British, was the effect a soldiers state of dress had on the population.  Something as small as soldiers wearing a regular hat over a helmet made a huge difference with how patrols and such were recieved by locals.

Cops running around dressed and geared up like Special Operations Forces may very well have a detrimental effect. Plus where the hell are they getting the money for some of this stuff? Some of the rain suits I've seen them use in various pictures (rain jacket and rain pants) cost $1500. 

Paladin1 wrote:

One of th emany lessons learned out of Afghanistan, especially studied by the British, was the effect a soldiers state of dress had on the population.  Something as small as soldiers wearing a regular hat over a helmet made a huge difference with how patrols and such were recieved by locals.

Cops running around dressed and geared up like Special Operations Forces may very well have a detrimental effect.

^ Was just going to say, and then I saw you added this.

And surely we can't ignore how many street protests we've been seeing around the U.S. (and Canada) in the past few weeks. Coincidence?

PS: Not Just Ferguson: 11 Eye-Opening Facts About America’s Militarized Police Forces

Aristotleded24 wrote:

 

Reminds me of the debate that was happening when cops first got Tasers. They were sold to the public on the basis of being a non-lethal way for cops to deal with people they would have shot otherwise, and no doubt there are many knife-wielding suspects who are still alive today for that very reason. Unfortunately, being sold as a "non-lethal" option, cops tended to rely on them too much and started using them as a shortcut. Witness the Dziekański incident among others.

Exactly.  I support police having tasers because I think as you mentioned it's much less-lethal when someone is shot with a taser instead of a gun but as you also point out police deploy their tasers en masse.  We need only look at videos of subdued suspects being tasered while face first on the ground or in hand cuffs.  Tasers shouldn't be used as a form of discipline or punishment.

Court Ruling on Cellphones Ravages Privacy - by Heather Mallick

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/12/14/court_ruling_on_cel...

"The Supreme Court of Canada's ruling that police can, without a warrant, search the cellphones of people they have just arrested is one of the most sinister in its history.

Justice Minister Peter MacKay is thrilled with the ruling.

You should not be..."

NDPP wrote:

Court Ruling on Cellphones Ravages Privacy - by Heather Mallick

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/12/14/court_ruling_on_cel...

"The Supreme Court of Canada's ruling that police can, without a warrant, search the cellphones of people they have just arrested is one of the most sinister in its history.

Justice Minister Peter MacKay is thrilled with the ruling.

You should not be..."

This reminds me of comments people made in the thread about police searching firearm owners homes without a warrant.

If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about.

Be careful... 'nothing to hide' is frequently a classic rationalization to cover fear or powerlessness. In Canada it seems the removal of rights is as easy as taking candy from a baby. Especially when they're surrendered with a ready acquiesence and the response that they were never needed in the first place.

The Time Has Come To Start Policing Canada's Police  -  by Michael Laxer

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2014/12/time-has-come-to-s...

"The situation can only be changed by elected politicians dispensing with the mythologizing of the place as all 'heroes' and actually exerting democratic and popular control over them.

The question is when is anyone with any political power or authority going to do something about it?"

Remember Sammy Yatim

The Police Were Created to Control Poor and Working Class People

quote:

This liberal way of viewing the problem rests on a misunderstanding of the origins of the police and what they were created to do. The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop crime, at least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid to late nineteenth century from the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class.

This is a blunt way of stating a nuanced truth, but sometimes nuance just serves to obfuscate.

Before the nineteenth century, there were no police forces that we would recognize as such anywhere in the world. In the Northern United States, there was a system of elected constables and sheriffs, much more responsible to the population in a very direct way than the police are today. In the South, the closest thing to a police force was the slave patrols. Then, as Northern cities grew and filled with mostly immigrant wage workers who were physically and socially separated from the ruling class, the wealthy elite who ran the various municipal governments hired hundreds and then thousands of armed men to impose order on the new working class neighborhoods.

Class conflict roiled late nineteenth century American cities like Chicago, which experienced major strikes and riots in 1867, 1877, 1886, and 1894. In each of these upheavals, the police attacked strikers with extreme violence, even if in 1877 and 1894 the U.S. Army played a bigger role in ultimately repressing the working class. In the aftermath of these movements, the police increasingly presented themselves as a thin blue line protecting civilization, by which they meant bourgeois civilization, from the disorder of the working class. This ideology of order that developed in the late nineteenth century echoes down to today – except that today, poor black and Latino people are the main threat, rather than immigrant workers....

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/31/the-police-were-created-to-contro...

eta:

quote:

There was a never a time when the big city police neutrally enforced “the law,” or came anywhere close to that ideal (for that matter, the law itself has never been neutral). In the North, they mostly arrested people for the vaguely defined “crimes” of disorderly conduct and vagrancy throughout the nineteenth century. This meant that the police could arrest anyone they saw as a threat to “order.” In the post-bellum South, they enforced white supremacy and largely arrested black people on trumped-up charges in order to feed them into convict labor systems.

One hopes that these lessons playing out south of us will be studied and learned from. Here too, police power has increased to alarming proportions along with abuses such as G20, Sonny Yatim, carding etc.

The Political Mobilization of the American Police

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/12/29/pers-d29.html

"...The demonstration of contempt for de Blasio has a more far-reaching significance, however. It reveals the attitude of the police-military apparatus at every level to the civilian officials who nominally hold authority over them. The corporate controlled media promotes this contempt for civilian authority..."

The Thin Blue Conservative Line

http://www.canada.com/News/politics/thin+blue+Conservative+line/10695074...

"A dozen ex-cops occupy seats in the Commons and Senate. Which is possibly a record."

'I'm the Victim of a 'Smear Campaign', Cop Board Chair Alok Mukherjee Says

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/12/08/im-the-victim-of-a-smear-campaign-c...

no surprise to find our new Tory mayor with the police here

As Obama Hosts Peña Nieto, Explosive Report Ties Mexican Federal Police to Students’ Disappearance

video or transcript

As President Obama hosts Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto at the White House today, human rights groups want Obama to press the Mexican government on its failure to investigate and prosecute abuses by state security forces. The meeting comes on the heels of an explosive new report that directly contradicts the Mexican government’s claims they were unaware of what happened the night 43 students went missing after an attack by local police in the state of Guerrero. According to the Mexican magazine Proceso, federal police played a role in the attack, and federal authorities likely tortured key witnesses. The case has ignited protests across Mexico and around the world. We are joined by the reporters who broke the story, Anabel Hernández and Steve Fisher. Hernández is a leading Mexican investigative journalist and author of "Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers."

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/6/as_obama_hosts_pena_nieto_explosive

Picking apart Oath or Affirmation of Office taken by police officers in Ontario

The Oath or Affirmation of Office that is taken by a police officer, special constable or First Nations Constable in the province of Ontario is one of the following two forms:

I solemnly swear (affirm) that I will be loyal to Her Majesty the Queen and to Canada, and that I will uphold the Constitution of Canada and that I will, to the best of my ability, preserve the peace, prevent offences and discharge my other duties as (insert name of office) faithfully, impartially and according to law.

So help me God. (Omit this line in an affirmation.)

OR

I solemnly swear (affirm) that I will be loyal to Canada, and that I will uphold the Constitution of Canada and that I will, to the best of my ability, preserve the peace, prevent offences and discharge my other duties as (insert name of office) faithfully, impartially and according to law.
So help me God. (Omit this line in an affirmation.)

Let us take a closer look at the Oath:

“I will be loyal to Her Majesty the Queen and to Canada” or “I will be loyal to Canada”

Which Queen are they taking the oath to? The one who swore an oath to uphold the law as per the King James Version of the Bible (KJV Bible), or the one who is the personification of the Crown and at the apex of the legal and political systems?

Big difference as one is law and one is legal. Legal is not law. Legal comes from legislative policy and is given the colour and force of law, but it is not law. Legal is like law, similar to but not. Legal is corporate policy.

“I will, to the best of my ability”

Is this useful as an excuse? Could a police officer say something to the effect of, “I was just doing my job to the best of my ability and did not realize that what I was doing was actually unlawful”?

“preserve the peace, prevent offences“

When a police officer issues a Provincial Offence Notice for a minor traffic infraction or for any other victim-less “crime” for that sake does he/she actually attempt to preserve the peace? Does the officer try to prevent an offence or just does their job to the best of their ability?

“offence”

Offence is an odd word as it shows in the editor as a wrong spelled word. Offence is not the same as offense. It is like Legal and Law. Offense is a law word (cause harm). Offence is like offense, similar to, like but not. Offense is in the realm of law and offence is in the world of legal. Law is law and legal is corporate fiction.

“according to law”

The most important phrase in the oath, “according to law”. The OPP is a corporation as is Canada as is the Crown. They are in the legal realm which has nothing to do with the law. Remember legal is like, similar to but not law. Legal is corporate policy.

Therefore, the OPP are policy enforcers for various crown corporations and private companies that benefit from legislated policy. 

The Provincial Offence Notices that are issued to you by OPP officers are not for offenses since you cause no harm. They are for offences, which are nothing more than revenue streams for the corporation. This is not law. It is theft of your property. Theft causes harm and is against the law.

“So help me God”

The Queen took an oath to uphold the law as per the KJV Bible and so should have all OPP members. Law appears over 500 times in the KJV. Legal appears 0 times in the KJV.

A message to the Ontario Provincial Police officers:

Ladies and gentlemen of the OPP you have a choice to make. Law or legal. Legal harms people by removing or restricting their lawful rights given them by their and your creator and that is against the law.

Be aware, when a man or a woman has caused no harm, you have no authority or lawful right to interfere in their lives. Please note that a driver’s license is a legal fiction and is not the property of the man or woman you pull over on the side of the road.

Please govern yourselves lawfully or you may find yourself held privately liable for any harm you cause the good people of the province of Ontario.

Remember, no harm no crime. That is the law!

Requiring a police officer to have a university degree is a good idea used in places like Germany, Berkley CA, etc. We might consider it in Canada.

montrealer58 wrote:

Requiring a police officer to have a university degree is a good idea used in places like Germany, Berkley CA, etc. We might consider it in Canada.

I spoke to a cop at a career fair about 10 years ago, and he said that even though Grade 12 is the stated minimum educational requirment for being hired by a police agency, that several police agencies won't take someone without a degree anyways, unless there was something special about the applicant.

I'm of 2 minds on this requirement. On the one hand, there are useful things that prospective cops can learn about, such as history, sociology, politics, economics, and psychology. On the other hand, having a degree in and of itself is not an indicator of good character. University also measures a particular kind of human capability that may or may not be reflective of other areas. How about recuits who have the education, so on paper they meet the requirements, but for one reason or other they may lack the street smarts that are needed to perform that job effectively?

A Pretext For Cyber COINTELPRO?  -  by Eric Draitser

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/26/a-pretext-for-cyber-cointelpro/

"If history is any indicator, then actions, political radicals, dissidents and many others will be targeted online..."

Black site in Chicago:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-ame...

Mass United Action Can Defeat Bill C-51! (and vid)

http://communist-party.ca/stopc51

CPC Supports March 14 Day of Action Against C-51

DEFEAT C-51 - NO POLICE STATE!

Meanwhile, CKLQ radio is [url=http://www.cklq.com/?cklq_home]reporting[/url] that the Brandon Police Service is considering the use of unarmed "community safety officers" for such things as crime prevention and neighbourhood watches.

'These Prosecutions Shut Off Investigative Journalism in the National Security Field' - Daniel Ellsberg to RT (and vid)

http://rt.com/op-edge/253973-investigative-journalism-security-field/

Excellent and alarming

Countries around world are revoking freedom of assembly

On March 26, without much fanfare or attention from U.S. media, the Spanish government ended freedom of assembly. In the face of popular opposition (80 percent of Spaniards oppose it), the upper house passed the Citizens’ Security Law. Under the provision, which goes into effect on July 1, police will have the discretionary ability to hand out fines up to $650,000 to unauthorized demonstrators who protest near a transport hub or nuclear power plant. They will be allowed to issue fines of up to $30,000 for taking pictures of police during protest, failing to show police ID or just gathering in an unauthorized way near government buildings.

The law doesn’t technically outlaw protest, but it’s hard to see what difference that makes in practice. Imagine if the NYPD, without judicial oversight, could give $650,000 fines to every Black Lives Matter protester participating in die-ins at Grand Central. Never mind that they could never pay: Would anyone return day after day, racking up millions of dollars in fines?

Spain is only the latest “democracy” to consign freedom of assembly to the dustbin. While earlier eras of protest and riot sometimes wrested concessions from the state, today the government’s default response is to implement increasingly draconian laws against the public exercise of democracy. It raises the question: How many rights must be abrogated before a liberal democracy becomes a police state?...

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/5/countries-across-world-are-...

Chris Hedges: Maybe we should just k*ll all the informants. Or something.

A Nation of Snitches and what Solzhenitsyn taught me.

Glenn Greenwald, I’m sorry: Why I changed my mind on Edward Snowden

After 60 years in public life, my first reaction to Snowden leaks was rage. I was wrong. So was most of the media

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/23/glenn_greenwald_im_sorry_why_i_changed_m...

the so called extremists of Canada, people not so enamorated to the staus quo are the change agents of any culture any society...and so when they are silenced...the system cannot change, becomes a fossilized body waiting to be crushed for lack of ideological nutrition...

this is Canada...the minority activists, people with new ideas and solutions to the problems of Society have been effectively marginalized and made impotent...

one can only hope that when the crunch comes...there may still be a few still around!

But the changes that will be needed require education and organization, pathetically lacking in canada...so I fear for the worst!