MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS

Recently, I was the subject of a special holiday TV series that was created by a local television station’s news producer. He told the audience that he was inspired to do the piece because the day after Donald Trump was elected president, I was describing the riots that were happening in downtown Portland.

Flash bang grenades that were fired from a gun kept exploding near my sixth story window and from what I could see from my window, the streets of Portland looked like a war zone.

Dumpsters were set ablaze store front windows were being smashed in and tear gas was beings used to try and subdue the rioters. I have been in the middle of violent protests before as I was at a protest during “The Occupy Movement’s sit in against the 1%.” However, as I looked down at the battle ground below, I couldn’t help but notice how the police officers this time were looking more like ground troops surrounding armored vehicles.

This is an image that we have gotten used to in the past decade, but it seems that the atmosphere of the police state is becoming more like war theater that just law enforcement.

In many cities, police departments have given up the traditional blue uniforms for “battle dress uniforms” modeled after soldier attire. Police departments across the country now sport armored personnel carriers designed for use on a battlefield. Some have helicopters, tanks, and Humvees and drones. They carry military-grade weapons. Most of this equipment comes from the military itself.

Many SWAT teams today are trained by current and former personnel from Special Forces units like the Navy Seals or Army Rangers. This sort of force was once reserved as the last option to defuse a dangerous situation. It’s increasingly used as the first option to apprehend people who aren’t dangerous at all. There’s now a dominant military culture within modern police agencies.

Perhaps it may be too late to ask this question, but is all of these types of warrior tactics sidestepping the Constitution?

Steadily and speedily, the force of the militarized police is denying citizens the protections of fundamental civil liberties afforded us by the Bill of Rights. While there remain legions of law enforcement officers devoted to protecting and serving their fellow citizens, the federal government’s proffer of powerful, free or almost free, weapons, vehicles, gear, and tactical training is making the allure of becoming an unofficial branch of the armed forces irresistible.

It appears the police are preparing to be the ground troops of a future revolution. If the founding fathers were alive today and were able to witness the actions of our police forces, it would be more than likely that they would view them as a standing army.

Alexander Hamilton once spoke of the dangers of a standing army against the people of the United States: “If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.’

The problem is most Americans do not see the danger of the militarized police and a future where disarmament of the citizens will be mandatory. However, the mob mentality of the people and the intimidation created by militarized police breeds a vicious circle of increasingly aggressive, militaristic, and arguably, unconstitutional policing.

This should be eating at the conscience of America.

Because without a constitutional conscience the militarization of the police will most certainly grow, and the weaponry that will be used against you will be similar to what was used in Iraq or Afghanistan.

There are new innovations that are now being developed that most certainly make the police forces appear to be like a standing army and in 2017 police forces all over the world will be better equipped with military style surveillance systems and laser powered disrupters that can be used to apprehend or even kill a suspected target.

In his farewell speech that he gave days ago, President Obama warned that Americans “must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are.”

“That’s why, for the past eight years, I’ve worked to put the fight against terrorism on a firmer legal footing,” Obama said. “That’s why we’ve ended torture, worked to close Gitmo, and reformed our laws governing surveillance to protect privacy and civil liberties.”

But while that makes for a nice sound bite, it’s not entirely accurate.

Using drones to kill American citizens without trial, collecting the email and phone records of millions of Americans on a daily basis, and grabbing militants off of the streets of foreign cities and imprisoning them indefinitely — these are all powers that Obama used during his administration and will hand over to Donald Trump.

Even more chilling from a constitutional perspective is that the Obama Administration has, with little to no complaint from the American people or the other two branches of government, deliberately targeted and killed US citizens in drone strikes, without those individuals ever having been given their constitutional right to due process of law.

The Obama Administration justifies this by arguing that “when an American has made the decision to affiliate himself with al-Qaeda and target fellow Americans, that there is a legal justification for us to try and stop them from carrying out plots.”

Though Obama acknowledges that US citizens are subject to due process under the Constitution, his attorney general, Eric Holder, has argued that “‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security.” Apparently, the administration believes that its own internal processes for determining if a US citizen can be killed in a drone strike are sufficient enough to count as giving someone “due process.”

All of this plausible tyranny and excuses for militant overreach will be handed over to President-elect Trump.

But why, exactly, are people so worried that Trump will do more with this power than what Obama hasn’t already done?

The concern seems to stem from the perception — much of which seems to come from the Obama Administration’s own efforts to push this narrative of President Obama as a deeply moral man who engages in serious, conscientious deliberations on each individual case before deciding to target someone, and especially a US citizen in a drone strike.

We are told Trump has no moral compass and that Obama does even though during his presidency, the issue of droning Americans was swept under the rug, and his radical claims of presidential power that were not afforded by the Constitution.

It was a provision for prolonged detention basically incarcerating someone not for what they have done, but for what the authorities are sure you will most likely do. Again this is detention without trial and without due process and handed over to Donald Trump.

But the real question is this: Will anyone really care if Trump expands the police state tactics? The only real reason to do so would be to jail his detractors – at least it is assumed that he will use his power to illuminate anyone who crosses him. We know that many right-wing Americans would delight in seeing those who are against Trump, beat with a truncheon, gassed, shot and or detained without trial.

We are so used to being under the gun that there is a sick and twisted schadenfreude or malicious joy that we have towards those we don’t agree with. They would rather see no restraint from the standing army against a revolution that they don’t support.

However, the Obama Administration would regularly kill people without being completely sure who they are killing. By most accounts, hundreds of dangerous militants have, indeed, been killed by drones, including some high-ranking al-Qaeda figures. But for six years, when the heavy cloak of secrecy has occasionally been breached, the results of some strikes had often turned out to be deeply troubling.

Every independent investigation of the strikes had found far more civilian casualties than administration officials admit. Gradually, it has become clear that when operators in Nevada fire missiles into remote tribal territories on the other side of the world, they often do not know who they are killing, but are making an imperfect best guess.

Obama loved his mechanical toys for killing, and we can’t wait to see what Trump does with these toys. Yet, no one really cares. There has been no real outcry from Congress, no moves by the judicial branch to curb the president’s power or declare his actions unconstitutional, and no massive, nationwide demonstrations by concerned Americans.

Only now we will be seeing a march against a president elect – and there were no real protests against Obama’s building of the police state.

Will anyone really care if Trump were to kill 6,000 people in drone strikes instead of 2,000?

Oh, the anti-Trumpers would because it hardens their resolve and point out their pitiful hierocracy. Under Obama we saw the first use of a robot to kill a suspect without due process in Dallas.

The dangerous events in Dallas last year, in which 12 policemen were shot, made it seem permissible to re-purpose a robot to apply lethal force. When an armed suspect refused to surrender, a Remotec robot armed with plastic explosives was dispatched to kill him. This wasn’t Robocop and it didn’t operate autonomously. It was a bomb disposal robot remotely controlled by police officers.

There is justification for this kill and legal scholars have pronounced that it was probably legal.

There is no doubt that we need to keep our police safe, but accepting new technological means to kill may have serious negative consequences for society. The separation of police from their weapons and suspects raises concerns about changing the nature of policing. Will it create a remote control presence buffer that dehumanizes the application of violent force?

What will stop the police from employing other advanced weapons against the people?

Well we may have our answer at the Standing Rock standoff in North Dakota. Over the last several months, the world has watched the American police state in action as cops from more than a dozen states beat, gassed, pepper sprayed, tasered, shot, and severely injured several protesters and water protectors at the Dakota Access Pipeline site.

Using their militarized gear, police have blinded at least one person and blown up the arm of another.

Now police have installed an anti-drone missile system at the site. Twitter has been buzzing about pictures that have come from the protest showing an Avenger AN/TWQ-1 Air Defense System in the area.

The question is why?

According to the Army Recognition website, the Avenger AN/TWQ-1 Air Defense System vehicle is a missile mounted system which provides mobile, short-range air defense protection for ground units against cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, low-flying fixed-wing aircraft, and helicopters.

The AN/TWQ-1 missile system has been around since the 1980s; however, it has recently been equipped with a “High energy laser weapon used to neutralize small unmanned air vehicles. Also it neutralizes unexploded ordnance at standoff distance.”

So now we have a short-range missile defense system that may be used against unarmed protesters trying to protect a Native American water supply.

It is entirely possible that the missile tubes are empty. It is also possible that they are simply using this vehicle’s heat sensing camera. However, that does not negate its presence. The deployment of this missile system to Standing Rock can be seen as little more than an act of intimidation.

It is clear that the use of military weapons and tactics by local law enforcement agencies presents a variety of constitutional concerns. It is also clear, however, that an individual asserting a legal claim for potential constitutional violations will face a number of barriers and such claims have only a marginal likelihood of success.

Who will be bold enough to challenge the apex predator state and their unconstitutional policing tactics which for all intents and purposes appears to be a standing army?

Nobody cared this was happening and even when I warned people of what Obama created, it was okay because many saw him as a decent and moral man.

Now, we have Trump.

The Trump Administration will inherit from Barack Obama a fully operational police state apparatus, with all-encompassing warrantless surveillance and a legal mechanism allowing the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens who are suspected of being “unlawful combatants.”

We can all kid ourselves and think he will relinquish this unconstitutional farce and make America great again.

https://soundcloud.com/groundzeromedia/apex-predator-the-rise-of-the-warrior-police-january-17-2017

Written by Ron Patton