With George Floyd as the latest example, along with the escalating violence and brutality of police across the country in response to the largely peaceful protests, documented and chronicled with the myriad videos and images that have been flooding all media outlets, one can safely conclude that the United States, under Donald Trump, is now a de-facto police state on the scale and scope of the worst police states of the last century, most notably the genocidal regime of Augusto Pinochet of Chile.
The murder of George Floyd wasn’t an aberration or a “one off” by a “bad apple“; it was the latest example of a systemic and rapidly growing trend by law enforcement across the country to brutalize and murder at will and with impunity, as discussed in a previous article. It has now emerged that police agencies across the country have been receiving training by a certified psychopath whose obsession with killing is unparalleled. It should be pointed out that the Minneapolis Police Department, in its previous form as it is now being disbanded and reconstituted per unanimous vote by the Minneapolis city council, had received training by this individual. In my previous article, I describe David Grossman as follows below. The front page of his web portal is provided here where I include the graphic rather than just a link
1) David Allen Grossman, is an author and retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel who has specialized in the study of psychology and how it pertains to killing. He has a long history of providing “Warrior Training” for many police agencies across the country, not the least of which is the City of Minneapolis Police Department! Any thinking, rational individual would have to conclude that Mr. Grossman should be the last person to provide such training for police, considering his morbid and sociopathic proclivity for killing. It emerges that one of Grossman’s students, Jeronimo Yanez, an officer in the City Of Minneapolis Police Department, shot and killed Philando Castile, the driver of a car pulled over by Yanez during a routine traffic stop. It turns out that Yanez was acquitted of all charges and received a “buyout” by the City
Police brutality and wanton murder committed with seeming impunity are exemplified in the following video showing how a band of modern day rogue outlaw murderers in uniform walked up and executed a distraught homeless man in broad daylight. It is important to keep in mind that this video, although quite disturbing, is an example of something that has been happening across the country, with the brutality and callous disregard for human life largely unreported or under-reported by the main stream media. The victim of this homicide-by-police could be any one of us who lost their job and home in the current economic climate and found themselves sleeping at a public bus stop. The depraved indifference for human life exemplified by these murderers is exceed only by their arrogance.
So how has domestic law enforcement evolved from local or regional policing, where the mandate was simple: “to maintain law and order”, to the scope and scale of what amounts to a heavily-armed occupying force. According to an August 2014 Newsweek article,
America has been quietly arming its police for battle since the early 1990s
Faced with a bloated military and what it perceived as a worsening drug crisis, the 101st Congress in 1990 enacted the National Defense Authorization Act. Section 1208 of the NDAA allowed the Secretary of Defense to “transfer to Federal and State agencies personal property of the Department of Defense, including small arms and ammunition, that the Secretary determines is— (A) suitable for use by such agencies in counter-drug activities; and (B) excess to the needs of the Department of Defense.” It was called the 1208 Program. In 1996, Congress replaced Section 1208 with Section 1033.
In a 2015 Executive Order, former President Barack Obama had curtailed DoD transfers of surplus military equipment and arms to domestic law enforcement. So why has the transfer continued largely unabated with many local and regional police agencies resembling the standing armies of a small country? Well, as it turns out, in spite of former President Obama’s much-touted 2015 executive order, there is mounting evidence that police departments are still receiving as much military hardware from the Pentagon as ever before. Obama’s Executive Order has been subsequently reversed by Donald Trump in 2017 with the transfer of surplus military equipment to police at an all time high.
It would be quite reasonable to ask why such violence and antipathy towards communities of color and minorities is on on the rise, why it appears to be spiraling out of control at a rate far greater than that experienced by the Civil Rights activists of the 1960s and 70s. As it turns out, an FBI report confirmed active links between law enforcement with alt-right and White Supremacist groups. It’s more than just a few bad apples; it’s a systemic problem that needs to be corrected and
ignores the well-documented support by law enforcement officers of alt-right extremist ideology throughout the country
Further, it also emerges that some members of domestic law enforcement have been receiving training from the Israelis and the IDF, infamous for their brutality, barbarism and cruelty towards the Palestinian people. As reported by The GrayZone,
100 members of the 800-strong Minneapolis police department were trained at a conference in Israel in 2012. That means at least one of every eight members the city’s force has been influenced by the methods of an occupying apartheid entity.
In addition to tactical and weapons’ training by the Israelis, some individual officers are ex-military who had received their training at Fort Benning, Georgia and the infamous School of the Americas. Derek Chauvin, George Floyd’s murderer, received training at this institution, the same institution that trained the Central American (Salvadoran) Death Squads of the 1980s.
This is all only one side of the equation. The other side incentivizes high arrest and conviction rates, rates that seek to maximum the inmate population at the many for-profit prisons and detention centers. These high arrest and conviction rates disproportionately target minorities and people of color.
What’s on the horizon?
Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster, a malignant autocrat of the highest order and no one should expect any meaningful changes if he is reelected.
Lock the S.O.B.s Up’
was Joe Biden’s Battle Cry, heralding the beginning of an Era, the Era of Mass Incarceration!
The dark clouds swirling around Biden, the presumptive Democratic Presidential candidate, don’t bode well for any meaningful police reform. Biden is widely known for his role in drafting the disastrous 1994 Crime Bill while claiming to champion minorities and communities of color. He has previously supported for-profit prisons and detention centers where those same people he ostensibly champions now are disproportionately incarcerated, many for petty, non-violent offenses. Now it emerges, Kamala Harris is being considered as his running mate. Harris gave us Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury Secretary; as California’s Attorney General at the time, Harris never prosecuted Mnuchin as head of OneWest for his role in the enormous theft and corruption surrounding OneWest during the 2008 Mortgage crisis.
Many in this country have short memories: Joe Biden was opposed to forced busing during the 1970s and is now running a self-styled….wait for it….. “Tough on Crime” ticket! Now!
Since we’ll get either one or the other of these two abysmally poor choices, in a “lesser of two evils” scenario, it’ll be up to congress to pass meaningful, veto-proof legislation with an emphasis on accountability, human rights, the elimination of military-grade hardware and arms whle establishing clear boundaries police cannot cross.
As of today, the protests continue unabated.