The FBI warned for years.......

[aubiefifty 18,231]

.......that police are cozy with the far right. Is no one listening?

Yahoo

Mike German

8-10 minutes

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Photograph: Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images

For decades, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has routinely warned its agents that the white supremacist and far-right militant groups it investigates often have links to law enforcement. Yet the justice department has no national strategy designed to protect the communities policed by these dangerously compromised law enforcers. As our nation grapples with how to reimagine public safety in the wake of the protests following the police killing of George Floyd, it is time to confront and resolve the persistent problem of explicit racism in law enforcement.

I know about these routine warnings because I received them as a young FBI agent preparing to accept an undercover assignment against neo-Nazi groups in Los Angeles, California, in 1992. But you don’t have to take my word for it. A redacted version of a 2006 FBI intelligence assessment, White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement, alerted agents to “both strategic infiltration by organized groups and self-initiated infiltration by law enforcement personnel sympathetic to white supremacist causes”.

Related: White supremacists and militias have infiltrated police across US, report says

A leaked 2015 counter-terrorism policy guide made the case more directly, warning agents that FBI “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers”.

If the government knew that al-Qaida or Isis had infiltrated American law enforcement agencies, it would undoubtedly initiate a nationwide effort to identify them and neutralize the threat they posed. Yet white supremacists and far-right militants have committed far more attacks and killed more people in the US over the last 10 years than any foreign terrorist movement. The FBI regards them as the most lethal domestic terror threat. The need for national action is even more critical.

In recent years, white supremacists have engaged in deadly rampages in Charleston, South Carolina, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and El Paso, Texas. More ominously, neo-Nazis obtained radiological materials to manufacture “dirty” bombs in separate cases in Maine in 2009 and Florida in 2017, which were only avoided through chance.

But in June 2019, when Congressman William Lacy Clay asked the FBI counter-terrorism chief, Michael McGarrity, whether the bureau remained concerned about white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement since the publication of its 2006 assessment, McGarrity indicated he had not read it. Asked more generally about this infiltration, McGarrity said he would be “suspect” of white supremacist police officers, but that their ideology was a first amendment–protected right.

The 2006 assessment addresses this concern, however, by summarizing supreme court precedent on the issue: “Although the First Amendment’s freedom of association provision protects an individual’s right to join white supremacist groups for the purposes of lawful activity, the government can limit the employment opportunities of group members who hold sensitive public sector jobs, including jobs within law enforcement, when their memberships would interfere with their duties.”

More importantly, the FBI’s 2015 counter-terrorism policy, which McGarrity was responsible for executing, indicates not just that members of law enforcement might hold white supremacist views, but that FBI domestic terrorism investigations have often identified “active links” between the subjects of these investigations and law enforcement officials. But its proposed remedy is stunningly inadequate. It simply instructs agents to protect their investigations by using the “silent hit” feature of the Terrorist Screening Center watchlist, so that police officers searching for themselves or their white supremacist associates could not ascertain whether they were under FBI scrutiny.

Of course, one doesn’t need access to secret FBI terrorism investigations to find evidence of explicit racism within law enforcement. Since 2000, law enforcement officials with alleged connections to white supremacist groups or far-right militant activities have been exposed in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia, among other states. Research organizations have uncovered hundreds of federal, state and local law enforcement officials participating in racist, nativist and sexist social media activity, which demonstrates that overt bias is far too common.

Law enforcement officials actively affiliating with white supremacist and far-right militant groups pose a serious threat to people of color, religious minorities, LGBTQ people and anti-racist activists. But the police response to nationwide protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, includes a number of law enforcement officers across the country flaunting their affiliation with far-right militant groups.

A veteran sheriff’s deputy monitoring a Black Lives Matter protest in Orange county, California, wore patches with logos of the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers – far-right militant groups that often challenge the federal government’s authority – affixed to his bullet-proof vest.

A 13-year veteran of the Chicago police department with a long history of misconduct complaints was investigated for wearing a face covering with a Three Percenters’ logo while on duty at a recent protest. A supervisor pictured with him at the scene apparently did not order him to remove it.

In Philadelphia, police officers failed to intervene when mostly white mobs armed with bats, clubs and long guns attacked journalists and protesters. The district attorney has vowed to investigate the matter. The following month, however, Philadelphia police officers openly socialized with several men wearing Proud Boys regalia and carrying the group’s flag at a “Back the Blue” party at the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge.

Prosecutors have an important role in protecting the integrity of the criminal justice system from the potential misconduct of explicitly racist officers

Police officers casually fraternizing with armed far-right militia groups at protests is confounding because many states, including California, Illinois and Pennsylvania, have laws barring unregulated paramilitary activities and far-right militants have often killed police officers. The overlap between militia members and the Boogaloo movement – whose adherents have been arrested for inciting a riot in South Carolina, and shooting, bombing and killing police officers in California – highlights the threat that police engagement with these groups poses to their law enforcement partners.

Law enforcement agencies must do more to strengthen their anti-discrimination policies, improve applicant and employee screening, establish reporting mechanisms, and protect and reward officers who report their colleagues’ racist misconduct.

Prosecutors also have an important role in protecting the integrity of the criminal justice system from the potential misconduct of explicitly racist officers. Prosecutors keep a register of law enforcement officers whose previous misconduct could reasonably undermine the reliability of their testimony and need to be disclosed to defense attorneys. This register is often referred to as a “Brady list”.

The Georgetown law professor Vida B Johnson has argued that evidence of a law enforcement officer’s explicitly racist behavior could reasonably be expected to impeach his or her testimony. Prosecutors should be required to include these officers on Brady lists to ensure defendants they testify against have access to the potentially exculpating evidence of their explicitly racist behavior.

My 1992 undercover investigation didn’t reveal any connections between the neo-Nazi bombmakers and weapons traffickers and law enforcement. In fact, the local law enforcement officers that worked with me on the investigation were consummate professionals who I literally trusted with my life. There are many more just like them.

But, however small, the presence of active white supremacists in law enforcement must be treated as a matter of urgent concern. As Professor Johnson has argued, the criminal justice system “can never achieve its purported goal of fairness while white supremacists continue to hide within police departments”.

• Mike German is a former FBI agent and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program

[aubiefifty 18,231]

there were two on the anniston police force a few years back that were removed.

[homersapien 12,230]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/08/kenosha-killings-militia-trump/615775/

The Violence Could Get Much Worse

Unless police and political leaders begin to crack down on the armed vigilantes monitoring protests, more bloodshed could soon follow the killings in Kenosha.

The killings in Kenosha, Wisconsin, represent an alarming escalation of the fight over police violence that has consumed the country this summer: It wasn’t an agent of the state who shot two Americans dead this week. Instead, an American man turned his weapon on other civilians during a protest—and law enforcement let him walk right by them and out of town. Police and political leaders have failed for years to take the actions necessary to prevent this kind of violence. Without serious, sustained intervention, more bloodshed could soon follow.

Late Tuesday night, a young white man with an AR-15-style rifle slung over his shoulder sprinted down a darkened street. He had, according to the narrative later pieced together from cellphone footage, just shot a person in the head and left them to bleed out in the parking lot of a car dealership. As he ran, a scattered group of people gave chase, and he fired at them, hitting at least one. A bystander called out to the police stationed at the end of the block: “Hey, dude right here shot them!” Yet the officers did nothing. When the shooter reached the squad cars, his arms raised in surrender, they let him pass.

Seventeen-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who has described himself as a militia member and appeared in videos that night next to other armed men linked to a local militia group known as the Kenosha Guard, has since been arrested and charged with killing two people. (He hasn’t yet entered a plea.) Rittenhouse and the other men, who claimed to be protecting local businesses, are not the first armed right-wing counterprotesters to evade police scrutiny this summer. In May and June, such extremists appeared on 187 occasions at protests around the country, according to the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a left-leaning organization that tracks extremist groups. Vigilantes appeared to receive the support or approval of police in about two dozen of those instances, says Alexander Reid Ross, a researcher at the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right and the author of Against the Fascist Creep.

Read: White nationalism’s deep American roots

On June 2, amid the nationwide demonstrations to protest the killing of George Floyd, officers in Philadelphia allowed men armed with bats to linger outside a police station past curfew, then looked on while members of the group beat protesters. Around the same time, authorities in Curry County, Oregon, seemed to welcome “local boys” defending the community against a rumored appearance from the left-wing group antifa. A constable in Texas called on members of a far-right paramilitary organization called Oath Keepers to guard a hair salon from threats of looting and arson. A police officer in Salem, Oregon, was filmed politely asking a group of armed men to disperse ahead of curfew “so we don't look like we're playing favorites.”

But deferential treatment of armed counterprotesters suggests that police are playing favorites. When law enforcement reacts leniently to far-right militant organizations, those groups tend to believe any violence on their part is authorized, says Michael German, a retired FBI agent who spent months in the early 1990s working undercover among white supremacists and right-wing militants. Consistent leniency, he told me, “has created a monster that’s going to be hard to contain.”

This week’s violence suggests that “you’re going to see more people arming themselves and deciding they’re going to police the environment,” Erroll Southers, the director of Homegrown Violent Extremism Studies at the University of Southern California’s Price School of Public Policy, told me.

Vigilantes have recently appeared in situations beyond anti-police-violence protests too. Authorities have allowed men and women wielding assault rifles to storm state capitol buildings in protest of the mask mandates and stay-at-home orders instituted during the coronavirus pandemic. Armed militias, under the watch of police, have demonstrated against the removal of Confederate statues. (Left-wing groups have used intimidation tactics and violence too, but their relationship to law enforcement is different and their presence has been much less frequent at public events this year.)

President Donald Trump and his allies have not condemned armed vigilantism. "How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?" Tucker Carlson asked on his Fox News program. At the Republican National Convention last night, Vice President Mike Pence decried the “rioting and looting” occurring in America’s cities and vowed to stand up for law enforcement. But he didn’t reference Rittenhouse, or the police shooting of Jacob Blake that triggered the Kenosha protests in the first place. When he denounced the murder of federal officer Dave Patrick Underwood in Oakland in May, Pence failed to mention that he was murdered by a man with ties to a far-right extremist group; instead, Pence implied that the officer’s death was caused by “the riots.” Trump similarly omitted details about the Kenosha protests when he announced yesterday that he planned to send federal law enforcement and the National Guard to Wisconsin “to restore law and order.” Over the summer, Trump has repeatedly referred to Black Lives Matter protesters as “thugs,” and in June ordered peaceful demonstrators to be tear-gassed and shot with rubber bullets.

Trump’s messaging empowers right-wing extremists, German, now a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, told me. “The president has [treated] protesters as his political enemies,” he said. “It’s easy to see how these groups feel that Donald Trump is their champion, at least for the short term.”

Civilians taking up arms during periods of social unrest is a familiar phenomenon in America: During the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992, for example, armed citizens defended their stores from looting and vandalism. But 30 years ago, the very nature of vigilantism was different: Americans didn’t have such easy access to the military-grade weapons that are now prevalent in this country. The Los Angelenos guarding their businesses brandished pistols, not AR-15s. This kind of firepower necessarily means that the potential for mass injury and death is much greater. One-third of American adults own a gun, and 43 percent of adults in Wisconsin have a gun in their home, according to a recent estimate from the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit policy think tank. (It is legal for an adult to carry firearms openly in public places in Wisconsin.)

Another difference: Historically, many militia groups have been anti-police and anti-government. But some of those in action today are outright supporters of law enforcement and conservative politicians. The groups that protested mask restrictions and stay-at-home laws this summer echoed Trump's opposition to both measures, and as the president has decried antifa on Twitter, these groups have appeared at protests to beat back far-left activists. Rittenhouse himself is a Trump supporter who attended one of the president’s rallies earlier this year, according to BuzzFeed.

Yet the partisan nature of these groups also means that Republican leaders can help put a stop to their vigilantism. Political violence tends to increase during election years, German said, and that’s especially true in periods when rhetoric is heated and political polarization is at record levels. A consistent message from Trump and other elected officials at both the local and national levels could help calm the turmoil. “You will not be the police,” Southers advises officials to tell community members. “Anybody breaking the law will be arrested and prosecuted, whether they are destroying property or aggressively going after protesters.” That message would require the cooperation of local police—and a commitment to enforce laws equally. Officers’ hands are often tied in places where open carry is legal, but they can still enforce curfews and other laws regulating protest. State leaders, too, could be doing more to check these paramilitary groups, Southers noted. All 50 states have laws on the books that allow them to restrict militia presence in public places, according to a 2017 report from Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

If there is little change, including in the Trump administration’s rhetoric, the country should expect many more instances of far-right vigilantism to accompany protests and other public events in the future, experts told me. Pete Simi, a sociology professor at Chapman University who studies extremist groups, warned that violence could—and likely will—extend beyond Election Day. If the president and his allies don’t turn the temperature down, far-right groups may feel even more emboldened during a second Trump term. And if Joe Biden defeats Trump in November, “a segment of [Trump’s] base will view this as grounds for no other choice but to revolt and revolt violently,” Simi told me. In either scenario, it will be up to local law enforcement to decide whether to prevent violence.

In video footage taken before the shooting began on Tuesday night, Rittenhouse and a few other men carrying weapons and wearing tactical vests strapped to their chests can be seen gathered in the darkness near a cluster of armored police vehicles. One officer, coming in fuzzy over a loudspeaker, orders protesters to disperse. At the same time, another officer tosses water bottles to Rittenhouse and his compatriots. “We appreciate you guys,” he says. “We really do.”

Elaine Godfrey  August 27, 2020

(emphasis mine)

[I_M4_AU 8,935]

39 minutes ago, homersapien said:

But deferential treatment of armed counterprotesters suggests that police are playing favorites. When law enforcement reacts leniently to far-right militant organizations, those groups tend to believe any violence on their part is authorized, says Michael German, a retired FBI agent who spent months in the early 1990s working undercover among white supremacists and right-wing militants. Consistent leniency, he told me, “has created a monster that’s going to be hard to contain.”

What a misleading and ridiculous article from theAthlantic.  The quote above can also be true if you replace far-right with far-left.  Where was Michael German when CHOP was set up?  Or in Portland for years now?

 

42 minutes ago, homersapien said:

In May and June, such extremists appeared on 187 occasions at protests around the country, according to the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a left-leaning organization that tracks extremist groups

Some of the 187 occasions were the protest against the 2nd amendment in Virginia and the protest against the authoritarian Governor in Michigan.  If any of these protests caused bloodshed we would have heard about it.  Another highly suspect left-leaning organization labeling citizens using their 1st and 2nd amendment rights as extremists.

 

47 minutes ago, homersapien said:

But deferential treatment of armed counterprotesters suggests that police are playing favorites. When law enforcement reacts leniently to far-right militant organizations, those groups tend to believe any violence on their part is authorized, says Michael German, a retired FBI agent who spent months in the early 1990s working undercover among white supremacists and right-wing militants. Consistent leniency, he told me, “has created a monster that’s going to be hard to contain.”

Again, exchange far-right with far-left and it still makes sense.  Michael German is a tool.  The last statement about creating a monster hard to contain is exactly what Democratic run cities have done for decades.  I hope you don’t believe Hiden Biden is going to “contain” the violence.

 

51 minutes ago, homersapien said:

One officer, coming in fuzzy over a loudspeaker, orders protesters to disperse. At the same time, another officer tosses water bottles to Rittenhouse and his compatriots. “We appreciate you guys,” he says. “We really do.”

If people would realize the these Democratic cities have the authority to call in the National Guard to quell the situation and refuse to do so, the police would not have to ask citizen (otherwise known by the constitutional term of militia) to help when they feel overwhelmed. The Kenosha Police Department requested 750 National Guardsmen to help quell the situation, the Governor approved 250.  Trump said he was ready to send in 500 more and was ignored.  TDS is real and it costs lives.  The ego of people are an amazing thing to watch.

[DKW 86 7,899]

Y’all stop. Homey is going to post 2-3 of these Pablum articles or crap sandwich Articles every week. You COULD have any number of things happen. Speculation like this is just a waste of time. It is useless blather that most can easily see thru in a second and don’t even stop and read. But for homey...crap like this nonsensical drivel, that is the air he breathes. SSDD. 
 

And you are right, you take an article like this and cut and paste anyone’s Or any organization’s name in and say the same thing. The brainless mediaphiles just pull this nonsense off the server and do a “Find and Replace” search and voila’ crack for the  nonthinking masses. 

[I_M4_AU 8,935]

Some days it’s just too much to let it go.  I feel better now.

[homersapien 12,230]

"....It’s worth examining the direct connection between the violence we witnessed in the past week and the political performances of the Republican National Convention. The alleged Kenosha shooter, it’s important to note, had posted images from a front-row seat at a Trump rally earlier this year. Meanwhile, two of the stars of the RNC were a Missouri couple also famous solely for waving guns at Black Lives Matter protesters. This represents a growing and open policy by the president and his party to encourage violent supporters and their racist causes.

In April, for example, Trump tweeted a vague call to “liberate Michigan,” among other states, from restrictions meant to protect against the spread of COVID-19. His followers responded. White, armed militias—some carrying neo-nazi and confederate paraphernalia—soon swarmed the capital, threatening state law makers. Many brought automatic weapons into the legislative chamber itself. One Black legislator—likely noticing the confederate and Nazi signage, as well as a lynching rope—brought armed escorts for security. Others wore bullet-proof vests.

In response, Trump called these armed vigilantes “very good people,” the same language he famously used to describe white supremacist Tiki torch-wielding marchers in Charlottesville three years ago, and urged the governor to give in to their demands. In short, he offered open support for violent white rebellion....."

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/rnc-white-house-trump-gop-fascism-kenosha-murder.html?via=taps_top