Us against them- The American Police Mentality.

America In Crisis -
Increasing Police
Violence
By Ted Lang
12-2-7

Police brutality as a regular occurrence in

America was once limited to specific areas

in big cities. It was motivated by an "us-versus-

them" racist police mentality that was formerly

isolated to ghettos and included also organized

crime strongholds in such big cities as Chicago

and New York during the government-imposed

Prohibition back in the 1920s and 30s. The

"them" in the combative police mindset

during this time was comprised of a certain

race or a particular criminal class, and

focused mainly on organized mobsters

personified by bootleggers and gamblers

generally identified as elements of the

Italian Mafia. And in the mid-1800s, Irish

gangs in New York City were commonplace.

Back in the early part of the last century

and still in existence today, were the black

and Hispanic ghettos representative of the

cities of New York and Los Angeles. Even

without direct public approval, an underlying

public attitude existed that condoned

isolated incidents of "rubber hose" back

jail cell or stationhouse basement

mistreatment and torture of ghetto or

race specific individuals while in police

captivity. "They probably deserved it" was

in all likelihood the general attitude

characteristic of this laissez faire public

aloofness. And both the police and the

public are aware of the high rates of crime

in the impoverished ghettos of the big cities.

Organized criminals and gangsters, a

subculture of American society, could

easily be identified as not only antisocial,

but extremely dangerous as typified by the

rampant machine-gun shootings and gang

murders in public by the criminal gangs of

the 20s and 30s. Territorial gang wars as

well as machine-gun battles with "Eliott

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agents were all the result of the government's

ill-conceived Prohibition against alcoholic

beverage consumption. The battle lines

were drawn by law enforcement and

organized crime in the struggle to provide

the bootlegging demanded by the public

and banned by a meddlesome state. But

the then-illegal liquor trade made so by

the sanctimonious saints of yet another

soon-to-be more efficient criminal

subculture, American government, was

the product of our government's continuing

stupid and failed attempts to legislate

morality. The latter is an impossible feat

for the most immoral sector of any society.

Police brutality and murders in small

town rural areas were concentrated mostly

in the South, and were exemplified

primarily by police-permitted lynchings

and torture deaths directed towards black

Americans in those locales. The Civil Rights

movement of the 1960s also produced

among virtually all the police departments

of our nation, an increased police

intolerance for anti-racial demonstrations. The

murders of three

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MurderOfCivil RgtsWorkers.html Civil

Rights Activists and the subsequent

cover-up of the crime in Mississippi in

1964 became the classic reference point

for Southern inhospitality on the part of

both a select minority of its citizenry [the

Klan] and police compounded by a

nebulous and undefined code of public approval.

In my high school years in the late 1950s, I

joined the police-sponsored Civil Defense

unit which met at the local police station

in Queens, New York. In addition to the

mandatory first aid training I received in

high school, the Civil Defense unit also

trained me in first aid thereby reinforcing

my life-saving and emergency medical

techniques. As part of the local precinct

of the NYPD, I mingled with the police

officers in the stationhouse.

The grumblings among the police officers

after televised news segments were aired

depicting police clashes with peaceful

marchers and demonstrators clearly

indicated more than a mere contempt

for both the Civil Rights movement and

the participating demonstrators on the

part on those officers of the NYPD. Members

of this very Northern and "Union"-oriented

police department became extremely

intolerant of these demonstrations in spite

of the fact that they were sanctioned by the

First Amendment and completely

peaceful. One of those televised news

vignettes showed the police and state

troopers assembled in a Southern town. The

newsreel recorded the police charge wherein

they literally tore into a column of African-

Americans and supportive whites that were

under the leadership of the late Reverend

Dr. Martin Luther King.

The police used attack dogs, swung their

billy clubs indiscriminately, and brutally

attacked women and even elderly

demonstrators, knocking them to the

ground and then continuously beating

them as their victims lay bleeding on the

ground. This wasn't crowd control; these

were acts of horrendous police brutality

and torture on public display. These

people had a right to demonstrate, were

not tying up traffic nor committing any

other type of criminal damage to the local

community. And they were marching

while prominently holding and displaying

the American flag. But they failed to obey

"police orders," even though those

"orders" were unconstitutional.

The site of that massive out-of-control

police rampage is still etched upon my

mind. It changed something inside

me. It planted a tiny seed of distrust for

both government and its police. It didn't,

at least at that time, extend my distrust

and disappointment to the uniforms of

the American military; I served my time

in the US Army. But, even that seed was

planted. Misguided volunteers for a

volunteer Army [or a Civil Defense unit]

controlled by expensively suited and

tie-wearing lunatics and genocidal

maniacs can still result in unwarranted,

unjust, and unconstitutional mass

murders and torture, even when

intending "to bring democracy" to a

people of another nation that never

asked for it and never did our nation

and its people any harm.

How did we "progress" from a "protect

and serve" mentality to one where every

American citizen is a criminal until the

citizen-victim proves otherwise under

taser torturing, physical beatings, and

outright life-threatening assault by

police? How did we go from an

"innocent until proven guilty" foundation

to the current government attitude

of guilty until proven innocent? The

police mindset has been transformed

into a new version of "us [the police]

versus them" [every citizen in America]!

The causes for this hatred by all levels

of police for America's citizens can be

attributed to four factors. The first

factor is technology. Police are now

able and capable of using monumental

technology against their new-found

enemy, the American people. Second,

police across America at all levels

have been unified by federal money,

benefits, equipment and reward-

producing initiatives provided by

Washington, DC. Third, the mindset

created by Cheney-Bush utilizing 9/11

and the success of Clinton's Waco

Massacre; everyone in America should

be, and WILL be, considered a terrorist,

or at least an "enemy combatant," until

convincingly proved to be

otherwise. Employing cruel and unusual

punishment is now the standard method

of proving innocence. Prohibitions

against these methods as documented

in that "goddamned piece of paper"

are no longer valid. And finally,

government's never-ending progressive

need for control, more control, and still

more control of its subjects. The "War

on Drugs" ["controlled" substances] and

gun "control" are typical. More and

more complicated and unintelligible

regulatory control mumbo-jumbo is

just what a dictatorship needs to make

sure every citizen does something

wrong so they can be arrested.

Let's look at these in turn. Technology

today is completely mind-boggling. Police

can employ infrared heat-sensitive

electronic scanners to focus on targeted

perpetrators inside brick and concrete

buildings. This technology is now available

to our military if not "our" police. Through

federal programs, it obviously can be made

available to police. And the government's

contempt and increasing violations of the

1878 Posse Comitatus Act will now enable

present advanced military technology to be

used against American citizens as well as

formerly legitimate, organized public

demonstrations.

Video cameras for citizen control by police

are everywhere in America, and are being

expanded exponentially. Police now carry

fully automatic machine-guns as "standard

operating procedure" or SOP. Police dress

up in "SWAT" semi-military gear letting

America know that they are prepared to

shoot and kill with minimum

provocation. Razor wire barriers at

political conventions are also

SOP. Rubber bullets, audio weaponry,

disabling gases and smoke and other

"crowd control" disablers are also SOP.

Second, American police at all levels are

generously supported by the American

taxpayer via federal benefits delivered

to local, county and state police via

military surplus, and the required

acceptance of federal "initiatives"

such as the "War on Drugs" and the

"Global War on Terror," as well as

other federal initiatives. Police

departments at all levels in America

also become the recipients of federal

funding grants, special training, and

even the newest standard and surplus

military equipment. This federal

involvement with police departments

all across the country has progressed

to where it now unifies all American

police thereby creating yet another

dimension of a standing military force

so obnoxious to the Founding Fathers.

Third, the establishment of "terror groups"

did not start with either the 1993 World

Trade bombing or the destruction of

the World Trade complex on September 11,

2001. It actually started with the Waco

siege and massacre under the first Clinton

regime. The combined use of police, the

federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and

Firearms [BATF], FBI, and the United

States military demonstrate clearly the

fear the Founders had in allowing the

federal government a standing army

and its horrific power to kill and

destroy. And although BATF and FBI

are "suit-and-tie" alphabet agencies, as

Waco demonstrated, they can and do act

in concert as a dangerous standing army.

The violation of the Posse Comitatus Act

was blatant, but as usual, since the

federal government can wield massive

killing power, and along with the

compliance of a virtually non-existent

American press, our killer government

experienced absolutely no modicum of

challenge from the media thereby

getting away totally with this most

egregious criminal outrage which in

effect supplants and makes irrelevant

the Boston Massacre and even the

American Revolution itself. Terrorism

is now used by American government to

control its own citizens. Justification for

such state paranoia was derived from

so-called anti-government terror groups

targeting America, whether real or imagined.

The Waco Massacre was totally

unnecessary. It perfectly demonstrates the

fourth factor. A simple mistake on a firearm

form, or a gun barrel that's an inch too

short, or the mere mention of the word

"gun," or a personal amount of a "controlled

substance," and uniformed police thugs

are now authorized the use of deadly

force. It is no longer necessary to prove

a crime has been committed, and a

crime is now defined by actions that are

really no crime at all because no fellow

citizen or citizens were injured. No

damage to any form of citizen or citizen

property need be proven. Waco was

planned and executed by Bill Clinton

and Janet Reno to terrify American

citizens and gun owners by demonstrating

the unlimited total power and authority

of government. Cheney-Bush are now

using this total power in Iraq and

Afghanistan to also kill, maim and

torture the unarmed and innocent

civilians of nations that did US no

harm. But what goes around will

eventually come around! Get ready

for yet another Waco or 9/11!

What is most horrifying for Americans

is the realization that there is only one

direction for ALL government: unchecked,

unlimited growth and never-ending

expansion of deadly force. And for

those individuals who were previously

totally incapable of understanding the

relationship of expanded government

and the resultant lessening of individual

freedoms, that relationship can now be

more easily understood. Whoever

offered that government "continually

grows" itself was telling it like it really

is. Look at the rate of government

expansionism! Look how increasingly

dangerous government at all levels

has become! Now ordinary traffic

pullovers and "confrontations" with

police as in just simply asking a police

officer for geographic directions when

lost can result in tasering, beating,

torture and even death.

As "We the People" are supposedly

"represented" by "two" political parties,

yet both with exactly the same agenda,

and Congressional representatives and

senators that completely ignore the will

of the people when it is publicly aired via

elections, it is obvious that the real power

and authority in America is not the people

but an unseen and unknown shadow

government empowered by the

international bankers seeking a

"New World Order." The avenue for

a reasonable, peaceful solution to this

increasing tyranny is growing

narrower and shorter.

How should we respond to the growing

threat of the state? Peaceably, of course!

But the rapidly increasing technological

power of the uniformed state guards

across America and their exponentially

growing violence against any and all

citizens, is working rapidly to prevent

any attempt at a peaceful

solution. Their total crushing of

individual freedom and citizen "wiggle

room" is threatening to destroy any

peaceful debate and corrective political

action. And as we become dangerously

closer to this non-solution, only one

course of action will be open: street

violence and revolution. All it will

take is another horrific outrage the

public finally realizes is government

perpetrated and violence may

erupt. And it appears that our

political class is both aware of

this as well as completely intent

on making it happen. The state is

powerfully equipped with dangerous

weapons of mass destruction; Waco

proves that our federal government

will use them against US!

The perpetrators of crime, formerly

identified as the "criminal element," are

ALWAYS prepared for violence. A

criminal does not commit rape, robbery,

assault and murder unless he intends

to succeed at his crime by employing

violence. Honest, decent, law-abiding

Americans just want to be left alone. They

are NOT prepared for violence, unless

they come to realize that no matter

how hard they try, violence cannot be

avoided. And when that realization

hits home, who is it that better deserves

the suffering produced from acts of

violence? Wouldn't that be the

unprovoked originator of the violence?

What happens if the American people

join together and determine that ALL

police and government authority is

"them?" Under police state slavery, we

will all be treated violently, and enslaved

and tortured. We will be sent to

forced-labor work camps [being built

by Cheney-Bush right now!] to enrich

the central bankers and their New

World Order. If we are to be killed

and tortured by heavily armed uniformed

government guards, we will suffer and

die anyway, so what real choice do we have?

Considering these scenarios, perhaps we

are fast approaching yet another time in

our republic's brief history when we

should again consider another:

"Live Free Or Die!"

c.2007 THEODORE E. LANG - All rights reserved

Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.