Alexandria, Virginia’s annual big event is its George Washington’s Birthday parade. When I lived there, I usually went. One year, as President Washington passed in his carriage, I gave him a proper 18th-century bow-and-scrape—real conservatives know how to do these things. He was so pleased he stood up in his landau, doffed his hat and bowed to me in return.

It may have been the same year this genial event got skunked. Among the marching units, all festive and gay—old meaning—came the Alexandria Police SWAT team. Accompanied by an armored vehicle, they wore military fatigues, body armor, and helmets. You could watch people physically recoil as they passed. The message their gear proclaimed was “threat.”

All across the country, police departments are militarizing, often with weapons and vehicles bought for the armed forces for war and now declared surplus. To the cops, the equipment is free for the asking. A story in the June 9 New York Timesreported that “During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment, and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.” The equipment facilitates the militarizing of police operations. 

read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/cops-with-war-toys/

With Ferguson afflicted by such a patchy economic recovery - and a racially unequal one at that - local leaders believe it is little wonder there has been plenty of tinder to feed the fire, writes Andrew West.

US civil rights leader Al Sharpton arrived in Missouri this week, declaring the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in suburban St Louis to be a "defining moment for this country".

Sharpton, a Pentecostal minister, divides opinion in America and sometimes in the black community itself: he is either a demagogue looking perpetually for an issue or an old-school activist willing to speak uncomfortable truths.

Whatever the case, his declaration has resonated throughout the African-American community, conscious that the historic election - twice - of a black president has changed little when it comes to race relations at neighbourhood level.

"I think the president said when he was elected the first time that his election was not the change that we seek," says another black leader, the Rev. Tommie Pierson of Greater St Mark Family Church, one St Louis's biggest churches, and a Democratic member of the state legislature, "It is the opportunity for change."

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-22/west-ferguson-was-a-tinder-box-awaiting-the-match/5689398

US president Barack Obama has ordered an investigation into whether it is "appropriate" for the military to sell battle-grade hardware to local police, a senior US official says.

The order follows widespread criticism of local authorities' use of military gear in Ferguson, Missouri after the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer.

Images of police wielding military-style guns and armour during clashes with protesters have shocked many American lawmakers and civil rights groups.

The official said Mr Obama "has directed a review of federal programs and funding that enable state and local law enforcement to purchase military equipment".

The review will consider "whether these programs are appropriate", whether training with the equipment is sufficient, and whether there is enough federal oversight of the gear's use.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-24/obama-orders-review-of-police-use-of-military-hardware/5692648

A New York grand jury declined to indict a police officer for the fatal chokehold that killed Eric Garner in Staten Island in part because obesity contributed to his death. You’re on notice, fatties: if you’re not fit, they will acquit the police who kill you.

http://rall.com/comic/too-fit-not-to-acquit

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Despite a lack of direct evidence that a suspect was engaged in ongoing illegal activities, a court sentenced the man to five years in prison based in part on the frequency of his visits to a barbershop where drugs were being sold.

Weighing in before the U.S. Supreme Court in Tucker v. U.S., The Rutherford Institute warns that convictions based on government conspiracy theories and speculative calculations rather than clear-cut proof will render every American a criminal who has the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Moreover, attorneys warn, with the increase in precrime programs, threat assessments, AI algorithms and surveillance programs such as SpotShotter which attempt to calculate where illegal activity might occur by triangulating sounds and images, the burden of proof has been essentially reversed to such an extent that individuals are assumed guilty and must then prove their innocence.

“It’s not enough for the government to think that illegal activity is happening. The Constitution requires the government to provide solid proof of criminal activity before it can deprive a citizen of life or liberty,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “The ends do not justify the means, especially if it allows the government to rely on assumptions rather than evidence in order to fight crime. The ramifications of empowering the government to sidestep fundamental due process safeguards are so chilling and so far-reaching as to put a target on the back of anyone who happens to be in the same place where a crime takes place.”

In 2018, agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco, and Explosives (ATF) uncovered narcotics and drug paraphernalia at a Washington, D.C. barbershop and in the homes of those who ran the operation and acted as the gatekeeper. Although Lonnell Tucker was caught in the act of selling a small quantity of drugs to a government informant one time at the barbershop (a “controlled buy”), ATF agents lacked any direct proof that he was part of the drug trafficking operation. Nevertheless, a jury convicted Tucker of conspiring to sell drugs, basing its findings on circumstantial evidence (a drug dealer’s claim that Tucker was frequently at the barbershop “acting like [he] had a license to sell drugs”) and a single drug sale to a confidential informant. The court was supposed to base Tucker’s sentence in part on the amount of drugs attributed to him, which was the small amount of drugs sold in the controlled buy. However, despite any direct evidence to support its claims, the court reasoned that since Tucker was a frequent visitor to the barbershop, he had been selling drugs five times a week over the course of thirty weeks. Based on that speculative calculation (the small quantity of drugs involved in a single controlled buy multiplied by the possibility of five visits a week over the course of a 30-week investigation), the court sentenced Tucker to five years in prison. Tucker appealed and asked the D.C. Circuit Court to recalculate his sentence. However, the Court affirmed the prison term, relying on the trial court’s speculative calculation and disturbingly claiming that “drug quantity calculations are an art, not a science.” Appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, The Rutherford Institute joined a number of leading criminal law scholars and organizations to denounce such speculative sentencing practices.

Dawinder S. Sidhu, Shon R. Hopwood, and Kyle Singhal of Hopwood & Singhal PLLC advanced the arguments in the Tucker v. U.S. amicus brief.

The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.

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https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/

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