The federal government will stop at nothing to gain control over all local law enforcement. Finally, some patriotic lawmen are exposing the unconstitutional effort for what it is: tyranny.
In an interview earlier this year with Defend Utah, deputy sheriff Beau Babka was asked if he had personally seen reports from federal agents “demonizing constitutionalists.”
“Yes. Absolutely,” Babka responded.
And the demonization of patriots will only increase as the federal government plans and performs joint training tasks with local police departments and sheriffs’ offices.
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As the military transitions into a tech-heavy force, increasingly reliant on robots and drones, local police forces are looking less like law enforcement and more like heavily armored combat units. Now, it seems they are starting to train like them, as well.
On September 29, Defending Utah spoke with David Browning, police chief of the city of Enoch, Utah. Browning told the group that he has personally participated in federal training exercises. He said that the federal agent in charge of the exercise informed local law enforcement participants that “the mere carrying of the U.S. Constitution constituted an individual being a potential threat.”
A story published by The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, reported on recent secret joint training missions between U.S. Army special forces and the Richland County (South Carolina) Sheriff’s Department.
The article describes training exercises being conducted by “unidentified units” from Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. Ft. Bragg is the home of the elite U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) and the super-secret, super-deadly Delta Force.
A spokesman for the Richland County Sheriff’s Department refused to identify who was participating in the exercise or why it was being carried out. The department did, however, issue a press release, warning that the war games could get loud. “Citizens may see military and departmental vehicles traveling in and around rural and metropolitan areas and may hear ordnance being set off or fired which will be simulated/blanks and controlled by trained personnel,” it declared.
In a free society, police officers are more likely to be viewed as friends whose purpose is “to protect and serve” their fellow citizens. Their numbers are few and their firepower and other means of enforcement are not so immense and intimidating as to cow and overawe the local citizenry, from whom, ultimately, they receive their authority — and their paychecks. In an authoritarian or totalitarian society, on the other hand, police officers are viewed with fear and suspicion as agents of a despotic central government, vested with the authority and means to deprive the hapless citizenry of life, property, and liberty at whim. In many countries, the police force is a ubiquitous, nationalized gendarmerie that is indistinguishable from the military establishment, of which it is, in many cases, merely a subsidiary.
As the number of U.S. troop-heavy foreign interventions decreases, the warcraft and weaponry used in battle are now being deployed in American neighborhoods as the members, machines, and methods of law enforcement become increasingly indistinguishable from those of the military.
Steadily and speedily, the forces of the militarized police are 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.
When they are patrolling the streets of their cities, cops these days look more like soldiers or Darth Vader-esque Imperial Storm Troopers than police, thanks again to the buckets of cash dumped into coffers by Homeland Security. Self-serving bureaucrats inside the U.S. government are tirelessly trying to obliterate local police forces answerable to local citizens and promote the consolidation movement as a step toward nationalization of all law enforcement.
These proponents of regional and national police forces desire nothing less than the eradication of all local police departments and sheriffs’ offices, the surrender of state and municipal sovereignty, and the conversion of cops into federal security agents sworn not to protect and to serve their neighbors, but to protect the prerogatives of politicians, precisely the type of tyrannical symbiosis that our Founders feared would one day obliterate the liberty they sacrificed so much to preserve.
As for the federal government, it will respond as always, promising Americans protection from “police brutality,” a practice that would not be such a scourge were it not for the weapons, money, and training given to local law enforcement by those same “saviors!”
This strategy is as old as tyranny itself. From Philip of Macedon to Barack Obama, despots throughout time have always been adept at manufacturing crises and civil upheaval for the sole and sinister purpose of compelling citizens to clamor for deliverance, deliverance they are all too happy to provide — at a cost.
In order to avoid following the path of disintegration taken by so many of the self-governing peoples of the past, we must rebuild the barriers to tyranny — namely, nullification. That is to say, the refusal of states to participate in any unconstitutional program of the federal government, no matter how alluring, financially or otherwise.
Next, as Americans we must reassert our natural right to protect and police ourselves. I described this scenario in a recent article:
Although police officers are the most visible components of today’s law-enforcement apparatus, it wasn’t always this way. In fact, for most of the early history of the United States, the investigation of crime and the arresting of suspects was not carried out by a professional cadre of full-time police officers at all.
Before the creation of the modern police force, the members of society believed that they themselves were endowed by natural law with very broad law-enforcement power. In fact, it was only the so-called executive functions of the law (issuing warrants, carrying out judicial orders, delivering summons) that were carried out by lawmen.
In the early days of the Republic, these duties were assigned by the people to sheriffs or constables, who would be chosen from among the people themselves. They were chosen (elected, often, but sometimes appointed) by the people and thus were accountable to them. No one would have imagined being a sheriff for life. Acting as a county sheriff was seen as an act of public service, not as a career. One would leave his profession when called upon by his fellow citizens and then, once the prescribed term of his public service was over, the sheriff would return to his former profession, living among those he recently served.
This arrangement continued to be common practice even as late as the 1830s when the renowned Alexis de Tocqueville visited America. De Tocqueville found that in America the “means available to the authorities for the discovery of crimes and arrest of criminals [are] very few.” To his surprise, however, he found that there was likely no country on Earth where “crime so seldom escapes punishment.”
How did we manage? How is it that in an era when the people themselves assumed most of the burden of investigating crimes and bringing lawbreakers to justice, the streets were safer and the cities more well-ordered?
The answer is found in the wisdom of our Founders. Men and women who desire to live in a peaceful, safe society should be responsible for making it so. Sheriffs elected or appointed by the people should be tasked with carrying out the executive functions of law enforcement, but it is the responsibility of the people themselves to watch, warn, and weed out.
Perhaps, if we can convince the many good, constitutionally minded police chiefs and sheriffs to support this plan and to reject all offers of money, materiel, or management from the federal government, liberty can be restored, the relationship between police and people can be repaired, and the future of self-government can be secured “for ourselves and our posterity.”
