UN Announces Support for Obama's Nationalization of Police

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After recently demanding everything from “robust gun control” and reparations for slavery to constitutional amendments altering the supreme law of the land, the United Nations has now publicly endorsed the Obama administration’s illegal efforts to federalize America’s local police departments. A UN official also offered to provide “technical assistance” to the U.S. government in implementing its radical demands.

Specifically, a UN official from Kenya touted one of the many schemes used by the White House to impose unconstitutional federal regulations on local law enforcement. Dubbed “consent decrees,” the plot involves extremist bureaucrats at the Obama Justice Department threatening, bullying, and suing city governments into submission to Obama’s demands. The UN “lawyer” called for the administration’s commandeering of cops to be “beefed up” and “increased” to help nationalize as many of America’s police departments as possible.

Citing “international law,” the UN figure also attacked gun rights and the concealed carry of firearms. The latest UN assault on the God-given rights to keep and bear arms, protected by state and U.S. constitutions, came after a deluge of similar attacks coming from the global body, and its widely ridiculed “Human Rights Council” in particular. While the U.S. government is not currently represented, some of the most ruthless communist and Islamist dictatorships on the planet enjoy seats on the outfit.

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The UN bureaucrat boasted of the Obama administration’s “cooperation” in the supposed investigation. However, the reaction to the UN’s attacks was swift, with criticism of the UN, often ridiculed by critics as the “dictators club,” making headlines across America after being posted on the Drudge Report, the world’s top news and information site.

The bizarre attacks on fundamental freedoms, local police, and America’s federalist system of self-government under the U.S. Constitution were made following a recent official visit by a representative of the dictator-dominated UN “Human Rights Council.” The demands were issued by radical Kenyan lawyer Maina Kiai, whose formal title is UN “Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association.”

“The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has provided oversight and recommendations for improvement of police services in a number of cities with consent decrees,” the UN “Special Rapporteur” said in his initial findings. “This is one of the most effective ways to reduce discrimination in law enforcement and it needs to be beefed up and increased to cover as many of the 18,000-plus local law enforcement jurisdictions.”

As The New American has been reporting for many years, the executive branch has been abusing its power by threatening local police departments with lawsuits and then bullying them into accepting unconstitutional federal standards. Ironically, the DOJ cites the unconstitutional Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act to engage in the bullying — the very same Clinton-Biden law now blasted by race-mongers such as Kiai as racist due to the mass incarceration of black Americans under the “three strikes” scheme — to pursue the illegal federalization. After being threatened, local jurisdictions, faced with the overwhelming resources of the out-of-control federal government in biased federal courts, often simply agree to submit to federal regulations under “consent decrees” instead of fighting a long and costly legal battle to maintain their independence from the White House.

“The Obama administration has been especially aggressive in pushing this DOJ takeover of local policing,” The New American reported in its special issue, Police Under Fire, published last year exposing the real agenda behind nationalizing and attacking the police. Indeed, the Obama administration has been boasting about the abuses in press releases, bragging in 2014, for example, that it had bullied 15 police departments into agreements, including nine consent decrees of the sort touted by the UN bureaucrat. Citizens and police in New Orleans, Portland (Oregon), Detroit, Albuquerque, East Haven (Connecticut), Warren (Ohio), Puerto Rico, and more have all been victimized by the illegal scheme.

The dangerous calls for trashing America’s system of government by nationalizing the police, which are supposed to be accountable to local communities rather than Obama, was hardly the only extremism exhibited by the UN lawyer. Among other bizarre theories, Kiai also argued that gun rights were not compatible with freedom of assembly. In America, of course, freedom of assembly is protected in the Constitution’s First Amendment, while gun rights are enshrined in the Second Amendment. Historically, the rights have been complimentary, with the right to keep and bear arms being seen as necessary to the security of a free state in which everyone is free to peaceably assemble, speak freely, and so on.

For Kiai, though, despite the fact that the rights have been co-existing just fine for more than two centuries in America, gun rights need to go in the interest of UN-defined pseudo-“human rights” revocable under virtually any pretext. “I wish to underscore the challenges of exercising the right to peaceful assembly when there is open or concealed carriage of guns,” he said. Ironically, perhaps, he pointed to Ferguson, Missouri, where members of the pro-Constitution Oath Keepers law enforcement group — falsely demonized as “white people” by the UN extremist — helped protect businesses from looters and rioters.

The UN bureaucrat also claimed unnamed “police” supported his warped view, despite their oath to the Constitution, because it was “scary” to know that protesters might be carrying concealed weapons. “Under international law [sic], the peaceful character of a protest is largely determined by the intent of the organizers and participants,” Kiai claimed, without citing which “international law” he was referring to, or what made this alleged global “law” effective in America. “There is no need for peaceful protesters to carry intimidating guns.”

Continuing with the references to what he views as “international law,” Kiai also claimed the UN’s views on labor and unions should override the views of Americans as expressed through their elected representatives. “International human rights law explicitly sets out the rights of workers,” the UN “special rapporteur” claimed. In particular, he said, illegal immigrants, who he called “undocumented migrants,” were not having their alleged right to a union respected by employers or local authorities. “Crossing national borders — whether legally or otherwise — does not take away these rights,” he said.

The ignorance displayed throughout the anti-American screed was stunning. Among other examples, Kiai mistakenly referred to America as “one of the oldest democracies in the world.” In the real world, of course, America’s founders abhorred democracy, or mob rule, preferring instead to set up a republic in which the rule of law would protect the God-given rights of Americans.

Critics, though, slammed the UN comments, and the Obama administration’s stealth efforts to illegally commandeer American police departments. “The UN Human Rights Council, on which China and Venezuela and Cuba sit, is urging the Department of Justice to nationalize as many as 18,000 local police jurisdictions,” said Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning. “That is appalling on its face, but what’s worse is Justice has already been regulating local police for years. These sue and settle lawsuits have been implemented in Newark, N.J., Miami, Fla., Los Angeles, Calif., Ferguson, Mo., Chicago, Ill. and others. Requirements include how searches are conducted, the use of force, the mandatory use of on-body cameras by the police, and so on. The agreements impose years-long compliance review regimes and implementation deadlines and regular reviews by federal bureaucrats.”

“The Obama administration has been pursuing these cases for years, and it has largely gone unnoticed,” Manning said. “Congress never authorized federal regulation of local police departments and if Obama had requested it legislatively, they likely would have said no. The DOJ has been taking over local police under Congress’ noses using an expansive interpretation of federal law. The ball was dropped but now it must be picked up and Congress needs to stop the nationalizing of local police departments. The fact that the UN Human Rights Council — which includes some of the worst abusers of human rights in the world that hate the U.S. — is cheering for this DOJ national takeover of the police should tell members everything they need to know.”

“It’s time to support local police, not render them impotent via federal restrictions against maintaining law and order,” Manning concluded. “No less than the very existence of local government is at stake.”

In an article in LifeZette that was picked up by the Drudge Report and countless other media outlets across America, senior editor Robert Romano of Americans for Limited Government echoed those concerns, giving the UN and its extremism another major black eye.

Even while calling for American police to be nationalized, though, the UN is going even further. Among other programs, the outfit is now working on building up its own international “law enforcement” capabilities. With its so-called “peacekeeping” military troops facing outrage worldwide for raping and exploiting children with impunity, the UN’s push to expand and further empower its UN “police” force, known as UNPOL, would appear to be especially ill advised. At the same time, though, the controversial global organization is working to usurp more influence over existing national police forces. This June, the UN even brought together more than 100 national police chiefs at its first-ever UN “Chiefs of Police Summit” (UN COPS).

Before that, UN boss Ban Ki Moon, who now refers to the outfit he leads as the “Parliament of Humanity,” called on local American police officers to obey what he termed “international standards.” And already, American cops are being trained by the UN, as this magazine has documented. More recently, Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced support for a global policing scheme known as the “Strong Cities Network” that has become a lightning rod for criticism.

Fortunately, there is a very simple solution to the UN and its outrageous meddling in American affairs: an American exit, or Amexit, from the UN. Legislation sitting in Congress, dubbed the American Sovereignty Restoration Act (H.R. 1205), would not only end U.S. involvement with the UN, it would also evict the scandal-plagued outfit’s headquarters from U.S. soil. With the UN’s attacks on police, constitutionally protected liberties and even the American system of government becoming increasingly extreme, Americans should re-double their efforts to get the United States out of the UN with an Amexit. At the same time, as this magazine has advocated for decades, Americans should continue working to support their local police, and keep them independent of federal control.

Photo: AP Images

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at [email protected].