This is a heads-up for an article put up at Salon 8-30-08. Glenn Greenwald reported police SWAT teams are doing pre-emptive raids on groups planning protest activities around the GOP convention. The purpose is intimidation pure and simple, the raids frightening, and the legality questionable.
The raids are designed to instill fear, send a message, and gather intelligence by seizing laptops, computers, journals and whatever else the police want to sweep up. (This is also intended to disrupt the activities of the targeted groups.) The police are described as heavily armed and not gentle in their tactics. Some people have been arrested and held for a time. Some may still be in jail.
Think any of this will be on the national news tonight, or be mentioned at the convention? Think the import of this will register with the chattering classes, busy wondering "What would Tim Russert do?"
It can happen here. It IS happening here. Make your own plans accordingly. (more)
This is an example of something that's been taking shape in America for a long time. While we've been mostly oblivious, thinking (if we think about it all) that this is the kind of thing that only happens elsewhere to other people, a sea change has been taking place in America. We've been building up a domestic military force under the radar, that can be used against us any time the authorities deem it necessary. It has been a bi-partisan effort, based on one simple motiviation: FEAR.
Fear makes people stupid. Fear makes people give up their freedoms. Fear makes Democratic politicians vote for policies that are anathema to everything America is supposed to stand for, everything the Party of Hope is supposed to fight. Fear of drugs. Fear of crime. Fear of Terrorists. Fear of Liberals or being called a Liberal.
Fear is the strongest weapon the GOP has in their arsenal. Fear constantly stalks Red America. Fear rules the land. Fear is coming to the Twin Cities. See it at work.
Here's an article from the Star Tribune.
Police raid RNC protest sites in Twin Cities
By Abby Simons, Heron Marquez Estrada and Bill McAuliffe, Star Tribune
Last update: August 30, 2008 - 2:04 PM
Ramsey County authorities raided several Minneapolis homes and a St. Paul building on Friday and Saturday as a pre-emptive strike against disruptive protests of the Republican National Convention.
Five people were arrested and more than 100 were handcuffed, questioned and released by scores of deputies and police officers, according to police and elected officials familiar with the raids.
In a statement Saturday morning, Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said the St. Paul raid targeted the RNC Welcoming Committee, a group he described as "a criminal enterprise made up of 35 self-described anarchists...intent on committing criminal acts before and during the Republican National Convention."
emphasis added
Greenwald:
Jane Hamsher and I were at two of those homes this morning -- one which had just been raided and one which was in the process of being raided. Each of the raided houses is known by neighbors as a "hippie house," where 5-10 college-aged individuals live in a communal setting, and everyone we spoke with said that there had never been any problems of any kind in those houses, that they were filled with "peaceful kids" who are politically active but entirely unthreatening and friendly.
Greenwald linked to this NY Times story:
Dozens Detained Ahead of Convention
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
Published: August 30, 2008
People organizing demonstrations related to the Republican National Convention said that members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department had detained dozens of people on Friday night inside a building in St. Paul that was being used as a protest-planning headquarters.
Police released one person at a time from a protest-planning headquarters where people were detained in St. Paul on Friday night.
People who had been inside the building said that officers entered shortly after 8:30 p.m., saying they had a warrant and instructing the occupants to lie on the ground.
“They handcuffed all of us,” said Sonia Silbert, 28, from Washington. “They searched everyone.”
The police timing is deliberate by my guess: do this on the weekend where it's not likely to get much notice, and let it die down before the convention coverage begins in earnest. Sarah Palin and Hurricane Gustav are another factor, sucking up news cycles and tying up the blogosphere, though this diary by Ken Avidor did get posted at Kos.
After the Bush administration has spent the last 6 years hyping terror threats everywhere and throwing out money at police departments for purposes of Homeland Security, one of the effects has been the creation of police anti-terrorism units, which build off years of funding for anti-drug units as well. War on Drugs, meet War on Terror; these programs happen to turn the cops into a domestic paramilitary force with unfortunate consequences. The Cato Institute has documented some of them.
White Paper
July 17, 2006
Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America
by Radley Balko
Executive Summary
Americans have long maintained that a man’s home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.
These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.
This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.
emphasis added
While the Cato paper is largely concerned with drug raids gone wrong, the Twin Cities raids show that these units/tactics can also be used by authorities to suppress political activity they disapprove of; the 2004 presidential campaign demonstrated this time and time again. These units are not just in big cities any more; they're all around the country. Combine these with the recent raids on illegals, and the picture that emerges should be profoundly disturbing to everyone. David Niewert has been doing excellent work to lay out the details of America's schizophrenic war on its own ideals.
The 'Knock on the Door" in the middle of the night is a cliche - but these days the door is just as likely to be kicked open by heavily armed and armored people assuming the worst and prepared to dish it out in return.
And this is the Freedom they're supposed to hate us for? Glenn Greenwald in an earlier piece at Salon on this deliberate march into a police state noted it is still being largely ignored by the Democratic party - which all too often has rushed to enable it to avoid being called 'weak' by the thugs currently running the GOP, aided and abetted by the corrupt subservient traditional media.
First, there is almost no mention of, let alone focus on, the sheer radicalism and extremism of the last eight years. During that time, our Government has systematically tortured people using sadistic techniques ordered by the White House; illegally and secretly spied on its own citizens; broken more laws than can be counted based on the twisted theory that the President has that power; asserted the authority to arrest and detain even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and hold them for years without charges; abolished habeas corpus; created secret prisons in Eastern Europe and a black hole of lawlessness in Guantanamo; and explicitly abandoned and destroyed virtually every political value the U.S. has long claimed to embrace.
This is what the Republicans are gathering in the Twin Cities to celebrate; this is what John McCain really stands for. The Rule of Fear.
This is what Barack Obama must defeat.
UPDATE: Lindsay Beyerstein at Firedoglake has more on the raids. Jane Hamsher complements Greenwald's article.
UPDATE: Since I have to wait to post this, I'm adding links to prior diaries at Kos turned up by searching on the phrase "police raids" Greenwald et. all are continuing to follow it up - where's the traditional media? This story deserves lots more attention for a number of reasons. As in:
• How did the police come to target these groups?
• Where is the information they're collecting from seized computers going, and who can access it?
• What kind of surveillance is going on in general?
• Who ordered the police to stage these raids, and why?
• Where are the judges who are supposed to rule on these things?
• How far away are we from the Chinese Olympics model, where all protests must be registered first with the police, all participants must be listed, and the protest can only be held in a designated area IF approved?
Here's the other diaries I turned up, in no particular order or precedence:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...