The Community Relations Service is the Department's "peacemaker" for community conflicts and tensions arising from differences of race, color, and national origin. Created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, CRS is the only Federal agency dedicated to assist State and local units of government, private and public organizations, and community groups with preventing and resolving racial and ethnic tensions, incidents, and civil disorders, and in restoring racial stability and harmony.
CRS lends its services when requested or accepted by the parties. The Service uses impartial mediation practices and conflict resolution procedures to help local leaders resolve problems and restore stability. CRS has no law enforcement authority and does not impose solutions, investigate, prosecute, or assign blame and fault.
From the CRS web site
Nevertheless,
Judicial Watch announced today that it "has obtained documents in response to local, state, and federal records requests revealing that a little-known unit of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Community Relations Service (CRS), was deployed to Sanford, FL, following the Trayvon Martin shooting
to help organize and manage rallies and protests against George Zimmerman." [My emphasis.]
Read the earthshaking details from the newly-emerged unearthed exposed revealed documents below the fold.
According to the documents:
March 25 – 27, 2012, CRS spent $674.14 upon being “deployed to Sanford, FL, to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.”
March 25 – 28, 2012, CRS spent $1,142.84 “in Sanford, FL to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.
March 30 – April 1, 2012, CRS spent $892.55 in Sanford, FL “to provide support for protest deployment in Florida.”
March 30 – April 1, 2012, CRS spent an additional $751.60 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance to the City of Sanford, event organizers, and law enforcement agencies for the march and rally on March 31.”
April 3 – 12, 2012, CRS spent $1,307.40 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance, conciliation, and onsite mediation during demonstrations planned in Sanford.”
April 11 – 12, 2012, CRS spent $552.35 in Sanford, FL “to provide technical assistance for the preparation of possible marches and rallies related to the fatal shooting of a 17 year old African American male.”
More of the same damning through foggy reasoning in links below. I can't yet find anyone else covering this story any more reasonably (strange, that).
Please if you find links cover the issue from another angle than blaming this unit of the DOJ for something for which there is no evidence whatsoever, and for doing something which appears to be the oppisite of what they actually did, let us know in the comments.
http://dailycaller.com/...
http://www.foxnews.com/...
Thousands of posters were printed demanding Zimmerman's arrest for killing Martin. These signs were funded by the Service Employees International Union local 1199, a health care workers union (dailymail)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...
http://www.washingtontimes.com/...
Media Matters and Rush Limbaugh making it a right/left issue:
Limbaugh Accuses DOJ "Peacemakers" Of Organizing Anti-Zimmerman Protests
(media matters, says the 'Peacekeepers' were there to cool tensions.)
http://mediamatters.org/...
Obama Regime Organized Trayvon Protests
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/...
Note: This diary and its title have undergone rewriting, which may explain the relationship between it and some of the comments below (some comments refer to that which has been rewritten.)