Recently the Intercept has reported on the efforts by the FBI to investigate domestic terrorist organizations including neo-Nazis, white supremacists, sovereign citizens and right-wing terrorists infiltrating our local police forces.
White Supremacist and other domestic extremists maintain an active presence in U.S. police departments and other law enforcement agencies. A striking reference to that conclusion, notable for its confidence and the policy prescriptions that accompany it, appears in a classified FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide from April 2015, obtained by The Intercept. The guide, which details the process by which the FBI enters individuals on a terrorism watchlist, the Known or Suspected Terrorist File, notes that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers,” and explains in some detail how bureau policies have been crafted to take this infiltration into account.
This infiltration includes covert supremacist operatives called “ghost skins” who the FBI guide states are encouraged and trained to “blend in” to regular society without displaying their real views while advancing the goals of supremacists and also that they have implemented a strategy of protecting these investigations from discovery by specific officers who actually been added to the terrorist watch list by hiding that information within the NCIC and other national crime databases from them.
And it goes like this...
In a heavily redacted version of an October 2006 FBI internal intelligence assessment, the agency raised the alarm over white supremacist groups’ “historical” interest in “infiltrating law enforcement communities or recruiting law enforcement personnel.” The effort, the memo noted, “can lead to investigative breaches and can jeopardize the safety of law enforcement sources or personnel.” The memo also states that law enforcement had recently become aware of the term “ghost skins,” used among white supremacists to describe “those who avoid overt displays of their beliefs to blend into society and covertly advance white supremacist causes.” In at least one case, the FBI learned of a skinhead group encouraging ghost skins to seek employment with law enforcement agencies in order to warn crews of any investigations.
That report appeared after a series of scandals involving local police and sheriff’s departments. In Los Angeles, for example, a U.S. District Court judge found in 1991 that members of a local sheriff’s department had formed a neo-Nazi gang and habitually terrorized black and Latino residents. In Chicago, Jon Burge, a police detective and rumored KKK member, was fired, and eventually prosecuted in 2008, over charges relating to the torture of at least 120 black men during his decadeslong career. Burge notoriously referred to an electric shock device he used during interrogations as the “nigger box.” In Cleveland, officials found that a number of police officers had scrawled “racist or Nazi graffiti” throughout their department’s locker rooms. In Texas, two police officers were fired when it was discovered they were Klansmen. One of them said he had tried to boost the organization’s membership by giving an application to a fellow officer he thought shared his “white, Christian, heterosexual values.”
Let me repeat, we’re not talking hypothetical here, we’re talking actual walking talking neo-Nazis, skinheads and supremacist with badges and guns.
During the Obama Administration the DOJ Civil Rights division investigated 20 different local police departments for a systemic “pattern and practice” of discrimination. 14 of those departments including Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, Ferguson, New Orleans and Puerto Rico who were eventually placed under consent decrees which through the oversight of Federal Judges are intended to gradually correct the lack of training, problems and abuses that seem to exist in these departments.
The idea there was in addressing the systemic tendency for persons of color to be presumed guilty until proven innocent, where the benefit of the doubt and the deference that is sometimes granted to white people who encounter the police — which is generally described by the constitutions as “reasonable suspicion” and “probable cause” — that black and latino people simply do not receive as frequently.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics does not show a correlation between race and crime or violence, but rather between poverty rate and violence.
For the period 2008–12— Persons in poor households at or below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) (39.8 per 1,000) had more than double the rate of violent victimization as persons in high-income households (16.9 per 1,000). Persons in poor households had a higher rate of violence involving a firearm (3.5 per 1,000) compared to persons above the FPL (0.8–2.5 per 1,000). The overall pattern of poor persons having the highest rates of violent victimization was consistent for both whites and blacks. However, the rate of violent victimization for Hispanics did not vary across poverty levels. Poor Hispanics (25.3 per 1,000) had lower rates of violence compared to poor whites (46.4 per 1,000) and poor blacks (43.4 per 1,000). Poor persons living in urban areas (43.9 per 1,000) had violent victimization rates similar to poor persons living in rural areas (38.8 per 1,000). Poor urban blacks (51.3 per 1,000) had rates of violence similar to poor urban whites (56.4 per 1,000).
Yet at the same time the BJS notes that as a typical manner of practice police departments tend to target black and latino citizens by a rate of 2 or 3 to 1 over others for stops, searches, arrests and officer violence despite their actual likelyhood of committing a crime.
o The most common reason for contact with police in 2008 was being a driver in a traffic stop (44.1%)
o Black drivers were about three times as likely as white drivers and about two times as likely as Hispanic drivers to be searched during a traffic stop.
...from 2002 through 2008 that Black citizens encountering police received threats of force, or use of force at least Three Times More Often than White citizens. Latinos citizens were threatened with force, or had force used on them about Twice as Often.
...the percentage of Blacks that are arrested during traffic stops is twice (4.7% to 2.4%) as high as White Drivers. And similarly their likelyhood of being ticketed is greater (58% to 53%) - although Latinos top them both at 62% - and their likelyhood of receiving a written warning (14.8% to 17.7%) or a verbal warning (6.0% to 11.2%) are consistently lower.
Of course when you specifically target black and brown people for stops, searches and arrests it only follows that more of them are going to be in our jail system creating the circular justification for the policy to stop, search and arrest them in the first place. But that doesn’t mean fair justice is being applied.
This analysis has been verified by independent studies and as bad as all that is — it is nothing compared to idea of neo-Nazi groups deliberating creating footholds and racist “gangs” within law enforcement that use an electric shock interrogation “nigger box”.
That’s some next level badness there.
And it’s not like were weren’t warned of this possibility with Homeland Security released it’s report on Right-Wing Terror back in 2009, arguing that there was a particular issue with terroristic violence from former members of the military and paramilitary militias. Since that time there have been several such attacks including the mass murder at the Sihk temple in Wisconsin by Wade Michael Page who became a radicalized neo-Nazi in the Army.
When Wade Michael Page strode into a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., and began to murder people, it was the culmination of more than a decade in the neo-Nazi movement. The best evidence suggests that Page initially came to his beliefs while serving at a North Carolina Army base that was then a hotbed of white supremacist activity, but they were honed by a dozen years on the white power music scene.
The reports concern about veterans who may be on the edge of snapping was also confirmed in 2013 with the Navy Shipyard shooting by veteran Aaron Alexis who seems to have been suffering from delusions. And also there was this…
In a 2011 article, the FBI’s counterterrorism analysis section called sovereign citizens “a growing domestic threat to law enforcement.” In one 2010 incident, two Arkansas police officers were killed when 16-year-old sovereign citizen Joseph Kane fired on them with an AK-47 assault rifle after he and his father were pulled over for a routine stop.
And yet we didn’t hear the quaintly not ironic “Blue Lives Matter” mantra then, now did we?
Following the massive complaint and outcry from the right that this report was “political persecution” the group within Homeland Security that produced it was disbanded, even though they’d previously done a similar report on “Left-Wing Terrorism”, since then generally the issue of right-wing fostered terrorism has remained off the radar even though the chances of being killed in America by a mass shooting terrorist attack from a white christian are far greater than a brown Muslim as shown by Mother Jones table of all mass shootings since 1981.
From the perspective of the victims the totals are Asian Mass Shooters (6 incidents, 72 killed, 31 wounded), Black mass shooters, (12 incidents, 116 killed, 94 wounded), Muslim Mass Shooters (4 incidents, 81 killed, 106 wounded), White mass shooters (47 incidents, 561 killed, 628 wounded).
Apparently It was so bad that the FBI has apparently adopted a strategy of blocking the information they’re gathering on specific “ghost skins” and white nationalist who are members of and affiliated with law enforcement.
According to the Guide, the FBI has the option to mark a watchlisted police officer as a “silent hit,” thus preventing queries to the National Crime Information Center, a clearinghouse for crime data accessible to law enforcement agencies nationwide, from returning a record that identifies the officer as having been flagged as a known or suspected terrorist. The document states that a “specific, narrowly defined, and legitimate operational justification” must be given in order to mark a Known or Suspected Terrorist (KST) entry as a silent hit. The suspect’s membership or affiliation with a law enforcement or military agency with access to the NCIC database is one of the specific justifications listed, implying that extremist infiltration is enough of a concern that the FBI has built-in protocols to prevent domestic terrorism investigations from being obstructed by members of law enforcement.
The FBI is tracking officers who have been flagged as known and suspected terrorists, and are so concerned that are hiding portions of the NCIC from them.
Let that one sink in for a bit.
The FBI frequently works with and aids local law enforcement but at the same time they are charged with investigating local police and battling terrorism. Even when those suspected terrorists are police. Police sworn to “serve and protect”, allegedly.
The last thing you want to have happen is for the targets of your investigation to realize that they’re the target of an investigation. Like when members of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department discovered they were the target of an FBI investigation for their pattern of inmate abuse and they kidnapped the informant who had tipped off the FBI and made him “disappear” within the jail system.
The inmate informant at the heart of a widespread civil rights scandal overshadowing the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department says he was moved to different jails and hidden in cars to keep him from talking to his FBI handlers.
Anthony Brown says he was kidnapped by deputies, held in isolation and watched around the clock so that federal agents wouldn't be able to contact their chief whistleblower in a massive investigation that has led to 20 arrests within the country's biggest sheriff's office.
"I'm supposed to be a criminal," Brown told KABC-TV in an exclusive interview broadcast Wednesday. But "these are people that are sworn to uphold the law."
Now just imagine if those deputies were also neo-Nazis or aligned with the Sovereign citizens movement while we have a fresh new alt-Right and KKK approved POTUS in charge and the FBI themselves have shown signs of being “Trump land.”
This my friends, is potentially a very, very bad thing.
Thursday, Feb 2, 2017 · 1:59:48 AM +00:00
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Frank Vyan Walton
More bad news.
President Donald Trump's administration wants to change a counter-extremism program so that it focuses solely on "radical Islamic extremism," Reuters reported on Friday, citing five unnamed sources briefed on the matter.
The "Countering Violent Extremism" program, which currently aims to lone attackers or groups through community partnerships, would no longer focus on groups like white supremacist organizations which have carried out attacks in the United States, according to the report.
Per Reuters, the program would be renamed "Countering Islamic Extremism" or "Countering Radical Islamic Extremism."
