Canadian oil pipeline company, Enbridge, is in the process of updating one of its pipelines, Line 3, that runs through Minnesota, carrying oil from Alberta to Lake Superior, in Wisconsin. The new pipeline will double the capacity of the previous one, and carves a new route through pristine wetlands.
Indigenous people in Minnesota are protesting the new pipeline, saying the new route violates treaty rights of Anishinaabe people in its path, affecting their ability to cultivate wild rice, which grows in numerous watersheds Line 3 is scheduled to cross. The wild rice is a staple of the Anishinaabe diet and a centerpiece of their culture. A leak in the pipeline could poison enormous areas of their lands and food supply.
In order to manage the protests from the affected people in the path of the pipeline, Enbridge, rather than follow the more standard policy of hiring private security, and the Minnesota police, rather than acting as neutral arbiters of the law, ensuring peaceful compliance on both sides, entered into an agreement to “reimburse” the state and the police for the cost of monitoring protests at the construction sites. An agreement that entailed police surveillance of protesters, and their arrest on the command of the company, apparently regardless of the legality of the protesters activities.
Is it necessary to point out that peaceful protest is a Constitutionally protected civil right, or that police using violence to suppress legal protest — especially at the behest of, and/or on the payroll of a private corporation (especially a foreign corporation) — is a violation of the Constitution?
Police have arrested more than 900 demonstrators, according to the Pipeline Legal Action Network.
From the Guardian:
The Canadian company Enbridge has reimbursed US police $2.4m for arresting and surveilling hundreds of demonstrators who oppose construction of its Line 3 pipeline, according to documents the Guardian obtained through a public records request.
The story in the Intercept is even more telling in that the primary concern of the police involved appears to have been not that they were violating their oaths as public servants, which they were, but that they might not get paid, or paid enough, because the managers of the Minnesota Public Utility Commission might grift the money they had rightfully grifted — sorry, might not “understand” policing well enough to reimburse them for common policing essentials like tear gas, rubber bullets, and cheeseburgers.*
Mind you, it is not generally sound public policy to allow public agencies to decide how much money, paid to the state, should be distributed to their own agencies, or for the agency to have a hand in picking the people who decide how much money they are paid (oh, those silly ethics!). That must be solely up to those employees of the state and public trust whose job it is to manage the budget, without fear or favor.
Further, both the police and the PUC are public employees, obligated by law to work in the interests of the community as a whole, including the indigenous people of Minnesota and Minnesota taxpayers, not to act as paid enforcers for a corrupt foreign corporation. Nether organization seems to feel that hiring the police out as private thugs violates any aspect of their public duty.
From the Intercept:
Last June, Kanabec County Sheriff Brian Smith wrote an email to other sheriffs along the pipeline route. “I think we need to let the PUC know that the person selected needs to be someone that we also agree upon,” Smith wrote.
—
The exchange between the sheriffs is an example of the public-private collaborations between law enforcement and fossil fuel companies that have raised alarms for civil rights advocates and environmental activists across the U.S.
Spokespersons for the protesters point out this arrangement is highly unethical.
“Our police are beholden to a foreign company,” Tara Houska, founder of the Indigenous frontline group Giniw Collective, told the Guardian. “They are working hand in hand with big oil. They are actively working for a company. Their duty is owed to the state of Minnesota and to the tribal citizens of Minnesota.”
“It’s a very clear violation of the public’s trust,” she added.
So this is where we are. Police and state graft and corruption right out in the open. Now the police are renting themselves out as modern day Pinkerton thugs when foreign corporations need muscle to violate the civil and Constitutional rights of American citizens.
A deal such as this should never even have been contemplated by either the PUC or the police. It is an ethical violation on every level. Police must never be incentivized to commit violence, abuse their authority, or engage in violations of public trust at the behest of private business, or in return for payment. There must never be even the hint that police have abused their authority for profit, or that the authority of the police is for sale to the highest bidder.
Everyone involved in the decision to do so needs to be fired and, quite possibly, prosecuted.
This is America.
—
*As a general rule, police must pay for their own meals. It is a violation of legal ethics to accept any form of gratuity, including reimbursement for normally unreimbursable items, such as food.