israeli police training for US local cops

 

"The Israelification of America’s security apparatus, recently unleashed in full force against the Occupy Wall Street Movement, has taken place at every level of law enforcement, and in areas that have yet to be exposed. The phenomenon has been documented in bits and pieces, through occasional news reports that typically highlight Israel’s national security prowess without examining the problematic nature of working with a country accused of grave human rights abuses. But it has never been the subject of a national discussion. And collaboration between American and Israeli cops is just the tip of the iceberg.

Having been schooled in Israeli tactics perfected during a 63 year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous population, local police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods in US cities. Meanwhile, former Israeli military officers have been hired to spearhead security operations at American airports and suburban shopping malls, leading to a wave of disturbing incidents of racial profiling, intimidation, and FBI interrogations of innocent, unsuspecting people. The New York Police Department’s disclosure that it deployed “counter-terror” measures against Occupy protesters encamped in downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park is just the latest example of the so-called War on Terror creeping into every day life. Revelations like these have raised serious questions about the extent to which Israeli-inspired tactics are being used to suppress the Occupy movement."  Max Blumenthal

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I have many times seen Israeli police and troops engaged against Palestinian civilians.  Maximum threat of violence, intimidation, use of rubber bullets that can kill, dogs, the readiness to use "ball" ammunition if necessary; these are all standard Israeli methods for dealing with an occupied people.  These are the same methods that were used by St. Louis County police in response to street demonstrations.  I find the crowds at Ferguson to be aesthetically unappealing but I insist that they should not be treated as though they are the "enemy" in a country occupied by the over-militarized police.  I understand that Michael Chertoff when he was Secretary of Homeland Security played a major role in setting up these mentoring relations with Israel.  At the same time DoD has been encouraged to dispose of surplus equipment by giving it to local cops.  What a convenient way to get this gear "off the books!"  The vehicles in particular are appropriate to a COIN campaign.  That is once again a discredited doctrine, and so DoD wants to get rid of it so that it can ask Congress for different equipment.

Some years ago I was on a state grand jury here in which a local cop testified.   I asked him why he wore a badge on his shirt that was clearly modeled on the regimental crest of the 1st Special Forces Regiment.  He said that he was a member of the Alexandria police SWAT team.  I asked him if he was prepared and ready to kill people in line of duty as a normal method of operations.  He said no.  I told him that if that was the case he should not wear our badge and that he should not think of himself in that way. pl 

http://exiledonline.com/max-blumenthal-how-israeli-occupation-forces-bahraini-monarchy-guards-trained-u-s-police-for-coordinated-crackdown-on-occupy-protests/

Comments

[steve]

Stars and Stripes has some interesting observations by combat veterans on the flawed use of force and tactics by the "militarized" Ferguson police department.

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/military-veterans-see-flawed-police-response-in-ferguson-1.298326

An aside--my Iowa town of 27,000 recently acquired a used MRAP. It was free of course, but what about its maintenance costs, let alone its possible use?

Hopefully, I will see it rusting away in a cornfield next spring.

The good news is that the acquisition was virtually universally panned by citizens.

[SamuelBurke]

Our Zionist gatekeepers are pulling out the usual barriers to mentioning Israel with regards the militarization of our police force.

http://www.truthrevolt.org/israel-revolt/glen-greenwald-blames-ferguson-unrest-israel

[AAL]

The now-infamous Albuquerque Police Dept., currently under DOJ scrutiny for the James Boyd shooting video that went viral, has reportedly put its MRAP up for sale. What's the MRSP on an MRAP these days?

[John Minnerath]

The 'militarization" of the police in the US at the local, county, and state level has been a disturbing trend for a number of years.
Having police able to deal with the issues of heavily armed drug gangs and other such elements is a valid point, how, when, and where they are used is where the problem arises.
Here we will be electing a new Sheriff this year, the incumbent is facing some opposition in part because he is seen by many as having been overly aggressive in his acquisition of surplus military equipment.

[oofda]

Also wonder about how much anabolic steroids some of the police are taking. Too many of them look like they have been working out and using steroids- which can affect judgement and temperment. Are they tested for steroids? "Joicers in Blue" is a phenoomena that is just being touched upon. Combine steroids and MRAPS and M-4s, and that makes trouble almost inevitable.

http://www.menshealth.com/health/scandals-cops-and-steroids

http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=1512&issue_id=62008

[Fred]

It didn't take long to go from "We are all Travon now" to we are all Palestinians. The president and his people should be proud of their achievement.

[Charles Dekle]

Given the performance of the IDF in Gaza, I find this statement by the FBI director ironic:
""The training and education you provide for the FBI and for law enforcement have never been more relevant. This especially includes the classes at the Holocaust Museum. At a time when law enforcement must be aggressive in stopping terror these classes provide powerful lessons on why we must always protect civil rights and uphold the rule of law."
- FBI Director Mueller speaking at ADL's National Commission Meeting in 2005"
http://archive.adl.org/learn/adl_law_enforcement/911_adl_law_enforcement.html?LEARN_Cat=Training&LEARN_SubCat=Training_News

It would seem that the Israelis are running the security apparatus in this country. If that is the case then we should stop paying those in our government entrusted with the job.

Regards,

[Kunuri]

Last summer I was a participant in Gezi protests in Istanbul. I have seen a massive assault by the extremely well armed, well drilled and ruthless police force attack mostly kids who were practicing their right to protest. I watched the whole thing from a high vantage point by chance, and I was awed. I commented here that Turkish police could have in no way have acted so efficiently on its own, I had suspected US training, and by implication Israeli training. I was sure about the equipment, US supplied, but tactics they used were classic. Such as unit cohesion, overwhelming numbers where they can mass numbers quickly and in formation, break apart the crowd, and pursue in small vicious squads firing water, gas and plastic bullets. Until then I had not even seen gas powered paint ball guns on Turkish cops. Anyway, days later when neighborhood cops could be seen in public, they were keen to let people know that they were not the cops that attacked the people. I see the same scene being played in Ferguson. Turkish water cannon trucks are no different than MRAPS, very scary...

Somewhere I had read that degree of civility in any society can be measured by number of on duty cops per citizen and the potential ability and propensity of the cops to use violence in the line of their duty. I lived in Switzerland for 5 years, and this holds true.

[SamuelBurke]

Here is the organization that rounds up our police forces to send them to our bff in the middle east. This is a win for the night-flower lobby.

http://projectinterchange.org/?p=6794

[Ex 11B]

Any of these clowns playing army can join up and be all tactical in the stan. But they might actually get shot at so no go on that. Bullies and cowards.

[HDL]

Justly slightly OT. Remember Tariq Khdair? I finally got a response from one of my US senators. After the obligatory "thank you for your service", and a recitation of the allegations, it was his "understanding that Tariq received treatment for injuries sustained during his arrest and was freed on bail, a condition of which was ten days of house arrest." He went to assure me that "the State Department is currently monitoring the situation and has publicly called for an expeditious, transparent, and credible investigation."
Well, I certainly feel much better about the whole thing,knowing that Kerry's Kids are 'monitoring"

[curtis]

A recent case in the Puget Sound area. He seems to have covered most bases of misbehavior.

"A former King County sheriff’s deputy accused of helping his estranged wife work as a prostitute, stealing department ammunition and illegally delivering testosterone pleaded guilty this afternoon in King County Superior Court...."

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2014/08/ex-king-county-deputy-pleads-guilty-to-prostitution-theft-and-drug-charges/

[NancyIK]

I hardly think the president feels he is a Palestinian or even identifies with them. Fred, be honest you are a republican and whatever the president did or didn't do you would find fault with. I voted twice for Obama and I wish he identified more with the Palestinians. All of our politicians seem to have a love fest when it comes to Israel.

[Tyler]

I've talked about how the militarization of police has been driven internally as well as externally. Police culture has changed with the veterans coming back from Afghanistan/Iraq bringing the techniques they learned there back here, and the old heads on the force not telling them no.

However, I don't know why anyone would want to be a police officer nowadays. Do your job, defend your life from a 300 pound strong arm robber, and next thing you know High Commissar Eric Holder is sic'ing the DoJ on you for violating someone's civil rights.

I'd say "be a fireman instead" but THOSE guys get sued by the DoJ too because the tests aren't easy enough for blacks to pass or something.

The US gets the emergency services it deserves.

[optimax]

At just over 7 minutes the sonic crowd control cannons and the smoke bombs begin. The crowd is at this point peaceful but the police over reaction ramps up the emotions. This looks like our future unless we make the local governments change course.

http://new.livestream.com/accounts/9035483/events/3271930/videos/59166942

http://www.ask.com/wiki/Sonic_weapon?o=2850&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com

The highway patrol taking over crowd control and staying low profile has calmed things down quite a bit.

[Cee]

Charles,

More than that...

White House and State Department officials who were leading U.S. efforts to rein in Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip were caught off guard last month when they learned that the Israeli military had been quietly securing supplies of ammunition from the Pentagon without their approval.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sway-over-israel-on-gaza-at-a-low-1407979365

[JohnH]

This brings back memories of the University of Wisconsin, 1968. All summer long, it seemed, the city council was debating whether to arm the police more heavily or not. Paul Soglin, the first to represent the heavily student section of town on the council, argued against it. His argument was simple: "If you give them more arms, they'll want to use them."

And that's exactly what happened. A few months later, the police had their new arms. Students continued to demonstrate against the war. The police intervened, over-reacted, and soon lost control. The National Guard had to bail them out.

Paul Soglin went on to become mayor. Back then, being right got rewarded.

And, back then, people had a say in whether to arm their police more heavily or not.

[Cee]

Kunuri,

I keep waiting for, as Howard Zinn wrote, The Coming Revolt of the Guards in A People's History of the United States...

pg 622 History which keeps alive the memory of people's resistance suggests new definitions of power. By traditional definitions, whoever possesses military strength, wealth, command of official ideology, cultural control, has power. Measured by these standards, popular rebellion never looks strong enough to survive.

However, the unexpected victories-even temporary ones-of insurgents show the vulnerability of the supposedly powerful. In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communications workers, garbage men and firemen. These people-the employed, the somewhat privileged-are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.

That will happen, I think, only when all of us who are slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see that we are like the guards in the prison uprising at Attica—expendable; that the Establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain its control, kill us.

All of us have become hostages in the new conditions of doomsday technology, runaway economics, global poisoning, uncontainable war. The atomic weapons, the invisible radiations, the economic anarchy, do not distinguish prisoners from guards, and those in charge will not be scrupulous in making distinctions. There is the unforgettable response of the U.S. high command to the news that American prisoners of war might be near Nagasaki: "Targets previously assigned for Centerboard remain unchanged."

There is evidence of growing dissatisfaction among the guards.... The elite's weapons, money, control of information would be useless in the face of a determined population. The servants of the system would refuse to work to continue the old, deadly order, and would begin using their time, their space-the very things given them by the system to keep them quiet-to dismantle that system while creating a new one.

[Cee]

Col. Lang,

Thank you for your thoughts on this topic.

[Cee]

Kunuri,

I forgot to add this. I wonder where on earth these new trainees are being used. Turkey? Iran? Perhaps Nigeria? Someone there ordered an attack on people demonstrating against what was being done in Gaza.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ZWijzG6qQ

[Fred]

NancyIK,

You don't like the analogy? Obama may have made the statement about Travon but the majority of the African American leadership was taking that rhetorical stand. It is not the President's role to quell a riot in a suburb of St. Louis, that is a job for the Governor of Missouri. He's the one who dragged his feet in the mater.

[fanto]

I am in process of calling all US Senators offices, so far 30 checked off my list - to say how awful is their stand on Gaza, and how Americans will "pay" for the slow extermination of Gaza people, in many years to come.

[Kunuri]

Thank you for the insightful comment above, I shall find and read the book.

The trainees in the video clip, seemed to be a bunch of fantasists and opportunists seeking protection employment from some rich Gulf Sheik, who would boast to his buddies that his bodyguard is Israeli Mossad trained. Turkey and Nigeria oligarchs as well, but I don't think Iranians will be impressed. Neither the Russians.

[Kunuri]

Tyler, I am sure you heard the term "use of disproportionate force", Israeli style, and the maxim that if "the security forces are armed to the teeth, they will use it." Add to that legal system that does not favor citizens civil rights, and human rights, you will have many Gezi Parks, Fergusons, and Kent States.

If there are indeed only two choices, Rambo police force on steroids or emergency services in shambles, and an overly restrained and weak police force, I will take the latter.

[Kunuri]

I just read this, I totally agree with you. I wrote almost exactly the same thing 5 minutes ago. Well armed cops with state authority on steroids means trouble every step of the way.