Banditti in Blue

(Thanks to the Strike The Root blog.)


A robber poses with his loot: The lucrative racket called "asset forfeiture," in which police steal money, cars, homes, and other valuables without convicting their owners of crimes, is a major reason why the fraudulent "War on Drugs" continues.


David Seward's problem wasn't his greed. It was his inability to transmute that greed into public policy.


Until August 2006, Seward was Chief of Police for the town of Troy, Texas (pop. circa 1,400). As I noted in this space shortly after the event, Seward was fired -- along with the three other officers who composed the police force -- amid accusations that he had misappropriated funds "seized during criminal investigations." Specifically, the money was confiscated after drugs were found in a car during a traffic stop.


He allegedly blew a relatively trivial sum -- described in the misdemeanor criminal complaint as "more than $500 and less than $1,500" -- on clothes, meals, gasoline, a rental car, vacations, and an embroidery machine (presumably for his wife).


For a brief period, Troy was deprived of the dubious protection of a police force, relying instead on the Bell County Sheriff's Department. Regrettably, the City Council reversed itself and reconstituted the police force.


Although Seward was arrested and booked on the theft charge earlier this year, he failed to appear for a June 11 court appearance and his current whereabouts are unknown.


Although he is the subject of an arrest warrant, the prosecutor very generously declined to tack on a "failure to appear" charge, as he doubtless would were the accused a mundane, rather than a former police chief. Furthermore, Bell County assistant prosecutor Ken Kalafut "did not know if law enforcement officers were actively seeking Seward," reported the Waco Tribune.


It's obvious that capturing Seward is not a pressing priority for his successors. After all, asset forfeiture -- the seizure of cash, cars, homes, and other valuables from people who are often neither convicted of, nor charged with, a criminal offense -- is a huge business in Texas, netting some $125 million for police agencies last year.


With such sums slopping police troughs across the state, it's impossible to believe that Seward's piffling misuse of a few hundred dollars here and there was the most serious instance of official corruption involving "forfeited" money. If he had somehow been able to swaddle his avarice in a serviceable bureaucratic rationale, Seward would still have his job.


Indeed, Seward's lack of discipline cost him what could have been a very lucrative gig. As Texas towns go, Troy (represented by the red dot on the map) is an insignificant insect, but it's a mosquito that's drilled into a major artery -- in this case, Interstate-35, which serves as a major conduit for drug traffickers and other traffic to and from Mexico.


This provides a ready-made rationale for seizing cash and other pelf from "suspicious" motorists, and anybody else who blunders into a traffic stop in or near Troy. In fact, according to a recent federal court ruling, the mere possession of a large amount of cash by a motorist provides sufficient justification for its seizure by law enforcement.


If he'd been blessed with a gift for "creative writing," or had the minimal self-control to avoid stealing small amounts of money, Seward could have turned his four-man police force into a lucrative shake-down outfit: A small town sitting astride a major interstate in the middle of nowhere would have been an ideal speed trap, and every traffic stop would be a chance for a big haul.


Support Your Local Highway Robber: Brian Gilbert, former Dallas County (Iowa) Sheriff, convicted of stealing $120,000 in "forfeited" money. Is it just me, or does he look a bit like Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy), the "King Sh*t" Washington cop from First Blood (below, right)?


That's how things worked for the Sheriff's Department of Dallas County, Iowa, located along Interstate 85, which is perhaps the country's most heavily traveled East-West freeway. Under the direction of former Sheriff Brian Gilbert, the Dallas County Sheriff's Department hauled in millions over the course of several years -- and then Gilbert got a little too greedy, making off with paper sacks containing $120,000 seized in a traffic stop.


Gilbert's punishment was a suspended ten year prison sentence, five years' probation, and a term of make-work "community service."


It's quite reasonable to believe that Gilbert's punishment would have been considerably more severe had he stolen $120,000 without the benefit of a wearing an official law enforcement costume.


Heck, given the leniency extended to Brian Gilbert for committing a major felony theft, David Seward really ought to turn himself in. Either that, or migrate to Iowa in search of a job in Dallas County.


East of Seward's old hometown can be found Kingsville, Texas, a rustic and picturesque town that serves as the Kleberg County Seat. More importantly, Kingsville is located on U.S. Highway 77, which in some sections runs parallel to I-35 and serves as an alternative route for drug couriers bringing their product into the U.S., and taking cash back out.


(Highway 77 also runs right through the City of La Grange, settled by Germans in the early 19th century and noted primarily for being near the little shack of ill-repute made famous in ZZ Top's imperishable blues-rock jam tune.)


NPR reported recently that "For impoverished cities and counties situated along 77 [the narcotics and drug money traffic] is like a river of gold. On one 15-mile section that runs through ... Kleberg County, the southbound lanes have become a `piggy bank,' according to the local sheriff. In the past four years, combined seizures [of cash] have surpassed $7 million."


That's why Kleberg County Sheriff Ed Mata "drives a gleaming new police-package Ford Expedition bought with drug funds," and this year was able to hit up the County Commission for a new fleet of vehicles for his department.


It's likewise the reason why the Kingsville PD, which patrols a somnolent city of 25,000 in which violent crime is as scarce as Ytterbium, "drive high-performance Dodge Chargers and use $40,000 digital ticket writers," as NPR reports. That same police force will "soon carry military-style assault rifles, and the SWAT team" -- yes, a town that size with an all-but-nonexistent violent crime problem has a SWAT team -- "recently acquired sniper rifles."


Ah, but the sniper rifles and other toys purchased with forfeited boodle are vital "homeland security" assets, insists Police Chief Ricardo Torres. "We have to be prepared," he insists, as he -- like other police administrators mainlining on drug money -- fatten up their budgets.


Oh, how David Seward must be kicking himself for blowing such a potentially profitable opportunity!

Photo courtesy of James Bovard.

But the forfeiture scam is much more than merely an inexhaustible source of police corruption and a mammoth kick-back scheme between narcotics lords and the law enforcement agencies who enforce drug prohibition -- thereby keeping narcotics prices artificially high.


Kingsville offers a very telling illustration of how federally abetted highway robbery by police, a major facet of the "war on drugs," has been a very effective means of militarizing "local" law enforcement by stealth.


Not quite a decade ago, Kingsville residents were quite understandably alarmed when the Army Special Operations Command at Ft. Bragg chose their torpid little town as the staging area for "Operation Last Dance," a live-fire exercise involving an uber-elite group from Delta Force called the Night Stalkers. The exercise included minor roles for the local police department, including its SWAT team.


According to Tomas Sanchez, at the time Kingsville's head of emergency management, "Operation Last Dance" involved (as summarized by WorldNetDaily) "a scenario that required military action because local police could not deal with civilians effectively."


"Martial law has been declared through presidential powers and [the] war powers act, and some citizens have refused to give up their weapons," Sanchez reportedly explained. "The police cannot handle it. So you call these guys in" -- that is, the Night Stalkers or similarly constituted special forces personnel. "They show up and they zap everybody, take all the weapons, and let the local P.D. clean it up."


Sanchez pointed out that "Operation Last Dance" left much of the town panicked and nearly all of it angry. Blackhawk attack helicopters used in the training exercise rattled windows and left many of the city's inhabitants terrified. One of the helicopters collided with a telephone pole and started a fire. Elsewhere trainees used live ammunition and set off explosive charges. The result was a general uproar, with angry citizens flocking to city council and county commission meetings and municipal authorities filing official complaints.


Now, however, with the help of both direct federal subsidies and the federally authorized take from highway shake-downs, Kingsville's "local" police department is quickly becoming a militarized affiliate of the homeland security state. And nary a syllable of protest can be heard.


Indeed, this ingenious back-door narco-subsidy of police militarization is taking place not only across Texas -- where Mexican drug profits are presumably plentiful, as are innocent victims who are fleeced in the name of forfeiture -- but nation-wide:

Lethal plaything: The Gwinnett County (Georgia) Sheriff's Department's armored SWAT vehicle.


*Brownsville, Texas recently used forfeiture funds to buy a Lenco BearCat armored vehicle, made famous in the police assault on harmless eccentric Robert Bayliss in rural Wisconsin;


*Georgia's Gwinnett County Sheriff's Department recently spent a wad of forfeiture funds to upgrade an armored SWAT vehicle that proved useless in a standoff that ended with the death of a 31-year-old woman;


*Canton, Ohio's Police Department dipped into the city till and found $100,000 in forfeited funds to buy its own armored SWAT vehicle, which was cheerfully described as a future mobile command post "for potential school shootings and terrorist attacks" -- neither of which, unlike police gang-molestation of attractive women taken into custody, has afflicted that part of Ohio, but, hey, keep a good thought;


*Police in Westland, Michigan presented the $114,113 purchase of an armored SWAT vehicle as a uniquely sweet deal. "There was no general fund money used—it was all drug forfeiture money,” exulted Westland Police Chief James Ridener. “The bad guys got to pay for it.” And once it's broken in and fully tricked out, Ridener continued, "We'll probably use it every week for narcotics [raids]."

"You see, kids, someday neat trucks like this will swarm our neighborhoods to flush out and carry away all the bad people whose names are on The Official List": Fresno, California's armored SWAT vehicle.



For those who pay attention, Ridener's last comment boldly underscores the evil symbiosis behind the murderous fraud called the war on drugs.


Why should police agencies want to "end" drug trafficking, when it is the source of inexhaustible largesse?


And why should police personnel consider themselves accountable those who live in the communities they occupy when they have Washington's permission simply to steal whatever amount they can and spend it on lethal toys?


(Yes, this decal is real, and is displayed on the bumpers of at least some LEOs. Thanks to J.D. Tuccille for bringing this to our attention.)



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Dum spiro, pugno!

Highway Robbery

Anybody old enough to have lived through the 70s, and who avoided the vices that would make remembering that decade difficult, can probably recall the 1975 populist anthem “Convoy” (and perhaps even the 1978 Kris Kristofferson/Ali McGraw film of the same title).

The C.W. McCall ballad described the spontaneous rebellion of long-haul truckers against the national 55 mile-per-hour speed limit. Determined to cross the continental United States without stopping, the truckers collaborated via Citizens Band Radio to warn each other about speed traps and other snares laid by the “Smokies” -- State Police and other revenue-hungry lawmen.

It is an illustration of the perversity of our times that at least some truck drivers are now collaborating with the revenue farmers.

“Some semi-trucks in Kansas are carrying something new – a highway patrol trooper,” reports the Topeka Capital-Journal (free reg. req.) “Troopers are riding in the cab with professional truck drivers as part of the new Trucks on Patrol for Safety [TOPS] program in which troopers witness and report violations of the law by police radio to other troopers on patrol in the area who can stop the vehicle involved...."

The program, modeled after a pilot program in Washington State, will run for six weeks and is expected to harvest hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. Each truck will be fitted with a five-camera system intended to record purported violations. The trucking companies who have decided to “partner” in this effort donate the vehicles and drivers free of charge, no doubt in consideration of certain non-monetary political or regulatory favors to be named later (and behind the scenes).

The first of the corporate Quislings to offer such services was the appropriately named Yellow Transportation of Wichita.

Sniff, sniff -- do we discern the rancid odor of federal pork emanating from this initiative?

Indeed we do: It is funded through the Transportation Department's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, by way of taxes collected at the gas pump.

It is not widely understood that federal “highway safety” bills have been larded with millions of dollars for schemes like TOPS – putative public safety campaigns that actually have the dual purpose of knitting “local” and “state” police to their federal masters, and giving those affiliates of the national Homeland Security State a taste for the easy money to be made through highway robbery.

The August 2005 (take a deep breath) "Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users" law, for example, contained huge caches of federal cash for promoting sobriety checkpoints and roadblocks and for impounding or confiscating vehicles as countermeasures to alcohol-impaired driving. As the watchdogs over at TheNewspaper.com observe, this approach “allows states to fund driving under the influence (DUI)-related confiscation efforts entirely with federal dollars."

The vigilant and principled Karen DeCoster points out another way the Feds have used our gas taxes to build their highway surveillance network.

A June 2005 seat belt use survey was conducted in New Mexico by the Preusser Research Group, under a contract from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “Previous studies found lower nighttime seat belt use rates in Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania,” reported the NHTSA.(.pdf) “This study sought to confirm those findings, using military-grade night-vision technology to collect nighttime belt use data, measuring day and night belt use in both densely and sparsely populated locations throughout New Mexico. AutoGated brand night vision goggles (XR5 image-enhancing tube) were used in tandem with an infrared spotlight to provide adequate illumination of the vehicle occupants without affecting the occupants of the
vehicle....”

According to the AP, as of June 2005, some 13,000 police agencies nationwide were using military-issue night vision goggles to catch seat belt "violators." (No government has the right or constitutional authority to compel drivers or passengers to buckle up.)


This militarization of traffic enforcement – the use of battlefield hardware and surveillance tactics – is carried out in the name of public safety, natch. Would anybody care to bet that it will also be used to identify vehicles suspected of involvement in drug trafficking, as well?

I use that formulation for a specific reason: In the “war on drugs,” it is often the property of a suspect – his car, cash, or other assets – that is found “guilty” and seized by the police. This is called enforcement in rem (“against the thing”), and the process is called “asset forfeiture.”

Here's how this could work:

A late-model SUV with out-of-state license plates is spotted passing a semi-truck on a stretch of I-80 in Dallas County, Iowa. The driver of that vehicle did nothing improper, and gave no indication that he was intoxicated – but the State Trooper in the semi noted that he fit the “profile” of a suspected drug courier. Accordingly, he radios ahead to the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, which intercepts the SUV.

After the officer cites some manufactured rationale for the stop (they can always “find a reason”), the driver is bullied into a “consent search” of the vehicle that finds no narcotics but does uncover a substantial quantity of cash – say, tens of thousands of dollars. The car is impounded, as is the cash.

The driver insists that he's not a drug dealer, but he's not in a position to fight the charge. He is presented with a waiver permitting the Sheriff's Department to declare that the vehicle is “abandoned property”; without much recourse, the driver signs the document. A legal notice is published in the paper inviting people to claim the “abandoned” automobile; if nobody does so within a month, the Department claims the vehicle and can sell it at auction.

I grant that this sounds entirely implausible. And yet between 2002 and 2006, Iowa's Dallas County Sheriff's Department hauled in $1.75 million in cash and vehicles, most of it seized from black and Latino drivers, using the method described above – except for the innovative use of semi trucks as mobile spotter platforms for this scam.

According to the Des Moines Register, the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, along with the Iowa State Patrol and eight local police departments, “have taken in $2.4 million in cash and property from accused criminals in Dallas County [since 2002]. Nearly 90 percent came from a 24-mile stretch of I-80." The figure might be higher, since the details of various seizures don't become public until after court proceedings are finished.



Brian "Light Fingers" Gilbert

Last week, former Dallas County Sheriff Brian Gilbert was found guilty of stealing a duffel bag containing $120,000 in cash “forfeited” from motorists detained at traffic stops. Gilbert declined to testify in his own defense, and the jury took just six hours to convict him. Gilbert's theft was relatively petty, given the federally abetted grand larceny routinely committed along that stretch of I-80.

This is exactly the kind of localized police revenue trap (albeit one created with federal assistance) the fictional truckers immortalized in “Convoy” would have sabotaged. And Gilbert is precisely the kind of wretchedly corrupt lawman one finds enshrined in trucker mythology.

Be sure to drop by The Right Source for news and commentary!

The Shadow of Claude Dallas

 Senseless, lawless violence -- government reduced to its essence: BLM employee C.J. Ross commits a felonious assault on Nevada property rights activist Ken Greenwell, in Palomino Valley, Nevada, November 13, 2001. Greenwell had staged a peaceful protest of the BLM's theft of cattle belonging to rancher Ben Colvin. Ross, acting on behalf of the rustlers, took offense. Note the contrast between Ross's snarling, feral visage and the incredulous composure displayed by Greenwell, and ask yourself: Which of these two displays the civilized face of freedom?

When they arrived at the cattle camp in Nevada’s Paradise Valley, the three shabbily dressed men claimed that they were interested in a job. Their timing was a bit odd; it was November, a little late in the year for a ranch to take on new hires. As it happens, the visitors weren’t looking for work as buckaroos; they were looking for the wiry, brown-haired ranch hand named Claude.

 

“You’re Dallas, aren’t you?” one of the strangers, a man named Frank Meale, asked the hand. When the young man replied that he was, Meale-- an undercover FBI agent -- and his two comrades -- FBI agent George Schwinn and Elko County Deputy Sheriff Noel McElhany – seized him, cuffed him, and stuffed him into the worn-out pickup truck that had brought them to the bunkhouse. 

 

A few months earlier, Claude Dallas had been secretly indicted by a federal grand jury, triggering a nation-wide manhunt by the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service. Dallas, an Ohio native, had drifted west to Nevada, where he found work as a cowboy. Polite, disciplined, and literate, Dallas distinguished himself by his appetite for honest work and his general disdain for the dissipations available in local saloons. He was also disinclined to talk about his background – a trait he shared with many others who chose this itinerant lifestyle.

 

“Claude is true Old West,” commented rodeo champion Cortland Nielsen. “A lot of guys try it, but the first time they have to shave with cold water they change their mind. Claude keeps going after it and after it. He should’ve been alive in the old days – a scout, the guy you send a day or two ahead to tell you how things are. He’d be perfect.” A photographer from National Geographic agreed with that assessment, which is how Dallas ended up being featured in a story entitled “The American Cowboy in Life and Legend” – a clue not even the FBI could miss. 

 

The officers who arrested Dallas said he was polite and friendly. His captors didn’t reciprocate. Dallas was flown across the country, frog-marched through airports in handcuffs and a belly chain. On his arrival in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, he was thrown into a drunk tank, where he was singled out for abuse by sheriff’s deputies.  

 

Dallas was regarded as an exceptionally depraved offender: He was a “draft dodger,” having refused induction in 1968. This isn’t because he was afraid to fight, or unable to – a fact well understood by the predatory bureaucrats who tracked him down. 

 

“Most likely he’ll try to run, but he may try to shoot it out,” Meale told the other two members of his snatch team just before the abduction. “We’ll have to shut him right down.” 

That “arrest” took place in November 1973 – nearly a year after the Vietnam War officially ended. The indictment against Dallas had been issued the previous July – a month after the draft was discontinued. Yet the Feds insisted on stalking Dallas, humiliating him, abusing him, and trying to put him in a cage. After the case against him was dismissed because of procedural mistakes by the Mt. Gilead Draft Board, one of his kidnappers promised that the persecution wouldn’t end.

 

“I’m gonna get you, Dallas – even if it’s just for tax evasion,” the FBI agent hissed in his ear as the cowboy was released. 

 

When Dallas returned to Paradise Valley, his fellow ranch hands noticed an ominous change in his disposition. 

 

“They wouldn’t have took me like this if they hadn’t got the drop on me,” he fumed to friends in the bunkhouse. Dallas “was publicly heard to swear that no one would ever outdraw him again – no one,” recounted Jack Olsen in his book Give a Boy a Gun. “One of his closest friends asked how he felt about the draft and the Vietnam War. He said that he would fight for his country if he were asked in a nice way, but `nobody’s gonna order me around.'” 

 

Roughly seven years later, two Idaho fish and game wardens – Bill Pogue, a former Winnemucca, Nevada police chief, and Conley Elms – tracked down Dallas’s campsite about three miles on the Idaho side of the Nevada border in Owyhee County. Dallas, who had spent several years working intermittently as a ranch hand and trapper, had developed a reputation among fish and game officials – and Pogue most likely considered himself just the man to rein in the “renegade.” 

 

Pogue, like other self-important martinets who see themselves as indispensable cogs in the “mighty machine of the State,” was an authoritarian prig who expected deference from Mundanes. Dallas, according to Jim Stevens, an eyewitness to the January 5, 1981 confrontation, wasn’t unduly impressed by the uniformed bureaucrat. Dallas, Stevens later recalled, possessed “eyes that showed no fright.” This obviously wouldn’t turn out well for someone.

 

Ever since he had arrived in the West, Dallas had frequently displayed an insouciant disregard for poaching laws. He had a handful of bobcat hides in his camp. Although Dallas had a valid Idaho trapper’s license, bobcat season wouldn’t open until January 9 – four days later. Pogue told Dallas that he was going to be cited for possessing illegal hides and venison taken out of season. Then, according to Stevens, Pogue said he would have to arrest Dallas.

Those words would prove to be a death warrant.

 “Are you going to take me in?” Dallas asked Pogue. At the time, Dallas and the two game wardens stood at points of a triangle roughly five to six feet apart. At some point, Pogue made a threatening gesture to his pistol. Stevens, who was busy elsewhere in the camp, didn’t see what happened next – but he heard the unmistakable report of a handgun, and whirled around to see Dallas in a shooter’s crouch, and a bloodstain spreading across Pogue’s chest. A fraction of a second later, Dallas shot Elms as well.

 

The wardens almost certainly died instantly. Nevertheless, Dallas delivered a coup de grace to each of them with a .22 rifle.

 

“Why, Claude? Why?” exclaimed Stevens in horror.

 

“I swore I’d never be arrested again,” replied Dallas. “They were going to handcuff me.”

 

Stevens would later testify that the wardens did not threaten Dallas’s life “in any way.” This isn’t true: Every demand made by a government official contains the implicit threat of lethal violence against those who refuse to comply. This was particularly true of the armed strangers who threatened to kidnap Dallas at gunpoint – something not mandated by what they called the law, but made necessary by Bill Pogue’s punitive nature. 

 

“Nobody has the right to come into my camp and violate my rights,” Dallas insisted as Stevens absorbed the bloody aftermath of the encounter. “In my mind it’s justifiable homicide.”

 

Many people in Idaho and throughout the Intermountain West agreed with that evaluation during the lengthy manhunt and high-profile trial that followed the killings. The arrest was illegitimate, which meant that Dallas – under the Bad Elk precedent – had the right to use lethal force in self-defense. He didn’t ambush the wardens; he was outnumbered by armed, truculent men, and outdrew them. 

It is true that Dallas had been poaching hides and game. Consider this: Seven years earlier, the Feds had seized him out of season, as it were, by arresting him after Congress had rescinded the hunting license it had granted the draft-nappers. There’s no moral case to be made for the proposition that poaching game is a crime, but poaching human beings is sound and defensible public policy. 

 

Claude Dallas was not a saint, but he only became a killer when he was cornered by gun-wielding government employees who most likely would have found some way to validate the FBI agent’s threat: The Federal Government would find some way to “get him,” no matter how trivial the violation. 

 

The lethal encounter between Dallas and the Idaho game wardens “fundamentally changed the relationship between the West and those charged with preserving its resources,” opined the Twin Falls Times-News in an editorial clotted with collectivist assumptions (derived from the notion that the earth is the State’s and the fullness thereof). “Before Jan. 5, 1981, we had wilderness rangers; ever since we’ve had wilderness policemen. The conservation officer who checks your fishing license nowadays is more likely than not to be armed.” 

 

Of course, this isn’t a novelty, given that the wardens who threatened to kidnap Dallas were carrying weapons and prepared to use them. The most important difference is that most wilderness “policemen” have adopted the swaggering, imperious disposition of William Pogue. 

 

Consider the case of Chico, California resident Jeff Newman, 53, a life-long avid skier who operates a painting business. As a sideline, Newman "tunes" skis and teaches others how to perform this kind of maintenance.

 

With the exception of a decade he spent in the employment of the Forest Service (more appropriately called the Sylvan Socialist agency, or SS), Newman has made an honest living. In early 2010, Newman and some friends he had met in the employ of the SS visited Colby Meadows in the Lassen National Forest, one of their favorite skiing destinations.

 

Years earlier, Newman and his friends built a bulletin board -- with the permission of the SS -- on which could be posted maps and emergency information. During their recent visit, one of Newman's friends, Larry Chrisman, posted an advertisement for Newman's ski tuning service on the otherwise vacant bulletin board.

 Neither of them thought more of the matter until a few days later, when an armed, bellicose SS troglodyte named Paul Zohovetz materialized on Newman's doorstep in full battle array. Newman initially thought Zohovetz was a customer. Quite the opposite was the case: He had traveled more than fifty miles to threaten Newman with a citation for posting a commercial flier without the specific permission of the SS.

 

As is often the case in such situations, the foul-tempered official busybody began to harass Newman about matters that had nothing to do with the flier.

 

"I'm not sure what this is all about," Newman complained.

 

"You're under arrest," snarled Zohovetz by way of reply.

 

Newman commanded the armed intruder to leave his property. Zohovetz, already guilty of criminal trespass, compounded the crime by threatening to attack Newman with a deadly weapon by pointing his Taser at the man's face and neck.

 

That’s right: Even the Regime's forest rangers are now equipped with portable electro-shock torture devices.

 

"He had this look in his eyes like he wanted to beat the crap out of me," Newman recalled. A diabetic who suffers from permanent nervous system damage, Newman was understandably concerned that a Taser attack would kill him. So as any rational person would, he fled into his house. His deranged assailant, badly overestimating his physical prowess, tried to kick down the door, succeeding only in leaving a muddy footprint.

 

Newman called Chrisman to his home as a witness. Zohovetz, having failed in his effort to bully the mild-mannered Newman by himself, called for backup from the local police department. After his friend arrived, Newman emerged from the house, only to be handcuffed. As a result of not taking insulin yet that day, he went into convulsions.

 

Satisfied that he'd made whatever point he sought to make, Zohovetz released Newman and told him that he was only issuing a "warning" regarding the flier. He also issued a citation for "threatening an officer," a charge that carries a six month jail sentence and a $5,000 fine.

 

The appropriately named SS spokesman John Heil insisted that Zohovetz behaved appropriately by driving 50 miles to issue a "warning" and then needlessly escalating a trivial matter into a life-threatening confrontation. 

 

When the case went to trial in March 2011, U.S. District Court Magistrate Craig M. Kellison ruled that Zohovetz “had no right to remain on Newman’s property once he had been ordered to leave.” He also cited a Supreme Court precedent acknowledging that the “freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.” 

 

It’s all but certain that those in the leadership echelons of SS are aware of the outcome of that case – and it’s just as likely that they have made a conscious decision to ignore it. This would explain a nearly fatal incident involving SS officer Shawn Tripp that took place in Montana’s Little Belt Mountains last November 26. 

 Bill and Tammie McCutcheon, residents of Roundup, Montana, were on a hunting trip with their four children – two teenagers and 18-month-old twins. Tammie, along with her 12-year-old daughter and the twins, had pulled over to the side of the road while Bill and the couple’s teenage son gone into the nearby forest. 

 Tripp, who was patrolling on a four-wheeler, approached the truck from behind. Tammie told the Billings Gazette that she initially thought Tripp, who was wearing a jacket with no insignia identifying himself as a federal officer, was another hunter. When she asked Tripp who he was, the SS officer “refused to identify himself and demanded that she get out of the truck.” 

 

Things became immediately and dramatically worse, recounts the Gazette. Tripp began “questioning her about whether they had driven past the `road closed’ sign…. Tammie McCutcheon said she was worried about her twins alone in the truck but was trying to respond to Tripp's questions. The encounter escalated, Tammie McCutcheon said, when Tripp tried to remove a hunting tag from the antlers of a deer in the back of the couple's truck. Tammie McCutcheon said she believed Tripp had no authority to remove the tag, and she grabbed it from his hand, bumping against him as she reached for the tag.”

 

Owing to the State supremacist indoctrination he had received, Tripp perceived that incidental contact as the high and grievous crime – nay, sin – of “assaulting a federal official.” Accordingly, he grabbed the terrified mother, threw her up against the truck, and roughly cuffed her hands behind her back. He then shoved her face-down on the open tailgate and began to paw the shrieking woman beneath her clothes. 

 

Tripp might consider this a “search”; by any rational definition, it was a sexual assault by an armed stranger who had spit out several angry demands but refused to identify himself (not that doing so would have justified his actions).

 

“I thought I was going to get raped," Tammie later recalled. The noise attracted the attention of her husband Bill, who had reached the top of a small nearby hill – and looked down to see, from about 100 yards away, a man on top of his wife as she screamed for help.

 

Hurrying down the hill, Bill ordered the assailant to leave his wife alone. As Tripp later admitted on the record, the properly infuriated husband never pointed his rifle at him – even though he would have been well within his legal and moral rights to use lethal force to stop the assault. Tripp, however, drew his pistol and pointed it at Bill, ordering him to drop his rifle. At one point, according to Tammi, the “unstable” and “muttering” SS enforcer pointed his sidearm at the couple’s 12-year-old daughter. 

 

A call for assistance issued by Tripp was answered by Wheatland County Sheriff Jim Rosenberg, who was hunting nearby. The Sheriff, who should have arrested Tripp for aggravated armed assault and sexual battery, chose instead to arrest Bill, who was held in jail for five days before being released. Significantly, in an interview with an investigator hired by the McCutcheons’ attorney, Sheriff Rosenberg was told by Tripp that Bill never pointed the rifle at him.

Nonetheless, Bill and Tammie were indicted in federal court on January 26 on charges that they “forcefully assaulted, resisted, opposed, impeded, intimidated, and interfered” with Tripp. Bill McCutcheon faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine; Tammie – whose “crime” consisted of protecting herself from a sexual assault, could be sentenced to 8 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

 During a dispute over the SS’s actions in closing down a road in Nevada’s Elko County a decade ago, the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade, a local citizen’s group ran a radio ad describing the agency’s personnel as “armed and dangerous.” 

 

“The Forest Service has a new policy of issuing citations for the following offense: Operating any vehicle off road in a manner which damages or unreasonably disturbs the land, wildlife or vegetative resources,” observed the radio spot. “If apprehended by Forest Service personnel, consider them armed and dangerous and cooperate with them to the fullest. Then contact the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade for assistance.” 

 

That prompted a petulant complaint from the SS that the ads were “inflammatory” and tended to promote “ill will” toward the agency. Oh, dearie dear – we can’t have that, can we?

 

Like Jeff Newman – who was once employed by the agency -- Bill and Tammie McCutcheon can testify of the indisputable truth of the characterization offered by the Shovel Brigade. Their experiences also underscore the wisdom of having the means to defend one’s self and one’s family in the event one encounters a predatory Fed in the wilderness – or, as Newman’s case demonstrates, in one’s own home.  

For killing the two wardens who tried to kidnap him, Claude Dallas eventually served 22 years for voluntary manslaughter. The foreman of the jury that convicted Dallas later said that he would have been acquitted of all charges if he hadn’t delivered what was most likely a gratuitous coup de grace. The Regime remembers those details. We should, as well. 

Obiter Dicta

Owing to travel, unanticipated difficulties on the home front (Korrin is doing much better now; my earnest thanks to everyone who has expressed their concerns on her behalf), and my responsibilities over at Republic magazine, posting here has been sporadic as of late. I appreciate your patience, and your continued material support. I'm generally posting at least one short piece -- sometimes two or more -- each day at republicmagazine.com. Please drop by and sign up for your free digital subscription!

Some of you have asked when Pro Libertate Radio will return. I'm still in search of an appropriate platform; I'll let you know as soon as the right arrangements have been made. 

Dum spiro, pugno!

End the Occupation: A Mission for the Oath-Keepers

One Nation, under Occupation: Police departments nation-wide are acting as if this were a conquered country, and as if citizens were "enemy combatants."



A thin blanket of early evening darkness had draped itself across Alex Locklear's home in Maxton, North Carolina when the armed intruders arrived.


Brandishing firearms, the invaders forced several people -- including wheelchair-bound Nicholas Locklear and a pregnant woman -- to the ground and then barged in through the rear door, threatening to "blow the brains" out of anyone who put up a struggle. One woman was so terrified that she fled, tripped over an unseen obstruction, and broke her arm.


The arrival of an unmarked police car with its blue running lights flashing must have provided the victims of the home invasion with a moment's relief. But that relief would have quickly turned to a different flavor of alarm when the victims realized that their assailants were the police.


Under the pretext of a drug search, the five-man robbery crew ransacked the Locklear home in search of large amounts of cash that could be "forfeited" -- that is, stolen -- as alleged drug proceeds. The robbers had to be content with the $200 they found in Alex Locklear's bedroom, which is all they could put their hands on before piling into the police car and pulling away with such reckless haste that the vehicle shed one of its front hubcaps.


Locklear, who returned shortly after the robbery, reported the crime to the Robeson County Sheriff's Office, giving descriptions of the assailants and their vehicle. Not surprisingly, the Sheriff didn't follow up on that solid lead, because the robbery had been spearheaded by Robeson County Deputy Sheriff Vincent Sinclair, a member of the department's drug enforcement unit.


The March 14, 2004 robbery most likely came about because the Sheriff's Department discovered that Locklear had cashed a large check to pay workers on his 400-acre farm before heading for a motorcycle rally in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. And that assault differed only in detail from similar outrages taking place every single day in the purported Land of the Free.


The chances are pretty good that as you read these words, paramilitary attacks -- commonly described as "no-knock raids" -- are either being planned or executed somewhere in the U.S. Typically carried out by the military units called SWAT or tactical teams, those raids are generally triggered by a tip from a "confidential informant" -- a paid snitch -- and subsidized with federal funds, often through the "Justice" Department's Byrne Grant program.


Ironically, those on the receiving end of such "authorized" assaults are often treated even worse than the victims of the raid on the Locklear home.




No recourse: Last August, a SWAT team in Anderson, Indiana destroyed Barbara Williams' home in a mistaken armed raid. According to the city attorney, since the assault was "legal," the city is not liable for the damages, and the now-homeless Mrs. Williams is just S.O.L.



When property is damaged or innocent people are injured or killed in the course of an "authorized" home invasion, police can generally expect to be held blameless, since any action they perceive as a potential threat supposedly justifies the use of deadly force.


Witness the case of 22-year-old Houston resident Pedro Oregon Navarro, who was murdered by police who invaded his family's home in a mistaken "no-knock" raid. Navarro, who had armed himself with a handgun to deal with belligerent intruders he didn't know were police, was shot twelve times.


According to Harris County District Attorney John B. Holmes, Jr., the violent death of Navarro at the hands of the police was not a crime, because "the law does not allow anyone to resist arrest, even an illegal one" -- and that therefore Navarro's murderers "had a right to use deadly force ... if he threatened them."

A common scene in an occupied land: Just your friendly neighborhood JBT, chillin' outside a really tricked-out armored vehicle.

Holmes is a prosecutor, so it's not surprising that he lied about the right to resist an illegal arrest. But his assumption that police have the "right" to kill anyone who resists is almost universally shared within both law enforcement and the "Justice" system.


Apparently, Deputy Sinclair and his gang didn't realize the extent of their official impunity: Had they known that they had the "right" to kill anyone who resisted their illegal invasion, it's likely that someone would have died at the Locklear home.


Like many corrupt police in such circumstances, however, the raiders left a relatively light footprint, most likely out of concern that leaving a corpse or two behind would lead to compromising questions. If their paperwork had been in order, they wouldn't have had to display such restraint.


The attack on Alex Locklear's home was just one of scores or hundreds of violent crimes committed by police in Robeson County, North Carolina committed over nearly a decade beginning in 1995. A federal investigation calling itself "Operation Tarnished Badge" eventually produced the conviction of some 22 police officers and Sheriff's Department personnel, including former Sheriff Glenn Maynor.


Deputies assigned to narcotics duty committed a string of crimes, some of them acts of state-sponsored terrorism -- such as fire-bombing homes of suspected drug dealers, or hiring arsonists to burn down the homes of personal enemies. On one occasion, a deputy doused a recalcitrant suspect with lighter fluid and set him on fire. Drug dealers who cooperated were protected from prosecution; one was even given a gun and a police uniform and permitted to take part in a raid.


Hundreds of thousands of dollars were stolen from people under the pretext of drug asset "forfeiture," with much of it skimmed away for personal use without being reported. District Attorney Johnson Britt noticed a bloc of deputies who were living beyond what he assumed to be their means: They bought boats or other expensive recreational vehicles, took cruise ship vacations together, even went in as a group for Lasik eye surgery.


What really rankled Britt, however, was having hundreds of drug cases dismissed because of the incompetence and corruption of drug enforcement officers in Robeson County. After all, how could a prosecutor make a name for himself if his drug cases -- the bread-and-butter of his profession -- kept being dismissed?


Britt contacted the Feds, and soon enough the Feds discovered that the Robeson drug cops were skimming from the profits of the local forfeiture racket. Presumably, if the cops had been faithfully reporting their haul and content with the kickback the Feds provided, or even if their corruption had been contained and relatively modest, the Feds wouldn't have intervened. As it happens, however, dozens of Robeson cops and deputies were put on trial for stealing "federal funds" -- meaning the cash that was seized at gunpoint from people suspected, but not convicted, of drug-related offenses.


What happened in Robeson County in the years between 1995 and 2002 (when "Operation Tarnished Badge" began) was hardly exceptional. There are many other jurisdictions in which, thanks to the federal "War on Drugs," local Police and Sheriff's Departments have mutated into robber gangs.


For several years, Brian Gilbert, Sheriff of Iowa's Dallas County, ran a very lucrative theft ring. Dallas County sits astride a very well-traveled stretch of I-80, the country's major east-west interstate. Gilbert and his deputies preyed heavily on people driving late-model SUVs with out-of-state license plates -- particularly drivers who appeared to be of Latino extraction.


Stopped for alleged traffic infractions, the drivers would be threatened with prosecution for drug-related offenses -- such as "money laundering" -- if they were found to be in possession of significant amounts of cash. That trouble could be avoided if the drivers simply surrendered their vehicles and money to the county.


This little scam netted millions of dollars, and might still be in operation today had Gilbert not gotten a bit too greedy: He was caught taking home several paper sacks filled with money that had been stolen during a traffic stop. For this act of felonious grand larceny, Gilbert lost his job and was given a suspended ten-year prison sentence, along with five years' probation.


Police in Kingsville, Texas have been more disciplined than Gilbert and his gang in Iowa. Because that tiny town is located along Highway 77, a route often used by suspected drug couriers, police have been able to confiscate millions in putative drug proceeds, with eighty percent of what they steal going directly into the city budget. This is why the exceptionally well-paid police in that town of 25,000 have tricked-out high-performance cop cars and all the latest digital toys.


It's important to italicize the fact that the people from whom this money is stolen have not been convicted of crimes -- or even, in most cases, formally accused of crimes. All that is required is the presence of a large amount of cash coupled with an assertion by self-interested law enforcement officers that there is a suspected "nexus" to drug activity of some kind.


A recent federal court decision (entitled -- I'm not kidding -- United States of America v. $124,700, in U.S. Currency) held, in effect, that traveling with a large amount of currency offers sufficient probable cause to justify a narcotics-related forfeiture. Once the proper incantations are uttered and the requisite paperwork is filled out in the typical tax-feeder's sub-literate scrawl, the money itself is found "guilty" and taken into government custody.



Police and prosecutors in Tenaha, Texas -- a town in Shelby County bordering Louisiana -- have added some innovative wrinkles to the familiar forfeiture racket. A current federal lawsuit describes how Tenaha police have refined to a science the practice of targeting motorists -- generally "racial and ethnic minorities, and those in their company" -- for unjustified traffic stops, during which they are questioned as to "whether they have money or valuables" and then subjected to illegal searches.


Should money or items of value be found, the motorist and passengers are then placed under arrest for "money laundering" or drug-related charges, and then given an ultimatum: Sign away their property or face prosecution. This form of extortion-robbery is particularly effective when the victim is carrying an abnormal but relatively small amount of cash -- say, less than $5,000 -- that wouldn't be enough to compensate for the hassle and expense of mounting a legal defense.


In one of the cases described in the lawsuit, an individual named Danny Green who works as an investigator for the Shelby County Prosecutor's Office threatened to kidnap a couple's children if they didn't sign a document surrendering about $6,000 in cash.

Den of thieves:

The Tenaha, Texas City Hall.

George Bowers, the superannuated mayor of Tenaha, insists that the seizures are justified not because of a compelling law enforcement need, but because his municipal government needs the money.


Oh. Well, then -- why not?


Why bother trying to cultivate a local economy when there are innocent motorists to shake down?


To understand the depth of cynical corruption that exists in Shelby County, consider the reaction of District Attorney Lynda Russell to the lawsuit: She sought official permission to use forfeited funds to defend herself from charges that she had illegally confiscated those same funds.



Nope, that isn't David Allen Coe: This vision of feminine refinement is Shelby County District Attorney Lynda Russell (a Republican, natch), a Queenpin (as it were) of the county's forfeiture mob.

If this kind of thing were taking place only in isolated, one-stoplight, speed-trap towns like Tenaha -- places where the local government is the malodorous residue at the bottom of a very shallow gene pool -- it would be disgusting, but avoidable.


But this kind of outright larceny under color of "law" is underway wherever the Feds have fomented an official crime spree in the name of the "war on drugs."


We really shouldn't perceive the "war on drugs" in metaphorical terms. This is an actual war, albeit one that targets individual liberties, rather than illicit commerce.


Thanks to this war, innocent people are frequently terrorized by military assaults on their homes, and injured or even killed without legal consequence. It's because of this war that travelers have a fully justified fear of being illegally detained and robbed at gunpoint by people in government-issued costumes.


That homefront war inspired "exceptions" to the posse comitatus law to permit the hands-on involvement of the military in domestic law enforcement. Even more alarming is the fact that it led directly to the federalization and militarization of law enforcement -- which means that the police themselves are, in effect, an army of occupation right now.



This state of affairs suggests a vitally important mission for the movement called "Oath Keepers" -- an association of retired and active-duty law enforcement and military personnel who define their allegiance in terms of fidelity to the Constitution, rather than loyalty or obedience to political officials.


As men committed to the Constitution, Oath Keepers have made it clear that there are at least ten specific kinds of orders they will not obey -- orders to disarm American civilians, conduct warrantless searches, blockade or interdict American cities, invade and subjugate states that assert their reserved powers and constitutional sovereignty, subject citizens to military tribunals, enforce martial law decrees, or otherwise undermine or infringe upon the constitutionally guaranteed individual rights of Americans.


Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes explains that Oath Keepers will stand down rather than carry out such illegal orders, and be prepared to defend law-abiding citizens against the aggression of a lawless government. Predictably, Oath Keepers has been identified as a domestic enemy by Morris Dees' for-profit Stasi, the so-called Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

SPLC Commissar Mark Potok (whose name, appropriately, is very similar to a Klingon epithet describing a sleazy, cowardly wretch).

According to the SPLC and its allies in the government-aligned media, the principled refusal of Oath Keepers to carry out criminal violence against innocent citizens is a variety of terrorism, or at least something akin to terrorism.


During a recent installment of Chris Matthews' cable television program, Matthews and SPLC apparatchik Mark Potok did their level best to contort comments made by Oath Keepers founder Rhodes into an endorsement of insurrectionary violence.


Matthews, who appears to be bucking for a Daytime Emmy, theatrically feigned incredulity that any responsible person could believe it possible that concentration camps could be erected on American soil -- ignoring such trivial matters as the WWII-era detention of Japanese-Americans and the hideous treatment of American Indians during the 19th Century. For his part, Potok insisted that Oath Keepers were cultivating terrorism by spreading alarmist rhetoric about the possibility of martial law.


Bear in mind that the SPLC's core fund-raising activity consists of hitting up elderly donors with appeal letters that traffic in alarmist rhetoric that treats the tiny, inconsequential white supremacist movement as nothing less than the Fourth Reich on the March.


To judge from the SPLC's standard spiel, the most significant threat to individual rights comes from toothless cretins in Klan regalia and socially inept Nazi wanna-bes with man-boobs. Meanwhile, black Americans, Latinos, and other people for whom the SPLC displays such supposed solicitude are being terrorized by armed government officials who are carrying out a very literal war within our borders.


This presents Oath Keepers with a splendid PR opportunity that should become one of its most important ongoing campaigns: Why doesn't that organization reach out to another estimable group, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, in demanding an end to the "war on drugs"?


Most of the unconscionable acts and policies the Oath Keepers oppose -- wholesale violation of individual rights, detentions, confiscations, civilian disarmament, militarization of domestic law enforcement -- are not a vague future possibility, but rather a tangible reality right now because of the "war on drugs."


Most, but by no means all, of the victims of that war are non-white Americans. It would be entertaining to watching the SPLC try to explain how Oath Keepers could qualify as a "hate group" even as they took up the cause of black and Hispanic Americans suffering official abuse by way of the "war on drugs."


Valuable as it is for Oath Keepers to inoculate police and military personnel against the prospect of wholesale martial law, the group should be urging such personnel to stand down right now when it comes to carrying out manifestly unconstitutional and anti-American drug war policies.


The Oath Keepers should urge police and Sheriff's Departments to reject counter-narcotics grants and federal subsidies of any kind, including equipment transfers and other material support from the Pentagon. They should find the honest and principled law enforcement personnel who are mortified by the transformation of so many police and Sheriff's departments into criminal syndicates through the practice of "asset forfeiture." And they should take the point in reining in the ever-expanding use of SWAT teams (as a prelude to abolishing them outright, of course).


We're constantly reminded that "most" law enforcement officers are decent, public-spirited men who are disgusted and alarmed by corruption and the abuse of power. By urging that law enforcement stand down from the "war on drugs," Oath Keepers could help us learn whether this is actually the case.

(My thanks to several contributors in the comments thread who corrected an error in an earlier version of this essay: I had mistakenly referred to I-85, rather than I-80, as a major east-west interstate highway.)

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