Law Enforcement Agencies Quotes

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I long ago became convinced that the most reliable source for arcane and obscure and seemingly unobtainable information does not lie with the government or law enforcement agencies. Apparently neither the CIA nor the military intelligence apparatus inside the Pentagon had even a slight inkling of the Soviet Union's impending collapse, right up to the moment the Kremlin's leaders were trying to cut deals for their memoirs with New York publishers. Or, if a person really wishes a lesson in the subjective nature of official information, he can always call the IRS and ask for help with his tax forms, then call back a half hour later and ask the same questions to a different representative. So where do you go to find a researcher who is intelligent, imaginative, skilled in the use of computers, devoted to discovering the truth, and knowledgeable about science, technology, history, and literature, and who usually works for dirt and gets credit for nothing? After lunch I drove to the city library on Main and asked the reference librarian to find what she could on Junior Crudup.
James Lee Burke (Last Car to Elysian Fields (Dave Robicheaux, #13))
Corrupt governments are run by corrupt politicians that run corrupt law enforcement agencies.
Steven Magee
I predicted that if control of drugs were administered by law enforcement agencies, the result would be a black market more irrational and widespread than that of alcohol prohibition and the growth of enormous police-state repressive bureaucracy. And who, indeed, wanted that?
Timothy Leary (Neuropolitique)
The good thing about the laws of physics is that they require no law enforcement agencies to maintain them
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry)
state and local law enforcement agencies were granted the authority to keep, for their own use, the vast majority of cash and assets they seize when waging the drug war.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
Recently, police in the UK have been petitioning the general public to ‘report non-crime hate incidents’, which would incorporate ‘offensive or insulting comments, online, in person or in writing’. In this new woke era, our law enforcement agencies are not content to police crime, but also non-crime. This is a huge relief, because for a long while now too many citizens have been not breaking the law and getting away with it.
Titania McGrath (Woke: A Guide to Social Justice)
1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.
Christopher Hitchens
Duke told me of planned...efforts against police response. As soon as possible after such conversations I would call the appropriate law enforcement agency in that city's jurisdictional area and alert them to Duke's information. Several times in follow-up conversations Duke would convey his surprise at how well prepared certain police agencies were to the Klan's presence, almost as if they knew beforehand what was going to happen
Ron Stallworth (Black Klansman: A Memoir)
Once an autocrat gets into office, it is very hard to get them out. They will disregard term limits, they will purge the agencies that enforce accountability, they will rewrite the law so that they are no longer breaking it. They will take your money, they will steal your freedom, and if they are clever, they will eliminate any structural protections you had before the majority realizes the extent of the damage.
Sarah Kendzior (Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America)
The U.S. Marshals Service is the oldest federal law enforcement agency in America, having been created in 1789 as part of the executive branch of government.
Roger D. Grubbs (Bounty Hunter)
These rules have made it possible for law enforcement agencies to boost dramatically their rates of drug arrests and convictions, even in communities where drug crime is stable or declining.33 But that is not all. These rules have also guaranteed racially discriminatory results. The reason is this: Drug-law enforcement is unlike most other types of law enforcement.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
Practically overnight the budgets of federal law enforcement agencies soared. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI antidrug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million.73 Department of Defense antidrug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991. During that same period, DEA antidrug spending grew from $86 to $1,026 million, and FBI antidrug allocations grew from $38 to $181 million.74 By contrast, funding for agencies responsible for drug treatment, prevention, and education was dramatically reduced. The budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for example, was reduced from $274 million to $57 million from 1981 to 1984, and antidrug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.75
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
Already law enforcement agencies make use of predictive analytic tools to identify suspects and direct investigations. It’s a short step from there to the world of Big Brother and thoughtcrime.
Bruce Schneier (Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World)
The New York power failure was not the first time the Hell's Angels have confounded the forces of decency and got off scot-free. They are incredibly devious. Law enforcement officials have compared their guile to that of the snipe, a wily beast that many have seen but few have ever trapped. This is because the snipe has the ability to transform himself, when facing capture, into something entirely different. The only other animals capable of this are the werewolf and the Hell's Angel, which have many traits in common. The physical resemblance is obvious, but far more important is the transmogrification factor, the strange ability to alter their own physical structure, and hence "disappear." The Hell's Angels are very close-mouthed about this, but it is a well-known fact among public officials. ... About halfway through our talk I got a strong whiff of the transmogrification factor, but I was hardly prepared for the mayor's special fillip on it. There were plenty of Hell's Angels at the riot, "but they escaped, " he explained, "behind a wall of fire." While he elaborated on this I checked my calendar to make sure I hadn't lost track of the days. If it was Sunday, perhaps he had just come back from church in a high, biblical state of mind. At any moment I expected to hear that the Angels had driven their motorcycles straight into the sea, which had rolled back to let them pass. But no, it wasn't like that. The mayor was not loath to give details of the escape; he wanted law enforcement agencies everywhere to be warned of the Angels' methods. Knowledge is power, he opined.
Hunter S. Thompson (Hell's Angels)
However, Trump’s flaws must be weighed against the disturbing nature of the opposition arrayed against him—an army of corporate-funded left-wing activists who excused and encouraged violent riots across the country; technology oligarchs who made unprecedented efforts to normalize censorship; state and local officials who radically altered the way Americans vote in the middle of an election for partisan advantage; an ostensibly free press that credulously and willfully published fake news to damage the president; politicized federal law enforcement agencies that abused the federal government’s surveillance and investigative powers to smear Trump as a puppet of a foreign power; and an opposition party that coordinated all these smears and spent years trying to impeach and remove a duly elected president from office.
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway (Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections)
As if the free military equipment, training, and cash grants were not enough, the Reagan administration provided law enforcement with yet another financial incentive to devote extraordinary resources to drug law enforcement, rather than more serious crimes: state and local law enforcement agencies were granted the authority to keep, for their own use, the vast majority of cash and assets they seize when waging the drug war. This dramatic change in policy gave state and local police an enormous stake in the War on Drugs - not in its success, but in its perpetual existence. Law enforcement gained a pecuniary interest not only in the forfeited property, but in the profitability of the drug market itself.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
THE U.S. SECRET Service is one of the oldest law enforcement agencies in America, created in 1865. Its original mission was to investigate and prevent counterfeit currency, which was rampant after the Civil War and threatened to destabilize the country’s economy. The
Clint Hill (Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford)
Huge cash grants were made to those law enforcement agencies that were willing to make drug-law enforcement a top priority. The new system of control is traceable, to a significant degree, to a massive bribe offered to state and local law enforcement by the federal government.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 die from shootings at more than six times the rate of white and Hispanic male teens combined, thanks to a ten times higher rate of homicide committed by black teens. Until the black family is reconstituted, the best protection that the law-abiding residents of urban neighborhoods have is the police. They are the government agency most committed to the proposition that “black lives matter.” The relentless effort to demonize the police for enforcing the law can only leave poor communities more vulnerable to anarchy. 5
Heather Mac Donald (The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe)
This domain name has been seized as a part of a law enforcement operation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Defence Criminal Investigative Service, Cyber Field Office and European law enforcement agencies acting throughout Europe, Serbia, Australia, and Canada, in cooperation with Europol.
Lauren James (An Unauthorized Fan Treatise (Gottie Writes, #0))
Police and prosecutors did not declare the War on Drugs—and some initially opposed it—but once the financial incentives for waging the war became too attractive to ignore, law enforcement agencies had to ask themselves, if we’re going to wage this war, where should it be fought and who should be taken prisoner?
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
state and local law enforcement agencies were granted the authority to keep, for their own use, the vast majority of cash and assets they seize when waging the drug war. This dramatic change in policy gave state and local police an enormous stake in the War on Drugs—not in its success, but in its perpetual existence. Law
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
The West is evidently no longer a safe place to express our opinions, unless we are prepared to meet a bloody end by doing so. The choice is ours, but we can be guaranteed that our government and law enforcement agencies will continue to support pedophilia, political correctness and multicultural genocide under the guise of religion.
Anita B. Sulser (We Are One (Light Is... Book 1))
Sheriff’s Department had long before enrolled in a federal program that provided surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies – free of charge.   The program, commonly referred to as 1033, had provided the local law enforcement agency with over $4 million dollars in weapons, body armor, trucks and other surplus military equipment.
Joe Nobody (Secession: The Storm)
and shoot-don’t-shoot training. This is the Oklahoma v. Tuttle decision (1984, 10th Federal Circuit Court), and today many law enforcement trainers teach that a law enforcement agency is probably not in compliance with federal circuit court guidance if they are still shooting at anything other than a clear, realistic depiction of a deadly force threat.
Dave Grossman (On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and Peace)
President Trump demonstrated striking hostility toward the referees—law enforcement, intelligence, ethics agencies, and the courts.
Steven Levitsky (How Democracies Die)
I now have three binders overflowing with the success of this program. My husband and I travel across the country teaching composite and forensic art to law enforcement agencies ranging from the FBI to two-person departments. Our students' sketches have identified such perpetrators as child killers, rapists, abductors, murderers, bank robbers, drug dealers and the largest serial arsonist in U.S. history.
Carrie Stuart Parks (Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces)
[Free trade agreements] are trade agreements that don't stick to trade…they colonize environmental labor, and consumer issues of grave concern (in terms of health safety, and livelihoods too) to many, many hundreds of millions of people - and they do that by subordinating consumer, environmental, and labor issues to the imperatives and the supremacy of international commerce. That is exactly the reverse of how democratic societies have progressed, because over the decades they've progressed by subordinating the profiteering priorities of companies to, say, higher environmental health standards; abolition of child labor; the right of workers to have fair worker standards…and it's this subordination of these three major categories that affect people's lives, labor, environment, the consumer, to the supremacy and domination of trade; where instead of trade getting on its knees and showing that it doesn't harm consumers - it doesn't deprive the important pharmaceuticals because of drug company monopolies, it doesn't damage the air and water and soil and food (environmentally), and it doesn't lacerate the rights of workers - no, it's just the opposite: it's workers and consumers and environments that have to kneel before this giant pedestal of commercial trade and prove that they are not, in a whole variety of ways, impeding international commerce…so this is the road to dictatorial devolution of democratic societies: because these trade agreements have the force of law, they've got enforcement teeth, and they bypass national courts, national regulatory agencies, in ways that really reflect a massive, silent, mega-corporate coup d'etat…that was pulled off in the mid-1990's.
Ralph Nader
In October 1982, President Reagan officially announced his administration’s War on Drugs. At the time he declared this new war, less than 2 percent of the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the nation.72 This fact was no deterrent to Reagan, for the drug war from the outset had little to do with public concern about drugs and much to do with public concern about race. By waging a war on drug users and dealers, Reagan made good on his promise to crack down on the racially defined “others”—the undeserving. Practically overnight the budgets of federal law enforcement agencies soared. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI antidrug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million.73 Department of Defense antidrug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991. During that same period, DEA antidrug spending grew from $86 to $1,026 million, and FBI antidrug allocations grew from $38 to $181 million.74 By contrast, funding for agencies responsible for drug treatment, prevention, and education was dramatically reduced. The budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for example, was reduced from $274 million to $57 million from 1981 to 1984, and antidrug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.75
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
The same grant programs that paid for local law enforcement agencies across the country to buy armored personnel carriers and drones have paid for Stingrays," said the ALCU's Soghoian. "Like drones, license plate readers, and biometric scanners, the Stingrays are yet another surveillance technology created by defense contractors for the military, and after years of use in war zones, it eventually trickles down to local and state agencies, paid for with DOJ and DHS money.
Jeremy Scahill (The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program)
Congress would later find that though bureau officials undertook COINTELPRO in the name of national security, its purpose was “preventing or disrupting the exercise of First Amendment rights.” The program took tactics developed for use against foreign adversaries during war and applied them to citizens: leaking phony allegations, sending anonymous poison-pen letters, interfering with jobs, having people arrested on drug charges, distributing misinformation, and encouraging violence. “In essence, the Bureau took the law into its own hands, conducting a sophisticated vigilante operation against domestic enemies,” the committee said. “Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that. The unexpressed major premise of the programs was a law enforcement agency has the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order.
Seth Rosenfeld (Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power)
But she knew that even in the current politically charged atmosphere, when people were encouraged to distrust or even openly disrespect law enforcement, the FBI was one of the few—perhaps the only—federal agencies for which most Americans still had respect.
Dean Koontz (The Silent Corner (Jane Hawk, #1))
On September 11, it was government that failed. Law enforcement agencies didn't detect the plot. The FBI had reports that said young men on the terrorist watch list were going from flight school to flight school, trying to find an instructor who would teach them how to fly a commercial jet. But the FBI never acted on it. The INS let the hijackers in. Three of them had expired visas. Months after the attack, the government issued visas to two dead hijackers. The solution to such government incompetence is to give the government more power? Congress could have done what Amsterdam, Belfast, Brussels, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, London, Paris, and Rome did: set tough standards and let private companies compete to meet them. Many of those cities switched to private companies because they realized government-run security wasn't working very well. Private-sector competition keeps the screeners alert because the airport can fire them. No one can fire the government; that's a reason government agencies gradually deteriorate. There's no competition.
John Stossel (Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media...)
It always helps to have the referees on your side. Modern states possess various agencies with the authority to investigate and punish wrongdoing by both public officials and private citizens. These include the judicial system, law enforcement bodies, and intelligence, tax, and regulatory agencies. In democracies, such institutions are designed to serve as neutral arbiters. For would-be authoritarians, therefore, judicial and law enforcement agencies pose both a challenge and an opportunity. If they remain independent, they might expose and punish government abuse. It is a referee’s job, after all, to prevent cheating. But if these agencies are controlled by loyalists, they could serve a would-be dictator’s aims, shielding the government from investigation and criminal prosecutions that could lead to its removal from power. The president may break the law, threaten citizens’ rights, and even violate the constitution without having to worry that such abuse will be investigated or censured. With the courts packed and law enforcement authorities brought to heel, governments can act with impunity.
Steven Levitsky (How Democracies Die)
James Comey should have been fired the day he held a very public news conference in July 2016 announcing his recommendation that Hillary Clinton not be criminally prosecuted for mishandling classified information and jeopardizing national security. He acted without authorization and in dereliction of his duty to follow the policies and regulations established by both the FBI and the Department of Justice. In so doing, he demeaned the work of the agency he led, damaged the integrity of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, and breached the public’s trust.
Gregg Jarrett (The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump)
The Pentagon, for its part, has given away military intelligence and millions of dollars in firepower to state and local agencies willing to make the rhetorical war a literal one. Almost immediately after the federal dollars began to flow, law enforcement agencies across the country began to compete for funding, equipment, and training. By the late 1990s, the overwhelming majority of state and local police forces in the country had availed themselves of the newly available resources and added a significant military component to buttress their drug-war operations.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
Bureaucracy, politics, and the inability of public institutions to humbly acknowledge mistakes were all to blame. The two law enforcement agencies were biding their time, refusing comment on what they termed an ongoing joint investigation into the relationship between the murders of Alexandra Parks, James Allen, Peter and Paul Nguyen, and George Schubert. The slayings of Deborah Stovall and Josette Leroux, professionally known on the porno circuit as Ashley Juggs and Annie Minx, were also folded in as part of the joint investigation. All the while, Foster remained in the L.A. County Jail on a no-bail hold. The
Michael Connelly (The Crossing (Harry Bosch, #18; Harry Bosch Universe, #28))
In 18th-century England this cronyism gave way to open economies in which anyone could sell anything to anyone, and their transactions were protected by the rule of law, property rights, enforceable contracts, and institutions like banks, corporations, and government agencies that run by fiduciary duties rather than personal connections.
Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
The question that remains unanswered and keeps coming to the fore is ‘Are the punishment schemes for child sex and sexual abuse deterrent in nature? Amidst ongoing debates in most countries about capital punishment as human rights violation to be inflicted in rarest of rare cases, and those who have abrogated capital punishment from their list of penalties, there is a need to transcend all national and international boundaries, and bring Child sexual abuse/rape within the ambit of international legislators, and law enforcement agencies, with a drive to pilot child rights of protection of his/her body much beyond the prevalent inefficacious laws, devoid of collective consensus of the people.
Henrietta Newton Martin
Why should anyone trust a government that has condoned torture, spied on at least thirty-five world leaders, supports indefinite detention, places bugs in thousands of computers all over the world, kills innocent people with drone attacks, promotes the post office to log mail for law enforcement agencies and arbitrarily authorizes targeted assassinations? Or, for that matter, a president that instituted the Insider Threat Program, which was designed to get government employees to spy on each other and ‘turn themselves and others in for failing to report breaches,’ which includes ‘any unauthorized disclosure of anything, not just classified materials.’” Some say this program was designed to turn government employees, such as your postman, into an army of snitches. The
Jim Marrs (Population Control: How Corporate Owners Are Killing Us)
most people stopped and searched in the War on Drugs are perfectly innocent of any crime. The police have received no training that enhances the likelihood they will spot the drug criminals as they drive by and leave everyone else alone. To the contrary, tens of thousands of law enforcement officers have received training that guarantees precisely the opposite. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) trains police to conduct utterly unreasonable and discriminatory stops and searches throughout the United States.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
Under the Fugitive Persons Act, those who escape from service are to be captured and returned, anywhere they are found in the United States, slave state or free. All law enforcement agencies are obliged to assist in these operations when called upon (as, indeed, “all good citizens” are so obliged), but it is the US Marshals Service that is specifically charged with the job. This law was passed in the ancient year of 1793 under its old name, but it’s been updated repeatedly: strengthened in 1850, reinforced in 1861, revised and strengthened a half dozen times since. When, in 1875, Congress at last ended slavery in the nation’s capital, the slaveholding powers were appeased by the raising of fees for obstruction. When President Roosevelt, in 1935, proposed the creation of a “comprehensive regulatory framework” for the plantations (and the Bureau of Labor Practices to enforce it), he quieted howling southern senators with a sweeping immunity bill, shielding US marshals from zealous northern prosecutors. Tit for tat. Give and take. Negotiation and conciliation. Compromise. It’s how the Union survives. People
Ben H. Winters (Underground Airlines)
Indeed, agencies of the state are more insular and potentially more corrupt because of that insularity than are private-sector companies. Corporations must answer to stockholders and customers and defend against lawsuits of wide variety, but government agencies seldom have to answer to anyone other than sympathetic congressional committees and are largely immune from lawsuits filed by citizens whom they fail to serve or actively damage. Each agency becomes a little kingdom and builds formidable encircling walls, which often inhibits the efforts of law-enforcement officers.
Dean Koontz (Memories of Tomorrow (Nameless: Season One, #6))
Most governments, most of the time, seek to monopolize violence. If only the government can legitimately use force, and this use is constrained by law, then the forms of politics that we take for granted become possible. It is impossible to carry out democratic elections, try cases at court, design and enforce laws, or indeed manage any of the other quiet business of government when agencies beyond the state also have access to violence. For just this reason, people and parties who wish to undermine democracy and the rule of law create and fund violent organizations that involve themselves in politics.
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny)
I know it's become fashionable to depict the police as sadistic Cossacks riding down innocent citizens, but I've become well enough acquainted with law-enforcement agencies across the country to know that's just not the case. Of course, a certain small percentage of policemen are irresponsible...but that doesn't justify the current unjust barrage of propaganda against a tribe of men who are hard-working, underpaid and daily risking their lives to protect us. I'm sure there are isolated instances of police brutality, but the rising crime rate and urban violence constitute a far, far more pressing problem.
Truman Capote
Most governments, most of the time, seek to monopolize violence. If only the government can legitimately use force, and this use is constrained by law, then the forms of politics that we take for granted become possible. It is impossible to carry out democratic elections, try cases at court, design and enforce laws, or indeed manage any of the other quiet business of government when agencies beyond the state also have access to violence. For just this reason, people and parties who wish to undermine democracy and the rule of law create and fund violent organizations that involve themselves in politics. Such groups can take the form of a paramilitary wing of a political party, the personal bodyguard of a particular politician—or apparently spontaneous citizens’ initiatives, which usually turn out
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)
Hoover wanted the new investigation to be a showcase for his bureau, which he had continued to restructure. To counter the sordid image created by Burns and the old school of venal detectives, Hoover adopted the approach of Progressive thinkers who advocated for ruthlessly efficient systems of management. These systems were modeled on the theories of Frederick Winslow Taylor, an industrial engineer, who argued that companies should be run “scientifically,” with each worker’s task minutely analyzed and quantified. Applying these methods to government, Progressives sought to end the tradition of crooked party bosses packing government agencies, including law enforcement, with patrons and hacks. Instead, a new class of technocratic civil servants would manage burgeoning bureaucracies, in the manner of Herbert Hoover—“ the Great Engineer”—who had become a hero for administering humanitarian relief efforts so expeditiously during World War I. As the historian Richard Gid Powers has noted, J. Edgar Hoover found in Progressivism an approach that reflected his own obsession with organization and social control. What’s more, here was a way for Hoover, a deskbound functionary, to cast himself as a dashing figure—a crusader for the modern scientific age. The fact that he didn’t fire a gun only burnished his image. Reporters noted that the “days of ‘old sleuth’ are over” and that Hoover had “scrapped the old ‘gum shoe, dark lantern and false moustache’ traditions of the Bureau of Investigation and substituted business methods of procedure.” One article said, “He plays golf. Whoever could picture Old Sleuth doing that?
David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI)
Sometimes, for instance, there would be a matter the governor didn’t want to discuss in public, but we knew he’d be asked about it at his next public appearance, or in any case Aaron would be asked about it. Let’s say the head of a cabinet agency had been accused by a state senator of running a cockfighting ring. His behavior would fall within executive purview, but since he had not been indicted or even legally accused, he couldn’t be fired or forced to resign. Aaron knew the governor would be asked about it at a press conference, so our office would issue a statement to any member of the press who asked about it. “[The senator’s] remarks have raised some troubling questions,” the statement might say, “and we’re looking closely at the situation in an effort to determine whether it merits further investigation by state or local law enforcement. At the same time, we want to avoid rushing to judgment, and we hope all concerned will likewise avoid making accusations in the absence of evidence.” This is the kind of statement Aaron would need: one that said something without saying anything. It would get the governor on record without committing him to any course of action. Hence the rhetorical dead weight: “state or local law enforcement” instead of just “law enforcement”; all that about “rushing to judgment” and “making accusations in the absence of evidence,” as if anybody needed to be told that. If a reporter asked the governor about it, he could avoid talking about it without having to use that self-incriminating phrase “No comment.” “I’d go back to what we’ve already said on this,” he might say, and repeat the gaseous phrases of the statement.
Barton Swaim (The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics)
told my people that I wanted only the best, whatever it took, wherever they came from, whatever it cost. We assembled thirty people, the brightest cybersecurity minds we have. A few are on loan, pursuant to strict confidentiality agreements, from the private sector—software companies, telecommunications giants, cybersecurity firms, military contractors. Two are former hackers themselves, one of them currently serving a thirteen-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. Most are from various agencies of the federal government—Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA. Half our team is devoted to threat mitigation—how to limit the damage to our systems and infrastructure after the virus hits. But right now, I’m concerned with the other half, the threat-response team that Devin and Casey are running. They’re devoted to stopping the virus, something they’ve been unable to do for the last two weeks. “Good morning, Mr. President,” says Devin Wittmer. He comes from NSA. After graduating from Berkeley, he started designing cyberdefense software for clients like Apple before the NSA recruited him away. He has developed federal cybersecurity assessment tools to help industries and governments understand their preparedness against cyberattacks. When the major health-care systems in France were hit with a ransomware virus three years ago, we lent them Devin, who was able to locate and disable it. Nobody in America, I’ve been assured, is better at finding holes in cyberdefense systems or at plugging them. “Mr. President,” says Casey Alvarez. Casey is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who settled in Arizona to start a family and built up a fleet of grocery stores in the Southwest along the way. Casey showed no interest in the business, taking quickly to computers and wanting to join law enforcement. When she was a grad student at Penn, she got turned down for a position at the Department of Justice. So Casey got on her computer and managed to do what state and federal authorities had been unable to do for years—she hacked into an underground child-pornography website and disclosed the identities of all the website’s patrons, basically gift-wrapping a federal prosecution for Justice and shutting down an operation that was believed to be the largest purveyor of kiddie porn in the country. DOJ hired her on the spot, and she stayed there until she went to work for the CIA. She’s been most recently deployed in the Middle East with US Central Command, where she intercepts, decodes, and disrupts cybercommunications among terrorist groups. I’ve been assured that these two are, by far, the best we have. And they are about to meet the person who, so far, has been better. There is a hint of reverence in their expressions as I introduce them to Augie. The Sons of Jihad is the all-star team of cyberterrorists, mythical figures in that world. But I sense some competitive fire, too, which will be a good thing.
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
Imported narcotics on CIA planes and otherwise serve three purposes important to the federal government. It is good business, exceeding war profits. Drug dealers work with the intelligence and military sectors. Profits gained from drug traffic help support covert projects, including assassinations. Second, provocateurs and police agents purposely push narcotics into the ghettos to control minorities. According to Louis Tackwood, the LAPD distributed drugs, as do other police agencies. Third, the necessary violence and crime in the streets caused by supporting drug habits requires more police, local helicopters, surveillance, arrests without warrants, framing selected patsies by planting evidence, and makes the law enforcement agent the protector of our life and property. Planted marijuana in the binoculars of John Lennon was the excuse to deport him. In spite of the cultural advancements that he and Yoko Ono have made, their outspoken criticism of war, genocide and political imprisonment make them eligible for the “enemies list.
Mae Brussell (The Essential Mae Brussell: Investigations of Fascism in America)
a moment later the second of Sverdlov’s men leapt out from behind the truck with his automatic raised. He was about take the shot at Maria, but Cris snapped off two rounds. Both buried themselves in his chest, and he collapsed to the sidewalk in a welter of blood. Bystanders were running, and a woman was screaming. He ignored them, reached the table, and stuck his gun in Sverdlov’s face. "Keep your hands in view, and don't move. Maria, we're leaving. You’ve seen the deal they were about to make with you. All they wanted was to get you here to kill you. Isn't that right, Major?" The Russian didn't reply, but his silence was eloquent. They raced across the street back to the Dodge and leapt inside. Sirens were starting to wail, and they had to get out of the city. He drove away fast and out of town, heading north. “Use your phone. Call March, and tell him we’re heading his way. You’ll be able to ask him about Alexander, and see if he can fix us up somewhere remote to stay. Like before, but not his place, an address with no connection to him, and nowhere near Alexander. They could use him again to reach you.” She made the call. It was brief, and she relayed it to him when she’d finished the call. “March said he’d do what he can to find us a place. Cris, what are you planning?” Her voice sounded different, not frightened, but hollow, empty of hope. He spoke as he weaved through the traffic to get away before someone came after them. The Russians, Chicago PD, U.S. Immigration, and maybe a couple more agencies he wasn’t yet aware of. "We need to go back to where it all started, where these bastards first picked us up. I’ll drive to the floatplane base, and if Warner is still there, I'll get him to fly us back to Vermont. It’s time to get ahead of them and make preparations for when they try again." "Why Vermont?" He frowned; annoyed he’d got it so wrong before. "I made a mistake coming here. I thought we could lose ourselves in the city, but the Russians have the same technical resources as U.S. Law Enforcement. Which means wherever we go, they'll find us. We have to go back to somewhere remote. Where there are no cameras.” “And what then? More shooting, more killing?” It didn’t sound like Maria. More like a frightened girl, frightened for the safety of her son.
Eric Meyer (The Kremlin Assassins (Black Operator #2))
But it was not until q984, she Congress amended the federal law to allow federal law enforcement agencies to retain and use any and all proceeds from asset forfeiture, andmtl allow state and local police agencies to retain up to 80 percent of the asserts value, that a true revolution began.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
These agencies sometimes act as henchmen for the White House, thwarting regulatory or enforcement initiatives that could upset corporate allies of the president or his party.
Mary Christina Wood (Nature's Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age)
awkward televised hug from the new president of the United States. My curtain call worked. Until it didn’t. Still speaking in his usual stream-of-consciousness and free-association cadence, the president moved his eyes again, sweeping from left to right, toward me and my protective curtain. This time, I was not so lucky. The small eyes with the white shadows stopped on me. “Jim!” Trump exclaimed. The president called me forward. “He’s more famous than me.” Awesome. My wife Patrice has known me since I was nineteen. In the endless TV coverage of what felt to me like a thousand-yard walk across the Blue Room, back at our home she was watching TV and pointing at the screen: “That’s Jim’s ‘oh shit’ face.” Yes, it was. My inner voice was screaming: “How could he think this is a good idea? Isn’t he supposed to be the master of television? This is a complete disaster. And there is no fricking way I’m going to hug him.” The FBI and its director are not on anyone’s political team. The entire nightmare of the Clinton email investigation had been about protecting the integrity and independence of the FBI and the Department of Justice, about safeguarding the reservoir of trust and credibility. That Trump would appear to publicly thank me on his second day in office was a threat to the reservoir. Near the end of my thousand-yard walk, I extended my right hand to President Trump. This was going to be a handshake, nothing more. The president gripped my hand. Then he pulled it forward and down. There it was. He was going for the hug on national TV. I tightened the right side of my body, calling on years of side planks and dumbbell rows. He was not going to get a hug without being a whole lot stronger than he looked. He wasn’t. I thwarted the hug, but I got something worse in exchange. The president leaned in and put his mouth near my right ear. “I’m really looking forward to working with you,” he said. Unfortunately, because of the vantage point of the TV cameras, what many in the world, including my children, thought they saw was a kiss. The whole world “saw” Donald Trump kiss the man who some believed got him elected. Surely this couldn’t get any worse. President Trump made a motion as if to invite me to stand with him and the vice president and Joe Clancy. Backing away, I waved it off with a smile. “I’m not worthy,” my expression tried to say. “I’m not suicidal,” my inner voice said. Defeated and depressed, I retreated back to the far side of the room. The press was excused, and the police chiefs and directors started lining up for pictures with the president. They were very quiet. I made like I was getting in the back of the line and slipped out the side door, through the Green Room, into the hall, and down the stairs. On the way, I heard someone say the score from the Packers-Falcons game. Perfect. It is possible that I was reading too much into the usual Trump theatrics, but the episode left me worried. It was no surprise that President Trump behaved in a manner that was completely different from his predecessors—I couldn’t imagine Barack Obama or George W. Bush asking someone to come onstage like a contestant on The Price Is Right. What was distressing was what Trump symbolically seemed to be asking leaders of the law enforcement and national security agencies to do—to come forward and kiss the great man’s ring. To show their deference and loyalty. It was tremendously important that these leaders not do that—or be seen to even look like they were doing that. Trump either didn’t know that or didn’t care, though I’d spend the next several weeks quite memorably, and disastrously, trying to make this point to him and his staff.
James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
So there was basically the same kind of conflict in Peter as Yeltsin had with the Supreme Soviet [parliament]? Yes. But it is important to note that there wasn’t the same division between the law-enforcement agencies that there had been in 1991. The FSB11 leadership—Viktor Cherkesov was the head—announced their support for the mayor from the start. The FSB introduced a number of measures advocating the arrest of extremists who were plotting provocations, planning to blow things up, or trying to destabilize the situation. And that was the end of it.
Vladimir Putin (First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President Vladimir Putin)
Should not a ‘free India’ enact laws to administer its intelligence community both at the Centre and in the States? Should not the country safeguard its future from errant leaders like Indira and Sanjay Gandhi, who mercilessly used the intelligence and enforcement machineries to execute the dictates of national emergency? Who can prevent the fundamentalist political entities to use these functional agencies to impose on the nation their brand of nationalism? Only the constitutional system can do that.
Maloy Krishna Dhar (Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer)
In the introduction we mentioned that there were around 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. Three-quarters of America’s 12,300 local police departments employ 24 or fewer officers; 48% employ fewer than 10 officers, and, in 2015, 5% employed a single officer.
Nick Selby (In Context: Understanding Police Killings of Unarmed Civilians)
Further, these continuums are the mechanical devices which the Supreme Court proscribed against using in the Graham decision. To quote Thomas Petrowski, FBI SAC and attorney (October, 2002; FBI Bulletin), “Unfortunately, many law enforcement agencies have adopted training in the guise of a “force continuum,” which is precisely the mechanical application that the Court proscribed…it is inconsistent with the concept of reasonableness. Most use-of-force continua indicate a reflective approach to a menu of force options with the goal of selecting the least intrusive option. While virtually every force continuum provides that such progressing through force options may not be appropriate in all use-of-force situations, the seed of hesitation is inescapably planted. The word continuum implies a sequential approach. The goal of force continua – using the least intrusive means to respond to a threat – simply is not constitutionally required. The law does not require officers to select the minimum force necessary, only a reasonable option.
Kevin R. Davis (Use of Force Investigations: A Manual for Law Enforcement)
Some former Bush officials, however, believed that the Justice Department's failure to pursue the New Black Panther Party case resulted from top Obama administration officials' ideological belief that civil rights laws only apply to protect members of minority groups from discrimination by whites. Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler denied any such motives. She asserted that "the department makes enforcement decisions based on the merits, not the race, gender or ethnicity of any party involved". But an anonymous Justice Department official told the Washington Post that "the Voting Rights Act was passed because people like Bull Connor [a white police commissioner] were hitting people like John Lewis [a black civil rights activist], not the other way around". The Post concluded that the New Black Panther Party case "tapped into deep divisions within the Justice Department that persist today over whether the agency should focus on protecting historically oppressed minorities or enforce laws without regard to race". The Office of Professional Responsibility's report on the case found that several former and current DOJ attorneys told investigators under oath that some lawyers in the Civil Rights Division don't believe that the DOJ should bring cases involving white victims of racial discrimination. The report also found that Voting Section lawyers believed that their boss, appointed by President Obama, wanted them to bring only cases protecting members of American minority groups. She phrased this as having the section pursue only "traditional" civil rights enforcement cases. Her employees understood that by "traditional" she meant only cases involving minority victims.
David E. Bernstein (Lawless: The Obama Administration's Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law)
This overt display of police inaction eventually became a recurring feature of the law enforcing agencies in the capital.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay (Sikhs: The Untold Agony Of 1984)
1.4 Recommendation: Law enforcement agencies should promote legitimacy internally within the organization by applying the principles of procedural justice.
U.S. Government (Final Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing May 2015)
1.3.2 Action item: When serious incidents occur, including those involving alleged police misconduct, agencies should communicate with citizens and the media swiftly, openly,  and neutrally, respecting areas where the law requires confidentiality. One way to promote neutrality is to ensure that agencies and their members do not release background information on involved parties. While a great deal of information is often publicly available, this information should not be proactively distributed by law enforcement.
U.S. Government (Final Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing May 2015)
1.5.1 Action item: In order to achieve external legitimacy, law enforcement agencies should involve the community in the process of developing and evaluating policies and procedures.
U.S. Government (Final Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing May 2015)
1.9 Recommendation: Law enforcement agencies should build relationships based on trust with immigrant communities. This is central to overall public safety.
U.S. Government (Final Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing May 2015)
Those in control of America’s most powerful institutions-- business, media, academia, bureaucracies, and even the FBI-- are engaged in a permanent struggle against half the country: technology oligarchs who made unprecedented efforts to normalize censorship; state and local officials who radically altered the way Americans vote in the middle of an election for partisan advantage; an ostensibly free press that credulously and willfully published fake news to damage the president; politicized federal law enforcement agencies that abused the federal government’s surveillance and investigative powers to smear Trump as a puppet of a foreign power; and an opposition party that coordinated all these smears and spent years trying to impeach and remove a duly elected president from office.
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway (Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections)
Putin engaged in a full-scale witch-hunt against anyone connected to Khodorkovsky. In the weeks that followed his arrest, Russian law enforcement agencies went after the political parties he’d financed, his charities, and scores of his employees.
Bill Browder (Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice)
The most insidious of the destructive forces behind Africatown’s demise involves the paper mills, which were at the heart of a billion-dollar lawsuit filed by residents. After seventy years as the main employers of Africatown’s residents, both mills shut down in 2000. Suddenly, nearly two thousand jobs disappeared, along with the perpetual and noxious stench associated with paper making. But the job losses were just a scratch on the surface compared to the real, almost invisible damage the mills had inflicted. To fully understand the story, we must step back in time to the 1980s, to a time when environmental laws in Alabama were essentially meaningless. Today, Alabama ranks last in the nation for what it spends to protect the environment, and is widely regarded by industry trade groups as the most permissive state in the country when it comes to setting or enforcing pollution limits. Back in the eighties and nineties, things were much worse. James Warr, who was the head of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management from its inception in the 1980s until the early 2000s, was opposed to vigorous application of environmental regulations for businesses. He was an odd fit for the head of an environmental agency tasked with regulating polluters, but I believe that is precisely why he was chosen—to ensure that the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act didn’t slow industrial production in Alabama. I was an environment reporter for the Mobile newspaper for eighteen years, beginning in 2000, and had numerous interactions with Warr and his agency. During an interview in 2003, Warr told me that the federal Superfund law was illegal and he had no intention of enforcing it or adding new sites in Alabama to the list.
Ben Raines (The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning)
What level of aggressiveness do you use on an intoxicated patron at a bar that is staggering around and wanting to fight you? What level of aggressiveness do you use on a gang of thugs that have jumped you in a parking lot? I add these two extremes because you are more likely to face one of these examples than find yourself in a life-or-death struggle in a trench on the front lines of a battlefield. Do you understand the Force Continuum that is taught to Law Enforcement Officers? I would suggest that you familiarize yourself with it. Besides being an excellent mental tool to use when faced with potentially violent encounters, it could be invaluable if you ever have to justify your actions to law enforcement or before a judge. The techniques demonstrated in this book can be very serious when executed. You should have a solid understanding of the law, levels of force needed to mitigate a violent encounter, and most importantly, the moral and ethical foundation of a true warrior. A warrior that has a high level of self-confidence, but isn’t arrogant. One that trains their body and their mind for that moment that they might find themselves in a sudden violent encounter. Warriors understand when to hold back the level of their aggression, and likewise, they understand when to unleash it in all its ruthless darkness. Few in today’s society walk the true path of a warrior. Most modern warriors are in special operations in the military and within the intelligence community. Others work as overseas contractors. There are some that work in various government agencies, but on the most part average civilians will never be in the role of a true warrior. Can any of us still be thrust into a life-or-death encounter with only our four limbs and, most importantly, our head to survive the situation? Yes, but honestly the odds of being in that kind of situation are extremely low. Given the gravity of such a situation, we should all still train ourselves to be able to increase our chance of surviving. The segment of the population that doesn’t train and believes that this type of thing will never happen to them, or their loved ones, falls under the category of those to be protected. Then again, you, as an individual, have the right to turn a blind eye, though morally and ethically wrong to a warrior, in such a situation and let natural selection take its course. I couldn’t do that and I’m sure the vast majority of you feel the same way. By examining ourselves and determining that we would not stand by idly while others were attacked, adds additional responsibility and purpose.
Rand Cardwell (36 Deadly Bubishi Points: The Science and Technique of Pressure Point Fighting - Defend Yourself Against Pressure Point Attacks!)
China was the intellectual property rip-off capital of the world, churning out pirated software and DVDs with abandon; no Chinese law enforcement agency in the year 2000 was interested in taking our case.
Desmond Shum (Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China)
A republic will not work if we don’t have shared facts.” Michael Hayden, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, sent a distress signal when he wrote (in the New York Times): “These are truly uncharted waters for the country. We have in the past argued over the values to be applied to objective reality, or occasionally over what constituted objective reality, but never the existence or relevance of objective reality itself.” The battle lines, Hayden perceived, made for some strange bedfellows. “In this post-truth world, intelligence agencies are in the bunker with some unlikely mates: journalism, academia, the courts, law enforcement, and science—all of which, like intelligence gathering, are evidence-based.
Jonathan Rauch (The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth)
1.2.1 Action item: The U.S. Department of Justice should develop and disseminate case studies that provide examples where past injustices were publicly acknowledged by law enforcement agencies in a manner to help build community trust. 1.3 Recommendation: Law enforcement agencies should establish a culture of transparency and accountability in order to build public trust and legitimacy. This will help ensure decision making is understood and in accord with stated policy.
U.S. Government (Final Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing May 2015)
1.3.1 Action item: To embrace a culture of transparency, law enforcement agencies should make all department policies available for public review and regularly post on the department’s website information about stops, summonses, arrests, reported crime, and other law enforcement data aggregated by demographics.
U.S. Government (Final Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing May 2015)
2.2 Recommendation: Law enforcement agencies should have comprehensive policies on the use of force that include training, investigations, prosecutions, data collection, and information sharing. These policies must be clear, concise, and openly available for public inspection. 2.2.1 Action item: Law enforcement agency policies for training on use of force should emphasize de-escalation and alternatives to arrest or summons in situations where appropriate.
U.S. Government (Final Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing May 2015)
Most people are unaware that nearly every federal agency includes some type of law enforcement division. For example, the United States Postal Service has a law enforcement wing—the Postal Inspection Service. Postal Inspection agents enforce over two hundred federal laws related to crimes involving the postal system, its employees, and its customers. Each year, these agents make over five thousand arrests, primarily for crimes such as mail theft, mail fraud, and illegally mailing drugs and weapons. Interestingly, these agents have a reputation of being some of the most dedicated and intelligent in all of federal law enforcement. Even the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) have law enforcement divisions with gun-carrying federal agents capable of making arrests for violations of federal tax and environmental law.
Maclen Stanley (The Law Says What?: Stuff You Didn’t Know About the Law (but Really Should!))
1.4.1 Action item: In order to achieve internal legitimacy, law enforcement agencies should involve employees in the process of developing policies and procedures.
U.S. Government (Final Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing May 2015)
1.5.3 Action item: Law enforcement agencies should create opportunities in schools and communities for positive nonenforcement interactions with police. Agencies should also publicize the beneficial outcomes and images of positive, trust-building partnerships and initiatives.
U.S. Government (Final Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing May 2015)
1.4.2 Action item: Law enforcement agency leadership should examine opportunities to incorporate procedural justice into the internal discipline process, placing additional importance on values adherence rather than adherence to rules. Union leadership should be partners in this process.
U.S. Government (Final Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing May 2015)
1.5.4 Action item: Use of physical control equipment and techniques against vulnerable populations—including children, elderly persons, pregnant women, people with physical and mental disabilities, limited English proficiency, and others—can undermine public trust and should be used as a last resort. Law enforcement agencies should carefully consider and review their policies towards these populations and adopt policies if none are in place.
U.S. Government (Final Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing May 2015)
2.1 Recommendation: Law enforcement agencies should collaborate with community members to develop policies and strategies in communities and neighborhoods disproportionately affected by crime for deploying resources that aim to reduce crime by improving relationships, greater community engagement, and cooperation.
U.S. Government (Final Report of The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing May 2015)
The Internet was creating more opportunities for perverts than most of us had imagined, and law enforcement agencies were less aggressive than the cyber-geeks in coming up with solutions
Linda Fairstein (Cold Hit (Alexandra Cooper, #3))
To be sure, “Dark Alliance” was far from a perfect piece of journalism. In his eagerness to break the story of the CIA, the Contras, and crack, Webb overstated some key claims. It was not true, for example, that Blandón’s drug ring “opened the first pipeline between Colombia’s cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles.” The piece also suggested in several passages that the CIA actively participated in Blandón’s operation. As much as testimony points in that direction, Webb never presented a smoking gun. What Webb could say with authority was exactly what the Kerry Committee had: that federal law-enforcement agencies, including the CIA, knew that Contra members were involved with the Colombian cartels and trafficking large shipments of cocaine to the United States. They also knew that a number of major U.S. drug rings controlled by Nicaraguan expats were helping to fund the Contras. Webb could have also said with authority that one of the Contra-cocaine connections known to the feds was Danilo Blandón, a trafficker who, it turned out, supplied Ricky Ross, the L.A. dealer who catalyzed the crack epidemic. Those were and are the facts.
Donovan X. Ramsey (When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era)
Section 13-2921 - Harassment; classification; definition A. A person commits harassment if, with intent to harass or with knowledge that the person is harassing another person, the person: 1. Anonymously or otherwise contacts, communicates or causes a communication with another person by verbal, electronic, mechanical, telegraphic, telephonic or written means in a manner that harasses. 2. Continues to follow another person in or about a public place for no legitimate purpose after being asked to desist. 3. Repeatedly commits an act or acts that harass another person. 4. Surveils or causes another person to surveil a person for no legitimate purpose. 5. On more than one occasion makes a false report to a law enforcement, credit or social service agency. 6. Interferes with the delivery of any public or regulated utility to a person. B. A person commits harassment against a public officer or employee if the person, with intent to harass, files a nonconsensual lien against any public officer or employee that is not accompanied by an order or a judgment from a court of competent jurisdiction authorizing the filing of the lien or is not issued by a governmental entity or political subdivision or agency pursuant to its statutory authority, a validly licensed utility or water delivery company, a mechanics' lien claimant or an entity created under covenants, conditions, restrictions or declarations affecting real property. C. Harassment under subsection A is a class 1 misdemeanor. Harassment under subsection B is a class 5 felony. D. This section does not apply to an otherwise lawful demonstration, assembly or picketing. E. For the purposes of this section, "harassment" means conduct that is directed at a specific person and that would cause a reasonable person to be seriously alarmed, annoyed or harassed and the conduct in fact seriously alarms, annoys or harasses the person. A.R.S. § 13-2921 Section 13-2921.01 - Aggravated harassment; classification; definition A. A person commits aggravated harassment if the person commits harassment as provided in section 13-2921 and any of the following applies: 1. A court has issued an order of protection or an injunction against harassment against the person and in favor of the victim of harassment and the order or injunction has been served and is still valid. 2. The person has previously been convicted of an offense included in section 13-3601. B. The victim of any previous offense shall be the same as in the present offense. C. A person who violates subsection A, paragraph 1 of this section is guilty of a class 6 felony. A person who commits a second or subsequent violation of subsection A, paragraph 1 of this section is guilty of a class 5 felony. A person who violates subsection A, paragraph 2 of this section is guilty of a class 5 felony. D. For the purposes of this section, "convicted" means a person who was convicted of an offense included in section 13-3601 or who was adjudicated delinquent for conduct that would constitute a historical prior felony conviction if the juvenile had been tried as an adult for an offense included in section 13-3601. A.R.S. § 13-2921.01
Arizona Legislature (ARIZONA REVISED STATUTES TITLE 13 CRIMINAL CODE 2022 EDITION: WEST HARTFORD LEGAL PUBLISHING)
[Michael] German observed how blinkered our national culture—not just within law enforcement, but within the halls of officialdom and in the national media—has become about the real threat posed by white nationalists: If the government knew that al-Qaeda or Isis had infiltrated American law enforcement agencies, it would undoubtedly initiate a nationwide effort to identify them and neutralize the threat they posed. Yet white supremacists and far-right militants have committed far more attacks and killed more people in the U.S. over the last 10 years than any foreign terrorist movement. The FBI regards them as the most lethal domestic terror threat. The need for national action is even more critical.
David Neiwert (The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right's Assault on American Democracy)
American intelligence, by contrast, sharply distinguishes between foreign and domestic targets. Almost all American intelligence is aimed abroad, at foreign allies and adversaries. Only one of the eighteen intelligence agencies has domestic intelligence collection as a core mission: the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is housed within the Department of Justice and operates with extensive legal and policy constraints, judicial review, and congressional oversight to protect American rights.36 The National Security Act of 1947 explicitly prohibits the CIA from exercising any “police, subpoena, law-enforcement powers, or internal-security functions.
Amy B. Zegart (Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence)
Whether we like it or not, as a law enforcement officer myself, I do believe that law enforcement agencies around the world and the Academies itself, takes away a young man’s or woman’s will. It tends to barricade he or she with rules and regulations. Depriving him or her of reason. It makes them less human. They no longer know reality or communication with the real world we live in.
Alex Hartley Jr.
Despite rumors to the contrary, there’s no evidence that the police officer who killed black American George Floyd in May 2020, Derek Chauvin, learned his fatal knee-on-the-neck technique from training in Israel. Regardless, the IDF routinely uses this suffocating move on Palestinians. The aim of the police program, according to the ADL’s director of national law enforcement initiatives, David C. Friedman, was to build connections “between law enforcement agencies in two democracies.” The US police who went “come back and they are Zionists. They understand Israel and its security needs in ways a lot of audiences don’t.”24
Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
Those who profit from the current situation—and those indifferent to it—will say that the housing market should be left alone to regulate itself. They don’t really mean that. Exploitation within the housing market relies on government support. It is the government that legitimizes and defends landlords’ right to charge as much as they want; that subsidizes the construction of high-end apartments, bidding up rents and leaving the poor with even fewer options; that pays landlords when a family cannot, through onetime or ongoing housing assistance; that forcibly removes a family at landlords’ request by dispatching armed law enforcement officers; and that records and publicizes evictions, as a service to landlords and debt collection agencies.
Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
What Webb could say with authority was exactly what the Kerry Committee had: that federal law-enforcement agencies, including the CIA, knew that Contra members were involved with the Colombian cartels and trafficking large shipments of cocaine to the United States. They also knew that a number of major U.S. drug rings controlled by Nicaraguan expats were helping to fund the Contras. Webb could have also said with authority that one of the Contra-cocaine connections known to the feds was Danilo Blandón, a trafficker who, it turned out, supplied Ricky Ross, the L.A. dealer who catalyzed the crack epidemic. Those were and are the facts.
Donovan X. Ramsey (When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era)
If what we advocate in this handbook is so good and has such a significant impact on how officers perform on the street, then why is it not common across law enforcement agencies? Because, it’s the culture, stupid! Cultures are unique to each organization and/or profession. These cultures take shape over time, eventually becoming so entrenched that people resist any change, even change that is positive and valuable to the organization. Many organizations get stuck by the current way they do things, simply because it’s the way they have always done it. They resist mainly because they fear losing something such as traditional methods of training, or operating how they have learned and developed over their careers. They fear they will lose control of their influence, their authority or prestige within the organization, and potentially their positions or jobs. Much of this is ego and individually driven and entirely self-serving, just hiding behind a smokescreen of leadership.
Fred Leland (Adaptive Leadership Handbook - Law Enforcement & Security)
It will be noted that the specific duties assigned to the new agency (CIA) specifically itemized most of the standard tasks of Intelligence, with the exception of “collection.” It would seem that a Congress that had debated the subject so long and so thoroughly would not have overlooked the function of collection. It is more likely that Congress fully intended what it stated—that the task of the CIA was that of “coordinating” intelligence. The duties of the CIA were set forth in the law as follows: to advise the National Security Council in matters concerning such intelligence activities of the government departments and agencies as relate to national security; to make recommendations to the NSC for the coordination of such intelligence activities. . . .; to correlate and evaluate intelligence relating to the national security, and provide for the appropriate dissemination of such intelligence within the government . . . provided that the Agency shall have no police, subpoena, law-enforcement powers, or internal security functions. . . .; to perform, for the benefit of the existing intelligence agencies, such additional services of common concern as the NSC determines can be more efficiently accomplished centrally; to perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the NSC may from time to time direct. For those familiar with that language used in legislative writing, it should be very clear that Congress knew exactly what it was doing when it set up a central authority to coordinate intelligence and when it further delineated the responsibilities into those five brief and explicit paragraphs shown above. Yet few such uncomplicated and simple lines defining the law of the land have ever been subject to so much misinterpretation, intentional and accidental, as have these.
L. Fletcher Prouty (The Secret Team: The CIA & its Allies in Control of the United States & the World)
It is estimated that up to one third of police officers who face a traumatic event will develop some level of post-traumatic stress (Dowling F.G., 2006). Despite this high number of psychological casualties, law enforcement agencies nationwide fail to support and train for a psychological injury that can last far longer than the physical injuries received in combat (Blum, 2001).
Karen Rodwill Solomon (The Price They Pay)
Institutional racism is any institutional policy, practice, or structure in governments, businesses, unions, schools, places of worship, courts, and law enforcement agencies that unfairly subordinate persons of color while allowing Whites to profit from such actions.
Derald Wing Sue (Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race)
With the time and money Bloomberg groups spend demonizing peaceful, law-abiding mom-and-dad gun owners, they could have promoted real gun safety. Bloomberg’s $50 million to shout down dissent on Second Amendment issues could have gone toward putting a safe in every American home or teaching children about proper behavior with and around firearms. He could have donated to Project Child Safe, a wonderful program created by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which gives away free gun locks in gun safety kits through partners in every state. Over thirty-six million safety kits have been distributed through partnerships with law enforcement agencies in all fifty states. Unfortunately,
Dana Loesch (Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America)
Half of all law enforcement agencies in the United States have fewer than ten officers, and nearly three-quarters have fewer than 25 officers.48 Lawrence Sherman noted in his testimony that “so many problems of organizational quality control are made worse by the tiny size of most local police agencies . . . less than 1 percent of 17,985 U.S. police agencies meet the English minimum of 1,000 employees or more.”49 These small forces often lack the resources for training and equipment accessible to larger departments and often are prevented by municipal boundaries and local custom from combining forces with neighboring agencies. Funding and technical assistance can give smaller agencies the incentive to share policies and practices and give them access to a wider variety of training, equipment, and communications technology than they could acquire on their own. Table 1. Full-time state and local law enforcement employees, by size of agency, 2008
U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (Interim Report of The President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing)
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a complaint against Colorado City and Hildale in June 2012, alleging that by acquiescing to the influence of the FLDS Church in the areas of law enforcement, housing, and access to public facilities, and discriminating against non-FLDS residents, the two areas and agencies under their control violated the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as the Fair Housing Act and Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.75 The lawsuit is currently pending.
Marci A. Hamilton (God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty)
In the end, therefore, the successful prosecution of environmental crimes may not be so much about the complexity of the laws and the competence of those agencies struggling to enforce them, but rather about changing a fundamental reluctance in American society to accept white-collar criminals as true criminals. When that happens, they may start being treated as such.
Joseph Hilldorfer (The Cyanide Canary: A True Story of Injustice)
Only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the United States. —ILICH RAMÍREZ SÁNCHEZ, AKA “CARLOS THE JACKAL,” REVOLUTIONARY ISLAM, 2003 The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. —PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, 67TH SESSION, UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2012 Our job is to change the Constitution of America. —SAYYID SYEED, PHD, ISLAMIC SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA, 43RD ANNUAL CONFERENCE, ROSEMONT, IL, LABOR DAY, 2006 The American people deserve complete, accurate, and factual information concerning the threats of subversion and terror posed to our country—particularly by Islamic jihad—and whether the Obama administration has acted forcefully to stop those threats. Unfortunately, Judicial Watch’s investigations into Islamist influence and terrorist operations and the actions of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies have shown that the administration has endangered national security and the safety of Americans because of political correctness and a refusal to recognize the true nature of the threat.
Tom Fitton (Clean House: Exposing Our Government's Secrets and Lies)
As has been the case far too often in the Obama administration, which may go down as the least transparent administration in history, the IRS refused to respond to our FOIA requests. Judicial Watch was forced to sue the IRS in federal court in October 2013, shortly after Lois Lerner had “retired” to avoid the consequences of her actions. Judicial Watch’s efforts through these FOIA requests and subsequent litigation led to the discovery that in addition to targeting conservatives at the IRS, Lois Lerner sent confidential taxpayer information to attorneys at the Federal Election Commission, which enforces federal campaign finance rules, in violation of federal law. Email communications revealed that Lerner, who formerly worked at the Federal Election Commission (FEC), sent extensive materials on conservative organizations—the American Issues Project and Citizens for the Republic—to the FEC, including detailed confidential information, after inquiries from the FEC attorneys. She disclosed this information in spite of Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, which bars the IRS from sending such information to anyone, including other federal agencies. It also turned out that the FEC attorneys were acting without authority to make such an inquiry, because the commissioners who run the agency had never approved an investigation. The emails discovered by Judicial Watch provided a disturbing window into the activities of two out-of-control federal agencies, whose employees, because of their political bias, were trying to target conservative organizations.
Tom Fitton (Clean House: Exposing Our Government's Secrets and Lies)
United States is committed to protecting privacy. It is an element of individual dignity and an aspect of participation in democratic society. To an increasing extent, privacy protections have become critical to the information-based economy. Stronger consumer data privacy protections will buttress the trust that is necessary to promote the full economic, social, and political uses of networked technologies. The increasing quantities of personal data that these technologies subject to collection, use, and disclosure have fueled innovation and significant social benefits. We can preserve these benefits while also ensuring that our consumer data privacy policy better reflects the value that Americans place on privacy and bolsters trust in the Internet and other networked technologies. The framework set forth in the preceding pages provides a way to achieve these goals. The Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights should be the legal baseline that governs consumer data privacy in the United States. The Administration will work with Congress to bring this about, but it will also work with privatesector stakeholders to adopt the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights in the absence of legislation. To encourage adoption, the Department of Commerce will convene multistakeholder processes to encourage the development of enforceable, context-specific codes of conduct. The United States Government will engage with our international partners to increase the interoperability of our respective consumer data privacy frameworks. Federal agencies will continue to develop innovative privacy-protecting programs and guidance as well as enforce the broad array of existing Federal laws that protect consumer privacy. A cornerstone of this framework is its call for the ongoing participation of private-sector stakeholders. The views that companies, civil society, academics, and advocates provided to the Administration through written comments, public symposia, and informal discussions have been invaluable in shaping this framework. Implementing it, and making progress toward consumer data privacy protections that support a more trustworthy networked world, will require all of us to continue to work together★ 45 ★
Anonymous
The NYPD’s Intelligence Division had grown out of the New York City terror attack of September 11, 2001. After being rehired as police commissioner four months later, Ray Kelly determined that federal law enforcement communities had failed New York. He could not understand how every law enforcement and security agency missed a plot involving dozens of people taking flying lessons, crossing borders, shipping money all over the place. Nobody was going to take care of New York, he realized, except New York’s Finest themselves.
Dick Wolf (The Intercept (Jeremy Fisk, #1))