Susanne Posel
In 2011 the consolidation of police departments to regional agencies became commonplace as budget cuts and funding was blamed for the cause of this merging of local forces into one encompassing police enforcement apparatus.
Under the creation of the Unified Police Department (UPD) in Salt Lake City, Utah jurisdictions and municipalities previously controlled by the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office was reallocated to UPD. This became the new police department and eventually the standard for other police departments across the nation.
The UPD dissolved the Sheriff’s Office and installed a completely compromised police force that was essentially a hired security firm that could be manipulated by federal agencies or acclimated into a national police force in the future.
Two years ago Eric Cantor, Congressional Majority Leader, introduced a bill into the House of Representatives that encouraged private sector “police companies” to replace law enforcement on the State and local level by coercing a new police protection insurance that would tack on a fee to citizens for the use of “police protection”.
Cantor justified this move as justified for having citizens pay for the police to be called to scenes as a “communal service” that is contractual just as any other service or good is paid for. As a customer, the citizen would tell 911 dispatch their insurance information for payment purposes to be billed after the police were deployed to the scene, or services were rendered.
Turning local police departments into private security firms that provide services to the public was the scheme behind privatizing law enforcement.
This fact has been hidden from public scrutiny and has added to the blending of social perception of what the police are and what they do so that police services are able to function without question. At the same time, citizens are expected to pay fees for these “services” that were once inherent to life in a structured town or city.
In early 2012, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report entitled “Homeland Security and Intelligence: Next Steps in Evolving the Mission” which outlined in part on how to redirect efforts of the federal government from international terrorism toward home-grown terrorists and build a DHS-controlled police force agency that would control all cities and towns through the use of local police departments.
DHS maintains that “the threat grows more localized” which necessitates the militarization of local police in major cities in the US and the training of staff from local agencies to make sure that oversight is restricted to the federal government.
The creation and implementation of fusion centers in urban areas was to “serve as focal points within the state and local environment for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information between the federal government and state, local, tribal, territorial (SLTT) and private sector partners.”
Private corporations have been parading as public servants policing cities and towns across America without the knowledge of the average citizen for quite some time. Just as the Department of Defense (DoD) hires private security firms such as DynCorp and Blackwater to stabilize populations of nations in foreign countries, the same ideology has been applied to American cities hidden in plain sight.
In states such as Florida , Minnesota , California , Louisiana and Massachusetts private security firms have replaced local police departments. Although they wear the same badges, these security firms are not there to uphold peace or enforce the laws and city ordinances. Just like any other corporation, they seek out opportunities to collect revenue for the benefit of the city that hired them.
Last year Delaware was the scene of the introduction of legislation that would take away the power of the office of Sheriff because the seat is an election position and beyond the control of private security firms. The bill, HB 290, was created out of retaliation for an outspoken Constitutional Sheriff. According to the legislation: “‘Police officer’ as used in this code shall not include sheriffs and sheriff deputies,” and that it “is the intent of the General Assembly to specifically state the sheriffs and their deputies do not have any arrest authority.”
Although this bill was stricken from the legislative docket, the Delaware Supreme Court stated that sheriffs and deputies are constitutionally enabled and empowered to authority of arrest.
The militarization of local police departments is not difficult to understand once it is known that these armed guards are employees of private security firms. This private public partnership (PPP) between city officials and those corporations contracted to preform services can easily be assimilated into the enhancement of DHS police state authority over townships and metropolitan cities within the US.
The very idea of the Office of Sheriff is the antithesis of this scheme to implement a national police state. And for this very reason every Sheriff should be supported and their authority preserved as one of the last bastions of Constitutional protection citizens may have to rely upon.