{"id":176132,"date":"2020-08-29T18:46:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-29T23:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/08\/29\/support-your-local-police-6\/"},"modified":"2020-08-29T18:46:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-29T23:46:00","slug":"support-your-local-police-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/08\/29\/support-your-local-police-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Support Your Local Police"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As if it were not blatantly obvious from their behavior, it turns out that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2020\/aug\/27\/white-supremacists-militias-infiltrate-us-police-report\">the FBI has been following largely successful efforts of white supremacists to infiltrate the police throughout the country<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">White supremacist groups have infiltrated US law enforcement agencies in every region of the country over the last two decades, according to a new report about the ties between police and far-right vigilante groups. <\/p>\n<p>In a timely new analysis, Michael German, a former FBI special agent who has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/aug\/15\/far-right-violence-fbi-terrorism-hate-crime\">written<\/a> extensively on the ways that US law enforcement have failed to respond to far-right domestic terror threats, concludes that US law enforcement officials have been tied to racist militant activities in more than a dozen states since 2000, and hundreds of police officers have been caught posting racist and bigoted social media content. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.brennancenter.org\/our-work\/research-reports\/hidden-plain-sight-racism-white-supremacy-and-far-right-militancy-law\">The report<\/a> notes that over the years, police links to militias and white supremacist groups have been uncovered in states including Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia. <\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026 <\/p>\n<p>The exact scale of ties between law enforcement and militias is hard to determine, German told the Guardian. \u201cNobody is collecting the data and nobody is actively looking for these law enforcement officers,\u201d he said. <br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\"><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span> <\/p>\n<p>This week, police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, faced intense scrutiny over their response to armed white men and militia groups gathered in the city amid demonstrations by Black Lives Matter activists and others <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2020\/aug\/26\/whats-happening-kenosha-wisconsin-shooting-jacob-blake-protests\">over the police shooting of <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2020\/aug\/26\/whats-happening-kenosha-wisconsin-shooting-jacob-blake-protests\"> Jacob Blake<\/a>, a Black father of three who was left paralyzed after being shot in the back. On Wednesday, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2020\/aug\/26\/kyle-rittenhouse-kenosha-murders-blm-protest-militia\">appeared to consider himself a militia member<\/a> and had posted \u201cblue lives matter\u201d content, was arrested on suspicion of murder after the fatal shooting of two protesters. <\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026 <\/p>\n<p>German told the Guardian on Wednesday: \u201cFar-right militants are allowed to engage in violence and walk away while protesters are met with violent police actions.\u201d This \u201cnegligent response\u201d, he added, empowers violent groups in dangerous and potentially lethal ways: \u201cThe most violent elements within these far-right militant groups believe that their conduct is sanctioned by the government. And therefore they\u2019re much more willing to come out and engage in acts of violence against protesters.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>There is growing awareness in some parts of the government about the intensifying threat of white supremacy. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have directly identified white supremacists as the most lethal domestic terrorist threat in the country. According to German\u2019s report, the FBI\u2019s own internal documents have directly warned that the militia groups the agency is investigating often have \u201cactive links\u201d to law enforcement. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So not a surprise.<\/p>\n<p>Absolutely everything that we have seen over the past 40 years has supported this conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>The right wing has been actively trying to infiltrate the US state security apparatus for years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As if it were not blatantly obvious from their behavior, it turns out that the FBI has been following largely successful efforts of white supremacists to infiltrate the police throughout the country: White supremacist groups have infiltrated US law enforcement agencies in every region of the country over the last two decades, according to a &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,364,526,374,373],"class_list":["post-176132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-law-enforcement-misconduct","tag-politics","tag-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}