This is What Tyranny Looks Like

Authored by dcreport.org and submitted by grepnork
image for This is What Tyranny Looks Like

Barr’s Black-Shirted Private Army Stands Guard with No Badges, No Nameplates, No Insignias

At the heart of upheaval over George Floyd’s killing is police accountability.

Do the act, face the effects– legal, political. ethical.

It’s the rewrite of what we grew up hearing – do the crime, do the time.

That’s the conundrum we’ve been seeing from the White House, where Donald Trump through Attorney General William P. Barr has been unleashing armed government agents stripped of personal or even agency identity.

The question, obviously, is why? What sense does this make, and what is Barr trying to achieve for the White House other than intimidation of would-be looters and peaceful protesters alike?

The imagery of federal troops – or agents that look like federal troops – guarding the steps of the Lincoln Memorial was strong … enough to reflect what we would expect in an authoritarian regime.

From all that has been reported, Barr organized his small army from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, who did wear identifying information without names. But also included were officers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the U.S. Marshals; the federal Bureau of Prisons; Homeland Security officers; the Capitol Police; the Federal Protective Service; the Secret Service, and the District of Columbia National Guard.

In some cases, they did not include Washington, D.C., metropolitan police.

The imagery of federal troops – or agents that look like federal troops – guarding the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and other public places was strong, which, of course, was the “dominating” force that Trump wanted. It is also strong enough to reflect what we would expect in an authoritarian regime.

A senior Justice Department official was quoted as crediting Barr with the idea of bringing in federal prison corrections officers, calling it an example of Barr’s “outside the box” thinking. “He brought those people in,” the official said, because dealing with riots is “exactly what they do best.”

Setting aside the operational issues of controlling a force from disparate agencies, this feels a formula for distrust for government. Indeed, there reportedly was confusion in pushing protesters out of the one-block path for Trump to walk to what has become his ill-fated photo op holding a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

We Warned You Three Years Ago Reviewing Trump’s budget plans in 2017, David Cay Johnston, editor-in-chief of DCReport, warned that Trump was laying the groundwork for a police state . Then in office barely six months, Trump and his minions already were preparing for the day that jack-booted black shirts would patrol the streets. Critics called us alarmists, when, actually, we knew Trump better than any other news organization. Please help us continue telling the truth about the dangerous men and women running our government and threatening the lives and liberties of every American.

Barr had to extend a safety perimeter around the White House so he pushed the protesters out with aerial irritants—the White House says it wasn’t tear gas, though others said it was–and physical force. All for a photo that was pretty dumb by itself.

Among the people who think deploying anonymous federal police is wrong is Michael Bromwich, the former inspector general of the Justice Department who oversaw internal investigations. He said anonymity “creates a huge problem” for oversight. “It completely undermines the ability to hold law enforcement personnel who engage in misconduct accountable.

“You’ve got to know who they are, and certainly which agency they represent.”

As it turns out, the Bureau of Prisons, for example, has no internal affairs systems to hold officers accountable.

Six years ago, after the Ferguson, Mo., violence, the Justice Department found that police anonymity was abuse by itself. It was called an act that “conveys a message to community members that, through anonymity, officers may seek to act with impunity.”

Christy Lopez, the former Justice Department official who warned Ferguson about the lack of nameplates, said the anonymity of officers on the streets of D.C. was “an indication of how upside-down this administration is.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler ( D-N.Y.) has requested formally information on the various agencies policing protesters in D.C. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has asked that the DOJ inspector general investigate Barr’s role. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting representative of Washington, D.C., have a bill to require federal law enforcement officers in uniform to clearly show their names and agencies.

Yesterday, without offering evidence, Barr said that foreign powers may be using the cover of protest to advance their own agendas against the United States. Meanwhile, he continued to mention publicly only abuses from far-left anarchists without mentioning the arrests of far-right groups.

Fear of street violence notwithstanding, our government is creating new fears about the government itself. We clearly now have confusion among military leaders who are resisting Trump’s attempts to politicize protests for partisan purposes. We have disagreement at every level of government about curfews and police deployment to protect buildings rather than people.

No, we should not be deploying active U.S. troops against Americans. But we should all agree that we know who is doing the policing.

Monkfich on June 7th, 2020 at 13:45 UTC »

Did anyone try calling the cops on them?

Edit: now that this has some visibility - if any cops in DC are reading this, have you formally been made aware of this?

PopeKevin45 on June 7th, 2020 at 13:36 UTC »

Does this not make them and their actions criminal and that people have a right to refuse their orders and defend themselves for what is legally an unprovoked attack by another citizen?

UsedWar2 on June 7th, 2020 at 13:05 UTC »

Just curious, if they do not identify as police or agents, for all we know they are nothing but a gang. And if they are not identified as police, wouldnt a citizen have a right to defend themselves by any means necessary?

They are not wearing uniforms but black gear that can be purchased from many places. They could be Proud Bois or whatever they are called.