Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

He also called in a Predator B drone.

As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.

This wasn’t the first time the police have used drones in the area either.

Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.

These drones are setting a dangerous precedent in allowing military drones to cross the lines into civilian use.

The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate.

Officials in charge of the fleet cite broad authority to work with police from budget requests to Congress that cite “interior law enforcement support” as part of their mission.

Though it hasn’t been widely publicized, the increased use of spy drones on US citizens should be a concern. There was no public debate on the use of drones and no one quite knows what legal authority they operate under.

In 2008 and 2010, Harman helped beat back efforts by Homeland Security officials to use imagery from military satellites to help domestic terrorism investigations. Congress blocked the proposal on grounds it would violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the military from taking a police role on U.S. soil.

Given the fact that a spy drone could watch a single individual for up to twenty hours at a time should concern citizens.

“Any time you have a tool like that in the hands of law enforcement that makes it easier to do surveillance, they will do more of it,” said Ryan Calo, director for privacy and robotics at the Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society.

Because law enforcement is keen to use spy drones without any public input or discussion, it is almost a given that it will be misused and overused.

The story of Sheriff Janke on the Brossart farm is a prime example of misuse.

The six adult Brossarts allegedly belonged to the Sovereign Citizen Movement, an anti-government group that the FBI considers extremist and violent. The family had repeated run-ins with local police, including the arrest of two family members earlier that day arising from their clash with a deputy over the cattle.

So, the sheriff automatically jumped the gun and said an armed standoff was currently occurring, which it was not. The drone then watched the Brossarts for four hours before the sheriff withdrew until daybreak. They returned the next morning.

Around 10 a.m., the video showed the three Brossart brothers riding all-terrain vehicles toward a decommissioned Minuteman ballistic missile site at the edge of their property. The sensor operator in Grand Forks switched to thermal mode, and the image indicated the three men were unarmed.

A SWAT team then moved in and arrested the unarmed men.

A search of the property turned up four rifles, two shotguns, assorted bows and arrows and a samurai sword, according to court records. Police also found the six missing cows, valued at $6,000.

Rodney Brossart, his daughter Abby and his three sons face a total of 11 felony charges, including bail jumping and terrorizing a sheriff, as well as a misdemeanor count against Rodney involving the stray cattle. All have been released on bail. Calls to Rodney Brossart were not returned Saturday. The family is believed to be living on the farm.

If one looks at this case objectively, many questions remain. Why did the sheriff not explain that someone else’s cows had strayed onto the Brossart property? It is likely that, given that it is rumored the Brossarts belong to Sovereign Citizens Movement, they’ve had run-ins with the law before. This probably makes them automatically hostile to the sheriff.

What does it matter that the family owns a few hunting weapons. They live in rural North Dakota and probably hunt as well as use their guns for protection from wild animals. Consider that six people live on the farm, are roughly ten to twelve weapons and unreasonable find?

Why is Rodney Brossart facing a misdemeanor charge concerning the stray cattle? Exactly what is the charge? Why is anyone being charged with anything concerning the stray cattle?

What are the eleven felony charges? They story doesn’t list them or explain what the charges are. Why is Rodney also being charged with terrorizing a sheriff? Did he do more than tell the sheriff to get off his land? We don’t know. We simply know that the Brossarts are bad guys because the police and the newspapers are telling us that they are.

There are still too many questions not reported in the news to determine why the Brossarts were arrested at all. What is abundantly clear is that civilian police departments are far too willing to encroach on civil liberties and private spaces to do their jobs properly. Spy drones are now normal on America’s northern and southern borders and they’re quickly moving into everyday life with alarming frequency. North Dakota seems to think this is okay. Do you?

I found this picture on imgur.  It shows how the riot police uniform has changed over the years from a simple crowd control officer to full-blown paramilitary officer.  If anyone can help me locate a source, that’d be great.

Not sure I like the inclusion of Nazi references in the video, but, overall, it’s a good video.

We have seen this attitude in action in the deplorable acts of the police at UC-Davis. We also saw the same abuse by the police in Seattle, which is currently under federal investigation for charges of violence and racial profiling. Dorli Rainey, an 84-year old protester was pepper sprayed by the police.

Rainey said she was on a downtown bus when she heard helicopters and thought, “Oh boy, I’d better go show solidarity with New York.” Occupy Seattle protesters had gathered Tuesday evening following police actions in New York City that cleared a Manhattan park of people there.

The Seattle activists were blocking downtown streets. Rainey said police told the group they had to move.

“They picked up their bicycles and started shoving them at us and confining us in a very small place and they started to pepper spray,” she said.

The police, however, didn’t even attempt to arrest anyone, nor did they really try to push back the protesters. Their first thought was to pepper spray everyone.

The police here are acting as nothing more than thugs. The police tell people to move and then give them no time to move before they start corralling the people into a small area. Once that’s done, the police feel free to start pepper spraying people. This is not how law enforcement is supposed to work. This is how thugs and bullies behave.

Dorli, however, took the pepper spraying incident in stride.

“It’s a gruesome picture, I’m really not that bad looking,” Rainey said in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press.

“I’m pretty tough, I guess.”

It is becoming abundantly clear that the police are out of control in the United States and far too many people in positions of power continue to allow the police to act as bullies instead of upholding the law. If the police can justify pepper spraying an 84-year old because they feared for their lives, then Americans can look forward to even more egregious acts of violence from the police. The police will continue to hide behind their arsenal of weapons while those in power who could stop it, will allow the 99% to continue to be mistreated and abused.

Scotland Neck Police Chief Joe Williams said they received a call Monday night about a man who fell off of his bicycle and injured himself in the parking lot of the BB&T bank, 1001 Main St. The caller was concerned that the man was drunk.

When Officer John Turner arrived, he saw Roger Anthony pedaling away along 10th Street. He followed Anthony in his patrol car, briefly put on his sirens and lights and yelled out of the window for him to stop, but Anthony continued to ride away, police said.

Williams said Turner then saw Anthony take something out his pocket and put it into his mouth. At that time, Turner got out of the car and yelled for Anthony to stop. When Anthony didn’t stop, the officer used a stun gun on him, causing him to fall off of his bike.

Anthony was transported to Pitt County Memorial Hospital, where he was declared brain dead, his sister Gladys Freeman said. He was taken off of life support on Tuesday.

Freeman said her brother was disabled, suffered from seizures and had trouble hearing. She said he was riding his bike home from her house on Sunday night. Anthony lived alone in an independent living community.

Roger Anthony posed no threat, yet the police felt that using a taser was the best course of action.

A parking garage surveillance video shows a former Albuquerque police officer kicking a suspected car thief several times while another officer holds him down.

After the beating, the video taken Feb. 13 appears to shows the officers giving each other belly bumps.

This incident comes after the Albuquerque Police Department faces heat for 20 officer-involved shootings and amid calls for a Justice Department probe.

Bob O’Grady being arrested in the San Diego Civic Center Plaza for laying inside of his sleeping bag to stay warm while a group of non-violent occupiers from San Diego, Los Angeles, Irvine, Encinitas, and other transplants from various locations across the US pow-wow under an erected U.S. flag in the heart of the plaza; in celebration of Veteran’s Day. SDPD uses excessive force to apprehend Bob, a SDPD officer uses a choking technique I never knew was legal in the continuum of force ladder. That must come after using a closed fist to assault the suspect in the face.

From OccupyCal, the police tell the protesters that the grass is closed.

At about 11:30 a.m. yesterday, a police officer told me and about eight other students that, and I quote, “the grass is closed.” We were going to sit under a tree and discuss things, and two police officers were watching us vigilantly to make sure we didn’t suddenly do something violent like try to put up tents. As we moved towards the tree, the first police officer stepped up and informed us that we could not walk from the broad concrete steps of Sproul Hall, where about a hundred people were sitting and talking, and sit on the grassy area just to the north of it. “The grass is closed,” she said.

Students often eat lunch on this stretch of grass, yet, at this particular moment, the police decided that it was now off limits to the students, simply because they had the power to say so.

To make things more interesting, it immediately transpired that the other police officer had, in fact, already given them permission to sit on the grass. And in an instant, the arbitrariness of the rule was made evident and undeniable.

I said to her, in as level and direct a tone as I could manage, “This is why we don’t trust you.” And she again elected to say nothing. She didn’t have to. The truth of power, in this situation, is that the policy is what the police will use their force to enforce. They don’t have to have a legitimate reason, nor are they embarrassed when it is shown that the “grass is closed” only because someone with authority said so. And the grass only became open because someone with more authority said so. Such people are not to be trusted.

These are not abstractions or “power” as a theoretical concept. This was power made frighteningly manifest, on the bodies of human beings who did not obey a police order to get off the grass, the very exact same grass I was talking about earlier.

At UC Berkeley, the police physically assaulted several protesters.

Celeste Langan, a campus associate professor of English and one of the protesters arrested Wednesday afternoon, said in an email that she knew that what she was doing by participating in the human chain was a form of nonviolent resistance, knew that she was disobeying the police order to disperse and knew that her participation made her subject to arrest. But, she said, she expected the police would arrest the protesters “in a similarly non-violent manner.”

“Rather than take my wrist or arm, the police grabbed me by my hair and yanked me forward to the ground, where I was told to lie on my stomach and was handcuffed,” Langan said in the email. “They could have taken the time to arrest us for refusal to disperse without violence, but instead seem to have been instructed to get to the tents as quickly as possible. Since the tents posed no immediate threat to public safety, their haste and level of force were unwarranted.”

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau later sent out an email stating that, because the protesters were linked together, it was not considered a non-violent protest and the police were justified by their actions.

The protesters knew there was a good chance they would be arrested and, since they were non-violent, they felt they would be arrested in a non-violent way as well. Things, however, turned out much differently than they had expected.

For UC Berkeley graduate student Alex Barnard, the most disempowering moment of Wednesday night was not when he was repeatedly hit with a police baton, cracking one of his ribs. Instead, the most disturbing moment of his experience came afterward, when he says an officer told him he had “no rights.”

According to Barnard, who was arrested along 31 others as part of Wednesday night’s Occupy Cal demonstration, after he was handcuffed with a zip tie and taken into Sproul Hall, a police officer asked him for identifying information. Rather than immediately answering, Barnard said he asked the officer about his rights and when he would be allowed to speak to a lawyer. It was then that the officer told him he had no rights and, after Barnard disputed the statement, said he would be recorded as “uncooperative” on his police forms, according to Barnard.

“You didn’t have a voice,” Barnard said.

According to UCPD Capt. Margo Bennett, the identification process Barnard described is completely different from any kind of interview or interrogation process and is not involved with the right to have an attorney present. She said she was not aware of the exchange described by Barnard but said it is not the kind of exchange the department wants officers and arrestees to have.

You don’t have any rights. You aren’t supposed to talk with the police. Just do whatever they tell you. The important thing to remember is that, even though the police tell you that you have no rights, you do. You need to know what they are before you get into a situation like this and do not let the police intimidate you. If you are arrested, there are rights that go with it, despite the power abuse from the police who say otherwise. The 1% doesn’t want you there and they are more than happy to allow the police to behave in this manner so long as the police are protecting them.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

So, what are your rights when filming the police? The ACLU’s Jay Stanley explains.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The unsealed indictments contained more than 1,600 criminal counts, the bulk of them misdemeanors having to do with making tickets disappear as favors for friends, relatives and others with clout. But they also outlined more serious crimes, related both to ticket-fixing and drugs, grand larceny and unrelated corruption. Four of the officers were charged with helping a man get away with assault.

Why do police officers not only think it’s okay to commit misdemeanors in fixing tickets, but that it’s also perfectly fine with helping someone get away with assault? Fixing tickets is corruption and fraud and it exposes the fact that the police believe they are above the law.

Jose R. Ramos, an officer in the 40th Precinct whose suspicious behavior spawned the protracted investigation, was accused of two dozen crimes, including attempted robbery, attempted grand larceny, transporting what he thought was heroin for drug dealers and revealing the identity of a confidential informant.

Five civilians were also arrested in the case. Among them was Officer Ramos’s wife, charged with participating with him in an insurance scam.

And how did the police departments react to hearing of these crimes?

Members of the news media were prevented by court officers from walking down the hallway where more than 100 off-duty police officers had gathered outside the courtroom.

The assembled police officers blocked cameras from filming their colleagues, in one instance grabbing lenses and shoving television camera operators backward.

The police are acting like thugs, defending their gang from anyone who is attempting to get at the truth and report the story of their corruption.

The case, troubling to many New Yorkers because of its implication that the police officers believed they deserved special treatment, is expected to have long tentacles. Scores of other officers accused of fixing tickets could face departmental charges. Some officers have already retired. Moreover, the indictments may jeopardize thousands of cases in which implicated officers are important witnesses and may be seen as untrustworthy by Bronx juries.

Federal agents earlier in the week arrested eight current and former officers on accusations that they had brought illegal firearms, slot machines and black-market cigarettes into New York City. Recently, other officers have been charged in federal court with making false arrests, and there was testimony in a trial in Brooklyn that narcotics detectives planted drugs on innocent civilians.

A lieutenant, Jennara Cobb, worked for internal affairs and leak information to other police officers. How can anyone ever trust internal affairs ever again when you can’t trust those who are supposed to keep information in internal investigations secret?

The ticket-fixing investigation began serendipitously in December 2008, after investigators began looking into accusations that Officer Ramos allowed a friend, Lee King, to sell drugs out of two barber shops named Who’s First that the officer owned in the Bronx. A wiretap was placed on Officer Ramos, which yielded conversations about fixing tickets.

The authorities said Officer Ramos provided Mr. King with an apartment, a cellphone, a car and a parking placard. He was one of the civilians arrested.

We all know that not every cop is corrupt, but when police officers defend those who are, just who are we supposed to respect in uniform and why is it justifiable that they can break the law simply because they are the police and corruption has been around for thousands of years? The levels of self-entitlement is reason enough that these officers should be fired.

On Friday morning, on the street outside the courthouse, some 350 officers massed behind barricades and brandished signs expressing sentiments like “It’s a Courtesy Not a Crime.”

When caught actually committing a crime, the police attempt to claim it’s just a courtesy and nothing for civilians to worry about. The audacity to claim, “we’re just following orders,” is an attempt to throw blame off themselves. After all, they’re just doing what they’re told, so they can’t possibly understand why people are angry at them. To them, it’s a perk of the job.

If you can’t understand that it is a crime to purposefully break the law to aid people close to you, then you will never convince the public that you are not corrupt. It’s evident that the corruption is endemic in the NYPD. The only way to root it out is to completely clean house and start over.

Those that stand idly by and do nothing should also think twice about the careers they’ve chosen as standing by and doing nothing is just as bad as helping in the corruption. Until then, whenever a citizen encounters a police officer, they will assume that they’ve run into a corrupt officer instead of one of the few good ones out there, something that never ends well.