Loss of Privacy

After eleven people were killed in a shooting spree last March in Samson, Alabama, the military were sent in to work traffic stops, violating the Posse Comitatus Act. Though it broke federal law, no charges have been brought against any Army personnel.

“As a result of the findings of the report, the Army took administrative action against at least one person,” Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said.

The action was less than a transfer or discharge but Garver would not elaborate.

It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that violating people’s civil rights, essentially, is a slap on the wrist and, maybe, a day off work.

The officer who made the decision to send the Soldiers thought he had the authority based on his experience with responses to Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew, the report said.

According to the report, the officer’s “intent was to be a good Army neighbor and help local civilian authorities facing a difficult, unique tragedy affecting the local community. There were no apparent adverse collateral effects to the support provided.”

The Army has said 22 military police and an officer were sent after Michael McLendon, 28, shot nine people to death in Samson and killed a 10th in neighboring Coffee County. The March 10 spree ended when McLendon killed himself.

While some may question the harm in the Army helping out a nearby town and police force, it must be remembered that the Posse Comitatus Act is there for a reason. They are restricted from performing any duties that would normally be an exercise of regular police work, including directing traffic and running traffic stops, on non-military property. The only way this would be legal is if there was a direct mandate from Congress.

Posse Comitatus is a civil protection that we must guard daily. Although the Army was trying to be helpful, we need to be vigilant in keeping the civil protections that we have. The local police should have requested help from the governor of Alabama, who then could have sent in more civilian police officers to help.

Each year, the police are stopping more than one million people, often for trivial reasons in their stop-and-frisk programs.

Ronnie Carr’s experience was typical: He was fumbling with his apartment door after school in Brooklyn when plainclothes officers flashed their badges.

“What are you doing here?” one asked, as they rifled through his backpack and then his pockets. The black teenager stood there, quiet and nervous, and waited.

Carr said the officers told him they stopped him because he looked suspicious peeking in the windows. He explained that he had lost his keys. Twenty minutes later, the officers left. Carr was not arrested or cited with any offense.

The incident left Ronnie Carr feeling like he did something wrong.

Civil libertarians feel that incidents such as Carr’s are not only a violation of civil rights, they are racist and do nothing to deter crime.  The police believe it helps to turn up illegal drugs and weapons.

The New York Police Department is among the most vocal defenders of the practice. Commissioner Raymond Kelly said recently that officers may stop as many as 600,000 people this year. About 10 percent are arrested.

“This is a proven law enforcement tactic to fight and deter crime, one that is authorized by criminal procedure law,” he said.

The police stop and detain up to 600,00 people, yet only ten percent are guilty of anything.  Where is this anything but harassment?  The police hide behind the 1968 Supreme Court ruling of “reasonable suspicion,” which is lower than the probable cause rule.

Civil liberties groups also complain because New York police keep a database of everyone stopped – innocent or not. That makes them targets for future investigations, said Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

If you’re innocent, there’s no reason to keep your information in a database.  That only leads to harassment in the future when you’re stopped again for “suspicious” behavior.

The problem with the law is that most people just accept it as a part of life.  They shouldn’t.  They should question why they were stopped and be vocal about it.  The police are practicing the policy of more police presence results in lower crime, except they are taking it a step further to more police harassment means lower crime.  While the statistics do bear out that crime has dropped with these policies in place, it also means more innocent people are targeted for no reason.  Being vocal is the only way to change these practices and force the police to adopt more prudent measures.  Targeting everyone is never good policy.

Yes, you read that right.  It’s a law.  It begins November 1, 2009.  If you have an abortion in Oklahoma, all the personal details of your abortion, excluding your name will be listed.

Here are the first eight questions that women will have to reveal:
1. Date of abortion
2. County in which abortion performed
3. Age of mother
4. Marital status of mother
(married, divorced, separated, widowed, or never married)
5. Race of mother
6. Years of education of mother
(specify highest year completed)
7. State or foreign country of residence of mother
8. Total number of previous pregnancies of the mother
Live Births
Miscarriages
Induced Abortions

With these details, once could easily deduce who the woman was, particularly if it is a smaller county.

Fortunately, The Center for Reproductive Rights is challenging the law.  In their lawsuit, they argue that the law violates the Oklahoma Constitution because it covers more than one subject.  This tactic was successful in the past when Oklahoma’s abortion ultrasound law was struck down.

One would imagine that this would be a HIPAA violation, thus, automatically, making it illegal.  This law is nothing but scare tactics to put fear into women and force them to carry a fetus to term.

If you can get photographic evidence of your neighbors fly tipping, painting graffiti, littering, and/or letting your dog poop on the sidewalk without cleaning it up, the police will give you cold hard cash.

Councillor Afzal Akram denied the scheme was a “snooper’s charter”.

“If Mrs Jones looks out of her window and sees a white van with the doors open and men dumping a sofa on the street we want her to write down the number plate and tell us,” he said.

“It’s not a snooper’s charter, I think the message is we want our streets clean and we don’t want people coming here and dumping rubbish.”

If council lawyers issues a summons officials will pay out £100, with another £50 on conviction, and £500 if the court imposes the maximum fine.

While it’s a nice idea to keep the streets clean, I don’t like the idea of nosy Mrs. Jones watching every single thing that I do.  I wonder where they ever could have gotten the idea from?

The Conviction Reward Scheme, which launched this weekend, was introduced after residents said they wanted more to be done to tackle environmental crime.

The response to, “make our neighborhood safer,” is, “clean it up yourself and we’ll toss a few coin your way.”