The National Guard is currently working with police in Albany, New York, to confiscate weapons from citizens in violation of the Constitution and Posse Comitatus.
The National Guard is a joint reserve component of the United States Army and as such prohibited from collaborating with state and local law enforcement except under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress. Posse Comitatus was seriously undermined when Congress passed the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007. The Warner bill allows the president to “employ the armed forces… to… restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition.”
In New York state, the “other condition” allowing the military to violate the rights of citizens is the bogus “war on drugs.” As the video here reveals, the cops and National Guard are using the spurious drug war to search for and confiscate weapons in violation of the Second Amendment. Local cops are using x-ray technology provided by the Pentagon to search vehicles. In addition to images of pot plants, Fox 23 shows an image of an x-ray scan that reveals a rifle hidden inside a car.
During Hurricane Katrina, the military and government concentrated on going house-to-house to confiscate legal weapons while preventing assistance to reach thousands of people displaced by the storm. In the wake of this egregious violation of the Second Amendment, many states worked to pass laws designed to prevent government from seizing weapons. “The actions of the New Orleans police have inspired 13 states, including Louisiana, to enact laws to keep state and local officials from taking guns during a state of emergency, such as after a natural disaster or terrorist attack,” Stateline.org reported in 2007.
The federal government has worked for more than two decades to federalize and militarize local law enforcement and deploy troops under a number of bogus pretenses subsequently justified and even shamelessly glorified by the corporate media.
“Do we want, as a free people, with the notion of privacy enshrined in the Constitution and based on the very clear limits and defined role of government, to be in a society where not just the police, but the military are on the street corners gathering intelligence on citizens, sharing that data, manipulating that data?” asked former Rep. Bob Barr in 2005.
Since Barr made his comment, the Pentagon under NORTHCOM has integrated with local police and has consistently violated Posse Comitatus. The Department of Homeland Security has also facilitated the militarization of law enforcement.
NORTHCOM has planned for “low end” scenarios — including crowd-control missions — since at least 2005. “The plans present the Pentagon with a clearer idea of the kinds and numbers of troops and the training that may be required to build a more credible homeland defense force,” the Washington Post reported on August 8, 2010. As Fox reports, this mission now includes searching cars with dangerous x-ray machines.
“We have been inundated with reports over the last few weeks of uniformed soldiers and National Guardsmen running internal checkpoints all over the country as a frightening ‘Red Dawn’ scenario unfolds not with a bang but with a whimper,” Paul Jospeh Watson wrote on September 23, 2009. “The military are now being called upon to undertake roles normally designated to police as Americans are incrementally acclimated to accept the presence of troops on the streets as an everyday occurrence.”
In addition to numerous instances of the military working hand-in-hand with police around the country — from checkpoints to patrolling public events like the Boston Marathon and the Kentucky Derby — the military has concentrated on training soldiers to take on demonized militias and gun owners.
On July 3, 2009, Infowars.com reported on the Missouri National Guard is training to engage in combat with “militia” groups. News of the training mission followed the release of a leaked DHS report on “rightwing extremism” by four months.
Cops in New York working with the Pentagon in violation of Posse Comitatus is not about marijuana and the so-called drug war. It is about searching for weapons and intimidating the American people. As the economy deteriorates the police and military will attempt to disarm the American people.
In 2008, a report by the U.S. Army War College spelled out how the Pentagon plans to respond to civil unrest as the economy implodes. “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” explains the War College report. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn also predicted economy-related riots and unrest in response to the engineered Greatest Depression now unfolding.
The integration of police and military has taken a sizable leap with the activities in Albany, New York. In the weeks and months ahead, as the economy further crumbles, we can expect more brazen efforts to impose a militarized police state, not only in New York but around the country.
