Operation FALCON and the Looming Police State

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/5763

Operation FALCON and the Looming Police State
by Mike Whitney | Feb 27 2007 - 2:41pm |

snip//

Operation Falcon: Blueprint for removing dissidents and political rivals

The Bush administration has carried out three massive sweeps in the last two years, rolling up more than 30,000 minor crooks and criminals, without as much as a whimper of protest from the public.

Operation Falcon is the clearest indication yet that the Bush administration is fine-tuning its shock-troops so it can roll up tens of thousands of people at a moment’s notice and toss them into the newly-built Halliburton detention centers. This should be a red flag for anyone who cares at all about human rights, civil liberties, or simply saving his own skin.

Operation Falcon was allegedly the brainchild of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his counterpart in the US Marshal's office, (Director) Ben Reyna. But its roots go much deeper into the nexus of right-wing Washington think tanks where fantasies of autocratic government have a long history. The name, Falcon, is an acronym for “Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally.” It relates to the more than 960 state, local and federal agencies which are directly involved in the administration’s expansive criminal dragnets.

Typically, law enforcement agencies are protective of their own turf and wary of outside intervention. The Falcon program overrides these concerns by streamlining the information-sharing processes and setting up a chain-of-command structure that radiates from the Justice Department. This removes many of the traditional obstacles to agency interface. It also relocates the levers of power in Washington where thy can be manned by members of the Bush administration.

Dictatorships require strong centralized authority and the Falcon program is a logical corollary of that ambition. It creates new inroads for Bush to assume greater control over the nationwide police-state apparatus. That alone should be sufficient reason for alarm.

The first Operation Falcon took place during the week of April 4 to April 10, 2005. According to the US Marshal’s official website, “The emphasis centered on gang related crimes, homicides, crimes involving use of a weapon, crimes against children and the elderly, crimes involving sexual assaults, organized crime and drug related fugitives, and other crimes of violence.” More than 10,000 criminal suspects were arrested in a matter of days. It was the largest criminal sweep in the nation’s history and, according to U.S. Marshall chief Ben Reyna, “produced the largest number of arrests ever recorded during a single initiative.” The Washington Times noted, “The sweep was a virtual clearinghouse for warrants on drug, gang, gun and sex-offender suspects nationwide.”

The emphasis was clearly on quantity not quality.

more...

[Webster Green]

1. Bring it on mutherfuckers!

The pigs won't like the welcome they get here.

I've had enough of their shit!

[Porcupine]

5. Iraq war veterans know how to deal with this shit.

I'm sure some of them have been taking notes as to how one deals with occupying forces.

There will be no government in the US without the consent of the people.

[Kurovski]

2. K&R. Just not feeling very well today. This does not help.(nt)

[meldroc]

3. K&R. Hard to stay focused on work when I see things like this...

[Morgana LaFey]

4. This needs to be posted in GD or GDP -- someone? I'm out of time.

It's quite important.

[Jcrowley]

6. Looming?

Those who have never strayed too far from the peg do not know or even care to consider how short is the leash.

When hasn't America been a police and PolicED State?

[twiceshy]

7. I fail to see the problem........

Is there a problem with arresting these nice wonderful people?

"gang related crimes, homicides, crimes involving use of a weapon, crimes against children and the elderly, crimes involving sexual assaults, organized crime and drug related fugitives, and other crimes of violence"

Seems like a good thing to me.

[nashville_brook]

8. read the whole article -- the snippet doesn't do it justice

here's a damning passage:

Operation FALCON II was another massive dragnet which covered the western half of the country and focused primarily on “violent sex offenders”. The raids took place from April 17-23, and succeeded in apprehending 9,037 alleged fugitives. The US Marshals web site boasts that the operation “took some of the country's most dangerous wanted criminals off the streets and made America's communities safer”.

Nonsense. Despite the claims of success, only 462 “violent sex crime” suspects were arrested, along with 1,094 “unregistered sex offenders” and other minor “sex crime” suspects. That leaves 7,481 suspects who were rounded up for other unrelated reasons.

Who are they and what crime did they commit? Were these drug violations, dads who were delinquent on child-support payments, traffic tickets, jay-walking?!?

7,481 people who were incarcerated are unaccounted by the government’s estimate. This means that the bulk of them were probably undocumented workers who were shunted off to the INS (Immigration and Naturalization) or dispatched to Cheney’s tent-city gulags in western Texas. (See: Democracy Now “Human Rights Groups Call for Closure of Texas Jail Holding Undocumented Immigrants” 2-23-07)