nat'l sheriff's assoc nsa
mofo 220 bak
SEE TWO
dark $ pharma neg ads
general category
see tigerswan, EMAC
just added constit sheriff see arpaio and clarke
mark lamb primary sexting 7 26
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no lnx many pix
Inside the bizarre Las Vegas conference where Trump-loving sheriffs, felons and conspiracy theorists vowed to form militias to patrol polling places and seize voting machines to stop Biden
A recent CSPOA conference in Las Vegas drew attention for its controversial mix of attendees, including felons, disgraced politicians and sheriffs
The event aimed to address extremism allegations within the group and outline plans for upcoming elections, such as investigating alleged voter fraud
Critics raised concerns about potential election interference and misinformation
By JAMES GORDON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED:, 21 April 2024
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A right-wing sheriffs' group that challenges federal law held a bizarre rally in Las Vegas last week featuring felons and conspiracy theorists as the country's presidential election is just months away.
The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, founded in 2011 by former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, held its annual conference in Las Vegas last week at the Ahern Luxury Boutique Hotel conference center.
The group, known as CSPOA, teaches that elected sheriffs must 'protect their citizens from the overreach of an out-of-control federal government' by refusing to enforce any law they deem unconstitutional or 'unjust.'
The right-wing 'constitutional sheriffs,' claim legal power in their jurisdictions that exceeds U.S. federal government and state authorities.
In particular, this time around, the organization is urging its members to seize voting machines while investigating claims of 'rampant voter fraud' that during the 2020 election proved to be baseless.
Last week's Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association conference in Las Vegas drew attention for its controversial mix of attendees, including felons, disgraced politicians and sheriffs. It's founder Richard Mack is seen speaking on the stand
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Last week's Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association conference in Las Vegas drew attention for its controversial mix of attendees, including felons, disgraced politicians and sheriffs. It's founder Richard Mack is seen speaking on the stand
Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser and retired three-star general who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI but was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump, was a speaker at the conference
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Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser and retired three-star general who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI but was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump, was a speaker at the conference
Trump's friend and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell also spoke as he pushed his election denial theories
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Trump's friend and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell also spoke as he pushed his election denial theories
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This time around, the group want to form a group that will patrol polling places and have the power to seize voting machines while investigating Democrats and other countries that are sending immigrants to the the U.S. in order to vote illegally, they claim and reported by NBC News.
In 2022, the group continued to promote baseless conspiracy theories that the last presidential election was stolen from Trump are have recently been pushing a dubious theory that county sheriffs can access voting machines and intervene in how elections are run - and also have virtually unchecked power in their counties.
Voting-rights advocates and election experts said any attempts by law enforcement to interfere in elections would be alarming and an extension of the threat posed by the continued circulation of Trump's claims about the 2020 election.
'The safest way to actually achieve that is to have local law enforcement understand that they have no obligation to enforce such laws,' Mack said during a recent interview. 'They're not laws at all anyway. If they're unjust laws, they are laws of tyranny.'
Mike Gannuscio (left) is running to be a sheriff in Mohave County, Nevada
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Mike Gannuscio (left) is running to be a sheriff in Mohave County, Nevada
In 2022, the group continued to promote baseless conspiracy theories that the last presidential election was stolen from Trump are have recently been pushing a dubious theory that county sheriffs can access voting machines and intervene in how elections are run. Zapata County, Texas, Sheriff Raymundo Del Bosque holds his hat over his heart during the national anthem
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In 2022, the group continued to promote baseless conspiracy theories that the last presidential election was stolen from Trump are have recently been pushing a dubious theory that county sheriffs can access voting machines and intervene in how elections are run. Zapata County, Texas, Sheriff Raymundo Del Bosque holds his hat over his heart during the national anthem
'The sheriff is supposed to be protecting the public from evil,' Dar Leaf, the chief law enforcement officer for Barry County, Michigan, said during last year's conference. 'When your government is evil or out of line, that's what the sheriff is there for, protecting them from that.'
The sheriffs' group has railed against gun control laws, COVID-19 mask mandates and public health restrictions, as well as the alleged election fraud.
It has also quietly spread its ideology across the country, seeking to become more mainstream in part by securing state approval for taxpayer-funded law enforcement training.
The public-facing image of the sheriffs group, prominently features the American flag and the experiences of black civil rights icons who pushed back against unjust laws.
But details of its operations are closely held, and its finances are shielded from public scrutiny.
It was briefly registered as a nonprofit in Arizona, but internal records indicate it is now a private company.
The group does not release its list of dues-paying members, nor does it publicize information about where or how it conducts trainings.
The sympathies of the group's leaders for right-wing, white-nationalist extremist causes, however, are well documented.
The CSPOA is also unequivocal about gun rights and supports the right of criminals and the mentally ill to carry firearms, opposing gun registration or background checks.
About 100 people attended the day-long conference in Las Vegas last Wednesday
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About 100 people attended the day-long conference in Las Vegas last Wednesday
Attendees of the conference milled around and mingled with one another in the lobby
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Attendees of the conference milled around and mingled with one another in the lobby
Various speakers from the 'law enforcement' community were on the stand and able to speak
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Various speakers from the 'law enforcement' community were on the stand and able to speak
Mack was an early board member of the Oath Keepers, the group involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Although he said he split with the group several years ago when it became a militia, Mack still speaks at Oath Keeper-affiliated rallies.
Leaf was investigated, but not charged, in connection with the Michigan attorney general's investigation into the alleged illegal seizure and breach of vote-counting machines in 2020.
He also appeared at an election-denier rally with two men later charged in the conspiracy to kidnap Michigan's Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Over the last six years, the group has hosted trainings, rallies, speeches and meetings in at least 30 states for law enforcement officers, political figures, private organizations and members of the public.
The group has held formal trainings on its 'constitutional' curriculum for law enforcement officers in at least 13 of those states. In six states, the training was approved for officers´ continuing education credits.
The group also has supporters who sit on three state boards in charge of law enforcement training standards.
Legal experts warn that such training - especially when it's approved for state credit - can undermine the democratic processes enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and is part of what Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University, called a 'broader insurrectionist ideology' that has gripped the nation since the 2020 presidential election.
'They have no authority, not under their state constitutions or implementing statutes to decide what's constitutional and what's not constitutional. That's what courts have the authority to do, not sheriffs,' McCord said.
'There's another sort of evil lurking there,' McCord added, 'because CSPOA is now essentially part of a broader movement in the United States to think it's OK to use political violence if we disagree with some sort of government policy.'
Mach, who founded was an early board member of the Oath Keepers, the group involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, pictured above
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Mach, who founded was an early board member of the Oath Keepers, the group involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, pictured above
Mack, seen here, said he split with the Oath Keepers group several years ago when it became a militia, although he still speaks at Oath Keeper-affiliated rallies
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Mack, seen here, said he split with the Oath Keepers group several years ago when it became a militia, although he still speaks at Oath Keeper-affiliated rallies
At least one state, Texas, canceled credit for the sheriffs´ training after determining the course content - which it said included a reference to 'this is a war' - was more political than educational. But other states, such as Tennessee, have approved the training, in part because it was hosted by a local law enforcement agency.
Unlike other law enforcement continuing education, such as firearms training, the sheriffs' curriculum is largely focused on the alleged constitutional underpinnings of sheriffs' absolute authority to both interpret and refuse to enforce certain laws.
One brochure advertising the group's seminars states: 'The County Sheriff is the one who can say to the feds, `Beyond these bounds you shall not pass.´'
Nationwide, there are some 3,000 sheriffs, whose salaries are funded by taxpayers. Mack has claimed about 10 per cent of those are members of CSPOA together with a further 10,000 regular citizens. About 100 people attended the Vegas conference.
They sheriffs serve as the chief law enforcement officers in their counties and are the only elected peace officers in the country.
They appoint deputy sheriffs and jailers and service the courts in their jurisdictions.
Especially in rural areas, sheriffs hold immense sway over what happens in their county.
Amy Cooter, research director at the Middlebury Institute Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism, said many sheriffs join the group from 'a misinformed but well-meaning perspective.' But, she added, it also allows some sheriffs to 'potentially engage in extremism by not enforcing legal, lawful, legitimate orders.'
Some states have pushed back against the group's training efforts, and not all sheriffs subscribe to the group´s ideology.
Many at the National Sheriffs' Association conference distanced themselves from the constitutional sheriffs or claimed not to know what they were about.
'When I took an oath 17 years ago as sheriff, I took the oath to uphold the Constitution, not overstep it,' said Troy Wellman, sheriff of Moody County, South Dakota, and a vice president of the National Sheriffs' Association.
And there has been public pushback in some counties led by 'constitutional sheriffs.' In Klickitat County, Washington, residents alleged Sheriff Bob Songer, a board member of the sheriffs group, engaged in fearmongering and intimidation.
He was the target of a formal complaint in 2022 that the state's law enforcement standards agency ultimately dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.
Michael Peroutka, another sheriffs group board member and former candidate for Maryland's attorney general, was once affiliated with the League of the South, which supports 'a free and independent Southern republic.'
At a 2019 sheriffs´ training event, he said, 'There is a creator God. Our rights come from him. The purpose of civil government is to secure and defend God-given rights.'
Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University's Program on Extremism, described the sheriffs group as 'insidious' and said it had become 'mainstream standard-bearers for entrance into more violent forms of extremism.'
'Just because it's not as overt in their subversion of the democratic system, just because it's quieter about how it does it and what it's calling for, doesn't make the ideas any less dangerous,' said Lewis.
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https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/12/pharma-lobby-poured-millions-into-darkmoney-groups/
pharmaceutical companies’ top lobbying group funneled millions of dollars to prominent “dark money” groups that pushed industry friendly messages to lawmakers and 2020 voters.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America raised nearly $527 million last year and spent roughly $506 million, new tax returns obtained by OpenSecrets reveal. That’s a record haul for the organization, which is funded by the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies.
The trade association made its largest political donation of 2019 — $4.5 million — to the American Action Network, a dark money group that backs House Republicans. The conservative nonprofit and its pharmaceutical industry donor share disdain for proposals to regulate the price of prescription drugs.
The same year it received PhRMA’s donation, theAmerican Action Networklaunched several multi-million dollar ad campaigns opposing President Donald Trump’s proposal to let Medicare negotiate drug prices. This year, the group launched multi-million dollar ad campaigns opposing House Democrats’ bill to lower drug prices and ads boosting vulnerable Republicans who supported an alternative bill considered much friendlier to drugmakers.
The alliance between drugmakers and GOP groups isn’t new. PhRMA has given $14.6 million to the American Action Network since 2016. In that time, the American Action Network became a major contributor to GOP causes. During the 2020 election cycle, it gave $26.4 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House Republicans’ top super PAC that helped unseat several freshman Democrats.
In several key 2020 races, the American Action Network battled with a Democratic group that also received funding from drugmakers. PhRMA gave nearly $1.6 million to Center Forward, a dark money group aligned with moderate Blue Dog Democrats, last year. That nonprofit provided most of the funding for an allied super PAC that spent $3.3 million supporting House Democrats. The pharma-backed GOP and Democratic groups went head-to-head in several key House races, including a tightly contested New York race that has come down to a handful of votes.
Late last year, as Congress debated drug pricing bills, Center Forward flew House staffers to San Francisco to meet with drug company executives. The nonprofit’s board members have also lobbied for pharmaceutical interests. Republicans in Congress are the most vocal opponents of efforts to have the government regulate drug prices — a measure that would damage drugmakers’ profits — but Blue Dog Democrats also pushed back on more aggressive proposals to lower drug prices.
Drugmakers bankroll groups pushing industry talking points to Trump
Prominent drugmakers have spent much of 2020 developing vaccines to fight COVID-19, and the threat of drug pricing legislation in Congress has died down amid the pandemic. But Trump has continued to push forward with executive actions on prescription drugs opposed by the pharmaceutical industry.
PhRMA deployed creative tactics in an attempt to persuade Trump against following through on his campaign promise to aggressively lower drug prices. During the Trump era, the trade association has bankrolled conservative groups that have access to the president.
The American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, received $150,000 from PhRMA in 2019. Led by Trump ally and corporate lobbyist Matt Schlapp, the conservative nonprofit launched the Coalition Against Socialized Medicine late last year to oppose efforts to regulate drug prices and enact single-payer health care proposals.
Nearly all of the coalition’s members received funding from drugmakers within the last two years. Big pharma’s trade group gave $505,000 to American Commitment, $78,500 to Americans for a Balanced Budget and $60,000 to the Taxpayers Protection Alliancelast year alone, according to new tax returns. The Taxpayers Protection Alliance launched a six-figure ad campaign last month aimed at killing “surprise” medical billing legislation and calling it a “handout” to big insurance companies.
New tax returns also show that pharmaceutical manufacturers’ trade group gave $200,000 to the National Sheriffs Association, a nonprofit representing thousands of law enforcement officials. The group launched a six-figure ad campaign last year warning against Trump’s proposal to import drugs from foreign countries, a measure bitterly opposed by drugmakers. Those ads specifically targeted Trump, airing in Washington, D.C., on his favorite Fox News programs.
Trump ultimately approved a plan to import drugs from Canada in September, but its scope was limited. He also moved ahead with a rule that would allow Medicare to negotiate the cost of drugs based on the price foreign governments pay, another measure strongly opposed by drugmakers.
Still, while Trump has moved ahead with industry-opposed measures, his GOP allies in Congress have not made drug pricing legislation a priority. Republican lawmakers and their aides are consistently fed opinion pieces and ad campaigns from conservative groups urging them to reject “socialist price controls.”
Republicans ran political ads in 2020 that mirrored talking points from major healthcare industry players. Super PACs aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) attacked Democrats’ over their support for a public health insurance option, a proposal that could hurt drugmakers’ profits. Those ads cited a study from the Partnership For America’s Health Care Future, a conglomerate of insurers, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that received $300,000 from PhRMA last year.
Longtime pharmaceutical ally gets seven-figure gift in retirement
One of PhRMA’s largest 2019 gifts was a $2 million donation to the Orrin Hatch Foundation, athink tank and research library launched by former Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). The trade group gave $140,000 to the foundation between 2017 and 2018.
Hatch, who retired in January 2019, was known as the pharmaceutical industry’s “man on the Hill” by the end of his 42-year tenure. Hatch helped shape current laws that regulate generic drugs and opposed measures to limit drugmakers’ monopoly protections. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Hatch was considered the major roadblock to drug pricing changes proposed by Democrats and Trump.
the pharmaceuticals and health products industry gave $2.8 million to Hatch’s campaign committee since 1998, more than any member of Congress who didn’t run for president.When Hatch faced a primary challenge in 2012, PhRMAgave $750,000 to a super PAC boosting his reelection campaign.
During Hatch’s final years in office, his allies reportedly asked pharmaceutical companies and K Street lobbyists for donations to fund the Orrin Hatch Foundation. In 2018, the foundation invited major corporations, including pharmaceutical giant Merck, to a luxury mountain resort for a fundraiser.
While the foundation will serve as a library to catalogue Hatch’s government service and provide civic education, it has also put out policy reports on pressing issues. Its most recent report delves into how lawmakers can craft “sensible solutions to both foster innovative biologics and curb skyrocketing drug prices.”
https://theintercept.com/2020/02/12/jordan-cove-oregon-pembina-pipeline/
at a CASINO in the small coastal town of North Bend, Oregon, dozens of law enforcement officers and corporate security personnel gathered for a two-day training on how to wage propaganda battles against protesters. The November 2018 event was organized by the National Sheriffs’ Association, one of the country’s largest law enforcement organizations, and hosted by the Coos County Sheriff’s Office, which has spent years monitoring opposition to the Jordan Cove Energy Project — a proposed liquid natural gas pipeline and export terminal that the Trump administration has named one of its highest-priority infrastructure projects.
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The cost of the event, however — totaling $26,250 — was paid by Pembina Pipeline Corp., the Canadian fossil fuel company that owns the Jordan Cove project.
In fact, for nearly four years, Pembina was the sole funding source of a unit in the sheriff’s office dedicated to handling security concerns related to Jordan Cove — despite the fact that there is not yet any physical infrastructure in place to keep secure. The pipeline and terminal cannot begin construction without approval from theFederal Energy Regulatory Commission,which is scheduled to vote on whether to license the project in February. Yet between 2016 and 2020, the department’s liquid natural gas division, known as a “combined services unit,” spent at least $2 million of Pembina’s money. The energy company put the funding on hold in April 2019 but left open the possibility that the arrangement could be revived in the future. Pembina and the sheriff’s department are currently discussing how they may continue to work together, and Coos County Sheriff Craig Zanni said he expects the partnership to be renewed.
In addition to hosting the law enforcement training, the unit used Pembina’s funds to purchase riot control equipment, monitor the activities of Jordan Cove opponents, and coordinate intelligence-gathering operations with private security companies that also worked for Pembina.Local residents, environmental activists, and tribal members have staged rallies and sit-ins and participated in public hearings in opposition to the project, which they say would exacerbate the global climate crisis, damage vital waterways, and violate Indigenous sovereignty. Dozens of property owners could see their land seized via eminent domain.
Law enforcement agencies often receive funding for equipment via corporate-backed professional associations and private foundations — a practice that civil liberties groups have criticized as enabling private influence with little oversight. The arrangement between Pembina and the Coos County Sheriff’s Office was unusual, however, given the department’s scrutiny of activists engaged in First Amendment-protected speech in opposition to its corporate benefactor.
“It’s stunning. It’s the complete opposite of how the police have presented themselves in recent history — that they are neutral parties positioned above the political fray,” said Jeff Monaghan, a criminology professor at Canada’s Carleton University who studies police surveillance. “This is a public police force that has essentially opened up a private, corporately funded wing and, in doing so, is entrenching itself on one side of a very complicated political debate."
The Coos County partnership is an extreme example of a trend in policing that has gained momentum across the United States — particularly since thousands of protesters from around the world gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota in 2016 and 2017in an effort to halt construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. Corporations are developing creative means to funnel millions of dollars to local law enforcement groups, and this funding has often been paired with increasingly elaborate private security and propaganda operations.
An investigation by The Intercept and Type Investigations, based on more than 15,000 pages of documents obtained via open records requests from the Coos County Sheriff’s Office and the city of Portland, sheds light on the fusion of public and private interests working to monitor and stymie opposition to the Jordan Cove Energy Project. The documents also reveal new details about a network of private actors profiting off the suppression of protest movements nationwide, among them veterans of the Dakota Access pipeline campaign who have since contributed to the policing efforts around Jordan Cove.
The global consulting firm Teneo led Jordan Cove-related communications and intelligence operations on behalf of Pembina,producing regular reports on the activities of opponents and helping coordinate the efforts of federal, state, and local law enforcement, including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and county sheriff’s offices, the records show.
At the November 2018 training paid for by Pembina, one workshop was led by employees of Delve, a Washington, D.C.-based opposition research firm affiliated with the national Republican Party that worked alongside police during the Dakota Access pipeline protests.
Another was led by former consultants for TigerSwan, the defense firm hired to oversee security of the Dakota Access pipeline that came under fire for its militaristic approach to protesters. The two former consultants enlisted to train Oregon law enforcement had previously attempted to organize pro-pipeline counterprotests, according to leaked audio recordings, encouraging dangerous tactics and at one point dangling the prospect of anonymous donations from oil companies.
“Pembina and other corporations are trying to build out the infrastructure now to lock us, as a planet, into using big reserves of fossil fuel,” said Brendan McQuade, assistant professor of criminology at the University of Southern Maine and author of a recently released book on police fusion centers. “The most distressing element of these documents is that they show the police both locally and nationally lining up, in a rigid way, behind corporations carrying out fossil fuel extraction.”
Purchasing Police Power
First proposed in 2005, the Jordan Cove Energy Project has become one of the longest-running battles in the country between the fossil fuel industry and opponents of new hydrocarbon energy infrastructure. If built, the project would transport 438 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year from the Jonah Field in Wyoming, the Piceance Basin in Colorado, and the Uinta Basin in northern Utah. The 233-mile Pacific Connector gas pipeline would snake beneath five major rivers as it pumps natural gas to a new export terminal at Coos Bay, where the gas would be chilled and liquefied before being carried to Asian markets on massive tankers.
[map]
In 2016, landowners in the pipeline’s proposed path successfully lobbied the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which provides permits for the construction of natural gas infrastructure, to deny an application to build the project. The agency asserted that developers had not proven the need for it. Pembina reapplied a year later, in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.
Since then, Trump has appointed individuals to the five-member commission who are more in favor of fossil fuel projects than their predecessors, including Neil Chatterjee, who previously served as energy policy adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. A decision by the FERC is expected on February 13.
In the meantime, grassroots environmental groups have helped rally tens of thousands of people to submit comments opposing Jordan Cove to state and federal permitting agencies. The Karuk, Yurok, Klamath, Tolowa Dee-ni’, Siletz, and Round Valley tribes have all passed resolutions opposing the project.
On a misty morning in August, Larry Mangan, a retired Bureau of Land Management biologist, stood on the shores of Coos Bay overlooking the proposed site of the Jordan Cove export terminal. The land on which he and his wife, Sylvia, have lived for more than 30 years is in one of the proposed paths of the Pacific Connector pipeline, and a portion of it is threatened with eminent domain.
“This project would be a disaster not just for us, but for our entire area,” Maghan said. “It’s almost unthinkable that our local police force would be so invested in it.”
The LNG division of the Coos County Sheriff’s Office was established in December 2015. At the time, the Jordan Cove project was owned by the energy infrastructure company Veresen, which Pembina acquired in 2017. Coos County Sheriff Zanni said the department expected Jordan Cove to create an array of security needs. Coos Bay is popular with anglers, crabbers, and recreational boaters who would share the space with giant LNG carriers, and he believed the terminal could become a target for terrorism.
According to county expenditure records, the Pembina-funded sheriff’s unit spent at least $1.2 million on salaries, benefits, and overtime between 2016 and 2020. The sheriff’s office also used money from Pembina to acquire equipment and technology that would allow deputies to monitor environmental activists and respond forcefully to potential protests. Last year, the department spent $48,250 of Pembina funds on an acoustic sound cannon and paid for repairs to a Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected tactical vehicle — a type of armored vehicle first developed for the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan that police have also used in the streets of Ferguson and at Standing Rock. The department also purchased social media archiving software and a drone.
The sound cannon was a response to what happened at Standing Rock, according to Zanni, who said he wanted a “more humane way” to deal with protesters that would avoid physical confrontation. As for the MRAP, the armored vehicle the department had obtained via the federal government’s surplus military property program was in a state of disrepair. Zanni said the vehicle had “technically nothing” to do with Jordan Cove. “It’s called leveraging for the better of the community,” he added.
Zanni described the sheriff’s office as “severely underfunded.” The department used to rely on proceeds from timber harvests on federal land to pay its bills, but that funding dropped dramatically in recent decades.
When Pembina discontinued funding in April, the sheriff’s office had enough remaining money for the unit to finish out the year. In December, the department was forced to absorb four deputies whose salaries had been paid for by the company (a fifth deputy retired). Pembina did not respond to requests for comment, but a spokesperson for the company told local press that it had adjusted its spending while awaiting permits to build.
The sheriff’s department met with the company in January to review the unit’s expenses and discuss a future agreement. A follow-up meeting has been scheduled for the coming weeks. “We’re going to move forward, basically,” Zanni said.
He pointed to the 2005 Energy Policy Act as justification for the unit.The federal law requires fossil fuel companies to come up with a cost-sharing plan with public agencies that have “responsibility for security and safety” at LNG export terminal sites. Zanni shrugged off the fact that the export terminal has not been approved or built yet. “As businesspeople, they’re pretty confident they’re going to get permission to do that,” he said of Pembina. “My argument is I need the resources before it’s going to be built.”
But, if the agreement is renewed, it may be invalid under Oregon law. In 1998, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a similar arrangement in Klamath County, Oregon, where the sheriff’s department had entered into an agreement with the timber corporation Weyerhaeuser to provide security services on the company’s land.
“Providing specialized law enforcement services to Weyerhaeuser has no logical relationship to a sheriff’s statutory responsibility to ‘Defend the county against those who, by riot or otherwise, endanger the public peace or safety,’” the court ruled. “We are persuaded that a sheriff lacks the express or implied authority under Oregon law to enter into an agreement to provide security services for private entities.”
“The court was pretty clear in saying that Oregon law sets out the general authority for governing bodies, and these types of contracts between corporations and police agencies don’t fit into that general authority,” said Kelly Simon, a staff attorney at the Oregon chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “Contracts like this that are biased and create special-interest groups in government bodies — they are not authorized because the police’s authority is to protect the public fairly and equally.”
Zanni said the Coos County Sheriff’s Office has had contracts with federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management as well as private timberland owners that occupy areas that the office otherwise wouldn’t have the resources to patrol. “Our contracts specifically say if there’s a law enforcement public safety need for that officer, we don’t care what you’re paying us for, he’s going to go handle that,” Zanni said.
...
not nec nsa but interesting to check:
https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-some-alabama-county-sheriffs-force-their-inmates-into-medical-debt
no lnx
How some Alabama county sheriffs force their inmates into medical debt
Written by ProPublica December 26, 2019
This article was produced in partnership with AL.com, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.
In Alabama, the county in which you’re arrested could be the deciding factor in who will be financially responsible for your medical bills behind bars.
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In Baldwin County, known for its white-sand Gulf Coast beaches and waterfront communities, the sheriff’s office ensures that inmates in the county jail do not have to pay anything more than a $15 copayment for medical care.
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“Inmates are not billed for the full cost of any medical care either inside or outside” the jail, Sheriff Hoss Mack said in an email. “Alabama Code Title 14 assigns financial responsibility of inmates’ medical treatment to the department where they are being held.”
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Just across the bay in Mobile County, home to one of the busiest ports in the U.S. and the eponymous city of nearly 200,000 people built around it, Sheriff Sam Cochran takes a different tack: Some of his inmates are personally on the hook for the full cost of medically necessary care they receive from outside doctors while incarcerated, even if they are awaiting trial.
The difference between the two sheriffs’ approaches demonstrates the unique power Alabama sheriffs have to set their own rules and answer only to voters.Legal experts and civil rights advocates say sheriffs like Cochran are likely violating both state law and the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment and excessive fines.
It’s not just happening in Mobile County. In multiple instances confirmed by AL.com and ProPublica, inmates have had medical bills sent to collections while they were still behind bars, damaging their credit and putting pressure on their family members to pay up to ensure the care continued.
Brandon DeLaFosse is among them. He was arrested on domestic violence, burglary and robbery charges and booked into the Mobile County Metro Jail in November 2018, three months after he underwent surgery on his inner ear. Since then, he has received bills totaling thousands of dollars for necessary follow-up appointments and tests, some of which have gone to collections while he remains behind bars.
“He keeps getting bills in the mail,” said Alicia DeLaFosse, Brandon’s mother, who has paid hundreds of dollars for care he has received while in custody. “It’s all money he owes from going back and forth to the doctor.”
Like many inmates, DeLaFosse doesn’t have significant income or access to public or private insurance in jail.
Alabama law is clear: If an “inmate develops a medical condition which requires immediate treatment at a medical-care facility outside the county jail, the department shall be financially responsible for the cost of the treatment of the inmate.”
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But Cochran said when the jail’s doctors determine inmates need care that goes beyond what in-house medical staff and contracted outpatient providers can handle, they are often taken to private medical professionals who do not have contracts with the jail. And he allows those medical providers to bill at least some of those inmates directly.
“When that person is taken out to that private medical facility or something like that, then, yeah, they’re going to bill him for that treatment,” Cochran said during an interview in his office last month. “It’s a more than reasonable thing to do.”
Asked later about the details of Brandon DeLaFosse’s case and how the practice squares with state and federal law, Cochran provided an email written by Trey Oliver, warden of the Mobile County Metro Jail.
Oliver wrote that inmates are required to pay “when they have a follow-up procedure or visit from a surgery conducted prior to being booked.”
As for DeLaFosse, Oliver wrote, “There was a follow up visit or two and his mother agreed to pay it beforehand.”
Most jails and prisons across Alabama and the U.S. either have doctors and nurses on staff or contract with outside companies to provide medical care in their lockups. It’s not uncommon for inmates to be charged low copays — typically less than $20 — for medications and medical services.
But requiring inmates to foot the bill for their health care takes that practice to another level.
That’s “like charging them for their own food,” said John Lentine, a Birmingham criminal defense attorney and adjunct law professor at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law and the Birmingham School of Law. “To me it’s a basic human rights kind of thing.”
Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Law and Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, said the practice is “absolutely” unconstitutional.
“There is a constitutional obligation to provide health care that meets the serious medical needs of people who are incarcerated,” said Deitch, who co-wrote the American Bar Association’s Standards on Treatment of Prisoners. “That’s not negotiable.”
The tactic is another way in which sheriffs across Alabama are avoiding financial responsibility for inmate medical care. AL.com and ProPublica reported in September that many sheriffs in Alabama and across the country are finding ways to release inmates from jail just before they incur expensive hospital bills, a tactic known as “medical bond.”
In several recent cases, incarcerated people around the country have successfully challenged policies restricting their access to free medical care in prison.
Last year, a federal court ruled that transgender inmates in Missouri’s state prisons have a right to receive hormone therapy free of charge while incarcerated, regardless of whether they were already receiving the treatments when they were taken into custody. And this year, prisoners in Minnesota reached a settlement with the state’s Department of Corrections that requires the prison system to provide prisoners who have Hepatitis C with expensive drugs that often cure the infection.
AL.com and ProPublica attempted to contact the sheriffs of all 67 counties in Alabama via email or phone to ask whether they allow inmates to be billed for care they receive while incarcerated. Of those, 13 sheriffs and one chief deputy responded. The sheriff of Mobile County and chief deputy of Jackson County each said they allow providers to bill inmates for necessary care in certain situations. Ten sheriffs said they do not allow inmates to be billed. Two others declined to comment.
“I’m Still Getting Bills”
Days after Thanksgiving last year, Brandon DeLaFosse was arrested in Mississippi on outstanding warrants stemming from an incident earlier that month in Mobile County, Alabama.
The then-28-year-old was driven back to Mobile, where he stayed in the county jail until Feb. 28, when he was sentenced to three years in prison.
DeLaFosse’s health problems continued behind bars. Since his ear surgery last year, he has suffered from persistent ear infections and severe hearing loss.
And his bills are piling up.
In between Marlboro Lights and peanut butter-and-syrup sandwiches at her Irvington home last month, DeLaFosse’s mother, Alicia, said she spends many hours each week making calls, sending emails and conducting research to advocate on behalf of her son.
She said a steady stream of medical bills addressed to her son has arrived at her house since his arrest. Billing records show that she has spent more than $600 on his care since his arrest, and more than $1,000 in outstanding bills have gone to debt collection.
On Dec. 6, 2018, while he was in the Mobile County Metro Jail, Brandon DeLaFosse was taken to see an ear, nose and throat specialist at Providence Hospital in Mobile for a surgery follow-up visit recommended by the doctor. But first, his mother said, jail staff required her to make a payment to the doctor’s office. After the appointment, the hospital’s billing department sent a bill for $729 for tests he underwent that day to Alicia DeLaFosse’s house.
“The way the nurse at the jail explained it to me is because it was something that didn’t happen at the jail, it’s preexisting. … I had to go pay for it myself,” she said. “For the jail to allow him to go see the doctor, I had to go to the doctor’s office and pay $125 first.”
A registered nurse at the jail in Mobile noted in Brandon DeLaFosse’s medical record that his mother made a payment and that the nurse had scheduled a follow-up visit for later that month. In January 2019, a nurse practitioner at the jail wrote a note in his file stating she would request another follow-up appointment with his doctor “with the expectation that it is handled in the usual fashion with his mother arranging for payment.”
“I don’t think it’s fair. They’re responsible for my medical care, so why should it be coming out of my pockets or my family’s pockets?” Brandon DeLaFosse said in a jailhouse phone call.
Cochran, the Mobile County sheriff, said via email that he views the situation as a “legal dispute between [Brandon DeLaFosse], us and our contracted provider. I know of no complaint or claim made against us.”
“The mom agreed to pay [the] bill. Looks like she reneged,” Cochran wrote. “Otherwise if it would have been medically necessary our contracted folks would have handled.”
Alicia DeLaFosse said she “didn’t renege” and paid for all of the medical costs she knew about in advance.
Brandon DeLaFosse continued to be billed for outside medical care after he was moved to state prison. On July 23, nearly five months after his sentence began, he saw a doctor and underwent tests at Providence Hospital. He was sent a bill for $224.70 for outpatient diagnostics administered that day, plus $71.98 for the doctor visit.
That shouldn’t have happened, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Department of Corrections said in a statement.
“By ADOC’S policy, all inmates in the care, custody, and control of any ADOC correctional facility are not charged or responsible for community-based medical care or mental health services,” the spokeswoman, Samantha Banks, said.
Any state prisoners “incorrectly” billed for outpatient medical care should notify the provider that they were incarcerated at the time, the statement explained. “The medical provider should submit to the Department the appropriate paperwork and any outstanding inmate medical bills will be directed to the appropriate payer.”
State prisoners in Arizona have reported similar issues with providers billing them directly for medical care they received while incarcerated, as KJZZ radio reported this year. Like in Alabama, the Arizona Department of Corrections has said the bills were sent out in error and that the department or its medical contractor would pay the inmates’ bills.
But that’s a vastly different situation than the one facing inmates in some Alabama counties, where sheriff’s offices are not chalking up such bills to error and are in fact deliberately choosing to avoid paying medical bills for inmates in their charge.
Constitutional Question
Though the public often has little sympathy for inmates, incarcerated people do have clear rights, particularly when it comes to health care behind bars.
Alabama law states that “necessary clothing and bedding must be furnished by the sheriff or jailer, at the expense of the county, to those prisoners who are unable to provide them for themselves, and also necessary medicines and medical attention to those who are sick or injured, when they are unable to provide them for themselves.”
In another section of the state code, a definition of a county inmate includes an explicit reference to their health care being provided for: “any person being held in a public institution under the administrative control and responsibility of the county sheriff and for whom the county is responsible for the provision of medical care.”
Brandon Blankenship, an assistant professor of law and ethics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said that allowing inmates to be billed for care that they receive while incarcerated amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and that the bills are excessive fines.
“I don’t think it’s ever been challenged in court in Alabama, but from where I’m sitting, the answer to me is that, no, it’s certainly not constitutional under the Eighth Amendment.”
The tactics of some Alabama sheriffs stand in sharp contrast to what’s going on elsewhere in the country. This year, California and Illinois banned the practice of charging inmates copays, and a number of other states have taken, or are considering, steps to rein in the practice.
“They usually cannot afford even a $5 copay, so the idea that they could pay thousands of dollars for these services is laughable from a practical perspective and it’s downright evil on many different levels,” said Deitch, the University of Texas at Austin professor.
In 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a seminal case, City of Revere v. Massachusetts General Hospital, involving a person who was hurt during an arrest and taken to a hospital. The court ruled that “as long as the governmental entity ensures that the medical care needed is in fact provided, the Constitution does not dictate how the cost of that care should be allocated as between the entity and the provider of the care. That is a matter of state law.”
But that ruling did not answer the question of whether inmates can be stuck with the bill.
“We don’t have any clear Supreme Court ruling,” said Fred Cohen, a professor emeritus at the University at Albany’s School of Criminal Justice who has decades of experience in corrections law and serves as executive editor of Correctional Law Reporter.
Cohen said he believes there is a good case to be made that the practice of allowing inmates to be billed for medical care violates their constitutional rights.
“I don’t think it’s an open policy question in that inmates should not be required to pay,” he said. “I think it could be held unconstitutional by the right court.”
Different Systems
...
PHARMA money laundering?!
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/11/big-pharma-bankrolled-conservative-groups-tax-returns-show
big Pharma bankrolled conservative groups that pushed industry message to Trump, tax returns show
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the pharmaceutical industry’s largest trade association, gave millions of dollars in grants to a number of conservative groups that pushed industry-friendly policies to the Trump administration and congressional lawmakers, new tax returns reveal. Read More
pharmaceutical industry’s largest trade association gave millions of dollars in grants to a number of conservative groups that pushed industry-friendly policies to the Trump administration and congressional lawmakers, new tax returns obtained by OpenSecrets reveal.
The influential Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents the most powerful drug companies in the country, is already one of the top lobbying spenders. But the group also extends its reach to influential conservative groups that are aligned with drugmakers against controls on drug prices.
Among its top recipients was the American Action Network, which received $2.5 million last year. The conservative “dark money” group, which took in $10 million from PhRMA since 2016, has consistently advocated policies favored by drugmakers.
In August, the American Action Network announced a $2.5 million ad campaign to fight “socialist” price controls in Medicare Part D, a proposal strongly opposed by the pharmaceutical industry. In June, the group announced a $3 million ad campaign to support President Donald Trump’s proposed drug rebate rule that favored pharmaceutical companies over insurers and pharmacy benefit managers. The Trump administration pulled the proposal in July.
Among other conservative groups PhRMA gave to last year are Consumer Action for a Strong Economy ($170,000), FreedomWorks ($100,000), Taxpayers Protection Alliance ($65,000), Institute for Policy Innovation ($35,000) and the Competitive Enterprise Institute ($25,000). Each of those groups signed on to a November 2018 letter opposing the Trump administration’s proposed rule to create price controls for drugs administered under Medicare Part B.
Numerous conservative groups that received funding from the pharmaceutical industry ran ads urging Trump not to embrace “socialist” price controls. FreedomWorks has run digital ads urging the rejection of “the socialist rate-setting scheme” and is fighting for PhRMA-favored provisions in Trump’s proposed trade deal. The conservative Heritage Action for America, which received $37,500 from PhRMA last year, ran ads urging members of Congress to reject the price control measure, also adopting the “socialist” branding.
The Coalition for Affordable Health Coverage, which received $725,000 from PhRMA between 2017 and 2018, took part in a July meeting with White House officials to push back on drug price controls.
PhRMA has consistently lobbied against price controls on drugs, a proposal that would deal serious damage to major drugmakers’ profits. The Trump administration insists it wants to lower drug prices, but its plans face strong opposition from conservative groups and Republican allies in Congress.
During a July Senate Finance Committee hearing on drug pricing bills, all but one Republican voted for an amendment that would prohibit the Trump administration from implementing one of its key goals, an international price index to set drug costs. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), once a supporter of a similar price control model, voted for the amendment and told reporters the pharmaceutical industry had “better ideas.”
In a statement provided with the group’s tax returns, PhRMA spokeswoman Holly Campbell said the industry faced “a number of challenging issues with significant ramifications for the future of biopharmaceutical innovation” in 2018.
“PhRMA used its resources to advance practical policy solutions that will lower medicine costs for patients,” Campbell said, adding that the group “worked to oppose harmful proposals that threaten patient access to treatment and hinder the development of new medicines.”
The trade group’s strategy of funding conservative forces isn’t new. In 2017, PhRMA gave millions to conservative groups, including $2.5 million to pro-Trump “dark money” group America First Policies, OpenSecrets reported.
The American Conservative Union, which received $150,000 from PhRMA in 2017, has also come out against industry-opposed measures, urging lawmakers not to adopt “socalist policies” that would cap the price of some drugs.
These conservative groups are naturally aligned with the pharmaceutical industry on such issues. But PhRMA has also given to influential organizations that might not have the same incentives to back drugmakers.
This summer, the National Sheriff’s Association, which represents thousands of elected sheriffs, ran a six-figure television ad campaign urging Trump to reject proposals opposed by the pharmaceutical industry, OpenSecrets reported. Specifically, the group tried to argue that allowing the importation of generic prescription drugs from Canada presented a safety risk.
Bloomberg later revealed that the cash-strapped trade group received at least $900,000 in grants from the Partnership for Safe Medicines, a nonprofit funded by PhRMA.
PhRMA’s 2018 tax returns reveal that it gave more than $8.5 million to the Addiction Policy Forum and an affiliated group, organizations that aim to fight the opioid epidemic. The group announced last year it would accept funding from PhRMA, which drew controversy from addiction advocates. The group gave nearly $14.5 million to the RX Abuse Leadership Initiative, which is working with law enforcement to fight the opioid epidemic.
The group chipped in $175,000 to RetireSafe, a GOP-linked seniors group that opposes House Democrats’ drug pricing package.
In addition to giving to conservative groups, PhRMA gave more than $1.4 million to Center Forward and $50,000 to Third Way Foundation, organizations that push center-left policies, underscoring the drug industry’s widespread attempts to influence policy.
PhRMA brought in a record $459 million in revenue last year, up slightly from its 2017 haul. Drugmakers are facing tremendous pressure from Washington lawmakers as they fight drug pricing proposals from congressional Democrats and the Trump administration. That’s while also pushing for an industry-friendly trade deal, handling the ramifications of the opioid crisis, combating state-level efforts to reduce drug prices and preparing for Democratic presidential candidates’ proposals to take on the pharmaceutical industry.
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https://www.politicalresearch.org/2019/06/06/the-national-sheriffs-association-strengthens-the-deportation-machine/
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced a new effort in May 2019 to expand the reach of its deportation machine. ICE’s new Warrant Service Officer (WSO) program allows local police officers to effectively become federal immigration enforcement agents and, in some cases, directly circumvent sanctuary policies adopted by local lawmakers. It is the latest in a series of developments by ICE to deputize local police to place even more immigrants in detention and on the path to deportation proceedings.
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The growing reach of immigration enforcement
The 287(g) program and related efforts are the primary way in which the administration, the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA), and the anti-immigrant movement are seeking to expand immigration enforcement’s already substantial presence in communities. The 1996 immigration bill, which was drafted by the anti-immigrant movement and signed into law by President Clinton, created the287(g) program. (Its name refers to Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.) The law allows ICE to enter into agreements with local law enforcement agencies, and deputize them to enforce federal immigration law. The law allows ICE to enter into agreements with local law enforcement agencies, and deputize them to enforce federal immigration law. Such agreements divert local resources away from the public good and towards the enforcement of federal immigration laws. 287(g) and other cooperation agreements with ICE effectively subsidize a federal agency whose Enforcement and Removal Operations Office has already nearly tripled since 2003, at the expense of local communities.
287(g) agreements are a crucial instrument to advance a broader “attrition through enforcement” strategy. First popularized by Mark Krikorian of the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies in 2005, the attrition strategy seeks to increase the marginalization of immigrants, to the point where they would—as 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney put—“self-deport.” Compounded with other policies, whether local efforts like Arizona’s notorious and unconstitutional SB 1070 or other discriminatory federal programs like Countering Violent Extremism, 287(g) agreements bolster a security state that explicitly targets immigrants and communities of color.
In its first week in power, the Trump administration sought to expand the 287(g) program as part of its broader draconian agenda. An executive order signed by the president on January 25, 2017, ordered DHS to “immediately” begin outreach to state and local officials for the purposes of entering 287(g) agreements. The number of agreements ballooned 135% after the executive order and ICE currently has agreementswith 80 law enforcement agencies in 21 states.
This expansive growth has not satisfied ICE. A year into the rapid spread of 287(g), ICE announced a series of Basic Ordering Agreements (BOA) with 17 Florida counties. The BOAs incentivize sheriff’s departments to honor unconstitutional detention requests from ICE, known as “detainers.” ICE detainer requests have been found by courts to violate the Fourth Amendment, yet ICE continues developing ways to bypass constitutional protections. States and jurisdictions across the country have sought to defend their immigrant neighbors and protect public resources by adopting sanctuary policies and limiting local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE. These policies protect communities and public resources from potential legal liabilities stemming from honoring ICE detainers. Predictably, the Trump administration and the anti-immigrant movement has targeted these policies in multiple ways. BOAs are one such way and ICE announced another on May 6, the Warrant Service Officer (WSO) program.
The WSO program is “intended for local law-enforcement that wish to honor immigration detainers but are prohibited due to state and local policies that limit cooperation with the agency,” according to the announcement. ICE also developed WSO with “rural jurisdictions that lack the budget and personnel resources to become 287(g) partners” in mind. According to its announcement, ICE created the WSO program following requests from the National Sheriffs’ Association.
The National Sheriffs’ Association: Drumming up support for mass deportation
The National Sheriffs’ Association is granting Pinellas County, Florida, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri the Sheriff of the Year award at the group’s national conference in Louisville, KY next week. Gualtieri, a former practicing lawyer, has reportedly led on immigration issues within the NSA in recent years, including the WSO, and designed the BOA program. The NSA’s decision to honor Gualtieri’s efforts to expand ICE’s already overzealous presence in communities reflects the association’s broader embrace of the anti-immigrant movement’s draconian agenda.
As Congress considered comprehensive immigration reform legislation in 2013, the NSA approved a position paper stating it opposed granting citizenship to undocumented people residing in the U.S. The proposal in Congress, which bolstered interior enforcement and border militarization efforts in conjunction with allowing some undocumented immigrants to regularize their status, ultimately failed. However, the NSA’s immigration stance became more strident.
A 2017 report published by the Center for New Community detailed ways in which the NSA has increasingly worked with the anti-immigrant movement. Among others the NSA:
- Endorsed a December 2014 event in Washington, D.C., organized by Massachusetts Sheriff Thomas Hodgson and anti-immigrant group Federation for American Immigration Reform(FAIR). Richard Mack, of the Patriot movement-aligned Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association was also in attendance.
- NSA Executive Director Jonathan Thompson spoke at a 2015 event in McAllen, Texas, organized by FAIR. Richard Mack was also a speaker.
- Louisiana Sheriff Greg Champagne, who was also NSA President at the time, appeared in a
produced by FAIR. The ad is one of two FAIR ads NSA still displays on its website. - NSA signed on to amicus brief drafted by FAIR’s legal arm.
- FAIR had an exhibition booth at several NSA conferences. FAIR will also have a presence at the NSA conference in Louisville.
It is also likely FAIR worked directly with the NSA and Florida Sheriff Gualtieri to develop the WSO program and other sanctuary workarounds. In March 2017, FAIR Executive Director Bob Dane wrote to NSA Executive Director Jonathan Thompson offering “a full pro-bono consultation” on detainer issues1. “We’ve developed an unofficial ‘task force’ here specifically to lend support and advice to you,” Dane wrote. “I’d like to suggest/offer that our team come over to the NSA next week and meet with you. By that point, more info will be evident from the field work you and the sheriffs are doing this week.” Thompson responded, accepting Dane’s offer. “The important player is not me but folks copied herein,” Thompson responded, cc’ing Gualtieri and others. “These are sheriffs and lawyers that know this stuff cold.” According to its 2017 annual report, FAIR met with NSA leadership the following month to discuss detainers.
The NSA’s anti-immigrant advocacy and work with FAIR continues beyond its involvement in enforcement programs like BOA and WSO in Florida. Last year, the NSA sponsored Massachusetts Sheriff Hodgson’s crowdfunding effort to build a border wall. NSA leadership have visited the White House multiple times in the last two years, including a bizarre appearance in September 2018 where dozens of sheriffs stood silently on risers behind the President as he ranted about a New York Times op-ed to assembled press. The September White House appearance was part of a three-day visit sponsored by FAIR. FAIR’s former law enforcement relations manager, the late Robert Najmulski,stood alongside the sheriffs during photo opportunities and the president’s remarks.
The NSA willfully supports the administration’s demagoguery and the anti-immigrant movement’s attrition agenda. Sheriffs, who are democratically elected, are facilitating the growth of ICE’s enforcement dragnet in their communities with significant institutional support from the NSA, ICE, and elsewhere. The NSA is not just complicit, they are actively bolstering an unjust and far-reaching enforcement regime that continues to wreak havoc on immigrants, their families, and broader communities.
ICE’s current memorandum of agreement with 287(g) jurisdictions expires on June 30. The upcoming expiration provides a unique opportunity for movements to pressure officials to cancel 287(g) agreements without engaging directly in electoral campaigns. Future cancellations or failures to renew 287(g) agreements would build on recent victories for immigrant communities fighting against the growing immigration enforcement apparatus. In places including North Carolina, Maryland, and Minnesota, officials were recently elected, in part, for their commitment to ending 287(g) agreements or cooperation with ICE in their jurisdictions.
These victories are the result of inspiring grassroots organizing efforts showing the strength and resilience of communities. Sheriffs have been encouraged by the administration, its anti-immigrant advisors, and the NSA to betray the communities they supposedly serve, by siphoning resources away from the public good and towards federal enforcement efforts. This trend can and must be reversed. Grassroots efforts show such fights are winnable—they just require contestation and support from movements for justice.
1 Wednesday, March 29, 2017 Email to Gualtieri,Robert; Champagne Greg; Faigin, Robert; Richard Stanek, on file at PRA
This entry was posted inEyes Right Blog by Political Research Associates. Bookmark the permalink.
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OMFG
may 2017
Ruth Hopkins, Indian Country Today Media Network
https://truthout.org/articles/footing-the-15-million-bill-for-the-dakota-access-pipeline-s-private-army/
Last fall, the eyes of the world were fixated on Standing Rock.
Among the images burned into the brains of so many abroad were those of Morton County sheriff’s department, joined by law enforcement officers from across the country, bedecked in military gear and armed to the teeth, brutalizing defenseless water protectors for expressing their first amendment rights and freedom of religion. Eyes were opened when mercs sicced vicious attack dogs on women and children guarding sacred burial grounds with their lives. Folks thousands of miles away watched in horror as they witnessed concussion grenades being thrown into crowds and elders being maced in the midst of sweat lodge raids. People will never forget live stream video picked up by mainstream media, showing hundreds of civilians being shot with water cannons in subzero temperatures by a corporate police state army.Some photos of injuries were judged too graphic to post by social media, as they revealed a young woman with a near severed limb and another who’d been blinded in one eye.
This was not Iraq or Afghanistan. There was no foreign enemy invading our shores. These events occurred in the middle of the United States, on Lakota treaty lands; and the only thing these innocent people had done was dare to stand in the way of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the same one Bismarck, North Dakota residents rejected due to fears it would contaminate their water supply. This war zone created by Dakota Access and Morton County was meant to subdue Standing Rock residents and water protectors and force them to accept an unwarranted risk to their fresh water and the desecration of ancestral graves, under the barrel of a gun.
Here in the states, hundreds of Native Nations and the American public sided with Standing Rock. Scores came to camp along the shores of the Mni Sosa (Missouri River). Others rallied in the local cities, signed petitions, and called the White House. Millions were outraged by the injustice.
Yet who is paying for the corporate police state brutality I just mentioned? You are.
Senator John Hoeven (R-ND), who accepted money from Energy Transfer Partners (the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline) and has been vocal in his support of both the Dakota Access Pipeline as well as the Keystone XL pipeline, has announced that North Dakota will receive $15 million in federal funds to reimburse the state for costs incurred as a result of militarizing Barney Fife and company while they pushed the pipeline through for ETP and engaged in the violent, forced removal of water protectors. Hoeven slid said monies into the Department of Justice’s budget as part of Fiscal 2017 funding legislation.
By the way, Hoeven sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee and is now the chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.Welcome to Custer’s wet dream.
The distinguished Senator from North Dakota would have us believe his state was alone in its mission to extinguish #NoDAPL. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When Morton County requested backup, law enforcement officials from across the nation came to North Dakota via the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC). The Sheriff’s Association also showed up in full force.
New York Daily News writer Shaun King obtained audio where Energy Transfer Partners freely admitted that they worked closely with the Sheriff’s Association, and wow, did they ever. They became one and the same.
Water protectors who lived at camp can attest to ETP and law enforcement’s collusion and fraternization, but the record speaks for itself.
The Sheriffs’ Association has a $3.46 million budget, according to tax forms. Some of this funding comes from corporate sources, like TigerSwan. TigerSwan maintains offices in Iraq and Afghanistan. TigerSwan’s CEO is a former adviser to the multinational private security firm, Blackwater. Blackwater was founded by Erik Prince, a Trump campaign donor and the brother of Betsy DeVos, the US Secretary of Education. Besides funding the Sheriff’s Association, TigerSwan is in charge of Dakota Access intelligence and supervising overall security for the company. Tigerswan works for Dakota Access, while funding and partnering with the Sheriffs’ Association.
The Sheriff’s Association purchased military gear from the US Department’s Defense Logistics Agency thanks to the Defense Department’s 1033 program.Think corporate welfare for the defense industry.
Wait, there’s more. Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren offered to reimburse North Dakota and Morton County for costs due to defending the Dakota Access Pipeline.
So why are US taxpayers forking over $15 million to North Dakota?
Despite the fossil fuel industry’s wishes, America is not an oil company with an army. We should not be bankrolling our own oppression.
Incidentally, the Dakota Access Pipeline is not even operational yet, and it’s already sprung a leak in South Dakota, just southwest of the Lake Traverse Reservation. End this foolishness.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/colorado-sheriffs-say-theyll-go-to-jail-rather-than-enforce-controversial-red-flag-gun-control-law/
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/12/28/st-charles-parish-louisiana-sheriff-pipeline-records-standing-rock
On December 27, a state* appeals court ordered a Louisiana’s sheriff’s department and its sheriff to release information about its officers’ trip to North Dakota during the heated protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016. The extended, indigenous-led protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation drew a highly militarized response from public and private law enforcement. Out-of-state cops, including those from Louisiana’s St. Charles Parish, flooded North Dakota to support it via an interstate agreement.
The latest move reversed a decision by a district court, which denied a public records request made by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a human rights law firm which has worked on behalf of environmental groups* in Louisiana, after parish law enforcement spoke out against Dakota Access pipeline opponents and endorsed the Bayou Bridge pipeline, a similar oil pipeline in Louisiana.
“We saw a dangerous blurring of the lines between law enforcement and private corporations at Standing Rock,” Pamela Spees, a senior staff attorney with CCR, stated when first filing suit for the public records in December 2017.
Spees, who was raised in Lake Charles, one of the communities that will be affected by the Bayou Bridge pipeline, is leading a lawsuit by Louisiana environmental groups seeking public records fromSt. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne. She was also an attorney in a lawsuit against Bayou Bridge Pipeline, LLC, which so far has unsuccessfully challenged the company's right to use eminent domain to confiscate land to build the pipeline, which is nearly operational.
The Dakota Access pipeline is owned by Energy Transfer (formerly known as Energy Transfer Partners), the principal owner of the also-contested Bayou Bridge pipeline, a 163-mile-long pipeline that cuts across southern Louisiana from St. Charles, near the Texas border, to St. James, on the Mississippi River. Despite ongoing legal battles in federal and state courts, the Bayou Bridge pipeline has been nearly completed.
Louisiana Sheriffs, a Pipeline Company, and a Private Security Firm
According to a CCR press release, the center’s request “also seeks to investigate larger connections among SCPSO [St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office], Sheriff Champagne, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), and TigerSwan LLC, in light of ETP’s proposed Bayou Bridge Pipeline project in Louisiana.”
TigerSwan, a private security firm involved in the Dakota Access response but denied a license to operate in Louisiana, is a corporate donor to the National Sheriffs’ Association’s $3.46 million budget, according to the association’s most recent tax forms. Under Sheriff Champagne’s leadership, the association lobbied Congress for surplus military gear and other undisclosed issues related to the Dakota Access pipeline, according to a review of federal lobbying disclosure forms by Steve Horn for DeSmog.
The center’s public records request, filed September 18, 2017, was made after St. Charles Parish’s Sheriff Greg Champagne and others connected to law enforcement, including Joseph Lopinto, the newly elected sheriff of Jefferson Parish who spoke on behalf of the National Sheriffs’ Association at a Bayou Bridge permit hearing, publicly criticized pipeline opponents.
At the time of his October 2016 visit to Standing Rock, Sheriff Champagne was also the president of the National Sheriffs’ Association and made largely unsubstantiated claims about the Dakota Access protests against the pipeline. In a Facebook postChampagne wrote: “Despite the statements coming from the media and protesters that they were completely peaceful and prayerful, it has been a fact that more militant protestors [sic] (terrorists) have destroyed property and physically beaten employees of the company in recent weeks."
[lopinto vid]
February 2017 Sheriff Lopinto voiced support for the Bayou Bridge pipeline at a permit hearing in which he claimed that Dakota Access protesters shot at law enforcement officers. “We don’t want the same thing occurring in Louisiana,” he said.
Were North Dakota Trip Photos and Videos Destroyed?
The records Spees is seeking include receipts for all travel expenses, which reportedly add up to nearly $36,000, and video and photos taken by St. Charles Parish deputies during their trip to North Dakota.
Though the appeals court ruling makes clear photos and video taken in North Dakota by Captain Patrick Yoes, commander of the St. Charles Parish Special Services Division, should be released, Spees worries those may never surface because it is unclear whether the department retained the materials.
Captain Yoes testified that “the files from the devices were loaded on a hard drive, and he provided all of the files relating to the EMAC [Emergency Management Assistance Compact] to the [North Dakota Morton] county’s sheriff and the public information officer.” However, Yoes said the original camera memory cards which he returned to Louisiana with may not have been preserved and it is unclear if the data on to the hard drives left in North Dakota have been preserved.
Spees doesn't see anything controversial about the records request and considers its initial denial unfortunate, because it compelled the center to litigate on behalf of opponents of the Bayou Bridge pipeline.
Champagne could appeal the federal court’s decision with the Louisiana Supreme Court. I reached out to Champagne’s communications officer but did not receive a response.
*Update 12/29/18: This story has been updated to reflect that a state, not federal, appeals court reversed the decision and that CCR filed the public records request and lawsuit, which was not filed on behalf of environmental groups.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/heres-the-truth-behind-the-national-police-association-and-its-shady-ideology/
Last month the National Police Association (NPA) filed an ethics complaintagainst Rachael Rollins, the new district attorney for Suffolk County, Massachusetts (who recently outlined her progressive policies to Filter).
“National police group knocks incoming DA,” stated the headline of a December 28 Boston Herald report. It described how the NPA accused Rollins of a “reckless disregard” for Massachusetts laws because of her “platform of generally declining to prosecute shoplifting, drug dealing, trespassing, resisting arrest and making threats.” These policies, the NPA claims, will create a “clear and immediate danger.” The NPA’s chief financial officer and president were quoted expressing their desire to exert pressure on Rollins to “change her mind” to prevent “risk and danger to law-abiding citizens.”
“The National Police Association Is Throwing a Fit Over Prosecutorial Discretion,” commented Slate on January 4, citing as “just one example of the complaint’s ridiculousness” Rollins’ alleged violation—simply by stating her policies while standing as a DA candidate—of a rule against prosecutors making comments that might prejudice a particular case.
DA Rollins tweeted a response to the complaint:
My statement regarding the National Police Association's complaint:...
There is much to unpack in what appears to be a bogus complaint created to garner press and monetary donations. Its filing is not just odd, as noted by University of North Carolina Law Professor Carissa Hessick, but disingenuous, because it has no hope of success.
But beyond the complaint itself, media acceptance of the NPA as an actual law enforcement organization made up of police professionals deserves scrutiny.
I had never heard of the NPA in my 21 years working in law enforcement—nor in my last eight years as a speaker, board member and now chair of a law enforcement non-profit.* The NPA is not a traditional police labor union association like the Fraternal Order of Police, nor a professional organization, such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Yet its name implies that it represents police professionals across the United States.
Looking Behind the Name
I therefore wondered who was behind the NPA. I wasn’t the only police professional to feel suspicious, as shown by this tweet from a former Boston police lieutenant and author
[
twit:
Tom Nolan ??
@ThomasNolan
I've been in the criminal justice profession since the 1970s and have never heard of the "National Police Association." They purport to exist in Indiana of all places, (no home to progressive CJ practices). The DA-elect in Boston is an African American woman. Sham organization.
Radley Balko
?
@radleybalko
Last week, prosecutors in St. Louis joined the police union to show up the newly elected, reform-minded DA. Now, a police association has filed a bogus ethics complaint against the newly-elected, reform-minded DA in Boston. https://twitter.com/CBHessick/status/1078384343482056706 …
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2:40 PM - Dec 28, 2018
Twitter Ads info and privacy
See Tom Nolan ??'s other Tweets
]
looked into the NPA’s corporate filings through the IRS website and also checked out the NPA’s website and online presence. It turns out that the NPA is a small non-profit that is less than two years old. It was incorporated first in the State of Delaware in early 2017, and then registered as a foreign corporation in Indiana. Its address in Indianapolis is simply a US Postal Service PO box.
According to the NPA’s 2017 federal tax filing, there are only three board members: President Ed Hutchinson, Secretary Brad Shaw and Treasurer Arnold Musungu.
A search of social media platforms shows that an Ed Hutchinson was previously a civilian staffer of the National Sheriffs Association. He is the only board member who has any apparent connection with policing that shows up online. I could find no evidence that Shaw or Musungu are current, former or retired law enforcement professionals or civilian staffers. The NPA did not respond toFilter’srequest for information about the backgrounds of its board members or staffers.
While this doesn’t prove the lack of any law enforcement connection, it does seem strange. You would expect any kind of police or public safety organization to highlight the involvement of current or former officers on its website, and the vast majority do so.
In 2017, its first year of operations, the NPA incurred a net financial loss of over $114,000. No doubt the NPA receives donations or is self-funding this loss in some way, hoping to expand its base and win future financial support—likely through its involvement in high-profile complaints, like the one against Rollins.
In its short history the NPA has filed other complaints against political figures. The organization signed to or filed amicus briefs supporting Darren Wilson vs. the City of Ferguson and the Department of Justice complaint targeting California’s sanctuary state law. It also tried to lead a Change.org campaign against Nike and Colin Kaepernick.
The NPA’s Disturbing Ideology
The NPA’s website and social media accounts suggest that it is positioning itself as the latest iteration of the police identity movement. Its rhetoric mirrors some of the most radical police union leaders, with inflammatory language increasing divisions between law enforcement and communities of color.
Here is one sample among many:
NPA Launches National Effort to Show Appreciation to Local Law Enforcement
It’s been a tough couple years for local law enforcement. Groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter have inspired people to assassinate cops on the street. Soft on Crime groups are targeting record numbers of individual law enforcement officers in law suits for police brutality. And cops are facing increasing disrespect on the streets as criminals have become emboldened by the wave of anti-cop rhetoric in the news media and by many politicians.
On its donate page, the NPA boasts of its work to “preserve the American way of life” and “fight back against cop-haters.”
In fact, as I’ve previously written, supporting law enforcement and supporting reform movements such as Black Lives Matter are not mutually exclusive. Promoting divisive rhetoric is detrimental to the public safety mission that requires any genuine law enforcement organization to be accountable to its constituents.
Otherpolicies that the NPA promotes include aggressive stop-and-frisk tactics and “broken windows” policing—strategies that have resulted in unconstitutional practicesthat undermine civil liberties.
The NPA’s immigration proposal—”Authorizing local law enforcement officers to perform federal immigration law enforcement functions”—is based on fear-mongering and a clear recipe for abuse and division. This policy has been repudiatedby a significant number of law enforcement leaders, whose experience has led them to conclude that it would make their communities unsafe.
The NPA’s list of collaborators is also illuminating. It includes the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation of Sacramento, California, which provided representation and incidental expenses for the NPA’s amicus curiae in support of Darren Wilson against Ferguson. Theamicus curiae brief in support of the DOJ against California was filed by the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which reporters have notedis the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. FAIR is a public-interest law advocacy organization with an ugly history: Its founder, Dr. John Tanton, has been described as a nativist and a white nationalist by the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to the *Washington Post*, Tanton “built on eugenicist thinking with aims to limit the birthrate of people deemed undesirable. His innovation was to focus on stabilizing the American population by severely limiting immigration.”
Other signatories on the briefs included the National Sheriffs Association, Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime and Stop Sanctuary State—an organization funded by another non-profit, named Californians for Population Stabilization. CAPS links population control and environmental concerns, and sees limiting immigration as a way to preserve American resources for future generations. It has also previously been linked to the white nationalist movement.
Surveys as Propaganda
NPA has also produced two “public opinion surveys,” one on illegal immigration and another on crime.
In September 2018 the Eugene Weekly reported on the survey about illegal immigration and sanctuary states. It was sent out to 40 states, including Oregon, and according to the report depicted “illegal immigrants” as “career criminals.”
Comparable distortions are evident in the NPA survey about crime, which was publicized in a press release claiming “strong support for proactive policing that reduce the number of people committing crimes.” The NPA did not respond to Filter’s questions about the methodology of the survey, which claimed, for example, 90 percent public support for law enforcement action to “prevent crime by stopping suspicious people for questioning.”
The survey questions are leading, and skewed to produce support for the NPA’s views. To take one example, this question intentionally mischaracterizes the varied reasons for the decline in crime:
Before receiving the letter accompanying this Survey were you aware that police and law enforcement have been responsible for reducing crime in the US by over 50% in the past 20 years?
And the question below, on the use of police force, completely ignores work from many researchers, including recently by New Jersey Advanced Media, that has found glaring racial disparities in the use of force. If you are black in New Jersey you are three times more likely to face police force than if you are white.
Today many law enforcement officers are reluctant to wrestle a criminal suspect to the ground, use a nightstick, or use any type of force when apprehending a criminal because they fear getting sued or brought up on charges of “police brutality.”
Do you support the right of a law enforcement officer to use force to stop a crime in progress, to apprehend a criminal, or to defend themselves from criminal attack?
As a police professional, I believe that there are instances where force is justified. But a survey that deliberately misleads the public—about police force and attitudes, and the racial disparities in the application of force—creates even more division in our society.
But perhaps that’s the point of the survey and the NPA. I concur with the Eugene Weekly’s assessment that the NPA fundraising letter and survey are a push to sway voters. But the manipulative, fear-mongering language used—”During your lifetime you have a 52% chance of being violently attacked by a criminal at least once … Were you aware your chances of being violently attacked by a criminal were this high?”—seems to me even more like political posturing designed simply to generate publicity and donations. Ed Hutchinson admitted to the Eugene Weekly that the immigration survey was designed as a fundraiser, and no doubt it was the same with the crime survey.
A Threat to Be Taken Seriously
The NPA Facebook page claims that donating will “make law enforcement fairer, safer and more effective.” But there is no evidence the policy proposals supported by the NPA will result in this—quite the opposite.
Criminal justice professionals and reformers may scoff at the amateurism and extreme rhetoric. But the NPA’s recent portrayal, by legitimate news sources, as a legitimate organization shows that it has found a niche preying on people’s fears of crime and those different to themselves. From that base, it’s easy to imagine it growing.
The NPA clearly exists not to promote public safety, but as a political organization to push back against criminal justice reforms. As Fordham Law Professor John Pfaff noted in response to the NPA’s Rollins complaint, “this is a political move, not a legal one. The NPA is laying the groundwork for reaction.”
Reformers like Rollins are, as journalist Radley Balko wrote, “a threat to the punitive, retributive criminal justice model that has dominated the United States since the 1980s.”
The movement of which the NPA is part will not give up without a fight. Redefining and reforming the criminal justice system demands that we promote safer communities through investment in programming outside of law enforcement. But we can’t do this without addressing Americans’ fear of crime, which—independentfrom the reality of crime risks—is continually fanned by tough-on-crime ideologues.
To push back against this, reformers and media should not take organizations’ self-descriptions at face value. Far from being any kind of “national police association,” the NPA is just another arm of the self-benefiting criminal justice lobby that perpetuates fear through deliberate mischaracterizations of crime.
*LEAP is the fiscal sponsor of The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter.
icn 818
...
Protesters Under Surveillance
As activists were fighting the Diamond Pipeline in Oklahoma, Energy Transfer Partners was planning another oil pipeline at the southern end of its network.
The Bayou Bridge pipeline is slated to run from Texas to St. James Parish, Louisiana, already home to many petrochemical facilities. Along the way, it crosses through the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest river swamp and a center of the state's crawfish industry.
Environmentalists were alarmed by the risks the project posed to residents of St. James Parish and the swamp's fragile ecosystem. And they quickly felt as if law enforcement agencies were working against them. For one thing, some officials openly supported the project. Joseph Lopinto, now Jefferson Parish sheriff,
last year on behalf of the National Sheriffs' Association and urged regulators to approve the pipeline.
Anne Rolfes, an organizer of the pipeline resistance and founder of the advocacy group Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said activists also suspected they were being watched.
During the protests at Standing Rock, a private security company hired by Energy Transfer Partners had compiled daily intelligence briefings and coordinated with local law enforcement, as detailed in reports by The Intercept.
Rolfes' group this year also obtained a handful of documents through a public records request that indicate state officials were tracking their efforts.
One state police report from November said the agency sent an investigator from its criminal intelligence unit to a hearing where activists had allegedly planned a protest, and that alocal sheriff's office planned to send a plainclothes officer.Rolfes said no protest was planned; activists merely intended to speak at a public hearing.
In the following months, an intelligence officer with the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness sent two emails to colleagues describing environmental groups' priorities, quoting Rolfes' newsletter and an article about the groups and adding a photograph of her.
Louisiana State Police declined to comment. Mike Steele, a spokesman for the state Homeland Security Department, rejected the notion that his agency spies on activists. He said this type of open-source tracking was similar to what they conduct ahead of football games or festivals. "We do that with any type of event, because safety is the number one concern," he said.
Energy Transfer Partners spokeswoman Alexis Daniel issued a statement saying, "any claims that our company or our security contractors have inappropriately monitored protestors in false." It's unclear what surveillance, if any, the company or its contractors have deployed in Louisiana. Energy Transfer Partners has also been accused of spying by a family in Pennsylvania.
pix
Rolfes said Louisiana officials are treating activists like criminals. "We're going to be followed while we participate in the democratic process?" she said.
The arrests in August of the three protesters on boats who were detained by off-duty officers only deepened the activists' feelings that the state and energy industry were working against them. While the arresting officers were working as contractors, they wore their state uniforms and badges and carried weapons.
Spees, with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the incident represented a problematic melding of public and private authorities. After the industry-supported bill was enacted by the state, she said, state employees acted on behalf of an energy company to detain activists under the new law.
"It's as though they've become the hired hands for private oil companies and pipelines companies," she said.
Activists in Virginia, where two gas pipelines are drawing protests, have also been tracked by that state's Fusion Center—which shares information across agencies to combat terrorism and crime—according to a report by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
In Washington state, a local sheriff's office has monitored activists opposed to a major pipeline project that connects with Canada's tar sands, sharing information with that state's Fusion Center, documents obtained by The Intercept show. Protest groups there already tried to block tanker traffic associated with the project, and local authorities have conducted trainings to prepare for mass protests.
The nation's intelligence community has a dark history of tracking political movements, including the FBI's COINTELPRO, which snooped on Martin Luther King, Jr., and others. Earlier this decade, FBI agents monitored opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline, according to The Guardian,yyy and the bureau had at least one informant at Standing Rock.
Even if local law enforcement agencies today are doing little more than collecting news articles and other open source information, covert surveillance risks equating political protest with criminal activity, said Keith Mako Woodhouse, a historian at Northwestern University who wrote a book about radical environmentalists.
"It gives a sense that law enforcement is, if not on the side of, at least more sympathetic to the industries and practices that are being protested," he said. "Presumably they're not surveilling the energy companies."
Pipeline companies have cultivated that relationship. They have reimbursed state law enforcement millions of dollars for providing security for their projects in North Dakota, Iowa and Massachusetts, for example. Most major pipeline companies also run charitable campaigns that have contributed millions of dollars to local emergency responders and other agencies and groups along their routes. The National Sheriff's Association, in turn, supported the Bayou Bridge and Dakota Access pipelines while it called protesters"terrorists."
A Worrying Trend
Over the past decade, the sense of urgency around climate change has intensified. Scientists say there is little time before the planet is committed to potentially devastating warming. The only practical way to avoid that is to largely eliminate fossil fuel use over the next several decades.
The government's response has been minimal, "so the next step is civil disobedience," said Woodhouse, the historian. "And if anything, it's surprising that it hasn't happened sooner and at a greater scale."
Woodhouse said efforts to suppress environmental protest trace back to the rise of radical environmental groups in the 1980s and `90s, when public officials slapped names like "eco-terrorism" and "ecological terrorism" on activists who vandalized equipment or animal testing facilities.
Now, Woodhouse said, environmentalists are threatening one of the country's most powerful industries. Some advocates say the new push against activists seems more widespread and unabashed.
"I think there is a very worrying trend—and the trend is on both sides of the political aisle to be perfectly frank and candid—a trend of trying to suppress political speech that you don't agree with," said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition.
"I think a lot of people feel a lot more threatened than they have in a long time," he said, "and I think that's true on all sides of the political spectrum. And when people feel threatened, they tend to lash out."
==
ref
greg champagne
...This "northern" camp was erected just days before and the occupants had been warned repeatedly for several days that their presence there was unlawful and that eviction was imminent. These warnings went unheeded. Despite the statements coming from the media and protesters that they were completely peaceful and prayerful, it has been a fact that more militant protestors (terrorists)have destroyed property and physically beaten employees of the company in recent weeks. I personally witnessed and photographed what I estimate to be at least a half-million dollars in damage to bulldozers and excavators. I further learned that many protestors other than Native American groups have descended upon the area such as anarchists and eco-terrorists who are hell bent on committing violence and damage. The police presence in the area to protect farmers, ranchers and other private property interests has been costing the state of North Dakota millions of dollars.
The Sheriffs of several states have contributed manpower over the last several weeks to help preserve order and protect property
==
https://www.alternet.org/drugs/bad-lawmen-devils-half-dozen-drug-corrupted-county-sheriffs
ast week, the good citizens of Mississippi's Tallahatchie County got a rude shock. The county's top lawman, Sheriff William Brewer, was at the courthouse, which was not unusual. This time, though, he was dressed not in his sheriff's uniform but in an orange prisoner jumpsuit to face federal criminal drug trafficking charges.
According to a federal indictment, over a period of 15 years, Sheriff Brewer had conspired with a local ne'er-do-well to have that person repeatedly rob drug dealers, give stolen cash to Brewer, sell the drugs, then give Brewer part of the proceeds. In return, that man got a free ride for his own methamphetamine trafficking activities. Well, until he started coming up with his own meth supply. When Brewer found out about that, he started demanding a $500 or $600 payment every week for the dealer to carry out his work unimpeded. The dealer eventually became an FBI informant and took his former partner down.
Brewer has now resigned as sheriff, and he has not yet been convicted of anything, but his arrest on drug and extortion charges is yet another disturbing example of the corrosive impact on law enforcement of enforcing drug prohibition.
County sheriffs are unique figures in the American law enforcement landscape. Unlike police chiefs or the heads of federal law enforcement agencies, they are typically elected, not appointed. They are subject to little effective oversight except from voters at the polling booth. They control policing not only of all county territory not handled by municipal police forces, but also the county jail and the policing of the courthouse. They control their own law enforcement fiefdoms.
And they sometimes turn to the dark side. For the past dozen years, the Drug War Chronicle has covered drug prohibition-related law enforcement misbehavior in a recurring feature, "This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories." During that period, hundreds of police officers, DEA agents, FBI agents, Customs and Border Patrol agents, jail and prison guards, and sheriff's deputies have gone down for one or more of the myriad forms of dirty drug policing.
Law enforcement misbehavior has run the gamut from planting drugs on innocent people to ripping off drug dealers and selling their stashes to sexual coercion to lying on search warrants to lying in court to pocketing cash from drug busts to embezzling asset forfeiture funds, and even stealing drugs from those drug drop-off boxes.
It's bad enough when the people charged with enforcing the law flout it, but it's arguably more disheartening and corrosive when the corrupt cops are the very people charged with heading law enforcement offices, such as county sheriffs. There are more than 3,000 of them, holding office in every state except Alaska (no county governments), Connecticut (replaced by State Marshals), and Hawaii (deputies serve in a division of the Department of Public Safety). The vast majority of them are honest law enforcement professionals.
But some are notoriously not. Each year, one or two or three county sheriffs find themselves on the wrong side of the law because of drugs, whether it's stealing them, selling them, or gobbling them down themselves. And sometimes, when they break bad, they do so in a spectacular fashion.Here are a half-dozen of the most outrageous from the past decade alone:
- Oklahoma's Custer County Sheriff Mike Burgess. Burgess was hit in 2008 with a 35-count indictment charging him with coercing and bribing female inmates to participate in sex acts. He was hit with 14 counts of second-degree rape, seven counts of forcible oral sodomy, and five counts of bribery by a public official, among other charges. A federal lawsuit filed by 12 former inmates alleges that Burgess and his employees had them participate in wet T-shirt contests and gave cigarettes to inmates who would flash their breasts. Another prisoner alleged she was given trusty status after agreeing to perform a sex act on Burgess, but lost that status when she later refused. After a jury trial, now former Sheriff Burgess was convicted of 13 felonies, including five counts of second-degree rape and three counts of bribery by a public official. Testimony included that of several former female inmates who testified they feared they would be sent to prison if they did not provide sexual favors to the sheriff, as well as two female drug court participants. Burgess sexually assaulted one of them in his patrol car after arresting her for a drug court violation. In March 2009, he was sentenced to 79 years in prison.
- Texas's Montague County Sheriff Bill Keating. Another badge-wearing pervert, Keating, 62, went down for a November 2008 drug raid at a home where the victim and her boyfriend lived. The boyfriend was arrested on outstanding warrants and removed by sheriff's deputies, who then searched the house and found meth paraphernalia. Sheriff Keating shooed the remaining deputy out of the bedroom, closed the door, and told the victim, "You are about to be my new best friend." He then threatened to arrest her on drug charges unless she "assisted" him by performing oral sex on him on multiple occasions and becoming a snitch for him.Keating pleaded guilty in that case in January 2009 but was then indicted along with nine jail guards—seven women and two men—for official oppression over allegationsthat the county jail was like Animal House. That indictment features multiple allegations of guards and inmates doing drugs and having sex with each other under Keatings' watch. Keating was looking at up to 10 years in prison on the original charge when he died of a heart attack in July 2009. The federal charges against him were subsequently dismissed.
- Illinois's Gallatin County Sheriff Raymond Martin. Sheriff Martin found himself in hot water in 2009, when he was indicted on federal marijuana trafficking charges after being videotaped repeatedly providing pounds of marijuana to a local man, who would sell the weed and then give Martin the proceeds. That man became an informant for the DEA after Martin threatened him with death when he said he wanted out. It only got worse from there. While in jail awaiting trial, Martin, his wife, and their 20-year-old son were allarrested again, this time on solicitation of murder charges for plotting to knock off the guy who ratted them out. In September 2010, Martin was convicted of 15 counts in the drug trafficking and murder-for-hire scheme. He was sentenced to two life terms in federal prison in January 2011.
- South Carolina's Florence County Sheriff E.J. Melvin. The only black sheriff on this list, Melvin wasindicted on dozens of federal charges along with 11 others in 2011 for a massive and complex cocaine trafficking conspiracy. He was accused of dealing cocaine from his official vehicle, extorting money from drug dealers for protection or to get reduced charges. State police agents testified that they give Melvin a list of possible drug dealers, only to have him tip them off and arrange to get payments from them to keep the agents away. In addition to the massive cocaine conspiracy, involving multiple kilograms of the drug over a multi-year period, he was also accused of ripping off $5,000 in victim assistance funds for personal use. He ended up convicted on 37 of 43 counts and is now serving a 17-year federal prison sentence.
- Kentucky's Whitley County Sheriff Lawrence Hodge. Hodge was indicted on both state and federal charges in 2011 for stealing around $350,000 over a seven-year period, including $100,000 he claimed was used in drug investigations. That wasn't all: Hodge was also charged with ripping off drug dealers and then funneling them to a local attorney. He would get a $50,000 kickback, the department would get a $50,000 "donation," and the dealers would get more lenient treatment. Oh, and he admitted to being strung out on pain pills. Hodge is now doing15 years of federal time and 17 years of state time, and when he gets out, he has to pay back some $335,000.
- Oklahoma's Love County Sheriff Marion "Joe" Russell. Russell was arrested in 2016 on charges of corruption, neglect of duty, and housing a fugitive, but it gets hinkier than that. He was accused of turning a blind eye to meth dealing out of his own home by his adult son, covering up a missing person case where another family member is the main suspect. His son, Willie Russell, had already pleaded guilty to methdealing. The fugitive, a young woman, was dating Willie and staying at the sheriff's house even though she had four arrest warrants outstanding. Russell would remind her that she was in a "safe haven," and when she left anyway, he arrested her and the man she moved in with—for harboring a fugitive. He was also accused of arresting drunken women in bikinis and taking them to his house instead of to jail. There, they were allegedly sexually assaulted and given meth. The missing persons case involves a young couple who were last seen in a car owned by Russell's nephew. That couple, Molly Miller and Colt Haynes, are still missing, but Russell is now in the clear, having copped a plea deal that resulted in one year of probation and $370 in court costs.
==
dapl: pvt intel
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/01/joe-arpaio-pardon-sheriffs-movement-215566
when ...Trump pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio, calling him a “patriot,” he didn’t just absolve him from the consequences of defying a federal judge. He didn’t merely excuse Arpaio’s racial profiling and illegal immigration sweeps. Trump’s pardon did do all of that. But it also did something more: It boosted a radical theory of law and American history that Arpaio supports, and which is gaining steam across the United States.
It’s called the “constitutional sheriff” movement, and as it grows, it’s increasing the risk of conflict between local law enforcement and federal authorities. Its animating idea is that a sheriff holds ultimate law-enforcement authority in his county—outranking even the federal government within its borders. Though the movement claims deep history in English law, its real roots lie in the more recent fringes of American right-wing thought. And its popularity helps explain why Arpaio’s defiance of federal law shouldn’t be seen as just one grandstanding sheriff crossing a line, but instead should be seen as part of a broader grassroots resistance to constitutional and cultural upheavals during the 20th century.
The strange idea that unites all members of this movement is that a sheriff is the highest law enforcement officer within a county’s borders—superior not only to local police, but also to officers and agents of the federal government. The actual influence of sheriff supremacy is hard to measure, but it has been growing in recent years, and today the official constitutional sheriffs’ association boasts 4,500 dues paying members and over 200 sheriffs. Its highest-profile members include Arpaio and David Clarke, who just resigned as sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, reportedly to help Trump in some capacity.
But those figures may underestimate how far its influence extends, and how fully it pervades certain regions of the country. In 2013, Arpaio joined nearly 500 other sheriffs who vowed not to obey any federal law that required them to confiscate guns from private citizens. In Utah, 28 of 30 sheriffs went even further, warning that “[n]o federal official will be permitted to descend upon our constituents and take from them what the Bill of Rights—in particular Amendment II—has given them.”
The constitutional sheriff movement arose from the ashes of the far-right, anti-semitic Posse Comitatus movement of the 1970s and 80s, led by William Potter Gale. The insignia favored by these Christian Patriots was a redesigned sheriff’s badge containing a noose, Bible and sword, to reflect their belief that sheriffs were responsible for the armed defense of citizens and higher law (a combination of their view of the Constitution and Christian Identity teachings). Before the movement collapsed with Gale’s death, its paramilitary figures developed an anti-tax, anti-government agenda that stoked conspiracy theories that Jews were responsible for oppressing farmers through crushing taxes and exorbitant loans. Its foot soldiers gained notoriety when they tried to stop foreclosures in the Midwest and engaged in shootouts with U.S. marshals.
The modern constitutional sheriff movement has revived the idea of sheriff supremacy envisioned by the Christian Patriots, tried to shed its anti-Semitic and racist origins, and now seeks to “take back America county by county, state by state.” Today, its ideology has gained traction with the militia movement, so-called sovereign citizens, separatists wary of centralized government—and increasingly, landowners, county commissioners, veterans and law enforcement figures. Cliven Bundy, who has clashed for years with the Bureau of Land Management, is an adherent of sheriff supremacy. In 2014, he demanded that the local sheriff step in and protect him from federal agents: “Sheriff, this is what We the People are asking this morning. Disarm the Park Service at …parks where the federal government claims they have jurisdiction.” One of his sons, Ryan Bundy, later said on TV, “The county sheriff is the only person that We the People have allowed to have policing power.”
As these unorthodox ideas have spread, politicians and lawmen have played boldly to anti-government sentiment, especially fears of federal officials intruding on property rights and gun rights. In 2014, Lora Hubbel, a candidate to become governor of South Dakota, told an audience: “The sheriff is the highest law officer in the county….Your county sheriff can tell the federal government ‘No, you can’t cross into my county.’ Your local sheriff is your best protection against the federal government.”
A number of candidates for sheriff or county commissioner around the country have campaigned explicitly on county-first theories of legal power. In New Hampshire, a businessman named Frank Szabo vowed to serve Hillsborough County as a constitutional sheriff who would defend citizens from “rogue federal and state agencies.” He even said he would be open to using deadly force to stop an abortion. And during the tense standoff in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge between Ammon Bundy’s armed men and federal agents, Glenn Palmer, a constitutional sheriff in Grant County, Oregon, praised the occupiers as “patriots.” Some, like Szabo and Hubbel, have lost elections when constituents recoil from the practical consequences of sheriff supremacy; others, like Arpaio, have been rewarded for their militancy.
Michael Barkun, an expert on political extremism, has termed this philosophy “radical localism,” because it valorizes and exploits subnational sources of power. In theory, that kind of localism could be a vehicle for many kinds of politics, but in practice constitutional sheriffs and their followers tend to occupy the edges of anti-government conservatism, organizing themselves to promote gun rights and property rights, to resist tax laws, national healthcare, gay marriage—and in Arpaio’s case, to implement a muscular view of border security. The enforcement policies of constitutional sheriffs aren’t neutral, but instead reflect a traditionalist and often apocalyptic worldview.
Do they have a point, at least in principle? The Constitutional Sheriffs claim to be supported by long tradition, but in fact sheriff supremacy is based on a faulty reading of history. Where states’ rights has some support in the text and history of the Constitution (notably in the 10th Amendment, but limited by the Reconstruction Amendments), the idea of sheriff supremacy does not: It has been made up by stitching together random references to sheriffs and militias in our political and legal texts. It relies on a highly selective reading of history, pretending that the high sheriff of the English shire was transplanted to colonial America, and then somehow emerged in the present day untouched by legal developments over the past 200 years.
In fact, in colonial America, most sheriffs were appointed by the Crown or landowners rather than elected by the people. The turn toward direct election of sheriffs came later, as part of the reforms of Jacksonian democracy. The militant orientation of the modern movement also comes from elevating the right to bear arms above all other rights, while treating the Second Amendment as if it codified the militia as a constitutional entity on par with Congress, the president, or the Supreme Court. It didn’t do that—not even close. And the sheriff supremacists never mention the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed equality and due process as part of the rights of national citizenship, and imposed new limits on states (and, by extension, local authorities).
Despite the “constitutional” label, sheriff supremacy makes mincemeat out of the framers’ constitutional design. The most basic principle of the original American Constitution is that of federal supremacy: When an irreconcilable conflict emerges between federal law and a subordinate source of law, federal law prevails. The office of sheriff itself is a creature of state constitutions and state law rather than some unchanging “common law” that supersedes federal law. Under long-standing constitutional principles, the federal government’s power to implement national policy reaches wherever is necessary to make that policy effective, as long as it doesn’t contravene a specific power that has been reserved for the states.
Nowhere did the framers explicitly authorize local government officials and lawmen to act as final authorities on the Constitution’s meaning. That would have run counter to every impulse they had in creating a stronger, more effective national government, and a coherent and consistent rule of law. The very thought of hundreds or thousands of armed individuals (there are over 3,000 sheriffs nationwide) each claiming the last word on the Constitution would have sent shudders through the men who met in Philadelphia.
The ideology of sheriff supremacy has attracted supporters largely by trading on popular suspicion of the federal government and disgust with land management policies. And, not surprisingly, the belief system has ended up encouraging clashes between sheriffs and the laws of their own state. In March 2013, Nick Finch, the sheriff of Liberty County, Florida, refused to enforce a state law that banned carrying a concealed weapon without a license. The sheriff’s reason for releasing the man from jail and allegedly altering the arrest records: “I know what law rules the day, and it’s the U.S. Constitution.” When word got out, Governor Rick Scott suspended Finch and the state charged him with official misconduct. Finch was eventually reinstated after a jury refused to convict. During trial, Finch’s lawyer had invited the jury to engage in nullification: “There ain’t many of y’all, but you have your own common code or beliefs ... It’s a way of life over here for people to own guns ... There’s a distinct possibility that, every now and then, one of y’all is going to make a mistake and he doesn’t want to create a convicted felon out of an incident that could be misunderstood.”
The costs of friction caused by sheriff supremacy can be high, and they always end up falling squarely on a sheriff’s constituents. Though a sheriff might sweep into office by promising to protect local taxpayers, overly aggressive tactics can backfire by leading to expensive lawsuits. One estimate put Maricopa County taxpayers on the hook for over $70 million dollars to defend Arpaio’s policies.
The face of the constitutional sheriff movement today is Richard Mack, who like Arpaio was once a sheriff in Arizona. Mack is the author of the pamphlet, Constitutional Sheriff: America’s Last Hope, which Arpaio has urged every citizen, police officer and sheriff to read (the entire back cover, in fact, is taken up with a plug by Arpaio.) In his pamphlet, Mack urges lawmen to save America from “a growing Marxist creed ... political whining for universal health care, gun control, forced equality through governmental redistribution of wealth, and the removal of religious beliefs and expressions from our public institutions.” The county sheriff, according to Mack, “is our nation’s last line of defense” against these changes. But “the greatest threat we face, as a nation,” he says, “is our own Federal Government.”
In 2011, Mack, with the help of Arpaio and others, founded the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. “We’re not mainstream,” Mack has confessed. CSPOA believes that “America needs to make a strong turn around to get back on the freedom track laid for us by our Founders” and that the county sheriff “is the last hope of making this happen.” The organization advocates “protection, service, and interposition” by sheriffs to protect citizen’s rights, and trains sheriffs and deputies how to engage in alternative tactics to resist the federal government.
If that word “interposition” sounds familiar, it’s because the concept was made famous in the 1950s when state officials tried to prevent racial integration by interposing themselves between white citizens and federal troops sent to enforce orders by federal judges. It’s also closely related to the older idea of nullifying laws believed to be unconstitutional—again, popularized by slave states such as South Carolina that opposed any regulation of that practice. Ironically, the militant abolitionist John Brown—hated during his day by law enforcement—was sometimes described by supporters as interposing himself and his men between the bodies of defenseless slaves and their owners, slave catchers, and the Slave Power that had corrupted the federal government.
For today’s constitutional sheriffs, interposition means demanding that federal agents obtain permission from a sheriff before conducting business in a county, and perhaps barring their way if consent is not given. It means stepping in between the government and county residents “to keep those at bay who would confiscate bank accounts, guns, land, property, and children.” It might also mean ignoring what “the County Attorney advises the sheriff to do” because they believe a sheriff “has no obligation to go along with those who subvert the Constitution.”
***
While in office,Arpaio behaved like what you would expect of someone who subscribed to sheriff supremacy. He consistently referred to himself as a “constitutional sheriff.” His office regularly issued news releases asking for more armed volunteers for his Maricopa County posse, which is understood to be a representation of the people and the measure of a sheriff’s potency to resist tyranny. The bigger a sheriff’s militia, the more faith residents have that external threats can be resisted. In fact, Arpaio bragged that his office operated 52 separate posse groups with nearly 400 armed volunteers. He used posses to patrol shopping malls and even called for armed citizens to “take action” against mass shooters and terrorists. In 2012, CSPOA gave Arpaio a lifetime achievement award.
Whenever Arpaio wanted to strike a defiant tone, as he did once federal judges and the Department of Justice had had enough, he always returned to the provocative idea of sheriff supremacy. After a federal judge ruled that Arpaio lacked authority under state law or federal law to detain undocumented migrants, he simply flouted judicial orders and ignored his attorney’s advice because he disagreed with the judge’s interpretation of the Constitution. “I will continue to enforce illegal immigration laws,” he brazenly announced. Arpaio declared that he would “never give in to control by the federal government” and would not “back down.” He even came up with a secret backup plan to turn over captured migrants to Border Patrol instead of ICE to evade a judge’s orders to cease and desist immigration enforcement.
Trump’s pardon of Arpaio didn’t just let the sheriff off the hook; it short-circuited the part of the American judicial process designed to hold government accountable, and resolve conflicts between levels of government. It began when a class-action lawsuit was filed in 2007 by individuals who claimed they had been racially profiled during Arpaio’s immigration raids and traffic stops. In 2012, the DOJ intervened in the case to vindicate federal interests in ending discriminatory policing, to stop Arpaio from retaliating against his critics in violation of the First Amendment, and to ensure that non-English detainees didn’t forfeit their rights without understanding them. Arpaio lost the first case and settled with DOJ, but was held in civil contempt of court for continuing to capture migrants without legal authority and for failing to turn over records of these encounters.
Acting on a referral from the federal judge overseeing the case, the DOJ eventually sought to hold Arpaio accountable for criminal contempt after Arpaio’s recalcitrance continued. A second judge tried the case and convicted Arpaio, finding that he had “willfully violated the [earlier] order by failing to do anything to ensure his subordinates' compliance and by directing them to continue to detain persons for whom no criminal charges could be filed.” Trump pardoned Arpaio just days before he was to be sentenced.
During the legal proceedings, Arpaio made the puzzling assertion that he had never violated his oath of office, despite having ignored direct orders from a federal judge. As far as he was concerned, the oath of office gave him the right, indeed even the responsibility, to ignore the federal court. He was merely doing the rightful job of a sheriff, enforcing the laws and Constitution as he saw them, unaccountable to anyone but himself. Now that Arpaio has been pardoned, his place in the pantheon of constitutional sheriffs is secure. And his view of American law and history—one shared by kindred spirits, and one that menaces not just federal law but the Constitution itself—just got a troubling endorsement from the president of the United States.
--
Robert L. Tsai is Professor of Law at American University and author of America’s Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions of Power and Community (Harvard 2014)--
==
rebut dapl bs champagne
http://bridgethegulfproject.org/blog/2016/letter-st-charles-parish-sheriff-greg-champagne-response-comments-about-standing-rock
February 17, 2017: Remains of Missing Worker Recovered After Phillip 66 Pipeline Explosion
The Times-Picayune reported on February 17, 2017 that the remains of pipeline worker Josh Helms, who had been missing since the February 9 explosion at a Philips 66 pipeline in Paradis, have been recovered, according to Louisiana State Police Troop B spokeswoman Melissa Matey. Six workers, including Helms, were cleaning the pipeline when the fire erupted around 7 p.m. February 9. Two were taken to the hospital with injuries, including a contract worker who was later flown to a burn unit in Baton Rouge, according to St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne said. The other worker was released from the hospital. "The Phillips 66 family is saddened by the loss of our colleague, Josh Helms," the company wrote on its Facebook page. "We extend our deepest sympathies to his family and friends."[243]
...
February 10, 2017: Sixty Homes Evacuated, Two Workers Taken to Hospital, One Worker Missing in Phillips 66 Pipeline Fire in Paradis Louisiana
Sixty Homes Evacuated, Two Workers Taken to Hospital, One Worker Missing in Phillips 66 Pipeline Fire in Paradis Louisiana. Sixty homes in Paradis, Louisiana were evacuated, two workers were taken to a local hospital, and another is unaccounted for after an explosion and fire at a Phillips 66 pipeline station. Two of the workers were hospitalized — one taken to a burn center— and three had minor or no injuries, the sheriff said. The remaining worker was unaccounted for, and a helicopter was being brought in to help search for him. Workers are now attempting to shut a high pressure line, a spokesman for the parish said. Photo: Matthew Hinton/The Advocate via AP) (Associated Press)
Officials evacuated 60 homes within a couple of miles of the Phillips 66 pipeline in Paradis . Officials evacuated 60 homes within a couple of miles of the pipeline as officials let the fire burn off. That could take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, the sheriff said. The evacuation perimeter, which remained in effect as of 8 a.m. Friday, is Louisiana Highway 635 to 306 Bayou Gauche Road. Graphic: Carlie Kollath Wells, NOLA.com The Times-Picayune
Reuters reported on February 10, 2017 that sixty homes in Paradis, Louisiana were evacuated, two workers were taken to a local hospital, and another is unaccounted for after an explosion and fire at a Phillips 66 pipeline station. Two of the workers were hospitalized — one taken to a burn center— and three had minor or no injuries, the sheriff said. The remaining worker was unaccounted for, and a helicopter was being brought in to help search for him. Workers are now attempting to shut a high pressure line, a spokesman for the parish said. "It's a very high pressure, high intensity fire," Champagne said. "When you get close to it, it is really singeing." The source of the product in the pipeline has been shut off, but the fire could burn for hours or at least a day, Champagne said. "It is a loud and scary fire, but it is burning off." "Phillips 66 is in the process of accounting for all employees and contractors who were working at the site at the time," the spokesman said.[260]
Champagne said the source of the 20-inch pipeline had been shut off but the fire would have to burn off the rest of the liquid inside, which could take hours or even days. “They tell us the best thing that can happen right now is for the product to burn off,” he said. The pipeline was carrying a highly volatile byproduct of natural gas, which was burning cleanly and very hotly over a 30- to 40-foot area, the sheriff said. “It’s just a big blow torch,” he said.[261]
Officials evacuated 60 homes within a couple of miles of the pipeline as officials let the fire burn off. That could take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, the sheriff said. The evacuation perimeter, which remained in effect as of 8 a.m. Friday, is Louisiana Highway 635 to 306 Bayou Gauche Road. Those evacuated from the east side of Highway 635 were allowed to return home late Thursday. The west side of Highway 635 remains under an evacuation order. The Edward A. Dufresne Community Center at 274 Judge Edward Parkway in Luling is being used as a shelter for evacuees. Paradis is about 30 minutes west of New Orleans.[262]
==
Sheriff runs 'secret police' force
Law enforcement officers as well as ordinary citizens hold special deputy commissions, but county's top cop won't say who
May 13, 2001
CROWN POINT -- There is a secret police force of hundreds of Lake County men and women who have the power to arrest, detain and carry a firearm without a permit. Yet they have little or no police training and are answerable to only one man -- Lake County Sheriff John Buncich.
Buncich has conferred special deputy powers -- as he is permitted to do by state law -- on 217 politicians, family friends, union officials, clergy and lawyers. He said he has done it as a courtesy, a time-honored privilege.
He has issued another 1,052 of the so-called commissions to county and municipal law enforcement officers, extending their police powers beyond the borders of their particular community.
He has refused requests by The Times to disclose the names of any of the 1,269 special deputies.
"It would embarrass them," he said.
This is in stark contrast to Porter County Sheriff David Reynolds, who has issued only 270 deputy sheriff commissions and only 20 of them to those who are not law enforcement officials. Reynolds' department has released the names of its commission holders who aren't
law enforcement
officers.
Buncich admits the special deputy system was open to abuse by some of his predecessors who he said traded deputy sheriff commissions "like candy" in return for political contributions and clout. Some of the previous holders abused the commissions to harass members of the public or get out
of
traffic tickets or other minor scrapes with the law.
Buncich said he hated the abuses when he was a county police officer. He could have abolished the system when he took office as sheriff more than six years ago.
But he said rather than do away with the system, he chose instead to reform it.
His immediate predecessor, Stephen R. Stiglich, said there was nothing that needed reforming, and he himself had overhauled an out-of-control, unaccountable special deputy program he inherited from Sheriff Rudy Bartolomei -- who now is in the federal witness protection program after pleading guilty in 1985 to weapons violations and turning government witness in a corruption investigation.
Stiglich said he made all of Bartolomei's special deputies turn in their credentials and reapply if they wanted new ones. He said under his administration, no more than 300 special deputies were appointed "and the number was probably closer to 250."
Buncich said his recollection is that Stiglich issued closer to 3,000 deputy sheriff credentials, a huge difference from Stiglich's estimate. But because neither man believes there is an obligation to make the names public, it is impossible to know for certain who is right.
Many full-time police officers who have gone through the 480 hours of training at the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy are openly scornful of the nonpolice special deputies, who often have no police training at all.
"We call 'em Deputy Dawgs," said one retired police officer who now works in private security. "They're handed out for political reasons, and everyone knows it."
Porter County requires additional training for all deputy commissions.
Whose responsibility?...
http://www.nwitimes.com/uncategorized/sheriff-runs-secret-police-force/article_d7d8b501-dc37-54e4-ad45-aedf86c416c0.html
==
Sheriff Harold Eavenson
Rockwall County , TX
President
Sheriff John Layton
Marion County , IN
1st Vice President
Sheriff Rich Stanek
Hennepin County , MN
2nd Vice President
Sheriff Darren Hall
Davidson County , TN
3rd Vice President
Sheriff Carolyn Welsh
Chester County , PA
Secretary
Sheriff David Mahoney
Dane County , WI
Treasurer [madison Wi]?
Sheriff Vern Stanforth
Fayette County , OH
Sergeant-at-Arms
Sheriff Greg Champagne
St. Charles Parish , LA
Immediate Past President
Sheriff Danny Glick
Laramie County , WY
Immediate Past President
==
mojo
Some of the police details that have arrived in Standing Rock are among the largest recipients of military transfers from the federal government, according to an In These Timesinvestigation. The South Dakota Highway Patrol has received $2 million worth of military equipment since 2006. The Lake County Sheriff’s Office in Northwest Indiana FBI riad bribery [http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/fbi-raids-lake-county-sheriff-s-offices-searches-may-have/article_677e5038-f0f5-5da3-85da-0222e1f28c3a.html
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-standing-rock-local-reax-st-1201-20161130-story.html
convicted fraud ]
:{
}:
obtained $1.5 million worth of military equipment over the same time period. The Pennington County Sheriff’s office in South Dakota, the Anoka County Sheriff’s office in Minnesota, and the Griffith Indiana Police Department have all received assault rifles through military equipment transfer programs as well.
==
mtg w. djt, brings up opioids and he rolls to immigrants?! actully minnesota refugees (somali)
trump seems to think asset forfeit is grabbing illegal drugs;
larine wyo epa oil.coal danny glick
SHERIFF GLICK: Mr. President, thank you. It's such an honor to be here. I'm Danny Glick, sheriff of Laramie County, Wyoming. You know, there are so many issues that you'll hear going around this table. One of the ones that probably isn't -- that people don't realize is EPA decisions that have affected our coal industry, our oil industry in the West. But beyond that, it increases the number of people that are jobless and thus increases our crime statistics. And it's starting to overwhelm us. We're very small out there for the most part, and we don't have the numbers of deputies, officers and law enforcement that can sometimes keep up with this. I appreciate what you've done and what you're planning in the future. I think it was very well publicized, and I just appreciate being here today.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Sheriff. And I will tell you that the EPA -- you're right. I call it -- it's clogged the bloodstream of our country. People can't do anything. People are looking to get approvals for factories for 15 years, and then after the 15th year they get voted down after having spent a fortune. So that's going to end. We have one of our really great people -- as you know, Scott is looking to be approved by the Senate. We're still waiting for that one, too. It's a disgrace what's going on. But as soon as he gets involved, we're going to unclog the system.
And, by the way, people are going to get rejected, but they're going to get rejected quickly. But for the most part, they're going to be accepted when they want to do. We're going to bring the jobs back. And your state was very, very good to me, as you know. I mean, they were very, very good to me and I appreciate that. And just tell the people we're going to get the system unclogged and we're going to get it up.
As you know, I approved two pipelines that were stuck in limbo forever. I don't even think it was controversial. You know, I approved them -- I haven't even heard -- I haven't had one call from anybody saying, oh, that was a terrible thing you did. I haven't had one call. You know, usually, if I do something it's like bedlam, right? I haven't had one call from anybody. And a lot of jobs -- in the Keystone case, we have potentially 32,000 jobs almost immediately. And then, as you know, I did the Dakota pipeline and nobody called up to complain. Because it was unfair. Years of getting approvals, nobody showed up to fight it. This company spends a tremendous -- hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, and then all of a sudden, people show up to fight it. It's not fair to our companies. And I think everyone is going to be happy in the end, okay?
So I appreciate it very much, Sheriff. It's a great honor to have you here. Thank you. And say hello to your people....
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/07/remarks-president-trump-roundtable-county-sheriffs
asked for help w/ mental health, rolled to i'm pop w/ cops and mil;
Pursuant to the Indiana Access to Public Records Act, I hereby request the following records:
Emails to and from the National Sheriff's Association, which uses the email domain @sheriffs.org. To attempt to help you locate the records, below are a selection of email addresses that may have been used for communication, although this should not be taken to be a complete list, I would still ask a search be done for the domain. This request's date range is 1/1/16 to the date this request is processed.
Emails:
dariat@sheriffs.org
jessica@sheriffs.org
patrickroyal@sheriffs.orgpatrickroyal@sheriffs.org>
jwmson@sheriffs.org
twoods@sheriffs.org
fwilson@sheriffs.org
rossmir@sheriffs.org
bnielsen@sheriffs.org
elyons@sheriffs.org
dconner@sheriffs.org
hburgess@sheriffs.org
jthompson@sheriffs.org:jthompson@sheriffs.org>
mfaulkner@sheriffs.org
hburgess@sheriffs.org
dhicks@sheriffs.org
==
lobby to 180 BO cuts to mil gear for cops
bs pr prez
https://www.sheriffs.org/blog/Presidents-Podium-Dakota-Access-Pipeline
PRESIDENT'S PODIUM: DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE
Author:
Sheriff Greg Champagne, NSA President
Post Date:
November 1, 2016
I was extremely privileged in the last several days to have the opportunity to travel to North Dakota as President of the National Sheriffs' Association to see firsthand the protest and the response thereto to the Dakota Access Pipeline Project near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation about 25 miles south of Bismarck.
I learned first that the pipeline project, which has been in the works for several years, will traverse four states including North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois carrying crude oil. First, I was surprised to learn that a natural gas pipeline is already underground on the same right of way. The DAP has received all federal approvals over several years, and litigation which attempted to stop it in the federal courts has been resolved. Despite this project being very "federal" in nature and clearly in interstate commerce, the Obama administration has refused to provide any law enforcement or other support to North Dakota state and local law enforcement that has placed them in the position of having to enforce the rule of law. As usual, law enforcement is put between a rock and a hard place due to various political agendas.
Based upon sensational news reports, I had the wrong impression that this pipeline was to run directly through the Standing Rock Reservation and would disturb ancient burial grounds of the Sioux Tribes. The argument has evolved now that this pipeline will jeopardize the water supply of the Missouri River (despite the fact that the pipeline will pass under other rivers including the Mississippi throughout its entire route). Also, the Cannonball River which runs throughout the Standing Rock Reservation is actually “upstream” from the pipeline crossing. This false narrative has understandably generated a great deal of sympathy and support from many quarters for the Standing Rock Sioux People. I quickly learned and saw for myself that this was untrue. The pipeline passes about two miles north of the reservation and that years of archeological study uncovered no significant native historical sites. It is difficult to believe that a single modern pipeline would be more environmentally risky than transporting crude oil by rail or truck through the same territory.
The Dakota Access Pipeline is 95% complete and the construction work near Standing Rock is the last phase which will tie the pipeline together. It is a 3.7 Billion Dollar Project.
From left to right: Sheriff Paul Laney (Cass County), Sheriff Greg Champagne (St. Charles Parish County), and Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier (Morton County)This past Thursday, October 27th, steps were taken the morning before I arrived which evicted protestors from private property directly in the path of the pipeline. This "northern" camp was erected just days before and the occupants had been warned repeatedly for several days that their presence there was unlawful and that eviction was imminent. These warnings went unheeded. Despite the statements coming from the media and protesters that they were completely peaceful and prayerful, it has been a fact that more militant protestors (terrorists) have destroyed property and physically beaten employees of the company in recent weeks. I personally witnessed and photographed what I estimate to be at least a half-million dollars in damage to bulldozers and excavators. I further learned that many protestors other than Native American groups have descended upon the area such as anarchists and eco-terrorists who are hell bent on committing violence and damage. The police presence in the area to protect farmers, ranchers and other private property interests has been costing the state of North Dakota millions of dollars.
The Sheriffs of several states have contributed manpower over the last several weeks to help preserve order and protect property. On October 27th, law enforcement evicted the trespassers from the north camp on private property about three miles north of the Cannonball River. While pleading with the trespassers for a peaceful move, law enforcement officers were met with Molotov cocktails and various missiles such as rocks and logs being thrown at them causing numerous injuries to the officers. The only discharge of a firearm occurred when a protestor fired at the line of officers. Miraculously, none were hit by the bullets. When the protestors were moved south of the bridge, two trucks used to blockade the roadway were set on fire by the protestors. This action now has very possibly jeopardized the integrity of that bridge. News accounts ironically then decried the use of defensive equipment such as “riot gear” and armored vehicles by law enforcement.
Many media sites reported only that "heavy handed" police tactics were used upon the protestors who were only praying and "peacefully" protesting. These same outlets failed to mention the shooting, Molotov cocktails, and extensive property and equipment damage produced by some of the protestors. The protestors even cut fences and attempted to induce a domesticated buffalo herd to stampede through the area. The owners of the herd, whom I spoke with personally indicated that at least a dozen of their buffalo were killed by protestors.
The next morning, I was present as law enforcement leaders including
Sheriff Paul Laney met with leaders of the tribe. The tribal representatives lamented the violent and destructive behavior of "outsiders" who had come in only to commit violence. They indicated that they would encourage these violent agitators to leave the camp and protest.
While the entire situation seemed to be de-escalating upon my departure on Sunday October 30th, it remains to be seen if the violence and illegal acts are truly over. I must commend the professionalism and patience of law enforcement officers under the leadership of sheriffs such as Cass County Sheriff and National Sheriffs' Association Board member Paul Laney, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, and Burleigh County Sheriff Paul Heinert. The North Dakota State Police as well as several area Police Departments also played essential roles. The operation evicting trespassers, some of whom became violent was carried out with professionalism and restraint despite liberal press stories to the contrary. I must also commend the numerous sheriffs’ offices throughout the multi-state area including NSA Executive Committee Member Rich Stanek of Hennepin County, Minnesota who sent personnel to assist with protecting lives and property.
I certainly feel empathy for the Native American peoples of America and especially the Sioux due to the treatment they received at the hands of the U.S. Government in the latter part of the 19th Century. These Native American Cultures are and should be a proud people for whom we should all have concern. However, the law and facts simply do not weigh in their favor in this case from everything I've seen. This project went through an extensive approval process over many years and court challenges in Federal Court have failed to be successful. We are a nation of laws. Emotion and empathy cannot carry the day. It just seems that opposition to this pipeline is not reasonably based upon legitimate environmental concerns. Energy independence has been one of the major goals of this country for decades. In my home state of Louisiana, we are surrounded by gas and oil pipelines and safely so. In another ironic twist, it is widely known that the Standing Rock Tribal Chairman owns a convenience store and gasoline station on the reservation.
It's time for everyone to move on in reference to The Dakota Access Pipeline and stop putting further strain on the citizens and law enforcement officers of North Dakota and surrounding states.
Greg Champagne, President
National Sheriffs’ Association
==
https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/102/1/152/686802/Objects-of-Police-History
Objects of Police History
Micol Seigel
Journal of American History, Volume 102, Issue 1, 1 June 2015, Pages 152–161,
https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav280
Published: 01 June 2015
...
The LEAA's most noticeable effect involved hardware, consequential for police forces that had worked primarily via pistols and patrol cars for decades. The agency facilitated transfers of technologies used by OPS or the military abroad, encouraging aerospace and electronics industries then energetically developing weapons for war to sell at home. New and experimental technologies funded by the LEAA flooded U.S. police departments in the late 1960s and 1970s: aircraft, complex communications systems, computer-assisted mapping and planning tools, sniper talent, and special forces such as SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams. Technology transfers were relatively easy to do, and the LEAA leaned into them so abundantly that critics complained of an overemphasis. More recent observers such as Radley Balko lament that these military tools, in particular SWAT teams, have made U.S. police vastly more lethal.19
In addition to providing materiel, the LEAA funded the U.S. police to intensify their activities in one of the central aspects ofcounterinsurgency strategy:intelligence gathering. Through a special statutory mandate to privilege detection and prevention of civil disorder, the LEAA “quickened” a police intelligence surge, Frank Donner details, producing a “movement for intelligence solutions to unrest” which rendered “an extraordinary proliferation of new police [intelligence] units and an equally extraordinary expansion of established ones.” No wonder the historian of militarization M. S. Sherry calls the period between 1966 and 1974—the last eight years of OPSoperations and the first six years of the LEAA—the “War Mentality in Triumph.”20
The LEAA also fed private policing and hybrid public-private ventures. Its grants buoyed all parts of the industry, including private and semiprivate think tanks, for-profit research-and-development and tech firms, and private universities. LEAA bequests funded a series of hortatory reports by the RAND Corporation exalting private policing, and follow-up studies by Hallcrest Systems “to advance the reform agenda RAND had initiated.” The LEAA developed regulatory statutes for private policing, acknowledging its nested location within circles of state authority. In the early 1980s the LEAA National Institute of Justice (NIJ) helped set up a Joint Council of Law Enforcement and Private Security Associations, an umbrella organization uniting the International Association of Chiefs of Police, theNational Sheriffs Association,and the American Society for Industrial Security, which had begun meeting jointly to facilitate their collaboration.21
==
meese speech 1981
==
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/650223663/Kennard-to-head-national-office.html
==
OMG
https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/07/20/emails-bush-iraq-war-pr-delve-off-the-record-strategies-dakota-access-pipeline
By Steve Horn and Curtis Waltman, MuckRock
Behind the scenes, as law enforcement officials tried to stem protests against the Dakota Access pipeline, alumni from the George W. Bush White House were leading a crisis communications effort to discredit pipeline protesters.
Emails show that the firms Delve and Off the Record Strategies, apparently working on contract with the National Sheriffs’ Association, worked in secret on talking points, media outreach, and communications training for law enforcement dealing with Dakota Access opponents mobilized at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in Cannon Ball, North Dakota. This revelation comes from documents obtained via an open records request from the Laramie County Sheriff's Department in Wyoming.
As previously reported by DeSmog, the GOP-connected firm DCI Group led the forward-facing public relations efforts for Dakota Access via a front group called Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now (MAIN). Today MAIN has morphed into a national effort known as Grow America’s Infrastructure Now (GAIN).
Delve is an opposition research firm run by Jeff Berkowitz, former Republican National Committee research director and official in the George W. Bush White House. His company led research efforts on behalf of the National Sheriffs' Association.
Off the Record Strategies, meanwhile, guided the sheriffs’ behind-the-scenes communications strategy. Mark Pfeifle runs the secretive firm, Off the Record Strategies, and served as communications advisor in the George W. Bush administration, leading PR efforts for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The National Sheriffs’ Association, a trade group for sheriffs, has been lobbying the federal government for additional surplus military gear from the Department of Defense under the auspices of its 1033 program. The association was also the central organizing vehicle which brought hundreds of out-of-state cops to Standing Rock via the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC).
Law enforcement present at Standing Rock underEMAC came under fire for a heavy-handed and overtly military-like response to pipeline protesters.
'Guns, Knives, Etc.'
According to an October 4, 2016 email sent by Chelsea Rider, content strategist for the sheriffs’ association, Pfeifle drafted the talking points used by law enforcement in an attempt to discredit the anti-Dakota Access movement. Representatives of that movement referred to themselves as “water protectors” because they opposed the pipeline crossing Lake Oahe and the Missouri River, a source of drinking water for the Standing Rock Sioux and others downriver.
The document attached to that email, according to its metadata, indicates it was indeed written by Pfeifle, and then given to the acting public information officer, Donnell Hushka of the North Dakota Association of Counties, who handled information related to the protests at Standing Rock.
The talking points purported that the movement was led by “out-of-state agitators” with gang and drug-dealing ties, had connections to “anarchists” and “Palestinian activists,” used violence, and possessed “guns, knives, etc.” In addition, the messaging included calls to “follow the money” in pursuit of potential funding support from liberal elites such as George Soros and Tom Steyer.
Credit: Laramie County Sheriffs' Department
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On October 5, Pfeifle sent a follow-up email to Hushka and other sheriffs’ association staff, including its executive director Jonathan Thompson, in response to an email sent by Thompson. Thompson’s email recommended changes for a press conference script drafted by Hushka.
“Importantly, we need to make sure we are pushing the primary message before the actual press conference begins, we want questions asked about who is [sic] protesters,” wrote Thompson in his email. “Must focus on the why this happening. This not for altruistic reasons, but nothing less than a desire to ‘occupy, threaten and intimidate,’ not peaceful protest. There those that want nothing more than using thug-like tactics, rumors and outright lights to distort what is really happening.”
Pfeifle agreed in his email, and suggested following the press conference with outreach to friendly media outlets to amplify the message.
Credit: Laramie County Sheriffs' Department
One of those outlets was the Say Anything Blog, run by Rob Port, who the next day, October 6, ran a blog post featuring many of the themes found in the talking points: “Over 85 Percent of Arrested #NoDAPL Protesters Are From Outside of North Dakota.”
In his email, Pfeifle had suggested reaching out to Port, who also hosts a radio show on WDAY AM-970 and regularly wrote blog posts in support of Dakota Access during the Standing Rock stand-off. When Port's piece went online, Pfeifle wrote an email that same day to the Delve team, sheriffs' association staff, Hushka, and others asking an association staffer to share the piece on social media.
Credit: Laramie County Sheriffs' Department
Though since removed from his blog, the Web Archive shows that Port formerly served as a policy fellow for the North Dakota Policy Council, a defunct think-tank that was part of the conservative and corporate-funded State Policy Network (SPN). SPN, as reported in 2013 by DeSmog, was actually created as a message-force-multiplier by and for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), another conservative and corporate-backed group which produces model legislation that is disseminated to predominantly Republican state legislators nationwide.
Scott Hennen, another conservative radio show host Pfeifle suggested the sheriffs' association target for outreach, actually copied and pasted the association's memo into a Facebook post, which was then shared by the association. In prefacing the talking points, Hennen also posted a photo of a Palestinian flag which was on the protest site depicted.
“For those who still believe the #NoDAPL protests are all peaceful and prayerful…read this,” read Hennen's Facebook post. “It will help you awaken to smell the coffee. And note the Palestine flag in the photo.”
On October 7, Hennen also invited Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier on his show to disseminate a similar set of talking points as those conveyed in Hennen's Facebook post.
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Iraq War 'Damage Control'
Pfeifle, who heads Off the Record Strategies, specializes in “damage control,” according to a 2005 Baltimore Sun story profiling the Bush White House communications strategy to fend off domestic critics of the Iraq War.
“Pfeifle's specialty is damage control. And at the moment, there is more than enough damage surrounding Bush,” The Sun wrote of the campaign Pfeifle co-ran with the host of MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” Nicolle Wallace, who then was a top communications advisor to President Bush. “With public alarm about the war mounting and public trust of Bush plummeting, the White House has gone on the defensive [sic OFFENSE] with a public relations push designed to discredit his opponents. The operation has all the trappings of a political campaign — including rapid-response statements targeted at opponents, using carefully compiled research.”
Pfeifle isn’t the only person with ties to the Iraq War who did public relations for Dakota Access. James “Spider” Marks led intelligence-gathering for the 2003 “shock and awe” campaign for Operation Iraqi Liberation. Today, he serves as a consultant to Energy Transfer Partners and sits on the advisory board of TigerSwan, the company’s private security firm and a funder of the National Sheriffs’ Association.
With a tagline of “Private Council/Public Results,” Off the Record Strategies does all of its business behind the scenes and rarely issues public comments.
“If we told you exactly what we do, we’d have to go on the record,” reads its website. “We’re strategic counselors with decades of high-level experience and a no-holds-barred approach to meeting — and exceeding — our client’s needs through personal and confidential service.”
Off the Record Strategies 'Here to Help'
In a May 7 webinar convened by the sheriffs’ association, Sheriff Laney and Pfeifle pointed to the October 2016 press conference as an instance of going on the offensive and turning the tables on the “North Dakota nice” attitude. Their webinar was titled “Protest on the Prairie: Law Enforcement Response and Lessons Learned.”
Laney appears to be a prominent figure within the National Sheriffs’ Association. He sits on its Board of Directors, formerly served on its Special Operations Committee, and won association awards in 2017 and2012. Within his more than hour-long webinar speech last May, Laney also gave a 17-point “DAPL Lessons Learned” presentation.
On top of his other affiliations, Sheriff Laney is a member of the Board of Directors for the North Dakota Association of Counties, which received the talking points from Off the Record Strategies and the sheriffs’ association in the October 4 email.
[vid]
In October 10 last year, Morton County, North Dakota — center of the pipeline protests — sent out a request under EMAC for 40 additional law enforcement officers to come to Standing Rock. Laney, and not Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, is listed as the point of contact on that request. An October 13 article in the Billings Gazette, taking note of how little time Laney had been spending at home in Cass County, refers to Laney as the Dakota Access “operations chief” in Morton County.
The National Sheriffs’ Association and Off the Record Strategies also show notable ties among personnel.
Patrick Royal, a media strategist who was director of media affairs for the Republican National Committee in the 2008 election, is actually listed as an employee by both the sheriffs’ association and Off the Record Strategies. Further, Jonathan Thompson, executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association, formerly worked in the Bush White House with Pfeifle. They both went on to work together at a public relations firm named S4 Inc. P. Edward Leffler — listed on his LinkedIn page as the director of presidential transition project for the sheriffs’ association — also lists himself as a communication and media relations specialist for Off the Record Strategies.
Royal, Thompson, and Pfeifle also worked together on a crisis communications reaction to the popular Netflix documentary series, Making a Murderer. According to an email obtained by USA Today, Manitowoc County Sheriff Rob Hermann consulted with the three of them on best practice response ideas to the hit 10-part series. Neither Royal, Thompson, nor Pfeifle responded to multiple requests for comment.
In an interview with Royal in May about the sheriffs’ association’s coordination of the Standing Rock law enforcement response, Royal responded, “I wouldn’t quite characterize it that way [and] I would say that what we tried to do was work with the local sheriffs to coordinate for them, to get people who would make themselves available.”
According to the sheriffs' association website, Royal was invited to speak alongside Pfeifle at the association's recent annual meeting held in Reno, Nevada, where they were slated to give two three-hour seminars titled, “Communicating in a:{ Crisis:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:.” Eventually, the agenda changed and it appears the two did not end up speaking at the meeting, replaced instead by Sheriff Kirchmeier, Sheriff Laney, and a representative from TigerSwan in a seminar bearing the same title as the May one given by Laney and Pfeifle.
In his May 7 webinar presentation, Pfeifle told those listening to consider his firm a “resource” to be tapped if necessary during prospective future pipeline battles.
[img]
“Consider us a resource of the National Sheriff’s Association. This is not the end of our activities to help and support law enforcement in areas where the pipelines could be under protest attack in the next days, months and years. But it’s a continuing activity that we will be available to support you in ways necessary and learn what we learned in North Dakota for areas that might be seeing protesters coming in doing much the same thing across the country,” said Pfeifle. “So, use us as a resource. We’re here to help.”
Pfeifle, in fact, has remained a resource for other pipeline fights, including the long-contested Keystone XL. According to Laney’s May 7 webinar presentation, he, Pfeifle, and Thompson all traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, on April 14 to meet with the state’s Attorney General, Doug Peterson. Keystone XL, if constructed, would pass through the Cornhusker State.
Research “Delve”
In the October 4 talking points email, several Delve employees were also included in the email chain, though it is unclear how or if they responded. The email only arose through the records request because it was forwarded to Laramie County Sheriff Danny Glick, who did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Delve principals in the email included Matt Moon, Jeff Berkowitz, Foster Morss, Lloyd Miller, and Dan Mintz. Moon is the former deputy research director for the Republican National Committee (RNC), where he worked with Berkowitz. Morss led the research and policy team for 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and formerly served as deputy research director for the RNC under Berkowitz. Berkowitz and Morss also worked together on Rudy Giuliani’s run for president during the 2008 election cycle.
Miller worked as a research consultant for the GOP Super-PAC American Crossroads, founded by former President George W. Bush's chief of staff Karl Rove,while Mintz has since transitioned into a new job and works as the speechwriter for U.S.Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ). The Daily Beast reported that Berkowitz also ghostwrote some of the campaign policy positions for Donald Trump’s 2016 run for the White House, doing so through another firm he runs named JBC Research LLC.
“Delve provides breakthrough insights for winning causes through competitive intelligence, opposition research, media and subject monitoring, policy analysis, and issue management,” Delve says on its website. “Our clients include fortune-listed corporations, major industry associations, Republican political campaigns, independent expenditure groups, and advocacy and educational groups.”
For Delve’s work on Dakota Access — which is owned by Energy Transfer Partners founder and CEO Kelcy Warren, a major Republican Party donor — the firm maintained a special email address, “pipeline@delvedc.com.” Representatives from Delve did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Delve’s “delve” into helping the National Sheriffs’ Association at Standing Rock appears to have paid off, though, at least according to Sheriff Laney’s May webinar presentation.
“It wasn’t until we had Mark and his people, Matt and Dan [of Delve] and Chelsea [of the National Sheriffs’ Association], [who] all came [and] spent probably way more time than they thought they ever would in their lives in North Dakota, but they spent months with us,” said Laney.
“And they were a godsend for us because we were finally about to fight them. You know, their professional media service we know was coming out of Seattle and it was highly funded. And to combat that with our own experts and I don’t have the time to go into all of that, but I can tell you without them, we would’ve been in serious trouble.”
Dakota Access, pending an ongoing federal court review of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ environmental review process for the pipeline’s Missouri River crossing and potential spill impacts on the Standing Rock Tribe, is now open for business. Obtained from hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) from the Bakken Shale basin, the oil contained within Dakota Access is now moving at a rate of half of North Dakota's entire production supply chain to market.
TAGS:
american legislative exchange council
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emergency management assistance compact
National Sheriffs' Association
==
unicornriot:
...Many of the reports also show DAPL security and/or law enforcement closely monitoring peaceful, legal events, such as fundraiser concerts and permitted first amendment rallies, as opportunities to conduct surveillance and gather personal information on activists. TigerSwan repeatedly sought out anti-DAPL events and gatherings in Illinois, where the pipeline ends, despite no direct actions against the pipeline ever having occurred there.
One TigerSwan report-back from a #NoDAPL protest at an Army Corps of Engineers office in Chicago signs off with the assurance that “manifestation of the anti-DAPL sentiment will continue to be monitored closely.” The same report also demonstrates TigerSwan’s heavy use of Open Source Intelligence (or ‘OSINT’) gathered via social media, at one point referring to analysts “data mining” the personal information of Chicago-area people who signed up to attend a pro-Standing Rock event on Facebook.
In addition to gathering information on individual “persons of interest,” part of TigerSwan’s stated mission is to protect DAPL’s reputation. Many of the leaked documents show concern with both the public’s perception of the pipeline as well as efforts by water protectors and journalists to uncover information about DAPL security contractors. Online content monitored and forwarded by TigerSwan included the hashtag #NoDAPL on Twitter, a DeSmogBlog investigation into TigerSwan’s past work for BP, as well as the Facebook page Bakken Pipeline Resistance.
TigerSwan is also closely involved with the National Sheriffs Association, a little-known nonprofit organization that played a large role in coordinating security operations to protect the Dakota Access Pipeline from Indigenous resistance.
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North Dakota law enforcement faced a staffing shortage almost as soon as the #NoDAPL movement kicked off, and was only able to successfully midwife the pipeline to completion with the assistance of hundreds of out-of-state law enforcement officers. This process of importing police from other states was legally done under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC), but on the informal, personal, day-to-day level, much of the coordination and messaging for the multi-state DAPL police operation was carried out by the National Sheriffs Association.
The National Sheriffs Association (NSA), a private group made up of publicly elected sheriffs, sent a letter in October 2016 to the Department of Justice demonizing #NoDAPL water protectors as violent drug users and asking for increased federal support to the Morton County Sheriff.
Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek, based in Minneapolis, is currently the “3rd Vice President” of the National Sheriffs’ Association. The sheriffs deputies he controls were critical components of the large police attack on the Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp on October 27, 2016 [VIDEO] with the approval of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. Unicorn Riot documented that the deputies had removed their otherwise standard nameplates during the attack. On October 28th a rally at Minneapolis City Hall compelled NSA vice president Stanek to withdraw his forces.
A slide from a TigerSwan ‘Shared Daily Intelligence Update’ for October 16, 2016 cites PR work done on DAPL’s behalf by the Sheriff’s Association.
A leaked recording of a December 2016 Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) board meeting features ETP COO Matthew Ramsey boasting of their company’s collaboration with the National Sheriffs Association to work against the #NoDAPL movement.
TigerSwan is listed on the National Sheriffs Association website as a corporate sponsor.
(Unicorn Riot has repeatedly tried to contact representatives of the National Sheriffs Association since October 2016, and as of this writing we have not received any response.)
The cozy relationship between TigerSwan and the National Sheriffs Association fits into a well-documented pattern of oil and gas interests working hand in hand with law enforcement to conduct counterinsurgency campaigns against indigenous peoples and environmentalists who oppose fossil fuel projects.
A TigerSwan report entitled ‘DAPL SITREP 034’, dated October 16, 2016 applauds the recent increase in bail amounts for those arrested at DAPL construction in Lee County, Iowa, speculating that a financial deterrent “may impede protestors from risking arrest due to the high cost to be released from bail.” (We reported on the increase in penalties for #NoDAPL related charges in Lee County, Iowa at that time last October.)
TigerSwan also laments that law enforcement in other Iowa counties “are not supportive of DAPL Security’s mission” and complains of the local sheriff’s “reluctance to arrest or cite trespassing individuals.” They then outline a plan to shift Iowa county sheriffs into taking a harsher, more repressive approach to #NoDAPL protests:
“We need to work closer with Calhoun, Boone, and Webster county [law enforcement] to ensure future protestors will at least be fined, if not arrested…Alternatively, we could request Lee County LE speak to other counties about tactics that are working.”
...
==
Kyle Thompson, of Bismarck, was disarmed by activists then turned over to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Thompson was later handed over to Morton County, and then released, called a victim. No charges were filed at that time, but Thompson was later arrested in an unrelated case on drug and weapons charges in April 2017 by Bismarck Police.
“Now we have the evidence. This proof also tells us more about the militarization of the police and the violence they imposed on water protectors. By comparing indigenous peoples to civilians and jihadist fighters, police and security were essentially given permission to carry out war-like tactics on water protectors.”
The activists who disarmed Thompson of an AR-15 as he was headed toward the main camp, Oceti Sakowin, face felony charges.
Thompson worked for Thompson-Gray LLC, listed under Silverton Consulting International by the Ohio Secretary of State, according to paperwork discovered inside his truck. The company was not authorized to work in North Dakota, and was owned by Charles Graham Clifton, a man who has at least three civil lawsuits filed against him.
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TigerSwan has ingratiated itself with the National Sheriffs’ Association by becoming a silver partner, according to the National Sheriffs’ Association website. The National Sheriffs’ Association was involved heavily during the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy and wrote a letter the US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, demonizing unarmed activists and the federal government’s lack of response in what it called a deluge of arson, vandals, rioting, and intimidation.
https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/04/27/dakota-access-sheriffs-lobbying-military-gear
By Steve Horn and Curtis Waltman
At the end of 2016, as a mix of sheriffs, police, and private security forces were clashing with those protesting the Dakota Access pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, the National Sheriffs' Association was lobbying Congress for surplus military gear and on undisclosed issues related to the now-operating oil pipeline.This information comes from federal lobbying disclosure forms reviewed by DeSmog.
The National Sheriffs' Association, a trade association representing sheriffs' departments nationwide,hired the firm Ervin Hill Strategy to lobby on its behalf during quarter four of 2016 and quarter one of 2017. Lobbyist and former congressional staffer John Blount was assigned to the cause. Blount did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The multi-state policing response at Standing Rock came under sharp criticism due to its highly militarized nature against the Native American-led opposition. Spurred by the North Dakota governor's emergency declaration, law enforcement officials nationwide began pouring into North Dakota under the auspices of the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC).
Credit: U.S. House Office of the Clerk
The lobbying disclosure comes as sheriff departments in rural America now look to the Dakota Access response as a policing crisis model, with some already bracing for similar demonstrations against the recently approved Keystone XL and Diamond pipelines.
“Professional Protesters”
Under what is known as the Defense Department's 1033 program, state- and local-level law enforcement agencies have the ability to purchase unused military gear from the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Logistics Agency. On its lobbying disclosure form, the Sheriffs' Association cited 1033, which goes bythe motto “from warfighter to crimefighter.”
Throughout the duration of the Standing Rock encampment in North Dakota, the Sheriffs' Association served as a vocal critic of those participating, writing in an October 2016 letter to then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch that those protesting were “illegally preventing the completion of a project under the guise of environmental and cultural concerns — an obvious ruse.”
“They are threateningranchers and farms andtrespassing onto private property to intimidate and scare local citizens,” wrote the association in its letter. “It is nothing less than lawless behavior perpetrated by professional protesters with no vested interest in the Pipeline nor any ties to the communities they claim will be affected.”
TigerSwan Funding
Founded in 1940and headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, theSheriffs' Association has a $3.46 million budget, according to its most recently filed tax forms.
Some of the organization's funding comes from corporate sources, according to its website, which includes the private security company TigerSwan. As DeSmog reported in October 2016, TigerSwan maintains offices in both Iraq and Afghanistan and is run by a special forces Army veteran. TigerSwan was put “in charge of Dakota Access intelligence and supervises the overall security,” according to an investigation conducted by Morton County in North Dakota.
James Reese, TigerSwan's founder and CEO, formerly served as an adviser to the multinational private security firm Blackwater. Dubbed “the world's most powerful mercenary army” by investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater was founded by Trump campaign donor and transition team member Erik Prince, the brother of U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos.
Post-Ferguson Lobbying
Beyond its lobbying efforts, the Sheriffs' Association has also made a public call for President Donald Trump toreverse the ban on sending military gearto local police agencies. President Barack Obama enacted this moratorium in the aftermath of the chaos and violence that followed the police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.
“Sheriffs will work closely with President-Elect Donald J. Trump to repeal Obama’s Executive Order,” the organization stated in December. “We are hopeful the new administration is more supportive of law enforcement’s important work to protect people in harm’s way, instead of the previous administration’s repeated moves to cripple and prevent us from defending and helping citizens in need.”
President Trump spoke to and
from the Sheriffs' Association in February. At the White House meeting, the association showed its appreciation to Trump for helping push its agenda by gifting him a “new sheriff in town” sculpture, which was reportedly its first time ever giving one to someone outside law enforcement.
img]
“Let me tell you the difference of six months,” Sheriffs' Association executive director Jonathan Thompson said at the meeting, according to a White House transcript. “I sat in this room, in this chair, and I was pleading — I was begging for help. Today, you’ve invited us here to your home. You're offering help. You're delivering on that offer. And on behalf of our members across the country, thank you.”
As an organization, the Sheriffs' Association had remained dormant on federal-level lobbying activity until the aftermath of Ferguson, according to forms reviewed by DeSmog. Blount, the Ervin Hill Strategy lobbyistfor the Sheriffs' Association, also currently serves other military contractor clients including General Dynamics, NorthrupGrumman, and Aerojet Rocketdyne.
Dakota Access Owner Coordinates with Sheriffs
As protests heated up at Standing Rock in October, the Morton County Sheriffs' Department requested support from the Sheriffs' Association, which coincided with out-of-state cops flooding the state in assistance.
In December, DeSmog reported on an audio recording first obtained and published by New York Daily News writer Shaun King, in which Energy Transfer Partners executive Matthew Ramsey said that the Sheriffs' Association worked in close coordination with his company, the pipeline's majority owner, against those opposing it at Standing Rock.
“We met with some of the officials in North Dakota [during a recent trip to the state],” said Ramsey in the recording. “We met with the National Sheriff's Association. People are tired of this. They're tired of seeing what's going on in the community and we think that the tide has turned and people are understanding what a great project this would be for the State of North Dakota.”
Indeed, the Sheriffs’ Association did send training staff and office personnel to Standing Rock. The group tasked Dane County, Wisconsin Sheriff Dave Mahoneywith training North Dakota agencies, which had little experience policing protests.
“When the situation in North Dakota began over the pipeline, I had been asked by the National Sheriff’s Association and by the Department of Justice to travel to North Dakota to speak to the sheriffs who didn’t have much experience with large gatherings,” Mahoney said in an interview.
While adamant his police force handled the response in Standing Rock in the same peaceful way as in 2011, when the Dane County Sheriff's Office handled over 100,000 people protesting Wisconsin's Republican Governor Scott Walker's Budget Repair Bill,the results in North Dakota tell a different story.
Greg Champagne, president of the National Sheriffs' Association and sheriff of St. Charles Parish in Louisiana, was also intimately involved in Standing Rock. In late October, Champagne traveled there for a publicity appearance, which was funded by the EMAC agreement. He was toured around the police lines and the construction sites, afterwards posting on Facebook a lengthy rebuttal to protesters and the media, which received 46,000 shares.
The St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office also sent two cameramen to video the cleanup after the eviction of demonstrators at one of the Standing Rock encampments. An open records request for that footage is still pending.
For its part, the Sheriffs’ Association told DeSmog, “What we were trying to do was help the local sheriffs, as a national organization, to coordinate the actions through the EMAC to get them people that would make themselves available.”
The association added that although the intent of its coordination was not to train law enforcement officials present at Standing Rock, that “per things like this, there is always training going on and coordinated tactics between North Dakota, Wyoming, Wisconsin or whoever else was there. We are also helpful with guidance and coordinating the knowledge as well by having people there like Dave [Mahoney, the Dane County Sheriff] who have better knowledge of large protest gatherings.”
Sheriffs Tackle Bayou Bridge
In the aftermath of Standing Rock, the Sheriffs' Association has remained active on pipelines owned by Energy Transfer Partners, including its proposed Bayou Bridge pipeline through Louisiana.
As DeSmog previously reported, Joseph Lopinto— an attorney with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana and former Republican state legislator — criticized the federal government's Standing Rock response while speaking on behalf of the National Sheriffs’ Association at a February public meeting related to the Bayou Bridge pipeline.
vid]
“The federal government failed to provide local law enforcement [in Standing Rock, North Dakota] with support to control hostile, often violent protesters that caused millions of dollars in property damage and shot at law enforcement officers,” he said at the convening. “The federal government failed to provide local law enforcement with the resources they need to deal with violent and unruly protests.”
Policing Protest
The intervention of the Sheriffs’ Association in social justice movements, such as the one at Standing Rock, is not unprecedented.
During the civil rights era, the Sheriffs' Association policed protests in Alameda County, California, which houses the City of Berkeley and the University of California. The association's California state representative, Alameda County Sheriff Frank Madigan, described these policing efforts during a 1970 congressional hearing about the Black Panther Party.
“Prior to World War II, I worked in the field as an investigator of subversives and now I am seeing the children back in the scene, what we call the Red-diaper babies getting into the act,” remarked Madigan. “Since Berkeley has become a Mecca we are getting dissidents from all over the country.”
“Red diaper baby” was a term applied to the child of socialists or communists (either self-described or as described by law enforcement officials), and was generally meant as a pejorative and to discredit. The Black Panther Party and campus-based antiwar movement, which were the subject of the 1970 hearing, were at the time the target of extensive surveillance and attempted disruption under the FBI's COINTELPRO (short for Counterintelligence Program). COINTELPRO eventually was scrutinized in a U.S. Senate probe known as the Church Committee investigation (named after then-U.S. Sen. Frank Church), and nominally came to an end.
Alex Vitale, a professor of criminology at Brooklyn College and author of the forthcoming book The End of Policing, told DeSmog that Standing Rock and the role of the Sheriffs' Association serves as a case study of broader policing trends seen during social movements.
“The 1033 program [lobbied for by the Sheriffs’ Association] should be understood in two ways,” said Vitale.
“First it is a cynical form of corporate welfare to the defense industry. It has opened up vast new federally subsidized markets by normalizing the idea that local police departments, no matter how small, need vast arsenals of military gear to defend themselves from the exaggerated threats of hidden terrorist cells and rampaging drug gangs. Second, it is part of an ideological worldview that the threats we face as a society are best dealt with by ever more police power.”
==
http://fox6now.com/2016/10/12/theyre-tired-stressed-deputies-from-dane-co-headed-to-north-dakota-amid-pipeline-protest/
dane sheriff says qualified b/c of walker recall:
...Because of past protests in Dane County, such as the demonstrations at the Capitol over Act 10 and the shooting death of Tony Robinson by Madison Police Officer Matt Kenny -- the Dane County Sheriff's Office was a good candidate.
"We were able to successfully prevent mass arrests, damage to property, injury to people, most importantly -- and allowed people to successfully gather to air grievances and to exercise their freedom of speech," Sheriff Mahoney said.
...
==
hmmn, maybe so?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2013/8/29/1234774/-Wisconsin-Guv-Walker-s-Newest-Bizarre-Scheme-to-Stop-Singers
According to one local source who prefers to go unnamed, the beleaguered Capitol Police chief recently contacted the Dane County Sheriff for advice on what to do. The Sheriff, who trains his staff in non-confrontational community policing techniques and has been moderately critical of the Walker administration, is said to have advised the chief to prepare for multiple federal lawsuits for violating people’s civil rights.
http://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2017/05/did-dane-county-wi-cops-return-to-work-too-soon-after-policing-dapl/
http://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2017/02/wisconsin-state-patrol-return-to-dapl-admits-mass-arrests-testing-new-strategy/
==
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Project Lifesaver International
877.580.LIFE
The Emblem Authority
800.378.0417
TigerSwan
919.439.7110
US Fleet Tracking
405.726.9900
==
2015 an rept
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) inmate calling rules.
In November, the FCC released its Order and Third Further Notice
of Proposed Rulemaking on docket 12-375, which established new,
lower calling rates for jails and prisons that go into effect six months
and 90 days, respectively, following the Order’s publication in the
Federal Register. The Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
asks for comment on inmate calling service issues involving video
visitation, international calling rates, and records requirements for
providers. With the cooperation of sheriffs and state associations,
NSA has filed comments and ex parte communications on the impact
of changes to call rates for correctional facilities with a special
focus on jails. NSA is examining questions on the definitions of jails
and prisons established in the Order, specifically on the contradictions
and inconsistencies of those definitions. NSA is weighing the
options of pursuing a Motion for Reconsideration, filing an appeal,
or other alternatives.
• Military Surplus Equipment. In May, the Law Enforcement Equipment
Working Group issued its recommendations to Executive Order
13688, which included a new list of prohibited and controlled equipment
for all federal grant and equipment programs, such as the Department
of Justice Byrne JAG, Department of Defense (DOD) 1033
program, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Federal
Emergency Management Agency grant. The Obama administration
implemented the guidance in October 2015 for immediate impact on
the FY2016 grant cycle. The DOD recalls of prohibited equipment
are already in progress. The training requirements will be enforced
throughout federal grants and programs. NSA worked with several
sheriffs to alert the media regarding recalls and, as a result, renewed
the interest of several key members of Congress. NSA is working with
partners on Capitol Hill to find legislative solutions while keeping
pressure on the administration.
• Asset Forfeiture. In January, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced
new restrictions on federal adoptions for civil asset forfeiture
cases. Congress remained concerned how civil asset forfeiture was being
used—in the words of forfeiture opponents, promoting “policing for
profit.” Throughout 2015, NSA worked actively with the DOJ...
• Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. In October, the Federal
Bureau of Prisons (BOP) announced it would be releasing more than
6,000 inmates early due to the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Amendment
782, with roughly one-third of those expected to be transferred
to Immigration & Custom’s Enforcement (ICE) due to foreign-born
status. Informal information requests regarding those inmates were
unanswered. NSA has therefore submitted formal FOIA requests with
both agencies. Similarly, the DOD has been unwilling to provide comprehensive
data on the recall of certain military surplus equipment.
NSA also submitted a formal FOIA request for that information. All
current FOIA requests are pending further action.
• Immigration and border security issues. NSA undertook a multipronged
approach to the immigration and border security issues
by collaborating with multiple state associations and sheriffs on a
Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) media day called “Time for
a PEP Talk.” Additionally, NSA participated in multiple meetings
with high-ranking DHS officials on current policies and coordinated
with several congressional offices on legislative solutions to
PEP challenges, including a liability protection for state and local
law enforcement. NSA Executive Director and CEO Jonathan F.
Thompson was invited to testify before the U.S. Senate Committee
on the Judiciary on a hearing regarding the Obama administration’s
criminal alien removal policies.
...
Jonathan F. Thompson Speaks Up
NSA Executive Director and CEO Jonathan F. Thompson made
many media appearances throughout 2015 on television, radio, in
print and online discussing issues like technology and the law, immigration
and border security, jailing concerns, managing a challenging
climate for law enforcement, and many other issues concerning the
membership. Here is a brief compilation of the many ways Thompson
was an advocate for the Office of Sheriff:
•Fox News Channel, immigration and border control concerns
• The Schilling Show, town hall on immigration enforcement gaps
• The Andy Caldwell Show, NSA’s Priority Enforcement Program
•The Daily Caller, Thompson and NSA President Sheriff Danny L.
Glick discuss the call for a federal warrant on immigration
The new rules on restricting access to military equipment for law
enforcement was a high-profile issue for NSA. Thompson penned
an op-ed that ran in many publications nationwide and garnered a
combined circulation of more than 1.71 million readers. As a result of
the article, members of law enforcement and their supporters created a
change.org petition to encourage the Obama administration to rethink
its stance and thus far have gathered more than 3,000 signatures. The
original piece is available via The Washington Post.
==
gearing up to run for gov, but son in trouble (ask privacy)
Stanek began his career in the Minneapolis Police Department in 1986 as a patrol officer.[2][3] He rose in the ranks, serving as Second Precinct commander,[3] and eventually commander of criminal investigations.[2]
House of Representatives:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:
While serving as a police officer, Stanek served five terms in the Minnesota State Legislature.[2] He was first elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in a 1995 special election to replace Warren Limmer, who had left the House for the Minnesota Senate. Stanek was elected, and represented Maple Grove, Minnesota until 2003. He served as chair of the Crime Prevention committee from 1999–2001, and the chair of the Judiciary Finance committee from 2001-2003.[1]
While in the legislature, Stanek wrote the Minnesota's felony DWI statute.[2] Stanek also introduced many bills related to law enforcement, including legislation "requiring a driver's license revocation for anyone convicted of fleeing a police officer; allowing for a verdict of "guilty but mentally ill" in state courts; creating a mandatory life sentence for a second violent felony conviction; ... [and] specifying that an officer's 'use of less lethal munitions does not constitute deadly force.'"[3] Stanek also sought funding for CODEFOR, a computerized crime-tracking system.[3]
Commissioner of Public Safety:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:
In 2003, Stanek was appointed by Tim Pawlenty to serve as Commissioner of Public Safety and Director of Homeland Security. He resigned his seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives, and took office, serving until April 2004, when his involvement in an 1989 incident involving an alleged assault and racial slurs by Stanek came to light.
Hennepin County Sheriff:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:
Stanek was elected Sheriff in 2006, replacing former Sheriff Pat McGowan. Sworn in on January 1, 2007, Stanek was re-elected in 2010 and again in 2014.[2] In all three elections, Stanek was supported by some members of the African American community, who cited Stanek's willingness to admit to past mistakes, and his work with African American officers in the Minneapolis police department.[3]
Stanek is on the executive committee of the National Sheriffs Association, serving as vice president.[4][5]
Controversies:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:
Assault, Racial Slurs:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:
In 1989, Stanek allegedly shouted racial epithets and assaulted an African American driver at the scene of a traffic accident in which he was involved. The case was ultimately settled out of court.[3]
False Communications
In 2007 Mayor R.T. Rybak and Minneapolis police chief Tim Dolan criticized Stanek for providing false information in the 26-minute video on the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge and for taking credit for actions that weren't his responsibility.[6] The $30,000 film was funded with forfeited money earmarked for training. "His theft of the credit is not going to sit well with my staff and our hard working partners," Minneapolis police chief Tim Dolan said in an e-mail. The St. Cloud company that produced the video was the same company that handled advertising and marketing for Stanek's campaign in 2006.[7]
Retaliation
Budget
Melissa Hill, who ran a campaign against Stanek under the slogan "Kitten for Sheriff"[8] was awarded $15,000 in a federal civil rights settlement against Hennepin County.[9][10] Hennepin County paid $15,000 to Melissa Hill for allegedly trespassing at Occupy Minneapolis. Hill's attorney Jordan Kushner said that "She was arrested and put in jail for no reason but for retaliation by the sheriff for being a political activist" and that Hill saw Stanek watching her from his SUV before she was arrested. He argued that both her original trespass order and arrest were unconstitutional. Hill was a legal observer for the National Lawyers Guild at that time of the arrest. "I feel I was vindicated," said Hill. "I was arrested on a public sidewalk. This sends a strong message that they can't be misusing their trespass policy to suppress free speech."[9]
In 2010 after his re-election Stanek was involved in a conflict with the County Board of Commissioners over his budget. The conflict, arising as the budget season kicked in, highlighted the divisions among powerful elected officials who have different views of the county's priorities at a time when budgets are being frozen and services cut. Stanek "advocates for a larger role for the Hennepin County sheriff, and he wants to be held harmless from any budget cuts," Board Chair Mike Opat said. "But public safety is done by a lot of people, not only the sheriff. The sheriff is not the generalissimo of Hennepin County."[11]
Standing Rock, North Dakota:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:
In October 2016, Stanek sent Hennepin County deputies and equipment to North Dakota to assist law enforcement efforts there to suppress the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.[12] The personnel sharing, under the auspices of the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, sparked protests and was met with criticism from Minneapolis City Council member Alondra Cano, state Senator Patricia Torres Ray, state Representative Peggy Flanagan, and Clyde Bellecourt.[13]
Personal life:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:
Stanek is married and has one son and one daughter.[1] He is a Catholic.[1]
==