Police State D.C.
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
Uh-oh.


D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence.

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate �Neighborhood Safety Zones.� At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn�t live there, work there or have �legitimate reason� to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.

Lanier has been struggling to reverse D.C.�s spiraling crime rate but has been forced by public outcry to scale back several initiatives including her �All Hands on Deck� weekends and plans for warrantless, door-to-door searches for drugs and guns.

Under today�s proposal, the no-go zones will last up to 10 days, according to internal police documents. Front-line officers are already being signed up for training on running the blue curtains.

Here�s my favorite part:


Peter Nickles, the city�s interim attorney general, said the quarantine would have �a narrow focus.�

�This is a very targeted program that has been used in other cities,� Nickles told The Examiner. �I�m not worried about the constitutionality of it.�

Obviously not.

Last week, I received the following email:


I live in Eckington, a �transitional� neighborhood in northeast DC. I got a knock on the door this morning from a guy with ACORN (looks like a lefty community group that I�d never heard of) saying that DC police would be coming around shortly asking to search homes in the neighborhood for guns, and explaining we had the constitutional right to refuse, etc. He added that anything the police find they can use against you because �you never know what a friend of a friend might have left in your house� Not sure if he told me this because I had just gotten out of bed and had answered the door in my bathrobe looking disoriented, but I digress. He was handing out a packet of info from the ACLU including a nifty doorhanger you can put out that says �NO CONSENT TO SEARCH OUR HOME�. One of my neighbors told me the guy told them they were only doing this in poor black neighborhoods, and this notice from the ACLU that I found online seems to bear this out.

I know it�s not exactly a wrong-door no-knock raid, but I am concerned because while I certainly don�t want the police (or any other strangers) rummaging through my junk, I�m kind of afraid of what would happen if I refuse the search. I already live on one of those streets with the surveillance cams installed. Does my address get �marked� for being uncooperative or suspicious? I should mention of course that I don�t own any guns and have never touched anything more powerful than a bb gun.

You are free to refuse the searches. But if a regular reader of this site feels uncomfortable asserting that right, you can imagine how other people subject to these searches might feel. Despite the promises of amnesty, I have a hard time believing you�re going to get off if you allow the police into your home and they find significant amounts of drugs or weapons.


http://www.theagitator.com/2008/06/04/police-state-dc/

your taking it all to serious there friend.......you have the right to bear arms,right?!

I support that fully...

The crime in DC is sickening..The ones who are innocent shouldnt mind this..The guilty ones will

The crime is sickening in DC, but they keep coming with waves of gun law/confiscation, what about that is going to stop criminals from getting weapons? Nothing, it's been pretty well established that when the citizenry is armed and the bad guys know it, the crime goes down.

To give DC law enforcement a blank check to demand that a person can't walk down a certain road, just because the officers decide the American citizen hasn't got any immediate business there is just one more step towards a Police state. That's not representative of Liberty and Freedom, it sounds more like a Nazi Checkpoint. "Papers?" "You have no business here, turn around or face arrest, Heil!"

I do agree with this, BUT, it's one more step towards BIG Brother.
Here in Chicago, we have cameras on the top of phone poles in crime ridden areas. Not bad if you obey the law, but who's monitoring those that monitor?

Being that I live 35 minutes from DC, I am exposed to the incidents that occur on a daily basis. The feel in the community is a stronger presence of support of it than what the Press promotes.

Whatever it takes to "reduce" the crime people are supporting, even a reduction is better than what it is right now...Something has to be done, it is out of control..

I had no idea violence had gotten THAT wretched there. It was deplorably poverty-stricken when I last visited in the 70's, but it was peaceful.
This is such a difficult situation of weighing pros and cons of such a state of emergency. I agree that it would be unlike our constitutional rights. And I understand where concern from the citizens and visitors comes in. And, I have to wonder if the police understand the risk and ramifications that will surely ensue. This is just AWFUL!!

But needed....

I can only think of that line about those who sacrifice their Liberty for promise of security...

DC checkpoint plan latest 'police state' tactic: CouncilmanNick Juliano
Published: Wednesday June 4, 2008

Over the last few months, city officials in Washington, DC, have instituted an array of tactics that has civil libertarians fearing the nation's capital is looking at the Bill of Rights as little more than a suggestion.

The latest proposal from DC's mayor and police chief would have officers patrolling Soviet-esque checkpoints limiting residents' ability to travel to and from targeted neighborhoods. The plan was reported Wednesday in The Examiner:

D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence. Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate �Neighborhood Safety Zones.� At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn�t live there, work there or have �legitimate reason� to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.
A city councilman who represents some of the affected neighborhoods -- in the District's northeast quadrant -- was cautiously optimistic about the proposal's potential to "crack down on ... open-air drug markets." But the local lawmaker, Harry Thomas, did express worries about DC "moving towards a police state."

Local blog DCist mocked the proposal and its defenders.

"Interim Attorney General Peter Nickles actually said that measures of this sort have 'been used in other cities,'" the blog noted. "Which cities are those, Mr. Nickles? Warsaw?"

Libertarian blogger Megan McArdle asked, "Where the hell am I living?"

DC has had a spate of violence recently, and I applaud the police department's urge to do something. However, this something seems to follow the logic outlined by Bryan Caplan:

1. Something must be done

2. This is something

3. Therefore, this must be done

Crime tears the fabric of society, but so does a government which believes that it may at any time control the movements of its citizens like so many (presumptively suspicious) sheep...
This latest draconian move follows several other recent proposals from DC officials that seemed to look upon individual rights and privacy concerns as little more than afterthoughts.

After outrage from civil liberties and gun-rights groups, DC delayed implementation of one plan that would send police door-to-door in targeted neighborhoods to conduct warrantless searches looking for drugs or guns. The so-called "safe homes" initiative has not been called off, however, so the local ACLU chapter is holding training sessions to educate people of their rights.

Another plan with Orwellian echos has the District creating a 24-hour surveillance network that aims to link together and constantly monitor thousands of closed-circuit video cameras distributed throughout the district.

The neighborhood checkpoint plan is scheduled to go into effect next week in the Trinidad neighborhood in northeast DC, according to the mayors office.

A local law school dean who leads DC's ACLU chapter called the idea "cockamamie" and ineffective.

�I think they tried this in Russia and it failed,� Shelley Broderick told The Examiner. �It�s just our experience in this city that we always end up targeting poor people and people of color, and we treat the kids coming home from choir practice the same as we treat those kids who are selling drugs.�

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Just found a little more on the topic, I just don't think this is a good thing, it's going to create a air of Everyone is guilty until proven innocent.

I just hope the cops say "present your papers please"

Well, I guess the moral of this story is not to have 'significant amounts of drugs or weapons' in your home.

are the police going to add red arm bands with a black swaztica in a white circle to there uniform and lil ss on their collar

That is a good moral...

However, even that hasn't stopped these insane, violent no knock searches that have seen innocent people and the cops themselves getting shot over nothing. Tyranny always comes to your door in a uniform.

No they are giveing out yellow armbands thay have a big P on them that stands for "Poor"

We as the true americans dont have to take this crap. If we wernt such a TV Dinner society, so happy havin our instant-short term pleasure and our two-ton waste lines, we would relize we hold the power as tax-paying citizens. We pay to feed the "law makers" familys, so they can drive there fancy cars and wear there $3000 suits. We pay them over 100,000 dollors a year so they make our lives miserable and ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and ITS TIME for a CHANGE. So instead of setting back and doing nothing, the Time is now to get up and stand up and not take crap like this any longer because without the support of the American People, these laws have no merit and are less valuable than the paper there printed on!!!

Hey, what happened to everybody????????

I noticed how all these new crowd control toys are now in the hands of the cops I think they are ready and waiting for any type of upriseing.

D.C. is as bad as any warzone. Detroit is the same.

I'm just saying, I have no real feelings on this issue. I'll never live in a city, but whatever.

Mayor Giuliani did it in New York City and the people loved it. Crime dropped tremendously and people could actually go out with alot less fear of getting hurt.