Public Safety's Greatest Threat: The American Police State

by Matthew Harwood.       If you’ve been listening to various police agencies and their supporters, then you know what the future holds: anarchy is coming—and it’s all the fault of activists.  In May, a Wall Street Journal op-ed warned of a “new nationwide crime wave” thanks to “intense agitation against American police departments” over   ... MORE

Jeff Nesbit: We Have Lost The War On Drugs

Criminalizing drugs just destroys more people.     It's time, finally, to face the ugly truth. We've lost the war on drugs in America. We need a new playbook, now, before more lives are lost. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that fatal drug overdoses in America were the highest in recorded history in 2014. The news   ... MORE

Video Of Long Beach Killing By Police Of Suspect Released; Officer Shot His Partner, Then Both Cops Shot The Suspect

by Brian Doherty. So what was the crime for which Noel Aguilar had been apprehended?   Riding a bike wearing headphones.   Petty law enforcement claims another life. When Noel Aguilar was shot and killed by two officers in Long Beach, California, in May 2014, the police initially reported that Aguilar had shot Officer Albert Murad before     ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Want My Blood? Get a Warrant.

Balking at warrantless alcohol testing.  Danny Birchfield drove his car into a ditch. Steve Beylund "nearly hit a stop sign while making a right hand turn into a driveway." William Bernard got his truck stuck in the river while trying to extract his boat. In his underwear. These embarrassing incidents—the first two of which happened in North Dakota,    ... MORE

William N. Grigg: Chicago Cops Say Keeping Evidence Of Misconduct Puts Cops In Danger – So They’re Destroying It

Destroying the evidence of long festering corruption.     With protesters thronging the streets of Chicago demanding police accountability and clamoring for the resignation of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the city’s police union is frantically trying to destroy decades of records documenting police misconduct. As is always the case, the     ... MORE

VIDEO: History Of Police Militarization

Reclaiming The Christmas Spirit: Ten Great Christmas Movies To Help You Shake The Police State Blues

by John W. Whitehead.      What a turbulent year it’s been. For those of us who have managed to survive 2015 with our lives intact and our freedoms hanging by a thread, it has been a year of crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns,   ... MORE

Conservatives Should Oppose Massive Collection Of DNA

by Bob Barr.   We all know that many citizens have become accustomed to surrendering all manner of personal information to whoever asks for it. Many have seen television ads with actors depicting individuals who gleefully send DNA samples to some corporation that will tell them whether their ancestors wore lederhosen, or kilts. In this        ... MORE

How Cops Turn Young, Low-Level Drug Offenders Into "Confidential Informants," A Job That Might Kill Them

by Jacob Sullum.    Drug war draftees. On November 22, 2013, his 20th birthday, Andrew Sadek sat down across a table from Richland County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Weber at the Law Enforcement Center in Wahpeton, North Dakota. It was the day after cops had searched Sadek's dorm room at the North Dakota State College of Science, finding "an orange  ... MORE

Drug Czar Wants More $ To Spend On Taking Your Stuff

by Nick Gillespie.       The Washington Post reports that the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) wants more money "to identify assets, prosecute cases and 'manage the massive paper flow associated with forfeiture.'"   Asset-forfeiture, in which law enforcement seizes property, cash, and goods that it says is connected to drug      ... MORE

Matt Agorist: College Grad Tasered & Beaten Until He Dies – The Chicago PD Releases The 3rd Horrific Video In Days

The hits keep on comin. It seems that the Chicago Police department is holding confession as the third video in just days has been released showing officers beat and taser a man before he dies. Only two weeks ago, after months of public pressure, the Chicago PD released the dashcam of Laquan McDonald being murdered by officer Jason Van Dyke.   ... MORE

John Stossel: Liberty, Fraternity, Security

What should we do about terrorism?   After the attacks on Paris, the French government passed a law that allows anyone suspected of being a security threat to be placed under house arrest and searches to be conducted without warrants. Reason's Anthony Fisher reports that this can lead to nasty experiences for anyone who associates with people ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: Does Fear Lead To Fascism?

How free people enslave themselves.   America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions. The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other. Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent ... MORE

Robert Hackett: No, NSA Phone Spying Has Not Ended

Only the framework changed.     Plenty of surveillance going on. At 11:59 P.M. on Saturday night, the U.S. National Security Agency supposedly yanked the cord on its bulk telephone records collection, thereby ending an expansive surveillance program that the nation’s intelligence community put in place in the wake of the September 11,     ... MORE

Ed Krayewski: Video Captures A Knife-Wielding Man Surrounded And Executed By A Firing Squad Of Cops

Police admit five of the officers fired their guns.  Police in San Francisco shot and killed a man they say was a suspected stabber after he approached an officer while holding a knife. Video posted of the incident to Instagram shows at least nine officers pointing their guns at the man, who appears to be trying to walk away as an officer moves in   ... MORE

John W. Whitehead: The Surveillance State Is Alive & Well

Life in the electronic concentration camp.      Bottle up the champagne, pack away the noisemakers, and toss out the party hats. There is no cause for celebration. We have secured no major victories against tyranny. We have achieved no great feat in pushing back against government overreach. For all intents and purposes, the National ... MORE

Civil Forfeiture Laws: It’s Mine, Until The Police Take It

by Paul Samakow.        Civil forfeiture laws allow police in just about every state to take citizens’ property, including cash, cars, electronics, even houses, without due process, simply by stating they believe the taken property was somehow involved in a criminal activity. Property can be legally taken without any charges being placed, without an    ... MORE

Innocent Man Paralyzed After Unprovoked Police Beating

Cops arbitrarily destroy a man's life.    Family say a man beaten by three officers with the San Antonio police department last year is now paralyzed from the chest down after surgeons experienced complications attempting to repair his spine. Forty-three-year-old Roger Carlos was in the 10600 block of Westover Hills Blvd. in May, 2014 taking    ... MORE

John Kerr: Take Profit And Self-Interest Out Of Policing

All theft should be illegal.  Law enforcement officials have plenty of words to categorize property heists, including robbery, theft, burglary, embezzlement and larceny. Perhaps it’s time to add another term to the lexicon: civil forfeiture. Many Americans may not realize that civil forfeiture laws—which proliferated in the 1980s as the drug war   ... MORE

In The Public Service - Heroic Cops Protect Community By Raiding A Group Of 90-Year-Old Women Playing MahJong

by Matt Agorist.   As hundreds of thousands of rape kits collect dust and remain untested, cops are quick to jump to action to raid a group of elderly women playing mahjong. A concerned citizen, with a knack for blindly following all decrees handed down from the establishment on high, conducted their patriotic duty of ‘seeing something’ and then    ... MORE