In the last week, the powerful LAPD flexed its muscle with a show of force that was directed against elected officials, with a clear and certain message, "The Police are in control in Los Angeles." The media does its job, and immediately gets wound up in the charges that are made, thereby distracting everyone from the power signals being sent. To the politically knowledgeable, the bottom line is obvious: law enforcement institutions run the state, and anyone who intends to operate without "permission" is going to be crushed.

What happened in the last week is that a city councilman was targeted for police surveillance, based on an anonymous tip. The anonymous tipster is that collaborator with the police, who is called a snitch in prison parlance. We also call them informants, and they are the first people the police protect whenever one of their police actions results in tragedy. It is based upon the testimony of secret informants that almost every police operation has its beginnings. We forget that law enforcement has no independent right to thrust itself, and the ideas of its agents, upon the population; yet this is what happens in every locality "protected" by a police agency in America.

By targeting an elected official of the government -- a supposed representative of the people -- for police surveillance, it is a direct threat to all elected officials, that they are being scrutinized by the police, to make sure that their behavior is "correct." This is not to imply that elected officials should be able to enjoy privileges not possessed by the average citizen, but the suggestion of terrorism is strong, if the police are willing to begin investigations on the slightest issue, using secret informants, that can result in the destruction of career diplomats and politicians.

The LAPD has had some sad days in the past decade, and it is desperately trying to recapture its glory days, when Chief Parker was at the helm, and the consensus of the community safely sided with law enforcement. But since the days of Malcolm X and the Watts Riots, nothing has been the same. It has been a downhill spiral ever since, culminating in the Rodney King debacle, in which police were caught red-handed abusing a motorist. The only thing that infuriated the community more than the police openly and boldly abusing citizens was the "not guilty" verdict of the stacked jury from California's version of Copland, Simi Valley. This led directly to a three day riot, which should be remembered for all time as the Anti-Government Riots of 1992. The sight of LAPD units retreating will be remembered for a long time to come, to the detriment of the omnipotent power of the republican state.

Is the role of the government solely one of protecting property? Can a government actually ignore moral issues, and fulfill the role of a government in the lives of the people? On the other hand, the morality enforced by the police is generally so narrow and self-serving, that some of the worst abuses of the police state take place in defense of what the police and district attorney's call "community standards." Under the threat of blackmail by police, the politicians are literally the captives of the police, carrying out the formalities of democratic process as a cover for the secret police operations targeted at the undesireables of the community, the servants, the minorities and dispossessed.

One of the principal dynamics of the mass state is the deliberate manipulation of the masses through the use of terror and disinformation. The legislators can debate and vote, but the police act, and in fact, most counties are dominated by the sheriff, who is literally the county executive, opposed by nothing more than a county Board of Supervisors or commissioners, who often cannot unite enough to even censure the sheriff, when real transgressions take place against the law. When an issue looks like it's going against the interests of the police, the police union can be instrumental in "leaking" terrifying rumors to the press, that the media is only too happy to lap up and distribute as bona fide information. Sometimes the "leaks" come directly from the power elite of the police agency, the chief of police and his cabinet of cronies; the journalists develop intimate relationships with police, which the police exploit to serve their needs. That is exactly how Richard Jewell's reputation was destroyed, and the police agencies and media that were implicated never expressed a wit of remorse.

The councilman whose reputation was destroyed this last week was placed under police surveillance based on nothing more than an anonymous tip. After his arrest for drug possession, the police released the surveillance tapes, none of which really revealed any activity that three- quarters of the population has not been involved in at one point of time or another. If the man had not of been a councilman, the police wouldn't have been interested in filming his activities, because they were so common. The issue of his abuse of drugs was addressed immediately by his checking into a drug rehab facility, and really, on a humanitarian basis, the only real issue was the man's health, and perhaps his judgment; but based on the democratic processes we now accept, this man's judgment was deemed acceptable, whether or not anyone knew he was under the influence of drugs. It was the police who felt that his behavior was unacceptable, and they single-handedly committed police resources to the political destruction of this city councilman.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that the police are drawing a line in the sand for politicians. By literally going after a political figure, no politician will ever again enjoy the ease he might have once possessed. But is that really for the best? It is similar to the pop-idea that term limits will produce a better statesman, rather than an increasingly volatile and manipulatible political class. The only thing that could really improve the quality of political representation is if the government were conducted according to legal standards, but that is absolutely impossible under the terms of the Constitution of 1787. But to increase the tensions in the legislative bodies is the wrong direction, because being built on the anonymous platform of secret ballots, the government ultimately represents no one. Pressure from the military and para-military forces within the state, only increases the tendency of the republic to behave as a police state protecting the interests of the Mighty Rich (those so rich that they loom over the state and federal governments, like the ghost in the machine).

The final evidence of the subverting of the community to the dictates of the police bureaucracy was the violation of the Haitian man by the New York Police Department. We forget that a modern city's police department is a monolithic institution of gargantuan proportions. The LAPD has about 8,000 members; the NYPD must have about the same force level. These are some of the largest metropolitan paramilitary institutions on the planet. And since Los Angeles became the bank robbery capital of the United States, the LAPD is now armed with semi-automatic weapons. In the heat of battle, no one asks whose interests the police department is serving; in the aftermath, it is often found that it is serving itself, at the expense of the civilian community it is supposed to be protecting and serving. If not itself, then the banking community, or the insurance industry, or the major landowners of the area. This does not mean that all police are bad, but it also does not mean that all police are good. Police are people, and they serve a function in our modern society, but it is a role that must be reformed, so that the police become the servants of the people instead of their secret rulers.

The New York policemen who were suspended were accused of beating a Haitian man, and "sodomizing" him with a broom handle. Even the police commissioner called it a crime, but it's all too little too late. Why do people have to be horribly abused before the police admit that they have problems? Before Rodney King was videotaped being beaten by police, the police knew that they were abusing members of minority communities, and they flat out lied about it, to gain the sympathy of the white community, that controlled the political machinery of the state. The beating had to be filmed, much to the shock and horror of the police, who felt that they could get away with assaulting the public with impunity. The fact that they felt this way is further evidenced by the "not guilty" verdict delivered by the Simi Valley jury, a jury the police knew would be stacked by the fact that per capita, the Simi Valley population has one of the highest ratio of retired LAPD in southern California.

Civilians better be on guard, because the police state is declaring war on them. Now there is such a thing as "illegal use of currency," and just having a large amount of cash is suspect all by itself. Anyone who doesn't immediately "sign on" to every new plan to set up highway checkpoints, or to invade the privacy of American citizens, is automatically accused of being a criminal, with something to hide. The police state doesn't need proof, the proof is in the accusation, for public officials who run the police, the elite power brokers within American communities, hold that they actually embody the law, and the mere fact that they say something is illegal, MAKES IT ILLEGAL. Of course, this is not true, but anyone who crosses the dictator class stands a chance of winding up in prison for life, because the legal system of the republic is so compromised that the police can make up charges as they go along, on the fly.

There is only one way out of this nightmare: The restoration of the pre-1776 constitution, the ancient constitution. Anything short of a restoration of the organic law of the American people will be nothing more than a compromise with totalitarians. A compromise no living American can afford to live with.

(CNS, 29 August, 1997)