From the August 2000 Idaho Observer:

Congress began gaining federal control of local police in 1968

By Don Harkins

On grounds that local police in Ohio and Pennsylvania are out of control, the federal government has taken over the operations of police in those states, Insight magazine recently reported. Considering the stories of excessive force, the fact that 2 million Americans are currently incarcerated and at least 30 percent of them were found guilty of a non-violent crime or are imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, one can infer that most of the nation's police forces are out of control. The cases of police brutality and ineptitude used by the feds to justify the takeover in those two states are not uncommon throughout the several states.

Ohio and Pennsylvania have set the contemporary precedent whereby the feds can justify taking control of your police department.

“From Los Angeles to New York City, the federal government literally is trying to take over local police departments,” said Insight.

The birth of the federal police force

The U.S. Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 which was amended January 2, 1971 to become Public Law 91-644. Through the act Congress created the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) within the U.S. Department of Justice.

The intent of the act was to arm swarms of federal law enforcement advisors with the authority of federal law and the federal police state agenda and send them hither to infiltrate local law enforcement. The LEAA used federal “planning” funds as bait to gain toeholds in the nation's local jurisdiction police activities.

The LEAA administrator and his two assistants were appointed by the president. They coordinated their efforts with groups of law enforcement representatives (“State planning agencies”) from the states that had been formed specifically to work with the federal government to “reduce and control crime.”

Section 3(b) of the act clearly outlines the intent of the federal government to infect as many of the nation's law enforcement agencies as possible with the federal police state agenda. “In all allocating of funds under this subsection, the State planning agency shall assure that major cities and counties within the State receive planning funds to develop comprehensive plans and coordinate functions at the local level.”

The LEAA was terminated in 1982 but in the 11 years of its operation it managed to plant the federal police state agenda into almost every city, county and state law enforcement agency in the nation. Nearly every law enforcement jurisdiction in the nation, even those in the most unpopulated regions, have access to federally-sponsored military-type combat training for their officers.

Though the LEAA has been decommissioned for 18 years, the federal government has been supplying local law enforcement with “surplus” military assault rifles, tanks, helicopters, armored troop carriers, battle garments and other military equipment. The federal government, through the FBI and the BATF, has also been supplying local police all over the nation with special house to house assault training and other specialized forms of military-type training.

Multi-million dollar federal legislation was signed in 1997 by President Clinton to put 100,000 more police on the streets.

Liberal federal laws with regard to what constitutes “probable cause” in cases of suspected domestic terrorism and drug trafficking, combined with federal property forfeiture (seizure) laws have given federal government the justification to deputize federally armed and trained local law enforcement personnel when it decides to conduct military-style raids upon American citizens who are no longer innocent until proven guilty.

It has been our experience here in north Idaho and eastern Washington that the tendency for federal investigators has been to look the other way while local law enforcement became increasingly brazen in their flagrant abuses of civil rights. Since 1968, the federal government has been supplying local law enforcement with all of the tools and skills to become an occupational police force that has been brainwashed with the federal agenda. Then, once the monster was created, they allowed it to grow until it became so oppressive the people begin to beg for the monster's mother to make it behave. The entire multi-generational operation has been a patient campaign on the part of the federal government to justify moving into your neighborhood to benevolently take control of city, county and state police departments.

The Hegelian dialectic: Create the problem then offer the solution. This tactic is as old as the relationship between people and governments. It's time we get wise to it. DWH