Bird’s Eye: Serving whom? Protecting them from what? The increasingly militarized US police (see the new vehicle for Tampa) parallel the decreasing respect for constitutional protections. Three articles explore the increasing power of the iron fist; one looks at the forked tongue.

* NYPD Attack on OWS and the End of the First Amendment Juan Cole Informed Comment

The US constitution prohibits Congress from restricting the right of citizens to assemble peacefully and to petition for redress of grievances….The government is also forbidden to interfere with the workings of the free press, so that the NYPD’s attempt to keep reporters away from the scene of their unprovoked attack on the demonstrators compounds the unconstitutionality of it all.

One of the ways that the First Amendment has been constrained is that fewer and fewer public spaces are still considered “public” (Zucotti Park is privately owned even though it is a park in a city). In contrast, our emails, bank transfers, and our automobiles parked in our driveways have all been declared “public.”

*Police State Tactics: Signs Point to a Coordinated National Program  NationofChange

The ugly hand of the federal government is becoming increasingly suspected behind what appears to be a nationwide attempt to repress and evict the Occupation Movement.Across the country in recent days, ultimatums have been issues to groups occupying Portland, OR, Chicago, IL, San Francisco, Dallas, TX, Atlanta, GA, and most recently New York, NY, where the Occupation Movement began on September 17. The two most recent eviction efforts, in Oakland and New York, have been the worst.

The police attacks have had a lot in common. They have been “justified” based upon trumped up pre-textural claims that the occupiers are creating a health hazard, or a fire hazard, or a crime problem, generally on little or no evidence, or there has been a digging up of obscure and constitutionally questionable statutes, for example laws outlawing the homeless. Then the police come in, usually in dead of night, dressed in riot gear and heavily armed with mace weapons, batons, plastic cuffs and tear gas, or even assault rifles in some cases and so-called flash-bang stun grenades–all weapons to be used against peaceful demonstrators.So violent has been the response that some returned veterans have condemned the police for using weapons and tactics that are not even permitted by occupying troops in war-torn countries.

* Militarising the police from Oakland to NYC   Al Jazeera

What happens when a government builds a massive, unaccountable police apparatus to thwart infiltration by a foreign menace, only to see the society it’s supposed to protect take to the streets for entirely different reasons?

It looks as though we may be about to find out. The Occupy protests have been mostly peaceful, with a few fairly dramatic exceptions. But the sight of a huge police presence in riot gear is always startling, and tactics that have been honed in Europe (such as “kettling”) against anarchist actions have not been as common in the United States as elsewhere. More standard forms of crowd control, such as the aggressive use of pepper spray and “rubber” bullets have so far been the outer limits of the police use of force. But it is hardly the outer limits of the possibilities.

….. Reporter Ando Arick analysed the new generation of weaponry in an article in Harper’s called “The Soft-Kill Solution – New Frontiers In Pain Compliance”. “An operator squeezes off a blast. The first shot hits them like an invisible punch. The protesters regroup, and he fires again, and again. Finally they’ve had enough. The ray gun drives them away with no harm done.”Except for the repeated “invisible punches”, of course. But like the Taser, the whole point of this “pain compliance” is to inflict short-term physical agony on human beings to “induce behavioural modification”.

* No Right to Bare Arms SFGate

Both the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild said they had “grave concerns about the conduct” of campus police. “Video recordings raise numerous questions about UCPD’s oversight and handling of these events, including whether law enforcement were truly required to beat protesters with batons,” the two groups wrote in a letter to campus officials.

… “The individuals who linked arms and actively resisted, that in itself is an act of violence,” UC police Capt. Margo Bennett said. “I understand that many students may not think that, but linking arms in a human chain when ordered to step aside is not a nonviolent protest.”