WASHINGTON – The U.S. declared a public health emergency Sunday to deal with the emerging new swine flu, much like the government does to prepare for approaching hurricanes.
Officials reported 20 U.S. cases of swine flu in five states so far, with the latest in Ohio and New York. Unlike in Mexico where the same strain appears to be killing dozens of people, cases in the United State have been mild — and U.S. health authorities can’t yet explain why.
“As we continue to look for cases, we are going to see a broader spectrum of disease,” predicted Dr. Richard Besser, acting chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We’re going to see more severe disease in this country.”
At a White House news conference, Besser and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano sought to assure Americans that health officials are taking all appropriate steps to minimize the impact of the outbreak.
Top among those is declaring the public health emergency. As part of that, Napolitano said roughly 12 million doses of the drug Tamiflu will be moved from a federal stockpile to places where states can quickly get their share if they decide they need it. Priority will be given to the five states with known cases so far: California, Texas, New York, Ohio and Kansas.
Napolitano called the emergency declaration standard operating procedure — one was declared recently for the inauguration and for flooding. She urged people to think of it as a “declaration of emergency preparedness.”
“Really that’s what we’re doing right now. We’re preparing in an environment where we really don’t know ultimately what the size of seriousness of this outbreak is going to be.
Recent House Votes
COPS Improvements Act of 2009 – Vote Passed (342-78, 12 Not Voting)
The House authorized this five-year, $1.8 billion bill funding the Community Oriented Policing Services grant program.
Community Policing Defined
Community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques, to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime.
Community Partnerships: Organizational Transformation: Problem Solving:
Collaborative partnerships between the law enforcement agency and the individuals and organizations they serve to develop solutions to problems and increase trust in police.
* Other Government Agencies
* Community Members/Groups
* Nonprofits/Service Providers
* Private Businesses
* Media
The alignment of organizational management, structure, personnel, and information systems to support community partnerships and proactive problem-solving.
* Geographic assignment of officers
* Despecialization
* Resources and finances
Personnel
* Recruitment, hiring, and selection
* Personnel supervision/evaluations
* Training
Information Systems (Technology)
* Communication/access to data
* Quality and accuracy of data
The process of engaging in the proactive and systematic examination of identified problems to develop effective responses that are evaluated rigorously.
* Scanning: Identifying and prioritizing problems
* Analysis: Analyzing
* Response: Responding to problems
* Assessment: Assessing problem-solving initiatives
* Using the crime triangle to focus on immediate conditions (victim/offender/location)
Community Partnerships
Collaborative partnerships between the law enforcement agency and the individuals and organizations they serve to develop solutions to problems and increase trust in police.
Community policing, recognizing that police rarely can solve public safety problems alone, encourages interactive partnerships with relevant stakeholders. The range of potential partners is large and these partnerships can be used to accomplish the two interrelated goals of developing solutions to problems through collaborative problem solving and improving public trust. The public should play a role in prioritizing public safety problems.
* Other Government Agencies
Law enforcement organizations can partner with a number of other government agencies to identify community concerns and offer alternative solutions. Examples of agencies include legislative bodies, prosecutors, probation and parole, public works departments, neighboring law enforcement agencies, health and human services, child support, ordnance enforcement, and schools.
* Community Members/Groups
Individuals who live, work, or otherwise have an interest in the community-volunteers, activists, formal and informal community leaders, residents, visitors and tourists, and commuters-are a valuable resource for identifying community concerns. Partnerships with these factions of the community can engage the community in achieving specific goals at town hall meetings, neighborhood association meetings, decentralized offices/storefronts in the community, and team beat assignments.
* Nonprofits/Service Providers
Advocacy and community-based organizations that provide services to the community and advocate on its behalf can be powerful partners. These groups often work with or are composed of individuals who share certain interests and can include such entities as victims groups, service clubs, support groups, issue groups, advocacy groups, and the faith community.
* Private Businesses
For-profit businesses also have a great stake in the health of the community and can be key partners because they often bring considerable resources to bear on problems of mutual concern. Businesses can help identify problems and provide resources for responses, often including their own security apparatus and community outreach. The local chamber of commerce can also assist in disseminating information about police and business partnerships and initiatives.
* Media
The media represent a powerful mechanism by which to communicate with the community. It can assist with publicizing community concerns and available solutions, such as services from government or community agencies or new laws or codes that will be enforced. In addition, the media can have a significant impact on public perceptions of the police, crime problems, and fear of crime.
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Organizational Transformation
The alignment of organizational management, structure, personnel, and information systems to support community partnerships and proactive problem-solving efforts.
The community policing philosophy focuses on the way that departments are organized and managed and how the infrastructure can be changed to support the philosophical shift behind community policing. It encourages the application of modern management practices to increase efficiency and effectiveness. Community policing emphasizes changes in organizational structures to institutionalize its adoption and infuse it throughout the entire department, including the way it is managed and organized, its personnel, and its technology.
* Agency Management
Under the community policing model, police management needs to infuse community policing ideals throughout the agency by making a number of critical changes in climate and culture, leadership, formal labor relations, decentralized decision-making and accountability, strategic planning, policing and procedures, organizational evaluations, and increased transparency.
Climate and culture
Changing the climate and culture means supporting a proactive orientation that values systematic problem solving and partnerships. Formal organizational changes should support the informal networks and communication that take place within agencies to support this orientation.
Leadership
Leaders serve as role models for taking risks and building collaborative relationships to implement community policing and they use their position to influence and educate others about it. Leaders, therefore, must constantly emphasize and reinforce community policing’s vision, values, and mission within their organization and support and articulate a commitment to community policing as the dominant way of doing business.
Labor relations
If community policing is going to be effective, police unions and similar forms of organized labor need to be a part of the process and function as partners in the adoption of the community policing philosophy. Including labor groups in agency changes can ensure support for the changes that are imperative to community policing implementation.
Decision-making
Community policing calls for decentralization both in command structure and decision-making. Decentralized decision-making allows front-line officers to take responsibility for their role in community policing. When an officer is able to create solutions to problems and take risks, he or she ultimately feels accountable for those solutions and assumes a greater responsibility for the well-being of the community. Decentralized decision-making involves flattening the hierarchy of the agency, increasing tolerance for risk-taking in problem-solving efforts, and allowing officers discretion in handling calls. In addition, providing sufficient authority to coordinate various resources to attack a problem and allowing the officers the autonomy to establish relationships with the community will held define problems and develop possible solutions.
Strategic planning
The department should have a written statement reflecting a department-wide commitment to community policing and a plan that matches operational needs to available resources and expertise. If a strategic plan is to have value, the members of the organization should be well-versed in it and be able to give examples of their efforts that support the plan. Components such as the organization’s mission and value statement should be simple and communicated widely. Everything should connect back to it.
Policies
Community policing affects the nature and development of department policies and procedures to ensure that community policing principles and practices have an effect on activities on the street. Problem solving and partnerships, therefore, should become institutionalized in policies, along with corresponding sets of procedures, where appropriate.
Organizational evaluations
In addition to the typical measures of police performance (arrest, response times, tickets issued, and crime rates) community policing calls for a broadening of police outcome measures to include such things as community satisfaction, less fear of crime, the alleviation of problems, and improvement in quality of life. Community policing calls for a more sophisticated approach to evaluation-one that looks at how feedback information is used, not only how it measures outcomes.
Transparency
Community policing involves decision-making processes that are more open than traditional policing. If the community is to be a full partner, the department needs mechanisms for readily sharing relevant information on crime and social disorder problems and police operations with the community.
* Organizational Structure
It is important that the organizational structure of the agency ensures that local patrol officers have decision-making authority and are accountable for their actions. This can be achieved through long-term assignments, the development of officers who are “generalists,” and using special units appropriately.
Geographic assignment of officers
With community policing, there is a shift to the long-term assignment of officers to specific neighborhoods or areas. Geographic deployment plans can help enhance customer service and facilitate more contact between police and citizens, thus establishing a strong relationship and mutual accountability. Beat boundaries should correspond to neighborhood boundaries and other government services should recognize these boundaries when coordinating government public-service activities.
Despecialization
To achieve community policing goals, officers have to be able to handle multiple responsibilities and take a team approach to collaborative problem solving and partnering with the community. Community policing encourages its adoption agency-wide, not just to special units, although there may be a need for some specialist units that are tasked with identifying and solving particularly complex problems or managing complex partnerships.
Resources and finances
Agencies have to devote the necessary human and financial resources to support community policing to ensure that problem-solving efforts are robust and that partnerships are sustained and effective.
* Personnel
The principles of community policing need be infused throughout the entire personnel system of an agency including recruitment, hiring, selection, and retention of all law enforcement agency staff, including sworn officers, nonsworn officers, civilians, and volunteers, as well as personnel evaluations, supervision, and training.
Recruitment, hiring, and selection
Agencies need a systematic means of incorporating community policing elements into their recruitment, selection, and hiring processes. Job descriptions should recognize community policing and problem-solving responsibilities and encourage the recruitment of officers who have a “spirit of service,” instead of only a “spirit of adventure.” A community policing agency also has to thoughtfully examine where it is looking for recruits, whom its is recruiting and hiring, and what is being tested. Some community policing agencies also look for involvement of the community in this process through the identification of competencies and participation in review boards.
Personnel supervision/evaluations
Tie performance evaluations to community policing principles and activities that are incorporated into job descriptions. Performance, reward, and promotional structures should support sound problem-solving activities, proactive policing and community collaboration, and citizen satisfaction with police services.
Training
Training at all levels-academy, field, and in-service-must support community policing principles and tactics. It also needs to encourage creative thinking, a proactive orientation, communication and analytical skills, and techniques for dealing with quality-of-life concerns and maintaining order. Officers can be trained to identify and correct conditions that could lead to crime, raise public awareness, and engage the community in finding solutions to problems. Field training officers and supervisors need to learn how to encourage problem solving and help officers learn from other problem-solving initiatives. Until community policing is institutionalized in the organization, training in its fundamental principles will need to take place regularly.
* Information Systems (Technology)
Community policing is information-intensive and technology plays a central role in helping to provide ready access to quality information. Accurate and timely information makes problem-solving efforts more effective and ensures that officers are informed about the crime and community conditions of their beat. In addition, technological enhancements can greatly assist with enhancing two-way communication with citizens and in developing agency accountability systems and performance outcome measures.
Communication/access to data
Technology provides agencies with an important forum by which to communicate externally with the public and internally with their own staff. To communicate with the public, community policing encourages agencies to develop two-way communication systems through the Internet to provide online reports, reverse 911 and e-mail alerts, discussion forums, and feedback on interactive applications (surveys, maps), thereby creating ongoing dialogs and increasing transparency.
Technology also encourages effective internal communication through memos, reports, newsletters, e-mail and enhanced incident reporting, dispatch functions, and communications interoperability with other entities for more efficient operations.Community policing also encourages the use of technology to develop accountability and performance measurement systems that are timely and contain accurate metrics and a broad array of measures and information.
Community policing also encourages the use of technology to provide officers with ready access to timely information on crime and community characteristics within their beats, either through laptop computers in their patrol cars or through personal data devices. In addition, technology can support crime/problem analysis functions by enabling agencies to gather information on the greater aspects of events including more detailed information on offenders, victims, crime locations, and quality-of-life concerns, and to further enhance analysis.
Quality and accuracy of data
Information is only as good as its source and, therefore, it is not useful if it is not of high quality and accurate. Community policing encourages agencies to put safeguards in place to ensure that information from various sources is collected in a systematic fashion and entered into central systems that are linked to one another and checked for accuracy so that it can be used effectively for strategic planning, problem solving, and performance measurement.
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Problem Solving
The process of engaging in the proactive and systematic examination of identified problems to develop effective responses that are evaluated rigorously.
Community policing emphasizes proactive problem solving in a systematic and routine fashion. Rather than responding to crime only after it occurs, community policing encourages agencies to proactively develop solutions to the immediate underlying conditions contributing to public safety problems. Problem solving must be infused into all police operations and guide decision-making efforts. Agencies are encouraged to think innovatively about their responses and view making arrests as only one of a wide array of potential responses. A major conceptual vehicle for helping officers to think about problem solving in a structured and disciplined way is the SARA (Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment) problem-solving model.
* Scanning: Identifying and prioritizing problems
The objectives of scanning are to identify a basic problem, determine the nature of that problem, determine the scope of seriousness of the problem, and establish baseline measures. An inclusive list of stakeholders for the selected problem is typically identified in this phase. A problem can be thought of as two or more incidents similar in one or more ways and that is of concern to the police and the community. Problems can be a type of behavior, a place, a person or persons, a special event or time, or a combination of any of these. The police, with input from the community, should identify and prioritize concerns.
* Analysis: Analyzing
Analysis is the heart of the problem-solving process. The objectives of analysis are to develop an understanding of the dynamics of the problem, develop an understanding of the limits of current responses, establish correlation, and develop an understanding of cause and effect. As part of the analysis phase, it is important to find out as much as possible about each aspect of the crime triangle by asking Who? What? When? Where? How? Why? and Why Not? about the victim, offender, and crime location.
* Response: Responding to problems
The response phase of the SARA model involves developing and implementing strategies to address an identified problem by searching for strategic responses that are both broad and uninhibited. The response should follow logically from the knowledge learned during the analysis and should be tailored to the specific problem. The goals of the response can range from either totally eliminating the problem, substantially reducing the problem, reducing the amount of harm caused by the problem, or improving the quality of community cohesion.
Assessment attempts to determine if the response strategies were successful by determining if the problem declined and if the response contributed to the decline. This information not only assists the current effort but also gathers data that build knowledge for the future. Strategies and programs can be assessed for process, outcomes, or both. If the responses implemented are not effective, the information gathered during analysis should be reviewed. New information may have to be collected before new solutions can be developed and tested. The entire process should be viewed as circular rather than linear.
* Using the crime triangle to focus on immediate conditions (victim/offender/location)
To understand a problem, many problem solvers have found it useful to visualize links among the victim, offender, and location (the crime triangle) and those aspects that could have an impact on them, for example, capable guardians for victims, handlers for offenders, and managers for locations. Rather than addressing root causes of a problem, the police focus on the factors that are within their reach, such as limiting criminal opportunities and access to victims, increasing guardianship, and associating risk with unwanted behavior.
Some people have referred to it as the “secret government” of the United States. It is not an elected body, it does not involve itself in public disclosures,
and it even has a quasi-secret budget in the billions of dollars. This government organization has more power than the President of the United States or the Congress,
it has the power to suspend laws, move entire populations, arrest and detain citizens without a warrant and hold them without trial, it can seize property, food supplies, transportation systems, and can suspend the Constitution.
Not only is it the most powerful entity in the United States, but it was not even created under Constitutional law by the Congress. It was a product of a Presidential Executive Order. No, it is not the U.S. military nor the Central Intelligence Agency, they are subject to Congress. The organization is called FEMA, which stands for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Originally conceived in the Richard Nixon Administration, it was refined by President Jimmy Carter and given teeth in the Ronald Reagan and George Bush Administrations.
FEMA had one original concept when it was created, to assure the survivability of the United States government in the event of a nuclear attack on this nation. It was also provided with the task of being a federal coordinating body during times of domestic disasters, such as earthquakes, floods and hurricanes. Its awesome powers grow under the tutelage of people like Lt. Col. Oliver North and General Richard Secord, the architects on the Iran-Contra scandal and the looting of America’s savings and loan institutions. FEMA has even been given control of the State Defense Forces, a rag-tag, often considered neo-Nazi, civilian army that will substitute for the National Guard, if the Guard is called to duty overseas.
THE MOST POWERFUL ORGANIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES
Though it may be the most powerful organization in the United States, few people know it even exists. But it has crept into our private lives. Even mortgage papers contain FEMA’s name in small print if the property in question is near a flood plain. FEMA was deeply involved in the Los Angeles riots and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some of the black helicopter traffic reported throughout the United States, but mainly in the West, California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Colorado, are flown by FEMA personnel. FEMA has been given responsibility for many new disasters including urban forest fires, home heating emergencies, refugee situations, urban riots, and emergency planning for nuclear and toxic incidents. In the West, it works in conjunction with the Sixth Army.
FEMA was created in a series of Executive Orders. A Presidential Executive Order, whether Constitutional or not, becomes law simply by its publication in the Federal Registry. Congress is by-passed. Executive Order Number 12148 created the Federal Emergency Management Agency that is to interface with the Department of Defense for civil defense planning and funding. An “emergency czar” was appointed. FEMA has only spent about 6 percent of its budget on national emergencies, the bulk of their funding has been used for the construction of secret underground facilities to assure continuity of government in case of a major emergency, foreign or domestic. Executive Order Number 12656 appointed the National Security Council as the principal body that should consider emergency powers. This allows the government to increase domestic intelligence and surveillance of U.S. citizens and would restrict the freedom of movement within the United States and grant the government the right to isolate large groups of civilians. The National Guard could be federalized to seal all borders and take control of U.S. air space and all ports of entry.
Here are just a few Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen:
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310 grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049 assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period.
* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has broad powers in every aspect of the nation. General Frank Salzedo, chief of FEMA’s Civil Security Division stated in a 1983 conference that he saw FEMA’s role as a “new frontier in the protection of individual and governmental leaders from assassination, and of civil and military installations from sabotage and/or attack, as well as prevention of dissident groups from gaining access to U.S. opinion, or a global audience in times of crisis.”
FEMA’s powers were consolidated by President Carter to incorporate:
* the National Security Act of 1947, which allows for the strategic relocation of industries, services, government and other essential economic activities, and to rationalize the requirements for manpower, resources and production facilities;
* the 1950 Defense Production Act, which gives the President sweeping powers over all aspects of the economy;
* the Act of August 29, 1916, which authorizes the Secretary of the Army, in time of war, to take possession of any transportation system for transporting troops, material, or any other purpose related to the emergency; and
* the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which enables the President to seize the property of a foreign country or national.
These powers were transferred to FEMA in a sweeping consolidation in 1979.
HURRICANE ANDREW FOCUSED ATTENTION ON FEMA
FEMA’s deceptive role really did not come to light with much of the public until Hurricane Andrew smashed into the U.S. mainland. As Russell R. Dynes, director of the Disaster Research Center of the University of Delaware, wrote in The World and I, “…The eye of the political storm hovered over the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA became a convenient target for criticism.” Because FEMA was accused of dropping the ball in Florida, the media and Congress commenced to study this agency. What came out of the critical look was that FEMA was spending 12 times more for “black operations” than for disaster relief. It spent $1.3 billion building secret bunkers throughout the United States in anticipation of government disruption by foreign or domestic upheaval. Yet fewer than 20 members of Congress , only members with top security clearance, know of the $1.3 billion expenditure by FEMA for non-natural disaster situations. These few Congressional leaders state that FEMA has a “black curtain” around its operations. FEMA has worked on National Security programs since 1979, and its predecessor, the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency, has secretly spent millions of dollars before being merged into FEMA by President Carter in 1979.
FEMA has developed 300 sophisticated mobile units that are capable of sustaining themselves for a month. The vehicles are located in five areas of the United States. They have tremendous communication systems and each contains a generator that would provide power to 120 homes each, but have never been used for disaster relief.
FEMA’s enormous powers can be triggered easily. In any form of domestic or foreign problem, perceived and not always actual, emergency powers can be enacted. The President of the United States now has broader powers to declare martial law, which activates FEMA’s extraordinary powers. Martial law can be declared during time of increased tension overseas, economic problems within the United States, such as a depression, civil unrest, such as demonstrations or scenes like the Los Angeles riots, and in a drug crisis. These Presidential powers have increased with successive Crime Bills, particularly the 1991 and 1993 Crime Bills, which increase the power to suspend the rights guaranteed under the Constitution and to seize property of those suspected of being drug dealers, to individuals who participate in a public protest or demonstration. Under emergency plans already in existence, the power exists to suspend the Constitution and turn over the reigns of government to FEMA and appointing military commanders to run state and local governments. FEMA then would have the right to order the detention of anyone whom there is reasonable ground to believe…will engage in, or probably conspire with others to engage in acts of espionage or sabotage. The plan also authorized the establishment of concentration camps for detaining the accused, but no trial.
Three times since 1984, FEMA stood on the threshold of taking control of the nation. Once under President Reagan in 1984, and twice under President Bush in 1990 and 1992. But under those three scenarios, there was not a sufficient crisis to warrant risking martial law. Most experts on the subject of FEMA and Martial Law insisted that a crisis has to appear dangerous enough for the people of the United States before they would tolerate or accept complete government takeover. The typical crisis needed would be threat of imminent nuclear war, rioting in several U.S. cites simultaneously, a series of national disasters that affect widespread danger to the populous, massive terrorist attacks, a depression in which tens of millions are unemployed and without financial resources, or a major environmental disaster.
THREE TIMES FEMA STOOD BY READY FOR EMERGENCY
In April 1984, President Reagan signed Presidential Director Number 54 that allowed FEMA to engage in a secret national “readiness exercise” under the code name of REX 84. The exercise was to test FEMA’s readiness to assume military authority in the event of a “State of Domestic National Emergency” concurrent with the launching of a direct United States military operation in Central America. The plan called for the deputation of U.S. military and National Guard units so that they could legally be used for domestic law enforcement. These units would be assigned to conduct sweeps and take into custody an estimated 400,000 undocumented Central American immigrants in the United States. The immigrants would be interned at 10 detention centers to be set up at military bases throughout the country.
REX 84 was so highly guarded that special metal security doors were placed on the fifth floor of the FEMA building in Washington, D.C. Even long-standing employees of the Civil Defense of the Federal Executive Department possessing the highest possible security clearances were not being allowed through the newly installed metal security doors. Only personnel wearing a special red Christian cross or crucifix lapel pin were allowed into the premises. Lt. Col. North was responsible for drawing up the emergency plan, which U.S. Attorney General William French Smith opposed vehemently. The plan called for the suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to FEMA, appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and the declaration of Martial Law. The Presidential Executive Orders to support such a plan were already in place. The plan also advocated the rounding up and transfer to “assembly centers or relocation camps” of a least 21 million American Negroes in the event of massive rioting or disorder, not unlike the rounding up of the Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
The second known time that FEMA stood by was in 1990 when Desert Storm was enacted. Prior to President Bush’s invasion of Iraq, FEMA began to draft new legislation to increase its already formidable powers. One of the elements incorporated into the plan was to set up operations within any state or locality without the prior permission of local or state authorities. Such prior permission has always been required in the past. Much of the mechanism being set into place was in anticipation of the economic collapse of the Western World. The war with Iraq may have been conceived as a ploy to boost the bankrupt economy, but it only pushed the West into deeper recession.
The third scenario for FEMA came with the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King brutality verdict. Had the rioting spread to other cities, FEMA would have been empowered to step in. As it was, major rioting only occurred in the Los Angeles area, thus preventing a pretext for a FEMA response.
On July 5, 1987, the Miami Herald published reports on FEMA’s new goals. The goal was to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent, or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad. Lt. Col. North was the architect. National Security Directive Number 52 issued in August 1982, pertains to the “Use of National Guard Troops to Quell Disturbances.”
The crux of the problem is that FEMA has the power to turn the United States into a police state in time of a real crisis or a manufactured crisis. Lt. Col. North virtually established the apparatus for dictatorship. Only the criticism of the Attorney General prevented the plans from being adopted. But intelligence reports indicate that FEMA has a folder with 22 Executive Orders for the President to sign in case of an emergency. It is believed those Executive Orders contain the framework of North’s concepts, delayed by criticism but never truly abandoned.
The crisis, as the government now see it, is civil unrest. For generations, the government was concerned with nuclear war, but the violent and disruptive demonstrations that surrounded the Vietnam War era prompted President Nixon to change the direction of emergency powers from war time to times of domestic unrest. Diana Raynolds, program director of the Edward R. Murrow Center, summed up the dangers of FEMA today and the public reaction to Martial Law in a drug crisis: “It was James Madison’s worst nightmare that a righteous faction would someday be strong enough to sweep away the Constitutional restraints designed by the framers to prevent the tyranny of centralized power, excessive privilege, an arbitrary governmental authority over the individual. These restraints, the balancing and checking of powers among branches and layers of government, and the civil guarantees, would be the first casualties in a drug-induced national security state with Reagan’s Civil Emergency Preparedness unleashed. Nevertheless, there would be those who would welcome NSC (National Security Council) into the drug fray, believing that increasing state police powers to emergency levels is the only way left to fight American’s enemy within. In the short run, a national security state would probably be a relief to those whose personal security and quality of life has been diminished by drugs or drug related crime. And, as the general public watches the progression of institutional chaos and social decay, they too may be willing to pay the ultimate price, one drug free America for 200 years of democracy.”
The first targets in any FEMA emergency would be Hispanics and Blacks, the FEMA orders call for them to be rounded up and detained. Tax protesters, demonstrators against government military intervention outside U.S. borders, and people who maintain weapons in their homes are also targets. Operation Trojan Horse is a program designed to learn the identity of potential opponents to martial law. The program lures potential protesters into public forums, conducted by a “hero” of the people who advocates survival training. The list of names gathered at such meetings and rallies are computerized and then targeted in case of an emergency.
The most shining example of America to the world has been its peaceful transition of government from one administration to another. Despite crises of great magnitude, the United States has maintained its freedom and liberty. This nation now stands on the threshold of rule by non-elected people asserting non-Constitutional powers. Even Congress cannot review a Martial Law action until six months after it has been declared. For the first time in American history, the reigns of government would not be transferred from one elected element to another, but the Constitution, itself, can be suspended.
The scenarios established to trigger FEMA into action are generally found in the society today, economic collapse, civil unrest, drug problems, terrorist attacks, and protests against American intervention in a foreign country. All these premises exist, it could only be a matter of time in which one of these triggers the entire emergency necessary to bring FEMA into action, and then it may be too late, because under the FEMA plan, there is no contingency by which Constitutional power is resto
On March 13th 2008 there was a secret closed door meeting of The United States House Of Representatives in Washington. During the last 182 years in the history of The United States, this is only the sixth time a secret meeting has been held by The House. Even though Representatives are sworn to secrecy by House Rules XVII, some of the members were so shocked, horrified, furious, and concerned about the future of America by what was revealed to them inside the secret meeting, that they have started to leak this secret information to independent news agencies around the world. The mass media said almost nothing about the secret meeting of the House, mentioning only one of the items being discussed. (The new surveillance techniques that are going to be used by the U.S. Government to watch all American citizens). The story was first released in a newspaper out of Brisbane, Australia revealing the contents of the secret U.S. Government meeting and plans for America including all of it’s citizens. Shortly there after, David J. Meyer from Last Trumpet Ministries found it and made it more available for the world to see.
Here is what was revealed:
The imminent collapse of the U.S. Economy to occur sometime in late 2008
The imminent collapse of the U.S. Government finances sometime in mid 2009
The possibility of Civil War inside the United States as a result of the collapse
The advance round-ups of insurgent U.S. Citizens likely to move against the government
The detention of those rounded up at The REX 84 Camps constructed throughout the United States
The possibility of public retaliation against members of Congress for the collapses
The location of safe facilities for members of Congress and their families to reside during massive civil unrest
The necessary and unavoidable merger of The U.S. with Canada and Mexico establishing The North American Union
The issuance of a new currency called the AMERO for all three nations as an economic solution.
Obviously, there is no documentary proof for the above as the meetings were secret. The information, however, does fit the profile of what is going on around us. Our Almighty Savior is ultimately in charge. Time will tell if these things are so, and time is running out!
List of Executive Orders
Executive Order Number
Meaning
10990
Allows the government to take control over all modes of transportation, highways, and seaports.
10995
Allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
10997
Allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels, and minerals.
10998
Allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.
11000
Allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.
11001
Allows the government to take over all health, education, and welfare functions.
11002
Designates the Postmaster General to operate national registration of all persons.
11003
Allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.
11004
Allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.
11005
Allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways, and public storage facilities.
11051
Specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.
11310
Grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.
11049
Assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period.
11921
Allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and flow of money in the U.S.A. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months.
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NEW UPDATE:
Losses in market share to the Eurodollar are to be expected, but the American dollar in free fall is no accident.
The moneychangers of the Federal Reserve have orchestrated that freefall to justify their secret plan to subvert
Canada, Mexico and the U.S. into their greedy brainchild: the North American Union. Intrinsic to the North
American Union is total control of a new proposed currency, the amero. It is well-known in Congress that the
amero printing dies are ready. To implement the North American Union, the moneychangers need to dismantle
the Constitution, assisted by the Chief Justice Roberts’ lie that the U.S. is a constitutional democracy.
Looking At The Big Picture
Except for a few hundred thousand U.S. Patriots, most Americans have no clue what has really been going on within The United States over the past 100 years, and the sad thing is that most do not want to know the truth. The further you look into the rabbit hole, the deeper it gets. Go to any currency conversion site and convert U.S. dollars to Euros so you can see for yourself the massive decline of the dollar. Look at how much money is and has been spent on the Iraq War to date, ($12 billion per month). Look at our currency and when it stopped being backed by gold. The Federal Reserve is not federal but a private bank who does not have Americans best interests at heart. We no longer have any manufacturing really based out of America and there is no way that our economy can survive this incredible strain very much longer. The IRS strong arms every American yearly with income taxes, yet there are no laws saying an income tax is to be paid. The CIA is involved in everything from global drug trafficking and covert military missions, to assassinations around the world and including U.S. Soil. Look at JFK for instance. It did not take long after JFK announced that he was going disband the CIA that he was shot in Texas. America’s new Stasi based organization called The Department Of Homeland Security is and has been slowly eradicating our rights for a few years now. House Bill H.R. 1955/S-1959 was read by the senate and then sent to DHS for some reason, but is now back and sure to pass. Once passed, this bill introduced by Jane Harman (D/CA), will be the proverbial last nail hammered into every American patriots coffin. HR 4279 or the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 which was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, will give the government draconian powers to do just this. This legislation gives the government the power to seize property that facilitates the violation of intellectual property laws. The legislation also mandates the formation of a formal Intellectual Property Enforcement Division within the office of the Deputy Attorney General to enforce this insanity… It has been revealed that F.E.M.A. has been building internment camps all over America granting Halliburton a massive $385 million dollar construction contract to make this happen. Most of these sites only need refurbished because they are mostly closed prisons, old WW2 internment camps still intact and other facilities taken over by the government. Some people have referred to them as F.E.M.A. Death Camps where the infamous Red list/Blue Lists will be used to decide who goes where. Whether you believe that The NWO/Illuminati/Globalization is real or not, there is a lot of proof that exposes definite plans or plots by the rich, political and religious elite to bring on an era of the end times. It is almost like some individuals are trying to make bible prophecy come true in their own sick and twisted ways. Not to mention that the world only has about 10 to 15 years of drinking water left before the wars fought for oil today will be fought for water in the near future. It has been said that these powers want to depopulate the planet of over 30% of it’s human inhabitants in the coming years. Examine all of the executive orders that have been signed into place allowing the president to basically become dictator in control of all government from tribal to federal in the event of any national emergency. If you did not know, In late 2006, Congress revised the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act to make it far easier for a president to declare martial law. Those changes were repealed at the end of this January as part of Public Law 110-181 (HR 4986), the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (signed into law by President Bush on January 28, 2008). Unfortunately it is not the great victory in which one might think because of the total militarization of all local and State police forces all across America. Will there be martial law? Is martial law coming soon to America? When you see law enforcement being armed with automatic weapons, bullet proof vests and riot gear in small towns that have not had a murder or crime in years, then you have to ask yourself why. The United States has more people locked up in prisons today than Russia and China combined. It comes out to one in every hundred Americans is behind bars. Our once great country that our ancestors fought and died for has become exactly the tyrants they were fighting. Fascists! When has America ever used words like Homeland? Never! If you spend a few weeks reading all the info, watching the videos and following the links at The U.A.F.F., you will then have a better understanding of what has led to The Decline And Fall Of America. Remember that Knowledge is power! Learn, look, listen, read, share, prepare, train, stock up on food and water supply for one year. Fill your pantry with non perishable foods, medicines, cooking oils, tinned meats and veggies. Flour, oats dried corn peas, beans and lentils.. Teach your self how to preserve food for storage. Check out your local potable/ drinking water supplies, non perfumed chlorine bleach is a good sterilizer for water, about 2 teaspoons full per 2 gallon bucket, stirred well and allowed to stand for at least 24 hours with a lid on it or until it no longer smells of bleach. Boiling water helps but it is not always enough to kill off the bacteria which can resist high temperatures. Americans have been warned for years of the things to come, but have blindly looked away from the truth, which has been available for all to see. There are no more excuses not to prepare for the possible future. The time to act is now before it is too late. Check The United American Freedom Foundation for daily updates and news you won’t see in the mainstream media.
US Air Force Study Suggests 2009 Influenza Pandemic in 1996
2009-avian-flu-pandemic
In 2009, according to a figure in the Air Force 2025 report, influenza kills 30 million people.
* A fascinating US Air Force study: Air Force 2025 released in 1996 suggests a plausible Avian Flu Pandemic for 2009. Kurt Nimmo writes :
On June 17, 1996, the U.S. Air Force released Air Force 2025, “a study designed to comply with a directive from the chief of staff of the Air Force to examine the concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future.” In the unclassified study, the College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and Education at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama posed several “fictional representations of future situations/scenarios” likely to arise.
In Chapter 5, the authors present a timeline figure representing “plausible history.” In 2009, according to the figure, influenza will kill 30 million people. “A similar influenza pandemic occurred in the past,” a footnote explains, making a reference to the influenza epidemic of 1918 and 1919, described as “one of the worst human catastrophes on record. It has been estimated that more than 20 million people around the world died during the epidemic, and of the 20 million people who suffered from the illness in the United States, approximately 850,000 died.”
“The influenza virus is unique among viruses in being able to undergo so much antigenic change that an antigenically novel virus can sweep around the world in a year or two, giving rise to significant morbidity and mortality,” another footnote states.
It is interesting to note that the source of the Air Force’s fictional pandemic is described as unknown and it is not “determined if the virus was a natural mutation or bioengineered. Many feared the latter.” (Emphasis added.)
Is it merely a coincidence the Pentagon would propose in 1996 a deadly flu pandemic for 2009 when live H5N1 avian flu viruses are discovered in vaccines produced by a Baxter International plant in Austria?
“The fact that Baxter mixed the deadly H5N1 virus with a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses is the smoking gun,” writes Paul Joseph Watson. “The H5N1 virus on its own has killed hundreds of people, but it is less airborne and more restricted in the ease with which it can spread. However, when combined with seasonal flu viruses, which as everyone knows are super-airborne and easily spread, the effect is a potent, super-airborne, super deadly biological weapon” of the sort proposed in Air Force 2025.
Last year, author and researcher F. William Engdahl revealed a Pentagon effort to weaponize avian flu. “If the reports are accurate, this could unleash a new pandemic on the planet that could be more devastating than the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic which killed an estimated 30 million people worldwide before it eventually died out,” writes Engdahl.
Engdahl then suggests “that sections of the international pharmaceutical industry cartel are acting in concert with the US Government to develop a genetically modified H5N1 virus substance that could unleash a man-made pandemic.” He cites Rima E. Laibow, MD, head of the Natural Solutions Foundation, a citizen watchdog group monitoring the pharmaceutical industry, who states:
Our best intelligence estimate is that pandemic Avian Flu has already been created through genetic engineering in the United States, fusing the deadly genome of the 1918 Pandemic, misnamed the ‘Spanish Flu’, with the DNA of the innocuous H5N1 virus in a growth medium of human kidney cells, according to the National Institutes of Health and the vaccine’s manufacturer. Some virologists believe that this would insure that the man-made mutant virus recognizes human cells and knows how to invade them.
Finally, it should be noted that Walter E. Boomer, a retired former four-star General and Assistant Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, sits on the board of directors of Baxter International. Of course, this is not definitive evidence the military controls Baxter or is behind the “accidental” contamination of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses with the H5N1 virus at its laboratory in Austria. It is highly suspicious, however.
Baxter International has had a relationship with the military since 1941, when its blood-collection devices were the only ones that met the specifications of the U.S. Armed Forces.
In a ‘Holy convenience, Batman!’ moment, a ‘unique‘ flu virus (one likely concocted in US Army labs) overtakes media coverage of revelations that the highest levels of the US government instructed the CIA (and private contractors) to torture terror suspects.
Scientists said the virus combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before. “We are very, very concerned,” World Health Organization spokesman Thomas Abraham said. “We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human,” he said. “It’s all hands on deck at the moment.”
Guess where the first swine flu outbreak occurred? That’s right, Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1976. Also likely created in a US Army lab. Thirteen soldiers died, leading the US government to force a questionable vaccine on the population — backed by a legal liability escape clause mandated by and for the pharma-terrorists. Next, people started dying not from the flu — but from the *vaccine.*
Every major media outlet has reported the fact that US/UK bioterrorists have been manipulating the avian flu virus in university and Army labs. This new flu strain, one that ‘no one has ever seen,’ contains avian flu. Now, how does *that* happen?
CLG has been covering flu ‘oddities’ for eight years. See: Flu ‘Oddities’ and Flu ‘Oddities’ News Archives.
*****
Flu Kills The Torture Memos obama 340×169
U.S. denies producing biological weapons from bird flu samples –Media: U.S. denies Indonesia’s allegation on bird flu virus 17 Mar 2008 The United States has flatly denied allegations it was producing biological weapons from bird flu samples sent by Indonesia to the World Health Organization, the English daily The Jakarta Post reported Monday. Michael H. Anderson, counselor for Public Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia, [has issued the denial]. However, Indonesian senior biodefense researcher Isro Samihardjo said the U.S. could use bird flu virus samples from Indonesia to develop weapons at the Los Alamos Laboratory. Isro was speaking at a meeting about Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari’s newly released book here Saturday. In her book “It’s Time for the World to Change, Divine Hands behind Bird Flu,” Siti writes of her suspicions about a conspiracy between the U.S. and the WHO.
Experts identify genes for bird flu replication 09 Jul 2008 Scientists have identified around 100 genes that the H5N1 bird flu virus needs in a host in order to replicate, and this finding may help in the hunt for ways to block foment its proliferation.
Army: 3 vials of virus samples missing from Maryland facility 22 Apr 2009 Missing vials of a potentially dangerous virus have prompted an Army investigation into the disappearance from a lab in Maryland. The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command agents have been visiting Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, to investigate the disappearance of the vials. The vials contained samples of Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis… In 97 percent of cases, humans with the virus suffer flu-like symptoms, but it can be deadly in about 1 out of 100 cases, according to Caree Vander Linden, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.
Scientists isolate genes that made 1918 flu lethal 29 Dec 2008 By mixing and matching a contemporary flu virus with the “Spanish flu” — a virus that killed between 20 and 50 million people 90 years ago in history’s most devastating outbreak of infectious disease — researchers have identified a set of three genes that helped underpin the extraordinary virulence of the 1918 virus. Writing today (Dec. 29) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison virologists Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Tokiko Watanabe identifies genes that gave the 1918 virus the capacity to reproduce in lung tissue, a hallmark of the pathogen that claimed more lives than all the battles of World War I combined.
Killer flu recreated in the lab 07 Oct 2004 Scientists have shown that tiny changes to modern flu viruses could render them as deadly as the 1918 strain which killed millions. A US team added two genes from a sample of the 1918 virus to a modern strain known to have no effect on mice. Animals exposed to this composite were dying within days of symptoms similar to those found in human victims of the 1918 pandemic.
Venture capital firm set to reap rewards on swine flu 24 Apr 2009 The swine flu outbreak is likely to benefit one of the most prolific and successful venture capital firms in the United States: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Thomson Reuters Private Equity Week reported on Friday. Shares of the two public companies in the firm’s portfolio of eight Pandemic and Bio Defense companies — BioCryst Pharmaceuticals and Novavax — jumped Friday on news that the swine flu killed a reported 60 people in Mexico and has infected people in the United States. The World Health Organization said the [unique] virus appears to be susceptible to Roche’s flu drug Tamiflu, also known as oseltamivir, but not to older flu drugs such as amantadine.
Rumsfeld’s growing stake in Tamiflu –Defense Secretary, ex-chairman of flu treatment rights holder, sees portfolio value growing. 31 Oct 2005 The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the globe, but it’s proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy that’s now the most-sought after drug in the world. Rumsfeld served as Gilead (Research)’s chairman from 1997 until he joined the Bush administration in 2001, and he still holds a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million, according to federal financial disclosures filed by Rumsfeld.
There are some factors that suggest the swine flu killing people in Mexico may be a biological weapon, but obviously no such conclusion can be drawn at this time. The World Health Organization and the U.S. government have been quick to deny such claims.
The swine flu virus is described as a completely new strain, an intercontinental mixture of human, avian and swine viruses. Tellingly, there have been no reported A-H1N1 infections of pigs.
According to a source known to former NSA official Wayne Madsen, “A top scientist for the United Nations, who has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as HIV/AIDS victims, concluded that H1N1 possesses certain transmission “vectors” that suggest that the new flu strain has been genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon.
Madsen claims that his source, and another in Indonesia, “Are convinced that the current outbreak of a new strain of swine flu in Mexico and some parts of the United States is the result of the introduction of a human-engineered pathogen that could result in a widespread global pandemic, with potentially catastrophic consequences for domestic and international travel and commerce.”
However, it’s important to stress that it is far too early to make this assumption. We have to bear in mind that the number of victims has been comparatively low when one considers the fact that hundreds of thousands in Mexico contract infectious diseases every year related to poverty like tuberculosis and malaria.
* A d v e r t i s e m e n t
* efoods
Fort Detrick, the U.S. Army Medical Command installation that was the source of the 2001 anthrax attacks, is again attracting suspicion in light of the swine flu panic after it was revealed that criminal investigators are probing whether virus samples recently went missing from its biolabs.
“Chad Jones, spokesman for Fort Meade, said CID is investigating the possibility of missing virus samples from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases,” reports The Frederick News.
In February, USAMRIID halted their work when virus samples were discovered that were not listed in its inventory. Criminal investigators from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division unit at Fort Meade are now probing whether virus samples are missing from the Army’s top biolab, which also studies pathogens including ebola, anthrax and plague.
Obviously, in light of the current swine flu scare, and the new strain’s possible synthetic origin, the fact that virus samples may have gone missing from the same Army research lab from which the 2001 anthrax strain was released is extremely disturbing.
A 2008 FBI and DOJ investigation concluded that Bruce Edwards Irvins, a microbiologist, vaccinologist, and senior biodefense researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland, was responsible for mailing anthrax to members of Congress and the media in September and October 2001.
The fact that Irvins apparently committed suicide shortly before the announcement led many to suspect that he was a patsy in a wider plot. Despite the suspicious circumstances, no autopsy was carried out on Irvins’ body. His attorney was certain that Irvins, who had cooperated with the 6-year investigation, was innocent of the five anthrax deaths.
The Department of Justice initially considered Dr. Steven Jay Hatfill to be a strong suspect in the anthrax attacks, but he later sued the government and won $5.8 million in damages. A New York Times piece on Irvins’ suicide asked the hypothetical question: “What if Dr. Hatfill had committed suicide in 2002, as friends feared he might? Would the investigators have released their evidence and announced that the perpetrator was dead?”
Fears that a mass pandemic was being readied as a biological attack have rumbled on in the conspiracy community ever since 9/11. Investigators point to the highly unusual number of deaths of top microbiologists to suggest that people with knowledge of the program are being eliminated.
In a little-noticed trend blamed on the state’s hard economic times, several courts in Florida have resurrected the de facto debtor’s prison — having thousands of Floridians jailed for failing to pay assessed court fees and fines. The shortsighted plan threatens to run afoul of the U.S. Constitution. It appears to generate little additional revenue relative to the misery it causes, and it should be stopped.
A recent report by the nonprofit Brennan Center at New York University School of Law highlights the difficulty of trying to get what one researcher called “blood from stone.” In Leon County’s Collection Court, defendants who fail to pay their court-ordered costs and fines — often hundreds of dollars — are notified to appear at Collections Court and later arrested if they don’t show. In the 12 months studied, there were 838 arrests for not appearing in court or failing to pay what was owed. Most people spent hours in jail, but some were held for a week or more.
At $53 per day of incarceration, it is an expensive way to try to collect from people who generally are struggling to meet the expenses of daily living. The center calculated that those incarcerated cost the system $62,085 to bring in $80,450 in debts.
Jail time for being broke is no way to help people get back on their feet after a run-in with the legal system. Judges should be exercising the option in state law that allows them to convert court-ordered obligations into community service. But with the Florida Legislature looking for revenue to fund the courts and other state services, judges are under pressure to wring every available penny out of those who owe.
The nonpayment problem is only likely to worsen. In Tallahassee, lawmakers are debating raising court fees and fines even further to raise general revenue for the state. Meanwhile, the state’s rising unemployment rate will make it tougher for Floridians with a criminal record to find a decent job. Do we really want our jails filled with people whose only “crime” is that they are poor?
About a third of Florida counties use collections courts, but even those without them jail people for their debts. In Pinellas, Hillsborough and Hernando counties, collection agencies are used to extract the overdue fines and fees. But defendants who violate their probation by failing to pay can find themselves in jail if a judge believes they have not coughed up what they can.
Author Charles Dickens familiarized his readers with England’s system of squalid debtors’ prisons. Dickens’ father was imprisoned in Marshalsea for debts and Dickens set Little Dorrit there. But that country saw the light in the mid 19th century and outlawed jail for debtors.
In the United States, it is unconstitutional to incarcerate someone solely for failing to pay a debt. Florida officials get around this by claiming the defendants are going to jail not for their debts but for violating a court order. That is what you would call a self-serving technicality. The truth is that Florida has enthusiastically resurrected debtors’ prison. How Dickensian is that?
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.
This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
Abraham Lincoln
Are you fed up with a Congress and a president who:
* vote for a $500 billion tax bill without even reading it?
* are spending trillions of borrowed dollars, leaving a debt our great-grandchildren will be paying?
* consistently give special interest groups billions of dollars in earmarks to help get themselves re-elected?
* want to take your wealth and redistribute it to others?
* punish those who practice responsible financial behavior and reward those who do not?
* admit to using the financial hurt of millions as an opportunity to push their political agenda?
* run up trillions of dollars of debt and then sell that debt to countries such as China?
* want government controlled health care?
* want to take away the right to vote with a secret ballot in union elections?
* refuse to stop the flow of millions of illegal immigrants into our country?
* appoint a defender of child pornography to the Number 2 position in the Justice Department?
* want to force doctors and other medical workers to perform abortions against their will?
* want to impose a carbon tax on your electricity, gas and home heating fuels?
* want to reduce your tax deductibility for charitable gifts?
* take money from your family budget to pay for their federal budget?
Show your government that you are serious.
Attend a Local Protest.
Undercover 4 Liberty 