Homeland Security gone wild

S

steelheart

Moderator
From New American comes yet another example of Homeland Security personnel running amok and acting as if they are above the law. Why is it that an agency that is supposed to be "for our own good" lets its employees act like thugs??



Abusing Homeland Authority (Excerpt)
by William Norman Grigg
May 15, 2006

As it emerges as our country's first national police force, Michael Chertoff's Department of Homeland Security is becoming notorious for abuses of power ? and even depraved crimes against children.
The school day had ended and the parking lot at Englewood Elementary was full of energetic kids eager to go home when Leander Pickett saw a late model car obstructing the school bus loading zone. Pickett, a teacher's assistant at the Jacksonville, Florida, grade school, strolled over to the car, which had made a wrong turn into an exit lane, and told its occupants they had to move.

Pickett's reward for looking after the safety of the schoolkids was to be thrown face-down onto the hood of the car, handcuffed, and held for more than a half-hour as students, teachers, and parents looked on in horror.

"I walked up to [the driver] and said, 'Sir, you need to move,'" Pickett told a television reporter. "That's when he said 'I'm a police officer. I'm with Homeland Security. I'll move when I want to.' That's when he started grabbing me on my arm."

"Mr. Pickett asked the guy blocking the bus loading zone to move, and the guy told him he would move his car when he got ready to move it," confirmed eyewitness Alton Jackson, a coach at the school. A second eyewitness, school employee Terri Dreisonstok, added: "At that point I intervened, and I went up to the gentleman and said, 'Mr. Pickett is an employee here,' and they said it didn't matter."

At the time Pickett was assaulted by the Homeland Security agents, school principal Gail Brinson was in the cafeteria. Summoned by an anxious student, Brinson raced to the parking lot and found an agitated Pickett being yelled at by the Homeland Security officials.

"I told them Mr. Pickett was an employee, and asked what he had done," Brinson recalled to The New American. "One of them told me that he had been 'abusive, aggressive, and belligerent,' but wouldn't say what else he had done to deserve being handcuffed. They just insisted over and over that it was 'Homeland Security business.' As I looked at Leander standing there in handcuffs without being told what he had done wrong, I said to the agents, 'Well, if you had treated me like this I would be belligerent, too.'"

Brinson demanded names and badge numbers, but the agents refused to provide them.

"They told me they didn't have to give me anything," she recounts. "They said that they were 'bigger than the FBI' and that they wouldn't let [Mr. Pickett] go until they thought it was okay. And all the time we had teachers crying, children screaming ? Leander is really popular with the kids ? and parents shouting at us." Finally, after an anguished half-hour, Pickett was set free without any charges being filed against him, and the federal agents drove away.

"You know what I think happened?" Brinson said to The New American. "I think they simply got lost, made a wrong turn into our parking lot, and when Mr. Pickett exercised his proper authority by telling them to move, the two things the Devil likes most took over ? pride and arrogance." With the help of an acquaintance who works for the federal government, Brinson pursued a complaint through the Homeland Security Department's civil liberties section, but it availed her nothing.

"You can't get anywhere with these people," she points out. "When something like this happens nobody [in the federal bureaucracy] will listen unless you have a connection. Well, I had a connection, and it still didn't help. I just kept getting transferred around from desk to desk, and finally I spoke with some official who just told me that they 'stand behind our men.'"

Leander Pickett hired a lawyer and prepared to file a civil rights lawsuit. "You know you hear these stories every day and say, 'This will never happen to me,' but ? it happened to me," comments Pickett. "If this is Homeland Security, I think we ought to be a little afraid."
 
This is the kind of thing you can expect to become commonplace in the next few years. Americans are not resisting it, and not standing up to it...why, then, should the government be afraid to intensify it?
 
Thugs with badges

From Eghad's link:
The department said the only reason the officers were at the school was because they pulled over to look at a map.
Click to expand...
So the Homeland Security thugs got lost, blocked the busses, and assaulted the guy who asked them to move their car.

My, my, my, aren't they big, brave men.:barf: :barf: :barf: They are nothing but power-tripping @$$holes.
 
This is the kind of thing you can expect to become commonplace in the next few years. Americans are not resisting it, and not standing up to it...why, then, should the government be afraid to intensify it?
Click to expand...

Greed, fear, growing uneducated population= more crime=more laws=
less freedom.:(
 
Except for the fact that the thugs said they were with "Homeland Security", no one knows anything about them. They never (apparently) showed badges or ID. Unless someone got the license of the car, they may never figure out who these guys are. Certainly it's quite possible they were not from any police agency whatever.

Edit: Rereading the article, it appears that Homeland Security has acknowledged that officers were at the school checking a map.

Tim
 
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there is probably bias on both sides of the story....

But why would the Homeland Security agents handcuff him and detain him?
Why didnt they just move and avoid the whole situation?
 
lilysdad-
I agree that the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. But here's the sticking point:
- There's little question that these Feds cuffed and detained a teacher in front of a less than admiring crowd. That said, what LEO would have simply released him, knowing the accusations and legal actions that would surely follow. Clearly, if he had broken some law, CYA principles would have mitigated for his arrest...even if charges would later be dropped. If he hadn't broken a law, he should never have been cuffed.

So, while I agree the truth lies somewhere between the two stories, the crux of the events don't speak well for these guys. Not well at all. Meantime, there's absolutely zero information that would indicate any of the teachers or students acted in an inappropriate manner.
Rich
 
"Becuz we're Homeland Security, dammit! Now you citizoids stop sending your rugrats to schools that might be....um.... where we pull over to look at a map becuz we're....um....lost, and be SURE and not get all uppity with us and then maybe, if you're really really good, we won't slam your schnozz on the concrete. Capish?"
 
Too Bad! Those agents should be detained and questioned by the American people. If they don't like it, we'll bump em off the pay roll.

We pay em, we pay to train them, they damn well better have a good answer!!!!!!!!!!
 
"Meantime, there's absolutely zero information that would indicate any of the teachers or students acted in an inappropriate manner."

What a coincidence. The news story was written by someone who was not there, who got most of his info from the teachers and students. Homeland Security is certainly not going to make any kind of statement until they have investigated. As a news item, this story really does contain almost zero information.

People need to be much more critical of what they read in the press.

Tim
 
We all know school teachers and students are agents of the liberal left and will go out of thier way to do anything to embaress federal agents :rolleyes: LOL

Yup and the Homeland Security agency has little to say....except for that line its under investigation
 
Do they use money from their own budget to pay for these investigations:rolleyes:

Maybe we should form yet another federal agency to screw America and gain more control over the sheeple.

We have BATFE harassing everyday Americans at gun shows and only god knows what else.


TAX CUTS, TAX CUTS, and MORE TAX CUTS!
 
"We all know school teachers and students are agents of the liberal left and will go out of thier way to do anything to embaress federal agents"

How do you know these teachers and students wouldn't do just that? Based on this article, you don't know one way or the other. You're just left to make assumptions.

"Yup and the Homeland Security agency has little to say....except for that line its under investigation"

What would you expect them to say? What would you say if you were the agency's public relations person and you had no facts?

I'm not saying the agents are blameless, but I also am not saying that I believe everything the teachers have said. I am simply saying that this story is purposely written to play on your emotions and presents very few useful and verifiable facts.

If you want to skewer the agents, go ahead. This is America. I am not willing to do so yet.

Tim
 
So let the communty grill these power heads along with the teachers and students.

Cut em down a few notches, go after bad guys, christ, do somthing, besides drive around lost all day.
 
Tim-
I note you responded to this part of my post:
Meantime, there's absolutely zero information that would indicate any of the teachers or students acted in an inappropriate manner.
Click to expand...
Fine, it was an afterthought and not necessary to my point. For the sake of discourse, I renounce it.


Now, how about responding to the point of my post:
There's little question that these Feds cuffed and detained a teacher in front of a less than admiring crowd. That said, what LEO would have simply released him, knowing the accusations and legal actions that would surely follow. Clearly, if he had broken some law, CYA principles would have mitigated for his arrest...even if charges would later be dropped. If he hadn't broken a law, he should never have been cuffed.
Click to expand...

See, when the response is, "Nothing proven; the public is probably lying; the media has no proof; nothing to see here.", you do nothing to disprove the account. In fact, you only serve to raise suspicion of organizations like Homeland Security which appear to owe no explanations to anyone but Homeland Security.

As for me, if it was my company and these were my employees and those teachers were my customers, I can pretty much betcha I'd have the "investigation" done in about 24 hours...this is not Iran-Contra, after all; and my "Public Affairs" person would have a statement for my customers about 2 hours later. That's called accountability.

The mantra that "We don't have all the facts" begins to wear thin when we don't have any recourse, other than relying on the accused agency's ability to internally investigate and respond.

Let's put it all on the table here: Are the accused to be dismissed because they're largely Black? Had this happened in Greenwich, CT or at Choate Academy, would we dismiss all those parents, teachers and kids as being untrustworthy? What did the Principal or the onlookers have to gain by lying? What do they have to lose? One doesn't have to "be there" to use common sense in extrapolating what happened....the guy was cuffed at his place of work and released....WHY?
Rich
 
the guy was cuffed at his place of work and released....WHY?
Click to expand...

exactly....its my understanding that to be handcuffed and detained there has to be reasonable suspicion of an offense against the law being committed or he has a reasonable suspicion that the officer might be placed in danger.

What was the offense or what was the danger to the officers? Thats a pretty easy question for thier supervisor to ask and get an answer...

is it unreasonable to get an answer to that in 1 hour?

in my experience when you dont get a quick and reasonable answer..somebody messed up.
 
Homeland Insecurity

This is of course the same Department of Homeland Security that just had one of its ranking officers arrested for child pornography and soliciting a minor, right?

Boy, I really feel so much safer now.:barf:
 
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