More military exercises

Army Invades Galveston, Texas

On Wednesday the residents of Galveston, Texas, endured what folks in Houston and Miami did earlier this week – an “urban warfare” exercise conducted by the U.S. Military.

Infowars,

31 January, 2013

“If you hear a lot of loud noises in Galveston tonight, it’s probably part of a military training exercise,”KTRK-TV in Houston reported. “According to the Galveston County Daily News, the Army is using the old jail on 17th Street for a night drill in urban warfare.”

Around 80 soldiers from the U.S. Army Special Operations Command in coordination with local law enforcement violated Posse Comitatus on Wednesday night, the Houston Chronicle reported.

“We were invited by the city of Galveston to conduct joint training exercises to enhance the effectiveness of both services in order to better protect the residents of Galveston,” Sgt. 1st Class Michael Noggle, an Army spokesman based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, told the newspaper.

How Galveston residents alarmed by noisy military maneuvers are “better protected” by the mini-invasion was not explained. Is it possible the Pentagon and the bureaucrats who “invited” the Army are worried about al-Qaeda’s navy showing up at the Port of Galveston?

“The purpose of the realistic urban training is to give our Special Operators an opportunity to hone their skills in a controlled, but unfamiliar, realistic urban environment that cannot be replicated with the bare-boned facades found on military installation ranges,” he wrote in an email.

As we have noted on numerous occasions, these increasingly frequent military exercises in coordination with local cops and officialdom are less about training in urban settings “that cannot be replicated with the bare-boned facades found on military installation ranges” then they are about acclimating citizens to the prospect of combat soldiers in their midst.

Incidentally, KTRK-TV reported that “the Army and Houston police apologized for not giving advance warning of a joint training exercise in southeast Houston” earlier in the week.

Arkansas town’s martial law

plan

Backlash met plan for officers with AR-15s to patrol Paragould, stopping everyone out walking for their ID

Salon

30 January, 2013

Updated, Jan. 30: According to local news reports, the police department canceled two subsequent town hall meetings to discuss the heavy handed policing plan. Following outrage from Paragould residents, the police cited “public safety concerns” to cancel the meetings. Meanwhile, Paragould’s mayor has reportedly dialed back his rhetoric around the amped up policing proposal and, according to the Arkansas Times, the mayor said patrolling police would not “constantly” be carrying assault rifles. Although announced to begin in January, no SWAT patrols have begun in Paragould yet.

 

Original: Following a rise in violent crime in Paragould, an Arkansas town of around 26,000 residents, the mayor and police chief announced that starting this month police in SWAT gear carrying AR-15s would patrol the streets.

“If you’re out walking, we’re going to stop you, ask why you’re out walking, and check for your ID,” police chief Todd Stovall told a December town hall meeting. As if to render the implementation of a visible police state more palatable, Stovall assured residents that police stops would not be based on any profiling: “We’re going to do it to everybody,” he said.

Stovall also told residents he had not consulted an attorney before instituting the plan. HuffPo’s Radley Balko noted that Paragould is not the first town to bring in such measures:

Using SWAT teams for routine patrols isn’t uncommon. Fresno did this for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The city sent its Violent Crimes Suppression Unit into poorer neighborhoods and stopped, confronted, questioned, and searched nearly everyone they encountered. “It’s a war,” one SWAT officer told Christian Parenti in a a report for The Nation (not available online). Another said, “If you’re 21, male, living in one of these neighborhoods, and you’re not in our computer, then there’s something definitely wrong.”

Balko picked up on interesting detail in Stovall’s comments. The police chief said, “This fear is what’s given us the reason to do this. Once I have stats and people saying they’re scared, we can do this.” As Balko pointed out, although there was an uptick in violent crime in Paragould, “fear” of crime was used as the pretext to implement martial law — based on such troubling reasoning, there is never not fear in U.S. towns today and so there is never not a pretext to introduce patrolling SWAT teams.