Preemptive raid against activists in Chicago... what's it going to take before you are pissed off

[Luminous Animal]

enough to do something.

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/05/17/police-preemptively-raid-apartment-arrest-activists-ahead-of-nato-summit/

Chicago police have reportedly engaged in a preemptive raid against activists that planned to protest the NATO summit. The raid is believed to have taken place late last night in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago.

The National Lawyers Guild reports:

…Police broke down a door to access a 6-unit apartment building near 32nd & Morgan Streets without a search warrant. Police entered an apartment with guns drawn and tackled one of the tenants to the floor in his kitchen. Two tenants were handcuffed for more than 2 hours in their living room while police searched their apartment and a neighboring unit, repeatedly calling one of the tenants a “Commie faggot.” A search warrant produced 4 hours after police broke into the apartment was missing a judge’s signature, according to witnesses. Among items seized by police in the Bridgeport raid were beer-making supplies and at least one cell phone…

These kinds of raids are the “hallmark of National Special Security Event,” says Sarah Gelsomino of the NLG and People’s Law Office. Gelsomino is correct. In fact, Michael Ratner and Margaret Ratner Kunstler document the “new paradigm of law enforcement” that is preemptive policing in their book Hell No! Your Right to Dissent.

Kunstler and Ratner call it the domestic version of preemptive war. The doctrine of preemptive policing relies on:

…information about demonstration plans, organizers and participants collected in advance of events to cancel protests and acts of dissent before any wrongdoing has occurred. Even assuming that such intelligence is reliable (most of the time police intelligence about protests is proven to be mistaken; the majority of demonstrators and bystanders arrested are found to be innocent of any crimes), the concept of relying on the ability of police to predict violations of the law flies in the face of the First Amendment. Well-established Constitutional law prohibits the government in nearly all instances from exercising prior restraint of speech or association…

[think]

1. Don't throw your copy of the constitution out quite yet

You can still wrap fish with it.

[Cleita]

2. You know what if the so-called authorities don't want to play fair, maybe

it's time for the movement to go underground and start using guerilla tactics. Now, I'm not advocating violence but stealth and the tactic of surprise.

[Enrique]

3. the Tea Party will be up in arms over this

given their love of Liberty and their devotion to the Constitution, and their hatred of big government.

[awoke_in_2003]

4. I really do not recognize...

this country anymore.

[47of74]

5. Give $$ to the NLG

That's what I did.

[Dawson Leery]

6. The goal of law "enforcement" is not justice, it is to protect the ruling class.

[Luminous Animal]

7. The raid was conducted by the organized crime division. WTF!

[DeSwiss]

8. K&R

[center]''All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed
they must rely exclusively on force.''~George Orwell [/center]

[Ed Suspicious]

9. I suspect it was done with Rhambo's blessing. n/t