Armed And Dangerous
Federal agencies expanding use of firepower
Sarah Foster
This is an excerpt from an article that appeared in the
September 1997 issue of Liberty Link, Libertarian Sacramento, PO Box 3003,
Orangevale, California 95662, http://www.jps.net/lpsacto, 916 987-1237,
davidlh@jps.net |
During
the late morning of January 14, 1997, 20 heavily armed federal agents and
local sheriff's deputies descended from a military helicopter onto rocky
Santa Cruz Island off the California coast. As snipers moved into
position along the ridge tops to secure the perimeter of the attack area
other agents staged dynamic entry into the buildings rousting 15-year-old
Crystal Graybeel who was sleeping late in her cabin.
"They
started screaming, 'Put your hands where we can see them.' They unzipped
my sleeping bag. I had to get face down on the floor and they handcuffed
me," the teenager said. She recalled the intruders wore ski masks
and carried machine guns. They kept her handcuffed for two hours.
The
target of the raid? A 6,500 acre bow-and-arrow hunting ranch, the
last bastion of private property on the island. The raid resulted
in three arrests volunteer Rick Berg, 35, and caretakers Dave Mills,
34, and Brian Krantz, 33 on suspicion of robbing Chumash Indian graves
and taking human remains and artifacts, charges they denied.
The
agency responsible for all this was not the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms, nor the FBI, nor any other agency typically associated with
such "dynamic entries." This raid was the work of the National Park
Service.
Surprised?
So were local residents. Though no lives were lost, the raid inspired
a firestorm of protest. "It saddens me that the Park Service has
resorted to Ruby Ridge tactics," said Marla Daily, president of the Santa
Cruz Island Foundation, referring to the September 1992 standoff between
the FBI and Randy Weaver that resulted in the death of Weaver's wife [and
son editor]. "This incident clearly crosses the line," Daily
said.
If
the use of the Park Service in commando-style operations seems strange,
it shouldn't. At a time when elected legislative bodies from city
councils to Congress have been passing laws that restrict the rights of
law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms, federal agencies within the
executive branch have been quietly authorizing dramatically increased numbers
of armed personnel often heavily armed with military-style assault weapons.
Today,
there are nearly 60,000 federal agents trained and authorized to enforce
the over 3,000 criminal laws Congress has passed over the years, plus the
hundreds of thousands of regulations which now carry criminal penalties
....
But
beyond the flat figures loom questions of how agencies are using, or abusing,
the powers they have in everyday law enforcement. Sting operations
and other entrapment tactics, hidden-camera surveillance, phone tapping
these have become commonplace practices in the name of investigation.
So, too, the use of dynamic entry teams the kind witnessed at Waco and
Ruby Ridge.
David
Kopel, director of the free-market Independence Institute in Golden, Colorado,
is an outspoken critic of the usurpation of local and state police authority
by the Federal government and the growing use of violence in law enforcement.
According to Kopel, the FBI has 56 SWAT teams that "specialize in confrontation
rather than investigation, even though investigation is, after all, the
very purpose of the bureau."
"Whereas
(J. Edgar) Hoover's agents wore suits and typically had a background in
law or accounting, SWAT teams wear camouflage or black ninja clothing and
come from a military background," he said. "They are trained killers,
not trained investigators."
Even
worse, other agencies are trying to match "FBI swashbucklers." BATF,
DEA, U.S. Marshals Service, even the National Park Service and Department
of Health and Human Services all have their own SWAT teams.
Contacted
by telephone, Kopel said he was "not shocked" at the growing size of the
community of federal law enforcement personnel as reported by the GAO,
"in light of the trends over the past 20 years." "Of course," he
added, "it would have astonished and frightened the authors of our Constitution."
....
Kopel
sees the federalization of law enforcement and the growth of the FBI as
parts of a larger effort to establish a national police force. He
cites in particular the involvement of the FBI in local law enforcement.
"Besides traffic tickets, there aren't many crimes where the FBI isn't
involved in the prosecution," he said.
Eventually,
he predicts, federal law enforcement agencies will be merged beginning
by moving the Treasury agencies under the control of the Justice Department,
as Al Gore has recommended. "But a separation of powers is at least
a small check on the movement towards total police power consolidation
and keeps them from going completely overboard," said Kopel ....
The
raid at Santa Cruz ... wasn't the first for the Park Service.
It wasn't even the most horrific in terms of outcome. Just one month
after the Weaver debacle at Ruby Ridge, Malibu millionaire Donald Scott
was gunned down in his home in a mid-morning assault involving 14 agencies,
including NASA, Immigration and Naturalization Services and the L.A. County
Sheriff's Department. The alleged reason for the attack was that
Scott was suspected of growing marijuana. None was found. There,
as at Santa Cruz Island, the lead agency was the NPS; and there,
too, the real reason was to acquire Scott's estate for the Park Service.
At
Santa Cruz, the National Park Service had been trying to obtain the 6,500
acre ranch which covers 10 percent of the island. The Nature Conservancy
owns the other 90 percent. The three arrests occurred as the National
Park Service had obtained orders from Congress to seize the ranch.![10x5 Page Background GIF Image](../../Images/10x5_Page_Background.gif)
November 1997
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