Whitehead: The Police State’s Reign Of Terror Continues… With Help From The Supreme Court

by | Oct 6, 2021 | Headline News | 18 comments

Do you LOVE America?

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    This article was originally published by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead at the Rutherford Institute.

    “But whether the Constitution really be one thing or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.” ― Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority

    “Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges.”—George Carlin

    You think you’ve got rights? Think again.

    All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will.

    This is the grim reality of life in the American police state.

    In fact, in the face of the government’s ongoing power grabs, our so-called rights have been reduced to mere technicalities, privileges that can be granted and taken away, all with the general blessing of the courts.

    This is what one would call a slow death by a thousand cuts, only it’s the Constitution being inexorably bled to death by the very institution (the judicial branch of government) that is supposed to be protecting it (and us) from government abuse.

    Court pundits, fixated on a handful of politically charged cases before the U.S. Supreme Court this term dealing with abortion, gun rights, and COVID-19 mandates, have failed to recognize that the Supreme Court—and the courts in general—sold us out long ago.

    With each passing day, it becomes increasingly clear that Americans can no longer rely on the courts to “take the government off the backs of the people,” in the words of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. When presented with an opportunity to loosen the government’s noose that keeps getting cinched tighter and tighter around the necks of the American people, what does our current Supreme Court usually do?

    It ducks. Prevaricates. Remains silent. Speaks to the narrowest possible concern.

    More often than not, it gives the government and its corporate sponsors the benefit of the doubt, seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government interests than with upholding the rights of the people enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

    Rarely do the concerns of the populace prevail.

    Every so often, the justices toss a bone to those who fear they have abdicated their allegiance to the Constitution. Too often, however, the Supreme Court tends to march in lockstep with the police state.

    As a result, the police and other government agents have been generally empowered to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance.

    In recent years, for example, the Court has ruled that police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits; police officers can stop cars based only on “anonymous” tips; Secret Service agents are not accountable for their actions, as long as they’re done in the name of “security”; citizens only have a right to remain silent if they assert it; police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes,” justifying any and all police searches of vehicles stopped on the roadside; police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime; police can stop, search, question and profile citizens and non-citizens alike; police can subject Americans to virtual strip searches, no matter the “offense”; police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home; and it’s a crime to not identify yourself when a policeman asks your name.

    Moreover, it was a unanimous Supreme Court that determined that police officers may use drug-sniffing dogs to conduct warrantless searches of cars during routine traffic stops. That same Court gave police the green light to taser defenseless motorists, strip search non-violent suspects arrested for minor incidents, and break down people’s front doors without evidence that they have done anything wrong.

    The cases the Supreme Court refuses to hear, allowing lower court judgments to stand, are almost as critical as the ones they rule on. Some of these cases have delivered devastating blows to the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

    By remaining silent, the Court has affirmed that: legally owning a firearm is enough to justify a no-knock raid by police; the military can arrest and detain American citizens; students can be subjected to random lockdowns and mass searches at school; police officers who don’t know their actions violate the law aren’t guilty of breaking the law; trouble understanding police orders constitutes resistance that justifies the use of excessive force; and the areas immediately adjacent to one’s apartment can be subjected to warrantless police surveillance and arrests.

    Make no mistake about it: when such instances of abuse are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution, one can only conclude that the system is rigged.

    By refusing to accept any of the eight or so qualified immunity cases before it last year that strove to hold police accountable for official misconduct, the Supreme Court delivered a chilling reminder that in the American police state, “we the people” are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.”

    This is how qualified immunity keeps the police state in power.

    Lawyers tend to offer a lot of complicated, convoluted explanations for the doctrine of qualified immunity, which was intended to insulate government officials from frivolous lawsuits, but the real purpose of qualified immunity is to rig the system, ensuring that abusive agents of the government almost always win and the victims of government abuse almost always lose.

    How else do you explain a doctrine that requires victims of police violence to prove that their abusers knew their behavior was illegal because it had been deemed so in a nearly identical case at some prior time?

    It’s a setup for failure.

    A review of critical court rulings over the past several decades, including rulings affirming qualified immunity protections for government agents by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order, protecting the ruling class, and insulating government agents from charges of wrongdoing than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

    Indeed, as Reuters reports, qualified immunity “has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights.”

    Worse, as Reuters concluded, “the Supreme Court has built qualified immunity into an often insurmountable police defense by intervening in cases mostly to favor the police.”

    For those in need of a reminder of all the ways in which the Supreme Court has made us sitting ducks at the mercy of the American police state, let me offer the following.

    As a result of court rulings in recent years, police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless searches. Police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless arrests based on mere suspicion. Police can claim qualified immunity for using excessive force against protesters. Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a fleeing suspect in the back. Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a mentally impaired person. Police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits. Police can stop, arrest and search citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.  Police officers can stop cars based on “anonymous” tips or for “suspicious” behavior such as having a reclined car seat or driving too carefully. Police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime.  Police can use the “fear for my life” rationale as an excuse for shooting unarmed individuals. Police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes.” Not only are police largely protected by qualified immunity, but police dogs are also off the hook for wrongdoing.

    Police can subject Americans to strip searches, no matter the “offense.” Police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home. Police can use knock-and-talk tactics as a means of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment. Police can carry out no-knock raids if they believe announcing themselves would be dangerous. Police can recklessly open fire on anyone that might be “armed.” Police can destroy a home during a SWAT raid, even if the owner gives their consent to enter and search it. Police can suffocate someone, deliberately or inadvertently, in the process of subduing them.

    To sum it up, we are dealing with a nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat.

    So where does that leave us?

    For those deluded enough to believe that they’re living the American dream—where the government represents the people, where the people are equal in the eyes of the law, where the courts are arbiters of justice, where the police are keepers of the peace, and where the law is applied equally as a means of protecting the rights of the people—it’s time to wake up.

    We no longer have a representative government, a rule of law, or justice.

    Liberty has fallen to legalism. Freedom has fallen to fascism.

    Justice has become jaded, jaundiced and just plain unjust.

    And for too many, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the American dream of freedom and justice for all has turned into a living nightmare.

    Given the turbulence of our age, with its government overreach, military training drills on American soil, domestic surveillance, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, wrongful convictions, profit-driven prisons, corporate corruption, COVID mandates, and community-wide lockdowns, the need for a guardian of the people’s rights has never been greater.

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      18 Comments

      1. Extreme violence to our oppressors is the answer to tyranny.

        • So replace one set of oppressors with another set of oppressors?

          Oppressors that would likely be foreign ones?

          That’s what would likely happen under your scenario.

          • And… you would what? Keep right on … with the current oppressive regime?

            Something smells of subversive dem_________.

          • I was a teacher’s aid, in one of my blue state’s last woodshops, and I will no longer call for moral equivalence.

            The Framers did not believe in civil rights as we know them.

            • DS – Sorry, don’t understand your first sentence, and don’t see its connection with the second sentence. Can you make it clearer?

              • Factory-sized power tools in the hands of replacement demographics. It’s like Red Asphalt. Yes it is.

                Don’t let these people build anything important. ffs.

      2. I am soooo glad I am not an American
        The more I hear The happier that I’m not
        I talk to many Americans in my travels
        many of whom expect never to return
        to “The Land of the Free”
        Only those who have never been anywhere
        spout-off about it being worse every where else
        Leave while you still can !!!!

        • Where do you recommend as places to leave to?

          • Anywhere but where you’re at now stupid!!

        • Huge difference between traveling and actually living in a country as a civilian.
          Of course those people you talked to are going to say whatever justifies and reinforces their decision to flee..
          We are living in time where pride and egos are making decisions and the results are going to backfire and cause more problems than we had to begin with.

      3. the irony that gun rights and abortion would be laid at the feet of the supremes

        if every time there was a botched abortion
        every time a woman has 15 or 20 abortions
        every time a woman was permanently damaged…physically or psychologically by an abortion
        every time a woman has a late term second trimester abortion

        if EVERY WOMAN was relentlessly shamed by MSM … the way responsible gun owners are shamed and put on the defensive every time some overly medicated psychopath goes on a rampage

        we wouldn’t be having this conversation

        one is a constitutional right …the other is a direct indicator of imminent societal collapse

        sigh
        but it will be interesting to see if the sc requires all women to keep their vaginas locked away in a safe lest it fall into the hands of nare-do-wells

        ht tps://abcnews.go.com/Health/ReproductiveHealth/abortion-addict-admits-multiple-abortions-suicide-attempts/story?id=8594347

      4. I feel for the police and this is why. The harsh reality on the streets is black violence is real and global (migration has spread the cancer of ghettos to cities across the Western world). Nonsense groups like BLM spread a lie: that black people are being wantonly killed by police and white people. But, alas, the evidence shows across the world the murder rate and rates of violence by blacks has trended upwards, while whites, in particular white Europeans, have become more peaceable ☮️.

        Black Death ?

        “Crime Rates and Trends in Africa
        Official and other statistics show that the crime rate in Africa is high. Of nearly half-a-million homicides committed globally in 2012, only 5% occurred in Europe; 31% occurred in Africa; just next to the Americas’ 36% (UNODC, 2013). Numbeo (2015) ranked six African countries as among the twenty nations with the highest crime rates in the world. These include South Sudan, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Libya. When homicide rates per 100,000 population were calculated, Africa again came second to the Americas. For example, statistics from the victimization surveys in Africa (UNODC, 2010) revealed that in Rwanda, during the period 2003- 2008, out of the number of crime cases reported, 68.9% were crimes at the household level while 31.1% were personal/individual cases. In other African countries, such as Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, Tanzania and Uganda, robbery, corruption, consumer fraud, sexual assault, kidnapping, and property crimes involving car hijacking, theft of livestock, and burglary were prevalent, although to varying degrees.”

        “As indicated by UNODC, out of 437,000 (almost half a million) deaths caused by intentional homicide globally in 2012, more than a third (36%) happened in the Americas, 31% occurred in Africa, 28% in Asia, and just 5% in Europe (UNODC, 2014).
        Source: Practical Action, Community Based crime Prevention Online Learning Alliance

        “The Americas continue to report high homicide rates. Young men are especially at risk, with a homicide rate for men aged 18 to 19 estimated at 46 per 100,000 – far higher than the risk faced by their peers in other regions. Firearms are also involved far more often in homicides in the Americas than in other parts of the world.
        By contrast, Europe has seen a decline in the homicide rate by 63 per cent since 2002 and by 38 per cent since 1990. The rate in Asia has fallen by 36 per cent since 1990. Data collection overall has improved since the previous Global Study on Homicide, but there remain serious gaps in the availability of reliable data for African countries. There are also indications that homicide is underreported in the official statistics in Pacific countries.
        This study offers particular insights into the gender-related killing of women and girls. “Femicide” “

        Source: UNODC, Global Study on Homicide

        “Black people are three times more likely to be killed on the streets of London than other ethnic groups, new figures show.” Source: The Independent

        ”Blacks are disproportionately represented as both homicide victims and offenders. The victimization rates for blacks were 6 times higher than those for whites. The offending rates for blacks were more than 7 times higher the rates for whites. Males represent 77% of homicide victims and nearly 90% of offenders.” Source: US Bureau of Justice Statistics

        • Who is doing most of the homiciding of those Blacks?

          Whites?

          • No Backs are doing it and even kill the whites if they can like the farmers and such. It is generally blacks killing blacks and killing whites. Prisons and TV are full of Blacks committing the crimes.

            • All true. Most blacks in the world are attacked, raped and murdered by other blacks. Very few are killed by whites.

              In fact, police often joke about how few times in a career they are ever called to respond to a white raping or killing a black.

              The one place where black lives don’t matter is in the black community.

          • Are you an idiot shill working for the establishment? Your many comments already are so ridiculous that no sane person would question an already OBVIOUS wrongdoing. Give it a fuqueing rest dummy!!!

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