http://www.mercurynews.com/…

For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn’t apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism.That view was expressed in a Justice Department legal memo dated Oct. 23, 2001. The administration on Wednesday stressed that it now disavows that view.

The October 2001 memo was written at the request of the White House by John Yoo, then the deputy assistant attorney general, and addressed to Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time. The administration had asked the department for an opinion on the legality of potential responses to terrorist activity.

The 37-page memo has not been released. Its existence was disclosed Tuesday in a footnote of a separate secret memo, dated March 14, 2003, released by the Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations,” the footnote states, referring to a document titled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States.”

Suzanne Spaulding, a national security law expert and former assistant general counsel at the CIA, said she found the Fourth Amendment reference in the footnote troubling, but added: “To know (the Justice Department) no longer thinks this is a legitimate statement is reassuring.”

Not as if this is really all that surprising given what they have done but can she serious? The fact they thought it for 10 seconds would be enough for me not to ever trust those people again. The 4th Amendment is pretty clear and no one in the Justice Department should have ever thought it “had no application to domestic military operations.”

http://www.usatoday.com/…

Federal prosecutors are targeting a rising number of law enforcement officers for alleged brutality, Justice Department statistics show. The heightened prosecutions come as the nation’s largest police union fears that agencies are dropping standards to fill thousands of vacancies and “scrimping” on training.

Cases in which police, prison guards and other law enforcement authorities have used excessive force or other tactics to violate victims’ civil rights have increased 25% (281 vs. 224) from fiscal years 2001 to 2007 over the previous seven years, the department says.

During the same period, the department says it won 53% more convictions (391 vs. 256). Some cases result in multiple convictions.

Federal records show the vast majority of police brutality cases referred by investigators are not prosecuted.

I’m glad this information is coming out in a paper like USA Today. Those of us who pay attention to police brutality have seen the stories increase. We’ve known that the number of cops have increased as federal funds have poured into local governments since 9/11. Now we have government statistics proving what we all felt was obviously true. Besides the expectation that an increase in personnel and events will result in an increase in faults we have admission that because their is a shortage of supply they are having to lower the requirements and/or the training. Just as our military has been doing. With less qualified and trained individuals you would also expect a greater incident rate. Anthony Gregory last year wrote a great summary of why our socialist law-enforcement system fails. As these statistics and more stories of police corruption and brutality come about I hope that people will come to realize the danger in giving the state a monopoly on justice and legal violence.