White supremacists and militias have infiltrated police across US, report says | Hacker News Reader

White supremacists and militias have infiltrated police across US, report says

theguardian.com

94 pointsvanusa67 comments

The core problem seems to be that police abuses are not being properly punished.

Whenever I tried to look into such incidence I see that prosecution gets stopped (or didn't even start) at a local level and the whole process stinks of conflict of interest. Asking local police and prosecutors to investigate misconduct just seems like a bad idea.

My solution would be to automatically throw every violent police incident to a special-purpose federal body which is not otherwise involved in enforcing laws. This would be filled with prosecutors focused on civil rights and those people would hopefully be highly motivated to prove their case in court.

The only problem I see is that this it ignores states rights but those are not particularly popular anyway.

You don't get to ignore states rights just because they aren't particularly popular.

Also, look into "regulatory capture". Independent bodies tend toward becoming very cosy with those they're supposed to be monitoring.

Non American here. The only time I ever hear about "states rights" is in relation to racism or misogyny.

Are there actually valid useful reasons for the concept or is it time to ask what purpose they serve?

The last two times I heard about states rights were:

- Trump wanted to run the Covid response. The states told him to get lost. (Was that good or bad? True, the Covid response has been disjointed, even incoherent. Would it have been more coherent if Trump ran it? Or less?)

- Trump wanted to send federal law enforcement into cities to control rioting. The cities told him no. (There were some federal agents in Portland against the will of the city; the legal scope of their activity was protecting federal property.)

The deal is that we have a limited federal government. They don't get all the power. They get the power the constitution says they get. The states (or the people) get the rest. And they're pretty touchy about protecting that power.

Is it useful? It is if you want to keep having a limited federal government. Arguably, we need (and needed) far more than we have had.

Can you give me a citation about the Trump Covid response? That does not match the reality I experienced.

Not from the top of my head. But I seem to recall Trump saying that we're going to require shutting down, or require masks (don't recall the details), and various governors telling Trump that no, we're not going to, and you can't make us.

A bit the opposite. Trump has consistently downplayed the threat, and the (blue) states have taken it seriously and saved lives. Fortunately it's well within their rights to be more restrictive than the federal government, just like it's within California's rights to have more restrictive emissions laws than the fed. But that's a different argument.

Sanctuary cities are also a case of states rights. They're not called such, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a local authority telling the federal authority to get lost.

Decentralization.

There's no such thing as "states' rights". States, like all levels of government, have no rights.

Government has powers, not rights, and only those powers granted it by Federal/State constitutions.

People sometimes misstate the concept of limited Federal powers as "states' rights", but the term generally reflects ignorance.

> You don't get to ignore states rights just because they aren't particularly popular.

Wouldn't it be possible to define all police misconduct a federal crime?

> Also, look into "regulatory capture". Independent bodies tend toward becoming very cosy with those they're supposed to be monitoring.

This happens to regulations of commercial activity because industry has a lot of incentive to lobby the regulators. Local police departments don't have much resources to lobby government agencies.

At the very least investigations performed by a external party would be less partial than those performed locally.

> Wouldn't it be possible to define all police misconduct a federal crime?

IANAL. Maybe.

> Local police departments don't have much resources to lobby government agencies.

The problem isn't just police departments. I think the problem is more the police unions. Could they work together to have enough resources? I suspect so.

Regulatory capture is about a lot more than lobbying.

Then again, I don't know that thinking of prosecutors are regulators is a good framing.

States don't have rights - people do. A government having rights is nonsensical - they have powers instead and limitations for damn good reason.

That's arguing semantics - whether you call it rights or powers makes little difference.

When people elect a government, that government passes a law, and some above-government institution overrules that law, you don't think that affects the rights of people? You could argue that the people agreed to that when their state joined some union, but if that union exceeds the authorization that was initially agreed to, it violates states rights, and by proxy people's rights.

> Independent bodies tend toward becoming very cosy with those they're supposed to be monitoring.

More so than bodies which never pretended to be independent in the first place? IOW what we have now? Seems like you're making the perfect the enemy of the good here.

Why have a federal body?

Prosecutors on the State level should be able to handle this without conflicts of interest.

Historically the answer is parochial corruption and interests where they don't want the problem solved regardless of what the law says. The federal level has "fifty" eyes on it while a state has mostly its residents watching it. Which is why federal hate crimes were devised.

To me a federal organization is a single point of failure. Once it goes bad, it's all bad.

In my world, the residents of a state should be the ones to keep an eye on this. They'd have a chance to affect it. Changing anything in Washington is rarely humanly possible.

Prosecutors rely heavily on police testimony during trials and their conviction ratio is highly important for their careers especially for elected ones, so it can easily create a conflict of interest.

They go after the police and somehow police officers stop attending trials or claim they don’t remember during their testimony.

There needs to be either a completely separated body from the state/district attorneys or it needs to be federal.

I was thinking a specialized police prosecution unit, on the state level. The career prosecutors there would make their careers by convicting cops.

That’s what internal affairs does, it still isn’t enough usually because it pretty much means you are stuck there once you join since your other career prospects disappear.

I think there's more risk of corruption or favouritism with IA than if it was a federal body completely disconnected from the department

Yep, in general this is what the DoJ supposed to also be doing, it just doesn’t have a mandate that can be applied to all cases.

"Infiltrated" is a strange word, here.

From the original report: > “white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement . . . by organized groups and by self-initiated infiltration by law enforcement personnel sympathetic to white supremacist causes.”

"self-initiated infiltration" sounds more like the racists were already there. My understanding from other reporting is that there's a law enforcement/military -> extremist militia pipeline as well, e.g. Oath Keepers and such.

It’s infiltration because they’re doing it to further their aims by subverting those* of organisations they’re joining. The Internet means that planning and radicalisation can happen without ever being explicitly targeted by organised extremists. Hence self-infiltration much like the Islamist terror attacks carried out by self-radicalised people.

* - Nominally at least.

One of the issues I see is that half of the country seems to see Oath Keepers and Threepers as “extremist militias”, while the other half sees them as a reasonable reaction to an increasingly powerful government.

I’m explicitly not taking a position on this topic -instead, I want to call out the significant disparity in perspective. HN seems to nearly unanimously accept the labels applied to these groups without question while other communities of which I’m part reject them (also without question).

More worrying than the polarization to me is the fact that neither group seems aware that other sees things so differently, and that the opposite opinion is broadly held by the other side. The assumption seems to be that only “extremists” would hold that view, when the reality is that 30%+ of the population share it.

The “moderate” position is vanishingly small these days.

What does a "moderate" position look like when it comes to white supremacy?

This is exactly what I mean. Which specific group are you referring to?

Using “extremist”, “anti-government”, “right-wing”, and “white supremacist” almost interchangeably seems to be very common. Both this article and the report its based on repeatedly refer to “white supremacist or far-right militant groups”. Those are very different things.

Yeah, there were many Klan members in the police force back in the day? This article seems to suggest it's a new problem

White supremacists exist in some quantity in all parts of American society. This should not be a surprise.

That they would choose a career where you can directly affect the lives and freedom of people you may hate without consequences would seem to make it more appealing.

Link to the report:

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidd...

>Obviously, only a tiny percentage of law enforcement officials are likely to be active members of white supremacist groups.

Quoted directly from the report itself. More fear, uncertainty and doubt to stir the pot. The author also resigned from the FBI as a whistleblower unrelated to this topic, so it seems he has a bit of an axe to grind.

Quoted out of context from the report. The point was that they're not likely to be out in the open about their affiliation with white supremacists, which is not the same as there being no affiliation at all. Of course infiltrators don't announce that they're infiltrators. Blending in is part of the game. Supremacists even have a name for this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_skin

Note the particular reference to law enforcement. That plus the ad hominem at the end of your comment adds up to a whole lot of Not Convincing. BTW here's another report on the same topic, from 2006. Can't wait to see what reason you come up with for dismissing it as well.

http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/402521/doc-26-white-su...

Most of that document is redacted. The first key judgment even seems to be in the spirit of my quote, contradicting that there's any real infiltration. Aside from a reference to one specific person and the KKK it's just full of hypotheticals: "they could", "which can", "they can benefit."

The fact that "ghost skins" exist does not suggest that they're any more numerous but it sure makes an attractive runaway conspiracy that of course can't be disproved.

My quote is completely in context, he mentions nothing about openness of affiliation in the paragraph before or after. In fact he weakens his own argument by jumping from pointing out a handful of alleged white supremacist connections since 2000 to "hundreds of federal, state, and local law enforcement officials participating in racist, nativist, and sexist social media activity" - posting memes seems like a bit of a step down from being a member of a white supremacist militia.

And my ad hominem is completely relevant considering that he has burned professional bridges and has no incentive to be subtle or nuanced about a politically charged topic.

As I said, fear, uncertainty and doubt. Glad to come back to this thread and see that it was flagged.

I'm not saying this isn't true (there's a lot of evidence to support this claim), however, if you read the actual report the Guardian is reporting on, all but one of their sources are Vox, NYT, WaPo. It wouldn't be controversial to say that these outlets lean left, and therefore would draw conclusions along those lines. Why didn't the Brennan Center report look at the studies directly? I think that taints the sources a bit.

Some of those that work forces...

Citation https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ

We stop former felons from taking certain government jobs. There's no reason we can't do the same for current or former members of white supremacist organizations. You don't get to be in law enforcement while also being part of a white nationalist terrorist group, this shouldn't be controversial.

Meanwhile in Germany: the Interior Minister blocks a study on racism in politics because it is "not needed" and "racial profiling is no problem because it is forbidden" (https://www.dw.com/en/germany-study-halted-into-racial-profi...).

At a time when literally every other week alt-right networks, weapons caches, abuses of police IT systems to snoop on women, antifascists and VIPs in the police and military crop up...

As other have noted, this article omits a number of relevant facts to spark a narrative:

> Wisconsin, faced intense scrutiny over their response to armed white men and militia groups gathered in the city amid demonstrations by Black Lives Matter activists and others over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black father of three who was left paralyzed after being shot in the back.

Video confirms Jacob Blake was ignoring the instructions of the police and moved to his vehicle (keep in mind that in the US firearm ownership is common).

> On Wednesday, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old who appeared to consider himself a militia member and had posted “blue lives matter” content, was arrested on suspicion of murder after the fatal shooting of two protesters.

Video and eyewitness testimony confirm this man was being chased by a group of people.

dang: a better link would be to the actual report:

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidd...

It's not self defense when you initiate conflict.

We have people traveling form out of state to start fights, then killing other people in 'self defense'. Do you see a problem here?

If someone pulls a gun on you and you're kneeling [1], or someone chases you [2], they are the aggressor. As this witness confirms [3]

He travelled 20 miles from his home, a very short drive. It's possible the men who attacked him travelled from further away.

You stating that this short journey 'crosses state lines' is a tactic similar to the article: omitting relevant facts to push a narrative.

[1] https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1299119894169092098?s...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdMTghlrFiw&bpctr=1598560684

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=0zSECoazDSE&...

>We have people traveling form out of state to start fights

Kyle Rittenhouse is from Antioch, which is on the northern border of Illinois and Wisconsin. Kenosha is 20 miles from Antioch by car.

Disturbing, but hardly surprising.

And here's a link to a video of David Beth, the Kenosha sheriff mentioned in the article, saying some things that you'd expect to hear from an anti-Semitic speech from 1930s Germany:

https://twitter.com/People4Bernie/status/1299006089317347330...

It's quite relevant to the infiltration of white supremacists into the police force that the article points out.

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