Regulatory Agencies Sending Armed Squads To Check Water Quality, 'Rescue' Baby Deer

from the when-all-you-have-is-a-bunch-of-armed-officers... dept

It seems as if nearly every police department, no matter how small or unthreatened by criminal activity, wants to outfit their officers with military-grade equipment (something the DHS is only to happy to help with -- provided someone invokes the codeword "terrorism" at some point during the requisition). The outcome is inevitable, tragic and more than a little ridiculous. Local SWAT teams are now rolling up on suburban lawns like they're storming Normandy, executing no-knock warrants in the dead of night to unverified addresses. Some occasions result in little more than completely freaked-out citizens. Others end in death and injury. Sometimes it's just the family dog that takes a bullet. Other times, it's innocent civilians.

But this militarization goes even further than various police departments. It also permeates other government agencies, agencies that really shouldn't be utilizing heavily-armed SWAT teams to enforce regulatory policies. It's not as if anyone should be expecting the kind of resistance these teams are armed for -- at least not in these situations.

This is the bold new face of American enforcement -- squads of armed men sent on a life-or-death mission to… check water quality.

Miners from the Chicken area -- a gold mining town of just 17 full-time residents and dozens of seasonal miners off the Taylor Highway, between Tok and the Canadian border -- said that during the third week of August they were surprised by groups of four to eight armed officers, who swarmed onto their mining claims with little or no warning.

The officers were armed and wearing body armor. They were part of the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force and were there to check for violations of section 404 of the Clean Water Act, according to several miners who were contacted by the group. Section 404 governs water discharges into rivers, streams, lakes and oceans.

Men with guns, checking water supplies. That's the new EPA -- an agency that backs up its policies with armed officers. I'm guessing it's done handing out fines for violations. No more "30 days to comply with federal PPM standards." No more Mr. Nice Regulatory Agency.

So, why did the EPA feel it was necessary to send armed officers to verify water quality?

The EPA has refused to publicly explain why it used armed officers as part of what it called a “multi-jurisdictional” investigation of possible Clean Water Act violations in the area.

None of your business, citizen!

One "helpful" staffer suggested it was probably because drugs and sex.

According to one Senate staffer, the federal agency said it decided to send in the task force armed and wearing body armor because of information it received from the Alaska State Troopers about “rampant drug and human trafficking going on in the area.”

Drug dealing, human trafficking and potentially unsafe water? That's quite the trifecta. Let's go to the State Troopers for a little more explanation.

“The Alaska State Troopers did not advise the EPA that there was dangerous drug activity. We do not have evidence to suggest that is occurring,” said Trooper spokesperson Megan Peters.

This is what happens when you have an excess of tactical gear and nothing to deploy it against. The "dangerousness" bar continues to be lowered until it ultimately bottoms out, and once that happens, officials just start making up their own justifications. And once that happens, people start getting hurt.

You can't amp up your squad, hand them tactical gear and loaded weapons, and then send them out to maintain a defensive perimeter while someone obtains a water sample, and not expect someone to misread something, anything, about the situation and react in a regrettable fashion. You've set them up for danger and delivered a glorified science fair project. Someone's trigger finger's going to get itchy. Someone's going to see normal movements as "furtive" and disgruntled exclamations from the victims as "threats."

Here's one more example of regulatory agencies acting like paramilitary strike teams in order to handle yet another life-threatening situation -- a baby deer that had ended up at a local "no-kill" animal shelter.

Two weeks ago, [shelter employee Ray] Schulze was working in the barn at the Society of St. Francis on the Kenosha-Illinois border when a swarm of squad cars arrived and officers unloaded with a search warrant.

"(There were) nine DNR agents and four deputy sheriffs, and they were all armed to the teeth," Schulze said.

Agents told staff they came to seize the deer because Wisconsin law forbids the possession of wildlife.

"I said the deer is scheduled to go to the wildlife reserve the next day," Schulze said.

Agents rounded up the staff and kept them controlled while they went in search of the fawn, which they then killed. Sure, the animal shelter might have released it alive, but Dept. of Natural Resources policy says seized animals must be killed to prevent the spread of disease. A spokesman for the DNR said "its heart was in the right place" when it stormed the animal shelter with armed officers and seized the very much alive fawn and killed it. (There's some dispute as to whether the DNR killed it at the shelter or euthanized it later, but the end result is the same.)

When reporter Colleen Henry asked if the department could have called first and asked for a voluntary surrender instead of expending all of these resources, she received one of the most ridiculous answers ever.

"If a sheriff's department is going in to do a search warrant on a drug bust, they don't call them and ask them to voluntarily surrender their marijuana or whatever drug that they have before they show up," [DNR Supervisor Jennifer] Niemeyer said.

When all else fails, start talking about drugs (see our first story). Obviously, harboring a wild animal is the same as possessing drugs and should be treated as such -- with an armed response. To compare an animal shelter to a drug dealer is more than simply disingenuous -- it's the nadir of rhetoric. It's a painfully weak fallback argument which is solely designed to allow the embarrassed "enforcement" party to extricate themselves from the discussion.

And now the DNR is complaining its receiving angry comments and death threats. I would never condone death threats (and there are laws in place to deal with those) but the agency deserves every negative comment and complaint it receives. It looked at all the possible ways to handle this and decided storming the animal shelter with a quasi-SWAT team was the best response. If you don't like being treated like terrible human beings, stop performing terrible acts.

The police state isn't just the police. It's the entire government, which has a large number of tools at its disposal, but always reaches for the bluntest, weightiest one first.

Filed Under: armed soldiers, dnr, epa, militarization, swat team, water quality

Only A Terrorist Would Complain About Tennessee's Water Quality

from the drink-the-damn-water...-or-the-terrorists-win! dept

The War on Terror has lasted so long the words have lost all meaning. Some of our war on terror actually involves warlike actions in other countries. Other parts of this war take the form of a debate on which constitutional rights are now considered optional -- a debate the general public isn't welcome to attend.

Still other parts of this capital-W, neverending war are even more poorly defined. Whenever some act or statement might have potentially negative consequences for Americans and/or their government, these too become our enemies. Another example of how the word "terrorism" has come to mean everything and nothing simultaneously is gracelessly provided by a member of Tennessee's water regulation body.

A Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation deputy director warned a group of Maury County residents that unfounded complaints about water quality could be considered an “act of terrorism.”

“We take water quality very seriously. Very, very seriously,” said Sherwin Smith, deputy director of TDEC’s Division of Water Resources, according to audio recorded by attendees. “But you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there’s no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism.”

It's tough to tell where Smith was headed when he began this statement, but it's altogether unsurprising where it ends up. Anything is an act of terrorism, even complaining about water quality. If the state disagrees with the public's assessment that the water is so hard it's best consumed with a chisel and a fork, they're now on The List and should know that any attempts to board a plane in the future will require a full-blown molestation of their person and carry-on luggage.

Even if the state agrees the water is better described as "heavily diluted silt," you've still got the feds to deal with, at least according to Smith. Apparently, the US government also has the power to declare your drinking water "pretty excellent, actually" before charging your complaining ass with "communicating terroristic speculation on local water quality."

At least the audience had the presence of mind to a.) get it all on tape and b.) say what everyone was thinking.

“Can you say that again, please?” an audience member can be heard asking on the audio.

Smith went on in the recording to repeat the claim almost verbatim.

Well, if you can't be right, at least be consistent. Smith's spokespeople were quick to issue a "no comment" and pledged to get to the bottom of Smith's statement, which was probably "misheard" or "taken out of context."

“In terms of the comments made by a member of the Water Resources Division at the meeting, we are just receiving the information and looking into this on our end,” spokeswoman Meg Lockhart said. “The department would like to fully assess what was said in the meeting. I am told that the meeting was far longer than the audio clip provided by SOCM and that Mr. Smith actually clarified his remarks. But again, we are looking into it.”

The comment shocked and outraged attendees, who saw it as an attempt to silence complaints, said Brad Wright, organizer for SOCM in Middle Tennessee.

Rep. [Sheila] Butt, who organized the meeting, also was shocked.

“I think that we need to be very careful with how we use the words ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism,’ ” she said. “I thought it was out of context. That did not apply to anything that we were discussing at the meeting.”

Butt said the water issue had been marred by “communication breakdowns” by both sides, which wouldn’t be made easier with such inflammatory comments being made.

Silence by rhetoric or not, there's evidence that those in charge of regulating water supplies take any disparagement of the goods very seriously.

A few months ago, a couple of Florida DJs pranked the local population, issuing a warning that the local drinking water was full of "dihydrogen monoxide." A small panic ensued and the pair briefly found themselves facing possible felony charges before more rational thinking prevailed.

[A]pparently, the station, the water works, and perhaps the authorities are still trying to figure out if the two hosts could face felony charges for, again, reporting that the scientific name of water was coming out of the pipes. "My understanding is it is a felony to call in a false water quality issue," Diane Holm, a public information officer for Lee County, told WTSP, while Renda stood firm about his deejays: "They will have to deal with the circumstances."

There you have it. If citizens know what's good for them, they'll shut up and choke down the local water, no matter how loaded with unexpected minerals, chemicals and barely treated sewage it is. This is America, dammit, home of the world's finest water! We certainly don't need rowdy crowds of dehydrated malcontents ruining our reputation at home and abroad with their terroristic complaining.

Filed Under: sherwin smith, tennessee, terrorism, water quality